Joseph A. Annibali - Reclaim Your Brain: How to Calm Your Thoughts, Heal Your Mind, and Bring Your Life Back Under Control

I first met Dr. Joseph Annibali at a five-day conference I was teaching on applying brain SPECT imaging, the brain-imaging tool we use at Amen Clinics. A highly trained psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who had already spent decades in clinical practice, Joe isnt one to rest on his laurels. He continually seeks out knowledge that will help his patients: people who are hurting, from all walks of life, who come to see him from far and wide. I was so impressed by his broad knowledge, kind heart, and open mind that I asked him to join our medical staff. Within a short time Joe became the chief psychiatrist in our Reston, Virginia, clinic, just outside of Washington, D.C., and is now a powerful leader and mentor among our staff of thirty medical professionals.

Our story at Amen Clinics began in 1991 when I ordered my first brain SPECT scans on patients with conditions like ADHD (attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder), severe aggression, and unresponsive anxiety and depression who had not improved with standard treatments. Over the years, with Joes help, we have built the worlds largest database of brain SPECT scans, now well over 115,000 scans on patients from 111 countries. These scans have significantly changed how we help our patients at Amen Clinics. Weve learned that psychiatric illnesses are rarely single or simple disorders. Giving someone the diagnosis of depression is exactly like giving them the diagnosis of chest pain; the diagnosis does not tell you what the problem is and how serious it might be. Treatment needs to be tailored to the underlying problems in individual brains, not a cluster of symptoms. Significantly, with our approach our patients understand that their problems are medical rather than moral, which has increased their willingness to follow the treatment plans and decreased their stigma about having a psychiatric disorder.

The most important lesson weve learned from our treasure trove of scans, and the lesson that has kept Joe and me excited about this work each day, is that you are not stuck with the brain you have. As Joe discusses in this crucial book, if your brain is busy or racing out of control, if your brain is dysfunctional, you can reclaim it. In many thousands of cases, we have seen that you can improve brain function, even if you have been really bad to your brain. For example, Amen Clinics did the worlds first and largest brain-imaging study on active and retired NFL players, where we saw high levels of brain injury. That was not a surprise. Your brain is soft, about the consistency of soft butter, and it is housed in a really hard skull with multiple sharp bony ridges, so it is easily damaged. All of the news about concussions in sports has been bad, with an increased incidence of depression, suicide, and dementia. But what really excited us with our NFL study was that on our program to help the players reclaim their brains, the same one Joe will outline in this book, 80 percent of our 170 players showed high levels of improvement, especially in their mood, memory, sleep, and brain function.

When Joe and I were in medical school in the late 1970s and early 1980s, we were taught that the brain doesnt heal. But now we know that is wrong. If you put the brain in a healing environment, often it can get better, much better, but it requires forethought and a great plan. And this healing is not just for football players. We have seen improvement in brain function for people with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), anxiety, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), Lyme disease, addictions, and even improvement in some people with Alzheimers disease.

In this book, Joe shares many of the important lessons we have learned, while at the same time giving you his unique perspective on healing. I encouraged Joe to write this book because of his extensive experiences and perspective as a master psychiatrist who integrates the latest thinking about the mind with our work on looking at and optimizing the brain. Reading this book will be like sitting on the psychiatrists couch of the future.

In recent years Joe has also become an expert on the effects on the brain of Lyme disease, in part because his own daughter has had it. Both Joe and I believe infectious diseases, like Lyme, will play a significant role in how psychiatrists will help people in the future, which you will learn about. Joe is also an expert on Irlen syndrome, a visual processing disorder, which can be associated with headaches, anxiety, learning challenges, and irritability.

One of the key ideas of this book is that you need first to heal (an injured brain if present) and balance the brain before other interventions can work well. Too often people see therapists to help their minds, when they first need to help their brains work better. Readers will learn a lot about what they can do to help themselves from the tools and approaches presented here. Most readers will not need to come for a SPECT scan to benefit from the information given in