A practical, prescriptive look at the most current and natural ways to improve brain health, from the bestselling author of Change Your Brain, Change Your Life.

A healthy, balanced brain is the key to accomplishing personal and professional goals. In this fascinating and inspiring audiobook, Daniel G. Amen shares the most up-to-date research on brain heath and function, and the ways in which both can be improved naturally. He also explains how listeners can develop specific qualities such as personal responsibility, good attention, consistent effort, impulse control, motivation, integrity, and creativity. Amen also provides tools listeners can use to naturally heal common mental challenges, including ADD, anxiety, depression, memory issues, and insomnia.


From the Compact Disc edition.

chapter 1

a scandal for our time

In the early hours of February 22, 2004—a cool, clear, late-winter day —copies of the fat Sunday edition of The Washington Post landed on doorsteps and driveways throughout the nation’s capital and its booming suburbs in Maryland and Virginia. Near the top of the front page, an arresting headline announced a scoop:

a jackpot from indian gaming tribes lobbying, pr firms paid $45 million over 3 years

This was a seductive come-on in a city where making money was in vogue, and the story lived up to the enticement. The Post reported startling details about the exploits of a lobbyist named Jack Abramoff, then forty-six, and a public relations man who collaborated with him, Michael Scanlon, thirty-three. They had persuaded four Indian tribes flush with gambling money to pay huge fees to exploit Abramoff’s connections with conservative Republicans in the White House and Congress to protect the tribes’ interests. At Abramoff’s urging, the tribes also hired Scanlon to do unspecified public relations work.

“The fees are all the more remarkable because there are no major new issues for gaming tribes on the horizon, according to lobbyists and congressional staff,” reported the Post’s Susan Schmidt. Abramoff persuaded the tribes that they needed his help “to block powerful forces both at home and in Washington who have designs on their money,” Schmidt wrote, quoting members of the tribes to this effect. She disclosed that the four tribes had donated millions of dollars to politicians and causes suggested by Abramoff, and had changed their traditional patterns of political contributions by giving less to Democrats and more to Republicans—at his urging. “Some members of the tribes” Abramoff represented “have begun to complain that they are getting little for their money,” wrote Schmidt.

Neither Abramoff nor Scanlon was a household name in Washington. But Tom DeLay was, and DeLay’s name appeared five times in that Post story. DeLay, a successful small businessman who ran an exterminating firm in the suburbs of Houston before he became a politician, was then the most powerful man in Congress. Everyone knew that DeLay had chosen Dennis Hastert of Illinois to become Speaker of the House of Representatives when that job suddenly came open in 1999. DeLay’s title was majority leader, technically second-ranking to the speaker, but their colleagues understood that DeLay was smarter and tougher than Hastert, and more influential among House Republicans.

In the mid-1990s DeLay and his colleagues in the Republican leadership had struck a bargain with Washington’s lobbyists that was both brazen and remarkably successful: if the lobbyists would help raise hundreds of millions of dollars to support Republicans and help preserve their majority in Congress, DeLay would invite them into the legislative process, and allow them to propose entire bills and suggest changes to legislation proposed by others.

Both sides fulfilled this understanding with gusto. The Republican National Committee and the party’s House and Senate campaign committees, which collected $358 million in contributions in the two years prior to the 1994 elections when Republicans won control of Congress for the first time since 1952, reported contributions of $782 million a decade later, in 2003–04—a 220 percent increase. Lobbyists and their clients helped make that possible. And lobbyists for corporate interests won countless legislative provisions from the Republican House and Senate favoring their clients. Under the...

 

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"A must-read . . . Magnificent Mind at Any Age blends scientific innovation with a clear and powerful writing style. Dr. Amen's SPECT scans are fascinating, his conclusions are life-changing, and he provides practical health strategies you can utilize immediately."

 

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"Providing brain basics from cradle to grave, Dr. Amen has written an indispensable handbook for handling emotions, cognition, relationships, and even our spiritual lives. It is comprehensive, inspiring, and user-friendly, explaining the most complex material in a way that's easy to understand and, better yet, to put into practice."

 

"A user's manual to care for our precious brain. If you have a brain, buy this book!"

 

Magnificent Mind at Any Age by Daniel G. Amen
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