What's up family? It's episode 106 of the genius life. Can you believe it?
What's going on? Everybody? Welcome to another episode of The Genius life. I'm your host Max Luke of you're a filmmaker health and science journalist. And the author of The New York Times best-selling book genius foods and the genius life on this episode of the show. I'm super excited to talk all things brain health and specifically mental health my guest for this episode of the show is dr. Daniel, Amen.
Is a very well-known psychiatrist. He has health clinics across the United States and you seized over 4,000 patients each month his breakthrough public television programs on various issues of brain and mental health of are over 80,000 times and have been watched by millions of people. He's also a distinguished fellow of the American Psychiatric association and is a Pioneer in brain spect Imaging his research on brain Imaging was ranked number 19 out of the top 100 stories in science in 2015 by discover.
Magazine and he is also a number one New York Times bestselling author. So I'm pumped to have this chat with him in which he reveals the 11 major risk factors that steal your mind. These are featured in his brand new book the end of mental illness, which is a national bestseller, which you should definitely go and check out it came out last month and I'm excited because this guy is super smart super compassionate and knows his stuff so
If you have a friend or loved one with any kind of mood disorder, or if you struggle with mood yourself, or you have any kind of any type of brain health issue, I would humbly submit that you listen closely to this episode of the show and share it with your friends and loved ones before we plunge headfirst into this chat. I want to give a shout-out to the sponsor of this episode of the show and that is birch Benders Birch Benders makes a line of super delicious pancake and waffle mixes that
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The Birch Benders.com and use promo code Max you'll get to save 20% off their there mixes come in super handy for a number of different applications. So definitely go and check them out. And if you are craving pancakes or waffles, you know that are super clean not going to make you feel crappy as I mentioned not using not made using any weird fillers and fake fibers and things like that Birch Benders is the jam Birch matters.com promo code Max, you'll get to save 20% off baby next up. I want to give a shout-out to
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life. Thanks so much Max. What a joy to talk to you.
Yeah. I know we've known each other for quite a while and I always love whenever getting the chance to collaborate you got to scan my brain on.
National TV which was a which was a pleasure.
And yeah, I'm a big fan of your work really ushering in the notion of preventative brain health and preventive mental health, which we're going to talk about over the next hour into the mainstream. So thanks for your
work. Well, it's just changed everything in my own life and the lives of people I love and just grateful that you help me share it.
So let's start at the I guess at the beginning for listeners who might not be familiar with you. What?
Is your background what kinds of things do you study and treat in your in your
clinic? So we have eight clinics around the United States and I am a classically trained psychiatrist that just completely took a left turn. So the short story is I'm one of seven children growing up. My dad called me a Maverick and to him that was not a good thing in.
72 the government still had a draft. I turned 18 and ended up is an infantry medic where my love of medicine was born, but about a year into being a medic. I realized two important things about myself. I didn't like being shot at I just couldn't get used to the whole idea and I didn't really like sleeping in the mud. That's just sort of not me.
My got myself retrained as an x-ray technician and developed a passion for medical. Imaging our professors used to say how do you know unless you look and that became a theme of my life after I got out of the military 1975. I went about a cold. I went to college and then medical school and in 1979. I'm a second year medical student when someone I love tries to kill her.
Herself and I took her to see a wonderful psychiatrist and I came to realize if he helped her which she did it wouldn't just help her that ultimately it would help her children and even her grandchildren as they would be shaped by someone who was happier and more stable. So I fell in love with Psychiatry more than 40 years ago, and I've loved it virtually every day since except I fell in love with the
Medical specialty that virtually never looks at the brain and I knew back then that was insane that if we didn't, you know, how can you make diagnosis with no biological information based on a group of symptom clusters and I just thought well, that's crazy. So somebody's got to change this and over the last 40 years. That's what I've been trying to do
your
Kind of famous for her or inFAMOUS for running running brain scans on people specifically spect scans and you've at this point amassed more than a hundred sixty thousand of these scans of various people's brains. What what are spect scans? And what do they what do they show you exactly? So
we actually didn't start with spect we started with quantitative EEG looking at the electrical activity in the brain when I
Is back in the Army? I was stationed at a place called Fort Irwin and the Mojave Desert. And when I started looking at the brain, it was just so interesting. I mean, I knew we had to do that but in 1991, I went to a lecture on brain spect Imaging s PE CT and spect looks at blood flow and activity. It looks at how the brain works and compared to the EEG work. I was doing the
Has were more detailed and in many ways more helpful. We still actually do both at Amen Clinics because you know, you just want to get as much data on a person's brain as you can and but suspect gave us these beautiful 3D images of the brain and it basically tells us three things good activity too little or too much and
We have this massive database, but I'm not the only one that does it of, you know, the people they sell the medication we use to do the scans. There are a hundred and sixty places in the United States. I have eight of them. So other people do it for Alzheimer's disease for stroke for head injuries for seizures. I just figured out how to use it for resistance psychiatric problems.
Because it's just unconscionable to me that people make complex diagnosis put people on medication with no information about how their brain works and some of my critics you brought up the infamy part. Some of my critics will say well it won't give you a diagnosis and that's absolutely right. You have to talk to people but giving some of the diagnosis of depression.
Doesn't tell you one thing about well, why are they depressed is it because their brain works too hard or not hard enough. Is it because they have a traumatic brain injury or they've been exposed to some form of environmental Toxin and clinical history plus Imaging dramatically improves outcomes. And you know, that's why we come to work to get people better and I published a study on fire.
500 consecutive patients showing our outcomes are better than anyone elses that publishes outcomes in Psychiatry.
That's amazing. I love you talked about the multifactorial nature of depression that depression could be the you know, the observable result of any number of factors and in your new book you the end of mental illness you talk about this. So what are some what are some potential causes do you think for people in the modern environment?
Become depressed.
Well, so the heart of the book is this mnemonic called bright Minds a long time ago. I came to realize if you want to keep your brain healthy or rescue it if it's headed to the dark place. You have to prevent or treat the 11 major risk factors that steal your mind and we know what they are.
This is the best reference book I've ever written. It has a thousand eighty six references and it so the things that we're going to talk about. It's not something, you know, I just discovered in one research study. So the mnemonic we created is called bright minds and B is for blood flow. So what's the cause of depression? It's low blood flow blood flow.
Blood flows actually, the number one brain Imaging predictor of Alzheimer's disease, but it's also associated with ADHD schizophrenia and depression. So why don't you want low blood flow? Well blood brings nutrients, but just as importantly it takes away toxins, and if you have low blood flow either because you have vascular disease hypertension. You don't exercise
You have erectile dysfunction if you have blood flow problems anywhere, it likely means they're everywhere. Then these things put you at risk and you know, one of the saddest stories that really taught me about this connection was when I was in medical school my grandfather who I was named after who was my best friend when I was growing up. I had a heart attack.
Tack and subsequently developed a major depression after his heart attack and what I learned at the time was sixty percent of people who have a heart attack will develop a major depression in the next 18 months. So there's a huge connection between hard and vascular problems and mental health issues. And you know, it's like if you have blood flow problems anywhere
Are like your heart they're everywhere and boosting blood flow. So with each of these risk factors, it's like, okay, how do you know if you have it so you can get a scan but not everybody can get a scan hypertension heart disease sedentary lifestyle erectile dysfunction is going to tell you probably have lower blood flow. Also caffeine and nicotine caffeine is not a health food.
Obtain and caffeine both construct blood flow to the brain. And so if you think that's one of your risk factors exercise eliminating caffeine and nicotine getting your blood pressure treated supplements, like Ginkgo huge fan of Danko because the prettiest spect scans I've ever seen or in people who take Ginkgo.
And then Foods, I know that's a particular interest of yours beats increase blood flow Rosemary. Oregano. Garlic cayenne pepper all increase blood flow to the brain. So how easy is that and basically it's love each of these risk factors. I mean love your blood vessels and then avoid anything that her
Bed hypertension detecting caffeine heart disease and then do things that help it including coordination exercises. So that's actually really important. There's this back bottom part of your brain called the cerebellum, which is Latin for little brain. It's 10% of the brains volume, but it's 50% of the brains neurons. It's the CPU the central processing unit in the brain.
rain, and you activate it by doing coordination exercises, like Dan's tennis table tennis and people who play racquet sports live longer than everybody else people play football and soccer live less little less Long than anybody else but racket Sports people just live longer and I think it's because they're activating their cerebellum, which
Then in turn activates the rest of the brain, so I'm a huge fan of the cerebellum. So that's just the blood flow are is retirement an aging when you stop learning your brain starts dying I is inflammation and you know, we could talk about that for the whole hour. But if your gut is unhealthy if you're low in Omega 3 fatty acid, if you have a processed food diet, you're more likely to be inflamed.
Aimed and inflammations associated with both depression and dementia. If you have periodontal disease, you know, if you have gum disease you're more likely to be depressed. So if you're not eating properly, you're not flossing and you have an unhealthy God that all by itself could trigger the depression. So is that a mental illness?
Less or is it a brain God acts as problem and I would argue it's not a mental illness. It's a brain got access problem.
It's a physical illness manifesting.
Mentally. Yeah. I hate the term mental illness. I've hated it ever since I decided to be a psychiatrist. I think it is wrong. It's shaming it's stigmatizing and it causes people to not want to get help.
Help and it's akaya trees fault. It's not their fault. I think we are working on the wrong Paradigm in 1999 or since 1999 cancers decline 27% suicide is gone up at 33% if you understand the statistics the outcomes in Psychiatry are no better than they were in the 1950s every other.
Lunch of medicine has made stunning progress psychiatry's made none. In fact, if you look at the big Innovations this year and Psychiatry. It's really using hallucinogens to help with PTSD and depression and I'm just shaking my head going. This is not going forward. It's going backwards. Why why are we not making progress because we're working on the wrong.
Paradigm making diagnosis based on symptom clusters with no biological data is insane, you know, it's like who else acts like that cardiologist don't act like that neurologist don't act like that orthopedic doctors don't act like that. No other medical specialist act like that and yet we're supposed to guess and somehow I'm crazy because I think well, if you don't look you don't know you should stop lying about that.
Yeah, I want to take just a step back because I remember having a conversation with you a while ago about alcohol and I know that you're a big critic of you know, this idea that alcohol in moderation is somehow good for us and you know, you also talked about caffeine and you know, I'm sure you're aware of the observational data that shows that people who drink coffee a seemingly endless amount of coffee. So, you know seem from an observational standpoint to be protected against
Any number of brain illnesses like Alzheimer's disease Parkinson's disease even Ms. So what are your thoughts on I mean if you can go a little bit deeper into why you are anti caffeine from a brain health standpoint and then also
alcohol. So let's start with caffeine caffeine constricts blood flow to the brain when I first because like, I'm sorry, I didn't have no money in this fight. But when I first looked at the Specht literature, they
recommended that you scan people off of caffeine because it can constrict blood flow to the brain up to 30% Wow, anything that constricts blood flow to the norgan prematurely ages the organ the second thing is it's addictive the more you drink when you stop drinking you get a headache and you get tired and you get irritable and so I'm not a fan of addictive things.
The third thing is caffeine for a significant part of the population disrupt their sleep and sleep is critical and in the book The End of mental illness. I have a writing device some very fond of and I wrote this whole section on if I was an evil ruler and I wanted to increase mental illness in America. Well, what would I do and there's actually 62 strategies in the book and one of the strategies is
I would have everybody start their days with caffeine and and them with alcohol because your artificially going up and then going down which is clearly not good for the health of the brain camping also blocks a chemical called adenosine adenosine tells you to go to sleep, but when you block a dentist and you actually have increased pain and so for all of those reasons,
Not to mention a lot of caffeine a lot of coffees raised with pesticides that I just and on top of which it dehydrates you had to give a presentation this morning to police department. And you know, I'm not having coffee before I have to give a presentation for two hours because right in the middle of it, I'm going to have to go the bathroom because it dehydrates you and your brain is 80%
Sent water so your body is 70% water. So most of us, you know, we're made up mostly of water but your brain even more so and being dehydrated by just two percent decreases cognitive ability. And so for all of those Reasons, I'm just not a fan of caffeine and yes coffee drinkers when you look at big.
Use there's seemingly the benefit with Parkinson's and diabetes, but there's so many other things you can do to get those benefits were lying on artificial energy just seems like a bad idea to me alcohol. My first Clinic was right outside the Napa Valley in Northern California. I actually wanted to buy a 3-acre Vineyard and then
When you look at the scans of people who are drinkers people that don't have quote a problem with drinking but they're drinking two three four drinks a day. They're definitely not healthy. According to a study from Johns Hopkins people who drink everyday have smaller brains and when it comes to the brain size Matters, it's the only organ in the body where size
Really matters and so the impact I've seen on scans is uniformly bad now does that mean you can't have two classes about call a week? Yeah. That's probably not going to hurt anybody. But why does my wife who's a nurse put alcohol on your skin before she gives you a shot because it kills the bugs. Well, how many bugs do you have in your gut?
A hundred trillion. Is it really a good idea to put poison down?
Into your intestinal tract, I'm not sure that's a good idea. And then if you know the research on alcohol and cancer that there is a significant correlation between drinking and I think it's seven different cancers and cancer is bad for your brain. I mean the stress that you're under the chemotherapy the radiation all of those things.
on top of wedge, you know not to mention the people that died in alcohol-related accidents each year, but is a psychiatrist see that alcohol lowers frontal lobe function making you more likely to say something stupid to your spouse that gets you to be divorced and is involved in a lot of the murders that I've been involved in I've had
Good Fortune, I'm not sure that's quite the right word. We've scanned about a thousand convicted felons a hundred murderers and a lot of the murders actually happened when people were
intoxicated. Wow, that is fascinating. Yeah, and you know, we all know that when we are inebriated mmm, it becomes a lot more difficult to make healthy food choices like with caffeine alcohol impairs sleep in a significant way.
So yeah, I would I would definitely agree with those those sentiments. What are your thoughts on T. I mean t has caffeine but surely there's got to be some benefit in a little green tea here and there.
Well, I'm actually drinking tea at the moment and I'm pretty sure it's decaffeinated but tea has half the caffeine of coffee and I think there are published benefits with green tea.
And so having a bit is fine. But if you're going to have more than a bed, I would switch over to D cap. Otherwise, it's going to hook your brain and Lord knows there's so many things trying to hook your brain into bad habits. And you know, I liked what you said about decision making people and so why when I go to a restaurant and it happens like almost all the time, the first thing they do is
They put bread on the table.
And then they offer you an alcoholic drink now, I know why they're offering you the alcohol drink because they're going that's where they make the most margin but they're also offering it to you because it makes your frontal lobe sleepy making you more likely to order more include desert, but why the Brad would people don't know is Brad is a simple carbohydrate. It's broken down into sugar quickly actually even in your mouth.
With the enzyme amylase and it causes an insulin spike your pancreas. He's the sugar in your bloodstream. It spikes insulin to drive it into your cells, but that insulin Spike drives tryptophan the amino acid building block for serotonin into your brain and when you get ahead of Serotonin like alcohol
All it calms down your frontal lobes and so the alcohol and bread together decrease the Judgment part of your brain may even though you walked into the restaurant. And you said I'm going to order the healthiest thing and I'm not going to order dessert. Well after the drink and the bread you're all in to make that restaurant more money.
Wow, and then you take people who are chronically under slept and it's just a recipe.
For bad decision making across the board
across the board and ultimately your health and your wealth and your relationships are dependent on the quality of the decisions that you make so people that are in chronic financial problem. They've made thousands of bad decisions people are in chronic relationship problems. They've made thousands of bad decisions people who
have chronic health problems. There are overweight or they have type 2 diabetes. They've made thousands of bad decisions and people don't get that. You have to start focusing on the health of your brain and give it the nutrients it needs and avoid the poisons that basically steal your decision-making.
Yeah. I love the bright Minds Paradigm the 11 risk factors that steal your mind and we've
Recover the B which is blood flow the our which is retirement and then I which is inflammation and I've talked about inflammation Ad nauseam, I think for my listeners so we don't have to we don't have to go there that could take up asshole, you know a whole an entire episode on its own but what about what's next? So we've got the G and the H in the tea. What are those what are those stand for?
So G is for genetics, but we think about genetics wrongly I
Think people go Oh obesity's in my family. I'm doomed or we have diabetes in my family or bipolar disorder schizophrenia. And and that's just a lie. The genes load the gun. It's what happens to us that pulls the trigger and I say genes are not a death sentence what they should be as a wake-up call.
So I dedicated the end of mental illness to my two nieces who actually live with me Alizee who's 15 now and Amelie who's 10 and they're loaded for mental illness. They have a family history of schizophrenia bipolar disorder depression addiction personality disorders incarceration almost anything you can think of in Psychiatry. It's in their family.
It is I said James load the gun. It's what happens to us the pulls the trigger. Unfortunately for them. They were raised and chronic chaos there with parents who suffered with depression addictions domestic violence. They went to many different schools and about four years ago. They were taken by child protective service and put into foster care and at the time my wife Tana was estranged from her sister the kids.
Is mom so we had no idea what was going on. But when we got a call from Child Protective Services, we knew we must act and it was the worst week of my marriage because you know, I'm all the child psychiatrist and I'm like now the kids can understand foster care. This is not okay with me and I even though I hadn't spent any time with them. Really I'm like, you know, we need to rescue them and she's like, well I grew up in
Easy and I am not inviting crazy and to my home. I've been spending my whole life trying to get away from crazy people. And so it was the worst week of our marriage until we sort of compromised wrap services around the mom who you know now was willing to get help and on Mother's Day 2017. She was able to get the children back and then you know, we moved them close to us and then end with us.
And the end of mental illness. So we just agree that these girls are extraordinarily high risk, both genetically and environmentally the whole idea behind the book is how do I ended in them and their babies and grandbabies? And so yes, they're genetically loaded but they're both getting straight A's in school. They're both extremely social. They're happy. They're no longer addicted to Hot
Cheetos and you know that sort of the whole point of the book.
Yeah genes are not Destiny. They're they're they're they're definitely not so that's that's great. I really appreciate that because a lot of people feel like they are locked into their quote unquote genetic Destiny, but you know their environment plays such a huge role in our risk for disease as well as you know, our risk for issues related to
To mental health. So moving on what what is the h stand for
well age and there are a couple of these that are epidemic in proportion inflammation is epidemic the H is head trauma or well your brain is soft about the consistency of soft butter. Your skull is really hard and has multiple sharp bony ridges mild traumatic brain injury ruins people's lives and nobody knows about
Because they end up seeing psychologists or psychiatrists who have never looked at their brains. So they don't understand the depression. The panic disorder is really a result of a concussion. They had or a car accident they had or a fall at the store. They had or fall down stairs or fall out of a tree when they were a child. If you said hey Daniel single most important thing you've learned from a hundred and sixty thousand scans.
Cans mild traumatic brain injury is a major cause of psychiatric problems and nobody knows about it because this whole professions not looking at the brain 2009. I started the big NFL study. We did at the time when the NFL was basically lying that they had a problem with traumatic brain injury in football. I partnered with the Los Angeles chapter of the NFL players Association and to date we have
And over 300 NFL players high levels of damage four times the level of depression as in the general population, but when we put them on a rehabilitation program the same one I talked about in the book 80% of our players get better blood flow to their brain is better. Their mood is better their sleep is better their motivation and their memories are better. I mean, that's sort of the whole point of the thing is you're not stuck.
Stuck with the brain you have you could make it better and one of my favorite treatments for traumatic brain injury is something called hyperbaric oxygen therapy while we of course we get them to eat. Right but putting them in a hyperbaric chamber can help reverse the damage for
people with concussion, you know, or even TBI that don't have access to a hyperbaric machine. I mean, what are some obviously the advice is to protect your head?
But for people who maybe have suffered a concussion with the acknowledgement that there is no one-size-fits-all recommendation here. I mean, what are just some general tips to you know, make sure that the damage isn't Further Along by, you know insults in the environment.
Well what I did with my NFL guys is everybody went on a multiple vitamin y B6 B12
Folate have been shown to decrease the conversion of mild cognitive impairment Alzheimer's disease. So I'm thinking let me give them new trends. I then put everybody on a high dose of high-quality omega-3 fatty acids and a combination and a ratio of 60% EPA to 40% DHA and then I
gave them a group of nutrients like Ginkgo and phosphatidyl serine and huperzine a all to support the brain through a multiple mechanism approach and that's what we did and then we scan them two months later and repeated their cognitive testing and the results were just stunning. My research team was just blown away by how many of these brain damage people got better.
You know and things like we talked about mood memory sleep motivation and blood flow to their frontal lobe. So simple inexpensive things fish oil multiple vitamin nutrients to support your brain in a number of different ways. Everybody can do that. I mean as you said the most important thing is prevent the next concussion and one of the things I talk about in the book people have had a head injury or concussion.
And I really think of them as the same thing that they often get headaches and become light sensitive. They may have depth perception problems have trouble driving at night. For example, they developed this thing called the irlen syndrome IR Lan and colored filtered lenses can just make a huge positive difference for them. And you know, I've had thousands of people over the years diagnosed with the
Roland syndrome and again just these simple colored filtered lenses can make a huge difference for them and I have information about that in the book.
It's fascinating. Do you ever recommend krill oil over fish oil, you know, my listeners might be familiar with the that there's a different chemical sort of makeup of the DHA fat in krill oil versus standard fish oil. Do you have any thoughts
There,
you know, I'm not seeing enough research showing that Krill is superior and it's more expensive but there is thousands of studies using fish oil and what a lot of people don't know about fish oil is because people generally think DHA works in your brain and EPA works for your heart, but the studies on ADHD and depression DH.
Doesn't really work at all for those that EPA Works more for anxiety and memory is DHA. But I like a combination and I quite frankly think everybody should be taking fish oil. I did a study on 50 consecutive patients who came to our clinics. So we did the omega-3 index with the study called Omega Quan and 49 of them had suboptimal levels of
Three fatty acids and then I published another study on looking at your omega-3 level and your hippocampus and hippocampus is one of the major memory structures in the brain that's also involved in your mood and when Omega 3 level fatty acids when omega-3 fatty acid levels were low the hippocampus was smaller and
activity.
Wow, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, I mean DHA is important as a straight, you know, one of the one of the most important structural building blocks in the brain, but EPA is I think it's powerful for cardiovascular health, which we know as you mentioned is crucial when it comes to having good brain health, but then also its ability to be anti-inflammatory, you know and create these compounds like resolve ins which help to basically pump the brakes on the inflammatory Cascade. So
Yeah, I'm with you. That's a that's a great recommendation. I want to get to I want to go through all the different letters. So we're up to T at this
point, you know, another epidemic is T is for toxins and you know looking at spect scans and almost psychiatrist. And when I first started doing Imaging I was the director of the Dual diagnosis unit, which is a psychiatric hospital unit that also takes care of substance abusers and it's sort of where I learned alcohol is not
Health food and marijuana's not going green. I'm actually quite horrified that you know made the presidential debate. The Joe Biden said, you know, I'm just not sure the science is there to legalize marijuana everywhere and Cory Booker made fun of him and basically said are you high and that was very disturbing to me because I published a study on a thousand me.
Marijuana smokers every area of their brain was lower in blood flow. That's not a good thing. And then in 2018, I published a study on 60 2454 brain scans largest Imaging study ever done and we looked at how the brain ages from nine months to a hundred and five and it's really got a fascinating pattern on how it ages, but then we looked at well, what accelerated aging?
And nicotine did alcohol did but marijuana did it way more than either nicotine or alcohol. So the idea that marijuana is innocuous is just wrong and for example kids teenagers who smoke have a 450 percent increased risk of psychosis teenagers who smoke have a higher incidence of anxiety depression and suicide in their 20s.
I mean should it be illegal? No, please don't put people smoke marijuana in jail. That's a bad use of our resources. But let's not say it's an innocuous because I just don't believe that it is but then you know and looking at the scans. Sometimes I get scans that were just flat out toxic and people who didn't drink or weren't doing drugs and then it really stretched my mind because I didn't learn anything about this in my residency.
At the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. So I went to sort of a pretty cool place. They didn't teach us at all about environmental toxins and their impact on Mental Health like mold or virtually every firefighters brain. I've seen has a toxic look because of the carbon monoxide they breathe or the cyanide they inhale when you know, they're leaving burning Furniture the
Lisa's these varied nasty chemicals and then if you just read the product labels or your shampoo or your underarm deodorant, they have things like parabens and phthalates that are toxic to brain function and their hormone disruptors there, you know, they decrease your testosterone or your thyroid or your estrogen and progesterone.
Around you begin to get horrified. So I talk about this app. I like called Think Dirty where you can scan all of your personal products and it'll tell you on a scale of 1 to 10 how quickly they're killing you and a number of people think that the toxins are actually a major cause of obesity and diabetes that it's not just your out of control eating.
That's the cause it's because you're being poisoned.
Yeah, I love that. Um, there was a study I believe it was published out of York University that found that over a 60-year period, you know between now and the 1960s, I believe you had to be consuming that to maintain the same body weight. You have to be consuming ten percent fewer calories today for whatever reason we just seem to
Getting fatter and calories are not the you know cannot and energy expenditure are not the sole explanation for that. They're they're they're you know that it's the Confluence of these factors in the environment. So yeah, I very much very much appreciate that
and so, you know, you obviously want to avoid anything toxic if you can and I grew up in Southern California, I grew up in the San Fernando.
The valley where we had smog days so I know I breathed in a lot of toxins. Just growing up where I did it's one of the reasons. I don't really want to go to China because the air pollution is so bad. But you know, it was a recent article in the news about sixty percent of the country still has, you know, multiple toxins in the drinking water. And so you always
Not to be supporting the for organs of detoxification. So your kidneys drink more water your gut eat more fiber your liver kill. Holy alcohol and eat brassicas which are basically detoxifying vegetables what I had for lunch today brussels sprouts cabbage cauliflower broccoli and sweat with exercise.
Eyes or sweat with saunas and people who take the most saunas actually have the lowest risk of dementia and actually think in your book The Genius life you talk about saunas and I talked about them in the end of mental illness as well
indeed. I am a huge fan of saunas. I just want to clarify because I don't like to get facts wrong on my show the York York University study found that
For the same amount of calories consumed and energy burned a person in 2006 would weigh 10 percent more than a person in 1988. So, you know, there's obviously a lot of confounding variables a lot of change in the world, but you know are ever-present exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals, you know is one is one plausible explanation among among others. So moving on. Yeah, I mean would love to
To get to the two minds and I mean your book is so full of information. So I feel like you know readers listeners have to go out and pick up the end of mental illness. It's amazing. But I just love, you know, your were so aligned in so many ways and I love that you don't hold back in your recommendation. So I just yeah, I would love to go through the last five if we can
so M is for Mindstorms, which is abnormal electrical activity in the brain. So, is that a mental health issue or is it a brain health issue and I
Argue it to brain health issue that sometimes these storms happened. We're all of a sudden you have temper problems or anxiety for a little or no reason and what I've seen on scans. It's this abnormal activity in someone's temporal lobe that when I stabilize it either with an anti-seizure medicine or interestingly the ketogenic diet it really
Ali helps balance people's emotion and I got I've been interested in the ketogenic diet for a long time could you know being a child psychiatrist and working with epilepsy, but I had a granddaughter that when she was five months old started having Wicked seizures and they wanted to put her on a medicine that was twenty six thousand dollars a dose and I'm like well, why not the ketogenic diet and the doctor
I said, you know, there's no science behind that and my wife said she knew the relationship went South when I asked him if he knew how to read that. You know, it's like no there's more than a hundred studies showing a decrease to seizure frequency by 50% So food really does matter that food is medicine or food is poison. And so
It's just a fascinating look at the connection between seizures and mental health and what are ways to balance these storms? So they don't have to steal your mind.
That's a perfect example of where food really truly can be medicine. There is a there's been a bit of a push back in certain pockets on Instagram and on the internet from what I call like the evidence.
I'm using air quotes but like, you know, the evidence-based insta influencer Community where you know, they really are trying to fight against the term that food is medicine because you know people will argue that like food can't cure, you know diseases like cancer and you know Alzheimer's disease and things like that. So I like to I like to say that food is a form of medicine, but certainly in certain in for certain conditions like hard to treat epilepsy where the cage ring.
Diet has been used for over a century at this point food clearly is medicine for those for those patients. So I'm I'm glad that you brought that
up for more food. Probably cause cancer and is clearly involved in Alzheimer's disease. There's a study from Australia where they looked at two outer Islands one had fast food restaurants the other one didn't they looked at their omega-3 and acts and their back
Depression inventory and the island with fast food restaurants had significantly lower levels of omega-3 fatty acids in their blood and five times the level of depression. It's the food. Yeah, that's your food ride and your mind will be better which is why in the book. There's a chapter called food made insanely simple, which I love that title.
I love that. Yeah, I mean there and there was the
the smiles trial that was published out of deakin University in Australia where they used food as the intervention to treat major depression and they saw huge results. So yeah, I'm I'm right there with you. I'm definitely in the food is medicine food is a form of medicine whatever, you know semantic variation you want to use, you know, I'm with you so we're up to I
So the second eye is immunity and infections. I'm in a new docu-series with Justin Bieber. He just released seasons and I'm an episode 5 and he came out publicly that I've been his doctor for a long time and it was very clear to me. Something was attacking his brain and you know, people can go. Oh, it's Fame and you know the trouble and his
Ali but you know when you have the kind of experience I have and you look at his brain you go know something's attacking his brain and he ended up with an autoimmune Encephalitis, which was an immune reaction and showed up positive for Lyme which is of epidemic proportions now in the United States and also Epstein-Barr.
And he had antibodies to the his dopamine receptor sites. And you know how important dopamine is to just being able to feel normal. So really strengthening your immunity and simple things like mushrooms and onions and garlic and brand new study out this morning on saffron that saffron help to treat rheumatoid arthritis, which is
Is an autoimmune disorder and in the book under inflammation, I talk a lot about God help but 70% of your immunity is actually housed in your intestinal tract and when it's not right you get attacked and I tell this great story of Adriana and the book sweet smart bright. She's 16.
Goes on vacation to you samiti with her family and they're surrounded by six deer and they think it's a magical moment, but 10 days later. She's hallucinating delusional aggressive. She ends up in a psychiatric hospital the doctor who was trained at Stanford tells the mother. She has schizophrenia. She has take this medication for the rest of her life that her mother just needs to sort of get over it and you know get on the medication bandwagon if you knew where
Other she's not going to do that and six months later. This child is shall of herself and her mother brought her to see us her brain is on fire where likewise her brain on fire and turned out she had Lyme and on an antibiotic and brain healthy habits over the next year. She got her life back subsequently graduated from Pepperdine with honors recently got her master's degree from the University of London and
human resource management and every day about noon I get a text from her mother. How can I pray for you today?
Infections and autoimmunity are major cause of psychiatric problems and very few people know about it. Even though Brain on Fire was a monster bestseller in this country. They even made a movie out add-on about it on Netflix. We're in New York Post reporter basically is having OCD paranoid psychotic symptoms, and it was only by random chance that
Had some abnormal blips on her EEG that they didn't send her down the psychiatric Rabbit Hole to hell and they figured out she had an autoimmune Encephalitis and on treatment. She got her brain back.
Wow. All I can say is I wish I had known that you were Justin Bieber's doctor because true story. I was at dinner last night in La celebrating my little brother Ben's birthday.
And he was sitting with his crew one table over for me. And I thought that was pretty cool. I've done is my first time seeing him in person.
Yeah, he's really a sweetheart. Who's he's just got a big heart and when you understand the whole story you realize one how Fame can damage your brain, but but there's a way back and
And he's worked really hard to get back. He really easily could have been one of the tragic stories of so many young
celebrities. Yeah, we've got CN n-- D&S left. We're in the home stretch. We're in the home stretch, and we're almost out of time so we could just do rapid fire and then my reading my listeners will go and pick up the book to do a deeper dive. But let's yeah, what's the N?
So n is no hormone issues.
Whose hormones are like Miracle Grow for your brain. You need to check them on a yearly basis things like testosterone and DHEA.
Thyroid insulin, estrogen and progesterone for women. So learning how to love and care for your hormones. Your mind is going to be dramatically better T is diabesity, which we could talk about for an hour 50% of the population is diabetic or pre-diabetic 72% of Americans are overweight 40 percent of us are obese. I published a study that showed as
Wait, when up the function of your brain went down in every area of the brain. It's almost a linear correlation. So getting your diet, right and your weight ride is just absolutely essential s is for sleep on average in 1900 Americans got 9 hours of sleep at night. Now we get 6 hours and 40 minutes on average. You cannot go through that.
That kind of change in such a short evolutionary period without it having a dramatic negative effect on mood on focus on cognition. So making sleep a priority and we talked about caffeine and alcohol. We could also talk about gadgets and blue light just making sleep a priority and sleep apnea is becoming an epidemic as well. But if you have untreated sleep apnea.
More likely to be overweight, but you're also more likely to be depressed. And is that a mental illness? I would argue. No your brain is starving for oxygen and it's a brain health issue gets your sleep, right and your brain often follows.
There's as far as I know there are other two types of sleep apnea. There's Central which is sort of you know,
The result of you know something going on in the brain, but then there's also a mechanical sleep apnea when people are overweight that tends to be the largest risk factor risk factor. Am I
wrong you're right. And so, you know the when a person's caring too much way, that's one cause but you can be thin and have sleep apnea and the problem is a lot of people are sleeping alone. And so they don't know that they snore that they stop breathing at night.
And when I can see evidence of it on the scans of really looks like damage to their parietal lobes the top back part of your brain, one of the first areas the dyes and Alzheimer's disease whenever I see it, I send people for sleep studies and it's consistently one of the most positive interventions to get sleep apnea treated that gives them energy for their brain. I mean, just think about it.
Our brain is the most oxygen hungry organ in the body. It's two percent of the body's weight, but uses 20% of the blood flow and oxygen if you starve it. I mean just think of somebody putting their hands around your throat. I mean it's going to cause you to be very unhappy and panic but that's what's happening all night long where the brain is not getting the energy it needs in order to function properly and sleeps really important because when you
Bleep you're consolidating memories from the day and your brain cleans and washes itself. So if you're not sleeping enough in a healthy way trash builds up, which puts you at more risk for things like Alzheimer's disease.
Absolutely. Yeah. I want to give a shout out to an app that I use to wake up. It's called Sleep Cycle. I have no affiliation with the company, but it's a it's an app that you use as an alarm clock and it wakes you up when you're in your lightest phase of
Sleep by listening to your to your bed and it determines based on the ruffling of the sheets. You know, when you're going to be in your lightest phase of sleep and that's the point at which it wakes you up. But the reason why I bring it up is because it's got the microphone on and it's monitoring your sleep. It also lets, you know, how many minutes of the night you've snored and so for people who live alone. I think it's a really great tool to know about because you know, I mean
Don't think I snore and thankfully according to the app. I don't snore so it has confirmed that but to try it, you know to try the app and it will let you know whether or not you snoring because otherwise there's no way there's no way of knowing if you if you sleep on your own.
It's really important and Technology can help us and it can hurt us. But using it in a helpful way is so important. Okay, you know what favorite chapters in the book is mine medicine versus nutraceuticals. It's so what's the science behind supplements? Because a lot of doctors will say, oh, there's no science. And again I go do you read their 286 scientific references in that chapter? And I have this cool way at least I think
School, like if you have ADHD before you go on medication do these 11 things and or if you have anxiety or depression before you go on medication think about doing these things including what supplements you might think about just because once you start psychiatric medications, and I'm not opposed to them. I'm just opposed to doing it with no biological Data before you start psyche.
Patrick medications that will change your brand to need them in order for you to function what are some natural things that you can try to see if it won't be helpful for you and we just have a lot of experience. I don't know thousands of testimonials showing that when people go on things like saffron and omega-3 fatty acids and the right kind of B vitamins that their mood is better their mind is
better.
Well, man, I love it. The end of mental illness is your new book. I'm super super excited for listeners to get their hands on it. And this is I had a ton of fun talking to you or just so aligned in so many ways before I ask you the last question that gets asked to everybody that's on this show. We're can listeners find you on social media. And also where is the book available?
So the books going to be available March 3rd everywhere and they go to end of mental illness.com. They can actually download a whole bunch of wonderful free resources. If they pre order order the book after the launch date including cookbook that my wife wrote called the 10-day brain boost where
Just I'm just so grateful to Max for helping me get the message to the world mental health issues or just growing exponentially and we need to just take a completely new approach and I say the end of mental illness will begin with the Revolution and brain
health.
Lloyd couldn't agree more. Well, dr. Amy. Thank you so much for your time. And the last question is what does it mean to you to live a genius life?
It's to take care of your brain. It's if you want to be a smart as you can be as you want to be as loving as connected it starts with the decisions you make which is a direct result of the physical functioning of your
brain.
Love it couldn't agree more. Well, thanks for your time to all you guys out there and podcast land. I appreciate you take a moment to spread this episode of the show share the knowledge that dr. Ayman just so generously dropped on us all and I will catch you on the next episode Peace guys. Take care your
brains.
