Speaker 1: This is the most dramatic podcast ever and iHeartRadio podcast.
Speaker 1: Chris Harrison and Lauren z e mc comedy from the
Speaker 1: home office in Austin, Texas. I am unbelievably excited for
Speaker 1: this show today. If there is a show you should
Speaker 1: sit down and listen to and take in, it is
Speaker 1: this one. I think this will be moving important, inspirational, educational.
Speaker 1: We're talking to doctor Amen, doctor Daniel Amen, who is
Speaker 1: really the foremost educator, philosopher on brain, on mental health,
Speaker 1: on mental education, on brain scans. His aim in clinics
Speaker 1: have seen more brain scans than any in the world,
Speaker 1: and he's also doing TV shows and social stuff. With
Speaker 1: all the brain scans that he's done, he is so
Speaker 1: fascinating and I have a thousand questions for this guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've been following him on Instagram for a while,
Speaker 2: so I'm super excited to get to talk to him.
Speaker 2: And if you don't follow him on Instagram, do it
Speaker 2: because he does constant videos onlike you know, just quick
Speaker 2: tips on your mental health things, the way that certain
Speaker 2: food affects your brain, that kind of thing. He's the
Speaker 2: advisor to major celebrities like Miley Cyrus and a bunch
Speaker 2: of other people and kind of also trains them on
Speaker 2: like how to focus into their success, how to change
Speaker 2: their outlook, like to give yourself an outlook of positivity,
Speaker 2: to create what you want through training your brain to
Speaker 2: look for those things. So he does this incredible combination
Speaker 2: of he's got the real data he's scanning your brain,
Speaker 2: combined with like how you can use that and the
Speaker 2: way you literally talk to and in your own brain
Speaker 2: to create the life you want.
Speaker 3: So he is fascinating.
Speaker 1: Physician, but also an adult and child psychiatrist as well
Speaker 1: as the founder of the ABE and Clinics. So, as
Speaker 1: Lauren was just alluding to, has both sides cover as
Speaker 1: far as you know, the clinical side of being an
Speaker 1: actual but then the psychiatry part as well. So fascinating
Speaker 1: topic today with a very fascinating man. We are excited
Speaker 1: to welcome doctor Amen into the show today. Doctor Amen,
Speaker 1: how are you, sir?
Speaker 4: I am really great, Chris, how are you?
Speaker 1: I'm terrific. Thank you so much for the time. This
Speaker 1: is my wife, Lauren.
Speaker 3: Doctor Aman. I'm fangirling.
Speaker 2: I followed you on Instagram for a couple of years,
Speaker 2: so I'm so excited that you're here on our podcast.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2: And did you just do something with our coworker slash boss,
Speaker 2: doctor Phil.
Speaker 3: I feel like I saw you with him.
Speaker 4: I did what did you guys do in the studio?
Speaker 4: We went after diet coke together.
Speaker 3: Oh, he's a big iced tea drinker.
Speaker 4: Well, I'm looking forward to scanning his brain.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm sorry we missed you. We're there probably a
Speaker 2: couple times a month we do. We're we're in a
Speaker 2: deal with Merritt Street, so we're here in Austin, Texas,
Speaker 2: and we drive to Dalla and we're working on some
Speaker 2: shows with them.
Speaker 5: Well, how fun. I'm hoping to be there more. I'm
Speaker 5: going to be there again in a couple of weeks.
Speaker 1: On another showed to I need to be up there
Speaker 1: whenever he's scanning brain. I want my brain. I kind
Speaker 1: of want my brain scan, but also scared to find
Speaker 1: out what that might reveal about me.
Speaker 2: Well, let's launch into the podcast with that, Doctor Amon, welcome.
Speaker 2: Let me ask you right off the bat, should Chris
Speaker 2: Harrison get his brain scanned?
Speaker 3: Are you scared about that idea? Of Babe?
Speaker 1: No, I would relish the opportunity.
Speaker 2: What do you think what would he learn For the
Speaker 2: people out there who are just finding out about you,
Speaker 2: you are the forefather of brain scans and all they
Speaker 2: can reveal. What are some of the basic takeaways people
Speaker 2: will get from having their brain scanned?
Speaker 5: Well, it's only good news because you have what you
Speaker 5: have and if I can make it better, well then
Speaker 5: you're better. When I met my wife Goodness, almost twenty
Speaker 5: years ago, I like fell hard for her, But the
Speaker 5: first naked part of her I wanted to see was
Speaker 5: her brain because ultimately, it's your brain that creates chaos
Speaker 5: in your life, or it's your brain that creates happiness
Speaker 5: and consistency and reliability and passion and purpose. And one
Speaker 5: of my friends, doctor Earl Henslen, who refers to me,
Speaker 5: he said, you know, if there's no forethought brain function,
Speaker 5: there's no for play.
Speaker 3: So how quickly into dating did you scan her brain?
Speaker 5: It was three weeks. In my family is if you
Speaker 5: date any of my children. I have six children, and
Speaker 5: I think second round, you got to get scammed?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 1: What type of scan? Just so everyone listening understands, this
Speaker 1: a CT scan? What kind of scan?
Speaker 5: Now? We do a study called brain spacked spect imaging
Speaker 5: stands for single photon emission computed tomography. It's a nuclear
Speaker 5: medicine study that looks at blood flow and activity, looks
Speaker 5: at how your brain works and basically shows us good activity,
Speaker 5: too little or too.
Speaker 4: Much, and then my job is to balance it.
Speaker 1: And so you can take that scan. Like you said,
Speaker 1: it's only good news because it is what it is.
Speaker 1: And then you said, you can make that better and better.
Speaker 1: So what are some things where you see for the
Speaker 1: average human being that you can give them the advice
Speaker 1: to better it? And what is that advice?
Speaker 5: Well, brain health is three things. It's brain envy. You've
Speaker 5: got to care about it. Nobody cares about brain because
Speaker 5: you can't see it right. You can see the wrinkles
Speaker 5: in your skin, of the fat around your belly, and
Speaker 5: you can do something when you're unhappy with it. But
Speaker 5: because nobody looks at their brain, very few people actually care.
Speaker 5: Even though, if you're blessed to lift eighty five or beyond,
Speaker 5: you have a one and two chance of being diagnosed
Speaker 5: with dementia, you have a one and two chance of
Speaker 5: having lost your mind. And so I think, like colonoscopies,
Speaker 5: you should evaluate your brain on a regular basis. So
Speaker 5: that's the first thing brain. Then you got to care
Speaker 5: avoid things that hurt it. You just have to know
Speaker 5: the lists. And quite frankly, both seven year olds know
Speaker 5: the list right right as you do tackle football, they'll
Speaker 5: probably go No, probably not good for your.
Speaker 1: Brain, professor, boxing not great.
Speaker 5: Boxing's not good, not sleeping, alcohol, nicotine, ultra processed foods.
Speaker 5: In fact, I went to my when my daughter was
Speaker 5: in second grade. I went to her class and I
Speaker 5: wrote down twenty things on the board and I went
Speaker 5: separate these good for the brain or bad for it,
Speaker 5: and they got nineteen right.
Speaker 4: The only thing.
Speaker 5: They missed was orange juice, which they put in the
Speaker 5: good category, but ultimately is way too much sugar because
Speaker 5: when you unwrap fruit sugar from its fiber source, it
Speaker 5: actually turns toxic in the body.
Speaker 1: That's it. I want to, just before we move on,
Speaker 1: go back to something that I know a lot of
Speaker 1: our listeners are going to say alcohol. When you say alcohol,
Speaker 1: is it a zero sum game or is it a
Speaker 1: moderate sum game? Where do you lie on this?
Speaker 3: You don't drink I think I don't drink.
Speaker 4: No, it's poison. It's like, why would you drink poison?
Speaker 5: And the American Cancer Society actually said it best. I've
Speaker 5: been railing against alcohol for thirty years just because I
Speaker 5: look at the brains of people who are regular drinkers.
Speaker 4: Their brain is smaller.
Speaker 5: And when it comes to the brain, size matters, right,
Speaker 5: it's the only organ wear size matters. And so the
Speaker 5: American Cancer Society a couple of years ago came out
Speaker 5: against any alcohol because any alcohol is associated with an
Speaker 5: increased risk of seven different types of cancer. Cancer is
Speaker 5: clearly bad for your brain. Right, the stress, chemotherapy and
Speaker 5: so on, and if you just think about it, and
Speaker 5: the pandemic was so instructive. Jim Beam, the whiskey company,
Speaker 5: turned its whiskey plants into hand sanitizer plants. Why because
Speaker 5: alcohols are disinfectant. Well, in your mouth and in your gut,
Speaker 5: you have a hundred trillion bugs, bacteria, viruses, fungi. You
Speaker 5: need them. They're important. They support you. They make nerve transmitters,
Speaker 5: they digest your food, they detoxify your body, they support
Speaker 5: your immune system. Let's not pour a disinfectant down our throats.
Speaker 5: It's just's not a good idea. On top of which,
Speaker 5: as a psychiatrist, every week, every week, one of my
Speaker 5: patients is talking to me about something bad that happened
Speaker 5: with alcohol. Whenever I go to a party, my father
Speaker 5: in law gets drunk and then they start telling all
Speaker 5: the things I told him, you know, in confidence. And
Speaker 5: I mean it's just people's level of decision making drops
Speaker 5: when alcohol is around.
Speaker 2: And it's very normalized, you know. I mean it's yeah,
Speaker 2: I know you're here. Yeah, there's nothing for me to say.
Speaker 2: It's hard.
Speaker 3: I know all this is true, and yet I do
Speaker 3: want a glass of wine. It's so hard. Is wine
Speaker 3: better than alcohol?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 4: Okay, it's just.
Speaker 1: Don't tell the Italians of the Greeks.
Speaker 5: It's a habit that. And you know, if you go
Speaker 5: to the Bible, the first story of somebody drunk in
Speaker 5: the Bible caused generations of problems. It was Noah after
Speaker 5: the Arc, you know, found some grapes after the flood
Speaker 5: and got drunk, and his child found him and then
Speaker 5: he cursed his child.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but Jesus never turned wine into water.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: Can I ask one question though, I don't know if
Speaker 2: you've seen that docuseries The Blue Zone on Netflix that
Speaker 2: got pretty popular. And when that gentleman went to Greece
Speaker 2: to the Blue Zone and grease where people were living
Speaker 2: well into their hundreds and in Italy they were drinking
Speaker 2: wine every day.
Speaker 3: So what is the why is that working in those environments?
Speaker 4: Yeah, well it's a very small amount.
Speaker 5: Okay, Plus they're doing other things right, got it right?
Speaker 5: And so if like I did the big NFL study
Speaker 5: when the NFL was sort of lying and had a
Speaker 5: problem about traumatic brain injury and football, and still I
Speaker 5: have active NFL players that I adore, and I'm like, look,
Speaker 5: if you're going to do something bad, you better do
Speaker 5: everything else right, Yeah, because that's clearly bad.
Speaker 1: And there before we jump on there's a major subject
Speaker 1: I want to get to eventually. But in the realm
Speaker 1: of super foods, things that we can do right, because Lauren.
Speaker 3: Has met and walnuts.
Speaker 1: Every day I'm eating tuper zil nuts and some walnuts
Speaker 1: and you know, asa ebowl because that's a what are
Speaker 1: the what are the real superfoods where you're like, this
Speaker 1: is great brain food, take this daily.
Speaker 5: Well, I think nuts, of course, without sugar on them.
Speaker 5: I think nuts are superfood. Berries are a super food,
Speaker 5: but they have to be organic. So just a little
Speaker 5: asterisk because non organic berries hold more pesticides.
Speaker 4: Than almost any fruit. I think green.
Speaker 5: Leafy vegetables, wild salmon eggs are a superfood.
Speaker 4: In my mind, as long as you know they're raised
Speaker 4: in a healthy way.
Speaker 5: And ultimately we are all creatures of habit and you
Speaker 5: just have to find twenty foods you love that love
Speaker 5: you back. And so if you think about the relationship,
Speaker 5: I was going to say that about alcohol, you love it.
Speaker 5: I don't know, Lauren, if you've ever been in a
Speaker 5: bad relationship in the past, I know I have. I'm
Speaker 5: not doing that anymore. I'm like married to my best friend,
Speaker 5: and I protect that relationship. I love her, she loves me.
Speaker 5: I'm not going to love stuff that hates.
Speaker 2: Me, that beats me out, But so I love that
Speaker 2: I love I protect her, she protects me.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna that's just sweet.
Speaker 2: Okay, what we interrupted you it was brain. The three
Speaker 2: things were brain envy, you got to care and the things.
Speaker 3: That hurt it. And what's the third one?
Speaker 5: Do things that help it on a regular basis. You're
Speaker 5: on a better memory tomorrow, go to better half an
Speaker 5: hour early tonight without your gadgets. And I have a
Speaker 5: mnemonic that I write about in all my books called
Speaker 5: bright minds. You want to keep your brain healthy or
Speaker 5: rescue it. You have to prevent or treat the eleven
Speaker 5: major risk factors that steal your mind. And we know
Speaker 5: what they are, so bright minds. B is for blood flow.
Speaker 5: Low blood flows the number one brain imaging predictor of
Speaker 5: Alzheimer's disease. Well, how do you know if you have
Speaker 5: low blood float, Well you can come get a scan,
Speaker 5: we would tell you. Or if you're smoking, if you're
Speaker 5: using marijuana, alcohol, low blood flow, if you're sedentary, if
Speaker 5: you have high blood pressure or rectial dysfunction, if you
Speaker 5: have blood flow problems anywhere, they're everywhere. And so a
Speaker 5: brain health program people's love, love lives get better. And
Speaker 5: so to increase blood floats, exercise and beats and regano
Speaker 5: and rosemary and cinema and Genko. One of my favorite
Speaker 5: supplements is Genko. The R is for retirement and aging.
Speaker 5: When you stop learning, your brain starts dying. So always
Speaker 5: be engaged with something interesting. Eyes for inflammation, and you
Speaker 5: know ultra processed foods low may get three fatty acids.
Speaker 5: But the sleeper with inflammation is gum disease. If you
Speaker 5: have gum disease, you have brain disease. And so just
Speaker 5: getting into the dentis getting your teeth claimed. Flossing regularly
Speaker 5: absolutely critical to brain health.
Speaker 4: The geusgenetics know what's.
Speaker 5: In your family. So do either of you have stuff
Speaker 5: in your family? I have obesity and heart disease, but
Speaker 5: either of you.
Speaker 3: I have heart disease on my dad's side.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, So you and I should be in a
Speaker 5: heart disease prevention program every day of our lives. And
Speaker 5: I adopted my two nieces and both their parents. Both
Speaker 5: of their parents are drug addicts. And you know, I'm hammering.
Speaker 5: They're fourteen and nineteen, Like you should be on an
Speaker 5: addiction prevention program every day of your life.
Speaker 4: And you know, people go, but what about moderation. That
Speaker 4: thought is.
Speaker 5: The gateway to hell because it's like, oh, I'm about
Speaker 5: to cheat. Whenever you say, well, everything in moderation just
Speaker 5: means you're about to do a bad thing.
Speaker 2: That into everything in moderation is a gateway to hell. Okay, yes, okay.
Speaker 5: The age has had trauma, major cause of psychiatric problems.
Speaker 5: Protect your head. Stop texting while you're driving or walking
Speaker 5: for goodness sakes.
Speaker 6: Tea is talks, and so we talked about alcohol and drugs.
Speaker 6: But it's also the toxins in your products that you
Speaker 6: put on your body.
Speaker 5: I don't know if you've seen this app called Think Dirty.
Speaker 5: It allows you to scan your personal products and I'll
Speaker 5: tell you, on a scale of one to ten how
Speaker 5: quickly they're killing you.
Speaker 1: Wow ssha.
Speaker 5: I'm not a big fan of detoxes. I think your
Speaker 5: life should be a detox.
Speaker 2: I use the Yuka app. Yuka It's similar. You scan
Speaker 2: everything and it tells you if they're hazardous. Everything's in it.
Speaker 4: I love that right. So there's also one by I
Speaker 4: Think EWG and it just is information for people to
Speaker 4: actually read the labels. And then the amin Bright Minds
Speaker 4: is mental health stuff, and I teach people to kill
Speaker 4: the ants, the automatic negative thoughts.
Speaker 5: Its steel your happiness. There's nowhere in school where they
Speaker 5: taught us not to believe every stupid thing we think.
Speaker 5: So it's learning how to direct your mind. The second
Speaker 5: eye is for immunity and infections. COVID unleashed a mental
Speaker 5: health pandemic, not only because of the isolation, fear, and
Speaker 5: poor public policy.
Speaker 4: The virus itself.
Speaker 5: Causes inflammation in the brain and increases anxiety and depression.
Speaker 5: So you've seen gen z go. You know skyrocketing mental
Speaker 5: health problems. Well, part of that is just inflammation from
Speaker 5: the virus itself. That N is neuro hormone changes. Your
Speaker 5: hormones are so important you should get them tested and
Speaker 5: optimized yearly. D is diabesity. We all know not eighty
Speaker 5: percent of Americans or overweight or obese. I published three
Speaker 5: studies that say, is your weight goes up, the size
Speaker 5: and function of the brain goes down. And now we're
Speaker 5: in this body positivity movement where you can't say anything.
Speaker 5: I'm like, no, no, no, know the truth and the
Speaker 5: truth will set you free. Are we need to do
Speaker 5: a much better job at getting people to a healthy
Speaker 5: weight underweight. It's clearly bad for you being overweight. If
Speaker 5: you're overweight, you have seven of these eleven risk factors. Well,
Speaker 5: just you know, the fat on your body increases inflammation, storage,
Speaker 5: talks and changes your hormones and so on. And then
Speaker 5: the S is for sleep, which just needs to be
Speaker 5: a priority for all of us.
Speaker 3: Wow, the COVID thing is blowing my mind. I didn't
Speaker 3: know that.
Speaker 2: I had never heard that about the virus, that it
Speaker 2: creates that much brain inflammation.
Speaker 3: Is that so?
Speaker 2: Is that just using everything else you've just talked about
Speaker 2: to try to get that down. Or is there one
Speaker 2: thing to fight the inflammation COVID's causing that you think
Speaker 2: people need to be doing.
Speaker 5: So I really like hercumans and quercetin and omega three
Speaker 5: fatty acids and vitamin D to sort of help put
Speaker 5: out the fire inflammation. And then of course you want
Speaker 5: to be on a story diet. You want to kill
Speaker 5: sugar and foods that quickly turn to sugar and people
Speaker 5: go co carbs are not the enemy, and they're not.
Speaker 5: It's high glycemic, low fiber carbs they're the enemy. There's
Speaker 5: the study from the Male Clinic where people who are
Speaker 5: on a fat based diet at forty two percent less
Speaker 5: risk of getting Alzheimer's disease, but people who are on
Speaker 5: a simple carbohydrate diet thing bread, pasta, potatoes, rice, fruit, juice,
Speaker 5: sugar had a four hundred percent increase risk of getting
Speaker 5: Alzheimer's disease. All this continuous glucose monitoring craze that we're
Speaker 5: in now, I like it because it's just telling people
Speaker 5: blood sugar is important, and you know it's one of
Speaker 5: the eleven diabesity. It's being overweight or having hot blood sugar.
Speaker 5: You don't want that because diabetes and pre diabetes delay
Speaker 5: healing and reacavoc on every organ in your body, especially
Speaker 5: your brain.
Speaker 2: Where do you fall on some of the carbs that
Speaker 2: I've that you've just mentioned, but I've hurt, like like
Speaker 2: sometimes I hear people.
Speaker 3: Really advocate for sourdough bread like this is.
Speaker 2: A great bread to eat, or like the much better
Speaker 2: quality pasta you'd find in Italy that we don't have
Speaker 2: in America.
Speaker 4: Well, Italy, it's so funny.
Speaker 5: So many of my patients, I think, even myself when
Speaker 5: I go over there, because of the walking and because
Speaker 5: it's not genetically modified and are raised with all the
Speaker 5: chemicals ours, is it just it seems to be better.
Speaker 5: But you still, you know, America has exported our obesity crisis.
Speaker 5: It's everywhere.
Speaker 4: And when you.
Speaker 5: Think of the Mediterranean diet, it's not pasta and pizza.
Speaker 1: So, doctor, one thing I really wanted to dive in
Speaker 1: with you is something that is so big today, and
Speaker 1: that is depression and the prescription of antidepressants. It is
Speaker 1: Laura and I were talking before you came on. I said,
Speaker 1: you know, to me, the math isn't mathing. We are
Speaker 1: prescribing these kids so much medication, and yet mental health
Speaker 1: is off the charts, meaning bad problems. Suicide rates are skyrocketing.
Speaker 1: So the more we are prescribing all this stuff, I
Speaker 1: don't see the end result and that this thing is
Speaker 1: being measured and weighed out.
Speaker 5: No, you're absolutely correct. Prozac was released in nineteen eighty
Speaker 5: eight and since then depression has gone up five hundred percent.
Speaker 4: So yeah, it's a mess. We're in a mental mess.
Speaker 5: Gen Z in particular, of fifty seven percent of teenage
Speaker 5: girls report being persistently sad, thirty two percent have thought
Speaker 5: of killing themselves. Think of that, twenty four percent of
Speaker 5: planned and thirteen percent of actually attempted suicide. These are
Speaker 5: numbers we have never seen before. And last year there
Speaker 5: were three hundred and thirty seven million prescriptions for antidepressants.
Speaker 5: Twenty five percent of women in the United States are
Speaker 5: taking them. I mean, these are really insane numbers. And
Speaker 5: most people get prescribed psychiatric drugs without anybody ever looking
Speaker 5: at their brain.
Speaker 4: And I noticed this like thirty five years ago.
Speaker 5: I'm like, why are psychiatrists the only medical doctors who
Speaker 5: never look at the organ? They treat If you just
Speaker 5: think about that, then you diagnoses based on symptom clusters
Speaker 5: with no biological data.
Speaker 4: So you don't have.
Speaker 5: To go, oh, you know, your brain's not really very healthy.
Speaker 5: Let's get your brain healthy and see if your mood
Speaker 5: would be healthy or your thought patterns are really not
Speaker 5: helping you. Let's work to train your brain to be
Speaker 5: more positive. I'm doing a study now on negativity bias.
Speaker 5: So if your brain tends to go to what's wrong
Speaker 5: much faster than to what's right, it puts you at
Speaker 5: risk for virtually every psychiatric illness. So I start my
Speaker 5: days today is going to be a great day, and
Speaker 5: when I go to bed at night, I go what
Speaker 5: went well today? And I'm very serious about noticing even
Speaker 5: the micro moments of happiness, So and talking to you
Speaker 5: guys will make my highlight real tonight. It's so important
Speaker 5: to notice what you like about yourself and about other
Speaker 5: people more than what you don't look.
Speaker 2: So it sounds like you feel like antidepressants are being overprescribed.
Speaker 2: And I think some people would say, oh no, we
Speaker 2: just were finally diagnosing it, but you feel it's overprescribed.
Speaker 4: Now that's nuts.
Speaker 5: We're twenty five percent of women are on antidepressants. And
Speaker 5: did you know, like I said, you know, I have
Speaker 5: six kids, five of them are girls. Birth control pills
Speaker 5: spike depression. Birth control pills increase the risk of depression
Speaker 5: by forty percent. And I can just tell, like when
Speaker 5: my twenty year old went on and I'm like, oh
Speaker 5: my god, she's such a different feman. And when she
Speaker 5: went off, she was just like herself. Wow, very few
Speaker 5: people are talking about I.
Speaker 2: Was on birth control in my twenties. No one ever
Speaker 2: told me this is going to increase your risk of depression.
Speaker 2: Which it feels like almost any medication you see a
Speaker 2: commercial for increase risk of depression is a side effect
Speaker 2: they say in the commercial.
Speaker 1: Well, and if they say everything like that, oh it
Speaker 1: may increase your risk of depression. But if someone said
Speaker 1: it may increase it forty percent, that's the flip of
Speaker 1: a coin. Essentially, that is different than oh it may.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I think about myself as a teenager.
Speaker 2: If my parents, like, if I was a teenager today
Speaker 2: and if my parents had taken me to see someone,
Speaker 2: I think I could have feasibly been prescribed and antidepressant.
Speaker 2: But when I look back, I was just a really
Speaker 2: I feel I was just a really hormonal, dramatic tea
Speaker 2: tenager and I kind of eventually grew out of that phase.
Speaker 2: And I guess that was something I wanted to ask
Speaker 2: you about because I don't want to make light of
Speaker 2: like like you just said that, I never had suicidal thoughts.
Speaker 2: I never thought about that, And I hear from these
Speaker 2: kids that they are really really dealing with that. But
Speaker 2: as a parent, how do you navigate I have a
Speaker 2: very hormonal teenager whose brain isn't fully developed yet. They're
Speaker 2: telling me they have these issues, and as a parent,
Speaker 2: you're scared, right, you don't want to risk that you
Speaker 2: wouldn't address an issue your teenager has.
Speaker 3: How do you navigate that?
Speaker 2: But while still having the spear in your head of like, well,
Speaker 2: should my kid really be on all this medication because
Speaker 2: that's scary too.
Speaker 5: Well, I'm not a posed to medicine. I'm just posed
Speaker 5: to that's the first and only thing. Yeah, you think about.
Speaker 4: So for example, saffron the spice.
Speaker 5: Saffron as this supplement twenty five randomized control trials showing
Speaker 5: it's equally effective to antype essence. So why wouldn't we
Speaker 5: do and head to head against antidepressants. Exercise walking like
Speaker 5: you're late for forty five minutes, four times a week
Speaker 5: Omega three fatty acids head to head against prozac was
Speaker 5: more effective in a study from New Zealand, learning how
Speaker 5: to not believe every stupid thing you think. Cognitive behavior
Speaker 5: therapy equally effective to antidepressants.
Speaker 4: So before you do meds, walk like.
Speaker 5: You're late, forty five minutes, four times a week, take
Speaker 5: saffron omega three fatty acids, and whenever you feel sad, mad, nervous,
Speaker 5: or out of control, right down what you're thinking and
Speaker 5: then just ask yourself whether or not it's true. I
Speaker 5: have this whole process on how to kill the ends,
Speaker 5: the automatic negative thoughts, getting skill in managing your mind
Speaker 5: and your body. Your brain and your body should be
Speaker 5: found days. And if we did just those things, we
Speaker 5: would cut antidepressing use in half, doctor Amand there are
Speaker 5: a lot of parents listening to this who have kids
Speaker 5: who have been prescribed indepressants and other drugs. Has it
Speaker 5: been over prescribed? Is this a life sentence? Are they
Speaker 5: going to be on it for the rest of their lives? Well,
Speaker 5: so right away you can walk like you're late, You
Speaker 5: can introduce exercise right away and it's free right away.
Speaker 5: You can have them take Omega three fatty acids not
Speaker 5: very expensive, right away. You can introduce saffron. Now, of
Speaker 5: course you should talk to your doctor about it. If I
Speaker 5: say that, then I go, well, most doctors don't know that,
Speaker 5: but right away, you can do those simple things right away.
Speaker 5: And I think all of us, I actually think it
Speaker 5: should be a class taught in grade school, middle school,
Speaker 5: and high school. Teach kids how to manage their minds,
Speaker 5: simple cognitive therapy principles in schools. And then if they
Speaker 5: get stable and they're better and they don't think of
Speaker 5: marijuana as innocuous or alcohol is a healthy right, Let's
Speaker 5: get the brain as healthy and clean as it can be.
Speaker 5: Then work with your doctor and exactly as you said,
Speaker 5: if you're on anti depressants and you just stop them,
Speaker 5: you can go through withdrawal. And what I do because
Speaker 5: at aim in Clinics, I have eleven clinics around the country,
Speaker 5: we spend more time taking people off meds than putting
Speaker 5: them on meds. And so it's like we'll cut it
Speaker 5: in a half and we'll do that for a couple
Speaker 5: of months and then we'll cut it in a quarter
Speaker 5: and do that for a couple of months and everything
Speaker 5: is okay, then we'll stop it.
Speaker 1: Well, I hate that what you just said is revolution.
Speaker 1: That is sad to me that at aim in Clinics
Speaker 1: we are trying to get more people off of medication
Speaker 1: than getting them on it. And it is our whole
Speaker 1: medical industry is based on the opposite, which is terrifying.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 5: It's because medicine has been taken over by business people
Speaker 5: and the goal is for pharmaceutical companies and many doctors,
Speaker 5: it's not to be in the order business. It's to
Speaker 5: be in the reorder.
Speaker 3: The lifelong customer business.
Speaker 1: Because what's interesting is we talk to a lot of
Speaker 1: women and they're like, well, I'm on antidepressants, but I
Speaker 1: don't even know. Am I supposed to just stay on
Speaker 1: these for the rest of my life. It's there's no goal.
Speaker 4: The role when I.
Speaker 5: Was in training was stay on it for about nine months.
Speaker 5: If this is your first episode, then slowly go off.
Speaker 4: If it's your.
Speaker 5: Second episode, do it for about two years to sort
Speaker 5: of reset things, and then slowly ring yourself off. And
Speaker 5: if it's your third episode, maybe you should be on
Speaker 5: it for the rest of your life. I find that
Speaker 5: is true for such few people enough I can get
Speaker 5: them to love and care for their brain.
Speaker 2: Interesting, well, and what about that we're like, we're talking
Speaker 2: about so many teenagers and young people are getting prescribed this,
Speaker 2: these medicines, but.
Speaker 3: Their brains are still developing, developing. I could be wrong.
Speaker 3: You tell me.
Speaker 2: Is it that your your frontal the front part of
Speaker 2: your brain isn't fully developed until you're twenty six?
Speaker 5: Yeah, about twenty five for girls, in twenty seven or
Speaker 5: so for boys. And you know, I love lord your story.
Speaker 5: It's like, you know, I was sort of an emotional,
Speaker 5: hormonal teenager and then I outgrew it. It's it's very
Speaker 5: common for teenage girls and boys to be hormonal and
Speaker 5: emotional because your brain is undergoing wild development. And then
Speaker 5: about your middle twenties, if you've been good to your brain,
Speaker 5: it sort of finishes. And you know, I tell so
Speaker 5: many of my parents of eighteen year olds I treat
Speaker 5: I said, let's just get them safely to least twenty
Speaker 5: five in national again, and things will be better. But
Speaker 5: the problem is is we're drugging these kids because psychiatrists
Speaker 5: and most family doctors, that's the tool, right, that's the
Speaker 5: tool in the toolbox, so they use it, but it's
Speaker 5: at society's detriment. The big mission I have in life
Speaker 5: is to end the concept of mental illness and create
Speaker 5: a revolution in brain health because I think, well, one,
Speaker 5: nobody really wants to see a psychiatrist. I told my
Speaker 5: dad I wanted to be a psychiatrist. He asked me
Speaker 5: why I didn't want to be a real doctor. Why
Speaker 5: I wanted to be a nut doctor and hang out
Speaker 5: with nuts all day long. So he didn't get Father
Speaker 5: of the Aar award, but Stigmas still lives. Nobody wants
Speaker 5: to see a psychiatrist. Everybody wants a better brain.
Speaker 4: What if mental health was brain health?
Speaker 5: If we just got that one concept through our culture.
Speaker 5: That's why I always loved being a doctor Phil because
Speaker 5: he helps me with that. We get that one idea
Speaker 5: through our culture, everything changes because if it's brain, you
Speaker 5: have to eat for your brain, you have to sleep
Speaker 5: for your brain, you have to stop poisoning your brain.
Speaker 2: How important is because you have these eleven clinics. Obviously
Speaker 2: getting a brain scan is not like part of our
Speaker 2: you know, immunizations and things like that that we get
Speaker 2: as kids.
Speaker 3: How much do you.
Speaker 2: Want that to be part of standard healthcare? And how
Speaker 2: often can we get brain scans? I don't know if
Speaker 2: there's a certain number you can get kind of the
Speaker 2: way you should be careful with MRIs, I don't know.
Speaker 5: Psychiatry should not be the only medical specialty that never
Speaker 5: looks at the organ it treats. So think about that.
Speaker 5: If you're going to go on to medicine and the
Speaker 5: doctor said, well, you may need this for the rest
Speaker 5: of your life, wouldn't you want to know ahead of
Speaker 5: time what your brain look like. I mean, the whole
Speaker 5: conversation I think is insane. And with spec because it's
Speaker 5: a nuclear study, there is some radiation about the same
Speaker 5: as a head ct that you know. We usually start
Speaker 5: with two and then I may do one or two
Speaker 5: in the next two or three years to go how
Speaker 5: am I doing? And maybe every five years. So it's
Speaker 5: not something you do without thought. But if you're dating
Speaker 5: any of my kids, you're getting scanned.
Speaker 2: By the way, have you rejected anyone? Have you done
Speaker 2: the scan and told one of your kids, no, he
Speaker 2: can't date that person?
Speaker 5: I did?
Speaker 4: You did?
Speaker 5: He didn't listen to me, and it was a disaster.
Speaker 4: So regrets it. I'm like, I think she's doing drugs.
Speaker 4: So and we never said. One of my son laws mother.
Speaker 5: Has paranoid schizophrenia and his father killed himself and the
Speaker 5: scan doesn't disqualify people. But I'm like, oh, you need
Speaker 5: to take this seriously. And he actually wrote a book
Speaker 5: called Change Your Brain Before twenty five where he opens
Speaker 5: the book with our interaction of you know, with his
Speaker 5: skin and his brain.
Speaker 1: Well, it's funny what you're saying is seems so common sense.
Speaker 1: It says, if I tore my acl or I broke
Speaker 1: my arm and a doctor goes, okay, I'll operate, I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: do you want to see it? Do you want to
Speaker 1: look at it? Do you even know what arm it is?
Speaker 1: And that's the way psychiatry is acting. It's like, well,
Speaker 1: just just tell me what's wrong, and I'll tell you
Speaker 1: what we're going to do.
Speaker 3: We're only going to tell you my symptoms.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like, do you all even want to see me?
Speaker 1: It is amazing that you're not seeing the organ that
Speaker 1: we're treating it. That I've never really heard it put
Speaker 1: like that, and it really does hit home.
Speaker 5: It's insane what's happened. And I'm just prayan and I
Speaker 5: live long enough to see it change.
Speaker 3: Wow. Well, thank you for all you're doing.
Speaker 2: I did want to ask you because I follow you
Speaker 2: on Instagram and there were a couple quick questions I
Speaker 2: had about some of the high profile brains you scanned.
Speaker 2: I saw you scanned Nick Cannon's brain and you told
Speaker 2: him he had to many children. No, I'm not if
Speaker 2: Nick Cannon has to get the brain scan of all
Speaker 2: the people his kids are going to be, that's so
Speaker 2: many scans, so many scans. No, you told him that
Speaker 2: he had some brain damage, but I didn't understand where
Speaker 2: that came from, like if he'd had an injury or
Speaker 2: It made me wonder, can we all have brain damage
Speaker 2: without like having had a major brain injury or an
Speaker 2: episode of some kind.
Speaker 3: What is that damage that's potentially there?
Speaker 5: Now?
Speaker 4: He had physical damage from.
Speaker 3: An accident from an accident, okay, and.
Speaker 5: He also had add which might fit the commitment issues.
Speaker 5: But you know, two his credit, he's like, I'm.
Speaker 4: Going to be serious about having a better brain.
Speaker 5: I love and you know I love you know all
Speaker 5: of my patients. But you know, some of my athletes,
Speaker 5: for example, they like being coached. It's like tell me
Speaker 5: what to do. We're not telling people what to do
Speaker 5: in a way they can hear.
Speaker 2: And then I saw that you work with Miley Cyrus
Speaker 2: and she just want her first Grammy and she's killing it,
Speaker 2: and I know you'd really worked with her on her
Speaker 2: goals and her success. I loved what you've been saying
Speaker 2: about how to keep your brain happy. What are some
Speaker 2: of the things you do with people to help them
Speaker 2: get towards their goals in terms of how they're working
Speaker 2: with their brain to that success they want.
Speaker 4: Well, the first thing is to define your goals. You know,
Speaker 4: with Miley, it's like you have to be the.
Speaker 5: CEO, and I teach them how to act like a
Speaker 5: CEO of their life, which means, of course, you have
Speaker 5: to take care of your frontal lobes because that's called
Speaker 5: the executive part of the brain. It's the CEO part
Speaker 5: of your life. You know, what do you want? Does
Speaker 5: your behavior.
Speaker 4: Fit what you want? Is this good for your brain
Speaker 4: or bad for it?
Speaker 5: And you know, I've worked with her for twelve years,
Speaker 5: so I'm so happy with her progress. And you know,
Speaker 5: sometimes it just takes a while to kick in, and
Speaker 5: it's certainly been with my leg, but she's a warrior
Speaker 5: for her yeah, yeah, and Flowers. You know the song
Speaker 5: that one song of the year, it's about self love.
Speaker 2: And just I'm such a fan of hers, So thank
Speaker 2: you for your work because I love her music and
Speaker 2: her I'm off of what you just said, the frontal
Speaker 2: lobe thing. I'm going to ask what might be a
Speaker 2: bold question, if our front lobe is the CEO of
Speaker 2: our brain, and if it is not developed until we're
Speaker 2: twenty five for women, twenty six, twenty seven for men,
Speaker 2: should we not be making any major life decisions before
Speaker 2: that time? Like, by that, I mean a lot of
Speaker 2: people get married in their early twenties.
Speaker 3: I did.
Speaker 2: I got married at twenty four and guess what, I
Speaker 2: got divorced. He got married at twenty two and he's divorced.
Speaker 2: We are kind of making these huge decisions and that
Speaker 2: really early period. I mean, legally we're considered adults at eighteen,
Speaker 2: but our brains aren't fully developed.
Speaker 3: So does this make sense the way our society is operating.
Speaker 5: In that way? Yeah, I think it's insane. You send
Speaker 5: eighteen year olds away to school with other underdeveloped brains
Speaker 5: in dormitory sororities and fraternities. With a lot of alcohol
Speaker 5: and drugs. When you really sort of step back from
Speaker 5: a neuroscientist's perspective, you're like, that's ludicrous. You know, that's
Speaker 5: why there's a high incidence of depression when kids go
Speaker 5: away or suicidal behavior when kids go away. And I've
Speaker 5: argued for many years keep them close, wow, because.
Speaker 4: Their brains aren't developed.
Speaker 5: And I know, and when I was eighteen, I told
Speaker 5: my dad I could do anything I wanted. I was eighteen,
Speaker 5: ended up in the army as an infantry medic and
Speaker 5: I'm like, how did that happen? It's because he told
Speaker 5: me I.
Speaker 3: Couldn't do it because we're rebellious then too. Wow.
Speaker 2: So when do you think is a good time people
Speaker 2: should get married brain wise?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think middle twenties, when your brain's getting close
Speaker 5: or toward the end of your twenties.
Speaker 4: I mean, everybody's.
Speaker 5: Different, and you know it has cultural implications as well,
Speaker 5: but you want marriage is hard with a good brain.
Speaker 5: It's harder with an underdeveloped brain, or it's harder with
Speaker 5: a traumatized brain, or it's harder with a toxic brain.
Speaker 5: In fact, I often wanted to do a program called
Speaker 5: brainmatch dot com, where I could, you know, scan everybody.
Speaker 3: So let's get that show on Merit.
Speaker 4: It's like, which brain would I want?
Speaker 1: That's the that's coming to you next to next year
Speaker 1: up on marriat Street Media.
Speaker 2: When you scanned your wife's brain when you were three
Speaker 2: weeks into dating, What did you like about it? What
Speaker 2: made you say I want to keep dating this person?
Speaker 4: Well, I could actually see the injury that happened to
Speaker 4: her brain. She was going seventy five miles an hour.
Speaker 4: Sister fell asleep, but the whale and flipped three times,
Speaker 4: so I could see that.
Speaker 5: But overall it was really healthy.
Speaker 4: And what I loved about.
Speaker 5: Her still like about her is she was curious about
Speaker 5: it and she wanted it to be better. She's a
Speaker 5: neurosurgical I see you nurse, so we sort of bonded
Speaker 5: over the brain. But she didn't take it as weird
Speaker 5: or invasive. She's like, oh, how can I make this better?
Speaker 5: In fact, since we've been married, she has written eight
Speaker 5: cookbooks for me and wrote a wonderful book called The
Speaker 5: Relentless Courage of a Scared Child.
Speaker 1: Wow, before we let you go. The parents out there
Speaker 1: have their kids and they're thinking, Okay, I want to
Speaker 1: take this brain health so much more serious. I hate
Speaker 1: to say this, but I would say the majority of
Speaker 1: the doctors and psychiatrists that maybe our kids are going
Speaker 1: to are not helpful. Do we find these clinics? I
Speaker 1: know you have eleven clinics around, but if we can't
Speaker 1: find one of those, what is a way to find
Speaker 1: good brain health doctors?
Speaker 4: Well, I think a good place to start.
Speaker 5: I have a brand new book called Raising Mentally Strong Kids,
Speaker 5: and I talk a lot about raising brain healthy kids.
Speaker 5: They can also get my book Change Your Brain every Day,
Speaker 5: which is just sort of simple daily practices to optimize
Speaker 5: your brain. And we have a brain Health network, so
Speaker 5: if they go to Amanclinics dot com, they can find
Speaker 5: out where we're located and where some of the people
Speaker 5: I've trained or located.
Speaker 1: We Laura and I are coming in.
Speaker 3: We're got to get scanned. You have one in Texas.
Speaker 5: I do have a clinic in Las Colinists in Dallas,
Speaker 5: right down.
Speaker 1: The street from Merritt Street Media.
Speaker 3: We'll be there.
Speaker 2: Come in us and Phil, Although did you already scan
Speaker 2: doctor Phil's brain?
Speaker 4: Now? I want to okay, so forward.
Speaker 2: And doctor Amin. I just want to end on a
Speaker 2: note of I think. I hope I'm understanding this right.
Speaker 2: It's coming from a hopeful place. It sounds like you're saying, like, yes,
Speaker 2: change your brain and treat your brain.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 2: Can we reverse damage in our brains. If somebody's you know,
Speaker 2: maybe feels like they've drank too much, if they've done
Speaker 2: damage in certain ways, can we fix that? Or is
Speaker 2: the brain like you did it and now it's done.
Speaker 5: Change your brain, change your life. You're not stuck with
Speaker 5: the brain you have. You could make it better. I
Speaker 5: couldn't prove it.
Speaker 3: Amazing. Thank you so much. This has truly been such
Speaker 3: a dream.
Speaker 2: Like I said, I've been following you, and guys, follow
Speaker 2: doctor Amen on Instagram because he is just constantly posting quick,
Speaker 2: helpful videos, amazing insight. It's I've been following you for
Speaker 2: two years now and I just love following you.
Speaker 3: So thanks for all you do.
Speaker 2: And I heard your relaunching your podcast I just saw today,
Speaker 2: so we'll be excited to see that too.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much.
Speaker 5: What a joy. Looking to meeting you guys in person.
Speaker 3: Thank you. And you're in California.
Speaker 5: I am, I'm in Newport Beach.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, we're going to have to stalk you and
Speaker 2: come to Dallas and do some stuff at work next
Speaker 2: time you're in for Merritt Damon.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for your time. Truly appreciate it.
Speaker 4: You're welcome, take.
Speaker 1: Care, We'll see you soon.
Speaker 3: Bye bye.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening. Follow us on Instagram at the most
Speaker 1: dramatic pod ever, and make sure to write us a
Speaker 1: review and leave us five stars. I'll talk to you
Speaker 1: next time.