← Change Your Brain Every Day
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Your brain matters. Amen Clinics helps people with brain scans and targeted treatment across 11 cities. Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, D.C. miami, New York, Seattle, Scottsdale, Los Angeles, Orange County, California and San Francisco. Learn more at amenclinics.com Every day you are making your brain better or you are making it worse. Stay with us to learn how to you can change your brain for the better every day.
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Welcome back to Change youe Brain Every Day. I'm Tana Amen.
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And I am Dr. Daniel Amen. After looking at nearly 300,000 brain spect scans at Amen clinics, at our 11 clinics over the last goodness 35 years, we've learned something most of psychiatry still ignores. When you look at the brain, everything changes.
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B
And today we're walking you through the 10 ways that brain spect imaging changes diagnosis, treatment, hope and outcomes. Not in theory, but in real people's lives. So number one, it decreases shame and guilt and increases compliance. I think this is so interesting and so important. As a nurse, I've seen this happen.
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So one of the most powerful things brain SPECT imaging does is remove shame. People stop seeing their struggles as a moral failure and start seeing them as a medical issue. So my first scam, 1991 and grand rounds at my hospital. Brain Spectim and Gene in Psychiatry. A new a new tool to help psychiatrists be more effective. I loved it. I was riveted. I had thought for 10 years as a psychiatrist, so I was a psychiatrist for almost a decade, that why are we the only medical specialists that never look at the organ it treats? And at that time I was already doing a study called Quantitative EEG and loved it and found it was really helpful. But SPECT was really a level up. And so I walked out of that lecture into the room of a new patient. And her name was Sandy. And Sandy tried to kill herself the night before. And as I was talking to her, it was clear to me she had adult ADD. She had an 8 year old son who had ADD. She's very smart, had an IQ of 144, but never finished college. And when I asked her, I'm like, why didn't you finish college? I said, how did you study? And she said, well, I never did, but it'd be the night before a test, I'd be out on a date and I'd realize, oh, I have a test tomorrow. I'd put on a pot of coffee, stay up all night. That's how I studied. And I'm like, she has add. And when I brought up add, she said, oh, adults don't have it. And I'm like, I'm the doctor. Adults totally have it. I said, but there's this new study I just went to a lecture on called Brain SPECT Imaging. I would like you to do it twice. Because with my QEEG work, I knew that ADD is not a disorder of a resting brain. People who have ADD can rest just fine. It's when you try to get them to do something that it becomes problematic. So we did one scan at rest, one scan when she concentrated. And when I suggested the scan to her, she goes, oh, I'd be happy for you to look at my brain. Right. Very few patients ever argue with the concept of getting more information to help their patients. And so a couple of days later, I had the scans back, and I put them on her hospital table. The one at rest was actually pretty healthy. But when she tried to concentrate, her whole brain, especially her prefrontal cortex and her cerebellum in the back part dropped in activity. And as I was explaining this to her, she started to cry. And she said, you mean it's not my fault?
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B
I've heard that so many times.
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And I wear glasses to drive. And I said, you know, people have ADD are sort of like people who need glasses. And I put my glasses on, and I said, people who need glasses aren't dumb, crazy, or stupid. Our eyeballs are shaped funny, and I wear glasses to focus. People who have ADD aren't dumb, crazy, or stupid. Their frontal lobes turn off when they should turn on. And the medicine or supplements help you focus immediately. Decrease shame, decrease guilt, increase compliance. And as I met her husband and her child, increased compassion.
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Yeah.
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In her family. And forgiveness from that one interaction, which is now happening thousands of times in my career. Imaging, just like you said, decreases shame, guilt, and increases complexity.
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B
I think that's one of the big things for a lot of family members. It's very hard to understand people's actions. I mean, I'm one of those people. I come from a family where there's a lot of interesting things that have happened. So it can be very easy to just. To just focus on judgment and frustration. And I think when you can see a scan and you see, like, when you can see it as medical, it doesn't mean you don't draw boundaries. It doesn't mean there aren't consequences to certain behaviors. But what it does do is it opens up. It does open up compassion, and it opens up forgiveness and just gives. It opens up conversation and the ability for people to start to heal and Think of it as a medical issue. I've just seen it happen over and over and over again because it can be hard when you grow up in a family like mine.
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A
So hard, especially when you don't know why. And what the scans do is they begin to tell a story of why. And the idea that it's not my fault, but it is my responsibility once I know. So the second thing is scans actually show the physiology of the underlying symptoms. That symptoms don't come out of nowhere. There's always a brain based reason. SPECT allows us to see the physiology, driving behavior, not just label symptom clusters.
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B
So I think this is important because a lot of people tend to think of psych issues or, you know, mental health issues as this very abstract thing that happens. Not a lot of people. At least I didn't grow up in a time in medicine where we thought of it as physiology. We just didn't see it that way, I think. And so I think when you can connect it to physiology and think of it as the brain, it. It changes something.
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A
It changes the discussion for sure. An ICU nurse?
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B
Oh, no. But psychiatrists were my least favorite people in the hospital. I almost canceled my first date with you when I found out you're a psychiatrist because of that. I only called them when I needed vitamin H, which was held all versed and like Ativan. What? Just to knock my patients out because we didn't want walkie talkies. So, like, knock them out? No, it was that bad.
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A
Did you just really say that?
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I did because it was a trauma unit. And so if we had psych patients, I'm like, I need a psychiatrist to knock them out. But other than that, I didn't really want them in my unit. Not the patients, the psychiatrists. Like, it was just a problem. So.
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A
You know, for the last 35 years, I've been looking at the brain, and my colleagues have given me nothing but grief. And that is, I think, in large part because they make diagnoses based on symptom clusters with no biological data. And that's insane. And to call me crazy because I want to look is a little bit like the person who says, the emperor has no clothes ends up in jail because it's like, oh, no, you can't say that. But think with me. If someone's homicidal, if they're suicidal, if they're so addicted they can't stop, if they've been on their 13th antidepressant and no one's looked at their brain, I just think it's nuts because what the scans do is they show the underlying physiology. So a recent case of somebody we love dearly, her brain's flipping on fire.
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B
Right.
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Where you can go, well, she has OCD tendencies or she has anxious.
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We've seen this too many times.
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Tendencies and when in fact she had Babesia, an infection that is from a parasite that is a co infection of Lyme disease. And if you didn't look, it would be easy to say, oh well, she.
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Just put her on some anti anxiety medications.
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Right. And it would be easy for her to get addicted.
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But oh, by the way, the infection would not be getting better.
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That you're not really asking yourself, okay, yes, she's depressed or yes she's anxious or yes she has ocd, which is what it is. But it's not why it is.
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Right.
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And if you don't understand the why, how do you treat it effectively?
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Well, the funny thing is I remember since I didn't cancel my first date with you, so we went out and when you started telling me about what you do, I was very confused. Why? This wasn't normal practice to me. It just sounded very logical, so.
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And it's not normal because if I'm right, and I am, it disrupts a trillion dollar industry. Yeah, I mean pharmaceutical and big food industries, it disrupts both of them.
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But yet psychiatry doesn't have a great reputation as it stands. But when I heard about this, I was like, this actually makes sense to me. This is less crazy than the normal crazy way.
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I know I was telling someone today, I said, you know, if I had to do it over again, I would have been a behavioral neurologist. Because then it just. Then you wouldn't get any grief baggage of psychiatry. Yeah, but I've become really a behavioral neurologist over time.
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B
You definitely practice like that.
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Because that's how I practice. Okay, so you see the underlying physiology, that's 2, 3. It actually prevents errors. Just like the person who has BIA treating her as if she had a primary anxiety disorder. Well, that would be an error.
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B
I mean all it's doing is giving you more information.
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So, and this is critical. Without imaging, doctors guess and guessing causes harm. You don't stimulate an already overactive brain or sedate one that's already underactive. And you don't miss things like toxic toxicity, trauma or even tumors. I. I want you to talk about when you were 25.
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B
I will, but I want to touch on this before I forget because this is really important. So a lot of people, I think they think that the scan is what tells them everything, but the scan is a piece of the puzzle. So when you get the scan back and the person we're talking about whose brain was on fire, it's not like you look at the scan and the scan went, oh, the brain's on fire. And here's why. No, the scan went, oh, the brain's on fire. Which has you go, why? Why is the scan on? Why is it on fire? Why is your brain on fire? And then you order the test to figure like, it's like, let's get a blood test, let's figure out why. Because that's a sign of.
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Teach you to ask better questions.
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You're not making the diagnosis off the scan. You're then getting better. It's better information.
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Sometimes we do, like, if you have Alzheimer's disease, there's a pattern for that. Or a traumatic brain injury, there's a pattern for that.
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But a lot of times it's a way to get more information.
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But how we use the scans at Amen clinics and is we take really detailed histories. So people fill out the equivalent of about 25 pages of information and answer 300 questions. And then we do cognitive testing plus the scans. And so we use all the information to make a diagnosis and OCD and.
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Blood tests and so much more. Right.
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But without looking, you're missing a critical piece of information. Imagine a cardiologist making a diagnosis of heart disease from a checklist.
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Right.
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A
So. So you were diagnosed with depression when you were going through treatment for thyroid cancer.
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Thyroid cancer, yeah. And treatment for thyroid cancer back then is not the same as it is today. It's very radically different. They don't take you off your medication for long periods of time any longer to do the radio, take you off thyroid. Right now, they can actually interrupt the thyroid medication, give you the treatment, and you're done. Back then, they had to take you off of your medication for a couple months. And so when they did that, no one explained to me, oh, you're not. You're not going to die. You're just going to wish you were dead. And so I went from being an extremely active, very athletic person who worked out two hours a day to not being able to climb a flight of stairs, got very depressed, and when I went to the doctor, they wanted to put me on Prozac. So not knowing anything about it, I took the Prozac. And what they should have done was explain to me that when you're off of thyroid medication, it will make you feel absolutely Terrible. So why don't we give it a couple of months and see how you feel. Or give it a month and, you know, so I went on the Prozac and it changed my personality radically. I became dangerously impulsive and they actually increased the amount they were giving me. He's like, give it some time. Let's increase your dose. And I became very, very impulsive. Like dangerously so. It could have really ruined my life. No one took the time to explain this. I did. I wrote about it in my book.
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A
Less Courage of a Scared Child.
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Yeah. Because it's really important. It really had nothing to do with my. With me being depressed. It had everything to do with my physical health, with what was going on with me. Yes, there was probably some underlying stuff like the stress of having thyroid cancer, dropping outta school. There was probably other stuff going on. But why don't we get my thyroid straightened out before you decide that, you know, and not put me on a medication that was not good for me because fast forward. I find out years later I have sleepy frontal lobes. And when you put someone on Prozac who has sleepy frontal lobes, it drops their frontal lobes more.
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So it's like taking the brakes off increases their impulsivity.
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So someone who was actually quite anxious prior to that now has no breaks.
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It's a great read. And the relentless courage of a scared child. So you don't make as many errors. Right. It prevents errors. And people who know my work often know that. Andrew's my hero story. Nine years old, attacks a little girl on the baseball field for no reason, is drawing pictures of himself shooting other children, hanging from a tree in a suicide attempt. And when I scan him now, 999 child psychiatrists out of a thousand have that boy diagnosed with intermittent explosive disorder. Put him on medication, put him in therapy. And for me, I'm like, now I have to scan him. And he has a cyst the size of a golf ball occupying the space of his left temporal lobes. First time I saw that was 1995. I've seen it 130 times since then. And when they drain the cyst, his behavior completely went back to normal. And now.
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But you're missing 30 years later and part of that story as well. The cyst was very invasive and would have killed him.
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Was very aggressive. And the neurosurgeon said he would have been dead in six months.
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And.
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But they drained the cyst. And 30 years later, he's married, he's employed, he's awesome. It prevents mistakes. And I saw another boy, Cody Who? Andrew Cyst was the size of a golf ball. Cody's was the size of a tennis ball. Well, imagine a tennis ball in your skull and what that did. And we're going to publish a new paper this year on intermittent explosive disorder. Decreases in the left temporal lobe, which is something I have seen over and over, but statistically very significant. And so you prevent mistakes. The fourth thing is it detects traumatic brain injury patterns that are often missed by CT or mri. I remember when I scanned you. So we first met January 1st. So we're coming up on our 20th anniversary. Best 20 years of my life.
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Me too.
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And scanned you January 26th because I really liked you, but I didn't really want to like you until I saw your brain. And I'm like, so when did you have a brain injury?
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I thought you were crazy. I was a neurosurgical trauma ICU nurse, and I'm like, brain injuries mean you're in a coma. They mean you have a brain drain. They mean you have a skull flap. They don't mean you've, like, walk away from something. So I said, never. Never.
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And what I learned from imaging is you gotta ask people 10 times whether or not they've had a brain injury. Did you ever fall out of a tree, off a fence, Dive into a shallow pool? Did you have a concussion playing sports? Did you get involved in a fight or fall? Were you ever in a bad car accident?
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Maybe. But I didn't lose consciousness.
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So what happened?
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My sister fell asleep at the wheel going 75 miles an hour and rolled.
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Three times and bashed in the roof. And if you'd been sitting up, you.
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Would have not been laying down. I would have died.
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Yeah, Instantly.
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But I didn't lose consciousness.
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Spared you for me. I'm so grateful. And just imagine if your brain is the consistency of soft butter tofu custard, somewhere between egg whites and jello, and it's housed in a really hard skull that has sharp bony ridges. And 75 miles an hour, you flip.
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Well, I hit three times.
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Then you hit the center console. That leaves a lasting imprint that can change your life.
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But I was like, I didn't lose consciousness. And that was 20 years priors or 15 years prior.
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But you could see it, apparently, the scan. And it's. It's. If you go, hey, Daniel, what's the single most important thing you've Learned from nearly 300,000scans? Mild traumatic brain injury ruins people's lives. And nobody knows it. And very exciting. Just came out this brand new textbook on imaging brain. That said, for the first time that I know of, you can actually see cte Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy on spec scans while someone's alive. Why someone's alive and why is that important?
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Well, because you can only see them when they were dead before. Now you've can see it and do something.
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Now you can do something. And npr, for God knows what reason, decided to pick on me because I say that I can make traumatic brain injuries better, which in fact I can. Why would they were coming after like there's a whole industry around CTE and people are saying they can rehabilitate the brain, but you really can't see it until they're dead and got into this war, which offended me quite frankly because I've raised fair bit of money for PBS and npr. Be that as it may, we can see CTE in living brains and we can often rehabilitate them. And the time to look is not after you stop playing football, it's when you start plane. So at least you have a baseline.
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B
So I think many people don't even remember the injury, whether it's the sports, the falls, the accidents. I certainly didn't even know mine was a thing. But their symptoms never made sense until they get the scan. And I know that I've seen this over and over again, even in my own family. It's like, oh, I've had these symptoms. In fact, there's often a lot of fear around it or a lot of shame or stigma. And then they'll see a scan and it's like my whole life makes sense. And that's so interesting to watch that happen is when someone's whole life begins to make sense.
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Over 50 million Americans live with chronic pain. And too many are told there's no hope beyond pills or surgery. My new book, Change youe Brain, Change youe Pain, gives you proven, practical steps from the latest neuroscience to calm your brain, heal your mind, and finally feel better physically and emotionally. Pre order now to receive bonus gifts at changeyourbrain changeyourpainbook.com 5 scans visualize damage from substance abuse. Inspect shows the real reason not to use drugs, alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, hallucinogens, inhalants, is they damage your brain.
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B
It also I think when people can see damage interrupts denial. It breaks the pattern of denial. It increases motivation, it increases compliance, and it becomes a turning point. I mean, we've seen people stop drinking like instantaneously when they see a scan, when they can see that their brain is bad people.
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On our podcast, Jonathan Cain who was drinking two bottles of wine a day, saw a scan, and stopped cold turkey. I actually made him a poster.
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Yeah.
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Which brain do you want? Healthy? Yours. Yours if you do what I say. Better. Yours if you don't do what I say, you're going to have Alzheimer's disease. And then Julius Randall stopped smoking pot when he saw his scan. The other thing it does, so six, it detects hidden toxicity. So they didn't tell you they were drinking or they didn't tell you they were doing drugs. Like, why does your brain look toxic?
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And then they'll admit, do teenagers get scared?
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Teenagers often come in and lie.
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Yeah.
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And then when I'm like, come on, why does your brain look toxic? And they go, you won't tell my parents, will you? Some of the sickest scans we see are actually from unexpected toxins like carbon monoxide poisoning or mold or heavy metals. Even sleep apnea begins to give an Alzheimer's pattern on scan. And the first time I learned this, I was seeing one of my very favorite patients named Carolyn. And she's like, toxic brain. But she's teaching a Christian school and said she never drank and never did drugs. Her brain looked terrible. So she could have lied, but I didn't think she would. It turned out she had mold exposure in her home. And it's not just anxiety, it's toxicity. And how would you know if you didn't look?
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And you can test once you, like, there's a mold test. Right. Or there's tests for all these different things. So a lot of these people are told it's just anxiety or it's just depression, but their brains are literally being poisoned. And it's really. I mean, what I love is that we can see it and then we can test and figure out what it is. It just. It gives you that next clue.
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Right. Seven, it improves differential diagnosis. Many disorders have shared symptoms, but they're not the same brain problem. SPECT helps distinguish bipolar disorder from ADHD or post traumatic stress disorder from traumatic brain injury. I actually published two large studies on that. 21,000 people. Discover magazine listed that research as one of the top 100 stories in science for 2015. I was very proud of that. It can show the difference between dementia and depression or actually between the types of dementia, which I'll talk about in a little bit.
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B
And this isn't a small thing. I mean, this difference can literally change someone's life or even save it.
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A
Absolutely. And then with dementia or, you know, memory problems as you age, there's a study called Amyloid PET that can actually tell you yes or no you have Alzheimer's, but what spec does that's different. So amyloid PET scans are about $4,000 for half that cost. Spect will actually tell you. Is it a pattern for Alzheimer's disease? Been described in the literature for literally 35 years, which is bilateral parietal top back part of your brain, temporal lobe decreased activity. It's a pattern for Alzheimer's disease or frontal temporal lobe dementia where you see the frontal lobes deteriorating along with the temporal lobes. Or vascular dementia from a stroke or vascular disease. Lewy body dementia, which is the dementia that Robin Williams died of, which goes with Parkinson's disease. What you see is their occipital lobes in the back deteriorate or alcoholic dementia, overall decreased activity or infectious disease dementia, very common cause of dementia, whether it's Lyme or sometimes even Covid traumatic brain injury related dementia, pseudo dementia, which is actually you're depressed, but it looks like you have dementia. My first dementia case, like, oh, she doesn't have dementia, she's depressed. And on Wellbutrin she got her memory back. This phenomenal case or this very interesting cause of dementia called normal pressure hydrocephalus, where the brain has too much pressure in it and you shunt them and they get their memory back.
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B
I mean, it's remarkable, interesting.
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So I think anybody who has dementia that SPEC is the right tool. Not amyloid pet, because amyloid PET just says yes or no to Alzheimer's where SPEC gives you.
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B
So that's what I'm trying to understand. So the difference is, is that the SPECT scan is going to show you a pattern of what where there's low activity in the brain. So that gives you an idea of what kind of dementia it is or what kind of Alzheimer's it is.
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A
Where what's low activity. But sometimes, like in Matilda, in my first case, she had almost burned her house down. She left something cooking on the stove and her five daughters went time to put her in a home. Matilda wanted nothing to do with the home. And they said, okay, we're going to put her in the hospital, get one more evaluation. Random chance I'm on call. And I thought she had Alzheimer's disease too when I listened to to the history. But I'm like, well, let's look. And it was within those first six months of me ordering SPECT scans. She had a beautiful brain, but her emotional brain was dramatically overactive. And I'm like, she doesn't have Alzheimer's disease. She's Depressed and on Wellbutrin within three weeks, we kept her in the hospital a month. Within three weeks, she's teaching cooking classes on the ward. She just blossom.
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B
So that sounds a little like my dad. Sounds like my dad's story when we were first dating. Yeah.
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A
Yeah. I'm still in trouble for that.
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B
You're still. You're not in trouble anymore? No. My dad had pseudo dementia when you scanned him. So I got the call that my sister, one of my sisters called me and said, we need your help. I hadn't talked to my dad, what, 10, 15 years? I'd probably talk to him in 10 years, but I hadn't seen him for a very, very long time. I had stopped talking to my dad when I was 18, and we did not have a good relationship. We were very estranged. And so he now suddenly was diagnosed or not. Yeah, he was. They said he had Alzheimer's disease. My sister said he was a recluse. He wasn't coming out of his room, and we were dating. And you're like, well, we have to scan him. And I'm like, no, no, no, no. I don't talk to my dad. And I told my sisters, I said, this is not my circus, not my monkey. Like, this is not. I don't. Why am I. What do you want me to do? I don't see him. I don't talk to him. We don't have a relationship. And you're like, no, we have to scan him. And I'm like, that means he has to come down here, and that means he's going to stay. Where? And you're like, well, with you. I'm like, are you out of your mind? So he ends up staying with me, which turned into him living with me for, like, five years. Anyways, he gets scanned. That's another story. He gets scanned. And you said he doesn't have Alzheimer's disease. And I'm like, well, then what is it? Because he's not coming out of his room. He has memory issues. He's not remembering things, he doesn't know where he's going and whatever. And you said he's depressed and he's on some toxic combination of medications, some bizarre combination medications that I haven't seen for years. And someone just put him on a bunch of meds and sort of forgot about him. And anyways, you took him off of those meds and changed his medication routine, put him on some supplements and got him exercising. And within what was six months, he was teaching courses at the church. He was teaching Bible Study at the church.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Yeah. And we ended up being able to heal.
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A
He did a holiday seminar.
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B
Yeah.
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And how would you know if you didn't look?
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B
That's pretty wild.
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That's the crazy thing. Scans measured the impact of treatment. I've loved that so much. You can see before and after scans, when Julius Randall was here, he stopped smoking pot. He took his supplements. He didn't believe every stupid thing he thought, and his brain was so much better. And that's motivating.
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B
Yeah.
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Because then you want to keep your well.
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B
And it also translates to not only your family, but your money and your performance at work and.
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Right. And people go, it's expensive. It's like having an unhealthy brain is expensive.
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B
Being hospitalized for Alzheimer's is when you don't have Alzheimer's.
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We're working this year to make it covered by insurance, but that's been a war. And it also shows if treatment's not working.
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B
Yeah. It's like, do we need to switch gears?
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A
Yeah. You know, is the patient being compliant? That's so important or.
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B
Well, that's a big one.
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Do we have.
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B
People have to want help? Because there are. So one of the things I wanted to talk about, too, is how often does it not work? Like, you know, there's always a percentage of the time that it's not as helpful as you'd like it to be.
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Well, we actually know because we do an outcome study on everybody.
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B
Okay. And how much of that time is it because people aren't doing their part?
- [33:52]
A
Partly. I mean, we. We did a study, people who were compliant, who did what we asked them to do, 90% of the time, they get better. People who are not compliant 50% of the time. So, I mean, they still get somewhat better. Somewhat better. But you got to work the plan. And I tell this to you. Can't make people do what I say. You're likely to get better if you don't do it. I'm sorry, you're not likely to get better. But at least we have a map. Right? You've heard it. Set of pictures worth a thousand words. But map is worth a thousand pictures. A map tells you where you are and gives direction on how to get to where you want to go. Now, we don't know everything. Right. We're just at the beginning stages of true neuroscience in psychiatry. So we don't know everything, but we know a lot and can get a lot of troubled brains better. And then the last thing is, scans identify brains at risk before the crisis hits. So I think it's one of the most important benefits. Early warning, we can see. Is your brain headed for cognitive decline? Is it? We're actually working on a suicide prediction tool.
- [35:20]
B
Oh, interesting.
- [35:22]
A
Whether or not you're more vulnerable to.
- [35:25]
B
Relapse, how can you see if someone is more vulnerable to relapse?
- [35:30]
A
If they have low frontal lobe activity, they're more vulnerable to.
- [35:34]
B
So if they can keep their frontal lobes stimulated appropriately, then they're less likely to re. That's so interesting. So treating ADD is critical.
- [35:42]
A
Treating ADD is absolutely critical to prevent relapse, and it's important to prevent suicide.
- [35:51]
B
So this revolving door of 5,150s for people who are, you know, not doing well, that's really important because, you know, sometimes they end up committing suicide. But if you. What you're saying is if you can treat whatever it is that's going on underlying and.
- [36:08]
A
And then it decreases the risk.
- [36:10]
B
Right. Increasing anxiety, increasing the frontal lobes.
- [36:13]
A
Right.
- [36:14]
B
Balancing.
- [36:15]
A
Sometimes the illness wins.
- [36:16]
B
Yeah. I mean, it is just.
- [36:17]
A
Just like with cardiology or with oncologists, sometimes the illness wins. But to do our best with the illness, you have to understand it. Right. And if you don't understand it and treat the brain, rather than just a cluster of symptoms. Right.
- [36:37]
B
Because. Okay, hold on. Because I think to make that more clear for people, the sim. To treat the brain instead of the symptoms. I think what you're saying is, because two people can show up, the same two people can show up with the symptom of depression, but the symptom of depression can be many different things. It can be an underactive brain. It can be an overactive brain, can.
- [37:01]
A
Be a toxic brain, can be a traumatic brain.
- [37:03]
B
You can't treat an underactive brain and an overactive brain the same way.
- [37:06]
A
Correct.
- [37:07]
B
Just one is like throwing gasoline on fire. If you treat that same one as you. If you treat an overactive brain the same as an underactive brain, it's like throwing gasoline on fire. But if you know what you're treating, then you. If you know it's overactive. If you know it's underactive, you treat it appropriately.
- [37:21]
A
Well, think of Jared, right? So your friend saw us on TV together, and she had a child who had been diagnosed with ad, had already been to psychiatrist, failed five stimulant medications.
- [37:36]
B
They kept putting him on stimulants because they thought he was ad.
- [37:38]
A
You actually didn't want him around Chloe.
- [37:41]
B
No. Because he had violent temper.
- [37:42]
A
Because he had violent temper and he had the symptoms of adhd. Hyperactive, restless, impulsive, Couldn't concentrate. Teacher said he'd never be anything. And typically at adhd, you get a stimulant like Ritalin or Adderall or something along those lines. But he had a pattern in his brain called the ring of fire, which 80% of the time, you put that brain on a stimulant, it's like gasoline on fire. Like a gasoline on a fire. And.
- [38:17]
B
And that's what they kept doing.
- [38:18]
A
I put him on neuralink, which is to calm his brain, and he got dramatically better.
- [38:25]
B
And by the way, he's an awesome human.
- [38:27]
A
And he's an awesome human. Yeah. We went to his wedding and we love him. But how would I know if I didn't know?
- [38:36]
B
Because his symptom was like, typical add.
- [38:39]
A
It's like giving everybody with chest pain the same treatment, which is lunacy, right?
- [38:46]
B
Because one has gas and one has.
- [38:48]
A
And one has a heart attack or one has heart arrhythmia, one has a heart infection. It's the same thing. So just like you said earlier, spec doesn't give you. Doesn't always give you the answer. It teaches you to ask better questions, but it decreases shame, guilt, increases compliance, increases family forgiveness. You see the underlying physiology. It tells you if the head injury is involved or toxins might be involved. It helps you subtype things like anxiety, depression, adhd, even addiction and obesity, which I've done in various books throughout the years. It gives you more information to help your patients. And if you can't get a scan, you clearly can read one of my books.
- [39:48]
B
Right.
- [39:48]
A
And. Or go online. They just give you so much brain health assessment. So go to Brain health assessment dot com. It's likely to say, oh, well, this is what my brain is likely to look at based on Dr. Well, and.
- [40:02]
B
You basically give the entire program in your book. I mean, it's, it's.
- [40:07]
A
Yes, if you change your brain, change your life or the end of mental illness.
- [40:11]
B
Yeah, I mean, if someone's really sick, they need to see a doctor. But if they're, if they're really trying to optimize their brain and they can't see a doctor, most of the information, a lot of what you can do.
- [40:20]
A
Is in there, right? Or, you know, the podcast is called Change youe Brain Every Day. And one of my favorite books, I think the book for most people to start with is Change your Brain every day. It's 366 short essays on the most important things I've ever said and that you can do. And at the end of each day, there's a small, little, tiny habit for you to do. Thank you for doing this with me. You were thinking, oh, you should do this one by yourself. But it was so much better that I did it with you.
- [40:54]
B
I always have more to say than I think I'm going to have.
- [40:59]
A
That is true. This podcast is brought to you by the Change youe Brain foundation, dedicated to ending the concept of mental illness by creating a revolution in brain health. Go to changeyourbrain.org to learn how you can support our mission. Leave us a comment, question, or review. And we just look forward to this year being a resource for you. You are not stuck with the brain you have. You can make it better. I can prove it. And you can literally change your brain every day.