Brain Expert: "Don't let your toddler have screen time" w/ Dr. Daniel Amen

Traditional home security only alerts you after a break-in, and that's too late. SimpliSafe is changing that. Stop. This is SimpliSafe. Police are on the way. We don't just alert. We help stop crime before it starts. Plans starting around a dollar a day. Right now, get 70% off your new system with professional monitoring at SimpliSafe.com slash Spotify. SimpliSafe. Ahead of crime in real time. Outdoor deterrence plans start at $49.99 a month. Visit SimpliSafe.com slash licenses for alarm license information. Social media companies are purposefully pissing you off. If you're anxious, you stay on longer. The only thing they want is your attention. When I'm looking at my kids, if they're using some sort of technology that's supervised, that's educating them, I view it as a net positive. Do you disagree with that? Do you think that's. I do. I think you have to be so careful. When did autism spike? As a child psychiatrist, I rarely saw it. Tylenol all of a sudden became the star pain reliever. Then we also saw an explosion of autism. We sat down with Dr. Daniel Amon, a world-renowned psychiatrist, brain expert, and 12-time New York Times bestselling author. Amon has scanned over 200,000 people's brains, including those of NFL players and celebrities. I know there's a lot of, like, hot topics in the media right now, especially when it comes to Tylenol, how that affects, you know, children, especially when a mother is taking that while pregnant. So I kind of wanted to start off with that topic, if that's all right. Well, let's just go for it right away. Okay. So those of us that think of ourselves as integrative or functional medicine doctors, and I think of myself as an integrative psychiatrist, have known for a long time that Tylenol is potentially a problem. And why? What does it do? It disrupts liver function. And so you can't properly. It can't properly detoxify the poisons that are in your body. There has been an association. So when did autism really spike? Yeah. And the American Psychiatric Association will lead you to believe when they change the diagnostic criteria. That's absolutely wrong. I mean, yes, maybe more people got diagnosed. But as a child psychiatrist, I rarely saw it in the 1980s when I was doing my. Training. I rarely saw it in the early 90s. About the mid-90s, it exploded. So what happened? Yeah. And in the 80s, when a mom had a fever, she'd use aspirin. But there were a couple of cases of something called Reye's syndrome, where babies had allergic reactions to aspirin. And the pediatrician said, oh, don't give them aspirin anymore. Let's start using Tylenol. So Tylenol, which was not big, all of a sudden became the star pain reliever and star-relieving fever. And then we also saw an explosion of autism. Now, I don't think it's the only thing. But it's a thing. And I believe autism comes from a gene, genetically vulnerable people, environmental toxin. And I think. Tylenol's one of them. I also think BPAs, bisphenol A, that's often in plastics, that Coca-Cola, they have BPAs in their cans. And they say it on their website proudly, which is sort of a little bad marketing in my mind. Aspartame, we'll talk about aspartame a little bit, that's in diet soda. And there's a brand new study on phthalates. So phthalates, one of the chemicals in. in personal products, like makeup, or deodorant, or your sunscreen. They put it as a preservative. And moms who, they looked at cord blood, the blood from the umbilical cord, so mom to baby. Those who had high levels of phthalate in their cord blood had a 500% increased risk of having an autistic child. So think about this with me. 'Cause it's not a genetic issue. Because genetic issues don't all of a sudden go from one in 10,000 to one in 31. That it's an environmental vulnerability put in, something happened. And it was an environmental toxin. Ultimately, if you want the healthiest baby, you have to get healthy yourself. - You mentioned how Tylenol, and I think you say this in your new book, that Tylenol is so important. - Yeah. - You know what I mean? - Yeah. - How Tylenol is so helpful for someone going through grief, and how, you know, ibuprofen. - And from a breakup, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, I guess like, yeah, for healing a broken heart. That's, I forget the exact quote that you said, but yeah, you were talking about Tylenol when it comes to a broken heart, as well as ibuprofen. But for some reason, with ibuprofen, it works for women, but not men. Talk to me more about that. - So, in Change Your Brain, Change Your Pain, I thought, the idea behind the book is that both physical and emotional pain work on the same, same circuits in the brain. And so, when they figured out that Tylenol actually helped with the emotional pain of a breakup, it's like, well, why is that? Because it calms an area of the brain called the medial, toward the middle, pain-suffering circuit. - Interesting. - I thought that was just so interesting. And why ibuprofen would work for women, but not for men, I'm not quite sure. But I found that, you know, this gender-based difference is just fascinating. But with things like headaches, you want, always want to ask yourself, why do I have it? Right? Well, you always want to be curious, not furious. So, what did I eat? What did I drink? What's the level of stress that I'm under, and how can I manage these things in a better way? And we often talk about how pain is repressed rage. So, if you're really angry, but you're such a nice person, you could never say it, it often comes out in back pain or head pain. And Tana, my wife, often calls me Pollyanna because I'm a very positive person. But I realized in writing, Change Your Brain, Change Your Brain, Change Your Pain, that I have to be friend Hannibal Lecter. Because you have to be able to find a way to get the rage out. Now, appropriately, right? We're not going to become a serial killer. Yeah, yeah. But too often, John Sarno, who wrote wonderful books on pain, talked about the goodest, the people that have to be good in order to be okay with themselves, that they suffer a lot more with pain, and he actually said it was repressed rage. I also find it very interesting, the connection that you drew between pain that you're experiencing, and then also, and grief, specifically, and muscle pain, knots in your back. We are, we're currently grieving, very fresh grief. We lost a baby at 17 weeks, just very recently. I'm so sorry. Still shaky about it, but seeing that you drew that connection, and I was, I just turned to Matt immediately, I was like, that's crazy, because I have started developing knots, like tweaking my neck, knots in my back, and like, I went and got, Matt, you scheduled me like a tension point, what's it called? A tension point massage? Yeah, Abby tweaks her neck, and so I scheduled her a massage, and it really helped, because she had all these knots. The masseuse was like, you have so many knots in your back, and then when I saw you drew that connection between grief, and muscles, knots, all this stuff, I was like, wow, that's crazy, that like, that turned a light on for me. Well, and hypnosis can be very helpful, or EMDR, EMDR is a specific psychological treatment for trauma, what happened to you was clearly traumatic, right, it's not a little T, it's a big T, and there's another technique I like a lot, called havening, do you know what that is? No, I'm not familiar. So it's bilateral hemisphere simulation, so I talk about all of these in the new book, but whenever you feel sad, do bilateral hemisphere stimulation, so it's either this, or this, I like this the best, and what I would have you do is go into the sadness while you're doing this, and go into it for like 30 seconds, I mean, really feel it, but then keep doing it and distract yourself. Like, go to Disneyland, in your head, or the mountains, or the desert, or the beach, or wherever you love, and then keep doing that for a couple of more minutes, and then go, how do you feel? So initially, if you do it with a havening therapist, they'll go, okay, on a scale of zero to 10, when you think about it, how upsetting is it, and you're like, it's a 10, right? And then you hey them, and you do that, for like three minutes and then rate it and often my patients will go it's a four and i'm like well let's do it again think about it for 30 seconds distract yourself go to the beach and then it's a two and then if you do it three or four times it's like you're still sad but you're not triggered and ron rudin who discovered this found it was really good for panic disorder it was really good for phobias and my dad died uh five years ago and it was like the worst day of my life and a couple of days later i'm over at his house and somebody put a picture of my dead dad in the mortuary in a random stack of papers and i got it and it just it was like somebody slugged me i was so scared so upset and i was angry and what idiot would do this and i couldn't stop thinking about that and i was at my house later that day obsessing about this and the little supervisor in my head goes you treat people who have this problem what would you do and i hate them i sat in the chair and i thought about how angry i was and i thought about the picture and i did that for like 30 seconds and then i took my brain to the beach and i kept it and it went from 10 to like four and then i did it again i went from 10 to 2 and then i fell in love with the picture because it was the last picture of my dad on earth it's so helpful and little kids can do this i found it incredibly helpful for when children are upset to stroke them right like on their arms have them think about what you're upset about and now go think about the playground or think about being in the pool but you know whatever they love and it just settles them how do you think things would have played out differently if say you would have turned to drinking in that time or went and binged a dozen donuts from krispy kreme or i don't know gotten high like are you then prolonging the pain into other areas and then it's it's coming up and you don't even know even understand why it's coming up like how how does that right you just could you know you feel better fast but doesn't last yeah and i always want people to feel better fast right that's a fast technique but i want it to last and i want you to work through it rather than pick up an addiction that creates more problems for you whether it's the donuts alcohol marijuana whatever why is it that doctors today are so quick to prescribe ssris or some sort of medication for things like that um i actually just to be vulnerable here vulnerable here for a second i'm actually currently on antidepressants and they've been they've been super helpful but it did shock me how easy it was to get prescribed them it was like a 10 minute phone call uh just you know with with the with the doctor through through an app like it was it was a pretty simple process and you know i had been depressed for a very long time so i think it was probably a good thing and i'm doing a lot better and it definitely i think it's helped me through this horrible thing that we're currently going through with with the loss of our baby girl but it was shocking to me though how easy it was because i i held off on you know getting them for a very long time because i was trying to fix it in all these different ways but i just kind of got stuck in this in that like doom loop that you talk about in your in your book um why is that that it's so easy to prescribe them and just hand out antidepressants 25 percent of the american population is on psychiatric medication wow it is a huge win for the pharmaceutical industry it is a huge loss for our society some people they're incredibly helpful but psychiatrists are the only medical doctors who never look at the organ they treat so you got prescribed 10 minutes working through an antidepressant and nobody looked at your brain nobody looked ahead of time nobody looked afterwards you have no idea what it's really doing to your brain now maybe you had a brain pattern where that medicine what are you taking i'm on zoloft so i take 50 milligrams every night before bed okay so maybe your brain was busy and the front part of your brain when it works too hard you can worry you're a little bit rigid if things don't go your way you get upset and you can be sad and those sad thoughts can cycle something like zoloft ssri calms that down but if you take too much or you take it for too long that then you don't care that much you become a little bit less motivated you become a little bit more impulsive and there's this balance between neurotransmitters in your brain so if you think of serotonin zoloft is a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor so what it's doing when your brain releases serotonin it's preventing the breakdown of it so it leaves more of it around right and so it calms things down but as you raise serotonin it's on a teeter-totter or counterbalances with dopamine and so as serotonin goes up relatively dopamine goes down and so say they were really out of whack to start so maybe it balances but maybe your dopamine was a little bit low because i think we talked before it's like well maybe you have add right unplanned is uh you know before i'm like i wonder if they have add which means you already started with low dopamine and so it might you might become a little bit more add yeah with it and so how do you know that's been my argument for 30 years unless you look ahead of time someone just monkeyed around with your brain with no biological data and that's what's happening and it's like you asked why it's because it's the only tool psychiatrists have now when i trained i trained in the early 1980s at walter reed that wasn't the only tool we had i was the therapist i was the medical doctor i was the psychiatrist i had medicine i had therapy i had group counseling i had lots of tools in my toolbox but in the early 90s when managed care they go oh psychiatrist you're you're too expensive you just do the drugs and we'll hire you know lower paid psychologists marriage and family counselors they do the therapy and in my mind i went to the doctor and i said i'm going to go to the doctor and i said i'm going to go to the doctor i'm not going to do that i'm treating the whole person i'm not going to be anybody's prescriber i'm going to be their doctor so i've hated that model but it took over psychiatry in the early 90s and it's beautiful for the pharmaceutical industry speak more about all these other methods there are to treat if you came to see me and i totally would give you an option of medication because my job isn't to tell you what to do my job is to give you options right it's called informed consent and head-to-head against zoloft walking like you're late 45 minutes four times a week equally effective but what do you have at the end of 12 weeks of exercise well you're cuter and your brain works a little bit better what do you have at the end of 12 weeks of zoloft you're less depressed but it's harder to have an orgasm i mean i don't know if that's true for you no okay so it's funny that you bring that up because i was listening to you talk about this very thing on a podcast and not to btmi but i have a very high libido and so just this past week i've been on zoloft now for four months and i was like abby like that i mean it's actually i'm not even gonna lie a little bit nice that i'm not so like man i just need some like i don't know but uh but i was like abby like this is weird like i've never done in his day now yeah i'm not so distracted by thinking about sex all the time so i mean maybe that's been helpful for me but uh well i think for some people because sometimes hyper sexuality can go along with add and calming that down a little bit can be so helpful right to give you a little bit better impulse control and not spinning on the same thought over and over again yeah um it is funny that we were talking about natural treatments so exercise omega-3 fatty acids especially higher in epa than dha learning how to not believe every stupid thing you think is so important like when you're sad or you're spinning it's like why are there no classes in school on how to manage your mind right i'm friends with paul simon and i love him he has this song called kodachrome which starts off with when i think back on all the crap and i'm like oh my god i'm gonna die i'm gonna die i'm gonna die i'm gonna die i'm gonna die i'm gonna die i'm gonna die that's the crap i learned in high school it's a wonder i can think at all i mean it's like why don't we teach kids how to manage their check books and manage their minds, right? We have a high school course called Brain Thrive by 25, decreases drug, alcohol, and tobacco use, decreases depression, improves self-esteem. Why? We teach them not to believe every stupid thing they think. And then we teach them to love and care for their brain by asking themselves this question every day. Is what I'm doing good for my brain or bad for it? And so alcohol, bad. Marijuana, bad. Hitting a soccer ball with your head, very bad, right? So just learning to do the right thing, not because you should, you do the right thing because you love yourself, right? And the thing, you want to love your brain. So three natural things, saffron, 28 randomized controlled trials against Zoloft, Celexa, Wellbutrin, Imipramine, Prozac, equally effective. Saffron is pro-sexual, so maybe that would not help you. It enhances sexual function. It helps with mood, but it also helps with memory and focus. There's five studies with ADD and saffron. And so I'm thinking for you, I'm doing those four things first. And fifth is learning to do the right thing. And so I'm doing those four things first. And sixth is learning not to believe every stupid thing you think, right? Whenever you're sad, whenever you're mad, whenever you're nervous or out of control, just write down what you're thinking and then go, is it true? That is a basic skill that second graders should learn. But this generation, your generation's thought, like I've seen some of the world's most famous people, they'll have the same thought. I'm not enough. One guy sold 400 million albums. I'm not enough. I'm like, dude, if you're not enough, nobody is enough. Who are you talking about when you say that? Well, I don't want to say that one. But I mean, so many people, they go, oh, I'm not enough. I'm not good enough. I'm not smart enough. I'm not pretty enough. I'm not tall enough. I'm not rich enough. I'm not enough. And I'm like, is that true? Yes. Is it absolutely true? No. How does it make you feel? Small. How would you feel if you didn't have the thought? Fine. Take the original thought, turn it to its opposite. I am enough. And then just focus. Do you have any evidence? You're enough. Married to a beautiful woman, have a job you find fascinating. It's where you bring your attention. So if you naturally tend to be depressed, we naturally tend to be negative. And negativity is bad for your brain. And so I try to teach all of my patients positivity bias. What's positive about this situation? And there's nothing positive about having a miscarriage, except you guys are still together and you still love each other and you can try again. And my mom had a miscarriage and she cried, I'll never have a baby. Yeah. She has. She has seven children and 54 grandchildren, great-grandchildren. Don't believe every stupid thing you think. So when you get that thought, just write it down and go, is that true? Something I love that you have shared many times is pain shared is pain divided. And that I found so much relief in that in this time. I have talked more openly, cried more openly, shared so much. And in a time that, I don't know, I felt like a little pressure, like maybe I should just be quiet and like get myself collected before I talk about this. But I have found so much healing in like talking about my pain. And I guess we can talk about that aspect of like managing our pain, like sharing our pain and like how that has a tangible benefit to how we experience it. It also connects you and it gives some purpose to the pain. Because if you shared it, other people have shared theirs with you. Now, ultimately, you want to share how you're getting better, right? You don't want to just share the pain. But in sharing it, other people can tell you their experience. And that's the connection that is healing. And we get sick in four circles and we get well in four circles. So I always think, about what's the biology of that. Your hormones went through a wicked, quick transition. So there's a physical aspect to that. There's also a psychological aspect to it, which is loss, right? And grief. And then there's a social aspect to it. There may be some tension or disappointment. And there's a spiritual aspect. It's like, well, why did that happen to me? And I think getting well is taking care of yourself physically, not believing every stupid thing you think, or using something like EMDR or Havening to manage it, connecting, sharing the pain, always looking for the purpose. It's just been on our minds constantly. It's been something that the automatic negative thoughts have definitely come up, feeling helpless, hopeless. That's obviously been a thing as well. And so it's just been, it's been something that's been really hard. I think, especially- What's the thought? From my perspective, I think being on antidepressants has definitely helped me, but it's been sad to see Abby blame herself for all that. And so just reminding her that there's absolutely nothing that she did wrong. Seeing her go into this blame game of like, "Oh, maybe I did this. Maybe I did that." And it's like, "No, you didn't. There's nothing you did. It's just sucky stuff like that." I feel like this happens sometimes. Well, we always try to believe we have more power than we do. Truthful. Yeah. When you go, "I could have done this, or I could have. " You just write that out. And then it's like, "Well, is that true? Is it absolutely true?" But the flip is, I did what I knew to do, and bad things happen to good people, right? And we know miscarriages often happen when there's sometimes something wrong with the baby. And so it's nature's way of not creating more suffering. But we don't know. But when your mind goes on the attack, that's when you need to write it down. And treat yourself like a good mom would, or a good friend, or a good teacher, a good coach. It's too often we treat ourselves in such an abusive way. And it's like, "Hey, would a good coach say that to me? Or would a good friend say that to me? Or would I say this to someone I cared about?" And it's like, you wouldn't. So then give that part of you a name. I love it. Give your mind a name. Like I named my mind after my pet raccoon when I was. Because she was a trouble maker. You had a pet raccoon? I did. No way. I loved her. Indoor? Like inside your house? Oh, yeah. Oh, no. Slept in my bedroom. What? That's scary. I didn't know that was happening. But TP'd my mother's bathroom. What? It was a very bad day. Ate all the fish out of my sister's aquarium. You're kidding me. Very bad day. But that's my mind. It just creates trouble. And so if you give your mind a name, you just can separate from it. And if you can be a little bit dispassionate and watch it and go, "Oh, it's a storm. And the storm because of the loss and the hormones, but you don't have to attach to it. It's not the thoughts you have that make you suffer. It's the thoughts you attach to. You've talked before about how when you look at the brain, you scan someone's brain who is praying or meditating, you see all sorts of activity. And I want to get into what that looks like, because I believe you referenced on a podcast, a study that somebody did on Tibetan monks and Francescan nuns. But where my question's coming from is, is there a similar thing going on in the brain when you look at someone who is reflecting on a loved one that's passed on or someone that was close to them and they live in their brain with them, if that makes sense? We all live in each other's brains. And when we lose somebody, important to us, the brain still looks for them. And that's where it becomes more active, different than in prayer and meditation. They tend to calm down an area of the brain called the posterior cingulate gyrus, big term. It's part of the brain that's like the cheddar box in your brain that talks to you and sometimes punishes you, says bad things to you. Meditation and prayer calm those areas down and they strengthen your frontal lobes. And there's always this dance between your emotional brain or the chatterbox and your frontal lobe. So think of your frontal lobes as the brake in your brain. Or if you think of the rider and the elephant, so your emotional brain is like the elephant, but it has a rider and the rider like directs the energy. No, it's like, now we're going to do that. We're going to do this. And you need that. But if you were in a car accident, if you played football in high school, if you're drinking alcohol or smoking pot, what you're doing is you're weakening the rider, you're weakening the brake and your emotions can get out of control. So we never want to do anything to damage this brake part in your brain. That's also brakes pain and change your brain, change your pain. I talk about three pain circuits in the brain. This being the most important one, because if this is weak, it can't shut down pain, physical or emotional. We talked before, last time we had you on the show, a lot about alcohol and how damaging that is. I think there's been a lot of research coming out recently where people are realizing that alcohol is essentially poison and it's not good for you. And even drinking in moderation isn't good. But now there's been this big push towards marijuana. It's been interesting to see. We realized that it's not good for you. It's not good for you. I recently moved to Arizona and immediately I started noticing like all these signs that were like free weed Friday, come get your free weed, like weed pizza, like all these, there's this big business now behind marijuana because it's getting legalized all over the country. And from the research that I've done on it, it seems to be a lot less harmful for your health than alcohol, but that doesn't still mean that it's healthy for you. So I'm curious, what do you say to the person who views marijuana as medicine, medicinal, helpful for chronic pain or headaches? What do you say to that person? Yeah, I'm not a fan. I published a study on 62,454 patients. It's the world's largest imaging study on how the brain ages. And little kids have really busy brains. And as we get older, it becomes sleepy and then what we looked at is what accelerates aging. Having schizophrenia was the worst. Your brain looked 10 years older. The next worst was marijuana. Really? Yeah. And then I published a study on a thousand marijuana users. Every area of the brain was lower in blood flow. And then there's a brand new study out earlier this year from another group that I have nothing to do with on a thousand marijuana users, young ones, the areas involved with low blood pressure. learning and memory were lower. It's not innocuous. It's a lie. Teenagers who smoke or use marijuana in their 20s have an increased risk of anxiety, depression, suicide, and psychosis. There's actually a gene that if you have this gene, you have a 700% increased risk if you use marijuana becoming psychotic. And most people never test for the gene. So if you're using marijuana, it's a little bit of Russian roulette. On our podcast, Change Your Brain Every Day, we recently had Julius Randall. So Julius is three-time NBA all-star. He's a superstar power forward for the Minnesota Timberwolves. He's smoking a lot of pot and almost got divorced over it. He saw a scan, and Julius is very smart. He saw a scan and saw the damage it was doing, and he stopped. Well, a year later, emotionally, because he learned how to not believe every stupid thing he thinks, he learned how to have better habits, got his ADD treated, and he's not using marijuana. He's so much better as his brain is better. I'm not a fan of it, especially because it can decrease motivation. It can decrease your coordination. There's one city in Ohio where 42% of the accidents are associated with marijuana. So we are just changing addictions. And now the new one is psilocybin. It's like psilocybin for everybody. And in some cases, marijuana is helpful. In some cases, under really good supervision, psilocybin probably is going to be helpful for depression and PTSD. The problem is this. As soon as we go, oh, this is good medicine, now we have mass numbers of young people having mushroom parties. Interesting. And what's the incidence of mental health problems in the young? They've exploded, and they've exploded in part around the societal lies that alcohol is a health food, marijuana is innocuous. And mushrooms are a good way to deal with your depression. We are worse than ever before. Suicide in young people has gone up 746% since the year 2000. So now we can add in social media and cell phone use where we're no longer dripping dopamine. We're dumping dopamine. And when you use your dopamine stores by the constant phone, the constant social media, the constant comparison, alcohol, marijuana, psilocybin, you just feel bad all the time. And then you get on the app and get on an SSRI, and you think you're fine. But there's new research associated SSRI use in older people with dementia. So if I was you, I wouldn't think, oh, this is my happy pill. I would go, I'm going to figure out how to manage my mind, get really healthy, and use this as a tool, a little bit like GLP-1 drugs. It's like, if you think you're going to use that to manage your weight for the rest of your life, you're going to be in big trouble. Yes, you want to turn off the food noise, but you also want to manage, you want to learn how to manage your mind and manage your body. It's funny you bring that up, because that was actually my very next question. What should I do as somebody that is currently on antidepressants? I don't want to be on this forever. I want to get off. Even though I'm sure it'll be frustrating to have a higher libido again, I'm sure I can manage that. I'm sure I can find natural ways of dealing with that. So what should somebody do that is wanting to get off of antidepressants? So make sure you talk to your doctor and love your brain. And at some point, we'll look at it. And then balance it. Eat things you love that love you back. Like, I love donuts. I could have six and be so happy. And I would be fat and inflamed and miserable. I was surprised to hear you say you liked it. When's the last time you had a donut? It's been a long time. In the past five years, have you had a donut? No. Oh, my. Cake, ice cream, last five years. When I go to Europe, I might have a gelato. But Drew Carey, you know, the comedian Drew Carey, he said it best. Eating crappy food isn't a reward. It's a punishment. I try to love things that love me back. But every night I make Tana brain healthy hot chocolate. Like every night. Unsweetened vanilla almond milk, raw cacao, a little bit of chocolate stevia. There's a company I like called Sweet Leaf. And I love it. And it loves me back. You seem to be a man of discipline. It seems like discipline plays an important role in your life. Love plays the biggest role in my life. And I love me. And I love Tana. And I love my kids. But I realize I never want to have to live with any of them. Right? I want to be, clear and independent for as long as I can. I don't want to be a burden, but I don't want to live with them. It's like, no, I want to be in control of me for as long as possible. Right? So I think of it as love, that I do the right thing, not as discipline. And what I think Lincoln said, discipline was choosing between what you want now versus what you want most. Are you a big fan of Abraham Lincoln? Love Lincoln because he failed repeatedly, was depressed, was suicidal twice in his life. Really? Yeah. I was just at the White House and it was really fun for me because I got to talk to RFK Jr. And right next to the Lincoln bedroom. And I've always been a huge. Huge fan of his. And in the winter of 1840, he was depressed, suicidal. He had a political setback and he went to his doctor in Illinois. Springfield, Illinois. And how did his doctor, Anson Henry, diagnose Lincoln with melancholia or what we would now call depression? He talked to him. He looked at him. He looked for symptom clusters the same way your 10-minute doctor did, right? You told him the symptoms. He gave you the diagnosis, which was basically a regurgitation of your symptoms. And then he diagnosed and treated him. That's insane that we're still doing it the way we did it 185 years ago. But yeah, I love everything about Lincoln from his overcoming a traumatic childhood. And do you know why he was depressed? I'm guessing because of all the really crazy stuff going on back then with the- What a lot of people don't know is when Lincoln was 10, he was kicked in the head by a horse and was unconscious all night. And he would have visions. So I think of them as temporal lobe problems, probably from the head injury. Depression is a very common cause of consequence of concussions. But if you don't look, you don't know. I actually got on antidepressants not too long after I had my third concussion. So my first concussion, I was wrestling a guy in college. We were messing around. He shoved me into a cabinet, whacked my head, got a concussion. Second one, I was actually a year ago this month, I was in Abby's group fitness class, fell backwards on this soft, plush mat thinking I was just going to roll just like normal. And there was a metal kettlebell right there that smacked my head. It started gushing blood. Second concussion. Third one, went on a surf trip to Nicaragua with some friends, took a fiberglass surfboard to the face. So maybe your depression is really post-concussive. Could be. Am. And Zoloft's not the right long-term treatment for that. Hyperbaric oxygen imaging, because how do you know unless you look? I mean, I can't say that over and over and over again. We put people in a hyperbaric chamber and put their brain in a healing environment. So I don't know if we talked about it last time, but I did the first and largest study on active and retired NFL players. So I've scanned and treated 400 NFL players. Unreal. 80% of our players. Got better when we put them on a rehabilitation program. Really good omega-3 fatty acids, a really great multiple vitamin, a brain boost that works in six different ways, avoid bad things, do good things. And for many of them, we put them in a hyperbaric chamber. I don't know if you know Joe Polish. He's also in Arizona. He's, I love marketing and he runs something called the Genius Network. He came to see me because he had an addiction and he got a baseball to his head when he was 10. You could see the evidence of the trauma and went in a hyperbaric chamber, took the supplements, dramatically better. Wow. You are not stuck with the brain you have. You can make it better. I would love to circle the conversation back to social media because we have little kids and there's actually a school in Arizona. We're going back and forth what we want to do with schooling with our kids. We're doing home stuff right now. And for the foreseeable future, but we're like down the line, it might be good for them to do social interactions at school. I think that's very important for their development. But there's a school near us that actually makes it a school policy that none of the kids can have social media. If you attend that school, no one can have social media. And that reminded me, I heard you say before, talking about applying neuroscience to public policy. And there's a country that banned social media for everyone. Australia. Australia. Okay. For our kids under 16. Yeah. I think that's a. I mean, I don't see America doing that, but. There's a direct correlation to suicide and social media and cell phones. Yeah. So a brand new study that kids who got cell phone at the age of five, when they're 20, they have a 50% chance of having suicidal ideation. Five, zero. One in two. That the earlier kids get cell phones, the more messed up they are. Why in Silicon Valley are their nanny contracts. That go, you cannot be on your phone around the child and you cannot let the child have access to devices. Why would that be? From the people who created this stuff, that they go, oh, it's not good for my kids. So if they know it's not good for your kids, it's not good for your kids. It's so scary for me because we were just in high school when I feel like social media was first picking up. And it has since obviously changed dramatically, gotten so much more all concerned. Yeah, it has. So I'm curious how you anticipate people in our generation, what our brains will look like when we're elderly because of this constant social media consumption. So conscientiousness, the one predictor of longevity is going down in your generation. Agreeableness is going down in your generation. And we don't recognize that social media companies. There's this great documentary. If you haven't seen it, you should, called The Social Dilemma. How these companies for profit are purposefully pissing you off. That if you're mad, if you're sad, if you're anxious, you stay on longer. And ultimately, the only thing they want is mind share. They want your attention for as long as possible. And so what they do is they take people's who are like center right. But then they'll just feed them right content. And pretty soon that center right person is more moderately right. But that moderate right person is now far right. The same thing's true. The center left person is now moderately left. And the moderate left person is now radically left. And it's an unintended consequence for money of dividing us into this really insane, hateful place that we have gotten to. That people celebrating the assassination of a young right star. It's just unconscionable to me. But it happens on both sides. It's not a left issue or a right issue. It's a social media mind manipulation. So, it's not a left issue or a right issue. So, they can sell you stuff. Can these devices, I know we've talked about social media and how damaging that can be, but can these devices be used for good as well? Because the reason I ask, our son, I'm so proud of him. He's three. He's doing like a little bit of school every week. He goes two days a week to this little, you know, small home school that we set up with our friends. And he recently, actually, I think this was just a couple of days ago, by far, best in the, in the class when it came to drawing all of his letters. He just like traced every letter. He's three. So, like most three-year-olds can't, you know, he just turned three. So, it was just very impressive that he almost perfectly traced every letter. And the reason he was able to do that was because about, I don't know, 10 days ago, 14 days ago, I started using this learning application on our iPad with him called ABC Mouse. And so, it's been interesting though, because he's learned so much from this learning program, ABC Mouse, but I've noticed how addicted he is to the learning games, even though it's, okay, which one is greater, the three acorns or the two pigs, and he'll, you know, do all these games. But he, there's something about the technology aspect that does get him, you know, glued to the screen. So, how do you, how do you balance that as a, as a parent? I would take away the screen. There's a really good book called The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Smith. And the more access they have to devices, the more it's going to wear out the dopamine in their brain, the more they'll get addicted to it, and the more problems they're going to feel. And as his parents, you are going to feel, right? Because when you struggle with the kids, you feel terrible. If it was me, I would get paper and draw the letters out with him. And the less screen time, the more attention he will build naturally. The more screen time, the less attention he will build. You know, like looking at myself, right? I love to learn. I think learning is so much fun. And so, when I go to learn something, I'll go on YouTube and listen to a three-hour podcast about a very niche topic that I just want to nerd out about. You know, in the same way, when I'm looking at my kids, if they're using some sort of technology that's supervised, that's educating them, I view it as a net positive. And do you disagree with that? Do you think that's- I think you have to be so careful because they're so reinforcing that kids get addicted to it. And then they get unhappy and they go through withdrawal without it. Your brain is mostly finished developing. His brain is undergoing wild development. And much better that he's outside, he's playing, or that you're teaching him off the development. The more you do it on the devices, the more dependent. He is going to be for that exciting, stimulating way of learning. I am so curious what other types of public policy you'd like to see put in place that has neuroscience in mind. So California passed a law that school, high school, cannot start before 8.30 in the morning. Because we know kids who get less sleep have a higher incidence of anxiety, depression, and suicide. And I love that. It's simple, but it's smart. I think brain health education should be in every grade. I had to learn English in every grade, right? But I didn't learn one thing, how to love and care for my brain. And I think this is absolutely critical. I think looking at all of the ingredients and products, I think we should really take a critical look at thousands. Acetylates and parabens and fragrance and aspartame. Yeah, I'm so curious what you have to say about aspartame. Because isn't that what's in Diet Coke that all of us are addicted to? So aspartame and 5,000 products. When I was 35, I had pain in my hands and my knees. And I had trouble getting off the floor playing with my smaller children. And one of my patients. And I think. The people who've taught me the most about what I do are the people I serve. It's been my patients. And I said, one woman said, I stopped aspartame and my pain went away. And I'm like, really? Because I thought it was free, right? It's no calories. Lunchtime, there was a Jack in the Box across the street from me. And I didn't care anything about my own brain. So I'd have lunch at Jack in the Box. And I'd have a 32-ounce Diet Pepsi. Like, everything. Every day. And I'm in chronic pain. And I'm like, maybe I should stop that. And so I did. And the pain went away. And then I'm not that smart, so I had to test it. And so I got another one. And then the pain immediately came back. And I'm like, done with aspartame. They gave mice aspartame. Diet Coke. I know. That's like every mom's favorite drink. And they liked it. I don't know if I want to hear this. Have you heard about Utah soda culture? And they liked it. But they got really anxious. And they gave them Valium, a benzo. And it calmed them down. But the really bad part of this study, their babies were anxious. And the babies were never exposed to aspartame. It had an epigenetic change. It turned on some switches that created anxiety in their babies. Their grandbabies were anxious. Aspartame, unleashed, 1981. 5,000 products. So if you just like, chewing gum, most gum has aspartame in it. And I just think we should do thoughtful studies rather than studies sponsored by Coca-Cola or sponsored by the food industry that they have very powerful lobbyists that are paying lots of money for the government not to look into these things. And I'm sort of a huge fan of RFK Jr. and Go. Let's get petroleum. Let's get petroleum-based dyes out of RFK. I mean, if you can't buy it in Europe, why can you buy it here? - Yeah. - Right? I mean, if they're like blocking things, I don't think, I'm not a fan of red dye. - You've said there's quite a few things that you're happy with what RFK Jr. is doing. I'm curious though, with how you spoke about mushrooms earlier. I wanna say RFK is, you know, working to legalize psilocybin in the country for those, you know, RFKs. You know, war veterans, people that have suffered from PTSD, and talk to me more about that. Like, are there any areas like that where you maybe disagree with RFK? - Well, I'm very concerned about the psilocybin stuff. I think it's going to be helpful to some people and it's gonna devastate other people. There's not enough caution in the discussion because as the idea of the dangerousness of a drug goes down, its use goes up. Because people don't know how to manage their minds. And so they're always looking to escape their own mind. And I'm like, why don't you just make friends with it? Why just, you know, give your mind a name and don't believe every stupid thing you think. - Making friends, gosh. - Wait, we never got the name of your mind. - Hermie. - Hermie. - That was the raccoon's name. - That's so cute. - It was, she was a girl. She actually, Hussey got pregnant. - Wow, oh my God. - I raised her with morals. - Oh my goodness. - Got out one night and then had seven babies. But anyways, Hermie was her name. And she, I loved her. And she was great for picking up girls. Because just take her out on her leash and oh, she's so cute. - What kind of girls is a raccoon? - Oh, so many. Take her to the beach and like, it was great. - Actually, I did want to ask you this. Because going through grief and loss, it feels like the natural stage that we're in now is like maybe we get a dog. That feels like a good, is there some connection? There's gotta be something to that. - Having an animal often is very settling to the brain. If you pick one that's rational and loving. Like I have a white shepherd and I am just so completely in love with her, right? It took a lot of work to train her. But yeah, when I work out, she like lays right next to me. - That's sweet. - Okay, we got to clear from that, come on. - I think that can be helpful. But you also want to make sure it's not a reaction because it's a 12 or 15 year decision. And they can be stressful. - Mm-hmm. - And you just want to sort of-- - We're negotiating here. - Judge your bandwidth. And then if you're really smart and you get a dog, make sure you have a really good trainer. And that you, 'cause the trainer's not for the dog, the trainer's for you. - Training me. - Just like training your mind, right? You have to be really thoughtful with a puppy. - I have kind of a dumb question that's been nagging me ever since the beginning when you were talking about pain and like headaches. So bear with me. - There's no dumb question. - Can you think so hard that you get a headache? Because I swear, sometimes I'm like, I thought way too much today. That's what this, that's what's causing this. - You can't. - What is thought thinking negatively? - No, like if you're like trying to learn something or grapple with something, negotiate like a hard concept in your mind, can it literally cause physical pain in your head? - Well, if the focus with stress will cause the tension, - So it's the stress. - To get worse, yeah. Have you ever been hypnotized? - Never. - So I have an app called Brain Fit Life. It's got six, soon to be 18 hypnosis audios. - Oh, wow. - And many of the new ones are for pain. - Wait, yes I have. - When you were giving birth. - I did a birth hypnosis thingy. - Yeah, hypnobirth like, yeah, meditation. - Meditation, it actually worked. - So what I would do, especially if you're prone to headaches is every day, just spend 10 to 20 minutes listening to a hypnosis audio and training your brain, how to get into a relaxed hypnotic state, because it'll lower your cortisol levels and your muscles are telling you something, that your brain is sending too many stress signals to your body. And so just being in a hypnotic state helps to settle that down. And then on top of that, I would add diaphragmatic breathing. So diaphragmatic breathing is just breathing with your belly and it's so simple, four seconds in, take a big breath, but blow up your belly when you breathe in. If you ever watch a baby breathe or a puppy breathe, they breathe exclusively here because it's the most efficient way to breathe, but then eight seconds out. So take twice as long to breathe in. Breathe out as you breathe in. And for people who have a smartwatch, often measure heart rate variability, which is a sign of heart health. And if you can increase it, you increase it with things like hypnosis and diaphragmatic breathing and meditation, you're just training your body. It's like, girl, you've been thinking too much. Or girl, you're too hard on yourself. We need to be the good mother to ourselves, right? Nurture, love, quiet your busy brain. - How do you tap into a hypnosis? Like it's easy, I'm thinking about my labor experience. It like, it was crazy. I was hypnotized for like, how long was that? That I was listening to that. I don't even remember the time. - Maybe 45 minutes 'cause you forgot to let them know that you needed another epidermal, like you needed a dose. - Yeah, like I came out of it and then they were like, "Okay, it's time to push." was like well i'm in so much pain and i'm wondering if that same thing would occur like in if i were to do this with a migraine like during the day where if i'm like okay yeah i was in that really relaxed state i did that practice in the morning here i am in the afternoon i've my to-do list is long how do you tap back into that without like do you just stop everything and enter the just do four diaphragmatic breaths okay lay on your back or sit in the chair and they're like a 15 second breath so like that's a minute um and go somewhere in your mind that you love like i can immediately do it and go to the beach or go to the mountains or go to jackson wyoming which is so pretty um it's just i'm gonna work to train my brain to help me and if we did a lot more of that in the society we'd be a lot happier you tap back into and then don't listen to things that piss you off whether it's the news or um social media that's meant to keep your attention just watch you know i think people listen just watch your feed on how much of it is oh i really like that versus that really makes me mad can you offset your vices so let me give you an example i know of somebody in my life they practically drink a beer every day but they also run every single day they never miss a day and so it's like okay alcohol not good for your brain but then running good for your brain so let me answer it this way i've seen 400 nfl players some of them active players they have 80 million dollar contracts they're still gonna play it's like if you're gonna do something bad you need to outweigh it with a whole bunch of goods so tom brady played until he was 45 he wrote a book called tb12 which is basically a brain health book virtually everything else he did was great or we're just finishing on firefighter study after the la fires and was so awful our foundation we have a foundation called the change your brain foundation that raises money for service and research and education and we're just finishing on firefighter study and we're just finishing on we donated a hundred scans for firefighters because they all have bad brains but does that mean they're not going to be a firefighter because of the toxic exposure the emotional trauma the head trauma no we need firefighters but what should happen is they should love their brain and they should always be rehabilitating it so you know if you want to keep your vices just see i mean you really can't out run a bad diet right but try to do way more good than bad and the more love you have for yourself the less bad you'll want to do is there something that we haven't discussed that people need to know like just you know final thoughts you had a sex question you want i had a sex question i want to ask what was it i can't i don't know i was like i want i want to bring this up i'm trying to figure out a way i'm trying to figure out a way to bring this up i'm trying to figure out a way i'm trying i was like you wrote a whole book about love and the brain i feel like he's got lots of a wealth of knowledge on that topic oh man um the best fourth play is forethought okay no forethought equals no foreplay right that's why you want to have good frontal lobes because you know for guys we can get aroused almost any time um girls are way different and they need thoughtfulness and so you always want to ask yourself this one question what do you want like with my wife i always want the same thing it's always the same thing i want a kind caring loving supportive passionate relationship a hundred percent of the time i want that but i don't always feel it rude thoughts just show up and i block them because it's like that's not going to get you your goal and the other thing notice what you like more than what you don't like every day you're shaping each other's behavior by what you notice and you know you can make her mad you can make her sad by what you say or what you do but that doesn't fit the goal because odds are you guys have the same goals i have most of my patients have the same goal kind caring loving supportive passionate relationship and it just supervise what comes out of your mouth right now if you drank those bad thoughts are likely to come out if you didn't sleep the night before those bad thoughts are going to come out if you're grieving those bad thoughts are more likely to come out but if you just focus on noticing what you like more than what you don't it just could change the quality of your relationship in a good way and i'll continue to really does dr raymond thank you so much for coming on the show it's been a pleasure speaking with you if you guys have it um definitely pre-order his his new book change your brain change your pain can they can pre-order it right they can pre-order okay and if they go to change your brain change your pain book we actually have four free gifts for them um even a 30-day online pain course no it's great and the emotional freedom journal which is how do you get the rage out um and i'll make it three fatty acid supplement very cool dr raymond thank you so much so great to see you guys again likewise when an intruder approaches a home they expect a camera what they don't expect stop this is simply safe police are on the way using smart ai cameras live us-based agents help deter intruders in under 30 seconds don't just record a break-in stop it from ever happening plan starting around a dollar a day right now get 70 off your new system with professional monitoring at simply safe.com spotify 30 seconds response time requires monitoring plan with outdoor protection starting at 49.99 a month visit simply safe.com licenses for alarm license information hey first time love those sneakers thanks depop got them cheap oh yeah okay downloading there's loads on there wow wish i'd had this last week i just paid full price for mine oh right and you can't get these ones anywhere find what you want for less on depop oh sneakers worn once excellent condition reaching your audience on spotify with display ads is easy use your existing creative and launch your first campaign in minutes with spotify ads manager