That makes no sense whatsoever.
This is garbage.
I don’t know what is going on with this guy.
[lively funk music]
It’s loaded up with a lot of nonsense,
fake data, fake words, fake numbers.
[lively funk music continues]
I’m psychiatrist and therapist Dr. Eric Bender.
Let’s fact-check some AI slop.
[lively funk music continues]
[marker scratching]
All right, let’s watch this first video.
[space bar clicks]
[Narrator] Psychology facts.
Number one.
If you don’t dream, [eerie music]
you might have a personality disorder.
[Eric laughs] [space bar clicks]
Studies show everybody dreams.
The difference is not everybody can recall their dreams.
In fact, some people with personality disorders,
borderline personality disorder, for example,
they do dream and, in fact, it’s often nightmares.
[Narrator] If a baby stares at you for a long time,
it means you are attractive.
Babies are looking at certain things
because they’re finding them interesting.
Not a psychology fact.
Enough of this.
Next.
[space bar clicks]
[Narrator] One of the best mental health tips
I’ve ever read.
If you feel like you hate everyone, eat.
[space bar clicks]
That makes no sense whatsoever.
[Narrator] If you feel like everyone hates you, sleep.
If we could all sleep on demand, that would be amazing.
This is weird.
[Narrator] If you feel overwhelmed by your thoughts,
write them down.
[space bar clicks] That’s actually not bad.
There’s something about getting them out of your head,
getting them onto paper.
I often tell patients who have insomnia,
write down everything that’s on your mind before bed.
Sometimes, that can really help.
[Narrator] If you feel like you’re not enough,
list your achievements.
I don’t think achievements being listed
are gonna help necessarily,
so that’s actually a big problem
when people feel that all they are is their achievements,
that they only deserve to be thought of or loved
when they’ve accomplished things.
[Narrator] If you feel unloved,
do something kind for yourself.
This sounds more like trite information they got off
of Hallmark cards as opposed to working through something.
[Narrator] If you feel invisible,
help someone in need.
If you feel too much pressure,
do a simple task.
I don’t know how you’re gonna get up
and do all these things.
It sounds miserable.
And honestly, that is when I start to see people
that come to therapy because they feel
like they can’t do any of these things
that they’re being told in this video to do.
Next.
[Sigmund speaking in foreign language]
This is supposed to be Sigmund Freud
talking to his student, Carl Jung, back in the day.
When Freud and Jung finally met after much correspondence,
they said that they spoke for 13 hours straight.
They sat together and just talked,
and so there was this incredible bond right away.
Freud considered Jung his pupil,
you know, his disciple in a way.
And then there was a split later on
as the ideas developed in different directions.
[Sigmund speaking in foreign language]
I imagine someone fed into AI images of Freud
and images of Jung and came up with these images
and the glasses and the beard.
That’s kind of the classic trope of the psychiatrist
because Freud did have a beard and wore glasses.
Freud had these ideas that there were developmental stages
as you grew up starting at a young age.
There was the oral phase, then there was the anal phase,
and then later there’s a latency phase,
and it was all about libido and sexual drive.
Jung said, No, there’s more
than just sexual drive and libido.
There’s also psychological energy.
There’s a universal energy.
Freud said it was very personal, unconscious, individual.
And Jung said, Well, we do have an individual unconscious,
but there’s also a collective unconscious.
Freud wanted Jung to really espouse his ideas
and to bring them forward,
particularly in the psychoanalytic community.
And when Jung didn’t,
that was really a break for the two of them.
Next video.
[screen chimes] [space bar clicks]
Let’s learn SSRIs [beep] because half of you [beep]
are swallowing brain-altering chemicals daily
and don’t even know why your orgasms disappear [beep].
[space bar clicks]
I don’t know what is going on with this guy.
If I walked into his office
and this is the way he treated me,
I would not wanna hang out with him.
What usually happens with these medications
is it can affect libido,
meaning someone’s desire for sexual activity.
These medications can affect orgasm
in the sense they can delay orgasm,
and sometimes for some people, they can’t climax.
You don’t know this until you’re gonna try.
But again, everybody is an individual.
Not everyone gets side effects.
Basic ones are fluoxetine, sertraline, escitalopram,
citalopram, paroxetine, fluvoxamine.
Oh, and don’t forget them [beep]
because I’m gonna pimp the [beep]
out of you at the end of this video.
This AI character’s use of pimping
is actually appropriate.
In the medical education system,
the word pimping means that people senior to you,
so if you’re a med student, it might be residents,
might be attending doctors.
If you’re a resident,
it might be some of your senior residents.
If they’re asking you questions
about the topics you’re discussing, it’s called pimping,
and that is often done in front of the group
of people you’re walking around with.
But serotonin is an instant [beep] happiness,
you depressed, lazy, good for nothing [beep].
He’s using the voice of somebody who’s depressed
that often uses negative voice towards themselves,
so that language is really sharp and harsh,
and that’s actually how people who are depressed often feel.
SSRIs treat depression, anxiety, panic attacks,
OCD, PTSD, social anxiety, and more.
That is correct that SSRIs treat all those things.
It doesn’t mean that it’s a panacea.
It’s not gonna cure you of everything.
Oftentimes, combinations of medication
and therapy work really well, particularly for anxiety.
Serotonin can increase BDNF,
brain-derived neurotrophic factor.
That’s what actually helps nerve cells
repair and sustain their lives.
The big SSRI side effects with the three Ss,
stomach, sex, and serotonin syndrome.
Serotonin syndrome is when there’s a flood
of serotonin that actually causes people
to have a pretty severe reaction.
You might find high fevers and sweating and muscle rigidity.
You do need to go to the emergency room
or call 911 if that ever happens.
Again, I’m not prescribing something
where the risk of something terrible happening
is outweighing the risk of something good.
Next video.
[screen chimes] [space bar clicks]
[Narrator] Ever wondered why some people
can’t stop overthinking?
Psychology says it’s actually a side effect
of high intelligence.
Maybe it’s a side effect of high intelligence,
maybe it’s anxiety, but there is no evidence to say
that somebody overthinking
means they have a high intelligence quotient.
[Narrator] Every decision triggers dozens
of mental simulations.
What if I do this?
What if it goes wrong?
What if they think I’m weird?
This actually sounds a lot more like anxiety
than it does someone having high intelligence.
You can have anxiety,
no matter what your intelligence level is.
[Narrator] It’s your prefrontal cortex working overtime,
analyzing outcomes faster than your emotions can process.
The prefrontal cortex is a part of your brain
right here above your orbital area, above your eyes.
It helps us with organization of things.
It’s very normal for anybody
to think about events in their lives,
to go back to conversations they had in the day.
It’s when you get stuck, when you can’t sleep,
when you keep going over something
again and again and again and again.
That’s called a rumination.
People are very anxious, have a lot of ruminations,
and it’s because they’re actually really lonely.
Sometimes, that ruminative language,
it’s almost keeping them company.
[Narrator] The same mind that overthinks everything
is also the one that understands the world the deepest.
[space bar clicks]
I don’t see any evidence for that.
I’d love to see studies that suggest that.
[Narrator] So, next time you catch yourself
lost in thought, don’t say,
I’m broken.
Say, My brain is just doing its job.
[space bar clicks]
That actually is pretty good advice.
I tell patients all the time,
the way we talk to ourselves is really important.
If you can be kind to yourself,
you’re more likely to be confident
and to try different things.
Next video. [screen chimes]
[space bar clicks]
[Narrator] Did you know trauma survivors develop
what scientists call supernatural
pattern recognition abilities?
[space bar clicks] Okay.
Unfortunately, trauma survivors
have a lot going on in their lives,
and it is not supernatural.
It comes from having been through a pretty awful experience,
and they wanna make sure it doesn’t happen again.
[Narrator] Chronic hypervigilance rewires neural pathways
to process micro-expressions.
The chronic hypervigilance
is being described here like it’s a gift.
It’s actually incredibly difficult for somebody
who is chronically hypervigilant.
They’re looking at everything as if it is threatening.
They have to keep their eyes peeled.
They’re looking over their shoulders.
You see this sometimes with people who have been at war.
Hypervigilance is actually one of the criteria
to diagnose post-traumatic stress disorder.
[Narrator] They can detect threats others completely miss.
They’re not seeing dangers other people don’t see.
They’re actually seeing dangers
that maybe other people don’t see
because they’re not necessarily dangerous.
People who have been traumatized
are really concerned about being hurt again,
even in situations where there’s not a need to worry.
[Narrator] They can instantly sense when someone is lying,
predict relationship outcomes
within minutes of meeting people.
This is garbage.
You can’t predict relationships
within minutes of meeting somebody.
And also, in terms of knowing
whether someone is lying or not,
in some of the worst cases of traumatized individuals,
meaning there’s a complex post-traumatic stress disorder
where they’ve been repeatedly traumatized,
they don’t necessarily assume everyone’s lying,
but they can’t trust other people.
[Narrator] Threat detection systems
have been neurologically enhanced
through peer survival necessity.
Neurologically enhanced is way overstating this.
Neurologically affected, yes.
I don’t know one person who’s been traumatized that says,
I have these amazing abilities now!
Next video.
[screen chimes] [space bar clicks]
Anxiety is nothing more than your mind
traveling to a future that hasn’t happened yet
and sounding an alarm in a body that is perfectly safe.
I don’t know if I agree with that.
You’re not necessarily perfectly safe when you have anxiety.
Anxiety is what helped us evolve
when we were out hunting for food
and we didn’t wanna get eaten by a saber-tooth cat,
so not all anxiety is just made up.
When you catch yourself worrying,
you are leaving the present moment.
I imagine this video has seven million views
because people think,
Oh, a monk, he’s got it figured out.
He knows how not to be anxious.
And a lot of people suffer from anxiety.
A lot of these AI-generated videos,
aside from the really bad cartoonish ones,
generate these images that look like humans,
so we see these images and it sounds like real advice
and we really want that advice.
Sometimes we’re too afraid to ask for it,
so we might just take the advice of the AI
just because it looks like a human being.
You are wandering into the what-ifs,
letting your thoughts spin until they become a storm
that pulls you out of control.
That’s a good description of anxiety.
A lot of times, people do have the what-if.
What if this happens? What if that happens?
What I try to help people do is think,
If this happens, then you would do what?
If that happens, then what would you do?
When the mind begins to race, count backwards.
That’s one way people can try
to tame their anxiety when they start to feel it.
There are a few other things I talk to people about.
One is having them inhale for a count of, say, three seconds
through your nose.
And then exhaling for twice as long through your mouth.
If you’re in the moment
and you’re really stuck and you’re panicking,
there is the 3-3-3 rule
where you can name three things you see,
name three things you hear,
and move three body parts.
I move my hand.
I move my whole arm.
I’m turning my head.
And being aware of those things,
it just brings you out of the moment
that you’re stuck in to a place where you’re grounded.
Instead of asking, What if it fails?
Ask yourself, What if it all works out?
That is something I ask people
when they’re focused very much on the negative
and they’re really anxious.
I said, Wait, what happens if you actually
do the things you wanna do?
What if it goes well?
Sometimes it can jar people to say,
Oh, I haven’t really thought about that.
And for everyone who has been following this journey,
my new book, The Way Back-
You always have to be aware of any video
that’s just trying to sell you a product.
There can be some good advice,
but sounds like in the end, this AI-generated monk
wants you to buy his AI-generated book.
Next video.
[screen chimes] [space bar clicks]
[Narrator] If you were born in 2008,
you grew up during constant change,
you learned early to stay alert instead of relaxed.
You often understand what someone feels
before they explain it.
This is bananas, B-A-N-A-N-A-S.
There’s nothing distinct about 2008.
I think what they’re talking about
is what’s called the cohort effect.
That means that a group of people
who were born in a certain time have had certain experiences
that maybe other people have not.
People born before the Depression, the Great Depression,
the way they dealt with money or saw money
is different than people who did not go through that.
[Narrator] Your mind replays moments, analyzes reactions,
and searches for meaning long after others have moved on.
Psychologically- That could be anybody.
And also, that was really weird
with this dude’s head exploding.
The cohort effect might be happening for someone
who was born in 2008 in the sense that they were
around 11 or 12 when COVID happened,
and that was really impacting lots of people,
not just those born in 2008.
We’re still learning the effects of what it was like
to grow up as a kid during the COVID era.
We do know that some kids are behind
in academics and reading and writing,
but again, it’s not distinct
for just people born in this year.
[screen chimes] [space bar clicks]
[Will] Hey Kyle, my name’s Will.
I’m gonna be your nurse today.
How are you feeling?
Oh, great.
Another idiot trying to poison me with meds.
Listen, Will, can you please just get this over with?
This seems to be a training video
for people in nursing school.
How do you de-escalate a situation?
This patient, this mock patient, is supposed to have,
per the video, schizophrenia.
A lot of times with schizophrenia, there is, in fact,
a feeling of persecution or a feeling of paranoia,
and I think they do get that right.
I’m just used to, in emergency rooms,
seeing people who have positive symptoms of schizophrenia.
That means things that other people don’t experience,
so they might have the hallucinations
or they might have voices that they’re hearing.
Typically, patients have more auditory hallucinations
than visual hallucinations,
and visual hallucinations are not very distinct.
Sometimes they can be blurs,
sometimes they can be in the background,
but auditory hallucinations are way more common.
And all these stupid meds you keep trying
to shove down my throat.
I know what you’re trying to do!
So, this is something we can see
with patients who are schizophrenic
or patients who have psychosis is this paranoia,
people trying to do something to them,
people trying to give them medication,
trying to take them over.
One thing that’s noticeable here,
and I think it’s actually more an artifact of the video,
there’s that pause between when the student says something
and when the patient says something.
[Will] What exactly do you think we’re trying to do?
Don’t play dumb, Will.
[space bar clicks] Sometimes in real life,
someone with schizophrenia or psychosis does pause
because they’re responding to internal stimuli.
They might be hearing things inside or voices,
and it takes them a while to focus on your voice
because they’re hearing something else.
Next video.
[space bar clicks]
[jellyfish cracking] [calm music]
This video is incorporating sounds
that about 20% of the population
would find soothing or relaxing or pleasurable.
This is called ASMR, autonomous sensory meridian response.
The people who hear this, they start to feel this feeling,
starts their scalp, so a little bit of a tingling,
might go down to their neck,
and they feel pleasure [glass clinking]
or calmness or relaxation just hearing that noise.
About 80% of the people,
they either don’t find it pleasurable,
that they could take it or leave it,
or they find it kind of gross, and I’m in that category.
[objects crunching and clinking]
So, the ADHD one had all these colorful things,
but not everybody with ADHD feels
like they’re bouncing off the walls.
A lot of times, people feel
like they have inattentive type ADHD
where they can’t pay attention.
[glass crackling and clinking] [calm music]
This is a pretty common stereotype of OCD
that everybody with OCD,
obsessive-compulsive disorder, is organized.
There are lots of different kinds of OCD,
and there are plenty of people who are disorganized
that have OCD.
Obsessive-compulsive disorder means you have an obsession,
there’s a thought, and you have discomfort from the thought.
The compulsion is the behavior or what you do to try
to get rid of the discomfort from the obsession.
Sometimes, people have obsessive thoughts,
and the compulsion is not something that’s external.
The classic example is people feel dirty and contaminated,
that’s the obsession.
Compulsion is they wash their hands.
Sometimes, you don’t see people
doing the compulsive behavior.
It could be a checking in their head.
It could be ruminating on the same thing.
It could be that they have to count to a certain number.
So, it’s not all about organization.
Next video.
[screen chimes] [space bar clicks]
[Narrator] Scientists discovered that chronic sadness
triggers a chemical war inside you
that can kill you decades early.
This is really crazy.
Yes, being sad for too long, it doesn’t feel good.
It doesn’t necessarily mean it’s something horrible.
When people lose a loved one,
for instance, they’re grieving.
They’re gonna be sad for a long time.
There are reasons people are sad.
It’s being human.
[Narrator] When you’re depressed,
your brain floods your bloodstream with cortisol,
a stress hormone designed to save your life in emergencies,
but when it stays elevated for months, it becomes poison.
This is not the complete picture.
In some cases of depression, cortisol is very high.
In other cases of depression, cortisol is very low.
[Narrator] This hormone destroys your immune system
from the inside,
making you 62% more likely to end up hospitalized
with severe infections.
Let’s take a closer look.
I see 62% of something,
I see a lot of numbers that don’t mean anything,
and I see a whole bunch of razzles in these columns here.
This number, 4016Z, looks like a percent sign.
76%1, this makes no sense.
It’s loaded up with a lot of nonsense,
fake data, fake words, fake numbers.
The danger in giving information like this
is that people start to feel like,
Oh, this is important.
I better learn what’s going on here.
But there’s nothing of value here.
This video feels more like a scare tactic
to try to make sure, Don’t be sad!
And that’s really impossible.
Next video.
[screen chimes] [space bar clicks]
[Narrator] The way a narcissist starts the day
can tell you a lot, because for them,
mornings are not always about peace.
You can’t necessarily tell a narcissist
because of the way they get up
and grumpily look at their phone.
[Narrator] They make their mood everyone’s problem.
If they are irritated, the whole house feels it.
Some of this can be true.
It’s not every day,
but narcissistic individuals can sometimes
make people feel like it’s their job
to take care of that person.
A lot of narcissists have an underlying vulnerability
or a fragility, and people around them
sense it and feel like,
Oh, we need to make sure Dad’s okay, Mom’s okay.
We need to make sure everything’s okay,
otherwise things could turn horribly wrong all of a sudden.
[Narrator] They act normal after a cruel night.
You are still hurting.
They are making coffee like nothing happened.
This video to me is depicting more
of what’s called malignant narcissism.
It’s someone who’s narcissistic
and shows a lot of the traits,
almost on that end of lack of empathy
and not caring about other people,
more towards the psychopathic end,
so this is not all narcissists.
Next video.
[screen chimes] [space bar clicks]
[Narrator] The most dangerous thing
that can happen in home is not a fight.
It’s a husband who has to beg for affection.
Okay, right now, I get a little bit
of a red pill vibe from this.
The woman might also feel pretty terrible
if she has to beg for affection.
Anybody would feel terrible.
[Narrator] Affection is not a reward you hand out
when he gets everything right.
It is the oxygen that keeps a marriage alive.
When there’s no room for affection,
there is something that needs to be worked on.
When I do couples therapy with people,
I’ll talk to couples about,
Imagine you have a child.
If you do have a kid, you need to give that kid attention.
You need to see that child.
You also have to imagine yourself, your couple, as a child.
Are you giving that child enough attention?
[Narrator] When a man loses hope and closeness,
he stops fighting for connection.
So, this is getting a little ridiculous.
This video feels like it fell out
of the manosphere a little bit.
The important point is that both people need affection.
It needs to go both ways.
Let’s move on.
[screen chimes] [space bar clicks]
[Narrator] If I’m gonna exercise, I should eat first.
If I’m gonna cook, I should have coffee first
so I can have energy to cook.
If I’m gonna make coffee,
I should clean the coffee maker.
So, right away, I will say that I have had patients
tell me this is how their brain works,
certain patients with ADHD.
They feel like they start thinking about one thing,
and it goes to another and it goes to another
and it goes to another.
[Narrator] If I’m gonna clean the coffee maker,
I should clean the kitchen.
If I’m gonna clean the kitchen,
I should clean the apartment.
If I’m gonna clean the apartment, I should put some music.
This could also be someone who’s quite anxious.
There’s often a presentation of somebody
that can look like anxiety or it can look like ADHD,
and you have to sort through that.
Is there an underlying sense of worry
or is someone actually having just ADHD symptoms,
which could be either hyperactive, impulsive type.
You think about that classic picture
of a kid bouncing off the walls,
seeming like they’re driven by a motor,
or is it someone who’s predominantly inattentive,
meaning they can’t focus
on what’s going on in front of them?
Some people have asked me,
Is there an uptick in the diagnosis of ADHD?
We have looked for it more.
We’ve now included women more and girls more,
because it used to be thought that,
Wait, girls don’t present with this hyperactive picture.
So we’re including more people.
We dropped the number of requirements
from, say, six criteria to five.
And also, the language in the DSM changed
from severely impaired to having your functioning impaired.
That change sometimes incorporates more people,
so maybe we’re catching people
that have always had these symptoms,
but now we’re just aware of it.
Let’s move on.
[screen chimes] [space bar clicks]
I am sertraline.
I am an SSRI, a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor.
I increase serotonin levels inside your brain.
[space bar clicks]
That is an important thing to correct.
Serotonin is a neurochemical, it’s made in your brain,
and it does have an implication in mood.
These medications affect the way serotonin is transported,
affects the way the receptors react with serotonin.
It used to be taught,
and this was picked up largely
because of the pharmaceutical industry,
that these medications increase the level
of serotonin in the brain.
It’s much more complicated.
I’m considered a first-line treatment for depression
and many anxiety disorders.
That is true. SSRIs are the first-line treatment for this,
if you’re using medication.
Sertraline is the generic name.
The brand name of this medication is Zoloft.
Other medications in this category,
you might recognize brand names,
Prozac, Lexapro, and Paxil.
I do not work overnight.
It usually takes two to four weeks to notice improvement.
That is true. Anywhere from two to six weeks
from a dose increase,
that’s when you start to see a change.
Possible side effects include nausea, headache,
sleep changes, and reduced sexual desire.
Not everybody gets side effects.
Sometimes, patients will say to me,
Wait a minute, I don’t wanna take the medication
because of the side effect list.
I understand that.
As a psychiatrist, I would never recommend something
that I didn’t think had benefits
that could outweigh the negative,
but sometimes people do have side effects
that make them wanna stop the medication.
And in that case, I’ll work with them to say,
Okay, let’s figure out what’s going on.
We’ll try a different medication.
Stopping abruptly can cause withdrawal symptoms.
Withdrawal symptoms from stopping your medication
are really uncomfortable.
They can be flu-like symptoms.
You might have a headache, a stomach ache.
Some people describe feeling that their head is in a tunnel,
so you wanna taper these down
the same way you want to taper them up.
Next video.
[screen chimes] [space bar clicks]
I’m Adderall.
I boost dopamine to help your brain focus.
You use that to deep clean your keyboard.
I’m Ritalin.
I sharpen your focus fast.
I also leave fast.
These are stimulant medications.
Stimulants are the first-line treatment for ADHD.
In ADHD, dopamine in your brain
isn’t functioning the way it would in a brain
of somebody who doesn’t have ADHD.
The stimulants raise the level
of dopamine in different ways.
How someone reacts to these stimulants is very individual.
It doesn’t mean that everybody’s gonna have Ritalin
go in their body fast and leave fast.
What I think it’s trying to say
is these short-acting medications,
they usually last for three to four hours,
and you might feel a spike and then a decrease.
Adderall and Ritalin help dopamine function
in the brain better.
What dopamine does is it allows you
to put the brakes on things
so that you can actually focus on one thing at a time.
People often think if they’re gonna take a stimulant,
they’re gonna be all sped up,
but if it’s a prescribed dose
that is right for you if you have ADHD,
it slows things down so that you can focus.
In fact, when you’re on too much stimulant,
you can feel like a robot.
A lot of times, people take Adderall
or Ritalin not prescribed.
I do not recommend that.
These medications have side effects.
They can increase your heart rate.
They can make you feel nauseated.
They can give you bad headaches.
So, it’s really important to only take the medication
if it is prescribed by your doctor.
Next video.
[space bar clicks] [bed whirring]
[tiles clacking]
[space bar clicks]
I don’t know why they’re turning
mental illness into bedrooms.
First of all, this doesn’t tell me
that this person has any particular disorder.
They’ve labeled it at the bottom,
dissociative identity disorder.
That’s what used to be called multiple personality disorder.
Maybe this bedroom is showing that someone
has a lot of different sides to themself.
We all have different sides to ourselves.
I don’t know what this is.
The complex PTSD bedroom looks really lonely.
A lot of times, people with complex PTSD
do suffer from loneliness.
Depersonalization is when you have the experience
of living outside of your life,
you’re not in touch with yourself.
It feels like they’re watching a movie,
not experiencing life themselves.
Sometimes, depersonalization is used
as a way to cope through trauma.
If someone is getting repeatedly abused,
they almost dissociate to the point
of not experiencing their life because it’s so terrible.
People with antisocial personality disorder
break the law sometimes.
Maybe this is supposed to imply that this is stolen items.
I don’t know exactly what’s going on.
I’ve had enough of this video.
Next.
[screen chimes] [space bar clicks]
[Narrator] Why is your gut called a second brain?
Because it literally has one.
Your gut doesn’t literally have a brain.
There are a lot of neurons in your gut,
and they do send messages to your brain.
I think that’s what this is getting to.
[Narrator] Around 90% of the fibers
in that nerve carry signals going up,
so your gut is talking to your brain
way more than your brain is talking back.
That is true that there are a lot of signals
going from your gut to your brain,
and it can impact mood.
[Narrator] In fact, about 95%
of your body’s serotonin is made down there.
It is true that the gut makes a lot of serotonin.
That serotonin doesn’t cross the blood-brain barrier,
so it’s not as if your gut
is directly connected to your mood.
It’s giving signals that impact your mood,
but it’s not a direct communication here.
What can cross are precursors to serotonin,
something like tryptophan.
Tryptophan is a precursor, a building block for serotonin.
If that is low and if a lot of the short-chain fatty acids
needed to build certain molecules,
if you don’t have enough of them,
then that can affect how much serotonin is in your brain.
Perhaps that impacts mood.
Take a look at this last video.
[screen chimes] [space bar clicks]
Option one, put your pointer finger
and your thumb together, and take an inhale.
Notice how it’s a little higher?
That’s gonna help you activate-
I’m not sure exactly that this is super helpful.
As I’ve said before, getting to that place
where you’re really anxious and remembering how to breathe
and put your fingers in certain places, that’s really hard.
Also, when it comes to breathing, it’s the exhale,
and people often forget that it’s the exhale
through your mouth that helps you calm down.
Breathing, though, to have somebody just lead you
through something to feel like someone’s there,
that can also help,
so if this furry animal creature can be present
when someone’s really anxious, that might help them.
Option number two,
go ahead and take your thumb and your middle finger.
Inhale.
Notice how that enters into your ribs.
That’s gonna help you calm down.
The finger stuff might actually help somebody
just focus on something else
other than their anxiety in the moment,
so that’s why that might be helpful.
I think a lot of people are leaning
on AI for their mental health,
in part because not everyone has access to mental health.
In reality, it’s really expensive.
It’s time-consuming.
Not everybody has coverage for their insurance.
People don’t know how to get a therapist.
They don’t know who to trust.
They don’t know whether they’re getting good therapy.
So, AI is a quick, easy way to try to get some kind
of emotional release or some kind of guidance.
[subtle mysterious music]
