Wednesday, February 23, 2011


Posted: 22 Feb 2011 06:00 AM PST
As you may know, over the past two years, our research team here at the Amen Clinics has been performing the world’s largest brain imaging study on active and retired professional football players.
All of that hard work has come to fruition. Our study “Impact of Playing Professional American Football on Long Term Brain Function” has been published in the Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience.
This study shows a very serious level of brain trauma in a high percentage of players. I am very proud of this study and think it is an important piece in getting the NFL to stop denying that playing professional football causes long-term brain damage.
But I have to admit that it’s the second part of this study that is most exciting to me. Our research team is now conducting a brain rehabilitation study to see if the damaged brains of football players can be rehabilitated.
I am so thrilled to say that our preliminary results are astounding. Many players originally came to see me with dementia, depression, and obesity. But after putting them on our brain healthy program, the same one you will find in my new book The Amen Solution, many have made extraordinary progress.

One of player lost 107 pounds in 7 months and experienced improvement with his dementia.
One player lost 110 pounds and his brain scans showed dramatic brain improvement.
Fred Dryer, famed Los Angeles Ram defensive end and television star of the show Hunter, was part of our NFL study. He wrote to tell us that “over the last few months my overall feeling of clarity and confidence is much improved. With the supplements and certainly with the neurofeedback sessions I have replaced a part of me that over time had slowly slipped away.”
Big Ed White, age 62, a four-time Pro Bowl offensive guard for the Minnesota Vikings and later for the San Diego Chargers, played 17 seasons in the National Football League. When I first met Ed he weighed 365 pounds and scored very poorly on his cognitive testing profile.

All of our players take a test called the Microcog, which measures intellectual functioning in nine different areas, including overall general cognitive functioning, information processing speed, attention, reasoning and memory. He scored very poorly.
After six months, on our brain healthy/weight-loss program, he had lost 40 pounds, and his test scores increased dramatically (see below).

Ed White’s Microcog Results
Before                          After                        % Change
General Cognitive Functioning                          21                              39                                90%+
Information Processing                                      25                              58                          > 100%+
Reasoning                                                              3                              13                          > 400%+
Memory                                                               14                              66                          > 470%+

The numbers are Ed’s percentile rankings, comparing him to other people his age and education level. For example, a ranking of 21 percent means 79 percent of people his age and education scored better than Ed.
Cam Cleeland, 34, is one of our younger retired NFL players. I have blogged about Cam previously, but I want to share his story again for any new readers.

Cam played football at a very high level in high school, in college at the University of Washington, and eight years in the pros as a tight end with the New Orleans Saints, New England Patriots, and St. Louis Rams. He volunteered for our study because he was struggling with problems of depression, irritability, low frustration, tolerance, high stress, obsessive thinking, and memory problems.
While playing football in college, he had a concussion and was unconscious for 18 hours. He was diagnosed with a total of eight concussions—three in college and five in the pros. He said his “bell was rung” every week.

Once in his rookie year while playing for Mike Ditka in New Orleans, he was involved in a hazing incident during which other players whacked him on the head with socks filled with coins (not the sign of intelligent life). Cam suffered a concussion and vision problems after the incident. Cam said that the NFL changed its position on hazing after the incident.

Cam’s evaluation showed clear evidence of depression, brain trauma, and cognitive dysfunction. His SPECT scan showed left-sided brain damage (he said he was hit in the left eye during the hazing incident and that he felt better on blocks when he led with the left side of his head). His Microcog (a test of neuropsychological function) showed significant decreases in general cognitive functioning, information processing speed, attention, memory, and spatial processing.

Eight months later we re-assessed Cam, using the same protocol as before. He reported he felt much better and noticed significant improvements in his attention, mental clarity, memory, mood, motivation, and anxiety level. He felt his anger was under greater control and he was getting along better with his small children.

His SPECT scan showed dramatic improvement in the areas of his temporal lobes (memory and mood stability), prefrontal cortex (attention and judgment), and cerebellum (processing speed). His Microcog showed dramatic improvement as well (see the following table).

He feels the difference and is excited to do everything he can to change his brain and change his life. You see, changing your brain can make you smarter and happier! It also made him thinner—Cam has lost 25 pounds since starting the program.
Cam Cleeland’s Microcog Results

Before              After              % Change
General Cognitive Functioning            13                        39                        200%+
Information Processing Speed            12                        30                        150%+
Information Processing Accuracy       27                        55                        100%+
Attention                                                  34                        70                        100+%
Memory                                                    30                        77                        > 150%+
Spatial Processing                                    5                        77                        > 1,400%+
The numbers are Cam’s percentile rankings, comparing him to other people his age and education level. For example, the 5 percent in “Spatial Processing” means 95 percent of people his age and education scored better than Cam.
See how another one of our players is doing in this week’s Case of the Week!
Posted: 22 Feb 2011 06:00 AM PST
If you’re a CEO, a small business owner, or a manager, you know that getting the most out of your employees is critical to your success… especially in tough economic time
Are you spending too much on new employee training due to high employee turnover?
Are your employees calling in sick too often?
Do you think your employees should be more productive than they are?
Have you tried traditional management strategies to fix these problems but haven’t succeeded in achieving lasting improvement?
The problem could be your company’s brain health. Most employers and managers have no clue how important brain health is to the health of their business and their bottom line.
Your brain is the supercomputer that runs everything you do to make your business a success or a failure. Your brain and your employees’ brains help you get and keep new customers, create new product lines, come up with innovative sales and marketing strategies, find creative ways to cut overhead costs, and devise effective management tools.
If you give your collective brains the attention they deserve, you are much more likely to have a smooth-operating, thriving business or organization. Your team at work will be more productive, thoughtful, reliable, and consistent. And your workplace will be filled with less stress, more fun, and more profit.
Want to know how to do it?
I will show you how you can achieve better corporate brain health… and a better bottom line… in a 1-day wellness symposium being offered by The LBL Group.
I’ll be presenting along with Will Marré, the co-founder and former president of the Covey Leadership Center where he translated the concepts of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People into powerful leadership courses. He has taught these courses to millions of executives worldwide. Personally, as a CEO myself, I can’t wait to hear what he has to say.
This symposium will take place March 23 from 8:00AM to 12:00PM in Solana Beach, California.
Click here for more information or sign up now at www.healthy-employees-lower-costs.com.
Posted: 22 Feb 2011 06:00 AM PST
My new book The Amen Solution: The Brain Healthy Way to Lose Weight and Keep It Off / The Secret to Being Thinner, Smarter, and Happier
has been released! The program in this book is very powerful and life-changing, and I have already seen it work for many people at the Amen Clinics. I know that you and your loved ones can benefit from it too.
Some people have been asking me how it will be different from Change Your Brain, Change Your Body so let me explain.
Ever since Change Your Brain, Change Your Body hit cyberspace and store shelves, people have been calling and emailing our clinics, posting comments on my blog, and talking to me at book signings, speaking engagements, and other events. What the overwhelming majority of them were begging for was a simple step-by-step brain-based program for weight loss.
The Amen Solution is that program.
While Change Your Brain, Change Your Body dealt with overall general health, The Amen Solution focuses on weight loss and helping you get thinner, smarter, and happier… all at the same time!
In this book I will give you the basic steps to boost your brain to become thinner, smarter, and happier at the same time. I will give you a 10-week program to get started. This is the same program we use at the Amen Clinics, and the same program we use with the NFL players in our retired NFL player brain damage and rehabilitation study.
In addition, The Amen Solution profiles “The Amen Solution All-Stars,” real-life people (including several of our NFL players) who have shared their journey to a slimmer shape, greater happiness, and improved brain function. I hope their stories will inspire and motivate you. You will also find “Get Smart to Get Thinner” boxes with thoughtful tips, strategies, insights, and success stories from the everyday people who have been successfully losing weight with this program.
By following The Amen Solution 10-week program you will learn how to say goodbye to emotional overeating, curb cravings and boost willpower.  Filled with the most up-to-date research, advice on natural supplements, meal plans, recipes, 200 quick ways to leave your blubber behind, and exercises to optimize your mind to shed those pounds, The Amen Solution is not just a 10-week diet.  It is a program to get control of your brain and your body for the rest of your life.
I can’t wait to hear from you about it. Share your successes with me by commenting on my blog.
Order your copy of The Amen Solution today.
Posted: 22 Feb 2011 06:00 AM PST
This is part 7 of a 10-part series on The Amen Solution: The Brain Healthy Way to Lose Weight and Keep It Off and the Secret to Being Thinner, Smarter, and Happier
Amen Solution #7: Know your brain type.
After looking at over 60,000 brain SPECT scans over the past 20 years one of the most important lessons we have learned at the Amen Clinics is that problems like being overweight or having ADD or being depressed are not single or simple problems in the brain.  They all have multiple types.  Through our brain imaging work I have described 6 different types of ADD, 7 different types of anxiety and depression and 5 different types of overeaters.  Knowing your specific type of a problem is essential to getting the right help.
I talk about this concept in great detail in the book.  For now, the five types of overeaters include:
The “compulsive” overeater … who constantly thinks about food.
The “impulsive” overeater … who has poor impulse control.
The “impulsive-compulsive” overeater … who tends to be both impulsive and compulsive at the same time.
The “sad” overeater, who eats as a way to self-medicate feelings of sadness or depression.
And, the “anxious” overeater, who eats as a way to soothe his or her anxiety.
Understanding the specific type of brain you have is critical to getting the right help and can help target your diets, supplements or medications if needed.
In one study, 42% of “morbidly obese” patients were diagnosed with ADD or attention deficit disorder.  These people are typically the impulsive overeaters, and it is virtually impossible to get them to lose weight, even with surgery, without first helping their brains.  But for people who are anxious or compulsive, giving them ADD strategies almost always makes them more anxious or more compulsive.
People who are compulsive tend to do better with higher carbohydrate diets, because they tend to calm the brain … while people who are impulsive do better with higher protein diets.  This is critical because the wrong diet can make some people mean, angry and out of sorts.
Recently, I was on the Rachael Ray show, and when I said this to Rachael, she told me that she had tried a low-carb diet, and it made her so mean that she wondered why her husband didn’t leave her.  I have seen couples have serious marital problems just because one of the partners got their hands on the wrong diet books.
In our clinics we use brain SPECT imaging to help us understand and treat our patients.  But a long time ago I realized that not everyone is able to get a scan.  My books are now translated into 30 languages and if you read one in Japan or Italy odds are you are not going to get a scan.  So based on thousands of scans I developed a series of questionnaires to help people predict what their brain might look like if they could get a scan.  Then, based on the answers, I give suggestions on ways to think about helping your brain with certain natural supplements, medications or exercises.
The questionnaires are found in the book and they are used by mental health professionals around the world.  Of course, you should always talk to your doctor about any treatment you try.
When Eileen first joined our program she weighed 187 pounds.  When she took our questionnaire she discovered that she was a Type 5 Anxious Overeater and used food as a way to soothe her anxiety.  She found that our journal helped keep her on track … and especially loved the exercises in it to help her calm her mind.
We are currently working on an online version of the journal that will make it easier than ever to track your calories and brain healthy habits. I’ll let you know when it’s available.
Over about 6 months she lost her anxiety and a whole lot of weight.  Since starting our program she has lost 39 pounds and 5 pants sizes.
In the next few weeks you will learn about how using specific supplements can help you become thinner, smarter, and happier and I will give you the tools to help you stop emotional overeating.  Plus, I will also show you how to influence your loved ones to be thinner, smarter, and happier too.  That is my favorite part.
Make sure you come back.  What do you have to lose? Maybe 10, 30, or even 70 pounds?  How cool would that be not to have to carry that much fat around anymore.
Order your copy of The Amen Solution today.
Posted: 22 Feb 2011 06:00 AM PST
I am so excited to tell you that my new public television special, The Amen Solution, is making its debut Tuesday, February 22! If you’re in the Los Angeles area, tune in to KCET to catch it. The show will air from 7:00PM-9:00PM PT.
If you aren’t in the Los Angeles area, stay tuned. I’ll keep you informed when it becomes available in other markets.
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