DO THIS First Thing In The Morning To COMPLETELY HEAL Your Body & Mind | Dr. Daniel Amen

Every day you're making your brain a bit better or a bit worse. You're not stuck with the brain you have. You can make it better. But you gotta.

This video is brought to you by the Ergatta rower, and you'll hear more about them in just a moment. I think you gotta have a dream.

The School of Greatness.

Really?

Yeah. Please welcome Lewis Howes.

What are some of the other techniques or nutritional things that we should be thinking about to optimizing the brain and body beyond ping pong.

Well, the first thing, and I did it this morning, is you go, today's going to be a great day. And that way you get your brain looking for what's right rather than what's wrong. And I get to be with you today and that makes me happy. I end every day and I recommend everybody do this. what went well today. So whenever I put myself to sleep, I say a prayer and then I go, what went well today? And I start at the beginning of the day and I purposefully look for the smallest things that went well that I like that make me happy. Now along that you'll find the big things, but you know, we're both busy and great things happen But you often don't stop and reflect on those great things that happened. And if you make it a habit, like the day my dad died, my dad died almost two years ago. And that day when I went to bed, I went, well, today the voice, the critic in my head was so upset. It's like you're a bad human being. But it's my habit. And then I thought about all the things that went right then. and even though I was sad and grieved, I went to sleep. Because I have my brain trained. We live in a society of undisciplined minds and there's a science to disciplining it. Yeah.

So what would you call that? Is it a, in the beginning of the day and the end of the day, what is that strategy called? Is it just mental focus?

Is it gratitude? Well, when people come to my clinic, we often do some neuro psych testing and one of the tests is is negativity bias versus positivity bias.

What's the difference between those two?

Well, negativity bias is you're focused on what's wrong. Your brain quickly, almost immediately, goes to what you're afraid of, what's negative. And the news will tell you all sorts of things to be afraid of. Positivity bias is you go to what's right. And so those two techniques are part of what I talk about in the new book, positivity bias training. How do you train your brain to look for what's right, not for just what's wrong? Now, it's not over the top because I've been thinking about this Bible verse a lot lately. The beginning of wisdom is fear of the Lord. And it used to always sort of bother me. I'm like, why do I have to be afraid? And then I realized people who have low levels of anxiety die early from accidents or preventable illnesses.

They're not worried about anything. They die earlier is what you're saying. Right.

And often the people that go to jail, they have low levels of anxiety, they actually have slower heart rates. They have lower sweat gland activity. Interesting. Right? Like if I think I'm gonna go rob a store, well, I don't because I don't wanna be caught.

Right.

And I don't like institutional food and I don't really look good in an orange jumpsuit. Yeah, yeah. Right? And so I'm always thinking ahead. And one of the lies of happiness. So I open youn Happier with the Lies of Happiness is don't worry, be happy. So Bobby McFerrin's Grammy Award-winning song, Don't Worry, Be Happy, is a lie because you need some anxiety so you do the right things and doing the right things consistently help you be happy.

Yeah, so you have a moral code, you're doing the right habits for yourself. You're not just like, I'm not gonna care. I'm gonna drink all day. I'm gonna eat whatever I want. Everything's gonna be fine. You want to have some... Well, if I do this action, there might be a negative reaction later as well.

Right. 50% of people 85 and older will be diagnosed with dementia.

Hmm.

I'm not okay with that. Those are bad odds, right? Because we're living longer and I don't want a 50% chance of having lost my mind. Now, but I can't start thinking about that when I'm 83. I need to be thinking about that when I'm 43 or 33, right? I mean, the earlier you can, the more you can push off those negative effects. So not too much anxiety because the cortisol damages your brain. But enough, it's like a dose response. What's the right dose of anxiety? And as a psychiatrist, I used to think my job was to lower the anxiety in my patients. And that's true for some patients. It's not true for other patients. I need to raise their anxiety.

So what would you say are the three main causes of someone more likely to reach a dementia state over 85 or before that even? What would those things be? the three bad habits or the thing, you know, the causes of dementia, would you say? So, increase those chances.

In the book, I actually talk about our Bright Minds approach to preventing dementia. So, there's 11, but if I had to pick a couple, it would be being overweight, because if you're overweight or have high blood sugar, there's something I call diobesity. It's a combination. You actually have seven of the 11 risk factors because I published three studies, the last one on 33,000 people that said as your weight goes up, the actual size and function of your brain goes down virtually in a linear pattern.

Does it happen if you're 30 years old and you're younger or is it only when you're older?

Happens in children.

Really?

Yeah. So we had two data sets, one in children, one in adults. drops.

The function and the size of the brain.

Trans size. Because it lowers blood flow to the brain. Obesity lowers blood flow to the brain. It ages the brain. It increases inflammation. Fat cells store toxins. It changes your hormones. Takes healthy testosterone and turns it into unhealthy cancer promoting forms of estrogen. this is not a good thing. And so if I had to go, don't be overweight. Now, don't be underweight. Underweight's not good for you.

Right.

Have a reasonable BMI. Be a healthy weight. And you don't want anything to damage your blood vessels because they found neurons, brain cells actually don't age. It's your blood vessels that age. And if your blood vessels aren't feeding your brain cells, they begin to die. And so with all of these risk factors, how do I know if I have it? So spec, this imaging study I do looks at blood flow. If you're drinking caffeine, if you're using nicotine, if you're sedentary, if you have any form of heart disease, if you have high blood pressure, all of those decrease blood flow to your brain. So you always want to Increased blood flow. And I love this part because when I get someone brain healthy, their sex lives get better. Because if you have blood flow problems anywhere, like you have erectile dysfunction, you have brain dysfunction. And if you have brain dysfunction, odds are you also have sex dysfunction because they're connected. It's about blood flow, right? The healthier your blood flow. And so, you know, I see a lot of 50, 60 year old guys and they're worried about their mom had Alzheimer's disease, they don't want to get it. But when they get on the program, their sex lives are better. That makes me so happy for them.

Now, there's something I touched on a little bit ago about the negativity bias and the positivity bias. I like to believe that I think in a positive way. I see the perspective of a situation. I try to look at the good perspective of the situation. I try to appreciate the things that I have as opposed to things that I lack. I try to see, have compassion and empathy for certain situations and say, that's really unfortunate, so I should be extremely grateful for where I'm at. You know, in all areas of my life, I try to have that perspective. I feel like it's a positive bias, right? Because it makes me feel better. There's been a lot of talk lately with different researchers and professors talking about the negative effects of, call it toxic positivity or too much positivity, I guess. Is there, you know, a negative, is there really a negative effect to the brain if you're thinking positively all the time? And if so, can you be toxic in the way you think in a positive way?

So I'm actually not a fan of positive thinking. I'm a fan of accurate thinking with a positive bias. Because positive thinking is I can have this third brownie and it won't hurt me. I can drive at 125 miles an hour down the freeway in the rain and it's not dangerous. I can give my phone number to a woman I met in a bar and not be thinking about the potential downsides of that. especially if I'm married and I want to stay married. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Right, I have this one friend. He came in and he told me about this woman he'd met at a medical conference and they were on a plane together and she'd been to his office. And I looked at him and I'm like, Do you like attorneys? And he's like, what do you mean? I said, you,'re married. you have ADD, you're not gonna cover up this affair, your wife's gonna find out, you're gonna lose half your net worth, and you're gonna be visiting your children on the weekends. And he's like, oh, I hadn't thought about that. Which means his frontal lobes weren't working, 'cause the front part of your brain not only thinks of the moment, it thinks of all of the moments, right? If I do this, what happens? And too often, people that have the most sadness. It's because they make bad decisions. And that can be toxic positivity, like, oh, I'm in the moment where I want people to be in all of the moments. Not just now. The future moment. Now and later, right? I want people to feel better quickly. Yes. With things that help them feel good now and tomorrow.

Right. Okay, so I like that accurate thinking with a positive bias. Yeah, accurate thinking.

Okay.

Is there such thing as toxic positivity in your mind?

Well, it could be. It's like don't worry, be happy. It's like, no matter what I do today, it's not gonna impact me. Tomorrow I can spend, I can max my credit cards, I can flirt with a girl even though I'm in a committed relationship.

I can drink all I want, I can eat all I want, yeah.

Yeah, that's toxic positivity. It's like, no, you need to be afraid. Right, I mean you came to my clinic and we looked at your brain and it's like, no, I want to love my brain. So if I love my brain, I avoid these things and I do those things. And then you have a better life. The School of Greatness starts with a healthy brain.

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Most books on happiness, and there have been a lot of books on happiness, is they go, okay, here are the things that make you happy. From gratitude and purpose and novelty.

Working out and this and that.

And I'm like, well, it depends on what your brain type is. For some people, helicopter skiing makes them happy. or jumping out of an airplane makes them happy. And for other people, that makes them flat out miserable. It's like, no, I'm not gonna do that. I'll be anxious, I'll be afraid. No. And what I learned, so at Amen Clinics, I have 10 clinics around the country, we do brain imaging. So if you have anxiety, depression, temper problems, relationship problems, memory problems, head trauma, whatever, we'll talk to you and then we'll scan you. It's been my big love affair in life is looking at people's brains. And early on I realized, 'cause I was looking at like, what does ADD look like in the brain? Or what does depression look like? Or bipolar disorder or autism? And early on quickly I learned they're not one thing. That each of those things have subtypes. And I've written books like Healing ADD, the Seven Types of ADD. And then when I was thinking about happiness, I'm like, it's clearly not one thing. And I've identified five primary types.

Brain types.

Brain types based on imaging. So there's the balance brain type, where quite frankly, most anything will make you happy. You're focused, you're flexible, you're positive and relaxed. And type two is the spontaneous type. Type one, you have a generally healthy brain. Two, you have sleepy frontal lobes, the front part of your brain, lower in activity. And you're very creative often. A lot of the young superstars I see are the spontaneous. Type, they need novelty, they love surprises, they hate routine. They want their life to be a bit unpredictable. They also like scary movies, they need a dopamine fix. Now the persistent type, type three, their front lobes actually work a bit harder than everybody else. And they hate surprises and love routine. They're accomplishment oriented. They finish things on time. They show up on time. And unfortunately, they tend to marry the spontaneous type. Or at least those are the people that come to my office. They come to my office. The fourth type is the sensitive type, and this was the type that was damaged the most in the pandemic because they crave connection, crave relationships. They're deeply empathic. When their relationships are good, they're really happy. And when they're stressed, they're very unhappy. And then type five is the cautious type. These are people that are early. two appointments. They will never jump out of an airplane unless the airplane's on fire. And to make them happy, they need peace, they need relaxation, they need a massage. And so understanding my type and their combinations.

Yeah, you might have two or three or.

Right. Yeah. And so, like, I like three or.

Four of these things at times. You know, it's like, I like my routine, but I also like to. get out once in a while and do something spontaneous.

So there are 16 types when you look at the combinations. And in the book, there's a link on how to get your free brain type. It's just so helpful.

What can we do once we know which type we're at? What do we do then with that information?

Well, for the balanced people, just keep it that way. For the spontaneous people, here are some supplements that might help your type. Here's the right diet for your type. Here are the right exercises. for your type. So if the spontaneous person, it is critical for them to know their goals in great detail. And they love the exercise. And then every day they ask themselves the question, does it fit? Does my behavior fit? Because the break in their brain is vulnerable. It's a little weak. And so often they'll go off here, they'll go off there. And a lot of CEOs are the spontaneous. especially entrepreneurs, not maybe CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, but for their own companies, which can be wildly successful, but they need a persistent person to organize them. Yes. Because they're really good at starting businesses, they're not good at growing businesses. So just know, oh, is that me? Then make sure you don't hire someone like you with your type. to grow your business because they won't. They'll get you in trouble with the IRS.

Exactly. So once we know the, and what's your brain type?

So I'm balanced. I have features of cautious and sensitive because I crave relationships. So when Tana and I get along and thank goodness we get along almost all the time, I'm so happy. My first marriage didn't get along at all and I was miserable for two decades. And I guess maybe I have the persistent type too.

You want to try to make it work and try to do everything you can.

I feel guilty when it doesn't.

I know that feeling. What do you say is the biggest lesson you've learned about your own personal life of assessing, I think it's 200,000 brain scans now, over 30 years? How long is it? 30 years of work of just assessing the world's brains in these different types. What's the biggest lesson you've learned about yourself in personal life, relationships, you know, all these things?

So, I started imaging in 1991 and I'm 37. I'd been a psychiatrist nearly a decade. I was the top neuroscience student in medical. middle school, and I didn't care about my own brain.

So what did that mean? You were eating whatever, you were sleeping whenever.

I only slept four hours. And I thought I was special because I could do that. Then I realized I wasn't special. You were bragging.

Oh, I only need four hours a night of sleep and I can function.

Yeah. Yeah. I was eating fast food. I was overweight, chronically stressed. And when I, the week before I scanned myself, I scanned my mother. and she was 60. And at 60 she had a stunningly beautiful brain. She's 90 now and she still has a stunningly beautiful brain. It's a little irritating. And then the next week I scanned myself and it wasn't good. My brain looked older than her 60-year brain. But it reflected her life, her brain. She could manage my difficult dad. She has seven children. She now has 54 grandchildren, great-grandchildren. She's the most consistently loving person. She knows everybody's birthday. She knows what's going on in everybody's life. She's just always interested. My brain wasn't healthy. I played football in high school. I had meningitis twice when I was a young soldier, and that's a bad thing for your brain. And I didn't care. I never drank or smoked. I just I didn't want to do that. I fell in love with my brain. And every day, I'm like, is this good for my brain or bad for it? You know, I don't take red eyes because I know that's bad for my brain. I mean, I'd rather give up a half a day to travel than take red eye.

Tell me why. Why is that bad for your brain?

Because you're not going to sleep right. When you're sleeping, you're changing time zones. And now, sometimes if you go to Dubai or something like that, you don't have a choice.

But on a frequent basis, East Coast.

To West Coast, it's like, no, I have a choice. I'm gonna take a 10 o'clock flight. And, you know, I'll just get other work done that day, and that way I'm not gonna lose a day of sleep, 'cause it's bad. And I look at what I eat. I look at how I think. I mean, everything in my life, like if you date, My daughter, I'm scanning your brain. Right, right. I mean, it's really at the core, at the center of my life when I met Tana 16 years ago. Liked her a lot. And like three weeks.

Please, I hope her brain looks good.

I'm like, you know, she could be the one. And so I said, you haven't seen the clinic. I said, Don't you want to come see the clinic? Oh, by the way, could we look at your brain? And she's a neurosurgical ICU nurse, so she loves the brain. And I scanned her and it was good enough.

You're like, Could be better or not. I'm going to get my girlfriend in there now too. I'm going to say, We just moved in. I'm like, the next test is the brain scan to see if you're really healthy.

Well, because ultimately, Brain functions are empathy. Being able to see things from the other person's point of view. It's cooperation.

That's so true.

It's excitement, it's fun, it's listening. It's those things that make a relationship work, right? Once you get beyond the cocaine phase of a relationship, like when I scanned Tammy, I was totally in this cocaine phase.

The adrenaline phase.

I wanted to activate my frontal lobes and go, okay, how's her brain? And one of my kids was dating this very cute girl and I scanned her and I'm like, please don't marry her. Please, don't marry her.

Based on the brain.

Yeah, 'cause I'm like, she's doing things you don't know that she's doing. 'Cause I can tell if you're substance abuser.

Now, you can tell if someone's smoking, drinking, marijuana, vaping, you can see this in the brain?

Yeah, I mean it doesn't label it, is vaping. You can see, but it's like this is toxic.

There's a toxic thing happening to the brain. Right. And could that be through thoughts alone or is it, you can see the difference between a toxic thinking versus toxic substance taking?

It's different.

Is it?

So, toxic thinking will often activate your emotional brain. So, like, the limbic brain will be more active, mold exposure or marijuana or alcohol, your brain starts to shrivel. Really?

So you can tell. So if say someone eats perfectly, you know, has all the right things to eat, they sleep well, well, they may not be able to do this if they're thinking negatively all the time, but let's just hypothetically say they try to work out consistently their healthy weight They're not taking any harmful substances, but they have extremely low self-esteem. They're constantly saying to themselves internally, I'm an idiot, I'm stupid, why did I do that? Doubting themselves. What does that look like to a brain? But they're doing all the other things semi-correctly.

Well, one, we would have to look, because I always say, how do you.

Know unless you look?

Because they may have been kicked in the head by a horse when they were 10 and it damaged their frontal lobes. and nobody knows about it because they were unconscious and had amnesia for the event. But say they're doing everything physically right, but mentally their mind is undisciplined, it's negative, they're going to have a relatively healthy brain, but their emotional structures are going to be really busy. And so it's like the chatter in their head, internal dialogue is just too active.

Yes.

And one of the fun techniques in the book, I love this technique, is give your mind a name. And so you can gain psychological distance from it.

Yes.

It's like you're sort of like the man in your head or the woman in your head that's always running a dialogue on you. Name him or her and separate. From it. Like when I learned this technique, like what would I name my mind? I named it after my pet raccoon when I was 16. So I literally have a pet raccoon. Hermie was her name. I thought she was a boy, but she wasn't. Anyways, Hermie, because I loved her, but she was a troublemaker. Right. She, like, TP'd my mother's bathroom. And she went to my dad, my mom went to my dad that night. and she said, Louie, it's my dad. It's either me or the raccoon. Now, my dad loved my mom, but he has the persistent brain type. And if you have the persistent brain type, nobody can tell you what to do. As soon as they tell you what to do, you're going to do the opposite. And when I heard him say, don't let the door hit you in the rear, I'm like, this is going to be a bad night. Oh, man. And then a couple of days later, her me ate all the fish out of my sister's Aquarium. It just like holds up signs like you're a fool or you're a failure or you're an idiot or whatever it is. And on most days those things aren't true. And if I could watch my thoughts rather than attach, that's the thoughts you have that make you suffer. We all have crazy thoughts. It's the thoughts you attach to that make you suffer.

So it's not having the crazy thoughts is one thing. Attaching, I guess, your identity to the thought.

Or believing.

Or believing it's a real thought will make you suffer.

Right. Like Jerry Seinfeld said, the brain is a sneaky organ. We all have weird, crazy, stupid, sexual, violent thoughts. That nobody should ever hear. Like if you see someone with a big load of boxes in his arms, you're like, oh, they should trip him. Now, you don't.

Right, right, right.

You don't because you're a kind, caring person, and you know that would just cause all sorts of trouble. Yes. Right? So just having the thought, and I've had guys, they come into my office and they go, I'm a pedophile. And I'm like, Tell me about that.

Wow.

And they're like, well, my teenage daughter brought some friends over and I had sexual thoughts about them. I'm like, Did you get their phone number? Did you climb in bed with them? I said, Having a thought has nothing to do with whether or not it's true. But when you attach to I'm a pedophile, oh my God. And they feel like sometimes they have to share that. I'm like, please don't share that. Share it with me. You know, let's work through it. Because if you really are a pedophile, we have to work on that. We have to protect you and other people, you and the children. We have to protect you. And often, I've actually scanned a number of pedophiles.

Really?

They have an impulsive, compulsive brain where they can't stop thinking about something and then they can't control it. But just because you have a thought is nothing to do with whether or not it's true.

Right, right.

I mean, a lot of people have had, you know, I should kill myself, but it doesn't mean you're going to. But it's why you shouldn't be drinking. If you have suicidal thoughts, you need to stop drinking because people who have suicidal thoughts who drink have a higher risk of killing themselves.

So what should we be aware of about thoughts? Are we the creator of thoughts? Do thoughts randomly come to us? Can we shift the thoughts? Should we believe every thought we have or realize, okay, that's just a thought, that doesn't mean it's who I am and it doesn't define me. overall principle around thoughts.

They come from all over the place. They come from your genes. They're actually written in your genetic code. So, trauma from a past generation can actually show up in future generations. It's really interesting. Last time I was here we talked about your brain is always listening and I talk about the ancestral drag where the issues you have may not be your issues. They may be from your mom or from your dad. So knowing your family history is really important. Thoughts come from the voices of your mom and dad. I have six siblings. Your siblings' voices come from your friends, from your enemies, from the news, from the music you listen to. And they lie. A lot.

Your thoughts lie a lot.

Your thoughts why a lot. Now, every time you have a thought, your brain releases chemicals. Every time you have a good thought, positive thought, happy thought, hopeful thought, your brain releases chemicals that make you feel good. Immediately, your hands get warmer.

When you think a positive thought.

When you think a positive thought, your hands get drier, your muscles become more relaxed, your breathing becomes slower and deeper, and your heart rate variability goes up. and it happens immediately when you have a sad thought, a hopeless thought, a helpless thought, a stressful thought. Your body immediately produces chemicals that make your hands colder and wetter, muscles more tense, breathing shallower and more erratic, heart rate variability goes down, that's a sign of heart health, and it happens immediately.

So, how connected are our thoughts to our nervous system and our body?

They're completely connected. Every thought you have impacts every cell in your body. Really? And thoughts lie. And it's not the thoughts you have that make you suffer. It's the thoughts you attach to. So, whenever you feel sad or mad or nervous or out of control, or write down what you're thinking. And then just ask yourself if it's true. What if you think it's true?

How do you switch that?

Well, so I love Byron Katie's technique. She's great to talk about it. It's work. These five questions. And she calls it four questions, and I turn around and I'm like, okay, five questions.

Is it true?

Is it really true? So if we took a thought, I don't know if you had a negative.

Thought recently that you want to share. Negative thought. I've been in a pretty good place, to be honest. I mean, I was just telling you, you know, I'm pretty consistent with my emotional accountability with therapy. I feel like my relationship's in a great place. That's the negative thought. Maybe the negative thought is I've been traveling a lot in the last month, and I haven't been as good with my nutrition, my sleep patterns, and my working out. So it kind of felt like, man, I just feel like a little sloppy.

A little off, like.

You know, I'm behind, you know, but it's not like a negative.

So let's go with I'm behind. Yeah. Is that true? And remember, we're not interested in positive thinking. Right. We're interested in accurate thinking with us. Positive space.

Am I behind? I'm behind necessarily on, like, my view of what I want to create for myself. So on that Viewpoint, I guess I'm a little behind, but it's. I'm not, like, beating myself up. that's more.

Okay, so that's question one. Is it just. Is it true? Question two is, is it absolutely true? 100 certainty. You're behind. All right.

Is it 100 true? It's not 100 true. It's just the story I'm telling myself.

Yeah. Question three is, how do you feel when you believe the thought?

I don't feel as good. Yeah, I don't feel as good when I'm ruminating or thinking about that thought. You know, I feel. you know, a little frustrated.

Question four is, how would you feel without the thought?

I feel a lot better. Yeah.

Right. And you are not the person. So many people worry if I didn't feel bad, I wouldn't be motivated. But that's not you. No, no. I'm not. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And question five is my favorite of all of them. Let's take the original thought. and turn it to the opposite, I'm not behind. And then we ask ourselves, is that true? Do I have any evidence that I'm not behind? So I love that because if I get a thought, Tana never listens to me. I've had that thought, right? She may be at that time in her cycle or she may be distracted and she's not listening to me. But if I go, Tana never listens to me.

Is that true? No.

No. And who would I be without the thought? I'd be a good husband. I'd understand. Maybe she's having a harder time. And then the turnaround can go three ways. It can go to the opposite. Tanna does listen to me. Well, I've written and produced 16 national public television shows. She's listened to the script on all of them.

Yes.

So she does listen to me. But you can also take it, to I don't listen to her. I'm like, I'm busy. Or I don't listen to myself. So the turnaround can be opposite self and other, which is a sophisticated concept, but when you get it, you don't have to believe your thoughts. They're productions of genetics and environment and chemistry. You then go, does this help me? Does it get me what I want? Is it accurate? And we haven't talked yet about this, and love this idea that happiness is a moral obligation. Because when I grew up in Catholic school, I went to Our Lady of Grace Elementary School in Encino, and then Crespi High School, the idea that happiness is a moral obligation that was nowhere to be found.

In Catholic school growing up.

Yeah. Or in most religious schools growing up. Or in most families.

Why is that not something that people think about?

Because they think of it as fluff. It's like, oh, so you're happy. But when you ask someone who was raised by an unhappy parent or married to an unhappy spouse, whether or not happiness is an ethical issue, and I guarantee you the answer will be yes. You're not happy. It's sort of like having bad breath that impacts everybody else. So it's not selfish to seek happiness. Now, in the same breath, I want to say hedonism is the enemy of happiness.

What's hedonism?

Where you just seek pleasure for pleasures say.

And so I'm gonna have sugar all day. I'm gonna have sex all day. I'm gonna watch movies all day. I'm gonna whatever it is that your pleasure trap is.

Right, because it wears out your pleasure centers. Before we were on, we started talking about fame and how fame can wear out the pleasure centers in your brain. You want to be very careful with the happiness you What is the fame trap?

How does fame bring happiness or bring sadness to people? Because I feel like a lot of people want money, they want power, they want fame. It's what they think they want growing up. But what have you seen from the brains that have a lot of fame, money, power, followers, if they don't have the right habits to help cultivate a healthy brain, what happens?

So there's these two areas in your brain. They're called the nucleus accumbens.

Okay.

And it responds to dopamine. And dopamine is often thought of the molecule of more and pleasure and focus and being high or happy. When you hit it hard, So think fame or think cocaine. You feel great. But the more you hit it, you begin to wear it out. And then it takes more and more-- To feel? To feel anything at all. And then it sets up a cycle of depression. And so-- I just listened to Will Smith's autobiography, which I thought was great. And he talks about it.

Really.

That, you know, another number one movie release or a number one best-selling hit, it's like, it's not nearly as cool as the one before.

It's not enough anymore.

And I had, and I experienced this, and it was disorienting. My book, Change youe Brain, Change youe Life, spent a year at number two or number three on the New York Times bestseller list. It's a historic bestseller. But my next book wasn't as good. I mean, I thought it was better, but it didn't sell as much. And so, so how does it, it's disorienting. And then, and then my book after that did great, Healing ADD. But then the one after that, not so much. And you just as an author, if you're really successful, you begin to feel off. and then, you know, I had to like come to grips with it. I've had 12 New York Times bestsellers, but, you know, I've written 40 books, so that means a bunch of them worked. And do I write to feed the nucleus accumbens? Or is it really a different chemical that I'm after? I'm after serotonin, which is respect, and oxytocin, which is love. connection. And so it's interesting to think about what you do based on the chemistry of happiness. And so, yes, there's dopamine, but unfortunately, dopamine is a trap. It's the molecule of more. I need more sex, more money, more praise, more followers. And I'm not going to lie, we went over a million fans on TikTok. That was cool, right? That was cool. But it's not the point, right? The point is connection, purpose, respect. Yes.

And what happens to the brain, we were talking about this before, of a brain that is in service to something greater than themselves, whether it's locally, whether it's with a friend or family member, they're being in service to someone, or they're making it their mission of a cause greater than them or their own Accomplishments. What happens to a brain that's on service mentality, more focused towards that versus a brain that's focused on self, success, acknowledgement? Can you just compare those?

So part of it depends on your brain type. And I want people to know, so what makes you uniquely happy? But there's this great study from Baltimore. It's part of the Baltimore Longevity Study where they did MRI scans on two groups. And one group volunteered at least once a week for a year, and the other group just did their regular life. So that was the intervention. Volunteering was the intervention. At the end of the year, they did MRI scans on them again. and the volunteer group had grown their hippocampus. Now, why is that important? The hippocampus, one of my favorite structures in the brain.

Where is that in the brain?

So, it's on the inside of your temporal lobe. So, behind your eyes.

Okay.

Back maybe an inch and a half.

Okay.

And the hippocampus is Greek for seahorse. because it's shaped like a seahorse. They're about the size of your thumbs, so they're big in your brain, and they're very special. Hippocampus is involved in memory, so it gets memory into long-term storage. Did you ever see the movie 50 First Dates?

Yes.

With Drew Barrymore and Adam Sandler. It's a great movie. I love that movie. Well, she had damage both of her hippocampus. So she couldn't, something happened today, she didn't remember tomorrow. So it's heavily involved in memory, but also in mood and spatial orientation. And it's very special because the hippocampus produces stem cells every day, about 700. And when you put the baby seahorses, called baby seahorses, in a healing environment, you grow them and they become part of your brain. And volunteering was good for the baby seahorses. And I went to teach people skills, not just give them pills. Whether it's antidepressants or anti-anxiety medications or marijuana or whatever. It's like, that's not the first thing to go to. The first thing is to learn diaphragmatic breathing. The first thing is to learn not to believe every stupid thing you think. The first thing is like, let's get your diet right because that'll take 30% of mental health problems. You just, you have to, when you're working with people, you have to find what works for them.

Yes.

Because, you know, what works for their type and what works For them, you have to find what they love. Because the whole goal is to love your brain. Yes. Because then you love your life.

Here's the thing, addiction is hard for a lot of people to overcome.

Really?

Addiction for a reason and people stay addicted for a long time because they probably try multiple times on whatever it is, marijuana or cigarettes or alcohol or porn or sex or whatever it is people are addicted to or just negative thinking. So, how does someone who feels like I've been trapped, I've been addicted for years or a long time on something, how do they really get to the root of healing that addiction or stopping it without taking on a different negative addiction?

In my last book, you, Brain Is Always Listening, I actually wrote a new 12-step program. Because the original AA program was written in the 30s. And I'm like, there's no neuroscience. It's basically a psychological, social, spiritual program. And step number one is know your life is out of control. That's actually step number two. Step number one is what do you want? What do you want in your relationships?

Clear on what you want.

What do you want in your work? What do you want in your money? What do you want in your physical, emotional, spiritual health? Gotta get really clear, what do you want? And then you ask yourself, is my behavior getting me what I want? And if it's not, that's step two. My life's out of control. It's being controlled by something I don't want. But so often people don't go to step number one, what do you want? And people go more money, it's like, well, that's probably not what what you want, because money doesn't make people happy. I mean, up to about $75,000. Right. If you're poor, you're not happy. Right. So there's a baseline of happiness, but above that, there is no connection to money and happiness. And so when you really get to what most people want, and I'm quite shocked by this, I've been a psychiatrist 40 years, and I ask people what they want, and they don't know. Or they'll say things like a promotion or a girl or money. But no, no. What do you want? And let's balance it. Because when you're not balanced, I mean, you and I work very hard, but when you're not balanced, you get burned out. Yes. And so what do you want in your relationships? I start there. What do you want for work? and money, because that's important, right? And if you know what you want for your money, you don't spend in a dumb way. Right.

Yeah.

What do you want for your physical health? So obesity runs in my family, and I don't want to be obese. So when I think of the brownie or Rocky Road ice cream or my mother's baklava, I'm like, no. Because it doesn't fit, right? I mean, I care. don't have tattoos, but if I had a tattoo, does it fit? Would be the first tattoo, maybe over here. Is it true? Is it really true? Does it fit? And in the new book, there's these seven secrets, like, what's your brain type? And are you doing things that make you happy? Optimize your brain. But with each secret, comes a question like, Am I doing something that makes me uniquely happy today? And this makes me happy, right? To me, this isn't work. It's fun. It's connection and education.

-So, is that one of the things to ask yourself?

-What makes me uniquely happy based on my brain type every day? -And then I want you to look for the micro moments of happiness. What's this? the smallest thing.

And am I doing those things on a daily basis?

Am I doing those things? Like hummingbirds. They're my micro moments of happiness. And I have hummingbirds in my yard, so I put plants there that they're going to be interested.

And it makes them happy.

So everybody's winning.

Everyone's happy, yeah.

Everybody's happy. What's another neuroscience secret? Optimize the physical function of your brain. So I did a study for this book. We looked at 500 consecutive new patients, St. Amant Clinics, and I gave them the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire. So how happy are you? On a scale of 1 to 6, we compared the high happiness group with the low happiness group. The low happiness group had lower function in their frontal lobes.

And so how do you increase the function in your frontal lobe?

Hyperbaric oxygen, certain supplements, not hitting soccer balls with your head. If you're boxing, don't let people hit you in the head. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean you protect them and I have thousands of before and after scans if you do the right thing. So we just, you're on our series, Scan My Brain. We just did Troy Glaus. So Troy was the third baseman for the Anaheim Angels. He was the 2002 World Series MVP. He hit 320 home runs. He's a very successful baseball player. that he was drinking too much and had four concussions when he played, had no purpose, and he came to see me. And his brain looked terrible, especially his frontal lobes. And he was really sad, which meant his family was really sad. People don't get it. It's right, it's not all about you. It's about everybody.

That's why he said, moral obligation.

Moral obligation. And I love Troy because he just did what I asked him to what to do. He stopped drinking.

And it was an athlete mindset. He's like, coach me up, I'll do.

What you tell me to do.

Yeah. Yeah.

No, that's why I love treating athletes. So he stopped drinking. He stopped drinking. He took the supplements I gave him. He ate better. He lost 15 pounds and increased his exercise. Because a lot of athletes, they got so burned out from working out. They stop. And you can't stop. I mean, you can shift. But you can't stop. And two months later, I scanned him again. His brain was so much healthier. Two months. And he was happier. Now, he has appropriate anxiety. He's like, no, I don't want that bad brain. I don't want that bad brain. And I don't want to go back to feeling bad. And so there's enough, anxiety, but now he asks himself, Lisa Howe, does it fit? Does this behavior fit the goals I have? Three is supplement your brain. Am I taking my supplements every day? And the supplement for happiness, there's a number of them, but saffron. I'm like a huge fan of saffron. I make something called Happy Saffron with a saffron extract called Afrom, zinc, and curcumin because in independent randomized controlled trials, they've been found to boost your mood. In fact, saffron has 24 randomized controlled trials comparing it to Prozac, Paxil, Lexapro, Zoloft, Wellbutrin, showing it to be equally effective. Really? Most antidepressants Decrease sexual function where saffron increases sexual function. And I think that's so interesting. It's just a natural supplement.

It's just a natural supplement.

It's not a drug. It's not a drug. And I'm not opposed to medication. It's just never the first thing I think about.

Don't just say my brain's messed up, I have ADD, here's a drug. You say here are all these other things you couldn't try to get you a little closer to where you wanna be.

First. Well, and we want to look at your brain first because how do I know what's going on with your brain based on just what you tell me? Right. No other doctor acts like that. Four, love food that loves you back. And when you travel, it's harder. Yeah. But you still have choices. And so we always go compared to what? Right. So I could have the deep dish pizza or I could find a salad. Yes. Right. I mean, it's like, oh, but I love pizza, but it doesn't love you. You're in an abusive relationship with pizza. Because, and I just think both you and I, at least me for sure, have been in bad relationships in the past. I'm married to my best friend. I'm not doing that anymore. Just not. And so many people come, but I love sugar.

It doesn't love you.

But it makes you stupid. And it makes you stressed. Oh, but I love cake or cookies or whatever. You know, it's love food that loves you back. You're in a relationship.

And your brain is in a relationship.

With food as well.

That's a good one. What's number five?

Master your mind. and gain psychological distance from the noise in your head. So that's where we put, is it true? And I love just sort of watching my mind because it doesn't torture me anymore. It used to torture me. And I was 28 before I learned I did not have to believe every stupid thing I thought. I was 28 years old. I was a psychiatric resident and I'm in class and when the professor said that, I'm like, really? It is a game changer for me just to like not believe every thought, but to sort of just watch the storms that come in my head. And when you do what I've done, so I have been a troublemaker in my profession. I have, we've had 10,000 physicians and mental health professionals refer people to us. I get a lot of love. But I've also gotten a lot of hate. Washington Post did an article on me and they called me the most popular psychiatrist in America. And to most psychiatrists, that's a really bad thing. So, but learning how to manage my mind, because you know, sometimes Thought will come up, nobody likes you. And then I'm like, 10,000 people for a patient's day in Chicago.

Sure, sure.

So maybe not. But if you don't know how to manage that, and I'm not unique, right? I mean, I have five sisters. I'm used to criticism.

Yeah, sure.

But if you don't know how to manage it, you get resentful, reactive, all of those things.

How do you manage it when you whether it's media or other, I don't know if there's other scientists or researchers who might be questioning you or your methods, how do you handle that and address it both personally and professionally?

It used to be really hard for me. It used to be really hard. And then I realized none of them will help 1%. of the people we've helped at Amen Clinics. I know we change lives. I have stories over and over and over. The lever patient that helped me with this, because I lived initially, because I was called all sorts of bad names, the charlatan, the snake oil salesman, and I was just anxious and upset, because I became a doctor in part because I like when people respect me.

Of course.

So if your community... Now I'm being disrespected and hell is separation from God or it's separation from your community. And now, and I loved being part of the psychiatric community. Won a research award from the American Psychiatric Association as Distinguished Fellow. and now I'm getting all this grief.

And why is this happening?

Well, I know why it's happening. And it's just normal that when you try to change your paradigm, people don't say thank you, especially for the people that are making money on the current paradigm. Right. They demonize you. There's a great book called the Structure of Scientific Revolution, and initially, somebody sees there's a problem. the powers that be try to fix it. That person comes up with a new paradigm, like what I do. We came up with a completely new paradigm. You should scan your brain and then you should do skills and natural things, not just pills. So you can see the pharmaceutical industry and the insurance industry are like, oh, no, can't do that. Step four is the rejection. It's the most predictable phase in science. scientific revolution. Interesting. And then five, progress in science happens through funerals. The old guard dies and a new guard comes up that embraces the new paradigm.

But it might take years or decades to embrace the new paradigm and then that becomes the new norm.

And then that becomes the new norm.

Until that's broken in 50 years or 100 years or when there's something new or whatever it might be.

Well, last year, so one of the exercises in youn Happier is write down the 20 happiest moments of your life. Because when you get sad, you can anchor them. Like I have them anchored in my house, like at my front door, it's anchored in my memory of me holding Tan and taking her across the threshold and almost dropping her because I almost dropped her when we practiced our dance the night before. And it was funny. It was fun. It was a good memory. And when I go in the kitchen, my grandfather's there at the stove making fudge, although I'm teaching him how to make a healthy fudge. Right? Well, last May, I got another one of my 20 happiest memories. The Canadian Association of Nuclear Medicine, which is a prestigious scientific body that regulates specter, in Canada wrote new procedure guidelines as if I wrote them. Wow.

So they used some of your procedures or they...

They wrote it as if I had written it. And 10 of the authors, five of them were my students. Basically saying you should look, what's the matter with you if you don't look? And it's a radical shift in the paradigm.

What's the spec stand for?

Single photon emission computed tomography.

This is how you scan them.

It's a nuclear medicine study that looks at blood flow and activity, but single photon, photon's a little piece of light. So when I scanned you, we injected the medicine, it goes and locks to your brain and then sends out signals that we could scan. And your image was made up of about 10 million photons or times the pieces of light hit the crystals in the camera. So it's really cool. But if you want to be happy, don't be a pioneer.

Because you're gonna be criticized, taken down, tried to be taken down, told all these nasty things about you.

And I just, I wish I'd known when I started that the sequence to how this is gonna go.

Yes.

Right. I wasn't looking for the hatred.

What was the sequence for you? Was it like, oh, I'm gonna try this paradigm isn't working the way I want it to work. This old paradigm, so let me find something new. This is exciting. I'm seeing some results.

So for me, when 1972 I turned 18 and Vietnam was still going on, and I became an infantry where my love of medicine was wow. Anyways, about a year into that, I realized I didn't like being shot at. It's not for me. So I got retrained as an x-ray technician and developed a passion for imaging. As our professors used to say, how do you know unless you look? So I love taking pictures of people's bodies. I just thought that was so cool. And when I went to medical school, someone I loved tried to kill her and I took her to see a wonderful psychiatrist, and I fell in love with him, because I knew if he helped her, it would help generations of her. So I fell in love with psychiatry, the only medical specialty that never looks at the organ it treats. And because of my imaging background, I knew it was wrong. Interesting. And I knew it would change. I just had no idea I'd be part of it.

Because psychiatry focuses on thoughts, in the brain, but it doesn't take an image or scan it necessarily.

Right. So if you went and saw a psychiatrist today, he would make a diagnosis exactly like they did in 1840.

Based on when Lincoln was depressed. Based on what you're telling them.

By what you tell them, how you look, your habits, and they're looking at symptom clusters.

Interesting.

Oh, you're a bipolar disorder. oh, you have borderline personality disorder. Oh, you have ADHD. And early on, I'm like, that's complete crap. Because how do you know what's going on in their brain? The assumption is depression's one thing. It's a serotonin deficiency, and so everybody should take an SSRI. But they work no better than placebo in large groups of patients. I mean, 60 minutes did a whole study a whole show on that.

Interesting.

And then when I started looking, because I like looking, I got so excited. And I'm also a writer and a communicator. Like, I like to write what I'm doing for the general population to benefit from my work, because I feel good when someone else benefits from my work, right? That gives me serotonin and oxytocin and the chemicals of happiness. We should talk about oxytocin before we finish for sure. But what I didn't know, because I started looking and I didn't make this stuff up, I mean I had a teacher and other people were doing it at the time, because I have a big mouth, I would attract a lot of patients and that would cause jealousy. And then the haters would come out. And then it didn't fit the current paradigm, diagnosis based on symptom clusters, no biological data. And then when I did the first 10 cases- When did you first do.

How long were you a psychiatrist for until you did the first scans?

Nine years.

Nine years. And so you were doing this and you were trying to diagnose- And I was being horrified.

Because like they're depressed, let me give you Prozac. I was, I had just gotten out of my residency when Prozac came out on the market. Some people got better, like dramatically better, by giving them the medicine, by giving them Prozac. And some people got worse and wanted to kill people. And I'm like, no, no, no, I'm not okay with this. Or I'm also a child psychiatrist, they had ADHD and I'd give them Ritalin. And some kids got dramatically better, like from D's and F's to A's and B's and so much better. And other kids would become suicidal. And I'm like, no, we're missing something. And then when I started looking, I'm like, okay, what's the one pattern? Like, oh, there's not one pattern. There's like seven or eight different patterns for all these things. So let's stop making diagnoses based on symptom plus with no biological data. And then the other thing I learned, which is why I do the athlete work I do, is mild traumatic brain injury ruins people's lives and nobody knows about it. Wow. Because they see psychiatrists, psychologists, marriage and family therapists, and nobody's looking at their brain. And so my NFL work, they have four times the level of depression as the general population because of the chronic Traumatic brain injuries. And what's the movie Concussion?

Concussion.

Yeah, that's kind of bringing that more to light. I was a consultant. You were in concussion. And I was actually written into the script. So I know what it's like to be written into a movie.

There you go. And I know what it's like to be written out of the movie. To be taken out of it.

Yeah.

So it's, you know, it's interesting that now it's becoming more.

And now there, the NFL is changing the way that the rules of the game where you can't hit head to head. And so I think there's some progress. Isn't it every bit as bad? exciting. I mean the idea that we need the violent hits to feed our animalistic nature, stop that. I mean, I grew up a Ram fan and the Super Bowl was fun, but I still saw concussions.

And that still... Yeah, a little micro-concussions.

Horrifies me. Right. I mean, the thousands of sub-concussive blows.

Every day in practice I mean, you played football for how many years?

A couple of years? Three. Three years.

And I loved it. And you probably hit head to head. This is probably before they had sophisticated helmets. Oh, we had plastic helmets.

Yeah. And so you probably have.

And we did drills in practice.

That's all you did. Yeah. And I'm thinking, that's insane. Yeah. When you just think the brain is soft, the skull is hard, and the skull has sharp bony ridges, and your brain controls everything. everything you do, how you think, how you feel, how you act. Why would you ever let a child do that? I spoke at the Future of Medicine Conference. And a friend of mine, who's actually a billionaire, stands up and he goes, because he heard me talk about football, and he goes, but my son really wants to play. And I hired him like a former NFL player coach. I'm like, what if he said, I really want to do cocaine because the level of damage is the same. Would you find him the most talented drug dealer?

Yeah, yeah, I hear you. It's funny I think about this now, like one of my buddies who was, I played arena football for a season and he was the MVP of like the arena championship game. And he goes, There's no way I'd let my son play football. You know, knowing what I know from back then, he's like, Just the traumas over and over again. It's like maybe baseball or some other sport, but basketball, but not in a sport where there's just constant hitting, you know? And I think it's, I asked myself that. My girlfriend's like, Would you let your kid do this? And I'm like, I don't know.

I don't know. I mean, it's a lot of pressure. So when you have LeBron James and, Barack Obama saying they wouldn't let their kids play football. Then I knew-- LeBron played football, so-- well, then I knew that it's starting to seep into consciousness. 'Cause when I started my NFL work, my brother laughed at me. He does that. And he's like, you just want everybody to play ping pong. 'Cause table tennis is the world's best sport.

You know, a sport that I've just started playing over things keep last thing seeing is pickleball. Have you played this?

I have not. People love it.

They love it. And I know why now. It's incredible. It's big table tennis, but little tennis. It's incredible. And you. It's a better workout, but it's just as much, you know, hand-eye coordination. So you don't have to be really technically good at swinging a racket. So it's like anyone can play. It's really fun. We'll have to do it sometime.

Yeah.

--A lot of fun.

--People who play racket sports live longer than everybody else. --Come on. --Everybody else. Study from England. The second was swimmers. The worst were football players and soccer players. But now you're playing pickleball.

--Exactly. --So, but for someone like you who, you know, had a lot of head trauma for three years essentially, and then I guess psychological trauma from from the war, you know, for a year or two of just being in that environment, how do you heal your brain?

Or can your brain-- you- didn't bring up my five sisters.

Yeah, the emotional trauma.

And being third in a Lebanese family.

Yeah, yeah, the emotional, psychological trauma, all that stuff. You're still able to heal your brain though, even if you did a lot of these, you know, physical damages to your brain, right?

I love that you can change it. Yeah. Every day. Right, I mean you know if you go on a bender tonight, your brain is going to be worse tomorrow. But if you sleep well tonight, your brain is going to be a bit better tomorrow. Every day you're making your brain a bit better or a bit worse. And I have scans, like Anthony Davis, the Hall of Fame running back from USC, I love him. He's the reason we did our big NFL study. He came to see me in 2007 and his brain was terrible. And he was terrible, temperamental and memory problems. He just did everything I asked him to do. He's so much better. I have his brain 10 years apart. How cool is that? I just scanned someone recently where I have her brain 24 years apart. How is it? She's now 81 and her brain is dramatic. dramatically better than when she was 50.

Come on.

Oh, no. It's amazing. It's so cool. Makes me so happy for her. But also makes me happy for me because this is the idea. You're not stuck with the brain you have. You can make it better. But you got to have the right mindset. Not of, oh, I can't do this, so I'm depressed. It's, oh, I did the right thing. Good for me. Good job. It's shifting your mindset. Did you ever see City Slickers with Billy Crystal?

I think I did, yeah.

So, he's this New York guy going through a midlife crisis and goes to a dude ranch and trying to find his mojo. And he's with an old cowboy, Curly, and Curly goes, it was, you just have to know the one thing. And Curly's played by Jack Palance. You just have to know the one thing. And Mitch, played by Billy Crystal, goes, what's the one thing? And the next scene, Curly dies. Oh, so he doesn't know the one thing. But I know the one thing.

What is it?

When you do the right thing, feel good about yourself.

Okay, so Master your Mind and also gain psychological distance from it. so you're not wrapped up in it all day. What were the next two then? The final two.

So six is notice what you like about other people more than what you don't.

This is giving judging people.

You mean giving happiness away? No, it's shaping people. It's. My wife hates when I say this, but I totally believe it. Everybody's out for themselves. It's just the more sophisticated you are the harder it is to tell. And I do this because I feel good doing this. Yeah, of course. And, you know, altruism is the best medicine for your stress hormones. That when you give and other people benefit, you matter. As opposed to I need to take advantage of this. this person, because that made me feel awful about doing that. But I shape you by what I notice about you. And I clearly do it with my children. And I clearly do it with my wife. My wife has red hair. I can get her to yell at me. Or I can notice what I like and make her smile. And is that manipulative, sort of? But it's in a good way. Right.

It's better than saying something nasty about.

Them or seeing it's worse than them. Activate your frontal lobes. Does this get me what I want? But notice what you like about other people more than what you don't. So they're really four animals in this book. I collect things. So I guess maybe I'm more of the persistent type than I think. But like I collect seahorses because of the hippocampus. And I collect ant eaters because you have to be able to kill the ants.

Yes.

And I collect penguins.

Ooh.

And ever tell you my penguin story? No. So I'm a child psychiatrist. It's 19. I'm in training to be a child psychiatrist. 1986. My son is seven. He's hard for me. He's oppositional. I adopted him when he was two and a half. And it's like, no matter, he's the persistent type. No matter what I say, argue with me. And I'm like, and I didn't feel close to him. And I was feeling bad. I'm talking to my supervisor, and she's like, you have to spend more time with him. And so I took him to a place, I was doing my training in Hawaii, and took him to Sea Life Park, which is where they have sea animal shows, sort of like Sea World. went to the dolphin show and that was great, and the killer whale show and that was fun, and the sea lion show and that was fun. And at the end of the day, he grabs my shirt and he goes, I want to see the penguin show. I want to see Fat Freddy. I'm like, who's Fat Freddy? It's a penguin. And so at the end of the day, Fat Freddy is this chubby but very cute penguin who comes out onto the stage, climbs, the ladder to a high dive, goes to the end, bounces, and then jumps in the water. And then he gets out. He bowls with his nose. He counts with his flipper. He jumps through a hoop of fire. And I'm like, this is so interesting. And then at the end of the show, the trainer asked Freddie to go get something. Freddie went and got it, and he brought it right back. And then time stood still. for me. Because I asked this kid to get something for me and he wants to have a discussion for like 20 minutes and then he doesn't want to do it. And I knew my son was smarter than the penguin. So I go up to the trainer afterwards.

How do you get this penguin to get to what you want?

I'm like, how did you do all of this with this penguin? And she looked at my son and then she looked at me and she said, I'm like parents. Whenever Freddie 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 even though my son didn't like raw fish, my daughter actually does. I wasn't paying any attention to him. Because I'm like my dad. I'm busy. I'm driven. I'm working. And... Like... So I collect penguins as a way to notice what I like about other people.

That's cool.

More than what I don't like. And literally, I have thousands of them. I actually wrote a book about this. And you are shaping the people in your environment. So you could notice the house isn't clean, or you can notice when the house is clean. And maybe you could be helpful.

And focus on that.

And you can focus, like my wife and I, we were in Florida and we were looking for property. And in my head, I'm like, She's gonna make a bonehead decision. And if I would have said that, it would just started a fight. I'm like, you,'re one of the smartest people I know with real estate. I said, what do you think? And then she just stopped. Not because I criticized her, Because when you criticize someone, you bring them more toward their position. But when you notice what you like and then back up, especially with persistent people, I often call it a little hit and run. It's like say it kindly, softly, and then don't talk about it. Because if you keep talking about it, you solidify them in their position.

Notice what you like about people. I think that's a, something I've tried to live by for a long time is that's a great way to build connection too and intimacy is to notice those things.

So which is happiness. Relationships more than almost anything is happiness.

And what's the seventh?

Live each day based on clearly defined values, purpose and goals.

What happens if we don't have clear values, purpose or goals?

You'Re thrown around by the news cycle, by the weather, by what other people's values, purpose and goals are. Yeah.

And I'm a big believer that when you have this and you're seeing progress towards these things, it makes you happier as opposed to not seeing progress on anything.

That's what Tony Robbins says, happiness is progress.

Yeah, absolutely.

You mentioned one of the things, so doing this exercise, one-page miracles, so important. It's called the one-page miracle because on one piece of paper, if you can put down what you want and then just ask yourself every day, am I getting it? You become so much more successful.

It's huge.

And I think it's one of the foundational reasons for my success besides building a team, getting people, getting the right people on the bus.

This is a very powerful and inspiring book with just so much tools, so many strategies, tools, research, images showing before and after, and lessons, and nutritional facts and studies, all these different things that people can dive into. I want to make sure people get the book Powerful youe Happier: the 7 Neuroscience Secrets of feeling good based on your brain type. And it's important for us to be aware of what our type is first so we can make actions that will improve that type. Over 200,000 brain scans from people all over the world, 155 countries backing kind of this research and information. So I want people to get a few copies of this, give it to their friends. You give a 30-day game plan on how to improve all these different things. And the least you can do is try some of this. And if it doesn't work, then you can try something different. But this is an amazing solution to start working towards.

So based on the book, I did 30-day happiness challenge. Yes. We actually have it at Eamon University. People can sign up for it. People who finished it were 32% happier after 30 days.

That's what I... That's pretty cool.

Their energy was better. Their memory was better. You know, All of my books, I sort of tend to wrap everything I know into, okay, what's this issue? If people pre-order the book or order the book in the first week, I'll give them a bottle of happy saffron and the 30-day happiness challenge and a workbook and a new cookbook.

Where did it go for that?

Go to youhappier.com and they can get.

All the information there. Okay, cool. Youhappier.com I want to ask you One final question or two about how death and grief affects the brain. You lost your father a year ago, is that right?

Almost two years.

Two years ago. I lost my dad a month ago. He passed away. And I remember the last time we talked about how you miss him every day. You mentioned this the last time we spoke. I'm curious about death and grief. How does it affect the brain of someone that you care about and love deeply when they pass away? And how does the feeling of grief affect the brain? And is it a good thing? Is it a bad thing? Is it reflecting and processing in a healthy way? Does that heal the brain? Does it affect it in certain ways? I'm just curious. This is something new.

Well, it's a normal thing, right? We all lose people we care about. And I want people to do the right things for their brain rather than the wrong things for their brain. So one, know it, feel it. The week after my dad died, I mean, every day as in my office thinking about him, I have voicemails from him, listening to the voicemails. Going through pictures, I wrote his eulogy. And it was so healing for me. And I was in my office crying.

After we-- Sure, sure.

'Cause I was sad. And it was-- I mean, it was 90, but it was a surprise 'cause he had worked so hard in his last five years to be healthy. But it was a combination of COVID and heart stuff. anyways, feel it. Like spend time grieving and feeling and make sure you have balanced memories. Like, you know, I had a hard relationship with my dad. And don't focus on all that stuff, but I also had a great relationship with him. And so keeping it balanced. And I got criticized by some of my nieces and nephews because I didn't talk about him as if he was God or if he was perfect. But, you know, grieving is being honest and then not letting the ants come in and then doing the brain healthy habits. I have this great story of a woman, you know, like you, when I lecture, people come up to me and they say they appreciate your work. Well, for me, people come up and cry. And when she stopped crying, She said, I lost my daughter two years ago to bone cancer. She's 12. Heartbreaking. And I didn't know how bad it would hit me. I went to bed, I drank too much, I ate all the wrong foods. She ballooned up to over 200 pounds. And she said, On the two-year anniversary of her death, I was gonna kill myself. Wow. And then I saw one of of your shows on public television, I decided I'd get your book. And if it was a bad book, I'd kill myself. Wow. Oh my gosh. I'm like, no pressure.

Oh man.

She said, but it was so simple. What I tried to do in you happy, this is so simple. See seven secrets and seven questions you ask yourself every day. She said, I'm down 24 pounds.

Wow.

She said, you, gave me my life back. And she said, what I want you to tell people who are grieving is never let grief be your excuse to hurt yourself.

To create bad habits and bad actions to hurt yourself.

Yeah. Right. And the people who have prolonged grief often have habits that are not helping them.

Whether it's distorted thinking or What do you mean prolonged grief?

Like they haven't processed it in a healthy way. Right. So, I mean sometimes you can get a grief that goes for years. Yeah. And it's because they don't process it. Wow.

So, process all the emotions. This is beautiful, Daniel. I appreciate you. You happier. The seven neuroscience secrets of feeling good based on your brain type. Make sure you guys get a few copies. You can go to youhappier.com to get all the bonuses as well. I really acknowledge you, Daniel, for constantly showing up and being of service. It's a beautiful gift from all the years, the experience, the lessons, the scans, the people you've helped, the case studies. There's just more work to be done. So I acknowledge you for constantly showing up and being of service to so many people. Thanks again for being here and all your help. If you got value from that, then go ahead and stick around for more.

Coming up right now. 50% off. Get this, Lewis. Just shocking. 50%, 5-0% of the population is either diabetic, 14%, or pre-diabetic, 36%. That's a disaster. And that comes from the simple carbs. We're pouring and pounding in our body. It's an insulin response.

So if we're diabetic or pre-diabetic, what is that doing to our brains?

It's atrophying. making your brain smaller and it's murdering the hippocampus. You know, those baby seahorses.

600, 700, that you said?

700 a day.

700 a day, they're being born and dying right away, as opposed to connecting and multiplying functionality neurons in the brain.

And helping your mood and helping your memory. And what's interesting, I'm 66, my youngest is 17, getting ready to go off to college. and we produce the same number of stem cells every day. Hers are more likely to stay than an older person's because the blood flow to my brain, not my brain, but the blood flow to most 66-year-olds is not healthy. And that's why aging is progressive. And did you know this will horrify you? 50% of people 85 will have dementia. And I'm not okay with that.

50% of people?

85. So if I'm fortunate enough, to live to 85 or beyond, I have a one in two chance of having lost my mind. That's why I'm serious about this. I love my four children. I never want to live with them. I just don't. I just don't. And I never want to be a burden to them. And I know later in my dad's life, my siblings, because I'm the medical person, are like, you know, you need to take his keys from him. I'm like, do you know him? Do you know how that conversation is gonna go? And I don't want my kids having to have that conversation with me, which means I have to do the right thing so I can stay sharp for as long as I can. And so I'm not overweight and I don't have high blood sugar because I get rid of the simple sugars in my life. bread, pasta, potato, rice, sugar. Those just, they don't have enough nutrients to pay off the sugar.

Right.

Right. They quickly turn to sugar. It's this thing called the glycemic index. Right?

Do you have any cheat days or a little here and there, or is it like, do you have a dessert, a couple bites?

Yeah. Or you like, I do. We go to Italy, I mean, not recently, we'll go to Italy and have a gelato.

But it's, But it's the daily consumption of these things which are really hurting.

But I have things I love. Like I have almost every day a cup of frozen blueberries. And I'll put a couple of Stevia-sweetened chocolate chips in it. And it's less than 100 calories and I love it. Or the hot chocolate, I love that. you know, I have a protein shake in the morning. I love it, right? I only eat food I love. That loves me back. Yes.

It's gonna take a practice, you know, for a lot of people. We've been conditioned to eat bad foods consistently for so long. We've got to condition ourselves to start eating good food.

It's just a habit.

It's a habit.

Right, is it a good habit or a bad habit? And your brain is always listening. There's actually a whole section on bad habit dragons. And the worst bad habit dragon is the oblivious bad habit dragon. You just never think about the products you put on your body. Another strategy under T for toxins is download the app Think Dirty. I have no financial interest in it, but the app thinks it's not what you think it is. It allows you to scan your personal products and it'll tell you on a scale of one to 10 how quickly they're killing you. So, for example, since I was 14, I shaved with barbershop. Yeah, I like it. Soft, it works. A scale of one to ten, 10 being bad. It's a nine.

Come on.

And I'm like, no, I like myself way too much to put crap on my body. And so I get something now called kiss my face. that's a two. And people go, well, it's more expensive. And it's like it is, except it lasts 50 times longer. So it's way less expensive. And I love it.

It's less toxic.

And it loves me back. Yeah. And the same with the shampoo. I was using. I forget. But now I forget. It's been so long. Now I use something called a LaFia. made in Africa, it's a two, get it on Amazon. It's just a practice of being thoughtful about what I put in my mouth, what I put on my body, and people go, Isn't that hard? And I'm like, Being sick is hard.

That's hard.

This is easy. God gave you a big brain for a reason. None of this is hard. It just you create new and different habits. Because ultimately the mother habit, is this good for my brain or bad for it? No, by the way, if it's good for your heart, it's good for your brain. I wrote a fun book you would really like called the Brain in Love. I used to be a columnist for Men's Health magazine. And I wrote a column for three years, Am I Normal? People write in about all the, and so anyways, I wrote Brain in Love. and I've been saying forever, whatever is good for your heart is good for your brain, because it's about blood flow. Your brain is 2% of your body's weight, but uses 20% of the blood flow and 30% of the calories you consume, which is why food is so important. But whatever is good for your heart is good for your brain. When I was writing Brain and Love, I went, whatever is good for your heart is good for your brain, is good for your genitals. 'Cause it's all about blood flow. Did you know 40% of 40-year-olds have erectile dysfunction? Which means 40% of 40-year-olds have brain dysfunction. 'Cause if you have blood flow problems anywhere, it likely means they're everywhere.

I'm 38, you're scaring me.

It's just another reason to stand up. To do the right things because your sex life is better. And I'm just a huge fan. And when people get on the brain health train, when they become a brain warrior, their erections get better. And I love that because I want people connected with their partners.

How much does the brain affect our choices in intimate relationships? our choices and who we choose to be partner with, who we're connected to, our love life, how much of the brain helps or hurts our love.

Well, your brain does what it's trained to do. So if you were trained by parents who bickered all the time, you're more likely to pick someone you bicker with, even though you hate it.

You like it, yeah.

The brain doesn't like change. That's why therapy is important. Because it's like you can work on it over time and create new habits. I've scanned thousands of couples. I love scanning couples and I didn't used to. I remember 1991, I just started scanning and I see this couple, they brought their two kids to see me because I'm also a child psychiatrist. and the little girl got better, but the little boy wasn't getting better. And as I saw him, I'm like, oh, his parents hate each other. He's under chronic stress. So I saw the parents. I'm like, you guys should come see me, because your bad relationship is causing your son's stress. And they're like, Dr. Raymond, we like you a lot. We've seen four other marital therapists, and they just make it worse. in my head, don't ever have this thought. I'm like, well, maybe you just didn't see anybody good enough.

Oh, man.

Don't ever have that thought.

I'll do that.

And when I saw them on the first session, I had two blue leather couches in my office. They sat on the opposite end of each couch. It's a bad sign in marital therapy. And after about three months, I know I'm not going to get them better. I feel hopeless, which is terrible for a psychiatrist to feel. But she had a PhD in Grudge Holden. I mean, she was beating stuff, she'd bringing up stuff from 15 years ago over and over. And she's married to a guy called the Sniper because he was always late to appointments. And whenever she'd settle down and be more able to learn, he would say something so evil, so awful to her just to get her going again. and I start having physical stress symptoms when I realize they're on my schedule. And at nine months, I'm in the shower getting ready to go to work and I know they're on my schedule, my stomach starts to hurt. And I'm like, damn, these people are in my shower. Today I'm gonna tell them to get divorced because it's actually better for children to not be raised in chronic conflict than for the parents to stick together fighting like they are. I agree. But I grew up Catholic. They don't get divorced. And it's like, you, don't get divorced, it's a bad thing. And because I had that thought, the Catholic voice came and visited me and said, because you're not a good enough therapist, you're going to condemn their soul style.

Oh, wow.

And I started looking at the water faucet going, how much therapy is this going to take to get over? And I got out of the shower and I called my friend from the imaging Brain Center. I said, Will you give me two scans for the price of one? Because I was always negotiating for my patients. And he's like, why? I said, Jack, I have this couple and I don't know what to do for them. He's like, Couple? He said, you, know, I've been married twice. I can't figure it out. Maybe we could do a website and call it brainmatch.com. oh, that's amazing. I like that. And when I presented that to the couple, they're like, well, this isn't working. Let's try something else. I mean, they knew it wasn't working, too. And she had an OCD brain, which totally fit in retrospect. She just couldn't let anything go. OCD brains, their front part of their brain works way too hard. And he had an ADD brain. His front part was sleepy, which is why he was late and why he was conflict driven. And I put him on Ritalin, her on Prozac, balanced their brain. Told him I didn't want to see him for a month because I needed a break. When they came back a month later, they sat on the same couch. She had her hand on his leg. Wow. Which is a good sign in marital therapy. And it's 30 years ago. I gave a lecture in San Francisco a couple of years ago. They came to it. They're still married. Shut up. They love each other. They don't fight with each other. She lets things go. He pays attention. And- They're still married. With a better brain. Wow. comes a better marriage. And when I met my second wife, when I met her, I knew I wasn't gonna fall in love with her until I saw her brain. And two weeks later, 'cause I really liked her.

So what does that mean? You like her, like, oh, but she needs to get scanned first before I say, I'm yours.

Yes, absolutely. And if you date any of my children for four months, if I think you're gonna stick around, I scan you. I'm not kidding.

I love this.

It's sort of like meet the parents. Right. But worse. So, Tana, my wife, is a neurosurgical ICU nurse. So, she loves what we do. And so, when I suggested, Hey, come to the clinic, let me look at your brain. She was all in.

Okay. And then what did you see in the brain and how did that match.

Your-- so her brain was actually pretty healthy, but I could see she had a head trauma in the past. And I'm like, Do you ever have a head injury? and she said no. And I'm like, because the scans don't lie. And I'm like, so maybe it was before she could remember. Yeah, right. But she's like, no. I'm like, ever in a car accident? She goes, yeah. When I was 25, my sister fell asleep at the wheel going 75 miles an hour. We flipped three times, landed on the roof. and only because my seat was, I was laying back, that I survived. She said, but I didn't lose consciousness. And what people don't realize, consciousness is a brain stem phenomenon really deep in the brain. You can totally damage the cortex of the brain. And so we worked to make it better. And she's been my best friend for for 15 years. Wow.

So if someone has a damaged brain, let's say you're hypothetically have the, you know, the ability to go and get a scan, you meet someone, you're dating them, you're like, I really like this person, I'm gonna get them scanned.

And their brain is messed up. Let's just say. Just know you're in for a wild ride. Now, if they're not willing to do anything about it, why would you be in a relationship with it? It's just your life's going to be hard. But I love them. and it's going to be stressful. But if they're like, oh, well, let's make this better.

Let's improve it.

That's awesome. Yeah. Right? I mean, that's the attitude. Right? If I scan my daughter's boyfriend and he goes, no, I'm not going to do any of this. You need to move him off.

Or you've got a decision. You're either going to struggle in this relationship. and you maybe have some good times, but a lot of stress where you can move on.

Right. It's just a piece of information that I think everybody should have. And when you're young and in love, you don't really think about, well, how's his mom? How's his dad? What's the family history? But, you know, being 66 and being a psychiatrist for 40 years, all of those things matter.

And what's the, so that's, we mentioned die obesity. which is being overweight, high blood sugar, obesity, stuff like that. What's the S in bright minds?

Sleep. Absolutely essential. So we talked about autophagy early. That's what happens when you sleep. Your brain cleans, it washes itself. Actually, the cleaning crew shows up. We didn't even know that. It's a system called the glymphatic system. that is asleep basically when you're awake and turns on when you're asleep.

Sweeping out thoughts, stress, fats, sugars, all that stuff.

Integrating information, but literally cleaning the synapses in your brain. Like the cleaning crew shows up. And if you're not sleeping six and a half, seven, eight hours a night, trash is building up in your brain, making you more likely to be depressed, to have brain fog, overweight, all those things, right? Yeah. And so being disciplined about a good time for sleep, avoiding things that hurt sleep, doing things that help sleep can be just so helpful. Yeah.

I had Andrew Huberman on a couple of times, neuroscientist out of Stanford, and I told him, you know, I'm trying to improve the quality of my brain. and I'm taking Spanish class three days a week. You've got to love that. Private Spanish teacher. One, because for 20 years, I've always wanted to do it, but it always gets too hard and I stop. And then at the end of the year, when I reflect on what I'm proud of, I'm always not proud that I didn't stick with something I wanted to do. So I keep telling myself, I either need to let this dream go and kill the dream and move on with my life, or I need to actually be consistent with it. even if it takes me years of practice until I'm fluent and conversational. And for the first three months, it was like it hurt my brain so much. Just learning, studying, trying to remember these things, it just was painful. Now I'm noticing the ideas are just as complex, but my brain isn't under so much pain and stress or just confusion or whatever. like I'm not enough or I can't get this or whatever it's saying. It's more like, okay, I understand this is challenging, but I know I can get this. So let me be patient with myself. And I feel like I'm picking up so much more because I may not get it in that moment, but then the next day or three days later, because I'm resting, because I'm cleaning out the mess, it's integrating. Like when I sleep, I feel like it's integrating what I learned days ago and now I remember it. But if I'm not sleeping well, if I'm stressed out, it's much harder to remember these things.

Absolutely. Because it's one of the things that sleep does. It integrates what we learn during the day and it compares it to our experience from the past and then decides what to keep and what to let go. But if you're not sleeping well, or you're drinking to put yourself to sleep, it damages REM sleep, which is the most restorative. sleep and you're not going to get the benefit from it. So sleep is absolutely essential. Sleep apnea, people who snore loudly, who stop breathing at night, triples their risk of Alzheimer's disease. Sleep apnea. Sleep apnea.

So how do we, well I mean, it's probably applying these things will help you get rid of sleep apnea and obesity is probably a big part of.

Sleep apnea, I'm assuming, right? For some people. Now some people are thin and have sleep apnea and they need to wear a CPAP. But working with the smartest people I know, right? This would be part of greatness, that the smartest people I know work with the smartest people they know. And so stop denying you have a problem or saying, I won't do this or that. So many guys go, oh, I'll never wear a CPAP. It's like, well, you're murdering those baby seahorses every night. when you're not breathing because so we talked about your brain uses 30% of the calories you consume, 20% of the blood flow goes to your brain, 20% of the oxygen. Any oxygen debt state damages your brain. And I have like near drowning brains. They're just awful. Any oxygen debt. state and sleep apnea is an oxygen debt state because you're stopped breathing, which is a very bad thing.

Are you able to recover those brains that had near drowning or...

Sometimes.

Sometimes.

Yeah, it depends. We don't have the Lazarus treatment to bring dead brain cells back to life, but we can get the struggling ones better.

Better.

I have one girl, it just breaks my heart. She was taking too much of a pain medication and her heart stopped for 10 minutes. And I have her brain beforehand, it was this big fat, I don't know, watermelon, and now it's like a prune. And I can get it better, it's never going to be normal. Really? Heartbreaking.

Is she able to have an okay life still or is it No.

Struggling with... And it's not just her, it's her parents. Lives will never be the same again. We have to be so much more serious about brain health.

When someone's brain shrinks over trauma, physical trauma, emotional trauma, whatever it might be, when it shrinks, obesity, What happens to the brain inside the skull? Is there more room? Is there more fluid in between the brain and the skull? Like what is actually how small could it be? Is it rattling? Like what is actually happening with the space between the brain and the skull when it shrinks?

So it gets bigger. The space gets bigger.

Space gets bigger.

So fluid will take it up. Okay. Because your brain, you know, has to be contained. but that's not what you want.

You don't want fluid, you know, a lot of fluid.

More fluid. In fact, if you have too much fluid, it's called hydrocephalus, and that can shrink the brain. One of the causes of Alzheimer's disease is called NPH, or normal pressure hydrocephalus. And when we put a shunt in and drain some of that excess fluid, people actually think think better.

Put a shunt in the brain, the skull, open up the skull.

Put a shunt and then we have it drain into your abdomen. Really? Yeah. And that's not uncommon.

Put something in the brain and it goes down.

But like, think of a tube. To drain the body or. No, no inside. Well, they'll tunnel it underneath your skin and so on.

It goes all the way down. Yeah, that's a crazy.

I actually did a study. It was fascinating. on something called Omental Transposition Surgery, where we took the omentum from the gut. So it's like this fatty apron on top of your abdominal organs. And it's loaded with stem cells. So we actually bunched it up and put it on the brain, but kept it connected to the blood supply in the gut. It was pretty wicked surgery, but we found it really improved cognition. Now, this was before the whole stem cell movement. We've been working with stem cells to improve brain function. That's crazy. Pretty interesting.

Crazy. I want to ask you about dopamine. In the last, I believe, seven years, I feel like with social media, smartphones, kids having smartphones much earlier and earlier, video games, the access to these things, the constant dopamine hits that we're all getting more with our phones. What does an overwhelmed dopamine do to the brain? Does it support brain health? Does it hurt brain health? Should we have only 10% of the dopamine we're getting? What is it doing to our function of our brains?

Dopamine is really important. It's a very important neurotransmitter. Now, there are a bunch of them that are really important: serotonin and oxytocin and endorphins and cortisol. Dopamine works on the area called the nucleus accumbens, which is the pleasure center, and the brain push on that and you feel, Whoa, I like that. If you push on it too much or too intensely, it wears it out. And which is why my book, Feel Better Fast, there's a whole section on drip dopamine, don't dump it.

Don't dump dopamine on yourself.

Don't dump it. In fact, in your brain is always listening, I have a brand new 12-step program. The 12-step program for addiction was actually developed 85 years ago and has no neuroscience in any of the 12 steps. And one would think the brain should be be part of the 12 steps. So I redid the 12 steps. I know some 12 steppers will hate me, but I'm like, well, if a neuroscientist was gonna do it, what would I do? And step number seven is drip dopamine. Don't dump it. Because when you dump dopamine, pornography, dumps dopamine, cocaine, dumps dopamine, alcohol, alcohol dumps it, drugs, skydiving, dumps it. running with the bulls, dumps it along with a whole bunch of cortisol. You wear out your pleasure centers, which is why in Justin Bieber's docu-series Seasons, he came out, I was his doctor, he talks about dopamine. And I pray that children do not become famous until their brains are developed. He was famous really early. early and every bad thing happened to him because he felt bad. He had no dopamine left. He'd worn out his pleasure centers.

Getting so much of it all day long, all the attention.

And so part of the therapy was we have to rehabilitate your pleasure centers. And so you want to avoid things that dump dopamine and engage in things that Drip, dopamine.

What are some of those things?

Like our conversation today. I mean, it's just been so much fun for me. Holding my wife's hand, looking in her eyes, playing with the grandbabies. Oregano, drips dopamine, pumpkin seeds, dip, drip, dopamine, magnesium, drip, dopamine, rhodiola ashwagandha. I mean, some cool supplements. So, I want to protect my pleasure centers because pleasure in many ways can be the enemy of happiness.

Really?

Because if you have too much it wears them out and then you begin to feel flat. And that's how addictions start. Something dumps dopamine, you go, oh, that's awesome. Like a young superstar does a concert and that's amazing but afterwards, They have nothing left.

They're alone in their hotel room or whatever.

And they're playing video games, which is dumping dopamine that they don't have. And so then they're like, well, maybe I'll smoke, maybe I'll vape, maybe I'll do marijuana or cocaine. And then it's flattening the response. Sugar does this too. It actually flattens the response. It's like, whoa, ew. Whoa, ew. and pretty much you're into whoa, ew.

Your whole life.

That's the addiction.

How, this is going to upset a lot of people. What is the research and the science saying about marijuana in terms of the brain health and marijuana? Because there's a lot of people talking about how it's actually relaxing them. I've never been high on anything in my life. I've never done drugs, never been drunk, never drinking alcohol. except for a couple sips when I was a kid as a taste.

So, your brain is probably gonna be better than you think it is.

I hope so. Yeah, never been drunk.

And I'm one of the few people, I've been drunk twice, but I learned quickly. I'm like, no, I don't like to be out of control. It's not for me. All the hater comments come out when I talk about marijuana. But I was, I mean, it was 20 years ago. I was on the radio with Michael Savage in the Bay Area. And he's like, People are just gonna hate you when you talk about marijuana. I said, But everybody who calls in who's been smoking for a while is gonna spontaneously complain of memory problems. And everybody who called in complained of memory problems. I can't remember, yeah. So I knew it was trouble right after I started looking at scans. It makes your brain look older.

Come on.

Than you are.

How am I? If you're smoking daily or once a.

Week or... Well, if you smoke once.

A week, is this both?

It's just marijuana. If you smoke once a week, the problem is it's fat soluble, which means it stays in your body for 30 days.

Oh, man.

And so that one decision can actually impact your brain for 30 days. And so if you're smoking a lot, you have a pretty high level in your body. And I published a study with my colleagues from USC on a thousand pot smokers. We compared them to a group that never smoked.

What happened?

Every area of their brain was lower.

Come on.

Every area of their brain was lower in blood flow. Blood flow is really important.

Now, is it the pot or maybe they're also eating sugar or drinking or they're also overweight?

It was the consistent variable that we looked at. And then, I did the world's largest imaging study on 62,454 scans, looking just at how the brain ages. What do little kids' brains look like? What old people's brain? What's the trajectory of aging? And it sort of sucks. Really busy brains, kids have really busy brains. It sort of levels out by the time you're 25, 26, and then it stays that way until you're 60, and then it starts to drop off. It's not good. And then we looked at, well, what accelerated aging in our database? And schizophrenia was actually the worst. Their brains were like 10 years older. Then the next worst was marijuana. And it shocked us.

Come on.

'Cause we looked at alcohol and smoking, depression, ADHD, no, it was marijuana. I'm very concerned. And now I'm a fan of legalizing marijuana 'cause please don't put people smoke. bought in jail, that is just a bad use of resources. But let's not say it's healthy, it's healthy for us, because it's not. Kids who smoke, teenagers who smoke or use edibles have a higher incidence of anxiety, depression and suicide. It's funny as teenagers.

It's funny you're saying that because you see the case, or I'll see this online of people making the case for marijuana. if people want to smoke and drink, it's on them. You know, I'm choosing not to personally for myself, but I'm not here to judge someone or make someone wrong. But I see people make the case to say, well, look at this person who. I don't even know what the condition's called, where it's like they're shaking, they can't control their body. They're, like, constantly shaking when they move, and then they smoke, and then all of a sudden, you see them relax. It's these viral videos of these individuals who have these conditions or can't calm their mind. They have marijuana, and all of a sudden, they're like, the most peaceful, relaxed person, and it helps that condition.

And there's evidence for it can work to help some forms of seizures. There's evidence for that. It helps with nausea and chemotherapy. It helps with appetite for people who are really struggling with cancer and they've lost their apetite. And it's like a lot of other things that can be good and bad. And so, I mean, you got to make your choice.

Yeah.

Ketamine, for example, has been shown to have antidepressant qualities and yet is a drug of abuse. And so in a supervised setting, for some people, it can be helpful. But let's not unleash it on the whole population. Right. And because-- It's a recreational thing. As the perception of a drug, as the perception of dangerousness of a drug goes down, use goes up. And that's what's happening for our children.

And marijuana, I'm hearing you say, based on this 60,000 scan study, is this what it was? 60,000, is one of the main factors for aging faster.

Correct.

The brain aging faster, which makes you lose memory, which makes you slow down, all these things, right?

Correct.

And what about smoking?

It's bad.

It's bad.

'Cause nicotine constricts blood flow to the brain. And so, and that's vaping.

Vaping is bad.

Right, vaping is just as bad.

Even if it doesn't have the toxins.

When you vape, you don't have as many toxins, but the flavoring is toxic. It's just it's a bad idea to get involved in changing your consciousness. What's the matter with your consciousness? Let's change that. Use diaphragmatic breathing, taming the ants, killing the ants, taming the dragons. Let's teach you how to mentally manage your mind so you don't have to medicate it.

Have you seen anyone who is the mind is under so much attack that they've been addicted to substances, they've tried to get off, and they're unable to stay consistent with healthier habits because they had some type of mental condition that was so aggressive that they were just like, I need to drink, I need to smoke because I've tried the other way and it doesn't work. Or have you seen people who have been successful time after time if they're able to follow the challenging practices consistently. to improve the quality of their brain.

So, I would say they're simple practices. I've seen people-- Challenging for people to-- I've seen people both ways. Yeah. Right. And often it takes enough pain for them to change. But sometimes, like losing their kids. But sometimes even when they lose their kids, they don't change because their brain has been hijacked. I mean, I don't know if you're like me, but one of the reasons I never did drugs is I never wanted something else to control my life.

Yeah, that was one of the reasons. I also never wanted to make an excuse, because I would see people, especially playing football in college, guys would get drunk after a game and then they would not be well the next day at practice. That was one. I was like, I want to have an advantage, but then people would do things and they'd cheat on their girlfriend. Oh, that was drunk. I'm sorry. I was like, If I cheat or do something bad, I want to own it. I want to be responsible for being a jerk or being a or whatever I did as opposed to blaming a substance that did that thing.

So you want to be in control of your whole life. Absolutely. And that's what I want. I don't want anything else controlling me. And if you know these things are potentially addictive, it's like playing Russian roulette. It's like, I would never play Russian roulette. roulette. I'm like, that's stupid. You know, why would I increase my chance of trouble? I mean, you know, to think you're invulnerable. It's not. Not a. Not a smart way to live. But anyway, I've seen patients both ways. You know, some people come and I teach them how to correct their negative thoughts, and they, like, walk out of my office. It's like, no, I can't do that. I'm attacked. to I'm a loser. And other people, they get it. And I'm always trying to be, how can I be more effective? And I find the easier I make it, the simpler I make it, like, you know, how do I get my brain healthy? Bright minds. It's like super simple, right? I mean, it's a little complicated, but it's your brain.

Yeah, yeah. What about the the wave of plant medicine use and normalization of plant medicine, the people saying it's transformation of transformational work, helping them heal their pain of their past, helping them overcome trauma, helping them break through of things they've never been able to mentally break through with. This work of ayahuasca, plant medicine, all these different things. What are your thoughts on that? in terms of brain scan results?

Well, I actually did a study with Ibogaine, which is one of the plant medications.

It's like an ayahuasca or...

It's like ayahuasca and it wasn't good from a brain perspective.

Really?

But I think it's going to be an interesting, exciting part of psychiatry. There are lots of studies that just recently legalized, not now, but in two years in Oregon, and- They're legalizing what?

Plant medicine?

Plant medicine. In Oregon. Mushrooms.

Oh, they are.

Psilocybin. In Oregon. Yeah. Microdosing. Because they're so smart. The problem is, I wish, so the big innovations in psychiatry now are magic mushrooms and marijuana and more medications. And I'm like, how about diet exercise and learning how to not believe every stupid thing you think? Don't you think we should at least.

Start- Let's start and sleep.

Yeah, yeah. Let's start with brain health. But I think it's going to be an interesting, exciting thing. But, you know, psychiatrists were really interested and excited about Valium. And they were really interested and excited about cocaine. Freud used cocaine. And they went, oh, they're interested and excited about marijuana. And they go, well, the brain has cannabinoid receptor sites. Well, the brain also has benzoreceptor sites and that didn't work out well. And the brain also has opiate receptor sites and that didn't work out well. Well, we should be finding ways to naturally increase opiates and that's exercise.

Well, people say, well, plants are natural. You know, and this has been happening for centuries with our ancestors.

And cocaine is natural.

Right?

Right. I mean, just because- Sugar is natural, I guess. Sugar is natural.

Right.

I mean, is it helpful? That's the question.

So, what about magic mushrooms or mushrooms or microdosing this? You know, I've heard mushrooms are good to eat, you know, food mushrooms.

Well, I actually make, I have a supplement company called BrainMD and we make something called Smart Mushrooms. I put a scoop in my shake every morning. It's got lion's mane and cordyceps and reishi and they have both immune system benefits and cognitive benefits. And I feel at 66, every bit as sharp as when I was 20.

So what's the difference between those mushrooms versus the...

They don't matter. Hallucinogenic effects.

What happens to the brain when we hallucinate?

It activates. It actually turns on some of the limbic or emotional parts of the brain. And if you're doing it in a therapeutic environment, you might be able to reprocess some of those painful memories in a different way. You might be able to separate from them, get a different perspective of them. But there are other ways to do that that might not have side effects. Like there's a treatment for trauma I like called EMDR. I'm just gonna ask you. High movement desensitization and reprise. I studied that in police offices.

I hear amazing things from this.

So helpful.

And that does a similar strategy of.

Activates your emotional brain and then calms it. So I did a study with police officers who had PTSD from being involved in shootings. And most police officers don't want to be involved in shootings that it becomes traumatic for them if they hurt someone and like soldiers in war and they were all off work and on average of eight EMDR sessions, they all went back to work and it calmed down the emotional parts of their brain. So that's pretty exciting. There's another technique I use called Havening, which is bilateral hemisphere stimulation. That's what EMDR is. You bring up the trauma, I get your eyes tries to go back and forth. And that trauma connects to another trauma, which can connect to another trauma. It's really interesting. But Havening is just really simple. It's thinking about the trauma. I want people always to go into their pain, not away from their pain. And so, for example, I told you my dad died May 5th last year. And a couple of days later, I'm at my mom's house. and we're just going through paperwork. Right? I mean, it's what you do after somebody dies. And somebody, some idiot, had a picture of my dead father in the mortuary in that stack of papers. And I'm just. And all of a sudden, I find it and it hits me, and it just bothered me. And. And a couple of hours later, I realized it was bothering me. It was circling in my head. And so I teach my patients this. It's Havening. It's like, think about what's bothering you and for 30 seconds stimulate both hemispheres of your brain. So as I do this, it's stimulating that side. If I do that, stimulate while you bring up the trauma and do that like up to six times. And after the first time, I'm like, that's the last picture my dad will ever see. Wow. And it was okay. And then I did it twice more. And the picture became my favorite picture of my dad because he was at peace. And I slept like a baby that night. And the picture never bothered me again. It's just simple. And there's these simple techniques that everybody should know. Why do you have to be sick? to learn how to be well. Shouldn't we have, and we have a high school course called Brain Thrive by 25 that we teach kids how to love and care for their brains, their minds, their relationships, and be purposeful. Yeah.

You have some beautiful techniques, some beautiful information. I'm very grateful for this. I've got, I think, a couple more questions if we've got some time. I've got so many notes here. This has been extremely helpful. I want to talk about memory. And then we can probably, I think we can wrap it up because I'm probably going a little long here. But I'll talk about memory. In an age of having everything at our fingertips and having all the information available without needing to remember, how important is it for us to get back to Remembering, remembering phone number. I remember as a kid, I used to know all these phone numbers from your mom, you know, your home, your dad's office.

Now we don't know any of them.

Exactly. I'm telling you, my girlfriend's phone number, right? It's like it's always programmed to click a button and have an action. How important is memory training for us as humans in a world of lack of memory? And what are a few things we could do to increase the ability to remember.

So, like you're learning Spanish, working your memory helps you to keep it. And we actually have a course I work with someone. I don't know if you've ever interviewed Jim Carroll. He's hysterical. He's a memory athlete. Okay. And, yeah, you would love him. And he. He was a steel mill worker. and selling Avon products. And then he had cardiomyopathy when he was 49. And as he was doing his PT, he was riding a bike, and rather than watch TV, he started memorizing things. And that was the secret. New learning with exercise. He learned all the zip codes in the United States. All of them? All of them.

Wait, how many zip codes are there?

Thousands of them. Wow. In fact, you could just say, you know, you're a zip code and he'd go, hey, you're from Erie, Pennsylvania. That's crazy. His memory is just phenomenal. And then he learned all the Oscar movies and all the Oscar actresses and actors and his memory is just unbelievable. He can go to a group of 2,000 people and give them tickets that have 12 letters on them and a movie on the other side. And he'll call on people randomly. You tell me the movie, I'll tell you the 12-digit number.

A lot like Jim Quick. A lot like Jim Quick.

A lot like Jim Quick. And he's hysterical. He's like a great entertainer. And if you use it, you get to keep it. if you don't use it, you'll lose it. And so it's really important. Now, we're probably not going to be remembering phone numbers because we have our auxiliary brains. But our auxiliary brains is causing Alzheimer's to be diagnosed three or four years later when it's actually harder to get help. Because I would diagnose people when I first started in practice 30 years ago. because their family would call me up and they say, He's getting lost in a place he's lived in 30 years. But now you just have to go, Hey, Siri, take me home. And so these auxiliary memories are actually causing people to be diagnosed later. We should always be working our brains. New learning is just absolutely essential. So Spanish is great learning a musical instrument. instrument is great.

A dance or whatever.

You know, if, you know, producing stuff for television is great. It's a new skill. Marketing is a new skill.

Anything that challenges you.

Anything. And you should be doing things that are new and different. Like, I know how to read brain scans. Like, hopefully you'll come and I'll look at your brain. I'll know immediately. Healthy, not healthy.

How many people have been through four labs?

Well, we have done 183, 000 scans.

And how many years?

I have three in 30 years.

Wow.

And we have 300 NFL players. And I love what I do.

It's amazing.

I'm so grateful. I had no idea that when I decided to be a psychiatrist, this would happen. This would have been my life.

I'm very excited about your book. I was going through it. I'm a big fan already. Your brain is always listening. Tame the hidden dragons that control your happiness, habits and hangups. There are some incredible exercises on how to deal with any type of struggle or stress that you might have in your life right now, whether it be addiction, whether it be negative thoughts, whether it be dealing with past traumas. You have the reasoning behind these things, you've got the exercises on how to overcome them, you've got everything in here which is extremely powerful. You've got simple strategies, you've got more complex things, you've got graphics that explain stuff for me. So it's amazing. I think everyone should read this. Overcome pain from your past. It's funny, I just did a video yesterday saying if you can learn to overcome the pain from your past, your life will be 100 times better just by that one simple thing. And this is something you teach in here through the science, through the research, everything you need in here to optimize your brain It's here. Check it out. Get the book. Get a few for your friends. Your brain is always listening. Make sure you get this book. Couple final questions and then we'll wrap things up. This is a question I ask everyone at the end called the three truths question. So I'd like you to imagine a hypothetical situation. It's your last day on earth, many years away. You've accomplished all of your dreams and goals and you're happy and healthy and everything you want to do you've done. But for whatever reason, you've got to take all of your written work with you, your video work, your content. It's all going to go with you to the next place, wherever you go. And no one has access to your information anymore, but you get to leave behind three things you know to be true, three lessons you would share with the world. And this is all we have to remember you by. I call it three truths. What would be three things you would share with the world?

Brain envy, love your brain, don't believe every stupid thing you think, know what you want, and ask yourself every day, does my behavior fit what I want? People don't do that. It's crazy. They should be teaching this to seven-year-olds. What do you want? Relationships? school work, money, your health, what do you want? Is your behavior getting you what you want? Rather than say you should do this or you should do that, shoulds don't work. It's just getting people to know and then act. And if they have a healthy brain, it's easier.

Yeah. I want to acknowledge you for a moment before I ask the final question. The work you continue to do is so inspiring and it's helping so many people when they allow themselves to learn, to apply it and take action. So I really acknowledge you for being so passionate about this work, for showing up for people's lives, for being someone that cares deeply about human beings, the quality of their life, improving their brain health, which is the quality of their relationships and everything. I just think we need more people like you. and I'm really grateful that you're alive, healthy and driven on this mission because I think a lot more people would be suffering without you creating this work in a simple way without you scanning people and getting the data that proves these things. So I really acknowledge you and I'm grateful you're alive. I really am because this stuff's really inspiring for me. Where else can we support you besides getting your book, following you on social media? Where else can we go if we want to learn more, if we want to take your courses, get supplements that can help our brains, where should we go?

So the supplements, brainmd.com to support your brain. Amen University, we have courses, Amen Clinics, I have nine clinics, I have a new clinic in Dallas, it's just crazy busy. Later this year we're going to open a new clinic in South Florida. And then my wife and I do podcasts together. We have 847 episodes.

Almost as big as this.

The Brain Warriors Way. They're like 10 minute little inspirational pieces to get people excited. Because we need a brain health revolution. Yes. Because with that, we can end mental illness, but it's never gonna start with what we're doing now. We have to break the paradigm and create a new one.

Yeah, so all mental illness or most of mental illness is connected to brain health, would you say?

Yes.

All of it, unless there's some type of trauma that...

It's foundational. If your brain's not right, you're not right. And it doesn't mean psychological trauma. won't have an impact. But if your brain's not right, plus psychological trauma, going to psychotherapy is not going to be as good as it could be. Bright Minds.

Everyone's got to apply the Bright Minds method. Okay, so we'll check out your podcast, the Brain Warriors Way podcast. We'll link up all this stuff. Make sure you guys check out brainmd.com and everything else. Get the book. Final question for you. What is your definition of greatness?

It's pushing to do what you know you can do, despite what other people say.

I appreciate you very much. I've seen this as a doctor. You can take people who, like nobody else thinks there's any we hope for, and they're at the end of the line and every doctor is giving up. There's nothing else we can do for you. And if you believe something is possible.

And you're informed and you're, and you.

Got the audacity to think that maybe.