The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - Moment 123: 11 Extremely Damaging Things You NEED To Avoid For A Healthy Brain: Dr Amen

Episode Date: August 18, 2023

In this moment, the celebrity psychiatrist and brain disorder specialist, Dr Daniel G Amen breaks down the most important tricks for a healthy and powerful brain. According to Dr Amen, while genetics do play a factor in your brain health, what is more important is how you live your life. This can include everything from eating more fish and less red meat, avoiding brain trauma, toxins and even taking better care of your mouth health. However, for Dr Amen, the 2 most important factors for whether you have a healthy or unhealthy brain is: learning and loneliness. By not learning and being lonely, you rapidly decreases your brain’s capacity and ability to function, which will then affect every aspect of your life. Listen to the full episode here - https://g2ul0.app.link/91PsXFzmlCb Watch the Episodes On Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/c/%20TheDiaryOfACEO/videos Dr Amen: https://www.instagram.com/doc_amen/ https://danielamenmd.com/

Quick one, just wanted to say a big thank you to three people very quickly. First people I want to say thank you to is all of you that listen to the show. Never in my wildest dreams is all I can say. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd start a podcast in my kitchen and that it would expand all over the world as it has done. And we've now opened our first studio in America, thanks to my very helpful team led by Jack on the production side of things. So thank you to Jack and the team for building out the new American studio.

And thirdly to Amazon Music who, when they heard that we were expanding to the United States, and I'd be recording a lot more over in the States, they put a massive billboard in Times Square for the show. So thank you so much, Amazon Music. Thank you to our team. And thank you to all of you that listened to this show. Let's continue. You want to prematurely age your brain? Drop out of school. Do not engage in new learning. I mean, you doing this podcast, you're always learning new things,

which is great for you. But the lack of, when you learn something new, your brain makes a new connection. When you stop learning or you start doing the same thing over and over again, your brain starts to disconnect itself. Being in a job that does not require new learning is a risk factor for dementia. Being lonely is a risk factor for dementia. Being lonely is a risk factor for dementia. So be an ass and you're more likely to hurt your brain. At my workplace, we have the no asshole rule. So there's a book by a Stanford professor called The No Asshole Rule. Love that book.

And The No Asshole Rule, as the CEO, starts with me. So I don't get to be one, but I'm not tolerating anybody who has asshole behavior at work. And if you're not an asshole, you're less likely to be lonely. And loneliness is terrible for brain function. If you want to prematurely age your brain, eat a lot of red meat as if your iron and ferritin levels are high. Because ferritin, it's just stored iron, 10 stage the brain. If you want to increase inflammation, which is a root cause of so many medical and mental health issues, never floss. Don't really care about your teeth. So you want to love your brain, you have to love your mouth. It's absolutely critical for you not to have gum disease.

Because if you have gingivitis, odds are you're at increased risk for heart disease and depression and dementia. It's fascinating. Like I didn't learn about this and I didn't really care about my teeth. And so I started seeing the links between gum disease and heart disease, gum disease and brain disease. And now I'm a flossing fool. But if you want to damage your brain, don't care about your mouth, about your teeth. Don't ever eat fish. People who have grilled or baked fish once a week have more gray matter in their brain.

People have low levels of omega-3 fatty acids have smaller brains. And if you want to damage your brain, eat the standard American diet. So processed food. Eat most of your calories from the gas station and from the fast food restaurants nearby. And they spent billions on getting those foods to the perfect crunchiness, the perfect meltiness, the perfect aroma, because they hire neuroscientists to addict your brain. Be suspicious. You want to damage your brain? Blame everything on your genes. Like I have obesity and heart disease. My family, but I'm not overweight and I don't have heart disease. Why? I'm on an obesity,

heart disease prevention program every day of my life because genes load the gun. It's what happens to us and what we choose to do that pulls the trigger. So I adopted my nieces because their parents couldn't stop using drugs. And I'm like adamant. If you want my help, you have to cooperate. There's no vaping. There's no drug use. There's no alcohol. And it's working. I taught them a new word last week, scrommeting. Have you heard of scrommeting? I haven't. It's a combination of screaming and vomiting. And because of the legalization of marijuana and the increased use, teenagers are getting this. And in record numbers, they're in emergency rooms screaming and vomiting. It's called scrumming. So genes load the gun. But know your risk and be on that prevention program. I i mean that's just a sign of intelligent

life the h is head trauma you want to damage your brain play football play soccer play rugby and box it's and and text while you're walking in la i mean you're just more likely to have a brain injury. Because you fall over just because, in case that wasn't clear, people are going to think texting is bad for their brain. See, marijuana is innocuous. It's total crap. I mean, I'm happy they legalized it. Please don't put people who use marijuana in jail. It's a really bad use of resources, really stupid. But let's not say it's good for us because teenagers who use have an increased risk of anxiety, depression, suicide, and psychosis. That's not okay. The brain undergoes wild development and people

sort of don't get this. They think little kids, their brain is undergoing wild development. But from the time you're 15 to 25, it's going through wild construction. In fact, that's when the highways are being myelinated. Have you ever heard of myelin? Myelin is a white fatty substance that gets wrapped on your neurons. And when a neuron or a brain cell becomes myelated, it becomes 10 to 100 times faster. It's more efficient. And when a baby's born, there's very little myelin in the cortex laid down. When they're about two months old, their occipital lobes, their visual cortex becomes myelinated. And when you smile at them, they smile back because they can really see you.

Well, slowly, myelination goes from the back all the way to the front, but it doesn't get to the front until you're about 25. So this masterpiece building, if you will, is under construction until you're 25. So many teenagers, it's the crappy food. It's just like throwing poison into the construction zone. Marijuana is innocuous. We're going to the parties and getting drunk. And they're damaging the building. And yes, there are ways

to repair it, but what idiot would damage the most beautiful building in the neighborhood? And I often say to my teenage patients, I said, hey, if you had a million-dollar racehorse, would you ever feed it junk food? Would you ever get it stoned? Would you ever get it drunk? And the smart ones would go, only if you were an idiot. But aren't you worth so much more? And we have a high school course called Brain Thrive by 25. We studied it in 16 schools, decreases drug, alcohol, and tobacco use, decreases depression, and improves self-esteem. And one of the weeks is things to avoid. Have a healthy brain.

And at the end of the lecture, it's a boy, never a girl. That's really irritating. Raises his hand and goes, how can you have any fun? And we play a game with him called who has more fun, the person with the good brain or the person with the bad brain? Who gets the girl and gets to keep her because he's not an ass? The person with the good brain or the person with the bad brain? Who gets into the college they want to get into?

Who has the best life? And ultimately, it's the person with the good brain. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm interrupting this broadcast with a very special announcement. Two years ago, I started writing a book based on everything I've learned from doing this podcast and meeting all of the incredible people that I've had the privilege of meeting. But also from my career in business, from running my marketing businesses, my software business, my investment fund, and everything else that I've been doing in business and life. And from this, I've created a brand new book called The Diary of a CEO,

The 33 Laws for Business and Life. If you want to build something great or become great yourself, like the guests that I've sat here and interviewed, I ask you, please, please, please read These 33 Laws, the book I always should have written. If you like this podcast this book is for you and it is available now in the description of this podcast below and every single day until it's out later this month one person that pre-orders it that takes a picture of their

pre-order uploads it to their story on instagram or social media and tags me will win a gold version of this book signed by me and there's only 33 copies of those available so pre-order it now tag me on social media when you do and 33 of you are going to win a very very special book