The Unplanned Podcast with Matt & Abby - Brain expert on Tylenol, Autism, and Anti-Depressants w/ Dr. Daniel Amen

Episode Date: October 29, 2025

Dr. Daniel Amen—renowned psychiatrist, brain imaging pioneer and bestselling author—joins Matt & Abby to unpack how the brain really affects health, mood and relationships. They dive into big topics: what Tylenol does to your brain, how autism should be understood through brain health, when anti-depressants help (and when they don’t), and why our brains are often overlooked in mental health. [sponsor info please Addy] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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at my kids, if they're using some sort of technology that's supervised, that's educating them, I view it as a net positive. Do you disagree with that? Do you think that's... I do. I think you have to be so careful. When did autism spike? As a child psychiatrist, I rarely saw it. Tylenol all of a sudden became the star pain reliever. Then we also saw an explosion of autism. We sat down with Dr. Daniel Amid, a world-renowned psychiatrist, brain expert, and 12-time New York Times best-selling author. Amen has scanned over 200,000 people's brains, including those of NFL players and celebrities. I know there's a lot of like hot topics in the media right now, especially when it comes to Tylenol, how that affects, you know, children, especially when a mother is taking that while

pregnant. So I kind of wanted to start off with that topic if that's all right. Well, let's just go for it right away. Okay. So those of us that think of ourselves as integrative or functional medicine doctors, and I think of myself as an integrative psychiatrist, have known for a long time that Tylenol is potentially a problem. And why? What does it do? It disrupts liver function. And so you can't properly detoxify the poisons that are in your body. there has been an association. So when did autism really spike? And the American Psychiatric Association

will lead you to believe when they change the diagnostic criteria. That's absolutely wrong. I mean, yes, maybe more people got diagnosed. But as a child psychiatrist, I rarely saw it in the 1980s when I was doing my training. I rarely saw it in the early 90s.

About the mid-90s, it exploded. So what happened? Yeah. And in the 80s, when a mom had a fever, she'd use aspirin. But there were a couple of cases of something called RISE syndrome where babies had allergic reactions to aspirin. And the pediatrician said, oh, don't give them aspirin anymore. Let's start using Tylenol.

So Tylenol, which was not bad. big, all of a sudden became the star pain reliever and star relieving fever. And then we also saw an explosion of autism. Now, I don't think it's the only thing, but it's a thing. And I believe autism comes from a gene, genetically vulnerable people, environmental toxin. And I think Tylenol is one of them. I also think BPAs, bisphenol A, that's often in plastics, that Coca-Cola, they have BPAs in their cans, and they say it on their website proudly, which sort of a little, it's bad marketing in my mind.

Aspartame, we'll talk about aspartame a little bit that's in diet soda. And there's a brand new study on phthalates. So thalates, one of the chemicals in personal problems. like makeup. Yeah. Or deodorant or your sunscreen. Um, they put it as a preservative. And moms who they looked at cord blood, the blood from the umbilical cord. So mom to baby, those who had high levels of fallout in their cord blood had a 500% increased risk of having an autistic child. Okay. So think about this with me. Because it's not a genetic issue. because genetic issues don't all of a sudden go from one in 10,000 to 1 in 31.

That it's an environmental vulnerability put in something happened. And it was an environmental toxin. Ultimately, if you want the healthiest baby, you have to get healthy yourself. You mentioned how Tylenol, and I think you say this in your new book, that Tylenol is so helpful for someone going through grief. and how, you know, ibuprofen, yeah. Yeah, yeah, I guess like a, yeah, for healing a broken heart. That's, I forget the exact quote that you said.

But, yeah, you were talking about Tylenol when it comes to a broken heart as well as ibuprofen. But for some reason, with ibuprofen, it works for women, but not men. Talk to me more about that. So, and change your brain, change your pain. I thought the idea behind the book is that both physical and emotional pain work work on the same circuits in the brain. And so when they figured out that Tylenol actually helped with the emotional pain of a breakup, it's like, well, why is that? Because it calms an area of the brain called the medial toward the middle pain suffering circuit. I thought that was just so interesting.

And why ibuprofen would work for women, but not for men. I'm not quite sure. but I found that, you know, this gender-based difference is just fascinating. But with things like headaches, you always want to ask yourself, why do I have it? Right? You always want to be curious, not furious. So what did I eat? What did I drink?

What's the level of stress that I'm under? And how can I manage these things? in a better way. And we often talk about how pain is repressed rage. So if you're really angry, but you're such a nice person, you can never say it. It often comes out in back pain or head pain. And Tanna, my wife, often calls me Pollyanna because I'm a very positive person. But I realized in writing, change your brain, change your pain, that I have to be friend Hannibal Lecter because you have to be able to find a way to get the rage out. Now, appropriately, right?

We're not going to become a serial killer. But too often, John Sarno, who wrote wonderful books on pain, talked about the goodness, the people that have to be good in order to be. be okay with themselves that they suffer a lot more with pain. And he actually said it was repressed rage. I also find it very interesting, the connection that you drew between pain that you're like experiencing and then also, and like grief specifically and muscle pain, knots in your back.

We are, we're currently grieving, very fresh grief. We lost a baby at 17 weeks just very recently. I'm so sorry. shake you, still shake you about it, but seeing that you drew that connection, I was, I just turned to Matt immediately. I was like, that's crazy because I have started developing

knots like tweaking my neck, knots in my back, and like I went and got Matt, you scheduled me like a tension point, what was it called, attention point massage? Abby tweaks her neck and so I scheduled her massage and it really helped because she had all these knots. The missus was like, you have so many

knots in your back. And then when I saw you drew that connection between grief and muscles, knots, all this stuff. I was like, wow, that's crazy. That, like, that turned a light on for me. Well, and hypnosis can be very helpful. Or EMDR. EMDR is a specific psychological treatment for trauma.

What happened to you was clearly traumatic, right? It's not a little tea. It's a big tea. Yeah. And there's another technique I like a lot called Havening. Do you know what that is? No, I'm not familiar. So it's bilateral hemisphere simulation.

So I talk about all of these in the new book. But whenever you feel sad, do bilateral hemisphere stimulation. So it's either this or this. I like this the best. And what I would have you do is go in to the sadness while you're doing this and go into it for like 30 seconds. I mean, really feel it. But then keep doing it and distract yourself.

Like go to Disneyland in your head or the mountains or the desert or the beach or wherever you love. And then keep doing that for a couple of more minutes and then go, how do you feel? So initially, if you do it with a havening therapist, they'll go, okay, on a scale of zero to ten, when you think about it, how upsetting? is it and you're like it's a 10 right and then you hay then and you do that for like three minutes and then rate it and often my patients will go it's a four and I'm like well let's do it again think about it for 30 seconds distract yourself go to the beach and then it's a two and then if you do it three or four times, it's like you're still sad, but you're not triggered. And Ron Rudin, who discovered this, found it was really good for panic disorder.

It was really good for phobias. That's music to my ears. I love a good olipop at the end of the day. Honestly, olipop is such a staple in our household. We started drinking olipop a couple years ago because it's soda without all the added sugar that most soda brands have. We literally all fight over our favorite flavors. There's so many good ones, though.

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Costco, Walmart, Target, Publix, Whole Foods, Kroger, and H.E.B. My dad died five years ago, and it was like the worst day of my life. And a couple of days later, I'm over at his house, and somebody put a picture of my dead dad in the mortuary in a random stack of papers. And I got it and it just, it was like somebody slugged me. I was so upset and I was angry and what idiot would do this. And I couldn't stop thinking about that. And I was at my house later that day, obsessing about this. And the little supervisor in my head goes, you treat people who have this problem.

What would you do? And I hate them. I sat in the chair and I thought about how angry I was and I thought about the picture and I did that for like 30 seconds. And then I took my brain to the beach and I kept it. and it went from 10 to like four. And then I did it again. I went from 10 to 2. And then I fell in love with the picture

because it was the last picture of my dad on earth. It's so helpful. And little kids can do this. I found it incredibly helpful for when children are upset to stroke them, right? Like on their arms. have the think about what you're upset about and now go think about the playground or think about being in the pool you know whatever they love and it just settles them how do you think things

would have played out differently if say you would have turned to drinking in that time or went and binged a dozen donuts from crispy cream or i don't know gotten high like are you then prolonging the pain into other areas and then it's it's coming up and you don't even understand why it's coming up? Like, how does that affect? Right, you just could, you know, you feel better fast, but doesn't last. Yeah. And I always want people to feel better fast, right?

That's a fast technique, but I want it to last. And I want you to work through it rather than pick up an addiction that creates more problems for you, whether it's the donuts, alcohol, marijuana, whatever. Why is it that doctors today are so quick to prescribe SSRIs or some sort of medication for things like that? I actually, just to be vulnerable here for a second, I'm actually currently on antidepressants, and they've been super helpful. But it did shock me how easy it was to get prescribed them. It was like a 10-minute phone call just, you know, with the doctor through an app. Like it was a pretty simple process and, you know, I had been depressed for a very long time,

so I think it was probably a good thing and I'm doing a lot better. And it definitely, I think it's helped me through this horrible thing that we're currently going through with the loss of our baby girl. But it was shocking to me, though, how easy it was. Because I held off on, you know, getting them for a very long time because I was trying to fix it in all these different ways, but I just kind of got stuck in this, in that like doom loop that you talk about in your book. Why is that that it's so easy to prescribe them and just hand out antidepressants?

25% of the American population is on psychiatric medication. Wow. It is a huge win for the pharmaceutical industry. It is a huge loss for our society. Some people, they're incredibly helpful, but psychiatrists are the only medical doctors who never look at the organ they treat. So you got prescribed 10 minutes working through an app and nobody looked at your brain. Nobody looked ahead of time.

Nobody looked afterwards. You have no idea what it's really doing to your brain. Now, maybe you had a brain pattern where that medicine, what are you taking? I'm on Zoloff, so I'd take 50 milligrams every night before bed. Okay. So maybe your brain was busy and the front part of your brain, when it works too hard, you can worry, you're a little bit rigid. If things don't go your way, you get upset and you can be sad and those sad thoughts can cycle. Something like Zoloft, SRI, calms that down. But if you take

too much or you take it for too long, then you don't care that much. You become a little bit less motivated. You become a little bit more impulsive. And there's this balance between neurotransmitters in your brain. So if you think of serotonin, Zoloft is a selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitor. So what it's doing, when your brain releases serotonin, it's preventing the breakdown of it, so it leaves more of it around, right? And so it calms things down. But as you raise serotonin, it's on a teeter-totter or counterbalances with dopamine. And so as serotonin goes up, Relatively, dopamine goes down. And so say they were really out of whack to start,

so maybe it balances. But maybe your dopamine was a little bit low, because I think we talked before, it's like, well, maybe you have ADD, right? Unplanned is, you know, before I'm like, I wonder if they have ADD, which means you already started with low dopamine. and so it might you might become a little bit more ADD with it and so how do you know that's been my argument for 30 years unless you look ahead of time someone just monkeyed around with your brain with no biological data and that's what's happening and it's like you asked why it's because it's the only tool psychiatrists have now when I

I trained, I trained in the early 1980s at Walter Reed. That wasn't the only tool we had. I was the therapist. I was the medical doctor. I was the psychiatrist. I had medicine. I had therapy. I had group counseling.

I had lots of tools in my toolbox. But in the early 90s, when managed care, they go, oh, psychiatrist, you're too expensive. You just do the drugs. And we'll hire, you know, lower. paid psychologists, marriage and family counselors. They do the therapy. And in my mind, I went bullshit. I'm not going to do that. I'm treating the whole person. I'm not going to be anybody's prescriber. I'm going to be their doctor. So I've hated that model, but it took over psychiatry in the early 90s. And it's beautiful for the pharmaceutical industry. Speak more about all these other

methods there are to treat you came to see me and i totally would give you an option of medication because my job isn't to tell you what to do my job is to give you options right it's called informed consent and head to head against zoloft walking like you're late 45 minutes four times a week equally effective but what do you have at the end of 12 weeks of exercise well you're cuter and your brain works a little bit better. What do you have at the end of 12 weeks of Zolov? You're less depressed, but it's harder to have an orgasm. I mean, I don't know if that's true for you. So it's funny that you bring that up because I was listening to you talk about this very thing on a podcast and not to be TMI, but I have a very high libido. And so just this past week, I've been on Zoloft now for four months and I was

like, Abby, like, I mean, actually, I'm not even going to lie, a little bit nice that I'm not so like, man, I just need some, like, I don't know. But, but I was like, Abby, like, this is weird. Like, I've never. He can get more done in his day now. Yeah, I'm not so distracted by thinking about sex all the time. So, I mean, maybe that's been helpful for me, but, uh, well, I think for some people, because sometimes hypersexuality can go along with ADD. And calming that down a little bit can be so helpful, right, to give you a little bit better impulse control and not spinning on the same thought over and over again. Yeah. It is funny though. We were talking about natural treatments. So exercise. Omega

3 fatty acids, especially higher in EPA than DHA, learning how to not believe every stupid thing you think is so important. Like when you're sad or you're spinning, it's like why are there no classes in school on how to manage your mind, right? I'm friends with Paul Simon and I love him. He has this song called Kodachrome, which starts off with when I think back on all the crap I learned in high school. It's a wonder I can think at all. I mean, it's like, why don't we teach kids how to manage their checkbooks and manage their minds, right? We have a high school course called Brain Thrive by 25 decreases drug alcohol and tobacco use decreases depression. It's improve self-esteem. Why? We teach them not to believe every stupid thing they think. And then we

teach them to love and care for their brain by asking themselves this question every day is what I'm doing. Good for my brain. We're bad for it. And so alcohol, bad. Norwana, bad. Hit in a soccer ball with your head. Very bad. Right. So just learning to do the right thing, not because you should, you do the right thing because you love yourself, right? And the thing, you want to love your brain. So three natural things, saffron 28, randomized controlled trials against Zoloft, Seleksa, Welbutrin, Eimipramine, Prozac,

equally effective. Saffron is pro-sexual, so maybe that would not help you. it enhances sexual function it helps with mood but also helps with memory and focus there's five studies with ADD and Safra and so I'm thinking for you I'm doing those four things first and theft is learning not to believe every stupid thing you think right whenever you're sad whenever you're mad whenever you're nervous or out of control So write down what you're thinking and then go, is it true? That is a basic skill that second graders should learn.

As a parent, I would say my most, most dreaded meal of the day is lunchtime. Really? Yes. Especially with the kids. Yeah, it's like we just cleaned up from breakfast. I'm thinking about making a dinner for the whole family. Like, you're telling me you need a third meal in the middle of the day. And I feel like I've never had a good plan for it.

And that is why I have stopped stressing over last minute meals and started using Little Spoon. Their recipes are made with pediatricians, packed with hidden veggies, and somehow my kids will still ask for seconds, which I feel like we're always bargaining with our kids at meal time, especially lunchtime. But Little Spoon has been excellent. They love, they love their meals with Little Spoon. They do. The Little Spoon meals even come with, you know, a side, an entree, a dessert. And so what I've been doing when I give them the Little Spoon meals is putting the dessert, like, away until they eat the main portion.

and then I give them their dessert. Oh, and they sure do love it. It also, there's something nostalgic about Little Spoon, too. Like, it reminds me of my childhood, but a much more wholesome and healthier version than what we were eating as kids. Yes. Oh, my gosh. And that's because everything's made with real ingredients, no artificial flavors, sweeteners, or dyes. It's the rare combo of convenient and healthy. And isn't that what we're always looking for? Oh, yes, Abby. And here's the exciting part. Little Spoon is now in Target. Plus, Target has an exclusive frozen line. Think their cult favorite, chicken nuggets, meatballs, and sliders.

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Well, I don't want to say that one. But, you know, I mean, so many people, they go, oh, I'm not enough. I'm not good. enough. I'm not smart enough. I'm not pretty enough. I'm not tall enough. I'm not rich enough. And I'm like, is that true? Yes. Is it absolutely true? No. How does it make you feel small? How would you feel if you didn't have the thought? Fine. Take the original thought, turn it to its opposite. I am enough. And then just focus. Do you have any evidence? You're enough. married to a beautiful woman, have a job you find fascinating. It's where you bring your attention. So if you naturally tend to be depressed, we naturally tend to be negative.

And negativity is bad for your brain. And so I try to teach all of my patients positivity bias. What's positive about this situation? And there's nothing positive about having a miscarriage Except you guys are still together And you still love each other And you can try again And my mom had a miscarriage

And she cried I'll never have a baby Yeah She has seven children And 54 grandchildren Wow Grandchildren It's like

Don't believe every stupid thing you think So when you get that Fah Just write it down And goes that true? Something I love that you have shared many times is pain shared, is pain divided? And that I found so much relief in that in this time. Like I have talked more openly, cried more openly, like shared so much in a time that, I don't know, I felt like a little pressure.

Like maybe I should just be quiet and like get myself collected before I talk about this. But I have found so much healing and like talking about my pain. I guess we can talk about that aspect of, like, managing our pain, like, sharing our pain and, like, how that has a tangible benefit to how we experience it. It also connects you. And it gives some purpose to the pain because if you shared it, other people have shared theirs with you. Now, ultimately, you want to share how you're getting better, right? You don't want to just share the pain.

But in sharing it, other people can tell you their experience. And that's the connection that is healing. And we get sick in four circles and we get well in four circles. So I always think about what's the biology of that. Your hormones went through a wicked, quick transition. So there's a physical aspect to that. There's also a psychological aspect to it, which is loss. right and grief and then there's a social aspect to it there may be some tension or disappointment

and there's a spiritual aspect it's like well why did that happen to me and i think getting well it's taking care of yourself physically not believing every stupid thing you think or using something like EMDR havening to manage it connecting sharing the pain always looking for the purpose. It's just been on our minds constantly. You know, it's been something that like the automatic negative thoughts have definitely come up, feeling helpless, hopeless, like that's, that's obviously been a thing as well. And so it's just been, it's been something that's been really hard. I think, especially, what's the thought? From my perspective, I think it, I think being on antidepressants has definitely helped me, but it's, it's been sad to see Abby, like, blame

herself for all of that. And so just reminding her that there's absolutely nothing that cheated wrong. Seeing her go into this like blame game of like, oh, maybe I did this, maybe I did that. And it's like, no, you didn't. There's nothing you did. It's just sucky stuff like this happens sometimes.

Well, we always try to believe we have more power than we do. Truthful. Yeah. When you go, I could have done this or I could have, you just write that out. And then it's like, Well, is that true? Is it absolutely true?

The flip is, I did what I knew to do, and bad things happen to good people, right? And we know miscarriage has often happened when there's sometimes something wrong with the baby. And so it's nature's way of not creating more suffering. But we don't know. but when your mind goes on the attack, that's when you need to write it down and treat yourself like a good mom would or a good friend or a good teacher or good coach. It's too often we treat

ourselves in such an abusive way and it's like, hey, what a good coach say that to me or would a good friends say that to me or would I say this to someone I cared about and it's like you wouldn't so then give that part of you a name I love it give your mind a name like I named my mind after my pet raccoon when I was because she was a trouble day ago I did no way loved her indoor like inside your house oh no slept in my bedroom what that's scary I didn't know TPed my mother's bathroom It was a very bad day. It ate all the fish out of my sister's aquarium. You're kidding me.

But that's my mind. It just creates trouble. And so if you give your mind a name, you just can separate from it. And if you can be a little bit dispassionate and watch it and go, oh, it's a storm. And the storm because of the loss and the hormones, but you don't have to attach to it. Because it's not the thoughts you have that make you suffer. It's the thoughts you attach to. You've talked before about how when you look at the brain, you scan someone's brain who is praying or meditating.

You see all sorts of activity. I want to get into what that looks like because I believe you referenced on a podcast a study that somebody did on Tibetan monks and Francescun nuns. But where my question is coming from is, is there a similar thing going on in the brain when you look at someone who is reflecting on a loved one that's passed on or a, you know, someone that was close to them and they're like they live in their brain with them, if that makes sense. We all live in each other's brains. And when we lose somebody important to us, the brain still looks for them. And that's where it becomes more active. different than in prayer and meditation. They tend to calm down an area of the brain called the posterior singular gyrus, big term.

It's part of a brain that's like the cheddar box in your brain that talks to you and sometimes punishes you. It says bad things to you. Meditation and prayer, calm those areas down and they strengthen your frontal lobes. And there's always this dance between your emotional brain or the chatterbox and your frontal lobes. So think of your frontal lobes as the break in your brain.

Or if you think of the writer and the elephant, so your emotional brain is like the elephant. But it has a writer. And the writer like directs the energy. No, it's like, now we're going to do that. We're going to do this. And you need that. But if you were in a car accident, if you played football in high school, if you're drinking alcohol or smoking pot, what you're doing is you're weakening the rider or you're weakening the break

and your emotions can get out of control. So we never want to do anything to damage this break part in your brain. That also breaks pain and change your brain, change your pain. I talk about three pain circuits in the brain. brain. This being the most important one because if this is weak, it can't shut down pain. Physical or emotional. I don't know about you, but sometimes keeping up with my supplements is kind of a headache. You know, they're expensive. They're hard to keep up with. But everyday dose is an affordable solution because they cover all of your bases in just a cup of coffee. It takes 30 seconds

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your free weed for like weed pizza like all these there's this big business now behind marijuana because it's getting legalized all over the country and from the research that I've done on it it seems to be a lot less harmful for your health than alcohol, but that doesn't still mean that it's healthy for you. So I'm curious, what do you say to the person that, you know, views marijuana as medicine, medicinal, you know, helpful for chronic pain or headaches? Like, what do you say to that person? Yeah, I'm not a fan. I published a study on 62,000, 454 patients. It's the world's largest imaging study on how the brain ages. And little kids have really busy brains.

And as we get older, it becomes sleepy. And then what we looked at is what accelerates aging. Having schizophrenia was the worst. Your brain looked 10 years older. The next worst was marijuana. Really? Yeah. And then I published a study on 1,000 marijuana users.

Every area of the brain was lower in blood flow. And then there's a brand new study out earlier this year from another group that I have nothing to do with on a thousand marijuana users, young ones, the areas involved with learning and memory were lower. It's not innocuous. It's a lie. Teenagers who smoke or use marijuana in their 20s have an increased risk of anxiety, depression, suicide, and psychosis. There's actually a gene that if you have this gene, you have a 700% increased risk if you use marijuana becoming psychotic. And most people never test for the gene. So if you're using marijuana, it's a little bit of Russian roulette.

On our podcast, Change Your Brain Every Day, we recently had Julius Randall. So Julius is three-time NBA All-Star. It's a superstar power forward for the Minnesota Timberwolves. He's smoking a lot of pot and almost got divorced over it. He saw a scan and Julius is very smart. He saw a scan and saw the damage it was doing and he stopped. Well, year later, emotionally because he learned how to not believe every stupid thing he thinks, he learned how to have better habits, got his ADD treated,

and he's not using marijuana. He's so much better as his brain. is better. I'm not a fan of it, especially because it can decrease motivation. It can decrease your coordination. There's one city in Ohio where 42% of the accidents are associated with marijuana. So we are just changing addictions. And now the new one is psilocybin. It's like psilocybin for everybody. And in some cases, marijuana is helpful. In some cases, under really good supervision, psilocybin probably is going to be helpful for depression and PTSD. The problem is this. As soon as we go, oh, this is good medicine, now we have mass numbers of young people having mushroom

parties. Interesting. And what's the incidence of mental health problems? in the young. They've exploded and they've exploded in part around the societal lies that alcohol is a health food, marijuana is innocuous and mushrooms are a good

way to deal with your depression. We are worse than ever before. Suicide in young people has gone up 746% since the year 2000. So now we can add in social media, and cell phone use where we're no longer dripping dopamine.

We're dumping dopamine. And when you wear out your dopamine stores by the constant phone, the constant social media, the constant comparison, alcohol, marijuana, psilocybin, you just feel bad all the time. And then you get on the app and get on an SSRI and you think you're. you're fine, but there's new research associated SSRI use in older people with dementia. So if I was you, I wouldn't think, oh, this is my happy pill forever. I would go, I'm going to figure out how to manage my mind get really healthy and use this as a tool, a little bit like JLP1 drugs.

It's like, if you think you're going to use that to manage your weight for the rest of your life, you're going to be in big trouble. Yes, you want to turn off the food noise, but you also want to manage, you want to learn how to manage your mind and manage your body. It's funny you bring that up because that was actually my very next question. What should I do as somebody that is currently on antidepressants? I don't want to be on this forever. I want to get off.

Even though I'm sure it'll be frustrating to have a higher libido again, I'm sure I can manage that I'm sure I can find natural ways of dealing with that. So what should somebody do that is wanting to get off of antidepressants? So make sure you talk to your doctor and love your brain. And at some point, we'll look at it, right? And then balance it. Eat things you love that love you back. Like, I love donuts. I could have six and be so happy. And I would be fat and inflamed and miserable. I was surprised to hear you say you like, when's the last time you had a donut?

It's been a long time. In the past five years, have you had a donut? No. Oh my. Cake, ice cream. The last five years. When I go to Europe, I might have a gelato, but Drew Carey, you know, the comedian, Drew Carey,

he said it best. Eating crappy food isn't a reward. It's a punishment. I try to love things that love me back. But every night I make Tanna a brain healthy hot chocolate. Like every night. Unsweetened vanilla almond milk, raw cacao, a little bit of chocolate stevia. There's a company I like called Sweet Leaf.

And I love it. And it loves me back. You seem to be a man of discipline. It seems like discipline plays an important role in your life. Love plays the biggest role in my life. And I love me and I love Tanna and I love my kids. But I realize I never want to have to live with any of them, right? I want to be clear and independent for as long as I can.

I don't want to be a burden, but I don't want to live with them. I was like, no, I want to be in control of me for as long. as possible, right? So I think of it as love that I do the right thing, not as discipline. And what did I think Lincoln said, discipline was choosing between what you want now versus what you want most. Are you a big fan of Abraham Lincoln? Love Lincoln because he failed repeatedly was depressed. was suicidal twice in his life. Really?

Yeah. I was just at the White House and was really fun for me because he got to talk to RFK Jr. And right next to the Lincoln bedroom. And I've always been a huge fan of his. And in the winter of 1840, he was depressed, suicidal.

He had a political setback. And he went to his doctor in Illinois, Springfield, Illinois. And how did his doctor, Anson Henry, diagnosed Lincoln with melancholia or what we would now call depression he talked to him he looked at him he looked for symptom clusters the same way your 10-minute doctor did right you told him the symptoms he gave you the diagnosis which was basically a regurgitation of your symptoms and then he diagnosed and treated him that's insane that we're still doing it the way we did it 185 years

ago. But yeah, I love everything about Lincoln from his overcoming a traumatic childhood. And do you know why he was depressed? I'm guessing because of all the really crazy stuff going on back then with the So what a lot of people don't know is when Lincoln was 10, he was kicked in the head by a horse and was unconscious all night long. And he would have visions. So I think of them as temporal lobe problems, probably from the head injury, depression is a very common cause of consequence of concussions. But if you don't look, you don't know.

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dot app slash legal slash podcast for full disclosures. I actually got on antidepressants not too long after I had my my third concussion. So my first concussion, I was wrestling a guy in college. We were messing around. He shoved me into a cabinet, whacked my head, got a concussion. Second one was actually a year ago this month. I was in Abby's group fitness class, fell backwards on this like soft, you know, plush mat thinking I was just going to like roll just like normal. And there was a metal. kettle bell right there that smacked my head. It's heard gushing blood. Second concussion. Third one, went on a surf trip to Nicaragua with some friends, took a fiberglass surfboard to the face. So maybe your depression is really post-concussive. Could be. And Zoloff's not

the right long-term treatment for that. Hyperbaric oxygen. Imaging, because how do you know unless you look? I mean, I can't say that over and over and over again. We put people in a hyperbaric chamber and put their brain in a healing environment. So I don't know if we talked about it last time, but I did the first and largest study on active and retired NFL players. So I've scanned and treated 400 NFL players. Unreal. 80% of our players got better when we put them on a rehabilitation program. Really good omega-3 fatty acids, a really great multiple vitamin, a brain boost that works in six different ways, avoid bad things, do good things, and for many of them, we put him in a hyperbaric chamber.

I don't know if you know Joe Polish. He's also in Arizona. He's, I love marketing, and he runs something called the Genius Network. He came to see me because he had an addiction, and he got a baseball to his head when he was 10. You could see the evidence of the trauma, and went in a hyperbaric chamber, took the supplements, dramatically. better. Wow. You are not stuck with the brain you have. You can make it better. I would love to

circle the conversation back to social media because we have little kids and there's actually a school in Arizona. We're going back and forth what we want to do schooling with our kids. We're doing home stuff right now and for the foreseeable future. But we're like down the line, it might be good for them to do social interactions at school. I think that's very important for their development. but there's a school near us that actually makes it a school policy that none of the kids can have social media if you attend that school like no one can have social media and that reminded me and I heard you said before talking about applying neuroscience to public policy and there's a country that banned social media for everyone Australia okay for our kids under 16 yeah I think that's a I mean

there's a direct correlation to suicide and social media and cell phones yeah so So a brand new study that kids who got cell phone at the age of five, when they're 20, they have a 50% chance of having suicidal ideation, 5-0, 1 and 2, that the earlier kids get cell phones, the more messed up they are. Why in Silicon Valley are there nanny contracts that go, you cannot be on your phone around the child and you cannot let the child have access to devices? would that be from the people who created this stuff that they go, oh, it's not good for my kids. So if they know it's not good for your kids, it's not good for your kids. It's so scary for me

because we were just in high school when I feel like social media was first picking up and it is since obviously changed dramatically. Gotten so much more all consuming. I'm curious like how you anticipate people like in our generation like what our brains will look like when we're elderly because of this constant social media consumption. So conscientiousness, the one predictor of longevity is going down in your generation. Agreableness is going down in your generation. And we don't recognize that social media companies, there's this great documentary. If you haven't seen it, you should, called The Social Dilemma, how these companies for profit are purpose. purposely pissing you off that if you're mad, if you're sad, if you're anxious, you stay on longer.

And ultimately, the only thing they want is mindshare. They want your attention for as long as possible. And so what they do is they take people who are like center right, but then they'll just feed them right content. And pretty soon that center-right person is more moderately right. But that moderate-right person is now far-right. And the same thing's true. The center-left person is now moderately left, and the moderate-left person is now radically left. And it's an unintended consequence for money of dividing us into this really insane,

hateful place that we have gotten to, that people celebrating the assassination of, you know, a young right star. It's just unconscionable to me. But it happens on both sides, right? It's not a left issue or right issue. It's a social media mind manipulation so they can sell you stuff. Can these devices, I know we've talked about social media and how damaging that can be, but can these devices be used for good as well? Because the reason I ask, our son, I'm so proud of him. He's three. He's doing like a little bit of school every week. He goes two days a week to this little, you know, small homeschool that we set up with our friends. And he recently, actually, I think this was just a couple of days ago, by far best in the class when it came to drawing all three. his letters. He just, like, traced every letter. He's three. So, like, most three-year-olds can't, you know, he just turned three. So it was just very impressive that he almost perfectly

traced every letter. And the reason he was able to do that was because about, I don't know, 10 days ago, 14 days ago, I started using this learning application on our iPad with him called ABC Mouse. And so it's been interesting, though, because he's learned so much from this learning program, ABCC Mouse, but I've noticed how addicted he is to the learning games, even though it's, okay, which one is greater, the three acorns or the two pigs, and he'll, you know, do all these games, but he, there's something about the technology aspect that does get him, you know, glued to the screen. So how do you, how do you balance that as a parent? I would take away the screen. There's a really good book called The Anxious Generation by Jonathan.

height and the more access they have to devices the more it's going to wear out the dopamine in their brain the more they'll get addicted to it and the more problems they're going to feel and as his parents you are going to feel right because when you struggle with the kids you feel terrible if it was me I would get paper and draw the letters out with him and the last screen time the more attention he will build naturally. The more screen time, the less attention he will build. You know, like looking at myself, right, I love to learn. I think learning so much fun.

And so when I go to learn something, I'll go on YouTube and listen to a three-hour podcast about a very niche topic that I just want to nerd out about. You know, in the same way, when I'm looking at my kids, if they're using some sort of technology that's supervised, that's educating them, I view it as a net positive. and do you disagree with that? Do you think that's... I do. Okay.

Yeah, I think you have to be so careful because they're so reinforcing that kids get addicted to it. And then they get unhappy and they go through withdrawal without it. Your brain is mostly finished developing. His brain is undergoing wild development and much better that he's outside,

he's playing, or that you're teaching him off the devices. The more you do it on the devices, the more dependent he is going to be for that exciting, stimulating way of learning. I am so curious what other types of public policy you'd like to see put in place that has neuroscience in mind.

So California passed law that school, high school, cannot start before 8.30 in the morning because we know kids who get less sleep have a higher incidence of anxiety, depression, and suicide. I love that. It's simple, but it's smart. I think brain health education should be in every grade. I had to learn English in every grade, right? But I didn't learn one thing how to love and care for my brain. And I think this is absolutely critical. I think looking at all of the ingredients and products, I think we should really take a critical look at phallates and parabens and fragrance and aspartame. Yeah, I'm so curious what you have to say about aspartame because isn't that it's in Diet Coke that like all of us are like

addicted to? Yeah. So aspartame and 5,000 products when I was 35, I had pain in my hands and my knees and I had trouble getting off the floor playing with my smaller children. And one of my patients, and I think the people who've taught me the most about what I do are the people I serve. It's been my patients. And I said, one woman said, I stopped aspartame and my pain went away. And I'm like, really? Because I thought it was free. Right. It's no calories. Lunchtime, there was a jack-in-the-box across the straight from me and I didn't care anything about my own brain so I'd have lunch at jack in the box and I'd have a 32 ounce diet Pepsi like every day and I'm in chronic pain and I'm like

maybe I should stop that and so I did and the pain went away and then I'm not that smart so I had to test it and so I got another one and then the pain immediately came back and I'm like done with Aspartame. They gave mice aspartame. They go. I know. That's like every mom's favorite drink. And they liked it. I don't know if I want to hear this. Have you heard about Utah Soda Culture? And they liked it, but they got really anxious. And they gave them Valium, a benzo, and it calmed them down. But the really bad part of this study, their babies were anxious. And the babies were never exposed to aspirate. It had an epigenetic change. It turned on some switches that created anxiety in their babies. Their grandbabies were anxious. Aspartame unleashed 1981. 5,000 products. So if you just like

chewing gum, most gum has aspirin in it. And I just think we should do thoughtful studies rather than studies sponsored by Coca-Cola or sponsored by the food industry that they have very powerful lobbyists that are paying lots of money for the government not to look into these things. And I'm sort of a huge fan of RFK Jr. and go, let's get petroleum-based dyes out of our, I mean, if he can't buy it in Europe, why can you buy it here? Yeah. Right? I mean, if they're, like blocking things. I'm not a fan of red dye. You've said there's quite a few things that you're happy with what RFK Jr. is doing.

I'm curious though with how you spoke about mushrooms earlier. I want to say RFK is, you know, working to legalize psilocybin in the country for those, you know, war veterans, people that have suffered from PTSD and talk to me more about that. Like are there any areas like that where you, maybe disagree with RFK? Well, I'm very concerned about the psilocybin stuff. I think it's going to be helpful to some people and it's going to devastate other people. There's not enough caution in the discussion because as the idea of the dangerousness of a drug goes down, its use goes up. Because people don't know how to manage their minds and so they're always looking to escape.

their own mind and i'm like why don't just make friends with it why just you know give your mind a name and don't believe every stupid thing you think friends gosh we never got the name of your mind hermy her me that was the raccoon's name that's so cute it was she was a girl she actually hussy got pregnant um wow i mean i raised her with morals oh my goodness got out got out one night and then had seven babies. But anyways, Harvey was her name. And she,

I loved her. And she was great for picking up girls. Because just take her out on her leash and, oh, she's so cute. What kind of girls is a raccoon? Oh, so many.

Take her to the beach and like, it was great. I did want to ask you this. Because going through grief and loss, it feels like the natural stage that we're in now is like, maybe we get a dog that feels like a good is there some connection there's got to be something to that having an animal often is very settling to the brain if you pick one that's rational and loving like i have a white shepherd and i am just so completely in love with her right it took a lot of work

to train her. But yeah. When I work out, she, like, lays right next to me. Okay, we got to clear from... I think that can be helpful, but you also want to make sure it's not a reaction because it's a 12 or 15-year decision. And they can be stressful.

So you just want to sort of judge judge your bandwidth. And then, if you're really smart, you get a dog, make sure you have a really good trainer. And that you, because the trainer's not for the dog. The trainer's for you. Training me. Just like training your mind, right?

You have to be really thoughtful with a puppy. I have kind of a dumb question that's been nagging me ever since the beginning when you were talking about pain and like headaches. So bear with me. There's no dumb question. think so hard that you get a headache because I swear sometimes I thought way too much today that's what this that's what's causing this you can't think is thought thinking negatively no like if you're like trying to learn something or grapple with something negotiate like a hard

concept in your mind can it literally cause physical pain in your head well if the focus with stress will cause the tension so it's the stress to get worse Yeah. Have you ever been hypnotized? Never. So I have an app called BrainFit Life. It's got six, soon to be 18, hypnosis audios. Oh, wow. And many of the new ones are for pain.

Wait, yes, I have. When you were giving birth. I did a birth hypnosis. Yeah, hypnobirth like, yeah, meditation. Meditation. Meditation. It actually worked. So what I would do, especially if you're prone to headaches, is every day just spend 10 to 20 minutes.

listening to a hypnosis audio and training your brain how to get into a relaxed hypnotic state because it'll lower your cortisol levels and your muscles are telling you something that your brain is sending too many stress signals to your body and so just being in a hypnotic state helps to settle that down. And then on top of that, I would add diaphragmatic breathing. So diaphragmatic breathing is just breathing with your belly. And it's so simple, four seconds in, take a big breath. But blow up your belly when you breathe in. If you ever watch a baby breathe or a puppy breathe, they breathe exclusively here because it's the most efficient way to breathe but then eight seconds out so take twice as long to breathe out as you breathe in and um for people who

have a smart watch um it often measure heart rate variability which is a sign of heart health and if you can increase it you increase it with things like hypnosis and diaphragmatic breathing and meditation. You're just training your body. It's like, girl, you've been thinking too much. Or girl, you're too hard on yourself. We need to be the good mother to ourselves, right? Nurture, love, quiet, your busy brain.

How do you tap into a hypnosis? Like, it's easy. I'm thinking about my labor experience. It was crazy. I was hypnotized for, like, how long? Was that? That was listening to that. I don't even remember the time.

Maybe 45 minutes because you forgot to let them know that you needed another epa-dirt. Like you needed a dose. And then they were like, okay, it's time to push. And I was like, well, I'm in so much pain. And I'm wondering if that same thing would occur like in if I were to do this daily. With a migraine or something. Like during the day where if I'm like, okay, yeah, I was in that really relaxed state. I did that practice in the morning.

Here I am in the afternoon. I've, my to-do list is long. How do you tap back into that without like, do you just stop everything and, enter the diagnosis again just do for diaphragmatic breaths okay lay on your back or sit in the chair and they're like a 15 second breath so like that's a minute um and go somewhere in your mind that you love like i can immediately do it and go to the beach or go to the mountains or in Wyoming, which is so pretty. It's just I'm going to work to train my brain to help me.

And if we did a lot more of that in a society, we'd be a lot happier. You can tap back into that. And then don't listen to things that piss you off, whether it's the news or social media that's meant to keep your attention. Just watch. You know, I think people listen. And just watch your feed on how much of it is, oh, I really like that versus that really makes me mad. Can you offset your vices?

So let me give you an example. I know of somebody in my life, they practically drink a beer every day, but they also run every single day. They never miss a day. And so it's like, okay, alcohol, not good for your brain, but then running good for your brain. So let me answer it this way. I've seen 400 NFL players, some of them active players, they have $80 million contracts, they're still going to play. It's like, if you're going to do something bad, you need to outweigh it with a whole bunch

of good. So Tom Brady played until he was 45. He wrote a book called TB12, which is basically a brain health book. Virtually everything else he did was great. Or we're just finishing on firefighter stuff. after the LA fires and it was so awful, our foundation, we have a foundation called the Change Your Brain Foundation that raises money for service and research and education.

We donated 100 scans for firefighters because they all have bad brains. But does that mean they're not going to be a firefighter because of the toxic exposure, the emotional trauma, the head trauma? No, we need firefighters, but what should happen is they should love their brain and they should always be rehabilitating it. So, you know, if you want to keep your vices, just see, I mean, you really can't outrun a bad diet, right? But try to do way more good than bad.

And the more love you have for yourself, the less bad you'll want to do. Is there something that we haven't discussed? that people need to know. Like just, you know, final thoughts. I know you had a sex question you wanted to ask. I had a sex question I wanted to ask. What was it? I don't know.

We were talking about it was like, I want to bring this up. I'm trying to figure out a way. I was like, you wrote a whole book about love and the brain. I feel like he's got lots of a wealth of knowledge on that topic. Oh, man. The best fourth play is forethought.

Okay. No forethought equals no. no foreplay right that's why you want to have good frontal lobes because you know for guys we can get aroused almost anytime girls are way different and they need thoughtfulness and so you always want to ask yourself this one question what do you want like with my wife i always want the same thing it's always the same thing i want a kind caring loving supportive power passionate relationship, 100% of the time I want that. But I don't always feel it.

Rude thoughts just show up. And I block them because it's like, that's not going to get your goal. And the other thing, notice what you like more than what you don't like. Every day, you're shaping each other's behavior by what you notice. And you know you can make her mad. You can make her sad by what you say or what you do. But that doesn't fit the goal because odds are you guys have the same goals. I have most of my patients have the same goal, kind, caring, loving, supportive, passionate relationship.

And it just supervise what comes out of your mouth right now. If you drank, those bad thoughts are more likely to come out. If you didn't sleep the night before, those bad thoughts are going to come out. If you're grieving, those bad thoughts are more likely. to come out but if you just focus on noticing what you like more than what you don't it just could change the quality of your relationship in a good way it all connects back really does dr raymond thank you so much for coming on the show it's been a pleasure speaking with you if you guys have it um definitely pre-order his his new book change your brain

change your pain can they can pre-order it right they can pre-order okay and if they go to change your brain, change your pain book. We actually have four free gifts for them. Even a 30-day online pain course. No way. That is great. And the Emotional Freedom Journal, which is how do you get the rage out? And I'll make it three fatty acid supplement.

Very cool. Dr. Raymond, thank you so much. Thank you. So great to see you guys again. Likewise.