Change Your Brain Every Day - The Difference Between Pleasure & Happiness with Dr. Robert Lustig

Episode Date: September 19, 2019

Many of the neurological issues prevalent in our society are the result of a conscious effort of the food industry to confuse and conflate the differences between pleasure and happiness. So what exactly does this mean? In the last episode of a series with “The Hacking of the American Mind” author Robert Lustig, Dr. Amen and Lustig describe how the crucial differences between dopamine and serotonin are disrupting our health.

Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. In our podcast, we provide you with the tools you need to become a warrior for the health of your brain and body. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we have been transforming lives for 30 years using tools like brain spec imaging to personalize treatment to your brain. For more information, visit amenclinics.com. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is also brought to you by BrainMD, where we produce the highest quality nutraceuticals to support the health of your brain and body. To learn more, go to brainmd.com. Welcome back. I am here on the Brain Warriors Way podcast with Dr. Robert Lustig. I am so grateful to you and your work. Likewise, you have helped me personally. So I owe you a debt.

Well, that is just a joy for me to share our work with you. And when your book, The Hacking of the American Mind, came out, it sort of reminded me of The Brain Warrior's Way. You know, we wrote, my wife and I wrote The Brain Warrior's Way because it's everywhere we go. Someone is trying to put a gadget in your hand, shove bad food down your throat. You get this toxic look at the news and it's like, you're in a war for the health of your brain and your body.

You need to become a warrior, armed, prepared, and aware to really be able to win the fight of your life, which is for your health. Indeed. So the subtitle of this book is The Science Behind the Corporate Takeover of Our Bodies and Brains. And that is exactly what is going on. There has been a corporate takeover, and that is what I describe in the book. Now, specifically, what I argue in scientific detail is that what has happened and the reason why this is a war is because our society has very specifically, with a conscious intent, confused and conflated two separate terms so that we don't know the difference. Those two terms are pleasure and happiness.

So there are seven differences between pleasure and happiness. What are they? I'm dying to know. All right, ready? Number one, pleasure is short-lived. Happiness is long-lived. Two, pleasure is visceral. You feel it in your body. Happiness is ethereal.

You feel it above the neck. Number three, pleasure is taking. Happiness is giving. Number four, pleasure is achieved alone. Happiness is usually achieved in social groups. Number five, pleasure can be achieved with substances. Happiness cannot be achieved with substances. Number six, the extremes of pleasure. Now, whether it be substances or behaviors. So substances like cocaine, heroin, nicotine, alcohol, sugar, all the stuff that does bad stuff to your brain, as you've shown. And to your families.

And your families. Or behaviors, shopping, gambling, internet gaming, social media, pornography. Those are all behaviors. There's an alcoholic after every one of those because excess of any of those hedonic substances or behaviors leads to addiction. So we have shopaholic, alcoholic, chocoholic, sexaholic, et cetera, and right down the line. Whereas you can't overdose on too much happiness. And number seven, the reason for the book, pleasure is dopamine, happiness is serotonin. So two different neurotransmitters, two different sets of receptors, two different areas of the brain, two different regulatory patterns.

Like, why do we care? They both feel good. Why do we care? And most people substitute one for the other because pleasure, you can buy. Happiness, you can't. Pleasure is cheap. Happiness is tough. So why wouldn't I want to substitute one for the other? Here's why. Dopamine is excitatory. When dopamine is released from one neuron to the next, it excites that next neuron. That's its job. Dopamine excites the next neuron. Now, neurons like to be excited. That's why they have receptors. But neurons like to be tickled, not bludgeoned. They like to stimulate, then they like to come to rest. Chronic overstimulation of any neuron anywhere in the brain or in the spinal cord or in that matter in the gut will lead to neuronal cell death. So it wears it out.

It wears it out, right? And we know this because we take care of kids in the neurointensive care unit who are in status epilepticus, you know, nonstop chronic seizures. And we have to stop their seizures as quickly as possible, put them into a pentobarbital coma if we have to, in order to preserve brain function. Because the longer those seizures go on, the stupider they're going to be. So it is a priority to stop the stimulation. So chronic excitation leads to neuronal cell death. Dopamine causes chronic excitation.

Dopamine kills neurons. Excessive dopamine. Excessive. Dopamine kills neurons. Chronic excessive dopamine kills neurons. Now, the neurons, they don't want to die. So they have a fail-safe. They have a plan B. They have a self-defense mechanism. What they do is they down-regulate the number of receptors. So it's less likely that any dopamine molecule will find a receptor to bind to.

So what does this mean in human terms, in terms of addiction? You get a hit, you get a rush, receptors go down. Next time you need a bigger hit to get the same rush because there are fewer receptors, and then the receptors go down. And then you need a bigger hit, and a bigger hit, and a bigger hit, until finally you need a huge hit to get nothing. That's called tolerance. And then when the neurons actually do start to die that's called addiction and those neurons ain't coming back they don't regrow so dopamine leads to addiction when it's excess overstimulation chronicity leads to addiction serotonin on the other hand is inhibitory so if it's inhibitory, it puts the next neuron to rest. Now, if it's going to put the next neuron to rest, is there any chance of

wearing it out? No. So does serotonin downregulate its own receptor? No. So you can't overdose on too much happiness. But there's one thing that downregulates serotonin, dopamine. They counterbalance each other. They do. But the more pleasure you seek, the more unhappy you get. But let me give you a different take on this. Because I've thought about this a whole bunch. That if we scan you and you have sleepy frontal lobes,

and psychiatrists won't know because they never look at the brain, but they give you an SSRI, which boosts serotonin, it'll actually make you worse because it'll take your sleepy frontal lobes, make them sleepier, which then will disinhibit you and cause all sorts of behavior problems. Well, in fact, we know that if you give SSRIs to the wrong patient, they will jump off roofs.

Or kill their mother or do all sorts of bad things. It works for three-quarters of the patients, and it doesn't work for the other quarter. My experience, not three-quarters. Because depression is just not one thing. That's right. Depression is not one thing that's right sometimes it's over activity sometimes it's under activity sometimes it's trauma sometimes it's toxins um and in my book feel better fast and make it last i talk about the dopamine drip versus the dopamine dump. And I've been blessed to treat a number of young celebrities.

And fame is a dopamine hit. Absolutely. When they recognize you, when they want your autograph, when the paparazzi follow you. And over time. And you know as well as I do that fame wastes a lot of people. It does. Because it wears out their nucleus accumbens. Totally agree. And the other thing that wears it out is obesity.

That the people, they go after the dopamine hit with the cupcakes that we got after moms for bringing to school. And the more they do it, the more treats, really the less cells for dopamine to feel anything at all. It changes the gain. So ultimately, we have been so plied with sugar that if you tried to get the sugar out of the food, it would taste terrible. And so that maintains the level. And people get withdrawal from sugar.

And they do. And also the T1CR receptor on the tongue for sugar goes down because of all the sugar in all of our food. So you end up needing more sugar to be able to get any sweet taste. So we have basically desensitized our taste buds and our reward center, which basically keeps us coming back for more. And if you can stay off sugar just 10 days, your taste buds begin to come back. They do. And when you eat an orange, it will explode with flavor in your mouth, as opposed to if you're eating a lot of sugar,

the orange tastes like nothing to you. And so being a brain warrior is you really do see sugar as the enemy. And we're here. We love to talk about food and loving food that loves you back. That would be good, wouldn't it? So many people are just in a bad relationship with food. Well, it's easy to get in a good relationship with food. Two words, real food. Food that came out of the ground or animals that ate the food that came out of the ground. That's real food. Two words, real food, food that came out of the ground or animals that ate the food that came out of the ground. That's real food. Anything else is processed. If it has a label, it's a warning label because real food doesn't have a label, does it? Because it doesn't need

a label. I love that. In addition, if any food has five ingredients or more, leave it at the store. Because that means it's processed. Do you know corndogs have 29 ingredients? I did. Pop-tarts have 36. Oh, isn't that insane? It's the insanity. Robert Lustig, professor of pediatric endocrinology at UC San Francisco, the author of

The Hacking of the American Mind, The Science Behind the Corporate Takeover of Our Bodies and Brains. How scary is that? Also in the documentary, Sugarcoated and Fed Up. I hope you just get his books, look at the documentaries. This is going to arm you, prepare you to win the fight of your life. And what did you learn in this week of podcasts? Write it down. Put it on any of your social media sites, hashtag BrainWarriorsWayPodcast. If you want to win a signed copy of the Brain Warriors Way cookbook, leave a review either on Apple or on BrainWarriorsWayPodcast.com. Also leave your questions. Thanks so much for being with us. If you're enjoying the Brain Warriors Way podcast,

please don't forget to subscribe so you'll always know when there's a new episode. And while you're at it,inics.com or a 10% discount on all supplements at brainmdhealth.com. For more information, give us a call at 855-978-1363.