Beat Depression Naturally: The Hidden Science of BDNF, Sound, and Movement | Dr. Drew Ramsey

If you're going to spend an hour in a spin class under floresome lights with somebody yelling at you to stand up and sweat versus an hour at Burning man dancing, I'll take the Burning man dancing every single time. And it's probably better for my brain, right?

Someone who doesn't pick up a little ukulele or guitar or sit down on the piano or sing in the car with themselves. I think it's like a missed opportunity of a really powerful neuroplastic tool which is using more music in our lives.

You might think there's something wrong with your brain, and maybe that's because someone wants you to think there is.

Radical truth. We have a mental health epidemic on our hands.

Studies show that people today are more anxious, more distracted, and more exhausted than ever. And it's not an accident your food hijacked, your neurotransmitters manipulated your mental health. A billion dollar industry that doesn't want you to ask the right questions. Dr. Jude Ramsey has spent decades inside the system and now he's exposing it. The real reason depression rates have doubled and why the standard treatments aren't working. How food, movement and connection can rewire your brain without a prescription. The psychedel pharmaceuticals and brain hacks that actually work and the ones that are pure marketing. This isn't just about mental health. It's about mental sovereignty. Because if you don't own your mind, the world will rent it out. Your thoughts create your reality. So what reality will you choose to build?

I don't need you to exercise for 150 minutes a week to beat clinical depression. I'd like you to go dancing this Friday night because there are some interesting studies looking at movement. All movement is great.

What does it do to your brain? You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey. Is it true that only crazy people become psychiatrists?

No, I don't think that's necessarily true. I mean, I think by crazy you mean like struggling with their feelings or struggling with, you know, their thoughts. I think to, you know, some extent, usually a lot of us, there are people in your life, in your family, that influence or inspired you. Or based on seeing people struggle with their mental health, that led you into the field. And then I think, Dave, if we're honest, I think let's just be honest together. Mental health now. And the reason this book is out is that it's something we all have to be thinking about differently. Like, there are a lot of debates. Appreciate some of those debates, a lot of evidence. But some of the simple stuff about what's eroding our mental health. Not to deny all the cool new stuff. There's a lot of new science in the book, but simple stuff that we're missing. It's a huge problem. It's something that people have to start addressing really today. And so, you know, I think everybody right now, when we think about what are the major symptoms, like what are the major conditions in America, right? Anxiety disorders. 40 million Americans, I think everybody over the past five years has felt more anxiety, fearfulness, insecurity. Um, so we look at, you know, things like mood, like depression in teens. We go from 8% when I finished residency, like 22,004, up to 14% of teens now 1 in 20, or, I'm sorry, now 20%. So 1 in 5. So, you know, there's. There's a lot we need to do to attend to our mental health. But I think to your question, all of us in mental health care about people who are struggling with their mental health. They're, in a lot of ways are most vulnerable because when your reality testing is off, or when you have psychotic symptoms, or when you can't stop whatever it is, drinking, gambling, porn, it's horrible. And so getting help from somebody who has a sense of that, empathy for that, but, you know, that's what we in psychiatry are trained to do.

It's really cool seeing the arc of your books. And I love the idea of a nutritional psychiatrist because this kind of flies in the face of a lot of traditional psychiatry. Many years ago, when I was dealing with. It turns out I had substantial anxiety that I didn't understand because it had always been there. Very likely there's some genetic nutritional catecholamine things, but I also was born with a cord wrapped around my neck. So I had ptsd, like symptoms kind of running throughout my life until I did some deep healing work on that. And just the transformation that I've had is profound. And. And I also know that if you give me certain foods, I'm a dick. Like, my ability to regulate my emotions drops dramatically. And I thought I was nuts from this, especially in the early thousands, before I started writing about biohacking and all. And I read a book, and I wish I could remember its name. It was about a guy who was a psychiatrist, and he had three people who thought they were Jesus. And if he took them away from certain foods and from secondhand smoke, they stopped thinking they were Jesus because they were just having this strong brain inflammatory thing. This has to be back in the 60s. And I just Realized, oh, there's some environmental variables that are affecting my brain. So how much is the environment around us? We'll say the chemical environment around us affecting our psychiatry today.

So let's start with psychiatry as our internal chemical environment. There's a lot of debate around sort of chemical balance. And I'm a physician, I think it's all chemicals and molecules up there. That's my sense of it. And when you shift them and influence them, it changes how we feel, how we think. People have had a lot of experiences that the simplest one is probably alcohol, but that's an example, I think, of chemical balance. I think what you're describing and talking about is how we've shifted a lens in terms of how we think in psychiatry. And I think, think all of my books have really tried to help people think beyond very simple terms of mental health. Mental health is obviously, it's complex, like human consciousness. It's like, wow, what else does something that cool all the other parts of the body seems like you can find in Home Depot, right? Pumps, filters, right? But the brain, human consciousness. Generator in aisle 10. No, it's, it's so, it's really wonderful. It's wild. We get no education culturally in some ways how to care for it, especially again based on all this new science. So you're talking about cases, some of the, I think rare cases, but really great examples of where things like inflammation can cause psychotic symptoms. Dr. Fasano at Harvard and then Emily Deans, one of my colleagues in evolutionary psychiatry, sort of talked about this idea of like, hey there. For some people a lot more than others, there are sensitivities to certain things in our environments. People struggle with a variety of things besides gluten that cause inflammation. And so I try to get into that and use inflammation. There are three frameworks in healing the modern brain. Kind of ask everybody, like, hey, as you're a friendly psychiatrist, I want you to uplevel when I meet people and they're like, haha, Prozac. It's like, I'm very, very handy with Prozac. Great medicine if you use it right. But what I'm really, it is, it's like nobody thinks about proz.

I'm handy with Prozac. That's just a great quote. And for listeners with this audience, there are a lot of people who have a judgment against pharmaceuticals.

Dave, I want to hear your thought on this because I've seen some of your content about some pharmaceuticals you like, and I think it's really interesting.

It's like, look Guys, if you have a tool, it's just a tool. And if you have a shovel, like, you might cut some worms, right? You might get a sore back, but you could dig a hole, right? And there's nothing wrong with the shovel. You could also hit someone in the face with it. So it's how you use it and what are the risks and what are the benefits? So I have zero issues with any pharmaceutical drug whatsoever. I just don't like misuse of pharmaceuticals. I also don't like misuse of anything else. So to say I'm going to have restricted tools or I'm going to have a religious belief set that says I will not use pharmaceuticals to make my life better or to extend my longevity and or to increase my intelligence. I think it's shortsighted and it's like taking away technology. The same as that first caveman who's like, look, I found fire. And the guy next to him was like, oh, I'm not going to use fire. It's technology and that guy is extinct. And the other guys are great, great, great, great, great.

That's how you open up superhuman. Talking about thog who finds a fire. Fire. Fire can burn you. And, well, I think a lot of us maybe think of us, you and I, as on different ends of a spectrum in some way. And I realized as I was preparing for this that you and I both love farming and love animals. That was very clear. We both have families, we both care about science and technology. And I think you and I are both really in awe of how much there is to know, how much science is coming out, how much we're learning, and then how much there is potentially to do. So it's a really, I try to remind people it's an exciting time if you are contending with your mental health. And I know that's maybe not the best sound bite, but it's an exciting time because we know more, we have more. You know, when people ask me about antidepressant risk, I have more longer term data. And then I have 21, 22 years of prescribing myself along with my colleagues to get a sense of the best next steps. And so, you know, there's a lot of, when it comes again to these frameworks, neuroplasticity, that's like a new idea, right? Talk with me, let's do some mental fitness work. And remarkably, your brain grows more, your brain repairs more, and surprising stuff, right? In the book, one of the tenets of mental fitness is connection. We talk a lot about the Social isolation epidemic. As a clinician, I meet with people and as I'm listening I'm thinking about your kind of web of connection. I talk about this in the book and really encouraging people to get explicit. You, you know, Dave, I think we're the same age. I think you're, I'm about to turn 51. You're 51.

And so I'm, I'm actually 52, but I identify as being about 40 because that's my lab tests say that's what your lab.

What do you think my lab. What do you think my lab tests say? How am I doing?

You're looking pretty good, but I feel like you just aged me. It's kind of like when you gender someone, but you just aged me so well.

I think this is going to fun for us. I, I had this idea that we should meet every year because we're the same age and I do, you know, I, I follow my tenants, I, I eat, I sleep, I try and love, I try and be a healer. I try and think about my purses purpose. You know, I think I, I, I struggle like most people in certain ways. As you're saying, there are lots and lots of tools and how we assess these tools and think about these tools are something that you know, everybody's doing a little differently. I think one of the reasons I want to write about tenants is like these principles like I don't know, we all agree on. It's like simple country farm boy and me, like everybody knows sleep is good, everybody knows higher quality nutrition is good.

Could you imagine if we were around and it was say the 1950s, we'd be, oh, let's have some benzos. They're still doing ice pick lobotomies for people. And if you were anxious, you probably just needed to shut the f up. I mean it was, it was a completely different world. And we have people going, oh, it's so stressful. We have all of these amazing pieces of knowledge about how our environment affects our happiness. There's good research. You can get to the research without going to the library. And you can go into any of the AI models and say could you explain what this vitamin might do for my Whatever. And it'll just tell you without even having to go read my blog or read anything. And it's, it's the best time ever to be changing the state of your brain because everything you could possibly want can be found. And 25 years ago when my brain was failing, getting the knowledge and the information, it was very difficult. And I Did brain scans, did all this weird stuff and figured my stuff out. But it costs a lot of money and took a lot of time. And for most people listening, you could read something like your new book Healing the Modern brain. Here's a 10 things you need to know and how much each of them applies to you. You can figure that out.

I hope so. I mean that's the hope in the book is to explain a principle, a tenant and talk about the science of how it affects your brain. Quite specifically to share a few studies to think about ranging from the nutrition where people know me as one of the early nutritional psychiatrists, eat to be depression and anxiety was really a fun book to write to kind of share this new science. And for the first time in history ever, randomized clinical trials, our gold standard in medic. We have seven, eight, nine of them around how a Mediterranean style diet can help patients who have clinical depression, helping more than a third of them go into full remission. Particularly you know, the one I think you'd like is the Amend trial which was young men with depression in Australia. 36% of them went into full remission from their depression. And it was a small trial, but great trial. And 100% of them had some improvement. And it was only, it was only two counseling sessions. And so you know, you see data like that and then you see it reflected on the front lines. You're right here on my couches, you're sitting with patients and you throw in a few questions or I've got one of my young guys in New York will send me pictures when he cooks something nice for he and his girlfriend. And I mean you could see I always light up, right? It's like you got some 20 something guy and he's like, hey, here's, here's some nutrient dense food. Here's fish with a little pesto sauce. I mean it's really, it's fun to see how people again can take these, these ideas, apply them into their everyday life and then again learn some of this new science of how things like isolation and engagement and even going out in nature affect brain structure and brain function.

There's something a little scary and it's in the title of your book, is it Healing the Modern Brain? What does neuroimaging tell us about modern brains versus non modern brains?

Well, modern brains are up against a new set of challenges and I hope it's not too scary, but I wanted to sound a bit of an alarm as a psychiatrist. A lot of people don't want to ever meet me and they meet me usually at the worst moments in their life where someone's maybe convinced them they've hit rock bottom, maybe, or it's just finally come time. And I'm very handy in your corner. Well, before that, as are all my colleagues. There's a lot we know about mental fitness and prevention of mental health disorders. Just like physical health. I mean, everybody listening, especially your audience, everybody's got some stuff that, you know, you should be doing for your body, right? Whether it's your strength and building muscle, your flexibility, working your core. Everybody knows a bunch of exercises whether you're doing them or not. We don't have those same frameworks for our mental health. And so I want to be really specific. Hey, if you don't work on connection, let's look at the data. What happens to us? We're more isolated than ever, right? They estimate the health effects of being lonely or about the health effects of smoking three quarters of a pack a day.

Are you saying that if. If you have friends, people can start smoking and the risk won't change?

That's. No, I don't think that's quite how the number works, but I think. I think it's. I think it's a good question. It's like, no, we're smoking in a group. It's okay. It's okay. You know, I hope more than fear. I literally, like, empower people and move beyond. Again, there's a lot of debate in mental health. Meds. No meds. There's a lot of debate in mental health about diagnosis and psychiatry. And I treat patients. People are suffering. You need ideas and help around what to eat today at dinner. Most people are struggling with an ocean. You know, if you're not an exercise or runner, weightlifter. I have good advice for you in the book because I don't need you to exercise for 150 minutes a week to beat clinical depression. In fact, Dave and I'd like you to go dancing this Friday night because there are some interesting studies looking at, you know, movement. All movement is great. Exercise is great for our brain health and our mental health. But there is a study looking at types of movement, and it made lots of press, but I loved it. It showed that going dancing is one of these things that's really great for our mental health. It makes sense to. It always feels good to get out on the dance floor a little bit, usually with people. And so again, I hope expanding the notion of exercise to movement now, expanding some of our notions of what we need to do to take care Of Our health, again, addresses what you say. The scary part, the modern brain, folks, you're up against something differently or that you need to address differently. And I think everybody knows that. And we talk about the mental health epidemic. It's like Mental Health Awareness Month. Love it. Great. If you don't turn it into Mental Health Action Month, I. E. You are doing stuff for the mental health of yourself and your community. I think the awareness isn't translating into what it needs to. We've got to do more for our mental health.

It's funny. Another guest on the show who talks about neuroplasticity, my friend Lisa Wemberger. Every time she sees me, she's like, dave, you need to go do Zookeeper. Which is kind of like an ecstatic Brazilian interpretive dance thing. So it's on my to do list. And I will say, if you're gonna spend an hour in a spin class under floresome lights with somebody yelling at you to stand up and sweat versus an hour at Burning man dancing, I'll take the Burning man dancing every single time. And it's probably better for my brain, right?

Well, I've not been to Burning Man. I think there's probably a lot going on there that influences your brain. From what I've heard, a few things.

That increase neuroplasticity chemically.

That happens that it seems like. It seems people are often smiling when they leave. Except that year with all the mud. That. That seemed a little challenging. That's a lot. That was not a good comedown, I would say. Neuroplasticity, going dancing. Zook dances. Part of my. I've been influenced by great clinicians and really good friends and colleagues. And one on my team, Samantha L. Crief, Columbia trained social worker. We had a little office together in New York City on 73rd and Broadway. This very famous building in New York, the Ansonia. And we had this, like, secret little kind of studio office. And Samantha came in one morning, and she had a big smile on her face, kind of little glistening, and just looked extra happy. And I kept thinking, like, that was all, like, glitter on her cheek. And I was like, samantha, is there a little glitter on her cheeks? You know. Yeah, you caught me. I was at Daybreaker.

Oh, yeah.

And Samantha early influence helped. Helped me stop drinking about four years ago. Samantha's not drink. I hope I can say that for a long time. And there's a big sober dance party again to start the day. Dancing, moving, being together, being optimistic. And so one of these ways, I think when we pay Attention. We see people around us who have aspects of mental fitness, who can inspire us, who, when we're struggling, we can kind of hang on to a little bit to get to that next step.

And so I first heard about daybreaker, like, maybe 10 years ago. They have a rave that starts at sunrise, and it's totally sober, so it's circadian aligned, and no one's drinking. And I thought, this is kind of crazy, but we'd bring coffee to it, because these people definitely need coffee. And now Mickey, one of the founders of that, lives down the street from me here in Austin, we hang out, and it's a really powerful thing because the dancing and the movement and the community, especially with the sun rising, it does something to your brain. What does it do to your brain?

So a few things. When we're removing our body like that, we release things called myokines. I write about them in Healing the Modern Brain. And we talk a lot about endorphins. Endorphins are great. We talk about endocannabinoids, right? These are kind of if cannabis binds to a set of receptors in our brain, it's the endocannabinoid system. And then myokines also induce brain growth via bdnf. And so BDNF is kind of like master control molecule. I think everybody in the biohacking space knows a lot about bdnf. It's not a perfect biomarker, but I think about it as a very hopeful. I call it like the molecule of hope, which is, hey, whether you're having a senior moment or you want to learn Japanese next month, or you need to recover from a trauma. The tenant I get into in the book of unburdening, all of those are possible because of neuroplasticity. Your brain's ability to grow, heal, repair itself. And it's something again, when we think in that model, when we approach diet through the brain's the most important asset. What do we eat to best support brain health? We pick a different set of foods. Same thing. When we think about, again, moving instead of just being down on ourselves, that, you know, I can't bench, like, 325 or probably even 225. I mean, it's just not. But I move a lot. I skin up the mountain. I try to, you know, get out and be really active outside as much as possible. The idea that, you know, that that really counts, and that creates a lot of neuroplasticity. So, again, what is happening when Dave's out dancing Burning Man? Let's not who. Who knows exactly what is taken. We won't go over the other neuroplastic compounds, but the dancing, the moving, and then also the connecting. Right? Because usually when you're at these events, you're with other people, you're connecting, you're. You're feeling that humanistic sense that there are things that we all agree on. Music's good, dancing's good. So those are some of the ways that again, movement and specific dancing are. Then there's a music effect, right, which. Which is Also just again, 1. Screening questions or one of the things. When I think about the tenet of engagement, I'll ask people on a meeting. Tell me a little bit about your hobbies. And I'm listening for instruments, music, singing. And sometimes, you know, a lot of times you don't hear that in the modern world. And it's a sign for me something's going on. People stop listening to tunes, stop expanding their kind of lexicon of the music they're listening to. Someone who doesn't pick up a little ukulele or guitar or sit down on the piano or, you know, sing in the car with themselves. I just think it's. It's like a missed opportunity of a really powerful neuroplastic tool which is using more music in our lives.

How has the role of sex and relationships changed with the modern brain?

Well, sex has changed because the need for sexually explicit content is just. It's ubiquitous now. And so a lot of the young men and some young women I'm treating, you know, that. That kind of difference between meaningful conn and sexual stimulation. There's a lot of work some men have to do in kind of separating that there is such a quick dopamine and, you know, all the good feel chemicals. You can really end up locked in your room with a lot of pornography or a lot of chatting or a lot of video games. So I think that's certainly changed things. I work with a lot of young women and I was just out horseback riding with like a group of young women. So, you know, I try as a psychiatrist, I always like to like, listen, listen in to the young folks. And, you know, I hear a lot of things like people going out on dates and men just sort of talking, not listening. I think maybe that's not anything that's new. Relationships have changed. I think that the constructs have changed. You know, it's a little different here where I am in Wyoming, where not as much as shifted where when I was in New York, the kind of polyamory movement was taking off and people were kind of considering a lot of different relational constructs. So all that's kind of new and the part that's changed the most is the explicit talk about it and your ability to find information. And so I love what you highlight earlier of we know more about mental health. You want to learn about mental health and the privacy of your own home. You want to find some influencers with bipolar disorder who are really going to help you navigate things. It's easy to do at the search away, but you also have this where this endless information becomes in some ways another person in your relationship. My wife was on Reddit this morning and I like stuck my face in front of the phone. I was like, oh, I'm your favorite Reddit feed, aren't I? So it's, let's break this down. Dave, what's going on with sex in a relationship? I think we know more about sex, sexual desire, sexual pleasure. I absolutely love this movement going on right now where kind of my matriarchs, the sort of perimenopausal and menopausal women are kind of being recognized as like incredibly, I don't know the right way to say this, incredibly vivacious and hot. And there's something about the kind of power going on there I think is awesome. I'm a big fan. And so again, more explicit talk, more information, and then I think more interruptions. Right. I see a lot more people who, they do not think about the opportunity cost of optionality enough. And that part of a great relationship is the sorting out how to make it work and being there for someone and being in service and, you know, love doesn't always make sense in a way that I think is confusing in the modern world.

One of the most powerful things I've ever heard from a therapist was I said, well, there's no reason for me to be afraid right now. And she just laughed and said, fear's an emotion. It doesn't have to be logical. I'm like, ah. So I just put all of sex and relationships and the not very logical side of things. They can make sense and there's ways to navigate them in tools. But if you think that you're a meat robot and that there's a truth table for relationships, it doesn't feel like that's a functional way to exist.

I think it gets back to your question earlier of, you know, to mental health clinicians, to psychiatrists. Do we have to struggle with our mental health to be good? It's something sometimes my patients really want to know. It's like, hey, I'm really in a dark spot. Do you have any idea what this is like other than listen? And I think you're speaking about a place where that isn't often talked about and maybe a little misunderstood about therapy. Therapy usually starts when you get to the point of saying it. And a lot of people feel the saying of it, you know, like what you just said. I'm feeling fearful, but I don't have anything to be scared of. That actually doesn't in that moment necessarily change it. It starts the change. Right. It's the beginning of a set of awareness, it's the beginning of a path towards something. But I think it's one of those disapp. Pointing, pointing moments. In therapists. We have a big, in therapy, we have a big aha moment. And it doesn't necessarily always change how we feel.

That happens a lot. And I, I've spent a lot of time doing, you know, shamanic work and going to monasteries and hooking computers up to my head to figure out how to integrate those two. And I'm very happy with where I am now, where I, I can change how I feel and if I'm feeling uncomfortable about something, like there are tools to go in and well, why and what and how. And then how do I sit with that? And if you have a supportive community and relationships around you where you can talk about it instead of bottling it up, it feels like, like there's, there's a path and something that's really inspiring for me. So like we both said, we're about 50, right? So when we were teenagers, if you tried to share your feelings, you would probably get in a fistfight, right? Like that. That's not something that you would do as a 16 year old in the 80s or whatever.

I think I nearly got like picked on. So.

Yeah, but boy, I got picked on. But then I would pick back.

A little tougher than I am. I was raised in a house of nonviolence, so it was a little conflictual as a young man.

Depends on the, on the school you're going to as well. I went to a pretty tough school, so had a knife pulled on me and stuff, so. So I wouldn't recommend that. It's just that there's that aspect of the Clint Eastwood toughness. And I have a bunch of friends in their 30s in Austin here, and I watch how they communicate with each other in friend groups and with their partners and man, the ability to talk about emotional states and felt states and to Listen, I wish I'd had those skills when I was 30. Like I had to work on those. Is this a shift in society? Are just. Are younger people actually better at emotions than older people?

Yeah, I think that there's a lot more awareness. I see some of the young folks in my life, my cousin Max and Nate, these young guys have a crew of guys in their 30s around the country, maybe some college friends, some high school friends. And you can tell it's really important to them to keep the group checking in with one another to get together. It feels like there's a lot more explicit talk about things like mental health, diagnoses. You know, if you have adhd, your friends know it. You know, it's. If you're struggling with depression, maybe people check in a lot more people are concerned. So I do think there's a shift. It's been really a lot of fun for me to help out a little bit with that. Men's Health magazine has myself and Greg Scott Brown, a psychiatry colleague of mine, we've had this series, Friday Sessions, where we interview men about male mental health. And so we've interviewed 100, 150 men and women about male mental health. Like, what is it? How is it changing? And we hear a lot about this, right? More openness, more encouragement. I think some men experience this as a little bit of like a higher bar, you know, that there's a little more expected of you now, more listening, more thoughtfulness. You know, maybe, you know, do do a little therapy or if you're in Dave's camp, a little shamanic work maybe, but a sense of not. Not being in a relationship simply as a box full of need or as a protector if you're a man. As my publisher Karen said, you know, I don't need your paycheck and I don't need you to protect me, but I do have some needs. It's the first tenet, Dave. The first tenet. I ask everybody and I think it comes from working with a lot of young men. I'm really blessed in my practice. I get to see a lot of men that we think about self awareness and not with. We have to change everything about ourselves, but we do need to know and own more of who we are often, and that's really the beginning of mental fitness, is really identifying ways that all of us can do things like externalize, think about that. Our challenges and our problems lie outside of us, where so often. It's a very disempowering notion and I hope healing the modern brain really helps people see. Hey, I think there's a lot in your day to day that was within your control. And I think we can all agree if you attend to it, things can improve for your mental fitness and your mental health.

Let's get a little further into the book. If I'm feeling anxious or depressed, should I get a fecal matter transplant?

Well, Dave, I mean, I think of the people I know, and I mean, I just met you, but I think probably you maybe already have had a fecal matter transplant. You know, Dave's talking about this idea.

Just that one time at Burning Man.

It was just that one that you called it afterwards. Right. But the fecal matter transplant comes again from one of the women.

We have to pause for one second here. So you're unflappable because you're a psychiatrist and you interview people all the time. And I got you to stumble there for a second with that comment. So I just think, Dave, I mean.

You'Ve got me to stumble a few times in my life. My relationship with you is, as my team would tell you, is long. I've been thinking about you at this moment quite a bit. I learned about this interview. I kind of believe at this point there's a way that Jung observed that as we get older, as we approach transcendence, that more moments of synchronicity happen to us. More kind of strange things, things you couldn't ever anticipate. This happened to me in the middle of the pandemic. I went. I was on our farm in Indiana, and prior to that, I've been traveling back and forth to my practice in New York. And I was on the farm and I got invited to do video with the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. And the pandemic was clearing up. So I went and I'm going to a part of the city I never go to. And I've been in the city. This is like the first time. And I hear Dr. Ramsey, and I look and I see a woman that I don't know, and she's coming towards me. Maybe you've had these moments at our age. One of those moments are like, oh, who is this? And it's the wife of one of my patients. They've just gotten married. And I'm thinking, how is it, of all the places I could be in that moment, all the places she could be, we just sort of like bump into each other. And so you got me down this rabbit hole, Dave, of moments of synchronicity and how we age. And I don't actually Remember your question here? You're saying I'm unflappable psychiatrist. You know, I think you can.

I made an offhanded comment there about fecal matter transplants. And one thing I appreciate just when you first got on, you have a really smooth tone, like a professional voice. Your, your voice and your nervous system are well regulated, right? And you can pick that up. And so I, I dropped the random at Burning man thing and I just watched the gears in your brain go like, like not mesh properly for a second because it was so random and that was amusing and fun.

So anyway, well, you know, I, I think part of the gears you see turning is that the microbiome is to give one of these new ideas and it's one of the big lenses. I thought you were setting me up. It's one of the big lenses.

I was right.

But I see like, hey, yeah, you know, we think about neuroplasticity is when we've talked about, think about inflammation. Everybody's talking about inflammation. How does inflammation relate to your brain? Well, when all the alarms are going off in your body, they also are going off in your brain. You have a whole specialized immune system in your brain. Right. Your brain can't make pus and your brain can't swell. I mean, it can, but it's not a good idea.

If it does, you're in trouble.

Yeah, you're in real trouble. There's not a lot of room up there. So your brain's kind of always sensing and obviously wanting to be in a well regulated state with inflammation. That's not happening for a lot of people we know from the new science. Again, looking.