The Dr. Hyman Show - Sharper, Stronger, Smarter: Build a Better Brain at Any Age

Episode Date: July 7, 2025

Not long ago, conditions like Alzheimer’s were rare, but today, nearly one in two people over 80 are diagnosed with it. In contrast, in places like the Amazon, dementia affects only about one in a hundred—highlighting how modern lifestyle plays a major role in brain health. The brain isn’t an isolated organ; it’s deeply influenced by diet, sleep, movement, stress, toxins, and emotional well-being. Many people who once struggled with brain fog, depression, or memory loss have experienced dramatic improvements by healing their bodies—addressing gut health, detoxifying harmful substances, optimizing nutrition, and supporting the brain’s energy systems. With the right tools, including targeted nutrients, lifestyle changes, and even therapies like breathwork or plant medicines, it’s now possible not only to protect the brain from decline but also to enhance clarity, focus, and resilience at any age. In this episode, I discuss, along with Dr. Daniel Amen and Alberto Villoldo, how the body and brain are intimately connected and how we can think and feel better when we address our overall health first. Dr. Daniel Amen is a physician, double board-certified psychiatrist, twelve-time NY Times bestselling author, and founder and CEO of Amen Clinics, with 10 US locations. Dr. Amen is the author of many books including the mega-bestseller Change Your Brain, Change Your Life, as well as The End of Mental Illness, Memory Rescue, Healing ADD, and Your Brain Is Always Listening. In March 2022, Tyndale will publish his new book, You, Happier: The 7 Neuroscience Secrets of Feeling Good Based on Your Brain Type.   Alberto Villoldo, Ph.D., is a medical anthropologist, psychologist and shaman, who studied the spiritual practices of the Amazon and the Andes for more than 30 years. While at San Francisco State University, he founded the Biological Self-Regulation Laboratory to study how the mind creates psychosomatic health and disease.  Founder of The Four Winds Society, he instructs individuals throughout the world in the practice of energy medicine. Dr. Villoldo has written numerous bestselling books, including Power Up Your Brain: The Neuroscience of Enlightenment (with David Perlmutter MD), Shaman, Healer, Sage; and WSJ bestseller One Spirit Medicine.   This episode is brought to you by BIOptimizers. Head to bioptimizers.com/hyman and use code HYMAN10 to save 10%. Full-length episodes can be found here: What Damages Your Brain And How To Reverse ItHow Creating A Healthy Brain Creates A Happy MindHow to “Grow a New Brain” for Lifelong Health

Coming up on this episode of the Dr. Hyman show. So fixing your brain starts with fixing your body and optimizing all the inputs into your system and minimizing the bad stuff, the bad inputs, whether it's stress, poor diet, toxins, allergens, bad bugs, drugs like caffeine, alcohol, sugar, whatever's causing your brain to not work. Feeling tired, tense, or foggy? Magnesium might be the missing link. Most people are low, and standard supplements don't cut it. Magnesium Breakthrough gives you all seven essential forms in one powerful formula. Better sleep, less muscle tension, mental clarity, all with no laxative side effects. Try Magnesium Breakthrough by bioptimizers at bioptimizers.com slash Hymen for 10% off.

Before we jump into today's episode, I wanna share a few ways you can go deeper on your health journey. While I wish I could work with everyone one-on-one, there just isn't enough time in the day, so I built several tools to help you take control of your health. If you're looking for guidance, education, and community,

check out my private membership, the Hymen Hive, for live Q&As, exclusive content, and direct connection. For real-time lab testing and personalized insights into your biology, visit Function Health. You can also explore my curated, doctor-trusted supplements and health products at DrHeiman.com. And if you prefer to listen without any breaks, don't forget you can enjoy every episode of this podcast ad-free with Hymen Plus. Just open Apple Podcasts and tap Try Free to start your seven-day free trial.

Your brain is not just this disembodied organ that is sitting in your skull connected from the rest of what's going on in your body. We learned about the blood brain barrier in medical school, but that's ridiculous. The brain is constantly interacting, communicating with everything going on in your body. Yes, you have a blood brain barrier, but it's not like it's something that's just inviolable. It's permeable and things go across and impact it. So everything that's happening in your body impacts your brain. In fact, the title of my book, The Ultramind Solution, was how to fix your broken brain

by fixing your body first. Fixing your body first and then you can see, well, then maybe I have some issues with my thoughts and my emotions and my feelings and my trauma, whatever. you if you are eating a crappy diet if you're drinking too much if you're smoking if you're not exercising if you have mercury poisoning if your vitamin D is low if your B12 deficient if your thyroid is not working your brain's not going to work so you just got to figure out how to get your brain healthy so fixing your brain starts with fixing your body and optimizing all the inputs into your system and minimizing the bad stuff, right? The bad inputs, whether it's stress, poor diet, toxins, allergens,

bad bugs, drugs like caffeine, alcohol, sugar, whatever's causing your brain to not work. The brain is pretty resilient and it can recover and heal given the right conditions. I've seen miracles. I've seen people reverse Alzheimer's, reverse autism, reverse ADD, reverse depression, things like bipolar disease, schizophrenia. I mean, you just wouldn't even imagine how powerful this is. In fact, Christopher Palmer, who's been on a podcast, talked about how to use a ketogenic diet to reverse Alzheimer's and optimize mitochondrial function as a key way to treating mental illness. There's departments of metabolic psychiatry at Stanford, of nutritional psychiatry at Harvard.

So we now actually have an understanding that the stuff I was talking about 15 years ago, by the way, was way ahead of its time and also extremely important to understand if we're going to fix our brains. About 30 years ago, almost, I developed chronic fatigue syndrome and it felt like I had dementia, depression and ADD all at once. My brain was broken. I really couldn't focus, I couldn't pay attention. I used to be able to see 30 patients a day, remember all their medical history, dictated them at the end of the day with no problem. I couldn't like remember where I was at the end of a sentence from where I started.

I couldn't read my kids a book out loud and actually understand at the same time. My brain really was broken. I couldn't sleep. I was exhausted. And I learned that I had mercury poisoning and that broke my brain. My brain was just a mess. I had terrible brain fog. I couldn't focus for much time. I was

a physician trying to like practice medicine. It was really tough. I couldn't even remember my patient names. And I knew I had to do something different. And that's when I discovered functional medicine almost 30 years ago. And when I reversed my chronic fatigue, when I detox from mercury, when I fixed all the other systems in my body, my mitochondria, my gut, my immune system, everything that was going wrong, I was able to reverse my chronic disease syndrome and my brain got better. And then I've written 18 books in 20 years. My brain is great.

I feel good and I'm sharper, faster and better than ever. So what's the worst things we do for our brains? Well, we have too much sugar and fine starch carbs and not enough good fats and not enough intake of the right nutrients. A lot of nutrient deficiencies, omega-3s, vitamin D, magnesium, to name a few that are critical for brain health and may have that affects over 50 to 90 percent of the population with deficiencies in those nutrients. Also we're exposed to all kinds of weird things that are diet, that are chemicals like artificial

sweeteners like MSG, environmental toxins that actually cause damage to the brain, heavy metals, all these things damage our brain. So a lot of things cause brain damage, not just what I mentioned, but things like lack of sleep, too much stress, not exercising, overuse of certain substances like alcohol or, or other drugs. Now I found over the years, really fascinating to me, it's really quite amazing that people don't connect how they feel with what they eat

or how much they rest or sleep, you know, how much they exercise or how much time they take for friends and community and connection or how much bad news and media they're exposed to. I had a patient said, geez, doctor, I'm so tired. I had a patient said, these doctor I'm so tired. I don't know what to do. I'm always tired. My brain's not working.

I said, well, how much do you sleep at night? He goes, well, five, six hours. And I'm like, well, you need an hour's sleep and try see what happens, right? So, don't connect the dots. Now, once you make those connections, you can start to change those simple habits that can have profound effects on your health long term and and you know make a lot of

little small changes that can make profound impact. Now feeling fully focused, fully energized, having great brain health, it requires really following the principles of functional medicine which is taking out the bad stuff and putting in the good stuff. It's taking out the bad food, toxins, allergens, microbes, stress, adding in the good stuff. They're right in whole foods, nutrients, balance of hormones, light, air, water, sleep, relaxation, connection, meaning, love, purpose. All these things are necessary for our brain to function properly. And most of us don't get enough of the good stuff. We don't get whole real food. We often are deficient nutrients. We're not exposed to enough natural light. We don't get enough fresh air. We don't get whole real food. We often are deficient nutrients. We're not exposed to natural light. We don't get enough fresh air. We don't drink clean water because most of it's

polluted. We don't have periods of deep rest and relaxation. We don't sleep enough. We don't live in rhythm. We don't exercise. We're too focused on being busy in our careers and all kinds of stuff to focus on community and meaning and purpose and love. And so we basically have to optimize those things in order for us to be healthy. One of the things that I really focus on, well, food is the number one thing that controls your brain. And we've seen miracles by simply people changing their diet from treating depression to Alzheimer's to everything from ADD to even schizophrenia as I mentioned. So eating real food is so important. When I say real

food, I mean real food, not processed food or ultra processed food, whole organic, fresh, local, unprocessed food. Basically it has a barcode or a label you might want to get rid of. If your great grandmother wouldn't recognize it as food, don't eat it. Does she know what a Lunchable is or a Pop-Tart? Probably not. Junk food is just bad. Fast food is bad. Ultra-processed food is bad. Some processed food is okay. A can of sardines is processed, right? It's in a can. It's got salt, maybe oil.

A can of tomatoes is processed. It's tomatoes, water, and salt. That's okay. But if you can't recognize where it came from, like a Pop-Tart, you probably don't want to eat it. And some things that seem like real food are really not, like yogurt. Yogurt is often filled with high fructose corn syrup, colors, additives, gums, thickeners, all these things are pretty pretty nasty for us.

Also you want to eat a lot of colorful fruits and vegetables. I know you say this all the time but these are full of phytochemicals, these are packed in the brain, the deep dark reds, yellows, oranges, greens, blues are so important because the color is where the phytochemicals are, it's where the medicine is. These are anti-inflammatory compounds, detoxifying compounds, antioxidants, they're mitochondrial boosting energy producing compounds, brain powering molecules. We need to eat that. So get lots of cultural plant foods, blueberries, dark green leafy vegetables.

Also go for the slow carbs, not the fast carbs. I'm not saying no carbs. Basically broccoli is a carb, but it's quite different than white bread or from sugar. Cauliflower and ice cream are all carbs, but you know cauliflower is good for you, but an ice cream sundae is probably not. So eating whole plant foods also with lots of fiber helps to reduce the surges of sugar that cause some of the problems. In fact, we call now Alzheimer's type 3 diabetes.

It's like diabetes of the brain from too much sugar. So eating lots of fiber helps slow the surge of sugar, nuts, seeds, lots of veggies, whole grains, beans, all really can be very helpful. And it also keeps your gut healthy. And by the way, your gut and your brain are connected. You need to maintain your healthy microbiome to actually protect your brain health and prevent Alzheimer's. Also fat, the brain is made up of 60% Omega 3 fat.

It's mostly fat in your brain. So you need to be a fathead and going on low fat diets are pretty bad for the brain. In my book, East Fat Get Thin, I talk about fats a lot and when they're good fats, when the bad fats and how to get the Omega 3 fats from your diet, from algae or fish. My brain worked pretty good before but I actually have gotten on a better fat diet including things like MCTOL which is really powerful for the brain and my focus and my clarity has just gone through the roof. Now, also you want to optimize protein. We need protein because if you lose muscle because you don't eat enough protein it leads to this cascade of problems with low muscle mass. That

deposits in your muscle leads to pre-diabetes lowers your testosterone which you need for brain function lowers growth hormone which you need for brain repair increases cortisol which causes brain damage literally causes the shrinking of your hippocampus the memory center of the brain. So you want to make sure that you're having enough protein, ideally animal protein, which is better able to build muscle. And when you age faster, your brain takes a hit, it shrinks. So you can keep your brain good by eating good fats and the right amounts of protein, omega-3 eggs, protein shakes. I like Virginia Mays Go whey for a protein shake in the morning, nut butters, fish for breakfast, all that is great. Also stop poisoning your brain, get rid of all the bad stuff, sugar, high fructose corn syrup, trans fats, food additives, preservatives,

environmental chemicals, all which really are a problem. Supplements also very important for the brain, a good quality multi-magnetism is important for the brain a good quality multi magnesium is important for the brain calms the brain it reduces the stimulation of the NDMA receptors Which is actually producing Alzheimer's risk vitamin D is important for the brain omega-3 fats probiotics all the B vitamins folate B6 B12 are critical for your brain and your neurotransmitter function and You can find all these Versions the best versions, the cleanest versions at my online store,

store.drheimann.com, along with other brain boosting supplements. So you need to design a plan for your life that includes your overall health. But you ought to incorporate some of these important practices for your brain. But the good news is what prevents brain problems, prevents heart disease, prevents cancer, prevents

diabetes and everything else. So not like you do a million different things, but these principles are really important for brain health. Happiness is a brain function. So that's number one. When your brain is unhealthy, you're likely to be unhappy. And so, you know, it's like, why did I write this book? It's like Americans are the unhappiest they have been

since the Great Depression. So given the pandemic, the political divide, the societal unrest, social media and the national media controlling the dialogue. And they go after fear because that activates the limbic structures in the brain. That gets people to pay attention. And so we're getting it. Fear, fight or flight. It's the reptile.

So they appeal to your reptile. They do. And a lot of people wake up with negativity and sadness because that's been planted in our brain through evolution because thousands of years ago you had to wake up and be afraid because that was a survival mechanism. So that is why the brain pays attention to negativity faster than to positive messages. And I'm like, okay, we're so unhappy that I want to spend a year thinking about studying, writing about happiness. And so I got 500 consecutive patients, Damon clinics, and we gave them the Oxford happiness questionnaire.

And then we looked at their brains and what we found the unhappier you were, the lower activity in the front part of the brain you had and the lower activity in an area of the brain called the basal ganglia, which has the nucleus accumbens, which is the part of your brain that responds to dopamine. And so things like head trauma or toxic exposure and so much of it I learned from you. Man, I don't know if I, I know I've told you, but you've just been a huge mentor of mine that I buy your books for all of my doctors. We have almost 70 doctors now.

Thank you. I'm getting so many royalties, thank you. And I love looking at the brain. That's sort of my thing, what I do. And it was just so clear, if your brain wasn't healthy, you were not likely to be happy. So the first strategy that nobody knows about is get your brain right and your mind will follow. And there are a whole bunch of strategies on how to do that the second one which I think you right there could

I just have a that is such an important statement you just said I don't want to go over it so quickly your brain is your brain which is this you know putty like structure in your skull and your mind is who you are as your thoughts as your feelings as your perceptions, and your mind function is determined by your brain function. And yes, you can overpower your brain function if you're really strong willed in many ways, but it's really important insight to understand that your brain and the quality of the health of your brain determines the quality of your mind. That's a big insight that most people don't realize.

Your brain creates your mind. Right, if you live sad, I'm depressed, I'm anxious, and they go, oh, it's like a sore ankle. It's like a stomach ache, but your brain can't have a stomach ache or a sore ankle, so it has a mood change, right? So you and I have been blessed to see some really cool people.

And I was in Justin Bieber's docu-series in 2020 called Seasons. And he came to me at a really low point. And like many of these young superstars, they'll show up or not. They'll do what you say or not. And when he got really low, he showed up and he said, I think I get what you're trying to tell me. My brain is an organ like my heart is an organ. And if you told me I had heart problems, I'd do everything you said. He said, so I'm going to do everything you say. Changed his diet, did hyperbaric oxygen, IV therapy. And he's better now than ever. He was just nominated for a bunch of Grammys that I'm so proud of him.

But if you don't get your brain right, it's really hard. You know, if you think of it like hardware and software got optimized, the physical function of your brain. And then you can program it. And we have faulty programming, we'll talk about that, but you first have to get the hardware right. Exactly. So keep going on the seven things.

I stopped you after the first one. So the second one is happiness is geared to your brain type. One of the big lessons I learned from imaging early on is that all psychiatric illnesses, all of them, are not single or simple disorders. They all have multiple types. Giving someone the diagnosis of depression is exactly like giving them the diagnosis of chest pain.

And nobody thinks about it like that, but it's absolutely true that, you know, nobody gets a diagnosis of chest pain. Why? Because it doesn't tell you what's cause of it, and it doesn't tell you what to do for it. I mean, you're not going to give everybody nitroglycerin. I mean, that would be stupid, right? But now we think of depression. Oh, you're depressed, take Lexapro. Or you're depressed, take Luvox, which is really interesting. We may talk about that in the pandemic.

But. Yeah, it turns out it's a good route for COVID. Yeah, it's really interesting. And I think I know why. But ADD is not one thing. It's seven different things. One of my best-selling books of all time, Healing ADD, I talk about seven different types.

And then when I was thinking about happiness, I'm like, the thing that makes spontaneous people happy, like scary movies, or having an affair,, jumping out of an airplane, the persistent person would actually, those things would make him or her miserable. And so it's really important to know your type. There are five primary types. You balance, that means, you know, most any reasonable thing will make you happy. Spontaneous, you need novelty or you're not happy. Persistent, you need routine or you are not happy. Sensitive, you need connection.

They were damaged most in the pandemic with the isolation. And the cautious people, they need peace to make them happy. And so know your type. I have a online quiz called our Brain Health Assessment, brainhealthassessment.com. You'll see which of the 16 types you have. And then, well, what are the things more likely to make you happy? And all of these strategies have questions.

And for get your brain right, the question, the little tiny habit, I don't know if you know BJ Fogg, but I worked with him six months on tiny habits. So we have 50 tiny brain habits. But the mother of all tiny habits for So we have 50 tiny brain habits. But the mother of all tiny habits for the brain is for strategy one, is this good for my brain or bad for it? So when you go to do something,

you just ask yourself, is this good for my brain or bad for it? Magnesium doesn't get the spotlight like vitamin D or omega-3s, but it should. It helps regulate mood, hormones, energy, sleep, and even blood sugar. And yet, most of us are either deficient or barely scraping by thanks to stress, caffeine, processed food, and even depleted soil. That's where magnesium breakthrough from bioptimizers comes in. Unlike typical supplements that only use one form, this delivers seven forms of magnesium to support key systems in the body like your brain, muscles, digestion, heart, and stress response all in one capsule.

You get support for sleep, mood, focus, and energy without the harsh laxative side effects that come from using the wrong form. Whether you're dealing with occasional tension, hormonal shifts, or just feel off, magnesium breakthrough helps fill in the gap fast. Go to bioptimizers.com slash Hyman to get 10% off today. So when we were at Saddleback, our first fight with Pastor Warren was you got to get rid of the donuts. Are it's good for your brain or bad for it? I mean, obviously it's bad for it. I don't know if you remember that, but I do. I had the soda, the pancake, breakfast, the mischief. The whole thing.

We had to work that out. They did good though. I would say I was impressed that the scale of change that they did so quickly. It was very impressive. That's amazing. And then the question for the second strategy, am I doing something today that makes me uniquely happy? So it's really diving into happiness is not the same thing for everybody. So don't say it's novelty and gratitude and appreciation and fun and comedy because it's

different based on your type. Three, you'll appreciate is supplement your brain. We live in a society of deficiencies. And if you're nutrient deficient, especially serotonin, you know, most people don't know that birth control pills depletes serotonin. And I've seen this over and over in teenage girls. They go on birth control pills and now they're anxious or they're depressed. And no one's thinking it's changing their neurotransmitters. And my favorite happy supplement is saffron. I've been following the science of saffron for 20 years.

24 randomized controlled trials against Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, amipramine, a Fexer, equally effective. But rather than being anti-sexual, you know, put someone on an SSRI and they have trouble having an orgasm or their libido goes down. Saffron is pro-sexual and it makes them more interested and there are studies showing that saffron helps with memory, even in people with mild cognitive impairment. So when the pandemic started,

I just released a product I love called Happy Saffron, Saffron Zick and curcumins. And I'm like, right after the pandemic, my dad died, I had to close our Manhattan clinic, it was a disaster. I'm like, I'm taking this. So this is the supplement, I take many of them, but that's my favorite one. And so I think we might agree,

probably everybody should take a really good multiple vitamin. Everybody should take an omega-3 fatty acid. You should optimize your vitamin D level, test it, odds are it's low, and then work to get it high normal because we're in a pandemic. And then it depends on your brain type. So our spontaneous people do better with stimulating supplements like rhodiola. Our persistent people do better with serotonin boosting supplements like 5-HTP.

The sensitive people do better with saffron or salami. And the cautious people do better with GABA, theanine, magnesium. Just a huge fan and too often you see this is people go to their family doctor, their nurse practitioner, and they ends up on a benzo. And it's like, no, no, no, that's like 20th on the list. Let's do meditation, diaphragmatic breathing. Let's try Gavin magnesium. Please don't do that. Because why would you start something? Whatever, yeah. Somebody can't stop. And I see them creating so many problems with inappropriate medication.

Well, they don't even work that well. That's the thing. If you took Prozac and you were cured and you were happy, life was good, wonderful. But it just, basically no better than a placebo for mild or moderate depression. So, you know. correct. That's another process Well, the pharmaceutical industry

Doesn't want to be in the order business I mean they consciously made the decision to be in the reorder Business that once you start something for a lot of psychiatric medications They change your brain to need them in order for you to feel normal. So many people are just wickedly afraid of going off antidepressants because of the withdrawal from them. And I'm not opposed to medication. I'm just opposed to that's like the first and only thing you do without getting someone's diet right, without getting their habits right. Right. Well, that's so true. I mean, you also talk about in the book, this whole idea of four circles of happiness as an exercise to make you happy. What is that?

Well, when I was in medical school, actually the first week, our dean came in the classroom and he said, never think of patients as their diagnosis. Always think of them in four big circles. And it's just stuck with me. He went to the board and he drew the first circle, which is the biological circle. So, you know, as a doctor, you need to know all about their biology. And as psychiatrists, for me, you know, our primary organ is the brain. So brain health, as we talked about. The second circle is the psychological circle, which involves development and how they think. And secret number five is master your mind and gain psychological distance from the noise in

your head which we'll talk about super fun circle but it's basically the psychological circle. Well one of the things we used to add is never don't believe every stupid thought you have. And I didn't learn that till I was 28 years old in my psychiatric residency at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. And I'm like, my eyes got really big because, you know, I've struggled with anxiety. And I'm like, why didn't they teach me that in third grade? Right. Just because I have a thought has nothing to do with whether or not it's true, whether or not it's helpful, whether or not I should attach to. And it's not the thoughts you have that make you suffer. It's the thoughts you attach to that make you suffer. And then he drew the third circle, which is the social circle. And two years into this pandemic,

the social situation for so many people has just been a disaster from the societal unrest, the political divide. At Christmas, I had never seen family division like I have seen. And I'm saddened by it. And I'm saddened by it. And I'm saddened by it. And I'm sadden like I have seen and I'm saddened

by it and I kept telling my patients over and over and over again, without connection, you have no influence. So you're a boxer or an anti-vaxxer or whatever, you know, people were like not getting together and anger at each other. And I'm like, if you don't stay connected, you have no influence on the other person. And then the last circle, which I just love so much is the spiritual circle. It's why do you care? You know, what is your deepest sense of meaning and purpose, your relationship with God, with the planet, with the past, with the future? And really

talking about that with my patients, and I have to tell you more, nine out of 10 patients, when I ask them what their goals are and why they think they're on the planet. They haven't thought about it. And I'm like, you know, a business is not going to go unless it has a mission statement and a purpose and a strategic plan. And so that's actually number seven of the happiness secrets is live each day based on clearly defined values, purpose, and goals. And purposeful people are happier. But if you don't know, and there's a great exercise in the book on how to find your purpose

that I love. And one of my favorite patients that came out last year that I've been her doctor for about 11 years is Miley Cyrus. And I love her so much. And she has just grown up so much in the last couple of years. And she's very purposeful. She knows what she's about and what she wants to accomplish. And her bad habits didn't fit.

And ultimately that's the question to ask for secret number seven is does it fit? Does my behavior fit the goals I have for my life? You know, especially when you look at the statistics, if you get to be 75, one out of two people will have diagnosable Alzheimer's. If you get to be eight, I'm sorry, one out of three, you get to be 80, one out of two people. Yeah. This is, this didn't exist 100 years ago before Dr. Alzheimer's got to put his name on this illness he identified. In the Amazon, the thing that amazed me is that

And the Amazon, the thing that amazed me is that the incidence of dementia is one out of 100 people. There's very little hard to see. There's 1% there and 20% here. 20% here. It's crazy. And it's, of course, related to our lifestyle. So learning how to grow a new brain, pretty important topic. It's really important.

And remember, the brain is fat. So you got to give it a good fat. You cannot turn on the higher brain until you go first in a ketogenic diet and doesn't need to be, you know, eating meat three times a day. But you got to go into autophagy, you got to go into start recycling cellular waste and eliminating man, we know how to do that. Now the beauty of it is not only do we have the diagnostics, we know how to reverse this. Yeah, we know how to do that now. The beauty of it is not only do we have the diagnostics, we know how to reverse the stuff.

We know how to create a new brain. We know how to help people grow a healthy brain that's not only going to prevent the dementias, it's going to let them step into this place of gnosis, of wisdom. Yeah. It's interesting, we've had Chris Palmer on the podcast. I'll probably have him back again, who's a Harvard psychiatrist talking about mitochondria as the core dysfunctional unit that is causing most mental illness,

everything from autism, schizophrenia, depression, and bipolar disease. And then we have to treat the mitochondria. But you're also saying that in terms of the aging brain, and not just not just that, but also just having a healthy brain, you really have to focus on that. So how does that come up in your book? You know, the mitochondria, it's a big section on mitochondria and how do we restore mitochondria? There are fuel factories inside every cell

and your brain and your heart to have the highest concentration of these fuel energy factories in mitochondria, but they're not only producing energy they are actually in charge of the death clock and whoever runs the death clock runs the show they tell cells when they need to die so new ones can be born so regeneration can take place but mitochondria have they're actually they don't belong to us. They are actually bacteria that join our cells, they formed a eukaryotic cell millions of years ago.

So that it cut a deal with these multicellular organisms saying, hey, I'm gonna give you energy, you keep me protected, keep me warm, keep me safe. And that's what they do. But what they do is they turn basically they store energy in the form of sunlight. Yeah. Of ATP of a molecule called ATP adenosine triphosphate. This is like the little sparklers that kids use and when that they're depleted that energy becomes goes from being ATP to ADP, adenosine mono AMP, adenosine monophosphate, your fuel tank is empty. And the so this process of storing energy of processing energy of protecting

the mitochondria who have 38 genes in a ring that are unprotected because our DNA is 24,000 genes in it. Your brain cells have more mitochondria than any other cell in your body for cell. And they are the feminine life force. Like 20,000, 50,000 per neuron. Yeah. Per cell. Yeah. And we can only get the mitochondria from our mothers. So they're what the, I heard the Amazon Shaman saying, you know, your people, their feminine life force is very weak. And then David Perlmutter said to me,

of course it's mitochondria. That's right. Because we get it from the mother. So how do we protect, repair? And here's where we get into zombie cells. Yeah, tell us about zombie cells. These are the zombies like... Like the ones in Haiti. Haiti, the spirituals. No, you're not talking about that.

We kind of, because zombie cells, these cells are neither living nor dead, and they're actually a cancer protection mechanism that every cell has. So if a cell is not able to copy its DNA's information accurately to a daughter cell, mother cell, they're mother cells and daughter cells, they're no daddy cells. If it doesn't copy correctly, it'll

neuter that cell so it cannot replicate, because we call that metastasis. So it'll neuter it, but it won't kill it. So these cells are not able to reproduce or neither living nor dead, but they're mitochondria. They become fat and swollen and are starting to produce chemical signals, chemokines, cytokines, that are pro-inflammatory and they're very toxic. But it's a cancer protection mechanism. But when you have too many of these, remember the problem here is the copying. If the copying is not accurate, they get neutered. And what interferes

with the copying is a signal to noise ratio, all the toxins we're exposed to. These cells begin to build and we end up with cancers. These senescent cells are called and they were discovered by James Kirkland at Mayo Clinic who did a beautiful gerontologist who said, I'm tired of prescribing walkers and wheelchairs. How do we begin to deal with the causes of aging? And he found that there were senolytic agents that actually switched on the kill switch, turned it back on in these cells and you could get rid of them you could do away with it kill the zombie cells you're also called senescence and this is analytics is senescence is aging and senolytic means to kill aging there's yeah kill the aging cells so so how do

that work how you do that well you we don't know exactly at least I don't know how they work But they seem to switch back on the kill switch in mitochondria And what are the therapies are using and those therapies are combining things like quercetin and Fisetin Fisetin is made from strawberries. Yeah, and quercetin is Polyphenol is made from onion skins for from a variety of products, natural products, and it's a hit and run intervention. Four or five days, and I have a senolytic protocol that we use in our retreat center in Chile that you've been to.

And in four or five days, you do away, it's a one and done treatment that you need to repeat, we're finding out three or four times a year because we got 40 years or 50 years of senescence cells in us. And that what that does is to basically reset the system, you don't have this burden of zombie cells that you need to that you're that you're functioning with it cleans you out. Yeah, it's true. Also, there's a great study out Israel where

they looked at I talked about in my book Young Forever, where these hyperbaric oxygen, over 60 sessions, I actually am doing it right now. I just came from my back surgery to heal the wound. But the the beauty of the the hyperbaric is that it actually creates a stress but it it also kills the zombie cells. Yeah. Yeah. And this is, I think, essential, absolutely essential. Our protocol is not only Fisetin, Quercetin, which is commonly used for this, because this will kill the zombie cells. But how do you get rid of them? So you've got to work on the transport system and support the liver and eliminating them. So we're combining it with with alpha lipoic acid and with liver support

including glutathione or glutathione to help the transport and eliminate them out of the body so they're not just sitting there. This is amazing. We're talking about mitochondria, zombie cells, and microbiome, serotonin, you know. But see, this is a trauma. This is plant based. This is working with and the reason you're, you're going to hear a lot more about senescent cells, because we're getting to molecular solutions to pharmaceutical solutions. Yeah. But this is available today. Fisetin is strawberries, You'd have to eat 30 pounds of strawberries

to get the same effect. You can take it as a supplement. But it's an amazing supplement, four or five day intervention that lowers your burden of these toxic cells that are pro-inflammatory. Yeah. One of the things that, you know,

it's so fascinating is that, you know, we can start to embed these practices into our daily life. And you've written this book, Growing a New Brain, which is not just talking about the theory, you talk about case stories, you talk about how to do it. And how to do it. Yeah. So can you maybe share some stories about how this is applied? What are the kinds of things people are doing?

How does it work? First let me share a story about how I kind of got into on this track. Because I was running a small lab at San Francisco State. We were looking at, can we create psychosomatic health? What are the mechanisms? And I got frustrated at one point, shut the lab down, and went to the Amazon to see what they did, people that have no technology, but they have the plants, the natural world, the plant world, and the mind, the power of the

mind to create, you know, we know the placebo effect is the most tested medication in the world. Yeah, because every pharmaceutical is tested against placebo. And we know it's extraordinarily effective. Yeah. I mean, it's 68% effective. It's morphine in the case of gunshot wounds. Amazing. So I began looking at what's the placebo effect. We don't know what the mechanism is, but we know it works.

We know it works even when the person you're giving the sugar pill to knows that it's a placebo. That's amazing. It's extraordinary. A lot of the shamanic healing is based on mobilizing this resource that we have to create health that we call that we dismiss derogatively as a placebo. That's just a sugar pill. Most of what you're getting in your pills that you take. You're activating your psychopharmacology because I always say the best pharmacy

is the one between your ears. The one between your ears, yeah. So this is how, what I became interested in. And so how do we do that for ourselves? Well, meditation seems to be one of those things. Practicing inner peace, breathing practices that begin, because that's the interface between your, that can allow you to self-regulate your physiology

and your nervous system. So I think we have to discover what works for us. We have to provide the brain with the neuro nutrients, the support, get the serotonin. We're serotonin depleted right now. And this is things that we can do immediately. And then turn your kitchen into your laboratory. And then take part in why this number of people are calling the experiment of N is equal to one. Yeah. Where you have, you know, in medicine, if you have a research project, you want n, the number of participants, to be as big as possible. But here the experiment is n is equal to one.

My experiment is called Alberto. Yeah. And yours is called Mark. Mark. I love experimenting on Mark. Yeah, me too. And the problem, the thing is that if you don't do the experiment, you get to be in the control group. And the control group is deadly statistics.

Yeah. You want to be an outlier in that bell curve. So we need to take control of our brain today, not outsource it to our digital devices like we've done. You know, the memory functions are all outsourced to our digital devices. You know, our memory functions are all outsourced to our digital devices. I was writing one of our blogs today and I said, this thing popped up. Do you want help with writing this blog? It was Chad GPT asking me if he wanted me to do it. Soon, we're only going to be here to clean the machines.

So we need to really upgrade our brain, take the next step in human evolution. Because the one interest, couple of interesting details, there are 40 million species in this planet, more or less, and only three of those don't have a death program in their DNA. And they're humans, dolphins, and whales. Every other species in nature has a death program. There are no grandmothers in nature.

They're eliminated. Whereas we have not only no grandmothers in nature. There's, there's, they're eliminated. Whereas we have not only have grandmothers, but we can live 30, 40 years after menopause. There's no menopause in nature. It doesn't exist. Nature is doing a biology experiment with humans, dolphins, and whales in longevity. And to take part in that experiment, we need to be proactive in it. We need to attenuate the systems that create psychosomatic disease, the amygdala, the production of cortisol and adrenaline, and switch on the production of the psychedelics that the brain produces to awaken the higher brain. It requires

the psychedelics. Well, let's talk about that. I was gonna close with this because I think this is really an important framework. Because historically we thought of psychedelics as causing psychological effects. But now we know they're causing biological effects and literally structural and functional changes

to the brain Incredible example by increasing BDNF and other brain trophic nutrients things that are helping the brain grow repair heal reduce inflammation and things like you know DMT from ayahuasca from you know, the bufo from the Sonoran Desert toad the you know psilocybin medicines MDMA which is synthetic chemical LSD chemical, or but that comes from a plant, ergot, all these are things that have been around for hundreds of thousands of years. And the olactin serotonin receptors. And the actin serotonin receptors, but what we're now

learning about them is it that they can really create profound lasting changes in the brain, in a way grow a new brain what can you tell us how you think about that it's amazing if you've seen the brain on on drugs on psychedelics you find that they're 20 to 30 times the amount of neural networks not the richard nixon brain on drugs with the fried eggs not not the one with the fried egg. Yeah. And the problem is that many, they say we're doing this experimenting without a traditional sacred structure. So every culture that works with psychedelics

knows that you need a diet to prepare for it, a diet that's rich in serotonin, for example, and some of the MAO inhibitors. And you need to prepare a sacred space, a safe space, not just drop some acid or give somebody some ketamine in. But even then, tremendous healing happens. So that's the chemical effect is what we're looking at. Other societies looked at the sacred. What was the environment? How do you create a safe space? How do you are able to commune with the divine in whatever form you encounter it?

And that's part of what we're looking for that we don't have the answer for. That's true. I think it's true. But I think what's what's sort of exciting to me is this sort of is this sort of revolution in brain science and the revolution in trauma healing, the revolution in psychedelic medicine, the revolution in psychedelic medicine, the revolution in understanding the body as a system and network, all these things are coming together. And I think it's just gonna change everything. We think about the brain, the mind, our lives.

Totally, it's gonna open up the door to explore the mind. So what does the future look like? Tell us about how you see the future. I am very optimistic. I see the future is tremendously exciting. I think that there have been five extinction events in the planet before we're living in this in the fifth one right now Started about 15 20 years ago more species are dying than the previous one That's when a gigantic meteorite struck the earth and wiped out 90% of life forms

During extinction events nature seems to take the foot off of the brake and step on the accelerator, evolutionary accelerator. So it's not only evolution in between generations, but now within generations that we can become a new human. What is called epigenetic reprogramming? Epigenetic reprogramming to become a new human being that can have long life, long health, and can become a keeper, a nurse keeper, a steward of the art, and can experience her and his divine nature. So beautiful Alberto. I mean, you know, I think about it a little scientifically too, which is that this concept that's emerging from our scientific discovery, in a way, you way, we talk about shamanic healing, we talk about energy medicine,

we talk about kind of healing from trauma. That this fundamental concept of epigenetics, which is relatively new, it's the idea that there's a control system regulating our genes, that our genes are fixed, but which ones are turned on or off is regulated by this sort of master coder. And the coder is the epigenome.

And that gets programmed generationally. So trauma can be transmitted generationally. Totally. The impact of toxins or crappy food is transmitted generationally. And those impacts are found downstream two or three generations down. So if your grandmother was exposed to glyphosate, you're at risk for all sorts of cancers and deformities. Right. If your great grandmother had a trauma, then that might be embedded in your DNA, like the Holocaust survivors. Precisely.

And their children and grandchildren have very low levels of cortisol that's been happening for generations. So what's exciting is what you're talking about essentially is using the science to reprogram the epigenome to break them so you can evolve within one generation. So there was this debate between Darwin and Lamarck. Darwin was like species evolved through natural selection over time. Lamarck was like species come fixed as they are. They're both right in a way, right?

So these traits, and he was like traits can evolve even in a generation. So I think- Very rapidly. Yeah, very rapidly. Not only that, but we inherit not only the toxic legacy of our ancestors, both biological, chemical, emotional, but also the gifts, the extraordinary gifts of resilience, of courage, of endurance, of bright, you know,

and we have to begin to tap into that. When it comes to supplements, you only want the best for your body, the kind with the highest quality, cleanest and most potent ingredients you can get. That's exactly what you'll find at my supplement store. Where I've hand selected each and every product to meet the most rigorous standards for safety, purity and effectiveness. These are the only supplements I recommend to my patients and they're also what I use myself. Whether you want to optimize longevity or reduce your disease risk or you're looking to improve your sleep, blood sugar, metabolism, gut health, you name it, DrHeiman.com has the world's best selection of top quality premium supplements all backed by science

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