I receive so many emails each day because I like to stay on top of research, innovations, and anything that can help me and my patients live vibrant and healthy lives. Every morning, I go through my inbox to get rid of the junk and keep what I need to know and learn. As I do this, I often think about what I can pass on to my patients that might interest them or help. Education is my passion, both for myself and for others.
One of my primary motivations behind creating Agroshare was my desire to have an exciting place to come to find some of the best advances in medicine, food and nutrition, and farming that can improve our lives with less difficulty and less trial and error! I have felt for a long time that these three areas are inextricably connected. It has been my life’s dream to show others how food, farming and medicine are all related, and improvements in one area can lead to positive changes in the others.
Below is a link to a video that I ran across during one of my inbox clean-outs. It is a TED Talk featuring Dr. Daniel Amen, and it has been viewed almost 19 million times to date! It revolves around mental health and some of the science behind keeping our brains functioning optimally, and the information is backed by the analysis of 83,000 brain scans. Dr. Amen compares images of healthy brains and normal brain activity with those affected by epilepsy, drug addiction, Alzheimer’s disease, traumatic brain injury, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and others.
After over two decades of research, Dr. Daniel Amen, a clinical psychiatrist and brain imaging specialist, concluded that many mental illnesses and emotional/behavioral problems can be linked back to an actual change in structure or injury to the brain, and that often, you can heal these injuries, thus ending the behavioral manifestations of the physical problem. The key is to address the brain as the cause, and not simply treat the unwanted behavior.
As a physician, the message behind this particular TED Talk really struck a chord with me. My passion for healthy food and background in both farming and nutrition stems from a desire to help patients heal and reverse health conditions rather than simply put a metaphorical band-aid on the problem by using prescription medication. Sometimes, as Dr. Amen mentions, medication is necessary. But sometimes, you have to look deeper in order to treat the root cause.
I also appreciate this video because, as a psychiatrist, he is working to remove some of the social stigma associated with mental health crises. Instead of blaming the individual, he is working to assess and heal actual physical maladies in the brain which present themselves with emotional symptoms.
If you find this video interesting, or you have any other favorite TED Talks you’d like to share, please contact us. We’d love to hear from you!
