You are not stuck with the brain you have. You could make it better. I can prove it. I did the big NFL study when the NFL was not telling the truth about traumatic brain injury and football. 80% of our brain damage players got better. We want to extend a heartfelt thank you to our listeners. Because of your incredible support, we're out of time has reached number one on Apple's mental health podcast chart, number two on the health and fitness chart, and number 26 overall. We couldn't have done this without you. Thank you for being part of this journey with us. If someone has a problem with substance use disorder, please call one call placement. That's 888-831-1581. And if we can't help you, we'll make a referral to someone who can. Please, we're out of time. Today on We're Out of Time, I'm joined by world-renowned psychiatrist and brain health pioneer, Dr. Daniel Aiman. The man helping millions change their brains and change their lives. You've helped millions rethink what it means to be mentally healthy, not just emotionally, but physically and neurologically. What first led you to see the brain as the gateway to healing? So when I was 18, I was an infantry medic. So being older than you, when I turned 18, I had a there was a draft and Vietnam was going on. And I became an infantry medic and that's why I fell in love with medicine. But about a year into it, I realized I didn't like being shot at. So I got myself retrained as an ex-right technician. And that was very important. Our professors used to say, how do you know unless you look? And that really stuck with me in the 1975 I got out of the Army, finished college, went to medical school, and when I'm a second-year medical student, someone I love tries to kill herself. And I took her to see a wonderful psychiatrist and I came to realize if he helped her, which he did, it wouldn't just help her. That it would help her children. It would help her grandchildren, as they would be shaped by someone who was happier and more stable. So in 1979, I fell in love with psychiatry because I realized it can change generations of people, your work, in addiction changes generations of people. But I fell in love with the only medical specialty that never looks at the organ it treats. Think about that. That's right. Right. Every other medical specialist look at the organ, psychiatrist's gas. And I knew it was wrong and I knew it would change. And I started agitated at medical school and then in my psychiatric residency, I'm like, well, why aren't we looking at the brain? Of course, we should look at the brain. So when I had the opportunity in 1991 to do a study called Brain Spectimaging, which is the imaging study we do at Amen and Clinics, it literally changed absolutely everything in my life. From the time I go to bed to what I eat, to how I interact with other people, and what I realized, most psychiatric issues are not mental health issues, their brain health issues. Get the physical functioning of your brain healthy and your mind is better because the brain, the physical functioning of your brain creates your mind. And if your brain is inflamed, your mind's much more anxious. It's much more negative. Now, where I went to medical school at Oral Roberts University, they always talked about four circles, biological, psychological, social, and spiritual. And I believe in all four circles all the time. But when people come to one of your treatment centers, no one's looking at their brain, which is basically insane. And last year, there were 340 million prescriptions written for antidepressants without any biological data. And I don't think depression should be a diagnosis. I think of depression like chest pain. Nobody gets a diagnosis of chest pain. Why? It doesn't tell you what's causing it, and it doesn't tell you what to do for it. Right? There are so many different causes of chest pain, heart attack, heart arrhythmia, heart infection, lung cancer, pneumonia, gas, and ulcer, H-pilory, grief, anxiety can cause chest pain. You know, get it diagnosed. And if a cardiologist gave everybody the same treatment for chest pain, he'd lose his license and be sued for malpractice. Because it's ridiculous. But yeah, you go to the doctor and you go, I'm tired, I'm sad, I wake up in the middle of the night, you end up on an SS or I. And you have no idea if that's a good thing or a bad thing. What if they do 8 to 20 hours of psych testing? So psych testing helps, but it doesn't tell you one thing about what's going on in your brain. It doesn't tell you if your brain is healthy, if it's underactive, if it's overactive. It doesn't tell you if the brain has been traumatized from a concussion. It doesn't tell you if the brain is toxic because you're living in a mold filled environment. The idea that your depressed take lexapro is ludicrous, but yet it's happening millions of times, I mean literally every day. What's the difference between what you're doing and a Q EEG? So we actually do both here at AIM and clinics. Quantitative EEG looks at the electrical activity in the brain. Spact looks at blood flow and mitochondrial function or energy metabolism. I love the fact that you said you do both of them. Because you and I have taken a lot of heat sometimes because we're innovators. And we've done something that is effective and built to last and helps a lot of people. You've launched a true revolution in brain health. How is it changing the way we think about and treat mental illness today? Well, let's just compare. If we think of it as mental health, diagnoses based on symptom clusters with no biological data. The outcomes in psychiatry are not better than the AI was born in 1954. Think about that, right? There's no other specialty in medicine that has not made significant progress. 25% of the adult population is on psychiatric drugs. Huge win for the pharmaceutical industry. Huge loss for our society. When you think of it as mental health, 57% of teenage girls report being persistently sad and suicide in the youngest gone up 746. I want to hear about that. Tell me about that in detail because that was so interesting. The suicide has gone up 746% since the year 2000 in young people. It's so sad. And we're thinking of it as you have a mental health problem when your dopamine stores have been depleted because of the cell phone in your pocket or because of social media and you constantly comparing your life to people's lives that are in fact not real. You are being hijacked by big corporations Facebook Google for money because their algorithms make you sad, mad and anxious and the sadder and matter you are the more likely you are to stay on the platforms and the platforms are not about your health. They're about marketing and making money. So what happened from 2000 to 2025 is we had this cell phone revolution and social media where children aren't spending 30 minutes on their phone. They're spending seven hours or 10 hours on their phone and dopamine which is the neurotransmitter of more. It's a neurotransmitter of motivation, of focus, of zest, of let's get stuff done that we're thrilling these kids to death and literally to death because every time you get a notification every time you scroll you get a little bit of dopamine which presses on the nucleus succumbens that pleasure in your brain and it wears it out. So if you think of so you find no pleasure in anything. You end up no pleasure in anything and then you go to substances because the substances make you feel initially but then it flattens you out further over time. That's right. So I want to finish this idea of mental health or brain health because mental health is oh you have this problem based on these symptoms so we'll do these treatments which usually are medication if you get a doctor involved. If it's brain health we have to eat right and you have to go to bed and you have to exercise and probably you should be taking omega-3 fatty acids and you probably shouldn't be drinking and marijuana is not innocuous. It's you have to get healthy and with 75% of us overweight or obese and 50% of us diabetic or pre-diabetic there's no way you're going to be mentally healthy because if you're overweight the fat on your body is producing inflammatory cytokines that are damaging your brain. That just brought me to how you feel about GLP once. Like, step-down. Well, I think of it like lap-bound surgery would never be the first thing I'd recommend because they don't teach you habits but if there's no other way for you to manage your way then they can be a tool but if you don't use it as a gateway tool to get healthy it's going to end up hurting you in the long run. So you think it's a good maybe not putting words in your mouth but it would be okay to give you a head start so long as you followed it up with the right eating behaviors. If you can use it to teach you to know how many calories you eat to think of calories like money and you know it's like I hate wasting money it's just I hate it. I'm a value-driven person but I think of the same thing as calories is this I have a thing I teach my patients I like questions do I love it and does it love me back because you're in a relationship with food. I don't know if you've ever been in a bad relationship I certainly I'm in a horrible relationship with food. It's the only thing I got left. So I've been in bad relationships but now you're my wife I'm in the best relationship of my life. I'm damn sure not going to be in a bad relationship with food because I can control that and I just ask myself this question do I love it like I love donuts but they hate me they make me foggy they make me fat they make my knees hurt it's like no I'm not gonna eat the donut because it doesn't love me and I love me so much I only want to put something in me I was at the White House recently don't hate me. I call him the President I do not hate you. I was sitting next to Lisa Trout and Lisa and her husband Kenny own justify. Justify is the triple crown winning thoroughbred and as I was sitting next to him like would you ever feed justified junk food and she goes no. I said would you ever get a drunk? she goes no. I said would you ever get them stoned? No. I thought why? He would never perform to his potential but aren't we worth so much more? Yes but we don't even think about what we put in our bodies and your brain uses 20 to 30% of the calories you consume and I think treatment centers should really be focused on feeding people. Absolutely. And I know you have the same thought. The Blue Zone diets are what we typically serve our people in a general way. I mean we'll just hold by alcohol with the Blue Zone diet what we do we do because it's called rehab. In your new book change your brain change your pain you write that pain isn't two problems it's one system how does emotional pain and physical pain intertwine and why is that so often misunderstood? So chronic pain if you've had pain for more than three weeks it's not just in your back or in your knee or in your neck it's activated the pain circuits in your brain. Thank you. And they're the same circuits that cause grief and depression and anxiety and so learning to really get out and stay out of pain you have to have a healthy brain and did you know Tylenol which has made the news for all the wrong reasons recently actually helps with grief it actually helps with the emotional pain from a breakup. Why would that be because it calms down the same circuits or Simbalto one of the really good antidepressants it's FDA approved for chronic pain. Why is that or Samee the supplement that's been found to be helpful for mood also helps arthritis? Why is that because they work on the suffering pathway in the brain so when you think of pain think of three pathways there's the feeling pathway oh it's up my toe so it activates part of the brain called the thalamus and then goes to the sensory cortex go out oh my toe hurts and then if your brain is busy in the middle it'll activate the suffering pathway and that sort of smears that pain with fear and dread oh I won't be able to dance again and then if the calming pathway which is your frontal lobes isn't working right won't be able to turn off the pain and so ultimately in change your brain change your pain I talk about those three circuits and how to balance them so you're not living a life of chronic pain. I love that I love that did you innovate that? What now people have talked about these three circuits but I really got interested in why does Simbalto and Samee work for both physical and emotional pain and in the book the star of the book is called the doom loop it's how you hurt physically or emotionally I mean I could hurt because I got rejected or I lost my job or my wife left me it activates those same circuits and so it's pain happens the fear center smears which then leads to negative thinking I call them ants automatic negative thoughts which then goes to muscle tension which increases pain which then goes to bad habits whether it's opiates or benzoes alcohol marijuana whatever which then just keeps you into this doom loop and to get out of it we need a healing loop so what you're saying is all these things compress on each other and then it just starts a vicious cycle of repeat right and people in chronic pain have a high incidence of suicide because they're just predicting nothing will work and they see a life of chronic pain I opened the book with the story of a police officer who was involved in two high speed car crashes ended up with chronic back pain six surgeries opiates alcohol and he tried to kill himself and I met him and as I do I scanned him the brain's gear shifter it's called the anterior singular jars work away too hard and I'm like oh you can't get away from the pain because it just cycles so that was that suffering pathway and as we calmed down he got his life back how do you think that I still hurt I just don't think about it all the time and so I fixed him with saffron one of my favorite supplements raises serotonin comes down the singular we use saffron omega-3 fatty acids curcumin to calm the suffering pathway I taught him not to believe every stupid thing he thought right I teach this for all my patients whenever you feel sad mad nervous out of control right down what you're thinking just ask yourself whether or not it's true we used hypnosis to calm down the tension and I taught him how to love and care for his brain by what he ate reconnected with his wife I love that I love that you hit every note on that every single one you began your psychiatric career at Walter Reed and tripler army medical center what did those early experiences with soldiers teach you about trauma and invisible wounds so I was an infantry medic when I was young and then I got out of the army went to medical school and then went back in and I loved my time at Walter Reed and one of the big lessons my first professional paper was called post-theat-nom stress disorder a metaphor for current and past life events and what I came to believe and actually believe more strongly now it's the brain you bring into war that often determines the brain that comes out of war it's based on a concept I developed called brain reserve so take two soldiers put them in the same tank and a rack expose them to the same blast same forces same angles everything's the same one of them walks away unharmed the other ones permanently disabled why it's the brain they brought into that accident so did they have a mom who was really stressed when she was pregnant with that child that decreases brain reserve did they feed the child in a healthy way that increases brain reserve did they play tackle football that decreases brain reserve did they have concussions did they there's so many things about the increase and decrease reserve and I think it's so important to look at their brain I published a huge study on PTSD and traumatic brain injury an imaging can separate is this post-traumatic stress disorder or is this traumatic brain injury or is it both and why is that important well emotional trauma tends to activate the circuits in your brain physical trauma tends to deactivate them so if you don't know you may do the exact wrong thing for them so say you think it's emotional trauma but really they have low activity give them an SSRI and you can dis inhibit them and make them worse because SSRI's decrease brain activity but if you start with decreased activity and you decrease it further now they can become homicidal or suicidal how do you feel about TMS I'm a huge fan of TMS if it's scan guided TMS right to stimulate everybody is left front a lobe who's depressed assumes everybody who's depressed has low left prefrontal cortex activity that's a wrong assumption so how do you figure it out first with the with the key you image you image them can you could you be quantitative EEG or you can use SPACT or you can use Pat or I have a friend at UCLA uses FMRI but we need some biological data to target treatment this flying blind stuff should go away you know it needs to be objective and not subjective and that's what you're about to do now I'm also for PTSD I'm a huge fan of EMDR and I know how to do it I practice it and I find it incredibly helpful for the right brain that's right you've treated addiction for decades from your perspective what's actually happening in the brain when someone breaks free when that craving no longer controls them well their brain is getting healthy that's what happens when the craving you know I just had on the podcast was Julius Randall who really struggled with marijuana addiction and he doesn't struggle at all he doesn't even think about it anymore I think in large part because his brain is much healthier and he doesn't believe every stupid thing he thinks he's also very goal directed I have all of my patients do an exercise called the One Page Maricle on one piece of paper what do you want relationships work money physical emotional spiritual health and as a high level athlete he's goal driven so he knows what he wants and marijuana just doesn't fit any of them plus he wants to have a better brain because that's what makes him a great basketball player it's his brain he wants to be a good dad what is that it's my brain and so I think it's getting your brain healthy and the addiction treatment field there's actually very little discussion about healthy brain about let's look at it and get your brain healthy so you don't have to be controlled that's right most most treatment centers don't talk about the brain at all all right in my new book experiencing transcendence I talk about what happens after recovery that moment when someone truly moves beyond the identity of addiction or trauma from your view what's happening in the brain when someone reaches that higher level of peace or purpose so there's an interesting area of the brain it's called the default mode network mostly in the post year single in the back top middle part of the brain and when that's too busy you have a lot of negative chatter about yourself and learning to calm that down which we actually see in meditation and cause transcendence and psilocybin does it although I'm not a huge fan but it comes you know that EMDR does that prayer and meditation does that and one technique I gift all of my patients is give your mind a name it's you don't have to listen to the noise that your brain generates and so I named my mind after my pet raccoon so we both have a raccoon we both grew up in in seno when I was so I guess this 1970 I'm 16 I have a German Shepherd I went to the pet store to get him a leash and a little baby raccoon climbed up the back of my leg up to my shoulders started playing with my hair when I had hair and I grabbed her she was so cute I bought her took her home got into lots of trouble but I loved her but she was a troublemaker she teaped my mom's bathroom ate all the fish out of my sister's aquarium would leave raccoon poo in my shoes that's my name and so I named my mind her me after the raccoon and so I just don't have to listen to it you know I can choose if I want to listen to it if I don't or she's really bothering me I put her on my cage I get these little thoughts that are scary right because nobody can scare me the way I can and you know they're like clouds they come and I go ah oh ah oh and I've just learned that my thoughts are not facts and they're just like clouds they and they pass right and so I love the way you put it because it's just a day people learn in different ways they have to hear it in different ways they have to see it in different ways people are different I have so many crazy thoughts and I just don't attach to them because it's not the thoughts you have that make you suffer it's the thought you attach to so a guy that's very Buddhist by the way I'm sorry that's a very Buddhist principle well it's also a very Christian principle I'm working on a program for churches called the amen hole four and it's based on Romans chapter 12 verse 1 and 2 be transformed by the renewing of your mind then you can test if it fits God's good perfect and pleasing will and that thought you know I'll tell you this anyway your audience will think I'm really crazy but we have two dogs at home and one of them loves me and one of them loves Tana and the one that loves Tana when she comes home he's just so happy he acts just insane and one day terrorists that was his names in my office and hanging out with me and I had the thought if I killed Tana terrorists would get really excited when I came home and I'm like no I don't think I'm going to kill Tana right I mean it was just this crazy thought right that I just didn't have to attach to right and I told Tana and she's like you know if you say that out loud and I'm dead they're going to think you did it right that's right so you wrote this great book tell my viewers about the book because I'm very impressed with it I have not read the whole thing but I have a summary of it and I love it and you're going to give me a signed copy before I leave and I am going to cherish it and I'm going to read it. Wow thank you so much change your brain change your pain 50 million Americans suffer with chronic pain 20% of children have chronic pain and I want people to know that ultimately it's your brain that feels it and it's your brain that reacts to it and if we change your brain if we help heal your brain pain will dramatically decrease and I'm so excited about it one of the studies I quote people my age so I'm 71 80% of us who have no pain have abnormal MRIs why because you know our bodies break down over time but our body also figures out how to get around that's right that crushed disk or that bulging disk or the arthritis is so many people get the abnormal MRI and it scares them into surgery when if you do conservative care it has the same efficacy as surgery but 21 time fewer side effects and so I want to just give people because every time it's my neck it's my knee it's my shoulder my hip that hurts I get an MRI and they're always abnormal and people go oh well surgery could really help but I know general anesthesia is bad for my brain and so you know as I said imaging just changed everything for me and then there's another study this is like crazy on aspera tame so you know the sweetener and I die coax right of all the people bend your treatment centers you know a lot of them were addicted to die coax for sure aspera tame so they gave mice aspera tame made them anxious like really anxious and then they gave them volume and a calm them down no that's not the answer to aspera tame but the scary thing the babies of the mice who never had aspera tame were anxious the grand babies were anxious what does that mean it means environmental toxins like aspera tame could be driving the mental health epidemic in kids and nobody's thinking about it aspera tame is in 5,000 products okay you got any good news for me you're not stuck with the brain you have you could make it better I can prove it I did the big NFL study when the NFL was not telling the truth about traumatic brain injury and football 80% of our brain damage players got better so with better brain better life doctor where can people learn about your work so we have a podcast that you're on change your brain every day they can also follow me on Instagram or TikTok at doc aiman or learn about our 11 clinics at aimanclinics.com and you've got one right in in scene now right where we started yes I do all right I just want you to look into the camera and say see you next Tuesday see a next Tuesday that's right we're out of time please subscribe on youtube click the thumbs up and leave a comment please subscribe on apple podcast and Spotify and leave a rating and a review and share the we're out of time podcast with others you know who will get value out of it see you next Tuesday
