 Welcome my friends to the depression to expression podcast Scott St. Marie here. Welcome back if you're subscribed if you're not subscribed Oh, we got a treat for you in previous episodes, but a treat for you today sitting down with yes The one the only dr. Daniel Amen talking about how we are going to end mental illness This is the future of brain health this episode. This is what you're going to learn the future of brain health The end of mental illness. We're gonna talk about single photon emission computed tomography Yes, right you haven't heard of speck scans. Oh come on We got to measure blood flow in the brain if we're gonna end mental illness We actually have to get uncomfortable and this is what dr. Daniel amen and I talk about is what's wrong with psychiatry today There's a lot wrong Pushing pills. Is that really the only answer? Do we understand what depression and anxiety actually mean? Is there a cure to ADD ADHD? What do we actually know and here's here's what's interesting and we go through all of this in the podcast And let me tell you if you haven't seen his TED talks if you haven't seen dr. Amen on stage He's an incredible speaker Incredible doctor incredible human being because when I when I watch his talks and I've been following him for years I kind of think okay when I meet him, you know via this zoom call Who knows how he's gonna be right? You never know how people act on stage and when they're on TV. How are they gonna be one-on-one and man? You can tell and and and I said this to him like you can tell that he is still So passionate about helping people about he's a he's a child psychiatrist too about helping children about helping young adults adults it doesn't matter who he is passionate about helping people and that just struck a chord with me because mental health is Absolutely my passion so in this episode we dig deep into how we need to shift Perspectives and health care and talk about brain health rather than mental illness He doesn't even like the word mental illness and his new book the end of mental illness All his links are in the bio if you want to learn more about how amen clinics is changing people's lives and changing how we see Mental health. I'm so fortunate to have sat down with them as I always say With these episodes buckle up man because we're gonna hit some hot topics in this episode Dr. Amen. Thank you so much and let's get going in three two one Dr. Daniel. Amen. Thank you so much for coming on the depression to expression podcast welcome Thanks so much for having me So I actually this is perfect right behind you are the many books that you've written over the the last many years and The the one end of mental illness That's a bold statement. I love bold statements. I love it What can you tell us about the end of mental illness and the kind of the kind of work you do? If no one has heard of you before all the listeners What would you like to tell them about the work you do to end mental illness? So at amen clinics I have eight soon to be nine clinics across the US From Bellevue, Washington where we see a lot of people from Canada or New York, Washington, D.C Three in California what we realize Based on our brain imaging work is that most psychiatric problems are not Mental health issues at all, but rather they are brain health issues That steal people's minds Get your brain right and your mind will follow since I've been a psychiatrist nearly 40 years I have always hated the term Mental illness. It's shaming. It's stigmatizing It's demoralizing And it's wrong These are brain health issues if I get your brain healthy Well, then your behaviors better your feelings are better your ability to learn and love are better and No one cares about their brain. Why you can't see it We screen almost every other organ except the brain I'm in a new docu series with Justin Bieber and I've been Justin's doctor for a number of years and He's he's a worldwide superstar which meant some days he'd do what I asked him to do and a lot of days he wouldn't And then he came into my office about a year and a half ago and he said I Think I get it my brain is an organ just like my heart is an organ if you told me I had heart disease I'd do everything you said I'm gonna get my brain right and then he went on and Just got Dramatically better, you know, most people see cardiologists have never had a heart attack They're there to prevent them what I'm really trying to do is create a Revolution in brain health because that is how we will end mental illness I think that's fantastic and in a lot of ways Psychiatry has come a long way like with the work you do seeing the brain. Yes as an organ but Unfortunately, and I'm sure you see this in in working with colleagues too that that a diagnosis for mental illness is still Completely what the patient will tell you and disclose and it's based on the the vocabulary and semantics that someone can express To then give you a Diagnosis this is what is way too common with the people that I speak to and even in my experience with a psychiatrist Do you see this a lot in in your work and see what's going on in around the world? Are we still back in the 1800s with diagnosing people? So how did they diagnose Lincoln when he was depressed in 1840? They talked to him. They looked at him. They looked for symptom clusters and then diagnosed and treated him That is still what's happening around the world and the problem with that is Depression is like chest pain. Nobody gets a diagnosis of chest pain Why? Because there are many different causes and if you don't properly identify the cause Treatment won't work. In fact treatment can hurt you for a depression There's clearly not one cause it can be from grief It can be from loss it could be from low thyroid low testosterone from Lyme disease from heavy metal exposure to mold Giving everybody antidepressants in Large-scale studies have been found to be no more effective than taking a sugar pill and It's why psychiatry has a bad rap In the hospital Psychiatrists are the most diminished of professions and they don't like to know it But my wife is a neurosurgical ICU nurse and when the psychiatrist would come on the ward She just sort of roll her eyes because it's this soft science and when she We'd we had our first date she almost cancelled it when she found out I was a psychiatrist This didn't want to be psychoanalyzed even though she needed it We diminish ourselves Why are we the only medical specialists who virtually never look at the organ? They treat I mean who else does that? Nobody else does that and And you'd probably agree with me Depression is just as serious as cancer depression is just as serious as heart disease or diabetes or obesity and It steals People's lives it steals their relationships. It steals their ability to love or Accelerate work and When we embrace this new paradigm of brain health People's moods get better. It's just one simple example. I Think I've been involved in three big innovations in Psychiatry one imaging if you don't look you don't know stop line Natural ways to heal the brain and we'll talk about some of them But like your food really does matter In a functional or integrative medicine Context so 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 There's a mnemonic in the book called bright minds to help people remember them Well, I had a patient who is severely depressed had ECT electric Electroconvulsive therapy three times and He tried like 17 different medications and I'm like well Have you ever tried an elimination diet and his brain looked terrible and he's like what's that? Well, I want you to eliminate gluten dairy corn soy artificial dyes and sweeteners and sugar and you don't have to do it forever but for a month and He had failed so many things. He's like If it'll make my brain better, I'll do it and within three weeks. He's dramatically better and so then We add back gluten Nothing happened. He's fine. We add back dairy Nothing happens. He's fine. We add back corn He said within 20 minutes of eating the corn. He had a vision of a gun in his mouth pulling the trigger And I'm like, oh, you have to break up with corn Yeah, and I love corn is what he said and I'm like, well now that's just an abusive Relationship you love something That hurts you that's trying to kill you, you know, we need this is like a psychotherapeutic moment You have to you can't be with something or someone that's trying to kill you that is not Rational and so anyways, he broke up with corn. How many people is it really their Diet that's driving their bad feelings. There's this great study from Australia We looked at two outer islands one had fast food restaurants. The other one didn't they measured their omega-3 fatty acid levels in their blood The island with fast food restaurant Significantly low levels of omega-3 fatty acids in their blood and five times the level of depression It's the food. Yeah Yeah, and let's talk about omega-3 since we're on the topic of depression and you this is so You could argue that it's such a complicated problem, but then sometimes the sim the solutions are relatively simple like the elimination diet Let's get back to a basic. Let's call it a Mediterranean diet almost with high high fats good fats, right? Maybe low in in refined sugars and caffeine's like I was on antidepressants for 12 years I got off them recently because it was a massive diet change amongst other lifestyle changes and exercises, but It's difficult because with mental illness. Let's just call it that for simplicity's sake or brain health We don't connect it to the body we cut off the head and then we treat this part right here So is this is this difficult for you to actually continue doing what you do knowing that it's still being treated this way Can you sleep at night because you're fighting all the time? You're like no We have to look holistically and the brain is an organ. Let's do the spec scanning. Let's do all of this Is it changing fast enough for you? No, it's so slow, but Why there's a lot of resistance to change many people don't want to change anyways, right? Once you start something, it's really hard To stop it if you're having a drink of vodka every night, you know when you realize you really shouldn't do it sort of hard to stop it 40,000 psychiatrists across the US are dependent on a treatment model that makes diagnoses based on symptom clusters with no biological data and big pharma has big resources in Washington that make this the Standard and so if you take insurance companies and big pharma and the 40,000 Psychiatrists that are wed to the status quo And anytime you try to change things in the book I talk about the structure of scientific revolution It's like well, how do scientific revolutions happen because this is a revolution Yeah, and it's actually there's a five-step process and we're between steps four and five Everybody knows there's a problem Lots of really smart people are going imaging genetics lifestyle changes are Critical It's just getting people to actualize it that is the problem and big pharmaceuticals. They're on Wall Street What's Wall Street interested or insurance companies? They're on Wall Street. What are they interested in? They're not interested in profit five years from now. They're interested in quarterly profits and without quarterly profits their CEO gets fired and Imaging lifestyle diet supplements is an investment there, but with the investment we hospitalized 90% fewer people If they come Taman clinics is rare for us to put someone in a psychiatric Facility where if all you're doing is 15-minute med checks it becomes commonplace so I Don't like it, but a long time ago. I realized I can do What I can do and we are changing it because we have 7,000 patient visits a month in our clinics We all the largest database and so I'm not gonna worry about what other psychiatrists do I'm gonna be like Gandhi said you have to be the change you want to see and so I used to think oh, I'm not smart enough to change a whole profession and then I got the epiphany I Haven't changed in it in Our way and a lot of people talk about our work and we have a lot of haters and it's like oh no That's all witchcraft and I'm like seriously. I'm looking at the brain and you're not and you're calling me a witch Well, there must be there must be people going after you are you up? Are you popular in the psychiatric field as far as you know receiving criticism? Is this what happens a lot to you? Oh? Well, it used to be a lot more. I mean I used to get called all sorts of bad things like a Charlotte Snake oil salesman and then I real snake oil was actually 23 percent omega-3 bad Yes, it's so it didn't bother me that much But we've had over 10,000 medical and mental health professionals refer to us So, you know when people go nobody loves them I'm like no we get a lot of love and in 2016 discover magazine Listed our research where we could separate PTSD post-traumatic stress disorder from a traumatic brain injury with high levels of accuracy They rated us as the top nurse science story and science that year so So plenty of people love us And I mean we have the best published outcomes So we actually do a formal outcome study on every patient we see So on average people have four point two diagnoses were complicated Most of people you know who have quote mental illness. It's a DD anxiety depression and an addiction That's just sort of the common story where they have PTSD and a panic disorder and depression So on average four point two diagnoses they failed three point three providers and five medicines That's the average person who comes to us at the end of six months if we treat them 84% are better and we're really excited about that and that's the number we focus on How do we improve? Outcomes because that's what I care about. I don't really care if you're diagnosed With depression because it you know, it's not telling me why Right one of the big surprises for me. I mean it still blows my mind. I really think I'm a head trauma clinic That having an undiagnosed brain injury and I'd ask you Scott Before you were depressed How do you ever had a brain injury? playing Football or soccer car accident falling down a flight of stairs and you cannot believe The number of people who suffer with 80d anxiety depression addiction Suicidal thoughts personality disorders that had a significant brain injury Before they started having psychiatric problems and often people go. No I didn't but I see it on the scan and so I'll push And you can't believe the number of people said no at this kid with Tourette's actually a funny story That um, you know Tourette's a tick disorder Where people have both motor like movements And vocal clearing their throat sometimes puffing blowing whistling even swearing And he had a tick disorder and he had an addiction. He was coming off drugs. He came to my clinic and because of his head tick You have to like lay still for 15 minutes to get the scan. We want no movement Otherwise it blurs the image And so we couldn't get him. So I actually climbed on top of him Took off my wedding ring and held his head So we could hold him still while he got scanned and so now we're bonded if you will Of course, I'm like, hey, stay with me. Let's look at your Scan and he had a damage to the left front side of his brain The only thing that does has a head trauma and I'm like, so why don't you have a brain injury? He said I didn't and then I start going through The list and he was irritated and going through drug withdrawal and pretty soon. No, no, no turned into F no like oh But you know, I grew up in the grocery business or plenty of people swore around me So it doesn't really bother me. Yeah, and I kept pushing F no F no F no and then all of a sudden he stopped And he said does a motorcycle accident count? I'm like, what happened? He said I was riding my bike around the lake and I saw a baby deer come on the road And I didn't want to hit the deer and I spilled the bike onto my left side Broke the helmet and broke my left jaw Do you think that matters? F yes I'm like Nobody knows this but I did the big nfl study We scanned and treated 300 nfl players at a time when the nfl Was lying that they had a problem about traumatic brain injury And they have four times the level of depression in the general population yeah And have you done any work with I'm I'm guessing hockey players can be similar as well There's been a lot of suicides with in the nhl as well and people dealing with depression A lot of kids come out of that. Yeah Hockey players my favorite one is paul korea who's in the hall of fame. He's from canada Had headaches every day For 12 years and when he came to us. Yes. Yeah, I mean you can actually Google on you know youtube see some of his concussions. They're just wicked And three weeks later. He didn't have headaches anymore Put him in a hyperbaric chamber put him on a group of supplements got him to love and care For his brain and that's ultimately what I want For you and for people listening the end of mental illness begins with a revolution in brain health You need to love And care for your brain. We have a high school program called brain thrive by 25 It's an all 50 states seven countries including canada And we have an independent group study it and we basically are teaching kids to love and care for their brain Um decreases drug alcohol and tobacco use decreases depression and improve self-esteem That's beautiful. That's beautiful There's it's difficult In the advocacy work I do And I loved your thoughts on this the end of mental illness everything you said is is absolutely fantastic I personally believe this is the way to go and the evidence you see Things need to change. It's quite obvious that what we're doing right now is not working What I see happening is people become they get diagnosed and say aha I have major depressive disorder That's what it is right and they'll be put on medication. They start to feel better And what happens is this is kind of the new normal and they'll find community with others going through the same thing Sometimes misery loves company, but also you want to empathize with others And then they become attached and identify to the illness And can't let go because you've then based your life around this label It's a really difficult thing. So I feel like sometimes people might not even want to detach from that and heal in a different way If they're okay with medication. Are you interested in getting people off of medication? Or are you interested in just people coming in who are who are not doing too well in the moment? Well, I want everybody to come in and look at their brain and get excited about brain health And I'm not opposed to medicine. I'm just opposed to that's the first and only thing you do Like I wouldn't be opposed to medicine for diabetes But I do my best to get you to change your diet And manage your diabetes without medicine But if you can't I'm absolutely going to use medicine You know, if you have bipolar disorder and lithium or lamecto really works for you, please don't go off of it Because having untreated bipolar disorder can cost you your life your marriage or job And so on so we have to be Thoughtful careful. So I always say I'm not crazy I think I use all the tools in the toolbox And if you need medicine, great, we'll just light candles at church and be grateful for it If you can do it with diet and that's your preference See for me, I just believe in informed consent that my job really isn't to tell you what to do My job is to properly diagnose you and if I don't look at your brain, quite frankly, I don't know You know, we need to stop lying about that that you can pick out complex psychiatric disorders with no biological data That's the ultimate in narcissism And hubris It's it's the ultimate that I can be that I can actually read your brain Yeah by what you tell me At a fight once with the director of the national institute of drug reviews Who is a who is a brain imaging researcher? She goes, oh, the brain has language. I don't need to scan I'm like, are you insane? The brain is never going to tell you you have sleepy frontal lobes or your cell umbrella doesn't work or you have assist In your temporal lobes. I'm just like I feel like I live in a time warp with stupid people No, I I can I can I can believe you there But the majority of psychiatrists don't have those tools They don't know the first thing about diet rarely someone comes out of a a psychiatric consultation It says yeah, they told me to uh, you know, get rid of gluten You know dose up on the b b 12s and omega 3s and stay away from sugar for a bit. It's usually a patient goes in they want something to make them feel better and I think it's a lot of Just the human condition you go in somewhere you want to leave with something tangible Right, it's easy. That's simple. It's fast but We make something for example called happy saffron that has saffron curcumin and zinc and A lot of psychiatrists. They have no clue about natural supplements and they'll go. There's no science Well, the problem the saffron and happy saffron. There's 21 randomized Controlled trials head-to-head against prozac zoloft effects are well butron the mipramine showing it's equally effective But rather than knock off your libido and your sexual function It promotes it and our first four testimonials on happy saffron One of the headlines was by agro for women. It was so popular. We ran out of it people are so mad at us But we're now doing this study because I want to improve your sexual Desire and function Because if I give you an antidepressant and I've just damaged your sexual desire and function Well, that actually makes you more likely to be depressed Because you won't want your husband to touch you. He may go have an affair And now all of a sudden you're in the middle of a crisis and nobody's thinking it's the psychiatrist 15 minute med check That may have in fact ruined your relationship because if you guys are bonded sexually and then you're not That can cause big stress in a relationship Right and it's it's this The model of you know, we've been told the story of it's a chemical imbalance again the cut off the head Let's treat just the brain and not realizing like i'm amazed I thought it was common knowledge that people knew that the majority of serotonin was created in the gut But that isn't common knowledge It's not common knowledge. Now. How do how do we get this out made in your gut? It's not necessarily what works in your brain. So that's important to know But there is this huge gut brain Connection and what most people don't know is if you take an antibiotic. So I had a cyst a two-thousand Recently and I had to take penicillin for a week and it's sort of irritating Because I know antibiotics change your gut microbiome And actually Decrease the amount of stem cells that the hippocampus makes why is that important the hippocampus? Is two large structures in your brain responsible for mood? and memory and every day in a healthy person they make about 700 new stem cells a day And the hippocampus is Greek for seahorse. And so I think you're like making 700 new baby seahorses every day Well, when you're on antibiotics, you're just Genocide for the babies And if you don't put your brain in a healing environment say you're smoking pot every day You're drinking every day. You're eating past food every day. You're in a pandemic and you're under chronic stress every day It's murdering those babies making you more likely to have both cognitive problems and mood problems Would you say that when people come to to the amen clinics? Are are you I guess you're obviously not opposed to providing the medication? But when does that come into play? When when is it okay to give someone? Let's just use depression for example To give the medication is this kind of the last resort where you're going to try this and this and this and this and then medications last How do you come up with that decision because your toolbox is larger than let's say the average psychiatrist You know again it goes back to informed consent It's this is what's going on with your brain and then we assess those 11 risk factors the bright minds I talked about earlier blood flow retirement and aging inflammation Genetics head trauma toxins and so on. So we're assessing you so before we recommend what to do We really have a complete picture not just here and and I would argue, you know, they're not really doing here Because they're not looking So they're not there. They're doing out there Um, you know, it's what they say my wife says this about me or I feel sad. I mean, it's just Um, what's the right word? I'm trying to be Not gross but um Well, I think it's a little self-righteous A mass Yeah, what's going on now? We're gonna look back on this period of psychiatry and be embarrassed by it that Yeah, but anyways, I think back to your point about drugs. Yeah back to your point about drugs Once we really get and that sort of depends on how serious if you're psychotic I'm probably gonna Yeah, I'm gonna search on some supplements for sure. I'm gonna talk to you about diet And I'm gonna probably give you a little vilify If you're manic and I can really see this cyclical pattern I'm gonna give you lithium or levectyl Um, and then the other things as well So it depends On the level of severity, but it also depends on what you want You know, that's why I think informed consent is so important because some people they don't trust supplements They really want a pharmaceutical other people Pharmaceuticals the last thing they would ever Consider and so then we do the other way And I'm always thinking about you like if you came to see me I'd want to know what's going on with you in the four big circles of life. So your biology That's your brain and your body Your psychology how you think and your development so Important we live in a society of undisciplined thinkers Um, I call it ants automatic negative thoughts that drive Depression Here um, we we live in a society of undisciplined thinkers. So here's the end I'm also child's cactus. So I have puppets You know, you don't have to believe every stupid thing you think A lot of depression is driven by the bad thoughts people have we need to develop an anteater So to get rid of these bad thoughts So whenever you feel sad mad nervous out of control write down what you're thinking Ask yourself if it's true if you Really know if it's true. So I'm a huge fan of cognitive therapy Yeah The social circle who you hang out with because people are as contagious as covet 19 Um, if you hang out with depressed people, you're way more likely to be depressed If you hang out with positive people, you're more likely to be happy Um, and then there's a spiritual circle with no psychiatrist wants to talk about except 80% of the population has really deep rooted spiritual beliefs and quite frankly, I want to know why you're on the planet What is your sense of meaning and purpose and a lot of people never end up dealing with the death dragon Um, we're all going to die and it's that sort of amorphous anxiety people struggle with but elizabeth kubleros said is um The denial of death That is responsible for People living empty meaningless lives because when you believe you're going to live forever You don't take care of the things you need to do today And so this spiritual circle I think dr. Frankl would call it meaning and purpose That is critical. So to get you optimized Well, I need to Help your brain be better. I need to help your mind be better. I need to help your relationships Be better. I always think of myself as a family psychiatrist if I see a new person I want to meet their spouse I sort of want to have a conversation with their mom and dad I want to know because people only have one view And I made other views in order to get a real whole holistic picture Um, and then I want to know why the heck you care. Why do you think you're on the planet? I think I think that's it comes from a place of compassion that you really love What you do obviously because you've been doing it for so long and you you still have fire about it I need to know what you're eating because I you're in your 60s and I hope I look like you when I'm in my 60s Let's just put it that way. You have amazing energy dr. Amen. Um, but Let's rewind a bit because I remember on your instagram or you tweeted something it was like it stigma mental illness is very very real people Don't seek Getting help due to these social factors and let's just call the misconceptions too about what this actually means brain health versus mental health But I think a lot of people in my experience Don't seek help from psychiatrists because They don't want to be just fed a pill and be labeled and in the one area of medicine that needs complete and 100 Compassion and love It's lacking Why do you think that is or do you think that is I'm just speaking from the people that I've spoken to over the last 10 12 years You know, I've met great psychiatrists We have 45 of them that work with us that are just wonderful People they're kind they're competent and they're passionate And and I have colleagues so as I wouldn't put everybody in that bucket but Since since I was trained in the early 80s and when I was trained we'd get an hour a week with Patients well because of managed care and how Psychiatrists are reimbursed they actually make more money in 15 minute med checks and so they really went from being a primary care doctor for their patient to a mechanical cookbook physician that is not rewarding because a lot of people don't get better and It became about the money and it's quite horrifying The level of burnout not among my physicians, but the burnout in my profession is really high because You know, you're really going to spend your day Giving medication and then medication to treat the side effect of the medication It's you just came down to one hammer for a whole profession And you end up not really being physicians but pharmaceutical reps Uh for the drug companies And I don't know that's just not fun for me and I was there During the transition to managed care and I hated it and it was 1992. I stopped taking insurance I'm like you want to see me you have to pay me I'm not doing this because I didn't feel like it was in the best interest Of my patients. I actually went and got another job Because you know, I'm like, I don't know if I'm gonna be able to make it But um turned out I actually ended up getting busier Because people want that kind of care Yeah, and it's so clear that that a lot of people aren't Aren't getting that need of either in their social circle or from from the doctor that they go to Out of all these spheres that we talked about there's the social there's emotional There's the psychological and there's brain health and let's just call it physical health Is there something when you see see clients say for anxiety and depression that's Let's just call them the most popular. Is there some circle that that is always Lacking is it their social life that just isn't up to par? Are they is it their diet that like nine times out of 10? It's like, yeah, you're not eating, right? That's like probably going to be the case. Is there some outlier that's always there No, um the common underlying theme is they don't love their brain So a long time ago I coined the term brain envy When I first scanned myself in 1991 the week before I scanned my mom And she was 60 and she had a perfect beautiful brain. She was actually our model Healthy brain and it reflected her life Of seven kids 50 grandkids and great-grandkids and she's just everybody's best friend Knows everybody's birthday everybody. I don't even know what everybody's saying And I scanned myself a week later and it looked sort of like crap I played football in high school. I had meningitis as a young soldier. I was overweight I just I didn't care about my brain. I'm a double board certified psychiatrist and board certified an adult psychiatry and child and adolescent psychiatry Was the top neuroscience student in medical school did not care about my own brain I could get four hours to sleep at night and thought I could function just fine Realizing I was special and then when I really realized that I realized I wasn't specialist stupid And so I wanted my mother's brain. So I had brain Envy and I realized Freud who coined the term penis envy Was wrong. It was about two and a half feet too low In the body. I've not seen one case of penis envy my whole career But I've seen so many people who have this deficit in brain envy That when you fall in love with your brain You treat it better. It functions better And then you're better physically emotionally spiritually relationally If there was if there was one I shouldn't just say one if there are a few Tips and invitations you could provide listeners who deal with depression and anxiety At this moment What would that be? I know it's impossible to fit it all in but Let's say they all have brain envy of uh, dr. Amen Well, so I have all sorts of tiny habits in the end of mental illness My favorite tiny habit is whenever you go to do something Just ask yourself Is this good for my brain or bad for it three seconds that question takes three seconds And if you can answer it with information and love love of yourself Love of your brain. Love of your family. Love of your mission. Love of your money If you can answer that question With love you're going to begin to get better When I wake up in the morning Every morning, it's actually at the top of my to-do list today is going to be a great day I just say that it's a mantra that way my unconscious mind will find why it's going to be a great day When I go to bed at night I close my eyes say a prayer and then go what went well today And as I review the positive things about my day, it sets my dream so To be more positive for all of my patients. I do lab work on them Can't change what you don't Measure if you're depressed or anxious you absolutely should know what your thyroid is what your ferritin level is That's a measure of iron storage high iron your body rust Low iron you're anxious and you can't focus and you're tired You know, you're really going to take xanax for that. That's a bad idea You know, you need more ferritin Um, so it's maybe more iron rich foods. Um, I want to know your testosterone levels Your hemoglobin a1c which is a measure of blood sugar your inflammatory markers I'm serious about with a better brain comes a better life and my anxious patients Often undisciplined thinking they're masterful with the ants Especially the fortune telling ants where they're arbitrarily predicted and things are going to turn out badly I love this book by Byron Katie. Who's a friend of mine loving what is Um, when you learn To love what's going on in your life. Your life is so much better But usually depression is in your in the past with regret Anxiety you're in the future with fear Learning how to anchor yourself to the present moment a huge fan of hypnosis of meditation Of diaphragmatic breathing just as a way to retrain your nervous system to be better healthier And I think we should actually be teaching second graders how to do this Absolutely, I think there's a there's quite a few schools mindful schools that are that are teaching meditation And you did a study. Is this correct? You did a study with andrew newberg. Is that correct? Did I get the name right? A whole bunch and andi and our friends. We were just oh really earlier years ago years ago. I did a A university paper on meditation and I saw it like this was Uh, well 10 years ago in 2000 2008 so 12 But yeah that name popped up and he was doing all of this different imaging with meditation And how it alters the brain and you're you know him well I do. Yeah. Now we've played table tennis together. We're fierce And no, I love him. He did the original studies on to bed and monks and franciscan nuns He's in this great movie. I love called what the bleep. Do we know? Uh about the impact of thoughts on our minds and on our lives Um, and we did a study together on a keratin kriya Uh, kundalini yoga form of meditation. It's a chanting meditation. So 12 minutes and Balance the brain calm down the emotional brain activated your thoughtful brain And if you just did that 12 minutes a day for eight weeks, it actually strengthened your resting Frontal lobes. It's just sort of a good thing because you have lobes as the executive part of the brain it's sort of like Your mother when you're grown up, but you still have hopefully a good mother in your head going. Oh, please don't say that to your wife Oh, no, don't do that Do you really want to eat dessert before you have dinner? It's just a bad idea Right. So it's having a supervisor in your head and when you damage your frontal lobes It's like you grew up without a supervisor Right. I I feel so fortunate to have to have chatted with you about this. This is unbelievable It's it's the present, but it is the future of Psychiatry and and brain health and the absolute end of mental illness Thank you so much for for coming on and and chatting with me. I really appreciate that Well, Scott, what a joy to meet you. Thank you for all that you're doing to get the word out about how we can be better Oh, I am on your team a hundred percent and if you'll invite me I I play I've been playing table tennis for 15 years. Okay, I can we'll we'll bet if we'll bet some money Okay, we'll see what happens. Um, is there anything else? Is there anything else that you'd like to uh To say to the audience, um Where can we find you? I'm going to put all of the links in the description on youtube my friends on on itunes on spotify Um, we'll put a link to the the latest book as well But um, I know there's quite a few sites for aiming clinics Well, so amen clinics dot com. Amen like the last word in a prayer clinics dot com um at doc amen on instagram Uh, dr. Daniel amen on facebook Uh, I often go live during the pandemic. I've been live about 75 times crazy um and yesterday was great live chat on mismatched anxiety If yours is low and your partner's high, how can you be helpful rather than hurtful? We have a podcast my wife and I we've got eight and a half million downloads. Uh, it's called The brain warriors way brain warriors way podcast.com. They can listen to us there. We've done about 700 of them Um, so plenty of places for them To learn more about our work you and your wife must have some incredible chats at the dinner table after work Yes, uh, and the pandemic, you know, a lot of people don't know Is 80 percent of families feel closer to each other That there are a whole bunch of good things about the pandemic people are rethinking their lives They're not in traffic as much. They're not hitting their heads with soccer balls as much So so they're good things but the thing I really love Is the extra time with my wife and with my kids and and I've here heard that From a high percentage of my patients Well, there's a lot less fomo as well Especially with teens and kids in elementary school where it's like I'm not invited to the party. Well, there is no party anyways We're all doing the same thing right now. We're all on our phones at home wishing we were doing something else We're all on the same page. It seems so I I can understand that for sure Uh, thank you so much dr. Amen. I really appreciate it and uh, we'll stay in touch Great. Thanks Scott. Thanks Well, this is the first outro I've ever done. I know weird, right? You're like the episode was over We don't want to hear from scott anymore, but hey, just just chill chill chill for a sec. I got to say a few things First of all, thanks for making it this far I hope you learned a lot in this episode and are taking some things with you Not only to ponder to think about but maybe some action To take when it comes to those daily habits that actually he does himself as I do the same things as well Now if you did enjoy the episode, what would mean a lot is if uh, if you're on itunes leave a cool little review Um, remember this podcast is ad free and sponsorship free notice that there were no breaks in the podcast for ads or sponsors So a seamless listening experience. So share the love I'd love for you to just take a few minutes and write a review or share the podcast and And you know, if you truly believe in in this message to end mental illness and look at brain health I think this could benefit a lot of people. So go ahead and share my friends Send me an email say hi follow me on instagram facebook check out my youtube videos. It's all there all for you Take care