Mayim Bialik's Breakdown - Dr. Daniel Amen: Depression is a Symptom, Not a Diagnosis

Episode Date: November 14, 2023

Dr. Daniel Amen (physician, psychiatrist, author, founder of Amen Clinics) shares proven ways to change your brain! He explains what psychiatry is getting right and wrong, his mental health approach from a psychiatric, holistic, and neuroscientific perspective, and the importance of getting to the root cause of any mental health condition. Dr. Amen reveals how mold exposure and traumatic brain injury can contribute to mental illness, how toxins in products and foods can make our bodies work against us, and why he considers happiness to be a moral obligation. He considers why many people are disillusioned by the psychiatric field, the nature of having celebrity clientele and how fame can physically damage the brain, and depression as a symptom and not a diagnosis. Dr. Amen discusses the science of supplements and which ones he recommends taking, why he includes spirituality in his prescriptions, his thoughts on trauma reprocessing in the psychedelic realm, and his preferred forms of therapy. Find out more about BrainMD: https://brainmd.com/ BialikBreakdown.com YouTube.com/mayimbialik Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Most people don't think their brain can change. Most people think their brain is stuck. You are not stuck. The brain you have, you can make it better. People don't think that their brain produces 700 new baby stem cells every day. And there's an area called the hippocampus on the inside of your temporal loaves. And hippocampus is Greek for sewers. And every day you make 700 new baby sea horses stem cells every day.

And through your behavior, you're either growing down or you're murdering. And nobody thinks like this. Every day I'm making my brain better by what I do or I'm making it worse. Smallest thing you can do. It'll make the biggest difference. And just ask yourself this question every day. This is good for my blame of that. And if you can answer that with information and love,

love of yourself, love of your family, love of your family, love of your reason, you're on the planet. You just start making better decisions. Give your mind a name. It's based on the concept of gaining psychological distance from the noise in the head. It's killing the ants. your happiness, you need to discipline your mind, train your mind to help you rather than

virtue. I have all my patients to write down 100 of the worst thoughts, and then we take into process to eliminate them or at least go into them and flip them. So if you take the worst thought, my wife never listens to me. And then flip it. and what does this and then go, okay, so what's really? If you don't question your thoughts, you believe them. And then you act as if they're true, even if they were born. And I want to treat myself like a good boss, good parent, a good coach, which is I'm always firm and kind, which is, I understand this is the hard day.

We can do better. What's your goal? And then you just ask yourself, every one. day, my behavior getting me what I want. And that's not selfish. I actually believe happiness is a moral obligation because of how content, right? If you've ever been raised by an unhappy parent or married to an unhappy spouse, raise an unhappy child, and you ask those people as happiness and

moral obligation, they'll say, absolutely. He'd miss him, however, is the enemy. If I know what I want in a relationship with my life, then I'm always told you what I say, what I do is it does fit. It's Myamiaolic's breakdown. She's going to break it down for you because you know she knows a thing or two. So now she's going to break down. Hi, I'm Myamialik and welcome to my breakdown. This is the place we break things down so you don't have to. We've got a very exciting guest today.

I'm flying solo with someone that Jonathan. is so envious that I get to talk to Dr. Daniel Amon. His mission is to end mental illness by creating a revolution in brain health. He is an author of numerous books. His most recent is Change Your Brain Every Day, and it's literally an everyday guide to changing your brain. He's the founder of Aymn Clinics. They have 11 locations across the United States.

It is the world's largest database of brain scans for psychiatry. He's the founder of BrainMD. a science-based nutraceutical company and Aman University. He also has, in 2020, he launched Scan My Brain, which has a ton of high-profile actors, musical artists, TikTok stars, athletes, entrepreneurs, and that's on YouTube and Instagram. And he really is a psychiatrist of an entirely other variety.

I'm going to ask him all the hard questions. I'm going to ask him what psychiatry gets wrong. We're going to talk about what psychiatry can get right and what the new phase of dealing with. with mental health actually looks like from a psychiatric and also holistic perspective. I'm so excited to welcome to the breakdown, Dr. Daniel, Amen. Break it down.

What an honor. Thank you for helping me spread the message about it's not mental illness, it's brain health. As I mentioned in the introduction, you've written so many books and the most recent, change your brain every day. which I've really been enjoying, first of all, because you wrote this book in a way that my brain works. I like a page a day. I like to kind of take things in bite-sized pieces. It's very easy to metabolize

the way you present really, really big concepts. And I really appreciate that. And I think a lot of our readers, a lot of our listeners will also really appreciate that. There's a couple things in particular I want to highlight from here. But first, I want to ask you a general question. you know, you're a psychiatrist. You are that guy who holds that medical degree. But a lot of people feel very disillusioned by many aspects of psychiatry. You know, I come from a time when, you know, when I first presented with mental health challenges as a teenager, this would have been in the late 80s and into the early 90s. You know, no one asked, what was your childhood like? What's going on in your home, what other symptoms might you be having that might indicate that you need more assistance?

You know, the prescription then was Xanax. They just like gave teenagers Xanax when they, you know, right, exactly. So I know. So what I'm wondering is, you know, was there a moment in your career? Was it early? Was it in med school? Was it later? Where you kind of felt a kind of break with some of what many of us think of as kind of old school psychiatry? Well, it was actually what you got was bad school psychiatry. So I was trained in 1982, in 1987. And really good psychiatry is you always think of people in four big circles. Biological that's going on in your brain. Psychological is going on in your mind, including past trauma, social, what's going on in your life, and spiritual, which is, why do you care? What is your deepest sense of meaning and purpose?

And that's foundation and has been for a long time. I became completely disillusioned with my profession because it's the only medical specialty that never looks at the organ it treats. And I've been trying to revolutionize that I've been demonized, shame, called the charlatan, snake oil salesman. And I'm like, I'm not okay with this. The prescribing medications like Xanax, with no biological data ahead of time, is stupid. and we can do so much better. But if you look at this shit show that is psychiatry right now,

27% of all doctor visits, like not just psychiatric visits, all doctor visits, someone's leading with a prescription for a benzop. That's insane. Last year, there were 337 million prescriptions for antidepressants. And when you see depression like I do through the lens, of those four circles, but particularly imaging, which you realize depression is a symptom like chest pain. It really shouldn't be a diagnosis because it doesn't tell you what's causing it.

So doctors say, well, it's idiopathic, which means the idiots don't know. It doesn't tell you what's causing it. And it doesn't tell you what to do for it. And that's why in big studies, SSRIs or depression with no better the placebo. No, I know if I give it the right person, SSRI, it changed their life in a positive way. I give it to the wrong person. They might want to kill themselves or kill somebody else. And so the idea that we can make diagnoses based on symptom clusters with no biological data is just dumb.

And I'm horrified, but still, you know, inspired every day to make a difference. And that's why we're talking. Yeah. I think, I mean, it's so, it's so lovely to hear you frame it that way. And, you know, I think that the next thing that makes me think about, and obviously you have a platform of having some very prominent clients, You work with people with really complicated and beautiful minds, and you've been able to really help people transform, you know,

so many features of their life. I wonder if, and I sort of know the answer to this because I've read your books, is what you're describing just for wealthy people? Is what you're describing just something that, you know, we get to read about or hear, Miley Cyrus and Justin Bieber talk about? Or is this a way of doing psychiatry that can actually apply to all people?

I have 11 clinics. We see about 10,000 patient hours a month of everyday people. I mean, I've been blessed to be Miley's doctor for a dozen years. And I've been Justin's doctor. And, you know, that's a real blessing. What it does is it helps me spread the message through culture that we need a brain health revolution in Justin Bieber's docu-series seasons. And, you know, like many celebrities, he comes, he doesn't, he does what I say, mostly not.

When he went through a really hard season, 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 that heart problems, I'd do everything you said. And then, you know, as he did what I said, he got so much better. And, but, you know, I tell people I can help you for free, right? I mean, I have about 6 million people on social media and I post all the time. That's free. Or they can go the library and buy one of my books.

If you buy change your brain every day and you just go through it three to five minutes a day, by the end of the year, your life's going to be transformed. You're going to fall in love with your brain. You're going to start avoiding things that hurt it and you're going to do things that help it. And if you need to get scanned because you really don't know what's going on in your brain, it's totally worth the investment, no matter who you are. That's really helpful. I want to get into some of the practicalities, some of the things that you actually do offer and that are helpful to change your brain. But I do want to ask something that I

get asked, you know, as a public-facing person a lot. Many people assume that the challenges that I have are because I've been on television since I'm, you know, 14 years old. Or they assume that, like, people in Hollywood are crazy or, you know, we get all this money and we do all this cocaine and that's what our problems are. But what I've experienced just, you know, as a human being, may be exacerbated by the life that I live, the amount of pressure that I or Justin or Miley fall under. But the notion of the core of what you're talking about, I just want to clarify, that has nothing to do with celebrity. You're not talking about what happens to celebrity brains and how to apply that to the regular population.

No, I come at this. It happens to all of our brains. And your brain, the physical functioning of your brain, is involved in everything you do, how you think, how you feel, how you act, how you get along with other people. And when your brain is healthy, you tend to be healthy. and when your brain is not healthy,

and fame is hard on the brain because it wears out the dopamine centers of the brain and leaving you feel flat and more vulnerable to cocaine. You know, I often say you want to drip dopamine. Don't dump it. And fame dumps dopamine, and pretty soon you just don't feel right. One of my celebrities said fame is lethal.

And, you know, we've seen those stories over and over again. But quite frankly, there's a whole bunch of things that are lethal. You know, suicide is the 10th leading cause of death. It's escalating, especially, I don't know if you saw these statistics, but 57% of teenage girls report being persistently sad. 24% have planned to kill themselves. and 13% have tried to kill themselves. These are statistics that are unlike anything

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One of the pages that really, really kind of knocked me on my tush was, I will tell you what day it was. It was, day 81, is bipolar disorder the new fad diagnosis? and, you know, I have a doctorate in neuroscience. I'm not a practicing neuroscientist. You know, my research days are long over. But I often get asked, you know, am I bipolar? Is this depression or is it just grief? Do I have OCD?

Like people love asking me these things, you know, both on the podcast and just as I'm in the supermarket. And, you know, one of the things that's so helpful about your book and all of the work you do is how very, very specific you are. So when I saw that about bipolar disorder, just in one page, you made clear what so much confusion really is about regarding this diagnosis and the rates.

So I want to take depression, which obviously is a component of bipolar disorder, why is depression? Why does that not deserve its own diagnosis, meaning what is it often telling us? Well, it's telling us that you're sad and you can't snap out of, but we don't know why you're sad.

Is your thyroid low? Do you live in a mold-filled environment? Are you a painter? And you're exposed to poison day in and day out. Have lost something, an idea, a person, very important. To you, do you have an infection like COVID that fires up your emotional brain? it's not a diagnosis.

It says, go find out why. But it's not why. Depression is not the why. It's the what. But if you don't know why, giving everybody who's depressed in SSRI, when you frame it this way, it's just dumb. It's not one thing,

sort of like ADD, not one thing. I wrote a book called Healing and ADD. I talk about the seven different types. Submints like Adderall helps some people and make other people wildly. And so I think we need to bring neuroscience into the field of psychiatry. The DSM, the diagnostic and statistical manual, I remember when DSM 5 came out, and Tom Insull, who is director of the National Institute for Mental Health, basically called it a bullshit doctor.

This is huge controversy. He said, it's 100% reliable. If you make a diagnosis of depression today, using these criteria, you'll make it tomorrow. But then he went on to say it's 0% valid because it's not based on any underlying neuroscience. In fact, if you're going to apply for a grant for research to the National Institute of Mental Health, They won't allow you to use DSM criteria. So I think it's pretty interesting. It's this war between the American Psychiatric Association

and the National Institute of Mental Health. And it just highlights that it's pseudoscience. It's not science to make a diagnosis based on symptom clusters with no biological data. It's ridiculous. There's no, and that's one of your, you know, one of your most poignant points. There's no other medical practice that makes diagnoses, life plans,

tells you're going to be on a pill forever without any scan, any data, any literally hard science that way. Not one. I remember when Justin came to see me, he's laying on my floor, crying his eyes out, been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. He can't sleep. He has ticks.

and I'm like, he's got a neurological problem. And it turned out he had Lyme disease. And, you know, infectious disease, my prediction, in 30 years, there's going to be a whole subspecial view of psychiatry. It's just dedicated to infectious diseases like COVID and Lyme, toxoplasmosis, there's a fascinating parasite. But if we make diagnoses based on symptoms, clusters and then give you a pill, we're slowing down the science to really help in mental illness,

to help understand where these things come from. To hear you talk about Lyme disease, to hear you talk about neurological conditions as impacting mental functioning, cognitive functioning, emotional functioning, to hear you talk about COVID this way. You know, I'm a person who has an autoimmune disorder. I'm one of those like super, super, healthy women who for some reason my thyroid stopped working at 23. And what I now know and what we now know is that these things tend to happen to people with certain backgrounds, certain genetic profiles and also certain, you know, kind of psychological profiles. But what's really kind of blowing my mind is that, you know, all of my hippie friends who would talk about mold and who would talk about, you know,

brain fog from COVID. We were all mocked. We were all told we're nuts. And, you know, women whose menstrual cycles seem to be not quite the same, right, during COVID. Many of us were told you're nuts. And I just have to say that it's so validating to hear someone like you give credence to these things. And I wonder, why are people afraid? Why are doctors afraid to say, this might be related to mold, this might be related to COVID. Why are people having such a hard time in quote traditional,

conservative Western medicine with acknowledging things that we know exist and impact mental wellness? That's not part of their training. It's not part of their experience. They're trained in the DSM, which is, you have these symptoms,

So you have that diagnosis. So here's the plant. I mean, they're really trained in an insane system. But what I do is not alternative medicine. It's good medicine. The fact that mold can impact your brain and your mood is in all the textbooks for psychiatry or the schizophrenia or the schizophrenia and Lyme disease often overlap. You just have to read the literature.

everything in my book, the end of mental illness. I guess it was because I'm so tired of being criticized. There's 1,084 scientific references. I reference absolutely every sentence that I wrote about keep your brain healthy and rescue it. You have to prevent or treat these 11 risk factors. And infectious disease is one of one. There's a whole group of doctors in a group. integrative medicine doctors, functional medicine doctors that are always looking for why.

Like you said, you had a monoimmune disorder. That's what it is. Why do you have an autoimmune disorder? Right. Why is your body pissed off at you? You know, I was in the Army for 10 years. And so I understand the concept of friendly fire, right? We're going to war, but my own soldiers are trying to kill me. Why? Is it glue? Is it soy? Is it corn? Is it artificial dyes? Sweeteners? Is the products you put on your body? Do you have leaky gut? Is your microbiome? You know, it's like, why is your body pissed off at you? And when you understand that, when you see the brain is an organ that's supported by the rest of your body, right? And too often in psychiatry, there's a complete divorce between the mind, the brain,

and the body. They're going after your mind, never mind looking at your brain, or looking at your eye or a soul sample on a patient today. Why? Because if your gut's not right, your brain's not right. If your brain's not right, your mind's not. Right. And so what I want people to take away from is if you're depressed or if you have an autoimmune disorder, if you can't sleep or if you can't concentrate, you want to understand the root cause rather than give yourself a label of bipolar or an OCD, whatever. And, you know, why I wrote Day 81 is I see so many people diagnosed with bipolar disorder that aren't.

That they have mood instability, they have irritability, they have temper problems, they have impulse control problems, because they had a traumatic brain. That if you go, hey, Daniel, what's the single most important thing you've learned from looking at a quarter of a million scans? My old traumatic brain injury ruins people's lives. Nobody knows because nobody was. What kind of traumatic brain injuries are we talking about? There's a couple really interesting examples in change your brain every day.

But can you give us some examples if people are kind of right now racking their brains metaphorically? What are we talking about that can actually contribute to some of these kinds of behaviors? Well, your brain is soft about the consistency of soft butter. The skull is really hard and has short-bony ridges. And I have to ask my patients often 10 times whether or not they've had a brain injury. And, you know, I was trained at Walter Reed, so I was a military trained doctor. So we thought about head injuries, but I'd ask once. And then they go, no, I'd move on.

Well, when you have a scan that shows a traumatic brain injury, you know, are you sure? Have you ever fallen out of a tree off a fence, dove into a shallow hole? If you had concussions, plans, sports? Have you been in a car accident? falls, fights, and people go, no, no, no, no. The first time this happened to me, no, no, no, no. When I was seven, I fell out of a second story window. If that counts.

Maybe. Or when I was three, I fell down a flight of stairs. I was unconscious for half an hour. Went to the emergency room. The doctor told my parents it was just a mild traumatic brain injury. I'll be fine. I've never been fine. is or one of the guys went through windshield

a car. Another one, actually a very funny story. Skid had Tourette's syndrome. You know, Tourette's syndrome is a tick, motor checks, vocal ticks, and often corporal alia, which is compulsive swearing. But he came in from a drug treatment program.

He had a tick. And so in order to do a scan, you have to lay still for 15 minutes. And so because he had a head, I climbed up on top of him and held his head still for 15 minutes. So we developed a very close relationship. So after I said, hey, why don't you just take around and look at your scam with you and damaged to his left frontal.

And I'm like, when did you have a head injury? He said, I didn't. I went, are you sure? And then the swearing started after, no. But I grew up in the grocery business, so I don't really care of you. swear. And I'm like, if you ever fall out of a retreat, F now. Fall out of the second story window, FN in the car accident, Fno. And then all of a sudden, after I did that like 10 times, he stopped. He said, I'm so sorry,

I'd like to. He said, I was riding my motorcycle around the lake and a baby deer came onto the road and didn't want to hit it. So I spilled my bike onto my left side and broke my left job. Do you think that counts? F, yes. I said, send to him. If you were to tell me the top three things that most people don't think about in terms of being able to change their brain, what would those be? Most people don't think their brain can change. Most people think their brain is stuck.

And that's clearer in this book. You are not stuck. If the brain you have, you can make it better. I can improve it. People don't think that their brain produces 700 new baby stem cells every day. It's actually a conversation Miley and I had. She's an animal lover, and I'm trying to think of ways to get her to attach her brain. And there's an area called the hippocampus on the inside of your temporal loaves.

and hippocampus is great for seahorse. And every day you make 700 new baby sea horses themselves every day. And through your behavior, you're either growing them or you're murdering them. And nobody thinks like this. Every day I'm making my brain better by what I do or I'm making. it works by what I do. And there's a little tiny habit I just dearly love. I work with BJ Fogg for six months.

He's a Stanford professor on how people change. And it's like the smallest thing you can do. It'll make the biggest difference. And it's just ask yourself this question every day. This is good for my brand of that for it. And if you can answer that, with information and love. Love of yourself, love of your family,

love of the reason you're on the planet. You just start making better decisions. Many people think marijuana is innocuous and alcohol is a health food. That's insane. Marijuana is not innocuous, an alcohol is not a healthy food. The American Cancer Society came out against any alcohol

a couple of years ago, because annual alcohol is associated with an increased risk of seven different types of cancer. And so, it's good for my brain or bad for it. Or another one I love is do I only love food that loves me with that? I don't know if you've ever been in a bad relationship. Me? Never. I have been in a couple of what was I thinking, relationships. And I'm not doing that anymore. Married to my best friend. And I'm damn sure not doing it with food. Right. People go, I love pizza. I'll beat you out. I love sugar for inflammatory. It makes you more likely to be fat and depressed. I love pasta. Usually it's going to spike your blood sugar.

So I really focus on loving food, loving things I drank that love me back. Right? We're in this relationship and our society is not dear to your help. Our society is dear to your food. I'm not okay with that. You know, my book, The End of Mental Illness, I imagined if I was an evil ruler,

and I wanted to create mental illness, what would I do? And I have 63 strategies, like, you know, make marijuana seem innocuous. So the level of teenagers use it, which has skyrocketed. Kind of a related point. Day 65 really spoke to me. Day 65 is about toxins. And this is another one of those things that, you know, again, like alternative, holistic, hippie people.

We've been talking about this stuff for decades. And, you know, I talk about this a lot on the podcast when I was, I'm a home birth person. I'm that, you know, hippie. And, you know, I used to make my kids shampoo. I made it out of like, you know, like Castile soap and we would dilute it with essential oils because you couldn't find a kid's shampoo that didn't have all this. crap in it that we know or is really bad. And people thought I was absolutely out of my mind. And, you know, I stuck to my guns and I would make the shampoo. Like, I just, I just did it.

I did all that stuff. And I'm not saying that I sparked a revolution. But what I think is so incredible, my kids are 18 and 15, is that you now can go to a generic supermarket and find shampoo that doesn't have all of those chemicals in it, meaning over the last 20 years, we have seen more open conversations about things like toxins in products, to the point that I don't have to make my own shampoo anymore. You don't just have to get it at specialty, you know, rich person supermarkets. You can get it at generic places now, meaning this is becoming part of our consciousness. There are aspects of toxins, though, that you talk about,

that many people cannot imagine actually matter. Can you give us some like hard scientific facts about why it actually matters what toxins are entering your skin, like your makeup, your nails, your hair? This is where like Dr. Amon becomes, you know, a lot of people's not favorite person for a minute. whatever goes on your body goes in your body affects your body and becomes your body and if you're putting toxins aerobins phthalates or drinking them right people think oh you know classic drinking

bottles it's innocuous it's not innocuous and we as a society are being poisoned by what we put on our body, what we ingest, and people go, oh, organic, that's just good to people. It's like, why don't you want pesticides in your body? What do pesticides kill? How many bugs do you have in your microbiome? Under trillion. Why would you kill them if they make neurotransmitters? They detoxify your body.

if they digest your food, if they create 60% of your immune system. Why wouldn't you want to take care of that? Right? It's sort of like taking care of your defense force. And if you have an autoimmune disorder, again, it's why are my cells pissed off at me? And toxins are a major cause. And I have all of my patients download an app.

like think dirty, where you can scan your personal products and I'll tell you on a scale of 1 to 10 how quickly they're killing me. When I first did it, like I shaved with Barbisol for 50 years, and on a scale of 0 to 10, 0 is a little long time, 10 is die early. It's a 9, and I'm like, horrified. Now I shaved with something called Kiss My Face and it's a 2. And, it's not more expensive. See, it's getting well. It's much more about decision-making

than price. Because, kiss my face lasts way longer than cortisol. And I love it and it loves me back. So it's that mindset. Do you want to poison your body?

And so being mindful of reading the ingredients. A lot of people read the ingredients of food, but they don't ever read the ingredients of products. And I was super worried during the pandemic because all of a sudden it's hand sanitizer, hand sanitizer. It's filled with crap. And I'm like, well, this is no way to strengthen your immune system. The reason that I turned to functional medicine is because Western medicine was offering me surgery. That was the solution. And I've had a lot of surgeries in my life. I'm one of those people. I've had four hernias and I've had all sorts of fascinating things happen to my body that

baffle doctors and surgeons. And I went to a functional medicine doctor because I didn't want surgery again. And I believed that there had to be a different way. And that was one of the first things she had me due. You know, I had gotten lax with products. And, you know, there was a website I used a million years ago and I went back to it. And it was very painful, but I did. I got rid of everything. I got rid of everything that was hurting me. And I'm proud to say the makeup that I'm wearing today, Dr. Amen, is all, you know, from companies that make a very strong commitment to not hurting me, you know, when I need to wear makeup. So I just, I really appreciate you talking about it and talking about it in, you know, in a way that's so accessible. I want to talk about, I want to get you to talk

about supplements. This is, you know, another one of those things. Like, I take a million pills now. I take a million pills. I take them twice a day. And I have not had to have surgery. And, you know, I don't know if it's placebo. I don't believe that it is. But I take pills that, in some cases, are not, you know, they're not prescribed by companies that get to make a lot of money when I take these pills. And I wonder if you can talk a little bit about the sort of nutritional component and the, you know, the pharmaceutical component, like in addition to the foods that you talk about people eating. You know, I take K-10, like I take all those things. What's the deal with that? Can you explain, again, from, you know, from your perspective, why that stuff matters and why mainstream,

you know, kind of culture is still so resistant to acknowledging that there's a whole class of ways to supplement your brain and your body that can help you live better. So in 1991, when I first started looking at the brain, I became horrified because some of the medications I was taught to prescribe clearly were hurtful to the brain. And I remember in medical school the idea of first do no harm. And so I started studying the science of the supplements. And in the end of mental illness, there are 286 references just in the supplement job.

People go, there's no science. Mine supplements. It just makes expensive euro. And my response to those people is, do you read? So, for example, Saffron has 24 randomized controlled trials showing they're equally effective to Prozac effects are so long and will be able to. So why wouldn't I start with Saffron, which is pro-sexual, rather than the SSRIs, which sort of steal your ability to have an orgasm?

And a lot of doctors won't tell you that. And all of a sudden, your partner feels like you don't love him or her because they can't arouse her. And no one's like it's the antipatose. So I think everybody should take multiple vitamin. We're in a vitamin deficient society. everyone should take omega-3 fatty acid supplement everyone should have their vitamin D level checked and then optimize you know we went through this whole pandemic and early on we knew people with low vitamin D levels died from COVID they're much more vulnerable but you

didn't hear Fauci or anybody from the CDC go you said your vitamin D level check and probably should be taking 5 to 10,000 units a day to get into the optimal range, right? Nobody said that, which is why U.S. has 4% of the world's population and 16% of the world's public. Right. Simple stuff that people can do. And so over time, I own the supplement company. I own Brambe, at least 70% my employees own the other 30%. And I love supplements. I take saffron every day. I take the multiple vitamin.

I take a brain boost, omega-3 fatty acid extra vitamin B. Why? Because I want to get my body all the nutrition that it needs. It's hard to get from food, even if you have an awesome diet. I want to ask you about religion. about religion and spirituality.

You know, it was that fourth circle that you mentioned. This is something that, you know, we find keeps coming around, you know, no matter who we speak to. We speak to people who, you know, have psychedelic, transcendental, spiritual experiences, and we talk to people who are, you know, religious people of faith, who believe that it's a cornerstone of their health. you have a lot of really interesting work that you do in the region of spirituality. And I wonder if you can sort of, I'm a person of faith, so you don't need to convince me, but I'd like to know what your pitch is.

Why does spirituality matter? And in many cases, you know, I always argue for, of course, you can be spiritual without religious structure, but there are reasons that for thousands of years, traditions have done things a certain way to try and emphasize certain components of the health of a spiritual lifestyle. But what is sort of, what's your pitch for why you choose to include

spirituality as part of your sort of prescription, as it were? Because it gets you outside of yourself into a greater consciousness, a bigger role. I think the epidemic of teenage students, is directly related to social media and people becoming self-absor. When it's all about you, the world becomes better. When it's about doing good and being helpful to others, the world that's much bigger.

Plus, you know, people like, you're a scientist. How can you believe in God? It's like, well, how can you not? Right. I think it takes way more faith to believe you and I. are having this conversation by random chance. You know, people like always forget this second law of business, which is entropy. Things go from order to disorder, just like my son's room.

They go from order to disorder. And so to think, we evolved without creative design. It just makes no sense. To me, there was an explosion a long time ago. all these random things happens, and now all of a sudden you and I are having a very thought. No, I don't believe. And if that's true, if there's creative design,

and probably this means something, and this matter. And my personal belief, when I die, it doesn't stop. There's too many instances. and I hear about them all the time in my practice, the people having near-death experiences, and they have these very rich experiences even when they were dead. So I'm a person who thinks life goes on in one way or another.

And, you know, who knows? Maybe I'm in law. But the hope helps. And either way, live on through my work, a little bit on for my children and grandchildren. I'm not willing. You know, and people go out so anti-science. Scientists are open-minded. They're always looking for answers.

They're not close-minded and go, here's the boss of hopelessness. Can you speak a little bit to that psychology circle? I'm a large proponent. I'm a huge proponent of, psychoanalysis, just because for me it has provided a really significant scaffold that has led to many other aspects of my healing. But I'm curious, sort of, do you have one general thing that you recommend for most people, or does it depend? Like, some people, I would imagine, can really benefit

from some sort of slowing down of their brain. So I'm a person who my brain will tend towards hypomania if left to its own devices. So for me, I need to have a practice that is slow. I need to have a meditative practice. I need to do yoga where I'm forced to learn how to sit. And for me, you know, therapy is kind of part of that slowing down. Do you have a general kind of way that you like to go about encouraging people to use talk therapy or does it really depend? Do you like cognitive behavioral therapy? So I teach all of my patients. One, give your mind a name. It's based on the concept of gaining psychological distance from the noise in your head.

That's one of the days. It's killing the ants, the automatic and thoughts that steal your happiness. You need to discipline your mind, train your mind to help you rather than perchee. I have all my patients write down 100 of their worst thoughts. and then we take into a process to eliminate them or at least go into them and flip them. So if you take the worst thought, my wife never listens to me.

And then flip it, my wife does listen to me. And then go, okay, so that's really true. And the truth is she does listen to me. If you just stick with, my wife never listens to me. If you don't question your thoughts, you believe them. And then you act as if they're true, even if they're holding on. So I'm a huge fan of, it's a form of CBT, I suppose. But I'm also a big believer in trauma work.

And I'm just finishing a monster study on adverse childhood experiences. Dave, the Ace questionnaire, to, 20,000 patients. Oh my gosh. Wow. I have their scans. And it's just breathtaking what we're learning. Oh, childhood trauma is bad

for your brain. And so I'm a big fan of the MDR by move to desensitization and reprocessing. When I do therapy, it's one of my personal favorites. I'll teach you to kill the ants and then work through the traumas that you had, give your mind a name, and just teach you skill.

I have an elite brain training course that I'm working on. I was a consultant for the Miami Heat, which is super fun for me. And I want to teach you, you're awesome. You've been awesome for a long time. How can you be more awesome? by working always in these four circles. That's amazing.

I hope you don't mind me asking this. You don't have to answer it if you don't want to. What is your take on the psilocybin and kind of ketamine, you know, in clinical settings, in supervised like ketamine-assisted psychotherapy and the psilocybin, you know, which is monitored by therapists and guides? A lot of people are doing ayahuasca and kind of having these incredible transcendental journeys. Some are transformative. some are terrifying. Where do you fall in terms of trauma reprocessing in the psychedelic realm?

I'm really anxious about it, and I feel like I've seen this part of it before. Xanax is innocuous, most of the helpful, opiates, pains the vital sign. Alcohol is healthy. No one is innocuous. I feel like I've seen this. For the big innovative, in psychiatry are magic mushrooms, ketamine, and marijuana. So like the street drugs of the 60s are making it come up. Now, I think if you've done the right things, like you've really done the work to get your brand healthy, and you've done treatments like EMDR,

which I often say it's sort of like magic mushrooms without effects. And it still doesn't work. than for select people, like with marijuana, it can be helpful. I'm open-minded. The problem is, it's the most common question I get asked. And I have a 20-year-old. And she's like, you know,

people are having magic mushroom parties left and drunk. They're not getting drunk. They're getting high. And I'm very concerned. about this. And I remember the last presidential election. Cory Booker shamed Joe Biden. When then Vice President Biden, when asked about marijuana,

said, I don't think it should be legalized yet. I think it needs more study. And Cory Booker on national television, you know, a very thoughtful senator said, man, are you high? And shamed him for, what, you know, I think the science is clearly not there. The teenagers who use have a higher incidence anxiety, depression, suicide, and psychosis in their 20s. This is not an eye force. So, man, are you high? He really speaks to Booker's lack of thoughtfulness. A couple fun questions. Can I know what you

named your mind? Yes. I named my mind after my pet raccoon when I was 16 out of pet raccoon. Her name was Hermann. And I've loved her. Just like my mind, she's in trouble. Hermann used to tee-tee my mother's bathroom.

Gave all the fish out of my sister's aquarium. What? Would leave raccoon poo in my shoes. And that's my mind. It's just like to stir up trouble. Like all of a sudden, the middle of work. You think about, you know. And so, you know, metaphorically, I used to sort of put her in the cage.

I'm like, you and me, do I take a time out? But now what I do when I find my mind acting up, I imagine her me and I put her on her back and I tickle her because I used to do that. And she loved that and making this fun and sound. and I'm like, come on, we can do better. And I want to treat myself as a good boss, a good parent, a good coach, which is I'm always firm and kind, which is, I understand this is the hard day. We can do better. What's your goal?

I ask that to myself all the time and ask all my patience, know what you want. We have an exercise in the book called the one-page miracle, one piece of paper, write down, what you want. And then you just ask yourself every day, my behavior, getting me what I want. And that's not selfish. I actually believe happiness is a moral obligation. That's kind of that. Happiness is a moral obligation. I grew up Roman Catholic. And that idea was nowhere to be found in Catholic school or mass. There was just a lot of sort of shame in Bill. And I appreciate my Catholic upbringing because it was structured and it gave me a lot of goodness. But happiness is a moral no, no, no, no, long suffering. And why is happiness and moral obligation? Because of how contagious

you are, right? If you've ever been raised by an unhappy parent or married to an unhappy spouse or raise an unhappy child, and you ask those people as happiness and moral obligation, and they'll say absolutely. And so hedonism, however, is the enemy of happiness. And if I know what I want, I'm caring, more than supportive, passionate relationship with my wife, then I'm always filtering what I say, what I do, does fit, fit.

They don't have any tattoos yet. my wife actually got one recently I think we've got it because our daughter's work for that but anyways if I got a tattoo it would be does it fit

does my behavior fit the goals I have for my life and I think that's always step one in the world what we want so they'll be getting you what you want

I think your tattoo should be a raccoon saying does it fit with a little thought. That's right. I got it. It's holding a little flag. The book, Change Your Brain Every Day. I really, really highly recommend it. I've really enjoyed speaking with you. I appreciate all of the work you do. You're a real warrior for those of us who need an advocate who could speak to the science and also the heart of what ails so many of us. Thank you so much. It's really been a pleasure having you here. Thank you, soon.

If you're watching on YouTube, you will notice that there's been a change of wardrobe, as well as a change of scenery. Jonathan was not with me for this interview, but I had so many questions about what Jonathan would say about it that Jonathan has watched the episode and we have reconvened for this outro. I don't think we've ever done this before. I can't remember if we have. I think there may have been a time. Also, I had a lot of notes for you during that interview, but we won't start there. You know what? We can do a separate episode just of Jonathan critiquing my interview strategy. It will be like one of those NBA analysts where they stop the game film.

That's exactly what it will be like. I'll circle. I'll be like, in this moment, you should have said this, but you led here. And instead of picking and rolling, I did the best that I could with Dr. Aymann. I had a very good time with him. I had so many things that I wish you were there to talk about. So Jonathan, what were some of the highlights? What do you want to talk about about Dr. Amon?

Let's go in order. We're going to go in order. He only wears black. He only wears black. Every time I've ever seen him, he's only wearing black. He's in line with Johnny Cash. 27% of all doctor visits result in the prescription for a benzo. That to me is a huge indicator that we may not be getting to the root cause of what's going

on during these medical visits. And we've spoken on this podcast extensively about the medical system and it's a sick care system. And this goes directly to what he was saying is that our world is designed to make us sick, not make us help. And if we understand that, that the products and services, the lotions, the ointments, the makeup, often the food, the packaged food, especially that are on the shelves around us that is quote unquote normal that many of us grew up with, never considered that it may have negative health implications. If we start with the notion that these are not healthy for us and actually they can be designed to make us sick over time, that is the beginning level of creating a foundation for health because you start to question

the status quo. I know what you're going to say. I know what you're going to say. What am I going to say? Because your face has that look on it of displeasure. I think that one of the challenges that I have with Dr. Amon's approach, which not with Dr. Amon himself, but his approach is very much like feels unattainable to me. meaning like we have to stop eating the way we're eating. We have to stop using the makeup we're using. We have to stop using the shampoo. We have to like, everybody needs to be in therapy.

Everybody needs to take supplements. Like, that sounds daunting to me. If we continue with the status quo, we get a health care system where 360 million prescriptions of antidepressants are given. And if that's okay as a metric for how we're all, living, then we don't have to question anything. But if we begin to question and questioning what is normal, tie it back to Gabor Matte's myth of normal, if we don't start to question our relationships, how we connect with people, how much we're working, the pressure that we're under,

and then extend to what we're eating, the chemicals on our bodies, the chemicals that we're cleaning our homes with and that we're surrounded by the chemicals we're putting on our bodies in terms of lotions. If we don't start to evaluate that, then we can't make any conscious change. And yes, it is daunting. And no, there shouldn't be a level of perfectionism needed, but we are in a crisis of health in this country. And if we don't start to evaluate the causes for some of this and we just say, well, everything is okay, then no possible change is going to be made. And I think it can't be a, oh, well, this is for elite people and this is for everyday people and people who are able to afford something.

Everyone can make microchanges. Everyone can eat slightly less processed food. Everyone can look at and start to understand some of the chemicals in lotions, as you described. even in everyday supermarkets, there are natural soap options. There are less fragrances. There are cleaning products that have less toxic chemicals of this. And it's the cumulative effect of all of this that begins to degrade our autoimmune system and cause disease. If you were to name your mind, Jonathan, what would you name it? I think it depends on what my mind is doing. Sometimes my mind is like creative and being hopeful when it's,

like analyzing and like just being uh pointing out all the things that are a problem um it needs a name it's a bit of a downer what what's a name for someone who's a bit of a downer it needs like a wampwamp name i don't want to name a name because then anyone with that name will be like my name is the name of jonathan's mean mind let's let's let's make this a little happier just for a second We'll add a little light note. There was a moment in the episode where you put yourself right in the same category as Miley Cyrus and Justin Bieber. And I liked how you just yourself right in there. What did I say?

It was something like, you know, you know, now I forget exactly the wording. Just me, Justin and Miley? Yeah, it's like, you know, how we do it. Oh, it was about fame. It was about the impact of fame. And I actually thought there was a tie in there to, you know, because you were trying to say, this stuff isn't just for people who have famed, like you, Justin and Miley, all performing for stadiums full of people and sell out crowds.

No, that's not what I was thinking. No. No. How do you sign autograph? Okay. In my defense, the reason that I was grouping myself was not because of a level of fame. It was not because of the wealth. What I was talking about was that these are people that he has spoken about who utilize what is sort of called this functional medicine approach, which is often combining supplement life with, you know, psychiatric analysis, with a deeper look at trauma as well as lifestyle changes, which I think is something that celebrity people.

have often been speaking up about. And, you know, as, as Dr. Amon said, like, this is something that is not just for celebrities. It is not just for Miley and Jester. It's available for me, too. And also other people, you know, his approach and, you know, like, we didn't really get into the details of, like, what these brain scans are, but that his notion that many people are walking around with challenges that they may not even know about. And, you know, as you you said, a lot of people show up at the doctor, like something's not right. And I mean, forget about just the benzos, you know, that's like Xanax and things like that. I mean, people, you know, SSRIs, like, I don't know the rates of those. I don't think those are being grouped together with that

statistic. But, you know, many people have, have simply been told, you know, to take this pill and you'll feel better. And it does work for some people. Or it works for a short period. of time and then the issue comes. But there are people for whom it works. Like there's a full genetic profile and I think that some people are more, you know, kind of, you know, medication purists. But that's really not for me, you know, to kind of assess. I think the point that Dr. Amon was making and I think the one that you and I really resonated

with is that a lot of people are going to doctors reporting that something's not right. And many times what's happening is the mind and body are not being considered together. You know, for example, his notion of like, if your gut is not healthy, you will not have mental health that is cohesive. Or infectious disease or Lyme disease or toxic mold. Like some of these physical ailments are looked at from the perspective of only mental health. And it's like, wait a second, there's a connection here that needs to be examined. Correct. And also those are some things that, you know, people in holistic communities have talked about and everybody, he was like, that's nuts.

Like, I've heard people talking about mold for decades in the homeschool community. Like, people talk about those things. And so that's also a real difference, you know, of like hearing Dr. Aman, you know, who's an MD. Like, he's a doctor who was trained in Western medicine, you know, like, that's his thing. And to hear him talk about that, like, we need that message amplified more, that there's more going on with all of our health. And it's not a matter of can you afford.

this, meaning it has been a matter of can you afford this, but that shouldn't be the way that this is determined if you get to be healthy, is do you have the money? 100% agree. There was another piece that he said so clearly, which I love, which is depression is a symptom. It is not a diagnosis. And so often we stop at the symptom. I have anxiety. here's your diagnosis. I have depression. Here's your diagnosis. Even OCD, here's your diagnosis. But what is

going on underneath? What is the what that is causing it? Or what is the why? Even the language that, you know, we try and use here instead of I have depression, you know, I'm experiencing depression. I'm having a feeling. And that's that notion of like, you know, if you can have that, that secondary self observing and saying like, oh, my concept. state is not to be miserable. Like, that's not, you know, and it sounds like, oh, you're just being a poliana to be like, that's not, that's not anybody's destiny, meaning that is the symptom that something is not right. And in many cases, it might be what's going on in your life. It might be unresolved trauma. And yeah, like, I think we all need to start realizing this is not like hocus pocus

magic. The other thing he said that I really appreciated is the brain is an organ that is supported by the body. And we are constantly making choices all the time whether we are supporting our brain or we are harming our brain. And if we begin to break down our lives into a series of choices, is this activity brain supporting or brain harming? That's a huge paradigm shift for most people. Okay, but are there any that are like, I don't know. Well, it goes back to the notion of celebrity. He said, what you want to do is have dopamine drips, not dopamine dumps. And I think that requires some unpacking. So a dopamine dump, of course, is like rushing on stage to mimes millions of screaming fans as you, you know, get ready to perform at a concert. As I shove Miley aside

because it's my turn. And you're, you know, you're in your sequence. outfit and you're ready to do your dancing and you have your microphone for singing. I'm in knee-high boots and nylons, just like Taylor Swift. And of course, that's a massive rush. And comedians speak about this. Remember we were talking to Fluffy and he talked about getting off stage at 12 o'clock at night and not being so amped up from that. You can't really slow down immediately and transition into sleep.

So performance, big events, major milestones. Okay, but you can't say that that's harming. There's people who are rock stars. They have to have that experience. I'm not saying that you should not do any of that, but it has to be seen that, oh, the person has just had this dump of dopamine. You're going to be depleted the next day. Your entire system. So you can be, you can repair it. You can repair it. You have to put reparative days to back end it. But most of the time, people are just like, go, go, go, go, go. And then at the end of three months, four months, whatever the two, tour might be six months, they come off of that. They're totally crashed and depleted. They can't feel good anymore because their system has not been primed to drip the dopamine so that they feel

okay. Okay. So that's a dopamine example. But I was thinking more of like what the goal would be because I think for a lot of people, it's like, well, I have to go to work and then I have to take care of my kids. And then if you have a spouse that needs to be taken care of to any level, it's like, I got to do that. And then like, well, I'm supposed to like have a good time. So like I'm supposed to like work out or watch TV, but then I don't get enough sleep. You know, like, I feel like so many people are just like on this hamster wheel, you know. So what he talks about the baby sea horses in the hippocampus, which I like a little baby sea horse.

Who doesn't? And so working out, that's going to be brain healthy. You can have your choice. At the end of your long day, are you going to sit on the couch because we're really tired? Are you going to move your body somewhat while we know moving your body is good for you? Are you going to stay up and watch that next episode of Yellowstone? Speaking to you, Maim, or are you going to get to bed early, wind down, read a book before bed, transition to sleep, which we know is brain healthy.

We know that reading and the eye movement across the page is brain healthy versus brain hurtful, which TV, unfortunately, is brain hurtful. It puts you in a passive state where you're not really stimulating anything. And the reason why people say veg out is because it kind of, turns you vegging out. On today's episode, Jonathan takes away everything fun. Meditation, brain healthy, having a conversation with someone brain healthy. I'm not saying everyone has to live as you say, like a month all the time, but we do have to know what we're trading off. If you're getting dopamine dumps all the time, which probably feels amazing, you have to know

that that's happening so that when you feel badly, you're not like, well, why? do I feel bad? It's a mystery. Maybe I'm dealing with some terminal disease. The likelihood is that you probably need reparative, restorative time because it's an understandable system. I want to touch on one thing that Dr. Amon talked about. He talked about us having more kind of control over our mind and our thoughts than we may realize. And, you know, he has this exercise, you know, to write down a hundred of your worst thoughts and then literally methodically, like, go through them and either eliminate them or flip them.

John, who would like to share one of your worst thoughts? 1929 is coming and everyone has to save frantically and every amount that you do save will be erased by inflation. That was inherited. Okay, so for those of... for those of our listeners who may not be following 1929 politics, you're talking about you have a general, you think it's one of your worst thoughts

is that some economic crisis is coming, and that guides a lot of your behavior in theory. I notice that when I'm very stressed and I get into catastrophize thinking, my mind will go there. How would you, in Dr. Amon's words, you know, if we're supposed to eliminate, that or flip it? What are some of the things that you think you can do besides like generally

being in a healthier place in terms of your diet and your sleep? With this particular bad thought, you know, how do we eliminate or flip that? I think it's society is not crumbling, have faith in society, have faith in experts who know a lot better than I do, what's happening. Do everything I can to my knowledge in the moment, be present, do everything I can to the knowledge in the moment, live responsibly in the moment, and also balance that with enjoying life. Can I add a few things? Please. And I don't mean this to be directive of like, here's what Jonathan should do, because I'm not

supposed to tell Jonathan what he should do, but some of you might be like, yeah, but if you do it on the podcast, it's part of your job. But that's not what's happening. One of the other things that I thought of, you know, I have a certain amount of financial insecurity. It's different than what you're talking about. But, you know, there's, there's like abundance meditations, which always kind of make me feel like, oh, that's so weird. But there's actually a practice. It is a, it's part of the Eastern tradition, you know, in terms of like a meditative practice on abundance of really trying to reprogram your brain into understanding that there's a much

bigger picture in terms of abundance. And it's not just about wealth. It's not like you have a fear of like, I want to be rich. We're talking about there is abundance in the world and there are ways for me to feel safer on a daily basis. So that's another thing that if this is a particular, you know, fear of yours, that might be something to look into. And I think also, you know, when you mentioned like living reasonably, you know, sometimes when we have financial fear in particular, our tendency is just to scrimp. You know, it's always to save. It's always to like not give ourselves something. But a lot of times, like for me, you know, until I actually looked at how much do I spend in a day in a week? Like until I did this, Susie Orman, you know, she has like a

financial workbook that I did when I was in college, you know, just because I was like, there's so much that I feel like I don't know because my parents always took care of things or, you know, I didn't, whatever, a lot of reasons. But once you realize like, oh, I could spend money on this fancy coffee beverage or getting nails done or I, I don't. Or I. could do this. Like sometimes just having more information about our finances can also be something because many of us act out of, you know, ignorance, meaning we don't even know where we're at. And so, oh, I better just save or I better just be anxious about it all the time. And I'm not saying that you don't have information about these things. Like your dad's an accountant and you're a

very financially responsible person. But I think for a lot of people, like I'm one of them, sometimes not knowing something makes the fear bigger. So I just wanted to add those two things. Well, I'll just say, as G.I. Joe said throughout my childhood, knowing is half the battle. All right. Follow us at Bialik Breakdown, and we'd love to hear what you think about the Dr. Eamon episode. Jonathan, thank you so much for doing a little cleanup of that episode. I really appreciate your insight, as always. And from our breakdown to the one we hope you never have, we'll see you next time. It's my Bialyx Breakdown. She's going to break it down for you.

She's got a neuroscience PhD or two. And now she's gonna bring