I really like the way the therapist in the movie “No Letting Go” described how worried thoughts collect and gradually worsen and become anxious thoughts (anxiety) progressing to what she refers to as “junk thoughts”. It is like “junk food” if you eat too much of it, you eventually get sick! It is obvious, the body feels the effects of “junk food” much quicker than “junk thoughts”. It often takes years for an overload of “junk thoughts” to cause obvious symptoms or the onset of a crisis before an illness is detected. I believe this is why most mental illness is not detected until the early twenties.
Higher priority of focus
Like the collection of “junk thoughts” generally taking years before symptoms appear, studies show that Alzheimer’s disease can begin 20 years before the onset of symptoms. In fact, Dr. Amen reports that Alzheimer’s disease may begin 30 to 50 years before you know you have it. That is a lot of time to implement various therapies to restore brain health if people were aware of what was happening. I truly believe mental illness and suicide rates would drastically decline if mental health awareness and research received a higher priority of focus.
Brain Imaging
There are brain imaging methods available today that show when someone has Alzheimer’s disease, or when there is too much activity (my interpretation- too many thoughts) causing the brain to become incoherent (my interpretation- scrambled) long before the onset of symptoms.
All organs in the body are connected to the brain through the central nervous system. When I worked with an energy worker, he spent over 90% of his time working in the brain because he had learned when the brain works properly, the body follows suit responding to the brain. Every part of the body is affected by the brain. Brain health is extremely important but as I explained in my blog about depression brain scans, psychiatrists are the only medical specialists that do not look at the organ they treat. In other words, they guess. Although the costs associated with brain imaging are not covered by most insurance companies at this time, there are other areas of focus to improve brain health that are available to everyone.
- Practice taking inventory of your thoughts striving to recognize “junk thoughts” and locating possible patterns of how, when, where, etc. “junk thoughts” are entering and plaguing the brain.
- Consider more carefully the music you listen to, the electronic games you play, the videos you watch including pornography as studies indicate they do affect mental health.
- Consider following Dr. Amen’s brain-smart program that has been statistically proven to elevate mood, improve memory, and blood flow.
- Explore meditation. Dr. Joe Dispenza includes images of the brain before and after meditation in his book “You are the Placebo” that show amazing coherence improvements and the normalization of high activity.
Junk Thought Video
This YouTube video about “Junk Thoughts” points out some unique perspectives about the pollution affecting mental health.
Encourage everyone to watch “No Letting Go”
I refer to the movie based on a true story, “No Letting Go” often because, in my opinion, it is the most authentic film reproduced about mental illness. I encourage everyone to watch it, not only to understand “junk thoughts” better but to understand more about mental illness in general.
Featured Top Photo by Tamara Garcevic
