Change Your Brain with Dr. Amen

0:005 a.m.

0:01Dr. Daniel Amen:I'm up with a crisp Celsius energy drink. Running 12 miles today. Grab a green juice, quick change, and head to work. Meetings, workshops. One more Celsius, no slowing down. Working late, but obviously still meeting the girls for a little dancing. Celsius. Live. Fit. Go. Grab a cold, refreshing Celsius at your local retailer or locate now at Celsius.com.

0:26this is the Ed Myland Show all right welcome back to the show everybody so I was just telling him I

0:33Dr. Daniel Amen:love him and I'm deeply grateful for him so I should probably say that live on the camera as we start the show today you got to be great when you've been on the pod three or four times and I think this is his fourth time I think as a guest on the show and it's because you all love him and he makes a difference in the world he is one of the world's leading brain health experts He's helped a lot of people with their brains, including me. And his clinic, the Amen Clinic, has done over almost a quarter of a million scans from people from 150 different countries. And every time he has a book out, I read the entire book.

1:06Dr. Daniel Amen:And it's always enlightening, always insightful. This one, for me, the most of all of them. And I say that today because he's got this book out called Change Your Brain, Change Your Pain. You guys, we're going to take a deep dive into your nogginal to see if we can help you be happier and less stressed. And for some of you, not quite so depressed in your life. And an explanation as to why you might be with my good friend, such a kind, good man. And he's the smartest dude in the room, and he never makes you feel like he needs to be. Dr. Daniel Amen, welcome back to the show.

1:43Ed Mylett:Ed, so great to see you. Just makes my heart happy.

1:48Dr. Daniel Amen:actually my brain but you know what i mean i know exactly what you mean well like always with you i don't like to waste moments because there's not very many people like you in the world and so let's let's start with some basic foundational stuff from this book and i mean it you know i've read all your stuff you've worked on my brain i've been to the clinic and i think this one hit me the most deeply because i think i suffer from a lot of the stuff in it and uh it gave me some understanding of myself. Some of it kind of overlaps with work I do as well. But let's start with some foundational stuff that I got out of the book in the beginning, which is you talked about the pain that many of us feel and that it's not just a signal from our bodies, but it's actually a story your brain is telling.

2:33Dr. Daniel Amen:Is that accurate description of what you're saying, that it's a story your brain is telling? What does that mean? Well, pain, you know, if it's your back, your hip, your neck, sadness, ultimately comes to live in your brain.

2:49Ed Mylett:And if your brain isn't healthy, you're in a lot of pain. And the same circuits that create emotional pain are also involved in physical pain. And so getting your brain as healthy as it can be and not believing every stupid thing you think and not suppressing emotion is critical to both healing physical and emotional pain.

3:29Dr. Daniel Amen:You talk about these different pathways in the book. Like, so it's not just a general concept, you guys, because I don't know, I think I've lived with a lot of stress in my life and it has as I've aged. My audience knows this. It's manifested itself physically over time, whether that be some heart issues that I've had, some back pain that I just, now that you're reading this, I'm like, I think this is a result of this brain thing I got going on with these different pathways. What is the lateral pain feeling pathway?

4:01Ed Mylett:Oh, it's a part of your brain called the thalamus, which is deep in the brain, sort of looks like a little leg. And your parietal lobes top back part of your brain, your sensory brain. And it's when you go, ouch, my back hurts, and it tells you where it is. And the thalamus, part of the deep limbic brain or emotional brain, when you're depressed, it's overactive. I just published this monster study with actually one of my haters. It's a really fun story. He told 2020, I should be arrested 20 years ago. And now we're publishing research together. So I love that so much. But what we showed is the thalamus in your emotional brain is overactive in depression.

5:01Ed Mylett:So if you're depressed, you're more likely to have physical pain. And one of the reasons I wrote the book was why does SAMI, which is a supplement, S-adenosylmethionine, or the antidepressant Cymbalta work for depression and pain. Like Cymbalta is FDA approved for pain and SAMe has many studies showing it decreases pain from things like arthritis. It's like, why is that? It's because they work on the same circuitry of the brain. And so pain comes into our consciousness, into our awareness through the lateral pain feeling pathway. Lateral just means toward the side, our parietal lobes, top back part of our brain toward the side.

5:56Ed Mylett:And if that gets activated, it then triggers our medial pain suffering pathway. Now, this is sort of more toward the middle anterior cingulate gyrus, insular cortex, basal ganglia. When that is overactive, now begins to smear the pain with dread, with awfulness, with angst, with, ew, I hate that. And so the first thing that happens, lateral pain feeling pathway, activates the suffering pathway. And then the third one is the little brain here. It calms the front part of the brain. This is called the calming pathway. So the prefrontal cortex is in large part inhibitory. It sort of puts the brakes on what you say and what you do, right?

6:55Ed Mylett:It helps you with things like forethought and judgment, but it also settles down pain. And so if you've been hitting soccer balls with your head, if you played tackle football and damage this part of the brain, you're going to be in more pain because your brain can't turn it off.

7:15Dr. Daniel Amen:Can I ask you something connected to that? And we'll keep, by the way, the best thing about having And Dr. Amen on the show, you guys, unlike most guests, he's willing to talk in specificity about what's in the book. A lot of guests don't because they're afraid, oh, well, then you won't go get the book. But just so you know, when a book is this big and this loaded, there's no way in an hour you're getting it all. So you still need to go get the book. More than anything you need to do is get this book. But let me ask you a question. This is an outside, though. It's not in my notes. It's just something I've wondered about based on these pathways and what we're going to talk about in a minute, which is this loop idea.

7:49Dr. Daniel Amen:Do you think, and I know this would be probably just speculating, but do you think that what goes on in your brain, this trauma, stress, toxins, this anxiety, this stuff you start to have, do you think that long term it can affect gene expression in your body? Like, could it be that profound? Meaning, if you're predisposed at some point to getting cancer, that maybe you turn those genes on sooner in your life because of the stress and inflammation that causes in your body, that potentially there's a correlation between those two things? Or am I reaching way out there on that one?

8:22Ed Mylett:No, you're absolutely correct. And ultimately, it's not just about you. It's about generations of you. It'll flip on or off certain genes that impact you, but also your babies and your grandbabies. Fascinating study. So I talk about aspartame in the book. And when I was 35, I had arthritis. And one of my patients said when she stopped aspartame, her arthritis went away. And I'm like, and I think I've learned the most from my patients. and I was drinking diet soda then like it was my best friend like jack-in-the-box it was across the street and I go get a 32 ounce diet Pepsi and yeah I just feel so bad about this like you know I'm a doctor I have no clue about nutrition and until I started looking at my brain and I stopped the aspartame and my pain went away.

9:25Ed Mylett:And I'm like, no. And now there's a new study on mice. They gave mice aspartame. It's in 5 ,000 products. They became really anxious and they gave them Valium and it calmed them down. Why they did that, I have no idea. But what they discovered, Ed, And this was the very disturbing thing. The babies of these mice who never had aspartame, their baseline was more anxious. Their grandbabies were more anxious. So our habits are not about us. They're literally about generations of us. So the question you ask about epigenetics, you know, if you don't sleep well at night, it turns off 700 health promoting genes.

10:23Ed Mylett:So our behavior every day is impacting us, but also our children and grandchildren. Are you still big on saffron for sleep? Huge. I'm big on saffron for so many things. There are 28 randomized controlled trials showing it's equally effective to Prozac, Lexapro, Welbutrin, Fexor, Zoloft. I mean, there's a brand new study on combined 192 studies on 17 ,000 patients on which are the supplements that actually work for depression. And saffron was the first. most effective. And then it said, if you're on an antidepressant or saffron and you add zinc and curcumin, it significantly enhances the effect.

11:20And so my company, BrainMD, has made

11:25Ed Mylett:happy saffron for six years, came out right before the pandemic. And I've taken it every day because It's not only does it help your mood, the reason I fell in love with saffron, most antidepressants decrease sexual interest and ability. It decreases your ability to have an orgasm. And I'd have patients come back. I'm happy, but I don't want to touch my wife. I'm like, no, no, no. Saffron is pro-sexual. It enhances that. And it's pro-memory. And there are studies showing it decreases pain. And I think what's happening is it's calming the medial pain suffering pathway. And I added zinc and curcumins to saffron for exactly that reason.

12:16Dr. Daniel Amen:Very interesting, isn't it, you guys? So let's talk about this unhealthiness in the brain a little bit. What's contributing? So you said earlier you listed some things. It could be injury. It could be toxins, stress. Sleep is a biggie. Right. But what about this unresolved? Like in my case, I'm trying to figure it out. Like I sleep pretty well. Like, but I did, you know, the story, I did have an alcoholic dad, drug addict dad when I was young, he ended up getting sober. I just feel deep inside me that some of that, this is the wrong word. So I pleased everybody. And I don't mark, marked me, scarred my brain somehow and put me in two things.

13:00Dr. Daniel Amen:Your brain. It changed my brain. And I measure my HRV now and it's just trash. It's like last night, doctor, my HRV was eight. Right. So I'm in fight or flight a lot. Right. Like I, if you all know all these correlations. And so I just wonder, like you say in the book, like your circuits can literally be hijacked. And you talk about this. I think you call it the pain HQ doom loop. And I'm like, that's familiar, I think, to me. Could you explain that to me and explain me to me a little bit? Even though we've done this in person, I think this is interesting for everybody's edification.

13:38Ed Mylett:I published a monster study on 7 ,500 patients and their ACE score, adverse childhood experiences. So on a scale of zero to 10, how many bad things happened to you growing up? and physical, emotional, sexual trauma or abuse, being neglected, watching your mother be abused, having a parent with an addiction, incarceration, or a mental health problem. So there's 10 of these things. If you score four more, you have an increased risk of seven of the top 10 leading causes of death. If you score six or more, you can die 20 years early, but you don't have to. My wife's an eight and she's not going to die early because she's had treatment for trauma.

14:35Ed Mylett:And like you, she takes really good care of herself. But what we found was childhood trauma. And I don't know if I told you this. My first wife grew up in a severely abusive alcoholic home. And when I married her, it's like two months later, she tried to kill herself. And she's the reason I'm a psychiatrist. And I studied children and grandchildren of alcoholics. It activates your emotional brain. So that suffering pathway, it's probably more active than is healthy for you.

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17:17Ed Mylett:Oh, the doom loop is really the star of the book. It helped me so much get out of chronic pain. So it starts with pain for any reason. So pain HQ, that's the acronym. Pain for any reason. And it can be physical pain. You broke your ankle. It can be emotional pain. You feel disrespected. It can be relational pain. There's a breakup. That's one of the major causes of suicide. Or it can be spiritual pain. You can have a moral injury. And many of us during the pandemic, we were morally injured by how the government handled the pandemic. Or if you think of a moral injury, I grew up Catholic and the whole priest pedophile scandal, the church lost billions of people who were injured by that particular scandal.

18:18Ed Mylett:So it could be pain for any reason, which is the lateral pain feeling pathway. It's like, OK, we hurt. And then that then activates the suffering pathway. And that's already active in people who are depressed, in people who have childhood trauma, which then leads to an invasion. That's the I of ants, automatic negative thoughts. The thoughts that just come into your mind automatically and ruin your day. And then that goes to N, which is nervous tension, because whenever you have a negative thought, your brain releases chemicals immediately and your muscles get tight and it happens immediately.

19:09Ed Mylett:but also in that end is repressed emotion and repressed rage, which makes your muscles sort of chronically tense. Then that leads to age, which is harmful habits. A lot of people then, whether it's alcohol or sugar or marijuana, psilocybin, things that are really not good for your brain. And I know your audience just went on tilt. It's like, oh, I thought psilocybin was the new happy pill. It's like, we'll talk about it. And then you get to Q, which is the quagmire or quicksand of the doom loop and it spirals. And the other star of the book is the healing loop. It's like, well, how do you get out of this doom loop?

20:02Ed Mylett:And it's relief. And it's, you begin to recognize the pain. And I love this so much, public knowledge. I've been working with Julius Randall, the NBA superstar for the last year and a couple of months. And it's, he doesn't fail anymore. He wins or he learns. We're curious. We're never furious. And I love that so much. It's you recognize and then you get curious about it. How did I sleep last night? What are my relationships? Am I blocking some of my emotions? It's we start getting really curious about the pain. And then we go after calming the suffering pathway, whether it's saffron, curcumin, omega-3, fatty acids, a technique I talk about in the book I like a lot called havening.

21:04Ed Mylett:And then we let go of the negativity. There's a whole section on positivity bias training. the more negative you are, the less activity you have in your frontal lobes. Negativity is bad for you. Now, unbridled positivity is not the answer. You know, I can drive at 125 miles an hour down the freeway in the rain. It's like, no, I want you to have enough anxiety. You do the right thing, but start every day with today is going to be a great day and end every day with what went well today. Force, push, noticing what's right way more than you notice what's wrong. But really, you know, one of the secrets in this book, and I learned it from John Sarno, who I'm a huge fan.

22:02Ed Mylett:He wrote a book called Healing Back Pain and the Mind-Body Prescription. And he talked about how chronic pain is repressed rage. and I'm like that's so interesting but I didn't think he did a good job of teaching people well how do you get rid of the rage because when I was in pain I'm like yeah my brother beat me up every day when we were children and trying to change psychiatry I've been brutalized like you know the guy that said told 2020 I should be arrested there's I'm pissed off a lot and it's like but if you knew me I'm sort of like Pollyanna it's like whatever happens to you well what is there good to be about what happened to you and so I realized that Pollyanna had to meet Hannibal Lecter and And I remember the epiphany.

23:06Ed Mylett:My wife, who calls me Pollyanna. And when I came that epiphany, I'm like. She has to die now, not all the time, but. And it's like, well, how do you get rid of the rage? And there's actually a psychotherapy that's a rage therapy. It's called ISTDP. or intensive short-term dynamic psychotherapy. And when I first learned it, I'm like, oh no, that's too harsh. And then I'm like, oh no, you have to get in touch with the rage. So there's a whole section in the book on how do you get the rage out. And so for your situation, what I would do, there's an exercise called emotional freedom journaling. And for each five years of your life, so get a journal and, you know, zero to five, five to 10, 10 to 15, draw a line down the page.

24:09Ed Mylett:And for each five years on the left side, write down what awesome things happened during that period. So zero to five, I'm four years old. I'm standing at the stove. I'm with my grandfather, who I'm named after, who I loved, who is my best friend growing up, we're making fudge. And that's on that zero to five page. But on the right side is being beaten up every day by my older brother. And I'm pissed off about that. And then do that for each five-year period of your life. Well, pretty soon you have a good sense where the pain's coming from. And then write about it. You don't ever have to yell at someone or shoot anybody.

24:57Ed Mylett:Please don't. But you want to be able to express it. Like if it could come out in your body, where would it go? And I don't know if you ever had EMDR for the childhood trauma. huh? You totally should. I love EMDR and do it a lot with my patients. But when we do the therapy, we'll often go, you know, so say I have a patient who was sexually abused, we'll often go back to that event, process it. And then it's like, if the rage could come out, where would it go? And there are a lot of people who die in my EMDR sessions because I don't want people blocking the emotions. Now, I always want you to be appropriate.

25:47Ed Mylett:I never want you to go to jail. But in your mind, you have to be able to express the rage. Otherwise, it'll come out in neck pain, back pain. And another very important thing in this book is there are a number of studies that show, I'm 71, people my age, 80 % of people my age with no pain have abnormal backs. 70 % of people my age have abnormal necks who have no pain. They have abnormal necks. And so every time, you know, I had hip pain, I had back pain, I had neck pain, I had shoulder pain, my MRIs are always abnormal, which activate the suffering pathway. And now it's like I have to have surgery.

26:45Ed Mylett:But I know what general anesthesia does to the brain. It's not good. It's actually one of the risk factors for dementia. And in the book, I have a dementia prevention program. And so surgery is going to always be my last option. But because they see the abnormal MRI, oh, you have to have surgery. And of course, they go to a surgeon who says, well, you have to have surgery because, you know, that's how they put their kids through school. And I've not had surgery and my back pain is gone. Your body wants to heal. your body was created or evolved to heal and you just have to put it in a healing environment