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May 31, 2017 - The Joe Rogan Experience
02:58:20
Joe Rogan Experience #968 - Kelly Brogan
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joe rogan
01:03:40
k
kelly brogan
01:51:15
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jamie vernon
00:50
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Speaker Time Text
unidentified
Boom!
joe rogan
We're live.
That's it.
Just like that.
So thank you for doing this.
Welcome.
What's going on?
kelly brogan
Total pleasure.
Nothing.
Happy to be in LA. Are you?
I am always.
joe rogan
New York's good right now though, right?
It's good.
It's like June-ish.
kelly brogan
It's like an addictive relationship, but most of us would rather be in California.
joe rogan
New York is?
kelly brogan
Yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah.
You're a psychiatrist.
kelly brogan
I am.
joe rogan
I would think that there is ample work in New York.
Just the environment that New York provides.
People stacked on top of each other like that.
Beep beep, Hong Kong, fuck you, all that.
Like, I would assume all that stress leads to a lot of people with a...
kelly brogan
Absolutely.
joe rogan
It's like if you were a fisherman, you want to live near a river, right?
kelly brogan
And it's fetishized in New York, too, to have a psychiatrist.
Right.
It's sort of almost expected that you do.
So not only is there, like, ample supply and demand, but then it's, you know...
joe rogan
It's a thing to talk about.
Yeah.
What's that about?
Can you explain that?
kelly brogan
I think it's like, you know, Woody Allen level, right?
Like sort of embracing your shadow.
And there's something refreshing about it because we don't pretend to be okay.
I mean, we're deeply not okay in New York, chronically.
joe rogan
Well, is someone okay, like in general, anywhere?
Is there a spot like, oh, yeah, Seattle, they've got it nailed?
kelly brogan
I mean, there's this term actually in the medical literature, believe it or not, called paleodeficit disorder.
And it just refers to like how far have you strayed from the path in your lifestyle?
Like basic stuff, green space, movement, you know, sleep.
And I would imagine that if you have more of those components intact, you're probably a bit more okay than if you're living, you know, in, you know, midtown Manhattan.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
Like Seattle in the summer to me is a really good place because it's so green and it's so pretty and the ocean's right there.
So you're getting some good air and then you're getting sun because it's the summer so you don't have that seasonal depression thing that goes on.
kelly brogan
I mean, I imagine they're doing better.
joe rogan
They're doing better this summer.
You never?
I've never been there.
kelly brogan
I've heard it's like crazy beautiful, yeah.
joe rogan
It's awesome.
It's awesome.
But those winters, they get to you.
After the 30th day of rain, you're like, come on.
This is stupid.
Like, how much water do you need?
kelly brogan
See, I'm like a big, big winter complainer, and I have been my whole life.
So I complain 10 months of the year of what it's like to live...
In the Northeast.
But recently I've been playing around with the idea that there's actually something cool about, like, you know, sort of cyclical living.
It's almost just, like, if you embrace it, then there's something, just like everything's dead and miserable for a period of time, and then it blooms, and then you get to experience, like, this rebirth, and then it, you know, flourishes, and then it dies again.
But there's another perspective on that actually being I don't know.
Like if you work with it.
It's sort of like a woman who's on birth control has no idea that there's any point to, you know, a cycle of energy over the course of the month, right?
And she sort of thinks that's annoying.
But there's a way you can wrap your mind around it where you work with it.
joe rogan
What do you mean?
kelly brogan
Okay, so like if you're on birth control, you have no menstrual cycle, right?
So you're just like a man.
You're like a flat line the whole month.
But there's actually something really empowering.
If you understand how to work with your energy shifts, because naturally, like a woman's natural...
I know this is really what you want to be talking about, right?
unidentified
I do.
joe rogan
I don't.
I mean, it's alien to me, so I do want to hear it.
kelly brogan
So, like, I figured this out.
I'm 39. I was on birth control for 12 years, so I never knew what it meant to have, like, a menstrual cycle until very recently, because then I had two kids, breastfeeding.
So a couple decades into my life, I'm just figuring this out.
But you have, like, totally different kinds of energy over the course of the month.
And you have to know how to work with that.
So there's a kind of energy that, you know, you want to go out and socialize or you want to stay in and work or you want to sleep more or less.
And if you don't know how to ride that, then you could be sort of taken off guard by it.
But if you know how to work with it, it's so much more powerful than just having this like artificial hijacking of your endocrine system.
joe rogan
That's interesting.
So there's like some sort of analogy to be drawn between the cycles of nature and the cycles of your body month to month.
unidentified
Huh.
joe rogan
I would have never considered that.
I never even thought about it.
But I have thought about birth control before, about how crazy it is that you give a woman a hormone that convinces her body that she's perpetually pregnant.
And that a giant percentage of women are on it for convenience.
unidentified
Yes.
joe rogan
Or even for other medical issues, like skin issues, right?
unidentified
Exactly.
kelly brogan
Exactly, yeah.
I mean, when I... I've always been a feminist, right?
So even when I was...
Younger and very much asleep, I identified as a feminist.
And I was one of those people who thought that birth control was like a female entitlement.
Like, how dare you not make this free and widely available?
But as I began to research more about it and more about how it's in many ways like the ultimate You know, not to sound too inflammatory, but the ultimate tool for oppression of, you know, the modern woman.
Now I find it incredible that we, you know, that we're still taking it because it seems like a good idea, right?
Who wants to deal with your annoying menstrual cycle?
Who wants to get pregnant?
Who wants to have endometriosis or polycystic ovary?
You know, who wants to have acne or like hair growing in weird places?
magic pill illusion.
There's no free lunch.
There's never going to be something that just fixes it for you and you just waltz off into the sunset.
There's always a cost and the cost is so much more vast, like ranging from literally death all the way to just like subtle alterations in your personality and like the fear moans you secrete, you know, and there was just a million women's study in Scandinavia that and there was just a million women's study in Scandinavia that showed about the vast increase in antidepressant prescribing for teenagers who are prescribed birth So, So it's the beginning of sort of, it's like a gateway drug sometimes for psych meds too.
joe rogan
I heard, I had a friend who, one of his good friends, his daughter died from some complications with taking birth control pills and smoking cigarettes.
kelly brogan
Yes, pulmonary embolism probably.
joe rogan
Smoking cigarettes apparently along with the birth control pills are extremely dangerous, but so many do it.
unidentified
Of course.
kelly brogan
And you don't even have to have that additional risk factor, you know, because birth control, whether it's the pill or something called the NuvaRing, by itself has that.
You know, I'm contacted often by parents of girls who have died from pulmonary embolism who've now become like activists in this realm.
joe rogan
It's because of birth control pills.
kelly brogan
Yeah, yeah.
No, it's like a known mechanism.
And it's a known risk factor.
Like, I think that's not being suppressed or hidden.
It's just that we are sort of entrained to dismiss the risks as we attach to the promise.
So we sort of like collude in ignoring that potential, you know?
joe rogan
That's so interesting because most people when they think about the birth control pill they think about it as something that liberated women because they can control whether or not they got pregnant and they were allowed for the first time to have careers and do whatever they wanted to because they didn't have to worry about being trapped.
kelly brogan
That's right.
That's the story.
joe rogan
But that's the biological free lunch thing, right?
Exactly.
Isn't there also a lot of issues?
Chris Ryan was on here, Dr. Chris Ryan, the author of Sex at Dawn.
He was on here and he was talking about how women can, like if you smell the clothes of other men, you can literally tell the men that you are attracted to, you would be biologically compatible with those men.
And that when they did these same studies on women who were on the birth control pill, they couldn't smell the difference.
kelly brogan
That's right.
It's called the T-shirt study.
Yeah.
joe rogan
How does that work?
Could you explain that?
kelly brogan
Well, essentially, the premise of pharmaceutical medicine is that you can just pull one little thread of the spider web and leave the rest of it intact.
Everything else is going to be fine.
We're only working on this one area.
So with birth control, for example, the idea is we're just, you know...
Taking over the management of your sex hormones, but the rest of your body is going to be totally unaffected.
And, of course, as we learn more about how all of these systems are totally and inextricably interconnected, we have a better understanding of how, you know, when you interfere with sex hormones, you also potentially have other effects, including raising things called binding you also potentially have other effects, including raising things called binding globulins, including inflammatory You're depleting a number of nutrients.
And we're having, you know, it's possible that we haven't even begun to look through the keyhole of the effects on brain and, you know, sort of neuropeptides in these arenas where we don't have any idea what hormonal secretion is about.
We just have to defer to the probability that our bodies are more complex than we've expected.
Right?
Like, begun to understand.
So your biology is meant to guide you.
It's meant to empower you.
And it's meant to, you know, create a sense of vitality if you can inhabit your body and be in a truce with it.
That's part of the problem with the mindset of birth control is, I'm just going to, you know, take this over.
I'm going to manage this.
And so who knows?
Maybe even it's a top-down, like, mindset thing that begins to sort of divorce you from...
Your sensibilities.
We don't really know, is the point.
That's going to be a common answer, I think, I have to give you, is that we don't really know.
But it does make sense that the subtle nature of your biology that involves sort of guiding your human interactions, and particularly sex-related interactions, is going to be derailed.
I mean, low libido is one of, ironically, the most common things.
Disclosed side effects of birth control.
So you're taking it so that you can have unprotected sex.
We don't feel like having sex ultimately anyway.
So it's not even really that well thought out, I think, by most of us.
joe rogan
It's very bizarre.
But what other alternatives are there?
I mean, if you're a woman and you want to have control of whether or not you get pregnant, there's not a whole lot of options other than weird ones like IUDs, which seem real weird.
kelly brogan
Yeah, I mean, some of my patients use what's called a copper IUD. You know, it's funny because I had one put in and two and a half, it cost like $700, and two and a half weeks later I had it taken out because I just felt weird about having like a pharmaceutical metal in my hand.
My body was felt like a tracking device.
joe rogan
Could you feel it in there?
kelly brogan
No, no.
No, it's not really a thing.
It's just like psychologically felt weird.
But I use something called a DAISY, which is like this highly calibrated thermometer.
And you track your, you know, because you have six fertile days a month.
This isn't, you know, like some major sacrifice you have to make in order to learn how your cycle works.
And then you get the benefits of being In your hormonal milieu.
It's not that complicated.
But there's a learning curve.
It requires learning how to be a woman.
And also sharing the onus.
Because with all of these side effects we've been talking about, there was a male birth control study that was just terminated because of how many side effects the men didn't want to deal with.
So there's such a sociocultural double standard around this.
But if we're talking about six days a month, How about we collaborate and try and figure something out?
You know, that doesn't involve a risk of death, perhaps.
joe rogan
So this daisy thing just monitors your temperature and tells you exactly what's going on?
kelly brogan
Yeah.
I mean, it's a little more sophisticated than that.
It actually has the efficacy, like, above 99% efficacy.
If you listen to it, that's part of the, you know, room for human error.
But it basically just tells you, like, have sex now.
If you want to conceive or if you don't, then don't.
So it's like a little light.
It's green, red, or yellow.
joe rogan
How many women are on birth control, if you had a guess, nationwide?
kelly brogan
You know, that's a good question.
I don't know the stat offhand.
Upwards of like 10 million, I would say.
joe rogan
That's a staggering number of people taking some sort of a substance that alters the very nature of who they are.
kelly brogan
Exactly.
Yeah.
I mean, my interest in it really came from looking at the psychiatric side effects because I'm very interested in medications that have potential, you know, gateway effects around psychiatric meds that we aren't informing women of before, you know, they start the prescription.
So, you know, whether it's like acid blocking medications, you know, or antibiotics, You know, birth control vaccines, these things have known psychobiological effects.
If you don't know that, then you'll never connect the dots.
And then you end up in the polypharmacy realm where you're taking multiple meds without ever knowing where the dominoes started to fall.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
Yeah, I remember there was a commercial that they used to have, I don't know if they still air it, but it was for a psychiatric medication that you take who's an antidepressant when you are depressed from antidepressants.
Do you know what I'm talking about?
kelly brogan
I think you're probably talking about Abilify.
joe rogan
Yes.
kelly brogan
Yeah.
It was actually the number one prescription in America recently.
joe rogan
It was terrifying.
kelly brogan
It's an antipsychotic.
joe rogan
Yeah, but you read the side effects.
It's like, whoa, slow down.
Like, what is this?
Like, psychotic thoughts and death and...
kelly brogan
Yeah.
joe rogan
Bleeding.
kelly brogan
Right.
And if what you were taking that had similar side effects isn't working, then you can just layer this on.
It's very common practice.
It's very rare, I would say, actually, for people to be on just one psychiatric med.
It's almost become industry standard to be taking upwards of, I would say, you know, two, three, sometimes even five.
Many of the patients I work with come to me on a cocktail of like five.
joe rogan
Jesus Christ!
kelly brogan
Well, you're chasing something for years, right?
Because you're never really going to feel yourself the way you want to.
And that's what I found is really what we want.
We just want to feel comfortable in our own skin.
We just want to feel ourselves.
In fact, we don't want to be her or him or be rich or beautiful.
We just want to feel cool being who we are.
And you're never going to...
I don't want to say never.
It's very unlikely you'd feel that way.
While on a medication that has consciousness-altering effects and a slew of side effects.
And so you're going to be chasing that with the promise of other meds.
A stimulant because your Paxil is making you tired and then you need a benzodiazepine because you can't sleep.
You know, then you're sort of depressed again, and so you have another antidepressant layered on.
And then there's a fad, you know, sort of, you know, bipolar 2 medication that you could try out like Lamictal or Abilify.
And so this is sort of the culturally sanctioned approach to mental health today.
joe rogan
So how does a doctor know?
Like, say if they put you on some Zoloft or something like that, not to pick on Zoloft, but then they say, well, this is not really totally doing it for you.
We're thinking about stacking Abilify in with the Zoloft, and I think that just might be the ticket to your happiness.
kelly brogan
Right, right, right.
Yeah, well, it's...
It's important to remember, right?
Like, particularly in psychiatry, there's no objective testing, measurement.
joe rogan
So it's not like you have a broken arm.
Like, hey, I see you have a broken arm.
We're going to put your arm in a cast.
kelly brogan
But with a broken arm, you can get an x-ray.
joe rogan
Right.
kelly brogan
And prove that you have a broken arm.
unidentified
Right.
kelly brogan
In psychiatry, there's no blood test.
There's no EEG. There's no, you know, scan of any kind.
It's a conversation.
Sometimes as short as 10 minutes.
joe rogan
Like, say if I came into your office and I'm like...
kelly brogan
My office is a little different.
joe rogan
Okay, but just say if you're a regular psychiatrist and I'm like, man, I don't know, Kelly.
I'm a fucking mess.
I can't keep it together.
What do I do?
What do I take?
Could you just start someone off on like a low dose of something and see if it helps and they come back in a couple weeks?
Like, how does it work?
kelly brogan
Yeah, it's like it...
It's like an art form.
I mean, you have your personal favorite medications that you feel comfortable prescribing, so you're more likely to prescribe them.
But then also, and this is also, you know, in the literature itself, if a patient comes in asking for a particular medication, then you, 49%, I think it was like of prescriptions that are written, are written because of specific patient requests.
joe rogan
Oh, Jesus.
kelly brogan
Those commercials.
Exactly.
They're getting these ideas from the fact that we are one of three countries in the world that allows for direct-to-consumer advertising.
unidentified
What are the other ones?
joe rogan
North Korea and Russia?
kelly brogan
No, it's surprising.
It's surprising.
Brazil and New Zealand.
unidentified
Oh, wow.
joe rogan
That is surprising.
kelly brogan
It's weird, right?
joe rogan
It confuses the hell out of me.
When I watch those commercials and those beautiful piano music playing and there's cartoon flowers that are smiling at everybody, I'm like, what are they selling me?
kelly brogan
Yeah, but it works.
And they know it works.
joe rogan
Ask your doctor.
kelly brogan
Multi-billions are put into those commercials, yeah, for good reason.
joe rogan
So there's no real, like, there's not like a blood test or something they give you where they say, I think this is going to be the ticket for you.
kelly brogan
Nope.
Yeah, no, it's very impressionistic.
And that's sort of the issue.
I mean, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, the DSM, is sort of the dictionary, so to speak, in psychiatry.
And like, in the 50s, it was like 150 pages, and now it's 886 pages.
And it's grown in volume, largely dramatically.
Because of the consensus decisions of a bunch of older white men sitting around a table.
joe rogan
Goddamn white men.
kelly brogan
So tired of them.
You know, almost all of them have industry ties.
And this is out there.
This isn't like conspiracy.
joe rogan
Yeah, no, my wife's mom was a nurse.
And she was always telling me that they would get taken out on these really nice dinners by these pharmaceutical companies.
They'd take you to a real nice restaurant, buy a steak and baked potato, and everybody could have a drink.
And they would be so willing to be very complimentary of this medication.
Oh, I know a girl who took this, and it really helped her a lot.
kelly brogan
And you think it's not going to affect you.
Like I was in that, you know, generation two where I got taken out to five-star restaurants in Manhattan all the time.
joe rogan
Yeah, just buy you stuff.
kelly brogan
It feels really good because you're making like 20 grand a year working your ass off.
And so when someone takes you to a fancy restaurant with your friends, but you could convince yourself that it's not actually going to, you know, that you're an intellectual and you're going to make your own decisions.
But All of the data suggests otherwise, that you are unduly influenced by that kind of courtship behavior.
And it's true.
So we have this sort of collusion on the part of the doctor and the patients to support industry interests over any sort of...
I don't know, shred of a scientific or evidence-based process for really diagnosing someone.
joe rogan
Well, especially when we're talking about something that is so subjective, where it's not like a broken arm.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
Where like, Joe, you've got a broken arm.
Like, I know what to do.
We're going to set your arm and give you a cast.
It's like, so you're feeling down?
Hey, man.
kelly brogan
Right.
joe rogan
I got something for you.
Do they even ask you, like, does a normal...
I guess someone who's really good would, but...
Is your diet and your sleep patterns, is that a consideration before they prescribe medication?
kelly brogan
No, in fact, most sort of turncoat doctors like me will tell you that we have one hour of nutrition education in all of our medical school and residency training.
joe rogan
Are you a turncoat?
Are you considered like a rat?
Are you a bad person in the industry?
kelly brogan
I am not welcome in the Howard Halls anymore.
No, I lost all my faculty positions.
unidentified
Why?
Just for being honest about this stuff?
kelly brogan
Because I guess the kind of science that I bring to the table, which is not my own, I don't have any original ideas, but I am really good, I think, at curating information and collecting it and synthesizing and presenting it, right?
So what I have to shine a light on is very inconvenient science for industry interests, but also for conventional practice, because, you know, I don't prescribe medication anymore under any circumstances ever.
But I do have an entire practice devoted to taking people off of medication.
So I have sort of my thing, and it's a lot based on lifestyle change, as you mentioned, right?
If you don't have your methodology as an alternative to prescribing, And you're going to acknowledge what a lot of the science says that condemns the pharmaceutical approach.
What are you going to do instead?
You just invested $200,000 of debt, blood, sweat, and tears, indentured servitude for like a decade of your training.
You're just going to give that up?
So it's a lot to expect the average psychiatrist to acknowledge anything beyond what's called consensus medicine.
It's called that because it doesn't even have a connection to the evidence.
It's not evidence-based.
It's just they all agree on it, and they're just going to keep doing it, you know?
joe rogan
So this consensus medicine, like in psychiatry, there's kind of like this understanding that you don't criticize the system that everybody's operating under.
You just work within that system.
kelly brogan
Yeah, why would you bother?
You know, because it's just going to get you...
unidentified
In trouble.
kelly brogan
It's going to be uncomfortable for you.
It's going to get you in trouble.
joe rogan
Wow, that's so crazy.
kelly brogan
There's no incentive, you know?
Like, I read more science than probably all my conventional colleagues put together because I have a lot of incentive to do so because I'm practicing outside of the...
You know, the gold standard, so to speak.
So when you're in the fold, why would you bother reading science?
Who cares?
You just do what you were taught to do.
Don't question it, you know?
So it's, you know, the reason that lifestyle is not presented as a relevant factor in conventional medicine is because it flies in the face of the whole model, right?
Like the model is still a gene-based model.
It's still, you were born with it.
You know, it's like coddling the victim.
There's nothing you can do about it.
So, you know, you better just be a good boy and take your medication.
It's the only thing you can do because diet doesn't matter.
You know, whether you're, you know, huffing fumes through your window doesn't matter.
Whether you're eating six cans of tuna a day and mercury poisoning yourself doesn't.
None of that matters really.
Maybe it's like of minor interest, but the real problem is your inborn genetic chemical imbalance, right?
So if that is the premise, and it's not just in psychiatry, it's in all of medicine, is gene-based determinism frees pharma to offer the only solution.
And it actually validates people on some level as the victim, right?
So like a lot of people want to feel that.
Weirdly.
You know, like their own victimization.
It feels comfortable.
joe rogan
Even though there's science that supports that having a healthy, nutrient-dense diet allows your body to produce all the healthy hormones and chemicals and neurotransmitters and then along with exercise, which also increases Simple stuff, yeah.
Haven't there been studies also that show that exercise, regular aerobic exercise in particular, it does as much to treat depression as SSRIs?
kelly brogan
More, yeah, actually.
Because the efficacy of most antidepressants is pretty embarrassing, to be frank.
Because if you really dig into the literature, it's not what you think it is, in terms of really being a viable treatment option.
So many of these natural alternatives, like, far outpace.
I mean, things even like herbs like turmeric or acupuncture, yoga, you know, exercise.
And that's just a single intervention.
So there's nothing miraculous about my approach.
It's basically just putting all those things together at once for like a synergistic effect.
So you can send your body and mind like a signal of safety, right?
And it works.
So if you're just doing one of those things in isolation, and even one of those things is more effective, then it really comes down to the mindset.
Because if you want it in a pill, it's going to be challenging for you to get results through effort or something behavioral.
So the mindset piece has become a real focus for me as being maybe the most important determinant of what's going to be an effective intervention.
joe rogan
The mindset piece, meaning...
kelly brogan
Meaning what you believe, like about health.
And if you want to, you know, believe that you're broken and that, you know, chemicals are necessary to manage your scary body and mind.
joe rogan
I've talked to a lot of smart people that believe that.
I have a friend, she's a scientist.
She's very smart.
She's on antidepressants.
And if you talk to her, she will argue to the death.
These are critical for her life and that she needs them and she has some sort of a brain imbalance and it's no different than having some other organ in your body that doesn't function properly and you need medication for that.
kelly brogan
We've been told that.
I was told that and I believe that for sure.
The analogy is often, well, it's like insulin to a diabetic.
It's the same thing.
And the more you, you know, challenge that, you're stigmatizing mental illness.
How dare you?
You know, I've been accused...
joe rogan
That's exactly the approach.
unidentified
Yeah.
kelly brogan
I've been accused of shaming women, which is, of course, the last, you know, all I care about is empowering women around their health.
Literally, I wake up every single day and devote my life to that purpose.
Like, the last thing I have any intention of doing is shaming anyone who's made this decision.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Well, it's just whenever something makes someone uncomfortable with their choices, they immediately want to turn someone else into an aggressor or someone who's victimizing them.
This woman that I'm friends with, it's unfortunate because I feel like if she exercised, at least she would know.
She doesn't exercise.
So if you don't exercise, you don't really know if that would help.
kelly brogan
Right.
joe rogan
But I hate to be that guy because I already am.
You know, like that proselytizing, you gotta work out guy.
That's fucking annoying.
That's like the CrossFit person or the proselytizing vegan or whatever.
A new cult member.
You know, you just want to talk forever about it.
kelly brogan
And it doesn't work because you're never going to convince someone.
joe rogan
You annoy people.
They hate you.
kelly brogan
It's true.
And it's like the, you know, you bring a horse to water thing.
You know, you can't make it happen.
But there is more readiness now than I think ever before.
Like, people are ready and once they have the information, it's sort of like...
And then they just transform.
joe rogan
Well, these conversations are happening now more and more with people where they're starting to look at, like, what is it in my life that's causing me stress?
What is it in my life that is depleting my sleep patterns or my health?
Have I ever gotten my blood test done and find out where my nutrient levels are?
kelly brogan
Simple stuff, yeah.
Needs are very different biologically people like people are gonna respond differently to drugs people are gonna respond differently to food It's just we come from different parts of the world and some people need different stuff And this is being called like n of one medicine and meaning like meaning the number of people in a study So like the phrase is n of one medicine because we're beginning to understand exactly what you're saying Which is yeah, it's you this is your thing.
This is your journey.
This is very specific to you, right?
So like You know, your depression, let's say, could be because you have a B12 deficiency.
It could be because you have low thyroid function.
It could be because you're taking birth control.
It could be because, you know, your dog died.
It could be because you have a shitty job that you hate.
It could be because your marriage has to go.
And it could be because you're ready for some psychospiritual emergence, you know?
You are the only one who really knows and who really can figure it out.
But we, on the conventional side of things, seek to depersonalize it.
So it's not you.
It has nothing to do with you.
It's just a chemical process that's unfolding and you need this one size fits all intervention.
joe rogan
It's very disingenuous, but it's also super common.
Isn't that weird?
The access to the data is there for everybody.
It's there for psychiatrists as well.
They would know the efficiency or the effectiveness, rather, of exercise.
unidentified
Right?
kelly brogan
But that's what I'm saying.
It's really coming down to like almost religious level belief systems.
Like either you believe, right, which I used to, P.S. Either you believe that we're sort of machines, right?
Like as Alan Watts would say, we're like flesh robots on a dead rock floating in the middle of nowhere.
So everything is purposeless and random and it's just bad luck and bad genes and You know, it's like the other shoe could fall at any moment and life is just a hustle and you're just trying to survive.
And you got to avail yourself of real medicine, which is pharmaceutical medicine.
It's the only legit option.
And you just got to do it.
And you know what?
You want some credit for even having the courage to actually take the steps to take your meds, right?
So that's one mindset.
And then the other, which is, I believe, growing, is Is that we have no idea what we're doing scientifically, and we're just looking through the keyhole.
And science is a process.
It's not like a destination where the science is settled, my favorite phrase.
So, you know, the body itself has this, you know, chiropractors call it vitalism, like has this innate wisdom, and it doesn't Make mistakes.
Like, it doesn't mess up.
Every single thing your body is doing is in wise response to a perceived, you know, stimulus, right?
joe rogan
Except diseases, of course, right?
Like cancer.
kelly brogan
No.
joe rogan
Leukemia.
kelly brogan
No, it would include without exception.
joe rogan
Really?
kelly brogan
Without, and I could explain what I mean by that.
But, right, so if I have an ache or a pain, or my hair is falling out, or I have a tumor growing out of the side of my body, My first response, it's possible, could be curiosity.
It could be, what is this about?
Where am I off?
Because in indigenous cultures, for example, illness is not something that your body is doing.
It's the manifestation of things out of balance with you and your soul, with you and the relationships in your life, with you and nature, and maybe the collective itself.
So it's this expression, it's this physical manifestation of something much deeper that has roots.
And until you understand what those roots are for you, you won't resolve it.
joe rogan
Right, but like serious errors like birth defects and things along those lines, that's not like a wise response to anything, right?
It's an error.
kelly brogan
It's a good question.
You know, the sort of like congenital question, like if you're just like born without a leg, I mean, you could take it to the extent where you say, okay, so what drove the birth defect, whether it was some sort of, you know, okay, so let's back up a second, because epigenetics, right, is the word du jour for beyond or above, actually, technically.
Right?
So the genes are interesting, but perhaps as insignificant as like 1% of what makes us sick, right?
Or well.
We never study what makes us well.
It's like a total black box.
But epigenetics is like how does the environment impact our genes, right?
So you could argue that a lot of congenital...
You know, sort of malformations and things like that, because this was an area of study for me when I was prescribing to pregnant women, which, believe it or not, was my specialty, prescribing psychiatric meds to pregnant women, that it is in response to that exposure.
And it's the body's method of adapting to an exposure.
joe rogan
Is it an adaptation or is it just an error?
Like if someone's born without a leg, what kind of adaptation is that?
It seems like some sort of a genetic error, no?
kelly brogan
It depends how you want to look at it.
I mean, to me, there are no errors because the body is responding to a perceived stimulus.
Now, if you throw a lot of toxicity, you know, in the way of your body, there may be a limit to which it can or will accommodate, right?
Because, like, something confusing for me was at one point I was reflecting on the fact that, you know, we've had all of these environmental exposures for, like, about 100, 150 years, like, since the industrial...
Revolution, right?
So we live totally different lives now with all these toxic exposures that we sit all day and we don't sleep and we have Monsanto and all the rest.
Pretty much for the past 100 years or so.
We can adapt.
My body is adapting within the hours that we're hanging out.
Why would it not have adapted over the past 100 years?
And like a paleo argument is like we've evolved the same way for 95% of our evolution and now we just haven't taken enough time.
To evolve, to catch up with today's modern influences, right?
But I actually think we're not meant to accommodate this.
And we will self-extinguish, like, if we don't course-correct, which I have faith we will do.
But we're not meant to adapt to this kind of lifestyle.
joe rogan
You mean like cubicle life, traffic?
Yeah, exactly.
kelly brogan
Chemicals, you know, chemical pollution.
joe rogan
This will be the end of people if we don't course-correct?
kelly brogan
I think we will.
And I think it's happening pretty much.
Like, I think even though we could biologically adapt, I think we won't because there is like a cosmic intelligence that is holding us accountable to a certain level of respect.
For this human organism, a certain level of respect for the privilege of being alive, you know?
And the way we're living today, just like trashing ourselves and trashing this planet, is a violation.
So, I don't know.
It's like a subtle point, but I think the point is we're not going to adapt.
So don't wait for it, you know?
And we're just going to get sicker and sicker and sicker and die.
And perhaps that is the most intelligent response.
joe rogan
Damn, someone's a voice of doom and gloom.
kelly brogan
No, I said it's going to get better, remember?
joe rogan
Right.
Yeah, it seems like the sacrifice for productivity, the daily sacrifice for productivity that comes at the expense of health and happiness is the norm.
That's what a lot of people deal with.
They deal with having bills, as you were pointing out about exorbitant medical bills.
So many people that are in the medical industry start their practice or start practicing being a doctor, a professional doctor, with a quarter-million-dollar debt.
Which is crazy.
It's so much money.
It's so crazy.
What a terrible idea.
What's almost mandatory for any civilization?
Well, you need healthcare, for sure.
You need to be able to take care of people.
I got an idea.
Let's take those people that you need to make these critical decisions to save your life and let's fuck them over.
Let's saddle those people up with crazy debt and leave them trapped in a world of stress.
I got an even better idea.
When they're going through their residency, let's not let them sleep.
kelly brogan
Right, exactly.
unidentified
Let's just keep them up.
kelly brogan
Keep them caffeinated, sugared.
joe rogan
Keep fucking working.
Give them pills.
Give them amphetamines.
You know, give them Adderall.
You need a prescription, Sally.
Are you tired, Sally?
I got a little pick-me-up.
It's called Adderall.
Sweetie, it's not your fault.
unidentified
You've got ADHD, D-S-T-U-V. Exactly.
kelly brogan
Q-R-S. But that's how it's like a hazing.
It's a hazing process, not unlike the military, you know, so that you remain loyal.
I mean, that's obviously one perspective on it.
But that's what I'm saying, right?
Like, I was $200,000 in debt.
It took a lot for me to just like jump ship and say, okay, whatever I, you know, invested that in, I'm just gonna walk away from it.
Most people, you know, are not in a position to do that.
And perhaps that's part of the design.
I don't know.
joe rogan
Well, even if it's not a design, it's a very efficient survival mechanism for the industry.
It just seems like one of the worst ways for someone to start a career in taking care of people is to be all fucked up themselves.
kelly brogan
But they need to be broken down in that way to stay in line.
It's just basic, sort of hierarchical...
joe rogan
Is it a conspiracy or is it people just taking advantage of this need and being greedy and just charging exorbitant amounts of money and having the whole thing subsidized by the government so they could be expensive and then the whole thing is crazy and also here's the big one that a lot of people maybe if you're a kid you're not aware of this Your student loans haunt you till you're dead.
You cannot get out of those fuckers.
You could buy a Ferrari.
You could be stupid and buy a Ferrari and go, God damn it, I can't afford this car.
And you go bankrupt.
And they will allow you to go bankrupt.
That can happen.
You can have a business, make terrible decisions, lose all your money, go bankrupt, and literally be absolved of your debt.
Except your student loans.
That shit is in your DNA, kids.
kelly brogan
Keep you tethered.
joe rogan
They keep you.
You have to pay that.
You have to.
It's crazy.
It's so nuts how much money it is.
When you find out what the student loan industry is in this country and how much money children go...
You're a fucking child when you're You're 18 years old, right?
So you make some ridiculous decision to go to some school and you get some grant or you get some sort of scholarship and then the rest of it you're going to get loans or whatever the hell your situation is.
And then you get out of four years and then you go and do your masters, you go and do some graduate work.
Oh, you're fucked!
You're fucked!
You're so broke!
And then if you get out, what are the odds you even get a job in your field?
You have to scramble to try to make some money, and then you have this never-ending pool of debt that you have to suck a little bit out of every month.
kelly brogan
It's like living for the oasis on the horizon.
But that's what we do in this country.
You know, we just are constantly waiting for it to feel okay.
Constantly waiting until we get there.
We're not getting there.
joe rogan
I think that free education, I mean, if it would be possible, if it is possible to do it without ruining the educational system, if it's not already ruined, if it is possible to do that, it would be like one of the best things we could ever do for young people.
Just keep them from being saddled down with some bullshit that you have to keep with you for the rest of your life.
kelly brogan
So you, like, are handicapped out the gate.
joe rogan
Yeah, it's crazy.
And it also, it inhibits any risk-taking that you're gonna have.
kelly brogan
Exactly.
joe rogan
Any chance, like, to jump ship and try something new.
Like, maybe you're doing something, but all the while you have this idea, God, I think this is really what I'm supposed to be doing.
I'm always thinking about it.
I gotta take a chance, but I have this fucking debt, and the only way to Really pay this debt off if I enter into this same...
unidentified
That's it.
kelly brogan
That's a really important point because if you sort of look across dimensions culturally, they're all geared towards supporting a certain kind of mindset and mentality, which is productivity-oriented, which is...
You know, capitalism and consumer supportive in terms of that, you know, sort of financial apparatus.
And so the things and elements, you know, like Graham Hancock has talked about this, you know, the elements that are convenient to that paradigm, including psychiatric meds and even alcohol on some level, like these more sort of suppressive, consciousness suppressive tools.
Are sanctioned, right?
But the things that would encourage risk-taking, encourage creative expression, encourage, you know, sort of consciousness expansion are, you know, demonized or, you know, rendered illegal because they're inconvenient to the paradigm.
joe rogan
I guess, but honestly, I think it's a victim of circumstance more than anything.
I believe that when the Psychedelic Act of 1970 was put into play, it was clearly put into play because they were trying to arrest people that were in the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement.
That's been proven.
It's been proven that there was a collusion and that what they were trying to do...
Was make it so that they could go after these people in the civil rights movement, go after these people that were in the anti-war movement, and they would catch them for drugs and arrest them, and they would cripple these movements.
And this is all documented real clear by the Nixon administration.
The reason why they passed That sweeping psychedelics act of 1970, which covered a lot of stuff that's not even psychoactive.
They didn't even know what they were doing.
And they missed some of the big ones.
They missed like 5-methoxy-DMT, which is one of the most potent psychedelic drugs known to man.
Just a few years ago, you used to be able to buy that shit online from chemical companies.
They would give you like a jug of it.
They could get a whole city high for a month.
And you could go buy it with a credit card.
Not that I know of anybody who did it.
And I certainly didn't.
And I definitely still don't have any of it.
But if I did, it's not even illegal.
That's what's crazy.
It's like they made stuff that was a normal part of human use for thousands and thousands of years.
They made it highly illegal.
And they did it at a time when they were trying to...
Break down these people that were trying to change society, right?
So that was 1970. But along the way, I think what's really happened is it became a matter of financial risk.
Like, marijuana's a big one.
Like, financial risk of the pharmaceutical drug companies if they found out that there's so many different things that marijuana could help.
Whether it is people's appetite or certain arthritic conditions or you can go down the list.
Kids with epilepsy.
It's a huge factor on children with autism, especially edible marijuana.
All these different things that it treats.
If that was made legal and people started turning to that and exercising a holistic approach, it would cost the pharmaceutical companies literally billions of dollars a year.
So I think that's the big conspiracy.
I think it's not really a paradigm, consciousness sort of a thing as much as it's a financial thing.
They're the same.
kelly brogan
They're totally related.
joe rogan
I agree.
But I don't think the people that are suppressing it are even aware of the effects.
kelly brogan
I would agree.
No, I would agree.
There's no master puppet string puller.
It's like this organism that's just moved only in one direction.
Yes, money.
joe rogan
The same reason why, also involved in trying to keep these drugs illegal, you have prison guard unions because they want to keep their money coming in.
You have police unions.
I mean, there's a lot of that where you find lobbying by these unlikely groups and you're like, I don't understand.
And then you go, oh, they just want to make more money.
They're more than willing to lock people up.
They're more than willing to demonize helpful things that grow naturally and have virtually no negative effects in terms of your health.
Things like marijuana.
kelly brogan
Totally.
I mean, that's why I, you know, when I speak about this, because I used to be really in, like, warrior mode on this topic.
How so?
unidentified
Huh?
joe rogan
How so?
Like, what do you mean by warrior mode?
kelly brogan
Because I just thought, okay, like, I've, you know, once I woke up, whatever, it was almost 10 years ago.
joe rogan
Do you ever use hashtag woke?
Do you ever write that?
kelly brogan
No.
joe rogan
No, okay.
kelly brogan
Should I? No.
Maybe I should.
joe rogan
No, it's just, it's a joke with the kids today.
Hashtag woke or hashtag woke AF. I'm old.
I'm old, too.
kelly brogan
Woke AF. That's good.
joe rogan
Woke as fuck.
kelly brogan
Yeah, thanks.
unidentified
I got that.
kelly brogan
I'm a quick study.
joe rogan
So when you became aware of all this?
kelly brogan
When I became aware, I was pissed.
joe rogan
Was it a gradual process?
unidentified
No.
joe rogan
No?
kelly brogan
No.
I got, like, sick, I guess.
It wasn't very dramatic, but my big sob story is that I was diagnosed with my first health condition, which is an autoimmune disorder.
unidentified
What is it?
kelly brogan
After my first pregnancy, Hashimoto's.
joe rogan
Oh, I have that.
unidentified
Oh, really?
joe rogan
Yes.
unidentified
Ah.
kelly brogan
I know.
unidentified
That's interesting.
kelly brogan
My dad and my brother do.
joe rogan
My mom has it.
kelly brogan
Also, which is not as common in men, but probably because nobody's looking for it.
Yeah, so I was diagnosed with that, and I just had this intuitive sense that I wasn't going to go to a conventional doctor, even though I had never, ever...
I've done anything but dismiss alternative medicine.
I was hardcore into the pharmaceutical model, very into science from that perspective.
But I knew that all they had to offer was Synthroid, and I had enough patients that never felt well on it.
joe rogan
Synthroid's weird stuff.
I took that stuff for a while, and then I switched to Armour Thyroid.
And that's one reason why I got pissed at Dr. Drew.
When Dr. Drew was giving that...
When he was talking about Hillary Clinton and all of her health issues, and he was going over her prescription, he was mocking the fact that she was on Armour Thyroid.
He was saying that that's old.
That's an old way of treating him.
I'm like, he doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about.
He's absolutely wrong, because I went through a bunch of different stuff, and then when I took Armour Thyroid, all of the symptoms went away.
Gone.
kelly brogan
And that's what the data shows, that people feel subjectively better on T3 containing.
joe rogan
Yeah, well, explain what that is.
It comes from pig thyroids.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah, which is fascinating.
kelly brogan
It's a glandular.
And he's not wrong because it is an old-fashioned medicine.
joe rogan
He's wrong that it's ineffective, though.
He was talking about how outdated it is.
kelly brogan
And that's subjectively people feel better on it.
So I took that for something similar called Nature Throid for a while.
But I went to a naturopath, which is so funny that I did that at that time.
joe rogan
That sounds like a hippie.
Was it a dirty place with macrame and stuff?
kelly brogan
No, it smelled really good.
joe rogan
Ferns?
Do you have any ferns?
kelly brogan
She was very friendly.
joe rogan
Oh, she was friendly?
Did she smell like patchouli or incense?
kelly brogan
Yes.
joe rogan
Oh, she did?
kelly brogan
Absolutely.
That was good.
It felt right, even though it seemed very wrong at the moment.
No, I did.
And I put it into remission in the space of like a year.
And my antibodies were like in the high 2000s.
My TSH was like 20. What did you do to put it into remission?
So the same things I do with my patients.
So I initially just changed my diet.
So initially, I just very simply at her recommendation, and I'm Italian.
I grew up Italian.
My mom's from Italy.
And I ate cheese and bread of some variety, like five times a day, literally, for my whole life.
So the two things, of course, she asked me to take out were gluten and dairy.
unidentified
Damn it.
kelly brogan
So it was a very amazing transition, but my early win was that I started like pooping every day and hadn't ever done that in my whole life.
joe rogan
Congratulations.
kelly brogan
Thank you.
Thank you.
These things matter.
And so I was like, wow, she must be on to something.
And then later I layered in other stuff.
joe rogan
Were you eating a lot of vegetables at the time?
kelly brogan
No.
I think it was more about what I took out at that point than what I put in.
But when I saw the change on paper, I was like, this is not even supposed to be possible.
This is literally not even we're not even taught that this is possible, let alone that it is anything, you know, that putting autoimmune conditions into remission has anything to do with diet.
And so I was really indignant.
And I've always been a science nut.
I've always spent Saturday, you know, like a good four hours every Saturday on PubMed.
Of course, I'm looking at different stuff over time.
But I went to PubMed and I was like, what else didn't I learn?
And I was like on an obsessive rampage for like a good couple of years.
And that's when I just turned over every stone, like everything, every sacred cow, whether all these meds we were talking about, like, you know, statins or acid blockers or antibiotics.
Then I got on to psych meds and then I started to look at the science supporting a very different kind of Perspective on, you know, this interconnected model and the gut microbiome and, you know, sort of the impact of belief on our, you know, biology that we can sort of like reprogram our hardware, you know, with our software, which is like we're the only species that can really do that.
That we can literally change.
joe rogan
Through meditation.
kelly brogan
Yeah, exactly.
joe rogan
Change the way your brain interacts with your body.
kelly brogan
And then it changes the health of the body.
You literally change your body.
joe rogan
So what did you do to do that?
Like what methods?
kelly brogan
So I was very reluctant to meditate.
I was an atheist my whole, like a belligerent, you know, sort of like Dawkins level atheist my whole life because I was a science worshiper.
And I was like, well, you know, spirituality and religion is for like weak people who like need to believe in some fairy tale to make them feel better about that.
joe rogan
Typical New Yorker.
New York liberal coming at you.
New York liberal scientist.
unidentified
Exactly.
kelly brogan
Well, it's scientism, right?
It literally is the church of science.
And so, you know, when I had this crisis of faith, so to speak, like, I was lost for a long time because...
Science had sort of, you know, or what I believed had sort of failed me in some ways.
And then I didn't have, I don't know what, the readiness to start meditating or find out what, you know, people were talking about when it came to spirituality.
Although I followed the literature.
So like I read the literature on meditation and epigenetic expression for years and years and years.
And I used to tell my patients to do it.
unidentified
But you didn't do it.
kelly brogan
But I didn't do it.
unidentified
Huh.
joe rogan
What held you back?
kelly brogan
Because I liked feeling stressed out.
joe rogan
That's so honest.
kelly brogan
When you don't do something, you're not doing it because you like actually being sick.
You like how you're feeling.
You're invested in it.
joe rogan
Is it that you like or that you're addicted to the weirdness with it?
kelly brogan
It's comfortable.
And the unknown.
For some of my patients, the meditation piece is the last part because they know it's going to be the game changer.
And they're not ready for everything to just be totally reconfigured.
They're not ready for that level of transformation.
joe rogan
Isn't that what they say, too, about sometimes people that are addicted to cigarettes?
That you're almost addicted to the idea that you're doing something bad to yourself?
You're addicted to that rush of, I'm being naughty.
kelly brogan
Yeah.
joe rogan
Oh, so good.
unidentified
Totally.
Oh, so good.
kelly brogan
It confirms something.
unidentified
Yeah.
Yeah.
kelly brogan
Some, like, self-loathing.
joe rogan
It gets you off the hook, too.
Because you're like, fuck it, I'm alive.
Who gives a shit?
This is all bullshit.
I'm not the future.
Fuck the future.
kelly brogan
Nihilist.
unidentified
Yeah.
kelly brogan
Total nihilist.
joe rogan
So many fucking smart people smoke cigarettes.
And it's so confusing.
It's like you're making a deal to slowly pay to poison yourself.
You're throwing a little bit of money in the pot every month, guaranteeing that 20 years down the line, 30 years down the line, however long it takes, you're going to have some bolt is going to come off the machinery.
And hey, Mike, you got a tumor in your lungs.
This is not good.
We're going to have to cut one of these things out of your chest.
You can get by on one lung, buddy.
This is what we've got to do, though.
You've got to start eating papayas.
Like, what?
unidentified
Papayas.
joe rogan
Start thinking, why am I even alive?
kelly brogan
But we all do stuff like that.
I mean, it's not always as obvious.
joe rogan
Not so extreme, but we recognize, right?
kelly brogan
Yeah, we do.
Because we're invested in reflecting a felt wrongness, I would call it.
joe rogan
A felt wrongness.
kelly brogan
Like, we feel deep inside something is wrong.
Wrong with us, wrong with society.
joe rogan
Right.
kelly brogan
Something's missing.
And then we don't want to pretend that everything is okay, so we self-medicate, you know, whether with, you know, drugs or cigarettes or, you know, workaholism or, you know, sex addiction.
We're all sort of in this place not wanting to acknowledge that there's a reason.
You know, like, one of my favorite quotes is this, like, Krishnamurti quote that it's no measure of health to be well adapted to a profoundly sick society.
Yeah.
joe rogan
I love New York.
It's the best.
I love the traffic.
You're like, oh, you're a sick person, man.
kelly brogan
Something is wrong with you.
Totally.
joe rogan
I love it.
unidentified
Honk, honk.
joe rogan
Yes, I'm home.
Yeah, that's a weird...
One of my very, very best friends is just addicted to New York.
He loves it.
He's been there forever.
unidentified
He loves it.
kelly brogan
It's like an abusive relationship.
joe rogan
Loves the city.
kelly brogan
Totally.
joe rogan
But he loves the energy.
He likes all the cars and traffic.
I don't know what it is, but he's healthy fairly.
Physically, he's got a few issues, but mentally, he's very healthy.
kelly brogan
Well, that's unusual to have just one thing sorted out.
joe rogan
He's a smart guy.
kelly brogan
The other thing is problematic.
joe rogan
He just loves the...
I don't know what it is.
Honk, honk.
You know?
kelly brogan
That's the thing, though.
Like, if you think about what the messaging is from the top down we were talking about, right?
Like, the messaging is keep it together, punch the clock on Monday, like, you know, sort it out.
joe rogan
Right.
kelly brogan
And you're supposed to be, like, fine.
Be fine.
joe rogan
Yeah.
kelly brogan
Right?
But many of us don't feel fine.
Like range, a huge range of not fineness.
That's what I'm saying when I say like a felt wrongness.
And that's actually healthy, you know, to sense that.
And a lot of artists, I would say, are the canaries in the coal mine, so to speak.
Like they're the ones who feel, you know, the collective wound, you know, if you want to call it that, more than we do.
They're sensitive in ways.
Well, I don't want to put you in my category here.
You're more of an artist than I am.
I'm not an artist, so I sort of...
joe rogan
Do you think of yourself as an artist?
kelly brogan
No, no, definitely not.
No?
No, it's interesting, actually, because most of my patients are.
unidentified
Really?
kelly brogan
Or they become, after I get them off meds, yeah.
joe rogan
Whoa!
Wait a minute.
kelly brogan
Yeah.
joe rogan
So they weren't artists, you get them off meds, and all of a sudden they start, like, composing music or something, or making paintings, or...
kelly brogan
Exactly.
They find some repressed expression, something like that, you know.
But if you also look at, you know, like I just wrote an article recently that tied in Chris Cornell and his...
joe rogan
Yeah, that one hurts.
kelly brogan
I know.
I know.
joe rogan
That one bothered me.
kelly brogan
I know.
And it's not an isolated...
I mean, listen, I don't know the details.
I don't know what happened, but I certainly smell her at.
joe rogan
Let's just say what his wife believes.
She believes he took too many of his antidepressants or anti-anxiety medications.
But wasn't there some rumor about him having a relapse?
Was there a rumor?
jamie vernon
Yes.
Rumor that there was like track marks, fresh track marks.
joe rogan
See if you find anything on that.
How the hell would anybody know that?
That seems like some shit that people just start making up.
kelly brogan
And listen, and I could be accused of doing the same thing, even commenting.
joe rogan
But his wife, who is married to him, was the one that said that she believed, like when she talked to him on the phone, that he had taken too much of his anti-anxiety medication.
unidentified
Right.
kelly brogan
And it'd be one thing to just be like, oh, she's like a grieving widow if there wasn't like a very indicting body of evidence that unequivocally, like literally two new studies just came out this week, that unequivocally, Implicate benzodiazepines in homicide and suicide.
A very important Finnish study demonstrated that benzodiazepines led to a 223% increase risk of committing homicide.
Jesus Christ!
along with antidepressants and actually other psychotropics, including stimulants, all of these medications have been linked to an increase in suicide as well.
So when I hear about a school shooting or I hear about the German Wings plane crash, What's the German Wings?
That guy, Lubig, who took down the German Wings plane, he just suicided with a whole plane of people and crashed the plane.
When I hear about these mass murder, menace to society kind of situations, My first thought is what psych meds were they on?
And my training...
Basically conditioned me to say, oh, well, they're mentally ill, so obviously they're taking psych meds.
That's like saying umbrellas cause the rain, right?
That's not how it works.
joe rogan
Causation, correlation.
kelly brogan
Exactly.
But actually, there's a massive suppressed body of literature that implicates these medications, all of them.
And we know why we think, right?
So we think that it has to do with the way you metabolize, some people metabolize these medications.
So you might be born with a genetic variant in your liver that makes it so that you, by design, metabolize medications differently than someone else, right?
So you can enter into a state of what's called auto-intoxication, right?
More easily than someone else, even sometimes in a couple of doses.
And you develop what's called akathisia-induced impulsivity, which is like, akathisia is like this feeling like you just want to crawl out of your skin, but you seem really chill.
It's like a really creepy horror movie level side effect.
joe rogan
So no one around you knows that you're about to fucking boil over and explode.
unidentified
Exactly right.
kelly brogan
I spoke in July in London.
I did this workshop.
And this guy contacted me named David Carmichael.
And he's like, I'd love to meet you.
I followed your work.
And I want to sort of tell you about my story.
I had known about this paper of which he was one of 10 or 11 subjects by these authors, Lucere and Crotty.
It was from 2011. Older paper.
Where they took all these people who had committed like heinous acts, right?
Like, you know, murdered their therapist or killed their child or themselves jumped in front of a train or whatever.
And they were prescribed antidepressants for totally run-of-the-mill stress, right?
So like work stress or a dog dying, not because they had like severe mental illness and were suicidal, right?
These people were not suicidal.
They were not homicidal.
They were normal citizens.
And they went on to do this crazy thing.
And what they found was when they analyzed each of these, you know, victims, perpetrators, however you want to look at it, they found they all had these liver variants that I'm talking about so that they were basically poisoned by medication.
But before they were poisoned, they were put into this altered state where they did impulsively violent things.
So this guy basically gets on the stage where I was speaking.
And he talks about how he was prescribed Paxil because he worked, I think, as an accountant.
And he was prescribed it for work-related stress.
It was just taking on too much stress at work, right?
And he remembers feeling like his mind like slip away, like he began.
You entered this realm of like psychosis, essentially.
And he started to develop all of these paranoid beliefs.
But he looked and people told him like, oh, you're getting better.
I'm so glad you're feeling better.
Long story short, he strangled his 11 year old son.
Oh, dead.
joe rogan
And this is before or after you met him.
kelly brogan
After.
This was actually years ago.
And he was not jailed.
joe rogan
So you met him and he was telling you about all this and then after that he killed his kid?
kelly brogan
No.
He killed his son before we met.
Years ago.
But he wanted to share with the audience of doctors I was speaking to.
joe rogan
So they exonerated him based on this medication?
kelly brogan
They did, which is rare, actually, believe it or not, because a lot of times these people are jailed.
So it's like, you know...
Punishing the victim, so to speak.
But that's sort of the issue that it's an important issue, right?
Because your friend, right?
Okay, so let's say some people, this is in line with their consciousness to not have any curiosity about why they're having symptoms, not want to see what they can do in terms of optimizing their lifestyle.
It's just like not their deal, right?
So they want to take a medication and they want to suppress their symptoms and just like hope it works out.
That's fine.
I don't care what people do.
This should be a free country, right?
You do what you want to do.
You practice the medicine that makes sense to you.
But the sort of like chink in the armor is perhaps this issue, which is that we don't really have a good way of identifying.
You know, it's Russian roulette.
We don't have a good way of identifying if you're going to be David Carmichael.
unidentified
Right.
kelly brogan
So, and it's, you know, it's one thing to kill yourself impulsively, but like, you know, the school shootings, for example, have, without an exception, been committed by people who are kids who are recently medicated.
So, is this a public health issue?
joe rogan
It's either on psych meds or coming off psych meds, right?
unidentified
Exactly.
joe rogan
It's almost 100%.
kelly brogan
Yes, if not 100%.
joe rogan
It is really crazy that that's denied.
And when you bring that up, by the way, people call you a gun rights apologist.
Well, you're distorting the issue.
You're turning it to a psych meds issue when it's a gun issue.
If these people don't have guns, they can't commit these crimes.
That, to me, is a very bizarre way of looking at one clear...
But it's what you were talking about before, where psychiatrists aren't talking about this.
This is such a taboo subject that by the time it gets to the average educated and informed person, who for the most part is probably liberal, because we're talking about people that want to get rid of guns, what they're seeing is only the gun.
They're not seeing the mindset behind the ability to do something like that.
kelly brogan
The very relevant context, yeah.
joe rogan
Is this testable?
kelly brogan
It is, actually.
And nobody tests for it.
Like, literally, apart from functional medicine doctors, perhaps, but for the most part, they're not going to be the ones starting patients on psychiatric meds.
Most psych meds are started by primary care doctors after a 10-minute appointment.
joe rogan
There's a scientific consensus that this issue exists, that with this liver issue, that if you take these medications, it can turn you into this or take you to this psychotic state?
kelly brogan
Yes.
unidentified
Yes.
kelly brogan
And you would be surprised how much scientific acknowledgement there is of some really… What's it called again?
joe rogan
I'm sorry.
kelly brogan
It's called akathisia-induced impulsivity.
The akathisia is the experience, the symptom, neurologic symptom that's induced by the impaired, it's thought to be impaired metabolism on the liver level of these medications.
So this is not like a theory.
It's not a theory.
It's right.
Yeah.
But there's a lot of stuff like that.
Like there's, you know, in the literature, there's something called antidepressant tachyphylaxis, which is the acknowledgement in the scientific literature that like a good 30 percent of the time they just stop having an effect, like stop working.
joe rogan
Yeah, that's the thing that people that I know that have taken them have said that the doctor will tell you, hey, this is going to work for a little while and then it's not going to work anymore.
kelly brogan
I just hope you don't shoot up a school in the meantime.
joe rogan
Well, my friend who got on them, and actually, I have two friends that got a great benefit from getting on SSRIs.
They had a great benefit, and they both eventually got off of them.
They got on them, and then their life improved.
They improved the overall existence that they experienced.
They improved their job.
They improved their status in life, relationship stuff.
All these different things improved.
And then they slowly weaned themselves off, and now they don't need them anymore.
But both of my friends that were on them say that it was a great benefit of them to get on them.
kelly brogan
So, that's a rare story, I would say.
It's a pretty rare story.
Now, you could argue that I have a skewed exposure to the population because I only see the people who've been on 10, 20 years and want to desperately get off and can't, you know.
But I am, again, this public health issue aside, which is that these medications could be inducing impulsive violence at random, and perhaps we should at least be talking about this as a society.
Right?
That issue aside, I'm, you know, a crusader for informed consent.
I believe that you just should know all the options and all of the available science, and then you make your own damn decision, right?
With your free will, you do what's right for you, what matches your level of consciousness, right?
The problem is that most people are not taken off of meds and they are maintained for long term, even though all of the long term science suggests that people do worse long term on all categories of psychiatric meds than if they were never medicated.
And this includes antipsychotics for schizophrenia.
joe rogan
All of them.
kelly brogan
All of them.
And the person who exposed this and really, you know, sort of blew the whistle on this issue, his book changed my life and made me put down my prescription pad, is Robert Whitaker, who's an investigative journalist, and he wrote a book called Anatomy of an Epidemic.
And I read it, you know, and it came out, and I was ready to read it and receive it because I just had this health experience of my own, right?
So I read it, and basically what he says is, okay, so we have...
with escalating rates of treatment, right?
Like more and more people, you know, 16% of the American population is on these meds, right?
Including a lot of your friends, my friends.
And with more treatment, shouldn't we have less disability, right?
Like shouldn't people be more functional and less sick?
And what we find is that the reverse is true, you know, that we have more disability with more medicating.
So his book goes through all of these studies up, I never heard about one of them in my Ivy League training.
All of these studies that are not industry funded, right?
Because we know that the pharmaceutical industry is four times more likely to publish something when it's positive than when it's not.
And they can publish whatever they want and not publish whatever they don't want, right?
So they are in charge of their own policing, which is the fox guarding the hen house kind of a situation.
So these were all non-industry funded studies.
And the story they tell is quite different than what you might imagine.
And it's like almost shocking, right?
That you have schizophrenia, right?
Obviously, you need to take meds, right?
joe rogan
Right.
kelly brogan
But what if like doing something is not as good as doing nothing, according to the published literature, right?
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
So doing nothing is better, according to the published literature, than doing something.
kelly brogan
Than doing medication.
joe rogan
So taking medication for some sort of a psychotic disorder, what are the odds that it's going to work?
kelly brogan
So when we're looking at the data that suggests that it's effective to take an antipsychotic, they're, without exception, short-term studies.
So six to eight weeks.
But people are taking these medications for months to years.
joe rogan
And they lose their efficiency over time or their effectiveness over time?
kelly brogan
They have sedating effects usually up front.
joe rogan
But it's not the same as SSRIs in terms of the efficiency?
kelly brogan
The story is similar because if we look at outcomes in the long term, like do you have a job?
Do you have a friend network?
Are you a functional member of society?
If we look at those parameters in the long term, people do worse.
And his argument is that that's why we have more and more of the population literally getting checks from the government because they cannot function in society even though they're medicated to the hilt.
You know, like they're fully treated, so to speak.
And he makes this argument for benzodiazepines, for stimulants.
And if you look into the literature, you understand that all that's happening is you're forcing an adaptation on the part of the body.
This is a chemical.
It is not fixing anything.
And just like alcohol, okay, like some people love alcohol.
For some people, it's very relaxing, right?
Some people hate it and it's terrible and it makes them sick.
So just like any other chemical substance with unpredictably psychoactive effects, it may be adaptive for a given period of time.
But we know through the alcohol analogy that there's no free lunch, right?
So even if it's adaptive in the short term, your body adapts, habituates, you become potentially dependent, although that's a more complex conversation.
You know, what drives that dependency?
The long term is known to us.
The long term picture of chronic use of alcohol for, let's say, social anxiety doesn't look pretty if you want to just stop drinking 15 years down the line after you've been drinking every day.
But we've been told to think of psych meds differently.
And what I'm trying to say is we shouldn't be.
Because they are just chemicals having chemical effects that your body is adapting to.
So obviously that chemical effect is not going to endure, right?
Like it's not going to last.
And then there's going to be a cost.
So one of the major pieces of informed consent I would like to see foregrounded for people is it may be nearly physically impossible for you to come off of this medication Jesus.
We're not taking the glass out.
We're just like putting a Band-Aid on it, giving you a Tylenol and being like, okay, get out of here.
You know, so we're not fixing the problem, so to speak.
So we're masking it.
And there's going to be, you know, sort of, it's going to, it's like a whack-a-mole.
Like, is this going to keep manifesting in other places?
So people are kept on these meds long-term, and then coming off them is...
I've come to the conclusion that they're more habit-forming than any chemicals on the planet.
Crack, OxyContin, nothing.
They do not hold a candle to how hard it can be to come off of psych meds.
unidentified
Jesus Christ.
kelly brogan
All you need to do is ask them.
So your friends are very rare examples, because there are millions of people on the internet right now trying to help each other.
Survive the process of coming, physically survive, let alone, you know, psycho-spiritually, survive the process of coming off of meds.
So that's what I focus on, you know, in my day-to-day practice now.
joe rogan
Now, are there certain meds that are more difficult to come off than others?
kelly brogan
I would say yes, although I've seen exceptions to that, too.
You know, I would say that there are certain antidepressants that are notoriously challenging, you know, meds like Paxil or Effexor.
But then Prozac, which is supposed to be like, have this long half-life and be easy to come off of.
I have patients who develop what looks like AIDS. Like, they get so sick in such complicated ways that no one believes them.
And then they think that they're, you know, well, you must have MS or you must have, you know, mono or you must have, you know, some new diagnosis.
And the literature since 2014 has told us, no, this is a withdrawal.
This is a complicated, protracted withdrawal that is worse than any other withdrawal.
Meds out there.
And so if you knew that, you might be like, all right, well, what are my other options?
Do I have other options?
And since I put down my prescription, I have many years now of experience of treating all manner of bipolar disorder, suicidality, psychosis, without medication.
And let me tell you, the outcomes that I get today, I couldn't have I fantasized about when I was prescribing.
I didn't even know that this was possible.
So if you know that these outcomes are possible, then maybe you would consider a lifestyle approach But you have to know it's possible.
So that's informed consent.
joe rogan
What was best case scenario when you were prescribing?
And did it ever feel like, I mean, did it ever get to the point where you were wondering, like, none of these people are really getting better?
They're improving in certain ways, but they're not getting better?
kelly brogan
You don't have the goal of getting them totally better.
What was your goal?
Management.
That's it.
Management of symptoms.
joe rogan
So the idea is you have an issue.
This issue is never going away.
Let's just throw a wet blanket on this sucker and see if we could hold down the fire.
kelly brogan
Exactly.
And you know what?
I have a lot of compassion.
Many of my friends are conventional psychiatrists, so I have compassion for people who are in the trenches practicing conventional approaches because I thought I was doing good, you know, when I was prescribing.
I thought I was doing good things for these people.
joe rogan
These friends, how do they feel about what you're doing now?
kelly brogan
They sort of like tolerate me.
I don't know.
unidentified
That's it?
kelly brogan
Well, it's funny because I have this, I don't know what you want to call it, like scientific advantage, meaning like I know more of the literature.
I've read more of it.
I've obsessively devoted my life to this subject.
They know sort of not to fuck with me on some level.
So I have respect, but they also, it's like my thing that I do over here.
joe rogan
Right.
Look, Kelly, we have a business.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
My business is giving pills to crazy people.
Fuck out of my office.
kelly brogan
Leave me alone.
Yeah, exactly.
I share an office with one of my best friends.
Do you really?
He rents from my office, you know, with all the Buddhas everywhere.
I mean, he's more conscious about it than that.
Actually, he works in forensics, which means that he works to sort of identify where people in the legal system are being medicated necessarily or unnecessarily.
joe rogan
Oh, God.
kelly brogan
Yeah, there's all sorts of weird specializations within...
The guild of psychiatry, it's like a many tentacled animal.
joe rogan
So when you say management, did you ever take someone from being a real mess and bring them off the ledge and then their life improved?
kelly brogan
Yes.
That's the good summary of what I do today.
So I see the sickest people that no one can help because they've gotten to the end of the road.
So they've done electroconvulsive therapy.
They're on six medications.
They've been hospitalized even in state facilities.
They're, you know, at the end of their rope because they're not well.
And even conventional psychiatry has nothing left to offer them.
So I, you know, people think like, oh, I treat the worried well, like some Upper East Side, you know, woman who's having an affair and she's stressed out or They call it the worried well?
The worried well, yeah.
But it's not, you know, it's not true.
Like, my patients are very sick.
And, you know, I have an online version of what I do in the office.
And the outcomes there are even wilder than the ones in my office.
So you can even do this totally on your own.
It's not like some voodoo I'm working on Madison Avenue in New York.
But for example, I've started to video interview these people as social proof.
It's all on my website and you can see what they have to say about it.
Because why would you believe me?
Because it sounds crazy what I'm saying.
joe rogan
So what do you do then?
Say I come to you and I say, hey, I've got real problems.
I'm depressed all the time.
Super bummed out.
Can't keep it together.
kelly brogan
99 problems.
This, I'll tell you about a woman, Allie.
Okay.
joe rogan
Don't give her a real name.
kelly brogan
No, she's on my website.
joe rogan
Damn.
kelly brogan
In a video.
Yeah.
She is an intrepid woman.
She's incredible.
She's a beloved.
joe rogan
I've never said that about a person.
They're intrepid.
kelly brogan
She is.
unidentified
I believe you.
kelly brogan
That's the point I'm ultimately going to make, is that this process of moving through the fire of your mental illness, which I don't believe in mental illness, but moving through the fire...
I don't.
joe rogan
What do you believe?
kelly brogan
I believe that we are, by design as humans, you know, that we feel things intensely.
And some people have experiences, you know, like in other cultural settings, some of the early experiences as what we would label schizophrenic, you know, there is an elder that is assigned to you to shepherd you through your psychospiritual emergence.
You know, we just don't have a cultural context for anything other than full and total complacency, full and total adaptation to this sick society, right?
joe rogan
Right, but regardless of environmental influences and whatever genetic problems you might have, people can have something really wrong with their mind, right?
kelly brogan
I don't ever think it's really wrong.
When it gets really wrong is under the influence of psych meds.
joe rogan
Always?
kelly brogan
There are very few exceptions.
joe rogan
If someone's experiencing psychotic breaks and they don't get put on psych medication, Does it go away?
kelly brogan
Well, that's the long-term data I was describing for you.
It does.
joe rogan
It does.
kelly brogan
So we have turned what might have been a single-episode experience that, when properly supported, totally, completely resolves and you get back to life, which is what used to happen even in the early 1900s.
You know, when we documented the natural history, so to speak, of these illnesses, we would see that they would go away on their own within a year.
You know, 80% of the time.
joe rogan
So when they would come up out of nowhere, they would go away out of nowhere as well.
kelly brogan
Right.
joe rogan
Huh.
kelly brogan
And we've turned them into chronic processes.
joe rogan
How many people are you talking about?
Sorry to interrupt you, but how big is this study?
Like how many people are being...
kelly brogan
There are many, many.
And this is where Whitaker is like, you know, my knight in shining armor.
Robert Whitaker, because he's cataloged all of this data.
There's a robust amount of data.
And importantly, it wasn't paid for by the industry.
So that's an important bias to control for, right?
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
So if someone comes to you and they're psychotic...
kelly brogan
So that's what I'm going to tell you about Allie, right?
Okay.
And her video is on my website.
This is all, you know, fully with her consent that I share it.
And she came to me end of her rope.
She came with her husband from Kansas to my office, and she was...
What are her episodes?
Her episodes are three days before her period, for years, she would develop psychotic symptoms, become totally paranoid and delusional, to the extent that at one point she was digging a hole in her face trying to get at a thread she thought was in there.
She attempted to commit suicide multiple times.
She had been on at least seven different psychiatric medications, in and out of hospitals, like a laundry list of diagnoses like this, literally.
Including bipolar disorder with psychotic features, premenstrual dysphoric disorder, you know, all manner of dating back from like eating disorders in her earlier history.
She'd been through the ringer.
Okay.
So she was like a professional psych patient.
And I was the last stop before an inpatient facility, basically, like institutionalization.
Okay.
I told her, this is how it's going to go.
So I have a very heavy hand up front, and I can be a hard ass for sure.
But it's in service of passing the baton to these women, because I don't have long-term patience.
There's an intense window, and then they...
They're done with me, right?
Once they're through the birth canal, so to speak, right?
So what I asked her to do was follow a very strict diet.
No cheating.
None.
Like, zero bullshit.
Okay?
joe rogan
So what's the diet?
kelly brogan
Okay.
So the template for the diet that I recommend is based not only on, like, my personal experience, but also on my work with my mentor, Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez, who was the most badass figure in modern medicine.
He passed suddenly in 2015, but he, for 27 years, treated terminal cancer, metastatic, like no hope cancer, literally, neurodegenerative illnesses, Lyme disease, diabetes, all with 100% holistic approach that was all with 100% holistic approach that was based on three pillars.
A personalized diet, so like one of 10 diets.
Coffee enemas.
joe rogan
Oh.
kelly brogan
Do you know what that is?
joe rogan
I've heard of it.
kelly brogan
You've heard of it.
All right.
Because it's like in the zeitgeist, like people are hearing about coffee enemas.
joe rogan
Why are you sticking coffee up your butt?
kelly brogan
Yeah, I know.
It's only necessary because we live in like a pretty toxic world at this point.
But what happens is the caffeine.
Okay.
So you're sticking this little tube like 12 inches up your butt, actually.
I know.
And it seems totally crazy and weird, but you do it all yourself.
You don't go somewhere to do it.
It's not like that.
And you're hitting this, like, it's called a flexure.
You're hitting this point right here where your intestines come across and then down, okay?
And right there is a nerve bundle that reflexes to your, it's called a parasympathetic nerve bundle.
It reflexes to your liver, and it basically helps your liver to dump It's like a supercharging of your liver's ability to detox you.
joe rogan
By putting coffee in there?
kelly brogan
Because the caffeine stimulates that nerve bundle.
It's basically like jacking up your liver.
Because we don't know how to detox better than our own body does.
Your liver is charged with that responsibility.
So if you can help your liver do it, it's going to be best.
And this is most relevant in cancer, like radical cancer treatments, because when the tumors are breaking down, you need to flush that waste or you'll die.
Like literally, it's called tumor lysis syndrome.
So, you know, some early pioneers discover that coffee enemas are critical, like literally life or death critical for helping you flush those wastes.
So I learned about them from the master.
And since using them in my practice, completely changed my practice.
So like a med taper that would take two to three years now takes me like six months with a given patient.
So Ali started doing coffee enemas twice a day.
But the dietary template is a little bit...
I wouldn't say it's like totally...
People think healthy, right?
And they think like vegan or they think vegetarian or they think, you know, tons of green juice or whatever.
And I noticed early on that as long as my patients ate a fair amount of red meat, they got better.
And I used to be like an ethical vegetarian when I was eating like cheese doodles and Pepsi, basically.
And so it was very confusing to me that, you know, red meat could be a healthy part of anyone's lifestyle or, you know, anything I could ever wrap my mind around recommending.
But...
Over the past 10 years and now with the understanding of Nick's Metric, you know, where there are some people who do require red meat to balance their nervous system, essentially.
joe rogan
Now, is this an actual requirement, or can this be mitigated through, like, a very smart and conscious vegetarian diet?
Like, if you're really careful about your nutrients and making sure that you get the essential fatty acids, making sure you get the essential amino acids and a really balanced profile of vegetable protein?
kelly brogan
It's a great question.
Ultimately, my goal in this month is to clear the slate of all the stuff that's yanking on your brain and your immune system and driving inflammation so that you can begin to sense what you need.
joe rogan
Have you ever had anybody that attempted to do it with, say, hemp protein or pea protein or vegetable-based proteins?
kelly brogan
At this point, I'm going for gold.
I'm interested in massive transformation for people, not just like, oh, I guess I feel a little better.
So I won't even see a new patient if they're not willing to at least try for the month to eat red meat.
joe rogan
Really?
But is this all anecdotal?
So it's all just like what you've experienced for working with patients.
But have you ever experienced a single patient that tried to do it correctly through vegetable protein?
kelly brogan
No, but I wouldn't.
You know what I'm saying?
But I do have this online program where there are people who get well and they stick to a vegetarian diet.
So it's apparently possible.
joe rogan
Well, a vegetarian, at least you can get eggs.
Right.
kelly brogan
In his model, there were no vegan diets.
And it's based on the work of Weston Price.
You know who he is, Weston Price?
joe rogan
I've heard the name.
kelly brogan
Yeah, he was like a dentist in the 1900s who like went around the world with his wife and studied all of these different people who, like indigenous people all over, like Eskimos, like Himalayan, you know.
Folks, Mexican folks and South American, and studied the healthy indigenous populations that were not eating industrialized food, right?
And what he found was they all ate different stuff.
So there isn't like a diet, right?
So how do you know what is your version, right?
So like an Eskimo doesn't eat coconuts and like a Maasai warrior doesn't eat whale blubber.
So like, how do you know...
What's your version?
The truth is only you know.
But our signals are so distorted and suppressed that we can't figure it out.
joe rogan
Right.
kelly brogan
But you'll begin to lower the white noise enough if you have this month-long experience of detox.
So I asked for daily meditation three minutes.
I told you I'm a kundalini zealot, so I asked for people to do...
joe rogan
You told me that before the podcast.
unidentified
Yeah, yeah, okay.
kelly brogan
They didn't hear me.
joe rogan
But it's okay.
unidentified
Yeah.
kelly brogan
So I came to kundalini yoga basically out of sheer desperation at a very difficult time in my life, largely after my mentor died.
And it totally changed my, like, rewired my nervous system, literally.
Literally.
Where now nothing stresses me out.
joe rogan
But if you have someone, I mean, I'm obviously not a vegan, but if you have someone that comes to you that does not want to eat meat, but wants to try this out, and wants to try this out with, I mean, it's really just the science of nutrition.
I mean, you can eat a vegan diet and be healthy, as long as you do it right, can't you?
kelly brogan
Well, so his model is that there are different kinds of people and different kinds of people, and I can explain a little more, require, require for their health certain dietary complements and what are called the parasympathetic dominants.
Right.
Which is more like the Eskimos.
Mm-hmm.
Require red meat to be healthy.
You will not only never be fully healthy, but then you're at risk for developing the illnesses that parasympathetic dominance develop, like leukemia, lymphoma, hypothyroidism, chemical sensitivity, chronic fatigue, depression.
Right?
So many, many, many, many, many former vegetarians converted from vegetarianism because they felt depressed.
Right?
So while that's true, on the other side of the spectrum are the sympathetic dominants who don't need to eat red meat.
And who do really well on like a full force like plants, grains, you know, even a high carb diet and they feel well.
And it's when they eat too much red meat, particularly industrial red meat, that they develop solid tumors like, you know, breast cancer, pancreatic cancer, colon cancer.
This is a very common, you know.
joe rogan
So essentially, when you're dealing with particularly indigenous populations and people that have a very strong gene pool that comes from one very strong area in the world, like Eskimos or like people that live in the Pacific Northwest or something like that...
Not Pacific North Wales, but you know what I mean, like Alaskan people.
Like there's people that live on like Nunavac and all these different islands that have eaten seal for hundreds and hundreds of years and have very little access to vegetables, right?
And meanwhile they have super low instances of cancer.
So it's just because their bodies have adapted and evolved.
For those requirements.
kelly brogan
With the environment.
unidentified
Right.
kelly brogan
Exactly.
That's exactly it.
joe rogan
But your body, like say if you came from Vietnam, you would have a very different nutritional requirement than that person would.
kelly brogan
And you will never be fully vital or healthy on the wrong version of the diet.
joe rogan
Is this all science or is this anecdotal guesswork?
kelly brogan
So when it comes to nutrition-based science, there ain't none.
There's just none.
Because the idea of nutrition research is like taking one nutrient out of the context of the person, out of the context of their life, out of the context of their cultural surroundings.
That's how we treat it.
We treat it like a pharmaceutical.
We look at single nutrient out of a whole complement of information.
So we just don't...
I tried.
Learning about nutrition that way.
And I drove myself crazy because I was like, what the hell do I tell my patients to eat?
I can't find any science to support this.
And that's why I looked for outcomes.
So Nick Gonzalez's outcomes are unprecedented in medical history.
Literally, like 34-year terminal pancreatic cancer survivor.
Do you know how long you have to live when you're diagnosed with pancreatic cancer?
joe rogan
Yeah, not that long.
kelly brogan
Like three to six months.
joe rogan
I know a guy's been alive for a few years on it, but...
He's actually taking meds.
kelly brogan
That's very, very unusual.
joe rogan
Yeah, I know.
It's amazing.
He still eats sugar, this fucker.
kelly brogan
He's doing his thing.
joe rogan
Eating fucking gummy bears and shit.
Do you know Rob Wolf?
Do you know who Rob Wolf is?
kelly brogan
Yeah, not personally.
I know his work.
joe rogan
Rob's a really interesting guy.
And one of the things that he does that's kind of fascinating is on his Instagram, he and his wife will do these tests.
They'll do carbohydrate absorption tests and ketosis tests.
And they'll both eat the same things, but he'll test her and then test him and the results vary widely.
kelly brogan
Yes.
joe rogan
Like, his reaction is, like, he just jokes around about how poor his genetics are and about how robust his wife's genetics are.
Apparently, like, nothing can knock her out of ketosis.
She can eat, like, crazy amounts of food, and then, like, a couple hours later, she's, like, back on baseline.
kelly brogan
That's, yeah.
joe rogan
Whereas his bio's all like, ah!
Like, his body just goes off the tracks.
Yeah, he's weaker.
kelly brogan
Totally the weaker sex.
joe rogan
Yeah, so his studies, though, and his little tests, although, you know, they're very small, it's just him and his wife, they're really fascinating to see how two people who are in the exact same household, same environment, you know, one's male, one's female, but also just different genetic and backgrounds, and how wildly they vary.
It's really...
kelly brogan
So what do you do with that, right?
joe rogan
How do you know who you are?
kelly brogan
That's the end of one medicine, right?
So the truth is that you have an intuitive compass, right?
Especially with food.
You are going to want to eat the diet that is going to make you well.
joe rogan
Oh, candy and ice cream.
unidentified
That's what it is.
joe rogan
It's intuitive, dude.
kelly brogan
That's what people think.
But the truth is, if you actually take this break and detox, so to speak, from all those addictive foods, and you have this shift in your body, you're not going to want it.
joe rogan
Yeah, that's where you're wrong.
Because tiramisu, after you have like a nice dinner and you see that on the menu, you're like, come on, roll it out.
Let's do this.
Get that cream with the cocoa on the top of it.
kelly brogan
Totally gross.
joe rogan
So good.
It's gross?
kelly brogan
I never liked it.
unidentified
Oh, how dare you?
kelly brogan
I quit coffee like nine years ago and now I can't touch it.
joe rogan
What about chocolate ice cream?
Is that okay?
unidentified
No.
Nothing?
joe rogan
Doesn't do anything for you?
Well, you're like some sort of an android then.
kelly brogan
No!
joe rogan
Something's wrong with you.
kelly brogan
I'm eight years into this stuff, so it starts to decondition.
And then if you really, really feel like something like that, then you're like, what's up?
What am I like...
You know what I mean?
joe rogan
Trying to eat some ice cream.
That's what the fuck is up.
kelly brogan
Shit is good.
joe rogan
You ever had like an ice cream sundae with whipped cream and fudge?
kelly brogan
No, do you understand how I used to eat?
I grew up in New Jersey, okay?
joe rogan
I was born there.
kelly brogan
I went to Friendly's like on the regular and I got the Happy Ending.
Can you believe it was called that?
unidentified
I know.
kelly brogan
The Happy Ending Sunday.
I know.
And the fries and the grilled cheese.
I used to eat even through my training when I trained at Bellevue in New York.
And at the gift store, they used to know me, so they'd have Twizzlers and dark chocolate Milky Way waiting for me every day.
Every day!
So I was like an addict, you know, by any definition.
And you can resolve that, you know?
And then you figure out, like, what actually you're meant to eat.
Because Nick always said, you will eat the food that you're meant to eat.
You'll want it.
But you have to sort of get your brain out of the way.
So if you have, you know, all of these nutrition gurus in your head telling you like red meat's going to kill you and give you a heart attack, then you're going to not want it.
But if you can, that's why I demand the openness as a criteria, you know, to participate with me anyway in a clinical setting.
Because then, like, I can't tell you how many of my patients were former vegans and now they're totally thriving.
Okay, so let me finish telling you about Allie, which I didn't finish telling you.
Okay, so that's basically what she did, right?
She was off all meds except for, as needed, Klonopin when she met me.
So she had already done...
joe rogan
What does Klonopin do?
kelly brogan
It's like Ativan, like the one we were talking about with Chris Cornell.
It's an anti-anxiety medicine, like Xanax or Valium, if you've heard of those.
Yes.
It's one of the most challenging to get off of in the long term.
And why wouldn't it be long term?
That's the confusing part.
Why would you just voluntarily stop taking something that makes you feel chilled out when you're feeling anxious, right?
But what if your anxiety is because you have unstable blood sugar and you're having this fight or flight explosion every hour and a half?
If you're not resolving that, then it's like putting a bandaid on a piece of glass in your foot.
It's like, okay, but why don't you just fix it?
And then you won't need it.
joe rogan
So you make them eat a certain amount of red meat.
Do you limit their portions?
kelly brogan
No, there's no calorie counting.
There's no portion, anything.
Because you are initiating yourself into the process of determining what's best for you.
So the whole point of this month, this military month that I impose on people, is that it's like an initiation to your own.
Self.
So the stuff you're doing, whether it's the meditation enemas, detoxing your products and stuff like that, basic functional medicine stuff, or the diet, it's all in your control, which is why you can do this without me, which has been the best evidence I've ever...
I never even dreamed that was totally possible, and now I'm Super pumped about it because the last thing I want it to be is like about, you know, the Kelly Brogan effect or something like that's not at all what I'm interested in.
So yeah, so you do all this yourself.
joe rogan
What do you make them eat though, besides red meat?
kelly brogan
Okay, so basically food.
Okay, so you're eating animal food.
joe rogan
Just eat food, you'd be fine.
kelly brogan
Crazy person.
Literally.
No, but listen, it's because tell me this isn't food.
So it's animal food, including, you know, any kinds of meat, fish, eggs, whole eggs, not just the whites.
Any kind of vegetables except for white potatoes.
I'll explain why.
Any kinds of fruit.
Nuts and seeds.
Natural salt as much as you want.
Tons of filtered water.
That's important.
And then natural fats.
So like ghee, which is like a clarified butter, coconut oil, olive oil, that kind of thing.
That's food.
By the way, what you're taking out is a little more challenging for some people.
This is just for the month.
It gets so much easier in the future, but you're taking out all grains, all beans, all dairy.
So the ice cream is going.
And then all refined sugar, so like honey and maple syrup are fine.
And then coffee and alcohol.
But listen, if you were really desperate, you might think about this.
unidentified
Oh yeah, for sure.
kelly brogan
And it can be challenging for the first week, and then you start to see the dividends.
And you want to just have one month in your adult life where you just see what's up when you control for these variables.
It's worth it.
Right.
Because then you know what the sort of relationships are between you, your personal, you know, biology, and these, you know, elements of your nutrition.
joe rogan
So what's the general reaction when you get someone to get rid of processed sugars, cut out the grains, cut out the nonsense, dairy, and just eat regular healthy food?
What's the normal reaction?
kelly brogan
That sometimes you feel worse.
joe rogan
Really?
kelly brogan
Depending on how much of the stuff you were eating, you can literally go through like a mini withdrawal.
Like headache, flu-ish symptoms, fatigue, irritability.
joe rogan
They call that like the keto flu when people get off of carbs.
kelly brogan
Exactly.
So that can be real.
Coffee too, obviously.
Anyone who's ever tried to quit can know.
But it's like a couple days and then you move through it.
And then what normally starts to happen is you start to like sort of feel the clearing, right?
So your energy is better, your sleep is better.
One of the most interesting things is how many people tell me that they sleep better When they eat more red meat.
Like, you would never make that connection, right?
Sounds crazy.
I didn't mention this, I hope it goes without saying, that there's a massive militant focus on organic and sourcing.
I would tell people never to touch an animal food if they don't know You know, that it was consciously raised.
Okay, so that's an important caveat.
So sleep gets better.
A lot of the, like, ravenous hunger...
Like, I have patients who can't even go as long as we've been talking without, like, having a snack or they get hangry, right?
joe rogan
Right, yeah.
kelly brogan
Irritable, lightheaded, you know, sort of racing heart.
joe rogan
Carb addicts.
kelly brogan
Yeah, pretty much.
But, like, who is it, you know, when you're just eating convenience food?
Like, that's a natural response.
Right.
And then sometimes it's much more radical.
So like in Ali's case, within two cycles, she was completely symptom-free.
So she went from grossly psychotic and suicidal to not only totally symptom-free, but now she's like moved through, is moving through, I would say, a process of awakening.
Like it's a spiritual shift.
Right?
Because it's like, you know, Gibran says, like, the wound is where the light enters.
And we don't have that consciousness as a society because we think that suffering...
joe rogan
What does that mean, the wound is where the light enters?
kelly brogan
It means that grief, pain, suffering is where you grow.
Like, it's where the real experience of being human and where the real contact with who you are...
So this is true even for something like ayahuasca.
Why would anyone ever do something like that?
But the point is, through that experience of humbling surrender, you meet yourself.
But we don't have a consciousness for that in America.
In fact, crying, like literally tears, is a symptom in the DSM. So it's literally a pathological symptom to cry.
That is the most basic evidence of our humanity, is that we cry.
And if we are living in a culture that says, you're sick when you're crying, stop doing that.
Take this so that you can stop feeling.
We have a bigger problem on our hands, right?
So I know I can't just sit in my Madison Avenue office taking people off of meds and think like, oh, you know, I'm changing the world.
This is a systemic cultural issue that we make no room for things to fall apart.
We make no room.
Do you know that with the DSM-5, so like the latest DSM, they took out something called the bereavement clause from the depression diagnostic category?
And that means that if you meet criteria for depression, which is what you would imagine, you know, well, changes in sleep, changes in appetite, low mood, poor concentration, hopelessness.
If you meet that criteria for two weeks, it doesn't matter if your kid just died or your wife or like your dad died.
So that's bereavement.
It doesn't matter.
You're still a candidate for treatment.
joe rogan
Or if you got fired, or if you experienced a natural disaster, or if you lost your house in a fire.
It doesn't matter.
kelly brogan
Right.
So some people saw that as like, wow, really a last straw of pathologizing normal human experience.
joe rogan
So is that one of the issues with these dissociative sort of chemicals that people get put on?
Because that's like one of the ways to describe a lot of people's reaction to SSRIs and antidepressants is a dissociative.
kelly brogan
Yes.
joe rogan
Like they have a very, they can, anything can happen and they're okay with it.
It's fine.
No worries.
No big deal.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
So they don't get these highs and lows.
And so because they don't get the lows, they don't get to rebound and get the highs.
And then also find themselves, understand themselves, so they can manage how low the lows get through the mind and through your just living in the moment and understanding.
kelly brogan
Yes, exactly.
joe rogan
Understanding that this is just a natural process of life and you've been through it before.
So instead of taking a pill, just suck it up.
kelly brogan
100%.
I mean, we don't, right, like, in tribal cultures, like, men are initiated, right?
unidentified
Oh, I've got a video I'll show you if you really want to see.
kelly brogan
Right, like, you've got a tooth yanked out, or you've got to, like, survive in the wild.
joe rogan
No, I've got an African circumcision video if you really want to get crazy.
kelly brogan
Oh, my gosh.
joe rogan
Yeah, one of the ones.
kelly brogan
You know, so we think of ourselves as being lucky, like that we don't have to go through that.
joe rogan
For sure.
kelly brogan
I'm not taking responsibility for what's in this video as being in any way related to what I'm talking about.
joe rogan
No, definitely not.
unidentified
I'm sure.
joe rogan
You wouldn't approve.
kelly brogan
But it's true.
We just baby our way through life because no one is teaching us how to confront our deepest fears, explore the shadow realms, and integrate it into our own power.
We have no understanding of it.
We make fun of that.
We think it's woo-weirdness that other cultures can do in their little tropical islands.
taking people off of psych meds somehow is seeming to serve as like an initiation process for like thousands today.
So interesting, right?
Like that you took it because you thought it was a good idea and it's so challenging to come off it and forces you to confront a lot of elements of your consciousness, live differently.
It forces you to work with your body differently.
It forces you to begin to look at why you went on them in the first place.
And then there's a whole nother layer of just it's being really physically disabling in some cases to come off these meds.
And it really brings you to your knees sometimes.
And so a lot of what I think of myself as doing is just like holding space for that process to happen.
And then once it happens, they move through into this like awakened state.
I mean, I mean, the vast majority of my patients and online course completers go on to become healers.
Why else would that happen if they weren't...
joe rogan
You're making people crazy, that's why.
They're turning to healers.
But you surely must experience a massive blowback from just conventional psychiatric medicine practitioners who are looking at what you're saying and saying, so you're telling someone all they have to do is just stop eating sugar and they won't be psychotic anymore.
That's fucking crazy.
kelly brogan
I'm not saying...
joe rogan
I know you're not saying that, but I'm boiling it down to that.
You're saying that you took this woman and you took her off of processed foods, you made her eat healthy vegetables and meat and eggs and healthy fats.
kelly brogan
Detox and meditate.
joe rogan
Coconut oil and avocado oil and detox and medication and all the inflammation went away.
The problem of the insulin spikes and all the blood sugar spikes, that goes away and then the body somehow or another comes back to some sort of a baseline.
kelly brogan
That's right.
And, you know, in the New England Journal of Medicine recently, there was a case report, right?
37-year-old woman who was so psychotic that her family took out a restraining order on her.
unidentified
Okay?
kelly brogan
Paranoid, delusional, totally psychotic.
She was treated with Risperdal and Zoloft, an antipsychotic and an antidepressant, which did nothing.
A year of this nonsense later, she was finally diagnosed with gluten sensitivity.
Okay, so wheat sensitivity, right?
They put her on a three...
This is in the hospital.
This is not like in some quack's office, you know, in Boulder.
joe rogan
How dare you go after Boulder like that?
It's one spot, though.
That is a spot.
And Sedona.
That's another one.
kelly brogan
I'm going there, actually.
Can't wait to check it out.
Totally.
So in three months on this strict gluten-free diet, she was totally normal again.
joe rogan
Wow.
kelly brogan
So this is not like a wellness fad.
There are real root drivers, but we don't know what it is for you, right?
Like I said, it could be physiologic, where it's like, you know, there's a similar story about a lifelong vegetarian woman, this is in the published literature, who became psychotically depressed, was admitted for catatonia.
Catatonia is like the worst diagnosis in In psychiatry, right?
She's basically unresponsive.
She was so mentally ill.
They treated her with electroshock therapy because the antipsychotics and antidepressants they used didn't work.
Finally, she gets transferred to an outside hospital because they were like, well, we don't know what to do with this woman.
They check her B12 level and it's like...
You know, tanked.
They give her a couple of B12 injections.
And not only is she better, but she's better than she's been in like 14 years from a couple of B12. So my point is that for her, it was B12. For her, it was wheat.
For someone else, it could be blood sugar instability.
For someone else, thyroid, autoimmune thyroid can make you cry.
Crazy.
Can make you suicidal, according to the literature.
It's not a theory, right?
joe rogan
Have you ever had anybody that you put on this diet and they didn't respond and they stayed psychotic or whatever their issue was?
kelly brogan
Here's why not a long time.
Because I screen for readiness, right?
So I screen for mindset.
And that's what we were talking about earlier.
Because if you're ready and you believe that you're like a whole radical next chapter of your life is like forthcoming...
Then I'm just part of the ritual, you know?
And it's like using the placebo effect even.
I don't know.
I mean, I'm very interested in science.
joe rogan
Well, it's not really a placebo, right?
But it is a belief.
kelly brogan
If you don't believe that this is going to do anything for you and you're a skeptic, it won't.
It won't.
And I can show you all the science in the world and it won't work for you.
joe rogan
But the physiological changes of adjusting your diet, those are real, right?
So, like, why won't it help you?
kelly brogan
But your beliefs can even override that.
joe rogan
Whoa.
kelly brogan
I think that's true.
joe rogan
How's that possible?
kelly brogan
Okay, so I'll tell you about another study.
joe rogan
Okay.
kelly brogan
So these are people like your friends and millions of others who think they were treated to remission, think medication really helped them, right?
joe rogan
Right.
kelly brogan
With Prozac.
Okay, so they're like well on Prozac.
Okay, so they're put in this study, 12-week study, and they get to either stay with their same dose of Prozac that helped them or they get crossed over to the placebo arm, the sugar pill arm.
And they don't know which is going to happen, right?
So what happened, interestingly, in that study is that the time they were crossed over or not, they both, both groups became statistically significantly depressed, right?
So like Mary takes her 40 milligrams on Tuesday, enters the study.
Is still taking her 40 milligrams like next Thursday, but now all of a sudden she's acutely depressed just because of the possibility that she might have gotten the sugar pill.
That's called the nocebo effect.
So the nocebo effect is the impact of fear or negative beliefs that limit your ability to respond to a given intervention.
It's real.
It's more important than anything we're actually doing is what you believe is happening.
joe rogan
So if somebody convinces you that Krispy Kreme...
Donuts could fix you.
There literally might be some truth to that.
kelly brogan
There could be.
And I would equate on some level like psych meds with Krispy Kreme donuts.
So there are some people who are going to say like, wow, that really helped me.
So this guy, Irving Kirsch, right?
He's a psychologist who's like a placebo effect expert, arguably.
What he identified was that when you control for what's called the active placebo effect, which is what happens when you feel the side effects you've been warned about, Of a given medication, and then you feel the medication is working, and then it actually works, right?
So when you control for the active placebo effect by giving people in a trial antidepressant, but then also a medication like atropine, for example, that has very similar side effects, dry mouth, you know, headache, constipation, this kind of thing, there's no difference.
So what he showed is that there is no statistically significant effect of antidepressants above and beyond placebo.
And that the reason that people believe that they're working, and they are, right?
So they believe it and then they do, is because they feel a shift.
They feel a change.
And they've been educated by commercials and their doctor maybe about these side effects.
And then they start to say, oh, my chemical imbalance is being...
joe rogan
Adjusted.
kelly brogan
Adjusted, right?
So it's subtle, but this is not just in psychiatry.
It's really relevant to psychiatry, but it's true in surgery.
You know, they do sham operations and orthopedics, and it's true in even, you know...
Pain management, you know, that the placebo effect is so real.
And it's not like you're being fooled.
Like, you know, like, in my training, I was taught to dismiss the placebo effect like some nuisance we have to control for.
But it's, if we could, Bruce Lipton said this, like, if we could harness this, we would have a side effect for a Medicine for everyone.
But we don't study it.
We don't understand it.
And we just assume it's like people being tricked or something.
joe rogan
Well, aren't the placebo effects fairly limited?
Like nothing really truly miraculous has happened.
unidentified
True.
kelly brogan
It's about 30%.
unidentified
That's pretty good.
kelly brogan
But that's exactly the efficacy of antidepressants is around 30%.
joe rogan
There was a study once that was done on a kid who had some horrible wart disease where it was incurable and it was like spreading all over their body and all over their arm.
Do you know the study?
kelly brogan
I don't.
joe rogan
And they gave this kid some sort of a placebo and it completely cleared it up.
kelly brogan
That's amazing.
I should know that.
joe rogan
Check that out.
And then when they found out that it was a placebo, then it became a problem, and I think it came back.
kelly brogan
Ethically, yeah, yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
There's something going on with the mind and the body, right?
And that's what the placebo effect is demonstrating.
kelly brogan
Right.
joe rogan
But this is unharnessed, and this is untrained, and this is very different than what's going on with the mind with meditation, which is harnessed and trained and focused.
So your thought is that this mind factor is not just an inconvenience, it's not just a variable, but maybe one of the most crucial aspects to overall health.
kelly brogan
If not the most crucial.
Yeah.
And again, conventional medicine is interested in this to some extent now, noticing that what people believe, like that you'll lose less blood in surgery if you visualize losing less blood in surgery, that that actually happens.
How can you control the physiologic activity of your body?
But you can.
Really?
They can prove that?
It's a study on PubMed.
unidentified
Wow.
joe rogan
So how do they convince them that they're going to lose less blood?
kelly brogan
They visualize it.
They meditate on it, visualize losing less blood.
So they have one group that says, you're going to do a visualization where you just like visualize your body letting go of less blood after the surgery or during the surgery.
And then the other group just does their thing.
joe rogan
What if you have one group, you say, dude, you're going to spray like a fountain.
You're like a broken fire hydrant.
You're going to just be gushing over the table.
You're going to be a sprinkler.
kelly brogan
You're right.
You should conduct this study.
That would be fascinating to see if the nocebo effect would have...
It probably would.
It probably would.
joe rogan
Yeah, I would imagine there's probably a way you could mindfuck someone into some terrible state, right?
unidentified
No question.
kelly brogan
So you know where we see this is in cancer diagnosis.
It's called medical hexing, that when you are diagnosed with cancer, the completion of suicide, but also other accidents, and your health basically declines.
Simply because of the diagnosis and that's why it's considered to be it's like bone pointing or something.
joe rogan
So it's voodoo.
It's what we've always known that like someone could put a hex on you and if you know that a hex is on you you're like god damn there's a goddamn hex on me and you start believing it and then it could really cause a huge issue.
kelly brogan
That's what has become clear to me is real.
And we don't want to think about it that way because we think medicine is science and it's, you know, this, you know, sort of impenetrable, you know, the hallowed halls of truth.
But it's a religion just like anything else.
In fact, Nick Gonzalez, my mentor, said it's the last really unrecognized religion on the planet is medicine.
And, you know, we have special language and we wear costumes and there's initiatory rites.
We're talking about the hazing process.
joe rogan
But it's real in a lot of aspects, like the medicine involved in treating a bacterial infection, antibiotics, the medicine involved in healing a broken arm.
There's real stuff there, too.
kelly brogan
So antibiotics is a whole other conversation, for sure.
Emergency medicine, listen, if I get hit by a bus, don't bring me to my naturopath in her office downtown.
joe rogan
She's going to light a candle.
kelly brogan
Right, exactly.
joe rogan
It's gonna be fine.
kelly brogan
Don't start saging my body.
For emergencies, that's what conventional medicine is really designed for.
We only ran into trouble when we started extrapolating from acute setting medicine into the outpatient world.
joe rogan
Well, also the denial of the aspects of nutrition.
Denial of the influence of nutrition.
This idea of only concentrating on the medicine and not concentrating on what we know to be viable alternatives and things that can make your body healthier.
Not taking that into account seems almost insane.
It seems like you're going to fix a car.
I hear a banging.
I'm just going to inflate these fucking tires.
What about the engine?
There's a banging in the engine.
Should I fix the engine?
No, no, no.
kelly brogan
Just turn off the alarm light and keep going.
joe rogan
Yeah, let's just turn the AC on.
It's almost like...
There's certain aspects they're looking at, the aspects of medication, and because of all the aforementioned variables like student loans, the consensus of your peers, everybody's in this sort of group together, there's all this unspoken word that you're not going to criticize, the establishment, and you can't really do that because if you do, you're out of a job and all your money that you spend on...
God.
kelly brogan
Yeah, I mean...
It's important to remember that the pharmaceutical industry is a business, right?
When you forget that and you think that they're in it to protect your well-being...
joe rogan
You're here to help us.
I see commercials.
kelly brogan
If you forget that, which is easy to do, especially because...
And we think of doctors as priests.
So if you forget that, then you can get into trouble because you take their word for something you perhaps should be doing a broader investigation on.
But if you remember that it's a business and it's very lucrative, successful business, I mean, it's the business model of all time, then you'll look with some circumspection upon their claims and their approach.
But our education as doctors is totally through the lens of pharmaceutical model.
Regulatory agencies, famously, like the FDA, CDC, and industry, it's a revolving door, literally.
And this is totally available information on the Internet.
That they're all the same people.
So we really do have the fox guarding the henhouse, and that's where we get into trouble.
If we don't have transparency around a true regulatory body that is not fiscally invested, we're going to have a problem, especially if we're presenting this as the only legitimate course of action for a sick patient, where you can actually, as a parent, have your children taken away from you if you don't participate in the model.
joe rogan
Have there ever been any serious suggestions that we remove this whole ask your doctor commercial aspect of medicine?
Not to my knowledge.
It seems so crazy that we know how influential commercials are.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
I mean, they're so influential.
And these are not just fact-based commercials.
They've got cheery music going on.
There's sunshine and butterflies and shit.
And it just makes you feel like super happy.
Like, I want to be like these people.
They're smiling all the time.
unidentified
Totally.
kelly brogan
Totally.
It's conditioning.
joe rogan
It's so crazy that they can do that for drugs.
kelly brogan
But you could argue, right, that you're just empowering patients with knowledge to help themselves.
Right?
That's why we're allowing the commercials.
unidentified
Ask your doctor if Abilify is going to keep you from jumping off a bridge.
kelly brogan
Or make you do it.
joe rogan
Ask your doctor.
kelly brogan
Oh my gosh, no.
joe rogan
Yeah.
So you said Abilify was at one point in time the most prescribed?
kelly brogan
Yeah, recently it was the number one prescription.
I think it was two years ago.
Synthroid's always up there.
But yeah, it was.
And it's because it's...
There's these trends, I guess, these stylistic trends in prescribing that, of course, have no evidence base.
But in psychiatry, we're really vulnerable to that because there isn't a clear, you know, A to B in terms of presenting symptoms and medication recommendation.
It's sort of a free-for-all.
You know, you can pile on as many or as few as you want.
And there are algorithms, but they're very loose.
joe rogan
What you're trying to say is Scientology is right.
kelly brogan
Who said that?
joe rogan
It's kind of what you're trying to say, right?
I mean, aren't they like super anti-Scientology?
Remember when Tom Cruise was on?
unidentified
I do.
joe rogan
What's his face?
What's that dude's name?
The dude's name, the Good Morning America guy.
kelly brogan
Wasn't he on Oprah too?
jamie vernon
Matt Lauer.
joe rogan
Matt Lauer, yeah.
kelly brogan
Matt, you're glib.
Matt Lauer, that's right.
joe rogan
You're glib, Matt.
Yeah, he's been on Oprah.
But in Oprah, it was when he was in love.
He jumped up on the couch and he was in love like no straight man who's ever lived on the face of the planet.
kelly brogan
Let him do his thing.
unidentified
Yeah, he's in love.
I'm in love.
I'm in love.
joe rogan
Now I'm divorced.
But back then, I was into it.
But no, when he was saying that on the Good Morning America show with Matt Lauer, he was essentially just saying what Scientology has always said.
Like, if you go down Sunset or Hollywood, where's the Psychiatry Kill Center?
kelly brogan
Oh, right.
joe rogan
You know?
jamie vernon
I think it's on Sunset.
joe rogan
There's some part of Hollywood.
kelly brogan
We used to have protests outside of the hospital, too.
joe rogan
They have people with, like, electro-shock helmets on, like, ah!
And, like, it's like psychiatry kills.
Like, what is this?
It's a fucking Scientology center.
unidentified
I know.
joe rogan
If you go in there, they're like, you don't need Scientology.
You need to hold on to these cans that are attached to the E-meter.
We've got to find out what's ticking.
And then they start manipulating your beliefs, and that in turn helps you feel better.
So there is some sort of a correlation between the mind.
In a way, they're almost not totally misguided in their efforts, right?
unidentified
Yes.
kelly brogan
And I would say an important difference in my perspective, perhaps, and theirs, is that I believe in individual empowerment.
joe rogan
Also, you're not asking for 10% of all their income.
And you don't require two and a half hours of study every night.
kelly brogan
Yeah.
No, there's hopefully more differences than that.
But no, I mean, it's, you know, if you're subsuming someone into a, I don't want to say like...
unidentified
Culture.
kelly brogan
How about a culture?
joe rogan
Oh, that's cool.
Just pause before I say the chur.
Culture.
kelly brogan
Then you're just transferring dependence, you know, from one model to the next.
And, you know, sort of my bag is to really...
Give people back their power through a methodology that's, you know, their own alone.
joe rogan
I think that highlights why that stuff works for people and why a lot of different things work for people.
A lot of different kinds of religions and unfortunately a lot of different cults and a lot of different ideologies and a lot of different mindsets do work for people.
Even fucking CrossFit.
There was a great article that I read about equating CrossFit to the fact that people do not have these religious groups.
They don't have these social bonding groups.
kelly brogan
Yeah, it's like a community.
joe rogan
Because they're not going to church anymore, so now they're going to this gym, and a lot of them literally call the gym church.
kelly brogan
Totally.
joe rogan
Yeah.
kelly brogan
Have you heard of the rat park studies?
joe rogan
Rat park?
kelly brogan
Yeah, rat, like the rodent.
joe rogan
Which studies on what?
kelly brogan
So, there are these Canadian studies that basically looked at the addictive model of cocaine, right?
So, like, you put...
We know, right, that if you put a rat in a cage by itself and you give it the choice of water or cocaine, it's going to drink the cocaine until it dies.
joe rogan
Yeah, I am aware of these studies.
kelly brogan
Yeah, so then these researchers were basically like, well, hold on a minute.
That's like totally a natural environment for a rat to be in.
So what if we put it in rat heaven where it can have sex with the rats and hang out and have a community and there's things to play with and little wheels and whatever?
Then what happens?
And if you give them cocaine or water, they don't touch the cocaine.
And you can even addict them in isolation and they will voluntarily detox in rat heaven.
Isn't that fascinating?
joe rogan
Yeah.
kelly brogan
So what does that mean, right?
It means that we fundamentally need community.
Like we need each other, like it or not.
And we don't have that as a part of the fabric.
We live in boxes.
We don't know our neighbors.
Like we don't have communities anymore.
joe rogan
Right.
kelly brogan
And so any time we have the opportunity, whether through AA or CrossFit, to plug into a community, we fix something inside ourselves so we have less of a vulnerability to abuse the effects of a substance like cocaine or alcohol.
joe rogan
Right.
The rat park study is so important because so many people will cite that as evidence that cocaine is so incredibly addictive.
Well, then when they find out about this, because this is like a different variation on that study, and they go, oh, okay.
I'm in a rat park.
kelly brogan
The context matters.
joe rogan
I mean, you're kind of in a rat park every day if you're in a cubicle environment, you're in your car in traffic, or you're on the bus and no one's talking to anybody.
kelly brogan
You're in your little cubicle by yourself, you know.
joe rogan
And then there's shared suffering that's coming from things like CrossFit, where you have these moments where you're bonding together, almost like you guys are, you know, you're in the trenches, right?
kelly brogan
Yeah, yeah.
Suffering together.
joe rogan
There's something to yoga class like that.
People get all Sat Nam Namaste on you.
kelly brogan
Kundalini's like that.
There's a lot of struggle.
unidentified
It's the...
kelly brogan
It's hard.
joe rogan
It's hard.
kelly brogan
It's super hard.
Yeah.
joe rogan
Yoga's really hard, and that's part of what's good about it, is that we need, I think we need hard things.
I think your body, if you're just constantly nerfed, and everything's soft, and everything's a free ride, and there's no ups or downs, and everything's middle, like, what is that?
That's not a human.
It's not life.
kelly brogan
100%.
joe rogan
But we forget that.
kelly brogan
So, like, when you're having a difficult window in your life, you know, and maybe you know why, like you had a loss, or maybe you don't know why, and things are just off, right?
Like, either you have a consciousness that says, there's something here, you know, there's something to this, there's some meaning to this, I gotta look deeper, I gotta pay attention to things, I gotta rebalance and differ, I gotta up my game, you know, of self-care.
Or you're like, this sucks.
I don't want to feel this way.
And there are thousands of prescribers, like, happy to open their door to you.
joe rogan
Yeah.
And that is really the problem, right?
The real problem is that there's so many different options other than what's going to make you healthy.
And there's so many different ways to just numb this whole experience.
Just numb it all down.
Like, let's put some ice on it, baby.
You're going to be fine.
Let's numb this whole thing down.
I have been of the opinion, especially over the last few years, I've really focused on this heavily and I've talked about it maybe too much, but I think people need to struggle in order to appreciate how nice things are and also to mitigate the effects of actual bad things that happen to you.
If you can do difficult, hard things on a daily basis, on a regular basis, You know, whatever your schedule allows for, but whether it's martial arts or whether it's yoga or whether it's difficult, struggle.
Physical struggles where you have to test yourself, where you have to pull through, you have to have discipline and resolve, and it's hard to do.
When you get through that, you develop that muscle and that understanding of struggle.
And believe it or not, this is where it's going to seem really weird.
The struggle that you get in a yoga class is so much harder than the struggle that you'll ever experience outside of that.
kelly brogan
Right.
So you're ready.
joe rogan
Which doesn't make any sense.
Like, no, you're going to work out.
Like, this is just like, no, this is not spin class, man.
This is something, like, very intense.
Not that spin class is not difficult.
kelly brogan
Hey, I was going to say, I'm a SoulCycle fan.
Watch it.
joe rogan
Yeah, I'm all about SoulCycle.
Spin class is hard too.
I mean, it's a bad example.
What I should say is it's not like going to the gym and doing like a simple round of calisthenics or exercise.
kelly brogan
It's pushing you into your discomfort.
joe rogan
Real serious discomfort where you want to quit.
You want to stop and you have to push through.
And that intense focus on difficult things, it makes life more bearable.
kelly brogan
Totally.
joe rogan
It makes it more enjoyable.
kelly brogan
My awakening, so to speak, began when I gave birth for the first time.
And I had a natural birth.
joe rogan
Did you do it in a bathtub?
Did you get crazy?
kelly brogan
I did it in a birthing center for the first time.
The second time I had a home birth.
joe rogan
Why did you do that though?
What if there was anything wrong and you needed to get to the hospital?
kelly brogan
It's interesting because my first birth I was still in the matrix.
So I was still eating McDonald's and prescribing.
joe rogan
So did you like that kid less than the second kid?
You're the matrix baby.
kelly brogan
You're totally the matrix.
Meanwhile, she's like a sage.
She had to compensate for all my dark energy.
So I actually had a natural birth because of the science.
Because I was like in this real like know-it-all place in my life.
Believe it or not, I've tried to move past that.
But I had this OB at the time, and I was like, she doesn't know what she's talking about.
And I researched, like, what is the evidence show?
OB is actually, like psychiatry, only about 30% of obstetrical practices are evidence-based, and the rest is consensus.
Like, the rest is just, they're just doing it because they're doing it.
joe rogan
What if that, like, the cord's wrapped around the baby?
unidentified
What if nothing?
kelly brogan
What if nothing?
We've been doing this since the beginning of time.
joe rogan
Right, but babies have died since the beginning of time because of these things, right?
kelly brogan
So we actually have home birth versus hospital birth data, which should be totally unnecessary, right?
But we actually have it at this point to demonstrate that that's, like, patently—it's fear-mongering.
It's, like, patently false.
joe rogan
But people do get choked by umbilical cords, right?
kelly brogan
Yes, certainly.
joe rogan
So what do you do?
kelly brogan
Anything is possible, of course.
joe rogan
So when that's going down...
kelly brogan
But the truth is that when you research the interventions, you will find...
So I had a natural birth because the research that I did on the interventions, things like fetal monitoring, episiotomy, even ultrasound, let alone C-section...
You know, antibiotics during delivery, etc.
What I found was that there wasn't science to support them.
And actually, the science suggests that they should be abandoned.
So what I was left with was...
joe rogan
What does the science suggest should be abandoned?
kelly brogan
These interventions?
joe rogan
C-sections?
kelly brogan
Yeah.
Oh, I mean, the consensus, even the WHO, which is part of the machine, but even the WHO says they should be less than 10%.
I mean, they're over...
In New York, they're upwards of almost 40% of birth star C-section births.
joe rogan
Why are women doing that?
Are they doing that to save their vaginas?
kelly brogan
They're doing it because they don't want to feel bad feelings.
And they don't want to feel pain.
joe rogan
That's it?
kelly brogan
It's exactly what we're talking about.
joe rogan
I've heard women specifically say they don't want to get stretched out.
kelly brogan
I don't think that's a big...
Yes, certainly.
But I don't think that's a huge motivator.
Women have been made to feel afraid of their own bodies.
It's the birth control thing we were talking about earlier.
If you think of your body as a total pain that's dangerous, it's going to fuck up at any given time, and you're going to wish you had listened to your doctor, who's a man and has never had a baby...
You could obviously be led down this path that says, let me manage your body.
I know better.
Science knows better how to do this.
Your body messes up all the time.
unidentified
Right.
kelly brogan
So that's the mentality.
And in that mentality, in my opinion, is that you're robbed of this opportunity, like psychedelic level opportunity to have a transformation of your consciousness.
Because it is hard, and it is scary, and it breaks your mind.
My mind broke on that day.
Broke.
And it's never been recovered.
Because it was literally so intense that my mind was telling me, you're gonna die, you're gonna die, you're gonna die, you're gonna die.
joe rogan
From the pain.
kelly brogan
It's like pain, but it's more than that.
It's not pain that you would have recognized.
Because it's purposeful pain.
It's not just a signal of something wrong, right?
Right?
So it's a sensation that is a part of the process of moving a human being through and out of your body.
So it's not, we call it pain, but, you know, midwives don't call it pain, for example.
It's not pleasure either.
It's just another thing.
It's another thing.
joe rogan
Why are they screaming?
It sounds like it's pain.
kelly brogan
Because when you're in that intense portal, you moan.
There are these primal sounds we make when we're making love or when we're experiencing fear, when we're really in it.
We make those kinds of sounds.
And there is a lot of fear.
But ultimately, if you don't succumb to it, it breaks.
And you see, oh, that was trying to tell me I couldn't do this.
And look, I just did it.
joe rogan
Do you ever think that if you could meet your old self, that your old self be like, listen to this crazy bitch?
kelly brogan
100%.
I wouldn't even have hung out with me.
I wouldn't even have talked to me at a bar.
joe rogan
Kundalini and placebos, huh?
What do you want me to do?
Eat eggs?
Get the fuck out of here.
This girl's crazy.
Get her on pills.
You need pills.
No, you need pills.
You're delusional.
You're talking about healers and holistic medicine.
kelly brogan
It would have been the eye roll of all time.
Totally.
joe rogan
That's hilarious.
unidentified
How do you, you know...
kelly brogan
Reconcile that?
joe rogan
Yeah.
kelly brogan
Because I feel myself.
Like, I feel 100% myself.
joe rogan
So, is there a self-conscious aspect of it where you do recognize that there are certain science-based practitioners that will be, like, rolling their eyes at you?
kelly brogan
Oh, I don't care.
unidentified
You don't care?
kelly brogan
No, no, I don't care about that.
And what's interesting, right, so I published this book last year, in March.
joe rogan
And what's it called again?
kelly brogan
A Mind of Your Own.
And I published it, and it was a really weird experience because I was a total newbie.
I'd never written a book before or whatever.
And out the gate, I got this very generous advance from a mainstream publisher, which shocked me.
And then it comes time to publish it, and they can't get me on a single The Today Show, Dr. Oz, 60 Minutes, and they're used to waltzing their authors who they give these large advances to right onto these platforms, mainstream media platforms.
I told them, it is not going to work with me.
You haven't worked with someone like me before.
Trust me, it's not going to work out.
These are all pharma-funded outlets.
Even NPR, PBS, they all are.
So we're going to have to come up with something else and Ultimately, they didn't listen and they started to spaz when I, a month before launch, didn't have a single interview.
They'd never had that happen before.
And so it was cool because alt media, you know, like this, I just called on a bunch of my friends and colleagues and It was like top 20 on Amazon within the first week.
And that's like the power.
Like mainstream media is totally dead.
I don't have to tell you that.
joe rogan
It's weird.
kelly brogan
It was so quiet for like the whole year afterward.
If you Google my book, there is not a negative review of this like very controversial text on the Internet.
Very weird.
Because we have trolls on our site every single day on Facebook, for example, or Facebook.
You know, Twitter, even Instagram.
It's like part of the deal of being an activist is that you deal with astroturfing and you deal with that whole, you know, sort of...
joe rogan
Astroturfing?
kelly brogan
Oh, yeah.
There is an amazing TED Talk that you need to watch by Cheryl Atkison, who's like a turncoat Like she used to be an anchor, I don't know where.
And so she has this TED talk on astroturfing and she basically breaks it down.
Astroturfing is like what, so the word, right, it's like a fake grassroots movement on social media, right?
So it's paid, industry paid bots, basically, who generate the impression that there is an opinion anti anyone who threatens the establishment.
And then there are people who organically glom onto that.
So they'll come on my site by the thousands.
And immediately after a comment is written, you quack.
Where did you get that fake medical degree?
You're killing people.
You should be ashamed of yourself.
There's blood in your hands.
Yeah, exactly.
And they almost always call me a twat or a cunt.
That's like almost always part of it.
That's how you know.
And there will be like 500 likes within 10 minutes.
That's like one of the indications that it's a troll.
You know what I mean?
So like there'd be a Facebook comment.
joe rogan
How do you know that that's a troll and not just people resonating with this idea that they hate quacks?
kelly brogan
Because I don't have that many people on my Facebook page that that would ever be a metric.
It's not even like probably algorithmically possible that it would be an organic phenomenon.
joe rogan
Did you see that thing recently?
Jamie brought it up yesterday about Donald Trump.
It turns out that he just had millions of bots follow him on Twitter.
Out of nowhere, something like 4 million bots just joined on and everyone's like, okay, what's going on here?
What happened here?
What is this?
These are fake accounts.
kelly brogan
Yeah, it's like a thing.
It's not surprising that this would have been part of it.
joe rogan
No, it's not surprising that people have figured out that they can manipulate this.
Half of President Trump's Twitter followers are bots.
Holy shit, this is so crazy.
kelly brogan
So you generate the impression that there's a grassroots energy and that it's actually not real.
joe rogan
He picked up 3 million Twitter followers in recent days, most of which appear to be recently created Twitter bots.
Screenwriter John Niven pointed out Tuesday morning that Trump's account saw a big spike in followers over the weekend, most of them newly created accounts without photos or tweets.
Tell several times signs of Twitter bots.
unidentified
Wow, that's crazy.
joe rogan
So that is something that they're doing.
They're making an active campaign to sort of bolst up his public appeal.
kelly brogan
Right.
And in that case, you know, I don't know specifically, but in that case, it would be to generate the impression that it's grassroots.
joe rogan
Right.
kelly brogan
When it's not.
That's why it's called astroturfing.
joe rogan
Got it.
kelly brogan
Because it's fake grassroots.
joe rogan
Got it.
unidentified
Got it.
kelly brogan
But yeah.
So I have all that energy in my daily life, but I didn't have a single negative review of this book in like a year.
joe rogan
It was totally weird.
jamie vernon
What are you laughing at?
joe rogan
Says it's false.
Why do they say it's mostly false?
Says President Trump, like other Twitter users with large following, has a large number of followers that appear to be bots or inauthentic automated user profiles.
What's false, Trump did not receive an influx of five million new Twitter followers in three days.
Oh, so snopes.
kelly brogan
Questioning, yeah.
joe rogan
So how many did?
I thought they said three million.
jamie vernon
As of May 1st it had 28.5, so it couldn't have gone up that fast over the month because it's only a 1.5 million gain.
I don't know.
joe rogan
That's not even abnormal for someone with that many millions.
He has 28 million.
jamie vernon
I don't know.
The story just got weirder, so...
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Hmm.
According to the archived images Twitter page, rumors of a surge in followers were greatly exaggerated.
Well, that's fake news!
jamie vernon
Yeah, I mean...
joe rogan
That's what he's talking about.
jamie vernon
Bots could have jumped on the fake story, Dad.
joe rogan
Yeah, but I'm sure there's a ton of bots following him.
I know there's a ton of bots following me.
I get them all the time.
These women that are fake women that want to talk about sex.
Like, come chat with me about sex.
Come sex me up.
And they're like, it's all like the worst broken English.
kelly brogan
Because you've tried to have a conversation with them.
It's not worked out.
joe rogan
Who explained it to us?
Yeah, I tried to...
DM them.
They don't ignore me.
Who tried to explain that to us?
That they use intentionally...
Was it Malice?
Was it Michael Malice?
jamie vernon
Maybe not.
joe rogan
They use intentionally shitty language so that if you follow them, their poor grammar sort of alerts them to suspicious people so that suspicious people don't interact with them, but dumb people.
So they're a honeypot that creates this environment that stupid people are attracted to because they can't see the grammatical errors because they're dumb.
And so it makes it more effective.
So these Nigerian scammers apparently...
They purposely use bad grammar.
Like, they're more than capable of using good English, but they use this shitty grammar so that the people that they do get are just really dumb.
kelly brogan
They're not trying to snag, like, the Ivy Leaguers.
joe rogan
Yeah, well, anybody who's got a discerning idea of, you know, what this may or may not be.
They're not trying to get that.
They're trying to get the gullible, and there's plenty of them.
Like, why go fishing for sharks?
We can catch guppies.
You know, and get nets full of guppies.
They can't even chew their way through the net.
This is easy pickings.
Don't go try to catch a whale, dude.
That's too much work.
You know?
It's really interesting, though.
I mean, if that is how sophisticated they truly are, it's kind of fascinating.
kelly brogan
But once you know this stuff, then you can interpret.
It just helps to be aware of it.
joe rogan
It would be a big, big deal if we found out that pharmaceutical companies were actively engaging in the use of these bots to attack people like you.
If you had someone like WikiLeaks on your side that dug into this shit and got some whistleblower from the pharmaceutical industry that cares, And release that stuff.
That would be pretty giant.
kelly brogan
I have some colleagues working on that.
joe rogan
Really?
kelly brogan
Yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
Don't tell people.
Now they're going to try to cover their tracks.
kelly brogan
They'll never know.
No.
I mean, the truth is that I don't think it's going to require that because I think people are waking up.
Just like by sheer zeitgeist energy.
People are waking up.
They are calling bullshit on a lot of the heavy-handed claims of the pharmaceutical industry.
They know their doctors aren't helping them.
The conventional model has a very limited ability to help them and or they've tried it and it's not worked.
So people are waking up.
And that's why in more recent time, I've focused my energy not on like fighting.
This is like some David and Goliath situation.
But I'm just focusing on making sure people know like what's possible.
It's like this Bucky Fuller quote, like you don't fight the existing system.
You know, you create one that makes the existing system obsolete, basically.
joe rogan
I don't know who made this quote, but it's a wonderful one in this regard that, Before diagnosing yourself with depression, first make sure you're not surrounded by assholes.
Whose quote is that?
unidentified
The context!
joe rogan
It's a great quote.
kelly brogan
It's real.
unidentified
Find out whose quote that is.
joe rogan
It's a great quote.
It is.
And also, you might have a shitty life.
You might be bummed out because you're working all the time in a job that's uninspiring.
You might be bummed out because you've got an abusive spouse.
You might be bummed out because you live in a crime-infested neighborhood.
You might be bummed out for...
You might have some environmental issues that are causing health problems.
There's a lot going on.
You might work in a job that gets you exposed to toxic fumes or chemicals or...
kelly brogan
Right.
joe rogan
It's a lot of variables.
kelly brogan
We're in a medical system that blames your biology.
That's it.
It just blames your biology.
joe rogan
Because it's convenient and because it suits the paradigm that's in place.
That's exactly right.
kelly brogan
That's exactly right.
jamie vernon
A lot of people ascribe it to Freud, but this QuoteInvestigator.com says that it actually should go to this Twitter account.
joe rogan
A Twitter account?
Which Twitter account?
jamie vernon
Debbie Hope should be credited with constructing the saying it says.
joe rogan
Debbie, you wizard you.
Whoever it was, she nailed it.
Did she nail it and attribute it to Freud?
That's kind of a clever move.
I don't want the attention.
kelly brogan
The radio edit version.
joe rogan
Yeah, really awesome and attributed to some dead dude who was a genius.
jamie vernon
I found this site before.
joe rogan
They kind of like do the telephone game with quotes and sort of like, this is what people are saying and then they go through all the iterations of how it's been translated out and Well, do you remember that one Greg Giraldo joke that got attributed to me online, and people had photos of me with Greg Giraldo's quote, and something that I never said.
It's absolutely not mine.
I didn't know whose it was, and then someone had to say, it's Greg Giraldo's, and then people say, why are you stealing Greg Giraldo's shit?
I'm like, I'm not making memes!
Like, I'm not doing that.
Somebody else did that.
But I put it on Twitter.
This is not mine.
I think I might have put it on Instagram, too.
A long time ago.
But it was weird.
I kept getting them.
These memes come in waves.
I get ones that I did say.
I get those in waves, too.
I get these pictures of me with weird quotes that I'd said.
kelly brogan
Memes are very powerful.
Video is even more powerful, though, because I think people have come to this conclusion that they can't trust anything anymore.
joe rogan
But memes are funny.
That's one of the things that—a good, solid meme— That's one of the things that was so egregious about that fat Jewish guy, is that he was stealing these brilliant ideas, and it made him look brilliant, when really he's just sort of this aggregator of other people's awesome ideas without giving them credit.
And he just got in on this plagiarism loophole, and everybody's like, what— And now he's got this weird thing that he does where he puts up the meme, he writes his own quote, and then just puts the originator's name at the end of it.
He doesn't even say originally created by, he just puts their name.
And that's like attributing credit, some sort of a weird way.
That's weird.
Super slimy.
Like, what's going on now with, like...
And the problem is, like, someone will send you something, and I have a real issue with this.
Like, someone sends me something that's hilarious, and I want to put it on Instagram, but I'm like, I don't know who made it.
Can I just put it up?
Like, what do I do?
Do I say, hey, I don't know who the fuck made this.
Let me know.
And then put it up, and then people go, oh, did you see what Joe Rogan said?
This is hilarious.
I didn't say it.
kelly brogan
It matters.
I'm big into attribution, because it makes, like...
It's like I have company around me.
joe rogan
It's also people who turn it into a business.
The meme business is a business.
And then they have sponsored Instagram posts and sponsored tweets.
And they make a lot of money.
There's a lot of money to be made.
And people are getting these development deals to do television shows and all sorts of other things based on the content of other people's ideas that they're just aggregating.
kelly brogan
That's amazing.
joe rogan
Yeah, well, it's just a weird loophole.
It's like if you were doing it with music, like say if you just wanted to take riffs that you thought were really awesome and put them on your music page, people will go, well, fuck you.
You can't do that.
This is my stuff.
I created this.
But that signature, unless you're putting watermarks on everything, that signature is not necessarily available with memes.
kelly brogan
Right.
Because they're that powerful.
joe rogan
Yeah.
And even if you do put a watermark, you know what they do?
They just find the original photo, put their own quote over it, and just don't attribute anything to you.
Because they don't want you to have the watermark on their page.
It's so sneaky.
It's like some weird copyright loophole that exists now.
No one knows exactly what to do about it.
kelly brogan
We need some ambulance chasing lawyers to catch up.
joe rogan
That's right.
Yes.
Ambulance chasers.
So what blowback have you experienced other than this influx of trolls and people there?
kelly brogan
Oh, so that's what I was saying, right?
Is that for a whole year, none.
Like, I took out a large life insurance policy.
joe rogan
Did you?
kelly brogan
When I published my book expecting, like, pretty serious.
joe rogan
You worried you were going to die?
unidentified
Yeah.
kelly brogan
It's happened.
I have colleagues, you know.
joe rogan
What colleagues do you have that have died?
kelly brogan
I'm going to leave that mystery hanger.
joe rogan
Do you think people have been killed because they've criticized pharmaceutical companies?
kelly brogan
You just have to know that it's the most powerful industry in the public eye, anyway.
joe rogan
That's intense, though, what you just said.
You have colleagues that you believe may have been killed.
I mean, you don't want to talk about it, obviously.
You clammed right up.
kelly brogan
It's hard to shut me up.
It is hard to shut me up.
unidentified
But you really believe that...
kelly brogan
No, I just don't think it serves to focus on this layer.
unidentified
Demon underlying power.
kelly brogan
But I do think it's a possible narrative.
How about that?
joe rogan
It's a possible narrative.
They might silence you.
kelly brogan
And in the realm of independent journalism and media, where some random schmo like me can actually have influence, especially, you know, that I am credentialed in a way that people might pay attention to, then why would they not want to, you know, quiet me?
joe rogan
Well, they put labels on cigarettes and no one gives a shit.
You know, I don't know if what you're saying is worth killing somebody over.
kelly brogan
Who knows?
I mean, I'm still here, so apparently not, right?
joe rogan
But you know what I mean?
I mean, it's like all those whistleblowers when it came to cigarettes and cancer.
Who gives a shit?
They make more money from cigarettes now than ever.
Less people smoke, so they just charge more for cigarettes, and they make more than ever.
They make more now for cigarettes than they have in the last 15 years.
kelly brogan
Yeah, no, I believe that.
And it's true, that just because...
Right?
Like, I'm not just trying to scare people out of taking meds.
joe rogan
You're trying to help them.
kelly brogan
I'm also showing that you can totally shed your chronic illnesses completely, forever.
Well, I can't show forever, but that you can have long-term shedding of your chronic illnesses.
That, to me, is a more threatening element of what I have to say than just like, these pills are dangerous.
You shouldn't take them.
I'm not saying that.
I'm saying you might have been told you're broken, that you have a mental illness for life.
But in fact, you know, like I have a woman who completed my online program, had such bad migraine headaches that she had to be on IV treatment.
She was treated by the top neurologist at Emory.
She was on multiple pharmaceuticals.
She was bed bound for two years.
OK, and she completed my program, which we talked about.
This is not rocket science.
OK, and she's totally symptom free.
joe rogan
Totally.
kelly brogan
So that's pretty threatening, right?
To show you that, in fact, what you're told is a permanent problem you just have to deal with and live with with pharmaceutical medicine could be completely dissolved is a very threatening concept.
And I'm not the only one.
I mean, many functional medicine doctors and holistic healers are working to create awareness of this possibility.
But regardless, it was pretty weird that, you know, the book made the New York Times list, strangely, and there wasn't a mention of it in mainstream media for a year.
Not once.
joe rogan
Nobody wanted to have you on their show.
This is amazing.
kelly brogan
Let's talk to her about this.
Not a negative review.
Not a single mention in mainstream media.
joe rogan
So the negative review, the problem with that is that you could refute the negative reviews and it also calls attention on it.
Let's see what her response is.
kelly brogan
It's like they decided to ignore me, which I was totally cool with because I had a very chill year.
joe rogan
With your life insurance policy.
kelly brogan
Yeah, exactly.
Just waiting, you know, to get my couple million to my kids.
But it's changing.
Like even in the past month or so, there's been like a more of a targeted effort and a couple of Allure and Cosmo and a couple of mainstream outlets have begun to suggest that I am, you know, a dangerous, reckless person who shames women who take meds.
joe rogan
They've said this in articles?
kelly brogan
Yeah.
Yeah.
I don't want to give it the click energy.
joe rogan
Isn't that funny that like if you give advice that based on actual studies, actual medicine, give advice about, you know, like, hey, maybe it's not a good idea that you take these crazy medications where we don't exactly know why you're taking them.
We don't know exactly if these are the right medications for you.
They're testing them on you literally as you go along that you're shaming.
kelly brogan
I'm not even saying maybe it's not a good idea.
I'm just saying, here's what the science says that you might not have been told, and here's what's additionally possible you should just at least know, okay?
And here's the social proof.
You know, interviews, I'm publishing four case reports as we speak in the peer-reviewed index medical literature, you know, so this is not like some random blog I wrote, okay?
So just know that that's possible and then make your decision.
And guess what?
If you're on meds and this sounds interesting to you, then I'm showing you there's a path.
To a new, you know, approach.
joe rogan
Right.
kelly brogan
That's, you know, that's it.
But actually, you know, and I hate to even give it airwaves because it's just sort of ridiculous.
And I do believe a lot of it initiated with astroturfing.
But I'm being called an ableist.
joe rogan
Oh, that's my favorite.
I love that word.
kelly brogan
I've never heard that word before.
unidentified
It's wonderful.
joe rogan
It's one of the new ones the kids are using.
All these little snowflakes.
kelly brogan
Good to know.
joe rogan
I love it.
kelly brogan
So I'm shaming people who can't do what I'm able to do, including have a home birth, you know.
joe rogan
Ableist.
kelly brogan
This has been around for a while.
joe rogan
You're white too.
kelly brogan
I know.
joe rogan
You have white privilege.
You're a woman, it's not as bad?
White woman privilege is not real?
kelly brogan
It is real.
It's totally real.
It certainly is.
It certainly is.
But you guys have to struggle with that a bit more.
joe rogan
Yes.
kelly brogan
Perhaps.
joe rogan
Yeah, I'm a conqueror.
I'm a man.
Terrible person.
Done awful things throughout history.
unidentified
Clearly.
joe rogan
All men are responsible for all terrible stuff.
Your bloodline.
Yeah, ableist is a wonderful term.
Do you ever use that, Jamie?
No.
Do you ever call anybody an ableist?
kelly brogan
No one actually does.
joe rogan
Well, in college they do, and they do online.
kelly brogan
Who knew?
I don't know where I've been that I never heard that term.
joe rogan
People are just...
It's too easy to get by.
It's too easy to eat.
It's too easy to survive.
There's not enough difficulty out there.
People go looking for insults and looking for things that are off.
unidentified
Divisiveness.
joe rogan
Yeah.
There's a constant searching for outrage.
There's a quest for recreational outrage.
And people find things to be appalled at and then attack them and go nuts over it.
It's just...
It's a very strange time.
I think it's beautiful though.
I think it's all really good.
We're coming to grips with how preposterous we are.
And we're doing so in the middle of these embroiled battles over ideologies, over cultural expression.
There's some girls in Portland that are taking a rash of shit because they're selling burritos and they're white.
They made a burrito truck and people are going crazy.
They're trying to shut them down, shut them down.
Because they're not Mexican and they're selling burritos.
They're not pretending.
They're not putting shoe polish on and pretending.
They're not putting brownface on.
They're just fucking selling burritos.
It's so crazy.
kelly brogan
Now you said that.
joe rogan
Critics, close white women's Portland burrito stand for cultural theft.
What the fuck, man?
They're burritos, you assholes.
kelly brogan
Mexicans don't even eat burritos.
joe rogan
Yes, they do.
How dare you?
kelly brogan
When you go to Mexico, how often do you eat burritos?
joe rogan
I've eaten burritos in Mexico.
kelly brogan
Real Mexican food?
joe rogan
Yes.
I have had a real chicken burrito in Mexico and it was quite delicious.
kelly brogan
I love Mexico.
joe rogan
I just don't understand why anybody thinks that there's something wrong with learning a style of cooking.
It's like I think you have cultural appropriation if you have a person who's pretending they're from Laos and they start talking with a fake accent and you go, hey man, you're from fucking Cleveland.
You're not even of Laos descent.
Like you do a 23andMe on you and you find out your family's from Finland.
Like, the fuck is wrong with you?
But there are people that do that and that is crazy, right?
But that's just deceptive.
This is not deceptive.
This is someone who likes making burritos.
They're making burritos.
And then these goofy white kids are fucking closing them down.
And that's what it is.
Cultural appropriation heroes just shouting out from the rooftop that you're wrong.
kelly brogan
Right.
joe rogan
You're wrong.
kelly brogan
That's it.
It's like you said.
We're just always looking for who to blame, who to be mad at, who to make sort of the persecutor of our felt wrongness.
It's that same issue.
joe rogan
It's so crazy.
kelly brogan
No, it is a weird, it is a weird time.
And the trouble is, you know, that the more that we, this infighting is like in some ways a distraction from the greater issues that are like government overreach and these greater issues that are allowed to unfold while we're busy calling each other names.
joe rogan
Yeah, you're doing that on Twitter and the government's literally reading your emails while you're doing it.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
And you're like, no, but we have to worry about this burrito stand.
kelly brogan
Right, you think you're fighting a good fight.
joe rogan
You can't have tortillas.
You're not from here.
Like, what is wrong with people that never existed before?
Like, whatever.
Here's the thing.
Here's what's fascinating.
It only works if the people that you're supposedly culturally stealing from are brown.
If you try cooking French food and you're not a French descent, nobody gives a shit.
You could cook Italian food all day long and no one cares about cultural appropriation.
You could be a white woman from Switzerland who lives in New Jersey and runs an Italian restaurant and no one cares.
They won't care.
kelly brogan
Well, arguably, they haven't been, like, oppressed, I guess, in the same way.
joe rogan
Well, they were at one point in time.
They just got through it.
kelly brogan
Now you're getting technical.
joe rogan
You know, it's Mexican.
But, I mean, for real, I mean, that's literally the path of boxing in America was it was Jewish people, Italians, Irish.
It was the suppressed people, black folks.
It was always the people that were the most economically suppressed.
And then they were also, like, my grandparents came from Italy, and they experienced horrible racism back then, back in the early 1900s.
But by the time they integrated into society, like, being Italian isn't even thought of as being not white anymore.
kelly brogan
That's not even interesting.
joe rogan
Yeah, but when my grandparents were kids, it was just like being Mexican.
It was the same kind of thing.
It was like you were treated like someone from somewhere else that they didn't want here.
They called them guinea wops and all these crazy slangs, horrible expressions that don't even mean anything anymore.
They're so ineffective now.
And our hope is, right, that one day it's going to get like that with Mexicans.
The same way it's like, you can't really mock someone from being from Holland.
No one gives a shit.
Like, you can say, oh, you're from Holland?
Like, yeah.
kelly brogan
What about Guido, though?
joe rogan
It doesn't matter.
They call themselves Guidos.
I know, that's one of my favorite words.
People in my family, they call themselves guidos.
They'll call themselves guineas.
They'll call themselves...
And it's almost like a term of endearment.
kelly brogan
No, it loses its power.
It's true.
joe rogan
It's totally lost its power because it's culturally acceptable to be Italian.
And then one day...
But the idea that these girls are stealing from Mexicans is where it's so crazy.
They're just selling burritos, folks.
It's just food.
It's just a certain way of preparing it.
It's not like they're pretending.
We invented this.
No one else did it.
It's a wrap.
The people who make wraps, those should be slapped.
That's not a wrap, motherfucker.
That's a burrito.
You're making a shitty burrito and you're calling it a wrap, right?
kelly brogan
Gluten-free burrito.
joe rogan
Those are the real problem.
Those are the problem people.
They're calling it wraps.
Zatz looks like a tortilla.
No, no, no.
No.
unidentified
A wrap.
joe rogan
What do they call it?
Did they call a wrap a tortilla?
They say it's a tortilla?
What do they call that outside of a wrap, right?
kelly brogan
It was a co-opting.
It's like a co-opting.
joe rogan
Totally co-opting, right?
That's the real theft is wraps.
kelly brogan
But it doesn't even taste good.
joe rogan
Like if those girls were just selling wraps, everybody would be like, oh, that's cool.
It's just a wrap.
kelly brogan
They just mislabeled it.
joe rogan
As long as they don't have a Mexican flag anywhere or any like cartoon of a chili pepper.
unidentified
Sombrero.
joe rogan
It's just, I really feel like this goes, I mean, it's a stretch, granted, but I really feel like this goes back to what we're talking about, is that people need difficulty in their life.
They really do.
And that way they don't seek out difficulty that's not real.
kelly brogan
You're going to manufacture it.
joe rogan
Yeah.
kelly brogan
Yeah, no, it's true.
joe rogan
I think that's one of the reasons why you're getting a lot of this from these college kids, where their tuition's being paid for, they don't have jobs, they're not competing in the real world, they're just operating on ideologies, and they're being taught by these knuckleheads that are just trying to keep their tenure, and they're trying to spread the same sort of ideology that they had when they were in college, and they never really entered into the workforce in a lot of examples.
A lot of these people went from academia to teaching.
I mean, right in there, just embedded into the system.
kelly brogan
Totally.
joe rogan
You know?
Hey ho, these racist teachers have got to go.
Right?
It's just, people are going crazy today.
And I think a lot of it has to do with the same thing.
I think it's this newfound ability to communicate, which is fantastic, and it's going to have its hiccups, and there's going to be some issues, and there's going to be some real co-opting of the system, like what you're experiencing, with trolls attacking an idea.
But overall, those ideas are spreading in a way that's It's unprecedented and impossible just a few decades ago.
Like, your ideas, spreading the way they have where I hear about them, and now, you know, you and I sit down and talk about this.
Millions of people are going to hear this conversation.
And this is unprecedented.
Like, this has never been available before.
So, all the bad stuff, you've got to take it with all the good stuff.
kelly brogan
There's a light and a dark, 100%.
joe rogan
What you're expressing, what you're trying to get out to people, this is all new stuff.
No one was saying this 20 years ago.
kelly brogan
Because we were all asleep.
joe rogan
This is Matrix talk.
This is more hippie talk that you would hate 20 years ago.
You'd be like, oh my god, I'm so crazy when I'm older.
kelly brogan
But that's why it is a cool time because it's sort of like the democratization of information where if you want to learn about other perspectives on anything, you look it up, you know, and then you make your own decisions.
So it is a time where you have the potential to be an individual in ways that we're not honored in a more conformist, you know, controlled media environment.
I mean, the trouble is that many people are still, you know...
I still believe that mainstream media is telling them the truth.
That deconditioning is very challenging.
joe rogan
Yeah, that's a real problem.
I mean, I think even though the Trump stuff with all this fake news talk is so detrimental, ultimately it is like you're getting people, even if they realize that this guy's a knucklehead and he's wrong about a lot of stuff, they're at least challenging these ideas that these networks are only giving you the news.
I mean, Fox News It is a goddamn sexual assault paradise over there.
I mean, these guys just keep getting kicked out of Fox News over and over again.
There's all these sexual harassment allegations and people are resigning left and right, right?
Well, because of all that stuff, it makes you go, oh...
Oh, these guys are creeps.
Like, there's a lot of creeps even there.
Like when Brian Williams got busted lying.
And you're like, oh, that news guy's just like another asshole.
They just make shit up.
Like, just because he's saying the real news, sometimes, doesn't mean everything he says is true.
And there's no way to filter it.
So everybody has to question things now.
In a way that you never questioned during the Walter Cronkite era.
You know, when people were giving the news back when Ted Koppel was on the air, you weren't, like, is Ted Koppel full of shit?
Like, no one was saying that, you know?
unidentified
Right?
joe rogan
But Brian Williams is clearly full of shit.
kelly brogan
But that's why it's weirder now to follow mainstream media.
Because if you're not saying that, how do you have so much allegiance to the machine that you would never question it?
To me, that's surprising.
joe rogan
It's also that machine is the only vehicle for these pharmaceutical companies.
They have to sandwich those commercials in between...
That's right.
Whatever show you're watching, you know, 360, whatever the fuck it is, and this guy's...
kelly brogan
It's every 10 minutes.
joe rogan
Yeah, and they just sandwich them in there, whereas you're not going to see those commercials, like, no one's going to read those drug ads on a podcast.
You're not going to say, okay, well, hey, been really nice talking to you, and I want to talk to you folks about Abilify.
Are you, right now, thinking about being suicidal and really want to cement those thoughts?
And solidify them and make action.
kelly brogan
It's so not funny.
unidentified
It's not.
joe rogan
You're right.
I shouldn't say it because I don't even know what I'm talking about.
You should be talking about this, not me.
But here I am.
What is this?
Abilify drug blame for compulsive gambling, eating, shopping, sex.
That's just life, bro.
How can you blame Abilify?
Here's one.
kelly brogan
No, you can because of this impulsivity thing I'm telling you.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Whoa.
kelly brogan
Oh, boy.
joe rogan
A gambling habit cost her between $1 million and $2 million in less than five years.
You just suck at gambling, lady.
Stop blaming drugs.
The woman had been living in Las Vegas since 1999, but she had never been tempted to gamble until she started taking the drug.
Get the fuck out of here.
That lady got a good lawyer.
She got a good lawyer, and she's crazy.
jamie vernon
I got 200 people.
joe rogan
I want to take Abilify so I can get some of that cash.
There was a drug called Reequip.
And there was a man in Ireland that took this drug and said before the drug, he was a healthy heterosexual, and after he took the drug, he became gay and a gambling addict, and he would engage in risky sex, and he would meet men in chat rooms and have unprotected sex with them.
And then he got off the drug and was like, what did I do?
And he won the equivalent of U.S. somewhere in the neighborhood of $600,000 from GlaxoKlineSmith.
unidentified
Hmm.
joe rogan
Yeah, here it is.
Man says Parkinson's drug made him addicted to gambling and gay sex.
What is that, from 2000 what?
What does it say up there?
jamie vernon
Uh, 11. Yeah.
joe rogan
There's my memory.
That's what I remember.
I remember things that can turn me into a gay sex and gambling junkie.
unidentified
That's important to know.
joe rogan
I'm like, hey, hey!
Meanwhile, what else works good on Parkinson's?
Pot!
Yeah, and pot doesn't do that.
kelly brogan
Well, good.
joe rogan
It's crazy.
This guy sued the shit out of him and won.
kelly brogan
That's what's crazy.
That's amazing that he won.
Because I believe it.
joe rogan
Well, what's crazy is it's one dude hopes for new drugs.
I love how they sandwich that in there.
kelly brogan
Oh, my God.
joe rogan
As many as one million people in the United States have Parkinson's.
And there's some new stuff that doesn't turn.
kelly brogan
There's probably ads on the side of them.
joe rogan
Oh, for sure.
Yeah.
I like how when you scroll down, the video keeps playing anyway.
Like, they put a little video, like, you can't escape the video.
It's always sitting in the corner, like, go ahead, press play.
Don't be tempted.
jamie vernon
They have been doing this on the bottom, like, where usually you'll see, like, another story or similar stories, a sponsored story will pop in there.
You can't even tell it's sponsored, usually.
joe rogan
Well, you can now on CNN, they have a ton of those.
On a lot of websites, they have a ton of those.
Yeah, it's pretty fascinating.
And it's like, you know, you won't believe what they look like now.
And you're like, God, what do they look like now?
And then you have to go through, like, fucking 20 pages of what other people that look like shit now to get to this one person that you might not even, they might even be on that, you know?
Just totally bullshitting you.
kelly brogan
Meanwhile, you wasted 10 minutes of your life.
You never get back.
Yeah, I mean, on Medscape and these, like, seemingly official medical websites, there are pharma ads that appear to be diagnostic quizzes, you know?
So, like, do you have depression?
And then you go take the quiz, and this is known, you know, has been exposed, 100% of people are identified, pretty much no matter what you click, you're identified as being a candidate for antidepressant.
joe rogan
Of course, right?
They're not like, dude, you're fine.
Go on with your life.
Go play Frisbee.
kelly brogan
In this objective assessment, you're doing great.
joe rogan
You're doing great.
Oh my god, I'm so glad that I don't have to sell you drugs.
jamie vernon
Right.
joe rogan
Wow.
So, what do you hope to really get into people's heads with this book and with all this information and what you've gone on in your journey?
If you had to like sum it up.
kelly brogan
Well, it's sort of like when you know better, you do better.
It's like a Maya Angelou quote.
It's like one of my favorite quotes.
joe rogan
That's a great quote.
kelly brogan
It is because there's no shaming in that, right?
joe rogan
This is as good as the fake Freud quote.
When you know better, you do better.
It's really good.
kelly brogan
When Freud said the word asshole in a quote.
So with this information...
Is there something in you that's, like, excited about it or that says, like, hmm, yeah, there's something to that?
Because if there is, then you should know what's possible, right?
Because if you know what's possible, then you will naturally move towards that.
And the transformations that I have seen and continue to see, I mean, like, I cry thinking about it.
It's so deeply inspirational because it's a kind of human experience that is so redemptive.
It's like a real reclamation.
That is not possible through the pharmaceutical model, in my opinion.
I want to tell you a quick story about antibiotics because you brought this up earlier.
So I went to India recently, right?
joe rogan
You need some antibiotics when you get back?
kelly brogan
No.
I don't take any pharmaceutical.
joe rogan
You don't take antibiotics ever?
What if you got an infection?
Like, what if you got staph?
kelly brogan
Then I'll tell you exactly what would happen.
Right.
So I went to India.
I brought my little kit with me, right?
Knowing that there's like...
And honestly, like, I don't believe in germ theory in the classical sense.
And neither should anyone.
Germ theory is like, if you're exposed to a bad bug, then you get sick.
Right.
Exposure equals infection.
unidentified
Right.
kelly brogan
Right.
But, you know, Pester himself on his deathbed said that it was the terrain, not the bug.
So what's the terrain?
The terrain is the context.
The terrain is your body in your lifestyle and, you know, in your existence.
So that seems to be more relevant.
And then the discovery of the microbiome, like this inner ecology, has totally...
We got to go back to the drawing board completely in medicine because we didn't know that.
joe rogan
How recent is the discovery of the microbiome?
kelly brogan
It's about like 20 years.
joe rogan
20 years.
In 20 years, the science of probiotics and understanding the importance of consuming fermented foods.
kelly brogan
Exactly.
And, you know, super infections through antibiotic overuse and the fact that you can't ever get out from under this idea of just killing the bad bugs.
unidentified
Right.
kelly brogan
It doesn't...
And so the more you sanitize and you use bleach and alcohol and Purell and all that stuff, you're actually distorting things and you're making it more likely for people to develop what are called nosocomial illnesses or infections, which is hospital-induced infections, right?
right?
The hospital is a sick environment, in part because we have a wrong idea about how biological ecosystems work.
There's no bad guys.
Everything works together.
It's like a metaphor for life.
In fact, there aren't really any bad guys.
It's all, you know, sort of part of the polarity of life.
We need bad to know we're good.
Like, it's that ancient philosophy.
So anyway, so we go to India and I bring bentonite clay, I bring colloidal silver, I bring a bunch of- Colloidal silver?
Do you know what that is?
joe rogan
Is that real?
That's that stuff that you like, you lose like little electrodes, you stick the water, the stick the silver in the water.
kelly brogan
Yeah, or you just rely on people to make that for you in a responsible way.
joe rogan
Didn't that turn some dude blue?
unidentified
Blue, yeah, yeah.
Did that really work?
kelly brogan
And it can.
It can do that.
joe rogan
And you're taking that risk?
kelly brogan
If you have the wrong, if you're using large particles.
joe rogan
Would you be cool if you looked like Avatar?
Like an Avatar lady?
kelly brogan
Would you be cool with that?
unidentified
I mean, I think it could work.
kelly brogan
What do you think?
I think it would undermine my credibility.
joe rogan
I don't know, it'd be freaky.
I'm super healthy, but I'm blue as fuck.
unidentified
Like...
joe rogan
That poor guy, he died.
kelly brogan
Oh my gosh.
joe rogan
Yeah, and that's irreversible apparently.
kelly brogan
Yeah, that's not what we're going for.
That's why as a DIY it may not be the best idea.
joe rogan
So what is colloidal silver?
What's the benefits of colloidal silver?
kelly brogan
Okay, so like herbal, like botanical, you know, sort of like...
antimicrobials, if you want to call them that, they don't kill stuff.
I think they have like a rebalancing effect.
But they're, you know, for like SIBO, which is small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, it's like a thing people are struggling with that a lot of functional medicine doctors treat.
There is a randomized trial looking at antibiotics versus herbal botanicals, showing herbal botanicals are as effective.
So why would you ever bother with the risks of antibiotics, which are legion?
I mean, they're massive risks.
joe rogan
So what herbal botanicals are specifically efficient?
kelly brogan
Things like oil of oregano, for example.
joe rogan
That's really good for you, right?
kelly brogan
One of the better studied ones.
Grapefruit seed extract.
Pau d'Arco.
There's a whole number of them.
Goldenseal echinacea that have these properties.
And a lot of supplements just sort of put them all together.
joe rogan
Right.
kelly brogan
Okay, so...
I'm making this story too long.
So I go to India.
I bring all this stuff, right?
And one of the women...
It's like a Kundalini trip.
One of the women gets really sick.
Like projectile vomiting and like screaming in pain.
Like bad scene.
joe rogan
I laughed right before you got to screaming in pain.
Sorry.
I thought she was just puking.
kelly brogan
No, it was...
She was super sick.
And even the Indian dude who was sort of like our chaperone in a way, like a friend of the woman who led the trip, was like, oh, we got to bring her to...
joe rogan
The hospital.
kelly brogan
The hospital.
joe rogan
And you're like, no, I've got to give her colloidal silver.
kelly brogan
And I was like, give me 12 hours.
joe rogan
Really?
kelly brogan
I looked her in the eyes and I was like, give me 12 hours.
And I know her well enough to know that she would be down for this approach.
Okay.
And she was not afraid.
Important detail.
She's not afraid.
She was super uncomfortable, but she wasn't like freaking out and like, oh my God, I'm going to die.
joe rogan
She just thought she was sick.
unidentified
Yeah.
kelly brogan
Which is true.
So in 12 hours, she was completely well.
We were in the car for a two-hour trip going to like another part of northern India.
unidentified
And how did you cure or treat her?
kelly brogan
She may very well have done it herself.
And the ritual of these supplements and bentonite clay and whatever could have just been an accessory.
Who knows?
The truth is that if she had taken antibiotics, which she never did, If she had taken them reflexively, she probably would have been sick longer, and she then ultimately, when she got better, would have attributed it to the antibiotics, right?
So she never would have had the opportunity to just see what her body's capable of.
So we make these assumptions about pharmaceuticals in the absence of any baseline evidence, information, or even experience to help us understand what our bodies are capable of.
joe rogan
But what if someone catches one of these antibiotic-resistant, very aggressive strains like MRSA? I mean, you know, so my partner has a website called GreenMedInfo.com, right?
What is it called?
kelly brogan
GreenMedInfo.com.
joe rogan
GreenMedInfo.com.
kelly brogan
And he catalogs all of the data from PubMed.gov on these natural substances, evidence that shows that something like garlic Because there's a study he put up on MRSA, and I think it was like garlic and maybe honey or something you would laugh at, right?
joe rogan
Dr. Rhonda Patrick went through this, and she talked about it on the podcast.
She had a persistent staph infection that would not go away, and she treated it with garlic in a topical form, and it cured it when nothing else would.
And she had gone through this host of antibiotics that really wrecked her gut biome, and she was...
Really fucked up for like a year because of it.
And she treated it with a topical application of garlic, which is crazy.
kelly brogan
And it sounds crazy until you actually learn that you wouldn't know that there's actually science to support that.
joe rogan
Yeah.
kelly brogan
So there's a ton of science to support natural medicine.
I don't know who funds these studies.
It's crazy that they're even done because there certainly isn't pharma money behind them.
But they are done.
And if you know about them, it might help you to make an informed decision.
But this is reflexive assumption that, well, pharmaceutical medicine is the only legit choice if it gets bad enough is conditioning.
That's all I'm saying.
It's a conditioned assumption.
And if you have an experience that defies that, then you'll make different decisions for yourself in the future.
But you have to have like that woman will probably make different decisions for herself in the future because now she trusts her body like just a little bit more.
You know, she's that much less afraid of all of the horror stories.
The fear mongering is the greatest marketing device, you know, employed by the industry is scaring you into what if you don't do it?
joe rogan
But aren't there a bunch of people that when they do catch MRSA or something like that and then get devastated, the right move is to get on an IV antibiotic.
Isn't that sometimes the case?
kelly brogan
You just told me a story where that's not true.
joe rogan
Well, I told you a story.
kelly brogan
Okay, so then...
joe rogan
But it's one, but it's one, and she had a topical issue.
kelly brogan
But if it's one, and you're the one, then that's important information for yourself.
joe rogan
It certainly is.
kelly brogan
I mean, antibiotics...
joe rogan
For that one, but I mean, don't they serve a purpose in some function, sometimes?
I mean, you don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, right?
I mean, if someone has some rampant, aggressive infection, a bacterial infection...
kelly brogan
Listen, if we only used antibiotics for true life or death emergencies, we would have a very different situation on our hands than what we have now, which is a combination of, you know, devastating our ecosystem, you know, making people gravely ill because they have very serious and totally unpredictable side effects, including long-term neurologic side effects, you know, What's even going on with our livestock?
We are in a mess with our worship of this idea of...
Do you know what antibiotic means?
It means against life.
Literally, there's something wrong-headed about that mentality.
And so it comes back to philosophy.
If you want to believe in war, you want to war against your body, you want to war against and blame all the bad people who do all these bad things, and you want to lock them up in prisons, and you want to hate the...
You know, Arabs and terrorists.
joe rogan
There's that hippie talk again, lady.
kelly brogan
But if that's your general vibe, then it's going to make sense to take medications like that for you.
But I, you know, have plenty of colleagues and myself, we have a different philosophy.
So that's why it comes down to, it's a religion.
You know, it really comes down to your belief system.
joe rogan
So your philosophy is improve the health of the gut biome, take in natural antibiotics, things like garlic, things like oregano oil, things that are...
kelly brogan
Work with nature, yeah.
joe rogan
Right.
kelly brogan
Right.
Get back to the continuum.
There's this notion that there's a path we're meant to walk, where we...
Sort of follow what our ancestors sort of set us up for.
And we've strayed from it big time.
And we're, in some ways, being reminded, you know, that we can't go too much farther without, like, struggling pretty seriously.
joe rogan
One of the big points that you just made, which is really huge, is that if we only used antibiotics when necessary in life or death situations, we wouldn't have the issues that we have right now with livestock, with people's health.
And people take Z-packs like it's going out of style.
I mean, they take them like they take Tylenol for a headache.
I know so many people that take antibiotics.
They just throw them down.
Oh, I feel so much better.
I took a Z-Pak.
You might feel better because you were going to feel better anyway.
And the Z-Pak, you just threw on top of the mix and decided that that was what was taking you over the top.
kelly brogan
That's right.
Meanwhile, it's like in the water supply now.
unidentified
Is it?
joe rogan
Z-packs?
But it's like microscopic levels that you can't really, they're not psychoactive, right?
unidentified
Isn't it?
kelly brogan
There was just something I put on social media.
It was like studying fish that are exposed to antidepressants through water and they became like more aggressive.
joe rogan
Wow.
kelly brogan
It was something like, you know, fish aren't made happier.
But the point is that antidepressants are just in the water supply now.
joe rogan
Yeah.
kelly brogan
Pharmaceutical products.
Apparently in dosages relevant to the clinical expression of fish behavior.
I don't know.
joe rogan
Jesus Christ.
kelly brogan
Yeah.
I mean, there's no free lunch.
There's no free lunch with pharma, I think.
joe rogan
But if you're into fishing, that's good because you want fish to be aggressive.
kelly brogan
I mean, maybe they don't want to be aggressive.
joe rogan
I don't give a fuck what they want.
kelly brogan
They're peace-loving.
They want to just chill.
joe rogan
I've never seen one.
kelly brogan
They're trying to chill.
joe rogan
Fish are just eating things.
Mostly other fish.
They're a bunch of goddamn cannibals.
All of them.
kelly brogan
Deep thoughts.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Silly thoughts.
Thanks for indulging those, by the way.
And thanks for coming on here.
I really appreciate it.
We just had three hours.
kelly brogan
It was fun.
Wow.
That's quite an attention span.
So you do not need Adderall.
You're doing just great.
joe rogan
No, I'm scared of Adderall.
I had two cups of coffee, though.
But if I had Adderall, I just don't...
I want to try it one day, but I'm terrified of it.
kelly brogan
A Canadian study just came out that if you take a stimulant, you're 13 times more likely to be prescribed an antipsychotic and four times more likely to be prescribed an antidepressant.
joe rogan
But they're Canadian.
They're not even like regular people.
They're a totally different kind of person.
kelly brogan
That's true.
It's very important.
joe rogan
It's super important.
kelly brogan
Confounding variable.
joe rogan
They're from the woods.
They're forest folks.
kelly brogan
They talk weird.
I know.
joe rogan
All right, Kelly.
So one more time, tell people what is the name of your book, where you can get it.
I'm sure you're going to get a lot of positive and negative.
Stay offline for a couple of days.
kelly brogan
I thought you had my back.
joe rogan
I do have your back.
I'm just telling you.
I don't want you to get hit with the trolls.
kelly brogan
No, listen.
First of all, it's important.
It's my disclaimer that I'm not here to tell anyone what to do.
joe rogan
Right.
kelly brogan
Okay?
It's just about informed consent.
And if you know all the information, you want to continue making your choice, do your thing.
But I do believe people are entitled to all of the information.
And I didn't know about it when I was prescribing.
So I carry that charge.
So my book is called A Mind of Your Own.
And the rest of my nonsense is on my website.
It's just kellybroganmd.com.
joe rogan
All right.
Beautiful.
Thank you.
I really enjoyed this conversation.
unidentified
Thank you.
kelly brogan
It was a total pleasure.
joe rogan
All right, my friends.
That's it.
We'll be back tomorrow with hilarious Andrew Santino.
So until then, get off those pills, you fucks.
Or don't.
kelly brogan
Or don't.
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