Review by leafreader for Change Your Brain, Change Your Body: Use Your Brain to Get and Keep the Body You Have Always Wanted
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The book is not bad. There are very interesting information on brain types.

The big problem with the book is frankly a lack of focus. You may very well come away with an OMG-now-what feeling. That’s because the author attempt to cover many possibilities that contribute to the same problem. Let’s say you suffer from anxiety, by the end of the book, you will have been given 50 different things that could have contributed to you experiencing anxiety – and when you try to summarize all those “solutions” it tends to lead you to basic good commons sense: eat well, exercise, don’t stress. Great! Now I know how to live.

That is not to say that book doesn’t give good advice or that it doesn’t have added information. But for 80% of the book, you would have already known the common sense information if you paid any remote attention to the usual batch of health and fitness related articles and magazines.

The big draw for me to purchase this book is to learn about the different types of brains that Dr. Amen has identified. And how each can be best managed via supplements? I focused in on supplements because I already have fairly good regime when it comes to food and exercise. He does provide the info I seek, but I had to shuffle through different parts of the book to piece the information together. The author did not make that easy. At the end of it, I came up with a one-page of summary from all those scattered writings. I’m OK with it but it is clearly not the best. It also indicate the value of your money, assuming you had some common sense about diets already.

The point is, if you don’t know a lot of basic information to begin with regarding good eating and brain habits, then this book will be very valuable. If you know the basics already, you will find information that you’ve not seen before but it takes some work to extract out the info and it puts to question the real value you are getting.

Review by Robert E. Griswold for Change Your Brain, Change Your Body: Use Your Brain to Get and Keep the Body You Have Always Wanted
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In “Change Your Brain, Change Your Body” Dr. Amen explains how he has used SPECT imaging to study the blood flow and activity patterns in the brain. SPECT is an acronym for single photon emission computed tomography.

He offers many examples of how he has used SPECT to obtain critical information about the brain function of his patients, and determine the best treatment to help those individuals to overcome a wide variety of problems, from depression to obesity to colds and headaches. The book makes use of illustrations of brain scans taken before and after treatment at Amen’s clinics. He clearly explains how he interprets these scans, and how he determines the appropriate treatment for an individual.

Dr. Amen presents 15 solutions to assist you in boosting your brain to enable you to attain and maintain the kind of body and sense of well-being you have always wanted. Among the many benefits that can be derived by learning to love your brain and apply the easy-to-follow solutions are increased energy, sharper memory function, and relief from unwanted stress.

Sounds to good to be true? Not really. I can attest to many of the strategies and techniques this book offers because I have used them and taught them with amazing results for four decades. What’s really new and different about Dr.Amen’s approach is that he is employing some recently discovered scientific diagnostic equipment such as SPECT along with his unique treatments.

Back in the 1980′s, I presented health conferences at the University of Minnesota and other colleges featuring “pioneers” in using the brain/mind for healing, and maintaining good health. Participants in those conferences included Norman Cousins, O.Carl Simonton, Bernie Siegel, Deloris Krieger, Norman Shealy, Raymond Moody, Gerald Jampolsky Karl Menninger, etal. Dr. Amen is to be congratulated for building on their work and currently being on the cutting edge of discoveries and treatment in this field. The world could use more like him.

This is a valuable, well-written book, and deserves five stars.