 So welcome to the Dr. Gendry podcast. You know, we've probably all been touched by mental illness Maybe it's a friend or family member or maybe you struggled with it yourself Well, my guest today says that the way we think about mental illness and mental health is all wrong He's Dr. Daniel Amon and one of America's leading psychiatrist and the author of a brand new book the end of Mental illness and I I can't think of a more important book that we should have in our hands right now You know in in the new book Dr. Amon Exposes the most common misconceptions about mental illness and explains why there is Something you can do to help yourself or your loved ones So in today's episode Dr. Amon and I will discuss the difference between mental health and brain health Why mental illness is not your fault and the biggest problems with modern psychiatry? Dr. Amon so good to have you back on the Dr. Gundry podcast Thank you, Dr. Gundry. What a pleasure to be with you again So, okay, so what's the difference between? Mental health and brain health and why is that so important, you know, we started looking at the brain Just about 30 years ago with a couple of different studies quantitative EEG and then brain spectimaging and It became very clear that these are not mental health issues At all that their brain health issues and that one Distinction changes everything because people begin to see their problems as medical and not moral It decreases shame and guilt it increases Compliance because people want better brains and it increases compassion and forgiveness from families and most psychiatrists actually never talk about brain health that the things you talk about for example the impact of diet on Your microbiome, but that completely affects your brain health How avoiding Toxic chemicals in the products we put on our body or the issue with concussions Having an undiagnosed brain injuries a major cause of suicide anxiety depression ADHD learning problems and homelessness But nobody's talking about it because most psychiatrists never look at the brain So think about that. What other medical specialty never looks at the organ it treats And that's insane because how do you know if this depression is because your brain works too hard or? not hard enough and giving everybody SSRI's which calmed down the brain and Can really help some people and be a disaster for others so how Okay, so, you know, I see this actually in my patients all the time You know, they've come to see their medical problems as as personal failings Rather than being caused by their environment or the foods they or even you know the drugs they've been prescribed So how do you propose we reframe this issue between quote mental health and physical health of our brains? Well, I think the first thing we need to do is actually start looking at the organ We treat that making diagnoses based on symptom clusters with no biological data I mean somebody should be upset about this and I've been upset about this for a long time but Cardiologists don't make diagnoses with no biological data Gastroenterologists don't orthopedic doctors don't nobody I know Does that so I think imaging just needs to become part of what we do because the brain is an organ you can look at both Structurally and functionally and so my colleagues will say well There's not enough science and I'm like seriously if you go to pub med calm today and type in brain speck You'll get fourteen thousand six hundred abstracts. It's like let's not say there's no science And it's like well, it's not part of our training and it's not part of our tradition Except the outcomes in psychiatry are no better than they were in the 1950s In fact disability for mental health reasons has quadrupled since the 1980s So obviously we're doing something wrong and so we we need a new paradigm Plus what I get excited about I don't know if you and I ever talked about the Daniel plan It's a program. I did with Pastor Rick Warren and Mark Hyman The first week fifteen thousand people signed up the first year they lost a quarter of a million pounds and then literally thousands of churches around the world have done the Daniel plan and Part of the testimonials are not just weight loss. It's they lost their antidepressants. They lost their anti-anxiety drugs. They Felt better their memories were better and it just highlights that when you get your brain, right? your mind follows but unfortunately most people suffer with mental health issues See psychologists and psychiatrists that virtually never talked to them about diet about exercise about supplementation about looking at do you have an infection? In your brain. I'm in a new docu series with Justin Bieber I've been Justin's doctor for a long time and he came out publicly that he had Lyme disease and that was part of What was driving his mental health challenges? So is that a mental illness or is it a brain illness and in my mind? It's clearly a brain health issue get your brain right your mind will follow You know one of the most interesting Things in the book is a section where you take a patient of yours and describe how he would or she would have been Diagnosed throughout history. Can you give us an example of that to kind of bring this home? so Jared was eight years old when I first met him and He was a hellion. He had been diagnosed with ADHD when he was three He had been on five different Stimulant medications for ADHD. They all made him worse violent rages He did terrible in school the third-grade teacher said Don't have any expectations for him because he's never gonna do well in school And when they wanted to put him on an anti psychotic his mother called the clinic And when we scanned him he didn't have ADHD that's usually goes with sleepy activity in the front part of the brain He had a pattern we called the ring of fire, which is there's too much activity in his brain So we had to calm it down and when we did his behavior normalized He's been on the honor roll or the Dean's list for the last ten years straight He has friends. I mean it's just stunning and How would they have treated him 6,000 years ago? Well, they would have drilled a hole in his skull to let out the evil spirits and in the time of Hippocrates Which was actually the most forward thinking time they would have changed his diet got him to exercise listen to soothing music and Got him into a job that fit his restless nature and then unfortunately they would have also bled him In the Middle Ages, they would have chained him and an asylum and in the 19th 19th century They probably would have sterilized him and faced it placed his family under suspicion in the eugenics program Which actually started in the United States, but was the precursor for Nazi Germany And in the 20th century Fred would have put him on his couch Which wouldn't have worked and then of course we could have blamed his mother and It's like and now what we're doing is the 15-minute Med check It's like well, let's try this and let's try that and if this doesn't work We'll go with that without any biological Data, which I would argue we need a new paradigm So I have so many of my Patients who will walk in with the report or the actual film of their brain MRI or their CT scan or their brain with a note from their Caring Neurologist or some and or psychiatrist and say see there's absolutely nothing wrong with my brain Why don't why are people using this an anatomical? Map of the brain as the basis to make a decision so there's a difference between structure and function and most Psychiatric problems not all but most of them are not structural problems They're functional problems the brain works too hard in certain areas or not hard enough and I published a study on traumatic brain injury that showed how spacked was Remarkably more sensitive than an MRI or CT and just think of it this way If I had a computer in front of me, and I dropped the computer well the computer might look just fine but you might not be able to turn it on or when you turn it on it would go into these loop patterns and MRI and CT are lagging indicators of trouble where specked is a leading indicator of trouble so with specked we can tell 20 years before you get Alzheimer's disease If your brain is headed to the dark place where you won't see that on an MRI or a CT scan At all so you know people listening think of it is like a car engine You know if you pop the hood you can see what the engine actually physically looks like But what you really want is to turn it on and see how it works and that's what functional imaging does which should be part of Every psychiatric evaluation. I believe because you know, I'm just no good at guessing You know, I often think of my colleagues like Johnny Carson from Karnak the Magnificent You know he'd get the envelope hold it up to his head and then wonder You know well, what's the question and I'm like I'm just not good at that and to expect me to guess on your Physiology without knowing I mean would cardiothoracic surgeons really Ever do that would they develop a treatment plan without any biology? No, although in the past We used to joke that half the people that we operated on for chest pain with a coronary bypass Actually had reflux esophageitis and half the people we operated on for Heidel hernia reflux esophageitis had coronary artery disease and we just weren't we didn't have the tools to to tell the difference and Obviously now we do so so can Can Joe blow or our listener or our viewer walk into their neighborhood? Hospital clean that clinic imaging center and say hi I want a spec scan of my brain Well, they can they have spec cameras virtually in every major hospital in the world for spec heart studies spec bone studies now The doctor generally is probably not going to have any experience Doing it and what we see because we read scans from all over the world is what people call normal generally is not Normal because nuclear medicine doctors never were taught to read Increases in the brain and a lot of psychiatric conditions the brain works too hard And so basically they're just looking for symmetry and holes so experience matters Which is why we have eight soon to be nine clinics around the United States to provide this service for people So when you say brains work too hard you talk about in the book about brain types and Is is is explain what that means? I mean doesn't it doesn't everybody have the same brain? No, as a matter of fact one of the big early lessons is That everybody's sort of different. I mean we have healthy balanced brains. We have spontaneous Brains that really have sleepy frontal lobes and they're creative and restless and spontaneous But they're also impulsive and they can't concentrate and they're late and disorganized There's persistent brains where the front part works too hard Often in many Cardiothoracic surgeons or neurosurgeons They want things a certain way and if things don't go a certain way it gets them Upset and you want your cardiothoracic surgeon to be that way They're not our ADD group at all a little bit of OCD And then our sensitive they're people who's limbic or emotional brains work too hard and our cautious brains people who tend to be anxious and What I learned is like if we just took obesity for example Putting everybody on the same program sort of silly when you realize they're impulsive Over-eaters they're compulsive Over-eaters they're sad over-eaters. They're anxious over-eaters putting everybody on the same program is sort of silly When a high protein low carbohydrate diet works really well for the spontaneous group the ADD group and it is a freaking nightmare for The persistent group because it's a focused diet And if you have OCD tendencies you will focus more on the things that upset you and I was on the Rachel Ray show and we were talking about this and she has that persistent brain type and she said I went on the Atkins diet and I was so mean I Wondered why my husband didn't leave me and so get on the wrong diet. You actually end up divorced the so So you can actually with a spec scan Tell a brain type or what other evaluation processes do you go through to make that determination? So we have a free online assessment people can take brain health Assessment calm brain health assessment calm and it'll tell you which of the 16 brain types you have Because there are combinations of types as well and it's good for Your husband to take it your children to take it someone you're dating to take it to see, you know What vulnerabilities there may be in relationships and I talk about this in the book when I first met my wife I really liked her and But I didn't want to like her until I saw her brain and so about two weeks later I'm like you haven't been to the clinic. Don't you want to come to the clinic and I scanned her She was a good sport, but you know, she worked at low Melinda on the neurosurgery ICU unit and You know, we sort of bonded over the brain and It's just I think we should be putting the brain more central in our Relationships because it's your brain that makes every decision You make and when your brain is healthy You make better decisions, which means you're healthier. You're wealthier. You're more successful at whatever you do So I can see it now that you're going to open a series of online dating services Where you're going to match brain scans with the appropriate person I'm am I going too far here or I don't want to give you a great idea because my goodness Now many years ago. I thought about brain match calm, but I When my daughter she you know fell in love really for the first time And and the rule in my house is if you guys date for more than four months I want to see his brain and I particularly Wanted to see Michael's brain because his mother when he was 12 years old killed herself and He found her and he had struggled with a fair amount of anxiety But just by falling in love with his brain taking the right supplements. He has done dramatically better Wow, so I can just see this, you know, I want you to meet my father, but he needs to scan your brain first That's a that's a lot of pressure. That's a lot of pressure. It's sort of like meet the parents. Yeah Or I've got a so the bar pickup line, you know, I want you to come up and see my etchings I want you to come up and I want to scan your brain is your pickup line So that's what Tana says. She said no one had ever asked me to see my naked brain that that was the most important part of me So what do you think about what can you tell our listeners about the link between their gut bacteria and their mental health? They're intimately connected More so than we ever thought and when I was a resident nobody said boo about this But if your gut bacteria is unhealthy as a child it actually sets you up for lifelong anxiety disorders and So think of all the kids who had tubes in their ears because they had multiple ear infections often because they're sensitive to dairy that That It damaged their microbiome Think of all the kids who were born by c-section and their microbiome wasn't properly populated or were not breastfed and And I don't want to make anybody feel guilty It's like okay you know that may be a risk factor and so you then go and take care of that risk by repopulating the gut in a healthy way with Forvented foods and probiotics, but this idea of leaky gut syndrome increases inflammation which is a major cause of both depression and dementia and So in the end of mental illness, I really take a functional medicine approach to brain health and and mental health and I have this mnemonic called bright minds to help you remember the 11 major risk factors that steal your mind and the first eye is inflammation Often caused by an unhealthy gut Yeah, you mentioned, you know, you mentioned the times of apocrates Which was I think we'd both agree probably the most he was so enlightened. It's scary but you know, he he said all disease begins in the gut and How he knew that back then is you know, it's shocking But you're right in the last even five years We've we've learned things that you and I never were taught in medical school And you know, even our friend David promiter when he did his five-year anniversary of grain brain About, you know, he didn't know nor did any of us about the microbiome brain connection back then and To his credit he changed a lot of his advice As I've changed a lot of my advice as we've relearned things But some of the things that frustrate me is that there are Well-known nutritionists who haven't changed their dietary advice in 20 or 30 years even though we have Totally new information that's available to all of us Can that apply to psychiatry? I assume you would say absolutely. Why haven't we done that? Yeah, no question. There's this great study from Australia Where they looked at two outer islands one of the outer islands had fast food restaurants The other one didn't and what they did is they measured their omega-3 fatty acid levels And the level of depression and as you might think the island with fast food restaurants had significantly lower levels of omega-3 fatty acids and five Five times the level of depression. It's the food the food is So important to the health of our brains, but what happened? So I did I published this study and I was actually looking at the data this morning on 22,000 patients looking at their bmi or their body mass index And function in 127 different parts of the brain And all 127 Parts of the brain it's almost a linear correlation between healthy overweight obese and morbidly obese as your weight goes up the actual physical size and Function of the brain goes down Which should just scare the fat off of everybody And it's the biggest brain drain in the history of the united states And now it's actually a national security crisis Because 70 percent of the people who try to apply for the military are rejected Because they're not healthy enough We're going the wrong way as a society And and we need to do better If we're going to stem the tide, this is not going to happen in congress It's going to happen through a ground swell Of education and information from doctors, you know like you and dr. Perlmutter and dr. Hyman and Dr. Bredesen, I mean it's really all of us Trying to get captured the attention Of the american population to change the way They eat so they don't have to suffer with chronic illnesses So you got any got any thoughts on why this will never happen from a government in incentive why congress Isn't scared to death about all of this Yeah, I think too many of the food companies the alcohol companies donate to their political Campaigns that I think it's about money And it should horrify us that You know we allow I think we ban like 11 chemicals where in europe they ban And 2500 chemicals and in canada they ban 500 chemicals and clearly what I can see on spec scans Is toxicity in your brain from yes drugs and alcohol but also environmental toxins as well Just for example the products you put on your body the tea in bright minds is for toxins And then there's just great app. I like called think dirty It's not what you think it is but you can actually scan your personal products And it'll tell you on a scale of one to ten how quickly they're killing you And so aluminum is probably not a good thing to put on your body or 60 percent of the Lipstick sold in the united states has led in it. You know, I call it kiss of death It's like we just need to be a little bit more thoughtful And and you're not doing any of this because you should you do it because you love yourself You love your life your mission your spouse your children Um, it's never that I should eat right. It's I want to eat Right because I love myself and in the book there's a whole chapter called food made insanely simple and it's It's really about finding food you love that love you back And that's the trick because you know, I want you to eat in a healthy way And I know you have recipes and they're delicious. Um, it's Getting well is never about suffering Um that when you you're not well, that's about suffering Yeah, no, I you know, I always try to explain to my patients as far as You and I know this is the only house that we're ever going to live in And you know, this is the only heart the only brain you you get And if you would pay as much attention to the care and upkeep Of the only house you ever get that you do to your car your home your lawn This problem would could stop virtually overnight No question. You're absolutely right and you know and nobody cares about their brain Why because you can't see it? You can see the wrinkles in your skin or the fat around your belly and you can do something when you're unhappy with that But you know when I first scanned myself in 1991 it was right after my mother my mother had a perfect brain A beautiful brain and mine she was 60. I was 37 and it looked like crap I'm like, why does my brain look so bad? But I played football in high school. I had meningitis as a young soldier And I had bad habits. I wasn't sleeping more than four hours at night. I ate a lot of fast food You know, I'm a double board certified psychiatrist And I don't care one bit about my own brain until I saw it and then I was horrified And I developed a concept I call brain envy Freud was wrong penis envy is not the cause of anybody's problem I've not seen one case in 40 years Um, but people need to start caring about their brain because if your brain's not right, your life is not right No, you know, you're right. You know, I was a world famous heart surgeon and Uh, I would look at people I operated on and at that time they looked a lot like me Um, you know, they were they were fat. They had little skin tags on them And I'm going, gee, you know, this 50 or this 45 year old guy, this 50 year old looks a lot like me But that can't happen to me because I'm a really smart heart surgeon And you know, one day, you know, when I met Big Ed, it clicked and I went, son of a gun I was operating on myself and it never made the connection Yeah, if we could see our brain, it would be very useful So, uh Yeah, you you got to have a I'm glad you're opening up another clinic. Everybody go look at their brain so Kind of summarize the book When you find out about your brain You there are steps you can take at any age to make a difference You bet. I mean, that's what's exciting. I mean, I really think that's the foundational message of my life You're not stuck with the brain you have you can make it better In fact, if you sleep better tonight, your brain will actually work better tomorrow If you eat better today, your brain will actually be better today if you eat badly today, your brain is going to be worse today on in the Have a new show that goes along with the book on public television and I have Lisa Gibbons, uh, who's a friend of mine. She's uh news personality Uh, she's beautiful. She's smart her mother and her grandmother died with Alzheimer's Disease and as I got to know her I'm like you want to come see me because we can tell Years and she goes well, why would I want to know and I said well if you knew a train was going to hit you Wouldn't you want to at least try to get out of the way? And so I have her brain at 51 and then I did it You know look terrible and then I have her brain at 62 and it looks stunningly beautiful Why because she does all of the right things So genes aren't really a death sentence. They should be a wake-up call For you to do the right things to prevent what you're vulnerable to Yeah, no, you're right. In fact, I I just recently joined you on public television with the longevity paradox And you're right genes actually have so little to do with with our destiny and our long-term health And our long-term brain health, you know 30 of us carry the apo E4 allele, which is a predictor of increased risk of Alzheimer's And so many of my patients come to me carrying that gene But the fascinating thing is and I'll tell anyone who will listen I have a number of people now in their late 80s carrying the 4 4 allele, which Not a good thing to have but they're doing great But I have a 97 year old gentleman who's a 3 4 And he still runs his company and his three daughters will not let him retire Because he's so good at what he does and so I'll any of my apo E4 folks. I'll say hey, you know 7 and you're running your company, of course, they're going to say why doesn't he retire? I tell anyone who listens don't retire if you're smart Because particularly men and now increasingly women in the workforce Being engaged In Everyday activities of work is Back me up on this is important in in your life So in the mnemonic bright minds where I talk about the risk factors are is retirement and aging when you stop Learning your brain starts dying And so being engaged You only want to be engaged as long as you want to be able to think And I had one woman said who is 60 and she's like, you know, I dieted and I exercise I don't really want to do that anymore And I said as long as you're okay with the consequences of aging which is depression and dementia Then why worry about it? But I'm not okay with it And I need to keep my brain actively engaged in order For it to work at an optimal level and quite frankly, you know, I have four children and I love them, but I never want to have to live with them I never want to be a burden and I don't want them taking my keys from me I don't want them telling me what to eat or what to wear I want to be independent But that means I need to be making good decisions for my health So my brain doesn't do what it often does with aging and it deteriorates. I've seen way too many 80 90 100 year old brains and Most of them except for a select few who loved their brains throughout their life Look terrible and I'm not okay with that. Yeah This has been great You know, I think that's so important and I tell Anyone who will listen to that it is never too late And in the number of stories I have of people You know on the way out in their mid 80s suffering from diabetes heart disease arthritis You name it who are now in their mid 90s and they're they're thriving individuals I wouldn't have believed this it was possible, you know in most of my career But I think your message That your brain is malleable. I think the sooner you get to work on it the better I think we could both agree on that But it is it's never too late. Lisa Gibbons is a great example To turn things around Yeah, it's never too late to have a better brain and a better life And it starts with love Love of yourself. Love of your brain. Love of your family. So doing the right thing And and the scans just always give me hope That I can tell how much better people can be and and I always tell people whatever we see is good news Because you have what you have And if it's great, we celebrate and if it's bad we go to work and rehabilitate it And I did the big nfl study when the nfl was lying. They had a problem. Yeah And uh high levels of damage It's like stop lying about it But 80 of my players get better when I put them on a rehabilitation Program you are not stuck with if you've been bad to your brain Well now is the time to make a decision To be better to your brain and it can be better for you All right takeaway Is there one thing today That that somebody can do to to help their brain just one. I know there's bunches of them. Give us one today So I worked with bj fog for six months. Uh, he's a professor at stanford on creating tiny habits You know, it's the smallest thing you can do today that will make the biggest difference So the one thing three seconds a day whenever you go to make a decision ask yourself Is this good for my brain or bad for it? And if you can answer that question with information and love love of yourself You'll begin to change your brain in such a positive way All right very good So where can viewers and listeners find the end of mental illness and learn more about you So the the book will be everywhere on amazon barns and noble wherever great books are sold They can learn us about us at amen clinics Dot com so amen like the last word in a prayer clinics dot com And we're in the middle of a six week challenge To get people's Brains healthy because the end of mental illness begins with a revolution in brain health and we're creating brain warriors to Move this revolution forward just like you're doing as well All right. Thanks again, and we'll we'll be talking soon. I'm sure thanks so much Okay, it's time for the audience question This question is from bill stanley on youtube Dr. Gundry I have been following the plant paradox for a year now and the question I have Is if the lectins are in the seeds and skins of vegetables Why can't we eat things like pumpkins squash, etc. If we skin and de-seed them Boy, do I get this question a lot from my patients and thanks for asking that bill So here's the deal. It's true that the major lectins are in the peels and seeds of the squash family My problem with my particular patient population is that these are fruits Anything with a peel and a seed is a fruit Certain fruits like the squash family do have lectins in the peels and seeds And yes, you can absolutely take the peels and seeds away and make them lectin free But that doesn't change the fact that their flesh is primarily fructose And lots of carbohydrates So when I'm dealing with patients with heart disease and or obesity or diabetes The fact that we're removing lectins from their diet is factor one But equally as important is reducing these fructose bearing carbohydrates out of their diet And you're going to learn more about this in my next book the energy paradox But fructose Is a major mitochondrial damaging sugar molecule And if you want to kill off your mitochondria Then eat all the deseeded squash and pumpkin you want to But otherwise I would stay away from these things and we've shown in my clinic In patients that we follow every three months for blood work that when we take These fruits out of their diet their triglycerides fall their hemoglobin a1c falls their fructose fructosamine falls And their kidney function improves So as much as I like pumpkin pie as the next person and as much as I think butternut squash soup is delicious I don't eat those things anymore. There's no human need for them. So great question I get it all the time. So thanks for sending the questions like that in So that's it for the dr. Gundry podcast. We'll see you next week Before you go I just wanted to remind you that you can find the show on itunes google play Stitcher or wherever you get your podcast because i'm dr. Gundry and i'm always looking out for you