Change Your Brain Every Day - Mariel Hemingway: Breaking Generational Trauma Before It Breaks You

Episode Date: May 18, 2026

In this powerful conversation, Dr. Daniel Amen sits down with Mariel Hemingway to explore the deep connection between family emotional history, trauma, mental health, and hormones. During the interview, Dr. Amen shares Mariel's brain scan and explains how generational stress, childhood experiences, and emotional pain can leave lasting patterns in the brain and body. Together, they discuss healing, resilience, and how understanding your brain can change your life.   For clinical treatment, visit Amen Clinics - 11 locations in the US with over 55 doctors on staff: www.amenclinics.com

It was like I was an observer in my own house. Because my parents drank and my sister did drugs, I was kind of removed from them. And I loved them, but I didn't know how to fix them. And I thought it was my job to fix them. Mariel Hemingway is an American actress, author, and mental health advocate. She is known for her roles in films such as Manhattan and lipstick, as well as her work addressing her family's complex legacy. My mother got cancer very early, and I became a primary caregiver at age 11. People get cancer and they go into a chemotherapy lounge and they feed them nothing but horrible food.

You're in war for the health of your brain. Everywhere you go, hospitals, elementary schools, doctors offices, someone's trying to give you bad food that will kill you. 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. brain is your most valuable asset. It controls everything from your focus and memory to your mood and energy. That's why I created Brain MD to give you science-backed supplements that support your brain so you can feel and perform your best every day. If you haven't tried them yet, go to BrainMD.com and use the code, Podcast 20 for 20%

off because when your brain works better, you work better. Well, I'm so excited to meet you and be with you when they said we can have Merrill Hemingway on the podcast. I'm like, please. I was so excited. Well, thank you. Tell me your goal. What are you hoping to get out of this process?

To be honest, I really feel like an infant here. I feel like I'm just swimming in a sea that I don't fully know what I know what you do and yet I don't know what you do. So my intention is, I mean, my lifestyle is very much about health and wellness and balance. And, you know, I come from a very challenged family in the mental health arena. So brain health has been a big part of my life. So anything that I can learn more about is just great, you know. So that's what we do. You know, a long time ago, I'm like, nobody wants a mental illness.

No one wants to be called mental. It shames people. It's stigmatizing. Yes. And it's wrong. These are brain health issues. Get your brain healthy and you're less likely to kill yourself. It's your brain healthy and you're happier.

You're less anxious. You're more focused. And I said 35 years ago I started looking at the brain with the study we did with you called Brain Spect Imaging. And it literally changed absolutely everything in my life. If you date any of my children, they're getting scanned. When I dated my wife 20 years ago, I'm like, oh, I really like you.

You haven't seen the clinic. You should come get scan. And then you live with the question is whatever you're doing, good for your brain or bad for it. And if you love yourself, you choose good. Yeah, exactly. So I've read your history. I've looked at your testing. I've seen your scans.

We'll talk about them. Oh, okay. So I have a good idea. And what I saw in the testing, your primary objective was to get a good evaluation of your overall brain health and function. And so we'll talk about it. There's lots of things in your history we could talk about from depression, family history of depression and suicide, If I understand it right, though, you didn't have depression until you had one of your kids. I'm not sure if it coincided.

You know, I've always asked myself, oh, is it, you know, was it postpartum? Did that create something? They were older. It was a time where I was deeply unhappy in my marriage. It was just a time. couldn't reconcile what was going on. And I was also so incredibly obsessive about what I thought was healthy at the time, which probably wasn't as healthy things. And I created, it's almost as though I created anxiety for myself, just based on my hyper vigilance, trying to do things exactly

right correctly. And I think the overwhelming sense that I was in a marriage that wasn't, it just wasn't healthy because there wasn't communication, but I hadn't been brought up to communicate. You know, I come from the generation. Nobody even went, like, you or like not something. We did not talk to me. My family was like, we don't talk to psychiatrists. Like, what will the neighbors think? You know what I mean? So I just had a very, an odd kind of misunderstanding of what of what mental health was and as you just said

brain health brain health is a different thing and when you too kind of and when you frame it that way it's like oh my gosh I can only get better I can only I always have believed and this is in my very you know because I'm a doctor and I'm just kidding because I have subjects because I have such a As much as I love my mother.

Yeah, exactly. But I mean, the truth is I've always believed there was a solution for people. And it's based on for me, and you may tell me differently, but I don't think so. It's based on lifestyle. It's what you're choosing every day. So important. And so misunderstood. And there's a pill for everything.

Yeah. But I. And, you. use medicine when it's appropriate, but it's like skills, not just pills. And the nutritionists here at Aemon clinics actually have better testimonials than almost anyone. Get your food right and your brain is happier. It's healthier. It just works better. Tell me about the obsessiveness. And you said you were like so focused on doing the right thing. Well, I think. You know, it all comes down to an extremely dysfunctional family that I loved because they were my family.

I didn't know any different. So my childhood was my mother got cancer very early in my life. And I became a primary caregiver, you know, at age 11. And I would take care of her in the middle of the night. And I watch and I remember thinking, oh, there must be something, it must have something to do with how she eats or, you know, like I kept thinking, there must be things. She doesn't get outside. And I knew this, like, at a very young age. But so anyway, my, and then because my parents drank so much and my sisters drank and did

drugs, and I was much younger. So I was, it was like I was an observer in my own house. I was kind of removed from them and who they were. I loved them, but I didn't know how to, well, I wanted to fix them. And I thought it was my job to fix them, right? Where did you get that idea? Well, when you wake up in the middle of the night and you see, you know, all this, it had been, there had been a party, right? And everybody had gone home.

And I wake up and I hear that it's silent. but I heard screaming, yelling. You know, people are throwing glasses. And I go downstairs and there's, you know, there's broken glass and wine everywhere, some blood because somebody got cut, right? And I cleaned it all up. And I'm however old I am. That was probably before my mother got cancer.

So that was the earliest memory I have of doing that is about eight years old. and when you see that and you think, oh my gosh, I have the ability to clean this all up. So I mentally actually turned that into, I can fix what's broken here. So I would clean it all up. They would wake up in the morning. The kitchen is clean. There's no more blood. There's no wine, stains.

Everything's cleaned up. And I really would think, you know what? we have a chance to make to be better today right so that that started this pattern of thinking oh I'm gonna fix I'm gonna fix everybody I married somebody who drank you know and I'm gonna fix that I'm gonna fix that I'm gonna fit he got cancer too I'm gonna fix him and then slowly you start to realize that don't those you can't fix anybody you can only fix you can only work on yourself. But it took me, it took me a long time. And, you know, my oldest sister suffered from schizophrenia. So she was always super challenged, but I loved her because she was brilliant. She's still alive. And, and yet, you know, she was, she had moments of extreme violence. How old were you when she first started showing symptoms? Here's what I think happened, and you can correct me.

This is, again, me being a doctor. She started doing, we lived in Mill Valley at the time, Northern California. And she started going into, she's 11 years older than me, and I was four. And she started going into San Francisco from Mill Valley into Hayd Ashbury, and she was taking a lot of LSD, a lot of LSD, and hanging out with the Grateful Dead. and doing whatever. But I think that that drug taking triggered a predisposition for whatever mental health issues that she ended up having. Okay.

So that was my clinical observation. So I'm not going to correct you. She's probably hanging out with David Smith, who's one of my friends. He and I wrote a book together. He founded the Hayd-Ashbury Free Clinic. Oh, wow. And the idea that LSD and other drugs can trigger schizophrenia, I've seen it in my career. So I'm not crazy?

Over and over again. Well, I haven't said you're not crazy. Okay, good. That's okay. We'll get to that. Fair enough. Anyway, so that's when the hypervigilance started. Like, I saw that.

I'm four years old. I saw that. I'm like, ooh. But I love it. her. She was super cool. She was like a fairy and I thought she was just so amazing. And then my other sister, Margo, who took her life in 1996, she also just drank, drank, did a lot of drugs. She didn't have a diagnosed mental illness per se, but I mean, all of the, all of the alcohol and all of the drugs just, you know, she,

She developed seizures, you know, from the amount of alcohol that she was consuming. And she just was on a path. It was a tough path. Anyway, watching those family members, I thought, I do not want, I love these people, but I do not want to end up like them. And so that was how I became so obsessed with like, you know. It sounds like intelligent life. Maybe. I mean, I was, if you're stepping back and don't go, oh, they are doing it so I should do it.

Right. They're doing it and their life isn't turning out in a happy way. So maybe I shouldn't do that. Yeah. I actually, when I was a young psychiatrist, studied children and grandchildren of alcoholics because my first wife grew up in a very abusive alcoholic home. And I just wondered why she didn't like me. I'm like, I married you. Why don't you like me?

And then when she tried to kill herself, took her to see a wonderful psychiatrist. And she wouldn't even admit her dad was an alcoholic, even though the police would come. And there was domestic violence. And I'm just like, how do you deny that? Yeah. Right? Yeah. But she thought she wasn't being loyal.

if she said that. Yeah. I mean, there's a very complex thing that happens when you love, you know, when you love someone, right? When you, or they're especially a parent. Because you have, in some ways, you have to, I took on the thing, I will protect them because I will fix them. And then, you know, my other sister is very similar to your ex-wife, kind of very loyal. They're not, you know, there's nothing wrong with how they. They get hammered every night, but what's wrong with that?

Denial's huge. Yeah, it is. And, you know, there was this one question in your history about your sort of concentration and focus and learning. Early on. Early on. Yeah. Thank gosh. But one wonders if that wasn't the chaos.

That's what I feel it was because I, my mother being sick, so terrified me. that I couldn't focus. She was, you know, she had cancer and the teachers were mad, you didn't finish this, and I would read, and I wouldn't retain anything that I'd read it again, and I wouldn't, it was just horrible. And I felt so kind of empty and lost in that, in that space of not being able to, and I,

and I left school at, you know, at 10th grade because of it. I mean, I left because I made a movie Manhattan and I wanted to move to New York and, you know, I could start a new life where nobody knew me, which I did. But I mean, the underlying thing was I need to get out of here because I can't function. I can't focus. And to your point, when I was out of that stress, I could focus when I was not no longer kind of. Yeah. Yeah, so that's sort of not ADD, that's trauma. Yeah.

And, you know, one of the things I saw that you did is EMDR. Only did it a few times, but it was very powerful, very powerful. Very powerful. I really, I was like, oh, this is good. Yeah, no, I'm a huge fan. It's amazing. It just helps you process the trauma. So the past doesn't have to live in the present.

And then you did something called frequency healing and brainwave technology. Yeah. Have you ever heard of that? Well, I've heard about neurofeedback. Yeah. So it's not neurovis. This is what they tell you.

But who knows? It no longer exists. So I'm like, was that real? But I think it was. So brain wave technology is, so there's electrodes on your brain. And it's reading your brain. Your brain hears itself in real time. So you listen to the sounds that your brain is making.

when the brain hears itself in real time, it can correct itself because it doesn't know that it's doing a neural pathway that is, you know, flawed or inconsistent until it hears itself. And I did hundreds of sessions. And afterwards, I mean, it was for me, it felt like a miracle because I literally. Who is the doctor that did that with you? Do you remember? He has passed. God, what's his name?

But a doctor didn't do it. He had people that ran his things here in L.A. and he was in Scottsdale. I can't believe. Oh, it almost had. I almost have the name, but I forgot it. Well, after it comes, let me know. Because it sounds a little bit like Nauri.

Lee Gertes. He wasn't a doctor, but he came up with this technology. And he had doctors on his team. And you found it very helpful. I found it powerful. I've also done neurofeedback. Neurofeedback, you're telling the brain what to do. You kind of, you're guiding.

You're just dancing with your brain. Right. Right. And I love that too. That felt very, I don't know. There was something about the brain wave and your brain kind of fixing itself, but because it hurt itself, if that's correct, if that's actually what was happening.

But I mean, I shifted dramatically. I had never realized that I'd been depressed most of my life until I wasn't. I mean, I literally woke up one day and went. And then the next day I was like happy again. I was like, hmm, this is interesting. I didn't know that you could actually be happy every day. Or like at ease, not. Yeah.

You balance your brain. Yeah. and then don't believe every stupid thing you think. People want big changes, but the brain responds to small, consistent habits. What you do every day matters. That's why I focus on daily brain support. Go to brainmd.com and use code podcast 20 for 20% off my favorite brain-first supplements. I always think of my patience in four big circles.

It's like, so what's the brain and your body doing? How about your mind, your relationships, and your soul? So I always think about those four all the time. And I try to optimize them. And when we think about your brain and body, this would be one of the most helpful things I say to you. if you want to keep your brain healthy or rescue it, we have to prevent or treat the 11 major risk factors.

And we know what they are. And for you, the acronym is Bright Minds, and the B is for blood flow. And you have a lot of healthy blood flow. And as I look at the risk factors, you were born three months premature. That can actually leave a lasting imprint. So if you had problems concentrating, you know,

odds are, it could be the chronic stress in staying up at 2 in the morning cleaning the kitchen. Yeah, that'll give you school problems, right? Right, right. But being premature could also have gotten you a little bit of less oxygen to start, which can decrease blood flow. Retirement in age in your 64. The older we get, the more serious we need to be. I hate that.

It's like the gravity of age, right? as we get older, our skin starts to fall off our face. Well, that same process happens in the brain. And so being serious, eye is inflammation. And I noticed you have some gut issues. Not anymore. Better? Yeah, way better.

Way better. Because if your gut's not right, your brain's not right. Exactly. I know that. They talk to each other all the time. Yeah. So I'm very aware of gut health. But that was for a long time, you know, and I did all these kinds of diets and things.

And, you know, I was vegan and macrobiotic and all fruit, no fat for year. I mean, it was crazy. Which is very bad for you. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, no. I was on caffeine and fruit for an, yeah. Caffeine and fruit.

Yeah, it was not good. Anyway. Yeah, get in your brain that's 60% fat. I know. Low fat generally goes with more. Tell that to the entire decade of the 80s. Because they were like, no fat, it's going to save your life. And I did it for, I did no fat for 20 years.

Wow. Bad. My skin was dry. That's probably led to some depression. Yeah. Because you're not getting any omega-3 fatty acids, which are so important for your brain. The G in Bright Minds is genetics, and there was a boatload of stuff. that almost all of us have stuff.

And the idea is genes aren't a death sentence. They should be a wake-up call. And so if I have, I adopted three of my six kids. Oh, my gosh. They all had substance abuse in their genetic history. And I'm like, you never use, you're never going to have a problem. You need to be on an alcohol and drug abuse prevention program your whole life. And, um, yeah.

What was the lore in your family about your grandfather, who is probably one of the most famous suicides in America? Yeah. Well, for years, it was, they denied that it was suicide. He shot it, you know, he by accident shot himself. You know, that was a few years. And then finally it came out, you know, it was suicide. Um. And in my opinion, he was such a great mind.

This mind was so powerful and so, you know, insightful and so unique. And he came from, you know, he came from suicides. He came from depression. I finally saw his mother, his childhood home where he was born, where he and his, you know, his father had taken his life in the, that home. And then his mother, who I never realized, had suffered from postpartum, you know, like there were all these things. I was like, oh, he's all makes sense. Because he, I think, was always struggling to handle the darkness, whatever darkness was inside him. And of course,

back in the day, they didn't know that alcohol was probably making it worse and causing more depression and more manic. I think he probably would have been diagnosed with some form of manic, you know, bipolar, I don't know, because he was just going up and down. But he was also drinking all the time. But I think he was self-medicating. I think he was trying to suppress this feeling of hopelessness that would happen periodically, you know. So, um, But the look, you know. He also had some head injuries? He did.

I think he had a head injury when he was, he was an ambulance driver in the Spanish Civil War for a while. And shrapnel, he got hit by shrapnel there. He also got hit. But this was later on in his life towards the end. he was in like a small plane crash and one of the propellers hit hit his head and that was I think that was the beginning of him not being able to function right the way he knew his knew how to do and I think that was the you know the very thing that he loved was the very thing that was taken away like his brain was just not functioning that kind of trauma and then he's still

you know drinking drinking Yeah, not good. Yeah. If you ask me, hey, Daniel, what's a single most important thing I've learned from narrowly 300,000 scans? Mild traumatic brain injury ruins people's lives

and no one knows about it. It's the most misunderstood thing. Damage your brain, you damage your life. And the brain is the consistency of soft butter, tofu, custard, somewhere between egg whites and jello. and it's housed in a very hard skull that has sharp bony ridges. And I've just seen it over and over and over again.

So one of my friends who I just dearly love, he's like normal, wealthy, good-looking, happy, credibly successful, and has a bike accident. But he doesn't lose consciousness, but he broke the helmet. And then he's like anxious, having panic attacks. His doctor puts him on an SSRI. And now he has suicidal thoughts. And he called me up.

And you could just see the damage. And so we put him in a hyperbaric chamber. And a year later, his brain's fine. He's fine. Amazing. Amazing. Craziness. Yes.

And you got your head hit when you were 15. Yes. Ski racing. Tell me about that. So I was a ski racer in Sun Valley because that's what you did. I knew nothing about any other sport. People would say, what's football team do you? I didn't even not.

Like I went to a football game and said, can we leave after the first inning? Yeah, that was apparently not what you say when you go to a football game. That's baseball. Anyway, so my, so I was a ski racer and that's all I did. So, you know, I was having a race on a weekend, which is pretty much every weekend you would have a race. And it was a dual slalom. And I was going down the course. And I could see the girl that was close to me, but I was, I was inching up.

I was, I was, I was going to win. She hit a gate. And I felt her coming towards me. I was like, oh, crap. and then she hit me and her ski came up and it's she lost your ski and it hit me in the face so it hit me right here and I've got it still got a scar um yeah and I was air lifted off the mountain and all that and got stitches did that happen right as soft skull is hard yeah so we'll look at your skin and see if we see it talks

T is toxins. So we would put alcohol there. Living in a moldy home. Even the anesthesia from a hip replacement. Yeah. All of those things potentially are toxic. But, you know, the first thing you do is you stop the toxin. Right?

If you're on a moldy home, you remediate it. If you're drinking, you stop. Yeah. M is mental health stuff. your pHQ 9 is actually a zero so that's the depression inventory I love that I rarely see that your hope score on a scale of zero to 64 is 63 so you live with high hope despite having an ACE score of seven do you know ACE stands for adverse childhood experiences so on a scale of zero to 10, how many bad things happened to you as a child?

And you have seven. If you score four or more, it increases your risk of seven of the top 10 leading causes of death. And if you score six or more, you died 20 years early. Now, you're not because the good news is, well, you can rehabilitate trauma. And you've worked really hard to get the past out of the present. Yeah. Yes. I love that so much.

We'll talk more about it. Eye is immunity and infections. You were bitten by a tick, but negative for Lyme. Brain doesn't look like you have Lyme. You've been taking hormone replacement, which I think is absolutely essential, and I'm so happy. Marty McCarrie came out and was the head of the FDA and said, we've been getting it wrong for women.

I just got chills because, you know, all these women would go, no, you know, I can't because I had, I was like, you make hormones. This doesn't even make sense. Why would you not want to have what you make? I mean, don't go on. Do you know why our hormones drop with age? No. For all the other reasons that everything drops. It's the planet's way of getting rid of you.

I'm just not okay with it. I'm not okay either. I want to stick around. The D is diabetes and you're obviously not overweight. You look very healthy. How's your blood sugar? Very good. Very good.

I mean, I don't. Yeah. Send me a recent lab. I would love to see them. Okay. Absolutely. And your sleep is good. So of all of these, you actively work to stay healthy.

Yes. And, you know, they weren't always good. So I did have to make definitive. And the good news is no matter how old we are, your brain can still get better. Every day your brain makes 700 new baby stem cells, especially an area called the hippocampus, which is Greek for seahorse. So I tell all my patients, your brain is making 700 new baby sea horses every day. And your behavior grows them. or murders them.

Which brain do you want? I want the big brain. I want the big brain. This is a study called Total Brain. It took you about 40 minutes to do. And it says you're not depressed or anxious or abusing substances. Do not have PTSD. And obviously not everybody who grows up and crazy develops PTSD.

Right. Some people do. As you answered the questions, there are some evidence of ADHD. Okay. I think it's more trauma, but we'll see. Okay. You're really good of recognizing faces.

That's what this is. But you recognize negative faces much faster than positive faces. And this is a trauma pattern. Ah, that makes sense. It's also a famous pattern. Because if someone's always sort of, I know you, I recognize you. I'm out. Then pretty soon you start going.

Is it dangerous? Yeah, right, right, right. You get your feelings hurt, that's this one. And sort of stick around a little bit. Not stress, not anxious, clearly, not depressed. Your long-term memory's outstanding. Your short-term memory's great. Focus.

Could be better. What is that? Focus. Good, man. Better. We get to work a lot. Planning's excellent. Processing speed, not so good.

So I bet you just didn't understand that. When you're sort of tapping on the computer. Oh, oh. Yours was slower. So these two probably go together. Flexibility is excellent. You're very positive. People who are depressed are like over here.

Right. But you tend to look for what's right rather than, what's wrong, resilient, social. So maybe I can help with these two things. Please. Please. We need to process better. And this was the X test you did for the scan,

where they put the IV in your arm, and you only had one atypical score. So this was sort of the longer it went, the slower your responses were. But it says not typical of people have ADD. So I think no, but let's look at your scan. And your scan will give us more information. So we do a study called spec,

and spec looks at blood flow and activity. It looks at how your brain works, and it basically tells us three things. Good activity, too little or too much. And then my job becomes balancing it. So this is a healthy scan, and they're not that many healthy people in the world. We actually did a study of normal, and then we realized, no, we can't call it normal. We have to call it healthy because normal is troubled.

I guess if you just turn on the news or go to the mall, you realize not everybody's having a good time. So here we're looking underneath the brain, top, bottom. This is an area called the cerebellum. It would be very important for you. These are your temporal lobes. One side, the other side, down from the top. So here the color doesn't matter. It's shape.

This one, the color matters. Blue is average activity. Red is the top 15%. White is the top 8%. And it should be here in the back bottom, part of your brain. And everything else sort of quiet. Oh, so we are looking at my mind.

Fine. You were just showing me in general. So this is what we want. Got it. Got it. Got it. Got it. Okay. And then when we look at yours, you have a great looking brain. There's some aging. That's true for all of us. But at some point, this left front, temporal lobe got hurt. So that's why I was interested about this ski accident. Yes.

Because that could be it. If you do what I say, this is where it is today. This is the possibility of how much better it could be. Amazing. And so I get really hopeful. We have a follow-up for one of our fun patients. His name is Tart. He has a show on HGTV called The Flipping El Muses.

They flip houses and they do home improvement. They take really terrible look in houses, roach, infested, and then they make them beautiful, and then they flip them, they sell it. His brain was really terrible, and a year later, it's dramatically better. So I call it extreme home makeover, brain edition. Brain addition. I love it. Have you ever been in a hyperbaric chamber? I have been in a hyperbaric chamber, and my husband has created a hypo-baric chamber, which is pretty extraordinary.

but it's not oxygen being pumped in. It is ambient air, and we pull it out and we push it back in. So it takes you up and down in altitude. Which is really amazing. I think that's one of the reasons I've gotten a healthier brain or healthier body. I don't know. It would be one of the things I would recommend. I mean, I have some supplements I like to help.

Yeah. I love hyperbar bear. I just think hyperbaric, if you do too much of it, can be detrimental if you do too much. You know, like, it's amazing for healing, though. And then here's your active scan. So let's go back. This is sort of what we want it to look like. Yeah.

And they're not enough. Your cerebellum could be better. Yes. Do you, what do you do for exercise? I do a hit. I do two days of a hit. workout. I hike every day. I hike and walk every day. And I do weights twice a week. Great. Yeah. Do you do any rocket sports or coordination exercises? No. And I should.

We've got, we've got, yeah. So I just want this to be busy. Yes. More active. I'm not worried about any of this. Yeah. Odds are your grandfather. His emotional brain was screaming. busy. And he had drank to settle it down. Yeah. Yeah. And I always tell my patients, let me do your drugs because I'm better at them. But I think coordination exercise could be super helpful. I actually know that I have to do them and I'm, I don't know. I've never been that good. So.

But that's even a better reason to do them. I know. Because then you just get better as long as you're not criticizing yourself. Exactly. It's like, you know, I'm not doing this to beat you. I'm doing this to work. A little bit of bumpiness. I think that's that past toxicity.

Right. Mild concussion in the past. You have some increased here. So that gives you a vulnerability to depression. But you're obviously not, so I wouldn't worry about it. Question. Oh, no. It's so clear.

It's so clear. I got to play some thing bong. No. I'm super excited. First of all, I have to say, thank you so much for making it always a positive experience. Because, and you said this in the beginning, but, you know, because I actually speak about mental health, and I'm now going to only call it brain health for the rest of my life all over the world. And you making it positive is such a, it's a gift.

It's going to make me cry because so many people just think there's something wrong with them. And I thought there was something wrong with me for a very long time. It's nice to know that it's not that bad. You have a great brain. Thank you. And the question is, well, how do I keep it that way? Yes. And how do I make it even better?

Yeah. Better. But most psychiatrists you go to, they have to find something wrong. And then the only hammer they have are medications. Medications. And I'm like, that's insane. Well, I know enough about you, and it's why I admire you so much, is that your stress, you know, like walking and health and the way that you eat and all of it and water.

You know, like all of these things, they matter. They matter to the brain. and what matters to the brain then matters to the body and what matters to the body, then, you know, it helps the brain. But it's just like your four quadrants. Those things are what make a difference in somebody's life. But the problem I think that people have is the separation. They think their brain is like, oh, my brain's over here. Like it doesn't matter. And, you know, people get cancer and you go into a chemotherapy lounge, and they feed them nothing but horrible food. And sugar is part of the reason why the cells grow.

It's like, what are you doing? Give them more chemical. It's just, I don't know, I get very frustrated. So, you know, just thinking that all of these things go together in concert, it's so beautiful. It's like a beautiful dance. Yeah. My wife and I wrote a book together called The Brain Warriors Way.

and it's got that title because you're in a war for the health of your brain. Everywhere you go, hospitals, elementary schools, doctors offices, someone's trying to give you bad food that will kill you early. My ex-husband had cancer surgery. They removed a tumor or whatever. And the first meal they gave him. I was so bad. I started, I lost it.

It was like boiled chicken, jello, green jello. I was like, is that supposed to be the vegetable? Because you colored it green. It was, and a cup of coffee and a piece of chocolate cake. I was like, that's not food? It was just so annoying. Anyway. It's, it's so annoying.

It's so annoying. It is so annoying. It is so annoying. We're actually working with the White House Faith office, and it's, HHS and hopefully declare the next 10 years the decade of brain health. Amazing. I just got jills. That's amazing.

We have to stop calling people mental. I know. It's just demeaning and shaming. It is. No one wants it. When I told my dad I wanted to be a psychiatrist, he asked me why I didn't want to be a real doctor. where I wanted to be a nut doctor and hang out with nuts all day long. Now, he didn't get father of the year award.

But he reflected what society believes, which means nobody wants to get help. But the help is not what it could be. And I think, look at your brain so you know what you're dealing with. And then get it healthy. and every decision you make, you just ask yourself one question, is what you're doing now good for your brain or bad for it and does it make the world better? There's actually all four circles in that one question, right?

Because negativity is bad for your brain. Believing every stupid thing you think is bad for your brain. holding on to hurts. It's bad for your brain. But having meaning and purpose, we're doing this great course. I'm so excited. It's called the AMAN Hole 4.

And it's in, we're piloting it in a hundred faith-based organizations. And I just got the first six-week results on 176 people, dramatic improvements. But what was the most interesting to me, if we improved the spiritual circle,

not with you believe in God, does your sense of meaning and purpose go up? Everything else followed it. Amazing. And that's a question most doctors never ask their patients. Why do you care? Why do you think you're on the planet?

And what is your deepest sense of meaning and purpose? Well, that question is like the brain itself. It's like up here, right? And it goes down. It's so beautiful. It's beautiful. It makes so much sense that you naturally would follow that.

Because if you do believe in something, I don't know. I don't know what you would call it, but in that. Well, that we're not here by random chance. That our conversation is not random. No. And that it has a purpose. and the purpose is beyond ourselves to help other people be better. Are you taking a multiple vitamin?

I am, yeah. And do you take an omega-3 fatty acid? Because I think that's super important. Yes. I want you to send me your lab work so I can see. Yeah. I would add we make advanced blood flow. could actually increase blood flow, make something else called brain and memory power boost.

Oh. That those two things, I think, could be super helpful. That's interesting because I, and blood flow would be circulation too. Yeah. Okay. Because I've always, you know, in Chinese, Chinese medicine, I've always had like, my circulation was always a bit of an issue, you know, which makes sense if, you know, three months premature or whatever. or not getting enough blood flow.

Interesting. Yeah, I love that. Is there something I should have asked you that I didn't? You asked me about all the good things. Peptides. What's your take on peptides? It's the Wild West. It is the Wild West.

It's the Wild West. It's so funny. With imaging, I was an early adopter and got so much great. In fact, last week I got to talk to the CEO of the American Psychiatric Association. And I've sort of been at war with them for 30 years because I'm like, they go, oh, no, you shouldn't scan your patients. And I'm like, are you insane? Like, I'm a psychiatrist. I know how to diagnose crazy.

Trying to take care of homicidal or suicidal or psychotic people without knowing what's going on in their brain. That's ludicrous. But they said, no, you shouldn't do that because it doesn't fit with the current diagnostic paradigm. And so I was talking to her. I met her at this great event at HHS. And she said something to me, I'll never forget. In fact, I may put this on my tombstone. She goes, you were just early.

Like 30 years? Seriously. You were just early. You're like, yeah, I guess so. But, I mean, the joy that brought to me, which is instead of you were crazy or you were a charlatan. But don't they always find out, you know, you start with something new. I can't remember there's some way that it breaks down that you're,

everybody says no, no, no, and they push you away and they push you away until finally, you know, eventually it becomes the norm and that you were always right. We always loved you. We always believed in you. And you're like, you didn't always. Yeah. But I know why people don't want to innovate.

Because hell is separation from God. Hell on earth is separation from each other. And if you innovate, they separate you. And it's a painful place to be. But for me, I always had the stories. of transformation that have blessed me. Yeah. And sort of kept me going.

And that is undeniable, right? That's beautiful. It's so good. Yeah. All right. We're going to make your brain better. I'm so excited. I'm excited too.

And then we'll go on the brain flip show. And for you, it's just, you know, home makeover brain edition. It's not like for Tarek. It's extreme brain edition. Yeah, that's right. Mine, we're doing the bathroom. We're redoing the bathroom. It's okay.

I don't mind. Make it nice. Maybe I should say. But every day you're remodeling it. Isn't that true? And we remodel it by what we eat, by the air we breathe, by the water we drink, by the thoughts we think, by the news we watch. The news we don't, we don't watch. The people we hang out with.

Absolutely. remodeling your brain in a good way or in a vulnerable way. Absolutely. Absolutely. Amen. Thank you. Thank you. Amazing.

Amazing. You just speak my language. I get so excited. I'm like, nobody talks like you, but you. So thank you. That's our goal, right? And I think as you talk about it, it was to stop calling people mental and help them have better brains.

Yeah. And you already have an awesome brain, so I'm going to help you make it more awesome. Amazing. And who wouldn't want that? Exactly. Right? As opposed to, no, I'm not going to see a psychiatrist. I'm not crazy.

Oh, my mother, my mother literally, my father suggested when my sister, you know, was, we moved to Idaho and she was having, you know, episodes. And my dad said, well, maybe we should. take her to a psychiatrist. Maybe she should talk to somebody. She goes, oh, my God, everybody will think we're crazy. Everybody, they'll know. Of course, I was like five at the time, and I just sat there listening to it.

I mean, you know, but that was the time. That's what people thought. And generationally, those thoughts keep, they keep you down. to keep generations from getting me well. You know, people like you who've advocated for it, it's just been so helpful. We just have to change the messaging. Yeah.

Right? Because there's a lot of more money for mental health. And I'm like, not as it's currently practiced. You're going to get more trouble. Way more trouble. I'll just say a quick story. So I spoke at the suicide, the American Society for Prevention of Suicide. I've spoken, I was a keynote

like three times. And the last time, and I was like, I don't think I can do this again. They were celebrating these people that were coming up with a pill to prevent suicide. And I was like, to prevent suicide. I just, I was like, how do you, you got to know what going on in there? Like, not everybody's system is the same. Well, an SSRI for the right brain will prevent suicide. An SSRI for the wrong brain will create suicide. Exactly. Exactly. So I remember Prozac came out in 1988, and so I was practicing. And in 1991, I started scanning people. And that was the year there was a study from Harvard that said Prozac can make you kill yourself.

Prozac can make you more aggressive. And of course, Eli Lilly came out and said, oh, no, it's just 30 people. And I'm like, oh, no, I absolutely saw that, that I would do just what I was taught to do. You're depressed based on this DSM criteria. And Prozac makes you want to blow your brains out. I'm like, but then what I realized, if your brain is busy, Prozac calms it down because serotonin is an inhibitory. neurotransmitter calms things down.

But if you start sleepy, Prozac can disinhibit you. And then all of a sudden, my wife wrote a book called The Relentless Courage of a Scared Child. She grew up in trauma. Her ACE score is eight. And she had thyroid cancer issues 23 and then got depressed. No one told her if we just kill your thyroid and you don't have any thyroid, you're going to. to be depressed. And so she ended up going to UC Irvine, saw a resident, resident put her on Prozac,

and completely disinhibited her. And she did things that are in the book, but are things she's not proud of. And when I scanned her years later, after we met, I'm like, I hope no one put you on an SSRI. And she goes, it ruined my life. So interesting. How do you know unless you look? Yeah, it just makes sense. Yeah, most nine-year-olds get it.

Exactly. Aren't we all just like seven or something? Let's be friends. Let's be friends. Let's continue. I want to see your table tennis skills go way up. All right. Fair enough. Thank you so much. Hi, I'm Dr. Daniel Lehman.

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