Change Your Brain with Dr. Amen

What if the pain you’re fighting isn’t coming from your body at all, but from patterns wired deep inside your brain? In this powerful conversation, I sit down once again with one of the most impactful thinkers I know, Dr. Daniel Amen, to unpack a truth that changed how I see stress, pain, trauma, and healing. This is his fourth time on the show, and there’s a reason you keep asking for him. Dr. Amen has helped millions of people understand their brains better, including me, and his newest work hit me harder than any book he’s written before. We go deep into the idea that pain is not just a signal from your body, but a story your brain is telling. Whether it shows up as back pain, anxiety, depression, or chronic stress, the root often lives in specific brain circuits that get hijacked by trauma, unresolved emotion, inflammation, and unhealthy habits. I open up about my own childhood, the stress patterns I still carry, and how those experiences changed my brain in ways I never fully understood until now. Dr. Amen breaks down the pain HQ loop and explains how emotional pain, physical pain, and even moral or spiritual pain can trap you in cycles of suffering that feel impossible to escape. We talk about adverse childhood experiences, why unresolved rage often turns into chronic pain, and how habits like poor sleep, diet, and suppressed emotions quietly flip genetic switches that impact not just you, but future generations. But this conversation is not just about understanding the problem. It is about getting out. We walk through the healing loop and the exact tools that calm the brain, raise heart rate variability, and restore control over your nervous system. From diaphragmatic breathing and progressive relaxation to journaling, EMDR, hyperbaric oxygen, and nutritional support, this episode is packed with practical ways to take your power back. If you have ever felt stuck in your body, your mind, or your emotions, this episode will change how you see yourself. The real question Dr. Amen leaves us with is simple and life-altering: Is what you’re doing right now good for your brain or bad for it? Answer that honestly, and everything starts to shift. Key Takeaways: Why pain is often created and amplified by brain circuits, not just physical injury How childhood trauma and stress hijack the brain’s pain and suffering pathways What the pain HQ loop is and how it keeps people stuck in chronic stress and pain Simple daily practices that calm your nervous system and improve brain health Why your habits today affect your children and grandchildren more than you think This is one of those episodes you’ll want to listen to more than once and share with someone who’s been carrying pain they cannot explain. Get ready to see healing in a completely new way. Max out. ⁠⁠⁠👉 SUBSCRIBE TO ED'S YOUTUBE CHANNEL NOW 👈⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ → → → CONNECT WITH ED MYLETT ON SOCIAL MEDIA: ← ← ← ➡️ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠INSTAGRAM⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ➡️⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠FACEBOOK⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ➡️ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LINKEDIN⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ➡️ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠X ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ➡️ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠WEBSITE⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Ed Mylett?

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• 0:45Ed Mylett?

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• 1:02Speaker 01

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• 1:34Ed Mylett?

  This is the Ed and Mylan Show. All right, welcome back to the show, everybody. So I was just telling him I love him and I'm deeply grateful for him. So I should probably say that live on the camera as we start the show today. You've got to be great when you've been on the pod three or four times. And I think this is his fourth time, I think, as a guest on the show. And it's because you all love him and he makes a difference in the world. He is one of the world's leading brain health experts. He's helped a lot of people with their brains, including me. And his clinic, the Amen Clinic, has done over almost a quarter of a million scans from people from 150 different countries. And every time he has a book out, I read the entire book. And it's...

• 2:16Ed Mylett?

  Always enlightening, always insightful. This one for me, the most of all of them. And I say that today because he's got this book out called Change Your Brain, Change Your Pain. You guys, we're gonna take a deep dive into your noggin, see if we can't help you be happier and less stressed and for some of you, not quite so depressed in your life and an explanation as to why you might be. With my good friend, such a kind, good man. And he's the smartest dude in the room and he never makes you feel like he needs to be. Dr. Daniel Amen, welcome back to the show.

• 2:50Daniel Amen?

  Ed, so great to see you. Just makes my heart happy. Actually, my brain, but you know what I mean.

• 2:59Ed Mylett?

  I know exactly what you mean. Well, like always with you, I don't like to waste moments because there's not very many people like you in the world and so let's, let's start with some basic foundational stuff from this book and I mean it, you know, I've read all your stuff, you've worked on my brain, I've been to the clinic. And I think this one hit me the most deeply because I think I suffer from a lot of the stuff in it. And it gave me some understanding of myself. Some of it kind of overlaps with work I do as well, but let's start with some foundational stuff that I got out of the book in the beginning. Which is, you talked about the, the pain that many of us feel and that it's not just a signal from our bodies, but it's actually a story your brain is telling.

• 3:41Ed Mylett?

  Is that, that accurate description of what you're saying, that it's a story your brain is telling? What does that mean?

• 3:46Daniel Amen?

  Well, pain, you know, if it's your back, your hip, your neck, um sadness ultimately comes to live in your brain. And if your brain isn't healthy, you're in a lot of pain. And the same circuits that, um create emotional pain are also involved in physical pain. And so, um, getting your brain as healthy as it can be and not believing every stupid thing you think and not suppressing emotion

• 4:30Daniel Amen?

  is critical to both healing physical and emotional pain.

• 4:37Ed Mylett?

  You talk about these different pathways in the book, like, so it's not just a general concept, you guys, because Yeah, I don't know. I think I've lived with a lot of stress in my life and it has as I've aged. My audience knows this. It's manifested itself physically. Over time, whether that be, you know, some heart issues that I've had, some back pain that I just now after reading this, I'm like, I think this is a result of this brain thing I got going on with my with these different pathways. What is the lateral pain feeling pathway?

• 5:09Daniel Amen?

  Oh, it's a part of your brain called the thalamus, which is deep in the brain, sort of looks like a little egg. And your parietal lobe's top back part of your brain, your sensory brain. And it's when you go, ouch, my back hurts and it tells you where it is. And the thalamus, part of the deep limbic brain or emotional brain. When you're depressed, it's overactive. I just published this monster study with actually one of my haters.

• 5:48Daniel Amen?

  It's a really fun story. He told 2020 I should be arrested 20 years ago. And now we're publishing research together. So I love that so much. But what we showed is the thalamus and your emotional brain is overactive in depression. So if you're depressed, you're more likely to have physical pain. And one of the reasons I wrote the book was why does SAME, which is a supplement, acetaminophen, methionine, or the antidepressant Cymbalta work for depression?

• 6:29Daniel Amen?

  And pain, like Cymbalta's FDA approved for pain and SAME has many studies showing it decreases pain from things like arthritis. It's like, why is that? It's because they work on the same circuitry of the brain. And so pain comes into our consciousness, into our awareness through the lateral pain feeling pathway. Lateral just means toward the side. Our parietal lobe's top back part of our brain toward the side.

• 7:05Daniel Amen?

  And if that gets activated, it then triggers our medial pain suffering pathway. Now, this is sort of more toward the middle anterior cingulogyrus, insular cortex, basal ganglia, when that is overactive now begins to smear the pain with dread, with awfulness, with angst, with ew, I hate that. And so the first thing that happens, lateral pain feeling pathway activates the suffering pathway. And then it, the third one is little brain here. It calms the front part of the brain.

• 7:50Daniel Amen?

  This is called the calming pathway. So the prefrontal cortex is in large part inhibitory. It sort of puts the brakes on what you say and what you do, right? It helps you with things like forethought and judgment, but it also settles down pain. And so if you've been hitting soccer balls with your head, if you played tackle football and damaged this part of the brain, you're going to be in more pain because your brain can't turn it off.

• 8:23Ed Mylett?

  Can I ask you something connected to that? And we'll keep going. By the way, the best thing about having Dr. Amen on the show, you guys, unlike most guests, he's willing to talk in specificity about what's in the book. A lot of guests don't because they're afraid, oh, well, then you won't go get the book. But just so you know, when a book is this big and this loaded, there's no way in an hour you're getting it all, so you still need to go get the book. More than anything you need to do is get this book. Let me ask you a question. This is an outside, though. It's not in my notes. It's just something I've wondered about. Based on these pathways and what we're going to talk about in a minute, which is this loop idea. Do you think, and I know this would be probably just speculating, but do you think that what goes on in your brain, this trauma, stress, toxins, this anxiety, this stuff you start to have,

• 9:07Ed Mylett?

  do you think that long term it can affect gene expression in your body? Like, could it be that profound? Meaning if you're, you know, you're predisposed at some point to getting cancer, that maybe you turn those genes on sooner in your life because of the stress and inflammation that causes in your body? That potential, potentially there's a correlation between those two things? Or am I reaching way out there on that one?

• 9:30Daniel Amen?

  No, you're absolutely correct. And ultimately, it's not just about you. It's about generations of you. It'll flip on or off certain genes that impact you, but also your babies and your grandbabies. Fascinating study. So I talk about aspartame in the book. And when I was 35, I had arthritis. And one of my patients said, when she stopped aspartame, her arthritis went away. And I'm like, and I think I've learned the most from my patients. And I was drinking diet soda then like it was my best friend, like Jack in the Box was across the street.

• 10:14Daniel Amen?

  And I'd go get a 32 ounce Diet Pepsi. And yeah, I just feel so bad about this. Like, you know, I'm a doctor. I have no clue about nutrition. And till I started looking at my brain. And I stopped the aspartame and my pain went away. And I'm like, no. And now there's a new study on mice. They gave mice aspartame. It's in 5,000 products. They became really anxious. And they gave them Valium and it calmed them down. Why they did that, I have no idea. But what they discovered, Ed, and this was the very disturbing thing.

• 10:58Daniel Amen?

  The babies of these mice who never had aspartame, their baseline was more anxious. Their grandbabies were more anxious. So our habits are not about us. They're literally about generations of us. So the question you ask about epigenetics.

• 11:23Daniel Amen?

  You you know, if you don't sleep well at night, it turns off 700 health promoting genes. So our behavior every day is impacting us, but also our children and grandchildren. Are you still big on saffron for sleep? Huge. I'm big on saffron for so many things. There are 28 randomized controlled trials showing it's equally effective to Prozac, Lexapro, Wellbutrin, Effexor, Zoloft. I mean, it's there's a brand new study on 100, it combined 192 studies on 17,000 patients on which are

• 12:08Daniel Amen?

  the supplements that actually work for depression. And saffron was the first, most effective. And then it said, if you're on an antidepressant or saffron and you add zinc and curcumin, it significantly enhances the effect. And so my company, BrainMD, has made happy saffron for six years, came out right before the pandemic. And I've taken it every day because not only does it help your mood, it the reason I fell in love with saffron, most antidepressants decrease sexual interest and ability. It decreases your ability to have an orgasm.

• 12:53Daniel Amen?

  And I'd have patients come back, I'm happy, but I don't want to touch my wife. And I'm like, no, no, no. Saffron is pro sexual. It enhances that. And it's pro memory. And there are studies showing it decreases pain. And I think what's happening is it's calming the medial pain, suffering pathway. And I added zinc and curcumin to saffron for exactly that reason.

• 13:24Ed Mylett?

  Very interesting, isn't it, you guys? So, let's talk about this unhealthiness in the brain a little bit. What's contributing? So, you said earlier, you listed some things. It could be injury, it could be toxins, stress. Sleep is a biggie, right? But, um, what about this unresolved? Like, in my case, I'm trying to figure it out. Like, I sleep pretty well, like, but I did, you know the story. I did have an alcoholic dad, drug addict dad when I was young. He ended up getting sober. I just feel deep inside me that some of that, this is the wrong word, so I please everybody, and I don't, must, marked, scarred my brain somehow. And put me into-

• 14:06Daniel Amen?

  Changed, changed your brain.

• 14:08Ed Mylett?

  It changed my brain. And I, I, I measure my HRV now, and it's just trash. It's like, last night, doctor, my HRV was eight. Right? So, I'm in fight or flight a lot, right? Like, I, if y'all know all these correlations. And so, I, I, I just wonder, like, you say in the book, like, your circuits can literally be hijacked. And you talk about this, I think you call it the pain HQ doom loop. And I'm like, that's familiar, I think, to me. Could you explain that to me and explain me to me a little bit? Even though we've done this in person, I think this is interesting for everybody's edification.

• 14:46Daniel Amen?

  I published a monster study on 7,500 patients, and their ACE score, adverse childhood experiences. So, on a scale of zero to 10, how many bad things happened to you growing up? And, uh, physical, emotional, sexual trauma or abuse, being neglected, watching your mother be abused, uh, having a parent with an addiction, incarceration, or a mental health problem? So, there's 10 of these things. Um, if you score four or more, you have an increased risk of seven of the top 10 leading causes of death. If you score six or more-

• 15:31Ed Mylett?

  Wow.

• 15:32Daniel Amen?

  You can die 20 years early. But you don't have to. My wife's an eight.

• 15:38Daniel Amen?

  And she's not going to die early because she's had treatment for trauma. And like you, she takes really good care of herself. But what we found was childhood trauma. And I don't know if I told you this, my first wife grew up in a severely abusive alcoholic home. And when I married her, it's like, two months later, she tried to kill herself. And she's the reason I'm a psychiatrist. And I studied children and grandchildren of alcoholics. It activates your emotional brain.

• 16:13Daniel Amen?

  So that suffering pathway, it's probably more active than is healthy for you. And so

• 16:25Ed Mylett?

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• 17:08Ed Mylett?

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• 18:26Speaker 03

  Wayfair, every style, every home.

• 18:28Daniel Amen?

  Oh, the doom loop is really the star of the book. It helped me so much get out of chronic pain. So it starts with pain for any reason. So Pain HQ, that's the acronym, pain for any reason. And it can be physical pain, you broke your ankle. It can be emotional pain, you feel disrespected. Can be relational pain, there's a breakup. That's one of the major causes of suicide. Or it can be spiritual pain, you can have a moral injury. And many of us during the pandemic, we were morally injured

• 19:10Daniel Amen?

  by how the government handled the pandemic. Or if you think of a moral injury, I grew up Catholic and the whole priest pedophile scandal, the church lost billions of people who were injured by that particular scandal. So it can be pain for any reason, which is the lateral pain feeling pathway. It's like, okay, we hurt. And then that then activates the suffering pathway. And that's already active in people who are depressed, in people who have childhood trauma,

• 19:52Daniel Amen?

  which then leads to an invasion, that's the I, of ants, automatic negative thoughts. The thoughts that just come into your mind automatically and ruin your day. And then that goes to N, which is nervous tension. Because whenever you have A negative thought, your brain releases chemicals immediately and your muscles get tight and it happens immediately, but also in that N is repressed emotion and repressed rage, which makes your muscles sort of chronically tense.

• 20:34Daniel Amen?

  Then that leads to H, which is harmful habits. A lot of people then, whether it's alcohol or sugar or marijuana, psilocybin, things that are really not good for your brain. And I know your audience just went on tilt. It's like, oh, I thought psilocybin was the new happy pill. It's like, we'll talk about it. And then you get to Q, which is the quagmire or quicksand of the doom loop and it spirals. And the other star of the book is the healing loop. It's like, well, how do you get out of this doom loop? And it's relief and it's you begin to recognize the pain.

• 21:19Daniel Amen?

  And I love this so much, public knowledge. I've been working with Julius Randall, the NBA superstar for the last year and a couple of months. And it's, he doesn't fail anymore. He wins or he learns. We're curious, we're never furious. And I love that so much. It's you recognize it and then you get curious about it. How did I sleep last night? What are my relationships? Am I blocking some of my emotions? It's we start getting really curious about the pain and then we go after calming the suffering.

• 22:04Daniel Amen?

  Pathway, whether it's saffron, curcumin, omega-3 fatty acids, a technique I talk about in the book I like a lot called havening. And then we let go of the negativity. There's a whole section on positivity bias training. The more negative you are, the less activity you have in your frontal lobes. Negativity is bad for you. Now, unbridled positivity is not the answer. You know, I can drive at 125 miles an hour down the freeway in the rain.

• 22:44Daniel Amen?

  It's like, no, I want you to have enough anxiety, you do the right thing. But start every day with, today is going to be a great day. And end every day with, what went well today? Force, push, noticing what's right way more than you notice what's wrong. But really, you know, one of the secrets in this book, and I learned it from John Sarno, who I'm a huge fan. He wrote a book called Healing Back Pain and the Mind Body Prescription. And he talked about how chronic pain is repressed rage. And I'm like, that's so interesting.

• 23:27Daniel Amen?

  But I didn't think he did a good job of teaching people, well, how do you get rid of the rage? Because when I was in pain, I'm like, yeah, my brother beat me up every day when we were children and trying to change psychiatry. I've been brutalized, like, you know, the guy that said, told 2020, I should be arrested. There's, I'm pissed off a lot. And it's like, but if you knew me, I'm sort of like Pollyanna. It's like, whatever happens to you, well, what is there good to be about what happened to you? And so I realized that Pollyanna had to meet Hannibal Lecter.

• 24:12Daniel Amen?

  And I remember the epiphany. My wife, who calls me Pollyanna, and when I came that epiphany, I'm like,

• 24:26Daniel Amen?

  She has to die. Now, not all the time, but and it's like, well, how do you get rid of the rage? And there's actually a psychotherapy that's a rage therapy. It's called ISTDP or intensive short-term dynamic psychotherapy. And when I first learned it, I'm like, oh no, that's too harsh. And then I'm like, oh no, you have to get in touch with the rage. So there's a whole section in the book on how do you get the rage out? And so for your situation, what I would do, there's an exercise called emotional freedom journaling.

• 25:10Daniel Amen?

  And for each five years of your life, so get a journal and, you know, zero to five, five to 10, 10 to 15, draw a line down the page and for each five years, on the left side, write down what awesome things happened during that period. So zero to five, I'm four years old, I'm standing at the stove. I'm with my grandfather, who I'm named after, who I loved, who is my best friend, growing up, we're making fudge. And that's on that zero to five page. But on the right side is being beaten up every day by my older brother. And I'm pissed off about that.

• 25:54Daniel Amen?

  And then do that for each five-year period of your life. Well, pretty soon you have a good sense where the pain's coming from. And then write about it. You don't ever have to yell at someone or shoot anybody, please don't. Um, but you want to be able to express it. Like if it could come out in your body, where would it go? And I don't know, have you ever had EMDR for the childhood trauma?

• 26:24Daniel Amen?

  You totally should. I love EMDR and do it a lot with my patients. But when we do the therapy, we'll often go, you know, so say I have a patient who was sexually abused. We'll often go back to that event, process it. And then it's like, if the rage could come out, where would it go? And there are a lot of people who die in my EMDR sessions because I don't want people blocking the emotions. Now, I always want you to be appropriate. I never want you to go to jail. But in your mind, you have to be able to express the rage.

• 27:07Daniel Amen?

  Otherwise, it'll come out in neck pain, back pain. And another very important thing in this book

• 27:17Daniel Amen?

  is there are a number of studies that show, I'm 71, people my age, 80% of people my age with no pain have abnormal backs. 70% of people my age have abnormal necks who have no pain. They have abnormal necks. And so every time, you know, I had hip pain, I had back pain, I had neck pain, I had shoulder pain. My MRIs are always abnormal, which activate the suffering pathway. And now it's like, I have to have surgery. But I know what general anesthesia does to the brain. It's not good.

• 28:02Daniel Amen?

  It's actually one of the risk factors for dementia. And in the book, I have a dementia prevention program.

• 28:12Daniel Amen?

  And so surgery is going to always be my last option. But because they see the abnormal MRI, oh, you have to have surgery. And of course, they go to a surgeon who says, well, you have to have surgery because, you know, that's how they put their kids through school. And I have not had surgery and my back pain's gone. Your body wants to heal. Your body was created or evolved to heal.

• 28:45Daniel Amen?

  And you just have to put it in a healing environment.

• 28:50Ed Mylett?

  You know, I want everyone to know this too, because he and I have worked together. I think things have been flowing in your life, like just so you guys all know, that so many of the things that Dr. Amen and I have worked on and talked about have helped me. I think I've just caught myself during an interesting season again. And when I look at like, you talk about both these things in the book, I'd like you to address them. But so I look at like, in my case, like, wow, I was really doing good for like two or three years. What happened recently that, and I think just my emotional, mental wellbeing, my brain health, as you describe it and have corrected me before. It's not, you know, mental health, it's brain health, literally, it's your brain. I think there's, uh, there's two things. One is a way out for me that you've taught me, and another is the way in, where I get into these loops.

• 29:34Ed Mylett?

  So when you talk about, I have some triggers. And one of the things in the book you talk about is identifying what are triggers for you that could put you in these loops. And then way out for me, and by the way, you know, he's already described many things, but you teach this diaphragmic breathing that I do. It's been like, really a big deal to me, you think, how simple. But like, when I'm in a certain pattern and a way of thinking, I have a certain breathing pattern also, which doesn't serve me. And when I have changed my breathing, something that simple, I can monitor my, uh, my HRV and it goes up. Like just by changing my breathing, just by changing that part of me has changed my brain health, my heart health. And so would you talk about what a trigger is?

• 30:19Ed Mylett?

  And then just something as simple as the breathing that you teach?

• 30:24Daniel Amen?

  No, I would love for you to just write down your triggers. Uh, because if you do EMDR, um, that's what you go after. And you go, so what's the origin of the trigger? So you feel it, get your eyes going back and forth. And then you get on a train and it's like, so when's the first time I felt that? And, and then is there a time before? And it's so powerful to covet your triggers, because they're teaching you what you need to work on.

• 31:05Daniel Amen?

  Diaphragmatic breathing is so powerful. And when you have a negative thought, or when you get triggered, your breathing becomes faster and more shallow. If you ever watch a baby breathe, or a puppy breathe, they breathe almost exclusively with their belly. So the diaphragm is this huge bell-shaped muscle between your chest cavity and your abdominal cavity. And if you watch a baby breathe, or a puppy breathe, when they breathe in, they stick their belly out. Because what they're doing is they're flattening their diaphragm. And what we talked about before, four seconds in, hold it for a second or two,

• 31:49Daniel Amen?

  eight seconds out. And then hold it out for a second or two. And for anybody who has a panic disorder, it fixes it. If you just do that 10 times. And I recommend people do it every day. So I wake up and I stretch, and then I do diaphragmatic breathing. And if my HRV is 40, it'll often go to 80 right afterwards. So the more you do it, the higher your HRV, which is a sign of both heart and brain health.

• 32:32Daniel Amen?

  And so I think the more you do that, that's good. I'm so glad it's helpful. And even when you're doing the breathing, think about the trigger. And then even without EMDR, it's, "When's the first time I felt like that?" And then take your good parent self. And often, it's loving the child that was afraid, or the child that was mad. And there's another thing in the book that I love so much on the origin of pain. And that is, when we're born,

• 33:13Daniel Amen?

  we want to bond. We have to bond because they feed us, they clothe us, they shelter us, they protect us. It's because of them we live. And so we desperately want to bond and then say something bad happens. Your dad's unpredictable or angry. Your parents get divorced, somebody dies in the family, there's an accident, one of your parents got fired, whatever it is. And then you feel pain. And then you feel rage.

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• 34:33Ed Mylett?

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• 35:10Ed Mylett?

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• 35:49Daniel Amen?

  Well, you really can't feel that. And so you block it and then you feel guilt about the rage. Like you did something wrong. And that becomes part of who you are. But it sets people up for pain. And often getting to the rage, the origin of the rage is so important.

• 36:17Ed Mylett?

  So good. You guys, isn't he amazing? Yeah, I've known him a long time. I mean this at 71. I'm not just saying this because we're friends. You're just getting better. You're just getting better. You actually, you really make me hopeful as I enter those years of my life that I can even be more effective and sharper and more contributory than I am now because I'm watching you do it. This is a man who's changed, you know, millions of people's lives directly, almost a quarter of a million scans, you guys. There's something in the book that I don't think I understood that I want to ask you about, which is, so you have breathing. Guys, you know me, every time I have him on, I'm like, okay, we understand the problems. What are the solutions, right? Like, give me the, give me the stuff. So the breathing has been transformative for me. And everybody, you know, one thing he talks about in the book is having these habits too.

• 37:02Ed Mylett?

  Like anything in life, like your diet, you're working out, you can get away from them. And I think for me recently, that's just what's happened. I've just gotten away from the things that I know work. And in reading the book, which has a bunch of new stuff in it, I kind of reconnecting, especially talking to him live today. All right, I'm gonna, I'm gonna be on the diaphragmatic breathing every day after I stretch now. Like, that's just done, right? That's done. But what is this progressive relaxation? To me, like in hearing it, I'm like, this technique, like I should be doing this, just knowing how much. I can feel the tension in my body that you and I, that you've been describing. What is that? How's that work?

• 37:39Daniel Amen?

  No, it's a hypnotic technique that is so effective. And on my app, Brain Fit Life, I actually have it in a number of other hypnotic scripts or audios I do for people. It's basically, close your eyes, roll your eyeballs up and really stress them. Feel them up. And as you let them come back down, you just notice how relaxed your eye sockets feel. And then imagine that relaxation spreading like a warm penetrating oil to the muscles in your face,

• 38:23Daniel Amen?

  your head, your neck, and just imagine the relaxation spreading from the top of your head all the way down to the bottom of your feet. And it's about 10, 15 minutes of just this beautiful guided imagery relaxation session. And, you know, people have been, psychiatrists have been doing it for a long time with patients. Well, not so much anymore because psychiatrists have become the prescriber, which just pisses me off so much.

• 39:01Daniel Amen?

  But it's a beautiful technique that I describe in, in the book and have resources for people. There's also a rage hypnotic.

• 39:16Daniel Amen?

  Audio for people where they go to a clearing in a forest. So put them in a trance, get them to open their subconscious mind to us. And then in the clearing, and I wonder what pictures you would see. There's a big tree stump and on the stump are pictures of all the things that have stressed you, that have pissed you off, that have made you sad, that have made you mad. And next to the stump is an axe where you cut them all up with great energy. Um, just to sort of recognize that all of us have these memories

• 40:01Daniel Amen?

  that become like zombies and they just like show up and they won't die. And so learning how to get rid of them is really important.

• 40:14Ed Mylett?

  He said something in there. He said, uh, you know, get your mind directing your body. And what occurs to me, the more and more I'm familiar with his work and my own life. It's like, that's happening unconsciously anyway. So the more we begin to consciously take control of our mind, directing our body through our breathing, um, through some of these guided meditations or hypnosis. Um, or just being aware of your triggers or knowing what these ants are. And understanding them what, for what they are when they show up. Now you're starting to take charge of your mind directing your body. Rather than that happening in some unconscious subconscious way all the time. And that's really why the work is so great. So I wanted to tell you about a year and a half ago. I think I went through about six months of the best mental health I've ever had.

• 40:58Ed Mylett?

  And ironically, it was through a very stressful time in business. Just some stuff with, you know, people taking advantage of me and some betrayals that took place in my life. And yet I'm weird in the sense that when things are pretty good, my mind finds reasons to worry and have anxiety. But when actually really bad stuff happens, I'm actually typically a pretty calm guy. It's a really interesting way I go about my life. However, I went through some of the best, I'd just say emotional and mental health of my life during this very difficult time. Ironically.

• 41:33Ed Mylett?

  I was going to do hyperbaric oxygen very regularly to recover from an injury that I had. And I didn't think about it. And then when I stopped, I kind of went back to baseline and then I'm reading the book. And that's one of the things you recommend for your mental or your brain health is hyperbaric oxygen. So I gotta let you talk about that for a second because I lived this, just not knowing that was one of the benefits.

• 41:58Daniel Amen?

  Well, I'm a huge fan. Published a study on soldiers who were involved in blast injuries. Significant improvement in blood flow and it decreases inflammation. So this active suffering pathway is often due to inflammation. And so hyperbaric oxygen lowers that and then it activates, increases blood flow, especially to the prefrontal cortex. The calming pathway. So you can see just that by itself has benefited to two thirds of the brain's pain pathways.

• 42:40Daniel Amen?

  I recommended so often for people, especially if they have low blood flow on their scans.

• 42:49Ed Mylett?

  Which I did, by the way. Okay, we're coming to the end here. And I gotta ask you about this psilocybin thing. And also I want to ask you about IbaGAIN. So you mentioned warfighters there a minute ago. I have had friends of mine who have had, you know, severe PTSD recently, just, just before we came on here live, I was reading an article. So I want you to speak your mind about this and maybe there's a distinction between the two. So I'm just reading this morning Conor McGregor went to Mexico. Did you see this? Went to Mexico and says, my life's changed. I saw it and I'm not, I'm, I'm saying how he said it. I don't have an opinion about this because I've never experienced it. But he basically said it changed his life. He did an IbaGAIN therapy.

• 43:30Ed Mylett?

  I've had a couple, Rob O'Neills, been on my show, who killed Osama bin Laden, has said IbaGAIN's made a big difference in his life. And then I've had other people go do these trips where they do. You know, mushrooms, they do psilocybin and they, some have said, I had a good trip and some have said, oh, man, it got really dark and it wasn't good for them. So are they different to you? Are they the same? I know they're in different mechanisms, but are both of them fall into the same category to you? Do you have an opinion about one?

• 43:59Daniel Amen?

  Well, they're, they're different, but, um, but I'm very worried. Uh, and the reason I'm worried is I've seen this party before. Uh, I mean, that's sort of the benefit or the curse of doing this as long as I have. In the eighties, benzos were mommy's little helper. And they were not supposed to be addictive. No one talked about them causing dementia. Um, but benzos are problematic. Uh, and then in the early nineties, it was alcohol's a health food. And it's just a blatant lie.

• 44:41Daniel Amen?

  Uh, they increase the risk of eight different cancers and they cause more destruction, right? You experience that as a child. Um, and then, um, pain is the fifth vital sign. You should be on opiates. Uh, which no, you shouldn't be. Because I talk about it in the book, that opiates off, actually piss off your white blood cells and increase inflammation. So short-term benefit, they'd create more pain. Um, and then, you know, the recent one is marijuana is innocuous. It's legal in forty states.

• 45:19Daniel Amen?

  Um, and it's created this nightmare in our society of people who are sad and anxious and suicidal. And psychonic.

• 45:32Ed Mylett?

  Stay there. So there's, there's benzos, alcohol, weed. Okay. You take a leap that that includes psilocybin, for example.

• 45:41Daniel Amen?

  Okay. So, so here's, here's the, here's the psilocybin thing. Uh, for some people, it's helpful.

• 45:51Daniel Amen?

  Just like for marijuana, for some people, it's helpful. But the problem, because everybody's all excited and nobody's talking about the fact that visits to emergency rooms for psilocybin psychosis has skyrocketed in the last three years. That teenagers are microdosing on a regular basis, they're having mushroom parties. And what we're doing is we're taking something that, under good supervision, could be helpful. And now, everybody's doing it. And that is the prescription for huge trouble. I have somebody I care deeply about, who started dating someone that said, "Let's

• 46:36Daniel Amen?

  do mushrooms together," and she became psychotic. And I'm very worried that people aren't going, "Caution, caution, caution." Maybe in supervised settings, but just like you said, that one person had a good trip, another person had a bad trip. And how do you know? And we don't know. And perhaps, you know, I should do imaging and go, "Okay, let's see if we can predict who gets benefit and who doesn't." But I remember reading Will Smith's autobiography, and I loved him.

• 47:21Daniel Amen?

  I was a consultant on the movie Concussion, and I thought he should have got an Oscar nomination for that movie. But toward the end of the book, he said he went to South America and did ayahuasca 14 times. And then, he just blew up his life on the Oscars, hitting Chris Rock. And I'm like, "Well, this didn't fix him."

• 47:48Daniel Amen?

  And so I don't think there's enough and I don't know if we've talked, but I've been working with the White House actually on creating a national brain health revolution. Don't hate me, my God, I've gotten so much hate. If Obama would have said, hey, Daniel, will you help? I'm like, yes. And the White House Faith Office loves me and they are working with me to create a national brain health revolution. And there's a lot of pressure to like nationally legalize marijuana and get on board with the psilocybin train.

• 48:31Daniel Amen?

  And I'm like, I'm just not a fan, especially like Conor McGregor. Did he do EMDR? Did he do hyperbaric oxygen? Has he done the work that doesn't have the risk of things like Ibogaine? I have before and after Ibogaine scans and I don't like them. I mean, I know why they work. They quiet the chatter in your head. But there are other ways to quiet the chatter, like give your mind a name so you can gain psychological distance from the noise. It's so helpful.

• 49:14Ed Mylett?

  Was that a full hour, everybody? Are you happy that you spent the time with us here today? I gotta tell you something. I think this is his best book and I've read most of them. And so I don't say that just because we're friends. By the way, it's certainly not a small book either. You won't, you won't be done in five minutes. Change Your Brain, Change Your Pain. We've gone through a lot today to help you. Thank you for being so generous, by the way, with your information and your time when I interview you every single time. You don't hold anything back and I love you and I'm grateful for you in my life. So thank you for being here today, my brother.

• 49:47Daniel Amen?

  I love you back and thank you for helping me spread the word. And the one question, always remember this question. It'll help you stay on track with your habits. This is the National Brain Health Revolution question. Is what I'm doing now, good for my brain or bad for it? And if you can answer that with information and love, love of yourself, love of your family, love of the reason God put you on earth, you just make better choices.

• 50:18Ed Mylett?

  Really good. I will remember that. I think people are gonna remember this. You guys, there's sometimes I don't have to even ask you to share an interview. I just know you're gonna share this one. So go ahead and do that. And by the way, if you're listening to this on the audio and you're not on the YouTube channel, go subscribe to YouTube. And if you're watching YouTube, go subscribe to an audio platform, whether that's Apple or Spotify or your audio platform of choice. Thank you, Dr. Amen. God bless you, everybody. Max out.

• 50:43Ed Mylett?

  This is the Ed Miliband Show.

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