The Tucker Carlson Show - Big Pharma’s Most Dangerous Lie and the Dark Truth About Weed

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00:00:59.880 Thank you, doctor.

00:01:01.680 You study the brain, not just emotions, but the physical brain, the actual biology of the brain.

00:01:08.580 I've got a lot of questions for you about that.

00:01:11.260 But let's just start with cannabis.

00:01:14.600 What are the effects of cannabis on the brain, marijuana on the brain?

00:01:17.680 So I published a study on 1,000 marijuana users, compared it to our healthy group.

00:01:26.280 Every area of their brain was lower in blood flow and activity.

00:01:31.920 And then just this year...

00:01:34.400 Measurably.

00:01:34.940 Measurably on the imaging study we do, which is called SPECT, Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography.

00:01:45.320 It looks at blood flow activity, but also looks at mitochondrial function.

00:02:04.940 I have to ask you this, pardon my ignorance, what's mitochondrial function?

00:02:14.980 So the mitochondria are little energy powerhouses in your cell.

00:02:21.140 They activate and keep the cell energized and alive.

00:02:27.520 And 49% of the tracer that we do this study with is actually taken up by the mitochondria in the brain.

00:02:37.660 So when we see low activity, it's really low activity, along with decreased blood flow.

00:02:47.240 And then there's a new study by a completely separate group than ours on 1,000 young marijuana users.

00:02:55.620 And the areas of the brain involved in learning and memory were low in blood flow and activity.

00:03:04.700 So it's not just me because I have a problem with marijuana.

00:03:09.300 It's other scientists as well saying marijuana is not great for the brain.

00:03:16.920 What are the effects of less mitochondrial activity and lower blood flow?

00:03:22.680 So it can go with tiredness, it can go with low motivation, it can go with depression over time,

00:03:32.700 it can go with more anxiety because your brain can't settle it down.

00:03:38.260 And in vulnerable people, it can go with an increased risk of psychosis.

00:03:44.000 How does that work?

00:03:46.880 We're all of a sudden seeing, because marijuana is not a drug, it's a medicine, we've been told.

00:03:52.720 It's the most healing medicine ever discovered.

00:03:55.280 It's quote natural, God made it.

00:03:58.320 And it's the answer to most of our physical and psychological problems.

00:04:01.960 And now all of a sudden, there seem to be all these studies showing a direct connection between heavy marijuana use and psychosis.

00:04:09.260 Is that connection real?

00:04:12.020 And if so, how exactly does that happen?

00:04:15.020 Do we know?

00:04:15.600 Well, it's absolutely real.

00:04:17.520 And people who have a certain genetic makeup are more vulnerable to becoming psychotic.

00:04:26.480 One gene in particular, if you have a combination of an abnormality in that gene,

00:04:35.620 you have a sevenfold, so that's a 700% increased risk of becoming psychotic if you are a heavy user of marijuana.

00:04:48.180 So not for everybody, but for everybody, the risk is somewhere between two to four times, especially if you start young.

00:04:59.440 And now it's the young that are suffering from the idea that marijuana is innocuous, because it's not innocuous.

00:05:10.160 But because they think it's innocuous, I think psilocybin is going to go the same way.

00:05:15.420 When the perception of the dangerousness of a drug goes down, its use goes up.

00:05:21.520 And that's what we've seen.

00:05:24.440 And teenagers who use have a higher incidence of anxiety, depression, suicide, and psychosis in their 20s.

00:05:34.400 And so you're taking a developing brain and altering how that brain develops.

00:05:44.440 And what we're seeing is the highest incidence of brain and mental health problems in young people we have ever seen.

00:05:55.640 Study from the CDC, 57% of teenage girls report being persistently sad.

00:06:02.440 But 37%?

00:06:06.120 57%.

00:06:06.720 32% have thought of killing themselves.

00:06:09.840 Think of that.

00:06:10.480 Of all?

00:06:11.340 There's a whole population?

00:06:12.860 Girls.

00:06:13.800 Teenage girls.

00:06:16.300 32% have thought of killing themselves.

00:06:18.660 32% of all teenage girls in the United States?

00:06:21.040 Yes.

00:06:22.180 24% have planned to kill themselves.

00:06:25.660 And 13% have tried.

00:06:29.280 We're in this mental mess.

00:06:32.440 And we have to go, why?

00:06:35.680 And it's more complicated than just marijuana.

00:06:39.360 But marijuana is clearly part of it.

00:06:42.540 And part of it are the societal lies that I've seen from the 80s.

00:06:49.320 So I started my psychiatric residency in 1982.

00:06:54.360 And I trained at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C.

00:06:59.040 And 1987, video games started to come out.

00:07:04.740 And they're like, oh, these are so exciting.

00:07:10.140 With no neuroscience study on what do video games do to development.

00:07:15.820 And it's not good.

00:07:17.440 There's not been great studies that say, oh, yeah, these are really great for brain development.

00:07:22.500 And then in the early 90s, alcohol is health food.

00:07:27.200 Right?

00:07:27.520 My first clinic is in Northern California.

00:07:30.080 I have 11 clinics.

00:07:31.440 And it was right outside the Napa Valley.

00:07:35.100 And the Napa Valley produces a lot of wine in the United States.

00:07:38.560 It was so excited.

00:07:39.860 You should have a glass or two every night.

00:07:43.200 And that's good for your heart.

00:07:46.000 No.

00:07:46.900 It's bad for your brain.

00:07:48.460 A glass or two of wine is bad for your brain?

00:07:52.780 The American Cancer Society came out four years ago against any alcohol.

00:07:58.200 Because any alcohol is associated with an increased risk of eight different cancers.

00:08:05.660 And then, you know, we did a prize fight between marijuana and alcohol.

00:08:11.960 And it went 12 rounds.

00:08:13.980 Because alcohol causes a lot of devastation, perhaps more than marijuana.

00:08:21.100 But the idea in society is alcohol is a health food.

00:08:26.020 It's a lie.

00:08:27.500 And then pain is the fifth vital sign.

00:08:32.600 It's you need opiates if you're in pain.

00:08:36.780 Well, that sort of didn't turn out well.

00:08:39.000 No, it didn't.

00:08:39.500 For us.

00:08:40.580 Or benzos.

00:08:42.100 Or mommy's little helper.

00:08:43.980 And that didn't turn out well.

00:08:46.560 So these are all trends just in the 43 years since you've been practicing psychiatry.

00:08:50.900 These are all trends that you've lived through.

00:08:52.820 These are all little lies that I see.

00:08:55.000 Not little, huge societal lies.

00:08:57.740 And then, and I'm also a child psychiatrist.

00:09:01.700 And so I would often see 16-year-olds, 17-year-olds.

00:09:05.260 And parents bring him in because I think he has ADD.

00:09:08.800 And I'm like, okay.

00:09:11.460 And as I would scan them, because that's what I do at Amen Clinics, we look at your brain.

00:09:17.140 The brain looks toxic.

00:09:18.820 And it shouldn't look toxic in a 16-year-old.

00:09:22.640 And initially, you ask the child, you know, are you using any drugs?

00:09:28.320 Of course not. 1.00

00:09:29.700 And then I'm like, but you have a toxic brain. 1.00

00:09:32.440 And then they start crying. 0.92

00:09:34.160 Because I teach them how important their brain is.

00:09:36.980 Your brain is involved in everything you do.

00:09:40.280 How you think.

00:09:42.340 How you feel.

00:09:43.280 How you act.

00:09:44.080 How you get along with other people.

00:09:45.620 And when this works right, you work right.

00:09:48.320 And when it doesn't, you don't.

00:09:52.200 And it looks toxic. 0.94

00:09:54.080 So you can tell, again, pardon the dumb questions, but you can tell from a brain scan of a 16-year-old whether that child is using drugs. 0.95

00:10:03.260 I can tell whether or not it's toxic. 0.93

00:10:05.840 And then I have to find out, well, why is it toxic?

00:10:08.680 And it could be toxic from drug use.

00:10:11.480 It could be toxic because they live in a mold-filled home.

00:10:14.020 It could be toxic because they have Lyme disease and the infection is causing their brain to look older than they are.

00:10:25.200 But that's all evident in the scan.

00:10:27.160 That's all evident in the scan.

00:10:29.520 It's toxic.

00:10:31.020 Now, it's my job then to figure out why.

00:10:34.140 And so when I see the toxic scan in this ADD 16-year-old who did not have ADD or ADHD when he was seven, right?

00:10:45.820 It's not something you just pick up.

00:10:48.160 If you really have ADHD, you had it your whole life.

00:10:53.380 If it just shows up, you either had a head injury, you're doing drugs, or you're living in a mold-filled home.

00:10:59.220 So there's a reason why.

00:11:02.460 And stimulants are not the answer to drug use.

00:11:10.100 But they often get poor.

00:11:11.400 More drug use is not the answer?

00:11:13.960 It's not the answer.

00:11:15.720 And so I'll show the kid their scan and then go through this exercise with them and they'll start to cry.

00:11:22.260 And they go, you won't tell my mom.

00:11:25.620 And I'm like, no, I'm pretty sure we should.

00:11:31.220 Because otherwise, how are you going to get the help you need?

00:11:35.840 And they're like, well, I'll stop.

00:11:37.300 I promise.

00:11:39.360 And the scans are so helpful for me.

00:11:43.480 A little bit like a lie detector.

00:11:44.940 Because it's really hard to say, oh, no, I'm not using when your brain looks toxic and there's not another good reason that it looks toxic.

00:11:57.680 And that's why marijuana is innocuous.

00:12:01.660 I'm like, well, you've not been in my chair for the last 43 years.

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00:15:33.420 So have you noticed, since you do treat children as well, an increase in damaged brains that you can attribute to marijuana use?

00:15:42.020 Absolutely.

00:15:43.420 An increase from when we started.

00:15:46.460 So that seems like a public health concern.

00:15:49.540 It's totally a public health concern.

00:15:52.900 We should be completely freaked out.

00:15:55.540 And people are like, marijuana is innocuous.

00:15:59.080 Marijuana is innocuous.

00:16:00.380 And it's like, why are you saying that?

00:16:02.520 Because they're getting rich from it, probably.

00:16:04.920 Well, the marijuana industry, which hates me, spends $3 billion a year on marketing.

00:16:12.920 So how are they different from the Sacklers at Purdue Pharma then? 0.99

00:16:15.920 Like, lying to people about the health effects of the drug they're profiting from.

00:16:22.920 I mean, it seems like the same thing.

00:16:25.560 It's a weapon of mass destruction.

00:16:28.340 Marijuana.

00:16:29.060 Marijuana.

00:16:30.920 And the weed industry hates you?

00:16:34.100 Of course.

00:16:35.460 Have they attacked you?

00:16:36.780 All the time.

00:16:37.700 Really?

00:16:38.320 What do they say?

00:16:38.780 If I post something on one of my social media sites, they'll call me a charlatan and hysterical and that I should get high.

00:16:49.240 And they should take my medical license and all sorts of things.

00:16:52.520 Take your medical license?

00:16:54.400 Yeah.

00:16:55.520 Because they'll do anything to try to shut me up.

00:16:59.500 But it's like, how do you not talk about the truth?

00:17:03.080 And it's like, well, how do you know?

00:17:04.360 It's like, well, I look at the brain and if your brain is not right, well, you're not right.

00:17:12.220 Yeah.

00:17:13.340 I just didn't know until we had breakfast a minute ago that that kind of damage was so, or any kind of damage to the brain,

00:17:21.220 more subtle damage, not, you know, head injury damage, but damage from drugs, for example, was detectable on a brain scan.

00:17:28.160 Yeah, so interesting.

00:17:33.460 So SPECT, the study we do, gives you this really beautiful 3D look at activity.

00:17:42.520 And a healthy scan shows full, even symmetrical activity with most of the activity being in the cerebellum.

00:17:51.180 So the cerebellum is the back bottom part of the brain.

00:17:55.540 Cerebellum is Latin for little brain.

00:17:58.960 And it's 10% of the brain's volume, but has 50% of the brain's neurons.

00:18:05.580 And alcohol is directly toxic to the cerebellum.

00:18:10.600 Well, so is marijuana.

00:18:11.820 And that's why you shouldn't drive when you're high.

00:18:15.560 So what happens in the cerebellum?

00:18:18.300 So, so many interesting things.

00:18:20.960 It's sort of the Rodney Dangerfield part of the brain.

00:18:23.840 It gets no respect.

00:18:25.840 This would be the lower brain we refer to, not the higher brain.

00:18:29.260 Well, it's so important because it's connected to the rest of the brain.

00:18:34.400 And it used to be thought that the cerebellum was involved in coordination, physical coordination.

00:18:42.560 Well, now we know it's also involved in thought coordination, how quickly you can integrate new information.

00:18:50.900 And marijuana slows the function of the cerebellum.

00:18:54.800 So your thoughts become slower and you're less coordinated, which is why you shouldn't drive if you're high.

00:19:04.980 Interesting.

00:19:05.700 Um, I mean, that was all kind of known when I started smoking marijuana, uh, right around 1982, uh, or 81.

00:19:15.940 And it was like the classic profile of the stoner.

00:19:20.600 Hey man, you know, slow, you know, molasses pace, uh, cadence to the language, droopy eyes, eating lots of snack food, kind of not doing anything.

00:19:32.860 Like people sort of knew even then when weed was way less potent than it is now, that it slowed you way down, but that's because it slows your brain down.

00:19:42.540 Because it slows your brain down.

00:19:44.460 It certainly alters your brain.

00:19:47.480 It works on, um, CB1 receptors.

00:19:53.120 So there are cannabis receptors in your brain, uh, endocannabinoid receptors.

00:20:00.840 And it activates dopamine, which means you feel high.

00:20:08.480 Yeah.

00:20:08.900 It feel rewarded.

00:20:10.600 Want to do it again.

00:20:12.700 For sure.

00:20:13.140 And then in vulnerable people, it actually disrupts dopamine.

00:20:17.700 So it doesn't work consistently, effectively.

00:20:22.360 And if it disrupts it, if it goes too high, then for vulnerable people, you can become psychotic.

00:20:29.320 You can begin to lose touch with what's real and what's not real.

00:20:35.680 So if you think of psychosis, that's the definition of psychosis is you begin to have trouble differentiating what's real and what's not.

00:20:44.760 You might have delusions, hallucinations, um, and it triggers, uh, psychosis that in some people will turn into schizophrenia, uh, which is arguably the worst psychiatric illness.

00:21:01.260 Uh, arguably the worst illness there is, period.

00:21:04.540 I can't think of anything worse than that.

00:21:07.100 No, it's awful.

00:21:08.900 Um, and so why would you use something if you didn't know your genetic risk that could flip you into not knowing what's real or not?

00:21:22.740 Because you had no idea it was risky?

00:21:26.740 And you don't love your brain.

00:21:28.960 See, I'm, I heard President Trump talk at the Department of Justice. 0.66

00:21:33.660 He had a conversation with the Mexican president about why Mexico exports drugs, but they're not a big drug-using country, which I thought was really interesting.

00:21:47.100 And she said, well, family's really important to us.

00:21:50.540 And he's like, well, family's important to us.

00:21:52.780 And she said, and we have a wicked drug education campaign. 1.00

00:21:58.260 And he's like, oh, we should do that.

00:22:01.300 And so I wrote my friend at the White House.

00:22:04.520 I'm like, you have to teach people to love their brain first before you tell them something's bad for them.

00:22:12.160 Because as soon as you tell them something's bad for them, they want to do it, right?

00:22:17.940 In the book of Genesis, God says, don't eat from the tree.

00:22:23.640 The next scene, they're eating from the tree.

00:22:27.900 So I was God, and I never try to play God.

00:22:31.100 But if I was God and I was counseling God, I'd like, tell them if they eat from the tree, she's going to have to wear clothes. 1.00

00:22:39.180 And that they're going to get kicked out.

00:22:42.840 It's like, tell them, ask them what they want.

00:22:47.140 And then, well, what's the consequences?

00:22:51.460 And so the first thing is teach them to love their brains.

00:22:56.540 And if you love it because it controls everything you do, well, why would you hurt it unless you were not that smart?

00:23:05.720 But you've got to have that foundational step.

00:23:12.360 I call it brain envy.

00:23:14.520 I always say Freud was wrong. 0.97

00:23:16.300 Penis envy is not the cause of anybody's problem. 0.99

00:23:21.160 God, I love your brain. 0.99

00:23:22.620 It's the only organ in your body where size really does matter.

00:23:27.520 It's your brain because it controls everything.

00:23:31.340 Size does matter?

00:23:32.380 Size matters.

00:23:33.260 You don't want a smaller brain.

00:23:38.900 And alcohol, marijuana, being overweight, they all decrease the size of your brain.

00:23:50.260 So Christmas is almost upon us before you get caught up in all the shopping and the presents and the travel.

00:23:55.260 It's worth reminding yourself of why we're doing this in the first place because of Jesus, his birth.

00:24:01.640 That's what Christmas is.

00:24:03.460 And that's one of the many reasons that we recommend the Hallow app, which is amazing.

00:24:08.000 So this Advent experienced the same peace that Mary found in her Bethlehem manger through Hallow's Pray 25 Advent Challenge.

00:24:15.300 The whole program revolves around quiet and calm, being still.

00:24:19.600 All of us, especially me, could use more of that, spending less time on to-do lists and online, and more time in prayer and silence with God.

00:24:29.400 Psalm 49, be still and know that I am God.

00:24:31.500 That is the idea behind this prayer challenge.

00:24:33.960 We're going to follow along in my house every day.

00:24:36.740 We talk about it every night.

00:24:38.000 You may have noticed this is a great country with bad food.

00:25:00.520 Our food supply is rotten.

00:25:02.760 It didn't used to be this way.

00:25:03.900 Take chips, for example.

00:25:06.040 You may recall a time when crushing a bag of chips didn't make you feel hungover, like you couldn't get out of bed the next day.

00:25:13.800 And the change, of course, is chemicals.

00:25:16.580 There's all kinds of crap they're putting in this food that should not be in your body.

00:25:20.320 Seed oils, for example. 0.99

00:25:21.460 Now, even one serving of your standard American chip brand can make you feel bloated, fat, totally passive, and out of it.

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00:25:52.840 Snacking on masa chips is not like eating the garbage that you buy at convenience stores.

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00:27:31.620 Being overweight decreases the size of your brain.

00:27:34.320 Yeah, horrible study.

00:27:35.460 Out of the University of Pittsburgh, my friend Cyrus Raji published it.

00:27:41.480 He looked at MRI scans of people who are healthy weight, so BMI between 18.5 and 25, overweight, 25 to 30 BMI, or over 30, obese.

00:27:57.060 The people who are overweight had 4% less volume in their brain, so less brain tissue, and their brains looked eight years older than they were.

00:28:10.140 How does that work?

00:28:10.660 The people who were obese had 8% less volume.

00:28:15.880 Think about that.

00:28:16.680 And their brains looked 16 years older.

00:28:19.880 I looked at my healthy group that we have in Amon Clinics, because when we were looking at healthy, we weren't looking at weight.

00:28:31.020 And after that study came out, we saw exactly the same thing.

00:28:35.940 And then I did a big NFL study, and I looked at my healthy weight NFL players and my overweight NFL players, and the overweight NFL players had significantly lower activity in their frontal lobes.

00:28:50.020 So, the frontal lobes is the most human, thoughtful part of your brain.

00:28:56.360 It's 30% of the human brain, 11% of the chimpanzee brain, 7% of your dog's brain, 3% of your cat's brain, which is why cats need nine lives.

00:29:08.660 Anyways, significantly lower blood flow and activity in their frontal lobes.

00:29:16.860 What weight does, excess weight increases something called inflammatory cytokines.

00:29:25.520 So, the fat on your belly is not your friend.

00:29:29.860 It decreases blood flow.

00:29:32.420 It increases inflammation.

00:29:34.720 It prematurely ages your brain.

00:29:38.660 It takes healthy testosterone and flips it into unhealthy cancer-promoting forms of estrogen, which is why being overweight increases your risk of 30 different cancers.

00:29:53.320 Really?

00:29:54.360 And it lowers your testosterone?

00:29:56.080 It lowers your testosterone.

00:29:59.660 And is it...

00:30:00.860 Wow, that's unbelievable.

00:30:02.180 Is that widely known?

00:30:03.660 Yes.

00:30:05.280 I'm usually the last to know.

00:30:07.120 It's widely known in scientific circles that obesity is associated with at least 30 different medical conditions, but including cancer.

00:30:19.660 What does marijuana do to testosterone levels?

00:30:23.480 Lowers it.

00:30:25.200 Conclusively, you can say that.

00:30:26.660 Yes.

00:30:26.940 And, you know, we have this younger generation who have low testosterone levels.

00:30:33.920 They've been getting lower and lower, and we have to ask them, so why is that?

00:30:39.160 And part of it is...

00:30:42.220 This is going to sound really crazy, but I believe it.

00:30:45.440 The dermatologist won.

00:30:47.880 They made us afraid of the sun.

00:30:49.500 And now we have these record levels of low vitamin D levels, but we also have record levels of toxins being put on our bodies.

00:31:01.500 So, mom thinks she's really being a great mom if she lathers her son or her daughter with sunscreen.

00:31:12.160 And now you've seen, in the last couple of years, sunscreens have come under a lot of scrutiny because of the toxins they have in them that if you put it on someone's skin, it goes into their body.

00:31:28.200 What kind of toxins?

00:31:29.140 Like parabens and phthalates, a brand new study where they looked at cord blood and autism.

00:31:39.580 And moms who had higher levels of phthalates had a five times increased risk of having an autistic child.

00:31:49.400 So, when Secretary Kennedy says, we're going to look at toxic exposure and autism, I'm like, we absolutely.

00:31:59.140 Should look at that.

00:32:01.240 I wrote an op-ed piece in the New York Times recently.

00:32:04.880 It was actually in response to Alan Francis, who was in charge.

00:32:10.020 He's a psychiatrist, very famous, was in charge of the DSM-IV committee.

00:32:14.980 So, the DSM, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual.

00:32:18.220 Its fourth version changed the diagnostic criteria.

00:32:21.920 It's a hugely significant book.

00:32:24.060 Huge.

00:32:26.240 And he said, well, that's the reason for the rise in autism.

00:32:32.520 And I wrote, that's sort of like the fox guarding the hen house.

00:32:40.660 It's, you know, autism clearly has exploded.

00:32:44.840 And it's not just due to different diagnostic criteria.

00:32:49.060 Of course.

00:32:49.280 Or older fathers.

00:32:50.380 It's due to a gene environmental bomb.

00:32:57.920 Something has happened in our society where in California now, it's insane.

00:33:05.200 One in 12 boys will meet the diagnostic criteria for autism.

00:33:11.800 That should just scare us to our core.

00:33:14.920 And so, what is different?

00:33:19.280 Is it Tylenol?

00:33:21.300 Is it phthalates?

00:33:22.560 Is it parabens?

00:33:23.840 Is it aspartame?

00:33:25.940 There's this crazy study on aspartame, which is in diet sodas and many diet products.

00:33:33.280 Aspartame is in 5,000 diet products.

00:33:38.300 They did this study on rats.

00:33:40.200 And they gave rats aspartame.

00:33:42.420 And it made them insanely anxious.

00:33:44.920 And then they gave them Valium and it calmed them down.

00:33:49.660 It's like, okay, that was pretty crazy.

00:33:53.260 But the part about this study that bothered me the most was their babies, who had never been exposed to aspartame, were anxious.

00:34:04.020 And their grandbabies were anxious.

00:34:07.400 It had generational consequences.

00:34:11.680 Does that mean it altered the genetics of the rats?

00:34:15.380 The epigenetics.

00:34:16.660 Epigenetics.

00:34:17.360 So, epigenetics is on top of your genes, they're switches.

00:34:23.900 And you can turn them on or off based on what you're exposed to.

00:34:31.640 And so, imagine this.

00:34:35.920 When you have a baby girl.

00:34:38.720 So, in our family, we have five girls.

00:34:44.020 Yes, I have five sisters. 0.87

00:34:46.280 God hates me.

00:34:47.820 You have five sisters? 0.77

00:34:48.680 I have five sisters and five daughters.

00:34:51.240 And I love them all dearly.

00:34:54.000 But when a baby girl is born, she's born with all of the eggs in her ovaries she will ever have.

00:35:02.180 Yes.

00:35:02.420 And what happens to her is turning on or off those switches, making illness more or less likely in her babies and in her grandbabies. 1.00

00:35:17.980 Because if she has a baby girl, that baby girl is born with all of the eggs she'll ever have. 0.78

00:35:24.320 And I think we should teach every teenage girl and boy that your decisions have generational consequences.

00:35:34.840 I'm a huge advocate for teaching brain health early.

00:35:40.480 Because, and it all goes down to one question that I love so much.

00:35:46.380 I used to play a game with my daughter, Chloe, when she was two.

00:35:51.460 And I'm like, hey, Chloe, good for your brain or bad for it?

00:35:55.160 And if I went avocados, she'd go two thumbs up, God's butter. 0.98

00:35:59.340 If I said blueberries, she'd put her little hands on her hips and go, are they organic? 1.00

00:36:05.840 Because non-organic berries hold more pesticides than almost any other fruit. 1.00

00:36:10.960 If I said hitting a soccer ball with your head, oh, so stupid. 1.00

00:36:15.880 Or talking back to your redheaded mother, very bad for your brain. 1.00

00:36:20.700 Dangerous, in fact. 0.98

00:36:21.880 But it's that question, what I'm doing right now, is this good for my brain?

00:36:28.060 Or is it bad for it?

00:36:30.680 And if I can answer that with information and love, I just tend to do the right thing.

00:36:36.660 Because most of us have self-interest in mind.

00:36:40.160 And I'm like, activate it, right?

00:36:42.620 What do you want?

00:36:44.180 Your relationships.

00:36:45.500 What do you want in your work?

00:36:46.560 What do you want in your money?

00:36:47.500 What do you want in your physical health?

00:36:49.360 Your emotional health, your spiritual health.

00:36:52.220 And so when you really get to what you want, you don't really want the substances because

00:37:00.640 they don't get you what you want.

00:37:02.400 Right.

00:37:02.760 Like, but I want to feel better.

00:37:05.160 Okay.

00:37:05.840 Well, there's probably 30 other ways to feel better.

00:37:10.280 We just don't teach any of them in school.

00:37:13.140 Like, how crazy is that?

00:37:14.580 Like, one of the things I teach my patients, how to kill the ants, and stands for automatic

00:37:19.320 negative thoughts, the thoughts that come into your mind automatically and ruin your

00:37:24.460 day.

00:37:25.200 And I was 28 years old in my psychiatric residency when a professor said, you have to teach your 1.00

00:37:31.740 patients not to believe every stupid thing they think. 1.00

00:37:35.620 And I'm like, but I believe every stupid thing. 1.00

00:37:38.220 Right. 1.00

00:37:38.620 Most of us do.

00:37:39.560 It's like, you mean I don't have to believe the noise or the nonsense that my brain creates.

00:37:48.020 They should have taught me that when I was a second grader, how to manage my mind.

00:37:53.340 I'm friends with Paul Simon.

00:37:55.460 And Paul's song, Kodachrome is one of my favorites. 0.95

00:37:59.340 It starts with, when I think back on all the crap I learned in high school, it's a wonder 0.95

00:38:03.660 I can think at all. 0.99

00:38:05.100 Yes.

00:38:05.380 And I'm like, why can't we be more effective?

00:38:12.160 Hate to brag, but we're pretty confident this show is the most vehemently pro-dog podcast

00:38:17.440 you're ever going to see.

00:38:19.480 We can take or leave some people, but dogs are non-negotiable.

00:38:22.920 They are the best.

00:38:24.560 They really are our best friends.

00:38:25.880 And so for that reason, we're thrilled to have a new partner called Dutch Pet.

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00:39:37.100 Your dogs, your cats, and your wallet.

00:39:39.520 What do you keep your most valuable possessions?

00:39:43.200 Not your necktie or a pair of socks, but things you wouldn't want to replace or maybe

00:39:47.760 couldn't.

00:39:48.860 Heirlooms from your parents, your birth certificate, your firearms, your grandfather's shotgun.

00:39:53.140 Where do you store those?

00:39:54.980 Under the bed?

00:39:56.140 In the back of a closet?

00:39:57.260 No, that's unwise and maybe unsafe.

00:40:00.260 Liberty Safe is the place to store them.

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00:40:21.660 Have a stock of rifles?

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00:40:49.160 You're going to dig it.

00:40:50.280 We definitely, plus they're good looking, I will say.

00:40:52.200 So you've probably got Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile.

00:40:55.460 That means you are definitely way overpaying for wireless service.

00:40:58.580 And we're not just saying that.

00:40:59.900 It happens for a reason.

00:41:01.140 When you join a massive cell phone company, you get charter support everything that their

00:41:06.020 operation is doing.

00:41:07.160 And that's a lot.

00:41:08.280 Big corporate programs, huge HR departments, thousands of retail stores you're never going

00:41:14.380 to visit.

00:41:15.240 You think your money is going toward getting better cell service, 5G service, but it's not.

00:41:19.520 So the wireless company we use, PureTalk, is very different.

00:41:22.720 They use the exact same cell network as the companies we just mentioned, but they don't

00:41:27.560 do any of the other garbage.

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00:41:50.660 Thank you.

00:41:51.060 Well, I mean, you said that the president of Mexico said that Mexico doesn't have, you

00:41:58.700 know, pervasive drug use, drug use problems because even though their economy is based

00:42:03.500 on selling drugs, Mexicans don't use drugs at the rate Americans do because they have 1.00

00:42:07.460 a very aggressive drug education program.

00:42:10.520 We also have a drug education program run by the drug peddlers that is super effective.

00:42:17.540 I mean, I think if you ask people about marijuana, the first instinct is, why are you judging

00:42:23.800 me?

00:42:24.420 Settle down.

00:42:25.160 You're too uptight.

00:42:26.640 And the second is, it's way better than alcohol.

00:42:29.880 And like, you got to get lit on something.

00:42:32.520 And so you might as well choose weed over booze.

00:42:34.500 And the third is, unlike alcohol, cannabis is actually like a real medicine, effective medicine.

00:42:41.160 It can save people's lives.

00:42:43.700 I mean, that is the story that we hear every day.

00:42:46.860 Assess the last part.

00:42:47.820 But is marijuana a medicine?

00:42:51.160 Well, I think when used properly, it can be helpful.

00:42:55.340 So for example, my mother-in-law, who I love dearly, had stage four lung cancer and wasn't

00:43:05.540 eating.

00:43:05.920 And I'm like, absolutely.

00:43:09.780 Let's see if marijuana will help her. 1.00

00:43:16.660 For certain people with glaucoma, it can be helpful.

00:43:20.400 Did it help her?

00:43:21.400 Yes.

00:43:27.180 But not for much else.

00:43:29.460 And if you're using it for anxiety, it's going to make you more anxious.

00:43:33.860 Right.

00:43:34.000 So, yes.

00:43:35.600 So glaucoma, which is a swelling of the eye, maybe?

00:43:39.280 Yes.

00:43:40.280 Okay.

00:43:41.240 Increased intraocular pressure.

00:43:43.480 Okay.

00:43:44.880 And to help with appetite.

00:43:49.160 Okay.

00:43:49.520 It can help with pain.

00:43:52.220 But if you start using it for pain, you're not going to stop.

00:43:58.860 Why do you say that?

00:43:59.960 What does that mean?

00:44:00.540 Well, if you're using it for pain, it's going to suppress the pain.

00:44:05.460 And when you stop using it, it's going to come back.

00:44:08.960 So if you don't go to the origin of the pain.

00:44:13.880 Yes.

00:44:14.200 And pain, I have a new book coming out in December, Change Your Brain, Change Your Pain.

00:44:20.640 And I talk about this in the book.

00:44:22.660 If you have chronic pain, say you have pain for three weeks or four weeks.

00:44:28.800 Well, pretty soon it's no longer in your back or just in your back.

00:44:32.820 It's actually in your brain, that your brain with pain becomes remodeled.

00:44:39.380 Yes.

00:44:40.440 And pain is now felt in your back, but it's in your brain.

00:44:47.020 And if you're really going to go after that chronic pain, you have to get your brain healthy.

00:44:53.040 And so if you're using marijuana for the chronic pain, it's suppressing those pain centers, but it's not getting your brain healthy.

00:45:04.100 And so when you stop the marijuana, the pain is just going to come back.

00:45:10.840 And it's very important in the book, I talk about the doom loop, where you have pain for any reason, which then triggers the suffering circuits in the brain that actually are the same ones for anxiety and depression.

00:45:26.020 Anxiety, depression, pain, the same circuits in the brain, which then triggers this flood of ants, automatic negative thoughts, I need surgery, I'll never be well, I'll always be in pain, which then triggers muscle tension, which increases the pain and leads to bad habits.

00:45:46.720 So not just marijuana, but could be overeating because of the marijuana, and you end up into this cycle of the doom loop.

00:46:00.240 Familiar to anyone who's had back problems.

00:46:02.800 I'm sorry?

00:46:03.320 That's familiar to anyone who's had back problems.

00:46:05.500 Absolutely.

00:46:06.020 You described it, I think, very well.

00:46:07.500 But so marijuana is, in your opinion, as a physician, helpful for a few just specific illnesses.

00:46:17.380 Glaucoma and low appetite.

00:46:21.600 Why wouldn't the answer be to isolate whatever the compound is in marijuana that helps with appetite and glaucoma and literally medicalize it, put it in a pill or some pharmaceutical form, and then sell it like you would any other pharmaceutical?

00:46:36.200 Well, they've done that for a long time.

00:46:37.980 Oh, okay.

00:46:39.180 I'm not the first one to think of that.

00:46:40.760 Okay, so we have that.

00:46:41.860 So we have that.

00:46:43.180 And so why does it need to be legalized for everything?

00:46:50.100 And are we better off than we were before we did that?

00:46:57.700 And the answer is absolutely we're not better off.

00:46:59.740 We're in the worst mess that we've ever been, and we need to be honest with ourselves.

00:47:06.720 And I just, I remember this crazy debate.

00:47:11.300 So it was a Democratic debate in 2020 where they asked Joe Biden whether or not the federal government should legalize marijuana.

00:47:23.280 And he said, no, he said, I don't think there's been enough study.

00:47:27.900 And on national television, Cory Booker shamed him.

00:47:33.080 And he said, man, are you high? 0.96

00:47:37.020 Like, the science is settled, and you're just crazy because you don't believe that.

00:47:43.980 So a U.S. senator is basically saying, the science is settled.

00:47:50.720 We should all get high.

00:47:52.080 And I'm like, that was just such a terrible moment for me.

00:47:57.000 I think I was screaming at the television.

00:47:58.900 But, I mean, does Cory Booker know, like, some science that you don't know?

00:48:07.100 No.

00:48:07.980 You don't think so?

00:48:09.160 No.

00:48:09.240 You don't think, yeah, Cory Booker's not.

00:48:12.040 And I'm just a fan of the truth.

00:48:14.000 Of course.

00:48:14.940 And my interest is to help you have a better brain.

00:48:18.700 Because if you have a better brain, your marriage is better.

00:48:22.640 You're a better dad.

00:48:24.400 You make more money.

00:48:25.640 Well, since you are a psychiatrist, I mean, what is the effect of, like, chronic marijuana use on marriages?

00:48:32.680 Well, I just released a podcast with Julius Randall, NBA superstar.

00:48:38.440 I love him.

00:48:39.440 It's public knowledge now that I've been his doctor.

00:48:42.360 It was ruining his marriage because his wife said he wasn't present.

00:48:48.600 Right.

00:48:49.180 That he was.

00:48:50.260 They already say that about men.

00:48:51.720 So, like, you don't need encouragement to be more vacant or distant.

00:48:56.640 Yeah, it's true.

00:48:57.460 It had just changed his soul in the sense that he just didn't care about the things that were actually really important to him after he stopped.

00:49:09.620 And he asked himself those questions.

00:49:13.100 What do I really want?

00:49:15.640 It's, no, I want to be married.

00:49:17.900 I love my wife.

00:49:19.080 I want to be a good dad.

00:49:20.480 I want to be a present dad.

00:49:22.880 And, yes, I want to be great at my craft.

00:49:26.660 But there's so much more to me than just basketball.

00:49:31.400 And when I met him, I learned that it was legal for NBA players.

00:49:38.120 They just don't test them.

00:49:40.040 So, they can be...

00:49:40.820 The league allows NBA players to use marijuana.

00:49:43.940 Yes.

00:49:45.200 So, then there's no restriction on it.

00:49:48.600 And, you know, I guess the only restriction is, well, how do you play?

00:49:52.740 And Julius thought he played better when he used.

00:49:58.440 But, in fact, he played better when he didn't use.

00:50:01.300 He just had to be able to learn how to manage his mind.

00:50:06.400 So, I'm not going to make fun of him for thinking that because people addicted to all kinds of substances become totally convinced that they operate at a higher level when they use those substances.

00:50:18.340 You've seen that, I'm sure, a lot.

00:50:20.420 Yes.

00:50:21.560 And once they stop, they generally don't believe it anymore.

00:50:28.520 Fair.

00:50:28.780 But you have to always ask, when someone's using any substance, it's why.

00:50:35.900 Right.

00:50:36.220 And there are biological reasons why they use it because it may decrease pain.

00:50:41.660 There are psychological reasons.

00:50:43.480 It does decrease the chatter in your head.

00:50:47.160 There are social reasons because you fit in with the group you're using.

00:50:51.880 Well, it wasn't that long ago that many Americans thought they were inherently safe from the kinds of disasters you hear about all the time in third world countries. 1.00

00:50:58.100 A total power loss, for example, or people freezing to death in their own homes.

00:51:02.320 That could never happen here.

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00:51:12.120 Remember when the power grid in Texas failed in the dead of winter?

00:51:15.700 Yeah, it happened, and it could happen again.

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00:51:22.740 And the truth is the future is unforeseeable, and things do seem to be getting a little squirrely.

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00:52:35.400 Could we stop on the second one, that it decreases the chatter in your head?

00:52:39.740 I've had a couple of very smart, just high-IQ friends who use marijuana for that reason, and say they become more fluent, clearer thinking, more able to focus.

00:52:54.460 You're suggesting that could be real.

00:52:56.420 They're not making that up.

00:52:57.300 No, it could be real, especially in the short run, probably not in the long run.

00:53:07.780 And I always want people to do things that help them feel good now and later versus now but not later.

00:53:19.200 Yes.

00:53:20.780 And so, are there other ways to optimize your brain?

00:53:29.200 And that's what I get so excited with players like Julius and some of the other people I've worked with, is how can I help you be the very best you can be?

00:53:42.780 So, it's not about taking broken people and putting them back together.

00:53:47.380 It's about taking awesome people and helping them be more awesome.

00:53:52.560 And looking at the brain, for me, it literally changed everything in my life from the time I go to bed at night to what I eat to what I do to make myself happy.

00:54:08.460 It's, I always wanted to optimize my brain rather than steal from me.

00:54:16.620 You know, I have six kids and I love them all dearly, but I never want to have to live with them.

00:54:22.480 And so, you know, I covet my independence.

00:54:25.880 And as I get older, I'm like, I need to be more serious because did you know 50% of people 85 and older, 5-0% of people 85 and older will be diagnosed with dementia of one form or another.

00:54:43.940 And it means if you're blessed to live to 85, you have a one in two chance of having lost your mind.

00:54:53.000 And marijuana increases the risk of dementia.

00:54:58.180 Really?

00:54:58.660 Yeah.

00:54:59.720 There are studies now and its use is skyrocketing in older people.

00:55:06.760 So, in Canada, there was a study where 15 years ago, 5% of people over 50 used marijuana.

00:55:19.320 Now, it's 21%.

00:55:23.000 The government of Canada, the government of the United States is encouraging that.

00:55:26.840 Why would they be doing that?

00:55:30.340 I don't know.

00:55:31.700 It's just wrong thinking.

00:55:34.260 Yeah.

00:55:35.340 At best.

00:55:37.240 We don't want dementia increasing in the population.

00:55:41.860 Alzheimer's is expected to triple by 2050.

00:55:46.060 No.

00:55:49.520 It's like, no.

00:55:51.280 And I wrote a book many years ago called Preventing Alzheimer's and got no end of grief from it.

00:55:57.720 Published at the year Reagan died.

00:55:59.720 And they're like, you can't do that.

00:56:02.720 That's a false promise.

00:56:03.960 And last year in the Lancet, their review article came out and said, 50% of Alzheimer's disease is preventable.

00:56:13.860 And I'm like, I'm so excited.

00:56:16.500 It's like, yes.

00:56:17.980 But in order to do that, you have to love your brain and take care of it.

00:56:22.140 What are the, without getting too technical, you know, steps that a layman can understand to reducing your risk of Alzheimer's would be what?

00:56:30.400 So, I have an acronym.

00:56:31.480 I like called Bright Minds.

00:56:32.820 You want to keep your brain healthy or rescue it.

00:56:34.960 You have to prevent or treat the 11 major risk factors.

00:56:39.800 And just quickly, B is for blood flow.

00:56:43.320 Low blood flow is the number one brain imaging predictor of Alzheimer's disease.

00:56:49.220 So, what lowers blood flow?

00:56:50.920 Hypertension.

00:56:52.360 Being sedentary.

00:56:54.260 Alcohol.

00:56:55.520 Marijuana.

00:56:56.700 Nicotine.

00:56:58.860 Much caffeine.

00:57:00.940 Right?

00:57:01.100 A little bit is fine.

00:57:02.240 Much.

00:57:02.900 Not a good idea.

00:57:04.960 R is retirement and aging.

00:57:06.840 The older you get, the more serious you need to be.

00:57:09.660 And you need to know what promotes aging.

00:57:12.540 Marijuana promotes aging.

00:57:14.740 And now, new studies out that if you're under 50 and you use marijuana, you have a 600% increased risk of having a heart attack.

00:57:23.980 So, we know it has a negative.

00:57:26.380 600%.

00:57:26.900 600%.

00:57:28.340 That seems significant.

00:57:29.720 It seems significant.

00:57:30.580 And so, we know marijuana has a negative impact on blood vessels.

00:57:37.640 Retirement and aging.

00:57:39.060 I is inflammation, a major cause of depression and dementia.

00:57:45.140 And so, pro-inflammatory foods.

00:57:47.740 So, the ultra-processed foods.

00:57:50.200 Low omega-3 fatty acids.

00:57:52.380 And not flossing.

00:57:54.380 Like, of all things.

00:57:55.960 Yeah.

00:57:56.260 A brain health strategy is floss.

00:57:59.520 Every night.

00:58:00.260 Floss your teeth.

00:58:01.040 Floss your teeth.

00:58:01.820 Do not get gum disease.

00:58:03.460 You don't want low-grade infections in your mouth.

00:58:05.880 And you don't want inflammation in your mouth.

00:58:08.760 So, it alters the microbiome or all the bugs in your mouth, which then have a negative impact on your whole body.

00:58:16.880 Do you use genetics?

00:58:18.680 Know what's in your family?

00:58:20.760 Like, I have obesity and heart disease in my family, but I'm not overweight and I don't have heart disease.

00:58:28.380 Why?

00:58:28.840 I'm on an obesity heart disease prevention program every day of my life because I don't want those things.

00:58:36.360 Because we adopted our nieces because their parents were addicts and I tell them, I said, you have addiction in your family.

00:58:47.280 You don't need to be on an addiction prevention program every day of your life.

00:58:52.140 And when I found the older one vaping, I grounded her for six months.

00:58:56.540 I mean, we're, like, very serious about if you want to go that way, that's up to you, but I'm not going to do anything in my power to help you.

00:59:09.660 The second one, and this is so important, or the next one is H, head trauma.

00:59:15.800 A major cause of psychiatric problems.

00:59:18.780 But it's also a major cause of substance abuse.

00:59:21.320 Because if you damage your frontal lobes, which happens in 90% of people who have head trauma, 90% of them, their frontal lobes are involved, it decreases impulse control.

00:59:35.240 So you might know, this isn't good for me, but if you want it, you do it, rather than if you want it, you distract yourself.

00:59:44.960 You make a better decision for yourself.

00:59:48.960 Like, tea is toxins, drugs, alcohol, mold in your home can damage your brain and make you decrease your decision-making.

01:00:05.520 General anesthesia is toxic to your brain.

01:00:08.300 And then the products we put on our bodies.

01:00:09.940 General anesthesia is toxic to your brain.

01:00:11.880 General anesthesia.

01:00:13.560 And, like, I'm a psychiatrist.

01:00:15.900 Why do I know that?

01:00:17.000 Because one of my patients, who is an alcoholic, who had a terrible-looking brain, she got clean.

01:00:24.220 Her brain looked great.

01:00:25.680 She then had knee surgery, calls me up crying. 0.99

01:00:29.180 She goes, I think I have Alzheimer's disease.

01:00:32.340 And I'm like, did she relapse?

01:00:34.120 So I scanned her. 0.65

01:00:35.160 Her brain looked terrible again, but she didn't relapse.

01:00:37.660 It was the effect of general anesthesia.

01:00:39.960 And then I went to the literature, and I'm like, what does the literature say?

01:00:45.740 The general anesthesia is hard on the brain and can increase the risk of dementia.

01:00:52.600 And it doesn't mean you don't get surgery.

01:00:54.760 It means you probably should do some rehabilitation work if you have to get general anesthesia.

01:01:01.040 So avoid it if you can.

01:01:03.340 Don't take it lightly.

01:01:05.480 Well, like people, like in the pain book, this is the one statistic that blew me away that really sort of nudged me to write the book.

01:01:12.680 If you have back pain and you get an abnormal MRI, well, that scares the socks off of you, triggers the doom loop, and you're more likely to get surgery.

01:01:27.900 Been there.

01:01:28.320 But head-to-head against conservative care, surgery is no more effective, and it has a 21-fold increased risk of side effects.

01:01:39.760 And then this is the statistic.

01:01:44.940 People my age, 70, 70% of us have abnormal backs who have no pain at all.

01:01:55.300 People who are 50 who have abnormal MRIs, 50% of them have abnormal back MRIs and no pain at all.

01:02:05.680 That means just because you have an abnormal MRI on your back or your neck or your shoulder doesn't mean surgery should be the first thing you do, but because there's an industry around surgery that's often the first thing that's recommended.

01:02:26.900 And I argue, well, let's do the conservative things with a brain boost first, and then if you need it, you need it, right?

01:02:36.740 I'm not opposed to it.

01:02:38.400 I'm just opposed to that's the first and only thing you do.

01:02:42.640 Why aren't public health authorities, federal and state, sounding the alarm about cannabis?

01:02:52.940 Or are they?

01:02:54.220 They're not.

01:02:56.040 State of California.

01:02:57.080 Or at least in my state, they're not because it's a revenue source, because there's a political lobby.

01:03:04.960 And it's shameful.

01:03:10.740 I don't know how else to say it.

01:03:12.940 When you really understand the research and now even more emerging research on anxiety, depression, suicide, and psychosis, I think we should be much more concerned from a public health standpoint.

01:03:31.940 When was the last time you heard a public health authority in the state of California say, you know, legalizing marijuana has been a disaster, and here are the numbers on it?

01:03:42.020 I don't think they say it because of the pressure that's put on them not to say it.

01:03:49.220 California is the largest marijuana-growing state in the country, maybe the world.

01:03:54.700 Certainly the highest potency, the best weed is grown in California, Mendocino, Humboldt counties, all that famously.

01:04:01.360 I mean, it's a huge part of the state's economy, and you think that's why they won't say it's bad?

01:04:08.560 Yes.

01:04:09.880 It's money and influence.

01:04:12.240 So, like, we used to make fun of the, you know, congressman from Kentucky because he wouldn't say smoking caused cancer.

01:04:24.020 It's the same thing.

01:04:27.700 Yeah.

01:04:28.660 You just look at power, and power has to do with money.

01:04:34.380 And it's killing us, and it breaks my heart to have all these young people think it's innocuous.

01:04:47.120 And now, along with the marijuana parties, they're having mushroom parties because I think mushrooms is going to go the same way as video games, and we didn't talk about social media and cell phones.

01:04:58.840 All of the stuff just unleashed on the population.

01:05:03.120 Psilocybin mushrooms.

01:05:04.020 But now psilocybin, we have a daughter that's 22, and she's like, Dad, they're not drinking as much, but they're using mushrooms because they think they're innocuous.

01:05:19.800 But the visits to emergency rooms for psilocybin psychosis has gone up significantly.

01:05:27.640 It's a little harder to tell yourself.

01:05:30.200 I mean, I spoke marijuana all through my childhood.

01:05:31.820 I also ate a lot of mushrooms.

01:05:34.020 But it's a little harder to tell yourself that mushrooms are, like, no big deal because you can flip right out on mushrooms.

01:05:40.920 Like, they eat enough, and they're hallucinogenic.

01:05:43.620 They inspire actual hallucinations.

01:05:46.000 Right.

01:05:46.080 So how do you, and maybe you're totally for that, or maybe you're not, but you can't say, it's like drinking a cup of coffee.

01:05:53.960 That's a profound thing.

01:05:55.300 You see things that aren't there.

01:05:57.180 That's, by definition, a big deal, no?

01:05:59.280 It's absolutely a big deal.

01:06:01.440 And they're studying it for PTSD, and they're studying it for depression.

01:06:08.120 And I'm for that.

01:06:11.580 What I'm not for is it's good medicine.

01:06:17.040 We should all do it.

01:06:18.600 Right.

01:06:19.400 That I think it is.

01:06:21.080 Well, it's kind of like weed and glaucoma.

01:06:22.580 Okay.

01:06:22.760 If it reduces your glaucoma symptoms, I mean, how could you be against that?

01:06:26.560 But there's a huge distance between that conclusion and, hey, it's totally safe.

01:06:32.820 Everyone should use it.

01:06:33.840 Right.

01:06:34.700 Like, you'd take chemo if you had cancer, right?

01:06:36.980 Absolutely would.

01:06:37.860 You wouldn't recommend your eight-year-old had chemo.

01:06:40.020 And chemo would hurt my brain.

01:06:41.420 Right.

01:06:42.480 Right?

01:06:43.160 But then, but I have to have chemo or I'll die.

01:06:46.020 I get it.

01:06:46.540 And so I need to rehabilitate my brain.

01:06:49.660 And it's probably from the almost 300,000 scans I've done, the biggest lesson is I'm

01:06:57.260 not stuck with the brain I have, that I can make it better and I can prove it.

01:07:02.540 Now, I can also make it worse and I can prove that too.

01:07:05.700 Right.

01:07:06.000 Every day I am making my brain better or I'm making it worse based on the choices that I make.

01:07:16.540 And that's so exciting.

01:07:18.300 And everybody gets really excited about neuroplasticity.

01:07:21.300 Neuroplasticity is you can remodel your brain.

01:07:27.200 But neuroplasticity goes both ways.

01:07:29.980 Whatever you repeat, you model in your brain.

01:07:35.100 Whatever you repeat becomes tracks that force you into that road, if you will.

01:07:44.600 And so when I go to a restaurant and the first thing they ask you is, do you want a glass

01:07:52.440 of alcohol?

01:07:54.400 When you go no over and over and over again, well, no becomes strong in your brain.

01:08:00.740 And so the temptation is low.

01:08:02.860 If you say yes over and over and over again, that then becomes an automatic response.

01:08:09.920 And so we're wiring our brains for health or illness by the choices we make.

01:08:18.980 Back to psilocybin really quick.

01:08:22.660 What do we know about the risks of using it?

01:08:26.100 That it can unbalance you.

01:08:28.480 That is true.

01:08:29.480 I can verify that.

01:08:31.160 Deeply.

01:08:31.920 I mean, completely unbalance you.

01:08:33.860 Yes.

01:08:35.020 That you want to use it again.

01:08:36.980 Although alcohol, if you use alcohol, there's a 15% chance you'll get hooked on it.

01:08:45.440 Really?

01:08:45.740 15% if you use marijuana and you're young, there's a 17% chance.

01:08:53.780 If you're older, it's only nine, according to the latest research.

01:08:57.940 So alcohol and marijuana in the young have an addiction potential for sure.

01:09:06.360 If you're older, alcohol is worse than marijuana.

01:09:10.060 Psilocybin, that's one of the risks, although less so, it seems, than either alcohol or marijuana.

01:09:20.240 Well, you can't function when you're tripping.

01:09:22.660 So it's not like you could, you know, eat four grams of mushrooms or whatever and like go to work.

01:09:28.900 You can't.

01:09:29.440 Well, and the doses in the studies, this is very important.

01:09:34.120 It's 25 milligrams in the studies on depression.

01:09:38.420 And many people I know who microdose are doing like 300 milligrams or 400 milligrams.

01:09:45.600 And so it is the wild west.

01:09:49.400 I am a fan of lion's mane mushrooms.

01:09:55.200 They have cognitive benefits and do not make you see things.

01:09:59.360 What's kratom?

01:10:00.260 So it's another one of what I call a weapon of mass destruction.

01:10:08.340 It is an opiate agonist, which means it increases the availability of opiates in the brain.

01:10:18.900 It's clearly addictive and it's legal and it's often shown and it's often sold in gas stations and places like that.

01:10:34.380 Yeah, the Indians run the gas station 50 yards from here.

01:10:37.340 It's only kratom for sale behind the counter.

01:10:41.440 What, I mean, is it, I've never tried it, is how serious is it?

01:10:45.960 Well, I've had a number of patients.

01:10:50.080 In fact, I just did this great segment on KTLA in Los Angeles.

01:10:56.140 So I scanned Casey Montoya, who's the weather person.

01:11:02.120 She loves me and wanted to experience my work.

01:11:07.560 And so I scanned her and scanned her producer.

01:11:10.040 And then we did them a year later.

01:11:12.580 And they both did what I asked them to do.

01:11:15.300 Casey's brain was better, like really better, but the producer's brain was worse.

01:11:23.300 And it sort of broke my heart because, you know, I get attached to how brains do.

01:11:28.160 And I'm like, why is it worse?

01:11:30.200 He goes, I don't know.

01:11:31.060 I've done this and I've done that.

01:11:32.420 And then he texted me.

01:11:37.040 He said, the only thing I did differently between the first scan and the second is I picked up kratom.

01:11:43.360 And I'm like, why did you pick up kratom?

01:11:47.620 Pick up means started using?

01:11:48.820 Started using kratom.

01:11:51.600 And he was anxious, something.

01:11:55.860 And he said a friend told him that would be helpful.

01:11:58.300 I'm like, you need to stop because it's clearly damaging your brain.

01:12:02.940 And there's no, it doesn't seem to be regulated in most places.

01:12:08.700 It's not.

01:12:09.280 No, it's in the sort of gray period where clearly it's legal.

01:12:14.300 They've tried to ban it a couple of times, but the kratom lobby gets to the regulators. 0.96

01:12:21.500 And I'm hoping that at some point this administration looks at it.

01:12:31.780 So compare the attitudes toward drugs in the United States, just broadly, vibe check, in other words, in 1982 compared to the attitudes you see now.

01:12:41.180 I think in 1982, we were much more concerned about the long-term negative impact of drug use, marijuana, psilocybin, than we are now.

01:12:59.600 I think just this sort of general lie that, and we unleash these things without long-term neuroscience study because marijuana was banned.

01:13:15.060 It got banned in 1937.

01:13:19.200 They couldn't study it, sort of like psilocybin.

01:13:23.040 And it is just, I see this as a psychiatrist, and it just blows my mind how we unleash these things without actually taking the time to study them.

01:13:41.540 Do other psychiatrists feel that way?

01:13:43.860 Many of us do.

01:13:45.320 They have 60 psychiatrists that work with me at Amon Clinics, and we all believe this.

01:13:56.020 Has the American Psychiatric Association taken a position on?

01:14:00.040 It's not a huge fan of marijuana as medicine.

01:14:07.820 And most addiction societies are very concerned about it.

01:14:15.320 Could you roll it back in the state of California right now?

01:14:19.360 No.

01:14:20.520 You could?

01:14:21.000 Oh, it's just, it's that powerful.

01:14:23.480 Not with the current administration.

01:14:25.100 Right.

01:14:26.420 So are you suggesting?

01:14:27.380 I mean, if there's going to be a different administration, it will be hard.

01:14:34.740 But I think the more we start caring about our brains,

01:14:40.160 so the most important thing I'm doing right now is I'm working on creating a national brain health revolution.

01:14:49.940 My goal is for everyone to ask themselves this one question.

01:14:54.740 Whatever I'm doing now, is it good for my brain or bad for it?

01:15:00.640 And if I can accomplish this, then I think people will really start to ask themselves that question.

01:15:13.220 Is it good for my brain or bad for it?

01:15:15.620 And the thing most pressing is marijuana, psilocybin, cell phones, social media, AI.

01:15:24.840 There's a brand new study out from MIT that evaluated smart kids who use AI to write their papers

01:15:37.680 rather than just doing it themselves or just using Google had significantly less brain function while they were doing that task.

01:15:48.080 What that means is if I go to the gym, I'm used to lifting 25 pounds so I could have strong arms.

01:15:55.480 It's now I go to the gym and I only lift two pounds.

01:15:58.400 So I'm not going to have strong arms.

01:15:59.400 Well, you don't go to the gym at all and you just sit in your chair and eat Doritos.

01:16:04.080 Farm it out.

01:16:05.220 Well, right.

01:16:06.100 You're farming out the exercise.

01:16:08.260 And we should be concerned.

01:16:11.080 About AI.

01:16:12.000 About AI.

01:16:13.080 Yeah.

01:16:13.440 I mean, it's here.

01:16:14.880 And if you use it responsibly, it can be a helpful tool.

01:16:20.900 But it's going to cause a lot of pain, I believe, and a lot less activity in the brain.

01:16:27.300 And what's the thing that protects us against dementia?

01:16:31.360 It's work, brain work.

01:16:34.100 The more I'm learning new things, the more I'm pushing my brain, well, the healthier it's going to be.

01:16:42.760 It's in many ways like a muscle.

01:16:45.040 And so I'm really good at reading brain scans.

01:16:49.620 If I just kept doing that, I'm not learning new things.

01:16:53.500 But if I figure out new and exciting ways to read the scans, well, that's good for me.

01:16:59.500 Or I learn a sport or I learn a language.

01:17:04.200 Just to put it into a larger governance context.

01:17:07.680 So, like, let's say you had a population that had been promised it was control, you know, had control of its own government, owned its own country.

01:17:13.620 And then for, I don't know, like 50 years, you did nothing to serve their actual interests.

01:17:19.280 And you started to worry that they would rebel against you in some sort of violent revolution.

01:17:23.360 You didn't want that. 0.99

01:17:25.240 Wouldn't you do everything you could to make them dumber and more passive? 0.99

01:17:28.640 Lower their testosterone levels. 1.00

01:17:31.800 Lower their brain activity.

01:17:33.680 Have some Kratom.

01:17:34.740 Have some SSRIs.

01:17:36.060 Here's a Benzo.

01:17:36.960 So, get fat. 0.98

01:17:39.960 You're like, why wouldn't you want that if you wanted people to be docile?

01:17:45.020 So, I wrote another book called The End of Mental Illness.

01:17:48.500 And in it, I imagined if I was an evil ruler and I wanted to create mental illness, what would I do? 0.58

01:18:00.440 What would you do?

01:18:01.220 All of those things you just mentioned.

01:18:02.800 And I would have little girls selling Girl Scout cookies.

01:18:09.960 In fact, in the most brilliant evil ruler strategy, there was a Girl Scout who set up her cookie stand outside a pot dispensary in San Diego.

01:18:21.540 And within a span of like three hours, completely sold out and had to get more product.

01:18:30.120 And I'm like, that is brilliant evil ruler strategy stuff.

01:18:35.900 It's got little girls that are really cute to sell you sugar with trans fats in them to people who are smoking pot. 1.00

01:18:45.560 I'm like, and the marijuana with the highest level or one of the highest levels of THC is called Girl Scout cookies.

01:18:58.320 So, it's so funny how, you know, Pavlov's principle just, it holds true always.

01:19:04.320 Second you say Girl Scout cookies, I was just carried away with thoughts of Thin Mints.

01:19:08.120 I was, I was, the texture, the taste.

01:19:12.700 But they don't love you back.

01:19:15.200 No, they don't.

01:19:17.220 So, I was at a luncheon.

01:19:18.980 I was at a luncheon recently with Lisa Trout.

01:19:21.980 And I love Lisa Trout.

01:19:23.700 Lisa and her husband, Kenny, own racehorses.

01:19:28.760 And they own Justify.

01:19:30.880 Couple from Dallas, very nice people.

01:19:33.360 Love them.

01:19:34.740 And I'm sitting next to her and I just had to do it because Justify won the triple crown.

01:19:42.100 And I'm like, would you ever feed Justify junk food?

01:19:47.340 And she rolled her eyes at me. 1.00

01:19:50.240 I said, no.

01:19:51.920 I said, would you ever get them stoned?

01:19:54.400 And she goes, of course not.

01:19:56.420 I said, would you ever get them drunk?

01:19:58.760 And she just looked at me.

01:20:01.940 And I'm like, why?

01:20:04.720 He would never live up to his potential.

01:20:10.920 So, whatever you eat or whatever you drink or whatever you put on your body, just another one of those questions.

01:20:23.980 Do you love it?

01:20:25.740 And does it love you back?

01:20:28.760 Because if it doesn't love you back, don't do it.

01:20:33.980 Right?

01:20:34.720 And this is all about self-interest.

01:20:36.840 Because I've learned you can't just tell people no because then, like in the Garden of Eden, they're, of course, at the tree.

01:20:43.160 It's like, but what's the goal?

01:20:44.920 And people go, come on, Daniel, how can you have any fun?

01:20:49.760 And I'm like, well, who has more fun, right?

01:20:53.300 Because what do you really want in your life?

01:20:56.740 And I think most people are like me.

01:20:58.340 They want energy.

01:21:00.000 They want memory.

01:21:01.440 They want clarity.

01:21:02.360 They want creativity.

01:21:03.320 They want passion.

01:21:04.220 Well, that takes a great brain.

01:21:07.840 And so, it's like, oh, but you should just have a glass of wine.

01:21:13.380 I'm like, well, I might love it, but it doesn't love me.

01:21:18.820 So, why would I engage in behaviors that don't love me back?

01:21:24.480 I think there are spiritual effects of all of this.

01:21:28.580 Dulling people physically, emotionally, mentally, reducing their cognitive power.

01:21:35.820 Everything that you've just described makes a person less likely to ask transcendent questions, I think.

01:21:44.600 Less likely to ask any questions.

01:21:46.400 Because their habit centers are in control rather than their purpose centers.

01:21:57.060 What's a habit center?

01:21:58.760 So, it's the dopamine loop in the brain.

01:22:03.660 So, there's an area called the nucleus accumbens, which is what responds to dopamine and gives you pleasure or pain.

01:22:12.220 And it's connected to the basal ganglia.

01:22:18.700 It's part of the basal ganglia.

01:22:20.240 If that takes over your life, you're just going to give in to whatever those habits created that.

01:22:29.020 And it decreases.

01:22:29.860 Are you describing craving there?

01:22:31.880 Well, there's a difference between wanting something and liking something.

01:22:40.100 An addiction often goes to you want it, but you don't necessarily like it anymore.

01:22:47.540 Yes.

01:22:47.760 And there's really this dance, I often say, between the elephant and the rider.

01:22:54.720 So, the elephant is your emotional brain.

01:22:57.920 And the rider is your prefrontal cortex.

01:23:01.520 It has to control or break your emotional brain.

01:23:09.480 So, the four-year-old in you is not always in control.

01:23:14.780 And when you hurt your frontal lobe, so think of hitting soccer balls with your forehead repeatedly, that'll hurt your frontal lobes.

01:23:21.580 Or playing tackle football.

01:23:24.680 Now, all of a sudden, free will goes from perhaps 80% to 40%.

01:23:35.020 And then when you get stoned, now it's at 10%.

01:23:39.980 Or you get drunk.

01:23:41.360 It's this beautiful dance between your frontal lobes and your emotional brain that often become disconnected in addiction.

01:23:55.340 How hard is it to get off marijuana?

01:24:00.080 Easier than some things.

01:24:02.960 Julius got off after he saw a scan.

01:24:05.180 I see that a fair amount when people go, oh, this is not really helping me.

01:24:11.720 It's damaging me.

01:24:14.400 So, he gets off or anyone gets off who's a daily user.

01:24:18.420 There are millions of daily users.

01:24:20.120 But what happens next?

01:24:21.980 Well, it takes a while.

01:24:23.320 It takes a couple of months, I think, for them to fully get out of their system.

01:24:29.080 And it depends on do they get off and substitute brain-healthy behaviors that help rehabilitate their brain.

01:24:42.840 And that combination makes it easier to get off.

01:24:47.100 If they get off and then replace it with vaping or replace it with sugar, they're much more likely to relapse.

01:24:58.680 And when you go to AA meetings, I always found this very interesting.

01:25:03.120 They'd have the donuts and everybody's smoking and they're eating donuts and coffee with a lot of sugar.

01:25:10.240 And I'm like, maybe we could replace those things with healthier things, healthier choices.

01:25:16.100 People who get off, particularly alcohol, tend to go bonkers with sugar.

01:25:21.600 What is that?

01:25:22.200 Well, they're just trying to replace feeling good because sugar works on the dopamine centers of your brain as well.

01:25:31.140 And I always thought, why isn't brain health part of addiction treatment centers?

01:25:37.200 I wrote a book with David Smith.

01:25:39.920 So, David is the founder of the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic in San Francisco.

01:25:45.040 He's considered the father of addiction medicine.

01:25:49.500 And we wrote a book together called Unchain Your Brain, Breaking the Addictions That Steal Your Life.

01:25:56.800 And in it, we put a brain-healthy program for addiction treatment centers.

01:26:02.820 And many of them around the country use that, which I'm so excited about.

01:26:07.940 But I rewrote the 12 steps in one of my books.

01:26:14.780 I have a book called Your Brain is Always Listening.

01:26:16.920 That's audacious.

01:26:18.120 I'm sorry?

01:26:18.640 That's audacious to rewrite the 12 steps.

01:26:21.060 Yeah, I thought it was a big deal.

01:26:22.200 But I'm like, they haven't been rewritten since the 1930s.

01:26:25.440 I said, what if a neuroscientist-

01:26:27.320 She hit the Old Testament next.

01:26:30.400 Rewrote the 12 steps.

01:26:32.020 Well, I wouldn't start with step one.

01:26:33.640 Step one is my life is out of control.

01:26:35.840 Yeah.

01:26:36.040 I would go, step one is what do you want?

01:26:40.760 Relationships, work, money, physical, emotional, spiritual health.

01:26:45.200 What do you want?

01:26:47.560 And step two is, is your behavior getting you what you want?

01:26:53.960 Obviously, it's not.

01:26:55.880 Step three, let's go get your brain healthy.

01:26:59.620 Brain health is three things.

01:27:01.500 Brain envy, God care about it. 0.89

01:27:03.620 Avoid things that hurt it.

01:27:05.160 Know the list.

01:27:06.600 Do things that help it.

01:27:08.760 Know the list.

01:27:10.940 That's got to be the next step.

01:27:13.540 Because with a healthy brain, you're less likely to relapse.

01:27:18.480 Or if you relapse, you don't see it as a failure.

01:27:22.500 Because every day, and this is what Julius and I did.

01:27:25.220 Every day you win or you learn is you take a curiosity mindset into the problem rather than

01:27:34.480 a shame mindset into the problem.

01:27:37.900 I failed.

01:27:39.200 It's like, well, let's look at it.

01:27:41.300 And if you can understand, do you know when people relapse, when they have low blood sugar,

01:27:47.880 when they've gone too long without eating, they're more likely to relapse.

01:27:54.000 That's 100% true.

01:27:55.140 So, like, carry nuts with you or just something with you all the time so you don't get hungry.

01:28:06.380 And...

01:28:07.000 Why does hunger cause relapse?

01:28:08.640 Low blood sugar?

01:28:09.140 Because it lowers blood sugar.

01:28:10.880 When you get lower blood sugar, you have lower frontal lobe function.

01:28:15.880 Really?

01:28:16.480 It's so interesting.

01:28:17.560 And there's this fascinating study where they took 107 couples, married couples,

01:28:23.820 and they measured their blood sugar right before bedtime.

01:28:27.740 And then they gave them voodoo dolls. 0.99

01:28:30.640 And they asked them to rate their feelings about their partner with pins in the dolls.

01:28:38.660 And so, they measured their blood sugar.

01:28:41.720 And the people who had the lowest blood sugar had more than twice the number of pins in the voodoo dolls. 0.95

01:28:49.240 I thought that was fascinating.

01:28:50.780 That is fascinating.

01:28:51.800 Yeah.

01:28:53.600 So, you listed the things that make your brain smaller and less functional.

01:28:59.100 What are the things that make it bigger and better?

01:29:02.000 So, we go back to Bright Minds.

01:29:04.720 Blood flow is clearly exercise.

01:29:06.560 And I think coordination exercises and strength training are both really important for blood flow.

01:29:17.160 Retirement and aging is learn new things.

01:29:20.140 And everybody should get blood work every year, I think.

01:29:23.420 And one of the tests you should always get is ferritin.

01:29:26.420 So, ferritin is a measure of iron storage.

01:29:29.360 And if your iron is high, it promotes aging.

01:29:34.520 And you should donate blood twice a year.

01:29:37.340 So, donating blood twice a year for people who have high veritin levels, good for their brain, good for the...

01:29:43.700 So, there was something behind the whole leech idea.

01:29:46.960 Well, it's so funny.

01:29:47.920 Tana and I were in Istanbul.

01:29:51.600 We went to the spice market and they had leeches for sale in the spice market.

01:29:57.460 And I'll look at my wife and I'm like, why do they have leeches for sale here?

01:30:02.420 And she's a neurosurgical ICU nurse.

01:30:05.240 And she said, because they suck blood. 0.99

01:30:08.760 And it can help wounds heal.

01:30:11.680 And it also takes off excess iron.

01:30:15.140 Now, if your iron levels are low, it's a very bad thing.

01:30:18.600 Don't do that.

01:30:20.780 So, you wouldn't recommend leeches for everyone?

01:30:23.240 No.

01:30:25.660 As far as inflammation, omega-3 fatty acids, I think everybody should probably take fish oil or an omega-3 supplement, healthy fish.

01:30:36.420 People who eat grilled or baked fish once a week have more gray matter in their brain.

01:30:42.940 I think you should floss regularly, take care of your teeth.

01:30:47.860 The curcumin is a wonderful anti-inflammatory supplement.

01:30:53.040 Also, saffron for so many reasons.

01:30:56.780 What's curcumin?

01:30:58.320 Curcumin is a spice from turmeric.

01:31:02.520 So, turmeric...

01:31:03.180 Also called cumin?

01:31:04.840 Not called cumin.

01:31:05.980 It's different.

01:31:07.040 Curcumin, very popular in India and curries.

01:31:12.940 Curcumin is one of the components of it that has specific anti-inflammatory effects.

01:31:20.660 And there's studies showing it decreases depression because depression and inflammation.

01:31:26.960 Inflammation is one of the causes of depression.

01:31:31.560 From genetics, like know what your risks are and be on a prevention program every day.

01:31:37.420 Don't text and drive so you have a head injury.

01:31:41.200 And avoid toxins, right?

01:31:43.480 So, I'm not a fan of drugs or alcohol.

01:31:46.040 But there's an app I like called Think Dirty.

01:31:49.220 It allows you to scan your personal products and it'll tell you on a scale of 1 to 10 how quickly they're killing you.

01:31:56.420 And so, just start reading the ingredients.

01:31:59.200 What are personal products like?

01:32:01.260 Shaving cream.

01:32:02.460 Like for years, I shaved with Barbasol.

01:32:05.580 And when I scanned it, 0 is live a long time, 10 is die early.

01:32:12.120 Barbasol's a 9.

01:32:13.640 And I'm like, oh, I don't want to do that.

01:32:16.060 And so, I now shave with something called Kiss My Face.

01:32:19.720 Used it this morning.

01:32:20.980 And it's a 2, right?

01:32:22.280 It doesn't have toxic toxins in the personal products.

01:32:26.920 So, think deodorant, shampoo, body wash, lotions, things along that line.

01:32:33.360 Read the labels, right?

01:32:34.920 Most people are smart enough now that they're reading food labels.

01:32:38.600 They need to read product labels.

01:32:42.420 The M, we didn't talk about the M, but that's mental health.

01:32:44.960 If you're depressed as a woman, it doubles your risk of Alzheimer's disease.

01:32:50.360 If you're depressed as a man, it quadruples your risk of Alzheimer's disease.

01:32:57.340 And now we know, new studies, SSRIs increase the risk of dementia.

01:33:02.540 Like, holy smokes.

01:33:05.000 And so...

01:33:06.200 But...

01:33:06.720 Significantly?

01:33:07.520 Significantly.

01:33:08.920 Head-to-head against SSRIs or head-to-head against antidepressants.

01:33:14.300 Walking like you're late for 40 minutes, 45 minutes, four times a week.

01:33:20.360 Equally effective.

01:33:22.020 Taking fish oil.

01:33:24.140 Equally effective to antidepressants in a study from New Zealand.

01:33:28.040 It was actually more effective. 1.00

01:33:30.440 Learning not to believe every stupid thing you think. 1.00

01:33:34.020 Cognitive behavior therapy works for depression. 1.00

01:33:37.260 Pushing away those thoughts.

01:33:39.700 Not pushing them away, engaging them.

01:33:42.340 I teach you how to do it.

01:33:43.540 It's really fun.

01:33:44.400 And then saffron is a brand new study out.

01:33:48.140 They looked at 192 studies on 17,000 people looking at what supplements actually had scientific evidence that they worked for depression.

01:34:02.120 And saffron in many studies was equally effective to antidepressants.

01:34:07.360 And if you added zinc...

01:34:08.600 No, saffron?

01:34:09.680 Saffron.

01:34:10.540 If you added zinc and curcumins, even more effective.

01:34:14.900 And the supplement SAMI, those were the ones that had good scientific evidence that they were effective.

01:34:24.380 And I love saffron.

01:34:25.880 And I've taken it every day for six years.

01:34:28.220 Why?

01:34:29.020 Studies for mood.

01:34:30.040 I'm not depressed, but I'm happy to be happier.

01:34:33.720 Studies for memory. 0.84

01:34:36.040 And it's pro-sexual rather than SSRIs, which sort of numb your sex drive and make it harder to have an orgasm.

01:34:46.120 So I'm like, so what would I do?

01:34:48.160 Prozac or saffron, zinc and curcumins?

01:34:51.600 I'd do saffron.

01:34:54.740 Immunity infections.

01:34:55.880 We haven't talked about this.

01:34:57.020 I would know your vitamin D level and I would optimize it.

01:35:01.980 60, 70% of the population in America has suboptimal levels.

01:35:07.440 And that's because they don't go outside or they're slathered.

01:35:09.640 Because of the sunscreen.

01:35:11.200 Yeah.

01:35:11.520 And because they're not going outside.

01:35:13.620 But we've been told that skin cancer is the real threat.

01:35:17.320 Yeah.

01:35:17.780 That since we've been told that, skin cancer has gone up, not down.

01:35:22.500 Now, I think...

01:35:23.380 Well, how does that work?

01:35:25.000 Not well.

01:35:27.020 No way.

01:35:28.120 It's like the dermatologist won.

01:35:30.320 They made us afraid of the sun.

01:35:34.100 But we need the sun.

01:35:35.900 We were made in the sun or we evolved in the sun.

01:35:39.880 And we need our vitamin D level to be at a healthy range.

01:35:46.340 Now, don't go crazy with it because then you'll end up with kidney stones.

01:35:49.420 But you want to know it, right?

01:35:53.240 You can't change what you don't measure.

01:35:56.500 You want to know it and then work to optimize it.

01:36:00.100 Either by getting more sun or supplementing it.

01:36:04.760 It's so important.

01:36:06.200 And eating garlic, mushrooms, and onions helps support immunity.

01:36:13.600 So, the second I in Bright Minds is immunity and infections.

01:36:18.200 And I believe infectious disease psychiatry.

01:36:22.060 It's going to be a major branch of psychiatry in 50 years.

01:36:26.020 And like COVID, for example, flamed the brain.

01:36:30.920 It's so interesting because when COVID first started, I mean, I have all these patients and they would get COVID and they'd get anxious or they'd get depressed or they'd get psychotic.

01:36:40.980 You could see it on their scans where their emotional brains became dramatically overactive.

01:36:49.520 And if you have long COVID, it's damaging your brain.

01:36:53.780 You can actually see it on scans.

01:36:56.460 I mean, I think that's true.

01:36:57.980 I mean, it's true anecdotally in my life.

01:37:00.800 People at the low point of COVID, people who had COVID in those few days where it can get difficult, it affected their emotional.

01:37:11.620 Condition.

01:37:12.760 A lot.

01:37:13.800 Why?

01:37:14.180 So, if you get COVID, in the next six months, you have a 25% increased risk of having a new onset psychiatric illness.

01:37:24.400 And what our scans taught us, it caused inflammation that targeted your emotional brain.

01:37:32.960 And so, the way to help that is omega-3 fatty acids decrease inflammation.

01:37:41.600 Curcumins decrease inflammation.

01:37:44.840 Quercetin, another supplement, decreases inflammation.

01:37:48.640 And then make sure you're on an anti-inflammatory diet where you're not eating processed foods, much sugar, or much simple carbohydrates.

01:38:01.260 There's a fascinating study from the Mayo Clinic where they looked at people who had a fat-based diet.

01:38:07.580 So, think avocados, nuts and seeds, green leafy vegetables, salmon, healthy oils.

01:38:14.600 40% less risk of getting Alzheimer's disease.

01:38:20.700 People had a simple carbohydrate-based diet, bread, pasta, potatoes, rice, fruit juice, sugar.

01:38:27.000 A 400% increased risk of Alzheimer's disease.

01:38:33.520 The D in Bright Minds is diabetes.

01:38:36.360 You do not want that.

01:38:38.040 It's a combination of being overweight and having high blood sugar.

01:38:42.740 It's a disaster for the brain.

01:38:45.420 So, when I get my overweight, pre-diabetic patients, I'm like, if you want to love your life for the rest of your life, we got to get this under control.

01:38:55.140 The N is neurohormones.

01:38:57.400 We talked about testosterone a little bit.

01:38:59.540 And the S is sleep.

01:39:00.680 So, all of those things are the bad things and the good things to do for your brain.

01:39:07.320 But it all boils down to, is this good for my brain or bad for it?

01:39:13.040 You can tell if someone is pre-diabetic, overweight, it's evident on the brain scan.

01:39:20.620 Yes.

01:39:21.600 Their brain scans look older than they are.

01:39:25.960 And that's reversible?

01:39:28.620 Absolutely.

01:39:29.100 Absolutely.

01:39:30.680 Now, the earlier you get it, the better, right?

01:39:33.260 If you have somebody with stage four Alzheimer's, I'm probably not going to make the biggest difference in their life.

01:39:39.680 But if they have stage one or two, or they have mild cognitive impairment, it's like, let's go.

01:39:46.380 Let's go after this.

01:39:47.500 Really?

01:39:48.500 My favorite story, one of them, is Nancy.

01:39:52.480 So, I did a big NFL study.

01:39:54.160 At a time when the NFL was sort of lying about traumatic brain injury in football was 2007, 2008, 2009.

01:40:03.500 And Ray White was one of our players.

01:40:06.080 He played linebacker for the San Diego Chargers.

01:40:11.260 And he joined my studies, so I would see his wife, who had frontal temporal lobe dementia, which is wicked dementia.

01:40:19.500 At a young age.

01:40:20.940 Yeah.

01:40:21.180 She was in her mid-50s.

01:40:22.360 And the doctor at UC San Diego told Ray, you should find a home for her.

01:40:30.840 Oh, gosh.

01:40:31.260 Because within a year, she is not going to know your name.

01:40:35.720 And he was mad and he was sad.

01:40:37.960 And he said, could you just tell me your opinion?

01:40:40.380 And we scanned Nancy.

01:40:42.340 And she had frontal temporal lobe dementia.

01:40:45.340 You could see it on the scan.

01:40:46.640 The whole front part of her brain was severely low in activity.

01:40:53.040 And I said, I agree with the diagnosis.

01:40:56.260 But if she was my wife, and I like my wife, I would do all these things.

01:41:03.880 Basically, all the Bright Minds interventions.

01:41:06.220 Plus, put her in a hyperbaric chamber. 1.00

01:41:08.140 Make sure she stops drinking alcohol.

01:41:10.700 Optimize her hormones. 0.73

01:41:13.100 Ten weeks later, they came back and I scanned her.

01:41:15.840 Her brain was better.

01:41:17.340 Wasn't normal, but it was dramatically better.

01:41:20.700 And Ray had lost 30 pounds in those ten weeks.

01:41:23.900 And I'm always trying to get my NFL players to lose weight.

01:41:27.420 And I'm like, how did you do that?

01:41:31.740 How did you lose 30 pounds?

01:41:33.840 He said, I knew if I modeled a brain-healthy life, she would do it too. 0.68

01:41:42.340 And it just hit me that sometimes motivation is about love.

01:41:49.560 He loved his wife.

01:41:50.960 Yes.

01:41:51.420 And as he got healthy, she did better.

01:41:54.220 Now, frontal temporal lobe dementia is awful.

01:41:57.100 And it was a war.

01:41:58.340 But five years later, she was still home.

01:42:03.260 Wow.

01:42:04.340 And I thought that was a huge win.

01:42:08.240 So, you're confident that this intervention slowed the progression?

01:42:13.080 Absolutely.

01:42:15.940 What causes frontal temporal lobe dementia?

01:42:18.780 We don't know.

01:42:20.900 Sometimes it's repetitive trauma.

01:42:23.680 Sometimes it's an infection.

01:42:25.940 But by and large, that's one of the ones we don't know what causes it.

01:42:31.360 Why is Alzheimer's sometimes referred to as diabetes type 3?

01:42:36.680 Because if you have diabetes and you're overweight, you're much more likely to have Alzheimer's disease.

01:42:43.300 Do you think that the rise in Alzheimer's, which is also, I think, real, we can say, it's not just a matter of, you know, extended lifespan or improved diagnosis, but there's actually more Alzheimer's, right?

01:42:54.880 Yes.

01:42:55.580 Is that directly related to food?

01:42:57.060 I think it's directly related to all 11 of those risk factors.

01:43:02.840 So, for example, if you have sleep apnea, where you snore loudly, you stop breathing at night, you're tired during the day, that triples your risk of Alzheimer's.

01:43:14.460 I think it's all of these things going together.

01:43:18.120 And we bought this huge lie that Alzheimer's is caused by an increase in beta amyloid plaque formation in the brain.

01:43:29.000 But when they develop medicines and vaccines against beta amyloid, that didn't work.

01:43:35.160 And we have a couple that are now FDA approved, but they don't work very well.

01:43:39.840 And they're very expensive.

01:43:42.780 It's, you have to go after all the risk factors.

01:43:46.620 As early as you can, I think all of us should be on an Alzheimer's prevention program, which is the same program to prevent depression.

01:43:57.640 And it's basically just healthy living.

01:44:01.500 It's basically answering that one question.

01:44:04.600 Whatever you're doing today, good for your brain or bad for it.

01:44:07.620 So, that goes to food, it goes to the time you go to bed, it goes to your interactions. 1.00

01:44:14.540 And it also goes to not believing every stupid thing you think. 0.99

01:44:18.700 So, we talked earlier about pushing away the bad thoughts. 1.00

01:44:21.840 I don't want you to push away, I want you to write them down.

01:44:24.900 Write them down.

01:44:26.080 Write them down.

01:44:26.600 Where no one can see them.

01:44:28.060 Well, that's up to you.

01:44:29.520 But it's like, and that just, go, is it true?

01:44:37.500 I don't know if you know my friend Byron Katie.

01:44:39.400 She's got this elegant way of killing the ants, the automatic negative thoughts. 0.96

01:44:45.660 So, my wife never listens to me. 1.00

01:44:48.600 I've had that thought.

01:44:49.480 And if you don't question a thought, you believe it.

01:44:55.560 And then you act as if it's true, even if it's a lie.

01:44:59.860 And so, my wife never sort of listens to me.

01:45:03.340 Write it down.

01:45:04.280 Is that true?

01:45:06.100 No.

01:45:07.460 I've written 19 public television specials.

01:45:10.140 She's listened to every script.

01:45:12.140 Now, maybe only once, but that's all I need her to do.

01:45:15.320 The second question is, is it absolutely true?

01:45:20.560 With 100% certainty, you know that thought's true.

01:45:23.980 No.

01:45:25.160 How does that thought make you feel?

01:45:27.760 Terrible.

01:45:30.300 Isolated.

01:45:31.260 Alone.

01:45:32.760 How does it make you act?

01:45:34.780 Distant.

01:45:35.420 Irritable with her.

01:45:36.680 What's the outcome of that thought?

01:45:38.260 She'll not listen to you. 0.98

01:45:41.480 The fourth question is, how would I feel if I didn't have the thought?

01:45:45.320 Fine.

01:45:47.940 How would I act?

01:45:49.480 Normal.

01:45:50.440 What's the outcome?

01:45:52.120 Happier.

01:45:53.780 The fifth question is my favorite one.

01:45:56.420 Take the original thought, Hannah never listens to me, and turn it to the opposite.

01:46:03.580 Hannah does listen to me.

01:46:05.840 And then I could list all the times she does.

01:46:08.160 And that way, rather than allow the thought to fester, see if you just push it away, it's still there. 0.90

01:46:14.120 But now, I've gone into the heart of it, and I've killed it. 0.51

01:46:19.080 And it doesn't bother me. 0.85

01:46:21.520 It's so effective.

01:46:23.000 And I have my patience.

01:46:24.120 If you just do that 30 times, take the worst 30 thoughts that come in your head. 0.98

01:46:30.240 Like one of my patients, I'm a pedophile.

01:46:35.760 Like, whoa, is that true?

01:46:39.520 Well, I have those thoughts.

01:46:42.520 Well, is it absolutely true?

01:46:44.300 He says, I've never touched anybody.

01:46:47.640 How does that make you feel?

01:46:49.560 Like a criminal.

01:46:51.640 Well, how would you feel if you didn't have the thought?

01:46:54.240 Normal.

01:46:54.680 What's the opposite of that thought?

01:46:58.320 I'm not a pedophile.

01:47:00.080 Do you have any evidence of that?

01:47:02.040 So I've never touched anyone inappropriately.

01:47:05.060 Right?

01:47:05.620 Just because you have a thought.

01:47:08.780 It's like all of us have crazy thoughts.

01:47:12.280 Yes.

01:47:12.880 All of us.

01:47:14.240 Like, this is going to sound really crazy.

01:47:17.960 But we have two dogs.

01:47:21.160 And I love them both.

01:47:22.500 But the German Shepherd loves my wife, like, way more than me.

01:47:26.620 Yeah.

01:47:27.340 I come home and he's like, hey, dude, what's up?

01:47:31.240 She comes home.

01:47:32.640 It's like, oh, my God.

01:47:34.420 It's Christmas.

01:47:34.680 I love you so much.

01:47:35.840 This is, where have you been?

01:47:37.580 I've been longing for you. 0.95

01:47:39.780 I mean, she's just nuts. 1.00

01:47:42.100 And he was in my office because when she's not around, he loves me. 0.92

01:47:46.360 And he comes hanging out with me. 0.70

01:47:48.760 And then I just had the thought, you know, if I killed my wife, he would love me more. 0.66

01:47:54.440 Yeah. 0.98

01:47:54.960 That's one answer for sure.

01:47:58.160 And then I'm like, yeah, but no.

01:48:03.600 No, we're not killing her. 0.99

01:48:05.520 And it's just your brain. 0.96

01:48:11.120 Jerry Seinfeld said this. 1.00

01:48:12.500 Your brain is a sneaky organ. 1.00

01:48:15.480 We all have weird, crazy, stupid, sexual, vile and thoughts that nobody should ever hear. 1.00

01:48:25.640 And just because you have a thought has nothing to do with whether or not it's helpful, whether or not it's true. 0.99

01:48:31.140 And it may not even be related to what you want at all.

01:48:36.080 Not at all.

01:48:37.900 And there's a verse in the New Testament I like, Romans 12, 2.

01:48:43.100 Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

01:48:46.640 And most Christians know that.

01:48:48.940 But they don't know the second part of it.

01:48:51.160 Then you can test to see if it fits God's good, perfect, and pleasing will.

01:48:59.660 And murdering Tana does not fit God's good, perfect, or pleasing will.

01:49:06.960 And in fact, will not make me happy because I love her so much more than I love the dog.

01:49:11.320 Of course.

01:49:12.220 Right.

01:49:12.900 But just having a thought, it's just like the weather.

01:49:18.260 It's like, oh, it's a storm.

01:49:21.020 And I can take that thought captive.

01:49:23.460 And I don't have to believe it.

01:49:26.800 But there's nowhere in school where we teach kids to manage their minds.

01:49:33.000 And so if they get these crazy thoughts, they think they're bad.

01:49:40.840 And they don't know how to deal with it.

01:49:42.680 So they smoke pot to manage it.

01:49:46.500 And then that becomes the habit loop of their life.

01:49:51.440 It's a familiar process, I think, for most people listening.

01:49:57.540 One question that arises, where do those thoughts come from?

01:50:02.260 It's a great question.

01:50:05.140 Because the thoughts may actually not be yours.

01:50:07.460 Well, that's my distinct impression.

01:50:09.400 That we're under, you know, attack or at least outside influence.

01:50:14.480 Or it came from a different generation.

01:50:16.860 There's a book I love called It Didn't Start With You.

01:50:20.380 And on our podcast, Change Your Brain Every Day, we interviewed Mark Wolland.

01:50:24.960 And he talks about how trauma gets passed down through generations.

01:50:31.780 That trauma causes epigenetic changes, these little switches on your genes.

01:50:37.860 And it makes you more vulnerable to anxiety, depression, and the thoughts that are associated with those things.

01:50:45.380 And it may have nothing to do with you.

01:50:48.400 Or any experience that you have had.

01:50:50.200 Or any experience you have had.

01:50:51.320 So are you saying that you arrive in this world with it encoded in your genes?

01:50:56.880 Yes.

01:50:58.240 That we're not blank slates.

01:50:59.860 No, we're not.

01:51:00.380 That we're what happened in the people before us.

01:51:04.840 So like aspartame can affect generations, so can trauma.

01:51:12.360 And there was a lot of study done on this of children and grandchildren of people in the Holocaust.

01:51:18.800 And how it changed the chemistry in their bodies, making them more vulnerable to having depression, anxiety, and PTSD.

01:51:30.120 It's also been found to be true for the children of the soldiers who were in Iraq and Afghanistan.

01:51:35.800 That they have a higher incidence of medical issues.

01:51:39.540 But what you're saying is not just that they picked it up at the dinner table.

01:51:43.000 You know, mom and dad are traumatized, therefore I am too.

01:51:45.840 It's something that is physical in origin.

01:51:49.220 It was genetic.

01:51:50.340 Yes.

01:51:50.960 That it's biological and psychological.

01:51:54.440 So all those circles, they all work together all the time.

01:51:59.580 Why do you fix that?

01:52:00.800 Well, one, you recognize those thoughts aren't you.

01:52:05.480 Yeah.

01:52:06.380 You just write them down and you evaluate.

01:52:10.440 Do you ever have those thoughts, evaluate them and find them true?

01:52:13.580 Like there is a monster under the bed.

01:52:15.180 Well, sometimes.

01:52:16.560 Well, sometimes.

01:52:18.440 All your fears come true.

01:52:20.160 Because the goal is never positive thinking.

01:52:24.100 That's not the goal.

01:52:25.180 The goal is accurate thinking with a positive spin.

01:52:31.440 I just published a huge study on 7,500 people on negativity.

01:52:36.880 And negativity is bad for your brain.

01:52:41.780 Negativity actually causes your prefrontal cortex, frontal lobes, to be lower in activity.

01:52:49.560 And so I'm not a fan of negativity.

01:52:54.320 But I am a fan of being honest.

01:52:58.000 And that just resonates the most with me. 0.87

01:53:03.320 So the pedophile.

01:53:06.620 He wasn't a pedophile.

01:53:08.360 It was the worry.

01:53:09.520 It was the thought.

01:53:10.480 Of course.

01:53:11.120 It's like jumping off a tall building.

01:53:12.920 You know, it's like, I don't want to get near the edge.

01:53:14.680 I could jump.

01:53:15.800 Right.

01:53:16.620 It's just a rogue thought has gone wrong.

01:53:19.820 And one of the exercises I give my patients is give your mind a name so you can gain psychological

01:53:27.480 distance from the noise in your head.

01:53:30.440 I learned that from my friend, Stephen Hayes.

01:53:33.320 And he was on our podcast.

01:53:35.120 And I'm like, give your mind a name.

01:53:36.600 I'm like, well, what would I name my mind?

01:53:39.640 Be interesting to hear what you'd name your mind.

01:53:42.100 But I named mine after my pet raccoon.

01:53:43.940 I had a pet raccoon when I was 16 and I loved her.

01:53:49.200 But she was a troublemaker. 0.99

01:53:50.960 She TP'd my mom's bathroom. 0.94

01:53:53.080 Oh, yeah.

01:53:53.440 She ate all the fish out of my sister's aquarium. 1.00

01:53:57.780 She'd leave raccoon poo in my shoes. 1.00

01:54:00.840 And that's my mind.

01:54:02.560 So I named my mind Hermie.

01:54:04.060 That was her name because I didn't know it was a girl when I got her. 0.96

01:54:07.360 And I just watched the movie The Summer of 42.

01:54:09.740 And Hermie was the main character and I loved him.

01:54:11.900 And whenever my mind starts to act up, metaphorically, I'll put her on her back and just start tickling 0.79

01:54:21.060 her.

01:54:21.940 I'm like, come on, we can do better than this.

01:54:24.640 So I'm not punitive to myself.

01:54:27.540 I'm a cheerleader.

01:54:29.140 And I realize I am not my thoughts.

01:54:32.880 Don't take yourself too seriously.

01:54:34.960 Absolutely not.

01:54:36.400 And does it fit, right?

01:54:38.100 It's another one of those questions.

01:54:39.600 Does this thought fit my goals or does it fit God's good, perfect, or pleasing will for

01:54:49.660 me? 0.90

01:54:50.800 I'm like, killing my wife doesn't fit. 0.97

01:54:53.860 There's like nothing about that that fits. 0.85

01:54:56.860 And I'm not a bad person because I had the thought because it's just the thought, right?

01:55:01.100 I didn't control it.

01:55:02.260 I'm not a bad person if I do something bad.

01:55:05.220 This is one of the reasons that nursing mothers go crazy is they have thoughts of harming their 0.98

01:55:09.900 own children whom they love more than anything.

01:55:12.320 Yes.

01:55:13.300 I'm sure you've dealt with that.

01:55:14.620 Absolutely.

01:55:15.420 That's common.

01:55:18.560 It's very common.

01:55:20.340 And they hate themselves for having those thoughts.

01:55:22.340 They hate themselves.

01:55:22.980 And they would never do anything to harm the child unless their brain is damaged or their 0.95

01:55:32.320 brain is disrupted.

01:55:34.460 So I've scanned over a thousand convicted felons, over a hundred murderers.

01:55:41.900 We got this scan of Kip Kinkle who murdered his mom and dad and then went to his high school 0.70

01:55:46.580 and shot 25 people.

01:55:48.340 His brain was so damaged.

01:55:50.700 How? 0.52

01:55:52.300 Well, he murdered his mom and dad, so we never really knew.

01:55:55.620 Likely had anoxia or lack of oxygen at birth.

01:55:59.660 And my hero story.

01:56:03.280 So when I first started doing scans, I loved it.

01:56:07.120 I was so excited about it.

01:56:09.340 And then I had, I'm a distinguished fellow of the American Psychiatric Association.

01:56:15.740 But then so many people there started to hate me.

01:56:18.480 They said, you shouldn't be scanning people.

01:56:20.780 It's not part of our tradition.

01:56:22.640 That's not what we do.

01:56:24.480 And I'm like, when I was growing up, I had a father whose two favorite words. 0.99

01:56:29.520 First one was bullshit. 0.99

01:56:31.440 The second one was no. 1.00

01:56:33.280 And I heard that over and over again. 0.97

01:56:35.460 And so when they told me I shouldn't be doing what I loved, I'm like, bullshit, no, I'm going 0.98

01:56:39.820 to do it. 0.66

01:56:40.280 But I became very anxious because I didn't like powerful people telling me I shouldn't

01:56:47.660 do something.

01:56:48.580 And it was really painful emotionally.

01:56:51.440 And then in 1995, I got a call late one night from my sister-in-law who told me my nine-year-old

01:56:59.540 nephew, Andrew, who's my godson, who I loved, attacked a little girl on the baseball field

01:57:06.840 that day for no reason.

01:57:09.940 And I'm on the other end of the phone.

01:57:12.040 I'm like, that's awful.

01:57:14.040 What else is going on?

01:57:15.660 She said, Danny, he's different.

01:57:17.600 He's mean.

01:57:18.420 He doesn't smile anymore.

01:57:21.060 I went into his room today and I found two pictures he had drawn.

01:57:24.860 One of them, he's hanging from a tree in a suicide attempt, nine years old.

01:57:30.940 The other one, he's shooting other children.

01:57:34.020 And that's the scary, that's awful.

01:57:36.100 And I'm like, I want to see him tomorrow because I'd been scanning people for four years and

01:57:40.920 I'd already correlated violence, at least in some people, to the left temporal lobe.

01:57:45.320 So if your left temporal lobe is damaged, you're more likely to have dark, evil, awful thoughts.

01:57:53.020 And so they brought him up to see me the next day.

01:57:55.220 They lived eight hours away.

01:57:57.260 And I'm like, buddy, what's going on?

01:57:59.360 He said, Uncle Danny, I don't know.

01:58:01.120 I'm mad all the time.

01:58:02.700 I'm like, is anybody teasing you?

01:58:04.660 He said, no.

01:58:05.920 He says, is anybody hurting you?

01:58:07.380 He said, no.

01:58:08.020 Is anybody touching you in places they shouldn't be touching you?

01:58:10.860 He said, no.

01:58:11.500 Well, 999 child psychiatrists out of 1,000 would have put him on medicine and put him

01:58:20.720 in therapy.

01:58:22.100 And I'm like, I have to look at his brain.

01:58:24.640 Because how do I know unless I look, right?

01:58:26.980 That's like one of the taglines of my life.

01:58:29.060 How do I know unless I look?

01:58:30.720 Why are psychiatrists the only medical doctors who virtually never look at the organ they treat?

01:58:36.660 And I went, great question.

01:58:41.080 I went to the scan center and I held Andrew's hand while he held his teddy bear and got scanned.

01:58:48.820 And afterwards, my mentor, Jack Pauldy, the image comes up on the computer screen.

01:58:55.920 He's missing his left temporal lobe.

01:58:58.600 And I looked at Jack.

01:58:59.560 It's the first time I've seen it.

01:59:00.680 I've seen it almost 200 times since.

01:59:02.540 He writes down, so mom won't hear, cyst, stroke, tumor.

01:59:10.500 And later that day, he got an MRI.

01:59:12.600 He had a cyst the size of a golf ball, occupying the space of his left temporal lobe.

01:59:20.380 I called his pediatrician.

01:59:22.120 I said, you find somebody to take this out or drain this thing.

01:59:25.680 He called three neurologists.

01:59:27.440 All of them said they wouldn't touch the cyst.

01:59:29.320 They didn't think it had anything to do with his behavior.

01:59:31.520 And they wouldn't recommend surgery until he had real symptoms, at which point I lost my mind and start screaming at the pediatrician.

01:59:42.320 I'm like, I have a homicidal, suicidal child.

01:59:44.680 What do you think are real symptoms?

01:59:46.720 So there's this incredible divorce between psychiatry and neurology.

01:59:51.640 And I thought to myself, neurologists, neurosurgeons, neurosurgeon, what I really want.

01:59:58.500 So I called the chief of pediatric neurosurgery at UCLA, Jorge Lazarev.

02:00:03.600 And he was already famous because he'd separated the Guatemalan twins or connected at the head.

02:00:09.960 And he said, Dr. Eamon, when these cysts are symptomatic, we drain them.

02:00:15.840 He's obviously symptomatic.

02:00:17.360 And after surgery, I got two phone calls.

02:00:22.060 First one was from my sister-in-law who said the surgery went really well.

02:00:27.260 And then she burst out into tears and she said, when Andrew woke up from surgery, he smiled at me.

02:00:36.680 She said, Dan, he hadn't smiled in a year.

02:00:38.940 And then I got a call from Dr. Lazarev who said, oh my God, Dr. Eamon, that cyst was much more aggressive than we thought.

02:00:48.300 It had actually thinned the bone over his temporal lobe.

02:00:52.120 So it had thinned the bone of his skull.

02:00:54.400 And he said, if he would have been hit in the head with a basketball, would have killed him instantly.

02:00:59.000 Either way, he would have been dead in six months.

02:01:02.020 And it was that moment I'd lost all of my desire for the American Psychiatric Association to like me, for my colleagues to love me.

02:01:13.120 I'm like, if you don't look, you don't know.

02:01:16.240 How many people are like Andrew, have brains that aren't right, that do bad things that we just label as bad rather than as sick?

02:01:25.640 And I mean, there was that moment that caused me to lose my anxiety and go to war.

02:01:32.380 Did he improve?

02:01:34.320 He got so much better.

02:01:35.800 And today he's got his own business and his dad and he's married and he has kids and yeah.

02:01:46.600 And we've seen almost 200 cysts since then.

02:01:50.740 Well, there are a couple of famous case, Charles Whitman, most famously at the University of Texas.

02:01:55.280 Right.

02:01:56.100 But of murderers who were clearly driven to it or their brain tumor or cysts played a role in it, obviously.

02:02:05.300 Right.

02:02:05.620 It's not that uncommon.

02:02:06.400 And how would we know unless we looked?

02:02:11.120 And so Dovstavsky said, you can tell about the soul of a society, not by how it treats its outstanding citizens, but by how it treats its criminals.

02:02:23.480 Yes.

02:02:23.780 And it just, I want to rehabilitate people who do bad things or at least try, right?

02:02:35.400 We should look at their brains and see, can we get them better?

02:02:39.700 Can we get them to love their brains so they don't go out and use drugs?

02:02:42.980 And I was involved in a program in Washington State where they actually screened for ADHD and learning disabilities, made them go through a 14-week course to learn about what they had.

02:02:55.460 And it cut recidivism from 69% to 29%.

02:03:01.060 Now, I think this is a conservative idea.

02:03:05.140 Yeah, it is.

02:03:05.540 That if you invest in true rehabilitation, they're going to get out and they're less likely to come back, which means they're going to get out, they're going to work, they're going to take care of their families, they're going to pay taxes.

02:03:19.080 They're going to be a more important part of society rather than we just house them and punish them further. 0.99

02:03:28.300 Your new book, Change Your Brain, Change Your Pain.

02:03:36.200 Dr. Raymond, thank you.

02:03:37.940 That was amazing.

02:03:38.760 Thank you so much.

02:03:40.780 Thank you so much.

02:04:06.480 Thank you.

The Tucker Carlson Show - November 17, 2025

Big Pharma’s Most Dangerous Lie and the Dark Truth About Weed

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