Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - YAPClassic: Daniel Amen on Healing Past Traumas and Building Brain-Healthy Habits

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Starting point is 00:00:26 Head to zbiotics.com-sash-profiting and use the code profiting at checkout to save 15% off. Hello, my beautiful young and profiting family. In this episode of the App Classic, we're talking about Dr. Daniel Aiman, one of America's leading psychiatrists and brain health experts. In today's episode, we discussed Daniel's childhood, how to work through trauma, and what trauma looks like in your brain. We also talk about Daniel's perspective on marijuana and alcohol and how you can improve your brain's health. Now, I absolutely loved this episode. That's

Starting point is 00:01:10 why we're replaying it. Dr. Amin is brilliant. And I'm confident you guys are going to love this episode too. You're going to learn a ton of actionable advice on how to improve your brain health. So let's dive right into my interview with Dr. Daniel Aiman. I'm so happy to have you on Young and Profiting Podcast. Welcome to the show. Paula, thank you so much for having me. Of course. So you are known as America's most famous psychiatrist. You are super accomplished.

Starting point is 00:01:38 You've been doing this for 40 years. Bestselling author of over a dozen books. You're known on TV. you've got television programs, you are just a rock star in this space, you are a psychiatrist, a brain disorder specialist, and it turns out that you have Lebanese descent. So me and you are both Middle Eastern, and for me being Palestinian,

Starting point is 00:01:59 I feel like that's one of the reasons why I'm successful. I feel like that's one of the reasons why I have grit and drive. And so I'm curious to know how has your Lebanese descent impacted your career and the way that you are today in terms of how hard working you are and how successful you are? Well, my dad is like the embodiment of the American dream in that my grandmother grew up in an orphanage in Bethlehem, and my grandfather came from Haifa before it changed over to Israel. And they were very poor.

Starting point is 00:02:36 My grandfather worked in a foundry, and my dad's one of five, but for whatever reason, he had to drive in the family and worked in a grocery store and ended up owning his own chain of grocery stores and became the chairman of the board of a four billion dollar company. And I think I inherited his drive. And Lebanese are often called the merchants of the Middle East. And I'm so grateful I have an older brother because in Middle Eastern families, the oldest boy golden child, right? If you're not the oldest boy, you're a bit expendable.

Starting point is 00:03:17 And so I was second, which was just perfect because I had the drive that I wasn't all that attached to the grocery business and just love psychiatry and wanted, that's what I wanted to do for my life. And it just sort of worked. Yeah, I can imagine and likewise, I mean, my dad same thing, like embodied the American dream, came over here, became a surgeon, grew up super poor, and so

Starting point is 00:03:45 I can totally relate to, you know, looking up to your father in that way. I know that you and your father actually didn't have the best relationship. So let's actually move on to that. You have a funny goat story that I want to talk about. I think a lot of Middle Eastern have really traumatic goat stories. Like my older brother has a very similar one. So I heard this and I thought it was so funny. So tell us about the goat story but really the lesson that I want to pull out is

Starting point is 00:04:10 how trauma impacts your brain and how long that trauma stayed with you and how you healed it. So tell us about this goat story. Well my dad was sort of like a no BS person. He was not warm and fuzzy. His two favorite words, when I was growing up were no. Whatever you asked him, the answer was no. And bullshit. And I was a tooth. And when I was five, I actually have a video of this.

Starting point is 00:04:41 I played it in my latest public television special. I'm five years old. We have a white goat, pure white. Her name was sugar. She loved me. I loved her. But she also loved my father's roses. So my father loved gardening. And you know, one day she had just ate too many of the roses. And he sent her away to the farm, which basically meant sugar is getting slaughtered. I mean, I didn't understand it at the time until a couple of nights later, my dad and his brother were joking.

Starting point is 00:05:23 They were feeding us sugar for dinner in goats stew. I remember throwing up, running to my room cried, and just thinking what an awful human being he was. And then I sort of let it go, and it was decades later. I am a psychiatrist. I'm speaking at a big conference on spirituality in the mind and Monterey, Mexico. Well, in Mexico, they actually have, you know, one of their street vendors, they sell goat meat. And I walk by and I could smell the goat meat and then I saw it. And then all of a sudden I had a panic attack. It was like I got flooded with that memory of when I was five and the murderer of sugar, over this stupid roses. You know, that's just the brain works through association. The cool end of the story is when I told my dad I wanted to be a psychiatrist, he asked me why I

Starting point is 00:06:35 didn't want to be a real doctor, why I wanted to be a nut doctor and hang out with nuts all day long. So that really crystallizes our relationship. But seven years before he died, he got really sick. And for the first time in his life, he looked at me and he said, I'm sick of being sick. What do you want me to do? And that's when our relationship really transitioned into a more helpful adult relationship. Yeah. I'm glad that you guys ended up making up before he passed. I actually lost my father to COVID last May.

Starting point is 00:07:11 So I know how that goes. Yeah, we may fifth. I remember the day and I was just horrified, you know, when people go, COVID's a cold. It's like, no, COVID's not a cold. I'm so sorry. He wants your dad. Yeah, it's okay. I mean, I think he had such a great life. My dad was just like this super nice generous everybody loved him, community leader, just such a great guy. So I just feel like he

Starting point is 00:07:38 left such a great legacy. So I don't feel so like bad about it because I just feel like he touched so many people and everybody loves him and Just was his time. I guess I have to be positive about it If I can ask how old was he when he does 74 Wow, yeah, yeah, I'm the youngest youngest of all our siblings Do you have I have four siblings. I have four. I'm one of seven. A good Catholic web amazed family. Yes, that's a lot of kids. And I'm the only non doctor. All my siblings are doctors, except for me and

Starting point is 00:08:14 I'm the media personality. So to each their own. So let's talk about that trauma with that trauma look like in your brain. What is that like what does trauma look like in your brain? What does trauma look like in your brain? So when that goat thing happened, you ended up having to eat your pet goat that was probably very traumatizing. What does that look like in your brain? So I actually published a couple of very large studies.

Starting point is 00:08:38 So at AIMON clinics, we have nine, soon to be 10 clinics around the United States. We do brain imaging work. We think you should actually look at the brain before you go about messing with it. Too many people are being put on psychiatric medications, and no one's actually ever assessed the organ of behavior, which is your brain. And I published a study on 21,000 people showing we could separate emotional trauma PTSD from physical trauma, traumatic brain injuries with very high levels of accuracy. It's what we call with emotional trauma, this diamond pattern where your limbic or emotional brain becomes overactive

Starting point is 00:09:28 and you just sort of can't stop thinking about it. The trauma I grew up with got set in my brain and then periodically something would trigger it and then all of a sudden I would feel awful. And that's true for so many people. But trauma actually leaves an imprint of activity that can be flipped, switches that you just sort of aren't ready for like walking by goat meat on the street. Yeah, that's super interesting that things can like stay with you for so long and you don't, you might not even remember that you have this memory but then something triggers it and you're like, oh shoot, I remember when that happened when I was much younger. So how do you overcome that? How do

Starting point is 00:10:21 you cleanse that trauma from you or just trauma stay with you forever? No, there's a lot of work that you can do to one understand it and to soothe it. I published another study on a treatment technique I'm very fond of called EMDR, which stands for I movement desensitization and reprocessing. It's a treatment where you bring up the trauma, so I can talk about the goat story. And the therapist gets your eyes to go back and forth while you do it. And initially it sort of heightens the feeling, but after they're done, it sort of dissipates. And it's really cool.

Starting point is 00:11:07 And I think it's the bilateral hemisphere stimulation, stimulating one side, then the other one side, then the other, that helps bring it up and then calm it down. There's another treatment technique I like a lot called havening, so like safe haven, havening, ING, and people can learn about it at havening.org. I also talk about it in my new book, Your Brain is Always Listening. And I remember shortly after my dad died last year, I'm liking my mom's house a couple of days later, we're just going through papers and some idiot put a picture

Starting point is 00:11:48 of my dead dad in the mortuary in a random stack of papers. And I remember going through it and then I saw it and it was like somebody just, you know, threw hot water on you. And it just upset me like the rest of the day, you know, what it would do this. And I noticed the picture bothered me. Well, I help people with this problem. And so I did haven't eaten and haven't eaten again by lateral hemisphere stimulation. So it's either you stroke down from your shoulders to your elbows or you stroke your face, which during the time of COVID, it's probably not a good idea or rub your hands like this.

Starting point is 00:12:33 So I noticed later in the day, okay, you're obsessing about this. So you think about it and I just started hating it. And you do it for 30 seconds and you rate it like on a scale of 1 to 10 how upsetting it is and it was like a 9 and I'm still very sort of raw for my dad died. But after 30 seconds of haything I noticed it was sort of like a 4 and after doing that you do it like up to six, seven times. After the third time, it didn't bother me. And then after I did it a couple of more times,

Starting point is 00:13:11 it became my favorite picture because it was the last picture of my dad on Earth and he was at peace. And so there are lots of ways some people use tapping, sometimes people use hypnosis, which I'm a big fan of. The trick is do something that helps rather than do things that hurt, right? There are fixes that fail.

Starting point is 00:13:41 Marijuana, alcohol, ice cream, being angry, you know, randomly dating to just sort of soothe the hurt you have. I like it. I wrote a book once called Feel Better Fast and make it last. You know, what are the strategies we can use that help us now and later, help us now and later versus now, but not later. Yeah, I love that havin'ing thing. You know, it's so funny. I want to just clear something up. So my dad died May 2020, which is why I'm more over it than I think your dad died May 2021. So my dad died right now. I made 2020. Oh, your dad died May 2020. Okay. I thought I just wanted to be I don't know. You're still fit. Yeah, you know what? I it's funny that you just talk about the havining thing because that's actually going to really help

Starting point is 00:14:34 me because I unfortunately my dad died in the hospital and we weren't allowed to visit him. And the last time that only time they allowed us to go to the hospital was after he died. So I always see this image of my dead father and it's so hard to get out of my mind. So I'm going to definitely use that the next time that that happens. And then I like the fact that you said that it's your favorite picture because it's great to reframe things in that way from a negative and to a positive. So I actually will take that forever. So thank you for sharing that with me.

Starting point is 00:15:04 Okay. So I actually will take that forever, so thank you for sharing that with me. Okay, so let's talk about alcohol and smoking marijuana on the brain since you brought it up. Talk to us about your research with spect scans and what your perspective is on marijuana and the brain because marijuana is getting legalized everywhere. It's really common, especially for millennials to be smoking marijuana. And I think that you have a perspective that needs to be heard about it. Yeah, and I have no dog in the fight. You know, I'm quite frankly more likely to see you if you use marijuana than if you don't. But I like this verse in the New Testament, John 8.32, know the truth and the truth will set you free.

Starting point is 00:15:49 Marijuana is bad for the brain. How do I know? I've looked at thousands of marijuana users. I actually published a study on a thousand marijuana users compared to healthy brains. Every area of the brain is lower in blood flow. So from the moment I ordered my first scan in 1991, I'm like, oh, marijuana makes your brain look older

Starting point is 00:16:17 than you are. And it gives the brain this sort of toxic, unhealthy look. And then if you've been a Skyatris for 40 years, you realize marijuana causes some vulnerable people to have an increased risk of psychosis. And if you smoke, if you use marijuana as a teenager, you're much more likely in your 20s to struggle with anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts. I was on the Michael Savage show years ago. He was a famous talk show host and he's going, you're going to get a lot of haters and I'm like, yes, but everybody who's going to call is spontaneously going to complain of short-term memory problems because marijuana affects your ability to learn.

Starting point is 00:17:07 Yeah, what about that argument that marijuana smoking prevents all timers? Is there any truth to that? Absolutely not. And you know, the people who are celibate, the people who are for it are going to dig up all the research they can on it. But the number one predictor, you're going to get Alzheimer's disease, is low blood flow to the brain. Number one predictor, marijuana lowers blood flow to the brain. Let's talk about obesity because people think obesity, they think you're physically unhealthy. I don't think they're thinking about your brain and how obesity impacts your brain. Can you talk to us about that? Well, the research actually is horrifying.

Starting point is 00:17:52 And, you know, I come from a family of fat people. My dad used to always hate when I said that. But I have a brother that's like 150 pounds overweight and a sister that's 150 or 200 pounds overweight. And then one of my friends published a study that said, is your weight goes up. This size of your brain goes down. And I'm like, oh no. Like no, no, no, no, no.

Starting point is 00:18:23 And that actually gave me the motivation to lose the 20 pounds I've been trying to lose for 30 years. Cause I'm not ever doing anything purposefully to have a smaller brain. That's a brand violation for me. And then I looked at my own database cause I have a group of normal people, healthy people. And I didn't sort of separate out the people

Starting point is 00:18:46 who were overweight or obese from the people who are healthy weight. So I looked at that and being overweight significantly was associated with low blood flow to the front part of the brain. Things like focus and forethought and judgment and impulse control. And then I was doing a big NFL study at the time.

Starting point is 00:19:06 I looked at my NFL players who are overweight versus healthy weight, again, low blood flow. And then I coined a term called the dinosaur syndrome big body little brain. You're going to become extinct. We need to get serious about this. And then last year I published a huge study on 35,000 scans and found there is basically a linear correlation as your weight goes up, the function of your brain goes down everywhere.

Starting point is 00:19:39 And we're in trouble with 42% of us, over, no, 42% of us obese in the United States, 72% of us overweight. This is the biggest brain drain in the history of the United States. Plus, I have a namanic I like if you want to keep your brain healthy or rescue it. If it's headed for trouble, you have to prevent or treat the 11 major risk factors that steal your mind. And we know what they are. And the namanic is called bright minds. Well, if you're overweight, you have six of them.

Starting point is 00:20:17 Just be in overweight because the fat on your body, if you're overweight at lower blood flow, we just talked about that. It prematurely ages the brain. Fat cells increase inflammation, and everybody now knows that if you're overweight or obese, it increases your risk of dying from COVID-19. Fat cells store toxins. They change hormones. So the N and Breitmines is neurohormones. It takes healthy testosterone, which is important for men and women, and turns it into unhealthy

Starting point is 00:20:56 cancer promoting forms of estrogen. This is a bad thing. And then the D and Breitmines is diobity, high blood sugar, more likely to have if you're overweight or being overweight. So we need to get serious. And being too thin is not good for your brain. Your brain needs nutrients, but we need to stop supersizing things. Let's hold that thought and take a quick break with our sponsors.

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Starting point is 00:23:41 Let's talk about dragons. So in your new book, you talk about these dragons that are coming from our past, haunting us today. What are these dragons and what are some of the dragons that you have from your past life? So as I was writing, your brain is always listening, my new book. You know, I initially thought, well, your brain listens to the food you eat, and the news you listen to, and the social media you follow, and then I'm like, your brain also is listening to the past. And I have a friend Sharon May who uses the analogy of dragons in her couples counseling, and I'm like, I wonder what dragons I have.

Starting point is 00:24:24 And so together Sharon and I came up with 13 dragons. You know, to one degree or another, we all have a little bit of them. But people have primary and secondary dragons. My primary dragon is the abandoned invisible or insignificant dragon. And I wasn't abandoned, but I was invisible being one of seven. Third, completely not special, and the love of his family being the second son. And, you know, it sort of hurts sometimes,

Starting point is 00:24:55 and I built a life based on being significant. I love helping. And when I don't help, that dragon of sort of breathed on, breathed fire on my emotional brain. And so, you know, I have to be careful because I can't help everybody, right? You sort of have to want to be helped for it to work, right? Not everybody is actually a good candidate to get psychiatric help.

Starting point is 00:25:21 The second one I had, the inferior flawed dragon, when, so I'm smaller. I was like the smallest kid in my class. And that was sort of hard. And then being second, and then being Lebanese, I grew up in the San Fernando Valley, just north of Los Angeles where it was a high Jewish population. And there was always that sort of conflict in my family and in the neighborhood and being Palestinian, you sort of understand, here in the United States, sort of most people take Israel's position. And we're like, you know, there really is another side to this story that very often in the US doesn't get told. And so there's also the anxious dragon, the wounded dragon, the whole goat story, the responsible

Starting point is 00:26:17 dragon. Or if you grew up roaming Catholic like I did, this shouldn't shaming dragon, you know, that sort of always point in its finger at you. My favorite of all the dragons is the ancestral dragon. That's where the issues you have, they're not yours, that you inherited them. They actually got written into your genetic code. And I just think now about Civil War and Syria and all those children that are being traumatized. Well, that trauma is being written in the genetic code.

Starting point is 00:26:55 So when they have babies, the babies are more likely to struggle with anxiety, more likely to have issues with post-traumatic stress disorder. And if you think of being Palestinian or Lebanese, there's a lot, or Israeli, there's a lot of trauma in our family history that is part of our genetic code when you think of the whole Black Lives Matter movement. There's generations of trauma virtually every country around the world has its issue with repressed people and even after the repression may be better, they're still the trauma that can live through generations. There's also another of the dragons

Starting point is 00:27:52 I've been thinking about lately is the death dragon. And one of my fun strategies, so each of the dragons, you know, where do they come from, what's the upside? Because all of them have an upside. How do you fix them? So we have strategies. They come from what's the upside, because all of them have an upside. How do you fix them? So we have strategies.

Starting point is 00:28:08 And my favorite strategy for the death dragon, I mean, you have to know you're going to die. It's the denial of death that is partially responsible for people living empty, purposeless lives. Because when you think you're going to live forever, you don't take care of the relationships and issues you need to take care of. And so when I was in college, I wrote my own funeral, very helpful, to just sort of know there's an end. So if there's an end, I need to make today important. I need to make today special. And one of my favorite techniques

Starting point is 00:28:48 is to actually list 10 good things about dying. And living in near Los Angeles is I'll never have to drive an LA traffic. Again, these people are seriously crazy. I won't have to go to the dentist. I hate going to the dentist. Got my teeth cleaned two weeks ago. And it's like, why are you poking my gums

Starting point is 00:29:07 with this sharp metal object? So just sort of looking at what's good about it, take some of this sting out of it. Yeah, I love that. You know, it reminds me of something that I spoke with Robert Green. And he taught me about the law of death denial. It's very similar to what you're talking about right now.

Starting point is 00:29:26 And I love how you put some strategies in place like writing your own funeral or writing 10 things down that is good about death because it can actually be the greatest motivator. Death can be the life's greatest motivator. I totally agree. All right, let's talk about another animal or insect. And that's ants.

Starting point is 00:29:43 What are ants or ANTS? Tell us about that automatic negative thoughts, right? Automatic negative thoughts come into your mind and ruin you and it's sort of shocking that you can get out of high school or college or have an advanced degree and no one ever taught you not to believe every stupid thing you think. There's actually no classes in managing your mind and I came up with the term ants about 30 years ago. I had a really hard day at work. I had four suicidal people. That's a lot. I had two couples who hated each other

Starting point is 00:30:32 and two teenagers who'd run away from home. And at the end of the day, I came home. I was worn out and I had an ant infestation in my kitchen. And currently I'm battling ants in my house. So I just know how irritating they are. And I was cleaning them up, I'm like ants, automatic, negative thoughts. Because you know, in your medical school,

Starting point is 00:30:59 you have to learn so much. You're always using memory tricks to remember things. And I'm like, my patients are infested. And the next day I brought a can of raid and spray to work. And I put it on my coffee table and I said, I'm going to teach you how to kill the ants. And the kids, because I'm also a child's psychiatrist, just loved it. And then I went to Pierre 39 in San Francisco near my office. And I got an antiter puppet and then subsequently I gave away these little antiters

Starting point is 00:31:33 because you don't have to believe every stupid thing you think. And whenever you feel sad or mad or nervous or out of control, write down what you're thinking and then ask yourself whether or not it's true. I don't know if you were any good when you were a teenager talking back to your parents. I was excellent. But no one ever taught me to talk back to myself that if I have a thought, I'm no good. I mean, it just came out recently.

Starting point is 00:32:13 I love Naomi Osaka and how she's been so public with her struggles and she's getting ready for the US Open. And she came out with, I am never enough. I am never good enough. And I'm like, no one's ever taught her to manage her mind. And I've been blessed, you know, I came out last year. I've been Justin Bieber's doctor for a long time and Miley Cyrus.

Starting point is 00:32:41 They have exactly those same thoughts. And no one had ever taught them. It's like you don't have to believe every stupid thing you think that you can learn to manage your mind. And I have another fun technique called give your mind a name. So it's based on a concept called psychological distancing. You can distance yourself from the chatter. And I actually gave my mind the name of Hermi. Hermi was my pet raccoon. When I was 16, I actually had a pet raccoon. And she was a troublemaker. And I loved her, but she teaped my mother's bathroom.

Starting point is 00:33:25 She ate my sister's fish out of the aquarium. She used to leave raccoon poo in my shoes. She's just like my mind. All of a sudden, my mind will pop up with these terrible thoughts. And I'm like, oh, Hermie, I need to put you in the cage. You know, it's like, I don't need to listen to you today. And periodical, just sort of check in and see. It's like, I don't need to listen to you today. Periodic, I'll just sort of check in and see how she's doing. Mind management is so important. Now, you need some anxiety. Let's

Starting point is 00:33:56 just get that out of the way right away. People with low levels of anxiety die the earliest from accidents and preventable illnesses. But obviously too much of devastation in life. And so I want nothing anxiety that I do the right things, but no more, which means I have to manage the thoughts I have. And there's an exercise in your brain is always listening of right down a hundred of your worst thoughts. And then I have you ask yourself five questions on each thought. And it's so powerful. If you do it a hundred times, the ants will dissipate. And you know, having an antinvestation now, when you go to bed, you just feel these creepy crawly things on you, even when they're not there.

Starting point is 00:34:49 When you have negative thoughts, they affect everything in your life, from your happiness, your relationships. Yeah, they just affect everything. Yeah, I feel like negative thoughts can impact your success, to your point or relationships. And like you said, they don't teach that in school. I wish they would teach mental health in school the same way that they implemented like PE. I wish they would do something like meditation class or some sort of mental health class.

Starting point is 00:35:17 I hope that that's in our future soon. We have a high school course and we actually have a elementary school curriculum where we do just that. We can get kids to kill the ants and manage their minds and do diaphragmatic breathing. Breathing is so helpful, so simple, so important. And it's something you can control. And if you ever watch a baby breathe or a puppy breathe, they breathe almost exclusively with their bellies. But our breathing has become more chest-based, shallower, more rapid, which just makes us more anxious.

Starting point is 00:35:58 So you say, breathe through your belly, then. Yeah, so imagine balloon in your belly. And when you breathe in, blow it up. So let your belly get big, which means for women, never wear tight clothes. Because if you're wearing something tight, you can't expand your lungs. And that's going to make you more anxious. And having five sisters and five daughters that this is, you know, I'm like no tight clothes. And it's like, oh, but I want to look skinny.

Starting point is 00:36:33 And it's like, yeah, you'll be skinny and anxious and less attractive because being anxious isn't attractive. And then take twice as long to breathe out as you breathe in. And so there's a cool app I like called Awesome Breathing and I'll program it for seconds and eight seconds out. And you just have to do it for like two minutes. Like when you come home, I want you to just try this

Starting point is 00:37:03 instead of the other thing we talked about, just for three minutes, awesome breathing. When you program it, four seconds in, hold it for a second, eight seconds out, hold it for a second, just for three minutes. Then email me and tell me how you feel because I guarantee you're going to trigger a relaxation response in your body, but your mind will be clearer than ever. And as a business person, it's not what you really want clarity. You want clarity. You want focus. You want energy, but without the frenetic pace, without the sort of monkey mind going on,

Starting point is 00:37:51 and diaphragmatic breathing. It's so cool because it's intentional, it's biologic, it's psychological, and just helps you be your best. Yeah, and what's the name of that app? It's awesome breathing, you said? Awesome breathing. Awesome breathing. Yeah, it's free, it's so simple. We'll be right back after a quick break from our sponsors. Young and profitors, let's face it.

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Starting point is 00:40:32 episode. I have a question for you. One of my last questions is what would be the one thing you wish would go mainstream out of all your research that you've done, that you wish that the medical field and your colleagues would really understand and you wish that it would just go mainstream. Well, let me pick two. The first one is imaging.

Starting point is 00:40:57 If you don't look, you don't know. My colleagues have sort of tried to diminish me over the years. And it's like I'm trying to get more information to help my patients and stop guessing like you are. And in May of this year, one of my top 10 happiest moments of my whole life happened when the Canadian Association of Nuclear Medicine put out new procedure guidelines on brain-spec imaging basically as if I wrote them. And so imaging needs to go mainstream. How do you know that your depression is not the result of being exposed to COVID or having an environmental

Starting point is 00:41:41 toxin or had a head injury that changed your life. How do you know if you don't look? Depression is not a prosack deficiency. And I'm not opposed to prosack. I just don't think that should be the first and only thing you use in the dark. Think of depression like chest pain. It's nobody gets a diagnosis of chest pain because it doesn't tell you what causes it or what to do for. The second thing I want to go mainstream is brain envy. I want us to love our

Starting point is 00:42:13 brains. Nobody loves our brain. They're old brain because you can't see it. When I first looked at my brain in 1991, I'm like, well, that's not healthy. I played football in high school, had men and gaititis as a young soldier. I thought I was special because I could get by on four hours of sleep at night. And when I saw my brain, I realized I wasn't special. I was stupid. And so, you know, loving your brain and really taking care of it, I want brain health to be as popular as Peloton and working out and physical health. And if you want to prevent or treat those 11 major risk factors that we talked about

Starting point is 00:42:56 earlier, you have to really love your brain and then avoid things that hurt it and do things that help it. And so most people sort of really know what hurts their brain. And, you know, we talked about marijuana. Alcohol is really not better. Alcohol, any alcohol is associated with an increased risk of seven different kinds of cancer.

Starting point is 00:43:21 And so people that go everything in moderation, that's the gateway thought to hell. Because it just means you're going to cheat. You're going to continue to give yourself permission to cheat. You're really not going to get serious about your health. And you know, and the reason I don't do those things, I think of it purely as an act of love, don't do those things, I think of it purely as an act of love, that it's not deprivation, I'm not depriving myself of something. It's, I love myself, and I love my family, and I love my mission. I need a good brain to actualize those things, because I know you think about business and work a lot with business. Well, what's the organ of success in business? It's your brain.

Starting point is 00:44:11 And so, right, it's a series of decisions that you purposefully make over time. That's what grows, great businesses. And so I avoid things that hurt it, bad food, don't hit soccer balls with my head, thoughtful when I drive. And then I engage in regular brain healthy habits, relationships, sleep. You know, you want to feel better tomorrow, go to bed early tonight, that sleep is absolutely essential. Simple supplements, multiple vitamin, fish oil. It's the decisions that you make day in and day out.

Starting point is 00:44:49 And something that I want to stress is just the way that you can lose weight. You can make your brain better. So if you scanned your brain now, does it look better now than it did when you first initially scanned it 20 years ago or whenever that was? Radically better. I have a new, I have a series. In fact, you should do it with me on Instagram called Scan My Brain, where we take influencers, scan them, and then I go over it with them. And we just did Dr. Emily Morse.

Starting point is 00:45:15 I don't know if you know Emily, but sex with Emily, huge podcasts and serious radio. Well, I scanned her. And then she fell in love with her brain and did what I asked her to do. And 18 months later her brain's dramatically better. And that's a whole point. It's you're not stuck with the brain you have. You can make it better even if you've been bad to your brain. I would love to do that test with you.

Starting point is 00:45:45 I feel like that would motivate me to stop doing what we talked about before because I would know the truth and stop believing these false narratives that are out there that I've lied to myself basically. Really quick, I do want to talk about coordination and how coordination and dancing and doing things like playing ping pong can actually improve your brain. And any other tips that you can give us in terms of things that I would have never known if I wasn't studying you that like dancing would be good for my brain. What are some little things that we can pick up and start doing that can help improve ourselves that aren't so obvious?

Starting point is 00:46:21 So table tennis is the world's best brain game because you got to get your eyes hands and feet all working together while you think about the spin on the ball. Now, not beer pong. It's like dancing is amazing because it's a coordination exercise, but not if you're drinking while you're dancing.

Starting point is 00:46:41 So the cerebellum in the back bottom part of the brain has half the brain's neurons. cerebellum is Latin for little brain. It's involved in coordination, but so much more when we activate that with coordination exercises, people think better. They actually make better decisions. So being involved with coordination exercises on a regular basis is great for you. Yeah, I totally, I think just any physical activity. I can correlate from when I started becoming successful was when I started going to the gym like literally,

Starting point is 00:47:15 I feel like it changed my mind, it changed the way that I thought. I do want to be respectful of your time. The last question I ask on my guess is, what is your secret to profiting in life? So in 1986, I wrote a book called The Sabotash Vactor, all the ways we mess ourselves up from getting what we want. And the number one hallmark of self-defeating behavior

Starting point is 00:47:38 is blaming other people for how your life turns out. So I take responsibility and responsibilities never blame. It's just my ability to respond to whatever situation comes my way. So it starts with that and then it goes to what do you want? It clarity, clearly defining what you want, relationships, work, money, physical, emotional, spiritual help.

Starting point is 00:48:07 I have an exercise called the One-Page Miracle. Write it out. Write what you want, not what you don't want. Focus on negativity will bring more negativity in your life. I think if I had to go, so why have I been successful because I'm responsible and I have clarity. And I stop caring what other people think of me. There's a rule I love called the 1840 60 rule that says when you're 18, you worry about what everybody's thinking of you.

Starting point is 00:48:38 When you're 40, you don't give a damn what anybody thinks about you. And when you're 60, you realize nobody has been thinking about you at all. People spend their days worrying and thinking about themselves, not you. So do what makes you happy. As long as you can support your family, right? There's people go, you know, do what you love. And it's like as long as you can support your family, is an important caveat to that. But I think that and brain health, because I love my brain, I'm 67.

Starting point is 00:49:13 I have the same energy I had as when I was 30. I have the same mental clarity. I just have a lot more experience in wisdom. I love that. This was such an excellent conversation. Where can our listeners go to learn more about you and everything that you do? So they can go to amenclinics.com. So amen like the last word in a prayer clinics.com.

Starting point is 00:49:33 They can also follow me on Facebook and Instagram at doc. Amen. Yeah, I'm easy to find. Amazing. Thank you so much. It was such a great conversation. Thank you. you

Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - YAPClassic: Daniel Amen on Healing Past Traumas and Building Brain-Healthy Habits

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