Live Like a Girl with Dr. Mindy Pelz - What Women Need to Know About Their Brains - With Dr. Daniel Amen

Episode Date: March 20, 2023

Welcome to episode 165 with guest Dr. Daniel Amen! In this episode, we cover what women need to know about their brains.  To view full show notes, more information on our guests, resources mentioned in the episode, discount codes, transcripts, and more, visit https://www.drmindypelz.com/ep165/. Dr. Daniel Amen's mission is to end mental illness by creating a revolution in brain health. He is dedicated to providing the education, products, and services to accomplish this goal. Dr. Amen is a physician, adult and child psychiatrist, and founder of Amen Clinics with 11 locations across the U.S. Amen Clinics has the world's largest database of brain scans for psychiatry totaling more than 210,000 SPECT scans on patients from 155 countries. He is the founder of BrainMD, a fast-growing, science-based nutraceutical company, and Amen University, which has trained thousands of medical and mental health professionals on the methods he has developed.  Dr. Amen is one of the most visible and influential experts on brain health and mental health with millions of followers on social media. In 2020 Dr. Amen launched his digital series Scan My Brain featuring high-profile actors, musical artists, athletes, entrepreneurs, and influencers that airs on YouTube and Instagram. Over 100 episodes have aired, turning it into viral social media content with collectively millions of views. He has also produced 17 national public television shows about the brain and his online videos on brain and mental health have been viewed over 300 million times. Dr. Amen is a 12-time New York Times bestselling author, including Change Your Brain, Change Your Life, The End of Mental Illness, Healing ADD, and many more. His highly anticipated new book Change Your Brain Every Day will be published in March 2023. Check out our fasting membership at resetacademy.drmindypelz.com. Please note our medical disclaimer.

Our hormones aren't nearly as healthy as they could be. And if your hormones aren't healthy, guess what? Your brain is not healthy. Hey, Dr. Mindy here. And welcome to season four of the Resetter podcast. Have I got a lineup for you this season? Lots of deep thinkers, a lot of brilliant minds, all with one focus to move the needle forward. on your mental and physical health.

So please know that this podcast is all about empowering you to believe in yourself again. And I want you believing in your body. I want you believing in your mind. I want you believing in your spirit. If you have a passion for learning, if you're looking to be in control of your health and take your power back, this is the podcast for you. Enjoy. On this episode of The Resetter podcast, I bring you Dr. Daniel Amen.

This is such a good conversation for those of you that are really wanting to get to know your brain better. I think there are many things that Dr. Amen does well and he's written, you know, so many books and he's out all over TikTok and Instagram and Facebook and all the socials educating us all. but what I loved about this conversation is the simplicity in which he was able to help us all understand better daily brain health. And you'll see in this conversation I started off by asking him specifically about the menopausal brain and what happens to the brain after 40. And I, you know, this is something that obviously I've been living with a menopausal brain and I've been helping. So many of my patients who have are in the menopausal process, understand their brains. And this conversation really took female brain health to a whole other level. But don't, for the men listening, don't, don't hop off because what I love about what Dr. Amen says is that he's surrounded by all these incredible women in his life.

And so he helping men understand what the female brain is going through, especially after 40, is really important. And the majority of what you're going to hear in this episode are some of his best brain hacks that will work for both men and women. And they're simple. It's just about training your brain. So if you want to know everything from the best diet to supplementation, to breath work, to his feelings on medications, to how we can all connect and improve our brains through purpose and community, this is the episode for you. So Dr. Daniel Amen, I loved this conversation. He does have a new book out.

We will leave the links for that. So please grab his new book. And as always, if you love this episode, share it out into the world. I really truly believe that when one person is happy, everyone around them is happy. And so one of the greatest gifts we can give the world is our own. happiness and I hope this episode does that for you. Enjoy. Anyone out there trying to give up your coffee habit? I know for myself that giving up coffee can be really hard when you're looking for an alternative to power up your brain.

So whenever I decide to fast from caffeine, which I do periodically so that I can reset my caffeine levels and make sure that A, I'm not addicted and B, that I don't need more. and more to be able to get the same effect. What I do is I actually replace it with Pure. So Pure is by Organify. It has Lions Main in it. It has coffee fruit in it. It's got apple cider vinegar in it so it balances blood sugar.

It's caffeine-free. And the way that they have put the ingredients together in this product, not only is it increasing BDNF levels, which BDNF, if you're not familiar, with it stands for brain-derived neurotropic factor. And it is a key fertilizer. That's what I'm going to call it, because it's like miracle grow for your brain.

It is a key fertilizer that will improve memory and learning. So not only is pure going to help you with more BDNF, but because of the apple cider vinegar, it has the ability to regulate blood sugar and to help grow good, good microbes in your gut. Now remember the microbes in your gut, they're making things like dopamine and serotonin and GABA, all those neurotransmitters that are so supportive for just a happy, calm brain. But then when you add in all the other ingredients, the Lionsmane and the coffee fruit,

and you're getting that surge of BDNF, you're getting a sharp brain that's focused, calm, and can accomplish anything. So can you see? see why I love this product. And if you are looking to get off caffeine, it's a phenomenal alternative. So as always, Organify is going to give you 20% off. So all you've got to do is go to Organify.com, backslash Pels, and you will get your 20% off. That's Organify, O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I-com, backslash Pels, and they will give you 20% off. And for those of you that are listening, I am, I just want to point out, I'm not saying that caffeine is bad.

I'm just reminding you that variation is good. And I do that with my food. I do it with my fast and I do it with my caffeine. So I hope you enjoy pure as much as I do. Okay, well, let me start Dr. Amen by just welcoming you to the Resetter podcast. I have been dying to have this conversation about the female. male brain with multiple experts, but you are definitely the man to talk to about a woman's brain. So let me just start off by saying, welcome.

Happy you're here. Thank you so much. I often say I know more about it than I want to. I have five sisters and five daughters, God is cruel, and 14 nieces and two granddaughters. So I have thought a lot about the female brain. And the female brain has strengths, especially when it comes to language and collaboration and intuition because they have a bigger highway network between the left and right hemispheres. So they tend to have, you know, better collaboration, more intuition, more impulse control. Not always in my family.

But you think of who goes to jail 14 times more. It's males. Who kills themselves, males. Even though females try, males are much more successful. like females try three to four times more than men, men are three to four times more successful. So I've been very interested in the female brain and gender differences for a long time. Yeah. And you know, one of the statistics that really hit me that I read recently was that the most common time for a woman to kill herself is from the decade 45 to 50. And I can tell you as a 53-year-old woman, that hit me really hard because these are, to your point, these are our mothers, these are our sisters, our friends, our community leaders. And it left me asking myself, why? Why do we struggle? Why does the female brain struggle as we start to hit our mid-40s and go through those menopausal years?

Well, so that's a huge part of the answer, is hormones radically shift. And they do it in a surprising way. I mean, you know probably more than me. But the one statistic that has always sort of stuck with me is progesterone levels tend to drop about 10 years before women actually go to menopause. So that means in their late 30s or early 40s, progesterone's going low. And progesterone is like the brain's natural valium and sort of settles things down. And when it goes low, women become anxious and irritable. Yep. They don't sleep well. And so then in order

to medicate that, they start drinking more. And alcohol is just not a health food. I mean, we can talk about that. I'm like not a fan of any alcohol. They start taking benzos as a way to manage their anxiety. They start taking antidepressants. They start taking sleeping pills. And it's like, well, let's measure it and replace it.

And, you know, why do your hormones drop with age? And it happens for males and females. Well, it's the planet's way of getting rid of you. And I'm not okay with that. What? Wait a second. Yes, I'm not okay with that either. Explain that more.

It's like, you know, it's like, okay, you're done with childbearing. It's time for us to lose you. So the planet's resources can be for the young. And I'm like, no, I'm not okay with that. And so what can I do to keep my testosterone level healthy? And for women, what can they do to keep their hormones healthy? And we live in a toxic soup society. And because we're being assaulted with pesticides and thalates and parabins,

and endocrine disruptors, our hormones aren't nearly as healthy as they could be. And if your hormones aren't healthy, guess what? Your brain is not healthy. If you have low progesterone, your emotional centers are busy. If you have low estrogen, you have lower overall blood flow to the brain. If you have low testosterone, you're mostly. food's not good. And so you begin to see how if your hormones aren't right, people get more sad. They engage in behaviors that hurt the brain, and they're more likely to become hopeless.

Yeah. So I feel like you just explained every woman I know, by the way, like, you know, as if I go out to ladies night with a bunch of 50-year-old women, that's the conversation is exactly what you just said. So when I dove into the research, I stumbled upon a really interesting article that talked about the intersection of estrogen and progesterone with four neurotransmitters, serotonin, dopamine, GABA, and glutamate. And it got me thinking that even though we know these hormones are supposed to decline as we go through menopause, the neurotransmitters don't have to decline. And is there a way for us to backfill in? And I know you do this so well in your clinics and really backfill in and create a nutritional plan that keeps those neurotransmitters high.

What resources do we have for those? Well, so we can use supplements to help. And, you know, in my mind, I'm going to always start with supplements. And if I need to put someone on medicine, I will, but it's never the first thing I think about. I'm a huge fan of saffron because saffron has been shown to increase both dopamine and serotonin. I own BrainMD, one of our best-selling products ever

is GABA calming to report GABA availability in the brain. And, you know, I, I think it's eating the right food. It's so important. We live in a society that is just deemed to poison us. And my new book, Change Your Brain Every Day, I have. So it's 366 short essays on the most important things I've ever said.

There are 62 evil ruler strategies in there. If I was an evil ruler and I wanted to create mental, illness? What would I do? And for sure, I'd feed the American population, fast food, junk food, artificial dry sweeteners and crap. Because what goes into your body becomes your body. People don't know that. Like your skin makes itself new every 30 days. You want to produce your skin. You got to eat the diet that's healthy. So getting your food right is just absolutely essential. And we now have three generations of working mothers. When I started my career, most mothers weren't working outside the house. I mean, they were working really hard,

but not outside the house. And then that changed about three generations. ago, and I think 90% of women in California, not only are they raising their children, they're working. And so what happens with that is they're tired, and they're looking for convenience, which is often fast food, which now we're into a big mess. Yeah. Because the nutrition there, I mean, they actually, why is it called fast food? because they take the fiber out of the food.

So you're in and out of the restaurant quickly. Right. Right. A thousand calorie meal, you just ate in like four minutes. On the testosterone thing or on the woman that's working idea, this was something that actually John Gray brought to my attention. And part of why he wrote his last book is because he said that we have more women in the workplace and they are using their testosterone at a faster rate.

And that when they come home, if their testosterone depleted, their goal then becomes that they need to replenish estrogen to help reboot their brains so that they can actually be an active member of the family. So his recommendation is at the end of a hard day, a woman would come home and do anything that would raise estrogen. And then, of course, he goes into the differences of, of how men and women deal with that end-of-the-day stress differently. But what are your thoughts on that?

I hadn't thought about it like that. I think that's a really interesting perspective. You know, what it made me think about was this epidemic of low cholesterol. I don't know if you're seeing it in your practice, but I see it, especially in younger people. and what does cholesterol help you make all of your hormones yeah and so we live in a society where cholesterol has been demonized and no wonder we have this epidemic of low testosterone for people it's like oh your cholesterol is 212 so you have to go on a statin which is insanity yeah yeah and what about just you know if you're if a woman's at work all day long

She's also a stressful job. She's raising cortisol. Well, the precursor to both testosterone and cortisol is DHA. So you end up with this situation where she's depleting her DHA stores. What's your feeling on that? Well, I mean, chronic stress does so many bad things from increasing cortisol, putting fat around your belly, shrinking your hippocampus, which means your memory is not going to be. be good. Your mood's not going to be good. So having a stress management practice is critical. Yeah. This is absolutely essential. Like I think of for my patients, basic training for my patients is learning how to

not believe every stupid thing you think. It's learning how to be able to quickly calm anxiety. using diaphragmatic breathing. I just think those two things are so helpful, so fast, that I just want all of them to know. And then if they're sitting on a core of trauma, which so many of our patients are, that they're not reacting out of the moment. their reaction out of all of the stressful moments from their past,

that doing treatments like EMDR can be so helpful. Yeah, yeah, a thousand percent. So let's go back to the woman who's quick to react because I think this is something that I shocked me as I went through menopause, and I hear a lot of women say this. So what I just heard from you, you know, when you take a 48-year-old woman who is, entering into more of her, maybe she's gone three or four months without her cycle. And so we know

her estrogen is down. We know her cortisol is up. Potentially her testosterone is down. She doesn't have enough progesterone, so therefore she's not getting enough GABA. And then something simple hits her brain. The stress reaction is so huge. You know, I would say that I, in my late 40s, I felt like I didn't even recognize myself. So in that moment, diaphromatic breathing, like, what are her tools? Because the rages, you know, we talk a lot about the menopausal rage has showed up. You're familiar with that one. You've been the recipient of that one.

But help us understand what tool do we have in that moment? Because I think that's where the alcohol becomes attractive. That's where, you know, we start to blame the people around us. really we need to take ownership over what's happening to our brains. Well, and it's also when divorce goes way up. Oh, yeah. Because if your hormones are off and your libido is off and you're mad, and women instigate divorce, like 70% of the time.

I've heard it sad, and it sort of makes sense to me, that when a woman is young and her hormones are high, she's really interested in bonding in keeping the family together and becomes other-centered. And it begins to go into perimenopause and then menopause. She's no longer other-centered. She's more self-centered, and it's more about her. Yep.

And that can be a real problem. It can be very disoriented for her spouse who is like, well, wait a minute, you like cared about me and now you don't care about me anymore. And it can be very disruptive to a family system. Now, I always tell the women I deal with, it's like, come on, it's sort of like you're on a plane. And if the air, oxygen pressure goes down and the masks come down, you have to put yours on first. And I want to teach young women, it's like, come on, you have to take care of yourself because if you're no good, everybody's going to suffer. Right. But one of the reasons I think for a high level of divorce in perimenopausal and menopausal women is it shifted.

That natural tendency to keep things together has shifted and become problematic. But back to your question, you're in a rage. What do you do? Yeah. It's called the 15 second breath. It's really good and it's very effective. Take a big breath, four seconds in. I mean, like, take a big breath.

And then through your note, four seconds in, hold it for a second and a half. And then take eight seconds to breathe it out through your mouth. really slowly and then hold it out for a second and a half. You do that four times and while you're doing it, ask yourself this question. What's the goal? What do I want in this situation? Now, for all of my patients, I have them do an exercise called The One Page Miracle. On one piece of paper, write down what you want.

relationships work money physical emotional spiritual health what do you want and so in that moment when you feel like lashing out when you do the breathing go okay does it fit does my behavior fit the goals i have for life. I love that. Most people in relationships are sort of like me, like with Tanna, I have the same goal. I've had the same goal for the 15 years we've been married. I want a kind, caring, loving, supportive, passionate relationship. I always want that. I don't always feel like that. I get rude thoughts that come into my head. And I'm just mostly, I think Tanna would say I'm mostly good. and inhibiting the stupid things, I think. That's awesome.

But if you're in a rage, if you can just four breaths, four 15 second breast, that's one minute. If you calm yourself, trigger a parasympathetic response, a relaxation response, and then go, what's the goal? What do I want? What's the goal? And you know when you lash out, you then feel guilty. Yeah. Often the cycle is this.

It's I have a tantrum. I feel bad. So I let negative behavior go on until I can't stand it. And then I lash out. And then I feel guilty. And then I let bad behavior or negative behavior go on until I can't stand. And then I lash out. So it becomes this guilt cycle, which is broken so much better is there's negative behavior,

deal with it, but deal with it in a rational way. I would think that's a trained, the first time you do it probably is tough. You may still want to lash out. But I would think the more, then you now have a state changer that you can use on an ongoing basis. So is that definitely something that gets easier with time? The more you do it, in fact, what I recognize, recommend is people do this breathing pattern for two minutes twice a day and just do it every day,

two minutes twice a day. And if you don't do it, if you don't practice it, you won't be able to use it when you're triggered. But if you practice it, you will have built that track in your brain that will allow you to use it when you're triggered. Yeah, perfect. So in your new book you talk about, and you and I chatted about this when we first started about the importance of daily routines for the brain. And one of the things that has been tugging on my heart is creating some kind of path for women when they hit 40. Because like you said, progesterone is the first decline. Progesterone will start to go down in the 30s. But then we hit the 40s and we get in those early years of the 40s, the mid 40s, and we're losing estrogen.

We're losing progester. what would a daily lifestyle look like? And you've talked about not eating the junk. You've talked about the brainwork. And you talk about happy saffron, but is there like a general formula we could follow that we could bring to every 40-year-old woman and say, hey, here's what's coming down the road.

Here's what you might want to implement. So I like these habits for everybody. It's like I start every day with today as well. going to be a great day. I'm always training my mind to look for what's right rather than what's wrong. Today is going to be a great day. Is this good for my brain or bad for it? That's the mother tiny habit. And the younger you start, the better it will be for you. But is it good for my brain or bad for it. You just have to know the list. And you know, society's confused people, you know, like gadgets are good and they've been created to be addictive. Well, they're not.

Alcohol's health food, right? I mean, we've been through that. We're now with marijuana's innocuous. It's a complete lie. It's not innocuous. It's toxic. Actually, study out this week about marijuana, increasing the risk of cardiovascular disease. My favorite daily habit is when I go to bed at night, I say a prayer and then I go, what went well today? And if you do this with your children like you start at breakfast, so why is today going to be a great day for you? Or at dinner go, hey, what went well today?

The conversations are so awesome. Yeah. But for me, every night, I've done it for probably a decade, what went well? It's a little treasure hunt every day pushing my brain to look for what's right. I mean, you know, I'll deal with what's wrong, but not right before bad. Because that's so important. You want to set your dreams up to be more positive. New study out just today, sort of, horrifying actually, that children and young adults who have nightmares have a higher incidence of Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease. Why? I'm not quite sure. It's alterations in REM sleep, which are really important. But I think whatever you can do to set your sleep up to be more effective, that will help you so much. But it all comes back to this silly, simple question, is it good for my brain or bad for it? And I don't choose it because I should. Because if you choose to do the right thing because you should, you won't do it. Right? Because all of us are run by the

four-year-old, the spoiled four-year-old in our head. that wants what he or she wants when he or she wants it. It's I do the right thing because I love myself. Because, you know, think about what do you really want? Right. If I look at what I really want, French fries is, I don't really want French fries. Yeah.

Or alcohol or soda or ice cream or whatever. What I really want is energy. and happiness and longevity and longevity and meaning and purpose and connection. Those are the things where if you ask me, all right, what do you really want, right? Not in the moment, but in all of the moments, then you begin to see your bad habits as enemies of what you really want. And that's maturity. Drew Carey, that comedian who lost a lot of weight and kept it off, he said something so profound. He said eating crappy food isn't a reward.

Yeah. It's a punishment. And I'm like, he's going to stay healthy. Because it's that mindset of love of I do the right things because I do the right things because I love my life, right? This is a gift. And I'm either on autopilot in service to the food industry or the alcohol industry or the drug industry. I'm in service to them or I'm in service to what I really want. Yeah. One of my favorite quotes is do something today. that your tomorrow self will thank you for.

And what I love about that is I actually, whenever I'm making any choice around food or drinks, I'm always thinking about my tomorrow self. Is my tomorrow's self going to feel guilty? Is my tomorrow's self going to be mad that my today's self went down this route? And it tends to steer me in the right direction. Yeah. And people who live the longest are conscientious. There's a study out of Stanford where they looked at 1,540 children in 1921 and when they were 10 years old.

And they started assessing them for what went with health, longevity, addictions. And the only thing that was consistent with people live the longest was conscientiousness. the don't worry be happy people died the earliest from accidents and preventable illnesses. And I've had so many people, like on social media recently, I took on fruit juice. I'm like, you're just going to die early because you love upon fructose. It's going to poison you. And it's like, oh, you need to smoke pot. You don't need to be so serious.

and just, you know, I just smile. It's like, no, I want to be that person that's at least doing everything I can. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Do you think that the brain is predisposed to fixing problems? Because I've heard that theory before, that the brain is always searching for problems because it wants to fix it. Or is that because you're maybe dominant in one part of the brain. that is wanting to accomplish that. Well, I think that's more a male thing.

Like, if you tell us you have a problem, we're going to fix it, and you don't really want it fixed. You just want someone to listen and connect with you. I think the brain is a meaning machine. It's always looking to make meaning out of what is in front of you, whether they're meaning there or not, always trying to make up a story about why this is important. I could see that. I could totally see that.

Okay, I'm going to let you in on a little behind the scenes of what I've been up to over the last year. Every year, I set one intention for my health to learn and discover and practice on myself. And in 2022, my intention was to really understand all forms of plant medicine. And so I had a great conversation with Joseph Shehey, and it's episode 139 of the Resetter podcast if you haven't checked it out. And in that episode, we talked about the future of plant medicine and mental health. And I've talked to a lot of CBD experts before, but Joseph really brought some clarity to the

conversation around CBD. So I'm so fired up about the topic of mental health. It's actually what my next book's going to be about. I'll let you in a little secret. I've already in the process of writing that. But we really need to start having strategies for people, including myself, that are easy on the body, that are non-toxic and are effective for mental health. And so I've spent the last year trying to really understand the different ways to combat so much of the change of my life and all the things that were impacting my mental health. And one of the strategies I found was in Joseph's products of cured nutrition.

So in fact, I've been using cured products for the last six months, and I can definitely notice a shift in my brain. Let me tell you what I notice. I'm less reactive. I'm sleeping better. And I'm able to calm myself more. You know, if you're a menopausal woman, if you're even sitting on the couch can be,

agitating. So learning to calm yourself down has been a skill I've been working on. And Joseph's product has real, or products in general have really helped with my overall nervous system and ability to relax. So my favorite product is their Zen product. And if you haven't tried it, I mean, all their products are great. But if you haven't tried their Zen product, that would be the first one to go to. They actually have a rise and a Zen. So you could go, you could do rise you take in the morning, zen, you take at night. So I recommend you go. You go. and check them out. And Cured Nutrition and Joseph are so kind, they are giving you 20% off.

So if you want to try any of their products out, you just go to curednutrition.com forward slash Pels and you'll save 20% off. And you can test it out and see if it gives you the relaxation that you're looking for and makes your brain less reactive, which is really the place that as humans we all should be moving to. How do we get our brains less reactive? And Joseph is giving us a solution. So curednutrition.com. that's C-U-R-E-D-N-U-T-R-I-O-N dot com forward slash Pells and you will save 20% off. Enjoy. Where do you speak of connection.

And this is another thing I've been thinking deeply about. You know, when we came out of the pandemic, there was so much isolation. And, you know, then we saw this resurgence of, or maybe it was the media's attention of mental health challenges. But where my heart went is we just really lacked connection. And I know that I'm in my best self. My brain is working the best when I'm connecting with others and really magnifying oxytocin and really having that deep human interchange with people. What does connection do to our brains? Well, I think it depends on the type of brain

you have. The pandemic is very hard for extroverts because it craved connection. The pandemic, was actually quite soothing for introverts. It was dramatically less stress because they didn't have to deal with extroverts. Well, I'm an extrovert. I'm sorry to all the introverts out there. The pandemic was truly awesome for parents who had teenage children and their kids couldn't just escape. So I have. So Chloe, our daughter was 16 when the pandemic started.

She just got her license, just got her first job, and then everything shut down. She got depressed. But she had to stay home. And we had almost every night two-hour dinners. We'd make dinner together. We would clean up the kitchen together. We'd have these great conversations. And we had just adopted our two nieces.

like January of 2020, because their parents couldn't stop using drugs and being bad parents. And the level of bonding and connection. And like I mentioned earlier, three generations of two parent working families, that families were, the bond and families had been strained. So for those people that were able to take advantage of the pandemic, and I know so many of my friends and patients, it was a historic positive time for bonding. Yeah. And now, if you were isolated during that, it was an awful time that. And then you get COVID, right? Almost all of us have gotten.

And COVID creates this little. bomb, inflammatory bomb in the brain. And, you know, so it depends really on the kind of brain and the type of situation you had. I loved being at home and having, you know, having the kids around where they were captive. In fact, I remember, I think it was like the fall maybe of 2020. I'm like, this is not going to last forever. And I just remember doing the dishes with the kids and getting sad because I liked it so much. Yeah.

Yeah. Our son's high school senior year was during the pandemic. And to your point, we cooked the most elaborate meals. And to this day, he'll come home and we'll all cook together. So it created this real anchor that that was a unifier for us. Good food over good meals, long, you know, all at the table, talking about really insightful things. I really loved that part of the pandemic. For sure, that was a highlight to your point.

Do you think one other thing that I've been really thinking about when I'm interacting, you know, you and I started off, I told you a lot of the people who listen to this podcast, a lot of my following are women over 40. And what I see is that when we transition, if you were a woman that was the primary parent giver and taking care of the kids, now the kids grow up, there's a lack of purpose. There's a lack of, you know, what do you do next? And it has me thinking about the positive effects of having a purpose in life on the brain. And I would even take it one step further. Some of the happiest people I know are ones that are in service of others. What does that do to the brain? Do we need to have a real strong purpose? And do we need to be outwardly focused on serving others as an adjunct to brain health? Well, purposeful people live longer. They're happier.

When they get depressed, they get better faster. They're cognitively better. So this great study out of Baltimore, it's the Baltimore longevity study where they evaluated two groups. So they did MRIs on them, and they looked at hippocampal vault. So the hippocampus is large structures deep in your brain, about the size of the thumb, shaped like a seahorse. Hippocampus is Greek for seahorse. One group, they just let them do whatever they wanted to do.

The other group, they volunteered. So they had purpose. the group who just continued to do what they normally do, their hippocampus shrank over that year. The group that volunteered their hippocampus grew. How exciting is that? That's really cool. You want to be in service if you want a bigger hippocampus.

And the hippocampus is involved in mood and memory. Amazing. And so knowing what, you want. And so as I talked about the one-page miracle, what do you want? Relationships, work, money, physical, emotional, spiritual health. I think of the spiritual circle. So why do you care? What is your deepest sense of meaning and purpose? Why are you on the planet? What is your relationship with the planet, with God, with the past, with your future, and purposes often other-centered, right?

If your purpose is, I want more money, you're not going to be happy because money and happiness just don't go together, right? I mean, up to about $75,000. Above that, they don't really go together. That what helps people be happy, happy is having connection and purpose. Yeah.

And I absolutely agree. I will tell you that a tool that I use when my brain clicks into suffering is I try to catch myself and realize, oh, God, I'm thinking about myself again. And sometimes it's like I'm thinking about what I'm trying to achieve for myself. And the minute I flip that into how can I show up on this planet as a person that serves and makes the world a better place. Literally, in a moment, I can switch from depression to excitement just by changing my focus on what I'm trying to get and turn it into what am I trying to give.

That is another tool I've used in order to switch my mood if it's heading in the wrong direction. I love that so much reminds me the story of George Bush, Sr., that Mrs. Bush became depressed, when George Bush was in charge of the CIA because he couldn't come home anymore and talk about his work. And she got depressed and went and saw a psychiatrist and he recommended medicine. She decided to volunteer. And she said that was her antidepressant. Yeah, crazy, right?

To your point in your new book is, I feel like we perhaps have, overcomplicated brain health. We've been looking for the magic pill. I'm curious what your thoughts are on that research study that came out last year saying SSRIs are not what we thought they were or what we thought they were. And I wonder if in the mental health world, we have been going after the wrong big tool looking at medication as the solution, whereas what you and I are talking about and your new book is talking about is it's in these little things that the brain thrives. Oh, I think the paradigm for psychiatry is completely broken.

Yeah. That making diagnoses based on symptom clusters with no biological data is insane. And I'm a psychiatrist. I know how to diagnose insanity. The psychiatrists are the only medical doctors who never look at the organ they treat. Last 30 years, I've been looking. And what I discovered is that most psychiatric problems, anxiety, depression, psychosis, bipolar disorder, OCD, they're not mental health issues. They're brain health issues.

You get your brain healthy. Your mind is so much better. And so what if mental health was really brain. help. And when you see it that way, everything changes. Stigma goes down. Compliance goes up. Everybody wants a better brain. In 1979, when I told my dad I wanted 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 and hang out with nuts all day long. I mean, that was bad parenting. But I understand, man. Now, it's like, well, they don't act like real doctors.

Yeah. And if we looked at the brain as an organ, and what can I do to enhance that organ, well, then I'm less depressed. Yeah, yeah. I'm less anxious. Is there a time and a place for medications? Of course. I mean, we never say there's not room for heart medications.

or there's not room for, you know, cancer medications. But it's just never should be the first and the only thing you think about. Sort of like somebody's got heart disease. Oh, well, the only thing we're going to do is give you drugs, right? I mean, that's insane when you think about it. Yeah, but that goes on every day in doctor's offices. It does because we are. in service to insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies. And I didn't go to medical school

to be in service to insurance companies or pharmaceutical companies. I went to medical school to be in service to my patients. And you remember in medical school, first do no harm, use the least toxic, most effective treatment, which happens to be teaching people not to believe every stupid thing they think, which happens to be we need to work on your diet and we need to get you to exercise. But neither you or I want to be like our colleagues who in large part are burnt out because they're in service to the wrong goal. They're in service. They're in service to because their debt is half a million dollars, they have to work in systems that perpetuate the status quo. And the status quo is a shit show.

Yeah. I hope everybody hears what you just said because I feel like there is a separation in health care right now. And there is the old paradigm and a new paradigm that's emerging. and what you're speaking about today and your new book is really this new paradigm that's emerging for mental health. And the old paradigm was just tell me the symptoms. I'll give you a medication, come back if that doesn't work. And the new paradigm is, hey, it's our responsibility. It's time for us to take responsibility for every single thing that shows up in our bodies. And I love that. It's one of the reasons I love your work because you take it up into the brain. Talk a little bit about two really interesting, like big things.

Like we've talked about foundational ideas, but there's been two big tools that I've seen work incredibly well for the brain. One is hyperbaric oxygen and the other one is EMDR. To me, both of those are game changers for mental health. Where would somebody bring those tools in and what exactly are they doing? So hyperbaric oxygen therapy is you go inside a chamber under pressure. with increased oxygen, it's been shown to increase blood flow to the brain. I first learned about it about 25 years ago from Mike Eusler, who was a nuclear medicine doctor

at UCLA, and he showed me spec scans of people before and after hyperbaric oxygen. And what he showed is it increased blood flow. And their scans are better. And spec also measures mitochondrial findings. function, and I'm like, whoa, you can just see the energy in the brain significantly increased. And then I published a study on soldiers who had involved in blast injuries that I did the scans before and after hyperbaric oxygen significant improvements. So any low blood flow state to the brain from autism to toxins,

infections, head trauma, hyperbaric oxygen can benefit. I published two big studies showing I could separate PTSD emotional trauma from traumatic brain injury, physical trauma, with high levels of accuracy using spec. And why is that important? Because the treatments are opposite. If you have emotional trauma, we need to calm the brain down. If you have physical trauma, we actually have to pump it up, increase activity and blood flow. EMDR, eye movement, desensitization, and reprocessing is a psychological treatment that has biological effects.

So I actually published a study on it on police officers who are involved in shooting. their emotional brain was busy and all of them, and after an average of eight treatments, significantly calmed it down. So with EMDR, you bring up trauma, which can be hard for people, and as they do, and there's a method to it, you get their eyes to go back and forth

or do tapping. It's alternate hemisphere stimulation, so left, right, left, right. either with eye movements or tapping. And as they bring up the trauma, it could be very upsetting, but then it tends to dissipate. So as opposed to you and I just talked about the time you're in a car accident or the time you're in a fire or the time you're raped, just talking about it, retramatizes you. If you do the bilateral hemisphere stimulation, you feel it, but it often then goes

away where you still remember it, but it loses its emotional charge. And it's so powerful. And so many women, perimenopause and menopause, one of the reasons they're reacting the way they are is because they've had some significant past trauma that they've not worked through. They may have talked about it, but they have. haven't really worked through it. And so I'm a huge fan of EMDR. Yeah. And I think when we go through those 40-year-old years into our 50s, it's like we have less focus on our children. And I feel like all the stuff you didn't deal with is going to bubble up to the surface and it's there for you to focus on. And my personal experience with EMDR has been nothing will work as quickly as EMDR for getting over some of those traumas that bubble to the surface.

So I would strongly agree with you on that. Yeah, it's like mushrooms without side effects. Yeah, for sure. I could totally see that because, you know, I'll use the example. I grew up in L.A. And I recently went down there after doing a lot of EMDR and nothing was triggering me when I had like, old places. I saw. I was like, oh, I'm not triggered. I became untriggerable, so I love it. Self love. Do you have a practice of self-love that you do every day? And what do you think your

superpower is? If you have like one superpower that you are bringing to the world, what would that be? Self-love for me is doing the right thing. Is when I do the right thing. It makes me really happy. And it's the one thing. It's when you do the right thing. Love yourself. Root for you. I love that. My superpower is looking at the brain. I love that. Over the last 30 years, I can look at your brain, and it really helps me teach people to love and care for their brains and to target what they need.

Yeah, I love that. And you're so good at it. And we're so grateful for all your work. How do people find your book? Where can they go? Change your brain every day out March 21st. If people go to change your brain every day.com, we have all sorts of free gifts for them,

including a bottle of calm my brain, which is one of my favorite supplements. And they can find me on TikTok, Doc AIMON, or on Instagram, doc, DOC, underscore AIMN, Amon Clinics.com. I'm so grateful to you. you. Thank you so much for having me on. So grateful to you and just keep up your amazing work where the world is better with you in it. So thank you so much. Appreciate you. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much for joining me in today's episode. I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you. If you enjoyed it, we'd love to know about it. So please leave us a review, share it with your friends, and let me know what your biggest takeover. way is.