Dr. Drew Ramsey: Why Mental Health Starts with Brain Health

**Dr. Drew Ramsey** (0:00)
140 calories, in my left hand, everybody, I've got one 12 ounce delicious can of Coca Cola. It's ice cold, folks. And in my other hand, I have a small kale salad. It's not so small, it's three cups of kale in it. It has a teaspoon of olive oil whisked together with some lemon juice, and it's got some sea salt and fresh pepper cracked on top. They're both 140 calories.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:40)
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**Richard Taite** (0:58)
Today, I'm sitting down with Dr. Drew Ramsey, a leading voice in mental health and nutritional psychiatry. He spent over 20 years helping people understand how what we eat, how we live, and how we connect all impact our mental health. We talk a lot on this show about addiction and recovery, but today, we're focusing on something just as important, how to build real mental fitness before things fall apart.
This is a powerful conversation about what's happening to our brains and what we can do about it. So first of all, Dr., I wanted to thank you. Should I call you doctor or professor?

**Dr. Drew Ramsey** (1:40)
You know, you can just call me Drew probably is better. You know, or doctor, I guess, Dr. Drew. I don't know.

**Richard Taite** (1:45)
Okay, then you're a doctor. Got it. We're hearing mental health crisis everywhere right now, but from where you sit, what's actually happening?

**Dr. Drew Ramsey** (1:56)
We have a mental health challenge that we've never had before. One of those ways that I focus on like the modern brain, right? What's healing the modern brain? Well, it's taking the new science really like 20, 25 years, but really exciting stuff, I'm going to say in the last 10 years, about how our brain functions, how we take care of them, and that's the root of your mental health is your brain health. And so this elegant, amazing brain of yours is in this modern world that has a lot of new challenges.
And so the mental health crisis is in part that we're doing a better job recognizing, talking about, de-stigmatizing mental health treatment. My mental health conditions are medical conditions. I'm a medical doctor, I went to medical school. When I think about how to take care of someone with depression, it's that kind of, I would say circumspect full 360 view that we use in medicine. I'm thinking about your psychology, I'm thinking about your biology, and I'm thinking about your environment, your sociology.

**Richard Taite** (2:56)
Hold on though, okay? That's not what every doctor does. That's what the top notch doctors do.
Okay, that's, yeah, I mean, you know, I just don't want to mislead, I just want to mislead my viewers. This is not, this is top notch care.

**Dr. Drew Ramsey** (3:11)
This is not, this is what everybody should get. Richard, I agree. This is not what most people are getting. And I hope by the end of this talk, everyone's going to have a really good sense of what I recommend as a psychiatrist, that everyone be doing on a weekly, if not daily basis to take care of and protect your mental health. I call this mental fitness, because you all, everyone listening, you have some idea of physical fitness. Maybe you're exercising, maybe you're not. But what I find fascinating, even if you're not, you know what to do.
If I said, Richard, look, I think you got to work on your core this week. It's super important for your mental health. I don't think I need to then tell Richard, oh, there are these things called crunches. Have you heard of a crunch? Have you heard of a plank? You already know. But when it comes to mental health, we're a little less clear, like what do we do? There's a mental health crisis. Clearly, we need more resilient mental fitness. We need to do more to care for ourselves.
What does that look like? And that's where these tenets of mental fitness come in.

**Richard Taite** (4:10)
Let me ask you a question. It seems to me like it got so much worse with social media, and then with COVID, it exploded.
Is that what you're seeing?

**Dr. Drew Ramsey** (4:25)
Yes. And I think my mental health and mental fitness is stronger than it's ever been. And I think there are a lot of people like that. Like, yes, COVID was horrible, but like all challenging things that humans encounter, we learn from it, we take some lessons from it, we take some hits from it too.