The Brain Warrior's Way
Description
When trying to live a healthy lifestyle, every day can feel like a battle. Forces are destroying our bodies and our minds. The standard American diet we consume is making us sick; we are constantly bombarded by a fear-mongering news media; and we’re hypnotized by technical gadgets that keep us from our loved ones. Even our own genes can seem like they’re out to get us. But you can win the war. You can live your life to the fullest, be your best, and feel your greatest, and the key to victory rests between your ears.
Your brain runs your life. When it works right, your body works right, and your decisions tend to be thoughtful and goal directed. Bad choices, however, can lead to a myriad of problems in your body. Studies have shown that your habits turn on or off certain genes that make illness and early death more or less likely. But you can master your brain and body for the rest of your life with a scientifically-designed program: the Brain Warrior’s Way.
Master your brain and body for the rest of your life. This is not a program to lose 10 pounds, even though you will do that—and lose much more if needed. You can also prevent Alzheimer’s, reverse aging, and improve your:
-Overall health
-Focus
-Memory
-Energy
-Work
-Mood Stability
-Flexibility
-Inner Peace
-Relationships
The Amens have helped tens of thousands of clients over thirty years, and now they can help you. It is time to live a better life—right now! | Praise for The Brain Warrior's Way
“Daniel and Tana Amen combine deep insights into science, psychology and spirituality to create a potent prescription for brain health. If you want to protect your most important organ, and ultimately become a force for healing in the world, follow The Brain Warrior’s Way.”—David Ludwig, MD, PhD, Professor, Harvard Medical School and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Always Hungry?
“Daniel Amen’s The Brain Warrior’s Way is beautifully written and provides a state-of-the-art plan to win the war on optimal brain health and function. It is easy to read, simple to implement, and with groundbreaking material that will help you to turn back the clock on aging.”—Steven Masley, MD, FAHA, FACN, FAAFP, CNS, bestselling author of The 30-Day Heart Tune-Up and Smart Fat
“Whether you're dealing with brain fog, physical disease, or just want a better brain, The Brain Warrior's Way will keep you and your brain healthy in our increasingly unhealthy world.”—Dr. Mike Dow, New York Times bestselling author of The Brain Fog Fix
“A true warrior is engaged in conflict with courage and skill. In this excellent book by Daniel and Tana Amen, the Brain Warrior now has the education, training and information to effectively fight and win the war against brain dysfunction and disease. Numerous insults in our environment, both obvious and hidden, induce inflammation and daily damage to our brain. We can control that destiny and the environmental-genetic interaction with the marvelous science and recommendations in this incredible and easy to read book. A wise healer will use that which works. These two wise healers have given us all the tools we need to heal our brain, keep us whole and at peace.”—Mark Houston MD, MS, MSc, author of What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Hypertension
“In The Brain Warrior’s Way, Daniel and Tana Amen pioneer a powerful life changing program to assist you in mastering your, mind, body and spirit. This book guides and ignites our innate ability to step back into a path of health and well-being with the transformational tools, wisdom and experiences provided. Life changing!”—Barry Goldstein, award winning music producer and author of The Secret Language of the Heart
“It’s this simple: If you want a healthy body, you have to have a healthy brain. The Brain Warrior’s Way is the ultimate manual on how to tune-up, protect and take care of your body’s most important organ. The Brain Warrior’s Way is the ultimate self-help book, a how-to manual for taking care of the most important organ in your body—your brain.”—Jonny Bowden, PhD, CNS, best-selling author of The Great Cholesterol Myth, Smart Fat and Living Low Carb
“Working together as both a medical team and two very warm writers and teachers, Daniel and Tana Amen have written real gems in The Brain Warrior’s Way book and cookbook. The authors provide practical, delicious, science-based programs to protect and optimize the most important part of you. Especially powerful to me were The Amens’ warnings about neurotoxins and strategies for combating them. In whatever stage of life you find yourself, I hope you will read these books!”—Michael Gurian, author of The Wonder of Aging and The Wonder of Children
Praise for The Brain Warrior's Way Cookbook
“The most important decisions that determine the brain’s health destiny happen in the kitchen, not at the pharmacy. Tana and Daniel Amen’s The Brain Warrior’s Way Cookbook is a guiding light that paves the way for brain health, functionality, and disease resistance with incredible recipes that are totally in line with leading-edge nutritional research. Truly, this is a transformative cookbook that will positively change our health trajectory.”—David Perlmutter, MD, FACN, board-certified neurologist and #1 New York Times Bestselling author of Grain Brain
“The Brain Warriors Way Cookbook will feed your mind, body and soul in a delicious and nutritious way. It uses the latest science to help reverse illness and help you function at your peak for the rest of your life!”—Dr. Mark Hyman, director of the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine and bestselling author of Eat Fat, Get Thin and The Ten Day Detox
“The Brain Warrior's Way Cookbook will help you incorporate the delicious foods you need to eat every day to keep you and your brain healthy in our increasingly unhealthy world.”—Dr. Mike Dow, New York Times bestselling author of The Brain Fog Fix
“A great brain can lead to a great body and heart. The Brain Warrior's Way Cookbook is a valuable tool to boost the health of the brain and body through clean eating stressing abundance, taste and appearance. The principles taught by Tana and Daniel Amen provide a path to healing and rejuvenation, top down.”—Joel Kahn MD, Professor of Medicine and author of The Whole Heart Solution
| Daniel G. Amen, MD, is a physician, a double board–certified psychiatrist, the founder of Amen Clinics, a 10-time New York Times bestselling author, and the recipient of the John Maxwell Transformational Leadership Award for 2019. Dr. Amen has written, produced, and hosted 14 popular public television shows about the brain that have aired more than 110,000 times across North America. He has spoken for the National Security Agency, and his work has been featured in outlets including Newsweek, Time magazine, HuffPost, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and Men’s Health. He is the author of more than 30 books, including The End of Mental Illness, Change Your Brain, Change Your Life, Healing Anxiety and Depression, and Healing ADD Revised Edition.
Tana Amen, BSN, RN, and VP of Amen Clinics, is the author of 6 books, including the New York Times bestseller The Omni Diet. She is a highly respected health and fitness expert, and a nationally renowned speaker and media guest. She has appeared on The Doctors, Today, Good Day New York, and more. Additionally, Tana's appearances on public television promoting brain health have helped raise millions of dollars for local stations. |
INTRODUCTION
The Brain Warrior’s Way
A warrior is someone who is committed to master oneself
at all levels, who develops the courage to do the right
thing for yourself, others, and community.
—THE WAY OF THE SEAL BY MARK DIVINE
The war for your health is won or lost between your ears, in the moment-by-moment decisions your brain makes every day. When your brain works right your decisions are much more likely to be
effective and add laserlike focus, energy, and health to your life. When your brain is troubled, for whatever reason, you are much more likely to make bad decisions that steal your energy, focus, moods, memory, and health and lead to your early destruction and trouble in future generations.
Bushido (Japanese: “way of the warrior”) is the code of ethics for the samurai. It is a way of living that is required to be a warrior. Samurais ascribe to a culture focused on constant, never-ending self-improvement in an effort to protect themselves and those they love. The Brain Warrior’s Way is also a way of living, a clear path we have developed over three decades of helping tens of thousands of patients at Amen Clinics have better brains and better lives. In addition, we have used this path to help people in the military, businesses, churches, schools, and drug rehabilitation centers. Living the Brain Warrior’s Way will improve your decision-making ability and sense of personal power and help your
■ Energy
■ Focus
■ Moods
■ Memory
■ Weight
■ Relationships
■ Work
■ Overall health
The Brain Warrior’s Way is a unique and powerful program and the only one of its kind to improve the health of your brain and body. It is grounded in scientific research and designed to help you live with vitality, a clear mind and excellent health—even if you are struggling or are in pain right now—even if you’ve made unhealthy choices for many years. This program will help you turn your health around. Don’t you want to wake up feeling good inside and out every day?
By following the Brain Warrior’s Way, you will transform the health of not just your brain and body, but the brains and bodies of those you love and care for. The new science of epigenetics has taught us that your habits turn on or off certain genes that make illnesses and early death more or less likely in you, and also in your children and grandchildren. The war for the health of your brain and body is not just about you. It is about generations of you.
Step by step, this book will show you how to develop a Brain Warrior’s MASTERY over your physical and mental health. It will teach you:
Mind-set of a Brain Warrior—knowing your motivation to be healthy and focusing on abundance, never deprivation
Assessment of a Brain Warrior—having a clear strategy, brain health assessment, knowing and optimizing your important numbers, fighting the war on multiple fronts, and always being on the lookout to prevent future trouble
Sustenance of a Brain Warrior—knowing the food and supplements that fuel success and give you a competitive edge
Training of a Brain Warrior—engaging in the daily habits and routines that protect your health
Essence of a Brain Warrior—transforming your pain into passion and knowing why the world is a better place because you are here
Responsibilities of a Brain Warrior—taking the critical step of sharing information and creating your own tribe of Brain Warriors
Yearlong Basic Training of a Brain Warrior—making lasting changes with tools that will last a lifetime
RULES OF ENGAGEMENT: BRAIN WARRIORS ARE
■ Serious
■ Purposeful
■ Informed
■ Aware
■ Prepared
■ Nourished
■ Highly trained
■ Deeply honest
■ Passionate
■ Protective
■ Relentless
Along the way you will meet dozens of triumphant Brain Warriors who were once prisoners of the war for their health. Their stories will inspire and encourage you into a new way of living.
BRAIN WARRIOR BILL
Here is a note from the leader of an East Coast Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO) Pod whose group spent three days with us at Amen Clinics learning the principles of the Brain Warrior’s Way.
“The program dramatically changed my life, allowing me to lose weight, and to focus unlike I could ever remember. My depression faded away and my focus and productivity improved. As a group, we universally agreed that the visit to Amen Clinics had the greatest impact on our lives in over a decade of being together.”
Most people don’t want to think about wars and warriors, and we would prefer not to either, but if you open your eyes and tell yourself the truth about what is happening in our society it is painfully obvious: we are in a war for the health of our brains and bodies. Americans die younger and experience more illness than people in other wealthy nations, despite spending nearly twice as much on health care per person.1 Close to 75 percent of our health-care dollars are spent on chronic preventable illnesses, including Alzheimer’s disease, depression, ADD/ADHD, diabetes and prediabetes, and obesity.
WHY WE ARE IN A WAR FOR OUR HEALTH
And this is not just an adult war. Huge corporations are targeting your children and grandchildren. When a clown or a king with a billion-dollar bankroll can come into your living room and bribe your children with toys to get them to eat low-quality, nonnutritious foods that promote illness and early death it’s time to fight back. According to a recent study, the toys fast-food companies use to entice children are highly effective weapons in hooking their developing brains to want more of what will hurt their health.2 In addition, well-meaning organizations, such as the Girl Scouts, enlist young girls to sell unhealthful cookies as a way to fund their activities, and few people think twice about the sugar, vegetable oil, partially hydrogenated fats, and artificial preservatives that promote disease. You are in a war for your health. Nearly everywhere you go (schools, work, shopping malls, movie theaters, airports, ball parks, and so on), someone is trying to sell you food that will kill you early. The standard American diet (SAD) is filled with pro-inflammatory foods that increase your risk for diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, cancer, ADHD, depression, and dementia. It is also associated with a smaller hippocampus, one of the major memory structures in the brain.
The real weapons of mass destruction in our society are foods that are
■ Highly processed
■ Pesticide sprayed
■ Artificially colored and sweetened
■ High glycemic
■ Low fiber
■ Foodlike substances
■ Laden with hormones
■ Tainted with antibiotics
Plus the companies that produce these unhealthful foods not only use toys to hook tiny human brains but also use neuroscience tricks to hijack adult brains. They purposefully associate gorgeous, scantily clad women with poor-quality food to hook your pleasure centers, somehow getting you to make the illogical connection that if you eat those foods, either these women will want you or you will look like them. You must know there’s no way these beautiful women would look the way they do if their diet regularly consisted of cheeseburgers that dripped mayonnaise, mustard, and ketchup down their blouses.
In addition, many corporations brag about the addictive nature of their foods, “Bet you can’t eat just one.” They hire food scientists to combine fat, sugar, and salt with the perfect texture, crunchiness, meltiness, and aroma to overwhelm the brain with flavor to trigger the “bliss point” in your brain, which is akin to taking a hit of cocaine, making you literally fall in love with low-quality foods. This is one of the reasons people say they love candy, doughnuts, pastries, french fries, and bread and can’t ever conceive of giving them up. They are not eating to live; they are eating to feed addictions that were artificially created for a profit motive. We had one woman tell us she would rather get cancer than give up sugar. We wondered aloud if she dated the bad boys in high school. Being in love with something that hurts you is a position that needs some serious reexamination.
No food of any kind belongs in the same emotional place in your brain as the love you have for your spouse, children, or grandchildren. Many ancient warriors considered dependence on anything, especially food, a weakness, and totally unacceptable. They ate to win; their survival depended on it. We want you to do the same thing if you truly love yourself, your health, your loved ones, and future generations.
The war for your health is not just about our modern-day adulterated food. News outlets repeatedly pour toxic thoughts into our brains, making us see terror or disaster around every corner to boost their ratings. The constant frightening images activate our brains’ primitive fear circuits (amygdala) that once ensured our survival but are now obsolete. The news always highlights the sensational, evil, and most awful stories to keep you hooked to their channels or websites. Unless you purposefully monitor your news intake, these companies succeed in raising your stress hormones, which over time shrink the major memory centers in your brain and put excessive fat around your waist—and belly fat is particularly toxic, because it converts healthy testosterone into unhealthy, cancer-promoting forms of estrogen. Do you reach for your phone first thing in the morning to see what awful things have happened in the world overnight? You might not have known that this habit is adversely affecting your health, but now you do.
You are in a war for your health. It is further fueled by technology companies that are constantly creating addictive gadgets that hook our attention and distract us from meaningful relationships.5 Many people are on their phones at mealtimes, rather than interacting with family members. A 2015 study found that teens actually spend more time on social media (average 9 hours) than they do asleep. Tweens are online 6 hours a day.6 Technology has hijacked developing brains with potentially serious consequences for many.
At Amen Clinics we have treated many teens and adults with video game or pornography addictions. One teenager became violent whenever his parents limited his play. We scanned his brain while he played video games and then later after he had abstained from playing any games for a month. It was like we were looking at the brains of two different people. The video games caused abnormal firing in his left temporal lobe, an area of the brain often associated with violence. When he was off video games, he was one of the sweetest, most polite young men we had met; but when on them, it was a completely different story.
Daniel did a Tinder experiment for the Dr. Oz Show using brain scans to see the effect of the dating site on mood and focus. He demonstrated that, in some individuals, the dating site can make people more vulnerable to anxiety and depression.
As video game and technology usage goes up, so do obesity and depression. Ian Bogost, famous video game designer (Cow Clicker and Cruel 2 B Kind) and chair of media studies and professor of interactive computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology, calls the wave of new habit-forming technologies “the cigarettes of this century” and warns of their equally addictive and potentially destructive side effects.
As part of the gadget revolution, disturbing new research from Microsoft reported that humans lose concentration after about 8 seconds, while the lowly goldfish loses its focus after about 9 seconds.9 It seems like evolution may be going in the wrong direction. In 2000, the human attention span average was estimated at 12 seconds, which is not great; but losing a third of our attention span in fifteen years is alarming!
According to an article in Harvard Business Review, “Beware of the Busy Manager,” our unhealthful lifestyles are diminishing our capacity at work.10 Only 10 percent of managers score high in both focus and energy, two of the main ingredients for success. The authors found that 20 percent of managers were disengaged, 30 percent scored high in procrastination, and 40 percent were easily distracted. This means that 90 percent of managers, and likely the rest of us, lack focus and/or energy.
These and other assaults on our brains and bodies have potentially devastating long-term consequences.
THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE WAR FOR OUR HEALTH
Genes play a more minor role than you might think, and many diseases are born out of unhealthful choices and behaviors, regardless of whether there is a genetic predisposition. Sadly, all around us we can see the devastating consequences of preventable illness.
Alzheimer’s disease is expected to triple by 2050, and there is no cure on the horizon. Alzheimer’s disease affects 50 percent of people age eightyfive and older. If you are fortunate to live until you are eighty-five or beyond you have a one-in-two chance of losing your mind along the way. To make matters worse, recent brain-imaging research has demonstrated that Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia actually start in the brain decades before you have any symptoms. Below is a brain SPECT scan, which measures blood flow and activity, of a fifty-nine-year-old woman diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease compared to someone with a healthy brain. You can see the back half of her brain is deteriorating. She likely had trouble in her brain in her thirties or forties.
Premature cognitive impairment leads to diminished work performance, which can lead to hardships among a workforce that grows older every year. With people working longer than ever before, even minor drops in brain function can jeopardize your productivity and job security. Since the 2008 recession, the average retirement age has risen from age fifty-seven to age sixty-two and by 2020 it is estimated that 25 percent of American workers will be fifty-five or older. The exciting news is that new research suggests that you can decrease your risk of Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia by 60 percent or more, and those same strategies will help your mood, focus, and memory. The Brain Warrior’s Way will clearly lay out those strategies for you.
Depression is one of the greatest killers of our time. It affects 50 million Americans at some point in their lives and has increased 400 percent since 1987. Depression is associated with suicide, divorce, job failure, heart disease, obesity, and dementia. Depression doubles the risk of Alzheimer’s disease in women and quadruples it in men. A staggering 23 percent of women between the ages of twenty and sixty are taking antidepressant medications. The risk of depression also significantly increases after the age of sixty-five.
Attention deficit disorder (ADD), also called attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), is now being diagnosed more frequently than ever. Statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report that nearly one in five high-school-age boys and 11 percent of school-age children overall have received a diagnosis of ADD, including an estimated 6.4 million children between the ages of six and seventeen. This is a 16 percent increase since 2007 and a 41 percent increase in the past decade.12 This rapid rise of ADD is due to many factors, including low-fat, low-fiber, high-glycemic diets; increased use of electronics; decreased exercise; and diminished sleep. Many people underestimate the devastating consequences of ADD. Yet, when left untreated, it is associated with school underachievement and failure (35 percent never finish high school), drug and alcohol abuse (according to one study from Harvard, 52 percent of untreated ADD adults have a substance abuse problem), job failure, divorce, incarceration, obesity, depression, and dementia.
Diabetes or prediabetes now affects 50 percent of the U.S. population, according to a 2015 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Blood sugar problems have dramatically escalated in the last thirty years. In 1960, one out of a hundred people in America had type 2 diabetes; today that ratio has changed to one out of ten people, a tenfold increase. Since the 1980s, the rate of type 2 diabetes has gone up 700 percent. The standard American diet is likely to blame and the sad news is that a majority of these cases are preventable. Most people don’t fully understand the devastating consequences of diabetes and even prediabetes, in which blood sugar levels are higher than normal but not yet high enough to qualify for a diagnosis of diabetes. High blood sugar levels damage blood vessels, inhibit healing, and damage every organ in the body. We have both lost loved ones with diabetes who had limbs amputated and suffered from depression, dementia, heart disease, and blindness.
Obesity is a serious national crisis with two-thirds of Americans overweight and one-third obese. Obesity increases inflammation, which is a low-level fire in the body that destroys our organs and is a risk factor for more than thirty medical illnesses, including cancer, diabetes, depression, and dementia. There are many published studies, including two by the research team at Amen Clinics, that report as your weight goes up, the size and function of your brain go down. This is the biggest brain drain in U.S. history and is now a national security crisis. Around 75 percent of young applicants for the military are rejected. The Department of Defense stated, “Being overweight or obese turns out to be the leading medical reason why applicants fail to qualify for military service. Today, otherwise excellent recruit prospects, some of them with generations of sterling military service in their family history, are being turned away because they are just too overweight.”
Our national weight problem is not just an adult issue. Childhood obesity has increased from 4 percent in 1982 to 18.5 percent in 2015, a 350 percent increase. And it is very clear that the food scientists and fast-food companies are going after your kids. If you are not a warrior for the health of your brain and the brains of those who depend on you, ADD, depression, dementia, premature aging, diabetes, obesity, and premature death are the consequences for your loved ones and yourself.
When we first came to understand the interrelatedness of these illnesses and implemented integrated treatment strategies, we were so excited with the outcome for our patients: better energy, focus, mood, memory, weight, and even pain relief.
Initially, when we started to talk about the Brain Warrior’s Way, some people pushed back, saying, “But I don’t want to fight—being a Brain Warrior sounds hard.” Our response was and still is, “Being sick is hard. Being a Brain Warrior is easy once you understand and implement the principles.” Having your health, with better energy, memory, mood, and focus, is priceless. More than anything, being a Brain Warrior is an incredible mind shift with lifelong benefits—and you will never want to go back to bad habits and poor choices for your health.
We recently gave a presentation to the eighteen-member executive team of a multibillion-dollar technology company. At the end of the first morning, the CEO pulled Daniel aside and said he had to plant brain health in his company. “It could be our competitive advantage,” he said, “especially when we are competing for talent with the likes of Google, IBM, and Microsoft.” Just as it is for them, brain health is your competitive advantage in life. It will help you thrive in every aspect of your personal life, health, work, finances, and relationships.
There is a proverb in martial arts,
“Master, why do you teach me to fight, but
speak of peace?”
The master replies,
“It is better to be a warrior in a garden,
than a gardener in a war.”
If you are a lover or a healer and not a fighter, like Daniel, then harness the healing power by becoming a peaceful Brain Warrior. The most effective warriors in human history never picked up a physical weapon. Think of Jesus, Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, and Martin Luther King Jr., all of whom inspired massive numbers of people to work for just causes and changed history forever. Their fights were personal and principle centered and were won with their brains, not their brawn, which is exactly what we will show you how to do. If you are a fighter like Tana, who has black belts in both Tae Kwon Do and Kenpo, this book will make perfect sense to you, too. Tana has been through a war with her health and never wants to go through it again. As her sensei Bob White says, “If you are prepared for the worst, you can expect the best.” For her, martial arts is symbolic of overcoming barriers and never giving up.
DANIEL AND TANA’S BRAIN WARRIOR PATHS
The Brain Warrior’s Way is deeply personal for both of us. We love our mission of creating and leading the Brain Warrior community of people who are serious about the health of their bodies and brains. Here is a brief summary of our individual journeys, so you can understand why this movement is important to us.
DANIEL’S BRAIN WARRIOR PATH
The warrior mind-set has been with me since 1972 when I enlisted in the U.S. Army at the age of eighteen to become an infantry medic. Working with wounded soldiers was where my love of medicine was born. As a medic, I was a warrior servant and loved supporting the health of our fighting men and women. After about a year, I realized that as much as I loved the medical aspects of being a medic I really hated sleeping in the mud and being shot at, so I got myself retrained as an X-ray technician and developed a passion for medical imaging. As our professors used to say, “How do you know unless you look?”
In 1979, when I was a second-year medical student, someone I cared about deeply tried to kill herself, and I took her to see a wonderful psychiatrist. I came to realize that if he helped her, which he did, it would not only save her life, but it could also help her children, and even her future grandchildren, as they would be shaped by someone who was happier and more stable. I fell in love with psychiatry because I realized it has the potential to change generations of people.
Since deciding to become a psychiatrist, I have been at war nearly every day fighting for the mental health and brain health of my patients. I fight with them for their sanity, marriages,
PUBLISHER:
Penguin Publishing Group
ISBN-10:
1101988487
ISBN-13:
9781101988480
BINDING:
Paperback / softback
PUBLICATION YEAR:
2017
NUMBER OF PAGES:
368
BOOK DIMENSIONS:
5.9900(W) x 8.9900(H) x 0.7500(D)
AUDIENCE TYPE:
General/Adult
LANGUAGE:
English