Dr. Daniel Amen: ON The Most Powerful Habits For A Healthy & Productive Brain

hey everyone welcome back to on purpose the number one health podcast in the world thanks to each and every one of you who come back every week to listen to learn and to grow now in our 12 months that we've been live that we started 14th of February in 2019 there's only been one guest who's been on the podcast twice and obviously that's my wife but out of all the other guests there was only one other guest that we've had on in the same year and he is our guest today now he was one of the most popular and one of your favorite episodes from last year so I'm so excited for this conversation this was truly one of those podcasts that I remember recording and anytime I'm asked in an interview or a conversation who was your favorite podcast this is the one I talked about so I I literally feel that today's guest as you all know dr. Daniel Amon is one of the best guests we've had hand down and I'm so excited for today's conversation now for those of you missed it the Washington Post called dr. Daniel Amon the most popular psychiatrist in America he's a double board certified psychiatrist and 12 time New York Times bestselling author dr. Daniel Amon is on the forefront of a new movement within medicine and related disciplines that aims at ending mental illness dr. Amon draws on the latest findings of neuroscience to challenge an outdated psychiatry paradigm and help people take control and improve the health of their own brain minimizing or reversing conditions that may be preventing them from living a life that's emotionally healthy dr. Emmons research team has published more than 70 scientific articles he's the lead research on the world's largest brain imaging study on professional football players his credentials can fill a book so I'll stop there and I'm so happy to have him on today's show and the end of mental illness so we're gonna be putting the link to this book into the comments and the captions and of course I highly highly recommend you go and grab a copy of the book dr. Daniel Amen thank you for being here Joe what a pleasure this is honestly the best I mean it every time I marched what's your favorite episode I talk about this thank you so much and it's not an overstatement it's everything you share the way you share it the way you talk about it your ability to go between spirituality and science and faith and facts like for me that's kind of where I get so excited and you're just that person that embodies all of it so thank you for being that and thank you for doing the work that you do well you're welcome I have to do it because if you don't look at the brain how the heck would you ever know and these aren't mental illnesses their brain illnesses and I opened the book with actually a story of when I was coming to your podcast you know I was so excited about it and in the corner of Hollywood and Vine there's this homeless person who's disheveled and has blood on his face he's talking to himself and most of my colleagues would have went oh yes schizophrenia or is unstable bipolar disorder why won't he take his medication and in my mind I'm like well when did he have his last head injury does he have Lyme disease is his gut a complete mess I mean why is he not able to make sense of his life and it's not what most people think it's not that he has a psychiatric illness or a bad attitude it's something's physically wrong with the health of his brain and what I've learned is get your brain right and then your mind follows ya and I love that approach it makes so much logical sense to me and as someone who's fascinated by neuroscience I couldn't agree more when you start looking at the stats in the data but I want to start a bit personally this time with you before we dive into all of that you were named after your grandfather I was and you had a very close connection and you know really close friendship growing up what was key to that connection that you had well I was named after him yeah and he was my best friend I'm one of seven and I'm completely not special so in a Lebanese family the oldest boy is the golden child brother and I'll older sister and so I was completely not specialized totally special it to him and he was a candy maker that was his profession so my earliest memories are standing at the stove making fudge making prolene and I actually have a company called brainmd that makes healthy chocolate because he was overweight he had heart disease and it his funeral was the saddest day of my life I would still make me cry because I was so connected to him and that matters I mean he lives in me every day because he was just such a kind person mm-hmm absolutely thank you for sharing that it's always nice to hear about that because it sounds like it's inspired a lot of your work today and the way you approach is which when someone's your best friend and then in 1979 you told your father you wanted to be a psychiatrist how do you decide that I feel like psychiatry today is such a rapidly growing industry it's becoming even more important with the challenges that we're seeing today's generations have but how did you in 1979 think of this career path and know that it was something you wanted to dedicate your life to it so a little bit earlier when I turned 18 the government still had a draft and I had a very low draft number which meant see you later and I became an infantry medic where my love of medicine was born but about a year into that I realized I didn't like being shot at it was just not my thing some people like that I didn't and I got myself retrained as an x-ray technician and developed a passion for imaging because our professors used to say how do you know unless you look and then I got out of the Army went to medical school and in 1979 someone I loved tried to kill herself and I took her to see a wonderful psychiatrist and I came to realize if he helped her which he did it wouldn't just help her it would help her children and even her grandchildren as they would be shaped by someone who was happier and more stable so I fell in love with psychiatry because I realized it has the potential to change generations of people but I fell in love with the only medical specialty that never looks the organ it treats and I knew it then it was wrong and so now I tell my dad I want to be a psychiatrist and unlike my relationship with my grandfather I had a really lousy relationship with my dad who was never home he worked all the time his favorite word growing up I don't know can I say this it was [ __ ] his second favorite word was no I mean [ __ ] no and I tell him I want to be a psychiatrist and he asked me why I don't want to be a real doctor why I want to be a nut doctor and hang out with nuts all day long now great story he is now my best friend but it took a long time and 40 years later I really got why he said that because we don't act like real doctors I mean what other medical doctor doesn't look at the organ they're treating cardiologists look neurologists look you're at the Pedic doctor luxor GI doctor looks every other physician evaluates the organ they're treating psychiatrist guess and I knew it was wrong and so part of my path was how do we look at the organ were treating it's the brain right it's people go hunch your mind well where does your mind come from your brain damage your brain you damage your mind a close friend of mine used to suffer from asthma when he was younger and he realized the harmful chemicals in cleaning products would always make it worse I encourage you to make sure you're not using harmful products in your home so please check to see that you're not now my friend only uses healthy eco-friendly products in his home and it's so easy to make sure he's doing that with Grove Grove collaborative is an online market that delivers all natural home beauty and personal care products directly to your door I'm a fan and couldn't picture myself all my wife ever using conventional products again they just make 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Maya and grove a $30 value go to Grove Cove /je to get this exclusive cleaning offer grove CO /j today i'm gonna share with you the most useful app on my phone but before i do that do you remember reading a book and connecting with a message that helped change your thinking that's the beauty of reading and learning I know that in today's digital age it's so easy to be distracted and overwhelmed with everyone's feed at the cost of neglecting your priorities if you love books pursuing new ideas and thoughts but feel you don't have the time I have just what you need I highly recommend the blink East app blink s is the only app that takes the best key takeaways the neaten of information from thousands of non-fiction books and condenses them down into fifteen minutes so you can read or listen to as you know I love reading biographies and they're usually very dense so before I start reading one I use blink East to filter if it's a book I'll truly enjoy I enjoy using blinkers on my phone on the elevator or on my iPad at home the minimal interface makes it easy on my eyes and with no distractions I can fully focus I've just read the 4-hour workweek by Tim Ferriss and if you're in any way interested in starting your own business or lifestyle this is a key book for you and it's filled with great practical tips anyone can implement right now for the holidays blink is a special offer just for our audience go to blink acecomm /j try it free for seven days and save 25% off your new subscription that's blinking spelled bli n ki st.com /j to start your free 7-day trial and you'll also save 25% off when you sign up a blink is calm /j yeah and tell it's incredible that you kind of clocked on to that so early on like that sounds crazy to believe that even now since you've been involved in this world and writing so many incredible books that we haven't caught on with that conversation like I thought the conversation is still mental illness you know that that's still and that's obviously what you're trying to solve like tell me what we're missing in the conversation why are we missing that in the conversation why are we not talking more about the brain and why are people not as focused on improving their brain as they should be so you remember when Sandy Hook happened yes and President Obama came on television that night and said we need more money for mental health and I'm like oh great almost all of these young school shooters had seen psychiatrists almost all of them had taken before medication before they committed their heinous acts more money for what we currently do is going to get us more of what we currently have did you know 23 percent of women between the ages of 20 and 60 are taking antidepressant medication that's insane you were not born with a prozac to fit see it's because our brains aren't right our habits aren't right we have no love honor respect for the brain I mean here we are in this incredibly beautiful place in LA where homelessness is skyrocketing and people don't know 50% of people who are homeless had a significant brain injury before they were homeless so you can do whatever you want from a societal standpoint to help the homeless but if you don't help their brains you're not going to help the situation I've seen that's a great onsen what what are the causes of brain injury like let's say someone's listening or watching right now and they're saying yeah dr. Daniel Amon I agree but you know I've never had any serious brain injury I've never had an accident I've never you know been an American football player I've never done boxing like tell us some of the things that actually cause brain injury and some of the ones that might surprise us so in the book actually the bulk of the book I talk about if you want to keep your brain healthy or rescue it if it's headed for the dark place you have to prevent or Treat the 11 major risk factors that steal your mind and there's a mnemonic I have called bright minds well the HM bright minds is head trauma and if you said hey Daniel single most important thing you've learned from 160,000 scans mild traumatic brain injury ruins people's lives and nobody knows it so yes it could be concussions from playing football even if you never had a concussion it's the sub-concussive blows just from playing I just saw a professional soccer player this week and he told our intake person never had a concussion and I asked him because his brain was damaged unlikes how many times have you had a soccer ball with your head and he's like thousands tens of thousands of times your brain is soft your skull is hard your skull has sharp bony ridges don't let your children play tackle football don't let them hit soccer balls with their head but it also comes from skateboarding accidents from falling out of a tree from falling down a flight of stairs from being in a car accident and go oh I had a whiplash injury but I didn't have a head injury well if you had a whiplash injury that meant you a head injury because what's on top of your neck it's your brain and what about emotional trauma or emotional challenges with parenting growing up or any of that how does that kind of so emotional trauma I published two studies actually than 21,000 people showing I could separate PTSD emotional trauma from traumatic brain injury with high levels of accuracy so with brain injuries what you see is decrease blood flow in the brain but with emotional trauma their limbic brain their emotional brain fires up and so I dedicated this book to my two nieces yeah and they grew up in traumatic families and they were taken by the police at the direction of Child Protective Services and put into foster care it's very traumatic for them and they have bad genetics they have family history of schizophrenia bipolar disorder major depression multiple suicides criminal behavior addiction I mean anything you can think of that so but genes only load the gun it's what happens to us that pulls the trigger well unfortunately they had both and we actually didn't know them until we got the call from Child Protective Services at which point I I knew my wife knew we needed to intervene and so the end of mental illness is how do I end it in them and their babies and grandbabies and you can see the emotional trauma in their brain which the cool thing about that is you know it and then you can comment down through some of the processes I talked about in the book what are some of the things that we're doing wrong for our brain on a daily basis because I want everyone listening and watching now to gain some self-awareness that they can start recognizing some of the practices or some of the habits that they're actually causing more damage to their brain well the first thing we're doing wrong is we don't care when I saw my brain so it's 1991 when I started to inspect what we do now and I scanned my mom she had beautiful brain and then I scanned myself and I was 37 at the time and it looked terrible I'm like was my brain look terrible I don't drink I'd never smoked I've never done drugs but I played football in high school and and we were taught then to use your hat as a weapon right tackle people with your had I had meningitis twice when I was a young soldier and I had bad habits I thought I was special that I only needed four hours of sleep at night I could get away with that and now I realize it wasn't special I was stupid I was overweight I ate fast food like it was like my best friend and so not caring and when I saw my brain and I saw it was worse than my six-year-old mother's brain I developed something I called brain and V Freud was wrong he was about two and a half feet too low in the body not once in my forty or psychiatric career by seeing penis MV not ones it's brain Envy you want I wanted her brain so what do you have to do care that's brain envy and then avoid things that hurt it and do things that help it but the first thing we're doing wrong I live in Newport Beach and I always say we care more about our faces our boobs our bellies and our butts then we do our brain how insane is that when it's your brain that makes every single decision you make and when it works right you look right so that's the first thing the second thing well we just go through the bright minds risk factors because all of them you have simple things that people could do so bright minds bees for blood flow low blood flows the number one number one brain imaging predictor of Alzheimer's disease but it's also associated with depression with schizophrenia and ADHD and my older niece Alizee when she first came to see me really low blood flow I didn't know why'd she have mold in a house she had some sort of environmental toxin so I put her in a / barrack chamber and hyperbaric chambers increase blood flow I also got her exercising more because exercise increases blood flow so if you've been wanting to exercise but you haven't found the time it'll save your brain right so that'll help you with motivation and brand new study out this week so excited love news for ever I've been telling people table tennis is the world's best brain game what why you got to get your eyes hands and feet all to work together while you think about the spin on the ball it's aerobic chess brand new study was presented at the American Academy of Neurology this week that Table Tennis improves Parkinson's disease and I love it so what kind of exercise should you do people who play racquet sports live longer than anybody else so ping-pong table tennis squash you want to do a coordination exercise and dance is also incredibly good for your brain as long as you're not drinking while you're dancing that sort of ruins the benefit so for blood flow it's exercise simple things supplements like ginkgo increase blood flow foods like beets or oregano cayenne pepper the spicier the better as long as it's not artificial spices the r is retirement and aging when you stop learning that's why I envy your job because you're always learning when you stop learning your brain starts dying [Music] do you sell stuff online well I have a way to help you make 2020 a lot less crazy and a lot more successful it's called ship station ship station makes managing and shipping out orders a breeze the digital world we live in now makes selling online very easy but getting orders out can be a real obstacle sending 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free money it's free to use and installs in just two clicks get honey for free at join honey calm /on purpose that's join honey calm /on purpose and so new learning has to be part of everything you do and then if your ferritin level is high that's a measure of iron storage if your ferritin level is high prematurely ages your brain so I know there's always controversy on red meat should you have it shouldn't you have it well it depends on your iron level if you have low levels of iron red meat can actually be really helpful just make it healthy red meat but if your iron levels like mine they tend to run too high I donate blood on a regular basis good for me good for someone else it's like the perfect exercise the eye is just devastating this country now it's inflammation and inflammation comes from low levels of omega-3 fatty acids 97% of people have low suboptimal levels of omega-3s when we test them horrifying processed food and of all things gum disease gum disease increases inflammation in your body which increases heart disease and brain disease so flossing and then getting your gut healthy probiotics can help the G is genetics but we think of genetics wrong I think people go oh I'm diabetic because my parents are I'm fat because my parents are you know I my grandfather had heart disease and he was overweight but I don't have art disease and I'm not overweight why because I see genes not as a death sentence but as a wake-up call what do I need to do to prevent those and one of my favorite stories in the book is Lisa Gibbens Lisa is a friend of mine she's a well-known media personality whose mother and grandmother died with Alzheimer's disease and I was on her television show a lot and I'm always sort of note you come on you need to come see me and she's like oh I don't want to know and I'm like no you want to know if you knew a train was gonna hit you wouldn't you at least want to get out of the way and so she went through a hard time and I saw her when she was 51 and her brain looked terrible I'm like no you're vulnerable and she's so smart she just did everything I asked her to do and I just scanned her again ten years later her brain's dramatically better Wow which is the theme of my life you are not stuck with the brain you have you can make it better and you're not too old and smile a it's yeah it's only too late when you're dead right because even people with dementia if you feed them crappy food they are going to lose their mind at a more rapid pace if you feed them healthy food they will retain or maybe even improve their cognitive function the H we talked about which is head trauma so avoid it t is toxins there's so much to talk about here and when I first started scanning people I was the director of a substance abuse treatment program and it's there's no question in my mind alcohol marijuana methamphetamines cocaine heroin and he's ecstasy bad for your brain now at some point for when I get we can talk about ketamine and things like that and how can for some people be helpful but no question drugs and alcohol are not good for your brain and I'm a little horrified by the marijuana discussion now and and I never try to take political sides I love everybody but when one of the Democratic candidates says yes I'm gonna legalize marijuana and day one and then I'm going to teach the black brown and American Indian minority communities to sell it I'm like that's insane you're gonna keep people down by doing that they're just not thinking I published a study on a thousand marijuana smokers every area of their brain is lower now I absolutely think it should be legal really let's uh put people in jail that's a bad use of everybody's resources but let's not say it's good for us and here in LA I mean just coming to the podcast I must have seen six dispensaries it's like I'm not a fan but what I learned through the imaging is there's a whole bunch of other things that are toxic yet for us like mold or environmental toxins so I love firefighters and first responders I've scanned hundreds of them they must all have toxic looking brains because of the carbon monoxide that they breathe in or the cyanide that comes from burning furniture so what do you recommend to them because that's their career and their job and what's sort of like football you know my professional football players are gonna still play one of them signed an 80 million dollar contract it if you're gonna do something that's potentially bad for your brain you have to do everything else right so rather than wait until firefighters retire they have doubled the risk of suicide I mean how that's shameful for us that we're not taking care of the people our first responders because football players really aren't heroes they're entertainers firefighters are heroes you need them we should be rehabilitating them all the way along we should just own it being a firefighter is brain damaging profession it just is and if it is let's protect them from it and you know one simple thing the listeners can do is don't put toxic things on your body when I wrote my book memory rescue I learned about how toxic products are for us you know if you put on a shaving cream for example Barbasol was what I've used as I was 14 I was like 50 years this stuff on my face that on a scale of one to ten of how quickly it's killing you is in mine and now I put something on my face called kiss my face and it's a two why because I love myself and they go oh it's expensive it's like no being sick is expensive this stuff isn't expensive but no by the way it lasts like twenty times longer than Barbasol so it's cheaper yet so products the M is Mindstorms it's abnormal electrical activity that often increases with sugar and so if you're having problems with anxiety with your moods with your temper kill the sugar right your diet can just make such a difference the second eye is immunity and infections know your vitamin D level I'm in a new docu-series with Justin Bieber II came out yeah he came out the with his mental health challenge and I've been his doctor and he has Lyme disease which is an infection that attacks your brain and he has antibodies that actually attack the dopamine receptors in his brain and dopamine gives you joy and it gives you motivation and gives you pleasure and you know my prayer for my young stars is dear God please don't let me be famous before my brains finished developing because it's damaging and I'm just so proud of him that he's been talking about his journey to getting well and he's just so much better but the infectious thing is so important and nobody knows about it right you go to he went to a psychiatrist in LA he said oh you have bipolar disorder here take lithium and at which point Bailey said no we're gonna go see dr. Raymond and I scanned him he didn't have bipolar disorder he had something was attacking his brain and how would we ever know if we didn't look n is nor hormone deficiencies and so many young men have low testosterone and you let go why is that you have a head injury can lower because it hurts the organ in your brain your pituitary gland that tells your body to produce hormones or it's all these toxins on our body that are called hormone disruptors you don't ever want to put a hormone disruptor on your body because your hormones are like miracle-gro for your brain anybody who has thyroid problems listening to this know you either anxious depressed low-energy and so on the D is diabesity we could just go on and on about this one but I have published several studies now that say as your weight goes up the physical size and function of your brain goes down and if you're overweight you automatically now have five risk factors because being overweight decreases blood flow to the brain it increases inflammation it stores toxins and it decreases your hormones so belly fat takes healthy testosterone and flips it into unhealthy cancer-promoting forms of estrogen this is a bad thing right and I've you go to the mall almost any city in America now and you like why are all these pregnant men here right I mean you just like you have to deliver that baby it's not good for you and then the S is sleep 60 million Americans have sleep related problems and in 1900 and I know I was in around 1900 but on average we got 9 hours of sleep and now now on average we get 6 and a half that change or evolutionary or old lights now it's disrupting the production of melatonin in our brain which is why you should turn off your gadgets at dark yeah absolutely no those by the way first of all thank you for walking us through that's very generous of you because that mnemonic in the book is so powerful and anyone who's listening or watching right now I highly recommend that when you get the book that's a great place to start and really look at those because you can go through that list and look at which of the ones that are affecting you the most which are the ones that you're noticing the ones you're not aware of like that's that's a great map to start with I find because it really helps you figure out what are you struggling than what you're not now when you look at those one of the things I love that you do is it's so practical to just start with one of them because oftentimes they're interconnected like you talk a lot about how when we eat later on the day then that's worse for our sleep and that when we eat close to when we sleep that's bad for our sleep and then that's bad for our brain and it's almost like this vicious cycle that one how that leads to another leads to unlearn that leads to another and it just keeps imprinting negative impact on our brain right it's it's all interconnected it's not and I love what you said it's like just do one thing yeah just a thing to start with is this little tiny habit in the book they're all these tiny house yeah the smallest thing I can do today yeah that'll make the biggest difference and it's just ask yourself this question three seconds whenever you're going to do something so whenever I'm going to drink this water is it good for my brain or bad for it I love and if I can answer that with information and love I love myself I love my wife I love my children I love my nieces I love my mission I love where I work you can answer it with information and love you start doing the right things yeah and I've said this a lot to my audience actually in my in my private coaching group but I've not said it so much here on the podcast but well you're saying so true that when you ask yourself that question you know is this good for my brain or bad for my brain you know am i acting in a way that I love myself or am i showing myself that I don't love myself you can only answer that question authentically if you know the research otherwise it's really hard to convince yourself that you're doing the right thing or the wrong thing so when I'm having this conversation with you now I know the next time I try to do any of these things that are bad for me I've got your voice in my head asking me this question I've got your voice walking me through which of the steps that I'm making mistakes on and that's where anyone who's listened to this podcast right now if you listen to dr. Daniel a man's podcast you are now in a better place to make better decisions all the time then if you listen to a podcast once a year or read a page of this book but don't really dive into it you're missing out on your mind actually being able to help you so one of the things I love that you talked about is ants right automatic negative thoughts and you talked about how sometimes our thoughts can lie to us what walk us through that so I never knew this until my psychiatric training it just blows me away that every time you have a thought your brain releases chemicals every single time you have a thought whenever you have an angry thought hopeless thought a helpless thought I mean thought your brain releases chemicals that actually change your body and it happens immediately your hands get colder they get wetter your breathing changes your heart rate changes your blood flow to your brain drops actually did a study on negative thinking patterns in the brain but the opposite is also true whenever you have a happy thought a hopeful thought of loving thought a purposeful thought your brain releases completely different set of chemicals that help relax your body thoughts are automatic they just happen they're based on complex chemical reactions and things from the past and maybe not even your past it could be your parents past or your grandparents past and they lie they lie alive just because you have a thought has nothing to do with whether or not it's true and one day after a really hard day at work I saw four suicidal patients two couples who hated each other and two teenagers who'd run away from home and I went home and I was tired and I came home to an ant infestation in my kitchen they were everywhere as I'm wiping them up I'm thinking to myself ants automatic negative thoughts my patients are infested and so I came the next day to work with a can of raid have ants break and then I'm like okay that's not good so later I replaced that with an anteater puppet and an ant puppet and that concept is just so helpful you don't have to believe every stupid thing you think and so here's the tiny habit whenever you feel sad or mad or nervous or out of control write down what you're thinking and just ask yourself if it's true my friend Byron Katie I don't know if you've had her on the ball I haven't but I know she is yes look I love her yeah she just teaches you to ask these five simple questions you know you had a bad thought write it down my wife never listens to me and then just these five questions is it true yes you know if you're mad is it absolutely true second question now he listens to me all the time she's listened to all 14 of my public television scripts like multiple times the third question is really interesting how do you feel when you believe the thought mmm I feel sad I feel disconnected I'm sort of angry I'll give myself permission to be rude to her that's not a good idea the fourth question is how would you feel without the thought like a good husband and then you take the original thought and turn it to the opposite my wife does listen to me and just see if you can find one or two examples but those five questions dramatically change the people I serve if they can I can just and I tell people that they say it in the book you need to do a hundred bad thoughts and just do those five questions with the hundred bad thoughts and then the ants will begin to go away from your life yeah I think thank you for sharing that I think that's such a practical and great system please when you're listening to this podcast when you get a moment today when you're finishing your commute or you've stopped walking your dog or you stop cooking take a moment actually do this activity I highly highly recommend it because when you see yourself start getting through one Thor and two and then five you'll start to see how you're rewiring your brain just by doing this very simple activity - so please do not take that activity lightly it sounds like I'll just do in my head no don't do in your head write it down do it step by step break it down like take the advice really really seriously one of the things I love about the book you talk about different types of brain and getting to learn about our different types of brains that we have tell us about the process of how we can become more aware can we do it without imaging and without scans or do we really need obviously we need to do that for to get the deepest I can't wait to get my brain scanned with you did something I am 100% going to do but how can we get to know our brains better so a long time ago I realized not everybody has the same brain I mean some people are lucky and they have pretty balanced brains but there's a whole group of people who have what I call spontaneous brains they have sleepy frontal lobes more with the a DD group there other people and they these two people tend to marry each other the spontaneous and the purse system the persistent I want to figure out what me and my wife want so the spontaneous they have sleepy frontal lobes so they're creative they're out-of-the-box thinkers they can interrupt they get distracted easily they might not be great at organization okay so that's the spontaneous type the persistent type they get stuff done when they say it they're early they but it has to be their way or they get upset they can worry hold grudges if things don't go their way they get upset now you want your neurosurgeon to be a little bit like that we're gonna do it we're gonna do it this way we're gonna do it perfectly we're gonna do it all the time and then there's the sensitive brain where their emotional system is increased and they make really good therapists but they tend to see the glass as half-empty rather than as half-full so they can go to sadness quickly and then there's the cautious people and you need some anxiety let's just be clear the people with the lowest level of anxiety the spontaneous group they also die early because from accidents and preventable illnesses these are the people that run with the bolts in Spain it's like why but the cautious people they tend to be more anxious more nervous and you want the sort of persistent and cautious to be I hire them all the time because it's like no I want to do the best job possible and then there's actually 16 types but 6 through 16 are combinations of those types so for example if you grew up in an alcoholic calmer you have a lot of alcoholism in your family you tend to be type 6 which is both spontaneous and persistent or what I might call impulsive and compulsive at the same time and what are the good partnerships which are the ones that do work well together well the ones I see a off yes the most are the spontaneous guys married to the persistent women okay she she was so attracted to him because he was the life of the party he didn't have the same inhibitions that she had but his lack of follow-through just makes her crazy I have a great story it's one of my first imaging stories I saw these exam also child psychiatrists and this this couple Judy and Gary brought their kids to me and the little boy had they both had abd the little girl responded to the simple treatments I gave a little boy didn't and so I'm like I need to see him so I saw him in weekly counseling and then I realized oh the reason he's not getting better is mom and dad hate each other and I'm like oh so I said you know I think I should see you guys to work on your relationship and they go dr. Haman we really like you a lot but we saw four of their marital therapists and they always make it worse and I'm like in my head and never have this thought because in my head I'm like let me they didn't see anybody really good so I had that thought boy I regret that thought cuz so they saw me and I had two leather couches in my office they sat on the opposite end of each couch and that's how they naturally sat when they would it was terrible okay um and he was always late he would always say things that would hurt her feelings she would hold on to it she I would say she has a PhD in grudge holding she's holding on to stuff from 15 years ago that his mother dead and after about four months I actually knew I wasn't going to be helpful but you know I'm persistent and at nine months whenever I see him on my schedule my stomach would hurt and this one morning I I realize they're on my schedule my stomach started hurting I'm in the shower and I said today I'm gonna tell them to get divorced because it is not good for children to be raised in chronic stress but I grew up Catholic like my mother was not kidding about the whole thing and you know divorce was like a really bad thing and so the Catholic voice visited me in the shower and said what because you're not a good enough therapist they're gonna get divorced and you're gonna dam their souls to hell and I just stared at the water faucet like how much therapy does this take to get over and then I got out of the thick I got out of the shower and called my mentor who taught me imaging and I'm like would you give me two scans for the price of one uh-huh it's like why I said Jack I have this couple and I don't know what to do with them he said couple scans what about brain match.com it's just like so interesting so anyways we scanned him he had low frontal lobes just like my spontaneous group and I was mad at myself because I missed that he had adult ad D and it's one of my specialties and she had a brain that was worked way too hard and so she had like an OC she that wasn't OCD but she had an OCD like brain and so I put her on Prozac him on Ritalin just to balance their brain and told him I didn't want to see him for a month because I was having trouble dealing with the stress and when they came back a month later they sat on the same couch she had her hand on his leg that's a good sign in marital therapy and now were 30 years later they're still me all right no way children are like in their 40s and they came to an event I did and it's just without knowing that that's they could have done therapy forever but if you don't have the map yeah how do you know what to do I'm just not like a fan of guessing it makes so much sense I feel like what you're doing is so it's it's almost like we've always talked about this that with the body it's very easy to see it before and after you know you look at the body and you're like all my muscles getting bigger am i losing weight am i gaining weight whatever it is and well you're literally letting people do is do the same with the brain right so you can literally see it get better I've seen and I share a lot of your posts on the brain but you're able to show us what a healthy brain looks like you're able to show us what a brain on marijuana looks like you're able to show us what a brain with specific diseases looks like and it's like when you see it physically look different you know whether you're making progress and I think that's half the issue at the mind and the brain is that people think you can't see it but based on the imaging you can and talking about couple matching and brain matching you you just shared something with me before we started the podcast which I love by the way it just shows how much you believe in what you're saying it's this is the proof forget all the studies that dr. Daniel a man's done forget all the people he's guided this is the real proof that he practices what he preaches so dr. Donna a man before we started the interview he told me that anyone who has wants to date his kids they have to get their brain scanned right absolutely that is amazing like that to me is much I have four children tell us about yeah I won't do it now the oldest is 42 and then three thirty five and then 33 and the youngest is 16 okay and she starts dating Michael and I love Michael Michael is a good boy but in my mind they're really not dating until I see his brain and when Michael was 12 his mother killed herself and he found her and I'm like now I need to know and he's such a good kid scanned his brain it was busy and he had struggled with anxiety and on the things that I recommended for him he's just done so much better on me and now he like refers people to us and one of my kids I scan the brain of his partner and I'm like please don't marry her because it was not good it was not healthy and it turned out she had an addiction issue that he didn't know about but he didn't listen to me and that was trouble and then you know I I was married for 20 years and it was not a good marriage and so I told myself I got divorced in 2005 ever got married again the first naked part of this person I wanted to see was their brain and I meant ten of my wife and she's a neurosurgical ICU nurse so we sort of bonded over the brain so excited for you to meet her and two and a half weeks later I'm like sweetheart you haven't seen the clinic don't you want to see the clinic we scanned her and it was good so I felt okay marrying her that's amazing that that to me is the real proof about me I love everything that's through this and we were talking about how like your partner is so important to your brain health right your partner is just so important we're speaking about how incredible Haley is earlier and you know love Haley she's she's amazing and it's just like that your partner is so important to your brain health and and I think we underestimate we underestimate that when you fall in lust or love or you know you infatuation coaching right I mean new love is works on the same area of your brain where cocaine works and on the nucleus accumbens that responds to dopamine and that's why don't marry somebody until the love switches from cocaine to then it has an opiate response and you just feel happy when you're around them but you don't get the fluttering yeah cocaine's chemistry like it's the same same feeling and you want alchemy where you're creating something beautiful not just going oh that person didn't do it for me because they didn't make my heart go fast yeah probably the guys that made your heart go fast broke your heart what is it what does the brain on love look like actually so I wrote my brain in love it's a great book okay my favorite chapters is how to use your head before you give your heart away Omega know how to do this how to do an interview based on neuroscience to see is this person could be a good partner for me or not a good partner for me but there's actually studies done on people who had just fallen in love and their basal ganglia this is a part of the brain that responds to dopamine become much more active just a little bit like OCD where all you can do is think about them all you see is the good parts of them and it disrupts brain function for a while which is why be patient and meet their friends and meet their family and see what they're like when you go out there's they're so mittens like I think you want to know about their family you want to know about their mom or dad you want to know about the friends and you want to meet them and just see does this fit the goals I have but if you don't have goals how do you know if it fits so it's what you know I get frustrated with a a you know the first step in the addiction programs is know when you're out of control and I'm like that's step two step one is know what you want yeah what do you want and in the book I talk about an exercise called the one-page miracle on one piece of paper write down what you want and then you ask yourself is my behavior getting me what I want and if it's not then we talk about what do we need to change and often it's your brain yeah and I love that you mentioned that because I think what happened in society at one point is obviously parents and family were very important in matching couples and bringing people together I think you know like I don't know I think I saw a study once which is like maybe maybe it's a bit more than 25 years ago but around that time it was very common for most people to be introduced through family or you married someone who lived in like a one-mile to 5-mile radius of where you grew up and that started to change and I remember growing up and just thinking like why doesn't matter it's between me and the person it said and when I met my wife my wife is an amazing relationship with her father she has an amazing relationship with her mother and amazing relation with her family and I know that that is so integral to who she is today but it took me to that because in the beginning I was just like oh no it's just about me and her as long as me and her get along that's all that matters you totally marry their family yeah you do you've totally married indirectly or directly we marry a mother I give you a secret so when I met Tana and Tanis actually working on a book that I love called The Reluctant courage of a scared child so she grew up with a lot of trauma and I really liked her beautiful she's smart she's sweet and how do you get someone to fall in love with you this is a neuroscience strategy okay you do something nice important for someone they love and we're dating for like three months and her father had who she was estranged from had just been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease and her sisters her half sisters had no idea what to do and now tannaz nurse I'm a doctor and I'm like well I know what to do let's bring him down which made her anxious because she was estranged and let me scan him and it turned out he didn't have Alzheimer's disease he had something called pseudo dementia which is severe depression that masquerades as Alzheimer's disease plus he's on a toxic cocktail medication and so I changed his medication got him on supplements put him on really the plan in the end of mental illness in six months later he's doing all-day seminars I mean he went from being a Rekluse that basically was just seeing how am I going to die to someone who lived and through the whole process they were able to mend their relationship and she fell in love with me you dr. Damon is that you're so good at shifting between the micro and the macro I can feel like today we've talked about we started for my mental illness and how we need to change the language around and we've talked about the actual changes we can make to our relationships and our particular habits and practices let's go back to the macro for a second how would you like us in media on podcasts in this area you like us to change our vocabulary around how we talk about mental illness brain health etc which is gonna help people actually get to the source of what's really going wrong so then and and the government everything how do we have to change that vocabulary because I think that's a big part of it so I was actually at the White House about 18 months ago part of group called mental health leaders of faith and they're like okay big ideas what are the big ideas the end of mental illness will begin with a revolution in health that we need to call these things with they really are just bring up mental illness no one wants one parents will go oh we won't say anything about that and it's shaming it's stigmatizing and it's wrong because they're not mental they're brain so we need to change the terminology from a mental illness to a brain health issue it's because when Justin came to see me and the switch happened when he came into my office and he looked at me and he said my heart my brain can have problems just like my heart can have problems if I had heart disease I would do everything you told me I have a brain health issue I'm going to do what you tell me until then we were sort of fussing will he do it won't it yeah and all of that but when you realize the brain is a physical organ that can have trouble if somebody said you had cancer you go do the other things to get it treat it if they said you had a liver problem you'd go do the thing the doctor said but because psychiatrists don't look at the brain their patients actually don't believe them it's like really you made a diagnosis of bipolar disorder just based on my symptoms yeah without ever yeah which is its wife one of the reasons I fell in love with him and Jane because compliance went up and stigma went down those are like big deals so my hope is we talk about these as brain health issues because you know how insane this is is you can have an addiction go to an addiction treatment center and they give you pancakes and waffles and candy and it's like are you people insane he's got a brain problem why aren't you going to feed the brain and there's a chapter in the book all the foods made it insanely simple and it's like why aren't you gonna feed it in a healthy way to get a healthy icy response so me my friends struggling with so many mainly cancer it's a trend that the diet sheet says no change is required as well right and and I know we want you to take more medication holy and we're trying to do population control yeah it's insane it's crazy that we haven't changed that yet it's um it's 50 percents I did this one study from Australia I talked about it in the book they looked at two outer islands one of them had fast-food restaurants the other one didn't and they measured their omega-3 index and the level of depression the island with fast food restaurants significantly low levels of omega-3 fatty acids in their blood and five times the level of depression now it's the food there's a linear correlation between the number of fruits and vegetables you eat a day and your level of happiness up to eight servings of fruits and vegetables a day I'm so glad I married my wife she sorted that out for me if I didn't have her I'd probably being the worst food she's been the one who's been so health focused exercise she just brought all of that into my life I was so focused on the mind and she helped me see all the similarities between the body in the mind well because if you're if you don't nourish your brain yeah it's hard to have a healthy mind and that's that thing we need to understand plus guys who were married live longer but women who were married do not live longer because they have they have to deal with us that's crazy I love it doctor name and you are amazing we're gonna go into the last couple of segments of the podcast this is called filling okay great so the first one is loving your brain means thinking about it every day nice yeah exactly if you love someone you think about them right that's great I love that there's grounds if you want to fry your brain think of alcohol as a health food and marijuana's going green good answer good answer I like that one okay my best habit for my health is every morning I start the day with today is going to be a great day yeah every night when I go to bed I go what went well today people love that from last time when you talked about it I was huge for people okay meditation helps increased blood flow we shoulda brain and decreases the hyperactivity in your emotional brain meditation helps balance the brain we should all limit sugar so when I was a monk at any sugar and I gave up sugar this January again and I've been having it I've been cheating I've been having once a week I've been having my favorite dessert but it's changed my life like I remember it changed my life then but I thought oh maybe I was among their letters so let's talk about this one so just for a second a beer doctor just for a second to it I'm like have you ever been in a bad relationship yeah for sure yeah me too multiple times me too yeah and I'm not doing that anymore I am only gonna love someone that loves me back and I'm damn sure not gonna do it with food so drew Carey said it right eating crappy food isn't a reward it's a punishment and so whenever I go to eat something I'm just asking myself do I love it because I want to eat what I love and does it love me back ah that is so good that is so good I'm I feel terrible for last night now that's so powerful that that's like that's a four year old yeah wants what he wants when he wants yeah it'll be good except here yeah and it's like when is it rational for an alcoholic to have cheat days or sex addict to have cheat days yeah and I never thought about it like that I love what you just said it's not a reward it's a punishment that's huge Wow okay can you be my doctor absolutely that's great I love that okay that was really good the best foods for the brain are colorful fruits and vegetables colorful low glycemic fruits and vegetables healthy fat 60% of the solid weight of your brain is fat lots of fiber and high-quality protein and water your brain because 80% of it is water hmm what's the difference between an evil rule and a good ruler some examples it's one of my favorite parts of this book I didn't want to end the bus I just thought if I was an able ruler just looking at American society and I wanted to increase the incidence of mental illness what would I do I put the worst foods on the bottom two shelves in the stores where children see them and beg for them if I was an evil ruler I would create addictive gadgets that steal people's attention span if I was an addictive if I was an evil ruler I'd give the NFL a day of the week I'd let them own a day of the week which is basically head trauma glorification if I was an evil ruler I would tell older people to get up on ladders to clean out their gutters because Falls are just so damaging if I was a good ruler I would limit gadgets for kids for sure and get them out in the Sun unfortunately the dermatologist won they made us afraid of the Sun and nearly 80% of us have low levels of vitamin D which is a universal risk factor not only for Alzheimer's disease and depression but also for cancer and if I was an evil ruler I'd continue to prescribe psychiatric medicines with no biological information which is great for the pharmaceutical industry it's just a frickin nightmare for our country that's great thank you for sharing that I love I love that too it was just brilliant and I just thought if you get into that mindset for yourself for Society for community what would a good and evil ruler do it becomes so clear what parts are tricking us son thank you that's beautiful okay so these are your final five you didn't remember them from last time we have the rapid-fire fast fire fast five questions so one word to one sentence answers maximum no more than that and I will probably go off tangent because you're so amazing but we will try and stick to this so I've got such a great choice here let's go with let's start with something funny your favorite Justin Bieber song purpose ah he sang it to me before it actually was released Oh wonderful great okay I like that I didn't expect that as a good answer yeah what do you think most people misunderstand about the brain that it's the most important part of you yeah I think I told you last time about one of my spiritual mentors has been an incredible spiritual mentor to tens of thousands of people in London he's got Stage four brain cancer I can't remember if I didn't mention it to you or not but yeah it's just been struggling it's amazing because he was such a light and such a guide for so many of us and even now in his weakest stage he's just exude ingratitude and it's amazing that after his brains complexion he's lost is pretty much a short term memories disappeared his long-term memory is it's there but it's you can tell that there's parts that are now failing to mesh together now he's become extremely quiet but the last I saw him last year he was just just grateful to everyone for what they were doing to serve God and what they were doing to make a difference in the world and that's all that was coming out and it was just yeah it's one of those things that you don't notice how powerful the brain is until you see it until you see someone lose it and I almost horrified yeah we do and we don't see that as much or we don't hear about it as much because I guess people struggle to talk about it alright question number three is what question do you wish people would ask you more often what's the best way to help my children nice because this is a generational yeah mission for me it started with it's going to help her children and even her grandchildren yeah what you do when a little girls born they're born with all of the eggs in their ovaries they'll never have this is so important yeah question number four what's something you were once sure of and now have changed your mind on all found a new answer to that your brain doesn't have to get old hmm I've seen so many older brains but not everyone's bad wow that's really powerful all right fast five final question what's the biggest lesson you've learned in the last 12 months could be personal professional anything I'm actually working on a new project called your brain always how do you do it it's called your brain is always listening and I talk about the dragons from the past that breathe fire on your emotional brain and my favorite dragon is the ancestral dragon is that sometimes your anxiety your anger your sadness may actually not be yours that it may be somebody from the past and so I was talking to my dad about the ancestral dragon ice tell me more about my grandfather he was 19 when he came to the country and his brother was not a good driver borrowed his sister's car and was killed in a train accident no and my grandfather never drove because of the bitterness and the anxiety that he helped and that happened before he made my dad yeah and I know that changed my grandfather's genes in part to make my dad who he was and then I got some of that as well I'm certain and so the thing in the last 12 months is sometimes our issues are in fact not our issues they're from another generation yeah we need to break those generational curses and make the choice on breaking that pattern but you need to know what pattern it is before you can break it great great answers I want everyone to go and follow dr. Daniel Amen on Instagram genuinely I look forward to his post and doctor name where can if people are listening and watching they're going I need to get my brain scanned like they're serious about it how can they come and do that because I think that would be an amazing you have eight clinics around the United States and then go to Amen Clinics comso Amon like the last word in a prayer clinics calm and we would love to serve them yeah I would love that anyone who's listening and watching and you really realize from today's conversation the impact and the importance of your brain health please go and take that opportunity I know I'm gonna be doing it as well and everyone including those and everyone else please please please go and grab a copy of this book it is going to blow your mind or your brain and it's gonna help you deeply understand what's going on in your brain your friends brains and how you can start helping yourself and others and remember this is what self-love really looks like right it's not just bubble baths and walks on the beach it's like this self-love for your brain is really what self-love is about but I feel like you're gonna say something and I stopped you uh now that's grateful yeah grateful for no I mean it I feel like this is the self love that that we all you know we're talking a lot about self-love these days but I feel like a lot of the other self love is like kind of nice to have and it might work but this is kind of like the root of all of it so I'm a big proponent of everything that dr. Daniel Amon does and I highly recommend that you go check it out thank you doctor the name for coming on the show again thank you please share your best insights from dr. Daniel a man on instagram tag myself and tag him as well so that we can see what you learned this episode thanks for listening everyone we'll be back with another on purpose episode next week [Music] hey guys so this is some bonus footage it's on my reflection from the interview that we just completely reducta Daniel a man of course he's been an incredible podcast guest before this was the second time we've had him on and I was actually sharing with him and that's why we wanted to switch the cameras back on because I said this off to the cameras were off when he came on last year and blew my mind and blew your mind and that podcast went super viral I fell in love with him as an individual and I and I really identified with what he was trying to do in the world and his expertise and his studies blew my mind and his understanding of the brain so I was really impressed by him as an individual and this time I'm sitting down with him after a year I'm actually realizing that I missed the point and I missed the point because I didn't yet realized that I need to go and get my brain scanned so importantly it needs to be the top of my agenda because until I do that then I'm not even taking it seriously and so maybe some of you listen last year and it was really powerful you know like I learned so much whatever it is but you're like but wait a minute I haven't actually changed what I'm doing for my brain actually don't understand my brain so go on get your scans get the new book and a mental illness as well weed more about it because if you're not doing that then we're basically saying oh that's nice that's another nice store it's another nice podcast it's another nice interview cool ideas but it's like this isn't that like this isn't that this is this is life-changing stuff and so I just wanted to let you all know that you should hide yeah of course please the end of mental illness begins with the revolution in brain health and we would love your ideas on well how do we create this revolution because if we don't the incidence of suicide is going to continue to go up and what I love about you and your group it's like these are passionate people so we'd love your ideas about so how do we create this revolution in brain health to change the conversation from mental illness to brain help yeah love that thank you yeah please please be send them through to us on instagram tag both of us comments action anywhere that you know it's gonna reach us we're gonna be looking out for your answers

Channel: Jay Shetty

Views: 117,156

Keywords: jay shetty podcast, Life, dr. daniel amen interview, jay shetty videos, jay shetty video, Social Media, jay shetty inspiration, Explore, Purpose, Mind, addiction, uplifting videos, inspiring video, daniel amen, dr. daniel amen, boyfriend, distractions, prince ea, girlfriend, inspiration, inspire, jay shetty motivation, shettyjay, jayshetty, knowledge, learn, learning, love, motivation, motivational video, on purpose podcast, podcast, relationships, self development, self help, justin bieber

Id: 6yXFOijenmM

Length: 73min 20sec (4400 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 09 2020