Big Pharma’s Most Dangerous Lie and the Dark Truth About Weed

34:48And I was 28 years old in my psychiatric residency when a professor said, you have to teach your patients not to believe every stupid thing they think. And I'm like, but I believe every stupid thing. Right. Most of us do. It's like, you mean I don't have to believe the noise or the nonsense that my brain creates? They should have taught me that when I was a second grader, how to manage my mind. I'm friends with Paul Simon. And Paul's song, Kodachrome is one of my favorites. It starts with, when I think back on all the crap I learned in high school. It's a wonder I can think at all. Yes. And I'm like, why can't we be more effective?

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37:35Including equalizers, balls, headers. Every goal is worth more on FanDuel. So let there be goals. New customers get$350 in bonus bets guaranteed when you bet$5 for seven days. 21 plus in present and select states. First online real money wager only. Minimum$5 wager required for seven consecutive days. $5 first deposit required. Bonus issued as non-withdrawable bonus bets, which expires seven days after receipt. Restrictions apply. See full terms at fanduel.com slash sportsbook. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or 1-800-MY-RESET. Thank you. Well, I mean, you said that the president of Mexico said that Mexico doesn't have, you know, pervasive drug use, drug use problems because even though their economy is based on selling drugs, Mexicans don't use drugs at the rate Americans do because they have a very aggressive drug education program.

38:22We also have a drug education program run by the drug peddlers that is super effective. I mean, I think if you ask people about marijuana, the first instinct is, why are you judging me? Settle down. You're too uptight. And the second is, it's way better than alcohol. And like, you got to get lit on something. And so you might as well choose weed over booze. And the third is, unlike alcohol, cannabis is actually like a real medicine, effective medicine. It can save people's lives. I mean, that is the story that we hear every day. Assess the last part. Is marijuana a medicine? Well, I think when used properly, it can be helpful.

39:07So, for example, my mother-in-law, who I love dearly, had stage four lung cancer and wasn't eating. And I'm like, absolutely. Let's see if marijuana will help her. For certain people with glaucoma, it can be helpful. Did it help her? Yes.

39:39But not for much else. And if you're using it for anxiety, it's going to make you more anxious. So, yes. So, glaucoma, which is a swelling of the eye, maybe? Yes. Okay. Increased intraocular pressure. Okay. and to help with appetite. Okay. It can help with pain, but if you start using it for pain, you're not going to stop. Why do you say that? What does that mean? Well, if you're using it for pain, it's going to suppress the pain, and when you stop using it, it's going to come back. So if you don't go to the origin of the pain, Yes. And pain, I have a new book coming out in December, Change Your Brain, Change Your Pain.

40:32And I talk about this in the book. If you have chronic pain, say you have pain for three weeks or four weeks, well, pretty soon it's no longer in your back or just in your back. It's actually in your brain, that your brain with pain becomes remodeled. Yes. and pain is now felt in your back, but it's in your brain. And if you're really going to go after that chronic pain, you have to get your brain healthy. And so if you're using marijuana for the chronic pain, it's suppressing those pain centers, but it's not getting your brain healthy. And so when you stop the marijuana, the pain is just going to come back.

41:22And it's very important in the book I talk about the doom loop, where you have pain for any reason, which then triggers the suffering circuits in the brain that actually are the same ones for anxiety and depression, anxiety, depression, pain, the same circuits in the brain, which then triggers this flood of ants, automatic negative of thoughts. I need surgery. I'll never be well. I'll always be in pain, which then triggers muscle tension, which increases the pain and leads to bad habits. So not just marijuana. It could be overeating because of the marijuana and you end up into this cycle of the doom loop.

42:12Familiar to anyone who's had back problems. I'm sorry? That's familiar to anyone who's had back problems. Absolutely. You described it, I think, very well. But so marijuana is, in your opinion, as a physician, helpful for a few just specific illnesses, glaucoma and low appetite. Why wouldn't the answer be to isolate whatever the compound is in marijuana that helps with appetite and glaucoma and literally medicalize it, put it in a pill or some pharmaceutical form and then sell it like you would any other pharmaceutical. Well, they've done that for a long time. Oh, okay. I'm not the first one to think of that.

42:53Okay, so we have that. So we have that. And so why does it need to be legalized for everything? And are we better off than we were before we did that? And the answer is absolutely we're not better off. We're in the worst mess that we've ever been. And we need to be honest with ourselves. And I just, I remember this crazy debate. So it was a Democratic debate in 2020 where they asked Joe Biden whether or not the federal government should legalize marijuana. And he said no. He said, I don't think there's been enough study. And on national television, Cory Booker shamed him. And he said, man, are you high?

43:49Like the science is settled and you're just crazy because you don't believe that. So a U.S. senator is basically saying the science is settled. We should all get high. And I'm like, that was just such a terrible moment for me. I think I was screaming at the television. But I mean, does Cory Booker know like some science that you don't know? No. You don't think so? You don't think, yeah. Cory Booker's not. And I'm just a fan of the truth. Of course. And my interest is to help you have a better brain. because if you have a better brain, your marriage is better. You're a better dad. You make more money.

44:38Well, since you are a psychiatrist, I mean, what is the effect of like chronic marijuana use on marriages? Well, I just released a podcast with Julius Randall, NBA superstar. I love him. It's public knowledge now that I've been his doctor. It was ruining his marriage because his wife said he wasn't present. Right. That he would use... They already say that about men. So, like, you don't need encouragement to be more vacant or distant. Yeah, it's true. It just changed his soul in the sense that he just didn't care about the things that were actually really important to him after he stopped. And he asked himself those questions.

45:25What do I really want? It's, no, I want to be married. I love my wife. I want to be a good dad. I want to be a present dad. And yes, I want to be great at my craft, but there's so much more to me than just basketball. And when I met him, I learned that it was legal for NBA players. They just don't test them. So they can be - The league allows NBA players to use marijuana. Yes. So then there's no restriction. on it. And, you know, I guess the only restriction is, well, how do you play? And Julius thought he played better when he used, but in fact, he played better when he didn't use. He just had to be able to learn how to manage his mind.

46:19So I'm not going to make fun of him for thinking that because people addicted to all kinds of substances become totally convinced that they operate at a higher level when they use those substances. You've seen that, I'm sure, a lot. Yes. And once they stop, they generally don't believe it anymore. Fair. But you have to always ask when someone's using any substance, it's why. Right. And there are biological reasons why they use it because it may decrease pain. There are psychological reasons. It does decrease the chatter in your head. They're social reasons because you fit in with the group you're using.

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49:36Requires Google account, Google Health app, internet, and Google Health premium subscription. Features subject to change. Availability and results vary. Not intended for medical purposes. Works independently of Gemini apps. Check responses for accuracy. Dotcom. Can we stop on the second one that it decreases the chatter in your head? I've had a couple of very smart, just high IQ friends who use marijuana for that reason and say they become more fluent, clearer thinking, more able to focus. You're suggesting that could be real. They're not making that up. No, it could be real, especially in the short run.

50:15Probably not in the long run. And I always want people to do things that help them feel good now and later versus now, but not later. Yes. And so are there other ways to optimize your brain? And that's what I get so excited with players like Julius and some of the other people I've worked with is how can I help you be the very best you can be? So it's not about taking broken people and putting them back together. It's about taking awesome people and helping them be more awesome. And looking at the brain, for me, it literally changed everything in my life. From the time I go to bed at night to what I eat to what I do to make myself happy.

51:20I always wanted to optimize my brain rather than steal from me. I have six kids and I love them all dearly, but I never want to have to live with them. And so I covet my independence. And as I get older, I'm like, I need to be more serious. Because did you know 50 % of people 85 and older, 5-0 % of people 85 and older will be diagnosed with dementia of one form or another? And it means if you're blessed to live to 85, you have a one in two chance of having lost your mind. And marijuana increases the risk of dementia. Really? Yeah. There are studies now, and its use is skyrocketing in older people.

52:19So in Canada, there was a study where 15 years ago, 5 % of people over 50 used marijuana. Now, it's 21%. The government of Canada, the government of the United States, is encouraging that. Why would they be doing that? I don't know. It's just wrong thinking. Yeah. At best. We don't want dementia increasing in the population. Alzheimer's is expected to triple by 2050. No. It's like, no. And I wrote a book many years ago called Preventing Alzheimer's and got no end of grief from it. published it the year Reagan died. And they're like, you can't do that. That's a false promise. And last year in the Lancet, their review article came out and said 50 % of Alzheimer's disease is preventable.

53:26And I'm like, I'm so excited. It's like, yes, but in order to do that, you have to love your brain and take care of it. What are the, without getting too technical, steps that a layman can understand to reducing your risk of Alzheimer's would be what? So I have an acronym I like called Bright Minds. You want to keep your brain healthy or rescue it. You have to prevent or treat the 11 major risk factors. And just quickly, B is for blood flow. Low blood flow is the number one brain imaging predictor of Alzheimer's disease. So what lowers blood flow? hypertension being sedentary alcohol marijuana nicotine much caffeine right little bit is fine much not a good idea um r is retirement and aging the older you get the more serious you need to be and you need to know what promotes aging marijuana promotes aging and now new studies out that if you're under 50 and you use marijuana you have a 600 % increased risk of having a heart attack.

54:36So we know it has a negative. 600 %? 600%. That seems significant. It seems significant. And so we know marijuana has a negative impact on blood vessels. Retirement and aging, I as inflammation, a major cause of depression and dementia. and so pro-inflammatory foods, so the ultra-processed foods, low omega-3 fatty acids, and not flossing, like of all things. A brain health strategy is floss every night. Floss your teeth. Floss your teeth. Do not get gum disease. You don't want low-grade infections in your mouth. And you don't want inflammation in your mouth. So it alters the microbiome or all the bugs in your mouth, which then have a negative impact on your whole body.

55:30Geogenetics, know what's in your family. Like I have obesity and heart disease in my family, but I'm not overweight and I don't have heart disease. Why? I'm on an obesity heart disease prevention program every day of my life because I don't want those things. We adopted our nieces because their parents were addicts and I tell them, I said, you have addiction in your family. You don't need to be on an addiction prevention program every day of your life. And when I found the older one vaping, I grounded her for six months. I mean, we're like very serious about if you want to go that way, that's up to you, but I'm not going to do anything in my power to help you.

56:22the second one and this is so important or the next one is h head trauma a major cause of psychiatric problems but it's also a major cause of substance abuse because if you damage your frontal lobes which happens in 90 percent of people who who have head trauma 90 percent of them their frontal lobes are involved it decreases impulse control yeah so you might know this isn't good for me. But if you want it, you do it rather than if you want it, you distract yourself. You make a better decision for yourself. Tea is toxins, drugs, alcohol, mold in your home can damage your brain and make you decrease your decision-making.

57:18General anesthesia is toxic to your brain. And then the products we put on our body. General anesthesia is toxic to your brain. General anesthesia. And like, I'm a psychiatrist. Why do I know that? Because one of my patients who is an alcoholic who had a terrible looking brain, she got clean. Her brain looked great. She then had knee surgery, calls me up crying. She goes, I think I have Alzheimer's disease. And I'm like, did she relapse? So I scanned her brain, looked terrible again, but she didn't relapse. It was the effect of general anesthesia. And then I went to the literature and I'm like, what does the literature say?

57:58The general anesthesia is hard on the brain and can increase the risk of dementia. And it doesn't mean you don't get surgery. It means you probably should do some rehabilitation work if you have to get general anesthesia. So avoid it if you can. Don't take it lightly. Well, like people, like in the pain book, this is the one statistic that blew me away that really sort of nudged me to write the book. If you have back pain. Yes. And you get an abnormal MRI. Well, that scares the socks off of you. triggers the doom loop, and you're more likely to get surgery. In there. But head-to-head against conservative care, surgery is no more effective, and it has a 21-fold increased risk of side effects.

58:53And then this is the statistic. People my age, 70. 70 % of us have abnormal backs who have no pain at all. People who are 50 who have abnormal MRIs, 50 % of them have abnormal back MRIs and no pain at all. That means just because you have an abnormal MRI on your back or your neck or your shoulder doesn't mean surgery should be the first thing you do, but because there's an industry around surgery that's often the first thing that's recommended. And I argue, well, let's do the conservative things with a brain boost first. And then if you need it, you need it, right? I'm not opposed to it. I'm just opposed to that's the first and only thing you do.

59:56So why aren't public health authorities, federal and state, sounding the alarm about cannabis? Or are they? They're not. State of California. Or at least in my state, they're not because it's a revenue source, because there's a political lobby.

1:00:20And it's shameful. I don't know how else to say it. When you really understand the research and now even more emerging research on anxiety, depression, suicide, and psychosis, I think we should be much more concerned from a public health standpoint. When was the last time you heard a public health authority in the state of California say legalizing marijuana has been a disaster and here are the numbers on it? I don't think they say it because of the pressure that's put on them not to say it. California is the largest marijuana growing state in the country, maybe the world. Certainly the highest potency, the best.

1:01:10Weed is grown in California, Mendocino, Humboldt counties, all that famously. It's a huge part of the state's economy. And you think that's why they won't say it's bad? Yes. It's money. And influence. So like we used to make fun of the, you know, congressman from Kentucky because he wouldn't say smoking caused cancer. It's the same thing. Yeah. You just look at power and power has to do with money. And it's killing us. and it breaks my heart to have all these young people think it's innocuous. And now along with the marijuana parties, they're having mushroom parties because I think mushrooms is going to go the same way as video games.

1:02:08And we didn't talk about social media and cell phones, all of the stuff just unleashed on the population. Psilocybin mushrooms. But now psilocybin, we have a daughter that's 22 and she's like dad they're not drinking as much but they're using mushrooms because they think they're innocuous but the visits to emergency rooms for psilocybin psychosis has gone up significantly it's a little harder to tell yourself I mean I smoked marijuana all through my childhood I also ate a lot of mushrooms But it's a little harder to tell yourself that mushrooms are like no big deal because you can flip right out on mushrooms.

1:02:53Like they eat enough and they're hallucinogenic. They inspire actual hallucinations. So how do you, and maybe you're totally for that or maybe you're not, but you can't say it's like drinking a cup of coffee. That's a profound thing. You see things that aren't there. That's by definition a big deal, no? It's absolutely a big deal. and they're studying it for PTSD and they're studying it for depression. And I'm for that. What I'm not for is it's good medicine. We should all do it. That I think it is. Well, it's kind of like weed and glaucoma. Okay, if it reduces your glaucoma symptoms, I mean, how could you be against that?

1:03:39But there's a huge distance between that conclusion and, hey, it's totally safe. Everyone should use it. Right. Like you'd take chemo if you had cancer, right? Absolutely would. You wouldn't recommend your eight-year-old had chemo. Would hurt my brain. Right. Right? But I have to have chemo or I'll die. I get it. And so I need to rehabilitate my brain. And it's probably from the almost 300 ,000 scans I've done, the biggest lesson is I'm not stuck with the brain I have, that I can make it better and I can prove it. I can also make it worse and I can prove that too, right? Every day I am making my brain better or I'm making it worse based on the choices that I make.

1:04:29And that's so exciting. and everybody gets really excited about neuroplasticity, neuroplasticity is you can remodel your brain. But neuroplasticity goes both ways. Whatever you repeat, you model in your brain. Whatever you repeat becomes tracks that force you into that road, if you will. And so when I go to a restaurant, And the first thing they ask you is, do you want a glass of alcohol? When you go no over and over and over again, well, no becomes strong in your brain. And so the temptation is low. If you say yes over and over and over again, that then becomes an automatic response. And so we're wiring our brains for health or illness by the choices we make.

1:05:32Back to psilocybin really quick. What do we know about the risks of using it? That it can unbalance you. That is true. I can verify that. Deeply, I mean, completely unbalance you. Yes. That you want to use it again. Although alcohol, if you use alcohol, there's a 15 % chance you'll get hooked on it. Really? 15%. If you use marijuana and you're young, there's a 17 % chance. If you're older, it's only nine, according to the latest research. So alcohol and marijuana in the young have an addiction potential for sure. If you're older, alcohol is worse than marijuana. Psilocybin, that's one of the risks, although less so, it seems, than either alcohol or marijuana.

1:06:32Well, you can't function when you're tripping. So it's not like you could, you know, eat four grams of mushrooms or whatever and like go to work. You can't. Well, and the doses in the studies, this is very important. It's 25 milligrams in the studies on depression. And many people I know who microdose are doing like 300 milligrams or 400 milligrams. And so it is the Wild West. I am a fan of lion's mane mushrooms. They have cognitive benefits and do not make you see things. What's kratom? So it's another one of what I call a weapon of mass destruction. It is an opiate agonist, which means it increases the availability of opiates in the brain.

1:07:31It's clearly addictive and it's legal. And it's often shown and it's often sold in gas stations and places like that. Yeah, the Indians run the gas station 50 yards from here. It's only kratom for sale behind the counter. I mean, is it, I've never tried it, how serious is it? Well, I've had a number of patients. In fact, I just did this great segment on KTLA in Los Angeles. So I scanned Casey Montoya, who's the weather person. She loves me and wanted to experience my work. And so I scanned her and scanned her producer. And then we did them a year later. And they both did what I asked them to do.

1:08:27Casey's brain was better, like really better, but the producer's brain was worse. And it sort of broke my heart because, you know, I get attached to how brains do. And I'm like, why is it worse? He goes, I don't know. I've done this and I've done that. And then he texted me. He said, the only thing I did differently between the first scan and the second is I picked up Kratom. And I'm like, why did you pick up Kratom? Pick up means started using? Started using Kratom. And he was anxious, something, and he said a friend told him that would be helpful. I'm like, you need to stop because it's clearly damaging your brain.

1:09:18And there's no, it doesn't seem to be regulated in most places. No, it's in the sort of gray period where clearly it's legal. They've tried to ban it a couple of times, but the Kratom lobby gets to the regulators. And I'm hoping that at some point this administration looks at it.

1:09:44So compare the attitudes toward drugs in the United States, just broadly, Vibejack, in other words. in 1982 compared to the attitudes you see now? I think in 1982, we were much more concerned about the long-term negative impact of drug use, marijuana, psilocybin, than we are now. I think just this sort of general lie that, and we unleashed these things without long-term neuroscience study because marijuana was banned, it got banned in 1937. They couldn't study it, sort of like psilocybin. And it is just, I see this as a psychiatrist And it just blows my mind how we unleash these things without actually taking the time to study them.

1:10:53Do other psychiatrists feel that way? Many of us do. They have 60 psychiatrists that work with me at Amon Clinics. And we all believe this. Has the American Psychiatric Association taken a position on? It's not a huge fan of marijuana is medicine. And most addiction societies are very concerned about it. Could you roll it back in the state of California right now? No. You could. Oh, it's just, it's that powerful. Not with the current administration. Right. So are you suggesting? If there's going to be a different administration, it will be hard. But I think the more we start caring about our brains.

1:11:52So the most important thing I'm doing right now is I'm working on creating a national brain health revolution. My goal is for everyone to ask themselves this one question. whatever I'm doing now, is it good for my brain or bad for it? And if I can accomplish this, then I think people will really start to ask themselves that question. Is it good for my brain or bad for it? And the thing most pressing is marijuana, psilocybin, cell phones, social media, AI. There's a brand new study out from MIT that evaluated smart kids who use AI to write their papers rather than just doing it themselves or just using Google had significantly less brain function while they were doing that task.

1:13:00What that means is if I go to the gym, I'm used to lifting 25 pounds so I could have strong arms. It's now I go to the gym and I only lift two pounds. So I'm not going to have strong arms. Well, you don't go to the gym at all and you just sit in your chair and eat Doritos. Farm it out. Well, right. You're firing out the exercise. And we should be concerned. About AI. About AI. Yeah. I mean, it's here, and if you use it responsibly, it can be a helpful tool. But it's going to cause a lot of pain, I believe, and a lot less activity in the brain. And what's the thing that protects us against dementia?

1:13:43It's work, brain work. The more I'm learning new things, the more I'm pushing my brain, well, the healthier it's going to be. It's in many ways like a muscle. And so I'm really good at reading brain scans. If I just kept doing that, I'm not learning new things. But if I figure out new and exciting ways to read the scans, well, that's good for me. Or I learn a sport or I learn a language. Just to put it into a larger governance context. So like, let's say you had a population that had been promised it was control, it had control of its own government, owned its own country. And then for, I don't know, like 50 years, you did nothing to serve their actual interests.

1:14:31And you started to worry that they would rebel against you in some sort of violent revolution. You didn't want that. Wouldn't you do everything you could to make them dumber and more passive, lower their testosterone levels, lower their brain activity, have some Kratom, have some SSRIs, here's a Benzo. get fat. You're like, why wouldn't you want that if you wanted people to be docile? So I wrote another book called The End of Mental Illness. And in it, I imagined if I was an evil ruler and I wanted to create mental illness, what would I do? What would you do? All of those things you just mentioned.

1:15:17I would have little girls selling Girl Scout cookies. In fact, in the most brilliant evil ruler strategy, there was a Girl Scout who set up her cookie stand outside a pot dispensary in San Diego. And within a span of like three hours, completely sold out and had to get more product. And I'm like, that is brilliant evil ruler strategy stuff. It's got little girls that are really cute to sell you sugar with trans fats in them to people who are smoking pot. I'm like, and the marijuana with the highest level or one of the highest levels of THC is called Girl Scout cookies. So it's so funny how, you know, Pavlov's principle just, it holds true always.

1:16:16Second you said Girl Scout cookies, I was just carried away with thoughts of Thin Mints. I was. The texture, the taste. But they don't love you back. No, they don't. So I was at a luncheon recently with Lisa Trout. I love Lisa Trout. Lisa and her husband, Kenny, own racehorses. And they own Justify. Couple from Dallas, very nice people. Love them. And I'm sitting next to her and I just had to do it because Justify won the triple crown. And I'm like, would you ever feed Justify junk food? And she rolled her eyes at me. I said, no. I said, would you ever get him stoned? And she goes, of course not.

1:17:09I said, would you ever get him drunk? And she just looked at me. And I'm like, why? He would never live up to his potential.

1:17:23So whatever you eat or whatever you drink or whatever you put on your body, Just another one of those questions. Do you love it? And does it love you back? Because if it doesn't love you back, don't do it. Right? And this is all about self-interest. Because I've learned you can't just tell people no, because then like in the Garden of Eden, they're at the tree. It's like, but what's the goal? And people go, come on, Daniel, how can you have any fun? And I'm like, well, who has more fun, right? Because what do you really want in your life? And I think most people are like me. They want energy. They want memory.

1:18:13They want clarity. They want creativity. They want passion. Well, that takes a great brain. And so it's like, oh, but you should just have a glass of wine. I'm like, well, I might love it, but it doesn't love me. So why would I engage in behaviors that don't love me back? I think there's spiritual effects of all of this. Dulling people physically, emotionally, mentally, reducing their cognitive power, everything that you've just described makes a person less likely to ask transcendent questions, I think. That's likely to ask any questions because their habit centers are in control rather than their purpose centers.

1:19:09What's a habit center? So it's the dopamine loop in the brain. So there's an area called the nucleus accumbens, which is what responds to dopamine and gives you pleasure or pain. and it's connected to the basal ganglia, it's part of the basal ganglia, if that takes over your life, you're just going to give in to whatever those habits created that. And it decreases. Are you describing craving there? Well, there's a difference between wanting something and liking something. An addiction often goes to you want it, but you don't necessarily like it anymore. Yes. And there's really this dance, I often say, between the elephant and the rider.

1:20:07So the elephant is your emotional brain and the rider is your prefrontal cortex. It has to control or break your emotional brain. So the four-year-old in you is not always in control. And when you hurt your frontal lobe, so think of hitting soccer balls with your forehead repeatedly, that'll hurt your frontal lobes or playing tackle football. Now, all of a sudden, free will goes from perhaps 80 % to 40%. And then when you get stoned, now it's at 10 % or you get drunk. And it's this beautiful dance between your frontal lobes and your emotional brain that often become disconnected in addiction. How hard is it to get off marijuana?

1:21:12Easier than some things. Julius got off after he saw a scan. I see that a fair amount when people go, oh, this is not really helping me. It's damaging me. So he gets off or anyone gets off who's a daily user, millions of daily users. But what happens next? Well, it takes a while. It takes a couple of months, I think, for that to fully get out of their system. And it depends on do they get off and substitute brain healthy behaviors that help rehabilitate their brain. And that combination makes it easier to get off. If they get off and then replace it with vaping or replace it with sugar, they're much more likely to relapse.

1:22:11And when you go to AA meetings, I always found this very interesting. They'd have the donuts and everybody's smoking and they're eating donuts and coffee with a lot of sugar. And I'm like, maybe we could replace those things with healthier things, healthier choices. People who get off, particularly alcohol, tend to go bonkers with sugar. What is that? Well, they're just trying to replace feeling good because sugar works on the dopamine centers of your brain as well. And I always thought, why isn't brain health part of addiction treatment centers? I wrote a book with David Smith. So David is the founder of the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic in San Francisco.

1:22:57He's considered the father of addiction medicine. And we wrote a book together called Unchain Your Brain, Breaking the Addictions That Steal Your Life. And in it, we put a brain healthy program for addiction treatment centers. And many of them around the country use that, which I'm so excited about. But I rewrote the 12 steps in one of my books, a book called Your Brain is Always Listening. That's audacious. I'm sorry? That's audacious to rewrite the 12 steps. I thought it was a big deal. But I'm like, they haven't been rewritten since the 1930s. I said, what if a neuroscientist - You see at the Old Testament next.

1:23:42Rewrote the 12 steps. Well, I wouldn't start with step one. Step one is my life is out of control. Yeah. I would go, step one is what do you want? Relationships, work, money, physical, emotional, spiritual health. What do you want? And step two, is your behavior getting you what you want? Obviously, it's not. Step three, let's go get your brain healthy. Brain health is three things. Brain envy, got to care about it. Avoid things that hurt it, know the list. Do things that help it, know the list. That's got to be the next step because with a healthy brain, you're less likely to relapse. Or if you relapse, you don't see it as a failure because every day, and this is what Julius and I did, every day you win or you learn is you take a curiosity mindset into the problem rather than a shame mindset into the problem.

1:24:50I failed. It's like, well, let's look at it. And if you can understand, do you know when people relapse, when they have low blood sugar, when they've gone too long without eating, they're more likely to relapse. That's 100 % true. So like carry nuts with you or just something with you all the time so you don't get hungry. Why does hunger cause relapse, low blood sugar? Because it lowers blood sugar. When you get lower blood sugar, you have lower frontal lobe function. Really? It's so interesting. And there's this fascinating study where they took 107 couples, married couples, and they measured their blood sugar right before bedtime.

1:25:40And then they gave them voodoo dolls. And they asked them to rate their feelings about their partner with pins in the dolls. And so they measured their blood sugar. And the people who had the lowest blood sugar had more than twice the number of pins in the voodoo dolls. I thought that was fascinating. That is fascinating. Yeah. So you listed the things that make your brain smaller and less functional. What are the things that make it bigger and better? So we go back to Bright Minds. Blood flow is clearly exercise. and I think coordination exercises and strength training are both really important for blood flow.

1:26:29Retirement and aging is learn new things and everybody should get blood work every year, I think. And one of the tests you should always get is ferritin. So ferritin is a measure of iron storage and if your iron is high, it promotes aging and you should donate blood. twice a year. So donating blood twice a year for people who have high varitin levels, good for their brain, good for the... So there was something behind the whole leech idea. Wow. It's so funny. Tana and I were in Istanbul. We went to the spice market and they had leeches for sale in the spice market. And I'll look at my wife and I'm like, why do they have leeches for sale here.

1:27:14And she's a neurosurgical ICU nurse. And she said, because they suck blood and it can help wounds heal. And it also takes off excess iron. Now, if your iron levels are low, it's a very bad thing. Don't do that. So you wouldn't recommend leeches for everyone? No. As far as inflammation, omega-3 fatty acids, I think everybody should probably take fish oil or an omega-3 supplement, healthy fish. People who eat grilled or baked fish once a week have more gray matter in their brain. I think you should floss regularly, take care of your teeth. The curcumin is a wonderful anti-inflammatory supplement.

1:28:05Also saffron for so many reasons. What's curcumin? Curcumin is a spice from turmeric. Also called cumin? Not called cumin. It's different. Curcumin, very popular in India and curries. Curcumin is one of the components of it that has specific anti-inflammatory effects. And there's studies showing it decreases depression because depression and inflammation. Inflammation is one of the causes of depression. From genetics, like know what your risks are and be in a prevention program every day. Don't text and drive so you have a head injury. And avoid toxins, right? So I'm not a fan of drugs or alcohol.

1:28:58But there's an app I like called Think Dirty. It allows you to scan your personal products and it'll tell you on a scale of 1 to 10 how quickly they're killing you. And so just start reading the ingredients. What are personal products like? Shaving cream. Like for years, I shaved with Barbasol. And when I scanned it, zero is live a long time. Ten is die early. Barbasol's a nine. And I'm like, oh, I don't want to do that. And so I now shave with something called Kiss My Face. Used it this morning. And it's a two, right? It doesn't have toxins in the personal product. So think deodorant, shampoo, body wash, lotions, things along that line.

1:29:45Read the labels, right? Most people are smart enough now that they're reading food labels. They need to read product labels. The M, we didn't talk about the M, but that's mental health. If you're depressed as a woman, it doubles your risk of Alzheimer's disease. If you're depressed as a man, it quadruples your risk of Alzheimer's disease. And now we know new studies, SSRIs increase the risk of dementia. Like, holy smokes. And so... But... Significantly? Significantly. Head-to-head against SSRIs or head-to-head against antidepressants. Walking like you're late for 40 minutes, 45 minutes, four times a week.

1:30:32equally effective. Taking fish oil, equally effective to antidepressants in a study from New Zealand. It was actually more effective. Learning not to believe every stupid thing you think. Cognitive behavior therapy works for depression. Pushing away those thoughts. Not pushing them away, engaging them. I teach you how to do it. It's really fun. And then saffron is a brand new study out. They looked at 192 studies on 17 ,000 people looking at what supplements actually had scientific evidence that they worked for depression. And saffron in many studies was equally effective to antidepressants. And if you added zinc.

1:31:21Saffron? Saffron. If you added zinc and curcumins, even more effective. And the supplement SAMI, those were the ones that had good scientific evidence that they were effective. And I love saffron, and I've taken it every day for six years. Why? Studies for mood. I'm not depressed, but I'm happy to be happier. Studies for memory. And it's pro-sexual rather than SSRI. which sort of numb your sex drive and make it harder to have an orgasm. So I'm like, so what would I do? Prozac or saffron, zinc, and curcumins? I'd do saffron. Immunity infections, we haven't talked about this. I would know your vitamin D level and I would optimize it.

1:32:1460, 70 % of the population in America has suboptimal levels. And that's because they don't go outside or they're slathered. sunscreen and because they're not going outside. But we've been told that skin cancer is the real threat. Yeah. That since we've been told that skin cancer has gone up, not down. Now, I think - Well, how does that work? Not well. No way. It's like the dermatologist won. They made us afraid of the sun, But we need the sun. We were made in the sun or we evolved in the sun and we need our vitamin D level to be at a healthy range. Now, don't go crazy with it because then you'll end up with kidney stones.

1:33:02but you want to know it, right? You can't change what you don't measure. You want to know it and then work to optimize it either by getting more sun or supplementing it. It's so important and eating garlic, mushrooms, and onions helps support immunity. So the second I in bright minds is immunity and infections. And I believe infectious disease psychiatry, it's going to be a major branch of psychiatry in 50 years. And like COVID, for example, flamed the brain. It was so interesting because when COVID first started, I mean, I have all these patients and they would get COVID and they'd get anxious or they'd get depressed or they'd get psychotic.

1:33:54You could see it on their scans where their emotional brains became dramatically overactive. And if you have long COVID, it's damaging your brain. You can actually see it on scans. I mean, I think that's true. I mean, it's true anecdotally in my life. People at the low point of COVID were depressed. People who had COVID in those few days where it can get difficult, it affected their emotional condition. A lot. Why? So if you get COVID, in the next six months, you have a 25 % increased risk of having a new onset psychiatric illness. And what our scans taught us, it caused inflammation that targeted your emotional brain.

1:34:45And so the way to help that is omega-3 fatty acids, decrease inflammation. Curcumins decrease inflammation. Quercetin, another supplement, decreases inflammation. And then make sure you're on an anti-inflammatory diet where you're not eating processed foods, much sugar, or much simple carbohydrates. This is a fascinating study from the Mayo Clinic where they looked at people who had a fat-based diet. So think avocados, nuts and seeds, green leafy vegetables, salmon, healthy oils, 40 % less risk of getting Alzheimer's disease. People had a simple carbohydrate-based diet, bread, pasta, potatoes, rice, fruit juice, sugar, a 400 % increased risk of Alzheimer's disease.

1:35:45The D in Bright Minds is diabetes. obesity. You do not want that. It's a combination of being overweight and having high blood sugar. It's a disaster for the brain. So when I get my overweight pre-diabetic patients, I'm like, if you want to love your life for the rest of your life, we got to get this under control. The N is neurohormones. Talked about testosterone a little bit. And the S is sleep. So all of those things or the bad things and the good things to do for your brain, but it all boils down to, is this good for my brain or bad for it? You can tell if someone is pre-diabetic, overweight, it's evident on the brain scan.

1:36:33Yes. Their brain scans look older than they are. and that's reversible? Absolutely. Now, the earlier you get it, the better, right? If you have somebody with stage four Alzheimer's, I'm probably not going to make the biggest difference in their life. But if they have stage one or two or they have mild cognitive impairment, it's like, let's go. Let's go after this. Really? My favorite story, one of them, is Nancy. So I did a big NFL study. at a time when the NFL was sort of lying about traumatic brain injury in football, was 2007, 2008, 2009. And Ray White was one of our players. He played linebacker for the San Diego Chargers.

1:37:23And he joined my study, so I would see his wife, who had frontal temporal lobe dementia, which is wicked dementia. And at a young age, she was in her mid-50s. and the doctor at UC San Diego told Ray, you should find a home for her because within a year, she is not going to know your name. And he was mad and he was sad and he said, could you just tell me your opinion? And we scanned Nancy and she had frontal temporal lobe dementia. You could see it on the scan. The whole front part of her brain was severely low in activity. and I said, I agree with the diagnosis, but if she was my wife, and I like my wife, I would do all these things.

1:38:16Basically, all the Bright Minds interventions, plus put her in a hyperbaric chamber, make sure she stops drinking alcohol, optimize her hormones. 10 weeks later, they came back, and I scanned her. Her brain was better. It wasn't normal, but it was dramatically better, and Ray had lost 30 pounds in those 10 weeks. And I'm always trying to get my NFL players to lose weight. And I'm like, how did you do that? How did you lose 30 pounds? He said, I knew if I modeled a brain healthy life, she would do it too. And it just hit me that sometimes motivation is about love. He loved his wife. Yes. And as he got healthy, she did better.

1:39:06Now, frontal temporal lobe dementia is awful, and it was a war. But five years later, she was still home. Wow. And I thought that was a huge win. So you're confident that this intervention slowed the progression? Absolutely. What causes frontal temporal lobe dementia? We don't know. Sometimes it's repetitive trauma. Sometimes it's an infection. But by and large, that's one of the ones we don't know what causes it. Why is Alzheimer's sometimes referred to as diabetes type 3? Because if you have diabetes and you're overweight, you're much more likely to have Alzheimer's disease. Do you think that the rise in Alzheimer's, which is also, I think, real, we can say, it's not just a matter of extended lifespan or improved diagnosis, but there's actually more Alzheimer's, right?

1:40:07Yes. Is that directly related to food? I think it's directly related to all 11 of those risk factors. So, for example, if you have sleep apnea, where you snore loudly, you stop breathing at night, you're tired during the day, that triples your risk of Alzheimer's. I think it's all of these things going together. And we bought this huge lie that Alzheimer's is caused by an increase in beta amyloid plaque formation in the brain. but when they develop medicines and vaccines against beta amyloid, they didn't work. And we have a couple that are now FDA approved, but they don't work very well and they're very expensive.

1:40:55You have to go after all the risk factors as early as you can. I think all of us should be on an Alzheimer's prevention program, which is the same program to prevent depression. and it's basically healthy living it's basically answering that one question whatever you're doing today good for your brain or bad for it so that goes to food it goes to the time you go to bed it goes to your interactions and it also goes to not believing every stupid thing you think so we talked earlier about pushing away the bad thoughts I don't want you to push away I want you to write them down write them down where no one can see them well that's up to you but it's like and that just go is it true I don't know if you know my friend Byron Katie she's got this elegant way of killing the ants the automatic negative thoughts so my wife never listens to me I've had that thought and if you don't question a thought You believe it.

1:42:07And then you act as if it's true, even if it's a lie. And so my wife never sort of listens to me. Write it down. Is that true? No. I've written 19 public television specials. She's listened to every script. Now, maybe only once, but that's all I need her to do. The second question is, is it absolutely true? With 100 % certainty, you know that thought's true. Now, how does that thought make you feel? Terrible. Isolated. Alone. How does it make you act? Distant. Irritable with her. What's the outcome of that thought? She'll not listen to you. The fourth question is, how would I feel if I didn't have the thought?

1:42:59Fine. How would I act? Normal. What's the outcome? Happier. the fifth question is my favorite one take the original thought tana never listens to me and turn it to the opposite tana does listen to me and then i could list all the times she does and that way rather than allow the thought to fester see if you just push it away it's still there but now i've gone into the heart of it and i've killed it and it doesn't bother me. It's so effective. And I have my patients. If you just do that 30 times, take the worst 30 thoughts that come in your head. Like one of my patients, I'm a pedophile. Like, whoa, is that true?

1:43:51Well, I have those thoughts. Well, is it absolutely true? He says, I've never touched anybody. How does that make you feel? Like a criminal. Well, how would you feel if you didn't have the thought? Normal. What's the opposite of that thought? I'm not a pedophile. You have any evidence of that? So I've never touched anyone inappropriately, right? Just because you have a thought, it's like all of us have crazy thoughts. Yes. All of us. Like, this is gonna sound really crazy, But we have two dogs. And I love them both. But the German Shepherd loves my wife like way more than me. I come home and he's like, hey, dude, what's up?

1:44:43She comes home. It's like, oh, my God. I love you so much. This is where have you been? I've been longing for you. I mean, she's just nuts. And he was in my office because when she's not around, he loves me. And he comes hanging out with me. And then I just had the thought, you know, if I killed my wife, he would love me more. Yeah. That's one answer for sure. And then I'm like, yeah, but no. No, we're not killing her. And it's just your brain. Jerry Seinfeld said this. Your brain is a sneaky organ. We all have weird, crazy, stupid, sexual, vile thoughts that nobody should ever hear. And just because you have a thought has nothing to do with whether or not it's helpful, whether or not it's true.

1:45:44And it may not even be related to what you want at all. Not at all. And there's a verse in the New Testament I like, Romans 12, 2. be transformed by the renewing of your mind. And most Christians know that, but they don't know the second part of it. Then you can test to see if it fits God's good, perfect, and pleasing will. And murdering Tana does not fit God's good, perfect, or pleasing will, and in fact will not make me happy because I love her so much more than I love the dog. Of course. Right. But just having a thought, it's just like the weather. It's like, oh, it's a storm. And I can take that thought captive and I don't have to believe it.

1:46:39But there's nowhere in school where we teach kids to manage their minds. And so if they get these crazy thoughts, they think they're bad. And they don't know how to deal with it, so they smoke pot to manage it. And then that becomes the habit loop of their life. It's a familiar process, I think, for most people listening. One question that arises, where do those thoughts come from? It's a great question. And because the thoughts may actually not be yours. Well, that's my distinct impression that we're under, we're under, you know, attack or at least outside influence. Well, it came from a different generation.

1:47:29There's a book I love called It Didn't Start With You. And on our podcast, Change Your Brain Every Day, we interviewed Mark Wollin. And he talks about how trauma gets passed down through generations. that trauma causes epigenetic changes, these little switches on your genes, and it makes you more vulnerable to anxiety, depression, and the thoughts that are associated with those things. And it may have nothing to do with you. Or any experience that you have had. Or any experience you have had. So are you saying that you arrive in this world with it encoded in your genes? Yes. That we're not blank slates.

1:48:12No, we're not. What happened in the people before us. So like aspartame can affect generations, so can trauma. And there was a lot of study done on this of children and grandchildren of people in the Holocaust. And how it changed the chemistry in their bodies, making them more vulnerable to having depression, anxiety, and PTSD. It's also been found to be true for the children of the soldiers who enter Iraq and Afghanistan, that they have a higher incidence of medical issues. But what you're saying is not just that they picked it up at the dinner table. You know, mom and dad are traumatized, therefore I am too.

1:48:58It's something that is physical in origin. It was genetic. Yes. That it's biological and psychological. So all those circles, they all work together all the time. Why do you fix that? Well, one, you recognize those thoughts aren't you. Yeah. You just write them down and you evaluate. Do you ever have those thoughts evaluate them and find them true? Like there is a monster under the bed. Well, sometimes. Well, sometimes. All your fears come true. Because the goal is never positive thinking. That's not the goal. The goal is accurate thinking with a positive spin. I just published a huge study on 7 ,500 people on negativity.

1:49:49And negativity is bad for your brain. Negativity actually causes your prefrontal cortex, frontal lobes, to be lower in activity. and so I'm not a fan of negativity, but I am a fan of being honest and that just resonates the most with me.

1:50:17So the pedophile, he wasn't a pedophile. It was the worry, it was the thought. Of course, it's like jumping off a tall building. It's like, I don't wanna get near the edge, I could jump. Right. It's just a rogue thought has gone wrong. And one of the exercises I give my patients is give your mind a name. So you can gain psychological distance from the noise in your head. I learned that from my friend, Stephen Hayes. And he was on our podcast. And I'm like, give your mind a name. I'm like, well, what would I name my mind? Be interesting to hear what you'd name your mind. But I named mine after my pet raccoon.

1:50:56I had a pet raccoon when I was 16 and I loved her. But she was a troublemaker. She TP'd my mom's bathroom. She ate all the fish out of my sister's aquarium. She'd leave raccoon poo in my shoes. And that's my mind. So I named my mind Hermie. That was her name because I didn't know it was a girl when I got her. And I just watched the movie The Summer of 42 and Hermie was the main character and I loved him. And whenever my mind starts to act up, metaphorically, I'll put her on her back and just start tickling her. I'm like, come on, we can do better than this. So I'm not punitive to myself. I'm a cheerleader.

1:51:41And I realize I am not my thoughts. Don't take yourself too seriously. Absolutely not. And does it fit, right? It's another one of those questions. Does this thought fit my goals or does it fit God's good, perfect, or pleasing will for me? I'm like, killing my wife doesn't fit. There's like nothing about that that fits. And I'm not a bad person because I had the thought. Because it's just the thought, right? I didn't control it. I'm a bad person if I do something bad. This is one of the reasons that nursing mothers go crazy is they have thoughts of harming their own children whom they love more than anything.

1:52:24Yes. I'm sure you've dealt with that. Absolutely. That's common. It's very common. And they hate themselves for having those thoughts. They hate themselves. And they would never do anything. Of course not. To harm the child unless their brain is damaged or their brain is disrupted. So I've scanned over a thousand convicted felons, over a hundred murderers. We got this scan of Kip Kinkle, who murdered his mom and dad and then went to his high school and shot 25 people. His brain was so damaged. How? Well, he murdered his mom and dad, so he never really knew. Likely he had anoxia or lack of oxygen at birth.

1:53:13and my hero story. So when I first started doing scans, I loved it. I was so excited about it. And then I had, I'm a distinguished fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. But then so many people there started to hate me. They said, you shouldn't be scanning people. It's not part of our tradition. That's not what we do. And I'm like, when I was growing up, father whose two favorite words, first one was bullshit. The second one was no. And I heard that over and over again. And so when they told me I shouldn't be doing what I'd loved, I'm like, bullshit, no, I'm going to do it. But I became very anxious because I didn't like powerful people telling me I shouldn't do something.

1:54:00And it was really painful emotionally. And then in 1995, I got a call late one night from my sister-in-law who told me my nine-year-old nephew, Andrew, who's my godson, who I loved, attacked a little girl on the baseball field that day for no reason. And I'm on the other end of the phone. I'm like, that's awful. What else is going on? She said, Danny, he's different. He's mean. He doesn't smile anymore. I went into his room today and I found two pictures he had drawn. One of them, he's hanging from a tree in a suicide attempt, nine years old. The other one, he's shooting other children. And that's the scary, that's horrifying.

1:54:48And I'm like, I want to see him tomorrow. Because I'd been scanning people for four years and I'd already correlated violence, at least in some people, to the left temporal lobe. So if your left temporal lobe is damaged, you're more likely to have dark, evil, awful thoughts. And so they brought him up to see me the next day. They lived eight hours away. And I'm like, buddy, what's going on? He said, Uncle Danny, I don't know. I'm mad all the time. I'm like, is anybody teasing you? He said, no. He says, is anybody hurting you? He said, no. Is anybody touching you in places they shouldn't be touching you?

1:55:23He said, no.

1:55:27999 child psychiatrists out of a thousand would have put him on medicine and put him in therapy. And I'm like, I have to look at his brain. Because how do I know unless I look, right? That's like one of the taglines of my life. How do I know unless I look? Why are psychiatrists the only medical doctors who virtually never look at the organ they treat? And I went, great question. I went to the scan center and I held Andrew's hand while he held his teddy bear and got scanned. And afterwards, my mentor, Jack Pauldy, the image comes up on the computer screen. He's missing his left temporal lobe. And I looked at Jack.

1:56:12It's the first time I've seen it. I've seen it almost 200 times since. He writes down so mom won't hear, cyst, stroke, tumor. And later that day, I got an MRI. He had a cyst the size of a golf ball, occupying the space of his left temporal lobe. I called his pediatrician. I said, you find somebody to take this out or drain this thing. He called three neurologists. All of them said they wouldn't touch the cyst. They didn't think it had anything to do with his behavior. And they wouldn't recommend surgery until he had real symptoms, at which point I lost my mind. and start screaming at the pediatrician.

1:56:54I'm like, I have a homicidal, suicidal child. What do you think are real symptoms? So there's this incredible divorce between psychiatry and neurology. And I thought to myself, neurologists, neurosurgeons. Neurosurgeon, what I really want. So I called the chief of pediatric neurosurgery at UCLA, Jorge Lazarev. And he was already famous because he'd separated the Guatemalan twins or connected the head. And he said, Dr. Amen, when these cysts are symptomatic, we drain them. He's obviously symptomatic. And after surgery, I got two phone calls. First one was from my sister-in-law who said the surgery went really well.

1:57:41And then she burst out into tears and she said, when Andrew woke up from surgery, he smiled at me. She said, Danny hadn't smiled in a year. And then I got a call from Dr. Lazare who said, oh my God, Dr. Eben, that cyst was much more aggressive than we thought. It actually thinned the bone over his temporal lobe. So it thinned the bone of his skull. And he said, if he would have been hit in the head with a basketball, would have killed him instantly. Either way, he would have been dead in six months. and it was that moment I'd lost all of my desire for the American Psychiatric Association to like me for my colleagues to love me I'm like if you don't look you don't know how many people are like Andrew have brains that aren't right that do bad things that we just label as bad rather than is sick.

1:58:39And I mean, there was that moment that caused me to lose my anxiety and go to war. Did he improve? He got so much better. And today he's got his own business and his dad and he's married and he has kids and yeah. And we've seen almost 200 since then. Well, there are a couple famous case. Charles Whitman most famously at the University of Texas. Right. But of murderers who were clearly driven to it or their brain tumor or cysts played a role in it, obviously. Right. It's not that uncommon. And how would we know unless we looked? And so, Dovstavsky said, you can tell about the soul of a society, not by how it treats its outstanding citizens, but by how it treats its criminals.

1:59:35Yes. and it just, I want to rehabilitate people who do bad things or at least try, right? We should look at their brains and see, can we get them better? Can we get them to love their brains so they don't go out and use drugs? And I was involved in a program in Washington State where they actually screened for ADHD and learning disabilities, made them go through a 14-week course to learn about what they had. And it cut recidivism from 69 % to 29%. Now, I think this is a conservative idea. Yeah, it is. That if you invest in true rehabilitation, they're going to get out and they're less likely to come back, which means they're going to get out, they're going to work, they're going to take care of their families, they're going to pay taxes.

2:00:31They're going to be a more important part of society rather than we just house them and punish them further.

2:00:45Your new book, Change Your Brain, Change Your Pain. Dr. Amen, thank you. That was amazing. Thank you so much.

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