Khloé in Wonder Land - Let's Talk Brain Health ft. Dr. Daniel Amen

Episode Date: April 10, 2025

Khloé sits down with Dr. Amen to unpack brain health, trauma, social media’s impact on kids, and why most of us are stuck in patterns we don’t even realize are wired into our brains.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hi Dr. Raymond. How have you been? Good. How about you? Having the time of my life. Good. Most people don't care about their brains. Why?

You can't see it. You can see the wrinkles in your skin, fat around your belly. Why don't we screen our brain? How do you know unless you look? Right. You're against drinking alcohol. You're against drinking alcohol. You're against drinking alcohol.

You're against drinking alcohol. You're against drinking alcohol. You're against drinking alcohol. You're against drinking alcohol. You're against drinking alcohol. You're against drinking alcohol. You're against drinking alcohol. You're against drinking alcohol. You can see the wrinkles in your skin, fat around your belly. Why don't we screen our brain? How do you know unless you look? Right. You're against drinking in its entirety, correct? Well, anything that increases the risk of seven

different types of cancer, I'm against. I want energy, memory, focus. I want passion. Lockhole just doesn't fit. Right. I'm like, I want passion. Lockhole just doesn't fit. Right? I hated the term mental illness. It's

shaming. It's stigmatizing. So what if mental health was really brain hell? And that's the revolution that I'm trying to create. Music Welcome to Chloe and Wonderland.

This is the podcast for real and raw conversations from the stories you haven't heard to the curiosities that we all share. Dr. Daniel Amon, world-renowned psychiatrist, brain expert, and number one New York Times bestselling author is joining me today, and we are diving deep. He's scanned over 200,000 brains, worked with the biggest names in Hollywood and sports,

and he's completely changed how we think about brain health. We're getting into it all. Parenting, relationships, and yes, he's seen the inside of my brain. What did he find? What does it mean? And how can you rewire your brain to change your life? So I've had the pleasure and the privilege

of meeting you through my sister Kendall and we actually went to your clinic in Encino and I got to get my brain scanned by you and it was such a privilege and you were on our show Kardashians and that was so significant. I feel like so many people from watching the show, I saw so much of the commentary. So many people had no idea that you could do scans on your brain. And I think people think you have to have an injury

in order to do something like that, or be, I don't know, a football player, be in a car accident along those lines. And it is such a blessing. And I know you started this in the seventies and this is your life mission. But I don't know, just I, what I really want to come across in this conversation is the importance of brain imaging. And I think I was listening to either your Ted talk or something else.

And it really resonated with me that every other doctor, if they're a cardiologist, they're analyzing imaging of the heart. If they're ear, nose and throat doctor, they're looking at imaging for ear, nose and throat or checking down your throat visually. And you're the only type of doctor that where they weren't doing brain scans and you were like, well, how does that make sense? Why am I advising you or prescribing you medication, but I don't really know what part of the brain is hurting.

And that, I don't know why I didn't realize that before until you said that. You said that so well. Did I? Oh my gosh, I felt like I fumbled that one. Think about this. Psychiatrists are the only medical doctors who never look at the organ they treat.

So last year there were over 340 million prescriptions written for antidepressants without any biological data. That's insane, right? I'm a psychiatrist, so I know how to diagnose crazy and that's crazy. Because if you don't look, then you don't know, was it the car accident when you were 16 that contributed to being sad? Or was it because your brain works too hard because you had a sexual assault or was it because you live in a mold-filled home? You just don't know. And when I started looking at the brain, it changed absolutely everything in my life.

If one of my kids dates somebody new, they're going to be scanned. Oh, I love that. And my 21 year old Chloe, who is in love. And I love her boy. Oh, good. But he played football.

And so, yes, we have to look at his brain. Are any of them ever opposed to being scanned? No. Oh good. Because they, they realize if you're in my family, the brain matters. Right. Right. And so it's just something you do. And I was married once before and I got divorced 25 years ago and I if I was ever gonna get married again the first naked part of her I wanted to see was her brain and Tana and I've been together for 20 years I scanned

her literally three weeks after we met each other and nobody thinks about it right you go to a marital therapist a relationship therapist and no one's looking at the brain which is just crazy you're so right but so many things I admire about you but specifically I think the empathy you have for the position that you're in I think you know what responsibility you hold for people but to to say that, and I'm paraphrasing, so excuse me, that you've thrown so many darts at the dark diagnosing people and it's some of them you might have hurt some of your patients by misdiagnosing medications to them. And I don't know if that many doctors respectfully, but would admit something like that. And I think that's such a beautiful thing to say.

And how you don't believe in a one size fits all for a medication or an ailment, and that you're looking at the brain and you can have ADHD, for example, and I've seen some of your scans, but they could be in different parts of the brain, correct? Right, I mean one of the first big lessons is all psychiatric illnesses, anxiety, depression,

OCD, ADHD, it's not one thing. I mean you would never give everyone who had chest pain the same treatment, right? That would be malpractice, that would be stupid, that would be insane, but yeah, you go tell your doctor you're depressed. The first thing he or she is gonna do is give you an SSRI, which in large scale studies work no better than placebo.

And it's like, well, why is that? Because SSRIs work for the right brain, but they do not work for the wrong brain. In fact, they can make you worse. So my wife, Tana, when she was, she writes about this in her book, The Relentless Courage of a Scared Child. She grew up in a really crazy environment. And in her mid-20s, she had thyroid cancer.

Oh wow. And she went to UC Irvine and saw a psychiatrist and he gave her Prozac and it made her less anxious. But it also disinhibited her. And all of a sudden, she's in Costa Rica with someone she had just met going, how did I get here? She started making really impulsive, stupid decisions. And when you look at her brain, she has sleepy frontal lobes and SSRIs,

serotonin is an inhibitory neurotransmitter, calms things down. So if you start with sleepy frontal lobes, it makes them sleepier. And then it's like taking the break off of your impulse control. So getting the wrong medicine can disrupt your life in a very bad way. Now I feel like it's more, I don't want to say trendy, but it's more common probably to get brain scans. But why do you think in the 70s, 80s, 90s, why were you such an advocate but others were not? So, 1991 I went to my first lecture on brain-specced imaging. That's what we do. And I'm so excited. I'm still excited. And the next year I went to an all day lecture at the American Psychiatric Association on brain spectrum imaging in child psychiatry.

So there was a lot of excitement, but very quickly they realized scans don't go with the current paradigm. They don't go with making diagnoses based on symptom clusters with no biological data. And we have our big Bible. It's called the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the DSM. And it really goes, okay, the DSM is not the thing. And all of a sudden the American Psychiatric Association went, oh no, we shouldn't scan. And that's really when the war, when I went to war

with the American Psychiatric Association, even though I have their highest award, they give members. And if I'm right, and I am, you should image the brain before you go about messing with it. It means that 40,000 psychiatrists and hundreds of thousands of regular doctors are not doing the right thing. When you tell people that they don't say thank you.

And there's actually this great book called The Structure of Scientific Revolution. It's how Do Revolutions Happen? And the first thing is somebody notices a problem. The outcomes in psychiatry are no better than they were in the 1950s. We should be ashamed of that. So the outcomes are not better than the year I was born in 1954.

That's sad. So someone notices there's a problem. The status quo notices the problem, but they make small changes because they're protecting the money. And then someone comes up with a new mousetrap. We should scan. When you scan and look at the brain,

you then treat it as an organ and you just don't try to drug it into submission you get people to eat better you get them to exercise you get them to go to sleep you get them to put down their phones you you know give them supplements to nourish their brain one of things for you recommended hyperbaric oxygen to help repair the accident you had. It's not just, oh, you have this, take that. And so the next stage in the revolution, if it disrupts somebody's money, and I disrupt

the pharmaceutical industry, then they try and kill you. And that's just normal. It's what happens. Sadly. And I think 10 years from now, it's gonna be radically different. Oh, I love to hear that. And I apologize, I said the 70s,

but that's when you started, when you went. So I went to medical school. You got deployed. In the 70s. So my short story is I was 18 Vietnam was still going on and I Had a low draft number and became an infantry medic and My love of medicine was born there, but about a year into it I realized I didn't like getting shot at yeah, it's like not for me

And so I got retrained as an x-ray technician and that was the thing our professors used to say, how do you know unless you look? And then I got out of the army, finished college, went to medical school, it's 1979. I marry my childhood sweetheart, two months later she tries to kill herself. And I took her to see a wonderful psychiatrist

and I came to realize if he helped her, which he did, it wouldn't just help her, it would help me. It would help our children, it would help our grandchildren. But I fell in love with the only medical specialty that never looks at the organ and treats and I knew it was wrong. I just had no idea I'd be involved in the change. Back then, I hated the term mental illness.

If you looked at my ex-wife and go, she has a mental illness, it's shaming. It's stigmatizing. Nobody wants it. What if we thought of these as brain health issues? Nobody wants to be called mental. Everybody likes to be called a brain. Yes.

Right? So what if mental health was really brain health? And that's the revolution that I'm trying to create. It's like, let's stop calling these things mental. Their brain. I had one of my young stars came into my office and you know, sometimes they come, sometimes they don't, sometimes they do what you say, mostly they don't.

But he came into my office and he said, I think I get what you're trying to tell me. My brain is an organ like my heart is an organ. If you told me I had heart problems I'd do everything you said. Somebody do everything you say and then he just got better and I'm so excited about changing the paradigm away from you know more money for mental health care as it's currently practiced that's just gonna get us deeper into this disaster we're in but more money to create a brain health revolution.

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Obviously our hearts in Oregon, our brains in Oregon, but you're right. There is not so much isolated attention on the brain as there is. Are your arteries clogged? Do you have heart issues, stomach problems? I feel like we focus on all these other things, but our brain seems to be neglected way more than the other organs. At least that's the way I perceive it. And I went and took your scan. It was so easy, if not almost enjoyable,

because we had to do the online test and I had to beat the clock and I was, I'm very competitive. So I was like, no! And so for me it was almost fun to do that part. But I still was like, I gotta do better. And then I went, I got scanned by you, what was that, 30 minutes? Yeah, it's not a long process to do better. And then I went, I got scanned by you, what was that, 30 minutes?

Yeah, it's not a long process to do whatsoever. Painless, absolutely nothing like that. I played a video game that I would say with my eyes, right? You did a CPT, so we started the IV because it involves a radio pharmaceutical that lights up your brain and after we start the IV you took a continuous performance test which is 15 minute test of attention which actually scored well on and

Every time you see a letter you hit the spacebar Except when you see the letter, you hit the space bar. Except when you see the letter X, you have to inhibit that. But you feel like you're playing a game, it's not scary. No, it's not scary. Instantly. We do little kids and old people,

and we've now done 260,000 scans on people from 155 countries. Is that not incredible? But it starts a love affair with your own brain. And most people don't care about their brains. And in 1991, I didn't care about my own brain. I'm a double board certified psychiatrist, board certified in general psychiatry,

child and adolescent psychiatry. Was the top student in our neuroscience classes. And I didn't care about my brain. Why? You can't see it. You can see the wrinkles in your skin or the fat around your belly. And you do something when you're unhappy with that. But the brain is one of the only organs we don't screen, right? Why don't we screen our brain? Given that if you're blessed to live to 85 or older, you have a one in two chance of having lost your mind, right? You have a 50% risk of being diagnosed

with Alzheimer's disease or other forms of dementia just by being 85. And I'm like, no, I'm not okay with that, right? I love my six kids, but I never wanna have to live with them, right? I don't want them, we're taking his keys from him. We're gonna put him in a, no. Put him in a home.

And if I heard properly, you can diagnose dementia Alzheimer's 30 years prior to it actually happening. Like you can see it from the scans that you do. And so is there a way to prevent it even if it's detectable on a scan? Yes. Wow. So in 2005, I wrote a book called Preventing Alzheimer's with a friend of mine and I got

so much grief. It's like, no, you can't do that. No, you can't do it. Last year, the Lancet published an article that said 50% of Alzheimer's disease is preventable. And how do you prevent it? You prevent or treat the 11 major risk factors that steal your mind. So if you knew a train was going to hit you, wouldn't you at least want to get out of the way? Yes. Right? And so for example, what we learned is if you're overweight, as your weight goes up, the actual physical size and function

of the brain goes down. And that should scare the fat off anyone. If you have diabetes, much more likely to get Alzheimer's disease. If you have low blood flow to your brain, for whatever reason, too much caffeine, alcohol, marijuana, nicotine, not good for your brain for whatever reason, too much caffeine, alcohol, marijuana, nicotine, not good for your brain. And so when you fall in love with your brain, you realize you have to treat it better. And I think COVID. And that was the reason I saw Kendall. And she got really anxious after she got COVID.

Very, you could just see the inflammatory bomb that went off in her brain. Infectious disease is a major cause of psychiatric illnesses and nobody knows it and I didn't know it, right? It was not in my training program. But COVID, for example, if you get COVID, you have a 25% increased risk of having a new onset psychiatric illness within the next six months. Oh, my goodness, or Lyme

disease. And California is we have a lot of Lyme disease here. If you put a map up of the highest incidence of schizophrenia in the United States, it's the Northeast, the North Midwest, and the West Coast. Wow. So highest incidence of schizophrenia. And you overlay that with the highest incidence of Lyme disease, they're virtually identical. Wow.

So is it possible, if you have schizophrenia, or you love somebody with it, should you at least be screened for Lyme disease? And you should look, because if you're psychotic, which means you've lost touch with reality, that's a brain dysfunction. And is that able to be reversed? Often. In fact, one of my best stories, I love stories.

It's I love stories. Do tell. So Adriana, 16, beautiful, straight A's. Her family goes to Yosemite on vacation. And when they get to their mountain cabin, they're surrounded by six deer. And they think it's a magical moment. But 10 days later, Adriana starts to hallucinate. She becomes paranoid, she's aggressive,

she ends up in a psychiatric hospital, not once, three times. She's on multiple antiipsychotic medications and her mother's just beside herself. And the last doctor told the mother she has schizophrenia, she's gonna be on these medications for the rest of her life. At which point her mother found me, brought her to one of my clinics. We saw that her brain was inflamed and we didn't know why. And it turned out she had Lyme disease from a deer tick. And on-

It happened that quickly? It happens that quickly. Wow. And on an antibiotic, Adriana got her life back and then ended up finishing high school, graduated from Pepperdine, got a master's degree from the University of London, and today she's normal. But what a testament to the mother as well, because so many people don't know what to do and I think that's why I'm so honored that, I mean you're so incredible on social media,

I need you to know that. I was telling, talking to my mom about that. And it's so exciting that I get to have someone as knowledgeable and profound as you. But if there's so many takeaways that people can receive from an episode like this, because we understand what you're saying and there. And that's the same thing on your social media. It's so incredible how, yes, I know you know all the big words and all the medical terms, but you're just, you're so relatable. And there's so many takeaways that people can receive. And I think you make people feel safe with you.

And maybe because you've been doing it for so long, but you also give people so much hope where so many people don't just say, well, here, here's this prescription, take this, and we'll see you in six months and see if it works. Now, I work really hard to say things as simply as I can because I never want the words to get in the way. And we have a high school course called Brain Thrive by 25.

I'm so excited about it. And it was studied, so it's 12 weeks 24 hours we teach Middle schoolers high schoolers to love and care for their brain. Oh, I love that decreases drug alcohol and tobacco use Decreases depression and it improves self-esteem. Yes. And that's the answer to this epidemic problem. And people go, oh, it's social media. And yeah, social media is part of it.

And oh, it's our ultra processed foods. Yeah, and that's part of it. But nobody loves and cares for their brain. If you love and care for it because you realize that's your future. You're just less likely to smoke pot, which is not innocuous. Right. That's the messaging is it's innocuous. You're less likely to drink.

Alcohol is not a health food. You're suspicious about psilocybin, which is now, it's the most common question I get asked when I lecture. You know, what do you think about magic mushrooms? And I'm like, I'm really worried because I think it's gonna go the way the opiate epidemic went. Oh wow, really? Yeah.

Remember in the late 90s, my wife's a nurse and she said, oh, now pain is the fifth fifth vital sign we have to ask them about their pain and if they're in pain, they need an opiate and It got us this incredible disaster, right? We're in now we need to be cautious and you know if you take an opiate for example It makes your white blood cells mad. And so helps in the short run. In the long run, makes you dependent on them. Right. Because you've made your white blood cells mad.

Now you always have to calm them down for any. Like you're against drinking in its entirety. Correct. Well, anything that increases the risk of seven different types of cancer, I'm against. And there's not a week that goes by where alcohol hasn't devastated one of my patients or family members' lives. It's just always because they drink

and then they say things they shouldn't say or they do things they shouldn't do. So yeah, I'm not a fan of alcohol. So for me, I think I drink like two or three times a year. I'm not a big drinker, but normally my birthday, I'll rage a little, but after you have kids, it's hard to do that. But I also realize the older I get,

it could be age or just maybe my tolerance isn't, you just, there's no reward the next day. You realize, gosh, I just got thrown, I work out five days a week and certain things, I love being a present parent. And you just realize, okay, this really doesn't feel good, this is horrible, but trust me, I think I've done a lot of damage in my 20s.

Is that damage that was done in my twenties able to be reversed or for anyone listening? If they're like, okay, I'm not at that place that I'm going to take any sort of physical, like my health journey isn't my first priority. Are there things at home that people can do to improve their brain function or by just cutting out these things in life, does your brain sort of regenerate itself on its own? Well, that's the exciting news is even if you've been bad to your brain, you can make it better and I can prove it.

So I did the big NFL study. I've scanned and treated 400 NFL players, cool players like Terry Bradshaw and Dick Buccus. 80% of my players with these bad brains get better when we put them on a rehabilitation program. And I was just thinking about BJ Fogg, who's a friend of mine, He's a professor at Stanford. We were at a conference together.

We did some work together. And he said, I wake up 100% every day. And I'm like, why? He said, because of you, I stopped drinking. And so the question really becomes, with alcohol or other things that are not good for your brain, is what do you really want? If you really go inside and you go,

what do I really want? And I want energy. I want memory. I want focus. I want creativity. I want connection. I want passion. Walk-all just doesn't fit.

Right? I'm like, if I got a tattoo, I don't have any.'t fit any of them. If I got a tattoo I don't have any, and beware of them, right? New research on lymphomas and tattoos. Say it louder, because I do not want my kids to get tattoos. Yeah, so. But I have one, but you know, I've done a lot of stupid things, Dr. Eamon.

I know, my wife got one, and completely freaked me out. But it was like our daughter's birthday on the back of her neck. Mine is my dad's handwriting and he passed away. So at least it's not like a grand example. If I got one, it would be, does it fit? Does my behavior fit the goals I have for my life?

So with all of my patients, one of the first things I do is an exercise Called the one-page miracle on one piece of paper write down what you want What do you have life in your relationships? So if you're married, what do you want with your spouse or you have a partner? What do you want with your children? What do you want with your family? What do you want with your money? What do you want with your family? What do you want with your money? What do you want with your work?

What do you want with your physical, emotional, and spiritual health? What do you want? And then, does it fit? In my book, I brought you a copy. It's called Your Brain Is Always Listening, one of my favorite books. I rewrote the 12-step program because, you know,

the addiction 12-step program was written in the 1930s and there's no neuroscience in it. So I thought- I didn't realize it was written that long ago. I assumed they would be updating it. No. Wow. And so I updated it.

Okay. And so step one is admitting your life is out of control. And from a neuroscience perspective, I'm like, no, that's step two. Step one is what do you want? Relationships, work, money, physical, emotional, spiritual help. Really get clarity. And then step two, my life is out of control is real easy. Because it doesn't fit what you want. Right. For

speaking of addicts, are you able when you scan someone's brain? Is there neurons that are going off if someone has an addictive personality? So I wrote another book called Unchain Your Brain, Breaking the Addictions That Steal Your Life. And it's not one thing. It's like six different things. And so you have to know what type.

And when I first started scanning in 1991, I was the director of a substance abuse treatment program. And their brains were so bad. I mean, one of the reasons I don't drink is it makes your brain look older than you are. Their brains look smaller, they look shriveled, and I'm like, I have a poster that hangs

in about 100,000 schools and prisons and doctors' offices around the world called which brain do you want? Healthy scan, drug affected scans. And it's no luck. But they're impulsive addicts, people who don't really think about it all the time but they can't control their impulses

when they get a craving. They're compulsive addicts, people think about it all the time, but they can't control their impulses when they get a craving. They're compulsive addicts, people think about it all the time, they can't get away from it. They're impulsive compulsive addicts, where they have combinations of that, sad addicts, anxious addicts, and head trauma addicts. If you have a bad injury, you're much more likely to have trouble saying no to drugs and alcohol and so if you know the tie right so for example our impulse of

addicts very high in our ADD group our compulsive addicts higher in our OCD group. It's so fascinating and you have 11 offices. Where are they at if people want to go and get scanned by so big places like New York and Atlanta and Hollywood, Florida, Chicago, Dallas, we have a new clinic in Phoenix, Orange County, Encino, just north of Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle. Amazing. I mean, I went to the one in Encino. I have been doing hyperbaric and stuff like that since I've seen you. You are also the person that's got me on saffron saffron pills I take and it's about mood adjustments like there's so I and I I do believe that saffron

really works. I love it. And there's no side effects. If you don't but I would love I do want to go back and get another scan with you just why not and because also last time I didn't do my treatments with you I was just at a different place in my life and I want to be I'm ready to take the brain health journey with you. I would love that. I am. Can we talk about saffron for a little bit? Yes. Because a lot of people don't know this there are now 26 randomized controlled trials showing it is equally effective in treating depression as

Prozac and Zoloft and Wilbutrin, but dramatically fewer side effects. And so I started paying attention to saffron about 25 years ago when the first study came out and what really piqued my attention, because there are a lot of supplements that have anti-depressant effects like St. John's wort, but it was pro-sexual and that I'm like, because things like Lexapro and Prozac and Zoloft, they decrease libido and you have a harder time having an orgasm and I'm like, no, I don't wanna do that for my patients.

I want them to like me. I want their sex life to be better. And that can make you even more depressed. Right, and so I'm like, and then over the last 25 years, now there's 26 randomized controlled trials, helps with mood helps with PMS helps one study with hot flashes it helps memory five studies with Alzheimer's disease it helps improve memory there's five studies with

ADHD and I'm like memory mood and sex so and sex. So we released Happy Saffron. That's the one we make February of 2020. So right before the pandemic. And I think it just got me through the pandemic. I think it got a lot of people through the pandemic. So there's folklore in Persia. If you're too happy, you must have had saffron. Well, that is the one that I take is the happy saffron

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So Dr. Amen, I got a brain scan from you a few years ago and I would love to go over the scans with you. I know you brought them in today. Well, let me show you a healthy scan. Okay. So we do a study called SPECT, S-P-E-C-T, and SPECT looks at blood flow and activity. It looks at how your brain works and it basically shows us three things. Good activity, too little or too much. And then our job is to balance it. These images are looking at the outside surface and here we're looking underneath the brain, down from the top, one side, then the other. And the color doesn't matter in these, it should just be full, even, and symmetrical. The images on the right,

the color does matter. Blue is average activity. Red is the top 15%. White's the top 8%. Okay, so white's like the super active areas of the brain. And they should be here in the back called the cerebellum. And it's the Rodney Dangerfield part of the brain. It gets no respect. Now, a lot of young people don't know who Rodney Dangerfield part of the brand. It gets no respect. Okay. Now, a lot of young people don't know who Rodney Dangerfield is, and it makes me feel

old, but he's a very famous comedian who always said, I get no respect. And then he'd talk about why I didn't get any respect. And when you came to first see me, you wanted a better memory, you wanted to talk about the car accident, you had, you could get stuck on things and there was some past emotional trauma. And if we look at your brain, your brain got hurt. And you can actually see the left front side of your brain, there's a hole. Now it's not a physical hole, but what it means is there's significantly less blood flow, less

activity, than there could be or should be. Right. Right. And even though you scored well on the CPT test, on the X test, when we tested you again, your focus was like 17%, like in a scale of zero to 100. It wasn't awesome. And that could go with decreased here. And I think this is trauma, physical trauma. And you had a car accident when you were 16. Yes.

Tell me about it. I had a car accident when you were 16. Yes. Tell me about it. I had a car accident 16. I went through my windshield with my head and my lower body was stuck under the steering wheel and I was knocked out. And so I believe that's definitely probably what that is. And that, and a lot of people don't understand. If you go, hey Daniel,

what's the single most important thing you've learned from 260,000 scans? Mild traumatic brain injury is a major cause of psychiatric problems. And nobody knows about it because nobody's looking at the brain. That's that one accident can literally change the trajectory of someone's life because people who have Concussions often develop something called Erlen syndrome I are LEN and Those patients often have migraines. Do you have migraines? I do, I've suffered from them since the sixth grade though. So prior to this.

Yes, I think they could have been hormonal, but I'm on, I take a medication for them and it's literally changed my life because mine were debilitating. Like I could not, if I got a migraine, I would have to cancel on you. I could never be under these lights. So I want you to learn about Erlen syndrome.

So it was actually developed by Helen Erlen. She was a school psychologist. She realized that certain colors of the light spectrum disrupted brain function and caused people to look like they had ADD or learning problems or migraines. And often depth perception issues as well. And on my scans, they often have increased activity in certain parts of the brain.

If you go to erlin.com, there's a self-test you can take. And if you have it, I'll connect you with the Erlin Clinic. And it's us. So you write that down so I could go to that site? Something as simple as colored filtered lenses dramatically changes people's lives. That's incredible. Okay, I'm gonna do that.

I have so many stories with Erlen. Okay. It's so helpful But back to your scan Trouble in the front and You heard your opposite side temporal lobe which could be involved in mood and memory and anxiety and irritability. And so likely what happened is your head hit the windshield, probably the left side of your head,

but the force went toward the right side of your skull. So it was probably this kind of impact to your brain. probably this kind of impact to your brain? I'm sure I've had a few head trauma situations. I mean, I think I even told you, look, I remember I slipped in a shower and like I cracked even some of my back teeth and I hit my head. I used to horseback ride,

I've fallen off horses a few times. Things that I just don't put myself in those positions anymore. I obviously still shower but besides that I try to wrap myself in bubble wrap. How old are your children? My daughter will be seven in April and I have a two and a half year old son. And he shouldn't play football? No he will not. It's like the research is so clear and we should not let them hit a soccer ball or your daughter hit a soccer ball with their head.

It's like no, tennis is great, table tennis is the best, coordination exercises, dancing, all that is amazing. But we have to love our children's brains. Do you know I have a new book called Raising Mentally Strong Kids? I read about that in my notes, I think. Yeah. Tell me about your book.

In large part, we have to love and care for their brains and teach them, so there's a game. So I have a game, it's called Chloe's Game, for my daughter, and is this good for your brain or bad for it? And if I would say avocado, she'd go, two thumbs up, God's butter. If I said blueberry, she'd put her little hands on her hips and go, are they organic? Because non-organic blueberries hold more pesticides than almost any other fruit. I'm like, of course they're organic.

She goes, God's candy. I said, talking back to your redheaded mother, she goes, oh, very bad. Very bad. Too much stress. Yeah. Yeah. I'm gonna make my kids play that game. Yes, and you can still call it Chloe's game.

You can, see. Have you heard of EMDR before? I haven't. So, I love it so much. I first learned about it in the early 90s, but a lot of people, when they've had trauma, they do everything they can to not think about it. Right.

Right, to block it out, and when they get triggered, they drink or they smoke pot or do whatever. With EMDRs you actually bring it up and they have your eyes going back and forth and it begins to integrate the trauma, connect it to other things in the past and then it dissipates. It's so cool. But is it like therapy that you know sometimes, I don't know if you've done therapy, but sometimes you'll do therapy and you talk about. I've done therapy for a long time. And you know sometimes. That's what I do. You'll do like you'll talk about your traumas and then you're more upset about

everything. So this does the opposite. Okay, is you bring it up and Then that dissipates I love that and I always want my patients going into the pain Rather than blocking the pain because when you suppress the pain Alcohol, it always comes back and rebounds it when you go through it You begin to understand it and process it. So I did a study on EMDR on police officers who all left work after they were involved in shootings. So they had emotional trauma. And average of eight sessions, they all went back to work. And it calmed down the diamond in their brain. And for therapy, my favorite things to do, one, love your brain.

Two, stop believing every stupid thing you think. So I have a children's book called Captain Snout and the Superpower Questions. It's about killing the ants. Ants stands for automatic negative thoughts, thoughts that come into your mind automatically and ruin your day. And I was 28 years old in my psychiatric residency

when one of my professors said, you have to teach your patients not to believe every stupid thing they think. I'm 28 years old. I'm a double, in my residency, finished medical school, I'm really well educated, no one had ever told me that before. I believed every stupid thing I thought.

So here's the exercise. Whenever you feel sad or mad or nervous or out of control, write down what you're thinking and then ask yourself, is it true? Can I absolutely know that's true? How does that thought make me feel? Terrible. How would I feel without the thought?

So much up here. And then you take the original thought and you turn it to the opposite, and you ask yourself if the opposite of the thought is bothering me is true. This is so cool, it's so powerful, and so basically I teach all my patients one page miracle, what do you want? Then we have to kill the ants,

the automatic negative thoughts. And then whatever trauma's there, we use things like EMDR to help them get rid of it with a healthy brain. Yes. What I love something you said and I didn't think of it like this is that your brain is one thing and your mind is another thing and I don't think a lot of people consider those to be two different entities but they are. Can you talk about that a little bit? Well, your brain, the moment by moment, physical function of your brain creates your mind.

And if your brain's not right, your mind's not right. But if your brain is healthy, you still have to program your mind. And it's programmed by what you allow it to do. And if you're not really thinking about it and spending three hours on social media, TikTok's programming your mind. Yes. Or Facebook is programming your mind. Yes. Or Facebook is programming your mind. Yes. You want to be very careful because their goal is money. So they want mind share because then they can get into your wallet.

And it's not necessarily good for you. No. What I something I did last night, which is something that you do is well, I pray every night with my kids and then I do my own adult prayers for me every that's a non-negotiable every single night. But something that I implemented last night and it's because of you was the recounting the micro happy's, I don't know what you call it, but the, the good things that happened to me that day but from the smallest of the small. And I had a great day yesterday,

but I think because I was recounting the smallest thing, I was like, no, I loved just getting my coffee first because in the morning I wake up and I wake up at five at the latest and I'll have my alone time and I do my Bible verse and then I sit by myself and have my coffee and reflect on that and then I start my day. I like to set the tone for my day.

But I don't think I realized how happy that makes me until I did what you suggested which is just recount your day and what are the little things that make you happy. And it was such a beautiful lesson. And I was smiling while I was talking, recounting my day, and I just wanted to say thank you for that, because it's such a minor thing, but it's the biggest thing. It's so simple, right?

It's so simple, but it was huge. But if you do it on a regular basis, so every night I go to bed and I say a prayer, and then I go, well, it went well today. And I start at the beginning of my day and I'm structured hour by hour. What did I like about the day? And the bad stuff shows up and I'm like no, not now, later. And I go back to what went well.

People who do that for just three weeks notice a significant increase in their level of happiness. Oh my gosh you are a vessel of knowledge and insight and I'm just so grateful that you came and shared all this with me and my viewers and listeners and I'm not kidding I am going on spring break with my kids this weekend but when I come back I think I want to make my first stop to come and see you and do another scan. I love that. But yes I just wanted to say thank you this was fascinating and I will definitely see you in a few weeks when I'm back from spring break.

I'm so honored thank you. Thank you Dr. Aiman.