STOP These 5 Habits That Are Destroying Your Brain! | Dr Daniel Amen

what things make the brain worse what are the common things that most of us do without thinking that make the brain worse when my daughter Khloe was in second grade I went to her classroom and I wrote 20 things on the board and I went separate them from me good for your brain bad for your brain seveny olds they got 19 out of 20 right so most people know the only thing they got wrong was or juice they put it in the healthy category when in fact when is it rational to unrap fruit sugar from

its fiber source because it turns toxic in your body so I'm not a fan of fruit juice I'm a fan of fruit not fruit juice but so the bad category hitting a soccer ball with your head no don't do that um what's bad about sugar for the brain proinflammation which what does that mean it makes you diabetic but I mean as it relates to the brain why is like orange juice or the ice cream bad for my brain because it's ultimately going to give you high blood sugar levels M which erode your blood vessels and

you're going to have lower blood flow to your brain that's bad thing I mean there's so many things about it so it's addictive it's pro-inflammatory it makes it more likely you're going to have diabetes and obesity so 72% of Americans are overweight 42% are obes I've published three studies on 35,000 people as your weight goes up the actual physical size and function of your brain goes down that should scare the fat off anyone I used to be chubby but when I figured out that connection I'm like oh no it was that that gave me the

motivation to drop about 25 PBS and so sugar is the gateway drug to diabetes and obesity and so not to mention inflammation which is the cause of depression and dementia so I've got sugar I've got head injury I'm going to avoid both of these things what else should I avoid and then you have low blood flow in those two very important areas and so how can we increase blood flow so you want to avoid things that cause low blood flow caffeine nicotine caffeine caffeine constricts blood flow to the brain what does that do to my

brain Con well constricts blood flow so you're going to get less blood flow and remember I showed you that progression with age no you don't want that you want to do things that increase blood flow to your brain so exercise um genko just one of the supplements I'm going to give you eat foods like um beets oregano Rosemary cinnamon they increase blood flow and do you think there's correlation or link between caffeine consumption and a shrinking brain yes and a shrinking brain is that associated with things like dementia aging brain you know I don't think

there's a connection I haven't read any research that says there's a connection between caffeine and dementia there's a connection with sleep problems and there's connection with sleep problems and dementia I think if you have like a 100 milligrams a day of caffeine it's probably fine but one veny Starbucks coffee has got 330 milligrams of caffeine Jesus and people just aren't thinking about the level of caffeine they're having in our society what are the other very obvious things that are not good for my brain because I really want to make sure that I avoid those things

so I've got sugar erectile dysfunction I mean while we're so B is for blood flow right while we're on blood flow 40% of 40y olds have erectile dysfunction 70% of 70y olds have erectile dysfunction what that means if you have blood flow problems anywhere it means they're everywhere and so like no and it means either you're too sedentary you're overweight you're smoking or having too much caffeine or using marijuana because marijuana lowers blood flow to the brain and so just in that one of the 11 it's exercise genko and for you not for everybody but

for you hyperbaric oxygen those three things will make a big difference in blood flow genko Geno what is that it's a supplement what does it do uh increases blood flow to the brain the pretti brains I've ever seen take genko there's actually a spec study uh they gave uh people 120 milligrams of genko twice a day significant Improvement in blood flow to the brain and so and one of the supplements I'm going to give you we have genko I I've taken it every day for the last 20 years at least and then this is where

the US government got an F for the pandemic loneliness accelerates dementia and brain problems and so when they isolated us the whole significant increase in brain problems so get connected to other people the ey in bright Minds is inflammation so what increases inflammation low omega-3 fatty acid levels and we are deficient 93% of the population is deficient in omega-3 fatty acids 93% so all of us should be either eating more fish or taking an omega-3 supplement like fish oil gum disease like who knew like I wasn't really that good at taking care of my gums

until I started reading the studies you have gum disease you have inflammation you're more likely to get depressed and have dementia I'm like oh my goodness so I'm a flossing fool um H's head trauma we talked about that I did the big NFL study when the NFL was struggling with the truth on traumatic brain injury in football and 80% of our players got better TS toxins um drugs alcohol um but other things like Mercury and what are the unobvious toxins because anesthesia anesthesia I I was looking at my bathroom items and I have like mouthwash

and toothpaste and deodorants and after shaves and I was wondering to myself whether those were toxic to some degree so there's an app there's a couple of them but the one I like is called Think Dirty MH where you can scan those products and it'll tell you on a scale of 0 to 10 how bad they are for you so zero is you live a long time and 10 is you die early and so when I figured this out and I scanning everything um I mean it cost me hundreds of dollars to replace things and

my wife more than that with all the makeup and stuff but I shaved for 50 years with barbasol and it's a nine which is die early and now I shave with something called kiss my face and it's a two it's like you know we teach people read the labels on food stuff should read the labels on anything that goes on your body or on your child's body and we have this epidemic and we'll get to it of low testosterone in males because of the toxins we put on their bodies when they're young what is the

m in bright so the m is mental health it's the quality of your thoughts the level of your stress and the level of trauma you carry in your body and whether or not you have any of the psychiatric stuff like depression for example doubles the risk of Alzheimer's disease in women and quadruples it in men and so that m is what's going on in your mind and so I teach people to kill the ants the automatic negative thoughts that steal their happiness um understand and process their traumas and treat whatever psychiatric issues may be present

like in your case the ADD and I think we start with a supplement um or even consider medication talk about the natural ways to do it the medicine ways to do it and for me I'm not opposed to medicine I'm actually really good at it but it's never the first and the only thing I think about last thing I wanted to ask you about is well there's really two outstanding questions that I have for you doctor the first one is about screen time people want to know does screen time this generation that have grown up

11 hours a day on a screen or social media up to 11 hours a day According to some studies does that have an impact on our brain it does it shrinks it it's sad I mean what it does is it wears out your pleasure centers so you have these two areas in your brain called the nucleus accumbens and they respond to to dopamine and they bring you happiness and they bring you pleasure and they bring you motivation and they bring you drive and when you're hitting them like every buzz on your phone every notification every

time you scroll and you like something you just got a little hit of dopamine well the more you do it pretty soon you thrill them to death you begin to wear out those pleasure centers and if let's just take Fame for example I've been blessed to see Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus and a whole bunch of really fascinating cool people who've been really depressed it's like how can you be depressed you're Justin Bieber or how can you believe you're not enough right because their pleasure centers get worn out by being noticed over and over and

over again well when you allow that in your brain the screen time three and a half hours if you're on for three and a half hours a day you have an increased risk of anxiety depression addiction obesity ADHD and our society's on way more than that and you go so why are we having this epidemic of uh teenage suicide and mental health problems especially in teenage girls social media it's one of the big issues of the day and not only are you wearing out your pleasure centers you hate yourself because you think everybody's better than

you are it's the comparison dragon that is damaging you if you love the dver CEO brand and you watch this Channel please give me a huge favor become part of the 15% of the viewers on this channel that have hit the Subscribe button it helps us tremendously and the bigger the channel gets the bigger the guests