Introduction:
Coming up on this episode of The Doctor’s Farmacy.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
Left unbridled, for many people, their brain goes to the dark place. And so these habits are so important.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Welcome to The Doctor’s Farmacy, I’m Dr. Mark Hyman, that’s pharmacy with an F, a place for conversations that matter. If you ever struggle with your mood, if you ever wanted to be happier, if you’re ever a little depressed or anxious, well, you better listen up, because we have a great podcast coming up with my good friend, my colleague, my partner in crime, where we created the Daniel Plan with Rick Warren, Dr. Daniel Amen. Many of you probably know who he is, he’s been on the podcast before. He’s a double-board-certified physician and a psychiatrist, 12-time New York Times bestselling author. That’s good, you’re catching up. Founder and CEO of Amen Clinic, with about 10 US locations.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
I have personally used his clinics, I personally had my brain scanned, and so have my family members. He’s written so many great books about the brain and health. He’s all about the brain. Change Your Brain, Change Your Life, as well as The end of Mental Illness, which is a very important book. He’s been on my podcast to talk about that. Memory Rescue, Healing ADD, Your Brain is Always Listening, and he is going to tell you about his new book today called You, Happier: The 7 Neuroscience Secrets of Feeling Good Based on Your Brain Type. Now, I want to know what kind of brain type if I have, so I’m going to be very selfish in this podcast to help me figure that out with me. So, welcome, Daniel.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
Mark, it’s so good to see you, my friend. This is one of the highlights of 2022.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Look, it’s going to be-
Dr. Daniel Amen:
[crosstalk 00:01:37]. We’ve so many fun things together. We’ve done many fun things together.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Well, I hope this isn’t your highlight of 2022, because that would be very depressing. But anyway. I love talking to you, so let’s get into it. So we’ve been looking for the roots of happiness for a long time. Medicine is very good at pathology, we’re not so good at wellbeing, at health at… Doctor, I want to be happier. What do I do? I don’t know, but if you’re depressed, I’ll give you a drug. So based on the data, it seems that some of it’s genetic, like maybe 40%, 10% is basically your situation in life, like, if you, obviously, have bad socioeconomic circumstances or social determinants of health. Habits and your lifestyle make up about 50%, which means you have a lot you can do to improve the quality of your life and your happiness. So, what are the seven secrets that you talk about in the book that no one’s really talking about, the secrets of happiness?
Dr. Daniel Amen:
So there are so many books about happiness, it’s like, why do we need another one? It’s because there’re big things missing, happiness is a brain function. So that’s number one. When your brain is unhealthy, you’re likely to be unhappy. And so it’s like, why did I write this book? It’s like, Americans are the unhappiest they have been since The Great Depression. So-
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Ooh.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
… given the pandemic, the political divide, the societal unrest, social media, and the national media controlling the dialogue… They go after fear because that activates the limbic structures in the brain, and it gets people to pay attention. And so we’re-
Dr. Mark Hyman:
[crosstalk 00:03:39] fear fight or flight, it’s the reptile. So they appeal to your reptile. [crosstalk 00:03:44].
Dr. Daniel Amen:
They do. A lot of people wake up with negativity and sadness, because that’s been planted in our brain through evolution. Because thousands of years ago, you had to wake up and be afraid, because that was a survival mechanism. So, that is why the brain pays attention to negativity faster than to positive messages. I’m like, okay, we’re so unhappy, that I want to spend a year thinking about writing about happiness. And so I got 500 consecutive patients to Amen clinics, and we gave them the Oxford Happiness questionnaire.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Oh yes.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
And then we looked at their brains, and what we found, the happier you were, the lower activity in the front part of the brain you had, and the lower activity in an area of the brain called the basal ganglia, which has the nucleus accumbens, which is the part of your brain that responds to dopamine. And so things like head trauma, or toxic exposure, and so much of it I learned from you. I don’t know if… I know I’ve told you, but you’ve just been a huge mentor of mine, that I buy your books for all of my doctors. We have almost 70 doctors now.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Thank you. No wonder I’m getting so many royalties. Thank you.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
I love looking at the brain. That’s my thing, what I do. It was just so clear if your brain wasn’t healthy, you were not likely to be happy. So, the first strategy that nobody knows about is get you your brain right, and your mind will follow. There are a whole bunch of strategies on how to do that. The second one, which I think-
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Can I stop you right there? Can I [inaudible 00:05:53]. That is such an important statement you just said, I don’t want to go over it so quickly. Your brain is your brain, which is this patty-like structure in your skull, and your mind is who you are. It’s your thoughts, it’s your feelings, it’s your perceptions. And your mind function is determined by your brain function. Yes, you can overpower your brain function if you’re really strong-willed in many ways, but it’s really important insight to understand that your brain and the quality of health of your brain determines the quality of your mind. That’s a big insight that most people don’t realize.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
Your brain-
Dr. Mark Hyman:
[crosstalk 00:06:28].
Dr. Daniel Amen:
… creates your mind.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Right. People, I’m sad, I’m depressed, I’m anxious, and they go, oh, it’s like a sore ankle. It’s like a stomach ache. But your brain can’t have a stomach ache or a certain ankle, so it has a mood change. Right?
Dr. Daniel Amen:
So you and I have been blessed to see some really cool people. I was in Justin Bieber’s docu-series in 2020 called Seasons. He came to me at a really low point. Many of these young superstars, they’ll show up or not, they’ll do what you say or not. When he got really low, he showed up and he said, “I think I get what you’re trying to tell me. My brain is an organ, like my heart is an organ. If you told me I had heart problems, I’d do everything you said.” He said, “So I’m going to do everything you say.”
Dr. Daniel Amen:
Changed his diet, did hyperbaric oxygen, IV therapy, and he’s better now than ever. He was just nominated for a bunch of Grammys, and I’m so proud of him. But if you don’t get your brain, right, it’s really hard. Think of it like hardware and software. Got to optimize the physical function of your brain, and then you can program it. We have faulty programming, we’ll talk about that, but first have to get the hardware right.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Exactly. So keep going on the seven things. I stopped you after the first one.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
So the second one is, happiness is geared to your brain type. One of the big lessons I learned from imaging early on is that all psychiatric illnesses, all of them, are not single or simple disorders, they all have multiple types. Giving someone the diagnosis of depression is exactly like giving them the diagnosis of chest pain.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Right.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
Nobody thinks about it like that-
Dr. Mark Hyman:
[crosstalk 00:08:31].
Dr. Daniel Amen:
… but it’s absolutely true that… Nobody gets a diagnosis of chest pain. Why? Because it doesn’t tell you cause of it, and it doesn’t tell you what to do for it. You’re not going to give everybody nitroglycerin. That would be stupid. But now, we think of depression, oh, you are depressed, take Lexapro, or you’re depressed take Luvox, which is really interesting. We may talk about that in the pandemic. But-
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. It turned out to be a drug for COVID.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
Yeah. It’s really interesting, and I think I know why. But ADD is not one thing, it’s seven different things. One of my best selling books of all time, Healing ADD, I talk about seven different types. And then when I was thinking about happiness, I’m like, the thing that makes spontaneous people happy, like scary movies, and having an affair, jumping out of an airplane, the persistent person would actually… those things would make him or her miserable. And so it’s really important to know your type. There are five primary types, so you balance. That means most, I think, reasonable thing will make you happy.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
Spontaneous, you need novelty, or you’re not happy. Persistent, you need routine, or are not happy. Sensitive, you need connection. They were damaged most in the pandemic, with the isolation. The cautious people, they need peace to make them happy. So know your type. I have a online quiz is called Our Brain Health Assessment, brainhealthassessment.com, you’ll see which of the 16 types you have, and then… well, what are the things more likely to make you happy? All of these strategies have questions. For get your brain right, the question, the little tiny habit… I don’t know if you know B.J. Fog, but I worked with him for-
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
… six months on Tiny Habits. So we have 50 tiny brain habits, but the mother of all tiny habits for the brain is… for strategy one, is this good for my brain or bad for it? So when you go to do something, you just ask yourself, is this good for my brain, or bad for it. So when we were at Saddleback, our first fight with Pastor Warren was, you got to get rid of the donuts. It’s good for your brain or bad for it… Obviously, it’s bad for it. I don’t know if you remember that, but-
Dr. Mark Hyman:
I do. The soda, the pancake breakfast, [inaudible 00:11:15]. We had [inaudible 00:11:19]. They did good, though. I was impressed that the scale of change that they did so quickly. It was very impressive.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
It’s amazing. And then the question for the second strategy, am I doing something today that makes me uniquely happy? So, it’s really diving into, happiness is not the same thing for everybody. So don’t say it’s novelty, and gratitude, and appreciation, and fun and comedy, because it’s different based on your type. Three, you’ll appreciate, is supplement your brain. We live in a society of deficiencies. If you’re nutrient-deficient, especially serotonin… Most people don’t know that birth control pills deplete serotonin. I’ve seen this over and over in teenage girls. They go on birth control pills, and now they’re anxious, or they’re depressed. No one’s thinking it’s changing their neuro transmitters. My favorite happy supplement is saffron. I’ve been in following the science of saffron for 20 years.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Really?
Dr. Daniel Amen:
24 randomized, controlled trials against Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft-
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Wow.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
… Imipramine, Effexor. Equally effective, but rather than being anti-sexual… Put someone on an SSRI, and they have trouble having an orgasm, or their libido goes down. Saffron is pro-sexual-
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Wow.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
… and it makes them more interested. There are studies showing that saffron helps with memory, even in people with mild cognitive impairment. So-
Dr. Mark Hyman:
[crosstalk 00:13:13].
Dr. Daniel Amen:
when the pandemic I started, I just released a product I love called Happy Saffron, saffron [inaudible 00:13:19]. Right at the beginning of the pandemic, my dad died, I had to close our Manhattan clinic. It was a disaster. And I’m like, I’m taking this. So this is the supplement. I take many of them, but that’s my favorite one. And so I think we might agree probably everybody should take a really good multiple vitamin. Everybody should take an omega-3, fatty acid, you should optimize your vitamin D level, test it. Odds are, it’s low. And then work to get it high and normal, because we’re in a pandemic. And then it depends on your brain type.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
So our spontaneous people do better with stimulating supplements, like Rhodiola. Our persistent people do better with serotonin-boosting supplements, like 5-HTP. The sensitive people do better with saffron, or SAM-e, and the cautious people do better with GABA, theanine, magnesium. I’m just a huge fan. Too often, you see this, is people go to their family doctor, their nurse practitioner, and they ends up on a benzo. And it’s like, no, no, no. That’s like 20th on the list. Let’s do meditation, diaphramatic breathing, let’s try gabin, magnesium. Please don’t do that, because why would you-
Dr. Mark Hyman:
[crosstalk 00:14:50].
Dr. Daniel Amen:
… start something somebody can’t stop. I see them creating so many problems with inappropriate medication use.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Well, they don’t even work that well, that’s the thing. If you took Prozac and you were cured and you were happy, life was good, wonderful. But it’s just basically no better than a placebo for mild or moderate to depression. So-
Dr. Daniel Amen:
Correct.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
… that’s another problem.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
Well, the pharmaceutical industry doesn’t want to be in the order business. They consciously made the decision to be in the reorder business. That once you start something, for a lot of psychiatric medication, they change your brain to need them in order for you to feel normal. So many people are just wickedly afraid of going off antidepressants because of the withdrawal from them. I’m not opposed to medication, I’m just opposed to that’s like the first and only thing you do without getting someone’s diet right, without getting their habits right.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Right. Well, that’s so true. You also talk about in the book, this whole idea of four circles of happiness as an exercise to make you happy. What is that?
Dr. Daniel Amen:
Well, when I was in medical school, actually, the first week, our dean came in the classroom and he said, “Never think of patients as their diagnosis. Always think of them in four big circles.’ And it’s just stuck with me. He went to the board, and he drew the first circle, which is the biological circle. So, as a doctor, you need to know about their biology. A psychiatrist, for me, are primary organ is the brain. So brain health, as we talked about.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
The second circle is the psychological circle, which involves development and how they think. Secret number five is, master your mind and gain psychological distance from the noise in your head, which we’ll talk about. It’s a super fun circle, but it’s basically the psychological circle.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Wow.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
And then he drew-
Dr. Mark Hyman:
One of my favorite things that you said is don’t believe every stupid thought you have. I love that.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
I didn’t learn that till I was 28 years old in my psychiatric residency at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. My eyes got really big, because I’ve struggled with anxiety, and I’m like, why didn’t they teach me that in third grade? Right?
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Right.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
Just because I have a thought has nothing to do with whether or not it’s true, whether or not it’s helpful, whether not I should attach to. It’s not the thoughts you have that make you suffer, it’s the thoughts you attach to that make you suffer. And then he drew the third circle, which is the social circle. He said, “And in the social circle, it’s how are your patient’s relationships? And what’s their social situation?” Two years into this pandemic, the social situation for so many people has just been a disaster, from the societal unrest, the political divide.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
At Christmas, I had never seen family division like I have seen, and I’m saddened by it. I kept telling my patients over and over and over again, without connection, you have no influence. So you’re a vaxer, you’re an anti-vaxer, whatever… People were not getting together and angry at each other, and I’m like-
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Right.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
… if you don’t stay connected, you have no influence on the other person. And then the last circle, which I just loved so much, is the spiritual circle.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Wow.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
It’s, why do you care? What is your deepest sense of meaning and purpose, your relationship with God, with the planet, with the past, with the future, and really talking about that with my patients. I have to tell you, Mark, nine out of 10 patients, when I ask them what their goals are, and why they think they’re on the planet, they haven’t thought about it. And I’m like, a business-
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Wow.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
… is not going to go unless it has a mission statement and a purpose and a strategic plan. And so that’s actually number seven of the happiness secrets, is live each day based on clearly defined values, purpose, and goals. Purposeful people are happier. But if you don’t know… There’s a great exercise in the book on how to find your purpose that I love. One of favorite patients that came out last year, that I’ve been her doctor for about 11 years, is Miley Cyrus, and I love her so much. She has just grown up so much in the last couple of years, and she’s very purposeful. She knows what she’s about and what she wants to accomplish, and her bad habits didn’t fit. Ultimately, that’s the question to ask for secret number seven, is, does it fit? Does my behavior fit the goals I have for my life?
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Hmm, interesting. So you’ve been doing this for a long time, like 40 years, and you’ve looked at a bazillion brain scans, and you did what most psychiatrists never do, which is look at the organ that they’re treating. What a concept. What did you learn through that detour that you took from traditional psychiatry, and what are the big lessons that you got and helped change the way you treat your patients?
Dr. Daniel Amen:
I became a psychiatrist… When I was in medical school, my first wife tried to kill herself, and I took her to see a wonderful psychiatrist. I came to realize if he helped her, which he did, it wouldn’t just help her. That ultimately, it would help me, it would help our children and our grandchildren. And-
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Sure.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
… I became a psychiatrist because I loved it, but I joined the only medical specialty that never looks at the organ it treats.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Wow.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
I was an x-ray technician in the army before I went to medical school. And I’m like, “Well, of course, you should look. How do you know unless you look?” When I got the opportunity to look, it literally changed everything. I realized that psychiatry is broken, making diagnoses based on symptom clusters with no biological data. That’s just insane, that we are run by the pharmaceutical industry. That’s not a good thing, because the motive isn’t wellness, the motive is profit. When I started looking at the brain, I’m like, “Oh, let’s dump the term mental illness, I’ve always hated that term, and let’s really focus on brain health.” If I can get your brain right, the biological circle, your mind is going to be better.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
Now, you got to program your mind with your values, purpose, goals, not believe in every stupid thing you think, but if the foundation of mental health is sick, you’re not going to be okay. That’s where I learned like Lyme disease can have a negative impact on your mind. COVID-19, what we know now, is it activates the limbic or emotional brain, and 20% of people who have COVID will get a new mental health diagnosis within the first five months.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Wow.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
That’s just craziness.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Crazy.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
I learned that diet matters. Secret number four is only love food that loves you back. That you are in a relationship with food, and so many people are in an abusive relationship with food. When we were doing the Daniel Plan, one of the pastors’ wives, I scanned her brain, and she’s in my office, and I was drinking tea, and she said, “Could you put the tea down?” No one had ever asked me that before, but I’m polite. And I put the tea down. She said, “I didn’t want you to spit it at me.” And I’m like, “I’ve never spat tea at anybody.” She said, “After you and Dr. Hyman lectured, I told my husband that I’d rather get Alzheimer’s disease than give up sugar.” And I’m like, “Did you date the bad boys in high school?
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Oh, boy.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
Because that’s obviously a bad relationship with sugar.”
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Oh boy. Wow. That’s crazy. I remember you telling me that. So now what you’ve said is pretty radical. I just want to summarize, because people need to just understand the power of this. In medicine, doctors learn nothing about health. They don’t learn how to create health, they don’t learn the things that actually you need to be healthy, they barely learn what impedes health. So if you ask your doctor, I want to make my heart healthier, my brain healthier, they might give you some platitude, like eat better, exercise more. But really, there’s this gap in our understanding of how do you create a healthy functioning human body, and particularly, brain? That’s been your life work. So when we take that frame, the question then becomes, well, how do we improve our brain health to improve our mood?
Dr. Daniel Amen:
So it’s really three big strategies. You and I both spend a lot of time trying to make things really simple for people. So the first one is brain envy, you got to care about it. Nobody cares about their brain. Why you can’t see it. You can see the wrinkles in your skin, or the fat around your belly, and you can do something when you’re unhappy with it. But because most people never look at their brain, they don’t care about it.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
In 1991, I was 37. I’m a double-board-certified psychiatrist, board-certified in general psychiatry, child and adolescent psychiatry, I was the top neuroscience student in medical school, I didn’t care one [inaudible 00:25:42] about my own brain because I’d never seen it. And when I saw it, I was horrified, because I played football in high school, had meningitis twice as a young soldier, and I had bad habits. Like I was only sleeping four hours, and I was eating fast food, I was overweight. I just didn’t even think about it.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
And so I developed a concept the week before I scanned my mom, and she had a beautiful brain. I developed a concept called brain envy. I always say Freud was wrong, penis envy is not the cause of anybody’s problem. I’ve not seen it one time in 40 years. It’s brain envy. You got to love and care for your brain. And then becomes easy to answer the question, is this good for my brain or bad for it, which is why I’m not a fan of alcohol, and I’m not a fan of marijuana. The second strategy is, avoid things that hurt your brain, and you just have to know the list. And-
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Which is?
Dr. Daniel Amen:
Whenever I post on alcohol or marijuana on TikTok, it goes crazy. People just get so… oh my goodness, how can you say that? I wrote a blog last year called I Told You So. And-
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Oh.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
when I first met-
Dr. Mark Hyman:
[crosstalk 00:27:04].
Dr. Daniel Amen:
You know Tana. When I first started dating her, she said, “I’ll never tell you I told you so.” She lied, it’s her favorite thing to say. I’ve been saying, since I started looking at the brain, that alcohol is not a health food. And then the American Cancer Society came out against any alcohol, because any alcohol increases your risk of seven different kinds of cancer. Not to mention, all you have to do is watch Netflix. The people who drink the most get into the most trouble. Alcohol is at the center of divorce, incarceration, conflict-
Dr. Mark Hyman:
For sure, for sure.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
… and so many health problems. So you want to be happier-
Dr. Mark Hyman:
For sure.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
… you want a healthier brain, kill the alcohol, and other things that nobody knows. Like general anesthesia can damage the brain. I didn’t know that, nobody ever taught me that. But I had a patient who I had her scan. And then after she had a knee replacement, she said, “I think I have Alzheimer’s disease.” Her brain looked like she’d just been hit by a truck. And I’m like, “I wonder if there’s any literature on this.” There’s a whole food fight in the literature among anesthesiologists on cognitive function after anesthesia. So for example, people who have coronary artery bypass surgery have a significant increased risk of getting dementia.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
Now, it doesn’t mean you don’t have surgery or anesthesia. What it means is know that’s a potential hurt, and so you have to do things that help. Things that I didn’t know, like playing football’s a brain-damaging sport. You’d think most thoughtful nine year olds would come to that conclusion.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
No.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
Obesity. I published three studies now, last one on 35,000 people. As your weight goes up, the actual physical size and function of your brain goes down, which should just scare the fat off anyone. And so-
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Big belly small brain.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
Yes.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Big belly, small grain.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
Well, and you’ve heard me say, if you want to keep your brain healthy or rescue it, you have to prevent or treat the 11 major risk factors that steal your mind. I first learned this term from you, diabesity, where you’re overweight and have high blood sugar. It’s a disaster for the brain. Because when you are overweight, it increases five of the 11 risk factors. You have lower blood flow to your brain, your brain looks older, so aging, it increases inflammation, it stores toxins, and takes healthy testosterone and turns it into unhealthy cancer-promoting forms of estrogen. It’s like, with 72% of us overweight… Because you have to ask the question, why America is the richest country in the world, 4% of the world’s population, 15% of the COVID deaths? It’s because we’re unhealthy.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yes.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
We need to do something about that beyond the vaccine and what pharmaceuticals there are. I’ve been disappointed that the powers that be haven’t talked about, we’re sick as a society, and we need to do better.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
It’s stunning to me, honestly, especially when the data’s so strong. I mentioned this before in the podcast, but study out of Tufts determined that 63% of hospitalizations for COVID were because of poor diet, which would… If everybody was healthy and didn’t have a poor diet, we’d literally have no problem with COVID. It would be a… Maybe a few people, older or sicker would die, but we wouldn’t be shutting down society, we wouldn’t be overwhelming the hospitals, we wouldn’t be burning everybody out, we wouldn’t be in this horrible situation, and no one’s really said anything about it except Bill Murr. It’s true.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
It’s insanity. It’s just-
Dr. Mark Hyman:
I wrote about this the first week. The first week or so after COVID, the data started coming out, and I was like… Early March, maybe early April, and I wrote an article with [inaudible 00:31:35] from Tufts, and we published in The Boston Globe. But it basically said your diet is playing a huge role in this, time to smarten up, but nobody listened.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
Well, and you could get shut down. People get after me because I say your best offense against COVID is your immune system.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
What hearsay, what Hersey.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
Why is that controversial?
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Close these clinics. Get the FBI in there, let’s raid that quack.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
Yeah. It’s just since sanity, but I’ve been able protect my whole career. So-
Dr. Mark Hyman:
God forbid, we tell people to eat healthy and exercise and get sleep and relax a little bit. God forbid. Shut us down for malpractice. It’s crazy. It’s crazy. Okay. This is really, really helpful, Daniel. So tell us about the book, You Happier Diet, and you talk about happy foods and sad foods. I can imagine what they are. My happy food is Chunky Monkey Ice Cream, but it might not be yours.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
Yeah. That’s a food that you love, that abuses you.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yes.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
So-
Dr. Mark Hyman:
I love it, but it doesn’t love me back. Well for five minutes-
Dr. Daniel Amen:
It doesn’t-
Dr. Mark Hyman:
For five minutes it does.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
… love you back. Yeah. But ultimately, we want to feel good now and later, versus now, but not later.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yes.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
That that’s the goal. The goal is to not just be in the moment, that’s a four-year-old’s mindset. I talk about the one thing. I don’t know if you saw the movie City Slickers, with Jack Palance and Billy crystal.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Whoa, I love that movie, love that movie.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
Great movie. So Billy Crystal’s character, Mitch, he’s having a midlife crisis, and he goes to a dude ranch, and he’s with an old cowboy, Jack Palance’s character. And Jack goes, “You just have to know the one thing.” And Billy’s like, “Your finger.” And he goes, “No, the one thing.” And he never tells him the one thing. In the next scene, Curly, Jack Palance’s character is dead, and Mitch is so upset, because he doesn’t know the one thing. But I know the one thing when it comes to your health, is when you do the right thing, stop feeling deprived. It’s when you do the wrong thing, the Chunky Monkey Ice Cream, that’s when you should be feeling deprived, because you’re depriving yourself of what you really want, which is energy and health and memory and relationship.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
I love what a comedian said, who lost a lot of weight. I’m trying to think of his name. Just blocked on it. But he said… it’ll to me. Eating healthy food isn’t a… eating unhealthy food isn’t a reward, it’s a punishment. And I went, “Oh, he’s going to keep his weight off, because he’s got the right mindset.”
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yes.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
That’s the mindset of happiness. It’s not of punishment. You punish yourself when you do the wrong thing.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
So what are the happy and sad foods you talk about?
Dr. Daniel Amen:
You know, because you would’ve written about them. It’s the pro-inflammatory foods, it’s processed foods. These are the sad foods. It’s often most baked foods, most foods loaded with sugar, it’s the standard American diet. I often say the real weapons of mass destruction are highly processed, pesticide-sprayed, high glycemic, low fiber food-like substances stored in plastic containers. Happy foods are colorful fruits and vegetables, not Skittles, loaded with fiber, it’s foods loaded with omega-3 fatty acids. So, healthy fish, nuts and seeds, avocados, green, leafy vegetables. Ultimately, do love foods that love you back.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
Every day, I start the day with protein powder, with omega-3 fatty acids in it, and I just love the shake I make every day. So I’m getting good fat and protein, and it just satiates me. I generally will do intermittent fasting. So if I finish eating at 7:00 at night, I won’t eat till 11:00 the next day, and then I’ll start the day with the shake. And then at night, I make brain-healthy, hot chocolate. So I take raw organic cacao with unsweetened organic vanilla almond milk from Costco, of all places, heat up the milk, put in the cacao, put it in the blender. It tastes amazing, and it’s like 40 calories. It loves me, and I love it.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
And then I’ll often have a cup of frozen blueberries during the day, because they’re just loaded with plant medicines and.. Everything I do, it’s just that question, do I love it, and does it love me? I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a bad relationship.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
[crosstalk 00:37:05].
Dr. Daniel Amen:
I have, and I’m never doing that again. I’m like, no, no. I’m married to my best friend, and-
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Well, one of the things that I… I remember this study that I read about called the Smiles Trial, which was a randomized controlled trial, comparing diet to medication, and it just worked better. Like, it was just… It’s just amazing how, when you go to a psychiatrist, they don’t ask you about your diet, your lifestyle. Maybe they’ll ask you’re sleeping or not, but it’s really a black hole, and you’ve really been one of the key thinkers that’s helped us change that around. One of things you also talked about in the book are the four nutraceuticals that really are important for happiness and mood. Can you talk about them? You might have touched on it earlier, but just, can you explain what they are, how they work, and who should take them?
Dr. Daniel Amen:
Well, we mentioned saffron, I’m just a huge fan of saffron. Anything that can boost your mood, sexuality, and memory at the same time, I think that’s just when I don’t ever mess. Omega-3 fatty acids are just crucial. I did a study, actually published it in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, where we looked at 130 scans, and we had their omega-3 index, Bill Harris’s test. People who had low levels of omega-3 fatty acids in their blood had low blood flow to the memory centers of their brain.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Wow.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
And so the hippocampus is also one of the major mood centers-
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yep.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
… in the brain. So I think omega-3 fatty acids are critical, vitamin D is critical. That really depends on your type. If you are the persistent brain type, you know these people. Worried, rigid, inflexible. Things don’t go their way, they get upset. No matter what it is you say to them, they argue with you. It’s like, it’s nice outside. Oh no, it wasn’t. It was nicer yesterday. You know these people. They have a deficiency-
Dr. Mark Hyman:
I try to stay away from them.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
The front part of their brain works too hard, and they are some of the unhappiest of the group, and serotonin-enhancing strategies help them so much, like 5-HTP or tryptophan. I love 5-HTP. The cautious people, what makes them unhappy is they’re always seeing the sky is falling. They look at the future with fear, and calming down their basal ganglia with GABA, magnesium, theanine can be just so helpful.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. So there’s a lot of stuff in your book that covers all this, and people can learn out what type they are, and what they need, and there’s questionnaires. Really, really great. The other thing you talk about is this whole idea of the noise in your head, and how do we get rid of that (beep) that’s constantly [inaudible 00:40:15] stuff and making us depressed? Because our feelings follow on from our thoughts. Most people think our feelings generate our thoughts.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
They don’t, it’s the other way around. You have a thought, and you have an interpretation of reality, whether it’s true or not, that’s going to change your mood. If you think your wife is cheating on you, even if she’s not, you’re going to get the same reaction as if you were chased by a tiger, and the body doesn’t stay English. So our thoughts generate our feelings, and you’re talking about all these negative thoughts. How do we get happy by getting rid of these thoughts? Or can we? Or what do we do? Can we get distance from them?
Dr. Daniel Amen:
Well, this section is just loaded with great strategies. There’s just nowhere in school they teach you to your mind. There’s a whole group of positive psychology habits. I start every day with, today is going to be a great day, nudge my mind with what’s right. I know I was going to talk to you today, that makes me happy. I end every day with what went well today. People who do that for just three weeks notice a significant improvement in their level of happiness, just that one strategy.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
About a year and a half ago, I lost my dad. I’ve been doing that habit for years now, what went well? So I say a prayer and I go, what went well? The night my dad died, I did it, because it’s habitual, it’s just a habit I do, and the critic in my head goes, really? We’re going to this today, on one of the worst days in your life? But because it’s my habit, I began to think about the interaction between my mom and the police officer, it was hysterical, all the texts I got from my friends, and just holding his hand before they took him away to the mortuary, and how soft it was. And then I went to sleep.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
These habits help you during hard times. We all have hard times. It’s our habits. Where you bring your attention always determines how you feel. You can nudge it in a positive or in a negative way. Left unbridled, for many people, their brain goes to the dark place. And so these habits are so important. And then two other strategies quickly. Whenever you feel sad, mad, nervous, or out of control, write down what you’re thinking. Because you’re right, thoughts create feelings, feelings create behaviors, behaviors create the outcome of your life. It-
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yes.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
… starts with thoughts. So when you feel bad, write it down, Tana never listens to me. I had that thought. And then go, is it true? When I really think about it, it’s actually not true, she’s listened to all 16 of my public television specials. And then I just don’t have to attach to it. So not the thoughts you have that make you suffer, it’s the thoughts you attached to. What’s new for this book is a technique I learned from my friend, Steven Hayes, on give your mind a name. That way, you can gain psychological distance, and you can choose whether or not to listen to it. So when I was interviewing him on the Brain Warrior’s Way Podcast, and he said that, I’m like, “So what name would I give my mind?” And I gave it the name [Herme 00:43:54], which was after my pet raccoon I had when I was 16 years old.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Oh my God.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
I loved her, but she was a troublemaker. She used to TP my mother’s bathroom, she ate the fish out of my sister’s aquarium, that was-
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Oh no.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
She left raccoon poo in my shoes. So now, whenever I get one of those thoughts, I really go, “Herme, do we really need to have this conversation?” So I’m just separating from my mind. My patients find this so helpful. One of them, her mind is Psycho Sandy, because she realizes really the voice of her mother, that constantly puts her down and tortures her, and it’s… You get to choose whether or not to listen to it.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
Another fun part of that chapter is, look for the micro moments of happiness. It’s part of training. What’s the smallest thing that makes you happy? So for me, it’s that taste of the first sip of the hot chocolate I make at night, or the first couple of frozen blueberries, because I love them. Or, I was looking outside the window before our podcast, and I saw a little bird that had a red head, Tana is a red head. I like redheaded things. It just made me smile. So what are the little things…
Dr. Daniel Amen:
Because if you’re waiting for the big things to happen… I got a Grammy, or my book’s a New York Times bestseller, that’s just such a trap. Because if you have too many big things happen, so we’ve learned about fade, it wears out the pleasure centers in your brain and makes you more vulnerable to depression.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Interesting. That’s a very interesting thing. Yeah. Wow. You talk also about the simple and the simple questions you can ask yourself to make you happier. Some of the stuff, you’ve touched on. Are are there other ideas?
Dr. Daniel Amen:
Well, it’s like, is it good for my brain or bad for it? Am I doing things that make me happy for my type? Am I supplementing my brain? That’s so important. Do I love foods that love me back? Is it true, whatever nonsense is floating around your head. Be as good at… I don’t know if you were good at talking back to your parents when you were a teenager. I was excellent.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
No.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
I did not ever-
Dr. Mark Hyman:
[crosstalk 00:46:26]. My stepdad was a rageholic, I had to-
Dr. Daniel Amen:
Oh. Well, and they get stuck in your brain sometimes. Our past, if we don’t manage it, controls our present.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Sure.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
And then we haven’t talked about six, which is, are you reinforcing behaviors in others that you like or dislike?
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Hmm.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
Where you bring your attention and your relationships often determines how those go. I tell the story of why I collect penguins, and it’s like, how do you train a penguin? You notice what they do right. You don’t beat them, you don’t criticize them, you don’t yell at them. Whenever they do something right, you give them a fish. And-
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Wait, wait, wait. You have penguins? You don’t have penguins at your house.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
Oh, I have like almost a thousand of them, not real penguins, but at penguin pens, cups, dolls. I actually wrote book about this.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
I was like, you’re in California, penguins aren’t going to be too happy there.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
Actually behind me, I have two of them. It’s based on this story, that I have now six children. I adopted our two nieces. But my oldest who I adopted, he was hard for me. I was a child psychiatry fellow at the time, and my supervisor said, “Just spend some more time with him, spend special time with him.” I took him to a place called Sea Life Park in Hawaii, where I was doing my training, and he was… He’s the persistent type, argumentative, oppositional, you ask him to do something, it’s a fight. Just he and I, we had a great day, went to whale show, that was fun. Went to the dolphin show, and that was fun. At the end of the day, we went penguin show, and the Penguin’s name was Fat Freddy. And this-
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Was what?
Dr. Daniel Amen:
Fat Freddy.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Fat Freddy. Okay.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
When fat Freddy came onto the stage, he climbs a high dive, goes to the end of the board, bounces twice, and then jumps in the water. And I’m like, “Oh, this is so cool.” And then he gets out of the water, bowls with his nose, counts with his flipper, jumps through a hoop of fire. And I’m like, “Okay, this is cool.” And at the end of the show, the trainer asked him to go get something, and Freddy went and got it and he brought it right back. And in my mind, I go, “Damn.” I ask this kid to get something for me, and he wants to have a discussion for like 20 minutes, and he doesn’t want to do it. I knew my son was smarter than the penguin.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
So I go to the trainer and I said, “How’d you get Freddy to do all these really cool things?” And she said, “Unlike parents, whenever Freddy does anything like what I want him to do, I notice him. I give him a hug and I give him a fish.” The light went on in my head that when my son did what I wanted him to do, I paid no attention to him at all, because I was like my dad who basically was gone at work my whole childhood.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Wow.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
But when he didn’t do what I wanted him to do, I gave him a lot of attention, because I didn’t want to raise bad kids. So I was inadvertently teaching him to be troubled in order to get my attention. So I collect penguins as a way to remind myself to notice the good things about the people in my life. Because in that way, there will be more goodness. And so I’m very intentional of not being critical, of noticing what I like, and it helps all of my relationships. Oh, by the way, at work, I have the no (beep), that I don’t get to be an (beep), and neither do you.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
So it starts with me, but I really work to hire people who are kind, who are competent, and passionate. Just like you said, I try not to have them in my life. But if you want to be happy, you want to be powerful. People who are not powerful are not happy. Powerful means I know exactly what to do to make Tana smile, and I know what to do to make her angry. I work hard before I say things to go, does it fit? Does it fit the goals I have for this relationship? Because Herme will show up with rude thoughts that just should never get out of my mouth.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
[inaudible 00:51:30]. How we manage that, and how we relate to it, and how we-
Dr. Daniel Amen:
And we’re so much better. Our ANT population, automatic negative thoughts, they tend to grow when we’ve eaten bad food. They grow when we haven’t slept seven hours. Right?
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
For women, right before their period, their ANT population is higher, so they need to be more aware of that. What I try to get with my patients is, let’s just notice we’re going to take a course in you. When it’s hard, we’re going to look at what did you eat? How did you sleep? What’s the quality of your thoughts? Are you nourishing your brain or not? We haven’t talked about this, but hedonism is the enemy of happiness.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Really? Really?
Dr. Daniel Amen:
Because-
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Okay.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
… the more intense pleasure you have, the more you’re going to wear out the nucleus succubus and be depressed, which is why I’m listening to Will Smith’s new book, it’s wonderful. He talks about fame and how the ride up is incredible. The plateau of fame is really a mixed bag. But when you unfamous, because he won a Grammy, and his next album was terrible, he said that is just awful, because you’re not modulating or managing the happy centers in your brain. You gave them too much pleasure. And so modulating it… That’s why things like micro moments of happiness…
Dr. Daniel Amen:
Just one other thing that we haven’t talked about. I start the book by saying happiness is a moral obligation. Where I grew up… I grew up Catholic school, alter boy, that concept, happiness is a moral obligation, was nowhere to be found. There’s plenty of guilt and shame and negativity. But why is it a moral obligation? Because of how you impact other people. I guarantee you, if you were raised by an unhappy parent, like a rageholic or married to an unhappy spouse… Ask anybody of happiness is a moral issue, and I guarantee you, they’re going to say yes. So it’s not selfish. People have that idea, oh, I shouldn’t be happy, or that’s not important. It’s crucial to how you impact others.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Amazing. So we are really not very good in happiness in America. We have more mental illness, drug overdoses. Countries like Bhutan measure to gross national happiness. I’ve been there, it’s pretty amazing, actually. You go to jail if you honk. It’s like, you can’t be an asshole in Bhutan.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
They have the no-asshole rule.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. They have the no-asshole rule. We are really at the bottom list of happiness countries. I think the top four in the last decade have been in Denmark, Switzerland, Norway, Finland, which I’m surprised [inaudible 00:54:50] depressed. But anyway. What do we have to learn from those countries? And how do we get a little more of that happiness juice?
Dr. Daniel Amen:
There’s actually a chapter of the book on happiness around the world. They often look for micro moments of happiness. So cozy is one of their words that translates to happy. It’s like time at home with friends in front of the fire that makes you happy. It’s the small things, not the big thing. More often than not, it’s about connection, and your relationships. Here, in the United States, we’re so focused on the hallmarks of success, whether it’s money or house or job, and not focused on the things that actually make people happy, like the right food. All you have to do is go down any major city and see all the fast food restaurants loaded with depression-inducing food. You and I go to the airport. What percentage of the food available in the airport will make you happy-
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Not very much.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
… versus the percentage that will increase inflammation? We haven’t talked about that much, but that’s part of the first strategy, get your brain right, that is pro-inflammatory, which will make you unhappy.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Absolutely. Wow. Well, the last thing I want to touch on is this program you’ve created as part of your book called The 30-Day Happiness Challenge. What is that? Sounds fun.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
So what I did was I really wanted to test the concepts in this book. And so I put together a course called The 30-Day Happiness Challenge. 32,000 people signed up, we measured their happiness with the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire, and then we measured, for those who finished, their happiness. Those, from start to finish, 32% increase in happiness. So I basically tell them about these and secrets, and then expand on it. It’s only like five to seven minutes a day. For those people who pre-order the book, they can actually have The 30-Day Happiness Challenge, along with a bottle of happy saffron. I’m so excited-
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Oh about. Amazing.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
… about that. I really want this book to do well. It’s not hard. Mark, one of the things I’m thinking about is happiness and mental health are daily practices. It’s like physical health. Everybody gets that, it’s a daily practice. You can’t be 50 pounds overweight on Monday, have a salad for lunch, and expect to be healthy on Friday. No, no, no. It’s like, you need to get to the daily habits-
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yes.
Dr. Daniel Amen:
… of health. Well, we need the daily habits of mental and brain health. Today as going to be a great day. What went well today? Is it true? Does this food love me? And do I love it? It’s like, all of these little habits is… we need to put them into our lives every day. As you and I write, we’re always writing about, how can I get this to work for this [inaudible 00:58:28].
Dr. Mark Hyman:
[crosstalk 00:58:28].
Dr. Daniel Amen:
We got to make it simple.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. So great. So great. Your work is so great. You’ve added so much to the field of understanding the brain and psychiatry. Your book, You, Happier: The 7 Neuroscience Secrets of Feeling Good Based on Your Brain Type, is out. You can get it anywhere you get your books, I’d encourage you to get a copy. If you want to learn more or about the 30-Day Happiness Challenge, go to amenuniversity.com/happy, that’s amenuniversity/happiness, and I wouldn’t miss it, I wouldn’t miss it, because happiness is what life is about, and it’s really the whole purpose of why we’re here, is to be fulfilled and content and happy and engaged.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Obviously, life is not always happy, but you want to set up your life so that your brain works right and your mind works right and your life works right, and that’s what Daniel is all about. So thank you so much, Daniel, for being on The Doctor’s Farmacy Podcast. For those of you who’ve struggled with happiness, are not having happiness, I encourage you to get the book, share this with your friends and family on social media, leave a comment, how have you improve your level of happiness and we can maybe learn something from you. Of course, subscribe wherever you get your podcast, and we’ll see you next week on The Doctor’s Farmacy.
Closing:
Hi everyone, I hope you enjoyed this week’s episode. Just a reminder that this podcast is for educational purposes only. This podcast is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided on the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you’re looking for help in your journey, seek out a qualified medical practitioner. If you’re looking for a functional medicine practitioner, you can visit ifm.org and search their find a practitioner database. It’s important that you have someone in your corner who’s trained, who’s a licensed healthcare practitioner, and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health.
