Addiction, Craving Control & ADHD: Dr. Daniel Amen’s Perspective

In this episode, I had an enlightening conversation with Dr. Daniel Amen, a renowned psychiatrist and brain health expert, about the seven different types of ADHD, the role of diet and nutrition in brain health, the impact of trauma on brain function, and his thoughts on hallucinogenic therapies.

03:40 - The brain’s role in drug addiction.
10:29 - The side effects of not treating ADHD.
14:54 - Treating ADHD.
21:56 - Digital addictions double the risk of ADHD.
26:34 - Omega-3 fatty acids and ADHD
33:19 - What does technology do for ADHD?
38:32 - Food you love that loves you back.
46:54 - How does trauma change the brain?

Dr. Amen’s Links:

Amen Clinics: amenclinics.com
ADD Type Test: addtypetest.com
Brain Health Assessment: brainhealthassessment.com
Dr. Amen's Instagram: instagram.com/doc_amen
Dr. Amen's TikTok: tiktok.com/@docamen 

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Transcript

Daniel G. Amen, MD  0:00  
You know, generally my patients want to try supplements before they want medication, you know, and for me, I always believe in informed consent. You know, my job isn't to tell you what to do. My job is to give you options. And then you decide what to do based on the options, I think are reasonable. And so many of my patients go and I don't really want to start with medicine. Let's start with supplements and see how far we get. And if they don't work, like we hope medicine is always an option.

Brooke Schnittman  0:39  
Welcome to successful with ADHD, I'm Brooke Shipman. And if you have ADHD and are feeling overwhelmed, chaotic and negative self beliefs, you're in the right place. The successful with ADHD podcast shares my guests journeys of overcoming challenges offering their tips and strategies for success to empower you to take control of your life and thrive with ADHD. Let's get started. Hi, Dr. Amon, and welcome to successful with ADHD. so wonderful to have you here. Thanks, Brooke, Joy,

Daniel G. Amen, MD  1:16  
thank you for helping me spread the word.

Brooke Schnittman  1:19  
Absolutely. And I know how you talk about how ADHD is being more commonly diagnosed, and people are understanding it more. So it's even more prevalent to have you on today to share all the wealth of knowledge you have about brain health and SPECT scans. And I know you have so much of a history in researching ADHD, and different disorders in the brain. I know you have ADHD yourself, I believe your wife has it, your ex wife, so and you some of your children do too. That's what I read. Oh, you didn't happen? Okay.

Daniel G. Amen, MD  2:01  
I just been blessed. To be around a lot of people who do again. It's, ya know, it's impacted my life in huge ways. Which has given me great empathy, but also a great ability to help.

Brooke Schnittman  2:23  
Absolutely. Okay, so to give you an official introduction, I just want to share some of the amazing things that you've done. I know you're on a mission to end mental illness by creating a revolution in brain health. And you're dedicated to providing the education products and services to accomplish this goal. You are the leading author of 12 time New York Times best selling books, I happen to have two versions of one of my favorite books. One is from about 20 years ago when I was studying ADHD, and one is more recent. And I mean, huge accolades. I know I haven't even hit on many of them, but you have done more than 230,000 SPECT scans as well in 155 countries. So tell me a little bit about SPECT Scans compared to just a typical DSM five diagnosis of a disorder.

Daniel G. Amen, MD  3:29  
So most psychiatrists make diagnoses based on symptom clusters with no biological data. That should cause some people to be suspicious. About 32 years ago, I started looking at the brain with a study called SPECT, which is a Nuclear Medicine study that looks at blood flow and activity, it looks at how the brain works. And what we found is it's very good at informing why you have the symptoms that you have. And giving everybody a stimulant, it's probably a bad idea, because they help some people often dramatically, and they hurt people, often dramatically. And so throwing darts in the dark or medicated tip darts in the dark at people just makes no rational sense to me. And when I first looked at the brain, I thought, ADD or ADHD would be one thing would show low activity in your frontal lobes, especially when you try to concentrate. And I quickly learn it's not one thing. It's five different things, and then six and now seven different Things in the brain. And when you know that type of ADD, you have, you're just much more likely to get better. And you're less likely to make mistakes. Because mistakes with patients are not innocuous. If you make somebody worse, they become demoralized. And then they don't want to get help. So having more information, in my experience has been helpful to get people better faster.

Brooke Schnittman  5:35  
Absolutely an ADHD is complex. So would you say that anyone with a complex disorder should get a SPECT scan as a first line of defense before just being treated based on the symptoms medically?

Daniel G. Amen, MD  5:53  
Yes. I think if you don't look, you don't know. And we should stop lying about that. You know, I mean, should anybody who has crushing chest pain have their heart looked at? Of course, of course they should. And, you know, anyone who has crushing depression or crushing anxiety, or they're failing in school? Well, why wouldn't we evaluate the organ of failure? Which is right?

Brooke Schnittman  6:28  
Right. Right. That totally makes sense. And why do you think that psychiatrist don't often study SPECT scans, or do SPECT scans?

Daniel G. Amen, MD  6:40  
Because it's not part of their training, it's not part of their tradition. And when you start looking at the brain and completely end up ends, how we practice psychiatry, the idea of giving people drugs based on symptom clusters with no biological data really becomes insanity. After you look at the brain, you realize there's a whole bunch of causes for ADHD or for depression, or anxiety disorders, from traumatic brain injury to toxic exposure to the terrible food we're paying people. The idea in psychiatry is anxiety, depression, ADHD, their genetic disorders, based on neurotransmitter abnormalities, we give you the drugs balance your neurotransmitters, and you're fine. The problem is no psychiatric medication cures anything. And they change your brain to need them in order for you to feel normal. And I have a problem with that. Because I don't want to start something you might not be able to stop. And there's, you know, if you go to the American Psychiatric Association's annual meeting, they have these huge booths, which means they're making a ton of money from the pharmaceutical industry. Well, that's how I became a psychiatrists. Again, my address helped balance people's brains, their minds, and to help them be less reliant on drugs, rather than more reliant. Now. I'm not opposed to using medicine, but it's just never the first line and the only thing I think about,

Brooke Schnittman  8:31  
yeah. So I don't know if you've changed your opinions, since you've written Healing ADD that stimulants are not addictive, they can be addictive, or does someone have to have an addictive personality to get addicted to anything?

Daniel G. Amen, MD  8:51  
So my experience is they're not terribly addictive and the doses that I use, you know, I mean, the big problem I have with teenagers is they don't want to take their medicine. Because if you go too high on the dose of this stimulant, it flattens them. They look tired. Isn't that interesting? Give someone a stimulant. And all of a sudden, their personalities just a bit flatter. Yeah. It's not like whoa, and not to buy a coffee and sleep and all of those things. Now, if you give it to the wrong person, they do get that. But when you give it to the right person, at the right dose, it tends to calm them down and tune them in and they can be more helpful, but I remember Caitlin, my daughter, who had the hyperactive variety, when we first put her on a stimulant, it completely calmed her down, which was so helpful to me. Because the whirlwind that she brought into my life was stressful. But then I'm like, okay, the dose is too high, because she looked a bit stoned. And I'm like, okay, that's not the goal. So I'd really, you know, decrease the dose to help her. It's very important. And, you know, people God, I want to give my child an addictive medicine. And and I understand that, and people should always ask about the side effects. But one question they should also ask is, what are the side effects of not treating? As add from school failure, divorce, incarceration, bankruptcy, job failure? I mean, they're rampant? Absolutely. But let's not call it one thing, because it's clearly not one. Yeah.

Brooke Schnittman  10:59  
Yeah. So you and I would love to go back to the seven types of ADHD in the next few minutes if we can. You talked about the effects of not treating your ADHD not being on medication or having the right treatment overall. A lot of individuals who don't know they have ADHD or aren't managing their ADHD might do drugs or alcohol or marijuana. You talk a lot about what that does to the brain. Can you elaborate on that?

Daniel G. Amen, MD  11:36  
Well, you know, once you start looking at the brain, you can't unsee it from the impact of alcohol or drugs, marijuana, bad food, digital addictions, not sleeping. And when you have untreated add, you often feel awful, or frustrated, or you know, you're not at your potential. And that's very hard on your self esteem that should never, you know, that you try, but it's not working like other people, you know, dry. So you use other substances to feel well, but they don't fix you. I mean, it's like a short term fix. It's continuing to cause a long term problem. And I always want to give things to people to help them feel better now and later. Versus now. Just now not later.

Brooke Schnittman  12:36  
Yeah, that makes sense. Okay. Can you share you had said that with the brain specs, you've noticed that there were five types of ADHD, six types of ADHD, seven types of ADHD, how do those differ from the classic three types of ADHD?

Daniel G. Amen, MD  12:54  
So we see classic ADHD, hyperactive, restless, impulsive, trouble concentrating, disorganized late. We see inattentive add, they're not hyperactive and not really terribly impulsive, but they have focus problems and organizational problems and procrastination problems. I'm not really a fan of the hyperactive impulsive. But not inattentive is just extremely rare. In my experience, type three for us is what we call over focused add, where the problem is not that they can't pay attention. It's they can't shift their attention. So they end up stuck on certain thoughts or certain behaviors. type four is temporal lobe add mood instability, irritability, temper problems, dark thoughts, plus, add. Type five is what we call limbic add, it sort of looks like a combination of mild depression. With add, it's sort of like the glass is always half empty. And then the Ring of Fire add, so that was the sixth type I described, because I just couldn't ignore it anymore on scans. It's like the brain works too hard, and it's like ADHD Plaus a lot of sensory overload. And then anxious. Add Tana, my wife has that type where she's pretty on time because she's anxious. But also never met a door cabinet door. She wanted to close or a wrapper she actually wanted to throw away. So

Brooke Schnittman  14:43  
says and believe in garbages use.

Daniel G. Amen, MD  14:48  
Yeah, so she has come with it helps her organize. And I think that's great. Well, a great strategy, and I'm a huge fan of getting a coach to help you you organize your life that can be so helpful. And if you run a business, don't have an add assistant. If you do, you're just going to chronically be frustrated and I'm happy but knowing that type stimulants like Ritalin or Adderall, Vyvanse. Concerta are really good for types one and two, but a make type three more obsessive. They make type four angry, sometimes even hallucinate, they make type five, sad. And there's a lot of negative rebound with a brain for type six 80% of the time, stimulants make them worse, sometimes angry, depressed, suicidal, and type seven and makes them anxious. So let's just stop, you know, saying this is one thing with one treatment, sort of like that same chest pain is one thing with one treatment, most thoughtful people would go, That's ridiculous. And when you know your type, you're just more likely to get the right help either from medicine or from natural supplements. So if we think of natural supplements, tyrosine, which boosts the amino acid, it's the amino acid building block for dopamine could help type one type two tyrosine plus five HTP could help type three, five HTP boosts serotonin tyrosine, GABA could help type four tyrosine plus, saffron could help type five, targeting the medicine or supplements to your type just helps you be more effective.

Brooke Schnittman  16:47  
So would you suggest typically that your patients get on supplements to treat their ADHD before medication.

Daniel G. Amen, MD  16:56  
You know, generally my patients want to try supplements before they want medication, you know, and for me, I always believe in informed consent. You know, my job isn't to tell you what to do. My job is to give you options. And then you decide what to do based on the options, I think are reasonable. And so many of my patients go and I don't really want to start with medicine. Let's start with supplements and see how far we get. And and if they don't work, like we hope medicine is always an option.

Brooke Schnittman  17:32  
Absolutely. And I know that you have the Add type test.com, where you can see without this back scan, if you can't afford it or you can't get one. It's you know, an example of what type of ad you have based on the seven types that you discover. And then it talks about the different types of treatments that you can take. So I actually did one the other night, and I saw the supplements that you recommended. So there was GABA and everything that you were talking about saffron. And it was very interesting. My husband did it too. He had five out of seven, I three out of seven. I would love to talk to you also like how does someone have five out of seven types of ADD?

Daniel G. Amen, MD  18:22  
Well, it's not uncommon that so if you have type one classic one automatically means you're not type two. Because you know type one is hyperactive, Ross's impulsive, can't concentrate to is just you can't concentrate. So, but very common to have one and three together. Those are my children and grandchildren of alcoholics. And if you had a concussion, so my sense is your husband probably had a concussion at some point. Well, that's very common. And type four

Brooke Schnittman  18:59  
was the soccer player.

Daniel G. Amen, MD  19:01  
Maybe he was a soccer player. Yes, yeah. So you had a concussion, or at least he had hundreds of sub concussive blows. And then you know, you've got a bit sad. That gives you five and if you're a bit anxious, that gives you seven. So it's very common add anxiety and depression run together a lot. So of the three which did you have?

Brooke Schnittman  19:33  
I had anxious, over focused and temporal lobe. And I have an anxiety disorder of a generalized anxiety disorder. And I was diagnosed with combined ADHD.

Daniel G. Amen, MD  19:48  
So now that you know, I always say treat the temporal lobe issue first, because that tends to allow us to do a better job at treating the over focus issue are the focus issues.

Brooke Schnittman  20:03  
Yes. And I know you talk about this also in your book, and I'm sure a lot of people ask you this, can you differentiate between over focused ADHD and OCD? So I know there's a lot of traits of obsessive thinking and over focused add.

Daniel G. Amen, MD  20:21  
Yeah, so the difference would be, do you have ADHD by history over time. So people have OCD that they often don't have any of the ADHD traits, short attention span, distractibility, impulse control problems, disorganization back, they're usually hyper organized. It's when you have both, and the add stuff happened. Over time, you can really look back into your childhood and go took me longer to do my homework, then it took most people, my handwriting wasn't that awesome. And teacher said, I talked too much in class, or a half an hour of homework would take you an hour to do those would be some of the things that I would look for.

Brooke Schnittman  21:18  
Okay. And you also say that there's different causations of ADHD. But typically speaking, if there's a child with ADHD, there's at least a parent with ADHD.

Daniel G. Amen, MD  21:32  
Typically, yeah, I mean, it's so heritable, that if the child has an I can't find it at all in mom's history, or mom's side or dad's history or dad's side, I look at the child to see if they look like the parents to think maybe they were switched at birth. I mean, it's just that might happen more than we think. But you know, what we're finding digital addictions, double the risk of having ADHD, brand new study out, kids who spend more than two hours a day on their devices have a significantly higher risk. So if you think device addiction, digital addictions, are increasing the risk. I think the toxic food, the ultra processed foods, are giving kids kids who have a fast food diet have a higher risk of ADHD, toxic products, all the plastics and BPA, these pesticides are increasing. The resk, mercury, lead, arsenic, mold, all increase the risk of ADHD Plus, there's this fascinating study from Holland, where they took 300 Children with ADHD and put them on an elimination diet. They basically took all the crap out of their diet. They could eat lamb, Turkey, vegetables, fruit, pear juice, rice. I was Ed. Three months later on 70% of the kids lost their ADHD symptoms. So is it possible that this epidemic of ADHD is in large part driven by the toxic food we are giving to our selves in our children?

Brooke Schnittman  23:35  
So were those children then given a SPECT scan, or any brain imaging to see if they were okay.

Daniel G. Amen, MD  23:45  
They weren't just fascinating. Be a great study for us to do. But, you know, I've done enough SPECT scans to know that if you're being poisoned food and environmental toxins, your brain is not going to work, right.

Brooke Schnittman  24:04  
Sure. It's interesting before I knew I had ADHD, I did an elimination diet. And I the gut brain connection, I, my IBS went away. I was clear headed, focused. It was very hard and difficult to stay on that elimination diet. But I did realize that gluten and dairy for me, were the two that were triggering my brain fog, and my IBS.

Daniel G. Amen, MD  24:37  
So you only want to love food that loves you back. Then you're in a relationship with food. So you want to make it harder to cheat than to do the right things. It's just so important. I think a lot of the ink Recent AD D in our society is directly related to demonizing fat in our society. So funny story 1972, I turned 18. And my dad told me if I voted for McGovern, the country would go to hell. And I voted. Perfect. I voted for McGovern. And the country went to hell, but had nothing to do with MacGyver. But he becomes a very important player in the demonization of fat. And the sugar industry, paid two scientists $50,000 To write articles that sugar was innocuous and fat was the problem. Well, it's a lie. And we've learned this, because as they took fat out of our diet, we became sicker and fatter than ever before. 60% of the solid weight of your brain is fat. And taking fat out of the diet of all these children, we created more brain problems for them. And, you know, often say if someone calls you a fat head, say thank you, but children should have plenty of healthy fat in there.

Brooke Schnittman  26:30  
Absolutely. And I know omega three fatty acids are huge for individuals with ADHD,

Daniel G. Amen, MD  26:38  
and found to be helpful in studies. I mean, generally not going to fix you. But it's one of those things, I just think all of my patients should take omega three fatty acids, either with fish oil, or we have a new vegan Omega three for people who are sensitive to fish or want to be big

Brooke Schnittman  26:58  
on their foul. So you say that video games and screen time for more than two hours a day could possibly cause ADHD, if I heard you correctly, or the ADHD symptoms?

Daniel G. Amen, MD  27:14  
Well, I wouldn't give them two hours a day. That was just the research I read recently. Gotcha. I wouldn't give more than a half an hour a day. And I would delay it as long as you could. Because you know, they're just not big benefits. For being on gadgets.

Brooke Schnittman  27:32  
It's yeah, I know. You mentioned the black lines are similar to ADHD, and how it appears in the brain when you're watching TV, or you're doing video games. Can you elaborate on that?

Daniel G. Amen, MD  27:51  
Well, when you play video games dumps dopamine. I mean, if we just think of ADHD, at least types one and two is a dopamine Deficit Disorder. We're thrilling kids to dad, by giving them things that constantly dumped dopamine, you want to store dopamine up so you can concentrate. But if you give them caffeine in the morning, if you give them red ball, if you allow them to vape if you let them play video games, if you give them unfettered access to own smartphones, what you're always doing is you're dumping dopamine. And so they don't have the dopamine stores to get their homework done. And there's become thrill seeking, or conflict seeking or love seeking as a way to boost their dopamine. And then you know, because we don't have good control over digital access, I have eight 910 year old boys addicted to pornography, because you can't give a developing mind this stuff without it having a very negative impact on the pleasure centers in there, right? Absolutely.

Brooke Schnittman  29:19  
I completely agree. And our youngest, he loves fortnight loves it, and he's been spending way too much time on it. And the result is anger, outbursts crying like a very extreme emotions once he comes off with the video games. So we're definitely lessening that at this point, he has hyperactive ADHD too, so he is getting that stimulation of dopamine from the video games. How old is he? He is nine.

Daniel G. Amen, MD  29:56  
Yeah, but severely left Add to. And otherwise, you know these companies. And I don't mean to be a conspiracy theorist

Brooke Schnittman  30:08  
No, they have psychologists looking at it right to make it.

Daniel G. Amen, MD  30:13  
They create these gadgets to steal mindshare. And they do it by reinforcing techniques that boost dopamine. And in Silicon Valley, many of the engineers there won't give their kids gadgets, because they know how damaging they are. And you don't want to wear out your pleasure center when you're young. Because just think of what that will set you up for. And I ended up having to send some kids to detox programs. And I noticed when my grandson was a year old, he was good on a smartphone. And we thought he was really smart, until we realize it also increases tics. And so supervising that has become incredibly important, Dude, you just don't want to give them stuff that steals their mind. And they don't have the same love for your child that you have. They have love for money, money, right? So they want as much of their attention as possible, so they can sell them stuff.

Brooke Schnittman  31:35  
I mean, it's a billion dollar company, right? My kids get money, and it goes straight to fortnight, hundreds of dollars. You're right. So what do you suggest, though, for individuals with ADHD, or autism, or anyone who has, you know, social issues, let's say just for lack of better term, and they feel that when they play video games, they can socialize with other people for the first time?

Daniel G. Amen, MD  32:05  
Yeah, but it's a lie. It's not the truth. They're socializing with a digital image of that other person, they're not actually having a real relationship. You know, that's portraying a real relationship, but it's not. And so I would find ways to get them appropriately treated. So when they're with other kids, they can enjoy each other. And I think social skills training is not used enough to help these kids. Show, you know, I always asked kids, so what do you want? What's the goal? And is your behavior getting you what you want, just as a way to activate their frontal lobes and nine year olds are not too young? What do you want? Your behavior getting it? But if I'm allowing them to dump dopamine through the, through the day, what they want is their drug? And they'll do everything to get their drug? Including becoming violent with their parents. It's sad.

Brooke Schnittman  33:18  
Yeah. Oh. So we have the seven types of ADHD, you had talked about a lot of the different causes. You mentioned, the digital piece, most of us are on a computer or phone as adults, more than two hours a day, especially working from home. What does that do then? For ADHD? Or people who are adults who don't have ADHD, but then are on screens for longer than two hours a day?

Daniel G. Amen, MD  33:56  
You know, it's there's, I think there's a difference between you and I being on Zoom, or whatever we're on and interacting, focused on the conversation versus killing hundreds of ants or bad guys coming at you hear that? As much as I like talking to you. It's not the same thrill as murdering all why not. And so I think, you know, whether it's me writing on a computer or doing interviews or seeing patients, I'm not dumping dopamine, I'm sort of dripping it, especially if I'm doing things I really like like this interview. So I would say, you know, technology is just part of it. But if I was constantly checking my phone, I was constantly waiting for that next thing to happen or the buzz in your pocket, then yeah, that's sort of where earn out your pleasure sons. Yeah. So having digital discipline is it's just absolutely essential. We are I don't know if you know, but we're in this mental mass, where 57% of teenage girls feel persistently sad. That 30 points.

Brooke Schnittman  35:23  
Oh my gosh, yeah, I saw that in a recent article you wrote. And when I worked in the middle school, as a special education director, more females were coming in with anxiety and depression than ever before suicidal ideations suicidal attempts.

Daniel G. Amen, MD  35:43  
I have a new book coming out next year called Raising mentally strong kids, and I have a public television special with it. And I've just been thinking a lot about why, you know, what's causing this dramatic rise. I'm way older than you are. But my guess is when you were in,

Brooke Schnittman  36:05  
I just looked good for my age, I guess.

Daniel G. Amen, MD  36:10  
When you were in middle school, or you were in high school, there were issues but they weren't at this level. Now, and so why. And so one is the pandemic and our reaction to it. When you isolate people, and then you give them death, tolls and fear. That's a problem that's going to create big problems. COVID all by itself, it creates an inflammatory bomb in the brain. Oh, yes. Being forced to be vaccinated. People don't like that people will like being forced and vaccinating kids is a bit insane. And then the digital addiction. Nut, parents are having more problems than ever before. And children are like violins and they play the stress of their parents. And then this crazy relationship we have with alcohol and drugs where we think of alcohols L Food marijuana's innocuous, both two huge lies. And then if you add toxic products, toxic food, toxic thoughts, and then to parent working families, where there's just a whole bunch of guilt about not spending enough time with the kids, and so you overdue for them, which creates kids who don't like themselves because they don't feel competent, right? I mean, how you develop self esteem in someone is you help them be competent. It's like they have chores, and you're not doing everything for them, and you don't fight their battles. You teach them to fight, how to fight battles, I think those are the way out that each of those have an answer. And the way out, like, we really think about what we feed them. And it's like, oh, my child won't have anything for breakfast, except Captain Crunch, or frosted flakes or donuts or patient

Brooke Schnittman  38:14  
that dilemma with ADHD because of the sensory issues sometimes might. If no, it's like 100%, fine

Daniel G. Amen, MD  38:23  
things you like that, like you back. And quite frankly, I'm not buying anything in this house. That doesn't surprise us your health. So, you know, take them to the store and go, we're going on a treasure hunt. We're gonna find 10 things you love that love you back. So I have one of my favorite patients of all time has Tourette's and he diagnosed him I think when he was nine. And and I love this kid. So the first thing I did was put them on magnesium, and an elimination diet. So magnesium to decrease the muscle text and elimination diet because I've just found it to be so helpful. Eliminated gluten, dairy, corn, soy, artificial dyes and sweeteners. And he came back two weeks later, and the tics were 95% better. But he looked sad. And I'm like, buddy, what's going on? He said, Dr. Ayman, I don't like any of the foods like you don't like any of them. He's like, nope. And so my next appointment him we actually went shopping. Oh, that's a sweet. I'm like so your job is to find 10 things you love that love you back while on that one shopping trip. We found 23 things he loved him on that loved him back and now we're up to 157 and there's no argument about food, there's no depression, about food, because he realizes that the TEKS bought him a lot of problems with being teased and standing out in a negative way. And it's just you gotta, you gotta eat food you love that loves you back.

Brooke Schnittman  40:23  
And that is essentially who you are as a doctor. I mean, you study the inside of a person's brain, and then you treat them based off of what you see on their inside. And it seems like that's the same for the elimination diet. So, you know, try to eliminate all the what things that typically make you swell, and then you slowly bring back those food and figure out what's impacting your body.

Daniel G. Amen, MD  40:56  
Yeah, and how I mean, I didn't have any nutrition education during my psychiatric residency, not one lecture. But you know, I feel like, I'm a really good doctor because I listened. And when I had the mother of an autistic child, tell me that when she eliminated gluten and dairy, he got 50 new words the next week. I'm like, Oh, I have to pay attention to that. Wow. Or when I had a patient who had arthritis, stop aspartame, why had arthritis at the time, and I was drinkin like 32 ounces of Diet Pepsi a day. And I'm like, Well, let me stop aspartame, and my arthritis went away. I just, you know, it's mostly through paying attention. Diet matters. So I remember toxins, they map or

Brooke Schnittman  41:57  
Sure. Do you think that trauma has anything to do with ADHD?

Daniel G. Amen, MD  42:04  
I think if you have trauma in your family, and if you experienced trauma growing up, you're gonna have more likely to have the over focused add type or the anxious add type. I'm actually doing a study now on adverse childhood experiences. So how much on a scale of zero to 10? How awful was your childhood, and like my wife's an eight, and we adopted both of our nieces because their parents were drug addicts. They're both nines. And that has a negative impact on brain functionally, the focus, for sure. And if your parents hate each other, it's really hard for you to focus in school. If your home is unpredictable, you're being molested. It's really hard to focus in school. So absolutely. I think trauma plays a role. It's one of the reasons I think it's really important to assess trauma when you're assessing anybody with a brain or mental health issue.

Brooke Schnittman  43:16  
So if so, for instance, I had trauma growing up, I was bullied pretty much my whole life. My parents were divorced, didn't like each other at a certain time. No one in my family is diagnosed with ADHD except for me. So are you saying that it can mimic ADHD symptoms or actually cause ADHD?

Daniel G. Amen, MD  43:40  
I think it would be more mimicking ADHD. Because if I help you eliminate the trauma or help you work through the trauma, odds are you're going to be able to focus much better. But how would we know Brooke, unless we actually looked at your brain? Do you have the class? The pattern that responds to stimulants? Or do you have the trauma pattern? That word respond better to something like EMDR a specific psychological treatment for trauma? Some people put you on psilocybin and have you do therapeutic mushroom trips. It's not my thing.

Brooke Schnittman  44:29  
Can you tell me more what you think about that? Yeah,

Daniel G. Amen, MD  44:32  
yeah. Fix me, buddy. I've seen a lot of people say that. They were better and they got insights and they had more compassion, but I'm not had anybody. They did you know, of course of six sessions, and then they're fine. You know, the sort of big aha for me was, I was a consultant on the movie concussion with Wilson about Toronto. like brain injury and football

Brooke Schnittman  45:00  
has a lot of changes.

Daniel G. Amen, MD  45:04  
And I read his book right before the Oscars last year. And at the end of his book, he talked about having Ayahuasca 14 times. So I lost it, a hallucinogen in South America. And then he attacks Chris Rock on national television.

Brooke Schnittman  45:24  
So I think it had to do with the iOS.

Daniel G. Amen, MD  45:27  
I'm thinking it absolutely didn't fix him. Yeah. Fair enough. fix anything.

Brooke Schnittman  45:36  
Listen, I mean, I yeah, I love the whole cold exposure thing. I think that's wonderful for dopamine, for sure. And it's so sad that untreated ADHD, like Will Smith can lead to that impulsivity of slapping someone on national television and then being banned from the Oscars for ever.

Daniel G. Amen, MD  46:03  
But if we don't lock at his brain, it's easy to call them bad. It's way harder to go. Why? Why did that happen? And, you know, the fallout for Chris Rock. You know, I mean, he experienced emotional trauma, physical trauma on national television. And so I would love both of their scans. You know, one guy, Blaine. So why did he do that? So likely had frontal lobe problems that night, you know, on a night that should have been sell up a Troy for him? I mean, he won the Oscar. I thought he should have got the Oscar for concussion. But um, yeah, I mean, one, the author

Brooke Schnittman  46:51  
eating concussions for other

Daniel G. Amen, MD  46:55  
couldn't stay in the appropriateness of the moment, which is very unlike him.

Brooke Schnittman  47:03  
You know, it's interesting, and I'm glad that you went there, because so many of us with ADHD hold it all together for so long, especially in school, and then we come home and we explode. Right? We explode on our parents, we explode on our loved ones. And Will Smith, he was always the guy that wouldn't use curse words. He was politically correct. Nice. From the outside appearance. What do you think about that? Do you think it was him holding on to his impulsivity? And then he got triggered because of his wife? And then it all came out? I mean, I know you haven't seen like, we have to see his brain to understand. But do you think there's any relationship to that and the child in the classroom?

Daniel G. Amen, MD  47:53  
Well, I think if you just look at how stress is stock, so odds are he, in his biography, autobiography talks about growing up in a traumatic environment with an aggressive dad. He also talks about head injuries that he and fame wears out the pleasure centers in your brain. And now we have these 14 Ayahuasca trips, we have a marriage that's in trouble. I mean, they talk about publicly, you know, about how she had an affair. There are right, son's friend. And I mean, it's publicly humiliating. And it's, maybe not one of those things would have caused the reaction. But the stacking of all of those things caused the reaction. Right. And so getting somebody well just want to address all of those things. And, you know, I'm always interested on how all of these brains from Jada and Chris Rock will interact to create joy, or holy terror.

Brooke Schnittman  49:12  
You mentioned EMDR for ADHD, and I know you talk about ants. So reframing negative thoughts and projection that we think we might feel someone's thinking about us, you know, being mind reader's all that. But EMDR Can you tell us a little bit about how that changes the brain.

Daniel G. Amen, MD  49:31  
So when you have trauma, emotional trauma, it fires up your emotional brain to look for trouble because it protects you. If you can head it off. It protects you EMDR helps to reset it. It helps to calm that area. The brown you still look for trouble when necessary, but you don't have to look for a white tiger around every corner. In your house or at work, I'm very a huge fan of EMDR

Brooke Schnittman  50:06  
Oh, yes, yes. A lot of my clients love it. My coaches, I had one EMDR session and it blocked out some traumatic memories in my dreams. I know your time is running up. So I want to be respectful of that. So I really appreciate you being here and sharing your wealth of knowledge about brain health and ADHD. I know you've impacted millions of lives and hopefully this interview impacts millions of mores. Can you just share with everyone where they can find you? Maybe take a free add type test, get supplements, learn more about you?

Daniel G. Amen, MD  50:43  
Certainly, they can find me at Amen clinics.com Amon like the last word no prayer clinics.com They can take her free add type tested add type tests.com or our brain health assessment and brain health assessment.com they can follow me on Instagram at doc underscore Amon that's on Instagram or doc Amon on tick tock and we just love to be helpful. I have a brand new book out called Change Your Brain every day really written for the Add Person 366 short essays, one a day, three to five minutes something simple to do. It's snackable content, so you can have a better brain and a better life.

Brooke Schnittman  51:34  
Thank you so much. And all of your books are like that even this you know you have a manual of how to get through it for the ADHD brain. So thank you for being such a huge impact on our community and for being on today.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai