These RISK FACTORS Are Destroying Your BRAIN! | Dr. Daniel Amen & Lewis Howes

it's just a practice of being thoughtful about what i put in my mouth what i put on my body and people go isn't that hard and i'm like being sick it's hard that's hard this is easy i think you gotta have a dream the school of greatness please welcome what is more powerful the brain the heart or the mind and which one is controlling our body the most no question it's your brain really your brain creates your mind and when the brain works right you work right but when your brain is troubled for whatever reason head injuries from playing football early alzheimer's disease you live in a mold-filled home you have covid19 which we know affects brain function or lyme disease it damages your brain and then you're more vulnerable to anxiety depression temper problems um and people don't get that is there's all this talk about get your mind right but if think of it like hardware physical functioning of your brain software your mind network connections your relationships if the hardware is not right the software won't run and the network connections will be faulty and so at amen clinics we have nine clinics around the country where we see thousands of patients every month that it's like get your brain right and then we want to program it your mind's really important and we want to help you work on your relationships but if your brain's not right nothing else is going to be as good as it can be so if someone is doing exercises or practices in their relationships dealing with anger management stress anxiety depression they're working on the software and not the hardware what will happen this is not as effective i mean it can be very helpful right um but just like the computer analysis and i didn't know this it was 1991 when i ordered my first spec scan spec is the study we do at eamon clinics i'm already a double board certified psychiatrist i'd been a psychiatrist for about a decade and i always felt like i was throwing darts in the dark at my patients that there's a great book called the structure of scientific revolution because if what i'm doing is right and i believe it is it it's really creating a revolution in brain health mental health care and the first step of the revolution thomas kuhn wrote about in 1962 is you notice a flaw in the system and i was taught was really well trained i trained to be a psychiatrist at the walter reed army medical center in washington dc and if you have six of these nine symptoms you get diagnosed with depression and then i give you a medication right that's what you did prozac a while but some of the people i'd put on prozac got better and some of them became suicidal some of them became aggressive some of them became obsessive and anxious and i'm like this isn't working like it should right and small percentage maybe it helps but not for everyone well maybe even a good percentage it helps but a good percentage it hurts which would horrify me because i would always feel off balance i didn't know this would work that would work plus i didn't care about my own brain at all because i hadn't seen it and in 1991 when i started ordering scans i scanned my mom she had a beautiful healthy brain i scanned me and it wasn't healthy but i played football in high school i had meningitis when i was a young soldier and and i had bad habits i wasn't sleeping i was eating fast food and when i scanned myself i developed a concept i wanted my mother's brain and so i called that brain envy freud was wrong penis envy's not the cause of anybody's problem you gotta learn to love and care for your brain and so the next 30 years i've been figuring out how can i have a better brain because when i have a better brain i have a better life and what i realized is depression is not one thing that's why prozac didn't work for everyone for some people they have really low blood flow and activity in the brain for some people it's really high and for some people they had head injuries in fact if you go hey daniel single most important thing you've learned from 183 000 scans that's how many we've done is that mild traumatic brain injury is a major cause of psychiatric illness and nobody knows about it because psychiatrists by and large never look at the brain what does psychiatric illness mean is the same thing as mental health disorder mental health disease what does that mean right i mean it's the same thing it's people who struggle with anxiety depression ocd ptsd schizophrenia attention deficit disorder addictions but so you're saying if we played football we're screwed forever you are vulnerable okay if since we played football and you're bigger and probably way better than me so you got your head hit more yes i was on the best position in the field which is i was a backup quarterback best position and um but you're clearly more vulnerable so in 2007 anthony davis came to see me he's the hall of fame running back from usc he's called the notre dame killer because in 1972 he scored six touchdowns against the university of notre dame and his he was at the time confused he had memory deficits he had temper problems he's getting into fights he had no business and one day he's driving on the 405 and he had no idea where he was going and he pulled over called a friend of him at the usc school of medicine he says you should go see dr raymond and when i saw him his brain at 54 look like it was 90 and bad for 90. and anthony just did everything i asked him to do and five months later his brain is better he's excited he's like doc we have to talk about this and this is at a time the nfl is really an active denial that they have a problem and so we did a study he helped me with the los angeles chapter of the nfl players association they co-sponsored my first study high levels of damage in players and what we found they had four times the level of depression and significantly higher incidences of dementia but 80 of them got better when i put them on a brain health program so it's wow now is do you think i know from transitioning out of sports as you know professional football player transitioning where my identity was tied to that thing for so long that when i left and that i had this identity identity crisis for a few years of like uh living in the past and will my life ever be the same type of mentality can the depression or anxiety come from the identity crisis as well or is it more tied to the traumas you hit because when i was in the game i felt like i had a purpose a mission i didn't feel as stressed and overwhelmed but as when i left the game when that came up is it a combination or is it it's always a combination yeah always i always think of people in four big circles what's the physical functioning of your brain and body so it's a biological circle which is psychological circle which is your development that really matters and your ability to manage your mind in my new book your brain is always listening i talk about the ants and the dragons yes the ants the automatic negative thoughts it'd steal your happiness and the dragons were big psychological issues from the past like the abandoned invisible and insignificant dragon that's my dragon uh that are always sort of breathing fire on your emotional brain so biological psychological social it's like well how's your money how's your relationships i mean we're just coming out hopefully of a pandemic that has spawned another mental health pandemic right so biological psychological social and spiritual which most psychiatrists would never touch but 80 percent of the population believes in god and has deep rooted spiritual beliefs and it's ultimately well why are you on the planet and you had lost your sense of meaning and purpose where you had one life and then well all of a sudden you don't have that anymore and i'm a huge fan of ariana grande's song thank you next because those three words are mental health it's gratitude for what's happened in the past looking forward gratitude for your career and then like all right what's next and if you had known me at the end of your career you'd like go good we're not going to hit our head anymore we're going to take care of our brain so we can do something right fine which obviously you've done yeah it's been great we have to acknowledge the the season of our life and then move on to the next season what would you say are the the three worst things we can do for our brain if the brain health is the thing the foundation for our mindset our heart health our the way we view the world what are the three worst things we can do whether it be taking a substance thinking a thought staying in a toxic relationship being around mold all day like what are the you know trauma to the head well i mean the worst thing you can do is not care about it uh does not have brain envy that's the worst thing how bright ever you can do and i have a little tiny habit i love i worked with bj fogg from the persuasive tech lab at stanford and we worked with him for six months on how people change and we created 50 tiny habits but my favorite tiny habit is before you go to do something today ask yourself takes three seconds is this good for my brain or bad for it and if you can ask yours you can answer that question with information and love love of yourself love of your mission um you are going to be better yeah because when your brain is better you're better so that's number one if you don't care number two is you engage in behaviors that hurt your brain whether it's head trauma or thinking of marijuana is going green it's not it damages the brain alcohol is not a health food it's living in a mold-filled environment you may know dave asprey dave and i are buddies he got scammed about 15 years ago and it was like moth eaten it was terrible but he was living in a mold-filled home and he actually did a documentary called moldy that i'm in on the impact of an environmental toxin on your brain and and i would say the third thing so brain envy engage in behaviors that hurt your brain the third thing would be you just never do anything to help your brain such as we talked about this before we started table tennis which is just a great brain game yes because you got to get your eyes your hands and feet all to work together while you think about this spin on the balls so i think of it like aerobic chest and people never think about their cerebellum it's the rodney dangerfield part of the brain now i'm horrified because many young people don't know who rodney is he was a comedian who used to say i get no respect and then he'd talk about why he got no respect well in the back bottom part of your brain there's cerebellum actually means little brain it's 10 of the brain's volume but it has half 50 of the brain's neurons and it's involved in coordination which is why table tennis is great for your cerebellum but also thought coordination how quickly you can integrate new information and we know people have add have sleepy cerebellums people who have autism awfully have damage cerebellums and so we so athletics are so important right these coordination exercises like martial arts is amazing as long as you don't hit your hat house as long as you don't hit your head because the brain is soft about the consistency of soft butter tofu custard somewhere between egg whites and jello and your skull is really hard and has sharp bony ridges this is why the thousands of blows you took to your head are just bad helmets don't protect brain damage protect you from brain damage they protect you from skull fractures but inside your brain your brain is doing this repeatedly and that's not a good thing you can't like take your laptop and just drop it repeatedly and expect it to do what it needs to do oh my gosh i just keep thinking of the decades of brain hitting over and over but i think you know what i love about your your message and your research is that it doesn't matter if you've been through that in the past as long as you're aware of it and you start to practice habits and routines and really set your environment up your relationships these four circles up for success you can really heal a lot of the past trauma in the brain is that right absolutely the exciting thing how much from these scans you've done where people have had horrible looking scans i mean whether it be brain trauma or sexual trauma or whatever it is that they were stuck in some type of brain trauma and they went on a program of better lifestyle better habits spiritual growth personal development were you able to see a significant transformation within a year five years ten years how long does this take well i have anthony davis's scans 10 years apart and dramatically better or one of my favorite nfl players his name is duval love he was an offensive guard for the los angeles rams for 12 years and when i saw him he's obese he's depressed he's been to jail um he's a mass and he just did what i asked him to do and that's why i love my nfl players because they're coachable they're used to being goats don't want the new tell me what to do and he lost 110 pounds and he's actually ended up getting his master's degree i was like oh my god and you know he's trim he's happy he's fit and his brain is radically better now it depends right on how much you played and how many hits and how damaged it is and it also depends on the brain you brought into football because some people brought really healthy brains into football they had parents who cared they had reasonable nutrition and so on and some people brought in terrible brains yes but 80 of our people get better especially if they do what we ask them is this better in terms of like okay you're 80 back to a super healthy perfect brain is it like wow this thing's unbelievable off the charts healthy like everyone can envy your brain even if you went through trauma or is it like it looks really good it depends on what you start with yeah um one of my other players anthony trucks who i just love um his brain was suffering when i first saw him really and yeah from oregon uh morgan football player played you got to fell for a few years i know yeah yeah i love him good guy and he just did what i asked a positive guy to do yeah and a year later his brain's healthy really yeah so it wasn't healthy when it came in a year later it's healthy right and that's the cool thing about the brain every day your brain and there's an area called the hippocampus and so i don't know if this is too much nerd neuroscience but cerebellum is really important they have the campus is really important because it's involved with mood and memory and it's greek for seahorse because it's shaped like a sea horse and every day the hippocampus makes 700 new baby stem cells or new baby seahorses every day every day in the brain in the brain you're making new cells every day so neuroscientists when i was taking neuroscience in medical school they told us you know if you hurt your brain sort of you're screwed and you're not getting it back well that was a lie that the brain continues to make new neurons throughout life and every day you're growing those babies if you put them in a healthy environment or you're murdering them and a funny story came out last year i've been miley cyrus's doctor for about a decade and i adore her and she was smoking a lot of pot as everybody knows and but she's also an animal lover so when i told her the pot was suffocating the baby seahorses she's like dr raven that's so unfair no i love animals you can't say that take that back wow and now she's better to her brain just the information no better do better i'm going to ask you some controversial questions about brain health how much does is it a third of americans are obese or is it two-thirds no two-thirds of americans 72 of americans are overweight or overweight 42 of us are obese obese i published three studies in fact i did an nfl study one of them was an nfl study i took players at the same position who were at a healthy weight versus those that were overweight the overweight had sleepy frontal lobes they had decreased activity in the frontal lobe i just published a study on 35 000 people it's one of the largest imaging studies ever done and there is virtually a linear correlation between as your weight goes up the function of your brain goes down really oh morbidly obese was worse than obese which was worse than overweight which was worse than healthy weight so healthy weight versus so healthy weight would be the best activity and then overweight and then obese and then morbidly what consists is overweight versus obese is this uh body fat percentage well it's something called bmi or body mass index which in nfl players actually doesn't correlate very well for them it's their waist to height ratio so their your waist should be half your height or less so if you're six feet tall that's 72 inches your weight real your waist and you got to measure you can't go by your pant size because the clothing industry knows that we're unhappy and so you guys got to put a tape measure right around your belly button and so if you're six feet your way should be 36 inches or less and that's good if it's not then it's good to work on right you can just see it as a problem to solve but 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 i have a mnemonic for that i read about in the books called bright minds well if you're overweight that automatically means you have five of the risk factors really because being overweight decreases blood flow that's what i my study showed it increases inflammation it stores toxins fat stores toxins like if you smoke pie it actually stays in your body for 30 days wow um it changes your hormones and this is like shocking for me in my nfl work that these big strapping virile men are almost all low in testosterone because when you have sub-concussive blows it damages the pituitary gland which turns off the production oh my gosh of testosterone and so belly fat especially takes healthy testosterone and turns it into unhealthy cancer-promoting forms of estrogen and so you know you have the diabetes risk factor blood flow inflammation toxins and hormones and so that's all from being overweight that's all from being overweight it's just a a thing we should be working on and what i often say is the real weapons of mass destruction isis has nothing on our food industry they're highly processed pesticide sprayed high glycemic low fiber food like substances stored in plastic containers this is what's really killing the health of america okay so obesity is a what i'm hearing you say obesity is a big factor to mental health uh stresses and brain stresses and alzheimer's disease and alzheimer's yeah obviously i mean it all sort of goes together from depression to um problems in school to memory problems later in life what's your thought i mean i'm all for people loving themselves where they're at where they're at in their life and loving their bodies for where they're at and not shaming themselves and the self-love movement of accepting yourself for where you are but that's only going to hurt our brains if we're not actually saying okay i accept and love myself where i'm at and the decisions i've made to be here but i've got to start working on these things otherwise there's going to be some challenges emotionally mentally anxiety depression if i don't work on it right my health then don't worry be happy people die the earliest from accidents and preventable illnesses and i want people to love themselves but doing the right thing is an act of love like if you're really unhealthy walking is an act of love and so so it sort of catches me in this funny place uh i remember i was on a plane once and um and i'd figure out this connection between as your weight goes up the size and function of your brain goes down and i was sitting next to someone who was very overweight we were on a tiny plane going to des moines iowa for public television and in my head i'm like oh you want to talk to her about that and then i i talk to myself all the time it's like no you don't want to say anything don't need to upset our day and um but then i went to pittsburgh and i went to gnc you know the supplement company and um one of my core values is being authentic as i live the message of my life and the message of gnc is health yes and their number three guy their marketing director took me to dinner was morbidly obese really and and that thought in my head is you should talk to him about this and and he made the comment he opened the conversation he's like you know i don't know why i'm overweight but my numbers are okay and i'm like what numbers and i'm like tom you don't want to be a dinosaur because i had figured out big body little brain you're gonna become extinct and we had this great conversation because my favorite verse in the new testament is john 8 32 know the truth and the truth will set you free i'm like do you not want to be like the number two guy or the number one guy you're not going to do that if your brain's not healthy and that conversation the next year he lost 80 pounds wow most people don't know that this is a serious health mental health brain health risk and i just want to tell people the truth and i want them to get healthy and people go but i don't like any one of my nfl players but i don't like any of the foods that are healthy for me and i'm like none not one and we did this great exercise and it turned out he liked like 70 of the foods everywhere you only want to love food that loves you back it's a relationship right i don't know if you've ever been in a bad relationship but i've been in a bad relationship 20-year marriage with someone who didn't like me very much i'm never going to do that again i'm just not it's a boundary for me and i'm damn sure not gonna be in a relationship with bad relationship with food i want to be in a good relationship i mean i love food i just wanted to love me back what are the five foods that we should have to help our brain the most salmon wild salmon blueberries uh walnuts uh olive or avocado oil um yeah healthy protein chocolate uh i make this great brain healthy hot chocolate every night for my family i just look at the six of them that live at home i'm like okay who's up for it tonight so costco of all places organic vanilla unsweetened almond milk rock cow it's a superfood so organic raw cacao and a little bit of sweet leaf is a company that makes flavored stevia they make chocolate flavored stevia and put it in the blender heat it up it's phenomenal good for me i love it and it loves me back it loves you back so salmon salmon blueberries walnuts avocado or avocado oil raw chocolate are some of the top favorite foods for the brain for the brain why are these foods is it high in uh antioxidants is it's proteins that they have so blueberry it's the phytonutrients they've actually done studies showing cognitive enhancement with blueberry juice uh salmon it's the omega-3 fatty acids and the complete protein avocados it's the healthy fat uh especially omega-3 fatty acids same with walnuts your brain is fat low-fat diets are bad really for your brain people who go on low-fat diets actually have an increased incidence of depression really yeah so now you don't want bad fats fried fats particularly you want healthy fats avocados nuts and seeds green leafy vegetables olive oils olive oil avocado oil damian nut oil yeah so how much how much food should the brain have is it you know it's your buddy our buddy uh dave asprey talks about fasting a lot a lot of people are in this fasting craze if we're not giving the brain food or nutrients for a day three days five days does that help the brain does it reset the brain does it hurt the brain so intermittent fasting where you go 12 to 16 hours from dinner to breakfast or lunch is good they've actually found your there's a term called autophagy where your brain begins to clean up some of the trash so it works in the brain too not just in the it works on the brain as well now i grew up roman catholic and long suffering was one of the gifts and i never got that one i'm not a fan of long suffering yes i'm not doing a marathon it's like way too much stress for my brain and i'm not fasting for three days but i can go 12 hours and i'm like that's not a big deal and it helps people lose weight it helps them be healthy and i come from a family of fat people my dad used to hate when i would say that but i have a brother 150 pounds overweight despite me loving him nudging him and you just have to be thoughtful know your vulnerability in bright minds that g is genetics so know what you're genetically vulnerable to and you know i have to work on it right right how you mention you don't do marathons uh if you're not traumatizing the brain through contact sports but you're an endurance junkie you love to run marathons you run them every year you do triathlons you do ultra marathons you're doing mountain climbing are these activities good for the brain to put some extreme stress on it even if it's not physical contact to the brain or does it long term hurt the brain the scans i have of extreme athletes are not good really yeah i think it's too much stress for the brain i love hip training high intensity training that's been shown to increase mitochondria and cells uh i'm not a fan of putting your body under a lot of stress it's it's just not good for it some stress is is good we call it use stress a little bit so your fibers grow that's why weight training is important the stronger you are as you age less likely or to have alzheimer's disease really but you want to love your brain you want to make sure you're sleeping for your brain that's the ass in bright minds so someone's like you know what okay i hear what you're saying but i really love to do a marathon or two a year and a few times in my life i want to do you know want to climb everest or something like that i want to do something to challenge myself and i go awesome is that going to hurt the brain it's not going to if you're doing everything else right so one of my nfl players just signed an 80 million dollar deal wow so he's going to play yeah that's how he's going to play and but if you're going to do something that is potentially damaging to the brain make sure you're doing everything else right so for example being a firefighter is a brain damaging profession we need to own that just like we need to own playing football is a brain damaging profession it's like own it everybody knows it now when i started my work in 2007 very few people know it now everybody knows it but they don't know that being a firefighter because they're our heroes those are the people we need when we need them and we need them healthy but because of the toxins they breathe because of the emotional trauma they see day in and day out because of the head traumas they experience they have a higher incidence of depression a higher incidence of suicide and a higher incidence of early death we should not be okay with this but it doesn't mean we're not going to have firefighters what it means is we should put their brain in a rehabilitative environment all the time we should be teaching them about brain health like with nfl players currently we should be teaching them look if you're going to do this own it it's a brain damaging sport so let's just do everything else right what are the other things right that you talk about are there are a few main keys is it nutrition is it sleep well if we think about bright minds it's such a good model so blood flow b is blood flow so exercise and foods like beets that increase blood flow or supplements like gingko that increase blood flow the r is retirement and aging new learning is absolutely critical um you know your work and studying greatness you're always learning something new which is great so for the brain retirement plus aging is obviously retirement and aging so continuing to learn in those states and always putting yourself in an anti-aging environment so the food you eat the exercise new learning being passionate never retiring right i mean maybe you go and do something else you like better because you have enough money but never retirement because when you start when you when you start not doing things your brain actually starts to disconnect itself so when we say paper someone retires at 60 70 75 and they say you know i'm just gonna sit on the beach for the next however long enjoy my family time enjoy the money i've had and relax what happens to those people if they don't have a purposeful mission in their life beyond relaxation what happens or what their brain disconnects itself really they have a higher incidence of dementia um and my dad worked until he died when he was almost 91 and he's like when my friends retire they die really and now if you retire because you really didn't love what you were doing anyways and you go off and do something you love maybe not golf because you're around all those toxins on the grain maybe not golf but when if you're doing things you love and you're always learning well that's awesome that's a really good thing if you retire from your job don't retire from your life don't retire from your life stay connected in some meaningful pursuit absolutely critical to keeping young and then the eye is inflammation this is the big bad actor uh because inflammation in your body which comes from eating processed foods one of the surprising things comes from gum disease if you're not a flosser really you need to floss i'm a flossing fool i did twice a day i wasn't that way until i started reading the studies that people who have gum disease have a higher incidence of heart disease but also a higher incidence of brain disease they actually found gum bacteria in higher in the brains of people with alzheimer's disease wow and so omega-3 fatty acids decrease inflammation fruits and vegetables decrease inflammation flossing and probiotics getting your gut healthy there's this huge connection between the brain and the gut because inflammation often comes from having an unhealthy gut either from infections or the lousy food that you're eating and the g is genetics you need to know your vulnerability but genes aren't a death sentence what they should be is a wake-up call to know what you're vulnerable to my i have heart disease and obesity in my family i don't have heart disease and i'm not obese why because i'm always on a prevention program you just want to be serious as soon as you know what your risks right okay ages head trauma which we talked about brain and soft skull is hard there are three million new head injuries every year in the united states this is a big deal right three million new head injuries every year is that from car accidents or sports falls everything everything wow you know being hit domestic violence whatever it might be anything gunshot whatever whatever 3 million which means most people live over the last 30 years that's 90 million people in the united states who struggle with the effects of traumatic brain injury very high in prison populations very high in people who struggle with psychiatric and then t is toxins and so you go what can i do to support my brain well one avoid them alcohol is not a health food um my biggest blog last year was titled i told you so and when i dated my wife tana yeah i think you met my wife she's awesome and when we were dating she said her wife my car not the 20 years not the 20 year that she said i'll never tell you i told you so she lied she's a flat-out lied to me it's like her favorite thing to say but i've been telling people ever since i started imaging alcohol is not a health food and our first clinic was right next to the napa valley so it was not a popular thing to say and but it's just what i saw and then there's a study from johns hopkins that say people who drink every day have smaller brains wow last year the american cancer society came out and said any alcohol is associated with an increased risk in cancer seven different cancers oh any alcohol any alcohol yeah that and so my every wine drinker is saying no you're wrong no i'm not listening to this right now what about a glass once or twice a week what about the nutrients from them if you're gonna do something that's bad for your brain you should be doing other things that are good for your brain right it doesn't mean you can never have a drink but just know it's not a healthy healthy full thing to do so you want to do the other things yeah like when i eat a bowl of ice cream and pizza i know it's not helping my brain right and if you do it once a month it's like not the biggest deal in the world but then because here we're talking about tea for toxins you want to support the four organs of detoxification so your kidneys drink more water your gut eat more fiber in my shake every morning i put fiber in it in your for your liver kill the alcohol and eat detoxifying vegetables they're called brassicas brussels sprouts cauliflower broccoli kale and take infrared saunas people who take the most saunas have the lowest incidence couple of alzheimer's disease really because it detoxifies you and it's also there's actually a study in the journal of the american medical association people with major depression took one infrared sauna their mood was better well how cool is that i mean that's like simple there's no side effects mostly to taking a 25-minute sauna so is it infrared or any type of sauna well it's probably any type of sauna but the study was uninformed right gotcha but anything that's releasing the toxins any heat exposure and not swashed sweating with exercise or saunas is detoxifying for you yeah and this isn't hard right like not one thing i've said right so far it's hard the m in bright minds is mental health this is where you learn to kill the ants and tame the dragons so ant stands for automatic negative thoughts the thoughts that come into your mind automatically and ruin your day and the exercise is super simple whenever you feel sad or mad or nervous or out of control write down what you're thinking and then just ask yourself if it's true you don't have to believe every stupid thing you think i didn't learn that until i was 28 years old i'm like i'm in class i'm a psychiatric resident at walter reed in washington dc and i'm like no shh i don't have to believe the noise in my head it's like thoughts come from your genes right they're actually written into your genes you're a failure maybe because your grandfather had to file for bankruptcy they come from your parents talking to you they come from your siblings i'm one of seven they come from the noise they come from your coaches and they lie just because you have a thought has nothing to do with whether or not it's true absolutely and i was working with the therapist recently that said just because someone tells you uh something about yourself doesn't mean and they're trying to give you this thing doesn't mean you need to receive that gift it's not a gift you need to receive they're offering you a gift that's a bad gift doesn't mean you need to take it you can just say okay i don't need that gift right now i don't need to let that thought sink in and believe this and i think i'll speak for myself growing up anytime i heard someone say you suck you're dumb you're an idiot you're not enough you'll never amount to whatever i learn to believe those things and i think a lot of us probably learn to believe whatever we hear from anyone whether it was a a side comment or a direct comment and how have you learned over the years to really defend against those ants like besides someone might say okay i tried writing it down that this is not true and analyzing this but what's in what how can we really show up for ourselves so our thoughts don't consume us in a negative way so you know that if you're overweight on monday and you have a salad you are not going to be trim on friday right you need to develop practices yes right that getting well physically is a discipline that occurs over and over over time right to be mentally well you need to develop practices that you do like eating well over and over and over so for example i start every day with today is going to be a great day as soon as my feet hit the floor in the morning and today was easier because i spent last night in santa monica and walked on the beach this morning and i get to hang out with you today is going to be a great day that way my unconscious mind finds why it's going to be a great day and then your brain is always listening i talk about taming the hopeless and helpless dragon the dragon from the past that feeds depression and it's something i do called positivity bias training uh i want to get my brain looking for what's right because it automatically goes for what's wrong and so i start every day with today is going to be a great day and then if i have a hard time if i feel sad or mad or nervous or out of control i write down what i i'm thinking and then i just go is it true and there's a whole bigger method in the book um and often i'll go to what's the opposite of that thought no one loves me or no one respects me or you're a failure and so quickly my brain if i go my wife never listens to me i've had that thought um i'll go well i never listened to my wife and i'd be like oh that can be true or she does listen to me and then i find the times it's just i don't believe what goes on in my head and then when i go to bed at night and this is so powerful i say a prayer and then i go what went well today and i put myself to sleep by reviewing the positive things that happened that day and i find the little micro moments whether it's that sip of hot chocolate that i made that i'm proud of myself for or some cool text or interaction and it sets my dreams up to be more positive yeah and a really fun thing i've been playing with recently is um i had stephen hayes on my podcast the brainwarrior's way and he had a technique of give your mind a name and it's based on a concept of psychological distancing and as he was talking about that he gave his mind the name george i'm like oh well i knew exactly what i'd give my mind the name herme hermie was my female i didn't know she was a female when i named her raccoon i had a pet raccoon when i was 16 years old and she was a troublemaker she was beautiful and smart and she tp'ed my mom's bathroom she ate my sister's fish out of her aquarium she used to poop in my shoes and she caused a lot of trouble just like my mind and so when i hear the like the negative chatter i used to take herming and put her on her back and tickle her and she used to love that he's had this great relationship so when my mind is acting up i'm like seriously do i need to tickle you right now just so i separate and i'm like is this helpful because you've had good coaches and you've had bad coaches right and i want me to be a good coach for me too many people their internal life is like a courtroom and they've got a spectacular prosecutor and a cruel judge and a jury that's awful wow and they have a weak defense attorney yeah and i'm like i got johnny cochran in my head right you know i want to protect my self um but people don't get any training isn't that interesting it's like in their minds yeah we are con i feel like in general we're conditioned to find the negative the bad to keep us safe or protect ourselves in some way but we've never trained ourselves to be a great coach or a great cheerleader to ourselves he just brought that up and made me think about it's like what if we did have that training as a kid on how to coach ourselves through pain discomfort and not only rely on the addictive coping mechanisms that we tend to lean towards well i don't know how to touch myself let me drink i don't have a coach let me take this drug or pornography or whatever the addiction choice is to cope for someone how do we learn to be a good positive coach in a time of complete chaos stress overwhelm dysfunction when we can't even get out of that we can't get out of that in our heads we can't even hear that coach in our mind it's a practice yeah it's all about and that's why i write you know whether your brain is always listening or feel better fast and make it last you know people do things to feel better fast we saw that during the pandemic but they're choosing things that actually make them worse you want to do things that help you feel good now and later yes versus now but not later now immediate all the time yeah so diaphragmatic breathing i'm just a huge fan or meditation i published three studies on a kundalini yoga form of meditation called kirtan kriya it's all of 12 minutes but it activates your frontal lobes it helps you with forethought and judgment and impulse control and it's fun it's beautiful which is birth life death reborn birth life death reborn it's just beautiful and um you know people can google you know their youtube videos on it but it works to balance your brain and that helps you feel good now and later versus now but not later what is the biggest challenge you face you've been doing this work for what 30 years 30 years the biggest 183 thousand scans you're speaking about this all the time you're writing incredible books about this all the time you've got talk shows on this on public television you've got you're the leading expert what's the biggest challenge in your life right now knowing all this information after 30 years what do you still struggle with i hate the fact that all psychiatrists don't do this i hate the fact that i'm still an outlier in my profession and part of me loves that because i get to do something very cool and very special but the fact that the masses of psychiatrists still are making diagnoses based on symptom clusters with no biological data exactly like they did in 1840 when lincoln was depressed lincoln was suicidal went to his doctor how did his doctor diagnose him he talked to him he looked at him and then he treated him that's exactly what's happening in 2021 it's insane and every day it irritates me that you know they'll go oh there's no science behind what dr amon does even though i've published 80 studies some of the largest studies in the world there's 14 000 scientific references on brain spect if you go to the national library of medicine but that's the stuff it just really frustrates me because most people aren't getting the help they need this psychiatric problems are not mental illnesses their brain illnesses wow and that one idea changes everything it decreases stigma it increases compliance because everybody wants a better brain nobody wants to be called mental calling someone mental shames them yes um people really don't wanna and yes i know lady gaga came out and justin bieber came out and it's like that's awesome but it's not mental illness it's brain health exercise it's been found to be a treatment for depression yes as effective as zoloft gratitude is also yeah why not yeah and let's work on getting the physical functioning of our brain right and optimizing our mind and that's how we're going to end mental illness so i have one of my other books called the end of mental illness and i love that title but i got a lot of great titles it's like what do you mean i'm like we need to stop calling these things mental illnesses and use these bright mind strategies because when your brain is better for example the second eye in bright minds is immunity and infections there's there's a study that i put in the end of mental illness of a graph of the a map of the united states of the highest incidence of schizophrenia it's the northwest the north midwest and the west coast and right below it is a graph of the highest incidence of lyme disease they're virtually identical wow could schizophrenia in some cases be an infection that's attacking the brain and i think the answer is yes not in all cases but it's something we should be screening for and i haven't people with lyme's disease have a higher risk of schizophrenia they do and they have a higher incidence of virtually all mental health challenges and i have so many great stories one of them i talk about in the book adriana 16 beautiful straight a student kind goes to yosemite on vacation with her family and when they get to their cabin they're surrounded by six deer and they think it's a magical moment but lyme is often transmitted by deer ticks and 10 days later she's hallucinating and she's violent and they put her in a psychiatric hospital she's diagnosed by a psychiatrist trained at stanford with schizophrenia told the mother adriana needs to be on this medication for the rest of her life and her mother's like no i'm not okay with this and they had spent like a hundred thousand dollars and ended up in my clinic uh spending a lot less than that and when we saw her brain we went her brain's infected and it shows the infections it shows the tendency toward infection and it turned out when we tested for lyme she had it and on an antibiotic within a year she was herself again and she went on she graduated from pepperdine and then she got a degree in hr from the university of london and she's normal and i remember because she's all one of my other doctors but when i got to meet her i mean both she and i just cried because she's the reason i do what i do that's beautiful but infectious disease including covid19 i have about 50 covid scans covet is not good for your brain and about 20 of people with covid will get a new onset diagnosis of anxiety depression yeah it is not a good thing you know a lot of people go oh it's like the flu no it's not like the flu um it can impact your brain and we knew it early on because you know you lost your sense of taste and smell well those are central nervous system struggles and uh yeah it's pretty interesting has there been any scans from people who've gotten vaccines on the effects of vaccines it's a great question um i've scanned lots of people with vaccines i haven't seen a pattern with it now some people will be hurt with vaccines right i mean any time there's any medicine there's a risk but i knew this was serious when i lost my dad to covet 19. wow i'm sorry to hear that and i have a clinic in manhattan you know which is the epicenter early on in the pandemic my 28 year old employee ended up on a ventilator for 10 weeks 28 year old 28 year old 10 weeks 10 weeks and is just not the same so have they recovered or not the same really yeah because there's this whole thing people are talking about long covet and uh we've treated a lot of people with long covet and long covenant it means you're not better in three days in fact you're not better in six months you still struggle with anxiety with brain fog with muscle aches and so on and it depends i've talked a lot since the pandemic started your best defense against covid19 is your immune system yes right and often it's your vitamin d level so the strategy for immunity and infections is optimize your vitamin d level either by getting more sun or taking a supplement like 80 percent of the population has sub-optimal levels of vitamin d and the study that just nailed it for me if you're level so normal is between 30 and 100 if your level is under 20 you have double the risk of cancer of those people who are over 40. so i keep my level around 80. you're in the sun all day you're having supplements yet right and it just it's just that one act it's like is this good for my brain or bad for it and if i do one thing i'm more likely to do two things if i do two things i'm more likely to do eleven things i'll stack it yeah so the n in bright minds is neuro hormones i alluded to that earlier you know testosterone is really important for brain health now you don't want too much because then your libido will go up and your empathy will go down which is a prescription for divorce losing half your net worth and visiting your children on the weekends so that's not a good thing but low testosterone goes with depression and goes with anxiety and goes with low energy so thyroid dhea testosterone estrogen progesterone and so on so get in your hormones tax d is diabetes so we talk about being overweight but also having high blood sugar high obesity diabetes what does that mean diet it's a combination of you're overweight and you have high blood sugar either one of those is a mental health brain health risk factor and 50 percent of that get this lois just shocking fifty percent five zero percent of the population is either diabetic 14 or pre-diabetic 36 that's a disaster and that comes from the simple carbs we're pouring and pounding in our body it's an insulin response so if we're diabetic or pre-diabetic what is that doing to our brains it's atrophying making your brain smaller and it's murdering the hippocampus you know those babies seahorses 100 700 yeah you said 700 today 700 a day were just they're being born and dying right away right as opposed to connecting and multiplying functionality neurons in the brain and helping your mood and helping your memory and what's interesting i'm 66 my youngest is 17 getting ready to go off to college and we produce the same number of stem cells every day hers are more likely to stay than an older person because the blood flow to my brain not my brain but the blood flow to most 66 year olds is not healthy and that's why aging is progressive and did you know this will horrify you 50 of people 85 will have dementia and i'm not okay with that 50 percent of people 85. so if i'm fortunate enough to lift 85 or beyond i have a one in two chance of having lost my mind that's why i'm serious about this i love my four children i never want to live with them i just don't i just don't and i never want to be a burden to them and i know later in my dad's life my siblings because i'm the medical person are like you know you need to take his keys from him i'm like do you know him do you know how that conversation's gonna go and i don't want my kids having to have that conversation with me which means i have to do the right thing so i can stay sharp for as long as i can and so i'm not overweight and i don't have high blood sugar because i get rid of the simple sugars in my life bread pasta potato rice sugar those just they don't have enough nutrients to pay off the sugar right right they quickly turn to sugar it's this thing called the glycemic index right do you have any cheat days or a little here and there or is it like i don't have a dessert or a couple bites yeah or you like i do we go to italy i mean not recently definitely and have a gelato but it's it's the daily consumption of these things which are really hurting but i have um things i love like i have almost every day a cup of frozen blueberries and i'll put a couple of stevia sweetened chocolate chips in it and it's less than 100 calories and i love it or the hot chocolate i love that yeah and you know i have a protein shake in the morning and i love it right i only eat food i love that loves me back yes going to take practice you know for a lot of people we've been conditioned to eat bad foods consistently for so long we've got to condition ourselves to start eating just a habit it's a habit right is it a good habit or a bad habit and your brain is always listening there's actually a whole section on bad habit dragons and the worst bad habit dragon is the oblivious bad habit dragon is you just never think about like the products you put on your body another strategy under t for toxins is download the app think dirty i have no financial interest in it but the app thinks not what you think it is it allows you to scan your personal products and it'll tell you on a scale of one to ten how quickly they're killing you so for example since i was fourteen i shaved with barbara salt yeah i like it soft it works a scale of one to ten ten being bad it's a nine come on and i'm like no i like myself way too much to put crap on my body and so i get something now called kiss my face that's a two and people go well it's more expensive and it's like it is except it lasts 50 times longer so it's way less expensive and i love it it's less toxic and it loves me back yeah and the same with the shampoo i was using um i forget but now i forget it's been so long and now i use something called a lafayette made in africa it's a two get it on amazon it's just a practice of being thoughtful about what i put in my mouth what i put on my body and people go isn't that hard wow and i'm like being sick it's hard that's hard this is easy god gave you a big brain for a reason none of this is hard it just you create new and different habits because ultimately the mother habit is this good for my brain or bad for it no by the way if it's good for your heart it's good for your brain i wrote a fun book you would really like called the brain in love i used to be a columnist for men's health magazine and i wrote a column for three years am i normal people write in about all that and so anyways i wrote brain in love and i've been saying forever whatever's good for your heart is good for your brain because it's about blood flow your brain is two percent of your body's weight but uses 20 of the blood flow and 30 percent of the calories you consume which is why foods so important but whatever's good for your heart is good for your brain when i was writing brain in love i went whatever's good for your heart is good for your brain is good for your genitals because it's all about blood flow did you know 40 of 40 year olds have erectile dysfunction which means 40 of 40 year olds have brain dysfunction because if you have blood flow problems anywhere it likely means they're everywhere and i'm 38 you're scaring me but just me it's just another reason to do the right things because your sex life is better and i'm just a huge fan and when people get on the brain health train when they become a brain warrior their erections get better and i love that because i want people connected with their partners how much does the brain affect our choices in intimate relationships our choices and who we choose to be partner with who we're connected to our love life how much of the brain helps or hurts our love well your brain does what it's trained to do so if you were trained by parents who bickered all the time you're more likely to pick someone you bigger with even though you hate it yeah the brain doesn't like change that's why therapy is important because it's like you can work on it over time and create new habits i've scanned thousands of couples i love scanning couples and i didn't used to i remember 1991 and um just started scanning and i see this couple they brought their two kids to see me because i'm also a child psychiatrist and little girl got better but the little boy wasn't getting better and as i saw him i'm like oh his parents hate each other he's under chronic stress so i saw the parents i'm like you guys should come see me because your bad relationship is causing your son's stress and they're like dr raymond we like you a lot we've seen farther marital therapists and they just make it worse and in my head don't ever have this thought i'm like well maybe you just didn't see anybody good man don't ever have that thought um and when i saw them on the first session i had two blue leather couches in my office they sat on the opposite end of each couch it's a bad sign in marital therapy and after about three months i know i'm not going to get them better i feel hopeless which is terrible for psychiatrists to feel but she had a phd in grudge holding i mean she was beating stuff she's bringing up stuff from 15 years ago over and over and and she's married to a guy called the sniper because he like was always late to appointments and whenever she'd like settle down and be more able to learn he would say something so evil so awful to her just to get her going again and i start having physical stress symptoms when i realize they're on my schedule and at nine months i'm in the shower getting ready to go to work and i know they're on my schedule my stomach starts to hurt and i'm like damn these people are in my shower today i'm going to tell them to get divorced because it's actually better for children to not be raised in chronic chronic conflict than for the parents to stick together fighting like they are but i agree but i grew up catholic i don't get divorced and it's like you don't get divorced it's a bad thing and because i had that thought the catholic voice came and visited me and she said because you're not a good enough therapist you're going to condemn their souls oh wow and i started looking at the water faucet going how much therapy is this going to take to get over and i got out of the shower and i called my friend from the imaging center i said will you give me two scans for the price of one because i was always negotiating for my patients and he's like why i said jack i have this couple and i don't know what to do for them he's like couple he said you know i've been married twice i can't figure it out maybe we could do a website and call it brainmatch.com oh that's amazing i like that and and when i presented that to the couple they're like well this isn't working let's try something else i mean they knew it wasn't working too and she had an ocd brain which totally fit in retrospect she just couldn't let anything go ocd brains their front part of their brain works way too hard and he had an 80d brain his front part was sleepy which is why i was laid and why it was conflict driven and i put him on riddle and her on prozac balance their brain told him i didn't want to see him for a month because i needed a break when they came back a month later they sat on the same couch wow she had her hand on his leg wow which is a good sign in marital therapy and it's 30 years ago i gave a lecture in san francisco a couple of years ago they came to it they're still married shut up they love each other they don't fight with each other she lets things go he pays attention and there's with a better brain wow comes a better marriage and when i met my for my second wife when i met her i knew i wasn't going to fall in love with her until i saw her brain and two weeks later because i really liked her so what does that mean you like her like oh but she needs to get scanned first before i say i'm yours yes absolutely and if you date any of my children for four months if i think you're going to stick around i scan you i'm not kidding i love this it's sort of like meet the parents right but worse uh so tana my wife is a neurosurgical icu nurse so she loves what we do and so and i suggested hey come to the clinic let me look at your brain she was all in okay and then what did you see in the brain and how did that match your so her brain was actually pretty healthy but i could see she had a head trauma in the past and i'm like do you ever have a head injury and she said no and i'm like because the scans don't lie and i'm like so maybe it was before she could remember everything yeah right but she's like no i'm like ever in a car accident she goes yeah when i was 25 my sister fell asleep at the wheel going 75 miles an hour we flipped three times landed on the roof and only because my seat was i was laying back that i survived she said but i didn't lose consciousness and what people don't realize consciousness is a brain stem phenomenon really deep in the brain you can totally damage the cortex of the brain and so so we work to make it better and she's been my best friend for 15 years wow so if someone has a damaged brain let's say you're hypothetically have the you know the ability to go and get it scanned you meet someone you're dating them you're like i really like this person i'm going to get them scanned and their brain is messed up let's just say just know you're in for a wild ride now if they're not willing to do anything about it why would you be in a relationship with it it's just your life's going to be hard but i love them and it's going to be stressful um but if they're like oh well let's make this better let's improve it that's awesome right i mean that's the attitude right if i scan my daughter's boyfriend and he goes no i'm not going to do any of this you need to move him off or you've got a decision you're either going to struggle in this relationship and you maybe have some good times but a lot of stress or you can move on right what's just a piece of information that's it that i think everybody should have and when you're young and loved you don't really think about wow how's his mom how's his dad what's the family history but you know being 66 and being a psychiatrist for 40 years all of those things matter and what's the so that's we mentioned diabetes which is being overweight um high blood sugar obesity stuff like that what's the s in bright minds sleep absolutely essential so we talked about autophagy early that's what happens when you sleep your brain cleans it washes itself actually the cleaning crew shows up we didn't even know that it's a system called the glymphatic system that is asleep basically when you're awake and turns on when you're sleeping sweeping out thoughts stressed fats integrating information but literally cleaning the synapses in your brain like the cleaning crew shows up and if you're not sleeping six and a half seven eight hours a night trash is building up in your brain making you more likely to be depressed to have brain fog overweight things right yeah and so being disciplined about a good time for sleep avoiding things that hurt sleep doing things that help sleep can be just so helpful yeah i had andrew huberman on a couple times neuroscientist out of uh stanford and i told him you know i'm trying to improve the quality of my brain and i'm taking spanish class three days a week got a problem private spanish teacher one because for 20 years i've always wanted to do it but it always gets too hard and i stop and then at the end of the year when i reflect on what i'm proud of i'm always not proud that i didn't stick with something i wanted to do so i keep telling myself i either need to let this dream go and kill the dream and move on with my life or i need to actually be consistent with it even if it takes me years of practice until i'm fluent or conversational and for the first three months it was like it hurt my brain so much just learning studying trying to remember these things it just was painful now i'm noticing the ideas are just as complex but my brain isn't under so much pain and stress or just confusion or whatever like i'm not enough or i can't get this or whatever it's saying it's more like okay i understand this is challenging but i know i can get this so let me be patient with myself and i feel like i'm picking up so much more because i may not get it in that moment but then the next day or three days later because i'm resting because i'm cleaning out the mess it's integrating like when i sleep i feel like it's integrating what i learned days ago and now i remember it but if i'm not sleeping well if i'm stressed out it's much harder to remember these things absolutely because it's one of the things that sleep does it integrates what we learn during the day and it compares it to our experience from the past and then decides what's to keep and what to let go but if you're not sleeping well like or you're drinking to put yourself to sleep it damages rem sleep which is the most restorative sleep and you're not going to get the benefit from it so sleep is absolutely essential sleep apnea people who snore loudly who stop breathing at night triples their risk of alzheimer's disease sleep apnea so how do we well i mean it's probably applying these things will help you get rid of sleep apnea and obesity is probably a big part of sleep apnea i'm assuming right for some people now some people are thin and have sleep apnea and they need to wear a cpap but working with the smartest people i know right this would be part of greatness that the smartest people i know work with the smartest people they know and so stop denying you have a problem or saying i won't do this or that so many guys go oh never wear a cpap it's like well you're murdering those baby seahorses every night when you're not breathing because so we talked about your brain uses 30 of the calories you consume 20 of the uh blood flow goes to your brain 20 of the oxygen any oxygen debt state damages your brain and i have like near drowning um brains they're just awful really any oxygen depth state and sleep apnea is an oxygen debt state really because you're stopped breathing which is a very bad thing are you able to recover those brains that have had near drowning or sometimes sometimes yeah it depends we don't have the lazarus treatment to bring dead cells dead brain cells back to life but we can get the struggling ones better better and i have one girl who just breaks my heart she was taking too much of a pain medication and her heart stopped for 10 minutes and i have her brain beforehand it was this big fat i don't know watermelon and now it's like a prune and i can get it better it's never going to be normal really heartbreaking is she able to have an okay lifestyle or is it not struggling with and and it's not just her it's her parents lives will never be the same again we have to be so much more serious about brain health when someone's brain shrinks over trauma physical trauma emotional trauma whatever it might be when it shrinks obesity what happens to the brain inside the skull is there more room is there more fluid in between the brain and the skull like what is actually how small could it be is it rattling like what is actually happening with the space between the brain and the skull when it shrinks so it gets bigger the space gets better space gets better so fluid uh because your brain's you know has to be contained but that's not what you want you don't want fluid a lot of fluid more fluid in fact if you have too much fluid it's called hydrocephalus and that can shrink the brain one of the causes of alzheimer's disease is called nph or normal pressure hydrocephalus and when we put a shunt in and drain some of that excess fluid people actually think better put a shunt in the brain the skull open up the skull put a shunt and then we have it drain into your abdomen really yeah and that's not uncommon it's something in the brain and it goes down but like think of a tube uh no no inside well they'll tunnel it underneath your skin and neck and so on it goes all the way down yeah that's a crazy i actually did a study it was fascinating on something called omental transposition surgery where we took the omentum from the gut so it's like this fatty apron on top of your um abdominal organs and it's loaded with stem cells so we actually bunched it up and put it on the brain but kept it connected to the blood supply and the gut it was pretty wicked surgery but we found it really improved cognition now this was before the whole stem cell movement uh we've been working with stem cells to improve brain function that's great pretty interesting crazy i want to ask you about dopamine in the last i believe seven years i feel like with social media smartphones kids having smartphones much earlier and earlier video games the access to these things the the constant dopamine hits that we're all getting more with our phones what does an overwhelm dopamine do to the brain does it support brain health does it hurt brain health should we have you know only 10 of the dopamine we're getting what is it doing to our function of our brains dopamine's really important it's a very important neurotransmitter now there are a bunch of them that are really important serotonin and oxytocin and endorphins and cortisol dopamine works on the area called the nucleus accumbens which is the pleasure center and the brain push on that and you feel whoa i like that if you push on it too much or too intensely it wears it out and which is why my book feel better fast there's a whole section on drip dopamine don't dump it don't dump dopamine on yourself don't dump it in fact in your brain is always listening i have a brand new 12-step program the 12-step program for addiction was actually developed 85 years ago and has no neuroscience in any of the 12 steps and one would think the brain should be part of the 12 steps so i redid the 12 steps i know that some 12 steppers will hate me but i'm like well if a neuroscientist was going to do it what would i do and step number seven is drip dopamine don't dump it because when you dump dopamine pornography dumb dopamine cocaine dumps dopamine alcohol alcohol dumps it drugs skydiving dumpsters running with the bulls dumps it along with a whole bunch of cortisol um you wear out your pleasure centers which is why in justin bieber's docuseries seasons he came out i was his doctor he talks about dopamine and i pray that children do not become famous until their brains are developed he was famous really early and every bad thing happened to him because he felt bad he had no dopamine left he'd worn out his pleasure centers doing so much of it all day long all the attention so part of the therapy was we have to rehabilitate your pleasure centers and so you want to avoid things that dump dopamine and engage in things that drip dopamine what are some of those things like our conversation today i mean it's just been so much fun yeah for me um holding my wife's hand looking in her eyes playing with the grand babies oregano drips dopamine pumpkin seeds drip dopamine magnesium drip dopamine rhodiola ashwagandha i mean some cool supplements so i want to protect my pleasure centers because pleasure in many ways can be the enemy of happiness really because if you have too much it wears them out and then you begin to feel flat and that's how addictions start something dumps dopamine you go oh that's awesome like a young superstar does a concert like that's amazing but afterwards they have nothing left they're alone in their hotel room or yeah and they're playing video games which is dumping dopamine that they don't have and so then they're like well maybe i'll smoke maybe i'll date maybe i'll do marijuana or cocaine and then it's flattening the response sugar does this too it actually flattens the response it's like whoa ew whoa ew and pretty much you're into whoa ew your whole life that's the addiction how this is gonna upset a lot of people uh what is the research and the science saying about marijuana in terms of the brain health and marijuana because there's a lot of people talking about how it's actually relaxing them i've never been high on anything in my life i've never done drugs never been drunk never drinking alcohol except for a couple sips when i was a kid as a taste but your brain is probably going to be better than you thinking also all right so yeah never been drunk and i'm one of the few people i've been drunk twice but i learned quickly i'm like no i don't like to be out of control it's not for me um all the hater comments come out when i talk about marijuana yeah but i was i mean it was 20 years ago i was on the radio with um michael savage in the bay area and he's like people are just going to hate you when you talk about marijuana yeah i said but everybody who calls in who's been smoking for a while is going to spontaneously complain of memory problems and everybody who called in complain of memory i can't remember so i i knew it was trouble right after i started looking at scans it makes your brain look older come on than you are how am i you're smoking daily or once a week or well if you smoke once a week is this both it's just marijuana if you smoke once a week the problem is it's fat soluble which means it stays in your body for 30 days oh yeah and so that one decision can actually impact your brain for 30 days and so if you're smoking a lot you have a pretty high level in your body and i published a study with my colleagues from usc on a thousand pot smokers we compared them to a group that never smoked what happened every area of their brain was lower come on every area of their brain was lower in blood flow blood flow's really important now is it is it the pot or maybe maybe they're also eating sugar or drinking or they're also over overweight it was that consistent variable that we looked at and then i did the world's largest imaging study on 62 454 scans looking just at how the brain ages what little kids brains look like what old people bring what's the trajectory of aging and it sort of sucks really busy brains kids have really busy brains sort of levels out by the time you're 25 26 and then it stays that way until you're 60 and then it starts to drop off that's not good and then we looked at well what accelerated aging in our database and schizophrenia was actually the worst they their brains were like 10 years older oh man then the next worst was marijuana and it shocked because we looked at alcohol and smoking depression adhd no it was marijuana i'm very concerned and now i'm a fan of legalizing marijuana because please don't put people smoke bought in jail that is just a bad use of resources but let's not say it's healthy it's healthy for us because it's not kids who smoke teenagers who smoke or use edibles have a higher incidence of anxiety depression and suicide it's funny as teenagers saying that because you see the case or i'll see this online of people making the case for marijuana and i'm if people want to smoke and drink it's on them you know i'm choosing not to personally for myself but i'm not here to judge someone to make someone wrong but i see people make the case and say well look at this person who i don't even know what the condition is called where it's like they're shaking they can't control their body they're like constantly shaking when they move and then they smoke and then all of a sudden you see them relax it's these viral videos of these individuals who have these conditions or can't calm their mind they have marijuana and all sudden they're like the most peaceful relaxed person and it helps that condition and there's evidence for it can work to help some forms of seizures there's evidence for that um it helps with nausea and chemotherapy it helps with appetite for people who are really struggling with cancer and they've lost their appetite and it's like a lot of other things that can be good and bad right and so i mean you got to make your choice yeah ketamine for example has been shown to have antidepressant qualities and yet is a drug of abuse and so in a supervised setting for some people it can be helpful but let's not unleash it on the whole population right and because as the perception of a drug as the perception of dangerousness of a drug goes down use goes up and that's what's happening for our children and marijuana i'm hearing you say based on this 60 000 scan study is this what it was 68 is one of them one of the main factors for aging faster correct the brain aging faster which makes you lose memory which makes you slow down all these things right correct and what about smoking it's bad because nicotine constricts blood flow to the brain and so and that's vaping vaping is right vaping is just as bad well even if it doesn't happen when you vape you don't have as many toxins but the flavoring is toxic and so um it's just it's a bad idea to get involved in changing your consciousness what's the matter with your consciousness let's change that use diaphragmatic breathing taming the ants killing or killing the ants taming the dragons let's teach you how to mentally manage your mind so you don't have to medicate it have you seen anyone who is the mind is under so much attack that they've been addicted to substances they've tried to get off and they're unable to stay consistent with healthier habits because they had some type of mental condition that was so aggressive that they were just like i need to drink i need to smoke because i've tried the other way and it doesn't work or have you seen people who have been successful time after time if they're able to follow the challenging practices consistently to improve the quality of their brain see i would say they're simple practices i've seen people challenging for people to i've seen people both ways yeah right and often it takes enough pain for them to change but sometimes like losing their kids but sometimes even when they lose their kids they don't change because their brain has been hijacked um i mean i don't know if you're like me but one of the reasons i never did drugs is i never wanted something else to control my life yeah was one of the reasons i also never wanted to make an excuse if because i would see people especially playing football in college guys would get drunk after a game and then they would they would not be well the next day at practice that was one i was like i want to have an advantage but then people would do things and they're like cheating their girlfriend oh that was drunk i'm sorry i was like if i cheat or do something bad i want to own it i want to be responsible for being a jerk or being or whatever i did as opposed to blaming a substance that did that thing so you want to be in control absolutely of your whole life and that's what i want i don't want anything else controlling me and if you know these things are potentially addictive it's like playing russian roulette it's like i would never play russian roulette i'm like that's stupid you know why would i increase my chance of trouble yeah i mean you know to think you're an invulnerable but it's not not as not a smart way to live but anyway i've seen patients both ways you know some people come and i teach them how to correct their negative thoughts and they like walk out of my office it's like no i can't do that i'm attached to i'm a loser and other people they get it and i'm always trying to be how can i be more effective and i find the easier i make it the simpler i make it like you know how do i get my brain healthy bright minds it's like super simple right i mean it's a little complicated but it's your brain yeah yeah what about the the wave of plant medicine use and normalization of plant medicine the people saying it's transformation of transformational work helping them heal their pain and their past helping them overcome trauma helping them break through things they've never been able to mentally break through with um this work of ayahuasca plant medic all these different things what are your thoughts on that in terms of brain scan results well i actually did a study with ibogaine which is one of the plant medications and it's like an ayahuasca or it's like ayahuasca and it wasn't good from a brain perspective really but i think it's going to be an interesting exciting part of psychiatry and there are lots of studies there's just recently legalized not now but in two years in oregon and um they're legalized what plant medicine plant medicine in oregon yeah mushrooms well they are psilocybin and organic yeah micro dosing because the problem is i wish so the big innovations in psychiatry now are magic mushrooms and marijuana and more medications and i'm like how about diet exercise and learning how to not believe every stupid thing you think don't you think we should at least start three siblings and start sleeping yeah yeah let's start you know with brain health but i think it's going to be an interesting exciting thing but you know um psychiatrists were really interested and excited about valium and they were really interested and excited about cocaine freud used cocaine and they went oh they're interested and excited about marijuana and they go well the brain has cannabinoid receptor sites well the brain also has benzo receptor sites and that didn't work out well and the brain also has opiate receptor sites and that didn't work out well we should be finding ways to naturally increase opiates and that's exercise people say well plants are natural you know and this has been happening for centuries with our ancestors and cocaine is natural right right i mean just because sugar is natural sugar is natural right i mean is it helpful that's the question so what about magic mushrooms or mushrooms or micro dosing this you know i've i've heard mushrooms are good to eat you know food mushrooms well i actually make i have a supplement company called bran md and uh we make something called smart mushrooms i put a scoop in my shake every morning i've got lion's mane and cordyceps and rishi and they have both immune system benefits and cognitive benefits and and i feel at 66 every bit as sharp is when i was 20. and so what's the difference between those mushrooms versus hallucinogenic effects so what else the brain when we hallucinate um it activates it actually turns on some of the limbic or emotional parts of the brain and if you're doing it in a therapeutic environment you might be able to reprocess some of those painful memories in a different way you might be able to separate from them get a different perspective got it of them but there are other ways to do that uh that might not have side effects like there's a treatment for trauma i like called emdr eye movement desensitization and reproduction i studied that police officer i hear amazing things so helpful um and that does a similar strategy of activates your emotional brain and then calms it so i did a study with police officers who had ptsd from being involved in shootings and most police officers don't want to be involved in shootings that it becomes traumatic for them if they hurt someone and like soldiers in war and they were all off work and on average of eight emdr sessions they all went back to work and it calmed down the emotional parts of their brain so that's pretty exciting there's another technique i use called havening which is bilateral hemisphere stimulation that's what emdr is you bring up the trauma i get your eyes to go back and forth and that trauma connects to another trauma which can connect to another it's really interesting but haven't is just really simple it's thinking about the trauma i want people always to go into their pain not away from their pain and so for example i told you my dad died may 5th last year and a couple of days later i'm at my mom's house and we're just going through paperwork right against what you do after somebody dies and somebody some idiot had a picture of my dead father in the mortuary in that stack of papers and i'm just and all of a sudden i find it and it hits me and it just bothered me and and a couple of hours later i realized it was bothering me it was circling in my head and so i teach my patients this it's havening it's like think about what's bothering you and for 30 seconds stimulate both hemispheres of your brain so as i do this it's stimulating that side if i do that stimulate while you bring up the trauma and do that like up to six times and after the first time i'm like that's the last picture my dad will ever see wow and it was okay and then i did it twice more and the picture became my favorite picture of my dad because he was at peace yeah and i slept like a baby that night and the picture never bothered me again it's just simple and there's these simple techniques that everybody should know why do you have to be sick to learn how to be well shouldn't we have and we have a high school course called brain thrive by 25 that we teach kids how to love and care for their brains their minds their relationships and be purposeful yeah you get some beautiful techniques some beautiful information i'm very grateful for this i've got i think a couple more questions if we've got some time i've got so many notes here this has been extremely helpful uh i want to talk about memory uh and then we can probably i think we can wrap it up because i'm probably going a little a little long here but i'll talk about memory in an age of having everything at our fingertips and having all the information available without needing to remember how important is it for us to get back to remembering remembering phone i remember as a kid i used to know all these phone numbers from your mom you know you're home you're up your dad's office you don't know any of them exactly i'm talking about the girlfriend's phone number right it's like it's always programmed to click a button and and and have an action how important is memory training for us as humans in a world of lack of memory and what are a few things we could do to increase the ability to remember so like you're learning spanish working your memory helps you to keep it and we actually have a course i work with someone i don't know if you've ever interviewed jim carroll he's hysterical he's a memory athlete okay and yeah you would love him uh and he he was a steel mill worker and selling avon products and then he had cardomo cardiomyopathy when he was 49. and as he was doing his pt he was riding a bike and rather than watch tv he started memorizing things and that was the secret new learning with exercise interesting he learned all the zip codes in the united states all of them all of them wait how many zip codes are there thousands wow in fact you could just say you know your zip code and he'd go hey you're from area pennsylvania that's crazy his memory is just phenomenal and then he learned all the oscar movies and all the oscar actresses and uh actors and his memory is just unbelievable he can go to a group of 2 000 people and give them tickets that have 12 letters on them and a movie on the other side and he'll call on people randomly you tell me the movie i'll tell you the 12-digit number this is a lot like jim quick a lot like a lot like jim quick um and he's hysterical he's like a great entertainer and if you use it you get to keep it if you don't use it you'll lose it and so it's really important yeah you know we're probably not going to be remembering phone numbers because we have our auxiliary brains but our auxiliary brains is causing alzheimer's to be diagnosed three or four years later when it's actually harder to get help because i would diagnose people when i first started in practice 30 years ago because their family would call me up and they say he's getting lost in a place he's lived in 30 years but now you just have to go hey siri take me home right and so these auxiliary memories are actually causing people to be diagnosed later we should always be working our brains new learning is just absolutely essential so spanish is great learning a musical instrument is great uh dance or whatever you know if you know producing stuff for television is great it's a new skill marketing is a new skill anything that challenges you anything and you should be doing things that are new and different like i know how to read brain scans like hopefully you'll come and i'll look at your brain oh no immediately healthy not healthy how many people have been through your labs well we have done 183 000 scans and how many years i have three in 30 years wow and we have 300 nfl players and i love what i do it's amazing i'm so grateful i had no idea that when i decided to be a psychiatrist this would happen this would this would have been my life i'm i'm very excited about your book i was going through it i'm a big fan already your brain is always listening tame the hidden dragons that control your happiness habits and hang-ups there are some incredible exercises on how to deal with any type of struggle or stress that you might have in your life right now whether it be addiction whether it be negative thoughts whether it be dealing with past traumas you have uh the reasoning behind these things you've got the exercises on how to to overcome them you've got everything in here which is extremely powerful you've got simple strategies you've got more complex things you've got graphics that explain stuff for me so it's uh it's amazing it's uh i think everyone should read this overcome pain from your past it's funny i just did a video yesterday saying if you can learn to overcome the pain from your past your life will be a hundred times better just by that one simple thing and this is something you teach in here through the science through the research everything you need in here to optimize your brain is here check it out get the book get a few for your friends your brain is always listening make sure you get this book a couple final questions and then we'll wrap things up this is a question i ask everyone at the end called the three truths question so i'd like you to imagine a hypothetical situation it's your last day on earth many years away you've accomplished all of your dreams and goals and you're happy and healthy and everything you want to do you've done but for whatever reason you've got to take all of your written work with you your video work your content it's all going to go with you to the next place wherever you go and no one has access to your information anymore but you get to leave behind three things you know to be true three lessons you would share with the world and this is all we have to remember you by i called three truths what would be three things you would share with the world brain envy love your brain don't believe every stupid thing you think know what you want and ask yourself every day does my behavior fit what i want no people don't do that it's crazy they should be teaching this to seven-year-olds what do you want relationships schoolwork money your health what do you want is your behavior getting you what you want mm-hmm rather than say you should do this or you should do that shits don't work you know it's just getting people to know and then act and if they have a healthy brain it's easier yeah i want to acknowledge you for a moment before i ask the final question the work you continue to do is so inspiring and it's helping so many people when they allow themselves to learn to apply it and take action so i really acknowledge you for being so passionate about this work for showing up for people's lives for being someone that cares deeply about human beings the quality of their life improving their brain health which is the quality of their relationships and everything i just think we need more people like you and i'm really grateful that you're alive healthy and driven on this mission because i think a lot more people would be suffering without you creating this work in a simple way without you scanning people and getting the data that proves these things so i really acknowledge you and i'm i'm grateful you're alive i really am because this this stuff's really inspiring for me where else can we support you besides getting your book following you on social media where else can we go if we want to learn more if we want to take your courses get supplements that can help our brains where should we go um so the supplements brain md to support your brain eamonn university we have courses eamon clinics i have nine clinics avenue clinic in dallas it's just crazy busy later this year we're going to open a new clinic in south florida um and then my wife and i do podcasts together we have 847 episodes almost as big as this the brain warrior's way they're like 10-minute little inspirational pieces to get people excited because we need a brain health revolution yes um because with that we can end mental illness but it's never gonna start with what we're doing now we have to break the paradigm and create a new one yeah so all mental illness or most of mental illness is connected to brain health would you say yes all of it unless there's some type of trauma that there's it's foundational yeah your brain is not right you're not right and it doesn't mean psychological trauma won't have an impact but if your brain's not right plus psychological trauma going to psychotherapy is not going to be as good as it could be bright minds everyone's got to apply the bright minds method um okay so we'll check out your podcast the brainwarrior's way podcast we'll link up all this stuff make sure you guys check out brainmd.com and everything else get the book final question for you what is your definition of greatness it's pushing to do what you know you can do despite what other people say appreciate you very much thank you when we have dopamine in our system and when we've taken control of that process we want to make sure that we capture everything that led up to that and it's it's vitally important in these big kind of we're talking in these big milestones type of examples but this can be done across the day

Channel: Lewis Howes

Views: 242,670

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Keywords: Lewis Howes, Lewis Howes interview, school of greatness, self help, self improvement, self development, personal development, success habits, success, wealth, motivation, inspiration, inspirational video, motivational video, success principles, millionaire success habits, how to become successful, success motivation, Dr. Daniel amen, daniel amen interview, foods to eat, health factors, live longer, age in reverse, brain foods to eat, foods that kill you, health theory

Id: XtzZMRgz8IQ

Length: 111min 55sec (6715 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 14 2021