Pod Insights The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett Doctor & Therapist To The Worlds Superstars: Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus & Bella Hadid!: Dr Amen About this episode There is a war going on and the battle is for your brain health. According to Dr Daniel Amen, whether it is food that will kill you, news that will stress you or gadgets that will drain your dopamine and attention, so much of the modern world is dangerous for your brain health.
Having scanned and examined over 200,000 brains, Dr Daniel Amen’s mission is to change the way people see mental health as isolated from brain health, and instead reimagine it so that people realise that if your brain healthy your mind will follow.
In this life changing conversation Dr Daniel Amen discusses how he revolutionised the field of psychology, discovered the power of brain scans and being the psychiatrist to the stars. In the episode Dr Amen outlines everything you need to know to ensure that you have the healthiest brain, and therefore the healthiest and happiest mind possible.
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Transcript 15,863 words · 3 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Daniel Amen? Four of my patients have a billion followers. Justin Bieber, Nylee Cyrus, Bella Hadid. And we looked at their brains. And what we found is-
0:10 Steven Bartlett? Thank you so much, Dr. Amen.
0:11 Daniel Amen? Dr. Daniel Amen.
0:13 Speaker 02 He's a clinical neuroscientist, New York Times bestselling author, one of America's leading psychiatrists and brain health experts.
0:20 Daniel Amen? Why do you do what you do? I have to do what I do. Someone I love tried to kill herself. If she would have died, I think I would have always been left with a hole in my soul.
0:36 Daniel Amen? Most psychiatric illnesses are not mental illnesses. They're brain health issues. When you reimagine, mental health is brain health. Changes everything. So you want to damage your brain? Do not engage in new learning. Don't ever eat fish, never floss, play football, marijuana, alcohol, nicotine, caffeine. No. It's a drug. You want to keep your brain healthy, takes three seconds. So...
1:04 Daniel Amen? Do you know about the ACE quiz? It's 10th of the most common childhood traumas. If you have four or more, you have an increased risk of seven of the top 10 leading causes of death. If you have six or more, you die 20 years earlier.
1:23 Steven Bartlett? Is there something that can be done to change it?
1:26 Daniel Amen? Absolutely. If you came to see me, I would have you-
1:37 Steven Bartlett? Dr. Amen,
1:40 Steven Bartlett? why do you do what you do?
1:42 Daniel Amen? It's, uh, part of my soul. I have to do what I do.
1:50 Daniel Amen? The short story, so I got to do what I do, is when I was 18. Vietnam was still going on and I had a low draft number. And I became an infantry medic where my love of medicine was born. But about a year into it, I realized I didn't like being shot at. It was irritating. It was horrifying. And I got myself retrained as an X-ray technician.
2:19 Daniel Amen? And just developed a passion for medical imaging. As our professors used to say, how do you know unless you look? And that became a theme for my life. And then I got out of the army in 1975 and finished college. And when I was a second year medical student, someone I love tried to kill herself. And I was horrified. I had no idea what to do. And I took her to see the chief of the Department of Psychiatry, where I went to medical school. And I realized if he helped her, it wouldn't just help her.
3:01 Daniel Amen? That ultimately, it would help her children and even her grandchildren as they would be shaped by someone who was happier and more stable. I fell in love with psychiatry, 1979. So 44 years ago, and I've loved it every day since. But I fell in love with the only medical specialty that never looks at the organ it treats. And even back then, I'm like, why aren't we looking at the brain? I mean, obviously, the brain is the organ of depression. The brain is the organ of bipolar disorder. The brain is the organ of anxiety. Why aren't we looking at it? And they said, that's the future.
3:44 Daniel Amen? We will, but not yet. And growing up, my dad thought I was sort of a pain in the ass. He called me a maverick because I didn't just accept what he said. And it turns out, he's true. And I'm pushing, we should be looking at the brain. In 1991, so I've been a psychiatrist almost a decade. I went to my first lecture on brain spect imaging. Spect is a nuclear medicine study that looks at blood flow and activity. It looks at how your brain works. And it basically shows us three things.
4:26 Daniel Amen? Good activity, too little, or too much. And then it rocked my world. I mean, explosion in my world. It's like, I have to look. How do I know unless I look? And the lessons. Just kept coming that the first lesson, most psychiatric illnesses are not mental illnesses. They're brain health issues. If I get your brain healthy, well, your mind tends to follow because your brain, the physical moment by moment
5:04 Daniel Amen? functioning of your brain creates your mind. And if your brain isn't healthy, your mind isn't healthy. So that was the first lesson. And I'm like, these are not mental illnesses. And when you reimagine, mental health is brain health, changes everything. It changed everything I do as a psychiatrist. Most psychiatrists, you come, you go to them and you go, I'm depressed. And then they'll give you a diagnosis with the same name of what you just told them. They go, you're depressed. And then put you on an antidepressant, which in large scale
5:43 Daniel Amen? studies, were no better than placebo. And I'm like, so next lesson, depression is like chest pain. It doesn't tell you what causes it, and it doesn't tell you what to do for it. But we have whole industries built on money for medicine for mental health conditions. And I think it's complete crap because they're not looking at the organ. They don't know, is it from head trauma? Is it from an infection? Is it from a lousy diet? Is it from being sedentary? Is it because you don't know how to manage your mind?
6:22 Daniel Amen? And I then learned that mild traumatic brain injury is a major cause of psychiatric problems. And nobody knows about it because they don't look at the brain. And I was just like a little kid, so excited, I still am. Thirty-two years later, we've done 225,000 scans. And it's, it's so fun to be in the future, helping people get well. So I have to do it. I know that's a long answer.
6:59 Steven Bartlett? I like long answers. You'll come to learn that. You've written so many books and you seem to have the same energy you've always had about this subject matter. When you sort of, if you were to encapsulate or to summarize the mission that you're on, which is the source of all that energy, what is that mission that you're on?
7:19 Daniel Amen? The mission is to end the concept of mental illness by creating a revolution in brain health. And that mission just evolved. You know, my mission when I graduated from medical school was to be a really good psychiatrist because it's personal to me. And to be a writer. I wrote my first book the year I graduated from medical school. And I found I loved the process, that writing brings me joy, that when I can take complex
8:02 Daniel Amen? concepts and make them really easy to understand, and that's helpful to someone, I love that. That's joyful to me. And that skill has served my career so well because my books bring a lot of people. We have 11 clinics around the US and they often come because they've read one of my books. So they serve the purpose of educating and then allowing us to do the work we love doing.
8:43 Steven Bartlett? If someone's listening to this and they've never really taken the time to learn about the brain before because they don't necessarily think it's so important, they, you know, they understand things about dieting or whatever else, but the brain, they kind of just assume it's there, right? Like a lot of people do. What case would you make to them about the importance of?
9:01 Steven Bartlett? Positive, healthy cognitive functions and brain health. What is the case? Why does it matter to the ordinary person? Say if they don't have a psychiatric predicament, they don't have a mental health disorder. Why does the brain matter to them?
9:16 Daniel Amen? Because your brain's involved in everything you do. How you think, how you feel, how you act, how you get along with other people. Your brain is the organ of intelligence, character, and every single decision that you make.
9:36 Daniel Amen? And when your brain works right, you work right. And when your brain is troubled, for whatever reason, mold, COVID, head trauma,
9:47 Daniel Amen? not sleeping, chronic stress, when your brain's not right, you're sadder, sicker, poorer,
9:56 Daniel Amen? less successful. I got to scan Tony Robbins, the famous success guru. And I love him and I love his work and I think he's so smart. And he said publicly he had mercury poisoning. He decided he loved swordfish, but it didn't love him back because it's loaded with mercury. And when we did a Facebook Live, I'm like, you are the software of success. But if the hardware's not working, it's going to be really hard to implement the wonderful strategies that you teach. And I always think of people in four big circles.
10:39 Daniel Amen? First week of medical school, Sid Garrett, our dean, he said, never think of patients as by their diagnosis. Always think of them in these four big circles. He went to the board and he drew the first circle, which was biology. And for me, it's like the physical functioning of your brain and body. And that's why the scans are so important. But then the second circle he drew was psychology. How's their mind working? How are their thoughts? Are they loaded with a term I later coined called ANS, Automatic Negative Thoughts? The thoughts that come into your mind automatically and ruin you. And also in this circle is development.
11:24 Daniel Amen? That's really the quality of your mind. And then the third circle. So if you think of the brain as the hardware of your soul, the mind is the software that needs to be programmed. So you've got to get your brain healthy, program your mind, and then work on the social circle, which is, so what's going on in your life? Think pandemic. That was a social disruptor. But also, how are your relationships? How's your job? How's your money? And then the last circle that most psychiatrists would never touch is the spiritual circle. It's like, why the heck do you care?
12:05 Daniel Amen? What is your deepest sense of meaning and purpose? And so I think assessing those four circles and working always to optimize them at the same time is critical for you being a whole, healthy person. But if your brain's not healthy because you played soccer and you had four concussions, doing all the therapy is not nearly as effective as getting your brain right and then doing the therapy.
12:50 Daniel Amen? I mean, because I'm like a huge fan of therapy and I have my therapy patients that I love. But it's hardware, software, network connections, always understanding someone's sense of purpose.
13:08 Steven Bartlett? Let's go into those four areas then. Just to pause on that, though, you mentioned Tony Robbins there. When I was reading through your story, it became apparent that you're quite the celebrity psychiatrist. Because a lot of celebrities have come out and said that they work with you.
13:26 Steven Bartlett? Give me a, give me a taste. Do some name dropping. Give me a couple of examples.
13:33 Daniel Amen? It's public knowledge. Bella Hadid came out and said she stopped drinking because of me. And then the newspaper tried to take my head off for that. Controversial psychiatrist gets Bella to stop drinking.
13:48 Daniel Amen? Dealing with haters is something I've become quite skilled at.
13:53 Daniel Amen? Public knowledge. I've been Miley Cyrus's doctor for 11 years. I'm really proud of her. She had the number one song in the world right now, Flowers, and it's about self-love, which makes me so happy. I'm in Justin Bieber's docu-series, Seasons, because I've been his doctor.
14:14 Daniel Amen? I love helping them. You know, I often say four of my patients have a billion followers.
14:22 Daniel Amen? So it's about influence, because if the mission is to end mental illness by creating a revolution in brain health, well, you gotta have an army. And so you might as well have an army with a lot of soldiers. And so it's, it's a very disruptive concept. Because when you really understand it, you realize we're living in a war. And I'm serious about this. Everywhere you go, someone's trying to give you bad food that will kill you early.
15:01 Daniel Amen? Everywhere you go, you hear negative news that's driving depression. It's not the news. It scares you so they can sell you stuff.
15:14 Daniel Amen? Everywhere you go, someone's trying to put a gadget in your hand or your pocket that will steal your dopamine and give them the mind share you should have. And the incidence of diabetes, fifty percent of the population is diabetic or prediabetic. Obesity is seventy-two percent or overweight or obese. I published three studies. It shows your weight goes up, the size and function of your brain goes down. And people go, you can't talk about that. It's like, no, you can't not talk about that. Alzheimer's is expected to triple and depression has gone up four hundred percent
15:58 Daniel Amen? since Prozac came on the market. So obviously that didn't fix it. And so it's what my wife and I often refer to as the brain warrior's way. You want to be armed and prepare to win the fight of your life.
16:18 Steven Bartlett? That's so true. I'm currently doing this glucose test as part of this company called Zoe. I had Tim Spector on the podcast. He's one of the co-founders. They do personalized nutrition. It's this incredible company based out in the UK. And so because I can see my glucose right now on my phone, when I went into a gas station the other day, or a petrol station, as we say in the UK, I looked around at my options and every single thing was bad for me. Every single thing in that gas station was sugar or processed carbohydrates. The only thing I could get in that gas station was water. And I said to my partner at the time, so if you're hungry, and it's also if you're stressed or tired, you are going to eat.
16:58 Steven Bartlett? This junk, but anyway, going back to.
17:00 Daniel Amen? Unless you plan, unless you put stuff in your car or in your computer bag. And when you really love yourself, you take time. And like, you know, for example, the plastic water bottles are toxic. That you just like turn them over and does it say a two or four or five on the recycle? And like, those are pretty good. They don't leach toxins nearly as bad as one, three, six and seven. And just knowing that, see, I always say God gave us a big brain for a reason. It's like when you get motivated, this isn't hard.
17:45 Daniel Amen? Brain health isn't hard. Being sick is hard. Brain health is not expensive. Being sick is expensive.
17:53 Daniel Amen? You just plan a little bit better.
17:55 Steven Bartlett? In terms of the hardware then, which was the first circle of your four circles? What can I do to make sure the hardware of my brain? What are the most important things to be cognizant of? To make sure my hardware is in good shape so that I have a chance of my psychology and my, my connections and my spiritual circle being successful also?
18:16 Daniel Amen? So I like looking.
18:20 Daniel Amen? It's like the brain is one of the only organs that doctors virtually never screen.
18:28 Steven Bartlett? You've looked at a lot of brains, right?
18:29 Daniel Amen? I've looked at 230,000 brains. And I mean, I'm obsessed with if you came to see me and you go, you know, I'm pretty good, but I want to be great. How's my brain? And we would look at it and is it younger than you are? Cause you have good habits? Is it older than you are because your habits aren't so good? Or let's just say it has nothing to do with you. Your mom smoked when she was pregnant with you or she smoked when you were a baby and you're inhaling this secondhand smoke, which is stealing a concept I call brain reserve.
19:13 Daniel Amen? So your brain health may have something to do with your habits or may have to do with the habits of other people. So I think the first thing, it's a concept. Called brain envy. I often say Freud was wrong. Penis envy is not the cause of anybody's problem. I've actually not seen it once in 40 years. He was focused on the wrong organ. It's the brain. And Freud, actually in 1895, said, "The brain science of my time is not up to the task of explaining patient's symptoms." Which was true in 1895.
19:54 Daniel Amen? So he went off and developed psychoanalysis and had a lot of really nutty ideas, but some really great ideas. But the brain science now can explain a lot of your symptoms. So the first thing is to assess it. And it's 1991, I ordered my first scan. I start scanning everybody I know. I scanned my aunt who had a panic disorder. I scanned my mother, had gorgeous brain, which fit her life. And then I scanned myself and it wasn't awesome. And, because I played football in high school. Had meningitis when I was a young soldier. I had bad habits. I wasn't sleeping. I ate a lot of bad food.
20:39 Daniel Amen? And I was the top neuroscience student in medical school. But I didn't care about my own brain. And when I saw it, that's when I fell in love with it. Wanted my mother's brain, the idea of brain envy. And I've been in love with it ever since. And one of my patients said when he saw his scan for the first time, "It was like seeing one of his children and he knew he'd never hurt it again." And so that's step number one. You want a healthy brain? You gotta care about it. Step two, you have to avoid things that hurt it. And you just have to sort of know the list.
21:22 Daniel Amen? And step three, is engage in regular, brain-healthy habits. Again, you just have to know the list.
21:32 Daniel Amen? And the simplest way, and I love this, and I noticed throughout my books, throughout the arc of the evolution of my books, the prescriptions get easier and easier. Because I'm always thinking, how do I plant it? So it takes root and grow. And I work with BJ Fogg. I don't know if you know Dr. Fogg from Stanford. He's in charge of the persuasive tech lab. It's basically, how do people change? And he said, either they have an epiphany. So when I saw my first scan, it was an epiphany. I didn't want an unhealthy brain. Because I understand what that means for my life.
22:16 Daniel Amen? But he said, most people, it's not the epiphany, it's the tiny habits. It's like, what's the smallest thing you can do today? That will make the biggest difference. And it comes down to the mother tiny habit. Whenever you come to a decision point in your day, like you're at the gas station, is this, you ask yourself this question. Takes three seconds. Is this good for my brain or bad for it? And if you can answer that with information and love, and this is very important, love of yourself, love of your mission, love of your work, you just start making better decisions.
23:00 Daniel Amen? And whenever I say, well, you shouldn't do this, and you shouldn't do that, it just never works. You gotta tie into, I want something special for my life, and this is gonna get it for me. And so if I'm at the gas station, I'm looking at the waters, and I'm like, okay, what's got a non-toxic bottle attached to it? And I'm going for the nuts. Because, you know, people who have a fat-based diet, nuts and seeds, green leafy vegetables, healthy fish, healthy oils, have 42% less risk of getting Alzheimer's disease.
23:45 Daniel Amen? People have a simple carbohydrate-based diet. So, most of the stuff in the gas station, bread, pasta, potatoes, rice, fruit juice, and sugar.
24:01 Daniel Amen? The standard American diet have a 400% increased risk of getting Alzheimer's disease. This study from the Mayo Clinic. And I love that you're monitoring your blood sugar. I just love that so much because Alzheimer's disease, people refer to it often as type three diabetes. And one of the best things you can do for your health is make sure your fasting blood sugar is under 90. And if it tends to run high, you can go, I take metformin for that. Or you can get rid of the simple carbohydrates in your diet.
24:46 Steven Bartlett? So there's two things I was really compelled by, as you were speaking in two directions, I wanted to go in. The first is, I want to know the list, when we talk about the things that are good and bad for the brain. But just before we get on to that, you said about how you have to pause during your day when you're making decisions and ask yourself, is this good for my brain? Now, I often wonder why people know information but don't change. You talked about the persuasive tech lab. I've always wondered what the connection between someone's self-worth and their ability to do the right thing when they're in that moment of making a decision for or against them. Because it's been my observation, which is completely unproven, that people who have, and I wondered if you'd seen this in your
25:27 Steven Bartlett? practice, but people that have a maybe a more stressed life, a lower sort of self-worth, a lower sort of self-image of themselves, tend to make short-term decisions that are less constructive or positive for the brain. But just generally in life, anyway. And I wondered if there's a link there. I often, I'm asking this question because I often wonder with some people that are close to me, with some of my friends, why they continue to make Decisions that they objectively know aren't healthy. They're not good for their, you know, their life, their long-term prospects of relationships, their health, whatever it might be. And I just, it's a bit of a left field question, but is there a correlation in your view between one's self-esteem, their self-worth, their self-image, and their ability to sort of
26:12 Steven Bartlett? delay gratification and make the right health decisions?
26:15 Daniel Amen? So it's actually connected that, do you know about the marshmallow test?
26:20 Steven Bartlett? I do, yes. I read about it.
26:21 Daniel Amen? And so Walter Mitchell from Stanford would give children, small children, three, four-year-old children, an opportunity to either have a marshmallow now or two a bit later. And the children who delayed gratification, their self-esteem was better. Their success virtually in every area of their life was better. Now, he later discovered you can actually train the ability to delay gratification. There's another study at Stanford. I love this study so much.
27:05 Daniel Amen? They looked at 1,541 10-year-old children in 1921. It's the longest longevity study ever done. And Lewis Terman, psychologist at Stanford, evaluated them and then he and others followed them for 90 years, looking at what goes with health, success, and longevity. And what he found was a bit shocking, that the don't worry, be happy people died the earliest from accidents and preventable illnesses.
27:46 Daniel Amen? And I always wanted to be that because I've never been the don't worry, be happy person. I like show up on time, I'm driven, I'm motivated. Of all my books, they all, they get turned in a week or two early. I'm like, no, conscientious.
28:06 Daniel Amen? And what they found was people who are conscientious live the longest.
28:11 Steven Bartlett? What's a don't worry, be happy person? How do you define?
28:13 Daniel Amen? Well, it's my brother and I love my brother, but he's 150 pounds overweight. And he leaves work at three o'clock, plays golf. He just like doesn't care. And for years I tried to help him get healthy. And I even set him up with the cutest nutritionist who I trusted. And he didn't show up. And then I realized I was caring more about this than he was. And it sort of broke my heart, but it's that nonchalant attitude. That's not taking things seriously and it'll kill him early. And that breaks my heart.
28:56 Steven Bartlett? Can you tell me about the journey of trying to help your brother? Because I think a lot of people listening to this have their own experience with trying to help someone that they love. And it's a often resentful, bitter, failing battle. I've been there myself.
29:08 Daniel Amen? So let me switch it to my dad.
29:10 Steven Bartlett? Okay.
29:11 Daniel Amen? Because that has a bitter ending, at least now. I did not have a good relationship with my father. When I told my dad I wanted to be a psychiatrist. He asked me why I didn't want to be a real doctor. Why I wanted to be a nut doctor and hang out with nuts all day long. And that's just hurtful. But I'd already not cared what he thought. 1972, I turned 18, I get to vote. George McGovern is who's very liberal is running against Richard Nixon. And I'm like, maybe I'll go for McGovern. And my dad said, if I did, the country would go to hell.
29:55 Daniel Amen? Well, I did, and the country went to hell, but it had nothing to do with McGovern. It had to do with Nixon and Watergate and all that craziness. So we were like butting heads.
30:08 Daniel Amen? When I started looking at the brain, I'm like, come on dad, I want, let me scan your brain. And he said no, until years later. And I'm like, dad, what I'm learning is the brain is an organ like your heart is an organ. We gotta get you healthy. And he's like, oh, great. My nut doctor's son is now a health nut. He's like, what's with you and the nuts?
30:35 Daniel Amen? And so for 25 years, I nudged him to get healthy. And he belittled me, he made fun of me, he would do it publicly, and it was hurtful.
30:52 Daniel Amen? But his opinion of me, even though it hurt, it didn't matter. I kept doing what I do.
30:59 Daniel Amen? And when he was 85, they had mold in their house, and he developed a chronic cough.
31:08 Daniel Amen? And then a heart arrhythmia.
31:11 Daniel Amen? And then heart failure.
31:15 Daniel Amen? And I went over his house, and I saw he was depressed. And my dad didn't get depressed. My dad gave depression, but he didn't get depression. And he looked at me, and he said, Danny, I'm sick of being sick. What do you want me to do?
31:37 Daniel Amen? And he's so stubborn, he did everything I asked him to do. He texts me a picture of the food. He's like, can I eat this? And I'm like, send me the ingredient list. And then I would circle it. And I'm like, in what universe is this good for you? And I'm one of seven children. Now he starts talking about me, to all of them. And they would text me and like, tell him to like, not be so enthusiastic. And we started working out together. He's a beast. He could do a six minute plank, because he's so stubborn. And
32:16 Daniel Amen? over six months, he lost 40 pounds, his energy came back, his heart was better, he starts driving again, and lived the next five years in love with his brain, in love with his body. And if he...
32:36 Daniel Amen? Would have died before those five years. I think I would have always been left with a hole in my soul. That helped repair it. And the only reason he did it is because I did it. The only reason he got healthy is because I modeled the message. And ultimately, that's what I tell my patients. You never know when they're going to turn. Like, I still never know if my brother will turn. I love him. I model. I'm always there with a suggestion, right?
33:20 Daniel Amen? But I'm not caring more than he cares.
33:23 Steven Bartlett? What would that hole have been?
33:25 Daniel Amen? I think it's one of the big gifts that I was given, that he looked at me and said, "What do you want me to do?"
33:37 Steven Bartlett? Is that, I'm assuming from hearing that, it's because that was the moment where he kind of accepted you and your worth and your job and your...
33:45 Daniel Amen? Yes. And he told everybody besides me how proud he was of me. Yeah. And the first time he told me he loved me was when I was 50. Which is just nuts when you think about it. I mean, he's from a different generation and, um, but I just can't even imagine it.
34:15 Steven Bartlett? When we have someone in our lives that, um, maybe wasn't fair to us in some way, whether it's a parent or an ex-partner or whatever, how do we, how do we not let the resentment or the negative emotions or the negative experiences or that feeling of injusticeness that like we, like this situation wasn't fair? How do we get to a place of empathy with those people so that we can live, you know, without the burden of that like resentment or, you know, regret or whatever it might be?
34:48 Daniel Amen? Well, I have a perfect example. So I started imaging in 1991. I am...
34:55 Daniel Amen? A distinguished fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. I won a research award. I am respected by my colleagues. But I start imaging. And initially, there was acceptance. And then because the imaging doesn't really go with the diagnostic orthodoxy, they're like, "You shouldn't do that." And now I'm caught in a bind. I love being connected to my colleagues, but there's no way I'm not looking at your brain if I can. And so, there's this tension.
35:33 Daniel Amen? And for three or four years, I feel challenged, I feel belittled, I feel anxious. And I'm starting to become ostracized from my group. So, I'm anxious and I'm furious. And then in 1995, my nine-year-old nephew Andrew attacks a little girl on the baseball field for no reason. So, my brother's youngest son. And my sister-in-law calls me up and she's crying. And she said she went into his room that day and found two pictures he'd drawn. One of them, he's hanging from a tree in a suicide attempt. Nine years old.
36:15 Daniel Amen? The other one, he's shooting other children. So, he's like Columbine, or Perklin, Florida, or Sandy Hook. I mean, we're into that kind of darkness. And 999 child psychiatrists out of 1,000 would have put him on medicine and put him in therapy. But because now, four years, I've been looking at the brain, we'd already correlated violence to the left temporal lobe. Left temporal lobe dysfunction often went with violence. I'm like, "I want to see him." And so, they drove eight hours. And I'm sitting with my nephew, who I'm also his godfather. And I'm like, "Buddy, what's going on?" He said, "Uncle Danny, I don't know.
37:00 Daniel Amen? I'm mad all the time." I said, "Is anybody hurting you?" He said, "No." I said, "Is anybody teasing you?" He said, "No." I said, "Is anybody touching you in places they shouldn't be touching you?" He said, "No." And when I held his hand while we scanned him...
37:19 Daniel Amen? When the scan came up on the computer screen, he had a cyst the size of a golf ball occupying the space of his left temporal lobe. It's the first time I've seen it. I've seen it a hundred times since. And when the neurosurgeon drained it, his behavior completely went back to normal. It was that moment the war began for me. It's like, if you don't look, you don't know. Stop lying about it. And I became a warrior to change psychiatry. But there's a lot of negativity with being a warrior. I was also in the Army. I was an Army psychiatrist.
38:01 Daniel Amen? And what I came to realize is a wonderful psychologist at Virginia Commonwealth University, Worthington, who came up with a method for forgiveness. Because when you're holding on to that toxicity, it's sort of like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. And he did this method, and someone murdered his mother. And he said it even worked for him when he was dealing with the grief of losing his mother to a horrible crime. And so I can recall the hate that I've experienced.
38:45 Daniel Amen? So that's the R. So recall it in detail. The E is empathize. It's like, so what are the haters feeling? You're doing something they don't know. You're doing something that's different than them. You're doing something that threatens them. See, if I'm right, and I'm right. Everything in my body knows I'm right. 230,000 scans later, this isn't fake, this is real. And if you don't look, you miss all sorts of important things. But they don't know that. And...
39:26 Daniel Amen? If they don't know it and they're threatened, well, of course, they're angry. I mean, I still hold on to, they should at least come visit, right? I mean, my work is so public. The A is altruistically give them the gift of forgiveness. Because, and I actually don't really pay attention to them. Because, you know, I do what I can, we publish studies, but I don't need the negativity. So you altruistically give them the gift of forgiveness, commit to it, and hold on to it.
40:08 Daniel Amen? And if you can do that for that relationship, you have more control over your happiness. Plus, if you're me, you're like, I wonder what their brain is like. And so, one of the first things the scans did for me is they increased forgiveness. So, I asked my dad to get scanned, 1991. My mom came, because she's like, what can I do to support you? "Oh, I don't want to do that." My dad, 12 years in a row, "No, I don't want to do that." "Why do you want me to do that?" "No, I don't want to do that." And then he came. And I'd never seen this in a 72-year-old person.
40:53 Daniel Amen? His anterior cingulate, so, we should talk a little bit about different parts of the brain and how they influence work. His anterior cingulate, it's the brain's gear shifter. It allows you to go from thought to thought, move from idea to idea, be flexible, go with the flow. And when it's busy, and he had the busiest anterior cingulate of any older person I'd ever seen, worry, hold grudges, my dad was masterful at holding grudges. Argumentative, oppositional. I used to joke that, I'm like, Dad, why is it every time I ask you for something, you say no?
41:37 Daniel Amen? He goes, I don't do that. I'm like, no, you do it. Why? He's like, I don't know. It's just easier. And Tony Blair, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, said the first hallmark of a leader is his ability to say no. Well, my dad was just masterful at it. But I have to tell you, seeing that part of his brain so busy was helpful for me to forgive him, that it was a brain misfire rather than it was a soul misfire.
42:12 Steven Bartlett? You talk a lot in your book about how we can reverse a lot of these things and we can change our brain, which I guess is the, is the hopeful, optimistic side of all of this. So in the case of your father, you see that in his brain. Is there something that can be done to change it?
42:28 Daniel Amen? Absolutely. I mean, that's sort of the big, exciting message of my life is you're not stuck with the brain you have. You can make it better and I can prove it. I did the big NFL study when the NFL was lying that it had a problem about traumatic brain injury in football. I scanned 350 NFL players and high levels of damage, stop lying about it. But 80% of my players get better when we put them on a rehabilitation program. And there's this story in the book about a mixed martial artist who, I was giving a lecture at the clinic and he raised his hand and he said,
43:10 Daniel Amen? "I just really love your work, but you're not going to like what I do." I'm like, what's that? He said, "I'm a mixed martial artist." And I'm like, well, I can like you, but yeah, you're right. I'm not a fan of people bashing your head in. And I said, "Let's look at your scan," and it was troubled.
43:32 Daniel Amen? I said, you know, I know these supplements work because they were my NFL formula, but I don't know how fast they work. Will you come tomorrow at 8 o'clock? I'm gonna give you the supplements I give my NFL players, and then I'm gonna scan you two and a half hours later. His brain was remarkably better two and a half hours later. Now, it didn't mean it would stay that way, right? He had to stay on the program and stop doing the things that hurt his brain. But how exciting is that? To know even a couple of hours from now, if I do the right things, my brain can be better.
44:15 Daniel Amen? And going back to my dad, what we found is low levels of serotonin go with high activity in the anterior cingulate. So if he would have chosen, I could have calmed it down and helped him be more flexible. Now, he chose not to do that. But I just remember my grandmother, my mom's mom, when she was 92, she went in the hospital diverticulitis. And my mom's mom had always been mean. She's not kind. When she met my wife for the first time, she goes, "Oh, you're Danny's next victim."
44:56 Daniel Amen? Grandma, I said, "I'm gonna talk bad about you after you're dead." She had that same brain. And when I put her on medicine to increase serotonin, she became sweet. Which just goes, makes you wonder, how many people end up divorced because of a brain dysfunction that could be fixed? It's just given me great empathy. It's easy, easy, easy to call someone bad.
45:33 Daniel Amen? It's harder to ask why.
45:36 Steven Bartlett? In the case of your father or your grandmother, is their brain and the mood kind of disorder that you've observed in it, is that a consequence of chronic bad habits in terms of brain health? In your view?
45:50 Daniel Amen? It's always both, that whenever you give in to saying no, you make saying no more likely.
45:58 Steven Bartlett? Right.
45:58 Daniel Amen? You develop these ruts in your brain, which is why behavior changes hard, because you have these ruts in your brain where it's after dinner, I smoke, or it's after dinner, I have ice cream, or it's the first thing in the morning, I have sugar cereal.
46:18 Steven Bartlett? And those become like pathways.
46:19 Daniel Amen? They become ruts, like deep pathways in the brain. And I've had them for years. I mean, for a long time before I got healthy, you know, I'd go buy Jack in the Box and get a Diet Coke and get a chicken fajita pita and it was habit. And so sometimes I'll see a Jack in the Box, hey, like, oh, and then of course, my supervisor comes in and like, really? And I think of it.
46:47 Steven Bartlett? Your supervisor is in your, your, your better, better sense.
46:51 Daniel Amen? Well, I think of it like children, that too many people are run by the four year olds in their head. Like I have five grandchildren and Haven is four. And Haven is funny and smart and sweet, but if she doesn't get her way, she totally can have a fit. And the rule in my house is if you have a tantrum to get your way, the answer is no, it's always going to be no, go for it. And so I didn't have tantrums with the kids growing up, but too many people, the four year old in their head is running the show. It's like, no, I go
47:35 Daniel Amen? buy Jack in the Box, I get curly fries and a Coke. I want it, I want it, I want it, I want it. And their parent self.
47:45 Daniel Amen? Doesn't go, doesn't fit your goals. You don't want it, right? You crave it. And there's a difference between craving and wanting. And it's like inhibit behavior. And that's where, we haven't talked about this yet, and I knew, I knew we would on this podcast. The CEO in the brain, right? So the front third of your brain is called the prefrontal cortex. It's called the executive part of the brain. And so you've talked about some of your friends who don't make good decisions, who don't wait or delay their impulses. Their frontal lobes are probably sleepy or smaller.
48:27 Daniel Amen? And that'll give them huge problems in their lives. And my work, I, I've seen tens of thousands of people have ADD of one form or another. And it often goes with decreased activity in their frontal lobes.
48:44 Steven Bartlett? Is that, is that nature or nurture?
48:47 Daniel Amen? Nature with input from nurture. Because they did this great study in Holland where they took 300 ADD kids, put them on an elimination diet. So they basically eliminated all the crap in their diet. And three months later, 72% of the children did not have ADD anymore. So, um, but when I diagnose someone with ADD, I generally see it. You know, coming down their mom's side or their dad's side. It generally doesn't occur in isolation. It is that strongly heritable.
49:29 Daniel Amen? Um, in fact, if I have a kid who's really ADD and I can't find a mom or dad, I look at the kid to see if he looks like his mom or dad, wondering if they got switched at birth. Just my experience.
49:44 Steven Bartlett? Really?
49:45 Daniel Amen? And, really? No, not kidding. And.
49:50 Steven Bartlett? So say that again. So if the child's brain doesn't resemble the mother of the father, you suspect that-
49:54 Daniel Amen? So I wonder-
49:56 Steven Bartlett? If it's-
49:56 Daniel Amen? If the child had been switched.
49:59 Steven Bartlett? Because you're that confident-
50:01 Daniel Amen? Because I'm that confident about the heritability of this. Now, there are other causes of ADD-like behavior, like traumatic brain injury. The child fell down a flight of stairs and was unconscious, even for just like 15 minutes. That can damage their frontal lobes. If the child was a headbanger, that can damage their frontal lobes. And so-
50:25 Steven Bartlett? Psychological trauma? I sat here with Gabor Maté.
50:27 Daniel Amen? Ah, interesting. We're just doing a study on ACE scores. Do you know about the ACE quiz? Stands for Adverse Childhood Experiences. And it was first done in combination with the CDC and Kaiser. They looked at 17,000 people. And they just gave people this simple questionnaire. And it's 10 of the most common childhood traumas. So, physical, emotional, sexual abuse, having a parent with mental illness, with an addiction, incarceration.
51:12 Daniel Amen? And you get scored zero to 10. So I have a one. My dad could really be nasty to me. So, there's some of that sort of psychological abuse. But I didn't get beaten. No one sexually molested me, so on. My wife, and she wrote a book about this called The Relentless Courage of a Scared Child, has eight out of 10. My two nieces, who Tana and I adopted, are both nines. And they found if you have four or more, you have an increased risk of seven
51:53 Daniel Amen? of the top 10 leading causes of death. If you have six or more, you die 20 years earlier. Now, it's not a death sentence. If you know it and you work on it, like Tana has, you know, you have normal lifespan.
52:12 Daniel Amen? But how wild is that? And so when I learned about it, I started giving it to all of our patients. And I now have 10,000 ACE scores on my patients. And we looked at their brains. And what we found is it tends to activate the medial frontal lobe. And they become hyper alert. They begin to watch what bad thing is going to happen. And I love a therapy. Have you ever heard of EMDR?
52:49 Steven Bartlett? Yes, I've heard of it.
52:50 Daniel Amen? It's a psychological treatment for trauma. Stands for eye movement, desensitization and reprocess. My favorite psychotherapy. I love doing it with patients. And when I met my wife, she's beautiful, she's smart. I mean, I like fell for her. And then I'm learning about this. So one of my first gifts to her was 10 sessions of EMDR, which I know is pretty weird. But she went for two years and I think it changed the trajectory of her life because she doesn't live with the past still present.
53:31 Steven Bartlett? How did, how did it help her? And what exactly does the therapy involve?
53:35 Daniel Amen? So trust, a good history. And then, so for example, if you came to see me, I would have you write down, we'd do a timeline of your life. I just want to know for each five year period, what were the great things that happened to you? And what were the horrible things that happened to you? And I do that purposely so you'll have a balanced view. If you just talk about the crap in your life, you feel like crap. And then I'd have you write down the top 10 traumas. And then it's it's a structured process, but I'd have you bring up the worst one. We always go for the worst first. And while you bring it up, I'll get your eyes to go back and forth.
54:18 Daniel Amen? And we'll let your brain direct where you need to go. And so initially, you could feel relive the trauma, but then it tends to dissipate. As opposed to just talking about the trauma, generally you relive it and feel like crap. The bilateral hemisphere stimulation helps it sort of just sucks the life out of it. You still remember it, but it's not haunting you anymore. You can go, yeah, that happened, but you're not sweating or you're not having nightmares.
54:58 Daniel Amen? And it just takes therapy to a whole different level. It's sort of like doing mushrooms without side effects.
55:09 Steven Bartlett? If I wanted to, you know, earlier on, you said, you said, you gave like three points. And the second point, you've just got to know the list. So you said, if you want to damage your brain, if you want to hurt your brain, you've got to know the list. If you want to help your brain and have a healthy brain, you've got to know the list. Going to the damaging my brain part, if I was intent on damaging my own brain, what would you advise me to do?
55:32 Daniel Amen? So in the book, I talk about it in a moniker called Bright Minds. You want to keep your brain healthy or rescue it? You have to prevent or treat the 11 major risk factors that steal your mind. So if you want to damage your brain, bright minds, the B is for blood flow. Low blood flow is the number one brain imaging predictor of Alzheimer's disease. How do you get low blood flow? Caffeine.
56:04 Steven Bartlett? Oh shit.
56:05 Daniel Amen? Nicotine, marijuana, alcohol, having a sedentary lifestyle, being overweight.
56:16 Daniel Amen? The R is retirement and aging.
56:19 Steven Bartlett? Can we pause on this low blood flow? You are the first person I've ever spoken to who has a comprehensive and very believable hypothesis that caffeine has a side effect. I've asked my guests over and over again because I think people refer to caffeine often as like this miracle drug that comes with no cost. But you're the first one through my research that seems to be very clear that caffeine is, does have a significant cost.
56:50 Daniel Amen? It's a drug. It's the most common drug. It's addictive. I mean, a little bit's fine, but more than a little bit is not fine. It increases cortisol. You don't want to increase cortisol. It puts fat around your belly. It shrinks your hippocampus. But you know, the reason I started really paying attention to it is on SPACT, the study I do, which is a blood flow study, it constricts blood flow 30%. I have all my patients hold caffeine the morning of their scans because I don't want it to artificially show me they have less blood flow than they really do.
57:34 Daniel Amen? It fakes you out to think you have energy. What it does is it blocks adenosine, the chemical that tells you to go to sleep. And so often people rely on caffeine because they're sleep deprived, but it's just this bad cycle. And so many of my patients stop and uniformly they tell me they feel better. They said their energy's better.
58:00 Steven Bartlett? You talk about one particular patient in the book who was struggling with a variety of difficulties. I think it was like brain fog and memory issues and so on. And one of the things you advised him to do was to cut coffee.
58:16 Daniel Amen? Jeff, yeah.
58:17 Steven Bartlett? Jeff.
58:17 Daniel Amen? I remember Jeff. He was a pilot and I live on caffeine. I'm like, you gotta get rid of it because his brain looked terrible.
58:25 Steven Bartlett? His brain looked terrible?
58:26 Daniel Amen? His brain looked terrible. And he's like, no, no, no. And he's like, alright, I'm gonna do it. And so he didn't get headaches. We cut it down by five percent a day. So three weeks it was gone. He didn't have any withdrawal, didn't have any headaches. And he's like texting me. Unbelievable energy, unbelievable clarity. And it's a drug. And why, you know, I want to teach my pill, my patients' skills. I don't want them to just take pills. And caffeine's a drug.
59:07 Steven Bartlett? Do you drink caffeine?
59:08 Daniel Amen? Little bit, not much.
59:10 Steven Bartlett? How much was Jeff having?
59:12 Daniel Amen? Um, Jeff was having about 600 milligrams a day.
59:15 Steven Bartlett? Jesus.
59:16 Daniel Amen? Which is two venti Starbucks. One venti Starbucks is 330 milligrams of caffeine.
59:29 Daniel Amen? And, you know, we've supersized everything in this country. I don't know if they do that in the UK, but we certainly do it here. And it's, it's not a, a good strategy.
59:39 Steven Bartlett? And so long-term restriction of blood flow to the brain through these things you've described, caffeine, marijuana, um, all of these things has a detrimental impact on the development of the brain. Pretty straightforward. I, I get that. So that's the B.
59:53 Daniel Amen? R is retirement and aging. You want to prematurely age your brain? Drop out of school. Do not engage in new learning. I mean, you doing this podcast, you're always learning new things, which is great for you. But the lack of, when you learn something new, your brain makes a new connection. When you stop learning, or you start doing the same thing over and over again, your brain starts to disconnect itself. Being in a job that does not require new learning is a risk factor for dementia.
1:00:35 Daniel Amen? Being lonely is a risk factor for dementia. So be an ass and it's more likely to hurt your brain. At my workplace, we have the no asshole rule. So there's a book by a Stanford professor called The No Asshole Rule. Love that book. And the no asshole rule as a CEO starts with me. So I don't get to be one, but I'm not tolerating anybody who has asshole behavior at work. And if you're not an asshole, you're less likely to be lonely.
1:01:16 Daniel Amen? And loneliness is terrible for brain function. If you want to prematurely age your brain, eat a lot of red meat as if your iron and ferritin levels are high because ferritin, it's just stored iron, tends to age the brain. The I is inflammation. If you want to increase inflammation, which is a root cause of so many medical and mental health issues, never floss, don't really care about your teeth. So you want to love your brain, you have to love your mouth.
1:01:57 Daniel Amen? It's absolutely critical for you not to have gum disease because if you have gingivitis, off odds are you're at increased risk for heart disease and depression and dementia. It's fascinating. Like I didn't learn about this and I didn't really care about my teeth. And so I started seeing the links between gum disease and heart disease, gum disease and brain disease. And now I'm a flossing fool. But if you want to damage your brain, don't care about your mouth, about your teeth. Don't ever eat fish. People who have grilled or baked fish once a week have more gray matter in their brain.
1:02:41 Daniel Amen? People have low levels of omega-3 fatty acids have smaller brains. And if you want to damage your brain, eat the standard American diet. So processed food, like eat most of your calories from the gas station. And from the fast food restaurants nearby. And they spend billions on getting those foods to the perfect crunchiness, the perfect meltiness, the perfect aroma, because they hire neuroscientists to addict your brain. Be suspicious. Um, the G is genetics.
1:03:26 Daniel Amen? You want to damage your brain? Blame everything on your genes. Like I have obesity and heart disease. My family, but I'm not overweight and I don't have heart disease. Why? I'm on an obesity, heart disease prevention program every day of my life. Because genes load the gun. It's what happens to us and what we choose to do that pulls the trigger. So I adopted my nieces because their parents couldn't stop using drugs. And I'm like adamant. If you want my help, you have to cooperate. There's no vaping, there's no drug use, there's no alcohol.
1:04:08 Daniel Amen? And it's working. I taught them a new word last week, squamiding. Have you heard of squamiding? I haven't. It's a combination of screaming and vomiting. And because of the legalization of marijuana and the increased use, teenagers are getting this, and in record numbers, they're in emergency rooms screaming and vomiting. It's called squamiding. So genes load the gun, but know your risk and be on that prevention program. I mean, that's just a sign of intelligent life. The H is head trauma. You want to damage your brain?
1:04:51 Daniel Amen? Play football, play soccer, play rugby and box. It's and and text while you're walking in LA. I mean, you're just more likely to have a brain injury. Um.
1:05:06 Steven Bartlett? Because you fall over, just because, in case that wasn't clear, people are gonna think texting is bad for their brain.
1:05:13 Daniel Amen? The tea is toxins. So, see alcohol as a health food, it's total crap. See marijuana is innocuous, it's total crap. I mean, I'm happy they legalized it, please don't put people who use marijuana in jail. It's a really bad use of resources, really stupid. But let's not say it's good for us, because teenagers who use have an increased risk of anxiety, depression, suicide, and psychosis. That's not okay. The brain undergoes wild development, and people sort of don't get this. They think little kids, their brain is undergoing wild development.
1:05:53 Daniel Amen? But from the time you're 15 to 25, it's gone through wild construction. In fact, that's when the highways are being myelinated. Have you ever heard of myelin? Myelin is a white fatty substance that gets wrapped on your neurons. And when a neuron or a brain cell becomes myelated, it becomes 10 to 100 times faster, it's more efficient. And when a baby's born, there's very little myelin in the cortex laid down. When they're about two months old, their occipital lobe, their visual cortex, becomes myelinated. And when you smile at them, they smile back because they can really see you.
1:06:36 Daniel Amen? Well, slowly, myelination goes from the back all the way to the front, but it doesn't get to the front until you're about 25. So, this masterpiece building, if you will, is under construction until you're 25. So many teenagers, it's the crappy food. It's just like throwing poison into the construction zone. Marijuana is innocuous, we're going to the parties and getting drunk. And they're damaging the building. And yes, there are ways to repair it.
1:07:17 Daniel Amen? But what idiot would damage the most beautiful building in the neighborhood? And I often say to my teenage patients, I say, hey, if you had a million dollar racehorse. Would you ever feed it junk food? Would you ever get it stoned? Would you ever get it drunk? And the smart ones would go, only if you were an idiot. But aren't you worth so much more? And we have a high school course called Brain Thrive by 25. We studied it in 16 schools. Decreases drug, alcohol and tobacco use. Decreases depression and improves self-esteem. And one of the weeks is things to avoid to have a healthy brain. And at the end of the lecture, it's a boy, never a girl.
1:08:01 Daniel Amen? That's really irritating. Raises his hand and goes, how can you have any fun? And we play a game with him called who has more fun? The person with the good brain or the person with the bad brain? Who gets the girl and gets to keep her because he's not an ass? The person with the good brain or the person with the bad brain? Who gets into the college they want to get into? Who has the best life? And ultimately, it's the person with the good brain. So we're at tea and you want to damage your brain. Undergo general anesthesia for plastic surgery over and over again.
1:08:43 Daniel Amen? General anesthesia is bad for the brain. Never read the ingredients on your personal product labels. Because you know, there's an epidemic of low testosterone in young males.
1:09:00 Steven Bartlett? Crazy, I was reading the stats the other day. What is it like?
1:09:03 Daniel Amen? It's because we're poisoning them.
1:09:04 Steven Bartlett? Is that why?
1:09:05 Daniel Amen? That's why.
1:09:06 Steven Bartlett? What is the, what is the headline stat there regarding testosterone in men? It's decreasing, isn't it? Year over year.
1:09:11 Daniel Amen? Year over year and more than half have either low normal or low levels. I've never seen anything like it. I've been measuring testosterone levels in my patients forever. And we're poisoning them. There's an app I like called Think Dirty. It's not what you think it is. It allows you to scan your personal products and it tells you on a scale of one to 10, how quickly they're killing you. So for example, I've shaved with Barbasol for 50 years. And when I learned this, a decade ago, I like scanned it.
1:09:51 Daniel Amen? One is good, tennis kill you early. It was a nine. And I was horrified. Because the parabens and phthalates are known hormone disruptors. So now I shave with something called Kiss My Face. It's a two. Lasts longer than Barbasol. And I do that because I love myself. I mean, why would I poison myself unless I was not that smart? And so just start reading the labels of your toothpaste, of your deodorant, of your shampoo, of your body wash, of your makeup.
1:10:28 Steven Bartlett? And what am I looking for? Because if I read the labels of my toothpaste, I mean, I wouldn't know if it was good or bad.
1:10:36 Daniel Amen? So you can scan.
1:10:37 Steven Bartlett? Scan it with the app.
1:10:38 Daniel Amen? Or EWG, the Environmental Working Group, has an app similar to that. You just educate yourself. Because it's not just about you. It's about generations of you. Because the health of your body matters when it comes to what babies you may make.
1:11:02 Steven Bartlett? Okay.
1:11:05 Daniel Amen? M is mental health. Believe every stupid thing you think. Be masterful. You want to damage your brain? Be masterful at predicting the worst and then making it worse.
1:11:18 Steven Bartlett? How does that have a bad impact on the brain?
1:11:20 Daniel Amen? Negativity increases stress. Plus negativity drops activity in your cerebellum. So we talked a little bit about the CEO, the prefrontal cortex. Well, it's intimately connected to the processing part of your brain, your cerebellum. It's about 10% of the brain's volume, but has half the brain's neurons. And negativity tends to deactivate it. So it actually makes you more confused. So if you think of an athletic slump, they're focused on, I'm gonna miss, I'm gonna miss. And of course, they miss. The second eye is immunity and infections.
1:12:01 Daniel Amen? So much to talk about with a pandemic, but people who have low vitamin D levels are much more likely to die from COVID. They're actually much more likely to die from virtually anything. Low vitamin D, which occurs in about 60% of the population, is associated virtually with every bad thing, including a smaller brain. So if you want to have a smaller brain, never go in the sun, never test your vitamin D level, and never take a supplement. Brand new study out just last week. People who take a vitamin D supplement have 40% decrease risk of getting Alzheimer's disease.
1:12:45 Steven Bartlett? How do they
1:12:46 Daniel Amen? How simple is that?
1:12:47 Steven Bartlett? How do they establish like causation in these studies where one would also assume that people that take vitamin D supplements have like, you know,
1:12:54 Daniel Amen? So this was a prospective study where they gave half the group vitamin D and then they followed them. It's a fascinating study. But there are tens of thousands of study on vitamin D and its impact. And the darker your skin, the more sun you need. So an interesting study from the Bahamas, they looked at people who were raised in the Bahamas, who then migrated to the United Kingdom. So healthy vitamin D to no vitamin D because of the weather.
1:13:35 Steven Bartlett? Botswana.
1:13:36 Daniel Amen? So from Botswana, and the incidence of psychosis went up.
1:13:41 Steven Bartlett? Interesting.
1:13:42 Daniel Amen? So and how simple is it? It's a blood test. Get your vitamin D measured. Everybody listening to this, you should know it like you know your BMI, like you know your blood pressure, and optimize it. Either get in the sun more if you can, or take vitamin D3 with vitamin K2. I mean, it's super simple. And I mean, it's like, that's easy. That's something you can do right away.
1:14:16 Daniel Amen? If I wanted to mess up my immunity, I would encourage myself to have leaky gut. So I'd encourage myself to damage the lining of my gut with antibiotics and alcohol and pesticide laden foods, and I wouldn't eat any fiber. So I would really lean into the standard American diet.
1:14:45 Steven Bartlett? Going back to your point about environmental toxins, I've always wondered if it was like pseudoscience that cosmetic products we have in our house are having an impact on our hormone levels. You were talking about hormone levels there. My partner has always said to me things like, be careful with what's in that toothpaste, Steve, or she'll look at products that I have and go, nope, or yes. I'm like, where's the science? We talked about testosterone and hormone.
1:15:10 Daniel Amen? The science is huge. There's a wonderful book. So if you ever, if you want to get rid of the doubt, it's called The Toxin Solution by Joe Pizorno, who started Bastille University, one of the most well-respected naturopaths in the world. Now, if you want a shortened version, read my book, The End of Mental Illness, because there's a whole section on toxins with about a hundred scientific references. So you don't want toxins and you don't want to think it's pseudoscience unless you've actually gone to PubMed.gov and studied it.
1:15:53 Daniel Amen? So many people called my work pseudoscience and I'm like, go to PubMed.gov today, you'll see I've published 80 studies and oh, by the way, there are 15,000 studies on spec. So I'm a fan of your sweetheart.
1:16:10 Steven Bartlett? Yeah. She always seems to be right about everything. I seem to. I'm pessimistic on my way in. And then, God, this doesn't sound so great, but what she says registers. And then I speak to an expert and they go, your girlfriend is right. That is the story of my life. So she's just a little bit. And I'll say to her, I'll leave this podcast now and I'll go, she's actually sat over there. I'll go and say, oh, by the way, he, I spoke to him and he said the stuff you said about all the cosmetic products I use is right. And she'll, she'll, you won't catch, you go, yeah, no. That happens literally every week, like three or four times a week. One of the things I read in terms of, because the impact of cosmetics on our hormone levels was that over the last 20 years, our testosterone levels have declined by about 50% on average, which is absolutely terrifying.
1:16:54 Daniel Amen? Terrifying.
1:16:55 Steven Bartlett? I have a lot of friends who are in, I have a staggering amount of friends and people that I know that are in sexless relationships and are struggling with sex and other hormone related issues. I've got a friend that is, had a challenge with, it's a POS?
1:17:14 Daniel Amen? PCOS.
1:17:14 Steven Bartlett? PCOS.
1:17:15 Daniel Amen? Polycystic ovarian syndrome.
1:17:18 Steven Bartlett? And I just have a suspicion that it's not nature that's causing some of these issues. So when I hear about how the cosmetic products we have in our life are influencing our hormone levels, I go, maybe this is the, maybe this is the guy that's stitching us.
1:17:37 Daniel Amen? It's worth making sure someone does an ultrasound on our ovaries to see if that's in fact the case. But I have a funny story on PCOS. When I first met my wife, she wouldn't attach. It was more like she was the guy and we'd make love and I want to cuddle and she's like, okay, done.
1:18:02 Daniel Amen? I couldn't, like, I loved her and she'd come and she'd go and she's like, just make me crazy. And then I took her to, our, our first fight was on the dog we were gonna get.
1:18:19 Daniel Amen? So I wanted like a King Charles Cavalier. I wanted like a lapdog, something cute, something I could just have fun with. And she wanted a Mastiff, or she wanted some Killer Dog. And I'm, no, it's just not me. And so we got into a fight about that. Anyways, I get her to see a hormone specialist, and she diagnoses her with PCOS. And it just made such sense. And what she did is an ultrasound of our ovaries. They were like loaded with these little cysts.
1:18:57 Daniel Amen? And she treated the PCOS. And so PCOS, women's testosterone levels tend to be higher. And their blood sugar tends to be higher, and they have more problems committing. So she fixes it. And then Tana becomes like committed. I love this. But then she calls me at work one day, and she said, I found this pocket poodle in Northern California that's like two pounds. And I'm like, who are you? It's like, change your hormones, change your dog.
1:19:38 Steven Bartlett? Do you recommend that we check our hormone levels frequently?
1:19:41 Daniel Amen? Every year.
1:19:42 Steven Bartlett? Every year?
1:19:43 Daniel Amen? Every year. DHEA, testosterone, thyroid, estrogen and progesterone for women every year. Because for women, their progesterone drops about 10 years before they go into menopause. Progesterone's the natural anti-anxiety hormone. And when it drops, all of a sudden, a woman's 40, and she can't sleep. And she's more anxious, and she's more irritable, and it's causing relationship problems. And she goes to the doctor and gets a prescription for Ambien, for Xanax, and for Lexapro. And oh, by the way, she's drinking more, or using more marijuana.
1:20:26 Daniel Amen? And she doesn't know why. And you just, it's easier to replace the progesterone than to deal with all those other strategies that help you feel better now, but not later.
1:20:39 Steven Bartlett? Is that what they call perimenopause?
1:20:41 Daniel Amen? Peri, it's earlier than that.
1:20:43 Steven Bartlett? Oh, really?
1:20:43 Daniel Amen? Yeah, perimenopause is sort of for most women in like late 40s.
1:20:50 Daniel Amen? Hormones are so important. And if your hormones aren't right, your brain isn't right. One of the things I talk about in the book is that women have a higher incidence of Alzheimer's disease. Now, part because they live longer than men, because they make better decisions. But a man's brain is used to not having estrogen, right? It's been raised primarily on testosterone. A woman's brain is used to having estrogen. So when she goes through menopause and doesn't have estrogen, blood flow in her brain drops, and it puts her at greater risk for things like dementia.
1:21:34 Daniel Amen? And so I'm a big believer in, you know, the reason your hormones drop with age. It's the planet's way of eliminating you. And I'm not okay with that. I want to stick around as long as I can. And so hormone replacement can be super helpful for people who need it.
1:21:55 Steven Bartlett? When I was researching you, I, I read that you've dealt with patients who have chronic difficulty with sleep several times in your career. I've got a lot of friends that, I always talk about, I've got a lot of friends, got a lot of friends that have struggled with sleep, often difficult to know what to say to them to give them advice. What would you recommend in terms of improving sleep? And I was quite curious because I read about your hypnosis and hypnotherapy treatment, which seemed to be quite effective in helping people that were struggling with sleep. But what would you say to someone that struggled with sleep?
1:22:29 Daniel Amen? It's three things. Sleep envy, gotta care about it. Avoid things that hurt your sleep and do things that promote it. So what hurts sleep? And most people know caffeine can, you know, if you have it in the morning, it's still in your body at night. And so know how you metabolize it. If you're having trouble sleeping, I'd kill it and just see if it has a positive impact. A warm room impairs sleep. A noisy room, a room with light, they all impair sleep. Blue light. So having blue light in your eyes.
1:23:15 Daniel Amen? After dark impairs melatonin production.
1:23:20 Steven Bartlett? What about glucose increases in food?
1:23:22 Daniel Amen? I'm sorry?
1:23:22 Steven Bartlett? If I eat before bed?
1:23:25 Daniel Amen? You become a non-dipper, which is so interesting. That if you don't eat three hours before you go to sleep,
1:23:36 Daniel Amen? right at sleep, your blood pressure will drop as you go to sleep. If you eat right before bed, your blood pressure won't dip, won't drop, which puts you at a higher risk for heart attack and stroke, because it's putting more pressure on your blood vessels. And trust me, you don't want a heart attack and you don't want a stroke. So whatever you can do to keep your blood pressure healthy, and that's sort of a simple thing. People who eat before bed generally have the habit of doing it, which is why I'm a huge fan of intermittent fasting. Because, you know, if you have dinner at six, you won't eat again until 10:00 in the next morning. But what that really means is you won't be eating right before bed.
1:24:23 Daniel Amen? So, and then things to help sleep. We talked about what not to do, what to do. Every night when I go to bed, I think rituals are wonderful. So I say a prayer and then I go, what went well today? And I've been doing this for a decade. And it's a treasure hunt now. I'm like on a mission to find what I liked about my day. And so I start in the morning when I woke up and I just go hour by hour looking for what I liked about the day.
1:25:05 Daniel Amen? And usually by early afternoon, I'm asleep, you know, as I'm going through my timeline. But I'm busy and so often awesome things will happen and I just sort of gloss over them. So it's a time to consolidate, that's what sleep does, consolidates memories. But now I'm focused on positive things which set my dreams up to be more positive. And people who do that for just three weeks increase their level of happiness. How simple is that?
1:25:42 Steven Bartlett? It's amazing. You wrote a book about the subject of happiness in 2020. It's called You Happier: The Seven Neuroscience Secrets of Feeling Good Based on Your Brain Type. Now, the concept of having a brain type, I find really compelling. You talk about it in this book as well, the idea that we have different brain types. Why does it matter to know what brain type I have? And what are the brain types?
1:26:05 Daniel Amen? There's sixteen, there's five primary types.
1:26:08 Steven Bartlett? Right.
1:26:09 Daniel Amen? Balanced, spontaneous.
1:26:11 Steven Bartlett? Yep.
1:26:13 Daniel Amen? Persistent, sensitive, and cautious. Why do you want to know? Because they're going to tell you where you're going to suffer. And if you know your type and the type of your parent, of your partner, or the type of your children, you'll actually be able to work on happiness in the relationship better. And so, for example, the balanced person really has a pretty healthy brain and they tend to be pretty even. And they just basically need, they need basic foundational support.
1:26:47 Steven Bartlett? We all know that person. I know, I know a lot of those people that have a seemingly balanced brain.
1:26:52 Daniel Amen? Yeah, and then there's the spontaneous people. You probably know a lot of them as well. They are spontaneous, they're creative, they're out of the box thinkers. They also tend to be impulsive, easily distracted, disorganized, they tend to be late. And they love novelty and they love surprises.
1:27:16 Steven Bartlett? Entrepreneurs?
1:27:18 Daniel Amen? They're often entrepreneurs. And they often marry the persistent type.
1:27:25 Steven Bartlett? Which is type three.
1:27:26 Daniel Amen? Which is type three. Which they're like a dog with a bone. They stay with stuff. They're on time. They hate surprises. They like ritual. They like routine. It's safe for them. And so throw them a surprise party and they'll be unhappy. They it won't be joyful for them. It will be stressful for them. The pandemic was really hard on the spontaneous people because they're often extroverts. Where the persistent people tend more to be introverts and they sort of liked not having to deal with a lot of other unpredictable people.
1:28:11 Steven Bartlett? In that way, is the phrase that opposites attract quite true? Because someone that's a bit spontaneous and maybe an entertainer and entrepreneur goes for someone who's a bit more controlled and rigid and likes a schedule. You see it in relationships. You see one partner that's typically doesn't care about planning the holiday. And the other person who's done the itinerary perfectly and they make for a good team.
1:28:33 Daniel Amen? They they do initially.
1:28:34 Steven Bartlett? Initially.
1:28:34 Daniel Amen? Then they fight. Because the persistent person can hold grudges. The spontaneous person can say things that hurt their feelings and they end up seeing me. In fact, I did a study called the Couples from Hell Study. Where I scanned 500 couples who failed marital therapy but still wanted to be together. And 80% of them, the scan showed one or both of them needed a tune up in their brain. And my first case, which I still remember, Gary and Judy.
1:29:13 Daniel Amen? I initially hated them because I knew I wasn't going to help them. They brought their kids to me. One kid got better, the other one didn't. I saw the other kid and I realized he's not getting better because mom and dad hate each other. So I'm like, I want to see you guys in marital therapy. And they said, Dr. Raymond, we really like you. We don't do well in marital therapy. We tried four times and it always makes us worse. And in my head, this was my own grandiose thinking. I'm like, well, maybe they just hadn't seen anybody really good. So I saw them and in their first visit, they sat on the opposite end of each couch. It's a bad sign in marital therapy. And after about three months, I know I'm not gonna help them.
1:29:58 Daniel Amen? She has a PhD in grudge holding. And he's always late, says awful, impulsive, stupid things. And I'm like, at the end of six months, I start getting physical stress symptoms because I hate being ineffective. I hate that. And nine months, I'm in my shower, getting ready to come to work and I realize they're on my schedule and my stomach starts to hurt. I'm like, today I'm gonna tell them to get divorced. Because it's not good for children to be in a home of chronic conflict. But I grew up Roman Catholic and the idea of divorce, especially 30 years ago, was awful. And the voice, the Catholic voice, visited me and said, oh, great, because you're not
1:30:41 Daniel Amen? a good enough therapist, they're gonna get divorced and go to hell. I looked at the water faucet and went, how much therapy does this take to get over? And I got out of the shower, called my friend who on the imaging center. I said, hey, Jack, will you give me two scans for the price of one? And he's like, why? I said, Jack, I have this couple and they're not getting better and it's making me crazy. I wanna see their brain. And he's like, we could start a business and call it brainmatch.com. Anyways, they got scanned. Her frontal lobes work way too hard, just like my dad. He had sleepy frontal lobes. And I'm like, how'd you miss this? He has ADD, she has OCD tendencies.
1:31:25 Daniel Amen? I put him on Ritalin, I put her on Prozac. I just read an article, if you believe in random chance, the night before, that Prozac calms down the cingulate gyrus. And they were fascinated and engaged by the brain because they knew it wasn't working. They took the medicine. I told them I didn't wanna see them for a month because I was tired and I wanted them that medicine to work. When they came back, they sat on the same couch. He had his hand on her leg. That's a good sign in marital therapy. And 33 years later, they're still married.
1:32:07 Daniel Amen? And they don't see therapists because they learn what they needed to learn, like responsibility and empathy and listening and assertiveness and noticing what you like more than what you don't like, grace and forgiveness. They learned it and their brains could process it, right? Go back to hardware, fix the hardware, the software is more likely to take it.
1:32:30 Steven Bartlett? I read that you had a divorce at age forty seven and you made a remark that you wouldn't get married again unless you got to scan your partner's brain.
1:32:39 Daniel Amen? It's absolutely true. There's no way I would marry someone unless I saw their brain. It was more important than seeing them naked. And I met Tana January first, two thousand and six, and her first scan was January twenty fourth.
1:33:02 Steven Bartlett? You scanned at the same month?
1:33:04 Daniel Amen? I scanned her. I liked her. I liked her a lot. And she's a neurosurgical ICU nurse. So we sort of bonded over the brain a little bit, but she said it was one of the best lines that I want to see her naked brain. I don't think I actually phrased it like that, but that's the story she tells.
1:33:24 Steven Bartlett? Is there a really clear correlation between when you're thinking, if you were to be a matchmaker professionally, you know, if that was, if you pivoted to the matchmaking industry, what you talked about the five types of brain, what types of brain would you try and pair together? Because if type two, the spontaneous doesn't work with the persistent because they end up arguing, is there a pairing sequence that results in an optimal marriage or relationship retention?
1:33:53 Daniel Amen? So balanced brains tend to do really well.
1:33:56 Steven Bartlett? They do, don't they?
1:33:57 Daniel Amen? With balanced brains.
1:33:58 Steven Bartlett? The guy I was thinking about.
1:33:59 Daniel Amen? Spontaneous brains.
1:34:01 Daniel Amen? They need someone that just keeps their dopamine flowing because they have lower dopamine levels. So often getting their EDD treated, that will help. Get them on a ketogenic diet, which helps steady their dopamine levels. That can be helpful.
1:34:19 Steven Bartlett? I think I'm a spontaneous.
1:34:21 Daniel Amen? I'm sorry?
1:34:21 Steven Bartlett? I think I'm a spontaneous.
1:34:23 Daniel Amen? We'll see. The persistent types tend to struggle because it's the my way or the highway part. The cautious persistent types tend to do really well because they're anxious enough that they're thinking about other people's feelings.
1:34:46 Steven Bartlett? I think we missed. So we got to three, didn't we? We got to number three, which was the persistent.
1:34:52 Daniel Amen? Right.
1:34:53 Steven Bartlett? Number four is sensitive.
1:34:54 Daniel Amen? Sensitive. So they're deeply empathic, often insightful, intuitive, can be empaths, but they tend to be prone to depression. And so they have a lot of ants running around, unless they discipline them. They make great therapists.
1:35:18 Steven Bartlett? Do they have high levels of stress?
1:35:20 Daniel Amen? No, that's the cautious type.
1:35:22 Steven Bartlett? Which is number four, five?
1:35:23 Daniel Amen? Five, yeah. They are loaded with the fortune telling ant. They often will get involved with these conspiracy theories. Unfortunately, some of the conspiracy theories tended to be true. That's really hard. Like, you know, I'm a psychiatrist for 40 years and someone comes in my office and goes, the NSA is listening to my phone. And, you know, I'm thinking schizophrenia, do I need drugs? And it's like, no, the NSA is listening to their phone calls. So it's been an interesting time for a psychiatrist. But it's the predicting the worst. And I tell my patients, the only people who should really predict the worst are contract lawyers. I mean, they should protect you from what bad things are going
1:36:08 Daniel Amen? to happen. Other than that, you want to predict what's going to go right.
1:36:16 Steven Bartlett? So if I am a spontaneous, which of those five brain types, the balanced, the spontaneous, the persistent, the sensitive, the cautious, should I marry?
1:36:26 Daniel Amen? Balanced.
1:36:27 Steven Bartlett? Okay.
1:36:28 Daniel Amen? You want, now, if you're a CEO,
1:36:33 Daniel Amen? you want a persistent, a persistent cautious type, so that's, that's type 11, to manage you. This is a really important point. If you are a business leader and you tend to be spontaneous, do not have a spontaneous assistant, because it'll stress you out and stuff won't get done and the IRS will come knock on your door.
1:37:03 Daniel Amen? Because you're not going to be filling out the paperwork, right? It's really important. You need to know your strengths, know your vulnerabilities, and hire to cover your vulnerabilities. Too many spontaneous people hire people they like that are like them, which leads to stress and chaos.
1:37:30 Steven Bartlett? Hmm, that's very true. In all of my businesses, I've always found managing directors who are calmer, more organized, more risk-aware individuals, and it's always worked really well, because I tend to be very risk, very prone to taking risks. And my default position, which I've had to learn, so I've had to sort of become self-aware and counteract it, is to pursue multiple things at once. So I have to have this ongoing conversation with my brain to say, focus, you, your, your, your better self, your wisdom knows that focus is your biggest pitfall. So, well, a lack of focus is your biggest pitfall. And I guess that kind of brings me to another point, which was this idea
1:38:14 Steven Bartlett? you touched on earlier on about disassociating from your brain, i.e. giving your brain a name, as you call it in your book, so that you can have a conversation with it. That sounds like a funny thing to do. If I call my brain, I'm going to give my brain a name. My brain is now called, I'm going to call it Daniel. So there's Stephen, who is me, and there's Daniel. Who is me? But my, Daniel is my brain and I am Steven. And what is the upside in creating the separation?
1:38:43 Daniel Amen? Psychological distance from the noise in your head. So you don't attach to it. So if it's Daniel, then you can accept what he says, or you can reject it.
1:38:59 Steven Bartlett? Okay.
1:38:59 Daniel Amen? So when I first heard about this from Steven Hayes,
1:39:05 Daniel Amen? I'm like, what would I give name? And I named myself after my pet raccoon when I was 16. And like my mind, Hermy was a shit stir. She TP'd my mother's bathroom. She ate all the fish out of my sister's aquarium. She'd leave raccoon poo in my shoes. She's, I loved her. I love me, but my mind is a troublemaker. It'll like conjure up all sorts of negative scenarios. So if I separate from it, I can put Hermy metaphorically in her cage. And now what I do, because I love her, is I'll put her on her back and I'll tickle her. Or I'll cuddle her.
1:39:50 Daniel Amen? I'm like, it's gonna be all right. You don't have to believe every stupid thing you think. Yes, we are gonna die, but we're not gonna die today.
1:40:01 Daniel Amen? You know, when you can live in the presence by managing your thoughts, by not attaching to them, by separating from them, that's where peace lives. That's where happiness lives. When you can sort of step outside and just go, you know, I'm not my thoughts. My thoughts might come from my dad's generation. May have been some of his trauma. Or it might come from the voice of my mom and dad growing up, or the voice of the priest, or my siblings, or the music I listened to, you know? And just because you have a thought.
1:40:44 Daniel Amen? Has nothing to do with whether or not it's true, or whether or not it's helpful. The brain is a sneaky organ. We all have weird, crazy, stupid, sexual, violent thoughts that nobody should ever hear. I tell my patients this all the time. One of my patients goes, "Oh, I had an indecent thought about my teenage daughter's friend. I'm a pedophile." And I'm like, "That's a big leap. Did you climb in bed with her? Did you make plans to talk?" He's, "No, no, none of that." I'm like, "Dude, you're not a pedophile. It's just your brain playing tricks on you.
1:41:28 Daniel Amen? Just because you have that thought, well, a whole bunch of people have that thought, but they don't do anything about the thought." But people don't understand that thoughts are just creations of neuronal function, and your frontal lobe should evaluate. "This is a helpful thought. I should pursue this thought. Stay away from this thought. This thought doesn't fit my goals."
1:42:01 Steven Bartlett? If I am a spontaneous brain type, then, is there anything I can do without drugs to become a balanced brain type?
1:42:08 Daniel Amen? So, first thing, one-page miracle. Write it out. It's an exercise in the book. What do you want? Just like as a CEO of a company, you have a business plan and you have quarterly goals. Write it out. What do you want in your relationships, in your work, in your money, in your physical, emotional, spiritual health?
1:42:32 Steven Bartlett? Why write it down?
1:42:34 Daniel Amen? Because you're telling your brain what you want. And then every day, you sort of know what it is. I mean, you memorize that thing. And then each decision you make, you ask yourself, "Does it fit? Does my behavior fit the goals I have for my life?" And so what you're doing is you're activating your prefrontal cortex. So the part of your brain that if you really are spontaneous, that's the sleepy part of your brain. So the first thing is intention.
1:43:12 Daniel Amen? Have a business plan, have a plan for your life. The second thing, you have to make sleep a priority because if you tend to be spontaneous, that goes way up when you haven't slept. That also goes way up when your blood sugar is low. So it's not just high blood sugar is the problem. It's often low blood sugar is the problem. One of my celebrities who kept getting arrested and trouble, I did a fasting blood sugar on him was 49. It was way too low. He had hypoglycemia and when I got him to eat four or five times a day, he never got arrested again.
1:43:52 Daniel Amen? So make sure your diet's right and my spontaneous people tend to do really well on ketogenic diets or low, simple carbohydrate diets. Now, that diet will make the persistent type crazy because that's a focused diet where if you put someone who can't stop thinking on a focused diet, they think more on the things that bother them. So the diet really depends on the type, which we talk about in the book. Exercise, tense aerobic exercise boosts dopamine and there's some simple supplements like L- Tyrosine.
1:44:32 Daniel Amen? Or I make something called Focus and Energy that's got ashwagandha, ginseng, rhodiola and choline, things that help you focus but don't amp you.
1:44:48 Steven Bartlett? Okay, Daniel. So we have a new tradition on this podcast. At the end of the Diary of a CEO episodes, we ask all of our guests to write a question and to put it into the book, The Diary of a CEO. So you will be asked to do the same just before you leave. But recently, what we've done, because we understand that these conversations foster a sense of connection in people because they're a little bit more vulnerable than your usual conversations and we believe that that's the door to connection, is we've turned some of the questions in this book into cards that people can play at home. This is a brand new thing we've done. So on here, these are various cards that have been written by previous guests on the show. If you scan the QR code on the back, it takes you to a video of the person who answered it, so the person that came after them.
1:45:31 Steven Bartlett? And then on the front, you can see the question they've asked with their name on it. I'm going to lay these cards in front of you. I want you to just pick one at random. I've just selected some for you.
1:45:41 Steven Bartlett? Out of the full, almost, I think there's about seventy or odd questions in here. I've picked ten. So just pick one at random and I'll ask you to answer the question that you pick. Is that okay?
1:45:51 Daniel Amen? Sure.
1:45:52 Steven Bartlett? You're up for it? Cool.
1:45:58 Steven Bartlett? Who's gone for the first one?
1:46:00 Daniel Amen? What is one mistake that you have made? That you have been scared to address or reconcile?
1:46:15 Daniel Amen? And you want me to answer that question? What is one mistake that I've made? That I have been scared to address or reconcile?
1:46:30 Daniel Amen? That I don't like firing people. That it's really hard. And I came to realize if I don't do it, I should fire myself. But that's the one thing. It's like, why did I hold on to that for so long?
1:46:59 Daniel Amen? It's that when you have the no asshole rule, firing people's really harder. But yet I've come to realize that it's an essential skill to prune. Because if you're a CEO, you're like a gardener. But it taps into something about me being bad that I don't like.
1:47:30 Steven Bartlett? What brain type have you got?
1:47:32 Daniel Amen? I'm a balanced type. And my vulnerabilities, because we all have wings or vulnerabilities, persistent and cautious.
1:47:41 Steven Bartlett? Okay. Can I ask you to pick one more card?
1:47:54 Daniel Amen? Who is the person you'd most like to say sorry to but haven't?
1:48:14 Daniel Amen? And I've thought about this. My dad died three years ago.
1:48:22 Daniel Amen? And I was so mad at him.
1:48:27 Daniel Amen? And would be pretty vocal about how mad I was of him.
1:48:34 Daniel Amen? But when you focus that, you don't see all the good things that happened. I had said that my A score was one.
1:48:48 Daniel Amen? And my wife's an eight. He provided
1:48:53 Daniel Amen? a level of stability that I didn't appreciate. And so
1:49:04 Daniel Amen? he knew the last five years that I loved him. And we spent a lot of time together. But I think I would apologize to him for holding on to the negativity.
1:49:17 Steven Bartlett? And that's exactly why we created these cards. If you want to get your own conversation cards, go to theconversationcards.com. That is theconversationcards.com. And I hope everybody everywhere gets their hands on them. I think the world would be a better place if we're all a little bit more vulnerable with each other because that very much is the door to connection. Back to the episode. Okay, so the question that's been left for you in the diary from our previous guest is,
1:49:40 Steven Bartlett? what topic is no one talking about now
1:49:44 Steven Bartlett? that historians will study in the future?
1:49:48 Daniel Amen? Well, from my perspective, it's the insanity of the mental health industry that is destroying the mental health of America. Making diagnoses based on symptom clusters with no biological data than drugging people. Last year, there were 337 million prescriptions for antidepressants. 27% of all doctor visits, no matter the specialty, 27%. Someone's leaving with a prescription for a benzodiazepine like Xanax or Valium. This is an insane time. And they call me crazy. And I'm not crazy. They're going to be talking about this dark period
1:50:33 Daniel Amen? in psychiatry for centuries to come.
1:50:38 Steven Bartlett? Daniel, thank you. For me, this is very much the culmination of so much work you've done over a series of books and your life's work. So I would recommend everybody, if they have the opportunity to go and get it, to go and get it right now. It is out and it's one of those real pivotal books that sort of turns the lights on to something that, to a room that I didn't even know existed, which is my brain. And the, the brain is obviously the computer, it's the driving force, as you said at the start of this conversation, of all the decisions I get right and wrong. And it's my duty to do everything that I can to love my brain. And that's exactly what your book leaves me with as a parting message, is it's this message of loving my brain and doing everything I can to treat it as if, with the respect and love that it deserves. Thank you for
1:51:22 Steven Bartlett? all of your work. Thank you for the inspiration you've given me. And thank you for the, the way that your work has nudged my life and the trajectory of my life. And therefore, as you say, the trajectory of those that come after me's life in a little bit more positive, healthy direction. Because that is not nothing. That is significant, especially as you zoom out. So thank you so much, Daniel. It's a joy to speak to you.
1:51:40 Daniel Amen? Thank you so much for such a wonderful interview, for being prepared to, to help me actually go inside myself and see how these dots connect and helping me spread the word. I'm trying to create a revolution and I need people to help. So thank you helping me. Thank you for helping me do this.
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