The Secret to Ending Mental Illness | Dr. Daniel Amen on Health Theory

So, your body responds to every single thought you have. And your brain responds. And are they helping you or are they hurting you? And you can learn to change your body often by changing where you let your mind go. Everybody, welcome to Health Theory. Today's guest is Dr. Daniel Amen. Known as America's most popular psychiatrist, he's double board certified and has a slew of New York Times best-selling books to his name. He's scanned over 100,000 brains in his career and his research into brain imaging ranked number 19 out of 100 science stories in 2015. His incredible public television programs on the brain and brain health have aired more than 80,000 times and through his nationwide string of health clinics, his team sees over 4,000 patients every month. This is a very serious list of bonafides, my friend. And welcome back, by the way, this is round two. It is good to have you back. Well, I'm grateful to be with you again. So, with that insane string of interactions with the brain, how's that given you a new way to think about mental health? How should we reframe it? What What has that taught you? So, I have a new book coming out called The End of Mental Illness and I realized that that's going to get me into all sorts of trouble. I love it. But after looking at the brain I've come to realize these are not mental illnesses at all. That they're brain health issues that steal your mind. And when you really unpack this one idea, it just changes everything. People begin to see their problems as medical and not moral, it decreases shame and guilt, it increases compliance, it increases compassion and forgiveness because we begin to see bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, or major depression like heart disease, and no one is shamed for it even though all of them have lifestyle contributions. you think that the stigma came from? Like why cuz dude, it was not long ago where mental health issues was really really stigmatized. I would say it's less now. I for years struggled with anxiety and didn't even want to tell my wife cuz I thought she would think less of me. Where do you think that all comes from? I I think it comes from the fact that we don't think of these as brain health challenges. Um mental illness places the emphasis on your mind, which is vague and hard to define. The mind is created by the brain. And when your brain works right, you work right. But when your brain is troubled for whatever reason, you have trouble in your life. You're more likely to be anxious, you're more likely to be depressed, you're more likely to have cognitive problems or get the diagnosis of ADD. And if we don't ever look at the brain, then how do we care about it? Think about this. What other medical specialty virtually never looks at the organ they treat? And because we don't look at the brain on a routine basis like we look at your heart or your prostate or your breast, nobody cares about their brain, really. And And when when you don't look at the brain, you come up with all sorts of interesting theories about why people act the way they do, but you don't have any information on the actual biology. And so, for someone who struggles with anxiety, what we learned, it's clearly not one thing. Your brain could work too hard, and that's why you're anxious cuz you can't settle it down, or it doesn't work hard enough, so it can't suppress the anxious feelings. Or maybe there's a toxin or trauma, and most people with anxiety, they go to a therapist, and they talk about what's going on. And so, they're working really on the software of the issue, but what if there's a hardware concern? I want to talk about the biology. I think this is really interesting, and would I think you would self-identify as religious, yes? You go to church, you talk about church a lot. Um, how do you think about sort of religion and that one-to-one tie between the the physicality of the brain and the mind? Um, there doesn't seem to be a conflict for you where there is for a lot of people. Yeah, no, not at all for me. To think all of this evolved out of random chance, I think actually takes more faith than believing in creative design. I've actually studied prayer and the impact of prayer on the brain. It's really interesting. Tell me more. Go deep. What do you mean by that? What is the impact? So, we studied it in different states. So, conversation Like different brainwave states or different like things you do? the brain in different prayer states. So, for example, I pray for you. Um, it's very intentional, very purposeful. Versus someone who does prophecy, which is one of the gifts in both the New Testament and the Old Testament, or speaking in tongues, which is a gift in the book of Acts in the New Testament. It's really interesting cuz speaking in tongues is basically you're channeling the Holy Spirit. And I've actually scanned channelers. I mean, people who channel the dead, like the Long Island Medium and other people. And there's research on channelers because, you know, in the United States we go, "Oh, no, that's not real." But in places like Brazil, half the population believes in it and engages in those kinds of spiritual disciplines. And so, the theory was when you speak in tongues or when you channel, you have to drop the function in your brain. So, you have to sort of drop the noise in your brain to become a vessel for the channel. And So, give me give me some of the brain waves. So, full disclosure, I'm not religious at all and I definitely will count myself in sort of the deeply skeptical, but I accept that there are things I do not understand. But could you look at a brain scan and know, "Ah, this person's in a prayer state or a meditative state?" Like are there certain things that you look for? Well, I you have to compare it. So, for example, for the prayer study we did both SPECT, which looks at blood flow and activity, and we also did quantitative EEG, which looks at the electrical activity in the brain. So, if you think of alpha states or theta states, theta states being more meditative state. Although, meditation fooled us. You sort of think, "Oh, when you meditate, your brain would get less activity." That's true in your emotional brain, but in your thoughtful brain, it fires up. It actually increases something called gamma rays, which are super fast waves. And so, you have to sort of know where in the brain you're looking. So, when we we say brain waves, what we're looking at is how busy is your brain. And we measure it in something called waves per second or cycles per second. And 0 to 2 cycles per second is called delta waves. And it's what happens when we sleep. Um 3 to 7 are theta waves, sort of daydreaming. People with ADD have higher levels of theta waves. So, they're often in sort of a daydreaming state. Alpha waves, 8 to 12 cycles per second, and that people often train that to become in a more meditative focused state. So, I love hypnosis, and I've done it ever since I was a medical student with my patients. And so, we almost think we try to get them into an alpha state. And then beta is 13 to 18, and high beta is above 18, and gamma is above 40. And so, we can actually train your brain maybe you need less theta, so you can concentrate better not be so distracted, or maybe we need to train up alpha. And it's very exciting for me because I first learned this idea in medical school, first do no harm. Use the least toxic, most effective treatment. So, I'd much rather do something like neurofeedback for you than just start you willy-nilly on medication. But unfortunately, that's what's happening in our society. 85% of psychiatric drugs are prescribed by non-psychiatric physicians in 10-minute office visits. And and I'm not opposed to them. I use them when nothing else is working, but it's not the first thing I think about. And in the end of mental illness, there's a whole chapter on mind medication versus nutraceuticals. And there's actually a table on which supplements have A level scientific evidence for things like insomnia, anxiety, depression, ADHD, addiction, um And and I'm pretty excited about that. All right, let's go back to the neurofeedback and meditation prayer. Like how do we train ourselves to be in a different state? So, I do a lot of creative writing and there's just a certain state that I think is an alpha wave state, but reading your breakdown in the books, it may be more of a theta state. Um so, I'll meditate for 15 to 20 minutes. I I am focused entirely on uh diaphragmatic breathing. So, um I am trying to what I think of as lower the background radiation. So, all of my stress, all of my anxiety, I can get it to zero and and unless there's something really weird going on in my life, I can get it to zero pretty fast. Like I said, 15 to 20 minutes. Um start diaphragm breathing, sort of all the worries and thoughts begin to go away, but you've got this um neurofeedback that people are using. You referred to it as a game on a computer. What are people doing? How are they getting the neurofeedback? Do you need that? Can you get there through prayer meditation? Like how do how do we begin to shift gears? Well, one of the reasons I really like neurofeedback is when people meditate, the only feedback they're getting is from themselves. And so, when you have instruments that can actually measure it, you have a better sense. And then, once we know it, and we have our goal, whatever that goal is, more creativity, more focus, less anxiety, irritability, then we can specifically set those training protocols and give you feedback to know where you are. Um and that's actually how I came to imaging was through um a treatment technique called biofeedback. So, biofeedback we measure things like hand temperature, heart rate, uh sweat gland activity, muscle tension, breathing, brain waves, and so we know your baseline and then we teach you, so for example, to warm your hands. And if I teach you to warm your hands with your brain, Mhm. it's an automatic relaxation response. And so, it triggers something called a parasympathetic response. So, if you think of fight or flight is a sympathetic response, well, it's the opposite of that. And so, well, how do you teach someone to warm their hands? So, first you put a little thermistor on their pinky and go, "So, what's your hand temperature?" And then, let's get hand-warming images and let's see which one works for you. And so, we'll write down 10 images that you might think would work for you and then we'll spend a couple of minutes on each image and then, you know, over an hour you have a pretty good sense when if you can do it. Children do it without any problem because they don't believe they can't. That is super interesting. But, um so it could be holding a puppy or putting your hands in front of a fire or holding a cup of decaf coffee or And he starts warming people's hands up. Yeah. And it when you warm your hand, it sends a signal to the rest of your body to calm down. Because when you get stressed, your hands get cold and they get sweaty. So, when I was a young psychiatrist, I used to do a word association test with my patients and I would talk about well, think of a pencil. And nothing would happen with their hand temperature. Or think of your mother. And for me, when I think of my mother, my hands get warmer because she's this really good concept in my head. But as soon as you go, think of your father, my hands get cold because we had a conflicted relationship. I mean, he's actually one of my best friends now, but it took a long time to get there. So, your body responds to every single thought you have. And your brain responds. And are they helping you or are they hurting you? And you can learn to change your body often by changing where you let your mind go. I want to go back to hypnotism. So, is there an element of that in this? Um and I I think the first question we have to answer is, why is hypnotism powerful? Well, it helps you tap into a natural state. Are you Are you um shutting a part of your brain down? No, actually we're activating. So, that was like with like with meditation, you know, it sort of fooled us. Yes, it calms your emotional brain, but it activates your cortical brain, the most evolved human thoughtful part of the brain. Um hypnosis in the studies that have done tends to activate the happy side of the brain, which is the left front in people who are right-handed. And we're not talking about Las Vegas and making people cluck like chickens and all of that. We are in hypnotic states all the time. So, if I drove to Vegas and that 5-hour drive seemed like it went by in two. It's called highway hypnosis, where time gets distorted. I don't know if you've ever like drove through a city and you're like, "I don't remember driving through the city." But, you did, and you were obviously fully awake and competent and so on. So, it's a hypnotic state. So, I'm just directing people into a natural state because they're more open, not more gullible, cuz you can't make people do things they wouldn't do. But, I have found it helpful for sleep. It's helpful for pain. It's helpful for anxiety. And, it just feels so good, which is I think cuz I had a lot of anxiety when I was young. I I think I gravitated toward these things cuz I teach my patients cuz they also help me. Yeah. So, the idea of hypnosis making you open, what made me think of that is you were saying, "Okay, you can give people these images. They can actually begin to warm their hands." Uh it made me wonder if, okay, do we first have to train them to light up that part of the brain that you're calling the happy part, which I've never heard that reference before? Um so, is is that step one, teach them to light up the the part of their brain that makes them more receptive? So, some people are highly hypnotizable. Mhm. Um that when you put them in a trance, time gets distorted very quickly. And, almost everybody can be hypnotized, but for some people like me, it's training. Mhm. You need to do it not one time and think of it as magic, but do it over time. And, when you put yourself when you do the diaphragmatic breathing, which I'm a huge fan of, you're actually beginning to put yourself in a hypnotic meditative state. And, then you can solve problems. Um it's just your whole physiology changes. Do you practice like do you teach people how to do self-hypnosis? So if if a meditative state is hypnotic then I would say okay it's simply focusing on the breath returning sort of letting go of the thoughts coming back to the breath over and over and over. Um is that sort of the baseline entry into this state or are there um more typical things that you'll have somebody do like trying to warm their hands? Like what's the easiest gateway to this? And then how do people use it? So we have an um online program called BrainFitLife and there's actually six hypnosis audios I do for them as if they were in my office. Um so we begin to decrease the outside world by focusing. And then I'll have people focus on something above their eye level. And as I count to 20 I'm going to suggest to them their eyes are getting heavy and about 12 their eyes start to get heavy and I'll have them close their eyes. So we take their scattered attention to a spot close their eyes and then the attention gets focused inward. Okay, pause there. What's happening in the brain? What are you trying to do in that first step? What I'm trying to do is decrease the noise. And then I'm going to do diaphragmatic breathing for them or really initially deep breathing if I hadn't already taught them diaphragmatic breathing. And there's a specific rate. I don't know if you've ever played with this but 3 seconds in 6 seconds out because that rate has been found to trigger a parasympathetic response. Very interesting. But I'm just getting them focused on what's going on internally. Mhm. And then I'll have them roll their eyeballs up. I'll have them basically tense their muscles around their eyes. Roll it down and then we're going to do progressive relaxation. I'll have them imagine the relaxation spreading from the little tiny muscles in their eyes to their forehead to their scalp all the way down to the bottom of their feet. And then I'll do a deepening technique. May have them walk down a flight of stairs or something similar to that. And then we'll do guided imagery. I'll take them park, the beach, the mountains, you know, whatever we decide on ahead of time that is relaxing for them. Get them to see what's there, feel what's there, smell, taste the freshness in the air. And And then we do the work. I had a 16-year-old boy who had panic attacks. And I got him into a really nice calm hypnotic state. And then I had him remember the last time he had a panic attack. That's interesting. Why there? Exposure in a new Safe. So, one, we're relaxed. It's safe. And then in this safe meditative state, I would have had I want to you to imagine yourself getting younger and smaller, smaller and younger. And I want you to go to the first time you had a panic attack. And after a minute, he went back to when he was 4 years old. He had a steak stuck in his throat. He thought he was going to die. And someone did a Heimlich maneuver on him. And it was very traumatic for him. And he'd completely forgotten about it. And then And this doesn't happen often. His mother was in the room, his 16-year-old boy. And I'm like, "Well, is there anything before this?" Cuz that was one of the sensitizing events. He actually went back to a time when he couldn't see, when it was dark, when he was wet, and something was choking him. And his mother knew exactly what happened. He actually went back to his birth and was born with the cord wrapped around his neck. Do you think that that he's remembering a story because doesn't the brain or reorganize so much that that those memories just they're not actually there anymore? See, I actually think we carry memories from other people. Uh and then genetically, in the book you talk about how you can train a mouse to be afraid of a cherry blossom tree for three generations, which is crazy. Is that what you mean or you talking about something else? Yeah. My grandfather, for example, when he was 19, he came from the Middle East, came to Los Angeles. His brother, who was a bad driver, borrowed his sister's car and was killed in a train accident. And he's 19. My grandfather never drove because that anxiety got solidified in his brain. And that happened before he was involved in making my father. And so, the anxiety I carry may not just be mine. That it may actually come from the experiences of generations. And that I think a lot of it didn't start with me. Um and so, we know, for example, children of Holocaust survivors have a higher incidence of PTSD. 30% of children of soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan who had PTSD, 30% of their children had PTSD. They call it secondary PTSD. And so, I think of these as ancestral dragons. It's like, "Well, what's the issue?" That actually may not be your issue. And so, I think it's really important for you to know about your mom and your grandma and your grandfather on her side and your dad and their ancestors because it's not just the genes we inherit, it's the scratches on them that turn on or off those genes that make anxiety, depression much more common in future generations. So, for example, The End of Mental Illness is dedicated to my two nieces, Amalie and Alyse. They're 10 and 15 and they have mental illness throughout their whole family. Um, family history of suicides, multiple suicides, anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, addiction, borderline personality, criminal behavior. But, genes only load the gun. It's what happens to us that pulls the trigger. And unfortunately, they were raised in chaos with parents who suffered with depression, addiction, domestic violence. They had multiple moves. And so, the whole idea behind The End of Mental Illness is how do I end it in these girls and in their babies and grandbabies. And what you do is you put their body and their brain in a healing environment. So, we work on the actual physical functioning of their bodies. And Alyse, when I scanned her at 13, her brain looked terrible. And was that because her mom drank when she was pregnant? Was it because they lived in a mold-filled home? What? I don't know. But, repairing that is absolutely essential to her doing well in school, for her picking a good partner for her, and not continuing What are the the sort of baseline things we do? You talk about diet in the book. Not being addicted to Flaming Cheetos anymore. What are What are some of the the things that you did to help them out? So, for Alyse, I mean, first it starts with feeding them right. Um and then supplementation, multiple vitamin, fish oil, optimize her vitamin D level, put gave her a brain boost that has seven different things to optimize brain function. Um Put her in a hyperbaric chamber, that made a big difference for her. Um Hyperbaric oxygen is really intriguing. For people that don't know what it is, walk them through what it does and why it's useful. So, I've published a number of studies on it and probably have a thousand patients with scans before and after. And the reason's like, why do I care? I'm a psychiatrist. Why do I want to put you in a hyperbaric chamber that puts you under pressure with increased oxygen? Because it increases blood flow to the brain. Well, for Alize, she had low blood flow. And so, she had about 40 dives, so about 40 hours in a hyperbaric chamber. I'm in a new docu-series with Justin Bieber and the hyperbaric chamber is all over the docu-series about him getting zipped in and zipped out because when I scanned him initially, he had really low blood flow to his brain. And he feels less anxious because he has better blood flow to his brain. And so, that was one of the cornerstones for Alize. And then, I teach her anomalies, the little one, not to believe every stupid thing they think. This is really important. So, we talk about hardware and software. Optimize the physical functioning of your brain and you do it by going after all the risk factors, blood flow being one of them. But then, as you optimize the physical functioning, she's got a lot of bad programming because she grew up in chaos and chaos gives you sort of a hyperactive emotional brain and your brain automatically goes to the dark place. And so every morning um we say today's going to be a great day. Why? Cuz then your unconscious mind will find well why is today going to be a great day? I got to hang out with you. So that makes me happy. At the end of the day, we always talk about well what went well today. It's training your mind but also setting up your dreams to be more positive and if your dreams are more positive, you'll be in deeper REM state which is a more healing state for your dreams. That's so simple but really really powerful. This is something man as you're talking is like I know some of this stuff and even that one like setting that intention before I go to bed would be better than what I'm doing now which is just sort of tumbling into bed and going to sleep. And it's so cool because you're probably like me and you're just busy. You have a lot to do and you want to accomplish a lot and so my days just go so fast. And when I close my eyes and go what what well today, I begin to remember these phenomenal touch points that I just sort of breezed over. And I love that and then I have a little tiny habit um I worked with Professor BJ Fogg for 6 months on creating tiny habits for brain health and the mother tiny habit is before you do anything, before you say anything, you just ask yourself is this good for my brain or bad for it. And if I love myself which I do, I'm going to make better decisions. So is this good for my brain or bad for it? If you can answer that question with information and love, your brain's going to be better. Yeah, it's one of those it's really simple and not a lot of people do it. Give me some more on the tiny habits. You pepper them throughout the book, but uh what are some other tiny habits that either you use or you've got your nieces using? Um so if the first one is just is this good for my brain or not? What are some others? Whenever you feel sad, mad, nervous, or out of control, write down what you're thinking. And then ask yourself if it's true. And there's a whole process in the book uh to not believe every stupid thing you think. And then when you go to say something to your wife or at work, does it fit? There's an exercise actually in all of my books basically called the one-page miracle. On one piece of paper, write down what you want. Your relationships, your work, your money, your physical, emotional, spiritual health. What do you want? I think everything starts with what do you want? And then does your behavior get you what you want? So for example, with my wife, I want a kind, caring, loving, supportive, passionate relationship. I always want that. I don't always feel like that. Sometimes I'll get a rude thought in my head. I'm having a bad day or she didn't do she not great about closing cabinet doors. And um and I've come to believe I would so much rather have her in this house with the cabinet door open than have her not there. So I like let it go because being a jerk doesn't fit the goal I have for my marriage. But it starts with telling your frontal lobe, so that's the front third of your brain, largest in humans than any other animal by far. This is what makes us human, but you have to tell it what you want. So, over time you match your behavior to get what you want. So, it starts with that. And then, does it fit? I love that idea of telling your brain what you want, especially if I'm talking to an entrepreneur. They don't know what they want. So, they have like a vague idea, but they don't really know the specifics of what they want. And my thing is, if you want to get somewhere, if you're really trying to accomplish something, the amount of hard work, of practice, of learning that you're going to have to do is really pretty extraordinary. But, if you're not aiming that at the right thing, then you're never going to make progress. And so, everything you're trying to accomplish in your life has to be so clear that it boils down to something that you can do right now today. Do you have a process for people for that? Is it as simple as just writing it down? Like, how do you walk people through the idea of getting that level of clarity in their life? So, I have virtually all of my patients start with the one-page miracle. On one piece of paper. And so, as we do therapy over time, it's does it fit? You know, does the food you're eating, does the thoughts you have, do your relationships fit ultimately your purpose? And all good businesses have plans. They have business plans, and they have goals, and they have quarterly priorities, and so on. But, very few people ever do that for themselves. And when I first did it in 1986, I think it just helped me so much clarify, because, you know, Amen Clinics and BrainMD are two companies. Um I didn't even imagine it back then. But, it's consistent effort over a long period of time. You end up doing something special. You've written so many books on the topic, given so many talks, and the shows you've done on PBS. I mean, it This is a really big topic. How do you help people that feel overwhelmed, that don't know where to start? They don't know how to keep going. How do you give them that entry point? Well, that's why I write. You know, and so why we have eight clinics. It's we want to coach them through it. And people go, "I can't afford to come to the clinic." Well, get a book. You can get it at the library. Um there's so much free things online cuz our goal, if we're really going to end mental illness, the end of mental illness begins with a revolution in brain health. I talk about this concept. If I was an evil ruler, how would I create mental illness in America? We are creating it in America by the food we serve, by the news that is everywhere, sort of the toxic pit you against me news cycles, social media, um letting kids hit soccer balls with their head, having Girl Scouts, Girl Scouts, selling poison. Uh You're talking about cookies, I assume. Cookies, yeah. And last year alone, nicotine use among teenagers went up 36%. Wow. So, Jewel is an evil ruler strategy. It's yeah. I mean, they have bubble gum flavored vaping devices. That's directed at children. Hello. Um we need to be more thoughtful. Talk to me more about toxins. So, definitely, obviously, tobacco, marijuana, um alcohol. Like, those are ones that I think most people, although I love what you say, alcohol is not a health food. It's not. Uh I think that one may need to be said more, but there's someone. I don't think anybody thinks smoking is good for them. But what are some of the things that are problematic that we might not be aware of like firefighters? That was one because of the flame retardant in the clothing that I I've only recently heard people start talking about. What are some toxins that people are getting on a daily basis that they might not realize is a toxin? Well, pesticides, for example, virtually all the corn is raised with pesticides. Virtually all the soybeans are raised with pesticides. And why don't you want food raised with pesticides? Because you ingest the pesticide and they begin to damage your microbiome. So I don't know if you had a lot of antibiotics when you were young. The kids who had a lot of antibiotics when they're young, they're anxious because it damages their microbiome. What antibiotics kill? Bugs. And so you have these 100 trillion bugs in your gut. If you're damaging them, well, we've seen that goes with anxiety. One of the toxins people don't know about, but it's clearly in the medical literature, is anesthesia. Children who have anesthesia have a higher incidence of learning disabilities and ADD. And adults who have anesthesia, especially around heart procedures, have a higher incidence of dementia. I mean, who thinks about that? It's like I need surgery, I'll just get surgery. Now, often you need to get the surgery, but then you need to rehabilitate your brain as if you played in the NFL. Not for everybody, but for some people. Mold exposure. So, you and I both know Dave Asprey. Dave got scanned about 14 years ago. His brain looked like crap. And he found he was living in a mold-filled home. And 12 years later, his brain's much better because, I mean, I think he's basically dedicated his life to creating brain health in other people. And so if we're going to do a quick rundown of what those things are that they would do to heal and rehabilitate the brains. We've talked about some, so hyperbaric oxygen may be extreme, but certainly they can do that, get their diet right. Um sleep is going to be huge. Um ending any social social isolation that you have, connecting to people. Um what are some other Don't be fat. That is straight to the point. Don't be fat. Um I come from fat people. Oh, why is it a problem? I It actually would be 11 major risk factors that steal your mind. If you're overweight, you now have five risk factors. Wow. Um the fat on your body is not your friend. It stores toxins. So, that's one risk factor. It increases inflammation. That's another risk factor. I published two studies that show as your weight goes up, the blood flow to your brain goes down, which should scare the fat off anyone. That's three. And it takes healthy testosterone, belly fat, and it flips it. It transforms it into unhealthy, cancer-promoting forms of estrogen. That's four. And then being overweight is five. And when you're overweight, your blood sugar often goes up as well. And that's part of being overweight. So, it's just like when I first figured it out, I always carried like 20 extra pounds. Um I lost the weight cuz I'm not going to shrink my brain, right? I'm never going to do anything I know purposefully to hurt myself. Why? And and it's like, "Oh, you're too uptight." It's like, "No, it's cuz I love myself. Why would I ever do something to hurt me unless I was sort of an idiot?" Um and I know that sounds harsh, but now that you know, we need to be eating a way that's calorie smart and loaded with vegetables. There is a linear correlation to the number of fruits and vegetables you eat a day and your level of happiness. But the brain, you'll like this. The brain does what you allow it to do. And so whatever habit or whatever behavior you engage in, you're going to do again. And so bad habits, they get stuck in your brain just like good habits get stuck in your brain. So it just takes some retraining. So for example, when I sit down at a restaurant and they come always, you want alcohol, and they just drop bread on the table. So I'm like, no to the alcohol because if you drink alcohol before a meal, you're actually going to order more food. And you're more likely to order dessert. And no to the bread. Why? Because it's a simple carbohydrate that quickly turns in your mouth, it starts turning to sugar. And it boosts a chemical called serotonin in your brain, which makes you happy. But it drops your frontal lobes making you more likely to order more and dessert. And so as soon as the waiter comes, I'm like, no on the alcohol, take the bread away. And now it's just an automatic response where the first couple of months of it it was hard. My brain had to actually make new connections to say, here's a situation, say no. Yeah. Now that that is what what I call bright lines. So just knowing that in my life I either do this or I don't do that has been transformative for me. I know a lot of people struggle with that I I because they probably make too aggressive of a bright line in the beginning. But having rules, man, I think is is one thing that people really underutilize. And I know people don't want to um deny themselves or whatever. They feel like they deserve it. That's something that people that I love very much struggle with. They feel they should be able to eat whatever they want. Well, we're all the same. It's just Carey said it best. He said eating crappy food isn't a reward. It's a punishment. And I I thought, oh, he gets it. He gets it. But that is a mind state. Like I understand where that statement comes from and I certainly understand the physiological effects. But eating bad food is [ __ ] awesome. Like it feels so good. It is delicious. Like you said it increases my serotonin levels. I love it. Like to me, I have to really stop and think about longevity being important to me, um clarity of mind being important to me. And that's why like clarity, clarity, clarity. You have got to know what you want. If you don't know what you want in those moments, you're going to say yes to the things that are right here right now. habitual. Plus, when you get rid of those foods, an orange will explode with flavor. That's what it is. Cuz what you're doing is you're basically giving in to engineered food where these food companies have hired neuroscientists to get the perfect meltiness, crunchiness, aroma. And I'm like, I'm not giving They're It's an evil ruler strategy. And I know what's important to me. I have clarity. It's health. It's purpose. It's longevity. It's my relationships. They don't serve my goals. They hurt my goals. And I I just don't want to engage in things that hurt me. I just don't think that's a rational approach in a society that is just flipping killing us. What do you think the number one thing society does that is eroding health span right now? So, I working on a new project called your brain is always listening. It's about the dragons from the past that still breathe fire on your emotional brain. And there's a whole list of bad habit dragons. And the one that's killing us is the oblivious bad habit dragon. We're not reading food labels. We don't know what's in the products we put on our body. We're just not thinking about our brains and our bodies. But that's the whole point of the end of mental illness. It's brain, not mind. Your brain creates your mind. Get your brain right, your mind will be better. Where can people get the book? Where can they see the programs? All that good stuff. So, I have a new program on public television. It's my 14th special. Um it's called Change Your Brain, Heal Your Mind. And uh The End of Mental Illness will be out March 3rd. Um everywhere, I hope. Nice. Last question. In terms of ending mental illness, what is the number one change that people could make that would have the biggest impact? So, if you want to help other people, what I've learned is you have to do it first. You have to model it. You have to be authentic. And then you can be a change person. And it just starts with that one question that we talked about. Is this good for my brain or bad for it? So, if you start loving and caring for your brain, your mood will be better. Your focus will be better. Your anxiety will be less. Nice. All right, guys. The whole tie between the brain and the mind, I think he's right on the money. Reframing mental illness as a problem with an organ that you have and treating it like you would treat heart disease, I think is A the way to get rid of the stigma and then B the way to accurately treat it. You will see that he's got so much information about exactly how to do that. Dive in, read the books, they have been transformational for me. Watch the specials, they are incredible if you want to digest the information from the books in that way. Um I think it's very, very effective. 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. 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