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Dr. Daniel Amen: you want to prematurely age your brain, drop out of school, have low blood flow. Low blood flow is the number one brain imaging predictor of Alzheimer's disease.
The Diary Of A CEO host: You are the first person I've ever spoken to who has a comprehensive and very believable hypothesis that caffeine has a side effect. I've asked my guests over and over again because I think people often refer to caffeine as a miracle drug that comes with no cost. But you're the first one through my research that seems to be very clear that caffeine does have a significant cost.
Dr. Daniel Amen: It's a drug. It's the most common drug, and it's addictive. A little bit is fine, but more than a little bit is not fine. It increases cortisol, and you don't want to increase cortisol. It puts fat around your belly and it shrinks your prefrontal cortex. The reason I started really paying attention to it is the SPECT study I do, which is a blood flow study. Caffeine constricts blood flow by about 30%. I have all my patients hold caffeine the morning of their scans, because I don't want it to artificially show me they have less blood flow than they really do. It fakes you out into thinking you have energy. What it does is block adenosine, the chemical that tells you to go to sleep. So often people rely on caffeine because they're sleep deprived, but it's just a bad cycle. Many of my patients stop, and uniformly they tell me they feel better and their energy is better.
The Diary Of A CEO host: You talk about one particular patient in the book who was struggling with a variety of difficulties, I think brain fog and memory issues, and one of the things you advised him to do was to cut out coffee.
Dr. Daniel Amen: Jeff. I remember Jeff. He was a pilot and he lived on caffeine. I told him you've got to get rid of it. His brain looked terrible, and he said no, no, no. Then he said, all right, I'm going to do it. He didn't get headaches. We cut it down by 5% a day, so in three weeks it was gone. He didn't have any withdrawal and didn't have any headaches, and he was texting me about unbelievable energy and unbelievable clarity. It's a drug, and I want to teach my patients skills. I don't want them to just take pills, and caffeine is a drug.
The Diary Of A CEO host: Do you drink caffeine?
Dr. Daniel Amen: A little bit, not much. How much was Jeff having? About 600 milligrams a day. Jesus. That's two venti Starbucks. One venti Starbucks is 330 milligrams of caffeine. We've supersized everything in this country. I don't know if they do that in the UK, but we certainly do it here, and it's not a good strategy. So long-term restriction of blood flow to the brain through things like caffeine, marijuana, and all of these other things has a detrimental impact on the development of the brain. Pretty straightforward.
That's the B. The R is retirement and aging. You want to prematurely age your brain: drop out of school and do not engage in new learning. When you learn something new, your brain makes a new connection. When you stop learning, or you start doing the same thing over and over again, your brain starts to disconnect. Being in a job that does not require new learning is a risk factor for dementia. Being lonely is a risk factor for dementia. So be an ass, and you're more likely to hurt your brain. At my workplace we have the no rule. There's a book by a Stanford professor called The No Rule; love that book. As a CEO, the no rule starts with me. I don't get to be one, but I'm not tolerating anybody who has behavior at work like that. If you're not an ass, you're less likely to be lonely, and loneliness is terrible for brain function.
If you want to prematurely age your brain, eat a lot of red meat, especially if your iron and ferritin levels are high, because ferritin is just stored iron. Iron can damage the brain. The I is inflammation. If you want to increase inflammation, which is a root cause of so many medical and mental health issues, never floss. Don't really care about your teeth. You want to love your brain, so you have to love your mouth. It's absolutely critical not to have gum disease, because if you have gingivitis, odds are you're at increased risk for heart disease, depression, and dementia. It's fascinating. I didn't learn about this, and I didn't really care about my teeth, until I started seeing the links between gum disease and heart disease, and gum disease and brain disease. Now I'm a flossing fool. But if you want to damage your brain, don't care about your mouth or your teeth.
Don't ever eat fish. People who have grilled or baked fish once a week have more gray matter in their brain. People with low levels of omega-3 fatty acids have smaller brains. If you want to damage your brain, eat the standard American diet: processed food, most of your calories from the gas station and the fast food restaurants nearby. They spend billions getting those foods to the perfect crunchiness, the perfect melt, the perfect aroma, because they hire neuroscientists to addict your brain. Be suspicious.
The G is genetics. If you want to damage your brain, blame everything on your genes. I have obesity and heart disease in my family, but I'm not overweight and I don't have heart disease. Why? I'm on an obesity and heart disease prevention program every day of my life, because genes load the gun. It's what happens to us and what we choose to do that pulls the trigger. I adopted my nieces because their parents couldn't stop using drugs. I'm adamant: if you want my help, you have to cooperate. There's no vape, no drug use, and no alcohol.
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