Dr. Drew Ramsey
Appearances
Something You Should Know
The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
Yeah, that's the whole point. Mental fitness are the things that we do to build our mental health. And I formally define it as it's the knowledge, patterns, habits, and skills that culminate in a more enjoyable, more mentally sound life.
Something You Should Know
The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
and these include just in broad strokes here these include things like what like diet like sleep like i mean just like what are the the big buckets here yeah so there's some of the the classics of lifestyle medicine that you know everybody knows they need to do a little better job on probably whether it's in uh nutrition or sleep hygiene or maybe moving our bodies more
Something You Should Know
The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
So it's some of those ideas. I try to put those ideas in a new context for people, which is how it specifically relates to brain health and mental health and these new parts of mental health that people aren't really paying attention to that maybe we'll get into a little bit. The idea that our brain grows, that's a different motivation for sleep time.
Something You Should Know
The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
But along with these classic tenets of lifestyle medicine, sleeping better, eating better, moving our bodies better, i saw that some things were changing for my patients around a certain set of issues that when they invest time in you know let's say making better human connections or building more self-awareness or living a life with more purpose
Something You Should Know
The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
it just did transformative things for their mental health. And so it seemed that investing in these, if there was a bench press for mental health, like what would it be? I feel like these tenants help answer some of that, that we have a set of activities and a framework where we can, whether we have a mental health diagnosis or not, whether we can be making our mental fitness stronger.
Something You Should Know
The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
That's really easy. Mike, you have a hobby?
Something You Should Know
The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
That's great. Your risk of depression just went down by 30%. Have you eaten seafood in the past two to four weeks? Leafy greens and nutrient-dense stuff? Yeah. Yeah, your risk of depression probably just went down by another 30% or so. Do you have a life that you're living with a sense of purpose?
Something You Should Know
The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
Okay, well, you just have, according to the data, a bunch of factors related to both your biology, your brain health, and your risk of mental health illnesses, all of which look a lot better to me as a psychiatrist because of your answers to those questions. Not everybody's in as fortunate a position as Mike of having a great sense of purpose.
Something You Should Know
The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
And I think particularly when you've had some mental health struggles or when you're having mental health symptoms, which we know more than ever people are, those types of things can be a little bit elusive. And so these are some of the core tenants that I really want people to think about and focus on beyond, again, some of these standard, really important pieces.
Something You Should Know
The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
We also want people working on and thinking about things like living a life with purpose, having hobbies and being engaged in those hobbies, because these are really protective for our mental health.
Something You Should Know
The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
Oh boy, I'm so glad you put it that way because it blows me away that more people don't know about the connection. You know, it feels like so often folks know misinformation about food or fear mongering or, you know, something they're trying to avoid, but they haven't heard something like, wow,
Something You Should Know
The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
If you have clinical depression and you're in treatment and you're not getting all the way better and you start eating a Mediterranean-style diet, which means more nuts, more whole grains, more lentils and beans, more seafood, you know, tasty diet, about 32% of people in that situation will go into full remission from their depression. So that was a randomized trial called the SMILES trial.
Something You Should Know
The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
And there have been a number of these trials that connect our food to our mental health. So there are a lot of mechanisms by which this work. Number one is how our dietary pattern, the foods that we eat, affect the growth and repair mechanisms of our brain.
Something You Should Know
The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
this is called neuroplasticity and it's really cool cutting-edge neuroscience and it has to be how we start thinking about the care of our brains and our minds we want to think about our brain our mind not again this is like broken thing right struggling with our all these symptoms but is this dynamic organ that is growing and repairing itself.
Something You Should Know
The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
And we have with our activities, with our choices, we have a say in how well some of that goes. The other way is just people are missing a bunch of nutrients that are super important for mental health. A lot of Americans in particular like to kind of go on a, I don't know, supplement frenzy, but they're missing some things that really food is a much better source.
Something You Should Know
The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
Stuff like fiber, phytonutrients, which are all these cool molecules found in plants. I'd even argue just a lot of people are eating a diet according to the data, most recent research on the American diet, they're just missing a lot of nutrients like vitamin E or magnesium. And what I find really fascinating is a lot of us, a lot of eaters,
Something You Should Know
The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
don't know where to find the most important nutrients for our brain like if i started quizzing you mike on your top folate source vitamin b9 or we're like when i need a little b12 that's my go-to meal most of us don't have one and i think that's a huge red flag i mean if you're listening and you don't have a sense of some of these nutrients it's a huge opportunity
Something You Should Know
The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
in terms of a place whereby learning more, going beyond this idea that a multivitamin gives us an insurance policy, and just learning a little more around how to nourish our mental health. What I find is a lot of people know and like some of the top brain foods, whether it's wild salmon or pesto or white beans or sauteed greens with garlic.
Something You Should Know
The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
I mean, there's a lot of delicious stuff for your mental health. And then lastly, Mike, sorry to keep going on, but the microbiome, which is all of the organisms that live in our gut, what you eat directly affects the type of organisms that are living there.
Something You Should Know
The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
And if you just think about it in simple terms, having a diversity, certain sort of markers in your microbiome, that is really good for your health overall.
Something You Should Know
The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
It depends where you are for certain people. For sure, there'll be a profound change. If you really embrace this idea and you get off of a diet of highly processed foods, if you, with that, start probably eating more plants, better quality protein, losing weight, I mean, you're on the path to transformative health changes. I think that we do probably need to be serious.
Something You Should Know
The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
Everyone's kind of hedging like, oh, how much? It's like we do need to be realistic about where the health of this country is and why we're having such a problem. We don't need a lot of new research. I mean, it's not a mystery of what's going on, that as a populace, we really struggle with a lot of excess caloric consumption, a lot of excess alcohol consumption.
Something You Should Know
The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
A lot of people are still struggling with smoking. So we've got some massive health problems on our hand. I'm very convinced that food is medicine and that controlling what you eat is an essential step that I hope everybody listening feels very empowered to do. None of my food recommendations are onerous or boring. I believe, I grew up on a farm.
Something You Should Know
The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
I've grown a lot of food along with being a physician. And I think food should be simple. I think it should be delicious. I think it should be really affordable. Thank you.
Something You Should Know
The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Something You Should Know
The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Something You Should Know
The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Something You Should Know
The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
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Something You Should Know
The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
Thank you.
Something You Should Know
The Secrets to Being a Successful Adult & Building Your Own Mental Fitness
These are some of the core tenets that I really want people to focus on, say, making better human connections, or building more self-awareness, living a life with more purpose. If there is a bench press for mental health, these tenets help answer some of that.