Brain Health Q&A with Dr. Drew Ramsey

Rob Corso

November 28, 2025

This issue of the Eudēmonia Newsletter is independent editorial content and has not been reviewed or endorsed by any sponsor.

Last Saturday, we explored why living longer doesn’t mean much if the brain isn’t keeping pace. More years only matter when your memory, focus, mood, and clarity stay strong enough to enjoy them.

Missed it? You can catch up on the brain health deep dive here.

This week, we brought your biggest questions to our expert. Dr. Drew Ramsey, a board certified psychiatrist known for bringing together modern neuroscience, nutrition, and practical mental health care. He founded the Brain Food Clinic and Spruce Mental Health, where he helps people build real mental fitness using evidence based tools and decades of clinical experience.

His work reaches far beyond the clinic. He’s a leading voice in Nutritional Psychiatry, a professor with twenty years at Columbia University, a frequent presence in major media, and the author of multiple influential books, including his latest, Healing the Modern Brain: Nine Tenets To Build Mental Fitness and Revitalize Your Mind.

Few people think more clearly about how to protect and strengthen the mind in a world that strains it from every direction.

Q. We’re living in an age when mental health challenges are becoming more mainstream and therapy more accepted. What do you think the most effective tools are to improve our mental health?

It is cool to be answering this question with so many options and so much research. If I could magically add more dance parties and lentils to everyone’s life, the data is pretty clear we could considerably boost mood and reduce depression. I am so stoked to see people ditching alcohol.

I created the framework of mental fitness to harness the tools that we all agree about: the tenets of mental fitness. Because building mental health today and then protecting it is more challenging. Screens. Social. Ultra-processed food. Once you appreciate the power of nutrition on our brain health and mood or the need of the brain to properly sleep cycle to eliminate waste, you get more clarity and consistency. Then you feel it.

This community knows a lot about that kind of proof! Mental fitness is all about taking this new awareness about mental health and the brain and taking action everyday. There is a next level to everyone’s mental health. If I could give you one tool, it would be believing that with conviction.

Q. My dad was recently diagnosed with dementia, and it’s made me wonder . . . what can those of us in midlife do right now to protect our brain health for the future?

Thank you for sharing that. My main advice is simple. Be patient and just love your dad a lot. Be very gentle with yourself.

So many of us in our 40s and 50s are struggling to be present with our parents as they age and decline. It is hard and important to make space for this process. There are both the practical and organizational parts of dementia care, as well as the very challenging emotional piece. They both take a lot of time and energy.

Right now, the most important moves for your mental health should be geared to prevent caregiver burnout and depression. Make sure to talk through this with someone in a similar situation: a buddy, partner, co-worker.

Everyone reading this newsletter knows the Holy Trinity of Brain Health: movement, nutrition, and social connections. But awareness must lead to your personal, consistent actions. Often, people dealing with this life phase of parental decline need to be encouraged to do less—again, making space. Take care of the basics for yourself.

I’ve found it reassuring to make sure I’ve gone to my physician. I’ve doubled down on some self-care activities like my sauna and physical therapy. Lastly, I find it very important to discharge energy, as the emotions can be overwhelming. Personally, I like yardwork, gardening, garage organizing and snow shoveling for this.

Q. Psychedelics are showing promise in everything from depression to neuroplasticity. Do you think they could eventually play a major role in protecting or even restoring brain health?

I really thought I’d be one of the cool kids of mental health, but alas, I have drifted into dad vibes. Psychedelics work best when they are used in a framework of people working on mental fitness. For patients with real mental health concerns, it is not clear that they are good for your mental health.

I worry that with psychedelics, people are lured by ideas like neuroplasticity, ego death, and interrupting the default mode network as generic catchphrases. Certainly, some early research trials are posting exciting results. But I’ve been sounding more contrarian, which has disappointed me, as these compounds are very intriguing.

Do they create real insight and meaningful clinical change? Often, people sound pretty high to me—and the feeling of being more connected is nice, but it fades. Sometimes it seems that the psychedelic movement is just new to the club of psychopharmacology: profound mental changes from exogenous compounds.

I sit with people for hours and hours listening to their minds. It is pretty psychedelic to begin with. And I’ve been successful in treating many “treatment resistant” patients without psychedelics but with good psychotherapy and applying the tenets of mental fitness.

Still, with all the excitement, I opened a clinic in Wyoming to deliver responsible, legal psychedelic medicine in a mental health setting, using ketamine-assisted psychotherapy. I got training and guided journeys. I found I prefer being a psychotherapist, and I worry the notion of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy is really being oversold. The shadow grows.

Psychotherapy is the process of finding the right words for our inner world and psychedelic experiences are known for being “ineffable.” They can’t be described with words. Some days, I am trying to convince teens not to try the DMT they bought off the dark web and consulting with families who have lost a relative to the psychedelic movement and false recovered memories. Other days, I am sending patients to Oregon to try legal psilocybin or to a research trial in Utah for MDMA and praying they will benefit.

Psychedelics are exciting. But be careful with your mind.

Q. What are cell phones and things like social media actually doing to our brains long-term? Do we know yet?

Cell phones are preparing us for the implants. The amount of information we are accessing and absorbing from our devices is staggering. And the seamless mix of entertainment and productivity . . . well, I have trouble putting it down like everyone else does.

But I don’t find the algorithm is keeping up with my evolution. I know I’m not on this earth to watch silly videos of a brofluencer’s 4:30 a.m. wellness routine. The tenet of engagement is all about fighting the algorithm. Building a mind with personal desires and preferences.

We know the way the brain processes information is being affected by both phones and AI. We know that social media is very bad for teen mental health. And we know we all love our phones and fiddling around with AI interfaces. The most pernicious effect is the opportunity cost of the hours we could spend building something human.

One reason I love being a therapist today is that we put down our phones in session.

Q: You’ve been a vocal proponent of male mental health. What do you wish every guy reading this would do?

Just one?

Write in your journal regularly. Get your words right and clarify your voice, or you will be lost as a man bouncing from influencer to influencer.

That, plus:

Focus on fiber as much as protein.
Listen better.
Be of service.
Ponder your purpose.
Build mental fitness more than physical fitness.
Get better at asking for help.
Be more curious.

It’s a really exciting time to be a man. There are more resources, better examples, and more varied opportunities than ever before. We also live in an era when we can work on our mental health—and my mental health has required a lot of work. It is really meaningful to me to see so many men speaking up about getting better. That is the legacy my generation can pass on if we keep working hard: male mental health.

A big surprise to me as a clinician has been the number of men on my couch. Right now, I’m working with guys ages 16–76. Men do so well in therapy, and a lot of the stereotypes fade. Men cry and struggle with self-esteem and body image. Depression in men is so vastly undertreated. The tenet of connection comes up a lot with men, as we tend to struggle to form and maintain connections.

Men are getting so many mixed messages these days, but the truth, to me, is quite bright. Men have more opportunity than ever before in history to build optimal mental fitness.

Q: You argue that people don’t know the new science of brain health. What do you mean by this?

Once you know the new science, you can’t live in the old ways. For example, the Glymphatic system. Nobody is worrying enough about it, the waste system of the brain, in part because it was just discovered in 2014!

You think about sleep differently once you understand it. A lot of people still drink a lot of alcohol. About twelve hours after drinking, inflammation shoots up, with C-reactive protein jumping roughly eighty percent. People seem to still be arguing about serotonin, dopamine and SSRIs.

Instead, I urge people to learn about neuroplasticity, inflammation, and the microbiome, and I focus on these as lenses in Healing the Modern Brain. These are the master regulatory systems underneath our brain health and mental health and we make important choices everyday that affect them.

The majority of people aren’t getting enough fiber, magnesium, or omega-3 fats every day. They don’t know about the clear, strong research connecting diet and mental health. I see this every day on my couch. People are desperately researching solutions and playing therapist with ChatGPT, but they haven’t eaten much real food or intentionally worked to deepen real human connections.

The views expressed by our expert are entirely their own. There is no financial, professional, or organizational affiliation between the expert featured in this Q&A and our sponsor.

Disclaimer: This newsletter is provided for educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute providing medical advice or professional services. The information provided should not be used for diagnosing or treating a health problem or disease, and those seeking personal medical advice should consult with a licensed physician.