Dr. Daniel Amen

Why do I know that?

Because one of my patients, who is an alcoholic, who had a terrible looking brain, she got clean.

Her brain looked great.

She then had knee surgery, calls me up crying.

She goes, I think I have Alzheimer's disease.

And I'm like, did she relapse?

So I scanned her brain, looked terrible again, but she didn't relapse.

It was the effect of general anesthesia.

And then I went to the literature and I'm like, what does the literature say?

The general anesthesia is hard on the brain and can increase the risk of dementia.

And it doesn't mean you don't get surgery.

It means probably should do some rehabilitation work if you have to get general anesthesia.

So avoid it if you can.

Well, like people, like in the pain book, this is the one statistic that blew me away that really sort of nudged me to write the book.

If you have back pain.

And you get an abnormal MRI.

Well, that scares the socks off of you, triggers the doom loop, and you're more likely to get surgery.

Been there.

But head-to-head against conservative care, surgery is no more effective, and it has a 21-fold increased risk of side effects.

And then this is the statistic.