.

>> Good evening, I'm psychiatrist father live from the Brucey studio in Fort Wayne , Indiana.

Welcome to Matters of the Mind now and its 27th year are Matters of the Mind is a live call in program where you have the opportunity to choose a topic for discussion.

>> So if you have any questions concerning mental health issues, give me a call in the Fort Wayne area by dialing (969) 27 two zero or if you're calling any place coast to coast you may dial toll free at 866- (969) to seven to zero now on a fairly regular basis we are broadcasting live every Monday night from our spectacular PBS Fort Wayne studios which lie in the shadows of the Purdue Fort Wayne campus.

>> And if you'd like to contact with an email question that I can answer on the air, you may write me at matters of the mind all one word at WSW Edgard that's via the Internet at matters of the mind all one word at WFYI Dog and I'll start tonight's program with an email I recently received.

>> It reads During The father of my son takes antidepressants and antianxiety medications.

He also has ADHD and attention deficit disorder.

>> He uses marijuana in the evenings after work.

How does this impact his medications that he's taking?

Well, if your son is under twenty four years of age I would strongly advise him to not use marijuana.

>> His brain is still growing and marijuana use has been known to stunt the growth of the brain particularly the part of the brain that is responsible for communicating ideas and intellectual content from one area to another.

So basically marijuana stunts the white matter development of brain white matter is like the insulation around your nerves and around your electrical wiring and if you stop the white matter connectivity it'll decrease the ability to for the brain to be able to think and thereby decrease IQ points and doing so.

So marijuana yeah that's a problem.

I'd want to be able to get the anxiety treated with something other than marijuana if your son says well I need the marijuana to help with anxiety, we've got better things for anxiety if my son says I need the marijuana to help me sleep, we have better things for sleep so there's other ways to be able to get around that anxiety will often go hand in hand with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or attention deficit disorder inattentive type and the reason will be when you're procrastinating, when you're having difficulty paying attention for sustained periods of time you're getting behind on your work.

>> It'll create a lot of anxiety.

You're always behind, you're always frantic.

You're always doing things at the last minute that will create a lot of anxiety and with anxiety comes not uncommonly insomnia where you can't get to sleep because you're worrying about things when you can't sleep will cause you to have trouble with depression.

You don't enjoy things.

You're less motivated, you're fatigued.

You started diminishing your self-confidence and all these different things can cascade over the course of time.

>> So if the depression and anxiety or there are they need to be treated with something other than marijuana what concomitantly trying to get the symptoms under better control because of the eighties the symptoms are the primary source of the anxiety.

Sometimes quite frankly we'll just treat the attention deficit disorder and in treating that you'll often find the anxiety will lessen.

But in the midst of all that the marijuana that's really got to go he might claim it gives him all these benefits but in the long run marijuana especially with a young adult anybody under twenty four years of age, it just doesn't go well, especially if you have difficulty with attention deficit disorder.

>> Thanks for your email.

Let's go to our first caller.

Hello Jean.

>> Welcome to Matters of Mind.

Well, Jean, you want to know how is the brain held up in the skull and what happens during a concussion?

>> Basically, Jean, this brain here weighs about three pounds .

It is only about two percent of the body weight but it takes up about 20 percent of the brains of the body's energy.

So the brain is relatively small compared to the rest of the body but it takes up a tremendous amount of energy.

>> So for that reason when the brain is jarred or get bumped around, it can have a big impact on how the rest of the body functions.

So the brain has the consistency inside the skull of about giallo.

>> If you have somebody who's had an acute injury their brain is showing it's just a gelatinous type of tissue and in doing so when it gets when you have a head injury and it gets bounced against this hard skull of ours, it'll have difficulty with release of a particular chemical called glutamate or glutamate is they accelerate in the brain glutamate consists of about 80 percent of the neurotransmission of the gray matter of the outside part of the brain, the thinking part of the brain.

>> So glutamate is what really fuels this outside part of the brain.

>> If you have a head injury and the brain has been pushed around and knocked around inside that hard skull, you'll get kind of a brain bruise and it won't be permanent damage necessarily but it'll cause you to have an increase in glutamate.

>> Too much glutamate is like too much acceleration in a car without enough braking you can have problems so too much glutamate getting released acutely.

>> No one can cause your seizures.

No two can cause you a tremendous amount of difficulty with thinking and concentration and that's what a traumatic brain injury or a concussion will be all about where you have trouble with remembering things, you'll have trouble with reaction time.

You might even have headaches and that's from the excessive glutamate release and we have the best luck with medication that will modulate or even block excessive glutamate release.

Depakote is an anti seizure medication.

It's been used for decades.

LaMotte's Rajin will decrease glutamate transmission.

We use naysay in acetylcysteine as a natural supplement to modulate glutamate.

We have various ways to stabilize glutamate if somebody had a traumatic brain injury.

>> So a traumatic brain injury is also known as a concussion.

It's basically a brain bruise where this little gelatinous tissue here weighing about three pounds gets knocked around in the skull and the recover from a concussion can be over the course of several days, not weeks depending on depending on the severity if somebody gets knocked unconscious during a concussion ,they're going to be more likely to have a prolonged time for recovery.

>> So we tend to look at concussions very seriously.

We try to get somebody to be able to rest after a concussion.

We don't want them to go out in or risk another concussion and that's why football players now have the concussion protocol where they have to be able to establish a certain amount of reaction time before they can get back out on the field.

>> Thanks for your call.

>> Let's go to next caller.

Hello Mario.

Welcome to Matters of the Mind.

Mario, you said you're starting to feel more agitation to loud sounds.

>> What's that mean?

Well, if you're already if you're all of a sudden having difficulty a lot with loud sounds, Mario, it could be that you've had a traumatic brain injury as I just mentioned and a traumatic brain injury following a concussion can make you really sensitive to noise.

So a traumatic brain injury where you've had a concussion or something like that can make you more sensitive to noise and make you more agitated.

Something else it can occur when you're more sensitive to noise all of a sudden can be that you've had Lyme disease.

>> Maybe you've been bitten by a deer tick.

You might have the aftermath of covert infections we've heard about that people had covered infections all of a sudden they not only have disturbances with their smell but they also are more sensitive to loud sounds for many people who have migraine headaches they will be sensitive to loud noises while they're having migraine headaches or as a precursor of the migraine headaches themselves.

Some people with autism or even ADHD for that matter, but especially autism will have a long history of being very jumpy and being very annoyed in the presence of loud sounds.

They can't tolerate a lot of stimuli and the loud sounds will be a problem for them if somebody is experiencing a bipolar manic episode that will make them more sensitive to loud sounds because when you have a bipolar manic episode where you're not even needing to sleep, you have racing thoughts, you're impulsive, you're doing things and saying things you ordinarily wouldn't do or say you'll be more sensitive to loud sounds in those cases and if you have a neurological disturbance like Bell's Palsy, Bell's palsy is where you have a trigeminal disturbance and this little trigeminal nerves comes out here and stands out across the face as well as the hearing and some people will notice that with Bell's palsy if they're having a spell where they're having difficulty with that they will have difficulty with increased sensitivity to sounds.

So if you're having agitation related to increase since you've sensitivity to sound, I'd certainly start with your primary care clinician review when it all started, did start with an infection.

>> Did it start with the head injury?

Yes, it's always been there to some degree and that's going to be the differentiation in terms of what type of treatment you might you might find indicated.

So check with your primary care doctor First Mile and see what kind of options might be available.

>> Mario, thanks for your call.

Let's go our next caller.

Hello Shannon.

Welcome to Matters of Mind.

Shannon, you want to know does playing board games or chess increase brain development and support mental health ?

>> It does.

>> Number one, if you're playing chess and you're playing board games, you're often playing with another person any kind of social interaction, Shannon can be very, very helpful especially for us older adults as you get older you tend to lose the social interactions.

>> You got to have social interactions as you get older because lack of social interactions as we age will be a very high predictor of dementia.

>> So to maintain your memory and your mental health as you get older you still need to socialize.

So just playing the board game itself and playing chess, interacting with other people will really help overall with your mental health .

>> There was a nun study in you in nuns that was done in a big convent years ago and it showed that they had a decreased risk for dementia and it was all part of the reason was they kept their brain active with board games and various activities that kept them intellectually stimulated.

That was part of the equation.

>> But what it was what was found was that when you play board games and you play chess yeah.

You have the social interaction which is good but it develops a part of your brain that's helpful for you to play chess and board games.

>> It won't necessarily help you with all areas of intellectual functioning.

However intellectually stimulating your brain is kind of like exercise for the brain.

>> So bottom line is boardgames chess can be helpful from a socialization standpoint that can help you intellectually especially with those games themselves.

But keeping yourself sharp and keeping your brain busy as opposed to passively watching television for instance, keeping your brain busy and having interaction like that can be really helpful.

>> Shana, thanks for your call.

>> Let's go our next caller.

Hello Daniel.

Welcome to Matters of Mind.

Daniel, you want to know at what ages does your brain go through major changes.

Major changes I can see with the brain Daniel will be around the age of eight years old prior to the age of eight years old.

>> If you've experienced severe trauma, either you've been emotionally, sexually, physically abused, you've had difficulty with your immediate family.

>> There was divorce separation.

Somebody went to prison.

There's drug abuse in the family before the age of eight years old.

If you witness any of that, you can be at a very high likelihood for trauma related depression or anxiety later in your life before the age of eight years old, your personality is forming before the age of eight years old.

There's a lot of stuff going on before you're eight years old and obviously when you're twenty twenty five years old and you already experience those things before you're eight years old, there's nothing you could do about it.

>> But it is it will be a risk factor for you having difficulty later on.

Now there are other factors involved including your ability to cope .

You're resilient says we call it your genetics.

There will be other factors that might be related to how well you're going to endure those past traumatic experience.

So eight years of age is a very important time frame.

>> Secondly, it's twenty four years of age.

I mentioned earlier that if you're using marijuana prior to the age of twenty four years of while your brain is still growing you can actually stunt your brain development.

So we highly advise people to not use marijuana prior to the age of twenty four years of age it's actually more detrimental to the brain than alcohol and my biggest concern about the legalization of marijuana in various states which is occurring will be that it will endure the use of marijuana with younger people because quite frankly over the years as I've talked to younger people some of them have abstained from marijuana simply because they say it's not legal.

>> I don't want to do anything illegal might give me a bad rap on my record later on.

>> It's one thing that's keeping them away from it.

But my concern is if the if we make marijuana legalized and you can put all the precautions on it, you want saying that's not allowed to be sold to people under 18 under 20 for whatever you say.

>> But if you legalize marijuana my concern is to the younger people, people under 24 years of age it basically endorses a safety because I've actually heard people say in various other states where marijuana is legalized well gee, my state wouldn't have legalized it had it not been safe.

>> So they perceive that if marijuana is legalized it's been routine.

It's been rigorously studied by the Food and Drug Administration and there aborts for it's safe enough to be legalized.

So there's a lot of argument out there about the legalization of marijuana.

I understand the legal and the political ramifications for legalizing marijuana.

>> I'm just concerned as a clinician that once you legalize it in a state it endorses its use especially with younger people.

We saw a deficit impact in the state of Colorado since the year 2012 I believe it was when they legalized marijuana since that time the mental health of young adults and adolescents and in Colorado has been really deteriorating exponentially.

And a lot of my colleagues who work in Colorado have said that it's really tough out there, you know, using marijuana gee you might say well I grew up in the 90s or eighties and marijuana it was used back then but we didn't hear anything bad about it was because in the 90s and 80s the potency of marijuana, the THC, the tetrahydrocannabinol cannabidiol content was about five percent in the marijuana.

Now it's up to 20 percent.

So as you get these higher potency in marijuana, it can cause even more of a toxicity effect.

And that's what you're seeing in a lot of the marijuana shops right now.

>> So at the age of twenty four that's a major time frame for women when they go through menopause women will go through menopause and they'll have this drop very gradually but it's dropping of estrogen.

>> Estrogen has receptors steadied in the memory center of the brain.

The temporal lobe here the hippocampus hears the left side.

>> There's the right side.

Hippocampus is the memory center of the brain and it's studied with little estrogen receptors.

So as women have loss of estrogen as they go into menopausal often notice a brain fog.

They'll have trouble with memory and concentration during that time.

So there's things we'll try to do to try to reverse that bioactive estrogen can be helpful for some people but sometimes we'll use particularly medications to help them with what can be clinical depression for some people in memory disturbances and as we get older, yeah, the brain is slowly shrinking on the outside especially the brain shrinks on the outside you can actually have symptoms of dementia.

So as the brain gets older it's important as I mentioned before, to stay socially, keep socializing to keep the brain active, exercising all these different things we need to do to keep the brain engaged as we get older.

But I mentioned earlier the brain's weight is about three pounds and you might think OK, so the bigger brain we have the better we're going to be able to concentrate in the more the more intellectually savvy will be, right?

>> Well, Einstein Albert Einstein had he donated his brain to science and they dissected his brain and they found that Einstein's brain was actually a little bit lighter than the average brain.

So just having a bigger brain doesn't mean you're going to be smarter.

Einstein's brain brain was actually smaller but what Einstein had he had an extra Jairus of tissue right through here.

He had an extra piece of brain tissue right there but his brain overall wasn't larger.

He just had an extra piece of tissue.

Is it considered to be an abnormality?

But I think because of that abnormality he could see mathematical concepts in a whole different perspective than the rest of us.

So Einstein had an abnormal brain.

>> Einstein likely if we to look at him today probably had autism.

So he's a person that had autism but he was able to utilize that autism in such a way that he was able to to make these mathematical mathematical type of equation analyzes that's entirely different than the rest of us could.

>> It could have done.

>> Thanks for your call.

Let's go our next e-mail question.

Our next e-mail question reads Director Fovea, what's the biggest predictor for divorce considering that we have a high divorce rate biggest predictor for divorce I think could be related back to John and Julie Gutman's research there at a University of Washington remarkable marriage therapists .

>> They actually have a love lab out there at the University of Washington in Washington State and the Ottomans were known to be able to sit with a recently married couple and sit with him for 15 minutes and within 15 minutes they could tell with a 94 percent success rate who was going to get divorced and who was not and people studied the Guardsmen's.

>> How do you know that one of the biggest predictors they found for divorce was the degree of negativity identified in each spouse toward the intentions of the other one.

>> In other words, they would look at the motives of their husband, their wives in the context of day to day activities.

>> So if the spouse perceived that they had negative connotations for why they did certain things, if the other spouse perceived that that's where there was a higher predictability for divorce.

>> So the important takeaway is in an interpersonal relationships such as marriage you have to look at the good of the and the other person if you're looking for the potential evil intention and you look at their motivations as always being derogatory or being something is good going to be a negative impact on you and you're always looking at the bad in that person.

>> It does give you a higher prediction.

There's going to be problems along the way in the marriage and not only does looking at the at the negative in situations and people around you, not only does that cause you to have difficulty with relationship with them but it can cause you to have a greater likelihood for depression.

We've noticed over the course of the years that people who have tend to have more negativity about other people around them and they make assumptions that other people around them have these evil angry type of motivations toward them personally.

>> Well, at the minimum that can cause you to have a lot of difficulty with anger and irritability and and cause you to lash out at other people.

But the most you can actually get paranoid where you have fixed false beliefs about the intentions of other people.

>> So bottom line is when you get married I think the best marriage counseling advice anybody could have would be not to make assumptions on the motivations of the others and not always make those assumptions make those assumptions be in the negative because those derogatory type of perceptions about your loved one can really fuel a lot of animosity between the two of you and you might think well gee, with people around me I need to be discerning.

I need to be on the watch.

I need to be on the lookout for possible danger.

The problem is if you do that with everybody including your spouse, it can cause you to have a lot of problems.

So yeah, it's important to let things go and it's very important as I tell a lot of young married couples to not not necessarily feel like you need to have the last say or any say at all when your spouse is having some conflicts simply listen back off and walk away from it as opposed to feeling like you need to answer it.

It is not a competition and the next day or two in the source of that conflict a lot of things are forgotten over the course time and that's a good thing.

Forgetting is actually mentally healthy and a lot of ways if you're somebody who is prone to not forget and always remember every single slight you've had against you, it's not good for your brain because your brain will branch in different ways.

>> This brain here has 80 billion neurons in it and each individual neuron has between thirty thousand and fifty thousand branches.

>> And if you have areas in your life where you're looking at the negative intentions of others, the motives of others, that area of your brain will actually branch more and you'll remember those things as if they're still happening.

So when you ruminate about all these awful things people have done to you and you're thinking about it over and over again, it's as it's as if it's still happening and that actually stimulates the part of your brain that is carrying those memories.

So it's actually healthy to forget some of the past slights and some of the past type of behavior that have been carried out against you.

>> I always think of Andrew Luck the football player, the quarterback for the Colts.

He was very good at forgetting about his interception interceptions and as a quarterback it's very important for you to do if you have an interception, don't dwell on it.

Don't think about it in the next series.

Forget about it and forgetting sometimes in our daily lives some of the best thing we can do.

>> Thanks for your email.

Let's go to next caller.

Hello Christina.

Welcome to Mars The Mind.

>> Christina, you want to know why do you feel an estrangement or no contact with family members is on the rise?

>> I don't know if it's on the rise or not, Christina.

It's something that I think legally you're going to hear more about that.

I think more people are aware of that as a possibility to have the no contact.

I don't think it's healthy for the kids and I'm always advising people if you have a husband, a wife, a mother or a father to try to not get the kids involved to the point where it becomes long lasting impairment for them because so many times they'll see the adults fighting in their lives.

As I mentioned before, that is a risk factor later on for those kids having difficulty, depression and anxiety because a risk factor for a child later on to have depression or anxiety will be witnessing especially before the age of eight years old separation, divorce, marital conflict, drug abuse in the household all this conflict and strife within the household if it's occurring before the age of eight years old, it can have a detrimental effect on the child's development and then actually can affect the child's brain development early on.

So is more studies get done on this with children?

We're finding that children are very susceptible to what happens around them at a very, very early age.

So I would certainly suggest to try to work things out one way or another.

I don't know what the statistics are showing concerning no contact situations but it's certainly not healthy in the long run.

>> Christina, thanks for your call.

Let's go to our last email question.

Our last email question reads Dear dad to father I'm lonely all the time even when I'm around others.

>> What can I do?

>> What can I do to feel like myself again?

I think it depends on the context why you're lonely when you're around others.

Is that always been the case for you?

If that's always been the case that might be some social anxiety you're experiencing.

You have a disconnect if you're if you're an older adult for instance and you're starting to lose your hearing loss of hearing is actually a risk factor for dementia because when you lose your hearing you can't hear what other people are saying.

You can't join the conversation and you can feel much more socially isolated.

>> So it's very important that if you're losing your hearing as you get older that you get hearing aids and get some kind of assistance in evaluation for that to try to get that return.

>> But I think that sense of loneliness can be all based on the context of the loneliness some people will feel extremely depressed when you're depressed.

You often don't want to socialize, don't want you can't enjoy things you don't want to do things that other people are doing and you feel more isolated.

So I think it's a matter of looking into all that.

>> I think we have another question here.

I'm going to try to get to that before we close tonight.

Hello, Don.

Welcome to the Mind, Don.

>> You know you want to know what are those long term side effects of Lamictal or Lamotrigine?

Lamotrigine has been around since the nineteen eighties originally approved as an anti seizure medication.

Now we use it for mood stabilization especially to help people put up with stuff.

>> The side effects of Lamotrigine are typically early on as opposed to long term.

Early on the first couple months you can have about a one out of four thousand risk of having a rash on the chest, neck or face especially if you take Lamotrigine in at a high dosage too soon or if you're taking with certain other medications will give you a higher blood level.

You get past the first two months with no rash typically limosine it can be well tolerated.

>> Well with some people especially older adults they can have some memory impairment with it later on.

That's not typical for many people but it's like with any medication if it happens to you and that side effect is only happening and one out of a thousand people and you're the one well you need to go another direction but typically it doesn't cause long term disturbances like tardive dyskinesia, diabetes or some concerns we have with these other medications.

Don, thanks for your call.

Unfortunately I'm out of time for this evening.

>> If you have any questions that I can answer on the air, you may write me via the Internet at matters of the mind all one word at WWE Dog I'm psychiatrist favorite.

>> You've been watching matters of mine on PBS Fort Wayne now available on YouTube.

>> God willing and PBS willing.

I'll be back again next week.

>> Thanks for watching.

Goodnight