Do This Daily To Boost Brain Health, Prevent Decline & End Inflammation | Dr. Daniel Amen

If I was an evil ruler and I wanted to create mental illness in America, how would I do it?

Yeah. And basically the food system we have.

Basically, I create American society where our food system, you know more about this than anyone, our food system is broken, right? I mean, 70% of us are overweight, 40% of us are obese. I published two studies that show as your weight goes up, the size of your brain goes down, which should scare the fat off anybody.

Size and function of your brain.

Size and function of your brain. I've heard you say that your brain shrinks 20 times. And because the fat on your body is not innocuous, it increases inflammation, it stores toxins, and it takes healthy hormones and turns them into unhealthy cancer-promoting forms of estrogen. So if you just think about that, that one thing by itself, our food, I actually think is responsible for almost half of the mental health challenges in America. There's this fascinating study from Australia where they looked at two outer islands. One of them had fast food restaurants, the other one didn't. And then they looked at their omega-3 index. And the island with fast food restaurants had significantly lower omega-3 index and five times the level of depression. Think about that.

Yeah, of course.

Just with the food.

There was some kid recently that went blind from eating Pringles and french fries because he was so vitamin deficient. He basically had xerophthalmia, which is from vitamin A deficiency. I mean, think about it. Junk food is gonna make you blind, not just fat and demented and diabetic.

Well, and that's one of the reasons I'm a fan of multiple vitamins because we're basically a vitamin deficient society with deficiencies in magnesium and vitamin D and choline and vitamin B and C, Bs and C. And so I just think it's a smart thing to sort of hedge your bet. 97% of the population's low in omega-3 fatty acids. They have suboptimal levels. I actually did a study of 50 consecutive patients who came to our clinic. We're not taking fish oil. 49 of them had suboptimal levels.

I mean, it's striking when you start to look and test, which most doctors don't. I mean, you actually are scanning people's brains. I scan their bodies through testing that looks at all these variables that most doctors don't look at. How many doctors look at omega-3 levels in your body? Most don't. But it's essential for my practice because I can't tell what's going on if I don't know what's happening.

Now, it's 25% of the membranes in your brain are made of omega-3 fatty acids. And so if they're low, your brain's not going to talk very well. to itself. Yeah.

I mean, if you're listening, I think most people, and I think this is true, I've seen it in my family, I've seen it in my patients, most people with some type of mental disorder, there's a stigma. There's a sort of a blame game going on and there's a shame about it. What your work is really doing is stopping that, saying that's just nonsense. It's like, would you shame somebody for having cancer? Or diabetes, or an autoimmune disease? No, you wouldn't. You would try to sort through what's going on and look at the biology, and that's what you've done. So tell us why people suffering from things like depression, anxiety, bipolar disease, ADD, panic disorders, bipolar, schizophrenia, even addiction.

Why.

Should they be hopeful now?

Because if they see it from a brain perspective, what we've learned is you're not stuck with the brain you have. Probably the biggest advance in neuroscience over the last 20 years is this concept of neuroplasticity, that you are not stuck with the brain you have. You can make it better. And every day you're making about 700 new hippocampal cells. So the hippocampus has stem cells and the hippocampus, you know, is Greek for seahorse. So every day you're making about 700 new baby seahorses and your behavior is either helping them grow or it's murdering them. And one of the things I think is really interesting, my 16 year old daughter, she and I, I'm 65, we're both making about 700 new baby stem cells in our hippocampus. Hers are more likely to stick around than mine because of blood flow. So new research, Brain cells don't age. It's your blood vessels that age. So anything that damages your blood vessels damages your brain. So if you know how to increase blood flow, so things like exercise and ginkgo and beets and rosemary and pepper, I mean, really simple things can actually help improve the function of your brain.

Ping pong, that's your thing.

Table tennis, but you're not stuck with the brain you have, you can make it better. And most people don't know that. I was just in Florida.

By the way, Dr. Amen is a mean table tennis player who whips my ass every single time. It's embarrassing.

And there's actually a study from England on who lives the longest. So they looked at sports. And so if you don't play any sports, you don't live long.

Tennis players live seven years longer.

If you play football or soccer, you don't live longer than anybody else.

'Cause you're butting your head with the ball.

People who play racket sports live the longest. And that's why I play table tennis. Because you got to get your eyes, hands and feet all to work together while you think about the spin on the ball. Yeah, yeah.

I picked up tennis when I was 45 and I work out as much as I can. It just makes me so happy and I think it has kept me younger. Well, it activates your cerebellum.

And the cerebellum, you know, the young people listening, you're not going to know who this is. It horrifies me. I call the cerebellum the Rodney Dangerfield. part of the brain. It gets no respect. Even though it's 10% of the brain's volume, it contains 50% of the brain's neurons. And the cerebellum is not just involved in coordination, it's involved in processing speed and thought coordination. And so when you play tennis, you're activating the cerebellum, which O has reciprocal connections with your frontal lobes, so it's actually making you smarter, more focused. It's really a great game. Yeah, I get so... And there are no head injuries with tennis or table tennis.

I'm not paying attention and the ball hits you. So, actually, when I'm really clumsy, I'll hit myself in the head with a racket. But that's not usual. So, this conversation is fabulous because we're reframing mental illness to brain health. and you have in your book the end of mental on this simple way of thinking about this you call Bright Minds, the 11 risk factors that steal your mind and how you avoid them. Can you take us through that?

So a number of years ago, I realized if you want to keep your brain healthy or rescue it if it's headed to the dark place, you have to prevent or treat the 11 major risk factors that steal your mind. And Bright Minds is the mnemonic we came up with. And the B is for blood flow. Low blood flow is the number one brain imaging predictor of Alzheimer's disease. It's also associated with addictions, it's associated with depression, it's associated with ADHD and schizophrenia. So you wanna do everything you can to protect your blood flow. And 40% of 40-year-old men have erectile dysfunction. Do you know what that means? 40% of 40-year-old men have brain dysfunction. If you have blood flow problems anywhere, it likely means they're everywhere. So you know you have blood flow problems if you get a scan, because SPECT is a blood flow study. If you have hypertension, if you have any form of heart disease, if you don't exercise. So it just gives you some very simple things to do. The R is retirement and aging. When you stop learning, your brain starts dying. And, you know, I turned 65 this year and I've seen thousands of 60, 70, 80 year old brains. And the news is not good. It's sort of like, you know, as we age, our skin begins to fall off our face. The same process happens in the brain, unless you're serious about it, right? I mean, I have your scan 10 years apart, and as you got older, your brain got better. Well, how exciting is that, that you are not stuck. I'm very competitive with the brain you have. The eye is inflammation that, I mean, both you and I know it's a disaster. Inflammation is a disaster for every organ in your body, including your brain. And so people can measure their omega-3 index.

But before you go into what you can do, It's important to underscore this. We know from the research today that depression is inflammation in the brain, that autism is inflammation in the brain, that ADD and dementia are inflammation in the brain. And if that's true, then the question is what's causing the inflammation? How do you stop it? And how do you fix it? So tell us about that.

So if you have a low omega-3 index, taking omega-3s can be really helpful. you have to get your gut right because having this thing and I'm a psychiatrist, I didn't know one thing about leaky gut until I read the UltraMind Solution. And then I'm like, oh, you have to get your gut right because if your gut's not right, your brain's not right. You're likely to have things get inside your body that have no business in your body, which causes an autoimmune or an inflammatory response. So food really matters. Sugar is pro-inflammatory and foods that quickly turn turned to sugar, bread, pasta, potatoes, rice. You want to, you often say, eat them like a condiment. That lasts better. Recreational drug.

Recreational drug.

They're not even a condiment. Sugar is a recreational drug. It's fine, but you- Didn't you say.

The four white powders?

Yeah, the deadly white powder.

Deadly white powder, white flour, white sugar.

Cocaine and too much salt.

So diet really does matter. And our processed foods are loaded with pro-inflammatory omega-6s. So corn and soy, we're overloaded with them. I mean, not that they're evil, but they're not the right choice as primary staples in our diet.

But also things like infections and mold and other.

We're gonna get there. So the eye is inflammation. The. And so get your gut right. Omega-3 fatty acids. The G is genetics. And the big lie with genetics is I have obesity in my family, and that's why I'm fat. Well, the fact is, I have obesity in my family. I have a brother and sister who are 150 pounds overweight, but I'm not.

Why?

You're wearing a skinny suit.

Because I know the behaviors that make it likely to be so. So genes are not a death sentence. What they should be is a wake-up call and tell you what you're vulnerable to so that you get serious about prevention.

I mean, you're in better shape now than when I met you 15 years ago.

Sure.

You lost more weight, you get more muscle, and you're 15 years older.

And I work on it. Right, but because I love what I do. quite frankly, I have four children. I never want to live with them. I love them. I want to be independent for as long as possible. I don't want them being worried about taking away my driver's license. That means I have to take care of my body because my body will then take care of my brain. But that causes you to think ahead, which is of course a brain function. The H is a national epidemic that nobody knows. It's head trauma. Head trauma is a major cause of psychiatric illness and nobody knows about it because psychiatrists, psychologists, marriage and family counselors, counselors, they never look at the brain. And so that fall out of a second story window that caused you to be angry and depressed, nobody's thinking about rehabilitating the damage that occurred. That's why you really shouldn't let your children hit soccer balls with their head, play tackle football. And if you've been in a car accident and then you got depressed, somebody should look at your brain and then you should go about rehabilitating it. That's what I did with the big NFL study. And we published a study, 80% of our players get better in as little as two months by putting them on our Bright Minds program. So I'm pretty excited about that. The T is toxins. And when I first started scanning people, I mean, it was really clear that marijuana, alcohol, cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin are bad for your brain. But then I would see these toxic scans of people who never use drugs. And I'm like, oh no. I had not one lecture on mold exposure when I was a psychiatric resident or heavy mercury or mercury poisoning or lead exposure, none of that. And so we often find ourselves working up a toxic brain. And did you know 60% of the lipstick sold in the United States has lead in it? I didn't know that. I think it is the kiss of death. And so I know you know this app, Think Dirty. And when I downloaded it, you can scan all of your personal products. I threw out half of my bathroom because it was basically toxic. Things like parabens and phthalates, they're called hormone disruptors, which we're gonna get to in a second, but you don't want whatever goes on your body, goes in your body and affects your body. So you have to get rid of the toxins. And basically it's decreased exposure and support the four organs of detoxification. Kidneys, drink more water. Gut, eat more fiber. Liver, stop drinking. I'm just not a fan. I mean, we can talk about it, but it disrupts liver function and sweat. with exercise or take saunas. People who take the most saunas have the lowest incidence of Alzheimer's disease. So M is something I call mind storms. It's abnormal electrical activity in your brain. So if you have a hot spot in your temporal lobes or cold spot, what we see, it's akin to seizure activity. So sometimes anticonvulsants can really help. A ketogenic diet has anticonvulsant properties. There's this great book, it's written in 1980 by Jack Dreyfus, who's the founder of the famous Dreyfus Mutual Fund. And he said, A remarkable medicine has been overlooked. And it was Dilantin, which is an old anticonvulsant. He'd been going to see psychiatrists forever. He said, Three days on Dilantin, he didn't need a psychiatrist anymore because it had balanced his brain. And so the second I is immunity and infections. If you look at a map of the United States and you look at the highest incidence of schizophrenia, overlay the highest incidence of Lyme disease, they're identical.

Incredible.

Incredible. Anybody in the West or the Northeast or the northern Midwest should be screened for Lyme if they have a psychotic disorder. They just need to screen them for it because if they have it, treating it may actually treat their, quote, mental illness that is not mental. It's the brain.

You treat the brain. Yeah.

And is neuro hormone deficiencies. D is diobesity. You know, as your blood sugar goes up and your weight goes up, your brain gets smaller. As we talked about, it's getting your weight right, your blood sugar right, and S is sleep. This is how you keep your brain. healthy.

Pretty common sense. Right, but nobody's put it together. It's like, you know, it's a functional.

Medicine approach to psychiatry with imaging.

It reminds me of what T.H. Huxley said when he heard of the theory of evolution. He said, how stupid not to have thought of that. You know, it's so self-evident and yet medicine is so behind the times on this. And the end of mental illness, this book, I think, hopefully will change the conversation, will be not just about providing more services or programs, but providing the right services and the right programs. And that's so, so important.

So.

Tell us about some of the biggest ahas you've had from looking at thousands, literally hundreds of thousands of brain scans. What are the things you've learned from looking at people's brains?

So the first one is you can make it better. I mean, I love that concept that I saw this patient in May and he had mold exposure. He grew up on a farm and was exposed to a ton of pesticides. He was a mixed martial artist and so on. And that's true for most of our patients. If you end up at one of our Amen clinics, it's not one of the Bright Minds risk factors you have. You often have seven. And three months later, I scanned him again after supplements. hyperbaric oxygen and his brain was radically better. And he's so excited. In fact, when he saw his scan the first time, he doesn't have children, but he said, it's what I imagine if I had children. When I saw my brain for the first time, I fell in love with it and knew I would never, ever do anything purposefully to hurt it. And so he fell in love with his brain. So I love that. The second big lesson is mild traumatic brain injury ruins people's lives and nobody knows about it. And our society finds mild. Where you might not even lost consciousness. So when I met Tana, you know.

Like if I bump my head in a doorway because I'm tall.

You know, probably not that. But if you fell down a flight of stairs, if you're in a car accident, even going 10 miles an hour, if you look at that accident in slow motion, there's this whiplash. that occurs and your brain floats in your skull, which means it slams against the front and then it slams off.

A jungle gym when I was five. That can end up my head getting a concussion.

Or, you know, when I scanned Tana after I met her, that's my wife. That's what you do on the first date.

You put your.

No, but I do it. Perspective girlfriend before I fall in love with them.

She said, excuse me. Come here.

Go in the scan. She never heard the line where I wanted to see your naked brain. And I could tell she'd had a head injury in the past. And she goes, no, but I didn't. And I said, well, are you ever in a car accident? And then all of a sudden, because she said, no, no, no, no. She said, oh, we was in a car going 75 miles an hour. Her sister fell asleep at the wheel and got, so she flipped the car two and a half times and then they came to a stop. and I'm like, oh, you don't think that had an impact on your brain? So things that people have forgotten or don't even think about. So that was a big aha. I grew up Catholic, like, not kidding Catholic. My mom was serious about the whole thing. And so I sort of had the idea of good and evil is black and white, or free will is black or white. And when I started scanning people, people started sending me real people did really bad things. We've done over a hundred murderers. And I began to go, free will is not zero or 100. It's gray. Most of us have about 80% free will. But if you have that accident, maybe that's 50%. And that six pack of Michelob may take your free will away. And so when President Obama, after Sandy Hook, said we need more services for mental health, Well, Adam Lanza had seen multiple psychiatrists. He was on multiple medications. We don't need more money for mental health as it's currently practiced.

That's what I was saying.

Virtually all the school shooters have had a psychiatric history where nobody looked at their brain.

So tell us some stories of people who've mentioned the head trauma, you mentioned the football players, you mentioned your sister-in-law, If someone comes in and has bipolar disease or depression, what are you seeing? What areas of their brain are not working? And what are the kinds of things that you've seen? Because what you're basically saying is that, Mark, when you say someone has depression or bipolar or schizophrenia, it's meaningless. It doesn't tell you the why. And that looking at the scans, you can have 100 scans of people with depression and they might all need different things.

Well, let me tell you a story from the book. It's one of my favorite all-time stories of a couple who failed marital therapy. Now, I don't know if you went to marital therapy. I certainly did in the past. And it's hard. Well, this couple went for three years, spent $25,000, and then the therapist gave them an F. She flunked them. She said, Get divorced. Well, they got really upset with her. And when they got angry at her, she said, well, I know a doctor in Costa Mesa, California, who takes care of really difficult people. You should go see him. And so as part of our process, we scanned them both, and the wife actually had a pretty healthy brain. His brain was just full of holes, just like a drug addict.

Yeah, and when you say holes, you mean areas that aren't getting blood flow.

Right, areas of decreased perfusion. How we render them, they look like they have holes in them. Yeah. And just like a drug addict. But in his history, he said he didn't drink and never did drugs. Now, it's the first thing they teach us in psychiatry school about addicts.

They lie.

They lie. They lie a lot. And so in front of his wife, I went, Are you sure you've never done drugs and you don't drink? And he said, Dr. Amen, I have many problems. That's not it. Now, the therapist diagnosed him with a mixed personality disorder with narcissistic and antisocial features. And so she basically called him a jerk. That's our way of calling someone a jerk. jerk.

Saying you're a psychopath.

Right.

And so when he said he wasn't doing drugs, I looked to the wife and I said, is that true? And she said, oh, yes, Dr. Raimond. He doesn't drink.

He's never done drugs as far as I know.

He's just an asshole. Comes by naturally. And like you, I laugh. But in my head I went, well, then why does his brain look so bad? And I went through the differential diagnosis. Drugs, alcohol, probably not. If He and his wife says now, an environmental toxin, anoxia, a lack of oxygen at some point, severe hypothyroidism, severe anemia, an infection. And so my next question to Dave was, where do you work? He said, I work in a furniture factory. I said, what do you do? He finished furniture all day. He was doing drugs. He was doing the worst drug of abuse, which is inhaling organic solvents. Because what do organic solvents dissolve? Fat, 60% of the solid weight of your brain is fat. Wow. So they were damaging.

And so in that VOCs, they're off-gassing from all the furniture and carpets and paint and...

Which is why firefighters often have toxic brains because when you light the couch on fire, it's producing all of those chemicals. in the brain. And so after she told me that, I said, after he told me that, I said to the wife, I said, so when did he become an? She said, what do you mean? I said, did you marry him that way? Do you have father issues you're trying to work out? She said, no, he was great when we got married. It wasn't until about five years ago. And then she put her hand over about.

And that's when he got that job.

Oh, God. about the time he got that job, he started to change. And so it shifted from he's an asshole to he's sick. And his attempt to being a good husband by going to work and supporting his family, he's being poisoned. And so for me, I took him out of that job, at least that position in the plant where he worked, put him on a rehabilitation program, and they didn't really need marital therapy. What he needed was brain rehab. And get your brain right. It's easy. I mean, both you and I are married, and you know, it's hard to be married with a good brain, but with a bad brain, it's really hard. But no marital therapist thinks about, well, what about the physical functioning of the two brains that are in front of me?

Well, that's a radical idea. You know, you have to get a brain scan in order to go to therapy.

Because what if it's the head trauma? Or what if it's the toxic exposure? Or what if it's you just both have a terrible diet leading to inflammation and you both have inflamed brains, which means now you're anxious and depressed and you take things the wrong way. This is not the sign of love, right? When your brain works right, you tend to be more empathic, more thoughtful, more loving. You can see things from their point of view, not just your own.

Right, I mean it's a very different framing instead of you're a jerk to your brain is broken and it fixes your brain and you're not a jerk anymore and you've seen this over and over again.

Thousands of people. We actually do a formal outcome study on everybody we see. So I have outcomes on 6,500 patients. We have the best outcomes. On average, if you come to Amen Clinics, you're complicated. You have 4.2 diagnoses, you failed 3.3 providers, and five medicines. At the end of six months, if we treat you.

So you're a resort doctor. The doctor of last resort.

Doctor of last resort. Just like you. At the end of six months, 84% of our patients say they're better.

How many?

84%.

That's unbelievable.

For a treatment resistant group. But we get to look at their brains. How do you know unless you look? I mean, it's insane that we're not looking at the brain.

What's also fascinating in your work is that it's not like you're anti-psychiatric medication. You're going to use whatever the right tool is, whether it's exercise or sleep or diet or supplements. But you also, it's so fascinating to me, you can look at someone's brain and see which areas are working or not working, and then you can match the medication specifically to that exact issue. It's sort of like an antibiotic. We use different antibiotics if you have strep or different antibiotics if you have clostridia or different antibiotic if you have pseudomonas. It's really specific and we don't do that in psychiatry. So we guess based on their symptoms but we don't look at the areas.

Of their brain that are working or not and that's so fascinating to me. Well, another one of the big aha's is depression is not one thing. Yeah. Seven things. ADD is not one thing. It's at least seven things. Maybe more. Addictions. at least five different things. You can be an impulsive addict, often with ADD, a compulsive addict, closer to OCD, a sad addict, an anxious addict, an impulsive compulsive addict, a temporal lobe addict, often based on head trauma, or these mindstorms. And people are trying to medicate what's going on, but if you don't really understand their brain and you put everybody in a 12-step program, it's not going to be as effective. as effective as it could be is if you know what type of brain they have and tailor the treatment. The same with obesity. You and I have talked about this before. You have impulsive overeaters, compulsive overeaters, sad overeaters, anxious overeaters, know your type so you can target the treatment. To put someone on a ketogenic diet that has a compulsive overeater brain, you make them mean. I was on Rachel Ray's show and we were talking about this and she's a, people can actually go to brainhealthassessment.com and take our free brain type test. And she was a type three, which was a compulsive overeater. And she goes, oh, I went on the ketogenic diet and I was so mean, I wondered why my husband didn't leave me. So balancing your food to the brain type can be really helpful.

So talk about supplements, because there's a lot of controversy about supplements. A lot of data is coming out lately that supplements don't work. I think that the story is more complex than that.

And, I'm like a huge fan of supplements and, you know, I mean, full disclosure, I own a supplement company, BrainMD, and the reason I do, I mean, I had not one thought when I was younger about owning a supplement company. But when I first started doing scans in 1991, I realized some of the medications I prescribed, particularly opiates and benzos, are toxic to brain function. And I remember in medical school, I'm sure you do too, this term first do no harm. Use the least toxic, most effective treatment. So I started to research, well, is there any science behind natural supplements? And at the time, there already was, there were science behind SAMe and L-tryptophan and 5-HTP and omega-3 fatty acids, magnesium and B vitamins, vitamin D. There's a whole field of orthomolecular psychiatry. And I got really excited about first do no harm. And so in the end of mental illness, there are actually whole sections on if you have depression, what are the 10 things you should do before you go on an antidepressant? If you have anxiety, what are the 10 things to do? If you have ADD or an addiction, what are the things to do before you go on medicine? And I'm not opposed to medicine. I use all the tools in the toolbox. I mean, if you have bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, medicine is the first thing I'm thinking about for you to stabilize the situation until I can try to understand those bright mind's risk factors and go and attack each of them. The science is always fascinating and you want to go, okay, who funded the science? And that's true on both sides, you know? Sure. The supplement companies or is it the pharmaceutical companies?

Or the food companies?

The pharmaceutical, the people that make Zoloft actually did a study on St. John's wort and they found it didn't work. Except when you actually read the study, it did work except for the most severely depressed people. But that wasn't the headline. The headline was St. John's Wort doesn't work. Well, the fact Zoloft doesn't work for severely depressed people, nothing works, no singular product. And one of the reasons why supplements don't work like ginkgo or vitamin E is the brain does not get sick in one way. So single supplement like single medicine ingredients often don't work. You have to take a multiple mechanism approach. And that's why Brain and Memory Power Boost, our memory formula, has seven things in it so that we can attack multiple risk factors at once.

I think it's very important people understand, don't understand what they do. They actually regulate all these biochemical processes in the body. They regulate hundreds and hundreds thousands of enzymes in the body that are required to make your chemical reactions go. So, for example, if you don't have B6, you can't convert tryptophan from your diet, from your turkey, into serotonin. It's just simple biology, but somehow these supplements are seen as these weird things that aren't really part of our biology, but they are essential. And I think that's something that I've learned and the widespread nature of these deficiencies and the other things that go on are really important.

Choline, for example, there's a widespread deficiency in choline and choline helps you with memory and it helps you with learning. And people who are vegans often have deficiencies in choline because they're easier to obtain for things like eggs and meat and poultry and fish. And so if you know that, then supplementing with it can really help you and that way you might not have to give up the lifestyle that you've chosen, whether it's being a vegan or a vegetarian.

Yeah, it's so important. And I think what you said is really important. People think of them as sort of single target, single agents, but they work as a team. You know, Michael Jordan, best basketball player ever arguably, right? But he couldn't win an NBA championship on a team by himself. You know, he needs all the other players.

Absolutely correct. And the brain doesn't get sick in one way, so it's not going to get better often by just doing one thing.

I think that's really what the premise of functional medicine is, is that it's not just about treating the disease with a pill. It's about looking at all the variables that create imbalance in the body or the brain and fixing those. You can't just do one thing. And that's what we were trained in medical school, do one thing, and then that's it. It's called Occam's Razor. And that was sort of the epitome of being a good doctor, was you found that one single magic thing, that magic pill that fixed everything. Now, what you're saying is that this is just a nonsense idea that doesn't reflect the complexity of our biology or our brains.

And, well, if you believe Irving Kirsch from Harvard, that antidepressants by themselves really work no better than placebo, except for the most severely depressed people and even then not very well. And now I've been a doctor like you for a long time and I know they do work when I target them properly to someone's brain and they work better when I get them to eat right. They work better when I get people to exercise. They work better when I use supplementation. They work better when I optimize their hormones. They work better when I get them to sleep. And you know one of the other big ahas, And I'm not a sleep doctor, but sleep apnea damages your brain.

For sure.

And you can actually see it on a scan. So I have gotten so many brains better just by getting a sleep study and then having them wear a CPAP. And so many men, they don't wanna wear the CPAP 'cause, you know, it doesn't make them feel masculine. But without it, they're literally murdering thousands of brain cells every night. 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 got to 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 if they're struggling, your brain is going to 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, boosts it. 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 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 produce, 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 we're eating constantly. And so I'm a huge fan of smart calories. But it's not just any calories. 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 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 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 illness. 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, 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 our, my babies, my grandbabies will never be able to afford before 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? That comes in there. We look at their psychology, how we 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 there's 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 psychiatrists. 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 it 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. and 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? And, 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. and 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, in 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. 'Cause, 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 freaking crazy. You've heard it said, 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 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. 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. 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 charlatan, 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'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 in 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 than give up sugar. And I'm like, did you date the bad boys in high school? I mean, 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 and 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 there are 35-year-olds that go, you know, I'm foggy and my memory's 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's 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 1600 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, 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 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 realize 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 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 one to ten how quickly they're going to kill you. When I first did that, I literally threw out half my bathroom. It was 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 his 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 hard. But having Alzheimer's is hard. It's expensive and you will feel deprived. Right? 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.

Doctor, I want to be happier. What do I do? I don't know, but if you're depressed, I'll give you a drug. It's like, so based on the data, it seems that, you know, some of it's genetic, like maybe 40%, 10%, is basically your situation in life. If you obviously have bad socioeconomic circumstances or social determinants of health, but habits in your lifestyle make up about 50%, which means you have a lot you can do to improve the quality of your life and your happiness. So, what are the seven secrets that you talk about in the book that no one's really talking about? The Secrets of Happiness.

So there's so many books about happiness. It's like, why do we need another one? And it's because they're big things missing. Happiness is a brain function. So that's number one. When your brain is unhealthy, you're likely to be unhappy. And so, you know, it's like, why did I write this book? It's like Americans are the unhappiest they have been since the Great Depression. So given the pandemic, the political divide, the societal unrest, social media and the national media controlling the dialogue, and they go after fear because that activates the limbic structures in the brain and gets people to pay attention. And so we're going to- Fear, fight.

Or flight, it's the reptile. So they appeal to your reptile.

They do.

And a lot of people wake up with negativity and sadness because that's been planted in our brain through evolution. Because thousands of years ago, you had to wake up and be afraid because that was a survival. mechanism. So that is why the brain pays attention to negativity faster than to positive messages. And I'm like, okay, we're so unhappy that I want to spend a year thinking about, studying, writing about happiness. And so I got 500 consecutive patients, Damon Clinics, and we gave them the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire. Then we looked at their brains and what we found, the unhappier you were, the lower activity in the front part of the brain you had and the lower activity in an area of the brain called the basal ganglia, which has the nucleus accumbens, which is the part of your brain that responds to dopamine. Things like head trauma, or toxic exposure. And so much of it I learned from you. I don't know if I, I know I've told you, but you've just been a huge mentor of mine that I buy your books for all of my doctors. We have almost 70 doctors now.

Thank you. I'm getting so many royalties. Thank you.

And I love.

Looking at the brain. You know, that's sort of my thing, what I do. and it was just so clear if your brain wasn't healthy, you were not likely to be happy. So the first strategy that nobody knows about is get your brain right and your mind will follow. And there are a whole bunch of strategies on how to do that. The second one, which I.

Stop you right there. Can I just. That is such an important statement you just said. I don't want to go over it so quickly. your brain is your brain, which is this, you know, putty-like structure in your skull, and your mind is who you are, it's your thoughts, it's your feelings, it's your perceptions, and your mind function is determined by your brain function. And yes, you can overpower your brain function if you're really strong-willed in many ways, but it's really important insight to understand that your brain and the quality of health of your brain determines the quality of your mind. That's a big insight that most people don't realize. Your brain creates your mind.

Right.

If people are sad, I'm depressed, I'm anxious, they go, oh, it's like a sore ankle. It's like a stomach ache, but your brain can't have a stomach ache or.

A sore ankle, so it has a mood change, right? So, you and I have been blessed to see some really cool people. And, I was in Justin Bieber's docu-series in 2020 called Seasons. and he came to me at a really low point. And like many of these young superstars, they'll show up or not. They'll do what you say or not. And when he got really low, he showed up and he said, I think I get what you're trying to tell me. My brain is an organ, like my heart is an organ. And if you told me I had heart problems, I'd do everything you said. He said, so I'm going to do everything you say, changed his diet, did hyperbaric oxygen, IV therapy. And he's better now than ever. He was just nominated for a bunch of Grammys, and I'm so proud of him. But if you don't get your brain right, it's really hard. You know, if you think of it like hardware and software, you gotta optimize the physical function of your brain, and then you can program it. And we have faulty programming.

We'll talk about that.

But you first have to get the hardware right.

Exactly. So to go keep going on the seven things. I stopped you after the first one.

So the second one is happiness is geared to your brain type. One of the big lessons I learned from imaging early on, is that all psychiatric illnesses, all of them, are not single or simple disorders. They all have multiple types. And giving someone the diagnosis of depression is exactly like giving them the diagnosis of chest pain. And nobody thinks about it like that. But it's absolutely true that, you know, nobody gets a diagnosis of chest pain. Why? Because it doesn't tell you what's causing it. and it doesn't tell you what to do for it. I mean, you're not going to give everybody nitroglycerin. I mean, that would be stupid.

Right?

But now we think of depression, oh, you're depressed, take Lexapro or you're depressed, take Luvox, which is really interesting. We may talk about that in the pandemic.

But- yeah, it turned out to be a joke for COVID.

Yeah, it's really interesting.

And I think I know why.

But.

ADD is not one thing. It's seven different things. One of my best-selling books of all time, Healing ADD, I talk about seven different types. And then when I was thinking about happiness, I'm like, the thing that makes spontaneous people happy, like scary movies and having an affair or jumping out of an airplane, the persistent person would actually, those things would make him or her miserable. And so it's really important to know your type. There are five primary types. So you balance that means, you know, most any reasonable thing will make you happy. Spontaneous, you need novelty or you're not happy. Persistent, you need routine or you are not happy. Sensitive, you need connection. They were damaged most in the pandemic with the isolation. And the cautious people, they need peace to make them happy. And so know your type. I have an online quiz called our brain health assessment, brainhealthassessment.com, you'll see which of the 16 types you have and then, well, what are the things more likely to make you happy? all of these strategies have questions. And for get your brain right, the question, the little tiny habit, I don't know if you know BJ Fogg, but I worked with him for six months on tiny habits. So we have 50 tiny brain habits. But the mother of all tiny habits for the brain is for strategy one, is this good for my brain or bad for it? So when you go to do something, you just ask yourself, is this good for my brain or bad for it? So when we were at Saddleback, our first fight with Pastor Warren was, you gotta get rid of the donuts. Are it's good for your brain or bad for it? I mean, obviously it's bad for it. I don't know if you remember that, but I do.

And the soda, the pancake breakfast, and the whole thing. We had our work cut out for them. They did good, though. I would say they, I was impressed at that scale of change that they did. It was very impressive.

It's amazing. And then the question for the second strategy, am I doing something today that makes me uniquely happy? So it's really diving into happiness is not the same thing for everybody. So don't say it's novelty and gratitude and appreciation and fun and comedy because it's different. based on your type. Three, you'll appreciate is supplement your brain. We live in a society of deficiencies. And if you're nutrient deficient, especially serotonin, you know, most people don't know that birth control pills deplete serotonin. And I've seen this over and over in teenage girls. they go on birth control pills, and now they're anxious or they're depressed, and no one's thinking it's changing their neurotransmitters. And my favorite happy supplement is saffron. I've been following the science of saffron for 20 years. 24 randomized controlled trials against Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, amipramine, Effexor, equally effective. But rather than being anti-sexual, you know, put someone on an SSRI and they have trouble having an orgasm or their libido goes down, saffron is pro-sexual and it makes them more interested. And there's studies showing that saffron helps with memory, even in people with mild cognitive impairment. so when the pandemic started, I just released a product I love called Happy Saffron. Saffron is a curcumin. And I'm like, right at the beginning of the pandemic, my dad died. I had to close our Manhattan clinic. I mean, it was a disaster. I'm like, I'm taking this. So this is the supplement. I take many of them, but that's my favorite one. And so, I think we might agree probably everybody should take a really good multiple vitamin. Everybody should take an omega-3 fatty acid. You should optimize your vitamin D level, test it. Odds are it's low. And then work to get it high normal because we're in a pandemic.

And then it depends on your brain type.

So our spontaneous people do better with stimulating supplements like rhodiola. our persistent people do better with serotonin boosting supplements like 5-HTP, the sensitive people do better with saffron or SAMe, and the cautious people do better with GABA, theanine, magnesium. I'm just a huge fan. And too often you see this is people go to their family doctor, their nurse practitioner, and the ends up on a benzo. And it's like, no, no, no. That's like 20th on the list. Let's do meditation, diaphragmatic breathing. Let's try Gavin magnesium. Please don't do that because why would you start something? Somebody can't stop. And I see them creating so many problems. with inappropriate medication use.

Well, they don't even work that well. That's the thing. If you took Prozac and you're cured and you were happy, life was good. Wonderful. But it just basically no better than a placebo for mild or moderate depression. So, you know, that's another problem.

Well, the pharmaceutical industry doesn't want to be in the order business. I mean, they consciously made the decision to be in the reorder business that once you start something for a lot of psychiatric medications, they change your brain to need them in order for you to feel normal. So many people are just wickedly afraid of going off antidepressants because of the withdrawal from them. And I'm not opposed to medication. I'm just opposed to that's like the first and only thing you do. without getting someone's diet right, without getting their habits right.

Right.

Well, that's so true. I mean, you also talk about in the book this whole idea of four circles of happiness. It's an exercise you do to make you happy. What is that?

Well, when I was in medical school, actually the first week, our dean came in the classroom and he said, never think of patients as their diagnosis. always think of them in four big circles. And it's just stuck with me. He went to the board and he drew the first circle, which is the biological circle. So, you know, as a doctor, you need to know all about their biology. And as a psychiatrist, for me, you know, our primary organ is the brain. So brain health, as we talked about, the second circle is the psychological circle, which involves development. and how they think. And secret number five is master your mind and gain psychological distance from the noise in your head, which we'll talk about. It's a super fun circle, but it's basically the psychological circle. And then he drew the things that.

You said is never, don't believe every stupid thought you have.

And, and I didn't learn that till.

I was 28 years old in my psychiatric. residency at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. And I'm like, my eyes got really big because, you know, I have struggled with anxiety. And, and I'm like, why didn't they teach me that in third grade?

Right.

Just because I have a thought has nothing to do with whether or not it's true, whether or not it's helpful, whether or not I should attach to. And it's not the thoughts you have that make you suffer. It's the thoughts you attach to that make you suffer.

And then he drew the third circle.

Which is the social circle. He said, and then the social circle, it's how are your patients' relationships and what's their social situation? And, you know, two years into this pandemic, the social situation for so many people has just been a disaster. from the societal unrest, the political divide at Christmas, I had never seen family division like I have seen. And I'm saddened by it. And I kept telling my patients over and over and over again, without connection, you have no influence. So you're a vaxxer, you're an anti-vaxxer, whatever, you know, people people are like not getting together and angry at each other. And I'm like, if you don't stay connected, you have no influence on the other person. And then the last circle, which I just love so much, is the spiritual circle.

It's why do you care?

You know, what is your deepest sense of meaning and purpose, your relationship with God, with the planet, with the past, with the future and really talking about that with my patients. And I have to tell you, Mark, nine out of 10 patients when I ask them what their goals are and why they think they're on the planet, they haven't thought about it. And I'm like, you know, a business is not going to go unless it has a mission statement and a purpose and a strategic plan. And so that's actually number seven of the happiness secrets is live each day based on clearly defined values, purpose and goals. And purposeful people are happier. But if you don't know, and there's a great exercise in the book on how to find your purpose that I love. And, you know, one of my favorite patients that came out last that I've been her doctor for about 11 years is Miley Cyrus. And I love her so much. And she has just grown up so much in the last couple of years, and she's very purposeful. She knows what she's about and what she wants to accomplish. And her bad habits didn't fit. And ultimately, that's the question. to ask for secret number seven is, does it fit? Does my behavior fit the goals I have for my life?

Interesting. So, you know, you've been doing this for a long time, like 40 years, and you've looked at a bazillion brain scans, and, you know, you did what most psychiatrists never do, which is they look at the organ that they're treating. What a concept. You know, what did you learn through that? detour that you took from traditional psychiatry. And what are the sort of big lessons that you got and helped change the way you treat your patients?

You know, I became a psychiatrist when I was in medical school. My first wife tried to kill herself, and I took her to see a wonderful psychiatrist. And I came to realize if he helped her, which he did, it wouldn't just help her. that ultimately it would help me. It would help our children and our grandchildren. And I became a psychiatrist because I loved it.

But I be.

But I joined the only medical specialty that never looks at the organ and treats. And I was an x-ray technician in the Army before I went to medical school. And I'm like, well, of course you should look. How do you know unless you look? and when I got the opportunity to look, it literally changed everything. I realized that Psychiatry is broken, making diagnoses based on symptom clusters with no biological data. That's just insane that, you know, we're run by the pharmaceutical industry. That's not a good thing because the motive isn't Wellness. The motive is and when I started looking at the brain, I'm like, oh, let's dump the term mental illness. I've always hated that term. And let's really focus on brain health. If I can get your brain right, the biological circle, your mind is going to be better. Now, you got to program your mind with your values, purpose, goals, not believe in every stupid thing you think. But if the foundation of mental health is sick, you're not going to be okay. And that's where I learned, like, Lyme disease can have a negative impact on your mind. COVID-19, what we know now is it activates the limbic or emotional brain and 20% of people who have COVID we'll get a new mental health diagnosis within the first five months. Wow. That's just craziness. I learned that diet matters. Secret number four is only love food that loves you back. That you are in a relationship with food and so many people are in an abusive relationship with food. When we were doing the Daniel Plan, one of the pastor's wives, I scanned her brain and she's in my office and I was drinking tea and she said, Could you put the tea down? I'm like, no one had ever asked me that before. But I'm polite and I put the tea down. She said, I didn't want you to spit it at me. And I'm like, I've never spit tea at anybody. She said, After you and Dr. Hyman and lectured, I told my husband that I'd rather get Alzheimer's disease than give up sugar. I'm like, did you date the bad boys in high school? Cause that's obviously a bad relationship with sugar.

The question then becomes, well, how do we improve our brain health to improve our mood?

So it's really three big strategies. You know, you and I both spend a lot of time trying to make things really simple for people. So the first one is brain envy. You got to care about it. Nobody cares about their brain. Why you can't see it, right? 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. But because most people never look at their brain, they don't care about it. In 1991, I was 37. I'm a double board certified psychiatrist, board certified in general psychiatry, child and adolescent psychiatry, is the top neuroscience student in medical school. I didn't care one whit about my own brain because I'd never seen it. And when I saw it, I was sort of horrified because I played football in high school, had meningitis twice as a young soldier, and I had bad habits. Like, I was only sleeping four hours a night. I was eating fast food. I was overweight. I just didn't even think about it. And so I developed a concept the week before I scanned my mom and she had a beautiful brain. And I developed a concept called brain envy. I always say Freud was wrong. Penis envy is not the cause of anybody's problem. I've not seen it one time in 40 years. It's brain envy. You gotta like love and care for your brain. And that becomes easy to answer the question, is this good for my brain or bad for it? Which is why I'm not a fan of alcohol and I'm not a fan of marijuana. The second strategy is avoid things that hurt your brain and you just have to know the list. And, you know, whenever I post on alcohol or marijuana on TikTok, it goes crazy, you know? people just get so, oh my goodness, how can you say that? I wrote a blog last year called I Told youd so. And when I first met Tana, and you know Tana, when I first started dating her, she said, I'll never tell you I told you so. And she lied, it's her favorite thing to say. And I've been saying since I started looking at the brain that alcohol is not a health food. And then the American Cancer Society came out against any alcohol because any alcohol increases your risk of seven different kinds of cancer. Not to mention all you have to do is watch Netflix. The people who drink the most get into the most trouble. Alcohol is at the center of divorce, incarceration, conflict.

And so many health problems.

So you want to be happier, you want a healthier brain, kill the alcohol, and other things that nobody knows, like general anesthesia can damage the brain. And like, I didn't know that. Nobody ever taught me that, but I.

Had a patient who I had her.

Scan, and then after she had a knee replacement, she said, I think I have Alzheimer's disease. And her brain looked like she'd just been hit by a truck. And I'm like, I wonder if there's any literature on this. And there's a whole food fight in the literature among anesthesiologists on cognitive function after anesthesia. So, for example, people have coronary artery bypass surgery have a significant increased risk of getting dementia. Now, it doesn't mean you don't have surgery or anesthesia. What it means is no, that's a potential her. And so you have to do things that help.

Yeah.

Things that I didn't know, like playing football is a brain damage in sport. I mean, you'd think most thoughtful nine-year-olds would come to that conclusion.

No.

Obesity. I published three studies now. Last one on 35,000 people. As your weight goes up, the actual physical size and function of your brain goes down, which should just scare the fat off anyone. And so brain injury. Yes.

Big, fairly small brain.

Well, and you've heard me say, if you want to keep your brain healthy or rescue it, you have to prevent or treat the 11 major risk factors that steal your mind. And I first learned this term from you, diabesity, where you're overweight and have high blood sugar. It's a disaster for the brain because when you're overweight, it increases five of the 11 risk factors. You have lower blood flow to your brain, your brain looks older, so aging, it increases inflammation, it stores toxins and takes healthy testosterone and turns it into unhealthy cancer promoting forms of estrogen. And it's like with 72% of us overweight, because you have to ask the question, why America is the richest country in the world, 4% of the world's population, 15% of the COVID deaths. It's because we're unhealthy. We need to do something about that beyond the vaccine and what pharmaceuticals are. I've been disappointed that the powers that be haven't talked about we're sick as a society and we need to do better.

It's, it's astounding to me, honestly, especially when the data is so strong. I mean, I, I mentioned this before in the podcast, but no, study out of Tufts determined that 63% of hospitalizations for COVID were because of poor diet, which would, it literally, if we, if we had everybody was healthy and didn't have a poor diet, we'd literally have no problem with COVID It would be a, you know, maybe a few people older, sicker would get die, die. But we wouldn't be shutting down society. We wouldn't be overwhelming the hospitals. We wouldn't be burning everybody out. We wouldn't be in this horrible situation. And no one's really said anything about it except Bill Maher. I mean, it's true.

It's insanity.

It's just- I wrote about this first.

Week, I mean, the first week or so after COVID, the data started coming out. And I was like early March, maybe early April, and I wrote an article with the Diary of a Faring from Tufts and we published in the Boston Globe. But it basically said, you know, your.

Diet is playing a huge role in this time to smarten up, but nobody listens. well, and you could get shut down. I mean, people get after me because I say your best defense against COVID is your immune system.

What heresy? What heresy?

Why is that controversial?

Close this clinic. Get the FBI in there. Let's raid that quack.

Yeah, I mean, it's just insanity. But, you know, I've been a heretic my whole career, so.

God forbid we tell people to eat healthy and exercise. and get sleep and relax a little bit. God forbid. Shut us down for malpractice. It's crazy. It's crazy. Okay, this is really, really helpful, Daniel. So tell us about the book, you, Happy youy Diet. And you talk about happy foods and sad foods. Like I can imagine what they are. I mean, my happy food is chunky monkey ice cream, but it might not be yours.

Yeah, that's a food that you love that abuses you.

So I love it, but it doesn't love me back. Well, for five. It does. For five.

Love you back.

Yeah.

But ultimately, we want to feel good now and later. I know the one thing when it comes to your health is when you do the right thing, stop feeling deprived. It's when you do the wrong thing, the chunky monkey ice cream. That's when you should. be feeling deprived because you're depriving yourself of what you really want, which is energy and health and memory and relationship. And I love what the comedian said who lost a lot of weight. I'm trying to think of his name, is blocked on it. But he said it'll come to me. Eating healthy food isn't a room. Eating unhealthy food isn't a reward. It's a punishment. And I went, oh, he's going to keep his weight off because he's got the right mindset. And that's the mindset of happiness. It's not a mindset of punishment. You punish yourself when you do the wrong thing.

You want to know my secret for living a long and happy and healthy life? Well, all I have to do is check out my weekly newsletter, Mark's Picks, where I share my favorite tips for health, longevity, well-being and lots more. Check it out and link below. You know, one of the things you also talk about in the book are the four nutraceuticals that really are important for happiness and mood. Can you talk about them? You might have touched on it earlier.

But just can you explain what they are, how they work and who should take them? Well, you know, we mentioned saffron. I'm just a huge fan of saffron. on anything that can boost your mood, sexuality and memory at the same time. I think that's just one I don't ever miss. Omega-3 fatty acids are just crucial. I did a study, actually published it in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, where we looked at 130 scans and we had their Omega-3 index, Bill Harris's test, and people who had low levels of omega-3 fatty acids in their blood had low blood flow to the memory centers of their brain. And so the hippocampus is also one of the major mood centers in the brain. So I think omega-3 fatty acids are critical. Vitamin D is critical. And that really depends on type. If you are the persistent brain type, you know these people worried, rigid, inflexible. Things don't go their way. They get upset. No matter what it is you say to them, they argue with you. It's like it's nice outside. Oh, no, it wasn't. It was nicer yesterday, right? I mean, you know these people.

And they have a different definition.

I try to stay. away from them.

The front part of their brain works too hard. And they are some of the unhappiest of the group. And serotonin enhancing strategies help them so much, like 5-HTP or L-tryptophan. I love 5-HTP. The Cautious people, what makes them unhappy is they're always seeing the sky is falling. They look at the future with fear and calming down their basal ganglia with GABA, magnesium, theanine can be just so helpful.

Yeah, so there's a lot of stuff in your book that covers all this and people can learn out what type they are and what they need and there's questionnaires. Really, really great. the other thing you talk about is this whole idea of the noise in your head. And how do we, how do we get rid of that inner stuff and making us depressed? Because, you know, our, our feelings are follow on from our thoughts. Most people think our feelings generate our thoughts. They don't. It's the other way around. You have a thought and you have an interpretation of reality, whether it's true or not, it's going to change your mood. If you think your wife is cheating on you, even if she's not, you're going to get the same reaction as if you were chased by a tiger. And the body doesn't distinguish. So our thoughts generate our feelings and you're talking about all these negative thoughts. How do we get happy by getting rid of these thoughts or can we or what do we do? Can we get distance from them?

Well, this section is just loaded with great strategies. There's just nowhere in school they teach you to discipline your mind. And there's a whole group of positive psychology habits. I start every day with today is going to be a great day. Nudge my mind with what's right. I know I was going to talk to you today. That makes me happy. I end every day with what went well today. People who do that for just three weeks notice a significant improvement in their level of happiness, just that one strategy. And about a year and a half ago, I lost my dad. And I've been doing that habit, like for years now. What went well? So I say a prayer and I go, what went well? And then I, my dad died. I did it because it's habitual. It's just a habit I do.

And.

The critic in my head goes, Really? We're going to do this today on one of the worst days in your life. But because it's my habit, I began to think about the interaction between my mom and the police officer. It was hysterical. All the texts I got from my friends and just holding his hand before they took him away to the mortuary and how soft it was. And then I went to sleep. These habits help help you during hard times. We all have hard times. It's our habits. Where you bring your attention always determines how you feel. And you can nudge it in a positive way or in a negative way. Left unbridled, for many people, their brain goes to the dark place. And so these habits are so important. And then two other strategies quickly. Whenever you feel sad, mad, nervous or out of control, write down what you're thinking. Because you're right. Thoughts create feelings, feelings create behaviors, behaviors create the outcome of your life. It starts with thoughts. So when you feel that, write it down. Tanner never listens to me. I had that thought and then go, is it true? And when I really think about it, it's actually not true. She's listened to all 16 of my public television specials. And then I just don't have to attach to it. So not the thoughts you have that make you suffer, it's the thoughts you attach to. What's new for this book is a technique I learned from my friend Stephen Hayes. on give your mind a name. And that way you can gain psychological distance and you can choose whether or not to listen to it. So when I was interviewing him on the Brain Warriors Way podcast, and he said that, I'm like, so what name would I give my mind? And I gave it the name Hermy, which was after my pet raccoon I had when I was 16 years old. And I loved her, but she was a troublemaker. Pool Maker. She used to TP my mother's bathroom. She ate the fish out of my sister's aquarium.

That was.

Oh, no.

She left raccoon poo in my shoes. And so now, whenever I get one of those thoughts, I really go, hermy, do we really need to have this conversation? So I'm just separated from my mind, and my patients find this so helpful, like one of You know, her mind is psycho Sandy because she realizes really the voice of her mother that constantly puts her down and tortures her. And it's you get to choose whether or not to listen to it. Another fun part of that chapter is look for the micro moments of happiness. It's part of training. What's the smallest thing that makes you happy. So for me, it's that taste of the first sip of the hot chocolate I make at night.

Yeah.

Or the first couple of frozen blueberries, because I love them. Or I was looking outside the window before our podcast, and I saw a little bird that had a red head. You know, Tammy's a red head. I like red-headed things, and it just made me smile. So What are the little things? Because if you're waiting for the big things to happen, you know, I got a Grammy or my book's a New York Times bestseller. That's just such a bad trap because if you have too many big things happen, so we've learned about fame, it wears out the pleasure centers in your brain and makes you more vulnerable to depression.

Interesting. That's a very interesting thing.

Yeah.

Wow. And you talk also about the sort of simple decisions and the simple questions you can ask yourself to make you happier. Is some of the stuff we've touched on or are there other ideas?

Well, it's like, is it good for my brain or bad for it? Am I doing things that make me happy for my type? Am I supplementing my brain? I think that's so important. Do I love foods that love me back? Is it true? You know, whatever nonsense is floating around, your head be as good at talk. I don't know if you were good at talking back to your parents when you were a teenager. I was excellent. Nobody ever taught me. Nobody ever taught me.

My father was a rageaholic. I had to.

Oh, well, and they get stuck in your brain sometimes. You know, our past, if we don't manage it, controls.

Present.

And then we haven't talked about sex, which is are you reinforcing behaviors.

In.

Others that you like or dislike? Where you bring your attention in your relationships often determines how those go. And I tell the story story of why I collect penguins. And it's like, how do you train a penguin? You notice what they do right? You don't beat them, you don't criticize them, you don't yell at them. It's like you, whenever they do something right, you give them a fish.

You have penguins? You don't have penguins at your house?

Oh, I have like almost a thousand of them. Not real penguins, but I have penguin pens, cups, dolls. I actually wrote a book about this.

I was like, you live in California, penguins aren't gonna be too happy there.

Actually, they're behind me. I have two of them. And it's based on this story that I have now six children. I adopted our two nieces. But when my oldest, who I adopted, he was hard for me. And I was a child psychiatry fellow at the time, and my supervisor said, just spend some more time with them, spend special time with him. And I took him to a place called Sea Life Park in Hawaii, where I was doing my training. And, and he was, he's the persistent type, argumentative, oppositional. You ask him to do something, it's a fight. And we just, just, he and I, we had a great day, went to the whale show. That was fun. Went the Dolphin Show, and that was fun. At the end of the day, we went to the Penguin Show, and the.

Penguin'S name was Fat Freddy.

And this was what?

Fat Freddy. Fat Freddy, okay. When Fat Freddy came onto the stage, he climbs a high dive, goes to the end of the board, bounces twice, and then jumps in the water. I'm like, oh, this is so cool. And then it gets out of the water. Bulls with his nose, counts with his flipper, jumps through a hoop of fire. And I'm like, okay, this is cool. And at the end of the show, the trainer asked him to go get something. And Freddie went and got it, and he brought it right back. And in my mind, I go, damn, I asked this kid to get something for me, and he wants to have a discussion for, like, 20 minutes, and he doesn't want to do it. and I knew my son was smarter than the penguin. So I go to the trainer and I said, how'd you do? How'd you get Freddy to do all these really cool things? And she said, unlike parents, whenever Freddy does anything like what I want him to do, I notice him. I give him a hug and I give him a fish. And the light went on in my head that when my son did what I wanted him to do, I paid no attention to him at all because I was like my dad, who basically was gone at work my whole childhood. But when he didn't do what I wanted him to do, I gave him a lot of attention because I didn't want to raise bad kids. So I was inadvertently teaching him to be troubled in order to get my attention. So I collect penguins as a way to remind myself to notice the good things about the people in my life because in that way there will be more goodness. And so I'm very intentional of not being critical, of noticing what I like, and it helps all of my relationships. And oh, by the way, at work, I have the no a**hole rule that I don't get to be an and neither do you. So it starts with me, but I really work to hire people who are kind, who are competent and passionate, you know, just like you said, you know, I try not to have them in my life. And, yeah, but, but if you want to be happy, you want to be powerful. Yeah, people who are not powerful are not happy. And powerful means I know exactly what to do to make 10 smile and I know what to do to make her angry. And I work hard before I say things to go, does it fit? Does it fit the goals I have for this relationship? Because Harmony will show up with rude thoughts that just should never get out of my mouth.

Well, I'll show you, right? How we manage that, how we relate to it.

And how we, and we're so much better. Like our ant population, automatic negative thoughts, they tend to grow when we've eaten bad food. They grow when we haven't slept seven hours.

Right.

For, for women, right before their period, their ant population is higher, so they need to be more aware of that. So just, you know, what I try to get with my patients is let's just Notice, you know, we're going to take a course in you. And when it's hard, we're going to look at what did you eat? How did you sleep? What's the quality of your thoughts? Are you nourishing your brain or not? And pleasure, we haven't talked about this, but hedonism is the enemy of happiness.

Really? Really?

Because the more intense pleasure you have, the more you're going to wear out the nucleus accumbens and be depressed, which is why I'm listening to Will Smith's new book. It's wonderful. And he talks about fame and how the ride up is incredible. The ride, the plateau of fame is really a mixed bag. But when you become unfamous, because he Want a Grammy and his next album was terrible. He said, that is just awful because you're not modulating or managing the happy centers in your brain. You gave them too much pleasure. And so modulating it, that's why things like micro moments of happiness and just one other thing that we haven't talked about, I start the book by saying happiness is a moral obligation. And where I grew up, I grew up Catholic school, altar boy, that concept, happiness is a moral obligation, was nowhere to be found. There's plenty of guilt and shame and negativity. But why is it a moral obligation? Because of how you impact other people. Yeah, I can guarantee you if you were raised by an unhappy parent, like a rageaholic or married to an unhappy spouse, ask anybody if happiness is a moral issue, and I guarantee you they're gonna say yes. So it's not selfish. You know, people have that idea, oh, I shouldn't be happy, or that's not important. It's crucial to how you impact others.

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.