Whine Down with Jana KramerWe talk a lot about mental health… but how much do you know about your brain health? Jana connects with Dr. Daniel Amen to hear all the facts of how we can make our brains healthier.
He has some crucial methods that every parent should know to help their children have the best brain development possible.
And, you need to hear the simple changes you can make to help avoid some major diseases!
Wind Down with Janet Kramer and I'm Heeart Radio podcast.
I've never been more excited to interview someone today. His name is doctor Amen and I've been following him on Instagram, stalking him and just liking commenting. He is incredible and he has a new book called a new book out called Change Your Brain every Day, and we're going to talk about all things brain today. But he has helped millions of people change their brains and lives. He's a founder of Aiming Clinics where you can scan your brain, so we'll talk more about that. He's a psychiatrist and a clinical neuroscientist, So let's get him on doctor Amen.
Hey, how are you.
It's so good to meet you, like in person, because we've been emailing. I think that's been you. Has it been you or is it your people? I'm so bummed that we can't do the scan your brain thing this month. But yeah, the movie kind of a little wrench into plans. But also I couldn't tell y'all at the time because it was still too early. But I'm actually pregnant, so I didn't know if you can also scan a brain when you're pregnant.
Well, congratulation, thank you, And we can do a different study. We can't do the spec study because of the radiation, but we do another study called quantitative EEG that looks at electrical activity. Okay, and there's no harm to the baby.
Okay.
I'm so fascinated by just everything in the brain because to me, when you when you break things down, like science does not lie, right, I mean, would you agree with that, like DNA that's not me.
Well, I mean something's right, but scientists lie a lot.
Well okay, so yes, But like the when you really break it down though, like if you were to do you know, logic, so like the logic of things like I'm like, it's logical some of the things that Like when I hear your things, I'm like, well, yes, like absolutely, like alcohol probably isn't great for your brain.
It's definitely not.
Okay.
Can I just ask one question though, Like I you know, used to have the occasional not occasional, I would have like the glass of wine a day, right because that would be my chill mommy moment. But now I've heard you know, I've been watching your stuff, and I'm like, man, I could really see how you know the impact on that. And then my fiance he's a football soccer coach, and so you know he's he did save all the studies about how alcohol affects, you know, just everything. And so what is your recommendation? Is it like you go dry and you don't drink it all or can you have it in moderation?
So we should actually chat about moderation. I think it's a gag way thought to hell because as soon as you say moderation, it means you're gonna cheat. I'm just not a fan of alcohol. I mean, one, it's a disinfectant, so why are you going to drink a distant effect? And when you have one hundred trillion bugs in your gut? And any alcohol is associated with an increased risk of seven different types of cancer. And so if we're bombarded with alcohol messages thirty commercials during the Super Bowl and no as I've been a psychiatrist for over forty years now and it's probably the number one reason people come to see me. It's either they're addicted or their behavior is bad where they say something when they're drinking that they normally wouldn't have said. And then when the American Cancer Society comes out against any alcohol.
I'm like, yes, right right, I mean, I hear you. And when you say moderation is cheating, that's again logic to me. But I would have never thought of it that way or said it that way because it's true because I kind of live my life like, well, everything in moderation, like I'll have a brownie, you know maybe when you know, every once in a while. I'm not going to have it every night, but i'll have you know, everything in moderation has always been my saying, and now I feel like that's a saying to say.
People come up to me all the time and they go, well, what about everything in moderation? And I know as soon as they say that, they're gonna cheat. And Drew Carey, who the comedian who lost a lot away, he said something so profound. He said, eating crappy food isn't a reward, it's a punishment. And when you understand that, it's like, well, why are you going to have a cheat day? I mean, if you are an alcoholic, you're not gonna have a cheat day.
That would be dumb.
Or you're a sex addict, you're not going to have a cheat day, or a smoker you're not gonna have a cheat day. You have to ask yourself what do you really want? And for me, I want energy, and I want memory, and I want focus and I want passion. I want connection and purpose. So when I look at the things that I might cheat with, I'm like, doesn't fit me, doesn't fit what I want. And so too often when people are I call them babies and brain help, they're, oh, I can't have this and I can't have.
That, but what are you trading it?
Like? I only want to love food that loves me back. I don't know if you've ever been in a bad relationship. I have, and I'm not doing that.
You didn't google me, have you?
I am not doing that anymore, and I'm certainly not doing it with the things I eat or the things I drink.
Right well, speaking of bad relationships, and I would love to kind of switch gears to, you know something brain wise stuff I didn't know. So I was in a really bad abusive relationship when I was nineteen and she tried to kill me.
He went to jail. It was the whole, the whole thing.
And from that relationship, I had really, really, really bad PTSD, where I just I couldn't even leave my house. I was afraid for my life. I even though I knew he was in jail, I would still see his face. I mean, it was just And I ended up going to my therapist. And I'd never been on an anxiety medicine and never even had anxiety attack until after this incident had happened where you know, he was on top of me and you know, beating me up and choking me. And so so from that moment, anytime I ever feel trapped or claustrophobic, like I will start to have an anxiety attack or again being on in person. This was back in my early twenties, and I remember going to my therapist going, if you don't prescribe me something now, like I can't live my life like this anymore. And so then he was telling me about like the serotonin levels in your brain and do you how do I say this?
Do you think that? Wit?
Let me?
I'm separate that. So there's that piece. And then I was on medicine for almost nineteen years. I've recently just got off my Lexapro a year and a half ago, so I've been without anxiety medicine for a year and a half and I know now how to deal with anxiety and it doesn't take over my life the way that it used to. But I've had someone else who I was recently had they were having an anxiety we're talking about it, and she said she had one anxiety attack. The doctor prescribed her medicine. And I'm like, why so soon, Like, you just had one anxiety attack, Like why would you just She's like, well, they were saying the serotonin levels are now going to be messed up. And I'm like, yeah, but you only had one, Like maybe your body was just not it was fearing something in that moment, and like that's what you should look into.
So I guess my question is, like, how does it?
Because I was told medicine is the only way to fix the serotonin levels late.
Crap, mm hmm.
That's just the Yeah, And perhaps if I had been treating you, I would have given you medicine, but it had never been the first thing I did.
The only thing I did.
Have you ever had em DR A specific so EMDR is what saved me basically, I mean that was I did that for three years, you know, in the therapy that I was doing, and that had that helped me get back on a car in a freeway, that helped me, you know, do all the things that was keeping me locked in. So yeah, I mean I'm a huge advocate for EMDR because it helped me a ton. And then post divorce was when I was like, wait a minute, I haven't had an anxiety attack at all. And then I think it was my body's way of going, you're safe. Now you can get off your medicine. So and I don't know if that is in relation to it, or maybe my levels just I don't know, like, is there That's the thing I wanted. I would love to know, because I'm like, is it just the many years I was on and my body just kind of stabilized, or was it I got out of a toxic situation and I felt safe and then I don't fear anymore.
Well, trauma gets stuck in your brain, and EMDR helps to get you unstuck. And then of course, learning how to not believe every stupid thing you think, learning how to settle your body, either with things like hypnosis or meditation or diapframatic breathing, something I like a lot too called vaguel nerve stimulation can just help calm your nervous system. You see the problem with psychiatric drugs is once you start them, they change your brain to need them in order for you to feel normal. And having one panic attack, often people go to the emergency room. They end up an SSRI, or they end up on a benzo for God's sakes, which are addictive and increase your risk for Alzheimer's disease because it's a short term fix. Helps you feel better fast, but clearly doesn't last. And I want you to feel better fast, but in ways that lasts over time that support the health of your brain rather than hurt your brain. Like I'm not a fan of benzo's. I mean I rarely prescribed them because once you start them, people don't stop them.
That's the problem.
And it's like, well, you haven't been anxious your whole life, Now you have a panic attack or you have seven of them, and then you're not dealing with what's the cause, what's the root? And I think for you, given the severe abuse, you had to calm down your brain. But you know magnesium does that, or Ashua Gandha does that, or Fielning does that, and why not start with natural things? And then if they don't work. Go stronger and stronger until you get something that works. But I found emd are so helpful.
It really is.
And she did that in brain spotting, so I don't know like what the exact difference is, but it was she kind of did both at the same time in a way, and it was yeah, I mean it's changed to each other.
Yeah, it was. It was incredible.
And I love another one called Havening. So now when you get upset. So they're all based on this bilateral hemisphere stimulation. If you stimulate one side of the brain, then the other one side, then the other one side than the other, and that's what they do with the eye movements or the tapping.
Ron.
Rudden out of New York found if you just do this, go into the thing that's bothering you or I guess my favorite.
One is this.
It really just seems to calm you down.
Like how simple is that?
And you know it's simple to take a medicine, but you know, something like lexapro can decrease or libido make it harder to have an orgasm.
You know, it's it's like, well, why are we going to do that first?
Hmm?
Yeah, Okay, interesting and I'm so curious too when we do the scan your brain because you have how many different locations do you have? Around eleven eleven? That's amazing because I'm so fascinated by your story with your nephew, and I really encourage people to go to your page and just read everything about you, but just hearing how certain things that can you know your brain, I mean can just trigger everything with like who you are and how you are.
And I just I'm curious to see like what we see when we do that.
So I feel like we have to have a part two to this podcast to be like, all right, let's dissect.
Now what my brain like.
And when we look at it, would you be like, all right, this is what you need to do or like, how does that like?
Where do we go? Do you give me like a game plan?
So we do a study called brain spectumagaine, and spec looks a blood flow and activity.
It looks at how your brain works.
And basically tells us three things. Is it healthy, interactive, or overactive? And then my job becomes balancing it. But when you come to see me, we're going to take a really detailed history. I want to know the story of your life, because I have to put your scan in the context of your life, and then you bet, I'll give you a plan and if it's really healthy, we'll celebrate. And if it's not well rehabilitated, I mean, I love making bad brains better. So that's like my favorite thing to do. I did the big NFL study when the NFL was sort of lying it had a problem with traumatic brain injury and football.
High levels of damage.
Stop lying about it. But eighty percent of my players get better when we put them on a rehabilitation program, which is basically three things. Brain envy. You got to start caring about your brain. Freud was wrong, venus envy is not the cause of an anybody's problem. Haven't seen it once in forty years. He had the wrong organ. It's your brain. So that's step one. Care two. So you have to start avoiding anything that hurts your brain. And just know the list, from going to bed late to alcohol, marijuana, to bad food to being overweight. To avoid those things and then do regular things that help your brain. Multiple vitamin especially B vitamins B six, B twelve, and FOL light have been found to enhance memory and actually decrease the conversion of this thing we call mild cognitive impairment. You have mild memory problems to severe memory problems. Vitamin D. People have low vitamin D have smaller brains. I mean, how simple is that? Take five thousand units of vitamin D a day, Omega three fatty acids. Put my players on a special cocktail of supplements that help them. Eighty percent of brain damage players got better on our program. How exciting is that you're not stuck with what you have. You can make it better.
Do you ever see a world where insurance companies would let would have would pay for, not pay for, but help pay for brain scans, since the brain basically controls our body. And it is with mental health illness on the rise and with you know people like this would help people so much.
I think so, but not until we change the pair paradigm. The problem is with the words mental illness.
I hate that okay tummy because.
It shames people. It stigmatizes people, and it's wrong. Until psychiatry stops acting like it did in the eighteenth century, making diagnoses based on symptom clusters with no biological data. Until we stop this crazy paradigm that makes pharmaceutical companies uber wealthy and people poor. See our database is now two hundred and thirty thousand scants. And the big lesson is most psychiatric illnesses are not mental health issues.
They are brain health issues.
And that one idea changes everything. Rather than go to a therapist and talk about your mind, should we go to a therapists and talk about, well, how's my brain? How's the physical functioning of my brain? I'm in Justin Bieber's Docusaries seasons because I've been as doctor, and you know, like many famous people, he'd come, he'd not come, you'd do it, I say, mostly not. And then when it was gone through a hard time, he came and he said something so profound. He said, I think I get what you're trying to tell me. My brain is an organ, like my heart is an organ. If you told me I had art problems, I'd do everything you said. And then as he engaged in brain healthy habits, he lost the bipolar disordered diagnosis, and other psychiatrist dave them and he did much better. So it completely changes the focus away from your mind, which is vague and hard to define, to the physical functioning of your brain.
So fascinating, and again like, yeah, if you look at it like that, I mean, if you told me that I had That's why I want to go sobout so why I want to do all the scans to be right? What do I need to like do to make sure that I stay healthy? And I love you with your book change your brain every day? I mean you give every day how to change your brain something for so what's a few that the book right now? But also what are a few things to help change your brain that you write?
Start every day?
It'd be a great day.
I really to train your brain to look for what's right rather than what's wrong. My favorite exercise, the one I do every day, and I've done it for over a decade, is when I go to bed at night, I say a prayer and then I.
Go what went well today?
And I actually start at the beginning of my day, go hour by hour looking for what I liked about my day. So talking to you, that'll make the highlight real tonight and it's so important. And then before I make any decision today, I asked myself this question, it's just good for my brain or bad for it? And if I can answer that with information and love, love of myself, love of my family, love of the reason I'm on the earth. Let's make better decisions. I also take multiple vitamin I'll take smart mushrooms, not magic mushrooms, but I'm a huge fan of Lion's maine and turkey tail and Rishi and Cortes EPs mushrooms, So I have my supplements. Another one I love is Saffron. Saffron has twenty four randomized controlled trials showing it's equally effective antidepressants. So when the doctor thought you were depressed, I had to put you on happy Saffron rather than lexapro. And if it didn't work, I'd go to lexapro. Right, So I want to make sure the message is clear. I'll eat a very low carbohydrate diet because diabetes, pre diabetes, obesity is the enemy of brain health, and so what you eat is critical. People have a fat based diet. Avocados, nuts and seeds, healthy oils, fatty fish have forty two percent less risk of getting Alzheimer's disease, according to a study from the Mayo Clinic. People have a simple carbohydrate based diet, so think of the standard American diet bread, pasta, potatoes, rice fruit, juice, sugar four hundred percent increase risk of getting Alzheimer's.
I'm not okay with that.
And so the food I eat, and I always want you to ask this question, do I love it? And does it love me? Because it's a relationship and I only like every day. I figured out recently how to make my own lemonade slushy. I just take a whole lemon, put it in a blender with sparkling water, ice, and a little bit of chocolate Stevia. There's a company I like called Sweet Leaf. They make like ten different flavors of stevia. I blend it and it just like going to seven to eleven and getting a slushy, except this one's healthy and I love it and it loves me. Or I make brain healthy hot chocolate every night for my family, unsweetened almond milk, organic almond milk with raw cacao, which is just loaded with healthy compounds and increased blood float of the brain, little bit of chocolate stevia.
Put it in a blender. Eighty four calories. I'm happy as a clam.
Wow.
I mean, do you have that in your book too? Like you do you have a I.
Don't have the lemonade one because I just figured it out.
Okay, well you'll send me that one.
And I have a new book coming out next year called Raising Mentally Strong Kids.
Oh see, I really really would love to read that one too, because I'm just doing the best that I can because you know, obviously I know all about my childhood traumas from doing all the therapy, and so I'm just i have a seven and a four year old, so I'm trying to you know, what I'd love to know more like what I can do as a mom to just help guide them in better, better directions.
Yeah, read parenting with love and logic. It is so awesome because ultimately, when you grow up with someone who's very successful or famous, that already gives you some negative thoughts about yourself how could I ever live up? And you help them by not doing too much for them right when you have a lot, You're like, oh, I love them so much.
I don't want them.
To suffer, and that will cause entitlement and suffering, and so it's really important that they have chores that you teach them to solve their own problems. Oh mommy on board, I'm like, oh, well, we should do boredom training. I wonder what you could do about that that does not involve devices.
Well, no, So my thing is I'm like, go outside, like I am such an advocate, and that's where like my ex and I because I'm like, I hate the iPad. I mean, I love that. I hate saying hate, but I just I do. I just I don't like to go outside.
Because those companies are after mind share and they're stealing a generation of children. Fifty seven percent of girls are persistently sad. And the more you're on a social media site and on average Jenna, children spend three point five hours a day and the third of kids are constantly on social media sites, this is we're on the front edge of a tidal wave. Yeah, brain and mental health problems in children. So parents, they need to be off their devices themselves and delay it as long as you can. If they're fourteen and they don't have a phone, they're not.
Going to die.
Yeah, And that's how I keep saying, like my daughter might dislike me because all her friends, I don't care. I don't want her on it because I know what it's has done to me with all the negative comments and people saying things and the filters and this, and I'm like, well, well kind of like my nose better in this filter. And then I'm like, nope, no more filters, no more nothing like cause it's like it's it messes with you. And then I get depressed and then I'm like, n noah, no more. Don't like it.
It's absolutely I don't want it from my kids.
Correct.
And so you know, given that you know many of their friends will have it, they won't like you, But I guarantee they won't like you more if you don't supervise them. So I've often said that is kids hate to be supervised, and they hate it more when they're not. But the trick is is you have no influence without connection. And so four and seven these are perfect ages. I do special time with each of them every day twenty minutes, ten twenty minutes and go, hey, this is your time. And during that time, no devices, and go this is your time, no commands, no questions, no direction. Do something with them. It's not TV or video games that they want to do. And if you do that every day over a couple of years, it's like money in the bank. If you want your children to pick your values, time and be a good listener. And too often, especially for women, I'll probably get hate mail for this. Especially for women, they talk too much because they have language on both sides of their brain. Guys just have language on the left side of their brain. It's be a really good listener. This thing I teach in the book called active listening. When they say something, don't respond, listen and then repeat back what you're hearing and listen for the feelings behind what you're hearing. And if you do that, they'll keep talking. So many kids, they parents bring them to me and they go, oh, he said he won't talk to you.
I go, I know, it's really hard.
And once I shut the door and I actually listen, they won't shut up.
That like little chotterboxes.
And the parents like, how would you do that? It's like I didn't say anything, you know, I just listened and reflected right.
Fact.
So if you spend time with them just that ten twenty minutes a day and you're a really good listener, they're going to bond with you. It's ultimately what humans want. We want to be bonded to safe parents. And then they tend to pick your values.
Well, you are just I could talk to you all day, but I know you were a very busy man, So thank you for coming on the show, and I just I appreciate everything that you're doing and thank you for Yeah. I love how even how you switch the whole mental health thing. I mean, I get everything you say, and so I just I appreciate you coming on, and I cannot wait to meet you in person and check out my brain and all the trauma that it might still have but it's okay because we're going to fix it.
Well, you do lots of really good things for it. So I look forward to seeing you in person, hopefully soon, and thank you for helping me spread the message. It's not mental illness, it's brain.
Health, absolutely, and I really appreciate you saying that. So thank you for coming on and I'll see you soon. Thank you all right, bye, honey, bye. Everybody get doctor Daniel Amon's book, Change your Brain every Day, and I love what he said about mental health illness. It's not it's about the brain health and getting brain healthy. So I am ordering at Decartes.
See you guys later.
