Welcome back. I'm Mel Robbins, and you're listening to an interview that I did here in our studios in Boston with Harvard's Dr Chris Palmer. And I'm so glad that you're still with me because you now know the remarkable results that Dr Palmer achieved in his own life, that he's achieving with patients here in Boston. And I'm sure you're curious, All right, what exactly is this eating protocol? What are the lifestyle changes? What do I need to do? Why is this working? And so as we drop back into this conversation, You're going to hear Dr. Palmer explain the science of why he believes mental illness is a metabolic issue. I'm about to ask him, how the heck can you tie together metabolism and mental health?

We have long known that there are biopsychosocial causes for mental illness. That means neurotransmitters, hormones, genetics play a role, stress and trauma play a role, loneliness, addiction. All of these things can play a role in mental illness. But to date, nobody has been able to put them all together in one coherent That's what I am arguing. And what I am arguing is that cutting-edge research over the last 20 years, once and for all, helps us connect those dots. And in the simplest way to put it, is it what What I am saying is that people who have brain disorders, their brains are either doing something that they're not supposed to be doing or failing to do something that they should be doing. Those people with brain disorders have a metabolic problem affecting their brain. And that is how we can tie together neurotransmitter imbalances, hormone imbalances, stress, trauma, loneliness, all of it, and put it together in one clear way.

You now call this the brain energy theory.

I do.

And explain that so that anybody listening can understand what the brain energy theory is.

In a nutshell, it says that mental disorders are metabolic disorders affecting the brain.

What does metabolic mean?

So most people think of metabolism in this really simplistic way. They think that it's burning calories and it affects our weight. I don't want to take away from that. There is no doubt that metabolism does influence how much you weigh, does influence your body weight, it affects your athletic performance. Those things are true. But the reality is metabolism is so much more than that. Metabolism is a fundamental part of all living organisms. So in the simplest terms, I would say metabolism is taking food and oxygen and some other things like vitamins and nutrients, and turning those things into energy or building blocks that are used to maintain or grow cells. It's humans eating and drinking and breathing in oxygen and breathing out carbon dioxide. Those are foundational to metabolism. But in fact, they play a role in every cell within our body. They play a role in the way our cells cells develop, the way they function or don't function properly, whether those cells live or die.

And just so that I am staying with you, Doc, I want to make sure I understand when you say metabolic. Do you have an analogy that would help someone like me that does not have a medical degree? I'm not a neuroscientist. I want to be able to leave this conversation and both explain it to my daughter who has anxiety or to my son or myself who has ADHD or my husband who has treatment-resistant depression. I want to be able to explain this. So when you use that big word metabolic, what are you referring to in the body, and how can we understand it at a simple way?

So in many ways, metabolism is ridiculously complicated.

I was afraid you were going to say that.

No, it really is. And so I'm going to give you a few analogies. But for context, I need people to understand that I get as a scientist and as a researcher, I get it is very, very complicated.

Great. And I appreciate you being willing to help those of us that are not planning on getting a PhD in this to actually understand the word metabolic because it's input process and then how it changes your body. But I like visuals, and I know you have a really good one.

So the easiest way to help people at least understand the complexity of metabolism is like traffic in the city. If I ask you what controls traffic in the city or what are all of the factors that play a role in whether there are traffic jams or no traffic jams?

Number of cars, number of stoplights, patterns of the traffic flow, whether or not there's construction, accidents.

Everything you said is true. So on one level, it's complex, right? It's really complicated. But if we really want to get to the heart of what causes traffic accidents and what causes traffic jams, we also want to think about what's controlling all of these cars at the end At the end of the day, it's the drivers inside of the cars. The drivers. If all of the drivers are doing exactly what they are supposed to do, traffic is going to flow optimally. If the drivers start messing up, if they're on their cell phone, if they're having a road rage day, if they're flipping people off, if they're slamming on the brakes for no good reason, if they're swerving into the other lane, traffic accidents, traffic jams begin to occur. So at the end of the day, the drivers are foundational to the flow of traffic. Agree. And with metabolism and human metabolism, it is equally complex. There are lots of things. There are biological, psychological, social things. Our diet, sunlight exposure, our sleep, the temperature of the room we're in, our age, all of those things play a role in metabolism. But if you really We look foundationally in a scientific way, what's really at the heart of it?

It's these tiny things in our cells called mitochondria. And they are actually foundational to metabolism. They are a part of the definition of metabolic problems or metabolic dysfunction. And the great news is that we can use cutting edge research about them over the last 20 years to once and for all start to piece together this complex mental health puzzle of what causes mental illness. Much more exciting news is if you then ask the question, Well, if there's a problem with mitochondria or metabolism, what can we do about it? Common sense lifestyle strategies like changes in diet, exercise, sleep, stress reduction, managing substance use. Those things can actually correct metabolic problems, so they can help people lose weight if they've got a metabolic problem. They can help type 2 diabetics reverse their diabetes. They can help prevent heart attacks. And what I am here to say is that those same strategies in the way that they can play a role in your blood glucose, in the way that they can play a role in your weight, in the way that they can play a role in preventing heart attacks, they can help restore your brain function and help your brain work better so that you no longer have what's called a mental illness.

Wow. I want to go back to the analogy because I was with you and I'm like, Okay, the drivers are the power. The drivers, okay, the drivers. And then if you now take that analogy and we talk about metabolism, are the drivers in your metabolism, your cells, or are they something else?

They're the mitochondria inside our cells.

And What is mitochondria?

So mitochondria, for people who've had high school biology, they probably remember mitochondria.

I had high school biology. You don't remember? I do not remember. That's okay.

So Most people who have heard of them have heard that they are the powerhouse of the cell. And what that means is that they are taking food and oxygen and turning it into energy. So mitochondria are controlling most of those processes in human cells. They are controlling our metabolism. But in many ways, the cutting-edge research part of it is that they're also playing a role in hormone production. Things like cortisol, estrogen, and testosterone, the first step in the synthesis of those hormones occurs within mitochondria. Mitochondria play a role in producing and regulating neurotransmitters like serotonin or dopamine. Mitochondria play a role in turning inflammation on and off. Mitochondria are affected by all of those lifestyle strategies: diet, exercise, sleep, hormones, substances, substance abuse, like cigarette smoking, alcohol, marijuana. But here's That's the thing. They're also affected by psychological and social factors. Trauma and stress affect our mitochondrial function, which then ends up affecting our metabolism, which then ends up making us or putting us at higher risk for developing a wide variety of mental illnesses, all the way from PTSD to depression to anxiety, to ADHD, to bipolar, to schizophrenia, people with serious adverse childhood experiences, horrible childhood, trauma abuse, they're at higher risk for developing essentially all of the mental illnesses.

But guess what else they are at higher risk of developing?

I have no idea.

Obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart attacks, and they are at very high risk of dying early deaths from those things.

You're here to say that if we focus on improving our metabolic health, which is food, sleep, lifestyle choices that are largely within our control at a cellular level, from the inside out, you can heal all of this and have profoundly better health outcomes.

Yes. I think for most people, That is 100% true. There are people who probably have rare genetic conditions or hormone imbalances or chronic infections or other things that are also impacting their metabolism, they may need additional strategies. So I'm not here to say that I've got the cure all for everyone with mental illness. The second thing that I want to say is that the devil is in the details. I don't want anybody I'm ready to come away from this conversation thinking that Chris Palmer is saying that if people with schizophrenia just ate a little more broccoli, it would cure their schizophrenia, because that's not what I'm saying. I'm not saying that a dietary intervention as simple as just eat more vegetables is going to cure schizophrenia.

What are you saying?

What I am saying is that dietary interventions, such as the ketogenic diet, Which starts to get very science-oriented. But if we use science-informed dietary strategies, like a ketogenic diet, I actually have been getting people with horrible lifelong schizophrenia better. Some of them are putting their horrible debilitating mental illnesses into remission, sometimes off of all psychiatric meds and living dramatically better lives.

I want to see if I can give this back to you because I am on a mission to make sure everyone listening can translate this extraordinary research of yours and these ground-breaking findings about the connection between food and your metabolism and every aspect of your health. But for this conversation, your brain functioning and you being mentally well. I think we all understand, generally, all right, if I'm a smoker, if I eat a lot of processed food, if I sit around on my couch all day and I'm playing video games, or I'm just looking at social media, that's not good for my heart. That you can predict based on people's habits who's likely to have a heart attack because their food that they're intaking, the way that their lifestyle choices are impacting their health, it's pretty evident that that could lead to a heart attack. But what you're basically saying is that after 30 years of research, those same lifestyle choices of food and sleep and exercise and breathing and how your body metabolizes this is changing the functioning and structure of your brain?

Absolutely. That is, in my mind, incontrovertible now. So in the same way that diet and exercise can affect your heart and your liver and your kidneys and your ovaries, guess what? The brain isn't Isn't immune. I don't know who on Earth came up with a concept that the brain is somehow the only organ in the human body that is immune from all of those things. When every other organ system is being affected, the brain is being affected. And what are the symptoms? How do we know when the brain is being affected? It comes out as what we call mental illness. So some people might have symptoms of ADHD. Others might have symptoms of an anxiety disorders. Others might have chronic unrelenting depression. And in extreme metabolic dysfunction, extreme cases, people might develop schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and other debilitating conditions.

What are the symptoms that you have a metabolic issue?

Profound metabolic issue would be serious obesity, type 2 diabetes, disease, history of a heart attack, history of metabolic syndrome or current symptoms of metabolic syndrome, which include high blood pressure, insulin resistance, bad lipids. We're looking at two biomarkers in particular, which are low HDL cholesterol, which is the good cholesterol. So if you have low levels, that's bad. And then high triglycerides. So if triglycerides are really high, that is a bad sign as well. Okay.

So if you have any of these things in yourself or somebody that you care about deeply, or I would venture to say any of the mental health issues that are not tied to something specific going on in your life, but that are just chronic, this is an indication. These are symptoms that you have something going on with your metabolism.

A hundred %.

Got it. Okay. So what's interesting about this is you're basically saying you got somebody walk into your office with ADHD or depression or chronic anxiety or schizophrenia or severe OCD, or Tourette's, or anything that any human being may struggle with. You, as a Harvard-trained psychiatrist, now see those as a symptom of a metabolic disorder.

I do. And that has completely changed the way I practice psychiatry.

Wow. That is so cool because I think since the history of time, people have walked into a psychiatrist or a psychologist or a psychoanalyst. There's a bazillion people you could see with some mental health struggle or some severe issue that they're dealing with from a mental health perspective. We attack the mental health issue without going neck down into the body. When you say, whoa, anybody in your A Life that has, and you've listed a lot of things, from anxiety to depression to OCD to PTSD to being on the autism spectrum to schizophrenia to bipolar disorder to trauma, all of these things. Imagine how transformative it is to look at somebody that you love and go, Oh, this mental health issue is a symptom of your metabolic system being completely out of whack. You need to understand this is a symptom of a metabolic disorder in their body. Holy shit, I think I just got this.

You have said it very articulately and very clearly and plainly, and I don't disagree with anything you've said. It has profound implications because in case people think like, Well, but I'm doing okay. I have a mental illness, and my treatment isn't so terrible. I want to be clear by ignoring the metabolic root causes. People with mental illness are at increased risk for developing, over their lifetime, a broad range of medical conditions. They are at higher risk of developing all They're all of the metabolic disorders. They're at higher risk of developing obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease. They are at higher risk of developing autoimmune disorders and other conditions. And on average, people with mental illness are dying early deaths. On average, for all of the psychiatric diagnosis, if you take them all together, ADHD, anxiety, personality disorders, depression, bipolar, schizophrénie, if you take all of them and put them all together, on average, men are losing 10 years of life, and women are losing seven years of life. And when we look at what are they dying of, the primary cause of death is heart attacks. They are losing essentially over about 15% of their lifespan because they are dying of metabolic problems, but they're dying early.

They are more likely to develop Alzheimer's disease disease. And so the ends of their lives are not pretty. They are not great. They are things that we all want to avoid. And we, the mental health field, are largely ignoring all of that, thinking it's not our problem. It is our problem. These are people, these are human beings coming to us, begging us for help, asking us for help. We need to offer them comprehensive human health care. And that means not only reducing their mental symptoms, it also means keeping them happy and healthy as long as possible, helping them live full, vibrant lives, helping them prevent getting these other medical conditions, and helping to prevent them getting dementia when they get older. We owe it to them to do that.

And your work is offering a brand new pathway. It's a good treatment for people and hope.

It is.

How do you know if you're getting enough sleep based on the things that you study? Yes. Because you hear eight hours.

How many hours do you sleep, by the way?

The Where I get the more boring I am. So I would say nine or 10.

Yeah, I love that. People who sleep less than six hours have higher mortality. They have lower mood, And they are hungrier, as we said, with the leptin. What you want to do is really to realize how much sleep you need is when you sleep without an alarm, How many hours do you sleep? And not when you're sleep-deprived.

Oh, I bet I sleep 10 hours. If I don't have an alarm on, I sleep way longer than I think I'm going to.

When you look at the last couple of weeks of your life, the best days, the when you felt the most refreshed, the best mood- Were the days I got the highest amount of sleep? By far. That's how much sleep you need. And every American that's listening to this is going to be like, I can't sleep that much. But you think about your best days of your life happened when you slept adequately. It changes your hunger hormones. It It changes your hormones in general. For women, especially as we get older, this is important. It changes your mood. It changes your ability to make decisions.

Yeah.

And your interactions with other people. So why would you want to skimp on that? Why would you say that you'll be like everybody else, sleep when you're dead? When you look at the data, the data says opposite. It says, if you don't sleep, you'll be dead So much earlier.

That's true.

If you don't sleep, you will be more depressed, more anxious, have more hunger and craving signals. You are going to be a version of yourself that is a shell of what you want to be.

So one final thing that I think would be extremely helpful to people. Let's assume that we went to bed early, and we wake up, and we get a good night's sleep. Can you walk us through what you would recommend the eating routine, or what is on our plate, and when are we actually eating? Okay. For complete hormone balance.

Yes. Okay. So as you know, everybody is different, and their life circumstances are different. Every time I do this, people say, Oh, but I work night shift, or I have little kids. I get it. I had many years where I didn't get enough sleep, where I didn't get enough sunlight, where I couldn't make the best decisions because I was just so pulled in all the different directions. So I get it. But we didn't even talk about circadian rhythms, but Mel, sunlight and darkness run our bodies. We have internal clocks in every one of ourselves. So routines are excessively important in terms of our mood and our body, our nutrition. So when you wake up in the morning, you want to get sunlight. I have a rule that I learned from someone online. Basically, I did this for a few days, and I felt the best I've ever felt, and I'll tell you what it is. When you wake up, instead of scrolling your phone, checking your messages and your emails, go get sunlight first. Sky before screens.

Oh, I love that.

So sky before screens is how you should start your day. Your body is wired to see sunlight in the morning, even if it's a cloudy day. It just has to be bright light. You can just walk out outside. For me, it's my back door. Just walk out for a few minutes. It could be 2 to 10 minutes. You could do... For me, I'm usually just in my pajamas, so I'm coming back in and getting ready for the day. So you don't want to have food or caffeine in the first 45 minutes of your day.

Why?

I'll tell you why. When you wake up, you feel groggy, right? Yep. That grogginess is partially, mostly from adenosine in your brain. Adenosine. Adenosine. Okay. And it clears out, as you know, within 30, 40 minutes, it clears out. Then you have your coffee, then you eat your food. And the reason why is coffee, the way it works, it blocks our adenosine receptor. So that means that it doesn't help get rid of that adenosine. It just blocks it from actually binding. So if you don't let that adenosine clear out and you just drink your coffee, when the coffee wears off in a couple of hours, that a dentinine is still there, and it just binds those receptors, and you feel excessively tired.

And that's why you think you need another cup of coffee.

And then you're fully dependent. Like the people that wake up and they need the coffee right then And then they need it again at 10:00, and then they need it again at 1:00, it's because you're not letting that adenocine go. You need to let that clear out.

I'm guilty of this. So I am going to try this tomorrow. I am going to absolutely have my coffee, and then... Oh, no, I'm not. I'm going to wake up. I'm going to wait 45 minutes. Then I'm going to have my coffee. I'm going to see if I have a craving for a second cup. Yes. That is fascinating. Okay.

So you want to let it clear out naturally, because it's not going to It's clear out naturally if you start the caffeine cycle right away. Got it.

So clear it out for 45 minutes. Get our son in. What's next?

Eat.

Okay. No intermittent fasting.

So everybody... I love intermittent fasting.

Then why are we eating?

Because I do it the opposite way.

Talk to me.

There's very good evidence that for thousands of years, we ate in one scheduled way, which is daylight hours. There was no microwave, Uber Eats. They had a fire, and you'd maybe eat an hour or two after sundown. That's it, right? Yeah. You are not snacking at midnight. There's nowhere to store the food thousands of years ago. Our internal clocks are set so that when melatonin hits 2-3 hours before bed, your organs shut down. You cannot process sugar as well as you did. You can't take it your muscles. You're not releasing digestive enzymes. So basically, when you're eating late at night, you're waking your body up in the middle of the night and asking it to do a math problem. Your body is going to be like, I don't want to do this. I'm going to make mistakes. You wake up and you're tired and you're pissed that someone woke you up in the middle of the night. That's what happens when you eat late at night.

Holy smokes. You put your body in conflict It's just the same thing with itself.

Yeah. And so intermittent fasting, everyone's doing it the wrong way. They're eating way late into the night, and then they don't eat all day when the sun is out, right? That's the time that your body is ready for food, right? So ideally, you wait an hour because nobody needs to be eating every minute of every day. Americans, we just eat 14 to 16 hours a day. It's just too much, right? So you wake up, maybe you get some movement in, you get your sunlight, you eat about an hour or two, even after you wake up. You don't need to push it to two, three, four. People are doing this thing. There's good evidence that skipping meals is actually bad for you, and that people who do it habitually actually have worse health outcomes, okay? Got it. So eat your breakfast. You want to have a high dopamine breakfast? Yeah. Let's have cottage cheese, eggs, tofu, scramble, veggies, nuts, berries.

Great. When do I eat next? Because I'm already hungry. No. Am I hungry right now? Are you hungry? When I eat vegetables, I would eat vegetables right now. There you go. So that must mean I'm hungry. But I got to have a glass of water first, and then I'm going to ask myself that again. See, I'm learning.

Then you tune in with the inner mouth, the brain-gut mouth.

Yeah. Okay.

So So then you can eat when you're hungry. Again, you can use your inner cues. Could be 12, could be 1, whatever your inner cues. You'll notice your Ghrelin is set on a Timer. Every day, you'll get hungry at the same time.

So hello, Ghrelin. It just It just, I think, dumped on me. Yeah. So what do you eat for lunch?

So basically, lunch is a chance for you to get... The healthier you eat earlier in the day, the better your chance of sticking to it. So they always say exercise and eating healthier foods, breakfast and lunch, is your best chance. So for me, I automated. And I had already talked to you when we had talked before that I try to eat the same things every day. So what do you eat for lunch? So I eat a salad for lunch. I usually put protein source on it. It could be different beans, nuts, it could be tofu, it could do eggs, you could do salmon, whatever you want. Protein and veggies, a salad with protein on it. And I always have a fermented probiotic food with my lunch because that's the best time for you to get in at least one to two servings of the kimchi, of the sauerkraut. It could be kombucha for a drink, apple cider vinegar in your dressing. So that's And then you have the best chance. Really simple. It can be very simple. And then your dinner is when you want to eat. If you are someone- Serotonin, baby. Yes. You're learning.

I'm paying attention.

So I know it's not sexy to say eat carbs, but carbs actually can be very healthy for you, especially in vegetable form, sweet potato, quinoa, whatever it is. You can eat that later in the day if you want to have that big boost of serotonin.

And what about snacks? If I'm I'm not legit hungry, but I'm not really craving anything, but I'm legit hungry midday, what's your go-to snack?

So remember that protein has this effect on your body that it tells your hunger hormones to stop. So if you want more leptin, eat more protein. So your snack can be yogurt. Your snack can be a protein shake. Your snack can be a piece of cheese. Something with protein because that will keep your dopamine levels up, and it will keep your hunger hormone stable. So protein snack. I think women, especially, we're eating just too little protein. There is a theory Yes. That the reason we get fat from eating ultra-processed food is because it's so low in protein that your brain never gets the signal that you're full. Your protein threshold is never met.

Wow. One final thing I want to ask you because we didn't really cover it, gluten. Everybody I know is gluten-free.

Yeah, it's not the gluten. There's very few people who are actually allergic to gluten. It is very common to have GI issues with processed gluten. So when you eat a lot of bread, pizza, carbs, but that's not the gluten itself. It's the fact that you're eating processed food. So gluten gets mislabeled all the time. What What I say to people is, go gluten-free for a few weeks, three to four weeks. See how you feel. When you add the gluten back, don't add back the bread, the cookies, the cakes, and the processed gluten. Add back a small wheat bulgar, like in a salad. Add back a healthy sourdough bread. Add back wheat in small unprocessed amounts and then see how you feel. And what I realized is that people villainize gluten all the time. And in America, gluten-free has become such a tagline that those foods are more unhealthy.

Oh, because of all the processing. Look at you, Dr. Amy. Is there anything else on this topic that we did not get?

I think we covered so much. I think like like you said, and I have taken this to heart, is that there's no pill that's going to save you. There's no person that's going to save you. When you learn about all this, when you actually listen to your own self, you What's going to be the one who saves yourself.

Well, Dr. Amy Shaw, let me just say thank you, because without this information, we can't save ourselves. And you've explained the internal, extremely elegant but complicated systems inside of us so that it makes sense, so that we understand why these choices, these substitutions, why it actually matters. That's my huge takeaway. I have never actually understood any of this at the level that you just explained, and that's an enormous gift. So thank you, thank you, thank you. What can we do to improve our memory, Dr. Amen?

Well, improve your brain. It's the most important thing. It's 50 %. I mean, think about this, Mel. 50 % of people, 85 and older, will be diagnosed with dementia. Those are odds I am not okay with. And if you want to keep your brain healthy or rescue it, you have to prevent or treat the 11 major risk factors that steal your mind. And I know we I don't have time to go in it, but the mnemonic I have is bright mind. So for example, maybe the most important thing, B, is for blood flow. Whatever you can do to increase blood flow to your brain, you're going to be happier, your memory is going to be better, and you're going to be more sexual because whatever is good for your brain, good for your heart, is good for your genital.

So is that the brisk walking?

So you want to avoid things that steal blood flow, caffeine, nicotine, being sedentary, having any form of heart disease. And then you want to do things that enhance blood flow. So walking, raw cacao, beets, the supplement ginko. These things all increase blood flow: cinnamon, oregano.

Wow. Okay. I want to hear the R, though. Bright Mind. I know that there's 11, but give me two or three of them.

The R is retirement and aging. When you stop learning, your brain starts dying. So constantly engage in new learning. The I is inflammation. But the one maybe to talk about more is the T. It's toxins. And we live in a toxic society society. Here I am in Florida. I just talked about all the fish on the Coast in Florida. On average, they have seven pharmaceuticals in their tissues. But just the products you put on your body. I have all of my patients download the app Think Dirty. It allows you to scan all of your personal products, and it'll tell you on a scale of 1-10 how quickly they're killing you. Oh, my God. We saw this year that the FDA took off number of sunscreens off the market because they were associated with cancer. How horrifying is that? You're thinking you're protecting yourself from cancer. The toxic products are giving you cancer. So think dirty. But also we have to stop thinking of alcohol as a health food. It's not. It's toxic to your brain. Or marijuana is innocuous. It's not. It damages your brain. And And it's these little lies in our society that is really promoting the disease we are just flooded with.

So you've been a psychiatrist for 40 years. What are five things you'd never do because it's bad for your mental health and your brain health?

Well, I never believe every stupid thing I think. And I think that's really important to know I'm going to get these crazy, stupid, awful thoughts, and I know how to manage and dismiss them. I would never say everything, I think. Some people come to me and say, Oh, Dr. Amen, I'm brutally honest. And I'm like, Well, that's usually not helpful. Relationships require... I would never purposely stay up late and screw up my sleep. I would never eat everything I want. And And I would never take medicine just based on symptom clusters. Like, I'm depressed, so take an antidepressant. So I think that's all insane. I always want to look at the brain and then target whatever treatment I need to have somebody's brains functioning.

Yeah. The one thing I forgot to ask you because right now, as you and I are talking, we've just turned the clocks back. But this time of year, when it gets darker earlier and it's colder, I notice my mood drops and I feel sad. What do you do, whether it's because of the time of year or because of chronic stress, you feel this languishing or heaviness set in. What are three things that you would recommend that somebody do to boost their mood?

So morning bright light. I think that can be really helpful. So a bright light therapy lamp for 20 or 30 minutes in the morning Exercise, don't overdo the caffeine. And it's really important. We haven't talked about this yet. Turn off blue light when the sun goes down.

What is blue light?

Constantly flood it with blue light. And in the morning, it's fine. But after dark, it's not because it decreases the production of melatonin. So you get it from your laptop, or you get it from your phone, or you get it from whatever gadgets you might be looking at. And so after dark, either put blue light blockers on your gadgets or just turn them off and go read a book.

Okay. Okay, great. And I also didn't ask you this, how do you know if your dopamine levels are low?

If you're tired, if you're unmotivated, if you can't concentrate, And you find yourself more impulsive than it's good for you.

And finally, let's bottom line, because you are the master at elite brain training. If you could leave everyone with just one thing that you would like them to start doing today to create better brain health, what would it be?

It's that mother tiny habit. It's whenever you come to a decision point in your day, just ask yourself, And what I'm doing, good for my brain or bad for And if you can answer that with information and love, I mean, I'm serious about this, love of yourself, love of your family, love of the reason you're on Earth, you're going to start making good decisions for your brain, and then everything in your life will be better.

If you can't afford to go to somebody in functional medicine to get this all tested, how do you figure out what's going on? You have in your the new book, Young Forever, you have all of these self assessments that you can do. But do you have to have testing at some point, or is there a way for you to have an accessible way? Because a One of the things I agree with you. I agree with you that our medical approach and the medical system is about treating illness versus keeping you healthy and whole. I agree that we treat symptoms, but we have a hard time getting to the root cause. I agree. Because I know that what's going to happen with this conversation, Dr. Hyman, is that we are going to activate anyone listening to absolutely take the next 10 days of your life and see what happens when you reset your diet and you remove a few things. Absolutely add in those simple supplements that cost you less than a dollar a day, and you are worth that investment in yourself and see what It happens. Absolutely take the steps to lower your stress and tap into your body's ability to reset, like even just the five deep breaths a day that activate and tone the vagus nerve.

But if somebody is going, I want to learn more. What is the next right step?

That's a great question. And one of the challenges I've always had with medicine is it's a secret guild. And doctors hold the reins. They can order the test or they can't. They will give you the results or they won't. They'll help you interpret them, or they won't. You're at the women's mercy of whoever you're seeing. Most doctors do a good job and want to help people, but it kept in the guilt. In the book, Young Forever, I do have really extensive questionnaires that allow you to figure out almost 80% of what's going on. Then depending on what you find in those, you can follow up with different kinds of testing. But because of this problem, exactly what you're talking about, I decided to co-found a company with a good friend called Function Health, which allows you, without a doctor's order to go to any Quest lab in the country, and there's thousands of them, get a blood draw of over 100 biomarkers that normally cost $15,000 for 500 bucks. Wow. It comes with a whole interpretive map and framework and dashboard that's filtered through the lens of functional medicine that I wrote that allows people to not have to go see the doctor and still do 80% of-Why the hell did I go to your clinic then?

I could have just done this, Dr. Hyman, bearing the lead. No, I'm just kidding. I am just kidding, everybody. I do want to say something that I was able to go to the medical center right here in this tiny town of Manchester, Vermont, and have blood drawn for those tests. Yeah, right. And so you don't have to go to your primary care. You don't have to go. All of the minute clinics that are popping up are places where you can go if you're going to do those things to order the blood draws.

Well, the thing is you have to usually get a doctor's order. So the beautiful thing about Function Health, this company that we created, was you don't need a doctor's order. So you can go to the website, sign up, and they'll network with over 50 different states, doctors in every one, where you can just go and get-The testing done. Yeah, get the testing done, get your results, and track it over time. And you can see your hormones, your thyroid, your insulin, your age-related markers, your brain chemistry, so much about what's going on with your body.

You know what's so cool about this? If you can afford to do it, and we'll put the link in the show notes, is it's like getting an X-ray of your insides. Yeah. You've proven to us that you heal from the inside out.

Yeah, it's absolutely true. And I'm so excited about this approach because it empowers people to be the CEO of their own health. And the reality is that even if you go to the doctor with all these complaints, they're going to be able to, quote, manage your symptoms. I don't want to manage people's symptoms. I want people to get better. I want people to reverse these problems and not need a doctor. The truth is, most of the things that work are not things you're going to get at a doctor's office, which is drugs and surgery. Sometimes you need them, and I use them. It's not a bad thing. But most of the problems we have don't respond very well to that. All these things we talk about, whether it's depression. I mean, any depressions just suck. They don't work that well. They have all these side effects. And the anxiety medications are highly addictive. I mean, they just cover over the symptoms. What if you could actually figure out why you're having the problem and fix it?

Well, I think you told us why. It's inflammation. It's a gut that's out of whack. It is the stressors in your life. It is the toxins in your environment. And not understanding that your body has this elegant design that is super intelligent and responsive and can heal itself if you are conscious and intentional about the right input. Yeah.

And that's what's exciting that's happening now in science is we're actually getting there. The old paradigm is dying, and in long The longevity space I've been working in, and when I wrote about A Young Forever, where these scientists are now talking about what's underlying all these diseases, these 155,000 diseases, that's not what we need to be thinking about. It's these 10 underlying problems that tend to go wrong as we get older that can explain all disease. And if we treat those, we may not be able to just extend our life by five years by getting rid of cancer or heart disease, but by 30 or 40 years. That means living to be 120 and being in good shape. I don't want to let it be 120 in a nursing home, and it I'm able to ride my chair. I'm able to ride my bike, go for a horseback ride, make love. That's what I want to do when I'm 100 or 120.

Wow. I'm glad that you said that because oftentimes I hear the word longevity, and I had that reaction. I don't want to be rotting away in a nursing home. Exactly. 125, that sounds terrible.

It's terrible because most of what we see, Mel, in the world is abnormal aging, and we think that's normal. Oh, it's normal to become frail and decrepid and not be able to do what you want and lose function. The truth is that most of us, our health span doesn't equal our lifespan. The last 20 years of our life-What's the difference between health span and lifespan? Well, health span is how many years you're healthy. You can do what you want. A lifespan is how many years you're alive. So if you're fine until you're 60, then you get dementia and you're nursing for 20 years, that's not good. So that's what you want to do, is make your health span equal your lifespan. So on my last day, I want to go for a hike with my beloved. I want to come home, make a delicious dinner. I want to have a bottle of wine, probably a pint of Ben and Jerry's ice cream.

Wait a minute. That wasn't on the diet. Who cares?

I'm 120. And then I make love, and I close my eyes and drift off, and maybe take a jump in the pond. That sounds incredible.

My mother-in-law is 85 years old. She jumps out of airplanes. She walks five miles a day. There you go. She's having the time of her life when Chris and I went alcohol free for a bit. She's like, I'm not doing that. I have my one glass of red wine a day. That's what I need. She plays cards. She prioritizes friends. Exactly. She is the definition mission of vitality at that age. She's like the Energizer Bunny. I can't imagine her running out of steam. And that's what I think you're talking about when it comes to vitality. You've talked also about self-care. What does that mean, self-care? Yeah.

So self-care is nourishing every part of yourself. So there is the physical part. So it is hard to heal and come home to yourself if you're living out of vending machines and drive-through windows.

Why?

Because your food affects your mood, and there's nothing life-giving in fake food. So as I like to say, as your grandmother would say, put some vegetables on that plate. Put some greens on that plate. So fruit and vegetables, I like to think of before I eat something, can I say, I'm eating this because I love myself? Then some things I won't be able to put in my body because I actually want to live. And we have it flipped where we will call those things the treat. I am treating myself by giving myself something that's killing me. To have to flip it. And of course, in moderation, because when people hear that, they're like, Do you mean I can never have? And drinking water instead of all the soda. Sleep is a big one. It is hard to come home to yourself when you're exhausted. We are busy, busy. And then all night, people are on their phones or up and can't sleep. I say, if your idea, and Hopefully this is okay to say.

You can say whatever you want.

Yes. If your idea of relaxing before you go to sleep is watching three episodes of Law and Order, I would encourage you to think about why is trauma relaxing to me?

Oh.

That's what it is. It's harm, crime, violation, attacks, and that's what is going to soothe me into my bedtime.

So what is the answer Yeah. That a lot of people give you when they do go into therapy about that connection.

It's that it's normal and familiar. Some of us grew up in high stress, so we think calm This illness is either fake or boring.

Wow.

People mistake peace for boring. It's like, to come home to yourself, you have to lean into the discomfort because it's going to feel unfamiliar. I was working with an adult woman and her mom, and they had been disconnected because the mother dealt with addiction and didn't raise her, but they are reconnected now and living together. And the adult daughter really wanted her mom to say she loves her. And the mother just said to me, That just seems fake. So she had not grown up with that, had not heard it. To her, it's like something people do on TV. And so I said to her, If you mean it, it's not fake. It just feels like it because you're not used to saying it.

It is amazing how many people don't tell the people that they love that they love them. Right. And it hadn't occurred to me. It's because they never were told that themselves. Yeah. And that it might feel forced or not authentic. Yes.

Whoa. Yeah. And that's the importance of us learning each other's love languages, because her response was the response of probably many of her generation, which was you have food on the table or you have a roof over your head.

Yes. What more do you want from me? Right.

What more?

Hey, it's Mel. Thank you so much for checking this video out. If you like this one, I have a feeling you're going to like this one, too. I'll see you there.