Pod Insights The School of Greatness Harvard Psychiatrist: How To Heal Your Mind With Your Diet - The Scientific Connection Between Nutrition & Mental Health About this episode I'm going on tour! Come see The School of Greatness LIVE in person! Get my new book Make Money Easy here! What if the root cause of mental health disorders isn't just in your mind, but in your metabolism? In this groundbreaking conversation, Harvard psychiatrist Dr. Chris Palmer challenges everything we think we know about mental health treatment. Drawing from three decades of clinical experience and cutting-edge research, Dr. Palmer reveals how metabolic dysfunction is driving the unprecedented rise in conditions like anxiety, depression, and ADHD. Through compelling patient stories and scientific evidence, he demonstrates why the current paradigm of endless medication isn't working and presents a revolutionary approach that integrates physical and mental health. Most importantly, he offers hope to millions suffering from mental health conditions by showing how lifestyle changes can create real healing. Learn more about Dr. Chris PalmerOrder your copy of Dr. Palmer's book Brain EnergyIn this episode you will learn:How metabolic dysfunction is the hidden driver behind many mental health disordersWhy psychiatric medications can sometimes make conditions worse by disrupting metabolic healthThe shocking connection between obesity and a 3.5x higher risk of mental health conditionsWhy ADHD diagnoses have tripled since 2010 and what's really causing this surgeHow diet, exercise, and sleep can be more powerful than medication for many peopleThe concerning link between birth control pills and mental health in young womenWhy integrating physical and mental health treatment is crucial for true healingFor more information go to https://www.lewishowes.com/1728For more Greatness text PODCAST to +1 (614) 350-3960More SOG episodes we think you’ll love:Dr. Mark Hyman – greatness.lnk.to/1695SCDr. William Li – greatness.lnk.to/1410SCGlucose Goddess – greatness.lnk.to/1575SC Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX
Transcript 15,125 words · 2 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Lewis Howes? There are two big things happening at one time that I've never done before. I'm going on a book tour for my new book, Make Money Easy, and I'm doing a podcast tour at the same time. It is going to be big and I'm going to seven cities in 10 days. Get your friends, get your family, bring everyone you know to these cities. I'm coming to Austin, Texas, New York, Boston. We're going to Nashville, then we're going to Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco. Make sure to get your tickets right now. Go to lewishouse.com/tour. Again, bring everyone you know. If you're looking to create more financial freedom and abundance in your life and you want to see massive guests live on the School of Greatness show,
0:44 Lewis Howes? get your tickets. I can't wait to see you there.
0:53 Lewis Howes? Welcome back my friend to the School of Greatness. Today, we have a groundbreaking conversation as I sit down with Harvard psychiatrist, Dr. Chris Palmer, to explore the revolutionary connection between mental health and metabolism. Drawing from his 29 years of clinical experience, Dr. Palmer is going to reveal how our current mental health crisis is deeply linked to something very specific that so many of us are struggling with. Before we dive into this, I just want to say thank you. So many of you have been supporting me over the last week as we made this announcement with my first ever national book tour coming up in just a few short weeks.
1:38 Lewis Howes? If you didn't see, we're going to seven cities around the country in 10 days. It's going to be like a sprint within 10 days for me bopping around city to city. And make sure you go check out lewishouse.com/tour right now to see if I'm coming to one of your cities or fly into one of the cities that I'm coming to and get your tickets right now because we're going to do something really powerful. I've got a book coming out and we're going to be talking about the book, Make Money Easy, which is all about your path to peace, freedom and financial abundance. So if you've been struggling with your financial abundance in your life or if you feel like you're blocked, you haven't been on a breakthrough financially,
2:20 Lewis Howes? this is all about how to unlock the energy within you to attract more wealth to you. And from 12 years of interviews with some of the biggest billionaires, influencers in the money and financial space, but also healers. This is a different type of a book because it's about helping you heal your relationship to money so that you can attract it as opposed to having to work hard to go make it. I'm very excited because in every city, we're going to be having a massive surprise guest as well. So it's going to be me speaking, but also we're going to be doing a live podcast tour during this with some of the biggest names in those cities.
3:00 Lewis Howes? It is going to be a fun evening of greatness and a celebration during the launch of my book, live podcast, talking about creating abundance in our lives. And if you have been to the Summit of Greatness, or if you haven't been, the community is on fire. It's electric. It is so much joy and passion and so many innovative thinkers and creative entrepreneurs and artists that come to the Summit of Greatness. So I believe it's going to feel like the same energy of community that will be there at the book tour as well. So make sure to go to lewishouse.com/tour right now, or you can click the link at the top of the description of the podcast episode where you're listening right now on Apple or Spotify to get that as well.
3:41 Lewis Howes? I hope to see you at one of these cities coming up here very soon. And also today, we have a big guest, again, Dr. Chris Palmer. He's going to share shocking statistics about the rise in mental health disorders from anxiety and depression to ADHD and bipolar disorder, and makes a compelling case for why integrating physical and mental health treatment could be the key to helping millions recover. He's got to share so many powerful insights today. I hope you get out your pen and paper or take notes in your phone app. Make sure to share this with one friend that you want to see continue to improve in their life. If you know someone who maybe is struggling at times mentally or their health, you really care about them.
4:25 Lewis Howes? You want to have them with the right science, with the right research, with the right expert, giving the wisdom and the tools to support them in improving day after day. Then just text the link of this podcast episode right now to a few friends and ask them what their biggest takeaway was from this episode. I'm so grateful you're here on the School of Greatness. Now let's dive in. Welcome back everyone at the School of Greatness. Very excited about our guest. We have the inspiring Dr. Chris Palmer in the house. Thank you so much for being here.
4:57 Speaker 01 Thank you for inviting me.
4:59 Lewis Howes? Very excited about this because you have incredible credentials. Harvard psychiatrist, trained researcher. And you are helping people overcome one of the biggest challenges in the world right now, which is understanding mental health, anxiety, PTSD, all these different things that are related around mental health. And it seems like the rise of mental health symptoms have exponentially grown in the last decade. And it seems like people are more medicated than ever before, and it's making them sicker, not better. And as a Harvard-trained researcher and psychiatrist, who also has prescribed people medication over the years,
5:39 Lewis Howes? it seems to me like you've found new ways to help heal mental health disorders. Is that correct? That is not related to medication?
5:48 Speaker 01 That is correct. It's related. It's about integrating physical health and mental health. And when you put it together, more often than not, you can actually help people heal and recover.
6:01 Lewis Howes? What would you say then is the root cause of mental disease? And is that the correct way to say it? Is it a mental disease or mental disorder, mental health condition? What is the correct?
6:13 Speaker 01 That is the million-dollar question. Because some people will say, "I'm struggling with my mental health. I'm burned out." That is very different than, "I'm struggling with my mental health because I had a really horrible childhood." Which is different than, "I have a mental illness." Which is different than, "I have a mental disorder." Or, "My son has a mental dis..." A severe, chronic, disabling mental disorder. Which is different than, "I'm neurodivergent. I'm just neurodivergent. People need to accept me. I have a different brain.
6:57 Speaker 01 I'm autistic, or I have ADHD, or I have a learning disorder." We have these different labels, these different words, and they can mean vastly different things.
7:10 Speaker 01 And yet, they're all interconnected. They can't be separated. And I think that's, I think that's one of the more complex areas. Because even the surgeon general is saying things like, we have a mental health epidemic, and one of the root causes is loneliness.
7:28 Lewis Howes? Yes.
7:29 Speaker 01 If we just address loneliness, we'll address this mental health epidemic.
7:33 Lewis Howes? But you can be in a community of your friends and family, but if you're eating all the wrong things, it's going to affect your brain and your mental health as well.
7:40 Speaker 01 Exactly. There's more to mental health than just loneliness. So, yes, I don't disagree with the surgeon general that loneliness is one piece of the puzzle. I don't think that we have a loneliness epidemic that is driving autism, that is driving ADHD, that is driving bipolar disorder. I don't think the loneliness epidemic is driving all of those things. I think there's much more to the equation than that.
8:09 Lewis Howes? What is the main thing that is driving depression, anxiety, ADHD, bipolar? What is the main root cause of those things?
8:18 Speaker 01 At the end of the day, it is metabolic dysfunction.
8:22 Lewis Howes? And what is metabolic dysfunction?
8:24 Speaker 01 So, you know, that even gets really complicated fast. The easiest way to explain it is that, you know, most people think of metabolism in simple terms. And they think about it as either you've got a fast metabolism or a slow metabolism, and that makes you lose weight or gain weight. Athletes might think about metabolism in a somewhat more sophisticated way. They might talk about VO2 max and some other things. If you've got a good metabolism, a healthy metabolism, a superior metabolism, you can run faster, you can lift more, you can do more. You can, you have endurance.
9:04 Speaker 01 You can run for 30 miles instead of the person who can only make it two miles and then peters out. And the reality is metabolism is those things and is related to those things and does largely influence those things. But metabolism is so much more than just those things. You know, the simplest definition is probably, it's a process that all living organisms use to take food, oxygen, and some other critical ingredients like vitamins and nutrients, and turn those into...
9:37 Speaker 01 Energy or building blocks for cells. And that that is what fuels our bodies. It's how our bodies grow. It's how our cells repair themselves. But it's also how our cells end up making hormones. It's how they make neurotransmitters. It's how our muscles move. In a way metabolism is biology.
10:06 Speaker 01 So in that sense, it's like this overwhelmingly complicated thing.
10:11 Lewis Howes? So if your biology is bad or off, your mental health is probably going to be off as well.
10:18 Speaker 01 Depending on where in the body it's occurring, yes. When your, when your biology is off or when your metabolism is off, you are likely going to have signs or symptoms of a problem somewhere in your brain or body.
10:32 Lewis Howes? Really?
10:32 Speaker 01 And that could be high blood pressure, high blood glucose in the form of prediabetes or diabetes. It could be obesity. It could be depression or anxiety or ADHD symptoms or seizures or Alzheimer's disease. It spans all of those. Again, not because metabolism is simple, but because metabolism is ridiculously complicated and all encompassing when it comes to biology. So in that sense, some researchers will even push back on me and say, Chris, come on, that's not very helpful. If you're saying that all of this is related to biology, then that doesn't really help us much.
11:16 Speaker 01 But if, once you see this big picture and you see these different puzzle pieces and how they all fit together, you can actually come up with shockingly revolutionary treatments sometimes.
11:32 Speaker 01 For people with mild mental health conditions, all the way to severe, crippling, disabling, mental health conditions. And at the same time, you're helping them improve their mental health, you can help them achieve a healthy weight and lower their blood pressure and live longer and live healthier.
11:54 Lewis Howes? What I mean, as a Harvard researcher, psychiatrist, you're supposed to be studying the brain or the minds, right? You're not supposed to be studying or thoughts. You're not supposed to be studying the body, right?
12:05 Speaker 01 That is exactly right. That's the way most people think of a psychiatrist.
12:11 Lewis Howes? Right. You're not supposed to be, don't think about the rest of the body, just the mind or the brain or the thoughts, right?
12:15 Speaker 01 You're a shrink and you lay people on couches and you talk to them about their dreams and their past and their childhood and everything else. Or you're focused on these chemical imbalances, all these neurotransmitters and you're prescribing pills, lithium, Prozac, Zoloft, Xanax, Klonopin, Dapico, whatever. You're just prescribing pills to try to modulate the brain activity.
12:42 Lewis Howes? Body doesn't work moduli. It works as a unified system, right?
12:47 Speaker 01 It sure does. It sure does.
12:49 Lewis Howes? You can't treat one element of the body or the brain by itself without hopefully treating the holistic part of the human being, correct?
12:58 Speaker 01 I think that is, you know, what you just said is 100% correct. And what you just said, when you say it like that, it sounds so obvious. Most people are gonna think, well, duh. But we in the mental health field, I just want to make clear how disruptive this is to the current paradigm. We in the mental health field prescribe pills that cause obesity.
13:28 Lewis Howes? That cause it.
13:29 Speaker 01 Cause it. We give people pills and they gain 100 pounds in one year.
13:35 Lewis Howes? Really?
13:36 Speaker 01 We, at the same time, they have dramatic increase in cardiovascular risk factors.
13:44 Speaker 01 They develop prediabetes or diabetes. And at least in the elderly, some of the medications we prescribe cause premature death.
13:54 Lewis Howes? Wow.
13:56 Speaker 01 And this is not like conspiracy theory stuff. These warnings are all listed on the package inserts issued by the FDA.
14:07 Lewis Howes? That side effects may include.
14:10 Speaker 01 Yes.
14:11 Lewis Howes? Weight gain.
14:12 Speaker 01 Diabetes, cardiovascular risk.
14:16 Lewis Howes? So people know that these side effects are most likely going to happen and they take it anyways.
14:22 Speaker 01 They take it anyways because that's what the doctors are telling them they need.
14:26 Lewis Howes? And they probably have lived in a lot of pain and suffering for so long that they want some relief also.
14:31 Speaker 01 They're desperate.
14:32 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
14:33 Speaker 01 They're desperate and they are, you know, in extreme cases, lives are ruined.
14:43 Lewis Howes? Families are ruined also.
14:45 Speaker 01 Families are, like, lives are ruined. So this broken, vulnerable family, whether it's your parents, your spouse, your children, take this vulnerable human being to a doctor and say, please, I'm begging you, help us.
15:03 Lewis Howes? Right.
15:05 Speaker 01 And the doctor says, we're going to use these pills. And these pills are going to help your symptoms. They are antipsychotics, they are mood stabilizers, they are antidepressants, they are whatever. And again, not all of the pills have the same side effects. So I'm not here to berate psychiatric meds altogether. I think psychiatric meds can save people's lives. I think some people really benefit from them. So I can play both sides of that fence. But the most disruptive part about linking physical health with mental health or linking metabolic health with mental health
15:49 Speaker 01 is that so many of our standard treatments are doing exactly the opposite of what we want to do. And that needs to change. And it needs to change as soon as possible because lives are at stake and human beings are suffering.
16:07 Lewis Howes? Yes. I'm curious, based on your, how long have you been a psychiatrist for now?
16:12 Speaker 01 Twenty-nine years.
16:14 Lewis Howes? Almost thirty years, almost three decades. You've probably seen a lot of changes over the last three decades. How many, in your opinion, how many people in America or in the world who you think are on mental health drugs, some type of mental health-related drug, actually don't need to be on them if they take other intervention approaches through the things that you're talking about, the health and wellness, the right foods, the right sleep? How many people would you think don't need to be on those drugs if they intervene in a different way? Is it ten percent that don't need them? Is it ninety percent? Is it, is there only, you know, what's the percentage?
16:56 Speaker 01 It is, it's a really important question. And the real answer is I'm kind of wildly guessing.
17:02 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
17:03 Speaker 01 But I'll at least share with you the basis for my wild guess. At best, it's maybe twenty percent.
17:12 Lewis Howes? Don't need them.
17:13 Speaker 01 Who, twenty percent who do need them.
17:15 Lewis Howes? Twenty percent who do.
17:16 Speaker 01 Eighty percent who probably could get by if we, as society, take a different stance and use different strategies for human health care, integrating physical health and mental health.
17:34 Lewis Howes? Wow.
17:35 Speaker 01 And the reason I say that is because the rates of many mental disorders are at all-time ever-recorded highs. The rates of depression, all-time highs. The rates of anxiety, especially in children, have tripled in fifteen years. Anxiety disorders diagnosed by pediatricians tripled in fifteen years. Rates of ADHD have tripled since 2010, fourteen years, triple the rates. The rates of autism spectrum disorder have quadrupled in twenty years. The rates of bipolar disorder in adults have doubled in twenty years.
18:15 Speaker 01 In children and adolescents, it's up exponentially because bipolar disorder largely wasn't recognized or diagnosed thirty years ago. So it's up like, literally like thousands of percent. It, it, it's crazy how much that's up. The rates of eating disorder. Five-fold increased risk for eating disorders. In case people have been hiding under a rock. Opioid overdose deaths through the roof. Five-fold increased risk in 25 years. Five-fold increase in opioid overdose deaths. We've long known how to recognize that kind of thing. There's this statistic.
19:00 Speaker 01 So a lot of people are like, oh, this can't actually be true. We're just recognizing all these diagnoses. Well, we knew how to recognize eating disorders and people starving themselves to death. 30 years ago. Yeah, we could see it. There was no problem diagnosing that. We knew how to recognize opioid overdose deaths 30 years ago. That people are dying. They're dead on the street.
19:24 Lewis Howes? You get the bloodstream.
19:25 Speaker 01 It's not rocket science. It was not that we were stupid 30 years ago and didn't know how to recognize it or diagnose it. There's another statistic called deaths of despair, which include the opioid overdose deaths, but includes suicides and other things, other causes of death, alcohol-related deaths. That is at an all-time high, at least since the Great Depression. I think we actually just, a year or two ago, surpassed the Great Depression. And the reason that's important is not because the Great Depression was a lot of metabolic health conditions.
20:05 Speaker 01 The Great Depression was tremendous pain, suffering, despair, lives being destroyed. 25% unemployment rate. People standing in line for food to feed their children. People losing all of their life savings. And there were no, there was no social security program back then. There were no government resources to make sure people weren't homeless. And when people are facing that kind of monumental despair, their lives are ruined. They go out and drink themselves to death. They kill themselves on purpose. They do all sorts of things.
20:47 Speaker 01 We are nowhere near that level of pain and suffering. In theory. You look at our economy, there's not, there's no comparison.
20:58 Lewis Howes? People have an abundant, in general, people have an abundance of food options. They have an abundance of shelter in general. They have an abundance of opportunities for success, or jobs, or careers, or choices, right? It's, you have options in general.
21:15 Speaker 01 We do, and we have safety nets. If nothing else, safety, it's not like you're living a life of luxury with a safety net.
21:22 Lewis Howes? But the government has funding for.
21:23 Speaker 01 But you are in a home with electricity, with heat. You're in a home with food. You're not standing on the street begging people for food so that you can feed your starving child. The deaths of despair are higher than that, period.
21:43 Lewis Howes? Why? What is the root cause, as a psychiatrist, would you say is the root cause of, you know, all these different mental health disorders and diseases?
21:53 Speaker 01 You know, I think those two statistics and those two periods, Great Depression and now, are really telling, because the real story is complicated. I'm not here to say all of mental health is due to eating bad food, or people being overweight or diabetic. I'm not here to say that. Because the Great Depression tells us a familiar story that most people know. When you lose everything, when you're poverty-stricken, when you lose your, your, your life.
22:34 Speaker 01 So these are people who, say, take a man who had a wife and two kids. He's the provider. He loses his job. He can't feed his wife and two kids. The wife wasn't working. She was staying home, raising the kids. They are furious with him because he had a hundred bucks in the stock market and lost it all. And that was their life savings. And now he's drinking every night. He's now an alcoholic.
23:11 Speaker 01 Or maybe using opioids because we actually had an opioid epidemic back at the turn of the century too. So now he's numbing his pain and his humiliation. It's easy to understand. So those are psychological, social causes of mental illness or mental health conditions. Those still exist and those can still cause mental illness today.
23:34 Lewis Howes? Yes.
23:35 Speaker 01 But again, there's a disconnect. We have all time ever recorded highs now, higher than the Great Depression. That doesn't make sense. And what is that? And what I'm saying is that sometimes biology, more than psychology or social factors, sometimes biology can drive mental illness too.
23:58 Lewis Howes? Is that a sometimes or a lot of the times?
24:01 Speaker 01 I think, I think it's a lot of the times because I actually think they're all interconnected.
24:06 Lewis Howes? Yeah. Because what's the obesity levels today versus 30, 50 years ago?
24:13 Speaker 01 They're staggering as everyone knows.
24:16 Lewis Howes? And type 2 diabetes.
24:18 Speaker 01 So right now, the statistics are about 70% of adult Americans are overweight or obese. About 40% of adult Americans are obese. The rates in children, it's about 40% of children now are overweight or obese.
24:34 Lewis Howes? That makes me sad. When kids, when I see kids like that, it makes me sad because it's so hard to reverse it. It's so hard. I know how hard it is to lose weight. It's so hard. But if you're starting young and you're already gaining all that weight, I just feel like it's challenging unless maybe when you're like 16, you hit puberty and it's like maybe metabolism like magically works better. But if you keep consuming the same way without being conscious of how is this going to impact my life? How's it going to impact my overall health of my, my brain, my heart, my, my muscles, my everything? It's so hard to reverse that. And for people that are, from my experience or my witnessing it,
25:18 Lewis Howes? it's hard for people, once they are overweight, to like, first off, lose it, because it might take years. It might take years, depending on how much you've gained. That is a daunting task for someone who's already not feeling good. They might be feeling shame, or guilt, or depression already, because of their weight or their body image, right? It is daunting to try to take it on for most people. And therefore, they don't take it on. Or they try, and then they fall back, and then they go back to old patterns of consuming things that keep them stuck. And it's the cycles, the loop. It's so hard. And that's why I get sad when I see it with kids. And I can imagine it's gotta be tough to be a parent. I'm not a parent. So I can imagine it's tough when your kids are screaming, and they want ice cream every day, or whatever it is.
26:03 Lewis Howes? I can imagine it's gotta be really challenging. So that's also...
26:06 Speaker 01 And it's even more challenging for parents, because even if you're one of those parents who's trying your hardest to give your kids real whole foods at home.
26:17 Lewis Howes? At school, they're...
26:18 Speaker 01 They go to school and get Pop-Tarts, and Fruit Loops, and mac and cheese, and chocolate chip cookies, and pizza for lunch, or their snack, or their breakfast, or whatever. A lot of those foods, you know, the researchers will call them hyper palatable. Others will call them addictive. Whichever term you prefer, those foods are designed to make people eat more of them than they should.
26:51 Lewis Howes? Not feel satiated or full.
26:53 Speaker 01 And so, once you start eating those foods, even if you come home to mom, who's got...
27:03 Speaker 01 Chicken or turkey and vegetables on the table. You look at that, you might even eat it and you're still hungry. And then what do you want? You want a bag of chips while you're watching TV or playing your video games. And your mom is gonna probably ultimately give in because you're gonna be whining. This kid's gonna be whining about how they're still hungry.
27:25 Lewis Howes? Yeah, and you're tired and you've worked all day and you don't have the energy to be patient. I get it, it's gotta be challenging.
27:30 Speaker 01 And no parent wants to hear their child say, "I'm hungry."
27:34 Lewis Howes? Or, "I hate you."
27:35 Speaker 01 Yeah, "I hate you, I'm hungry, why are you starving me?" Every parent wants their children to grow and thrive and like so like that is just an instinctual thing. We feed our children. We make sure they're not hungry. That is an instinctual thing. And so when your kids are getting hooked in other food environments that you have no control over as a parent and then you're trying to feed them healthy food, it's an uphill battle at best and probably a losing battle.
28:07 Lewis Howes? Hard.
28:07 Speaker 01 For most people.
28:09 Lewis Howes? For moms or parents, moms and dads watching right now, parents watching right now, as someone who has studied this for three decades, what is the link between nutrition and mental health?
28:20 Speaker 01 The reality is it gets really complicated fast. And there are a lot of mental health professionals who are still skeptical about this field. I'm gonna just say that upfront.
28:33 Lewis Howes? Sure, and is there research or science that you've seen that's?
28:36 Speaker 01 There is a tremendous amount of research and science clearly documenting these links.
28:41 Lewis Howes? And what is the, what is the link? And then what is the research and science saying about the link between mental health and nutrition?
28:48 Speaker 01 So let's build on what we were just talking about. Obesity and mental health.
28:54 Lewis Howes? Because there's a correlation there.
28:56 Speaker 01 Most people understand that nutrition is related to obesity. That what you're eating plays a role in obesity. I don't have to go to, I don't have to fight too hard to convince people of that. So if we can assume that that is true, what you put in your mouth day to day plays a role in whether you have obesity or not. Once a child has, or an adult has obesity, they have no history of mental illness at all. They start out with obesity.
29:28 Speaker 01 Once you have obesity, you are at dramatically increased risk for a wide range of mental disorders.
29:36 Lewis Howes? Really?
29:37 Speaker 01 Nicotine use disorder, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depression, anxiety disorders, personality disorders, eating disorders. Essentially, all of the mental health conditions, all of the major categories of mental health conditions that we have are included. So if you have obesity, you are at much higher risk of developing a wide range of mental health conditions.
30:04 Lewis Howes? Wow.
30:05 Speaker 01 If your parents have obesity, their offspring are at much greater risk of having neurodevelopmental disorders.
30:13 Lewis Howes? Oh, man.
30:14 Speaker 01 Meaning autism, ADHD, learning disorders, and others.
30:19 Lewis Howes? What is the percentage or number of like when someone reaches obesity level? What is the likelihood that they'll also have a mental health disorder or condition? Is there like you're 20% more likely, you're 80% more likely to have some type of mental health challenge?
30:39 Speaker 01 So it honestly, the real details of that get down to what age is the person? Are they at an age where this disorder is more likely to occur or even be diagnosed or recognized?
30:52 Lewis Howes? Sure.
30:53 Speaker 01 But the rates range anywhere from the low end is 50% more likely to have a mental health condition. The high end is 350%.
31:04 Lewis Howes? Holy cow.
31:05 Speaker 01 3.5 times more likely to have mental health conditions, including things like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder.
31:14 Lewis Howes? Just linked to obesity.
31:16 Speaker 01 So we have a really good longitudinal study of children. So researchers followed over 5,000 kids from birth to age 24. So even before they have obesity, they have insulin resistance, which we can measure. The children at age nine who had the highest levels of insulin resistance were five times more likely, it's 500% more likely, to develop a psychotic disorder.
31:44 Lewis Howes? Holy cow.
31:45 Speaker 01 By the time they were 24.
31:46 Lewis Howes? Wow.
31:47 Speaker 01 That's bipolar disorder or schizophrenia. The children who gained the most weight around the time of puberty, four times more likely to have major depression by the time they turned 24. They, you could mix and match those statistics, but those were the statistically significant findings. But children who gained a lot of weight around puberty were also more likely to develop psychotic disorders and all sorts of other disorders. And likewise, children with high levels of insulin resistance, more likely to develop mood disorders and other disorders. But the bottom line is that, and a five-fold increased risk. I want to be clear.
32:29 Speaker 01 When we talk about statistics like, oh, maybe eating so much red meat is bad for you. Those epidemiological studies at best find 10%, 15% increased risk over years. We're talking 500% increased risk.
32:47 Lewis Howes? Man.
32:48 Speaker 01 This is not trivial. This is like slap in the face. This is a stronger connection than genes, genetics, than family history, than other things.
33:01 Lewis Howes? Because a lot of people say, well, mental health illness is like genetic, right? It's like a genetic thing, or it was in my family, or my grandfather, or something. But is that true? Or is it more, well, if they were obese, and you also were obese as a child, it's just kind of linked because that was your environment and that was the habits that your parents did, and so you took on those habits. Like, is it truly genetic? Or is it more an environmental pass down?
33:28 Speaker 01 I think there's truth in, there are some risk genes that we have identified. And interestingly, almost all of them can be linked directly to metabolism, or specifically mitochondria.
33:42 Lewis Howes? Interesting.
33:42 Speaker 01 We can get into the nerdy biology if you want, but, but they can, almost all of them can be linked to metabolic health.
33:51 Lewis Howes? And if you have a weaker genetic metabolic health symptoms or conditions.
33:58 Lewis Howes? Are you able to reverse that and improve that even if it was linked in your genes from your family?
34:04 Speaker 01 I believe we can.
34:05 Lewis Howes? Wow.
34:06 Speaker 01 And that is
34:07 Lewis Howes? That's huge.
34:08 Speaker 01 That, in my mind, is the hope.
34:10 Lewis Howes? Now, is that a belief or is there science or research backing the belief?
34:14 Speaker 01 There is. So, we don't have massive randomized clinical trials with thousands of patients yet. So, some will say, you know, until we have a randomized controlled trial of 10,000 people with schizophrenia, we're not going to believe it.
34:35 Lewis Howes? Yeah, yeah.
34:36 Speaker 01 Fine.
34:36 Lewis Howes? But based on your practice?
34:38 Speaker 01 Based on my practice, based on the thousands of people that I'm hearing from, based on the pilot trials that are getting done, yes, 100%.
34:49 Lewis Howes? Wow.
34:49 Speaker 01 I know this, these strategies, metabolic treatment strategies can save lives, literally.
34:57 Lewis Howes? Wow.
34:58 Speaker 01 Can save lives. And
35:01 Lewis Howes? And these require no drugs?
35:03 Speaker 01 Yeah. If anything, the challenge sometimes is getting people off of drugs that they've been on for years or decades.
35:09 Lewis Howes? So, their body can start to heal and get into a cycle of harmony?
35:14 Speaker 01 Yes.
35:15 Lewis Howes? Not a cycle of chemical changing or blocking or disrupting?
35:19 Speaker 01 Yes. Again, because of this, again, I'm not anti-medication. And if somebody's taking medications and is thriving on that medication, keep doing it. I love people thriving. And if somebody is saying, I take a stimulant for my ADHD and I'm thriving now, great, keep thriving. If somebody else says, I have anxiety or depression and I take Prozac and it has saved my life and I'm doing great on it and I don't have any side effects, great, keep doing it. But more often than not, a lot of people are not thriving on psychotropic medications. At best, they are managing what they are being told are chronic
36:04 Speaker 01 mental health conditions. You're going to be like this for the rest of your life. You just have to accept. That, oh, it must be genetic. You know, the researchers and the clinicians who say that, I have zero doubt. They actually have such good intentions when they say that.
36:22 Lewis Howes? Sure, 100%.
36:23 Speaker 01 And the intention is, I don't want to blame people. And I want them to know, this isn't your fault. This isn't your fault. But by telling people it's genetic.
36:33 Lewis Howes? It kind of gives them an out, right? It's like, oh, it's not my fault. And there's nothing I can do about it.
36:38 Speaker 01 So, I think that's, again, I think that a lot of people think that that's benevolent. I actually think it's harmful because you're making people hopeless. You're telling people that you are defective.
36:52 Lewis Howes? That's not good.
36:52 Speaker 01 Your genes are defective. It's not your fault. It's your parents' fault, and their grandparents' fault, and their parents' fault, and their parents' fault.
36:59 Lewis Howes? And you're gonna be on medication for the rest of your life.
37:01 Speaker 01 But you're gonna have to take meds for the rest of your life.
37:03 Lewis Howes? I don't like that.
37:04 Speaker 01 And, and we, we're sorry that these meds aren't working ideally.
37:08 Lewis Howes? This is the best we got.
37:08 Speaker 01 We're sorry that you're in the hospital every other year.
37:11 Lewis Howes? Oh, man.
37:11 Speaker 01 We're sorry that you can't work because your depression and anxiety are so bad, or because your mood instability is so bad, or because your ADHD is so bad, or because your learning disorder is so bad. We're sorry you can't work. We're sorry you're not thriving. But that's just the way it is. And you're just gonna have to accept it. And accept that you've got this unfortunate condition. Again, in the last 25 years, we're telling that to four times more people.
37:41 Lewis Howes? Crazy, crazy.
37:42 Speaker 01 Four times more people than we were 25 years ago. And it's not because we're just recognizing it more. People's brains are being impaired. That's what I think. At the same time that we have skyrocketing rates of obesity and diabetes. And we see impairment and, you know, appetite signaling, and satiety signaling, and, you know, fat cells and everything else. That's obesity is that. Obesity is a biological, pathological process. It is not good for you. By and large, I think for most people, it's not their fault.
38:23 Speaker 01 If somebody's telling you, eat this food, eat these chips, eat these Pop-Tarts, these are good for you, and you're eating them. And those things are making you sick.
38:33 Lewis Howes? Yep.
38:34 Speaker 01 I think the first step is somebody needs to inform the person that these are not good for you. These are actually toxic for you. They're harming your health. And so we need to start there. And then we need to start with like, schools aren't passing out cigarettes. They're not passing out vapes. Why are they passing out other harmful substances?
38:54 Lewis Howes? Right.
38:55 Speaker 01 To our children?
38:57 Lewis Howes? You know, it's interesting, Chris, I, you know, as I'm reflecting on my childhood. And I think there's one thing that saved my life. Because I had extreme learning disability. I was never like diagnosed or anything like that. But I was in the bottom of my class. I, I had to cheat my way through on homeworks and tests just to pass class because it was so challenging for me to
39:18 Lewis Howes? hear something and retain the information, comprehend it. No matter how much I read a book, the page, I couldn't remember what was on the page. It was just challenging. Learning from sitting down and, you know, eight hours a day on a desk, being told complicated things and trying to remember, remember them. It was daunting every day. I couldn't wait to be done with school. So my whole childhood, all the way through high school and college, I did not enjoy sitting in a classroom and being taught in that manner. I love to learn, but being taught in that manner didn't work for me. I was never diagnosed with anything, but I, I, I know I had dyslexia or something because I still struggle today reading.
40:02 Lewis Howes? And I would just wait for the clock to end every day. And eat bad food during lunch, during dinner. And my parents didn't know. We didn't really know about nutrition back in the late eighties, early nineties like we do now, more of it, right? So I just got what I got. I ate what I ate, I got what I got. And there was one thing that saved my life, I think. And that was.
40:24 Lewis Howes? Playing a lot on the playground and playing sports a lot. Because I was moving my body so much after class. Outdoors, running, sprinting, jumping, playing, I think that saved my life. Cause otherwise, if I didn't have that, there's no way I'd be able to stay in shape. And there's no way I've been able to function with my brain. Cause it was already struggling so much from consuming the food and having kind of a learning disability, I guess. It was just daunting every day in class. And I don't think I would have made it if I didn't have the ability to play and be active as well. I think that mitigated a lot of the, the bad foods and candy and chips and 12 Dr. Peppers a day I was drinking or whatever I was doing. It was just like, it mitigated some of that.
41:08 Lewis Howes? Or my body was able to process some of that sugar somehow, so I could function. And without that, I think I've been hard. And I think kids nowadays are, are working out less and less. They're less physically active. And it's gonna really harm them in their adulthood. And you're seeing the link to it already based on your research, so. I don't know how people do it today. Like, I feel like I was lucky enough that I was able to work out, just kind of save my life. I don't know.
41:37 Speaker 01 You were lucky, or you were self-medicating. I could almost say.
41:42 Lewis Howes? You mean that the food was self-medication?
41:44 Speaker 01 No, the exercise was your self-medication.
41:46 Lewis Howes? That was my medication.
41:47 Speaker 01 That you noticed, I feel crappy. I wanna go run and sprint and jump and other stuff. And now I feel alive. Now I feel good.
41:55 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
41:56 Speaker 01 And that's why you didn't stop. Unfortunately, other kids get sucked into this pit.
42:04 Lewis Howes? This was pre-social media also, so I wasn't, you know.
42:07 Speaker 01 Where it just drains you of all your energy. And now you're becoming overweight or obese and prediabetic. And now you don't have energy to go run. And you're getting more and more out of shape. And it's harder for you to run because you're overweight or obese. And now other people are making fun of you. You're not getting any kind of positive reinforcement for anything athletic that you're doing. If anything, you're getting laughed at and made fun of.
42:34 Lewis Howes? Which makes you wanna eat more and just.
42:37 Speaker 01 Which makes you then say, well, why am I doing this? I may as well just give up. I'm, I'm not a jock, I'm not an athlete. That's for other people. I'll just focus on school or I'll just focus on whatever. And then a few years later, they're getting diagnosed with depression, anxiety, ADHD, whatever, and they're getting medicated, and now they're on that path.
43:03 Speaker 01 You know, I wanna, I wanna come back to this concept of obesity, because one of the, one of the most strongly kind of recommended remedies to the obesity epidemic is acceptance.
43:18 Lewis Howes? Acceptance of what?
43:20 Speaker 01 Acceptance of obesity. It's this movement called body positivity.
43:25 Lewis Howes? I was just gonna ask you this.
43:26 Speaker 01 Body positivity.
43:28 Lewis Howes? I was just gonna ask you this, because this is probably the most controversial thing that you'll talk about.
43:32 Speaker 01 Let's all be positive. Let's just stop fighting this uphill battle. Let's accept that obesity is around. Some will go so far as to say it's genetic, again, well-intentioned. It's not genetic, people, like, we didn't have the rates of obesity 50 years ago that we do now. Anybody who tells you it's genetic is living in a fairy tale.
43:58 Lewis Howes? How scary is it for you as a psychiatrist and someone who treats mental health disorders on a daily basis?
44:04 Speaker 01 It is terrifying for me, because, not because I don't want people to be able to be overweight or obese, and be happy and healthy, and go through life, and be accepted, and not be made fun of. If somebody can be obese, and otherwise healthy, and their brain is intact, and they are functioning in life, and they have friends, and they have romantic relationships, and everything that they want, and it's all going well, I have no problem with that person. It's, it's free country, make your choices, we're, we're all different, we've all got our strengths and weaknesses, leave that person alone.
44:44 Speaker 01 But the statistics we talked about earlier tell a very different story. It's not just their body shape that's at risk. It's not just societal stigma. It's not just fat shaming that is the risk. Obesity is a symptom. That your metabolism is disrupted. Wow. And something is disrupting your metabolism. And at the same time, it is causing the symptom of obesity. The same time that it's causing your fat cells to just get larger and larger and larger. And just unrelentingly larger and larger and larger, meaning more and more weight gain.
45:28 Speaker 01 Those same processes are affecting the way your brain functions. And putting you at risk for depression, anxiety, burnout, psychosis, bipolar symptoms. Wow. And those are the labels that will then ruin your life. And nobody will even think to connect those two dots. Nobody will even think those two dots are even related. Despite the abundance of research that we have. And again, many in the mental health field are terrified to talk about this. Why? Because they know that the pills we're prescribing are causing obesity. Oh, man. We are contributing to this problem.
46:13 Speaker 01 So little Susie comes in, normal weight, with some mood instability and depression. And we start putting her on pills. And those pills make her gain forty pounds. And then two years later, she develops her first psychotic episode.
46:35 Speaker 01 And we think the mental health field right now just says, well, she just had a bad illness. Our treatments, the obesity, none of that had anything to do with her new brain symptoms. It's painful to think about that. It's been painful for me as a psychiatrist to think about that because I Because you were trained a certain way. I was trained a certain way and I was prescribing those pills and I still prescribe those pills in some situations to patients. And to think that I may have contributed to people's chronic mental health conditions. It goes all the way from, I feel guilt ridden, I feel disgusted with myself, I feel nauseated.
47:18 Speaker 01 If I really let myself think about the patients and the level of suffering and pain they experienced, the decimation to their lives, the suicides, the people who are dead. When I really think about that, it's nauseating to think that our current treatments contributed to that or may have contributed to that. And what I'm saying is that the science is finally coming together. So if there are any clinicians, psychiatrists, please do your research. Google it, PubMed, search it, do whatever you need to do. Most of your listeners are not psychiatrists and scientists.
48:03 Speaker 01 But what I'm here to tell all, everyone, is that the science has come together. The science is coming together. We have this outline which calls for a paradigm shift. A paradigm shift in how we think about mental health and how we treat it. And to put it in the simplest terms, we need to pair and integrate physical health and mental health. All your listeners are going to say, yeah, duh, of course. Well, then why are we prescribing pills that are causing physical health conditions? Why are we prescribing pills that are causing massive weight gain, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, premature mortality?
48:47 Speaker 01 On average, people with mental illness, any one, take your pick, any mental illness, people diagnosed with a mental illness are dying early deaths. On average, men are losing 10 years of life, women are losing seven years of life. And the primary cause of death is not suicide. The primary cause of death are heart attacks and strokes. Just 10 years earlier than everyone else. And we are turning a blind eye to this. I'm less concerned, quite honestly, I'm less concerned about the end of life. If you die happy at 70 instead of 80, whatever. I mean, to the people who love you, it is, it's a big deal. And I don't mean to minimize that or be dismissive of that.
49:32 Speaker 01 If you've got children, I mean, they care. And yes, I want everybody to live long, healthy lives. But what I'm much more concerned about as a psychiatrist is what happened to that person for the 40 years prior to their death? Were they thriving or were they suffering? Yeah. With unrelenting mental anguish? Were they suffering? Or were they just even, just like you described when you were younger? Were they muddling by? They're getting by, they're doing okay. But they constantly, chronically feel, I'm less than everyone else. I'm not smart like everyone else. I'm not motivated like everyone else.
50:17 Speaker 01 I, maybe I just, you know, there's something wrong with me. Maybe I'm depressed or I'm anxious or I've got ADD or whatever. I've got a learning disorder. But there are millions and millions of people getting through life, feeling like they're not good enough. Feeling like they don't measure up. And what I'm here to say is we can do better.
50:43 Lewis Howes? Yes.
50:43 Speaker 01 Those people should not have to go through life like that. Those people should be thriving and we should help them thrive.
50:50 Lewis Howes? Hundred percent. And you mentioned something about kind of body acceptance. It seems like when I was growing up in the nineties or whatever, it was about the media portrayed extreme skinny in women as beautiful. And then now it seems like a different extreme. It's like obesity is beautiful and the media portrays that and body acceptance. And I think there's a good intention behind it. But as a psychiatrist, what is the fear that you have when people are being celebrated for obesity versus thinking about a holistic health approach to life?
51:30 Speaker 01 I really think it's because, you know, I think that movement again, it's good intention.
51:37 Lewis Howes? Accept yourself, yeah.
51:39 Speaker 01 That they think that all of the bad outcomes of obesity are because of fat shaming and societal stigma. And if society would just come around and learn to be kinder and nicer to people with obesity, if everybody could play nice together, we would have a happier world. What I'm here to tell you is that's not true. Obesity is a symptom. It's like smoke coming out of your house and ignoring it and saying, let's have a, let's have a smoke positivity home. Let's, let's just celebrate the smoke coming out of our homes and ignore that there's a fire burning.
52:22 Lewis Howes? Wow.
52:23 Speaker 01 That may burn down our foundation, that may burn down our home. What I'm saying is let's not ignore it. It is a symptom of metabolic dysfunction or dysregulation. We can understand it and we can do something about it. And again, we can help people thrive. A lot of people quickly then go to Ozempic. Let's just prescribe Ozempic for everybody. Put everybody on Ozempic, that'll solve the, that'll save the day. No, that won't save the day. There is still a root cause of the obesity. And if we don't address it,
53:01 Speaker 01 if we just ignore it and treat the symptom with Ozempic, and I'm not anti Ozempic. If people need Ozempic to get a leg up on the lifestyle changes that they need to make, if that helps them get over their addictive cravings for the junk food that they should know they can't eat, then I'm all for it. But what I want to be clear is that our dietary advice for too long has been too simplistic. We tell people eat less and that'll solve the problem. So you can have Doritos still, but just eat fewer of them. Instead of eating the whole bag, eat half the bag.
53:45 Speaker 01 You can have your chocolate chip cookies, the ultra-processed kind, not the kind that grandma's making, the ultra-processed kind of choc- you can have those chocolate chip cookies, but just have two or three instead of 10. The problem is that people can white knuckle it for a few weeks or a few months. They can, and this is the illusion, is that people can white knuckle it. They can white knuckle it and eat less of that crappy food. And sure enough, their weight will go down a little bit. And then everybody will say, "See? See? It's a willpower thing." But that person will slip back 95% of the time. That's what the statistics tell us. Wow.
54:30 Speaker 01 95% of the time, when they lose weight in those ways, they will slip back. Why? Because their cravings will come back. Their cravings actually never left. They were just white knuckling it. And people can only white knuckle it for so long. So instead, what I would argue is that people need to be given better advice. And that advice means-
54:56 Speaker 01 Some foods are gonna be healthier for you than other foods. You can't eat bags of Doritos every day and think that you are going to be healthy. Right. You can't eat ultra-processed chocolate chip cookies every day as your treat and think that you are gonna be healthy. And it's not because those foods are so delicious. So some people will say that. They're just really delicious. Well, grandmas made delicious food a hundred years ago. We had Thanksgiving celebrations a hundred years ago. Yeah, it wasn't all ultra-processed. People weren't obese at nearly the rates that we have now.
55:38 Speaker 01 So it's not just delicious food versus bland salad. That's not the decision point. The decision point is the ultra-processing. You know, there's lots of debates about what exactly is happening. But you know, there's a researcher at the NIH, Kevin Hall, who's done some research on ultra-processed foods. He basically takes people, locks them up in a metabolic ward and feeds them, explicitly feeds them, the exact same macros. So the same protein, fat, carbohydrate. Calories. Calories, everything, giving them like 6,000 calories.
56:23 Speaker 01 The option of 6,000 calories a day. 6,000, wow. With meals and snacks and then just says, eat whatever you want. Try not to lose or gain weight. Just eat whatever you want. He did a study that was published over four years ago now. And when he gave them unprocessed foods, same macros, same calorie content, all that. When he gave them unprocessed foods versus ultra-processed foods, on average, the people ate 500 calories more of the ultra-processed versions and they gained on average about two kilograms, which is about almost five pounds. Wow. In just two weeks. In just two weeks.
57:04 Speaker 01 When they were given the real whole food, on average, they lost about the five pounds. He just began replicating this study, he's not done with it. But he just published some interim results. The interim results are even worse. When the, when the subjects were given the ultra-processed, highly palatable foods, on average, they ate a thousand calories extra a day. The interesting thing is that he asked the, the participants through the whole study, how do you like the food that we're giving you? How full are you? How hungry are you? How are you feeling? The ratings on all of the different foods were similar.
57:48 Speaker 01 They were not different. So when people were being given real whole foods, it wasn't that they were complaining, saying this food sucks. They weren't saying, I'm hungry all the time. They weren't saying any of that. It's just, they stopped eating. Because their metabolism was healthier. And their brain told them, you're full, you're done. You're good. Stop eating. Wow. When they were eating the ultra-processed stuff, there are very likely, based on that research alone, I think it's fair to say, there are chemicals added that just make the foods hyper-palatable or addictive. Yeah.
58:30 Speaker 01 Now, you know, when I say that, most people are like, well, yeah, we kind of get that. That's probably true. If I'm selling food, if I'm a food company CEO, what's my goal? Sell the most food possible. Get people to eat the whole bag so that they have to go back to the grocery store tomorrow and get another bag. And then the next day, get another bag. And then the next day, get another bag. Just keep pulling it. That's good for my profit margin. That CEO doesn't really care about your health. Yeah. They certainly don't care about your brain health, or your child's brain health. And right now, we're not even holding them responsible or accountable for what that, what their chemicals might be doing to our children's brains. Wow.
59:14 Speaker 01 And when, when your child ends up with a severe chronic mental health condition, you know, at a minimum, we call it failure to launch. Millions of those people out there. Mm-hmm. All these, men more than women, unfortunately. All these guys are sitting in their parents' basements, playing video games, failing to launch.
59:39 Speaker 01 That's the minimum. The maximum is your kid is going to psychiatrists, trying medication after medication, going to therapists, in and out of hospitals, maybe in and out of jail or prison.
59:52 Lewis Howes? Right.
59:53 Speaker 01 Maybe in and out of ERs with overdoses. And the parents are terrified that they are gonna lose their children.
1:00:02 Lewis Howes? And you think the main cause of of all these things is linked to nutrition? And your ability to move your body?
1:00:10 Speaker 01 I think it's linked, so I would go broader, I would say it's linked to metabolism. But yes, there's no doubt.
1:00:17 Lewis Howes? That is sleep, movement.
1:00:18 Speaker 01 Nutrition, movement, sleep are huge.
1:00:22 Lewis Howes? Yes.
1:00:22 Speaker 01 And so, you know, screens come into it. Everybody's glued to their phone and what do screens do? Well, one, they prevent you from moving.
1:00:30 Lewis Howes? Yep.
1:00:31 Speaker 01 You're not, you're not running outside in the sunshine when you're on a screen.
1:00:35 Lewis Howes? Exactly.
1:00:37 Speaker 01 And screens interfere with sleep.
1:00:39 Lewis Howes? Yeah, exactly.
1:00:40 Speaker 01 So, so it's kind of a, screens are a double whammy. So, is screen addiction part of the problem? A hundred percent. And then, sure, the cyberbullying and everything that's going on when you're in that screen. Sure, yeah, that doesn't help. But I think it really is more physiological. I think it, the cyberbullying, the trauma, the stress, all of that is playing a role on our biology.
1:01:08 Lewis Howes? Sure.
1:01:09 Speaker 01 That when you are traumatized, when you are stressed, it is taking a toll on your body. Most people get that. And what I'm saying is if you dig deep, it's actually taking a toll on your metabolic health.
1:01:27 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
1:01:27 Speaker 01 It's making your blood glucose go up from stress hormones and cortisol. It's making your heart rate go up. It's increasing your blood pressure. And if it's occurring over long periods of time, I mean, those are metabolic biomarkers.
1:01:41 Lewis Howes? Chronic stress.
1:01:42 Speaker 01 Yes.
1:01:43 Lewis Howes? Chronic stress is linked to trauma, unresolved trauma, pressures, all these different things as well.
1:01:49 Speaker 01 Yes.
1:01:50 Lewis Howes? So when we can learn to start the healing journey of past traumas, psychologically, emotionally, physical, sexual traumas, if we can start the healing journey of that.
1:02:03 Lewis Howes? And do these other things you're talking about from the physical side, from sleep, from minimizing screens, from nutrition, movement, all these different things. It sounds like you'll be able to set yourself up for more mental peace and therefore greater success as a human being.
1:02:19 Speaker 01 A hundred percent. Like what you just laid out, and I know you're like a shining example of all of this. So you're like everyone's role model for all of this, but yes. And what I'm saying is that you don't have a chemical imbalance that you need to medicate.
1:02:35 Lewis Howes? Yes.
1:02:36 Speaker 01 And you don't necessarily need to be in therapy for the rest of your life every week. You're not a defective human being. That you may have had vulnerabilities. You may have had a less than optimal brain function and the strategies that you've used allowed you to thrive. Again, does anybody get to perfection? No, we're all human. We've all got our strengths. We've all got our weaknesses. That's just the way it is and that's never gonna change.
1:03:10 Lewis Howes? Right.
1:03:11 Speaker 01 But you can still have vulnerabilities. You can still struggle with reading, for example, like you mentioned a little bit ago. You can still struggle with reading and be quite successful.
1:03:20 Lewis Howes? And it doesn't have to affect my self-worth anymore.
1:03:24 Speaker 01 No.
1:03:25 Lewis Howes? It doesn't have to affect my ability to feel good about myself. It's okay, yeah.
1:03:31 Speaker 01 And especially nowadays and with learning and with education and all of the technology that we do have. If reading's not your thing, you can acquire information or learn in other ways.
1:03:43 Lewis Howes? Hundred percent, yeah.
1:03:44 Speaker 01 And that's the thing. So some of it is just recognizing what are people's strengths? What are their weaknesses? What are their vulnerabilities? If you're a little overweight, okay, maybe you're not gonna be the super thin athlete. That's okay. You don't need to be.
1:04:01 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
1:04:02 Speaker 01 You don't need to be that in order to thrive. Other people may not be good with reading. Other people may have trouble sitting still for long periods of time. Other people, you know, whatever. I mean, it's fine. We can help people thrive. It's really strange because there are people who wanna like deny all of mental health conditions or brain, like there's no such a thing as mental illness. It's all made up. And I'm like, I'm not, definitely not in that camp.
1:04:32 Speaker 01 So I am in the camp that some people can have pretty significant mental health conditions, mental disorders is what I would call them, mental illnesses, whatever term people want to use, where their brains are not functioning properly, where they can't pay attention, where they're having psychotic symptoms, where they're having panic attacks for no reason, where their brain is just ruminating on past trauma or past painful events. And even though they say to themselves, "Stop it, stop doing that, stop thinking about it, just go on with life." Like, if you could just forget about that, everything would be fine.
1:05:10 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
1:05:10 Speaker 01 And their brain won't let them forget. Their brain just keeps bringing it back up. I do think that people can have conditions where their brains aren't functioning optimally. And what I'm here to say is, yes, medications, we can still use them. If they can help people achieve remission and recovery and thrive in life, I'm all for it.
1:05:37 Lewis Howes? Mm-hmm. But not stay on it forever.
1:05:40 Speaker 01 But far too many people are not getting any of those three things. They are not getting remission, they are not getting recovery, they are not thriving.
1:05:47 Lewis Howes? Right.
1:05:48 Speaker 01 They are being medicated, they're being told, "You've got a severe, a chronic mental health condition, we will manage it the best we can."
1:05:58 Lewis Howes? Right.
1:05:58 Speaker 01 And I want those people to hear loud and clear, "There is a new way."
1:06:03 Lewis Howes? Mm-hmm. That's beautiful. That's beautiful. I've got a couple of final questions for you, because I think this has been a really powerful starter. We'll have to have you back on and talk more extensively. But if people want more from Dr. Chris Palmer, leave a comment below if you're on YouTube, or message us and let us know if you want to hear more, what question you really want answered. But I think this is a great start for people, because we could talk for hours right now, but I think this is a lot for people to digest and to reflect on, because so many people have different things that they've been struggling with. There's a couple of final questions I want to ask you. There's a lot, it seems like lately I've heard more people say they've been diagnosed with ADHD.
1:06:47 Lewis Howes? As a psychiatrist, what is the root cause of ADHD? And also, what is the best way to start healing or reversing ADHD?
1:06:56 Speaker 01 I think, you know, ADHD in its classic form is considered a neurodevelopmental disorder, meaning you're either born that way, or it's something that's happening to you early in life.
1:07:08 Lewis Howes? Yep.
1:07:10 Speaker 01 It can, there are biological, psychological, and social causes of it. So, the biology can include everything we've talked about.
1:07:22 Lewis Howes? Yep.
1:07:22 Speaker 01 Diet, exercise, and those things are way off base and skyrocketing in our, in our population. And I think that is a big part of the reason why we have skyrocketing rates of ADHD. Again, if your parents have-
1:07:38 Lewis Howes? With the lack, with the lack of the things we talked about, nutrition, sleep-
1:07:42 Speaker 01 Nutrition, sleep, exercise. That, that if, if children are being fed from birth,
1:07:52 Speaker 01 highly processed, ultra-processed baby food formula with added sugars and other things. You know, right now, the World Health Organization and the American guidelines, dietary guidelines for Americans say that children under two should have zero foods with added sugar.
1:08:11 Lewis Howes? Wow, yeah.
1:08:11 Speaker 01 Zero. Gerber, if you look at the ingredient list of Gerber baby foods-
1:08:16 Lewis Howes? Salt sugar.
1:08:17 Speaker 01 A lot of them have sugar. It's not all sugar, but a lot of them have added sugar. We are not following these common sense guidelines. And so, we're setting these young brains up for not thriving. And again, this is not impossible. Japan does a very different job. The rates of obesity and overweight in Japanese children are less than 5%.
1:08:46 Lewis Howes? What is it in America?
1:08:48 Speaker 01 Forty percent.
1:08:49 Lewis Howes? Wow.
1:08:51 Speaker 01 Japan knows something we don't. And what they know is that they feed their kids broccoli and seaweed.
1:08:57 Lewis Howes? Oh, food, yeah.
1:08:59 Speaker 01 And, you know, fish and other things. That they're eating them real, they're giving them real food.
1:09:08 Speaker 01 And so that's part of it. Some of the other biology could be infections. If you get an infection early in life, you're much more likely to have a whole range of neuropsychiatric disorders, including ADHD.
1:09:22 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
1:09:23 Speaker 01 But then psychological and social factors play a role. Trauma, stress, childhood adversity, poverty. Those things, yes, they do play a role. So for some kids, you're gonna look at some kids with, who get diagnosed with ADHD. And if they're in a crappy abusive household, yelling, screaming, shootings on the street, but yelling, screaming in the household.
1:09:48 Lewis Howes? Wow.
1:09:50 Speaker 01 It's pretty clear why that kid is having some mental health condition.
1:09:55 Lewis Howes? Sure.
1:09:55 Speaker 01 And I don't care what it is. It's probably more than just ADHD. It might be PTSD, anxiety, depression, whatever, a lot of it. I mean, that's obvious. So I'm not here to take away from those obvious cases.
1:10:10 Speaker 01 Those situations have not increased in our society. We've had a tripling in ADHD diagnoses since 2010. Those poverty-stricken, abusive households have not tripled.
1:10:24 Lewis Howes? So what is the root then of that?
1:10:26 Speaker 01 The root is metabolic dysfunction, which means diet, exercise, lifestyle, other things.
1:10:32 Lewis Howes? Have you seen people who've come in to your clinic or other psychiatrists that you know are working with patients that come in and are diagnosed with ADHD, that have gone on this?
1:10:45 Lewis Howes? Intervention, not using medication, but intervention of I'm gonna prescribe you eight hours of sleep, whole food diet, movement, moving your body. And have you seen them be able to reverse ADHD?
1:10:58 Speaker 01 A hundred percent.
1:10:59 Lewis Howes? Really? So it's a reversible thing?
1:11:02 Speaker 01 It is. So that should not be controversial. The psychiatry field has long said a lot of people will outgrow ADHD. Other research shows, like I just attended a summit on ADHD with world renowned experts. Cutting edge research. The ADHD brain just appears to be five years behind other brains. But that's big when you're in school.
1:11:28 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
1:11:29 Speaker 01 If you're five years behind the other kids.
1:11:31 Lewis Howes? I might have been like 10 years behind. I was like struggling.
1:11:34 Speaker 01 You're five years behind the other kids? That's huge and it's really huge for the teachers. So the teachers see you as a problem.
1:11:40 Lewis Howes? Yes.
1:11:41 Speaker 01 They see you as five years immature, all the way through.
1:11:46 Lewis Howes? But adults are getting it now.
1:11:47 Speaker 01 But, well, so that's, that is the thing. Is that what I think is happening is that as we have skyrocketing rates of metabolic disorders in humans and adults, 70% of adults are overweight or obese. It impacts their brain function at the same time. We know this. This is not speculative. We have neuroimaging studies documenting this. We have cognitive tests documenting this. Random, like controlled trials, like this is not, this is really not kind of up for debate, if you will.
1:12:27 Speaker 01 If you believe in science, if you believe in research, this is not controversial. Obesity affects the function of the brain.
1:12:38 Speaker 01 I would argue it goes the other way. That obesity may be a reflection of brain dysfunction. That the appetite centers and the, our feeding behavior centers are in the brain. And when those are dysregulated, that makes people eat more than they should. But that dysregulation doesn't stop at just those two little areas. It, it goes to the rest of the brain.
1:13:01 Lewis Howes? And it's all connected, yeah.
1:13:02 Speaker 01 It's all connected. And so, at the same time that you have dysregulation in your appetite signaling, you have dysregulation in paying attention.
1:13:15 Lewis Howes? Of course.
1:13:16 Speaker 01 Concentrating, motivating yourself, sitting still. And so, adults will, I think rightfully, go to psychiatrists saying, "There's something wrong with me." A lot of times, they probably struggled with metabolic health since they were kids. So it's not, they're not making it up, like, "Yeah, I was eating Captain Crunch and Fruit Loops and drinking Kool-Aid and, you know, Dr. Peppers and all that stuff when I was a kid." And yeah, now, now in hindsight, I realized, "Yeah, I did struggle in school and nobody knew it." And the psychiatrists today are saying, "Aha, we've, we've diagnosed ADHD that just got missed."
1:13:59 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
1:14:00 Speaker 01 And what I'm saying is, no, it, it's bigger than that. And whether the person had it since childhood, I think some adults are developing it now, newer. We need to put it together. And again, the reason we need to put it together is because we are prescribing more psychiatric pills than ever. We are delivering more psychotherapy than ever. More people are getting psychotherapy than ever before. We are distributing treatments. We are scaling treatments.
1:14:38 Speaker 01 And the rates are skyrocketing. It's a losing battle.
1:14:43 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
1:14:43 Speaker 01 The answer is not more pills. The answer is not even better pills. The answer is let's understand the biology of what is happening to the human brain and the human body. And let's address it. And at the end of the day, it's not rocket science solutions.
1:15:05 Lewis Howes? Yes.
1:15:05 Speaker 01 It's diet, nutrition, exercise, movement.
1:15:10 Lewis Howes? Sleep.
1:15:10 Speaker 01 Sleep. Refraining from harmful substance use. And the social stuff, the relationships, the connection, the purpose in life. You've got to have a purpose. You need to have a passion. Everybody needs that.
1:15:25 Lewis Howes? Yes.
1:15:26 Speaker 01 You put those things together. I'm not even gonna keep going on. Those are the lifestyle medicine buckets. You put those together and you've got a winning package.
1:15:34 Lewis Howes? Hundred percent.
1:15:35 Speaker 01 For most people.
1:15:36 Lewis Howes? I think I want to finish with this one final question. Cause I want you to come back on and we can talk more. And I don't wanna, I wanna, I wanna keep it at this for a great starter for people. Then I want us to come back on in the future and do more. But this is the question, I don't know why this came up for me during this conversation. I'm not an expert in this. Um, you know. I don't know if it's good or bad. But I know a lot of women in the world take the pill. I don't know if you have any research on this or if this is something that psychiatrists study. But how much does the pill affect women's mental health?
1:16:15 Speaker 01 It definitely affects women's mental health.
1:16:19 Lewis Howes? Does it improve it? Does it hurt it? Because it seems like a lot of women are on the pill. And whatever your preference is, doesn't matter to me if that's what you're doing. But it doesn't seem to be natural to be blocking hormones that are supposed to be within a human being on a monthly cycle. For me, it just doesn't seem natural. Even though it's been conditioned that this is a good thing or a lot of people can take it and it's gonna help prevent a lot of things, I get that. But how much is the pill hurting women more than they actually know?
1:16:48 Speaker 01 I think that, yeah, so we have, we do have good research studies on this.
1:16:55 Speaker 01 The real answer is, it's complicated. So first and foremost, I want to say, women have a right to contraception, to effective contraception.
1:17:03 Lewis Howes? Hundred percent.
1:17:04 Speaker 01 We don't want, we don't want lots of unwanted pregnancies.
1:17:07 Lewis Howes? Hundred percent, yeah, I'm not saying like-
1:17:09 Speaker 01 Let's start there. So, so everything else I'm gonna say that follows, I'm not at all in favor of taking contraception away from women, or then just trying to have them barefoot and pregnant and kitchen-
1:17:19 Lewis Howes? Hundred percent.
1:17:21 Speaker 01 None of that.
1:17:21 Lewis Howes? Hundred percent, but, but-
1:17:22 Speaker 01 Number two-
1:17:23 Lewis Howes? There's a price you pay for everything.
1:17:25 Speaker 01 There is. And, so there are some women, probably a lower percentage than, than half, who will benefit from birth control pills. So there-
1:17:38 Lewis Howes? How many percentage?
1:17:40 Speaker 01 It's, it's hard to say. So it really is kind of, I want to say anecdotal, it's more than anecdotal, because like-
1:17:47 Lewis Howes? Sure.
1:17:47 Speaker 01 OB-GYNs and, and reproductive psychiatrists will actually use birth control for women who have really erratic periods or other things.
1:17:58 Lewis Howes? Hundred percent.
1:17:59 Speaker 01 And, some women can benefit tremendously from it. The bad news is, we do have large population studies. If you are a younger woman, less than 20, on birth control, the, the chances that you might attempt suicide, three times higher.
1:18:22 Lewis Howes? Come on.
1:18:23 Speaker 01 If you're on birth control than if you're not on birth control.
1:18:25 Lewis Howes? Really? Three times higher.
1:18:27 Speaker 01 Now, there are confounding variables in that. Because if you're on birth control, it means that you're probably dating. And maybe some of those suicide attempts are because, you know, the love of your life just broke your heart and dumped you, or whatever.
1:18:39 Lewis Howes? I mean, but people go through breakups all the time.
1:18:41 Speaker 01 Yeah, and people who aren't dating are being fat shamed and lonely and then feeling, feeling ugly. And, so you could, you could play those, you could play those lots of different ways. Three times the suicide rate is massive.
1:18:56 Lewis Howes? It's huge, of women under 20 who are taking-
1:18:59 Speaker 01 Birth control.
1:19:00 Lewis Howes? Birth control.
1:19:00 Speaker 01 Versus women who are not taking birth.
1:19:02 Lewis Howes? What does birth control do to the brain of a woman when they're on it every single day?
1:19:07 Speaker 01 So the one thing, so, so the reality is estrogen and progesterone-
1:19:13 Speaker 01 Are have massive effects on the brain and body. Most people think of them as reproductive hormones and they, you know, play a role in the ovaries.
1:19:25 Lewis Howes? Sure.
1:19:25 Speaker 01 Way the ovaries function and yes, they do. And that's why women are taking them for reproductive control.
1:19:32 Lewis Howes? But it can't spot one area of the body.
1:19:34 Speaker 01 But guess what? They there are estrogen and progesterone receptors located throughout the human brain.
1:19:40 Lewis Howes? Hundred percent.
1:19:41 Speaker 01 And that estrogen, those estrogens and progesterones are affecting the function of your brain. Numerous areas, including mood regulation, attention, cognition. So this is one of the reasons. So we know that estrogen, for example, impacts brain function. I mean, the strongest evidence is later in life. So when women go through menopause, depending on whether you go through menopause early or late, that will impact your risk for Alzheimer's disease, for example. Because estrogen is playing a direct role in brain metabolism.
1:20:22 Speaker 01 So it comes back to what I'm talking about overall, brain metabolism. It's a hormone. It's a well-known hormone. Everybody knows it. So again, this kind of thinking about mental disorders as metabolic disorders is about putting all of the pieces of the puzzle together. It's not about replacing them. But so women will know this. Like when I talk about this with women, they're like, you're a man saying this?
1:20:49 Lewis Howes? Right, right, right.
1:20:50 Speaker 01 Either they're angry at me for how dare you even talk about it. You're a man, you don't have any right. Or thank God, a man finally gets it and is speaking the truth. Because we women have been trying to shout this from the rooftops and everybody dismisses us and we do have brain symptoms.
1:21:07 Speaker 01 And it's not our fault, and we shouldn't be ashamed of it, and we shouldn't be shunned for it. And people shouldn't be telling us we're hormonal, like, like we're defective because we have hormones. We can use this knowledge, we can use this science to come up with better strategies, to be more patient, compassionate with people. Again, people are still gonna go through menopause. Women are gonna go through menopause, like it or not. Yeah. And you're gonna have some decisions to make about, do you wanna take hormones? Do you not wanna take hormones? Are they indicated? That transition is going to affect your brain, whether you like it or not. So I'm not here to say that we can make everything perfect,
1:21:50 Speaker 01 and everybody can live perfect lives and not have any struggles and not have any adversity at all. I'm not here to say that. But what I am here to say is that if you understand, you can come up with treatment solutions. Yes. You can come up with accommodations, if you will, that if, if, if we know that this period is happening, like, like pregnancy and then postpartum period. That's something we can all anticipate. And we can all rally to support that woman to get through the postpartum period. If she's vulnerable to mental health episodes in the postpartum period, we can all rally to support her. And the easiest thing we can do is to make sure she's not sleep deprived. Yes.
1:22:32 Speaker 01 We can like, make sure that if she's breastfeeding, that hey, honey, could you pump maybe one or two bottles so that somebody else can get up in the middle of the night? Sure, sure. And feed the baby so that you're not doing it every two hours because you need some sleep. Hundred percent. And, I mean, there's so many clear, common sense things. Again, that's not rocket science. Doesn't cost too much money, it just needs some supportive Sure. husband, boyfriend, family, whatever. Sure. To come to the rescue and help her out. Right. Knowing that you're vulnerable right now. Sure, sure. Cause of hormones and other things. I guess the thing I'm taking away from this, I want
1:23:11 Lewis Howes? You know, again, I'm not an expert in this, but and we're not women. So I can't speak into the experience of a woman. But what I'm hearing you say, the research and the data and the science is saying that if a woman is on birth control, it is three times more likely they will have suicide thoughts or suicidal. Is that what you said?
1:23:31 Speaker 01 Suicidality, yeah.
1:23:33 Lewis Howes? And so I just want people to be aware of that. And maybe there's a bigger benefit to you. And maybe there's, maybe you can manage that in other ways where it doesn't affect you. But it sounds like there's a massive risk to it. And I just want women to be aware of what they're taking on if they choose that option.
1:23:51 Speaker 01 So 100% everything you just said. And maybe even more concretely, just or just to add to that. To say, if you are a woman and you've chosen to go on birth control and now all of a sudden, a few months later or a year later, you're having mental health struggles, anxiety, depression, suicidality, anything, mood instability.
1:24:18 Lewis Howes? Yes.
1:24:19 Speaker 01 Talk to your healthcare practitioner about could this birth control pill be playing a role in my new onset mental health condition?
1:24:28 Lewis Howes? Right.
1:24:30 Speaker 01 And could I maybe go off of this and let's see? And.
1:24:36 Lewis Howes? Yeah, don't, don't take more pills for the symptoms of the pill. You know what I mean? It's like.
1:24:41 Speaker 01 Well, that's the challenge is that.
1:24:43 Lewis Howes? Oh, stay on the birth control. But here's something else to add in now.
1:24:46 Speaker 01 Exactly. Let's take the worst case scenario.
1:24:48 Lewis Howes? That's not good.
1:24:48 Speaker 01 A birth control pill is going to adversely affect a woman's mental health.
1:24:52 Lewis Howes? Yes.
1:24:53 Speaker 01 She is 18 years old. We'll make her an adult, so we don't piss anyone off. She's 18 years old. She decides to go on birth control. She had never had mental health symptoms before. And now at 18 and a half or 19, all of a sudden she starts having new onset anxiety or depression. She goes to her doctor to talk about this.
1:25:17 Lewis Howes? Yes.
1:25:18 Speaker 01 Because she's talked to her friends and all her friends say, oh, you've got to go and get on some Prozac or Zoloft. It really helps.
1:25:26 Lewis Howes? Helps you sleep, helps you deal with anxiety.
1:25:28 Speaker 01 So now she goes to the doctor and now the doctor prescribes her Zoloft. On top of the birth control pill, the Zoloft maybe kinda sorta works. But then three months later, now her sleep is really disrupted. Or she gained weight.
1:25:42 Speaker 01 Because of the Zoloft.
1:25:43 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah. Or she starts gaining weight.
1:25:47 Speaker 01 But now her sleep is disrupted. And so what does the doctor do? Well, let's put you on a sleeping pill now. Oh, my gosh. Let's put you on a sleeping pill so we can help you sleep. Oh. And now she's on three pills. All because somebody didn't recognize what the root cause was, which was a bad reaction to a medication. Yes. I cannot tell you how many people I've seen that this has happened. Really? My estimation is millions and millions of people Oh. are in that situation. Where they, again, they go on a pill for a good reason. Yeah. She, you know, she's eighteen, she's dating somebody. She wants to be protected. She wants to be responsible.
1:26:31 Speaker 01 She wants to make sure she's not gonna get pregnant. And that's a, our society would say that you're, she's being responsible. That's great. The boyfriend wants her to be on the pill. Everybody wants her to be on the pill. Everybody. So she's on the pill. And now it starts having adverse effects. Nobody even considers that possibility. And now she's going down this road where she's getting more and more meds. Developing more and more health conditions. Again, she started off a happy, healthy, thriving woman. In, in love, in a relationship.
1:27:10 Speaker 01 Now, now she's got depression, anxiety, whatever. She's got insomnia because of the side effect. Maybe she's starting to gain some weight. Now the boyfriend dumps her. And now what? This is. Now there's more medication to deal with the trauma and the stress.
1:27:24 Speaker 01 Well, yeah, I know that if the boyfriend does dump her, then she gets even more depressed because of grief. And so what do we do? We increase the dose of your Zoloft. Or we start a new medicine. We have to add a medicine. We need to do something to treat that. And unfortunately, then, at that point, I've seen lives ruined from that point on. Because it's some-
1:27:47 Lewis Howes? Some people might say, "Well, if I'm 18 and if I'm not on the pill and if I'm having sex, because that's my choice and I want to and I want to have connection or pleasure. And if we get pregnant, then my life is over because I'm 18 and I haven't lived my life. And I have a child now at 18." And so someone might say, "Well, I don't want my life to be over because I have a child too early." Or what I think is too early, based on society's standards.
1:28:10 Speaker 01 Well, and I am gonna endorse that. So I am all for responsible family planning. And that means planning when you are going to have a baby. I mean, 50%, for those of you who don't know, 50% of pregnancies in the United States are unplanned.
1:28:31 Speaker 01 More often than not with married couples, but they are unplanned.
1:28:34 Lewis Howes? What's the other solution, then, to not getting pregnant besides being on the pill?
1:28:39 Speaker 01 So there are IUDs, that a man can wear a condom. I mean, there are all sorts of other contraceptive methods that people can use. And I'm not here to say there's a one-size-fits-all contraceptive method for everyone. But what I'm here to say is that, as you pointed out, understand that there are risks with contraception. That if you're taking a pill that is impacting your hormones, that impact not just the function of your ovaries, but also impact the function of your brain. So that's unequivocal. Like, I'm not making this up. Like-
1:29:17 Lewis Howes? It's science.
1:29:18 Speaker 01 Like, let that sink in.
1:29:20 Lewis Howes? Yes.
1:29:20 Speaker 01 This pill that I'm taking is not just affecting my ovaries, it's affecting my brain. Just let that sink in and then just be mindful of it. And if something's happening with your brain function over the next year or two, like you're developing new onset psychiatric symptoms. Be open to the possibility that could it be that
1:29:42 Lewis Howes? Yes.
1:29:43 Speaker 01 The contraceptive pill that I'm taking.
1:29:45 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
1:29:46 Speaker 01 And be open to at least having that conversation with your healthcare provider. Really pushing them, don't, you know, don't let them dismiss this. This is a real thing. This pill is affecting my brain. And now all of a sudden, I'm having new onset psychiatric symptoms.
1:30:03 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
1:30:03 Speaker 01 You say that and most healthcare professionals will, if you put it together like that for them, most healthcare professionals will say, yeah, you're right. Let's, let's try a different pill or let's stop the pill. Maybe we could try an IUD or maybe you and your boyfriend could find some other.
1:30:18 Lewis Howes? Wear condom or don't have sex or whatever.
1:30:19 Speaker 01 Or whatever. Maybe you, yeah, we can find a new solution.
1:30:25 Speaker 01 And I really would strongly push that the new solution should not be, let's add an antidepressant to the mix.
1:30:31 Lewis Howes? I just don't think there's any benefit to that.
1:30:33 Speaker 01 It, it, I just see it go wrong too often.
1:30:37 Lewis Howes? Oh, man. There's a lot, there's a lot we uncovered here today. I want, there's three things I want people to do. If you're, if you're watching on YouTube, I want you to leave a comment of the biggest aha moment or takeaway that you heard or watched during this conversation. Cause there's a lot of information here. But again, you've got three decades of being a clinical practitioner, but also a researcher, a teacher, all these different things. And you study it from the top experts in the world. So you're seeing the data and you're seeing real patients in real time. And you've seen the rise of these things, these mental health disorders or illnesses over the last three decades at astronomical rates. And there's a, a direct link to physical and mental health.
1:31:23 Lewis Howes? There's a direct link to nutrition, the way you move for the lack of movement to your mental health as well. So I want people to leave a comment on the YouTube of their biggest takeaway, aha moment, et cetera. Second thing I want people to do, if you're listening or watching, I want you to share this with one friend who maybe has been struggling. Maybe they don't have some extreme bipolar disorder or something, but maybe they've just been. Mentally going through a hard time, whether it's overwhelmed, anxiety, stress, whatever it might be, send them this link and ask them their biggest takeaway as well. I think a great way to be a friend to someone is to pass them on good information and good, and good content that could hopefully open their minds to what's possible for their personal growth as well. So send this to one friend as well.
1:32:09 Lewis Howes? Third thing I want people to do is I want them to get your book because you've got a book that dives in deep on all these different things called Brain Energy, A Revolutionary Breakthrough in Understanding Mental Health and Improving Treatment for Anxiety, Depression, OCD, PTSD, and More. And again, a lot of people are feeling these, these symptoms or these conditions these days, or they have early-stage symptoms of these things. And I want people to get the information and have the solution to reversing these things because you're not hopeless. It's not hopeless. You give a lot of people the tools on how to reverse a lot of these things. And yes, like you've said, there are extreme cases that may need
1:32:55 Lewis Howes? extreme medical interventions. And we're not talking about that. We're talking about the other 90, 95% of people who are developing anxiety, overwhelm, stress, PTSD, ADHD, who are having these things that are starting to take over their life. But it sounds to me like a lot of them are reversible or manageable to not be consuming one's life. So I want people to get your book. I want them to follow you. Uh, brainenergy.com, chrispolmermd.com, also chrispolmermd on X and Instagram. And, and really send people this conversation in your life, your friends, your family members.
1:33:39 Lewis Howes? And say, hey, I just was thinking about you and wanted to see if there's anything that you took away from this conversation. I think that's the best way people can support their friends and family as well. Is there anything else we can do to be of service to you, Chris?
1:33:52 Speaker 01 No, I mean, this is, this is really helpful. I want to thank you so much for, I mean, serving me is serving people who are struggling with their mental health.
1:34:01 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
1:34:01 Speaker 01 Because there are millions of them.
1:34:04 Lewis Howes? Yes.
1:34:04 Speaker 01 So if we can help those people, I love the idea of sending this episode to a friend or family member. And then I would actually just add, follow up with them.
1:34:14 Lewis Howes? Yes.
1:34:15 Speaker 01 Say, how are you doing? And when they, after they give you their polite answer, I'm fine.
1:34:18 Lewis Howes? But how are you really doing?
1:34:19 Speaker 01 I'm fine. How are you really doing?
1:34:21 Lewis Howes? Yeah, yeah.
1:34:22 Speaker 01 I actually sent this to you because I really sometimes worry about you, or I've noticed this, whatever concern you had about them that made you send this to them. And ultimately, what that's about is I want you to just be a really good friend and resource to people. Even if you yourself are struggling with your own mental health, you can be a rock for someone else.
1:34:41 Lewis Howes? Hundred percent.
1:34:42 Speaker 01 Just let them know, like, I'm here for you.
1:34:44 Lewis Howes? Yes.
1:34:45 Speaker 01 I've got your back. We can get through this together. And that, in extreme cases, that can save a life.
1:34:55 Lewis Howes? Yes, hundred percent. And I want to, I want to finish with this, Chris, because I, I want to acknowledge you for, again, three decades of research. And I love this in your book. You dedicate your book to your mother. I'm going to read it for people. I think it's beautiful. "To my mother, my futile attempts to save you from the ravages of mental illness, lit a fire in me that burns to this day. I'm sorry that I didn't figure this out in time to help you. May you rest in peace." And I just think that's a beautiful mission and purpose that you are living. Even though your mother, you weren't able to be a stand for her, but to be able to...
1:35:32 Lewis Howes? In her memory, be of service to other people who have family members and friends who are struggling with extreme mental health disorders and feel like there's no hope. And so I really acknowledge you for being a stand for research, being a stand for science, to give people tools and putting yourself out there to hopefully save a lot more lives that are struggling and feel like there's no hope. So I'm really, really grateful for you, Chris, for being here today. Thank you. Thank you, Louis, for having me. Appreciate it. I have a brand new book called Make Money Easy. And if you're looking to create more financial freedom in your life, you want abundance in your life, and you want to stop making money hard in your life, but you want to make it easier, you want to make it flow, you want
1:36:17 Lewis Howes? to feel abundant, then make sure to go to makemoneymeasbook.com right now and get yourself a copy. I really think this is going to help you transform your relationship with money this moment moving forward. We have some big guests and content coming up. Make sure you're following and stay tuned to the next episode on the School of Greatness. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes
1:36:58 Lewis Howes? with me personally, as well as ad free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you, if no one has told you lately, that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.
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