Speaker 1: You're listening to I Choose Me with Jenny Garth. Hi, everyone,
Speaker 1: welcome to I Choose Me. This podcast is all about
Speaker 1: the choices we make and where they lead us. I
Speaker 1: know this episode is going to be incredible because my
Speaker 1: guest today is on a mission to end mental illness.
Speaker 1: He is creating a revolution, you guys in brain health.
Speaker 1: My guest today is a physician, an adult and child psychiatrist.
Speaker 1: He's the founder of brain MD, and he hosts a
Speaker 1: digital series called Scan My Brain that I Think I
Speaker 1: was one of the first guests on. He's the author
Speaker 1: of Change Your Brain every Day and is a twelve
Speaker 1: time New York Times best selling author. He has worked
Speaker 1: with high profile people like Miley Cyrus, the Kardashians, Justin Bieber, Belahadid,
Speaker 1: and so many more. Please welcome my friend, doctor Amen
Speaker 1: to the I Choose Me Podcast. Doctor Raman, Oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: I've known you for so long. It feels like so long,
Speaker 1: but it's not really that long, right.
Speaker 2: No, well, I think it's the four years maybe four years?
Speaker 1: Yeah, right. Let's bring the listeners into our relationship and like,
Speaker 1: have we met? We met a few years ago when
Speaker 1: I heard from my friend Adele. She had sent me
Speaker 1: your Instagram profile and I was so enthralled by the
Speaker 1: content that you were putting out. I felt like you
Speaker 1: were speaking directly to me, and I knew I had
Speaker 1: to meet with you. Do you remember when I came
Speaker 1: into your office the first.
Speaker 2: Time I did so, you did my show Scan My Brain.
Speaker 2: You are actually the first person we have now done
Speaker 2: like one hundred and fifty episodes.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, I'm so honored.
Speaker 2: And you were the first one. We were talking about
Speaker 2: your memory and beautiful brain. It just worked way too hard.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when you told me I had a beautiful brain,
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, that makes me feel good.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, you've seen a few.
Speaker 3: I was.
Speaker 1: I remember I was kind of like in a dip,
Speaker 1: you know, like a little a little bit of a depression.
Speaker 1: I was really struggling with my memory and I was
Speaker 1: getting more and more worried that I was developing like
Speaker 1: early onset Alzheimer's or something. And I think that that
Speaker 1: was Wait was that was that before the shutdown or
Speaker 1: right after the shutdown? See see my memory still an issue.
Speaker 2: It's was right after.
Speaker 1: Right after right after? Well, my memory is a lot better.
Speaker 1: If you're wondering and you have taught me and my
Speaker 1: daughters so much, like you've taught the world so much
Speaker 1: about brain health and how to perform better and be
Speaker 1: better and think better so that we're healthier. All the
Speaker 1: things that you've done. Gosh, you've got to be proud
Speaker 1: of yourself.
Speaker 2: I was excited every day to work with wonderful people
Speaker 2: and help awesome people be just a little more awesome.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's true. Why don't we start by talking about
Speaker 1: high performance and the brain. You just got back from Paris, right,
Speaker 1: you were there working with Olympic athletes who are pushing
Speaker 1: their bodies to extremes. What kind of things do you
Speaker 1: work on with someone like that on that level?
Speaker 2: Well, so I was there on Alicia numan'st and Alisha
Speaker 2: is a Canadian Olympic poll waulter, and she had a
Speaker 2: bad concussion in April of twenty twenty one and developed
Speaker 2: something called Arline syndrome, which is certain colors of light
Speaker 2: disrupt the functioning in your brain. And she's depressed and
Speaker 2: had a lot of what we call ants automatic negative thoughts.
Speaker 2: And she actually told me she did my show as well.
Speaker 2: She told me, if I don't get an Olympic gold medal.
Speaker 2: I will be a failure and my children won't love me.
Speaker 2: I'm like, oh, we have to talk about that, because
Speaker 2: if you get an Olympic medal, you've just made your
Speaker 2: children's lives harder, right, because it's hard to live up
Speaker 2: to someone who is so accomplished. Anyways, I scanned her.
Speaker 2: I could see the trouble in her brain. We worked
Speaker 2: on it. She stopped drinking, because if you're an Olympic
Speaker 2: pole vaulter, that's your sarahbellum back bottom part of the
Speaker 2: brain that's involved in coordination, and alcohol is directly toxic
Speaker 2: to your sarahbellum. So she stopped drinking. She stopped believing
Speaker 2: everything she thought. She got rid of the idea of
Speaker 2: always being in the future with fear, and we changed
Speaker 2: it to every day I win or I learn. And
Speaker 2: we also got rid of the idea of you have
Speaker 2: to be the best. That's just such a toxic idea.
Speaker 2: But you want to be your best, and so every
Speaker 2: day we win or we learn. We get rid of
Speaker 2: the idea of perfection, but we go for consistency and
Speaker 2: being really good. And in twenty twenty three, she was
Speaker 2: the world indoor pole vaulting champion and she got the
Speaker 2: Bruns medal this year in Paris. It's emotional. It's so
Speaker 2: fund for me to be there and to just watch
Speaker 2: her perform at this incredibly high level. And one little
Speaker 2: secret I told her because she would get really bothered
Speaker 2: if she was around the other girls that were negative,
Speaker 2: and that would like rub off on her, And I'm like, no,
Speaker 2: that's your competitive advantage because when they're negative, well, that
Speaker 2: turns off the cerebellum, it turns off the coordination part
Speaker 2: of your brain. When they're negative, you're going to fly
Speaker 2: higher than them that day, And there were only five
Speaker 2: girls left at the end, and two of them were
Speaker 2: negative and they didn't make the next bar. And it
Speaker 2: was just so fun to sort of take the best
Speaker 2: of my work and help her be just a little
Speaker 2: bit better.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, you said you're getting emotional about that.
Speaker 1: I'm getting emotional about it. I don't even know her.
Speaker 1: That's that's what a special position you were in to
Speaker 1: be able to help her and then go there and
Speaker 1: be on her team in such an intimate way and
Speaker 1: such a part of her accomplishing that. Wow, that's really cool.
Speaker 1: That's a good story. I mean, stress and anxiety. It
Speaker 1: affects so many of us. Do you think there's really
Speaker 1: anyone left out there who doesn't have those feelings?
Speaker 2: Well, you want to hear something new I learned?
Speaker 1: Yes, please?
Speaker 2: Great? Freaking me out a little bit? Uh Aspertain, the
Speaker 2: you know, Zerow, the diet coke, and diet pepsi and
Speaker 2: over six thousand products. They did a study with mice
Speaker 2: and they found when they gave the mass pertain, they
Speaker 2: became very anxious, and their babies were anxious, and their
Speaker 2: grand babies were anxious. So it had a generational negative fact.
Speaker 2: And I think, you know, maybe I was twenty when
Speaker 2: aspartain came onto the market and I thought it was free, right,
Speaker 2: it's free, right, it's no calories.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But it's not such free, yeah.
Speaker 2: Because it changes some of the structures in your brain
Speaker 2: to need it in order for you to feel okay.
Speaker 2: But then you're more anxious. And in the study they
Speaker 2: actually gave the mice valium to calm them down, and
Speaker 2: that worked. But as you and I both know, valium
Speaker 2: is addictive. Once you started, people don't stop it. It's
Speaker 2: just a very bad thing. So could our societal anxiety
Speaker 2: in part be to what we're eating or what we're drinking.
Speaker 2: I mean, yes, there are obvious answers. The pandemic really
Speaker 2: ramped up everything, the death tolls, the isolation, the fear,
Speaker 2: and the virus itself. COVID activates your suffering pathway in
Speaker 2: the brain. It was the most interesting thing when I
Speaker 2: first started doing scans. So I saw you in December
Speaker 2: of twenty twenty, so right after the pandemic started, and
Speaker 2: I had scans. So I do a study for your listeners.
Speaker 2: I do a study called spec that looks at blood
Speaker 2: flow and activity, looks at how the brain works. And
Speaker 2: I had all these scans that people before they got
Speaker 2: COVID and then after they got COVID, and it was
Speaker 2: like this inflammatory bomb went off in their brain, making
Speaker 2: them more vulnerable things like anxiety and depression.
Speaker 1: Wow. Okay, first of all, that's a bummer for those mice.
Speaker 1: Second of all, it seems like the aspartain, not just
Speaker 1: the valuum that they gave them, but the aspartain itself
Speaker 1: is addictive, right right, Yeah, Okay, wait, rewind, what the
Speaker 1: heck is a brain scan and why do people want
Speaker 1: to get one?
Speaker 2: Well, you know, the brain is like the only organ
Speaker 2: people don't routinely screen right heart, You screen your calling,
Speaker 2: you screen your cervix, you screen your brass, and the
Speaker 2: most important work is your brain, right because it's your
Speaker 2: brain that makes you who you are. And about thirty
Speaker 2: three years ago I started looking at the brain with
Speaker 2: this study called brain Spacked imaging spect stands for single
Speaker 2: photon emission computed tomography that looks at blood flow and activity.
Speaker 2: It looks at how your brain works, and it basically
Speaker 2: shows us three things. Good activity, you had a lot,
Speaker 2: too little that wasn't your problem, or too much and
Speaker 2: that's what we saw in your emotional was working too hard.
Speaker 2: And then I take the scan and I balance it
Speaker 2: with lifestyle habits, with supplements, sometimes with medicine, and Jenny,
Speaker 2: imagine with me. Last year, there were three hundred and
Speaker 2: forty million prescriptions written for antidepressants in the United States.
Speaker 1: Wait wait, wait, go back, how many again? That's a
Speaker 1: big number.
Speaker 2: Three hundred and forty million million descriptions. Twenty five percent
Speaker 2: of women in the United States are taking get an antidepressant.
Speaker 2: That is not an okay number. Twenty five percent of
Speaker 2: women do not have they're not born with a serotonin deficiency,
Speaker 2: but all of these people who got these medications, no
Speaker 2: one ever looked at their brain. So they're changing the
Speaker 2: brain without any guidance on how to do it. And
Speaker 2: so since I started looking at the brain, I learned,
Speaker 2: like all these important things, mild traumatic brain injury is
Speaker 2: a major cause of psychiatric problems and nobody knows it.
Speaker 2: And remember you told me about the accident that you had.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, I had. I'll tell our listeners. I had
Speaker 1: an accident when I was in my early twenties. I
Speaker 1: was run over by a jet ski in the Pacific Ocean.
Speaker 1: The person that was driving the jet ski was Luperry,
Speaker 1: and so we always got a good giggle out of that.
Speaker 1: But I did totally pass out, black out whatever, go unconscious,
Speaker 1: and I woke up and I was being asked all
Speaker 1: these questions on the beach by the paramedics. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: that was the only time I can really remember a
Speaker 1: hit to the head, a traumatic brain injury or concussion
Speaker 1: of any kind.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well that was big. But you know, I didn't
Speaker 2: really see that in your brain, which.
Speaker 1: Meant, well, you saw a little, didn't Yeah, but.
Speaker 2: It was little opposed to you know, can this explain
Speaker 2: the problems with your memory, and so the brain can heal,
Speaker 2: But so many of my patients it's the traumatic brain
Speaker 2: injury that leads to the impulsivity that leads to the addiction,
Speaker 2: that leads to the depression. And we can fix it,
Speaker 2: but you can't fix something you don't know.
Speaker 1: Is there bingo? I mean, yeah, you've told me before.
Speaker 1: Like all my years dealing with my dad and his
Speaker 1: heart disease, they would never have prescribed him medication for
Speaker 1: his heart if they hadn't gone and done a sonogram
Speaker 1: and looked at it from every angle to know what
Speaker 1: the problem was. And then to think, all these years
Speaker 1: myself and many many other people have been getting prescribed
Speaker 1: medication for their brain and nobody's ever even looked at
Speaker 1: it until you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a bit insane.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it really is. You talked about ants. I think
Speaker 1: you were the first person that taught me about ants,
Speaker 1: and you tell them what ants is, what ants are.
Speaker 2: So goodness, it was over thirty years ago. I'm in
Speaker 2: my office and it was a bad day. Not a
Speaker 2: bad day. It was a hard day. Four suicidal patients,
Speaker 2: two teenagers who'd run away from home, and two couples
Speaker 2: who hated each other at the end of the day,
Speaker 2: I walk I go home and I walk into the
Speaker 2: kitchen and it's got an ant infestation in the kitchen
Speaker 2: and I'm cleaning up what feels like thousands of ants.
Speaker 2: And as I'm doing it, and the ants start like
Speaker 2: crawling out my arm and I'm like, automatic negative thoughts, ants.
Speaker 2: My patients are infested with ants. And so I finished
Speaker 2: it cleaning up. And then the next day I brought
Speaker 2: a can of ant spray to work and I start
Speaker 2: talking about it. I'm like, it's like, you have this
Speaker 2: investation of ants in your mind and I have to
Speaker 2: teach you to get rid of them. And then I
Speaker 2: realize ant spray is probably too toxic. And that weekend
Speaker 2: I went to Peer thirty nine and San Francisco and
Speaker 2: they have a puppet store there that's really awesome, and
Speaker 2: I got an ant puppet and then later an ant
Speaker 2: eater puppet. And because I also see kids, so I'm
Speaker 2: always thinking about, you know, analogies that they'll understand. And
Speaker 2: actually have a book called Captain Snout and the Superpower
Speaker 2: Questions where we teach kids to kill the ants that
Speaker 2: just pop up in their head. And I was twenty
Speaker 2: eight years old in my psychiatric residency when I heard
Speaker 2: a professor say, you have to teach your patients not
Speaker 2: to believe every stupid thing they think. And that was
Speaker 2: such a revelation because I believed every stupid thing I thought.
Speaker 2: And I'm like, what you know. Thoughts come from all
Speaker 2: sorts of places. They come from your genes. Sometimes, you know,
Speaker 2: trauma's written in your genetic based on what happened to
Speaker 2: your mom or dad. Sometimes they come from the voices
Speaker 2: of your mom or dad. From I grew up in
Speaker 2: a Catholic church, I had lots of guilt voices. Sometimes
Speaker 2: your siblings or friends or foes, you know, those of
Speaker 2: you who've been blessed and cursed to be in the
Speaker 2: public eye from the crazy journalists for clickbait. Lots come
Speaker 2: from all sorts of places, And just because you have
Speaker 2: a thought has nothing to do with whether or not
Speaker 2: it's true, whether or not it's helpful, and whether or
Speaker 2: not you should attach to it, Because it's not the
Speaker 2: thoughts you have that make you suffer. It's the thoughts
Speaker 2: you attached to that make you suffer. And so the
Speaker 2: exercise is, whenever you feel sad, mad, nervous, or out
Speaker 2: of control, just write down what you're thinking, and then
Speaker 2: ask yourself whether or not it's true, whether or not
Speaker 2: it's helpful, whether or not it's going to get you
Speaker 2: what you want in life, or if it's toxic and
Speaker 2: it needs to go. And it's a discipline, right, I
Speaker 2: believe people have to do the process like a hundred
Speaker 2: times to just retrain your brain. So Alicia's thought that
Speaker 2: we started with is I will be a failure if
Speaker 2: I don't get a gold medal and my children won't
Speaker 2: love me. Well, that's clearly distorted, not helpful thinking. We
Speaker 2: killed at least a hundred of her aunts, and so
Speaker 2: when she's at the most stressful time, she does her
Speaker 2: personal best because on the runway on the track, she
Speaker 2: imagined white lines and they will hot colds, and they
Speaker 2: were to prevent the ants from jumping over into her lane.
Speaker 2: And it's like, no, I don't have to believe that
Speaker 2: today I win or I learn.
Speaker 1: I think everybody has ants. Right. I love when you
Speaker 1: taught me that a thought leads to a feeling, leads.
Speaker 2: To an action and then the outcome.
Speaker 1: That's so incredible to just break that down because it's
Speaker 1: so simple to understand, just because you have a feeling.
Speaker 1: What you said doesn't make it true. And I literally
Speaker 1: just had I was having a little moment with my
Speaker 1: husband last night, literally was like, that is a feeling
Speaker 1: you're having and it's not doesn't make it true. So
Speaker 1: I was quoting you in my argument last night.
Speaker 3: We're good ants if you have ants and your husband
Speaker 3: has hands and the ants mate, Oh God, create super ants.
Speaker 1: I have three super ants living in my house.
Speaker 2: And so you know, with my wife, I'm always really
Speaker 2: clear with what I want. I want a kind, caring, loving, supportive,
Speaker 2: passionate relationship. I want that all the time. But I
Speaker 2: don't feel like that all the time. Right. I have
Speaker 2: rude thoughts that just show.
Speaker 1: Up what you mean, You're human.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and I don't say them because it doesn't get
Speaker 2: me what I want. And I find I spend a
Speaker 2: lot of time with my patients going, Okay, what do
Speaker 2: you want? Remember, I think we did the exercise, the
Speaker 2: one page miracle on what piece of paper write down
Speaker 2: what do you want? Relationships, work, money, physical, emotional, spiritual health?
Speaker 2: What do you want? So you have to actually tell
Speaker 2: your brain what you want, and then the question is
Speaker 2: does it fit If I say this, will give me
Speaker 2: a kind, caring, loving, supportive, passionate relationship or not. And
Speaker 2: I remember once we were fussing over a piece of
Speaker 2: property we were thinking of mining, and I heard the
Speaker 2: criticism come up in my head, and I'm like, that
Speaker 2: is not going to get you what you want. And
Speaker 2: I collect penguins. When you were in my office, you
Speaker 2: probably saw I have penguins. And the penguins are about
Speaker 2: noticing what you like about other people, way more than
Speaker 2: what you don't. Because every day we're training each other
Speaker 2: by what we notice about each other. And so I've
Speaker 2: lived with this concept, notice what you like more than
Speaker 2: what you don't. And so in the fuss, I'm like,
Speaker 2: how can you turn this around? And I'm like, you're
Speaker 2: really good with real estate. So rather than the criticism
Speaker 2: that had popped up in my head, I flipped it
Speaker 2: and then just sort of let it go a little bit.
Speaker 2: And then she went, oh, this is probably not a
Speaker 2: good decision. So yes, you flip the thought. I flipped
Speaker 2: the thought right, rather than criticize her, notice what I
Speaker 2: like about her? Right, Because every day you're training. We
Speaker 2: teach people how to treat us by what we tolerate,
Speaker 2: but we also teach them how to treat us by
Speaker 2: what we notice about them. So I have this great story.
Speaker 2: So I have this patient I saw, and she was fourteen.
Speaker 2: When I first saw, she had tried to kill herself.
Speaker 2: And this is two years later. She's doing great. And
Speaker 2: then she shipped conflicts with her mother. She came in
Speaker 2: one day and she's very angry and she said, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna run away from home and you can't stop me.
Speaker 2: And she went on and on. And then she looked
Speaker 2: around my office and noticed I collect penguins. And she's like,
Speaker 2: and Doctor Eymond White is a grown man collect penguins.
Speaker 2: I laughed. I said, you've been seeing me for two years,
Speaker 2: you're just noticing them. And then I told her this story.
Speaker 2: When my son was seven, So this is forty years ago.
Speaker 2: My son was seven. He was really hard for me.
Speaker 2: And I was doing my child's skyatry training and I said,
Speaker 2: I went to my supervisor and I said, he's really
Speaker 2: hard for me. Help me. He said, you need to
Speaker 2: spend more a long time with you. So I took him.
Speaker 2: I was doing my training in Hawaii to a place
Speaker 2: called Sea Life Park on O Wahoo and they have
Speaker 2: sea animal shows. And I went to the whale show
Speaker 2: and the dolphin show and the sea lion show, and
Speaker 2: I was all great. And at the end of the
Speaker 2: day he goes, I want to see fat Freddy and
Speaker 2: I'm like, who's that. It's like the penguin, Dad, don't
Speaker 2: you know anything that was of our relationships. But this
Speaker 2: little penguin was so cool. He was a humble penguin
Speaker 2: and he was chubby. Why it was called that Freddy.
Speaker 2: And he comes on the stage, climbs a high diving board,
Speaker 2: goes to the end of the board, bounces, jumps in
Speaker 2: the water like the whoa. Then he bowls with his nose,
Speaker 2: counts with his flipper, jumps through a fire and I'm like,
Speaker 2: this is cool. And at the end of the show,
Speaker 2: the trainer asked Freddy to go get something. Freddy went
Speaker 2: and got it and he brought it right back, and
Speaker 2: in my mind, I went, damn, I asked this kid
Speaker 2: get something for me, and he wants to have a
Speaker 2: discussion for like thirty minutes and then he doesn't want
Speaker 2: to do it. And I knew my son was smarter
Speaker 2: than the penguin. So I went up to the trainer
Speaker 2: afterwards and I'm like, how did you get Freddy to
Speaker 2: do all these really cool things. And she looked at
Speaker 2: my son, and then she looked at me, and she said,
Speaker 2: unlike parents, whenever Freddy does anything like what I want
Speaker 2: him to do, I notice him. I give him a hug,
Speaker 2: and I give him a fish. And the light went
Speaker 2: on in my head that when he did what I
Speaker 2: wanted him to do, I wasn't paying any attention because
Speaker 2: I was busy, But when he didn't do it I
Speaker 2: wanted him to do, I gave him a lot of
Speaker 2: attention because I didn't want to raise bad children. So
Speaker 2: it's inadvertently teaching him to be troubled. And so I'm
Speaker 2: telling my patient this and then I get this really
Speaker 2: crazy idea, and she tended to be oppositional, and so
Speaker 2: I'm like, you know, I have this really crazy idea.
Speaker 2: You probably don't want to hear it. And so if
Speaker 2: they're a little opposition of like, no, I have to
Speaker 2: hear it now. And I'm like, well, what if we
Speaker 2: shaped the behavior of your mother? And she goes I'm listening.
Speaker 2: I said, what if whenever she's rude to you or
Speaker 2: inappropriate to you, you don't overreact, you don't yell, scream,
Speaker 2: stomp out and her eyes got really big, and I said,
Speaker 2: but what if she is appropriate with her? You put
Speaker 2: your arms around her and you tell her you love
Speaker 2: her metaphorically, you give her a fish and she goes,
Speaker 2: let's try it. And she texted me that night, I'm
Speaker 2: not going to run away. Don't worry about me. And
Speaker 2: two weeks later when I saw her, she said they
Speaker 2: had the best two weeks and she brought me a
Speaker 2: penguin for my collection. And so, you know, with your husband,
Speaker 2: or my wife or the people who work with us,
Speaker 2: can we be better at noticing what we like more
Speaker 2: than what we do?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that really works. It's hard to remember to do
Speaker 1: it in the heat of the moment, but if you
Speaker 1: keep practicing at it, if you keep reminding yourself about it,
Speaker 1: then it starts to become habitual and easier to access
Speaker 1: in those moments of you know, a fight or an
Speaker 1: argument or disagreement or whatever it is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the more you do it, it's building the pathway
Speaker 2: in your brain. And so I didn't get a lot
Speaker 2: of that grown up, which is why collect penguins, because
Speaker 2: I have to constantly be reminded, notice what you like
Speaker 2: more than what you don't, and actually they am. In clinics,
Speaker 2: we have the no asshole rule. I don't get to
Speaker 2: be an asshole, and neither do you, because kindness goes
Speaker 2: with elevated service and it goes with better outcomes.
Speaker 1: I don't know this for sure, but brain scans aren't
Speaker 1: customarily covered by insurance. Is that right?
Speaker 2: No, because it's not part of yet the standard of care.
Speaker 2: So most doctors will make diagnoses based on symptom clusters
Speaker 2: with no biological data. And who wins in that scenario?
Speaker 2: Insurance companies because they're not paying for any high technology
Speaker 2: pharmaceutical industry is clearly winning, and doctors don't have to
Speaker 2: do anything different. That's clearly of the future.
Speaker 1: And you said, yeah, right, so and is that going
Speaker 1: to change anytime soon? Do you think?
Speaker 2: I don't know. The Canadian Society for Nuclear Medicine just
Speaker 2: came out with procedure guidelines firstpect as if I wrote them,
Speaker 2: and I think it is covered in Canada, so it will.
Speaker 1: Change, I hope, So I hope. So are there exercises
Speaker 1: or specific things that our listeners and myself can do
Speaker 1: to keep our brains healthy and sharp and ant free ish?
Speaker 2: So brain health is three things brain envy. You want
Speaker 2: to care about your brain. So nineteen ninety one I
Speaker 2: scanned my mom, actually just saw her a little while ago.
Speaker 2: She's ninety two. At sixty, she had a stunningly beautiful brain.
Speaker 2: And then I scanned myself and it wasn't awesome because
Speaker 2: I played football in high school and didn't sleep, and
Speaker 2: it was overweight and just had bad habits. And I
Speaker 2: was very upset that my sixty year old mother had
Speaker 2: a better looking brain than I did at thirty seven.
Speaker 2: And so I developed this concept called brain envy. I
Speaker 2: wanted a healthy brain like hers. And then I went, oh,
Speaker 2: Freud is wrong. Penis envy is not the clause of
Speaker 2: anybody's problem. What we need people to do, need to
Speaker 2: teach people to do, is have brain envy. And so
Speaker 2: that's number one. You got to love your brain. Right.
Speaker 2: I lived in Newport Beach, where we have more plastic
Speaker 2: surgeons and almost anywhere in the world, and I'm like,
Speaker 2: we care more about our faces, our boobs, our bellies,
Speaker 2: and our butts than we do our brain. That's insane.
Speaker 2: So the first step love the three pounds between your ears.
Speaker 2: And that should be especially true for you because you
Speaker 2: have a beautiful brain, so you just never want to
Speaker 2: lose the healthy blood flowed to your brain. The second
Speaker 2: thing is avoid things that hurts your brain. And so
Speaker 2: you just have to know the list, and you know,
Speaker 2: quite frankly, most seven year olds know the list. I
Speaker 2: went to my daughter's second grade class and I went
Speaker 2: and I went to the board and I drew twenty
Speaker 2: things on the board, playing football, playing soccer, drinking orange juice,
Speaker 2: going to bed early, taking your vitamins, staying up late
Speaker 2: with your iPad. And I said, I want you to
Speaker 2: just divide these into good for your brain and bad
Speaker 2: for your brain. And out of the twenty things, they
Speaker 2: got nineteen right. The only thing they missed was orange juice,
Speaker 2: which they put in the good category when it really
Speaker 2: belongs in the bad category because it's too much concentrated sugar.
Speaker 2: And but you know some things that would surprise people.
Speaker 2: If you have gum disease, you have brain disease. You
Speaker 2: got to be a flossing fool. It's a flossing fool.
Speaker 2: You want to take really good care of your teeth.
Speaker 2: If you have a dysfunction, you probably have brain dysfunction.
Speaker 2: Because if you have any blood flow problems anywhere likely
Speaker 2: means they're everywhere. If you retire and you're not engaged
Speaker 2: in new work or new passion, that's really bad for
Speaker 2: your brain. So new learning is especially helpful, and you
Speaker 2: doing the podcast, you're always learning something new and you're
Speaker 2: a very curious person anyways, that's really good for your
Speaker 2: brain process. Food terrible for your brain. Having an unhealthy
Speaker 2: gut is bad for your brain. Having low levels of
Speaker 2: Omega three fatty acids. So wild salmon taking fish oil
Speaker 2: just essential for brain. Help texting while you dry. If
Speaker 2: your brain is you are more likely to get a concussion.
Speaker 2: And alcohol is just not a healthful it's not. The
Speaker 2: American Cancer Society came out against any alcohol three years
Speaker 2: ago because any alcohols associated with an increased risk of
Speaker 2: seven different cancers. Marijuana is not innocuous, and people using
Speaker 2: psilocybin like crazy now, and I'm very.
Speaker 1: Concerned psilocybum like microdosing with mushrooms, right.
Speaker 2: I'm very concerned about that because everybody thinks it's safe,
Speaker 2: even though it's still illegal in forty nine states. There's
Speaker 2: very little research on it. So the total number of
Speaker 2: research studies involves less than a thousand people, Wow, it's
Speaker 2: going to go the way I predict that benzos are
Speaker 2: going to go, or opiates or alcohol or marijuana. You know,
Speaker 2: I feel like I've seen this party before and it's like, oh,
Speaker 2: it's innocuous.
Speaker 1: Oh, but it grows in the ground. It can't be
Speaker 1: bad for you, right, that's what people say.
Speaker 2: But cyanide grows in the ground and it's clearly bad.
Speaker 1: Good point.
Speaker 2: And the first story of alcohol in the Bible is no,
Speaker 2: it gets drunk after the flood and sort of makes
Speaker 2: an ass out of himself, and then it causes this
Speaker 2: generational family rift with the people. You know it naked son.
Speaker 2: But it's like, how can I have any fun? And
Speaker 2: we play We have a high school course called brain
Speaker 2: Thrive by twenty five, and when we teach kids this
Speaker 2: topic of what to avoid, invariably a boy it's never
Speaker 2: a girl will raise his hand and go, how can
Speaker 2: you have any fun? And so we play a game
Speaker 2: with them called who has more fun? The kid with
Speaker 2: the good brain or the kid with the bad brain?
Speaker 2: Who gets the girl and gets to keep her because
Speaker 2: he doesn't act like an idiot? Who gets the college
Speaker 2: they want to get into. Who has the best jobs?
Speaker 2: You know, becomes the best parents, the person with the
Speaker 2: good brain or the person with the bad brain. And
Speaker 2: I think that helps people sort of got it, So
Speaker 2: avoid things that hurt it and then do things that
Speaker 2: help it, like exercise. Low blood flow is the number
Speaker 2: one brain imaging predictor of alzheimer. And so I walk
Speaker 2: like a late for forty five minutes. It's four or
Speaker 2: five times a week. I think that's so important. Coordination
Speaker 2: exercises like tennis because it works out that cerehbellum part
Speaker 2: of the brain we talked about before. Multiple vitamin vish oil,
Speaker 2: optimize your vitamin D level, engage in new learning, and
Speaker 2: know your risk. So I have the risk of heart
Speaker 2: disease and obesity, and I don't have heart disease and
Speaker 2: I'm not overweight. Why because every day of my life
Speaker 2: I'm on an obesity heart disease prevention program. I adopted
Speaker 2: by two nieces because their parents were drug addicts and
Speaker 2: it was terrible for them, and so I've encouraged them
Speaker 2: to be on an addiction prevention program every day their
Speaker 2: lives and go to bed half an hourly. If you
Speaker 2: want to better, remember tomorrow, and go to bed early tonight.
Speaker 2: Without your gadgets, and don't be overrated. I published three
Speaker 2: studies that show as your weight goes up, the size
Speaker 2: and function of the brain goes down. And don't be skinny.
Speaker 2: That's not good for your brain. But with seventy four
Speaker 2: percent of the population overweight, this is it's just going
Speaker 2: to cause huge long term cost to this country and
Speaker 2: paint and suffering.
Speaker 1: I read last night, actually a horrifying article and it
Speaker 1: said there was an increase in microplastics infiltrating our brains.
Speaker 1: Have you been seeing this these signs in your studies.
Speaker 2: I have, and it's horrifying. And if you get in
Speaker 2: Coca Cola's website because you always want to buy things
Speaker 2: that do not have this phenol a in it.
Speaker 1: Wait, leta go back. What's that word, this.
Speaker 2: Phenol a or BPA's it's gas BPAs. It's what they
Speaker 2: put in hands and plastics to make them harder, and
Speaker 2: they're in every Coca Cola product, and Coca Cola is
Speaker 2: proud of it, even though it's associated with autism, it's
Speaker 2: associated with ADHD, it's associated with cancer. We need to
Speaker 2: be much more thoughtful. When we know better, we have
Speaker 2: to do better.
Speaker 1: Why would Coca Cola be proud of.
Speaker 2: That because they're like, oh, there's not enough science, and
Speaker 2: we are even though there is. So you know why
Speaker 2: they would put that on their website is I think
Speaker 2: of them as evil. And in my book The End
Speaker 2: of Mental Illness, I wrote a whole section on if
Speaker 2: I was an evil ruler and I I wanted to
Speaker 2: create mental illness in our society, what would I do?
Speaker 2: And that's an evil ruler strategy. I'd put a known
Speaker 2: neurotoxin and then I'd brag about it, because if I
Speaker 2: brag about it, then it makes you know. Coca Cola
Speaker 2: has some level of authority even though it sells diabetes
Speaker 2: water and it's like, oh, well, I trust it, sort
Speaker 2: of like we like trust McDonald's and I'm like, no,
Speaker 2: probably a bad idea.
Speaker 1: Yeah. One study showed that we could be consuming a
Speaker 1: credit card size of plastics in a week.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's really terrible. And so you have to ask yourself, Jenny,
Speaker 2: why in nineteen ninety one was autism at one in
Speaker 2: ten thousand children, and now here in California it's one
Speaker 2: in twenty two boys, and it's one in thirty five
Speaker 2: kids nationwide. It's like if I was going to have
Speaker 2: babies today, I would be afraid that.
Speaker 1: I'm more discouraging doctor Emon.
Speaker 2: Well, the encouraging news is you're not stuck with the
Speaker 2: brain you have. You can make it better. You just
Speaker 2: have to be thoughtful. And Tan and I, my wife
Speaker 2: and I did almost a thousand Brain Warriors Way podcasts.
Speaker 2: And the reason we called it the Brain Warriors Way
Speaker 2: is you're in a war for the health of your brain.
Speaker 2: Everywhere you go someone's trying to give you bad food
Speaker 2: that will kill you hurly. Or every time you turn
Speaker 2: on the news it's the same stuff, but it's negative,
Speaker 2: negative terror or political divide. It's like, just turn it off,
Speaker 2: you know, if you have to limit it to no
Speaker 2: more than ten minutes a day and read a neutral site.
Speaker 2: And now we have addictive gadgets that are stealing our attention.
Speaker 2: As device youse went up, the incidents of add went
Speaker 2: up as well. We just have to be thoughtful, careful
Speaker 2: on what we do, and I'm always hopeful we'll figure
Speaker 2: it out, but we need to be serious.
Speaker 1: And we need to be warriors.
Speaker 2: Say the truth, and the truth is we can do
Speaker 2: way better.
Speaker 1: I was going to ask you about technology, especially like
Speaker 1: social media, and the world just seems to be getting
Speaker 1: quicker and quicker and faster and faster. That's got to
Speaker 1: be affecting our brains and our attention spans. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's something we all probably know but conveniently forget. How
Speaker 1: important is it to put our phones down before we
Speaker 1: go to bed?
Speaker 2: Well, so, what does social media do and what devices
Speaker 2: do they give? You? Just this little bit of dopamine
Speaker 2: over and over and over and over again. And dopamine
Speaker 2: is the neurotransmitter that helps you feel good, It helps
Speaker 2: you feel motivated, it helps you focus, it gives you pleasure,
Speaker 2: brings you joy when you dump dopamine. So, and I
Speaker 2: think you and I talked about this. I mean, it's
Speaker 2: really one of the problems with being famous early. It
Speaker 2: just wears out the dopamine centers in your brain and
Speaker 2: it leaves a lot of young people vulnerable to addiction
Speaker 2: because they feel bad. Right, all these good things are happening,
Speaker 2: but internally they feel bad because their brain has been
Speaker 2: overflooded with dopamine. Well, devices, it's like you're dumping dopamine
Speaker 2: all day long.
Speaker 1: But how am I getting dopamine when I'm seeing something?
Speaker 1: And it makes me compare myself or it doesn't feel good,
Speaker 1: it makes me feel I could feel jealous, I could
Speaker 1: feel left out, all the negative feelings. How am I
Speaker 1: getting dopamine?
Speaker 2: Then you're getting it from the hit of the notification.
Speaker 2: It's like, oh, I have to look or scrolling and
Speaker 2: you go, oh, that's really funny. Well that's really cool.
Speaker 2: But then your serotonin levels dropping when you compare yourself
Speaker 2: to someone else in a negative way. So dopamine gets released,
Speaker 2: but then you don't have any store left. Serotonin drops
Speaker 2: because the respect you have for yourself goes low. Cortisol
Speaker 2: goes up because of the stress. And my wife said
Speaker 2: it really she goes when I start scrolling, I start
Speaker 2: thinking about what's wrong with me. She's like, I think
Speaker 2: I have to fix something, as opposed to she wouldn't
Speaker 2: have that thought at all if she wasn't scrolling.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've convinced myself to stop scrolling. You know, I
Speaker 1: post and I take care of my business on Instagram,
Speaker 1: but I really do try try, try to have a
Speaker 1: no scrolling policy. And I tell my friends, Look, if
Speaker 1: you're doing something exciting and you want me to know
Speaker 1: about it, just text me it because I want to
Speaker 1: know what's going on for you, but I'm not going
Speaker 1: to see it on Instagram.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think it's good to have a team
Speaker 2: that does that. I mean, I think it's important. I
Speaker 2: have seven million followers or something, and I love educating people.
Speaker 2: But there's no way I'm going to spend all the
Speaker 2: time curating in the comments. Because some people love me
Speaker 2: and I'm grateful for that. Some people hate me and
Speaker 2: I try to ignore that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a it's a slippery slope, blessing and a
Speaker 1: curse because like you said, you know, we can do
Speaker 1: like what we're trying to do and spread beautiful and
Speaker 1: important messages, positive, uplifting, positive things, but on the other hand,
Speaker 1: it can really amplify those negative thoughts.
Speaker 2: So can I tell you about something new I'm working on.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 2: So I'm working on a new book called Change your Brain,
Speaker 2: Change Your Pain, and it's about the intersection of physical
Speaker 2: and emotional pain. I turned seventy last month. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: just started noticing it's my me, it's my hip, it's
Speaker 2: my it's my shoulder, it's my knack. I'm like, what
Speaker 2: is going on? And then I remember, you know, in
Speaker 2: my work, some antidepressants like Symbolta or antidepressant supplements like
Speaker 2: samy also work for pain. And so one of the
Speaker 2: reasons I write is when I really want to get
Speaker 2: excited about learning something new and it's been so much fun.
Speaker 2: But the one big aha I got is all pain,
Speaker 2: physical and emotional, is processed in the brain in these
Speaker 2: three different pathways. And one of the things that puts
Speaker 2: people a great risk for physical pain is repressed emotions.
Speaker 2: And so I'm really good at noticing what I like
Speaker 2: more than what I don't like. And I actually make
Speaker 2: my grandchildren sit with me and watch Pollyanna the movie,
Speaker 2: the Disney movie Pollyanna, because she plays the glad game
Speaker 2: no matter what situation you're in, what is there to
Speaker 2: be glad about in this situation? But what I've come
Speaker 2: to realize is that repressed emotions, if you don't express them,
Speaker 2: they punish you, they torture you. And I've been having
Speaker 2: my patients do some rage journaling, and it's sort of
Speaker 2: like Pollyanna meets the Hulk, and we have to honor
Speaker 2: all of our feelings rather than I don't know in
Speaker 2: your house, but in my house, my mother would say,
Speaker 2: if you don't have something good to say, don't say
Speaker 2: anything at all, and you just learn to bottle and
Speaker 2: repress what makes you angry or frustrated without talking about
Speaker 2: it or without finding ways to express it. And I
Speaker 2: just think that's so important. I have a rule of twelve,
Speaker 2: which I love. It's like I took ten ou to Paris,
Speaker 2: and I'm like, twelve things are going to go wrong.
Speaker 2: Let's just agree we're not going to get angry till
Speaker 2: the thirteen thing goes wrong, and then we can yell
Speaker 2: screen have a complete meltdown and three things went wrong.
Speaker 2: And I love that because it goes with emotional flexibility.
Speaker 2: The more flexible you are, the healthier you are. But
Speaker 2: rolling with it doesn't mean rolling over that. When you
Speaker 2: have strong feelings, it's important to find a proper, healthy
Speaker 2: way to get them out of your body.
Speaker 1: And you think journaling is a good way to do that.
Speaker 2: Rage journaling.
Speaker 1: I've done some rage journaling in my days.
Speaker 2: That's good because then you're just less likely to hurt
Speaker 2: if you can admit your feeling lines and find a
Speaker 2: way to get out. But then, so this is where
Speaker 2: Pollyanna the Hulk sort of become best friends. It's we're
Speaker 2: going to express it and then we're going to find
Speaker 2: out what's good about it. Well we can learn from.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's really good. Okay, there's you know me,
Speaker 1: There's so many things I want to talk to you about.
Speaker 1: I could talk to you forever, but I'm going to
Speaker 1: save that question that I wanted to ask you. I'm
Speaker 1: going to come back to that one when you come
Speaker 1: back another time on the show. Okay, we talked about
Speaker 1: the foods we could eat. We talked about all the things. Oh,
Speaker 1: brain fog, brain fog. We've talked about this. I talked
Speaker 1: to doctor Mary Claire Haver. We were talking about menopause
Speaker 1: and the brain fog that comes associated with it. Is
Speaker 1: our way to help us get rid of the brain fog?
Speaker 1: Are there supplements we should take, activities we should do well?
Speaker 2: So you want to ask yourself, right, So I love
Speaker 2: my brain? What am I doing that might be hurting
Speaker 2: it to increase inflammation? And what can I do to
Speaker 2: calm that down? And if you're a menopause, are you
Speaker 2: taking bioidentical hormones to really give your brain the nutrients
Speaker 2: it needs? Too? Many women are afraid of them, and
Speaker 2: so they just sort of grit their teeth and try
Speaker 2: to get through it. Do you know why your hormones
Speaker 2: drop with age?
Speaker 1: Tell me.
Speaker 2: It's the planet's way of getting rid of you.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, well that's great.
Speaker 2: And I'm not okay with that now. So I'm like,
Speaker 2: I'm not okay with that. I'm the CEO of Brain MD,
Speaker 2: and we have a product called brain Tmax which helps
Speaker 2: boost stosterone levels, absolutely essential for women, and in our study,
Speaker 2: the women actually did better than the men. I mean,
Speaker 2: I take it every day because I know how important
Speaker 2: testosterone is, not just for libido, but also for memory,
Speaker 2: for focus, for vitality, for strength. And Ashwood Bonda, which
Speaker 2: is herbal product that I just love, decreases anxiety but
Speaker 2: also increases testosterone. And my wife says when she takes
Speaker 2: progesterone at night, this is the reason she's not on
Speaker 2: the six o'clock news.
Speaker 1: So I take biodentical hormone therapy and my testosterone levels
Speaker 1: are fine. But do you think taking a supplement like
Speaker 1: you mentioned is important?
Speaker 2: Well, I think levels are fine, and there's a difference
Speaker 2: between normal and optimal, and so if they're in the
Speaker 2: upper half of normal, and I think that's fine. If
Speaker 2: they're in the lower half of normal, then maybe taking
Speaker 2: a supplement like brain temax could be helpful.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you got to get your blood checked though, right.
Speaker 2: Can't change what you don't measure.
Speaker 1: That's right, that's right, doctor Aymon. Before I let you go,
Speaker 1: what was your last I choose me moment? The moment
Speaker 1: where you choose yourself.
Speaker 2: I was in Paris as with my wife and daughter
Speaker 2: and I love them so much. I was so excited
Speaker 2: to help Alicia that I'm like, I'm going to go
Speaker 2: separate and I'm going to focus and you guys, I
Speaker 2: will see you later. And they were totally fine with it.
Speaker 2: But you know, the usual me is like are you okay?
Speaker 2: Can I take care of you? And it was like,
Speaker 2: now I choose me because I want to to just
Speaker 2: do the work I love so much.
Speaker 1: Wonderful, thank you being on my podcast. I love you
Speaker 1: so much.
Speaker 2: I love you back. Thank you so much for helping
Speaker 2: me share.
Speaker 1: My work always. Doctor Amen is such a wealth of knowledge.
Speaker 1: We're going to have to have him back on because
Speaker 1: there's just so much that I want to cover when
Speaker 1: it comes to our brains. But that conversation was so
Speaker 1: jam packed full of great information. I hope you guys
Speaker 1: listen to I hope you took notes because the things
Speaker 1: that he has taught me have changed my life. As
Speaker 1: we continue to choose ourselves each week, I want you
Speaker 1: to try something different and this is really actually going
Speaker 1: to help your brain. I want to challenge you to
Speaker 1: give a random act of kindness. You could offer to
Speaker 1: pay for the coffee of the person standing behind you
Speaker 1: in line, or you could send a handwritten to someone
Speaker 1: just to brighten their day, or even more simple, give
Speaker 1: a stranger a compliment on how great their outfit looks.
Speaker 1: We get so caught up every day with jobs and
Speaker 1: bills and responsibilities that it's really easy to forget to
Speaker 1: spread kindness. I know what you're thinking, how is a
Speaker 1: random act of kindness? And I choose me moment. Trust me,
Speaker 1: you are going to feel good after you do it,
Speaker 1: and that is going to make you want to keep
Speaker 1: feeling this happiness of spreading joy. Thanks for listening to
Speaker 1: I Choose Me. You can check out all our social
Speaker 1: links in our show notes, rate review, tell me everything,
Speaker 1: and use the hashtag I choose Me. I will be
Speaker 1: right here next week, and I hope you will choose
Speaker 1: to be here too,