The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The No.1 Brain Doctor: "This Parenting Mistake Ruins Your Kids Brain!", "Alcohol or Marijuana Will Destroy Your Brain!", "A Stagnant Career Can Increase Your Chance Of Alzheimers!" - Dr Daniel Amen
Mon, 10 Feb 2025
Are our brains under attack? Based on a bank of over 200,000 brain scans, Dr Daniel Amen reveals the hidden threats silently destroying our minds and steps to fight back Dr Daniel Amen is a psychiatrist and brain disorder specialist, and founder and CEO of the Amen Clinics. He is the bestselling author of books such as, ‘Change Your Brain Every Day’ and ‘Raising Mentally Strong Kids’. In this conversation, Dr Daniel and Steven discuss topics such as, how alcohol shrinks your brain, the link between Alzheimer’s and depression, how heartbreak is equal to heroin withdrawal, and and the impact of social media on the brain. 00:00 Intro 02:25 Why This Conversation Is Important 03:58 How Many Brains Has Daniel Scanned? 04:45 Brain Rot: Why Are People Caring About Their Brains Now? 05:38 Is There a Link Between Porn Consumption and Brain Health? 08:34 Can I Fix My Brain? 09:52 Why Do People Come to See Daniel? 11:10 Alcohol Is Bad for the Brain 15:11 What Does a Brain Look Like After Heavy Drinking? 16:39 Why Does Brain Size Matter? 20:10 Alcohol Is Aging Your Brain 21:36 How Bad Are Drugs for the Brain? 26:38 What's Wrong With Magic Mushrooms? 33:01 Are Antidepressants Being Oversubscribed? Proven Alternatives 39:26 Can You See Trauma on the Brain? 42:59 Things You Can Do at Home to Help Trauma 45:27 The Impact of Negative Thinking on the Brain 46:48 Low Anxiety Will Kill You 48:46 How to Become More Disciplined and Motivated 53:21 How to Calm Your Worries 59:50 Can Extremely Negative People Become Positive? 1:00:29 Ads 1:01:28 Who Is Elizabeth Smart? 1:03:35 Horrific Events Don’t Necessarily Define Who You Are 1:05:23 The Impact of Stress During Pregnancy on Your Child 1:09:03 The Cause of Alzheimer's 1:14:03 The Impact of a Fatty Fish Diet 1:16:12 The Impact of Hope and Grief on the Brain 1:23:55 How Do You Raise the Perfect Brain? 1:30:07 What Are the Non-Obvious Ways to Help Children's Brains? 1:33:57 Ads 1:35:01 Is ADHD Increasing in Our Population? 1:40:32 Daniel Amen’s Daughter 1:43:11 Different Types of ADHD 1:46:12 Can You See Love on the Brain? 1:47:46 What Change Would Daniel Like to See in the World? 1:53:20 Mindfulness and Meditation 1:54:45 Ice Baths 1:55:10 Loving Your Job 1:56:17 Breath work 1:56:56 Social Media and Its Effects on the Brain 1:57:07 Hustle Culture 1:57:42 Microplastics 1:58:06 Noise Pollution 1:59:31 Is AI Going to Be Good or Bad for Our Brains? 2:01:46 Are Brains Getting Bigger or Smaller? 2:03:16 What's the Most Important Thing We Didn't Talk About? 2:05:14 Has Scanning Brains Changed Daniel’s Belief in God? 2:05:32 The Effects of Religion on the Brain 2:09:21 The LA Fires and Their Impact on the Brain 2:13:00 Guest’s Last Question Follow Dr Amen: Instagram - https://g2ul0.app.link/t3fyeyooNQb Twitter - https://g2ul0.app.link/UmRfScqoNQb Podcast - https://g2ul0.app.link/Lfnd1rmoNQb Amen Clinics - https://g2ul0.app.link/W1oBV9roNQb BrainMD Supplements - https://g2ul0.app.link/SZLrxBtoNQb To support Change Your Brain Foundation - https://g2ul0.app.link/Uq3shdvoNQb You can purchase ‘Raising Mentally Strong Kids: How to Combine the Power of Neuroscience With Love and Logic to Grow Confident, Kind, Responsible, and Resilient Children and Young Adults’, here: https://g2ul0.app.link/lavOHXyoNQb Watch the episodes on Youtube - https://g2ul0.app.link/DOACEpisodes My new book! 'The 33 Laws Of Business & Life' is out now - https://g2ul0.app.link/DOACBook You can purchase the The Diary Of A CEO Conversation Cards: Second Edition, here: https://g2ul0.app.link/f31dsUttKKb Follow me: https://g2ul0.app.link/gnGqL4IsKKb Independent research - danielamen.tiiny.co Sponsors: Linkedin Ads - https://www.linkedin.com/DIARY PerfectTed - https://www.perfectted.com with code DIARY40 for 40% off Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: Why should you care about brain health?
Because people are worried that their habits are shrinking their brain, like food, gaming, social media, pornography. What about working with arseholes? Bad for your brain.
And then is there anything non-obvious that we do to our children's brains?
Yes. And this is so important because this is one thing a lot of parents do without knowing the consequences for their children. And we'll talk about that. What about the negative thinking? Well, we just published this huge study on this. And the science is really clear. It decreases activity in your prefrontal cortex, which impacts your motivation, focus, and mood. It is detrimental to your brain.
So, how can you kill the negative thoughts? Well, there's a whole bunch of things. One is sapon. Head-to-head has been shown to be equally effective. There's antidepressants. And then, whenever you feel sad or mad or nervous, what I want you to do is simple. It's so simple.
I find it incredibly fascinating that when we look at the back end of Spotify and Apple and our audio channels, the majority of people that watch this podcast haven't yet hit the follow button or the subscribe button, wherever you're listening to this. I would like to make a deal with you.
If you could do me a huge favor and hit that subscribe button, I will work tirelessly from now until forever to make the show better and better and better and better. I can't tell you how much it helps when you hit that subscribe button. The show gets bigger, which means we can expand the production, bring in all the guests you want to see and continue to do in this thing we love.
If you could do me that small favor and hit the follow button, wherever you're listening to this, that would mean the world to me. That is the only favor I will ever ask you. Thank you so much for your time. Back to this episode. Dr. Daniel Amen. If someone's just clicked on this conversation now and they have no idea who you are, which is highly, highly unlikely.
Can you tell me why listening to you and this conversation and the work that we're about to go through now is so important for everyone, even those who believe that right now they have no issues?
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Chapter 2: What is the link between alcohol and brain damage?
Everybody has a brain that's listening. It controls everything they do, how they think, how they feel, how they act, how they get along with other people. And most people know it but don't. Your brain is the organ of intelligence, character, and every decision you make. And when it works right, you work right. And when it doesn't, you have trouble.
And most people have no idea that their bad decisions, their sadness, their anxiety, their insomnia, their poor relationship has to do with the physical functioning of their brain. So if they want to be happier, They need to think about loving and caring for their brain. Optimize your brain. You optimize your mind's ability.
You mentioned scanning brains there. Remind me again how many people's brains you've scanned now. So it's now about 260,000. 260,000 people's brains. And you've scanned some famous brains.
Yes, actually people from nine months old to 105 from 155 countries. And it's public knowledge. I've been in Justin Bieber's docuseries, Seasons. I scanned his brain. I've scanned Miley Cyrus' brain. Mel Gibson just went on Joe Rogan and talked about me scanning his brain. Muhammad Ali, Mike Tyson, Jake Paul.
Yeah. You also scanned my brain. And you actually taught me a lot from scanning my brain, which I'm... And did you think about your brain after we talked about it? Of course, I think about it all the time now. It's also interesting that in 2024, the year just gone, the word of the year was the word brain rot. And that's interesting, because the subject of the brain, I don't think has been...
given the credit and the attention it deserves, really until recently, and much of your work has played into that. Why do you think, if you had to guess, why do you think Oxford University's word of the year was brain rot?
Because people are worried that their habits are shrinking. their brain, especially social media and digital addictions. I'm so hoping they'll go to brain health, be more aspirational.
We've talked about a lot of things on this show. One of the things that really stuck with me is how the content we consume can have a profound impact on our brains. We often think of the chemicals, the drugs, the alcohol and all those things which I want to talk about. But one such piece of content which I don't think we have talked about is the impact of pornography on the brain.
Is there a link between brain health and pornography consumption?
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Chapter 3: Can marijuana harm your brain?
repeatedly with pornographic images. It's like dopamine, dopamine, dopamine. It begins to deaden that area, and then you need more and more to begin to feel anything at all. That's why fame is so hard on the brain. But pornography, especially in the young, is incredibly damaging to the brain.
So is that applicable to all things that cause like a really sharp burst of dopamine and stimulation? So you said there fame, pornography, I mean, potentially gaming or gambling, those kinds of things. Alcohol is obviously one of those things as well. Cocaine. Cocaine, especially for a developing brain.
Especially for a developing brain. If there's any message, protect your brain until you're 25. And then your brain will protect you. But until then, your prefrontal cortex, that front third of your brain, is not fully developed, which is sort of why God gave you parents. So you supervise. It's like, oh, my teenagers hate it if I supervise them. And yeah, they hate it more if you don't.
But what if you get to 25 and you're listening to this now and you go, Jesus, Does this mean that I can do nothing about my brain? Of course not.
I mean, what I've shown is, let's just take the NFL work. Big damage, right? Let's stop lying about this. Football is a brain damaging sport. And soccer as well is a brain damaging sport. So high levels of damage. 80% of my NFL players got better. when we put them on a rehabilitation program.
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Chapter 4: How do magic mushrooms affect mental health?
So if you've been bad to your brain, like nonstop gaming, lots of pornography, terrible food, and all of a sudden you go, oh, I can have a better brain. Your brain can be better in as little as a couple of months where you just feel better, think better, your mood is better. But it has to start with this concept. I think we've talked about brain envy. You have to want to have a better brain.
When people come to you, what is it they're typically motivated by? When they come to you, why do they come to you? Is it because they've heard of your work on the internet and they're curious about getting their brain scanned? Or do they usually come with a symptom or some other...
Now, usually they come because they're in pain, that they're anxious, they're depressed, their marriage is falling apart, or their wife says, come or I'm going to divorce you. It's not an uncommon thing. Or they're struggling in school. They're not living up to their potential in one way or another. Now, about 10% of the people come to us go, I'm fine, but I want to see and I want to be better.
And I don't want Alzheimer's. So a lot of people come because they love a parent or grandparent that has Alzheimer's. They realize there's a genetic component to it and they don't want to have that. But that's really someone who is forward thinking. I think more people come because they're hurting.
What evidence have we got that alcohol is bad for the brain and bad for the rest of our body, especially in moderation?
Well, the U.S. Surgeon General just came out wanting to put cancer warning labels on all alcohol. That's sort of big evidence. I mean, three years ago, the American Cancer Society came out against any alcohol that Because drinking any alcohol increases your risk of seven different cancers. And that's a big deal.
And then the evidence I have, and my first clinic was outside of the Napa Valley in Northern California. So alcohol is a big thing. And as I was looking at scans, I'm like, your brain's older than you are. that alcohol is not a health food. It is detrimental to brain function. And then, of course, you know, so I've been a psychiatrist. Now I decided to be a psychiatrist 46 years ago.
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Chapter 5: What are effective alternatives to antidepressants?
The number one problem I see is someone drinks and they make a bad decision. Someone drinks and they say something to their partner that they just shouldn't have said. Or they drink and they go to work. Or they drink and they drive. Or they drink and... It just causes so much trouble. And in 1999, I did a show called The Truth About Drinking.
And we took a young adult who had trouble with alcohol, got him sober, scanned him, And then on national television, we got him drunk, just like he got drunk. And it just crashed his frontal lobes. And you just, it's so clear that alcohol takes the brake off your brain. And so people use it. to calm the brain down. But there's certain parts of your brain you really don't want to go offline.
The part that says, don't say that, don't do that. Is that just when I've had one drink and then when I sober up, I'm back to normal? Or is this chronic? Well, it depends.
One drink will decrease in a mild way your decision-making. When it becomes chronic, your life begins to get out of control.
Because I'm wondering, you know, if people drink in moderation, are they going to see long-term impacts to their brain? What is there such thing as... drinking just a little bit and being fine?
Well, I think there's always sort of a dose response. There was a study in Spain that looked at people who had mild, moderate, and severe drinking, and they compared them to people who didn't drink at all. Even the people who only drank a little had disruptions in the white matter of their brain. Now, most people have heard about gray matter and white matter. Gray matter is nerve cell bodies.
White matter is nerve cell tracks. So if you think of gray matter, it's where the computation is happening in the brain. And white matter... are like the highways. And so even a little bit of alcohol is creating potholes. It's disrupting the highways in the brain. And if you're drinking a lot, you are prematurely aging your brain.
You've scanned a lot of people who are alcoholics. Lots. I mean, I've got some scans. here and which I'll put on the screen but can you explain to me exactly what a brain looks like when the person has been drinking heavily for a long period of time so again we do a study called SPECT and SPECT looks at blood flow and activity it looks at how the brain works and
For people who know the mitochondria, those are the little powerhouse energy plants in your cells. The spectracer, 49% of it is taken up by the mitochondria in the brain. So we're also looking at energy metabolism. And what we see with alcoholic brains is something we call scalloping, which is this global decrease in activity. So a healthy brain, full, even, symmetrical activity.
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Chapter 6: Can trauma be a catalyst for growth?
And we are now—so many states have legalized marijuana for recreational use, including here in California. And the mental health crisis is not better. If anything, it's dramatically worse.
There's two issues here, isn't there? There's the impact cannabis has on the brain and then there's the whole issue of legalization. And as you were speaking, I was just looking at some of the research and it says exactly what you said. It says that there was a study published in JAMA Network which examined over a thousand young adults' brains
And almost 70% of heavy users exhibited reduced brain activity during working memory tasks. The decline was associated with poor performance in retaining and using information. Long-term cannabis use has been linked to smaller hippocampus volume, which again impacts memory and learning. So, I mean, the science is clear of what it's doing, but the question of legalization is a whole nother issue.
Well, please don't put people who use marijuana in jail. Like, that's just a bad use of money. That's not smart. But the problem becomes we're not educating kids on the potential damage to brain development, which nobody really argues about. Nobody reputable I know of is going, yeah, give it to teenagers and let them smoke all they want. No, it's just dumb.
So it's a bigger question, and I think the answer— I have a high school course. It's called Brain Thrive by 25. And we actually studied it in 16 schools. Decreases drug, alcohol, and tobacco use. Decreases depression and improves self-esteem. Why? We teach kids to love and care for their brain. You got your brain scanned, and now you love your brain better. You want it to be better.
That's the answer. It's not scanning everybody. It's educating everybody. Your brain controls everything you do. And when it works right, you work right. And when it doesn't, you don't. So let's love it and let's learn together how to optimize it. But the big innovation, Stephen, for 2025 in psychiatry are marijuana, psilocybin, and ketamine. The street drugs of the 60s are coming back.
And I'm like, I feel like I'm living in this insane world where we're not talking about you should eat better. and exercise and learn not to believe every stupid thing you think. And meditation could calm your mind probably more effectively than alcohol or marijuana. And it's not hard to learn. What's wrong with psilocybin magic mushrooms?
Yeah, everybody's so excited about microdosing and it's a treatment for depression. And I think I've seen this story before. So in the early 80s, benzos, you know, like Xanax and Klonopin and Ativan, they were mommy's little helper. And this will really help your anxiety. The problem is they make your brain look older than you are, and they're addictive as hell. Then there was alcohol.
It was a health food. Marijuana is innocuous. Pain is the fifth vital sign, which led to the opiate epidemic. And now we're into mushrooms. Psilocybin-associated psychosis has gone up 300% in the last couple of years. That not for everybody, but for some vulnerable people, and we don't know who they are, it can flip them into a psychotic episode. I'm like, we need to be careful.
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Chapter 7: How does early life impact brain development?
Yeah.
And they were training people to do psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy.
But there isn't a psilocybin compound that's been approved yet by the FDA. So... there's still, I think it's stage three clinical trials from what I understand. I was quite involved in that world as an investor once upon a time. So I understand the like rigor to get these compounds clinically approved. And you're right.
So in the early like clinical trials, there's, I mean, groups of like 20 people in some of the early clinical trials. And as they're progressing now, and I think getting to stage three, they need to have bigger sample sizes and, and make sure that these compounds are safe.
And from what I've seen, a lot of people are trying to get it approved in a clinical setting for cases of treatment-resistant depression, where you do see, even in the studies that I've read, you see some people have...
adverse responses so some people get worse and there's you know if you take a someone who's treatment resistant depressed and potentially suicidal and you give them a a strong compound like psilocybin some people can get worse but for the ones that get better It's pretty remarkable.
It's like I've been... I remember the first study that I read, I think coming out of one of the London universities that's really leading on this, maybe Imperial College London or something. And it said something like 30% of people that did one dose of psilocybin were... went into clinical remission after 12 weeks after one dose.
And there's really like nothing else that I can think of that can deliver that kind of response in that period of time. Ketamine. Ketamine.
I mean, MDMAs, I think, been... Ketamine can do it, but then ketamine can also be addictive and can be problematic. So I'm like, well, why wouldn't we scan them first? And then try to figure out why you're depressed. Because if you think about it, depression is like chest pain. And nobody gets a diagnosis of chest pain. Why?
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Chapter 8: What are the risks of Alzheimer's and how can it be prevented?
Thank you.
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Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And two, you know when relapse happens. Relapse happens when you don't sleep.
Okay.
When you've gone too long without eating. When blood sugar levels go low. Relapse happens. You start making bad decisions. If you're a female, when you're in the last week of your cycle, because blood flow to your frontal lobe drops for many women. So I have five sisters and five daughters. I completely believe in PMS. And I've scanned people, best time of their cycle, worst time.
It's like they're two different people, sort of like they have multiple personalities. because their brain is just so different. Now, obviously not with all women, but for certain ones, it's a big issue.
And if the ants are taken over, so if the automatic negative thoughts, which also tend to go up if you haven't slept, if you've gone too long without eating, if you're at that time of your cycle or you're under chronic stress or you're drinking or using other drugs. So you might suppress them, but then they come back. And they attack you. So then you have to suppress them again.
And this is how addiction starts.
So is it fair to say that if you're trying to change who you are and you're trying to establish a new habit or crack motivation, then the goal shouldn't be necessarily to get a six-pack. It should probably be something further upstream like sleep well or better frontal lobes.
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