Transcript

[0:00] Dr. Daniel Amen

25% of the adult population in America is on a psychiatric drug. It's a shit show. Psychiatric drugs don't cure anything. It's insanity.

[0:12] Dr. Daniel Amen

Spending more money on this current model is just going to perpetuate the problem.

[0:20] Justin McMillen

Why the hell did psychiatry just become about that?

[0:24] Justin McMillen

Well, Dr. Daniel Amen, world renowned psychiatrist and brain health expert, has scanned nearly 300,000 brains during his 47 years of practice.

[0:31] Justin McMillen

Amen has uncovered that what we've been calling mental illness is actually a brain health issue: impulsive, compulsive, sad, anxious, head trauma addicts. And if you know your type, you can then begin to target treatment.

[0:49] Dr. Daniel Amen

Getting a scan doesn't get people well, it just gives you a map.

[0:55] Dr. Daniel Amen

Especially when we talk about addiction, you've heard it said a picture is worth a thousand words, but a map is worth a thousand pictures.

[1:02] Dr. Daniel Amen

Last week someone told me I should win a Nobel Prize for my work. This week, you're telling me I should be arrested. It sort of keeps me balanced.

[1:13] Dr. Daniel Amen

Voodoo dolls. People who had the lowest blood sugar had more than twice the number of pins in the dolls.

[1:20] Dr. Daniel Amen

Ultimately, this is going to be the hardest thing I say: it's not about you.

[1:27] Dr. Daniel Amen

It's about generations of you.

[1:33] Intro

I am the experiment. You can write your own story. Not stop trying and don't give into the fear.

[1:39] Justin McMillen

[...] My 14 year old is just a character. He's into everything, you know, spirituality. He reads constantly. He had this mission to start. He wanted to start recording and.

[1:45] Dr. Daniel Amen

Yeah.

[1:46] Justin McMillen

You guys good? Okay.

[1:51] Justin McMillen

He had a mission to start checking out churches. So every Sunday he would be all dressed up and he would just leave the house. And then after the second Sunday, I'm like, "What are you doing?" And he's like, "I'm going to church." "Like which church?" He's like, "A lot of them."

[2:04] Dr. Daniel Amen

Yeah.

[2:05] Justin McMillen

And then the kid, this was like two years ago.

[2:10] Justin McMillen

He's like, "I'm on a spiritual journey right now," basically.

[2:14] Dr. Daniel Amen

I love that.

[2:16] Justin McMillen

Yeah, yeah. And he found a church he liked. And you know, our family has a high degree of spirituality, but, you know, we pray at dinner and whatnot, and, you know, we read the Bible, but we don't go to one specific church. And so for him to do that, it was cool.

[2:29] Justin McMillen

But anyways, it'd be great for you to meet the family.

[2:36] Dr. Daniel Amen

I'd love to.

[2:38] Justin McMillen

Yeah. Okay. So, Dr. Daniel Amen, welcome to the show.

[2:42] Dr. Daniel Amen

I'm so excited to be here.

[2:45] Justin McMillen

I'm excited to have you, very much so. You're most known for your work on the brain, and we're going to talk a lot about that today. But one of the things I'm really interested in is how you've spent about 30 years now working in your particular area.

[2:59] Dr. Daniel Amen

47 years ago, I decided to be a psychiatrist after someone I love tried to kill herself, and I took her to see a wonderful psychiatrist, Stan Wallace, who was chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at Oral Roberts University, where I went to medical school. And I came to realize if he helped her, which he did, it wouldn't just help her, it would help me.

[3:27] Dr. Daniel Amen

It would help her children and even her future grandchildren, as they would be shaped by someone who is happier and more stable. So early on, I got what Dr. Wallace was doing was generational, and I love that. And so I was a second year medical student, and I've loved studying psychiatry, being a psychiatrist, every day. When you... I, I love that there's moments in people's lives, these sort of moments where you have an epiphany, or there's some sort of external factor that causes you to shift and turn in one direction, you know?

[4:11] Dr. Daniel Amen

And so that's clear when it came to psychiatry. Was it, "Oh, this doctor saw her and put her on medication and it made it better"? No, no, no, no. He was our chairman of the Department of Psychiatry, and so we saw it as: we make diagnoses based on symptom clusters with no biological data, and then we try to drug the brain into submission.

[4:35] Justin McMillen

He would have failed you?

[4:38] Dr. Daniel Amen

It's like, no, you really. At Oral Roberts University, the first week in medical school, the dean came and drew four big circles on the board. And he said, "Never think of your patients as their diagnosis. You are not your diagnosis. Always think of them in four big circles." The first one was: what's the biology, the physical function of the organ.

[5:03] Dr. Daniel Amen

You're dealing with the brain. For me, what is the psychology, how did they think, what was their development like. The social circle: what's going on in their life, who are they hanging out with. And the spiritual circle, which is why they act. You care, you know, what is your sense of meaning and purpose, your relationship with God, with the planet, with your past and with your future. And all four circles, all the time.

[5:38] Dr. Daniel Amen

Now, before I went to medical school, when I turned 18, it was 1972 and Vietnam was still going on and America still had a draft, and I had a really low draft number, which went by, and I became an infantry medic. And that's where my love of medicine was born. And about a year into it, I realized I didn't like being shot at.

[6:01] Dr. Daniel Amen

So I got retrained as an X-ray technician. That was very important, because our professors used to say, "How do you know unless you look?" And I was sort of an amateur photographer and love taking pictures. And now, as an X-ray technician, I'm taking pictures of people's bodies. So when I decided to be a psychiatrist, I'm like, well, why aren't you looking at the organ you're dealing with?

[6:28] Dr. Daniel Amen

Because obviously it's your brain, and if your brain's not right, your mind's not right. But they're like, "Oh, we don't do that." And growing up, my dad called me a maverick, and to him, that was not a good thing.

[6:42] Justin McMillen

Is your dad... I'm a third child, second son.

[6:46] Dr. Daniel Amen

And, you know, as a middle child, three of seven.

[6:52] Dr. Daniel Amen

Wow, we push back, we push back. And so he'd go, "Do this," and I'm like, "Why?" Or I would go, "Oh, we could do this better." He goes, "No, no, no." Because my dad had two favorite words, bullshit, all the time, bullshit, and no. So those were the two favorite words. So when I became a psychiatrist and I'm agitating for we should be looking at the brain.

[7:20] Dr. Daniel Amen

And they go, "Oh no, it's not our tradition, it's not what we do." And I'm like, "Bullshit." Now, yeah, I'm like no. And when I started looking at the brain, I want to...

[7:33] Justin McMillen

Can I ask you a question about that?

[7:35] Dr. Daniel Amen

Of course.

[7:37] Justin McMillen

So, so when you're, when I love the idea of your dad, no and bullshit.

[7:41] Justin McMillen

He sounds like he was an amazing person and probably helped build you in many ways. I mean, for so many years, I was bitter because he was gone. My dad is the American dream, immigrant parents, grew up very poor in Flint, Michigan. His dad worked in a foundry, and he's one of five boys, and he went to work when I was 12, in a grocery store.

[8:12] Justin McMillen

Ended up owning a chain of grocery stores and was the chairman of the board. His name for Unified Groceries was a $4 billion company. So my dad was really a hard worker.

[8:42] Dr. Daniel Amen

Yeah.

[8:44] Justin McMillen

And a maverick in his industry, and very smart, but gone. Like, my memories of him when I'm ten and I'm going to the store, and he wasn't nice.

[9:11] Dr. Daniel Amen

Bullshit now. It's just.

[9:14] Justin McMillen

And when you're one of seven, you can sort of get lost. Yeah. And in a Lebanese family, I'm the second son, which is a little bit like Prince Harry when he wrote his book Spare. But what I've come to appreciate, he's not a spare, right? His book should have been called Total Freedom, because Prince William could not have married a Hollywood star, but he could.

[9:41] Dr. Daniel Amen

Sure. And, you know, despite all the drama, what it did for me, my older brother running the grocery stores, which was not my calling in life. And so, so I had a complicated relationship with my dad. When I told him I wanted to be a psychiatrist, he asked me why I didn't want to be a real doctor, why I wanted to be a "nut doctor" and hang out with nuts all day long, and that's brutal.

[10:03] Justin McMillen

But by the time I was deciding on what I wanted to do, he had no influence on me because we didn't really have a relationship. And then when I started looking at the brain, I'm just really quick, I mean, the parents of that time coming out, I mean, they were raised by the Great Depression folks, right? So it's like they had a very...

[10:22] Dr. Daniel Amen

And then it would be an immigrant, that's also its own thing. But and then being one of seven, it's like, as a parent, it's so hard when you have so many children, you have a lot of love, right, but it gets divided. And then if you're working all the time, which in many ways, I mean, someone had, I think he had a lot of judgment.

[10:42] Justin McMillen

Yeah, yeah, you know, it's like when I turned 18 at a low draft number, and so I went to sign up, and then I decided I would join because I could choose my job, and I could, Vietnam was going on, I could actually choose to be stationed in Europe. And that was amazing.

[11:14] Justin McMillen

Where were you at?

[11:20] Dr. Daniel Amen

For me, I was north of Frankfurt, in a little city called Friedberg, okay, where I was part of the Third Armored Division, which protected West Germany at the time from the Soviets and the Fulda Gap. And it was so formative for me, growing up with a really powerful, sort of absent, negative dad, I didn't really know who I was without him.

[11:41] Dr. Daniel Amen

And I found myself there, and I also found I was smarter than I thought, because I didn't do that well in high school. And then I started taking one class at a time, and I'm like, "Oh, I can do this." And my first book that I ever wrote is about how to do school, because there was no class on how to do school, right.

[12:02] Dr. Daniel Amen

So when I was the student in college, people didn't want me in your class because I would screw up the curve. And then what I realized, "Oh, I will help people," and as I help them, that actually helped solidify the information for me. And when I went to medical school, I was in the charter class at ORU and their medical school.

[12:28] Dr. Daniel Amen

I realized they didn't have a charter class, so I didn't have anybody ahead of me, so I mentored people behind me. And that book, "Change Your Brain, Change Your Grades," is really, how do you do this? And so I love teaching people how to do what I've learned. And that's started in college for me.

[12:38] Justin McMillen

So that's, you've learned that the best way for you to learn and understand is to teach.

[12:44] Dr. Daniel Amen

Yes.

[12:46] Justin McMillen

That's amazing. And you've written how many books?

[12:50] Dr. Daniel Amen

42.

[12:52] Justin McMillen

And people go, "Well, which one do I start with?" And I brought this one, "Change Your Brain, Every Day," because it's 366 short essays on the most important things I've ever said. So it's sort of like my greatest hits book. And that's the one, it's like 3 to 4 minutes a day, given the TikTok society we're in, it's like, just read a page a day. Okay, anyways, so, "Change Your Brain, Change Your Grades," I love writing and I love teaching. I love being a psychiatrist. My first rotation in medical school is at Central State Hospital, when we used to have, you know, state hospitals, insane asylums.

[13:23] Dr. Daniel Amen

We don't call them that. But my first patient thought she was the Blessed Mother. Her best friend on the ward thought she was Satan. And I'm like, it just doesn't get any better than this.

[13:35] Justin McMillen

It's so interesting because ultimately, why do you...

[13:38] Dr. Daniel Amen

What, I hate when that's all you're, it's because it's God, I just, I like stories, and it's just been the perfect fit.

[13:48] Justin McMillen

So you're in the military, which is incredible, because that just colors who you are so much. Then you decide to go to medical school, did they give you a fast track, right, because you're a medic in the military?

[14:09] Dr. Daniel Amen

Gave you in, so I grew up in Southern California. Lots of people in my family, especially, I have five sisters and then later five daughters. So God hates me, I think. 18, I go into the military, in Europe for three years, infantry medic, X-ray technician. I get out in 1975, go to college for a year. I'm on the speech team, that becomes very important for me, being able to translate what I'm thinking so people can understand it in a compelling way.

[14:36] Dr. Daniel Amen

1976, I'm the California state champion for peace oratory, arguing for a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine, because my grandmother grew up in an orphanage in Bethlehem, which is part of Palestine. And so my thinking about generational trauma, and then you got to circle back to that, because I'm curious to hear your thoughts.

[15:03] Justin McMillen

Oh, yeah.

[15:07] Dr. Daniel Amen

Well, it's such a mess, it's such a mess. But I'm the most hopeful I've ever been in my whole life, because of what's happening in the Middle East now, I'm hopeful. And then I graduate from Southern California College, now Vanguard University, it's a Christian school. I went to Catholic school growing up. Being a person of faith has always been important to me.

[15:32] Dr. Daniel Amen

My mom was serious about the whole thing, and I was an altar boy. And even when I was in the military, I served at mass. And then going to a Christian college and then a Christian medical school, I remember when, and then I went back in the Army, I was an Army captain, trained at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C.

[16:01] Dr. Daniel Amen

And when I got there, some of the other interns and residents would call patients bad names, like, "Gomer, get out of my emergency room." And I'm like, "No, we don't do that." It was horrifying for me, because if you would have done that at ORU, where they taught us to pray with patients, they would have fired you.

[16:25] Dr. Daniel Amen

I mean, it was all about honoring and treating people with respect. And so I did my psychiatric training in Washington, D.C., loved Walter Reed. I'm also a child psychiatrist, so I did my child psychiatry training in Hawaii, probably the favorite place I've ever lived, on Oahu, I took my wife, from the Army Medical Center, the big pink hospital on the hill.

[16:54] Dr. Daniel Amen

And I love being a child psychiatrist, because what that means is for every one of my patients, I want to know their development. So just as we're talking a little bit about mine, when we first met, I asked you about chores, because it's just ingrained in me, we all have a story, and understanding that story is just critical to understanding a person's life.

[17:23] Justin McMillen

Yeah, so thinking about everything you're saying is also interesting, because as you're sharing this biography, right, like your past starting in this family, the second-born son, and what that means about you being able to create your own story, right? You don't have to follow in the king's footsteps, right? That makes so much sense. And then... bullshit.

[17:44] Dr. Daniel Amen

No. Makes sense. And then you being a maverick, it's like there's all these hints, right, of what's to come, you're somebody who is going to push back and challenge. And then you're a man of faith and highly driven to help the world, right, that's in you. I mean, completely, the first time I met you, I was, it was overwhelming, actually, because I see you, you know, a lot.

[18:07] Justin McMillen

You're a pretty public person, but in real life, you have that, I can feel it off of you. You have a genuine sense of love and compassion, and so that's maybe the Catholic side of you, the spiritual side of you. And then I can see it, so it's like dad's not there, but then...

[18:25] Dr. Daniel Amen

And if I'm wrong, tell me, but then you go to the military and you establish your own set of rules and systems, because the military kicks your ass a little bit, right? See, ultimate good mother.

[18:44] Justin McMillen

Yeah.

[18:46] Dr. Daniel Amen

I mean, people don't really get that. It's, you know, they notice what you do, right, and I did a lot of things right, and I got promoted quickly, because I, you know, I can follow rules and I don't like pain. And so they notice what you do right, and they punish you when you don't do right, and they're consistent and reliable, it's a frame, it's a frame. I'm like, it's sort of like the good mother.

[19:15] Justin McMillen

Yeah, and you have to learn to deal with so many different characters and personalities and social sides to it, for sure.

[19:24] Dr. Daniel Amen

I appreciate it. Yeah, now, I wasn't in Vietnam and I didn't get shot at, but it taught me to make good decisions. And if somebody tells, you know, it taught me, well, go ask somebody else, that there's always, there's a way around, and that's ultimately what's hope. Hope is tomorrow can be better and I have a role in it.

[19:44] Dr. Daniel Amen

It's basically agency. And the Army taught me that if somebody said no, well, let me go ask someone else and let me think about how I can get to my goals. And my goals are always good, I don't have any devious goals, I want to do good and I want to have fun doing it.

[20:07] Justin McMillen

Yeah, yeah.

[20:12] Justin McMillen

And then, what's so interesting too, is you think about the X-ray technician piece of this, because, what did you say? What was the language, "how do you know unless you look"? Right, I belong to a profession that even today in 2026 makes diagnoses based on symptom clusters, with no biological data.

[20:30] Dr. Daniel Amen

And then they try to drug the brain into submission. When I trained, from 1982 to 1987, this is before managed care took over psychiatry, and plus I'm in the military, so we don't charge anybody anything, we can just practice the way we want. So I was never the prescriber, psychiatrists today, and I'm sure Tree House deals with a lot of psychiatrists.

[21:01] Dr. Daniel Amen

Right, but you really deal with them as the prescriber, it's like, they need this or that medication, and that would horrify me. There's no way I would ever do that job, because I want to get people better in those four circles, and I don't want to farm out the therapy, because I want to be therapeutic, I want to know about this.

[21:28] Justin McMillen

I've always wondered about this, and I think you're the guy who can answer it. Why the hell did psychiatry just become about that?

[21:33] Dr. Daniel Amen

Was it ever? It's money. It was never just about that up to that point, I mean, Freud, if you think about it, he was seeing people five days a week and really understanding their internal life.

[21:52] Dr. Daniel Amen

And if you believe people really are, well, in those four circles, I'm not going to be pegged to one of the circles, right, which is the biology. I want to be involved in that circle, absolutely, but not just with medicine, I want you to get to a healthy weight, I want your blood pressure to be...

[22:17] Dr. Daniel Amen

Well, I don't want you to be poisoning yourself, so I want you to be physically healthy, I want to help you be mentally healthy, socially healthy. Julius Randle, the NBA playoffs are about to start, and he's an NBA superstar, and he did my podcast because I've seen him for a couple of years now. And the idea that I would just give him this or that medication and not get to know his mom and get to know his wife and help him parent his children.

[22:53] Dr. Daniel Amen

And when he's at the free throw line, learn how to breathe so he makes his free throws, that's joy for me. It's like being involved in the whole person you're treating, rather than the 15-minute med check. And this happened in 1992, when managed care started taking over psychiatry, understand what is managed care? Managed care means your insurance company is basically supervising the care that you give.

[23:27] Dr. Daniel Amen

What are they willing to pay for? And if a psychiatrist is $4 or $500 an hour, it's like, "Oh no, you need to go see a marriage and family practice doctor, that's $100 an hour, we'll pay for that, but we won't pay for the psychiatrist." And then the training in residencies in medical schools started training them to be the prescriber.

[23:55] Dr. Daniel Amen

As opposed to, for me, I took a month elective in hypnosis when I was a medical student, and I loved it. I love putting my patients in a trance, I made Julius, you know, like a four-minute peak performance thing he listens to before games. I love that part of my professional life.

[24:26] Justin McMillen

It makes sense, I think it's so crazy that it's the managed care, which makes sense, right, because the dollar has driven that whole field of medicine into a specific place.

[24:38] Justin McMillen

But how, I wonder how doctors that are just prescribing in 12 minutes, I got to be careful how I say this, but how do you wake up every day and look in the mirror and feel like that's the right thing?

[24:46] Dr. Daniel Amen

People are smart, they have to understand that there's more to it than that. Well, and to really, not a healer, right? And I posted something recently, I'm like, "Psychiatric drugs don't cure anything, right?" They change your brain, which can be lifesaving, but they actually change your brain to need them in order for you to feel okay. And so they are never the first and only thing I do.

[25:16] Justin McMillen

Explain what you mean by that, change your brain to need them. What do you mean by that?

[25:19] Dr. Daniel Amen

Well, if you go on an SSRI, it is artificially increasing the availability of serotonin in your brain, and when you stop it, and you were not born with a serotonin deficiency, but when you stop it, you often feel worse.

[25:40] Dr. Daniel Amen

And so there's an art to stopping them, you have to stop them very slowly over time. Which is why, in 1991, that's when I started looking at the brain with the imaging study we do now, SPECT, I realized some of our medicines aren't helping us, that they're actually making things worse. The benzos, for example, the brain sort of looks like you're a drinker, and I didn't like that.

[26:11] Dr. Daniel Amen

And I remember in medical school, and also got this somewhat from my mother, first, do no harm, what's the least toxic, most effective treatment. Which is why I own a supplement company, I started imaging in 1991, the supplement company came around 2008, 2009, because, like, natural ways to heal the brain. And so initially I just sent people for omega-3 fatty acids, for SAMe, for vitamin D, for St. John's wort.

[26:48] Dr. Daniel Amen

Then, later around 2000, and saffron, there are 35 randomized controlled trials showing it's equally effective to antidepressants. And so, would I give you Prozac, which can be very effective, but then you're going to have a hard time stopping it, and it has sexual side effects. So that's the thing that always used to irritate me.

[27:14] Dr. Daniel Amen

It's because you have to talk about that with your patients, look, if you start this, your desire may go down and it's going to be harder to have an orgasm. Now, if they had premature ejaculation, a little bit of Prozac, miraculous, it's like, "Oh sure, let's do it." But I didn't like the sexual side effects. And saffron, when it first came out, was pro-sexual.

[27:39] Dr. Daniel Amen

And then a whole group of studies showed enhanced desire or enhanced performance.

[27:46] Justin McMillen

And so how long does it take to work? Is it something that builds, is it cumulative?

[27:50] Dr. Daniel Amen

If you start taking it, you know, I gave it to my, so I first released Happy Saffron, Saffron Zinc, and Kirkham in February of 2020, so right before the pandemic came out, and I'm like, I think I'm going to take this.

[28:08] Dr. Daniel Amen

And then I gave it to my assistant, and the next day she's humming, and I'm like, "Kim, why are you humming?" She goes, "I don't know, I'm just happy." So for some people it works very quickly, for a lot of people its best effect will be two, three, four weeks later.

[28:30] Justin McMillen

And is that, do we know what's happening?

[28:34] Dr. Daniel Amen

It actually raises serotonin and dopamine and GABA and BDNF, brain-derived neurotrophic factor. It's been shown to decrease inflammation, and it's been studied for a wide variety of things, mood got the most research, for mood, memory, five randomized controlled trials against dementia medicine for Alzheimer's disease, showing it enhances memory, sexuality, some, like, mood, memory sucks.

[29:05] Justin McMillen

I think I'm going to take it. I think everyone should take it.

[29:08] Justin McMillen

I bet, anyway, I was going to be googling saffron to figure out where they got it, where to get it. I was on Khloé Kardashian's podcast, I was on the Kardashians a couple of times, and she came, like, 3 or 4 years ago.

[29:23] Dr. Daniel Amen

And then I didn't hear from her, and then she wanted me on her podcast, and she said that everything you said, scanned her brain much better, which excited me. And then she holds up and she said, "I've taken this for three years and it's been miraculous for me, Happy Saffron!" At which point we completely ran out.

[29:44] Justin McMillen

Wow, I actually have some back there, that you gave me.

[29:50] Justin McMillen

I haven't started taking it yet, though. I wanted to talk to you about that too.

[29:56] Dr. Daniel Amen

Yeah, I got it from Kim, I think, gave it to me when I came in, so I think it was Kim.

[30:01] Justin McMillen

That's amazing. So, so you've developed a relationship with the Kardashians, or you've, that's really exciting. And you've been able to help.

[30:24] Justin McMillen

What caused them, what caused Khloé to come to you in the first place?

[30:24] Dr. Daniel Amen

So I first saw Kendall, or, excuse me, she was referred to me, I think, by Hailey Bieber. It's public knowledge, I was Justin's doctor, and she had post-COVID anxiety, she said she'd really never been anxious, and then got COVID and was just a mess.

[31:29] Dr. Daniel Amen

And you could see it on her brain, her emotional brain, her limbic brain was just crazy, overactive, which is what we saw in COVID. And then later, Kendall and Khloe came to the clinic. Khloe had a bad accident, a car accident, when she was 16. Lots of stress with Lamar Odom and his addiction and his near-death experience.

[31:52] Dr. Daniel Amen

And so, and then I saw mom, which I just love her. Yeah, it's fun. And, you know, the reason to do it, even talk about it, is my goal is to change society. I'm working with the White House Faith Office on creating the decade of brain health and a national brain health revolution. And you've heard of six degrees of separation?

[32:08] Dr. Daniel Amen

Well, the Kardashians are two, right? One out of every two people on the planet know who they are. That's why it's so interesting, because, you know, even Justin, we had a little encounter with him too, he actually loaned us a hyperbaric chamber for a while for somebody that was coming through, was a friend, and we went up and got it.

[32:08] Justin McMillen

And we had it here for several months, just, you know, the collapsible ones, he used to sleep in his.

[32:30] Dr. Daniel Amen

Yeah, I know, I know, we had it here, and then I got to meet him in Hawaii and my kids and I, and he's such a great person, so.

[32:40] Dr. Daniel Amen

But, but why that matters, it's not the celebrity sort of, you know, it's about, it starts flowing. And if Khloe goes, "This helped me," that increases awareness. And if you want to create a national brand health revolution, you have to have influential people helping. Yeah.

[33:05] Justin McMillen

You and I have found all of them helpful. Yeah, yeah, that's incredible. Yes, I, that's, that's what, so I think this comes down to, and we can circle back through this, because you are without a doubt one of the most influential medical professionals on the planet right now, which is extraordinary to me, because from a personal standpoint, I know that there's two things that I'm on the planet for, right?

[33:25] Justin McMillen

I'm to be a father for my children and a good husband, and secondarily, to end as much unnecessary suffering on this planet before I die, that's, it's crystal clear to me. And so I want to do that at scale. So when I meet someone like you, that's got such a voice, it's incredible, because you're out there and you can really affect change.

[33:50] Justin McMillen

Now the other side of that is you get people pushing back too, which is mind blowing to me, because part of the reason, I think, that you have such a big platform, right, could be wrong, so correct me, is that I think that, even if we're not consciously aware of it, most of the Western world knows something's not right about us in terms of health, where we're headed.

[34:17] Justin McMillen

Right, people have this feeling like something's not quite right. And so when a guy like yourself starts to rise up and say, "Hey everyone, look, we need to be talking about the brain, the control center of everything, we need to talk about these things, we need to talk about medicine." People want to know, that's why I think everybody's really interested in what you have to say, because it's like we all want to know, how do we get better?

[34:46] Justin McMillen

And you're a voice for that, and that's extraordinary. Now, on the other side of that, you're challenging existing belief systems and a dogma in a field of medicine that is like a $1 trillion industry.

[34:58] Dr. Daniel Amen

Right, because I'm not opposed to medicine, I'm opposed to the indiscriminate use of medicine, which is happening today. 85 to 90% of psychiatric drugs are prescribed by non-psychiatric physicians, in seven minute office visits.

[35:12] Justin McMillen

Say that again?

[35:12] Dr. Daniel Amen

25% of the adult population in America is on a psychiatric drug. It's a shit show. And I wrote one of my favorite books, I wrote with my wife, it's called "The Brain Warrior's Way," because we're in a war, for the health of our brain.

[35:12] Dr. Daniel Amen

Everywhere you go, someone's trying to shove bad food down your throat that will kill you early. Virtually every popular television show, alcohol is in the center of the show. I'm just watching Mayor of Kingstown, which I love, Taylor Sheridan shows, and Michelle Pfeiffer loses her husband, and she goes to see a therapist, and she's being mean to the therapist.

[35:42] Dr. Daniel Amen

And the therapist goes, "Do you want a drink?" I'm like, "Are you kidding me? You're really giving a grieving woman alcohol, this is, are you insane?" I was so irritated by that scene. Everywhere you go there's negative news, that's really not the news, it's to hook you, so they can sell you alcohol. Jack in the Box.

[36:12] Justin McMillen

Curls, or copper underwear, what is the, is it a conspiracy, is there something, is it a, one's less crazy to ask you this, probably, I don't know that you'd have the answer, but do you think that there's somebody that's truly making these decisions, or do you think it's...

[36:34] Dr. Daniel Amen

I think there are groups of people making the decision. I was thrilled that Meta and Google were found guilty of intentionally creating addictive platforms that damage people. And if, you know, during the pandemic, if I would have said your best defense against COVID is your immune system and not the vaccination train, that got canceled. I mean, that happened. And it's like, what is going on with our society?

[37:13] Dr. Daniel Amen

Wikipedia, for example, hates people who think of, you know, natural treatments and so on. My own Wikipedia page, it hates me.

[37:13] Justin McMillen

But my own base, how does that make you feel?

[37:13] Dr. Daniel Amen

It does. It doesn't say anywhere that I'm a distinguished fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, that Discover Magazine listed my research in 2016 as one of the top 100 stories in science.

[37:42] Dr. Daniel Amen

And, you know, it basically paints me as an evil charlatan. And it's like, so how do you manage that? Well, when I was a little boy, Ivan, my older brother, beat me up all the time. And then when I was about 6 or 7, he realized, "Oh, he could be my friend, he could play with me nice."

[38:05] Dr. Daniel Amen

And so I learned you can take haters and turn them into friends. And so a lot of the medical critics, I can think of two in particular, I've been able to turn into friends and have become great. I'll tell you the story about 2020, 2020 came to see me in 2005, and I love talking about our work.

[38:34] Dr. Daniel Amen

And they said, "We want to talk to you about childhood bipolar disorder," because they have a specific pattern on scans, and the interviewer starts the interview, so it's in this cool place, it's dark, the lights are on me. And he goes, "Brad Peterson, who's a child psychiatrist from Columbia who does brain imaging research, told us you should be arrested for your work."

[39:03] Dr. Daniel Amen

"How would you respond?" And remember, I told you I was on the speech team in college, and my speech coach said, "When you don't know what to say, take a breath, smile, it'll come to you." So in my head I'm like, "These people fooled me, they're here to hurt you." And so I took a breath, I smiled, I said, "That's so interesting."

[39:27] Dr. Daniel Amen

"Last week someone told me I should win a Nobel Prize for my work. This week, they're telling me I should be arrested. Sort of keeps me balanced." And at the end of the interview, the interviewer took his microphone off, threw it on the floor, looked at his producer, and said, "You lied to me, this guy is the real deal."

[39:50] Dr. Daniel Amen

"How would you know if you didn't look?" And then a couple of years later, I opened our clinic in Manhattan, and my medical director there, Manuel Trujillo, I told him the story about Brad Peterson, well, he had actually taught Brad Peterson at NYU, and he goes, "I'm going to get you guys to meet." And I'm like, "Do I really want to meet this guy?"

[40:12] Dr. Daniel Amen

Yeah, yeah, we met, and he's like, "They took it out of context." And we published a paper in a Nature journal recently, Translational Psychiatry, on SPECT and how it predicts depression. So we have a new paper on bipolar disorder coming out, and that's what I love, because ultimately, how would you know if you didn't look, right?

[40:42] Dr. Daniel Amen

My work is completely scientific, it's completely rational, most 12-year-olds would understand: if you don't look at the brain, you're guessing. And the thing that always sort of kept me going, kept me sane, were the stories of transformation, just seeing people get well. If you don't look, you're guessing, and why would you do that?

[41:10] Dr. Daniel Amen

Unless you were sort of stupid. Yeah, that diagnoses just based on symptom clusters, our data shows us that depression is clearly not one thing. It's interesting, if you had two people and had them debate, would it be better to not look or to look? I think an average third grader would say, of course it's better to get more information to make a decision, that's so obvious that it's crazy.

[41:40] Dr. Daniel Amen

It's crazy that anyone would push back against that, it's insane. And the arguments are it costs money. Sure, okay, sure, so it costs money, yeah, right, I mean, everything costs money, money is not the point, mission is the point, but if there's no margin, there's no measure. Of course, so the other thing is radiation, and SPECT is a nuclear medicine study, but it's like a head CT or a third of an abdominal CT.

[42:12] Dr. Daniel Amen

It's a normal medical amount of radiation. Or, you can prove it works, right? And I'm like, we have the best published outcomes of anyone who publishes their outcomes on complex psychiatric disorders. Now, getting a scan doesn't get people well, it just gives you a map, and without a map, you're lost. So I would argue, especially if we talk about addiction, that you've heard it said a picture is worth a thousand words, but a map is worth a thousand pictures.

[42:56] Dr. Daniel Amen

A map tells you where you are and gives you direction on how to get to where you want to go. And without that map, it's easy to call people bad. I remember, I was thinking about this patient, his name was Reed, and he was such an asshole. I saw him the day I got out of the hospital after he had a suicide attempt, because his wife was leaving him, because he was difficult, and he was mean to me.

[43:27] Dr. Daniel Amen

I was like ten minutes late because I was dealing with a suicidal patient, and he started chewing me out. He'd already chewed out my staff, and I'm like, "You need to go get scanned, because I am not going to tolerate this behavior. I need to understand why." And, it's so important what you just said.

[43:46] Justin McMillen

I'm sorry, it's so important what you just said, because you basically just said, "I need to understand why you're behaving this way." You know, there's something, I think it was, I can't remember who said it, if it was Ben Franklin or...

[44:04] Justin McMillen

"I don't like that man very much, I must need to get to know him better." Right, like, you have to know more, and understanding that there are some things going on inside the function of the actual chemicals and tissue in the head that creates the thinking and the behavior that's happening, that's why that matters. You literally just said, "I need to do this to feel compassionate towards you."

[44:25] Dr. Daniel Amen

Otherwise, right? Yeah, yeah, otherwise I'm not dealing, I'm just, you know, I have the no-asshole rule in my life. And he got scanned. He had damage to his left frontal, left temporal lobe and his cingulate gyrus, the brain's part that sees what's wrong, sees errors, that's way overactive. And he's got a damaged brain. And I'm like, when did you have a head injury?

[44:48] Dr. Daniel Amen

And he said, "I was riding a bicycle downhill in Colorado, and my front tire hit a rock and I spilled the bike onto my left side, broke my helmet." I'm like, "I can fix this," I said, "but you need to do what I ask you to do, and you need to be nicer." And six months later, he's bringing the girls flowers.

[45:16] Dr. Daniel Amen

He's the kindest, most, I saw him for a number of years, and I just loved him because he was easier to love, sure, when his brain worked right. And nobody thinks about that. So when someone's really difficult, in my mind, I'm like, I wonder what's going on in their brain. Now, you can have a great brain and still be an asshole.

[45:42] Justin McMillen

Sure.

[45:44] Dr. Daniel Amen

But we should look ahead of time, which, I think in drug treatment, it's really an important tool, I get people to stop using just because they don't want to perpetuate the damage in their brain.

[46:10] Justin McMillen

Let's get into that for a second. So I'll give you an imaginary case study, and maybe you could tell me, this person is going to be the perfect patient, meaning that they're going to do exactly what you say.

[46:10] Justin McMillen

Okay, so we'll call this person Joe. They're 32 years old, they've been drinking heavily for ten years, they're a nicotine user, they come in, they want to stop drinking, they maybe did stop, they went through a detox and they've stopped for a couple days. They get scanned first, tell me what you think, based on looking at, how many thousand?

[46:35] Dr. Daniel Amen

Almost 300,000 brain scans, what are you going to see? So odds are we're going to see a brain that's toxic. And I'll show them, "Here's a healthy brain, and here's this one that sort of looks troubled, which one do you want?" Now you have to start with, your brain is involved in everything you do, how you think, how you feel, how you act, how you get along with other people.

[47:04] Dr. Daniel Amen

It's the organ of intelligence, character, and every decision you make, and when it works right, you work right, when it doesn't, you don't. And then the scan's going to tell me what type of addict he is. Is he an impulsive addict? He has low frontal lobe function, so he's not governing his limbic system, the governor is not good.

[47:32] Dr. Daniel Amen

Okay, is he a compulsive addict? His governor is fine, but the anterior cingulate is working way too hard, and he can't stop. So some addicts, they really don't think about it all the time, but as soon as they get triggered, they use, so their governor is a problem. Okay, other addicts, they think about it all the time.

[47:56] Dr. Daniel Amen

It's like alcohol or marijuana or cocaine or nicotine, it's on a loop in their head, one is a dopamine problem, the other is a serotonin problem. There are head injury addicts, where there's damage to their frontal and temporal lobe, and despite being in ten treatment programs, it hasn't worked for them, because it's that head injury wild card, which is so common in our veterans, especially people like Navy SEALs, who've been through a thousand breaching exercises.

[48:30] Dr. Daniel Amen

They're anxious addicts, where their amygdala, insular cortex, basal ganglia is working way too hard, and they drink to settle that down. And I always tell my patients, their drugs are much better at it than they are. They're sad addicts, other parts of the limbic brain are really active, and you can see that.

[48:58] Dr. Daniel Amen

So, and sometimes, when they take opiates, they just feel normal, but it's like, let's not do that, because the outcome of that is going to be bad. But acupuncture may be a really helpful treatment for you. And so I wrote a book with David Smith, who's the founder of the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic.

[49:25] Dr. Daniel Amen

He's the father of addiction medicine in the US, because I think it was 1987, he was at the American Medical Association when they made addiction medicine a specialty in medicine. So David and I wrote this book, "Unchain Your Brain: Breaking the Addictions That Steal Your Life." And we've talked about impulsive, compulsive, sad, anxious head trauma addicts, and if you know your type, you can then begin to target treatment to their brain, rather than everybody goes through one program, because it's like with TMS, everybody shouldn't do the same thing.

[50:05] Dr. Daniel Amen

We should know what's going on in your brain before, I mean, you'd never do the same thing for everybody that has chest pain, right? That would be lunacy. But we do the same thing for depression, or for addiction, without looking, we just end up in the problem we're in at the moment.

[50:33] Justin McMillen

And what I love about what you're doing is that by looking and understanding, then you give people answers. And we're going to take Joe past this point too, because I'm curious what you would prescribe for him to do to heal his brain. But what's amazing about you, and why I actually think what you're doing is less of a, you know, you said there's money.

[50:56] Dr. Daniel Amen

Well, it's very expensive to continue to look for answers within the medical system, going doctor after doctor and getting kicked around, months, sometimes years, of not understanding what's happening. You're giving people information and then giving them easy-to-follow, if you do it right, things that anyone could do to help heal their brain, like getting sleep.

[51:20] Dr. Daniel Amen

And you go to all the things that are widely accessible, much more like somebody running the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic, right? What do we have available to us? Well, this person has the agency to control how they sleep, they can buy the supplements, right, versus, "I'm going to put you on all these drugs, you're going to do all this expensive stuff and you're not getting healthy," right?

[51:41] Dr. Daniel Amen

In the process. So one of the reasons I'm on the planet is to eliminate the term "mental illness" and call these things what they really are, brain health issues, right? So based on almost 300,000 scans, the big lesson I learned is most psychiatric illnesses are not mental health issues, they're brain health issues. Get your brain healthy and your mind will follow.

[52:17] Dr. Daniel Amen

When you think of it as mental health, no one wants it, call somebody mental and you're shaming them, call them a brain and you elevate them. But what we have is a shitshow of diagnoses based on symptom clusters, no biological data, trial and error medication, where a quarter of the adult population in America is on psychiatric drugs, 27% of all doctor visits, all specialties.

[52:45] Dr. Daniel Amen

Someone is being prescribed a benzo. It's insanity. Spending more money on this current model is just going to perpetuate the problem. But if you think of it as brain health, you have to eat better, sleep better, alcohol is not a health food, marijuana's not innocuous, psilocybin is not the answer.

[53:12] Dr. Daniel Amen

And the benefit, if my model is correct, and it is, you not only have less depression and less addiction, you have less risk for Alzheimer's disease, your weight is going to be better, your blood pressure is going to be better, and your habits are going to be better. So I think the answer to the epidemics of Alzheimer's disease, depression, diabetes and obesity is not to see them as separate disorders, but as different expressions of the same unhealthy lifestyle that have exactly the same cure.

[53:50] Dr. Daniel Amen

And this national brain health revolution's all based around one question. I worked with BJ Fogg, do you know Dr. Fogg out of Stanford?

[54:08] Justin McMillen

I've heard the name.

[54:10] Dr. Daniel Amen

He's in charge of the Persuasive Tech Lab, and he wrote a book called "Tiny Habits," which is about how people change. So they either get an epiphany, the scan is an epiphany.

[54:13] Dr. Daniel Amen

We'll talk about that. They change who they hang out with, or they make very small incremental changes. Well, I hired him for six months to come up with "The Brain's Tiny Habits," and the number one tiny habit, which the revolution's built around, is this one question, and it's completely free: is what I'm doing now good for my brain or bad for it?

[54:40] Dr. Daniel Amen

And does it make the world better? All four circles are in that one question, and ultimately that's how people get well. They love their brain, they avoid things that hurt it, and they do things that help it. But that's all in that one question: is what I'm doing now, talking to you, good for my brain or bad for it?

[55:07] Dr. Daniel Amen

And does it make the world better? And the answer is, it's good for my brain and it makes the world better. So yes, what I'm doing now works. But staying up and scrolling on my phone, now that's bad for my brain, the blue light will keep me up, decrease melatonin, I won't get enough sleep, and my brain won't clean and wash itself.

[55:30] Dr. Daniel Amen

Passing by the donut shop, it's like, I love donuts, but they don't love me. And I don't know if you've ever been in a bad relationship, I certainly have, I'm married to my best friend, I'm not doing that anymore, and I'm damn sure not doing it with food. I love food that loves me back.

[55:55] Dr. Daniel Amen

So it's that one question.

[56:00] Justin McMillen

I see what you just did, that's incredible. Yeah, it's like a toxic relationship, because you love this thing and it's hurting you, right? I mean, my grandfather, we haven't talked about him, but he's so special to me.

[56:19] Dr. Daniel Amen

Your grandfather?

[56:20] Justin McMillen

Yeah, what was his name?

[56:22] Dr. Daniel Amen

Daniel, I'm named after him, and he was my best friend.

[56:25] Justin McMillen

And so my dad, driven, no nonsense, not a relational person, he used to say, "I don't get heart attacks, I give them." A salesperson who called on him had a heart attack after he met with him, and blamed my dad for it, because my dad was so hard on him. He goes, "Don't blame me, or fat slob, that's why I got a heart attack." I mean, that was sort of my dad.

[56:42] Dr. Daniel Amen

There's some part of you that's got a level of being bullied, though, that I...

[57:06] Justin McMillen

That's, but my grandfather was a candy maker, and the sweetest, literally, person. My early memories are standing at the stove with him making fudge in Michigan.

[57:24] Dr. Daniel Amen

Not, no, but my dad grew up in Michigan. My grandfather was here in Southern California, this is mom's dad, and I just loved him so much. Still, if I talk about him for more than 30 seconds, I'll just start to cry.

[57:43] Justin McMillen

Did you spend a lot of time with him, were you around all the time? In fact, my mom, because there are seven children, his store was in, where was it, you said he was a candy maker, he was a candy maker at his own store, in furniture, and where, in Los Angeles. So I grew up in the San Fernando Valley, and we would go to his house every Sunday.

[58:17] Dr. Daniel Amen

But some days, you know, my mother of seven children, when she's having a baby or something, I'd go stay there for weeks, and played cards and just loved him. And my grandmother was terrible, and so I was like, "Why are you being mean, damn, I like him." Yeah, now she's a piece of work. But your grandfather owning a candy shop is pretty sweet, though, but he died early, and he was overweight and had heart disease.

[58:42] Dr. Daniel Amen

One of our strategies, so we have an acronym called Bright Minds, you want to keep your brain healthy or rescue it, we have to prevent or treat the 11 major risk factors that steal your mind. So Bright Minds, the G is genetics, so I have the genetic vulnerability to be overweight and have heart disease, but I don't have either.

[59:13] Dr. Daniel Amen

Every day of my life I'm on an obesity, heart disease prevention program. I adopted our two nieces because their parents were both drug addicts. And I'm like, "You need to be on an addiction prevention program every day of your life because this stuff might steal your life." Now, ultimately, it's up to you, you choose, but here's the information.

[59:43] Dr. Daniel Amen

So I think everybody should know what are we vulnerable to. But, you know, I loved sweets, but they obviously didn't love me, so every night, the very practical thing to honor my grandfather, I make Brain Healthy Hot Chocolate: unsweetened almond milk, heat it up, I make like two cups, share it with my wife, heat it up for four minutes, put in only two teaspoons of raw cacao, liquid stevia, there's a company called Sweet Leaf, no financial interest, but they make ten different flavors, I love their chocolate, and put it in a blender, it's 60 calories, so it's calorie smart, which I think is important. The blender kind of froths it.

[1:00:14] Dr. Daniel Amen

And I love it, and it loves me.

[1:00:27] Justin McMillen

That's awesome. You should make this. How cool would it be to have something in honor of your grandfather as a supplement?

[1:00:33] Dr. Daniel Amen

Well, we actually have Brain Love bars and Brain Joy bars, not in the summer, but other times of the year.

[1:00:40] Justin McMillen

That's an honor, my grandfather did that. Yesterday I was having the craziest sweet tooth, and I, I didn't give in to it, so that's good. But I was like, my brain was just thinking about sugar nonstop, and I need something like that. We go with, like, the super low sugar, like Lily's chocolate, you know, where it's got like one gram of sugar.

[1:01:07] Dr. Daniel Amen

And people are getting smart, ChocZero makes some good products. But you have to be careful, because if you give in to it too much, you're going to want to give in to it more, right? And there's a lot of crap in some of that stuff, too, a lot of processed things.

[1:01:28] Justin McMillen

And yeah, so, this is great.

[1:01:30] Justin McMillen

Or, forgot where we were. Oh, this, so this guy that comes to you with the alcoholic brain, I want to go back here. What do you tell him to do to make his brain healthier?

[1:01:36] Dr. Daniel Amen

Well, let me give you a real example. Jonathan Cain, who is the keyboardist for Journey, the band Journey, and he wrote most of their iconic songs, like "Don't Stop Believin'," "Faithfully," and "Open Arms."

[1:01:56] Dr. Daniel Amen

And I love him so much. And he's married to Pastor Paula White, who is in charge of the White House Faith Office. So this is my connection to the White House. As I help Paula, well, you know, whenever you get involved in helping someone when you learn about their family. John was drinking two bottles of wine a day, and he's still touring.

[1:02:23] Dr. Daniel Amen

I mean, Journey is still on the road. I'm like, he should do my show. And so John comes, initially thinks it's, you know, Paula's brand health thing is all a joke. And he comes, he has one of the E4 genes, that's the gene that increases your risk for Alzheimer's disease. I scanned him, he's 74, his brain looks older than he is.

[1:02:54] Dr. Daniel Amen

His brain's about 85 or 90. And it's the alcohol. And I make him a poster. So for Joe, I would make him a poster, and the poster's called "Which Brain Do You Want?" Here's a healthy scan, here's yours, here's yours six months from now if you do what I say, and here's yours three years from now if you don't.

[1:03:18] Dr. Daniel Amen

And I made that for John, and he actually put it on the tour bus, healthy John versus, much better if he does what I say, basically Alzheimer's disease if he doesn't. And I'm like, so which brain do you want? He stopped drinking that day. And what he said was the epiphany, then he lost his baby belly.

[1:03:49] Dr. Daniel Amen

The pain in his hands went away, his energy went up, and it reinforced itself. You know, I also put him in a hyperbaric chamber, because he had overall low blood flow to his brain, that was very helpful for him. He took a multiple vitamin, fish oil, a brain boost that works in six different ways, and saffron, basic supplements, got him to a healthier way.

[1:04:23] Dr. Daniel Amen

Eats better, thinks better, doesn't believe every stupid thing. And if you actually know John's story, he was in a Catholic school in third grade when the school burned down, and he was there and he watched the school burn down. There's trauma in there too, like how many of our patients don't have trauma? But that was wicked trauma.

[1:04:50] Dr. Daniel Amen

And so doing 20 sessions of EMDR was incredibly helpful, because when you don't process trauma, your limbic brain is too busy and you drink to settle it down. So why not process the trauma and get out the erroneous beliefs you developed.

[1:05:12] Justin McMillen

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. I think showing, so, like, all four of the circles are working together.

[1:05:23] Dr. Daniel Amen

Stop poisoning his brain, nourish it, stop believing every stupid thing you think, process the trauma. His relationship with his wife is much better, and all with a sense of meaning and purpose. So you create a feedback loop, because as the brain gets healthier, he starts behaving healthier, and then that reinforces the behavior. And sometimes people relapse.

[1:05:51] Dr. Daniel Amen

And I always say, win or learn. There's never failure if we're always curious and not furious, we'll figure it out. And if you have a relapse, don't be ashamed, be curious. And then let's just sort of talk it through. And often the biggest trigger to relapse is you went too long without eating, because low blood sugar is associated with relapse.

[1:06:22] Justin McMillen

And so, this is super fascinating, because when we have somebody that is, sorry, can I tell you this really quick, you're going...

[1:06:30] Dr. Daniel Amen

I don't want to interrupt you, no, go ahead.

[1:06:32] Justin McMillen

So, you know, just like you have people leaving against medical advice out of a hospital, in a treatment environment, they have people leaving against clinical advice.

[1:06:43] Justin McMillen

You know, typically people, they come in and check into Tree House, maybe like a weekend, not a lot, maybe 10% of them will start, we say "going limbic," right, and there you see it in their eyes, and they're just moving into this old tunnel, tunnel vision. One of the main things we do, and you just reinforced it, is we'll take them to eat and we'll feed them a lot of food.

[1:07:05] Justin McMillen

We just encourage them to eat as much as possible. And I don't know why, but that seems to almost always, about 30% of the time, probably a third of the time, interrupt the pattern.

[1:07:15] Dr. Daniel Amen

Yeah, is that because you put a continuous glucose monitor on them, and there's a blood sugar thing, they're more irritable.

[1:07:26] Dr. Daniel Amen

One of my famous patients who kept getting arrested, I did a fasting, I did a glucose tolerance test on him, measured him before sugar, gave him a drink of sugar, and then over two hours his blood sugar dropped to 49, which is really low.

[1:07:48] Justin McMillen

That's very low.

[1:07:49] Dr. Daniel Amen

And you're just more likely to get arrested when your blood sugar is low, and you're more likely to make a bad decision.

[1:07:58] Dr. Daniel Amen

You're more likely to say something. They did this great study on couples, so they gave 107 couples voodoo dolls, and they said, "We want you to express your feelings about your partner with pins in the dolls." And right before that, they measured their blood sugar. And people who had the lowest blood sugar had more than twice the number of pins.

[1:08:24] Dr. Daniel Amen

And the dolls.

[1:08:24] Justin McMillen

Isn't that crazy?

[1:08:24] Dr. Daniel Amen

That is so crazy. Oh my gosh, the things that we just would never, if we think of it as mental health, you go, "You have repressed rage." And maybe that's true, but when you're thinking of it as brain health, you're like, "How's the blood sugar level?" You're going deeper every time.

[1:08:36] Justin McMillen

That's, that's what's amazing. What do you think about, because the brain, you know, the Western, the standard American diet, we eat a lot of sugar, a lot of carbohydrates, and so that's what's fueling the brain. And then you have the ketogenic diet where people switch over to ketones. Do you think that blood sugar jumping up and down is because of our diet?

[1:08:49] Dr. Daniel Amen

Yeah, that's, and because of the toxins in our body that decrease the pancreas from being effective. So I think it's two things.

[1:09:00] Justin McMillen

Yes.

[1:09:01] Dr. Daniel Amen

I think for most people it's the simple carbohydrates. There's a great study from the Mayo Clinic where they showed that people who are on a fat-based diet, like a ketogenic diet, had 42% less risk of getting Alzheimer's disease.

[1:09:10] Dr. Daniel Amen

People who are on a protein-based diet, so think of a caveman diet, they had 21% less risk of getting Alzheimer's disease. But people on the standard American diet, a simple carbohydrate diet, bread, pasta, potatoes, rice, fruit juice, sugar, had a 400% increase risk of getting Alzheimer's disease. It's the sugar and the foods that quickly turn to sugar.

[1:09:42] Dr. Daniel Amen

Bread, pasta, potatoes, rice, fruit juice, sugar, that also go with bad decisions.

[1:10:01] Justin McMillen

Yeah, that signal is so loud that we as people have got to be studying the hell out of that, right? Because that would mean that sugar, at least there's correlation, sugar and Alzheimer's.

[1:10:11] Dr. Daniel Amen

They are, they clearly, they're calling it diabetes type three.

[1:10:12] Justin McMillen

Yeah, I've heard this.

[1:10:13] Dr. Daniel Amen

It's okay, they're doing that more in Europe.

[1:10:20] Justin McMillen

Or they're saying that in Europe now, is that...

[1:10:25] Dr. Daniel Amen

Yeah, they do it here as well. You want, if you're pre-diabetic, you want to think of that as an emergency, because it's damaging every blood vessel in your body, as blood sugar goes high, blood vessels become brittle and then they're more likely to break.

[1:10:37] Dr. Daniel Amen

And that increases your risk of stroke, delays healing, and you're just more likely to make dumb decisions.

[1:10:53] Justin McMillen

Where do you want to, where do you want to see people's agency?

[1:10:54] Dr. Daniel Amen

Well, it's like when I, deal, 5.15, 24.9, okay, fasting blood sugar, if you can get it to 90 or under, that's great, but not under 70.

[1:11:03] Dr. Daniel Amen

My, my, so I had this, I won't go into it too much, but I got kicked in the stomach training, it was on purpose, and then my pancreas ended up having this big contusion on the back of it and closed up my main pancreatic biliary duct, and I ended up with pancreatitis and it was there for a year. So I was in Cedars and hospitals, and they thought for a second that I wasn't going to make it.

[1:11:32] Dr. Daniel Amen

It was bad, so I ended up with a lot of damage, scar tissue on my pancreas, no drinking or anything like that, I was living very hard. In fact, I was in amazing physical condition. But my A1C is at 5.6, and I don't eat a lot of sugar, and that's probably in part because of the islet cells.

[1:11:47] Dr. Daniel Amen

I think they're called, in my pancreas. And then my fasting, I get it checked every six months or so, my fasting glucose barely drops under 100.

[1:11:56] Justin McMillen

Yeah, you might want to wear a continuous glucose monitor and just see what foods spike it.

[1:11:57] Dr. Daniel Amen

Yeah, it's like for me, oatmeal, it's crazy, it goes to 220 with oatmeal.

[1:12:06] Dr. Daniel Amen

And I love cherries, but they don't love me. And ultimately, I just, I love me and I want to nourish me. And, you know, if you think of it as deprivation, you always lose. If you think of it as a game, you always win.

[1:12:20] Justin McMillen

Oh, I like what you said about the healthy relationship, because that's the most incredible way to put it.

[1:12:20] Dr. Daniel Amen

And it even could be framed in our work, right, so everything's about a relationship.

[1:12:20] Justin McMillen

So we need, you could make an entire treatment program around relationships, your relationship with everything around you. And either the relationship is causing you to grow and flourish and make you better and happier, or it's hurting you. And if you like being in the relationship even though it's hurting you, that's a negative relationship, which is the relationship people have with substances and people.

[1:12:57] Dr. Daniel Amen

And yeah, I really like that idea a lot, because if you think about it, I want to have a good relationship with food that loves me back, because you love you, right?

[1:13:13] Justin McMillen

Yeah, right, and people go, "Oh, you can't have this and you can't have that," or everything in moderation, that's the gateway thought to cheating.

[1:13:23] Dr. Daniel Amen

And it's like, well, how can you have any fun? And it's like, well, who has more fun? We have a high school course called Brain Thrive by 25, it's been in all 50 states, and they're excited about it. We teach kids to love and care for their brain. And week four, when we teach them what to avoid, it's always a boy.

[1:13:43] Dr. Daniel Amen

It's never a girl, sort of weird, that raises his hand and goes, "How can you have any fun?" And so we play a game with them, who has more fun, the kid with the good brain or the kid with the bad brain? Who gets the girl and gets to keep her because he doesn't act like a jerk, the kid with the good brain, or the kid with the bad brain?

[1:14:07] Dr. Daniel Amen

Who has the most independence from their parents? It's the kid who makes the best decisions, the person with the good brain, who gets into the college they want to get into, who gets the best job, who has the most meaning and purpose, who's the best dad, the person with the good brain or the bad brain, right?

[1:14:31] Dr. Daniel Amen

I never feel deprived. But when I eat something I shouldn't, that's when I feel deprived.

[1:14:38] Justin McMillen

And Drew Carey, the famous comedian who lost a lot of weight and kept it off, he said eating crappy food isn't a reward, it's a punishment.

[1:14:51] Dr. Daniel Amen

And that's the mindset of being sober, it's a mindset of being ripped, it's a mindset of being healthy.

[1:15:10] Justin McMillen

Absolutely right.

[1:15:11] Dr. Daniel Amen

And I know, I'm going to be 72 this year, I'm in a war with, you know, the gravity of age. As we age our skin falls off our face, and I'm like, no, I don't like that. So what are the habits to keep me as healthy as I can be for as long?

[1:15:20] Dr. Daniel Amen

It's so, because I love...

[1:15:30] Justin McMillen

Yeah, my wife, there's a lot to that too, because there's so many memory care homes, and what we're seeing, and you can tell me a lot more about this, you know more than I do, what we're seeing is that the body's lasting a lot longer than the brain, right, and then you see people that have to be cared for.

[1:15:44] Justin McMillen

It's very expensive.

[1:15:54] Dr. Daniel Amen

Yeah, it's not health span, I mean, you might have a lifespan that's long, but your health span doesn't keep up with it. And I want mine to be the same. Plus I want to outlive all my critics, so I have motivation. I love it, actually, I really don't think about them much.

[1:16:05] Dr. Daniel Amen

But I have a wife I dearly love, my grandchildren.

[1:16:15] Justin McMillen

And do you think about longevity, or do you look into any of the folks that are really diving hard into longevity, like the guy who's trying to live forever, Bryan Johnson? Do you ever see him?

[1:16:26] Dr. Daniel Amen

No, this guy is, I think, I don't know where he's at, but he's had on this, he has something called Blueprint, some tech billionaire, and now his entire focus is he says he spends more money studying his optimization, longevity, than anybody else.

[1:16:47] Dr. Daniel Amen

And so he's doing all these tests on himself, and he publishes everything. You've got to check him out. He does hyperbaric, he does all these things, and he's got the blood markers of, like, a 20-year-old.

[1:16:58] Justin McMillen

I think it's rational.

[1:16:59] Dr. Daniel Amen

Yeah, to, not to the point where you're stressed and you raise your cortisol worrying about it, but I was in the sauna this morning, I usually get up before my wife, I work out, I take a sauna, and I put a red light cap on, get in a hyperbaric chamber.

[1:17:32] Dr. Daniel Amen

I want to put my brain, my body, in a healing environment. And I have a new book on pain, and I wrote the book because I'm like, "It's my knee, it's my shoulder, it's my hip, why?" And my favorite part about the new book is something called the doom loop. And I get a lot of addicts get into the doom loop and then they lose control.

[1:18:00] Dr. Daniel Amen

It's like, you have pain for any reason, that activates the suffering pathway in the brain, which leads to an ANT infestation, automatic negative thoughts and negativity, which then triggers tension. The tension increases the pain, which goes to bad habits, which then causes the loop to just continue. There's a healing loop, which is, every day, whenever you learn, you begin to see what's triggering it.

[1:18:34] Dr. Daniel Amen

Is it food? Is it stress? Is it not sleeping? Why are you always doing things to calm your suffering pathway, diaphragmatic breathing, meditation, hypnosis. Positivity bias training, I think, is absolutely essential for everyone. The only people who should be predicting the worst are contract lawyers. You need your contract lawyer to predict what could go wrong with that contract.

[1:19:04] Dr. Daniel Amen

Other than that, negativity and low hope could drive unhappiness, and then relaxation to relax your muscles. But this is also emotional expression. I had to learn that from Pollyanna, who's one of my favorite characters in literature, because she played the glad game, whatever situation you're in, what is there to be glad about in this situation?

[1:19:33] Dr. Daniel Amen

Well, she also had to learn how to dance with Hannibal Lecter, because if you don't express the rage you have inside in a healthy way, it'll eat you alive.

[1:19:44] Justin McMillen

And so have you ever heard of this therapist? Intensive short-term dynamic psychotherapy?

[1:19:50] Dr. Daniel Amen

It is, you tell me, it's so fascinating.

[1:19:51] Justin McMillen

Yeah, tell me, it's a rage therapy.

[1:19:52] Dr. Daniel Amen

The idea behind it is when we're born, we want to bond, we have to bond in order to survive. But if something happens, our parents get divorced, our dad loses his job, mom's an alcoholic and she's unpredictable, we feel pain and rage, but then, because we need them, we feel guilt about the rage, and we believe we did something terrible and that we need to be punished.

[1:20:35] Dr. Daniel Amen

And the guilt about the rage can create all sorts of psychological and addiction problems, because you feel like you're bad when you didn't do anything. But developmentally, kids that are three, four, five, six think of themselves at the center of the world. And so if something bad happens in the family, they think it's because of them, and then they feel pain and rage and then guilt about the rage.

[1:21:04] Dr. Daniel Amen

So I find I have to get people in touch with that, and to really parent that child. And sometimes in your mind, people die, you know, you have to find a way to express the rage in a healing way.

[1:21:20] Justin McMillen

Wow, you hear that all the time, like when I was a kid, my parents got separated, or my parents split up, and...

[1:21:21] Dr. Daniel Amen

And I always felt like it was my fault.

[1:21:22] Justin McMillen

Like you.

[1:21:22] Dr. Daniel Amen

And it's crazy, so irrational to think that a four-year-old, or a six-year-old, would think that somehow, and I've even had people tell me, "No, it actually was because I was a really hard kid." I'm like, "You were eight, dude, like, no you weren't."

[1:21:47] Dr. Daniel Amen

That's, no, please stop, and it's like, "No, I was really hard for my parents, because, you know, they were both going through a lot, and I was a very, very colicky baby."

[1:21:56] Justin McMillen

And then, it's heartbreaking to hear how.

[1:21:57] Dr. Daniel Amen

Yeah, and you have to get them to re-parent themselves. And, you know, I'm blessed to see some really wonderful professional athletes.

[1:22:09] Dr. Daniel Amen

So I'm like, so tell me your best coaches and tell me your worst coaches. So the best coaches notice what you do right and teach you when you could do better. The worst coaches notice what you do wrong and never let you forget it. But internally, we're often very bad parents to ourselves, we just notice what's wrong.

[1:22:36] Dr. Daniel Amen

There's a part of the brain called the anterior cingulate gyrus that detects errors, just straight up in there, that detects errors. So if this part is too busy, you notice what's wrong about you and you notice what's wrong about other people, it can be really problematic. And serotonin calms that down, to become more flexible. Anyways, either in EMDR or talking to people, you know, I show them this model, and it's like, "Oh my God, that's so me."

[1:23:16] Dr. Daniel Amen

And then they develop defense mechanisms around it.

[1:23:20] Justin McMillen

Have you ever had EMDR?

[1:23:21] Dr. Daniel Amen

No, it's such a while, I think of it as like psilocybin without side effects.

[1:23:22] Justin McMillen

I was listening to Miley Cyrus talk about it literally yesterday on my drive, so I was, I think my phone was listening to me, because I was talking to somebody about EMDR. And then Miley Cyrus was explaining, like, being on a train, and this whole process that she went through, I don't know, but yeah.

[1:23:40] Dr. Daniel Amen

Yeah, no, I have. Okay. Your eyes go back and forth, and, for alternate, and tapping on your body. Get your mind on a train, go to the bridge, and whatever trauma you're dealing with at the moment, get on a train.

[1:24:04] Dr. Daniel Amen

Go back to the first time it happened. And with the eye movement or the tapping, it just sort of sucks the energy out of it. But then I'll often have your adult self go back on the train with you, and rethink that situation with an adult mind, rather than "I'm bad" or "it's my fault."

[1:24:22] Justin McMillen

That's, that's interesting.

[1:24:23] Justin McMillen

Have you? Obviously you've done it, I love it.

[1:24:24] Dr. Daniel Amen

The first time I did it, we were talking about some of the controversy, the California medical board, in 1996, investigated me for a year for my use of imaging, the most awful year of my life. So I was really anxious, I was, you know, afraid I could lose my license.

[1:24:54] Dr. Daniel Amen

I'd spent so much of my life trying to get to where I was. And I named our therapist in my office, and I'm like, "Jennifer, you need to see me." And 45 minutes later, I didn't care if they took my license, I was going to be fine. And it was just miraculous for me.

[1:25:17] Justin McMillen

That's incredible.

[1:25:18] Dr. Daniel Amen

I hear amazing stories, I have a few EMDR people who are trained in it that work for me in the various treatment centers around the country, and we get great reports, especially with the veterans.

[1:25:28] Justin McMillen

That's, there's a lot there, but yeah, we, I haven't personally done it. I should, I should think about it, you know, rather than "should," it would be helpful.

[1:25:38] Dr. Daniel Amen

One of the things I tell my patients, whenever you think you should do something, change that to "I want to do it," or "it fits my goals to do it."

[1:25:55] Dr. Daniel Amen

And if you don't want to, and it doesn't fit your goals, don't do it. Words matter.

[1:26:05] Justin McMillen

The other day, my wife's alarm went off, can we take a break?

[1:26:06] Dr. Daniel Amen

Yeah, let's do it. Where's the bathroom? Back there. And can I get some water? Absolutely.

[1:26:12] Justin McMillen

Like that. So we were just talking about brain, brain rot, right, which I heard you and Stephen talking about it on Diary of a CEO, and word of the year last year.

[1:26:23] Justin McMillen

Yeah, which is crazy. So I was thinking, because I am familiar with your work, can you talk about brain envy? Is brain envy the antidote or the cure for brain rot?

[1:26:46] Dr. Daniel Amen

I love how you phrase that, that's, yes. And 1991, when I started scanning people, I scanned everybody I knew, I was so excited about it. I scanned my mom, who's 60, so, she's made 95 this year.

[1:26:57] Dr. Daniel Amen

She had a stunningly beautiful brain, shockingly, but it fit her life. She has seven children, 54 grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and she knows everybody's birthday, what's going on in everybody's life. You could call her up and go, "Hey mom, I have five friends visiting from out of town," she'd make dinner for us, she'd always say "us."

[1:27:22] Dr. Daniel Amen

She'd stop at the store and get this and that. I mean, she's a Newport Beach Golf Club champion, 1978. I mean, she just had a stunningly beautiful brain. And then I scanned myself the week later, and it wasn't as good as hers, and it really upset me. I played football in high school, and I had meningitis as a young soldier, and I had some bad habits, and I wanted her brain, and I'm like, "Oh, Freud was wrong."

[1:27:54] Dr. Daniel Amen

Penis envy is not a thing, right? It's not been a thing in the 45 years I've been a psychiatrist. Brain envy is what we want, a better brain. The only organ in your body where size matters is your brain. Everything I've done since then is, how can I have a better brain, better brain better life, better brain better marriage, better brain more money, better brain more meaning, more purpose, better brain better grandpa.

[1:28:30] Dr. Daniel Amen

Better brain, better thinking, better creator, better everything. And why would I ever put anything in my body that directly hurts my brain? And people go, "Really, you don't drink?" And I'm like, alcohol is a disinfectant.

[1:28:49] Dr. Daniel Amen

Did you know during the pandemic, Jim Beam turned its plants into hand sanitizer plants? Why? If I have 100 trillion bugs in my gut, and they make neurotransmitters, and they digest my food and detoxify my body, well, why would I kill them? It's like, "Oh, but how can you have any fun?" I said, "Have you been around drunk people?"

[1:29:20] Dr. Daniel Amen

It's not funny. And so many of my patients, they go, "You know, I drink to make other people more interesting," and I'm like, "Well, you need to change the people you're around." It's the quick fix. The U.S., though, to our credit, there's less alcohol consumption now, on the flip side of that, there's more marijuana.

[1:29:42] Dr. Daniel Amen

Yeah, and more psilocybin.

[1:29:51] Justin McMillen

What do you think about cannabis use in the United States today?

[1:29:52] Dr. Daniel Amen

It's a disaster. Are we better off because of all the states that have legalized it? We are not better off, we don't have less anxiety, less depression, we are not better off. I'm not a fan of putting people who smoke marijuana in jail, so I'm not a fan of that.

[1:30:10] Dr. Daniel Amen

But let's say it's innocuous. And ultimately this is going to be the hardest thing I say: it's not about you, it's about generations of you. And if, people just don't know this simple fact, when a little girl is born, she's born with all of the eggs in her ovaries she will ever have. And whatever she experiences or ingests turns on or off certain genes that make illness more or less likely.

[1:30:48] Dr. Daniel Amen

And that's true for her, but also her babies and grandbabies. We have to be so much more serious about our young people's health.

[1:31:07] Justin McMillen

Can you say that again in a different way, when a girl is born, the eggs, what?

[1:31:08] Dr. Daniel Amen

When a little girl is born, she has all the eggs in her ovaries she will ever have.

[1:31:17] Dr. Daniel Amen

So males continue to make sperm throughout their life, but our habits impact the health of the sperm, which means it's impacting the health of your babies and your grandbabies. But it's even more important for girls, because their eggs are all there when they're born. And so it's this concept of epigenetics, it's not just that I inherited obesity and heart disease from my family members.

[1:31:51] Dr. Daniel Amen

I've inherited a lot of the illnesses that have been turned on or off by their habits and their exposures.

[1:32:16] Justin McMillen

That's a pretty astounding idea, I mean, I imagine if people really wrap their head around that thought about what that means.

[1:32:17] Dr. Daniel Amen

And one simple, really crazy example is aspartame. So they gave mice aspartame, aspartame is the artificial sweetener in Diet Coke, but it's also in 5,000 products released in the United States in the early 80s. And when it first came out, I thought it was free, I'm like, "That's awesome," and for lunch I'd get like a 32-ounce diet soda.

[1:32:27] Dr. Daniel Amen

But I had arthritis when I was 35, and one of my patients said, "You know, I stopped aspartame and my arthritis went away."

[1:32:52] Dr. Daniel Amen

So I learned so much from my patients. I stopped aspartame and my arthritis went away. And I had to test it a couple of times, and it came back. I'm like, but there's a study with mice where they gave them aspartame, they became very anxious, and this wasn't a crazy amount of aspartame, it would be like having three diet sodas.

[1:33:15] Dr. Daniel Amen

They gave them Valium, and it calmed their anxiety down.

[1:33:25] Justin McMillen

From 27% of all doctor visits, someone's getting a benzo, could it be related to something so innocuous as a diet soda?

[1:33:26] Dr. Daniel Amen

But the thing that was the most troubling is the mice's babies and grandbabies, who never had aspartame, were anxious.

[1:33:44] Justin McMillen

Oh man, so it's flipping the genetic switch, you wonder?

[1:33:53] Dr. Daniel Amen

There's probably a hundred things like that in our society that we unleash without enough study, and all of a sudden we have this mental health crisis. And yes, it's perpetuated by negative news, and yes, by our processed food diets, and yes, by cell phones and social media. But could there be other things, like aspartame, that are driving this epidemic that we should at least study?

[1:34:17] Justin McMillen

I think this, it seems like we are, which is good. At least the current administration, specifically HHS, and Secretary Kennedy, he's focused on this in a lot of ways. He takes a lot of the same slings and arrows that you do, around challenging a system. What do you think about him and what he's doing, and where we're at right now?

[1:34:38] Dr. Daniel Amen

I love him, you know, I don't agree with everything, he's a proponent for psilocybin, and very cautious, I think that's going to get us into the same sort of marijuana issue. But I love that he challenges the status quo and asks more questions. There was an article in the New York Times basically trashing him and his position on autism, and I was so irritated I wrote a response, which they published, which is, "What's the argument against more information?"

[1:35:14] Dr. Daniel Amen

The argument against, this thing is out of control and we need to study its causes.

[1:35:24] Justin McMillen

It's like, yeah, I know, I'm a huge, I'm a huge fan. And you're doing some work there too, right, that's the idea, this decade of brain health, can you talk a little bit about your vision for that?

[1:35:25] Dr. Daniel Amen

So I've been to HHS a number of times, and I'm hoping we're going to have five or six pilots with a branch of HHS called RSA. And, yeah, I'm very excited to get my work in more places. So we have a new program called The Aim and Hope Foundation, it's based on the four circles we've been talking about. It's already launched, and 50 churches and faith-based organizations, 50 more coming online in the next two months. I did a program with Saddleback Church called the Daniel Plan, where the idea was, get the world healthy through faith-based organizations.

[1:36:20] Dr. Daniel Amen

And that program went to thousands of churches, I'm sort of doing version 2.0, and very excited about it.

[1:36:35] Justin McMillen

Are you working with Monty on some of the stuff?

[1:36:36] Dr. Daniel Amen

Monty, I think, he introduced Monty Barks.

[1:36:37] Justin McMillen

Yeah, yeah, Monty Barks, and I've talked about it, and it's funny that we met in DC when we live so close to each other.

[1:36:44] Dr. Daniel Amen

I know, it wasn't that crazy, yeah, it took me 13 minutes to get there this morning. I'm really excited about what Manny's doing.

[1:37:00] Justin McMillen

You know, there's, well, we'll say this quickly, I think we got to wrap here in a moment, but, Uber, right, this is going to sound off subject, but it's not. The brilliance of Uber as a company was that it looked at existing infrastructure where there was already momentum and energy moving in a direction.

[1:37:12] Justin McMillen

And someone said, "How can we harness the power of that to change something? Let's change transportation, let's give people jobs." And so somebody figured out how to put a layer on top of an existing system that would allow for something that was already there, where there was already energy and momentum, to make a big move.

[1:37:33] Justin McMillen

Right, because that's how you do things fast and big. And so you have the faith-based community, which is massive, you already have the momentum, you have the desire, it's just, the energy's there, so how do we put a layer on top of that? And you just described it, right.

[1:37:44] Dr. Daniel Amen

The, the, for say it again, the for payment, whole for, oh, the Amen whole for, exactly, something like that.

[1:37:54] Dr. Daniel Amen

To layer into the faith-based community to make a change and a difference. So it's exciting, I love the innovation that's going on in DC right now.

[1:38:08] Justin McMillen

So, okay, any last thoughts, you got a final tip for people in recovery, or just in general, around what they should be doing to take care of their brains?

[1:38:18] Dr. Daniel Amen

It's just that one question, right, I just come back to it over and over again, is what you're doing good for your brain or bad for it, does it make the world better, if you can answer that with information and love. And quite frankly, most second graders know, "Oh, this is good for my brain or bad for it."

[1:38:39] Dr. Daniel Amen

It doesn't have to be complicated, you just have to remember it. And the one tip we talked about today, relapse happens when blood sugar goes low, your diet really matters.

[1:38:55] Justin McMillen

And when I learn, all right, Dr. Amen, thank you, this was so great to be with you.

[1:38:56] Dr. Daniel Amen

And it's good to be with you.