 Welcome to the Dr. Gendry podcast. On today's show I'm going to be talking to America's most popular psychiatrist. That's quite an honor and he's a 10-time best-selling author. Most of you know him or at least have heard of him, Dr. Daniel Amen. Dr. Amen has spent decades researching the brain and he's pioneered the use of a special kind of brain imaging called a spec scan. And it's both incredibly important and quite frankly incredibly controversial. And he's been using spec scans to really help people change their brains and their lives. His most recent book is feel better fast and make it last. But he's got so many books that I'm trying to catch up with him. So welcome to the Dr. Gendry podcast. It's great to see you in person. I've known you for years but welcome. Thanks for coming. Well thank you so much. It's a joy to be with you and it's always funny when people introduce me and say it's controversial to look at the brain. You have to ask yourself, well isn't it controversial not to look at the brain in people who have complex psychiatric or neurological problems. So it continues to blow me away that they think I'm controversial when psychiatrists are virtually the only medical doctors who never look at the organ they treat. So I just remain confused but feel incredibly blessed to have done this work. So you know that's a great place to start. As a psychiatrist what drove you to say there's got to be a way of looking at the brain rather than talking to people or seeing what a drug is going to do. What was the impetus? So before I went to medical school I was an infantry medic and that's where my love of medicine was born but then I was trained as an x-ray technician and developed a passion for medical imaging and our professors used to say how do you know unless you look and then when I fell in love with psychiatry I went well of course we should look. The brain is our organ. I mean you know Freud knew that. Freud was actually a neurologist. The brain is our organ and how do I know if your depression is due to head trauma or toxic exposure or inflammation or your brain works too hard or not hard enough and so early on even in medical school I was agitating we should look at these patients to assume you know what's going on based on symptom clusters. Well as a cardiothoracic surgeon you wouldn't operate on people unless you knew the map so why am I going to throw darts in the dark medications at you if I don't have a map and so in 1987 I started doing a study called quantitative EEG and I really liked that but in 1991 I went to a lecture on brain spectimaging spect is a nuclear medicine study cardiologists use it all the time to look at the heart and when we started looking at the brain it just revolutionized everything in my life so unlike an MRI or a CT scan those are anatomy scans they show what the brain actually physically looks like spect looks at function and the most exciting lesson we learned is I can see what's going on and if I can see it I can change it and that has really become the mission of my life you are not stuck with the brain you have you can make it better and I discovered that many of the medications I was taught to prescribe actually made the brain look worse where things like diet and exercise and simple supplements made it better and I remember in medical school first do no harm use the least toxic most effective treatments and it's just made me a warrior for the health of your brain so there's a there's an epidemic of dementia going on that's rather obvious most of us you know know a family member or a friend certainly I take care of a number of patients can you can you spot with a spec scan things that are going to number one predispose to developing dementia and number two can you see something coming and then change that course well so I have a book called memory rescue and I'm so excited about it and the idea behind it is if you want to keep your brain healthy or rescue it if it's headed to the dark place we can tell on scans years often decades before you have any symptoms if your brain is headed to the dark place and how you reverse that is you prevent or treat the 11 major risk factors that steal your mind and we know what they are and just speaking of the science there's over a thousand references in memory rescue and SPECT can tell and this has been published there's over 1200 scientific studies on SPECT and dementia of one form or another and you might know in the scientific literature they're talking a lot about amyloid imaging and amyloid imaging will tell you Alzheimer's or not where SPECT will actually give you a differential diagnosis of nine different things so SPECT can say well is it head trauma dementia or Lewy body dementia the dementia that goes with Parkinson's disease or is it normal pressure hydrocephalus where your ventricles are too big because your brains under pressure is it a toxic like alcoholic dementia or infectious disease which we're talking about now more than ever before and so you know it's one of the reasons why I love SPECT people go oh there's no science behind what Dr. Raymond does and you know I just like go do you read I mean today on PubMed.com if you type in brain SPECT you'll get 14,000 scientific abstracts it's just people don't know because psychiatrists aren't used to looking at the brain so they've not been following the science like I have because quite frankly I've been obsessed with it for nearly 30 years a psychiatrist who is obsessive hmm how do you feel about that I feel awesome all right all right so help me how does a how does a psychiatrist interact with a neurologist like you said Freud was actually a neurologist to start with are are you talking the same language to each other I mean for instance we were talking off-camera about Dale Bredesen and I had on the podcast a couple weeks ago grain brain deck promo I think there's a lot of commonality be between psychiatry and neurology do your your colleagues in neurology feel the same way or is that where the controversy is with using SPECT to look at this well I think Dr. Perlmutter and Dr. Bredesen are friends and forward-thinking grain brain actually talks a lot about psychiatric issues and you know I think the sad thing was psychiatry and neurology got divorced a long time ago and that was a mistake because most psychiatric problems are in fact brain problems in fact I'm working on a new project called the end of mental illness because quite frankly I hate the term mental illness it's stigmatizing it stains people and it's basically the wrong paradigm when I told my dad in 1979 I wanted to be a psychiatrist he asked me why I didn't want to be a real doctor wanted to be a nut doctor and hang out with nuts all day long and there's that stigma among psychiatrists my wife who we talked about neurosurgical ICU nurse she trained at Loma Linda where you were at and she said she almost canceled her first date with me when she found out I was a psychiatrist because she thought they were all crazy so there's this noise about it so no one wants to see a psychiatrist no one wants to be labeled as defective or crazy or abnormal but everybody wants a better brain so what if mental health was really brain health and if we reimagined it we wouldn't be engaging in brain healthy habits so get this brand new study out of Australia two remote islands one has fast food on it one does not have fast food on it the island with fast food had lower omega-3 levels in their blood so their omega-3 index was significantly lower and the level of depression was four times so food matters but we weren't taught as psychiatrists anything about food it was only when I started looking at well how do I make brains better that I came to the idea well you got to get your food right because if your food's not right the physical organ your brain is not going to be right so it literally began to transform all of my thinking yeah I think I think that's a great point you know when I when I had Dr. Perlman on his point which is well taken is there is no cure for Alzheimer's period there is no treatment for Alzheimer's but that it is a completely almost completely preventable disease as I agree with you a huge amount of mental health is probably preventable with you know diet and lifestyle so take me through how do you how do you take someone who wants to have the best brain possible give me some action steps so people listening to us or watching us say okay I'm gonna take this away and I'm going to feel my my brain's gonna feel better fast what can I do so and feel better fast I have this mnemonic I like brain Excel and it is basically the program we use here at Amon Clinic so the first thing you do is you get your brain right because when your brain works right you work right and when it doesn't you don't and they're actually nearly a hundred tiny habits so what's the smallest thing you can do today that will make the biggest difference and the tiny habit for brain health three seconds is before you go and do something you just ask yourself this question is this good for my brain or bad for it and then you just have to know the list right alcohol it's just it's not a health food right it drops brain function and people who drink every day have a smaller brain as a study out of Johns Hopkins and when it comes to the brain it's the only organ where size matters exercise is good vegetables especially colorful vegetables are good omega-3 fatty acids are good oranges are great orange juice it's bad because it's unwrapped fructose and it's way too much sugar which turns out to be pro-inflammatory for you so if you know the list that becomes really important so we talk about how to get your brain right how to get your mind right so the R in brain XL is your rational mind and you can train that to help you for most people it hurts them and so the tiny habit whenever you feel mad or sad or nervous or out of control write down what you're thinking ask yourself if it's true so I teach people how to kill the ants the automatic negative thoughts that steal your happiness and another tiny habit I love is start every day with today is going to be a great day because if you do that you begin to train your mind to look for what's right rather than what's wrong and then you end the day with what went well today and research has shown in three weeks that will just increase your level of happiness those two very tiny habits will increase your level of happiness yes you can take Prozac but it's got all sorts of side effects and once you start it you can't stop it you know once you start today is going to be a great day you're not going to want to stop it the A in brain XL is attachments you know it's just the thing our relationships when they're good they make us super happy and when they're bad sometimes they make you want to kill yourself and so I teach people after 40 years of being a psychiatrist well what are the most important things and I teach them to go okay what's your goal in your relationship so mine with my wife is very clear I want to have a kind caring loving supportive passionate relationship with tenna but I don't always feel that way so I always want it but I don't always feel that way so if I'm an engage my frontal lobes I ask myself does my behavior get me what I want so if I have this rude thought that just popped into my head well does that help me or does it hurt me so attachments are really important I actually there's a scientific process of forgiveness that I include in the book that's just so special I is inspiration we're basically wearing out our pleasure centers in this company with our in our country with our gadgets and social media and I try to get people in touch with what's passionate and purposeful for them because it actually will push on your pleasure centers in a positive way and is nutrition X is the X factor what are the big lessons we've learned from imaging we have a database now of 150,000 scans on people from 120 countries so yes my colleagues think it's controversial but literally people from all over the world seek out our help especially if what they've done has failed so that's typically we see treatment resistant people and we publish our outcomes we have better outcomes than anybody in psychiatry because we look at what we do before we do it and then the last one is my favorite part of the book it's love you do the right thing not because you should I mean nobody does that right God said you shouldn't go to the tree the next scene Adam and Eve are at the tree right now it's like you you do the right thing because you get to stay in the garden you do the right thing because you love yourself your wife your husband your kids your mission you never do it because you should doing the right thing is never hard being sick you know this being sick is hard making good decisions to optimize your health is ultimately about love and it's not just about you it's literally about generations of you now we know it's not really genetics it's epigenetics that your habits turn on or off certain genes they make illness more or less likely yes in you but also in your babies and your grandbabies I have a new granddaughter who's seven months old her name is Haven she's just so beautiful and when Haven was born think about this Haven is a little girl she was born with all of the eggs she'll ever have in her ovaries little girls are born with all of the eggs she'll ever have so her habits her diet her level of stress her infections are turning on or off certain genes making illness more or less likely yes in Haven but also in Haven's babies and Haven's grandbabies it really should give us all pause to say look you know it's not about me it's about generations of me yeah it's true you you know the the Dutch famine study really was one of the best studies to prove the impact of epigenetics and just for people who don't know that study the Dutch during World War two were blockaded by the Germans and they literally were starving to death and women who gave birth following that famine the children were actually predisposed to obesity and diabetes because they reset their genes to seek out food because that didn't they basically their genes didn't want this to happen to them but what's so interesting is those children's children and now the third generation is also being impacted by what happened in the 1940s imprinting epigenetically on those children in the womb it's just it's scary but it's also you're right I think empowering because if if we understand really from the get-go what's going to happen even as babies I have two young grandchildren and thankfully my my daughter or husband follow my program and they actually raise their kids with the plant paradox method and because they get it and they go oh my gosh you know you know what have we done what what did my father do to me when I was a big fat guy so but you're right it's it's it's scary how much we now understand it's not our genes it really isn't genes have very little to do about all this it's the imprint on those genes from epigenemic from food from lifestyle that's going to make all the difference speaking of making the difference what do you give me your thoughts about sleep how important is it how impactful is it on our mental health and also on preventing dimension memory loss so in feel better fast and memory rescue I talk about this one idea 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 and I have a mnemonic I love called bright minds and so B is for blood flow and R is retirement and aging and I is inflammation and the S is sleep because what I've seen is people who get less than seven hours of sleep at night have lower overall blood flow to their brain which means more bad decisions people who have sleep apnea they snore loudly they stop breathing at night their brain actually looks like they have early Alzheimer's disease it begins to kill the tissue in their parietal lobes top back part of the brain which is one of the first areas that dies in Alzheimer's disease and then new research has shown that when you sleep your brain cleans or washes itself it's basically cleaning up the amyloid plaques that are building up in the brain and so making it a priority is critical and in 1900 on average Americans got nine hours of sleep at night now in 2018 they got six and a half hours of sleep at night you can't go through that kind of radical change in such a short period of evolutionary history and it not have a negative impact on our well-being children who average one less hour of sleep at night have a higher incidence of suicide so we need to be more thoughtful and make sleep a priority in our lives okay give me one action step to get more sleep everyone who's listening to us going oh that's great for you to say but you know I'm working two jobs and I got three kids and I'm stressed out at night and I'm steering at my TV screen and the last thing I want to do is go to sleep so turn blue light blockers on every gadget that you your eyes look at after dark so you know phones have them computers have them you can download simple apps for them that way you're not going to be bombarded with the blue light that turns off melatonin also don't eat two hours before you go to bed because people who eat right before they go to bed have a higher incidence of heart attack and strokes because their blood pressure doesn't dip right before they go to sleep so they're called non-dippers and they have a higher incidence of heart attack and stroke and you know why I love talking to a cardiothoracic surgeon many years ago I realized suspect is a blood flow study it looks at blood flow and activity and the number one brain imaging predictor of Alzheimer's disease is low blood flow to your brain so whatever is good for your heart is good for your brain and whatever is bad for your heart is bad for your brain so taking care of your blood vessels is actually one of the most important things you can do for your brain no that's very true we we have techniques to measure blood vessel flexibility in our clinic and it's it's fascinating there's a saying in longevity that you are only as young as your blood vessels are flexible and that has to do with the brain as well but we've we found and published that certain substances that high polyphenol sub substances like like grape seed extract like coffee like extra dark chocolate and olive oil has polyphenols that absolutely make your blood vessels more flexible and when we add this to people's diets their blood vessels get flexible and then we took them out of people's diets and we could actually prove that their blood vessels got stiff again so yeah you you've got to have blood for to your heart and you've got to have the same thing to your brain here you're absolutely right all right I I've got to get you I've got to get you on the road to your next meeting so on that same subject what are people eating that's unhealthy for their brain and give me one action step to stop that habit and start a better habit for their brain so I love this idea I mean you know you and I agree on the foods right anything that's pro-inflammatory so Tana and I wrote a book called the Brain Warriors Way and in it we talk about the weapons of mass destruction which are highly processed pesticide sprayed high glycemic low fiber food like substances stored in plastic containers with 70% of us overweight or obese 50% of us are diabetic or pre-diabetic this is the biggest brain drain in the history of the United States I published two studies that show as your weight goes up the actual physical size and function of your brain goes down which would scare the fat off anyone so the one little tiny habit is when you go to eat something ask yourself do I love something that loves me back so I don't know how many of your listeners have been in bad relationships I have been in bad relationships in the past where I love people that didn't love me back or weren't good for me and I'm not doing that anymore you know I have a wonderful woman that I adore and I'm damn sure not doing it with food when I have total control over so when you're looking at that brownie or the donut or the cupcake it's like that is pro inflammatory it's addictive it increases erratic brain cell firing it doesn't love you back so you might love it but it doesn't love you back the only things I eat are things that serve my health rather than steal from my health you got to get your mind right about this it's not oh I don't miss the Rocky Road ice cream I actually see it as a weapon of mass destruction so you know you're getting well when you find and we're all creatures of habit you know what are the 20 foods you typically eat I mean people it's like 15 or 20 foods that's it you just have to lie it's not hard just find 15 that you love that love you back and Tana has a great cookbook called the Brain Warriors Way cookbook and the last night she made me asparagus soup with chicken that was just phenomenal there is no suffering in getting well yeah you know I used to know Jack Lane before he passed on and Jack Lane one of his favorite expressions which I think is going too far but if it tastes good spit it out yeah now that's not right because you can train your taste buds I mean I love everything that I eat I mean you know my snack is a cup of frozen blueberries and I love that so talk about polyphenols they're just loaded with it and and so you just have to find things you love that love you back okay so why we've hit all the things I wanted to hit one last thing as you know I'm fascinated with the microbiome both in our gut and the oral microbiome tell us the research is evolving very very rapidly about the gut-brain connection and even the microbiome connection thoughts on that what what have you learned that's changed your practice in the last few years with the human microbiome project and the brain you know we talked about whatever's good for your heart is good for your brain well whatever is good for your microbiome is good for your brain as well there's actually a direct connection between the brain and the gut through the vagal nerve and when you keep the gut bugs healthy you're happier you're actually less anxious you feel less stress and it helps to modulate inflammation and the eye in bright minds is inflammation and in that part of the book I talk all about the microbiome and how critical it is so you want to avoid things that hurt it I mean this is like this isn't hard right so for the brain do things that help it avoid things that hurt it for the microbiome it's the same do things that help it avoid things that hurt it so don't take antibiotics unless you have to you need to like lessen the alcohol why did my wife is a nurse put alcohol on your skin before she gave you a shot because it's killing the bugs and I'm just not a fan of murdering those gut bugs that detoxify your system help you digest your food make nerve transmitters make vitamins and so on and then lots of fiber because fiber actually becomes the prebiotic or the food for the gut bugs or the pro biotics yeah absolutely right perfect all right I do one last thing on my segment I take an audience question but I'll do that after I say goodbye to you so I really appreciate you coming on it's it's great to get to know you better we'll see you again I hope thank you Stephen what a joy to spend time with you all right so everybody get this book and find out how to save your brain before it's too late and keep you happy that's nothing else make yourself happy okay so we've got an audience question Karina asks having such a hard time getting started with the diet any suggestions on helping with cravings well first of all cravings are completely normal as you've seen in the plant paradox and as you'll see in the upcoming longevity paradox your bad gut bugs actually control your desire for these bad foods they actually send text messages to your brain just like we were hearing with with Dr. Amon that you should feed them the things they like and quite frankly they love junk food so it takes a few days for you to starve these guys and if they don't have what they want to eat they actually die off and leave because they no longer have that what's fascinating is if you give your gut bugs the things they like and quite frankly that's lots of green stuff lots of leaves lots of resistant starches like yams or hickamud or tarot root just to name a few the good bugs this is what they grow on and they multiply and literally push out the bad bugs the good bugs in turn send text messages to your brain to go get some more of this stuff and I and I write about a lot of my real died in the wool meat and potato guys or people who would say I would never eat a salad in my life about two weeks later when they come back to my clinic and see me for a follow-up they said this is the weirdest thing you know I hate vegetables I hate salads but now I crave them if I go a day and I can't get a salad I'm ready to kill somebody and that's so unlike me and it's literally because your brain has been hijacked by bad bugs and they want you to keep giving them the stuff they want but you can drive them out so willpower is actually an important thing and what is really useful is to have your significant other your spouse your brother your sister your your dog be the policeman and say I empower you to stop me because I'm out of control and I want you to you know clean out the refrigerator for me those are easy those are easy steps to do and just say I'm not going to get mad at you just stop me I need help and it's okay to ask for help the other thing I think is really easy to do is many people we talked with dr. Heyman about 80% of Americans are either diabetic or pre-diabetic and that means 80% of us are what's called insulin resistant and we'd spend an hour on insulin resistance but I won't what it means is that when you start taking away all these sugars that you're used to you actually go through sugar withdrawal your cells can't use fat properly you can't get into ketosis this is what Adkins didn't know and you go through what's sometimes called the low-carb flu or the Adkins flu where you get a headache you feel like you have absolutely no energy you're grouchy the word hangry I think is a great term I think one of the easy ways to get through this period of time is to get yourself some MCT oil medium chain triglycerides sometimes called liquid coconut oil it can be easily made into ketones in your liver and it's tasteless it's flavorless take about a tablespoon three die three times a day for the first few days and you'll get through those cravings the other option is get yourself a handful of nuts and whenever a craving hits you take some nuts here's a little trick put some salt on the nuts when we're actually actively losing weight we dye your yeast we pee a lot and we pull salt out of our bodies and there's some very good research that shows that we actually should increase our salt intake when we're first starting these programs and it will really help with cravings so don't be afraid of salt for salt is not the enemy that everybody thinks it is so having said that it's normal to go through these cravings you're getting bad messages from the bad bugs and you got to starve them and empower yourself to starve those guys they'll leave and the good guys will take over and they'll start controlling you in good ways all right so that's the Dr. Gundry podcast for today thanks a lot for listening the 30-day challenge is still ongoing I'm posting just about every night on Instagram about what I'm doing how are you doing why because I'm Dr. Gundry and I'm always looking out for you