How to End Mental Illness

step number one as you get rid of the term mental illness and you call these things what they really are brain health issues that steal your mind you get your brain right and your mind will follow so the end of mental illness really begins with a revolution in brain health [Music] welcome to the doctors pharmacy I'm dr. Mark Hyman and that's pharmacy with an F F AR ma CY a place for conversations that matter and if you know anyone who's had mental illness or you've suffered from any mental problems this is the show you want to listen to because we're gonna hear something that isn't talked about which is that your mental illness may not be what you think it is and can be fixed in fact we're gonna talk about the end of mental illness with my friend and my colleague and teacher dr. Daniel Amon Daniel and I go way back we've known each other a long time I first went to a name in clinic where he scanned someone in my family in 2004 maybe and we begun extraordinary relationship this lasted over 15 years and together we created something called the Daniel plan which was after Daniel from the Bible although it could be Daniela and with Rick Warren to put a faith-based wellness program in Saddleback Church where we got 15,000 people to lose a quarter million pounds in a year and get healthy and fix their bodies and their brains and you know it's just been an extraordinary privilege in my life to know you and work with you dr. Daniel Amon has been called by The Washington Post the most popular psychiatrist in America and Discover Magazine listed his brain imaging research as the top neuroscience story for 2015 in fact most psychiatrists treat the brain without ever looking at the brain Daniel's a psychiatrist who thought gee maybe it would be a good idea to look at the brain and how its functioning or not functioning if we're gonna treat the brain and mental illness he's a double board certified psychiatrist ten time New York Times bestselling author amazing books that you've probably heard of change your brain change your life healing a DD memory rescue change your brain change your grades that sounds good and the Daniel plan co-authored with Pastor Rick Warren and dr. Mark Hyman that's me in March twenty twenty his book the end of mental illness will be published this is going to be one of the most important books I think you ever written because it reframes the conversation about mental illness in a way that I don't think anybody else I was doing out there he's the founder of the Amon clinics which has eight locations across the United States he's got the largest database of brain scans related to behavior I mean think about that we don't connect our brains to behavior our mood we don't look at imaging we look at it if you have a tumor but not if you have a mood disorder or if you have a psychiatric disorder right he's done a hundred and sixty thousand spec scans on patients from 121 countries he's got a research team has published more than 70 scientific studies he's a lead researcher on the world's largest brain imaging and Rehab study on professional football players who's get their brain damage to all the time knocking heads his research has not only demonstrated high levels of brain damage and players but also the possibility of significant recovery for many with the principles that underlie his work in fact I've seen those cases I've seen those scans it's impressive this team has also published the world's largest functional brain imaging study on how the brain ages with over 62,000 spec scans he's hosted 14 national public television shows about the brain and aired over a hundred thousand times he's married to Tana and as a father of four children and five grandchildren and Daniel I've had my brain scan with you twice and it's a very eye-opening experience so welcome to the doctors pharmacy mark it's such a joy to be your friend it's also a joy to be here and talked to the people who you touch yeah so you know I went to see you first when I had it was coming out of a period of mercury poisoning and real brain dysfunction my broken brain as I call it and you've been on there broken brain docu-series and there were a lot of holes in my brain and I then have gone through using functional medicine using your approach and I scanned you know over a decade later and saw it was dramatically improved and and it was you know when you see it on yourself you go wait a minute and I know I know it's better because my brain is working better and I go you know one of the stories were telling ourselves about our emotions our moods our behaviors our relationships our ability to focus our memory our mood disorders whether it's bipolar schizophrenia or things I do depression what if the stories were telling ourselves about those problems are just the wrong story so and I decided to be a psychiatrist 1979 my dad asked me why I didn't want to be a real doctor haha why I wanted to be a nut doctor and hang out with nuts all day long that's exactly so he doesn't Bend nuts all the time he doesn't get father of the Year award but you know 40 years later I sort of understand where he's coming from is we have diminished ourselves as a profession psychiatrist because we sort of don't act like real doctors I mean what medical specialists virtually never looks at the organ they treat not a to a blood test or an x-ray or a scan right right and I was an x-ray technician when I was in the Army so I was first entry medic in 1972 but then I got trained as an x-ray technician and our professors used to say how do you know unless you look so when I decided to be a psychiatrist I'm like well how do you know unless you look that there's not one type of schizophrenic patient or one type of bipolar patient and I always felt handicapped because cardiologists look orthopedic doctors look gastroenterologist looked everybody else looked I was supposed to guess and that was not okay with that yeah and so when I got the opportunity in the late 80s to start looking at the brain I was like a little kid so excited and when I looked at my own brain I'm like oh that's not healthy because I played football in high school I had meningitis twice as a young soldier oh and I'm like oh no I need to love and care for my brain and oh by the way when you do that your moods better your focus is better your Energy's better so the whole idea you meet six out of these nine criteria for depression you're depressed well heck you and I can tell if somebody's depressed in 10 minutes but what we can't do is tell what's the underlying brain pattern or what's the cause and so why wouldn't you lock so that you would have a sense of what to do so the imaging just changed everything and the second thing that changed everything was the ultra mind solution which is really by Mark Hyman my friend and I told you this I actually bought it for all the doctors I have 40 doctors in my bow and I went under it was a best-seller this is how you get the brain healthy so the brain is an organ and your brain can have problems just like your heart comes yeah and but most people who see a cardiologist have never had a heart attack they're there to prevent them so I am trying to create a psychiatry where people know their risk factors and they attack them as soon as possible so that we can prevent depression we can prevent bipolar disorder we can prevent a DD or if we can't prevent them at least we treat them in a whole person functional medicine approach I mean what an idea and when we do that their brains look better yeah I mean you you've pioneered an extraordinary breakthrough idea I mean everybody goes how do you keep your heart healthy well I know I exercise that you do healthy diet you know I don't smoke I keep my blood pressure under control but who say is someone how do I create a healthy brain they're like I don't know and the doctors will say I don't know maybe walking is good for your brain they know now maybe eating better is healthier for your brain these are ideas that just weren't in medicine until just recently and you really help bring that along and I think that the challenge we have now is that we actually are in a period of time where the meaning we have given to mental illness we're discovering is wrong the meaning when we say someone has depression or anxiety or bipolar or schizophrenia it's kind of like shaming and blaming as opposed to like there's something wrong with you instead of like oh you have a broken leg let's work on your broken leg right it's a very different frame it is and that's what the imaging did for me because what I realized and actually realize it fairly quickly these Ellis's aren't mental they're brain yeah and that one idea begins to change everything and the idea behind the end of mental illness and the title is I dedicated the book to my two nieces Emily and Alice a-and they are loaded for mental illness in their family and we know there's a genetic component in their family history there's schizophrenia bipolar disorder multiple suicides OCD PTSD criminal behavior depression and but jeans only load the gun it's what happens to us that pulls the trigger right and they were raised by two parents who were chaotic they had substance domestic violence they were moved multiple times and about four years ago they were taken by Child Protective Services out of foster care and at the time my wife Tana was estranged from her half-sister Tamara and we got a call from CPS and it was the war I'll protect us it was Child Protective Services worst week in my marriage because I wanted to adopt the children and she's like I grew up and crazy I do not want crazy in my family and so we really had trouble and we came up with a compromise which was we wrapped services around their mother we scanned her at our clinic in California we got her in a drug treatment program we did all the brain health things we do for our patients and on Mother's Day 2017 she got the children back well the end of mental illness is how do I end mental illness in these girls and in their children and grandchildren and how you do it I've write it out in the book and step number one as you get rid of the term mental illness and you call these things what they really are brain health issues that steal your mind get your brain right and your mind will follow so the end of mental illness really begins with a revolution in brain health just like you and I did with the Daniel plan so it wasn't just those fifteen thousand people who got no right thousands of churches around the world did our program and got 30 and Cleveland doing it now and they decreased their medications for mental health issues it improved their moods their energy their memory their relationships I mean the stories you and I have heard doers I remember that woman who came up to me after six weeks when we went back to the church and she had been depressed her whole life in and out of psychiatric institutions on medications their marriage was struggling she didn't oh she could work anymore and she said dr. Hyman is it possible that my depression could go away in three days I'm like well yeah if it was related to something you were eating and it was and she not only lost like 45 pounds but she was able to get her life back in a way that that she really hadn't in decades and decades of traditional psychiatric treatment we heard that story just over and over again get your brain right your mind will follow but in order to get your brain right you actually have to get your body right so step number two is once we get rid of the term mental illness you have to fall in love with your brain but before we go into that I just want to spend a minute on this because it's such a big paradigm shift you know if you think about you know all the labels we get people we called the dsm-5 which is basically the psychiatric manual that categorizes people according to their symptoms it's it's a way of describing myth illness that doesn't actually represent the biology of what's going on it doesn't represent the causes and it guides people down a treatment path that really has been a massive failure for the most part right all right outcomes are no better than they were in the 1950s yeah and mental illness is on the rise I mean when I looked recently at the costs of health care over the next 35 years it was 95 trillion dollars and the most expensive disease was mental illness and depression why not because you're in the hospital but because you lose quality of life you lose productivity you can't work you can't function you can't be a happy member of society and so you know we have to sort of get over the idea that mental illness is a psychological and emotional problem and start with the premise that it's a brain problem fix that and then yeah you might have to deal with some psychological and emotional issues but you can't do it in the reverse order it's very hard I always say you know it's I can give you a lot of morphine if you have a broken ankle might help you walk a little bit but it's not gonna fix your ankle right so I think of it in four big circles that we all have a biology so that's the hardware of your brain the actual physical functioning of your brain if you try to program that without fixing the hardware it's not going to work so there's the biological circle there's a psychological circle how you think yeah really important so I think of that as software yes there's a social circle which is who you hang out where so are in the computer analogy think of that as network connections right you become like the people you hang out and one of the things I may have gotten from you is if you want to get healthy find the healthiest person you can stand right and then spend his right him or her as possible while your friends are you know eating McDonald's and having french fries and beer and watching TV all day you're gonna be probably overweight and unhealthy if they're all drinking green juice and going to yoga class they're probably gonna be healthier and then there's the spiritual circle which is why the heck do you care why are you one the planet what's your sense of meaning and purpose both you and I work really hard because we're both very purposeful people and we believe we're here to do something important and if you don't have meaning in your life it's sort of hard to if you don't know the why it's hard to do the what yes and so but going to therapy and I'm a huge fan of therapy yeah once your brain works right makes the most sense otherwise it demoralizes you there's actually side effects to going to therapy with a troubled brain because it won't work right and then people spend money they spend time they spend energy and it's not working so they get demoralized and wonder what's the matter with them and it could have been the head injury it could have been the toxic exposure like you talked about what happened to you in China when you were there it's so many different intentional causes it could be because your body's chronically inflamed rise your guts not health right and get your body right get your brain right your minds better your moons better and we're going the wrong way just like you said Tom Insel who is director of the National Institute of Mental Health said the DSM that you mentioned is a hundred percent reliable what that means is if you make a diagnosis with depression today using the DSM you'll make the diagnosis tomorrow but then they went on to say it was zero percent valid right because it's not based on any underlying neuroscience so you see and that's why my profession dismissed scans because it didn't fit their diagnostic model so rather than throwing out the Bible and going with neuroscience they threw out neuroscience and said Oh Imaging's not helpful and yeah you know it's like Michael Pollan said was that psychiatry is brainless right it is and I'm trying to change that because why should I be a diminished medical profession that other people make fun of I'm not okay with that because it hurts millions of people in try and kill yourself today in every major city in the world and no one will look at your brain yeah that's insane yeah scary so thank you for reframing mental illness to be primarily a brain disorder that can be fixed by fixing your body and then fixing all these other circles right because it's much easier to fix your other circles if your brains working if you're not mercury poisoned or your thyroids work not working or your you're not b12 deficient or vitamin D deficient or you're not pre-diabetic all those things will mess up your brain right so it's much easier to do the work of actually creating meaning and purpose in your life and being happy and dealing with the psychological issues if your brain is working properly no question about it and if you've been traumatized and so many people because they've been raised by parents who have brain issues then it changes your brain in the negative way so put the brain in a healing environment the psychological work becomes so much easier so why is this so prevalent today I mean every 14 minutes someone commits suicide every eight minutes someone dies of a drug overdose 51 percent of the population at some point their life have some mental issues a quarter the women population in this country or on antidepressants like what's going on well there's a part in the book a writing device that I just love it's called if I was an evil ruler and I wanted to create mental illness in America how would I yeah and basically I create American society where our food system you know more about this than anyone our food system is broken right I mean 70 percent of us are overweight 40 percent of us are obese I published two studies that show as your weight goes up the size of your brain goes down which should scare the fat off anybody eyes and function of your brain size and function or you say the brain size and because the fat on your body is not innocuous it increases inflammation it stores toxins and it takes healthy hormones and turns them into unhealthy cancer-promoting forms of estrogen and so if you just think about that that one thing by itself our food I actually think is responsible for almost half of the mental health challenges in America there's this fascinating study from Australia where they tilt looked at two outer islands one of them had fast-food restaurants the other one didn't and then they looked at their omega-3 index and the island with fast-food restaurants had significantly lower omega-3 index and five times the level of depression think about yeah just with the food there was some kid were saying that went blind from eating Pringles and french fries because he was so vitamin deficiency had zero opthalmic which is from vitamin a deficiency I mean think about it junk foods gonna make you blind not just fat and demented in diabetic well and it's one of the reasons I'm a fan of multiple vitamins because we're basically a vitamin deficient society with deficiencies in magnesium and vitamin D and choline and vitamin B and C B's and C and so I just think it's a smart thing to sort of hedge or bad 97% of the population is low in omega-3 fatty acids they have suboptimal levels actually did a study of 50 consecutive patients who came to our clinic we're not taking fish oil 49 of them had suboptimal yeah level I mean it's striking when you start to look and test which most doctors don't I mean you you actually are scanning people's brains i skin their bodies through testing that looks at all these variables that most doctors don't look at right how many doctors look at omega-3 levels in your body most don't but it's most essential for my practice because i can't tell what's going on if i don't know what's happening now it's 25% of the membranes in your brain or made of omega-3 fatty acids and so if they're low your brains not going to talk very well to itself yeah i mean if you're listening i think most people and i think this is true I've seen it in my family I've seen it in my patients most people would sometimes mental disorder there's a stigma there's a sort of a blame game going on and there's a shame about it what your work is really doing is stopping that saying that's just nonsense it's like would you shame somebody for having cancer or diabetes or an autoimmune disease no you wouldn't you would try to sort through what's going on and look at the biology and that's what you've done so tell us why people suffering from things like depression anxiety bipolar disease a DD panic disorders bipolar you know it's a friend even addiction why why should they be hopeful now because if they see it from a brain perspective what we've learned and is you're not stuck with the brand-new half probably the biggest advance in neuroscience over the last 20 years is this concept of neuroplasticity that you are not stuck with the brain you have you can make it better and every day you're making about 700 new hippocampal cells so the hippocampus has stem cells and the hippocampus you know is Greek for seahorse so every day you're making about 700 new baby seahorses and your behavior is either helping them grow or it's murdering them and one of the things I think is really interesting my 16 year old daughter she and I I'm 65 we're both making about 700 new baby stem cells in our hippocampus hers are more likely to stick around than mine because of blood flow so new research no rain cells don't age it's your blood vessels that age yeah so anything that damages your blood vessels damages your brain so if you know how to increase blood flow so things like exercise and gingko and beets and rosemary and pepper I mean really simple things can actually help improve the function of your brain ping-pong that's your thing Table Tennis thank you are not stuck with the brain you have you can make it that and most people don't know that I was just in Florida either way dr. Ayman is a mean table tennis player who whips my ass every single time it's embarrassing and there's actually study from England on who lives the longest so they looked at sports and so if you don't play any sports you don't live long tennis players of seven years longer if you play football or soccer you don't live longer than anybody else because you're putting your head with the ball people who play racquet sports live the longest and that's why I play table tennis all right because you got to get your eyes hands and feet all to work together while you think about this spin on the ball yeah yeah I picked up tennis when I was 45 and I were as much as I can it just makes me so happy and I think it has kept me younger and well it activates your cerebellum and the cerebellum you know you're the young people listening they're not going to know who this is it horrifies me I called the cerebellum the Rodney Dangerfield part of the brain it gets no respect even though it's 10% of the brain's volume it contains 50% of the brains and neurons and the cerebellum is not just involved in coordination it's involved in processing speed and thought coordination and so when you play tennis you're activating the cerebellum which Oh has reciprocal connections with your frontal lobes so it's actually making you smarter more focused it's really a great game yeah I get so and there no head injuries with no tennis or table them thanks for not paying attention in the ball it's so that's actually when I'm really clumsy I'll hit myself in the head with a racquet but that's not usual so this is conversation is fabulous because we're reframing mental illness to brain health and you have in your book the end of mental on this simple way of thinking about this you call bright minds the eleven risk factors that steal your mind and how you avoid them can you take us through that so a number of years ago I realized if you want to keep your brain healthy or rescue it if it's headed to the dark place you have to prevent or treat the 11 major risk factors that steal your mind and bright minds is the mnemonic we came up with and the bees for blood flow low blood flows the number one brain imaging predictor of Alzheimer's disease it's also associated with addictions it's associated with depression it's associated with ADHD and schizophrenia do you want to do everything you can to protect your blood flow and 40% of 40 year old men have a rectal dysfunction do you know what that 40% of 40 year old men have brain dysfunction if you have blood flow problems anywhere it likely means they're everywhere right and so you know you have blood flow problems if you get a scan SPECT is a blood flow study if you have hypertension if you have any form of heart disease if you don't exercise so it just gives you some very simple things to do the R is retirement and aging when you stop learning your brain starts dying and you know I turned 65 this year and I've seen thousands of 60 70 80 year old brains and the news is not good it's sort of like you know as we age our skin begins to fall off our face the same process happens in the brain unless you're serious about it right I mean I have your scan ten years apart and as you got older your brain got better yeah well how exciting is that that you're not me happy I'm very competitive with the brain you have the eye is inflammation that I mean both you and I know it's a disaster inflammation is a disaster for every organ in your body it's true including your brain and so people can measure their omega-3 index just going to what you can do it's important underscore this we know from the research today that depression is inflammation in the brain that autism is inflammation in the brain that AVD and dementia are inflammation in the brain and if that's true then the question is what's causing the inflammation how do you stop it and how do you fix it so tell us about that so if you have a low mega three index taking omega-3s can be really helpful you have to get your gut right because having this thing and I'm a psychiatrist I didn't know one thing about leaky gut until I read the ultra mind solution and then I'm like oh you have to get your gut right because if your guts not right your brains not right you're likely to have things get inside your body that have no business in your body which causes an autoimmune or an inflammatory response so food really matters sugar is pro-inflammatory and foods that quickly turn to sugar bread pasta potatoes rice you want to you off and say eat them like a condiment that last sugar and is a recreational drug it's it's it's fine but didn't you say the four white powders deadly white that's a white powder white flour white sugar cane and too much salt that so diet really does matter in our process foods are loaded with pro-inflammatory omega sixes so corn and soy it's we're overloaded with them I mean not that they're evil but balanced they're not the right choice as primary staples in our diet but also things like infections and mold and we're gonna get there so the eye is inflammation that and so get your gut right omega-3 fatty acids the G is genetics and the big lie with genetics is I have obesity and my family and that's why I'm fat well the fact is I have obesity and my family of a brother and sister who are 150 pounds overweight but I'm not why you're wearing a skinny suit because I know the behaviors that make it likely to be so so genes are not a death sentence what they should be is a wake-up call and tell you what you're vulnerable to so that you get serious about prevention now than when I met you 15 years ago sure you lost more weight you get more muscle and you're 15 years older and I work on it right but because I love what I do and quite frankly I have four children I never want to live with them I love them I want to be independent for as long as possible I don't want them being worried about taking away my driver's license that means I have to take care of my body because my body will then care of my brain but that causes you to think ahead which is of course a brain function the H is a national epidemic that nobody knows it's head trauma head trauma is a major cause of psychiatric illness and nobody knows about it because psychiatrists psychologists marriage and family counselors counselors they never look at the brain and so that fall out of a second-story window that caused you to be angry and depressed nobody's thinking about rehabilitating the damage that occurred that's why you really shouldn't let your children hit soccer balls with their head play tackle football and if you've been in a car accident and then you got to press somebody should look at your brain and then you should go about rehabilitating man and that's what I did with the big NFL study and we published a study 80% of our players get better in as little as two months later by putting them on our bright minds program so I'm pretty excited about that the tea is toxins and when I first started scanning people and it was really clear that marijuana alcohol cocaine methamphetamines heroin are bad for your brain but then I would see these toxic scans the people who never use drugs yeah and I'm like oh no I had not one lecture on mold exposure when I was a psychiatric resident or heavy mercury or mercury poisoning or LED exposure and none of that and so we often find ourselves working up a toxic brain and did you know 60% of the lipstick sold in the United States has led in it so I think that is the kiss of death ha ha and so I know you know this app thing dirty and when I downloaded it you can scan all of your personal products I threw out half of my bathroom because it was basically toxic yeah that things like parabens and phthalates they're called hormone disruptors which we're gonna get to in a second but you don't want whatever goes on your body goes in your body and affects your body so you have to get rid of the toxins and basically it's decreased exposure and support the four organs of detoxification kidneys drink more water God eat more fiber liver stop drinking I'm just not a fan I mean we can talk about it but it disrupts liver function and sweat with exercise or take saunas people take the most saunas have the lowest incidence of Alzheimer disease so em is something and I call Mindstorms it's abnormal electrical activity in your brain so if you have a hot spot in your temporal lobes or cold spot what we see it's akin to seizure activity so sometimes anticonvulsants can really help a ketogenic diet has anticonvulsant properties there's this great book is written in 1980 by Jack Dreyfus who's the founder of the famous Dreyfus mutual fund and he said a remarkable medicine has been overlooked and it was dilantin which is an old anticonvulsant he'd been going to see psychiatrists forever he said three days on dilantin he didn't need a psychiatrist anymore because it had balanced his brain and so the second eye is immunity and infections if you look at a map of the United States and you look at the highest incidence of schizophrenia over lay the highest incidence of Lyme disease they're identical it's incredible anybody in the West or the Northeast or the northern Midwest should be screened for Lyme if they have a psychotic disorder and just need to screen them for it because if they have it treating it may actually treat their quote mental illness it was not mental it's before how do you treat the brain yeah Anna's neural hormone deficiencies Diaz diabesity you know as your blood sugar goes up and your weight goes up your brain gets smaller as we talked about so getting your weight right your blood sugar right and s is sleep this is how you keep your brain healthy pretty common sense but nobody's went together it's like you know it's a functional medicine approach to psychiatry with imaging it reminds me of what th Huxley said when he heard of the theory of evolution he said how stupid not to have thought of that it's so self-evident and yet medicine is so behind the times on this and the end of mental illness this book I think hopefully will change the conversation will be not just about providing more services or programs but providing the right services and the right programs and it's so so important so he'll tell us about some of the biggest AHA's you've had from looking at thousands literally hundreds of thousands of brain scans what are the things you've learned from looking at people's brains so the first one is you can make it better I mean I love that concept that I saw this patient in May and he had mold exposure he grew up on a farm and was exposed to a ton of pesticides he was a mixed martial artist and yeah and and that's true for most of our patients you know if you end up at one of our eight Amen Clinics it's not one of the bright minds risk factors you have you often have seven and three months later I scanned him again after supplements and hyperbaric oxygen and his brain was radically better and he's so excited in fact when he saw his scan the first time he doesn't have children but he said it's what I imagine if I had children when I saw my brain for the first time I fell in love with it and knew I would never ever do anything purposefully to hurt it so he fell in love with his brain so I I loved that the second big lesson is mild traumatic brain injury ruins people's lives and nobody knows about it and our smiles where you might not even lost consciousness so when I met Tana you know if I brought my head in a doorway because I'm tall you know probably not that but if you fell down a flight of stairs if you're in a car accident even going ten miles an hour if you look at that accident in slow motion there's this whiplash that occurs and your brain floats in your skull which means it slams against the front and then it slams jungle gym when I was five my concussion or you know when I scan ten after I met her that's my wife that's what you do on the first date you put your you know but I do it perspective girlfriend before I fall she said this game she never heard the line where I wanted to see your naked brain and you could tell she'd had a head injury in the past and she goes no but I didn't and I said will he ever in a car accident and then all of a sudden she said no no no no she said oh we was in a car going 75 miles an hour her sister fell asleep at the wheel and got so she flipped the car two-and-a-half times and then they came to a stop and I'm like oh you don't think that had an impact on your brain so things that people have forgotten or don't even think about so that was a big aha I grew up Catholic like not kidding Catholic my mom was serious about the whole thing and so I sort of had the idea of good and evil as black and white or freewill is black or white and when I started scanning people people started sending me real people did really bad things we've done over a hundred murderers and I began to go free will is not zero or a hundred it's gray there most of us have about 80 percent free will but if you have that accident maybe that's 50% and that six-pack of Michelob may take your freewill away yeah and so when President Obama after Sandy Hook said we need more services for mental health while Adam Lanza had seen multiple psychiatrists he was on multiple medications we don't need more money for mental health as it's currently practiced but that's what I'm saying virtually all the school shooters have had a psychiatric history where nobody looked at their brain hmm so so tell us some stories of people you mentioned the head trauma you mentioned the football players you mentioned your sister-in-law you know if someone comes in and you know has bipolar disease or depression you know what are you seeing what areas that brain are not working and one of the kinds of things that you've seen because what you're basically saying is that mark when you say someone has depression or bipolar or schizophrenia it's meaningless it doesn't tell you the why and they're looking at the scans you can have hundred scans of people with depression and they might all need different things well let me tell you story from the book it's one of my favorite all-time stories of a couple who failed marital therapy now I don't know if you went to marital therapy I certainly did in the past and it's hard well this couple went for three years spent $25,000 and then the therapist gave them an F she flunked them she said get divorced well they got really upset with her and when they got angry at her she said we'll I know a doctor in Costa Mesa California who takes care of really difficult people you should and so as part of our process we scan them both and yeah that actually had a pretty healthy brain his brain was just full of holes just like a drug addict yeah when you say holes you mean areas that aren't getting blood flow right areas of decreased perfusion how we render them they look like holes them yeah and just like a drug addict but in his history he said he didn't drink and never did drugs no it's the first thing they teach us in psychiatry school about addicts is lie they lie they lie a lot and so in front of his wife I went are you sure you've never done drugs and you don't drink and he said dr. Raymond I have many problems that's not it now the therapist diagnosed him with a mix personality disorder with narcissistic and antisocial features and so she basically called him a jerk that's our way of calling someone a jerk thing you're a psychopath right and so when he said he wasn't doing drugs I looked to the wife and I said is that true and she said oh yes dr. Raymond he doesn't drink he's never done drugs as far as I know he's Justin haha comes by naturally and like you I laugh and in my head I went oh then why does his brain look so bad and I went through the differential diagnosis drugs alcohol probably not if you know he and his wife says now an environmental toxin anoxia lack of oxygen at some point severe hypothyroidism severe anemia an infection and so my next question today was where do you work he said I work in a Furniture Factory I said what do you do he finished furniture although though he was doing drugs he was doing the worst drug of abuse which is inhaling organic solvents because what do organic solvents dissolved fat 60% of the solid weight of your brain it's fat Wow that they were damaging and so we call that VOCs their off gassing from all the furniture and carpets and paint and which is why several firefighters often have toxic brains because when you light the couch on fire its producing all of those chemicals in the brain and so after she told me that I said after he told me that I said to his wife I said so when did he become an [ __ ] she said what do you mean I said did you marry him that way do you have father issues you're trying to work out she said no he was great when we got married it wasn't until about five years ago and then she put her hand over about and that's when he got that dog about the time he got that job he started to change and so it shifted from he's an [ __ ] to he's sick in his attempt to being a good husband hmm by going to work in supporting his family he's being poisoned yeah and so for me I took him out of that job at least that position and the plant where he worked put him on a rehabilitation program and they didn't really need marital therapy what he needed was brain rehab and get your brain right it's easy I mean both you and I are married and you know it's hard to be married with a good but with the bad breath it's really hard but no marital therapist thinks about well what about the physical functioning of the two brains that are in front of me well that's a radical idea you know you have to get a brain scan or to go to therapy because what if it's the head trauma or what if it's the toxic exposure or what if it's you just both have a terrible diet leading to inflammation and you both have inflamed brains which means now you're anxious and depressed and you take things the wrong way this is not the sign of love right when your brain works right you tend to be more empathic more thoughtful more loving you can see things from their point of view not just your own right I mean it's a very different framing instead of you're a jerk to your brain is broken and fix your brain and you're not a jerk anymore and you've seen this over and over again thousands of people we actually do a formal outcome study on everybody we see so I have outcomes on 6,500 patients we have the best outcomes on average if you come Damon clinics are complicated you have 4.2 diagnoses you failed three point three providers and five medicines at the end of six months if we treat you so you're a resort doctor the doctor of last resort dr. Blake you at the end of six months 84 percent of our patients say they're better how many 84 percent that's unbelievable for a treatment-resistant group but we get to look at their brains how do you know unless you look I mean it's insane that we're not looking at the brain what's also fascinating in your work is that it's not like you're anti psychiatric medication you're gonna use whatever the right tool is whether it's exercise or sleep or diet or supplements but you also just so fascinating to me you can look at someone's brain and see which areas are working or not working and then you can match the medication specifically to that exact issue it's sort of like an antibiotic you know we use different antibiotics if you have strep or different antibiotics to be outclassed ready or a different antibiotic if you have you know Pseudomonas so we inch it's really specific and we don't do that in psychiatry so we guess based on their symptoms but we don't look at the areas of their brain that are working or not and that's so fascinating to me well another one of the big aha is depressions not one thing yeah seven things a D D is not one thing it's at least seven things maybe more addictions at least five different things you can be an impulsive addict often with a DD a compulsive addict closer to OCD a sad addict and anxious addict and impulsive compulsive addict a temporal lobe addict often based on head trauma or these Mindstorms and people are trying to medicate what's going on but if you don't really understand their brain and you put everybody in a 12-step program it's not going to be as effective as it could be is if you know what type of brain they have and tailor the treatment the same with obesity that you and I've talked about this before you have impulsive Overeaters compulsive overeater sad Overeaters anxious Overeaters know your type so you can target the treatment to put someone on a ketogenic diet that has a compulsive overeater brain you make them mean and you I was on Rachael Ray's show and we were talking about this and she's a people can actually go to brain health assessment calm and take our free brain type test and she was a type 3 which was a compulsive overeater and she goes oh I went on the ketogenic diet and I was so mean I wondered why my husband didn't leave me so balancing your food to the brain type can be really helpful hmm so talk about supplements because there's a lot of controversy about supplements a lot of data is coming out lately that supplements don't work I think that the story is more complex than that and I'm like a huge fan of supplements and you know I mean full disclosure I own a supplement company brainmd and the reason I do I mean I had not one thought when I was younger about Oh name is supplement company but when I first started doing scans in 1991 I realized some of the medications I prescribed particularly opiates and benzos are toxic to brain function and I remember in medical school I'm sure you do too this term first do no harm use the least toxic most effective treatment so I started to research well are there any science behind natural supplements and at the time there already was there were science behind Sammy and l-tryptophan and 5-htp and omega-3 fatty acids museum and B vitamins the whole there's a whole field of orthomolecular psychiatry and I got really excited about first do no harm and so in the end of mental illness or actually whole sections and if you have depression what are the 10 things you should do before you go on an antidepressant if you have anxiety what are the 10 things to do if you have a TD or an addiction what are the things to do before you go on medicine and I'm not opposed to medicine I use all the tools in the toolbox I mean if you have bipolar disorder or schizophrenia medicine is the first thing I'm thinking about for you to stabilize the situation until I can try to understand those bright minds risk factors and go and attack each of them that the science is always fascinating and you you want to okay who funded the science and that's true on both sides you know a sure supplement companies or is it the pharmaceutical companies sound companies pharmaceutical the people that make zoloft actually did a study on st. John's wort and they found it didn't work except when you actually read the study it did work except for the most severely depressed people but that wasn't the headline the headline was st. John's wort doesn't work well the fact zoloft doesn't work for severely depressed people nothing works not no singular product and one of the reasons why supplements don't work like gingko or vitamin E is the brain does not get sick in one way so single supplement like single medicine ingredients often don't work you have to take multiple mechanism approach and that's why brain and memory power boost our memory formula has seven things in it so that we can attack multiple risk factors at once I think it's very important people understand understand what they do they actually regulate all these biochemical processes in the body they they regulate hundreds and hundreds thousands of enzymes in the body that are required to make your chemical reactions go so for example if you don't have b6 you can't convert tryptophan from your diet from your turkey into serotonin it's just simple biology but somehow these supplements are seen as these weird things that aren't really part of our biology but they are essential and and I think that's something that that I learned and the widespread nature of these deficiencies and the other things that go on are really important choline for example there's a widespread deficiency in choline and choline helps you with memory and it helps you with learning and people who are vegans often have deficiencies in choline because they're easier to obtain things like eggs and meat and poultry and fish and so if you know that then supplementing with it can really help you and that way you might not have to give up the lifestyle that you've chosen whether it's being a vegan or a vegetarian yeah it's so important I think what you said is really important people think of them as sort of a single target single agents but they work as a team you know Michael Jordan best basketball player ever car Gilley right but he couldn't win an NBA championship on a team by himself you know he needs all the other players absolutely correct and the brain doesn't get sick in one way so it's not going to get better often by just doing one thing and I think that's really what the premise of functional medicine is is that it's it's not just about treating the disease with a pill it's about looking at all the variables that create imbalance in the body or the brain and fixing those you can't just do one thing that's what we're trained in medical school do one thing and then that's it it's called Occam's razor and that was sort of the epitome of being a good doctor was you found that one single magic thing that magic pill that fixed everything and what you're saying is this just a nonsense idea that doesn't reflect the complexity of our biology or our brains and well if you believe urban Kersh from Harvard that antidepressants by themselves really work no better than placebo except for the most severely depressed people and even then not very well and now I've been a doctor like you for a long time and I know they do work when I target them properly to someone's brain and they work better when I get them to eat right they work better when I get people to exercise they work better when I use supplementation they work better when I optimize their hormones they will writer when I get them to sleep and you know one of the other big aha and I'm not a sleep doctor but sleep apnea damages your brain for sure and you can actually see it on a scan so I have gotten so many brains better just by getting a sleep study and then having them where asleep out and so many men they don't want to wear the CPAP because you know it doesn't make them feel masculine but without it they're literally murdering thousands of brain cells every night yeah it's pretty frightening so so all these things are necessary you can't just do one thing you have to follow the whole bright mind model which is essentially a functional medicine framework that you've sort of crystallizing these really easy mnemonic and I think in your book you break it down for people and you give them really practical strategies for how to do this on their own and I remember you know the ultramen solution I wrote 10 years ago I I basically said well how do I treat patients what questions do I ask them what conclusions do I make from those questions and then what do I do what's my algorithm and I essentially created that in the book I said okay fill out a questionnaire do your magnesium deficiency H of omega-3 deficiency vitamin D deficiency is your thyroid out of whack do you have gut issues are you toxic are you pre-diabetic and is your sex hormones working or not and I I basically gave him a score and then I said well if your score is over X then you should add these few things do these different tied things to these different supplements see how you do and then if that doesn't work then go see a doctor but not leanin doctors you have to check these specific tests and do these specific things and this one woman came to see me after I written the book and it was maybe a year later so and I said so hi how are you doing why are you here says well I don't really have anything I said well why did you come so well it took me nine months to get this appointment I said oh she said I read your book the ultra mind solution and I just follow what it said and everything went away I'm like okay well why are you here then she said well I thought maybe you could tell me something new I don't know and it was like and then I realized you know a lot of this not all of it but a lot of this can be done at home by people learning how to take care of their brains and that's the work you've done that's your contribution in the world it's really it's really amazing I think you should win the Nobel Prize for this but anyway that's just me but I think it's it's such a powerful model shift at brain shift a frame shift a paradigm shift for what we need to do in this era of expanding mental illness our kids brains are being destroyed you know there's suicide on the rise Alzheimer's on the rise and if we just thought about how to take care of our brains it would all change I worked with BJ Fogg do you know BJ yeah I'm your change guy head Stanford on behavior change we worked with him for six months and created 50 tiny habits for brain health but my favorite one is takes three seconds before you go to make a decision ask yourself is this good for my brain or bad for it and if you can answer that with information and love because doing the right thing is never because you should do it it's because you love yourself it's you love your life you love your family you love your mission if you can answer that question with information and love you're really gonna be on the road to brain health and the end of mental illness that's so great Daniel is there anything else you want to share with us where can people find help if they're struggling with brain illnesses so if they go to Amen Clinics comm that they can learn all about the eight clinics we have around the country Tana and I have a podcast you've been on it thank you called the brain warriors way Podcast brain Warriors way podcast calm we've done 500 of them now yeah we would and they can get the end of mental illness when it comes out in March fantastic I'm so excited for your new book I think it's going to change whether you think about mental illness and we need it because we have a crisis everybody's talking about it the solutions that are out there may be incremental yours is a quantum jump in how we have to think about mental so thank you for your work Daniel thank you for being a guest on the doctors pharmacy and if you love this podcast please share with your friends and family on social media subscribe wherever you get your podcast leave a comment we'd love to hear from you and we'll see you next time on the doctors pharmacy thank you [Music] [Applause] hi everyone it's dr. Mark Hyman so two quick things number one thanks so much for listening to this week's podcast it really means a lot to me if you love the podcast I did really appreciate you sharing with your friends and family second I want to tell you about a brand new newsletter I started called marks picks every week I'm gonna send out a list of a few things that I've been using take my own health the next level this could be books podcasts research that I found supplement recommendations recipes or even gadgets I use a few of those and if you'd like to get access to this free weekly list all you have to do is visit dr. Hyman com forward slash picks that's dr. Hyman com4 slash picks I'll only email you once a week I promise and I'll never send you anything else besides my own recommendations so just go to dr. Hyman com4 slash picks that's P I see KS to sign up free today

Channel: Mark Hyman, MD

Views: 98,025

Rating: 4.9093041 out of 5

Keywords: dr. daniel amen, brain injury, mental illness, brain health, depression, anxiety, tbi, traumatic

Id: 2Ob5uJ9P6Ww

Length: 59min 46sec (3586 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 06 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/PostPsychiatry]

The stigma comes from how people are labelled, eg from calling social problems mind/brain "illnesses" as if people have something permanently wrong with them.

Like they're insane, dangerous, etc.

Neurosciencenews.com

• "Almost all diagnoses mask the role of trauma and adverse events, & diagnoses tell us little about the individual patient and what treatment they need.

  The authors conclude that diagnostic labeling represents ‘a disingenuous categorical system’.

Lead researcher Dr. Kate Allsopp:

• “Although diagnostic labels create the illusion of an explanation they are scientifically meaningless and can create stigma and prejudice. I hope these findings will encourage mental health professionals to think beyond diagnoses and consider other explanations of mental distress, such as trauma and other adverse life experiences."

-- Study finds psychiatric diagnosis to be ‘scientifically meaningless’ @ https://neurosciencenews.com/meaningless-psychiatric-diagnosis-14434/