Soul Boom - Can Dr. Amen's Brain Scans Predict Depression, Anxiety and Addiction?

Episode Date: December 18, 2025

Dr. Daniel Amen (brain health expert, psychiatrist and physician) wants to reframe “mental health” as brain health, and explain how brain imaging can reveal patterns behind depression, anxiety, addiction, and even chronic pain. They unpack automatic negative thoughts, negativity bias, and simple daily “tiny habits” that can reshape your brain and your life. Plus, Dr. Amen connects science with meaning, purpose, and spirituality, asking one powerful question: is what you’re doing right now good for your brain and does it honor your creator? SPONSORS! 👇 reMarkable 👉 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://remarkable.com⁠ Miracle Made (promo code: SOULBOOM for 20% OFF!) 👉 ⁠⁠trymiracle.com/SOULBOOM⁠⁠ and use promo code SOULBOOM for an extra 20% OFF and a free 3-piece towel set! Grow Therapy 👉 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://growtherapy.co/SOULBOOM⁠ Green Chef (50% OFF + Free Shipping + 20% OFF next 2 boxes!) 👉 ⁠https://www.greenchef.com/50soulboom⁠ Fetzer 👉 ⁠https://www.fetzer.org⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⏯️ SUBSCRIBE!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠👕 MERCH OUT NOW! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠📩 SUBSTACK!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  FOLLOW US! IG: 👉 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://instagram.com/soulboom⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ TikTok: 👉 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://tiktok.com/@soulboom⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  CONTACT US! Sponsor Soul Boom: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[e-mail]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Work with Soul Boom: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[e-mail]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  Send Fan Creations, Questions, Comments: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[e-mail]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  Executive Produced by: Kartik Chainani Executive Produced by: Ford Bowers, Samah Tokmachi Companion Arts Production Supervisor: Mike O'Brien Theme Music by: Marcos Moscat Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One question. Is what I'm doing now? Good for my brain. And does it honor my creator? That's it. Say that one more time because that is really profound. If you can answer that with information, good science, and love, love of yourself, love of your family, love of the reason God puts you on earth, you just start making better decisions.

Freud was wrong. Penis envy is not the cause. The only organ in your body where size matters is your brain. Mine is enormous, but I'm not sure it's completely functional. But I mean, look at the size of this melon. I love it. It's crazy. Hey there, it's me, Rain Wilson, and I want to dig into the human experience.

I want to have conversations about a spiritual revolution. Let's get deep with our favorite thinkers, friends, and entertainers about life, meaning, and idiocy. Welcome to the Soul Boom podcast. Hey, just a quick shout out to our sponsor, NeutroFall. More on them later, but you can head to NutraFall.com and use promo code SoulBomb now for $10 off your first month, plus free shipping. Miracle made. Go to try miracle.com slash soul boom and use promo code SoulBum for an extra 20% off plus a free three-piece towel set. Also, check out Soul Boom's brand new holiday merch, available for a limited time only at

Soulboom.com slash store. Enjoy the show. Dr. Amen. Is that a Joe? Amen. Did you make up that name? Come on. Your name is Amen. Amen. Amen. Like the last word in a prayer. So I get the last word. I love that growing up. I was actually quite fun because every time I go to church, my name would be spoken all the time. Amen. He'd be like, yes. And then there was Lilies of the Field with Sidney Portier and had that famous song. Amen.

Yeah. I've always loved my last name. It's pretty incredible that, you know, preeminent psychiatrist, brain study or pain management guy is named Amen. When I was at Walter Reed, I did my internship in residency there. There's this very large black schizophrenic patient scary. And he looked at my name tag because I was in the Army. And just said, Amen. Dr. Amen.

You're the last doctor I'm ever going to have. You better get me well. And how did that go? Great. Amazing. As a second year medical student, someone I love tried to kill herself. and I took her to see a wonderful psychiatrist, Stan Wallace,

and I came to realize if he helped her, it wouldn't just help her, that it would help her children, it would help her grandchildren as they would be shaped by someone who was happier and more stable. I got this view of psychiatry that it can change generations of people. And that was 46 years ago,

and I have loved it every day, day since, except I fell in love with the only medical specialty that never looks at the organ it treats. And I knew it was wrong. And I'd always hated the term mental illness because it shames people. You call someone mental, you demean them. Call them a brain, you elevate them. So what if mental health was really brain health? And early on in my residency, I did my residency at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, I'm like, we should be looking at the brains of our schizophrenic patients, of our bipolar patients, of our people who want to kill themselves or want to kill other people. We should look at their brain.

And they're like, it's a future. And growing up, I had a very complicated relationship with my father. But he had two favorite words. The first one was bullshit. Everything was bullshit. And whenever you asked him a question, the answer was no. It was always no, no matter what the question is. Like, Dad, why do you always say no?

I don't say no all the time. No, I don't. That's bullshit. And so when they said, oh, that's the future. I'm like bullshit. No, we should find a way to look at our patient's brains now. And in 1991, I went to a lecture on brain. spec imaging, that's the imaging study we do at Aemon Clinics.

Now, what is that kind of, I've heard a lot, and was reading a lot about spec, how is that different than like an MRI or something? So an MRI and a CT scan generally or anatomical studies, they look at what the brain actually physically looks like. Speck, like Pat, is a nuclear medicine study that looks at blood flow and activity. Okay. So when we inject the medicine, 49% of it is taken up in the mitochondria. So it's really looking at cellular metabolism.

And spec stands for single photon emission computed tomography. What does that mean? When it's a nuclear procedure. So what that means is we inject the medicine and it's connected to something called technetium. And it decays, and as it decays, it produces these little pieces of light. So every scan in that book is made up of about 10 million photons or little pieces of light that teach us how your brain works. And it basically tells us, is it healthy?

Is it underactive? Is it overactive? And it created this revolution in my life that in 1990. I'm a double board certified psychiatrist. I was the top neuroscience student in medical school. And I didn't care at all about my own brain. Isn't that sort of crazy? But when I saw it, so actually I scanned my mom the week before.

She's going to be 94 in a couple of weeks. So she was 60 and it was stunning, beautiful. And then I scanned myself and it wasn't because I played football in high school. And I had meningitis as a young soldier. And I had bad habits. I could only sleep four hours at night. And I was chronically stressed and overweight. And you could see all this in the skin.

What I could see is it wasn't healthy. And so I developed a term that I love called brain envy. I wanted my brain to be like my mom's brain envy. Like Freud was wrong. P penis envy is not the core. cause of anybody's problem. Yeah. The only organ in your body where size matters is your brain.

Mine is enormous, but I'm not sure it's completely functional. But I mean, look at the size of this melon. I love it. It's crazy. So what did you do to treat your own brain health? So ultimately, brain envy, you have to love it. You have to like start thinking about it. And brain health is three things.

Brain envy, got to care. Avoid things that hurt it. Know the list. What are some things? Seven-year-olds know the list. Okay. Drugs and alcohol. Drugs, alcohol.

Stay hydrated. Hitting a soccer ball. Get some sleep. Yeah. Sleeping. Yeah. Negative thinking. Oh.

Sugar. Being overweight is bad for your brain. I published three studies that show is your way. Sugar, really? As your weight goes up, the size and function of your brain goes down. Oh, I'm fucked. They're now calling diabetes, they're not calling Alzheimer's Diabetes Type 3. Because if your blood sugar is not healthy, it shrinks your brain.

And so avoid things that hurt it, do things that help it, whether it's exercise, omega-3 fatty acids, know your vitamin D level. There's an acronym we can talk about called, minds because it's really you want to keep your brain healthy. You have bright minds running all through this. You have to prevent or treat the 11 major risk factors that steal your mind. And if you're overweight, you have all 11. If you're not sleeping, you have all 11.

But ultimately it's coming down. This one question. I figured it out. I worked with a Stanford professor for six months on tiny habits on how people change. And what's the smallest thing I can do today that will make a massive difference in my life. One question. Is what I'm doing now, good for my brain, or bad for it, and does it honor my creator? That's it. Well, say that one more time, because that is really profound. I love the way you tie it. What I'm doing now, is what I'm doing now,

good for my brain, or bad for it, and does it honor my creator? And if you, you're doing, it's You can answer that with information, good science, and love. Love of yourself, love of your family, love of the reason God puts you on Earth. You just start making better decisions. For years during the holidays, I had this tradition that I never really talked about. I would show up to parties wearing a Santa hat. Not because I was festive, because it was a convenient way to hide whatever creative choices. My hair decided to make that holiday.

season. But after I started taking the men's formula from Nutrafall, the Santa Hat retired. What do you think? I love Nutrafall because my hair feels stronger and thicker now and I actually feel comfortable showing up to events without a giant red felt distraction on top of my head. Neutrophol is the number one dermatologist recommended hair growth supplement brand, trusted by over one and a half million people. See, thicker, stronger, faster growing hair with less shedding in just three to six months. Nutrafall is really the perfect gift for anyone on your list. Like your husband or dad, who relies on their Santa hat, way too much, like some kind of emotional armor.

Or even yourself or anyone who wants to support their overall hair health. Give the gift of confidence this holiday season with Nutrafall, whether you're treating yourself or someone on your list, visibly healthier, thicker hair is the gift that keeps on giving. Right now, Neutrofall is offering our listeners $10 off your first month's subscription, plus free shipping when you go to neutrafall.com and use promo code soul boom. That's neutrafall.com promo code soul boom for $10 off. Hey, I wanted to give a quick shout out to our spiritual partners at the Fetzer Institute. They have just launched a brand new shiny website over at Fetzer.org.

That's Fetzer.org. And it's full of spiritual tools for modern struggles, which is exactly what we're trying to cultivate here at Soul Boom. Fetzer believes that most of humanity's problems are spiritual, with the root and they're helping people plant some deeply soulful solutions. So I urge you to go poke around their new website, check out Fetzer.org.

Thank you Fetzer Institute for helping sponsor the show and all of the truly amazing work that you do over there. Fetzer.org, that's Fetzer, Z-E-R, dot org. There's so much I wanna unpack there, but let's go to all of a sudden you threw the creator in, which as listeners, folks at home will know, I love, fabulous, but there might have been a lot of people listening right now. We're following along, getting it, fascinating.

This is great. Wow, I hadn't thought about my brain health quite this way. And then you throw the creator on in there. What's going on with that? Well, I think it takes way more faith to believe you and I are here by random chance of some explosion billions of years ago than we're here by creative. on. I absolutely think it's insane to think that this is all random and there is no deeper consciousness, no deeper sense of meaning and purpose. And if you don't believe in God,

however you define God, it triples your risk of depression because where's the hope? and I have always felt this way. And people go, oh, but you're a scientist. And I have 90 publications. I published the world's largest imaging study on 62,000 people. And it's like, I just, I don't get the argument that we're here by random chance. Well, what's interesting to me is that you fearlessly kind of throw that in to the soup of of this work that is very scientifically backed.

And have you gotten pushback for your kind of avowed belief in a creator from the scientific community or the psychiatry community? No. Oh, great. Not much. That's great to hear. And Freud was an atheist and he thought religion was opiate of the masses. But young, wasn't?

It's always been part of who I am. And there's nothing in my experience. See, I think becoming an x-ray technician and going to the lecture on brain spec imaging, I think it was part of a plan on why, you know, someone who grew up in the valley not very special, is creating this national brain health revolution. That's just not me by myself doing that.

It's like the Blues Brothers. We're on a mission from God. We have almost 300,000 scans on patients from 155 countries. It's like, well, how did that happen? And yeah, I mean, I work hard and I'm persistent, but no. I think it's putting together all these pieces that I didn't do that. But going back to your mantra there, like in terms of a tiny habit

that one can do today, and the listener at home can just say, what can I do that's positive for my brain health today? Is it good for my brain or bad for it? Is it good for my brain or bad for it? And if you don't want to add, and it honors my creator, don't add it. Right.

But if you love yourself, right, it's ultimately about love. love. And I love what Drew Carey said. Eating crappy food isn't a reward. It's a punishment. And I'm like, oh, he's going to stay healthy because he gets it. It's not about deprivation. I'm not depriving you of anything what I want. Because when you really go, what do you want? If you go, hey, Daniel, what do you want? Energy. Memory, passion. Have sex with my wife. What do I really want? Daniel, I don't want to have sex with your wife. The brownie doesn't fit.

The sugar doesn't fit. When I go, what do I really want is I want vitality? And yes, maybe in the moment I want the hot fudge Sunday, but not really. But last night, damn you traitor Joe's. I had three dark chocolate peanut butter cups. They're small. And then I just really wanted more sugar. And I had two of these magnificent blue Ubu cookies.

They were so good, but I just needed that sugar last night. But I didn't sleep great because of it. I know I didn't, I could tell there was just something unsettled in my sleep that was from, because that's more sugar than I usually have. What do I do instead? So every night I make my wife brain healthy hot chocolate because my grandfather, who I was named after, who I loved desperately, was a candy maker. And so I have this complicated relationship with sweet things. Okay.

Because my earliest memory is standing at the stove making fudge. Oh, my goodness. With grandpa. And, but it's like clearly not good for me. and I come from a family of fat people. No, I publish three studies as your weight goes up, the size and function of your brain goes down. Like, no, we're not doing that.

But I love sweet things. So raw cacao, unsweetened almond milk, heat up the almond milk, put in the raw cacao, a little bit of chocolate stevia. There's a company I like called Sweet Leaf. and 60 calories tastes great. I love it and it loves me. All right.

Because that's the question. The other question, I have lots of questions, is do you love food that loves you back? And I was at lunch recently with Lisa Trout. So Lisa and her husband Kenny owned Justify. So Justifies the last Triple Crown winning racehorse. And as I was sitting with her, I'm like, would you ever give justified junk food?

And she goes, no. I said, would you ever get him drunk? She laughed. No, would you ever get him high? And said, no. I'm like, why? He would never live up to his potential. And I'm like, that's the answer.

Why do you do the right thing? Yeah. One thing is when you do the right thing, stop feeling deprived about it. because that's like a four-year-old's mindset. It's when you do the right thing. That's when you really patch yourself on the back and go, yeah, this is love. Love is doing the right. Oh, yeah.

The rule of 12 is a tiny habit. I love the rule of 12 so much. You told that story, traveling with your wife, many, multiple things can go wrong on the trip. And you're going to allow 12 terrible things to happen to you. on your vacation. They lose your luggage. The train is late. The hotel room sucks, whatever.

And you're not going to complain or feel negative or get overwhelmed until it goes past 12s. You're going to allow 12 negative things. Sorry to. I love that. That's perfect. To scope what you had in your book. But I love that story. And then it kind of allows for a flexibility and a resilience.

Psychological flexibility is a sign of psychological health. And so so many of my patients, they'd love that rule because something would go wrong and they'd be upset. Yeah. And they'd yell and scream and fight with their spouse. And I'm like, just count. Yeah. When you get to 13, go ahead and have a tantrum. Have a tantrum.

The amount of time that you spend focusing on thoughts and what a thought is. because this is a correlation and a connection between a spiritual practice. In both my faith, the Baha'i faith, and in Buddhism, everything starts with a thought. A thought leads to a feeling. The feeling triggers whatever endorphins and chemicals are going to flood your brain

and then those are going to make you feel something else and that's going to trigger even more thoughts. It feels like by focusing on your next thought or tools in thinking, that triggers a chain reaction that can open up so many possibilities towards not only decreasing pain, but opening new pathways of action in your life. And it's something I really struggle with. I really struggle with negative thinking. Maybe it's my own anxiety disorder or mental health issues.

childhood trauma, there's a lot of, you know, addiction. There's a lot of stuff that are components to that. But you talked about one of the markers of brain health is negative thinking. Like you're literally like drugs and alcohol, you know, CTE, concussions, like all of these things. It's associated with two thirds of the 300 questions we ask people. So I talk about a study that we published in the book on negativity. And so every patient who comes to aiming in clinics, we do lots of assessments, not just imaging, but we also do imaging. And one of the tests is negativity bias.

So zero to 100, you're more negative or more positive. And the people who are more negative, they have lower function in the front part of their brain. people who have low hope have lower function, people who have low happiness, lower function. And we correlated negativity with two-thirds of the 300 questions we asked people. And so training out negativity bias. Now, not too positive where you think you can drive 125 miles an hour in the rain on the freeway. now. Right. I never want to take your anxiety from 85 to zero, but I do want to take it from 85 to 15. I want you to have appropriate anxiety and one of the tiny habits is not believing

every stupid thing you think. And it's basically the five questions. Whenever you feel sad, mad, nervous, or out of control. just write down what you're thinking. And there are different kinds of ants. I call them ants. Yeah. Automatic negative thoughts. And when you get negative,

one thought links to another negative thought, and then they stack and then they attack you. And so you need an internal ant eater getting cleaning up the mess. And I was 28 years old in my psychiatric residency And one of our professors said, you have to teach your patients not to believe every stupid thing they think. And I'm like, but I believe everything I think. And then I'm like, you mean, I don't have to believe everything I think that thoughts come from all sorts of places.

They come from your parents. They come from the news you watch, the music you listen to your friends, your phone, social media now. And they lie. Like all the time. They lie. Our own thoughts lie to ourselves constantly. And just because you have a thought has nothing to do with whether or not it's helpful, whether or not it's true. My wife never listens to me.

So I had that thought. And if I just, see, if you don't ever question your thought, you believe them. Right. And then you act as if they're true. And that's such a toxic thought. She never listens to me. There's such a wonderful exercise in here you put like where you write down, just write down your thoughts. Don't judge.

Just write them down. And then one of the first questions is like, is it true? Is that true? So it's a way of confronting yourself and that negativity bias. It's just about logic. That's what I love. And there's no class. Can you imagine in school,

there's no class on how to manage your mind. We actually, we have a course called Brain Thrived by 25 that we teach in high schools. And we teach kids to love and care for their brain and to manage their mind. And it's so eye-opening to them, oh, I don't have to believe everything I think. And now with the algorithms in social media meant, to piss us off to get us angry or anxious or sad so we stay. They're creating this division in society that's artificial but oh so toxic. You talked about that negativity bias and you quote a positive psychologist whose name

I'm forgetting and there was an image in there I shared with my wife last night and we both were stunned by it and we just spent like five minutes just drinking it in, which is this idea that we are wired for a negativity bias. And I've spoken about this on the show many times because anxiety is there to protect us, you know, fear and negativity is like, you know, there could be a, you know, a saber tooth tiger stepping on a twig that could eat us.

So we're afraid when we hear a twig snap. You know, our great ancestors were. So, but this idea that negative thoughts stick to us like, like, uh, Velcro and positive thoughts stick to us like Teflon. And just that the simplicity of that image really held true inside of me because I, I witnessed that in my own life every single day. So we have to train our brains to kind of slicken the Velcro, I guess, and make the Teflon more sticky. It's a practice.

right in our phase we have practices and they're there to help guide us every morning i start the day with today is going to be a great day and every night i go to bed what went well today so i say a prayer and then i go what went well but i don't just like list three things i'm grateful for i start at the beginning of my day. And I go hour by hour until I'm asleep, looking, hunting for what I liked about the day because I'm pushing my brain to notice what I like because it protects me. Now, I'm also conscientious because people who are conscientious, they live the longest, right? What does that mean conscientious? If you say you're going to show up and you show up consistently, reliably, predictably, that's what conscientiousness is. And they live the longest. They actually

just study at Stanford on 1548, 10-year-old children in 1921. And they looked at happiness and openness and conscientiousness. And the don't worry be happy people died the earliest from accidents and preventable illnesses. The conscientious. one's lived the longest. I love that. Fascinating. So let's go back to this thought before we pass that by. Like, what is a thought? It's just an image or words that come to you. It's almost like your brain is a little bit of a receiver. And it's like, oh, I just had that thought. But some thoughts we generate, like we consciously come up with a thought. And some thoughts do. seem to just spring out of nowhere.

Well, there's springing out of an area of the brain called the posterior singular gyrus part of the default mode network. And another tiny habit that I dearly love is give your mind a name. Yours is like Ronnie or something. What was your name? Hermie. I named my mind after my pet raccoon when I was 16. And I loved her, but she was a troublemaker, just like my mind.

It just stirs up stuff. And if you're a public figure, so you know this, and if you're trying to change a medical specialty, you get all sorts of haters. And so the haters feel, feed the negativity. And so if my mind, if there's a storm, I'm like, oh, Hermie, you'll have to go in the cage. Or that's what I used to do.

Now I put her on her back and I tickle her and play with her because raccoons have over 200 sounds. But it's the idea of gaining psychological distance from the chatter. It's not the thoughts you have that make you suffer. It's a thought you attach to. Wow, that's amazing. I'll be honest. I don't love laundry.

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And feelings. You can't really have a feeling without a thought, right? Well, some people do. Yeah. Some people are anxious, they don't know why they're anxious. Could be their thyroid's high. Or it could be they had COVID. COVID did so many bad things to us as a society.

COVID causes an inflammatory bomb to go off in your brain. And so if you had COVID, in the next six months, you have a 25% increase risk of having a brand new psychiatric illness. Why? So I scan people. I had their scan before they got COVID. Pre-COVID. And then afterwards, and you can just see their emotional brain become much busier, become much more overactive. Wasn't that part of the isolation though, too? It was a one-two punch of the COVID. Yeah, but that wouldn't cause the inflammation in your brain. The isolation, the death tolls, the fear, the lockdowns, all of.

of that contributed to the anxiety. But the wild card, the thing you have to fix is the inflammation in your brain. So you think the coronavirus literally like fucked with our brains? Absolutely did. No question in my mind. And did it reduce cognition in some ways?

Yes. So increased depression, increased anxiety. And there's now some evidence that also increased dementia. So inflammation is not a good thing for your brain. I mean, if you cut your finger, yes, you need to have inflammation to protect it. But chronic inflammation and there's still many people who suffer from post-COVID. And so I like omega-3 fatty acids and curcumans and quercetin. It's like, what can I do to sort of put out this fire?

You focus so much on the brain and the brain scans and of reading the brain, learning from the brain, I kind of feel like the brain is overrated. I feel like when I'm at my maximum kind of health and wellness, I feel like I have a gut intuition. I'm more connected to my heart. And I know these aren't necessarily like, not necessarily physiological.

They're finding more and more kind of, they're calling the gut like the second brain. And also when I, I listen to conversations about consciousness, let's say. And materialist scientists are saying like, the brain is everything. There's no soul, there's no spirit. There's not even really consciousness. You know, Daniel Dennett, let's say.

You know, it's just, it's the illusion of like these neurons firing in the brain. I struggle with that because I, what my experience feels much larger than the brain. So is there, and I'm asking the kind of foremost brain scientist like a troubling question, but are we getting ourselves in a difficulty by focusing so much on the brain? Because I feel like we're such a brain-oriented society. Everything's like, look at your screen and think your way through and, you know, do this academic work and, you know, people at work, you know, you're on your computers and you're using your brain all day long. but isn't part of the journey to deepen our compassion

and to deepen our hearts? I know there's a lot in there, but it's just a general concern that, are we sure that the brain is the way to go here is the path forward? Well, it's not the path forward by itself. When I was in medical school, our dean came to the board first week,

and he said, never think of your patients by their diagnoses. Always think about them, four circles and wrote biological, psychological, how they think their development, right? You alluded to some childhood trauma. So be interested in your ACE score, if you know it, adverse childhood experiences

on a scale of zero to 10, how many bad things happen? I'm a one, my wife's an eight. Biological, psychological, social, the situation you find yourself in, and spiritual. That, you know, whether you acknowledge it or not, you have a soul. And it's, everything is not the brain.

But I think of all four circles all the time. And when your brain works right, you tend to work right. And when it doesn't, you don't. But one of my favorite people, Byron Katie, do you know her work? I do. I love her so much. I talk about her in the book and the five questions. So I got this scan of Kip Kinkle who murdered his mom and dad and then he went to his high school and shot 25 people.

Awful brain. Awful. And I think for him, bad brain, but he also had bad thoughts. He was socially isolated as many of the school shooters are. And, really no sense of meaning and purpose except to hurt people. So he had trouble in all four circles. Byron Katie, who is one of the most loving, compassionate people I have ever met. And I think of her as one of my spiritual teachers. Well, her brain wasn't that great either. Now, I worked to fix it. But here's a person of incredible peace and service. And her brain. And her brain. brain's not healthy, but psychologically, she's way better because of her enlightenment. Socially, she's very connected.

And spiritually, she's plugged in. And so it's how these four circles always dance with each other all the time. And I think any scientists that say they know, it's like they're not a very good scientist because scientists are always questioning. Well, what do you think about the connection of brain and consciousness? Because this dance that scientists have been doing for 50 years of like there is nothing beyond us. There is no spirit, soul, consciousness is an illusion.

Everything that is thought, said, felt, experienced, remembered can be pinpointed to certain neurological. But it can't be. Like I have looked at more. more brains than anyone probably in the history of the world. And you can't, they're still fighting where consciousness might be. They haven't found consciousness in the brain. Not even close.

The brain in many ways, I think of it as a receiver of the universe. And, you know, you alluded to earlier, a lot of scientists go, he believes in God. He must have a small brain. Well, in fact, people who have faith have larger temporal lobes, temporal lobes being underneath your temples and behind your eyes, and it's often where you experience God. So there's a researcher in Canada who had put helmets on people and give them low-volt electrical activity and go, what do you experience? Well, people who were stimulated on the outside of the right temporal lobe, they'd get a sensed presence in the room. they'd actually feel the presence of God, however you believed in God. So that means there's a part of your brain meant to have a relationship outside yourself.

In the AA big book, it talks about the three components of addiction. It talks about the physical allergy, mental obsession, and the spiritual malady or spiritual disease. How do you experience this in brains that you look at of addicts specifically? And how do you address those three components and how does it sync up with your work? So I wrote a book once called Unchained Your Brain, Breaking the Addictions that Steal Your Life. And I wrote it with David Smith, who is the founder of the Haydashbury Free Clinic. He's thought of as the father of addiction medicine. And the big idea in the book, addictions are not one thing. stop putting everybody in the same program.

You have impulsive addicts, compulsive addicts, impulsive addicts, impulsive addicts, you have sad addicts, you have anxious addicts, and you have head trauma addicts. If you never look at their brain, and it's sort of like giving everybody Prozac for this depressed. It's like, well, that's insane. It works no better than placebo because there's so many different types of depression. I have found we're going to have more addicts.

coming going forward. Why? We're wearing out the pleasure centers in the brain with cell phones and social media and video games. And if you wear out the nucleus accumbens, that's a part of the brain that responds to dopamine. You wear that thing out. You're at great risk for mental illness, even though I hate that term. Yeah, you use brain health instead of mental illness. What if, if, If you think of it as mental illness, you make diagnoses, think of this. Diagnoses are made with symptom clusters with no biological data, exactly like they diagnosed Lincoln in 1840 with melancholia or what we'd now call major depression. How did Dr. Anson Henry diagnose him?

He talked to him. He looked at him, looked for the symptom clusters, and then diagnosed and treated him. of the 340 million prescriptions written last year for antidepressants, that's exactly how everybody got diagnosed. And I'm a psychiatrist, I know how to say, oh, that's crazy. That's crazy because depression is like chest pain. Right, nobody gets a diagnosis of chest pain.

Why? It doesn't tell you what's causing it, and it doesn't tell you what to do for it. Give everybody nitroglycerin for chest pain, you'll lose your medical license. But now we have this insane practice of diagnoses based on symptoms, no biology, you're depressed, take an SSRI, which new studies show

there increase the risk of Alzheimer's disease. No. SSRIs do. SSRIs. All of them across the board or? Yeah, yeah. But if it's brain health, well, one, you have to look at the brain

and then you have to get it healthy, right? If it's mental health, you don't really have to deal with your sugar addiction. If it's brain health, you have to deal with your sugar addiction because it's bad for your brain. Right. And you end up always asking the question, it's good for my brain or bad for it. And you still have to program it, which is why you have to kill the ants and live the rule of 12 and all the other things that we talked about. Now, the thesis of your book is about caring for your brain and dealing with long-term pain and suffering. And I think it's not something I deal with.

Thank God, although I do have a little tennis elbow. I want you to take a look at it later on. Maybe give me a few pills. But everyone listening has either a friend or family member dealing with long-term pain. And what is it that? you've uncovered about the connection between your brain, your thoughts, and chronic pain. So the book is actually for anyone in physical or emotional pain because the big aha was they've run on the same circuits in the brain. And so if it's chronic depression, if it's panic attacks,

if it's back pain. It's the same neuro pathways. It's the same pathway. It's the same pathways in the brain. I talk about the three pain pathways, the feeling pathway, where you actually feel where it is, you can go, okay, it's my back. The suffering pathway that smears the feeling pathway with fear and the inhibitory or calming pathway that settles it down. And so I talk about those three pathways, but really the star of this is the doom loop and how to get out of it. And the doom loop happens whenever you feel pain in any of those four circles. So you have physical pain, emotional pain, social pain, or spiritual pain. So growing up Roman Catholic, the whole pedophile scandal that just never went away, there's a lot of moral injury or spiritual pain

that goes with that. So pain for any reason, which then activates the suffering circuit, now all of a sudden you're afraid of the pain. And one of the studies in the book that I love so much, because, I mean, anything, I write something,

there's a personal element to it. And as I'm 71, I'm like, it was my knee, it was my back, it was my neck, it was my elbow, So my hips, something was always hurting and it was pissing me off. And I'm like, why? And since I started writing this book, I've had no pain, which I just dearly love so much.

But I read this study that said, if you get an MRI and 70% of people my age who have no pain have abnormal backs and they have abnormal neck. and they have abnormal joints. And it would be, but I would go. And they would go, oh, it's because of this crushed disc you have. And then I'd be afraid. And that makes everything worse. It puts me into the doom loop. And so pain for any reason activates the suffering circuit,

smears everything with fear, invasion of ants, the automatic negative thoughts, negativity bias. then triggers muscle tension, which then go to bad habits, which puts you into the doom loop. And so I teach people how to get out of the doom loop. And one of the most interesting ways to get out of the doom loop is to not be as good.

The goodness have more pain. And I talk about the work of John Sarno, who I just dearly love. And he talked about repressed rage as a major cause of physical pain. Oh, he's the back guy. He's the back guy. Yeah.

And then he wrote the divided mind and the mind-body prescription. But what he didn't do, what this book does that he didn't do is I teach you how to get rid of the rage. And I'm Pollyanna. Like, talk to my wife. Like, I'm always playing the glad game and what is there to be glad about? like we're laughing about the traffic and, you know, well, at least when I'm dead, I won't have to deal with this. But what I realize, if I do that too much, I'm going to hurt more. That Pollyanna in

many ways needs to make friends with Hannibal Lecter. You have to find ways to express the rage that you feel. And in it, I talk about a therapy called intensive short-term dynamic psychotherapy, which is a rage therapy. It's, if you're, if you're feeling really anxious, if that anxiety could come up and go out of you, well, where would it go? And it might kill people. And obviously we don't want anybody to die, but we want you to get in touch with the rage that has been suppressed for so long,

that is coming out either in physical pain or emotional attack of yourself. Because you said, well, where did these thoughts come from? And they often come from repressed emotions. Wow. This is deep stuff. How do you get that? It's beautiful. How do you get that rage out?

Is it a punching bag or hitting a tennis racket against a pillow or screaming into a mattress? In the book called Emotional Freedom Journaling. And so what do you do is you take. each five years of your life. So for me, it'd be 14 pages, 0 to 5, 5 to 10, 10 to 15, and so on. And draw a line down the middle of page. And on the left side, write the awesome things that happened during that time. So 0 to 5, I'm standing at the stove, making fudge with my grandfather, who I loved.

On the opposite side, I'm getting beaten up every day by my older brother. And so you do that, and pretty soon you get a good idea where the rage is. And then you raid, if it could come out, where would it go? Just in my imagination, if I didn't block it at all. It is so pain relieving to know you're not a bad person just because you have an awful murderous thought. It's just a thought. but holding it in accelerates the pain

so it's one of the fun parts of my book because when I figured out Pollyanna had to meet Hannibal Lecter it was just one of those aha moments being the goodest doesn't mean you're good now what does that mean being the goodest like you're people pleasing

you're always perfectionism maybe a little bit trying to do everything right. Making yourself small. Okay. So other people won't feel threatened by it. Letting other people violate your boundaries, having porous boundaries. Yeah.

Anything you want to say right now to someone that's dealing with chronic pain, emotional or physical, finds themselves in this doom loop. And as you talked your way through it, I was like, oh, I totally get that, I see that, I get that. Anything you want to say right now, to allow people to get free from that. So some people are going to go,

well, you think it's all in my head. And or like I'm faking. And I'm not saying that at all. But it is in your brain and your brain is in your hat. Understanding the connection between the brain body connection and getting that physically, as healthy as it can be, and then programming it,

to help you rather than hurt you. It's so powerful. And as you said, you get way more benefits than just pain. It's an Alzheimer's prevention program. It's a depression prevention program. Better brain, better life. I'd love that so much. But let's go there, because I would go even further.

I would say change your brain, change your thoughts. these automatic negative thoughts and so many other ways that we think about ourselves. There was this workbook I was doing and it was about increasing your compassion for yourself. And like if you have a friend who's in pain and suffering, like nine times out of 10, we're so much more empathetic to our friend

than to our self if we're in the same. We berate ourselves. Or you should get over it. Or you should just do this. Or you dumbass. Why are you doing making these choices? You know, we can be really hard on ourselves in a way that we never would be for someone else outside of ourselves that we love. Yeah.

Because we have that we live with this undisciplined mind. And learning to discipline it and, you know, comes from the great word to disciple or to teach, right? Don't beat yourself up. It gives you more self. compassion. Now, a lot of people who have ADD, this will blow your mind a little bit, so they have lower frontal lobe function. We already talked about it, goes with low hope and low happiness and high negativity. Many people who have ADD are conflict seeking, either with themselves, you're a dumbass, or with other people.

They poke at other people, but they end up with more pain because of the chronic cortisol exposure, stress hormones, and their calming pathway can't turn off the pain. So your front third of your brain, largest in humans and any other animal by far,

is in large part inhibitory. It sends inhibitory signals to your emotional brain to settle down. But if it's a lot of, it's hurt because you played soccer and you hit soccer balls with your head or you played football and you have concussions. You can't suppress the negative emotions that take control. We seem to becoming more entrenched in our opinions. It's very rare that you kind of ever hear anyone kind of not only changing their minds, but even being remotely open to having their minds

changed. Curiosity seems to have gone down. If we're going to have a spiritual revolution, we need to kind of address some of these, some of this kind of social disease that I'm sure is connected to brains. But can you take a step back and just from the work that you've done, how do you see America right now and what a path forward might be? Well, we're in a whole four crisis. You know, we talked about the four circles. We are sicker than we've ever been. and 50% of the population is diabetic or pre-diabetic. 75% of us are overweight or obese. 90% of our health care dollars are spent on chronic preventable illnesses.

Think about that. And we're in the worst brain and mental health epidemic in probably the world's history. 57% of teenage girls report being persistently sad. Seven suicide and young people has gone up. 746% since the year 2000. So what happened? What happened since the year of 2000?

Cell phones, social media, COVID. Friendships, we have 40% fewer friendships than we did in 1990. And 58% of young people report a lack of meaning and purpose. So we're in a bad place. But I believe the answer to this epidemic is not to see them as separate disorders, but as different expressions of the same unhealthy lifestyle and toxic exposures that have exactly the same cure. And I talk about it not specifically in the book, but the book is that cure in that we have to get our brains healthy. We're going to discipline our minds.

We have to reconnect with people. When you call someone a conservative, you're lumping them with all the conservatives or liberal you ever knew, and you can't deal with them anymore. And the news and social media, they purposefully divide us. And if we're going to become, if we're going to come back together, we have to see the manipulation that has been done to us. And that has got to piss us off. that we talk to people on the other side rather than go how the fuck can they believe that it's like no we need to we need to see the manipulation for what it is and fight to come together you know and our leaders aren't helping us no they are they are not capitalizing on either

Our leaders in business and in politics are not healthy. So I'm working on a national brain health revolution to get everybody to just ask that question, is this good for my brain or bad for it? Does it honor our creator? And the creator part puts a bit of morality back into it. It's like, no, love your neighbor, turn the other cheek. and sort of stop being an asshole. Too late.

But I like what you said because I recently, in a recent podcast with the wonderful thinker, writer, poetist, spiritual philosopher, Valerie Kor, she was doing this revolutionary love tour and she was referencing, like, they are doing this and they want us down and they want to oppress us and they want to say, and I was like, what is all this day, they, they?

Because as soon as you kind of use the word, day, there's just this giant wall. It's a labeling. Oppressers. And that includes, you know, white supremacists with your aunt Patty who just votes fiscally conservative. And it lumps them all into one giant kind of anathema and enemy. And that's, that's not what it is. There's dozens of subdivisions in beliefs. And we can't that that is dehuman. in and of itself. It's stinking thinking. It's just bad logic to lump people and go, oh, you think that.

And yeah, it's a bit terrifying. But don't give your kids cell phones. Like, don't. There's a new study. The kids who got cell phones early, like at five or six, 50% of them had suicidal thoughts in their 20s. It's like, this is not okay. This is not okay that we have evidence.

These things are dangerous. Yeah. Wow. Daniel Amen. Dr. Daniel. Amen. Brother. I got so much great stuff.

You guys check out. Change your brain. Change your pain. It's a Bible. I told him as he was coming up in the parking lot. I was like, you know, you wrote like five books and stuffed them into one.

It's, there's a lot here. something to kind of study, to go back to. You have so many amazing positive psychology studies packed throughout the book and both of our hero, Dr. Martin Seligman. I'm a huge fan of the revolution that he started in positive psychology, but check out this book.

And thank you, I got so much out of this conversation. I think our listeners will too. And if people wanna find you, obviously, you have 11 brain clinics around the world, but you've got a podcast too, change your brain every day. And they can also follow me on Instagram, Doc, Amen, TikTok, of all places. I got a TikTok content award this year. So congratulations. But what I love about it, it's getting younger people to love and care for their brains. Oh, that's great. And what's your home

address? Thanks, everybody. Thanks for watching. The Soul Boom podcast, subscribe now on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, podcasts and wherever else you get your stupid podcasts. Are you thinking about senior living for yourself or a loved one? Choosing the right community is important. At Amica Unionville, we offer personalized care that evolves with seniors' needs and 24-7 support and security for peace of mind. Plus, Amica Unionville residents never need to worry about cooking or cleaning so they can focus on enjoying social activities and rediscovering passions.

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