Change Your Brain, Change Your Life: The Breakthrough Program for Conquering Anxiety, Depression,...

Change Your Brain, Change Your Life: The Breakthrough Program for Conquering Anxiety, Depression, ... | Daniel G. Amen | Scare Your Brain...Hybernate in Obscurity

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Change Your Brain,...

	Change Your Brain, Change Your Life: The Breakthrough Program for Conquering Anxiety, Depression, ... Daniel G. Amen Three Rivers Press, 1999 - 352 pages average customer review:based on 100 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

For the clueless, some common sense snake oil

I've read just about every book on cognitive psychology as it applies to the so-called healthy brain, and seeing that this book is number #1 in the subject of health on Amazon demands that the author make an appearance on Bill Maher or the Daily Show so the author can publicly be challenged by someone with commonsense and street smarts. If you need to read a book that explains that to lay off alcohol, tobacco, avoid pollution, get quality sleep, and reduce stress in order to optimize your mind and thinking, I'd have to question what's inside your skull besides air. The only difference this book has to promote its veracity is the unproven use of spect imaging to prove it is true. But do you need a super expensive diagnostic tool that no insurance company will pay for to get diagnosed to verify that you feel crappy? Here is another conspiracy of the experts to strike fear into the laity to paraphrase George Bernard Shaw. It also is a conspiracy of marketing. Just sign up for Dr. Amen's 'newsletter' and you'll get a daily helping of the latest findings in brain research that will tell you that putting 7 teaspoons of sugar in your morning coffee is not a salubrious habit.

Note that Dr. Amen now has three 'clinics' two in the highest per capita zip codes in California and now a new one in Reston, VA, one of the more affluent areas of No. Va., where life is pretty much recession proof with most of its inhabitants working for Beltway corporations or the feds and that possess the highest per capita counties and lowest employment rates of any region in the U.S. Is that a prime place to provide services for the cognitively challenged or is it prime real estate because you're assured an affluent clientele since insurance doesn't pay for such pseudo-science? These clinics are primarily to test which of the 6 forms of ADD you have (according to Amen). If you need inspirational stories about people with ADD who have 'made it' to make you feel good, you can just do a google search. Not spend your hard earned money on Dr. Amen's snake oil. Now, if you have ADD and such stories inspire you, let's face it, you ain't going to be one of the case studies. You can take Dr. Amen's test to detect if you have ADD and which of the six types of ADD. Now I took this test and discovered I was highly likely to have four of the six, and lo and behold the interventions for one type were counterindicated for another. So I guess if you score as I did, you can try killing two birds with one stone, so to speak, take the recommended nutrients for one type, and then throw up so as to disallow those same nutrients/diet from exacerbating the other type. Other revelatory things you'll learn--here and in updates: Playing football can cause brain injury. No kidding? So can boxing! What a revelation! This book is so paltry in anything of note that it could be condensed in a little brochure and published by your local Department of Health. Now I'm sure Dr. Amen is convinced he is providing a service for America. So, for example, if you're being shipped off to Iraq, follow Dr. Amen's advice, and don't get a concussion from a roadside explosive. If you drive on a highway don't get hit by an 18-wheeler. You know that you really want to, but Dr. Amen will show you the error of your ways.

Let's have some truth in advertising at least. Let's change the book's title from 'Change your Brain' to 'Get A Brain' and let's alter the second imperative that forms the tail end of the book's title, which is currently 'change your life' to 'change "my life"' meaning Amen's life so he can feed his ego. And if you take this stuff seriously without doing in-depth research on brain functioning, sorry, but I just can't say 'Amen.'

Kidding slightly aside, Amen has his metaphors all wrong. He advocates--besides a healthy diet and other obvious positive habits--to work out the brain. But the brain isn't a muscle. It's an organ, and what makes someone excel in most any endeavor is not the brain, it's the mind. The brain doesn't get 'stronger' by working out. There has never been any valid scientific study that has even suggested that it does. Such methods were tried about 50 years ago. They fell under the category of behaviorism. Do you know anyone with autism cured through training or anyone with Tourette's syndrome who has? Not even dyslexia is improved much by 'training.' What matters a lot more is encouragement and love, and with those two 'techniques', you can change just about anything. There may be methods like meditation and yoga to give you a more balanced disposition, but consider that people who engage in these practices are motivated to do so, which means a) they probably don't feel so good to begin with; and 2) the specific method of 'training' is not what is important. It's the fact that you have a motivation to change. Which, if you decide to read this book, is probably where you are in your life. So, if you need some hope, I guess this is as good a book as any to read in a couple of hours. But being more generous with hugs is a lot more effective.

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Scare Your Brain...Hybernate in Obscurity

I don't know about 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. One can only imagine why people in the world are so screwed-up. Alcohol, drugs, depression, psychosis, bi-polar-mania, skizoid Freud. Will this book treat and cure us? Will this MD show us the way to faith and posterity? Drug freedom is merely a dream, doctors advocate drugs for anything and everything. Without drugs and changing your brain, will that change your life? Will that conquer anxiety, depression, obsessiveness, anger and impulsiveness? Perhaps, perhaps not. Enjoy what you have before you give it away or it is taken away from you. I imagine most of you won't like what I've written above, after all personal denial is on the upsweep.

I'm the author of the book KISSING FREUD, a facinating psycho comedy/drama, and the book DUBROVNIK, a thrilling spy/adventure story in the beautiful city of Dubrovnik, Croatia. Both books are available here at amazon.com/books. Enjoy.

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