Change Your BRAIN, Change Your LIFE! These Hacks Will Improve Your BRAIN | Dr. Daniel Amen

Cuz I really think better brain, better decisions. Better brain, better relationships. Better brain, more money. Better brain, better life. Hope you enjoy the episode brought to you by our sponsor Thrive. Get 50% off your at-home gut health test when you go to trythrive.com/impacttheory. Enjoy the episode. Everybody, welcome to another episode of Health Theory. Today, we are joined by a psychiatrist, best-selling author, and a brain scan ninja, Dr. Amen. Thank you so much for being here. I always love spending time with you and reading your books. They are incredible, have been life-changing for me. And the most recent one, Your Brain Is Always Listening, is no exception. So, thank you so much for being here. Well, thank you for helping me spread the word about brain health. So, speaking of the brain, if it's always listening, what is it always listening to? And what is this idea of dragons that you talked about in the book? I find this really useful. Well, your brain is always listening. It's listening to your past. It's listening to the food you eat. It's listening to marketers. It's listening say it's listening to your past, is it listening to what you say about your past? Or are you using listen as sort of an umbrella for reliving? The past for many people is always present for them. And I got this idea of dragons from the past that still breathe fire on your emotional brain. So, I was doing a podcast with Dr. Sharon May, who's a friend of mine, relational therapist. And she started talking about dragons from the past that were ruining relationships. And then she and I started collaborating, and it's like, "Well, let's identify the dragons. And we came up with 13 of them, and a couple of the pandemic just exploded, like the death dragon or the grief and loss dragon. Um but my whole life I was living with the invisible abandoned or insignificant dragon, one of seven. Um I was in the middle, I'm a second son in a Lebanese family, which means you're expendable. Um which turned out to be beautiful cuz I didn't have to go in the grocery business, right? In Lebanese families, the oldest child the oldest male child goes in the business and Is your brother still in the business? My brother is president of the business. Wow. Um I don't think I'd ever heard you talk I mean, your dad was really successful in the business that he built. I didn't realize just how much sort of I guess ended up not being familial pressure for you, but certainly would have been for your brother. Well, it's pressure. When you grow up with a dad that's very successful. I mean, he ended up being the chairman of the board of a $4 billion company. Wow. Um you often just go like, I can never live up to that. And so you're struggling in that comparison, which is actually the second dragon, the inferior flawed dragon. And I had that one in spades, you know, being short and second and um you know, it helped me in so many ways, right? The dragons have downsides, but they also have upsides. If you have felt insignificant, well, I built a life based on being significant. And it sort of worked. So, how do you help people reconcile that? Like when I when I read the book, I'm hearing about these dragons, they mostly sound negative, but you in terms of if they go unchecked, your prefrontal cortex is offline. It really does become pathological and it becomes a problem. But I'm obsessed with this idea that there's pathology on both sides. So, if you have too much drive, it's going to spill into pathology. You know, if you're feeling too broken, too inadequate, whatever. But if you don't have enough, there's also pathology on that side. How do you help people walk that balance? Is it the prefrontal cortex? There's always this balance between your prefrontal cortex. So, think of that as the brake in your brain. But you don't want it too strong. When it works too hard, people have OCD. It's sort of like the brake is always on. And so, if you think of a car, like I like going to Big Bear, and think about coming down the hill, you need a good prefrontal cortex. You need a good brake. Because if the brake's not on, you die because you go off a cliff. Which is apropos. People don't brake their behavior, and they make bad decisions. And so, they die early. But if the brake is always on, you can't get down the hill, either, because it's like stop, stop, stop, stop. Think of people have OCD. So, it's about balance between the front third of your brain, prefrontal cortex, and your emotional brain. Because we need passion, we need purpose, we need a reason to do something. But if it works too hard, we get sad, or we get too anxious, or we become traumatized. Uh the wounded dragons, just so common, way more common now since the pandemic. Wounded dragon is I am broken in some way, or something else? It's I've had trauma. Okay. And I tell this story of Reliving it was so hard for me. But when I was little, I had this beautiful white goat who um Sugar. was was our pet, Sugar. Yeah. And um I actually have this video. I did a public television special on the new book, and I actually showed the video of me when I'm 5 playing with Sugar, and Sugar's kissing me, and and it was just beautiful. But, Sugar also liked my dad's roses. Okay. And so, one day Sugar went off to the farm, which means Sugar got slaughtered. And a couple of nights later, my dad and his brother were joking that they were feeding us Sugar for dinner, which was incredibly traumatic for me. And years later at this point? Like six, five or six. Oof. And I mean, I and I remember it like it's yesterday. But, years later, I was in Monterey, Mexico, giving a big talk, and they have goat meat for sale in street vendors. Like we don't do that in the United States. And as I walked by, I got flooded with that memory. And all of the sudden, I'm 43 or something, have a panic attack. Wow. Because the past is always connected to the present. And so, if there's trauma, learning how, and I talk about this in the book, how to recognize it and disconnect from it. Okay, so that's recognizing it, disconnecting, doing the unwinding is a tall order. Before we get to that, can you What are some of the most common dragons, and if you have one of these running rampant in your life, your prefrontal cortex isn't putting the brakes on it? What What does that manifest as in in the more common dragons? Well, so we've had over 100,000 people take the quiz knowyourdragons.com. So people can do that. It's free. And on average people have six of them. So it's common to have issues. And the anxious dragon is the most common. The responsible dragon where you feel like you have to take care of other people. Which actually can breed this thing called codependence and entitlement in others. You have to be careful with that. The wounded dragon. The inferior flawed dragon. Very common. And it's basically I compare myself to you in a negative way. Social media is driving that epidemic. And the death dragon sort of surprised me. But you know, we did the study during COVID. And is it a fear of death? It's the fear of death. dragon And a lot of people haven't come to grips with death. Like one of the strategies I have actually played out today is write down 10 good things about dying. Whoa. And um it's like, oh, well that's okay. Because if it's inevitable, it is. Right. It's it's like you have to learn to embrace it. And there's a lot of writing exercises in in the book because I actually want people to write their story and give it the ending they want. And then ask themselves every day then kick in your prefrontal cortex, is my behavior getting me what I want? Cuz too often people go for fixes that fail rather than fixes that fix. Okay. So first we're going to identify our dragon. Okay, so I have the fear of death dragon and I have the anxiety dragon. As somebody who suffered with the anxiety dragon, that one was very easy for me to relate to. Okay, so I have the anxiety dragon. I'm obsessing about a future that I'm practicing the failure unintentionally. This was my thing. I would find my what I thought of as exit ramps. Like if this situation becomes problematic, what's my exit ramp? But in thinking about all of my exit ramps, I was rehearsing it going wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. And when I'm journaling, the idea I want to bring together with this, so I I identify my dragon, but now when I'm doing the journaling, how do I get to accurate thinking? Because the problem in the first place is that I have a cognitive distortion. I have a a tendency to think of how the things could go wrong, or at least that felt like the right way to plan for the future. I've since stopped doing that. Um how do you recognize what accurate thinking actually is? And you go through this in the book because you you have that like four questions that you have people do. I think it was four. And there's a part in there where they would often say like I'm going to fail. Are you going to fail? Yes. Like to them that seems self-evidently true. So how do you help them recognize that that isn't actually accurate? I help them question it. Whenever you feel sad or mad or nervous or out of control, write out what you're thinking. And then it's five questions, but it's is it true? Is it absolutely true? With 100% certainty. And that's the one that usually cracks it. Like I'm worthless. Is it absolutely true? Now you're getting thoughtful. It's like, well, I'm a mother. And I'm a sister. And I'm a daughter. And no, it's not absolutely true. It's ridiculous. The third question is, how do I feel when I believe I'm worthless? Bad. Withering. Sad. Lonely. And the fourth question is, who would I be without this thought? Or how would I feel if I didn't have the thought? The most common answer to that one is free. And then you flip it around to the opposite. It's like I am worth something. Or I have worth. And then give me an example. Or two, or three, or four. And you have to do that exercise at least a hundred times to begin to retrain your automatic response. I mean, I've been teaching people to kill ants for a long time, automatic negative thoughts, but I just found these five questions. They're just so elegant to just have a dialogue with yourself. I'll never be successful, or I won't have enough money, um or my life has no meaning. It's like well, let's put that under a microscope. Not positive thinking. Accurate thinking. Okay, so putting myself in the shoes of somebody that's trapped in one of these dragons, my gut instinct, and you've done this so much more than I have, but my gut instinct is the part that they're going to struggle with the most is they're going to say the opposite, right? So, I have worth, I have value. It just isn't going to feel true. Or it's going to feel true at such a low rung level. Like, yes, okay, fine, I have some value, but Jesus, is it enough to be worth everything that that going through? I find that people are so ill-equipped to accurately identify what their abilities are, their capabilities, their worth, their value, all that. But, I'm like, "Don't even worry about what's true. Ask yourself what's useful." And if it's useful to tell yourself, "I'm a good person. I have worth." And that gets you moving towards doing the things that are actually worthy, then we're going to do it. Does that make sense to you or do you think there's something better? Well, well, not better. I like it. It's With each of the dragons in the book, I have their origin story. So, where do they come from? What's the upside? Cuz all the dragons have upsides. My abandoned, invisible, and insignificant dragon had tremendous upside for me. Um how do you tame it? So, it's more than just correct your thinking. So, there's strategies. So, for for one, seek insignificance. Well, that's useful. And it could be volunteering at church. It, you know, whatever fits your definition internally of significance. And then I have meditations around each of them. Um so, think of that as foundational. Like the wounded dragon, for example, I talk about EMDR. Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. And it's so powerful. It's when you're traumatized, it actually gets stuck in your brain. And we see a pattern. We call it the diamond pattern in the brain. So, your emotional brain gets turned on, and it can't go back to normal or healthy. And EMDR, they actually have you bring up the trauma while they get your eyes to move back and forth and it settles it down. So, as an example, 1996, so I've been doing imaging for 30 years. The first 20 years it was like a horror film in my life cuz I was getting picked on and I mean I had the New York Times pick on me, the Washington Post pick on me, and my colleagues calling me bad names. And I'm like, I just want to look at the brain. What's your problem? Um and in 1996 I had the state of California's medical board investigate me. Yeah, I'd never heard that before. It's crazy. was traumatizing. And I couldn't sleep. And one of the original EMDR trainers worked for me. And I walked into Jennifer Lendel's office in my clinic and I'm like, you need to help me. After an hour of this treatment I was absolutely fine. So, they took my license from me. I could get a job. I could take care of my family. I was going to be fine. But you can just imagine you would spend a big chunk of your life trying to do what you do and now someone's trying to take it away from you. Why does the lateral eye movement shift the brain so profoundly? That you go from I can't sleep, this is a total mess to one session and now I'm good. I think it's more than just eye movement. Um there's another technique that's somewhat similar. That's a part of the same technique? It no. But it's similar. It's called Havening. Okay. And but they're both bilateral hemisphere stimulation. So, for example um off camera we talked about how my dad died last year. And a couple of days after he died um in a random stack of papers, I'm at my mom's house just helping her organize things. It's a picture of my dead dad in the mortuary. And I'm like, what idiot? What cuz it just bothered me. And I noticed it was just bothering me throughout the day, you know, I'd see the picture and I'd be irritated and and then I'm like, oh, you help people who have this problem. And Havening is bilateral hemisphere stimulation. So, it's either you're rubbing your hands like this while you think of the trauma. Um it's rubbing your face, probably not cool in a pandemic. Um or what my favorite thing is and I do this a lot with my patients is I have them hold their shoulders and then rub down to their forearms and they do it for 30 seconds. And the idea is to get stimulation on both sides of your body. sides while you bring up the trauma. Do you have to do it yourself or can someone else do it for you? Either way. Interesting. And people can learn about it at Havening .org, like savehaven, havening.org. And so I did that with the picture. And you rate it like on a scale of 1 to 10. And it was like a nine, I was pretty irritated by this. And after I did it for 30 seconds, it's like a four. And then after I did it again, the irritation was gone. I did it two more times for 30 seconds and I fell in love with the picture because it was the last picture of my dad on earth. And so there are techniques so that you don't have to live with trauma spinning in your brain, whether it's EMDR, other people do tapping, which can be helpful, or Havening. I want to speculate about why that's working. So, when I meditate, what's useful about meditation, the only times that it works for me are when I can really lock into the pleasure cycle of the breath. So, I have to be thinking about optimizing the pleasure of each part of the breath. By doing that, I really pull my brain to like, what is happening right here, right now? One, it helps because it's truly when you're breathing in a meditative way, it just feels good. Like, purely hedonistically, it just feels good. And then, my mind can't wander to whatever is freaking it out because I'm there in my breath. And I'm wondering if this is a there's something about stimulating both sides of the brain that's the important part, or if this is just your focus is now locking in on the sensation of being touched or touching yourself, and that disrupts cuz I I think a lot about pattern interrupting, that you're just hitting the brakes on this runaway thought. And by touching yourself, by tapping, by whatever, that you you're grounding in a physical sensation, which stops your brain from thinking about the traumatic thing. That's sort of bullet point one. But, bullet point two is that you fell in love with the photo. But, let's take these one at a time. Do you think it is it the bilateral activation of the brain that's critical, or is it just the focus? I think it's the bilateral hemisphere stimulation. Cuz a lot of times, people will bring up trauma and focus on it, and it doesn't make them feel any better, it makes them feel worse. But, I did a study on EMDR. We took police officers who were involved in shootings, and they developed PTSD and couldn't go back to work. And I scanned them, and then I scanned them during their first EMDR session. So, while the therapist was bringing up the trauma, and the Were you scanning them in that moment, Or you scan them after it? In that moment. Interesting. And So, okay, before you go on up. Their emotional What what does it look like when they're PTSD'd out? So, when they have PTSD, if you look at the scans I do, it looks like a diamond pattern. Where their limbic or emotional brain is more active compared to a healthy brain. Mhm. And then in that trauma activation, it gets bigger. Gets more intense. But after they did an average of eight sessions, calmed it down. And that psychological intervention had biological effects. Okay, so that all makes sense. Now, when I'm stroking myself, I am recalling the memory. I'm activating bilaterally my brain. I don't understand why that breaks the elevation of the emotion. Why does it Yeah, and I I'm not sure we know why. We just know it does. It was actually discovered by Francine Shapiro when she was in Menlo Park that when she looked left and then right and did it over and over again, what she was upset about didn't upset her as much. And it was really from that moment she then started working with soldiers from the VA and Did she come in and why she did it the first time? Was it accidental? accidental. So. Intriguing. Okay. Yeah. And now we have other groups like the Havening Group. There's another group called Brainspotting. But they all seem to be bilateral hemisphere stimulation tools to bring up the trauma and sort of suck the emotion out of it. So, you still remember it. You know, I still remember being investigated by the medical board. Mhm. But, I don't get freaked out. Do you tell yourself a new story? So, you pull So, one of the things I find most fascinating about memory is that every time you pull it into your working memory, you're affecting it. And so, you can change the tenor of that memory, the emotional resonance of that memory as you hold it in a working memory and then store it back. So, as you're doing this, you're doing the Havening, you're or the bilateral eye movement or both, you're pulling the memory forward, are you to optimize the process, do you need to tell yourself a different story about it? Do you need to focus on the positive things that came out of it? I mean, you talk about being able to find positives in death. Is that what we're doing? Or you literally just need to think about it in the normal way that you always think about it in your I'm sure obsessive way, but as long as you're doing that bilateral contact, it's going to lower the emotion. For many people, that's exactly what happens. Um other people, not so much. And so, then you have to go, what else is going on? Mhm. And do they have a hurt prefrontal cortex? So, a lot of the soldiers that we work with, they have PTSD and traumatic brain injury. People just didn't focus on the fact that they were around three IED blasts. And so, when things don't work like you hope they would, that's where the imaging work I do becomes so helpful. So, the second fascinating element here. So, we understand now how lower the emotional resonance, but how did you fall in love with that photo? It So, even when you retold it to me, it sounded like a change in story that you went from that's a photo of my father's death to that's the last photo of somebody that I loved and cared about. Is that a narrative shift that's required to get that new emotional anchor or or the the association with that physical sensation is pleasant and therefore it paints that new emotion on an old memory. So, part of it is skill. Um my children get horrified if I want to watch Pollyanna, one of my favorite movies ever. Pollyanna teaches people to play the glad game. Whatever situation you're in, what is there to be glad about in this situation? So, I've trained my brain to do that over time. And when you take the emotion out, something's going to replace it. And if you have skill in managing your mind, you'll often look for what's right rather than what's wrong. And and I've worked really hard on that cuz it wasn't my nature. Growing up, I was pretty anxious and I was masterful at predicting what's the worst thing that could happen and then I'd make it worse. So, It's down there. I know it. It's a hallmark of people that have panic attacks. Um but I've worked really hard and it's the blessing of my job. I get to help people and in that I always help myself. Okay, so we need to identify what our dragons are. We need to engage our prefrontal cortex to make sure that we pump the brakes on that stuff. We need to reframe things, get good at the glad game, the Pollyanna game, whatever we're going to call that. Right. Um we need to engage with reality. So, how are things really instead of trying to run or hide from it, both the good and the bad. So, don't over um think you're a loser, failure, whatever. Um Yeah, it's completely not helpful. Cuz negative thinking disrupts brain function. Um but at the same time, too positive of thinking, you could be driving down the freeway at 125 miles an hour in the rain. I mean, positive thinking by itself is harmful. We have to be thoughtful, careful. No doubt. Um right? And that's the prefrontal cortex. There's a whole chapter in the book on the dragon tamer. Mhm. It's like, how do you tame this dragon thunder? Um And and you do it with having forethought and judgment and impulse control, which means, oh by the way, you have to feed it right. There's a whole section in the book on the scheming dragons, which is really how society is stealing your mind if you're Scheming to make you worse, basically. Yeah, like there's the holiday dragon, right? Oh, it's Thanksgiving. Let's eat terribly. Right. Uh or it's Halloween or Christmas. You know, we're going to celebrate the birth of the baby Jesus by eating terribly and hurting people. It's like, how does that make sense? And there's a brand new 12-step program in this book. Uh because there's the addicted dragons. I talk about the bad habit dragons. And as I was writing that, I'm like, you know, the 12-step program for addiction was written basically in the 1930s. And there's not one neuroscience step in the 12 steps. It's mostly psychological, social, and spiritual. And I'm like, well, if a neuroscientist rewrote the 12 steps, what would he add? But step one in the traditional 12 steps is admit your life is out of control. And I'm like, no, that's step two. Step one is, what do you want? No doubt. Relationships, work, money, physical, emotional. So, what do you want? Step two, is your behavior getting you what you want? If it's not, then you need step three, which is get your brain right. Cuz I really think better brain, better decisions. Better brain, better relationships. Better brain, more money. Better brain, better life. No doubt. I've never heard anybody talk about goals before. Like, I'm obsessed with that. And it just seems like people don't bring it up. Uh but here we go. This is from the book. You're more likely to be able to protect yourself from dragons and ants. We've talked about those. When you have clear goals, a healthy blood sugar level, plenty of sleep, no alcohol in your system, and you talk about marijuana as well, which would be nice and controversial. You don't mention it in this quote, but um you have in the book. And you are not hungry, angry, lonely, or tired. And I thought, that really sums up the protective mechanisms, the things you have to look out for, and what you have to do. Um walk people through why are goals so important? Why is a guy that spent 40 years focused on brain health talking about that? And how did you come to realize just how useful that is? You have to tell your brain what you want. Because it's always listening. And if you don't know what you want. And I ask all of my patients, what do you want? They'll talk about money. Or they'll like, I have a 17, almost 18-year-old daughter. And she's had two boyfriends. And I've dismissed them both. But it's like, what do you want? And they talk about money. Mhm. And I'm like, no. That's a side effect of a meaningful, purposeful life. Having that as the goal is a terrible goal. And I like money. I always say to my team, "No margin, no mission." Right? You have to make money. But if that's the point, that's the prescription for unhappiness. And I've always and I got this when I was a medical student. It's people get burned out when they become unbalanced. And so when I ask my patients what they want, relationships, work, money. It's important, but it can't be the thing. Right. Physical, emotional, spiritual health. What do you want in a balanced way? Because if you know, then you're more likely to get it. So, for example, you've met Tana. Mhm. Uh I want a kind, caring, loving, supportive, passionate relationship with my wife. I always want that. But I don't always feel like that. But when I'm thoughtful, when I know my goals, cuz they're posted, Mhm. I'm so much more likely to act like that, which means I'm going to have a great marriage. Especially if she has clear goals, too, and we have similar goals for our relationship. Do you guys talk about your goals? All the time. And when you say they're posted, where are they posted? So, I have them posted in my bathroom, and I have them on my phone. Very smart. And And and so, everything it comes out. I love like three-letter three-word sentences or three-word questions. And like for the Ands, is it true? And for goals, is does it fit? Does my behavior today fit the goals I have for my life. So, last night I was at the Orange County Fair, they had fried butter puffs. Doesn't fit. The goals I have, right? Cuz one of my goals is to be physically healthy. If you're trying to change medical specialty, you want to live a long time cuz it's going to take a long time. And so, I want to be healthy because that gives me energy and happiness and so, the butter fried butter puffs didn't fit. Yeah, I think this is a super underserved um thing. It It There's a great Tony Robbins quote. If you don't know where you want to be in 5 years, you're already there. And I remember when I heard that, I was like, "Oh my god." Like, so many people have dreams about where they want to go and what they want to do, but they stay these sort of vague, amorphous blobs and they never get defined and therefore you never achieve them and your future is always 5 years away and you're just you're stuck in this perpetual sameness. So, it's really interesting to hear you talk about that. So, now let's say that they have their goal, they've written it down, they posted it, they see it multiple places in their house. How do they go about getting the brain that they're going to need to actually get there? So, we know that we don't eat our butter puffs. In fact, what I'll ask is, why don't we eat our butter puffs? We want to live a long time, I get that, but specifically what what is the problem with fried butter? Yeah, like what makes something bad food? I think that's the right way to ask it. Um I come up with this new phrase I just love so much that you only want to love food that loves you back. That you're in a relationship with food. I think 30% of the mental health problems in America are related to our terrible diet. Uh that you are what you eat in large part. And if you're eating I call them the weapons of mass destruction, highly processed, pesticide-sprayed, high-glycemic, low-fiber food-like substances stored in plastic containers, you're not going to be healthy. You poison your gut. You're poisoning your brain. And I published three studies now. The last one on 35,000 scans, one of the world's largest imaging studies. Tom, you will not believe this. There was a linear correlation on virtually every area of the brain as people's weight went up, the activity and blood flow in their brain went down. I believe it, unfortunately. Healthy weight, overweight, obese, morbidly obese in a linear fashion. When I saw those graphs, when I was doing the research, I was just like horrified. And I come from a family of fat people. Uh my dad used to hate when I'd say that. But I have a brother that's 150 lb overweight. And a sister the same thing. And I know if I just ate everything that looked good to me, I would be too. And now I'm not having that, especially because I don't want a small brain. Right. Right? And And people go, "Oh, that's fat-shaming." And I feel terrible about it cuz 72% of the country is overweight. Think about that. I mean, how insane is that? 42% of people are obese. The pandemic made it worse. We should be worried about that because the extra fat on your body produces inflammatory cytokines. And we know inflammation's a major cause of depression and dementia. The fat on your body takes healthy testosterone, which we need, which men and women need, and it turns it into unhealthy, cancer-promoting forms of estrogen. That's a bad thing. Fat stores toxins. We need to get serious about being at a healthy weight with healthy food. Mhm. Um and so diet is critical, exercise, supplementation I think is really important. They did study 97% of the population um low on omega-3 fatty acids. And so finding ways to supplement. That 80% of us are deficient in vitamin D. In a pandemic, that's not okay. Nope. Right? Cuz people with low vitamin D actually die more if they get COVID-19. So Yeah, going back to what you're saying about fat shaming so first of all, I come from a morbidly obese family as well, and I've often said that you when you love something, you don't hate on it, look down on it. Like I don't think less of people because they're obese. Uh but going back to the idea of facing reality at the same time I know that I will lose them earlier than I absolutely have to if they continue to live that lifestyle. And so getting people, especially now in a pandemic, to just face that it isn't fat shaming to say you're more likely to survive this disease that's ravaging, you know, the entire human population if you are living a healthy lifestyle, get your weight under control, exercise, eat right, work out, all of that stuff. Um because there's nothing worse than trying to solve a problem when you ignore the thing that's actually causing it. Like you're just at that point, it's really about symptom mitigation versus figuring out what's really going on. Um do you think that this So going back to weight specifically to pick up on that for a second because I learned a long time ago as a psychiatrist, if you don't admit you have a problem, you can't solve it. Dude, that is so true. Until I finally admitted to my wife that I was anxious, I I couldn't make progress. And finally, I just was like, "Fuck, I have to tell her." And it really did not make me feel good about myself because, you know, there is something about the way that she would look at me like I could do anything, and that felt so good. And to finally be like, "Yo, I'm over here. I'm struggling, homie." Like, this is really gnarly. And of course, it wasn't the turn off that I feared it was going to be, and it only brought us closer together. But that was really hard to admit. But then once I could say it out loud to the person that was the only person I really cared about impressing, then it was like, "Okay, now I can actually deal with this." Because when you become more real, you become more relatable. And there's so many guys don't understand this, that they deny that they have a problem because they want to be perceived as the person who has it all together, but then nobody can relate to you. Um you know, that's one of the reasons I became really vulnerable in the book, and I haven't gotten any haters. I mean, I have plenty of haters, don't get me wrong. But from writing from on that stand. Um but I remember when I did the big NFL study, at the time when the NFL was sort of lying they had a problem, and my letter to the commissioner, "If you don't admit you have a problem, you can't solve it, and it's going to get worse." And And that came from marriages where especially the guy wouldn't admit that they were struggling, and it ended up falling apart. Yeah. I can certainly understand that. So, okay, we admit that we have a problem, whether it's about weight or whatever. Um how do we begin to unwind this stuff? That's really I think the the important thing. Is it Does it just come down to Look, there are cuz you you write in the book and I wrote them down so I can read them out if we need to, but um there just Are there just certain things you just have to do and you just you have to do them and until you do them like this is never going to change. Well, then that's the bad habit chapter. You know, I have the bad habit dragons. There's the overeater bad habit dragon. The worst of all the dragons is the oblivious dragon. Is that an intentional like you're intentionally being oblivious or people that really just don't know? You just don't know and you haven't taken the time. You go I'm fat because everybody in my family's fat. It's like, "No, I have a lot of fat people in my family and I'm not because I don't get into behaviors making it likely to be so." And so it's about being intentional, reading the labels of the food you eat, of the products you put on your body. It's asking yourself this one question. Is this good for my brain or bad for it? Right? I mean, ultimately in all of my books I've tried to create brain envy. I want people to love their brains. Um and is this good for my brain or bad for it? reason that brain envy works just to be clear is because you can improve your brain. How exciting is that? And I've proven that over and over and NFL players and soldiers and police officers that you're not stuck. And intuitively people should know that, right? If I don't sleep tonight, I'm not going to think well tomorrow, but no one's thinking about the physical functioning of their brain. So I'm in Justin Bieber's um new docu-series Seasons. And he came out I've been his doctor for a long time. And like many celebrities, they do what I'd say sometimes. Show up sometimes. But then, cuz he went through a really hard time, he came into my office and he said, "I get it. My brain is an organ like my heart is an organ. If you told me I had heart problems, I'd do everything you say. I'm going to do everything you say." And he got radically better. And you got to love it. And And we have to stop this whole mental illness thing. I hate it. Cuz it's not mental illness, it's brain health. Right. Get your brain right and your mood is better. You're happier. You're more focused. You make less bad decisions, which will decrease your anxiety. Speaking of anxiety, so you said earlier that you think 30% of mental health, brain health problems are tied to um diet. In my N of 1 experience, I think it's even higher than that. So, when I think about okay, suffering from profound anxiety, I'm trying all the mental tricks and there's no doubt they helped. I'm very, very beneficial. But I just couldn't I felt like I was learning to better cope with the symptoms, but I wasn't eliminating the symptoms. And so, I was like, "What is going on?" And then of course, because of what my wife went through from a health perspective, become aware of the gut, start really thinking about what I'm eating and that there are going to be things that might be messing me up that I just would never have guessed. Um long-time listeners of my show will grow tired of hearing the following statement, but at the beginning of COVID, I went through something really weird that I'd never experienced before. I was getting super tired all the time, brain fog, just like almost losing my zest for life. and I was like this is really bizarre. And I thought okay, well what would you tell somebody if they came and describe those symptoms? And I was like no matter what I would tell them it's something that you're eating because that's just so true in terms of the way if your body's being affected your brain's being affected it's almost certainly something you're eating. And I'm like but my diet so healthy like how could this possibly be? And I was like just eliminate whatever you're eating a lot of and see what happens. And I'm like what am I eating a lot of? And I was like pecans? And so I cut out pecans 48 hours later I was back in business. I was like how the hell is it possible that pecans of all the And they were like raw they weren't even like roasted. I mean these were like the all but just plucked off a tree. So I was I anyway I couldn't fathom that that was it but it was it. And then that got me thinking wait a second could my anxiety be tied to something I'm eating? And so then I started cutting out anything processed cuz dude I love my zero calorie drinks love them in a way I can't even begin to tell you but of course that comes with a lot of chemicals that I've never even heard of and I've heard of a lot of chemicals. And in cutting all of that out the what my anxiety feels like to me now I might still have a thought about something's going to go wrong in the future. And that will trigger that that feeling of like ooh something bad is coming. But it never escalates. Food is so important. And when I put my patients on elimination diet so we basically eliminate the bad things. They get so much better. And the nutritionists that work with us have more success stories than the psychiatrists. And they used to irritate me. Food matters. What you put in your mouth your microbiome matters. We have these hundred trillion bugs in our gut. And what we feed them, you know, helps to grow the ones that make you happy or they help to grow the ones that make you angry and sad. Um it's just so important. And our biggest blog last year, uh I wrote one called I told you so. And when I And I started with when I dated Tana, she told me I will never tell you I told you so. She lied. It's like her favorite thing to say. And then I said, "But the American Cancer Society just came out and said you shouldn't drink." Why? It increases your risk of seven different kinds of cancer, not to mention it prematurely ages your were given that advice, I was like, "Uh like this one just doesn't land for me. It just doesn't seem possible that it would be essentially a health food. What about weed?" Marijuana is uh in that very in It's in. I published a study on a thousand marijuana users. Every area of their brain is lower in activity. Now, does help some people? Like when my father and wife What does it actually help with? It helps increase appetite. For some people, it can actually decrease seizure frequency. It suppresses activity in the brain. I I'm very worried because as the perception of dangerousness of a drug goes down, its use goes up, especially in teenagers. And if you're smoking or eating edibles as a teenager, you've just increased your risk of anxiety, depression, and suicide in your 20s. Oof. So, that It's not good. And I, you know, all child psychiatrists, I'm also a child psychiatrist, have the experience of all of the sudden a 16-year-old is not acting right. And we test them and they end up positive for marijuana. That it's not innocuous. And and I think that's the important thing. Now, is it worse than alcohol? Well, actually, I published a study on 62,000. This is the world's largest imaging study. 62,000 scans on how the brain ages. And then we looked at what accelerated aging. Schizophrenia was the worst. Your brain looked 10 years older than people who didn't have schizophrenia. The second worst, and it was a surprise for me, was marijuana. Your brain Worse than alcohol? Worse than alcohol, worse than smoking. What? I am startled by that. Yeah, I was too. And it's like it's the data. And I have no dog in the fight. Right? If you smoke, if you don't smoke, you're just actually more likely to see me if you do. Is it lowering blood flow? Like what's the mechanism? flow to brain. Wow. I thought for sure you were going to say alcohol was the worst. Yeah. But neither of them are good. Man, that's crazy. Yeah. So Food can make you happy. So can drugs. That's the That's the problem. Like when I think about all the the insults that people can do to their brain, how important the brain is for the mind, and that your mind, if you don't have your mind under control, your life Your life will be determined by how well you control your mind. Like I just because ultimately, all we are is a string of emotions. Things either make you feel good, bad, or indifferent. And when you spend a lot of time feeling bad, life sucks. When you spend a lot of time feeling good, life is great. And it doesn't matter if you have all the money in the world, if you feel bad, life sucks. Doesn't matter if you're broke as the day is long, if you feel good, life is great. So but the number of things that insult our brain from just concussive trauma from certain types of contact sports to sitting around to weed, alcohol, a lot of things that are fun. Over prescription of drugs, oh my god. Gadget screen time, like yeah, negative thoughts. Like it is bananas and the amount of time that people have to put into getting it right. So we have a high school course called Brain Thrive by 25. And I I love this course. And we play game with them called who has more fun. The kid with the good brain or the kid with the bad brain? Who gets the girl and gets to keep her because he doesn't act like an ass? The kid with the good brain or the kid with the bad brain? Who gets into college? Who gets the job they want? Who has the most consistent positive behavior? It's the person with the good brain. This is not about not having fun. It's about having fun with all of you intact. Yeah, and over a prolonged period of time. Over a prolonged period of time. Dr. Amen, thank you so much for coming on. Dude, I always love your books and time with you. Where can people connect with you and ensure that they have the good brain over a long period of time? Well, they find us at amenclinics.com. So amen like the last word in a prayer, clinics.com. They can follow me on Facebook or Instagram. Instagram it's @doc_amen. We're doing a whole cool series called Scan My Brain. Done some just wonderful influencers. It's super fun and um we want to create a revolution in brain health. Want to end mental illness, end that whole discussion and really start talking with a better brain always comes a better life. I love it. I love it and thank you for everything that you do. Guys, if you haven't already followed him on every conceivable place, do. Read his books, they are transformative. And speaking of things that are transformative, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Thank you guys so much for watching and being a part of this community. If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. You're going to get weekly videos on building a growth mindset, cultivating grit, and unlocking your full potential.