Change Your Brain, Change Your Body
September 27, 2010 by dr. lam · Leave a Comment
As part of Dr. Daniel Amen’s series on “Change Your Brain…”, his book Change Your Brain, Change Your Body is particularly fascinating in exploring the connection of mind and matter, i.e., how one’s mental health can affect one’s physical health. Dr. Amen is well known for his clinics that focus on using SPECT scans to determine physiological functioning of the brain and how the activity (or lack thereof) in certain anatomic subregions of the brain can be signs of function and disease in the brain. After reading this book, I am convinced that SPECT scans can serve as an invaluable source of information for a skilled and knowledgeable practitioner who knows how to use and interpret them.
He starts with the premise that we cannot change our body without first changing our mind. If we want to lose weight, it does not begin with our body but with how we perceive our body, how we desire that weight loss and what we do to be committed to those changes. If we adopt a fad diet for a week then decide to stop, it is not the fad diet’s fault it is our brain’s fault that caused us to attempt a fad diet and then subsequently to abandon it.
By losing 35 pounds over the past 2 years, I did so not by using fad diets but by realigning my relationship to food. In the past, I enjoyed eating processed food quickly and mindlessly and also in having guilty pleasure in eating fatty foods. I also liked stuffing myself with food. Until I changed my brain in a fundamental way not to like eating that stuff and not wanting to eat until I was gorged like a pig, I could not lose weight and keep it off. I find that people who want to lose weight are using food as a crutch (as much as I did) and cycling their energy around this activity in a love-hate relationship. Until we end the brain struggle, we cannot end the physical one.
Similarly, as I started to enjoy eating healthier and working out regularly, I started to change my perception of my own body and my relationship to it. I started to enjoy my new body and enjoy my healthy lifestyle. When I was in Belgium a week ago, I ate fries, chocolate, and waffles but I could “cheat” because I knew that they were part of my enjoyment for the time that I was in a country famed for those foods but I actually started to crave my morning concoction of raw vegetables and other healthy comestibles.
Another fascinating part of the book centered on how the lack of sleep can actually cause us to gain weight. He argues that as adults over the age of twenty we need at least 7 hours of sleep for our body to function well. Those who say that they can get by with 4 to 5 hours are doing a disservice to their body functioning since almost all of us require at least 7 hours no matter what we tell our bodies to the contrary. When we have a lack of sleep our body starts to create an imbalance of leptin to grelin. Grelin is what makes us hungry and leptin makes us full. Our grelin hormones (what Amen calls gremlins) surge making our bodies not only hungrier but hungrier for sugary, fried foods; and our leptins fall making us not as full when we eat. When we get our beauty rest we not only get beauty because we feel more rested but our eating habits can improve because of it too.
The other fascinating topic that this book discusses is how other people in our lives influence our eating habits, which Amen cites an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Dr. Amen, a Lebanese, recalls his confectioner heritage when his grandfather would tempt him with sugary snacks and how his family would encourage him to eat more because he was too thin. He argues the single most common reason for obesity is living with someone who is obese. That person reinforces bad habits and also encourages bad habits out of guilt for their own lack of will power or desire for gluttony. I just got back from Europe and I do not believe I saw one obese person except for the vacationing Americans. In France and in Spain when someone gains 5 pounds they do not allow themselves to move to 10 to 15 pounds but start to vigorously move downward back to their ideal. It is simply not in their culture to be overweight. It is in ours.
Sometimes when our body is out of our desired ideal it may not be our fault entirely. Dr. Amen talks about how his wife was hyper aggressive, agitated, and well, masculine. He consulted a gynecologist who suspected polycystic ovarian syndrome and found out that his wife’s condition was caused by hormonal imbalance. By treating her effectively with medicine, she changed. If we have a hard time changing our brain perhaps there is a functional brain problem that is causing us not to want to change or to be comfortable with our body at an unacceptably unhealthy state. That is where SPECT scanning and/or counseling with a professional may be of value but lies beyond my knowledge basis. Sometimes it is a question of the chicken or the egg: we may have a desire to eat badly and therefore we gain weight. Alternatively, a bad diet causes us not to stay full, to be more tired, and to be frankly addicted to more bad diet that causes us to eat more bad food. Amen talks about proper supplements that can help balance the brain and the body. For me daily vitamin D and fish oil are integral to my overall balance of my mind and body.
This book is so rich in content and advice that I cannot hope to cover all the details. I hope that these salient points that I derived from this book for my own personal gain is helpful for anyone out there interested in changing their body by a new method advocated as changing one’s brain first.
Younger Next Year
September 20, 2010 by dr. lam · Leave a Comment
Younger Next Year is written by a team of a patient (Chris Crowley) and his physician (Henry Lodge, M.D.), the latter of whom works at my alma mater Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons (but whom I did not know when I was there as a resident). The two authors, patient and physician, take turns writing chapters with a colloquial and a scientific voice, respectively, regarding how to look and feel younger next year.
The principle, declared method to look younger next year advocated by the septuagenarian Chris and the 50-year-old Dr. Harry is routine, consistent exercise. They see this as more important than almost any other element, and they spend a good portion of the book explaining why. In short, they believe that our body is programmed to decay when we are sedentary since it goes against the nature of our epoch a millennium years ago when we did not sit at computer terminals with a large Coke beside us. We tell our bodies that we are dying when we do nothing. We start to store fat and decay, as we tell our bodies that we are in starvation mode (since that is what we did when we started to starve a thousand years ago and before) by breaking down muscle and storing fat. It was the most efficient way for us to avoid death by actually starting to rot. Crazy huh?
The authors advocate working out at least 6 days a week and to make 4 of those days cardio intensive. After having finished this book, I started a few weeks ago to change my work out regimen to fit the bill. Two years ago I was a weekend warrior, doing spin classes and a little lifting on the weekends. About 18 months ago, I started yoga and then within a couple of months I went to four days a week. I then progressed after a few months to perform yoga almost consistently 5 days a week. I have now returned to yoga 4 days a week and added an incredible workout known as crossfit (check out crossfit.com for more information) twice a week so that I now work out consistently 6 days a week (except for last week when I was in Europe in which case I walked almost 3 to 5 hours each day instead).
In their diet chapters, they also reflect on how a sugary diet of empty calories causes our bodies to think we are in starvation mode since in the history of man we have never gone from starvation to gluttony except when our body starts to try to horde calories during times of starvation. When you combine that with the empty calories we get from soft drinks, we have a ton of calories we are consuming each day but they are not nutritive so our body grabs all the calories we are getting but we start to become hungry again for two reasons. First, our body stored all the fat from the calories in preparation for possible starvation but then had no nutrition obtained from doing so. Second, the sugar spike that required an outpouring of insulin causes us to pour out more insulin making us even hungrier in a very short time.
The authors finally touch upon the need for love and connection in our lives. Sex being a great thing to have but not as critical as having touch and love in our lives to provide emotional health. As a retired attorney, Chris states that he did not take the time during his years as a lawyer to develop any personal hobbies so that when he retired he was left with a large vacuum and did not know what to do with that surplus time. He contends that we all should engage in fruitful avocations so that we can engage our brains and hearts in rewarding pastimes that can also carry over into our mature years.
Although this book was a bit redundant in its message (perhaps I have read too many books on a similar subject), I recommend it to anyone who finds what I have written above to be foreign sounding or have not really thought about exercise, diet, or relationships as sources of how to look and feel better now and a year from now. Although I am a plastic surgeon, I believe that Botox, fillers, and fat transfer are insufficient to make someone truly look and feel young: diet, exercise, and mental/emotional health must accompany your investment.