DAILY HACKS For Better Brain Health & Ending MENTAL ILLNESS | Daniel Amen

Blood flow is just such an important issue. It brings nutrients to cells and it takes away toxins. The biggest myth about brain health is you can't change it. So when I was in medical school, we were taught that you were born with all the brain cells you'd ever have and if you lose them, you're out of luck. And what we now know, that was completely false, that your brain actually makes new cells. every day and your behavior is either growing them or hurting them. So your behavior has a big impact on how healthy or unhealthy your brain is. So ADD or attention deficit disorder, also called ADHD, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, they're just different names for the same thing. And it affects probably 10% of the population. So most people who have it actually don't know that they have it, short attention span, distractibility, restlessness, disorganization for things like time and space, so their rooms tend to be a mess, they tend to be late, and impulse control issues. ADD is our research and many others lower activity in the front part of the brain. The front part of the brain is the brain's brake. It stops you from saying every stupid thought you have. And when it's low, people with ADD get themselves into trouble because they say things that might hurt someone else's feelings. They do things without thinking it all the way through. Now, all of us do that. at some point in life we didn't sleep, we had a bad day, but people have ADD, it's just been part of their life for most of their life. So people have ADD, I mean really it's anybody that's struggling with their mind should seek help when their symptoms are really beginning to interfere with their life. They're interfering with reaching their potential at school, at work, in relationships, or with their health. And the thing I love about what we do here at Amen Clinics is we actually look at people's brains. And yes, you can change them. I mean, that's the coolest thing. But when you optimize someone's brain, their schoolwork is better. their work is better, their relationships are better, and people begin to get toward their potential, which really makes them happy. So when I first started looking at the brain in 1991, I thought ADD was one thing. And there's already published research then that ADD was low activity in the frontal lobes. But the more clearly ADD people I sent, the more I realized it wasn't one thing in the brain. and initially I made four subtypes based on the imaging work and then it was five and then it was six and recently we added a seventh type. And the important thing about that is if you give everybody Ritalin, two of the types get better, five of them get worse, which is why Ritalin has a bad reputation for the right type. Amazing for the wrong type. It's a nightmare. So blood flow is just such an important issue. Blood is essential to life. It brings nutrients to cells and it takes away toxins. So without adequate blood flow, you're in trouble. And the imaging study we do here at Amen Clinics is called SPECT, single photon emission computed tomography. And it's a study of blood flow. It looks at blood flow to the brain. And the number one brain imaging predictor of Alzheimer's disease is low blood flow. And when you don't get adequate blood flow, brain cells start to suffer. Many of them start to die and it can cause lots of problems. I often talk about brain envy. You know, if you really want to get your brain really healthy, It's really simple. It's three things. Brain envy, you gotta care about it. Avoid bad, anything that hurts it, do good. Engage in regular brain healthy habits. But then as I started to think about blood flow, I'm like, well, it's the same thing. Really, it's blood flow envy. You want to love your blood vessels and take care of them because if they're struggling, your brain is gonna struggle. So, blood flow envy, avoid anything that hurts them. Caffeine constricts blood flow. Nicotine constricts blood flow. Having high blood pressure, low blood flow, because it's harder to get through. Heart disease, I mean, your heart's this magnificent pump, so keeping your heart healthy. Exercise. and one of the horrifying statistics about blood flow, 40% of 40-year-olds have erectile dysfunction. That's blood flow. Do you know what that means? If you have blood flow problems anywhere, it likely means they're everywhere. 40% of 40-year-olds have brain dysfunction. 70% of 40-year-olds have of 70-year-olds have erectile dysfunction, which means 70% of them will also have brain dysfunction. So if you have erectile dysfunction, you want to be serious about reversing that. So how do you do that? Love the supplements, ginkgo and vinpocetine. The prettiest brains I've ever seen take ginkgo. exercise, incredibly healthy, and beets. Beets, you know, they have a compound in them, nitric oxide, that helps increase blood flow. So food is medicine or it's poison. And having worked with Dr. Hyman on the Daniel Plan, I mean, foods just... It's the number one thing to get right if you want your brain and body, right? Because, you know, we're eating constantly. And so I'm a huge fan of smart calories. But it's not just any calories, right? You can go on an 800-calorie Twinkie diet and you will lose weight, but you'll also increase your risk for inflammation, heart disease, dementia, depression, and cancer. So So let's just get this clear. I think calories matter, but you need to make them high quality calories. Water is absolutely critical. 70% of our body is water. 80% of our brain is water. So being properly hydrated is critical. And then clean protein is essential. I actually think you should have protein at every meal because it helps to balance your blood sugar, but you want it clean. That means things like hormone free, antibiotic free, free range, grass fed. Healthy fat, I'm a huge fan of fat. 60% of the solid weight of your brain is fat. If someone calls you a fat head, say thank you. Carbohydrates are really important. They're essential to life, but we call them, I want you to eat smart carbs. So these are carbs that are loaded with nutrients and fiber, but low glycemic carbs, which means carbs that don't raise your blood sugar, because high blood sugar levels are a terrible predictor of premature aging and Alzheimer's disease. And so think colorful carbs, berries and red bell peppers, orange bell peppers, carrots and kill the sugar before the sugar kills you. And then what I like to do, what we like to do here at Amen Clinics is actually put people on an elimination diet because there are just so many people who are sensitive to dairy, to wheat, to corn, to soy. I have one guy, he was had multiple suicide attempts and was very sad. And those are often the patients we see here at Amen Clinics. People failed other people. And he went on an elimination diet and immediately felt better. It was like, wow, you know, I've like taken all these meds, they didn't help, the elimination. And then we added one thing back at a time to see if there was something he was sensitive to. 20 minutes after we added back corn, he had his first suicidal thought. It's like, Whoa. So he broke up with corn. So you want to know what you're sensitive to. I wrote a book called the Brain Warrior's Way with My Wife. And we argue in the book, the real weapons of mass destruction are highly processed, pesticide sprayed, high glycemic, low fiber, food-like substances stored in plasticized containers. that are destroying the health of America, with two-thirds of Americans overweight, nearly 40% obese, and food, and the fake food we serve people, is a huge cause of this national epidemic. And I published two studies that showed as your weight goes up, the actual physical size and function of your brain goes down. It's the biggest brain drain in the history of the United States. and it's not okay because my babies, my grandbabies will never be able to afford the tsunami of illness coming our way. So food is one of the most important interventions, but whenever we think of people here at Amen Clinics, we always think of people in four circles. So we look at their biology. So that's where diet comes in. It's also where the scans come in, and also where have you had a head injury? comes in there. We look at their psychology, how they think. We look at their social circle, who do you hang with? Because people are contagious. You become like the people you spend time with. And there's a spiritual circle, which is why are you on the planet? What is your deepest sense of meaning and purpose? So whenever we intervene with someone, we have biological interventions, food, exercise, nutrients, psychological interventions, learn to not believe every stupid thing you think, thoughts lie, they lie a lot. They're social interventions, who do you hang out with? Let's assess that. And their spiritual interventions, why do you care? And when we use those four circles, people get better. I had a really hard day at work. I saw four suicidal people, that's a lot for a psychiatrist. Two couples who hated each other and two teenagers who'd run away from home. I went home feeling worn out and I came home to an ant infestation in my house. There were thousands of them. And I remember as I'm getting the ant spray and cleaning up all the ants, I began to think, my patients are infested with ants, automatic negative thoughts. I have to bring ant spray to work the next day. And so I did, put it on the coffee table and I started talking to people about we need to kill the ants. And they liked that. And so I got rid of the ant spray because it's toxic and I found an ant puppet. and an anteater puppet. And I started playing with the kids I see, because I'm also a child psychiatrist, but also the adults. And ultimately it's come down to here's the exercise. Whenever you feel sad or you feel mad or nervous or out of control, I want you to write down what you're thinking. Just write it down. And then you ask yourself, Is it true? Can I absolutely know that it's true? How does the thought make me feel? Who would I be without it? We turn it around to the opposite. And research has shown that this one simple technique, learning how to not believe every stupid thing you think, is as effective as antidepressant medication. that it helps people lose weight. It improves their work productivity and improves their relationships. I see this LPGA golfer who I love. She's awesome. And when I first saw her, she was very depressed. I would spend hours a day crying. And she's just the most disciplined person, except when it came to her mind. No one had ever taught her, and she's like 40 years old, no one had ever taught her to not believe every stupid thing you think. And when she started journaling and questioning and correcting the negative thoughts that were going through her head, she's not been depressed for over a year. And, I mean, yes, I could have given her four antidepressants and then all the side effects that go with that. But I have this little thought in my head, First do no harm. You know, what's the least toxic thing I can do is teach you to discipline your mind. And that's really helpful. So here at Amen Clinics, we see little kids and old people and everybody in between. I think what we're famous for is brain imaging. We do a study called brain spect imaging that looks at blood flow and activity and helps us to guide treatment. We do another imaging study called quantitative EEG that looks at the electrical activity in the brain. But once you have the map, it's like, well, how do you change it? you know, we'll use medicine if it's appropriate, but we also love natural treatments. Hyperbaric oxygen is one of the mainstays of our treatment for people who have low activity in their brain. There's another one called Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation using powerful magnets to stimulate or calm certain areas of the brain depending on what we see on the scans. We also do neurofeedback, which helps change the electrical activity patterns. We do hypnosis, we do psychotherapy and family therapy. We have a new treatment we're really excited about called ketamine infusions using a dissociative drug that has actually been found to rescue many people who are in suicidal states. I mean, really helpful for resistant depression and other things. We also have integrative medicine services. A long time ago, I realized you really can't divorce your brain from your body. So if your thyroid's not right, your brain's not going to be right. If you have a toxic load, your brain's not going to be right. so we offer integrative medicine services too. We also have another very cool treatment called microcurrent treatment. It's called the EquiScope. It helps with pain and you give low-volt microcurrent electricity into joints or into areas of pain and it helps You feel better? And one of my friends, Mark Victor Hansen, who's the author of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, he said, Daniel, you have to learn about this. And I'm like, people do this to me all the time. It's like, leave me alone. He's like, no, you have to hear about this. And my knees were hurting. I played football in high school, and in college, intramural football, I tore my ACL. And I've always struggled with knee pain. And I had it operated on and it was acting up again and I'm like, okay, I need to get surgery, get a knee replacement, something. I'm tired of being in pain. And I met the guy who promotes EquiScope and for 90 minutes he worked on my knee. and I had no pain. And I could run. And I'm like running up and down the stairs, the hallway, and I'm like, no. Because, you know, I don't think of myself as a placebo responder. You know, I, you know, maybe I am.

But.

After that, the next day, I went on a plane to Italy, and I got one of the Airbnb apartments. I'm like thinking, you know, I'm not going to stay at a fancy hotel. I'm going to be on the community. 72 steps up. I'm like, by the end of this trip, my knees are going to be trashed and I'm going to be on serious drugs. I'm going to be strung out, I'm sure. No pain. And I must have walked 10 miles every day and three times up and down those stairs. And so I'm like, okay, I'm paying attention. And so we also use the microcurrent therapy here. So if somebody's interested, when it comes to brain imaging, we're better than anyone in the world. We've done 130,000 scans on people from 111 countries. I mean, literally people come from all over the world to see us. Yes, you can get a spec scan. in Ohio or in Massachusetts, but no one with our experience. Hyperbaric oxygen, there are people that do that all over the country, all over the world. Neurofeedback, there are many great people. The thing that makes us special is we do scan-guided treatment. Almost everyone who's got a brain issue, or a mental health issue, no one's looking at their brain. And I've been doing this a long time. That's crazy, right? I know, I'm a psychiatrist. I'm not supposed to call things crazy. That is just fricking crazy. You've heard it said, a picture is worth a thousand words. But a map is worth a thousand pictures. A map tells you where you are. and it gives you direction on how to get to where you want to go. Without a map, you're lost. And virtually 100%, I mean almost, of people, if they're homicidal, if they're suicidal, if they're losing their memory, if they're depressed, if they're failing in their marriage or at school, no one's looking at their brain. They're looking at the symptoms And then they're diagnosing and treating them based on symptom clusters. And that's just stupid. There is no other specialty in medicine, not one, that treats people without biological data, not one. And so we've made it our goal to try to change how psychiatric medicine is practiced. by adding imaging, that's the first thing. And then natural ways to heal the brain, because as soon as they started looking at people's brains, they were taking Xanax or they're on opiates, their brains look terrible. And I'm like, well, what are the natural things we can do? Which is what always connected me with Dr. Hyman. So a long time ago, I realized that nobody wants to see a psychiatrist. No one wants to be labeled as defective or crazy or abnormal, but everybody wants a better brain. So what if mental health was really brain health? And we just believe that. I mean, it's so clear to us when your brain works right, you work right. And when your brain is troubled, for whatever reason, you have trouble in in your life. And so if we can actually see it as an organ that we can evaluate and optimize, well, who wouldn't want that? Rather than so many of the people, initially they come here and their parents are like, well, I can't get them there, because they say they're not crazy. And it's like, tell them crazy or not, that's not the issue. The issue is we want them to have a better brain, because with a better brain, their life is better. if you have someone in your life that's depressed, depression is one of the most treatable illnesses on the planet. And so the important thing is to give them information and give them hope. I have a 14-minute TED Talk. It's got almost 4 million views. It's called the Most Important Lesson from 83,000 Scans. So I did it three years ago. And It just inspires people. It gives them hope. It gives them an alternative to where they are. Stop telling them not to feel bad because they feel bad. Stop telling them to count their blessings because they've probably done that. You have to know why they're depressed. So like ADD has many different types. so does depression. Some brains work way too hard, some brains don't work hard enough, and so you have to know what you're dealing with so you can properly target treatment. So we know that if you have depression in girls, females, it doubles their risk of Alzheimer's disease. So the chronic stress hormones associated with depression, with the negativity, with the sadness, the tearfulness can actually damage some of the circuits in your brain. If you're a guy and you have depression, you have four times the risk of Alzheimer's disease. Some people actually think it's a precursor to dementia. The quality of your thoughts really matter. We did a study here on appreciation. So I scanned a psychologist who was writing a book called the Power of Appreciation. And she focused on what she loved about her life and her brain looked awesome. And I'm like, well, you have to do the opposite so that we can compare. And so I had her think about what she was afraid of. what was negative in her life and it completely deactivated her frontal lobes, so the judgment center of her brain, completely deactivated her temporal lobe, which is where Alzheimer's disease starts, and it dropped out her cerebellum, which is the processor in the brain. So moment by moment, thoughts matter and if you tend to be depressed, you tend to have way more negative thoughts than people who aren't. So growing up, I got beaten up virtually every day of my life until I was about six. I had an older brother that has ADHD. He wouldn't be still at all, and he decided it was fun to pick on me. So I was an anxious kid. Now at six, he decided, I'm a better playmate than I am a punching bag, and we've been great friends ever since. And every chance I get to beat him in tennis, I do. badly. But when I was a little kid, I used to bite my nails and pick my skin. And I used to be masterful at predicting the worst possible things that would happen.

And.

Doing what I do, it really helps me not believe every stupid thought I have. I'm masterful at using hypnosis for my patients. Anytime I put myself in a trance or one of my patients in a trance, I sort of go with them. So learning mindfulness and meditation, cognitive therapy has all been incredibly helpful to me. So I do the things I tell my patients to do: hypnosis and meditation, not believing every stupid thing, I think. And it has helped me. tremendously because I mean, another time in my life, I went through great anxieties when I started doing imaging. I mean, I just thought it was cool. My problem is I had a national platform when I thought it was cool. So I had written my first nationally published book in 1991 when I started doing scans. So when I started doing them, I started writing about them. And then a group of my colleagues go, no, you shouldn't be doing that. Psychiatrists don't do that. You're a Charlotte. you're a snake oil salesman. And I got freaked out because I didn't go to medical school for people to be disrespectful to me or to bully me. I mean, I really felt bullied. And I had a flaw then that I've subsequently lost, which is I used to want people to like me. And now I had a lot of people who hated me. And my patients always loved me, but it was hard for me, and so I stopped talking about what I did. And then in 1995, I had a personal experience where my nephew had attacked a little girl on the baseball field for no reason out of the blue. And when I scanned him, I found he had a cyst the size of a golf ball. causing his behavior to be deranged. I mean, there's just no better way to say that. I mean, he was like Columbine ready to happen. And when they took the cyst out, his behavior went back to normal. And for me, I took that as a sign, lose the anxiety and fight for what you know is right, which is if you don't look, you don't know. And so sometimes to lose anxiety, you actually need almost a conversion-like experience of, okay, why are you doing what you do? So I wrote a book once called Unleash the Power of the Female Brain. And I did it because I have five sisters and I have three daughters. And the female brain is just wildly different than the male brain. I I'm not even sure we're the same species.

It's that.

Different. And there's a study from Canada showing that females have 52% less serotonin than men. And that's the neurotransmitter that helps you feel happy, that helps you feel positive, relaxed. And birth control pills drop it further. And we know women have twice the amount of depression as males, three times the amount of anxiety disorders as males. And so there are ways to increase serotonin. One of them is truly toxic. and a couple of them are more helpful. So the most common way people increase serotonin in their brain that helps them be happier, less anxious and less worried is they get a sugar burst. Anything that increases an insulin response in your body pushes tryptophan, the amino acid building block for serotonin, into your brain and makes you happy. And so cookies, cake, candy, frappuccinos made with a lot of sugar, pasta, potatoes, rice, those things that are high glycemic, you just feel happier. I had one woman once told me she'd rather get Alzheimer's disease, then give up sugar. And I'm like, did you date the bad boys in high school? I mean, it's clearly it's a bad relationship, right? So if you kill the sugar, so many people go, well, what am I going to do? Well, exercise raises serotonin in the brain. 5-HTP, one of my favorite supplements, and saffron, the spice. Saffron, most expensive spice in the world. It's not that expensive as a supplement. We actually make something called serotonin mood support with 5-HTP and saffron. So if you can exercise and then during those times when you're getting anxious or sad, saffron 5-HTP, it can help you in such a positive way. So brain fog's really interesting. And what I've seen is they're 35-year-olds, that go, you know, I'm foggy and my memory is no good. That's normal, right? Because I'm 35. And I'm like, no, you have bad habits. Then someone who's 45 goes, you know, I have brain fog and my memory is no good. But that's normal because I'm 45. And I'm like, no, you don't love your brain enough. Or I'm 70. That's normal. And I'm like, no, it's not normal. I mean, common. But it's usually the sign that there's trouble. And so no matter what your age, if you have brain fog, and it's not because you drank too much the night before or you didn't sleep, but it's becoming more a part of who you are, it's time to get assessed and treated. I have a new book. I'm so excited. Called Memory Rescue. It's the best referenced book I've ever done. It's got 1,600 scientific references. and it's based on this simple idea that I have. If you want to prevent Alzheimer's disease, if you want to keep your memory strong, if you want to rescue it from going to the dark place.

You.

Have to prevent all the risk factors that we know destroy your brain and we know what they are. I mean, there's a lot of science behind this. And I put the 11 major risk factors into a mnemonic called Bright Minds. So if you can remember these 11 things, it'll rescue your memory. It'll also rescue you from an addiction, from depression, from anxiety, and Bright Minds. B is for blood flow. Low blood flow, number one predictor of Alzheimer's disease. So if you have things like hypertension, heart disease, erectile dysfunction, you're not exercising, that's a predictor of trouble. So exercise and ginkgo and vinpocetine, two supplements I like a lot, and eating things like beets can be really helpful. So know your risk, and do something simple to help it. R is retirement and aging. When you stop learning, your brain starts dying. And so new learning needs to be part of your life. I is inflammation, major cause of depression and dementia. We measure everybody's C-reactive protein here. We also measure their omega-3 index. And omega-3 fatty acids are amazing as an anti-inflammatory intervention. This spice turmeric because it has the curcumin that have been shown to have powerful anti-inflammatory properties. The G is genetics. You have it in your family. You need to be concerned. It is not a death sentence. It's a wake-up call. Curcumin actually have been found in combination with vitamin D to decrease the plaques thought to be responsible for Alzheimer's disease. So if you have it in your family, you want to learn to like curry. I didn't like it, now I like it, right? It's sort of an acquired taste, at least for me. H is head trauma, major cause. And our society is so stupid. I mean, so stupid that we cheer at boxing matches, mixed martial arts is legal, it shouldn't be legal, right? But there's money in it. We know the connection between playing football and long-term brain damage. The American Soccer Association just came out and said, if you're under 11, you cannot hit soccer balls with your head. Right? Because they realized it's associated with long-term brain damage. You don't like 12-year-olds, 13-year-olds, 14-year-olds? The brain's not finished developing until you're 25. So it's like, seriously? Or we engage in high-risk behaviors. So we need to have more love, more respect for the brain. So protect it. That's the big strategy for H. And hyperbaric oxygen, if you've had a head injury. T is toxins. We are now living in a toxic society. Brand new study out of China. Children who have the highest phthalates, in their body have the highest incidence of ADHD. We need to support the organs of detoxification: your kidneys to drink more water, your gut eat more fiber, your liver stop drinking and thinking alcohol is a health food, and your skin, which means sweat. New study from Finland, people who took the most sauna had the lowest incidence of Alzheimer's disease. Hit the sauna. Not hard. None of these things are hard. And then download there are a couple of free apps I like. My favorite is called Think Dirty. You can actually scan all of your personal products to tell you on a scale of 1 to 10 how quickly they're going to kill you. When I first did that, I literally threw out half my bathroom. It's like, holy smokes. And I just, you know, I've been reading food labels forever. I never really read product labels. Like, what's the matter with me? Do you really need to put aluminum on your body? Yes, there's a controversial connection to Alzheimer's. So why would you put anything controversial on your body? It's your body. Don't you like yourself? So that's Bright Minds in Bright Minds is M is mental health. As we said, depression doubles the risk of Alzheimer's in women. Quadruples it in men, you need to get it treated. It doesn't necessarily mean meds. Head to head with antidepressants, fish oil, exercise, and not believing every stupid thought you have have been found to be equally effective. So if you're depressed, let's do that. And oh, by the way, let's check your thyroid and your toxic load. I The second I is immunity and infections, which is one of the most common things we see here at Amen Clinics, whether it's Lyme or herpes or toxoplasmosis, that if your immune system is weak and you've been attacked by infections, that dramatically increases your risk. And most people diagnosed with Alzheimer's are never screened for them, which is just psychotic. And is neurohormone deficiencies. testosterone, thyroid, estrogen, progesterone, DHEA. I think of hormones like Miracle-Gro for your brain. And when they're low, you're not gonna function, right? And so many women are going, well, I'm 48 and I'm premenopausal and should I take hormones? Will they give me cancer? Will they? And I'm just a huge fan. of getting you to an optimal level. D is diobesity, combination of diabetes and obesity, or just having one of those is trouble for your brain. And we have seen just changing someone's diet can help so much. And that's is sleep. Sleep apnea triples the risk of Alzheimer's disease. On scans it makes you look like your brain looks like you have Alzheimer's disease because your brain is the most oxygen hungry organ in the body. So if you want to keep your memory strong, you have to have a plan. And we love this Bright Minds Plan because it's like simple, it's not hard. And people go, oh, it's so much to do. And it's like, dude, it's your brain, right? This isn't art. But, Having Alzheimer's is hard. It's expensive and you'll feel deprived. So many people when you nudge them to get healthy they go, oh, it's too expensive, it's too hard. And I don't want to deprive myself. Like the four-year-old inside their body is running everything. And I'm like, I've seen a lot of people with Alzheimer's over the years. Expensive, hard, and everybody feels deprived. So the limbic part of the brain, it's also called the emotional part of your brain, deep structures about the size of a walnut, and it determines how happy or sad you are. It colors the world in a positive way or a negative way. It's also involved in bonding, stow's highly charged emotional memories. And you're a libido, so how interested in sex. you are. When it works right, people feel happy and positive and motivated and driven. When it's overactive, people tend to feel sad and blue and negative and isolated and less interested in sex. It's the part of our brain that sort of makes life worth living. So you want to feed it positive thoughts, give it good direction. Awesome smells can be really helpful, like lavender and sage. Actually, sage has good scientific evidence. It helps memory. And when it gets hurt, so for example, when you go through grief, it gets hurt. Don't let grief be your excuse to hurt yourself. That's when really great brain healthy habits can really help calm that down. And don't block emotions. It's really important that if you lose something important and you feel like crying, cry, because it actually helps to release the activity in the limbic system. So as humans, we're a social species. We're not polar bears. Polar bears just do fine by themselves. But that's not us. The more isolated we are, it's actually one of the risk factors for Alzheimer's disease. It increases our risk. When we're together, we have to work our brains. It's like, what's she thinking? What am I going to do? There's that dance that goes on. And we also get feedback on how we're doing and whether or not our thoughts are helpful rational and so on. But who you're connected to really does matter. They're the longest longevity study ever done found the health habits of the people you spent time with was as good a predictor as anything else as to how long you would live. And so I always tell people, you want to be healthy? Find the healthiest person you can stand. and then spend as much time around him or her as possible. So I love this idea of being a brain warrior. When I was doing the Daniel Plan with Mark, I clearly saw the war that we're in. One of the reasons I got chosen to help with the Daniel Plan is I went to my own church and watched them serve donuts and bacon and sausage and ice cream. hot dogs, and I was so taken back where I'm going to get my soul fed, and these people are trying to kill me. And I'm like, it's a war. And so if you really want to be healthy, and that's why I love this series, you need to be armed. You need to be prepared, and you need to be aware. that there are forces that will steal years off your life and your children's lives. And so it is really this deep sense of urgency that I want people to see the war and to have a plan to overcome it. And Brain Warriors, because we have thousands of them, they're happy, they're healthy. I had one, she went into one of the big box stores and she wrote to me and she said, I walked in and saw death in every corner, piled upon death. And I just had never seen it before. And I went and got the few things I could get there and then I left. But the fact that she's seen it, and avoiding it, she's going to be healthy for a very long time. And that's what made me happy.

ADHD can be a really devastating experience. And one of the things that I like to do when I'm working with my patients is the first thing we do, we've got to normalize it. We've got to let you know everything's gonna be okay.

Well, that's right. There's a stigma, George, around mental illness.

Yeah.

And that's really why I wrote the book, UltraMind Solution, because it was very clear to me seeing patients who I would treat their biology and their psychology would get better. And I wasn't treating their brain, I was treating their body. And I would notice the side effects of their ADD going away, their autism getting better, their depression going away, their panic attacks going away. I'm like, what is going on here? So that really through the lens of functional medicine, what we do here at the Ultra Wellness Center in Lenox, Massachusetts, where we practice, is we go deep into these root causes. So with ADHD, what are the things that are the most common drivers? Because it's not a Ritalin deficiency, as we said, right? It's something else. What are we seeing in these patients that we find that then we can treat and help them get better?

I start with the understanding that there are some structural differences in the brains of a person with a predisposition.

There's a predisposition.

There's a predisposition. It's genetic, it's physiologic, and so you can't ignore that starting point. Now, that's not the first, you know, so that's my first line of thinking, and I know that I'm going to find out what that is.

It's important to remember for people that genes load the gun, but the environment pulls the trigger.

Exactly.

So you might have a predisposition, it doesn't mean you're predestined to have the problem.

Exactly. that's exactly right, Mark. That's the point. And that's where I go next is, I know the predisposition is there and I have tests that I can figure out what some of those predispositions are actually expressing themselves in that child or adult. And I will address them. But I also, as you just pointed out, is I go back to the environmental pieces first. And because those I can start working on at the very first visit.

You can modify.

Modify at the very first visit without having to do any tests. and that is to go through lifestyle. And where's the first lifestyle piece I go to? It's nutrition. Right. And because the nutrition does a couple things. There is the, the, the nutrition, the actual macro micronutrients and minerals and phytonutrients that the child needs that they might not be getting.

Yeah.

And then there's the impact that that diet he's on is having on his body, on his, and particularly on the gut microbiome.

On the bad diet.

Right.

The dirty diet. Right. That bad diet. Right. Which is filled with all the things that you talk about all the time, the high fructose corn syrup, the GMOs, the hormones, the pesticides, the additives and.

The colors and dyes. Those chemicals have been linked in research to ADHD issues.

Absolutely.

Really clearly.

Yeah, and there's a diet, the Feingold diet is based on removing those from the diet. So I can modify that right off the get go and I can get them to start to think about how to change that child's diet and simply remove some things. and add some things in their place to start moving them in the right direction. And the diet you're talking about that.

They'Re getting usually is an inflammatory diet. Yes. And what's fascinating to me as we start to look at the research on all these brain issues, whether it's autism or ADHD or Alzheimer's or depression, their inflammation in the brain.

Yeah.

And we never knew that before.

Yeah.

So do you take an Advil if you have depression or if you have ADD? No, you have to figure out why there's inflammation in the brain. and that's what functional medicine does. It's a, it's a methodology to get to the root cause of whatever it is. And in this case, it's inflammation in the brain. And all these kids often have other inflammatory issues, too. And you have a case, and I want to share a case where we, we talk about this, but, but how, how, how do we sort of begin to tease apart what aspects of the diet are the most important in these kids?

First, I interview like I ask, I, you know, the tease it apart. You have to ask, like, okay, what are you eating? Mom, what are you feeding? You know, and I, well, I'll ask them. Right? And as soon as I, as soon as I asked the child what they eat, here's what happens. I'm gonna just pick this up. Mom's, mom's holding a folder or a newspaper or something. And as I asked the child what they're gonna eat, I see this. Okay? I usually see she's gonna hide because she knows what's gonna come out. All right? We're gonna hear about, we're gonna hear about lucky charms and we're gonna hear about hot pockets and we're gonna hear about, you know, the Gatorade and, and blaming hot chips. And, and she, she's, she's doesn't, she feeds the child that because that's what the child wants to eat. And because they can't self-regulate, she knows that there's gonna be, you know, there's hell to pay when you're not giving them what they want. So yeah, so first off, you tease it out by doing a three-day diet history, talking to the mom, talking to the child. And once you begin to tease that out, then you can get an understanding of what you need to add back in. And most of the time it's like, everything. Yeah. You know, and we also do food sensitivity testing.

Yeah.

Checking for gluten and dairy, which often causes inflammation in the brain for these kids, right?

Yeah.

You know, I, I don't know when you want to, when you want me to talk about the testing piece, but the thing I want to say about the gut microbiome in your diet is that inflammatory diet. Remember, and I, you don't have to remember, but for the, our listeners, that the gut microbiome does things for us. It's like another organ. and so 70% of our serotonin resides in the gastrointestinal tract.

Like a second brain.

Right, second brain. 30% of our dopamine resides in the intestinal tract. When you're eating a bad diet and you're shifting the microbiome, you're shifting the balance of good bacteria and bad bacteria, you're now going to create an environment where a child cannot produce some of those neurotransmitters. You're going to create an environment where they're not breaking down their food completely because of the inflammation. You could be getting something called leaky gut and that dysbiosis, that leaky gut, that leads to a lack of absorption of some really important nutrients. And that begins to have a big effect. So now they're not absorbing their magnesium. Now they're letting too much copper in and not enough zinc. Now you're not getting enough iron. And we know that if you're anemic and you don't have enough iron, you're going to not be able to concentrate well. That's the real important impact of your diet. It's not just, oh, sugar's bad for them. Well, what's it doing to, you know, you may notice that- the microbiome. the microbiome. We got to fix that. And that's why I said, I know what the predisposition is, but the first place we're going to go is to the lifestyle and what- 'cause that lifestyle is affecting the most important thing and that's the gut.

Yeah, nutrition is so huge. we see this with these kids is they have poor quality nutrition. They're eating a lot of processed food. They're not getting the good nutrients they need. They're eating foods that are inflammatory. They're having gluten and dairy often, which can be very neurotoxic for some kids. They're eating additives and chemicals in their food that can trigger hyperactivity. And so there's this whole range of food interventions that have been shown to be very effective for these kids. Even removing food sensitivities. That's one study published in the UK. So, there's a lot of literature on this, but it's not something that you get when you go to the psychiatrist. It's not mainstream. No, they don't talk about this. Hey, everybody, it's Dr. Hyman. Thanks for tuning into the Doctor's Pharmacy. I hope you're loving this podcast. It's one of my favorite things to do and introducing you all the experts that I know and I love and that I've learned so much from. And I want to tell you about something else I'm doing, which is called Mark's Picks. It's my weekly newsletter. And in it, I share my favorite stuff. from foods to supplements to gadgets to tools to enhance your health. It's all the cool stuff that I use and that my team uses to optimize and enhance our health. And I'd love you to sign up for the weekly newsletter. I'll only send it to you once a week on Fridays. Nothing else, I promise. And all you have to do is go to drhyman.com/picks to sign up. That's drhyman.com/picks, P-I-C-K-S, and sign up for the newsletter and I'll share with you my favorite stuff that I use to enhance my health and get healthier and better and live younger longer. Now back to this week's episode. So we're looking at the role of nutrition, nutritional deficiencies, food sensitivities, and lack of the right nutrients. What are the other things we should think about? The gut, you said. The gut plays a huge role, right?

Yeah, yeah.

So you have leaky gut.

Yeah, everything I just mentioned. You know, with the leaky gut, the alterations in the microbiome, you're going to have less serotonin made, less dopamine made, you're not going to get the nutrients that we just talked about. And so that we look there and we can do tests to determine, we have, you know, very sensitive tests that can look at, we do organic acid tests that can look at amino acid levels, which are the precursors for making your neurotransmitters. So that if you're not, you know, eating enough protein, which kids don't eat enough protein, you're not eating enough protein, and then you have already disordered your microbiome, which includes your gastric acids, which includes your pancreatic acids. Those are very important for breaking down your proteins, your carbohydrates, and your fats. You get all the nutrients you need. So we need to make sure that they're, you know, if that's not happening, they're not getting amino acids, then they're not gonna be able to make those neurotransmitters. We can measure that using organic acids. We can look at carbohydrate metabolism that's important in energy production. energy that's needed for the body to work, particularly the brain.

Yeah.

Since it has the most mitochondria in the entire body because it needs the most energy. And if that brain's not making energy because you're not getting the appropriate amounts and types of carbohydrates, that child's not going to do well.

Yeah.

And we can, we can determine that on the organic acids or an ion profile.

So these are kind of tests you don't normally get at a regular doctor and these these tests tell us about things like mitochondria. You mentioned mitochondria. I just want to sort of loop back on this because there's a woman named Suzanne Goh, a pediatric neurologist, went to Harvard, Oxford, and studies autism. And she's found in these autistic kids as a subset of these kids that have impaired mitochondrial function in their brain. And it's an energy deficit which can cause these neurologic symptoms. And so she provides the substrates or the basic building blocks for making energy in these kids that are supplements like CoQ10 and carnitine and other nutrients that are so important for building energy in the system. So we sometimes find this in these kids, they have energy issues.

Absolutely. You know, we've seen that with our autistic kids that we, when we give them, you know, those, we give them amino acids. When we give them methylcobalamin, which is a basic nutrient, yeah, you see changes. Dramatic changes. Dramatic. When you address the mitochondria, you're gonna see those dramatic changes.

And they also have issues around toxins, these kids sometimes, right? So talk about toxins and mental health and particularly ADHD.

Right, so the toxins that we look for the most and they're tested for, you know, in schools as part of your lead, lead, there you go, got lead. So we have lead, we also have mercury, and we have arsenic. Those are three very common heavy metals that you're gonna find in your environment. So each one of them are going to be able to block the energy producing pathways in cells. They're also going to limit the neurotransmitter metabolism in the brain. They're directly neurotoxic. and they also have effects on the body's ability to make energy in their mitochondria. So we test for heavy metals in kids all the time. And why do kids have that? And why do we find that? Because I tell people, it's not a matter of whether you're toxic. It's not a matter of whether you have heavy metals. It's how many do you have? And how much? And that's going to be a product of several things. One, we go back to genetics. you just may not be a good detoxer, right? You may have, you know, snips which are single nucleotide polymorphisms. Those are like one single nucleotide change in the blueprint that makes the protein. And if that is off, then that protein's not going to work correctly. Well, if your detox proteins and enzymes are not working, you just don't detox that well. And we can determine that and then we can determine what your lead levels are. And then we have ways that we can bring those down.

And it's so common, you know, I remember this kid I had who was like 10 or 11 years old, just a terror, ADD, getting kicked out of class, disruptive behavior issues. And the mother was just desperate.

I wasn't in your class.

She was a young mother, but she was very smart and she kind of came to us. And it turned out his school was across the street from a cement plant. And the cement plant burns coal and coal releases mercury and lead. and every day they go in the parking lot, at the end of the day, the cars were just dusted with this ash from the cement plant and the kids were playing in the playground with this cement plant and I tested them and he had very high levels of heavy metals and we detoxified them, we fixed his metabolic pathways and this kid got better. So, you know, it's not that every kid with ADD has lead or mercury, it's just one of the things to think about. And just like I always say with functional medicine, just because you know the name of the disease doesn't mean you know what's wrong with you, right? ADD can be many, many things and many, many factors can be gluten, be metals, can be nutritional deficiency, can be magnesium issues, can be, you know, your gut microbiome, can be gluten. So you have to think about all the factors. That's really what we do. And we have very specific tests which.

We can do to identify this in functional medicine. And you can bring 10 kids in here with ADHD, right, or the label of ADHD, and every, each one of them is going to be treated differently because they're all going to be different. Their, their genetics are going to be different, their environments are going to be different, their supports are going to be different. and that's what we do in functional medicine. When a child or an adult comes to me, I spend up to 90 minutes just teasing out every piece of the puzzle I just talked about.

So tell us about Joey, 'cause he's one of your patients.

Joey. So Joey came to see me and there's a multitude of issues. The one that was the main presenting issue was the fact that he wasn't doing good in school. He was told he had ADHD and the mom and the dad had taken him to the primary care and the immediate desire of the primary care physician was to start him on a stimulant. And the parents weren't- Like Ritalin. Like Ritalin, Adderall, and such. And they just didn't want to go down that road. They had heard a podcast, they had read one of my blogs, and they decided to come to the ultra wellness center. Here he comes. So, you know, going through the entire history with Joey, we found out that Joey had had from a very early time in his childhood, he had had gut issues and he had eczema early on in his life. So what were his gut issues? Lots of colic, dairy sensitivity and eczema. They sort of resolved a little bit as time went on. Then he developed some seasonal allergies. and then he developed the ADHD. So he was being treated with antihistamines during springtime. They cut back dairy and that was it. So Joey comes, lovely kid, very bright. And quite honestly, his behavior in the room wasn't as off the wall as some of the kids can be. and when I did ask him questions, he could articulate pretty clearly. Well, I could see him starting, you know, start to fidgeting. Yeah, he was starting to fidget as time was going on, but I think his dad was fidgeting more than him. This is very inheritable. So what did I do? So the same things that we always do. I did his genetic testing. So we do a test called DNA health, and that lets us know about several important genes. I can learn about those detox genes I talked about, but then I also can look at some of the methylation genes. And again, in your UltraMind Solution, you do a great job in explaining methylation. Methylation is a process that the body uses in thousands of reactions to activate molecules to do their job. Yeah, I'll just say- It's one of.

The most important chemical reactions that happens literally millions of times a second.

Yeah, millions of times a second. It's protecting and repairing your DNA. It's part of the detox pathways, and it's really important in neurotransmitter metabolism. And so two of them, one called the MTHFR gene and one called the CMT gene, really control methylation. And the CMT gene in particular is responsible for metabolizing the catechol neurotransmitters, dopamine, norepinephrine, and epinephrine. Those are the three neurotransmitters in the prefrontal lobe, prefrontal cortex of the frontal lobe that are responsible for behavior, executive function, self-regulation, concentration and learning in the prefrontal cortex.

So, and these are just variations in our genes that aren't like a mutation per se. They're just differences among individuals that make you more or less likely to have a different issue.

Yeah, they're the genes that make us, you know, give you blue eyes, give me brown eyes, right? But they also are responsible for some really critical life altering, reactions in our body.

In fact, one third of our entire DNA codes for enzymes.

Yep.

Which regulate most of our body functions. And those enzymes are all controlled by nutrients. And when you have variations in those enzymes, you may need higher amounts of certain nutrients. So while 400 micrograms of folate might be good for one person, another person might need 4, 000.

That's, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. and so, so I checked the genetics and I found that he had a variation in his CMT gene that actually left him with really low levels of dopamine. So at Baseline, he had low levels of dopamine, which is what makes you.

Focus and pay attention and be alert.

Right.

Yep.

And so, interestingly enough, when you, when you take that child and you put them under pressure, they actually function better because now their dopamine levels start to come up under pressure.

Oh, is that why I always do better writing my books under deadline?

Yep. So there's this thought that I've had that kids procrastinate, adults procrastinate, so that they find themselves under pressure because now their dopamine levels go up and now they're in the sweet spot and they can get their work done. so I found that he had that particular gene. And of course, I've already talked about what the worst diet could look like. Well, he had the worst diet. And so we did an ion profile and we found that he was missing important nutrients. He was low in his B12, his B2 riboflavin was low.

And it's important for energy production.

Energy production, that's mitochondrial, that's the mitochondrial cellular activity that provides the energy for your neurons to work. And he was low in his B vitamins. And that's really critical because, you know, particularly, and then folate, folate was normal, but his MTHFR gene had a variant that made it less active. Why is that important? Because the MTHFR gene is responsible for methylating folate, and that's part of the.

That makes it active.

That makes it active. If you don't have active folate, you can't use it. And folate's a very big, important part of how, you know, how your neurotransmitters in your brain are gonna work. So he had two genetic issues, a poor diet, and he had an imbalance in his, in his gut. He had just General dysbiosis and overgrowth of a lot of bad bacteria. And so I treated those things. And how do I treat that? they meet with our nutritionist and the first thing we do is we put them on an elimination diet. We take out all the bad things. So we're taking out sugar, we're taking out processed carbohydrates, we're taking out foods with coloring, we're taking out dairy, gluten, soy, and I can just tell you, when I met with Joey six weeks later, just based on the nutritional changes that I made before I had my lab results. We started them on that diet before the lab results came in. He had already, mom was already talking about how his attention had improved. Now, I had added some magnesium in on the first visit. I added some fish oil. There are studies that show that children with ADHD, when they get at least four grams of omega-3s daily, you see an improvement in their executive function, you see an improvement in their behavior. So I put them on fish oil, magnesium, vitamin D, that diet. By the first visit back, mom was already saying teachers are seeing a difference and that she was noticing a difference too. And he was sleeping better.

If you love that last video, you should check out the next one for sure on getting to the root cause of all disease. Many, many studies have shown that if you actually have a strong community, that you live longer. If you're part of a bowling group or a knitting group, even if you eat crappy, you live longer.