So that

was more than 13 years ago.

And then we found not only did she have it, but everybody in her family had it.

And from her mother and her uncle and her dad had actually been diagnosed with it and he didn't have it.

And so ADD or ADHD, you know, it's had both names through the years, is a neurodevelopmental disorder where over time, so it's not something you just have for the moment because you're tired.

Over time, you have a short attention span.

You're distracted.

And then, so how would somebody who's listening to this right now for themselves or their child or someone they know, if they feel like they have some of these symptoms, is there a

A big one

... with both depression and dementia, but if you have inflammatory, uh, an inflammatory process already brewing in your body because you have low omega-3 fatty acids or you have gum disease or your gut's unhealthy, you're more likely to be vulnerable to the inflammation storms that kill people with COVID-19.

The N is neurohormone deficiencies.

Low testosterone has been found to be a risk factor for mortality from COVID-19.

Oh, by the way, it causes depression and low libido and low motivation.

The D is diabesity, which is rampant in our society.

High blood sugar, also being overweight or obese, another big risk factors for COVID-19, but they're big risk factors for mental health challenges.

Mm-hmm.

And what made you decide to focus on this specifically when you were starting your career?

Well, when I was in medical school, let me start before then.

When I turned 18, Vietnam was still going on and I became an infantry medic.

where my love of medicine was born.

But about a year into it, I realized I didn't like being shot at.

So I got retrained as an x-ray technician and developed a passion for imaging.

Our professors used to say, how do you know unless you look? And then 1975, I get out of the army, finish college, I go to medical school.

Can you go into what those are? I'm so curious.

So what are the differences and how does that lead to a big impact

on our relationship? So I actually published, I think it's the world's largest study on gender.

And on 46,000 scans looking at, well, what's the difference between male brains and female brains? And it's sort of like we're not the same species.

The female brain, especially in the emotional circuits of the brain, are very busy, much more active.

Their frontal lobe, so that's the front third of your brain, largest in humans than any other animal by far, significantly more active.

in the female brain.

Now, the prefrontal cortex is called the executive part of the brain.

But for anyone at home that's listening, how would you actually even then approach that type of discussion where, because it doesn't feel good if you just keep telling the person, remember this, remember this, remember this.

What did they call it? Did they just call it depression when he was depressed? Or what did they call it? Was there recognition of these same exact symptoms? And what were they?

Well, for depression at the time, they actually called it hypochondriasis.

because they thought it was below his ribcage.

And many people used to think that's where depression came from.

In the last hundred years, of course, now we think of depression as brain illness.

And I like to say, what if mental health was really brain health? And that's what I've come to believe, looking at all the tens of thousands of brain scans we've seen at the Amen Clinics for a long time.

Getting back to ADD, the hallmark symptoms are short attention span, but not for everything.

yeah it makes total sense what you're saying and so you've done 70,000 plus brain scans your clinic what first of all let's talk about your clinic for a minute what makes it different in this world of brain research

That's going to have side effects at very minimum.

Well, actually, so I own BrainMD.

BrainMD is our supplement company.

And why do I own a supplement company? Because some of the medicines I was taught to prescribe are harmful for the brain.

And Our first supplement is called Neuralink that has 5-HTP, raises serotonin, GABA, raises GABA, and L-tyrosine, which is the amino acid building block for dopamine.

And for a number of the types, it's really good.

In fact, my niece, when she was seven, was just a holy terror.

And that's very familiar territory for me.

What about alcohol?

It makes your brain look older than you are.

And when I first started scanning people, I was the director of a substance abuse treatment program.

And their brains look so bad.

I actually put them on a poster.

And the poster hangs in 100,000 schools around the world called Which Brain Do You Want? Alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine, nicotine.

Not good.

Well, and nobody cares about their brain.

What's the mechanism it's working on?

It seems to increase multiple neurotransmitters and decrease inflammatory markers.

And why I got interested in saffron is around 25 years ago, there was a study showing it helped mood and improve sexual function.

And most of the antidepressants I prescribe decrease sexual function.

And that was always something that used to really irritate me.

I'm going to help your mood and ruin your relationship.

And I'm like, no, I don't like that.

What else have we not gone through from that? Omega-3s, saffron, SAMe, ashwagandha?

Like I say, I think you can teach it

...

I have an exercise.

I think, I have an exercise I do with my patients, and I first came up with it in 1986, and I'm so happy I did.

It's called the one-page miracle.

On one piece of paper, write down what you want.

Relationships, work, money, physical, emotional, spiritual health.

Oh.

You, you talked a little bit-

It's out of the box.

So I think we have to talk about it.

We have to legislate it.

Um, we have to study it.

Why do we keep releasing things that are so sexy that we don't study the impact? We have the sickest young generation in the world's history.

58% of teenage girls report being persistently sad, 32% have thought of killing themselves, 24% have planned to kill themselves, and 13% have tried to kill themselves, a CDC study.

Mm-hmm

It's the same playbook every time.

Thomas Kuhn wrote a book in 1962 called The Structure of Scientific Revolution.

And one of my friends sent it to me when he saw I was getting pounded by my colleagues.

And he goes, this is going to help you.

And it's basically revolutions happen in six stages.

So just quickly, normal science.

So I finished my training in 1987.

What is going to be in that decade?

So let's just start there with what's happening with grief and the brain.

Well, it activates the emotional circuits in the brain that, combined with chronic high levels of cortisol, shrink your hippocampus, though the hippocampus is one of the major memory centers in the brain.

And it's very sensitive to stress.

And when you go through grief, it shrinks your hippocampus.

And so it's hard to find a name.

You feel foggy.

You feel fuzzy.

Yeah.

So for those out there who are either men or women who have not had children or women who have had children who've never had postpartum, thank God, can you kind of explain what goes on in the brain in that time period?

Well, in postpartum, whether it's depression, anxiety, psychosis, OCD, um, when you have a baby, when you're pregnant, your hormones change dramatically.

Estrogen, progesterone, pregnenolone, um, and then you have the baby, and they all drop precipitously.

And if you have a healthy brain, you can manage the rollercoaster, but if you have a vulnerable brain, that rollercoaster can send you over the edge.

And, um, yeah, I'm working with the White House Faith Office on creating the decade of brain health, and I'm very excited about it.

And one of the things we're working on is teaching everyone not to believe every stupid thought you have.

The brain is a sneaky organ.

And I'm wondering just from that perspective, do you think that the SSRIs are being abused? Not in every case, but just broadly, um, in our population.

So thank you for that.

Well, you're welcome.

You know what? I love that you're doing that with your children.

Most parents never do.

And when my 22-year-old was two, she and I used to play this game called Chloe's Game.

Is this good for your brain or bad for it? And I would say...

and she'd go, God's butter.

It's just how healthy that brain is and how healthy your body is.

Why do you think that this is the unhappiest generation at the moment? What's contributing to that?

Because they have brain problems.

They think of alcohol as a health food.

They think of marijuana as innocuous.

They think of psilocybin as the cool new thing that I should do because it treats PTSD and depression, and I think I should do it at the party I'm at Friday night.

Uh, I think there are a series of lies that are driving the problems we have.

And then if you take on top of that social media, where you think everyone else's life is better than yours, the negative news that is actually designed to hook you to keep watching even though it makes you angry, um, so that they can sell you more copper underwear.

Uh, so I'm interested to know what even short-term and then slightly more protracted, you know, social, normal, normal use, whatever normal recreational use of alcohol, weed and mushrooms does to the brain.

It's a buffet

... type three through seven, then it's over-focused and anxious and limbic, and it just means it's not classic.

So if somebody just gave you a stimulant, they gave you Ritalin or they gave you Vyvanse, it'll probably make you unhappy.

You'd be getting stuff done, but you'd start torturing-

It's neuroplastic, yeah

... your brain produces 700 stem cells.

Um, there's an area of the brain called the hippocampus.

Hippocampus is Greek for seahorse.

What are the ones that are the, the biggest winners from a supplement perspective?

Omega-3 fatty acids help mood, memory, uh, and pain.

I love that.

Um, my favorite of all of them is saffron.

So s- the spice, the most expensive spice in the world, has been shown in twenty-six randomized controlled trials to be equally effective as antidepressants with fewer to virtually no side effects.

What's the mechanism it's working on?

It seems to increase multiple neurotransmitters and decrease inflammatory markers.

Um, and why I got interested in saffron is around twenty-five years ago, there was a study showing it helped mood and improve sexual function.

What do you think we're still getting wrong?

Very few people love and care for their brain.

I had this great lunch recently with Lisa Trout.

And Lisa and her husband, Connie, Ken, Kenny, own Justify.

So Justify is the last Triple Crown winning racehorse.

And we have a high school course called Brain Thrived by 25.

We teach kids to love and care for their brain.

And you think, how does a person who builds this incredible com- company, gives out all these millions of shoes to impoverished people throughout the world feel like they're not enough at the end of the day? It's because the value system that they're valuing themself with is not who they feel inside because they've been wearing a mask for so long is one of the things that I think is happening.

So that

was more than 13 years ago.

And then we found not only did she have it, but everybody in her family had it.

And from her mother and her uncle and her dad had actually been diagnosed with it and he didn't have it.

And so ADD or ADHD, you know, it's had both names through the years, is a neurodevelopmental disorder where over time, so it's not something you just have for the moment because you're tired.

Over time, you have a short attention span.

You're distracted.

And then so how would somebody who's listening to this right now for themselves or their child or someone they know, if they feel like they have some of these symptoms, is there a

I wanted to talk about one of your newer books, which is the end of mental illness here, because right now with everything that's going on in the world, I mean, you must see, what are you seeing and what are you recommending for people who are going through some real struggles right now?

Um, you know, I think of it as pandemic squared is yes, we're in the middle of a global pandemic, but it's going to cause another pandemic.

with people who've lost their jobs, who've lost their loved ones, who are frightened and afraid.

Calls to suicide hotlines have gone up nearly 1,000%.

And the way out of this is surprising that many people don't know.

I titled the book The End of Mental Illness because I hate the term.

Mental illness, because it's wrong.

So does that make you crazy because your hormones are off? It can make you feel crazy.

Oh, wow.

And get rid of the sugar and foods that quickly turn to sugar.

There was a study from the Mayo Clinic where they look at people at a fat-based diet, so avocados, nuts and seeds, green leafy vegetables, fish.

42% less risk of Alzheimer's disease.

And then they looked at people who had the standard American diet: bread, pasta, potatoes, rice, fruit juice, sugar.

400% increased risk of Alzheimer's Disease.

Yeah.

I'm like, "No." So I think everyone should have their hormones tested and optimized.

Are you advocating for say, taking glycine and NSTL cysteine to make glutathione to go at that same pathway or nicotinamide riboside or any of these things that are sort of hotly discussed now?

Yes.

And NAC is one of my favorite supplements.

And people don't know.

I mean, it's been shown to be helpful for depression.

It's actually pretty effective for obsessive compulsive disorder.

It's more effective than Prozac for people who have trichotillomania.

So

[laughs]

Which, oh, by the way, makes them more anxious.

So four seconds in, take a big breath, hold it for a second and a half, eight seconds out, and hold it for a second and a half.

And when you're on a plane, just really focus on exhaling as long as you can.

That resets your nervous system.

And then just start writing down all the really awful, terrible thoughts you have, the images, and then correct them.

Uh, so do you, have you ever interviewed Byron Katie?

Yes, yes

Right.

And, uh, I'm working on, uh, a national brain health revolution campaign actually with HHS and the White House.

AndIt's all based around this one question.

So if you ask me, what's the number one thing I can do for my brain? It's this question: Is what I'm doing now good for my brain or bad for it, and does it make the world better? And if you can answer that with information and love, you get to keep a healthy brain, or you get to create a healthy brain.

And quite frankly, most seven-year-olds know the answer to the question.

They'll get a 90%.

If you put 100 things down and go, "Good for your brain or bad for it, and does it make the world better?" And it comes from a game I played with my daughter, who's...

Mm

Mm.

That could be mari- perimenopause.

It doesn't show up when you're 60.

That could've been a car accident.

It's something you have your whole life.

So short attention span, uh, attention deficit disorder or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

I actually hate the term ADHD, because half of the people who have it are never hyperactive, especially females.

Yeah.