Dr. Daniel Amen ON: How to Change Your Life By Changing Your Brain & the Lies About Happiness That Are Increasing Depression

I cannot wait to share it with you. I am so so excited for you to read this book, for you to listen to this book. I read the audiobook. If you haven't got it already, make sure you go to eight Rules of Love dot com. It's dedicated to anyone who's trying to find, keep, or let go of love. So if you've got friends that are dating, broken up, or struggling with love, make sure you grab this book. And I'd love to invite you to come and see

me for my global tour Love Rules. Go to Jay shedytour dot com to learn more information about tickets, VIP experiences and more. I can't wait to see you this year. Now you know that I'm fascinated and committed to introducing you to people who can expand your mind, your brain, that can help you heal internally and externally, that can help you three sixty degrees take care of your life.

And today's guest is someone who is the first guest whoever has been on the podcast twice and now the first guest who's ever been on the podcast three times, which shows us how much you all love him and how much I really appreciate all his insights and guidance as well. He's my go to person whenever I hear about a new treatment or a new therapy or a new whatever it may be. I'm texting this person saying, Hey, what do you think about this? Like? What do you

think about this? And I really appreciate he lives in extremely holistic life, from a spiritual point of view, from a scientific point of view, and having someone that I can ask these questions too openly helps me. So I hope today helps you. I'm speaking about the one and only Doctor Daniel Aymon. Doctor Aman's mission is to end

mental illness by creating a revolution in brain health. Doctor Amen is a physician, adult and child psychiatrist and founder of the Ayman Clinics, with ten locations across the US. Aiman Clinics has the world's largest database of brain scans for psychiatry, totaling more than two hundred thousand spec scans

on patients from one hundred and fifty five countries. He's also the founder of brain MD, a fast growing science based company, and Aymon University, which has trained thousands of medical and mental health professionals on the methods he has developed. Doctor Amen is not new to books or TV. He's produced over sixteen national public television shows about the brain, and his online videos on brain and mental health have

been viewed over three hundred million times. And Doctor Raymond is a twelve time New York Times best selling author. I've got a long way to catch up, and today we're talking about his latest book. It's called You Happier, The Seven neuroscience Secrets of Feeling Good based on your brain type. This is the book I want you to go and get. The link is in the caption right now, Doctor Daniel Ayman, thank you so much for being here.

Thank you for allowing me to have you in my pocket at all times to be able to text you and ask you weird and wonderful questions, and most of all, thank you for being just you know, such a such a kind, warmheyed person who who always brings their best energy to serve others. So thank you for being here. Well, it makes me happy to be with you, you know. I think of happiness as a daily practice, and appreciating the people you love is just critical to it. Yeah, yeah,

and I really appreciate you. You you said you were happy to be here when we were just filming a seconds ago, and then you're telling me that I looked good, and I was saying to you, it's because I've been doing all the right things and following your advice. And I remember, I think it was our second interview, not

our first one, our second interview. I was saying to you, like, I have only one cheat day a week now, and you just look to me and you were like, well, you know why they call it a cheat day, right, And I didn't. I was like, what do you mean?

And you were like, yeah, because you're cheating your brain, like you know, and you gave this beautiful explanation, and I was thinking, you always have these things that you say that stick with me, and if anyone doesn't follow doctor Dannie Lemon on Instagram, make sure you're go and follow him because I love how you post the brain scans of beforrees and afters of on a certain drug and without a certain drug, on weed, without weed, Like I just think that the way you communicate brain health

is fantastic and so great for my generation the generation after me. I think we have so much to learn from you. So thank you for what you're doing and how you're doing it too, and always makes me happy to see you and your wife as well. And this has probably been the longest I haven't seen you since you scan my brain. So that was so much fun. That was so much fun. I was very relieved to know that my brain was doing all right, so well.

And when you see it, you develop a relationship with it and you want it to be better and it's hard to hurt it once you see it. Yeah, that's so true, and it's it's crazy to me that we don't get exposed to our brains, like you don't ever see your brain, which we use every day, that works for us every day, and you have no access to it apart from see your body, you see you know, different organs maybe sometimes with the brain's not talked about a lot. What is our brain? What does it do?

And how do we develop a relationship with it? Because I feel that people are very confused with what is the brain? What is the mind? You know, what does it do? What does it not do? I think there's a lot of stuff out there. How would you describe it? Well, it's very clear to me after all the scans I've done that your brain, the physical functioning of your brain, the moment by moment physical functioning of your brain, creates your mind. And if your brain's not right, your mind's

not right. And there are a lot of spiritual teachers that'll separate the mind from the brain, but you can't because just think of Alzheimer's disease. You know, very damaged brains, and they're very damaged minds that go I mean people that act in ways they never act if their brain was healthy, that they don't remember people that they're deeply in love with. And so if we want a healthy mind,

it actually starts with a healthy brain. And you know, I've had the blessing or the curse to scan over a thousand convicted felons and over one hundred murderers, and their brains are very damaged. So if your behavior is so bad you end up in a cage, and they're not thinking, Oh, I have to understand, evaluate, rehabilitate that person's brain, and then that better and that helps all

of us stuff. Staefsky once said, you can tell about the soul of a society not by how it treats its outstanding citizens, but by how it treats its criminals. And it's you know, when I first started scanning people, I didn't really have an opinion on the death penalty. I just really hadn't thought about it. I thought of free will as black or white, you have it or you don't. And then as my work became known, defense attorneys would send me people did really bad things and

their brains were so damaged. And when I would go to court and a lot of people hated me for that. You know, if you have a bad brain, you did something terrible, you don't get to go home. But should you kill them? I mean, it's a really important question, and I'm like, no, you know, it's not the sign of an evolved society to kill sick people. I mean, you have to protect society from them. But what I've seen is if we rehabilitate their brain, they can have

a meaningful life. And people just aren't connecting. It's your brain. It's easy to call people bad, it's harder to go why and oh can I fix it? What are the things that damage our brains? Because I think what we find is we often think like, oh, that person was totally normal and then one day they just changed, or we say things like oh, yeah, if you just met them, like they were just quiet and calm, like you would never have noticed anything, and then they did this horrific thing.

Like what are those habits? What are those patterns that start damaging our brain? Because I don't think we're aware, As you said, we never see our brain, we don't really talk about it, we don't really know much about it. What are the things we do since birth that damage our brains that could lead to something as extreme as that? Well, even before birth, yes, So since marijuana has been legalized in many states, babies born with marijuana in their bodies

has gone up seventeen hundred percent. I mean it's a ridiculous amount. So even before you're born, what happens in utero can damage the trajectory of your life. They have more behavior problems, they have more attention problems, they have less empathy for other people. And then you know, as you go through life, the standard American diet is damaging brains. You know, you talked about how healthy your diet has been. I follow this guy on TikTok. For some reason, my

TikTok's has gone crazy. And he looked at his blood sugar before and after pop tarts, and pop tarts was like the worst thing he looked at, almost worse than Coca cola. But what are we feeding children? I mean, in public school free lunches, pop tarts, which means we're damaging their blood sugar levels, we're damaging their weight, and we're damaging their brain. And I have a mnemonic called bright Minds which helps me remember, you know, like B is for blood flow. Low blood flow number one brain

imaging predictor of Alzheimer's disease. So Netflix right, not in front of the TV too often, not exercising. That damage is your brain. Probably the number one thing that causes brain trouble. Your brain is soft. About the consistency of soft butter, your skull is really hard and has sharp bony ridges. Mild traumatic brain injuries ruined people's lives. If you said, hey, Daniel, single most important thing from two

hundred and ten thousand scans, mild traumatic brain injuries. Don't let your kids physical right from snowboarding, falling off a horse, football, soccer, physical abuse will do it. Falls, car accidents, you know, and people are texting and driving and texting and walking. And there's three million new concussions every year in the United States, which means over the last thirty years there

have been ninety million people that have had concussions. It's very common and a common cause of depression, homelessness, addiction, suicide, panic attacks ADHD. Wow. Yeah, I mean, when you spell it out that clearly, I think what I love about you is I think the two times I have done an intervide and then when I was with you, I just go away going, oh, I need to so I need to do something for my brain. I need to figure it out right, and it's it's a good thing.

Like I enjoyed that healthy sense of an awakening and a healthy sense of fear because I think we are so scared of being scared in society today, like we don't want to listen to the truth because it's scary, it's inconvenient. It forces us to change something. If someone could do something starting tomorrow, what is the thing that someone could do waking up tomorrow that could be better for their brain? What would you say that is? Well,

you know and you're happier. I talk a lot about the tiny habits, the smallest things that will make the biggest difference and brain and mental health. It's a daily practice, just like physical health. Right, as I said, you look really great. That's a daily practice. Right. You just don't do that one day a week, you do it every day. If you want a really great brain and a really great mind, their habits every day. And some of my favorite every day is as good for my brain or

bad for it? I just like when my daughter, she turned nineteen yesterday, and when she was little, we played Chloe's game, and Chloe's game was is this good for your brain or bad for it? Frozen blueberries, Oh, two thumbs up, God's candy or avocados, Oh, two thumbs up, God's butter. Hitting your head with a soccer ball no, very stupid, thumbs down. Right, And so just playing with her with that question that takes three seconds, right, I mean, it's doesn't take long, and people go what's good and

what's bad? Second graders know it. I went into our second grade class, put twenty things on the board and I went separate them for me, and they got nineteen out of twenty right. So I got a ninety five percent. And the only thing they got wrong was orange juice, which they put in the good category, which is like way too much. Sure, And so whenever you unwrap sugar from its fiber source, right, turn fruit into juice, it turns toxic in your body. So you have to be

really careful with that. So that's one. Two. Whenever you wake up in the morning, today is going to be a great day, you have to nudge your brain right. We have a conscious mind, we have an unconscious mind. We have a self image, and your subconscious is paying attention to the words that the conscious mind is sane. And so if you're like, oh, I don't want to get out of bed, today is going to be a bad day, You're gonna have a bad day because you

just programmed your subconscious mind to do that. Every day when my feet hit the floor. Today is going to be a great day. And then my favorite of all of them is when you go to bed at night, and bed is so important because if you want to have a good day, it starts the night before. Is what went well today? So when I go to bed, I say a prayer and then I go what went well? And I go on a treasure hunt because I'm purposefully

looking for what are the right things that happened? And I look for the micro moments, you know, like what's the smallest thing. And for me, where I live, I see a lot of hummingbirds and butterflies and I just focus on them. And I've been doing this for years and it's so helpful. And about two and a half years ago, my dad died and it was an awful, awful day. And when I went to bed that night, I said a prayer and they went what went well today?

And then the voice in my head, you know, started criticizing me, like you're a bad kid and you don't love your dad and whatever. But because it's my habit, I went what went well today? And I saw this interaction between my mother and the police officer, and it was so funny and so beautiful that it just made me smile. And then I thought of all the texts I got from my friends who found out about my dad,

and that was peaceful. And then I just thought about holding his hand before they took him away, and I went to sleep because I'm mastering my mind and not being a victim of the situation didn't mean I didn't grieve. I still grieve, I still miss him, But it's these habits like every day to direct my mind to help me while taking care of my brain. Yeah, I love those practical tools because in effect, what we're trying to

do is change our thought pattern. Right, we have a pattern, as you said, to wake up and say I'm tired, and we put it on snooze, and then we get up and then we're having breakfast and we're like, I'm still tired. And then we get to lunchtime and we're like looking at the clock and we're like, I'm still tired.

And then by the end then I'm still tired. But then we're up at midnight watching Netflix or whatever it may be, saying I'm still tired, and then that becomes our reality that we just continue to feed that fatigue and we're just more and more and more tired. Whereas when you nudge your brain in a different direction, as you said, and you said today is going to be a great day, you now start making great choices because

you want it to be a great day. But what I love about what you've defined, and this is different and I appreciate it, is that you don't talk about positive thinking. You talk about accurate thinking as being a healthier way to live. And I really like that clarification because I think the positive thinking approach can also be quite toxic. Like you just said about your father, it's not that you didn't feel grief, it's not that you don't miss him like of course, those are very real

human emotions, but you know how to direct them. Can you clarify for our audience today, what is the difference between accurate thinking and positive thinking? Well, positive thinking is I can have this third beer and it won't negatively impact me. Or I can drive in one hundred and twenty five miles down the freeway and the rain and it won't hurt me. Positive thinking is I can stay up and be on my phone until two in the

morning and it won't have a negative impact. They do this great study out of Stanford lewis Terman nineteen twenty one evaluated fourteen hundred and fifty three ten year old children and then they followed them for ninety years. Look it what goes with success, health and longevity. And then don't worry be happy people. Actually, in the beginning of the book, I talk about the lies of happiness, and this is one of the lies. Don't worry be happy.

They died the earliest from accidents and preventable illnesses. I have an older brother, and I adore him, but he's like a hundred and fifty pounds overweight. I always sort of wanted to be like him because I'm intense and I work hard and I've always got projects, and he's like off at three o'clock playing golf, and you know, he just seemed to not have a care in the world. But my health is so much better than his because I worry about it. And so you want to have

the right dose of anxiety. People with low levels of anxiety go to jail because they don't like think, oh, if I do this, bad thing could happen. But obviously too much makes you suffer. And I love the verse in the New Testament John A thirty two. Know the truth, and the truth will set you free. And I want to live my life in truth. So I want to tell myself always, So what's the truth? So if I think Tanna never listens to me, I'm like, well, is

that true? Right? It's another little habit right to always carry around those three words. I don't have any tattoos, but if I did, is it true would be one of the tattoos. Because I don't want to believe everything I think, and that's very important. Your mind creates trouble. With Master Class, you can learn from the world's best

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many fields and disciplines. I've been really enjoying Ester Parol's class on relational Intelligence with lessons on the power and art of connecting to others. Esther was a past guest on the podcast, and her class has been a great way to learn specific techniques to deepening relationships. And I love that all of the lessons are around fifteen minutes long, and how their audio listening feature lets me listen on the go like a podcast. I highly recommend you check

it out. Get unlimited access to every class, and as an on purpose with j Jry Listener, you get fifteen percent off an annual membership. Go to Masterclass dot com forward slash on Purpose. Now that's Masterclass dot com forward slash on Purpose for fifteen percent off Masterclass. You know, thoughts, they come from all sorts of places. They come from your ancestors. They're actually written into your genetic code. I don't know if you ever read the book. It didn't

start with you, Yes, of course that's amazing. I love that book. And trauma and successes actually get written in our genetic code, and our thoughts come from the voices of our moms, our dads, our siblings, our friends, foes, the news you listen to, which, by the way, is no longer the news anymore. Let's just be really clear. They bastardize that industry, and it's about tribalism and money and it's not about news. I start every day with the Good News Network. It's just a cool app. I

have no financial interest in it. I just love it. I'm always smiling, you know, sending articles to my kids. And the music you listen to. I actually did his study on rap, country, rock, and classical music and heavy metal. We did a memory task with high school students, and heavy metal was the worst, Classical was the best. The second best was country, which shocked usted retted rat Foil

in their right behind heavy metal. Oh wow wow. Because that's why one of the biggest forms of music today's rapping, hip hop and music so influences how we feel, and so you want to be careful with the inputs because you might not think they matter, but your subconscious minds listening. Yeah. Absolutely, Well that's why I want to ask you. This is really interesting to me because so I've been listening to jazz in the car. Now, jazz is my new. Jazz is my new. I usually don't listen to anything. I

usually just talk to myself when I drive. That's been like my habit for years. Is I see driving as a moment of spending more time with myself, So I generally drive to nothing. But when me and my wife are in the car together, we both like music, and recently we've been listening to jazz music together. But what I find really interesting about what you just said is that there's a difference between what feels good and what

is good for you. So someone may say I feel good when I eat junk food, when I listen to music that isn't good for my brain, and when I drink, but when I miss out on that meal, I don't feel good. When I choose classical music, I don't feel good. And when I choose to eat healthy and maybe don't drink as much, I don't feel good. And so what I'm fascinated by is our relationship with feeling a certain

way versus being a certain way. So when I started to have to remove refine sugar from my diet, which my wife encouraged me to do, I didn't feel good about that, Like that was painful. I didn't enjoy that feeling in my mind right. Or when I started to go to the gym every day or hike where I hike outside every day now and when I'm working out, I don't feel good about it, but it's good for me. So I started to discover that the things that are

actually good for me don't always feel good. So how do you approach the idea of feeling a certain way? Because I feel like everything that I do that's good for me, I didn't feel good about when I started doing it. Now I choose it because now there's because you're getting the benefit of correct the benefits. I'm also feeling the pattern shift now if I eat so I

still get a craving for junk food. I still have that craving sometimes and maybe once a month now I'll be like, all right, I'm gonna have a burger, Like I'm gonna eat, you know, like a burger and fries and whatever, And now I don't like the taste of it. Like after I feel really regretful, and I'm like, I didn't even like that. I need to remember that. Then now I've changed my tastes, so now it's changed, So tell it. Talk to me a bit about that, Like why do we always want to feel happy and feel

good but we don't often make the right decisions. Secret number four is love food that loves you back, and you're in a relationship. I want you to love what you eat, but I also want it to love you. And so if you're in love with alcohol and alcohol is clearly toxic to your brain for so many reasons, brain and your body, then it's sort of like you're in an abusive relationship. And you know, I just want

people to think about what do you really want? Do you want that mountain of fries or that swimming pool of alcohol? Or do you want energy? Do you want clarity? Do you want memory? Do you want vitality? Do you want creativity? And ultimately what I want is I want to feel good and I want to be good and I want to do good and that comes from a brain and body that work, right, So I don't want to feel good now but not later. Right, that's a four year old's mindset. I want to feel good now

and later. So the things I do day in and day I love now. It just it takes a while sometimes to change your habits. The brain is lazy. It just wants to do what you've allowed it to do. So what you said is just so beautiful. It's like, well, I still get the cravings and I'll give in and then I'm like, oh, why did I do that? Yeah, that's because then I just I just don't feel awesome. So for that momentary pleasure, it's like, well, is it worth it? Does it fit? So another tattoo I'm going

to get some day? Does it fit? So? I recommend this is actually a part of Secret seven Live each Day based on clearly defined values, purpose and goals and quite frankly hedonism. It's not on my goal list. It's it's not in my value list and hedonism. So giving in to every craving I have is the enemy of happiness because it ends up wearing out your dopamine or

pleasure centers in your brain. And I always talk about you want to drip dopamine, don't dump it, because when you dump it with the fries and the alcohol the porn, you don't have much left, and so then you have to go back and do it again, and all of a sudden, chemicals are controlling you rather than you are

controlling you. The dopamine gets so addictive, and as you said, with the pleasure centers, now we're having to the same amount of what we had doesn't even fulfilled the amount of pleasures that we have to have more to hit the same amount of pleasure. As far as I understand, is that correct? Like, it's absolutely true, and fame wears out the pleasure enters in your brain. And I've been blessed.

I mean, I'm friends with you, justin Miley, and and you know, we talk about this over and over again, how fame is just such a trap because you know once, you know, like I had a video go viral and it's like forty million views, and I'm like so exciting, and so when the next one gets eight million views, you're like, well that sucked, and you realize just you know, how stupid that is. You have to be very careful and you want to drip dopamine. How do you drip dopamine?

How does someone do that? Let's say someone who's not getting forty million views, eight million views, but they're posting on social media, they're eating a burger, they're having that glass of you know, alcohol every night. Whatever it may be, like, how does someone learn to I love that idea. I'm thinking,

how does someone practically drip dopamine? Because that's really it's the micro moments of how so for me, I mean, it's like holding Tana's hand and then but noticing and feeling her skin and feeling the warmth, the softness its It's like being present, being connected, or seeing the humming bird, watching the sunrise or the sunset, depending on where you live. It's being present, noticing what you like way more than what you don't like. Plus sunlight, drips dopamine, pumpkin seeds

drip dopamine, Omega three fatty acids. I just gave you a present of our vegan Omega three as I know you're vegan and people have been wanting it for so long. But all the vegan Omega three's they don't have EPA in them. So Omega three's there's EPA and dha. They're almost all dha. But EPA is critical for mood, for focus, for circulation, and it's the first product on the market that I know of that is just loaded with the right balance of omega Three's what is the difference between

ep and DJA. They work on different systems in the body. Both of them are absolutely essential, and they're essential, which means you got to get them from an outside source. Your body doesn't make them, and people who are vegan, it's really hard to get healthy EPA and DHA levels from flax seeds and avocados, for example. No, I can't wait to start taking them. I'm really excited. What am

I gonna notice? What's going to be? Like your skin's already good, But your skin, your hair, your nails, that's the things people notice. But their mood is better. Brand new study out just today Omega three fatty acids helped decrease the incidence of depression. Also helps with focus and helps with memory. It's just critical because they make up the fats in twenty five percent of nerve cell membranes

in your brain. I mean, that's hugely important. The reason why I find is so fascinating that I think so many of us are trying to solve a mental challenge when actually it's a physical, brain tangible challenge. Right, Like I'll meet a lot of people who are saying, genn't feel focused, I feel cloudy, I feel no energy, I feel lethargic. What do I do to get motivated? And it's like, well, no, no, no, the motivation is not

the issue. It's like you're dealing with a lot of other stuff physically tangibly that could be solved, and then with good values, good purpose, good goals, you can actually go in the right direction. But just having a good set of goals and targets and values is not going to solve the fact that your body is crying out for attention. And I think I was definitely in that

space for a long time in my life. I like had such a strong mind that I didn't realize how much I was weakening my brain, and that actually, if I strengthened my brain, my mind was even stronger, my body was even better, and you know, it was all interconnected.

And so for anyone who's who's listening to this, I want you to remember that if you've got an energy issue, a fatigue issue, a focus issue, like this is the podcast for you, Like, this is what I want you to listen to, because chances are it's because you're missing out on some of this stuff, like there's there's a part of your diet or something that's not going into

your body. Well, and if you think of it like hardware and software, yes, the setting goals which is so important, and not believing every stupid thing you think, which we'll talk about, is so important. But those are software programs and you've got to have the hardware that will run it. Plus I hate the termamental illness, you know, and I've talked about that before. It's it's not men till its brain. And when you call someone mental, you shame them. When

you call them a brain, you elevate them. So we need to change the discussion. And mental illness is in right, everybody's talking about their mental illness, but it's the wrong discussion. The discussion is about brain hell, and yes, you have to program it. But what's happening in our society now. It's one of the reasons I wrote the book We're

the unhappiest we've been since the Great Depression. That depression tripled from February of twenty twenty to August of twenty twenty, unbelievable, never seen anything like that, and children suicide skyrocketed depression, anxiety, rug abuse skyrocketed and children, and it's like the pharmaceutical industry is winning that the incidents of anti depressants, anti anxiety medications like xanax when of twenty percent and teenagers. That is a nightmare because it's the wrong solution. And

I'm not opposed to medicines. This never the first thing I think about. It's like, let's get your brain and your habits right and then we'll see what you need. And more than half the people taking medicine really don't need it. Last year, three hundred and thirty seven million prescriptions for antidepressants in the United States. That's insane. I mean, yeah,

it's alarming. I think we've all experienced it in little microdoses of our family, our friends, the news, But then when you hear it as a collective, it's super painful. I mean, how does a society that's going through so much pain, how do we collectively heal? Because that's like that we're further behind because of the pandemic. It's like it was already tough. Now we're really dealing with it.

Someone's dealing with a friend or family member or someone in their life who's going through that it can feel overwhelming for anyone like not everyone's a trained psychiatrist. No, everyone's trained as a therapist to be able to support that kind of individual. Where would you suggest someone starts if someone in their life is really spiraling or struggling, Well, I would start by following me on TikTok or Instagram or you Happier or the end of mental illness there is.

This is a completely new way to think. And I dedicated my book The End of Mental Illness to my nieces and right at the beginning of the pandemic. We adopted them because their mom and dad couldn't stop using drugs. And I am so proud of them because of how well they're doing by just getting the right supervision, the right love, the right food, and the right habits. Now they grew up in trauma. Do you know that ACE

test Adverse Childhood Experience? We should talk about it. It's a test and originally done by the CDC and Kaiser, and it's ten questions on did you experience early childhood trauma? So things like physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, parents who divorced, parents who were addicted, incarcerated. You watched one of your parents being beaten in domestic violence. Okay, so ten of these questions. So how do you score? Do you score zero, like you had no trauma? I score one.

My wife is an eight because she grew up in trauma and she wrote about it in her book, The Relentless Courage of a Scared Child The nieces we adopted. It's a nine. If you score four or more, you have an increased risk of seven of the top ten leading causes of death. If you score six or more, you have a twelve hundred percent increased risk of killing yourself. You have a higher risk of depression, addiction, virtually every

bad health thing. And our daughter is one. So eight to one that's the goal, right, How do you take your trauma? Heal it and not give it to the next generation. And when I met Tanna, I just dearly loved her. I mean, she's beautiful, she's smart, she's awesome. But when I learned about the trauma, I gave her ten sessions of EMDR. It's a specific psychological treatment for

trauma and stands for eye movement, desensitization and reprocessing. She ended up going for a year because there are a lot of stuff to work out, but change the trajectory of her life. She's like my best friend. We like never fight, we get along. We have the same goals. We don't live out of the past. We live out of the present and what we want for the future.

And so many people live with trauma and they're living being controlled by the traumatized eight year old in their lives when they don't have to be, and so part of being happy is dissipating the traumas from the past. Why can people do that test? That sounds fascinating the way, so they can go online and just search for adverse childhood experiences. NPR has a free version of it online and you pretty much know once you take it. How long does it take to do? Just like three minutes.

Super it's just ten questions and it's basically yes or no. But you know, if you're four or more getting help and EMDR is so cool. I want to hear more about it. I'm so glad you raised it because I was like, I've I've had a few clients i'm coaching right now and they've been working with someone else in

the MDR space. Obviously that's not my expertise, but yeah, I wanted to get your thoughts on it, Like explain if anyone who doesn't know what is the EMDR not the name, but like what is it as a practice? So what you do, it's it's actually an eight step practice as you take a good history and you're looking for, like what are the top ten traumas you've had in your life? And you do this with a you do it with a therapist, with somebody who's trained and certified

in it. Then you begin to target, so what's the worst one, and what's the negative belief with that, and what's the positive belief that you would rather believe, and where do you feel it in your body? And so you hold that image and then imagine just being on a train, and we get your eyes to go back and forth, or sometimes they'll do alternate tapping on your knees, or there's a thing called the butterfly hug to do alternately.

While you bring that up and while you're on the train, you just sort of see where it goes, and it'll often go to the early traumas, heighten them. But then with the eye movements, it helps the brain integrate it from an adult perspective rather than living as a four year old's perspective, and it takes the distress from like

an eight or nine out of ten to zero. And it's so cool, and it's one of the fastest therapies because a lot of times people go to a therapist and they'll talk about the trauma and they just feel worse because what they've done is they've brought it up. They'd like say, subconscious, let's pay attention to these awful things you've been trying to forget. But it's the integration.

And I did a study that we published in the Journal of Neurse Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences, a great journal on eight police officers who were involved in shootings and they couldn't go back to work because they were traumatized. Because you know, whatever you think about the police, I work with a lot of police officers. Most of them are just kind carrying, service oriented people and they don't want to hurt anybody, and so they were devastated couldn't

go back to work. I scanned them and in their brain there's a pattern for trauma where their emotional brain was working too hard, and after an average of eight sessions, their brain had calmed down and they all went back to work with the MDR. Wow and so. And with the MDR, there's no you're not under anything, there's no substance. It's just now. And in fact, I'm just sitting down talking to you. I began. I made this connection because what psychedelics do, and people asking me about that all

the time. Now I'm not a fan of it um because I think it's risky and I get to see the fallout of people doing it, they have bad trips. What psychedelics do is they begin to fill in some of the holes in the ruts in your brain. Like you know, if you've been traumatized and imbad ombad ombad or it's my fault, it's my fault, my fault. It can help dissipate that for some people, but they're side effects. With the MDR, there's no side effects and you come

out of it freer. So my first experience with EMDR. So what I do in my profession is, you know, I've often said I've been bleeding on the cutting edge because psychiatrist don't look at the brain, which is completely insane. But when I started doing that thirty years ago, my colleagues hated me. It's like, no you shouldn't do that. That's not what we do. We make diagnoses based on symptom clusters. We don't need to know about the brain, which you people are insane. But I got investigated by

the medical board in California for like a year. It was the worst year of my life. And I an mdr therapist working for me in my office, and one day I went into doctor Lendall and I'm like, I am not okay, You're gonna do this thing on me. And after an hour I left her office and I didn't care. I'm like, it'll whatever will happen, will happen, you know. I love to say. My friend Byron Katie says argue with reality, welcome to Hell. And my anxiety

just went away. And ultimately they dismissed any complaint against me. And I obviously been doing this a long time, but I just saw how powerful it was. I didn't have to stay attached to the pain. I mean, I'm fascinated to try it myself now, and like, I think that's the only way to know. And but it's great to hear that again. I just to clarify, I think what

you're saying is that this is a great practice. It helps you move along and then only habits still have to be in place, because do you feel like people doing it? Yeah right, it's like others you can just go back and like, like dancing is a great brain exercise, but if you drink while you dance, you're completely messing up the benefit. Yeah, that's great. Pink table Tennis brand

new study out today. I was so excited that racket sports people who play racquet sports live longer than everybody else, sixteen percent longer, longer than runners, longer than anybody else. I love that because I play pink punk tennis and pickleballs. But like beer pond is not going down, you know, I don't know, but no, I literally play. I play all three of those. I'm getting a pink bunk table. I play tennis, and I started playing pickleball, and it's

like it's so much fun. It's easy, you only need one other person, easy to do, and they're not good for you, and it's fun and you and it loves you back. Yeah, you just have to find what are those habits? What are those activities I love that loved me back. Yeah, that's fantastic. I want to let everyone know if you don't have you happier already, which is the book that we're talking from, makes you grab a copy because we're you know, literally touching the surface. But

the lies of happiness are fantastic. There are eleven lies in here that we're told. We've talked about a lot of them today, having more and having more of something like love, sex, fame, drugs, don't worry, be happy. We talked about that positivity mindset. We talked about advertisers and fast food. We talked about needing you know, technology, we talked about and we'll talk a bit more about that too. We talked about constantly being in the news, constantly being

aware of the news. We talked about alcohol, marijuana. We've touched on a lot of those lies, but I really want you to dive into it because I think those lies are what's governing our pursuits. But focus on the seven Secrets of happiness to talk about that no one else is talking about. You said the brain needs targeted nutrients every day to boost happiness. What are some of

those targeted nutrients? Because you also gave me along with the vegan omegas, you also gave meaning, could you tell us a bit about why that's so awesome for calm, clarity, and focus, well, especially if you tend to be anxious. Thanning from green tea helps you focus and calm you at the same time. And yes, green tea does have a little bit of caffeine, But why green tea is better than coffee is the thanning helps calm down the

effects of the caffeine. And but thanning by its self is just magical for so many of my patients and those gummies they taste great and they have no sugar, right because sugar for me, it would be a brand violation, and we don't do brand violations. Where from what is it from green tea? Okay, that's where it comes from, right, it's not. Yeah, it's one of the active ingredients in green tea Green tea. Catechians are another great substance for your brain. My favorite of all of them. We talked

about omega threes, but my favorite is saffron. And I've been following the science of saffron for over twenty years because over twenty years ago a study came out showing it was equally effective to prozac, and I'm like, whoa um. And there's folklore in India, India. Yeah, my mom is gonna love this moment in this podcast. Then if you're too happy, you must have had saffron. So now there are twenty four randomized controlled trials head to head against antidepressants,

showing that it's equally effective to boost your mood. But as opposed to antidepressants, which can decrease sexual function, saffron increases sexual function, increases pleasure, increases responsiveness, even in some studies sperm motility. Saffron has been shown to enhance memory and unlike memory, mood and sex. And at the beginning of the pandemic, right where my dad was sick, I'm like, I make something called happy saffron with saffron zinc and

kirk humans. I have taken it every day since, and I just think it's just a nice thing to help keep people balance. But then the supplements in large part depend on your brain type. That's secret Number two is what makes some people happy makes other people miserable. And a one size fits all with happiness, it's just not reality. Some people need novelty and they love surprises. Where it's type two. There's five primary types. That's our spontaneous type.

But type three the persistent type. They hate surprises and love routine. And so know your type and the type of your spouse and children, and then ask yourself, every day, I do something that makes me uniquely happy. And this book's going to help people figure out that type. You have the types in the book, so we have the balanced brain type, the spontaneous brain type, the persistent brain type,

sensitive brain type, and the quotious brain type. And the book helps you diagnose and figure out which brain type you have. So you can do this with your friends, your family, your partner, your kids, and that's going to help you understand what they need more of or what they miss effect. My nieces they had friends over and they were in the spot home and they were taking the ACE quizzes with their friends and knowing each other's brain type. It was such a great discussion. Yeah, I

love that. How do people, as in walk us through some of the process you created to help people figure out their brain type? Well, you know, based on my imaging work, I like, I was looking initially for the one type of you know, where's depression in the brain, And then I realized, oh, there's not one type of depression. There's seven where's add in the brain. There's not one type of add there's seven. That's why Ridland's controversial. For

some people, it's a miracle. For other people, it's a nightmare. And it depends on how your brain works. And then I realized I was seeing patterns of personality, like if your frontal lobes worked too hard, you tend to be worried and rigid, and if things don't go your way, you're upset. And I have of my five girls, two of them have this pattern, and I know no matter what I say to them, they're going to dismiss it. It's going to bounce off. It's like they wear teflon.

And so if I were like shopping I love shopping with my girls, and I go, oh, do you like this, the answer will be immediately no. So for them, I know their type and I wait for them to show me stuff, and if I want them to do something, I'll actually ask them the opposite of what I want them to do, because they're just you know, these people, they're just sort of naturally oppositional. And if I want them to go to the store with me, I'm going to go I'm gonna go to the store you probably

don't want to go with me. It's like, what do you mean, I don't want to go with you. We don't spend any time together. That approach of personalization and an individualization is just so needed, especially in healthcare, because like you're saying, you can, and that's what me and my wife see that in us, Like our diets are completely different for us to be an optimal level, and our workouts are completely different. Like my wife is a

high intensity workout person. I'm a low intensity workout person. I just don't enjoy high intensity. It doesn't work for me. I feel more inflamed, I feel you know, more heated in my body. I don't need that. I'm pretty you know active heat as it is. And then my wife really enjoys it. It's really great for her body. She

feels great for men. So I just think it's so fascinating that we keep trying to take like whatever works for everyone must work for me, and we get this trend or this fad, and I think this diagnosis of your brain type that I think this is the best thing that you possibly could have done for us. The persistent people, they need carbs if you put them on a chetogetic diet, they get depressed and they get angry.

I was on Rachel Ray's show and she was the persist brain type and a national TV we're talking about this, and she said, I went on a low carb diet and I was so mean. I wondered why my husband didn't leave me. Because the persistent brain type needs serotonin. And if you think about a higher protein, lower simple carbohydrate diet, it's a dopamine diet. It helps you focus. But if you give it to the persistent type, they focus more on the things that make them unhappy and

make other people unhappy. So the wrong diet can cause divorce, and so you have to like target it to the person. But it's also why people get addicted to sugar, because sugar is a simple carbohydrate, and sugar raises serotonin and it makes you happy. Have you ever wondered when you go to a restaurant why they immediately give you bread and alcohol because both of them drop your frontlope. So the bread some carbohydrate raises your blood sugar and your

pancreases it and produces insulin. Insulin drives tripped to fan into your brain. Trip to fan makes serotonin and you feel pretty happy, which is why people get addicted to pastries and bread and pizza and donuts. And then they give you alcohol because it drops your front elopes. So if they give you free bread and offer you alcohol, they're gonna make more money because you're gonna order things you said before you walked into the restaurant you weren't

going to order, including dessert. That is so true. And I love it when they give me bread. It's like my favorite. It is not anymore, but that's like my favorite thing that I love it when I walk into the restaurant, like do you have a bread basket? Like you know, it's a it's such a habit, right, It's it's all habits. Would I find that happiness is such

an interesting goal, That's what I meant. But we want to feel happy, but the things that you have to do to feel happy are not necessarily the things you want to do. If something initially initially that's what I'm until it switches, until it switches and oh, by the way, and I start the book with this, happiness is a moral obligation because you know, people are like, oh, you're writing a book on happiness. That's fluff. Can't you do

something more serious? And I'm like, but it's a moral obligation. Why because of how you affect other people. I guarantee you if you ask someone who is raised by an unhappy parent, or married to an unhappy spouse, or raising an unhappy child, whether or not happiness is an ethical issue. So this is important for us to seek happiness in the context of health. I believe everyone that is doctor Daniel Aman speaking about you happy. It is the book.

I genuinely, genuinely recommend this book. I think you know there's some books that will just transform how you think about your brain. I know that working with doctor Daniel Aleman has been really powerful for my brain. So many of the habits have developed consciously or subconsciously have happened

through our conversations. I mean, when you told me about racket sports, that's what led me to start playing tennis, and then I started playing pickleball, and then I picked I'm getting a ping pong table, and it was just there were these really tiny things that we've exchanged in our conversations that have made huge differences in my life.

And so today when you told me I look great, I was like, yeah, thanks, to you, doctor, this is because of you, but I want you to go and grab this book, The Seven Neuroscience Secrets of Feeling Good based on your brain type. The book's called You Happier, Doctor Danna Leman. You'll know this will be no surprise to you. We end every interview with a fast five, which is our final five every time that we do this, so you have to figure out new answers every time

you come on. But these are your fast five. So the first question is what is the best brain advice you've ever heard, receive, or given? Every day? Ask yourself this question is as good for my brain or bad for it. It's so simple. It's the mother tiny habit to have a great brain for the rest of your life. Okay, second question, what is the worst brain habit advice you've ever received? So, what is the worst brain advice or you've ever received? Everything in moderation, which is the gateway

thought to hell. It's the gateway thought to cheating. As soon as you hear someone say everything in moderation, they're going to do something bad for their brain. Wow. Explain.

Let's let's dive into that a little bit, because I feel like that's such a common misconception that people have, Oh I need to have a balanced life in a balanced diet, right, So yeah, but balance for them when they're saying moderation means sugar, or it means alcohol, or it means marijuana or thing that doesn't well, it means comfort, it's their excuse. It's it's one of the little lies

people tell themselves that keep them fat, depressed, and feeble minded. Yeah, let's let's do I actually want to take a little segue. Let's talk a bit about marijuana, because I think that that's become so popular. I did it a bit as a kid. I messed around within my teens and never really got into it. You did my brain scan, there's no, there's no signs of it because I was never too

deep into it. And obviously since I lived as a monk, I don't I don't mess around with anything, so I haven't you know, I haven't drank alcohol for sixteen years or something like that, and like no marijuana for sixteen years. But what is marijuana doing? Because I feel like so many people do feel like they need it or like it's benefiting their life where it's become so normal though, Like, are the what are the issues. Well, they need it because it changes their brain to need it in order

to feel normal. What is he doing in a way to make people feel like it's helpful? What calming things down right in the brain. So I published a study on a thousand marijuana users. Every area of their brain is lower in activity. And then I published the world's largest imaging study on sixty two four hundred and fifty four scans looking at how the brain ages. And I looked at well, what accelerated aging, and marijuana was the

second worst thing to accelerate aging. The worst thing was having schizophrenia, but the second worst thing it surprised me quite frankly. It was worse than alcohol, worse than marijuana. It dulls slows down nerve cell firing. So if you have a busy brain in your anxious you feel like it's helpful. But it's also been shown to damage some of the structure of neurons, and kids who smoke or use have an increased incidence of anxiety, depression, and suicide

in their twenties. Kids who use have a four hundred and fifty percent increased risk of developing psychosis, and people have been I've been a psychiatrist forty years. We've all seen cases like that. Their cases now because marijuana is so much more potent than it was when I was growing up. That there's a word called scrommating, which is screaming and vomiting at the same time that if you're in an emergency room, people are like, oh, oh, this

person's poisoned with marijuana. Not to mention the seventeen hundred percent increase in babies being born with marijuana and the trouble that that causes. It's like people go to that before they learn diaformatic breathing, before they learn meditation, before they learn self hypnosis, before they go for EMDR to deal with their traumas, and that's just not right, Like, let's do the non toxic things first rather than you know,

And that's my problem with psychedelics. It's like, you know, maybe at some point if you have severe PTSC that's not responding to anything that could be helpful, But have you done the basics first? Yeah, And the challenge I find that most people say is that non toxic things are slow. You have to learn something right, it's not immediate like meditation, for example, as you know, meditation. Let's take a what was the first thing you said. You said,

diafromatic breathing. Dim. I can get you to break a panic attack in two minutes. Yea. If I just get you to breathe four seconds in, hold it for a second, eight seconds out, hold it for a second. Do that for three minutes, you're gonna feel so much better, so much calmer. This isn't hard, but it's not taught, and so people don't know, and then they're like, so, where's my dealer. That's the hard part. That's the hard part.

We're not taught, and then we go for the quick fix, and then we get addicted to the quick fix because it's a quick fix, and then that becomes our reality. And that's right. But there are other quick fixes that are quick. Yeah, if we just are taught. Um, Like you know, one of my favorite things is killing the ants, the automatic negative thoughts. Whenever you feel sad, mad, nervous, or radicate, write down what you think. Write it down

and then go is it true? And then write the opposite Tanna never listens to me, Tanna does listen to me, And then go is that true? And you'll often find the opposite of the thought that's torturing you. It's true when I do that all the time with my wife, I feel the same way doing with your spouse is very helpful. But I'm like, all, Riley doesn't care about me? And then yeah, asking myself, Rody does care. Oh, I

can find lots of reasons. Yeah, it's it's beautiful. And then you don't have to believe the negativity because where you luck determines how you feel. If you find the negative, you're going to feel negative, and if you find the beautiful, you're gonna feel beautiful. Absolutely all right. Question number three, this that was a great tangent. I'm glad we did that. Question number three, what is your current purpose? How do

you define it? My current purpose is to change how psychiatric medicine is practice, to take it out of the dark ages, to end the whole concept of mental illness and create a revolution in brain health. I love that. What a great purpose we here to support. We have a big gale. I'm so excited about seventh at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, the end of mental Illness. We're going to be what's the goal of that, what's the what's

the purpose to do? In that event. So the purpose of the event is to really raise money for the Foundation for Research, tend the whole concept of mental illness for education. We actually have a new preschool course to teach kids to love their brain called brain Thrive by five and serve us to raise money especially for first responders because you know, they got hurt really bad in the pandemic, so that they can get this new brain health way. We're so excited. Kerry Anna Naba is going

to be the MC of the event. Miley Sarah says she's going to come, So we're excited as some congrats, very excited for that. I've got two more questions with you then I'll let you there you go, all right. Question number four is um and is that something everyone can come to? By the way, it's a public event, so we're gonna start advertising it soon perfect December seventh. December seventhly hillto it's a public event that people can buy tickets to come to to support the cause that

you just mentioned. Correct, amazing love that. We'll put the details in the notes as well as everyone has them. Question on before, what's something you wish you knew about the brain earlier? In your own life. So nineteen ninety one, I'm thirty seven, and I'm a double board certified psychiatrist. I was the top neuroscience student in medical school, and I don't care about my brain at all life. And I was overweight, and I was only sleeping four hours

a night. I was chronically stressed. And I scanned my brain because I just started scanned, so I scanned everybody I knew. I scanned my sixty year old mother. She had a gorgeous brain. And when I scanned myself, it wasn't healthy. And I was horrified. And I come from a very competitive family, and I just really unhappy that my sixty year old mother had a better looking brain than I did. So I developed a concept called brain envy. I always say Freud was wrong. Penis Envy's not the

cause of anybody's problem. I wanted a better brain, and I think I've spent the last thirty one years just trying to get a better brain. Well, ses just wish you knew about that. I wish I knew about that earlier. I wouldn't have played football, and I wouldn't have drank diet soda like it was my best friend. Do you want to tell us a bit about that, because I feel like soda people have agreed it's bad without diet soda has become I used to think diet soda was free, right,

I mean, it's like no galleries. But the aspartame and what we know now was sucralos is really bad. So there's a brand new study out looking at sugar, sucralose or splenda and stevia, and they did brain scans and cognitive testing and stevia nothing happened before or after. It's actually pretty safe. Sugar. New learning dropped, Splendor was the worst. New learning dropped, long term memory dropped, and you've got a surge of slow frontal lobe activity, which means it

deactivated your frontal lobes. And I'm like, and you know, the yellow packets are everywhere so where. It's so scary. It's like, I don't know how the I don't know how they haven't figured out way to just improve the food about as a whole through all these standards, Like with all these studies coming out, how most of these foods has not been bad because of the agricultural londy that you know. I mean, just we talked about pop

tarts and how bad they are. But they're you know, we're spending government money to give them to poor children, which will keep them poor. Yeah, it's so sad. I find that's the hardest part for me, where I'm like, but we can change it. Yeah, well, I know we can. That smart people can figure out solutions to aramatically shift the population. I don't know if we ever talked about the Daniel Plan, the big project I did Saddleback Church, where you know, thousands of churches have done the health

program that I created with Pastor Rick Warren. So you just have to have intention. Yeah. Purpose, that's part of the revolution in brain health. Yeah. Fifth and final question, what makes you happier? Being here makes me happier? Seeing you being with people I love makes me happier. It was at the Beverly Hilton Hotel today getting ready for our event, and they cooked a lot of Tanna's recipes from her cookbook The Brain Warriors Way, and they did such an amazing job that made me happy. And I'm

walking out to the parking let someone recognized me. I love your TikTok evall thing. So making a difference makes me happy. I'm one of seven children and I'm in the middle, so I was completely irrelevant, and so not being irrelevant sort of helps make me happy. I love that, doctor Jennam, and it's always such a joy to spend time with you, Honestly, it really is. And thank you so much for all the work you're doing. I know I lean on it constantly and I deeply appreciate it.

And I hope that everyone's going to go out and read the book, make a change in their life and start changing their brain. But thank you so much for joining us. Make sure that you follow doctor Raymond on TikTok, on Instagram and all social media platforms, and make sure that you tag us with anything you learned, anything that stood out, any element of this podcast. For to share it with someone else who needs it, feel free to

cut it up and put it on TikTok. Like there's so many amazing insights here in the book but also in this show, and I love to see what resonates with you, and I love to see what you're applying in your life. So it makes you share that. Thank you so much for listening and watching, and doctor Jenner Aim and thank you for doing this so much. Thank you app share it thank you Lad,