Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMwAN30FJAQ
four of my patients have a billion followers Justin Bieber niley Cyrus Bella Hadid and we looked at their brains and what we found is thank you so much Dr Ayman Dr Daniel Eamon he's a clinical neuroscientist New York Times best-selling author one of America's leading psychiatrists and brain health experts why do you do what you do I have to do what I do someone I love tried to kill herself and she [Music] would have died I think I would have always been left with a hole in my soul most psychiatric illnesses are not mental illnesses they're brain health issues when you re-imagine mental health is brain health changes everything so you want to damage your brain do not engage in new learning don't ever eat fish never floss play football marijuana alcohol nicotine caffeine it's a drug you want to keep your brain healthy takes three seconds so did you know about the ace quiz it's 10 of the most common childhood traumas if you have four or more you have an increased risk of seven of the top 10 leading causes of death if you have six or more you die for 20 years earlier is there something that can be done to change it absolutely if you came to see me I would have you before this episode starts I have a small favor to ask from you two months ago 74 of people that watch this channel didn't subscribe we're now down to 69 my goal is 50 so if you've ever liked any of the videos we've posted if you like this channel can you do me a quick favor and hit the Subscribe button it helps this channel more than you know and the bigger the channel gets as you've seen the bigger the guests get thank you and enjoy this episode oh [Music] Dr Eamon why do you do what you do it's uh part of my soul I have to do what I do um the short story so I got to do what I do is when I was 18 Vietnam was still going on and I had a low draft number and I became an infantry medic where my love of medicine was born but about a year into it I realized I didn't like being shot at it
was irritating it was horrifying and I got myself retrained as an x-ray technician and just developed a passion for medical imaging as our professors used to say how do you know unless you look and that became a theme for my life and then I got out of the Army in 1975 and finished college and when I was a second year medical student someone I love tried to kill herself and I was horrified I had no idea what to do and I took her to see the chief of the Department of Psychiatry where I went to medical school and I realized if he helped her 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 I fell in love with Psychiatry 1979. so 44 years ago and I've loved it every day since but I fell in love with the only medical specialty that never looks at the organ it treats and even back then I'm like why aren't we looking at the brain I mean obviously the brain is the organ of depression the brain is the organ of bipolar disorder the brain is the organ of anxiety why aren't we looking at it and they said that's the future we will but not yet and growing up my dad thought I was sort of a pain in the ass he called me a Maverick because I didn't just accept what he said and it turns out he's true and I'm pushing we should be looking at the brain in 1991 so I've been a psychiatrist almost a decade I went to my first lecture on brain spec Imaging spect is a nuclear medicine study that looks at blood flow and activity it looks at how your brain works and basically shows us three things good activity too little or too much and then it rocked my world I mean explosion in my world it's like I have to look why no unless I look and the lessons just kept coming that the first lesson most psychiatric illnesses are not mental illnesses their brain health issues if I get your brain healthy well your mind tends to follow because your brain the physical
Moment by moment functioning of your brain creates your mind and if your brain isn't healthy your mind isn't healthy so that was the first lesson and I'm like these these are not mental illnesses and when you re-imagine mental health is brain health changes everything it changed everything I do as a psychiatrist most psychiatrists you come you go to them and you go I'm depressed and then they'll give you a diagnosis with the same name of what you just told them to go you're depressed and then put you on an antidepressant which in large-scale studies work no better than placebo and I'm like so next lesson depression is like chest pain it doesn't tell you what causes it and it doesn't tell you what to do for it but we have whole Industries built on money for medicine for mental health conditions and I think it's complete crap because they're not looking at the organ they don't know is it from head trauma is it from an infection is it from a lousy diet is it from being sedentary is it because you don't know how to manage your mind and I then learned that mild traumatic brain injury is a major cause of psychiatric problems and nobody knows about it because they don't look at the Brian and it's just like a little kid so excited I still am 32 years later we've done 225 000 scans and it's it's it's so fun to be in the future helping people get well so I have to do it I know that's a long answer I like long answers you'll come to learn that um you've written so many books and you seem to have the same energy you've always had about this subject matter when you sort of if you were to encapsulate or to summarize the mission that you're on which is the source of all that energy what is that mission that you're on the mission is to end the concept of mental illness by creating a revolution in brain help and that mission just evolved you know my mission when I graduated from medical
school was to be a really good psychiatrist because it's personal to me and to be a writer I wrote my first book the year I graduated from medical school and I found I loved the process that writing brings me joy that when I can take complex Concepts and make them really easy to understand and that's helpful to someone I love that that's joyful to me and that skill has served my career so well because my books bring a lot of people to we have 11 clinics around the US and they often come because they've read one of my books so they serve the purpose of educating and then allowing us to do the work we love doing if someone's listening to this and they've never really taken the time to learn about the brain before because they don't necessarily think it's so important they you know they understand things about dieting or whatever else but the brain they kind of just assume it's there right like a lot of people do what case would you make to them about the importance of positive healthy cognitive functions and brain health what is the case why does it matter to the ordinary person say if they don't have a psychiatric you know predicament they don't have a mental health disorder why does the brain matter to them because your brain's involved in everything you do how you think how you feel how you act how you get along with other people your brain is the organ of intelligence character and every single decision that you make and when your brain works right you work right and when your brain is troubled for whatever reason mold covid head trauma um not sleeping chronic stress when your brain's not right you're sadder sicker poorer less successful I got to scan Tony Robbins you know the famous success Guru and I love him and I love his work and I think he's so smart and he said publicly had mercury poisoning he decided he loved swordfish but it didn't love him back because it's loaded with Mercury and when we did a Facebook live I'm like you are the software of success but if the hardware is not working it's
going to be really hard to implement the wonderful strategies that you teach and I always think of people in four big circles uh first week of medical school Sid Garrett our Dean he said never think of patience as by their diagnosis always think of them in these four big circles he went to the board and he drew the first Circle which was biology and for me it's like the physical functioning of your brain and body and that's why the scans are so important but then the second Circle he drew was psychology how's their mind working how are their thoughts are they loaded with a term I later coin called ants automatic negative thoughts the thoughts that come into your mind automatically and ruin you and also in this circle is development it's really the quality of your mind and then the third circle so if you think of the brain as the hardware of your soul the mind is the software that needs to be programmed so you got to get your brain healthy program your mind and then work on the Social Circle which is so what's going on in your life think pandemic that was a social disrupter but also how are your relationships how's your job how's your money and then the last Circle that most psychiatrists would never touch is the spiritual Circle it's like why the heck do you care what is your deepest sense of meaning and purpose and so I think assessing those four circles and working always to optimize them at the same time is critical for you being a whole healthy person but if your brain's not healthy because you played soccer and you had four concussions doing all the therapy it's not nearly as effective is getting your brain right and then doing the therapy I mean because I'm like a huge fan of therapy and I have my therapy patients that I love but it's Hardware software network connections always understanding someone's sense of purpose let's go into those four areas then just to pause on that though you mentioned Tony Robbins there when I was reading through your story it became apparent that you're quite the celebrity
psychiatrist because a lot of celebrities have come out and said that they work with you give me a give me a taste do some name dropping give me a couple of examples um it's public knowledge Bella Hadid came out and said she stopped drinking because of me and then the newspaper tried to take my head off for that controversial psychiatrist gets Bella to stop drinking um dealing with haters is something I've become quite skilled at uh public knowledge my I've been to Miley Cyrus's doctor for 11 years I'm really proud of her she had the number one song in the world right now flowers and it's about self-love which makes me so happy I'm in Justin Bieber's docu-series Seasons because I've been his doctor um I love helping them you know I often say four of my patients have a billion followers so it's about influence because if the mission is to end mental illness by creating a revolution in brain health well you gotta have an army and so you might as well have an army with a lot of soldiers and so um it's it's a very disruptive concept because when you really understand it you realize we're living in a war and I'm serious about this everywhere you go someone's trying to give you bad food that will kill you early everywhere you go you hear negative news that's driving depression it's not the news it scares you so they can sell you stuff um everywhere you go someone's trying to put a gadget in your hand or your pocket that will steal your dopamine and give them the Mind share you should have and the incidence of diabetes is 50 of the population is diabetic or pre-diabetic obesity is 72 percent or overweight or obese I published three studies it shows your weight goes up the size and function of your brain goes down and people go you can't talk about that it's like no you can't not talk about that um Alzheimer's is expected to triple and depression has gone up 400 percent since Prozac came on the market so obviously that didn't fix it and so it's what my
wife and I often refer to is the brain Warrior's Way you want to be armed and prepared to win the fight of your life that's so true I'm currently doing this glucose test as part of this company called Zoe I had Tim Spectrum the podcast he's one of the co-founders they do personalized nutrition it's this incredible company based out in the UK and so because I can see my glucose right now on my phone when I went into a gas station the other day or a petrol station as we say in the UK I looked around at my options and every single thing was bad for me every single thing in that gas station was sugar or processed carbohydrates the only thing I could get in that gas station was water and I said to my partner at the time so if you're hungry and it's also if you're stressed or tired you are going to eat this this this junk but anyway I'm going back to unless you plan unless you put stuff in your car uh or in your computer bag and when you really love yourself you take time and like you know for example the plastic water bottles are toxic that you just like turn them over and does it say a 204 or 5 on the recycle and like those are pretty good they don't Leach toxins narrowly as bad is one three six and seven and just knowing that I always say God gave us a big brain for a reason it's like when you get motivated this isn't hard brain health isn't hard being sick is hard brain health is not expensive being sick is expensive um you just plan a little bit better in terms of the hardware then which was the first circle of your four circles what can I do to make sure the hardware of my brain what are the most important things to be cognizant of to make sure my Hardware is in good shape so that I have a chance of my psychology and my my connections my spiritual Circle being I'm successful also so I I like looking um it's like the brain is one of the only organs that doctors virtually never screen you've looked at a lot of brains right almost looked at 230 000 Brands and I mean I'm obsessed with if you came to
see me and you go you know I'm pretty good but I want to be great how's my brain and we would look at it and is it younger than you are because you have good habits is it older than you are because your habits aren't so good or or let's just say it has nothing to do with you your mom smoked when she was pregnant with you or she smoked when you were a baby and you're inhaling this secondhand smoke which is stealing a concept I call Brain Reserve so your brain health may have something to do with your habits or may have to do with habits of other people so I think the first thing it's a concept called brain Envy I often say Freud was wrong penis envy is not the cause of anybody's problem I've actually not seen it once in 40 years he was focused on the wrong organ it's the brain and Freud actually in 1895 said the brain science of my time is not up to the task of explaining patient symptoms which was true in 1895 so he went off and developed psychoanalysis and had a lot of really nutty ideas but some really great ideas brain Science Now can explain a lot of your symptoms so the first thing is to assess it and it's 1991 I ordered my first scan I started scanning everybody I know I scan my aunt who had a panic disorder I scanned my mother had gorgeous brain which fit her life and then I scanned myself and it wasn't awesome and because I played football in high school had meningitis when I was a young Soldier I had bad habits I wasn't sleeping I ate a lot of bad food and I was the top Neuroscience student in medical school but I didn't care about my own brain and when I saw it that's when I fell in love with it wanted my mother's brain the idea of brain envy and I've been in love with it ever since and one of my patients said when he saw his scan for the first time was like seeing one of his children and he knew he'd never heard it again and so that's step number one you want a healthy brain you got to care about it step two is you have to avoid things that hurt it and you just have to sort of know the less and step three is engage in regular brain healthy habits again you just have to know the list
and the the simplest way and I love this and I I noticed throughout my books throughout the Arc of the evolution of my books the prescriptions get easier and easier because I'm always thinking how do I plant it so it takes root and grow and I work with BJ fog I don't know if you know Dr Fogg from Stanford he's in charge of the persuasive Tech Lab because basically how do people change and he said either they have an epiphany so when I saw my first scan it was an epiphany I didn't want an unhealthy brain because I I understand what that means for my life um but he said most people it's not the Epiphany it's the tiny habits it's like what's the smallest thing you can do today that will make the biggest difference and it comes down to the mother tiny habit so whenever you come to a decision point in your day like you're at the gas station is this you ask yourself this question takes three seconds is this good for my brain or bad for it and if you can answer that with information and love and this is very important love of yourself love of your mission love of your work you just start making better decisions and it whenever I say well you shouldn't do this and you shouldn't do that it just never works you gotta tie into I want something special for my life and this is going to get it for me and so if I'm at the gas station I'm looking at the waters and I'm like okay what's got a non-toxic bottle attached to it and I'm going for the nuts because you know people who have a fat based diet nuts and seeds green leafy vegetables healthy fish healthy oils have 42 percent less risk of getting Alzheimer's disease people have a simple carbohydrate-based diet so most of the stuff in the gas station bread pasta potatoes rice fruit juice and sugar the standard American diet have a 400 percent increased risk of getting Alzheimer's disease a study from the Mayo Clinic and I love that you're monitoring your blood sugar I just love that so much because Alzheimer's disease people refer to it often as type 3 diabetes and one of the
best things you can do for your health is make sure your fasting blood sugars under 90. and if it tends to run high you can go I take metformin for that or you can get rid of this simple carbohydrates in your diet so there's two things I was really compelled by as you were speaking in two directions I wanted to go in the first is I want to know the list when we talk about the things that are good and bad for the brain but just before we get on to that you said about how you have to pause during your day when you're making decisions and ask yourself is this good for my brain now I I often wonder why people know information but don't change you talked about the persuasive Tech Lab um I've always wondered what the connection between someone's self-worth and their ability to do the right thing when they're in that moment of making a decision for or against them because it's been my observation which has completely unproven that people who have and I wondered if you've seen this in your practice but people that have a maybe a more stressed life a lower sort of self-worth a lower sort of self-image of themselves tend to make short-term decisions that are less um constructive or Pro um positive for the brain but just generally in life anyway and I wondered if there's a link there I often I'm asking this question because I often wonder with some people that are close to me with some of my friends why they continue to make decisions that they objectively know aren't healthy they're not good for their you know their life their long-term prospects of relationships their health whatever it might be and I just it's a bit of a left-field question but is there a correlation in your view between one self-esteem their self-worth their self-image and their ability to sort of delay gratification and make the right Health decisions so it's actually connected the do you know about the marshmallow test I do yes I read about it so uh Walter Mitchell from Stanford would give children small children three four-year-old children an opportunity to either have a marshmallow now or two
a bit later and the children who delayed gratification their self-esteem was better their success virtually in every area of their life was better now he later discovered you can actually train the ability to delay gratification there's another study at Stanford I love this study so much um they looked at 1541 10 year old children in 1921. it's the longest longevity study ever done and Lewis Turman psychologist at Stanford evaluated them and then he and others followed them for 90 years looking at what goes with health success and longevity and what he found was a bit shocking that the don't worry be happy people died the earliest from accidents and preventable illnesses and I always wanted to be that because I've never been that don't worry be a happy person I like show up on time I'm driven I'm motivated of all my books they all they get turned in a week or two early I'm like no conscientious and what they found was people who were conscientious lived the longest I said don't worry be happy person how do you define well it's my brother and I love my brother but he's 150 pounds overweight and he leaves work at three o'clock plays golf he just like doesn't care and for years I tried to help him get healthy and I even set him up with the cutest nutritionist who I trusted and he didn't show up and then I realized I was cared more about this than he was and it sort of broke my heart but it's that nonchalant attitude that's not taking things seriously and it'll kill him early and that breaks my heart can you tell me about the Journey of trying to help your brother because I think a lot of people listening to this have their own experience with trying to help someone that they love and it's a often resentful bitter failing battle I've been there myself so let me switch it to my dad okay because that has a better ending at least now um I did not have a good relationship with my father when I told my dad I wanted to be a psychiatrist
he asked me why I didn't want to be a real doctor why I wanted to be a nut doctor and hang out with nuts all day long and that's just hurtful but I'd already not cared what he thought 1972 I turned 18 I get to vote George McGovern is who's very liberal is running against Richard Nixon and I'm like maybe I'll go for McGovern my dad said if I did the country would go to hell well I did and the country went to help it had nothing to do with the government had to do with Nixon and Watergate and all that craziness so we were like butting heads uh when I started looking at the brain I'm like come on dad I want let me scan your brain and he said no until years later and I'm like Dad what I'm learning is the brain is an organ like your heart is an organ we gotta get you healthy and he's like oh great my nut doctor son is now a health nut he's like what's with you in the nuts and so for 25 years I nudged him to get healthy and he belittled me he made fun of me he would do it publicly and it was hurtful but his opinion of me even though it hurt it didn't matter I kept doing what I do and when he was 85 they had mold in their house and he developed a chronic cough and then a heart arrhythmia and then heart failure and I went over his house and I saw he was depressed and my dad didn't get depressed my dad gave depression but he didn't get depression and he looked at me and he said Danny I'm sick of being sick what do you want me to do and he's so stubborn he did everything I asked him to do he texts me a picture of the food he's like can I eat this and I'm like send me the ingredient list and then I would Circle it and I'm like in what universe is this good for you and I'm one of seven children um now he starts talking about me to all of them and they would text me and like tell him to like not be so
enthusiastic and we started working out together he's a beast he could do a six minute plank because he's so stubborn and over six months he lost 40 pounds his energy came back his heart was better he starts driving again and live the next five years in love with his brain and love with his body and if he would have died before those five years I think I would have always been left with a hole in my soul that helped repair it and the only reason he did it is because I did it the only reason he got healthy is because I modeled the message and ultimately that's what I tell my patients you never know when they're going to turn like I still never know if my brother will turn I love him I model I'm always there with a suggestion right but I'm not caring more than he cares what would that whole have been I think it's one of the big gifts that I was given that he looked at me and said what do you want me to do is that I'm assuming from hearing that it's because that was the moment where he kind of accepted you and you're worth in your job and you're yes and he told everybody besides me how proud he was of me and the first time he told me he loved me was when I was 50. which is just nuts when you think about it I mean he's from a different generation and um but I just can't even imagine it when we have someone in our lives that um maybe wasn't fair to us in some way whether it's a parent or an ex-partner or whatever how do we how do we not let the resentment or the negative emotions or the negative experiences or that feeling of Injustice that like we like this situation wasn't fair how do we get to a place of empathy with
those people so that we can live you know without the burden of that like resentment or you know regret or whatever it might be well I have a perfect example so I started Imaging in 1991. I am a distinguished fellow of the American Psychiatric Association I won a research award I am respected by my colleagues but I start Imaging and initially there was acceptance and then because the Imaging doesn't really go with the diagnostic Orthodoxy they're like shouldn't do that and now I'm caught in a bind I love being connected to my colleagues but there's no way I'm not looking at your brain if I can and so there's this tension and for three or four years I feel challenged I feel belittled I feel anxious and I'm starting to become ostracized from my group so I'm anxious and I'm furious um and then in 1995 my nine-year-old nephew Andrew attacks a little girl on the baseball field for no reason so my brother's youngest son and my sister-in-law calls me up and she's crying and she said she went into his room that day and found two pictures he'd drawn one of them is hanging from a tree in a suicide attempt nine years old the other one he's shooting other children so he's like columbine or Parkland Florida or Sandy Hook I mean we're into that kind of Darkness and 999 child psychiatrists out of a thousand would have put him on medicine and put him in therapy but because now four years I've been looking at the brain we'd already correlated violence to the left temporal lobe left temporal lobe dysfunction often went with violence I'm like I want to see him and so they drove eight hours and I'm sitting with my nephew who I'm also his Godfather and like buddy what's going on he said Uncle Danny I don't know I'm mad all the time I said is anybody hurting you he said no I said has anybody teasing you he said no is anybody touching you and places they shouldn't be touching you no and when I held his hand while we scanned him when the scan came up on the computer screen he had a cyst the size of a golf
ball occupying the space of his left temporalo it's the first time I've seen it I've seen it a hundred times since and when the neurosurgeon drained it his behavior completely went back to normal it was that moment the War Began for me it's like if you don't look you don't know stop lying about it and I became a warrior to change psychiatry but there's a lot of negativity with being a warrior I was also in the Army I was an Army psychiatrist and what I came to realize is a wonderful psychologist at Virginia Commonwealth University Worthington who came up with a method for forgiveness because when you're holding on to that toxicity it's sort of like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die and he did this method and someone murdered his mother and he said it even worked for him when he was dealing with the grief of losing his mother to a horrible crime and so I can recall the hate that I've experienced so that's the R so we'll call it in detail the ears empathize it's like so what are the haters feeling you're doing something they don't know you're doing something that's different than them you're doing something that threatens them see if I'm right and I'm right everything in my body knows I'm right 230 000 scans later this isn't fake this is real and if you don't look you miss all sorts of important things but they don't know that and if they don't know it and they're threatened well of course they're angry I mean I believe I still hold on to they should at least come visit right I mean my work is so public the a is altruistically give them the gift of forgiveness because and I actually don't really pay attention to them because you know I do what I can we publish studies but I don't need the negativity so you altruistically give them the gift of forgiveness
commit to it and hold on to it and if you can do that for that relationship you have more control over your happiness Plus if you're me you're like I wonder what their brain is like and so one of the first things the scans did for me is they increased forgiveness so I asked my dad to get scanned 1991 my mom came because she's like what can I do to support you I don't want to do that my dad 12 years in a row no I don't want to do that why do you want me to do that no I don't want to do that and then he came and I'd never seen this in a 72 year old person his anterior cingulate so we should talk a little bit about different parts of the brain how they influence work the sand here is singulate it's the brain's gear shifter it allows you to go from thought to thought move from idea to idea be flexible go with the flow and when it's busy and he had the busiest anterior cingulative any older person I'd ever seen worry hold grudges my dad was masterful at holding grudges argumentative oppositional I used to joke that I'm like Dad why is it every time I ask you for something you say no he goes I don't do that I'm like no you do it why he's like I don't know it's just easier and Tony Blair the prime minister of the United Kingdom said the first Hallmark of a leader is his ability to say no well my dad was just masterful at it but I have to tell you seeing that part of his brain so busy was helpful for me to forgive him that it was a brain misfire rather than it was a soul misfire he took a lot of new book about how we can reverse a lot of these things and we can change our brain which I guess is the is the hopeful optimistic side of all of this so in the case of your father you see that in his brain is there something that can be done to change it absolutely I mean that's sort of the big exciting message of my life is you're not stuck with the brain you have you can make it better and I can prove it I did the big NFL study when
the NFL was lying that it had a problem about traumatic brain injury and football scan 350 NFL players and high levels of damage stop lying about it but 80 percent of my players get better when we put them on a rehabilitation program and there's a story in the book um about a mixed martial artist who I was giving a lecture at the clinics and he raised his hand and he said I just really love your work but you're not gonna like what I do I'm like what's that he said I'm a mixed martial artist and I'm like well I can like you but yeah you're right I'm not a fan of people bashing your head in and I said let's look at your scan and it was troubled um I said you know I know these supplements work because they were my NFL formula but I don't know how fast they work will you come tomorrow at eight o'clock I'm going to give you the supplements I give my NFL players and then I'm gonna scan you two and a half hours later his brain was remarkably better two and a half hours later now it didn't mean it would stay that way right he had to stay on the program and stop doing the things that hurt his brain how exciting is that to know even a couple of hours from now if I do the right things my brain can be better and going back to my dad what we found is low levels of Serotonin go with high activity in the anterior cingulant so if he would have chosen I could have calmed it down and helped him be more flexible now he chose not to do that but I just remember my grandmother my mom's mom when she was 92 she went in the hospital diverticulitis and my mom's mom had always been mean she's not kind when she met my wife for the first time she goes oh you're Danny's next victim Grandma I said I'm going to talk bad about you after you're dead she had that same brain and when I put her on medicine to increase serotonin she became sweet which just goes it makes you wonder how many people end up divorced because of a brain dysfunction that could be fixed
um it's just given me great empathy it's easy easy easy to call someone bad it's harder to ask why in the case of your father or your your grandmother is the brain and the mood kind of disorder that you've observed in it is that a consequence of chronic bad habits in terms of brain health in your view it's always both that whenever you give in to saying no you make saying no more likely right you develop these ruts in your brain which is why Behavior change is hard because you have these ruts in your brain where it's after dinner I smoke or it's after dinner I have ice cream or it's the first thing in the morning I have sugar cereal and these become like Pathways they become ruts like deep Pathways in the brain and and I've had them for years I mean for a long time before I got healthy you know I go by Jack In The Box and get a Diet Coke and get a chicken fajita pita and it was habit and so sometimes I'll see a jack-in-the-box like oh and then of course my supervisor comes in and like really and I think of it your supervisor is in your your brain you're better better sense well I think of it like children um that too many people are run by the four-year-olds in their head like I have five grandchildren and Haven is four and Haven is funny and smart and sweet but she doesn't get away she totally can have a fit and the rule in my house is if you have a tantrum to get your way the answer is no it's always going to be no go for it and so it didn't have Tantrums with the kids growing up but too many people the four-year-old in their head is running the show it's like no I go buy Jack in the Box I get curly fries and a coke I want it I want it I want it I want it and their parent self doesn't go doesn't fit your goals you don't want it right you crave it and there's a difference between craving and wanting and it's like inhibit behavior and that's where we haven't talked about this yet and I knew I knew we would on this podcast the CEO in the brain right so the front third of your brain is called the prefrontal cortex it's called the executive part of the brain and so you talked about some of your friends who don't make good
decisions who don't wait or delay their impulses their frontal lobes are probably sleepy or smaller and that'll give them huge problems in their lives and my work I I've seen tens of thousands of people have ADD of one form or another and it often goes with decreased activity in their frontal lobes but is that is that nature or nurture nature with input from nurture because they did this great study in Holland where they took 300 add kids put them on an Elimination Diet so they basically eliminated all the crap in their diet and three months later 72 percent of the children did not have add anymore so um but when I diagnose someone with ADD I generally see it you know coming down their mom's side or their dad's side it generally doesn't occur in isolation it is that strongly heritable in fact if I have a kid who's really 80d and I can't find a mom or dad I'd look at the kid to see if he looks like his mom or dad wondering if they got switched at birth just my experience really and really no not kidding and so say that again so if if the child's brain doesn't resemble the mother of the father you suspect that so I wonder if it's if the child's not related had been switched uh because you're that confidence because I'm there confident about the heritability of this now there are other causes of add like Behavior like traumatic brain injury the child fell down a flight of stairs and was unconscious even for just like 15 minutes that can damage their frontal lobes If the child was a head banger that can damage their frontal lobes and so psychological trauma I sat here with gabo mate ah interesting we're just doing a study on Ace scores do you know about the ace quiz stands for adverse childhood experiences and it was first done in combination with the CDC and Kaiser they looked at 17 000 people and they just gave people this simple questionnaire um and it's 10 of the most common childhood traumas So Physical emotional
sexual abuse having a parent with mental illness with an addiction incarceration and you get scored zero to ten so I have a one my dad could really be nasty to me so there's some of that sort of psychological abuse but I didn't get beaten no one sexually molested me and so on my wife and she wrote a book about this called the Relentless courage of a scared child has eight out of ten my two nieces who tan and I adopted are both knives and they found if you have four or more you have an increased risk of seven of the top 10 leading causes of death if you have six or more you die 20 years earlier now it's not a death sentence if you know it and you work on it like Tana has um you know you have normal lifespan but how how Wild is that and so when I learned about I started giving it to all of our patients and I now have ten thousand a scores on my patients and we looked at their brains and what we found is a tends to activate the medial frontal lobe and they become hyper alert they began to watch what bad thing is going to happen and I love a therapy have you ever heard of EMDR yes I've heard of it it's a psychological treatment for trauma stands for eye movement desensitization and reprocess my favorite Psychotherapy I love doing it with patients and when I met my wife she's beautiful she's smart I mean I like fell for her and then I'm learning about this so one of my first gifts to her was 10 sessions of EMDR which I know is pretty weird but she went for two years and and I think it changed the trajectory of her life because she doesn't live with the past still present how did how did it help her and what what exactly does the therapy involve so trust a good history and then so for example if you came to see me I would have you write down we do a timeline of your life I just want to know for each five-year period what were the great things that happened to you and what were the horrible things that happened to you and I do that purposefully so you'll have a balanced view if you just talk about the crap in
your life you feel like crap and then I'd have you write down the top 10 traumas and then it's it's a structured process but I'd have you bring up the worst one we always go for the worst first and while you bring it up I'll get your eyes to go back and forth and we'll let your brain direct where you need to go and so initially you could feel relive the trauma but then it tends to dissipate as opposed to just talking about the trauma generally you relive it and feel like crap the bilateral hemisphere stimulation helps it sort of just sucks the life out of it you still remember it but it's not haunting you anymore yeah that happened but you're not sweating or you're not having nightmares and it just takes therapy too a whole different level it's sort of like doing mushrooms without side effects if I wanted to you know earlier on you said you said uh you gave like three points and the second point was you just got to know the list so you said if you want to damage your brain if you want to hurt your brain you've got to know the list if you want to help your brain and have a healthy brain you've got to know the list going to the the damaging my brain part if I was intent on damaging my own brain what would you advise me to do so in the book I talk about a mnemonic called bright Minds you want to keep your brain healthy or rescue it you have to prevent or trade the 11 major risk factors that steal your mind so if you want to damage your brain bright Minds the B is for blood flow low blood flow is the number one brain Imaging predictor of Alzheimer's disease okay how do you get low blood flow caffeine oh [ __ ] nicotine marijuana alcohol um having a sedentary lifestyle being overweight the r is retirement and aging can we pause on this uh low blood foot flow you are the first person I've ever spoken to who has a comprehensive and very believable hypothesis that caffeine has a side effect I've asked my guests over and over again because I I think people refer to caffeine often as like this miracle drug that comes with no cost
but you're the first one through my research that seems to be very clear that caffeine is does have a significant cost it's a drug it's it's the most common drug it's addictive I mean a little bit's fine but more than a little bit is not fine it increases cortisol you don't want to increase cortisol puts fat around your belly it shrinks your hippocampus but you know the reason I started really paying attention to it is on spacked the study I do which is a blood flow study it constricts blood flow 30 percent I have all my patients hold caffeine the morning of their scans um because I don't want it to artificially uh show me they have less blood flow than they really do um it it fakes you out to think you have energy what it does is it blocks adenosine the chemical that tells you to go to sleep and so often people rely on caffeine because they're sleep deprived but it's just this bad cycle and so many of my patients stop and uniformly they tell me they feel better they said their energy is better you talk about one particular patient in the book who was struggling with um a variety of difficulties I think it was like brain brain fog and memory issues and so on and one of the things you advised him to do was to cut coffee Jeff yeah I remember Jeff he's a pilot and I live on caffeine and I'm like you got to get rid of it because brain looked terrible his brain looked terrible his brain looked terrible and he's like no no no and he's like all right I'm gonna do it and so he didn't get headaches we cut it down by five percent a day so three weeks it was gone he didn't have any withdrawal didn't have any headaches and he's like texting me unbelievable energy unbelievable clarity and it it's a drug and why you know I want to teach my pill my patients skills I don't want them to just take pills and caffeine's a drug do you drink caffeine a little bit not much how much was Jeff having um Jeff was having about 600 milligrams a day Jesus which is two venti Starbucks one venti Starbucks is 330 milligrams of
caffeine and you know we've supersized everything in this country I don't know if they do that in the UK but we certainly do it here and it's it's not a a good strategy and so long-time restriction of blood flow to the brain through these things you've described caffeine marijuana all of these things has a detrimental impact on the development of the brain pretty straightforward I get that so that's the B as far as Retirement and aging you want to prematurely age your brain drop out of school do not engage in new learning I mean you doing this podcast you're always learning new things which is great for you but the lack of when you learn something new your brain makes a new connection when you stop learning or you start doing the same thing over and over again your brain starts to disconnect itself being in a job that does not require new learning is a risk factor for dementia being lonely is a risk factor for dementia so be an ass and they're more likely to hurt your brain at my workplace we have the no [ __ ] rule so there's a book by a Stanford Professor called the no [ __ ] rule love that book and the no [ __ ] rule is the CEO starts with me so I don't get to be one but I'm not tolerating anybody who has [ __ ] Behavior at work and if you're not an [ __ ] you're less likely to be lonely and loneliness is terrible for brain function if you want to prematurely age your brain eat a lot of red meat as if your iron and ferritin levels are high because ferritin is just stored iron 10 stage the brain the eye is inflammation if you want to increase inflammation which is a root cause of so many medical and mental health issues never floss don't really care about your teeth so you want to love your brain you have to love your mouth it's absolutely critical for you not to have gum disease because if you have gingivitis off odds are you're at increased risk for heart disease and depression and dementia it's fascinating like I didn't
learn about this and I didn't really care about my teeth and so I started seeing the lengths between gum disease and heart disease gum disease and brain disease and now I'm a flossing fool but if you want to damage your brain don't care about your mouth your about your teeth don't ever eat fish people who have grilled or baked fish once a week have more gray matter in their brain people have low levels of omega-3 fatty acids have smaller brains and if you want to damage your brain eat the standard American diet so processed food like eat most of your calories from the gas station and from the fast food restaurants near nearby and they spend billions on getting those foods to the perfect crunchiness the perfect meltiness the perfect Aroma because they hire neuroscientists to addict your brain be suspicious um the G is genetics you want to damage your brain blame everything on your genes like I have obesity and heart disease 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 genes load the gun it's what happens to us and what we choose to do that pulls the trigger so I adopted my nieces because their parents couldn't stop using drugs and I'm like adamant if you want my help you have to cooperate there's no vaping there's no drug use there's no alcohol and it's working I taught them a new word last week squameting have you heard of scrometing I haven't It's a combination of screaming and vomiting and because of the legalization of marijuana and the increased use teenagers are getting this and in record numbers they're in emergency rooms screaming and vomiting it's called scrumpeting so Jane's load the gun but know your risk and be on that prevention programmer I mean that's just a sign of intelligent life the H is head trauma you want to damage your brain play football play soccer play rugby
and box it's and and text while you're walking in L.A I mean you're just more likely to have a brain injury um because you fall over just because in case that wasn't clear people are going to think texting is bad for the brain the t is toxins so see alcohol is a health food it's total crap uh see marijuana is innocuous it's total crabs I mean I'm happy they legalized it please don't put people use marijuana in jail it's a really bad use of resources really stupid but let's not say it's good for us because teenagers who use have an increased risk of anxiety depression suicide and psychosis that's not okay the brain undergoes wild development and people sort of don't get this they think little kids their brain is undergoing wild development but from the time you're 15 to 25 it's gone through wild Construction in fact that's when the highways are being myelinated have you ever heard of myelin myelin is a white fatty substance that gets wrapped on your neurons and when a neuron or a brain cell becomes myelated becomes 10 to 100 times faster it's more efficient and when a baby's born there's very little myelin in the cortex laid down when they're about two months old they're occipital lobes their visual cortex becomes myelinated and when you smile at them they smile back because they can really see you well slowly myelination goes from the back all the way to the front but it doesn't get to the front until you're about 25 so this masterpiece building if you will is under construction until you're 25 so many teenagers it's the crappy food it's just like throwing poison into the construction zone marijuana is innocuous we're going to the parties and getting drunk and they're damaging the building and yes there are ways to repair it but what idiot would damage the most beautiful building in the neighborhood and I often say to my teenage patients I said hey if you had a million dollar resource would you ever feed it junk food would you ever get it stoned would you ever get a drunk and the Smart Ones would go only if you were an idiot but aren't you
worth so much more and we have a high school course called brain Thrive by 25 we studied it in 16 schools decreases drug alcohol and tobacco use decreases depression and improves self-esteem and one of the weeks is things to avoid to have a healthy brain and at the end of the lecture it's a boy never a girl that's really irritating raises his hand and goes how can you have any fun and we play a game with them called who has more fun the person with the good brain or the person with the bad brain who gets the girl and gets to keep her because he's not an ass the person with the good brainer the person with the bad brain who gets into the college they want to get into who has the best life and ultimately it's the person with the good so we're a t and you want to damage your brain undergo general anesthesia for plastic surgery over and over again general anesthesia is bad for the brain um never read the ingredients on your personal product labels because you know there's an epidemic of low testosterone in young males it's crazy I was reading the stats the other day what is it it's because we're poisoning them is that why that's why what is the what is the headline start there regarding testosterone and Men it's decreasing isn't it year over year year over year and more than half have either low normal or low levels I've never seen anything like it I've been measuring testosterone levels in my patients forever and we're poisoning them there's an app I like called think dirty it's not what you think it is it allows you to scan your personal products and it tells you on a scale of one to ten how quickly they're killing you so for example I've shaved with barbasol for 50 years and when I learned this a decade ago um I like scanned it one is good tennis kill you early it was a nine and I was horrified because the parabens and phthalates are known hormone disruptors so now I shave with something called Kiss My Face it's a two last longer than barbasol and I do that because I love myself I mean why would I poison myself unless I was not that smart and so just start
reading the labels of your toothpaste of your deodorant of your shampoo of your body wash of your makeup and what am I looking for because if I read the labels of my toothpaste I mean I wouldn't know if it was good or bad so you can scan scan it with the yeah or ewg the environmental working group has an app similar to that you just educate yourself because it's not just about you it's about generations of you because the health of your body matters when it comes to what babies you may make okay m is mental health um believe every stupid thing you think be masterful you want to damage your brain be masterful at predicting the worst and then making it worse um how does that have a bad impact in the brain negativity increases stress plus negativity drops activity in your cerebellum so we talked a little bit about the CEO the prefrontal cortex well it's intimately connected to the processing part of your brain your cerebellum it's about 10 of the brain's volume but has half the brain's neurons and negativity tends to deactivate it so it actually makes you more confused so if you think of an athletic slump they're focused on I'm gonna miss I'm going to miss and of course they miss um the second eye is immunity and infections um so much to talk about with the pandemic but people who have low vitamin D levels are much more likely to die from covet they're actually much more likely to die from virtually anything low vitamin D which occurs in about 60 percent of the population is associated virtually with every bad thing including a smaller brain so if you want to have a smaller brain never go in the Sun never test your vitamin D level and never take a supplement brand new study out just last week people who take a vitamin D supplement have 40 percent decrease risk of getting Alzheimer's disease how simple is that how do they establish like causation in these studies where you one would also assume that people that take Vitamin D supplements have like you know so this was a prospective study where they gave half the group vitamin D and then they followed them
fascinating study there are tens of thousands of study on vitamin D and its impact and the darker your skin the more sun you need so an interesting study from the Bahamas they looked at people who were raised in the Bahamas who then migrated to the United Kingdom so healthy vitamin D to no vitamin D because of the weather so from Botswana and the incidence of psychosis went up interesting so and how simple is it it's a blood test get your vitamin D measured everybody listening to this you should know it like you know your BMI like you know your blood pressure and optimize it either get in the sun more if you can or take vitamin D3 with vitamin K2 I mean it's super simple and I mean it's like that's easy that's something you can do right away um if I wanted to mess up my immunity I would encourage myself to have leaky gut so I'd encourage myself to damage the lining of my gut with antibiotics and alcohol and pesticide Laden foods and I wouldn't need any fiber so I would really lean into the standard American diet going back to your point about environmental toxins I've always wondered if it was like pseudoscience that cosmetic products we have in our house are having an impact on our hormone levels you were talking about hormone levels there my partner has always said to me things like be careful with what's in that toothpaste Steve or she'll look at products that I have and go nope oh yes I'm like where's the science we talked about testosterone and the science is huge there's a wonderful book so if you ever if you want to get rid of the doubt it's called the toxin Solution by Joe pisorno who started Bastyr universities one of the most well-respected naturopaths in the world now if you want a shortened version read my book the end of mental illness because there's a whole section on toxins with about a hundred scientific references so you don't want toxins and and you don't want to think it's pseudoscience unless you've actually gone to pubmed.gov and studied it so many people called my work pseudoscience and I'm like go to pubmed.gov today you'll see I've
published 80 studies and oh by the way they're 15 000 studies on spect so so I'm a fan of your sweetheart yeah she she always seems to be right about everything I seemed I I'm pessimistic on my way in and then God this doesn't sound so great but what she says registers and then I speak to an expert and they go your girlfriend is right that is the Story of My Life just a little bit and I'll say to it I'll leave this podcast now and I'll get she's actually sat over there I'll go and say oh by the way he uh I spoke to him and he said the stuff you said about all the Cosmetic products I used is right you won't catch you guys it happens literally every week like three or four times a week one of the things I read in terms of because the impact of Cosmetics on our hormone levels was that over the last 20 years our testosterone levels have declined by about 50 on average which is absolutely terrifying terrifying I have a lot of friends who are in I have a staggering amount of friends and people that I know that are in sexless relationships and are struggling with sex and other hormone-related issues I've got a friend that is um had a challenge with it's a POS PCOS PCOS polycystic ovarian syndrome and I just have a suspicion that it's not nature that's causing some of these issues so when I hear about how the Cosmetic products we have in our life are influencing our hormone levels I go maybe this is the maybe this is the guy that's it's worth making sure someone does an ultrasound on our ovaries to see if that's in fact the case but I have a funny story on PCOS when I first met my wife um she wouldn't attach um it was more like she was the guy and we'd make love and I want to cuddle and she's like okay done I could I'm like I loved her and she'd come and she'd go and she's like just make me crazy and then um I took her to our first fight was on the dog we were gonna get so I wanted like a King Charles cavalier
I wanted like a lap dog something cute something I could just have fun with and she wanted a Mastiff or she wanted she wanted some killer dog and no it's just not me and so we got into a fight about that anyways I get her to see a hormone specialist and she diagnoses her with PCOS and it just made such sense and what she did is an ultrasound of our ovaries they were like loaded with these little sis and she treated the PCOS and so PCOS women's testosterone levels tend to be higher and their blood sugar tends to be higher and they have more problems committing so she fixes it and then Tana becomes like committed I love this but then she calls me at work one day and she said I found this pocket poodle in Northern California that's like two pounds and I'm like who are you it's like change your hormones change your dog do you do you recommend that we check our hormone levels frequently every year every year every year DHEA testosterone thyroid um estrogen and progesterone for women every year because for women their progesterone drops about 10 years before they go into menopause progesterone is the natural anti-anxiety hormone and when it drops all of a sudden a woman's 40 and she can't sleep and she's more anxious and she's more irritable and it's causing relationship problems and she goes to the doctor and gets a prescription for Ambien for Xanax and for Lexapro and oh by the way she's drinking more or using more marijuana and she doesn't know why and you just it's easier to replace the progesterone than to deal with all those other strategies that help you feel better now but not later is something called perimenopause pear um it's earlier than that yeah perimenopause is sort of for most women are in like late 40s [Music] um hormones are so important and if your hormones aren't right your brain isn't right one of the things I talk about in the book is that women have a higher incidence of Alzheimer's disease now part because they live longer than men because they make better decisions
um but a man's brain is used to not having estrogen right it's been raised primarily on testosterone a woman's brain is used to having estrogen so when she goes through menopause and doesn't have estrogen blood flow in her brain drops and it puts her at greater risk for things like dementia and so I'm a big believer and you know the reason your hormones drop with age it's the planet's way of eliminating you and I'm not okay with that I want to stick around as long as I can and so hormone replacement can be super helpful for people who need it as you might know the show's now sponsored by Airbnb absolutely love Airbnb always have always been a you know saved my life on so many occasions and my team when we first got in touch with Airbnb were talking about how most people don't realize that their place where they currently live could become an Airbnb and I guess the second question there is how much could your place be worth and it turns out you could be sitting on an Airbnb gold mine without even knowing it some people Airbnb their entire homes when they're away that's what I did in New York whenever I left New York my place was on Airbnb and people rented it out sometimes for a day sometimes for two days sometimes for a week and it's a great way to cover some of the bills while you're away so whether you're looking to go on holiday or you just want some extra cash for bills or you want to buy something nice for a valentine that you love whatever it might be head over to airbnb.com host and you can find out how much your current property where you live can earn while you're not there I suspect it might blow your mind because it certainly blew mine when I was researching you I I read that you've dealt with patients who have chronic difficulty with sleep several times in your career um I've got a lot of friends that I always talk about got a lot of friends got a lot of friends that have struggled with sleep um often difficult to know what to say to them to give them advice what would you recommend in terms of
improving sleep and I was quite curious because I read about your hypnosis and hypnotherapy treatment which seemed to be quite effective in helping people that were struggling with sleep but what would you say to someone that struggled with sleep it's three things sleep Envy God care about it avoid things that hurt your sleep and do things that promote it so what hurts sleep and most people know caffeine can you know if you have it in the morning it's still in your body at night and so know how you metabolize it um if you're having trouble sleeping I'd kill it and just see if it has a positive impact um a warm room imperiously a noisy room a room with light they all impair sleep blue light so having blue light in your eyes after dark impairs melatonin production what about glucose increases in food I'm sorry if I eat before bed you become a non-dipper which is so interesting uh that if you donate three hours before you go to sleep right at sleep your blood pressure will drop as as you go to sleep if you eat right before bed your blood pressure won't dip won't drop which puts you at a higher risk for heart attack and stroke because it's putting more pressure on your blood vessels and trust me you don't want a heart attack and you don't want a stroke so whatever you can do to keep your blood pressure healthy and that's sort of a simple thing people who eat before bed generally have the habit of doing it which is why I'm a huge fan of intermittent fasting because you know if you have dinner at six you won't eat again until 10 in the next morning but what that really means is you won't be eating right before bed um so and then things to help sleep we've talked about what not to do what to do every night when I go to bed I think rituals are wonderful so um I say a prayer and then I go what went well today and I've been doing this for a decade and it's a treasure hunt now I'm like on a mission to find what I liked about my day and so I start in the morning when I woke up and I just go hour by hour looking for what I liked about the day and
usually by early afternoon I'm asleep you know as I'm going through my timeline but I'm busy and so often awesome things will happen and I just sort of gloss over them so it's a time to consolidate that's what sleep does consolidates memories but now I'm focused on positive things which set my dreams up to be more positive and people who do that for just three weeks increase their level of happiness how simple is that it's amazing you wrote a book about the subject of happiness in 2020 um it's called you happier the seven Neuroscience secrets of a feeling good based on your brain type now the concept of having a brain type I find really compelling you talk about it in this book as well the idea that we have different brain types um why does it matter to know what brain type I have and what are the brain types there's 16 there's five primary types right balanced spontaneous yeah persistent sensitive and cautious why do you want to know because they're going to tell you where you're going to suffer and if you know your type and the type of your power of your partner or the type of your children you'll actually be able to work on happiness in the relationship better and so for example the balanced person really has a pretty healthy brain and they tend to be pretty even and they just basically need they need basic foundational support we will know that person I'm sorry I know a lot of those people that have a seemingly balanced brain yeah and then they're the spontaneous people you probably know a lot of them as well they are spontaneous they're creative they're out of the box thinkers um they also tend to be impulsive easily distracted disorganized they tend to be late and they love novelty and they love surprises entrepreneurs they're often entrepreneurs and they often marry the persistent type which is Type 3 which is Type 3 which they're like a dog with a bone they stay with stuff they're on time they hate surprises they like ritual they like routine it's safe for them and so throw them a surprise party
and they'll be unhappy that they it won't be joyful for them it will be stressful for them the pandemic was really hard on the spontaneous people because they're often extroverts where the persistent people tend more to be introverts and they sort of liked not having to deal with a lot of other unpredictable people in that way is the phrase that Opposites Attract quite true because yes someone that's a bit spontaneous and maybe an Entertainer an entrepreneur goes for someone who's a bit more controlled and rigid and likes a schedule you see it in relationships you see one partner that's typically doesn't care about planning the holiday and the other person who's done the itinerary perfectly and they make for a good team they do initially and then they fight because the persistent person can hold grudges the spontaneous person can say things that hurt their feelings and they end up seeing me in fact I did a study called the couples from Hell study where I scanned 500 couples who failed marital therapy but still wanted to be together and eighty percent of them the scan showed one or both of them needed a tune-up in their brand in my first case which I still remembered uh Gary and Judy um and a I initially hated them because I knew I wasn't going to help them they brought their kids to me one kid got better the other one didn't I saw the other kid and I realized he's not getting better because Mom and Dad hate each other so I'm like I want to see you guys in marital therapy and they said Dr Raymond we really like you we don't do well in marital therapy we tried four times and it always makes us worse and in my head this was my own grandiose thinking I'm like well maybe they just hadn't seen anybody really good so I saw them in their first visit they sat on the opposite end of each couch it's a bad sign in marital therapy and after about three months I know I'm not going to help them she has a PHD in Grudge holding and he's always late he says awful impulsive stupid things and I'm like at the end of six months I start getting physical stress symptoms because I hate being ineffective I hate that and nine months I'm in my shower
getting ready to come to work and I realize they're on my schedule and my stomach starts to hurt today I'm going to tell them to get divorced because it's not good for children to be in a home of chronic conflict but I grew up Roman Catholic and the idea of divorce especially 30 years ago was awful and the voice the Catholic voice visited me and said oh great because you're not a good enough therapist they're going to get divorced and go to hell I looked at the water faucet and went how much therapy does this take to get over and I got out of the shower called my friend who owned the Imaging Center I said hey Jack will you give me two scans for the price of one and he's like why I said Jack I have this couple and they're not getting better and it's making me crazy I want to see their brain and he's like we could start a business and call it brainmatch.com anyways they got scanned her frontal lobes work way too hard just like my dad he had sleepy frontal lobes and I'm like how'd you miss it csadd she has OCD Tendencies I put him on Ritalin I put her on Prozac I just read an article if you believe in random chance the night before that Prozac comes down the Cingular gyrus and they were fascinated and engaged by the brain because they knew wasn't working they took the medicine I told them I didn't want to see him for a month because I was tired and I wanted them to have medicine to work when they came back they sat on the same couch he had his hand on her leg that's a good sign in marital therapy and 33 years later they're still married wow and they don't see therapists because they learn what they needed to learn like responsibility and empathy and listening and assertiveness and noticing what you like more than what you don't like Grace and forgiveness they learned it and their brains could process it right go back to Hardware fix the hardware the software is more likely to take it I read that you'd you had a divorce for age 47 and you made a remark that you wouldn't get married again unless you got to scan your partner's
brain it's absolutely true there's no way I would marry someone unless I saw their brain is more important than seeing them naked and um I met Tana January 1st 2006 and her first scan was January 24th you scan to the same month I scanned I'm I like it I liked her a lot and she she's a Neurosurgical ICU nurse so we sort of bonded over the brain a little bit but she said it was one of the best lines that I want to see your naked brain which I don't think I actually phrased it like that but that's the story she tells it never really a clear correlation between when you think if you were to be a Matchmaker professionally you know if that was if you pivoted to the matchmaking industry what you talked about the five types of brain what types of brain would you try and pair together because if type 2 the spontaneous doesn't work with the persistent because they end up arguing is there a pairing sequence that results in an optimal marriage or relationship retention so balance brains tend to do really well they do don't know with balance brain the guy I was thinking about spontaneous brains they need someone that just keeps their dopamine flowing because they have lower dopamine levels so often getting their add treated that will help get them on a ketogenic diet which helps steady their dopamine levels that can be helpful I think I'm a persistent I'm sorry I think I'm a spontaneous we'll see um the persistent types um tend to struggle because it's the my way or the highway part um the cautious persistent types tend to do really well because they're anxious enough that they're thinking about other people's feelings I think we we missed so we got to three didn't we we got to number three which was the persistent right number four is sensitive sensitive which so they're deeply empathic often um insightful intuitive and uh can be empowers uh but they tend to be prone to depression
and so they have a lot of ants running around unless they discipline them they make great therapists um do they have high levels of stress no that's the cautious type which is number four five five yeah they are loaded with the fortune telling ant they often will get involved with these conspiracy theories unfortunately some of the conspiracy theories tended to be true that's really hard like you know I'm a psychiatrist for 40 years and someone comes in my office and goes the NSA is listening to my phone and you know I'm thinking schizophrenia do I need drugs and it's like no the NSA is listening to their phone calls so it's been an interesting time for a psychiatrist but it's the predicting the worst and I tell my patients the only people should really predict the worst are contract lawyers I mean they should protect you from what bad things are going to happen other than that um you want to predict what's going to go right so if I am a spontaneous which of those five brain types the balance the spontaneous the persistent the sensitive the cautious should I marry balanced okay you want now if you're a CEO um you want a persistent you a persistent cautious type so that's that's type 11. um to manage you this is a really important point if you are a business leader and you tend to be spontaneous not have a spontaneous assistant because it'll stress you out and stuff won't get done and the IRS will come knock on your door um because you're not going to be filling out the paperwork right it's really important you need to know your strengths know your vulnerabilities and higher to cover your vulnerabilities too many spontaneous people hire people they like that are like them which leads to stress and chaos hmm that's very true in all of my businesses I've always found managing directors who are calmer more organized more risk aware individuals and it's always worked really well because I tend to be very risk um very prone to taking risks and
my default position which I've had to learn so I've had to sort of become self-aware and counteract it is to pursue multiple things at once so I have to have this ongoing conversation with my brain to say Focus you you your better self your wisdom knows that focus is your biggest um Pitfall so well the lack of focus is your biggest Pitfall and I guess that kind of brings me to another point which was this idea you touched an earlier on about disassociating from your brain are you giving your brain a name as you call it in your book so that you can have a conversation with it that sounds like a funny thing to do if I call my brain I'm going to give my brain a name my brain is now called I'm gonna call it Daniel so there's Stephen who is me and there's Daniel who is me but my Daniel is my brain and I am Stephen and what is the upside in creating the separation psychological distance from the noise in your head so you don't attach to it so if it's Daniel then you can accept what he says or you can reject it okay so when I first heard about this from Stephen Hayes I'm like what would I give my name and I named myself after my pet raccoon when I was 16. and like my mind Hermie was a shitster she tped my mother's bathroom she ate all the fish out of my sister's aquarium she'd leave raccoon poo in my shoes she's I loved her I loved me but my mind is a troublemaker It'll like conjure up all sorts of negative scenarios so if I separate from it I can put Hermie metaphorically in her cage and now what I do because I love her is I'll put her on her back and I'll tickle her or I'll cuddle her I'm like it's gonna be all right you don't have to believe every stupid thing you think yes we are gonna die but we're not gonna die today and you know when you can live in the presence by managing your thoughts by not attaching to them by separating from them that's where peace lives that's where happiness lives when you can sort of step outside and just go you know I'm
Not My Thoughts my thoughts might come from my dad's generation may have been some of his trauma or it might come from the voice of my mom and dad growing up or the voice of the priest or my siblings or the music I listen to you know and just because you have a thought has nothing to do with whether or not it's true or whether or not it's helpful the brain is a sneaky organ we all have weird crazy stupid sexual violent thoughts that nobody should ever hear I tell my patients this all the time one of my patients goes oh I had an indecent thought about my teenage daughter's friend I'm a pedophile and I'm like that's a big leap did you like climb in bed with her did you make plans to talk he's no no none of that I'm like dude you're not a pedophile it's just your brain plain tricks on you just because you have that thought well a whole bunch of people have that thought but they don't do anything about the thought but people don't understand that thoughts are just creations of neuronal function and your frontal lobe should evaluate this is a helpful thought I should pursue this thought stay away from this thought this thought doesn't fit my goals if I am a spontaneous brain type then is there anything I can do without drugs to become a balanced brain type so first thing one page miracle write it out it's an exercise in the book what do you want just like as a CEO of a company you have a business plan and you have quarterly goals write it out what do you want in your relationships in your work in your money in your physical emotional spiritual health why write it down because you're telling your brain what you want and then every day you sort of know what what it is I mean you memorize that thing and then each decision you make you ask yourself does it fit does my behavior fit the goals I have for my life and so what you're doing is you're activating your prefrontal cortex so the part of your brain that if you really are spontaneous that's the Sleepy part of your brain so the first thing is intention to have a business plan or have a plan for your life the second thing you have to make sleep
a priority because if you tend to be spontaneous that goes way up when you haven't slept that also goes way up when your blood sugar is low so it's not just high blood sugar is the problem it's often low blood sugar it's a problem one of my celebrities who kept getting arrested in trouble I did a fasting blood sugar on him was 49. it was way too low he had hypoglycemia and when I got him to eat four or five times a day he never got arrested again so make sure your diet's right and it's my spontaneous people tend to do really well on ketogenic diets or low simple carbohydrate diets now that diet will make the persistent type crazy because that's a focused diet where if you put someone who can't stop thinking on a focused diet they think more on the things that bother them so the diet really depends on the type which we talk about in the book exercise intense aerobic exercise boost dopamine and there's some simple supplements like l-tyrosine or I make something called focus and energy that's got ashwagandha ginseng rhodiola and choling things that help you focus but don't amp you okay Daniel so we have a new tradition on this podcast at the end of the Diary of a CO episodes we ask all of our guests to write a question and to put it into the book the Diary of a CEO so you will be asked to do the same just before you leave um but recently what we've done because we understand that these conversations Foster a sense of connection in people because they're a little bit more vulnerable than your usual conversations and we believe that that's the door to connection is we've turned some of the questions in this book into cards that people can play at home this is a brand new thing we've done so on here these are various cards that have been written by previous guests on this show if you scan the QR code on the back it takes you to um a video of the person who answered it to the person that came after them and then on the front you can see the question they've asked with their name on it I'm gonna lay these cards in front of you I want you to just pick one at random I've just selected some for you um out of the full almost I think there's about 70 or odd questions in
here I've picked 10. so just pick one at random and I'll ask you to answer the question that you pick is that okay Joe you're up for it cool who's gone for the first one what is one mistake that you have made that you have been scared to address or reconcile and you want me to answer that question what is one mistake that I've made that I have been scared to address or reconcile that I don't like firing people that it's really hard and I came to realize if I don't do it I should fire myself but that's the one thing it's like why did I hold on to that for so long it's it's that when you have the no [ __ ] rule firing people's really harder but yeah I've come to realize um that it's an essential skill to prone because if you're a CEO you're like a gardener but it it TAPS in to something about me being bad that I don't like what brain type have you got I'm a balanced type and my vulnerabilities because we all have wings or vulnerabilities persistent and cautious okay can I ask you to pick one more card [Music] who is the person you'd most like to say sorry to but haven't and I've thought about this my dad died three years ago I was so mad at him and would be pretty vocal about how mad I was of them but when you focus that You Don't See all the good things that happened I had said that my a score was one and my wife's an eight he provided a level of stability that I didn't appreciate and so he knew the last five years that I loved him and we spent a lot of time together
but I think I would apologize to him for holding on to the negativity and that's exactly why we created these cards if you want to get your own conversation cards go to the conversationcards.com that is the conversationcards.com and I hope everybody everywhere gets the hands on them I think the world would be a better place if we're all a little bit more vulnerable with each other because that very much is the daughter connection okay so the question that's been left for you in the diary from our previous guest is what topic is no one talking about now that historians will study in the future well from my perspective it's the insanity of the mental health industry that is destroying the mental health of America making diagnoses based on symptom clusters with no biological data than drugging people last year there are 337 million prescriptions for antidepressants 27 of all doctor visits no matter the specialty 27 someone's leaving with a prescription for benzodiazepine like Xanax or Valium this is an insane time and they call me crazy and I'm not crazy they're going to be talking about this dark period in Psychiatry for centuries to come Jesus Daniel thank you for me this is very much the culmination of so much work you've done over a series of books and um your life's work so I would recommend everybody if they have the opportunity to go and get it to go and get it right now it is out and it's one of those real pivotal books that sort of turns the lights on to something that to a room that I didn't even know existed which is my brain um and the the brain is obviously the computer it's the driving force as you said at the start of this conversation of all the decisions I get right and wrong and it's my duty to do everything as that I can to love my brain um and that's exactly what your book leaves me with as a parting message is it's this message of loving my brain and doing everything I can to treat it as if um with the respect and love that it deserves thank you for all of your work thank you for the inspiration you've given me and thank you for the the way that your work has nudged my life and
the trajectory of my life and therefore as you say the trajectory of those that come after me's life in a little bit more positive healthy direction because that is not nothing that is significant especially as you zoom out so thank you so much Daniel it's a joy to speak to you yeah thank you so much for such a wonderful interview for being prepared to help me actually go inside myself and see how these dots connect and helping me spread the word um I'm trying to create a revolution and I need people to help so thank you help me thank you for helping me do this I've now been a huel drinker for about four years roughly so much so that I ended up investing in the company um and I play a role on the board of the company but they also very kindly sponsored this podcast and to be honest I've never said this before but he all believed in this podcast before anybody else the CEO Julian um told me before we even launched the podcast how successful it would be and that heal would back it and I absolutely have a huge amount of gratitude for them for that support but an even greater sense of gratitude for the fact that they've helped me stay nutritionally complete throughout the chaos and hecticness of my tremendously busy business schedule so if you haven't tried out here which I hope most of you have at least given it a go by now try it out it's an unbelievable way to try and stay nutritionally on course if you have a hectic busy schedule and let me know what you think send me a tweet and a DM tag me let me know what you think quick one as you guys know we're lucky enough to have blue jeans as a sponsor and supporter of this podcast for anyone that doesn't know blue jeans is an online video conferencing tool that allows you to have slick fast good quality online meetings without any of those glitches that you'd normally find with other meeting online providers you know the ones I'm talking about and they have a new feature called Blue Jeans basic which I wanted to tell you about blue jeans basic is essentially a free version of their top quality video conferencing and that means that you get immersive video experiences you get that super high quality super easy and zero fuss experience and apart from zero time
limits on meetings and calls it also comes with High Fidelity audio and video including Dolby voice they also have expertise grade security so you can collaborate with confidence it's so smooth that it's quite literally changed the game for myself and my team without compromising quality at all so if you'd like to check them out search bluejeans.com and let me know how you get on DM me tweet me whatever works for you let me know how you find it [Music] oh [Music]