We're Out of Time - Dr. Drew Ramsey: Why Mental Health Starts with Brain Health

Episode Date: May 26, 2026

In this episode of We’re Out Of Time, we sit down with Dr. Drew Ramsey — psychiatrist, mental health advocate, and leading voice in nutritional psychiatry — to unpack what’s really happening to our brains in the modern world.From the connection between food and mental health to the growing mental health crisis impacting millions, Dr. Ramsey explains why brain health is the foundation of emotional wellness. Together, we explore how nutrition, environment, relationships, biology, and lifestyle all shape the way we think, feel, and heal.This conversation goes beyond traditional discussions about mental illness and recovery, offering practical insight into building “mental fitness” before things fall apart. Dr. Ramsey shares why the modern brain faces challenges unlike ever before — and what science says we can do to protect it.If you’ve ever wondered how stress, diet, isolation, and everyday habits impact your mental well-being, this episode is packed with eye-opening perspective and actionable takeaways.

140 calories. In my left hand, everybody, I've got one 12-ounce delicious can of Coca-Cola. It's ice-cold, folks. And in my other hand, I have a small kale salad. It's not so small. It's three cups of kale in it. It has a teaspoon of olive oil whisked together with some lemon juice, and it's got some sea salt and fresh pepper cracked on top. They're both 140 calories. If someone has a problem with substance use disorder, please call one call placement. That's 8888-8-3-1-1581. And if we can't help you, we'll make a referral to someone who can. One Call Placement is affiliated with Carreira Treatment, Wellness, and Spa and One Method Treatment Centers. Today, I'm sitting down with Dr. Drew Ramsey, a leading voice in mental health and nutritional

psychiatry. He spent over 20 years helping people understand how what we eat, how we live, and how we connect all impact our mental health. We talk a lot on this show about addiction and recovery, but today we're focusing on something just as important, how to build real mental fitness before things fall apart. This is a powerful conversation about what's happening to our brains and what we can do about it.

So first of all, doctor, I wanted to thank you. Should I call you doctor or professor? You know, you can just call me Drew probably is better, you know, or doctor, I guess, Dr. Drew, I don't know. Okay, then you're a doctor. Got it. We're hearing mental health crisis everywhere right now. But from where you sit, what's actually happening?

We have a mental health challenge that we've never had before. One of those ways that I focus on like the modern brain, right? What's healing the modern brain? Well, it's taking the new science, really like 20, 25 years, but really exciting stuff. I'm going to say in the last 10 years about how our brain functions, how we take care, of them and that's, you know, that's the root of your mental health, is your brain health. And so this, this elegant, amazing brain of yours is in this modern world that has a lot of new challenges.

And so the mental health crisis is in part that we're doing a better job recognizing, talking about destigmatizing mental health treatment. Mental health conditions are medical conditions. I'm a medical doctor. I went to medical school. When I think about how to take care of someone with depression, it's. It's that kind of, I would say, circumspect full 360 view that we use in medicine. I'm thinking about your psychology.

I'm thinking about your biology. And I'm thinking about your environment, your sociology. Hold on, though. Okay. That's not what every doctor does. That's what the top-notch doctors do. Okay. That's, yeah.

I mean, you know, I just don't want to mislead my viewers. This is not, this is top-notch care. This is not. This is what everybody should do. get Richard. I agree. This is not what most people are getting. And I hope by the end of this talk, everyone's going to have a really good sense of what I recommend as a psychiatrist that everyone be doing on a weekly, if not daily basis to take care of and protect your mental health. I call this mental fitness because you all, everyone listening, you have some idea of physical fitness. Maybe you're exercising. Maybe you're not. But what I find fascinating, even if you're not, you know what to do. If I said, Richard, look, I think he's, you got to work on your core this week. It's super important for your mental health. I don't think I need to then tell Richard Howe, there are these things called crunches. Have you heard of a crunch? Have you heard of a plank? You already know. But when it comes to mental health, we're a little

less clear. Like, what do we do? There's a mental health crisis. Clearly, we need more resilient mental fitness. We need to do more to care for ourselves. What does that look like? And that's where these tenets of mental fitness come in. Let me ask you a question. It seems to me, like, like it got so much worse with social media. And then with COVID, it exploded. Is that what you're seeing? Yes. And I think my mental health and my mental fitness is stronger than it's ever been.

And I think there are a lot of people like that. Like, yes, COVID was horrible. But like all challenging things that humans encounter, we learn from it. We take some lessons from it. We take some hits from it too. for sure the social media incredibly challenging at the same time, that's where most people are going to see this. And so, you know, we are less connected for sure in certain ways. And I get into that in the book saying, hey, you got to pay attention to what happened and what's in your pocket and how you engage with people or you're going to have a much higher risk of mental health problems.

But yes, the social media took a toll. COVID took a toll. aside from all of that, there's just clinical depression. There's just bipolar disorder, PTSD, just the, you know, you just mentioned that's a couch right there. And the same, you know, young men's figuring out how to express themselves emotionally and be good boyfriends and good men. Mom's figuring out how to help their kids or themselves, how to build self-esteem or confidence or achieve that goal. This is what I really want to talk about. I love the fact that you're not.

that you that you advocate diet for psychiatry. And that's never, you're like the only one that I've ever spoken to about that. And you're not anti-meds or SSRIs. You're saying that this is not instead of, but in addition to. And it also involves sleep hygiene and all sorts of, other basic things that you should be doing for yourself for self-care and maintenance along the way, right? Yep.

I want to give you a roadmap. That's all true about me, Richard, because I believe my job is helping people get better. And I live in a world where a lot of people I work with have lots of challenges in their mental health and medications are part of their journey in some ways, sometimes short term, sometimes long term. And I'm not here to judge that. I'm here to get people better. Diet's a huge part of that.

It's called nutritional psychiatry. I'm one of the originals. There are a number of psychiatrists who really help move this, get this movement going. In fact, this year I'm going to the American Psychiatric Association annual conference in San Francisco. And it's the 20th year that I've presented. And it just kind of shows that while, you know, we often get ding like, oh, doctors don't know about nutrition. You know, the AP has been very supportive of me and all of my work because it's common sense. now part of depression treatment guidelines because of the work we've all done, especially

Felice Jackin, Australia, Umunaydu, Chris Palmer. These are all really, you know, other leaders in this field. We now have about 15 years of data. And it's just, it's super cool. Like, people get better when you feed them healthier food. Right. With their depression and anxiety. You would think it's common sense, but it's not, you know, we do at Carrero. We have Blue Zone foods. Right. I just, when we started, I said, you know, this is. going to be different. And I want to do the blue zone foods and I want to teach people how to eat and make food part of the treatment plan. Everybody knows a Navakato's great brain food. Not a lot of people have sat with folks who haven't eaten an avocado and gotten them to. Not a lot of people

have sat with patients. My colleagues in dietetics and nutrition and a lot of my colleagues in mental health for sure. But not a lot of people have had that experience of like, okay, well, how do you actualize it in somebody's life? How do you support someone? How do you support someone? How do you you talk about this without a sense of judgment or bias, but a sense of support. Do you know how I would do it? I want to hear. I would literally cut an avocado in half, put some sea salt on top with a spoon, give him half, and tell him to close his eyes and taste it.

How delicious is that? It's a great example of how some of the interventions I've seen and have worked with for institutions have always brought food to the table. Because we can talk about it all day long, but if you haven't ever eaten quinoa or you've never had, I put a little olive oil on there in Richard's avocado intervention, or you haven't had that notion in a mental health setting of sharing. There was a brief period in my career where I commuted from my farm in Indiana,

where I was born or where I was raised, rather, and raised a lot of food. And I'd fly in New York, and I'd, like, bring, so I bring, like, my cukes and my tomatoes with me. I'd make this little platter for my patients because it was so delightful, it's sort of entertaining to me that I could grow food for the people that I was treating. It's beautiful. It's beautiful. And I don't know if you know it or not, but it's an intervention that is used all the time with eating disorders. Well, for sure. I mean, you know, eating disorder, there's a lot around in some ways, you know, removing a lot of the value judgments about food and nourishing the self. and eating disorders, a lot of people don't know, are really our most lethal set of psychiatric disorders. And so they're really misunderstood illnesses. And, you know, one of the concerns or one of the things we look out for in nutritional psychiatry is making sure not to trigger something like an eating disorder or what's called orthorexia.

Orthorexia is when we have such rigid rules about food. Of course, I can't eat your barbecue. I'm a brain foodie. I only eat seafood, greens, nuts, and beans. We don't want to create that rigidity or in some ways that impracticality, that you're an eater. So most days, every day you need to eat multiple times. Sometimes you didn't plan great. You're not in the right environment.

You're on a road trip. You're at someone's home and they're serving you. And it's not perfect brain food. And that needs to be okay some of the time. Let's talk about sugar for a second. When I gave up sugar, it was the hardest thing in the world for the first seven days. after seven days, I didn't think about it. Now, I'm going to give you a caveat.

I was doing micro doses of zepp out. Okay. So that made it really easy for me. Okay. How do you feel about sugar and how do you feel about a GLP1 shutting down the noise? Because it also helped me with my cigars. Okay. I don't even think about cigars.

I love it. I mean, you know, I'm a physician. Like, you're telling me you got better. There's a medicine that's helping you. You're not eating refined sugar as much and you're not smoking tobacco. Your risk of oral cancer, your risk of obesity, your risk of dementia. I mean, everything just went down. And so I love all of that.

There is. Let me tell you my thoughts on sugar, which is I'm probably one of the few people in the health space who really likes to honor sugar for what it is, which is a psychosperital miracle. sugar is the base of our food supply, right? The sun hits leaves, and what does it make? It makes sugar. Now, when we're talking about dietary refined sugar, we're talking about sweets, we're talking about commercial baked goods, we're talking about candies,

we're talking about low-fat stuff, we're talking about, you know, corn syrup solids and dectrose inverse syrups, right? Okay, what we're really talking about there. What you're talking about is you gave up processed foods and you gave up ultra-processed foods. You didn't give up broccoli. broccoli is just made a sugar. You didn't probably give up apples. Maybe you gave up pasta a little bit of it, but you still have it.

Those are all sugars. So I think it's really interesting. You're right. Getting rid of refined sugars is important. But I think that's really a signal for what we're trying to say in the health space. When we say sugar, seed oils, all this stuff is we're trying to say ultra-processed foods. And then the really important step, which I love as a clinician, is like, tell me about it. Probably the good example for me is alcohol.

Love alcohol, love drinking, have a bunch of alcohols in my family. It's easy but two and two together. Never hit that point of really having a problem problem, but definitely was at a point where I needed to stop drinking. I was very lucky. It came off pretty quickly and easily for the most part. Like you and like with your sugar story, it took a little while longer, but I really didn't have a lot of alcohol craving, but ended up with a lot of sweet craving. Why isn't the first line of treatment instead of medication, nutritional? nutritional psychiatry, like nutritional interventions.

And I'd even say like mental fitness, I think for one it is. If you look at the treatment protocols pretty universally, right, when we meet someone with clinical depression, you know, our sense is one labs. We want to make sure it's not B12 or folate or your thyroid or anemia, you know, all very common causes of clinical depression. We want to hear about your life. You know, if your dog died, you lost your job, your girlfriend kicks you out. and you don't work out ever and you just watch a lot of TV and you're feeling down.

You know, that's the kind of thing that is a lifestyle situation. I really work very hard in my clinical situations and collaborations as I think about them to get to a place of really raw honesty, that I have zero interest in judgment. You know, there's lots of places for people to feel shameful about their mental health. There's lots of places for people to be a judge, and particularly in mental health. There's a lot of places where people are, it's really easy for them to find bias, meaning that the way that I'm going to get you better is by my plan. I like the Prozac.

I like the avocados. I like the mental fitness. And, you know, there's some truths. We all have our style, but really good clinical mental health care is delivered in a bias free way. So, listen, I work with alcoholics and drug addicts all the time. And they come in completely destroyed and broken. Okay.

Mm-hmm. how does the food add to that hell and how can the food bring back, make you whole again so that you can start from a healthy baseline? Well, when your main driver of pleasure is alcohol or substances, you've lost one of the main dopaminergic and kind of drives of human, which is to nourish and feed yourself. You've also sabotaged one of the main things that keeps us healthy and mentally. healthy, which is the power and need for human connection. And that human connection's gotten sabotaged because it's now mitigated by substance, right? You're interested in your friends, but you're mostly interested in getting beers with your friends. You're interested in your friends, but your friends are kind of the people that you score coke with and then snort it.

And so that disruption of nourishment and of a number of the tenants of mental fitness is really at the core of how substance use disorders destroy and disrupt someone's life. The nourishment's very interesting because especially in recovery, I mean, how it goes out the window is clear to everybody. You often run out of money. You don't have the focus. Your drive and attention is on other things and it's catch as catch can for food. Also, a lot of the substances of abuse, stimulants, methamphetamines, cocaine, marijuana, alcohol, they all really influence appetite. And they influence how we kind of consume and how we eat and how we think about satiation. Cannabis, you know, a lot of cannabinoid receptors naturally in the blame.

There's a CBD1 and a CBD2 receptor. And cannabis is involved in, you know, a nausea and, you know, how we perceive nausea and people who chronically use cannabis, you know, daily users. There's a reasonably increasingly high incidence of people who eventually run into this hyper-emesis syndrome where you can't stop retching and vomiting and then you use cannabis and it gets even worse and people present to the ER because you can't keep anything down and so you know how much of it is you know I think maybe when it started it sounded like an urban legend and at least as far as I understand from the literature and my colleagues like it's actually something that happens and so

what about the psychosis what about the marijuana psychosis how often you see that the biggest that's the biggest risk in cannabis that people don't know about I'm shocked but the number of teen and specifically the number of teen parents I meet who've never heard of marijuana-induced psychosis or they think about cannabis as something that, you know, is a quote-unquote safe. You know, the most dangerous thing for your teen in a lot of ways is cannabis because the risk of psychosis skyrockets. But isn't most of this, isn't most of this just good kids who don't get high, got high and got too high?

No, no. I think that a lot of it is the vulnerability genetically of some people who wouldn't develop psychosis and then cannabis you know cannabis is also considered a light psychedelic and so one of the you know the concerns of psychedelics is they really they breach or kind of like strongly influence and in some cases really disrupt you're what's called your default node network and in a lot of ways for some people that's kind of your sense of reality as we know it so for a lot of people that's wonderful right you kind of lose the trauma you get more connection you get a lot of healing but for some

people that's really just devastating. And so cannabis and psychosis, you know, some of it is people get too high about a third of people, you know, they'll get a little noity, they call it a little paranoid. But, you know, this syndrome we're talking about. Every psychiatrist has seen it. It's terrifying. You just see, you see, you know, it's a bunch of kids. They're smoking a bunch. I trained up in the upper part of Manhattan. And there's a very kind of large population. Cannabis is very common. Large population of cannabis smokers smoking big blunts. And there'd be like that kid in the group. and they just would totally derail, decompensate, get psychotic. It is awful.

And so, you know, there's obviously been lots of fearmongering around cannabis, but I just think this is a population in a psychoeducational need that just people don't know about, about just really watching, especially with the vapes at ease that people move into regular use. So the nourishment of nutrition, I don't want to get off the way, like, the thing is, like, use it for your recovery people because one, just the, like, tactile, like, you need. need stuff to do with your hands, right? You're not picking up beers. You're not using some. So, you know, you want to think about nutrition as one of the ways that you're organizing your life in your mind. It's about sober living. And I think about sober living and sobriety is that there

isn't just the not using substances. That's step one, right? Step two is sitting with feeling and naming those feelings that you've been numbing or getting away from with all the substance. And then there's this, you know, kind of next step, I think. Say that again. Say that again, because that was the best thing you've said today and I want them to hear it again. It's a step two, this idea that once you get rid of the substances, then you're sitting with it. You're sitting with the feelings you've been getting away from. You're sitting with a mental health problem you haven't taken care of.

You're able to actually name stuff. You're able to work on yourself. In your book, Healing the Modern Brain, what's the biggest shift in thinking you want people to understand about mental health? Step one, the first tenet of mental. fitness everyone is self-awareness and this is really this desire i have this this book and this framework of mental fitness helps you transcend some of the damage that's being caused by our modern environment be that social media be that all the substances we're talking about that's

actually part of the book and people like what do you mean about the healing the modern brain it's like this is the first time my career i'll meet mommies daddies that can be super conservative not who you'd think and man they got their vape pens they've got their psychedelic retreats they're taking CBD at night. You know, they've been on a couple of different medicines and stimulants. And they're also super crunchy and organic. And so it's this like big mix now. So self-awareness is so important because everybody listening, me, Richard, everyone,

has your own experience, your own challenges, your own unique set of genes and experiences and most importantly, your own values. What do you think about the psychedelics? I'm probably a little bit contrarian in the space that I love science and neuroscience. I love the deregulation in the sense of more progression and decriminalization. I think the risk gets really minimized and the effects get really kind of stated hyperbolicly. And I also think that some people are having great experiences. I think what's underreported are the side effects and people have.

bad experiences, false recovered memories, people having splits with reality. And then I just think there's a lack of real world efficacy. The people who are responding are the believers. You know, those same people respond. I want to stop you right there because that's exactly right. You could not be more correct. Do you know what this is a lot? First of all, the microdosing is fine because it helps you focus. And if it's done the right way, it's fine. Okay. But as a general rule, I view psychedelics in mental health or treatment for drug addiction and alcoholism. I view it as a guy who's never done mushrooms or acid as a kid doing it for the first time and experiencing what we all experienced as kids. Now, it's real to him.

okay and it may give you a breakthrough okay but it doesn't last that's just that's the moment of clarity that now you got to follow it up with treatment and therapy well you know this is really interesting question right now and this is about 140 compounds that are in the process of seeking FDA approval and one of the things that you know I don't know it's called it psychedelic pharma big pharma I love how big pharma was in trouble with everyone and and telling how big farmer is making lots of psychedelics. It's kind of wild. The serotonal hypothesis is all BS, all BS,

until actually where are you binding to with all the psychedelics? Oh, the serotonin receptor? It's like, wait, I thought you were saying the serotonin hypothesis is all wrong. It's really a fascinating space. I think that thing you said earlier, Richard, we can't say, like, in general or generally. I think that's the hardest part about this is we're talking about a bunch of different diagnoses, a bunch of different populations and about seven different compounds. And so right there on my couch, I've done some ketamine-assisted psychotherapy with patients.

I've gone and done ketamine as part of a ketamine training. You know, I've referred patients to psilocybin treatment for treatment-resistant depression. In Oregon, that's now legal and accessible. You know, there are a lot of things. It's interesting. All of the folks who are excited, or not all of them, but there's such excitement about psychedelics, but where's the excitement about TMS, Kranztranial magnetic stimulation? Everybody's on board.

Everybody's getting on board with the TMS. Slowly, but it's wild. It's been around for 25 years. I mean, this most recent protocol sort 80% response rate at the same protocol. But the practice is always 10 to 15 years behind the science, right? And plus, insurance wasn't paying for it up until a short while ago. So, yeah, we should give a couple, a couple of my colleagues, Owen Muir is one. He's got a great substack frontiers in psychiatry, I think it's called.

And he's been one of the folks who's really on the frontier of making these new treatments more accessible. Owen really open about his own bipolar disorder. And it's just a really good, really big brain. But he's been working really hard with the number of colleagues just to talk about TMS and, you know, kind of called neurotech or interventional psychiatry. Really exciting where it's the use of magnets and some are now using ultra, a short sort of UV. And so again, really exciting era for mental health.

Yeah. Just to go back for a second because I spoke generally, right? And I know how hard that is to speak generally about anything. But the reason I do it, right, is because, you know, I've been doing this 20 years. And so it's no longer anecdotal. It's field research. It's like what I do is the data based on what the study would be, right? I mean, so it's it's it's it just feels that way to me.

It just feels that. There's definitely the feel of that archetypal for an individual who's been, you know, really locked in, grinded out at work, hasn't done mental health work, really unhappy. You see these patients sometimes in therapy where, you know, does some of those I would call basic. psychological ideas. You had a really, really awful development and that influences your object relations, how you interact with people, how you form attachments and intimacy. Some people are really surprised by that. It's new news to them. Or, wow, it sounds like what happened to you is you had a panic attack. And that's why you ended up with just pain. You know, you meet men who are like, I've never even heard of that. That helps me so much. I was sure I was dying. Of course,

you're sure he was dying. That's actually, that's the cardinal symptom of a panic attack. It's an impending sense of doom. So, you know, you see these things that are, as we say, kind of archetypal, you know, in psychiatrary, it is like the bread and butter of what we see, meaning that we see it every day. And then I think there, you know, there are a lot of people using the psychedelics really responsibly. They're the psychonauts who aren't really there for mental health. They're there for consciousness exploration. I think it's really important to differentiate between that and mental health treatment. Yeah, but they'll call it mental health. You know, they do, but they don't have the fear that they should. You know, when you're a real mental health clinician and you're handed a psychedelic medicine, you're scared of it.

Because when you give people medicines, when you give people what we call exogenous compounds, which is a psychiatrist, I do that a lot. You're changing someone's brain chemistry, and that comes with a hell of a lot of responsibility and consequences. What I hope in my work, whether it's eat to beat depression and anxiety, where I'm really trying to dial people in on some of the simple rules of nutritional psychiatry. I want you to think about nutrient density. How many brain nutrients are coming to you and that food? Talk about that. I want to talk about what you're most proud of in the book. Well, let's go with the first one, which is nutrient density.

So everyone, we're always counting calories. We've been obsessed. Right. If you eat a thousand calories, you're going to lose wheat. If you wait, if you eat 3,000 calories, you're going to gain weight. Shutter, shudder, how many calories are in that bite? Now, I've eaten the exact same number of calories that I've expended. my entire life without ever counting a calorie because my weight's been pretty stable.

I've definitely had a period during the pandemic. I went up and down about 25 pounds as a lot of us did. But for the most part, as I've stayed, let's say, 180 to 190, that means I'm eating and burning the same amount of calories. And what that sort of tells me and has told me as a clinician is that our brain is really wired to a metabolic set point and that we can influence that, obviously, with exercise, we influence that with our sleep quality, we influence that with the quality of nutrition that we eat.

We influence that with how stressed we are. And so it's nutrient density I really like because calories doesn't help you make a decision. Think about it. 140 calories. In my left hand, everybody, I've got one 12-ounce delicious can of Coca-Cola. It's ice cold, folks. And I'm going to pour it over a big glass of ice for you. And we all know we love that every now and then.

Super sweet but delicious. And in my other hand, I have a small kale salad. It's not so small. It's three cups of kale in it. It has a teaspoon of olive oil whisked together with some lemon juice and it's got some sea salt and fresh pepper cracked on top. They're both 140 calories. Now, the Coke brings nothing to the table for nutrition. Bring some sugar, which will fuel some brain cells.

It brings a little bicarbonate, if I remember, a little sodium. But that's it. The kale salad, on the other hand, you're talking about, oh, gosh, you've got like three cups. You've got like 2,400 percent of your daily needs. of vitamin K. You've got about 600% of your daily need of vitamin A in the form of beta keratin. You have almost 500% of your daily need of vitamin, your daily need of vitamin C, just in that salad. You have all types of fiber. You've got folate, vitamin B9, one of the most important nutrients for depression. You've got all these amazing phytonutrients. They don't even

get counted in nutrient density because nutrient density is about vitamins and minerals, but phytonutrients, sulfuricane, quercetin. Oh my gosh. These are like these incredible anti-inflammatory, really cool compounds. And so that's nutrient density, right? You pick the Coke, fine, but you get 140 calories and you get nothing else. Whereas with my kale salad, you get a nice, first of a longer chewing, talking experience, right? You can sit there and have that kale salad for a little while. All the flavor, all the taste.

You get all the stuff in the olive and the lemon juice we'd even talk about. And so that's nutrient density, right? All of those nutrients for the same number of calories. I want to know how to clear your brain fog and let me tell you why. I wake up in the morning with such. It's been like this for as long as I can remember decades. I wake up with a mind, a brain fog that is beyond. And unless I put on a nicotine patch, okay, four big huge pills of fish oil and creatine,

okay and a cup of coffee i cannot think okay do i have to go through all that nonsense or is there something else we can be doing to kind of ease that morning routine because that has been going on a while i keep the coffee for sure uh you know that coffee is a really incredibly good drink for your brain put the data lots and lots of interesting phytonutrients in there i'm sorry i'm sorry i put the what I put the Lions main. Lion's main has some data for sure. You know, I have a very simple routine.

I think that for, you know, you mentioned having a TBI, Richard. And so, you know, a lot of times when I hear about these things, I'm hesitant to weigh in because,

you know, I have my own opinions about nicotine. Maybe there's been a real trend there. You know, someone could hear that. And those in the nicotine camp say, wow, that's so good for your brain,

some of us would say, of course, you're a little foggy in the morning. You're in a little nicotine withdrawal. Nicotine is a really powerful. antidepressant, getting off of it. I remember the head of substance used at Columbia Psychiatry. It's this really brilliant psychiatrist who's Reagan's drugs are.

And once he came to teach us and he talked about his experience quitting nicotine. And this guy has gotten people off of cocaine, crack heroin. He says, look, nicotine, I think, is the hardest. It took me six months. And I didn't enjoy anything. I was grumpy. I still crave sick. I was just really honest about how hard it was.

So I think that the fish oil, the data is really ambivalent. The data, I mostly know through depression. And, you know, I tend to get people eating fish. You know, there is this kind of concerns with seafoods, microplastics. I tend to remind people the number one source of microplastics for you is in your environment and the air you breathe. Well, hold on. So you're saying what is it in the fish, the coline? The fish I like because it's a food.

And so the fish, you're going to get DHA, EPA. you're also going to get all the nutrients that come with fish of complete protein B12. You know, certainly there are patients who do well on fish oil. And a lot of people, for example, might not eat seafood, might like not like the hassle of seafood. So I've definitely prescribed a lot of fish oil in my life. I don't do as much. What about supplements? Well, things like creatine and other supplements, you know, for me, I kind of feel there

are lots of people in the space who talk about that. There's lots of people in the space who have their supplement brand. And I've kind of loved being the guy who's here to talk about food. But what about amino acids? Are there any amino acids that should be supplemented? D in the winter. What? Vitamin D in the winter.

This is my tribute to longevity. 52-year-old, no supplements, all food, vitamin D in the winter. Okay. And mental fitness. I really, I think the thing that maybe separates me, Like I'm the same age as David Asprey. For right now, I've found taking good care of my health for me that's eating whole real foods and avoiding processed foods, avoiding plastics, avoiding supplements, taking medications when appropriate and when I need it. Beautiful.

Beautiful. Doing a lot of, you know, I would say if people spend as much time investing in their relationships, connection and being of service as they did with their narcissists. artistic longevity plan. I think they're going to feel a lot better at 80. That's exactly right. What are you most proud of in the book? I think at this book, I'm most proud of the framework of really trying to be explicit. I feel there are a lot of people asking for your kind of ear and your time and your attention.

And I think I'm really proud of that this book is both really complex. and really simple. I love the fact that I got a psychiatrist on the podcast that is completely holistic, yet does not denigrate the medication. You can't when you're in practice. You can't because you see somebody's life with Zoloft. And you can't then go out and be like, yeah, esotergerized. You put some more bipolar disorder on.

You fight. And you talk and you, you know, argue and eventually try a little low-dose lithium and bam. They've got their life back. What are the biggest mistakes that people make when trying to improve their mental health? Well, I think one of the biggest mistakes is people listen to misinformation and the false idols of mental health. That people get a lot of information, especially young men I treat from TikTok. You know, they come in and tell me about the peptides and that they're injecting themselves. And then I'm kind of a chump because I don't have like BTC.

157, like running through my veins. I think people pray to the false gods of psychedelics. They confuse psychedelics with mental health care. Psychedelics are an interventional, very intense treatment. We're trying to figure out where it fits in the treatment protocols. And we're early in that. I think a mistake, main mistake, I think, you know, I see Richard, I'm just going to say, the number one mistake that people make around their mental health is they don't have a plan for

their mental fitness. I want us to move into mental health action, right? Mental health awareness, right? Awareness is the first step. Have you ever done a 30-day menu? Yes, I've done some 30-day menus. We've got some one-week menus. My cookbook is called Eat Complete.

You've got a cookbook. We've got a cookbook. My third book was, so I have five books, everybody. The Happiness Dieter wrote with Tyler Graham. That was really a book on how the. food supply change and how mental health change in America and some basic foods to look at. I wrote 50 shades of kale, which is my tribute to kale. As kale got popular, it turned me on and I'd read a sexy kale rottica book about it.

It's kale recipes that are delicious. If you go before me, that's going on your tombstone. Okay. Go on. Utilize. Don't think I won't do it. I can do anything. Go on.

And then eat complete. You know, I found that I have. I'm a psychiatrist. I've got a little nutrition training. But I found that I was trying to like, gosh, you know, people are like, I want more magnesium and I'd be like, you should eat more. Yeah, it's like, is it almonds? Is it beans?

Is it green? So all those are great magnesium foods. But I wanted to organize all that information, kind of in my mind, but in a book. And I wanted to think about, okay, we all know magnesium is important. We all know vitamin B12 is important, right? Richard, you're in mental health. Like, you know, folate's important. What are your favorite?

magnesium foods. And, and smirative magnesium. And yeah, everybody just kind of comes up, even doctors, what's your favorite folate food? People are like prenatal vitamins.

And I thought it was really fascinating, right? We're worried about our health. We're worried about our mental health. But none of us can actually name where the most important nutrients for our mental health come from in our food. Right.

It's just like, like other than seafood, you know, and omega-3 fats, like all these other nutrients, B-12, folate, magnesium,

selenium. Iodine. Oh my gosh. Iodine deficiency is the top cause of mental disability and intellectual disability in the world. Same thing with iron deficiency. One of the top causes of intellectual and mental health problems in the world. Two billion people are iron deficient. And so, eat complete, sorry to go on this rant, was as, okay, what are these foods

do in the brain to inspire you? What are the foods, like the 10 foods that have the most of this nutrient per calorie? And then the recipes are made out of those foods. All my books, except the last one, have recipes in them. And they're fun. They're easy. Everybody, I come from really rural Indiana. I think people see that I, you know, I trained in New York and I live out in Jackson,

Wyoming, and they kind of miss the fact that I'm from really poor rural Indiana, meaning you got to buy it at Walmart or be able to buy it at Walmart for a recipe to work in my mind because I want these recipes to be accessible to everybody. Do you know what I love most about this, the collateral effect? the collateral effect of sitting down with your family and having dinner every night. Oh, yeah. That's actually, there's a lot of data about that. If you're looking again for mental health interventions. And I talk about that in all my books and in Healing the Modern Brain that, you know, I want to talk to you about your nutrition.

I want to talk about food choices. I want to talk specifically like food categories to get you more confident that you're doing the right thing. But there's also the context. And so as soon as you're cooking for someone else, it's better for your mental health. As soon as you're going to the grocery store a little more organized, maybe that's just in your mind, maybe that's a list, maybe that's a meal plan, but like a little bit more of a mission.

I love that. Dr. You're best. All right, listen, is there anything else you want to tell our viewers? Is there anything I left out? Oh my gosh. Everybody, one, I want to say thanks to there's so much more. I think being a mental health professional and psychiatrist, gosh,

I'd love to help you with any questions you have about your mental health. But I think the thing I want to leave you with is the price of it. and that if you're with us and you've been with us for this long and you're interested, I really hope that means, as you think back over the last hour, there's something, something that sticks out, something that got said. We didn't talk about some of the tenants, like unburdening, which usually everybody resonates because everybody's got something they need to work through. But I hope maybe it was the lentils.

Maybe it was a few of Richard's idea about substances, but something helps you think about in a really acute way today, this week, something that you can do for your mental fitness. one of these tenants, maybe it's self-awareness. There's all kinds of stuff on my website. There's all kinds of videos I put out about journaling, journaling, prompt, self-awareness. I really try to put a lot of free content out there. But, you know, my hope is that there's a lot more that you have in terms of questions

about your mental health, that this conversation is just kind of a starter for you and what's your appetite because there's so much. There's so much more than just meds and therapy. There's so much that you can do. There's so much right now in your own home that's great for your mental health. And so I want mostly everyone to leave hearing just my profound hope for you and my encouragement that your mental health is incredible and it's building and that you, no matter where you are, that's the privilege I've had. I get to meet people at their worst over and over again. And then I see them at their best.

Good. What's the name of your book? There's the book, Healing the Modern Brain is my fifth book. It's all about how you build mental fitness. There are nine tenets in here. I wrote this book in part because I wanted to write about stuff we all agree about. Everybody agrees on every tenant that it's vital for your mental health. So I provide you the latest brain science and mental health science on like,

how do you do it right? Like stop saying sleep hygiene and start living according to the tenant of sleep. And there's a whole set of things that you learn that allow you to better rest your brain, clean out all the waste from your brain and sleep. See you next Tuesday. there it is and he's a real doctor we're out of time please subscribe on youtube click the thumbs up and leave a comment please subscribe on apple podcast and Spotify and leave a rating and a review and share the we're out of time podcast with others you know who will get value out of it see you next

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