The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast - Dr. Daniel Amen On Brain Health & Function, How To Guard Against Mental Health Disorders, & Practices We Can Utilize To Continue To Have Optimal Brain Function

Episode Date: July 19, 2021

#375: Dr. Daniel Amen is an American celebrity doctor who practices as a psychiatrist and brain disorder specialist as director of the Amen Clinics. On today's episode we discuss how to take care of o...ur brains and keep the brain healthy so that we can function in the most optimal way. We also discuss how to guard against mental health disorder and what we need to do to continue to utilize optimal brain function. To connect with Dr. Daniel Amen click HERE To connect with Lauryn Evarts click HERE To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE For Detailed Show Notes visit TSCPODCAST.COM To Call the Him & Her Hotline call: 1-833-SKINNYS (754-6697) This episode is brought to you by The Skinny Confidential  The Hot Mess Ice Roller is here to help you contour, tighten, and de-puff your facial skin and It's paired alongside the Ice Queen Facial Oil which is packed with anti-oxidants that penetrates quickly to help hydrate, firm, and reduce the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles, leaving skin soft and supple. To check them out visit www.shopskinnyconfidential.com now.  This episode is brought to you by Olive & June The Olive & June Mani system is the secret behind salon-perfect at home, all-in-one, no guessing, no messy nails, no salon price tag. All TSC Him & Her listeners can no get 20% off your first mani system with our code SKINNY. Visit www.oliveandjune.com and use promo code SKINNY at checkout for 20% off your first mani system.  This episode is brought to you by RITUAL Forget everything you thought you knew about vitamins. Ritual is the brand that’s reinventing the experience with 9 essential nutrients women lack the most. If you’re ready to invest in your health, do what I did and go to www.ritual.com/skinny  Your future self will thank you for taking Ritual: Consider it your ‘Lifelong-Health-401k’. Why put anything but clean ingredients (backed by real science) in your body? This episode is brought to you by Skillshare. Skillshare is an online learning space offering more than 25,000 courses. Join the millions of students already learning on Skillshare today with a special offer just for our listeners: Get two months of Skillshare for free. That’s right, Skillshare is offering The Skinny Confidential listeners two months of unlimited access to over 25,000 classes for free. To sign up, go to www.skillshare.com/skinny Produced by Dear Media 

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Starting point is 00:00:00 The following podcast is a Dear Media production. She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire. Fantastic. And he's a serial entrepreneur. A very smart cookie. And now Lauren Everts and Michael Bostic are bringing you along for the ride. Get ready for some major realness. Welcome to The Skinny Confidential, him and her.
Starting point is 00:00:21 Aha! People want low levels of anxiety. And what I realize, it's not necessarily my job. For some of my patients, it's actually to raise their anxiety. And when you see your scan that's not healthy, and you are smart enough to know, oh, my brain controls everything I do, how I think, how I feel, how I act, how I manage money,
Starting point is 00:00:46 how I am in relationships. It's like you don't want to do anything that hurts your brain. Welcome back, everybody. Welcome back to the Skinny Confidential Him and Her Show. For those of you that are new to the show, my name is Michael Bostic. I am an entrepreneur and brand builder. Most recently, the CEO of the Dear Media Podcast Network. And across from me, my wife, my co-host, my partner in crime, Lauren Everts, Fostik. That was cute. Today, we have a great episode, guys. Dr. Amen is on the show talking all about our brain.
Starting point is 00:01:14 And this one is really interesting because we really dive deep into the brain function, the health of our brain, how we can tell if we have a healthy brain, falling in love with our brain, what's good for it, what's bad for it. It's an area that we haven't dove too deeply into. And Lauren and I were at the edge of our seat listening to Dr. Amen. He is a wealth of knowledge. So who is Dr. Daniel Amen? He's an American celebrity doctor who practices as a psychiatrist and a brain disorder specialist as the director of the Amen Clinics. He also, and this is how I heard about him, Miley Cyrus was on Joe Rogan, and she was raving about this doctor.
Starting point is 00:01:47 And so I knew I had to interview him on the podcast. I reached out. I found that everyone is obsessed with him. He's really, really helped Justin Bieber. He talks about it in this episode. Justin talks about it, I guess, on his video series that he does on YouTube. So you'll have to check that out.
Starting point is 00:02:03 Dr. Amen has also been on the New York Times bestselling list five times, which is crazy. He wrote all kinds of interesting books. My favorite one that he wrote is Your Brain Is Always Listening. And then he also wrote one called The End of Mental Illness. He is very well versed in everything when it comes to the brain. With that, let's welcome Dr. Amen to the Skinny Confidential Him and Her Show. This is the Skinny Confidential Him and Her. I had two skinny margaritas last night. What is my brain looking like today? Sleepier. Yeah, I feel sleepier. Yeah. The biggest blog I wrote last year was called I Told You So.
Starting point is 00:02:48 So I've been looking at the brain for 30 years and alcohol is not a health food. And when I first said that, I got no end of grief from my colleagues. And last year, the American Cancer Society came out and said, people shouldn't drink because any alcohol is related to seven different kinds of cancer. And when I first dated my wife, she said, I'll never tell you I told you so. And she lied because it's like her favorite thing to say. And so I wrote this blog, I told you so, because based on the imaging work we do, we have now 184,000 scans on people from 150 countries. It's just really clear.
Starting point is 00:03:36 Alcohol drops blood flow and activity in your brain, which is why people sort of do dumb things when they drink. They get into more things when they drink. They get into more fights when they drink. They have more cognitive impairment when they drink. And people go, but I need to drink. I love to drink. And the question is, do you love something that does not love you back? And I don't know if you've ever been in a bad relationship. I have. I'm not doing that with things I can control. What does someone's brain look like when they've had, say, five drinks? It's 4th of July. You go out with your friends. You have five drinks. What is the difference
Starting point is 00:04:16 between a brain that is healthy not drinking and a brain that is drinking on 4th of July excessively? So I was part of an Emmy-winning show with Lisa Gibbons called The Truth About Drinking. And in the show, my role was to take a young adult who drank quite a bit, scanned him sober, not good, was older than he was. And then we got him drunk on national television and scanned him again, completely dropped the executive part of his brain, the part of your brain, the front part of your brain involved in forethought and judgment, impulse control, organization, planning. That's why domestic violence goes way up with alcohol, because people don't make thoughtful decisions.
Starting point is 00:05:03 With someone who's drinking over time, like say we're talking about an alcoholic who's 55 years old, are there holes in their brain? When you look at a brain scan of someone who is obsessed with alcohol and drinking it all the time, what does that look like? You know, when I first started imaging in 1991, I was the director of a substance abuse treatment program. And the scans were so bad. I brought them home to my four children and
Starting point is 00:05:29 effectively created anxiety disorders in all four of them when it came to substance abuse. I'm like, you don't want a brain like this. And people go, well, it's bad for all sorts of health reasons, cancer and diabetes and obesity. But it decreases forethought and judgment. It's not good. I have a poster that hangs in about 100,000 schools around the world. It's called, Which Brain Do You Want? Healthy scans surrounded by alcohol and drug-affected scans. It's not good news.
Starting point is 00:06:03 So in your life, do you abstain completely? No alcohol at all? Or will you partake? So I don't drink. I don't really like to drink. I don't like a fuzzy brain. I like clarity. And when I was 16, I got drunk on a half a bottle of champagne and a six-pack of Michelob.
Starting point is 00:06:21 I was sick for three days. And I only had to do that one more time to realize it's just not for me. And the whole drug issue, because it's so popular now, was popular when I grew up in the late 60s. I'm like, why do I want to lose control of my mind? So there's actually a healthy level of anxiety because I thought I'm a psychiatrist. People want low levels of anxiety. And what I realized, it's not necessarily my job. For some of my patients, it's actually to raise their anxiety.
Starting point is 00:06:55 And when you see your scan that's not healthy and you are smart enough to know, oh, my brain controls everything I do, how I think, how I feel, how I act, how I manage money, how I am in relationships. It's like you don't want to do anything that hurts your brain. And so when people come to you, point blank, it sounds like obviously alcohol is not good for you. We've identified that. That's been proven.
Starting point is 00:07:17 But is there a sliding scale? It's like, okay, some people are going to go out at night. They're going to enjoy a glass of wine. And then that scale gets exponentially worse. You have three, five. From the scans you've seen, is there anything where like, okay, I get it if you're going to have a glass of wine or compared to three glasses, five glasses. Do you see exponentially getting worse and worse and worse? And what is that number if there is a, I'm putting quotations here because we've determined it's not healthy, a healthy number of drinks.
Starting point is 00:07:45 Yeah, there's a brand new study from Spain that looked at MRI scans and any alcohol. And they showed that any alcohol made your brain look worse than people who didn't drink. So you want to just go, what's the dose of my poison? And so if you have two glasses a week, it's probably not a big deal. Of course, it depends on the size of the glass. I was in the army and stationed in Germany and some of the beer steins were huge. So it depends on the size. Everybody does bad things. If you're
Starting point is 00:08:21 going to do bad things, you want to do the other good things more. Like I did the big NFL study at a time when the NFL was lying. They had a problem. And obviously, playing football is a brain-damaging sport. But one of my players signed an $88 million contract. So he's going to play. So if you're going to do something that's bad, you want to do everything else right which what is everything else is right if you're gonna if you're gonna drink alcohol and you're gonna have wine or you're
Starting point is 00:08:51 gonna play football what are the things that are right or maybe like even like breaking it out like if i if we like lauren said last night she's gonna go have two margaritas what are things then she can do to maybe counteract some of that poor behavior. Poor behavior? No pun intended. So making sure you had food before you drank, that's important. Make sure the food's healthy. So diet is such an important part. Your brain is 2% of your body's weight, about three pounds. It uses 20 to 30% of the calories you consume. And so making sure your diet is clean and healthy. And you guys have a little one, right? One and a half. Yeah. And so- Blueberry monster. She loves blueberries, which I think I've heard you say is good for the mind.
Starting point is 00:09:38 Blueberries are like brain berries. That's what I think of them. And kids' meals are just a disaster. It's like, why would you ever feed your children these things unless you just don't like them? They're not happy meals. They're sad meals. So nutrition is critical. Exercise, supplementation. I'm a huge fan of supplementation. Multiple vitamin, fish oil.
Starting point is 00:10:00 Optimize your vitamin D level. Brand new study out. Actually, two this week. One, vitamin D level. Brand new study out, actually two this week, one vitamin D decreases cravings for opiates and you have more gray matter if you have healthy vitamin D levels, even from supplementation. So I was pretty excited about that. And then you go through your day asking yourself this question, is this good for my brain or bad for it? And if you can answer it with information and love, love of yourself, love of your spouse,
Starting point is 00:10:31 love of your kids, love of your money, your mission, you just start making better decisions. Sleep is critical for brain function. And the reason the two skinny margaritas were not great for you is it decreases REM sleep. And REM sleep is the most restorative sleep. When you sleep, your brain cleans or washes itself. And if you're not getting good sleep, your brain sort of gets dirty. One of the best tips someone told me about my daughter, I really like this tip too, and I'm going to do it for all my kids if I
Starting point is 00:11:05 have more, is feed her what you're eating yourself. So if I'm eating an avocado, I give her an avocado. This morning I had papaya, I give her papaya. Whatever I'm eating, I just give her some of mine. Instead of having like this whole cabinet of like her processed food or her baby food, whatever that is, I just give her what I'm eating, hoping it's healthy. I try to eat as healthy as I can. And I think that that's made for her to eat whatever she wants. She's very, she'll eat anything now. And it also makes her eat healthy because I'm already eating healthy.
Starting point is 00:11:38 I thought that was good advice. I like it as long as you're eating healthy. Right. Yeah, don't eat a donut and give it to her. Right. 95% of baby food has toxic levels of metals in it. It's horrifying. When you look at that, you're like, oh, great. We're just poisoning the next generation.
Starting point is 00:11:58 Somebody should be paying attention to that. That is so crazy. That is wild. I told you off air, but I first heard about you because I was listening to Joe Rogan and Miley Cyrus was on and she was just singing your praises left and right and she was saying that you helped her essentially stop smoking weed so I would love to talk about also marijuana I know you talk about that a lot. What is the difference between a marijuana brain, and I put that in quotes, and an alcohol brain? You know what, Michael?
Starting point is 00:12:37 What, Lauren? I just had my ritual protein shake. Is that why you're looking strong, fit, glowing, beautiful, exquisite? Yes, because there's 20 grams of pea protein plus a complete amino acid profile. This protein is legit, okay? The reason that I don't love proteins is because they're filled with soy. This one, essential protein by Ritual, is soy-free, gluten-free, and formulated with non-GMO ingredients. Here's how I prepare it. Okay. It's a very specific way. I do two
Starting point is 00:13:11 scoops of ritual essential protein. Then I do a little bit of ice, not too much. If you do too much, it gets slushy. Then I do half water, half unsweetened almond milk, cinnamon. And here's the deal. A big scoop of cacao. Cacao is filled with antioxidants and mixed with the protein. It is legit. It's like a milkshake, you guys. Sometimes once in a while, not every day, I would say four days a week, I'll do half of a banana. And on the other days, I do no banana. You can mix it up. You can do you. You can mix it with anything because this protein is delicious, handcrafted vanilla flavor. It's a direct from farmer vanilla bean extract. It's all clean. It's plant-based. It's great for all the different stages of your life, pregnancy, postpartum. And I just like it because if I'm in a hurry and I'm running late,
Starting point is 00:13:59 I feel like I am getting filled up. And I also feel like I'm getting my protein in, which sometimes I have a problem with. So try my smoothie. It's like a cacao milkshake. You could sprinkle some cacao nibs on the top. Check out Ritual. They have the best multivitamins and protein. It's clean. It's delicious. Why not shake up your Ritual to make trying something new a less scary Ritual offers a money back guarantee. So if you're not 100% in love, you can send it back. Plus, all Skinny Confidential, him and her listeners get 10% off during your first three months. You're going to visit ritual.com
Starting point is 00:14:34 slash skinny to add essential protein today. That's ritual.com slash skinny. I love Miley. I've been Miley's doctor for 10 years. And it was really hard the first five or six getting her to stop because she was sort of the poster girl for marijuana. And I'm always thinking of analogies. And Miley's an animal lover. And I'm like, you have these two areas of your brain. It's called the hippocampus, which is Greek for seahorse. And I'm like, oh, I bet that's the hook.
Starting point is 00:15:12 And your hippocampus is very special because it actually makes 700 new cells every day. Wow. And it's one of the only parts of the brain that continues to produce stem cells throughout life. So we used to think you're born with all the brain cells you'll ever have, and if you lose them, that's it. And I'm like, Miley, your brain is producing 700 new baby seahorses every day.
Starting point is 00:15:40 The environment you put your brain in is either gonna grow the seahorses or it's going to murder the seahorses. She got up from the couch and she goes, that's not fair. You know I'm an animal lover. And I'm like, you don't want to be murdering these baby seahorses in your brain. And that's what we see with marijuana. We also see it with alcohol. And like, I have no dog in the marijuana fight. I'm going to make more money if you're smoking because you're just more likely to see me than if you don't. But I published two big studies, one on a thousand marijuana users compared to healthy. Every area of their brain was lower.
Starting point is 00:16:23 That's not a good thing. It means their brains are prematurely aged. And then I published the world's largest imaging study on 62,454 scans on how the brain ages. So we looked at our youngest patient was nine months. Our oldest is 105. We have these great aging graphs. And then since we had the data, we go, so what accelerates aging? Schizophrenia was the worst thing. Your brain was like 10 years older on average if you had that diagnosis. The next worst, and it shocked us, was marijuana. It was worse than alcohol, worse than nicotine.
Starting point is 00:17:01 It was just worse. And if you're a teenager who smokes, and this is my big concern, because as the perception of dangerousness of drug goes down, its use goes up. And so it's like 40% of teenagers are smoking pot at some point. I mean, it's just really ridiculous. If you smoke pot as a teenager, you have a 450% increased risk of being psychotic at some point. As a young adult, it increases your risk of anxiety, depression, and suicide. Do you think a lot of suicides
Starting point is 00:17:40 and a lot of depression and anxiety are coming from these substances? I would love for you to speak more on that. That was like a very quick yes. Not to say wrong, but it means you get very, obviously a lot of conviction in that. Yes, I want to know why. They change your brain. So when you're a teenager, your brain continues to go through wild development.
Starting point is 00:18:07 Your brain is pruning itself. It's getting rid of things you're not using. And it's doing this process called myelinization. So your nerve cells are becoming wrapped with a white fatty substance called myelin. And myelin acts like insulation on copper wires. So it makes, that's why when you're 25, 27 for boys, when the brain is mostly fully myelinated, you just make better decisions. You're more thoughtful. You learn from the mistakes you make. You're less emotional. And what marijuana does, along with alcohol and other
Starting point is 00:18:46 drugs, is it disrupts the myelinization in your brain. And so people start using drugs when they're 14. Well, say they go to a program when they're 30, they're still emotionally sort of 14 and they've impaired their brain's development. Now, what I always start with clinically with a patient is not so much the neuroscientist. The neuroscience is your brain is involved in everything you do, how you think, how you feel, how you act, how you get along with other people. It's the organ of learning, of loving, and every decision you make. And when it works right, you work right. And when it doesn't, you don't. So if you start with fall in love with your brain, I always say Freud was wrong. Penis envy is not the cause of anybody's problem. Haven't seen it once in 40 years. It's brain envy. You want to learn to love and care
Starting point is 00:19:46 for this three pounds between your ears. And if you get to that love point, brain envy point, you're like, oh, well, that's why I shouldn't do that. We have a high school course that's in all 50 states called Brain Thrive by 25. We teach teenagers to love and care for their brain. And there's a whole section on, okay, avoid this, do that. And when we do the avoid this, invariably, I don't know why it's a boy, 14-year-old boy raises his hand and goes, how can you have any fun?
Starting point is 00:20:17 And so we play a game with them called who has more fun, the kid with the good brain or the kid with the bad brain? And kid with good brain gets the girl, but also gets to keep her because he doesn't act like a jerk. Gets into the college they want to get into, gets the best jobs. I dated a lot of guys with the bad brain in high school. Now I think I got one with the good brain. Well, that's still, we're still, jury's still out on that. The jury is still out on that. We'll have to see what goes on. Have you ever examined a brain of someone who committed suicide? Yeah, unfortunately.
Starting point is 00:20:53 And what is- I study. We do a formal outcome study on everybody we see. And we have the best outcomes of anyone that publishes outcomes for mental health. But not everybody gets better. And I published a study on 40 people who later we found out killed themselves. And as a group, they have really low activity in the front part of their brain, especially on the underside of the brain, often from traumatic brain injuries.
Starting point is 00:21:25 Is that something they're born with? Or is that something that happens? Or is it because of substance abuse? Or is it a combination of everything? Or in those studies, people that have taken their own lives, have you seen like they're born, they have this issue where they have less activity and it just progressively gets worse over time? We're just trying to understand how much is genetics. You can have a bad brain from all of those things. If your mom, for example, drank when she was pregnant with you, she's setting you up for trouble. I dedicated my book, The End of Mental Illness, to my two nieces, Amelie and Alize, because they were loaded genetically for mental illness, family history of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression,
Starting point is 00:22:06 suicide, borderline, I mean, anything they had in their family. And then they were raised in chaos. Child Protective Service took them four and a half years ago. And I didn't know them, but when they got taken into Child Protective Services, you know, I was like, okay, we have to do something about this. And the whole idea behind the end of mental illness is they're loaded for it. How do we prevent it in them and in their children? So pre-birth stuff can happen. You know how healthy you are when you are pregnant matters. The brain goes under wild development.
Starting point is 00:22:44 Birth, birth trauma is a common cause of mental health issues because if you get anoxia or lack of oxygen because you had a hard birth, that can cause problems. Traumatic brain injury. If you said, hey, Daniel, it's the single most important thing you've learned from 184,000 scans, mild traumatic brain injury ruins people's lives and nobody knows about it. So for example, in my NFL work, we've scanned 300 NFL players. They have four times the level of depression as the general population. Just from all the impact. Wildly successful, strong, smart people. Because if you damage the brain, you damage how you feel, you damage how
Starting point is 00:23:28 you act, you damage how you think. I have a really good girlfriend who was living a completely normal life, really positive, like great girl. And she got into a car accident and there was no scars or bumps or anything on her, but she got a concussion. And all of a sudden, like weeks later, she started experiencing all this anxiety and all this depression. And a lot of her friends cut her out because they were like, you don't have any cuts and bruises on you from the accident. What are you talking about? And she just had this horrible time of dealing with her brain injury because no one could see it. Do you see that a lot with people who have this brain injury? But because it's sort of like Lyme disease, you can't see it. People think it's fake.
Starting point is 00:24:17 So this is random, but Zaza's latest pastime hobby is painting. Yeah, she's a real artist. She is a real artist. She's painting you pictures, Weston. She's taking commissions. And you know what I'm going to tell her to do when she gets a little older, Michael? What are you going to tell her to do? Skillshare. Every human being was born to create and Skillshare has all the tools that you need. If you want to learn more about paint brushing, shout out to Zaza. Or you want to learn more about Instagram video assets. Or even if you want to learn more about Instagram video assets,
Starting point is 00:24:45 or even if you want to learn how to plan your day and make it productive, Skillshare is for you. You know what I love about Skillshare? It's an easy entry point where you can jump in and learn any skill online. Very affordable. You don't need some fancy college, some fancy degree. The entire time I've operated Dear Media from the beginning with all the team members that we've brought in, I don't think I've ever looked at a college resume. What I look at is skills. I look and see what work people have done, what they're capable of, what they can do. It doesn't matter their experience level if they've gone, if they've worked in a bunch of companies before, if they've gone to some fancy school, it matters. Can they get the job done and do they have the skills?
Starting point is 00:25:18 So the ones that I am doing with my team right now, because we get to do some every couple of months is the TikTok for everybody. And it really taught us about TikTok. So basically, it helps you upload your first TikTok. There's also one that's super interesting that I feel like has had like 50,000 students, and it's Productivity Masterclass. These two are going to improve your life drastically, especially if you're a creator or a business owner. Yeah. And a time when the world is changing so rapidly with technology, it's so important that you're constantly staying up to date and adding new relevant skills. Sometimes schools can't get
Starting point is 00:25:53 you there. Skillshare is amazing because they have real-time classes taught by people like you and me where you can jump in and basically learn anything. So jump to the head of the line, jump into a Skillshare class, acquire a valuable skill, and maybe take your career to that next level. Skillshare is also incredibly affordable, and an annual subscription is less than $10 a month. Explore your creativity at Skillshare.com slash TSC and get one month free. So you get a one month free trial of premium membership. That's one month of a premium membership at Skillshare.com slash TSC. Except on the imaging work we do, we can see it.
Starting point is 00:26:36 Yeah. You know, and when we see it, and often people who are suffering, they come to see us and we go, have you ever had a brain injury? Because it's just, it's on the top of our list of causes of brain health problems. What is a brain injury? Could that be a concussion where you fell? Yes. So your brain is soft, about the consistency of soft butter. Your skull is really hard and has
Starting point is 00:27:02 multiple sharp bony ridges. Your brain was not meant to hit a soccer ball with your head. Your brain was not meant to play tackle football or to snowboard. Your brain just wasn't evolved for that or made for that. And soft in a hard skull with sharp bony ridges. Mild traumatic brain injuries can occur if you never lost consciousness. So for example, take a baby and shake them violently. That could cause learning problems. It could cause mood problems. It could cause lifelong problems because you're damaging the baby's brain. So think of a car accident where you have a whiplash injury. Well, what's on top of your neck?
Starting point is 00:27:47 It's your brain. And your brain isn't anchored in your skull. It floats in water. And so when you go helmet to helmet with someone, your brain shakes. And then that damages it. And so we often ask people, have you ever had a brain injury? And they'll often say no. And then we go, are you sure? Have you ever fallen out of a tree, off a fence, dove into a shallow pool, had a concussion playing sports? You cannot believe the number of people
Starting point is 00:28:16 go, no, no, no. Oh, I was seven and I fell out of a second story window. I was just thinking about how many brain injuries I've had when I was a kid. Thinking trees, hockey, boxing, football, all these things. I'm like, oh shit, knocked my teeth out when I was seven, fell down off a ramp. I'm like, I probably got a lot of stuff going on here. If Michael and I came to see you and we did a brain scan and you get our scan and you see our brain and you see things to improve, are you prescribing certain foods? are you prescribing certain foods? Are you prescribing certain supplements?
Starting point is 00:28:47 What is the plan of action to get your brain back to normal? Or to try to get it as, I mean, it sounds like it'll never be back to what it was, but at least to work to improve it, right? Well, it depends. I saw a guy a week ago, Monday, and I saw him for the first time three years ago, and his brain was headed for Alzheimer's disease. It looked awful. He was drinking too much and
Starting point is 00:29:11 just didn't care about his brain. And then a year later on supplements, mostly, his brain looked better. And then we got diets, supplements, good decision-making. I had brain envy when I scanned him two weeks ago. His brain just looked beautiful. So for most people, you can get their brain to a healthy state. One of my favorite stories, Lisa Gibbons and I, she's a journalist and a media person. She and I have been friends forever. And her mom and her grandmother died with Alzheimer's disease. And I just love her. And I'm like, come on,
Starting point is 00:29:51 you need to come see me because we can tell 20 years early if your brain's headed for darkness. And she was going through a hard time and she came to see me and her brain was headed for darkness. And this is when she's like 52. And did she at this time feel completely normal? Like she would have no idea. She was sad. She was going through like a breakup and she felt sad. But she had no idea she's heading towards Alzheimer's. No, but she had been worried about it because, you know, when you have it in your family, you're like, is that going to happen to me. Sure. But by doing all the right things, 11 years later, her brain is beautiful and healthy. And she's cognitively as sharp.
Starting point is 00:30:31 And that's not what usually happens, right? 10 years later, your face isn't the same. Well, that same process is going on in the brain, but it doesn't have to. And the cool thing, whatever's good for your brain is also good for your skin is also good for your skin because the health of your skin is an outside reflection of the health of your brain.
Starting point is 00:30:51 This is a granular question, but you've mentioned supplements twice. High level for the audience, if they're thinking about, like these are your critical supplements, they're essentials, vitamin D, fish oils mentioned. Are there like four or five of these things that you
Starting point is 00:31:05 across the board recommend for everybody? So I'm a huge fan of saffron. And I have a company called BrainMD and we make something called Happy Saffron. Saffron, zinc, and curcumins because- Blended. It's a- because they're 22 randomized controlled trials on saffron as effective as boosting mood as Prozac, Zoloft, Effexor, Imipramine. But it doesn't have the sexual side effects that those antidepressants have. And I always think first do no harm, use the least toxic, most effective treatment. So the supplements I take every day, a really good multiple vitamin, high dose, high quality fish oil, vitamin D, happy saffron. Is there a brand, maybe your own brand, but is there other brands you like that are high quality? Because I know there's so much out there. That's
Starting point is 00:32:01 actually one of my challenges. I'm looking at supplements. I've got a lot of smart people on the show and they recommend supplements. And I'm trying to figure, okay, there's so much out there that's actually one of my challenges i'm looking at supplements got a lot of smart people on the show and they recommend supplements and i'm trying to figure okay like there's so many brands out there other ones are like hey this is an this is a tier a brand these are ones to stay away from yeah well i'm fond of ours brain md for sure but i also like natural factors i think they do a really great job and they have a very wide selection yeah there are a lot of brands i like that I think do a really good job and what's in the bottle will actually, what's on the
Starting point is 00:32:30 label will be in the bottle on the day it expires. Do you like Thorne? We keep hearing Thorne. Thorne's a great company as well. And do you, for fish oil, I know there's a different one, there's like cod, is there a specific type of fish oil that, is it the liquid form or the capsule? Yeah, this, I always see on the internet too about fish oil not taking the right one.
Starting point is 00:32:49 Isn't there different kinds? There is. And there's different omega-3 fatty acids. And there are a lot of vegans who don't get enough EPA and DHA. From a mental health standpoint, they found EPA. So if you think of the major components of omega-3 fatty acids, and they're critical because 25% of the nerve cell membranes in your brain is made up of omega-3 fatty acids. And as a society, like 95% of us are low in omega-3 fatty acids, simple blood tests called the omega-3 index.
Starting point is 00:33:28 But EPA helps focus and mood where DHA is better for memory and anxiety. And so the one we make 60% EPA, 40% DHA in a dose that will get your omega-3 index healthy. What can I be doing for my one and a half year old? Is there anything that she should be doing to improve her brain? She did fall off the bed. I talked about it on Instagram. She fell off the bed. And now you're giving me anxiety.
Starting point is 00:34:01 Do I need to get her a brain scan? You know, not yet. But what you should be doing is watching her. How's her mood? How's her behavior? How's her learning? How are her words? I feel like everything's good.
Starting point is 00:34:13 And if everything's good, everybody falls. But too often, people will fall and then they'll get more irritable and parents will go stop it. And discipline them rather than what I always say, people who are listening should write this down, be curious, not furious. Always be the scientist, not just the subject. If you can just step back and go, huh. So if I'm being a bitch to you because you're annoying me, you need to be curious, not furious. I'm literally going to tattoo that. I'm pretty curious. No, you aren't. That's a good one. I like that a lot. I'm going to remind my husband of that every single day. Well, and you also want to ask yourself, does it fit? So you guys together as a couple should go,
Starting point is 00:35:02 what's our goal as a couple? Like for my wife and I, kind, caring, loving, supportive, passionate relationship. Always want that. Don't always feel like that. But both of us, because we designed that together, always want it. So, when I feel like being irritating, I don't. You can get back to it. Because I ask myself, well, does it fit? Does my behavior fit the goals I have? And my wife grew up in trauma.
Starting point is 00:35:36 She has a high ACE score. So ACE is called Adverse Childhood Experiences. And she wrote a book about it, The Relentless Courage of a Scared Child. And so her brain quickly can go to negativity and she works on it. And because I want a kind, caring, loving, supportive relationship, when she goes that way and it frustrates me, I'll notice what I like about her more than what I don't. And that helps tamp down the negativity. That is some of the best advice that's been on our podcast. I hope that you really listen to that and you play it over and over. I am listening to it, but I do think that sometimes people come
Starting point is 00:36:14 on the show. I think it takes two, right? Your wife also has to be participating and getting to a place where she's also recognizing when either your behavior is poor, her behavior is poor and get back to that place, right? I think that sometimes people, I don't want to generalize everybody that have grown up in trauma. They expect everybody to come into their world, right? And they expect them to like embrace that trauma with them, but it, but it's not always possible, right? It takes two people to kind of recognize, Hey, we've got to work to these loving, caring, compassionate relationships. We've got to both get to that place and both be aligned. He's saying sometimes I can be chaotic.
Starting point is 00:36:50 No, no, I'm not attacking you. I believe to one of your podcasts, and you said that there was some mental health challenges in your family. Lots of mental health challenges. My mom committed suicide when I was 18. My sister had severe, severe, severe addiction when she probably was the age of 13 to 19. Her sister and her are five years apart. So when her mother passed, this sister was much younger. I'm very lucky my dad was very stable, but it could be way worse. I'm not saying that I I don't like to live in the trauma. Does that make sense? I don't like it to define me. I really try to move forward. But there are habits that I picked up that are chaotic that I've brought into my relationship now. So I think that's what he's referring to. So I'm planning some trips this
Starting point is 00:37:49 summer, which is super exciting. And when I'm on the go, I have to have nail polish on me because there's nothing worse for me than a chip nail. I can't deal with it. It drives me nuts. I'm sure a lot of you are like that. So what I do is I bring my Olive and June Manny system. And you guys, this is so efficient. First of all, it's super cute. Okay. It's like light pink. It comes with the right colors, but it has this thing called a poppy in it. Okay. It's a patented poppy. And the biggest nail issue, basically, we all know this is that you can't do both hands. One hand looks like it was done by an artist. And the other hand looks like it's just the sloppiest thing on the planet.
Starting point is 00:38:31 Like it's painted by a five-year-old. But this kit, like I said, has the poppy. So you can paint both of your hands. Literally, this poppy brush handle just makes it so easy to paint. It looks good. The system's also super affordable. So there's six polishes, which breaks down to $2 a manicure. And the polish is great. Like all the time people are asking me
Starting point is 00:38:51 if I have gel and I do do gel sometimes. But when I'm at home, I never do gel. I give my nails a break, but it's so shiny and it doesn't chip. That's so important to me that it doesn't chip, especially when I'm traveling. So definitely try it out. We have the founder on the podcast, Sarah Gibson Tunnel. She's insane. She's so detail-oriented. She's all about a brand. And it's no surprise that the Olive and June Manny system is so flawless. She literally thought of everything. No messy nails, no salon price tag. And now you get to get 20% off your first Manny system with our code skinny. Your new nail life is here. Get 20% off your first Manny system. When you use promo code skinny at oliveandjune.com, we're done with expensive bad Manny's. This is the new us.
Starting point is 00:39:42 Yeah. Cause it resets your nervous system to be vigilant. When something that traumatic happened, your emotional brain, if I scanned you, we call it the diamond pattern, your emotional brain pops up. And then you begin to watch for bad things to happen. And if your partner is not always watching for bad things to happen, it's stressful. And I noticed it. I fell in love with my wife early. So, I had to scan her early. That's sort of a prerequisite for my dating life. And I was like, I want to look at your brain. She goes, you want to look at my naked brain? And as a gift, I gave her 10 sessions of EMDR. It's a specific psychological treatment for trauma. And she went on, she did it for a year.
Starting point is 00:40:31 It was so helpful for her. Everyone says this. Can you explain to our audience what that is? So EMDR stands for eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. And basically what they have you do, therapist has you bring up the trauma. People go, no, don't want to think about it. No, go into the pain, helps it dissipate,
Starting point is 00:40:54 block the pain, it expands the pain. And so you bring it up, they have your eyes go back and forth, and it takes the energy out of the trauma. You still remember it, but you don't attach to the scary parts of it. And then you see what this trauma is connected to, and you begin to clean up the connections along the way that feed into it. It's really helpful. I published a study on imaging and EMDR on police officers who are involved in shootings.
Starting point is 00:41:30 Police officers do not like shooting people. It's really clear. And for this group, they couldn't go back to work because they were so anxious and sad. And after eight sessions, they went back to work. It was cool.
Starting point is 00:41:46 When can I make an appointment? Well, do you even take appointments with everything you're doing? Because you're very active on social media. You have books. There's so much going on. Are you actually a working therapist right now? Well, I have my own patients. But one of the things we're doing that might be fun for you guys is we're doing an influencer series. So the only new people i see are people who are willing to film it and we just did lewis house and it was great fun and tam and sorsak the young pretty little liars actress and jenny garth and we did one with anna lynyn McCord. And she told me for the first time she
Starting point is 00:42:26 ever said this publicly, she had multiple personality disorder, Roy called dissociative identity disorder. That went viral. That was fun. I actually saw that and I didn't remember that's the other way I found you until you just said that. She came out and really opened up. That was cool. Yeah, no, it was really cool. That's sort of the best and highest use of my time is teaching people about what we do. But for people who don't want to do it, I have 40 psychiatrists that are amazing. Speaking of that type of therapy, you mentioned one thing where people block. Do you see in that type of therapy people go into those sessions and remember or identify
Starting point is 00:43:03 things that they didn't even, like subconsciously weren't even aware of anymore no question because that's because i always wonder like on the surface i have i try to i'm sure there's been some type of trauma in my life somewhere somehow i i think probably in everybody's life there's something right right i can't consciously pinpoint like what that is or if there's a specific, I mean, on a large level, there's micro stuff and go, when's the first time I had that thought or that feeling? is so important because it often helps to explain why we have these sort of unexplainable moments. If you're more anxious or more angry, then really try to be curious, not furious, and go, that's the first time I had that feeling.
Starting point is 00:44:19 And you'll notice these bridges. I had this one guy who had a lot of sexual performance anxiety. And it was about to ruin his relationship. And he came to see me. And I'm like, so right before you have sex, what are you thinking and feeling? It's not going to work. I'm going to fail. And I had him close his eyes.
Starting point is 00:44:44 Tell me the first time you had that thought or feeling. Six years old, couldn't learn how to read. He was dyslexic and his dad was beating him. And so that got transferred into the bedroom for him. And as we cleaned that up, you know, I'm here, this is now, his performance got better. So do you find, I know, I'm here, this is now, performance got better. So do you find, I mean, in your work, it sounds like there's a lot of people that don't correlate certain things to other areas. Like you wouldn't correlate, hey, I couldn't on the surface. Most people wouldn't correlate, I couldn't read till I can't perform in the bedroom. But do you find those connections all the time where it's something on the surface just doesn't look like it would ever like have a linear path to that, but it does. Absolutely. Yeah. So for example, someone could have been assaulted in a park and while they're
Starting point is 00:45:31 assaulted in their visual field, they saw pine trees. All of a sudden they can be in the mountains with pine trees and have a panic attack and they have no idea why, because their conscious mind didn't connect the pine trees to the assault what is your opinion on plant medicine and mushrooms and ayahuasca and all these things that are being talked about a lot it's not the first thing i would do i mean it's really popular and everybody's super excited about it and i, well, can we work on your diet and supplementation and not believing every stupid thought you have? Let's do that first. And if I have a foundation of really good mental hygiene habits and I'm still not making progress, then I think it can be helpful. I actually did a study on ibogaine, which is
Starting point is 00:46:26 another plant medicine, and it really calmed down the emotional brain, but it sort of calmed down everything else as well. And I have a lot of patients that have done a lot of it, and it sort of is a short-term fix, but not a long-term solution. We have a lot of conversations on this podcast, but what I'm always very careful of is jumping to extremes before you've taken care of the bases, right? And that's like the basis you said, proper diet, proper sleep, proper supplementation, working out, reading. Sex. Yeah, like these basic things. Because the basic like people want to, because the basic things are sometimes the hardest things, right? Like it requires discipline. People want to jump to the extreme thing before they take care of the basics.
Starting point is 00:47:11 And it's almost like they want to like skip ahead of the line in a weird analogy. Does that make sense? Right. They don't want to do the work. Yes. And I think of mental health like physical health in order for us to have healthy bodies, that you have to make
Starting point is 00:47:27 good decisions over and over and over again, right? I mean, most of your decisions need to be good and you need to be in a routine. The same thing's true for your mind. You need to take care of your brain because your brain creates your mind. And then you need good mental habits. So I start every day with today is going to be a great day. And that way my unconscious mind finds why it's going to be a great day. I start, I go to bed every night, say a prayer. And then I go, what went well today? And I search for the little tiny moments.
Starting point is 00:48:04 I call them the micro moments of happiness. And I put myself to bed with that. And my dad died last year. And with Father's Day coming up, it makes me think a lot about him. And that night when I went to bed, just because it's my habit, I went, what went well today? And then, you And then the supervising critical voice in my head goes, you are a terrible human being for wanting to do this exercise tonight. But it was my habit. And then I remember the interaction between the police officer and my mom was so beautiful. All the texts I got from my friends and holding my dad's hand before they took him away. And this went right to sleep. Didn't mean I wasn't sad.
Starting point is 00:48:45 I was totally sad. And didn't mean I didn't grieve. Still grieving. But it helps because I have these habits. And there's another fun trauma technique I teach you called havening. It's really interesting. You should have the guy that created havening on. I think you're loving it.
Starting point is 00:49:03 And so basically, like EMDR, it's bilateral hemisphere stimulation. So either this, where you rub your hands together, or this, while you bring up the trauma. My favorite one is doing this. And I remember after my dad died, it's like three days later, I'm at my mom's house and we're just going through stacks of paperwork. We have a family that just gets stuff done. This is my family. We get stuff done. And as I'm going through the paperwork, some idiot, who knows, I don't know, randomly put a picture of my dead dad in the mortuary in that stack of papers. And I just felt when I saw it, like somebody hit me in the face. I was angry and I was upset. I just noticed the picture bothered me that day. And so havening is you bring up what
Starting point is 00:49:52 bothers you and then you just gently stroke because it stimulates both sides of your brain while you bring up the trauma. And people can learn more at havening.org. And as I did that, so I would have rated that trauma, how bad I felt, as a 10, on a scale of 1 to 10. And then after I did this, and you do it like six times for 30 seconds. Well, after the first time, it was like a four. I wasn't so attached to being angry about it. Wow. And after the fourth time, it was like a four. I wasn't so attached to being angry about it. Wow.
Starting point is 00:50:25 And after the fourth time, I fell in love with the picture because it was the last picture of my dad on earth. And so having these tools in the toolbox, and your brain is always listening. I talk about the dragons from the past that are always breathing fire on your emotional brain. And that's the grief and loss dragon. I'm like, well, how do you deal with it? Or the death dragon, the pandemic just exploded, the death dragon. Is there tools that you utilize in the
Starting point is 00:51:00 morning? I know you said you wake up and you look for the good, but do you have a specific morning routine that helps you set the day off on a nice tone? I do. First thing when my feet hit the floor, today is going to be a great day. And then I make my wife a berry specific shake in the morning. It's a protein shake that has just loaded with nutrients. We call them smart mushrooms as opposed to happy mushrooms like reishi and turkey tail and lion's mane and greens product that I love. So a lot of water, protein to get the day going. And then we spend like half an hour together. What's the greens product?
Starting point is 00:51:43 Well, it's called Neuro Greens. It's not just greens, it's reds and blues. NeuroGreens. Oranges, NeuroGreens. Okay. I have like a sideball question here, but because you scan so many brains, we had the author Robert Green here the other day. I don't know if you've ever read any of his work. He wrote Laws of Human Nature, 48 Laws of Power. He's a really prolific writer. But I was telling him, because we both share a passion for reading, and I was like, whenever I start to feel sorry for myself or get upset or have a little anxiety or think that life's unfair or tough, I go and read these books about people in time that have lived through really challenging times. And I think that helps set. But I wonder if you've
Starting point is 00:52:20 ever scanned brains of people that are voracious readers compared to they're not. And if you've identified any kind of pathway to reading leading to less anxiety. And you might say no, but I'm just wondering if reading correlates to anything for healthy brain habits. Well, new learning is huge and reading often goes with new learning. Now, if you're reading like the same author over and over again probably not that helpful but your brain gets into the stories with really great writers and is actually there and it's working and the reason i asked about and it's different than watching a movie yeah that's why i ask because reading is so active with the brain yes that's why it's more active reminds is so active with the brain. And wearing colored
Starting point is 00:53:26 filtered lenses makes a huge difference for them. One of our influencers, Carrie Ann Inaba, the Dancing with the Stars judge who I adore, when I saw her, I'm like, I think you have Erlen. And on a scale of zero to 18, she was an 18. Wow. And so you imagine trying to read a teleprompter when the light really assaults your brain. It's really hard. I might have that. I feel assaulted by light.
Starting point is 00:53:57 So, erlin.com. That's so weird that no one's ever communicated like that. Michael gets mad at me because in the morning, the light light that's the really good word like assaults me it feels invasive when the morning i like to wake up with the with the sun with the light right but then he turns the artificial light on i'm not talking about the sun i'm talking about artificial light it it bothers me is that maybe friends from something well i would there's a self-test on their website, Irlan, I-R-L-A-N.com.
Starting point is 00:54:28 I've always wondered. The artificial light really bugs me. And it's so helpful. And it's very common after people have had a traumatic brain injury. So some of my hockey players actually will tint their visor a certain color because after they've had a concussion and, you know, in hockey, there are concussions all the time. It just, it settles their anxiety. They're less irritable and they feel better. And sometimes people wear contacts.
Starting point is 00:54:57 No one's ever like put it into words how I feel about that. I've had two concussions and that the light. What happened? I'll have to tell you off air. It's a long story. Basically, I just want to say that I had nothing to do with it.
Starting point is 00:55:10 Basically, I fell on my head. That's on, on one of them. The other one, I can't even remember. My dad just told me I had another one
Starting point is 00:55:16 when I was little. Didn't you fall on a bike or something? I fell on a bike. I fell on a bike. You're right. How did you know that? But,
Starting point is 00:55:21 so I've had two concussions and maybe that, the light thing has to do with that. So don't make fun of me when I tell you to turn it off. Or maybe you inherited it. But when I first heard about it, I thought it was nonsense because I didn't learn about it in school. And then I got over it myself because one of my friends who actually had severe migraines put on the glasses and they're different colors for everybody. And her migraines went away. So if you don't like driving at night because lights bother you, if you have depth perception problems, you see these people in the mall. If I'm at the mall and there's an escalator,
Starting point is 00:55:54 I just walk on the escalator and go up. These people don't. They'll often stay at the bottom and get on with a little bit of anxiety because their depth perception may not be as good as it could be. Wow. I have another question that I need to pique my curiosity on. You work with your patients consistently. COVID happens, the lockdowns, you're scanning brains. Have you identified any abnormalities in the scans after the lockdown
Starting point is 00:56:20 or seen anything that you haven't seen before from it? Well, I have COVID brains. I have over a hundred COVID brains and sort of surprised me. It lights up your emotional brain. So people become more vulnerable. That's what Robert Greene said. He said that he was feeling more vulnerable. COVID brains, meaning they've actually had COVID or COVID meaning they lived through the pandemic? No, no. That they had the virus and the virus activated their brain. We also have a number of long COVID or long hauler brains, which are not healthy brains.
Starting point is 00:56:59 The isolation. Well, it's good and bad, right? I mean, I don't know if you guys noticed it, but you have more time together. And if you sort of like each other, you get to bond more. We like being together. Like I had, we had like hour and a half dinners with the kids. We had just adopted our two nieces and then our daughter's 17. they were like running before the pandemic and we'd have to like try to catch them. And now we had all this time. And so eight out of 10
Starting point is 00:57:31 families say that they're closer because of that. It eliminated the bullshit friendships too that you didn't want to do too. Like all the relationships that were kind of surface, it eliminated that, which I think is really nice and did allow you to concentrate on the people that really matter if you could see them. Obviously, there's different circumstances. Well, and there's lots of ways to connect. I think businesses also learned my business that we can be apart and still be together, whether it's Zoom or phone calls or whatever. But for a great number of people, the isolation just really elevated depression. Obesity went way up, especially among young adults. It's shocking the amount of weight that that group gained from 20 to 30 and lots of addiction issues because of the isolation.
Starting point is 00:58:29 So mental health problems. I wrote at the beginning of the pandemic because The End of Mental Illness came out March 3rd, 2020. I was on a book tour and I got a call from the Mel Robbins Show in New York saying, don't come, we're closing New York. And I remember writing that night, mental hygiene is just as important as washing your hands. This pandemic is going to spawn a mental health pandemic, which is exactly what happened. Depression tripled from February of 2020 to August of 2020. We've been doing this for a while now. And I think whenever you put yourself out publicly, you're always going to, you're putting yourself in the crosshairs of public opinion, which is fine. But what we've identified, we're like, oh, there was never a year, at least online, that has been this negative. And I think people clarified that as, oh, the people are angry.
Starting point is 00:59:18 But what I've always thought is it's not that, it's that people are so fearful right now. It's manifesting itself in anger, right? Like people are lashing out or they're saying things that they wouldn't normally say because they're coming from a place of fear and you like isolate people you put them in a place where there's uncertainty they're not sure they're not sure what's going to happen or if they're gonna see their friends all these things and then you give them a device where they can have a microphone like you're gonna see some things you haven't seen before. And I wonder- No question. And for men, depression often is expressed with anger and frustration. Women are much more likely to seek help and say, help me. Guys, not so much, which is why women actually
Starting point is 01:00:00 try to kill themselves three times more than men, but men are three times more successful, which I think is our sort of level of denial that we have a problem. The other thing was it was the pandemic and then the societal unrest and the political division. Like I've never seen in the, this is my 10th presidential campaign as a psychiatrist. I've never seen anything like it, the division in families that has just ripped families apart. It's just horrifying to me. And I say over and over and over again to my patients, you have no influence if you're not connected.
Starting point is 01:00:43 Stay connected. And if you can't talk about it, don't talk about it, but be connected. You wrote a book called Healing ADD. A lot of people are prescribing Adderall for ADD. I would love to know what your thoughts on that is. Well, ADD is real. And when left untreated, the statistics are horrifying that you have a 50% chance of having a substance abuse problem. You're more likely to be overweight. You use three times the amount of money in medical services. You're less likely to finish high school. You're more likely to get divorced. You're way more likely to go to jail. So if someone has it, they really
Starting point is 01:01:26 have it. It's not digital-induced ADD, right? It's not induced by our society, but you can sort of see it in their family. And it's not ADD of the moment, but you've had it for a long time. Again, a treat is really important, but our bias at Amen Clinics is always first do no harm. Let's do the natural things first. But if they don't work, then I'm sort of a fan of Adderall or Ritalin for the right brain. But in healing ADD, I talk about there's seven different types of ADD. It's not one thing. For two of the types, stimulants like Adderall, really helpful. Calm you, focus you, you make better decisions.
Starting point is 01:02:16 You're a lot less likely to get divorced because people have untreated ADD or conflict seeking. are conflict-seeking. It's not conscious. They don't know it. But Adderall's a stimulant. Without it, they stimulate themselves either by negativity or by picking on their partner or picking on their coworkers or picking on their children. And you just see it and it's so toxic. But the reason Adderall has controversy is for the other five types, it'll actually make them worse. And so you hear great testimonials for it. And then you see horror stories. Like I had a little boy who has one of the types called Ring of Fire, and he got put on Ritalin and became suicidal. Totally makes sense for us. That type of brain always is worse on Adderall. But my daughter, who has inattentive ADD, and this is going to
Starting point is 01:03:19 sound awful, and it's just what it is. I didn't think she was very smart. And I hate when I say that, but she didn't learn her times tables until she was in fifth grade. In third grade, I'm like, something's wrong. Brought her to see a psychologist who tested her. And she basically said, she's not very smart, but she'll be okay because she tries hard. Now, she didn't use those words, but I looked at the testing and she she said she'll be okay because she tries hard. In eighth grade, she won a Presidential Scholar Award, not for academics, because she never did well in school, but for effort. She always was a kid that tried hard.
Starting point is 01:03:55 Tenth grade, she fell apart, staying up till one or two o'clock in the morning to get her homework done, Cs, Ss, and Bs. And she came to me crying at two o'clock in the morning and go, dad, I can never be as smart as my friends. And I'm like, you need to scan her. This was right when I was starting scanning and she had a classic sleepy brain. And next day I put her on a little bit of Ritalin, normalized it.
Starting point is 01:04:23 The next grading period, four months later, straight A's. Wow. Straight A's for the next 10 years. Got into the University of Edinburgh's veterinarian school. Wow. And without it, it would like be condemning a child to read, but you wouldn't give them the glasses that they needed. Wow. That was really informative for the audience, I think.
Starting point is 01:04:52 I've never heard ADGs described like that. Well, I think it's all about, I mean, there's so many, this is why we all say you've got to go to the right people and get the right information. Because like you said, if there's seven of these types and two and five of them don't work for this stuff but you're using this stuff like candy i mean 85 percent of psychiatric drugs are prescribed by non-psychiatric physicians in seven minute office visits and so people get hooked quickly on xanax or Ambien. And I'm always like, these medications are insidious in that they change your brain to need them in order for you to feel normal. And if you need them, great. I mean, we celebrate, but let's not do it without really being thoughtful about it.
Starting point is 01:05:44 This is my last question. You have worked with a ton of celebrities. I saw you worked with Will Smith on a movie. I know you worked with Miley. Is there any celebrities that you've worked with that have been really outspoken about how much you've helped them? And maybe you could tell a story about that.
Starting point is 01:05:58 I'm in Justin Bieber's docu-series on YouTube called Seasons. I didn't know that. When he first came to me, such a mess. And a lot of celebrities, they just don't do what you ask them to do, right? They have, I call it, the special spoiled and entitled dragon.
Starting point is 01:06:22 But he came into my office one day. And in the docusies, they say he was diagnosed by someone else with bipolar disorder. I scanned him. He had really low blood flow in his brain. In fact, he goes in the docu-series with this hyperbaric chamber. He used to actually sleep in it. It's one of the treatments we use if you've had traumatic brain injury because it helps to repair it. But it was hard to sort of catch him, to get him to do the right thing. But he came into my office one day, and I love this. He said, my brain is an organ like my heart is an organ. If you told me I had heart problems, I'd do everything you said. He said, I'm going to start doing everything you say.
Starting point is 01:07:11 Then he got significantly better. And what are the things that you tell someone that has horrible brain trauma? Well, so the first thing is avoid things that hurt it and do things that help it. I mean, brain health is really three things. Brain envy, you got to care about it, avoid things that hurt it, do things that help it. And so supplementation for him, hyperbaric oxygen. When he was at his lowest, some medication was helpful. I think ultimately the most helpful thing for him was Haley. Everybody that that knows him he that she is just such a wonderful human being that she brought a rational stable loving environment that was healing for him i would say that you're like a hailey oh where can everyone find you pimp yourself out tell us about your book um your instagram's incredible if you guys want to see visuals, I really enjoy following you. I've learned so much about the brain. So tell us where everyone can find you. amenclinics.com. Amen, like the last word in a prayer, clinics.com or supplements at brainmd.com at DocAmen on Instagram or Facebook. We're trying to educate the world because, you know,
Starting point is 01:08:35 the world's in trouble. And I think we're in a war for the health of our brain. And you need to be a warrior. And we teach people how to do that. The next podcast is you and your wife together. Let's do it. Let's do a him and her on him and her. She will love that. I would love it. Bring her in. Yeah. I'm really interested in interviewing his wife on drama. Well, listen, I think this, I mean, for me personally, this was very helpful, very informative. I think you've probably helped a lot of people doing this today. So thank you, Dr. Amon for coming on. Really appreciate you. Thank you. Thank you. Do you want to win a copy of Dr. Amen's book, Your Brain Is Always Listening? All you have to do is tell
Starting point is 01:09:12 us your favorite part of this episode on my latest Instagram, at Lauren Bostick, and someone from the team will slide into your DMs. Thank you guys so much for listening. Make sure you rate and review the show on iTunes.

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