Use Your Brain to Change Your Age: Secrets to Look, Feel, and Think Younger Every Day by Daniel G. Amen

Use Your Brain to Change Your Age: Secrets to Look, Feel, and Think Younger Every Day Reviews

• 
  Suzanne

  Diet and exercise will change your brain age. As always, a good diet and a positive outlook on life will erase years off the interior and exterior of your body.
  His book offers some impressive brain before and after pictures and the usual dramatic life changing stories.
  Dr. Amen often mentions his website that offers his books, supplements, and self-help products for sale. He's in it for the additional sales he will make off his products.
• 
  Diane

  According to what I read in this book if you want to look younger, feel more vibrant and avoid memory problems and decrease your risk for Alzheimers, you better work at keeping your brain healthy. According to Dr. Amen, a clinical neuroscientist who has performed over 70,000 brain scans on individuals from 90 countries over the last 20 years at his Amen Clinics helping individuals to slow and even reverse the aging process. Sounds a little too good to be true doesn't it?
  
  Through interesting case studies the author reports how our brain and decision making is affected when people neglect their diet and become sedentary, and going on to further state that images of patient's brains have shown that memory problems, depression are more of an issue as we age for individuals who do not eat well, do not sleep enough and don't engage in regular physical activity.
  
  He discusses his anti-aging plan as it relates to: eating better for a longer life, ways to boost energy and improve memory, supplements that we all should take, how positive relationships help to slow the aging process, the pitfalls of drugs and alcohol and their effects on the brain, how to promote healing even if a brain has had a head injury or was damaged by a stroke, and how to out smart your genes (not so sure about this one and halt aging in the process.
  
  I found a lot of what the author says about diet and exercise to have been things that I've read previously in other articles from various health publications I read, but I did find many of the case studies pretty fascinating. The narrator, Marc Cashman made the studies interesting so the audio book was enjoyable.
  
  What I didn't care for was what I would describe as a lot of self promotion of the "Amen Clinics" along with the products he promotes there.
  
  3.5/5 stars
• 
  Leftbanker

  If I put half the effort into creating my own diet/exercise miracle plan as I do hate-reading shit like this book, I, too, would be a phony guru and flying around in my own jet, but then I remembered that I really don’t like to fly.
  
  He lost me with his resume filler of “life-long Christian.” Sorry, but the superstition you were born with and not intelligent enough to talk yourself out of doesn’t qualify you in any aspect of medicine.
  
  Yet another book that could easily be reduced to a few notes on a 3X5 index card. Instead, he adds lots of anecdotes of people just like you and me who were once tubs of guts and now they run marathons, or whatever. Dude is a couple years older than I am and could pass for my dad.
  
  Common sense that most mildly well-informed adults already know. Eat decent food, exercise, and use your brain.
  
  This guy obviously seems much more interested in creating a health industry empire than helping people.
  
  He uses examples of a few slobs who have somehow walked out of slob-dom and on to brilliant, healthy lives. There are countless books exactly, and I mean fucking exactly like this book out there on the market, yet people are still fat and way out of shape. Obviously, these methods don’t work.
  
  I live in a society (Spain) in which most people eat pretty well, what the diet gurus call the Mediterranean Diet. There is no magic going on, it’s just people taking the time to cook their own food, mostly. People also walk a lot here because they live in cities, mostly.
• 
  M Pau

  Excellent book about nutrition and exercises for your brain.
• 
  James

  Every now and then I come across a good health, diet, exercise or food book. This one was a random pic at the library and I'm glad it was chosen as I could relate to the topics. As the book started, I wasn't sure where it was going and that it was just a book to kick your butt to start you on an exercise and diet program.
  
  However about 1/2 way in and relating many of the topics (i.e. diet, exercise and vitamins), I really started to listen. It took about 1 more week to finish off the books as each CD was ~80 minutes and in that time, i've been sold on trying out some of the processes.
  
  First change so far has been to start making my gallon of day ice tea (w/ 4 teabags) using Stevia (2 bags per gallon). The change has been to remove 2 sweet n low and 1 equal packet per gallon. Little strange getting used to the new taste as 1 packet is not enough and 2 are pretty darn sweet. I'm hoping to keep with this. I've also for the last couple of days tried not to have my 2 cans of diet pepsi per day. The diet pepsi might be harder to keep away from, but I'm trying.
  
  Second change was to try to get back into the kick of having a multi vitamin per day. I heard a study a couple of years back that zinc was bad for memory as you got older and that it might cause pre-alzheimers. Having someone going through that in family, I quit it immediately. Zinc is still in my caplet, but I'm going to try to start taking it again.
  
  Next change that just occurred tonight is the purchase of a fish oil supplement. It was a 650/250 EPH/BPA (not sure of acronmys) mix from the vitamin store. 180 caplets for $45. Not sure the price is reasonable or not, but wanted to give it a try. My wife is not sure why I'm taking a large dose.
  
  I'm hoping with the 3 changes, I can knock a couple lbs off the belly that have persistently stayed for the last several years, even after dropping 25 lbs several years ago to the 175 range.
  
  Let's see how it goes. Good book for the detail provided. I'm going to look up some more info on the amen clinic site to see the recommendations.
  
  Would like to rate a 4.5 vs 4 or 5 but chose 4 for my rank.
• 
  Lisa

  The subtitle of the books is "secrets to look, feel, and think younger everyday." Don't take that too seriously as far as the outward cosmetics of your appearance. The thrust of the first half of the book is combating Alzheimer's disease. That is not a bad thing, mind you, but the title might be misleading to some readers. The second half deals to a small degree with appearance and mental states, such as depression. Amen has written something of a cheerleader's book: "Eat the rainbow! Yay! Life-long learning! Yay! Exercise! Yay! Defeat Alzheimer's!" There is little that a reader who had kept up with current research in popular magazines will find new, though the reading might inspire action rather than passive understanding. I enjoyed it because the topic is of particular interest to me, and the information was very practical. However, I find fault in two ways. First, Amen doesn't hesitate to frequently mention his own paid online services, his clinics, supplements, and his wife's cookbooks. At times, the book sounds like little more than an infomercial. Once is enough for the fans, doc. After that you sound like a money-grubbing nag. Second, I listened to it in audio. This is a terrible book for that format. There are so many lists: organic foods to eat, non-organics to avoid, best fish, Glycemic Index ratings for food, etc. All these lists make this book nearly impossible in audio form. If you want the lists, anecdotes, and advertisements, choose the paper or electronic version so you can refer back easily.
• 
  Alesa

  I'm really giving the five stars to Dr. Amen himself, because this book covers a lot of the same stuff as his other books. However, it's a terrific wake-up call to what most of us are doing to our brains, namely NOT helping them stay as young as they could. His recommendations are pretty simple. Get daily exercise. Don't do alcohol, drugs or tobacco. Lose the extra pounds. Get off sugar, white flour and salt. Take multi-vitamins and vitamin D. Keep learning, no matter what your age. But which of us is doing ALL these things? He sure gave me a good kick in the butt to go for an even healthier lifestyle. (ANYTHING to avoid Alzheimer's!)
• 
  Rodica Nicolae

  Is an interesting book with a plenty of tomography SPECT pictures which makes you feel curious and wants to know more about how your brain can change if you're doing the right choices regarding the food what you're eating every single day and also if you will start to supply at list with Omega 3 Fish Oil, multivitamin and Vitamin D(suggested frequently in the book) also I will like to add Vitamin C which I feel it's so important for your immunity system. I recommend this book for everyone who wants to know more about specific tips of brain and a healthy lifestyle.
• 
  Cassandra Carico

  This book has sound information, though I didn't really learn anything new. His special angle is using brain scans in order to prove that one should eat better, exercise more, and think good happy thoughts. I get... got it before I read the book.... but if you didn't, it is a pretty good book.
• 
  Naomi

  Went with three stars because I don't think I'll read it again, however the book did have a lot of interesting information and I feel more motivated to start exercising again and to start eating better.
• 
  slowreader

  good info, but mostly common sense. extremely repetitive.....
• 
  Doug Lewars

  *** Possible Spoilers ***
  
  This isn't a bad book but it's a bit of overkill. Basically, brain health boils down to the obvious.
  
  Eat well-balanced nutritious means. Stay away from sugar and cut back on the fats. Get plenty of protein through lean red meats, fish and chicken.
  Drink lots of water.
  Get a good night's sleep.
  Stay away from alcohol, tobacco and drugs.
  Get plenty of exercise. If some of it can be aerobic so much the better.
  Stimulate your brain through continuous learning. Avoid too much routine. Be curious and try mental challenges.
  As much as possible eliminate elements of stress from your life and deal with what can't be eliminated by deep breathing, self hypnosis, or meditation.
  Avoid being trapped by negative thoughts and emotions. Turn them around. Focus on the positive.
  
  That's pretty much the entire book. You don't actually need to read this book. You can skim it quite effectively. Keep in mind however that this author has an agenda. He wants you to have brain imaging and one may surmise he makes a wee profit when people do. He wants you to go to his website and probably pay a suitable fee for suggestions and games that you could almost certainly find on the web without paying. He wants you to have extensive blood work so that you will know precisely where you stand on any number of variables. Presumably this work will also come at a cost to you and a profit for him.
  
  This author has been criticized by the medical community. Nevertheless, his basic mantra of diet, exercise, sleep, etc. is sound. However if you just go to his first set of bullet points you've pretty much got everything of value. And if you miss them at first he tends to repeat much the same things over and over and over. I believe that he could have reduced the entire book to about ten pages but then his publisher would have most certainly reacted poorly.
  
  In summary, much of what this author says makes sense. It is not necessary to read the book word for word to obtain value and skimming is more than adequate. He has an agenda and he includes things that are overkill but it's easy to ignore them.
• 
  Ezechel

  Based on the title, I expected a discussion on cognitive practices that exercise the brain. I does have that, but it's only one single chapter. So jump to chapter 5 if that's what you want, that chapter deserves 5 stars.
  But the rest of the book is very generic health advice you've heard so many times before, working from the presupposition that you need a healthy body based on good nutrition and habits if you wanna have a good brain. Sure, I don't contest that, but change the title of the book and say "Use my health coaching program to lose weight and feel better about yourself". I'm sure his program works, as most health coaching programs do. But not because they have access to some new and exclusive science one needs to get informed about in a book, but because it's based on encouragement, accountability, and a sense of a worthy investment into one's future.
• 
  Patricia

  Sometimes when you read a health book it is with a little skepticism This book gives you information, tells stories and touts the effects of a diet high in anti-oxidants, low in bad carbs and saturated fat, with specific supplements, exercise, and mental work, as a way of reversing certain problems associated with aging. The reason for the three stars is it is also a commercial for his clinics and in every chapter, Dr. Amen says there is more information on his website. With his recommendations for vitamins, I started to explore whether other medical people agreed with what he was doing in his practice. In this I would say buyer beware, there were negative reviews with concerns that he is widely seen on PBS. So many of his suggestions are common sense, the scans and his brand of vitamins you can make your own judgment on.
• 
  John Wood

  Very good info on brain health and how you can improve it. It includes many lists of beneficial foods and other factors that affect your brain. There are many strategies for improving brain health including diet, sleep, weight loss, reading, brain work, and exercising. Many things are the usual suspects but this book gives good details and includes many examples of real people including SPECT scans demonstrating definite improvement. The biggest aha for me is that obesity has a great effect on brain function, including memory loss and cognition. Though Doctor Amen touts his program and supplements, there is a lot of useful info and the book gives me more incentive to exercise and lose weight.
• 
  Andrew

  A self-help book on eating well and properly exercising your Brain. The writing is a bit repetitive and full of self-promotion. A few of the sections discuss specific vitamins that were new concepts for me. The first half of the book focuses on combating Alzheimer's disease. The second half focuses on mental states like depression.
  
  I do not recommend the audiobook, this book is meant to be skimmed.
• 
  Seemy

  Good book on how to not only look after your brain with many solutions included - but the many lessons and info on things that can negatively impact your brain and ultimately your health in many aspects from physical to mental - bit repetitive at times and not entirely agreeable content in some circles but very useful content making it a worthwhile read.
  
  
  To Our Continued Success!
  Seemy
  
  http://www.WaseemMirza.net
• 
  Ahmed Atia

  The e-book is very informative but extremely boring. There are great insights about the relationship between bad diet, stress and poor sleeping with brain damage and how reversible is this. The boring side that a lot of stuff is repeated allover the book plus the long pages of chemicals names and percentages.
• 
  Darlene Ruiz

  Anyone with a history of dementia and Alzheimer's in the family should read this book. Personally, I found it to be a wake up call and relieved to read that if you are beginning to experience mental fog or forgetfulness, you are able to do something about it and change your brain.
• 
  Michelle Van Dyke

  For a scientific self help book, this was easy to understand (which u need if u have ant brain injury!) And I found it very interesting, especially how it pinpoints exactly what kind of brain u have and how to fix it. Doable fixes and not surgery!