Change Your Brain Every Day - Title: The Amen's Top Secrets to Staying Energized

Episode Date: March 6, 2026

In this week's mini-episode, Dr. Amen & Tana discuss their top ways to stay energized. Feeling mentally drained, foggy, or unfocused? In this episode, we explore what it truly means to stay energized by supporting your brain health from the inside out. Your brain controls everything—from focus and memory to mood and motivation—so keeping it healthy is the key to sustained energy throughout your day. We break down the science behind mental fatigue and share practical, research-backed strategies to boost cognitive performance naturally. You'll learn how sleep quality, nutrition, movement, stress management, and daily habits directly impact brain function and long-term vitality. Tune in to discover how small daily choices can lead to clearer thinking, better focus, improved mood—and lasting energy.

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. Hi, I'm Dr. Daniel Aman. And I'm Tanna Aman. Welcome to change your brain, change your life. We are so excited to have you with us. Every week we're going to give you tips and tools to help you have a better brain and a better life. You're not stuck with the brain you have.

You can actually make it better and we can prove it. So at the Aman Clinics over the last, goodness, 23 years, we've been doing brain imaging. We do a study called brain spec imaging. Speck looks at blood flow and activity. It looks at how your brain works. We've done nearly 100,000 scans on people from 111 countries. And just what Tanis said, the theme of our work is you're not stuck with the brain

you have, you can make it better. And we've proven it over and over again. I always like to start with brains run the world. They run the stock market, the local market, huge corporations, mom and pop shops down the street. Brains run governments, although not that well. Yeah, probably don't want to talk about that right now. Brains run schools, churches, families.

These are our girls and some of our grandbabies. And you. And we're so excited because every week we're going to bring you information and tips that will literally help you change your brain and change your life and your family. But, you know, most people rarely think about the brain, which is a huge mistake because success in everything you do always starts. with a healthy brain. The problem is that brain-related problems

affect 200 million Americans at some point in their lives. Brain fog, memory problems, depression, anxiety, insomnia, and being overweight or obese. And nobody thinks about that, right? Nobody thinks that the belly and the brain are connected. Right. So we want to really help you make that brain-body connection.

And I like what you often say is that it's almost more normal to have a problem at some point in your life or know someone that does that's very close to you than it is to not have a problem. What is it, 51% of people will be affected? So according to the US government, 51% of us at some point in our life will have a psychiatric illness. 29% of us will have two and 17% or 51% or 51. million Americans will have three. So I like to say normal is a myth. It's a setting on a

dryer or a city in Illinois. I actually get to give a lecture once in normal Illinois, which was hysterical. And how were the women there? Were they normal? Well, I mean, you know, being from California, it was the first time I actually met normal women and It tended to be like everybody else. It's the smart people that get help when they have a problem rather than they think they're so different than everyone else. So what I like about this is that it really, we're really interested in breaking the stigma.

We don't want people not getting help or hiding in secrecy or suffering alone. We really want to break that stigma and help people to realize this is medical, not moral. And I love this because I grew up in a time where it really was a stigma. And in fact, here I'm a nurse, but I still had that same thought. And when I met you, and I started understanding what your work was about, gosh, that was nine years ago now, I thought it was the coolest thing. I thought it was... You really put up with me for nine years?

Sometimes I wonder, but, you know? No. No. Seriously, it's the most amazing thing because when I started to really understand the power of looking at someone's brain and really seeing what you can do when you when you when it's not just the scan when you look at all four circles that biological psychological social and spiritual aspect of a person and you work on that whole the whole person the results are astounding and it really does take the stigma out there's no reason for people to suffer alone like they do. And we're going to talk to you about those four circles as we move along in this show. They're just so critical.

Thinking about some of the problems in the brain, what a lot of people don't know is Alzheimer's disease is expected to triple in the next 25 or 30 years, and there's no cure for it on the horizon. If you're fortunate enough to live until you're 85, and I'm totally planning because I live with this one, 50% of people at 85 will have a diagnosis of dementia, one form or another. And the truly terrifying thing is what we now know through our imaging work is that Alzheimer's disease starts in your brain, 30 to 50 years. before you have any symptoms. So of a patient I diagnosed at 59, odds are she had brain changes in her 20s.

So this is actually the person on the screen. So these are spec scans. Speck scans are what we do at Aymn clinics. They look at blood flow and activity, healthy on the left, someone with Alzheimer's disease on the right, who is diagnosed at the age of 59. So even in her 20s or 30s, or 30s or 40s, her brain is deteriorated and nobody knows because virtually nobody looks.

So looking as you'll hear about in this show just changes everything. It's really interesting. I mean this isn't my idea. The National Institute of Aging in 2011 changed its staging guidelines. So it used to be normal, mild cognitive impairment, which means you're forgetting many things. and then Alzheimer's disease. But based on the imaging work from clinics like ours, they changed it. They added a new stage.

So the first one is still normal. The second one is normal, but your brain's deteriorating. So you can actually see changes in the brain when people don't, you know, have any outward manifestation, then mild cognitive impairment Alzheimer's. But you can see the trouble. Right. And what's so interesting is now for a long time now, we've said we're going after Alzheimer's, We have an Alzheimer's prevention program, and that sort of made some waves, but it's true,

because people never make the connection or they didn't until more recently between lifestyle, what you're doing every day and its effect on diseases like Alzheimer's. In other words, as your weight goes up, the size and function of your brain goes down, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, all of these things actually contribute to, how you're going to, how Alzheimer's disease. All of these things that are preventable. Preventable. And so that's why when we say we have an Alzheimer's prevention program and we're going

after it, we're going after all of those things that lead to Alzheimer's disease. So we are going to teach you that connection between your body and your brain and how do you prevent these things. It's actually much easier than you might think. That it requires focus and we're going to give you those right things to focus on. As most people know, depression is one of the greatest killers of our time. Worldwide, it is the most expensive medical problem. It affects 50 million Americans at some point in their life,

and it is a major risk factor for Alzheimer's disease. In fact, in women, if they have problems with depression, it doubles their risk. In men, it quadruples their risk. And you know, I want to just take a minute here. We sometimes talk about it, and we talk about in a clinical sense and what the risks are and things like that. But anybody suffering with depression knows it is one of the most miserable things to ever suffer from. And there was a period after I went through thyroid cancer, I actually had significant depression, not understanding what was happening with the whole disease process,

but it's like someone is ripping your skin off. It's terrible. While you're awake. So it's just, and it's something you can't get away from. There's not a painkiller for it. You know, now we have some medications that help sometimes and sometimes they don't. But that's really what we want to help people with, is we want to help alleviate some of that suffering and show people what you can do naturally and also medically.

So we're not anti-medication by any stretch. We don't want you to walk away thinking that we are, but we are. against the indiscriminate use of medication without addressing lifestyle because there are so many things you can do to make your life better today starting now and that's what we want to share with you. And one of the things I think you're famous for in the Omni Diet, the book that she wrote in the other cookbooks is really eating in an anti-inflammatory way and what has been discovered is inflammation in your body is a major risk factor for Alzheimer's disease and it's a major

risk factor for depression. Depression also increases the risk of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and obesity. And everybody knows obesity is a serious national crisis. Two-thirds of us are overweight, one-third of us are obese. Obesity is a major risk factor for stroke, heart disease, cancer, depression. I mean, it's a risk factor for 30 medical illnesses. Right. And again, Again, we also want people to understand this word obesity is thrown around and it's almost thrown around like it's your fault because you eat too much and we want you to understand that we know it's way more complicated than that. It's about hormones.

It's about environmental pollution. It's about a lot of things. It's about how your brain functions. About food companies making food. Absolutely. And it's about how your brain functions and we're going to be addressing all of those things. And there's actually something you can do, but you have to understand what's going on first. No better, do better. If you look at the maps of the progression of obesity in the US, it was really not a big problem at all in the early 1980s.

But then it just started to skyrocket. And one of the things I think that skyrocketed it was the US government when they came out and they said, fat is the enemy. Let's take fat out of everything. And when they really sponsored low fat this, low fat that, low fat diets are good for you, they replaced the fat with sugar. Sugar and chemicals. And so this term obesity, which we'll get into another point, but these are chemicals that are either in your food or in the environment.

And we started putting those obeisogens in people's foods, they're chemicals that don't easily leave the body. But another thing happened during that same era, and we started adding a lot of pollutants to the environment, including to the water. And if you look at the areas where obesity actually is worse than any other area in the country, they tend to be right along the Mississippi River,

where we dump a lot of stuff. Isn't that interesting? So your environment clearly matters. The CDC, according to statistics, no state meant the Healthy People 2010 goal of having less than 15% How scary is that? Obes. Yet in 2000, so just 10 years earlier, no state had more than 30% obese, now 12 states do.

And the scariest part for me, because we have an 11-year-old, one in three children born after the year 2000 are estimated to, it's estimated that they will get type 2 diabetes, they will develop type 2 diabetes. That's just frightening. frightening. Now, what we get really excited about, and I first published this in my book, the Aymann Solution, is that the answer to obesity, depression, and Alzheimer's disease is not to see them as separate disorders that each have their own way to wellness. It's really to see them as different expressions of the same disorder. And I like what you said. I love this, yeah.

So I actually do a lot of presenting and sometimes for academic institutions. And when you're presenting to these institutions, you really have to have a lot of, you know, you have to cite medical journals. And as I start getting into these disease processes, I'm like, wow, okay, you go down a rabbit hole. There's so much to know, so much to learn. And then all of a sudden you come full circle because what I realized, the disease process, when you're in the disease process, it's really complicated.

It seems complicated. It feels complicated and it feels like you can't get out. But then all of a sudden when I start looking at the solutions, the solutions are simple because they're the same. It was amazing to me. So they're the same whether it's depression, they're the same whether it's Alzheimer's disease, they're the same whether it's obesity, hypertension, diabetes. So in other words, what's good for your brain is good for your heart, is good for your reproductive

organs and your hormones and everything else. I always go to that spino, I can't help it. In our very first show, you're talking about... We might as well let you see the real us. I was teasing her. I was with the patient yesterday who had a high blood sugar, and I said, you know, as blood sugar levels go down, erections go up. But it's true.

And so that's... All right, so I have to like take this full circle, right? So for years, I've been saying whatever's good for your heart is good for your brain. because it's all about blood flow. Your brain is the most active organ in your body. It uses 20 to 30% of the calories you consume, 20% of the oxygen, and 20% of the blood flow. So anything that's a problem for your heart,

so heart disease, hypertension, heart arrhythmia, are bad for your brain. Right. Right. And then it was actually, shortly after we met, I started working on my book, The Brain in Love, which was easy to write as I was with her. And then I'm like, whatever's good for your heart is good for your brain is good for your genitals.

It's all about blood flow, right? I mean, erections are all about blood flow. And so whatever's good for your heart, is good for your brain, it's good for your genitals. Whatever is bad for your heart is bad for your brain is bad for your genitals. And then I read this horrifying study. 40% of 40-year-olds have erectile dysfunction. It's crazy.

Which means 40% of 40-year-olds already have brain dysfunction. Right. And 70% of 70-year-olds have erectile dysfunction, which means it's likely 70% of 70-year-olds have brain dysfunction and it's reversible. And that's what's exciting is that when we put people on this program, it's not hard. It's a paradigm shift. But what's so incredible, almost always, when we work in large groups, we get incredible stories of people going off their medication, which we don't want you to do, okay, without consulting your physician. But they end up going off of medication, you know, in a healthy way. But they also have reports of, you know, improved sexual function and, you know, decreased blood sugar and improved memory, focus.

We can't talk about sexual things without a kiss. Sorry. Excuse me. All right. Focus. Terrifying statistics. There are actually now 200 studies that report as your weight goes up,

the actual physical size and function of your brain goes down. I read that first study, and I'd lost nearly 30 pounds. I'm like, that should scare the fat off anyone. When I read the first study from my friend Cyrus Raji, when he was at the University of Pittsburgh, now at UCLA. I then went and we looked at our normal database and we looked at the healthy weight people and the overweight people and the overweight people had lower function in their prefrontal

cortex. So that's the most human thoughtful part of your brain. That horrified me. It's why I ended up writing, change your brain, change your body. Because I realized if your brain's not right, your body's not right. Although I'm going to take some credit for the fact that you look younger now, and you did when I met you, so since I'm in charge of the nutrition. You want to say more about that?

I do, I want a trophy or something. But you make me want to live longer. Well, it's good, and there's no junk in our house, so you have no choice. So anyways, this is our study on, you know, our quote, normal group. It's never a good idea to be obese. You don't want the pressure on your joints, but fat actually is not a knocky. Right, I want to point this out. So again, we understand it's not that simple.

We're not blaming anybody. Okay, if you're overweight, we want you to hear this. We're not saying, oh, you're lazy. That's not the message here. We understand that in many cases it's actually not your fault. You may have been exposed to something. There might be a lot going on in your life. What we are saying is that it's not healthy for you.

Okay, we're not discriminating against anybody who's fat. We want to help you have the best life you can and the best brain you can. And you're not likely going to do that if you have a lot of fat on your belly. So we want to be able to show you some of the reasons that that might be happening, why it's been so difficult, and how you can reverse it. Then, Amen Clinics, and we'll talk about this at some point in our shows, we did the world's largest study on active and retired NFL play. And so as I was learning about as your weight goes up, the size of your brain went down.

We then studied our football players who were healthy weight, same position, and compared them to the obese football players in what we found, again, lower function in the frontal lobes. And if you just think of your prefrontal cortex, judgment, focus, forethought, impulse control, organization, planning, and learning from the mistake. stakes you make. And in order to get to a healthy weight, you really need those functions. And so to understand brain-body connection is just critical. And as your brain gets better, your body tends to get better as well. Because trust me, I know how hard it is. I have fat

genes. I actually did a genetic test that said I had a 67% chance of being obese. And I have an obese sister and an obese brother. And I know if I'm not focused on this, I'll totally be overweight. So I know it's hard. We were just at the hospital. Your father-in-law was sick. And we went to a deli nearby to get them something to eat. I actually counted all of the food they had in the deli. 95% of it was unhealthy. It was like, so it takes good forth thought takes good frontal lobes in order to fight the war. Right. Because I mean, let's make no mistake about it.

You are in a war for the health of your brain and your life. And I really like the word warrior for that reason. So as somebody who's had cancer three times, who's had a laundry list of health issues and was on a laundry list of medications at one point in my life, yeah, I like the word warrior. So I learned how to fight early on in life. I practiced martial arts. And that's an empowering word. And the reason I like it is because I didn't always feel empowered.

And I know some of you watching right now don't feel empowered. You felt like a victim at either some point in the past or now. And we want you to know that we're going to teach you how to become a warrior. You're going to learn how to fight for your health, for the health of your family. You're going to learn the right things to do. And we want you to be empowered with that information. Stay tuned because next week we're actually going to talk about Tanna's story. want you to, I mean, when you hear her story, it will inspire you and you'll love her,

although not as much as I love her. So as I learned about these studies as your weight goes up, the size of your brain goes down, it's frightened me into losing a fair amount of weight. And when we looked at our studies, as your weight went up, thinking and reasoning scores also go down. So I want you to be a bit anxious about your weight. Not that it upsets you, but it motivates you to do something. And as I was saying, fat is not innocuous. Fat actually becomes the largest endocrine organ or hormone-producing organ in your body. In fact, fat takes healthy testosterone, which is important for men and women. It gives you a sense of sexuality,

virility, motivation, motivation, energy, mood, and it takes healthy testosterone and it turns it into unhealthy forms of estrogen that can be cancer-promoting. In fact, fat cells release over 30 different types of unhealthy chemicals in your body. In addition, it stores toxins. And so when people lose a lot of weight, they actually can get sick because of the release of toxins into their body. It releases something called pro-inflammatory cytokines. And this is a long word to mean it increases inflammation in your body. Inflammation, again, is a major cause of dementia and depression.

It promotes insulin resistance, and you're going to hear us a lot talk on this show about how important insulin is and blood sugar. I want you to give you. motivated. This could be one of the most important things to do, not just for your joints, but also for your brain. A long time ago, I coined a term called the Dinosaur Syndrome, which is totally rude, and I apologize for... No, you don't. Don't lie. I was actually on a plane when I figured this out. I was doing a public television tour, and I was going from Chicago to Des Moines. And you can only get to Des Moines in small

planes. I hate small planes. But anyways, I was sitting next to a woman who was morbidly obese. And, you know, I'm like sort of scrunched in my chair. And the chair as little as it is. And I got the thought, oh, maybe you should lean over and tell her she doesn't want to be a dinosaur. You know, big body, little brain, you're going to become extinct. And, of course, you know, the next thought in my head as soon as I had the dinosaur thought was, shut your mouth because I don't know if you had a mother like mine but

or wife you know my mother used to say if you don't have something good to say don't say anything at all and so I didn't say anything and then when I got home I told Tanna about the dinosaur and I said shut your mouth she said you have enough people who ate you that's terrible don't ever say that out loud and then we went to Pittsburgh and I went to GNC I was going to do some business with GNC, with our supplement line, and their marketing director was morbidly obese. And it really upset me.

And the reason it upset me is because if you don't live the message of your life, you're a bad messenger. I mean, you're just not an effective. Yeah, how do you trust somebody who? But, you know, I'm trying to do business with these folks, so I'm very nice. And then we go out to dinner with them at the Capitol Grill in Pittsburgh. and for dessert for the table. He ordered two soufflés.

And I'm just like, Tom, you don't want to be a dinosaur. And Tana's sitting next to me. And with the pointy shoes, she kicks me. Now, why do women wear pointy shoes? So we can kick you when you need to be. But Tom got really curious. He said, what do you mean? And I said, well, there's a whole bunch of studies.

Actually, the first one was done here at the University of Pittsburgh that said, as your weight goes up, the size of your brain goes down. I said, are you done? Are you, like have you gone as far at GNC and as far in your career as you want? And he said, no. I said, well, then don't you think it's going to require good brain function? And he's like, I never thought of that. The next month, he'd lost 17 pounds. The next year he lost 80 pounds.

I just saw him recently looked awesome. And he has been promoted. And then for public television, my next show, I'm like, do I talk about the dinosaur syndrome? And I did. And it's caused a revolution for a lot of people. Like all these letters, people go, I lost 100 pounds. I lost 200 pounds because I don't want to be a dinosaur. I'm going to show you an image in just a little little.

bit. You don't want to be a dinosaur. But one of these shows we are going to talk about sometimes what causes men to say the things they do out loud. It's because we have less frontal lobe functions than women. So we go to jail 14 times more than women do. But women suffer more with anxiety and depression. And I'm not going to say it. I'm not going to say it. You're not, no, because I've got the pointy shoes on.

She has boots. So is anybody concerned about their brain health? Some anxiety is good. Did you know people have low levels of anxiety? They die early from accidents and preventable illnesses. So our goal is going to be in part, raise your anxiety, not to make you anxious, but to motivate you. People with low levels of anxiety go to jail. But fear just gets you started.

Feeling amazing. I have to tell the story about Chloe, because it's just hysterical. So our 11-year-old, she's doing really well in school this year, but she's a little over the top on the anxiety about getting things done early. Like she makes us cancel family plans. So where did she get that? I have no idea. But she's definitely not a procrastinator.

So she'll have a project due a month from now, and she will want to get it done tomorrow. done tomorrow. And if it's not done, she starts to get very stressed and anxious and she gets really nervous, thinking she won't have enough time to get it finished. She's so afraid that something will get in the way that she won't relax until it's done. And so she gets really uptight. So she had a big project. It was due in like a month. And she just went a little crazy and she's like, you've got to help me go to the store and get all my stuff. And she was acting a little neurotic about it. So I kept telling her, so I kept telling her, you know, it's good that she's motivated,

but that I wanted her to relax a little bit, that she was getting a little too anxious. Anyway, she turned in the report, it was done way early. She turns it in, she gets an A, and I told her, I said, no, see, Chloe, just by having a plan, you didn't need to get that anxious. You still got it done. I'm proud of you for getting it done, but you don't really need to get that stressed out. And she looked at me and she goes, do you know why I do well in school because I'm anxious. So some anxiety is good. Too much is obviously bad for you.

So let's talk about Steve. I mean this is just one of my favorite stories. He inspires us all the time. So a number of years ago is 630 pounds and he was depressed. He had a 25 year addiction to alcohol and nicotine. It was really the alcohol why he was so overweight. but he also had sleep at me, hypertension, diabetes, chronic pain. He was suicidal, but he couldn't get upstairs to get his gun

because he couldn't lift his body up. And he was on 10 medications. Whenever Steve would fall, one or two people could never get him up. He actually had to call 911 and a group of people, like nine of them, would lift him up. And one day he fell and hurt his knee. They took him to the hospital. And while he's in the hospital, he says, you know, I really have to make a decision.

I'm going to kill myself or I'm going to get well. And just by random chance, if you believe in random chance, his sister saw me on public television in North Carolina with my show, Change Your Brain, Change Your Body. And she got it for him. She got the package for him. He was waiting for him when he got home from the hospital. And Steve thought it was an answer to prayer, and he just did everything that I said.

And I love that. So many people go and they cherry pick. You know, I'll do this, but I won't do that. Oh, that's too hard. And they don't get the results. Steve did everything, and he got his important numbers checked. And one of the things we want you to do, and we'll talk about it more in the coming weeks, is you've got to get your labs checked, right?

And his testosterone level was so low that doctor didn't believe it, and they measured it three times. It was like lower than a woman's. And he, so big, he couldn't run, obviously. But he's a musician. And so what he would do is he would dance in his chair. And that was his form of exercise. Immediately stopped smoking.

Immediately stopped drinking. Eight exactly like we talked about, and that we'll teach you about. In fact, he got the recipes. just started using them. And in four months, he lost 159 pounds. And his doctor said, well, if you can get down to 400 pounds, we can do the gastric bypass surgery.

And he laughed at the doctor. He says, if I get down to 400 pounds, I'm going to keep going. It's the sign of intelligent life. Seriously. And then about two years later, he writes to me. and he's like, you know, I love you and Tanna and I love your work. I just want to meet you because, in fact, I'd lost nearly 400 pounds. And most of what you see in the picture is, in fact, skin.

So he at one point out, he used to laugh. He was so funny. He was just so happy about his life. And he used to like wave his arms and saying, saying, I can fly because he had so much skin. Right, because all that skin looked like. And same thing around his abdomen. And so at some point he actually... He looked like, what's the name of that dog?

The Sharpay, yeah. He used to call himself a Sharpay. And so he decided to, at some point, he was going to get the surgery just to have some of the skin removed. So not only did he lose nearly 400 pounds, he lost his diabetes. He lost his pain. He got off like eight medications. His memory was better, his mood was better, his energy was better. He was addiction-free and went from 10 to two medications, which is something we hear all the time, that people go down on their medication.

Right. But I want to point something out. So we don't believe that there's such thing as a one-size-fits-all with any program because every person is different. And our program is designed to be customized for you in a sense. And what that means is if Steve had not gotten his important numbers checked, he wouldn't have realized. He's probably tried many diets before. In fact, I know he did. And we have many people come to us and they've been yo-yo dieting for years.

If your testosterone, vitamin D, or thyroid are not functioning at optimal levels, I don't care what diet you do. You can lose weight all day long and you're going to gain it back and then some. So it will sabotage you. If your numbers aren't right, it's going to sabotage you. So that's why I say that we customize the program because we will teach you how to make it work for you, but you've got to get your numbers checked. We need to know what's going on with you. And then we actually write a lot about it, talk about it, we have it in videos telling you what to do.

And then we'll talk about what your brain type is. What your brain type is. Which will do coming up in other shows. Which by the way, if you're testosterone, vitamin D or thyroid or off, it affects your brain function. Oh, no question. No question about it. In fact, all of those have been associated with dementia. Right. And depression.

And depression. Now one of the exciting things is we actually have an online community that we love called Brain Fit for Life. and Steve is one of our coaches. So he inspires people every day. So here's the big idea for the Change Your Brain, Change Your Life series with a little forethought and our method, so we call it the AIMN Clinics method that we're going to talk to you about coming up quickly.

You can boost your brain and improve everything in your life. You are not stuck with the brain you have. We can make it better and we can prove it. Thank you. Thank you. We would love for you to leave us a comment, question, review, subscribe. We're going to be here for you.