Joey, age 9, struggled with hyperactivity, restlessness, impulse control problems, inattention, and distractibility. His pediatrician had suggested trying a couple of different medications but Joey’s mother was interested in trying alternative treatments first. She had heard about our work with neurofeedback and wanted an alternative to medication.
Joey did neurofeedback twice a week and we quickly began seeing significant changes, including less hyperactivity and longer ability to focus. After he stopped the neurofeedback he continued to do well in school and at home.
WHAT IS NEUROFEEDBACK?
Neurofeedback is a specialized treatment that uses advanced computer technology for balancing and optimizing your brain. It is a fun, interactive and engaging treatment that helps you strengthen and retrain your brain to a healthier, more focused state.
Using real-time displays of brain activity, you can learn how to self-regulate your brain function.
Monica, age 17, came to the clinic for problems with anxiety, worrying, temper outbursts, poor school performance, and oppositional behavior. She had been in psychotherapy for two years, which seemed to help her temper problems but not her oppositional behavior or school performance. Additionally, she had tried two different medications but she did not like the side effects.
When she learned about neurofeedback she liked the idea of learning how to control her own brain. We did neurofeedback twice a week and within the first month she noticed less worrying. By the end of 6 months she felt more focused, less anxious, and overall more cooperative, which her family validated.
Research has demonstrated the effectiveness of neurofeedback to improve many conditions including:
Patients report enhanced memory and focus, decreased impulsivity and anxiety, better mental clarity, more restful sleep, improved mood, and a host of other benefits after using neurofeedback without side effects!
In fact, the American Academy of Pediatrics named neurofeedback a “Level 1: ‘Best Support’ intervention for ADD/ADHD, on par with medication.”
The effects and benefits of training last long after the training itself has stopped. Because the brain has actually learned (or relearned) a more efficient way of performing, it will continue in this way as new pathways in the brain are created, thus making lasting change the path of least effort.
WHAT TO EXPECT?
With neurofeedback, YOU become an active part of your brain’s healing. You will play a video game using just your brain—it’s fun!
Here’s how it works: electrodes are placed on your head to measure electrical activity in your brain (this is painless, non-invasive, and safe for people of all ages). Then, you will play some games that require concentration. At the same time, you will be able to view your brain activity on a computer monitor. A clinician will show you how to interpret the activity: which patterns mean your brain is engaged and which patterns mean your brain is less engaged.
You CAN change your brain and change your life. Amen Clinics can help. To learn more about neurofeedback strategies or to schedule an appointment, contact the Amen Clinics Care Center today at 888-288-9834. It is important to be able to “keep your cool” and remain flexible with your emotions throughout life’s ups and downs. This ability allows you to adapt more effortlessly to new obstacles, situations, and experiences. Being cognitively flexible allows you to grow as a person and to have a better overall attitude.
The ACG and Emotions
By using SPECT brain imaging, we’ve observed that the area in the front part of the brain called the anterior cingulate gyrus (ACG) tends to be overactive in those who have difficulty with cognitive flexibility. The ACG is involved in shifting attention. When it is operating well, it allows us to focus on something, move on, and then shift focus to something else. However, when it is overactive, there is a tendency for people to get stuck.
Here are some simple strategies you can integrate into your life to help you overcome a negative mindset, become more flexible, and adjust more easily to life’s curveballs.
Use Nutrition to Boost Your Mood
Your ACG has many “serotonergic” receptors, meaning that people who tend to be stubborn in their thinking or behavior may have a deficit of serotonin.
For many, a diet with a higher ratio of complex carbohydrates to protein can be effective. Serotonin levels can also increase by eating foods rich in L-tryptophan which is a building block of serotonin. Such foods include chicken, turkey, salmon, beef, nut butter, eggs, and green peas.
Exercise
You can also increase L-tryptophan by exercising. Exercise increases your energy levels, diminishes your worries, and can distract you from the repetitive thinking patterns that get stuck in your head.
Thought Stopping
An important part of gaining control over your repetitive thoughts is to becoming aware of them when they occur. When you notice negative thoughts start to creep in, you should envision a red stop sign, and say to yourself, “STOP!” The more you practice this, the more you will gain control over your thoughts.
Write Out Options and Solutions
Writing down your thoughts helps to “get them out of your head,” and allows you to view them more rationally. Follow these steps:
Write down the thought that is stuck in your head.
Write down what you can do to help offset the thought.
Write down the things that you have no control over with regard to the thought.
Think Before Automatically Saying NO
Some people have the tendency to say “no” automatically–even before thinking about what was asked of them. This can be especially problematic in relationships. It is limiting and unnecessary to always dismiss ideas or deny your partner his or her request. To help with this, before responding, take a deep breath, hold it for three seconds, and then take five seconds to exhale while considering what the best way to respond would be.
These techniques can help you vastly improve your mental flexibility which in turn will help you reduce your worries, improve your relationships and reduce the distress you experience when you get stuck on unhealthy or negative thoughts and behaviors.
If you or a loved one is struggling with emotional flexibility, contact Amen Clinics to schedule a visit, or call our Call Center today at (888) 288-9834.
This is a subject that is very near and dear to my heart – Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) in females. I am a father of three daughters – two of which have ADD – and my wife, Tana, was diagnosed with ADD.
ADD is commonly thought of as a disorder of hyperactive, behaviorally troubled boys. Yet, it affects many girls who are often overlooked because they tend not to be as hyperactive and have fewer behavior problems.
In fact, although females have ADD in high numbers, males are diagnosed three to four times more than females. Missing ADD in women can have devastating lifelong effects on their health, mood, relationships, career, and finances.
I’m going to share with you 8 specific ways that ADD may be holding you back:
1. Disorganization
Most people with ADD tend to struggle with organization. You often struggle keeping spaces tidy, especially your room, book bags, filing cabinets, drawers, closets, and paperwork. Things are left half done, half put away, “organized” through piles, or dropped wherever. Other people often complain bitterly about the disorganization, such as bosses, teachers, children, and spouses.
2. Being Chronically Late
Challenges with the organization of time are also something that you tend to struggle with. You tend to be late and have trouble completing tasks on time. Tasks and duties tend not to get done until there are deadlines or someone else is mad at you for not doing it. Often, you agree to do too many things at once, not realizing the time commitment involved. The chronic tardiness lands many ADD people in deep trouble. For example, you get fired from jobs for being late to work, not once, but on a chronic basis.
3. Conflict Seeking
To feel more alert, folks with ADD often find themselves seeking conflict or excitement. You can be masterful at making other people mad or angry at you which can have a serious impact on personal relationships. Additionally, many people with ADD are in constant turmoil with one or more people at work. You seem to “unconsciously” pick out people who are vulnerable and begin to pick verbal battles with them. Conflict may follow you from job to job.
4. Short Attention Span
This is true for regular, routine, everyday tasks. People with ADD have a difficult time with boring tasks and need stimulation or excitement to stay engaged, which creates problems in terms of following through on things like homework, chores, or paperwork. The mundane is terrible for you and not by choice. Many people with ADD can pay attention just fine for things that are new, novel, interesting, highly stimulating, or frightening.
5. Easily Distracted
You tend to notice more in your environment than others, which makes you easily distracted by outside stimuli, such as light, sounds, smells, certain tastes, or even the clothes you wear. Your keen sensitivity causes you to get easily off task. This can completely ruin relationships because they require consistent attention over time.
6. Stress
You may experience chronic stress from the results you’ve created in life. Chronic exposure to stress hormones does not make ADD better. In fact, stress hormones damage the memory centers, and chronic stress causes the brain to become hyper-alert, leading to severe distractibility and an inability to filter out extraneous stimuli.
7. Sleep Problems
Sleep disturbances are very common in people with ADD. Thanks to having a busy brain, you may have trouble getting to sleep at night and getting up in the morning. Sleep cycle problems can interfere with relationships, work, school, and overall energy level. Sleep deprivation leads to overall decreased brain activity and makes ADD worse. To optimize brain function, proper sleep is essential. Be sure to practice good sleep hygiene.
8. Insecurity
You may often have what feels like a long list of failures. You have many experiences of trying hard and not succeeding. ADD coaching can be particularly helpful for this. It allows females with ADD to develop a greater sense of confidence in their abilities. This, in turn, gives you the momentum to move forward with your goals.
The good news is that ADD is highly treatable. However, ADD, like many other conditions, is not just a single and simple disorder. Therefore, treatment is not a one-size-fits-all solution. We have identified 7 types of ADD– and each requires a different treatment plan because of the diverse brain systems involved.
To begin treatment for ADD, it is critical to know which type you have so that you know how to implement the most targeted interventions possible for your specific type. Amen Clinics has developed a free and confidential questionnaire to help you know if you or a loved one has ADD and which type you might have.
Tens of thousands of people with ADD from all over the world have been helped by Amen Clinics, and we can help you, too. To learn more or schedule a comprehensive evaluation, contact the Amen Clinics Care Centeronline today or call (888) 288-9834. We’ve all heard of mildew, and some of us know about black mold, but do you know what mold can do to your health? Mold is actually a toxin, and it releases toxic gas and spores into the air. When the toxins enter your body, via skin or air, the toxic gases cause a disturbance in many organs, including your brain.
Often confused as just allergies, or “just being out of it,” mold infections can affect cognitive function, especially in the frontal cortical area.
Is it Mold Toxicity or Stress?
When mold toxicity occurs, many dysfunctions can occur, and add psychological distress, or feelings of “craziness.”
Since the 1950’s when drywall began replacing plaster, high-efficiency, energy-saving appliances are smaller and more airtight for many houses. This has increased the reports of mold infections and their drastic indicators.
Traumatic brain injuries, Lyme disease, and mold infections have very similar symptoms. These conditions are often associated with brain fog, memory loss, insomnia, and even nausea. Because TBIs are often painful and frightening, people tend to seek help more immediately.
Symptoms of a TBI appear suddenly and can last for years, which is why many of these illnesses are misdiagnosed as something else.
When a mold infection isn’t misdiagnosed as Lyme or a TBI, it’s often diagnosed as other brain conditions because of the symptoms. The sudden “brain fog” and memory loss allows for people to simply write it off as getting older, while depression and anxiety symptoms seem to signal mental illness.
How Can You Treat a Mold Infection?
Because of the long-term effects of mold, it is often misdiagnosed, and therefore mistreated, leaving the person even more frustrated, and still suffering from the distressing side effects of mold toxicity.
If you even think your symptoms are similar to a mold infection, it’s important to get a comprehensive evaluation. The first three things we’d do to help are:
Contain or stop the exposure
Boost your detoxification pathways
Increase your levels of vitamin D
An Amen Clinics full evaluation uses SPECT brain imaging to assess the brain’s function and brain flow, while other tests confirm and help to find other conditions. Because there are often other concurrent conditions, it’s even more vital to find out everything, and not just treat the side effects.
Many people have found hope and help at Amen Clinics, just like Kimberlyn. She went from an active, organized person, to feeling exhausted and out of sorts. When she went to her doctor, he did a series of tests and found that she was suffering from mold illness. She began treatments, and after her full evaluation, Kimberlyn was finally diagnosed, treated, and her symptoms gradually improved.
If you or a loved one has symptoms that sound a lot like Kimberlyn’s contact Amen Clinics today, or call 888-288-9834 and find the hope you’ve been looking for.
A highly influential, walnut-sized area – deep in the center of your brain – is live wired with functions all critical to your survival. The limbic system in your brain, in fact, influences problem solving, organization, and rational thought, among other things.
From an evolutionary standpoint, the limbic brain is an “older” part of the brain of mammals, enabling humans to experience and express emotions, freeing them from primitive behaviors and helping to develop the surrounding cerebral cortex.
In order for these functions to have an effect in the world, though, your LS must fuel the passions and desires to enable them.
What Makes Up Your Brain’s Limbic System (LS)?
Thalamus is a large structure deep in the center of the brain that relays info to and from the outside world and your cerebral cortex
Amygdala is an almond-shaped structure in the temporal lobes involved in emotions and fear responses
Hippocampus is a seahorse-shaped structure that helps memories move into long-term storage
Hypothalamus is the size of a pearl and controls brain chemicals that make you hungry, sexual, sleepy, exhilarated, angry, or unhappy
Olfactory cortex is our sense of smell, which connects to emotional and memory centers
When the LS is overactive you are likely to interpret neutral events through a negative filter. For example, if you have a neutral conversation with someone whose LS is overactive or “negatively set,” he or she is likely to interpret the conversation in a negative way. On the other hand, when this part of the brain is balanced, a positive interpretation of events is more likely to occur.
Appetite, Energy and Sleep Are Influenced by the LS
Your sleep and appetite cycles are controlled by the LS, especially the hypothalamus. Healthy appetite and sleep are essential for optimal health. However, disruptions in the LS can negatively affect sleep and appetite, which may mean an inclination toward too much or too little of either.
LS structures are also intimately involved with bonding and social connectedness. We are social animals; when we are bonded to people in a positive way, we feel better about ourselves and our lives.
Another important function of the LS is to process sense of smell, says Dr. Amen. “Brain messages from all the other senses [sight, hearing, touch, and taste] are sent to a ‘relay station’ before zooming to their final destination in different parts of the brain,” he says. Because your sense of smell (via the nose) goes directly to the LS, it’s easy to understand why aroma has such a profound impact on emotions.
3 Ways to Balance and Optimize Your LS
Physical Exercise: One study comparing exercise with antidepressants found that after 12 weeks, both therapies were equally effective. At 10 months, exercise was actually more effective – and it has no side effects.
Vitamins and Supplements: Supplements containing Omega-3 fatty acids and fish oils – especially those containing a higher EPA content, and S-adenosylmethionine – have both been shown to support a healthier, happier mood. Find Passionate Purpose: What is important to you? What and who do you care deeply about? Answering these questions can help your mood; and they can also help you live a longer, fuller life.
To learn more about balancing your limbic system or how Amen Clinics can help you with depression or negative feelings in your life, contact the Amen Clinics Care Center online or call 888-288-9834 today. There has always been a correlation between brain damage, as a result of a brain injury, and later onset depression or depression symptoms. But what if the reverse was true – what if recurring depression actually did physical damage to structures of the brain?
Size Matters When it Comes to Your Hippocampus
In a study published in Molecular Psychiatry, researchers have found that when people encounter repeated bouts of depression, their hippocampus shows clear, physical shrinkage. The hippocampus, which is the part of the brain responsible for forming memories, also helps in developing healthy emotional behaviors.
Researchers began looking at the hippocampus because there was speculation as to whether a smaller hippocampus would lead to depression symptoms.
At the Brain and Mind Research Institute, researcher Ian Hickey built and cross-referenced a 9,000-person brain scan library. When comparing the healthy control brains to those that had experienced regular episodes of depression, he could reasonably conclude that depression actually does tangible, physical damage to the brain.
Further, when the subjects had started experiencing depression before the age of 21, their physical changes were most obvious.
Depression May Cause the Hippocampus to Shrink 10 Percent
Your hippocampus is a part of your limbic system, the area of your brain that houses all of the emotional aspects of your life. It dictates how we see ourselves and our understanding of us in the world. On average, researchers found that the hippocampus shrunk up to 10 percent when someone experienced repeated episodes of depression.
In other animals, shrinkage in the hippocampus also changes other behaviors as well. Symptoms of a shrunken hippocampus include trouble concentrating and memory problems.
This begs the question, though, which comes first? The shrunken hippocampus or the depression?
Neuroplasticity – How Your Brain Can Reverse the Damage
Regardless of how depression starts, you’re not stuck with the brain you have; you can change your brain, and your hippocampus. Studies at the Centre for Psychiatric Research in Stockholm have followed depressed people for 10 years in one study, and results show that negative effects on the hippocampus from chronic depression can be reversed.
The right, individualized treatment can reverse those effects, especially given that the hippocampus is one of the most regenerative areas.
This ability, to repair and create new nerves – neurogenesis and neuroplasticity – proves that you can change your brain and reverse the shrunken hippocampus and keep the reoccurring depressive episodes from happening. In animal trials, neurogenesis is paramount to making depressed brains healthy again, and through various trials, antidepressant treatments seem to effectively start or encourage the process.
One thing that researchers are trying to figure out next: Can antidepressants help chronic depression because of the way serotonin in the brain is affected, or because of the way it encourages new nerve cells to form? Or both?
The sooner that depression is treated, the less damage done is to the hippocampus. Though antidepressants have showed to help, researcher Ian Hickey and Amen Clinic founder, Dr. Daniel Amen, encourage the regenerative process in brain cells. The Amen Clinics Method encourages using the least toxic methods to treat conditions like depression, and to increase neuroplasticity.
If you or a loved one have experienced recurring episodes of depression, don’t wait. Amen Clinics patients have a better quality of life after just six months, 85 percent of the time. Don’t you deserve to live happy and healthy? Call us today at 888-288-9834 or visit our website to schedule an appointment.
In my lectures, I often ask the audience, “How many of you want to live until age 85 or beyond?” Most of the audience raises their hands. Then I ask, “Did you know that 50 percent of people 85 or older will be diagnosed, or have significant symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease or other forms of dementia, before that?”
If you are fortunate to live until you are 85 or beyond, you have a one-in-two chance of losing your mind along the way. That one statistic gets their attention, and it should get yours too.
Alzheimer’s disease is expected to triple by 2050 – and there is no cure for it on the horizon.
If that is not enough motivation for you to get brain healthy, then you might want to volunteer at an elderly care center for two weeks and meet a few people with Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia. It is a frightening illness that robs your ability to form new memories. Later in the illness, you can lose old memories too. Plus, it places a tremendous, emotional burden on families.
According to the Alzheimer’s Association, there are approximately 5.4 million people of all ages in the United States alone with Alzheimer’s disease and another one million with other types of dementia.
People in their 40’s and 50’s Show Signs of Early-Onset Alzheimer’s
Alarmingly, it’s currently estimated that half a million people in their 40’s and 50’s have early-onset Alzheimer’s disease or other forms of dementia.
Dementia is defined as damage to brain cells that results in progressive thinking and memory problems. Dementia is the umbrella category; Alzheimer’s disease is only one of the types, along with alcoholic dementia, Parkinson’s dementia, frontal temporal lobe dementia, and vascular
To make matters worse, we’ve conducted recent brain-imaging research here at Amen Clinics that demonstrates that Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia actually start in the brain decades before you have any symptoms. Other research shows that lower memory and thinking scores on cognitive tests obtained up to 18 years earlier can indicate possible Alzheimer’s disease later in life.
The National Institute of Aging recently revised its guidelines for Alzheimer’s disease.The previous Alzheimer’s guidelines had three stages:
Normal for people without symptoms.
Mild cognitive impairment for people or relatives starting to notice a problem. And,
Alzheimer’s disease, where a significant problem is present.
Based on new brain imaging data, the National Institutes of Aging added a new second stage:
Normal
No obvious symptoms, but negative changes are already brewing in the brain. This is the “preclinical stage”
Mild cognitive impairment, and
Alzheimer’s disease
Can you see the problem? No matter how old you are, even if you have no symptoms at all, your brain is already starting to dramatically deteriorate, so the smart time to start preventing Alzheimer’s and other diseases of aging is now – not tomorrow, and not next year.
9 Risk Factors for Alzheimer’s
The best strategy to decrease your risk of accelerated aging, Alzheimer’s disease, and other forms of dementia is to eliminate risk factors associated with them. The good news is that most of these risk factors for Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia are either preventable or treatable.
Obesity
Low education
Depression
High blood pressure
Carotid artery narrowing
Physical frailty
Smoking
High homocysteine level (linked to heart attack risk)
Type 2 diabetes
In my book, Brain Warrior’s Way, we provide a road map for decreasing your risk for Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia. In the process, you will look and feel better, have a sharper memory, and improve your decision-making skills.
Since the problems of aging, including dementia, start much earlier than their symptoms may manifest, now is the time to take your brain health seriously.
If you suspect that you or a loved one is experiencing symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease, dementia, or other memory problems, Amen Clinics can help. Our experienced staff will help you learn more about your brain, support you in preventing Alzheimer’s and dementia and assist with early diagnosis and intervention.
If you’re ready to take control over your future, call us today at 888-288-9834 or visit our website to schedule an appointment.
Who You Spend Time With Impacts Your Mood
When you are with positive, supportive, and loving people, you feel happier and more content, and you live longer. This is not only intuitively true but research has demonstrated it again and again. For example, in a study at Case Western Reserve in Cleveland, Ohio, 10,000 men were asked, “Does your wife show you her love?” The detailed health histories of the men followed over ten years who answered yes showed fewer ulcers, less chest pain, and longer lives than those who answered no.
When you spend time with negative or hostile people, you tend to feel tense, anxious, upset, sick, and less intellectually on the ball. Being around people who make you feel stress causes your body to secrete an excessive amount of adrenaline, which makes you feel anxious and tense and puts you on your guard. Increases in the stress hormone cortisol can disrupt neurons in the hippocampus, one of the main memory centers in the brain.
Through the years people have told us that living with a person who suffered from schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, panic disorder, Attention Deficit Disorder, or borderline personality disorder has had a negative impact on their physical and emotional health. The chronic stress for family members associated with these illnesses when they are untreated or under-treated can be devastating. Mothers of untreated ADD children, for example, have a higher incidence of depression themselves and often complain that they are physically sick more often and cognitively less sharp than before they had the child.
In our experience, a hallmark of unhappy people is that they have a tendency to surround themselves with negative people – with people who do not believe in them or their abilities, people who put them down, discourage them from their goals, and treat them as though they will never amount to anything. Surrounded by these types of people, you eventually get a clear message that you are no good.
Are you surrounded by people who believe in you and give you positive messages?
Do you spend time with people who encourage you to feel good about yourself? Or do you spend time with people who are constantly putting you down and down playing your ideas? Who are the five people you spend the most time with? Are they positive or negative? The reasons people surround themselves with negativity are easy to understand. People who grow up in negative environments often grow up to be negative. It is what they are used to and, in a strange sort of way, it is what they are comfortable with, what their brain knows. A Choctaw medicine man once told us, “People do not seek happiness, they seek familiarity.”
If an insecure parent continually belittles his child to make himself feel better, the child grows up believing that he is no good and that he is not worthy of being around people who make him feel good. When the trauma of divorce of death happens in a family, a young child often erroneously believes he is at fault and carries around tremendous guilt for a long time. Some children who witnessed parents struggle through a difficult marriage get the message programmed in their brains that relationships are inherently problematic, and they, too, get caught in incompatible relationships.
Adults, as well as children, can be beaten down after years of living through a difficult marriage or being in an abusive job situation. Many people will stay in a job they hate, for example, because their boss leads them to believe that no one else would hire them and that they are lucky to have the job. Just as in an abusive marriage, in an abusive job situation, employees have their self-esteem beaten down to the point that they no longer believe they can go beyond their abusive environment.
Past relationships have a real impact on present ones.
If your past relationships were filled with negativity, chances are your present and future relationships will be the same unless you make a conscious effort to overcome the past.
If you are experiencing depression caused by your past or present relationships, you are not alone. Depression CAN be treated and Amen Clinics CAN help. Call us today at 888-288-9834 or visit our website to schedule an appointment.
ADD also called ADHD is a national health crisis that continues to grow. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 20% of boys and 11% of girls are being diagnosed with it.
Even though it is now being diagnosed more frequently than ever, it remains one of the most misunderstood and incorrectly treated illnesses of our day.
ADD often has a powerful negative impact on a person’s ability to do well in school. In fact, studies show that as many as 33% of kids with ADD never finish high school (3 times the national average). If you look at the following list of hallmark symptoms of this neurobiological disorder, it is easy to see why:
Restlessness
Short Attention Span
Distractibility
Impulsiveness
Procrastination
Forgetfulness
Hyperactivity
Disorganization
Students with ADD are often not identified by their schools as needing assistance and end up falling through the cracks.
However, after years of receiving complaints from parents, the U.S. Department of Education just released new guidelines intended to prevent schools from discriminating against the ever-increasing population of students with ADD.
Furthermore, the guidelines direct school districts to identify students with ADD and provide appropriate accommodations to assist them in being successful in school. Additionally, the guidelines entitle parents to ask that their child is evaluated by their school district.
As reported in the Los Angeles Times, the U.S. Department of Education’s assistant secretary for civil rights, Catherine Lhamon, was quoted as saying, “The failure to provide needed services to students with disabilities can result in serious social, emotional and educational harm.”
Identification of the disorder is just the first step.
ADD, like many other conditions, is not just a single and simple disorder; therefore, treatment is not a one-size-fits-all solution.
With more than 125,000 brain scans in our database, we have identified 7 types of ADD—and each requires a different treatment plan because of the diverse brain systems involved. What works for one person with ADD may not work for another—or could even make the symptoms worse!
When properly diagnosed, kids and teenagers with ADD & ADHD can heal and live a happy life. Amen Clinics has helped tens of thousands of people with ADD from all over the world and can help you, too. To learn more or schedule a comprehensive evaluation, contact theAmen Clinics today or call 888-288-9834. This past year, the research team at Amen Clinics, in collaboration with scientists from UCLA, Thomas Jefferson University, and the University of British Columbia, completed two research studies on the differentiation of traumatic brain injury (TBI) from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). They were both accepted into peer-reviewed journals.
The first study, entitled Functional Neuroimaging with Default Mode Network Regions Distinguishes PTSD from TBI in a Military Veteran Population was published in April 2015 in Brain Imaging and Behavior. The second study, Functional Neuroimaging Distinguishes Posttraumatic Stress Disorder from Traumatic Brain Injury in Focused and Large Community Datasets was published in PLOS ONE in July 2015. The latter is the world’s largest functional brain imaging study on more than 21,000 patients that demonstrated the ability to distinguish between PTSD and TBI using brain SPECT imaging with high accuracy.
We were very pleased to be published in these two excellent medical journals; however, we were really honored when we received the acknowledgment from Discover Magazine about the relevance of our studies to the scientific community. The pioneering research we did on differentiating TBI from PTSD has been highlighted in Discover Magazine as #19 of the top 100 stories in all of science for 2015! Our research was sandwiched between Tesla’s new entry into renewable energy at #18 and the discovery of a new dinosaur species at #20.
Brain SPECT imaging reveals the differences we cannot know just from talking about the patients’ symptoms.
With SPECT (single photon emission computed tomography) we are able to do an overall evaluation of a person’s brain function. The tracer, HMPAO-Tc99, is distributed proportionally to blood flow in the brain. Areas that have lower activity, such as with TBI, draw less blood to them, whereas areas of overactivity, as seen in PTSD, draw more blood. This allows us to differentiate high and low activity from the patient’s normal blood flow. In our study, we were able to distinguish PTSD from TBI with 80% – 100% accuracy.
Using SPECT to Guide Treatment
Because PTSD and TBI have several overlapping symptoms, this capability is particularly important when trying to differentiate between them since the treatments for each are different. Below is a list of symptoms that are among those that can confound the diagnosis for even very experienced clinicians:
Typically, treatment for PTSD and emotional trauma is psychological in nature and the goal is to try to calm down the brain. Conversely, treatment for TBI is more physiological in nature and focuses on increasing activity in the injured areas of the brain. Knowing which condition a patient has is critical to helping them heal. For example, if someone is feeling depressed and has difficulty concentrating, a doctor may presume it is TBI and prescribe a stimulant. Unfortunately, if the diagnosis is actually PTSD, the patient’s symptoms will be exacerbated.
By using SPECT to help differentiate between PTSD and TBI, it is our hope that the findings from our study and the acknowledgment by Discover Magazine will help millions of people suffering from one or both of these devastating conditions to be correctly diagnosed and more effectively treated.
If you have been working with patients who have PTSD or TBI but they aren’t responding well to treatment, consider referring them for a SPECT evaluation at one of our clinics. By doing so you will obtain the data on the underlying biology of their condition which can improve your treatment decisions and help the patients feel better more quickly. Call us today at 888-288-9834 or schedule a visit today.
