Full transcript: Dr Daniel Amen on London Real
2:49 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Dr. Daniel Amen, the physician, psychiatrist, and brain disorder specialist. You are considered one of the most influential experts in the world when it comes to brain health with over 40 years of clinical practice and over 300 million views of your videos online.
3:14 You’ve written 12 New York Times bestselling books, including Change Your Brain, Change Your Life, and The End of Mental Illness. Your expertise has been sought by major institutions including Google, Harvard, the National Security Agency, and the U.S. Congress. Your latest book, Change Your Brain Every Day, break down the importance of looking after your brain and how it plays such a crucial role in your overall well-being. Your goal is simple. To change the way psychiatric medicine is treated and practiced worldwide, Dr. Amen, welcome to London Real.
3:46 Thank you, Brian. Thank you for helping me share this message. I am looking forward to diving into this because you have unique IP and an incredible way of looking at the brain and the world. I want to throw a few quotes for people out there from you. You have said, quote, the war for your health is won or lost between your ears.
4:05 Make no mistake, you’re in a war for the health of your brain and mind. Everywhere you go, someone is trying to make money by shoving bad food down your throat that will kill you early. You continue by saying news corporations repeatedly pour fear and images of disaster into your brain to boost their ratings. Tech companies create addictive gadgets that hook your attention and distract you from your loved ones and your purpose. Talk to me about this war we all have going on, this information war that determines our brain health, our longevity, our happiness, everything.
4:42 So last night, I actually adopted my two nieces because both of their parents were drug addicts and bad parents. And it was just horrifying to watch as they got taken into foster care. Well, last night I went to the Orange County Department of Education because one of my nieces got a character award and she got a scholarship for a full ride to UCLA. So I’m so proud of her. And I was watching all of the teachers and the kids.
5:19 It was the most unhealthy group. And I live in Orange County, California, which is sort of known as a healthier part of California. And I was just horrified about the incidence of obesity. And I’m like, this is not the society that I grew up in. And the war is here.
5:45 It’s on our doorstep with 72 percent of Americans overweight, 42 percent obese. It’s dramatically spiked in children. And then if you mix that with the social media addiction, I don’t know if you saw this study, Brian, 57 percent of teenage girls are persistently sad. More than half of teenage girls are persistently sad. Twenty four percent have planned to kill themselves.
6:22 Thirteen percent have tried to kill themselves. I believe we are on the front edge of a tidal wave of mental health problems in children and young adults. And I’m just horrified because everywhere you look, you see our society has it out for them rather than nurturing them. And so we’re in an era of anger and confusion, division and terrible food and toxic products we’re putting on people’s bodies. And so, you know, as a neuroscientist and a psychiatrist, I step back.
7:10 I’m just constantly horrified by what is happening in our society. You know, I’m turning 52 today. And, you know, I grew up kind of in the 80s and it was before mobile phones, maybe before extreme food engineering and maybe before some of the things that brought us to where we are today. Is it a lot of those things? Because we weren’t necessarily there back in the 80s or even the 90s, were we?
7:37 Not even close. Not even close. It would have been very rare for you to have a friend or someone you know in your high school commit suicide. It is very common for that to take place. Now, I see children all the time that are just devastated that one of their friend attempted or completed suicide.
8:09 And it’s all of these factors that are coming together. And then if you add the pandemic and our reaction to the pandemic, the fear, the isolation, forced vaccinations, people losing a sense of autonomy and control over their own bodies. And then the virus itself, which caused an inflammatory bomb in the brain, you just see how things are accelerating in a bad, bad way. And then not to mention, of course, alcohol is a health food in the mind of so many people.
8:49 Marijuana is innocuous. It’s completely a lie. But the big innovations in psychiatry now are marijuana, ketamine, and psilocybin. It’s like the street drugs of the 60s are making a comeback. And I’m like, why don’t we feed people right and teach them not to believe every stupid thing they think and teach them to love and honor their brains?
9:19 Yeah, there’s a lot of things you just spoke about, and I’d love to get into every single one of them. I’ll just say, on a personal note, there’s a quote from you that really resonated me, and maybe we’ll go there first. I think you wrote one time, I will not be controlled by a chemical, or at least maybe that was a thesis of a lot of what you were writing. And I’ll be honest, doctor, that was probably the story of my life for the past 30 years, is that I was controlled by various chemicals, started off with alcohol.
9:46 And then when I went to New York City, I moved on to drugs like heroin. I had a nice overdose that woke me up in 01. You know, I was smoking Lucky Strikes back in the day. And like, my successes later in life were slowly getting off each one of those substances, because each one would whittle away my self-esteem every single day that I knew I had to grab it, whether it was consciously or subconsciously. And honestly, those are some of the greatest successes of my life, more than my family, more than everything I created here, was the fact that I will not be controlled by a chemical.
10:18 And I was just wondering if you could just talk a little bit about that, because like you said, these days, it feels like we’re being offered more and more chemicals. And it seems to be kind of going the other way. And I’m just curious for your thoughts on that. Well, we’re being thrilled to death. And there’s a very interesting part of the brain called the nucleus accumbens.
10:43 It’s where dopamine works. You know, if you push on it a little bit, you feel happy. And our society is pushing on it so much that it’s actually wearing it out. And so if you think of heroin or cocaine or alcohol or marijuana, they all release dopamine that gives you that sort of sense of euphoria or high. You know, it’s a drive to do it again. Gadgets do it. Pornography does it. The gossiping does it.
11:23 So I didn’t fraud its name. It’s like being happy about the failures of others is another thing that we see all the time. You know, you’re in England, the Daily Mail is famous for it. You know, let’s let’s get a headline that just diminishes someone. And they’ve covered my work actually fairly. So I don’t want to pick on them too much.
11:50 But we’re taking our pleasure centers and we just keep dumping dopamine and it hooks you. And I don’t want to be controlled by a substance and I don’t want to be controlled by a news organization. I don’t want to be controlled by Apple or Facebook, for goodness sakes. But you have to be very intentional because if you constantly dump dopamine, you’re going to be sad. You’re going to be unmotivated. You won’t be able to focus.
12:27 It’s one of the reasons the spike in ADD or attention deficit disorder has occurred. It’s a dopamine deficit disorder. I’ve been blessed to treat a number of very well-known people. It’s public knowledge that I treated Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus. And fame completely wears out the pleasure centers in the brain. I mean, fame is potentially lethal.
12:57 Why is that? Why is fame? Because when you become famous, everybody recognizes you. And that’s so exciting. But there’s this thing called hedonic adaptation that once you get pleasure from somebody recognizing you, you then need more and more of it to have the same response, just like with your drug abuse.
13:31 The first time you did cocaine, you’re like, whoa, I like that. The second time was good, but not as good as the first time. And by the 20th time, you’re not using for the euphoria. You’re using to treat the subsequent depression from the depletion of dopamine. And so if you think of fame and I love both of them so much, but you wear out the pleasure centers pretty soon, you’re using a cocktail of drugs just to try to feel OK.
14:10 And they almost killed those children. Early fame is particularly bad because your brain really isn’t done, developing until you’re about 25 or 26. And so having early fame at 14, 15, potentially devastating for brain function. Wow. Wow. I’m just curious while we’re on that.
14:36 How do you start off with someone like Justin Bieber that probably got famous in his teens? I think it was mid teens maybe or Bella Hadid or even Miley Cyrus was young as well, wasn’t she? When she got famous, what is your philosophy around something like that? Well, the first thing is bonding, getting them to trust me and then getting them to love their brain. I remember when Justin came into my office and, you know, like memory, many celebrities come, not come, do what I said, mostly not. And then when he went through a really hard season, he came into my office and he said, I think I understand what you’re trying to tell me. My brain is an organ just like my heart is an organ.
15:26 If you told me I had heart problems, I’d do everything you said. I’m going to do everything you say. And before he came to see me, he’d been diagnosed by somebody else with bipolar disorder. But at Eamonn Clinics, I have 11 clinics around the United States. We look at the brain.
15:44 I mean, we looked at his brain with a study called Brain Spacked, S-P-E-C-T, imaging that looks at blood flow and activity. And I’m like, you don’t have bipolar disorder. Your brain’s hurt. We need to find out why it’s hurt. And he’s just done remarkably well. Or Miley, it was getting her to love her brain.
16:12 And, you know, she has the number one song in the world right now, Flowers. I’m so proud of her. And Flowers is really about self-love. And when you love yourself, doing the right thing for your brain is an act of love. It’s an act of love for yourself, for your family, for your friends, and for your mission.
16:41 Why are you on the planet? When your brain works right, you work right. And too many people have the idea, oh, if I really take care of my brain, I’m going to miss out. You know, it’s like, well, how can you have any fun? I have a high school course that teaches young people how to love their brains called Brain Thrive by 25.
17:04 And invariably, one of the 14-year-old boys will raise his hand and go, how can you have any fun? And so we play a game with them. And I played this with Miley as well. It’s like, OK, who has more fun? The kid with the good brain or the kid with the bad brain?
17:20 In fact, I was doing a big lecture for high school students, and I texted Miley right before the lecture. And I said, are you having more fun with your good habits or your bad ones? And she texted me back. She goes, ah, good, buy a billion. And I think if you ask asked her now from relationships and productivity and happiness, it’s with her good habits.
17:54 Yeah. Amen to that. I can attest to that. I mean, I’m about five and a half years since I stopped drinking and people ask me about it. I get a big smile on my face and I’m like, oh, my God, it’s the greatest thing ever.
18:05 It’s like hundreds of times better. I can’t believe it took me 30 years to figure that out. When you say love your brain, how do you do that? So when I first started looking at the brain in 1991, the week before I looked at mine, I looked at my mother’s brain. And she was 60 at the time. And she had a stunningly beautiful brain, which just really reflected her life.
18:34 She has seven children. She was the Newport Beach golf club champion. She had a ton of friends. She was just I mean, she is an awesome mother. And then I looked at mine.
18:47 I was 37. It wasn’t very healthy because I played football in high school. I had a lot of bad habits like I wasn’t sleeping. And I developed this concept called brain envy. I wanted her brain. And I often say Freud was wrong.
19:08 He was about two and a half feet too low in the body. Penis envy is not the cause of anybody’s problem. You have to love your brain. And when you love it, everything changes like all of your decisions change because brain health is basically three things. Brain envy got to care about it. Nobody cares about their brain.
19:33 Why? Because you can’t see it. You can see the wrinkles in your skin or the fat around your belly. And you can do something when you’re unhappy with it because most people never look at their brain. They just don’t care. And in 1991, I’m a double board certified psychiatrist.
19:50 I’m board certified general psychiatry, child and adolescent psychiatry. It’s the top neuroscience student in medical school. And I didn’t care at all about my own brain. Like I’m watching football every Sunday. It’s like my favorite sport, which obviously is a brain damaging sport.
20:09 I just didn’t care about it. But when I saw it, I’m like, oh, no, we got to make this better. And so I think I’ve spent the last 32 years making my brain better and the brains of the people I serve. Yeah. And your TED Talk, I think from eight, nine years ago, you show a bunch of brain scans and you show, I think, some really interesting things.
20:32 Someone with dementia and someone with addiction or maybe even anxiety. And then you mentioned this fact, it kind of blew me away, saying that I think it was psychiatrists or psychologists or the only medical professionals that don’t look at the organ they’re treating. And it is pretty shocking, the fact that they don’t bother looking at that most of the time. And that’s the thing they’re treating. And there’s all these amazing tools and techniques.
21:00 And I was wondering if you could speak on that and how that’s affected your journey the last 10 plus years. Well, and they call me crazy. I’m sure. I mean, in a war with my colleagues, psychiatrists are indeed the only medical specialists that never look at the organ they treat. They make diagnoses based on symptom clusters with no biological data.
21:24 Exactly how Abraham Lincoln was diagnosed with depression in 1840. And I’m not kidding when I say this. And it’s part of the shit show that is psychiatry today. Last year, there were 337 million prescriptions for antidepressant medications, 60 million prescriptions for stimulants, most of those to children. And without no biological information, you know, you tell me you’re depressed, I’ll give you Lexapro.
22:01 And that’s just nuts. So my own personal journey when I started looking at the brain, I was so excited. I was like a little child. I’m like, you know, I became a psychiatrist because my first wife tried to kill herself while I was in medical school. And I was horrified to her to see a wonderful psychiatrist and I came to realize if he helped her wouldn’t just tell her that ultimately it helped me help our children and even our grandchildren because they would be shaped by someone who was happier and more stable.
22:38 So I fell in love with psychiatry. But before I went to medical school, I was an infantry medic. I was in the army. And then I was an x-ray technician. And when I was an x-ray technician, our professors used to always say, how do you know unless you walk.
22:53 So as I became a psychiatrist, I’m like, why aren’t we looking at the brain? I mean, obviously the brain is our organ. And so when I got the opportunity to do it, I’m really passionate about it. But then my colleague said, well, that’s not what we do. That’s not how you do this work.
23:12 Well, I’m a middle child and I was sort of a pain in the butt to my dad. And because you tell me I shouldn’t do something. I’m like, well, why? You know, I get more information. I’m going to be a better doctor.
23:28 And so for the first couple of years, I was pretty anxious going against the grain. And then I think for many people to do something that’s important, there’s a story. So I was really anxious and upset. I feel caught. I want to be loved by my colleagues. I wanted to be. And yet I wanted to do the work I knew I was supposed to do.
23:56 And in 1995, my sister-in-law calls me up one night and tells me my nine-year-old nephew, Andrew, who’s also my godson, attacked a little girl on the baseball field that day for no particular reason. And I’m like, it’s 10 o’clock on a Tuesday night. I’m on the phone. I’m horrified because Andrew is also my godson. So he and I are really close. And I’m like, Sherry, what else is going on with him? And she said, Danny, he’s different. He’s mean. He doesn’t smile anymore.
24:36 I went into his room. It still makes me emotional. I went into his room today and I found two pictures that he had drawn. One of them, he was hanging from a tree in a suicide attempt. The other picture is shooting other children.
24:54 So if you think about it now, Andrew is Columbine or Sandy Hawk or Parkland, Florida, waiting to happen. And I’m like, I want to see him tomorrow. Because I’d already been scanning for four years. I’d already sort of associated violence to an area of the brain called the left temporal lobe. And when I saw him, I’m like, buddy, what’s going on? And he said, Uncle Danny, I don’t know. I’m just mad all the time.
25:28 And like, is anybody teasing you? I said, no. Is anybody touching you in places they shouldn’t be touching you? No. And so I scanned him and I held his hand while he held his teddy bear while I got scanned.
25:45 And as the first time I saw it, I’ve seen it a hundred times since he was missing his left temporal lobe, that area that’s often associated with violence. It turned out he had a cyst the size of a golf ball occupying the space of his left temporal lobe. And when the neurosurgeon drained it, his behavior completely went back to normal. And it was at that moment the war in my head started with my colleagues. I stopped being afraid and became a warrior.
26:22 Because if you don’t look, you don’t know. The neurosurgeon said, if I hadn’t figured that out, Andrew would have been dead in six months. And this is personal, right? Not only from people in my own family who suffered, but I’m a better doctor when I look at your brain. And you’re a better patient because when you look at your brain, you like go, oh, I want that better, right?
26:48 I mean, most rational people, they know your brain’s involved in everything you do, how you think, how you feel, how you act. You get along with other people. And if it’s troubled, you’re going to have trouble in your life. So if you see your brain and it’s not healthy, you’re more cooperative with me. When we put you on a brain health program, so not a psychiatric treatment program, nobody really wants that.
27:18 But everybody wants a better brain. So I hate the term mental illness because it shames people, it’s stigmatizing, and it’s wrong. These are brain health issues. And so when we reimagine mental health as brain health, everything changes, which means you got to eat better and probably should supplement your brain. And you probably shouldn’t let your children play tackle football or hit soccer balls with their head.
27:54 Yeah, language is everything, isn’t it? And so also mental illness feels as if it’s disempowering when I hear that. I don’t know what to do. And it seems like this weird thing that I can’t get my hands around, but brain health is different. And so if I come to you, doc, and I’m like, all right, whatever, I’m not feeling good or I’m depressed or whatever, you would immediately scan my brain.
28:19 And then you would probably start putting me on a protocol of what I ate, what I viewed, the sports I played if I was doing head injury stuff. And then you would also start getting me processing things differently with my brain. Is that kind of where you would start? There’s a lot of things there. So I take a really good history when patients come to see us. They fill out about 25 pages of information. I mean, I really want to get to know you.
28:46 And then I would scan you and I would test your brain. So we’ll do some cognitive testing. And then I’ll put all of that together. And I’m like, you’re really awesome and accomplished and can be better. And what if at your level, I could help you be 10% more effective?
29:13 I mean, that would be pretty cool. So I don’t start with your bipolar, your schizophrenic, you have OCD. I generally start with you’re awesome. How much more awesome can I help you be? And I always think of my patients in four big circles. It’s okay. So how can I help the biology of your brain and body?
29:37 Because I can’t get your brain right if your body is unhealthy. And so I have a mnemonic we talk about called Bright Minds. You want to keep your brain healthy or rescue it. If it’s headed for trouble, we have to prevent or treat the 11 major risk factors that steal your mind. So I assess all of those on my patients. So we’re going to get the biology, right? But you also have a psychology or how you think or what was it like growing up?
30:08 What were the developmental traumas in your life? So we’re going to I’m going to teach you how to kill the ants, the automatic negative thoughts that steal your happiness. We live in a society of undisciplined thinkers here in the US, probably in the UK, there’s an ant infestation, the automatic negative thoughts that steal people’s minds. There’s a social circle, which is what’s going on in your life and in the world, right, just coming out of a pandemic that was huge social stressor.
30:47 But also what most psychiatrists would never talk about, there’s a spiritual circle. Why do you care? You know, what’s your deepest sense of meaning and purpose? It’s your connection with God, with the planet, with the past and with the future. And so what we know is that purposeful people live longer, they’re healthier and they’re happier.
31:16 And so I spend time with my patients on what is your sense of purpose? Why do you care about having a healthy brain? Wow, very holistic. And you mentioned the traumas. I know you talked about this ACE test, where they kind of go back through these different types of traumas that people have had.
31:38 And I think you’d said that if you identify a certain number, it can mean that your lifespan will be 20 years less than someone else. I wonder if you could speak a little bit out on how you identify traumas, how you can resolve them and how they really do affect your longevity. Well, I’m living in a family, a trauma, you know, so ACE, Adverse Childhood Experiences. So the initial study was actually done by the CDC and Kaiser in Southern California. We looked at 17,000 people and they gave them this ACE questionnaire, which is 10 questions. And they’re all basically about childhood trauma, physical, sexual, emotional abuse, neglect, abandonment, divorce, incarceration, growing up with a parent who had a mental illness or a substance abuse problem.
32:36 And so how many of these on a scale of zero to 10? So I’m a one. My wife is an eight. She grew up in serious trauma with an uncle that was a heroin addict and lots of physical and emotional abuse. Both of my nieces who I adopted are nines. And so if you score four or more, you have an increased risk of seven of the top 10 leading causes of death, including cancer.
33:13 If you score six or more, you die 20 years earlier. Now, my nieces and my wife are not going to die 20 years earlier because they’ve addressed the trauma and they live brain healthy lifestyles. And my wife wrote about this in her book, The Relentless Courage of a Scared Child. And one of the ways to address trauma and all of them have had EMDR. It’s a specific psychological treatment for trauma.
33:49 I love it. Besides teaching people to not believe every stupid thing they think, to kill the ants, it’s my favorite form of psychotherapy where we’ll have you bring up the traumas, catalog them, bring them up, but then get your eyes to move back and forth. That’s why it’s called the EMDR eye movement. And while you do, you feel the trauma, but then it tends to dissipate. And it’s just very effective. But if you continue to drink while you’re doing EMDR, it’s sort of less effective.
34:29 Okay, so that’s the way you deal with the traumas, the ant and EMDR and obviously simultaneously working on the other circles. But those two are very effective for dealing with the trauma. What do you think about some of these MDMA-assisted therapies for traumatized soldiers? I mean, I know you’re not a fan of necessarily other substances, but they’re trying to do a similar thing that maybe cannot be done with people with extreme trauma. What are your thoughts on something like that?
35:04 I’m very worried about it because, you know, I’ve been a psychiatrist for 40 years. I’ve seen this party before. I have seen how opiates are innocuous. In fact, in the 90s, doctors were shamed if they didn’t keep people out of pain. That pain was considered the fifth vital sign. And if someone was in pain, you needed to give them an opiate and you’d see where that got us. That wasn’t good. Or that alcohol is a health food. Again, in the 90s, our first clinic was right next to the Napa Valley in Northern California.
35:49 And everyone’s so excited, you know, I have to have my two glasses of red wine a day that that is good for me. It’s a complete lie. Or that, you know, we’re in the middle of marijuana is innocuous. Back during the last presidential election, Vice President President Biden, when he was asked about the federal government legalizing marijuana, he said, I think there still needs to be more study. And then Senator Cory Booker on national television shamed Biden and said, man, are you high? The answer is in. And Booker was wrong. The answer is not in. The answer is the opposite.
36:36 The teenagers who use marijuana have an increased risk of anxiety, depression and suicide. I published a study on a thousand marijuana users. Every area of their brain is lower inactivity. So now we’re coming to psilocybin and ketamine. And I’m for anything safe that helps my patients suffer less.
37:06 But let’s not do those things that potentially you’re going to have to do over and over again to maintain relief. Let’s not do those until at least first we’ve gotten your diet right, until first we’ve looked at your brain and know that we are, in fact, dealing with PTSD and not traumatic brain injury. I published two studies in 2015 showing we could separate with high levels of accuracy, traumatic brain injury from post-traumatic stress disorder. So think physical trauma from emotional trauma. And Discover magazine listed my research as one of the top 100 stories in science for 2015.
37:54 So I was really happy with that. That sent it to all of my critics, at least everyone I could think of. But why is that important? Well, if you don’t know what you’re dealing with, how do you properly treat it? If you really think it’s emotional trauma, then calming the brain is a really good idea.
38:18 But what if it’s the effect of traumatic brain injury? So many of these soldiers also had blast injuries and they already have a low activity brain. What would happen if we decrease the activity in a low activity brain? It’s you disinhibit people and you make them dramatically worse. So we’re doing all of this. We’re unleashing psilocybin on the population where we’re not looking at their brains. And it’s the first thing everybody wants.
38:51 It’s like, oh, mushrooms. Will you prescribe those for me? And I’m like, not yet. Let’s be thoughtful and let’s not think of it as the first thing to do. Let’s think of it as maybe 12th or 13th on the list.
39:10 And just one example, I was a consultant on the movie Concussion with Will Smith. And you’ll remember all the Oscars stuff about diversity and Will Smith should have been nominated. I thought he was just awesome and amazing in that movie. Like I’m a huge Will Smith fan. And right before the Oscars last year, I read his autobiography and it was amazing. But at the end of the autobiography, he said he did ayahuasca 14 times.
39:50 Well, Brian, it clearly didn’t fix him because on national television, he blew up his life. And if these things fix people, one would think 14 times would be enough. Yeah, that’s an interesting statement. I mean, I’ve had a very life changing and powerful ayahuasca ceremony about five years ago. And I do think that infrequent doses of some of these things can have beneficial effects than they have.
40:24 As far as with Will, like, yeah, I mean, I don’t know. There’s a lot of factors there. Let’s just say that. But I understand your point of saying maybe fix the basics first. Obviously, if you’re prescribing anything regularly to someone, that’s not really a good sign. Yeah. And so people that are just trying to get more and more things like psilocybin and marijuana to try to solve a problem.
40:48 That doesn’t seem like a good idea to me. But I will say for me, some psychedelics have gotten me much further than other things happened. So yeah. I’m curious. You know, I asked my patients. I do a series on Instagram called Scan My Brain. And Anna Lynn McCord, the actress from 90210, was on and she did a documentary on plant medicine.
41:18 And like you found it incredibly helpful. But her brain wasn’t healthy. And so I’m caught. Because, you know, as a doctor, my role is to decrease suffering. So I want to use anything that decreases suffering that doesn’t potentially hurt you.
41:43 And, you know, with these things, not having legality for very long. It’s the side effects I worry about. Yeah, I think for a lot of people, their alternatives are the antidepressants and we can go into big pharma next. Maybe a lot of them don’t have access to some of your IP. They go to a therapist for 30 years. They don’t get anywhere.
42:08 And, you know, they’re stuck without having anything that can get them through or process certain things. So for me, it was it was pivotal and very important. But yeah, that’s my experience. Let’s talk about big pharma. And let’s talk about some of these things you mentioned, like bipolar and ADHD and all these other things. I don’t even know what those mean anymore.
42:32 But clearly prescriptions are being written left and right. And I know in America for children all the time that hasn’t hit the UK as much, but we’re usually a few years behind. What don’t you like about what’s happening there? What needs to happen for that to be done intelligently? Or should they stop writing those prescriptions?
42:54 Well, I’m not a fan of the government telling doctors what to do. That sort of happened during the pandemic and it was not good, right? Suppressing free speech is a bad idea. Yes, I agree. From my perspective, it’s a shit show. Eighty five percent of psychiatric drugs are prescribed by nonpsychiatric health care professionals and 10 minute office visits.
43:27 So if you just start with that, you realize this is going to be trouble because, you know, people who are not experts in these medications are prescribing them like candy. And in the early 90s, even psychiatric visits, you know, when I was trained, I’d see my patients for an hour or two a week and then managed care took over medicine and they relegated psychiatrist to be the prescribers. And all of a sudden, you know, I find myself being pushed to do 15 minute med checks. Now, I decided, no, that’s just that’s not me. But that’s what’s happening wholesale in the United States.
44:20 So I think stopping that practice of being the prescriber and being the whole person doctor, you know, like many of us, at least in the 70s and 80s were trained is a more rational approach. And educating people that depression is not an illness. It’s a symptom. I mean, it’s sort of like saying you have chest pain and nobody gets the diagnosis of chest pain. Why? Because it doesn’t tell you what causes it and it doesn’t tell you what to do for it. So I think our nomenclature, how we name things, is just a bit bizarre because you can be depressed from low activity in the brain, from a head injury.
45:14 You can be depressed from high activity in the brain, from inflammation, from COVID. You can be depressed because you have bad thought patterns. You can be depressed because you have mold in your home or you have Lyme disease. So I think what looking at the brain did for me, I went, oh, depression is not one thing. ADD or ADHD is not one thing. Bipolar disorder is sort of the bad current diagnosis. Oh, they’re bipolar. Justin was diagnosed with bipolar.
45:52 He was on my floor crying, screaming, not being able to sleep, but he wasn’t bipolar, which generally shows up on a scan. It’s too much activity. He had too little activity. So I think we need to change the paradigm away from you have this and you said it right. It’s sort of vague, amorphous mental illness to your brains could be better. And if we think of it that way, everything changes.
46:32 Do you think psychiatric drugs should be prescribed in some situations, a large portion of situations or not at all? Clearly, they should be prescribed in some situations, right? I mean, I never say you shouldn’t take insulin or you shouldn’t take medicine for your heart. You know, the brain can have problems just like your heart can have problems. But, you know, in our Washington, DC clinic, we saw 12 year old boy that was on 17 medications. I think when you actually look at the practice of psychiatric medication, it’s ridiculous.
47:19 If we started reducing prescriptions by 90%, would that be a pretty good start, do you think? I think it would. And I think suicide would go down and wouldn’t go up. I mean, all of the antidepressants have black box warnings, especially for teenagers, because we know they don’t work and they make people worse in a high percentage of cases. Yeah. Talk to me about the relationship between big tech and big pharma and big food, because it seems to have even changed the last few years, as we’ve seen with lockdown and COVID and vaccines.
48:04 I mean, you mentioned freedom of speech, but in 2020, we had a big fight with YouTube over freedom of speech and things we weren’t allowed to say. And Dr. I’ve been broadcasting for nine years. I had never once had a video taken down. And I did on April 6th of 2020, when it was the second largest YouTube live stream in the world, because we were asking questions about some things happening.
48:25 And I didn’t understand it at the time. I was like, why would a tech company stop me from saying this? But it’s a weird kind of a marriage of all these things. And I’m just curious what you think of it and what you think we can do about it, if anything. I think the tech companies are heavily invested in the pharmaceutical companies. I mean, I don’t think that. I know that. And they suppressed freedom of speech.
48:53 They suppressed the positive articles on hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin. And if you’re a doctor, they would shame you. They’d report you to the medical board. I mean, it was a very dark time in America. And I think a lot of people now see the attempt at control. And there’s been a backlash against it, actually, in one poll here in the United States.
49:28 So Robert Kennedy, who he’s labeled as an anti-vaxxer, he’s not. He’s a smart vaxxer, if you actually listen to him. But he had on one day last week, he had 20% of the Democratic vote among likely voters against President Biden. And he’s never ever run for office. But I think he represents a response to Big Pharma. And he’s an environmental lawyer. And if you actually go on his website, he’s against a lot of things that are damaging our children, like plastics and toxins in the water and pollution, not just over vaccinations.
50:26 Can you imagine that, I mean, we pretty much knew all along that a lot of kids, even when they got COVID, didn’t get sick, didn’t get hurt. And now they’re forcing children to be vaccinated in order to go to school. There’s a problem, psychologically, not to mention biologically, but there’s a problem when you force people to do something to their bodies against their will. For vaccination, we know doesn’t prevent you from getting it or spreading it. And so, you know, the amount of anger is just so intense among so many of my colleagues and so many of my patients.
51:18 And then what you saw in 2021, especially at Christmas was, if you didn’t agree with other people in your family, you wouldn’t see each other for Christmas. I never had seen anything like that social disconnection that happened, that the level of vitriol was just so intense. We’re still, we’re going to feel the fallout of this or a generation, at least. Right. Whether it was like buying the narrative or not buying the narrative, split people so far down the middle that they would not even get together for Christmas. That’s what you saw in 2021.
52:01 It was awful. It’s a little bit better last year. And I think this year, people are beginning to go, oh, that was a really crazy time. But I think because the government did it so poorly, did the manipulation so poorly that they’re going to have a harder time doing it again. Yeah. So it’s fascinating you bring up Robert because, you know, we were broadcasting in March and April of 2020 and asking questions about PCR test masks and, you know, God forbid, a vaccine.
52:38 And I had Robert on the show, but I couldn’t stream him on YouTube because they would have, you know, thrown me off the platform. So we created a separate streaming platform and I had a conversation with Robert going into it. I mean, I got an engineering degree from MIT and I just respect the science. And so I was like, you know, I take, you know, I’m ready for the vaccine. And then I spent an hour and a half with Robert.
53:00 And at the end of that, I said, wait a second. There’s a lot going on here that I had no idea was going on. He explained everything in the Act of 86. And I found him incredibly informed, intelligent, everything. And we had him back on a few months ago.
53:16 But the fact that he couldn’t speak to people at that time was it was shocking. And the way they just character defamed him into something that he just really isn’t. Like you said, he’s got a whole long history of working for environmental issues and autism and children and all these other things. And yeah, I think maybe now some people are starting to understand that about him. But he really opened my mind to a lot of things. So yeah, good to have people like that out there.
53:46 But things were really suppressed at the time. And so for you, that relationship is already there. And this is just exacerbating what you’re seeing happening right now. So we have more obesity, more mental disorders. And this is all going one way, which is the wrong way. And America is leading the charge there.
54:05 America certainly is leading the charge. But it’s a reason to get up every morning and be in the fight, be in the war. And, you know, the mission I have is to end the concept of mental illness by creating a revolution in brain health. So that’s why I get up. That’s why I have five million followers on social media.
54:40 And I’m whatever you think about TikTok. And I certainly have differing views. But I love the fact that my 13 year old niece gets irritated because all of her friends follow me. You know, that it’s that we need different information. There’s this explosion of interest in mental health, you know, with people like Simone Biles and other celebrities.
55:13 And I’m of two minds with that. One, yes, it’s important to talk about. But two, the more people that talk about it, the more medication is going to be prescribed. And it’s just a little weird when Simone Biles, who I’m a huge fan of, is now sponsored by Powerade from Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola is part of the evil empire, right?
55:46 I mean, sugar water and every one of their containers has BPAs in it, which are toxins. Every one of their containers, and if you go on their website, they’re sort of proud of it. And so if you think of the plastics, the sugar, the caffeine, and then the celebrities who are endorsing it, it’s like, how do children make sense out of all of this? And my goal is to help them see how they’re being manipulated and to take their lives back. Yeah, in Britain, you know, our heavyweight champion Tyson Fury started talking about mental health a couple of years ago.
56:31 And look, it was important. It was important for us to see this, you know, incredible physical specimen. And to know that, you know, a year or two earlier, he had been 300 plus pounds and was depressed and doing drugs and almost killed himself. And it started the narrative. The problem with that is, is that what do you do with mental health? Now, everyone’s aware of it.
56:50 But like this, and then what is the problem? I see. And then it usually means, yeah, probably medication. But I don’t ever see anybody saying, okay, this is the way you’re going to take care of your brain. You’re going to do what you say, this, this, this, and this.
57:05 And so, yeah, I find like that narrative is great to talk about, but it doesn’t ever seem to go to any solutions. And that’s our, that’s the next step. That’s what’s the solution. I think we should train every second grader how to not believe every stupid thing they think. I have a book I love called Captain Snout and the superpower questions.
57:32 It’s about how to just learn to question your own thoughts. Because as I mentioned earlier, we’re living in this time of societal ant infestations. Ant stands for automatic negative thoughts and thoughts that just come into your mind automatically and ruin your day. I was 28 years old before I learned I didn’t have to believe everything I thought. I’ve been my psychiatric residency at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C.
58:07 And a professor said to my class, you have to teach your patients not to believe every stupid thing they think. And I’m like, well, I believe every stupid thing I think. And, you know, just that one skill. And they actually did a program in the United Kingdom where they hired, they trained and hired thousands. Thousands of cognitive behavior therapists.
58:40 And they teach people not to believe every stupid thing they think. And they found it saved a lot of money in mental health care. Just that one intervention. So in so many ways, the United Kingdom is more forward thinking. I mean, you live there, but at least from an outsider perspective, they’re better at monitoring what goes into food, what’s allowed on packaging and so on.
59:16 Yeah, also prescriptions like we never went too crazy with the opioid thing. And yeah, we just didn’t ever go too far on a lot of those things that happened in America. So maybe we learn because there’s a little bit of a lag. Talk to me about anxiety because I saw a really great YouTube short and you have a really good YouTube short. So thank you for those where you talked about people dealing with anxiety.
59:41 It was pretty interesting. I think it’s something everybody feels like they deal with or deals with. But you had some interesting ways of trying to confront it or deal with it in a way that’s not escaping it or medicating it. Yeah, you never want to start something you can’t stop. And so you have a panic attack.
1:00:02 You end up in the emergency room. The doctor gives you a prescription for Xanax. All of a sudden, you won’t be able to stop that. Where what if he taught you diaphragmatic breathing? So one of our most popular shorts is four ways to break a panic attack.
1:00:24 But let’s start with the idea that some anxiety is good. If you think of anxiety from zero, you don’t have any to 100. You can’t leave your home because you’re wracked with anxiety. People who have low levels of anxiety die early from accidents and preventable illnesses. So I always want to keep my patients about 20 on a scale of zero to 100.
1:00:56 I want you to have enough anxiety that you do the right things. That when you’re at a restaurant and someone says, what can I get you? The waiter says, what can I get you to drink? You go water because you know if you have that glass of wine or that alcoholic beverage, you’re more likely to order dessert even though you didn’t want to because it’s dropping frontal lobe function. Anyways, enough anxiety is important.
1:01:28 Too much, obviously, is bad, makes you suffer. So we need to train our brain to settle down. And if you’re anxious in a situation, the first thing is don’t leave. Because if you leave because of your anxiety, the situation now controls you. So the first time I was on national television, I was on CNN, I had a panic attack in the green room, and I’m like, I have to get out of here.
1:02:01 And thankfully, the voice in my head started laughing at me and said, you treat people who have this problem, what do you tell them to do? Don’t leave. The second thing is breathe. And it’s like, OK, everybody knows how to breathe, except they don’t. That if you take twice as long to breathe out as you breathe in, it triggers an automatic relaxation response.
1:02:34 And I was in the Army for 10 years, and they teach you to put your chest out, suck your gut in, which is absolutely the worst thing to do for breathing, because it blocks lung capacity. And so when you breathe in, stick your belly out and try to breathe lower in your body with your belly. And so I teach all of my patients four seconds in, take a big breath, hold it for a second and a half, eight seconds out. Hold it out for a second and a half. It’s a 15-second breath.
1:03:10 Do that for two minutes. You’ll break the panic attack. You should at least try that before you take a xanax. The third thing is write down whatever you’re thinking. People who are anxious or masterful at catastrophizing, they have what I call fortune-telling ants, where they’re always predicting the worst.
1:03:31 Write it out. Ask yourself if it’s true. And then simple supplements like theanine or magnesium or GABA or ashwagandha can be so helpful. That’s really helpful. Yeah, it’s interesting how you had to actually heal yourself on that, which shows that it’s something we need to have as far as like a default mechanism.
1:04:02 Being in this situation and dealing with it is super important. Being really wary of anybody who writes you a script for something because that’s how most people go down a very dark road. Those addictions happen quick and they can be dangerous and they can take over your lives. You talk about happiness. If you don’t want to start something, you can’t stop.
1:04:23 Right. So that’s the rule I have. Yeah. And psychiatric medicine. And I already said I prescribe it and I’m really thoughtful when I do it.
1:04:36 But I also know it changes your brain to need it in order for you to feel normal. And that was probably your experience with addiction. That once you start down the road, pretty soon your brain has changed and now you need it to feel okay. Yeah, that’s exactly what happens. I think it was Axl Rose who said it in the Guns N’ Roses song.
1:05:02 I used to do a little until a little wouldn’t do it so the little got more and more. And so yeah. And you talk to addicts on the street and they’re doing their drugs not to get high just to feel normal for a few hours maybe and then they go back to this complete withdrawal. And I guess you’re saying that can happen with social media, with mobile devices, with fame, and anything else that you bring into your life that over triggers that dopamine. And yeah, I’ve been there. It gets dark.
1:05:30 And you want to drip dopamine, not dump it. Right. And it’s when you dump it, you need more and more to get the same response. You talk about happiness and you talk about the seven lies of happiness. I thought it was really interesting, kind of what you say on there.
1:05:49 Just curious your thoughts on happiness for people out there because a lot of times I think we think about it only in one way. So yeah, what are your thoughts there? I love what Dennis Prager said. Happiness is a moral obligation. So growing up Roman Catholic, I was an altar boy, Catholic school for nine years, I never heard that.
1:06:18 I think my life was sort of run by should and shaming and guilt. But I love that concept so much. Happiness is a moral obligation. Why? Ask anyone who was raised by an unhappy parent or married to an unhappy spouse or raising an unhappy child, whether or not happiness is an ethical issue.
1:06:43 And I guarantee you, they’ll say yes, because of how we impact other people. And there’s a neuroscience to happiness. When I was writing my book, You Happier, I took 500 consecutive patients and gave them the Oxford happiness questionnaire. And then I looked at their brains and the healthier your frontal lobes were, the happier you were. Another reason not to let children hit soccer balls with their forehead or play tackle football.
1:07:20 And we haven’t talked about my NFL study, I don’t think. But I’ve scanned and treated 350 NFL players and that four times the level of depression is the general population. And you got to go, now these are some of the most successful people on the planet. Why would they have four times the level of depression? Because of the frontal lobe injuries that they would have.
1:07:52 And so the healthier your brain, the happier you’re going to be. And then know the lies and know the secrets of happiness. So for example, drip dopamine, don’t dump it. So you realize hedonism is the enemy of happiness because you’re dumping dopamine, fame is the enemy of happiness because you’re dumping dopamine, pornography because you’re dumping dopamine, drug abuse because you’re dumping dopamine. So I’m like, drip dopamine.
1:08:36 So I look throughout my day for the micro moments of happiness. Connecting with you makes me happy. Holding my wife’s hand, making her decaf cappuccino in the morning, that makes me happy. Going for a drive, that makes me happy. And I like the idea of habits.
1:09:06 Like every day I start my day with today is going to be a great day. And then as I look through my schedule, what are the things I’m most excited about today? But my favorite one, and actually today would have been my dad’s 94th birthday, is when I go to bed at night, I ask myself, what went well today? I actually go on a treasure hunt. So when I go to bed, I say a prayer.
1:09:38 And then I go, what went well? And I start at the beginning of the day. And I go sort of hour by hour, looking for what I liked about the day. And the negative stuff will pop up, and I just brush it away because that’s not the point. I mean, I’ll deal with that.
1:09:55 It’s whatever, but not now. The point is to set my dreams up to be more positive. And why I thought about my dad when he died three years ago. And the night he died, it was an awful day, a terrible day. The night I went to bed, I said a prayer.
1:10:22 And then I went, what went well today? And then the supervisor in my head went, seriously? We’re going to do that today? But I’ve been doing it for 10 years. And so I do it, right?
1:10:36 Your brain is lazy. It does what you allow it to do. And so because that was my habit, I thought of an interaction between my mom and the police officer that quite frankly was hysterical. And then I thought about all the people who texted me, love. And then I thought about holding his hand before the mortuary took him away.
1:11:01 And I just remembered how soft it was. And then I went to sleep. Because I’m disciplining happiness and the right habits in my life so that even during the darkest day of my adult life, I can be okay. Super powerful. I’m learning some very new things here today.
1:11:24 So I really appreciate this, Dr. And talking about a lot of these things for over a decade, and I like this, dripping, the dripping dopamine is really powerful. I want to ask you about some substances and get your thoughts on these. I’m going to list maybe five or six of them. I’d love for you to tell me the real truth according to you.
1:11:42 Alcohol. We touched on it before. Like you said, for 20 years people would bring up the study that a glass of wine was good for you every single day. I’m in Britain where it’s literally part of the fabric of society where it’s being pushed on you left, right, and center. Does the alcohol belong in the human body?
1:12:00 And how do you tell people that? It’s a lie.
1:12:07 The American Cancer Society, they used to get funding from the alcohol industry. The American Cancer Society came out in 2021 against any alcohol because they said any alcohol increases your risk for seven different types of cancer. Alcohol is a disinfectant. Jim Beam actually turned its whiskey plants into hand sanitizer plants. Why would you put a disinfectant in your body?
1:12:37 Alcohol is responsible for so much in the way of suffering. I see as a psychiatrist, plus it prematurely ages your brain. I’m not a fan of anything that takes control out of your mind. I don’t want anything controlling me. Plus it tastes terrible.
1:12:59 Anything, you know, because it’s poison. And you have to, oh, I have to get used to it, or I have to put sugar and salt with it. It’s like, no, it’s poison. Why does my wife put alcohol on your skin before she gives you a shot? Because it kills the bugs.
1:13:15 How many bugs do you have in your gut? 100 trillion. You’re really going to disrupt your microbiome, the five pounds of bugs you have in your body by drinking alcohol. It’s just a bad idea. Yeah, I mean, if you look at the A&E, which is kind of our emergency room statistics in Britain and like all the death and destruction that happens from drunk driving to just the behavior people have when they’re on it.
1:13:43 I mean, it’s, they always say alcohol and drugs, but alcohol is probably, it’s the most dangerous drug on the planet and always has been, right? Pretty much. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, the first story of alcohol in the Bible was a bad story.
1:13:58 Caused intense. It was about Noah getting drunk after the flood and caused intense family drama. Yeah. It’s fascinating. Now that I’m out of it, I look at the way it’s sold to us.
1:14:12 It’s just fascinating. The whole wine industry and the whole nonsense storytelling that goes beyond that and the thing, the wines and the vintages or the premium brands and the stories they put in the logos on the thing. And you said the fruits that you have to put into it so you can get it past your palate that knows better. I mean, it’s just this fascinating, fabricated lie to con you into doing something that is terrible for you. And once people can see that, you could probably start looking for it in other places in your life as well.
1:14:44 But it’s fascinating how it’s developed and it’s really dangerous, isn’t it? During the Super Bowl, there were 30 beer commercials. I’m just like, I mean, when you look at the world through my eyes, you just see the shit show. And you wonder, you know, if people’s eyes aren’t open, how they survive. Because they’re certainly not thriving.
1:15:12 Alcohol does not increase thriving. And that’s what I want. I want to thrive. Yeah. Marijuana, the advocates said for many decades that it was good for sleeping, for decreasing tension, for relaxing, for stretching the body.
1:15:31 CBD had all these benefits. And then it was starting to be legalized in all these states and now it’s recreational. I have people that visit New York City and they say, you can’t walk down the block without seeing it, smelling it, having it sold to you. Is marijuana good for you and where are we right now when it comes to its ubiquity? Well, it’s everywhere and I’m not a fan.
1:15:58 And I never have been. When I first started looking at the brain, people’s brains looked older. So I published this study. It’s the largest imaging study ever published on 62,454 scans. We looked at how the brain ages.
1:16:18 Little kids have really busy brains, sort of stabilizes around 25, and then after 65 it tends to get less and less active. I hate that part. And then we looked at what accelerates aging. So we have all of these factors that we get on our patients, smoking, drinking, different psychiatric diagnoses. And schizophrenia was the worst.
1:16:46 Schizophrenia accelerated aging pretty dramatically. Surprise, the second worst was marijuana. Virtually every area of the brain was lower in activity and blood flow. And we know it disrupts development. And because of legalizing marijuana in Durango, Colorado, there was an increase of 1,700% babies born with marijuana in their system.
1:17:25 And we know it disrupts myelinization. So myelinization is a very important process that happens in the brain. When we’re born, we don’t have much myelin in our brain. But myelin is a white fatty substance that wraps neurons. And so it wraps, insulates neurons, brain cells, and makes them faster and more efficient.
1:17:56 And when we’re born, we don’t have much myelin. Around two months, the back part of our brain becomes myelinated. And we begin to see better, which is why when you smile at a newborn, they don’t smile back. But when you smile at a two-month-old baby, they smile back at you. Well, myelinization goes from the back and slowly comes forward.
1:18:18 And the front part of your brain myelinates when you’re about 25. So you’re really not an adult when you’re 18, right? Those of us who remember when we were 18 or have 18-year-old children, we know they’re sort of baby adults. So take a 15-year-old. Make them believe doing marijuana is fun, it’s cool, it’s innocuous.
1:18:43 What you’re doing is you’re taking their brain that is under construction and you’re throwing poison in it. It’s a bad idea. We want to do everything we can to enhance development, not damage it. And so prematurely aging, as I mentioned before, teenagers who use increased risk of anxiety, depression, and suicide in their 20s, it’s a shit show. And brand new study out just a couple of weeks ago, they looked at smokers versus…
1:19:22 So cigarette smoking versus marijuana smoking, lung damage was worse in marijuana smokers. Wow, because that’s the other thing. And then you add vaping to it, nicotine. Well, that’s now more addictive. And it’s hard to go places where you don’t see people vaping.
1:19:48 I don’t know if that’s true in the UK, but it’s certainly true here in the United States. Yeah, and so you don’t like vaping because you get even more intense chemicals and nicotine is even more addictive and other things go in those vape liquids. And nicotine and caffeine and marijuana all decrease blood flow to the brain. Like I talk about brain envy, you want to have brain envy. You want to have blood flow envy.
1:20:17 And when people, sort of a fun fact for me, people who get on our brain health program, their sex lives get better because if you have blood flow problems anywhere, they’re everywhere. And so I don’t know if you know, but 40% of 40-year-olds have erectile dysfunction. 50% of 50-year-olds, 60% of 60-year-olds, 70%. And I’m like, I’m going to be 69 in a couple of months. I’m like, no, I’m not okay with that.
1:20:46 So the good things I do for my brain also help my love life. You mentioned caffeine in passing. Most people are addicted to caffeine. I always, I have a course called The Life Accelerator and I say Starbucks are basically just drug dealers. They deal drugs, chiefly sugar, and the other one is caffeine.
1:21:07 But how do you feel about coffee and caffeine? Do people need to stay away from them? They have some, this is where you get a lot of hate probably, but how do you feel? I get so much hate, but I also get a lot of love. I think be very careful with it.
1:21:23 You don’t want to start something, you can’t stop. And clearly, if people are drinking more than a normal-sized cup a day, they begin to have withdrawal if they don’t use it. Yeah, Michael Pollan, who’s been on the show, wrote a great book about caffeine. It’s worth reading. And then writing the book, he came off of caffeine.
1:21:45 And I think for the last 30 days and when he had that cup, it was like kind of a psychedelic experience. But people don’t realize how addicted they are to caffeine. It’s serious. They don’t because so many people are living an unconscious life. And I think, you know, whenever I do something, I ask myself, is this good for my brain or bad for it?
1:22:14 And I want to, I am happier. I am more successful when I’m doing the right things for me. I know a lot of people go, I’ll be successful when, and I used to be in that trap. I’ll be successful when I get out of the army, when I get into medical school, when I get the residency I want, when I, you know. And it’s the wrong way to look at it because it’s misery.
1:22:47 It’s sort of like competition. You know, I’ll be happy when I beat you. That’s a prescription for misery. It’s I am successful when I am doing. I am successful.
1:23:00 And then just finish the sentence. I am successful when I’m doing the right things for my health. Because that’s what makes me happy. Yeah. You have a great line in the book, I think, where you say, when you go to eat a food, does the food love me?
1:23:17 The way that I would love the food. Is it love me back? I think is what you say. Is it going to love me back? That was a fascinating way to think about that.
1:23:25 And maybe the next time someone goes to grab something, is that going to love you back? Most of it’s not. I was just wondering if you could speak on that. Well, have you ever been in a bad relationship? Yes.
1:23:37 Me too. And I’m not doing it anymore. I’m like married to my best friend. And I work hard to take care of my relationship with her. I love her and she loves me back.
1:23:52 I’ve also been in bad relationships with food. Where I love Rocky Road ice cream. But it clearly doesn’t love me back. I only want to love food and things I drink that I love. Like I make this amazing lemonade that I love.
1:24:19 You know, squeeze a lemon, put some sparkling water in it, a little bit of chocolate stevia. It’s a company I like called Sweet Leaf. I have no financial interest in them, except I buy a lot of their stuff. And I love it and it loves me. So whatever I eat, whatever I drink, does it serve my health?
1:24:47 Or does it steal from my health? And people go, oh, that’s hard. I’m like, no, being sick is hard. Or that’s boring. It’s not boring, because I get what I want.
1:25:00 I mean, when you ask yourself, Brian, what do you really want? For me, I want energy. I want memory. I want clarity. I want connection.
1:25:12 And I want purpose. And so does this food or does this drink love me? Does it serve me or am I a victim of the food industry that made Doritos with the perfect meltiness, crunchiness, aroma? Yeah. I’m not being hijacked for their financial gain and for my illness.
1:25:49 Yeah. There’s so much frighteningly engineered food out there that is not delivering anything good for you. A couple of final questions, doctor. I have young boys. They’re turning six and seven this year.
1:26:02 And I was wondering what your thoughts are for big picture things when raising young kids like that. I have a new book coming out next year with Charles Fay called Raising Mentally Strong Kids. I think teaching them. So play this game with them. Because at this age, they are plenty moldable.
1:26:35 When my daughter was two, she and I played this game. We called it Chloe’s game. What are their names? Damon and Caden. Yeah.
1:26:46 So it could be Damon’s game or Caden’s game. And I’m like, it’s good for your brain or bad for it. So if I said blueberries, she would go, are they organic? Because nonorganic blueberries hold more pesticides than almost any fruit. And I’m like, of course they’re organic.
1:27:05 She’d go two thumbs up God’s candy. If I said avocados, she’d go two thumbs up God’s butter. If I said hitting a soccer ball with your head, she would roll her eyes at me and go, are you stupid? Brain is soft skull is hard. So I think just planting brain health is so important.
1:27:31 As a parent, I often think the first thing is to have clarity. What kind of parent do I want to be and what kind of child do I want to raise? You have to tell your brain what you want. Otherwise, you repeat what your parents did. Or if you didn’t like it, you do the opposite of what they did and end up raising spoiled kids.
1:27:57 And if you’re successful, that’s a big risk, is raising entitled children. And so I want to be clear and present and firm, the big two words with parenting, firm and kind. And I want to raise responsible, competent, happy people, which means I don’t do too much for them. Parents who have low self-esteem often get their self-esteem by telling kids how to think rather than asking them to solve problems. So just one example.
1:28:44 My wife was struggling with the same daughter. And I’m like, you’ve already done second grade. It’s her homework to do, get out of the fight. And so she listened to a program I love called Parenting with Love and Logic. And she announced to Chloe, she said, I did second grade.
1:29:06 I’m never going to ask you to do your homework again. And Chloe’s eyes got really big. And she stormed off, and she came back. And her mother never asked her to do her homework again because she held the anxiety and the consequences. If she didn’t, when the price was cheap, right?
1:29:28 If she didn’t go out to recess in second grade because she didn’t return her homework or the teacher was mad at her, that’s a cheap price. Versus parents doing too much, and children don’t pay the consequences until they’re in high school or college. And then the most important thing is modeling. But I get hate for this, but I wrote an article on how to make your child a Republican, a Democrat, or anything you want. And I’m dead serious about it.
1:30:07 You want your children to pick your values? Two things. Special time. Spend 20 minutes a day with each of them alone doing something they want to do. And during that time, no commands, no questions, no directions. It’s just time to bond.
1:30:26 Because if you’re bonded to them, they pick your values. If you’re not bonded to them, they’ll pick the opposite values just to piss you off. And during that time, practice active listening. That when they say something, don’t give them your opinion. Just repeat it back and shut up.
1:30:47 And they’ll talk themselves through whatever is going on. Time and listening is magic for parenting. Wow. Yeah. I already like what you’re saying, and I already need to be doing more of that.
1:31:03 So look, we could talk all day. This is fascinating IP. It’s really, really powerful. The book is Change Your Brain Every Day. Just how do people get in touch with you?
1:31:14 Do I need to get a brain scan from you next to go down this path? And then also, final thoughts from you. People can find us at amenclinics.com. Amen like the last word in a prayer. Imagine growing up with that last name, amenclinics.com.
1:31:31 Follow me on Instagram at doc underscore amen or on TikTok at docamen. Yes, you should get a brain scan. You’ve been bad to your brain, and now you’re better. So odds are it’s much better. But how do you know unless you look?
1:31:49 So, I mean, that just takes it to a different level. And I’m trying to create a revolution, and you’re a revolutionary, so I would just love to recruit you to this mission of ending mental illness. Great. I’m in, Doc. I really appreciate you talking about this, but I appreciate more that you’re specific about the language and that you have action steps people can take, again, in your four circles, so it’s not just one vertical.
1:32:24 So many people have recognized. I mean, I just listened to a Senate hearing yesterday where they’re talking about the ills of social media, but they don’t have any solutions. So they’re not addressing maybe the symptoms or the core issues. They’re just maybe they’re just addressing a symptom. And you seem to really thought this through, and it really resonates with me.
1:32:44 So very much appreciate what you’re doing. I recommend everyone get a copy of this book and look into this further and tell me where to go in London. I’ll get a brain scan and we’ll continue this journey. Great. Thanks, Ryan.
1:32:56 All right. Thanks so much. And thanks, everybody. We’ll see you next time on London Real. Bye.
