Dr. Daniel Amen, Celebrity Psychiatrist & Clinical Neuroscientist, On How To Become 30% Happier In One Month

All the ways to keep your brain healthy and young, which, oh, by the way, are the same strategies to have pretty skin. It's the same strategy to grow your nails, to have hair. I mean, that's not my problem. I inherited this. But, you know, to have healthy hair, to have a healthy brain, you have to have a healthy body. They go together. The whole point of your body is to carry around your brain foreign.

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So today on the podcast, you guys, this is a biggie for me. This was amazing. I have Dr. Daniel Amen. Dr. Amen's mission is to end mental illness by creating a revolution in brain health. He's dedicated to providing the education, products, and services to accomplish this goal. He's a physician, adult and child psychiatrist, and founder of amen clinics with 11 locations across the U.S. he has the world's largest database of brain scans for psychiatry, totaling more than 230,000 that he has done for patients across 155 countries. And he is well known in so many areas, and he's even made it into pop culture. You guys, he was just on the Kardashians helping Kendall look at her brain health. And I love what Dr. Amen does because he really talks a lot about how if we can focus on a few things with our brain and our.

Brain health, which a lot of these.

Are very basic hacks. Not hacks, but basic things that we can do to change our brain health, which when I say that, you guys, this is why you want it. It's for your mood, it's for anxiety, it's for depression. It's for your capacity, your ability of what you can handle, what you can focus on. And when your brain work, you work better.

Your dreams and goals get that much.

Closer, you feel better, your relationships get better. This is a big freaking deal. It affects your business every single day. A lot of people think it's their personality. A lot of people think they're just wired that way, when truly it is how we're treating our brains and you can improve it. I loved this podcast, and I think.

You'Re gonna love it, too.

So let's get.

Daniel, I'm so excited to have you on the podcast. Thank you so much for coming on.

Well, thank you, Lori. Thank you for helping me spread the message of brain health. We need it now more than ever before.

I love following you for so many reasons, but one of the main reasons is how you talk so much about depression being a symptom of things. It's actually been a lot of your work has empowered me so much around just my mental health and emotional well being to know that we have a lot more control over our emotions than maybe a lot of us think. And that's actually so much about what my podcast is about. Earn youn're Happy. Because it's really about what all goes into that. So I'm so excited about your new book, Change youe Brain Every Day. So what prompted you to write this book?

You know, I came to realize that brain and mental health, our daily practices. So just like physical health, just like spiritual health, if you want to be cognitively sharp, if you want to be happy, if you want to live a long time with your brain intact, it's not something that you do periodically, it's something you do every day. And so I took the best of what I've said and what I've thought over the last 40 years being a psychiatrist, and I put it in 366 short essays that you can read in two or three minutes a day and then an action step on how to take care of your brain. And within the first month, you're going to be happier, you're going to be more serious about brain health and you're going to develop the right rhythm to get and stay healthy. I mean, can you imagine spending just two or three minutes a day in a psychiatrist's office getting nourished rather than medicated? And it's 366 because next year's leap year. Amazing. I wanted to cover you for leap year.

Thank goodness. I was worried about that one day. I love just even looking at it that way that, you know, because we think, okay, we gotta try to eat right, we gotta drink our water, we gotta go for a walk. Like we have all these things in check. But I love really looking at as what are the things I'm doing specifically for my brain health? You know, my husband and I do a couple things every single day to like get our minds in check and things like that. But I know that it's so diverse on different things to do. So what are you seeing in your research that suggests we should pay more attention to brain health now especially.

Oh, it's a shit show. I don't. I can't find a better word.

That's a great word.

Last year there were 337 million prescriptions for antidepressants. How many 337 million prescriptions? A quarter of the population is taking psychiatric drugs. 57% of teenage girls, I mean, this is just heartbreaking. Are persistently Sad. So almost one in four have planned to kill themselves. And 13%, or one in eight, have tried to kill themselves. This is insane. When you and I were growing up, I mean, it was extremely rare for me and probably extremely rare for you to know someone in your school that had a suicide attempt. Now it is common and it just shows the trouble we're in. And I actually believe we are in the beginning stages of a tidal wave of mental health problems, brain health problems in children. And this is not okay. There is nothing about this that is okay. You know, partly related to the pandemic and our reaction to the pandemic. When you force people to do something they don't want to do with their bodies, they get pretty angry about that. It caused division. It caused this polarization in our society that's worse now than I've ever seen it. And then take the virus itself. Covid is bad for your brain. I've treated so many patients who had Covid anxiety, Covid depression, Covid paranoia. I was on the Kardashian show because Kendall Jenner came to see me and it looked like a bomb went off in her brain. And she said after she got Covid, she was incredibly anxious and unhappy. If you take that pandemic, Covid, the digital addictions where people are constantly comparing themselves to false idols, I mean, they're false, right? They're algorithms written by the technology industry to hook your attention that basically makes you feel bad. So they sell you stuff and mix that with the toxic products we put on our bodies, the toxic food Americans are eating. Last night I went to the Newport Mesa education school board of education because my niece, who I adopted, got a special award. The number of unhealthy people there just really concerned me because these are higher education people. And so looking at the shit show that is our society going, something's got to change.

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What does that for anybody that doesn't know? What exactly do you do? How do you look at them. And how has that really made you, like, rethink your practice as a psychiatrist?

So 1991, I'll go back before then. When I was 18, Vietnam was going on and I became an infantry medic, where my love of medicine was born. But about a year into realized I didn't like being shot at. It was my thing. And I got retrained as an X ray technician and developed a passion for imaging. As our professors used to say, how do you know unless you look? And I love that. I'm a very visual person. And then I got out of the army in 1975 and finished college, went to medical school, and when I'm a second year medical student, someone I deeply love tries to kill herself. And I was horrified. I took her to see a wonderful psychiatrist, and I came to realize if he helped her, it wouldn't just help her, that ultimately it would help her children and even her grandchildren as they would be shaped by someone who was happier and more stable. So I fell in love with psychiatry because I realized it has the potential to change generations of people. And so I'm in this for the right reasons. But I fell in love with the only medical specialty that virtually never looks at the organ it treats. Think about that interesting cardiologist look. Your orthopedic doctor looks, your GI doctor looks, your gynecologist looks, everybody looks psychiatrist guess. And I'm like, not okay with that. And so when I had the opportunity 32 years ago to start looking at the brain, Laurie, it changed everything. Because what I realized is these are not mental illnesses, they're brain illnesses. Call someone mental and you shame them, call them a brain, and you elevate them. Nobody wants a mental illness. Everybody wants a better brain. So what if mental illness was really brain health? And when you think of it like you have a mental illness, you're depressed. Take Lexapro, you're anxious. Take Xanax. When you see it from the other side, you're depressed. Well, why are you depressed? What's going wrong with your brain? Because your brain is the organ of happiness and sadness. You don't think of just grabbing for medication. You're anxious. Well, why are you anxious? What's going on with freaking out your brain? Rather than Xanax, which is addictive, causes memory problems, and basically will ruin your life, right? Once you started, so many people have trouble stopping it, and you never want to start something you can't stop. That just doesn't make any sense to me. So I started thinking about natural ways to heal the brain. And then I started thinking about diet and exercise and all the ways to keep your brain healthy and young, which, oh, by the way, are the same strategies to have pretty skin. It's the same strategy to grow your nails, to have hair. I mean, that's not my problem. I inherited this. But, you know, to have healthy hair, to have a healthy brain, you have to have a healthy body. They go together. The whole point of your body is to carry around your brain.

This is so close to home for me because at about probably 20 years old, I wanted to start venturing out in the world and doing more. And with that, it flared up a lot of, like, anxiety. I still had a lot of depression from growing up. I grew up in a really unhealthy family, just physically unhealthy, which was giving me a lot of these results. Anxiety, depression, just thinking that that was who I was. Like, growing up in my family, there was a lot of talk about, this is who we are, this is how we are. It just runs in the family. And so I, instead of, you know, looking at that first, I was like, I just, maybe doctors can help someone. To the doctor and told them about, I have this anxiety, I have this depression. Right away, without even asking, they just gave me medication. And so the medication started to. It was an anxiety medication. I don't remember which one it was, but that started to bother me. So they gave me another medication. So I was on multiple medications and not doing okay. Like, I actually was feeling much worse than I was feeling before. And this was my moment, for me, of saying, okay, if this is not working, maybe I should start, like, really looking into this and advocating and researching what could actually work. And that's really when I started to find a healthy. More of a healthy lifestyle. And I realized so much of, you know, what I was doing and the food or what I was thinking or all of these different things were giving me this result that I didn't want. So that was a really empowering moment for me just to kind of realize, okay, you're not going to fix it necessarily with a pill. You have to seek outside and look at all of these healthy ways of living. So can you tell me why for you, you feel like every single day we need to be focusing on our brain? Like, what impact is that going to create?

Well, every day you're making it better or you're making it worse. I mean, every single day you're making it better, you're making it worse. I carry around this question all day long. I have a Whole series of tiny habits. You know, what's the smallest thing I can do today that will make the biggest difference? And I am happy I'm successful when I'm making good decisions. And so I ask myself, is this good for my brain or bad for it? And if I can answer that with information and love, love of myself, love of my family, love of the mission I'm on earth to do, I just make better decisions. And it's like, what do you really want, you know, at your core? At my core, what I want is energy and memory and clarity and connection and purpose and creativity. That's what I want. And alcohol doesn't serve me. You know, I'm huge. There's a whole section in the book on only love food that loves you back.

That's good.

I don't know if you've ever been in a bad relationship. Yep, I have been in a couple of bad relationships. And, you know, I'm married to my best friend, so I'm not doing that anymore.

Same.

She said the only reason she's running is if she's chasing me.

So I love that I have this.

Perfect situation because she was hard to catch. You know, I'm damn sure not doing it for food. You know, people go, oh, but I love cheesecake, or I love alcohol, or I love pizza, but they don't love you back. And, you know, why are you in a bad relationship? And, you know, the example you gave earlier, well, you know, my family said, well, this is just who we are. I hear that all the time in my family. I have heart disease and obesity, but I don't have heart disease and I'm not overweight. Why? I'm on a heart disease obesity prevention program every day of my life. I adopted my nieces because their parents were drug addicts, and I drill into them. You need to be on substance abuse prevention program every day of your life, because jeans load the gun. It's your decisions that'll pull the trigger.

Wow, that's good. Okay, so first I want to ask you, because maybe some people are like, okay, what is my potential for happiness if I take care of this, if I do the book, if I do these things that he's saying, which we can get a little more into, am I just going to feel happy every day? What's going to noticeably be different?

Well, you'll be 30% happier in a month. So we actually did a 30.

Okay.

It's like, you'll be happier. Yeah. What's the organ of happiness? It's not your toe and it's generally not your kidneys, although if they're not healthy, you're not going to be happy. It's your brain. And if you get your brain healthy, your energy is better, your focus is better, your mood is better, you're less anxious and more purposeful. Okay, I want that. So what do you do? Three things. The first one is brain envy. You got to care about it. Freud was wrong. Penis envy is not the cause of anybody's problem. I've not seen it in 40 years. He was, like, two and a half feet too low. Your body, the only organ where size matters is your brain. And we live in Newport Beach. We have more plastic surgeons here than almost anywhere in the world. I often say we care more about our faces, our boobs, our bellies, and our butts than we do our brain. And that's insane, because none of those things are going to make you happy. It's your brain that feels, that creates happiness. So love your brain. That's number one. Okay? Number two is avoid anything that hurts your brain. Right? It's not hard. You just got to know the list. And unfortunately, our society lies to us and says, constantly checking your phone equals happiness. Now it equals sadness. Right? Any addictions equal sadness because they wear out the pleasure centers in your brain. We could talk about fame and dripping dopamine versus dumping dopamine. Hedonism is actually the enemy of happiness because it dumps dopamine. Marijuana is the enemy of happiness because it dumps dopamine. Alcohol is the enemy of happiness because it dumps dopamine. Ayahuasca is the enemy of happiness because it really dumps dopamine and makes you briefly psychotic. High fat, high sugar foods. Now, I'm a fan of fat, just not this kind. The kind that goes into cheesecake dumps dopamine and decreases happiness. And so you want to drip dopamine. Like, our conversation makes me happy. So avoid things that hurt it. Know the list. You know, one of the things people don't think about, or what are the products you put on your body? What's the deodorant? What's the best? So, you know, before I was aware, I just go to the Rite Aid and get suave. And then when I started reading the ingredients, I'm like, you're getting clean and poisoning yourself all at the same time.

It's a great tagline. By the way.

There'S an app I like, you might know it called Think Dirty, which is you can scan your personal products. It'll tell you on a scale of 1 to 10, how quickly they're killing you. For 50 years, I shaved with Barbasol. It's cheap, smells nice. It's like, thick. I like it. 0 is live a long time tennis kill you early. Okay, it's a nine. And so now I shaved with something called Kiss my face, and it's a two. So I do that because I love myself. Other things to avoid not sleeping, too much television, hanging around, negative people, believing every stupid thing you think you know. I'm a huge believer in disciplined thinking. Just because you have a thought has nothing to do with whether or not it's true and whether or not it's helpful. So I call them ants. Automatic negative thoughts that they infest your brain. One bad thought leads to another bad thought. So ants link, and then they lead to a whole series of bad thoughts. They link, they stack, and then they attack you. And they're more likely to attack you the last week of your menstrual cycle if you're a woman, if you've not slept, if you've not eaten, or if you've listened to the news. Because the news is no longer the news. The news is written. I mean, at the Washington Post, in their newsroom, they have a scoreboard on which articles get the most hits. Because then they will lead. And they're always negative, scary. You know, if they can embarrass a Republican, that's gonna lead. Now Fox is the other way with Democrats.

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But it's just this insanity we live in of corporations trying to scare us to make money and it's destroying the mental health of America. So I have a mnemonic you might like called Bright Minds. They're actually, I think there's almost a month of Bright Minds risk factors in the book. So, for example, if you want to keep your brain healthy or rescue it, you have to prevent or treat the 11 major risk factors that steal your mind. Like B is for blood flow. Anything that decreases blood flow is bad for you. And did you know 40% of 40 year old men have erectile dysfunction? That should be horrifying. 70% of 70 year old men have erectile dysfunction. But what that means is if you have blood flow problems anywhere, it means they are everywhere. So 40% of 40 year olds have erectile dysfunction and brain dysfunction. 70% of 70 year olds have cognitive function problems. This is not okay. So what decreases blood flow? Caffeine, nicotine, high blood pressure, being sedentary. So the anecdote, the antidote is exercise, especially coordination exercise. People who do coordination exercise go pickleball, live longer than everybody else dancing. Of course, if you drink when you dance, it ruins the benefit and.

But you become a better dancer. No, no. You just think you are.

You just think you are. That's funny. Beets, cayenne pepper, rosemary, oregano, cinnamon. There are all these natural ways to increase blood flow. Like we talked about, brain envy. I want you to have blood flow envy because brain cells don't die. Blood vessels die. Oh, and like every day. This is so cool. There's a part of your brain called the hippocampus. It's a very special part of the brain. It's Greek for seahorse because it's in the shape of a seahorse. And every day it produces about 700 new baby stem cells every day.

Wow.

And my 19 year old daughter, if she's behaving, those stem cells stick around and they grow. But I'm almost 69 and if I'm not really good with my behavior, they all die because I don't have the blood flow to support them. And so blood flow envy is very important to me because I want to keep my memory.

Okay. So for anybody listening who's like, okay, this is a lot of stuff. Do you talk about building particular habits in your book? Ways to build good brain habits, like where to start? What's a good spot?

So is this good for my brain or bad for it? And if you have children, play games with them. Is this good for your brain or bad for it? So Chloe, my 19 year old, when she was 2, I would go, let's play Chloe's game. Blueberries. Good for your brain or bad for it? She goes, are they organic? And I go, of course they're organic. She goes, God's candy. And I said, avocados. She'd say, two thumbs up God's butter. I said, hitting your head with the soccer ball. She'd roll her eyes and go, are you stupid? Talking back to your redheaded mother? Oh, very bad for the. So it's that question. And then, you know, I think you even start a little bit before that with the question I asked earlier. What do you want? And do it in this very specific way. What do you want in your relationships? What do you want at work? What do you want for your money? What do you want for your physical, emotional, and spiritual health? And I do it very specifically that way so people don't get burned out. They get burned out if, what do you want? I want money. And that's their focus. That's a prescription for misery. Actually, one of the lies of happiness is more money will make you happy. That's true. Up to about $75,000. And then there's just no correlation with happiness and money. So what do you want? Is it good for my brain or bad for it? Does it fit? Like, my wife got her first tattoo. I'm a little freaked out by this, but, you know, she got, like, her daughter's birthday, and that was lovely. And I'm still weirded out by it. If I ever get a tattoo, it's going to be, does it fit? Because I just want so. It's not what I should do. So that's the important thing. I grew up Catholic and realized guilt really is not a very effective motivator.

Nope, I feel that.

But clarity is a motivator by acting in my own best interest. So does it fit? And then start every day with, today is going to be a great day. So now you have intention. And when you do that, you feel better. Where you bring your attention always determines how you feel. Where you bring your attention determines how you feel. And so if I say to myself, today is going to be a great day, well, then I'm looking forward to the things I get to do today. I look for the micro moments of happiness. What's the smallest thing that happened that makes me happy? From making my wife's decaf cappuccino in the morning to watching Ted lasso one of my favorite shows, or shrinking, which is hysterical. And then when you go to bed tonight, what I do is I say a prayer and then I go, what went well today? And then I go on a treasure hunt. I'm very purposeful, and I've done this for about 10 years, where I just start at the beginning of the day and I'm like, what went well today? And I'm looking for what's right and, you know, the negative stuff will pop up. And I imagine a big broom situation, sweeping it away, because I'll deal with it, but not now. The whole point of this exercise is to set my dreams up and my sleep to be better, to be the best it can be. Because when you sleep, your brain cleans and washes itself. And when you do that as a practice, your level of happiness will go up in three weeks. Now, I've done it for 10 years. Today is actually a very special day because would have been my father's 94th birthday. And three years ago this month, he died. So he got Covid and he got better. And then what Covid often does is triggers Epstein Barr infections. And that killed him. And remember the night he died? He died about nine o'clock in the morning. And when I went to bed that night, it was probably the worst day of my adult life. I went to bed and said a prayer, and then I went, what went well today? And then, you know, we all have a supervising voice. It's like, seriously, we're going to do this today, tonight? But the brain's lazy. The brain does what you allow it to do or what you train it to do. And so right away, I remembered a very fun, funny interaction between my mother and the police officer. And I'd been doing a program with the Newport Beach Police department, so I knew the police officer that was there. And I remember all the texts I got of love from my friends. And then I remember holding my dad's hand before the mortuary took him away. And then I went to sleep. Because I have spent years disciplining my mind to help me rather than to hurt me. So even in your darkest days, you know, I have a couple of phrases I use, like, argue with reality. Welcome to hell. So I really work hard not to argue with reality, to accept what is. And these habits are just so helpful. And whenever you feel sad or mad or nervous or out of control, write down what you're thinking. And then ask yourself, is it true? And then talk back to yourself. Were you good at talking back to your parents when you were a teenager?

Oh, for sure.

I was. Excellent.

Yes, I was called.

Yeah, me too. But no one had ever taught me to talk back to myself. I was 28 years old in my psychiatric residency, and one of our professors said, you have to teach your patients not to believe every stupid thing they think. And I'm like, I believe every stupid thing I think. And, you know, there's so much suffering that goes with that. But, you know, one of the days in the book is give your mind a name. Because if you give your mind a name, it's based on the concept of gaining psychological distance from the noise in your head. Well, then you don't have to listen to it. Like, I named my mind after my pet raccoon. When I was 16, I actually had a pet raccoon. Her name was Hermie. I loved her, but. But she was a troublemaker. And she tped my mother's bathroom one day. That was a bad day. She ate all the fish out of my sister's aquarium. She'd leave raccoon poo in my shoes. And that's my mind. It just stirs up trouble I can't get.

I just. How did you get a raccoon? I can't let it go.

So I had a German shepherd at the time, and I went to a pet store in the San Fernando Valley where I grew up to get a leash for my dog. And this little eight week old raccoon crawled up the back of my leg, my shoulder, and started playing with my hair. And so I grabbed it the cutest and I had to have it. So I brought her home. Got in all sorts of trouble for that. You know, I loved her. And so now Hermi.

So Hermione is now your brain.

Oh, hang on. Yeah, no, I have Hermie.

Oh, okay, Hermie.

So, you know, now I realize that I'm separate from my mind. And when you can separate from it and go, does that thought help you? And questioning your thoughts is so helpful. I did a program with NBA referees for a year, and, you know, they're getting screamed at. And if they make any mistakes, you know, the video plays over and over again on national television. And they can get pretty anxious and pretty sad.

I can imagine that's an intense job.

Teaching them not to believe everything they think is so important. So if you have an anxiety disorder, often when you were anxious, you were catastrophizing. You know, in the book, I talk about nine different types of ants, but the ant of anxiety disorders is fortune telling. And I used to be so Good at that. You know, just predicting the worst. And then I would make it worse. And. But I teach people how not to attach. And one of the fun things, like, I have a lot of haters. I don't focus on them much. But sometimes, you know, I got into a fight with NPR over my work on traumatic brain injury. And even people like npr, organizations like them, you know, they're always looking for what's the controversy. And I remember I sit in my office one day going, I just, I hate this, this. And so I wrote it down because I was angry and I don't like being attacked. And so I go, I hate this. And I wrote it down. And one of the exercises is, flip it to the opposite. I love this. And I started thinking, I love being that person that challenges the status quo. And an organization like NPR is not coming after me unless I have the ball. And I did the big NFL study when the NFL was sort of lying. They had a problem. And one of my players who read something critical about me, he said, they only try to tackle people with the ball. But if I would have lived believing my thoughts, it would slow me down. It would stop me. It would cause me to become frozen with fear. And you can't change a medical specialty if you're frozen.

What are you personally loving or like loving? Learning right now. Is there anything that right now, in the mornings, you're loving reading or that you're really thinking on or in conversation around with the brain?

Well, with your research at the moment, elite brain performance is what I'm really excited about. Eric Spoelstra, the coach of the Miami Heat, heard me on Lewis Howes podcast and called me up, and I got to train the coaching staff of the Miami Heat. And I just. I love thinking about how to use your brain to be the best and then to use those principles with all of my patients. So rather than seeing you as messed up, I want to see you as awesome, and I can be on your team and help you be better. So I love that I'm working with the. All of this is public knowledge. Alicia Newman, who's the Canadian pole vaulter, the Olympic pole vaulter, she had a bad concussion. And I do a show, actually, you might want to be on it, called Scan My Brain, where we take influencers, scan them, and work to get their brains as healthy as can be. And she became the world indoor pole vaulting champion this year. I'm so proud of her about, you know, what's the right mindset, and. And every day we win or we learn every day. We win or we learn. And we don't work to be better than other people. We work to be our best self and we help other people be their best selves because that's the prescription for happiness. The prescription for misery is I have to beat you. I have to be better than you, because that's not human, because it isolates you. I mean, yes, you probably can have more babies if you go to that sort of base level, but it doesn't create a tribe. It creates isolation. And some of the most decorated athletes are some of the most miserable people because they never learn to share.

Okay, I feel like I'm hearing a lot just from different people who we work with, a lot of entrepreneurs or people who want to go after a dream. And I hear from so many people now that they have trouble focusing or have a short attention span or can't sit still or they can't get the work done that they want to do. What do you think is the first thing that you could say to them to number one, maybe make them realize they don't, it's not necessarily them or who they are. And then what do you suggest around that?

Well, you have to love your attention span, and then you have to avoid anything that hurts it, like keeping your phone on or your notifications on when you're trying to get work done, using caffeine, that gives you focus, and then you have none. So brain, healthy habits. And then one of the questions often is, do they have ADD or not? Because ADD is real, and when left untreated, it causes big problems. A lot of entrepreneurs, they're entrepreneurs because they don't want to work for anybody because they're independent and they want to get things done at their pace rather than someone else's pace. And so if you never had attentional problems and now you have them, ask yourself, did I have a concussion? Am I going through hormonal changes? Because that happens. Am I overweight? And is the fat on my belly stealing testosterone, for example? And now I can't focus at all. So I find getting people physically healthy, decreasing distractions, ruling out add, making sure they're not using caffeine in the morning and alcohol at night or other substances. Right. I mean, people think marijuana is innocuous and that's a lie.

Do you have specific brain scans around what's happening with people consuming so much social media?

I don't. I have a lot of experience with patients. And I'm telling you, phone addictions in 12, 13 year olds, I mean, these Kids are often getting violent when you take their phones from them, but I haven't done that. I do with video games. I actually published this case study of a kid. Whenever his parents tried to take away his video games, he got violent. Actually tore apart his room. And I'm like, okay, can't have that back. And then so we kept him off for a month, and then we did a scan while he played, and it completely disrupted his brain. You could just tell the disruption in his brain, the cigarettes of the new generation.

What about connection? When people are. A lot of the work that I've done is around just connecting and making sure that we're connected as a tribe, connected as human beings. Are you able to kind of see the difference between people's brains in those who have strong communities and those who don't feel connected?

So the Surgeon General just came out with, loneliness is an epidemic, and loneliness is actually a risk factor for Alzheimer's disease and depression. And so the lonelier you are, the more your emotional brain is busy, but your thoughtful brain is sleepy. So you have to ask it, though, is it brain dysfunction that's contributing to loneliness or is loneliness contributing to brain dysfunction? So I think it goes both ways. There's a fascinating study from Baltimore, the Baltimore Longevity Institute, that one group of older people, they just did what they normally did. The other group volunteered, and the people who volunteered actually grew their hippocampus. So when we're not connected, we are a connected species, the brain gets at risk for trouble.

Okay, I have so many questions to ask you, but I saw you on one of my friends podcasts, Lisa Bilyeu, and she asked a question that I thought was so amazing, so interesting, but she was talking about how married men live longer than married women do. Can you tell me a little bit about this? Because I am a married woman.

So why do married women not live as long? Because they're chronically stressed? Because they're dealing with men. Why do men live longer? Because their wives are telling them to go to the doctor. Their wives are now not always right. It's a generalization, but it's clearly been my 40 years of experience that your wife is like, should you be drinking so much?

That's amazing.

Could we be eating? Could we be eating better? Let's go for a walk.

My husband just went and got a full body scan, mri, the whole thing yesterday. So, yes, we forced that.

Yeah. But, yeah, you are more likely to take care of yourself and women. I did a huge. I did a book called Unleash the Power of the female brain. Which I have five sisters and five daughters. God's cruel wreck on me. And so I'm like, I'm studying it. I published the world's largest imaging study on gender. And we just have different brains. That your brain generally is healthier and it's busier and you have greater access to the right side of your brain that admits when you have a problem, you might focus too much on problems. But the right side of the brain is that part that sort of puts things together and goes, there's trouble. And so women are more intuitive, but they're also much quicker to see trouble. And do you know what percentage of time if a couple files for divorce, what percentage is women?

No.

75% it's the woman.

Wow.

Because she's seeing trouble. Which can be good or it can be bad depending on the lens you're looking through. But you know, so men have lower levels of anxiety disorders and men often have too little anxiety. Females often have too much anxiety. But you gotta get anxiety. Right. So if you think of it from zero to a hundred. So zero is no anxiety. A hundred is you don't leave your house because you're so anxious. The ideal for most people is about 20. The don't worry, be happy people die the earliest from accidents and preventable illnesses. Wow. Because you drive on the freeway at 120 miles an hour in the rain, you're not like, that's really a bad idea. You give your phone number to somebody way before you should. Before you go, you know, this person could be a stalker. I mean, I don't want people to be so anxious. They're unhappy that I want them to be anxious enough. They don't make bad decisions.

All I can think about if Bobby McFerrin is still around. The don't worry, be happy singer.

It's in my book. I wrote a book called you happier and it's the first lie of happiness. Don't be happy. It's like, no, you will be miserable if you don't worry. You need the right dose of worry. You know, because I've seen a lot of 69 year old brains and they all look awful. So I, I need to be serious about my brain health so the gravity of age doesn't come to visit me.

Or I want to read the. Which I'm going to. What was the women's book that you wrote again? Say it one more time for me.

Unleash the power of the female brain.

Okay. Can't tell you how many times that I have been, you know, maybe my husband and I will fight about something or talk about something that feels serious. And I'll be like, where are you right now?

How'd you.

Why, like, why are you so quiet all of a sudden after we were in this in depth conversation? Like, I'm still on it. And he's like, I'm thinking of who.

I'm going to start on my fantasy lineup.

And I'm like, how are you able to do that? Like, we were just, we're in the middle of a fight right now, so.

Because he compartmentalizes it, he has little boxes in his brain and you have a string of yarn. It's. Everything's connected. And for him it's like, okay, I don't have anything else to say. I'm done. Totally.

So now we laugh about it because we see so much of that in our relationship that I'm like, okay, now we, now we get each other. So. Okay, well, I am, I am so grateful for you and all the work that you do and the way that you have committed your life to helping us help our brains and be happier. That's a very large, meaningful topic for me because coming from a place of feeling like you don't have control or this is who you are to understanding, like you said, it's kind of just that understanding and awareness that that helps you be able to make those changes and inspires you to change. For me, it's when I read about it and read your stuff and learn what it is, that's what inspires me to make the changes because I understand it and the science and all of your research and things like that. So I'm so grateful for you. Where can we get the book?

So you get change your brain every day, anywhere great books are sold. You can learn more about my work@ AmenClinics.com so amen. Like the last word in a prayer. Clinics.com. you can learn more about your own brain. I have a free brain health assessment. Brain health assessment dot com. Learn what type of brain you have. There's 16 different brain types and all the ways you can care for your brain. Follow me on Instagram or TikTok of all places. My 13 year old niece, she rolls her eyes at me. She's like, all my friends follow you. It's.

She's like, could you just give me a shout out on there at least?

Okay.

Well, again, so grateful for you. You guys, one of the biggest things we can do is go get the book. It's a gift for him. And it's an even bigger gift for you. It's going to change your life. And definitely let him know what your biggest takeaway was from this podcast. Today you truly Dr. Amen. You like dedicate your life to this. I love following you have so much fun information on Instagram for me. It's great bite sized info that makes me feel smarter is awesome. So you guys, his Instagram handle is docdoc. Amen A M E n. Let him.

Know what your biggest takeaway was and.

Until next time, earn your happy.

Bye everyone.