If someone told you that your phone could be making you depressed, that the shampoo in your shower might be messing with your hormones, and that your brain can actually heal from years of damage—would you believe them?
Dr. Daniel Amen would. And he has nearly 300,000 brain scans to back it up.
Dr. Amen—a 12-time New York Times bestselling author, founder of Amen Clinics, and what The Washington Post called “the most popular psychiatrist in America”— sat down with us for a conversation that honestly changed the way we should think about own health. And our faith.
Nothing was off limits: the mental health crisis hitting teenagers, why your social media feed is literally designed to radicalize you, and—most importantly—what you can actually do about all of it.
Watch the full conversation here: Rock Church on YouTube, and make sure you subscribe so you never miss a message.
Dr. Amen calls it a “whole four” crisis—meaning it’s hitting us in all four areas of life at once: physical, emotional, relational, and spiritual.
Here’s a snapshot of where we actually are:
That last stat hits different. We have more ways to communicate than any generation in history, and we are lonelier. There’s something deeply wrong with that picture.
Dr. Amen connects a lot of this to cell phones and social media. He’s not the first to say it, but the way he explains the brain science behind it is eye-opening!
Brace yourself. Dr. Amen pointed out that tech executives in Silicon Valley have nanny contracts preventing their own children from using the devices they build—because they know exactly how harmful they are.
Here’s the neuroscience: social media is engineered to dump dopamine. Dopamine is the brain chemical tied to motivation, focus, and happiness. But constant, artificial spikes from scrolling crash your dopamine baseline over time, making it harder to feel good from normal life experiences.
And it gets worse for kids. If a child gets a smartphone at age five, by the time they’re 20, they have a 50% chance of struggling with suicidal behavior. That’s one in two. That should change how every parent in the room thinks about what they hand their kids.
Dr. Amen was also direct about what social media is actually doing politically: it’s designed to radicalize you. The algorithm doesn’t care about your values or your faith. It cares about your attention, and the most reliable way to grab your attention is to make you angry, scared, or outraged. Left or right doesn’t matter to it. Division is the product.
Here is the challenge: the only thing we should be that radical about is Jesus.
Dr. Amen built his entire whole-health program on a foundation you might recognize. Romans 12:1-2:
“Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. This is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”
That phrase “renewing of your mind” isn’t just a spiritual metaphor. Dr. Amen’s work shows that your brain is genuinely changeable. It can heal. It can improve. The choices you make every day—what you eat, how you exercise, what you watch, who you spend time with, what thoughts you entertain—are literally rewiring your brain, for better or worse.
Paul tells us not to conform to the patterns of this world. Dr. Amen would say the world’s patterns are processed food, toxic products, algorithmic outrage, and ANTs—automatic negative thoughts that your brain generates constantly and you don’t have to believe.
And 1 Corinthians 6:19 reminds us that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. If we’re serious about that, it should change how we approach everything from what we eat to what we scroll through at midnight.
Dr. Amen said the best question you can ask yourself about any habit, food, or thought is: “Is this good for my brain, or bad for it? And does it honor my Creator?”
Here are four practical takeaways from our conversation:
1. Physically: clean up what goes in and on your body.
Ditch ultra-processed foods. Drink more water. Sweat regularly through exercise or saunas (people who use saunas most have the lowest rates of Alzheimer’s). And read your product labels the same way you read food labels. What goes on your body goes into your body.
2. Mentally: challenge your ANTs (automatic negative thoughts).
When you feel sad, anxious, or angry, write down what you’re thinking and ask: is this actually true? Then ask whether that thought fits what Romans 12:2 describes as “God’s good, perfect, and pleasing will.” You don’t have to believe everything your brain tells you.
Dr. Amen also shared what he calls the Rule of 12: don’t let yourself get upset until the 12th thing that day has gone wrong. It sounds simple, but it’s a real shift. Most of us lose it at thing one.
3. Relationally: catch people doing things right.
Animals at SeaWorld aren’t trained through punishment—they’re trained through consistent positive reinforcement. The same principle applies to your marriage, your kids, your friendships. Shift your focus from what people do wrong to what they do right, and watch your relationships change.
4. Spiritually: live with meaning and purpose in community.
Church isn’t a ritual. It’s a scientifically-supported factor in brain health. Belonging to a community, having a sense of purpose, and living beyond yourself are all tied to better mental and physical outcomes. Dr. Amen put it plainly: church is good for your brain.
This blog just scratches the surface of what Dr. Amen shared. In the full message, he goes deeper on brain imaging, COVID’s effects on the brain, why the news is not actually the news, and how to build a healing environment for yourself and your family.
Watch it here: Rock Church on YouTube → “Coming Together” with Dr. Daniel Amen
While you’re there, subscribe to the Rock Church YouTube channel so you get every message delivered straight to you.
Dear God, I surrender my body, my mind, and my desires as a living sacrifice—holy and acceptable—as an act of worship. Give me wisdom on how to care for my body, how to care for my family, and the courage to make the right decisions. Even when it’s inconvenient. Equip me to be the most effective follower of Jesus I can be. Amen.
If you’re in San Diego and you’re looking for a community that takes both faith and real life seriously—come check out Rock Church. We have campuses in Point Loma, El Cajon, Chula Vista, San Marcos, City Heights, and online.
No pressure. No dress code. Just a diverse group of people trying to live out their faith in a way that actually makes a difference.
Plan your visit at sdrock.com.
