Change Your Brain Change Your Life
This is a review of the book “Change Your Brain Change Your Life” by Daniel G. Amen, M.D.
Date: December 13, 2021
Best place to buy: Amazon.com
Price: 12.99 (paperback)
About Daniel Amen, MD
Daniel Gregory Amen (born July 1954) is an American celebrity doctor who practices as a psychiatrist and brain disorder specialist as director of the Amen Clinics. He is a five-times New York Times best-selling author as of 2012. Amen has built a profitable business around the use of SPECT (single photon emission computed tomography) imaging for purported diagnostic purposes. His marketing of SPECT scans and his writings about the brain and health in his books, in addition to his media appearances, continue being very popular. The Washington Post called Dr. Daniel Amen the most popular psychiatrist in America and Sharecare.com named him the web’s most influential expert and advocate on mental health. Amen has studied brain injuries affecting professional athletes, and has consulted on post-concussion issues for the National Football League.
What is SPECT Scanning?
Amen’s practices use of single-photon emission computed tomography, or SPECT, scans of brain activity in an attempt to compare the activity of a person’s brain to a known healthy model. Amen prescribes both medication and non-medicative courses of treatment, depending on the case. He also performs before-and-after SPECT scans, which claim to assess the effectiveness of treatment. (Wikipedia)
The Book
Brain Prescriptions
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In this completely revised and updated edition, neuropsychiatrist Dr. Daniel Amen includes effective “brain prescriptions” that can help heal your brain and change your life.
“Perfection in combining leading-edge brain science technology with a proven, user-friendly, definitive, and actionable road map to safeguard and enhance brain health and functionality.”—David Perlmutter, M.D., New York Times bestselling author of Grain Brain
In Change Your Brain, Change Your Life, renowned neuropsychiatrist Daniel Amen, M.D., includes new, cutting-edge research gleaned from more than 100,000 SPECT brain scans over the last quarter century and scientific evidence that your anxiety, depression, anger, obsessiveness, or impulsiveness could be related to how specific structures work in your brain. Dr. Amen’s “brain prescriptions” will help you:
• To quell anxiety and panic: Use simple breathing techniques to immediately calm inner turmoil
• To fight depression: Learn how to kill ANTs (automatic negative thoughts) and use supplements targeted to your brain type
• To curb anger: Follow the Amen anti-anger diet and learn the nutrients that calm rage
• To boost memory: Learn the specific steps and habits to decrease your risk for Alzheimer’s disease that can help you today
• To conquer impulsiveness and learn to focus: Develop total focus with the One-Page Miracle
• To stop obsessive worrying: Follow the “get unstuck” writing exercise and learn other problem-solving exercises
You’re not stuck with the brain you’re born with.
This most extraordinary and outstanding book is a MUST for your library.
In the Preface to the New Edition, Dr. Amen states:
“Since this book was first published in 19998, so much as changed both in the field of neuroscience and at Amen Clinics. Our clinical experience in diagnosing, treating and optimizing the brain has grown exponentially. Our database of brain SPECT (single photon emission computed tomography) studies, the primary functional brain imaging study we use at Amen Clinics, has grown from about five thousand scans in 1998 to well over one hundred thousand scans in 2015, making us one of the world leaders in applying brain imaging science to help people who struggle with emotional issues such as anxiety, depression, and bipolar disorder; behavioral challenges like additions, weight control, or anger, cognitive problems, such as brain fog or memory issues; and learning challenges, including attention deficit disorder (ADD).”
Core Belief
Our core belief is still as valid today as it was in 1998: You are not stuck with the brain you have, you can make it better, you can change your brain and your life. Our method is described in the book.
Have the Mindset of a Brain Warrior
To achieve optimum mental performance, we have to have the mindset of a brain warrior. Dr. Amen’s ten national public television specials have aired more than eighty thousand times across North America.
Chapters of this Book
The book contains these enlightening chapters:
Part One
How Imaging Changes Everythng:
Your Brain: A Brief Primer
Introduction: The Single Most Important Lesson I’ve Learned from Looking at More Than 100,000 Brains
12 Principles to Change Your Brain and Your Life
Stop Flying Blind, Start Feeling Better: An Introduction to the Amen Clinics Method
Assess and Optimize the 4 Circles of Your Life
How Imaging Changes Everything: Stories from the Revolution (From Miracles and Meat Cleavers to Flashers, Tooth Fairies, and Trains)
Know Your Important Numbers: You Cannot Change What You Do Not Measure
Part Two
Know and Heal the Brain Systems That Run Your Life
Looking Into Love and Depression: The Limbic System
Feel Better Fast: Limbic System Prescriptions
Looking into Anxiety and Fear: The Basal Ganglia and More
Stop Feeling Nervous Now: Basal Ganglia Prescriptions
Looking Into Inattention and Impulsivity: The Prefrontal Cortex
Achieving Total Focus: Prefrontal Cortex Prescriptions
Looking into Worry and Obsessiveness: The Anterior Cingulate Cyrus
Getting Unstuck: Anterior Cingulate Gyrus Prescriptions
Looking into Memory, Temper, and Mysticism: The Temporal Lobes
Boosting Memory, Learning, and Temper Control: Temporal Lobe Prescriptions
Know Your Brain Type: 7 types of ADD, 7 types of Anxiety and Depression, 6 Types of Addicts, 5 Types of Overeaters
Imaging Changes Everything in Relationships: Understanding the Brain Patterns That Interfere with Intimacy
The Missing Links: Drugs, Alcohol, Head Trauma, Toxins, Infections, and the Brain
Part Three
The Brain Warrior’s Way
The Amen Clinics Program to Explode Your Potential, Reverse Illness, and Reduce Your Risk for Alzheimer’s
The Brain Warrior Diet: Eat Right to Think Right
Please Help Me! When and How to Seek Professional Care
Who is Andrew Really, Questions on the Essence of our Humanity
Important chapters in this book
12 Principles to Change Your Brain and Your Life
Here we want to present a few excerpts of the paragraph entitled “12 Principles to Change Your Brain and Your Life”.
Summary of the 12 Principles of the Amen Clinic:
- Your brain is involved in everything you do and everything you are.
- When your brain works right, you work right, and when you brain is troubled you are much.
- Your brain is the most amazing, energy-hungry organ in the universe.
- Your brain is the consistency of soft butter and housed in a really hard skull with multiple sharp bony ridges, making it easily injured.
- Many things hurt the brain.
- Many things help the brain.
- Certain systems in the brain are designed to do certain things, and problems in these systems tend to cause specific symptoms that can benefit from specific treatments.
- Looking at the brain gives many powerful insights not possible through listening to symptoms alone
- All psychiatric illnesses are not single or simple disorders in the brain. Each one has multiple types that require unique treatments. One treatment will never work for everyone.
- Brain aging is optional. Work to boost your brain’s reserve.
- You can change your brain and change your life.
- Get it. Give it away. Keep it forever. Change the world.
Stop Flying Blind, Start Feeling Better: An Introduction to the Amen Clinics Method
Also, here are a few excerpts of the paragraph entitled “Stop Flying Blind, Start Feeling Better: An Introduction to the Amen Clinics Method.
The Amen Clinics Method:
Know the four circles of brain health (biological, psychological, social, and spiritual).
Know your brain (gather information on how your brain physically functions through our work with brain SPECT imaging…)
Test your brain (at Amen Clinics, we assess the function of our patients’ brains using a sophisticated neuropsychological test called WebNeuro…
Know your important numbers (body-mass index, height-to-waist ratio, Vitamin D, testosterone, and thyroid levels.
Know the brain systems that run your life. (Examples of 5 brain systems: limbic, basal ganglia, prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate gyrus, temporal lobes). Another innovation of the Amen Clinics‘ work.
A personalized program targeted to your brain, leading to better outcomes.
Boot brain reserve (how you can boot your brain reserve, increase your resilience, reverse illness, and significantly decrease your risk of Alzheimer’s by becoming a brain warrior for life.)
Access and Optimize the 4 Circles of your Life
Also, here are a few excerpts of the paragraph entitled “Access and Organize the 4 Circles of your Life”.
4 Circles of your Life:
Biological: how your physical body functions (body)
Psychological: developmental issues and how you think (mind)
Social: social support and your current life situation (connections)
Spiritual: your sense of meaning and purpose (spirit)
How Imaging changes everything
Finally, here are a few excerpts of the paragraph entitled “How Imaging changes everything”.
Without scan or another measure of brain function, it’s like throwing medication-tipped darts in the dark at someone’s brain.
Dr. Amen adds: “Despite the intense criticism I received from colleagues early on for doing something outside the box of psychiatry’s standard of care, I persisted in ordering SPECT scans because of the amazing outcomes this technology allowed me to witness.”
The story of Carlos: “You are not stuck with the brain you have. You can make it better and we can prove it”. When we first saw Carlos, he was forty-eight years old and filled with worries, negative thinking, depression, anger, and trouble focusing. He firmly committed himself to the four-circles program we laid out for him…. By taking to heart the steps in the Amen Clinics Method, Carlos stopped overeating as a way to medicate his sadness and irritability…. His follow-up SPECT scan showed overall increased activity. Carlos changed his brain and in the process changed his life!
Dr. Amen adds: “You can do this too. None of what I will ask you to do is hard. It just takes consistent effort.
We hope you have enjoyed this review of “Change Your Brain Change Your Life”.
PROS
Since we are firm believers in knowing as much as possible about our brains, we find that this book contains a lot of novel and beneficial information for anyone who wants to improve their brain and change their life.
CONS
The SPECT scans might be a little expensive for you. Go to www.amenclinics.com to investigate what else might be available from the Amen Clinics.
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