Change Your Brain Every Day - Brain Health Revolution: How Two Women are Changing Their Lives and the World One Brain at a Time

Episode Date: June 30, 2025

In this powerful episode, Dr. Daniel Amen sits down with two inspiring brain health coaches whose personal journeys prove that healing the brain can transform your life. From inherited trauma and destructive choices to purpose, peace, and passion—they discovered how understanding the brain was the key to lasting change. Now these Amen University brain health coaches on a mission to help others move from emotional pain to resilience, and from scattered focus to extraordinary success. You’ll hear brain health strategies anyone can use, along with real stories of people who’ve overcome ADHD, depression, traumatic brain injuries, and more—and are now sharing the message of hope and healing around the world. 00:00 Intro 01:03 Sponsor 01:25 Barbara’s Story 05:32 Laura’s Story 10:56 Elite Brain Health Training 12:20 Why We Need a Revolution 14:25 Katie’s Brain Health Discovery 17:35 You Need to Care About Your Brain 19:14 The Aftermath of Tragedy 23:00 Different Expressions of the Same Lifestyle 26:03 The Amen Whole 4 Blueprint 28:44 Galileo’s Psychiatrist 30:55 Winning Over Skepticism 34:17 Creating Brain Health Leaders 36:04 The Younger Generation of  44:27 New Studies on Hope 45:55 Spreading the Message 54:46 First Steps for Aspiring Brain Health Leaders 1:06:39 Sponsor 1:07:22 Wrap Up   For more on becoming a voice in the Brain Health Revolution, visit www.amenuniversity.com  

It's a moral issue that affects everybody. I invited Barbara and Laura to just talk to us about some of the people who've gone through the program. One of our graduates now, her name's Katie. She was already struggling with ADHD, depression, anxiety, and binge eating, but she also had a traumatic brain injury that gave her something that she hadn't felt in a long time, and that was hope. We know today that people are sadder, they're sicker, they're unhappier than they've ever been. And despite the advancements in technology

and pharmaceutical advancements, they're getting pills and not skills. When I started looking at the brain in 1991, it changed everything. So many people tried to take me out professionally. You guys know the story of Brad Peterson? Every day you are making your brain better or you are making it worse. Stay with us to learn how you can change your brain for the better every day. Your brain matters. Amon Clinics helps people with brain scans

and targeted treatment across 11 cities. Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, DC, Miami, New York, Seattle, Scottsdale, Los Angeles, Orange County, California, and San Francisco. Learn more at aemclinics.com. Hey everybody, welcome to the Change Your Brain Everyday podcast. We have a different format today.

I invited two of my friends, Barbara Gustafson and Laura Pamales, and they are coaches on our elite brain training programs and today we want to talk about why you care about your brain. And one of the most important strategies to brain health, which is you have to get it, get the information, live it, and then you have to give it away. Because it is in the act of giving that you create your own support group, making it much more likely

you stay on our program forever. They call it our program, but it's like the program to get and keep your brain healthy for as long as possible. And Barbara, maybe you can introduce yourself. What I want to say about you, besides I adore you, is that you actually came to the clinic a number of years ago, and then you took our

brain health coaching certification course. So tell us about you. And then I'll have Laura introduce herself as well. Absolutely. So I can remember a moment in time. And it was about eight years ago. I was sitting at Cracker Barrel on Thanksgiving Day. And my dad handed me a tabloid paper.

And at first I was a little bit confused. And then I looked at the cover and it said, Ancestry.bomb. And I opened it up and there was a picture of his family. And in that article revealed the murder cover-up by my great-grandfather. And it also included the mental health story, my grandfather's suicide. And I think it was that moment I was shocked and then I was angry. And that angry actually became clarity because I knew in that moment that I wanted to

remove the shame of my family's history. I knew that there was nothing I can do about my past, but I could take care of my brain. And that's what led me to getting scanned. Because one of the things that ran in my family was Huntington's disease and other mental health issues. And so when I was able to see what was going on my brain, I was first relieved that I didn't have what I feared the greatest, but at the same time, it did reveal some things I needed to pay attention to. So I learned how to navigate the journey with my

dad because he was diagnosed with Huntington's, but I also learned how to take care of my own brain and find ways to regroup and give my brain the space that needed to heal, such as nourishing it with with the right foods, thinking much better thoughts and applying simple strategies that you gave me to help my brain stay calm or even through grief and through tough decisions. And so now I'm able to guide other people through that who their brain and stay resilient, even when life pulls them off course. I love that so much. Laura actually helped me in a very detailed way, completely revise and update our coaching courses,

our elite brain health certification course and our clinicians course. So we'll tell you about those as we go along. But Laura, tell us your story. Absolutely, well, first of all, thank you so much for having Barb and I on this show with you. We're incredibly excited to be here

and to spread the message. Actually, Barb was already on the scene when I joined the team and was able to come and take part in creating the Elite Brain Health Certification Program. But my journey to brain health actually started well to learning about brain health about four years ago when I found myself discovering I need to know how my brain works. Sometimes people find themselves wondering what's going on,

what's happening, how did I get here, where did I go wrong? What role does my family genetics play in this? And that's where I was at the time. I found your Ted Talk, Dr. Amon. I think it's the most watched Ted Talk. And it was like what you learned after, at that point, maybe like 180 scans, and now we're up to like 260, 260,000. But watching that really revolutionized my outlook on education, on learning, on mental

health, on the space that I was at in that moment. So that prompted me to actually get certified myself. So I got the brain health certification about four years ago, and I've been working on the Amon University team in the last almost two years now. As you mentioned, when I came on board, we were in the beginning stages of redesigning our elite brain health certification program. It's the most innovative program out there. There's nowhere else you will find this type

of forward thinking with our amazing instructors who two of them are on this call right now. So I feel incredibly honored to be on the call, but really my story came from, you know, a really troubled childhood. And Dr. Amen, I know you've worked with these kinds of cases over and over where we have these rebellious teenagers.

So that's me. I was the rebellious teenager. Everything was, I'm doing the opposite of. And then, you know, not understanding why, but really looking back, I just wanted to have fun. You know, I was a teenager who just wanted to have fun. And I thought my version of fun was going to parties and sneaking out and disobeying my parents

and, you know, experimenting with drugs, experimenting with alcohol. And I was really on a road to self destruction. And anyone who knows me who's watching this podcast, please in the comments, comment, Laura speaks facts because anyone who knew me and who's looking at me now is probably thinking what is going on? What a transformation.

And I'll tell you, when I go back to my hometown and visit, people say, wow, how, how, how are you successful? How did you get from here to here? And so when I look back, I see a girl who was struggling with, you know, trying to fit in, having fun, who really, you know, looking back I see that my four circles were just out of whack so looking back I see my prefrontal cortex was not done developing at 15 years old my social circle was horrible hanging out with the wrong people I'm 13 to 15 years old at this age spiritual circle was non-existent I had no relationship with God other than sometimes Easter sunrise service or

Christmas service and psychologically the ants were just running amok in my brain. And so when I came to my Amon University certification, I was at a place like what's wrong with me, but really when I learned in the program, I got to see my four circles just were not healthy. There was nothing wrong with me per se. It was just I wasn't taking care of the organ of all decision making. So I was making poor choices and speed up to the, you know, a little bit later I knew I was going to end up, you know, not alive anymore from the from the path I was going to either in jail drug addicted or an alcoholic That's where I was headed as a teen but you know, thank the Lord that I my prefrontal cortex got developed and through the

lifespan of From then until now I was able to learn how to take better care of the organ that makes all decision making. So that's kind of like a summary story of my origin and how I came on to then be here, you know, can you believe it? Be here to make, to help, you know, partner with you all here and creating an elite brain health certification. Who would have thought, right? Who would have thought the person who makes the worst of decisions is now teaching other people how to make better decisions and live happier, better lives through brain health?

So we developed the brain health, the elite brain health certification course, and the clinicians course, because I wanted to teach people what I knew at a deep level. And the difference between the coaching course and the clinicians course, the coaching course is for everybody. Get this information and we teach you how to teach it to others, either in small groups or in some cases big groups.

For the clinicians course, this is what I teach my doctors at Amon Clinics. when we have a new doctor, it's like, this is how we practice psychiatry. And if you're a mental health provider, the clinicians course is for you. But if you just want to bring this to your church, to your school, to your business, to your friends, that would be the course for you. And I want Barbara, it's why I invited Barbara and Laura to just talk to us about some of the people who've gone through the program.

And it really is a revolution. It really is a revolution. And I often say the end of mental illness will start when we create a revolution in brain health. Because most people never think about their brains. It's really crazy. I live in Newport Beach, California, where we have more plastic surgeons per square mile than almost anywhere in the world. And I often say we care more about our faces, our boobs, our bellies and our butts than we do our brain. Like how

insane is that? And the reason people don't care is you can't see it, right? You can see the wrinkles in your skin or the fat around your belly and you do something when you're unhappy with it. But nobody looks at their brain. Now I had the opportunity in 1991 to start doing the imaging study we do at Amon clinics called brain spec imaging. And when I looked at my own brain, it wasn't healthy. And even though I was the top neuroscience student in medical school, I'm a double board certified psychiatrist. I just really never thought about my own brain until I saw it. And I played football in high school. I had meningitis when I was a young soldier. I had bad habits, like I wasn't sleeping more than

four hours a night. And when I saw my brain and it wasn't healthy, I immediately got that was a bad thing. And I developed this term I call brain envy. Because I scanned my mom the week before I scanned myself and her brain was just perfect. And you know, I wanted her brain, brain envy. And that's it starts with that. That if you start to care, then you begin to treat it better. So Barbara, Laura, talk about how people find us. I mean, both of you talked about how you found us and I'm so grateful that you did. But do you have a story?

Yes, so a story that comes to mind, one of our graduates now, her name's Katie, and she is a natural health practitioner from a little town in New Zealand. And back in 2020, she was already struggling with ADHD, depression, anxiety, and binge eating, but she also had a traumatic brain injury in early 2020. So that just intensified everything. And her exact words to me, when she shared about this,

is she said it was like everything got radio activated. And what she meant by that was all the anxiety, depression, and overwhelm just lit up her brain all at once. And she said it was messy, overwhelming, and she just didn't know how to pull herself out of this. So during one of her therapy sessions, a psychologist told her, Katie, it's not you, it's your brain.

And she said that moment is what clicked for her and just opened a door. And she just started researching and she clicked for her and just opened a door. And she just started researching and she came across you, Dr. Amen, and she found the Brain Warrior's Way at our local library. And she just started reading it and doing everything it said. And she describes it that it wasn't an instant transformation, but it gave her something that she hadn't felt in a long time and that was hope. And so she started taking these little steps and eventually she rolled in the brain health certification. I remember having several conversations with her during her healing

process and she was saying, I don't think it's the right time. I don't think it's the right time, but it got to a point where she said, I am ready. And I've had the privilege of watching Katie put in work consistently and wholeheartedly. And with her doctor's support, she was able to wean off her medications and then rebuild parts of her life that had fallen apart. And she began immediately helping others. And since then, she has grown her wellness practice.

She's published her first book about concussion healing, and then she's launched a brain health podcast. And every day she's sharing her story and your message and reaching those who are struggling with brain health concussions or caring for someone who is. And so if you think about, you know, from her working with children with ADHD to adults healing with trauma, grief and concussion, she's sharing strategies to create real lasting results. And her biggest takeaway when I was talking to her about this is your brain can heal. And I feel like Katie's living proof that even when healing feels out of reach,

it's still possible. Love that so much. Laura, do you have a story you wanna share? Yeah, absolutely. And I think you framed it so wonderfully, starting with you have to care about it. And that just really sums up our brain health community here at Aiman University. We have a community of people who care about their brain, their family's brain, and the brains of their community across schools, churches, businesses, jails, everywhere. And so, you know, a lot of our certified people,

they start with a personal story. I think that's so important for change to happen and for people to even want to care about other people changing. And so a lot of our certified coaches and clinicians, they have their own personal story that drew them to the revolution and that keeps them fired up because every time that things get hard, they think about their personal story and they remember their why, right Barbara? Just like you mentioned the story about the newspaper. Like this is your why. We're out here, we're changing our brain, we're changing our generation,

we're changing the generation of the lives that are coming after us. And you know, we know today that people are sadder, they're sicker, they're unhappier than they've ever been. And despite the advancements in technology and pharmaceutical advancements, people are still not getting better. They're getting pills and not skills,

like Dr. Avin always says, right? And so, in alignment with that, I remember this story about one of our beloved mentors of our cohort program. Her name is Udi with Huntington Coaching out in Texas. She gave us permission to share. And she, you know, her story starts with her really pursuing educational attainment.

She liked mental health, she wanted to learn more, she wanted to help people, she had a heart for others. And like Katie, it just wasn't the right time, maybe in that moment. She just, you know, was finding herself like, oh, here's Dr. Amon um you know teachings and podcasts I love it and she's eating it up um and she was kind of in her master's degree kind of learning along and just kind of pushing off the certification like I'm gonna do this after my master's I'm gonna do this after this

and so she's moving along towards her goal but then one day she gets the call that you never want to get. And it's a call from her family member that her sweet, sweet nephew, Arturo Martinez, has just lost his life by suicide. If you know, Udi, you know she loves her nieces and nephews. Everything she does is about them and now she's on the other line of the receiving end of someone telling her that her sweet nephew is no longer with them. So at that moment you can imagine her family's life is shattered. They will never be the same again with the loss of this 22 year old boy. And so she obviously flew out to the family, they're together and they start talking about his brain health and the signs

and what they could have done. And all the things that run through your mind. But when Uri was sharing this story with me, she said that in that moment, it propelled her to get certified immediately. She came to Aiman University, lots of phone calls, lots of, sign me up, got certified.

Now, she's making it a mission to join this revolution in a way where she can no longer stay quiet. Yuri is speaking Arturo's story like never before. We talked about how before, you know, changing lives and being part of the revolution was a want to, like one day I'm gonna do it. But then after this personal story, it became a must do. It became a mission.

It became a calling. And today our certified UD is out there. She's mentoring other people. She's in churches. She's in churches. She's in businesses. I talked to her a few days ago. She was doing a corporate event back to back. She's speaking on stages.

She is just spreading the message that what if mental illness is not that at all, but actually brain health. And so she's opening the eyes to the community and churches and her home and her family. And that's where the ripple effect of the revolution is taking place. That story is so near and dear to us

because we know UD personally and Katie as well. And there's so many more like that. There's just dozens and dozens of our certified professionals out there in all of the places that I just said. Churches, schools, jails, Barbara and I talked about that earlier, communities, corporate events, they're out there quietly doing a little ripple effect of the message. But I think the time is now where the voices are getting louder, the voices are being heard,

and we're really seeing a lot of momentum. And Dr. Amen, you can speak to this too, because I know you've been part of some initiatives too, whether globally, politically, personally, where we're seeing the need for this to rise even more like ever before. Well, the need is incredibly great, right? When 57% of teenage girls report being persistently sad, 32% have thought of killing themselves, 24% have planned to kill themselves, and 13% have tried to kill themselves. These are statistics unlike any point in human history and more medication Last year there are 340 million prescriptions written for antidepressants. That's not the answer

Obviously that is not the answer legalizing Marijuana as it becomes more legal people are not only more addicted, they're sadder, they're more anxious. That's not the answer. We believe the answer to these epidemic problems is actually not to see them as separate disorders, but as different expressions of the same unhealthy lifestyle that have exactly the same cure, which we internally refer to it as the brain warriors way. And I'm so excited.

I've been working, I think both of you know, I've been working with the White House to create a national brain health initiative. And my contact at the White House goes, we need a revolution. We need a revolution. And the revolution is these are not mental illnesses. They're brain health issues. Get your brain healthy and your mind will follow.

So I wonder, you know, at 13 or 14, Laura, or Barbara, when you're reading about your family, if you just reframe it to, oh, their brains were not as developed as they could be, or their brains had been hurt, or potentially poisoned with things like mercury or lead or mold. It just it gives you a completely different look at the struggles people have and a lot more empathy. It's like I wonder what was going on in their brain.

Nobody wants a mental illness. Nobody wants to be called mental, right? That shames you. Everybody wants a better brain. So that's the whole point. And it matters whether you're worried about getting dementia whether you're worried about getting dementia or you're struggling with depression

or brain fog or fatigue, or I'm working on a new program for children who've been sexually abused and exploited. And the numbers are just astronomical and it's horrifying. But you wanna have a different approach than therapy and medication. And I'm a fan of therapy, and sometimes I'm a fan of medication,

but not by themselves. Always in the context of our four circles. I'm going to actually start calling it the Eamonn Whole Four blueprint, right? Biological, psychological, social, spiritual. We need all four of those circles all the time. Yes. I love how you call it a blueprint. Because I know one of your favorite

tools you talk about is the one page miracle, where people go through those four circles and decide what they want. And for me, when I'm walking people through that, it's, I tell them it's like a blueprint. It's like a clarity blueprint. And it helps you really get a baseline of where you're at. But also, what are you truly longing for in your life in those areas? But I like how you reframed it as a whole circle blueprint. a whole circle blueprint. You have to tell your brain what you want. And the beautiful thing about signing up for one of these courses is you really get all the benefits of my education and experience

over the last 40 years, because we have people do the one page miracle in the courses, which is just on one piece of paper, write down what you want. Relationships, work, money, physical, emotional, spiritual health, what do you want? And then every day you just ask yourself, does my behavior get me what I want? And many of you have heard about the manifesting and the science of intention. And when you decide what you want with clarity, your brain's much more likely to manifest it, to make it happen.

But I'm shocked at the number of my patients who've actually never sat down and wrote out a blueprint for their lives. And these are things that we will help you do. You know, one question is. You know, this changes everything moment and our work when I started looking at the brain.

So on the podcast recently, we had Todd Herman. He wrote a book called The Alter Ego Effect. It's wonderful. I recommend it. I use it a lot with my patients. But when I was thinking of an alter ego for me, I came up with Galileo's psychiatrist. Why? Galileo's psychiatrist.

Galileo is someone who got himself into a lot of trouble, but he's really considered the father of modern science. And he developed the world at the time, the world's most powerful telescope. And he could look at Saturn and found that Saturn had moons. And he went against the prevailing wisdom of the time that everything revolved around the Earth and said, that's wrong. Everything revolves around the sun. And he got put on house arrest. I mean, he was shamed. and said, that's wrong. Everything revolves around the sun.

And he got put on house arrest. I mean, he was shamed. He was forced to recant, even though he really didn't. And so he looked, he saw what was already there. But by looking, it changed everything for him. When I started looking at the brain in 1991, it changed everything. It's like, oh, your brain is an organ just like your heart is an organ. And if you don't take care of it, you're going to be sadder.

You'll be more anxious. You're going to be more distracted. You're going to be more anxious, you're going to be more distracted, you're going to have bad temper, you're going to be more likely to be addicted, you're not going to get along with other people. Better brain equals a better life. And I've so many people have tried to take me out professionally. Do you guys know the story of Brad Peterson? Could I ever tell you that story? Does it ring a bell? So I was on 20 20 in 2005.

And so I've been doing our work for like 14 years and loved it and loved talking about it. Twenty twenty calls me up and they say, we want to talk about your work with brain imaging and bipolar disorder in children. And I'm like, awesome. But they lied to me. It was a gotcha interview.

And the journalist, so imagine, so we're in this really dark room, the lights on me, the lights on him. And he said, Brad Peterson is a child psychiatrist from Columbia who also does imaging. And he told us that you should be arrested for your work. And right away in my head, I went, okay, this is not what you thought it was going to be. Right. I mean, I thought they were really curious about it. I didn't know they were there to murder me. And I was on the speech team in college and my speech professor told me,

when you don't know what to say, take a breath and smile. It will come to you. And I looked at the journalists and I said, that's so interesting. Last week, someone told me I should win a Nobel Prize for my work. Now you're telling me I should be arrested. It sort of keeps me balanced.

And at the end of the interview, the journalist took off his microphone, threw it on the floor, looked at the producer and said, you lied to me. This guy's legit. And why wouldn't you look? Well a couple of years later when we opened our Manhattan clinic, the person I opened the Manhattan clinic with, Manuel Trujillo, taught at NYU, and he knew Brad Peterson. And I told him about this stupidity, that I should be arrested for my work. And so I got to meet Dr. Peterson and I'm like, dude, what's the deal? Like, don't you want to look? If you don't look, you don't know. Anyways, when he actually saw what I did, he got very curious. And oh, by the way, we've published two large papers on SPECT and bipolar disorder, SPECT and depression.

And I love that because the ultimate goal is to turn haters into lovers. But when you. Try to. Go a new way or. Create a new trail. You just have to be OK with some people not understanding in the beginning. But we're at the point now that the White House is interested in creating a brain health revolution.

And this isn't a Republican issue. It's not a Democratic issue. It's a moral issue that affects everybody. And, you know, I often say President Biden called me up. I'd be at the White House in a heartbeat. But the fact now people call me up and they go, how should we do this? I couldn't be

more excited. And one of the things I want to do and create the brain health revolution is create brain health leaders, brain health revolutionaries, And that's why both of these elite brain health certification courses. So there are two, one is a coaching course, that's for people want to get the information and teach it to others. And the other one is for clinicians. And you actually go through the program in a cohort or with a group of other people. Initially, we allowed people to just sort of go through it at their own pace. But a lot of people didn't complete it. And now we have like, what is it, an 81% And now we have like, what is it an 81% completion rate,

which we're so proud of because you do it with other people. So Barbara, maybe talk about someone else's journey and how they're using this in their life. Yeah, so we have a lot of leaders and as you mentioned, clinicians, but what I noticing is we're starting to attract some teens and also some college students. And we have one particular college student,

actually she just graduated recently from University of Boulder in Colorado. And at the time before she joined, she was struggling with und through, Elle discovered your work and she found a completely different path to approaching her anxiety and they got rid of the mold. her going through the brain health certification gave her tools to understand the brain's role in her mental health. And what happened then is it inspired her to start helping her friends in college. And she ended up, she founded a group called Buff Brain Gym. It's a cute little image of a brain and it's got muscles

and it's completely student-led at University of Colorado Boulder. And what they're doing with that is they're using your methods, aiming clinics methods to help the students reduce anxiety, also create a space for conversation. So they're really helping that social circle. And so students, they are taking control of their wellbeing through your methods. And not only that, other universities have taken notice of what Elle has done and have reached out to her to see how they can duplicate the Buff Brain Gym model

for their college students. So for Elle, she's really utilizing it through education, nutrition and practical tools and students are finding real solutions. Love that so much. Laura, do you have an example? Yeah, so I actually wanted to make a comment on some of the things that you were saying earlier

about the revolution. This is a thought I had so many times, but I think it's quite comical talking about no one ever looking at the brain, right? So I think about the revolution and it moving forward, and I think about the future. And I have this funny thought in my mind that when the people of the future look back on this moment at this brain revolution that's starting and taking ripple effect and now in the White House and now gaining popularity with the central message that the brain can have problems just like any other organ can have problems. So the funny thought I have in my head is I feel like the people of the future might

say something like what took them so long right does anyone else feel like they're like what took the people so long to realize that you can't separate the organ the brain from the mind right and so I wanted to comment on that because I just I have that I have that thought periodically and I just kind of laugh like why why isn't this the norm? Why isn't this like accepted? Why isn't this already so prevalent that we know mental illness is actually brain health? But then I do also realize that any revolution worth being a revolution is always going to be met with resistance. Why? Because in order for a revolution to get started,

it has to have a prerequisite of people not being satisfied with the status quo any longer, right? So you're not having a revolution without a disruption in the status quo. And so with that, you know, people are no longer happy with the way that they come into a doctor's office and they get a 10 minute, you know, meeting and three diagnoses and 14 drugs and they're on the way out the door. And I can testify that that actually really does happen just in case anyone is out there

wondering that I have a lived experience where I was going through some normal seasonal changes in life and saw someone who literally, after a 10 minute meeting, who wasn't a psychiatrist, by the way, you know, me sharing some of the things I was feeling sad about, I got diagnosed with things and then I had prescriptions and I'm on my way out the door after a 10-minute session.

And so, you know, that is the reason why we're building this revolution, why we have our people on boots on the ground, people like Elle's story, people like Katie's story, people like Yudi's story. And then I would like to finish off my personal story that I started earlier because it kind of like really wraps up the rebellion teen that there is light at the end of the tunnel, there's hope. And so after I got certified and started learning these practices, you know what I did?

I spent time in my life actually doing them. I actually cared. I actually wanted my brain to improve. So about, I don't know, maybe three, four years ago I started supplementing my brain. I started taking omega-3s. I started taking my brain and body power. I started taking happy saffron. And so lo and behold, one day last year, Dr. Amon, I got to come to the clinic and get my brain scan, something I've always wanted to do. And let me tell you how scared I was.

I knew I had experimented with drugs. I knew I had some really bad negative thinking. I knew I had did some, you know, not brain healthy habits. And I was expecting to see lots and lots of um with the people when they see it they think there's holes in your brain there's not really holes it's just lots of low blood flow I was expecting to see patchy uptake like the clinic clinicians say just kind of a really damaged brain and lo and behold I got my scan last year best thing I've ever done fell in love with my brain the moment I saw it but I remember emailing it to you Dr. Aiman and saying come

on doc give it to me tell me tell me about my brain I can handle it doc just give it to me and I was expecting you to say oh my goodness this rebellion years of your life really did you in lady you know and instead you said something so beautiful and you said you have a beautiful brain which I found out later you also said that to Barbara and then I heard you say it to someone else in a podcast so I was like Dr. Aiman the world renowned psychiatrist says my brain is beautiful and then we're, he told me that too. No, but really it was a beautiful full symmetrical brain.

And you know, I needed to work on my default mode network. Yes, but because I supplemented my brain, because I avoided risky behavior, because I cared about my brain, because I'm on a mission to change my life and the generations after me my brain was in the best shape that it could possibly be because I cared about it and took care of it and so I want to give this like I wanted to finish my rebellion teen story by giving hope to others who are possibly have gone through the same thing and

I've heard some recent podcasts that you had recently with other people who were sharing about their out of control teenage life. And I was like, oh, there's so many more of those like me out there, but there is hope. You can heal your brain. You can make it better. We can make this brain health agenda the norm now with more stories like this, with more of our clinicians and coaches out there in the community and in schools

and in businesses spreading the message. It's creating this ripple. And I keep saying that because that's exactly what it is. And it's just stories of hope for those that are really hopeless. Well, and the big lesson that I've learned and you just shared is you're not stuck with the brain you have. You can make it better. We can prove it. And how exciting is that? And we're doing a big study now on hope.

And we're working with Chan Hellman at the University of Oklahoma. And we've given 20,000 people the hope questionnaire. And what we found is if you have low hope, you actually have low activity in the front part of your brain, especially in an area called the insular cortex. And hope is tomorrow can be better,

and I have a role in it. And over the last 30 years, whenever I sign books, I always sign them with hope. So I write with hope and then I sign my name. Because what that means is you have agency to make your brain better or you make it worse, depending on what you choose. And in these courses and in all of my work,

ultimately I want to be the little voice in your head that helps you do the right thing. So where do you think this revolution needs to spread? Either of you. I'll jump in because this is a population that's near and dear to my heart, because we have some nonprofits in our community. And I know a number of our students, our graduates, are teaching in this population, but those who have been incarcerated, but also families affected

by incarceration. And some of our graduates are working directly, they're going into prisons and jails. And what you just said about hope, I'm going to pull in that because there's a lot of talk that hope isn't a strategy, hope isn't enough. But when you look at the science of hope, the right type of hope actually creates pathways, you know, towards future goals and strategies. And when we're able to take simple tools into jails and prisons,

and this is where they have access to nothing, including supplements, but these real practical strategies provide hope and meaning for these inmates and families. And just for example, something one student who teaches breath work in the community regional jail, they've shared that introducing just simple techniques like box breathing and mindfulness meditation has helped reduce the number of fights among many of the inmates who were open to learning these strategies and also forgiveness, self-forgiveness, things like that provide hope and meaning,

especially to people who, you know, maybe they're at rock bottom, maybe they've made some choices that they regret, or maybe there's just something out of their control that happened. So that is definitely, I see a population who could really use that because, while it's important that they be held accountable, we need to also, as a community, make sure that person is supported

just because the recidivism rate is pretty high. Many of them are re-arrested. So if they're experiencing a lot of trauma in that environment, in jail or prison, that's not going to be good for the community. And we have an opportunity to help them while they're in a place where they don't have access to anything. I'm also thinking businesses. That's near and dear to my heart too, just because there's been some studies showing that 70% of high functioning leaders are admitting to feeling anxiety, depression, even when they look fine on the outside.

That's just mind blowing to me, just because people are caring a lot. And when you're able to help the leaders or the team managers, you're helping to build resilience in that person, which leads to resilient teams, resilient communities. So I think there's other, you know, there's other populations who definitely are needing this. I know Laura and I were talking about this earlier and she brought up a few as well. Yeah, absolutely. We said politics,

which Dr. Aiman just mentioned recently, and how, you know, just kind of creating these revolutionary programs, and politics helps us to pass bills that get us into schools, that get us into other nonprofit organizations or government-funded activities. And so that's really huge because that's where the mainstream media is and that's where we get the

most kind of visibility, right, from people who are able to make those decisions. And then we also talked about churches. You know, I of her niches was to go and kind of consult with pastors. She was getting this overwhelming kind of email inboxes and phone calls with pastors because she did presentations in churches, you know, just asking her how to handle brain health issues in the church. And so, yeah, we love our pastors, our spiritual leaders. I love my very own, wonderful. And sometimes, though, what she was experiencing

was that they sometimes don't know how to handle mental health-related things. And so what she does is she goes into churches and she does presentations and she does coaching with those that are suffering with not just moral issues or spiritual issues, but getting to some other brain health related issues. Someone who, someone with a good brain,

someone with a better brain can love the Lord more, right? With a better brain and you're a church attendee person and you love God, you can love God even more with the better brain because you're gonna make these good decisions. You're going to keep yourself out of trouble and really elevate and optimize your life in all the four circles and I thought that was a wonderful niche and while I'm on that topic, I'll just share that, that many of our clinicians and coaches, they have several different niches. So I just want to throw this out there for anyone watching who says, you know, is this for me? Is

this something that's really beneficial? I work with this population or that. And I know Barbara just mentioned, if you're a corporate trainer, the business sector is, oh, my gosh, they're dying for speakers. And what better health and wellness message to bring than this one? Right. And we mentioned, you know, the young lady I spoke to that speaks in churches. And then we also have, you know, people who specialize in and helping. Let's say I talked to somebody recently that helps women who were diagnosed with ADD later in life and that's their niche. They do brain health coaching

to women who were diagnosed with ADD later in life and helping them put the pieces of their life together like oh my gosh you know let's say I'm 42 years old and I'm just realizing all of my life I've struggled with xyz and now someone's telling me about it, now I've learned about it. And so we have different niches as well as in the athletic sector. We have, you know, coaches of athletes who are coaching their athletic, whether in schools or colleges or pro on how to optimize their brain for better performance. We obviously have tons of clinicians.

We have our nurses, our doctors, our psychologists, psychiatrists who are coming and they're getting certified and they're using this in their own scope of practice and they're kind of using it as a tool and their tool belt to kind of bring in some of these holistic measures. Holistic practices, that's another one. Barb, you could jump in if I'm missing some, I'm sure I am. Let me jump in. Educators. I like that we're talking about this. And many people don't think of pastors as first responders, but pastors are first responders. When someone has a psychotic episode or someone goes through a

domestic violence incident or someone's charged with child abuse from CPS, often the pastors are the first people calling and they often don't know what to do. And they get overwhelmed with compassion, fatigue. And so bringing this program to churches is really important. So we've talked about businesses, churches, schools, families. Right. I mean, the biggest benefit of doing this program churches, schools, families, right? I mean, the biggest benefit of doing this program is you get as healthy as you could be. I think both Barbara and Laura would attest to that.

I know that's certainly true for me. Like every day, whatever I'm doing, is this good for my brain or bad for it? I'm always asking that. And whatever I'm eating, do I love it? And does it love me back? There are just so many cool, life changing messages that really take root in in your life.

take root in in your life. If people are interested in becoming leaders in the brain health revolution, what do you think's the first step? I mean, maybe it's reading one of my books like Change Your Brain Every Day. one of my books, like Change Your Brain Every Day. I think of that book as sort of like a summary of all of my books. So if The Beatles have a greatest hits album, Change Your Brain Every Day, that book, it's 366 short essays on the most important things

I've ever said. short essays on the most important things I've ever said. But if they want to be part of our community, what's the next step for them? Yeah, so I'll start and Laura, I'll let you jump into the very first thing. I feel like you need to have have a desire, a calling to really, because I've had a lot of people and I've been listening to conversations and I hear people say, it's so bad out there. I wish there was something that I could do, but I'm not a doctor or not a physician, but I really love that you've packaged this in a way that you don't have to be a doctor to teach basic brain health principles.

And so I often say to people who are really searching and looking at this, maybe they've hopped on a call just to find out information, but they also have specific goals. I sometimes tell people, you know, you don't have to have it all figured out at the front end, how to be part of a movement. Revolutionary leaders, they are perfect, but they're willing.

And so having a willingness to learn, to grow, and to help others is definitely, that is very critical. If people wait until they're completely ready, you may never start. That was one of the questions that Katie had, you know, I don't think I'm ready, don't think I'm ready. And I asked her, do you think it would have even come up in your awareness if there wasn't a part of you that was ready? So I encourage people don't wait until you feel ready. But if you say yes while you're uncertain, that's where your transformation starts to begin, not just for the other people, but also for you.

I invite people to sometimes just reflect, if you were thinking about this, what value could this bring to your life, to your well-being, but also your family, your clients, your loved ones? And how could your understanding of the brain change the way that you show up, change the way how you connect and lead? And then also ask, what's the cost of not allowing myself to be part of something bigger? And what is the cost of waiting? And what is the cost of doing things the old way? So these are sometimes hard questions to take a look at and look in the mirror. But as Laura was saying

earlier, and I think you were saying this too, Dr. Eamon, it's a paradigm shift. You have to change the way you look at things and change the way we look at the brain. And so I know for you, Dr. Eamon, you're looking for, to start a revolution, but you're also looking for revolutionary minded people to take this further and people who care deeply. And I know when I first started taking a look at this, I didn't feel ready. I had to experiment a lot. And when you and I first met back in 2018,

I believe we really sat down and took a look at how can we get this out more? We didn't have all the answers, but we knew we had to do something. And so looking at what is your next step, like what do you clearly see now and what is aligned with you? So what would you add to that, Laura? Yeah, so something pops out to me immediately hearing you say, when some people say, I'm not a doctor. I don't know if I could do this, right? And I have some funny stories. Well, they're kind of funny, not really, but you know, I actually have one of

my favorite stories of a doctor who calls and you know, I'm on the phone with them and they're really upset, you know, and they're kind of like, really angry saying, spect imaging doesn't work, you know, he's kind of like, letting me know he's letting me have it. And work. You know, he's kind of like letting me know he's letting me have it. And so for 25 minutes, he's on the phone, a medical doctor and he's saying to me, spec doesn't work. I don't understand how you can say spec works. You need to tell me what you're doing. And he's just going on and on. And so I let him finish and I practice my active listening. And then at the end, when he was done, I said to him, you're right, spec doesn't work.

And he kind of stayed quiet on the phone. And then he kind of was like, what? Like, what do you mean, right? And so I'm like, well, we don't do, we don't teach that spec imaging solves your brain health problems. That's not what we teach. We teach the Amon method, which involves the four circles approach and we're looking at you biologically, psychologically,

socially and spiritually. The SPECT report is a piece of information. It's not the end-all be-all and it'd probably be not ethical to just take a a spec scan and diagnose you and give you medication. We take the four circles or as Dr. Aiman just renamed it right the blueprint of the holistic for four viewpoints you could correct me and so after that he says to me like the light bulb went off, you know, he's like, wow, I thank you. Thank you so much. You clarified everything for me. I completely sold him. He was a fan during the revolution. And it just makes me wonder, you know, when I when I talk to the doctors, they're always saying no one taught me this in medical school and we do have a doctor on this call and he could attest to that. But when I talk to them, nurses, mental health nurse practitioners, AMDs, psychologists, psychiatrists, they're all calling us

and saying the same thing to me, which is no one taught me this. I had one day of nutrition lesson. I had two days of nutrition lesson. You know, no one taught me about the non-invasive or first do no harm ways of healing people. And so to those who say, I'm not a doctor, I can't do this, I say doctors are also saying the same thing.

So may as well jump on and explore. And the next step for that person might be take a low risk avenue first, right? Use your prefrontal cortex way, way out, right? Like Barbara said, what's the risk of not joining? What's the risk? What are you losing by not spreading this message? What could potentially harmful things could happen that you could prevent if you were out there teaching your family and your generations the next step. But we have tons of free resources that you know I started with the TED talk. I watched the AIMIN method for free on YouTube. There's tons of free resources out there. This podcast right? That people can start exploring and learning more to kind of get their feet

wet and decide, this is for me and we want those people. We want those people on fire for this message. And you know what? Our community, we already have them really. I mean, they are amazing, amazing. They blow us away every day. And so they can decide if they wanna join

this crazy group of people who are out there saying, hey, the old archaic method of diagnosing people the way that we did when Abraham Lincoln was alive is no longer working for us and we want better. We want better solutions. We want optimized lives. We want better families, better communities and so forth. And so the next step is finding out if this is for you. And if it is, go to amonuniversity.com and join us

because we have tens of thousands of boots on the ground. I think we were playing around with the numbers earlier and we're over 10 to 12,000 registrations in our programs who have already enrolled and are currently in the program or graduated. And so this isn't like a small group of people. We are a global group now, right, Barbara? I know you do our support calls.

And could you name some of the countries that we're in spreading this message? I believe we're in over 50 countries now. Thinking of, oh, goodness, Ricky Johns is in the Philippines. We have some in Africa, Thailand, a lot in UK, lots in Canada, but yeah, it's definitely global. Well, and all goes back to what I said at the beginning is if you want to be as healthy as you can be, you got to get this information. But then once you get it, you have to live it

and then you have to give it away because it is in the act of giving. You create your own support group, making it more likely you'll stay on the program forever. And there has never been a time that needed you as much as now, when clearly the health of America is going the wrong way. But we're having big discussions on how to change it. And the brain health revolution is part of the discussion. So we would love you to be part of our community, even if you just listened to the podcast,

we always are grateful for you. We'd love if you'd leave us a review, subscribe, share it with your friends. But if you want to go deeper, go to AmonUniversity.com and click on our coaching elite brain health certification course. Or if you're a clinician, a physician, a psychologist,

a social worker, a drug and alcohol counselor, click on the Clinician Elite Brain Health Certification Course. Just click on Learn More. It will take you to a place where you can sign up for a call to just learn more about our programs so that you can get it for yourself, but then give it to the people you serve.

And ultimately, that's the spiritual circle we talk about. It's always turning our own pain into purpose. I don't believe we're here by random chance. I believe we're here for a reason, and the reason is to do good and make the world better than it is now. Well, ladies, thank you so much. It's so great to see you as always.

Thank you for the discussion. I look forward to seeing you again. And thanks all that listened to the Change Your Brain Everyday podcast. Thank you so much. You too. This was such an honor to be here. Hi, this is Dr. Daniel Amon.

I am so thrilled to talk about our brand new course, Brain Thrive, for preschoolers through grade one. In this course we're going to teach kids to love their brain, to know that it's amazing, to know that it controls everything they do and everything they are, is if they learn to love and care for their brains, everything in their life will be better. Thanks again for being here. You can follow me at doc underscore Eamonn on Instagram or doc Eamonn on TikTok.