Kind: captions
Language: en
in today's episode of health theory with
dr daniel ayman we discuss why football
is worse for your brain than cocaine how
to interrupt negative thinking patterns
why low-fat diets may cause depression
and what you can do to improve your
brain function right now
hey everybody welcome to health theory
today's guest is dr daniel amen a double
board certified psychiatrist who also
happens to be a 10-time new york times
best-selling author he is arguably the
world's foremost expert in brain
scanning and he is responsible for
scanning roughly 100 000 brains in his
career discover magazine named his
breakthrough brain imaging work as one
of the top 20 stories in science in 2015
and the washington post called him the
most popular psychiatrist in america now
having said all of that knowing what you
know about the brain how do we take a
good brain and make it great
well i love that idea it's really three
simple things and the first thing is you
have to care about it when i first
scanned myself in 1991 it wasn't good
and just the week before i'd scanned my
60 year old mother and she had a
gorgeous brain
and
so i created brain envy i wanted her
brain so here i am i'm a double board
certified psychiatrist so for people who
don't know what that means so i'm a
general psychiatrist and i have a
specialty in kids i'm a child and
adolescent psychiatrist i'm a physician
i'm highly educated and i don't care at
all about my own brain right i love
watching football on sunday and and when
i saw my brain i'm like ouch
this can be better and so how do you
make it better well the second thing is
you avoid anything that hurts it and i
have a mnemonic we can talk about called
bright minds it's if you want to keep
your brain healthy you have to prevent
or treat the 11 major risk factors that
steal your mind yeah so
brain envy got care avoid things that
hurt it
do things that help it
and
so what did we learn that exercise
boosts blood flow to the brain not
believing every stupid thing you think
calms the anxiety centers in the brain
things like omega-3
fatty acids get your gut right because
your gut makes most of the
neurotransmitters in your body well the
little tiny habit for brain health is
before you go to make any decision you
ask yourself this is good for my brain
or bad for it and if you love yourself
because it's never about should as soon
as you think you should do something you
won't do it um just because we're all
four years old and our head and
rebellious it's
you
answer the question in a positive way
because you love yourself because you
love yourself your wife your life your
mission
um
that's why you do the right thing
because too often people go well i can't
have this and i can't have that and as
soon as you get into that deprivation
mindset
it's not going to work
it's really interesting to me how often
the answer that you push people towards
whatever their struggle is is something
that i'll call soft
love comes up a lot attachment
not being lonely like things that you
would expect a psychiatrist to give you
a pill for you've traditionally shied
away from that obviously speak it can be
very profound but that you're leading
people to do um
maybe easier or more basic things first
what are some of the like just dead
simple easy things that people should be
thinking about with protecting their
brains if they want to answer you know i
want to do something that's good for my
brain but they don't know what that is
like well
so i went to my daughter's second grade
class
and i put 20 things on the board
and i went 20 things that are good for
your brain just just 20 things 10 of
them were good 10 of them were bad and
i'm go separate them for me they got
them all right except one thing
marijuana orange juice really okay they
put it in the good category when in fact
it's got way too much sugar and whenever
you unwrap sugar from its fiber source
it turns toxic in your body
and so
um so
is this good for my brain or bad for it
or is it good for my child's brain or
bad for it and they come to you and they
want to play football
where does that fall it falls in the bad
category brain is soft about the
consistency of soft butter your skull is
really hard and it has sharp bony ridges
now don't let them do that and i had one
billionaire he goes but my son really
wants to do it and i've hired this you
know nfl coach
and i'm like oh well if he told you he
really wanted to do cocaine
would you go get him a dealer because
it's the same freaking thing right
because i have scanned you know we have
150 000 scans on people from 120
countries
and
contact sports damaged the brain about
the same as cocaine whoa
i knew it was bad i didn't know it was
that bad
so and we talked before we started about
i tend to get myself in trouble and
about 10 years ago we started the
world's first and largest study on
football players on professional
football players and the level of damage
is sad
but 80 percent of them get better when
we put them on a rehabilitation program
so even if you've been bad to your brain
you can make it better and i can prove
it
i've spoken to my audience about it
before but the thing that led me to you
was
massive anxiety that seemed to be
getting worse by the day and one of the
things that helped me was crushing the
ants the automatic negative thoughts and
becoming a pattern interrupt and
stopping that walk people through some
of the things that
aren't necessarily because we'll get
into diet but that aren't diet related
that are really just
the way that they allow themselves to
think whether it's the brain getting
stuck and looping around
repetitive negative things whether it's
negative thoughts that they never
interrupt like what are those things
that really
cause people problems that they may not
even be aware of we have a brain health
assessment online people go to
brainhealthassessment.com and go which
of the 16 brain types do you have
so let me take just a step back and then
i'll answer that question whenever i see
someone so if you came to see me
i'm always thinking about the four
circles of your life so i'm thinking
about your biology so with anxiety
my first thought is areas in your
emotional brain just are working too
hard and so it's driving that anxiety so
what's the biology what's the psychology
which is how do you think and the
environment that you grew up in
what's the social circle um because if
you're around a lot of
irritated angry negative people you're
more likely to be anxious and what's
this spiritual circle
um why do you care why you're on the
planet what's your deepest sense of
meaning and purpose so i'm always
thinking bio psychosocial
spiritual and that way i end up helping
whole people not just oh you're anxious
to examines because that's the
quick answer
that if you go to
kaiser for example and
i just hired a doctor from kaiser and he
saw 25 patients a day so the 25 patient
a day answer is xanax is let me give you
a benzo
and the problem with it is once you
start it it's insidious it changes your
brain
to need it in order to feel normal
and so i'm like so how else can we quell
your anxiety so there's some simple
supplements like gaba or one of my
favorites magnesium that can be really
helpful
but the psychological one there was one
day i
was at work and i saw four suicidal
patients and that's hard for me and then
i saw two couples who hated each other
and two teenagers who ran away from home
and so at the end of the day i was worn
out and i came home to an ant
infestation in my house
and
i'm cleaning up thousands of ants and
i'm like
and then it just hit me and
automatic negative thoughts
my patients are infested
and the next day i went to work with a
can of ant spray and i put it on my
coffee table and i'm like we need to
help you get rid of these things that
are infesting your mind
and they like that it was just something
they could grab onto so here's the
exercise whenever you feel
sad
or mad or nervous or out of control i
just want you to write down what you're
thinking
and ask yourself if it's true
and i have um a process so i don't know
if you want we could do it together
pick a thought any thought you want to
share
and
i'll teach you how to put a stake in it
um this is never going to work
okay
so here are the five questions
is it true
it certainly could be true yeah but is
it true
i can't say definitively
i don't know
sure right yeah because i am not a fan
of positive thinking
i am not interesting positive thinking
kills way too many people
i'm a fan of acting kills too many
people what do you mean
so they did a study at stanford
1921 on 1548 10 year old children and
they followed them for 90 years looking
at what goes with success health and
longevity
and it wasn't the don't worry kids
it wasn't the happy kids
in fact the don't worry be happy kids
died the earliest
from accidents and preventable illnesses
the kids who lived the longest were the
conscientious
kids
the kids who said they're going to show
up at a certain time and they show up on
time the kids who got their homework
done the kids who were responsible who
actually had a bit of
anxiety because anxiety prevents you
from driving at 125 miles an hour down
the freeway in the ray right right you
need some anxiety obviously too much it
makes people suffer
so this isn't going to work out is it
true i don't know the second question
is can you absolutely know with a
hundred percent certainty it's not going
to work out no no
third question how do you feel
when you believe
the thought
it's not going to work out
bad
anxious do you feel uncomfortable
impending doom this sense that you know
it's overwhelming you don't want to look
at it you want to turn away you want to
go do things that are fun that are just
easy immediate gratification
eating the marshmallow immediately
that's sort of all at a limbic level
it's just emotion
and then how do you treat other people
when you believe the thought if i were
to give into it you're going to be
grumpy or grouchier or shorter with
people or just sullen and quiet yeah so
is it true i don't know can i absolutely
know that it's true no how do i feel
when i believe the thought anxious
worse i mean it's fueling the thing that
makes you naturally upset
fourth question is who would you be or
how would you feel if you didn't have
the thought if you couldn't have the
thought
certainly better for sure
and i'm gonna now i'm gonna start
pushing you because one i want this to
be useful in my own life and then two i
want people listening for it to really
be useful i find that there's a certain
point where the anxiety kicks over into
it feeling purely biological and what i
mean by that is i can't differentiate
between being cold and being anxious
they're the same physical sensation so
i'm like am i just cold or is this an
exacerbation of the anxiety and so
one of the quotes that has just seemed
so true to me in my life and this isn't
how they meant it but this is um you'll
understand in a second why it's always
running so true the only thing to fear
is fear itself so the only thing that i
have to fear when it comes to public
speaking is anxiety it's like if i
didn't have to worry about the anxiety
i'm not worried about the performance or
the outcome i've done it so many times
and so before i go on stage i have to
meditate to calm everything down to slow
my breathing to get the blood back into
the right areas so in that situation
there's not
negative thoughts that are driving you
right so in the beginning i had to learn
to stop that loop from even starting by
killing that initial thought which is
why that was so powerful for me
so
killing ants is by it's a biological
treatment too because when you believe
these negative thoughts it changes your
physiology immediately
um
so
how would you feel if you didn't have
the thought better you said
so the fifth question is my favorite
question it's you take the original
thought this will not work out
and you flip it
to the opposite
to the exact opposite not the
narcissistic
opposite which is i will be the best
ever
um
so the opposite of it this will work out
you have any evidence that that's true
if you're thinking about
you know whatever the situation won't
work out historical performance sure
just like once in your life or more than
once uh depending on what we're talking
about no it could be
years of success at something right
somebody on my board just this morning
i'm dumb
and then when we switched it to i'm not
dumb
she had like 50 reasons why she wasn't
dumb
right but if you don't challenge your
thoughts if you don't question your
thoughts
you believe them a hundred percent and
then you act
out of the belief
so learning how to clean that up is
really important but sometimes there are
remnants of anxiety that are not driven
by
the negative thoughts and their
diaphragmatic breathing is so important
so if i was you
well and i used to be you because before
i'd speak um i'd be very nervous and i
was on the speech team in college but i
couldn't hold paper in my hand because
it would shake right it was like really
irritating and so i became masterful at
diaphragmatic breathing and it's super
simple
um
i put people in my office on the floor
put a book on their belly and i teach
them when you breathe in make the book
go up when you breathe out make it go
down the trick is big breath
take twice as long to blow it out
so it's like three or four seconds in
hold it just for a second and then about
eight seconds out
and that triggers a parasympathetic
response so you know the difference
between the fight-or-flight response you
have a sympathetic response we're really
anxious our hands get cold so that's the
cold connection they start to sweat our
muscles get tense our breathing becomes
shallow and fast which is inefficient
for the brain and you just you want to
run away or you want to
hit something
you want to trigger the opposite it's
called a parasympathetic response and
that breathing pattern will do it also
holding something warm
will do it as well and for for some
people they'll just put their hands
under warm water and if you can get in a
sauna that's great or
get in a hot tub you can't do that
before you speak but
so what is like if somebody comes to you
i know you're gonna say that you scan
their brain like it's a bit tough for
everybody watching at home but what are
like the the basic protocols for some of
the most typical things that you see is
it are you starting with diet are you
starting with exercise like how do you
get people to take the the sort of
um edge off whatever they might be
experiencing
well i'm usually working always in those
four circles so
yes i'll scan them because if i don't
look i don't know but not everybody can
do it so and change your brain change
your life i think that's my book you
read there's one of you questionnaires
that go oh well you're more likely to
have a limbic
issue here or basal ganglia an anxiety
issue with these symptoms or prefrontal
cortex
issue which is so common for us
and then i'll go oh well if this is
likely the issue these are the
supplements i would think about
and i tend to start with supplements i
mean unless you're schizophrenic or
you're a brittle bipolar person
i generally start with supplements first
and so at home people can go to
brainhealthassessment.com
find out which of the 16 types they have
and then we'll work on the biology
along with biology yes you should
exercise of course you should and
there's certain kinds of exercise
especially coordination exercises so
rocket sports by far my favorite very
few head injuries but they work your
cerebellum and the cerebellum i think of
it is the rodney dangerfield part of the
brain it gets no respect even though
it's 10 of the brain's volume but has 50
percent of the brain's neurons can you
imagine something that has half the
brain's neurons actually gets very
little coverage uh
in the scientific media and so what is a
cerebellum doing is it um to do with
coordination and well that's what they
used to think yeah coordination movement
but now we know 80 of it is dedicated to
cognition
and motion
and cognition in what way just like
general processing or processing speed
you want to talk about something near
and dear to my heart i would love to be
able to process raw data faster that's
how i think of it um i'm assuming then
that's cerebellum
so
i
start playing table tennis that's step
one what else what am i supplementing
what other activities am i doing
so
a racket sport
if your wife likes ballroom dancing
become good at it because it's a
coordination
exercise and then
you want
to stimulate
it and there's certain
supplements that i actually like like
theanine because it helps you feel
relaxed but it really also helps you
focus and this is over the counter
rhodiola ashwagandha
ginseng we actually make something we
like called focus and energy and we find
it stimulates your frontal lobes and
your cerebellum at the same time
so and then stop hurting it alcohol is
directly toxic
to the cerebellum i mean that's why they
make you try to walk a straight line you
can't because your cerebellum is not
working it's being poisoned
so i hardly ever drink what are some
other things that people do on a
day-to-day basis that could be totally
just horrific for that so
if you're playing football or your kids
playing football what they're doing is
they're banging their frontal lobes and
there's actually this really cool term i
like it's called cross cerebellar
diasthesis it's like
what does that mean
you hurt your left
frontal lobe it actually turns off your
right cerebellum
and if you hurt your right frontal lobe
it turns off the left cerebellum and if
you're
heading
flip soccer balls
you're turning off both sides
of your cerebellum so we just have to do
so much better at protecting
the brain
talk to me about diet's impact on that
what are some
main sort of ballpark things you should
be pulling out
you know it's not hard
and again if i put this these things on
the board people would gut it sugar is
pro-inflammatory it increases erratic
brain cell firing and it's addictive so
if you can get rid of a really limited
sugar that's really helpful for people
the more colorful clean fruits and
vegetables the better the one misnomer
people often have is oh i should go on a
low fat diet the problem with that is 60
of the solid weight of your brain is fat
and low fat diets can actually trigger
depression and so i like healthy fat
fish although um
clean fish
and so swordfish is out and never would
have that it's just loaded with mercury
and i'm a huge fan of salmon
wild salmon
avocados they're
like god's butter
right it's just a great brain food for
you
you have to be calorie smart
uh
because um
70 of us are overweight 40 of us are
obese i published two studies that show
as your weight goes up
the physical size and function of your
brain goes down should scare the fat off
anyone when i read that i ended up
losing 30 pounds you know i'd like tried
for 30 years and i just never really had
the motivation until i went i'm not
going to have a smaller brain i'm not
going to do that
so
clean protein healthy fat actually at
every meal because it helps stabilize
your blood sugar one of the biggest
things that will steal your mind is have
a high fasting blood sugar level
it's actually been shown to be
associated with brain atrophy and it
makes your blood vessels brittle and
more likely to break so there's a term i
like i didn't coin it but i like it
called diabetes it's a combination of
being overweight with high blood sugar
it's a disaster
for brain function and this is why
people get addicted
it's carbohydrates simple carbohydrates
so if you ingest cupcake your pancreas
sees all the sugar and it sends out an
insulin burst
well that insulin burst drives
tryptophan the amino acid precursor to
serotonin into your brain
so when you eat bread or pasta or
potatoes
your brain likes it because it feels
happier it feels more relaxed now the
problem is it kills you early and so you
have to sort of take us but you know the
other thing that drives tryptophan into
the brain is exercise
and so
and many of my athletes they exercise
intensely so they don't get depressed
and when they get hurt they get
depressed because they can't get their
antidepressant fix
and so they'll go to sugar and then
that'll make them feel terrible about
themselves and so know what's good for
tryptophan to getting into your brain
and know what's bad
so before we started rolling you said
something so fascinating and you said if
i were basically an evil genius and i
wanted to just absolutely destroy
people's health
i would
create what kind of lifestyle
so
let's just take this mnemonic i've
created on how to keep your brain
healthy it's called bright minds
and so if i was the evil ruler
the b in brightmind stands for blood
flow
is i would give all children social
media
and video games
and encourage them to play as much as
they could
because that would drop blood flow to
their brain brand new study the more
screen time
the smaller the brain that's a little
horrifying well one they're not going
outside they're not getting exercise
they're not getting the sun we have a
massive deficiency of vitamin d in this
country and exercise increases something
called bdnf or brain derived
neurotrophic factor it helps your brain
grow
so we're losing
miracle growth
retirement and aging is the r and bright
minds if i was an evil ruler i would let
everybody retire at 55
and not have to and then i'd put them in
front of the tv there and make them
angry at
you know whatever political fight is
going on
the eye is inflammation
which comes basically from low omega-3
fatty acid levels processed foods gut
problems and so i'd like nobody gets
fish
in my
kingdom
and we don't have fresh food
we basically have fast food restaurants
the g is genetics
[Music]
and i don't know what you have in your
family and mine i have heart disease and
obesity obesity in a big way in my
family yeah but as you
we can see
genes are not a death sentence
they should be a wake-up call to do the
right things to decrease your genetic
vulnerability so if i was the evil ruler
i would go you have obesity in your
family i do a public campaign
so it's in your family why worry about
it live it up you're going to die early
enjoy the path
as opposed to what i think is actually
more rational is you have this
vulnerability you need to be really
serious about your health
h is head trauma
i'd encourage all kids to hit soccer
balls with their head to play tackle
football to ride horses and people go
well why are you down on horses it's
like well what killed superman it was a
horse i can't tell you the number of
patients i see who had serious
addictions because they had fallen off
of a horse and had no frontal lobe
function the t is toxins so if i
was the evil ruler i would get rid of
all of the environmental protection so
that we are filled with air pollution
water pollution and i would never i
would tell the manufacturers they don't
have to
put the ingredients
on the labels not only for food but also
for personal products and one of the
things things like parabens and
phthalates or hormone disruptors and
aluminum when we're putting them on our
body whatever goes in your body
goes on your body goes in your body
becomes
your body
i'd think of alcohol as a health food
we've certainly had that craze i would
legalize
not only legalize marijuana but
it's like let's not say it's good for us
because all of my
published research says it's bad
that now does that mean if someone's
dying of cancer and it'll help their
pain and help the nausea and help them
eat god bless them right i mean so let's
be rational about it i just saw someone
who'd been smoking pot for 50 years and
his brain was remarkably older than he
was
the m is mental health
and
um if i was the evil ruler i'd create
cnn and fox news and that it ruins
people's health because they always lead
with negative they increase anger
and frustration and polarization
the more you're exposed to it the
angrier you get and the more it
separates you from other people
the eye is immunity and infections i
would belittle people who are testing
patients for lyme disease my great
stories or patients who have lyme
one girl she's 16
she became psychotic after a visit to
yosemite and she went
had three psychiatric hospitalizations
none of the medications work she became
a shell of herself she came to our
clinic
and i'm like so what happened at
yosemite and her mother said we were
surrounded by six deer and we thought it
was a magical moment
she got bit by a deer tech that caused
lyme that then caused her to lose her
mind and on an antibiotic she got her
mind back vienna's neuro hormone
deficiencies and so letting kids hit
things with their head actually drops
their hormone levels and so i'd test for
that diabetes i'd create the american
food system isis has nothing on our food
industry the real one and i'm not
kidding when i say it the weapons of
mass destruction are highly processed
pesticide sprayed high glycemic low
fiber food like substances
stored in plastic containers they're
ruining our health if i'm right you know
and i'm not the only one who's published
this there's been i think 20 other
scientists as your weight goes up the
size of your brain goes down it's like
oh my god if 70 of us are overweight
it's the biggest brain drain in the
history of the united states in fact
it's a national security crisis because
they're not letting as many not as many
people are eligible to sign up for
military service because we just have an
unhealthy population and if i was an
evil ruler i would create screens
that have blue lights because they
disrupt sleep
uh because the s in bright minds is
sleep so there's so many things
happening that i'm just it gives me
pause about the society we're
raising our babies and grandbabies in i
was going to say a lot of what you're
describing sounds like what we're
encountering every day so if that's the
way to really mess people up then what
is the lifestyle that is going to help
us supercharge so you talked about sleep
um
where where should we be at how much
sleep are we talking about does time of
day matter or like
and not just sleep what is the idealized
lifestyle so if we just go back through
those
bright minds risk factors so with blood
flow it's exercise simple supplements
like ginkgo and vinpocetine boost blood
flow to the brain simple foods like
beets or cayenne pepper rosemary so
they're dietary things you can do
they're lifestyle things exercises blood
flow you've said that i thought was
really interesting is
what happens in the heart happens to the
brain happens to the genitals um and
what's the stat on the number of 40 and
50 and 60 year olds that have erectile
dysfunction that's insane 40 of 40
worlds
70 of 70 year olds and if you have blood
flow problems anywhere it likely means
they're everywhere
and it's one of the
i don't want to say big benefits that's
bad but it's one of the benefits of the
program almost
everybody's sex life gets better which
i'm like a huge fan of that this is you
know for years my antidepressants not
mine but you know like prozac and zoloft
and lexapro they decrease sexual
function
which that makes me sad right it makes
it harder for women to have an orgasm or
harder um for men to perform right and
i'm like well let me give you something
that'll enhance your performance because
your mood will be better and i'm always
thinking what i do for you how is that
going to affect your partner right
because i never think of myself as your
psychiatrist i always think of myself as
your families psychiatrists because i
see little kids and whole people and
everybody in between
so exercise so for retirement and aging
i want you working in a job that you're
passionate about that you're purposeful
with and if you're not and some people
just aren't it's what are you doing for
new learning every day what do you do
for new learning every day is it all
around the brain or do you have stuff
outside of that no in fact it shouldn't
be like i know how to read brain scans
just reading more scans doesn't really
help my brains pattern recognition so i
play the piano which i really like um
simply piano is my app for playing the
piano which is good which is good for my
cerebellum
and then i have a table tennis coach and
you're a table tennis coach i do that's
right you played at the national level
didn't you i did but you want to get
better and the only way you get better
is pay play people better than you
and so so i do that the i is take fish
oil
and a probiotic
because we think about keto so i being
inflammation so
um keto is the only thing in my life
that had a drug-like effect when i tried
it i had suffered from inflammation for
like 15 years i was icing my wrist every
night because they just hurt and just
keep them in check
but i wasn't doing any fat in my diet i
basically lived in a state of rabbit
starvation for
two or three years
and then for the potential anti-cancer
properties i'd been hearing about
ketogenics thanks to peter tea and dom
d'agostino and i thought alright i'm
gonna give this a shot i went hardcore
four to one
so for every combined gram of protein
and carbohydrate i was eating four grams
of fat it was miserable i hated it the
most but
my wrist felt amazing
that was really transformative for me
what are your thoughts on keto well
i'm a fan of it for
neurodegenerative diseases and for
seizures in fact i have a granddaughter
who has a wicked seizure disorder and on
a ketogenic diet she lost her seizures
it's actually one of my passion stories
because when i suggested it she's five
months old she's having 160 seizures a
day and on the diet she lost her
seizures but the reason i'm not a fan in
general is there's not enough colorful
plants and plants have medicine so for
your
pain
it may have been dairy or it may have
been gluten or it may have been corn or
it may have been soy those things that
tend to go away on a ketogenic diet it
could have been one of those things as
well that was driving the inflammation
because a lot of people would argue that
meat can drive inflammation as well and
the first thing i do with almost all of
my patients that aren't getting better
is i put them on an elimination diet
and i have to tell you the nutritionists
in my clinics
they have more success stories
than the psychiatrists so one story i
had a guy that was severely depressed he
had ect he'd been hospitalized electric
shock therapy
he had
been hospitalized multiple times you
suicidal he said to me he said you're my
last hope i get that a lot that's a
little bit stressful for me
um
and i'm like nothing's worked i want you
to try an elimination diet he's like do
i have to i'm like really
yes you have to and so what does that
mean no
gluten no dairy
kill the sugar no corn no soy no
artificial dyes or preservatives he's
like that's my whole diet
but i'll do it
three weeks later is dramatically better
but then i said so let's see what it is
so we added back gluten nothing happened
we added back dairy nothing happened
we added back corn he said within 20
minutes he had a vision of a gun in his
mouth
i'm like
we have to break up with corn
and his depression has not come back
that's crazy that isn't that crazy yeah
and i mean i should be used to that at
this point like the number of people
that have that kind of reaction to a
specific type of food and how variable
it is meaning
maybe corn for me is fine but for him is
absolutely catastrophic
and how much variability do you see
how do you because an elimination diet
can be very confusing for people how do
you walk through the three you just have
to think of it really simply
it's these are foods i get to choose and
these are the foods i should lose and
you just have to know the list but like
where do you start is there a ground
zero like is it chicken breast and
broccoli like what is your start here
well see for me the first rule
is it has to be delicious
and nutritious
so
i
am fortunate that i'm married to a nurse
who not only is beautiful but she's
really smart and one of her best gifts
is taking
really healthy food and making it taste
awesome so there is no suffering so you
have to get that in their head and we're
all creatures of routine i mean i'm so a
creature of routine so that means i
really only have to find 20 foods i love
that love me back
and i don't know in your relationship if
you've ever been in love
that was bad for you if you've ever had
a bad relationship
but i have
and i'm not doing it again
and i'm damn sure not doing it with food
so because i have control over that do i
love this
and does it love me back i'm not going
to be in love with something
that hurts me i did the daniel plan
pastor rick warren called me up and said
i'm fat my church is fat will you help
me we created a program uh for them mark
hyman and i did and thousands of
churches around the world had done it
it's awesome but one of the pastor's
wives came into my office and
she said i told my husband last night
after you gave a lecture that i'd rather
get alzheimer's disease than give up
sugar whoa
i'm like did you date the bad boys in
high school because that's a bad
relationship wow and later we found out
she has a family history of alzheimer's
and she's given up sugar
but
the insanity
around food is is crazy dude that like
actually makes me emotional that's crazy
it's crazy but so many they're attached
to
you know at the holidays this is how my
mother loved me so if i give this up
it's like giving up my mother and you
really have to understand the
attachments to the different foods they
have but then get them attached to new
foods by showing them it can be both
delicious and nutritious i was watching
or listening to a podcast that you did
with somebody and they were asking you
like final questions and they said what
do you wish you were better at or
something like that and you said
the one thing i wish i could do was
get more people to change and i thought
god i so get that like i'm i totally
agree with you but i imagine it meaning
that you tell people hey this is what
you need to do like even your own father
for years like wouldn't listen and then
obviously he finally has his
breakthrough moment but
what have you learned in all of that to
get to the point where you have maybe a
better success rate than somebody else
even though still far too many people
would rather get alzheimer's and can
actually say it out loud which is just
beyond crazy to me
but where have you had successes with
that what are some
takeaways that people watching this can
try to implement because i i know it is
true if even if it's only me there are
people watching this that
either they need to change or maybe more
importantly someone they love needs to
change and they just don't know how to
help them well if you want to help
someone else and my dad's story is a
great story you have to live the message
if you don't live the message you suck
as a messenger and too many physicians
don't live the message of health and so
therefore they're not good at changing
behavior in their patients and so
they end up just one medicine after the
other which i think is bad medicine
um so the first thing is you have to
live it
and then
you have to find smart ways
to get them interested so i start an
exercise with all of my patients called
the one page miracle so on one piece of
paper i want you to write out what you
want
what do you want in your relationships
in your work in your money in your
physical emotional and spiritual health
what do you want write it down
and then i want you to ask yourself does
your behavior get you what you want
because i realize nobody does it because
they should do it
but
they're more likely to do it if it fits
if it's their
goal
so
i want to live a long time because i
love my mission i love my wife i love my
kids i love my grandkids you have to
understand
so why do you want to be
healthy so that really becomes primary
so you live it you get them into what
their motivation
is and then you make it as simple as
possible
is this good for my brain or bad for it
um
start every day with today is going to
be a great day because then your
unconscious mind will find why it's
going to be a great day or end every day
with what went well today just to begin
to direct your mind so i find i have to
make it really simple and i have this
huge benefit
i have pictures you know 30 percent of
the brain is dedicated to vision and so
i can show you here's a healthy scan
here's your scan
i'm sort of hoping you'll get some
anxiety over it right ramp up your
anxiety so you do better
that's what i've seen i had this one guy
from the valley came to see me
and
he was really his wife was concerned he
was really depressed and his brain
looked like he had alzheimer's disease
and i'm like how much do you drink
and he's like i'm never drunk i'm like
that's not the question how much do you
drink and he was like having three
scotches a day whoa
and he was overweight and i added up the
calories that he was drinking a year at
three scotches a day it was 30 pounds of
fat he was putting on his body just from
those calories and but when he saw his
scan he got appropriately anxious
stopped drinking started with the bright
mind's habits
and completely transformed his life in
six months wow that that is
really pretty extraordinary one thing um
again you keep throwing out these little
nuggets that i find so interesting is
starting the day putting your feet on
the ground and saying this is going to
be a great day like these um the the i
call them soft things but they're so
powerful one thing you talked about that
i absolutely love is i forget the exact
phrase you use but basically to bathe in
happiness to just drink that in one why
is it important and then two how do we
actually do that
well in my new book
feel better fast and make it last which
i'm really excited about
is there's an exercise and feel better
fast it's about flooding all five of
your senses at once with happiness i
mean that's why you have senses it
brings the world in why not bring it in
in a happy way rather than in a
terrifying way so they're visual things
like images of nature although on my
phone it's like here are my favorites
and i can just go to it and it makes me
happy because it triggers happy memories
for me um listening
to sounds of nature like the rain or the
ocean or certain music like for me it's
good vibrations from the beach boys um
what are the scents
what are the touches
what are the tastes the smells
that can trigger happiness so vanilla of
all things honeysuckle jasmine have been
found in scientific studies to trigger
happiness
it's really interesting and if i
remember right there's something about
smell it's the one sense that doesn't go
through like a relay station in the
brain it's like processed directly it
goes right to your limbic brain
and so smells will trigger either
intense happiness or sadness
really interesting
all right so before i ask my last
question tell these guys where they can
find you online
and then i have a modified question for
you
amenclinics.com is a great place
we also have brain md health
for our
supplements
to take the brain health assessment
brain healthassessment.com
and they can find feel better fast
amazon or barnes and noble wherever
books are sold nice
all right my last question
normally i ask people just what the one
thing they can do that will have the
biggest impact on their health but for
you i want the one thing in each of the
four areas i thought that was so
interesting that you think when you're
treating a patient of those four areas
that really make up the whole human so
in each of those four quadrants what's
the one change that they could make that
would have the biggest impact on them so
under biology it's this tiny habit
three seconds is this good for my brain
or bad for it you just you need to know
the list but if you love yourself you're
to do the right
thing
under the psychological circle
is it true you should just carry those
three words around everywhere you go
because the thoughts that just pop into
your head my wife doesn't listen to me
the traffic today is going to be
terrible you know it's like is that true
um
in this social circle
what have i done today to enhance my
relationships and i know because
relationships are the one thing that can
make you immediately feel better
or homicidal
and so how can you enhance your
relationships and
spiritually
what am i doing today that's purposeful
because purposeful people live longer
they're happier they actually have less
risk of dementia
amazing awesome daniel thank you so much
for joining me that was really awesome
guys this is somebody who has had a
massive impact on me one of the earliest
books that i ever read about the brain
was making a good brain great and
realizing that we are not stuck with the
brain that we have that we can make
change and if you guys know me you hear
so much of my rhetoric about change from
those books and that was what really
began to show me that there were
concrete steps that i could take to
improve things i love his mnemonic
devices i think that they will be very
effective for you one that we touched on
but didn't go letter by letter
is brain xl that's one you're going to
want to look up you can find that on his
website it's absolutely extraordinary
in terms of improving your
ability to
basically perform at a high level so
going out figuring out what the things
are that are working against you and
then breaking down brain excel which is
feeling better and making it stay that
way so
getting into his world finding those
things applying them in your life fixing
your lifestyle so that it matches
something that is good for your brain i
think it's fascinating that he said that
you can give it to little kids and they
can sort it out in terms of what's good
for your brain and what's not and yet as
adults
we're hearing crazy ass phrases like i
would rather get alzheimer's than give
up sugar and so really coming to terms
with what you want to achieve and the
steps you have to take to get there and
i don't think anybody does that as well
as he does so as you dive into his world
that will be your reward you'll be able
to optimize your brain in a pretty
profound way
so
check him out he certainly changed my
life alright if you haven't already be
sure to subscribe and until next time my
friends be legendary take care
thank you sir that was phenomenal
thank you guys so much for watching and
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