or out of control. the first one is meditation, which is a wonderful tool to calm your mind and boost your brain at the same time. meditation actually fooled us. initially we thought it would calm brain activity. what we found was that many different forms of meditation actually dramatically increase blood flow to the front decision-making part of your brain, so you're smarter. last year we published a scientific study showing how a very simple 12-minute meditation boosted blood flow to the prefrontal cortex, the same area of your brain that helps you make good decisions. i recently treated a woman who was in a severe car accident. shortly after, she had problems with depression, anger, and emotional overeating. once i taught her to meditate using the same 12-minute protocol,

she noticed that within a month, her moods, emotions, and eating behaviors were under much better control. you can find the simple meditation protocol in the program materials. one of the most powerful techniques you can use to stop emotional overeating is to get control of your mind and stop believing every stupid thought that goes through your head. thoughts lie. they lie a lot. and it is often these deceptive thoughts that drive your anxiety, depression, and emotional overeating. for years i've taught my patients to kill the ants that infest their minds. "ant" stands for automatic negative thoughts, the thoughts that come into your mind automatically and ruin your day. you can learn much more about this in the program materials, but the essence of ant killing is this: whenever you feel sad, mad, nervous, or out of control,

write down your automatic negative thoughts and ask yourself, are they true? for example, sherry, one of my patients, recently told me that she feels guilty whenever she doesn't clean her plate. when she was a child, her mother made her feel bad if she didn't eat everything she served. i remember my mom trying to do the same thing to me. "think about the poor people in china," she said. one of the few times she hit me was when i replied, "well, let's pack it up and send it to them." [laughter] the other time she hit me was when i lit the couch on fire when i was five years old, but that is a story for another time. i asked sherry to write down the thought, "i should eat everything on my plate." "is that true?" i asked. "of course it isn't true.

look at me. it's obvious i've eaten way too much. i'm done letting her voice inside my head control me." carlos knows a lot about ants. his mind was filled with worries and negative thinking when he first came to see us for anger and trouble focusing. carlos weighed 266 pounds. his health habits were terrible, and his brain was in trouble. by using the ten amen solutions, especially learning how to kill the ants, carlos lost 50 pounds and noticed a dramatic improvement in his energy, mood, and his memory. by learning to kill the ants, he no longer overate to medicate his sadness, and by eating brain-healthy foods, he no longer had the energy crashes that made him so vulnerable to stress. on the outside, it is like he is a different person.

we saw the same dramatic difference on the inside as well. how cool is that? his brain is dramatically better. by getting healthy, he changed his brain and in the process, changed his life. remember, this is not a program to lose 10 pounds. it is a program to get control of your brain and your body for the rest of your life. so carlos is here. would you stand up? [applause] so imagine not carrying 50 pounds around with you. i mean, no wonder people who are overweight have trouble with their knees, right? i mean, you can't put that kind of pressure on. many people overeat as a way to deal with past hurts or

emotional traumas: troubled childhoods, difficult parents, being abused, losing your job, going through a divorce. all of these stressful events can cause actual physical changes in the brain that lead to anxiety, depression, and emotional overeating. whenever we experience emotional trauma, it often gets stuck in our brains, even if it happened decades earlier, and it can hurt you. emotional distress increases a hormone called cortisol that normally helps us deal with emergencies. but when we are exposed to too much cortisol, it causes us to store fat, especially around our bellies, and it can kill cells in the memory centers of the brain. sharon came to see me for being anxious and overweight. on her spect scan, she had an emotional trauma pattern. we call it the diamond pattern because the emotional part

of the brain is overactive in such a way iwh it looks like a diamond. ed aenro ssknha about trauma, she initially denied any. i asked her five times. i then asked her to tell me why she overate. "i don't know," she said. "sometimes i just feel so nervous, and food makes me feel better, at least for a while." one of the most effective tools i use with my patients is something i call disconnecting the bridges from the past. whenever you feel upset, write down how you feel in the moment, such as, "i feel really anxious." and then go back in your mind to the first time in your life that you can remember having that feeling. in sharon's case, whenever she felt anxious, she had trouble breathing. when i asked her what she felt, she said she felt like she was suffocating.

i asked her to go back in her mind to the first time in her life that she could remember having trouble breathing. her mind immediately went back to a time when she was four years old and had a piece of steak stuck in her throat. she turned blue and thought she was going to die. she remembered someone from behind her squeezing her really hard and dislodged the piece of meat. she was so upset that she couldn't stop crying. her parents gave her cake and ice cream to calm her down. once she understood the emotional bridge, she was able to disconnect her anxiety from the event and made significant progress on her anxiety and weight over the next year. learning how to deal with stress and disconnecting the traumas from the past are critical pieces to ending emotional overeating.

if you have emotional trauma, don't run from it. make sure that you get help for it. i talk about how to do this in detail in the program materials. amen solution number ten: with your behavior, you can influence your loved ones to be thinner, smarter, and happier too. you have much more influence than you ever imagined. if you follow the program, i know it works. we were able to demonstrate it with our retired nfl players who started with bad brains and many bad-brain habits. roy williams is part of a three-generational nfl family. he, his son eric, and his grandson kyle all played in the nfl and are all part of our study. when roy came to see us at the age of 73, he weighed 334 pounds. getting roy motivated to get healthy was surprisingly easy.

all i had to tell him was that as his weight went up, the size of his brain went down. roy runs a highly successful business that helps families transition their wealth to the next generation, so he was not too keen on having a smaller brain. roy did all of the things we asked of him, and not only has he lost 30 pounds, his attention, memory, and reasoning scores, which were already pretty good, got even better. his wife says he has the energy of someone who is 40 years old, which initially really irritated her. [laughter] but over time, our program ideas rubbed off on her, and she has lost weight too. and his son and grandson have lost even more weight than roy has. the best way to influence the people you love is

to first get healthy yourself. if your health habits are bad, you influence your loved ones in a negative way. if you're healthy, if you lose weight, and if you improve your energy and mood, people will want what you have. remember carlos? after seeing her husband's success--and this is the part i love the most--his wife, who was not overweight, started our program to learn how to create a brain-healthy family and ended up losing 10 pounds herself. and his 14-year-old daughter took our program. carlos' success influenced everyone he loved. my mother-in-law, mary, sfulsi businesswoman. when she started to lose weight, many of the women in her office followed her example and lost weight too. you can have a tremendous influence on the health

of those around you. are you involved in your school, your business, or your church? since i've focused on being healthier, i've begun to realize that many schools, businesses, and churches could do much better in helping the people they serve. i recently went to our church with my family and told my wife i would save us seats while she took our daughter to children's church. as i walked toward the sanctuary, i passed hundreds of doughnuts for sale, for charity. and then i walked by bacon and sausage cooking on the grill and started to feel really irritated. and then i passed hundreds of hot dogs being prepared for after church. and as i sat down, the minister was talking about the ice cream festival they had the night before. i was so frustrated that when my wife found me in church, i was typing on my phone,

and she gave me that look that only your wife can give you that said, "why are you on that thing in church?" and i showed her what i was writing: "go to church. get doughnuts, bacon, sausage, hot dogs, ice cream. they have no idea they're sending people to heaven early." [laughter] we need to help them become a brain-healthy church. they have no idea what they're doing to the health of the congregation. the same thing happens in our schools. the same thing happens in businesses. and if you get this message, you can be an agent for change,

because i don't think god wants us to go to heaven early. that's not the plan! are you going to be an agent for change, or, in fact, are you going to hurt those you serve? research suggests that your diet will affect generations to come. in a new study, animals that were given the typical western diet over several generations bred more obese offspring. the diet changed the functioning of the animals' genes so that over time, they ate more and more food and became fatter and fatter. this is very disturbing because it means that unless you get yourself under control now, it can affect your children, your grandchildren, even your great grandchildren. your legacy is going to be about health or about illness.

you get to decide. are you going to be a good role model and help the people you love, or are you going to be a bad role model and hurt them? my brain keeps coming back to the story of ray and nancy. ray loved his wife, who had dementia, so much that he knew the only way that she would follow the plan was if he modeled the behavior. losing 30 pounds made a dramatic difference in his life and in her life as well. the best way to change other people's behavior is to start by changing your own. that is love. what are you doing today to get healthy? what are you doing today to model good health for those you love? who do you want to influence? is it your husband, your children, your grandchildren, your employees? i know for me, i want to

influence all the people in my life, but if i'm not healthy, i have no influence, and i have no credibility. you can do this. none of this is hard. by using these ten amen solutions, you can become thinner, smarter, and happier and help those you love become thinner, smarter, and happier too. may god bless you. i'm dr. daniel amen. [applause]

wow! so the decisions that i make affect my little girl. and will affect her little girl or boy years to come. that's powerful, that's powerful. this is about the choices that we make as individuals, about how we get to affect your communities. i'm here with dr. amen, thank you so much for being with us. also with us is david. we hope you've gained new insights from this presentation of the amen solution, thinner, smarter and happier. if you have and appreciate that public television produced it just for you, then this is your opportunity to let us know by becoming a supporting member of weta right now. it only takes a few moments of your time. call the number on your screen right now or pledge online at weta.org. there's -- there's so many good reasons to support this program. you've gotten something really meaningful out of watching the

show and we also have great thank you gifts to appreciate you going to the phone and making that pledge of support or pledging online. for a 90-dollar pledge we'd love to send you the program dvd which is a two dvd set with over an hour of bonus material, isn't that right? >> we actually continued the fun and i answered questions for an hour, plus i did two interviews, one with my wife on how to create brain healthy families, another one with my own trainer, brad davidson, on how you can work out to get physically stronger and enhance brain function at the same time. >> that's right. and we have another thank you gift for 120-dollar pledge, we send you the hard cover book, the amen solution, the brain healthy way to lose weight and keep it off. the big winner so far has been the 240 gift, the amen solution master package. why don't you run through the wealth that is this package. >> well, this is -- is a way for us toay y thankou for supporting this great station. our way to change your life.

you get the dvd of the show, plus an extra dvdf oha bonus material, you get my new hard cover book the amen solution, you get three e-books on a cd rom, get healthy with the brain doctor's wife. a cookbook, a coaching guide that will change your life and an exercise guide. plus there's a six cd audio course that i do, the secrets to being thinner, smarter and happier. now if you like this information, you will love it, take me with you on your ipod or in your car. you also get a questionnaire to help you know what your brain type is. it also tests the health of your brain. plus, there's a 90-day free online -- 90 days free of my brand-new online program, the amen solution, that literally holds your hand to get thinner, smarter and happier. the questionnaires are online. you get a brain journal.

it is on cool because if you just take five minutes a day and fill out your habits, it reminds you of the right things to do and it doubles your weight loss in just 10 weeks. there's a brain gym where we'll test your brain, your memory, attention, focus, mood, anxiety level, and then we'll give you some very specific exercises in the form of fun games to work out your brain. there are hundreds of brain healthy recipes, there's a relaxation room, there's a kill the ants room, we just talked about the automatic negative thoughts and how you can get rid of them. this one technique has been found in research studies to be as effective as antidepressive medication, and there are no side effects to it. so the whole online program, it's like spending a year with me coming to see me twice a week. you get all the things that i teach my own patients, including six individual hypnosis audios just like you were sitting in my office. it's a great value and it's our

way of saying thank you when you call in to support this station. >> one of the things you were talking about is being an agent for change, right? let us use our own behavior to influence those around us positively. and you have a really amazing story about being a change at. could you tell us stories? >> at the end of the show i actually talk about going to my own church and being truly horrified by the food that they were serving, so i spent half the church service praying that god would help me to help change churches, and then rick warren from saddleback church called me up and said dr. amen, we want you to help us change saddle book church. i work with dr. oz and others to get healthy. it's wonderful the amazing stories, and we're using the

same 10 principles of the amen solution. saddleback church is connected to 25,000 churches around the world. so we're going to get this country healthy. but you can also do it from your business, from your school up, from your family. now is the time to get healthy, not tomorrow, tonight. today is the time to get healthy. so please, call and get these great gifts, we'll teach you how to do it in a fun way that is about abundance, never about deprivation. it's not about 10 pounds, this is not a program to lose 10 pounds in 10 weeks, there's a lot of programs to do that. this is a program to get control of your brain and your body for the rest of your life. >> and not only changing your life but actually those around you. i really love that idea, that it's not just a personal issue but actually it's the ripple effect of what happens around you. while making a contribution to

weta is just like that. your pledge is a personal pledge but it's added to the community and we want to say thank you. when you make that pledge of support right now, david has more. >> weta is committed to broadcasting a great diversity of programs. perhaps you've enjoyed concerts in the past to celebrate our diverse musical heritage. perhaps it's our travel programs that excite your curiosity or perhaps it's a historical documentary that presents a balanced examination of a particular event. whatever you turn on weta you'll find something to tweak your curiosity, show your appreciation now for diverse quality programs by becoming a member right now. preserve a place for quality, diversity and individual enrichment. support weta, please go to the theth number to call is on your screen. thank you. >> when you pledge $35 or more and become a new member of weta, you'll receive five great gifts, a one-year subscription to news week magazine, a weta ecotomato,

the weta magazine and lapel pen. become a member today. >> and when you make that pledge of support we've got some really terrific ways of saying thanks. for a 90-dollar pledge we'll send you the program two dvd set, it's got some bonus material on that as well. for a 120-dollar pledge the hard cover book, the amen solution, the brain healthy way to lose weight and keep it off. for 240-dollar pledge the amen solution master package, which contains -- why don't you actually talk about it, because this is sort of like -- i feel like it's you. >> well, it's just -- it's a great value that well send you to say thank you for this wonderful station. it's only on public television you'll see a show like mine. this is my fifth show for public television. i really just wanted to give you just such a great thank you gift. it includes the two dvd set of

this program, plus an hour of bonus material, there's the new hard cover book, three e-books you get, get healthy with the brain doctor's wife, cookbook coaching guide and an exercise guide. there's the six cd audio course where i download my brain to yours, there's the master questionnaire to know your brain type, but there's 90 days free of my brand-new online program that literally holds your hand to get thinner, smarter and happier. it's got a food journal, a brain journal, a brain gym, a relaxation room, a kill the ants room, it's really all the things i've been working with my patients over the last 30 years and you can log on anytime you need them or want them and u these tools to get thinner, smarter and happier now. >> it's all about you, right? it's all about giving you the tools you need to make these positive changes.

dr. amen, you're really connected with this area. you did your schooling here, you have a clinic here, and i think it's a really interesting thing to talk about the context of going to your clinic versus the 240-dollar package. >> well, you know, i love washington, d.c. and lived here for a long time and trained at walter reed and so i decided to open an east coast clinic. he opened it in virginia because this area's just one of my favorite areas in the world. but a long time ago i realized not everybody can come to one of my clinics or get a scan. to do our whole evaluation is about $3,500. and what i designed were a series of questionnaires and tools to really help you get the benefit of coming to one of our clinics for a lot less money. so for a pledge of $240, you've got all the great materials that we talked about from the show, the book, the cds, the e-books, the online solution and

questionnaires, it's just a great value. and i know because i've done this work for a very long time. if you follow the program just like i ask you to, it will change your life in a positive way. >> dr. amen, why public television? it feels like to me you could choose a lot of homes for your programming but why public television? >> you know, i always wanted to be on public television because public television is the number one trusted network on tv. people trust it and it's thoughtful television. it's not let me just get you excited so i can keep you there until the next commercial. it's television for you that will make a positive difference in your life. so i've just been incredibly blessed to be able to partner with public television to bring my shows to you. >> and how many shows have you done now? >> this is our fifth show. >> fifth show. i know you have many, many books. i guess just thinking, do you have any concept of the number of people whose lives you've

affected? >> well, it's millions of people who watch the shows and have bought my books and have been part of this. and the letters i get, i mean, times they just make me cry because it's so gratifying to be able to get the message out that changes people's lives. and to hear from people it makes a difference in their life. >> well, we only have about a minute left, so if you haven't called yet please do make your pledge of support right now. for a 90-dollar pledge we'd love to give you the program, 2 dvd sets, bonus material as well. for $120, we'll give you the hard cover book. the 240 pledge, the master package with the dvd set, the book, the cd rom with three get healthy with the brain doctor's wife e-books, which includes a

three guides. six cd's, an audio cd, and that's taking it in the car with you somewhere, right? >> or when you're running, you could download ito yourou ipod. >> or when you're doing your fast walking like when you're in a rush to go somewhere. a 90 day free trial of dr. amen's new online program. so many great thank you gifts, you can ask the volunteer about that. the most important thing, though, is that you take some action today. this is about making a difference in your own life about supporting your community which brings you public television. it's all of the programming that you get here, it's being able to have all this time with someone like dr. amen. this is your public television station. we need to hear from you now. before we go t toxt nhee pamro we'd like to thank our volunteers from the american association of universito women for the past 130 years aauw has worked to bring about change and equality for women and girls in education and thed we'd andrs we'd like to thank ping by

charlie changes for feeding our volunteers. we'd like to thank you for you called in with a pledge during this break. if you haven't, there's still time to call, the number on your screen, or pledge online at weta.org. dr. amen, thank you so much for being with us this evening. >> my pleasure. thanks to weta. >> you bet. now on to another great program here on weta. enjoy.