0:00 now you've scanned over 250,000 brains and have concluded that yes men and women's Brains are different and it can actually show up in subtle ways that can have massive impact so what are the differences and how does that lead to a big impact on our relationship so I actually published I think it's the world's largest study on gender and on 46,000 scans looking at well what's the difference between male brains and female brains and it's sort of like we're not the same species the female brain especially in the emotional circuits of the brain are very busy much more active they're frontal lobe so
0:47 that's the front third of your brain largest in humans than any other animal by far significantly more active in the female brain now the prefrontal cortex is called the executive part of the brain it's sort of like the boss at work and it's involved with things like forethought judgment impulse control organization planning empathy learning from the mistakes you make significantly more active in women and the one statistic that shows that's absolutely true is who goes to jail males 14 times more than females because
1:34 they're not thinking ahead you know if I do this this is going to happen if I say this this is going to happen males and females both have their own significant strengths but the strengths of the female brain is forethought it's conscientiousness it's collaboration that is why they actually make really good leaders but because of the busyness of their emotional brain they also suffer with depression twice as much as males and they try they attempt suicide three times more than men but men are more successful at
2:21 suicide three times more than women because they use more violent means and often suicide attempts for women is a cry for help but because men are generally not as good at communicating they hold things in and until it's too late oh my God so there's so much there that I'd actually really love to dive into because I think that in as you were breaking it down it's like well if we really are almost like two different species no wonder sometimes we look at each other like the other person's nuts so let's just even Orient people on everything you're saying it doesn't mean that women or men are better cuz when people say that they're not the same it's funny how people get their backup of like yes we are I just no no one's
3:08 better or worse but we're different so now if we're different how on Earth do we use our differences to understand each other and actually collaborate better instead of um be at each other's throats and you know call each other crazy and nuts and things like that okay so you say there's a lot of strengths with women and a lot of challenges with women's Brains and so let's just go through a few of those if you don't mind so you said that um women are more likely to worry more their emotional brain especially in area called the anterior just means toward the front singulate gyrus part of a it's a part of a network in the brain called the default mode Network female brains wildly more busy so they think
3:54 more they process more they worry more and and it's just because the gear shifter in the brain is very busy compared to male brains now we have to understand there some males that have a very busy anterior singulate and some females we it's right so these are in general terms but when I look at a scan I generally can tell how old the scan is how the person is and whether or not it's male or female uh females tend to have healthier brains they have less addictions left head injuries because they didn't play football and so on had fewer fights so less head injuries so
4:40 their brains tend to be healthier but busier and with the busyness especially in that front part of the brain they worry they hold grudges if things don't go their way they get upset and could be argumentative and oppositional in one study they had 5 2% less serotonin and what does serotonin do it calms down that part of the brain but it also calms down the limic or emotional part of the brain most people don't know that serotonin is an inhibitory neurotransmitter which just means it calms things down and if you have 52% less than I do and I'm not worried about it and you are that's going to
5:27 cause friction and and cuz I'm not worried now you're giving me anxiety and I don't really want it and that can be trouble is it really 52% less whoa 52% less than a a man and so doing things to boost serotonin can help balance you and when your hormones go low serotonin goes low with it which is why as women go into per menopause or menopause they can get depressed and one thing most people don't know is that with progesterone it actually goes lower 10 years before you go into menopause so in your late 30s progesterone think of it as the brain's
6:13 natural Valium when it goes low now your busy brain becomes busier you're more worried you're more anxious you're sadder you're more irritable you can't sleep because your brain won't shut off and you go to the doctor who gives you a prescription for Ian to sleep very bad for Xanax to calm your anxiety very bad and then for Prozac or Lexapro to help your mood you'll leave with these three things that you may never stop and I'm like Checker progesterone give her a little bit of progesterone because then she might need not need any of it and then make sure you get more Sunshine increases serotonin exercise increases
6:58 serotonin and do something where you feel respect increases serotonin oh what do you mean by that well whether it's volunteering or having a job where you feel respected or respecting your family and women often because of the worry overdue for children the child will go on board and rather than go I wonder how you're going to fix that they try to fix it and the less you do things like like that the better and your children will actually respect you more if you stop overdoing for them and I teach all of my patients to kill the ants the automatic negative thoughts that steal their happiness it's not a good thing wow so
7:45 okay so you said the Sun and exercise are two things that people can do to boost their serotonin and that will make them less emotional and so they'll be able to communicate with their partner better less worried worried so I don't want to say less emotional because I want us to be emotional I want us to feel our feelings can when we block them they come out in pain in our body um and then sometimes the supplement 5htp 5htp is the amino acid precursor to serotonin and I like it I've used it a lot over the years with my patients so anywhere from 500 milligram to 200 Mig perfect um okay so I've got something else for you I did a search on Google about what are the biggest complaints
8:32 men have about women and women have about men and I would love to actually read them to you and then you break down what is probably happening in our brains Where We complain about the other person and don't get them so number one for women the biggest complaint they have is he's not there for me what is happening in the brain where you may feel that intensely and the the guy doesn't necessarily understand that feeling well you know guys have add five times more than women do so their attentions been may be shorter um but a challenge is once you get a thought well you may have that thought 50 times so he might not have
9:19 been there for you once because he was distracted or you came in the fourth quarter of the Laker game and you wanted to like test how how much does he love me does he love me more than the lers and it's like wait till the end of the game right I mean why are you going to do that and then complain he's not there for you so sometimes it's context dependent but often when I'm talking to guys it's like if you hurt her feelings you really want to be careful because she may think about it way more than you think about it just because of the default Network in her brain which tends to go on repeat if she's stressed and it changes during
10:07 this woman's menstrual cycle so I I grew up with five sisters um one week when I'm a teenager one week they just really like me and they were so happy to have me as a brother two weeks later I'm the worst thing in the world and it's very confusing right you always just sort of feel off center especially if you have five females in the house plus six with my mother and so when I first started hearing about PMS after I started scanning people I'm like I'm going to scan women at different times of their menstrual cycle and I was seeing this teenage girl and she was getting better and I'm at Marine World which sort of like SeaWorld in Northern California and
10:53 I got a call on the weekend it's a Sunday from her mother that she had attacked her husband with a knife oh God and I'm like is this new Behavior she said right before my period I've left him three times but I got really out of control today and I'm very worried and I saw her in my office later that afternoon the next day the worst time of her cycle scanned her and then I scanned her again 11 days later 11 days later her brain was just normal but during the worst time of her cycle her cingulate flamed and her frontal loes dropped which means she's worried rigid
11:41 and flexible with no break and so I helped balance her brain she stopped attacking her husband they're still doing fine but your hormones when they change it can be fright in for people and and a lot of women know what I'm talking about and some of them uh no problem at all but some of them it really puts a lot of stress on their relationship yeah I my God as you were saying that I just thought if you've already got these differences between us and now you add on to the top that our brains during our cycle are changing and um there are stronger moments you know
12:28 than others that understanding I'm sure becomes even more far apart and you know growing up I just always heard a lot of guys going oh she's on her period you know stay clear she's crazy and as a woman it was really upsetting to hear that but it is very confusing because you're like I don't like all everything that I'm feeling right now feels real but I feel a little out of control and so understanding what is happening um and even understanding I know that like the brain changes when a woman gets pregnant and doesn't like the brain shrink and again the woman thinks that she's going crazy and if we don't understand it then I think you feel lost you feel empty you feel alone um and to add to all of that then your partner looks at
13:13 you like you're losing your your marbles well and it's very stressful for your partner because it's the unpredictability that leaves him off center or her off center and so just knowing and sort of I have uh a lot of my female patients just track their Cycles it's like let's just know where you are because if this happens two or three days before you start we're not going to treat that just know it and during that time more things to boost serotonin make sure you get out in the sun more make sure you exercise more sometimes a little 5htp can be really help
13:59 but if it starts 2 weeks before then we really need to assess what's going on in your hormones and that's very important because sometimes balancing that can really help level it some people it's called premenstrual dysphoric disorder pmdd um it can be really bad where women get really dark um they're just taking this natural sort of Cy vulnerability and it's magnified and it may be magnified because they had a concussion when they were four or five and they don't have healthy activity in their frontal loes and so when that time comes your prefrontal cortex think of it
14:45 like the break in your brain it's like well the break doesn't work and I have less control over myself which is very frightening so how do you stabilize the brakes then you said did serotonin is that the key serotonin calms down the worry Center so then we would need something like dopamine to increase your prefrontal cortex activity and the beautiful thing about exercise it does both it does both it increases serotonin and it increases dopamine that's interesting is that why so dopamine is like the excitement right that Rush is that why we women go for like cake and stuff and like um like sweet Foods when
15:31 we're kind of during our cycle when we're about to no it's serotonin they they do the serotonin um because and do you know this is why restaurants give you bread when you sit down free bread often amazing bread uh what does bread do it's a simple carbohydrate simple carbohydrates bread pasta potatoes rice fruit juice sugar cause an insulin spike in your body which drives serotonin into your brain so tryptophan uh another one of the amino acid precursors to serotonin It's a larger molecule and it doesn't compete
16:17 well to get across the bloodb brain barrier exercise takes the other amino acids put them in your muscles decreases the competition for tryptophan to sneak in your brain sugar pushes tryptophan into your brain which is why you like it it makes you feel good the problem is it also makes you fat depressed and feebleminded so not a good thing it's not a good tradeoff yeah thank you for breaking that down by the way that was amazing um the other thing that women have uh the one of the biggest complaints women have about guys is they don't connect enough there's not enough connection between them so talk to me about that and the connection and why again I'm always just going to speak for myself I am I definitely have a um uh
17:06 the connection with my husband I feel it more than he does so if we don't spend time together I'm the one that has to wave the flag to be like hey we're not connecting um now we've just owned that with each other and said look this is my responsibility because he doesn't feel it so I'm going to wave the flag first and then if I wave the flag we've got an agreement that he'll pay attention even though he feels connected to me so what is happening between me and my husband or men and women with the connection part that potentially men don't need it as much as women and typically they don't um there is not one Society on Earth where men are primary caretakers for children not one and it's because female limic brains or emotional
17:53 brains are busy and who do you attach to in your family my dad was gone at work all the time I'm attached to my mom and we're wired that way and people hate when I say that but there's not one not one Society on Earth uh I think men today are doing better than when I was growing up but there's a great example of how hormones are involved in this when I got together with Tana with my wife she was sort of like a guy and I'm like I had trouble getting her to commit we'd be intimate and then she's like okay I gotta go and I'm like hey where are you like there was no
18:39 Afterglow it was like an after Zing gone and then we had her hormones checked and her ovaries checked she actually had something called PCOS her polycystic ovarian syndrome and her testosterone levels were really high and when we Balan them she connected she attached to me and then our first fight was over the kind of dog we were going to get so I wanted a little King Charles cavaliere they're very cute they're loving they'll sit on your lap you know it's like my little buddy and she wanted a Mastiff and I'm like no and so we thought about this and then once her
19:26 hormones were balanced she calls me up one day at work and she's looking at pocket poodles online this little cute black I'm like who stole my wife it's like this is not you right to go from a Mastiff to a pocket po change your hormones change your dog wow you say the dog at the end that's so incredible so literally things like that then aren't necessarily just about taste it's about uh our brain and our hormones and our emotions absolutely and women's Brains get bathed in utero so even before you're born they get bathed with estrogen well estrogen causes language to develop on both sides
20:15 of your brain so typically we think of language on the left side of the brain for right-handed people but for women it they have greater bigger language centers which is why they often use more words um and I tell mothers disciplining children less words less words more likely to get what you want because if you overwhelm them with language they get confused or irritated wow that's so fascinating um and I actually you say that um going back to the the the bonding the the connection between a mother and a child um that if the father is an alcoholic versus the mother that's an alcoholic
21:01 the kid actually has more trauma um in their future if the mom's the alcoholic absolutely and so uh my first wife grew up in a pretty severely abusive alcoholic home and when we got married I mean she's the reason I became a psychiatrist two months into our marriage she tried to kill herself and I took her to see a wonderful psychiatrist and I came to realize if he helped her it wouldn't just help her that it would help me and it would help our children and our grandchildren and as the children of alcoholic stuff came out I studied it and if you and 30 million people in the United States grew up in alcoholic homes W that's huge and they
21:47 learned not to trust not to talk and not to feel because it was dangerous and and when I saw the difference between if you're that D was an alcoholic it's bad if your mom's an alcoholic it's a disaster because she's the primary bonding figure and if you can't trust her it's hard to trust anybody if you're not feeling strong and healthy on the inside it's nearly impossible to show up and crush your goals and dreams take it from me I ignored my health for so long and it had such a negative impact on my life my confidence and my self-esteem and that's why I want to tell you about Joy Women's Wellness Joy Women's Wellness helps women like you and me
22:33 take control of our well-being so we can feel like us again Joy Women's Wellness will do a simple blood draw and then give you a super indepth Functional Health Rapport and together with your clinician you can come up with a game plan for how to balance your hormones get your energy back and start sleeping through the night so prioritize your health and just feel better from the inside out click the link below and run over to Joy to get your levels checked right now and guys if you use my coupon code they're going to give you 10% discount so you can go and get started that's choose jooy doco now in my work I talk a lot about trauma and how to heal trauma and absolutely it's possible Tana grow up in a traumatic environment do you know the
23:20 ace questionnaire adverse childhood experiences so 0 to 10 how many bad things happen to you growing up four or more increases the risk of every bad thing well 10 is an eight wow but our daughters of one so and that's sort of the whole point of our work 8 to one is you don't have to give your trauma to the Next Generation wow and is Ace you said AC AC adverse childhood experiences wow it's about physical sexual emotional abuse neglect witnessing a parent um being hurt by the other parent having a parent
24:06 with an addiction with a mental health problem or going to jail so it's how many of these things happen to you and I adopted my two nieces because they're both nines and but one of them's at UCLA doing amazing the other one's going into high school um yeah it's hard I mean development matters so much but if you just understand these differences you just don't take it as personally and one very practical thing because men tend to be more distracted you have to tell them more than once what you like and so if you like like you're being intimate with each other a lot of women ago I told him and
24:54 he's not doing that because he doesn't love me you only told him once and it's like how do boys learn to shoot free throws they shoot thousands of them it's like no you have to remind them no don't be irritated about it but in a loving way it's like no do this remember do this and they love you and they'll want to but they forget and so you just have to remind them so don't take that personally as if they're not into you it is just how they are wired correct and that you just have to teach them over and over a bit and don't be like mean about it but what happens is I said it once now I've spun on it because of my
25:42 very busy emotional brain now I've spun on it and now I torture him and I'm like no that's not a good way to do it and I used to think early on as a psychiatrist that because I've seen lots of couples that it takes takes two to change and I realize that's totally not true it takes one person to change because if you begin to notice what you like more than what you don't like the relationship begins to change in a positive way I was actually going to ask you is that one of the things that for us to just remember because you we act as if someone's going to respond the way we would and so if I tell my husband I really love this I
26:27 assume he's going to respond as if I would if he came to me and he told me he really loved it because if my husband came and told me I really love this I would plan I would get him 10 of them like let's say I got him a chocolate or something I'd get him 10 of them I'd have them on reorder I would put one on his pillow like I would go oh my God he told me he like cool and I would remember that for the next 10 years and I will have that in the back of my brain so that when he's going for a snack I'll be like oh you want this chocolate that's how I would show up so when I tell him I assume he should should react the same but when he doesn't especially in my younger years obviously now I just know so much about men and women and the brain and health and mindset and the difference between just humans in general that I don't do this but I do remember back at the beginning I was like I can't believe he
27:13 didn't like is he not listening is he not paying attention to me am I not important you know and so you to your point that spiral of that voice in your head starts to make up a story and then you poke at them because you're irritated right you leak then you leak which causes him to recoil oh yeah and then there becomes more and more distance and then the relationship becomes vulnerable so for people at home don't judge your partner if they forget your anniversary like what would you actually suggest because what I now do is I tell my husband babe it's our anniversary I'll put him I'll put it in the calendar I then text him to remind him I then will put an alarm in his phone to remind him to book dinner but but it's because I know this is what I'm
28:00 looking for like this is what I need and this is what I want but I know that he's very forgetful and he gets very busy so I try to counteract it um but for anyone at home that's listening how would you actually even then approach that type of discussion where because it doesn't feel good if you just keep telling the person remember this remember this remember this well I think if they don't remember it could be because they have ADD it could be because they had a head injury it could be because because they're so focused on doing other things to take care of the family that that just hasn't bubbled up to the surface I think what you're doing is perfect right this is a goal for you he cooperates lets you put it in his calendar right it's not that he's
28:46 oppositional it's just he gets distracted and so you're just helping them with this and if you really want a great relationship um with that female busy brain you tend to notice what you don't like more than what you like you tend to notice what you don't like about yourself there's one study where 93% of women don't like their bodies uh and if you're not 93% 93% of women don't like their bodies and so if you're focused on noticing what you don't like that's going to cause chronic stress in the relationship I collect Penguins um I don't know if you noticed them when they
29:32 were in my office I did yes when my oldest actually was seven he was hard for me oppositional um argumentative and I'm talking to my supervisor I'm a child Sky Tre resident during that time and she gave me some very great ideas but then more time with him and so I took him to a place called Sea Life Park in Hawaii where they have sea animal shows and I went to the whale show and it was great and the Dolphin Show and the sea lion show and all of it was great but at the end of the day we went to the penguin show The Penguin's name was fat Freddy and Freddy did all these amazing things he went on the stage climbed a 20 foot high high diving
30:17 board went to the end bounced jumped in the water I'm like whoa got out B with his nose counted with his flipper jumped through a hook of fire and I have my arm around my son thinking I'm a good dad this is so much fun and then the trainer asked him to go get something asked Freddy to go got something Freddy went and got it and brought it right back and at that moment time Stood Still For Me CU I asked this kid to get something for me and he wants to have a discussion and then he doesn't want to do it and I knew my son was smarter than the penguin so I'm like I'm the problem so I went up to the trainer afterwards I said how did you get Freddy to do all these really cool things she looks at my son and then she looks at me and says I'm like parents whenever Freddy does anything
31:04 like what I want him to do I notice him I give him a hug and I give him a fish and the light went on in my head that when he did what I wanted him to do I really wasn't paying attention but when he didn't do what I wanted him to do I gave him a lot of attention CU I didn't want to raise bad children so I collect Penguins to notice what I like about the people in my life way more than what I don't like and if you really want to connect with your partner notice what you like appreciate what you like you'll find you get a lot more of that back every day you are shaping the behavior of the people around you um by what you
31:51 pay attention to so because of your busy brain if you just notice this is wrong that's wrong I don't like my body I don't like this about you it's just DEA to everything around you and I I love like little tiny habits the smallest things you can do that make the biggest difference start every day with today is going to be a great day and and every day with what went well today I I notice when I'm irritated with t rather than go I'm irritated about this I find something like I really like that about you like we are fighting over a piece of property like I'm like in my head I'm
32:38 like why would you want to do that and but that would have been demeaning right I'm like you're really good at thinking about and investing in property and then I didn't criticize her and she went yeah it's probably not a good decision and so M it's interesting how the response will change depending on how you approach it absolutely right it's it's how you say it right there are ways to say things that are demeaning and hurtful and there are ways to say exact the same thing that are encouraging and just like how would I want someone to say that to me and so start your day with what what was it sorry today is going to be a great day
33:23 today is going to be a great day and then at the end of every day I've even heard you say that on the day that your father passed away you still did that practice Yeah because the brain's lazy and this is a very important point the brain is lazy what you allow it to do it's going to keep doing and so I've done that practice for 13 years and I go to bed I say a prayer and then I go what went well today and I start at the beginning of the day and I sort of go hour by hour looking at what I loved about the day and the day my dad died was the worst day of my life when I went in bed I said a prayer what went well and I'm like really we're going to do this today and
34:10 I did it and my mind immediately went to an interaction between my mom and the police officer that was just funny and tender and sweet and then I went to sleep because I've trained my mind to help me rather rather than allow it to hurt me wow that's so powerful so powerful and we live in a society where people don't train you how to manage your mind how to be mentally strong yeah and that's what you're here for to help us all get mentally strong um okay I'd love to now talk about the biggest the two biggest complaints men have about women and this actually goes into with the what I was talking about like the forgetting right guys you have to keep reminding them but what's interesting is
34:57 my husband never seems to forget anything that's sexual so he forgets romance or he may forget an anniversary but anything sexual we've been together for 23 years he'll mention something of like our third or fourth date um of something maybe sexual and so one of the biggest complaints guys have about women is that there's not enough sex so what is it then about men and their sex that that is so profound in their lives versus women testosterone the we have not a little more we have way more testosterone and I have uh a friend who a woman who had way too
35:42 high testosterone level so her doctor gave her testosterone but actually gave her the wrong dose and she actually wrote a book about this and she's like it was so hard being a guy because I couldn't stop thinking about sex so if you have 10 times or 20 times the level of testosterone your brain is going for competition and sex competition and sex and this is why it's so important if your partner is taking testosterone make sure they're checking their level regular because if he takes too much it's the prescription for Force because
36:28 his libido goes up and his empathy goes down and that's a disaster um have you noticed that that correlates at all with infidelity yes really and you can actually look at a man's fingers and you can look at a woman's fingers it's called the 4D 2D ratio so the fourth finger which is the ring finger the index finger is the second one if even and yours are pretty even means you got a lot of estrogen when you were in your mother's womb if the fourth finger is longer so my fourth finger is longer it means you got testosterone well the the bigger the difference of the fourth
37:15 digit to the second digit fourth digit is longer I did the big NFL study when uh one of my NFL players his fourth fa was like this his second there was like this and he told me he had more than than a thousand sexual partners it it's testosterone so which finger so this finger here the one by your thumb so fourth finger is one by your your pinky so if your pinky is the fifth finger the fourth finger if it's longer than your second finger than your index finger uh you have more testosterone if they're even then that means you have know more estrogen every woman is going on the date now looking at hands and seeing their fingers right you don't have to have them take off
38:02 their clothes at all to have a sense but but bigger is not better because they're more likely to have heart disease they're more likely to be unfaithful they're more likely to get divorced so good in fantasy may not be good is who makes the best ad yeah oh yeah that's true um so actually speaking of infidelity I'd love to talk about the difference and um what it is about and I assume it's testosterone right the sex drive but I've also you talk about in your book about how women are less impulsive so you said that earlier so I wonder how much that contributes to men cheating on their spouse more than women because they're more impulsive is that part of it yes and remember men are
38:49 diagnosed with ADD attention deficit disorder five times more than women add is often a dopamine deficit disorder where women have a higher incidence of depression so they have a serotonin Deficit Disorder so one worry more the other less focused more distracted excitement seeking now plenty of women have ADD but if you're excitement seeking and your frontal loes are weaker which means your break is not as strong and you see a a cute girl you're like oh I should sleep with her as opposed to I love my wife I love my children I don't
39:34 want to lose half my net worth I mean like practical things that your brain should always be thinking ahead a lot of people go oh I don't want to be anxious anymore it's like a bad goal I want to get your anxiety to about 15 or 20% I want you have enough anxiety you think I had uh rather than no anxiety where you die early so I actually have a quote of yours about so being in a relationship and like let's say you're questioning whether your spouse is uh faithful or not you said women are more aware of Science and their intuition but women are also more emotional which makes them prone to negative thoughts that end up lying to them so I was wondering like as we're talking about this infidelity thing how much complexity there is there
40:21 where you've got the guy that is potentially more impulsive has less breaks is more risk um you know um Keen to take a risk and then you've got women who the negative thoughts are going in their mind they got they're trusting their gut they're taking in the signals but because their mind is looping and spiraling that we're maybe reading into signs that don't exist so as we start to think about people in relationships what all this complexity how do we start to separate if you will the um as a woman your intuition right like how do you actually start to listen to your intuition and how do you make sure that your emotions aren't lying to you well and intuition is a right hemisphere phenomenon language is
41:09 generally on the left hemisphere so you may know something's wrong but you can't verbalize it which I think is really interesting the Corpus colossum that's connection between the left and right hemisphere you have this big tra is actually larger and women than it is in men I often say ask yourself for the evidence and write it down so that connects I think something's wrong with the language part of your brain and so if you can search for the evidence rather than um you think something's wrong but you really don't have evidence and it just could be the right side of your brain is working too hard and it
41:56 may actually be from trauma in the past now it may be real may be real but Trauma from the past tends to get stored in the right side of the brain and so you have more intuition that things are wrong when they may in fact not be wrong and if you harp on it things are going to be wrong because you're creating more stress than needs to be there yeah I I really struggle with this whole with infidelity and cheating I've done more and more episodes on it and I think the reason is for me I've been married for 21 years it doesn't any circumstance any circumstance I would be able to absolutely say no and walk away and I
42:42 would never cheat on my husband I can say that with such confidence I would never cheat on my husband I would rather if I feel there's a problem in my marriage I'll talk to him about it I would ask him a thousand questions I would go to counseling I would do therapy but the one thing I would never do is cheat don't understand how someone can say I didn't mean to or it was you know it was just a one night thing I didn't mean like I I cannot get my head wrapped around that and so as we're talking about the risk averse versus the people that are willing to take risks or the um you know people who have impulse what is happening where that impulse control can overtake everything that you just said right I love my wife I love my kids how on Earth in that moment can the brain take over so that all the risk everything your entire family everything
43:28 you've built maybe you spent 20 years with your that you are willing to risk that like that because you don't see the future you just see the moment and that's what your prefrontal cortex does that front third of your brain it sees the future if it's weak for whatever reason say you have too much mercury in your body it'll weaken your prefrontal cortex or you played soccer growing up and you headed a thousand soccer balls you have a weaker preal cortex or you played football or you smoked uh a lot of pot or drank a lot of alcohol weakens your prefrontal cortex so when you're in the moment and you're attracted to someone you just blank on the future and
44:17 it causes a great amount of emotional pain and so for all of my couples for me what do you want in your relationship I mean know it write it down right in your business you had a business plan and mission statement a business plan but most people in their life they don't have a mission statement and they don't have a plan and so I think to over ride week frontal loes what do you want and tan and I want a kind caring loving supportive passionate relationship and we always want that but we get rude thoughts that show up or my libido's up
45:03 and hers is down or hers is up and mine's down because of whatever else is going on in your life but if we both have the same goal then we filter all of our actions through that goal so what would you do for people listening like how would you then strengthen your prefrontal cortex um if do you know so let's say you're with somebody and you're like yeah they've played soccer and they've done you know 10,000 headers if you don't have the ability to get your brain scanned is it safe then to assume that it is um it needs some help yes and is there evidence in your life short attention span distractability disorganization
45:49 procrastination impulse control problems so that's signs of a vulnerable or weak prefrontal cortex it's like oh I have to work on strengthening that because affairs often happen after alcohol and it's why you know I'm not a huge fan of alcohol because the problems I see as a psychiatrist probably half of them are related to alcohol in one form or another father drank too much molested a child father drank too much and had unfair drank too much and this bad thing happened uh it's like don't take your frontal loes offline you always want you
46:38 know if you want to have a great marriage keep your frontal loes working for you it's like oh but I just want to relax but relax right do diaphragmatic breathing meditation hypnosis just don't take your frontal loes offline so if you wanted to not only keep online but you wanted to boost it what are the things you can do so like for those people who played football or headed soccer balls I'm a huge fan of hyperbaric oxygen therapy I did published a study on it and soldiers involved in Blast injury significant Improvement in the prefrontal cortex what is it doing it's increasing blood flow so it actually increases a process called angiogenesis Help the brain make new
47:23 blood vessels increases stem cell production decreases inflammation but I love it because it makes the brain healthier fatter busier if you will in a good way thank you for breaking that down and I believe also you say that women are generally more empathetic which means that we forgive more so are we more like well maybe they also hold grudges more so but is that tied to it's to empathy or that's tied to something else no they generally have more empathy and or better collaboration seeing things from another person's point of view but if you hurt her feelings she may talk to you about it 15 years from now because her hippocampus so hippocampus is Greek for seahorse
48:11 it's the major memory structure in the brain it gets things from short-term memory to long-term memory and when it gets damaged people have Alzheimer's disease but her hippocampus is busier tends to be bigger which means she's going to remember if you had that Affair and you really want to be thinking ahead so she's not talking to you about it three decades from now and that's because we have a bigger hippocampus than guys right why why would we what does that serve well cuz you have to remember the berries that were poisonous or um and your sense of smell is more intense female sense of smell is more
48:58 intense females also have better peripheral vision guys have better tunnel vision now it's very unfair because because your peripheral vision is better you can see a cute guy not turn your head but if I see a cute girl I go like toally get because she's got better purple like who are you looking at yeah although I'm fortunate my wife will go oh don't you think she's cute and not get offended by it I heard you say in an interview that when your daughter met a guy the first thing you wanted to do is scan his brain to see if um you would give your blessing or not for them to get together what are you looking for in the guy's brain to see
49:46 whether he'll be a good partner for your daughter or not it's absolutely true that it's it's not the first thing but if I think you're going to it's like if I think you're going to STI so I usually wait for about four months and if I think you're going to stick I invite you to the clinic in fact I actually don't consider you dating until I've seen your brain and what I'm looking for is whether or not it's healthy because you know people lie about doing drugs and I'm like I want to know is it healthy does it need to be balanced and if it needs to be balanced are you opening are you open to balancing it so
50:32 I'm looking for how smart the person is how healthy their brain is and do they have the same value that I have my kids have having a healthy brain like when I met my wife uh almost 20 years ago I really liked her she's beautiful she's smart heart my heart would just go fast still goes fast so 3 weeks into our relationship I'm like you haven't seen the clinic don't you want to come see the clinic and she's a Neurosurgical ICU nurse so she loved what I do and we bonded over the brain and we I scanned her and it passed well so you were
51:19 looking for those things I was looking for exactly those things is it healthy um is she going to drive me crazy and what are you looking for with that woman how busy her frontal loopes are cuz if they're overly busy it's like she's going to whatever I do wrong she's going to beat it to death and that's stressful and wasn't it was it your son whose girlfriend you scanned and you were like yeah don't date her please don't marry her I I'm like and I'm not that kind of father no you don't like that you know have a great life let me be helpful to you and I'm like something's wrong don't marry her and he did and it was a disaster really I mean ultimately how happy you are it's a
52:07 brain function right the brain controls everything you do how you think how you feel how you act how you get along with other people that's the organ of intelligence character and every decision you make those things are Central to relationships and most marital therapists never look at or really think about the brain but if it's not healthy it's really hard to be happy so I saw this couple who failed marital therapy it's one of my favorite stories they got an F they went for three years spent $225,000 and at the end of the three years the therapist said get divorced oh
52:52 God and so she failed them she gave them an F but they didn't want to be divorced and they got mad at her and she said well I know a doctor in Orange County who takes care of really difficult people you should go see him and when I saw them her brain was healthy his was mothy it was awful one of the worst brains I'd ever seen and in my mind is drug abuse or alcoholism but his history I get a history on people before I see them said never use drugs and didn't drink but the first thing you learned about drug addicts is they lie so in front of his wife I'm like is it true you don't drink and you've never used drugs he said I have a lot of problems that's not it and
53:39 I looked to the wife and I said is he telling me the truth she said yeah he doesn't drink he's never done drugs he's just an but in my mind I'm like why does his brain look so bad and I'm like where do you work he said I work work in a Furniture Factory I said what do you do he finished his furniture all day long he was doing drugs he was doing the worst drug of abuse for the brain which is inhaling organic solvents and so I took him out of work put him on a rehab program and he was no longer an whoa they stay together yeah oh my God that's amazing but how do you know unless you
54:25 walk m right all these couples that are struggling no one's looking at the brain and they just think he's got a character problem he's narcissistic or she's borderliner whatever it is and it's like maybe their brains be tuned up a little bit better W that's crazy story so a guy's brain I did a research and i' love to hear your thoughts on if this is accurate or not in your thoughts on it so I looked up what does a man's brain look like in love from a response standpoint and I'd love for you to maybe even break down what is actually happening number one their judgment is impaired absolutely Las Vegas uses this principle right I mean they have half- naked women
55:11 giving you alcohol your judgments impaired which means they're going to make a lot more money and when you fall in love it's just like cocaine actually Helen fiser from Ruckers university has done a number of brain Imaging studies new love so the basil ganglia the part of the brain that responds to dopamine goes up and the frontal loes go down wow fascinating um he will form positive memories well memory is formed with intense emotion positive or negative so which is why Tom is still talking about things from your third date it was that good Dr aan
55:58 um so you're saying so in so in this circumstance someone's in love it's an intense emotion so they're going to have better memories right okay like I remember everything about the first week of meeting P so um it says that love deact deactivates their fear of social judgment interesting your friends are going no no no and you're like oh no she's right for me which is why don't get married after 8 days in fact I say wait two years to just let the intense emotion sort of normalize in your brain so you can see them for who they really are I wrote a book called The Brain in love and
56:45 there's actually a whole chapter on how to scream people on a date um and it's like use your head before you give your heart away because when you just fall in love that dopamine rush you don't see the dead animals around the Oasis of love it's like should have seen this should have seen that should have seen this what was the matter with me and it's because dopamine overtook good judgment I got to ask you then what are you doing the screening process what does that look like it's just a series of thought thoughtful questions uh so if we went out I would
57:31 just want to know what it was like for you as a child and I'd be really good at listening and I'd want to know what your mom was like I'd want to know what your dad was like I wanted to know what kind of sports you play and I want to know what excites you what makes you happy and I'm really paying attention are these things good for the brain or bad for the brain and it doesn't me if they had challenges you throw them away like I said my wife grew up in a very chaotic home um and my first gift to her was 10 sessions of EMDR a specific psychological treatment for trauma she ended up going for two years and it's
58:18 one of the reasons why we don't fight we don't trigger each other I mean we're respectful of each of our vulnerabilities but uh we don't trigger each other because she worked through hers and I work through mine wow that's amazing I love those question I never thought about asking someone questions to figure out what's happened to their brain in order to understand them better within those dates it's so genius cuz ultimately you want somebody somebody with a reasonably healthy brain if they're going to be the father of your child I mean my my brain thinks ahead right so like I'm nice to my children because I realize at some point
59:04 they may be taking care of me so you better pay pay your dues now so I'm thinking ahead I don't do too much for them because that'll create entitlement entitled people are never happy but I think it's it's good and teenagers often are not thinking ahead because the front part of their brain is not fully developed until you're 25 and so one thing right away forgive your younger self because your brain wasn't fully developed until you're 25 so if you did really stupid things when you're 18 or 22 it's like forgive that you're a younger self be kind so it seems crazy then that drinking ages 18 in England and uh 21
59:51 here really should be 25 once your bra should 25 developed and it's crazy to send kids away to school when they're 18 like um their brain's not finished until they're 25 so take their underdeveloped brain at 18 and put them with a bunch of other underdeveloped brains and in a sorority or a fraternity and you end up with all sorts of stupidity yeah now look when you're 18 you think that you know everything so um okay so another thing is says that men's Brains in love may feel less pain right because they have so many good chemicals going on and their level
1:00:37 of oxytocin so it's not just dopamine and serotonin oxytocin which is the bonding hormone in fact I wanted to mention that BEC um so women it goes up significantly with the romance and Manic goes up signific ific L with orgasm and so women need romance in order to have sex men need sex in order to feel connected okay so a man's brain in love could help quit smoking wow he's gotten pleasure from something else uh smoking it's so hard which is like don't start uh vaping is not a healthy form of smoking don't
1:01:23 start uh but it just steals the dopamine and changes the pleasure centers in the brain it said they're more impulsive absolutely as your pleasure centers go up but your judgment thoughtful centers go down which is why new love don't trust yourself be patient I must say that once a week to my patient do you really interesting be patient so like don't move in don't do anything drastic don't get tattoo now you know I have a sister that got married to somebody after 8 days and they're still married but uh not recommended
1:02:08 yeah um they are extra kind which I guess just makes sense because they're like feeling a little like um they're more emotional well it's the oxytocin and the dopamine that's going up uh unless you threaten their judgment then they're not extra kind it's like do you really think this is a good idea it's like you just don't understand huh this is so fascinating um one of the things that you say about women's Brains is that women are less likely to be in the camp of don't worry be happy so there's this huge study out of Stanford where they looked at 1548 10-year-old children 1921
1:02:56 and then they followed them for 90 years 90 90 wow looking at what goes with heal success and Longevity and the don't worry be happy people died the earliest from accidents and preventable illnesses and why do women live on average 7 years longer than men they worry more men who are married live significantly longer than men who are not married but women who are married do not live longer than women who are not married because they have to take care of men and apparently we're stressful apparently apparently we
1:03:42 stressful um you want some anxiety so often men don't have enough and women have too much and so I think you want to get it to about 15 or 20% on a scale of 0 to 100 right more than 40 you're suffering that's not good but zero you're making bad decisions and there's so many bad decisions to make today that you know more than ever before whether it's addicted to your cell phone thinking of alcohol as a health food or marijuana as an Oculus or you know coming up here how many fast food restaurants did I see brand new study out out on ultr processed foods increase brain damage
1:04:30 increase 30 different illnesses including diabetes obesity and cancer so it's hard you more than ever we need healthy frontal loes to make good decisions so you said there's roughly around seven years difference in lifespan um but I've also heard you say that actually the um increase in our lifespan is actually for women slowing down a lot more than it is men why is that I think it's the level of illness that's going on 72% are overweight 42% are obese and you know one thing we haven't talked about yet is women have a higher incidence of dementia and it's like why would that be yes one is they live longer that's the
1:05:16 biggest risk for dementia but when you go from having estrogen having estrogen having estrogen to not that drop increases depression increases memory problems decreases blood flow to the brain so I'm a big fan of hormone replacement do you know why your hormones drop with age it's the planet's way of getting rid of you and I don't know about you but I'm not okay with that and you I don't want the testosterone level of a 20-year-old do not need that attic anymore but I'm fine if I have the testosterone of a
1:06:02 40-year-old right for enough to make me vital uh but not so much to make me irritating so what's actually happening then especially with women through you know perimenopause um because I've heard studies that say between 45 and 55 is when it's the highest suicide rate for women and that's when uh many women actually the I can divorce is initiated by women during that 10year period what is happening what up homie I got something free and new to share with you right now how often are you visited by that negative voice in your head telling you that you're not smart enough that you're not good enough experienced enough not fill in the blank one of the most powerful things you can learn to do in life is to turn that negative voice
1:06:48 into your besy and I want to teach you how to do that and so much more in my four steps to becoming confidence workshop and guys the most amazing thing is you can actually register for completely free for this Workshop so click the link on your screen and I see you on the inside and did you know of who files for divorce 75% of the time it's women that's crazy and I think that's the right hemisphere seeing problems that they're just much more likely to see it and then with their hormone changes they're much more likely to focus on what's wrong rather than what's right there's another theory that I also think is really interesting before a woman gets pregnant life's
1:07:36 really about her but once she gets pregnant her brain remodels itself and it's now about family and protecting the family but when she goes through menopause it's no the brain remodels itself again and it's now about her and you'll frequently hear women say this is my time and that means she's been irritated irritated irritated irritated with him and now of a sudden she's done with him and I'm like balance your hormones and then see if you're still done with him and may maybe you are but there's too much of an investment for at least not to see the
1:08:24 contribution to hor moms so what if you haven't had children I mean I assume that it's your hormone still change you go through the par menopause and things like that but if you haven't had that shift then you probably I mean it's an overgeneralization but have been stronger about getting what you need through the whole time and you wouldn't necessarily have that big jolt of a change again because I know that you know people especially a lot of women that I I know they have a really hard time when their kids leave the nest oh huge Tana was when Chloe left and went away to college which I was opposed to she only left first semester Tana was going to get depressed I could see it and I said look I'm going
1:09:10 to take off a week a month and we'll just go someplace uh just to try to protect her um it's they lose purpose almost like an athlete that ends their career and it's like if they haven't figured out what they're going to do next they're very vulnerable to depression and so my mom was really good and then she picked up I'm one of seven and after the third one she picked up Golf and she just loved it and that became her life and she was happy for all of us to leave I think because she had what was next
1:09:58 and I think that's really important if you're going to retire know what you're going to do next so I understand the why women may leave their husbands around that time but what about suicide what is happening in that because of the depression oh because they see darkness and they see no way out and I often tell my patients suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary feeling and if you're sad and dark and drank alcohol takes the lid off of the break and so I think more than half the people who kill themselves do it while they're drinking so it's actually not
1:10:44 uncommon to have Suicidal Thoughts uh but it's uncommon to have suicidal behavior and alcohol of takes a lid off of the break that prevented you uh because people don't see what it does to other people um that suicide just devastates families yeah I just recently been hearing about how women I mean as I get older I'm 44 and so really paying attention to where my hormons are where they're going to be in 5 years where they're going to be in 10 years and just knowing the facts and that's why I'm so fascinated and so grateful for you to be sitting with me just like answering
1:11:30 these questions because I I want to know what's coming so that I can preempt it so that I can do all the groundw now and set myself up for success and so me and Tom we talk about literally we've spoken I mean it was like maybe even last week where it's like my hormones are changing I'm 44 so how do we make sure we protect our relationship and so understanding what is happening to me so that we can communicate as is happening is going to be very key for us so I've already went and got my I was telling you off camera I already went and got my hormone panels taken so that I know where I'm I am right now and then also the thing that I'm talking to Tom about is how he can change in his communication with me as I go through this transition because I'm going to assume that as my hormones
1:12:16 change are um the things that he would say to me the way he would say it I may start to interpret them in a different way and so we're trying to work on that communication what else can I start to maybe think through or anyone listening that maybe at that age um in order to set ourself up for a great relationship feel good about ourselves and you know not have that depression that you're talking about and also protect ourselves from Alzheimer's because women are so much more likely to well and I think since you and I met you have fallen in love more with your own brain right treating it better and then not believing every stupid thing you think so it's building these brain health and emotional health skills that will serve
1:13:05 you no matter where your hormones are but being smart enough to know let me keep my hormones at a healthy level and let me make sure my brain's as healthy as it can be and very few people think about it but when I see the studies on estrogen for example and they look at 60-year-old brains with estrogen versus 60-year-old brains without estrogen you see the problem that without estrogen your brain looks older than you are and it's not good for you so what would you suggest people can do then on like a daily habits um in order if they're around that time like what can you do to actually boost your estrogen watch your
1:13:51 products that you put on your body because arabin and phalates are hormone disruptors so that's a very bad thing and we can't forget that women need testosterone that a lot of the products that you put on your body steal your hormones they're actually called hormone disruptors parabens thades fragrance and just scan all of your personal products there's an app I like called think dirty and just lets you scan them and are these healthy for me or they not healthy and ultimately it comes down to the mother question is this good for my brain or bad for it whatever I do this is good for my brain or bad for it and I
1:14:38 have a pneumonic in all my books called bright Minds keep your brain healthy or rescue it you have to prevent or treat the 11 major risk factors that steal your mind in the end is neurobrain hormones get them tested every year so the simple question is this good for my brain or bad for it but that means what you eat what you think what you watch what you listen to and what you put on your body just be thoughtful is this helping me or is it hurting um thank you for that I think that those sorts of things and just being able to in real time change your behavior and since I last saw you I downloaded the app and now I scan everything to make sure with my
1:15:25 moisturizer and things like that um and then obviously I'm sure diet as well makes a huge difference which I'm very pay attention to but um is there any type of like uh food item that is the most disruptive well I think the most disruptive is sugar and foods that quickly turn to sugar so there's this study uh at the Mayo Clinic people who have a fat-based diet avocados nuts and seeds salmon green leafy vegetables healthy oils have 42% less risk of getting Alzheimer's disease people who have a simple carbohydrate-based diet the standard American diet bread pasta
1:16:11 potatoes rice fruit juice sugar have a 400% increased risk of getting Alzheimer's disease it's the food and we live in a society where the food is awful uh for us that you know think of Fruit Loops for kids in the morning or um Frosted Flakes or Donuts pastries go to the office and
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