← Change Your Brain Every Day
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- [00:00]
Dr. Jared Ament
I truly believe too many people are getting operated on. And when they do get operated on, they're getting the wrong surgery. Forty years ago, when you had a bad hip or a bad knee, they put a rod through the knee, they put a rod through the hip, that joint is no longer functional. Why we're still doing that to the spine, to me, is asinine. Dr. Jared Amant is a board certified neurosurgeon known as the anti fusion doctor. He specializes in minimally invasive spine surgery
- [00:22]
Patient with back pain
designed to help patients avoid fusions and
- [00:24]
Tana Amen
preserve their natural movement.
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Dr. Jared Ament
Pain is a way of the body telling us there's a problem. The spine needs muscular support to stay whole. We're all degenerating, we're all getting older, but you can slow that process down. It's important to know when pain is guiding you to do something differently. When it's okay to do something to mask that pain, you can go down the rabbit hole and say, oh my God, I'm going to just take pills the rest of my life and we have the opiate epidemic on our hands. That's not an answer. Pain doesn't usually happen in isolation. It happens for a reason and it's important to understand it.
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Tana Amen
What are the biggest misconceptions patients have about back pain?
- [00:53]
Dr. Jared Ament
The biggest misconception is that.
- [01:00]
Tana Amen
Every day you are making your brain better or you are making it worse. Stay with us to learn how you can change your brain for the better every day. Your brain is your most valuable asset. It controls everything from your focus and memory to your mood and energy. That's why I created Brain MD to give you science backed supplements that support your brain so you can feel and perform your best every day. If you haven't tried them yet, go to brainmd.com and use the code PODCAST20 for 20% off. Because when your brain works better, you work better Foreign.
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Patient with back pain
Welcome back. We are very excited today we have a special guest, Dr. Jared D. Amond. He's a fellowship trained American board certified neurosurgeon, specializes in complex and minimally invasive brain and spine surgery using the latest technologies including neuronavigation, endoscopy and robotics. He's also a fellow of the American College of Surgeons and his practice focuses heavily on motion preservation. He's often referred to as the anti fusion doctor. Want to hear more about that? He's also the first in the world to innovate and initiate the 360 degree arthroplasty trial when motion preservation is not feasible. He also specializes in the management of degenerative spine diseases, brain and spine tumors, and facial and pain spasm syndromes. Dr. Ament has operated on many celebrities and professional athletes and is currently the principal investigator on several FDA clinical trials researching to next generation of artificial disc and motion preservation technologies. So we're so excited to have you.
- [02:58]
Tana Amen
Thank you. And how we got introduced is I was on Max Lugavi's podcast. I have a new book, change your brain, change your pain. Yes. And he said pain was in his brain, but also in his back. And when he saw you, he had done sort of all of the holistic, healing things, and they didn't work. And he has been in pain for 10 years, and he's like, you have to meet Jared. And then I got a call from Jack Domay, who used to be the CEO of Hitachi in, you know, America. And I had done work with Jack, and Jack loves me, and he goes, you have to meet Jerry. And so we called and I invited you on the podcast.
- [03:45]
Dr. Jared Ament
It's very nice to be here. So thank you. And our names, our last names are very, very similar. Right?
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Tana Amen
It's Amen with a T, Amon with
- [03:52]
Dr. Jared Ament
a T. We may be related.
- [03:54]
Tana Amen
And. And I've been thinking a lot about pain and how it frightens people. It changes their life in a negative way. And back pain is no joke.
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Patient with back pain
It's miserable.
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Dr. Jared Ament
I mean, it changes people's quality of life to a point that. I mean, we've. We've seen some major adaptations. It ruins people's lives.
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Tana Amen
Share your journey into, like, Widener surgery and just let us get to know you.
- [04:29]
Dr. Jared Ament
I like long walks on the beach. No. You know, people have asked me this before, and I don't really know how to pinpoint it other than there was one moment that my late grandmother used to say that she remembers babysitting when I was 10 or 11. And somewhere along the way, I had transitioned from, you know, the model cars or the model fighter planes that people put together when they're a kid, and you can make them and build them and paint them. She remembers coming. I think she was babysitting. My parents were away, and she came to the room at like, 2 in the morning. I was 10, 2 in the morning, and the light was on, and so she thought I left it on, but she found me at my desk putting together a model of the brain, and somehow I had transitioned to that. Where the curiosity and the intrigue came from after that, I'm not entirely sure, but I did know all along the way, even into undergrad and medical school. That neurophysiology fascinated me. I liked the abyss that was neurosurgery. It is the hardest, the most competitive, the most difficult. And it was one of those things that we didn't have all the answers. I mean, you could literally take someone's old heart out and put in a new one. Right. And so we can't do that with the brain or the spine yet. And I like challenges. Sometimes it's in. People say, you know, neurosurgeons have God complexes. But what people don't realize is how humbling the profession can be when we really can't fix what we're hoping to be able to fix. And so that's kind of how the path started.
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Tana Amen
And traditionally, when you're operating on someone's
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Dr. Jared Ament
back
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Tana Amen
is the most common operation. Effusion operation, I think.
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Dr. Jared Ament
So, you know, statistically probably is. There are a lot less invasive operations regarding the spine that don't involve implants. Like someone herniates a disc, you can do a little microdiscectomy procedure, 30, 40 minutes, just take out the disc, put pushing on the nerve, call it a day. But when it comes to implants and the bigger surgeries, and especially as the population is more and more active, aging better, living longer, there's a lot of degenerative disease. And at some point the, a lot of. I don't know where this changed, but 30, 40 years ago, the industry pushed towards these rods and screws. And they're not stuff that you get at Home Depot, although it looks very similar. They're very fancy colored and coated in titanium and wonderful and MRI compatible now. But was always part of our training. You know, you were a trauma nurse. I mean, for neurosurgery, you saw brain and spine trauma. When the, when the spine is severed in two, sure, that makes sense. You have to try to put it back together and secure it. But what didn't make sense to me was why we did that in cases where there wasn't instability, when the spine really wasn't unstable is just degenerative. And we felt that the degenerative changes, the arthritic changes were causing pain or neurologic problems. I did not understand the equation, why that plus that equals rods and screws and fixate like you have a problem and that problem is causing pain or neurologic deficit. And somehow you go in there and take away all the compression on the nerves, you open everything up and that's great, but what you're left with is kind of a blank space in a field and the Answer became fused because was felt to be the safest thing to do. Put rods and screws. You don't have to worry about it. The bone heals together, the nerves are safe, the spinal cord is safe.
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Patient with back pain
Yeah, that's not quite how it ends up. Most of the time.
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Dr. Jared Ament
It's not. I mean, the, you know, not neurosurgeons get a bad rap. Spine surgeons in particular, that, you know, surgery, especially back surgery, beget surgery. Beget surgery. It's like domino.
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Tana Amen
My dad had it when he was 86, 87, and part of his foot was numb, and his foot was not numb, but it didn't help.
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Dr. Jared Ament
The backpack.
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Tana Amen
Yeah, and.
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Patient with back pain
But many have the disc above or the disc below, and then it's. I mean, not the. The vertebra above.
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Dr. Jared Ament
It's called adjacent segment disease.
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Tana Amen
Well, then I read this study that completely changed the way I think about pain, which is I'm 71, and 70% of people my age who have no pain at all have degenerative changes in their spine. And I'm like, okay, the MRI is what freaks people out. It's often what leads them to pain. Is there another way?
- [08:54]
Dr. Jared Ament
Well, I always say, and this is really important, don't treat the picture, treat the patient. Now, in surgery, if there is a correlation between the picture and the patient, you usually have a better surgical result. But. But often we'll see that people will come because something necessitated an image. Their family doctor or someone said, we need to get this or that, and they get freaked out. And I think more surgery is being done than is necessary. And that's. People always say surgeons are the hammer to the nail of the problem. But I truly believe too many people are getting operated on, and when they do get operated on, they're getting the wrong surgery. So you mentioned adjacent segment disease. What is adjacent segment disease? When you. The idea of a fusion. I always use this analogy. I use it with Max Lugova as well. And it's so, you know, a little bit redundant, but it's a good analogy. Shock absorbers on a car, if one shock absorber on the car blows and you put some duct tape around it, or you put a strut and you hold it together, but it's not functioning like a normal shock absorber, what happens to the other shock absorbers in the car? You can still drive the car, but they wear out. They take its asymmetric stress on those shock absorbers. That's not how it was designed. Now, I don't know what you believe, whether it be God or nature but how would the design of the spine was mobility was movement. And so when you remove that motion segment to treat a problem, you create abnormal stresses above and below it. And that's what propagates the problem. And that's why I think we're doing wrong. Forty years ago, when you had a bad hip or a bad knee, they did the same thing. They put a rod through the knee, they put a rod through the hip, got rid of pain, but it's not functional. That joint is no longer functional. So why we're still doing that to the spine to me is asinine.
- [10:35]
Patient with back pain
So what do you do instead?
- [10:36]
Dr. Jared Ament
Well, the idea is motion preservation. If there's not frank instability, some major trauma, can we preserve motion? And there are several ways to do it, but the most common one is what's called artificial disc replacement. On the front of the spine is the disc like a shock absorber on the spine for a car. And if we can remove, if the entire disc should be removed. Cause if it's a little herniation like I talked about before, we can do a little, take the little herniation, leave the disc alone and you don't have to over operate. But if there's enough degenerative changes, you can remove the remnant disc, especially when people are bone on bone. And you can put in a new disc that functions like a mechanical joint, almost exactly like a knee or a hip replacement. Now there are others, it's gotten even more advanced. We do something nowadays called the TOPS procedure, which is an artificial facet replacement, which is the back part of the skull.
- [11:27]
Patient with back pain
Interesting.
- [11:28]
Dr. Jared Ament
And that was developed in Israel, which is close and dear to my heart. And so I have no financial interest in the. Wish I did, but I don't have any interest in the company. But I have extreme interest in the science. And I was part of the original FDA trial as an investigator. So I have the luxury of seeing patients with seven or eight years of follow up where this has really only been in the US for about two years. And it's incredible what these new technologies are now doing for people because the artificial disc is a little bit more nuanced. This the artificial FaceTime literally treats patients that only had fusion as an option. That was the only other option. Most of the time there's a little bit of a slip in the spine. Not frankly unstable, but there's a slip. Significant degenerative disease. The facets grow and become really arthritic and they push into the nerve canal. So when you see people as they get older and like after 10 minutes. I got a. They call it a shopping cart sign. They have to lean over a shopping cart to relieve their foot or they have to take a break. Five minutes then becomes two minutes or it becomes less and less mobility. That's called neurogenic claudication, like claudicatory symptoms in the legs. It's very common to see people like that who've got these growing gnarly looking facet joints in the back of their spine that push into the nerves. In the past, getting rid of those facets makes the spine unstable. So when you have instability, you fuse. In this case, an artificial facet replacement allows us to decompress all the nerves, give people their mobility back without fusion.
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Tana Amen
And so you take those facets off and then you replace them with this device with the artificial cassettes.
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Dr. Jared Ament
Yeah.
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Patient with back pain
Wow. And this is feeling like I need an appointment.
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Dr. Jared Ament
Let's talk.
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Tana Amen
Talk a little bit about your history.
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Patient with back pain
So my back's a mess. It's a story of your life. Right?
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Tana Amen
We have a real live patient.
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Patient with back pain
So I'm a mess. I mean, I've been highly active my whole life. Martial arts, CrossFit, the whole thing. And then I hurt myself pretty badly about five years ago. It was sort of a combination of things. I had a hysterectomy, which weakened my core and didn't take the time off that I probably shouldn't. Should have.
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Dr. Jared Ament
Yeah.
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Patient with back pain
And then went back and I felt something in my back. And I'm like, well, I feel how many times from those sports, you know? But then I fell. And so it's sort of the three things happened very close together. And I don't know which one was the worst of it. But the bottom line is, all of a sudden I couldn't walk up my stairs. I mean, I could not walk. I was just in tears. I've never felt pain that bad. So people I know that have back pain will tell you they've never had pain that bad in their life. So the next thing I know, I'm like, crying. I can't walk up my stairs. We're looking for houses with elevators. Like, I. It was bad.
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Dr. Jared Ament
Sorry. Yeah.
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Patient with back pain
And so I go to the doctor and get an MRI and the facets are a mess. My disc at L2 at L2 is gone. He said, it's crushed. It's just gone. And he said, it's bone on bone. And so he said he wanted to do a fusion. And I said, is fusion the only option? He said, yes, it's the only option.
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Tana Amen
And he was going to put A cage in.
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Patient with back pain
He's going to know. He's going to fuse it.
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Dr. Jared Ament
He's going to include cage, cage, cage, cages. Like, when people say cage, it's like. Think of like a wedge.
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Patient with back pain
Yeah.
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Dr. Jared Ament
Spacer.
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Patient with back pain
So he's gonna fuse it. But I'm like, but it's already bone on bone. I don't know. Just. I didn't want to do it because I've seen so many of them go bad. Plus I have scoliosis. I had mild scoliosis, which I feel like is a little worse now, but. And I'm like, what's going to happen if I have scoliosis and you do this? I don't know. Just in my head, I'm like, I just had.
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Dr. Jared Ament
Gets worse.
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Patient with back pain
I felt like it was gonna be worse, so I just didn't want to do it. So I've done everything that.
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Dr. Jared Ament
I have a formal consult when we're done here. Yeah. Table. We'll do an exam. It's perfect.
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Patient with back pain
Yeah.
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Tana Amen
So you had an epidural and.
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Patient with back pain
No, it helped for probably a year and a half.
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Dr. Jared Ament
Great.
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Patient with back pain
And. But in that year and a half, I really worked on getting my core strong. I started doing Pilates. I started doing just. I started very small, but now I'm doing strength training. Not CrossFit ever again, but I'm doing strength training. I'm doing Pilates. I'm walking. I'm. I couldn't walk for 15, 20 minutes.
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Dr. Jared Ament
Yeah. So, I mean, I love Pilates, by the way. Love Pilates. I wanted to take two steps back because you said something that rung true to me. Martial arts. Which Martial art?
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Patient with back pain
So I have a black belt in taekwondo and a black belt. A secondary black belt in Kenpo karate.
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Dr. Jared Ament
Very nice. So my first job was when I was 16, teaching martial arts. I Shotokan.
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Patient with back pain
I grew up.
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Dr. Jared Ament
I grew up in a dojo. That was my life.
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Patient with back pain
So. And I got depressed when I had to give it up.
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Dr. Jared Ament
Yeah.
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Patient with back pain
Because, you know, that rush, that intensity that there's no therapy. Like beating the heck out of big padded guys. There's just nothing like it. So.
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Dr. Jared Ament
I know I grew up in a dojo. My sensei was like my second father.
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Patient with back pain
Y. Yes.
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Dr. Jared Ament
A young kid. I started 6 first job at 16. And I only really stopped training like that when I left.
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Patient with back pain
Yeah.
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Dr. Jared Ament
For medical school. But I always kept training.
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Patient with back pain
So I was in Israel.
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Dr. Jared Ament
I trained with the Israeli military as part of their teaching unit. And so I continued it. And it's a. It's a huge passion, but it's.
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Patient with back pain
So you understand.
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Dr. Jared Ament
But I understand what it's like to not be able to do something like that.
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Patient with back pain
So I got really depressed because not just the. It wasn't just the pain. The pain was bad. And that made me depressed. And it wasn't just the feeling older because of the pain that made me feel depressed, but giving up the things you love.
- [16:32]
Dr. Jared Ament
Absolutely.
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Patient with back pain
And that just. That still gets to me sometimes. So, I mean, I'm active now, so I'm okay. But it's hard.
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Dr. Jared Ament
Adaptations can be good. They can also be extremely depressing. And I. One of the things, I mean, you and I had spoken. Anyone you asked me, what's my goal? My goal is trying to make people more aware so there's better choices so that you don't have to adapt so much, that your quality of life, the things that give you joy, have to be changed. And so I always say, people, I want to get you back to the highest functional quality life possible, not a band aid. Let's figure out a solution so you can do all the things you want to do. And patients always ask when they're doing well. Can I? They know I was a. There's another part of my story. As I was a sommelier. I was in the wine business before I put myself through college by learning wine. But anyways, anyway. But they always know. Somehow they find out or as posts or something about my wine collection and all this stuff. Then can I get you a bottle of wine? I said, you know what? The only thanks I ever would love to receive would be a picture of you doing something incredibly active or whatever it is that gives you that feeling that you had that we both had in martial arts. And it's true. Because that, to me, is the greatest joy of what. What we're doing.
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Patient with back pain
Yeah.
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Dr. Jared Ament
We're both. We're trying to help people. We're trying to make.
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Patient with back pain
Make people whole again, make them feel whole again.
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Tana Amen
Yeah, yeah, I know the best gift is to see them happy, living, doing.
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Dr. Jared Ament
Yeah.
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Tana Amen
What they love. What are the biggest misconceptions patients have about back pain?
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Dr. Jared Ament
I think the. The biggest misconception is that you can band aid the solution away, that you. That it. Or that it happens in isolation. Because people do talk to me a lot about how their back pain has affected the rest of their life. Their work, their family life, their sexual health, their. And so the misconception is that it's sort of, you're in a silo and it's just back pain, but usually it affects much more than that. And then the other thing is that all these Injections and things that people do. Again, pain is a way of the body telling us there's a problem. I'm not saying more surgery. You're a case, you know, Pilates, core strengthening the spine needs muscular support to stay whole, to degenerate slower. We all degenerate life. We're all getting older, but you can slow that process down. And so I think that it's important to know when pain is guiding you to do something differently, when it's okay to. To do something to mask that pain. But I mean, we say masking pain, you can go down the rabbit hole and say, oh, my God, I'm going to just take pills the rest of my life, and we have the opiate epidemic on our hands.
- [19:03]
Tana Amen
Right.
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Dr. Jared Ament
That's not an answer.
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Patient with back pain
It's not right.
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Dr. Jared Ament
And so even an injection, I think, is great to try. If an injection, we know structurally you're okay. Structurally, you're safe. You're not at risk of a neurologic injury because that's back pain can be. You're on the precipice of that. So I think an injection is fine to take down that inflammation, to allow you to do things like Pilates and therapy and rebuild the core.
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Patient with back pain
Yeah. So for me, I was doing it. I was only doing it as a temporary fix so that I could see, can I do. Can I avoid surgery by getting strong?
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Dr. Jared Ament
Right.
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Patient with back pain
It wasn't for me to keep doing the injections.
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Dr. Jared Ament
No. But that's a perfect example of what made sense. But there are some people that live in. They're so afraid of surgery or they can't do anything if they don't get their injection every six weeks. And again, on some levels, especially if you have so many comorbidities that you're not a good candidate for surgery, you should never consider surgery. You have high risk factors. Sure. You do everything you can. I just think it's very important we know that pain doesn't usually happen in isolation. It happens for a reason. And it's important to understand it.
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Tana Amen
And at what point Tana is the first person who turned me on to John Sarno's work.
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Dr. Jared Ament
Okay.
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Tana Amen
That pain often is repressed rage or it's repressed emotions. And there's one study I talk about in my new book where they looked at conservative treatment versus back surgery. Same outcome, 21 times fewer side effects.
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Patient with back pain
And
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Tana Amen
if 70% of people my age have abnormal backs, who have no pain at all. And pain often gets stuck in the brain, in the circuitry of the brain, where it's either the feeling pathway or the suffering pathway or the calming pathway are not functioning. Right. I mean, I like the idea of, all right, well, let's get your brain as healthy as it can be and see, but as Max had said, he tried all those things. And the minimally invasive procedure, is that an accurate way to call it depends on the surgery.
- [21:22]
Dr. Jared Ament
Not all the surgeries we do are minimally invasive. There may be more cutting edge or novel, but not necessarily minimally invasive.
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Tana Amen
But if that surgery helped him and it helped Jack, it's like, oh, well, you have to pay attention.
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Patient with back pain
Yeah. Because I think it depends on the injury. I mean, Sarno's work really helped me as far as managing my pain. Didn't change my injury. My injury was my injury. And you can't say that to someone who's, who's a quadriplegic, who's, you know, I mean, like.
- [21:47]
Dr. Jared Ament
Yeah, I think you have to be careful because those studies also. First of all, I know that study didn't look at motion preservation technology. It looked at other back surgeries, which we've already kind of talked about and established as fundamentally flawed, in my opinion. But it's a little bit of the chicken versus the egg sort of situation. Because there are situations where I completely agree that you could have an okay looking spine, but the pain is out of proportion and that a lot of that is brain health, brain mediated, or it could be the reverse and you can have a real problem. Your foot stops working, you lose continence, you can't control your bowel or bladder function. This is a neurologic issue. And this whole pathway then affects your brain's perception of quality of life. And we know that pain and stress and cortisol levels affect neuroplasticity and neuro. Neurogenesis. So it can go either way. And I just think, again, my preference,
- [22:40]
Tana Amen
the more pain you're in, the more it activates those circuits in your brain. And that gets so.
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Patient with back pain
So it's like a psych.
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Dr. Jared Ament
So.
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Tana Amen
So if you think of phantom limb pain, I mean, obviously it's not in your limb, that's not there. It got stuck in the processing centers.
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Patient with back pain
But I will say that that work where it help the. My back injury was real. It's a real injury. But where the work helped me is I'm very tight. I mean, there's a reason I practice martial arts and CrossFit and not, you know, I wasn't doing yoga. It's because my brain is very intense and I'm. I'm just a very high strung kind of person. That's where that work helped me. It was getting that. The intensity, like noticing how that was affecting my pain. That was affecting my pain and making my pain worse. So I can make my pain worse or I can make my pain better.
- [23:30]
Dr. Jared Ament
As I preface the conversation, too much surgery is likely being done. And the goal for me, when, especially when talking to people like you, is if we're going to do surgery, let's do it for the right reasons and let's do the right one.
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Tana Amen
So how do you, as a neurosurgeon, when you assess someone, go, okay, this person's likely to have a really good outcome, and this person, not so much.
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Dr. Jared Ament
I mean, I can take you through, like 18 years of figuring it out and training. And I mean, I'm always evolving and we're using the tools that we have to help. When I say that, I mean like AI and different algorithms and predictive models, which we didn't used to have. So it's part of. It's just training and learning and figuring out, you know, part of it's the training. Part of it is anecdotal what you do in your practice, and you kind of grow from that. I was very fortunate. I had mentors who are arguably the leaders and pioneers in motion preservation. So they allowed me to think outside the box. I think it's just a combination of good common sense, good training, and then objective tools and measures that we now have available and even more coming online, like AI. So for a lot of. We have. You were mentioning in the introduction of the 360 trial that we started. This 360 trial, it's not about. In the olden days, it was like you put a radiograph on a screen and you look at things. Then it went to the digital computer, and we start measuring things on the digital computer. And now I'm like, you could put a line here and you measure it. It's 3 millimeters, or someone could take 2 millimeters. It's too subjective. It's too inaccurate. And so now we have anybody who's enrolled in our trial, their images gets fed into this AI algorithm. So it's objective. It's the same AI tool being used over and over and over and over again and learning. But at least we know that we're not the ones making these measurements. And that's helping us with predictive analytics to say these patients are better candidates versus not. So it's. I mean, you have to be open to using these tools. There are people that are just very set in Their ways, and they're not. And that's why they keep putting rods and screws in the back. I mean, on my. On Instagram, like, you know, they have the anti fusion doctor, but I always say all my hashtags, I say for a reason. That's not marketing. I don't make money off of it. It's what I feel is stop the hashtag. Stop the madness. Hashtag motion preservation surgery. Because it doesn't make sense in nine out of ten cases. And in the. In the. God forbid, the one case of a bad car accident, the spine is severed. Yes, it makes sense. I still fuse in those cases.
- [25:59]
Patient with back pain
So. Interesting. I don't know why it didn't make sense to me either, but.
- [26:01]
Dr. Jared Ament
Didn't make sense to you even intuitively, right? Because you're a martial artist?
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Patient with back pain
Just.
- [26:05]
Dr. Jared Ament
Yeah, it's because you're martial arts.
- [26:06]
Patient with back pain
Something about it made sense to me.
- [26:07]
Dr. Jared Ament
So I have a thing for martial artists. It's because you're a martial artist. It's because you were a martial artist.
- [26:11]
Patient with back pain
We speak a different language. So I tried to get him into it with me. Funny story. I tried to get him. I'm like, we need to do something together. So he's very in and very young. Like, we balance each other out, but, like, let's do something together. So I get him to go with me, and I think he got through his first belt test, and we were in New York. And he's like, I'm not gonna go back. And I'm like, why? And he goes, because I just realized I'm walking down the street thinking I know how to break that guy's arm. I'm like, I know, right? You could break his neck too. He's like, no.
- [26:41]
Dr. Jared Ament
Knowing doesn't mean you have to do. It's the same as the same in surgery. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should.
- [26:47]
Tana Amen
What if the key to overcoming your pain isn't just in your body, but in your brain? My new book, Change youe Brain, Change youe Pain, offers strategies I've used with thousands of patients to break free from physical and emotional pain and reclaim focus, energy, and peace. Healing is possible, and it starts with your brain. Pre order my new book now and receive special bonus gifts at Change your brain ChangeYourPainbook.com. it's named after my grandfather. And he was my best friend growing up, and he was the kindest person.
- [27:32]
Patient with back pain
That's you.
- [27:33]
Tana Amen
And.
- [27:33]
Dr. Jared Ament
Yeah, I got.
- [27:35]
Tana Amen
I didn't get my business sense from. I got that from my father, who Was not kind.
- [27:41]
Dr. Jared Ament
You want to hear something even crazier? My middle name is Daniel.
- [27:44]
Patient with back pain
Oh, that's so funny.
- [27:45]
Dr. Jared Ament
So if you look at our names, we spell it.
- [27:49]
Patient with back pain
That is funny.
- [27:50]
Dr. Jared Ament
It's really, really funny. What.
- [27:52]
Tana Amen
What are some of the most practical things you can tell people from your experience, helping them manage their pain?
- [28:01]
Dr. Jared Ament
I think Tana mentioned some of the things. I mean, there's often many ways. It's often multifaceted, and first important step is one, diagnosing the source of the problem. If possible, diagnose the source of the pain. Secondarily, figure out if it's a pain due to arthritis. Degenerative things that don't put you at risk for neurologic dysfunction. Because if you can take that off the table, like in your case, take it off the table, then I would say, then you have. The world is your oyster. And I would say pain's coming from somewhere, coming for a reason, but it's not necessarily dangerous at the moment. So therefore, if it's not dangerous, I can do things like. That's the practical approach. The corollary is if we go down that diagnostic pathway and they say there's an impending risk here and we have to be cognizant of it, then that's something we have to either intervene or monitor more closely. So practically speaking, it's those two pathways. And then if you pick the pathway of conservative care, because you can, and it's safe to do so then we mentioned some already, but there's a plethora of things that are available. I mean, Max talked about it, you know, in his book on his show. You know, there are a lot of things. I mean, people. I just have a patient tomorrow also, very big online presence, and she's talking about exosomes and stem cells and traveling to a different country. Mark Hyman talks about, you know, his.
- [29:23]
Patient with back pain
Oh, I've done all of that.
- [29:24]
Dr. Jared Ament
His fiasco, going down to Mexico and, you know, and stem cells and everything happened then a major infection in his spine. There are certain things that you can do that I didn't.
- [29:33]
Tana Amen
I didn't know that about Mark. Yeah, Mark and I wrote a book together.
- [29:36]
Dr. Jared Ament
Oh, Mark.
- [29:37]
Tana Amen
The Daniel Plan.
- [29:38]
Dr. Jared Ament
Yeah. And so Mark Hyman talks about it and. Yeah, I've had.
- [29:41]
Tana Amen
I've been so disappointed.
- [29:43]
Patient with back pain
Yeah.
- [29:43]
Tana Amen
In stem cells.
- [29:45]
Patient with back pain
The exosomes actually helped me a little bit.
- [29:47]
Dr. Jared Ament
No, exosomes are good,
- [29:50]
Patient with back pain
you know, expensive stem cell thing. I was very hopeful.
- [29:53]
Dr. Jared Ament
Didn't really work the stem cell. I've been disappointed as well. I think stem cell technology is coming I think it's, it's, it's just not here yet into the level we want. I have seen people that have had some interest rate, interesting relief with amniotic or placental grafting and some neurogenesis plasticity. But the truth of the matter is a lot of the times these stem cells that we are injecting, we just don't know what they do. We think they're going to be like PRP that you take from your own body and put into a joint and it's lubricating. But Stemem cells and PRP are different. And stem cells, unfortunately, can sometimes have a mind of their own. And we have not figured out a good way to control, hey, you, stem cell, please regrow this person's disc for me. Because that would be cutting edge and that would be amazing. We don't have that ability. I have taken care of patients who went somewhere, got stem cells, injected. The stem cells wreaked havoc on their spine, just ate up parts of the spine. And we had to reconstruct the entire with rods and screws. Had to reconstruct the entire spine. Now, I'm not bashing them because I think there'll be a time we'll have more scientific capabilities around that technology, but it's just not here yet.
- [30:57]
Tana Amen
Spine health is central to overall health, but people don't think about that. So how do they take care of their spines?
- [31:07]
Dr. Jared Ament
They don't. Yeah, I mean, people don't think.
- [31:11]
Tana Amen
Like I often say, nobody really cares about their brain because you can't see it. You can see the wrinkles in your skin or the fat around your belly. You do something when you're unhappy with it. But because most people never look at their brain, they don't care. And I think that's even more so true for the spinal.
- [31:30]
Dr. Jared Ament
I mean, I, when I take care of athletes, it's always fascinating to me that they walk into the office and they look like, you know, Incredible Hulk and you take a picture of their brain and they've got lesions everywhere. Spine looks like a 90 year old, you know, grandmother's spine with complete arthritic changes. Look, plastic surgeons have a better sales pitch than we do because they, they're dealing with things that people see. And it's hard for us to say we want to help, we want to, you know, this is important for your overall neurological health. You know, and I always tell people back, you mentioned back pain and what's the global picture and spine health and overhealth. I mean, there are so many things that, how Your brain, your spine's like the highway, right, For. For information to go back and forth to and from the brain for the rest of the body, if you don't take care of that highway.
- [32:11]
Patient with back pain
Yes.
- [32:12]
Tana Amen
So how do people take care. Stretching. Yeah. Strength training.
- [32:17]
Dr. Jared Ament
One of the most. People always say core, right? Core exercises. But people think that means going to the gym and doing a bunch of crunches, right. It's not. That's not true. What core actually means the musculature, like the multifidus longissimus. Qls the muscles around the spine. Not the pretty stuff we see on the exterior, but actually the stuff that when I go in and I'm operating, we're actually looking, dissecting, being very meticulous about putting back together, not cutting through. So those are the things. Those are the core that's required. And so it's much more.
- [32:46]
Patient with back pain
Isn't it true that a lot of people who are ripped don't actually have a strength in some of those areas?
- [32:50]
Dr. Jared Ament
They don't have a core. They're ripped because they're working on all the things that will make them look ripped.
- [32:55]
Patient with back pain
Right.
- [32:55]
Dr. Jared Ament
But the core, you see all the person with the eight pack and all these things, but they go to one Pilates class and they're dying, Right?
- [33:01]
Patient with back pain
So that was sort of. I was really into that when I was younger, but I don't think I had a strong core.
- [33:05]
Dr. Jared Ament
And this is not a huge. I mean, I'm a big proponent of Pilates, but, you know, why do I put people to Pilates? Because it's one of those things that really works on core. When we deal with a lot of adolescents with scoliosis, one of the best things I put them in very early is Pilates because it works on the central core around the spine. The spine needs muscular support to remain strong and intact and stable. And when the spine is. And moving and mobility, that's hence motion preservation, you know, pitch that I'm giving. Because when you have mobility in the spine and strength in those movements, then you have a slower degenerative process. Now, like all of us, we're fighting genetics. There are some people that are genetically predisposed to accelerated arthritic conditions or things like ankylosing spondylitis, dish diffuse idiopathic skeletal hypersosis. There are certain things that life is unfair and we have to deal with, you know, what we're dealt, what we're given and we deal with it. But they're. In general, there are a lot of healthy ways to keep our spine better Longer.
- [34:09]
Patient with back pain
Yeah. Well, one of our kids actually said, if you could give me any advice, what would you give me? I'm like, well, besides all the normal advice that we give our kids, protect your spine and your joints. Like, we already talk about the brain all the time, but it's like project. No one thinks about it. And I'm like, after being hurt, if you want something to age you really fast hurt your joints and your, and especially your spine.
- [34:28]
Dr. Jared Ament
Absolutely.
- [34:29]
Tana Amen
So some exercises for the kind of core you're talking about.
- [34:33]
Dr. Jared Ament
Yeah, sure. So, you know, I always tell people compound exercises. So the movements that are not just one isolating certain areas, like functional, functional compound movements where you're balancing or doing a plank, but then lifting one leg in the air and you're alternating, those are the type of movements that are, are better for internal core strengthening.
- [34:53]
Tana Amen
So I like an ab roller because I feel like I'm working my back, my chest, my.
- [34:59]
Dr. Jared Ament
At the end of the day, something's better than nothing. I mean, but look, and I talked to Max at length about this. It's not just the exercises. I think, you know, Max is onto something when it comes to his, you know, healthy eating.
- [35:09]
Patient with back pain
Right. You know, anti inflammatory.
- [35:12]
Dr. Jared Ament
This is not a, I mean, people joke about it. There's a lot of influencers online. There's all these products out there. But the truth of the matter is, especially in the western diet, we. And again, this is. I've learned a lot from Max and it's funny how he became my patient and friend and we just celebrated our one year anniversary together and we had a cigar. It's like the worst thing we could have been doing together. But it was funny. But we enjoy it. Don't get me started.
- [35:32]
Tana Amen
But no, no celebrating with ways to hurt you.
- [35:37]
Dr. Jared Ament
Exactly. But it's important because we know that the spine and the brain can go under significant oxidative stress and inflammatory stress. And some of that comes from what we eat. So healthy eating, avoiding ultra processed foods, all of that really matters. I mean, here's.
- [35:58]
Patient with back pain
Inflammation is a cornerstone inflammation.
- [36:00]
Dr. Jared Ament
So here's a, here's a great point that, that people don't realize when you eat poorly or, or you have pain or something's bothering you, or you're stressed at work, all of these signals in some way can affect the HPA axis. Right? So your cortisol, your cortisol levels go up. What happens when your cortisol levels go up? I mean, in the, in the short run, it's actually good for you. Fight or flight, great for adaptation, memory consolidation, is actually really good. But the data is very clear that over two weeks of elevated cortisol levels in the brain and the spine causes a reduction in bdnf. Right. Brain derived neurotropic factor. And that can happen from eating poorly.
- [36:40]
Patient with back pain
Right?
- [36:41]
Dr. Jared Ament
Right. You can actually see hypercardoisolemia and reduce BDNF in the brain and the spine. What does that do? Causes structural deterioration.
- [36:50]
Patient with back pain
Isn't that interesting?
- [36:51]
Dr. Jared Ament
Of the spine and the brain.
- [36:53]
Patient with back pain
But the flip side of that is an anti inflammatory diet and moderate exercise help to boost bdnf. Right.
- [36:58]
Dr. Jared Ament
Correct.
- [36:59]
Patient with back pain
So. So it keeps your brain younger.
- [37:02]
Dr. Jared Ament
And the spine. People don't. People don't. People talk a lot about the brain health. And don't get me wrong, I'm a neurosurgeon. I still operate on the brain. Brain health is critical. But why does BDNF and why do those signaling pathways matter for the spine? The highway. Right. They'll go back and forth to and from the brain to the rest of the body is because there are still structural things in the spine like microglia or oligodendrocytes. Oligodendrocytes are required to produce myelin. Right. To have transmission in the sheath and white matter sheets. And those things become structurally incompetent or deteriorate when you have high inflammatory stresses that. Come again. Diet can cause that. Good or bad pain. Good or bad. Both of those factors.
- [37:41]
Tana Amen
Not sleeping.
- [37:42]
Dr. Jared Ament
Sleep. And.
- [37:43]
Tana Amen
But if you're in pain, you don't sleep well.
- [37:46]
Dr. Jared Ament
Yep.
- [37:46]
Patient with back pain
And that's.
- [37:47]
Tana Amen
And then people start sleeping.
- [37:49]
Patient with back pain
The pillows.
- [37:50]
Dr. Jared Ament
And yes, I've been through, you know, 80 pillows as well. We've all gone through it.
- [37:55]
Patient with back pain
He's like, where are you in there?
- [37:57]
Tana Amen
It's like a fort every night.
- [37:59]
Dr. Jared Ament
My wife is the same way. It's unbelievable.
- [38:01]
Patient with back pain
But I've got my lumbar pillow. I've got my, like I always say, my wife.
- [38:04]
Dr. Jared Ament
I'm trying to not take this personally that you're creating a major barrier.
- [38:09]
Tana Amen
Tell us a story that has inspired you the most.
- [38:14]
Dr. Jared Ament
Well, this isn't recent, but I can tell you during some of the hardest times in residency, during training as a neurosurgeon, which is not the easiest thing to get through, we often joked in the trenches that it was like the Navy seals of medicine.
- [38:27]
Patient with back pain
Yeah.
- [38:27]
Dr. Jared Ament
You know, I mean I witnessed it 30, 40 hours, literally.
- [38:31]
Patient with back pain
I witnessed two neurosurgeons collapse on the floor. This was back before they put the regulations in for the 80 hours.
- [38:37]
Dr. Jared Ament
I was before the 80 hours too. And then when they put the 80 hours in the only exception was to neurosurgery. Right. And so we were. I was 40 pounds overweight, eating whatever. On the go from the nursing station. I blamed you.
- [38:50]
Patient with back pain
They would feed you.
- [38:51]
Dr. Jared Ament
Yeah, they feed us.
- [38:52]
Patient with back pain
If you were nice.
- [38:53]
Dr. Jared Ament
If we were nice, they'd feed us. And we were on the go.
- [38:55]
Patient with back pain
If you weren't nice, we were going to wake you up in the middle of the night.
- [38:57]
Dr. Jared Ament
Yes. For Colace orders. See, she gets it.
- [39:03]
Patient with back pain
Or Tylenol.
- [39:04]
Dr. Jared Ament
Yeah, exactly. But why are you looking at me like that? Look at that.
- [39:09]
Patient with back pain
That's how we were nice to us.
- [39:11]
Dr. Jared Ament
That's how it was.
- [39:12]
Tana Amen
I was always nice to nurses. I figured that out.
- [39:16]
Dr. Jared Ament
Yes. During the hardest of times. I do remember, and it's interesting. I didn't really go into this subspecialty of neurosurgery, but it was a functional neurosurgery case where the patient suffered from essential tremor. And I think she was a musician. It may have been a different case. But the test that we were doing in the. On this is a live opinion awake brain surgery. And we're using microscopic electrodes deep into the brain. And she was. Her hand was shaking and she couldn't drink a cup of water. And that was what we were doing. We were giving her a cup of water. And I just remember a moment during residency. We're all exhausted. None of us want to be there. And these cases for residents tend to be pretty boring. It's not open brain surgery. It's all microscopic. You can't see anything. We're like, can we please go home? And if you say that, of course you're kicked out and all that back. And I remember they did the. We implanted the electrode and they turned it on and she did this and drank the water and started to cry.
- [40:13]
Patient with back pain
It's the coolest thing ever.
- [40:14]
Dr. Jared Ament
And the entire. Or started to cry. And at that moment, didn't matter how tired we were. I knew why we were there and what we were learning to be able to do to help people.
- [40:25]
Patient with back pain
It is so cool. So I worked for Medtronic for a while.
- [40:27]
Tana Amen
Yeah.
- [40:28]
Patient with back pain
And that was. My therapy was deep brain stimulation. It was just the coolest thing.
- [40:32]
Dr. Jared Ament
Yeah. And I mean, now they're doing it with like ultrasound and it's. It's an incredible kind of evolution. But the. The ability to affect someone's quality of life while they're.
- [40:40]
Patient with back pain
While they're in surgery, while they're actually was a.
- [40:42]
Dr. Jared Ament
Was a sort of monumental shift because it went from being, why the heck are we here at the moment? To an aha moment.
- [40:49]
Patient with back pain
Yeah, it's pretty awesome.
- [40:51]
Dr. Jared Ament
Yeah.
- [40:51]
Tana Amen
I had one of those cases where thought she had Alzheimer's disease because she almost burned down her house. And. And then I scanned her, and I'm like, she doesn't have the pattern. Her emotional brain was way too busy. You could see the inflammation. Her thalamus and her basal ganglion put her on WellButrin, and within three weeks, she's teaching cooking classes on the ward. I mean, it's like the movie Awakenings where she just woke up.
- [41:21]
Dr. Jared Ament
But, you know, that's interesting, because you. Neuropsychiatric disorders, there's some crossover here, because when you talk about pain, you talk about hpa access, cortisol. We also know that that extended cortisol. Extended pain. Pain is mediated through, like, ventral ventromedial, ventral lateral part of the thalamus and then branches out. We know that you can actually see changes. Early dementia, increased tau proteins with prolonged elevated cortisol levels. And so there is a crossover here in terms of neurosurgery, psychiatry, neuropsychiatry. Because pain, hypercortidolemia can cause neuropsychiatric problems as well.
- [42:01]
Tana Amen
Yeah. And Sarno's idea of repressed rage causes tension, and that increased muscle tension increases pain.
- [42:13]
Patient with back pain
Yeah. Not gonna lie. I do love rage journaling.
- [42:15]
Tana Amen
Is that what I love?
- [42:17]
Patient with back pain
Rage journaling?
- [42:19]
Dr. Jared Ament
Yeah.
- [42:19]
Tana Amen
I have found it's not helpful. We have.
- [42:22]
Patient with back pain
Doesn't know it.
- [42:23]
Tana Amen
We have a niece who had complex regional pain syndrome, which is a disaster,
- [42:29]
Dr. Jared Ament
and it was terrible. I've seen.
- [42:31]
Tana Amen
And if you looked at her brain, it's on fire.
- [42:34]
Dr. Jared Ament
And one of the hardest things we
- [42:35]
Tana Amen
have to deal with, learning not to be afraid of the pain and Cymbalta, which is transformational for her. Now she's on the track team. She's running.
- [42:47]
Patient with back pain
Yeah. She was one of the good cases. She's.
- [42:49]
Dr. Jared Ament
We're done here. Off the record, I'm going to talk. I'm going to pick your brain a little bit about CRPs.
- [42:52]
Patient with back pain
It was pretty rough.
- [42:53]
Dr. Jared Ament
It is. I think all surgeons secretly are very afraid. It's terrifying because when we intervene and that happens, you know, we feel very paralyzed, no pun intended, about what we can do next for this patient.
- [43:08]
Patient with back pain
Yeah.
- [43:08]
Dr. Jared Ament
Because there's like. I mean, people have done pain management and ketamine boot camps and all these things.
- [43:12]
Patient with back pain
It was. It was. It was pretty scary.
- [43:14]
Dr. Jared Ament
Yeah.
- [43:15]
Patient with back pain
We didn't think, she's gonna get better.
- [43:16]
Dr. Jared Ament
Yeah. I. That doesn't surprise me.
- [43:19]
Tana Amen
What advice would you give to other doctors who want to push the boundaries of traditional practice and adopt newer evidence based methods. Having been brutalized myself, I was about to say likewise.
- [43:37]
Dr. Jared Ament
Look, as you know, we become a little bit of a target. I would say make sure you've got lizard skin. You know, thick, thick skin. Don't be afraid, just be prepared. I'm still a target. I mean, this 360 arthroplasty trial that I'm running, you know, there are groups that think I'm at the cutting edge of the next coming of spine surgery. And they're.
- [44:00]
Patient with back pain
But you're on the bleeding edge too.
- [44:01]
Dr. Jared Ament
Yeah, they think I am absolutely crazy. And you know, I just. Along those lines, I want to tell a quick story, a shout out to one of my mentors, Dr. Pat Johnson, who's a very famous cowboy neurosurgeon at Cedars. And he, I trained with him, I still work with him.
- [44:17]
Tana Amen
I met him.
- [44:18]
Dr. Jared Ament
Yeah, I still.
- [44:18]
Tana Amen
At Dr. Phil's.
- [44:20]
Dr. Jared Ament
Yeah, yeah, he knew. Yes. So I know the relation there. And so I was his fellow and we still do research together. We still get together for dinner. We. And he was a very important mentor. And we were at a conference together. And this kind of goes along with your questions as well. We were at a conference together and there was maybe, I don't know, a thousand, two thousand neurosurgeons. Just neurosurgeons, not spine only, just neurosurgeons in the room. And I got up and gave a talk presenting our early results on this. And people were like, this is crazy. You are nuts. You're opening yourself up to liability. And I said, okay, but thank you for the feedback. I mean this. And then interestingly, Pat Johnson was talking next and he got up and you've met him, he's quite the character. And he says, you know, I know we're on a clock, but this is what he says. I'm Pat Johnson, so I'm going to take the liberty to stop this right now. And the moderators are looking at what is going on. We have people do. He's like, no, no, sorry, we're taking a break. And he says, I want to ask the audience a question because Jared was my fellow. And while I think that he's on the cutting edge and he pushes the limits, I actually applaud him for what he's doing. But I want to canvas the audience. How many people in this room do this type of surgery that he's talking about? 5% put up their hand. He said, okay, if you were the patient, how many people would consider it? 95%. Put up their hand. And I was a little. I was touched. I was a little emotional because Pat Jones doesn't always go out on a limb for someone, and he did for me at that moment. But it also showed something that there's this disconnect between what you're trying to accomplish and what the convention is and what the standards are. And so for someone who wants to kind of be at the cutting edge, just understand that. And if you truly believe in it, you're doing it ethically, you're doing it the right way, you want to do right by people. It doesn't mean you're not going to be a target. So like I said, just, you're absolutely
- [46:21]
Tana Amen
going to be a target. And that's normal. So that's the thing to remember. Have you read Thomas Kuhn's book? Oh, you should.
- [46:29]
Dr. Jared Ament
You'll love it.
- [46:29]
Tana Amen
It's called the Structure of Scientific Revolution. It was written in 1962. Dr. Kuhn is a medical historian. Okay. And he talks about the six stages of scientific revolution. And the first one's normal science, fusion. In this case, the second stage is somebody notices a problem, the outcomes aren't quite what they should be. The third stage is the status quo. To protect the money. Yeah, they see the problem too, but they make small incremental changes. So as a psychiatrist, we have six versions of the DSM and DSM five is virtually the same as three. It really hasn't evolved in 45 years. It's the same document. Like, stop it.
- [47:23]
Dr. Jared Ament
So interesting.
- [47:24]
Tana Amen
The fourth stage is somebody comes up with a new mousetrap. So looking at the brain in my case, or a new way to do surgery in your case. And stage five is the most consistent of all the stages. It's the rejection and it's brutal. And it was. Max Planck, the Nobel Prize winning physicist, said new progress in science happens through funerals. It doesn't happen because people see the light, because people die. And the new generation grows up wanting something more effective.
- [48:07]
Dr. Jared Ament
All right, so we're falling on the sword. For everyone else.
- [48:09]
Tana Amen
Stage six is the acceptance. And I would argue you're already between five and six. And so, you know, I mean, if
- [48:21]
Dr. Jared Ament
you survive, you have to live long
- [48:25]
Patient with back pain
enough to see the new generation.
- [48:26]
Tana Amen
And you see, if I would have known that early on when people were calling me a snake oil salesman, even though snake oil is 23 omega 3 fatty acids. Just saying when it used to hurt my feelings, it's now I just don't pay attention to them. It's like, well, if you're not looking at the brain. And you think you can do this by just talking to people? God bless you, you're stupid.
- [48:52]
Dr. Jared Ament
Yeah, I'm trying to get better at paying less attention, but I'm doing. Look, I'm trying to do it. Yeah. I'm trying to do it right. And it's just.
- [49:01]
Tana Amen
No, it's normal. And you do what works.
- [49:05]
Patient with back pain
And one of his players, one of his NFL players said they only go after the guy with the ball.
- [49:09]
Tana Amen
Yes.
- [49:10]
Dr. Jared Ament
Yeah, makes sense. That makes sense.
- [49:12]
Tana Amen
Anyways, we've enjoyed this very much. What else do you think people should know? You know, what I'm taking away from this is there are a number of things I should look into before I just do a fusion that my surgeon recommends well.
- [49:33]
Patient with back pain
And what I'm taking away from this is I've, I've always known I may not get out of having surgery, but there are other options to fusion that, that are probably going to be more effective for me.
- [49:46]
Dr. Jared Ament
Yeah.
- [49:46]
Patient with back pain
So. Because I just, that was, that was a hard no for me, just knowing what I know. So that's actually exciting for me to know that when I get to that point, when I know that I'm starting to lose function, because I do. I wake up in the middle of night sometimes have to stand up because my foot is starting to, you know, cramp up. Okay. So now maybe I won't be so scared.
- [50:03]
Dr. Jared Ament
Yeah. I mean, surgery is not always the answer. And I'm really not saying that I. And, and I think you guys know, I. It's really just about knowing there are other options. And sometimes there are better options that just aren't as accepted for a variety of reasons. I mean, the crazy thing also is, even around artificial disc technology, especially in the lumbar spine, someone said to me, insurance companies love this. They're also money driven. Right. It's experimental. Still. I said, you know, we have 20 years of data, some randomized controlled trials included, with over a thousand peer reviewed publications. And you guys are calling this experimental, but you'll let me fuse a person's entire spine together and pay for that? Do you know how many things in medicine we do with less data, quote, unquote experimental or off label or what? So there, there are some, I think, nefarious kind of insidious factors going on here that I'm not privy to. And so it's, it's frustrating. But I think, thankfully we'll continue to push and hopefully prevail. I just push? Yeah, we'll push.
- [51:09]
Tana Amen
How can people find out more about you your practice. Where can they follow you online?
- [51:16]
Dr. Jared Ament
Yeah, I'm online. So. Dr. Jared Ament. So a M E N T Dr. JaredAmmond for Instagram, my office, my practice with my partner Amir Voxher, who's also another cutting edge, amazing person who's helped me, who's given me the support to kind of do what I do. It's called NSG Neurosurgery and Spine Group. We have an office in Santa Monica. We have an office in the Valley. The website is www.nsg-la.com but. But yeah, I mean you can reach. I'm try really hard to answer anyone who reaches out online and, and give them some personal feedback. Just it's hard to give medical advice online. I try very hard not to do that. But I will certainly always try to help guide people and along the path to making better decisions around their brain and spine health.
- [52:05]
Tana Amen
People come to amen clinics from all over the world for answers. With 11 clinics in major hubs, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, D.C. louisiana, Miami, New York, Orange County, Seattle, San Francisco and Scottsdale, expert brain care is closer than you think. Visit amenclinics.com that's awesome. Thank you so much.
- [52:32]
Dr. Jared Ament
Thank you both.
- [52:32]
Tana Amen
Listening to Change youe Brain every day. Leave us a comment Question Review subscribe we'll see you next time.