Change Your Brain, Change Your Life: The Breakthrough Programme for Conquering Anger, Anxiety, Obsessiveness and Depression - Softcover

Daniel G. Amen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0749941960 ISBN 13: 9780749941963

Publisher: Crown Publishing Group, 2010

Synopsis

Change Your Brain, Change Your Body: Use Your Brain to Get and Keep the Body You Have Always Wanted

About this title

Review:

In this age of do-it-yourself health care (heck, if the doctor only sees you for 10 minutes each visit, what other options are there?), Change Your Brain, Change Your Life fits in perfectly. Filled with "brain prescriptions" (among them cognitive exercises and nutritional advice) that are geared toward readers who've experienced anxiety, depression, impulsiveness, excessive anger or worry, and obsessive behavior, Change Your Brain, Change Your Life milks the mind-body connection for all it's worth.

Written by a psychiatrist and neuroscientist who has also authored a book on attention deficit disorder, Change Your Brain contains dozens of brain scans of patients with various neurological problems, from caffeine, nicotine, and heroin addiction to manic-depression to epilepsy. These scans, often showing large gaps in neurological activity or areas of extreme overactivity, are downright frightening to look at, and Dr. Amen should know better than to resort to such scare tactics. But he should also be commended for advocating natural remedies, including deep breathing, guided imagery, meditation, self-hypnosis, and biofeedback for treating disorders that are so frequently dealt with by prescription only.

From the Inside Flap:

Do you panic at the thought of walking into a room full of people you don't know? Do you feel as if a cloud of gloom is always hovering over your head? Do you have the same negative thoughts over and over? Are you so easily distracted that you often can't finish a project? Do you fly off the handle at your spouse for no good reason? Do you have trouble connecting meaningfully with other people? If you've been struggling to overcome a problem like these without success--perhaps you've even tried therapy but given up--it probably isn't for lack of trying, thinking, or motivation; you just didn't have the right answers or the right tools. Now you do.

In his pioneering new book, Change Your Brain, Change Your Life, Dr. Amen explains how you can "optimize" your brain to achieve your fullest potential. Using state-of-the-art brain imaging technology, Dr. Amen has spent the last decade helping thousands of patients understand how the way their brains are wired can affect their thoughts and emotions. He explains which brain systems are associated with particular problems, gives detailed checklists to help you pinpoint your problems, and offers specific yet simple "brain prescriptions" (cognitive exercises, nutrition, medication, and more) to help actually enhance brain function and heal each problem.

Many of the difficulties associated with anxiety, depression, excessive worrying, anger, and distraction are related to five specific systems in the brain. Dr. Amen explains how these systems work and how malfunctions can affect your behavior. If you've always believed that you were just going to have to live with the way you are, you'll be amazed by the vivid before-and-after brain scans of some of the thousands of patients that have been successfully treated at the Amen Clinic--visual proof that the right treatment can help you. You certainly don't need a brain scan to understand the basis of your particular problem or implement the correct solution, but these striking images will inspire you to make meaningful and effective changes. Seeing is believing!

Brain Prescriptions That Really Work

See the Anxious Brain *  See the Depressed Brain *  See the Angry Brain *  See the Impulsive Brain *  See the Worried Brain

In this breakthrough book, you'll see scientific evidence that your anxiety, depression, anger, obsessiveness, or impulsiveness could be related to how specific structures in your brain work. But you're not stuck with the brain you're born with. Here are just a few of neuro-psychiatrist Dr. Daniel Amen's surprising--and effective--"brain prescriptions" that can help heal your brain and change your life:

To quell anxiety and panic:

Follow the 18/40/60 rule
Use simple breathing techniques to immediately calm inner turmoil
Learn which foods calm anxiety
To fight depression:

Learn how to kill ANTs (automatic negative thoughts)
Build a library of wonderful emotional experiences
Surround yourself with antidepressant fragrances
To curb anger:

Follow the Amen anti-anger diet
Learn the nutrients that can calm rage
Let Mozart calm you
To conquer impulsiveness and learn to focus:

Develop total focus with the "One-Page Miracle"
Use lights and sounds to stay focused
Get coaching from a professional organizer
To Stop obsessive worrying:

Learn the nutrients and foods that help
Follow the "get unstuck" writing exercise
Do simple problem-solving exercises
When your brain doesn't work right, you can't work right. With its easy-to-follow program and compelling evidence that you can actually retrain your brain to work more optimally, this breakthrough book will help you make lasting changes.

About this edition

• Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0749941960
• ISBN 13: 9780749941963
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352