Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Dr. Daniel Amen: Brain Boosting Habits | E132

Episode Date: September 20, 2021

How do COVID, alcohol, and marijuana affect your brain? In this episode, we are talking with Dr. Daniel Amen, one of America’s leading psychiatrists and brain health experts. His breakthrough public television programs on brain and mental health have made him well-loved by millions of viewers seeking guidance on memory, attention, other cognitive functions, emotional issues, behaviour and more. Dr. Amen has authored or coauthored 70 professional articles and more than 30 books, including New York Times mega-bestseller Change Your Brain, Change Your Life. He has appeared on numerous television shows including Dr. Phil, Larry King, Dr. Oz, The Doctors, and The View. His work has been featured in Newsweek, Time, Huffington Post, ABC World News, 20/20, BBC, London Telegraph, Parade Magazine, New York Times, New York Times Magazine, Washington Post, LA Times, Men’s Health, Bottom Line and Cosmopolitan. In today’s episode, we discuss Daniel’s childhood, how to work through trauma, and what trauma looks like in your brain. We’ll also talk about Daniel’s perspective on marijuana and alcohol, what COVID does to your brain, and the little exercises you can do to improve your brain’s health. If you’ve always wanted to learn more about the brain and its secrets, this is a must-listen! Sponsored by -  ZipRecruiter. Try ZipRecruiter FOR FREE at ziprecruiter.com/yap Gusto. Get three months free when you run your first payroll at gusto.com/YAP Social Media:  Follow YAP on IG: www.instagram.com/youngandprofiting Reach out to Hala directly at [e-mail] Follow Hala on Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Follow Hala on Instagram: www.instagram.com/yapwithhala Follow Hala on Clubhouse: @halataha Check out our website to meet the team, view show notes and transcripts: www.youngandprofiting.com Timestamps: 00:51 - How Daniel’s Family Background Made Him Who He Is 03:07 - Daniel’s Goat Story 07:54 - What Does Trauma Look Like In Your Brain 09:59 - How To Understand and Soothe Your Trauma 15:06 - Daniel’s Perspective on Marijuana and Alcohol on The Brain  17:32 - Does Marijuana Prevent Alzheimer’s? 21:36 - Obesity’s Impact on The Brain 27:17 - What COVID Does To Our Brain 29:20 - How to Improve Your Brain’s Health 35:24 - Understanding the Dragons That Haunt You 42:21 - A.N.T.S. (Automatic Negative Thoughts) 51:23 - Daniel’s Research He Wish Would Go Public 56:23 - Little Things You Can Do To Improve Your Brain 57:34 - Daniel’s Secret to Profiting in Life Mentioned In The Episode: Daniel’s Website: https://danielamenmd.com/ Daniel’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doc_amen/ Daniel’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/DocAmen Daniel’s Clinic Website:​​ https://www.amenclinics.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode of YAP is sponsored in part by Shopify. Shopify simplifies selling online and in-person so you can focus on successfully growing your business. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com slash profiting. You're listening to YAP, Young and Profiting Podcast, a place where you can listen, learn, and profit. Welcome to the show.

I'm your host, Halla Taha, and on Young and Profiting podcast, we investigate a new topic each week and interview some of the brightest minds in the world. My goal is to turn their wisdom into actionable advice that you can use in your everyday life, no matter your age, profession, or industry. There's no fluff on this podcast, and that's on purpose. I'm here to uncover value from my guests by doing the proper research and asking the right questions. If you're new to the show, we've

chatted with the likes of XFBI agents, real estate moguls, self-made billionaires, CEOs, and bestselling authors. Our subject matter ranges from enhancing productivity, had to gain influence, the art of entrepreneurship, and more. If you're smart and like to continually improve yourself, hit the subscribe button because you'll love it here at Young and Profiting Podcast. This week on YAP, we're chatting with Dr. Daniel Aiman, one of America's leading psychiatrist

and brain health experts. His breakthrough public television programs on brain and mental health have made him well loved by millions of viewers seeking guidance on memory, attention, emotional issues, behavior and more. The doctor has authored or co-authored 70 professional articles and more than 30 books, including New York Times Megabest Seller best seller Change Your Brain Change Your Life. He's appeared on numerous television shows including the Doctor Phil Show, Larry King Live, Doctor Oz, and The View.

His work has been featured in Newsweek, Time, Huffington Post, ABC World News 2020, and so many more. In today's episode, we'll discuss Daniel's childhood, how to work through trauma, and what trauma looks like in your brain. We'll also talk about Daniel's perspective on marijuana and alcohol, with COVID-19 dust your brain, and little known exercises you can do to improve your brain health. If you've always wanted to learn more about the brain and its secrets to optimization, this episode is a must-listen.

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That's ziprecruiter.com slash yAP. ZipperCrooter, the smartest way to hire. Hi, Dr. Daniel Aiman. I'm so happy to have you on Young and Profiting Podcast. Welcome to the show. Paula, thank you so much for having me. Of course. So you are known as like America's most famous psychiatrist. You are super accomplished. You've been doing this for 40 years. Bestselling author of over a dozen books. You're known on TV. You've got television programs. You are just a rock star in this space. You are a psychiatrist, a brain disorder specialist.

And it turns out that you have Lebanese descent. So me and you are both Middle Eastern. And for me, being Palestinian, I feel like that's one of the reasons why I'm successful. I feel like that's one of the reasons why I have grit and drive. And so I'm curious to know how has your Lebanese descent impacted your career and the way that you are today in terms of how hard working you are and how successful you are. Well, my dad is like the embodiment of the American dream and that his parents came, my grandmother grew up in an orphanage in Bethlehem and my grandfather came from Haifa before it changed over to Israel. And they were very poor. My grandfather worked in a foundry in Flint, Michigan. And my dad's one of five. But for whatever reason, he had the drive in the family and worked in a grocery store and ended up owning his own chain of grocery stores and became the chairman of the board

of a four4 billion company. And I think I inherited his drive. And Lebanese are often called the merchants of the Middle East. And I'm so grateful I have an older brother because in Middle Eastern families, the oldest boy, Golden Child, right? If you're not the oldest boy, you're a bit expendable. And so I was second, which was just perfect because I had the drive, but I wasn't all that attached to the grocery business,

and just love psychiatry and wanted, that's what I wanted to do for my life. And it just sort of worked. I'm grateful for it. Yeah, I can imagine and likewise, I mean, my dad, same thing, like embodied the American dream, came over here, became a surgeon, grew up super poor, and so I can totally relate to, you know, looking up to your father in that way. I know that you and your father

actually didn't have the best relationship. So let's actually move on to that. You have a funny goat story that I want to talk about. And I think a lot of Middle Eastern have really traumatic goat stories. Like my older brother has a very similar one. So I heard this and I thought it was so funny. So tell us about the goat story, but really the lesson that I want to pull out is how trauma impacts your brain and how long that trauma stayed with you and how you healed it. So tell us about this goat story. Well, my dad was sort of like a no BS person. He was not warm and fuzzy. His two favorite words when I was growing up were no. Whatever you asked him, the answer was no.

And bullshit. And I was a tooth. And when I was five, I actually have a video of this. I played it in my latest public television special. I'm five years old. We have a white goat, pure white. Her name was sugar. She loved me. I loved her. But she also loved my father's roses. So my father loved gardening. And you know, one day she had just ate too many of the

roses. And he sent her away to the farm, which basically meant sugar is getting slaughtered. I mean, I didn't understand it at the time, until a couple of nights later, my dad and his brother were joking. They were feeding us sugar for dinner in goats stew. I remember throwing up, running to my room, crying, and just thinking what an awful human being he was.

And then I sort of let it go. And it was decades later. I am a psychiatrist. I'm speaking at a big conference on spirituality and the mind and Monterey, Mexico. Well in Mexico, they actually have you know one of their street vendors. They sell goat meat and I Walked by and I could smell the goat meat and then I saw it and then all of a sudden I had a panic attack. It was like I got flooded with that memory of when I was five in the murder of sugar

over the stupid roses. You know, that's just the brain works through association. The cool end of the story is when I told my dad I wanted to be a psychiatrist he asked me why I didn't want to be a real doctor, why I wanted to be a nut doctor and hang out with nuts all day long. So that really crystallizes our relationship. But seven years before he died he got really sick and for the first time in his life he looked at me and he said I'm sick of being sick.

What do you want me to do? And that's when our relationship really transitioned into a more helpful adult relationship. Yeah, I'm glad that you guys ended up making up before he passed. I think that's, you must feel a lot of comfort knowing that you guys healed your relationship before he, you know, transitioned into another place. So I definitely understand what you went through. I actually lost my father to COVID last May. So I know how that goes. Last May 5th, I remember the day and I was just horrified, you know, when people go, COVID's a cold. It's like, no, COVID's not a cold.

I'm so sorry. You lost your dad. Yeah, it's okay. I mean, I think he had such a great life. Everybody remembers him. So while he was actually, or I know your dad was really tough around the edges. My dad was just like this super nice, generous, everybody loved him, community leader, just such a great guy. So I just feel like he left such a great legacy.

So I don't feel so like bad about it because I just feel like he touched so many people and everybody loves him. And it just was his time. I guess I have to be positive about it. If I can ask how old was he when he does? He was 74. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, I'm the youngest, youngest of all, our siblings. How many people do you have? I have four. A number of seven, a good Catholic Webamace family. Yes, that's a lot of kids. And I'm the only non-doctor. All my siblings are doctors, except for me and I'm the media personality, so to each their own. So let's talk about that trauma,

what that trauma looked like in your brain. What does trauma look like in your brain? So when that goat thing happened, you ended up having to eat your pet goat that was probably very traumatizing. What does that look like in your brain? So I actually published a couple of very largeizing. What does that look like in your brain? So I actually published a couple of very large studies. So at AIMON clinics, we have nine soon to be 10 clinics around the United States. We do brain imaging work. We think you should

actually look at the brain before you go about messing with it. Too many people are being put on psychiatric medications, and no one's actually ever assessed the organ of baby, which is your brain. And I published a study on 21,000 people showing we could separate emotional trauma, PTSD, from physical trauma, traumatic brain injuries, with very high levels of accuracy. And it's what we call with emotional trauma, this diamond pattern, where your limbic or emotional brain becomes overactive. And you just sort of can't stop thinking about it. The trauma I grew up with got said in my brain and then periodically something would trigger it and then all of a sudden I would feel awful.

And that's true for so many people, but trauma actually leaves an imprint of activity that can be flipped, switches that you just sort of aren't ready for, like walking by goat meat on the street. Yeah, that's, it's super interesting that things can like stay with you for so long and you don't, you might not even remember that you have this memory, but then something triggers it and you're like, oh shoot, I remember when that happened when I was much younger. So how do you overcome that? How do you cleanse that trauma from you or just trauma stay with you forever?

No, there's a lot of work that you can do to one, understand it and to soothe it. I published another study on a treatment technique I'm very fond of called EMDR, which stands for Eye Movement De-Sensitization and Reprocessing. It's a treatment where you bring up the trauma, so I can talk about the goat story. And the therapist gets your eyes to go back and forth while you do it. And initially it sort of heightens the feeling, but after they're done, it sort of dissipates. And it's really cool. And I think it's the bilateral hemisphere stimulation, simulating one side than the other one side than the other,

that helps bring it up and then calm it down. There's another treatment technique I like a lot called havening, so like safe haven, havening, ING, and people can learn about it at havening.org. I also talk about it in my new book, Your Brain is Always Listening. And I remember shortly after my dad died last year, I'm like in my mom's house a couple of days later, we're just going through papers and some idiot put a picture of my dad dad in the mortuary

in a random stack of papers. And I remember going through it, and then I saw it, and it was like somebody just, you know, threw hot water on you. And it just upset me like the rest of the day, you know, what it would do this. And I noticed the picture bothered me. Well, I help people with this problem.

And so I did haven't eaten and haven't eaten again by lateral hemisphere stimulation. So it's either you stroke down from your shoulders to your elbows or you stroke your face, which during the time of COVID's probably not a good idea or rub your hands like this. And so you bring up. So I notice later in the day, I'm, okay, you're obsessing about this. So, so you think about it.

And I just started hating it. And you do it for 30 seconds and you rate it like on a scale of one to 10, how upsetting it is. And it was like a nine. And I'm still very sort of raw for my dad dying. But after 30 seconds of havenning, I noticed it was sort of like a four. And after doing it,

it seemed to do it like up to six, seven times. After the third time, it didn't bother me. And then after I did it a couple of more times, it became my favorite picture because it was the last picture of my dad on Earth, and he was at peace. And so there are lots of ways some people use tapping, sometimes people use hypnosis, which I'm a big fan of. The trick is do something that helps rather than do things that hurt.

Right? There are fixes that fail. Marijuana, alcohol, ice cream, being angry, you know, randomly dating to just sort of suit the hurt you have. I like it. I wrote a book once called Feel That Are Fast and make it last. You know, what are the strategies we can use that help us now and later versus now, but not later. Yeah, I love that havin'ing thing. You know, it's so funny. I want to just clear something up. So my dad died May 2020, which is why I'm more over it than I think your dad died May 2021.

So my dad died right now. I made May 2020. Oh, your dad died May 2020. Okay. I thought I just wanted to be clear with my dad. I know, I'm still. You're still fit. Yeah, you know what?

It's funny that you just talk about the havin'ing thing because that's actually gonna really help me because I unfortunately my dad died in the hospital and we weren't allowed to visit him. And the last time, the only time they allowed us to go to the hospital was after he died. So I always see this image of my dad father and it's so hard to get out of my mind.

So I'm gonna definitely use that the next time that that happens. And then I liked the fact that you said that it's so hard to get out of my mind. So I'm going to definitely use that the next time if that happens. And then I like the fact that you said that it's your favorite picture because it's great to reframe things in that way from a negative and to a positive. So I actually will take that forever. So thank you for sharing that with me. OK, so let's talk about alcohol and smoking marijuana

on the brain since you brought it up. Talk to us about your research with specs scans and what your perspective is on marijuana and the brain because marijuana is getting legalized everywhere. It's really common, especially for millennials to be smoking marijuana. And I think that you have a perspective that needs to be heard about it. Yeah, and I have no dog in the fight. You know, I'm quite frankly more likely to see you if you use marijuana than if you don't. But I like this verse in the New Testament. John 832, know the truth and the truth will set you free. Marijuana is bad for the brain. How do I know? I've looked at

thousands of marijuana users. I actually published a study on a thousand marijuana users compared to healthy brains. Every area of the brain is lower in blood flow. So from the moment I ordered my first scan in 1991, I'm like, oh, marijuana makes your brain look older than you are. And it gives the brain this sort of toxic, unhealthy look. And then if you've been a psychiatrist for 40 years, you realize marijuana causes some vulnerable people to have an increased risk of psychosis.

And if you smoke, if you use marijuana as a teenager, you're much more likely in your 20s to struggle with anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts. I was on the Michael Savage show years ago. He was a famous talk show host and he's going, you're gonna get a lot of haters. And I'm like, yes, but everybody who's gonna call is spontaneously gonna complain of short-term memory problems

because marijuana affects your ability to learn and remember. I'm a fan of it being legal. Why? Please don't put people smoked pot and jail. That is just a bad use of resources. Let's just teach people that, you know, maybe this is a fix that fails. And ultimately, there are a whole bunch of other things you can do to feel better. Yeah. What about that argument that marijuana smoking prevents all timers? Is there any truth to that? Absolutely not. And, you know, the people who are celibate, the people who are for it are

going to dig up all the research they can on it. But the number one predictor, you're going to get Alzheimer's disease, is low blood flow to the brain. Number one predictor. You're going to get Alzheimer's disease. It's low blood flow to the brain. Number one predictor. Marijuana lowers blood flow to the brain. Let's talk about obesity because people think obesity, they think you're physically unhealthy. I don't think they're thinking about your brain and how obesity impacts your brain. Can you talk to us about that? Well, the research actually is horrifying. And I come from a family of fat people. My deck dues to always ate when I said, but I have a brother that's like 150 pounds overweight

and a sister that's 150 or 200 pounds overweight. And I notice there's that tendency, and if I just ate everything I wanted, I'd be fat. And then one of my friends published a study that said, is your weight goes up. The size of your brain goes down. And I'm like, oh no. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. And that actually gave me the motivation

to lose the 20 pounds I've been trying to lose for 30 years because I'm not ever doing anything purposefully to have a smaller brain. That's a brand violation for me. And then I looked at my own database because I have a group of normal people, healthy people, and I didn't sort of separate out the people who are overweight or obese from the people who are healthy weight. So I looked at that and being overweight significantly was associated with low blood flow to the front part of the brain, things like focus and forethought and judgment and impulse control. And then I was doing a big NFL study at the time. I looked at my NFL players who were overweight versus healthy weight, again low blood flow. And then I coined a term called the

Dinosaurs Syndrome Big Body Little Brain. You're going to become extinct. We need to get serious about this. And then last year, I published a huge study on 35,000 scans and found there is basically a linear correlation as your weight goes up. everywhere. And we're in trouble with 42% of us over, no, 42% of us obese in the United States, 72% of us overweight. This is the biggest brain drain in the history of the United States. Plus, I have a namanic I like, if you want to keep your brain healthy or Rescue it if it's headed for trouble you have to prevent or treat the 11 major risk factors That steal your mind and we know what they are and the namanic is called bright minds Well, if you're overweight you have six of them just be an overweight because the fat on your body if you're overweight at lowers blood flow We just talked about that. It prematurely ages the brain.

Fat cells increase inflammation, and everybody now knows that if you're overweight or obese, it increases your risk of dying from COVID-19. Fat cells store toxins. They change hormones. So the N and Breitmines is neurohormones. It takes healthy testosterone, which is important for men and women, and turns it into unhealthy cancer promoting forms of estrogen. This is a bad thing.

And then the D and Breitmines is diobicity, high blood sugar, more likely to have if you're overweight or being overweight. So we need to get serious. And being too thin is not good for your brain. Your brain needs nutrients. But we need to stop super sizing things. And, you know, neuromarketers are women, and they brag about it, like with Lays potato chips. I don't know if you remember, but they used to have a slogan, Betcha can eat just one. It's very addictive, and we thought about how to make it that way. Why are they put super cute women with Carl's junior burgers. And you know these women aren't eating these burgers, but it's that unconscious connection

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It's so funny because people don't really think about food and its impact on your brain, but to your point, it's super, super strong. So we were talking a little earlier about COVID-19. And I've heard other viruses can impact your brain. And so I was wondering from your perspective, what you think COVID-19 would do to our brain, just knowing what other viruses have done to people's brains in the past. So I have hundreds of COVID scans and it's not good news. For some people their immune system handles COVID-19 and they're not even symptomatic. For other people they end up in the ICU, they lose their sense of taste and smell. They're more likely to get anxious or depressed

or have brain fog. And I actually have a handful of scans where I had the person scan beforehand and then they got COVID-19. And COVID-19 tends to increase inflammation in the brain. And it sort of jacks up your limbic or your emotional brain, leaving you at a significantly higher risk for anxiety, depression, brain fog, and irritability. I find I do a lot of smell retraining with my patients.

And, you know, we get them a diffuser and lots of different scents. And we work on it for like 10 minutes a day. I just want you to smell these and see if you can tell the difference because we're training their smell neurons to wake up. And it's amazing how many people with COVID it changes their sense of taste and healthy food just doesn't taste good for them anymore and end up eating you know more low quality foods which can really negatively impact your health. COVID serious and you know both you and I know that and we have to be serious about preventing the spread as much as we can. So is there anything that we can do if we got COVID-19 to help counteract what the virus would do to our brain? Well, yeah, I wrote a book once called Memory Rescue. And if you want to prevent or treat those 11 major risk factors that we talked about earlier, and I think of brain health in really simple terms.

The first thing is brain envy. You want to care about it. Freud was wrong. penis envy is not the cause of anybody's problem. I haven't seen it once in 40 years. So you have to really love your brain and then avoid things that hurt it and do things that help it. And so most people sort of really know what hurts their brain. And, you know, we talked about marijuana alcohols really not better. Alcohol, any alcohol is associated with an increased risk

of seven different kinds of cancer. And so people that go everything in moderation, that's the gateway thought to hell. Because it just means you're going to cheat. You're going to continue to give yourself permission to cheat. You're really not going to get serious about your health. And the reason I don't do those things, I think of it purely as an act of love,

that it's not deprivation. I'm not depriving myself of something. It's I love myself, And I love my family, and I love my mission. I need a good brain to actualize those things, because I know you think about business and work a lot with business. Well, what's the organ of success in business, it's your brain. And so, right, it's a series of decisions that you purposefully make over time. That's what grows, great businesses. And so I avoid things that hurt it, bad food, don't hit soccer balls with my head, thoughtful

when I drive. And then I engage in regular brain healthy habits, relationships, sleep. You know, you want to feel better tomorrow, go to bed early tonight. That sleep is absolutely essential. Simple supplements, multiple vitamin, fish oil, vitamin D. You know, we talked about COVID-19. People have low levels of vitamin D died more often than people who had healthy levels. I mean, how simple is that?

I mean, super simple. Your best defense against COVID-19 is your immune system and your brain, right? It's the decisions that you make day in and day out. Yeah, 100%. COVID is super serious. I hope everybody out. Are you pro vaccine? Are you pro vaccine? Yeah, I am because it turns COVID into a cold, right? Getting a vaccine that doesn't mean you won't get COVID and doesn't mean you can't spread it, but it prevents it because your body now recognizes it as a troublemaker, it prevents it from getting out of your lawns, out of your respiratory track. I have so many stories of people who didn't get the vaccine that really got hurt,

and I have so many stories of I do a lot of work with police, teaching police, how to have brain healthy police departments. And one of the departments I work with, one of the guys that works there is morbidly obese. And he wasn't going to get the vaccine and his chief chewed him out. And it's like, you need to get it because you're at the greatest risk. And he ended up got the vaccine, got COVID and was like he had a cold for three days. I mean, it is really amazing. So yeah, I, you know, and people go, we don't know and we're part of an experiment. Well, those who haven't gotten the vaccine are the control group

in the experiment. And so far, it's not a good thing. I totally agree. I think if you're out there, you need to get vaccinated. They say 99% of people who go into the hospital right now are the folks who have not gotten vaccinated. And so you definitely need to take care of yourself, take it seriously. We both know that it's a very serious virus.

Any last things on telling people to get the vaccine, because I'm definitely putting this out on social media, I think it needs to be spread across billboards. Well, I have an Instagram account and we almost have a half a million followers and they love me for the most part. And we posted, my wife and I, when I got the vaccine, and the level of hate that we got,

it was shocking to me. But at the same time, I'm not going to let, you know, the people who disagree with me change the way I think or the advice that I give. I want you to protect yourself. There is the same fight for vaccinations with smallpox and the people who didn't get it, they spread it, smallpox more.

And that's not okay, because that was lethal. COVID is potentially lethal, especially for vulnerable people. Yeah, they said that COVID over the last 18 months has killed more people than HIV over the last 40 years. That is serious, and we should take it seriously. Thank you for sharing your perspective on that. Let's talk about dragons.

So in your new book, you talk about these dragons that are coming from our past, haunting us today. What are these dragons and what are some of the dragons that you have from your past life? So as I was writing, your brain is always listening, my new book. You know, I initially thought, well, your brain listens to the food you eat and the news you listen to in the social media you follow. And then I'm like your brain also is listening to the past. And I have a friend Sharon May who uses the analogy of dragons in her couples counseling. And I'm like, I wonder what dragons I have. And so together Sharon and I came up with 13 dragons.

You know, to one degree or another, we all have a little bit of them. But people have primary and secondary dragons. My primary dragon is the abandoned invisible or insignificant dragon. And I wasn't abandoned, but I was invisible being one of seven. Third, completely not special, and the love of his family being the second son. And, you know, it sort of hurts sometimes. And I built a life based on being significant. I love helping. And when I don't help, that dragon, sort of breathed on, breathed fire on my emotional brain.

And so, you know, I have to be careful because I can't help everybody, right? You sort of have to want to be helped for it to work, right? Not everybody is actually a good candidate to get psychiatric help. The second one I had, the inferior flawed dragon, so I was smaller. I was like the smallest kid in my class. And that was sort of hard. And then being second, and then being Lebanese, I grew up in the San Fernando Valley, just north of Los Angeles, where it was a high Jewish population.

And there was always that sort of conflict in my family and in the neighborhood and being Palestinian, you sort of understand here in the United States, sort of most people take Israel's position. And we're like, you know there really is another side to this story that very often in the US doesn't get told. And so there's also the anxious dragon, the wounded dragon, the whole goat story, the responsible dragon. Or if you grew up roaming Catholic like I did, this shouldn't shaming dragon, that's sort of always point in its finger at you.

My favorite of all the dragons is the ancestral dragon. That's where the issues you have, they're not yours, that you inherited them. They actually got written into your genetic code. And I just think now about Civil War and Syria and all those children that are being traumatized. Well, that trauma is being written in the genetic code. So, when they have babies, the babies are more likely to struggle with anxiety, more likely to have issues with post-traumatic stress disorder. And if you think of being Palestinian or Lebanese, there's a lot, or Israeli, there's a lot of trauma in our family history that is part of our genetic code when you think of the whole Black Lives Matter movement. There's generations of trauma, but they're not special, right? Being Palestinian, you understand.

It's not just one group, virtually every country around the world has its issue with repressed people and even after the repression may be better, there's still the trauma that can live through generations. There's also another of the dragons I've been thinking about lately is the death dragon and COVID has just exploded this, you know, not being able to see your father when he was in the hospital, or children are worried about death more than ever before because of the death numbers.

And one of my fun strategies, so each of the dragons, you know, where do they come from? What's the upside? Because all of them have an upside. How do you fix them? So we have strategies and my favorite strategy for the death dragon. I mean, you have to know you're going to die. It's the denial of death that is partially responsible for people living empty,

purposeless lives. Because when you think you're going to live forever, you don't take care of the relationships and issues you need to take care of. And so when I was in college, I wrote my own funeral very helpful to just sort of know there's an end. So if there's an end, I need to make today important. I need to today special. And one of my favorite techniques is to actually less 10 good things about dying. And living in near Los Angeles is I'll never have to drive an LA traffic. Again, these people are seriously crazy. I won't have to go to the dentist. I hate going to the dentist. Got my teeth

cleaned two weeks ago. And it's like, why are you poking my gums with this sharp metal object? So just sort of looking at what's good about it, take some of this sting out of it. Yeah, I love that. You know, it reminds me of something that I spoke with Robert Green, and he taught me about the law of death denial. It's very similar to what you're talking about right now. And I love how you put some strategies in place like writing your own funeral or writing 10 things down that is good about death because it can actually be the greatest motivator. Death can be the life's greatest motivator. I totally agree.

In the outro, I will list all of your dragons and give everybody a great overview of that later on. And you guys can go to KnowYourDragons.com for a free quiz if you want to find out what your dragons are. Yeah, bam. If you're ready to take your business to new heights, break through to the 6 or 7 figure mark or learn from the world's most successful people, look no further because the Kelly Roach show has got you covered.

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listen to podcasts. Hey, ya fam! As you may know, I've been a full-time entrepreneur for three years now. Yet media blew up so fast, it was really hard to keep everything under control, but things have settled a bit and I'm really focused on revamping and improving our company culture.

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What are ants or ANTS? Tell us about that automatic negative thoughts, right? Automatic negative thoughts. Come into your mind and ruin you. And it's sort of shocking that you can get out of high school, or college, or have an advanced degree, and no one ever taught you not to believe every stupid thing you think that's actually

no classes in managing your mind. And I came up with the term ants about 30 years ago. I had a really hard day at work. I had four suicidal people. That's a lot. And a day, I had two couples who hated each other and two teenagers who'd run away from home. And at the end of the day, I came home.

I was worn out and I had an aunt in the station in my kitchen. And currently I'm battling ants in my house. So I just know how irritating they are. And I was cleaning them up, I'm like ants, automatic, negative thoughts, because you know, when you're in medical school, you have to learn so much. You're always using memory tricks to remember things.

And I'm like, my patients are infested. And the next day, I brought a can of raid, ant spray, to work. And I put it on my coffee table, and I said, I'm going to teach you how to kill the ants. And the kids, because I'm also a child's psychiatrist, just loved it. And then I went to Pierre 39 in San Francisco near my office. And I got an antiter puppet

and then subsequently, I'd give away these little antiters because you don't have to believe every stupid thing you think. And whenever you feel sad or mad or nervous or out of control, write down what you're thinking and then ask yourself whether or not it's true. I don't know if you were any good when you were a teenager talking back to your parents. I was excellent. But no one ever taught me to talk back to myself. That if I have a thought, I'm no good. I mean, it just came out recently. I love Naomi Osaka and how she's been so public with her struggles. And

she's getting ready for the US Open. And she came out with, I am never enough. I am never good enough. And I'm like, no one's ever taught her to manage her mind. And I've been blessed, you know, I came out last year. I've been Justin Bieber's doctor for a long time and Miley Cyrus. They have exactly those same thoughts. And no one had ever taught them. It's like you don't have to believe every stupid thing you think that you can learn to manage your mind. And I have another fun technique called give your mind the name. So it's based on a concept called psychological distancing. You can distance yourself from the chatter. And I actually gave my mind the name of Hermi. Hermi was my pet raccoon

when I was 16. I actually had a pet raccoon. And she was a troublemaker. And I loved her, but she teaped my mother's bathroom. She ate my sister's fish out of the aquarium. She used to leave raccoon poo in my shoes. She's just like my mind. All of a sudden, my mind will pop up with these terrible thoughts. And I'm like,

oh, honey, I need to put you in the cage. You know, it's like, I don't need to listen to you today. And periodical, I'll just sort of check in and see how she's doing. But mind management is so important. You know, now you need some anxiety. Let's just get that out of the way right away. People with low levels of anxiety die the earliest from accidents and preventable illnesses. But obviously too much. Debt a state's your life. And so I want a nothing anxiety that I do the right things, but no more, which means I have to manage the thoughts I have. And there's an exercise in your brain is always listening of right down a hundred of your worst thoughts. And then I have you ask yourself five questions on each thought and it's so powerful. If you do it a hundred times, the ants will dissipate.

And, you know, having an ant in the station now, when you go to bed, just feel these creepy quality things on you even when they're not there. When you have negative thoughts, they affect everything in your life, from your happiness, your relationships. Yeah, they just affect everything. Yeah, I feel like negative thoughts can impact your success to your point, your relationships. And like you said, they don't teach that in school. I wish they would teach mental health in school

the same way that they implemented like PE. I wish they would do something like meditation class or some sort of mental health class. I hope that that's in our future soon. We have a high school course and we actually have a new elementary school curriculum where we do just that. We can get kids to kill the ants and manage their minds and do diaphragmatic breathing. Breathing is so helpful, so simple, so important. And it's something you can control.

And, you know, if you ever watch a baby breathe or a puppy breathe, they breathe almost exclusively with their bellies. But, you know, living through stress, especially a pandemic, our breathings become more chest-based, shallower, more rapid, which just makes us more anxious. So you say, breathe through your belly, then. Yeah, so imagine a balloon in your belly. And when you breathe in, blow it up. So let your belly get big, which means for women, never wear tight clothes. Because if you're wearing something tight, you can't expand your lungs. And that's going to make you more anxious

and having five sisters and five daughters that this is, you know, I'm like no tight clothes. And it's like, oh, but I want to look skinny. And it's like, yeah, you'll be skinny and anxious and less attractive because being anxious isn't attractive. And then take twice as long to breathe out as you breathe in. And so there's a cool app I like called Awesome Breathing and I'll program it for seconds and eight seconds out. And you just have to do it for like two minutes. Like when you come home, I want you to just try this instead of the other thing we talked about.

Just for three minutes, awesome breathing. And when you program it for seconds and hold it for a second, eight seconds out, hold it for a second, just for three minutes. And then email me and tell me how you feel. Because I guarantee you're going to trigger a relaxation response in your body, but your mind will be clearer than ever. And as a business person, it's not what you really want. Clearly, you want clarity, you want focus, you want energy, but without the frenetic pace, without the sort of monkey mind going on, and diaphragmatic breathing, just, it's so cool because it's intentional, it's biologic, it's psychological and just helps you be your best.

Yeah, and what's the name of that app? It's awesome breathing, you said? Awesome breathing. Awesome breathing. Yeah, it's free. It's so simple. Awesome. Well, I can't wait to try. We'll stick that link in our show notes. So we are about to wrap up here. We're running out of time. I have a question for you. One of my last questions is, what would be the one thing you wish would go mainstream?

Out of all your research that you've done, that you wish that the medical field and your colleagues would really understand and you wish that it would just go mainstream. What's one piece of research you wish would just go mainstream? Well, let me pick two. The first one is imaging. If you don't look, you don't know. I'm furious.

My colleagues have sort of tried to diminish me over the years. And it's like I'm trying to give more information to help my patients and stop guessing like you are. And in May of this year, one of my top 10 happiest moments of my whole life happened when the Canadian Association of Nuclear Medicine put out new procedure guidelines on brain-spect imaging, basically as if I wrote them. So, imaging needs to go mainstream. How do you know that your depression is not the result of being exposed to COVID, or having an environmental toxin, or had a head injury that changed your life?

How do you know if you don't look? Depression's not a prosack deficiency. And I'm not opposed to prosack. I just don't think that should be the first and only thing you use in the dark. Think of a depression like chest pain. It's nobody gets a diagnosis of chest pain because it doesn't tell you what causes it or what to do for. The second thing I

want to go mainstream is brain envy. I want us to love our brains. Nobody loves our brain. They're all brain because you can't see it. When I first looked at my brain in 1991, I'm like, well, that's not healthy. I played football in high school, had meningitis as a young soldier. I thought I was special because I could get by on four hours of sleep at night. And when I saw my brain, I realized I wasn't special. I was stupid. And so, you know, loving your brain and really taking care of it, I want brain health to be as popular as Peloton and working out and physical health.

And if you want to be mentally strong, you have to work out just like being physically strong. It's a daily practice. And something that I want to stress is just the way that you can lose weight. You can make your brain better. So if you scanned your brain now, does it look better now than it did

when you first initially scanned it 20 years ago or whenever that was? Radically, better. I have a new, I have a series. In fact, you should do it with me on Instagram called scan my brain where we take influencers, scan them, and then I go over it with them. And we just did Dr. Emily Morse. I don't know if you know Emily, but sex with Emily,

huge podcast and serious radio. Well, I scanned her. And then she fell in love with her brain and did what I asked her to do. And 18 months later her brain's dramatically better. We have that episode coming up soon on Instagram. And that's a whole point. It's you're not stuck with the brain you have. You can make it better even if you've been bad to your brain. I would love to do that test with you. I feel like that would motivate me to stop doing what we talked about before because I would know the truth and stop believing these false narratives that are out there that I've lied to myself basically.

And really quick, I do want to talk about coordination and how coordination and dancing and doing things like playing ping pong can actually improve your brain. And any other tips that you can give us in terms of things that I would have never known if I wasn't studying you, that like dancing would be good for my brain.

What are some little things that we can pick up and start doing that can help improve ourselves that aren't so obvious? So table tennis is the world's best brain game because you got to get your eyes hands and feet all working together while you think about the spin on the ball. about the spin on the ball. Now, not beer pong. It's like dancing is amazing because it's a coordination exercise, but not if you're drinking while you're dancing. So the cerebellum in the back bottom part of the brain has half the brain's neurons. C cerebellum is Latin for a little brain. It's involved in coordination, but so much more when we activate that with coordination exercises, people think better, they actually make better decisions. So being involved with coordination exercises on a regular basis is great for you. Yeah, I totally, I think just any physical activity. I can correlate from when I started becoming successful was when I started going to the gym like literally I feel like it changed my mind, it changed the

way that I thought. So, Dr. I do want to be respectful of your time. The last question I ask all my guests is what is your secret to profiting in life? So in 1986 I wrote a book called The Sabotage Factor all the ways we mess ourselves up from getting what we want And the number one hallmark of self-defeating behavior is blaming other people for how your life turns out So I take responsibility and responsibilities never blame It's just my ability to respond to whatever situation Comes my way so it starts with that and then it goes to what do you want? It's clarity, clearly defining what you want,

relationships, work, money, physical, emotional, spiritual health. I have an exercise called the One-Page Miracle. Write it out. And write what you want, not what you don't want. Focus on negativity will bring more negativity in your life. I think if I had to go, so why have I been successful?

Because I'm responsible and I have clarity. And I stop caring what other people think of me. There's a rule I love called the 1840 60 rule that says when you're 18 you worry about what everybody's thinking of you. When you're 40 you don't give a damn what anybody thinks about you and when you're 60 you realize nobody has been thinking about you at all. People spend their days worrying and thinking about themselves not you. So do what makes you happy. As long as you can support your family, right?

There's people go, you know, do what you love. And it's like as long as you can support your family, is an important caveat to that. But I think that and brain health, because I love my brain. I'm 67. I have the same energy I had as when I was 30. I have the same mental clarity. I just have a lot more experience in wisdom.

I love that. This was such an excellent conversation. Where can our listeners go to learn more about you and everything that you do? So they can go to amonclinics.com. So amon like the last word in a prayer clinics.com. They can also follow me on Facebook and Instagram at doc aiman. Yeah, I'm easy to find. Amazing. Thank you so much. It was such a great conversation.

Thank you. Thanks for listening to Young and Profiting podcast. If you haven't yet, make sure you subscribe to this podcast so you never miss an episode. Man, I think this conversation with Dr. Daniel Aiman was so good, I asked my team to push it out earlier than originally scheduled, because I think it's super important, especially after such a challenging couple of years with the pandemic, to be able to check in on ourselves mentally and make sure that we have the recovery tools for past trauma. Daniel told us a story about a pet goat that he had when he was a little boy.

His father sent away that goat one day he loved so much and then they had him for dinner. He was mortified, he was disgusted and decades later as an adult that trauma still lived in him. The brain works through association so even if you don't know it, emotional trauma can live in your brain and then come up when you least expect it. In order to overcome serious trauma, you have to do the hard work. You should seek advice from a medical professional who can help you find the right treatment, and then you should avoid forms of recovery that don't work.

You should avoid trying to overcome trauma by using alcohol, marijuana, or eating junk food. Those are all really bad vices for your brain and will have the opposite effect. In Daniel Amin's new book, Your Brain is Always Listening. He uses the analogy of dragons that describe unhealthy thoughts that go into our emotional brain. As promised, I'm going to outline all the dragons Daniel mentions in his book here in the outro.

The first one is inferior or flawed dragons. This is when you feel inferior to others. Anxious dragons, when you feel fearful or overwhelmed. Wounded dragons, you're bruised by past trauma. Should and shaming dragons, you're racked with guilt. Special spoiled or entitled dragons, you feel more special than others. Responsible dragons, you need to take care of others. Angry dragons, you harbor hurt and rage. Judgmental dragons, you hold harsh or critical opinions of others due to past injustices that you've suffered. Death dragons, you fear the future and lack of meaningful life.

Grief and lost dragons, you feel lost and fear loss. Hopeless and helpless dragons, you have a pervasive sense of despair and discouragement. And Cestral Dragons, you're affected by issues of past generations. So everybody has dragons, and these dragons can actually be beneficial, and they can, of course, hurt you and hurt your success in life. And Dr. Daniel outlines, how do you overcome these dragons in his book? And personally, I feel like I have a bunch overcome these dragons in his book? And personally, I feel like I have a bunch of these dragons. I definitely have special spoiled or entitled

dragon where sometimes I feel more special than others. It's good and bad, like I said before. I think your weaknesses can be your biggest strengths. So I feel more special than others, meaning I feel confident. I feel life is limitless. I'm super optimistic. But at the same time, people might not think I'm the most humble person They might not want to do favors for me They might think that I already have it all figured out and nobody really wants to give me a handout or help me because I am really confident And that's not the best for relationships But it actually turns out to work okay in terms of my success as an entrepreneur

I also have wounded dragons I'm 100% bruised by past drama, whether that's past relationships that I've had that weren't the healthiest, or the fact that my dad tragically died from COVID-19 last year. And I definitely still have work to do in terms of healing from that trauma.

And then ancestral dragons. I'm Palestinian. Oh my gosh, I feel like I probably have such crazy in Cestral Dragons just by being Palestinian. So it's super interesting. I can't wait to dive deep into knowing these dragons better, knowing the benefits and the negatives of having these dragons and how to overcome them.

And if you want to know your dragons and how to overcome them, you can go to knowyourdragons.com and take Daniels Freakwiz. That's KnowYourDragons.com and take Daniels Free Quiz. That's KnowYourDragons.com and you can take Dr. Daniels Free Quiz to find out what your dragons are and how to overcome them. These dragons also relate to ants or atomic negative thoughts. Remember, mind management is super important when it comes to getting rid of those ants. And one exercise Dr. Daniel recommends is to write down 100 of your worst thoughts and then ask yourself five questions about each one. By the time you do this, 100 times, your ants will hopefully disappear. Dr. Aiman and I talked about mental and emotional health. We also touched on physical health.

Dr. Aiman has hundreds of brain scans of people that suffered from COVID-19, and he says it could increase inflammation in the brain and typically leaves people at significantly higher risk of having anxiety, depression, brain fog and irritability. Daniel says we have to love our brains, we have to be mindful of how we treat them. We can heal and optimize our brain health by eating healthy whole foods like brain superfoods, hemp seed, Brazil nuts, turmeric, we got to get adequate sleep, we have to avoid drugs and alcohol, and we can engage in stimulating coordination activities like ping pong or dancing. If you like this episode and you want to learn more about mental health, go check out my

Gap Live conquering invisible enemies, featuring a slew of powerhouse people in this space like Dr. Daniel Aiman, Dr. Caroline Leif, Amy Marin, and so many more. Here's the clip from that live episode. You know, we think of one in four people being impacted by either depression or anxiety acutely and any given day, and part of that being driven by the fact that we're so lonely and cut off, we need to rethink how we can physically interact with people. And part of the problem I would argue, and part of the reason why I launched Lada, when you start up, is to bring people together so they can start exercising again. I think the lack of physical activity is one of the real contributing factors here.

So we're isolated, we're stuck at home, staring at a screen of electrons all day. When we need to get back into our bodies and engage in some kind of a rubric activity, whether it's jogging or dancing or walking or hiking, doing something in nature that will take us out of our minds that trap where we might feel anxious or depressed and simply to start moving and that will impact our health immensely. So that's one of the things I tell you. I know coming full circle. Again, if you want to learn more about mental health and get some tools and strategies to better your mental health, go check out my Gap Live conquering invisible enemies featuring

Dr. Daniel Aiman, Dr. Caroline Leif, Amy Marin, and so many other powerhouses in this space. As always, I love to end this episode with a recent Apple Podcast review. Dropping us an Apple Podcast review is the number one way to thank us at Young & Profiting Podcasts, and this week I want to shout out Gavin Hardleene, he says, The best career in life advice ever. The Young & Profiting Podcasts with Halata is perfect if you're looking for easy to understand advice on business, life, health, your mindset, and so much more. This podcast has become a morning ritual for me and gets me fired up for the day.

Thank you so much Gavin for your awesome review and I'm super happy to hear that you include YAP in your morning ritual. I feel like anybody who would listen to YAP every single day and every single morning could change their life for the better very quickly. If you'd like to be featured on Young & Profiting Podcasts, just drop us a five star review on your favorite platform and another thing that I love that you guys like to be featured on Young & Profiting podcasts, just drop us a five star review on your favorite platform. And another thing that I love that you guys do to support the show is when you take a screenshot

of this app, you uploaded to your Instagram story, tag me at YappwithHalla, I'm gonna repost it, and then let's chop it up in the DMs. I love to hear from my listeners, I'd love to meet you, follow you back, talk to you about what you like or dislike of the show, I love to connect with my listeners. You can also find me on LinkedIn, just search for my name, it's Halataha, big thanks to the Yap team as always, this is Halat signing off.

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