Neuroscientist: "Your Thoughts Physically Hurt You Unless You Do This!" | Dr. Daniel Amen

Every thought you have impacts every cell in your body. So for example, if I said mother, my hands got warmer. Now if you said father, hands get colder, they get sweatier. Every thought you have affects every cell in your body.

Dr. Daniel Amen has been called by the Washington Post the most popular psychiatrist in America.

He's the foremost expert on brain health on the planet.

He's a double board certified psychiatrist, 10 time New York Times best selling author. Dr. Daniel Amen, if you don't believe.

In God, it tr doubles your risk of depression. And people go, you know, as a neuroscientist, how can you believe in God?

How can you not?

I think it takes way more faith to believe. You and I are having this conversation through random chance. I believe in the second law of physics, which is called entropy. Things go from order to disorder. They don't go the other way around.

I don't think people are going to understand this unless we have some type of research or backing, which I think maybe you have some of this already, which I think through the scans.

The scientist that has done the most work in this is.

Welcome back everyone to the school of greatness. Very excited about our guests. We have the inspiring and the very helpful Dr. Daniel Amen back in the house.

Good to see you. Thank you, my friend.

Yes. You have a new book which I'm excited about called change your brain, change your pain. The first thing I want to ask you is about the pain that people feel in their bodies. You just mentioned that you used to have a lot of chronic pain in your back and you didn't know it was tied to your brain. How much of chronic pain in people's bodies is actually linked to their brain health?

Probably 70%.

Really?

And the book is not just about physical pain, it's about emotional pain. And one of the reasons I wrote it, besides for me it was my back, it was my hip, it was my knee, it was my neck. And part of me went, oh, I'm just getting older. But the neuroscientist in me goes, physical and emotional pain run on the same circuits in the brain. Interesting. And so I was actually really curious, why the supplement? So I own a supplement company, Brain md. I love it. Why does same work for depression and arthritis? It's like, why is that? Or Cymbalta, a really good antidepressant, is also FDA approved for pain, for chronic pain. It's like, well, why? Because they work on the same circuits in the brain. And when you get your brain healthy, it helps to balance these circuits and the Pain is less. And so most people go, oh, it's my back. Yes, it is, but it's also your brain. And when you get your brain right, your back is better. And the other thing that just completely blew my mind that was so helpful for me is I read a couple of studies, especially one that said 80% of people my age. So I'm 71. 80% of people my age with no pain have abnormal back MRIs. 70% of them have abnormal joint MRIs. 60% of them have abnormal neck MRIs. And I would always go, whether it's my neck or my back or my knee, get an mri. And they would just scare the socks off me. And the people go, oh, yeah, it's abnormal. You need surgery. But I know what general anesthesia does to the brain, and it's not a good thing, really. And it's actually one of the risk factors for Alzheimer's disease. The more general anesthesia. And if you're a kid and you have general anesthesia, it increases your risk of learning problems and add. And so I'm like, no, I don't want general anesthesia. So when I realized 80% of people with no pain have abnormal backs, I'm like, oh, that means your body figures out how to heal. Even though your discs may be arthritic, your discs may be crushed. That before we do surgery, let's get our brains healthy.

Interesting. So people with abnormal MRI scans or with something that looks wrong in their back or their neck, but they don't have any pain around it, how is that possible? If they have something messed up or a discount.

Because your body is always wanting to heal. And if it gets hurt, if you put it in a healing environment, still might look hurt on an mri. Your body has figured out a way around it. So my abnormal C5, C6, which freaked me out. It doesn't bother me at all now because I know everybody my age has an abnormal neck. And it's the freakout that then puts people into. What I think of the star of this book is it's called the doom loop. It's where you have pain for any reason. It activates the feeling pathway in your brain, which then turns on the suffering pathway. And when that suffering pathway goes up, you then get an invasion of ants, automatic negative thoughts. And then you get negative, and then you spin on it, which then leads to nervous tension, which then increases the pain, which then goes to harmful habits. Alcohol, marijuana, bad food, opiates, whatever. And then it puts you into this cycle of pain, suffering ants, tension, bad Habits, pain, suffering.

Yeah. You call it the doom. Doom loop.

The doom loop.

Now, how much of our pain in our body is tied to our thoughts?

Well, that's part of the doom loop. It's this invasion of automatic negative thoughts and negativity bias. So I published a study this year. I'm very excited. I think it's the world's largest imaging study on negativity versus positive positivity. And if you're negative, it actually decreases. What we see is decreased activity in your prefrontal cortex. Now, why is that a bad thing? Well, your prefrontal cortex is the executive part of your brain. It's involved with things like forethought, judgment, impulse control, but it's also part of. So there are three pain pathways in the brain. Feeling, suffering, calming. So your prefrontal cortex actually sends signals to the rest of your body. It's okay, settle down. If you damage this. We talked about it with football, right. If you damage this, it's harder to turn off the pain signals in your body. Wow.

Okay. So your thoughts impact your ability to either heal or experience pain, either on a positive or negative side is what I'm hearing you say.

By moment. Moment by moment. Every thought you have impacts every cell in your body. Moment by moment. When I was a young psychiatrist, I learned a technique called biofeedback, where we would put sensors on your body and look at hand temperature, sweat gland activity, heart rate variability, breathing. And I would do a word association test with my patients, and I would say things that were innocuous, and then I'd say things that were loaded. And so, for example, if I said mother and mother for me is a good concept, immediately my hands got warmer, they got drier, my breathing became slower, my heart rate variability went up, and it happened immediately. Now, if you said father, which for me was a stressful comment, you're like, harder immediately. Hands get colder, they get sweatier. My muscles get tense, my breathing gets faster and shallower. Every thought you have affects every cell in your body. And there's nowhere. And you know this. There's nowhere in school where they teach us to discipline our minds. And so people are just left with the negativity, which is worse now from social media and the negative news. And depression has skyrocketed. Did you know suicide in young people has gone up 746% since the year 2000? And it's like, what? Why? What happened since the year 2000? Cell phones, social media, covet. We have to train everybody. And I think that's part of the school of greatness, right? You have to have the mindset and. And it's not believing every stupid thing.

You think, or it's also, it's. It's learning how to find meaning in the memories of our life that cause us trauma, triggering, you know, or these stressful thoughts. You know, we think of, you think of father. Hopefully you've healed that relationship in your mind. But if you haven't healed something of your past and you see that person, you think of that person, someone says that person's name, and you get tight and tense. That means there's an association around your thinking and your bile, your body, that is tied to frustration or anger or resentment or shame or guilt that causes you to clench in some way. And that clenching, what I'm hearing you say, the more you do that causes pain in the body. When you're clenching, you're thinking, you're clenching your body. You're not relaxing, you're breathing. You're creating more of an environment for pain and suffering to occur. Maybe you don't feel the pain right away, but you're building over time the environment for pain to occur. And so we've got to be learning how to manage our mind.

Learn how to manage our mind, which is a huge part of the book. Another very interesting part of the book that I really love but initially hated was I tend to be Pollyanna. I mean, I've really worked on my own positivity bias. I tend to notice what's right way more than what's wrong. But I realized with chronic pain, it often comes in good people who have repressed rage.

Really.

And so as I was working on the book, I had this epiphany. Rage came out of you, that Pollyanna, because Pollyanna is my favorite movie and Pollyanna teaches people to play the glad game. Whatever situation you're in. What is there to be glad about in this situation? That Pollyanna needs to make friends with Hannibal Lecter, that you need to have a mechanism to express the negative feelings you have if you just always gloss over them. You may be, as John Sarno said, a goodist, but you're going to hurt. And there's a fascinating therapy I talk about in the book called intensive short term dynamic psychotherapy. What is that? Because Sarno talks about chronic pain is repressed rage. And I'm like, well, how do you get the rage out? And this is a therapy that says if you are anxious, if you're depressed, often you have rage inside. And so if the anger could come out, where Would it go?

And how do you do it in a healthy way so you don't harm yourself or others?

Well, yes. You always want to be thoughtful and how you do this, and you want to be respectful. There's a exercise in the book called Emotional Freedom Journaling, and I love it. So what it is, is you take a page in a journal for each five years of your life. So 0 to 5, 5 to 10, 10 to 15, and so on. And so being 71, that's 14 pages for me. And you draw a line down the middle, and on the left side, you write, what awesome things happened in my life. And on the right side, you write, what awful things happened. And pretty soon, if you do this, you get to where the rage started. And often when we're born, we want to bond, Right? You just had two babies, and the babies desperately want to bond. Why? Because their very survival requires that, and so they want to bond. So when something bad happens, they may feel pain, they may feel anger, they may feel rage, but it's like, oh, no, I can't have that feeling. And when they have the feeling, they then turn it on themselves, like, I did something bad. I caused it. So they feel guilt about the rage, and if they don't process that guilt about the rage, it can lead to all sorts of things, especially chronic pain. Wow.

So we've got to find a healthy way to process rage. Do you feel like everyone has rage inside of them?

Well, I mean, everybody has difficult things, but if you have a high ACE score, do you know the ace? Adverse childhood experiences.

I don't think I've taken it, like. But someone told me all the things, and I was like, I think I've hit all those things. So I haven't actually, like, Well, I.

Think when you came to me and you did a history, we probably did one.

Yeah.

So it's. On a scale of 0 to 10, how many bad things happen to you? Growing up, Physical, emotional, sexual abuse, neglect, witnessing domestic violence, Having a parent with an addiction, a mental health challenge.

Divorce. One.

Divorce is one. Having a parent go to jail. So zero to 10 at all. We showed, we published a study on 7,500 people that it activates your emotional brain. So the suffering pathway in the brain gets activated with childhood trauma. Now, istdp, what I was talking about, teaching people to get the rage out. Or my favorite one, EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. It's. You bring up those traumatic events, have your eyes going back and forth, and you feel them but it takes away the trigger. It just calms and soothes your nervous system. And the book I talk about sort of blending EMDR and istvp, which is will do emdr. And if those feelings of rage come up, I'll have you act it out. And so there's a whole bunch of people that die in these sessions. Right. And nobody dies in real life. But being able to, to just get to it and process it, it's so incredibly helpful.

It's so freeing. I've done many different type of therapeutic experiences where I've, you know, screamed in a pillow and brought up these emotions and kind of let them out in a healthy way and you feel emotionally free. You know, maybe still it hasn't fully left you and it still comes back at different times. But the more you process these emotions in a healthy, conscious way, I feel like the freer you become, the lighter your brain feels and your body feels from pain and suffering. And that's a lot of what you're talking about from change your brain change your pain is finding ways to free your mind, to free yourself from feeling the pain that you've brought upon yourself or other people have brought upon you. And you haven't figured out how to release and let go of and process. And I'm curious in your mind, what makes a great brain? The Kia Sportage Turbo Hybrid has a bold design, a spacious interior with 232 horsepower and a 12.3-inch panoramic display to keep the adventure going and fit with the way you live. And with SiriusXM, every drive comes alive, bringing you closer to the music, the sports talk and podcasts that you love right in your vehicle or on the Sirius XM app. Every SiriusXM equipped Kia Sportage Turbo Hybrid includes a three month trial, so the experience begins the moment you drive. Learn more@kia.com sportage-hybrid Kia movement that inspires.

Well, I scan it. I do a study called Spec that looks at blood flow and activity, sort of looks at how your brain works. And a great brain is healthy, full, even, symmetrical activity. It's not too low or too high. And you, I just can clearly tell this is healthy, this is not healthy. Females tend to have healthier brains, maybe why they live longer, but their emotional brain is busier, which is why they have more depression.

And do women have more depression than men?

Twice as much.

Really?

Yeah.

I thought for some reason men had more depression or loneliness because they were.

Well, men have more loneliness because they have the need to be in groups is not as high and even though women have depression twice as much as men actually are successful killing themselves much higher than women. So women try more, men are more successful because they attempt with more violent means.

So what in terms of suicides? I don't know if you know this statistic. I mean, what is the rate of men versus women on a yearly basis who commit suicide? Is it equal?

No. Men are much more successful.

Really?

Yeah. Even though women try more, men are much more successful. Wow. And we're just going into this crazy, awful epidemic. There was a study from the CDC. 57% of teenage girls report being persistently sad. Think about that. More than half persistently sad, 32% have thought of killing themselves, 24% have planned, and 13% have tried. Why? If you give a child a cell phone early, 5, 6, 7, in their 20s, they now have a 50% risk of having suicidal thoughts. So it. They're dopamine destroyers. So if you take cell phones and social media and video games and fast food, process ultra processed foods and negative news, it's all these things that are wearing out the pleasure centers. So dopamine, the neurotransmitters of joy, of happiness, of focus, of motivation. If you wear out that part of your brain, it's called the nucleus accumbens, you just feel flat and you go, why am I here? Where's the drive? Where's the hope? And then so quickly, the psychiatrists or your family doctor is going to put you on an ssri, which isn't really fixing it, because as you raise serotonin, ssri, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, as you raise serotonin, it lowers dopamine. They sort of counterbalance each other in the brain. And, you know, most psychiatrists never look at the brain, which of course I think is insane. And we're not targeting treatment to your brain.

Why don't psychiatrists look at the brain?

It's insane. I've been doing it for 34 years. I love it. People have said I'm crazy. I'm clearly not. They don't do it because it's not the standard, it's not the paradigm. And if they did, it would disrupt everything. And for a long time I'm like, this is so cool. Why isn't everybody else doing it? And then there's this great book Thomas Kuhn wrote this structure of scientific revolution. So it's like how revolutions happen. And normal science, that's one, just going along. Two, somebody notices a problem, somebody's depressed, they give them Prozac, they want to Kill themselves, we have a problem. I hate that Prozac has black box warnings. Even for the right person, it's a miracle. For the wrong person, it's a nightmare.

Yeah.

The status quo goes, there's a problem, and they make little tiny fixes so they don't have to change the money. Four, someone comes up with a new idea. Imaging, natural ways to heal the brain, and a functional or integrative medicine model. Because it's not mental health, it's brain health. Right. So that's sort of the big aha from the scans. Stop calling people mental health. Nobody wants it. Everybody wants a better brain. So what if mental health was brain health? And then stage five is the rejection because it threatens the money and the status quo. And that's the most dangerous phase because people get killed. Machiavelli even said it back, I guess, the 16th century, that developing a new system is the most dangerous thing you can do.

People resist it. Yeah.

And stage six is the acceptance. And we're between five and six. I was telling you, I just got off the phone with the head of the nih and I'm talking about creating this brain health revolution nationally because we should start looking at the brain. Last year, there are 340 million prescriptions for antidepressants.

340 million million. Holy cow.

Without any of the doctors looking at their patients. Brains so flying blind.

So going off of feelings.

I feel this way just like 1840 when Abraham Lincoln was depressed. So I love Lincoln. So I've read like 12 biographies of him. And I love him because he was challenged in his childhood and he failed repeatedly and hated how he looked. If I ever meet anyone uglier than me, I'm going to kill the wretch. To put him out of his misery. And in the winter of 1840, he was suicidal. He had a political setback, and he wouldn't leave his room. His friends came, took his knives from him, and they brought him to see Dr. Anson Henry in Springfield, Illinois. And how did Dr. Henry make the diagnosis of melancholia, or what we now call major depression, with Lincoln? He talked to him, he looked at him. He looked for symptom clusters, then diagnosed and treated him. That's exactly what's happening 185 years later. And I'm like, like, that's insane that we should look. Because when we look well, then I can target treatment to your brain rather than a cluster of symptoms, because you can have those same systems symptoms with wildly different scans. And why you would never give one person you would never give everyone the same treatment for chest pain. Right. If you went to a doctor, cardiologist and you had chest pain, he goes, I just give everybody nitric oxide. You would leave because he'd be a quack. But now people go, depression. Oh, well, everybody gets an ssri, which in large scale studies work no better than placebo. That should concern us.

Wow. So what is the difference between brain health and mental health?

So if it's mental health. HADS is currently practiced in the United States. We have the National Institute of mental Health. You make diagnoses based on symptom clusters with no biological data.

This is based on what people are saying to their practitioner.

Right, Right. And then how I feel.

This is what I'm experiencing. I'm having these type of thoughts, checklist. I'm suicidal or I'm depressed or I'm feeling these types of symptoms. Right. You tell them the symptoms you're feeling. Right.

And then the doctor interprets, reads their mind.

Oh, yeah.

And goes, oh, well, you're depressed. So they give you this, the diagnosis that you told them your symptoms. You're going in, I'm depressed. It's like, oh, well, you have depression. Give you an ssri. Or you go, anxious. They go, oh, well, you have an anxiety disorder and give you a benzo. 27%. This will blow your mind. 27% of all Dr. Visits, someone is getting a benzo. Come on. Like, Xanax, Valium, clone, Klonopin, Ativan. 27% of all Dr. Visits, someone's getting a benzo, which are addictive and increase the risk of dementia. Or you go, I can't focus. Oh, well, you must have attention deficit disorder. Here, take Adderall. Or my favorite diagnosis to explain this insanity. You have temper problems. And you go to the doctor and go, I have really bad temper. I explode. We actually have a diagnostic term called intermittent explosive disorder. It's like, what the hell does that mean? It means you explode and we put you, what, in anger management groups? Or it's like, no, you probably have a left temporal lobe problem. What? I see a lot on scans, but we shame people with these psychiatric diagnoses rather than, oh, you had a head injury. You hurt that part of your brain. Let's get it better so you have better control over your temper. So it just makes so much more sense to me to change it from symptom clusters to, of course, understanding your symptoms and then looking at the biology.

How much of it is actually healing the physical matter in the brain and going through the Protocols of healing, whatever it is that we see in the scans and also healing the psychological and emotional wounds from our history that we've been holding on to in the body.

So it's both. And I always say it's all for all the time. And I'm working on a new program called the Amen Whole four. Because we're in a whole four crisis.

What is that?

Brain body. We're sicker than we've ever been in this country. 50% of the population is diabetic or pre diabetic. 75% of us are overweight or obese. 90% of healthcare dollars are spent on chronic preventable illnesses. So brain body, but also your mind. We have an epidemic now of anxiety, depression, autism, addiction and adhd. And that was before the pandemic. And then everything got worse. And then I talked about 25% of the adult population is on psychiatric medication. I mean, just like wrap your arm around that. Suicide is skyrocketed. So we have this mental health problem. So biological, psychological, brain body, psych relationships were lonelier than ever. Even though we're more connected, we're lonelier than ever. And belief in God is down. And 58% of young people live with a lack of meaning or purpose. And so the whole four. But get this, this is what I'm so excited about. I believe the answer to these epidemics is not to see them as separate disorders, but as different expressions of the same unhealthy lifestyle and tox exposures that have exactly the same cure. And that is getting them all well together. It's like let's assess and optimize your brain. Let's train your mind, deal with the past traumas, let's help you reconnect, all with a sense of meaning and purpose. And so I'm developing this faith based program. It's an 18 week program to teach people to love, love and care for their brains, their bodies, their minds, their relationships and their relationship to faith.

How much of people's lack of relationship to God or faith is actually impacting their amount of suffering and chronic pain.

So if you don't believe in God, it triples your risk of depression. Really triples. Oh my God. If you believe that you are here by random chance and your life has no meaning or purpose, it triples your risk of depression. There's so many bad things.

So whether you believe in God or not, if you just want to have a better life, it's important for you to say, I'm just going to believe because I know it's going to help me be healthier. It's like it's finding and people go.

You know, as a neuroscientist, how can you believe in God? And I'm like, I think it takes way more.

How can you not faith.

Yeah. To believe. You and I are having this conversation and we've had this friendship over years through random chance that, you know, the babies that were just born or you know, my five grandbabies, I just don't see it.

It's a miracle.

I just don't see it as random.

Yeah.

And you know, I believe in the second law of physics, which is called entropy. Sort of like my son's room. Things go from order to disorder. They don't go the other way around. From order to more order. Yeah. No, I think there's creative design. However you believe in it, it's, it just has always made sense. Wow. To me.

So this is interesting because I think a lot of people are, are losing faith. Especially, especially in the last five to 10 years or maybe people are just have been going to church less or their parents just let them, hey, do whatever you want. Or people are confused in the younger generation. I've been there, all these different things I've gone through questioning my faith as well. And I'm curious then based on, I think you've done over 300,000 brain scans of the 300,000 brain scans that you've done and all the research in the world around this, what do the brains look like of those that don't believe in God or don't have a relationship with faith versus those that do? Today's show is brought to you by Apple Watch. Knowing how you sleep is a game changer when it comes to overall well being. But for many, sleep and sleep quality are a mystery. The new Apple Watch Series 11 provides an easy way to track and better understand the quality of your sleep. The sleep score on Apple Watch helps you better understand your sleep routine and help to make it more restorative. Dive into factors like sleep duration, bedtime consistency, how often you wake up and time spent in each sleep stage. Apple Watch takes you from not knowing to knowing. Find out more@apple.com Apple Watch Series 11 iPhone 11 or later required it's a.

Really interesting question and you know, for so many years people would belittle me for my faith and there was this one MRI study that came out on believers versus non believers. Really? And you would think by science my other non believing friends would think oh well if you're a believer you have a Smaller brain. Well, in fact, smaller brain. Your temporal lobes were bigger, if you were a believer, in the temporal lobes underneath your temples, behind your eyes. They're heavily involved in spiritual experience. In fact, there's a scientist from Canada, Michael Persinger, he would put a helmet on people and give them low volt electrical activity, and he'd stimulate the outside of the right temporal lobe. People would feel the presence of God in the world. They would get a sensed presence, come into the room, which I thought was so interesting. And I think of the brain in large parts as a receiver that when the brain is healthy, we can receive the consciousness from the universe in a positive way. And when it's not healthy, maybe it's post Covid inflammation. All of a sudden, now there's all this static and I don't feel well at all. Interesting.

You know, I'm assuming there's a link to your intuition as well around brain health. Just being able to perceive the world around you having more discernment, being able to be like something feels off with this relationship or, I don't know, this situation. I don't think I'm supposed to be in this room right now. Like, I'm assuming, if you feel clearer in your mind and your brain is actually healthier, you're going to have a stronger intuition about the decisions to make in your life, the clarity of your goals or dreams, whether you're in the right relationships or you should get out of the relationship that's not serving you. You're probably going to be able to have more of a superpower within you when you have clarity and brain health is what I'm assuming.

Absolutely. And that's why when people drink, they're in rooms they shouldn't be in, or they get high. They end up making decisions that haunt them for a long time.

How bad is alcohol and smoking of any kind for brain?

So the American Cancer Society came out against any alcohol four years ago. So I've been railing against alcohol for 34 years because I look at people's brains and if you're a drinker, your brain looks older than you are and they're like, hey, wait a minute. We've been told alcohol is a health food. It was a lie, and it was based on some really faulty science. And alcohol kills so many people. It's not good for you. It's a disinfectant. You know, during the pandemic that Jim Beam, the whiskey company, turned their whiskey plants into hand sanitizer plants. Tana, my wife, she's a nurse why does she put alcohol on your skin before she gives you a shot? Because it kills the bugs. Right. It's a disinfectant in your gut. You have a hundred trillion bugs, bacteria, viruses, fungi. Why are you going to drink a disinfectant? Right. Doesn't make sense.

These are healthy bugs. These are not bugs you want to kill.

Yeah, no. They make neurotransmitters. They digest your food, they detoxify your body. The microbiome, these hundred trillion bugs, is absolutely critical for brain and mental health. And so if you damage them, you damage your mind. And did you know Splenda drops, Healthy gut microbiome. That was such a sugar. The sugar substitute, really. Yeah. And while we're on that topic, one another reason I wrote this book. When I was 35, I had bad arthritis. I couldn't get off the floor playing with my kids. And I think I'm a good psychiatrist because I've learned a lot from my patients. And one day, one of my patients said I stopped aspartame in diet soda, and my arthritis went away. And at the time, it was way before I was enlightened. I would go across the street from my office to Jack in the Box and get a 32 ounce diet Pepsi and that rush.

Ooh, it tastes good for a second.

You know, maybe like some fried chicken strips and french fries. And so I was drinking diet soda like she was my best friend.

Yeah.

And I'm like, I have chronic arthritis. Let me stop. So I stopped and the pain went away. But I'm not that smart. And so, like a couple months later, I'm like, maybe it wasn't that. So I went, got another one in pain for a week, and I broke up up with aspartame. But here's the new study. They took mice and they gave them a little bit of aspartame and water, and it made them very anxious. And then they gave them a benzo, they gave them Valium, and it calmed down the hyperactivity in their amygdala, part of the brain that feels fear. But the really crazy thing about that study, aspartame's in 5,000 products now. Their babies were anxious.

Oh, my gosh.

And they never had aspartame. Their grandbabies were anxious. That aspartame is causing epigenetic changes. And could this mental health explosion be to things like that that are happening in our society that we just have no awareness of?

Off. Wow.

Kill the aspartame.

So alcohol has zero benefit as what I'm gonna Hear you say to the body, right? People might say, well, it helps me loosen up. Or it's a cultural thing.

I could teach you diaphragmatic breathing and that will help you loosen up. I could teach you not to believe every stupid thing you think and that will loosen you up. Skills, not just pills, skills, not just substances. And while we're on the topic, marijuana will your pain and then it'll come back, really. And then you'll be dependent on something that increases your risk of anxiety, depression, suicide and psychosis. I am just horrified.

What has happened in the last decade since marijuana has become legal in many states. And it's very accessible for people to have just like a candy bar at any moment. They can just eat something or they.

Legalized in 40 states now. So recreational marijuana in 24 states.

What have we noticed with brain and mental health linked to marijuana usage in the last 10 years?

So I published a study on a thousand marijuana users. Every area of their brain is lower in activity. I was just on Tucker Carlson's podcast on marijuana and the comments, they're like tens of of thousands.

They hated you probably.

They're like, they hate me and they love me because people see the damage and the devastation it does to relationships. And then another group, not me at all, published another study in JAMA psychiatry on a thousand marijuana user young people decreases in the learning and memory areas of their brain. And I just had Julius Randall on my podcast, the NBA superstar who I love so much. And he came to see me and we talked about it on the podcast. He's about to get divorced because he was smoking a lot of pot. And it was his escape from his past. It was his escape from his negative thoughts. But his wife, his mom, everybody's like, it's changing him in a negative way. And he stopped it as soon as he saw a scan. I love that part about the scans. He stopped it. And then I taught him how to manage his mind and we did EMDR and we got the rage out and he doesn't believe every stupid thing he thinks. And another technique in the book is give your mind a name. Right? Gain psychological distance from the chatter, from the noise in your head. So he named his mind after his dog Teddy, that just barked for no reason. He's because why am I? And it just stirs up trouble. And then you'll love this. We created an alter ego for him because he was known for sort of falling apart in the playoffs, even though it wasn't fair. Right. Once you get that label. And so his alter Ego was the Mamba Disciple because he grew up for the first four years playing with Kobe Bryant. And so when he got on the court, it was no longer Julius who didn't do well in crunch time. It was the Mamba Disciple and he had the best playoffs of his entire career, where they went to the Western Conference finals.

Wow. So marijuana, in a thousand scans study that you saw, it did nothing good for the brain physically, is what I'm saying.

Not one good thing.

What about people that swear that when I take marijuana I have like all this creativity and all these ideas flow through me and I'm like the best performer and artist and writer and it's just like it comes through me when I take marijuana. What do you say to people like that who swear by it?

Well, I just love to look at their brains. And is it making your brain healthy and does it help you feel good now and later, or is it now but not later? And I think of myself as a long term thinker. It's like I want you to feel good now and be creative now, but I also want you to be able to do it 10 years from now.

Yeah, interesting. And if it's hurting your brain over time, it's shrinking your brain or limiting your brain, then it's going to be harder to be thinking clearer later and staying healthier longer. I love this approach to creating distance from your mind. So if someone is experiencing negative thoughts, if someone is experiencing doubt, insecurity, shame, guilt, or they're just saying negative things about themselves to themselves and to other people, how can we create a mechanism that allows us to separate ourselves from our mind, to have a conversation with it it to see it for what it is from a different interpretation so that we can harmonize with our mind and ourselves to be in better alignment with a positive mindset rather than negative thinking.

That's a huge part of this book on negativity bias, how bad that is for your brain and how to train your brain to be more positive and how to not believe High in the sky.

Yeah, but how to not believe the negativity?

It's a training.

Yes.

You know, like Julius shoots free throws over and over again. Even though he's sought tens of thousands of them, he keeps doing it. Why? Because he has to keep that skill. We always have to be working on our mind. So initially, give your mind a name, begin to separate. I named my mind after my pet raccoon when I was 16. I loved her, but is a troublemaker. She like TPed my mother's bathroom Ate all the fish in my sister's aquarium. Would leave raccoon poo in my. And that's my mind. It just like stirs up trouble. So when I get a storm, I'm like, you're going in your cage? Like, no, I don't have to listen to you. Or now what I do, I put her on her back and just tickle her in my mind. Right. So it's a beautiful visualization because raccoons have. Have 200 different sounds they make.

Wow.

What really helps is whenever you feel sad or mad or nervous or out of control, write down what you're thinking and then identify the type of ant. I call them ant species. Is it all or nothing? Things are all good or all bad? Is it just the bad ants where you're focusing on what's wrong? Mind reading, fortune telling? The worst ant of all of them is blame. Whenever you blame someone else for the problems you have, you become a victim and you can't change anything. And a lot of negativity goes with blame. And people are, oh, the other ant is labeling. Whenever you label yourself or someone else with a negative term, you can't deal with them anymore because you've lumped them with all the people that are like this. And so you can't deal with it. And so, oh, he's liberal or she's conservative. Well, that means she's a fascist. And it's just this incredibly stupid thinking, illogical thinking that we're living with in this society. And the news and social media is taking advantage of that because they realize if they piss you off, off, you're going to stay there longer and you're going to watch the copper underwear commercial. It's all money driven and it's ruining our minds. And so when you feel bad, write down the thought, identify the kind of ant it is and talk back to it. And I don't know if you've ever interviewed Byron, Katie.

Yes, I'd love to work. Amazing.

And so basically, Tana never listens to me. I've had that thought and it's like it's all or nothing. Is it true? Like, no. But if I don't question my thoughts, I believe them.

Yes.

And then I act as if they're true.

Yeah.

Is it absolutely true? No. How's the thought make me feel? Sad, Lonely, disconnected. How would I feel without the thought? Fine, Take the original thought 10 and never listens to me and just go, Tana does listen to me. And I can find a hundred examples. Yeah, right. It's just not believing everything. And the mothership thought, the thought that's damaging so many people. I'm not enough. Julius had that thought.

Not enough.

Who is. Yeah, I saw. I've been Miley cyrus's doctor for 15 years now, and I'm not enough. I'm like, okay, who is.

Why is this. This seems like the biggest challenge for all of humanity. This one thought. Why is I am not enough? A core thought that most of the world has on a continual basis. And. And what is the easiest way to overcome that thinking? This episode is brought to you by Facebook. Finding the perfect Secret Santa gift can be stressful. You want it to feel personal and unexpected, but not random. That's where Facebook comes in. Facebook is all about turning small moments into real, meaningful connections. Just like giving the perfect gift, it brings people together in thoughtful ways, helping us show we truly see and appreciate the people around us, whether they're co workers, friends, or family. And you can check someone's profile to see what they're into. Explore marketplace for unique gifts or join groups to swap creative ideas and inspiration. Facebook connects you with people who are into the same things as you and helps you find something that truly fits, making the perfect find feel more special and personal. And I've actually seen this firsthand with my own community. We have a Facebook group for everyone who's ever attended my summit of greatness event. And it's incredible to see how people stay connected long after the event is over. They share updates, support each other's goals, and celebrate wins big and small. And it's a reminder that when people stay connected, great things keep happening. Let's reconnect this holiday season. Explore more with Facebook today.

Is it true you're not enough?

But why do people. Absolutely.

Because of comparison. And now with social media, you're comparing yourself to not just the neighbors. You're comparing yourself to millions of people.

And filters and AI comparison. It's like.

And so write it down. I'm not. Not enough. Is that true? Yes, that's absolutely true. With a hundred percent certainty, you are not enough. Probably not, is what most people say. They said, how does that make you feel? Small, Less than anxious? How would you feel if you didn't have the thought? Fine. Free.

A lot better. Yeah.

And it's okay. So what's the opposite? I am enough. So where do you see that in your life where you are enough? Well, I'm a dad and I have a job and I pay my mortgage. I have enough. And that's where you meditate, right? You take the original thought, flip it to the opposite, and then you meditate. And then you start every day with, today is going to be a great day. And as you go through your day, you look for the little miracles.

Yes.

In the day, it's a hummingbird. It's a butterfly. It's brain, healthy hot chocolate. It's like, oh. And when you go to bed at night, you go, what went well today? And you don't just, like, list three things you're grateful for. It's like, start at the beginning of your day. Like, I have a white shepherd that I just dearly love. And I had a moment with her this morning. Just got fixed, and it was hard. I love her so much. And we had that beautiful moment. I'm noticing the things I like more than the things I don't like. Because it's not the thoughts you have that make you suffer. It's the thoughts you attach to. We all have crazy thoughts. Do you want to hear my craziest thoughts?

Sure.

So we have two shepherds. The white one's mine, and the German shepherd is Tanner's. And when Tana comes home, he loves her. Like, oh, my God. He, like, barks. He runs around. He gets. He's like, the energy's just coming out of him. And when I come home, it's like, hey. And that's it. Like, hey, hey, dude. And whenever she's not there, he always comes and hangs out with me in my office. I just had this thought one day, if I killed my wife, when I came home, he would be so excited to see me. And I'm like, no, we're not going to kill the wife for this. But your mind creates. Jerry Seinfeld once said, the brain is a sneaky organ. We all have weird, crazy, stupid, sexual, violent thoughts that nobody should ever hear. Like. Like the one I'm sharing. And so many people think they had that bad thought. They must be a bad person. Well, I'm absolutely not a bad person. And I'm absolutely not going to kill my wife. It's just a random thought, like the weather and so learning to manage the noise. The nonsense is so helpful.

You talked about gratitude for a second and, you know, really focusing on all the little moments throughout the day that you can appreciate and find joy in and gratitude in. What parts of the brain are most affected by gratitude and appreciation?

So it calms your amygdala, that fear center in your brain, really. It calms your limbic brain, and it activates your prefrontal cortex.

So gratitude does all Those things, gratitude.

Is this beautiful balancing act. And meditation and prayer both do the same thing.

Wow. If someone doesn't have gratitude in their life and everything is a frustration and there's anger towards what they're lacking rather than appreciation and gratitude towards what they have, what happens to the brain?

So chronic negativity increases your risk of dementia. So so many people that are pessimists, they go this way. I'm never disappointed. And I'm like, yeah, but you're more likely to get dementia. You're more likely to be depressed. Negativity bias. So we did this study on negativity bias. When people come to see us, we ask them 300 different questions. Lots of psychiatric symptoms. Negativity is associated with two thirds of them. It's like shocked us, really. It's like, no, negativity is not good. Now, you don't want to be too positive. I tell my patients who are really anxious, the goal is not. Not to get you. So say 0 to 100. The goal is not to get you from 85 to 0. The goal is to get you from 85 to 15. I want you to have enough anxiety that you do the right thing.

Sure, sure, right.

That you don't go for the third glass of beer.

Right.

That you're not driving at 100 miles an hour in the rain. Right. The don't worry, be happy people die the earliest from accidents and preventable illnesses. So I'm not arguing for always being Pollyanna. I want you to be thoughtful. And the people who live the longest are conscientious, which means if you say you're going to show up, you show up consistently, reliably, predictably. Right. I mean, I was on time. I like being on time because I'm conscientious. Yes, Right. And I want to be conscientious with my help. And people go, oh, how can you have any fun? I did celebrity rehab once with Dennis Rodman and his brain was not great. And I was teaching him to be brain healthy. He's like, how can you have any fun? And I have a high school course called brain thrive by 25, we teach high school students to love and care for their brain. And week four, here are the things to avoid. 14 year old boy, never a girl, girl. 14 year old boy, how can you have any fun? So I play a game with them. Who has more fun, the kid with the good brain or the kid with the bad brain? Who gets the girl and gets to keep her because he doesn't act like an ass? The person with the good brain or the person with the bad brain, who gets into the college they want to get into, who makes the most money, who has the most meaning and purpose. It's never about deprivation. You know, I can't have this, I can't have that. It's about abundance of what you really want. Because if you really like the end of the day, what do you really want? And for me, it's energy, it's memory, it's passion, it's purpose, it's love, it's connection. That's what I want.

Freedom. Physical freedom. Yeah.

Independence. Right. I mean, the older I get, right. I never want to be a burden to anybody. And I have six children and I never want to live with any of them. Love them, don't want to live with them. Right. So that means decades ahead of time I need to be thinking about my health. Wow.

For some reason I want to go back to the, to the God conversation because I haven't heard you talk about this that much. And I don't know if I've seen a lot of people talk about the science of having a belief and faith in God, on how much it actually impacts the brain. And I don't think people are going to understand this unless we have some type of research or backing, which I think maybe you have some of this already, which I think through the scans. And so have you followed up with people after you've scanned them who show a high connection with their faith and a high belief in God? Have you had a follow up process with them to understand how they feel on a consistent basis and how their brain looks by having a consistent trust and belief in God? And do they have happier, more fulfilling lives or relationships or is that dependent on circumstance? What else have you noticed with people's brains?

If you get sick, you get better faster.

Really.

So the scientist that has done the most work in this is at Duke. His name is Harold Koenigse. I wrote this huge volume and looked at the neuroscience of prayer and looked at the health benefits of belief and their myriad that if you're, if you go to church on a regular basis, if you get sick, you get better faster, it lowers your risk of mental health issues. And obviously people who are Christian or Muslim or Jewish, they have mental health issues, but having the belief and the community associated with it is protective.

Interesting. Would some people say, well, that's just the community and the ritual and the habit of having people around you, or.

Is it really good for you, but also believing you're here for a purpose Believing you are wonderfully made, that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit that was given to you by God. Their neurotransmitter benefits to that belief.

Was there ever a time in your life where you didn't believe in God? No. Really?

Now there are times. I was scared of God. I grew up Roman Catholic, and I wrote a book, I think you interviewed me for it, on happiness. And I start the book with Happiness is a Moral Obligation, which I got from my friend Dennis Prager. And there was. That was nowhere in my childhood that happiness was a moral obligation. It was more about long suffering. Now, I've always believed in God. When I was a young soldier, so I was in the army for 16 years, and we really cute company clerk. And I'm like, hey, can I take you out? And she goes, will you take me to church? And growing up Catholic, I was an altar boy. Like, I can do church. She took me to a Pentecostal healing service. And they were speaking in tongues and screaming and crying and dancing. It was different, but she was cute. And I went back and I got connected to a group called Teen Challenge. It's a Christian group that deals with drug addicts. And I just fell more deeply in love with Jesus and helping these people. And when they went through the program, believe when they went through the program, they had a very high success rate, because now it's not about them. It's about their relationship with God and with other people. Very powerful.

Powerful.

And then I went to a Christian college, and then I went to medical school at Oral Roberts University. Learned medicine in the context of my faith.

You've had a, you know, unique faith history then and a wide range of learning and. And different churches you've been through. Where is your faith now and how does it serve your brain, health, and your overall soul?

Well, for sure, I don't believe this is it. And I believe I'm here for a purpose. And my purpose is to make a dent in the universe by getting people to love and care for their brains and to change my specialty, which I dearly love. But psychiatrists do not need to be the only medical specialists that never look at the organ they treat. And it drives me every day. And, yeah, I just. I feel incredibly blessed to be part of the conversation and getting the world healthy through churches. I don't know if we ever talked about Mark Hyman, and I did the Daniel Plan with Pastor Rick Warren. Really? When was that? So in 2010, I just finished my second book on the connection between physical health and Mental health. Change your brain, change your body. And I went to my church in Newport Beach, Mariners Church, and I walked by, hundreds of donuts for sale. And it just pissed me off. I'm like, I'm going to get my soul fed. These people are trying to kill me. And I prayed that Sunday that God would use me to change the culture of. Of food at church.

Yeah. Which is. It's usually not good food.

It's not good food.

Yeah.

And I haven't. Well, you know me, I have sort of an attitude, and I'm praying that. And I'm like, it's the dumbest prayer you've ever prayed. And I'm like, God, it's my prayer. You do with it whatever you want. That's my prayer. Two weeks later, Rick Warren, the senior pastor at Saddleback Church, one of the largest churches in the world, called me and said, I'm fat. My church is fat. Met, will you help me? And I had never met Pastor Warren.

He sold like 30 million books or something crazy, right?

50 million.

50 million books for purpose Driven Life.

Purpose Driven Life. Yeah. And 15,000 people signed up the first week. The first year, they lost a quarter of a million pounds. And I was just so blessed, so honored to be part of it. And so I'm recreating it 15 years later from this whole four perspective because we get. Get better together or we get sick together. In fact, just make a list of 10 of your friends. Your health is going to reflect their health.

Why do you think? Again, I'm not. I'm not into understanding all of church culture and what's happening, what's not happening with church culture. But it sounds like church culture still has this, I don't know, obesity epidemic, I guess, where there's kind of like they're not focusing on. I don't. I'm not saying everyone, but a general observation is they're not focusing on health, physical health, as well as spiritual health. Why do you think that is, when we. When people and.

Or mental health? Because there was sort of a divorce between the church and psychiatry that Freud, you know, thought that if you believed in God, it was like the opiate of the masses and he was an atheist. Carl Jung, on the other hand, had deep reference and belief in the Almighty. And Victor Frankl as well, who, you know, I sort of think of myself more like Victor Frankl with biology. So, yeah, the church is doing better in many places. I want this amen. Whole4 program to help them do much better in this.

Again, the whole 4 program, which is around the brain body system, which is around the mind, which is around your relationships and also your spiritual relationship with God or faith. These four areas of life, if we are not in a healthy place on all four of these areas, what I'm hearing you say is that the brain is not healthy, as well as healthy as it could be. Is that correct?

Absolutely.

And so when we focus on improving the quality of our health with our brain and our physical body, improving the quality of our health around our thoughts and our mind, around our intimate relationships and friendships and around a relationship with God, we will live a better life. Is what I'm hearing you say.

Absolutely true.

What if the people only do? Yeah, you know what? Screw physical health. I'm going to drink when I want, I'm going to smoke marijuana, I'm going to have fun, I'm going to eat a bunch of craft food. You know, I think positive thoughts, but I'm not going to take care of my, my health and ah, God, who knows, Maybe this is all random. What, what are they saying when they are eliminating two of the four things?

Well, they're living the way society would have them live. I believe we're in a war for the health of our brains and our minds and our relationships and our souls. Everywhere you go, someone's trying to shove bad food down your throat and they'll get what we have. And I don't know if you know this statistic, but if you live to your 85, one in two people will be diagnosed with dementia or Alzheimer's disease. I'm not okay with that. That's normal. So you will get what is normal, what is normal. For each decade of your life, you will be on one pharmaceutical. So I should be on seven and I'm not on any. You will get the norm, which is we're fatter, sicker than we've ever been in our society. And do you want whole health or do you want partial?

Yeah, health.

I want whole health.

That's what I.

And now that you have babies every day you are modeling health or illness.

Yes.

With your behavior, people don't get it. It's not just about you. Right. For the person who says, nah, I'm just going to keep drinking and eating bad.

It's not about just you, it's the generations after you.

It's about generations of you.

And our biology will impact not only our children, but our grandchildren is what I'm hearing you say.

Well, your girls were born with all of the eggs in their ovaries they will ever have they don't make new ones. They have all the eggs they'll ever have.

And so it's based on what we've passed down at this season, you know, based on our biology.

And so how healthy you and your wife were before you conceived them, how healthy she was during the pregnancy, their health going forward is turning on or off certain genes, making illness more or less likely in them, but in their babies and grandbabies.

And it also sounds like that if you aren't, you know, healthy in all four of these areas that you talked about, the brain, body, the mind, relationships, and your relationship to God, you're passing down your level of quality of health or lack of quality of health to your children when you have this them. And you have to almost train them how to be healthier as you get healthier. If you haven't been working on that.

Beforehand, you model it.

Right.

How do I help other people be healthy? Yeah, I model it. I live the message. So we brought up my dad early on, and I had a very complicated, negative relationship with my father early on. And I told him I wanted to be a psychiatrist. He asked me why I didn't want to be a real doctor, why I wanted to be a nut doctor and hang out with nuts. Nuts all day long. And then when I realized after I started looking at the brain, I have to get physically healthy because the brain is an organ, just like your heart is an organ. So if my heart's not right, my brain's not right. If I'm overweight, my brain's not right. And he's like, oh, great, now you're a health nut. You're a nut doctor. And what's with you and the nuts is what he said. But 25 years later, and he made fun of me a lot, he got sick and he said, danny, I'm sick of being sick. What do you want me to do? And the only reason he asked me that question is because I modeled health. And he did everything I asked him to do. He got insanely healthy. He lost 40 pounds. He started working out. He could do a six minute plank. I mean, he's like 87 and can do a six minute plank. Yeah. And the only reason that happened is because I lived the message.

Well, you modeled it. There's a lot of questions that I still have for you, but we've got to, we've got to wrap up here in a moment because you got to get to your next. Your next interview. But I want to give people the information for the book. It's called Change your brain, change Your Pain by Dr. Daniel Amen. And if anyone again, you've done it worth 300,000 scans from patients from 155 countries. And there is so much data that you have that is backing this book that talks about how to overcome the pain that most of the world is feeling both mentally, physically, emotionally. People are suffering, people are physically in pain. And what you're teaching people is the connection on the brain health or the lack of brain health and the pain in the body as well. And this is all about breaking the doom loop to heal both chronic physical and emotional pain. And I feel like if people don't start taking full ownership of these four areas of their life now, they're going to have so much pain and suffering for years that it's going to be so much harder to reverse if you wait. So I encourage everyone to get the book right now. Free yourself from the pain by going through this information and the strategies in this book and set your family and your friends up with a model like you did for your father of what a healthy human being looks like. Not a perfect human being. We're all going to make mistakes and have negative thoughts, but it's believing in those negative thoughts or not is what's going to help you feel more free. And people can get the book. Change your brain, change your pain. They can go anywhere on social media, Doc. Amen. Your website, amenclinics.com you've got all your supplements there as well. Instagram, docaimon. What else should we send people to or should people know about that we didn't talk about? If you have one final message for people.

Well, we actually have a very special pre order campaign for the book. If you go to Change youe Brain, Change youe Pain Book.com we will actually send you one of my favorite supplements, Brain Curcumins, which has been shown to be helpful for pain. We have a online 30 day course that goes through the major principles. We'll give you that, we'll give you the Emotional Freedom Journal and just want to get it in the hands of as many people as possible. Change your brain changeyourpainbook.com if someone is.

Watching or listening right now and they're still not convinced, but they have some type of physical chronic pain in their body, they wake up with arthritis or joint pain or back pain or headaches, they have some type of thing that's just gnawing at them physically and you could share one final message for them to support them.

And I think people get really offended when you're going, you think it's all in my head. And I'm like, I don't think it's all in your head, but your brain is in your head and it's an organ. And if you've been in pain for more than three weeks, you people think of neuroplasticity as a good thing. It's just a thing your brain does, what you allow it to do or what happens to it. And you've built these pain pathways in your brain. Learning to calm them down would just make you so much happier. Yeah, there's so much hope here. I was having dinner with my cardiologist, and right before I filmed, I have a new special coming out in the book next weekend, and he was going to go get back surgery, and he's like, it's been going on for four years. And I'm like, just read the book and. And he read it. He calls me two weeks later, 90% gone.

Wow.

And then another month later, my pain is gone. Because your brain is better.

Daniel, Amy, thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Thank you, my friend.

Amazing.

You can't cure a disease without also curing the soul.

Interesting. What does that mean? That means that the networks that control.

Your brain are linked to the networks that are controlling the health of your organs. If the signal to turn off inflammation doesn't come, the inflammation can persist. Chronic stress, chronic anxiety is an inflammation.