The Dr. Hyman Show - Why Food Should Be A Factor In Treating Mental Illness

Episode Date: October 23, 2020

Why Food Should Be A Factor In Treating Mental Illness | This episode is brought to you by Find My Formula We know that our diet can have a major impact on mental health. Unfortunately, however, most medical education programs don’t include nutrition, so many psychiatrists and physicians, in general, aren’t as empowered as they should be to prescribe a healthy diet. Moreover, stigma around mental illness is still pervasive in our society and can keep people from feeling empowered that they can change their brain health and get the care they truly need. Dr. Hyman recently explored these topics with psychiatrists Dr. Daniel Amen and Dr. Drew Ramsey. Dr. Daniel Amen is the founder of Amen Clinics. Amen Clinics has the world’s largest database of brain scans related to behavior, totaling more than 160,000 SPECT scans on patients from 121 countries. Dr. Amen’s research team has published more than 70 scientific articles. He is the lead researcher on the world’s largest brain imaging and rehabilitation study on professional football players. His research has not only demonstrated high levels of brain damage in players, but also the possibility of significant recovery for many with the principles that underlie his work.  His team also published the world’s largest functional brain imaging study on how the brain ages with over 62,000 SPECT scans. He is a double board-certified psychiatrist and ten-time NY Times bestselling author, with such blockbuster books as Change Your Brain, Change Your Life, Healing ADD, Memory Rescue, Change Your Brain, Change Your Grades, and The Daniel Plan, co-authored by Pastor Rick Warren and Dr. Mark Hyman. His most recent book is The End of Mental Illness.  Dr. Drew Ramsey is not your average psychiatrist. A writer, farmer, and doctor who focuses on the connection between mental health and food, he is passionate about nutritional interventions and creative media to share a different way of thinking about the brain and mood. He is an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and in active clinical practice in New York City. He also spends much of his time with his family, growing their own food, on a 127 acre organic farm. This episode is brought to you by Find My Formula, the world’s first personalized nootropics company. Right now, Find My Formula is giving The Doctor’s Farmacy listeners an exclusive discount. Visit findmyformula.com and get 15% off of your first box by using the code ‘drmark’ at checkout. Find Dr. Hyman’s full-length conversation with Dr. Daniel Amen, “How to End Mental Illness” here:  https://DrMarkHyman.lnk.to/DrDanielAmen Find Dr. Hyman’s full-length conversation with Dr. Drew Ramsey, “Can you beat depression with food?” here: https://DrMarkHyman.lnk.to/DrDrewRamsey

Coming up on this episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. From a brain perspective, what we've learned is you're not stuck with the brain you have. Probably the biggest advance in neuroscience over the last 20 years is this concept of neuroplasticity, that you're not stuck with the brain you have. You can make it better. Hey everyone, it's Dr. Hyman here. You know I love sharing new tools that I love to incorporate in my own life. And I'm constantly working on a bunch of different projects at once. Like right now, I'm working on a new book, recording podcast episodes, and I recently traveled LA to film my upcoming public television special.

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the folks at Find My Formula are giving my community an exclusive discount. When you use the code DRMARK, that's D-R-M-A-R-K, at checkout, you'll get 15% off your first box. They'll send four variations for you to try. Testing these multiple variations is how I was able to identify and continue the exact mixes to get the largest impact on my performance. Like any other supplement or system of supplements, I always recommend you check in with your doctor or healthcare practitioner before getting started. I hope you'll take advantage of this amazing offer. Just go to findmyformula.com and use the code DRMARK at checkout. Now let's get back to this week's episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. Hi, everyone. I'm Kea Perot at one of the producers of The Doctor's Pharmacy. Hi, everyone. I'm Kea Perot at one of the producers of The Doctor's Pharmacy podcast. Currently, one in five Americans live with mental

illness. And unfortunately, despite its prevalence, social stigma is still a big problem. Even more shocking is that the past methods of treating mental health disorders didn't actually look at what was happening inside of the brain or incorporate the role of food into treatment and prevention. Dr. Hyman recently sat down with Dr. Daniel Amen, who has been paving the way for a new type of psychiatry. His approach looks at the actual brain and uses an integrative approach to prevent and treat disease. The brain is an organ and your brain can have problems just like your heart can have problems. But most people who see a cardiologist have never had a heart attack they're there to prevent them so i am trying to create a psychiatry where people know their risk factors and they attack them as soon as possible so that we can prevent depression we can prevent bipolar disorder we can prevent bipolar disorder, we can prevent ADD,

or if we can't prevent them, at least we treat them in a whole person, functional medicine approach. I mean, what an idea. And when we do that, their brains look better. Thank you for reframing mental illness to be primarily a brain disorder that can be fixed by fixing your body

and then fixing all these other circles, right? Because it's much easier to fix your other circles if your brain's working, if you're not mercury poisoned or your thyroid's not working or you're not B12 deficient or vitamin D deficient or you're not pre-diabetic. All those things will mess up your brain, right? So it's much easier to do the work of actually creating meaning and purpose in your life and being happy and dealing with the psychological issues

if your brain's working properly. No question about it. And if you've been traumatized, and so many people have because they've been raised by parents who have brain issues, then it changes your brain in a negative way. So put the brain in a healing environment,

the psychological work becomes so much easier. So why is this so prevalent today? I mean, every 14 minutes someone commits suicide, every eight minutes someone dies of a drug overdose, 51% of the population at some point in their life have some mental issue, a quarter of the women population in this country are on antidepressants.

Like, what's going on our food system is broken right i mean 70 of us are overweight 40 of us are obese i published two studies that show as your weight goes up the size of your brain goes down which should scare the fat off anybody size and function of your brain size and function i've heard you say that many times and because the fat on your body is not innocuous it increases inflammation it stores toxins and it takes healthy hormones and turns them into unhealthy cancer promoting forms of estrogen and so if you just think about that that one thing by itself our food i actually think is responsible for almost half of the mental health challenges in america there's this fascinating study from australia where they looked at two outer islands one of them had fast food

restaurants the other one didn't and then they looked at their omega-3 index and the island with fast food restaurants had significantly lower omega-3 index and five times the level of depression think about that yeah of course just with the food well and that's one of the reasons i'm a fan of multiple vitamins, because we're basically a vitamin deficient society with deficiencies in magnesium and vitamin D and choline and vitamin B and C, B's and C. And so I just think it's a smart thing to sort of hedge your bet. Ninety seven percent of the population is low in omega three fatty acids. They have suboptimal levels. I actually did a study of 50 consecutive patients who came to our clinic who were not taking

fish oil. 49 of them had suboptimal levels. I mean, it's striking when you start to look and test, which most doctors don't. I mean, you actually are scanning people's brains. I scan their bodies through testing that looks at all these variables that most doctors don't look at. How many doctors look at omega-3 levels in your body? Most don't. But it's essential for my practice because I can't tell what's going on if I don't know what's happening.

No, it's 25% of the membranes in your brain are made of omega-3 fatty acids and so if they're low your brain's not going to talk very well to itself yeah i mean if you're listening i think most people and i think this is true i've seen in my family i've seen it in my patients most people with some type of mental disorder there's a stigma there's a sort of a blame game going on and there's a shame about it. What your work is really doing is stopping that saying that's just nonsense. It's like, would you shame somebody for having cancer or diabetes or an autoimmune disease? No, you wouldn't. You would try to sort through what's going on and look at the biology. And that's what you've done. So tell us why people suffering from things like depression, anxiety, bipolar disease,

ADD, panic disorders, bipolar, you know, schizophrenia, even addiction. Why should they be hopeful now? Because if they see it from a brain perspective, what we've learned is you're not stuck with the brain you have. Probably the biggest advance in neuroscience over the last 20 years is this concept of neuroplasticity, that you're not stuck with the brain you have. You can make it better. Dr. Hyman also discussed the powerful relationship between food, depression, and overall mental health with psychiatrist, writer, and farmer Dr. Drew Ramsey. There aren't many psychiatrists around who are talking about gut flora and mood or the immune system. That's changing.

I mean, that's one of the exciting things happening now is as food, as medicine is becoming more of something that gets embraced and gets understood is really critical, especially to prevention. I think we're just seeing more. People talk about the microbiome. There's a randomized clinical trial for straight-up clinical depression last fall using a probiotic. We have two randomized clinical trials looking at the Mediterranean-style diet to treat clinical depression. So it's an exciting time right now.

And they show benefit. They show tremendous benefit. I mean, it shows so much benefit. treat clinical depression so it's you know it's an exciting time and they show benefit they show tremendous benefit i mean it shows so much benefit they i mean you you know if you fail antidepressant treatment right now you get one of the treatment protocols we get put on something like a billify and an atypical antipsychotic right augment and augmentation strategy that's your evidence-based protocol that's what they use to treat schizophrenia they use it and then it crossed over i like i like a billify for a little we call it a little ego glue i mean when you need it a vilify could be a good medicine but what's interesting is the number needed to treat to

get that right and find that right patient that works for is about 10 with the mediterranean style diet with the trial trial showed us the number to get that right to for it to help one person was four and you know compare that you know that means you treat 10 people to vilify nothing one person gets one person gets better food you treat four people food and one gets better it's a much better drug than the drug i mean it tastes better it has fewer side effects and it's what you know it's what whether you need to billify or not i think the part that concerns me and concerns you is nobody gets food to start with nobody gets a much instruction around food when you get put on medications, ranging from, hey, this is how long you're going to be on it,

or, hey, there's a little weight gain, let's really dial in your diet. We don't mention food. And that's just a huge, beyond the meds, it's just a huge blind spot, both for health care in general, but really for mental health. And that your brain consumes more food than any other organ in your body. Every other field of medicine, you go to cardiologists, you know, we might not agree with the advice that they give, but at least they talk to patients about food. The number one change I want to see is I want us to stop meeting patients when they're mentally ill. I want us to start meeting patients and

helping them stay mentally well. Because the most powerful tool that I have as a psychiatrist is the power of prevention. And no one comes to talk to me or think about talking to me or fights the stigma to talking to me until they're late in the game. And, and that's great. I'm going to get a better wherever you,

wherever you meet me, I'm going to help get you better, but I'm going to help you get yourself better, actually, is the way to put it. But I hope that what changes and what is changing is that we start having a language to talk about our mental health and recognize that we all have this. I think people think about folks like you and me.

One of the things I love about you is you talk about being depressed, and people think, oh, you're a brilliant, successful physician. You're an innovator. Like, you don't have depression. And it's like, no, you do. And you have. And that's what I hope is going to change. So if someone's listening and they have depression, anxiety, mental health issues,

what are the ways of eating that actually cause a problem? And then when we'll get into what are the ways of eating that actually cause a problem and then when we'll get into what are the ways of eating that actually can fix the problem yeah that's such a great question let's start with the problem at the end of your fork before we tell you the solution and the problem that you're under your fork a lot of people know those words that you know everybody knows i'm about to say sugar everybody knows i'm about to say trans fats everybody knows i'm about to say processed foods and so the surprise it causes everything cancer diabetes alzheimer's and depression and i think what's really been striking to me as a psychiatrist interested in behavioral change and as an eater and as a parent how do you change those from being concepts to being behavioral and action-oriented items in your own life?

And so what's causing the problem, very simply, is not getting enough of the right nutrients. And I would argue for a lot of Americans, missing a set of nutrients. Americans are not getting phytonutrients because they're not eating plants. Americans are not getting seafood because they eat 14 pounds per year period and it's fish sticks it's not the seafood that we would want them to eat they're not you know this is not shrimp ceviche and wild salmon on uh yeah and they also there's i think a problem that isn't just around the food choice but is around uh i would say the missing spirituality of food and that that people

have we've lost our soul about food and when you tell people to eat well there's a notion that well that costs too much or it takes too much time or i don't know how to do it and i think those are our missing lies yes and and i think it's just i mean i have my my mama taught me how to cook and she's taught me that recipes start with olive oil or butter garlic and onions pretty much and then you add in what you put in some vegetables in that and and it's fine you're good right you put in some meat in that you're good you um and so it's pretty much how i cook yeah i mean i think it and what i'm i'm shocked by things like when we make our lentil soup at home we make a lentils carrot celery that's it. We put it in a crock pot.

And I love serving that dish for people like, wow, what's in here? It's like, it's lentils. Yeah, carrots, celery, a little pinch of sea salt. So, anyway, those are what's on the end of the fork that's causing the problem is, first of all, people aren't eating with the fork. People aren't taking a deep breath and engaging their digestive system. And people aren't in any way offering up gratitude or thanks for that. Most people, some of you all are out there doing that. So those kind of things, it's not just that garbage is on the, you know, it's not even

your fork, it's in the package that you're eating or that it's on the go. It's that we've lost that notion of where it comes from and valuing that. Unfortunately, most medical programs don't include nutrition education. So many psychiatrists and physicians in general aren't as empowered as they should be to prescribe a healthy diet. And sadly, our overconsumption of unhealthy, ultra-processed foods are only making matters worse when it comes to our mental health. Thankfully, the medical field is starting to awaken to the power that food can have in optimizing brain health and full body health. It is one of the many important things that should be taken into account when treating mental disorders. If you'd like to learn more about the topics covered in

this episode, I encourage you to check out Dr. Hyman's full-length interviews with Dr. Daniel Amon and Dr. Drew Ramsey. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider sharing it and leaving us a comment below. Thanks for tuning in. other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided on the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your journey, seek out a qualified medical practitioner. If you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, you can visit ifm.org and search their find a practitioner database. It's important that you have someone in your corner who's trained, who's a licensed healthcare practitioner, and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to

your health.