The ADHD Doctor: “I’ve Scanned 250,000 Brains” You (Steven Bartlett) Have ADHD!!! Dr Daniel Amen

Justin Bieber Muhammad Ali Miley Cyrus and then there are the murderers, rapists, arsonists. I've probably seen more

brains

than anyone in the world and now your brain, so this is going to be very difficult for you, you really

have

ADHD. Dr. Daniel Aon, the world's leading expert on Brain Dr. Aon's mission is to end mental illness by creating a revolution in brain health. Buckle up, Dr. Aon, let me know what you see. Your brain is involved in everything you do and after today you will always worry about your brain. What things make it worse? drugs alcohol not sleeping well sugar fruit juice throwing a football with your head caffeine caffeine shrinks it what's wrong with sugar you are more likely to be obese and as your weight increases the actual physical size and function of your brain decrease should scare anyone and then there are social networks, if you are on 3 and a half hours a day you start to wear down those pleasure centers that bring you happiness and give you pleasure and drive you to excite them. death but you're not stuck with the brain you

have

you can improve it I can prove it so start with let's see my brain let's do this we have evidence of that and that's normal in our society the problem is two or three of Those can affect the rest of your life and no one knows quickly.

This is really fascinating to me. On the back of our YouTube channel it says that 69.9% of you who watch this channel frequently over the lifespan of this channel have done so. I still haven't hit the Subscribe button. I just wanted to ask you a favor. It helps this channel a lot. If you choose to subscribe, you help us scale. The guest helps us scale production and makes this program bigger. If I could ask you a favor. If you've seen the show before and enjoyed it and you like this episode you're currently watching, could you please hit the Subscribe button?

Thank you very much and I return that gesture by making sure that everything we do here is received. better and better and better and better that's a promise I'm willing to make you, we have a deal, Dr. Aon, if anyone just clicked on this podcast and is considering staying or maybe doing something else with their time, can you explain to us? to me BAS B about what you know we're going to discuss and the topic we're going to discuss and how important the benefit is to your life if you get 10 extra years of cognitive performance in your life. uh better love better money Better health because your brain we're going to talk about is involved in everything you do how you think how you feel how you act how you get along with other people and my goal is to finish, it's going to sound huge and it is and it's going to It may sound impossible, but it is not my goal: to end mental illness by creating a revolution in brain health.

I hate the term mental illness, it shames people, it stigmatizes and it's wrong, these things are not mental disorders, they are brain disorders if you get your brain healthy, your mind tends to follow you, then you are depressed, an antidepressant does nothing to that your brain is healthy, no one talks to you about your diet, your exercise level, your sleep, you don't live in a moldy home that doesn't allow your kids to head soccer balls correctly because that's not healthy for them. the brain and if we can create this revolution in brain health, the incidence of mental health disorders will be cut in half and I guess that's part of the revelation.

You actually

scanned

my brain and today you're going to tell me the results that you have on your laptop in the corner of the room, so I came to your clinic in Los Angeles and they made me take a test. on a computer like it was almost like some kind of speed test and then they had me lie down on a big machine for about how long that lasted, about 30 minutes, 15 minutes, 15 minutes while this big machine spun around my head and I watched my brain. that was my experience of what happened and then I filled out some questionnaires about myself and my brain and my life in general and from there all that data feeds into what you are about to show me now yes, so I will never make a diagnosis from a scan , okay, I make a diagnosis from all the information, so we dropped all that information on you and I gave you a test called the Connor Continuous Performance Test, which is a 15-minute attention test and every time you see a letter, you press. the space bar except when you see the letter In fact you could have ADD or ADHD, from getting bored easily to poor writing, disorganization, etc., and you're obviously very bright, but you struggled a bit in school, so with all that information, the first thing we need to do is look at a healthy scan so we know what.

It looks like a healthy scan and we're going to show it in two different ways: we need to look at the outer surface of your brain, so a healthy one is the image on the left and all we should see is full, even symmetrical activity. the image on the top left looks below the brain, so the top is the front part of the brain, the bottom is the back, the top is an area called the prefrontal cortex, very important in humans, the larger in humans than any other animal by far it has 30% of the human brain 11% of the chimpanzee brain and then the back part is the cerebellum lower back part of the brain um again very important involved in processing speed the lower part right of the images on the left look down from above uh the other two looking at the brain from the side the color does not matter, it is the shape, it must be complete, uniform and symmetrical the images on the right, the color matters, that's right as we call our active images, blue is the average activity, red is the top 15%, white is the top 8% and I see all white, so white is where things really happen, it's really hot, okay , and that's healthy, that's normal and that's going to be very important to you, so if we look at your brain, it's a little bumpy, etc.

I will ask you about toxins, there is something toxic in your life, what are toxins, so think that alcohol, marijuana, mold heavy metals in your body, infections, so it is not alcohol or drugs , then I start to ask: have you ever lived in a filled mold? environment maybe we should test him to see if he has more mercury in his body or lead in his body than he should. For example I had very high levels of mercury, my brain looked like this when I first

scanned

it, it was toxic and I had very high levels of mercury like I never drank, I just don't like it, I never smoked, I never did drugs, but my brain it seemed toxic, so you have to go get it, well, why and for me it was Mercury, um, decreased activity in your left prefrontal. cortex, so when I think about maybe adding similar symptoms into your life, it's probably coming from there and a decrease in activity in your left temporal lobe and you're right-handed, yeah, yeah, so that can go with the irritability, which what I have seen is that it can go with a kind of short fuse and your prefrontal cortex is a kind of supervisor of the brain, it watches you and your prefrontal cortex is flat MH and I don't like that and then when I heard that you played soccer, I read that you played soccer, it is very common in my soccer players, how long did they play soccer for almost my entire childhood and any concussions playing soccer?

I think I had a couple big hits to the head that were significant, but not many, not anything that put me in the hospital, but I had a couple of moments where I walked off the field because like if there was a clash of heads, then you Your brain is soft with the consistency of soft butter, your skull is very hard and has sharp bony ridges, two or three of those can impact the rest of your life. and nobody knows because nobody looks good, if you went and saw a thousand psychiatrists you said: I want to concentrate better and have a better temper

amen

t, you saw a thousand psychiatrists, two of them would look at your brain, which I think is crazy, so the colors here I'm looking at what the red and green does, so the color doesn't really matter here it doesn't matter, it's the shape, so when I see this hole, you don't have holes in your brain, which means the hole is less flow optimal blood, in fact, I will show you if you do what I ask and we scan you in 6 months, it will be better.

I have a program that tells me if you do what I ask. you do this is what is generally going to happen and if you don't do well what I ask you to do this is what it will be like in five years in 10 years and you are young if you are serious about loving and repairing your brain to your 60, 7 and 80 will be amazing because you will have a healthy brain. If you say, oh, the healer of Aman, and I don't believe any of this garbage, it's going to be very difficult for you because you're not going to have full access to your brain and that's scary, so I know it's a big deal, but I think this is due to a traumatic brain injury at some point and a little bit of toxin that maybe can mold mhhm and when i.

I say mold, our house was very very dirty growing up so I guess you're talking about that and sometimes we had mold around the window sill and we had mice and rats at one point and it was like living in a house. that a hoarder had lived because some of the rooms were filled to the ceiling with trash, so I think maybe if you're talking about mold or toxic brain, I guess that's where it comes from once it gets into your body. unless you do something active to remove it it really remains and can continue to cause problems and then if we go to active scanning it is very different than what I want it to be and I know I can improve it but if we go back to what is healthy a lot of activity in the cerebellum your cerebellum is sleepy even though you're probably very coordinated I need to activate that thing this is really important to have better activity there and you have this diamond pattern so you have an ad and we'll talk more about it, it's a subtype al which I call adding too focused, where you can be obsessive when you're really interested in something, but if you're not interested, you find it hard to concentrate, so if you look at this, it looks like a diamond and when you look at that diamond.

I think about past emotional traumas and published a large study analyzing that there are 20,000 people. Can I separate emotional trauma from physical trauma? And I can do it with really high levels of precision and I find there's a little bit of both. for you, do you play Rocket Sports? No, I don't, so that's going to be one of my recipes for you and I actually studied in England. People play Rocket Sports and live longer than everyone else. Soccer was in the background, like soccer and American football. the bottom but table tennis tennis rocketball now pickle ball uh bad mitton are at the top but let's talk about this diamond for a moment when I say emotional trauma MH what comes up for you so a few things, the first is that my parents were always in War grew up as a child in a home where there was so much yelling and negative energy, but then he grew up ashamed because we were.

I was very different from everyone around me and I never invited friends to my house in those 16 years I lived. there before I left, so no one really knew where I lived. I think about all those things when I think about emotional trauma, well, that's great, yeah, I mean, if you grow up in a stressful environment, Mo MH, in a hostile environment where your parents are at war, train your brain, your emotional brain, so that it becomes active because you always have to be alert for danger and that is programmed early and even later, when there is no danger, your body can still look for it, you are waiting for the next one. something bad that could happen and do you think I have ADHD?

Now I do. The question would be who has it in your family because not only does it appear, but often children who have ADHD have one or both parents who have it and you can see it. those similar exchanges and it seems like one or both parents might have had a little conflict looking for my mother and if I had asked Hazard which of my parents had ADHD and this is just me guessing, without trying to diagnose my parents I would say there would be been my mother because she is the most irritable her handwriting is not great she is a little more like SC scattered I should say that she is much more messy my dad is very organized with everything my mom is very very very messy like me um um the other one One thing I would ask is what the teachers said about you.

I spoke again at my school to GCS CNA level students. I've done it twice and I remember one of the teachers. she approached me keep in mind that at this age I am 24 25 years old and she said that you were a useless student but you were kind you are a good person I was never saying bad words or throwing chairs but I was useless and spent most of my time in the exclusion unit which is where you go if you don't do your homework or don't attend I just couldn't sit in the classrooms I couldn't sit in the classrooms and stay focused on what they were telling me It's especially when I wasn't interested, that has been its defining quality of my life.

I'm exceptionally good at not doing things I'm not interested in and I'm ex and I'm good when I'm interested, but when I'm not interested.I could see my peers almost as if they themselves wanted to get involved in things that don't interest me. I will do that. I could never do that and I've always said I'm a remarkable quitter, so think about quitting. He went to school, then he went to college for a day and it was like NOP he never came back after that first day, so it's a very important tip for people who have ADD is to choose something that they like, not a job where they think they will make more money, and that's another kind of piece of the puzzle that completely fits with having to add and, as we know, there are problems with that, but there are also great benefits for your preal cortex when you work too hard, so which I imagine if I scanned your dad he would be busy because he is very organized and likes to collect, but there is less creativity that goes with the frontal loes busy when he is a little sleepy, you have all kinds of thoughts and you are a little less subject to rules that people whose prefrontal cortex is more active, they like rules and they like uniformity and they like predictability and they probably like some of that because I think you inherited some of that from your dad, that's the top of the diamond, but obviously you are very creative.

I believe that I am a creative entrepreneur. I know other entrepreneurs who are very good at finance, operations and processes, while my skill in entrepreneurship has always been creativity, that's why I'm a marketer, that's where I built my fortune per se, it was in marketing. and creativity. So, I always found other people to do the finances or the process or operation for me, because that's not where I'm committed or where I think I'm particularly good and since a lot of CEOs listen to this podcast, a lot of CEOs have ADD of one way or another and they prosper when they hire organized people, which is why CU is very important, we tend to like to hire people like us and it is very important to hire people who help us when we are most vulnerable.

It's almost like hiring people with different

brains

. Yeah, literally, yeah, we, we, we talked about something a second ago, you said when you saw your brain for the first time, it changed your life. I feel like that now. I feel like when I almost didn't realize my brain was there and I think a lot of people we go through our lives with simply because we never see what we don't appreciate so the first step is that awareness and then the second step is realize that we can do something about it because I grew up thinking that your brain and your body in general are just what they are.

It's like I can't do anything about it, you know, I tend to think I can't do anything about it. I don't know my nail. You probably can, but you see these things as static objects, that's what they are, this idea that I can do something about it, it's the most important idea, it's the empowering idea and that's what you're telling me, it's possible, I can. change my brain, it's the most exciting lesson I've ever learned, you're not stuck. I'm not stuck with the brain I had You're not stuck with the brain you have You can improve it.

In fact, I can prove it every day what I have come to believe is that you are making your brain better or are you making it worse let's start with what you are doing what things make the brain worse what are the common things that most of us do without thinking that make the brain worse brain when my daughter Khloe was in second grade I went to her classroom and I wrote 20 things on the board and I went to separate them for me, good for your brain, bad for your brain, one year olds, they got 19 out of 20 right, like this Most people know that the only thing they got wrong was the orange juice, they put it in the healthy category.

When, in fact, when is it rational to strip fruit sugar from its fiber source because it becomes toxic in the body? ball with your head no, don't do that um, what's wrong with sugar for the brain? It's pro-inflammatory, what does that mean, does it make you diabetic, but I mean, when it comes to the brain, why is it bad for your health like orange juice or ice cream? my brain because ultimately it will give you high blood sugar levels MH that erode your blood vessels and you will have less blood flow to your brain, that's bad, I mean there's so many things about it that it's addictive, it's pro-inflammatory. makes it more likely that you will have diabetes and obesity, which is why 72% of Americans are overweight, 42% are obese.

I have published three studies on 35,000 people, as their weight increases, the actual physical size and function of their brain decreases. That should scare anyone. I used to be chubby, but when I discovered that connection, I was like oh no, that's what gave me the motivation to lose about 25 pounds, so sugar is the gateway drug to diabetes. and obesity, not to mention inflammation, which is the cause of depression and dementia, so I have sugar. I have a head injury. I'm going to avoid both, what else should I avoid? And then you have low blood flow. in those two very important areas and then how can we increase blood flow?

So, do you want to avoid things that cause low blood flow? caffeine nicotine caffeine caffeine restricts blood flow to the brain what does that do to my brain? With good it restricts blood flow so that you're going to have less blood flow and remember I showed you that progression with age. No, you don't want to do things that increase blood flow to your brain, so exercise, um genko, just one of the supplements that I'm going to give you. you eat foods like beets, oregano, rosemary, cinnamon, they increase blood flow and do you think there is a correlation or link between caffeine consumption and a shrunken brain?

Yeah, and a shrunken brain is associated with things like dementia, brain aging, you know, I don't think so. there's a connection I haven't read any research that says there's a connection between caffeine and dementia there's a connection with sleep problems and there's a connection with sleep problems in dementia I think if you take like 100 milligrams a day of Caffeine is probably fine, but a Starbucks venty coffee has 330 milligrams of caffeine. Jesus, and people just don't think about the level of caffeine they have in our society. What are the other very obvious things that are not good for my brain because I really want to make sure? that I avoid those things I have sugar erectile dysfunction I mean while we are like this B is for blood flow just while we are in blood flow 40% of 40 year olds have erectile dysfunction 70% of 70 year olds have erectile dysfunction what does that mean that if you have blood flow problems anywhere, it means they're everywhere, so it's like No.

And it means you're too sedentary, you're overweight, you're smoking, or you're drinking too much caffeine, or you're using marijuana, because marijuana reduces blood flow. Blood flow. the brain and only in that one of the 11 is exercise genko for you not for everyone but for you hyperbaric oxygen those three things will make a big difference in blood flow genko genko what is a supplement what does it uh increase the blood flow to the brain the brains prettiest I've ever seen taking genko there's actually a specific study uh they gave people 120 milligrams of genko twice a day Significant improvement in blood flow to the brain and that's why in one of the supplements that I'm going to take To give them, we have genko.

I've taken it every day for at least the last 20 years and this is where the US government got an F for the pandemic, loneliness accelerates dementia and brain problems, so when they isolated like everything significant . increase in brain problems, so connect with other people. The i in Bright Minds is inflammation, so, which increases inflammation. low levels of omega-3 fatty acids and we are deficient. 93% of the population is deficient and omega-3 fatty acids, 93%, so everyone. should we eat more fish or take an omega-3 supplement like fish oil gum disease like who knew I wasn't that good at taking care of my gums until I started reading Ed the studies you have gum disease you have inflammation you are more likely to you become depressed and have dementia.

I'm like, oh my gosh, so I'm a flossing fool. H.'s head trauma we talked about. I did the big NFL study when the NFL was struggling with the truth about traumatic brain injury. injuries in football and 80% of our players improved Toxins TS um drugs alcohol um but other things like Mercury and what are the non-obvious toxins because anesthesia anesthesia I was looking at my toiletries and I have mouthwash, toothpaste, deodorants and aftershaves. and I was wondering if they were toxic to some extent, so there's an AB, there's a couple of them, but the one I like is called Think Dirty mhm, where you can scan those products and it will tell you on a scale of 0 to 10 what so bad they are for you so zero is you live long and 10 is you die early so when I discovered this and scanned everything I mean it cost me hundreds of dollars to replace things and my wife more than that. with all the makeup and stuff, but I shaved for 50 years with barbasol and it's a nine which is dying early and now I shave with something called besame la cara and it's a two, it's like you teach people to read labels of food. read the labels of everything that goes into your body or your child's body and we have this epidemic and we will get to that thing of low testosterone levels in men because of the toxins that we put in their bodies when they are young, which is the M? in brightness, then the m is mental health, it is the quality of your thoughts, the level of stress and the level of trauma that you carry in your body and whether or not you have something psychiatric like depression, for example, doubles the risk of Alzheimer's. in women and quadruples it in men, so m is what is going on in your mind, that is why I teach people to kill the ants, the automatic negative thoughts that steal their happiness, understand and process their traumas and treat any psychiatric problem that may be present. in your case, ADD and I think we started with a supplement, or even looked at medication, we talked about natural ways to do it, medicinal ways to do it and for me, I'm not opposed to medicine, I'm actually very good at it. in that. but it's never the first and only thing I think about I've never really taken medication in my life even if I have a headache I don't take medication I'm not the type of person I probably haven't taken a Actually, in years, the only time I've I've been on medication it's like I have some kind of serious infection so there was one time my foot was turning green and I stood on a glass and it was really getting out of control I'm talking like a 2 inch purple thing was growing on my foot and I thought, "Okay, instead of cutting off my leg, I'll take this medicine the

doctor

gave me, otherwise I just don't take it, so I'd rather leave." through severe pain than taking medication because I believe my body can fix things, so when I think about taking medication for ADD or ADHD, I really don't know the difference.

I do well if I'm messy or if I'm messy. My handwriting is bad or whatever so that's who I am and that's okay I can improve on that I can be less I can be more organized but why do I want to take my meds right? I'm not going to be the one to sell you the medications, but what I would say is that a lot of times people ask me about the side effects of MH medications and adding stimulants could decrease your appetite or negatively affect your sleep. but you always have to ask the second question, what are the side effects of not taking the medication, what is the impact on your life, on your business, on your money, on your relationships, on your health, because living without treatment increases for many people and maybe not. you, but for a lot of people you suffer from chronic stress because of the negative things that tend to come with it, the dysfunction and for you it's clearly not broken, but it's optimized, you have full access to your own brain and I would say no. and we can do it and we can do it better, but we can do it in steps and ultimately I see my job as giving people options and then telling them the pros and cons of each option and then letting them choose correctly.

I mean, that's what good

doctor

s should do. doing so is called informed consent um and you know, I can only tell you my experience. I told you my daughter's story and I've seen that thousands of times that people become more optimized and it's not necessarily the medicine but that medicine. when it's right brain, right, wrong brain, it makes people worse and if you read my book on healing, I talk about the Ring of Fire ADD, so ADD and ADHD are different terms for the same thing 1980, DSM Diagnostic and Manual mental disorder statistician I hate that but what we have is attention deficit hyperactivity disorder with or without hyperactivity 1987 God knows why they changed the name ADHD attention deficit hyperactivity disorder basically ruling out half the people who had it because Half of people who have ADD or ADHD are never hyperactive and are not diagnosed because they do not attract enough negative attention toward themselves.themselves like for parents to go you have a problem and you're giving me a problem so anyway different names for the same thing and if you can handle it having extra help for the things you're not good at with exercise with all the good habits you have, that's amazing if you want to be 10% more focused like I treat this writer um and he only takes medication when he has to do things, but he never takes it when he writes because he has 16 plot lines at once in his books and says no.

I think that diminishes my creativity a little. It's interesting because the fact that we're medicating a brain like mine. I do it for professional optimization because if you go back like you don't know a couple hundred years, you go back even further. In a time when we didn't like to read or write, there were no computers and all this stuff, you would have had no idea that You know, if you go, if you go back too far, you wouldn't have been able to really know. an ADHD, well, what I'm trying to do is for you to be able to tell him about his life.

I mean I have a patient from Ethiopia and I'm wondering the impact on your culture and he said that people with severe ADHD are excluded because they can't be trusted and the isolation causes great shame and pain um and they have no idea that Is it a question of the brain where ADHD comes from or also, well, it's genetic, okay, it's clearly genetic, I mean, if I don't look in someone's family I think it was a traumatic brain injury and with you I think that's possible because to football um except you see it in your family um is it a defect or is it a difference is it a difference if I chose to take a drug was it like that? as you called it rellin, I think you called it, so Rin would be one of the options, whatever the drug was, what exactly would it do under the brain scan of my brain, so if I scan my brain and take the drug, what would it do? you would see in my brain well I can tell you it would activate your cerebellum okay the part that was a little sleepy was a little sleepy and it would activate your prefrontal cortex and give your brain better energy so my first specific scan was 1991, a woman who tried to commit suicide the night before I went to the brain imaging conference and then I left the conference and she was my new patient, her name was Sandy, she tried to commit suicide the night before and from what I'm learning, she, I'm thinking he has ADD, he has an 8 year old son who has ADD, he talked about the genetic connection, he had an IQ of 144, but he never finished college and I ask him, how did you study?

She said, well, I never. I really did, except maybe the night before an exam, I had a cup of coffee, stayed up all night studying, and then took the exam, which is the classic way and way of doing things, and I said : "You know, I think maybe you have." adult with ADD and she says, oh, adults don't have ADD and I'm thinking I'm the doctor, but I'm wondering how about we look at your brain and I knew from other work I've done that I should do it she did it twice rest and concentration and when he tried to concentrate his brain completely shut down like he was willing to do it once but if he had done it twice his brain would probably be busy or at rest and then when he tried to do it he would fall and I put up the photos uh a couple of days then I put the photo on the table in front of her and while I was explaining it to her she started crying and said what do you mean it's not my fault and I told her what I had added is something like people need glasses and I wear glasses to drive and I took off my glasses, I put them on and said that people who wear glasses are not stupid, crazy or stupid, their eyeballs are a funny shape and we use glasses to concentrate, he said that people with ADD are not stupid, crazy or stupid , some of them are the brightest people I know, but their frontal lobes are turned off by taking the medication, because glasses for your frontal lobes help you focus and she did, she was conflict driven, she was always pushing her husband.

She got into a big fight and because of that she tried to commit suicide, she stopped saying that she is a better mother, she came back and finished college. I mean, her life is like your brain with glasses. Wow, my friends who take ADD medication tell me that. like his life was before and after that moment, so you know, I completely believe what you're saying. You said this phrase a second ago when we were talking about the M, which is your mental health and the impact it has on development. of a brain that is healthy or unhealthy and you said that thing about you have to make sure you kill the ants, what is killing those negative thoughts, um, that's a lot easier said than done, how can someone kill their negative thoughts ? process that you can go through to do that, yes, it's a habit, right, and it's not difficult, but like any habit, you have to do it repeatedly, over and over, over and over, and over and over, every Every time you have a thought, your brain releases chemicals every time. you have a bad thought a sad thought a crazy thought your brain releases a certain set of chemicals that make you feel bad immediately your hands get cold they start sweating your muscles tense you start breathing erratically and it all happens instantly every time you have it a positive thought a happy thought a hopeful thought a loving thought like I'm back because I love the first time I was on the podcast with you um, a completely different set of chemicals comes out and your hands get hot and dry, your breathing slows down. beat your heart in a healthier way and it happens as if immediately people have ADD, since we are talking about they tend to have more negative thoughts because negative thoughts are more stimulating and this is the exercise when you feel sad, angry, nervous or out of control.

Write down what you're thinking and then ask yourself if it's true, it's absolutely true, this is a process I learned from my friend Byron Katie, how I feel when I have this thought, how I act when I have this thought and what the result is. of the thought then it is true it is absolutely true how I feel to act on the result of the thought how I would feel if I did not have the thought how I would act if I did not have the thought what is the result of the If I do not have that thought, then my favorite part is taking the original thought.

Tana never listens to me. Tana is my wife. I've had that thought and then turned it into the opposite. T. Yes listen to me and then ask yourself yes or No, that is true and by directing my thoughts by managing them instead of being a victim, many of my patients are victims of their thoughts until they do the job correctly. This is one of the things where you do what the FI says and write down a hundred of your thoughts. The worst thoughts take you through that process and when you hit 30 they stop bothering you, so if I'm a repetitive negative thinker or a repetitive positive thinker, does that alone change the shape of my brain?

Yeah, and in um my new book change your brain every day there's actually pictures of Noel Nelson she was writing a book called The Power of Appreciation and I had her and she wanted me to scan her while she was appreciating her brain and it looked beautiful. and I'm like me' I'm showing it to you. I think you need to come back tomorrow and I want you to hate yourself and she's like, "Oh, I don't want to do that." "Come on, you have to suffer for science." a positive scan and then we had a negative scan and her negativity brought down her left temporal lobe, her left frontal lobe and her cerebellum.

Very interesting, I mean, similar to what your scan looks like, but hers was much worse, I mean, it's a healthy brain and then a disabled brain. brain and that explained to me the athletic slumps is like why do people get into athletic slums because the negativity turns off their cerebellum and they become a little less coordinated interesting and I'm not a fan of positive thinking. I'm a fan of precise thinking. with a positive spin, the very positive thought is that I can eat this third piece of cheesecake and it is not going to negatively impact my body or my brain like no, don't worry, be happy, people die sooner in accidents and diseases preventable, so a lot of People come to me for anxiety and I'm like that on a scale of 0 to 100 how much is it?

I'm like 50. I said okay, our goal is not zero, our goal is 15. I want you to have enough anxiety. Do the same. right things somewhat related to that is a word that is also used, which is stress when we talk about m in Bright Minds how to have healthy brains what role does stress play in our brains stress um, especially chronic, unremitting stress, so if we think about The stress you had growing up, where there were a lot of fights, increases a hormone called cortisol. Cortisol begins to reduce activity in the hippocampus, one of the main memory and learning centers in the brain, so at least one could argue or postulate your struggle. at school it was because your emotional brain was busy because you were worried about things at home, that makes you more likely to get infections, it makes you more likely to have problems and Trauma, trauma was the other word you used, which I thought .

It was worth diving into the impact trauma has on our brains. And does trauma show up when you scan someone's brain? You can see it? Yes, then the trauma appears is that diamond pattern. That's why I asked you about it, it's your emotional state. singular anterior brain at the top is the brain shifter thamus often involved in mood basil migdala ganglia involved in anxiety so we often see worry, anxiety and sadness and it appears as that pattern of diamond that after people do EMDR, a specific psychological treatment for trauma calms I write it down and I say psychological treatment, I say, yes, but it has biological effects, uh, it's a very interesting treatment, so the first thing I do is that You write down 10 big traumas in your life and we'll go after the work first. and you mention it and there is a whole process, but your eyes go back and forth while you mention it and it is very interesting the connections that your brain will make with it, but as you process it you discover that you are actually less.

It bothers me and is master for single incident trauma like being robbed or in a car accident, for chronic CR trauma it takes longer but is very helpful, when I met my wife 18 years ago her Ace score on experiences adverse childhood on a scale of 0 to 10 how many bad things happened to you was an eight and I was so enthralled with this woman and one of my first gifts to her was 10 sessions of EMDR. One wanted to see if she would like to wrestle with her trauma. I was there for two years and I'm absolutely convinced that that's one of the reasons she and I rarely worry because we don't provoke each other and when you talk about trauma it's not these big tea traumas that some people sometimes do. they talk.

Do you know that when I was young my uncle caressed me, for example? It may also be an isolated incident that happened when you were an adult. It can absolutely be anything that attacks your sense of security, whether physical or emotional. Being fired is traumatic for a person. Many people, not acting at a high level in an important situation, can be traumatic and that changes the activity within your brain, well it depends on how strong you are, if you were really strong, if you are really strong, then the centers of activity of their brain well they would. and there's one thing we haven't talked about yet called brain reserve, which is how healthy the brain was that you brought to the trauma because you can take two soldiers, put them in the same tank and expose them to the same explosion, at the same angles, everything is the same he comes out unscathed the other is permanently disabled because it is the brain that they brought to the trauma and so if your mother used drugs while she was pregnant with you she diminished your reserve if your mother and father fought a lot or separated when she she was pregnant with you that decreased your reserve if she gave you bad food if she neglected you if there was chronic stress that is decreasing your reserve so we all have a certain level of reserve when we go into that trauma and some people become post-traumatic Growth that they are actually better after the trauma you know they create the trauma and do something meaningful out of it and other people have post traumatic stress that really makes them suffer so I love the idea of ​​Brain Reserve because I'm always thinking about increasing mine yeah , because also when something traumatic happens I'm in a better place, like if you kill the ants, if your ant population is low, my automatic negative thoughts, yeah, so if you're masterful.

If you have an anteater running around in your head clearing away the negative thoughts that we all have when you suffer that trauma, well, you are better able to deal with it than if you have an undisciplined mind that is infested and there are Nowhere in school are people teaches you how to kill ants. We have a foundation called Change Your Brain Foundation and I love it so much. We're dedicated to Education Service research, but last year we produced this new course called Brain Thrive by Five. It is for children of agepreschool, kindergarten, first grade, where we teach children to love and care for their brains.

It's like 30 modules or six to seven minutes long and six of them are not learning how to kill ants and little kids just love that you don't have. believe every stupid thing you think and I don't know if you know this, but Jerry Seinfeld once said that the brain is a sneaky organ, we all have strange, crazy, stupid, sexually violent thoughts that no one should have here and just because you have a bad thought No It doesn't even mean that you believe well in the thought, it is not the thoughts you have that make you suffer, it is the thoughts that you attribute to it that make you suffer.

I have all kinds of crazy thoughts and I think my brain is very creative, but I don't. I don't think most of them, quick, I just want to talk to you about our sponsor. Super fast jobs called LinkedIn. Hiring is one of the most important steps in your business and without good people there is literally no business. Believe me. I discovered along the way that Your business is nothing without good people. You want to be 100% sure you have access to the best candidates available and that's why I need you to check out LinkedIn jobs. LinkedIn Jobs helps you find the right people for your team faster and for free.

That's why when I grow any of my teams at any of my companies, I go straight to LinkedIn and I highly recommend you do the same. There are simple tools, like screening questions, that make it easy to focus on candidates with the right skills and experience so you can prioritize who you like to interview and hire, which is why small businesses rate LinkedIn jobs number one for offer quality hires compared to the main competitors. LinkedIn Jobs helps you find the qualified candidates you want to talk to faster. Post your work for free on linkedin.com doac, that's linkedin.com doac. to post your work for free terms and conditions apply as you know this podcast is sponsored by hure and one of my favorite products they've ever created is their hu Daily Greens.

It actually worked so well when we launched it that it was completely sold out and the only thing I'm coming back here to tell you is that it's back in stock now, it tastes amazing and it actually has 91 vitamins, minerals and whole food ingredients in just one scoop . It's nice not to have to think about it. By taking many different pills and vitamins in the morning, I can take this and know that I am giving my body a good dose of all the vitamins and minerals it needs each morning. It tastes so much better than having to take some of the other green powders I've tried and it's really comforting to know that unfortunately I'm taking proper care of my body and currently this product is only available in the US so anyone in the US visit hu.com to get it sooner.

It's over again, but anyone who's not in the US and wants it to come to their country, DM me and I'll talk to the hu team at our board meetings and let them know what you want . In your country, tell me about the unhealthiest brain you've ever seen in a 15-year-old boy. It was Kip Kinkle. He is a 15-year-old boy from Springfield, Oregon, who brought guns to school. They arrested him. His parents picked him up. from jail and sometime between 6 at night and 8:00 the next morning he murdered his mom and dad and then went to Springfield Sddon High School in Springfield Oregon and shot 25 people based on my work , they scanned it and scanned it for trial.

His brain was as horrible as he had never seen a 15 year old boy whose brain was so damaged and his life reflected it, what did you see in his brain? He was wrinkled at 15 at 15 and okay, why? he murdered his mom and dad, so I couldn't get a good story, but he had anoxia at birth, lack of oxygen, a serious infection or something was poisoning his brain, it could have been a boy, it could have been an infection, I mean , we are. Speaking of M, the I is immunity and infections, it is one of the main causes of psychiatric problems, no one knows.

Have you scanned the brains of many psychopaths I have and what do you see when you look at a psychopath? So I published a study on murderers and young people. murderers have very low frontal L function older murderers it is low overall activity now not all murderers are the same I have the brain of a murderer her brain actually looked pretty good but she was in the middle of being abused by her husband and she murdered him and was It's not so irrational, you know when you really know his story. But most brains have problems. Do you think you could look at a brain and predict now?

You should ask me if you scan presidential candidates. It's interesting, especially now. What do you think is Donald Trump's brain? looks good, I think if we scanned President Biden or former President Trump, neither of them would be healthy, I mean, one we talked about, the older they get, the less healthy they are and, um, if someone's going to have nuclear codes, would they? We should not? I know what his brain is like and I wrote an op-ed in 2008 when Brock Obama was running against John McCain arguing for Don't you think we should scan presidential candidates? And yeah, I don't think any of his brains were healthy and that worries me because I mean, what do we need for our most important politicians to have judgment, foresight, impulse control?

Okay, so turn to Devil's Advocate on that, if we start doing that in the highest office in the land, then that philosophy could trickle down to lower positions in the world. you land and when you go and try to get a job at I don't know a restaurant or a marketing agency, it might become the norm that there's almost brain discrimination or brain bias at play when someone like me gets a brain scan and they go. Listen, this guy's not going to be very good at concentrating. It's an interesting question. I have to tell you if you date one of my children for more than four months.

I'm going to have you scanned, really. I'm going to figure out how to do it. which is the rule in my family um and if you have a bad brain it doesn't mean you can't come back but you are smart enough to fix it that would be the question have you done so well my son in law? Jesse, who I love, his mother has paranoid schizophrenia. I think I want to scan your brain and he actually wrote a book called Change Your Brain Before 25 and he opens the book with the story of the scan of him and him sitting with me. 6'4 I'm 5'6 and he said he's never felt so small and yeah, no, that's the rule in my family.

I like it. I said when I met my wife that I really liked her and wanted to see the first naked part of her. I see that it was her brain, so three weeks into our relationship, I say, Hey, you haven't seen the clinic, don't you want to see the clinic? She came. I scanned it and it passed. Do you use her brain against her? I bet you. I bet not? We talked to Tana, she said yes. You will tell me that there has not been a single time that you have brought out her brain in a moment of conflict or argument, not even a single time because I will call Tana.

Yes, no, because you know what I do and this is on par with killing ants. I do an exercise with my patients called The Miracle of a Page, on a piece of paper write what you want Rel and in a very specific way what you want. I want your relationships, your job, your money, your physical, emotional and spiritual health, what do you want? And with her because she is at the top of my list. I want a kind, affectionate, loving, supportive and passionate relationship. I always want her to not always feel this rude to me. Thoughts come to my head and if I have slept and eaten I never tell them why because I don't get what I want right and that is not selfish.

People say oh, but you know, what you want is what I want. It's not selfish, it's good because hedonism is the enemy of happiness, but happiness is a moral obligation because of how you impact other people. Your brain is very smart, but you have to tell it what you want and every important business, including mine, has a page. strategic plan we know what we want and we know what we are going to do this quarter and this year, but people don't do that in their lives and you think they should have a life plan, each person should know what they want.

Your behavior gets you what you want. Do you think the brain almost conspires to make it conform to what you want? The brain once you are clear about what you want. I guess your actions will change a little and then your brain will change shape. it fits what you said you wanted, yes, and the brain is lazy, the brain does what you allow it to do and it's habitual. I was talking to one of my patients yesterday about this because we were working on his one-page miracle and he's just like you. I know I could be more positive and I go, is it a habit to be negative or to be positive, what highways are you building in your brain, positive highways or negative highways, precise highways or distorted highways, you build them and if you watch the news, they will become. more distorted because it is yes, in my book the end of mental illnesses.

I did something that was very fun for me. I figured if I were an evil ruler and I wanted to create mental illness, what would I do? And watching the news, I think so. There were 62 evil ruler strategies and I think it's like 12 um because the news isn't the news anymore, the news is about eyeballs and selling things and negativity sells, if I can scare you that'll sell, so, um, you got You have to be very careful with what you allow in your brain and yes you should be informed but not over and over again people who start the day with the news are 27% less happy in the afternoon well, I listen to a lot of True Crime in things about murderers serial Like every day, are you telling me it's so funny?

I have this program on Instagram called scan my brain. I take influencers and I scan them and I did it with Megan Trainer uh the musician. I love her music and she says: I can't sleep and every night. before going to bed she is listening to True Crime and I say: stop it, do you think it's because I listen to True Crime before going to bed? I have this exercise that I recommend to all my patients. I've done it for 10 years. What went well when? I'm going to bed. I start at the beginning of the day and go hour by hour looking for what went well in my day.

I think that makes your dreams more positive. I think I do both and then I just watch. Which one works best for you every day? Earn or learn the key to immunity and infections from Bright Minds. So, do you know your vitamin D level? No, but I take the only supplement I take frequently. I would say there are two. vitamin D and omega-3, but as I'm also black I need more vitamin D, so people who have darker skin need to go from Africa where there is a lot of sun to the UK where there is no sun, dramatically increase the risk of mental health problems yes, due to vitamin D deficiencies, you know what?

I believe there is a certain member of my family who I will not name who came from Africa. They have two Nigerian parents who went from Africa to the UK. and I saw that his mental health deteriorated quite significantly to the point that we think this person might have bipolar disorder now and I, part of me, is suspicious once I learned about vitamin D deficiency in people who have the darker skin, this person has very, very, very black skin, um. that might be associated with that change of being in a new country that hasn't had sunlight for 30 years when you're black, black, you bet you are and it's part of that, if you look at mental health as brain health, then that it becomes a critical intervention.

If you're not paying attention to brain health, then you're wondering what anticho or mood stabilizer can I give you, and chances are I'll use an anticho or mood stabilizer, but if I can get your brain healthy, you may not need it. or you will need half the dose and then infections. I mean, we're just coming out of a pandemic and coid changes your brain in a negative way, it makes it explode like an inflammatory bomb in your brain. I was on the Kardashian show last year because I scanned Kendall Kendall came to see me and obviously I was on the show so it was public knowledge and it was postco and her emotional brain was on fire uh and that's what we saw with Co and Long Co emotional brain is hot but then the cortex starts to have little activity, it's a bad combination, why does that mean it's like a chronic damage and what does that mean if, in terms of behavior, what are the implications for behavior, so the hot limbic brain tenses anxiety? which she hadn't had um if you start damaging your cortex and suddenly you're sad, you're impulsive, you're irritable, you can have dark thoughts, sometimes even suicidal thoughts and people have coid, dementia increases significantly, anyone listening to this now same who is depressed clinically depressed um or just feels like you know the depressive symptoms where did you start? let's go to the extreme someone who doesn'tcan get out of bed.

I sat here with Jay Pinkit and she told me that she was clinically depressed and if she came in at 4 p.m. Every day for her that was a victory there are many people who are in that situation right now where did you start with those people what advice do you give them because I'm sure you see many of them in your practice? it starts with awareness yeah that maybe this isn't me maybe it's my brain mhm and then it starts with loving your brain and then researching your brain because depression is like chest pain so if anyone has chest pain, you say, where would it? you start well you start with an evaluation you wouldn't start with drugs I mean, that would be ridiculous you would like to go why do you have chest pain why are you depressed do you know how your thyroid is well the person who can't go out on the couch are, they could be hypothyroid or one of my friends became depressed, he had anemia, he had pernicious anemia because it was a B12 deficiency.

I wouldn't assume, oh, you're depressed, take this medication, depression is what it is, it's not why. It is and if you don't know why it is that way, how do you effectively deal with something? So many people come to me and leave. I have an autoimmune disorder. It's like, well, why do you have an autoimmune disorder? Why is your body so angry? He is attacking himself and that's why because my body is broken, but why is your body broken? And I hate the term broken in the show like broken brain and it's like no, it's not optimized, let's optimize it right.

I never want my patients to do it. Think of them as mental and I never want them to think they are broken. You are amazing, so how can I help you be maybe 10% more amazing? People feel like their brain is against them and working against them when they feel depressed. or those chronic cycles of negative thinking why is my brain attacking me why is it against me so part of it is that it's unhealthy and part of it is undisciplined and last year I had to give a lecture for the Miami Heat coaching staff. It's a lot of fun for me and I'm really thinking a lot about the Elite Performance and I think it's a much better model.

It's like you let me help you be the best you can be instead of letting me fix you and I think someone like you, I mean, it's like you're already amazing, how can I make you more amazing? How can I give you more access to your own brain? It's easier to sell that than you know, let me give you a diagnosis of a mental illness and then let me give you a medication that you will have to take for the rest of your life. This is the wrong model that psychiatry is currently operating with. Really good for the The pharmaceutical industry is really bad for our society. 25% of the US population takes psychiatric drugs.

That's just horrible. It is a psychiatric drug and I am not opposed to psychiatric drugs. Be very clear. I'm actually very good with them. It's never like that. The first and only thing I think about is what is the neurohormone n in brilliant minds, if the hormones that affect your brain, which are all of them, are not optimal, you are not optimal and the DNS is like you are cold when other people are . We should not look at your thyroid, D is diabesity where you are overweight and or have high blood sugar levels, it is the most common of the 11. 72% of people are overweight and as your weight increases you have 7 of the 11 factors risk, it decreases blood flow. the brain ages prematurely the brain increases inflammation stores toxins it's a bad thing and then the S is sleep I've recently become obsessed with my sleep I have my woop on almost all the time and they are the sponsors of this podcast I should probably say it, but also I'm like a shareholder in the company, but it's become one of my biggest obsessions in my life: waking up in the morning and seeing how I slept, how much deep sleep, restful sleep I've had. my heart rate variability, all that, I'm obsessed with it, what does sleep do to my brain?

I guess you said before that it somehow cleans it, cleans it and refreshes it well. We didn't even know it until I guess I was 10 or 12 years ago, researchers saw that the fluid system in your brain, called the glymphatic system, doesn't open when you're awake, but when you're asleep, it opens and then clears things out. , washes them and so on for those people. like me, who thought I was special because I could get by sleeping four hours a night. I'm like running with a toxic brain or a dirty brain and so what are those toxins? What does it clean?

Have you heard? of beta ameloid, which is a group of proteins that increases the risk of suffering from Alzheimer's disease, so they accumulate during the day. The system clears it out, but if you don't sleep well, you have a more toxic buildup of those kinds of clumped proteins that are problematic for you interesting interesting is there anything else people need to know about sleep in the brain? Because I think everyone knows that sleep is important. Many people struggle with sleep. Sleep apnea triples the risk of Alzheimer's disease. One of the great lessons that images have taught me. i can actually see the sleep apne pattern on a scan and it looks like early alzheimer's disease, the bilateral upper posterior parietal part of his brain slows down what he sleeps, he snores loudly, he stops breathing at night, he is chronically tired during the day next, so when you sleep you are breathing, you have a lot of apnic episodes where you stop breathing, etc., and if you sleep alone, you may not know it because your snoring doesn't wake anyone up, and even the people you have been diagnosed they do not do it.

You don't treat it because they don't want to wear the mask at night and I say no, you have to treat it, otherwise the worst thing you can do for your brain is deprive it of oxygen, that's the worst thing you can do for your brain. brain, then the work of breathing must be quite good for the brain. Breath work is good for the brain. One of my little habits, I have a lot of them for brain health, is the 15 second, uh, 8 second breath, hold it for a second and a half. seconds hold it for a second and a half do that four times eight times it will break a panic attack do it routinely it will increase your heart rate variability breathing work heart rate variability is this metric that I think much of society has suddenly become quite obsessed with including me, my friends and I literally have a heart rate and skills contest every morning where we like to capture our high rate variability and put it in the chat and some of my friends are trying to increase .

Of them one of my friends is called is my friend named Ash. I mentioned it before. He's been pretty low, so he's been trying to get it up. I guess we're going to have to ask two questions here, which is which is. variability and the second question is how can I improve it in your opinion so again you can't change what you don't measure and now people who use Apple watches or AA rings or devices that measure heart rate variability is beat to beat variability. beat. of your heart rate and people say oh well my heart rate should beat the same well no actually the more variable it is BU bum bum instead of bum bum bum bum bum um um The first time I heard about heart rate variability heart rate with babies is that when a baby is born, they actually put a monitor on the baby's scalp and watch the variability of the baby's heart rate and if it's very variable, it bounces all over the place, well, it's a sign of heart health when it flattens out and becomes uniform like it's only 70. go get the baby because that means the baby is in trouble doesn't make any sense, it's like counterintuitive, it's a little counterintuitive, but if the variability of your rate heart rate is low, you have a higher risk of anxiety, depression, and heart disease leading to premature death.

This means there is a huge connection between the health of your brain and the health of your heart, which is why meditation increases heart rate variability. The work of breathing increases heart rate variability. Exercise can increase heart rate variability. Getting enough sleep and good sleep hygiene can increase it. Ants decrease heart rate variability. I stopped drinking. alcohol for this very reason people don't know, but I mean, I've probably mentioned it twice on the air, but I think I stopped drinking alcohol about a month and a half ago and part of the reason is when I used my scream and then I had, I don't know, a glass of wine or two glasses or three glasses of wine the day before, when I woke up the next day, my heart rate variability was like a flash of red, it was 30 40, usually on a big day my heart rate variability is 150 140, which is strong, very strong.

I know this CU. I compete with my friends, but on a day where I had a glass of alcohol, it would flash red and it would be 40. Also, if I was sick, it would also be 40. If I had a really stressful day without sleep the day before, it would also be 40. and the fact that the alcohol was causing my heart to respond the same as a terribly stressful day without sleep or coid, I thought that and that's part of the reason. I stopped drinking alcohol and now that you have a brain Envy, yes, you will have a healthier brain if you keep it away because alcohol lies to us, alcohol lies to us, alcohol causes damage to the brain, really even a little alcohol causes damage. in the brain it alters something called white matter, so the gray matter, the nerve cells of the body, the white matter, the nerve cells track, so the white matter are the highways in the brain that transmit information and impulses, and Even a little alcohol has been shown to alter the white matter in your brain.

I don't want anything to ruin the highways in my brain, but I love that you measured it, made the connection, and then stopped it. It's a sign of intelligent life because you love yourself alcohol because there are a lot of people who are, they are on the fence about alcohol right now, they probably don't have a very bad relationship with it, they probably aren't alcoholics, but they just have it because society is built in such a way that On a Friday night, when the waiter comes and leaves the wine list, you just go, it's okay, whoever I am.

He was undecided. My friend, one of my best friends, was an alcoholic, so I understand why he quit because he had a really dysfunctional relationship with him that he would ruin. In his life I'm the type of person who would have a drink two drinks and then maybe stop. I didn't feel the need to take 3 4 S 19 he was different and that's also why there were no adverse consequences in my life, so when I went to him recently, he was writing a book about alcohol and alcoholism, he was telling me about the book and I personally wouldn't read that book because I don't feel like I have a problem with alcohol, this was before I quit so I thought about what I would love in a book, this is just me personally, it's a book that explains to people people who are sitting on the fence than a drink, a beer or a glass of wine Just because I don't know, society is built in such a way that it's hard to avoid it, but they might opt ​​for a mocktail if someone gave them some evidence based in the performance that alcohol, even a little, and casual consumption really matter.

This is where you come in, doctor, one of my biggest posts on Instagram was: I told you, the American Cancer Society came out and said that any alcohol increases the risk of seven different types of cancer and I've been talking about this for 30 years. because I have scans and people who drink alcohol have lower activity than people who don't drink at all and obviously alcoholics have terrible looking brains. Don't do that, but you have to ask yourself why and remember we talked about that. -page miracle what do you want relationships work money physical emotional spiritual health So where does alcohol come into that?

Oh well, it helps me relax nicely. The 15 second breath will help you relax, but it has no side effects that will increase your heart rate variability, alcohol will decrease heart rate variability and brain function and if it decreases brain function it decreases decision making as a psychiatrist 30 % 40% of the people I see initially come to my office because it is in some way related to alcohol, problems with their spouses with their children, whatever it is, I am so impressed that you notice the difference with heart rate variability and Then you stop, yeah, 'cause I'm out. I was offensive with alcohol and it's crazy.

Now I understand how difficult it is to stop in our society. I was telling my team that I quit and I went to dinner with a guy named SRX, everyone knows SRX is a sunny DJ and this was a week after I quit, I sat in the restaurant, the waiter came to bless him and said, here is the wine. ready I go I don't drink alcohol he goes he goes and takes a bottle of wine and puts it next to me and says this is not alcohol this is art I'm going to leave it next to you just in case you get tempted and Sunny, in his favor,Sunny tells this bartender that no, she doesn't drink, this drink doesn't have any of that in it, and in that moment I understood how hard it is to quit smoking in a society we've built where every social interaction seemingly requires it. be fueled by alcohol and if you say no, either you're weird or someone will try to change your mind or persuade you otherwise, it's just the culture we have the evil ruler The society I'm talking about is an evil ruler strategy the drug dealers food drug dealers alcohol dealers um for me, I just look at people like that and it's like, so why do you want me to drink when I don't want to?

When you go to a restaurant the first thing they do is put bread on the table and ask if you want alcohol because they both lower your frontal loes, they both make you more likely to order more and spend more money at the restaurant, so the bread It's an investment on your part because bread gives you a sugar spike, a blood sugar spike that then pushes the serotonin into your brain and makes you happy, but the serotonin decreases the function of the frontal lobe, something that you never they say when they give you an SSRIs for depression are oh, you'll become a little more impulsive because they'll drop the front and then alcohol, which also lowers the front, so you'll spend more money on the restaurant question than at this point of alcohol.

If I took two people off the street, let's say they do everything in their lives the same, apart from what I'm about to say, I gave one of them a casual drink for the next decade, maybe just two drinks a week, three drinks a week for the next decade and the other person was completely sober for the next decade when you looked at their brain in 10 years, if they were doing everything the same you would see a difference. Yes, the person who drinks two or three times a week will see it. they will have less blood flow in their brain and that will have changed the shape of their brain, yes it will shrink a little more and that means their behavior will change too, they will have a little less impulse control and when you look at the brain, there is a little less impulse control, when you're doing difficult things like marriage, it's not a good thing, or raising children or running a business, it's like you don't want a slightly worse decision, sex, sex and libido. many people are struggling with their sex life achieving an erection arousing men and women the brain and sex I imagine there are people who come to you and are going to listen to me and my wife me and my partner me and my husband we have stopped having sex I have lost my libido when you listen to that and you offer people advice about libido and sex what is the brain, right, your sex life improves a lot of it is about blood flow and if you have erectile dysfunction or low libido, eh, it has to be fine, why?

What are the risk factors with that? and a lot of them relate to what's going on in your brain and I, very often people go, I did everything you said and my wife is much happier with our sex life, um, you have to do it. check your hormones, I think that's very important, you have to deal with any sexual trauma that may be there, the largest sexual organ in the body is your brain, if there is no forethought, there is no foreplay, so it's about the decisions What do you take, what else do I need to know about sex?

If I'm trying to put my partner in a good mood and I'm trying to turn him on, you know it depends on his brain, okay, so if your partner has a very busy frontal thing, that part called the anterior singular gyrus you can't go, come on. , let's have sex because you've met people with the automatic system who know that no matter what you say, they're going to say the opposite or I'm going to worry about it, I mean, it's like today was a nice day, oh no, yesterday It was cuter, I mean even simple things, so you want to want to have sex.

No, I was at this conference once and someone approached me. a break and I said: you have helped me a lot. um, I thought my wife just didn't love me and what I realized is that part of her brain was working too much, so now I ask her the complete opposite, it's like, oh, like I wanted to go to the store, she never he would want to go with me and I'll go, so now what I do is go, I'm going to go to the store, you probably don't want to come, what do you mean? I don't want to come, of course I want to come, she said, but it doesn't sound right to say it, well you probably don't want to have sex, oh I'm coming, it's okay, I know her brain does this and I gave her natural things to stimulate. serotonin so I said take her to dinner with pasta so I'm not a fan of pasta in general except these people take her to dinner with pasta because pasta increases serotonin and then they take her for a walk around the lake because exercise increases serotonin and then they give him Give him a piece of dark chocolate, not too many because if you give him too many, he won't need you, but dark chocolate has peas in it. fenoy means alert your brain that something fun is about to happen and then kick it up a notch. baby powder because baby powder has been scientifically proven to be a natural aphrodisiac for women because what do women subconsciously associate with babies in baby powder and they subconsciously want one and then rub your back and don't ask for anything directly and from approximately day four until approximately? day 18 of your menstrual cycle you are probably lucky why day four to day 18 because it is the last week of a woman's menstrual cycle, especially people who have this type of brain tend to be more irritable is that before their period is before your period is okay, so the week before your period is when she two weeks before your period is generally the best time.

Men and women have significantly different brains, so this whole thing about you not being able to put your gender on your medical forms is just crazy. Stupid, uh, because gender matters, like estrogen and testosterone, they matter when it comes to brain function. I published a study on 46,000 scans looking at the differences between male and female brains and it's wild. Women have much better frontal loe function, much better blood. flows to the front of their brain, which makes them good leaders if you think about impulse control, collaboration and communication, and the only statistic that hits this home is who goes to jail 14 times more than the men, but women get depressed. twice as much as men because their limbic or emotional brain is much busier than the male brain and that is why in every human society women are the main caregivers of children.

Women have a greater nesting instinct, so I told them we moved recently and moving is a lot more. harder for women in general than for men because they feel like they lose their nest and have to rebuild it and I was an army psychiatrist for seven years and I always told the guys that it was like when you move, stay home and help her fix the house because she will be much happier for you with that impulse control, but I remember reading the statistics that men suffer from gambling and gambling addictions significantly more than women, addictions to drugs, alcohol and five times more that women, um, but women get help because they're not afraid to ask for help, whereas for men it's usually a sexist thing, it's like nothing's wrong with me, that's why women try to commit suicide three or four times more than the men, but the men commit suicide three times. to five four times more than women because men use more violent means and men do not communicate.

I'm in trouble saas SAA an exercise for the brain good for the brain so I'm a big fan of saunas uh because of studies, mainly from northern Europe, people who take the most saunas have the lowest incidence from Alzheimer's disease and I told you about my mercury detox is really important and you can detox in many different ways, but the sauna is one of the most effective ways to exercise. you want to stay young walk like you're late if you're 80 and can walk three miles per hour you have a 90% chance of living to be 90 if you can only walk one mile per hour you have a 90% chance of not living to be 90 years, so exercise increases blood flow, increases brain Dr. dve neurotrophic factor, increases serotonin, increases dopamine.

Another interesting thing is should you do cold dives because cold dives have been found to be quite dramatically increasing dopamine, so you should do cold dives, not if you have heart problems, so if you have heart problems, I wouldn't do that. , but if you have inflammation, if you have pain, if you tend to be depressed, there is evidence that cold soaks can be helpful. about weight on the brain when you look at someone who is clinically obese and you look at her brain, what do you see? If I'm trying to lose weight, what do I need to know about the brain?

You know, I've thought a lot. about this because I have obesity in my family um, as your weight increases, your brain size and function decreases and that's horrible, the good people that are and our society is against us. I mean, I just wrote a book called The Brain Warrior way. and I maintain that you are in a war for the health of your brain everywhere you go, someone is trying to shove bad food down your throat that will kill you. I can see the emotion on your face when you say this, yeah, it's just horrible, you know?

To think about Carl's Jr. taking these, you know, Charlotte McKinna or Katherine Webb, these beautiful women and making them eat cheeseburgers, and subconsciously people say that if you eat those burgers, these women will love you. , these women have spit buckets on those SATs. where every time they take a bite they spit it out because they never have those bodies if they ate that food we are being manipulated and it is causing what I think is one of the biggest epidemics that has ever existed uh obesity and because you are overweight the blood flow decreases aging inflammation stores toxins makes you feel bad about yourself take healthy testosterone we talked about you know why low takes healthy testosterone and turns it into unhealthy cancer that promotes forms of estrogen it's just a disaster what's going on I think you need to start count your calories and you know, I run into all kinds of scientists, calories don't count, it's complete bullshit, now the quality of your calories is just as important, but don't eat more than you need and we live in a society where the one we eat. too much and people don't know if you think about Cheesecake Factory and these monster portions, it's like it's crazy, and it's a great thing that changed, but the obesity epidemic really started when the US government, among others , demonized fat, everything went low fat in the 80's low fat low cholesterol and they put sugar in things to replace it, in fact it just came out recently it was in the 60's that some of the sugar companies paid scientists to say it was fat, not sugar, and it harmed millions of people.

The last thing I wanted to ask you is that there are really two outstanding questions that I have for you, Doctor, the first is about screen time, people want to know how this generation that has grown up 11 hours a day spends their screen time. day on a screen or on social networks. media up to 11 hours a day According to some studies, that has an impact on my brain, it shrinks it, it's sad, I mean what it does is wear down your pleasure centers, so you have these two areas in your brain called core. accumbens and they respond to dopamine and they bring you happiness and they bring you pleasure and they bring you motivation and they bring you drive and when you hit them like every buzz on your phone every notification every time you scroll and you like something I just got a small dose of dopamine, well the more you do it, you soon thrill them to death, you start to wear down those pleasure centers and if we take fame, for example, I've been lucky enough to see Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus and a lot of people really Fascinating and cool who has been very depressed.

It's like, how can you be depressed? You're Justin Bieber or how can you believe you're not right enough because your pleasure centers wear out from being noticed over and over again. Well, when you allow three and a half hours of screen time in your brain, if it's on for three and a half hours a day, you have a higher risk of anxiety, depression, addiction, obesity, ADHD, and our society is in for a lot more than that. . So why are we having this epidemic of teen suicide and mental health issues, especially on teen girls' social media? It's one of the big problems of the day and not only are you wearing out your pleasure centers, but you hate yourself because you think everyone is better than you are the comparison dragon that is harming you my last question is about the happiness of the one we're talking to there who I spoke to, I think it was a shot in the arm that told me that happiness takes on this kind of interesting arc throughout our lives.lives, where at the beginning of Our Lives we are a little happier, then in the middle of our Lives we are a little sadder, and then as we get older we become happy again.

Now I was contrasting that information with what you said about how the brain withers with age, if the brain withers with age, why do many neuroscientists think that happiness looks like this kind of U shape in our lives, where in the middle of our lives we are less happy, the beginning and the end we are happier? That's a great question: we try less as we get older, so after age 65 or 70 we've done a lot of the hard things we had to do, so depression also increases with age and obviously Dementia increases with age. I think it's because I don't have to achieve things, which makes the middle part so difficult, that we are more satisfied with the nature of Our Lives because we are not trying to get it right, if we are right, if we are not. then that becomes a problem and increases the risk of depression.

It's complicated, but isn't it? Because you know as you get older, you probably also have fewer connections, so that's a confounding factor and yeah, I wouldn't. I mean, I've seen that research. and I wrote a book about happiness, uh, because you know when I write a book it's going to take me six to nine months to write it and I ask myself what I really want to think about for the next six to n months and I loved it because just like negative thinking is a bad habit, happiness is also a habit and when I go to bed and do what went well for me today I feed happiness or throughout the day if I look for the micro moments of happiness, you know.

What is the smallest thing that will happen today that will make me happy? Then I'll just be happier. I hear all of this and I read it in your books and one of the things that I really take away personally is because I have so much information, what I need to do is pick a couple of these habits and basically put them on my calendar, like you talked about breath work. and about the Gratitude exercise at night and that kind of thing. get a couple of them and just plug them into my calendar because you know if they're not scheduled, they probably won't happen in their lives as busy as mine, so in addition to making small changes to things, you know, maybe about diet . or water or whatever it's like to drink a little less caffeine.

I already gave up alcohol. Make sure I focus on sleeping. Some of these I want to make routines in my life, so that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to take away from this that we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest without knowing who they'll leave it for and the question left for you is pretty perfect. Think, what have you changed your mind about in the last decade? Well, the first thing that comes to mind is this idea that I got from Dennis Prick, which is that happiness is a moral obligation.

I never thought of it that way. I grew up Roman Catholic. The idea was nowhere in my family, it was nowhere in the Catholic school that I went to and I'm grateful for my education, uh, and I'm grateful for my faith, but it was about duty and being ashamed instead of elevation and the fact that happiness is A moral obligation is this video that Dennis Prer produced and that I love called "Why Be Happy" and I never thought that how I feel influences everyone around me. If I'm unhappy, it's not just about me, it's about everyone I come into contact with. so working on myself is the most loving thing I can do for other people Daniel G.

Amen, thank you so much, thank you for an amazing conversation and also thank you for taking the time to look at my brain, and you're absolutely right now. I am aware that that brain even exists after seeing it, it is almost as if it were like Pablo, my dog. Now I feel the responsibility to take care of it and I think that added to everything you have imparted to me about the fact that I can do something about it. It changes my life and you know, I could have sat here all day and read tens of thousands of comments that I saw online about the work that you are doing to help people live happier, healthier, healthier lives and the consequences that that has for generations, I think, is perhaps the most special thing of all, because if you can tilt someone's brain in a better direction, you're not just tilting their brain. in a better direction, you are tilting the coming generations of brains in a better direction and that will only tilt society in a better direction and that is exactly the work you are doing.

I know we talked about your father last time. You know, a lot of times we don't get the praise from our parents that I guess we always crave, but I really hope you understand how proud everyone is of you, all the patience with which you've invested time and love and energy into everything. the people who listened to this show were leaning in a better direction because of you and me too, my life was leaning in a better direction because of you, so thank you, thank you so much, what a joy, oh.