Sharper, Stronger, Smarter: Build a Better Brain at Any Age

0:00Dr. Mark Hyman:Coming up on this episode of the Dr. Hyman Show. So fixing your brain starts with fixing your body and optimizing all the inputs into your system and minimizing the bad stuff, the bad inputs, whether it's stress, poor diet, toxins, allergens, bad bugs, drugs like caffeine, alcohol, sugar, whatever's causing your brain to not work. Before we jump into today's episode, I want to share a few ways you can go deeper on your health journey. While I wish I could work with everyone one-on-one, there just isn't enough time in the day, so I've built several tools to help you take control of your health.

0:32Dr. Mark Hyman:If you're looking for guidance, education, and community, check out my private membership, The Hyman Hive, for live Q &As, exclusive content, and direct connection. For real-time lab testing and personalized insights into your biology, visit Function Health. You can also explore my curated doctor-trusted supplements and health products at drhyman.com. And if you prefer to listen without any breaks, don't forget you can enjoy every episode of this podcast ad-free with Hyman Plus. Just open Apple Podcasts and tap try free to start your seven-day free trial. Your brain is not just this disembodied organ that is sitting in your skull connected from the rest of what's going on in your body.

1:08We learned about the blood-brain barrier in medical school, but that's ridiculous. The brain is constantly interacting, communicating with everything going on in your body. Yes, you have a blood-brain barrier, but it's not like it's something that's just inviolable. inviolable. It's permeable and things go across and impact it. So everything that's happening in your body impacts your brain. In fact, the title of my book, The Ultra Mind Solution, was how to, you know, how to fix your broken brain by fixing your body first, right? Fixing your body first. And then you can see, well, then maybe I have some issues with my thoughts and my emotions and my feelings and my trauma, whatever.

1:42But if you, if you are eating a crappy diet, if you're drinking too much, if you're smoking, if you're not exercising, if you have mercury poisoning, If your vitamin D is low, if you're B12 deficient, if your thyroid is not working, your brain's not going to work. So you just got to figure out how to get your brain healthy. So fixing your brain starts with fixing your body and optimizing all the inputs into your system and minimizing the bad stuff, right? The bad inputs, whether it's stress, poor diet, toxins, allergens, bad bugs, drugs like caffeine, alcohol, sugar, whatever is causing your brain to not work.

2:18The brain is pretty resilient and it can recover and heal given the right conditions. And I've seen miracles. I've seen people reverse Alzheimer's, reverse autism, reverse ADD, reverse depression, things that bipolar disease, schizophrenia. I mean, you just wouldn't even imagine how powerful this is. In fact, Christopher Palmer, who's been on the podcast, talked about how he used a ketogenic diet to reverse Alzheimer's and optimize mitochondrial function as a key way to treating mental illness. There's departments of metabolic psychiatry at Stanford, of nutritional psychiatry at Harvard. So we now actually have an understanding that the stuff I was talking about 15 years ago, by the way, was way ahead of its time and also extremely important to understand if we're going to fix our brains.

2:59About 30 years ago, almost, I developed chronic fatigue syndrome and it felt like I had dementia, depression, and ADD all at once. My brain was broken. I really couldn't focus. I couldn't pay attention. I used to be able to see 30 patients a day, remember all their medical history, dictated at the end of the day with no problem. I couldn't remember where I was at the end of a sentence from where I started. I couldn't read my kids a book out loud and actually understand at the same time my brain really was broken. I couldn't sleep. I was exhausted. And I learned that I had mercury poisoning and that broke my brain.

3:36My brain was just a mess. I had terrible brain fog. I couldn't focus for much time. I was a physician trying to practice medicine. It was really tough. I couldn't even remember my patient names. And I knew I had to do something different. And that's when I discovered functional medicine almost 30 years ago. And when I reversed my chronic fatigue, when I detox from mercury, when I fix all the other systems in my body, my mitochondria, my gut, my immune system, everything that was going wrong, I was able to reverse my chronic fatigue syndrome and my brain got better. And since then I've written 18 books in 20 years, my brain is great.

4:10I feel good. and I'm sharper, faster, and better than ever. So what's the worst things we do for our brains? Well, we have too much sugar and fine starch carbs and not enough good fats and not enough intake of the right nutrients. A lot of nutrient deficiencies, omega-3s, vitamin D, magnesium, to name a few that are critical for brain health. And that affects over 50 to 90 % of the population with deficiencies in those nutrients. Also, we're exposed to all kinds of weird things in our diet, There are chemicals like artificial sweeteners, like MSG, environmental toxins that actually cause damage to the brain.

4:46Heavy metals, all these things damage our brain. So a lot of things cause brain damage, not just what I mentioned, but things like lack of sleep, too much stress, not exercising, overuse of certain substances like alcohol or other drugs. Now, I found over the years, really fascinating to me, it's really quite amazing that people don't connect how they feel with what they eat. or how much they rest or sleep, you know, how much they exercise or how much time they take for friends and community and connection and, or how much bad news and media they're exposed to. I had a patient said, geez, doctor, I'm so tired.

5:23I don't know what to do. I'm always tired. My brain's not working. I said, well, how much do you sleep at night? He goes, well, five, six hours. And I'm like, well, get eight hours sleep and try to see what happens, right? So don't connect the dots. Now, once you make those connections, you can start to change those simple habits. It can have profound effects on your health long-term and make a lot of little small changes that can make profound impact. Now, feeling fully focused, fully energized, having great brain health, it requires really following the principles of functional medicine, which is taking out the bad stuff and putting in the good stuff.

6:00It's taking out the bad food, toxins, allergens, microbe stress, us adding in the good stuff, the right whole foods, nutrients, bouncing hormones, light, air, water, sleep, relaxation, connection, meaning, love, purpose. All these things are necessary for our brain to function properly. And most of us don't get enough of the good stuff. We don't get whole real food. We often are deficient nutrients. We're not exposed to natural light. We don't get enough fresh air. We don't drink clean water because most of it's polluted. We don't have periods of deep rest and relaxation. We don't sleep enough.

6:30We don't live in rhythm. We don't exercise. We're to focus on being busy in our careers and all kinds of stuff to focus on community and meaning and purpose and love. And so we basically have to optimize those things in order for us to be healthy. One of the things that I really focus on, well, food is the number one thing that controls your brain. And we've seen miracles by simply people changing their diet from treating depression to Alzheimer's to everything from ADD to even schizophrenia, as I mentioned. So eating real food is so important. When I say real food, I mean real food, not processed food or ultra processed food, whole, organic, fresh, local, unprocessed food.

7:09Basically, it has a barcode or label you might want to get rid of. If your great grandmother wouldn't recognize it as food, don't eat it. Does she know what a Lunchable is or a Pop-Tart? Probably not. Junk food is just bad. Fast food is bad. Ultra processed food is bad. Some processed food is okay. A can of sardines is processed, right? It's in a can. It's got salt, maybe oil. A can of tomatoes is processed. It's tomatoes, water, and salt. That's okay. But if you can't recognize where it came from, like a pop tart, you probably don't want to eat it. And some things that seem like real food are really not, like yogurt.

7:43Yogurt is often filled with high fructose corn syrup, colors, additives, gums, thickeners. All these things are pretty, pretty nasty for us. Also, you want to eat a lot of colorful fruits and vegetables. I know you say this all the time, but these are full of phytochemicals. These impact the brain, the deep dark reds, yellows, oranges, greens, blues are so important because the color is where the phytochemicals are. It's where the medicine is. These are anti-inflammatory compounds or detoxifying compounds, antioxidants, they're mitochondrial boosting, energy producing compounds, brain powering molecules.

8:16We need to eat that. So get lots of colorful plant foods, blueberries, dark green leafy vegetables. um also go for the slow carbs not the fast carbs right i'm not saying no carbs i mean basically broccoli is a carb right but it's quite different than white bread or from sugar cauliflower and ice cream are all carbs right but it you know cauliflower is good for you but an ice cream sundae probably not right so eating whole plant foods also will have lots of fiber helps to reduce the surges of sugar that cause some of the problems. In fact, we call now Alzheimer's type 3 diabetes. It's like diabetes of the brain from too much sugar.

8:56So eating lots of fiber helps slow the surge of sugar, nuts, seeds, lots of veggies, whole grains, beans, all really can be very helpful. And it also keeps your gut healthy. And by the way, your gut and your brain are connected. You need to maintain your healthy microbiome to actually protect your brain health and prevent Alzheimer's. Also fat. The brain is made up of 60 % omega-3 fat. It's mostly fat in your brain. So you need to be a fathead. And going on low-fat diets are pretty bad for the brain. In my book, Eat Fat, Get Thin, I talk about fats a lot and when they're good fats, when they're bad fats, and how to get the omega-3 fats from your diet, from algae or fish.

9:39Um, my brain worked pretty good before, but, um, I actually have gotten on a better fat diet, including some things like MCTL, which is really powerful for the brain. And my, my focus and my clarity has just gone through the roof. Now also want to optimize protein. We need protein because if you lose muscle, because you don't eat enough protein, it leads to this cascade of problems with low muscle mass. fatty deposits in your muscle, leads to prediabetes, lowers your testosterone, which you need for brain function, lowers growth hormone, which you need for brain repair, increases cortisol, which causes brain damage, literally causes the shrinking of your hippocampus, the memory center of the brain.

10:22So you want to make sure that you're having enough protein, ideally animal protein, which is better able to build muscle. And when you age faster, your brain takes a hit, it shrinks. So you can keep your brain good by eating good fats and the right amounts of protein, omega-3 eggs, protein shakes. I like regenerative-based goat whey for a protein shake in the morning, nut butters, fish for breakfast. All that is great. Also, stop poisoning your brain. Get rid of all the bad stuff, sugar, high fructose corn syrup, trans fats, food additives, preservatives, environmental chemicals, all which really are a problem.

10:57Supplements also very important for the brain. A good quality multi-magnesium is important for the brain, calms the brain. It reduces the stimulation of the NDMA receptors, which is actually producing Alzheimer's risk. Vitamin D is important for the brain. Omega-3 fats, probiotics, all the B vitamins, folate, B6, B12 are critical for your brain and your neurotransmitter function. And you can find all these versions, the best versions, the cleanest versions at my online store, store.drhyman.com, along with other brain boosting supplements. So you need to design a plan for your life that includes your overall health, but you ought to incorporate some of these important practices for your brain.

11:37But the good news is what prevents brain problems, prevents heart disease, prevents cancer, prevents diabetes, and everything else. So not like you do a million different things, but these principles are really important for brain health. Happiness is a brain function. So that's number one. When your brain is unhealthy, you're likely to be unhappy and so you know it's like why did i write this book it's like americans are the unhappiest they have been since the great depression so given the pandemic the political divide the societal unrest uh social media and the national media controlling the dialogue and And they go after fear because that activates the limbic structures in the brain that gets people to pay attention.

12:33And so we're getting it. Fear, fight or flight. It's the reptile. So they appeal to your reptile. They do. And a lot of people wake up with negativity and sadness because that's been planted in our brain through evolution. because thousands of years ago, you had to wake up and be afraid because that was a survival mechanism. So that is why the brain pays attention to negativity faster than to positive messages. And I'm like, okay, we're so unhappy that I want to spend a year thinking about studying, writing about happiness. And so I got 500 consecutive patients, Damon clinics, and we gave them the Oxford happiness questionnaire.

13:28And then we looked at their brains and what we found, the unhappier you were, the lower activity in the front part of the brain you have and the lower activity in an area of the brain called the basal ganglia, which has the nucleus accumbens, which is the part of your brain that responds to dopamine. And so things like head trauma or toxic exposure, and so much of it I learned from you. I don't know if I, I know I've told you, but you've just been a huge mentor of mine that I buy your books for all of my doctors we have almost 70 doctors now thank you i'm getting so many royalties thank you and i love uh looking at at the brain you know that's sort of my thing what i do and it was just so clear if your brain wasn't healthy you were not likely to be happy so the first strategy that nobody knows about is get your brain right and your mind will follow uh and there are a whole bunch of strategies on how to do that the second one which i just stop you right there could i just that is such an important statement you just said i don't want to go over it so quickly your brain is your brain which is this you know putty like structure in your skull and your mind is who you are it's your thoughts it's your feelings it's your perceptions and your mind function is determined by your brain function and yes you can overpower your brain function if you're really strong-willed in many ways but it's really important insight to understand that your brain and the quality of the health of your brain determines the quality of your mind that's a big insight that most people don't realize your brain creates your mind right if you live sad i'm depressed i'm anxious they go oh it's it's it's like a sore ankle it's like a like a like a like a stomach ache but your brain can't have a stomach ache or a sore ankle so it has a mood change right so you and i've been blessed to see some really cool people and i was in justin bieber's docu series in 2020 called seasons and he came to me at a really low point and like many of these young superstars.

15:53They'll show up or not. They'll do what you say or not. And when he got really low, he showed up and he said, I think I get what you're trying to tell me. My brain is an organ, like my heart is an organ. And if you told me I had heart problems, I'd do everything you said. He said, so I'm going to do everything you say. Changed his diet, did hyperbaric oxygen, and IV therapy. And he's better now than ever. He was just nominated for a bunch of Grammys that I'm so proud of him. But if you don't get your brain right, it's really hard. You know, if you think of it like hardware and software, got to optimize the physical function of your brain and then you can program it.

16:42And we have faulty programming. We'll talk about that. But you first have to get the hardware right. Exactly. So keep going on the seven things. I stopped you after the first one. So the second one is happiness is geared to your brain type. One of the big lessons I learned from imaging early on is that all psychiatric illnesses, all of them, are not single or simple disorders. they all have multiple types. Giving someone the diagnosis of depression is exactly like giving them the diagnosis of chest pain. And nobody thinks about it like that, but it's absolutely true that, you know, nobody gets a diagnosis of chest pain.

17:34Why? Because it doesn't tell you what's causing it, and it doesn't tell you what to do for it. I mean, you're not going to give everybody nitroglycerin. I mean, that would be stupid, right? But now we think of depression. Oh, you're depressed. Take Lexapro or you're depressed. Take Luvox, which is really interesting. We may talk about that in the pandemic, but. Yeah, it turns out it's a good group for COVID. Yeah, it's really interesting. And I think I know why, but ADD is not one thing. It's seven different things. One of my bestselling books of all time, Healing ADD, I talk about seven different types.

18:11And then when I was thinking about happiness, I'm like, the thing that makes spontaneous people happy, like scary movies and having an affair or jumping out of an airplane, the persistent person would actually, those things would make him or her miserable. And so it's really important to know your type. There are five primary types. You balance. That means, you know, most any reasonable thing will make you happy. Spontaneous. You need novelty or you're not happy. Persistent. You need routine or you are not happy. Sensitive. You need connection. They were damaged most in the pandemic with the isolation.

18:59And the cautious people, they need peace to make them happy. And so know your type. I have an online quiz called our Brain Health Assessment, brainhealthassessment.com. You'll see which of the 16 types you have. And then, well, what are the things more likely to make you happy? And all of these strategies have questions. and for get your brain right. The question, the little tiny habit, I don't know if you know BJ Fogg, but I worked with him. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Six months on tiny habits. So we have 50 tiny brain habits. But the mother of all tiny habits for the brain is for strategy one, is this good for my brain or bad for it?

19:49So when you go to do something, you just ask yourself, is this good for my brain or bad for it?

20:03so when we were at saddleback our first fight with pastor warren was you got to get rid of the donuts are it's good for your brain or bad for it i mean obviously it's bad for i don't know if you remember that but i do as a soda the pancake breakfast and the miscute initials we had to work that out they did good though i would say they i was impressed that the scale of change that they did so quickly it was very impressive it's amazing and then the question for the second strategy am i doing something today that makes me uniquely happy so it's really diving into happiness is not the same thing for everybody so don't say it's novelty and gratitude and appreciation and fun and comedy because it's different based on your type.

20:57Three, you'll appreciate is supplement your brain. We live in a society of deficiencies. And if you're nutrient deficient, especially serotonin, you know, most people don't know that birth control pills deplete serotonin. And I've seen this over and over in teenage girls, They go on birth control pills and now they're anxious or they're depressed and no one's thinking. It's changing their neurotransmitters. And my favorite happy supplement is Saffron. I've been following the science of Saffron for 20 years. 24 randomized controlled trials against Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Omipramide, Afexor. equally effective.

21:52But rather than being anti-sexual, you know, put someone on an SSRI and they have trouble having an orgasm or their libido goes down, saffron is pro-sexual. And it makes them more interested. And there are studies showing that saffron helps with memory, even in people with mild cognitive impairment so when the pandemic started i just released a product i love called happy saffron saffron zinc and curcumens and i'm like right we got a pandemic my dad died i had to close our manhattan clinic i mean it was a disaster i'm like i'm taking this so this is the supplement i take many of them but that's my favorite one and so i i think we might agree probably everybody should take a really good multiple vitamin.

22:47Everybody should take an omega-3 fatty acid. You should optimize your vitamin D level, test it. Odds are it's low. And then work to get it high normal because we're in a pandemic. And then it depends on your brain type. So our spontaneous people do better with stimulating supplements like rhodiola. Our persistent people do better with serotonin boosting supplements like 5-HTP. The sensitive people do better with saffron or SAMI. And the cautious people do better with GABA, theanine, magnesium. I'm just a huge fan. And too often you see this is people go to their family doctor, their nurse practitioner, and they end up on a benzo.

23:39And it's like, no, no, no. That's like 20th on the list. Let's do meditation, diaphragmatic breathing. Let's try GABA and magnesium. Please don't do that because why would you start something? Somebody can't stop. And I see them creating so many problems with inappropriate medication use. Well, they don't even work that well. That's the thing. If you took Prozac and you're cured and you're happy, life was good, wonderful. But it just basically no better than a placebo for mild or moderate depression. So, you know, that's another problem. Well, the pharmaceutical industry doesn't want to be in the order business.

24:26I mean, they consciously made the decision to be in the reorder business. that once you start something for a lot of psychiatric medications, they change your brain to need them in order for you to feel normal. So many people are just wickedly afraid of going off antidepressants because of the withdrawal from them. And I'm not opposed to medication. I'm just opposed to that's like the first and only thing you do without getting someone's diet right, without getting their habits right. Well, that's so true. I mean, you also talk about in the book this whole idea of four circles of happiness as an exercise to make you happy.

25:12What is that? Well, when I was in medical school, actually the first week, our dean came in the classroom and he said, never think of patients as their diagnosis. Always think of them in four big circles. And it's just stuck with me. He went to the board and he drew the first circle, which is the biological circle. So, you know, as a doctor, you need to know all about their biology. And as a psychiatrist, for me, you know, our primary organ is the brain. So brain health, as we talked about. The second circle is the psychological circle, which involves development and how they think. and secret number five is master your mind and gain psychological distance from the noise in your head which we'll talk about super fun circle but it's basically the psychological circle well one of my favorite things you said is uh never don't believe every stupid thought you have and and i didn't learn that till i was 28 years old in my psychiatric residency of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

26:21And I'm like, my eyes got really big because, you know, I've struggled with anxiety. And I'm like, why didn't they teach me that in third grade? Right. Just because I have a thought has nothing to do with whether or not it's true, whether or not it's helpful, whether or not I should attach to. And it's not the thoughts you have that make you suffer it's the thoughts you attach to that make you suffer um and then he drew the third circle which is the social circle he said in the social circle it's how are your how are your patients relationships and what's their social situation and you know two years into this pandemic, the social situation for so many people has just been a disaster from the societal unrest, the political divide.

27:14At Christmas, I had never seen family division like I have seen. And I'm saddened by it. And I kept telling my patients over and over and over again, without connection, you have no influence so you're a vaxxer you're an anti-vaxxer whatever you know that people are like not getting together and angry at each other and i'm like if you don't stay connected you have no influence on the other person um and then the last circle which i just love so much is the spiritual circle it's why do you care you know what is your deepest sense of meaning and purpose is your relationship with God, with the planet, with the past, with the future, and really talking about that with my patients.

28:08And I have to tell you, Mark, nine out of 10 patients, when I ask them what their goals are and why they think they're on the planet, they haven't thought about it. And I'm like, you know, a business is not going to go unless it has a mission statement and a purpose and a strategic plan. And so that's actually number seven of the happiness secrets is live each day based on clearly defined values, purpose, and goals. And purposeful people are happier. But if you don't know, and there's a great exercise in the book on how to find your purpose that I love. And, you know, one of my favorite patients that came out last year that I've been her doctor for about 11 years is Miley Cyrus.

29:02And I love her so much. And she has just grown up so much in the last couple of years. And she's very purposeful. She knows what she's about and what she wants to accomplish. And her bad habits didn't fit. And ultimately, that's the question to ask for secret number seven is, does it fit? Does my behavior fit the goals I have for my life? You know, especially when you look at the statistics, if you get to be 75, one out of two people will have diagnosable Alzheimer's. If you get to be 80, I'm sorry, one out of three, if you get to be 80, one out of two people. Yeah. This didn't exist 100 years ago before Dr.

29:50Alzheimer's got to put his name on this illness he identified. In the Amazon, the thing that amazed me is that the incidence of dementia is one out of 100 people. There's very little heart disease. There's 1 % there and 20 % here. 20 % here. It's crazy. And it's, of course, related to our lifestyle. So learning how to grow a new brain, pretty important topic. It's really important. And remember, the brain is fat. So you've got to give it a good fat. You cannot turn on the higher brain until you go first on a ketogenic diet. And it doesn't need to be, you know, eating meat three times a day. But you've got to go into autophagy.