These RISK FACTORS Are Destroying Your BRAIN! | Dr. Daniel Amen & Lewis Howes

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.

I think you gotta have a dream.

The School of Greatness. Really? Yeah. Please welcome Lewis Howes.

What is more powerful, the brain, the heart, or the mind? And which one is controlling our body the most?

No question, it's your brain.

Really?

Your brain creates your mind and when the brain works right, you work right. But when your brain is troubled for whatever reason, head injuries from playing football, early Alzheimer's disease, you live in a mold-filled home, you have COVID-19 which we know affects brain function or Lyme disease. It damages your brain and then you're more vulnerable to anxiety, depression, temper problems. And people don't get that. There's all this talk about get your mind right, but think of it like hardware, physical functioning of your brain, software, your mind, network connections, your relationships, if the hardware is not right, the software won't run, and the network connections will be faulty. And so at Amen Clinics, we have nine clinics around the country where we see thousands of patients every month that it's like, get your brain right. And then we want to program it. Your mind's really important, and we want to help you work on your relationships. But if your brain's not right, nothing else is going to be as good as it can be.

So if someone is doing exercises or practices in their relationships, dealing with anger management, stress, anxiety, depression, they're working on the software and not the hardware, what will happen?

It's just not as effective. I mean, it can be very helpful. But Just like the computer analysis. And I didn't know this. It was 1991 when I ordered my first SPECT scan. SPECT is the study we do at Amen Clinics. I'm already a double board certified psychiatrist. I'd been a psychiatrist for about a decade. And I always felt like I was throwing darts in the dark at my patients. There's a great book called the Structure of Scientific Revolution. 'Cause if what I'm doing is right, and I believe it is, it's really creating a revolution in brain health, mental health care. And the first step of the revolution Thomas Kuhn wrote about in 1962 is you notice a flaw in the system. And I was taught, was really well trained, I trained to be a psychiatrist at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, DC. And if you have six of these nine symptoms, you get diagnosed with depression, and then I give you a medication. Right.

That's what you did for Prozac.

For a while. But some of the people I'd put on Prozac got better, and some of them became suicidal. Some of them became aggressive. Some of them became obsessive and anxious. And I'm like, this isn't working like it should. Right.

And a small percentage maybe it helps, but not for everyone.

Well, maybe even a good percentage it helps, but a good percentage it hurts, which would horrify me, 'cause I would always feel off balance. I didn't know this would work, that would work. Plus, I didn't care about my own brain at all because I hadn't seen it. And in 1991 when I started ordering scans, I scanned my mom. She had a beautiful healthy brain. I scanned me and it wasn't healthy. But I played football in high school. I had meningitis when I was a young soldier. And I had bad habits. I wasn't sleeping. I was eating fast food. And when I scanned myself, I developed a concept I wanted my mother's brain. And so I called that brain envy. Freud was wrong. Penis envy is not the cause of anybody's problem. You gotta learn to love and care for your brain. And so the next 30 years I've been figuring out how can I have a better brain? Because when I have a better brain, I have a better life. And what I realized is depression is not one thing. That's why Prozac didn't work for everyone. For some people, they're really low. blood flow and activity in the brain. For some people it's really high and for some people they had head injuries. In fact, if you go, hey Daniel, single most important thing you've learned from 183,000 scans, that's how many we've done, is that mild traumatic brain injury is a major cause of psychiatric illness. Oh man. And nobody knows about it because psychiatrists, by and large, never look at the brain.

What does psychiatric illness mean? Is it the same thing as mental health disorder, mental health disease? What does that mean?

Right, I mean it's the same thing. It's people who struggle with anxiety, depression, OCD, PTSD, schizophrenia, attention deficit disorder, addictions. So you're saying if we played football we're screwed forever? You're vulnerable. Since we played football, and you're bigger and probably way better than me, so you got your head hit more. Yes. I was on the best position in the field, which is I was a backup quarterback. Best position in the field.

She wasn't on the field, yeah.

And but you're clearly more vulnerable. So in 2007, Anthony Davis came to see me. He's the Hall of Fame running back from USC. He's called the Notre Dame Killer, because in 1972, he scored six touchdowns against the University of Notre Dame. And he was at the time confused. He had memory deficits. He had temper problems. He's getting into fights. He had no business. And one day he's driving on the 405 and he had no idea where he was going. And he pulled over, called a friend of him at USC School of Medicine. He says, you should go see Dr. Raymond. And when I saw him, his brain at 54, look like it was 90 and bad for 90. And Anthony just did everything I asked him to do. And five months later, his brain is better. He's excited. He's like, Doc, we have to talk about this. And this is at a time the NFL is really in active denial that they have a problem. And so we did a study. He helped me with the Los Angeles chapter of the NFL Players Association. They co-sponsored my first study, high levels of damage in players. And what we found, they had four times the level of depression and significantly higher incidences of dementia. But 80% of them got better when I put them on a brain health program. So it's- Wow.

Now, do you think, I know from transitioning out of sports, as a professional football player transitioning where my identity was tied to that thing for so long that when I left and that I had this mini identity crisis for a few years of living in the past and will my life ever be the same type of mentality, can the depression or anxiety come from the identity crisis as well or is it more tied to the traumas you hit? Because when I was in the game, I felt like I had a purpose, a mission. I didn't feel as stressed and overwhelmed, but it's when I left the game, when that came up. Is it a combination or is it...

It's always a combination. I always think of people in four big circles. What's the physical functioning of your brain and body? So it's a biological circle. What's the psychological circle, which is your development, that really matters. And your ability to manage your mind. In my new book, you, Brain Is Always Listening, I talk about the ants and the dragons. The ants, the automatic negative thoughts. it steal your happiness. And the dragons, big psychological issues from the past, like the abandoned, invisible and insignificant dragon, it's my dragon, that are always sort of breathing fire on your emotional brain. So biological, psychological, social, it's like, well, how's your money? How's your relationships? I mean, we're just coming out, hopefully, of a pandemic that has spawned another mental health pandemic, right? So biological, psychological, social, and spiritual, which most psychiatrists would never touch. But 80% of the population believes in God and has deep-rooted spiritual beliefs, and it's ultimately, well, why are you on the planet? And you had lost your sense of meaning and purpose, where you had one life and then, well, all of a sudden you don't have that anymore. And I'm a huge fan of of Ariana Grande's song, Thank youk. Next. Because those three words are mental health. It's gratitude for what's happened in the past looking forward. Gratitude for your career, and then like, All right, what's next? And if you had known me at the end of your career, you'd like go, Good, we're not gonna hit our head anymore. We're gonna take care of our brain so we can do something. Fine. Which obviously you've done.

Yeah, it's been great. We have to acknowledge the season of our life and then move on to the next season. What would you say are the three worst things we can do for our brain? If the brain health is the foundation for our mindset, our heart health, the way we view the world, what are the three worst things we can do? Whether it be taking a substance, thinking a thought, staying in a toxic relationship, being around mold all day, like what are the, you know, trauma to the head?

Well, I mean, the worst thing you can do is not care about it, is not have brain envy. That's the worst thing.

Have brain envy.

You can do. And I have a little tiny habit I love. I worked with B.J. Fogg from the persuasive tech lab at Stanford, and we worked with him for six months on how people change. and we created 50 tiny habits. But my favorite tiny habit is before you go to do something today, ask yourself, takes three seconds, is this good for my brain or bad for it? And if you can answer that question with information and love, love of yourself, love of your mission, you are going to be better.

Yeah.

Because when your brain is better, you're better. Absolutely. So that's number one. If you don't care. Number two is you engage in behaviors that hurt your brain. Whether it's head trauma or thinking of marijuana is going green, it's not, it damages the brain. Alcohol is not a health food. Living in a mold-filled environment. You may know Dave Asprey. Dave and I are buddies. He got scammed about 15 years ago and it was like moth-eaten. It was terrible. But he was living in a mold-filled home. And he actually did a documentary called Moldy that I'm in on the impact of an environmental toxin on your brain. And I would say the third thing, so brain envy, engage in behaviors that hurt your brain. The third thing would be you just never do anything to help your brain, such as we talked about this before we started, table tennis, which is just a great brain game. Yes. Because you got to get your eyes, your hands and feet all to work together while you think about this spin on the ball. So I think of it like aerobic chess. And people never think about their cerebellum. It's the Rodney Dangerfield part of the brain. Now, I'm horrified because many young people don't know who Rodney Dangerfield is. He was a comedian who used to say, I get no respect. and then he talks about why he got no respect. Well, in the back bottom part of your brain, there's cerebellum actually means little brain. It's 10% of the brain's volume, but it has half 50% of the brain's neurons. And it's involved in coordination, which is why table tennis is great for your cerebellum, but also thought coordination, how quickly you can integrate new information and we know people have ADD have sleepy cerebellums, people who have autism awfully have damaged cerebellums. And so we so athletics are so important. Yes. Right? These coordination exercises like martial arts is amazing. As long as you don't hit your head. As long as you don't hit your head because the brain is soft about the consistency of soft butter, tofu, custard, somewhere between egg whites and jello, and your skull is really hard and has sharp bony ridges. This is why the thousands of blows you took to your head are just bad. Helmets don't protect brain damage. Protect you from brain damage. They protect you from skull fractures. But inside your brain, your brain is doing this. Repeatedly. And that's not a good thing. You can't like take your laptop and just drop it repeatedly and expect it to do what it needs to do.

Oh my gosh. I just keep thinking of the decades of brain hitting over and over. But I think, you know, what I love about your message and your research is that it doesn't matter if you've been through that in the past. As long as you're aware of it and you start to practice habits and routines and really set your environment up, your relationships, these four circles up for success, you can really heal a lot of the past trauma in the brain. Is that right?

Absolutely. That's the exciting thing.

How much from these scans you've done where people have had horrible looking scans, I mean whether it be brain trauma or sexual trauma, whatever it is that they were stuck in some type of brain trauma, and they went on a program of better lifestyle, better habits, spiritual growth, personal development, Were you able to see a significant transformation within a year, five years, 10 years? How long does this take?

Well, I have Anthony Davis's scans 10 years apart and dramatically better. Or one of my favorite NFL players, his name is Duval Love. He was an offensive guard for the Los Angeles Rams for 12 years. And when I saw him, he's obese, he's depressed, he's been to jail, he's a mess. And he just did what I asked him to do. And that's why I love my NFL players, because they're coachable. They're used to being coached.

Tell me what to do, Coach.

I'll do it. Hey, Coach, tell me what to do. And he lost 110 pounds. And he's actually ended up getting his master's degree. I was like, oh, my God. And, you know, he's trim, he's happy, he's fit, and his brain is radically better. Now it depends, right, on how much you played and how many hits and how damaged it is. And it also depends on the brain you brought into football because some people brought really healthy brains into football. They had parents who cared, they had reasonable nutrition and so on. And some people brought in terrible brains. But 80% of our people get better. especially if they do what we ask them.

Is this better in terms of like, okay, you're 80% back to a super healthy, perfect brain? Is it like, wow, this thing's unbelievable. Off the charts healthy. Like everyone can envy your brain even if you went through trauma or is.

It like, it looks really good. It depends on what you start with. Yeah. One of my other players, Anthony Trucks, who I just love, his brain was suffering when I first saw him. Really?

A year ago from Oregon? -Working football player, played in the NFL.

For a few years. I know trucks, yeah, yeah.

-Yeah, I love him.

-Good guy. -And he just did what I asked him to do.

-Super positive guy. -To do.

And a year later, his brain's healthy. -Really? -Yeah. -So wasn't healthy when he came in, a year later it's healthy. -Right. And that's the cool thing about the brain. Every day, your brain, and there's an area called the hippocampus. And so I don't know if this is too much nerd neuroscience, but the cerebellum's really important. The hippocampus is really important because it's involved with mood. and memory.

Interesting.

And it's Greek for seahorse, because it's shaped like a seahorse. And every day, the hippocampus makes 700 new baby stem cells or new baby seahorses. Every day.

In the brain.

In the brain. It's making new cells every day. So, neuroscientists, when I was taking neuroscience in medical school, they told us, if you hurt your brain, sort of your screwed, and you're not getting it back. Well, that was a lie, that the brain continues to make new neurons throughout life. And every day, you're growing those babies if you put them in a healthy environment, or you're murdering them. And, oh man, funny story. Came out last year, I've been Miley Cyrus' doctor for about a decade, and I adore her. And she was smoking a lot of pot, as everybody knows. But she's also an animal lover. So when I told her the pot was suffocating the baby seahorses, she's like, Dr. Raven, that's so unfair. No, I love animals. You can't say that. Take that back. Wow. And now she's better to her brain. Just the information, know better, do better.

I'm gonna ask you some controversial questions about brain health. How much does, is it a third of Americans are obese or is it two thirds? Two thirds of Americans.

72% of Americans are overweight.

Or overweight.

42% of us are obese.

Obese.

I published three studies. In fact, I did an NFL study. One of them was an NFL study. I took players at the same position who were at a healthy weight versus those that were overweight. The overweight had sleepy frontal lobes. They had decreased activity in the frontal lobe. I just published a study on 35,000 people. It's one of the largest imaging studies ever done. And there is virtually a linear correlation between as your weight goes up, the function of your brain goes down.

Really?

Oh, morbidly obese was worse than obese, which was worse than overweight, which was worse than healthy weight.

So healthy weight, versus.

So healthy weight would be the best activity and then overweight and then obese and then morbidly obese.

What consists of overweight versus obese? Is this body fat percentage?

Well, it's something called BMI or body mass index, which in NFL players actually doesn't correlate very well. For them, it's their waist to height ratio. So their, your waist should be half your height or less. So if you're six feet tall, that's 72 inches, your waist and you got to measure. You can't go by your pant size because the clothing industry knows that we're unhappy. And so you guys got to put a tape measure right around your belly button. And so if you're six feet, your waist should be 36 inches or less. And if it's not, then It's good to work on. Right. You just see it as a problem to solve. But if you want to keep your brain healthy or rescue it, if it's headed to the dark place, you have to prevent or treat the 11 major risk factors. I have a mnemonic for that. I read about it in the books called Bright Minds. Well, if you're overweight, that automatically means you have five of the risk factors. Really? Because being overweight decreases blood flow. That's what my study showed. It increases inflammation. It stores toxins, fat stores toxins, like if you smoke pie, it actually stays in your body for 30 days. Wow. It changes your hormones. And this is like shocking for me and my NFL work that these big strapping, virile men are almost all low in testosterone because when you have subconcussive blows, it damages the pituitary gland, which turns off the production of testosterone. production of testosterone. Oh my gosh. And so belly fat especially takes healthy testosterone and turns it into unhealthy cancer promoting forms of estrogen. Ooh. And so, you know, you have the diobesity, risk factor, blood flow, inflammation, toxins and hormones. And so, that's all from being overweight. That's all from being overweight. Just a thing we should be working on. And what I often say is the real weapons of mass destruction, ISIS has nothing on our food industry. They're highly processed, pesticide sprayed, high glycemic, low fiber food like substances stored in plastic containers. This is what's really killing the health of America.

Okay, so obesity is a, when I'm hearing you say obesity is a big factor to mental health stresses and brain stresses.

And Alzheimer's disease.

And Alzheimer's, yeah.

I mean, it all sort of goes together from depression to problems in school to memory problems later in life.

What's your thought? I mean, I'm all for people loving themselves where they're at. where they're at in their life and loving their bodies for where they're at and not shaming themselves and the self-love movement of accepting yourself for where you are. But that's only going to hurt our brains if we're not actually saying, okay, I accept and love myself where I'm at and decisions I've made to be here. But I've got to start working on these things. Otherwise there's going to be some challenges emotionally, mentally, anxiety, depression if I don't work on it, right? My health.

The don't worry be happy people die the earliest from accidents and preventable illnesses. And I want people to love themselves. But doing the right thing is an act of love. Like if you're really unhealthy, walking is an act of love. And so it sort of catches me in this funny place. I remember I was on a plane once and I'd figure out this connection between as your weight goes up, the size and function of your brain goes down. And I was sitting next to someone who was very overweight and we were on a tiny plane going to Des Moines, Iowa for public television. And in my head, I'm like, oh, you want to talk to her about that? And then I talk to myself all the time. It's like, no, you don't want to say anything. Don't need to upset her day. And, but then I went to Pittsburgh and I went to GNC, you know, the supplement company. And one of my core values is being authentic. So I live the message of my life and the message of GNC. is health. And their number three guy, their marketing director, took me to dinner, was morbidly obese. Really? And that thought in my head is, you should talk to him about this. And he made the comment, he opened the conversation. He's like, you know, I don't know why I'm overweight, but my numbers are okay. And I'm like, what numbers? And I'm like, Tom, You don't want to be a dinosaur because I had figured out big body, little brain, you're going to become extinct. And we had this great conversation because my favorite verse in the New Testament is John 8:32, Know the truth and the truth will set you free. I'm like, do you not want to be like the number two guy or the number one guy? You're not going to do that if your brain's not healthy. And that conversation the next year, he lost 80 pounds.

Wow.

Most people don't know that this is a serious health, mental health, brain health risk. And I just want to tell people the truth, and I want them to get healthy. And people go, But I don't like any of, one of my NFL players, but I don't like any of the foods that are healthy. for me. And I'm like, none, not one. And we did this great exercise. And it turned out he liked, like, 70 of the foods that were on the list. You only want to love food that loves you back. It's a relationship, right? I don't know if you've ever been in a bad relationship, but I've been in a bad rel. As in a 20-year marriage with someone who didn't like me very much. I'm never gonna do that again. I'm just not. It's a boundary for me. I'm damn sure not gonna be in a relationship, the bad relationship with food. I want to be in a good relationship. I mean, I love food. I just want it to love me back.

What are the five foods that we should have to help our brain the most?

Salmon, wild salmon, blueberries, walnuts, olive or avocado oil, yeah, healthy protein, chocolate. I make this great brain healthy hot chocolate every night for my family. I just look at the six of them that live at home, I'm like okay, who's up for it tonight? So Costco of all places, organic vanilla unsweetened almond milk, Raw cacao, it's a superfood. So organic raw cacao and a little bit of sweet leaf is a company that makes flavored stevia. They make chocolate flavored stevia and put it in the blender, heat it up. It's phenomenal. Good for me, I love it and it loves me back.

It loves you back. Salmon blueberries, walnuts, avocado or avocado oil, Rock chocolate are some of the top favorite foods for the brain.

For the brain.

Why are these foods? Is it high in antioxidants? Is it proteins that they have?

So blueberry, it's the phytonutrients. They've actually done studies showing cognitive enhancement with blueberry juice, salmon, it's the omega-3 fatty acids and complete protein, avocados, it's the healthy fat. especially omega-3 fatty acids, same with walnuts. Your brain is fat. Low-fat diets are bad for your brain. Really? People who go on low-fat diets actually have an increased incidence of depression. Really? Yeah. So now you don't want bad fats, fried fats particularly. You want healthy fats, avocados, nuts and seeds, green leafy vegetables. olive oil, olive oil, avocado oil, Damian nut oil.

Yeah. So how much, how much food should the brain have? Is it, you know, it's your buddy, our buddy, Dave Asbury talks about fasting a lot. A lot of people are in this fasting craze. If we're not giving the brain food or nutrients for a day, three days, five days, does that help the brain? Does it reset the brain? Does it hurt the brain.

So intermittent fasting, where you go 12 to 16 hours from dinner to breakfast or lunch is good. They've actually found your, there's a term called autophagy, where your brain begins to clean up some of the trash.

So it works in the brain too, not just in the body.

It works on the brain as well. Now, I grew up Roman Catholic and long suffering was one of the gifts and I never got that one. I'm not a fan of long suffering. I'm not doing a marathon. It's like way too much stress for my brain and I'm not fasting for three days, but I can go 12 hours. That's not a big deal and it helps people lose weight. It helps them be healthy. And I come from a family of fat people. My dad used to say when I would say that, but I have a brother who's 150 pounds overweight despite me loving him, nudging him. you just have to be thoughtful, know your vulnerability and bright minds and gee is genetics. So know what you're genetically vulnerable to and you know, I have to work on it. Right, right.

How you mentioned you don't do marathons. If you're not traumatizing the brain through contact sports, but you're an endurance junkie, you love to run marathons, you run them every year, you do triathlons, you do ultra marathons, you're doing mounting climbing, are these activities good for the brain to put some extreme stress on it, even if it's not physical contact to the brain? Or does it long term hurt the brain?

The scans I have of extreme athletes are not good.

Really?

Yeah. I think it's too much stress for the brain. I love HIIT training, high intensity training that's been shown to increase mitochondria in cells. I'm not a fan of putting your body under a lot of stress. It's just not good for it. Some stress is good. We call it eustress. A little bit so your fibers grow. That's why weight training is important. The stronger you are as you age, the less likely you are to have Alzheimer's disease. But you want to love your brain. You want to make sure you're sleeping. For your brain, that's the essence of Bright Minds.

So someone's like, you know what? Okay, I hear what you're saying, but I really love to do a marathon or two a year. And a few times in my life I want to do, you know, on a climb Everest or something like that. I want to do something to challenge myself. And I go, Is that gonna be awesome?

Is that gonna hurt the brain? Is that gonna, if you're doing everything else right. So one of my NFL players just signed an $80 million deal. Wow. So he's gonna play. He's going to play. But if you're going to do something that is potentially damaging to the brain, make sure you're doing everything else right. So for example, being a firefighter is a brain damaging profession. We need to own that. Just like we need to own playing football is a brain damaging profession. It's like own it. Everybody knows it. Now, when I started my work in 2007, very few people know it. Now, everybody knows it. But they don't know that being a firefighter, because they're our heroes, those are the people we need when we need them, and we need them healthy. But because of the toxins they breathe, because of the emotional trauma they see, day in and day out, because of the head traumas they they have a higher incidence of depression, a higher incidence of suicide, and a higher incidence of early death. We should not be okay with this. But it doesn't mean we're not going to have firefighters. What it means is we should put their brain in a rehabilitative environment all the time. We should be teaching them about brain health, like with NFL players. Currently, we should be teaching them, look, if you're going to do this, own it. It's a brain-damaging, sport. So let's just do everything else. Right.

What are the other things right that you talk about? Are there are a few main keys? Is it nutrition? Is it sleep?

Well, we think about Bright Minds, it's just such a good model. So blood flow, B is blood flow. So exercise and foods like beets that increase blood flow or supplements like ginkgo that increase blood flow. The R is retirement and Aging, new learning is absolutely critical. Your work and studying greatness, you're always learning something new, which is great for the brain.

Retirement plus aging, is that what you said?

Retirement and aging.

So continuing to learn in those stages.

And always putting yourself in an anti-aging environment. So the food you eat, the exercise, new learning, being passionate, never retiring, right? I mean, maybe you go and do something else you like better because you have enough money, but never retirement. Because when you start not doing things, your brain actually starts to disconnect itself.

So, when we say people, someone retires at 60, 70, 75, and they say, you know, I'm just gonna sit on the beach for the next however long, enjoy my family time, enjoy the money I've had, and relax. What happens to those people if they don't have a purposeful mission in their life beyond relaxation? What happens?

Their brain disconnects itself, really. They have a higher incidence of dementia. And my dad worked until he died when he was almost 91. And he's like, when my friends retire, they die.

Really?

And now If you retire, because you really didn't love what you were doing anyways, and you go off and do something you love, maybe not golf, because you're around all those toxins on the green, maybe not golf, but if you're doing things you love and you're always learning, well, that's awesome. That's definitely. That's a really good thing.

So, you can retire from your job. Don't retire from your life.

Don't retire from your life.

Stay connected in some meaningful suit.

Absolutely critical to keeping young. And then the eye is inflammation. This is the big bad actor because inflammation in your body, which comes from eating processed foods, one of the surprising things comes from gum disease. If you're not a flosser, you need to floss. I'm a flossing fool.

I do it twice a day.

I wasn't that way until I started reading the studies. that people who have gum disease have a higher incidence of heart disease, but also a higher incidence of brain disease. They actually found gum bacteria higher in the brains of people with Alzheimer's disease. And so omega-3 fatty acids decrease inflammation, fruits and vegetables decrease inflammation, flossing, and probiotics, getting your gut healthy, there's this huge connection between the brain and the gut because inflammation often comes from having an unhealthy gut, either from infections or the lousy food that you're eating. And the G is genetics. You need to know your vulnerability, but genes aren't a death sentence. What they should be is a wake-up call. to know what you're vulnerable to. I have heart disease and obesity in my family. I don't have heart disease and I'm not obese. Why? Because I'm always on a prevention program. You just want to be serious as soon as you know what your risks are. Right.

Okay.

H is head trauma, which we talked about. Brain is soft, skull is hard. There are 3 million new head injuries every year in the United States. This is a big deal.

Three million new head injuries is that every year? Is that from car accidents or falls?

Falls, everything. Everything. Wow. You know, being hit, domestic violence, whatever.

It might be, anything. Gunshot, whatever.

Whatever. Three million. Which means most people live over the last 30 years, that's 90 million people in the United States who struggle with the effects of traumatic brain injury. very high in prison populations, very high in people who struggle with psychiatric diseases. And then T is toxins. And so you go, what can I do to support my brain? Well, one, avoid them. Alcohol is not a health food. My biggest blog last year was titled, I Told youd so. And when I dated my wife, Tana, I think you met my wife. She's awesome. And when we were dating, she said- your current wife?

Not the 20-year.

Not the 20-year. She said, I'll never tell you I told you so. She lied. She just flat out lied to me. It's like her favorite thing to say. But I've been telling people ever since I started imaging, alcohol's not a health food. And our first clinic was right next to the Napa Valley, so it was not a popular thing to say. And, but it's just what I saw. And then there's a study from Johns Hopkins that say people who drink every day have smaller brains. Wow. Then last year, the American Cancer Society came out and said any alcohol is associated with an increased risk in cancer. Seven different cancers.

Oh, any alcohol.

Any alcohol.

And so my wine drinkers, saying, no, you're wrong. No, I'm not listening to this right now. What about a glass once or twice a week? What about the nutrients from the grains?

Oh, man, all these. If you're gonna do something that's bad for your brain, you should be doing other things that are good for your brain. Right, it doesn't mean you can never have a drink, but just know it's not a healthy, healthy, full thing to do. So you wanna do the other thing.

When I eat a bowl of ice cream and pizza, I know it's not helping my brain.

Right. And if you do it once a month, it's not the biggest deal in the world.

Exactly.

But then, because here we're talking about tea for toxins, you want to support the four organs of detoxification. So, your kidneys drink more water, your gut eat more fiber, and my shake every morning. put fiber in it, for your liver, kill the alcohol, and eat detoxifying vegetables, they're called brassicas, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, broccoli, kale, and take infrared saunas. People who take the most saunas have the lowest incidence of Alzheimer's disease because it detoxifies you. And it's also, there's actually a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, people with major depression took one infrared sauna, their mood was better. Well, how cool is that? I mean, that's like simple. There's no side effects mostly to taking a 25-minute sauna.

So is it infrared or any type of sauna?

Well, it's probably any type of sauna. But the study was on infrared.

Infrared, gotcha. But anything that's releasing the toxins, any heat exposure, and not sweat.

Sweat, sweating with exercise or saunas is detoxifying for you. Yeah. And this isn't hard, right? Like not one thing I've said so far is hard. The M in Bright Minds is mental health. This is where you learn to kill the ants and tame the dragons. So ant stands for automatic negative thoughts, the thoughts that come into your mind automatically and ruin your day. And the exercise is super simple. Whenever you feel sad or mad or nervous or out of control, write down what you're thinking. And then just ask yourself if it's true. You don't have to believe every stupid thing you think. I didn't learn that till I was 28 years old. I'm in class. I'm a psychiatric resident at Walter Reed in Washington, D.C. And I'm like, no, I don't have to believe the noise in my head. It's like thoughts come from your genes, right? They're actually written into your genes. You're a failure maybe because your grandfather had to file for bankruptcy. They come from your parents talking to you. They come from your siblings. I'm one of seven. They come from the noise. They come from your coaches. And they lie. Just because you have a thought has nothing to do with whether or not it's true. Absolutely.

I was working with a therapist recently that said, just because someone tells you something about yourself doesn't mean, and they're trying to give you this thing, doesn't mean you need to receive that gift. It's not a gift you need to receive. They're offering you a gift that's a bad gift. Doesn't mean you need to take it. You can just say, okay, I don't need that gift right now. I don't need to let that thought sink in and believe this. And I think I'll speak for myself growing up, anytime I heard someone say, you suck, you're dumb, you're an idiot, you're not enough, you'll never amount to whatever, I learned to believe those things. And I think a lot of us probably learned to believe whatever we hear from anyone, whether it was a side comment or a direct comment. And how have you learned over the years to really defend against those ants? Like, besides someone might say, okay, I tried writing it down that this is not true and analyzing this, but what's a what, how can we really show up for ourselves for thoughts don't consume us in a negative way.

So you know that if you're overweight on Monday and you have a salad, you are not going to be trim on Friday. You need to develop practices that getting well physically is a discipline that occurs over and over, over time. Right? To be mentally well, you need to develop practices that you do like eating well over and over and over. So for example, I start every day with today is going to be a great day. As soon as my feet hit the floor in the morning, and today was easier because I spent last night in Santa Monica and walked on the beach this morning, and I get to hang out with you, Today is going to be a great day. That way, my unconscious mind finds why it's going to be a great day. And then your brain is always listening. I talk about taming the hopeless and helpless dragon, the dragon from the past that feeds depression. And it's something I do called positivity bias training. I want to get my brain looking for what's right because it automatically goes for what's wrong. And so I start every day with, Today is going to be a great day. And then if I have a hard time, if I feel sad or mad or nervous or out of control, I write down what I'm thinking. And then I just go, Is it true? And there's a whole bigger method in the book. And often I'll go to, what's the opposite of that thought? No one loves me or no one respects me or you're a failure. And so quickly my brain, if I go, My wife never listens to me, I've had that thought. I'll go, well, I never listen to my wife. And I'll be like, oh, that can be true. Or she does listen to me and then I find the times that she, it's just I don't believe what goes on in my head. And then when I go to bed at night, and this is so powerful, I say a prayer and then I go, what went well today? And I put myself to sleep by reviewing the positive things that happened. that day. And I find the little micro moments, whether it's that sip of hot chocolate that I made that I'm proud of myself for, or some cool text or interaction, and it sets my dreams up to be more positive. And a really fun thing I've been playing with recently is I had Stephen Hayes on my podcast, the Brain Warriors Way, and he had a technique of give your mind a name. and it's based on a concept of psychological distancing. And as he was talking about that, he gave his mind the name George. I'm like, oh, I knew exactly what I'd give my mind, the name Hermie. Hermie was my female. I didn't know she was a female when I named her. Raccoon. I had a pet raccoon when I was 16 years old, and she was a troublemaker. She was beautiful and smart and she TP'd my mom's bathroom. She ate my sister's fish out of her aquarium. She used to poop in my shoes. She caused a lot of trouble, just like my mind. And so when I hear the negative chatter, I used to take Hermine and put her on her back and tickle her and she used to love that. We just had this great relationship. So when my mind is acting up, I'm like, Seriously, do I need to tickle you right now? Just so I separate. And I'm like, Is this helpful? Because you've had good coaches and you've had bad coaches, right? And I want me to be a good coach for me. Too many people, their internal life is like a courtroom, and they've got a spectacular prosecutor and a cruel judge and a jury that's off Wow. And they have a weak defense attorney. Yeah. And I'm like, I got Johnny Cochran in my head, right? You know, I want to protect myself. But people don't get any training.

Isn't that interesting?

It's like in their minds.

Yeah, we are, I feel like in general we're conditioned to find the negative, the bad, to keep us safe or protect ourselves in some way. But we've never trained ourselves to be a great coach or a great cheerleader to ourselves. You just brought that up. It made me think about it. It's like, what if we did have that training as a kid on how to coach ourselves through pain, discomfort, and not only rely on the addictive coping mechanisms that we tend to lean towards? Well, I don't know how to coach myself. Let me drink. I don't have a coach. Let me take this drug or pornography or whatever the addiction choice is to cope for someone. How do we learn to be a good positive coach in a time of complete chaos, stress, overwhelm? dysfunction. When we can't even get out of that, we can't even get out of that in our heads, we can't even hear that coach in our mind.

It's a practice. Yeah, it's all practice. And that's why I write, you know, whether your brain is always listening or feel better fast and make it last, you know, people do things to feel better fast. We saw that during the pandemic. But they're choosing things that actually make them worse.

That hurt them.

In the long run. So you want to do things that help you feel good now and later versus now but not later.

Now, and needing it all the time.

So, diaphragmatic breathing, I'm just a huge fan. Or meditation, I published three studies on a Kundalini yoga form of meditation called Kirtan Kriya. It's all of 12 minutes, but it activates your frontal lobes. It helps you with forethought and judgment. and impulse control. And it's fun, it's beautiful. Sat nam, sat nam, which is birth, life, death, reborn, birth, life, death, reborn. It's just beautiful. And people can Google their YouTube videos on it, but it works to balance your brain. And that helps you feel good now and later versus now but not later.

What is the biggest challenge you face? You've been doing this work for what? 30 years. 30 years. The biggest 183,000 scans, you're speaking about this all the time, you're writing incredible books about this all the time, you've got talk shows on this on public television, you've got, you're the leading expert. What's the biggest challenge in your life right now, knowing all this information after 30 years? what do you still struggle with?

I hate the fact that all psychiatrists don't do this. I hate the fact that I'm still an outlier in my profession. And part of me loves that because I get to do something very cool and very special. But the fact that the masses of psychiatrists still are making diagnoses based on symptom clusters with no biological data exactly like they did in 1880. 1940, when Lincoln was depressed, Lincoln was suicidal, went to his doctor. How did his doctor diagnose him? He talked to him. He looked at him, and then he treated him. That's exactly what's happening in 2021. It's insane. And every day it irritates me that, you know, they'll go, oh, there's no science behind what Dr. Amen does, even though I've published 80 studies, some of the largest studies in the world. There's 14,000 scientific references on brain spec if you go to the National Library of Medicine. But that's the stuff. It just really frustrates me because most people aren't getting the help they need. Psychiatric problems are not mental illnesses. They're brain illnesses. And that one idea changes everything. It decreases stigma. It increases compliance because everybody wants a better brain. Nobody wants to be called mental. Calling someone mental shames them. Yes. People really don't want to, and yes, I know Lady Gaga came out and Justin Bieber came out, and it's like, that's awesome. But it's not mental illness. It's brain health. Exercise has been found to be a treatment for depression.

Yes.

As effective as Zoloft.

Gratitude is also, yeah.

Why not? And let's work on getting the physical functioning of our brain right and optimizing our mind. And that's how we're going to end mental illness. So I have one of my other books called the End of Mental Illness. And I love that title, but I got a lot of grief from the title. It's like, what do you mean? I'm like, we need to stop calling these things mental illnesses. and use these Bright Mind strategies because when your brain is better. For example, the second I in Bright Minds is immunity and infections. There's a study, and I put in the end of Mental Illness, of a graph of the map of the United States of the highest incidence of schizophrenia. It's the Northwest, the North Midwest, and the West Coast, and right below it is a graph of the highest incidence of Lyme disease. They're virtually identical. Could schizophrenia in some cases be an infection that's attacking the brain? And I think the answer is yes, not in all cases, but it's something we should be screening for. And I have people with Lyme disease.

Have a higher risk of schizophrenia?

They do, and they have a higher incidence of virtually all mental health challenges. And I have so many great stories. One of them I talk about in the book, Adriana, 16, beautiful, straight-A student, kind, goes to Yosemite on vacation with her family, and when they get to their cabin, they're surrounded by six deer. And they think it's a magical moment, but Lyme is often transmitted by deer ticks. And 10 days later, she's hallucinating and she's violent. And they put her in a psychiatric hospital. She's diagnosed by a psychiatrist trained at Stanford with schizophrenia, told the mother, Adriana needs to be on this medication for the rest of her life. And her mother's like, no, I'm not okay with this. And they had spent like $100,000 and ended up in my clinic. spending a lot less than that. And when we saw her brain, we went, her brain's infected.

It shows the infections.

It shows the tendency toward infection. And it turned out when we tested for Lyme, she had it. And on an antibiotic, within a year, she was herself again. And she went on, she graduated from Pepperdine, and then she got a degree in HR from the University of London. and she's normal. And I remember, because she's all one of my other doctors, but when I got to meet her, I mean, both she and I just cried because she's the reason I do what I do. That's beautiful. But infectious disease, including COVID-19, I have about 50 COVID scans. COVID is not good for your brain. And about 20% of people with COVID will get a new new onset diagnosis of anxiety, depression. Come on, really? Yeah, it is not a good thing. A lot of people go, oh, it's like the flu. No, it's not like the flu. It can impact your brain. And we knew it early on because you lost your sense of taste and smell. Well, those are central nervous system struggles. And it's pretty interesting.

Has there been any scans from people who have gotten vaccines on the effects of vaccines?

It's a great question. I've scanned lots of people with vaccines. I haven't seen a pattern with it. Now, some people will be hurt with vaccines, right? I mean, anytime there's any medicine, there's a risk. But I knew this was serious when I lost my dad to COVID-19.

Wow. I'm sorry to hear that.

And I have a clinic in Manhattan, you know, which is the epicenter early on in the pandemic. My 28-year-old employee ended up on a ventilator for 10 weeks.

We had a 28-year-old.

28-Year-Old.

10 weeks.

10 weeks and is just not the same. So, have they recovered or not the same? Really? Yeah, 'cause there's this whole thing people are talking about long COVID. and we've treated a lot of people with long COVID. What does long COVID mean? It means you're not better in three days. In fact, you're not better in six months. You still struggle with anxiety, with brain fog, with muscle aches and so on. And it depends. I've talked a lot since the pandemic started. Your best defense against COVID-19 is your immune system.

Yes. Right.

And often it's your vitamin D level. So the strategy for immunity and infections is optimize your vitamin D level, either by getting more sun or taking a supplement. Like 80% of the population has sub-optimal levels of vitamin D. And the study that just nailed it for me, if your level, so normal is between 30 and 100, if your level is under 20, you have double the risk of cancer of those people who are over 40. So I keep my level around 80.

You're in the sun all day, you're having the supplements.

Yeah. Right, and it's just that one act, it's like, is this good for my brain or bad for it? And if I do one thing, I'm more likely to do two things. If I do two things, I'm more likely to do 11 things.

You'll stack it.

Yeah. So the N in Bright Minds is neurohormones. I alluded to that earlier. testosterone is really important for brain health. Now you don't want too much because then your libido will go up and your empathy will go down, which is a prescription for divorce, losing half your net worth and visiting your children on the weekends. So that's not a good thing. But low testosterone goes with depression and goes with anxiety and goes with low energy. So thyroid, DHEA, testosterone, estrogen, progesterone and so on. So getting your hormones taxed. D is diobesity. So we talked about being overweight, but also having high blood sugar.

Diobesity.

Diobesity.

What does that mean? Diobesity.

It's a combination of your overweight and you have high blood sugar. Either one of those is a mental health, brain health risk factor. And 50% of that, get this, Louis. 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 a day, 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, or 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. 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, I do have a dessert, a couple bites.

I do. We go to Italy, I mean, not recently. We go to Italy and have a gelato.

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

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. yeah. And, 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.

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 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 products, and it'll tell you on a scale of one to ten how quickly they're killing you. So, for example, since I was 14, I shaved with barbershop. Yeah, I like it. Soft, it works on a scale of one to ten. Ten 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. 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's 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's so important. But whatever's good for your heart is good for your brain. When I was writing Brain and Love, I went, whatever's 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 and 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 actions 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 in who we choose to be partnered with, who were 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.

I like it, yeah.

The brain doesn't like change. That's why therapy is important. because it's like you could 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 little girl got better, but the little boy wasn't getting better. 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. And in my head, don't ever have this thought. I'm like, well, maybe you just didn't see anybody good enough. Don't ever have that thought. Don't 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. 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 realized 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 going to 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. We 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 she 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 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, 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 no CD ADD 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 it was late and why it 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 on the same couch. Wow. 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 don't. 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 me the parents, 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. So we worked to make it better. And she's been my best friend. 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 it scanned, 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, or you can move on.

Right. It's just a piece of information that I think everybody should have. And when you're young 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 these 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 into 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. 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 Struggling with that.

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's, you know, has to be contained. brain, but that's not what you want.

You don't want fluid. 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.

Put like the thing 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 fast. 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. 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 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 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. and every bad thing happened to him because he felt bad. He had no dopamine left. He'd worn out his pleasure centers.

Doing 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, 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 yeah.

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.

To your brain, it's probably going to be better than you think it is.

Oh, so. All right, 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, 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. Oh, I can't remember, yeah. So, I knew it was trouble right after I started looking at scans. It makes your brain look older than you are.

How am I ever 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? Are they also overweight.

It was that 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. 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 because 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 in smoke pot 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. You're funny you're saying that because you see the case, or I'll see this online of people making the case for marijuana. And if people want to smoke and drink, it's on them. 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 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 appetite. 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-- Because recreational things. 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? 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. Because nicotine constricts blood flow to the brain. And so, and that's vaping.

Vaping is right as bad?

Vaping is just as bad.

Well, you move it doesn't have the toxins.

When you vape, you don't have as many toxins, but the flavoring is toxic. And so it's just 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 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 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- It's 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 if. Because I would see people, especially playing football in college, guys would get drunk after a game, and then they would. They would not be well the next day at practice. It was one, I was like, I want to have an advantage, but then people would do things and they'd like cheat on their girlfriend. They're like, well, 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. 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. 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. correct their negative thoughts and they walk out of my office. It's like, no, I can't do that. I'm attached 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 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 legalize what?

Plant medicine?

Plant medicine.

In Oregon.

Mushrooms.

Oh, they are.

Psilocybin.

In Oregon.

Yeah. Microdosing.

Because there's so much.

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 Let's start. Let's start. Let's start with brain health. But I think it's gonna 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, 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 are 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, 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 have hallucinogenic effects. So what happens in 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 movement desensitization and re. I studied that in police office.

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, 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, you get your eyes to go back and forth, and that trauma connects to another trauma, which can connect to another, 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 it. 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. 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 paper. and I'm just, and all of a sudden I find it and it hits me and it just bothered me. 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. 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 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 talking about the girlfriend's phone number, right? It's like it's all 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 was a steel mill worker and selling Avon products. And then he had cardio 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. 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, you know, 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 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. Oh no, immediately healthy, not healthy.

How many people have been through your labs?

Well, we have done 183,000 scans.

In how many years?

I have three in 30 years. And we have 300 NFL players. 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 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 hang-ups. 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. It's amazing. I think everyone should read this. Overcome Pain From youm 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 a hundred 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 is 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. 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? Yeah. People don't do that. It's crazy. They should be teaching this to seven-year-olds. What do you want? Relationships, schoolwork, 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, shits 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, Aimen 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 called 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. Because with that, we can end mental illness, but it's never going to 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't. do despite what other people say.

Appreciate you very much. Thank you.

When we have dopamine in our system and when we've taken control of that process, we want to make sure that we capture everything that led up to that. And it's vitally important in these big kind of, we're talking in these big milestones type of examples. But this can be done across the day.