216: Dr. Daniel Amen - All Psychiatric Illnesses are Not Single or Simple Disorders

Summary: In Episode #216 Ari interviews [Dr Daniel Amen](http://www.amenclinics.com/): the man who’s scanned more brains than anyone else in the world. Daniel’s a psychiatrist with a background in medical imaging who believes that the health of your brain is physical, social, and spiritual as well as mental. He’s the author of [The 7 Types of ADD](http://www.additudemag.com/slideshow/61/slide-1.html), and [Change Your Brain, Change Your Life](http://www.amazon.com/Change-Your-Brain-Life-Obsessiveness/dp/0812929985). Tune in to learn more about Daniel’s work, and find out how to make your brain function better. Time Stamped Show Notes: - 15:22 – Welcoming Daniel to the show - 15:43 – Daniel was an infantry medic in Vietnam and retrained as an x-ray technician - 16:16 – Was inspired by the potential of psychiatry to change people’s lives - 17:20 – Has developed a database of 120,000 brain scans - 17:27 – “You’re not stuck with the brain you have...you can make it better” - 19:00 – How large a part of Daniel’s process is the Spec Scan? - 20:20 – Health is physical, mental, social and spiritual - 21:20 – Psychiatry needs to look at damage to the brain as a physical organ - 22:20 – “I originally trained as a marital therapist” - 23:30 – Daniel scanned the brains of his most troubled couple: “It helped so much” - 24:30 – Many problems have physical causes - for instance, toxoplasmosis - 25:30 – “We should be analysing and rehabilitating criminals...let’s invest in making people effective” - 26:26 – Daniel started looking at ADD when he was a child psychiatrist - 27:30 – “All psychiatric illnesses are not single or simple disorders” - like physical symptoms, they have multiple causes and need different treatments - 30:20 – “Everybody’s ADD is different” - 30:45 – “I don’t like fighting with people...my colleagues hate what I’m doing and it used to really trouble me.” - 32:00 – What’s Daniel’s treatment methodology? - 33:20 – Treatments range from nutrition supplements, to education, to medication - 35:58 – How much of Daniel’s work is corrective and how much is optimisation? - 37:05 – Daniel and his wife are starting a new course: “The Brain Warrior’s Way” - 39:09 – “We’d love to see entrepreneurs get really serious about the health of their brains” - 30:20– _Top 3 Tips to be More Effective:_ - Improve the quality of your decisions - Never let yourself get hungry - Make sure you get 8 hours of sleep every night - Visit the [Amen Clinics](http://www.amenclinics.com/) website for more information Key Points: - When your brain is healthy, you are healthy - Health is simultaneously physical, social, mental, and spiritual: ‘mental illness’ can have physical or social causes - You can make your brain function better by making the right decisions: fight to keep it healthy with good nutrition, sleep, and stimulation - Psychiatric illness, like physical illness, is complicated: different treatments work for different people Resources Mentioned: - [Tab Snooze](http://www.tabsnooze.com/) - Make open tabs go away until you need them - [Get See Note](https://www.getseenote.com/?ref=producthunt) - The Post-It note, upgraded with e-Ink - [Ummo](http://ummoapp.com/?ref=producthunt) - Track and improve your public speaking - [The world's first co-working space](https://hbr.org/2016/04/the-innovative-coworking-spaces-of-15th-century-italy?utm_source=nextdraft) - [Smooch](https://smooch.io) - Automate responses and customer support - [Front App](https://frontapp.com) - Aggregate all your messages to one collaborative inbox Sponsored By: [EarthClassMail](https://www.earthclassmail.com/) – Earth Class Mail helps you move your snail mail to the cloud. Visit [www.LessDoing.com/postal](http://www.lessdoing.com/postal) to get signed up now! Text DOLESS to 33733 to sign up for the Less Doing Newsletter Credits - Original Music provided by [Felix Bird](http://2014.felixbird.com/) - Audio Production by [Chris Mo