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Every day you are making your brain better or you are making it worse. Stay with us to learn how you can change your brain for the better every day. Do you have a few minutes to change your brain and change your life? I'm going to tell you about the Amen Clinic's method. It is our way of helping people have better brains and better lives. Whether you are struggling with symptoms of adhd, anxiety, depression, mood cycles, autism, addictions, weight issues or memory problems, we are very excited about it. It has been developed over 22 years on tens of thousands of patients. Before we get to the method, it is critical to know why it is so important. The mental health field is in a crisis. Dr. Thomas Insel, the director of the National Institute of Mental Health, recently said that many of the treatments in psychiatry are no better than they were 50 years ago. He wrote, the unfortunate reality is that current medications help too few people to get better and very few people to get well. The typical way most people who receive treatment for depression, anxiety, temper problems or attentional problems is that they go to their doctors and tell them their symptoms, such as I'm depressed. And the doctor then gives them a diagnosis with the same name, such as depression. And the treatment is then typically an antidepressant medication. This is actually very similar to the way Abraham Lincoln was diagnosed with depression and in 1840 he told his doctor his symptoms and Anson Henry, his physician, gave him a diagnosis based on his symptoms and then started to treat him. That was 173 years ago. If you are anxious, you usually get an anxiety disorder diagnosis and end up taking anti anxiety medication. If you have attentional problems, many people end up with a diagnosis called ADD or ADHD and end up taking stimulant medication such as Ritalin or Adderall. Or my favorite diagnosis to explain this is for people who have temper problems who explode intermittently. They often get a diagnosis called intermittent explosive disorder or ied. The acronym is ironic. And they often end up in anger management classes or on any number of medications. These diagnoses are based on symptom clusters without any biological information. Did you know that psychiatrists are the only medical specialists who virtually never look at the organ they treat? Cardiologists look, neurologists look, gastroenterologists look, orthopedic doctors look, psychiatrists. Guess there is a better way. At the Amen clinics, we believe it is critical to actually look at and study the brain. So if you have symptoms like depression, we want to look at how your brain works. Because how does anybody know what is going on in it unless you actually look. Not all people with depression have the same brain pattern. Some people have low activity in the brain, others have high activity. Some people may have a brain injury pattern. Other brains may show evidence of being exposed to environmental toxins. Depression is a symptom and has many different causes. Brain imaging helps us uncover how your individual brain works. Rather than simply give you a diagnostic label based on symptoms, we want to understand why you are anxious or have attentional problems or temper issues. In my writings, I've described seven brain types associated with anxiety and depression, seven types of add, six types of addicts and five types of overeaters. One treatment will never work for everyone who is depressed, anxious, inattentive or addicted. They all have different brain types. Looking at the brain helps us develop a more complete understanding of your problems and more personalized targeted treatment. Amen Clinics just published an extensive six month outcome study on 4, 500 consecutive patients showing that we obtain high levels of success for our patients. Let's take a more detailed look at the Amen Clinic's method. Even though we are known for our brain imaging work, our method starts by taking very detailed histories in which our patients fill out about 25 pages of information on themselves and we often obtain information from others. In doing our histories, we look at the four important circles of a person's life. Biological, psychological, social and spiritual. In the biological circle, we want to know about your genes, so we get a detailed family history. We also want to know about your diet and level of exercise, if you've had a head injury or were exposed to environmental toxins. In the psychological circle, we want to know how you think significant developmental events, attachment problems and any past emotional traumas. In the social circle, it's important to know what stresses you currently may be experiencing and the health and happiness of the people you spend time with because people tend to be contagious. And in the spiritual circle, we want to know why you care, what is important to you? Why are you here? What's your connection with past generations, future generations, the planet and your religious beliefs? We start with our four circle evaluation, but we don't stop there. We also want to know how your brain works. We do a study called Brain SPECT imaging that looks at blood flow and activity patterns. The scans act like a roadmap so that we can see the underlying biology of your add, anxiety, depression, memory or temper problems. In a study we published in the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, we demonstrated that having a SPECT scan change the diagnosis or treatment for patients 78.9% of the time, nearly 8 times out of 10. In addition to the history and scans, we also test how your brain works through sophisticated computerized testing. And we usually order targeted lab studies because if your thyroid levels or other important blood tests are too high or too low, you're not likely to get better no matter what we do for you. It is important to note at the Amen clinics that we never make a diagnosis just from a SPECT scan. Our skilled doctors put together all of the information to get the best possible understanding of you and your issues. Taken together, all of these steps help us give our patients more specific personalized diagnoses and targeted treatment to their brains, with some of the best outcomes anywhere. With treatment, we have actually some very specific ideas, such as first, do no harm. Our imaging work has taught us that many standard, frequently prescribed medications can actually hurt the brain. We believe in using targeted medication when necessary, but also believe in using natural treatments whenever possible. We often say use the least toxic, most effective treatments targeted to your symptoms and your brain. But we don't just stop trying to alleviate symptoms. We also want to boost your brain's reserve. We want your brain to actually be better than before you were suffering. Brain reserve is a very interesting concept. It is the extra cushion of brain function. You have to deal with whatever stresses come your way. The more reserve you have, the more resilient you are. I hate this graph, but what it says is that as you age, you, your brain gets less and less active. We did a study on 8,000 people and found that's what happens. Little kids have very busy brains and old people not so busy. At some point along this line, when you cross a certain threshold, your reserve is gone and symptoms like depression, anxiety, memory problems, brain fog, or temper problems start to occur. When you were conceived, your brain had a lot of potential for reserve. But if your mom smoke, ate bad food, was chronically stressed, or had infections, your reserve was being depleted even before you were born. If, on the other hand, your mother was healthy, ate well, took her vitamins, and was not terribly stressed, she was helping to increase your reserve. And the rest of your life is either increasing or decreasing your reserve. For example, if you fell down a flight of stairs at age three and hit your head, even though you may have no symptoms, you decreased your reserve. If you started smoking marijuana as a teenager, you probably decreased your reserve further. Then, if you played tackle football or hit a lot of soccer balls with your head, there was even less reserve. Even though you might not yet be symptomatic Think of it this way. Take two soldiers who are in a war. They're in the same tank, and both are exposed to the same blast injury at the same angles. One of them walks away unharmed. The other one is disabled. Why? It depends on the level of brain reserve they brought into the accident. One soldier started higher on the line because he took good care of his brain. His parents fed him well. He had lots of educational opportunities, and they didn't let him play football. The other soldier started lower on the line with less reserve. They're both sergeants in the army. They're both accomplished, but they start at different places. And the blast takes this soldier here. So it clearly took some of his reserve, but he is not symptomatic. And the other soldier ended up here. Most of the people we see at the Amen Clinic start below the line. They are symptomatic. Our goal is not only to get them well, but ultimately it is to get them better than before they were suffering by boosting their brain reserve. The Amen Clinic's method is to use the least toxic, most effective treatments, informed by imaging and targeted lab studies, in a biopsychosocial, spiritual context. We do all we do because of how much we care for our patients, their brains and their outcomes.