How to Protect Your Brain Before It's Too Late | Dr. Daniel Amen – EP 802

0:00Pop quiz. What's in your kid's lunchbox? At Whole Foods Market, they've already done the studying. Over 300 food ingredients are banned from their shelves. No hydronated fats in the peanut butter and no high fructose corn syrup in the cookies. And for sandwiches, there are no synthetic nitrates or nitrites in any of their deli meat. So you can pack lunchboxes with peace of mind. Get back to school ready at Whole Foods Market. Everyone treats summer like it owes you happiness. Long days, pool parties, your best life on a loop. So what does it mean when you feel worse? The summer blues are real.

0:39It's why summer is one of the busiest stretches of the year for people starting therapy. Therapy is not only for when you're in crisis. Grow therapy is for all the moments when you decide you want more. More support, more clarity, more tools. Mental health isn't a destination you reach. It's something you build, and Grow makes that easier. Grow connects you with thousands of high-quality licensed therapists across the U.S., offering both virtual and in-person sessions, nights, and weekends. You can search by what matters, like insurance, specialty, identity, or availability, and get started in as little as two days.

1:20There are no subscriptions, no long-term commitments. You just pay per session. Grow helps you find therapy on your time. The therapist you want takes your insurance on Grow. Grow accepts over 125 insurance plans. Sessions average$21 with insurance, and some pay as little as$0 depending on their plan. Visit growtherapy.com slash book now today to get started. That's growtherapy.com slash book now. growtherapy.com slash book now. Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan. Today on Passion Struck, Dr. Daniel Amen issued a warning about modern culture that stopped me in my tracks.

2:03Take a listen to this. If I was an evil ruler and I wanted to create mental illness, I have this thought experiment in my book, The End of Mental Illness. I'd create American society. Every commercial is online gambling, alcohol, fast food, pharmaceuticals. We are being brainwashed in such a bad way and is stealing the brain health of America. Hey, it's your friend John, and welcome to PassionStruck. I'm so glad you're here. Whether you're a longtime listener or someone who just discovered the show, thank you for pressing play today. Maybe you've built the life you were supposed to want, but you've quietly wondered why it still doesn't feel like enough.

3:05If that's you, you're in the right place. Every week, I sit down with the world's top scientists, researchers, and thinkers to uncover what it actually takes to build an intentional life that matters. Thanks for joining me. Let's get into it.

3:25Hey, it's your friend, John, and welcome back to PassionStruck. I am so glad you're here. Today is episode 802 and the beginning of a brand new series we're calling the adaptive brain, how your mind learns, changes, and heals. Over the next month, we're going to explore one of the most remarkable discoveries in modern neuroscience, that your brain is not fixed. It's constantly adapting, learning, and changing. And understanding how it works may be one of the most important investments you ever make in yourself. Let me ask you something. Have you ever wondered why change can feel so hard, even when you know exactly what needs to change.

4:05Maybe you tried to break the same habit over and over again. Maybe you promised yourself this time will be different. Or maybe you've done the work, you've read the books, listened to the podcast, gained incredible insight into why you think and behave the way you do. And yet you still find yourself slipping back into the same patterns. What if that problem is a lack of motivation? What if it isn't a lack of discipline? What if we've been asking the wrong question? all along. Because understanding yourself isn't the same as changing yourself. And that's exactly where today's conversation begins.

4:39By the end of today's episode, you'll understand why lasting transformation requires more than willpower. How chronic stress, loneliness, trauma, and even our daily habits reshape the brain. Why our automatic thoughts become powerful architects of our future. and most importantly, why Daniel Amen believes no one is ever too damaged or too late to build a healthier brain. Our guide for this conversation is Dr. Daniel Amen, someone who I've always wanted to have on this podcast and someone you have requested time and time again. Dr. Amen is a physician, psychiatrist, founder of Amen Clinics, bestselling author and one of the world's leading authorities on brain health.

5:24After studying hundreds of thousands of brain scans over more than three decades, he's challenged the way we think about mental health, arguing that before we can change our lives, we need to understand and care for the brain that creates every thought, emotion, decision, and relationship we experience. But here's what stayed with me long after we stopped recording. This wasn't really a conversation about brain scans or even neuroscience. It was a conversation about hope. Because so many people walk through life believing they're broken, that they're simply wired this way, that this is just who they are.

6:02Daniel challenged that belief. He reminded me that if the brain can adapt, then our future doesn't have to look like our past. And I can't think of a better place to begin this new series. So let's dive in. Here's my conversation, the one and only Dr. Daniel Amen. Thank you for choosing PassionStruck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life that matters. Now, let that journey begin.

6:33I am absolutely honored today to have Dr. Daniel Amen on PassionStruck. Daniel, it is so great to finally get to meet you. Thank you, John. Thank you for helping me spread the message of brain health. It's an important message. And for me personally, and it's an extremely important message because for most of my life, I have been trying to figure out how do I preserve my brain? I had my first traumatic brain injury when I was five years old, and it completely changed much of my personality. Over the past four or five decades, it has been a learning experience for me and something that I've probed deeply.

7:15You are someone I've always wanted to talk to about this. I wanted to start out, Daniel, if someone from 1995 walked into the world we live in today and looked only at our brains, what would surprise them the most? What's happened in the past 30 years? We've been destroying dopamine in the brain. It started a little bit before then with video games, but then cell phones, social media, constant negative news, the political divide. It has just caused great stress. Suicide from 2000 to now has gone up over 60 percent. And young people are in serious trouble. 57 % of teenage girls report being persistently sad.

8:13People think of alcohol as a health food, marijuana is innocuous, psilocybin is the next savior. We're really in a dangerous, very stressful time, especially for young people. That begs an interesting question. What concerns you more right now? what substances like those that you just mentioned are doing to our brain or what chronic stress, loneliness, and disconnection are doing to them? I think it's all of it. If I was an evil ruler and I wanted to create mental illness, I have this thought experiment in my book, the end of mental illness. I'd create American society. I love basketball. It's public knowledge.

9:08A couple of my patients are NBA players. And so I love watching the playoffs and the finals. But it's every commercial is online gambling, alcohol, fast food, pharmaceuticals. And I'm like, no, we are being brainwashed in such a bad way. And on the Lord's Prayer, it ends with deliver us from evil. And I'm right there with Jesus in this. It's like we have to do something about the evil in our society that is stealing the brain health of America. But as a grandfather and a father, it's stealing our young people's future. Yeah. Out of those evils that you mentioned, which of the modern habits that we have worries you the most, yet society is still treating as completely normal?

10:24If we just took the political divide, and I hate it, that if you scroll on TikTok or Instagram and you click on something that's center left or center right now all of a sudden they're going to feed you content yeah that makes you more left or more right and pretty soon you begin to hate people that 30 years ago you loved that yes you could have a disagreement but you'd still go to Thanksgiving dinner. And it's so bad now that friends of mine, they're like, oh my goodness, that's such a different perspective. I never hear that. And we are being manipulated for profit. And that's what I want people to really see.

11:31There's a reason that the court in New Mexico awarded a verdict against Meta for$345 million. There's a reason that a jury in Los Angeles found Meta and YouTube guilty of manipulating young people's minds. And I'm just not okay with it. And I think it's important for those of us who see the evil to speak out. And now Australia, last week Britain, there's legislation in Canada to ban social media for children under 16, which is just rational. it. Let's take a step back here for a second. One of my favorite interviews I've done on this show was with Dr. Anna Lemke, who I'm sure you're familiar with, who wrote Dopamine Nation, and she and I explored what you're talking about in death.

12:31She was actually one of the people who testified in those trials you just mentioned. And I think we're talking about two different things. In the New Mexico trial, they were focused on how they're using the technology to allow predators access to kids. And then the case in Los Angeles was about a specific female who they created thousands of images of how she was distorting her own self-perception because of the filters that, as I understand it, Instagram was giving them. But in both cases, I think what's happening is we're fundamentally giving a technology to users who should not be exposed to this technology.

13:15Where do you think the issue is? Is it with the technology? Is it with the parents? That's what a lot of the listeners who ask me about this, those are the questions they're asking. Dr. Well, I think it's everybody that if you give your child a cell phone before the age of 13, you've just significantly increased their risk of having a mental illness. And children who get them at five or six, this brand new study, have a dramatically increased risk of suicidal thoughts when they're 20. The constant

13:58comparison against other people's lives. When you and I were children, we did that, but we didn't do it at the speed or the scale that is happening now. And then it's how long can I keep your attention? And food companies know this, right? The sugar cereals are on the bottom two shelves because they want stomach share and they know the children will see them and they'll harass their parents to get them. So it's part of marketing forever. They're just masterful at getting you to stay on longer. But how do they get you to stay on longer? these little dopamine squirts it's like whoa and if they can make you angry sad anxious you're going to stay longer now i don't know that they purposefully thought that but that's what they discovered, the brain pays attention to what makes it afraid or what makes it mad way before what makes it happy, what makes it joyful, what makes it have a positive thought.

15:24And so So we're driving attention with fear and negativity. And yeah, I just think it's damaging. Not a generation, but generations of people. I'm not sure if you're familiar with the psychologist Gordon Flett, who just retired from York University up in Toronto. Gordon is one of the foremost experts in the world on the science of mattering. And his research found something pretty remarkable. In his studies, he found that only 8 % of parents believed that their children sometimes felt like they didn't matter. Yet when they interviewed the children, over 35 % of them reported that they either didn't matter or weren't sure they mattered.

16:13And what I found so interesting about this is that most of those parents love their children deeply. They simply weren't communicating the signals that they thought they were. I wanted to ask you, do you think this is part of what's going into when you talked about the teenage girls having this higher sense of sadness and despair that the developing brain is changing with a child who's consistently questioning whether they're seen by the world around them? I love that research. With the distractions, the bond is loosening between parents and children. And nobody talks about it, and I'll probably get harassed for talking about it.

17:02But we're now in our third or fourth generation of working mothers. So when I was growing up, my mom volunteered, my mom played golf, but my mom was mostly there. I had an anchor, even though I'm one of seven children, I had an anchor. Now in California, probably the same in Florida, 80 to 90 % of moms work outside the house. And I published a big study on the differences between male and female brains. And this means it's our third or fourth generation of tired women, because they're primary caretakers for the home. They're primary caretakers for the kids. There's not one society on the face of the earth where males are the primary caretakers.

17:57And now they're working outside the house. And so they're chronically stressed, chronically overwhelmed. And it's really, what does bonding require? So bonding requires two things, time, actual physical time and listening. But now the modern family, when you go to a restaurant, it's all five of people are on their phones and they're not paying attention to each other. Yes, the digital devices are clearly problematic, but also having tired parents who struggle to afford their mortgage, especially here in a place like California, is part of this sort of trouble with the family, along with a decrease in church attendance and belief in God.

19:08Because when you think it's about you, you're much more likely to get depressed than if you think you're here for a purpose. Yeah, I think you're right about parents. When I think about mattering, I almost think of mattering as like our social immune system. And if you've got parents who themselves feel like they're disappearing into their own life, who aren't showing up and feeling that they themselves matter, then how are they going to show up for their kids, as you were just explaining? And I was lucky. My mom was a stay-at-home mom. And then we were fortunate enough that when I was raising my two kids, my wife was able to stay at home.

20:00And I can definitely see the difference in my kids when people meet them and they talk about their behavior, their instincts, the nurturing that they have that's inside them, I think it makes a huge difference. So I think you're onto something there, regardless of what parent is the one who's spending most time at home. Well, because of their guilt, because they want to be with them, and they want to nurture them, but there's this gnawing sense that I'm not enough, I'm not doing enough that parents today tend to overdo. And I did a post, I was on a podcast, and I said this one thing, and it ended up getting 50 million views.

20:55It still blows me away. I think it's the most popular thing I've ever said. When you do too much for your children, you are building your self-esteem by stealing theirs. That self-esteem comes from feeling competent. Oh, I can solve this problem. But when you say, I'm bored, and your parents scrambles to help you not be bored, they've just robbed you from the opportunity to figure out, well, what can I do so I don't feel bored? So it's very important. Yes, of course, we have to protect our children, but we also want them to pay the consequences for bad decisions when the price is inexpensive. So when they're seven or when they're 10 or when they're 12, rather than when they're 17.

21:59We'll be right back with more of my conversation with Dr. Daniel Amen. As you're listening today, I want you to consider one question. What is your environment teaching your brain about worth? Throughout this conversation, Daniel explains that our brains are constantly adapting to our stress, our relationships, our habits, and the messages we hear every day. One of the ideas I've spent the last several years researching is what happens when those messages quietly tell us something else, that we're valuable only for what we produce, that we're invisible unless we perform, and that our significance depends on our success.

22:38I call this the great erasure, the slow, often invisible process of disappearing in plain sight as systems reward our utility while overlooking our humanity. That's the heart of my new book, The Mattering Effect, coming this October. It's about understanding the hidden forces of systemic unmattering, and more importantly, how we reclaim our sense of worth, connection, and significance in a world that too often teaches us the opposite. You can pre-order at thematteringeffect.com. If you'd like to explore these ideas even further, every episode in our new Adaptive Brain series includes a companion workbook inside the Ignited Life on Substack, where you'll find practical exercises to help you apply what you're learning to your own life.

23:25You can find links to both in today's show notes. Now, a quick break for today's sponsors. Thank you for supporting those who support the show.

23:40you're listening to passion struck right here on the passion struck network and let's get back to the conversation with dr daniel amen i know we're talking about kids and their development but i understand when it comes to the brain that it's very important to protect the brain especially before we reach about 25 found. Why is that protective nature so important and what happens to our brains if they're exposed to the wrong things before that age? See, your brain continues to develop throughout life, but it really is undergoing wild development until you're about 25 in girls and maybe 28 in males, there's a process called myelination where all of your nerve cells get wrapped with a white fatty substance called myelin.

24:36And when we're born, we don't have much. About two months old, our occipital lobes in the back become myelinated. That's why when you smile at a baby when they're born, they don't smile back. But when you smile at them at two months, they notice it, they process it, and they respond. Well, that slowly goes forward. And when you're about 25, it myelinates your prefrontal cortex, that most human, thoughtful part of us. And this is why it's so important to educate kids about brain health so they don't drink early. They don't smoke pot early. They don't do drugs early. They don't hit soccer balls.

25:30I know we have the World Cup going on, but protecting the developing brain is critical because that's what's going to take them through the rest of their lives. And it's so basic, but most people don't really think about. Your brain is involved in everything you do. How you think, how you feel, how you act, how you get along with other people. It's the organ of intelligence, character, and every decision you make. And when it works right, you work right. And when it doesn't, you don't. And every day, you are building brain reserve, the extra tissue you have to deal with whatever stress comes your way, where you're damaging or stealing your reserve.

26:22So your first head injury at five, that took some of your reserve. And then the subsequent ones you've had, it took. But if you're raised in a consistently loving home with decent nutrition and good opportunities and not a ton of stress because your mom or dad are not addicts, then it can help reverse the trouble. So if you are a person who, during those developmental years before you were 25, experienced different elements that would affect your brain health, what options are there for you to try to treat it and turn around some of the damage that might've been done? my big book change your brain change your life it's all about neuroplasticity and how if you put the brain in a healing environment it can be better even if you've been bad to your brain and from my perspective I think you have to look right if you don't look at your brain how do you actually know what's going on.

27:44It's psychiatrists are the only medical doctors who virtually never look at the organ they treat. Think about that. Why would you ever fly blind if you didn't have to? And then brain health is three things. It's brain envy, got to care about it, avoid things that heard it, know the less. We've talked about some head trauma, chronic stress, not exercising, bad food, gum disease, low hormones, poor sleep, being overweight, and then do things that help it. And so if we just take video games, for example, all of a sudden, all these children that are spending hours playing video games, their vitamin D level is plummeting because they're not outside.

28:35Their level of exercise is plummeting, so their weight goes up, their blood sugar goes up because they're not moving their bodies. I have a mnemonic you might like or an acronym you might call bright minds. You want to keep your brain healthy or rescue it. You have to prevent or treat the 11 major risk factors. Bright minds like B is for blood flow, R is retirement and aging, I is inflammation, and so on. And I love it so much because it really tells us what not to do. So for blood flow, smoking, don't do that because it constricts blood flow. And then what to do? exercise. Eat colorful fruits and vegetables and dark greens because they increase blood flow.

29:33Daniel, one thing that strikes me is we're talking about brain health far more than we did decades ago, which is why I opened up with the question from 1995. Yet anxiety, depression, ADHD, and burnout, and as you said, suicide rates all continue to rise. What do you think we're still getting wrong? Very few people love and care for their brain. I had this great lunch recently with Lisa Trout. And Lisa and her husband, Kenny, own Justify. So Justify is the last Triple Crown winning racehorse. And we have a high school course called Brain Thrive by 25. We teach kids to love and care for their brain.

30:22And often in the class, I'll go, he had a million dollar racehorse. Would you ever feed it junk food? And all the kids go, no. And I go, well, why? And it's like, well, he wouldn't win. And so now I'm sitting next to the woman who owns the last Triple Crown winner. And I'm like, Lisa, would you ever be justified junk food? And she laughs. She goes, no. I said, would you ever get them drunk? And she laughed and she goes, no. I said, well, would you ever get them stoned? And she rolled her eyes at me. And I'm like, why? He would never live up to his potential. I love that answer so much. But Clearwater, Florida or Newport Beach, where I live, drive down the street, fast food restaurants everywhere.

31:26There's this crazy study that was done on aspartame. Aspartame came out about 1980. It's now in 5 ,000 products. Like you can't really buy gum without aspartame or sugar-free gum. And so they did a study. They gave mice aspartame in a normal dose, and it made them really anxious. But the thing about the study that just was so surprising. Their babies were anxious who never had aspartame. It created epigenetic changes. Their grand babies were anxious. So I think there's probably dozens of these sleeper exposures that are going on in our society that help explain the skyrocketing autism rates, the increase in ADHD beyond the dopamine destroyers we talked about early, that there's environmental gene interactions that are going on and we don't understand.

32:44Plus, there's nowhere in school where we teach kids to manage their minds. I was 28 years old in my psychiatric residency. One of our professors said, you have to teach your patients not to believe every stupid thing they think. And I'm like, but I believe every stupid thing I thought. I have 25 years of education and no one had ever taught me to manage my mind. We need to make that part of school. I want to extend this question to the topic of flourishing. I was interviewing Richie Davidson, and Richie was talking to me about his new book, Born to Flourish. And he was saying that he thinks that a big reason people aren't flourishing like we used to isn't the absence of illness.

33:38But he was alluding to the same thing you are. It's the active cultivation of us not focusing on our well-being over time. Do you think that because of the way we're living, it is leading to why so many people today are feeling like they're not flourishing, like they're not living the life that they feel they could be because their brain just doesn't feel like as healthy as it should be because of the way we're treating it over a period of time? it's public knowledge that i was justin bieber's doctor and i am miley cyrus's doctor and i've treated lots of wonderful high profile people they'll have the same thought i'm not enough and i've looked at justin and i'm like so where did you get that thought or miley it's like where did you get that thought if you're not enough who would be but that's what social media does to you it's the constant comparison of numbers of followers of likes of comments and then if you add the bots that I would do an Instagram live and within 15 seconds of me being on Dr.