The Adam and Dr. Drew Show - #2092 - Empathy is a SUPERPOWER! | Part 1
Episode Date: June 24, 2026On this episode of The Adam & Dr. Drew Show, Dr. Daniel Amen joins the show to discuss the science of brain health and the surprising insights he's gained from scanning the brains of cele...brities, substance abusers, and even serial killers. Dr. Amen explains how alcohol can contribute to brain diseases such as Alzheimer's, breaks down the risks associated with the growing popularity of nicotine pouches, and discusses why obesity can be so damaging to overall health. He also shares recommendations for supplements and lifestyle changes that may help improve brain function and reduce the risk of cognitive decline.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Transcript
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Recorded live at Corolla 1 Studios with Adam Carolla and board certified physician and addiction medicine specialist Dr. Drew Pinsky.
You're listening to The Adam and Dr. Drew Show.
Yeah, get it on. Got to get on the choice, but to get on mandates. You get it on.
Dr. Drew is over there in Florida or New York or Washington, D.C. Where are you?
Or something. I'm in New York City. New York City.
All right, so he's here via Zoom.
Also, Dr. Daniel Lehman has joined us.
He has a book, Change Your Brain Every Day.
It is out as we speak.
The doctor has authored 30 books, maybe more.
He is a doctor.
He's a psychiatrist.
He's an author.
Done a lot of work with a lot of celebrities as well.
Good to see you.
In fact, Adam, Adam, he, we took about,
I think six members of the, I think it was the last cast of Celebrity Rehab to Dr. Amon to do his
spec scan so I could show them what they had done to themselves.
And like every good addict, they sort of blew it off.
But some of them got a little information out of it.
Well, explain what a spec scan is first, doctor.
Well, it's so nice to see you both.
Speck is a study that looks at blood flow and activity.
It looks at how your brain works.
We've done almost 300,000 scans over the last 35 years.
And for me, it just changed everything I do as a human, as a psychiatrist.
So many people drew, when they see their scan, they stop drinking.
So one of my patients, Jonathan Kane, who's the keyboardist for Journey,
who wrote most of their iconic songs, was drinking two bottles of wine a day.
He saw a scan.
It's like you're going to get Alzheimer's disease.
Stop that day.
You know, your brain controls everything you do.
And when you see that you're actually poisoning it, unless you're Dennis Rodman,
Dennis was one of the young men you brought to me, you get serious about wanting it to be better.
Because if it's not better, your whole life is worse.
So you can see blood flow to the brain.
And you can tell if that's being affected by alcohol or drugs or,
anything else? I mean, how much of it is genetic? Or is any of it genetic? Part of it is genetic.
If you have one of the E4 genes, the APOE4 gene, if you have one of them, it increases your risk of
Alzheimer's two and a half fold. If you have two, like Chris Hemsworth does, it increases your risk
more than tenfold. So it doesn't mean you're going to get it. What it means is you should be
on an Alzheimer's prevention program your whole life.
Dan, are you spending a lot of time these days in that space of preventative measures for not just dimension, but I'm guessing other neurodegenerative diseases?
Do you bet.
I'm very excited.
And you might know Maha Elevate.
CMS has $100 million, and they're awarding 30 grants to look at functional lifestyle medicine programs like ours, even though it's very sophisticated imaging.
ultimately what we want to do is get your life right so you stop hurting your brain and you start
helping it.
So Hemsworth has this precursor gene and it's 10 times more likely, but that doesn't mean he's
going to get it, but it does mean as a younger person, he needs to begin some protocols,
which means I would assume not drinking.
Absolutely.
And then there's stuff not to do and then there's stuff to do.
Right. Right. So what is the not to do? And then what is the to do? And then what part of this is
pharmacological or involves, you know, supplements and things of that nature? So I have an acronym I like called
Bright Minds. You want to keep your brain healthy or rescue it. You have to prevent or treat the 11 major
risk factors. And that really tells us what not to do and what to do. So Bright Minds B is for blood flow.
Low blood flow.
It's a number one brain imaging predictor of Alzheimer's disease.
Low blood flow.
So what gives you low blood flow?
Hypertension.
Any form of heart disease, alcohol, marijuana, nicotine.
Oh, marijuana.
Being sedentary.
Decreases blood flow.
I published a study on a thousand marijuana users.
Every area of their brain was lower in blood flow.
And nicotine or tobacco?
Or both.
Both.
So nicotine constricts blood flow to the brain.
That's why you can actually tell the skin of a smoker because it's more wrinkled because
it's affecting the blood flow to your skin.
So everyone who is doing nicotine pouches and things like that.
Oh, it's the new, everybody's so excited.
It's innocuous.
It's a complete lie because nicotine is one of the most.
be interested in your perspective on this, Drew. But I think it's one of the hardest drugs to get off
of once you start. Oh, if you're, here's the problem. If you start before the age of 15,
there approaches a zero probability that you're going to be abstinent on nicotine. So under,
really under 16, you're committed to replacement therapy of some type. So those people are
going to be on long-term nicotine. And I wonder, makes me, I feel a little like I
I have to pay attention to this more what we should be doing to those people to help them not get the ill effects of nicotine.
Well, we should be teaching young people to love and care for their brains.
We have a high school course.
Well, we have a high school course in seven countries, all 50 states, brain thrived by 25 decreases drug alcohol and tobacco use, decreases depression and improve self-esteem.
And it's like, well, how you do it is you get them angry at the people who are stealing their money to manipulate their mind.
Well, here's a question I never thought of.
A lot of people would say, well, the nicotine pouches are better than a cigarette because it doesn't involve the lungs and the smoke and that kind of stuff.
I think all doctors agree with that.
But now hearing what you say about nicotine, and nicotine is supposed to have some beneficial stuff,
as well, at least recently reported.
But if it's going to constrict and cut off flow to the brain, then that's no go.
But here's what I don't really know.
A cigarette delivers how much nicotine and a pouch delivers how much nicotine.
Because if you're saying the nicotine is the constrictor, but the smoke from the cigarette is bad,
but what if the cigarette delivers half as much nicotine as a pouch?
than where are we at now?
Well, they're both bad.
I know, but it's just like, you know, pick your poison.
Right, but is it like, and I know pouches have more nicotine than others.
But remember, the manner in which people speak, smoke,
determines how much nicotine they're delivering.
You know, are they rapid smokers, are they long draggers,
are they one cigarette after the other?
Right, but how much nicotine is in an average cigarette, I guess is my question?
Look it up.
I never, well, I'll have our guys look it up.
All right.
I'm kind of curious.
And then how much nicotine is in an average pouch.
Now, a pouch may last you three cigarettes.
I don't know.
Depends how people smoke.
I mean, you can't figure that one out.
But I am just kind of curious what is one cigarette versus one pouch.
The average cigarette is 10 to 12 milligrams of, uh,
nicotine, which I'm guessing is more than the average pouch. But now we'll find out the average
pouches. So while they're looking that up, yeah. It also occurs to me in terms of these
youth brain health initiatives. I wonder, Dan, is there going to be a day when we test for
the Alzheimer's genes in high school age students to determine who should not be playing football
because of the concussion effects? So I write about it and change your brain every day, that people who
have one of the E4 genes, if they get a concussion, it accelerates their risk. And I've actually
scanned seven world champion boxers, including Muhammad Ali and Mike Tyson. If you have one of those
genes, it accelerates your risk of dementia. And so I think absolutely you should know. And perhaps
you're not playing football, you're playing tennis or you're playing golf. Sports actually,
absolutely essential, but why would you let a child play a sport that puts them at risk for long-term
damage? Because they're at risk of being a pussy when they're older. Yeah, except I did the big NFL
study. That's a huge risk. When the NFL was sort of lying about traumatic brain injury and
football, it's like, stop lying about it. It is a brain damaging sport. I know, but so is having no
discipline and being soft and not being able to compete. It's not do that or be a pussy.
I agree with you, but it's like I would do, I'd say good, do the, do a military academy or get on a crew team or wrestle.
Crew is amazing.
I know, but in North Hollywood High, they don't offer a crew program.
That's the problem.
Well, I live in Newport Beach.
Oh.
So, you know, crew, anything that's repetitive and offers a lot of pain and discipline will definitely do that.
So smoking bad, alcohol bad, contact, you know, head trauma, bad.
What is good?
So that's the H is head trauma.
T is toxins.
We're talking about them.
Well, what's good where blood flow is exercise.
Exercise.
A lot of foods.
What kind of exercise?
So I love Japanese walking.
It's high intensity.
So you walk normal for three minutes, fast as you can,
for three minutes, do that five times.
Also, weight training, because the stronger you are as you age, the less likely you are to get
Alzheimer's disease.
Also, the more metabolically stable you're going to be with all the muscle, as compared to no muscle.
Absolutely.
And, you know, I published three studies on 33,000 people that show as your weight goes up,
the actual physical size and function of your brain goes down.
Oh, really?
scare the fat off anyone. If you're overweight, you have all of the 11 risk factors because it
decreases blood flow. It increases aging. It increases inflammation. So the D in Bright Minds is
diabetes where you're overweight and your blood sugar is high. So exercise, I mean exercise
is always good. We got that figure. Diet. We're saying beats.
Beats increase blood flow.
I love beats.
I love beats.
So if you go on a special date and you want to have dessert, make sure you have beats on your salad.
Beats on your salad.
You know, the thing about beats.
Because it's blood flow anywhere.
Yes.
Right.
If you have blood flow problems anywhere, an erectile dysfunction is, well, I don't want to say huge.
That's the wrong thing.
But erectile dysfunction is so common.
40% of 40-year-olds have it.
70% of 70-year-olds have it.
And if you have blood flow problems there, you also have them in your brain.
Because if you have blood flow problems anywhere, they're everywhere.
What about any form of supplements and or other dietary things?
I don't know, red meat versus fish and things like that.
You know, I own Brain MD, which is a supplement company.
Why?
Because our best-selling product is called Happy Saffron.
30 milligrams of saffron.
Why?
35 randomized controlled trials showing it's equally effective to antidepressants without side effects.
And I'm like, oh, I think I'll take that.
Five studies on memory, five studies on focus.
It's pro-sexual rather than most SSRIs.
We sort of decrease your sexuality.
And people don't get withdrawal from it.
I also think you should take a multiple vitamin, omega-3 fatty acids.
You should know your vitamin D level, and you should optimize it, either by supplements or the sun.
To the fatty acids, you got me on accelerated DHAs a long time ago.
What's the number there?
So I love the ones that are combined with DHA and EPA, about 600 milligrams of DHA a day,
800 milligrams of EPA, and it decreases inflammation, decreases heart disease,
helps your skin, helps your mood.
Just so we can clear the screen.
Cigarettes start off at 10 milligrams of nicotine, but you only get about 1.5 per cigarette
or 1 to 1.5 because it burns off or whatever.
And pouches are 1-5 to 15.
they just keep going up.
So you're probably getting more nicotine in a pouch,
but again, I don't know how many cigarettes you're smoking per pouch.
All right, we need to take a quick break.
Be right back with the doctors right after this.
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All right.
So, I have a question, Adam, real quick.
Dan, getting into sort of other, I don't know if they're controversial, but other thoughts about brain health, lithium orate, any rule there?
I love it. We carry it. It's very helpful. And people who are in communities that have low lithium in the soil, lithiums assault, have a higher incidence of suicide in those communities. Now, if you're flagrantly bipolar, you're not taking lithium or a take you're at a higher dose. But it can be helpful for mood stability and memory. There's a whole excitement.
new research on lithium deficiency in Alzheimer's disease.
How about metformin?
Metformin can be helpful if it stabilizes your blood sugar from a supplement standpoint.
But not as a sort of routine, you know, after a certain age kind of recommendation.
Not unless your blood sugar is a problem.
Right.
Now, 50% of the American population is diabetic or pre-diabetic.
So you want to get your blood sugar under 100.
Where are we at with caffeine?
I'm not a huge fan.
I mean, it's not a big deal if you have 100 milligrams a day.
But just one venty, Starbucks is 330 milligrams, which is an addiction dose.
Which means if you have that every day and you stop, you're going to have headaches, you're going to be irritable.
it also constructs blood flow to the brain.
But from a supplement standpoint,
there's something called parazanthine,
which is a caffeine metabolite
that boosts blood flow,
that doesn't make you pee,
that doesn't make you anxious,
and doesn't keep you up.
What form does that come in?
So it comes either in a capsule or a powder.
I love it.
I find it very helpful.
So what do you do with something like Hemsworth?
Do you check him yearly?
You know, is it, is the precursors for the Alzheimer's?
Is that sort of like saying, you know, your mother had breast cancer,
so you should come in and get screened at a younger age,
and we should keep with it once a year versus don't bother doing it before 50,
and we'll see you every five years or something.
You should be on an Alzheimer's prevention program your whole life.
And what is that?
I mean, we know the diet and things like that.
It would not be playing football.
But you get scanned every year and that kind of thing?
No, but every five years, we can tell on our scans decades before you have any symptoms,
whether or not your brain is headed for trouble.
And on our podcast, change your brain every day, we just rescan Tarek El Moussa.
So Tarek is an HGTV star.
He flips houses.
and, you know, takes these cockroach-infested, moth-eaten, hoarder houses, and flips them into something beautiful and sells them.
Well, when I scanned him, he had birth trauma, and he had substance abuse.
What's birth trauma?
When he was born, he was in the neonatal.
I see you.
So he had a lack of oxygen.
Uh-huh.
Was he like premature?
Pre-mature?
And he was premature.
And he had behavior problems.
And his mom always felt bad because the teachers were all.
always calling us like, look, he had birth problems. So you can see the difference between
from birth and perhaps substance caused later on in life. Yes. But his brain looked like
one of his hoarder houses. I mean, it was so bad. And we put him in a hyperbaric chamber. I'm a
huge fan. 89 sessions. His brain a year later is dramatically better. Really? I mean, the brain he had,
you end up divorced, you end up with trouble with the IRS, you end up having trouble in your life.
His brain now, more likely to stay married, more likely to be a good dad, more likely to make more money.
I mean, he's already wildly successful, but tortured.
And now he's better because his brain is better.
How much time is in the hyperbaric chamber and how often?
So he did 89 sessions over a year.
So it was a couple times a week, and he'd go in anywhere from 60 to 90 minutes.
And like I'm a psychiatrist, why do I care about hyperbaric oxygen?
One of my friends who does imaging at UCLA, he said, look at these before and after scans of autistic kids when they would go in a chamber.
And then I got really interested in it about 20 years ago.
So you just book an appointment, go in.
Well, hyperbaric chamber, what is that, does it feel like anything?
Or can you just sit there and listen to a podcast with your earbuds on?
Yeah.
It just, you know, your ears pop because it's increased pressure with more oxygen.
So it would be great for you to come, get scanned, let us see your brain.
And if it's great, we celebrate.
And if it's not, we rehabilitate.
Oh, I like what you did there.
Typically, Adam, you wear an oxygen mask with that bowl.
oxygen, and then you just sit in this chamber where the pressure starts going up.
And you've got a TV, you've got a phone, whatever you want.
Oh, really?
Hmm.
Interesting.
They must have, there must be storefronts that have these things.
Oh, yeah.
Well, there's functional medicine organizations that are starting to pop up all over the place.
I have no idea what it costs right now, but I'm guessing.
A couple hundred dollars.
You know, some people have them in their houses.
It's a couple hundred a session.
Yeah. Okay. Yeah, like they have these places with these deprivation tanks, you know, where you're going to float and there's 10 of them in a shower or whatever. I mean, it's not the same thing, but you know what I'm saying. So, Adam, hate to interrupt. I've got a bunch of questions. Go ahead. Go ahead. Okay. One is you mentioned the Xanthine system, which is getting at the oxidative stressors on the brain. Are you advocating for, say, taking glycine and Nestil system.
to make glutathione to go at that same pathway or nicotinamide riboside or any of these things that are
sort of hotly discussed now.
Yes.
And NAC is one of my favorite supplements.
And people don't know.
I mean, it's been shown to be helpful for depression.
It's actually pretty effective for obsessive compulsive disorder.
It's more effective than Prozac for people have trichotillomania.
Trichotillomania is compulsive hair pulling.
The big study out of Iraq that 2,400 milligrams of NAC helped people who had post-concussive syndrome.
Yeah, I'm a huge fan.
And I also, I don't think I told you, we're working with the White House Faith Office on the decade of brain health and creating this sort of national brain health revolution initiative.
I'm very excited.
about that. I want us to stop calling people mental. So I hate the term mental illness. It shames
people. It's stigmatizing. It's wrong. And go, oh, you have a brain health problem. Nobody wants
to see a psychiatrist. When I told my dad I was going to be a psychiatrist, he asked me why I didn't
want to be a real doctor, why I wanted to be a nut doctor. Everybody wants a better brain. So what
if mental health was brain health? If it's mental health, it's like diagnoses based
on symptom clusters, no biological data.
I have a meeting with the APA's DSM committee coming up.
I'm very excited about it because they're finally opening their mind to imaging.
If it's brain health, you have to eat better.
You have to exercise.
And yet, you know, I've been chanting forever.
We treat the brain is the only organ which gets disease and illness that we treat differently
than every other organ, or at least talk about it differently,
imagine differently.
it is no different. It is no different. And if you don't look, you don't know. So the idea that psychiatrists
are the only medical doctors who never look at the organ they treat and we've let them get away with it.
It's insane. Well, I mean, every commercial on TV is another pharmaceutical. And now there's one,
I can't remember what it's called, but you're actually supplementing the pharmaceutical you're already on for your brain.
that's not really working that well.
Now we're taking a second supplement.
It's just insane.
Well, you'll be happy to know that for, I don't know,
30 years I keep saying take hikes and listen to classical music
when everyone we're talking about getting 15-year-olds on these SSRIs.
You would.
And it's what Dr. Freud called ordinary misery.
What's wrong with ordinary misery that's good?
It builds grit and resiliency.
We've talked about a lot of diet and diet.
and cutting things out.
What about the brain in terms of the exercise,
not the exercise, the physical exercise,
which we said is good for the brain,
but crossword puzzles, things of that nature,
conversation versus watching TV,
doing things that are sedentary,
or just say,
I'm going to spend X amount of time a day
trying to create something
with a pad and pencil
my lap or paint or sing or anything of that nature. So they are in bright minds is retirement and aging.
When you stop learning, your brain starts dying. And the phone in your pocket is a dopamine
destroyer. You know, the phone, social media, all the things that give you these little dopamine
hits. It wears out your pleasure centers. And you just feel flat, which then you go to the
pharmaceuticals. It's sort of crazy. So new learning and AI is really interesting because it can
destroy your brain because now all of a sudden you're doing 25 pound weights with your mind
by reading and thinking and writing and now you have somebody to read it for you, to think for you,
to write for you. Now if you use it in really creative ways, it's amazing.
can be an amazing tool.
Oh, AI.
AI.
Yeah.
But they're dangers to it.
That's a new study out of MIT that found people who use it to write their essays.
They use dramatically less brain function.
So, you know, it's interesting because everybody blames the phone for a lot of the modern-day ills.
But I found myself sitting around last night, and I became fascinated in this part of World War II.
history, which in, I was talking to my son about this the other day, and I was kind of getting
into it, which is this Jericho trumpet.
The Jericho trumpet is a siren that the Germans put on their stucca dive bombers to
horrify everyone on the ground when these things were in a 80-degree dive.
And it was propelled by the wind.
It had a little siren.
It blades in there.
And when they dropped into that dive, they use it in all the World War II.
Two movies were zee-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-and-it was their psychological warfare to freak everyone out.
But anyway, I found myself at 10 o'clock last night with my phone, but I wasn't doom-scrolling.
I was looking up Stuka bombers in this siren and what it was called and how it worked
and how it slowed the plane down about 10 miles an hour just with drag.
And also how during level flight, it would make a noise.
and drive the pilots insane.
And how it also become a kind of early warning system for people on the ground.
Instead of horrifying them, they knew it was coming now.
And how the later models of the Stuka Dyebomber had it removed.
And then I started thinking about Germans in general,
like this notion of we're fighting the entire world,
but we're also trying to round up Jews.
And we're also putting sirens on our planes to horrify people on the ground.
Like, they had five or six fronts going on in the psychological department.
What a waste that is when you're actually trying to win a war.
But I actually used my phone for good because, I mean, not calling myself a hero.
I was like, I was learning things and looking up videos on Stuka bombers and so on and so on and so forth, early versions that had the twin tail, the newer ones had the single tail stab.
So it's sort of like a gun.
It could be used for a crime, but it could also be used to stop crime.
And maybe the notion shouldn't be getting people off of their phones, but getting them to use the phone for good.
Like it is kind of crazy.
You have every library in the world in the palm of your hand and what a gift that is.
Or you could just be looking at porn all day.
But it decreases our connection with other people.
I mean, I agree with you. I'm not giving up my phone. There's actually a term called nomophobia people that are afraid to lose their friend. Many people give up sex before they give up their phone. So, but you see it all the time when you're out. Families at dinner and everybody's on their phone and nobody's talking to each other. We are lonelier than ever before in human history, which is sort of crazy when you think of it.
that Surgeon General came out with a report on loneliness.
And if you're lonely, 58% of young people report being persistently lonely, even though we're more
connected.
And that's equivalent health-wise to 15 cigarettes a day.
And so being connected is so important.
Yeah, I'm so happy that you're treating the brain like an organ and repairing it, working on it,
and it is right.
We have little, we don't give a lot of thought to stuff we should be giving more thought
to like the brain, which just controls everything.
It's kind of, it kind of, it's interesting.
When I think from a sociological standpoint, the family unit controls everything.
I mean, it's predetermines if you're going to prison, if you're going to have substance abuse,
if you're going to be physically abused, if you're going to be all of it.
you know, mom, dad, intact, family, you know, all of it predicts everything.
And we put little to no effort into that aspect of life.
And then the brain controls everything.
And we just don't seem to put a lot of effort into that.
Like the two major things that would take care of crime, it would take care of substance abuse,
it would take care of physical abuse, it would take care of all the things that we want
to eliminate in our society.
would be family units in brains, and that's the ones we almost never talk about,
which is sort of insane as a society.
But at least you're doing the brain part, Doc.
Once you see it, you can't unsee it.
And then once you see it, it's like, oh, I have to make this better.
Did you see with your patience when you started scanning people,
like behaviors that were represented and manifested,
and is it all just blood flow or there are different aspects to it where you could go,
this person can't stop doing this or that and I can see that in their brain?
So you can see obsessiveness.
You can.
But what's really interesting is someone will get the diagnosis of obsessive,
compulsive disorder and has a classic pattern.
But not everybody who has OCD has that pattern.
That's why you scan people because like depression is sick.
different things. I wrote a book on ADD. It's like ADHD. It's seven different things.
Give everybody riddling. Some people have a dramatic positive response and some people want to
kill themselves. Stop, you know, it's like depression is like chest pain. It has many different
causes. Stop giving everybody an SSRI that is depressed because you might hurt them.
Is there how much of SSRI intake? I mean, how much of
that could be cured with diet, exercise, you know, meditation, cold plunges, like, whatever.
Like, if you just said, we're going to put this person on a strict regimen of, they're going to do
everything I'm going to say.
They're going to be doing the hikes and the cold plunges and the sensory deprivation tanks
and the meditation and the exercise.
And they got a scan.
So if I could have scan guided treatment, probably seven.
75% won't need medication.
Head-to-head against SSRI's exercise is equally effective.
So head-to-head, omega-3 fatty acids,
head-to-head learning how to not believe every stupid thing you think is equally effective.
So why not, before I give you Lexapro, I teach you not to believe everything you think.
I get you to exercise, give you fish oil and saffron.
Where...
The last question for you, sorry, Drew.
I've got a bunch.
too bad. Curiosity. I cannot, my son is very curious. And I know a lot of people have no curiosity
about anything. And I always feel sorry for those people because they don't seem to learn that
much, but they're set in their ways. Let's just say that. Where does curiosity stem from?
Is it a kind of intelligence and why are we not preaching or focusing a little more
on curious.
Because we're getting people through the system for the lowest common denominator.
I teach my patients curious, not furious, that you always, when things aren't going right,
wonder why, rather than judge yourself.
And the people who aren't learning their prisoners of their habits.
But can you tell through the scan, I just know people that are supernaturally curious
and other people just have no curiosity.
So interesting.
Doesn't seem to be connected to alcohol or caffeine or, you know, nicotine or anything.
Just, they're curious.
So the lower your frontal lobes, the more creative and more curious you are.
When your frontal lobes work too hard, you're rigid.
And if things don't go your way, you get upset.
It's like, this is how the world should be.
Is there a difference between males and females?
because I also find males are much more curious than females.
Dramatic difference.
And females have much more frontal lobe activity,
which is why they go to jail 14 times less than males.
Their emotional brains are much busier,
which is why they're primary caretakers for the children,
but it's also why they have twice the risk of depression.
Well, take a quick break.
Drew's got a bunch of questions.
So we'll keep the doctor on because, Drew, you're loaded for,
bear over there. Oh, you're at your, uh, you're at your home, aren't you? Yeah, in the
apartment. You know, it's weird. The way the backdrop is laying out, it looks like a green screen
with something on it. It looks like a high school pictures or something. Are you putting that
blue scrim on there? I, it's just a normal shade and it's, we shine a blue light on. I can open
the window. No. We'd open the window? I know what the view looks like, but it looks good.
Good. It worked out, Drew. Good job.
Thank you.
All right. We'll take a quick break. Be right back.
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at first I didn't think it was real
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stream now, pay never. All right. So, Drew's got questions for the good doctor.
All right. So two, one is sort of fun and one is rather large. You, we were talking about the
frontal lobe activity. Dan, do you remember? I'm sorry one thing real quick, Drew. Yeah.
You answer my question, but sort of, it was a little confusing. Men are more curious than
women.
I didn't say that.
That's not true.
But lower frontal lobe function goes with more creativity and more curiosity, more out of the box thinking.
And in general, men have less frontal lobe activity.
But they also go to jail more.
So they're more curious than women?
I think so.
Well, their frontal lobe is how you describe it, and that's what.
I've never actually studied that in particular.
Well, I will just say from personal experience, guys feel more curious than women.
It's not a pejorative or a declaration of whatever against women, but I do know guys seem to be more curious than women.
No, women, when men are curious and sort of probing about stuff, women will often declare that is annoying.
I have heard that many times.
Lots of follow-up questions announced annoying.
I know I have twins.
I have boy-girl twins.
My son, we did a whole half hour on Jericho's trumpet because he wanted to know this
was crazy to him that they put sirens on their dive bombers and stuff like that.
My daughter, that conversation would have lasted four seconds.
She would have jumped out of the car while it was moving.
All right, go ahead, Drew.
So we're talking about the frontal lovel function.
I don't know if you remember Dennis Rodman's pattern, spec pattern.
but in addition to cortical stippling from the alcohol,
he had this extraordinary opinion that I've never been able to really figure out.
I'm wondering if since those days that you've seen this again,
which was bilateral temporal lobe shutdown and hyper-functioning into frontal lobes.
Do you remember that?
I do, which is why he probably had that temper problem,
why I didn't read social cues.
And I wondered if he had a birth injury or some sort of toxic exposure
when he was growing up.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, there are scans I remember.
His was clearly one.
You know, guys have fantasy women.
I have fantasy brains.
And he was one of my fantasy brains.
Fantasy in what sense?
Well, you know, if you meet Scarlett Johansi and you're like, oh, I really thought about
you a lot.
Ah, I see.
I got to scan Muhammad Ali and I'm like, oh, that was so cool.
No, I agree.
I mean, so you have to have your bucket list of brains.
But when sometimes we say fantasy brain, it sounds too positive.
Like, oh, we should all aspire to have Rodman's brain.
No.
Fantasy to scan.
So you'd like to scan Muhammad Ali.
You'd probably like to scan a serial killer's brain as well.
I have.
What do you find?
Yeah, terrible.
Really?
Really.
Absolutely bad. Now, Ted Bundy probably would have had a pretty good brain because he planned.
But the Kip Kinkle, who I scanned, shot as killed his mom and dad, and they went to his high school and shot 25 people.
Brain was devastated.
Really?
So sad.
Yeah.
Because that's a complete impulse move, whereas other serial killers are.
There's a difference between a school shoot.
and a serial killing, they both might end up with the same body count, but the Ted Bundy's
were escaping from prisons and planning, and he was, you know, he was pretending like he was
broken down on the side of the road and putting a fake cast on his arm and stuff like that.
Like, that, that was not an insane person per se in terms of-
What he did was insane.
Yes, but it wasn't an important.
But he's responsible.
Yeah, he would have, he would have.
trouble pleading insanity because of how calculated and how functional his calculations were.
But all right. Go ahead, Drew. He had more questions.
And by the way, it pertained to Dennis at the time, Dan and I looked at each other and said,
boy, you know, the hyperfunctioning frontal lobes, this guy can take a narrow behavior or
a narrow topic and hyper function on it like rebounding.
Like that's, you just be laser beam.
Creatine, good or bad?
Good.
for the brain.
Good.
Brand new study, five grams a day, treated depression.
There's another study, if you didn't sleep well last night, 20 grams really helps you function
better the next day.
So it helps build your muscles and your brain.
20 grams in the morning, 20 grams at night, 20 grams or 5 grams after you work out.
So usually it's 5 grams in the morning.
In the morning.
But if you didn't sleep the night before,
You're a firefighter and you're up all night, 20 grams on the nights, the days you didn't sleep the night before.
Right.
So I'm going out of town doing some shows in Reno, have a late show on a Saturday and an early airport leaving early on Sunday morning.
That get up and take 20 because you're sleep deprived that night.
Right.
Okay. Drew, I think you locked up at least visually, but that's all right. Your face is in a great position.
Oh, that's crazy. Can you hear me? Yep. Go ahead.
I'll go with the question. I'll reset while Dan's answering the question because it's kind of a big question, which is, Dan, you've been fighting. And in the post-COVID world, I think we're all kind of aware that the medical establishment is, it rounds the wagons. It has its own set of priorities.
It closes out creative ideas.
And you've been sort of at the forefront of pushing ideas that gets resistance.
I think an awful lot about Galileo these days.
What has your experience been with all this and where are we now relative to say when you started bringing these issues up?
So Galileo is actually my alter ego.
I do work with patients on alter egos, which I like a lot.
And if I was Galileo as psychiatrists, I keep doing what I do.
So I have been shamed.
I've been belittled.
I've had the American Psychiatric Association.
Actually, on three occasions, write position papers against spec.
And just last month, I'm so excited about this, they're working on the new version of the DSM.
That's a diagnostic and statistical manual.
What number are we up to?
Of mental disorders.
So we're currently on five, which is actually six because three had two versions.
and they said we were wrong.
Why was everyone going after you?
Because you shouldn't look at the brain.
It's like, no, psychiatrists don't do that.
You're taking advantage of mentally ill people.
You don't see what you say you see.
And it's literally insane.
But it's so stupid that most nine-year-olds would go,
yeah, you probably should look at the brain.
Well, I mean, we're in a phase.
where COVID comes around and it's hurting obese people and Bill Maher tells everyone to get some
exercise in a diet and get some sunshine and some vitamin D and then they attack him, which is like
that seems bizarre that you're attacking somebody who's telling you to be healthy, especially
in the face of COVID. But I guess that's sort of akin to what you were going through.
I mean, meaning you're just sort of telling the truth and trying to help people and the powers
it be or ganging up on you?
Which there's a book written in 1962 called The Structure of Scientific Revolution by Thomas Coon.
And what I went through, he just described it perfectly.
You have a new mousetrap based on experience, it's smart, and you get rejected.
And the rejection can happen for decades in my experience, but eventually the old people
die and a new group comes up and they go,
oh yeah, we need a new way. The outcomes in psychiatry are no better than they were in the 1950s.
We are worse mentally than we've ever been. I mean, we just saw this with COVID, but how much of this is
big pharma just sort of circling the wagons? Big pharma, big food, big medicine, insurance companies.
Right. Insurance companies. It's the whole thing. I mean, the beautiful thing with RFK Jr.
and Dr. Oz.
It's at least there's an end to talk to these people.
I gave a lecturer at HHS with the White House Faith Office
and the head of the American Psychiatric Association, Marquetta Wills,
was there.
And I'm like, I really want to recruit you to the decade of brain health.
And oh, by the way, the APA, I'm a distinguished fellow of the APA.
I have their highest award they give members has hated me.
She's like, well, maybe we should talk.
And so we talked, and she said, four words, I am putting on my tombstone.
She said, you were just early.
Last or one of the last questions, a lot of people talking about carnivore diets and a lot of people trying it and talking about some pretty...
Keto.
Keto.
A lot of astonishing results seem to come out the other end.
It doesn't seem to be where you're at, but I'm curious if you studied that brain.
I have. And I have a granddaughter who has a wicked seizure disorder. And started when she was five months old. And they were going to put her on a medicine that completely wipes out your immune system.
Right. Why don't we put her on a ketogenic diet? And the doctor said, oh, there's no science behind that.
Zucker or Avron. Is it Zucker? Who's granddaughter? Sorry, from Zucker and Abram. All right. So the guys who did airplane and police squad and all those movies, it was either Zucker or Abrams.
I can't remember.
One of them has the granddaughter, had the same.
Or family member, and he looked it up and he did the keto thing with them and it literally cured it.
She's been seizure-free.
What does the brain look like on keto?
It's helpful for people who have bipolar disorder.
It's helpful for a subset of people with schizophrenia.
It's helpful.
The Mayo Clinic did a study.
People on a fat-based diet dramatically less Alzheimer's disease.
People on a protein-based diet.
So the caveman diet, less Alzheimer's disease.
People on the standard American diet, bread, pasta, potatoes, rice, fruit, juice, sugar,
400% increased risk of Alzheimer's disease.
So it's good, and you can see it.
You can see the, you can see a keto brain.
But if you put an OCD person, a rigid, worried, things don't go their way on a ketogenic diet that get mean.
Because their focus gets better on the things.
that piss them off.
Jim Abrams of Zucker and Abrams, son, Charlie, suffered from this.
So, see, maybe if my brain was in better shape,
I would have known that it was Jim Abrams instead of Zucker.
But I was only able to wear it down to Zucker and Abrams and a family member,
and he did all his own.
You got to ask the question,
how many people would know who the producers of Air Plan actually is?
Their names.
Oh, I feel better about myself.
Doctor, let's give you a plug.
The book, Change Your Brain Every Day.
It is out as we speak.
I'm with you.
Family, brain.
Work on both of them.
We'll be living in a utopia in no time at all.
Drew, what do you got?
Dr.com, check everything out there.
This Saturday, Carson City, Nevada.
I told you guys, Nugget, two shows, and then I'm going to Kimmel's Theater in Vegas.
Carson and Vegas, both bad brain cities.
But I'll be there doing my brand of comedy.
You got Adam Crowell.com for all that.
Until next time, this Adam Crowell for Dr. Daniel Aiman
and Dr. Drew, saying, Mahalo.
Thanks, Doc.
At first, I didn't think it was real.
I woke up to this blinding light,
and I was transported to another place.
Pluto TV.
Then I heard a voice.
Come with me, if you want.
to live. There were thousands of movies and shows, and they were all free.
The truth is ours. It's just so beautiful. On Pluto TV, free streaming of Terminator 2,
Fringe Arrow, the 100 N, the X-Files may cause excitement, loss of sleep, and sudden belief in
extraterrestrials. No credit cards or alien encounters necessary. Pluto TV, stream now, pay never.
