The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast - Dr. Daniel Amen On Optimal Brain Health, Anxiety Management, Male Vs. Female Brains, & The Effects Of Alcohol & Drugs On The Brain

Episode Date: June 5, 2023

#576: Today we're sitting down again with Dr. Daniel Amen. Dr. Amen is a brain health expert, physician, psychiatrist, and founder of Amen Clinics, the world’s largest database of brain scans for psychiatry. Dr. Amen is one of the most visible and influential experts on brain health and mental health with millions of followers on social media & is on a mission to end mental illness by creating a revolution in brain health. Today we're sitting down with Dr. Amen to discuss anything and everything related to our brain, how we've been actively distorting our own thinking & how to stop. He also gets into the facts: the psychological common denominator of people who live the longest, the effects that prescription AND nonprescription drugs have on your brain, commonalities of people with anxiety, and everything you should know about ADD and ADHD. Lastly he gives our audience tangible tips of what people can do to enhance their brain health, eliminate brain fog, enhance mental flexibility, and lower ADD symptoms.   To connect with Dr. Daniel G. Amen click HERE To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE Subscribe to our YouTube channel 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 This episode is brought to you by Sakara Sakara delivers science-backed, plant-rich nutrition programs and wellness essentials right to your door.  Go to Sakara.com/skinny or enter code SKINNY at checkout to receive 20% off your first order. This episode is brought to you by Thrive Market Thrive Market is the go-to for all of your grocery and household essentials- and it's all conveniently delivered to your doorstep. Get 30% off your first order, plus a free $60 gift at thrivemarket.com/skinny or use code SKINNY at checkout. This episode is brought to you by Cymbiotika Cymbiotika is a health supplement company, designing sophisticated organic formulations that are scientifically proven to increase vitality and longevity by filling nutritional gaps that result from our modern day diet. Go to cymbiotika.com/SKINNY or use code SKINNY at checkout to get 15% off sitewide. This episode is brought to you by Zoc Doc Zocdoc is the only FREE app that lets you find AND book doctors who are patient-reviewed, take your insurance, are available when you need them and treat almost every condition under the sun. Go to zocdoc.com/skinny to download the app & book with a top-rated doctor today. This episode is brought to you by Wella Wella Professionals just released its most luxurious hair care line; Ultimate Repair. You can purchase The Ultimate Repair Miracle Hair Rescue at Ulta stores, or go to wella.com to learn more. This episode is brought to you Sephora Check out Sephora's wide variety of clean beauty products at sephora.com/clean Produced by Dear Media  

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.

Aha! Not being aware of what you put on your body. So your deodorant, your body wash, your shampoo, your makeup. Is it loaded with toxins? We need to teach people to read the labels, not just of the food we consume, although we should do that, but also of the products we put on our body, because whatever goes is so juicy because, yes, he's been on the show, episode 375. But on this episode, we actually went to his clinic in Dallas and got our brain scanned. Michael didn't know what the fuck he was getting into. I just scheduled the whole thing behind his back. And we basically got on a plane from Austin, went to Dallas, and immediately I whisked him

off to the brain clinic. We had to answer a bunch of questions. A lot of personal questions. A lot of personal questions, depression, anxiety questions, all different kinds of stuff. And then we went back and we did the scan. And you have to wait a couple weeks and then you get the scan back. And lo and behold, what we discovered is that I am more like a guy and Michael's more like a girl. Well, I don't know if that's exactly right. Yes, they said 90%. They said that you have a slow brain and I have a fast brain. That's what Dr. Amen says.

His words, not mine. I'm fine to have a slow brain because I feel like it's the tortoise and the hare. We're going to define what slow and fast brains mean. Actually, it's not one better than the other. But typically, and what Lauren's talking about is it's switched. Typically, men have the slower brains and women have the faster brains. But for whatever odd reason, just like everything else in our life, we're switched. I think that it's just that I'm more relaxed and easygoing and chill. And I like am more stoic and I can just go with the flow and be flexible and you're more anal. But what you'll also hear in this episode is that fast brains are

actually associated with longer life because we're constantly on edge looking around for the danger around the corner. Who would you guys rather hang out with? Someone who's like slow and chill and fun and flexible or slow and slow who's uptight. You decide. I don't know. Okay. Dr. Daniel Amen. You've seen him everywhere. He is a brain health expert, a physician, a psychiatrist, and the founder of Amen Clinics, the world's largest database for brain scans. Dr. Amen is everywhere. He is Miley Cyrus's doctor, Justin Bieber, Megan Trainor. He's Jenny Garth. He's done Hannah Brown's brain. He's done tons of former NFL players and high profile entrepreneurs. And personally, what I got and I'll let Michael

speak next out of this whole experience was I was able to see sort of where my weak spots are. So for me, one of the things that Dr. Amen recommended in our follow-up was that I play more ping pong. He said that's going to be really good for my brain and me being able to get quicker. For Michael, he said what? I forgot. I only remember my own scan. He just says I basically need to relax a little bit more. But what's interesting about the scans is he can basically look at any damage you've done to your brain and caution you against continuing those behaviors. You can also look at your brain patterns and how you think and help you work through issues that you might be having psychologically. And so it's interesting because we look at every

other area of the body, but nobody actually goes and takes a look at our brain and scans the brain. And he'll get into it in this episode, but many clinical psychologists never even take the time to look at what's going on in someone's brain, which obviously factors greatly into what's going on with their psyche. So it's an interesting episode. He's got all the data on us. Nobody's looked at my brain more in my life than Dr. Amen at this point. Nobody's looked at Lauren's brain more. Well, I actually have looked at your brain. Now I have all the stuff on your brain. You got all the data. Yeah. I'm doing like each, I'm going like body part by body part. I want to have all the information. I was surprised that I wasn't more damaged than I am.

I thought, you know, I thought I did a number on myself when I was younger, but apparently I've recovered. You're doing good. In this episode, you'll learn how our brains work, how it influences everything about our lives, the difference between male and female brains, different ways we distort our own thinking, the effect drugs have on your brain,

why fixing your nutrition and exercise routines will change your life, and so much more. We sort of go everywhere. On that note, let's welcome Dr. Daniel Amen back to the Skinny Confidential Him and Her Show. This is the Skinny Confidential Him and Her. So Dr. Amen has been on the podcast before. I'm sure a bunch of you listened to his episode. But what's so cool about this episode is that Michael and I had the opportunity to go have our brains scanned in Dallas by your clinic. And so now not only do we have you on to ask you all the questions, I feel like in a way we're practitioners of this process. He knows more now about our brains probably than we do.

Here's the funny thing. And I'll let you describe this in your eloquent terms. Michael and I are different, but different than other people. You don't say. Talk about that. You have a lot of great brain function, both of you. But typically, I see female brains work way harder than male brains. Male brains tend to be a bit sleepy and female brains tend to be busy. And that's why she overthinks and things don't go a certain way. She tends to get upset, but you guys are switched in that your brain's a little bit sleepy. Lauren's brain's a little bit sleepy. And Michael's brain is really busy. And so I will have the opposite recommendations of what I usually do. I am not an overthinker at all. And it is sleepy. It's a little bit of sleep at the wheel, I will say. However, sometimes it's okay to be asleep at the wheel because my husband's brain is like, where's the saber-toothed tiger at all times?

Well, and when you say sleepy, just for the audience, when you say sleepy and busy, what do you mean as a sleepy brain? Because I think many people are like, does that mean someone's dumb? Or does that mean someone's not able to think? Or does it just mean it's not as active and firing as much as, you know? It sounds like it's not as emotional either. So SPEC, the study we did, basically measures three things. I mean, it's measuring blood flow and activity, how your brain works. And it's like areas that are healthy, areas that may be underactive, areas that are overactive.

And I published a study on 46,000 scans looking at the difference between the male and female brain. And women's brains, female brains were way more active on average than male brains. And it's only a problem if you're having problems in your life, but knowing what to do to make you happier and healthier, you got to have a scan. Because if you don't know, how do you know what to do? And it fit, I think, your symptoms. Yeah. And what you want better. Yeah. And so if I stimulate Lauren's brain,

she's going to feel clearer and more focused. And Michael already feels more focused. The problem is sort of slowing that down just a little bit. Yeah, I got to calm down. Yeah. Yeah. focus the problem is sort of slowing that down just a little bit yeah i gotta calm down yeah yeah so if we do that you both are already awesome you'll be more awesome it's funny because i always say i married my mother and he married his father and that's maybe because your brain's like a girl and mine's like a boy but i just tried your focus and energy.

Do you think that that will help me mentally? I do. Okay. And we also tested your brains. So you know, yes. So we know this. And so we want your memory better and your focus better.

He also said to you guys that I need to play a game like ping pong or tennis or handball that stimulates that part of the brain to be really busy. Yours is less active, which is why I don't want you to drink because alcohol is directly toxic to that brain. And if you do coordination exercises like table tennis or pickleball or tennis or dancing, if we activate that part of the brain, you're going to be sharper. You're going to think faster. And ultimately, as we age, things don't get better. They generally get worse. But it doesn't have to, which is sort of the really exciting news when I often do my first or second follow-up scan and people do what I ask them to do. Their cerebellum usually is healthy.

We're obviously going to talk about a lot of our results and go through it. you on this show before, but for people that haven't and new listeners, maybe briefly explain what you do at your clinics and what you're specifically looking for when you scan someone's brains. And I know that could be a number of things, but generally what you're looking for and how you're helping people. So, you know, I think of myself as a brain health expert. I'm trained as a psychiatrist. I have 11 clinics around the country. Our youngest patient was nine months. Our oldest is 105. We see everyone who want to have a better brain and a better life. So commonly, we see people with anxiety and depression and memory problems and ADHD and addiction, but it all comes down to how can I help you have a better brain? Because when your brain is healthy, your mind is better.

Your brain creates your mind. And about 32 years ago, I started doing a study called brain SPECT imaging. SPECT looks at blood flow and activity, looks at how your brain works. Most psychiatrists never look at the brain. And if you never look at the brain, you're throwing darts in the dark at people. And I just think, well, that's insane, right? What other medical specialists never look at the organ they treat? And in doing it, I fell in love with my own brain. It's like, oh, that wasn't good. Let's make it better. And 25 years later, it's better, healthier, stronger.

And that's the mission. So if somebody's struggling, we look, but we also take really good histories, right? Both of you filled out a lot of information. We did cognitive tests, and then we add the scans to who you are and then we go working on getting your brain better once you get your brain better think of hardware like in a computer optimize the hardware so much easier to run the software one of the most interesting things that you said to me was that you have seen a lot of football players who have had concussions and they come in and there's like i don't you could speak again more eloquently like holes and dents and all these different things in their brain and you've given them protocol and they've come back and you've scanned their brain six months

later and it's a different brain is that accurate yeah no dick buckus the famous hall of fame linebacker for the chicago bears called me his brain savior. Wow, I didn't know you worked with him. Because he ended up doing like 800 hyperbaric oxygen sessions and just sharp and he's 90 years old now. So it's never too late to have a better brain. And every day, you're making it it better you're making it worse by the habits you engage in do you believe in what a lot of people are saying about you know a lot of football players who have had a lot of concussions or with what happened to junior say out is there a correlation between depression suicide and these these concussions? Absolutely. There is.

Absolutely. I did the big NFL study at a time when the NFL was sort of lying. They had a problem. So in 2007, Anthony Davis, the Hall of Fame running back from USC, came to see me, and his brain was bad. But five months later, it's better because he did what i asked him to do have you guys seen the new netflix documentary studs no but i know what you're talking about it's really good okay and i just i love what he says to his patients so i stole it from mine it's like do what the f i say

and i love that because if you do what i, your brain will get better and then your life will be better. And so AD, Anthony Davis did what I said. Five months later, his brain is better. Then because of him, I partnered with the Los Angeles chapter of the NFL Players Association and we have scanned and treated 350 players. Wow. The NFL, people who play in the NFL have four times the level of depression as the general population. Why? I mean, they're wildly successful people.

It's because they hit their heads over and over and over again. Very bad. The one thing, so you've heard the term maybe chronic traumatic encephalopathy cte which is football dementia the the going lore is it's untreatable and progressive and i think that's a lie and actually got into a big fight last year with NPR because they're like, Dr. Amen says he can cure CTE. Never once said that because it's an autopsy diagnosis, which means you got to be dead in order for someone to make the diagnosis. And you know, that those are not my patients. That's a pathologist patients. My patients are of the living. I absolutely can see traumatic brain injury on a scan

and we can repair it if people do what we ask them to do. If someone does commit suicide, is there stuff in their brain that you would be able to see before that? Yes. Huh. And I've actually published two studies on suicide. And usually the front part of their brain is low in activity. So they don't have a break and they also are losing empathy. And empathy is if I kill myself, what will the people I love and who love me, how will they go through that? But they've lost that ability to see things from another person's point of view.

That's why you test in all those kind of like pre-exam tests to see if people have empathy to begin with. Yes. You can see empathy in the brain? Yes. It's a frontal lobe function. So the better your frontal lobes work, the more likely- Who has more empathy, me or Michael? Does that have to do with recognizing if someone's happy or sad or angry on the face? Is that one of the tests that tests for empathy or no? No. That tests for your temporal lobe function and whether or not you're exposed to trauma. So people who are exposed to emotional trauma.

So for example, and both of you did the ACE test, adverse childhood experiences. People who have a lot of those, they recognize negative faces way faster than positive so i grew up in a pretty stable home i mean it had its quirks for sure but on a scale of zero to ten and emotional trauma mine's a one my wife's an eight she grew up in crazy and she recognizes negative faces way faster than I do. I tend to recognize the positive faces. And I'm like, oh, I can train you. Because we have games to train you to recognize happy faces. And she's like, well, why would I want to do that?

Because she, you know, the suspiciousness helps her in her mind be safe so do you remember maybe i don't even forget look at this do you remember what our results were i don't even remember i thought i recognized happy faces more well i actually have them i also do want to know who has more empathy this will be interesting because this is something that makes everything into a competition no i'd love to like know if i could throw something in his face during a fight and be like, well, you know, I have more empathy, so I'm more evolved. You guys are actually very similar. That doesn't surprise me. That doesn't surprise me.

You're very similar in you're good at reading faces and you tend to read positive faces faster than negative ones. The one thing Michael could do better is the emotional flexibility not which goes with having a really we could talk about busy frontal so what is so so in terms of emotional and i'm happy to be the the guinea pig here what's an example of me being able to do better with emotional flexibility like what's a situation where like what's an everyday example or like where people aren't well when things don't go a certain way it bothers you oh yeah that's for sure like i'll give you an example right now if we went to the airport and missed our flight like let's say we were running late and missed our flight

he would talk about it he done all. He would be sweating, freaking out. I would be like, eh, we'll catch the next one. Now, is he late because of you? Me. Because of me. So that's actually the biggest problem in our marriage that I'm working on. Is that he gets really frustrated whenever I'm late. And that has to do with his emotional flexibility but it also

it has to do also with my i'm gonna blame my slow i value not only my own time but i value other people's time so for example i we could talk about this is a very this you know the doctor on the show now it's a brain thing i let's just think of it as from a brain thing rather than a purposeful yes thing like i will have anxiety if you are sitting out there waiting for 20 minutes when we committed to being here on time does that make sense like i don't like this but this is a problem i run into i'm such a flexible person that like if someone cancels on me last minute i'm like oh we'll figure it out another time so i think that i need to get more into his type of brain, which is why I need brain supplements. And not acknowledge my flexibility, but acknowledge that other people aren't as flexible as me.

Does that make sense? What was Lauren lowest in? What was her thing? Like if I was low in emotional flexibility, what is her, where is she? Let's get on though some of the cognitive tests that she's not stressed not anxious not depressed her long-term memory is good but focus planning processing speed recall memory short-term memory can be better the test showed she was more at risk for somebody who has ADD. And time is sort of a vague concept for many people who have ADD.

And when your cerebellum is low, sort of time is not as important. I know my first marriage, I had to lie if we had to be at the airport at 11. It's like I had to say 10. i tried that with her do you actually think i read this in paris hilton's book about how she said that time is like not real i sometimes feel like that is that is that add it's often consistent with add time is not real but the plane is leaving at 11 a.m. I know, but I do.

And if you tend to have busy, but my brain tends to be busy. You tend to like want to be there an hour early. No, no, no, no, no. Because you predict somebody could have a flat tire. There could be traffic. Your brain is always seeing what problems could have and you're solving the problem and so why not be an hour early i've never thought of one thing about that what you just said my brain's never thought anything this is gonna maybe ever in my life no but here's the other thing i also think it's undignified to

be running through the airport with all your bags stressing behind you like home alone you know and then when they're all running through the air because he doesn't have emotional flexibility i think it's i just think it like char Charlie Munger talked about like being undignified to have to collect invoices. That was just a funnier even example. But I don't want to run like the Home Alone guy

through the airport to jump on the plane. I just want to leisurely stroll through. I don't mind jumping on the plane. Grab a bottle of water, you know, relax, maybe in a lounge.

So let's talk about anxiety. Okay. Because people have high anxiety. That's not good for you. But low anxiety, often associated with people with ADD, that's not good for you either because you end up dying early

from accidents and preventable illnesses because you haven't thought ahead and planned for trouble. So for my patients, think of anxiety on a scale of zero, you have none, to a hundred, you're racked with it. I want my patients around 20. I want them seeing the trouble and avoiding it. When it's too low, people get into hot water. What is Michael on the spectrum? So Michael's probably around 30 and yours is probably around 10. So I'm not too far off.

No. And you're both highly competent, successful people. The idea for here was not to say, oh, you're a problem. We have to fix you. It's how can we be the best? Super brave. And at your level, 5% better, 10% better. That's worth a whole bunch. Low anxiety. No one's ever described it like that. That's exactly how I feel. And I get what

you're saying, how it's not good as you age because accidents, it's almost like a clumsiness. I'll give you an example. I'll see this girl sometimes walk through the street with her head in the phone, not paying attention to what's going on. I'm like, this is a false sense of safety. There's cars, there's people, there's danger. I couldn't imagine not, my head's on a swivel, you know what I mean? As you get older, there's curves, there's tripping, there's all sorts of stuff. You hear it all the time. People fall, they get older, they trip, they bang their head, and they're done. So there's a study out of Stanford where they looked at 1,540 10-year-old children in 1921. And then they followed them for 90 years looking at what goes with success, health, and longevity. And. And it was surprising.

The don't worry, be happy people died the earliest from accidents and preventable illnesses. The people who lived the longest were conscientious. So if they said they were going to show up, well, they show up. I actually consider it cheating if I die before him and he marries someone else. I just want to put that out there. I consider that cheating. I'll have to deal with that once in a time.

And you're out of integrity. Are you going to come back and haunt him? I would do something a little less obvious that he doesn't expect. From the grave? No, I would do something before I died that you don't know about. I can't give away my secrets. I have another, another i want to stay on this but i also have another question what are things that people are doing consistently to damage their brains obviously contact sports has to be one of the big ones alcohol has to be another one what are the

things that we don't realize that are harming our brains that we're doing consistently? Sugar. Blue light at night. Not flossing your teeth. Gum health is critical to brain health. So getting your teeth clean, getting your gums evaluated on a regular basis, keeping them healthy is critical. Not being aware of what you put on your body. So your deodorant, your body wash, your shampoo, your makeup, is it loaded with toxins? Ours are. So for example, I didn't know since I was 14, I shaved with Barbasol and on a scale of zero

to 10, 10 being bad, it's a nine. It's a kill you early sort of product. I don't think a lot of men know that. No. And now I shave with something called Kiss My Face, which is a two. Did you look that up on the EWG? On Think Dirty. Think Dirty. Think Dirty. Yeah. So EWG is great. Think Dirty is another really good one. We need to teach people to read the labels, not just of the food we consume, although we should do that, but also of the products we put on our body,

because whatever goes on our body goes in our body and becomes our body and now we have this epidemic of young males who have low testosterone levels and it's because we're poisoning them and i specifically think it's sunscreen really yeah like people my age nobody ever wore sunscreen and we didn't get burned because we were thoughtful. We were smart. Now, kids aren't going out at all without sunscreen. And if you just scan those products, there are a lot of them that are very toxic. Actually, the FDA took a number of them off the market because they're associated with cancer. So the dermatologists won.

They made us afraid of the sun. But we were evolved in the sun or we were made in the sun. And we now have these historically low levels of vitamin D, which you get from the sun. What shaving cream do you use? I don't really shave that much. And if I do, I just use the water in the shower because I usually have a little bit of a stubble.

So you're not using like Gillette or something? No. Kiss my face. No, but if I do shave, I'm actually going to shave this somewhere for a little bit, because I'm just getting sick of this and I'll use kiss my face if I do it. I think this conversation about the products that we put on our skin is about to become huge. And it's people like you who are talking about it and making people understand that the stuff we're putting on is getting in our system. What do you think about heavy metals and the effect of that on the brain?

Or does it have an effect? Of course it does. I mean, lead is one of the major causes of antisocial behavior. Aluminum is a neurotoxin. Mercury is toxic to the brain. So I think it is critical to avoid them, but also to make sure your detoxification pathways are healthy. So if you're drinking alcohol, you're poisoning your liver,

which is one of the major detoxification pathways in the brain. Your recommendation on alcohol, which I always find fascinating, and I think you were one of the earliest and first person to continue to be, is no alcohol. There is no amount in your mind that is healthy or safe or good for you. Correct. It's poison. So my wife said, nurse, why does she put alcohol on your skin before she gives you a shot? Because it kills the bugs the bugs well how many bugs do you have in your gut you have a hundred trillion bugs that make neurotransmitters that detoxify your food why would you kill them you know that clearly it's bad and they did studies on people who drink just a little bit they have disruptions in the white matter in your brain. So what's the

white matter? So people go gray matter, white matter, gray matter, brain cell bodies. That's where a lot of processing happens. White matter are brain cell tracks. So they're the highways in the brain that allow the left side and the right side to talk to each other, communicate. They're critical. So it's damaging the highway system in the brain. And young people, and you and I chatted beforehand that you were drinking. Yeah, I drink way too young. Way too young.

Yeah. When your brain is under construction. Yeah yeah probably 12 to like 12 years old and then like heavily from like 14 all the way through college and so your as your brain is under construction so it's undergoing this process called myelination so whenever you myelinate a neuron you wrap it or your brain wraps it with a white fatty substance called myelin helps it work 10 to 100 times faster and it starts when you're a little baby about two months in the back of your brain and then it slowly goes and when you're about 25 it finishes your frontal lobes empathy fore, forethought, judgment, impulse control. And so you're 12, your brain's undergoing this wild development.

You're poisoning it. Poisoning it. And it's like, you know, and you did it because you didn't know. And that's what other kids were doing. But we have to stop that. We need to teach kids. And I actually have a high school course called Brain Thrive by 25. We need to teach kids to love their brain. Because if you would have loved your brain,

you're like, no, I'm not going to do that. That's stupid. Why would I hurt myself? Well, you know, it's interesting as I took seven months off of alcohol completely while she was in her last pregnancy. And then I came back to it. But like when I came back to it, I was like, oh, like my relationship changed with it forever because it was out of my system for so long. And then in the beginning of this year, we did another 90 days and went for my birthday and I was just like, you know, I'm just now that I know what it feels like for long periods of time without it, it feels strange to go back to it. And I don't, I'm not drawn to it.

Like I don't need it for social interactions anymore. And it's, you know, you can let loose and have fun with a little bit, but once you know, like kind of the difference in feeling, and I think a lot of. I don't need it for social interactions anymore. And you can let loose and have fun a little bit. But once you know the difference in feeling, and I think a lot of people just don't know, maybe they take a week off or they take two weeks off or even a month. It's not long enough. You need to out of your system for a while

to really distinguish the difference between using it and not. And so it's actually harder for me now to go back to it consistently than it is to stay away. I don't think I'll ever, I don't know if it's going to be cut completely completely but it's going to be so limited in my life now that like you know it just it's i just know what it feels like to feel great all the time now and i don't like going back to feeling not great so i did a project with a stanford professor

on how people change because that's I'm so interested in that. And we worked together for six months. And then two years later, I saw him at a conference and he said, because of you, I wake up a hundred percent every day. Cause he stopped. Yeah. And isn't that what you,

I mean, you said, you know, you have to step back and go, what do you really want? And I want energy and I want memory and I want focus and I want to make good decisions and I want relationship, passion, purpose. That's what I want.

And my guess is it's probably the same for you guys. And so where does alcohol fit in that? Or where does sugar fit with that? Or where does staying up all night, not sleeping? It does. None of those things fit with what I want. So rather than you shouldn't drink, well, that'll just make you drink. It's does it fit? And I love what you you said you said your relationship with alcohol changed and i i don't know if you've ever been in a bad relationship sure but i have and every relationship sucked before me so you know what a bad relationship is like i'm not going to have a bad relationship with things i can control yeah i've been in bad relationships and I'm not gonna have a bad relationship with things I can

control yeah I've been in bad relationships and I'm not doing that anymore and I'm damn sure not doing it with food or something I drink like I have a really good relationship with what I eat what I drink I love everything I drink and it loves me back. And that, so that becomes the question is, do I love things and people that love me back? Yep. And this is like a very small tangent, but people ask all the time on the show, one of the topics is like, how do you develop confidence?

And I feel like alcohol is going to disable you from ever really developing true confidence because you're using it as a crutch in social interactions. And it creates a situation where you're artificially changing the way you feel and think in those interactions, as opposed to when you have no alcohol and you're reliant solely just on you as you are, you really have to learn to be comfortable and not just with yourself, but in those interactions. We're going to a party tonight. It's a big birthday party for a friend of ours and I probably won't drink at all. And a few years ago, I've been like, oh, we're going to this party. I'm going to be around all these strangers and these people. I probably need to loosen up and have a few drinks. Now I'm comfortable in

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sakara.com slash skinny or enter code skinny at checkout. That's sakara, S-A-K-A-R-A dot com slash skinny. You get 20% off your first order. sakara.com slash skinny. Let me tell you about my Thrive Market order. I'm going to get detailed with you. I love going on their site and picking out my exact groceries every single month and curating it to what I want. First of all, I have to get organic pumpkin because my dogs love it mixed in their food. I get the one that they have because it's a BPA-free liner and it's just pure pumpkin. I also sometimes will mix it in Townsend sweet potato. Then I get Yum Earth organic licorice. This is the best licorice on the planet. It's strawberry. It's gluten-free. And I kind of call this healthy candy. I mean, I don't know how healthy it is, but it's delicious on a movie night. I also get the Rayo's Homemade Arbiata Sauce.

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Thrive Market..com. If you are not on the Symbiotica bandwagon, what are you even doing? I take Symbiotica every single day of my life. I don't even know what to recommend to you because there's so many good products on their site. Every single product is designed with a sophisticated formula. Everything is scientifically proven to increase vitality and longevity. I am so annoying if I don't have my Symbiotica order on time. Ask anyone on my team. I'll literally go to the Symbiotica team and be like, please, please, please, can you send me my vitamin C? I have so many favorites, but I guess I would tell you to start with the liposomal vitamin C. It comes in this little packet. It tastes like vanilla chai. It's absolutely delicious. You can

put it in your water or just take it down. My daughter likes it. I also really like their little squirters. They have a B12 squirter that's all about energy and vitality. And then they also have a vitamin D squirter, which is yellow. And it has vitamin K in it, which really activates the D. They both taste amazing. I do a pump in Zaza's mouth, and then I'll do like 12 pumps of each in my mouth. And I love, love, love this formula. So those are the ones that I would check out. But like I said, you can't go wrong. Michael's obsessed with all their products. They also have like a lavender magnesium spray I spray on my skin at night. Visit symbiotica.com slash skinny for 15% off sitewide.

That's symbiotica.com slash skinny. You get 15% off sitewide. Have you heard of the Stockholm syndrome? Sure. Yeah. So it's where you get kidnapped and you fall in love with the kidnappers. I think many people's relationship with marijuana, alcohol, and sugar is just like the Stockholm syndrome.

You fall in love with someone that has hijacked you, hurt you. Not to mention, you mentioned testosterone levels between marijuana and alcohol. That's also killing people's testosterone. It absolutely is. I would like to know something. I love when your content pops up. In fact, I have it starred.

But I notice sometimes when you do a reel and it's you talking to the camera, that people in the comments are aggressive especially with your content how do you handle that aggressive with what they're just oh i have lots of haters it's not i don't it's but you have a lot of people who are like obsessed with you but i'm just saying there's people who are constantly wanting to like just question you and all how do you deal with that or do you just block it out? What's the major pushback?

What's the major? I want to know as someone who's a brain expert, what, what you do, because we're talking about faces, negative, positive faces, what you do with that comments.

I don't pay attention to it. I knew you were going to say, I knew it was going to be. Yeah. No, I've had lots and lots of haters over the years because if you're going to disrupt what is common. So if I'm right about imaging and I am, that means 40,000 psychiatrists are wrong that they're practicing in the dark ages. They don't say thank you when you tell them they're wrong. They hate you. They try to kill you emotionally. And you just sort of have to be okay with it. It's, you know, my book,

The End of Mental Illness, has 1,084 references in it. Because I'm like, okay, that's a big promise. You better make sure all the science is there and show people where you got that information. But, you know, if I talk about marijuana, for example, I get the most hate for marijuana. But during the last presidential election, when Vice President Biden was asked about his position on marijuana, he said,

I don't think the federal government should legalize it. I think we need more study. And Cory Booker on national television, so Senator Cory Booker shamed Biden and said, man, are you high? And I'm like, that's nuts. Because the science, if anything, people are beginning to go, oh, this is a bad idea. Last year in Durango, Colorado, there was a 1,700% increase in babies born with marijuana in their system. So as we talk about these buildings under construction, you're putting the foundation of someone's life at risk by poisoning them in utero. Not a good thing. So haters hate. I think though that the projection, a lot of it comes from people who are smoking marijuana daily and it's just projection onto you.

Even if you, like, I mean, listen, I don't care if people drink, that's their decision. I try to be kind of agnostic to what people decide to do. Just present the information. Then, Hey, you make your own decision. But like, if you tell people that no amount of alcohol is good,

I imagine there's a lot of people that get pissed off about that. Right. Well, it is, but the problem is, it's not just me saying it. Yeah. Right.

Plus I have more experience than probably anyone who's ever lived looking at the brains of people who do this or that and um i do this show on instagram called scan my brain and one of my favorite stories is troy gloss who is the 2002 world series mvp He played for the Angels. And he was drinking way too much. His brain looked way older than he did. But two months later, it looked better once he stopped drinking. 16 months later, it looks dramatically better. And really, the question just becomes, which brain do you want? do you want the healthy brain and for you given your cerebellum

sleepy i'd really question any relationship with alcohol because you want that healthy you want to be processing quickly why do you think that someone with a slow cerebellum like like me prefers a glass of wine over weed. Is there a correlation to that? Like why I like a shot of tequila as opposed to smoking weed? No, they both suppress activity. So it's just preference.

I think it's just preference for you. But why do you think I don't like something like cocaine? Overall, you have a lot of really good activity in your brain. And I would know that. The one thing I really want to activate is your cerebellum. We can do that, which means you have to stop things that hurt it. What about plant medicine? What does it do on the brain?

Like ginkgo? I'm a huge fan of Ginkgo. Or Lion's Mane. Mushroom. Yeah, what about psychedelics? No, I'm not a fan. Why? Because it's barely legal.

Barely. And I am older. I hate that. But I've been through, you should put people on opiates in pain, which then led to the opiate crisis. Oh, benzos are mommy's little helper. And oh, they can really help with anxiety. But once you start them, you won't stop them.

And now we know, see, looking at scans in 1991, like benzos are bad for the brain. They make your brain look older than you are. And now we know we have this huge epidemic of benzodiazepine use like Xanax. And 27%, get this statistic, 27% of all doctor visits, someone's being prescribed a benzo. Do benzos make you depressed? They can. And they increase your risk of dementia. That's a bad thing.

It's a really bad thing. Or in the 90s, alcohol is a health food. Clearly isn't. Brand new study out just two weeks ago on 5 million people showing any amount of drinking, you live less long. So what you're saying is that- So let me- Yeah.

And then marijuana- Tell us, I want to know what you- And then marijuana is innocuous. It's a complete lie. Now that we've made marijuana innocuous, if teenagers use, increases the incidence of anxiety, depression, and suicide as 20-year-olds, and it increases the risk of psychosis 450%. And now the big question is, well, what about psilocybin? And what about ayahuasca? And I've seen scans and it decreases activity. And that's what the published research decreases activity in your emotional centers.

Okay. That can be good, but it decreases activity in your thoughtful centers. And right before the Oscars last year, 2022, I read Will Smith's autobiography and it was great. And I love him. I was a consultant on the movie Concussion where I actually thought he should have won the Oscar because he was so good in that. But he did ayahuasca 16 times. fix him because he blew up his life from someone who is used to making fun of people. And it was a completely inappropriate criminal act. And you got to go, it was so disappointing

because he'd worked on himself so much. Obviously that't fix it and so i think when the standard stuff doesn't work maybe think about psychotherapy assisted psilocybin but that's 15 on the list and now everybody it's like so sexy it's not the first thing. It's everybody's first thing. And I'm like, are you insane? And I've had some of my patients who I just dearly love. They're like, oh, let's go do that. And I'm like. Well, you know what it is. And like, I am very vocal about this.

People are looking for the shortcut in life at every turn, right? Like I've been critical on Ozempic. I've been critical on jumping to these things. I've been critical on Ozempic. I've been critical on jumping to these things. I've been critical on certain medicines because like, and listen, there's a time and a place as I'm sure you very well know as a doctor for all sorts of things, but it's like, what does proper diet look like? What is eliminating toxins from your life look like? What does proper exercise look like? It's harder. It takes longer. It's more grueling. It's more painful. The results are slower, but it's a natural process that you can implement over time. And I honestly firmly believe

that if most people got their diet and their fitness under control, it would eliminate 99% of their problems. And I'm not a doctor. I'm not an expert. Just most people don't want to do that. At least half. I would agree a doctor. I'm not an expert. Just most people don't want to do that. At least half. I would agree with you. We get so many testimonials from the nutrition work we do at Amen Clinics. In my new book, Change Your Brain Every Day, I say brain and mental health are daily practices. And if you can put those in your life, you're not going to need things that are risky. And I'm a bit risk averse when it comes to my health or my patient's health.

No, I like that. I mean, if I came to you and the first thing you said to me was you're going on this medicine, the last thing you'd see is my foot out the door. I want to know the other things that are tools in the toolbox before we jump to the extreme stuff. If we have to jump to the extreme stuff because we've tried everything else, fine. But I feel like people don't try the other stuff first.

They just say, what can you give me? What can fix this right now, tomorrow? And did you know 85% of psychiatric drugs are prescribed by non-psychiatric physicians in 10-minute office visits. So benzos, you know, you go to the emergency room with a panic attack. The emergency room doctor gives you a benzo and then tells you to go. So they just gave you something that will change your brain to need it in order for you to feel normal. They won't teach you about diaphragmatic breathing, about hypnosis, meditation, learning how to kill the ants, how to not believe every stupid thing you think.

They won't give you basic skill to manage your brain and mind, and they just start you on drugs you won't be able to stop. Our friend Khalil, he's been on the show three times. Hi, Khalil. Very vocal. He was a former addict, heroin, everything under the sun and completely changed his life around now. He's completely clean. So we're for, I think well over 20 years now, but he was saying benzos are actually harder to kick than heroin, right? Like people have a greater time or more successful time getting off of things like heroin than they do off of benzos. He says, benzos are some of the most brutal things to kick from your system from a, you know a recovery rehab perspective. It's true. But yet 27% of all doctor visits, somebody's getting a benzo. But if you told someone, Hey, you're going to, you want to try heroin or this,

it just sounds like, Oh, like, yeah, I'll get on a benzo. That doesn't sound nearly as bad as heroin, but they don't realize they're signing up for something that's way harder to kick. It's harder to kick. All of the opiates will kill you faster. Of course. Adderall. I heard there's a shortage. A lot of people are taking Adderall. What is your thoughts on that? Is there a place for it? I would love to know your opinion. So one of my biggest selling books was Healing ADD. I have been an expert in people who have attention deficit disorder or ADHD since early in my career because I'm also a child psychiatrist. And half of the kids we see is ADD of one sort or another. Left untreated, ADD has really big consequences.

52%, according to one study from Harvard, have problems with substance abuse, untreated. ADD, 33%, never finished high school, higher incidence of divorce, incarceration, bankruptcy. So we have to treat it. Medicine isn't the first thing, but it's probably the third or fourth thing. I mean, the first thing is clean up your diet because they did this great study out of Holland and they replicated it when they put 300 kids on an elimination diet. So they basically eliminated the crap in their diet. 72% three months later didn't have ADD symptoms. So your brain is 2% of your body's weight. It uses 20 to 30% of the calories you consume. If you start nourishing the brain,

you're going to focus better. You're going to calm down. So that's the first thing. The second thing is exercise because exercise increases dopamine availability in the brain. Simple supplements like tyrosine or- Took that this morning. Ginseng, rhodiola, ashwagandha have been found to help calm you and focus you. Well, isn't that what we really want? And if that doesn't work, then I think of something like Ritalin or Adderall. But what I discovered is ADD is not one thing.

It's seven different things. How we name things in psychiatry, we name them based on the symptoms you tell us rather than on what's the cause. So nobody gets a diagnosis of chest pain. Why? Because it doesn't tell you what's causing it and it doesn't tell you what to do for it, right? Would you give everybody with chest pain nitroglycerin or would you give everybody with chest pain the same thing? Only if you're an idiot, right? I mean, what could cause chest pain? It could be a heart attack, could be heart arrhythmia, could be a heart infection, could be pneumonia, could be a heart attack. It could be heart arrhythmia. It could be a heart infection. It could be pneumonia. It could be gas. It could be anxiety. It could be grief.

You don't give one thing that has, well, what can cause depression? So many different things. Pancreatic cancer, it's one of the presenting symptoms of pancreatic cancer is depression. Low thyroid, toxic exposure to heavy metals can cause depression. It can be because you've lost something important to you, that can cause depression. It can be because you have it in your family. There's so many different causes. Do you give everybody an SSRI to something

that has all these different causes? Well, that's stupid, right? And so with ADD, classic ADD, hyperactive, restless, impulsive, can't concentrate. They do really well with stimulants. Inattentive ADD, more common in girls. They do well with stimulants. Now we get over-focused ADD. Stimulants make them worry more. Temporal lobe ADD, stimulants make them aggressive. Limbic ADD, stimulants make them sad. Knowing the type gets you to better supplements or medicine combinations.

And how often is ADD misdiagnosed? For example, we talked, and I'll pick on myself again. When I was younger in school, I told you I was not the best student. I was always getting in trouble. But many of the teachers- You mooned the principal. Many. No, I didn't moon the principal.

That's right. I gave the principal the middle finger. That was another thing. I forgot about that. But- A bit of impulsivity. A bit of impulsivity. But they all thought when I was growing up, they tried to prescribe me ADD medication

in third grade. And my dad ended up shutting it down. And I was interested when I saw the test, am I at risk for ADD medication in third grade, and my dad ended up shutting it down. And I was interested when I saw the test, am I at risk for ADD from what you've seen? And if I am not, what would happen if I was put on that medication at the third grade? So you never took it? Never. Yeah. It would have disrupted you.

You would have become worse. And you would have started chewing on your clothes. You would have started worrying more. You might have developed some- Based on what you've seen on my test. Yeah. test you don't show up as add at all that's what cerebellum's awesome but the problem is not that you can't pay attention but it's you have trouble shifting attention which will make you look like you have attentional problems but it's not the how many times out of 10 when your mom or

the teacher asked you to do something, did you do it the first time without arguing or fussing with them? I'm not a first time doer. That's for sure. Um, I would say if my mother asked me and we talked about this or my father, because you know, they were real authority figures in my life when I was growing up and I had respect and love for them if they asked me i would most likely do it they might say different right they might say no teachers on the other hand especially in school or other people if i felt like they were trying to tell me to do something i was like let's get to number 10 and even to this day i i can when i'm on something that I perceive to be the most important thing that needs to get done, like that's where my brain, like if we're working on something in the business and I think that that is the thing that needs, that's going to have the most impact on movement or wherever we need to go. And somebody brings me something that I think is not as important.

Like I'm not even entertaining it until I get the thing, the other thing done. Yeah. So for you you there's no way i mean i'm giving you serotonin mood support to sort of settle down your frontal lobes if you decided oh let me try adderall not gonna like it and you might like it for oh no i hate it i tried it one night and call like a few nights in college just studying cram because that's what kids did and I hated it. Yeah, it's not the right thing for you. I ended up just playing like video games

and just not being able to study at all. But see, all these kids on Adderall, nobody's looked at their brain. And why am I the only one that goes, that's insane?

It is insane. Because why would you ever fly blind if you didn't need to? And I often say psychiatrists make diagnoses just like they did in 1840 when Abraham Lincoln was depressed. So I love Lincoln because he like failed, failed, failed, and then became a wild success. And it's like, so how did he stick with it? And he had depression several times in his life. In fact, in the winter of 1840, he was suicidal and his friends took his knives from him. He went to see his doctor in Springfield, Illinois, Anson Henry. And how did Dr. Henry diagnose Lincoln with melancholia or depression. He talked to him. He looked at him. He looked for symptom clusters and then diagnosed and treated him. You tell me that's not exactly the way they're making

diagnoses today, which is nuts, right? You go to the doctor, I'm depressed. He gives you a diagnosis with the same name. He goes, oh, you're depressed. And then gives you an antidepressant, which in large scale studies work no better than placebo. With no biological data. So what would have happened? So this would, I guess it's a cautionary tale, I think, for parents out there because one, the people that were telling me to get on that were not, they did not have your credentials. And two, if I would have just gotten on there and gotten on them at that young age and my parents would have said, I guess this is what this person needs, what would have happened to me? Your behavior would have gotten worse. And then your dad would have taken you off and not trusted any of the professionals.

That's typically, that's sort of the typical kid we end up seeing in our clinic. On average, our patients are complicated. They have four different diagnoses. They've failed 3.3 providers and six medicines. And it's not innocuous. Looking at people's brains? Are you really the only one? I'm not the only one. I'm the noisiest one, for sure. But most psychiatrists, I would say 99% of psychiatrists never look at someone's brain. You mentioned kill the ants.

What does that mean? So once you get your brain healthy, balanced, you still have to program. And we live in an ant-filled society. So ant is a term I coined a long time ago. It stands for automatic negative thoughts. The thoughts that come into your mind automatically and ruin your day. And I remember the day I coined this term, I had a bad day at work or a hard day at work. I had four suicidal patients, and that's a lot for a private practice. I had two couples who hated each other, and I saw two teenagers who

had run away from home. And so i got home and i was tired and i came home to an ant infestation in the house and i'm like really and as i'm cleaning up have you guys ever had an ant infestation so i'm cleaning up these and now you're in texas so there are more ants in texas bigger as i'm cleaning them up. I'm like, yeah, automatic negative thoughts. My patients are infested. And so I brought a can of raid to my office the next day and I put it on my coffee table and I'm like, we have to kill the ants because they're damaging your mind. And then I'm like, well, raid's toxic. So I went to Pier 39 in San Francisco and I got an ant puppet and an ant eater puppet. And I'm like, I teach how to get rid of these.

And kids love this idea. I saw one little boy who had a panic disorder. And three weeks later, he told me it was an ant ghost town in his head. I'll often ask people, what's your ant population like? We have no mental discipline in this country. You just have to watch the news or watch Congress. They're filled with distorted thinking. Oh, now the haters are really going to come.

People don't like hearing this. It's true. No, we live in a society of distorted thinking please elaborate go for it well where we're demonizing people who don't believe what we believe we're labeling people you're a vaxxer you're an anti-vaxxer and then we are lumping them so we can't deal with them and in change your brain every day and a lot of my work i talk about different ways we distort our thinking to make things out to be worse than they really are like there's all or nothing thinking things are all good you're right or you're left just the bad ants where you're focused on what's wrong. If you watch the news, like I don't watch the news. I start the day with the good news network.

I'm looking for what's right rather than what's wrong. Fortune telling ants where you predict the worst and then you're going to make it worse. Like we're always at the end of the world. Mind reading ants where you arbitrarily believe you know what someone else is thinking even though they didn't tell you and i have 25 years of education i can't tell what anybody's thinking a negative look from someone else may mean nothing more than they're constipated you don't know blame michael gives me a negative look this is like get out of here this is like a weird thing to say too. It's like sometimes in this, this is just like me being honest.

Sometimes we like to fuck with the audience and like have somebody on that they would think we would never have on. Because I want to point out to people that it's important to be mentally flexible and to question your own assumptions, right? Like we'll have somebody that is maybe a political or medical figure that they would think

we would never align with. And I'll have them on just to be like, listen, it is so important to not put your thinking or your thought process in a box. It's so important to listen and be emotionally and mentally flexible because if you get to the point where everything's black or white or everyone's in this box or that box, you really limit yourself as an individual and as a person. And then the extremes have the power right now. And that's what's happening in the news.

It's what's happening in politics. The crazy people are in control. And it's on both sides. And it's horrifying to me. But, because it's really important, whenever you feel sad or mad or nervous or out of control, write down what you're thinking. And then ask yourself whether or not it's true. If you get on this string of negative thinking and you never correct the bad thoughts that go through your head, they have created this concrete pathway in your brain that is just going to drive

depression, drive anxiety, drive fear, drive trouble sleeping. I was 28 years old in my psychiatric residency before one of my professors said, you have to teach your patients not to believe every stupid thing they think. The thoughts come from all sorts of places. They come from your ancestors. They actually get written into your genetic code. I don't know if you ever had Mark Wolin on, but he's got a great book called It Didn't Start With You about generational trauma. Meaning like somebody that like four generations back, some of that DNA and thought process

could be encoded in the way that we think still. Yes. Not just from our parents or grandparents. So grandchildren of the Holocaust have a higher incidence of anxiety, depression, and PTSD. There's a great study, I think it was out of Emory, where they took mice and they made them afraid of the scent of cherry blossoms. So every time the scent of cherry blossoms was in the air, they shocked them, mild shocks, but it still freaked them out.

Well, that's called classical conditioning. They found that babies were afraid of the scent of cherry blossoms and their grandbabies were afraid of the scent of cherry blossoms, which means trauma can be passed down generationally. So before you have babies, see, we need to teach teenagers this, go get your therapy. Because when a little girl is born, when you were born, you were born with all of the eggs you'll ever

have in your ovaries. You don't make new eggs. You're born with all of them, which means you're actually carrying the genetic material for your grandchildren when you're born. I think it's just so fascinating. And so whatever happens to us, good or bad, turns on or off certain genes that make illness more or less likely in us, but also in our children and our grandchildren. So, but back to when you feel sad or mad or nervous or out of control,

write it down. And you got to do this process like a hundred times, write it down and then question. So if you were writing, like, what is the exact thing? Say I was upset about something that was said to me in the office and I perceived that to, you know, it made me mad or sad. I would go in my journal and write, hey, I'm upset about this person. This person said this. So let's do an example. Okay.

Yeah. So when's the last time one of you felt lousy and you had a bad thought that bothered you? She's always late. so let's let's just do that she's always late so five questions you guys ever had byron katie on no she's awesome so we're taking recommendations from you after this we'll get so for me because my wife has ADD, she never listens to me. So five questions. Maybe Lauren has ADD. And it's just answer it, right?

I'm not a fan of positive thinking. I'm a fan of accurate thinking with a bit of the positive spin. So she's always like, is it true? Yes. Is it absolutely true? With 100% certainty. No, not always. No. No. How does it make you feel? Irritated. And how would you feel without the thought?

Fine. And then take the original thought, she's always lame, flip it to the opposite, she's not always lame, and then ask yourself if that's true and then meditate on the opposite one so this is separation the other is you roll with it because you know being angry at her doesn't really help didn't change and the only thing you can really change is yourself. So you can do that consistently with basically every thought process you have. And you just basically go through that kind of same exercise whenever you're upset or whenever. About you.

What do I get to do? That's fun. So what's the thoughts that make you. About Michael or just about in general. Whatever you want to do. Our producer Taylor never has the camera set up. Is that true? No, it's not true.

No. Let me do the process. Is that true? No. Yes, it is true. See? She doesn't even know. Is that true?

And then you say, is it always true? Is it absolutely true? No. But how does it make you feel? Violent. I'm just kidding. Irritated. How does it make you feel? Violent. Irritated. How does it make you act?

Energetically frustrated. And what's the outcome? So when I extend the process often, so how does it make you feel? How does it make you act? Energetically frustrated. And what's the outcome? Him talking for three hours and explaining why it wasn't set up.

Stress. Yeah. And suffering. Through my ears. And the fourth question is, how would you feel if you didn't have the thought? At ease. And how would you act?

Calm and cool and collected. Yeah. And you'd still talk to him about it because you're a good boss. Right? I mean, good bosses don't ignore problems. They deal with them. Right. But they don't spin on them.

Got it. And what's the outcome of not believing? Less stress. More happiness. And if we take the original thought, cameras are never set up, and we turn it to the opposite, the cameras are set up, and then just meditate on it. I never want you to lie to yourself.

This is not, you know, let's just pie in the sky positive thinking. I'm not a fan of that. I'm a fan of accurate thinking. And then you deal with the problems without stress and without pain. Let's do one with Michael. Okay. Ooh, with Michael. It should be easy for you.

You're irritated with me daily. He gets irritated easily at me over stupid shit. Okay. He gets irritated with me Over stupid shit. Okay. He gets irritated with me over stupid shit. Is that true? Yes. Is it absolutely true? Yes.

So he's always getting irritated with you over stupid shit. Maybe not 100% of the time. Can we define stupid shit too? Now let her and I do the process. Alright. So how does that make you feel? Cortisally. I'm sorry?

Cortisally. Did you just make up an adjective? Cortisally. Yeah, like my cortisol goes up. And how does it make you act? A little bit disconnected. Maybe. Disconnected from it.

When he gets irritated with me, I kind of disconnect. I disassociate. That's the right word. And what's the outcome of believing the thought? He gets more stressed. He gets more stressed. More irritated. Probably less. And how would you feel without the thought? You couldn't have that thought. Peaceful. And how would you act more peaceful and what would be the outcome less stress for both of us more peace more peace so it's your fault so we think if we take the original thought he's always irritated with me over stupid shit it's he's not always irritated to me i wouldn't i never go to the narcissistic opposite like he's

never irritated with me because that's just a lie but he's not always irritated with me do you have an example but let's define like yeah yeah you're you're controlling it let's finish okay do you have an example that he gets irritated with me about. Where he's not always. Oh, where he's not always irritated with me. Yeah. Yeah, I have a hundred examples. Yeah.

So that's what I need to focus on. And that's what you need to meditate on. Got it. Because as soon as you go, so that's an all or nothing ant. Whenever you think in words like always, everyone those are absolute it's it's lies it's a distortion right so you're saying that you're lying to yourself did anyone see that interview recently with elon musk in the bbc where he said give me one example and the guy couldn't give example he said i've got hundreds of examples but then he couldn't give example what is

an example i think we should finish the exercise. Of Michael getting irritated? Yeah. We've got hundreds. We already talked about one. Yeah, got to rattle them off. About me being late is the number one. So is that categorized as stupid shit? When I say that I'm going to be

somewhere at a certain time and I'm not, it's all being late. Being late for the airport, overpacking. Oh, my God. It looks like we're going in a covered wagon to go on a two-day trip. Oh, my God. I have the same problem. We could have a support group here. It's incredible.

I think my- The cleaner your thoughts, the more accurate, the more positive, the more hopeful, the better you guys get along. And it doesn't mean you don't deal with stuff that frustrates you. But you do it as honestly and as positively as you can. Like one of the secrets of happiness, I have seven of them, but one of the secrets is notice what you like about other people more than what you don't like. Ooh, that's a good one. You are shaping each other's behavior by what you pay attention.

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shampoo it after I go swimming or if I go swimming in the beach. And then I'll get out of the shower and I'll brush it with a very, very specific brush. I talk about this brush on my Instagram all the time. And then I will spray some kind of repair situation into my hair. And the product that I've been using and I used on stories the other day is Ultimate Repair Miracle Hair Rescue. So this is like this luxurious leave and spray that repairs hair damage in 90 seconds. It's going to give you smoother hair with less breakage. The best part about it though, in my opinion, is it has omega-9 in it. And this replenishes the outside layer of the hair. You want to use this on wet hair and you can totally use it if you have colored hair.

I just colored my hair brunette, so it's totally fine for that. And what I like to do is I spray it in my hair, like my brushed hair that's wet, and then I wrap it into a tight bun. So I have this really pretty sleek, wet bun. It's so simple, could not be easier. So if you're looking to multitask when your hair is wet, you have to check this out. You can purchase Ultimate Repair Miracle Hair Rescue at Ulta now. You can also go to Wella.com. That's W-E-L-L-A.com to learn more. Who doesn't love Sephora? I am such a huge Sephora fan. But one thing that I'm obsessed with about Sephora is they have a wide variety of clean makeup brands and products. So I'm going to tell you the specific products that I buy from Sephora

that are clean. You've seen this all over my socials. I love the Lawless Forget the Filler Lip Plumping Mask. I have so many of these lip plumping masks all over my house, even like Zaza will put them on her lips. And I feel fine about it because it's vegan, it's cruelty-free, and it's also clean at Sephora. If you're going to buy other products from Sephora that are clean, I would highly recommend checking out Merit. My friend Gracie Norton, who's been on this podcast, is the one that introduced me to Merit. And I immediately went to Sephora to stock the brand. I got the bronzer stick. I got the highlighter stick. I love it. I use it all the time. And it's just one other thing that I've switched out in my makeup bag to be clean. You can't go wrong with Sephora's clean

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It can be any name. When I heard this. Name it like the seven dwarfs. I'll be sleepy and Michael can be grumpy. Taylor can be dopey so i named my mind after my pet raccoon you have a pet raccoon when i was 16 okay i grew up in the san fernando valley it was legal then i don't think it's legal now and her name was hermy and i loved her so when i heard about give your mind a name i'm like i'm gonna name it hermy why because i loved her and she was a troublemaker she like

tp'd my mother's bathroom she ate all the fish out of my sister's aquarium she'd leave raccoon poo and that's my mind my mind and so many people listen their mind is a troublemaker wait pause pause yeah wait did you get this raccoon from the wild or was this a pet store? A pet store. It was a pet store. Yeah, I walked in to get my dog. I had a German Shepherd, a leash. And this thing crawls up the back of my pants.

How big was it? It was a baby at the time? It was like eight weeks old. Okay, so you had it from- She was gorgeous. They're so cute. And they make 200 different sounds. And very good at picking up girls because they're like, oh, she's so cute.

Oh, I'm going for the guy with the raccoon. Anyways. I like that. Are raccoons, like, are they trainable pets? They're trainable. Wait, is the raccoon sleeping with you in the bed? No, she had a cage. She had a cage, okay.

She had a cage. And she was awesome. But she was also a troublemaker like my mind. And so if I can separate from my mind, if I don't attach, it's not the thoughts you have that make you suffer. Everybody has crazy, weird, sexual, violent thoughts nobody should ever hear. Not the thoughts you have that make you suffer. It's the thoughts you attach to that make you suffer.

So if you can detach, and so the world is going to come to an end in your head. You're predicting. It's like, oh, Hermie's having a bad day. I need to go put her in the cage. This is exactly what I try to tell Michael to do when he gets so close to a problem and I'm like detached from the thought. You just articulated it in a different way. I thought that sometimes that's not a good thing because you're dissociating. No, when you're dissociating, and that's very common if you grew up in trauma, is people separate from themselves and they can split. Multiple personality disorder is the most extreme form of dissociation.

Okay. But if you can just sort of step back and go, I am not my thoughts, it helps you so much to just take sort of a rational view of it. I have a question. Plot twist. Is the vaccine having an effect on people's brain at all? You've seen.

Way to end on an easy subject. No, I want to know. What do you think? COVID clearly damages the brain. I did Kendall Jenner's scan after she had COVID. So I was on the Kardashian show. I know. I saw you.

And her brain was just like on fire. And that was from COVID. The question about the vaccine is not clear. I have had many people hurt by the vaccine. They said they were not normal. Their immune system was a wreck and they were more anxious and more depressed. But there are no clear published studies showing the vaccine increases mental health problems. How it does, though, is when you force someone to do something against their will, that causes psychiatric problems.

And the idea that we're forcing children to take an untested vaccine, I mean, vaccines like this should be tested for years, not months. That was just bad judgment. I mean, we got sold by the pharmaceutical companies. I have to tell you, and now we're sort of far enough along, how the government handled this was terrible. It was terrible. You didn't hear anything about get healthy. Not anything. In fact, they isolated you and you drank more, you ate more bad food,

you watched more negative news. And whenever you create loneliness, and that's what we did, we created mass loneliness. And then you let people come back together, they get violent, which is exactly what we're seeing. So I'm furious. And we live in a country where you're supposed to have free speech, right? Absolutely shut that down with prominent doctors. Well, that's been proven now too. That's been proven.

I mean, absolutely shut that down. A lot of hypocritical situations. I mean, it was doing what we do. It was so interesting. And also like running the company now that I run, where like most people are, you know, speaking. You know, one thing I pride myself on with Dear Media is like, I let everybody say whatever they want to say,

however they want to say it. Like that's, it's in the contracts. I don't, so it was, it was a really interesting time because like we were getting a ton of pressure, not only on this show, but me as an executive running a media company to not allow that kind of stuff to happen. Like not, you know, to stop people from saying how they felt. And it was, it was a really strange thing for me. And like, we, you know, caught a lot of flack during this whole process, but I pride myself and I'm proud of the way that we handled and that I never forced anybody to do anything or say anything or take anything because to me, it just felt like such, it felt like such a poor thing to do in such a poor time to take advantage of people who are such, who are in such a fragile state of mind. I'm proud of the fact that

I never made any young person do anything to their body that they may not have felt comfortable doing. Right? Because it just felt so gross to me that people... There's a lot of people... It is gross.

It's gross that... I'm going to call it out. It is gross that an employer thinks that you can come in and tell people what they can do to their body. But it was a wild time because they fired police officers. Oh, yeah. I have a friend who's hired. They fired soldiers.

They fired firemen, nurses. And it's just awful. Yeah, it is. I mean, it's unlike anything I've been. And I have really good mental health habits but I was furious and I'm still I'm I hope we learn and you have to ask yourself you know why does Robert Kennedy's never done anything political at 14 percent there's a new um yeah he's out there he's blowing the lid off some stuff. He is, you know, he's never been political, but against president Biden, he's already

got 14% of people who want to vote for him. That's like crazy high for somebody who's just starting. Who's not a political person. It's because there's a very high percentage of Democrats and Republicans who think what happened is a scam. And it is. I just believe that. And you'll probably get more hate, but I don't really care. Your best defense against COVID is your immune system. For a vaccine, you have to take repeatedly and it doesn't prevent you from getting it or spreading it, that's not a vaccine. But this goes back to what I was saying in the beginning.

I mean, listen, obviously there were certain people that were severely at risk, but for the majority, it was people that didn't have all their health functions at their disposal, right? There was not one moment of time ever that I was ever worried about it for me because I'm not being arrogant here, but I take care of myself. I eat right. I exercise. I get my heart condition right. I get my metabolic rate up. I do all the stuff. And so it was strange to me to protect myself against something that I was confident my body could protect myself against. Now, it goes into the fact, again, that you do the work up front, you take care of yourself, you eat right, you exercise, you get in the sun. A lot of people just don't want to do this kind of stuff. I also think that this conversation hasn't been had a lot of the virtue signaling of the bandaid on the arm. It was so manipulative and actually,

in my opinion, narcissistic to sit with a band-aid and say, you should do this and you should do that and I'm a hero because I did it. People are saying it's for the greater good. To me, it seems like you want to virtue signal that I'm a good person to other people and that anyone who's not is not a good person.

That was proven that it wasn't for the greater good either. It had absolutely no effect whether you took it or I took it. If I took it and you didn't, it didn't affect your COVID outcome or infection rate at all. That's been proven. Masks were useless. No. It was all useless. Putting people, ruining the economy.

People wonder why inflation is out of control. You can't just print all that money and then not increase the output of productivity and have inflation be managed. Productivity has to match the printing of dollars. If it doesn't, you're going to have massive inflation. So this is all poor judgment. So I'm hoping it's a learning experience. We learn from it, but we have to talk about it without fear.

And so many of Google and Facebook, they censored people. That's not okay in a country that has free speech as its First Amendment. The problem is, in order to make an educated decision, you have to see both sides of an argument. And if you're only seeing one side, you can't make an educated decision. That is why I am so against censorship in any, in any kind of case, because you have to be able to see like every w we're, I think people are smart enough if they have the information to come to their own conclusions. But if you only have one side of the coin and you only can see that information, it's very difficult to make rational decisions.

And if companies like Google have money in the pharmaceutical companies, that's clearly a conflict. I mean, that's clearly, if they're shutting down the other side, we should be angry about that. But we should be clear in our thought. And during the pandemic, I prayed the serenity prayer probably five times a day. You know, God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference, which is why, and I almost always just stay apolitical because I want to help you. I don't really care what you believe. I want to help you either way. But at some point you have to say bullshit, like, no,

this is not okay of course yeah same with us we try to stay political but it got to a point where i was like hey honestly just get like just leave me alone just leave me the fuck alone and don't make me vaccinate my children with an unproven vaccine. There was no chance. That was never going to happen. But, you know, now to go to the University of California, like they want you to be vaccinated. And it's like, come on.

Like, haven't you like been paying attention? They don't prevent you from getting it. They don't prevent you from spreading it. Young people don't die from it. Stop it. getting it they don't prevent you from spreading it young people don't die from it stop it but it's control which we have to stop brain and body power can we do a giveaway of the dietary supplements that you have and a book that's signed by you absolutely okay maybe we can do a giveaway of a couple of your faves. And what is in, I mean, you've written so many books. What are people going to get from this new one?

So Change Your Brain Every Day is like a daily multiple vitamin for your brain. It's my greatest hits book. It's 366 short essays on the most important things I've ever said. And there's an action step to do every day. So it's like three to five minutes of inspiration on how to love and care for your brain. It's like you spent five minutes with a psychiatrist every day for a year, but a different kind of psychiatry. Amazing. We can do a giveaway, you said. So what we're going to do is we're going to have everyone follow

at Dr. Amen. Doc Amen. At Doc underscore Amen on Instagram. On Instagram. Or Doc Amen on TikTok. Love it. I love how he's like with the times in TikTok. I love it. And then tell us your

favorite takeaway from this episode. I know I learned so much. I am just so excited to have you on. I could talk to you for hours. You're welcome to come back anytime. If someone wants to get a brain scan with you or find your book, where can they find you and your book? Pimp yourself out. Amen Clinics, like the last word in a prayer, amenclinics.com. They can learn about our clinical work and get the book anywhere. Great books are sold. My mission in life, and I'm so grateful to both of you because this really helps. The mission I have is to end mental illness by creating a revolution in brain health. I hate the term mental illness by creating a revolution in brain health. That I hate the term mental illness, shames people, stigmatizing.

It's wrong. These are brain health issues. I can help you get your brain right. Like your mind follows. I have so much respect for what you do. Thank you so much. You guys, I'm going to post my journey of getting my brain scanned on my TikTok. I'll do like a little vlog of the whole day in the life and I'll post some stories. Dr. Amen,

you're the best. And we discovered that what my brain scan was a little better, right? Mine's superior. The determination. You both have great brains. They're just different. Yeah, I'd rather be chill. Wait, don't go. Make sure you've rated and reviewed the podcast on the podcast app. And also, if you want to watch us live on television on YouTube, you can head to our YouTube channel and search The Skinny Confidential to find us. And also, if you love Dr. Amon's episode so much, go back to episode 375. And that will give you more context about who he is and what he does.