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

31:44Understand and process their traumas and treat whatever psychiatric issues may be present. Like in your case, the ADD. And I think we start with this supplement or even consider medication. Talk about the natural ways to do it, the medicine ways to do it. And for me, I am not opposed to medicine. I'm actually really good at it. But it's never the first and the only thing I think about. I've really never taken medication in my life. Even like if I get ahead, I don't take medication. I'm not the type of person. I probably haven't taken a pill in like really in years. The only time I've taken medication is if I have a severe infection of sorts.

32:38So like there was this one time where like my foot was going green and I'd still done some glass, whatever. And it was really getting out of control. I'm talking like a two inch purple thing growing on my foot. And I thought, okay, instead of getting my leg cut off, I'll take this medication, the doctor's given me. Otherwise, I just do not take it. So I will rather go through severe pain than take medication because I believe that my body can fix things. So when I think about taking a DD medication or ADHD medication, I don't really know the difference. I go, well, if I'm messy or if I'm my handwriting's bad or whatever it might be, then that's just who I am.

33:19And that's okay. I can get better at it. I can be less, I can be more organized. But why do I want to take medication? Well, I'm not going to be the one to sell you on medication. But what I would say is... So a lot of times people ask me the side effects of medication. And for stimulants, for ADD, it could be a decrease as your appetite, or it can negatively affect your sleep. But you always have to ask the second question. Which is, what are the side effects of not taking the medicine? What's the impact on your life, on your business, on your money, on your relationships, on your health? Because living with untreated ADD for many people, and maybe not you, but for many people, it goes with chronic stress.

34:15Because of the negative things that tend to go along with it. And for you, you're clearly not broken. But are you optimized? Do you have full access to your own brain? And I would argue, no. And we can do better. But we can do it in steps. And ultimately, I see my job is giving people options, and then telling them the pros and cons of each option, and then letting them choose. That's what good doctors should do. It's called informed consent. And I can just tell you my experience. I told you the story with my daughter. And I've seen that play out thousands of times. That people just become more optimized.

35:25And it's not necessarily the medicine. But that medicine, when it's for the right brain, right, the wrong brain, it makes people worse. And if you read my book, Healing ADD, I talk about the Ring of Fire ADD. So ADD and ADHD are different terms for the same thing. 1980, the American Psychiatric Association's DSM, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, I hate that. But what we have was Attention Deficit Disorder, ADD, with or without hyperactivity. 1987, God knows for what reason, they changed the name to ADHD. Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, basically throwing out half the people who have it.

36:14Because half the people who have ADD or ADHD are never hyperactive. And they don't get diagnosed because they don't bring enough negative attention to themselves for parents to go, you have a problem. And you're giving me a problem. So anyway, it's different names for the same thing. And if you can manage it by having extra help for the things you're not good at, with exercise, with all of the good habits you have, well, that's awesome. If you want to be 10 % more focused, like I treat this writer, and she only takes medicine when she has to get stuff done. But she never takes it when she writes, because she has 16 plotlines going on at once in her books.

37:19And she goes, now I think it decreases my creativity a little bit. Interesting. Because the fact that we're meditating the brain -like mind, I go, is that for professional optimization? Because if you just go back, like, I don't know a couple hundred years, if you go back even further to a time when we couldn't read or write, there wasn't computers and all of these things, you would have had no idea. But if you go back far, you wouldn't have been able to tell a really an ADHD brick. Well, what I'm trying to say is - But you wouldn't be able to tell their life. I mean, I have a patient from Ethiopia.

38:00And I'm like, so tell me the impact in your culture. And he said, the people of severe ADHD get excluded because they can't be relied on. And the isolation causes great shame and pain. And they have no idea it's a brain thing. Where does it come from, ADHD? What ADD? Well, it's genetic. It's clearly genetic. I mean, if I don't see it in someone's family, I think head trauma. And with you, I think that's possible because of soccer, except you see it in your family. Is it a defect or is it a difference? It's a difference. If I chose to take a drug, was it like, you called it Ritalin. So Ritalin would be one of the options.

38:59What exactly would it do under brain scanning to my brain? So if I scanned my brain and took the drug, what would you see in my brain? My can tell you, it would activate your cerebellum. Okay, that was a bit sleepy. It was a bit sleepy. And it would activate your prefrontal cortex. And it would give your brain better energy. So my first specks scan, 1991, a woman, shredded killer self the night before. I went to the lecture on brain -specdimaging and then I walked out of the lecture and she was my new patient. Her name was Sandy, shredded killer self the night before. And as I'm getting to know her, I'm thinking she has ADD.

39:43She's an eight -year -old son who has ADD, talked about the genetic connection. She had an IQ of 144, but never finished college. And I'm like, how'd you study? She said, well, I never really did, except maybe the night before a test I put on a pot of coffee, stay up all night cramming, and then I take the test. It's a classic ADD way of doing things. And I'm like, you know, I think maybe you have adult ADD. And she goes, oh, adults don't have ADD. And I'm thinking, I'm the doctor. But I'm like, how about if we look at your brain? And I knew from other work I'd done that I should do a twice at rest and concentration.

40:26And when she tried to concentrate her brain completely deactivated, turned off. Like for you, well, I ended it once, but if I had done it twice, probably your brain would be busy or at rest. And then when you try to do it, it would drop. And I put the pictures on a couple of days later, I put the picture on the table in front of her. And as I explained it to her, she started to cry. And she said, you mean it's not my fault. And I said, having ADD is sort of like people who need glasses. And I were glasses to drive and took my glasses out, put them on. And I said, people, where glasses aren't dumb crazy, you're stupid.

41:08High balls are shaped funny. And we wear glasses to focus. I said, people like ADD aren't dumb crazy or stupid. Some of the brightest people I know. But their frontal lobes deactivate. Taking the medicine is like glasses for your frontal lobes help you focus. And she did it. She was conflict driven. She's always poking her husband. They got into a huge fight, which is why she tried to kill herself. She stopped that. She's a better mom. She went back and finished college. I mean, her life's... It's like your brain with glasses. Well, my friends that take medication for ADD say that to me. They say it's like their life is before and after that moment.

41:51So I've, you know, I completely believe what you're saying. Second ago you said this phrase when we were talking about the M, which is your mental health and the impact that has on the development of a brain that's either healthier or unhealthy. And you said this thing about, you've got to make sure you kill the ants, which is killing those negative thoughts. That's much easier said than done. How does someone go about killing their negative thoughts? Is there a process they can go through to do that? Yeah, it's a habit, right? And it's not hard. But like any habit, you have to do it repeatedly, like over and over and over and over and over and over.

42:31Whenever you ever thought your brain releases chemicals. Whenever you have a bad thought, a sad thought, a mad thought, your brain releases a certain set of chemicals that make you feel bad immediately. Your hands get cold. They start to sweat. Your muscles get tense. You start to breathe erratically. And it all happens instantaneously. Whenever you have a positive thought, happy thought, a hopeful thought. A loving thought. Like I'm back because I love the first time. It's on the podcast with you. A completely different set of chemicals come out. And your hands get warmer, drier, your breathing slows down, your heart beats in a healthier.

43:19And it happens like immediately. People have ADD since we're talking about that. They tend to go more toward negative thoughts. Because negative thoughts are more stimulating.

43:34And here's the exercise. Whenever you feel sad or mad or nervous or out of control, write down what you're thinking. And then ask yourself, is it true? Is it absolutely true? This is a process I learned from my friend, Byron Katie. How do I feel when I have this thought? How do I act when I have this thought? And what's the outcome of the thought? So is it true? Is it absolutely true? How do I feel, act, and the outcome of the thought? How would I feel if I didn't have the thought? How would I act if I didn't have the thought? What's the outcome of not having that thought? Then my favorite part of it is take the original thought, Tana never listens to me.

44:28Tana's my wife. I've had that thought.

44:33And then turn it to the opposite. Tana does listen to me. And then just ask yourself whether or not that's true. And by directing my thoughts, by managing, so rather than being a victim, so many of my patients are victims of their thoughts. Until they do the work. This is one of the things where do at the FIC, write down 100 of your worst thoughts. Take them through that process. And by the time you get to 30, they'll 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? Yes. And in my new book, Change Your Brain Everyday, there's actually pictures of Noel Nelson.

45:23She was writing a book called The Power of Appreciation. And I had her, she wanted me to scan her while she was appreciating her brain. And it looked beautiful. And I'm like, as I'm showing it to her, I'm like, you need to come back tomorrow, and I want you to hate yourself. And she goes, oh, I don't want to do that. I'm like, come on, you have to suffer for science. And I said, we have a positive scan, and then we had negative scan. And the negativity dropped her left temporal lobe, her left frontal lobe, and her cerebellum. So interesting. I mean, similar to what your scan looks like. But hers was way worse.

46:07I mean, it was a healthy brain, and then a deactivated brain. And that explained to me, athletic slumps. It's like, why do people get an athletic slumps? Because negativity turns off their cerebellum. And they become just a little less coordinated. And I'm not a fan of positive thinking. I'm a fan of accurate thinking, with a positive spin. So positive thinking is I can have this third piece of cheesecake, and it's not going to negatively impact my body or my brain. Like, no. The don't worry, be happy people. Die the earliest of accidents and preventable illnesses. So a lot of people come to me for anxiety.

47:02And I'm like, oh, 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's 15. I want you to have enough anxiety. You do the right things. Somewhat linked to that is a word you used as well, which is stress. When we're talking about the M in bright minds, how to have healthy brains. What role does stress play on our brains? Stress, especially chronic unremitting stress. So if we think of the stress you had growing up, where there was a lot of fighting, it raises a hormone called cortisol. Cortisol begins to shrink activity in the hippocampus, one of the major memory and learning centers in the brain.

47:55So one could at least argue or postulate your struggle in school was because your emotional brain was busy, because you were worried about things at home. It makes it more likely to get infections. It makes it more likely that you have learning problems. And trauma. Trauma was the other way to use it, which I thought was worth diving into. The impact that trauma has on our brains. And just trauma show up when you scan someone's brain. Can you see it? Yes, so trauma shows up as that diamond pattern, which is why I asked you about it. It's your emotional brain. And to your singular at the top, it's the brain's gear shifter.

48:41Thalamus often involved in moot, basil ganglia, migdala involved in anxiety. So we often see worry, anxiety, and sadness. And it shows up as that diamond pattern. That after people do EMDR, a specific psychological treatment for trauma comes it down. And I say psychological treatment, I'm like, yeah, but it has biological effects. It's a very interesting treatment. So I get you to, like, first thing, write down 10 big traumas in your life. And we'll go after the worst one first. And have you bring it up. And there's a whole process to it. Have your eyes go back and forth while you bring it up.

49:28And it's so interesting the connections your brain will make to it. But as you process it, you find you're actually less bothered by it. And it's masterful, single incident traumas like being robbed or being in a car accident. For chronic trauma, it takes longer. But it's so helpful. When I met my wife 18 years ago, her A -score adverse childhood experiences on a scale of 0 to 10, how many bad things happened to you, was an eight. And I was so taken with this woman. And one of my first gifts to her was 10 sessions of EMDR. One, I wanted to see if she would, like, wrestle with her traumas. She went for two years.

50:23And I'm absolutely convinced that's one of the reasons she and I rarely fuss with each other. Because we don't trigger each other. When you talk about trauma, it's not these big T traumas that some people sometimes talk of, which is, you know, when I was young, I was fondled by my uncle, for example. It can also be an isolated incident that happened when you were an adult. Absolutely. It can be anything that attacks your sense of safety, either physical or emotional. Getting fire is traumatic for a lot of people, not performing in an important situation. It can be traumatic. And that changes the activity within your brain.

51:13Well, it depends on how strong it is. If it was really strong. If it was really strong. Then the activities, the centers of your brain, we'd talk about. Well, and there's one thing we haven't talked about yet, called brain reserve, which is how healthy was the brain that you brought into trauma. Because you can take two soldiers, put them in the same tank and expose them to the same blast, the same angles, everything's the same. One walks away unharmed. The other one's permanently disabled. Why? It's the brain they brought into the trauma. And so, if your mother used drugs, while she was pregnant with you, she decreased your reserve.

52:01If your mom and dad fought a lot, or they separated when 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's decreasing your reserve. So, all of us have a certain level of reserve when we go into that trauma. And some people get post -traumatic growth that they're actually better after the trauma. They make the trauma and make something meaningful out of it. And other people have post -traumatic stress, where it really causes them to suffer. So, I'd love the idea of brain reserve, because I'm always thinking of boosting mine.

52:49Yeah, because then also when something traumatic happens, I'm in a better place, right? Right. Like, if you kill the ants, if your ant population is low. My automatic negative thoughts. Right. So, if you're masterful, if you have an ant eater running around in your head, cleaning up the negative thoughts that all of us have, when you go into that trauma, you're just better able to deal with it, then if you have an undisciplined mind that's infested, and there's nowhere in school that people teach you to kill the ants, we have a foundation called the Change Your Brain Foundation. And I love it so much.

53:33We're dedicated to research, education, service. But last year, we produced this new course called Brain Thrive by Five. So, it's for preschoolers, kindergarten, grade one, where we teach kids to love and care for their brain. It's like 30 modules, or six to seven minutes long. And six of them aren't learning to kill the ants. And little kids just love that. You don't have to believe every stupid thing you think. And I don't know if you know, but Jerry Seinfeld once said, the brain is a sneaky organ. We all have weird, crazy, stupid, sexual, bio -on -thought. That nobody should ever hear, and just because you have a bad thought, doesn't even mean you believe the thought.

54:22It's not the thought you have that make you suffer. It's the thought you attach to that make you suffer. I get all sorts of crazy thoughts, and I'm like, my brain is so creative. But I don't believe most of them. Q1 is often when businesses start implementing new systems and processes in hopes of creating efficiencies for the year ahead. And over the course of my career, I've learnt just how crucial having the right systems in places, one which has helped me across many of my investments is NetSuite. They're also a sponsor of this podcast. NetSuite is the number one cloud financial system through their streamlined platform.

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55:31That's netsuite .com slash Bartlett. Tell me about the most unhealthy brain you've ever seen. For a 15 -year -old, it was Kip Kinkle. He's a 15 -year -old boy in Springfield, Oregon, who brought weapons to school, got arrested. His parents picked him up from jail. And sometime between six o 'clock that night, Nate o 'clock the next morning, he murdered his mom and dad. And then he went to Springfield, Thurston High School in Springfield, Oregon, and shot 25 people. Based on my work, they scanned him for his trial. His brain was so awful. Like I'd never seen a 15 -year -old that had a brain so damaged.

56:22And his life reflected it. What did you see in his brain? It was shriveled. At 15. At 15. And it's like, okay, why? Well, he murdered his mom and dad, so I couldn't get a good history. But he either had anoxia at birth, lack of oxygen, a severe infection, or something was poisoning his brain. It could have been lead, it could have been an infection. I mean, we were talking about M, the eye, the immunity and infections. It's a major cause of psychiatric problems. Nobody knows about it. Have you scanned the brains of lots of psychopaths? And what do you see when you look at psychopaths? So I published a study on murderers.

57:10And young murderers have really low frontal lobe function. Older murderers, it's global, low activity. Now, not all murderers are the same. I have one murderer's brain. The brain actually looked pretty good. But she was in the middle of being abused by her husband, and she murdered him. It wasn't that irrational, you know, when you really know her story. But most brains are troubled. Do you think you could look at a brain and predict? Now you should ask me, should you scan presidential candidates? Interesting. Especially now. What do you think Donald Trump's brain looks like? Well, I think if we scanned President Biden or former President Trump, neither one of them would be healthy.

58:03I mean, one, we talked about the older you got, the less healthy they are. And if someone is going to have nuclear codes, shouldn't we know what their brain looks like? And I wrote an op -ed piece in 2008 when Barack Obama was running against John McCain. Are you in? Don't you think we should scan presidential candidates? And yeah, I don't think either one of their brains would be healthy. And that concerns me. Because, I mean, what do we need for our top politicians? Judgment? For thought. Impulse control. Okay, so playing devil's advocate to that, if we started to do that at the very highest office in the land, then that philosophy might creep down to lower offices in the land.

59:02And when you go and try and get a job at, I don't know, a restaurant or a marketing agency, it might become the norm that there's a almost brain discrimination or brain prejudice in playware. Someone like me, they have their brain scanned, they give a listen to this guy's. He's not going to be very good at, aren't they? Yeah, focusing on the game. 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 get you scanned. Really? I'm going to figure out how to do that. It's the rule in my family. And if you have a bad brain, it doesn't mean you can't come back.

59:39But are you smart enough to fix it? That would be the question. And you don't know? Well, my son -in -law, Jesse, who I'd love, his mother has paranoid schizophrenia. I'm like, I want to scan your brain. And I have. He actually wrote a book called Change Your Brain Before 25. And he opens the book with the story of his scan. And he's sitting with me. He's six four. I'm five six. And he said he'd never felt so small. And yeah, no, that's the rule in my family. Like I said, when I met my wife, I really liked her. And the first naked part of her I wanted to see was her brain. And so three weeks into our relationship, I'm like, hey, I haven't seen the clinic.

1:00:36Don't you want to see the clinic? She came, I scanned her. It passed. Do you use her brain against her? I bet you do. I bet you do. No. We spoke to Tana. She said you do. You were telling me there's not been one time where you brought up her brain in a moment of conflict or arguments. Not once. Because I will call Tana. I don't. Yeah, no. Because you know what I do. And this is on par with killing the ants. I do an exercise with my patients called the One Page Miracle. On one piece of paper, right down what you want. Relay. In a very specific way, what do you want in your relationships? Your work.

1:01:25Your money. Your physical, emotional, and spiritual help. What do you want? And with her, because she's on the top of my list, I want a kind, caring, loving, supportive, passionate relationship. I always want that. I don't always feel like that. Road thoughts come into my head. And if I've slept and I've eaten, I never save them. Why? Because it doesn't get me what I want. Right? And that's not selfish. People go, oh, but you know, what you want is what I want is 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.

1:02:17Your brain's so smart, but you have to tell it what you want. And every major business, including mine, we have a One Page Strategic Plan. We know what we want and we know what we're going to do. This quarter and this year, but people don't do that in their lives. And you think they should have like a life plan. Every person should. What do you want? Is your behavior getting you what you want? Do you think the brain almost conspires to make to fit what you want? Either brain wants your clear on what you want. I guess rations will change a little bit. And then your brain will change shape to fit what you've said you wanted.

1:03:00And 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 about this yesterday. Because we were working on his One Page miracle. And he's like, you know, it could be more positive. And I go to happen to be negative or to be positive. Which highways are you building in your brain, positive highways or negative highways? Accurate highways or distorted highways? You build that. And if you watch the news, they'll become more distorted. Because it's, yeah. In my book, The End of Mental Onus, it was very fun for me to do. I imagined if I was an evil ruler.

1:03:52And I wanted to create mental illness. What would I do? And watching the news. I think there's 62 evil ruler strategies. And I think that's like 12.

1:04:06Because the news is no longer the news. The news is about eyeballs and selling things. And negativity sells. If I can scare you, that will sell. And so you have to be very careful with what you allow in your brain. And yes, you should be informed, but not over and over and over and over again. People who start the day with the news are 27 % less happy in the afternoon. Well, I listen to lots of true crime and serial killer things. Like every day. You tell me so funny. I have this show on Instagram called Scan My Brain. I take influential people and scan them. And I did make a trainer, the musician.

1:04:59I love her music. And she goes, I can't sleep. And every night before bed, she's listening to true crime. And I'm like, stop that. Do you think it matters? Because I listen to true crime before bed. I have this exercise that I recommend all my patients. I've done it for 10 years. What went well when I go to bed? I started the beginning of the day and just go hour by hour looking for what went right about my day. I think that's set your dreams up to be more positive. I think it's, I do both. And then I just see which one works better for you. Every day, when or learn. What is the eye in bright minds?

1:05:47Immunity and infections. So do you know your vitamin D level? No, but I do take the only supplement that I take frequently. I'd say this too is vitamin D and omega three. But because I'm black as well, I would need more vitamin D. So people have darker skin, need Anne going from Africa where there's a lot of sun to the UK where there's no sun to dramatically increase the risk of mental health problems. Yeah. Because of vitamin D deficiencies. Do you know what? I think there's a certain member of my family who I won't name, who went from Africa that they've got two Nigerian parents went from Africa to the UK.

1:06:34And I saw their mental health deteriorate quite significantly to the point that we believe this person might have bipolar now. And I, part of me suspects once I learn about vitamin D deficiency in people that have darker skin. This person has very, very, very, very black skin. That it might be associated with that change. Being in a new country that has no sunlight for 30 years when you're, you know, black, black. You bet. And it's part of, so if you see mental health as brain health, then that becomes a critical intervention. If you're not paying attention to brain health, then you're like, well, what anti -psychotic or what mood stabilizer?

1:07:18I give them. And I'm very well, am I using anti -psychotic or a mood stabilizer. But if I get your brain healthy, you might not need it or you'll need half the dose. So, and then infections, I mean, we're just coming out of a pandemic. And COVID changes your brain in a bad way. It causes like a inflammatory bomb to go off in your brain. It 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 post -COVID. And her emotional brain just was on fire. And that's what we saw with COVID. And long COVID, emotional brain is hot.

1:08:11But then the cortex begins to get low in activity. It's a bad combination. Why, what does that mean? It's a chronic damage. And what does that mean if the, in terms of behavior? What's the implications for behavior? So the hot limbic brain, tens anxiety, that she hadn't had. If you start damaging your cortex and all of a sudden you're sad, you're impulsive, you're irritable, you can get dark thoughts, sometimes even suicidal thoughts. And people got COVID significantly increased in dementia.

1:08:56Someone who's listening to this right now, that is depressed, clinically depressed, or just feels, you know, depressive symptoms. Where'd you start? Let's go to the extreme end. Someone that can't get themselves out of bed. I sat here with J .D. Pinkett, and she told me that she was clinically depressed. And she, if she just got to 4pm every day to her, that was a victory. There are lots of people out there that are in that situation right now. Where'd you start with those people? What advice did you give them? Because I'm sure you see a lot of them in your practice. It starts with awareness. Yeah.

1:09:34That maybe this is not me, maybe it's my brain. And then it starts with loving your brain, and then investigating your brain. Because depression is like chest pain. So if somebody had chest pain, you're like, well, where would you start? We start with an evaluation. You wouldn't start with drugs. I mean, that would be like ludicrous. You would like, oh, why do you have chest pain? Why are you depressed? How's your thyroid? Right? The person that can't get off the couch, they could be hypothyroid. Or one of my friends got depressed. She had anemia. She had pernicious anemia because it was a B12 deficiency.

1:10:20I wouldn't assume, oh, your depressed take this medicine. Depression is what it is. It's not why it is. And if you don't know why it is, how do you effectively treat something? Like so many people come to me and they go, I have an autoimmune disorder. It's like, well, why do you have an autoimmune disorder? Why is your body so mad at you? It's attacking itself. And so - Because my body's broken. But why is your body broken? Right? And I hate the term broken. Right? It's just serious, like the broken brain. And it's like, no. It's not optimized. Let's optimize it. I never want my patients to think of them as mental.

1:11:03And I never want them to think of themselves as broken. You are awesome. So how can I help you be maybe 10 % more awesome? People feel like their brain is against them. Is working against them. When they're feeling depression or those chronic cycles of negative thinking, why is my brain attacking me? Why is it against me? So part of it is it's not healthy and part of it's undisciplined. And I got to do a lecture last year for the coaching staff of the Miami Heat. It was so much fun for me. And I'm really thinking a lot about elite performance. And I think it's just such a better model. It's like, let me help you be your best rather than let me fix you.

1:11:54And I think someone like you, I mean, it's like, you're already awesome. How can I make you more awesome? How can I give you more access to your own brain? And it's just, 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 medicine you have to take for rest of your life. This is the wrong model the psychiatry is currently operating with really good for the pharmaceutical industry, really bad for our society. 25 % of the American population is on psychiatric drugs. That's just horrified. Is Ritalin a psychiatric drug? It is. And I'm not opposed to psychiatric drugs.

1:12:46We're really clear. I'm actually really good with them. It's never the first and only thing I think about. What is the end in bright minds? Neurohormone. If your hormones that affect your brain, withdrawal, are not optimal, you're not optimal. And the DNS, like if your, um, called when other people are not, we should look at your thyroid. The D is diabesity where you're overweight and or have high blood sugar. It's the most common of the 11, 72 % of people are overweight. And as your weight goes up, you have seven of the 11 risk factors. It lowers blood flow to the brain. It prematurely ages the brain, increases inflammation.

1:13:39It stores toxins. It's a bad thing. And then the S is sleep. I've got obsessed with my sleep recently. I have my Woupon pretty much all the time. And their sponsor of this podcast, I probably should say. But I'm also like a equity shareholder in the company. But it's become one of my biggest obsessions in my life. It's waking up in the morning and looking at how I slept. How much deep sleep, restorative sleep I've had, my heart rate variability, all that stuff. I'm obsessed with it. What does sleep do to my brain? I guess you said earlier that it kind of cleans it. Cleans it and refreshes it. Well, we didn't even know that until, this is 10 or 12 years ago, where researchers saw that the fluid system in your brain, it's called the glimphatic system, doesn't open up when you're awake.

1:14:25But when you're asleep, it opens up and then sort of cleans things, washes things. And so for those people like me, who I thought I was, special because I could get by on four hours of sleep at night, I'm sort of run around with a toxic brain or dirty brain. And so... What are those talks, it talks in. So what is it cleaning? Have you heard of betaamoloid, which is cluster of proteins that increases your risk of Alzheimer's disease? So they build up during the day, system cleans it. But if you're not getting good sleep, you have more of a toxic build up of those kinds of clumping proteins that are problematic for you.

1:15:09Interesting. Interesting. Is there anything else people need to know about sleep in the brain? Because I think everybody knows sleep is important. A lot of people struggle with sleep. Sleep apnea triples the risk of Alzheimer's disease. One of the big lessons imaging has taught me that I can actually see the pattern for sleep apnea on a scam, and it looks like a early Alzheimer's disease. Bilateral, parietal, top back part of your brain decreases. What does sleep apnea? Snorreloudly, stop breathing, ignite, chronically tired the next day. So when you sleep, you're breathing, you have many apnec episodes where you stop breathing.

1:15:57And so, if you're sleeping alone, you actually might not know it because no one's being woke up by your snoring.

1:16:08And even people who've been diagnosed with it don't treat it because they don't want to wear the mask at night. And I'm like, no, you have to treat it. Otherwise, the worst thing you can do for your brain is starve it of oxygen. That's the worst thing you can do for your brain. So breath work then must be quite good for the brain. Breath work is good for the more brain. One of my tiny habits, I have many of them for brain health, is the 15 second breath, eight seconds in, hold it for a second and a half, four seconds out, hold it for a second and a half. Do that four times, eight times, it'll break a panic attack.

1:16:54Do it on a routine basis ill -encrystial heart rate variability. Breath work, well, breath work. Heart rate variability is this metric that I think society, much of society have suddenly become quite obsessed with, including me. Me and my friends literally have a heart rate variability contest every morning where we like screenshot our heart rate variability and drop it into the chat. And some of my friends are trying to increase theirs. One of my friends called, it's my friend called Ash, I've mentioned him earlier on. Here's this, been quite low, so he's kind of been trying to get it up. I guess we're gonna have to ask two questions here, which is, what is heart variability?

1:17:26And the second question is, how do I improve it in your view? So again, you can't change what you don't measure. And now, people who wear Apple Watches or Auranges or devices that measure it, heart rate variability is the beat to beat variability of your heart rate. And people go, oh, well, my heart rate should beat the same. Well, no, actually the more variable it is, bum bum bum bum bum bum, rather than bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum. I first heard about heart rate variability with babies that when a baby is being born, they actually put a scout monitor on it and they look at the heart rate variability of the baby.

1:18:13And if it's very, variable, it's bouncing all over the place. Well, it's a sign of heart health. When it flattens and becomes even, like it's just 70, they go get the baby, because that mean the baby is in trouble. It doesn't make any sense. It's like counterintuitive. It's a little bit counterintuitive, but if your heart rate variability is low, you have a higher risk of anxiety, depression, and heart disease, dinerly. I mean, there's this huge connection between your brain health and your heart health. And so, meditation increases heart rate variability, breath work increases heart rate variability, exercise can increase heart rate variability, good sleep and good sleep hygiene can increase.

1:19:10It adds decrease heart rate variability. I stopped drinking alcohol for this very reason. People don't know this, but I probably mentioned it twice now. But I quit drinking alcohol about a month and a half ago, I think. And part of the reason is, when I wore my wop, and then I had, I don't know, one 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 flashing red. It was 30, 40. Typically, on a great day, my heart rate variability is 150, 140, which is strong. I know this because I compete with my friends. But on a day where I had a glass of alcohol, it would be flashing red and it would be 40.

1:19:52Also, if I was sick, it would be 40. Also, if I had a really stressful, unslept day the day before, it would also be 40. And the fact that alcohol was causing my heart to respond the same as an awfully stressful, unslept day or COVID, I thought, fuck that. And so that's part of the reason I quit drinking alcohol. And now that you have brain envy, you're going to have a healthier brain if you keep it away. Because alcohol lies to us. Alcohol lies to us. Alcohol causes damage in the brain. Really? Even a little bit of alcohol causes damage in the brain. It disrupts something called white matter.

1:20:36So gray matter, nerve cell bodies, white matter, nerve cell tracks. So white matter is the highways in your brain that transmit information and impulses. And even a little bit of alcohol has been shown to disrupt the white matter in your brain. I don't want anything messing with the highways in my brain. But I love that you measured it. You made the connection and then you stopped it. It's a sign of intelligent life because you love yourself. Alcohol. Because there's a lot of people that are sat on the fence right now with alcohol. They probably don't have a really bad relationship with it. They're probably not alcoholics.

1:21:18But they kind of just, they have it because society is constructed in such a way that on a Friday evening when the waiter comes over and puts down the wine list, you just go, oh, I'm going, whatever. That's who I was. I was just on the fence. My friend, one of my best friends, was an alcoholic. So I understand why he quit because he had this really dysfunctional relationship with it that would ruin his life. I am the type of person that would have one drink, two drinks, and then I'd maybe stop. I didn't feel the need to have three, four, seven, and nineteen. He was different. And also because of that, there was no adverse consequences in my life.

1:21:49So when I went away with him recently, he's writing a book on alcohol and alcoholism. He was telling me about the book and I was going, I personally wouldn't read that book because I don't feel like I have a problem with alcohol. This is before I quit. So I was like, what I would love from a book, this is just me personally, is a book that made the case to people who are kind of sat on the fence that drink or a beer or a glass of wine just because, I don't know, society is constructed in such a way where it's hard to avoid. But they could go from up to, if someone gave them some performance -based evidence that alcohol, just even a little bit, the casual drinking, actually matters.

1:22:31So this is where you come in, Dr. One of my biggest Instagram posts was I told you so. The American Cancer Society came out and said, any alcohol increases your 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 any alcohol have lower activity than people who don't drink at all. And obviously, alcoholics, terrible looking brains, don't do that. But you got to ask yourself, why? And remember we talked about the One -Page Miracle? What do you want? Relationships work, money, physical, emotional, spiritual health. So where does alcohol come in to that?

1:23:24Oh, well, it helps me relax. Well, the 15 -second breath will help you relax, but there are no side effects to it. That will increase your heart rate variability. Alcohol will decrease heart rate variability and brain function. And if it decreases brain function and decreases decision making. Is this psychiatrist 30%, 40 % of the people I see, they initially come to my office because it's somehow alcohol related. Fight with their spouse, problems with their kids, whatever. It's so impressed. You notice the difference with heart rate variability and then you stopped. Yeah, because I was offence with alcohol.

1:24:07And it's crazy. And I now understand how difficult it is to stop it on society. I was telling my team, I quit. And I went for dinner with a guy called Skrillex, let everyone know Skrillex, he's a DJ, Sunny. And this was a week after I'd quit. Sat in the restaurant, the waiter comes over, bless him. And he goes, here's the wine list. I go, I don't drink alcohol. He goes, he goes and gets the bottle of wine. And he puts it next to me and goes, this is not alcohol, this is art. I'm going to leave it next to you just in case you get tempted. And Sunny's, Sunny, to his credit, is telling this waiter, no, he doesn't drink.

1:24:38And this waiter's having none of it. And in that moment, I understood how difficult it is to quit in the society that we've built, where every social interaction apparently needs to be fueled by alcohol. And if you say no, you're either weird or someone will try and change your mind or persuade you otherwise. It's just the culture we have. It's the evil ruler society. That's an evil ruler strategy. The food pushers, the drug pushers, the alcohol pushers. For me, I just, I look at people like that and it's like, so why do you want me to drink when I don't want to? What's going on with you? Yeah.

1:25:17And I usually shut some down. But why? Interesting question. When you go to a restaurant, the first thing they do is put bread on the table and ask if you want alcohol because both of them drop your frontal lobes. Both of them make it more likely you're going to order more and spend more money at the restaurant. So the bread is an investment on their part because bread gives you a sugar spike, a blood sugar spike, which then pushes serotonin in your brain and makes you happy. But serotonin drops frontal lobe function. One thing they never tell you when they give you an SSRI for depression is, oh, you're going to become a little bit more impulsive because it's going to drop your frontal lobes.

1:26:12And then alcohol, which also drops your frontal lobes. So you'll drop more cash in the restaurant. Question then, on this point of alcohol, if I took two people off the street, let's say they do everything in their lives the same other than what I'm about to say. I gave one of them a casual drink for the next decade, just maybe 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 look to their brain, it's ten years time, if they were doing everything the same, would you see a difference? Yes. The person who is drinking two or three times a week will have less blood flow on their brain.

1:26:53And will that have changed the shape of their brain? Yes. It'll be a little bit more shrivel. And then that means their behavior is going to change as well. They'll have a little bit less impulse control. And when you look at the brain of an object... And a little bit less impulse control when you're doing hard things like marriage. It's not a good thing, erasing children or managing a business. It's like you don't want a little bit worse decision. Sex. Sex and libido. A lot of people are struggling with their sex lives, getting an erection, getting aroused, men and women. The brain insects. I imagine you have people come to you and go listen, me and my wife, me and my partner, me and my husband.

1:27:39We've stopped having sex. I've lost my libido. When you hear that, and you offer people advice on libido and sex, what is... You should be right, your sex life gets better. In large parts, it's about blood flow. And if you're having a rectile dysfunction or low libido, you've got to go, well, why? What are the risk factors with that? And many of them relate to what's going on in your brain. And so often, people go, I did everything you said. And my wife's so much happier with her sex life.

1:28:20You have to check your hormones. I think that's very important. You have to deal with whatever sexual trauma might be there. The biggest sex organ in the body is your brain. If there's no forethought, there's no foreplay. And so it's about the decisions that you make. What else do I need to know about sex? If I'm trying to get my partner in the mood, and I'm trying to make them aroused, you know, it depends on their brain. Okay, right. So if your partner has a very busy frontal lobe that part called the anterior single of gyros, you can't go, come on, let's have sex. Because you've met people with the automatic no, that no matter what you say, they're going to say the opposite of it, and you're going to have sex with them.

1:29:13I mean, it's like it's a nice day today. Oh, no, it was nice or yesterday. I mean, even simple things. So you've got to, when I have sex, no. I was at this lecture once, and somebody came up to me at a break and said, you've helped me so much. I thought my wife just didn't love me. And what I realized is that part of her brain was just working too hard. So now I ask everything in the opposite. It's like, oh, like if I wanted to go to the store, she'd never want to go with me. And I'd go, so now what I do is I 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?

1:29:53Of course I want to come. He said, but doesn't sound right to say, well, you probably don't want to have sex. Oh, I go, okay, I know her brain do this. And I gave him natural things to boost serotonin. So I said, take her out for a pasta dinner. So I'm not a fan of pasta generally, except for these people. Take her out for a pasta dinner because pasta increases serotonin. Then take her for a walk around the lake, because exercise increases serotonin. Then give her a piece of dark chocolate, not too many. Because if you get her too many, she'll have no need for you. But dark chocolate has PEA in it, phenolethylamines, that alerts your brain that something fun is about to happen.

1:30:43And then put on a little baby powder, because baby powder, it's been shown scientifically as a natural fidesiac for women. Because what a women unconsciously associate to baby powder, babies. And unconsciously they want one. And then rubber back and don't ask for anything directly. And from about day four to about day 18 of her menstrual cycle, you're likely to get lucky. Why from day four to day 18? Because she's the last week of a woman's menstrual cycle, especially people who have this brain type tend to be more irritable. Is that before that period? Because it's before the period. Okay, so the week before that period is when she's going to be...

1:31:32Two weeks before their period is generally the best time. The men and women have different brains significantly. Wildly so. Well, there's this whole thing about you can't put your gender on your medical forms. It's just insanely stupid. 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 they're wild. Women have much better frontal lobes function, but much better blood flow to the front part of their brain. Which makes them good leaders. If you think of impulse control and collaboration and communication.

1:32:25And the one statistic that just hammers this home is who goes to jail? Men. Fourteen times more than women. But women get depressed twice as much as men. Because they're limbic or emotional brain. It's much busier than the male brain. And that's why in every human society, women are primary caretakers for children. Women have a bigger nesting instinct. So I told you we moved recently. And moving is much harder on women in general than it is in men. Because they feel like they lose their nest and they have to redo their nest. And I was an army psychiatrist for seven years. And I used to always tell the guys I'm like, when you move, you stay home and help her put the house together.

1:33:17Because she's going to be way happier for you. On that impulse control, but I remember reading the statistics that men suffer with gambling addictions and betting addictions significantly more than women. Drug addictions alcohol with ADD five times more than women. But women get help because they're not afraid to ask for help. Where for men, it's often a macho thing. It's like there's nothing to matter with me. Which is why women attempt suicide three to four times more than males. But males kill themselves three to five four times more than women do. Because men use more violent means. And men aren't communicating.

1:34:07I'm in trouble. Soreness. Soreness and exercise on the brain. Good for the brain. So I'm a huge fan of soreness. Because the studies mostly from Northern Europe, people take the most soreness, have the lowest incidence of Alzheimer's disease. And I told you about my mercury detoxing is really important. And you can detox in a lot of different ways. But son is one of the most effective ways. Exercise is you want to stay young. Walk like you're late. If you're 80 and you can walk three miles an hour, you have a 90 % chance of living till you're 90. If you can only walk a mile an hour, you have a 90 % chance.

1:34:57You're not going to live until you're 90. So exercise boosts blood flow. It increases brain drive, neurotrophic factor. It increases serotonin, increases dopamine. Another interesting thing is, should you do cold plunges? Because cold plunges have been found to fairly dramatically increase dopamine. So you should do cold plunges. Not if you have heart problems. So you have our problems, I wouldn't do that. But if you have inflammation, if you have pain, if you tend to be depressed, there's evidence cold plunges can be helpful. What about weight in the brain? When you look at someone who is clinically obese and you look at their brain, what do you see?

1:35:46And if I'm trying to lose weight, what do I need to know about the brain?

1:35:53I've thought a lot about this because I have obesity in my family. As your weight goes up, the size and function of your brain goes down. And that's horrifying. People who are, and our society is against us. I mean, you just wrote a book called The Brain Warriors Way. And I argue you're in a war for the health of your brain. Everywhere you go, someone's trying to shove bad food down your throat. That will kill you. I can see the emotion in your face when you say this. Yeah. It's just horrifying. You know, to think of Carl's Jr. that will take these, you know, Charlotte McKinney or Catherine Webb, these beautiful women, and have them eat cheeseburgers.

1:36:40And it's unconsciously people are like, if you eat those burgers, these women will want you. Well, 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 greatest epidemics ever of obesity. And as you're overweight, lower blood flow, aging, inflammation, stores, toxins, makes you feel awful about yourself. Takes healthy testosterone. We talked about, you know, why the low? Takes healthy testosterone and turns it into unhealthy cancer -promoting forms of estrogen.

1:37:32It's just a disaster what's happening. I think you have to start counting your calories. And, you know, I run up against all sorts of scientists go, calories don't count. It's complete crap. 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 we're eating way too much. And people don't know if you think of the cheesecake factory and these monster portions. It's like, that's insane. And it's a big thing that changed. But the obesity epidemic really started as the US government, among others, demonized that. Everything became low fat in the 80s.

1:38:25Low fat, low cholesterol. And they put sugar in things to replace it. In fact, it just came out recently. It was in the 60s that some of the sugar companies paid scientists to say it's fat, not sugar. And it damaged millions of people. The last thing I wanted to ask you about is, well, there's really two outstanding questions that I have for you, Doctor. The first one is about screen time. People want to know, does screen time, this generation that I've grown up 11 hours a day on a screen or social media, up to 11 hours a day, according to some studies, does that have an impact on our brain? It does.

1:39:08It shrinks it. It's sad. I mean, what it does is it wears out your pleasure summers. So you have these two areas in your brain called the nucleus 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're hitting them like every buzz on your phone, every notification, every time you scroll and you like something, you just got a little hit of dopamine. Well, the more you do it pretty soon, you thrill them to death. You begin to wear out those pleasure centers. And let's just take fame, for example.

1:39:58I've been blessed to see Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus and a whole bunch of really fascinating, cool people who've been really depressed. How can you be depressed? You're Justin Bieber. Or how can you believe you're not enough? Right? Because their pleasure centers get worn out by being noticed over and over and over again. Well, when you allow that in your brain, the screen time, three and a half hours. If you're on for three and a half hours a day, you have an increased risk of anxiety, depression, addiction, obesity, ADHD. And our society is on way more than that. And you go, so why are we having this epidemic of teenage suicide and mental health problems, especially in teenage girls, social media?

1:40:49It's one of the big issues of the day. And not only are you wearing out your pleasure centers, you hate yourself. Because you think everybody's better than you are. It's the comparison dragon that is damaging you. My last question is about happiness, which we're talking about then. I spoke to, I think it was Tally Sharat that told me happiness takes on this kind of interesting arc throughout our lives, where at the start of our lives we're a little bit happier than in the middle of our lives we're a little bit sadder. And then as we age, we go back into being happy. Now, I was contrasting that information to what you said about how the brain withers with age.

1:41:32If the brain is withering with age, then how come a lot of neuroscientists think that happiness resembles this kind of ushapen our lives, we're in the middle of our lives, we're less happy, the start and the end we're more happy.

1:41:48That's a great question. We're less striving as we age, right? So after 65, 70, we've sort of done much of the hard things that we need to do. And so depression also goes up with age too. And obviously dementia goes up with age. So I think it's because I don't have to accomplish things, which makes the middle part so hard. So we're more satisfied with the nature of our lives because we're not trying to... Well, if we are, right? If we're not, then that becomes a problem and then Chris is the risk of depression. It's complicated, there isn't it, because you get older, you probably have less connections as well, so that's a confounding factor.

1:42:43Yeah, so I wouldn't... I mean, I have seen that research and I wrote a book on happiness because when I write a book, it'll take me six to nine months to write it. And I'm like, so what do I really want to think about for this next six to nine months? And I loved it because like negative thinking is about habit, is happiness is also a habit. And when I go to bed and I go, what went well today, I'm feeding happiness. Or throughout the day, if I look for the micro moments of happiness, you know, what's the smallest thing that's going to happen today that's going to make me happy? I'm just happier.

1:43:29I hear all of this and I read all of this in your books and one of the things I've really taken away personally is because I have so much information, what I need to do is select a couple of these habits and basically put them into my calendar. Like you talked about the breath work and you talked about the gratitude exercise at night and those kinds of things. What I need to do is get a couple of them and just insert them into my calendar. Because you know, if they're not scheduled, they probably won't happen in their life as busy as mine. So what is making small sort of changes to the, you know, maybe dietary things or water or whatever it might be drinking a little bit less caffeine?

1:44:03I've already quite alcohol, make sure I focus on my sleep. Some of these I want to make routines in my life. So that's what I'm going to do. So what I'm going to take away from this. We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they're going to be leaving it for. And the question that's been left few is quite perfect. I think what have you changed your mind about in the last decade? Well, the first thing that comes to my mind is this idea that I got from Dennis Prigger, which is happiness is a moral obligation. I never thought of it that way.

1:44:45I grew up Roman Catholic. That idea was nowhere. And my family, it was nowhere in the Catholic school I went to. And I'm grateful for my education. And I'm grateful for my faith. But it was about should and shaming rather than elevation. And the fact that happiness is a moral obligation. There's this video that Dennis Prigger produced that I just love called, Why Be Happy. And I never thought that how I feel influences everybody around me. That if I'm unhappy, that's not just about me. That's about everybody I come in contact with. So working on myself is the most loving thing I can do for other people.

1:45:59Daniel G. Aiman. 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 totally right. Now that I have the awareness that that brain even exists, having seen it, it's almost like I feel like it's like a Pablo, my dog. I now feel a responsibility to take care of it. And I think that that coupled with everything that you've imparted on me about the fact that I can do something about it for me is life changing. And I could have sat here all day and read 10 to 1000s of comments that I saw online about the work that you're doing to help people live happier, healthy, healthy lives.

1:46:37And the consequence that has for generations, I think is maybe 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're tilting generations to come of brains in a better direction. And that alone will tilt society in a better direction. And that's exactly the work that you're doing. So I know we talked about your father last time round. You know, often times we don't get the praise from our parents that I guess we, we always longed for. But I really hope you understand how proud everyone is of you.

1:47:17All the patients that you've invested time and love and energy in, all the people that listen to this show that were tilted in a better direction because of you. And me as well, my life's been tilted in a better direction because of you. So thank you. Thank you so much. What a joy.

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