Girls Gone Bible - Brain Health w/ Dr. Amen | Girls Gone Bible

Episode Date: June 21, 2024

happy ggb friday to our best friends:) today we have the absolute pleasure of having Dr. Daniel Gregory Amen on the podcast.  Dr. Amen is a physician, adult and child psychiatrist, and founder of Amen Clinics with 11 locations across the U.S. Amen Clinics has the world’s largest database of brain scans for psychiatry totaling more than 225,000 SPECT scans on patients from 155 countries. He is the founder of BrainMD, a fast growing, science-based nutraceutical company, and Amen University, which has trained thousands of medical and mental health professionals on the methods he has developed. we have a conversation surrounding brain health, mental illness, and practical ways to improve your overall well-being. Dr. Amen is a lifelong Christian who masters the art of balancing psychology and spirituality. https://danielamenmd.com/about/ -- all of Dr. Amen's books: https://danielamenmd.com/programs-books/ we love you guys so much. Jesus loves you more. -Ang & Ari GUYS WE'RE GOING ON TOUR!!! Austin, Texas 06/27 https://tickets.austintheatre.org/11407/11408?fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAaZ1-ez8rCVz5eqBxaJ7pSBSAsoTQ3uu37Sv4QiexX-wYV0PABy4CaWnozg_aem_ZmFrZWR1bW15MTZieXRlcw Houston, Texas 06/29 https://cph.evenue.net/cgi-bin/ncommerce3/SEGetEventList?groupCode=GIRLS&linkID=houston-cph please join us. we can't wait to see you. if you’d like to support Girls Gone Bible 🙏🏻🕊️🤍 Paypal- https://www.paypal.me/girlsgonebibleinfo Venmo- https://www.venmo.com/u/girlsgonebible HEY WHILE WE'RE HERE. WOULD YOU BE ABLE TO RATE & LEAVE COMMENTS ON SPOTIFY & APPLE PODS. IT HELPS US. OK BYE NOW LOVE YOU

Hi guys, I'm Angela. And I am Ari. And this is Girls Gone Bible. We are a Christian podcast. We talk all about mental health, life, Jesus, the Bible, anything to do with your everyday. And we love you guys so much. We're happy you're here. We always say, come as you are, just don't stay that way. We are so honored, truly so blessed today,

because we have a guest who changes the lives of so many people, who has changed Arya and I's life in just the past few days of doing so much research on him. We have Dr. Daniel Amon on the podcast. Thank you for being here, Dr. Amon. Dr. Amon Thank you so much for having me. Dr. Amy Thank you. Absolutely. So let's just get into it. We talked a little bit off camera about how Ari and I are making sure we don't have holes in the brain. And so it's just... We have so many questions about mental health. And thank God for you. You have done so much work. You have freed so many people. And you are a lifelong Christian. Is that right?

Absolutely. Yes. And so I'm wondering if you could just give us a little bit about your background just as a Christian, how you know Jesus, what it's like being in medicine and being a doctor while also being a Christian. Yeah, I never really got the conflict for me. Yeah. So I grew up Catholic, like my mother was very serious. So I've always believed in Jesus. Didn't really have a relationship with Jesus until I went in the army when I was 18.

And I was an altar boy even in the army. I mean, this was personal to me. And there was a really cute company clerk. Her name was Christine. And I'm like, hey, would you go out with me? And she goes, will you take me to church? And I'm like, I can do church. Like, I've done church my whole life.

And it was at the 97th General Hospital in Frankfurt, Germany, where I was stationed. And it was a Pentecostal healing service. Oh my goodness. It was so different than church as I knew it. The nuns sort of said, God was a little bit irritable, so you want to be quiet in church. Nobody was quiet in church.

And so it sort of freaked me out, but she was cute. So I went back and I just fell in love with the people that were there and to have a more personal, deeper relationship with Christ. And I got involved with a group called Teen Challenge. It's a Christian group, an Assemblies of God Christian group that deals with drug addicts and is part of why I fell in love with medicine. And when I got out of the army in 1975, I went to Vanguard University, which is an Assemblies of God school here in Southern California.

And I wanted to be educated in the context of my faith. And when I decided to go to medical school, I went to Oral Roberts University. I was in their first class of their medical school, because again, I wanted to be educated as a physician in the context of my faith. So people go, how can you be a psychiatrist and a Christian? How could you not be? It's sort of my question. What about science and what about evolution?

And I'm like, so what about it if you think we all happened by random? Chance by some explosion a long time ago Then you really haven't read physics because the second law of physics is entropy things go from order to disorder Which means we're not gonna evolve The way we did so that today you and I can have this intimate conversation. I'm not a fan of we're here by random chance. And so it never made sense to me. And when I went to medical school, I wanted to be a pediatrician. But when I did pediatrics, I didn't like it at all, because I like it when people like me.

And as soon as little kids see you coming in the white coat, they start screaming. And I'm like, no, that's not fun. And then I got married to my childhood sweetheart when I was a second year medical student. And four months later, she tried to kill herself. And I'm completely freaked out. And I took her to see Stan Wallace, who was the chief of the Department of Psychiatry

at ORU, and changed everything. I came to realize that if he helped Robin, that it wouldn't just help her, that it would help me. And ultimately, I adopted her child. It would help her, it would help me, it would help our children, and ultimately our grandchildren, as they would be shaped And ultimately our grandchildren is they would be shaped by someone who was happier and more stable So I fell in love with psychiatry 45 years ago, and I've loved it every day since and I'm more emotional because Even though Robin and I got divorced 25 years ago She's been taking care of my handicapped granddaughter because the vision I had became true. As she became, one, didn't kill herself, and two, became more stable, it impacts generations

of people. And that's what psychiatry does. But I fell in love with the only medical specialty that never looks at the organ it treats. And I knew that was wrong. When I was 18, back in just a little bit, Vietnam was going on and I had a low draft number and I became an infantry medic. And that's really where my love of medicine was born. And then I didn't like being shot at, so I got retrained as an x-ray technician and developed

a passion for medical imaging, professors used to say. How do you know unless you look? So when I became a psychiatrist, I'm like, well, obviously it's the brain, right? I mean, that doesn't take rocket science. Why aren't we looking? And so when I started looking at the brain, it just changed everything. Because I hate the term mental illness. I hated it back then in 1979 because it shames people. It's stigmatizing and it's wrong.

Robin wasn't mentally ill. She had a brain health problem. Oh, by the way, she had a bad car accident a couple of years before we got married because she was very different than when we were dating as kids. And knowing it's not mental health, it's brain health, it just brain health.

It just changes everything. So if you think of your brain, so if it's mental illness, think of it this way. You have depression, you go to your doctor and you say, I'm depressed. He gives you a diagnosis with the same name and then he gives you an antidepressant. That's what the current practice of mental illness or psychiatry is. And I'm

like, no, no, no, this is wrong. If it's brain health, well, then you have to start eating right. And then you have to start exercising. And then you probably should take some supplements. And you're supporting the organ that creates your mind. Right, people go, what's the difference between the brain and the mind? The brain, the physical functioning of your brain creates your mind. And so if the brain's not healthy, it creates obsessions.

It creates panic, it creates depression. And so it's not mental health, we need to get rid of the term mental illness and go it's brain health. Get your brain healthy. And then it's easier to be happy. So I think of it often like hardware and software, right? The brain is the hardware, physical functioning of your brain. You can't program it if it's not right. But once it's right, then it's easier to program. And we have to program it, right? Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

But there's nowhere in our school system where we teach kids not to believe every stupid thing they think. Thank you. There's nowhere in our school system where we teach kids to love and care for their brain. Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit that was given to you by God, that was bought for you at a price of the blood of Jesus Christ. Really, you're going to put fast food there. It's like, come on, let's be thoughtful. And I don't know if you know my work with Pastor Warren and the Daniel Plan, and I went to my church, Mariners, here in Newport Beach, and I'd just finished writing Change Your Brain, Change Your Body.

It's my second book on the connection between physical health and mental health. And I was so happy. It was a Sunday morning. Tell my wife, I said, why don't you drop Chloe, our daughter, who was six at the time, off at Children's Church. I'll go save the seats. And I walked toward the sanctuary, saw hundreds of donuts for sale. And I'd seen the donuts since I was four years old going to Catholic Church.

But that day they really made me mad because I'm going to church to get my soul fed. These people are trying to kill me. There's not one healthy thing about donuts. And then I walked by bacon and sausage cooking on the grill. And I'm just so irritated. I feel like someone just slugged me. And right before I walked into the sanctuary, they were cooking hot dogs for after church.

And I'm like, no. And as I sat down, the minister was talking about the ice cream festival they had the night before. And I am so furious. And when my wife finds me in church, I'm typing on my phone, and she hates the phone. She says it's the other woman.

And she's like, give me that look that only your wife can give you, right? Like, why are you on that thing? Don't you know you're going to hell? And I showed her what I was typing. Go to church, get donuts, bacon, sausage, hot dogs, ice cream. They have no idea they're sending people to heaven early. Save them, then kill them. This is not the plan. And that Sunday, August 2010, I prayed God would

use me to change the culture of food at church. And in the middle of the prayer, I'm like, this is the dumbest prayer you've ever prayed. How is that ever going to happen? And I'm like, you get to know me, I have an attitude problem. I'm like, it's my prayer, deal with it, is what I told God. Well, two weeks later, Pastor Rick Warren, who's the senior pastor at Saddleback Church, one of the largest churches in the world, the author of The Purpose Driven Life, our generation's bestselling book, calls me up.

And he said, I'm fat. My church is fat. Will you help me? And I created with my friend Mark Hyman and Rick the Daniel Plan, which has been done in thousands of churches around the world. And you know, I say that to mean prayer matters, intention matters, and you can make a big impact in the world, but it starts with a healthy brain.

Wow. Yes, I have a couple questions for you, because I had really intrusive thoughts, that they took over my mind, and then of course I found God, I did a renewing in the mind, he completely healed my mind. I mean, it's crazy what he did. Would you say, so I watched you and you said that over, I think it was 377 million prescriptions in the US with antidepressants. I really wanted to talk to you about this because I go back and forth with the medications.

I have a lot of family members that rely on it and they're still stuck with the same problems. So you're basically saying, say you know you're suffering, you have the intrusive thoughts, you're severely depressed, do what you said, work on the brain, focus on eating healthy, do those things before you turn to the medications. What are your thoughts on the medications and the antidepressants? Because we get so many questions. Do I try it? What do I do? Do I try other things?

For me, I'm so happy that I tried the other things because I was healed. I actually, when I tried the antidepressants, it actually made me worse. Well, they all have black box warnings. And I don't think we think about it right. Depression is like chest pain. Nobody gets a diagnosis of chest pain. Why? It doesn't tell you what causes it and it doesn't tell you what to do for it.

Do you think it would be rational to give everybody aspirin for chest pain? No, that would be stupid, be ridiculous. And so to assume all depression is because you have low serotonin levels is idiotic. In large scale studies, the SSRIs work no better than placebo. Now, they work for some people, but it's a specific group of people.

So what causes chest pain? So many different things, from gas and grief and a heart attack and a heart arrhythmia and a heart infection and pneumonia and an ulcer, all those things. So with depression, I said, well, what causes depression? You can inherit it, right? There are genetic vulnerabilities. You can be from a head trauma,

can be from loss of a relationship. It can be a whole bunch. It can be because you have inflammation in your gut because your diet's awful. I have one patient, I'll just pick on corn for a second, 30 antidepressants, electroconvulsive therapy, ECT, nothing worked for him. And I'm like, we should try an elimination diet.

And he's like, okay, I'm desperate. So no gluten, dairy, corn, soy, artificial dyes, sweeteners, and sugar. Let's just do it for a month and see how you feel. And a month later, he comes back. He said, I'm healed. That's awesome. So what we did is we added back gluten.

Nothing happened. We added back gluten. Nothing happened. We added back dairy. Nothing happened. We added back corn. He said within 20 minutes he had a vision of a gun in his mouth pulling the trigger. So he had to break up with corn. Now shouldn't we at least try the dietary intervention

before we go on a medication that's gonna be hard to get off. That's right. Right? Because like benzos and SSRIs, when you stop them, it often causes these electrical zaps in your brain and you don't like it. So head to head against antidepressants, saffron, the spice saffron has been found to be equally effective in 25 randomized controlled

trials. I'm a huge fan of saffron. Head to head against antidepressants, walking like you're late for 45 minutes, four times a week has been found to be equally effective. Head to head against antidepressants, omega-3 fatty acids, a study from New Zealand showed it was more effective than Prozac. Head to head against antidepressants, learning how to not believe every stupid thing you think, how to take your thoughts captive.

Here's the exercise. Whenever you feel sad, mad, nervous, or out of control, write down what you're thinking. And then just ask yourself whether or not it's true. Wow. Know the truth. The truth will set you free. I'm not a fan of positive thinking. I'm a fan of accurate thinking with a positive spin.

So if you're depressed, why not walk like you're late for 45 minutes, four times a week, take omega-3 fatty acids, learn how to believe, how to not believe every stupid thing you think, and take saffron. So why not start there? And if it doesn't work, think about medicine. Medicine is not the devil.

It's just how we prescribe it in five-minute office visits with no discussion about brain health. That's just insane. Can I just ask you a question about that? I have a friend of mine who, she's a really close friend, and about 10 years ago she went into the doctor's office to tell them that she had a stomach ache and she wasn't using the bathroom for a few days or for like a couple of weeks. And they told her, you're depressed. And they gave her Zoloft. And then she was on Zoloft for 10 years because she had a stomach ache.

And then in the middle of like maybe a few years after she started Zoloft, they then prescribed her Adderall because she said that she didn't have energy throughout the day. And so why are they so quick to not even ask you the right questions? Why do they want to pump people with medication so quickly and so easily? You know, medicine has changed so much in the last 45 years. So I decided to be a psychiatrist 45 years ago and when I trained at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington DC, so I trained as an army officer, we'd have an hour or sometimes two or three with our patients

every week and we were like whole people doctors. It was therapy plus sometimes medication. In late 1980s and the early 90s, managed care took over medicine. And psychiatrists became the prescribers because we went from seeing a patient for an hour or three a week to 15 minute med checks once a month. Because that was the new business model. And then they would farm out the therapy to marriage and family therapists or psychologists and basically turned psychiatrists into prescribers.

And I'm not OK with that. And I was never okay with that. And I was never okay with that. I'm like, no, that's not what I want to do. No, that's awful. But now, 85% of psychiatric drugs are prescribed by non-psychiatric physicians in seven-minute office visits. And how do you get someone out of your office quickly if they're having a stomachache?

You don't ask them tell me about your marriage Or tell me about your diet. You're going. Oh you have a stomachache Probably stressed take Zoloft not telling you it's going to decrease your ability to have an orgasm. That's a problem and that You probably take this for many, many years. Yeah. I have one more question about medicine if you don't mind. You guys, it is hot outside and your nighttime bedroom temperature has a huge impact on your sleep quality.

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And use the code ggbtrymiracle.com slash ggb. You start taking the Prozac or the Zoloft, you start on the five milligram, then after a couple months you get to go to 10, then 20. And do you feel like in the long run it's just making you worse? You know, it depends. I don't want to bash medicine.

I want to just put it in its proper place, right? If you have diabetes, you got to get your diet right. But if you won't or you can't, then insulin will save your life. And a lot of people have the mindset, give me the easy answer. And then it's harder to walk like your lake, take your fish oil, don't believe every stupid thing you think. So you have to, I think, just be honest with yourself. Am I a person who wants to be as healthy as I can and I'm going to do the work or that's not a priority for me,

just help me feel better. And I think my job is not to tell people what to do. I always tell people, I'm like your partner. We make decisions together. And here are the options. Now I'm never getting anybody addicted to anything because that's not gonna be an option. We're gonna do it thoughtfully, we're gonna do it slowly, we're gonna do it in partnership. And quite frankly, why write?

And why do social media and all of that? Because I just wanna teach people what I've learned so it can help their family like it helped my family. I wanted to actually talk to you about EMDR because I know you're a big advocate for that, right? And I had a girlfriend who did it. She said it's changed her life. Could you talk a little bit about that?

I love it so much. And I've been recommending it for decades and got trained myself to do it a couple of years ago and I'm just like a little kid having so much fun with it to just see the transformation that it makes in people's lives. And it's based on the work of Francine Shapiro who when she was in Menlo Park, she's a social worker. She realized when she got her eyes to go back and forth, whatever she was bugged about didn't bug her anymore.

And then so she started with her patients and came up with this whole therapeutic process that have you bring up the stresses and the traumas and they have you get your eyes going back and forth and it brings up the emotion but then it tends to dissipate. I have a public patient that I love so much. Her name's Alicia Newman. She's an Olympic pole vaulter, and she holds a Canadian record for pole vaulting. And we've done like 30 sessions, because when you're a world-class athlete, you have a lot of trauma. And she had a lot of trauma in her life.

And just doing it, it helps sort of clean out the closet of the bad things that have happened in the past. You sort of put them in the right perspective. So the past is not in front of you. So many people who've had trauma in the past, well, it's in front of them and they still see it, they're still triggered by it, they still react to it. And for her, we've been able to put it behind her.

That's amazing, that's so, so wonderful. I do wanna ask you about, cause you spoke a little bit earlier about brain damage and about how brain damage can severely affect your mental health. And I know people who have severe brain health issues like things like schizophrenia or severe bipolar disorder or people even in manic episodes who like deal with delusions and things like that. And it's a lot of it has to do with brain injuries and like people

get into accidents and then they suffer with their mental health afterwards. Can you speak to that a little bit? I want to know if you think if you have severe brain damage and then now you're suffering with these mental disorders or low brain health, if there's any way other than medication to reverse this brain damage. So I did the big NFL study when the NFL was sort of not telling the truth about traumatic brain injury in football. High levels of damage and it's actually a fun story. If you asked me, you said, hey, Daniel, what's the single most important thing you've learned from a quarter of a million scans that we've done here at Amon Clinics?

Mild traumatic brain injury ruins people's lives. And nobody knows about it, because they see psychiatrists that never look at the brain. Your brain is soft about the consistency of soft butter. Your skull is really hard and has sharp bony ridges. If you actually looked inside a skull, you'd see all these sharp bony ridges and it's easily damaged. When I got my first football player in 1999, Brent Boyd, clearly had a damaged brain. I wrote a disability letter to the NFL,

and I'm like, he's got brain damage secondary to playing football. And they laughed at me and said, no, he's an alcoholic. And brain scans don't mean anything. And then 2007, Anthony Davis came to see us, the Hall of Fame running back from USC. At 54, his brain looked like he was 100, and it was bad for 100.

Clearly had brain damage. And he got me to speak at the Los Angeles chapter of the NFL Players Association. And I love football. I idolized the Rams because I grew up here. And there were some of the players I idolized clearly had dementia. And I'm like, somebody should do a study. And if you grow up Roman Catholic like I did, as soon as you like, somebody should do a study. And if you grow up Roman Catholic like I did, as soon as you go, somebody should do a study,

you go, well, why aren't you doing the study? And so I sponsored the first and largest study on active and retired NFL players, high levels of damage. Own it. Stop lying about it. 80% of our players got better when we put them on a rehabilitation plan. And that's the exciting news. But people have schizophrenia, people with severe bipolar disorder,

nobody's talking to them about brain health. No one's looking at their brain. They're just this medicine, that medicine that makes them feel bad, so they don't take it and then they're blamed for not taking it. Oh, by the way, they don't know that sometimes schizophrenia comes from infections. Sometimes bipolar disorder comes from infections.

So one of my favorite stories is a 16 year old girl by the name of Adriana who was normal, beautiful, smart, went to Yosemite on a family vacation. And when they got to their cabin, their cabin was—they were surrounded by six deer. They thought it was a magical moment. But there are these things called deer ticks that cause Lyme disease. Ten days later, she starts hallucinating.

She becomes aggressive, paranoid, gets hospitalized three different times. One of the doctors trained at Stanford told the mother she had schizophrenia. She's always going to have schizophrenia. She needs to be on this medication for the rest of her life. And if you knew Debbie, her mother, she would have none of it. And she finally, six months later, found her way to our clinic.

Adriana's brain's on fire. We go, why's her brain on fire? Infectious disease is one of the causes for brain inflammation. We found out she had Lyme disease, and on an antibiotic she got her life back. I'm like, man, this just, it gives hope to probably a lot of people, Dr. Amen, because there are so many people

who suffer so severely. I know people who I believe to maybe have to deal with the things they're dealing with for the rest of their lives. And that could potentially not be the case for them. And that's really good news. And we're so grateful for what you do, because you actually care. And God really, really is using you. And I know that you know this, but in such a a magnificent way and we need people like you and I don't

Know anybody else who's doing what you're doing. So we just want to say thank you. Yeah, seriously You want to hear a fun story? Yes, so the heart the hardest part of this It was I was like a little kid so excited right? I'm doing this For personal reasons. I love it. I love when people get better. And then I found imaging. And then my colleagues started to hate me. And I'm like, well, why is that?

It's like you're not supposed to image people. I'm like, I'm supposed to guess. And it's like, it's not what we do. This is how we practice. And I'm like, well, I don't know about you, but that's not how I do it. And I ended up in a war with my colleagues. And I've been called every bad thing, from a charlatan to taking advantage of mentally ill people

to, I mean, just horrifying. And for the first couple of years, I was completely freaked out by it was anxious, I couldn't sleep, I knew I was doing the right thing right when you know you know when you know that you're doing the right thing. And then I got a call from my sister in law, Sherry, that said my nine year old nephew, Andrew, who happens to be my godson,

attacked a little girl on the baseball field that day, but for like no reason. And I'm like, what? And she said, Danny, he's different. He's mean. He doesn't smile anymore. I went into his room today and I found two pictures he had drawn. One of them he's hanging from a tree. The other picture, he's shooting other children. So if you really think about it, Andrew is Columbine, or Parkland, Florida, or Sandy Hook waiting to happen. And I'm like, I want to see him tomorrow. And they lived eight hours from where I lived.

And when I saw him the next day, I'm like, buddy, what's going on? He said, Uncle Danny, I don't know, I'm mad all the time. I was like, is anybody hurting you? No. Is anybody teasing you? He said, no. Is anybody touching you in places

they shouldn't be touching you? No. And 999 child psychiatrists out of 1,000 would have medicated him and put him in therapy. I needed to see his brain and I held his hand while he held his teddy bear and he got scanned. When the scan came up on the computer screen, he was missing his left temporal lobe. It was the first time I had seen that. I've seen it a hundred times since. He had a cyst the size of a golf ball occupying the space of his temporal lobe. And I told his pediatrician, I said, you find someone to take that out.

And he called three neurologists, all of them said they wouldn't touch it. They didn't think it had anything to do with his symptoms. And I knew they were wrong. And so I called the pediatric neurosurgery department at UCLA, Dr. Jorge Lizarov, who is the chief, and he said, Dr. Raymond, when these cysts are symptomatic, we drain them, obviously, is symptomatic. And when they did the surgery, I got two calls, one from his mother, who said the surgery went really well.

And when Andrew woke up, he smiled at her. She said, Danny Hinn smiled at her. The second call was from Dr. Lizarov, who said, oh my god, Dr. Raymond, that cyst was so aggressive, had put so much pressure on his brain, actually thinned the bone over his temporal lobe. He said if he would have been hit in the head with a basketball, would have killed him instantly.

Either way, within six months, he would have been dead. And that's the moment. I didn't care if you liked me, and I went to war. If you don't look, you don't know. Stop lying about it. And in 2005, 2020 came and interviewed me, because my work is controversial. And they lied.

They said, we want to talk to you about your work on childhood bipolar disorder. Well, they really were trying to get me. And they start the interview with a doctor from Columbia, Brad Peterson, who's a child psychiatrist and an imaging researcher, says you should be arrested for your work. And I remember being, I'm like, okay, this isn't going to be the interview I thought it was going to be. And I remember being on the speech team in college and my speech coach said, when you

don't know what to say, smile, take a breath. It'll come to you. And I looked at Jim Avea, the journalist, and I said, that's so interesting. I said, last week, someone told me I should win a Nobel Prize. This week, you're telling me I should be arrested. Sort of keeps me balanced.

It's humbling. And at the end of the interview, he takes his microphone off, throws it on the ground, looks at the producer and goes, you lied to me. This guy's the real deal. And just last month, Brad Peterson, the guy that said I should be arrested, he and I have a paper that just came out

in translational psychiatry about specting depression. Wow. And so, I love how it's coming around. Talk about prepare a table before you in the presence of your enemies. Wow, wow, wow. That's one of my favorite stories with the cyst. I mean, you just, I can't believe that was affecting his brain so much that he was having

those thoughts. I can't imagine. Well, and so it teaches us that people who do bad things might have a bad brain. That's right. And so it decreases judgment, increases empathy, and increases effectiveness, right? It's easy to call people bad. It's harder to go, why and can we fix it?

We asked our viewers, they wanted to ask you, and heartbreak, heartbreak sometimes takes years. It feels so physical. Can you touch on that a little? Well, it is physical. Give us some tips, yeah. Right, because when you love someone, they come to live in all the fun places in your head. And when they go away, either by death or choice,

your emotional brain starts to fire up. And too often, people do the wrong things to calm it down, whether it's alcohol or bad food. I was up in Northern California giving a lecture. And at the end of the lecture, and this often happens to me, someone comes up to me and they just start crying. And I waited.

And she said, two years ago, my 12-year-old daughter, Sammy, died of bone cancer. And I was sort of glad she died because she was in so much pain. But the grief just ruined me. And I went to bed and I drank and I ate all the wrong food and she ballooned up to over 200 pounds, she was 5'2". And she said on the two-year anniversary of her death, I had planned to kill myself.

But I saw you. I don't mean to laugh, but she said, I saw you on public television. And I go, I'm going to get his book. And if it's a bad book, that's why I laughed. If it's a bad book, I'm going to kill myself tomorrow. And I'm like, no pressure. Praise God, it was a good book. But it was really easy to understand.

And it was really compelling. I just started doing the simple things you said to do. I stopped drinking. I stopped eating bad food. I started walking. Now I'm running. It's been 10 weeks. I've lost 24 pounds.

She said, I want you to tell people to never let grief or heartache be your excuse to hurt yourself. It's that's where you have to lean in to your good brain habits. So your brain can process the sadness. Alcohol does nothing but prolong it. Marijuana does nothing but prolong it.

Benzos do nothing but prolong it. Pornography does nothing but prolongs the heartache. And so it's doing the right thing. And then I went through a period of heartache 20 years ago, and nothing worked for me. And I ended up finding a book that I just dearly love called Loving What Is. And it was so good.

I'm published by the same imprint at Random House as Byron Katie is. And I got to meet her, scanned her whole family. And I live with the five questions that come from the book. So if we talk about practical things, one, start every day with today is going to be a great day. Push your brain to what's right rather than what's wrong. Ask yourself

every day is this good for my brain or bad for it. You just have to know the answer and quite frankly most seven-year-olds know the answers is good for my brain or bad for it. And then whenever you feel sad or mad or nervous or out of control, write down what you're thinking. And then just ask yourself whether or not it's true. So the intrusive thoughts you had, because you didn't challenge them,

they came to live there. And it's like they're creating these pathways in your brain to stay. You need to kick them out. And so, my wife never listens to me. I don't have that thought. Write it down. Is that true?

You know, if I'm really bad at her yes Is it absolutely true? So that's question two now. She's listened all 19 public television scripts. I've written and critique them How do I feel when I have this thought lonely isolated bad How would I be without the thought? Normal, happy? Turn the thought around to the opposite. And you have to do this like a hundred times,

and then your mind becomes disciplined, right? People try once and go, it didn't work. It's like you did one pushup and you can't do 10 tomorrow and you like blame who? Who do you blame, right? It's like you gotta do the work. and you can't do 10 tomorrow and you like blame who? Who do you blame, right? It's like you gotta do the work. And her website's actually called thework.com.

So kill the ants. Whenever you start panicking, breathe with your belly, four seconds in, eight seconds out, four seconds in, eight seconds out. It's magic if you do it. And when you go to bed tonight, go what went well today. And be serious, I go on a little treasure hunt every night. What went well.

I put this interview into what went well today. Oh, that's so sweet. Me too. We're going to write all of this down for everyone. Can we please talk about supplements and things that we should take? Can I just tell you something really quick? So about a month ago now, I decided to cut out sugar. And I've dealt with like all of our viewers.

Viewers know I was diagnosed with OCD and it shows up a lot in my eating habits, a little bit of disordered eating and and all this stuff. So sometimes I'll get like crazy about my food. So everyone that I told I'm cutting out sugar just thought I was doing it because it's another thing about the body. And I was like, no, you guys, sugar makes me depressed. The day after I eat sugar, I am severely depressed

and down for days. And so I have felt a significant difference. First, when I cut out the sugar, the processed sugar, I went through withdrawals, and I've had to withdraw from alcohol, I've had to withdraw from nicotine, and withdrawals from sugar are worse than both of those combined. And then I also realized I feel so much better. So could you speak to that a little bit and about the supplements we should be taking?

So sugar is pro-inflammatory. We think inflammation is a major cause of depression. And when you're doing something that other people aren't doing, they don't want you to leave them, so they get critical. They try to reel you back in. I'm very OCD about my food. I try to only eat things I love that love me back. So I've been in bad relationships.

Probably neither of you have been in bad relationships. But. Oh, well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's OK. All right. So you understand where I'm coming from. And I'm not doing it anymore.

I'm not. And I'm And I'm not doing it anymore. I'm not. And I'm for sure not doing it with food. I'm only gonna love food that loves me. Your brain uses 25 to 30% of the calories you consume. So eating sugar hurts your brain. So why would you do that unless you weren't that smart? Right? Love food that loves you back.

From supplements, I think everybody should take a multiple vitamin. Everybody should take an omega-3 fatty acid supplement. Everybody should know their vitamin D level and work to optimize it. If you want to know more specifically about supplements, we have an online test you can take, brainhealthassessment.com. Know which of the 16 brain types you have and then we can recommend specific types of supplements. Just the hour before, I was with someone and she goes, what should I take? I'm like, take you six minutes.

Take the brain health assessment. So I'm a type eight, knurling. Or if you're a type one, multiple vitamin fish oil, vitamin D. You're a type two, that's our spontaneous people. They need more stimulating supplements like L-tyrosine or Roliola. If you're type 3, so said you're OCD, that's our persistent type.

I love 5-HTP. I love saffron. I love tryptophan. If you are sensitive type, saffron is perfect for you. If you're a cautious type, I like ashwagandha, magnesium and theanine. So the brain health assessment helps you to know what type you have. Amazing. So does that mean I can't have that chocolate cake

after dinner? Yeah, are you about to really like chocolate cake? Well, does it love you back? I mean, that's just the question. It's like, no, of course it doesn't. What about a Mexican Coke? But every night I make brain healthy hot chocolate for my family, unsweetened vanilla almond milk. She's like that.

Raw cacao and Sweet Leafs, company I like, like called they make liquid stevia and they make a chocolate that's just awesome. So there my wife has a cookbook I'll give you there are so many desserts in it and it's just the question yeah right you don't want to be attached to things that hurt you. Just think of it as a bad relationship. And when you go, I can't have this, I can't have that, you never get really healthy. Drew Carey, the comedian, said it best.

Crappy food isn't a reward. It's a punishment. And when you really understand, because if your body really is the temple of the Holy Spirit that was given to you by God, that was bought for you at a price of the blood of Jesus Christ, think of how important your body is. You want to love it and care for it. And that's not OCD. That's just, you're serious.

You know what? I really appreciate you saying that Dr. Eamon. So everyone who's made fun of me. Yeah. Including myself. I'm like, I'm actually talking to Ari. No, thank you so much. Can I ask you one last question?

So Ari and I basically, we spend about all day taking turns having mental breakdowns. And so one of us has to take care of the other one and then we switch and like, it's very quick. What's, do you have a diagnosis for that? And is it the enemy? Which one is it? Or is it, are we the demon? Well, I think you have someone to support each other. And if you get the right habits, then you can just nudge. So when you're having the mental breakdown,

Ari can go, well, is that really true? What are you thinking? Let's work through that. And yeah, social support's so important. It is very important. As long as you're not supported by someone who goes, here, have a drink. Oh, no, no, no. No, no.

Sober four years. Let me give you some mushrooms or... Yeah she says that to me every time and I'm like, I'm four and a half years sober, don't do that. I'm just kidding. I don't do that. Smart mushrooms, like lion's man. Like reishi.

Reishi? Reishi. Yeah. Cordyceps, turkey tail. Thank you so much. Thank you. You're so welcome. Truly, we're so grateful for you. We're so grateful for the work that you do

Thank you for coming on. We really appreciate it. And can you just say your books that they can order? Because I would love to love for them to order those. I'm sure it's so helpful and I can't wait to read them. I think the easiest of my books to read is Change Your Brain Every Day. It's 366 short essays on the most important things. And if you just take three minutes a day, within a month you will have fallen in love with your brain and begin to make simple changes that'll last the rest of your life.

I love it. God bless. We're putting all that in the description. Yes. Thank you so much. Thank you. Seriously. Thank you for helping me spread the message about brain health. Thank you. You're amazing. Thank you. You guys, we love you so much. May the Lord bless you and keep you. May He make His face shine upon you and be gracious to you. May He turn His face towards you and give you peace and perfect brain health in Jesus' name. Thank you so much. Amen.