My new book Magnificent Mind At Any Age is coming out 12/2/09.  You can pre-order it on the website here.  Starting 11/29 my new PBS special on this book will start airing across North America.

Here is Part Three of Six of what you can expect in the book.  

Boost Blood Flow 

Blood is especially important to the brain.  Even though the brain is only 2% of the body’s weight, it uses 20% of the body’s blood flow and oxygen supply.  Blood flow to the brain is rarely thought about as important by the general public, unless a disaster strikes, such as a stroke or an aneurysm.  Yet, good blood flow is absolutely essential to the brain’s health.  This is one reason I favor brain SPECT as our primary imaging study.  It specifically looks at blood flow patterns in the brain. 

Blood brings oxygen, sugar, vitamins and other nutrients to the brain and takes away carbon dioxide and other toxic waste products.  Anything that limits blood flow prematurely ages all of your body’s organs.  Consider the skin of smokers.  Most people can tell if someone is a smoker by looking at his or her skin.  A smoker’s skin is more likely to be deeply wrinkled, and even perhaps tinged with yellow or grey color.  Why?  Nicotine in cigarettes is a powerful constrictor of blood flow to every organ in the body, including the skin and the brain, as such you look and think older than you are. 

Unless you actively do something to change it, blood flow throughout your body decreases over time, especially to the brain.  Blood vessels become droopy and blood pressure rises, limiting blood supply.  In order to stay young of heart and mind, it is essential to understand the factors that limit blood flow and eliminate them.  Improving blood flow is literally the fountain of youth.   

Whatever is good for your heart is good for your brain.  Since I wrote my book, Sex On The Brain, I also realized that whatever is good for your heart is good for your brain is also good for your genitals.  Blood flow to your genitals is essential for both men and women to have healthy, passionate, satisfying sex lives.  Did you know that 40% of 40 years olds have erectile (blood flow) dysfunction?  And, 70% of 70 year olds have erectile dysfunction, too?  No wonder commercials for Cialis, Levitra, and Viagra are everywhere.  The startling statistics for erectile dysfunction are an indication that heart and brain problems are also much more common than most people think. 

Here is a partial list of factors that limit or disrupt blood flow.

Stress – the overflow of the stress chemical adrenaline constricts blood flow to many areas of the body.

Caffeine – directly constricts blood flow to the brain, disrupts sleep and is involved in dehydration. Ø      Nicotine – constricts blood flow everywhere.

Dehydration – the brain is 80% water. Anything that dehydrates you makes it harder to think.  I once did a scan of a famous body builder.  His scan looked like he was a dug addict, but he vehemently denied it.  Then I learned that he significantly dehydrates himself before photo shoots to look leaner for the camera, which was the day after his first scan.  When he was adequately hydrated the following week, his brain looked much better.

Artery Disease/Heart disease – directly limits blood flow.

Diabetes – is a small blood vessel disease, limiting blood flow, making blood vessels brittle, and preventing healing of damaged tissue.

Environmental toxins – poison blood vessels.

Lack of sleep – people who get less than 6 hours a sleep at night have lower overall blood flow to the brain.

Lack of exercise – weakens the heart pump, plus blood vessels become droopy and less efficient.

Drug or alcohol abuse – directly toxic to the vascular system.  Drug or alcohol show a toxic Swiss cheese appearance on scans from the overall decreased blood flow. 

To increase healthy blood flow throughout your body and brain you need to get enough sleep, drink plenty water and avoid substances that dehydrate you, such as caffeine, stop any medications or bad habits like smoking that may be getting in the way and consider taking supplements such as fish oil, gingko and ginseng that boost blood flow.  

Probably the most important thing to do is to eliminate any toxins and exercise.

In this blog, I want to share a comment from Samantha.  It is unbelievable, but yet so totally believable.  You must read the labels of the foods you buy!

“I would really like Dr. Amen to see this comment so he can inform others.  I was just reviewing the Brain and Behavior Course and remembered that I just saw the Target brand vitamins for CHILDREN has aspartame in it.   I know well enough to look at every label before consuming something myself or allowing my children to eat it. There are thousands of other parents feeding their children aspartame with a vitamin!  I work with children and helped along so many families with your information.  Keep up the incredible work!”

Whenever I go to the store or fast food restaurants I see unbelievable combinations of toxins, dyes, sugars in the foods we are offered.  Chicken breast, for example, from McDonald’s has the following ingredients:  ”Chicken breast filets with rib meat, water, seasoning (salt, sugar, food starch-modified, maltodextrin, spices, dextrose, autolyzed yeast extract, hydrolyzed [corn gluten, soy, wheat gluten] proteins, garlic powder, paprika, chicken fat, chicken broth, natural flavors (plant and animal source), caramel color, polysorbate 80, xanthan gum, onion powder, extractives of paprika), modified potato starch, and sodium phosphates.  What is chicken breast doing with chicken and gluten?

Most popular chewing gum has aspartame.  The insanity continues to grow unless we demand healthy food.  You are what you eat.  Know what you are eating.

My new book Magnificent Mind At Any Age is coming out 12/2/09.  You can pre-order it on the website here.  

Here is Part Two of Six of what you can expect in the book.  

Do A Better Job of Taking Care of Younger Brains 

Most people think that we become adults when we turn 18 years old.  That is a societal definition, but it is not true from a brain science perspective.  The prefrontal cortex, the part of our brain that makes us most human (forethought, judgment, impulse control, learning from our mistakes – the stuff of maturity), does not finish developing until we are about 25 years old.  The insurance industry knew this long before neuroscientists, as 25 is when your car insurance rates go down because you become a more thoughtful driver. 

As the brain matures, nerve cells become wrapped in a white, fatty substance called myelin (a process known as myelinization). Like wrapping copper wires with insulation, myelin protects and helps nerve cells work up to 10 times more efficiently.  Myelinization starts from the back part of the brain and works forward.  The occipital lobes, involved with vision, myelinate within the first few months of life, so we can see more detail.  It is not until we are much older that the prefrontal cortex becomes myelinated.  Current research, including ours, suggests it is about age 25.  From a study we did at the Amen Clinics, involving more than 6,300 patient scans, we found that the activity in the prefrontal cortex did not become stable until we are in our middle 20s. 

Why is this so important?  Since the brain is not finished developing until we are in our mid 20s, we should be doing a much better job protecting our teenage and young adult brains.  Too often parents give up on their teenagers and do not supervise what they eat, allow them to get little sleep, don’t get terribly upset about early drinking or marijuana use and allow them to drive in unsafe vehicles.  We allow our kids to go away to college too soon, where they engage in brain destroying behaviors, such as heavy drinking, nonstop violent video games, Internet gambling and pornography, and we are ready to toss them out of the house when they are 18, if they irritate us.  I know my three adult children (31, 26, and 21) have much better judgment now than at 18.  I can certainly say the same thing about my own behavior.  Once this brain research was released, the Supreme court banned executing murderers who committed their crimes when they were teenagers. 

Take this concept further, parents spend billions of dollars each year trying to help their  children be successful.  We spend money on private schools, summer camps, lessons of all sorts, including martial arts, athletics, music and dance.  We spend time tutoring them or hiring tutors for them. With all the time and effort spent on helping them be their best, we should not forget the most important organ that actually tells the body how to hit the golf shot, remembers the karate kata, hears the prosody of music and improvises in modern dance.  Spending time and money on youth brain health is one of the smartest investments in your child’s, teenager’s and young adult’s future.  Some simple things to do for children and teens is to teach them about the importance of their brain, how to take care of it, protect it, feed it properly, get enough sleep, avoid toxic substances, such as drugs or alcohol, and share the major concepts with them from this book and my other book Making A Good Brain Great.  Once properly educated on the brain I find children and teens are much better at taking care of their own brains.

My new book Magnificent Mind At Any Age is coming out 12/2/09.  You can pre-order it on the website here.  Here is Part One of Six of what you can expect in the book. 

Protect Your Amazing, But Fragile Brain

The brain is the most complicated organ in the universe.  It is estimated that the brain has 100 billion nerve cells and more connections in it than there are stars in the universe.  Even though the brain is only about 2% of your body’s weight, it uses about 25% of the calories you consume.  If you take a piece of brain tissue the size of a grain of sand, it contains 100,000 neurons and a billion connections all talking to one another.  If you are not thoughtful, the brain loses an average of 85,000 brain cells a day, or one per second.  Information in the brain travels at the speed of 268 miles per hour, unless of course you are drunk, which really slows things down.  The brain is the organ of loving, learning, behaving, intelligence, personality, character, belief and knowing.

The brain is also very soft and it is housed in a really hard skull.  Most people think of the brain as firm, fixed, and rubbery.  Yet, that is not how it is inside your skull.  That is how it is once it is fixed in formaldehyde on the pathologist’s table.  Inside your skull the brain is 80% water and the consistency of soft butter, custard, somewhere between egg whites and jello.  Neurosurgeon, Katrina Firlik, in her book Another Day In The Frontal Lobe, describes the brain “like tofu, the soft kind, which when caught in suction during surgery slurps into the tube.” 

Your soft “tofu-like” brain is housed in a really heard skull that has many ridges.  These ridges damage the brain during trauma.  If this is true, which it is, then why would you ever let a child hit a soccer ball with their heads, play tackle football (even with helmets), skateboard, snowboard or ski without helmets?  Why would you ever buy your teenager his first motorcycle or take her four wheeling in the desert unless you didn’t like them?  From a neuroscientists point of view, these are dangerous activities that could grievously injure the brain.  Sports like boxing, football, motocross and cage fighting are simply not worth the risk.  The brain loves physical activity and it is better to think about safer brain sports such as tennis, table tennis, track and field (although not pole vaulting) and basketball.   

A 2007 study by John Adams and colleagues at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine found that playing soccer, where the ball is often hit with the head, may be linked to long-term brain injury and memory problems later in life.  Researchers found evidence of reduced gray matter in the brains of male college soccer players, compared with young men who had never played. 

The single most important thing I have learned from looking at tens of thousands of scans is that mild traumatic brain injuries change people’s whole lives (by damaging their brain) and no one knows it.  The brain injured person often subsequent to the injury suffers from emotional, behavioral or cognitive problems that may lead them to a psychiatrist or psychologist, who typically never looks at the brain.  Problems which are physically based are often considered psychological.  If you never look at the brain, you miss what many researchers have called the “silent epidemic.”  There are two million reported new brain injury cases every year, and millions of others that go unnoticed. 

When I first started the imaging work, I saw a lot of brain injury patterns on scans.  When I asked patients about a history of head injuries they denied them.  When I pressed, a whole new world opened up.  I found out that people often forgot significant injuries. I had to ask them three, four, even ten times.  Many people forget or they did not realize that they have had a serious brain injury.  You would be amazed at how many people, after repeatedly saying no to this question, suddenly get an ‘ah ha’ look on their face and say, “Why yes, I fell out of a second story window at age seven.”  Or, they tell us they went through the windshield of a car head first, had concussions playing football or soccer or fell down a flight of stairs.  Not all brain injuries, even serious ones, will cause damage.  There is an interaction between genetic vulnerability and trauma.  Plus, the brain is buffered by the cerebral spinal fluid that bathes it.  Still, damage can occur more than most know.

So many of the troubled people we see at the Amen Clinics have had a brain injury or two or three.  Damaging your brain may limit or impair your ability to be successful in any area of your life.  People who have experienced head injuries have a higher incidence of drug abuse, alcoholism, mood problems, divorce, domestic violence, arrests, financial problems and every other type of trouble that leads to failure.  Be smart. If you want to be your best, protect your soft brain.

For many years it has been known that MS is increased in more northern latitudes.  In a new study a link was found between vitamin D deficinencies and MS. More northern latitudes have less sun exposure and less vitamin D.  This is an important study that leads to important suggestion of intervention.  See the study from Medscape below.

September 26, 2008 (Salt Lake City, Utah) — Results from a new study unite the genetic and environmental risks of multiple sclerosis in a disease-specific and gene-environment interaction. Presenting at the American Neurological Association 133rd Annual Meeting, researchers described a link between vitamin D and the pathogenesis of MS.

“There’s a connection between the 2 — no question about it,” lead investigator George Ebers, MD, from the University of Oxford, in the United Kingdom, told Medscape Neurology & Neurosurgery. “But exactly how it works is not clear yet.” Asked to comment on the work, Emmanuelle Waubant, MD, from the University of California, San Francisco said, “MS is a very heterogeneous disease, and this is an interesting way to look at the factors that predispose people.” She noted, “This study looks at the bigger picture and is the way things should be done. The data provide decent traction and it is an interesting result.” 

Dr. Ebers and his team examined the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) for deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) sequences predicted to respond to vitamin-D complexes. They identified a single sequence, which appeared to be functionally active because it transfected the segment into cell lines and measured functional expression in response to added vitamin D. Unexpectedly, they found this sequence is haplotype-specific and perhaps evolving in response to selective pressures characterizing the northern migration of European populations. This solitary MHC vitamin-D–responsive element is strategically located in the promoter region of the class II complex specific to a haplotype associated with MS risk,

Dr. Ebers told the meeting.  “These findings further implicate vitamin D in environmentally mediated MS risk,” he said. 

Sequence Haplotype-Specific During an interview after the session, Dr. Ebers said his group was surprised by what it found. “Most times you don’t find exactly what you are looking for, but in this case, that is exactly what we found. It was as plain as day.” The data suggesting vitamin D is deficient in MS are strong, Dr. Waubant added. “What is unclear is whether or not it also affects the severity of disease.” 

“Everyone who has examined this from the National Academy of Sciences to the dietary committee of the European Union to a variety of professional organizations all agree pretty much that the amount of vitamin D that people are getting is too low,” Dr. Ebers pointed out.“I know all the experts in the field, and they’ve sort of voted with their feet,” he said. “They’re all on vitamin D and their family is on it too. As far as anyone can tell, the amounts in question are harmless, and it’s dirt cheap.” Some experts are advocating that given the potential benefit, vitamin D should be widely administered. But others have reservations and are recommending a more cautious approach. “I’m reluctant to say there’s absolutely no risk, because people have been wrong on these things,” Dr. Ebers told Medscape Neurology & Neurosurgery. “But I think in this particular case, the evidence has been so strong that it’s safe, and all the experts who examine this are comfortable. Plus, many are giving 2000 units a day to pregnant women, so that should be as reassuring as anything.”

It has been a while since I have written.  Forgive my absence.  I just finished filming a new PBS special based on my new book, Magnificent Mind At Any Age, that is coming out December 2nd.  Over the next few months I will include snippets of the book and PBS show in the blog.  Here is a piece from Chapter 2: A Magnificent Mind Starts With A Healthy Brain. 

“Brains run the world.  They run the stock market and the local market.  They run huge corporations and the “mom and pop shop” down the street.  Brains run churches, banks, hotels, tennis clubs, dry cleaners, professional basketball teams, Internet dating services and universities.  Brains run marriages, choirs, homeowner associations and terrorist groups.  Your brain runs you and is significantly involved in running your family.   

Yet, even though the brain is involved with everything we do at work and at home, we rarely think about or honor the brain.  There is no formal education about the brain in MBA programs; no brain training programs at church; no brain exercises in customer service or management programs; and no real practical education about the brain in school.  The lack of brain education is a huge mistake, because success in all we do starts with a healthy brain.  The characteristics of a magnificent mind include personal responsibility, clear goals, good attention, consistent effort, effective social skills, impulse control, motivation, integrity and creativity.  Yet, few people realize that all of these are brain functions.  A healthy brain makes these characteristics easier to incorporate in your life, while a damaged or struggling brain makes these much harder.   

Taking great care of your brain is essential to a magnificent mind.  Here is an example. In one of the graduate psychology courses I taught I asked for volunteers for our healthy brain study.  By the year 2000, we had amassed tens of thousands of SPECT scans for clinical reasons, such as ADHD, anxiety, depression, autism, Alzheimer’s disease, brain trauma, marital strife and violence.  In order to further our research efforts we needed to build a large normal database to compare our clinical studies.  I solicited normal people wherever I went.  Surprisingly, they were not that easy to find.  Christy, one of my favorite students, came up after class very excited.  She said, “You have to scan my 82 year old grandmother, Anna.  She is one of the most normal people I know. You will love her.”  On Christy’s advice and her grandmother’s agreement, we screened Anna and indeed found her to be healthy.  She met all of the criteria for the study: no psychiatric illness at any point in her life, no substance abuse, brain injuries, first degree relatives with psychiatric illness and she was not on any medications.  Anna had been married for 58 years and was a loving wife, mother and grandmother.  She had a sharp, curious mind and was active in her church and community.  She had solid relationships that spanned many years.  Anna never drank alcohol, never smoked and tried to eat healthy.  Anna has one of the healthiest brains I had ever seen, out of nearly 50,000!  Her brain fit her life.   

The First Steps to a Healthier Brain  

Most of us are never taught about how important the brain is, so we go through life thinking about everything but this critically important organ (weight, skin care, finances, children, internet dating, vacations, careers, sports).  I live in Newport Beach, CA, the heart of the OC (Orange County).  We have often been called the plastic society because we have more plastic walking around our streets and beaches than almost any other place in the world.  I often say that we care more about our faces, our boobs, our bellies and our butts, than we do our brain.  How stupid is that?  When you really want to change, the first place to always start is with your brain.  Over the next few days I will give you the first six things you should do to improve your brain health.  Stay tuned.” 

You can preorder Magnificent Mind At Any Age on our website or a www.amazon.com.  Here is the Table of Contents.

Part One: A Magnificent Mind Starts With A Healthy Brain 

Chapter 1. Are You Wired for Success or Failure?  The Secret Behind Why Some People Achieve Their Dreams and Others Don’t 

Chapter 2. A Magnificent Mind Starts with a Healthy Brain: Essential Strategies 

Chapter 3. Encourage Brain Envy: Eliminate the Daily Habits That Hold You Back 

Chapter 4. Hidden Short Circuits May Be Ruining Your Life: Learn How to Identify and Correct Your Vulnerable Areas 

Chapter 5. If Your Were My Family How Would I Treat You? The Four Circles of Health and Healing and Why You  Should Consider Natural Treatments 

Chapter 6. Natural Ways to Heal Attention Deficit Disorder 

Chapter 7. Natural Ways to Heal Anxiety and Depression 

Chapter 8. Natural Ways to Heal Memory Problems and Insomnia 

Part Two: A Magnificent Mind Makes Your Dreams A Reality 

Chapter 9. Ignite Your Passion: Light Up the Brain Circuits that Drive Success 

Chapter 10. Make Your Own Miracles: Use Your Brain to Define Your Dreams and Make Them a Reality 

Chapter 11. Know When to Apply the Brakes: Strengthen Your Brain’s Internal Controls 

Chapter 12. Embrace the Truth: Liberate Yourself from the Lies Polluting Your Brain 

Chapter 13. Get Unstuck: Enhance Your Brain’s Ability to Change and Adapt 

Chapter 14. Develop Mental Toughness: Cultivate a Resilient Brain 

Chapter 15. Enhance Your Social Networks: Build a Brain Trust  

Chapter 16. Be a Maverick Thinker: Stop Anxiety from Allowing Others to Run Your Life 

Chapter 17. Create Lasting Trust: Send the Signals that Build Integrity 

Appendix A: When More Help Is Needed

Appendix B: Why SPECT: What Brain SPECT Imaging Can Tell Clinicians and Patients 

References and Further Reading

On its front page, the New York Times (8/26, A1, Alvarez) reports that “a growing tide of combat veterans” is returning “home from Iraq and Afghanistan with mild traumatic brain injuries, or concussions, caused by powerful explosions. As many as 300,000, or 20 percent, of combat veterans who regularly worked…away from bases” may “have suffered at least one concussion, according to the latest Pentagon estimates.” The concussions may leave many with “longer-term problems that can include…persistent memory loss, headaches, mood swings, dizziness, hearing problems, and light sensitivity. These symptoms, which may be subtle and may not surface for weeks or months after their return, are often debilitating,” and could lead “to financial problems, job losses, divorce, and mental-health issues.” Last year, the Department of Veterans Affairs began “screening all Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans who come in for clinical help. So far, 33,000 of 227,015, about 15 percent, have screened positive for mild brain injury since April 2007.” It remains unclear, however, “how many service members, particularly those who fought earlier in the war, remain unscreened, and whose injuries go undiagnosed.”

 Department of Defense to spend $4 million to conduct clinical studies on holistic therapies for veterans. The Hartford Courant (8/25, Somma) reported that the “U.S. military is spending $4 million to figure out whether New Age practices and holistic therapies can mend the wounded psyches of its troops.” In light of the fact that a “high number of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan” have been “diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and brain injuries, the government is handing out grants to conduct clinical studies on everything from yoga, to Reiki, to animal assisted therapy, to transcendental meditation.” According to a “request for proposals, which closed May 15,” the Department of Defense said that it “supports the use of alternative therapies, if they are proved efficacious.”

From researchers at the University of Pittsburgh comes a study that fits our clinical experience with brain imaging — alcohol lowers blood flow to the brain.  Here is an abstract that should give you pause when you think about that second drink. 

Christie IC, Price J, Edwards L, Muldoon M, Meltzer CC, Jennings JR. Alcohol consumption and cerebral blood flow among older adults. Alcohol. 2008 Jun;42(4):269-75.  Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh 

A substantial epidemiological literature now supports the existence of a J or U-shaped association between alcohol consumption and a broad range cardiovascular health outcomes including stroke. Although it is well documented that alcoholics exhibit both global and regional cerebral hypoperfusion in the sober state, little is known regarding the effects of a broader range of alcohol consumption on cerebral blood flow (CBF). The present study employed positron emission tomography with H(2)(15)O to assess quantitative global and regional CBF in 86 participants (51 men and 35 women; mean age 60.1) as a function of self-reported weekly alcohol consumption (none, <1, 1 to <7, 7 to <15, and >15 drinks per week). Analyses controlling for age, gender, and vascular health (carotid intima-media thickness) revealed that, relative to the weighted population mean, global CBF was greater in the lightest alcohol consumption group (<1 per week) and lower in the heaviest (>15 per week). Effects did not vary across regions of interest. This report is the first to describe an inverted J-shaped relationship between alcohol consumption and CBF in the absence of stroke. 

Michael Phelps has ADHD.  It is no secret. His mother wrote this article for ADDitude Magazine. See…

http://www.additudemag.com/adhd/article/1998-2.html.

With intense exercise and a supportive environment, you can turn a challenge into an amazing life.  This article made me smile. 

Here is a fascinating research study from Russia on the importance of taking care of your blood pressure. High blood pressure decreases blood flow to your brain and impairs concentration and other cognitive processes. Lose weight, exercise and get hypertension treated!!

“The aim of our study was to estimate brain perfusion and cognitive function (CF) in patients with arterial hypertension (AH) before and after hypotensive therapy. The study included 15 patients (mean age, 53.0+/-5.7 years) with previously untreated or ineffectively treated essential hypertension of the second degree.

All patients underwent brain single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) scanning with 99mTc-hexamethylpropylene amine oxime (99mTc-HMPAO) and comprehensive neuropsychological testing before and after 24 weeks of hypotensive therapy (angiotensin-converting enzyme [ACE] inhibitor or diuretics).  The brain perfusion was significantly lower (15-22%) in all regions of AH patients. These patients showed a 25% decrease in attention and psychomotor speed as well as a 14% decrease in mentation. Six months of hypotensive therapy led to an increase in brain perfusion by an average of 7-11% in all brain regions. After treatment these patients demonstrated an average 11-18% improvements in attention and psychomotor speed, as well as an average 10% improvement in abstract mentation.

Marked signs of brain hypoperfusion and impaired CF: decrease in attention, slowing psychomotor speed and mentation was found in hypertensive patients even without focal neurological symptomatology. Twenty-four weeks of hypotensive treatment with ACE inhibitors or diuretics had a positive effect on cerebral perfusion and led to CF improvement.

Reference: Efimova IY, Efimova NY, Triss SV, Lishmanov YB. Department of Nuclear Medicine, Institute of Cardiology, Tomsk Research Center, Tomsk, Russia. nuclear@cardio.tsu.ru. Brain perfusion and cognitive function changes in hypertensive patients. Hypertens Res. 2008 Apr;31(4):673-8.