Is Social Media Disrupting Your Brain Health? | Dr. Daniel Amen

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Depression is the leading cause of death around the world. Wow. Most expensive illness. And the pharmaceutical companies just have a field day with this. You know, their stock is up, they're selling. You know, last year there were 337 million prescriptions. For antidepressant medication, but we're more depressed than ever. It's not the answer.

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Hey everyone, welcome back. You're listening to the Ancient Health Podcast. This is a special episode featuring Dr. Axe and his conversation with Dr. Daniel Amen. Now, Doc Amen is a physician, a board-certified child and adult psychiatrist, an award-winning researcher, and a 17-time bestselling author. Yes, 17 times. He's the founder and CEO of Amen Clinics, which holds the world's largest database of functional brain scans. Brain scans are something that are talked about on this episode and super fascinating, the research that is coming from that. Now, this conversation really dives into child and adolescent brain health specific to some of the things that are more prevalent today, like screens, having screen time and scrolling. We talk about things like fubbing, the These are new to our world, but they are having a significant impact on the development of children. Now, we wouldn't have an episode complete without discussing some of the practical measures you can take to help your brain health. And this is an incredible conversation that gives you some of the actionable steps that can help you improve your brain health, whether you're an adult raising children, or you're an adult looking to improve your brain health and cognitive ability as you get into your later years. I hope you enjoy this episode. I learned so much from it. So without further ado, let's get into today's episode.

Hey everybody, Dr. Axe here. Welcome to the podcast. Today we have a good friend of mine, Dr. Daniel Amen, and I've been following Dr. Amen's work for years. We've probably done 4 or 5 interviews at this point, but I remember seeing you first, Dr. Amen, on PBS do a show. And by the way, my mom was a big fan of yours too. And so watching you share some things on brain, she was having some just a little bit of short-term memory loss. She started following some of your advice on more healthy fats and diet and exercise and learning, and you really just improved her memory. And so anyways, just one, you know, thanks for improving the health of the family member. And I love so much about what you do, but I want to get into a lot today. I want to talk about how to improve brain health and neurological health. I also want to talk about some of the things that are destroying our neurological health today. There's actually an interesting thing in the news recently called phubbing, which is phone snubbing. So it's all these people that are on their phone all day, what that might do to the brain and even dopamine levels. So I wanna get into all that today. But to start, I'd love to hear from you what got you into studying the brain.

Well, Josh, it's so great to be with you as always. I follow you and I find the information you put out So helpful, so thoughtful. So when I was 18, the government had a draft and I became an infantry medic where my love of medicine was born. But about a year into being a medic, I realized I didn't like being shot at. It was just, it was not my thing. Some people like it. I'm like, what else could I do?. And I got myself retrained as an x-ray technician and just developed a passion for medical imaging. As our professors used to say, how do you know unless you look? A couple of years later, I get outta the Army, I go to medical school, and when I'm a second-year medical student, someone I love tries to kill herself. And I was horrified, had no idea what to do. Took her to the chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at my medical school. And I came to realize if he helped her, which he did, it wouldn't just help her, that ultimately it would help the people who loved her. It would help her children, even her grandchildren, as they would be shaped by someone who was happier and more stable. I fell in love with psychiatry, was now 44 years ago. And I've loved it every day since. But I fell in love with the only medical specialty that never looks at the organ it treats. Think about that. Mm-hmm. Neurologists look, orthopedic doctors look, your GI doctor looks, every other medical specialist looks except psychiatrists, and they still make diagnoses based on symptom clusters. With no biological data, just like they diagnosed Lincoln with depression in 1840. So I remember in medical school thinking that was wrong, knowing it would change. I just had no idea I'd be part of the change. And in 1991, I ordered my first study, my first SPECT scan. So at Amen Clinics, what we do is a study called single photon emission computed tomography. SPAC that looks at blood flow and activity. It looks at how your brain works and it basically shows us 3 things: good activity, too little or too much. And it changed everything. It changed everything about me as a psychiatrist, as a physician, and as a human being, because I came to realize most mental illnesses Most psychiatric problems, they're not mental, they're brain. Get your brain healthy and your mind will follow. So one of my books, The End of Mental Illness, I'm like, we need to change the paradigm. Stop calling people mental, it shames them. Call them a brain, it elevates them. And if we really see mental health as brain health, everything changes. Because rather than if you're sad or you're anxious, going to see a psychiatrist or going to see a psychotherapist, and, and I'm not opposed to psychiatrists or psychotherapists, but it's not the first thing to do. The first thing to do is to love your brain. The first thing to do is to stop doing things that hurt it— drugs, alcohol, head trauma, toxic exposure, bad food— and start doing things that help it— diet, exercise, supplementation, learning how to not believe every stupid thing you think. But when you see this as an organ, well, you stop hurting it. But in psychiatry, the big innovation in psychiatry are ketamine, psilocybin, and marijuana. And I'm like, no, yeah, the street drugs of the '60s are making a comeback in a huge way. And I'm not okay with this because marijuana clearly damages the brain. I published a study on 1,000 marijuana users. Every area of their brains lower in blood. And before we go to ketamine or before we go to psilocybin, how's your diet?

Yeah.

Are you taking some simple supplements like omega-3 fatty acids, multiple vitamin, optimizing your vitamin D level? I'm a huge fan of saffron. Are you doing the right things to take care of your brain. But in our society, it's like psilocybin or it's ketamine. And I'm like, you know, maybe 10th on the list, but it's clearly not in the top 5. Yeah.

Yeah. That's good. You know, you know, one of the things that, and again, I, one of the things I've always appreciated about you is you're not, you're not recommending the quick fix. It's always a holistic protocol. It's things that are, you know, we should all be doing anyways. And you know, and, and you've been teaching how to, people how to use food as medicine now for, you know, 40 years. And so again, I'm so grateful for, for all you've done there. You know, one, one of the things, and I wanna come back to some food things and supplements and other things in a minute, but I do wanna talk about some, some of the recent research I've, we've both probably read over the past couple years. You know, there was a study come out, came out on social media for young girls, and it found that adolescent girls who spend the most time on social media channels like Instagram have higher levels of mental health issues, including depression and suicidal thoughts. What are your thoughts on ways to, what are your thoughts on that in general on what's going on there? Why, you know, these girls that are spending so much time on social media are having so many, again, you know, as you would say, brain health issues as everyone else is, as sort of explaining mental, mental health issues. And, and what are your, recommendations.

You know, I'm working on a new public television special on raising mentally strong kids, and like you, I'm horrified. The— our children and young adults are on the front edge of a tidal wave that's going to hit this country, go around the world with mental health stuff: anxiety, depression, ADHD, OCD, PTSD, whatever. Why? And listen to this statistic. 57% of teenage girls are persistently sad. 30% of teenage girls have thought of killing themselves. Wow. 24% have planned it, and 13%, or 1 in 8 girls, has tried to kill themselves. This is not okay. There's just not one thing about this that's okay. And the incidence of ADHD and addictions in young males is skyrocketing as well. Why? And so I wrote down what I believe are the top 10 reasons, and social media is right at the top, and digital addictions, because if you grab your phone 40, 50, 100, 200 times a day, what you're doing is you're wearing out the pleasure centers in your brain. 'Cause every time you get a beep, every time you get a notification, you get a little drip of dopamine. But if you hit the pleasure centers, an area called the nucleus accumbens, too often or too hard, it begins to wear them out. And then you need more and more to feel anything at all. Plus, I believe there's a little bit of evil going on. If you are— if the product is free, you are the product. It's the subtle changes these companies make in how you think and how you feel and how you spend money. And the research says if you spend more than 3 hours a day on these devices, you have a higher incidence of anxiety, depression, and ADHD. The average teenager spends 3.5 hours on these gadgets a day. So it's the dopamine deficit and it's the change in the mindset. And girls in particular, they don't like themselves anymore because they're constantly comparing themselves to other people in a negative way. So they're also, you know, constantly following people, but they want people to follow them. And so if you think about this, it's— they're chronically self-absorbed. And that's a very bad thing. If you want to be happy, you got to get outside of yourself and be useful to somebody else.

It's so good. You know, I remember, and I know you've read all these studies too, reading— I remember years ago reading a study that basically said, you know, the that if you pursue happiness, self-happiness for yourself, it leads to depression and loneliness and everything else. Versus if you pursue purpose and family connection and other things, that's actually what leads to happiness. But what you're saying is so spot on that for so many people, they believe that I'm going to focus on myself. And, and by the way, we see this to, to stay on the same topic, but add something else in. I've had so many patients over the years that came to me and they focus, let's use an example like fibromyalgia or Lyme disease. And these people, the only thing they thought about for 24 hours a day was, I have Lyme, I have Lyme, I have Lyme, I have fibromyalgia, and just literally were in their head with it all day. And you sort of see this vicious cycle of them getting sicker, right? I mean, you've probably seen something similar.

Well, where you bring your attention always determines how you feel.. And if you're focused on illness, you're gonna feel ill. If you're focused on being less than, your self-esteem's gonna be terrible. If you focus on watching the news, you know, that would be another one I'd put in the top 10. The news is in fact no longer the news. The news is there to scare you, to get your eyeballs so that you can buy copper underwear whatever, you know, the latest drug they're trying to sell. You have to turn that off. I mean, it's repetitive, it's negative, and it's meant to get us angry and to fight with each other, you know, whether it's CNN or Fox. I mean, it's the same thing, just, you know, it's just a different way to get people unhappy. And the news is everywhere. Now, but, you know, I would also argue COVID is part of the escalation in two ways. The virus is not innocuous. I've actually seen— I have before and after scans on people who've had COVID. My big claim to fame last year was I was on the Kardashians and I scanned Kendall Jenner and her emotional brain looked like there was a bomb that went off of inflammation. And kids often don't become terribly symptomatic with COVID but it still can negatively impact their brain. And then we know that if your vitamin D level is low, you're more susceptible to get sick from vitamin D. And we live in a society where 70% of the population has suboptimal levels. But then there was our reaction to COVID where we isolated kids, we frightened kids, we gave them hour upon hour of Zoom time, of video game time, of social media time. And then families were pitted against each other, right? You're vaccinated, you're not vaccinated. If you're not vaccinated, you can't come over. Which always was hysterical. It's like if they're not vaccinated, it's on them. They're not likely to give you, right? If you get COVID, vaccination doesn't stop you from getting it, doesn't stop you from spreading it. I mean, just this insanity. But the thing that hurt children is all of a sudden they saw adults at war with each other, right? If you don't do, believe the way I believe, then I hate you and I won't have anything to do with you. And then that spilled over to schools where bullying escalated. And, you know, it's just sort of a societal nightmare that was created by the very poor handling of the pandemic.

Well, you know, you look— I, I remember early on when all those stats were coming out. You remember early on and they were saying Alcoholism is— alcohol consumption up, drug consumption is up, antidepressant, like all of these numbers, even within the first few months. And, and, and like you said, I, I was watching this video with a psychologist and he was saying that the people that were leading the country at the time, and surely just throughout the whole pandemic, they really never thought about the long-term consequences. They never fully thought about what would happen to mental health. And that's what, you know, the government needs a brain doc, right? They should have had you, you know, maybe, maybe you could replace, you know, Dr. Fauci next time around. I'm kidding. But anyways, my point is, is that it would— I'm not totally kidding, but all that being said, you know, I do, I do think that there's definitely a lack of people understanding the long-term repercussions. And you had mentioned this as we were, we've been talking, you said, you know what, there are, you know, we're, we're in for, I think you used the word tsunami of issues maybe 10 and 20 years from now. What, what might some of those issues be or what might that look like? I, and I remember years ago when I first got into practice, we were always focused on the biggest issues were Childhood diabetes and obesity and cancer and heart disease. But the statistics I've seen over the past 5 years, it's mental health or brain health is becoming by far the number one growing issue today.

Depression is the leading cause of death around the world. Wow. Most expensive illness. And the pharmaceutical companies just have a field day with this. You know, their stock is up, they're selling, You know, last year there were 337 million prescriptions for antidepressant medication, but we're more depressed than ever. It's not the answer. Head to head against antidepressants, walking like you're late for 45 minutes, 4 times a week is equally effective at 12 weeks and much better at 10 months. Head to head against antidepressants. Omega-3 fatty acids have been shown in one study from New Zealand to be more effective head-to-head against antidepressants in 24 randomized controlled trials. Saffron has been found to be equally effective, but people take it because their memory is better and their sexual function is better, as opposed to, you know, those things often are worse with our SSRIs. Head-to-head against antidepressants, learning how to not believe every stupid thing you It's equally effective. So why, why wouldn't we get people exercising, get them on some simple supplements, and teach them cognitive behavior therapy? Not believing every stupid thing you think. It's actually a program in Great Britain where they did that. They invested heavily in clinics to teach people cognitive behavior therapy. Cognitive behavior therapy, I call it killing the ants, the automatic negative thoughts that steal your happiness. They spent dramatically less money on their overall healthcare because if your mind's not right, your body's not right.

Hmm. You know, one, one of the things going back to one of the things, conversations we started with is talking about these young adolescent girls who are spending, you said 3.5 hours a day on social media. By the way, I had a friend of mine recently and, and there's a, a girl he was talking with and he looked at her, he looked at her phone. He's like, hey, he was asking me, how much social media time are you spending on social media? I was around 7 hours. I pulled up my phone and, and she was at 32, like almost like 32.7. Like that, that, that's a long time. I mean, that, that's a lot of time on a social media device. All that being said, it made me start thinking about like, I have a daughter, right? And so how do I deal with that with my own daughter? And I thought to myself, You know, one of the things I think it's important as parents is that we explain why. So sitting down with my daughter Arwen and talking about social media and saying, number one, there's a time limit. You know, as you're saying, there's research showing that over a certain amount of time is, is, you know, there's, there's a tipping point in some cases for certain people. So what's that time limit? So let's say, hey, you have an hour a day. And also going through, and some parents might think, oh, this is an invasion of privacy, and I'm not asking to have access to her phone 100% of the time, but actually saying, hey, Arwen, I want to sit down. I want to go through your actual profile and I want to go through who I think you should be following, who you shouldn't be following. Let's just go scroll through some pictures together. Hey, here's why this is good, why this is good. Hey, here's a— I know a friend, you know, somebody who you follow that's a celebrity and they're half naked on every other photo. Here's what science shows is this is going to do to your self-esteem. And this person is not like My point is, is I think one of the things that I've looked at recently— go ahead. Well, no, my daughter's very young. I'm not going to do this for another, you know, 5, 10 years with her. She's 3 years old.

I think it's a great conversation. She's very young. The longer you can delay her having devices, the better it's going to be for her. And then supervise her. And it's not an invasion of privacy. To know what's on her phone, that, you know, God gave us parents to supervise us until our own brain is developed. And so, you know, kids hate when you supervise them. They actually hate it more when you don't, because to them it means you're too busy and you don't care. And for my kids, and And, you know, I have them ranging from 13 to 47. I adopted 3 of my kids, and I want to know where you're at, who you're with, and what you're doing. And I pretty much want to know that until you're 18.

Yeah.

And, um, and, and it's like, I'm checking. But the better relationship you have with her, the more she's gonna just think you care. If you're sort of an asshole, it'll be a war. And so the first step in raising mentally strong kids, and maybe next year after my book is out, I'll talk more about it, but it's know what you want, right? That's always the first step. What kind of dad do I want to be and what kind of child do I want to raise? Right? Everything starts with that. But there's no influence without connection. Yeah. And so I do this exercise with my kids and my patients called special time. Every day, 20 minutes, it's just your time. And during that time, no commands, no questions, no directions. It's like money in the emotional bank. And you know, if you're just a good listener and you're in their space for 20 minutes a day, it protects them. But what's happening in our society now, we have two-parent working families, everybody's on their own phone, right? So if you are having dinner, everybody's on their phone. Yeah. And so this lack of attention is damaging our children.

Well, one of the studies, to your point, that I was reading recently was about family dinners. And so they, they, they'd showed that the sweet spot is at least 5 to 7 or family meals, family meal times a week was optimal for building relationships. They found 3 was okay. But if, if families didn't do at least 3 meals together a week without smart, you know, just being able to connect and talk, I mean, it was very destructive to the connection between the parent and the parents and children. So that's obviously to your point. Another interesting was there's this term going around called phubbing. It's P-H-U-B-B-I-N-G, which is about they call it phone snubbing. And so, you know, if you're ever with anybody and they're talking to you and they're on their— so ingrained in there, but they did this with parents and the kids and they found— and by the way, you're, you're gonna say you've maybe read it, and if you haven't, you're like, well, this is obvious. But I mean, it was really, really detrimental to kids' self-esteem and their overall connection with their parents and a number of other issues if their parents were heavy smartphone users and if the kids were trying to connect with their parents while they're on the phone and their parents basically ignored them. I mean, it was incredibly destructive in the study. So this is something I know that we, you know, see a lot.

I hadn't heard that, so I love that. Yeah, you bond with two things: time and a willingness to listen. And if you're on your phone, you're not listening because you're distracted. I mean, we really live in an ADD society. I mean, ADD's like real if you have it, get it treated, but it's also induced by modern distractions. Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, I, and in fact, I was one of those kids growing up. I got put on ADD medication for like 3 days and I just felt, you know, weird. I ended up saying, hey, I don't wanna be on this. My mom was like, okay, you know, and then ended up doing what, I mean, my issue was Sugar and dairy, you know, it was like, and, and a number of other things. I remember once I started eating healthy, all of a sudden I was like, wow, I can focus. I mean, it was absolutely amazing. Well, what are, let's talk about ADHD for a minute. What are some of the, I guess, two things, sort of mindset. What, what is your mindset around ADHD in terms of, is it one, is it a, a disease, or is it a— the way that somebody's, you know, some kids are functioned not to sit in a classroom for 8 hours? So that's one question. The second question is, what are some of the best things that an individual that has it, or a parent, can do proactively to help with ADHD?

Um, I have a book I wrote called Healing ADD, and it's real. And when it's left untreated, there are all sorts of bad consequences. Like a third of kids who have ADD or ADHD never finish high school. Half of them, according to one study from Harvard, could struggle with the addictions. There's a higher incidence of divorce, incarceration, bankruptcy. So, so I don't want in any way diminish it, but you have to have like the major symptoms really is the story of your life. And too many people are diagnosed with ADD when they have a dairy allergy or they have a gluten allergy. Gluten actually decreases blood flow, especially in the cerebellum on scans. And so if you think you have ADD, First thing to do is go on an elimination diet just for like a month. Eliminate gluten, dairy, corn, soy, artificial dyes, sweeteners, and then limit sugar. And parents go, but there's nothing left to eat. It's like, come on, God gave you a big brain for a reason. There's like 1,000 other things. Yeah, tweet. But if you do that and you still have the symptoms and the hallmark I think there are 5 hallmark symptoms. Short attention span, but not for everything. Short attention span for regular routine, everyday things like homework, schoolwork, paperwork, chores, things that sort of make life work. And now you can imagine if you've given your children devices, well, they can't pay attention because they're too distracted. The second one is they're easily distracted. They hear too much, they see too much, they sense too much. And so it's like the world comes at them too quickly. As kids, one of my kids has ADHD. She was hyperactive from before birth. She's always taking her clothes off, you know, she couldn't wear socks cuz of the seams, tags would bother her. The third one is they're disorganized for both time and space. They tend to be late. Their rooms tend to be a mess. It's really hard for them to organize themselves. They procrastinate. They put things off until the very last minute. It's like somebody has to be mad at them to get stuff done.

Yep.

And they have impulse control issues, like they're not thinking before they say something. They don't think before they do things. Now, all of us, 100% of the population has ADD moments. If those things are sort of the story of your life, the first thing isn't Ritalin. In my book, I talk about, well, there's 7 different types of ADD. Please don't give everybody a stimulant because you'll help some people and you'll make other people dramatically worse. So know the type. And that's where the imaging work has been so helpful to me. And you gotta get labs because if you have low ferritin, you know, iron storage, you look like you have ADD, plus you can't sleep, you're anxious. If your thyroid's low, you look like you have ADD. And so basic labs I think are absolutely essential. And then simple supplements actually have good research that they can help, like EPA, Omega-3 fatty acids, not DHA. But so for those people that don't know, there are two major, I mean, there are more, but omega-3 fatty acids, DHA, which people think, oh, that's good for your brain. And EPA, that's good for your heart. It's like, no, EPA actually seems to be better for depression and for ADHD. Magnesium can be helpful. Ferritin, if your ferritin levels are low, or iron, zinc can be helpful as well. And then I like things like rhodiola, ashwagandha, ginseng, more stimulating herbs that can also be helpful.

You know, you know, one of the things, Doc, that I, I, you, we referenced earlier, and I think this is a, you know, we'll sort, sort of parlay into an interesting conversation is, is that, you know, when we talked about, when you mentioned COVID earlier, I was talking to a doctor who practices Chinese medicine and, and he is, he, he trained in Israel, actually trained in China. He's Israeli, came over here and, and he's the most brilliant oriental med doctor that I, I, I know. And he had said he really believed that a, one of the side effects of whether it be long COVID or COVID or a number of things were it affected the blood and even the way that sort of the blood kind of got a little too sticky and clotted and even blood to different areas of the body. And I'm, I'm interested on your, your thoughts on this. So he really felt like we really needed to strengthen and move the blood a lot more to actually help, help, help the issue. You know, there are conditions like Alzheimer's and others in particular that there, there's a, there's a correlation, right? Between blood flow to the brain, right? You look at certain herbs like ginkgo biloba and even, even maybe one of those you mentioned in terms of helping get more blood to the brain. How, how, how, one, feel free to share any thoughts on what I just said. And also, what are some ways that people, whether it be herbs or movement or things that people can do to start getting more blood to the brain? And why does that affect the brain?

So low blood flow is the number one brain imaging predictor of Alzheimer's disease. It's, and it's associated with ADHD, depression, and schizophrenia. In probably my last 7 or 8 books, I have this mnemonic called Bright Minds. You want to keep your brain healthy or rescue it, you have to prevent or treat the 11 major risk factors that steal your mind. And Bright Minds is the mnemonic, and the B is blood flow. And it's very purposeful that that's first. So how do you know you have low blood flow? Well, you could get a scan. I have 11 clinics now, and SPECT is a blood flow study. If you're smoking or using nicotine or too much caffeine, marijuana, and alcohol all decrease blood flow to the brain. If you're sedentary, if you have high blood pressure, if you have any form of heart disease, You probably have low blood flow to the brain if you have erectile dysfunction, because if you have blood flow problems anywhere, they're everywhere. So how do you increase blood flow? Exercise. That's why walking like you're late helps depression because it helps blood flow. Ginkgo. Huge fan of ginkgo. Resveratrol helps increase blood flow. Beets and beet powder increase blood flow. Oregano, rosemary, cinnamon have all been shown to increase blood flow. So you want to have— you often talk about brain health as 3 things. Brain envy. You want to care about it. Freud was wrong. Penis envy is not the cause of anybody's problem. Haven't seen it once in 40 years. So brain envy, avoid things that hurt it, do things that help it. Well, you want to have blood flow envy. You want to want better blood flow. Your brain is 2% of your body's weight but uses 20% of the blood flow in your body. So blood flow is essential. And then avoid things that hurt blood flow, do things that help. And with those other 10 risk factors, it's the same thing. Care about it. Like, R is retirement and aging. The older you get, I turned 69 this week, the more serious you need to be because there really is this thing called the gravity of age. Inflammation, what causes it, how do you prevent it, and so on.

Now, what are your thoughts on this? So I had a, and by the way, I have not looked up the research on this in particular for this therapy. I was at my house in Nashville and we had a hot, we have a hot tub and we have a pool. Well, it was middle of winter and I thought I was having a little bit of a backache and I thought, you know what, I'm gonna sort of, I'm gonna get, I'm gonna do hot cold contrast therapy. So I got in the pool, you know, it was very cold, got in the hot tub, went back and forth. And the next day I was like, wow, I'm, my back feels really good. You know something else I noticed though? I realized I'm like, my brain feels so sharp right now. Any thoughts on kind of doing hot, cold, hot, cold? I know that, you know, that there, there are, there are some maybe benefits in terms of that contrast therapy of, and even heat, but, you know, maybe, maybe, you know, part of that is that sort of blood flow.

Well, we have a cold plunge at home. My wife does it way more than I do. Has been shown to increase Dopamine production, 250%. And for her, it also decreases inflammation. So her back is better and she feels cognitively sharp. If I turn the camera around, I have a sauna in my office because people who take the most saunas have the lowest risk of Alzheimer's disease. Wow. Because it helps detoxify. Your body. There's a study from Finland. People who took saunas 5 to 7 days a week had 60% less risk of getting Alzheimer's disease. And it was cumulative. You know, 1 to 2 days was better than none. 3 or 4 days was better than 1 to 2, but 5 to 7 days was sort of magic.

Wow. I love that. Yeah, there's some good sides. I'll, we'll look that up and share that on a future podcast as well. But I do think there's some benefits of that, especially infrared with the, you know, the infrared saunas, you know, combined with the cold plunge is, is, is fantastic. What, what, what are some of the, what are some of the biggest brain myths that are out there? You know, there's, there's doctors out there and we see this all the time and maybe, you know, different, it's different per, per maybe different industry or body part. But what, what are some things you see in sort of the mental health brain area that maybe there are even other colleagues of yours out there saying, well, you need to do this or not do this for brain health, but you think, you know what, that's a myth, or you should do this instead?

Well, psilocybin is one. Yeah.

There you go.

Yeah. Microdosing mushrooms is another. You know, it's been legal for such a short time. It's actually still mostly not legal, and yet there's so much excitement about it. There's so many underground parties with it. I'm very worried about it 'cause I've seen the party before, right? Benzos are mommy's little helper. That's a disaster. Alcohol's a health food. Complete crap. I don't know if you saw, but Ireland is putting cancer warning labels on all alcohol now.

No.

Wow. That is innocuous. Clearly not. And now You know, we treat and feel better at parties with psilocybin and ketamine. So all of that, I'm like caution, you know, big yellow light flashing. What are the other things? I mean, there's so many health claim, health foods that claim to be healthy that are clearly not. So one thing would be, we talked earlier about gluten. And gluten is just not good for your brain. That many people are very sensitive that when you eat gluten or dairy, they both mix with stomach acid and produce something called gluteomorphins that work on the heroin centers of your brain. Or casein. So casein from milk, caseomorphin. Which again work on the opiate centers of your brain, which is why people love pizza. Probably doesn't love them back, right? That it could be a bit addictive and it's not really great for the health of your brain. But the myth is I should eat gluten-free packaged food. The problem is it's generally filled with crap. It's generally filled with sugar or foods that quickly turn to sugar. I think another myth is, oh, you should be on a low-fat diet. Well, 60% of the solid weight of your brain is fat. So if somebody calls you a Fathead, say thank you. That low-fat craze, which is still around.

Yeah, it, it's crazy. It, it keeps blowing my mind that it is still around. I don't know how, but it is.

You're right. Another thing is, oh, my cholesterol's high, I should take a statin. High cholesterol as you age has actually been shown to go with your memory stays. Intact. But we have so many people on statins and they drop their cholesterol way too low and then they get depressed. I have a brother-in-law who had a very high cholesterol and I'm like, don't let him drop your total cholesterol below 160. And when I tested it was 90 and online and he was depressed. I'm like, look, I can give you drugs, or we can just dial back this statin so you have some cholesterol because cholesterol, you know, think of it as the material to make your hormones. And if your cholesterol's low, you're not gonna be able to manage stress.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, those are, those are all some really good myths out there. And I know the low-fat craze is a big one and you know, the, the foods that, you know, people even go to, whether it's Whole Foods Market or Trader Joe's or a health food store and, you know, gluten-free on the label and it definitely doesn't mean it's healthy. You know, one of the other things I've, I've been interested in and I, I don't know if I, you know, I don't, we haven't talked about this. I, I had not posted a video for a long time because I went and got a simple stem cell injection, got my, my disc got infected and I didn't walk for 10 months. And so that's even why, you know, so I just started walking again a couple months ago. And so I'm not, do I, I said I'm so sorry. Oh yeah, it's, it's, it's okay. But one of the things that I, you know, I tried to learn as much as I could through the process. And one of the things I, I started, I did a few times was go and get some like different nutritional IVs, you know, and whether that would be a Myers cocktail, which is a lot of B vitamins or immune vitamins and things like that. Are there any, if anybody does, you know, that we probably have some listeners that maybe sometimes get some vitamin IVs. If somebody is going to, one, you can share your thoughts on any sort of nutritional IVs. I think again, predominantly doing just eating and getting your vitamins and minerals that way is best. But I do think that this is something that more and peop— more and more people are looking at that might be severely deficient. Are there any particular vitamins, minerals, or things that people do in IVs such as NAD or anything else that you know to be beneficial to, to our, our neurological health?

Glutathione can be really helpful. You probably know David Perlmutter. I adore David. I've seen a number of videos with IV glutathione and Parkinson's disease and shown to be incredibly helpful. NAD has been helpful, especially for addictions, help decrease cravings. Magnesium. Can be very helpful during the pandemic. High dose vitamin C to really help support your immune system. I think they can be really helpful for some people. Now, you're right. I mean, you should, you know, I'm like not a big fan of detoxes because your life should be detox, right? I mean, why are you eating crap? Because it's a bad habit. I mean, it's really the only reason, right? It's not thoughtful at all. I love what Drew Carey said, the comedian who lost a lot of weight and kept it off. And when I heard him say this, I knew he'd keep it off. He said, eating crappy food isn't a reward, it's a punishment. And when you get that mindset that you're not depriving yourself of what your 4-year-old inner child wants, Right? I mean, you're acting like an adult and go, do I eat things that serve my health or do I eat things that hurt my health? Right? I don't know if you've ever been in a bad relationship in the past, but I have, and I'm not doing it anymore. I'm like married to my best friend and I'm damn sure not doing it with food. I am only gonna love food that loves me back.

That's such a good mindset.

You're in a relationship, and do you want to be dumb and self-abusive, or do you want to be smart? Because when you really go, what do you want, right? And we probably want the same thing. I want energy, I want memory, I want clarity, I want passion, and I want purpose, and I want connection. I want all of those things. More than I want ice cream or more than I want a cocktail. I want those things. And so does my behavior match what I want?

That's good. Really good. But one other thing I wanted to ask you about is you've written so many phenomenal books. You know, I wanted to ask, so what's, what's your new book coming out and talk to us a little bit about what you're covering in that.

So my new book is Change Your Brain Every Day. And in it I talk about brain and mental health are daily practices, just like spiritual health. It's a daily practice. Physical health is a daily practice. Brain and mental health, they should be daily practices. So it's actually 366 short essays. On the most important things I've ever said.

So, wow.

It's a little bit like a daily reader or daily meditation to get a better brain, because with a better brain, everything else in your life is better. So I think of it sort of as my foundational book, or I took all the other books and took the most important concepts and I put them here. So it's a great place to start. And, you know, it takes 3 or 4 minutes to read a page and do a page a day. And it's 366 because next year's leap year and I didn't want you to have to miss a day.

I love this. It's like a record album. It's, you know, Dr. Amen's greatest hits. So I'm, I'm excited to check it out. Well, by the way, anyone listening, if you wanna improve your brain and neurological health, I wanna encourage you check out Dr. Amen's new book. Also think about someone you know, you know, I'm, I'm thinking about this, Dr. Amen. There are so many people, as you mentioned, who went through COVID even kids today. And, you know, the mental health issues today, more than, I mean, in terms of what's growing more quickly right now, more than heart disease, more than diabetes, more than cancer, we're seeing mental health, whether it be depression, anxiety, ADHD, feelings of isolation and loneliness are going up more than ever before. And so having some brain medicine, whether that be foods Dr. Amen's recommending or supplements or ways of thinking or bad habits to, to get rid of and good habits to start doing. I know that you're going to cover a lot of those things in your new book, Dr. Amen. So I want to encourage everybody, Change Your Brain Every Day. You can check it out on Amazon or run out to your local bookstore and check it out. But you're such a fantastic writer and communicator. That's one of the other things I've loved about your books or watching your PBS shows over the years is that you've got such a gift of being able to take a lot of these complex neurological realities and make them really easy to be easily understandable and give us practical ways that we can all improve our neurological health. In fact, I'd mentioned this, my, my mom, even right now, uh, she's, she's in her 70s. And so we're trying to keep her brain really, really healthy. So I've got her actually based on, I know things you've taught over the years, ginkgo biloba, she's doing her omega-3, she's doing some lion's mane mushroom and vitamin D. And, uh, anyway, so I just wanna say thanks so much for for all your wisdom and value you've, you've added over the years to all of us.

Yeah, you're so welcome. I love your work and I'm so grateful that you're helping me spread this message.

All right, everybody. Well, hey, thanks for listening to another podcast. And again, thanks to Dr. Daniel Amen, who is teaching this message of health and healing all over the world. Also, I know he's got clinics all over the country where you can get a SPECT scan done. So if you wanna see the blood flow to your brain, you wanna, you want to get a marker for kind of a grade of how healthy your brain is, you can go and check out Dr. Amen. What's the website? Is it, is it amenclinics?

Amenclinics.com.

Yeah. Check out amenclinics.com if you, or you have someone you love and you feel like they need a brain scan to be able to tell where they're at. And then his, his physicians or Dr. Amen can give you some recommendations on what to start to do for your brain health. Awesome. Thanks everybody. And thanks again, Dr. Amen. Hey, Dr. Axe here. I want to say thank you so much for listening today. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to like and subscribe to the show so you don't miss a thing. Also, if you're in search of more natural health content, you can follow us @healthinstitute on Instagram or subscribe to our newsletter using the link in the show notes below. Hey, thanks a lot and have a blessed week.