Change Your Brain Every Day - Journey’s Jonathan Cain Opens Up About Death-Defying Childhood Tragedy

Episode Date: December 2, 2024

Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee and Journey keyboardist Jonathan Cain shares the deeply personal story of how he survived a deadly fire at his Catholic school that claimed the lives of 93 classmates and three nuns—a trauma that left an indelible mark on his life and, as Dr. Amen explains, his brain. 00:00 Intro 01:50 Sponsor 03:10 Jonathan’s Journey/Goals 06:35 Jonathan’s History 08:03 Chicago Fire Tragedy 21:32 BRIGHT MINDS Risk Factors 24:39 Head Trauma 27:27 Mold Exposure 28:45 BRIGHT MINDS Continued 30:11 SPECT Scan Analysis (Surface) 37:16 SPECT Scan Analysis (Active) 39:23 The Plan 42:17 Bad Days, Good Data 44:45 Sponsor 46:12 Wrap Up

The neighbors tried to help before the firemen got there, but their ladders couldn't reach because it was a half-story high. It was a code, that's not code. Sadly, one room perished, the whole entire room. The sister had a mindset of well we're gonna pray and the firemen will come and we'll be okay and they all put their heads on the dust and they were burnt in ashes, just nothing left of them. It was so hot. How many people died that day? 93 children and three nuns.

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. I am so excited this week to welcome Jonathan Cain to the podcast. Jonathan is the rhythm guitarist and keyboardist for Journey. He has written some of their most iconic songs like Don't Stop Believing, he wants a better brain. And it had been traumatized. When he was eight years old, there was a fire at his school that killed 93 people, including three nuns. He had struggles with his faith. There were then issues of fame and drinking too much. He had a skiing accident when he was 59 and was unconscious. We're going to have a great discussion.

And just a little preview, after our episode, he got wildly healthy. Stay tuned. Hi, I'm Dr. Daniel Lehman. I've experienced firsthand the powerful impact that proper supplementation can have on your brain, your body, and your mind. That's why I founded BrainMD. Our formulas are scientifically created from decades of clinical research designed to help you think clearer, feel better, and improve every aspect of your health. Whether it's Brain and Body Power Max, the same formula I used in the world's largest study of NFL players to optimize brain performance, to happy saffron, to boost mood and memory, and ProBrainBiotics Max to improve the gut-brain connection. BrainMD delivers the highest quality science-backed solutions to help you think and feel better. Tana and I take many of our products every day. And as a special offer,

just for our listeners, you can save 20% on your next order. Visit BrainMD.com and use the code podcast20. With a better brain always comes a better life. Well, we are here with my friend John Kane from Journey, which is why I have the Journey shirt on. The Journey concert was spectacular. And when I watched what you did on the piano on the guitars to see the music you've made over the last was you 50 50th anniversary concert is so special thank you and I'm so honored that you are doing this thank you I'm honored to be here with you and excited about everything you're doing here. The research has been phenomenal. And the rose, you know, to understanding the brain are just getting wider and wider. So it's really cool. Your brain has done amazing things. And but you want to do amazing things for like

20 more years. Sure, that's it. You know, as we get older it you know as we get older you know we slow down and you know um yeah i think my i'm still as productive as i would like to be you know like so i'm still writing a lot of music uh which i'm happy about because i have friends that have stopped you know all together um and one of the things i really love is songwriting. That's my passion. So I continue to do that. And it's a satisfying thing because you want to have a purpose besides just playing in a rock band. And we play the same songs over and over again

that we wrote 40-some years ago. So it's enriching and gratifying to me to create something new, whether it's a piano piece or, you know, a pop song or a worship song. And so if I can help your brain be a little bit better, Yes. then you'll be able to do the reason God put you on earth even better. That's right.

Even better. Even better. Let better. Even better. Let's see, goals. So I read the history you did. Thank you. I looked at the checklist that I harassed you about. Yeah. Yeah.

I looked at the cognitive testing. We'll talk about that. And I've looked at your scans. So I have a really good idea. But tell me your goals. What do you want the most out of this? You stay vibrant, stay present for the grandkids, for my wife, Paula, and just, you know, brain healthy, like wake up every day, you know,

wanting to accomplish things, you know, get things done and just live, live these last, I mean, I'm in the seventh inning, you know, and. But that's when it gets exciting. You know, yeah. And probably, I don't know how long, I guess I'm going to be on stage. Have to really pray about it and make the right decision for my life. You know, how long am I going to be in the game for? And you got to know when it's time to walk away, you know, for sure.

So I think this would help me make those decisions. Because everything in life is decisions, you know. Which come from your brain. That's right. And so unless you make, you know, healthy decisions for your life, you're going to be unhappy. Yeah. So I think it's connected very much so. Some of the big things in the history I saw, many successes.

You're incredibly creative. But you do have chronic work stress. Yeah. It's been frustrating for you. You don't have to talk about it here. Yeah. Alcohol started at 17. And you had a period of 10 years where it was really pretty heavy.

Yeah, it was, yeah. And now, even now, it's half a bottle to a bottle a night. Right. And you and I chatted, and you're a wine maker. Yeah. Right? Kind of, sir. And you have a masterful palate.

That's right. But it's not serving. No. Your brain. No. It's making your brain look older than you are okay which probably not what you want that's not what you use because it relaxes you and sort of because you're bored it does push Paula's buttons because Paula grew

up in an alcoholic home right yeah so it's sort of like pushing on a boil right it's like a boils there and it's like boom ouch yeah um five or six years ago you got um some depression yeah um and significant in your history was when you were a there was a fire at your school. Right. And I read your book, Don't Stop Believing. It's a great book. I recommend it. Tell us about it.

It was, you know, just almost demonic, I would say, because of, you know, the Catholic Church left some things open. They didn't, for example, in the school we were at, the fire safety code was, it was to code for a grandfathered clause. The building was older than 35 years, so it didn't need sprinkler system. It didn't need, you know know to have the proper equipment in it

because it was an older building it was a two and a half story building the fire alarm wasn't even connected to any fire station we come to find out uh the fire extinguishers were seven feet in the air where no one could get them um and so all of these little doors that were open for the enemy to come and just and then they we had a kid a 11 year old uh pyromaniac who had set an apartment fire in cicero the nearby uh subdivision who supposedly set these uh papers on fire in the basement and um he was a new transplant. His mother had gotten him out of that neighborhood because he was on hot water from starting this apartment fire.

He burned the whole apartment down, you know. And they suspect it was him. He's only 11, and he couldn't help himself. He lit this drum of paper up. But he didn't realize that there was a cold intake pipe that went to the roof. And so the fire burned really hot, and all the smoke and heat went to the roof.

It was cold. It was December 1st, you know. So all the heat rises up. This is in Chicago, where you're from. Yeah, Chicago, Illinois, 1958 december 1st um and it went up into the the roof the gable area in there and the smoke started building and then the heat started coming and then it started burning the ceiling uh from several classrooms to the point that there was all this tar paper on top of the roof. And it was just black smoke from 50 years of tar paper, whatever it was.

And it looked like an atom bomb. It was dark gray, horrible. And it filled all the hallways. I was on the first floor, able to get out, walk out, actually. And I knew it wasn't a fire drill because I could smell smoke. But it was upstairs. You couldn't see this thing raging. That was the weird part.

We went out in a single file. We stood there looking at the school. And we didn't have our coats, so we left everything in the room and ran outside with a couple of other classrooms. And we lined up, and it was eerie silence, smell of smoke. And then all of a sudden the roof caves in on room 207 or whatever it was. And the screams happened.

And the kids started jumping out of the windows. The fire escape that normally would come down during a fire drill wasn't coming down. It was just and I remember always seeing it come down. They had a little crank, you know, and I was just so worried. What's going on here? There's there should be there's 200, 300 kids are going to come down this fire escape, you know. And it turned out the sister forgot the key for the door. And the janitor and one of the head priests ran in and got the key,

crawled up on their knees to the second floor, made a right turn, got into the smoke, smoky room, somehow managed to get to the door, opened up the door, and the kids start, you know. And if that hadn't happened, we would have lost a lot more children because the fire department still hadn't come yet because the alarm was hooked to nothing. So somebody had made a call in the rectory to call the fire department. So it was ironic because when the first truck got to the school, they didn't know where the fire was. They were running around the building looking, where's it at? Where's it at? And of course, they saw the drum in the basement. So they extinguished it, but the school was already on fire somewhere. And I thought it was interesting because the truck that came from downtown was a snorkel truck. The first fire snorkel truck ever built.

And the second time they ever used it. And it showed up 20 minutes late, sadly. And I watched the snorkel go up, the hose right on top of the roof. So you're outside. Yeah, I'm watching. And you're watching this whole thing. It's a movie. And you're eight years old.

It's a movie. And the parents start coming to pick their children up. Now it's like quarter to three, 20 to three, and now they're coming in. They're getting hysterical. You have hysterical parents, and the firemen are there trying to do their job. And kids are jumping out of the windows and, you know, and they have these nets, you know, for them to jump.

Some, a couple of kids actually jumped from two and a half stories and lived. I mean, not even one, one guy, he told me he jumped and he didn't break anything. I'm like, that's impossible. You know? So the neighbors tried to help before the firemen got there, but their ladders couldn't reach because it was a half story high. So that we had a basement that was kind of, you know, down in, in the ground halfway. So it wasn't cold. That's not cold. Two stories. So all this stuff happened.

And sadly, one room perished, the whole entire room. The sister had a mindset of, well, we're going to pray, and the firemen will come, and we'll be OK. And they all put their heads on their desks, and they were burnt in ashes, just nothing left of them. It was so hot. How many people died that day? Ninety-three children and three nuns.

Wow. But the majority was 70-some children in one classroom. Can you imagine that, 70 kids? We had standing room only. No, I went to Catholic school. Standing room only. I used to have to give my seat up, you know, and stand along the side of the room there, the wall there.

I got first dibs, and after lunch, I had to stand against the wall. But these four kids, and some of the teachers were very crafty. They got it done. But that snorkel truck went up and put that fire out in about minutes. In minutes, it was gone. And I thought to myself, God, if they had only showed up. So there was a lot of questions about why didn't that call. When the janitor went over to the rectory and said, call the fire department.

And the Chicago Fire department got the call late and according to the janitor's testimony that he there was some 10 15 minutes that were not according to his watch you know and they blamed it on him uh for sloppy housekeeping and all this stuff and it wasn't until a year later they found it it was arson. And it took an expert. The Chicago Fire Department was going to find out how it was done. So they were really amazing. They still are incredible. And what kind of imprint do you think this left on you?

I had a sadness about me. For example, my fourth grade books. I was in third grade for the fire, and I bought the books early for fourth grade because they were secondhand books. This guy, Marks, the chura had perished in the fire. And I went to my mother and I said, what am I to do? This guy's dead.

She said, you're gonna dedicate your school life to him and you're gonna do really good. Just turn it into a positive job. You know? So I did, I said, wow. Okay. Yeah. Mark. So I remember we had, we had a big kind of a funeral and stuff and I prayed. But some, I lost something with my faith. You know, there was like an abandonment issue. Like, Jesus, are you there? Where are you? And I kept looking at my Mickey Mouse watch going, surely, Jesus, you're going, the firemen, I kept waiting, coming, coming, coming. And they didn't come. And I got despair.

I got just so depressed. Oh, no. Oh, no. Because It's really happening. These kids are dying in there, you know? And then the idea that, you know, they told us about what happens when you go to hell and it's, you know, hot and you burn. And I'm like, right next to the house of God, you're going to, we're going to let this go down like this. This is how it ends. At 20 minutes to three, all these kids are going to be in body bags. You know, so that was tough for me, you know, cause I, he was my Superman, Jesus, you know, he really was. I would pray to him. He always made things happen for me. I was a Holy Spirit-filled kid, and that knocked the wind out of me. I bet. It did.

And it wasn't until years later, I'm talking about my 50s, I found a pastor. I was going to this Lutheran church. I baptized my three kids in there, and I struggled with it, souls that had been lost. And I said, what do we do? And he said, sometimes God requires great sacrifices for great change. And those children created a huge change for fire safety in schools around the world. That'll never happen again because it's a model of what could happen.

So maybe God needed that to show the world. And those kids happened to be in the way of chaos, which I believe it was chaos, to create a safer environment around the world. And the whole world came to Chicago to find out what happened. How did all of this go so wrong? Why, why, why, why, you know? And so, you know, Mayor Daley quickly acted. The next year, all schools were required to have sprinklers.

Everybody, you could, anything that was two and a half stories was shut down. You weren't allowed to have school, know in those kinds of buildings um the fire alarms had to be tested by the fire department it was a whole new thing and right away it wasn't like a year later or two immediately this was put into effect so he took massive action uh so those children may have saved a lot of lives. A lot of lives. And so when my pastor put it that way to me, I went, wow. I get it. I get it.

And then he pointed me to a scripture where it says Jesus wept. Short of scripture in the Bible, Jesus wept. And he said he was there, you know. And we went to the 50th commemorative mass there. And the bishop said, all of you have been an umbrella of grace, umbrella of grace for all these years. Anybody that was in that fire, God has, you know, put an umbrella of grace in your life, whether you know it or not. You know, when I started thinking all the amazing things that happened to me, you know, I ended up in journey. How did that happen? You know, accordion kid from Chicago ends up in journey, you know. It's a stretch. But there it was. And it hit me all that, you know,

sometimes tragedy can create a victory, you know. You can find victory through tragedy, you know. Like, sometimes it propels. Like, I just remember running to music as fast as I could. And I wasn't looking back, you know, I wasn't going to look back. And I remember taking those school books in fourth grade and really trying hard for that poor soul that lost his life, Mark, you know, in the fire. And so I believe it, you know, ashes for beauty, I guess. You know, it's like, you know, you got to take these ashes and make something beautiful. And that's what the Lord did for me. So I'm going to go through, I have an acronym I like called Bright Minds.

Okay. You want to keep your brain healthy. Yeah. Or rescue it. Yeah. You have to prevent or treat the 11 major risk factors that steal your mind. Right. And we know what they are.

Yeah. And headline, just last week, Alzheimer's is highly preventable. Yeah. I'm like, really? I wrote a book in 2005 called Preventing Alzheimer's. And it was based on the idea they talked about in the article, if you want to keep your brain healthy or prevent Alzheimer's, you have to prevent or treat these 11 risk factors.

And so B is for blood flow, low blood flow. It's the number one brain imaging predictor of Alzheimer's disease. That's why I do a blood flow study. So SPECT, which you'll see in a little bit, is a blood flow study. So you have high blood pressure, but you are faithful in keeping that treated.

Yes. Really important. Yeah, I'm on top of that. Yeah. Retirement and aging. So you're 74. The older we get, the more serious we need to be right right because like our skin falls off our face as we age that same process happens in the branch sure um inflammation you have arthritis so that may be a sign of inflammation

alcohol doesn't help inflammation. It's pro-inflammatory, especially at the levels that you're doing. Genetics. Your mom had MS. Not sure why. Family history of depression and some alcohol issues. Who had alcohol issues in your family? My mother's brothers.

Your mother's brothers. They were. And my dad really kind of dabbled it he he backed off as he got older and drank but he still drank a ton of beer i mean he was he was banging it um but they back in the 50s and 60s you know they were drinking the heavy heart i mean it was like, Manhattans and martinis and all this stuff, you know? Yeah. So it was just, I remember being 17 years old, just getting my permit, uh, driving my, my two drunk parents home, you know, cause they were, they were blasted. And my dad was a, you're, you're good. You take the wheel.

So I'll drive another drink. You can take the wheel, John. I've only got my permit. That's okay. You got it. You know? So I was around, my uncles all died before they were 70 years old, all three of them. They all had strokes, you know? Wow. Yeah. And my father's, all my father's, uh, workers, uh, his friends, his golf buddies all died before they were 65 for cancer you know because of the lead so you've already outlived your dad and all those people yep but we're not done yet no no we gotta go um the h is head trauma and you fell off a horse multiple times. And I found out today you got dragged. Yep.

And then talk about this skiing accident when you were about 59 years old. Yeah, it was a, they, some snowboarder had created a compression bump, like a little lip, a jump. And I was at one of the really nice mountains, compression bump like a little lip a jump and I was at one of the really nice mountains North Star and Up in Tahoe. Yeah, and you pay a lot of money for grooming there, you know and yet I

Happen to be going Down to the lift some snowboarder had knocked my pole out of my hand So I was going to fetch my pole. And I was looking for a route to go to get the pole instead of looking down. And right then, my skis hit this bump. And I went about eight feet up in the air this way. And I knew it wasn't going to end well. And boom, just no helmet. My son was was with me my son saw the whole thing we argued about who was going

to wear the helmet and then in the end we left it in the car it could have been you know so the ski patrol came got me and uh i spent the the afternoon trying to feel good but this intercostal muscle hurts so much i mean they do those in baseball and football accidents and there's nothing you can do for them you know it's like breaking a rib and it was so sore so i got separate shoulder you know a concussion and all this stuff and it was all because of this thing that didn't belong on the hill it was and i went back to the ski patrol i said get rid of that thing why is this here you know i told i you know i was thinking maybe i should sue these people this isn't cool you know this isn't a snowboard run. And, you know, I didn't

know it was there. And yet there it was, you know, went straight up. Well, I must've made you furious. I was, I was scared that night because of the, the, the concussion. So my son stayed with me and he woke me up every three hours. Did you lose consciousness at all? Yes. I was out. I don't know. I think they might have hit.

I don't know how long I was out. I really don't know. It was pretty bad, though. I mean, I just looked at me alive. I could have broke my neck. I mean, the way I looked at it. We can see it on your scale. Yeah. It was bad.

I saw in your history there was some mold exposure. Tell me about that. I mean, the way I looked at it. We can see it on your scan. Yeah. It was bad. I saw in your history there was some mold exposure. Tell me about that. I am allergic to it. And, you know, the first time I went to Florida, being a Midwest guy with Journey, right, we were on the road um i came down with a severe bronchitis like an infection that was it was allergy induced and i can get if if i get around because i wasn't used to like whatever hotel we were at had some funky something going on in the hVAC, you know, and I got sick as a dog. And, um, the, uh, the doctor that treated me told me, he said, your allergies, um, can flare into, um, you know,

these kinds of horrible infections, you know, and I thought I was going to die. I mean, I didn't know what it was, but it was mold induced. Yeah. And I've had shortness of breath from it. You know, it's scary. So you have to keep it under control. But when it's around you, you don't know, you know. And so it was new for me.

And this hotel wasn't the best hotel, that's for sure. So the M in Bright Minds is mental health stuff. We talked about the fire, some depression, work stress. PHQ-9 is a measure of depression. You have none, which is great. The one we can't see is called ACE Adverse Childhood Experiences. You have two, and it was mostly about conflict at home. It was mom, yeah, my mom was just tough.

And I think she was starting to experience the MS, attacking her nerves and making her irritable. And she had a rough time with menstrual cycles. Horrible. You know, she had very rough ones. I have five sisters and five daughters. Yeah. PMS is real.

Yeah. And for some people it's really dangerous. Yeah. Yeah, it is. Your hope score that's from like 30 to 65 is really high. So I love that. Yeah. So whether that's, well, I wrote, don't stop believing doc. I mean, so whether that's well, I wrote don't believe in doc

I mean, I I'm sorry. I wrote don't stop believe Your vitamin D levels low I actually want to get a new set of blobs on you so I'll order them and We'll check your hormones your BMI is good your body mass index sleep is good so all right the reason people come to see me is because i look at their brain and we do a study called spacked and speck looks at blood flow and activity looks at how your brain works and it basically shows us three things good good activity, too little or too much. And then my job becomes balancing that. So here we look at the outside surface of the brain. Here we're looking underneath the brain, down from the top, one side, then the other.

And this is very important because I'm going to show you why in a minute. We're looking at the top 45% of brain activity. Anything below that shows up as a hole or a dent. So when you see the holes or dents, you don't have holes or dents in your brain. They're just less active than they should be. Right. Than what would be normal for your age. And so it should just be full, even, and symmetrical. Color doesn't matter.

It's the shape. Now here, the color does matter. Blue is average activity. Red is the top 15%. White is the top 8%, which should be here in the cerebellum. And I'm so interested in yours because you're so coordinated musically, right? I watched that last night. I'm like, it's got great cerebellum, except alcohol is directly toxic to the cerebellum. You can play these songs over and over again, even if you're demented because your brain knows how to do it, right?

Your brain, it's a habit at that point. It's automatic. Right. And so that 90-minute show you did, you're going to have to lose a whole bunch of brain tissue before that goes bad. But you don't want to lose any brain tissue. No, no, no. And so this should be really active.

Everything else sort of quiet. Let me look at your skin. It's not as good as I want it to be. I want it to be better. So you have a lot of really good activity. But the accident happened here. And you can actually see this big dent. Yeah.

And that's on the right side. Mm-hmm. But, and probably affected your frontal lobe. So your brain is the consistency of soft butter, tofu, custard, somewhere between egg whites and jello. And it's housed in a really hard skull that has sharp bony ridges. And so I asked God, why didn't you put bumper guards around those? He said.

Wouldn't that be nice? Who knew they'd play football? Yeah. he said wouldn't that be nice who knew they'd play football yeah um so this is probably giving you problems with focus and these guys with memory so now if i was you i'd ask the question can you make it better yeah yeah that's the big question so let's go here and this is the beginning this is one of the areas that dies in alzheimer's disease okay so we want to get rid of this i'm worried because these are memory centers. Yeah. We need to make these things better. If you do what I ask you to do and you come back six months from now,

because I want you to come back six months from now, we can make your brain look like this. So none of it's dead, but it's sleepy. This is our goal. We can make it a whole bunch better. Now, if you leave here, and I know you won't, but if you did, some people do, and they go, I don't believe any of the things he said. This is where your brain will be when you're 80. And that's not good. And that's an Alzheimer's pattern. Right.

So, and the reason I show it to you is I want you to have enough anxiety. When the habit comes in, it's like, oh, it's after a concert. I drink. Or, oh, it's 8 o'clock. I drink. Or it's a habit oh, it's after a concert. I drink. Or, oh, it's 8 o'clock. I drink. Or it's a habit, right? Yeah. I mean, the brain's lazy.

The brain just does what you allow it to do. Right. Right. I mean, even sometimes I'll drive by Jack in the Box, and before I got sane, I would, like, get a chicken fajita pita. Yeah. A Diet Coke. Yeah.

And then, so I was like was like oh i should do that and then whack i was like no you shouldn't right stay away from that right so we don't want this right this is not our goal our goal is this you want a big fat fat brain. And it can be if we do the right things. And big picture, three things. Brain envy. You've got to care about it. Nobody cares about their brain because you can't see it. You can see the wrinkles in your skin or the fat around your belly,

and you do something when you're unhappy with that. Because nobody looks at their brain. Nobody cares. So care. Stop doing things that hurt it. Right. And I think for you, really, the only thing is alcohol. And I haven't seen many other things that you're doing.

You eat really well. You like to cook. You're a good cook. You like some of Tana's recipes that makes me so happy absolutely um you're working out and because you know the thing that kills us as we get older is frailty yeah so you don't want to be frail are you lifting weights yes good yes 10 000 steps a day i'm sorry 10 000 steps a day. I'm sorry? 10,000 steps a day. I love that.

Yep. Yeah, we were comparing steps last night. That was fun. So avoid things that hurt and then do things to help it. What are you taking as far as supplements? Not much. Not much, no. Okay.

I'm going to put you on my NFL formula. So I did the first and largest study on active and retired NFL players, 400 players. When I put them on our red box, two packets a day, multiple vitamin, but not a normal one. It's super one. Fish oil and a brain boost that works in six ways. 80% of our players got better Like better mood better memory better focus better sleep better motivation You do not need better motivation I'm going to show you

So when we look at the active scan Your basal ganglia are really busy and sometimes that go with anxiety you're not anxious sometimes that goes with people can't stop working yeah it's like they're always going yeah always thinking they're always doing something but sometimes trauma too can be stored yeah yeah and i think it might be good for you and i to do a little bit of emdr and just sort of walk through some of those traumas see if we can turn that down yeah a

little bit because that could also be one of the reasons you drank because you're like i'm not anxious but maybe it's because the alcohol is medicating it. Yeah. Yep. Very nice. And your cerebellum's great, but it's not nearly as busy as your basal ganglia. And I want to change that. Do you do any coordination exercises besides music?

Not really, no. Have you ever played a rocket sport? I used to. I used to play. I play golf, you know. So that's pretty, you know. But I. My mother and I argue about this all the time.

I worry about. It's not exercise. My knees and my hips and, you know, the running thing. I try to go jogging. No, no. Running's not exercise. My knees and my hips and the running thing. I try to go jogging. No, no. Running's not exercise. Running's not a coordination exercise. Yeah, no.

Do you play table tennis? I have, yeah. I'm pretty good. Are you pretty good? Yeah. I would play. Yeah. I would get a table and just get good at it.

Yeah. Okay. Like half an hour, twice a week. And I'd even hire a coach. Like, teach me to be really good. Because that's going to activate this part of the brain. Okay. And you'll find your creativity will even be better.

All right. That's interesting. Yeah. So here's the plan. So we talk about bright minds, risk factors should have bright minds plan uh blood flow exercise especially coordination exercise and weight training yep i like that sure be strong oh yeah right never hurt yourself but push yourself oh i do so if you stop touring you're still going to work yeah right and i just always want you to think as long as i want my brain to work i have to be engaged yeah and but you're the kind of person that's just you naturally yeah right when I talk to your kids, I'm like, hey, tell me what I should know. Yeah, yeah.

And they went, he's always engaged. He's always interested, curious. Yeah, sure. That's me, yeah. So you have to keep that. How are your gums? Good. Do you go to the dentist regularly?

Yes, I do. I take good care of my teeth, yeah. Floss every day? Oh, yeah. I've got a water pick.. I take good care of my teeth, yeah. Floss every day? Oh, yeah. I've got a water pick. I don't fool around with my teeth, no. But my parents had periodontal. They lost all their teeth.

I mean, it was terrible. That puts you at risk for Alzheimer's disease. Oh, yeah, no. I take care of my teeth. Love that. Yep. And then genetics, just be serious about prevention. I'm going to test you for the APOE4 gene, and that'll change some of my interventions if you have that.

Yeah. Protect your head, so no more skiing without a helmet. No, I would never do that. Toxins, so avoid exposure. Yeah. Limit alcohol. Yeah. There's an app I like called Think Dirty.

It's not what you think it is. It allows you to scan all your personal products. It'll tell you on a scale of 1 to 10 how quickly they're killing you. Oh, okay. Because, you know, it's not just alcohol. It's also the products that have parabens and phthalates and BPAs. Yeah. Coca-Cola company's proud that they have bpas in their cans uh

i don't drink that stuff i don't know so um you want to sweat which you do saunas do you have a sauna at home i don't like saunas you don't like something they dry me out they dry them yeah no i'm not i'm not a big fan of them okay i just don't think they well then they're kind of the hyperbaric oxygen yeah i'm interested in that yeah avoid toxic foods and products um the mental health stuff we'll work on killing the ants you don't have a big ant infestation in your head and stands for automatic negative thoughts make sure your vitamin d is healthy your hormones are healthy your diet's already good sleep you know you're sleep fine so i don't have to worry about that

so and this is how it goes. When people first come to see me, well, you're doing awesome. When most people come to see me, they're doing terrible. Yeah. Good days and bad days, but mostly bad. And then we start the program and they get better, but it's not in a straight line. They're better and then not, better than not. Yeah. The point of this slide is when things like I'm not better, we want to learn from that rather than go, this stuff doesn't work.

Right. So every day we win or we learn. Every day we win or we learn. Awesome. So I work with B.J. Foggg he's a professor at stanford yeah and he created uh this process on how people change and he said you have to make it as small as possible yeah right and so the mother tiny habit whenever you go to do something just go good for my brain or bad for right Good for my brain about so I worked with him Like every day for six months. I love him and he loves me and then we stopped and then a year later

We're a conference together and he goes have to thank you. I said, okay He said I stopped drinking because of you. Yeah, He said, I now wake up 100% every day. Every day, yeah. And that's a good goal. That's a good goal. To be 100% every day. Yep. When Drew Carey said, eating crappy food isn't a reward.

It's a punishment. I'm like, oh, he's going to stay healthy because he had the right mindset. Right? It's not deprivation. It's not, oh, I can't have this or I can't have that. It's, well, what do you want more? This huge wine cellar process in your brain or clarity. Right.

Energy. Right. Energy. Right. I mean, it's like, what do you want more? And for me, I want energy. Yeah, sure. And I want good decisions. And I don't want dementia.

And I never want to have to live with my children. Yeah. Love them, don't want to live with them. Are you excited to optimize your brain and help the brains of those you love? Do you want to prevent or treat memory problems, anxiety, or depression? Do you want to be happier? That's why I created Amen University, to take what I've learned over the last 45 years and help you have a better brain, a better mind, and a better body. You can take courses like our 30-Day Happiness Challenge, which was shown in research to increase happiness by 32% in just 30 days, or memory rescue, or overcoming anxiety, depression, trauma, and grief, or healing ADD at home in 30 days and much more. We also have professional courses and courses for kids, including Brain Thrive by 25, which was found in independent research to decrease depression and improve self-esteem. can save 20% on your next course. Visit amynuniversity.com and use the code podcast20.

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