Your Diet Might Be Making Your Mental Health Worse | Dr. William Li & Dr. Mark Hyman

I kind of want to take us down a path of helping us understand food is medicine from the perspective of the mind and mental health, because we have a serious mental health crisis now. I don't think we have a crisis of mental health because there's somehow a design flaw in human beings.

Our software is not failing.

We have a screwed up operating system that got installed.

I want to talk about a new term called the flavorome.

The flavorome.

The gut microbiome. Healthy gut bacteria or diseased bacteria can actually text message your brain up the vagus nerve back to the brain.

The irritable bowel causes the irritable brain, not the other way around.

It turns out that the graveyard is the garden when it comes to actually the microbiome. Have you heard of amentoflavone?

No, I haven't.

Amentoflavone actually lowers anxiety.

Cantaloupe is like a natural Valium. You can change your brain, you can change your mind, and you can heal both. William Li is a renowned physician-scientist and New York Times bestselling author whose work has transformed how we understand the connection between nutrition, disease, and the body's natural healing Hey, it's Dr. Hyman. I'm so excited to share this episode with you today. But before we dive in, I want to get your help. Please take a minute to hit that subscribe button. Whether you're watching here on YouTube or listening on your favorite podcast platform, it truly means the world to me and it helps my team and I bring you this podcast every single week. Plus, I don't want you to miss a thing. So thanks so much for being part of this community, and I'm glad you're here. William, so good to have you back, back on the podcast.

Always good to be talking to you, Mark.

I know we've done this virtually. We've done this in person. I think this might be the third round. I don't know. I don't know.

Is it? I've lost count.

You know, you are, are one of the pioneers in thinking about how food is medicine, but from a deep science perspective. And, uh, not just, oh, it's, you know, food is medicine. That's cool. Eat your blueberries, but like really understanding the role of the molecules. Um, and there was an interesting article. I don't know if you saw it in the New England Journal of Medicine about the dark matter of nutrition. It was about the 139,000 different compounds in food that regulate our biology that are from phytochemicals. And I've heard even up to 3 million. I think that number keeps changing. And it, the dark matter of nutrition is, is called that because we just thought of food as protein, fats, carbs, fiber, vitamins, minerals, and that's pretty much it. You know, and maybe, you know, some nice stuff from polyphenols, but like didn't really have a complex understanding of it. And so there's this whole other world of nutrition that is waiting to be discovered. And so we're mapping out a whole world of, of the way food interacts with our receptors and our metabolic pathways and our microbiome and our immune system and our brain chemistry in ways that have never been really uncovered before. And you've been deeply thinking about this for a long time, and I've personally learned a lot from you and from your books, Eat to Beat Disease and all of your work. And so I kind of want to take us down a path of helping us understand, you know, food is medicine. From the perspective of, of the mind and mental health. The brain and the mind are related and they, the mind reflects what's happening in the brain. And, and if we don't understand how to create a healthy brain, we can't have a healthy mind. And so fundamentally, you know, how do you think about using food and nutrition and food as medicine in the realm of mental health? Because we have a serious mental health crisis now. How do you think about it? And, and what do you, you know, the last few years, are you kind of looking at this field? Where, where's your take on all this?

Yeah, I'm glad you actually connected the brain and sort of the mental health aspect, and then we should just dive and connect the head to the gut.

Oh yeah.

Right?

Yeah.

So this is really the second brain, the second brain that connects to the first brain, which connects to our emotions and really our behavior. So it's all really interconnected. You know, if you take a systems biology approach, which means you don't isolate one thing, you look at how everything is interconnected and think about how the dominoes you hit one side might affect the down notes on the other side, you realize we're just at the beginning of a new frontier of understanding our behavior and our brain. And as it relates to food, you mentioned, um, biology and I want to, you've heard about the genome. Mm-hmm. This is our DNA. I heard about that. Right. And you've heard about the microbiome, which you've actually alluded to.

Yeah.

I want to talk about the food and its many components, this so-called dark matter, and bring up a new term called the flavorome.

The flavorome.

The flavorome is actually what flavors food, which is what we prefer, which influences our emotions, including pleasure or a negative reaction, repulsion. And it's connected to the substances in the food, the molecules in the food, which then interact once we eat them, starting from the mouth, going all the way down to our lower gut, and then ultimately to our gut microbiome in the cecum where the microbiome is located. A lot of people don't realize exactly where the microbiome's in the gut. Most of it.

That's the last part of your large intestine. Okay. Yeah.

Let's, let's back up a second.

Cæcum. What is that?

Let's, let's get large.

Let's, the last part of your large intestine.

Let's talk cæcum, right? Okay. So you got 40, 40 feet of intestines starting in the mouth, ending in the anus, and the, uh, goes from mouth to esophagus to stomach. After the stomach, uh, it, it go, then you switch to a different part of the gut below the diaphragm. Small intestines is a long snaky tube like your garden hose.

22 feet.

Exactly. Then you finally, it finally goes to the large intestines, small to large. Okay. Size up and, and the connection between the small intestines, a small tube, and the large intestines, a large tube right there. That connection's called the cecum. It's kind of a floppy bag. It's where your appendix actually is. And then if you were to keep on going in a large intestines or the colon, it goes up, takes the elevator up, and then it crosses the building across your gut, and then it goes back down and then it empties out. Okay.

Yeah. I mean, I misspoke. It's the beginning of your large intestines.

It's the beginning of the large intestines and it's a sac and it's where the intestines is, and that's That's actually where most of the gut microbiome lives. Not all of it, but most right where the appendix lives. And now we're beginning to reconsider whether the appendix is truly a useless organ or—

I don't think God's so dumb. Exactly. Exactly.

Nothing, nothing is left without some purpose. But back to this idea of the gut microbiome being signaled by the food that we eat, and then the gut microbiome can basically message our brain through nerves that involve the vagus nerve, right? So you've heard of vagus nerve stimulation and everything else about how to affect our mood and depression and anxiety. Well, it turns out our gut microbiome is actually doing vagal nerve stimulation all the time. And so the vagus nerve coming out of our brain, and this is the connection. So out of our brain, in our hindbrain, coming out of our cranial nerves, popping out of our the bottom of our brain, and the vagus nerve, which is our 10th cranial nerve, um, courses out. The big thick cables come out, go down our neck, wrap around our esophagus like a fishnet stocking, then penetrate the diaphragm, and then go down into our gut, and it ramifies like a horse's tail, right? All those nerves go everywhere. And guess what? The gut microbiome, healthy gut bacteria, Or disease bacteria can actually text message your brain up the vagus nerve back to the brain. 80 to 90% of those nerves run upwards to the brain, not down, just downwards.

Yeah, that, that's fascinating. I remember reading an article in JAMA years ago where they talked about irritable bowel syndrome and it was a revolutionary article from my perspective, cuz in medical school we learned that irritable bowel was a psychological problem, that it was because people were anxious and stressed and that was the cause. But it actually is the reverse. When the microbiome is altered and there's inflammation, it creates irritation that sends messages back up, like you said, like test messages to the brain. It causes an irritable brain. So the irritable bowel causes the irritable brain, not the other way around.

Exactly. And then the brain feels it and then you feel uncomfortable.

Yeah.

And by the way, you know, uh, do you remember those, uh, many hours in med school where all we're supposed to be doing is learning and like, you know, taking notes or, or seeing patients and, you know, it was more frequent than not, like something in our, Gut wasn't doing well and you weren't feeling great, you couldn't show it, right? Well, that's actually signals from our gut microbiome communicating our brain, say, you know, not so, not all is well here.

Right.

And we have to hold our behavior in, in order to be able to just keep performing.

Yeah.

But inside something's going on. And so again, this whole other issue of what that has to do with brain, mental health, and behavior connected to our gut is all interconnected. So if we ate more healthy, think about all the crap we ate in med school.

Yeah, that's totally true.

Right?

So, well, I didn't, I I was, I was a weird weirdo. I brought my own yogurt and granola and fruit in the morning and it made my miso soup at night.

Well, think about all the things that were brought by drug reps. Oh yeah. That I did to the lunches. And so the point is that even in medicine, we've actually been not properly trained, at least in the past, to think appropriately about the connection between the gut and the brain.

Not at all. No. And I remember, you know, I was, you know, just practicing functional medicine and treating patients with all kinds of issues. And, and I was often brought kids with behavior problems or ADD or other issues. And, you know, I, I was just sort of learning, or, or even adults with sort of autoimmune things or weird diseases who had mental health issues like OCD or, um, behavior anxiety issues, depression. And, you know, I began to see that there was this big connection and I would do stool testing and I would do urine organic acid testing, which looked at metabolites of the microbiome in the urine that you can pick up from bacteria or fungi. And there was this one little girl who was so beautiful, but so violent and aggressive. She was like 9 years old and she would get kicked outta school multiple times a day to be in the hallway. She, on the bus, they had to stop the bus like 10 times on the way home. She was, you know, a terror at home with her sister. She would tear up family pictures. I mean, she was just a nightmare. And I worked her up and I found she had massive overgrowth of bad bacteria in her gut and she had massive overgrowth of of fungi in her gut. And I gave her an antibiotic and an antifungal and like overnight she turned into this beautiful, sweet little girl. You know, it was unbelievable. And I was like, holy shit.

Well, that, well, that's the power literally of understanding the gut and you intercepted the problem. But I want to actually bring out one thing that you just said that I think is important for anybody listening to this to consider. You said you intercepted a problem microbiome that was causing behavioral changes and mental, you know, torment with an antibiotic, right? Yeah. So too often we tend to black and white things in medicine, especially in the health and wellness space. But here's an example of where the judicious selection of the right antibiotic to slightly tip the odds of favoring the good bacteria to overcome the bad bacteria. It's about balance.

Yeah.

Not about extremes. Uh, and got the result that you were hoping for.

Yeah. You know, there's a whole world that we are just beginning to understand that science is beginning to unpack. And, and I think, you know, the whole relation between the gut and the brain and mental health and mood is so important. And when you think about it, and I want you to kind of dive into this, 'cause I kind of learned a lot about this from you. The first time I really heard about polyphenols and the microbiome was from you actually at a, at a Milken Conference like a decade ago or something. And you were showing slides and I was like, oh wow, this is amazing. Circadian disruption affects all of us. Most modern lighting misaligns our internal clocks and quietly doses us with junk light that signals the brain to stay alert long after our biology is preparing to rest. I felt this myself for years, the vague sense of being off even when everything else in my routine was dialed in. Chorus, the makers of Oyo, created a smarter solution. Their circadian lighting shifts gradually throughout the day to support your natural rhythm. In the evening, it removes blue wavelengths so your body can do what it was designed to do: rest and recover. They didn't just build a bulb. They spent years decoding how to bring the sun indoors. Now I've seen how the right light can transform how you feel. When people fix their light, everything shifts: their mood, focus, sleep, resilience. So make the switch to lighting that works with your biology. Shop now for their newest product, Oyo Sphere, at chorus.com/sphere and enjoy 15% off with the code HYMANSphere15. That's K-O-R-R-U-S.com/sphere and use the code HYMANSphere15. I recommend magnesium to most of my patients and for good reason. It's involved in hundreds of biochemical reactions in the body, including regulating the nervous system, supporting muscle recovery, and helping your body transition to a restful sleep. Now, what's interesting is that newer research is starting to look at how certain forms of magnesium may support brain health and sleep quality. Now, one randomized clinical study, adults who took a brain-available form of magnesium reported improvements in sleep quality and daytime functioning compared to placebo. Now, magnesium is one of the most common nutrient deficiencies I see, and low levels can contribute to stress, poor sleep, muscle tension, and low energy. And the challenge is that most magnesium supplements only contain one or two forms, and they're not always well absorbed. And that's why I recommend Magnesium Breakthrough by Bioptimizers. It's a full-spectrum formula that includes 7 different forms of magnesium. Designed to support your brain, your muscles, your stress response, and your sleep. I take it as part of my evening routine. Try it today and go to bioptimizers.com/hyman and use the code HYMAN at checkout to save 15% off your order. That's bioptimizers.com/hyman and use the code HYMAN. The microbiome is fed by what you eat. You're not just eating for you, you're eating for the trillions of bugs in your gut.

Right.

So tell us about why that's important and what we're eating and how that destroys or messes them up and what we should be feeding them to actually enhance them, the right bugs.

Yeah.

Okay. So first of all, and how this relates back to mental health and brain, brain health.

The theme of what we've just been talking about is that our brain health and mental health is connected to our gut health, which is fed by food. Mm-hmm. Right. And here we are thinking of ourselves as individuals, right? With our own cognition, our own emotions and our own appetites and our own behaviors. But in fact, when you, once you factor in the gut, 39 trillion bacteria and counting, you're really talking about a single organism. That's you sitting over there and me sitting over here. We are single organisms made up of 39 to 40 trillion pieces. Yeah. All right. And so we're not even single organisms. We're more like a coral reef. And just like a coral reef with the clownfish and an anemone and the barracuda and the octopus, you know, basically how how we, how things, how we, the whole reef performs has to do with how well the fish are fed. If you've got starving fish or you're bleached coral, you're going to wind up having a very sick ecosystem. And that translates directly to the brain. And as you said, this is a just an emerging area of research, which makes it challenging. I want to come back to the point of like, how do we test? How do we know? Because we're beginning to, you know, understand how important the microbiome is. But for somebody listening to this, how do I know my microbiome missing. Well, you can't go to your regular doctor to ask for that kind of test. I know, but let's go back.

You can go to an irregular doctor like me, or an irregular.

Exactly. Or regularly irregular, right? That's the atrial fibrillation doc. All right, so let's talk about, um, polyphenols.

Yeah. So what is a polyphenol anyway? Okay.

Polyphenol is basically Mother Nature's pharmacy with a F and not a PH. It's thousands of different kinds of molecules. Most of them make the colorful foods, the rainbow.

Millions.

What's that?

Millions.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. The billions, the, the, the, the colorful, the colors you see in the produce market.

Yeah.

Many of them are attributed to polyphenols. These are just natural chemicals that are found intrinsically in food. What's very interesting about polyphenols in food is not only what they do for people, which is a good thing, they're anti-inflammatory, they help to our metabolism work better. They can help fight excess body fat and decrease visceral fat, feed the gut microbiome, but as prebiotics, But it turns out that a more interesting question is now being asked, which is why did plants even have polyphenols? Yeah. What did they do for the plant? Yeah.

And you know, they're not, they're not there for us.

They're not there for us. Okay. But it turns out that Mother Nature imbued plants that make foods with polyphenols to fight the disease, to, to fight for the health of the plant itself.

Right. So it's a plant's immune and defense system.

It's a, it's an immune defense system. It's a repair system. It's a plant's healing system. So if you were to ask me in plain people's people speak, what is a polyphenol doing in a plant? I would say it's there to heal the plant.

Yeah.

And keep the plant healthy. Right. So, and I'm gonna come to this in a second, like how does it affect the choices that we make? Turns out that if a plant is growing naturally in as regenerative an environment as it possibly can, natural, okay. Without artificial chemicals and spiking the soil and doing all kinds of crazy things to it. What do you have in a natural field or forest? You've got little bugs that are nibbling on the stems and the leaves of the plant. That's an injury. And the plant is gonna respond to the injury, the natural injury, by healing itself, by creating polyphenol. So it turns out that more naturally grown food plants actually will have more polyphenol.

The more stress a plant is under, it's called hormesis, right?

Exactly.

Which is the stress that doesn't kill you, it makes you stronger. That's why a wild strawberry explodes with flavor and a giant red strawberry from the grocery store that's industrially produced tastes like cardboard.

And we've actually studied strawberries for what's inside it. And again, there's our hundreds of molecules, but we are just getting to them one by one. Strawberries have ellagic acid as one of their bioactives. That means biologically active. It's not just about the strawberry, it's how our body responds when we eat the strawberry. That ellagic acid does a lot of things. It feeds our gut microbiome, healthier gut. It also lowers inflammation all by itself, but it also helps a healthy gut bacteria lower inflammation. By releasing short-chain fatty acids. So now you got a twofer, right? You've got ellagic acid, which is inherently anti-inflammatory. How do we know this? Because if you actually grow inflammatory cells in a Petri dish in a tissue culture and you put ellagic acid in there, they will, they will stop having a riot. They'll calm down. If you actually put the short-chain fatty acids of the gut microbiome in the same dish, they'll also calm down. So these are truly a double-headed kind of action of, of ellagic acid. Now what's interesting is the clinical Clinical data also shows that people who eat strawberries, about a cup of strawberries a day over the course of a couple of weeks, will also change mental state. It'll actually lower depression, improve cognition, specifically improve memory.

Make sure you eat the organic ones cuz the strawberries are the most contaminated.

Well, and this is, and this is the point is that basically if you want the most potent ellagic acid, this was studied by horticulturalists in England.

Yeah.

You want to have organic strawberries because they're the ones that have to defend themselves against Mother Nature just to stay robust. So they actually have the greatest hormetic generation of these polyphenols. So when we eat them, we get the, we get a benefit that the plant, you know, plant doesn't need anymore. Now we get the benefit from it. And it turns out that the organic strawberries have the most. Now that's the most of the good stuff. You just talked about the least pesticides. And here's the deal with the fruits that are worth getting the organic for. You cannot wash off pesticides from a strawberry cuz you can't skin a strawberry. You would never skin a strawberry. And there's other fruits that you want to pay attention to as well that benefit the gut, that can improve, that can improve your mental state. Like apples, for example, you can peel an apple to skin the apple, but actually the, the fiber in the skin is really, really beneficial. So too is the ursolic acid, which improves blood flow. Yeah. Which improves brain blood flow, which improves cognition.

Yeah.

Right. So again, when you can think more clearly, you have less brain fog, you actually are less anxious or depressed, you get in a better mood. So again, turns out studies at UMass, University of Massachusetts, have studied if you take regular pesticides, spray 'em on an apple, like in a conventional farm, basically the pesticides will penetrate into 20% deep into the skin of the apple.

Wow.

Now you try washing that off, it won't happen. So again, that's another example of where making, choosing organic with anything that you're gonna have the skin or you can't, or you want the skin or you can't skin it would be actually beneficial.

Yeah. And I always thought, you know, like you, you taught me this, but I always thought that probiotics and prebiotics were the key to healthy gut microbiome. But it turns out the third P, polyphenols is just as important. And that, that collection of molecules, those dark matter nutrition, it's a lot of what actually creates a healthy microbiome. So eating all these various plants, I mean, you, you taught me, for example, that pomegranate and green tea and cranberry have super beneficial effects on a keystone species called Akkermansia muciniphila that protects the lining of the gut and prevents leaky gut and reduces inflammation, helps metabolic health, has all these benefits around certain treatments for cancer and boost your immune system for against cancer. Yeah. This is just one bacteria and there's, you know, like you said, 39 trillion in there and maybe a thousand species in one.

And I'll tell you something even more profound that is emerging as a theme in gut health research that is quite important for thinking about brain health. We used to always, okay, I used, when I was a kid, my grandparents used to take probiotics. I never knew what they were. Really? Yeah. They came in from, the probiotics were sent from Japan and they used to arrive at my parents' house and my grandparents were living with, with us and they would open them up and I remember they would like some bacillus. I'm like, why would you eat a bacteria?

Right? Wow.

Really weird. And by the way, so this is showing that long before the current trend of probiotics, it has been done in past generations. There's some ancient knowledge, right? Ancient knowledge.

All the fermented foods is all probiotics. Totally. Yeah.

So I used to wonder if a probiotic bacteria was dried, it has to be dead. And if it's dead, how could it do something beneficial to you?

Yeah.

Right. And, and to this day, if you really think about it, live bacteria in your gut makes sense doing all those things we're talking about. You need a live bacteria to text message your brain, right? Wrong. It turns out that even dead bacteria, the shell of the bacteria, the carcass of the bacteria is biologically active. And this is why pasteurized bacteria are now being shown to also be bioactive. I'll tell you an experiment that was done that was really amazing. So there's a professor named Susan Erdman who's a colleague of mine at MIT, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, studying bacteria, a gut bacteria called Lactobacillus reuteri.

Yeah.

This is a fascinating bacteria that actually is often found in mother's milk. Mm-hmm. Healthy mother's milk injected into the baby to colonize the bacteria.

Mm-hmm.

It's a Lactobacillus. All right. Lactobacillus reuteri. Probiotic actually helps the wounds heal. So we were— helps wound healing. So we actually did a research study where we were actually looking at whether or not feeding Lactobacillus reuteri as a probiotic would speed up wound healing. And indeed it doubled the rate of wound healing and it did it from the gut by increasing the gene expression, turning on the gene mach— genetic machinery for a protein called vascular endothelial growth factor. Yeah. Just to prompt new blood vessels to grow. Vegf. Just to be able to heal the wound. That's pretty amazing. Right? That's great. Gut, skin, Axis. Now what about the brain? Turns out Lactobacillus reuteri also text messages your brain and tells your brain to produce oxytocin. Yeah. Social hormone. All right. Now I'm not getting to the, I haven't gotten to the, the punchline yet. The punchline is, can we destroy, this is the experiment, can we destroy the bacteria's effect by pulverizing it? So in the lab you can actually take an ultrasound. Not the kind you would actually do in a pregnant mom to look at the baby, but there's like a destructive ultrasound. So think about like a, a naval weapon, the sound, sound weapon, and you can beam it at the Lactobacillus reuteri and pulverize it into a gajillion pieces. All right. You feed it, uh, to, uh, an experimental system to animals, just putting it in their drinking water. And guess what? The dead pulverized bacteria will also make the brain release oxytocin. Totally not, no, no chance it's alive.

It is completely pulverized because the dead stuff has signaling molecules in it.

Signaling molecules. Like, you know, like the, uh, you know, like, so I was, uh, I, I sort of think about it as the graveyard of the microbiome is also a garden that's actually active.

Yeah.

It's still able to do things.

This is just a, kinda like compost or something, you know?

Exactly. Exactly. So, you know, more powerful than we thought.

You know what one patient of mine said, you know, Dr. Hyman, I took this probiotic and I was just looking it up and and, and it was a, a specific strain, uh, Bifidobacterium longum 1714 improves the quality of deep sleep. Think about a probiotic that actually improves your sleep. So everything is connected here.

It makes total sense, right? I mean, I, I, I think that we, here's the thing, you know, when we as communicators and also medical experts talk about the microbiome and mental health and brain health, you know, we make it seem very logical and common sense. I think it's important to say that, you know, what we're talking about is, is really kind of a realization and we're taking whatever pieces of evidence that currently exist and trying to help people understand the connections and the importance of having— if you want good brain health and good mental health, you really need to have good gut health at the same time. And that's a connection on food, but we don't really have all the answers yet. Yeah. That's the key thing. We, there's, you know, before anybody runs out out after hearing this and just goes and buys whatever bacteria there is, recognize that there's a, there's a long way to go before we actually have mastered how to actually map out that to get to the results that we need.

But in the meantime, we can eat prebiotic foods, probiotic foods, fermented foods, polyphenols. We can kind of hack, hack the game a little bit by having a broad array of these different types of foods that are microbiome-enhancing foods without worrying too much about which probiotic take.

Exactly.

Exactly.

Because you know what, foods actually are wrapped up with, if you take fermented foods, it's already got some polyphenols, it's got some dietary fiber, it's got the prebiotics and it's got the bacteria. And you know, if you ever ask like, okay, do all the healthy bacteria, are they alive in fermented foods and sauerkraut or in yogurt? Some of them are probably dead.

Yeah.

Okay. And that's okay. It turns out that the graveyard is the garden when it comes to actually the microbiome.

I wanna double-click on something you said. Could you like, said it and we whizzed over it and I think it's so important and it's called the flavorome. Like I never heard that term before, but you know, it reminded me of, of, um, a gentleman who's been on the podcast a few times, Fred Provenza, who's a rangeland ecologist from Utah at Utah State for most of his life. He's retired now. He wrote a book called Nourishment, essentially about what we can learn from animals about how to eat. And he studied the behavior of rangeland animals out west, looking at what plants they ate and what they did. And, you know, there were some general food and crops for calories, but then they ate and sampled many, many different plants for their phytochemical benefits and their medicinal benefits. And they would only eat a certain amount of them cuz at certain levels they could be toxic or it was like they knew what to eat and they had this natural intelligence based on the flavor. And what always, what always sort of blew my mind is that when you think about the taste of food, the flavor of food, it always comes from the phytochemical richness of the food. That's what brings the flavor. Dan Barber figured this out. He probably didn't think about this, but he created something called Ro7se, essentially to reverse engineer flavor back into foods that have had that flavor engineered out of them. Like butternut squash is tasteless, but he created honey nut squash, which is basically a phytochemically richer food that makes it taste sweeter, better naturally. So we put all these flavorings on foods instead of actually eating the foods that have the flavor naturally. So The explosion of a wild strawberry is a different flavor than a store-bought strawberry that's not organic, or even organic is not as good as the wild one. And so it's, people don't understand that if you seek out foods that have a natural richness of flavor, if you go to your garden and anybody's at a garden, I, I, I've had gardens most of my life and you know, you get an asparagus that you kind of crack off the stem and you eat it. It's like, there's no substitute. It's unbelievable. Or you take broccoli and you eat it, or you take a tomato off the cherry tomato that's ripened in an August sun on the plant and it It's a, it's a totally different set of flavors that comes from these phytochemicals. And that's where the medicine is. That's where the dark matter nutrition is. And we've essentially bred our plants that we eat to not have these anymore. Research on the microbiome has made it increasingly clear just how central the gut microbiome is to overall health. It influences everything from digestion and immune function to skin health and even how our bodies process nutrients. But not all probiotics are created equal, which is why I pay close attention to the science behind the companies working in this space. Now, one company is doing that particularly well. It's called Seed. Their DS-01 Daily Synbiotic is formulated with 24 clinically and scientifically studied strains designed to support gut health, healthy regularity, skin health, immune health, and gut barrier integrity. DS-01 is also the number one digestive health probiotic. What impressed me most about Seed is their level of scientific rigor, which is what led me to join their clinical board. They're helping set a new standard for what a symbiotic should be. If you're looking for a simple daily habit to support your gut and whole body health, this is a great place to start. Go to seed.com/hyman and use the code 20HYMAN to get 20% off your first month. That's 20% off your first month at seed.com/hyman and use the code Code 20 Hymen. More and more research is coming out on the importance of maintaining muscle as we age, and muscle is essential for longevity, metabolism, and healthy aging. And in my January conversation with Dr. Gabrielle Lyon, we took a deep dive into this topic, highlighting the importance of prioritizing high-quality bioavailable protein. But not all protein is created equal. One of the most nutrient-dense sources I found is wild medicine. Wild axis deer in Hawaii roam freely and graze on nearly 200 different plants growing in volcanic soil, which produces meat that's incredibly rich in nutrients, truly embodying food is medicine in its purest form. Now what matters isn't just the grams of protein, it's what your body can actually absorb and use. Venison is naturally high in bioavailable heme iron, B12, zinc, and complete amino acids, including leucine, which helps trigger muscle protein synthesis. It's also naturally lean and incredibly pure. And if you're like me, you want to avoid a lot of the things that show up in typical snack foods, like the industrial seed oils, soy protein isolates, and added sugars, and all kinds of weird artificial ingredients. And that's why I've been incorporating Maui Nui's wild venison jerky sticks into my routine, whether it's after a workout or on a busy day of travel, or even on weekends when I want some quick but nutrient-dense. They are made with just 3 simple ingredients: wild venison, water, and spices. It's not just great for me. It's great for active kids, athletes, parents all benefit from real nutrient-dense protein like this. And right now, Maui Nui is offering my listeners a free 6-pack of their venison jerky sticks with your first order. Just go to mauinuivenison.com/hyman to claim your free starter pack. That's mauinuivenison.com/hyman.

You know, I, I was, uh, I, I know Dan Barber very well. We're doing a collaboration. I went out to visit his this regenerative farm.

Yeah.

Uh, in New York. And, uh, he gave me a pitchfork. Mm-hmm. And we went out there and I dug up potatoes.

Yeah.

Which I've always considered to be the most tasteless.

Yeah. No, not necessarily.

Plucked it outta the ground, brought it to the kitchen. He cooked it for me.

Yeah.

And it tasted amazing.

It tasted amazing.

I mean, it was sort of like a different food altogether. And let's talk about flavor for a second because flavor is what draws us to our favorite foods. Right. And flavor, by the way, is connected to the brain, not only through taste buds, but also through our nose.

It's kind of our natural homing system that we've then had hijacked away from us by the food industry.

Yeah. And also the flavor industry. Think about the candles growing, you know, burning in your home or in the hotel or the scents or the car smell. We have been inundated with industrialization of our senses, right? Our taste buds by the food industry, our olfactory nerves, our nose from, you know, the people that want to make things smell nice, like the laundry detergent or their dish So, and the reality is that we, you know, we, I think what we're learning is that by going back to nature and appreciating the intensity that can be packed into food, we will naturally gravitate towards the foods that we individually. So this is personalized nutrition. We all have our own preferences of flavor profile. Some people are supertasters. So, oh man, it's way too hot for me, or I don't prefer this kind of sour food. I can't take it. Other people go, man, that I really like that.

I like bitter food.

Foods. And so I think that, you know, by recognizing our— the part of the flavor, uh, flavor is linked to preferences, which is part of our individualization, which is part of our humanity.

Yeah.

Right. And then think about the diversity of foods out there. Okay. If you could eat a food that you preferred, that you love the flavor on, it's going to make you happier. And so that's also hardwiring above the gut. So we're not talking about the gut microbiome here. You haven't even put it in your mouth. Mouth. You've just smelled it. You see it. Our eyes are basically radar dishes that connect right to our brain. We can even feel happy seeing foods.

Yeah.

Right. So again, talking about mental health, brain health, mood, emotion, you know, our, how our emotions are, it is so complicated because it's not only our gut, it's our eyes, it's our nose, it's our taste buds that all work in concert.

It's true. But you know, I think what I've learned, William, is that your body will naturally gravitate towards things that support its health. If you remove the things that are interfering with those signals. So if you're, for example, having artificial sweeteners, which are 1,000 times sweeter than regular sugar, or you're having a lot of sugar and you have some blueberry, it's going to taste bland. But if you don't eat sugar, and I do this, I take people on these retreats and I get them off all the sugar and the starch and all the crap for like a week. And then I give them a treat at the end, which is like blueberries and they're like, wow, this is like so sweet. And it's because we, we've had our, our natural instincts hijacked by the food industry. And so we're not attracted to those foods which are good for us. We're attracted to those foods that are bad for us. And we've had our senses almost homogenized and removed from what naturally is good for us. And I think we need to learn how to get back to that and hit the reset button. That's why I, I created the 10-Day Detox Diet. You can go to 10daydetox.com and learn about it, but essentially it's, it's a full reset. Set of your system so that you can then start to go, okay, what do I like? What do I want? I mean, I walk by, you know, like I'll walk by a store or like a restaurant's like where they have like muffins or bagels or whatever. I don't wanna eat it. It doesn't, it looks like a rock to me. Like it doesn't attract me because my body's naturally seeking those things that support its health because I've trained it to, and I've let it kind of uncovered from all the crap.

I don't know if you saw the research that looked at, chimpanzees knowing inherently when they're injured that they'll pick specific plants to chew on them that will give them the bioactives, the polyphenols from certain plants in order to be able to heal their wounds.

That's right. That's what I'm talking about. The animals have this natural intelligence. We've lost it.

We've lost it. We lost touch of it.

And it's part of what's caused our mental health to be screwed up because we're eating a diet that is so damaging to our mental health. All the starch and the sugar and the refined foods and the ultra-processed foods and all the additives and chemicals. It has such an adverse effect, not just on our microbiome, but on our metabolic function and our health. And, you know, like the Harvard, there's now departments of metabolic psychiatry. I mean, there's nutritional psychiatry. This is because there's an understanding that there's this relationship between the amount of sugar and starch and processing of our diet and our mental health.

Right.

And it's causing an epidemic of mental health issues. I don't think we have a crisis of mental health because there's somehow a design flaw in human beings. It's like, yeah, there was always a few maybe crazy people in the tribe, but like basically most people were pretty stable and good.

Our software's not failing, right? I mean, basically every—

We have a screwed up operating system that got installed though.

We're spilling coffee on the keyboard kind of thing, right? Here's something interesting to think about when it comes to mental health. What are, there's obviously a lot of things that if we introduce into our system that are gonna cause inflammation. So regardless of what mental health condition that you're talking about, everything from schizophrenia to autism to depress— to major depression, bipolar disorder, you know, so far what's been looked at as a common denominator of these syndromes is actually inflammation in the brain.

Yeah. That's right. That's right. Yeah. I think that's so important. Let's, let's double-click on that because inflammation is what's behind a lot of the mental health crises.

Right.

I mean, I've read a study that they showed They were interested in using TNF-alpha blockers for depression, which is a stupid idea, which is like an autoimmune drug.

But, but, or, or it's a brilliant idea.

Well, it's a brilliant idea in the sense that it's, oh, it's inflammation, but it's a bad idea cuz there's better ways to reduce inflammation without all the side effects.

Right. So, but you know, if we are really trying to address this root cause of mental illness, or, or let's not call it mental illness, let's call it kind of a deviating from our own mental health. You've got this like smokescreen that's put up by inflammation. And although there are underlying things that might make something depression versus anxiety disorder versus OCD versus schizophrenia, the reality is if you can strip away the inflammatory layer, that's actually an important thing that people are empowered to do. We can do that ourselves. You don't need a psychiatrist to lower brain and body inflammation and hence brain inflammation. And so removing the bad stuff to actually lower inflammation is Actually, it's, you know, it's, it's a, it's low-hanging fruit, literally and figuratively, right? I mean, all of those polyphenols and fruits that, that, and vegetables that you would eat can actually lower inflammation. So you can get a head start on anything that you're doing for mental health by lo— by eating foods that lower inflammation. Yeah. You know, and by the way, the other thing that's interesting about inflammation, which most of us are walking around with, even those of us who take care of ourselves, you know, You know, life is tough. Stress causes inflammation. Yeah. Most of us are, have a little bit of more stress than we want in our lives. And so we're always a little bit inflamed, which is why, you know, we need to actually have that fire extinguisher to regularly put things out 3 times a day whenever we're actually making a choice. Make that choice to lower inflammation in your bodies is good for brain health, good for mental health as a practice. I think as just a matter of actually how you choose your foods, your meals. Now the other thing is staying away from things that can cause inflammation as as well. And this is really the other part of the dark matter in manufactured foods and ultra-processed foods.

And by the way, the dark matter is a good thing. It's not bad. The dark matter is all the things we haven't seen that are good in food. But there's also a dark— There are darker matter. There's a darker matter, which is the shitty food we're eating. Right, right. That's what you're talking about.

That's the dark side of the force.

Yeah.

Right? Okay. So then you actually put all those chemicals that our body tries to process, tries to detox, our liver, our kidneys, all these organs try to kind of remove, has to do extra work, has to consume energy, part of the energy that we would normally have for enjoying life, for brain function. If we have to divert that energy to detoxing the chemicals that we find in our foods, artificial coloring, artificial flavoring, artificial preservatives, you name it, the fillers, all these kind of transformed additives that are actually found in our foods, not only does it steal from our life energy and our life force, but they actually directly trigger inflammation as well. And by then triggering inflammation, just, I know, think about the dietary pattern. You eat less foods with polyphenols, more junk food with all these chemicals. You are tilting these scales towards inflammation.

And the most inflammatory thing is sugar and starch. That's what's That's the majority of Americans' diet. And that, that's creating insulin resistance, which creates belly fat deposition. Those cells in your belly are not just holding up your pants, they're, they're little factories of inflammation creating adipocytokines, which are inflammatory molecules from the fat cells that go to your brain and affect everything.

And the food industry that makes foods with sugar and starch tend to add to those foods a lot of other additives.

Yeah.

Right. So you're talking about sort of, you know, something that can be damaging. You get the double whammy.

Yeah. So I think, I think you're right. I mean, the inflammatory issue is huge. So all these polyphenols tend to be anti-inflammatory, whereas all the foods we're eating tend to be inflammatory. And a very basic level, you know, to simplify things, you know, when your brain's inflamed, your mood's inflamed, you're depressed, you're anxious, you're irritable, you're, you're bipolar disease, you have schizophrenia, you have autism. These are all brain disease. Even Alzheimer's is brain inflammation.

Or you actually have and you have and/or brain fog. Yeah. And that actually steals from your quality of life. You know, this is not, where did I leave my keys? This is like, I, I can't focus on anything.

Yeah.

Right. And so this is when you kind of, when anybody who's in that situation feels like, you know, they really, really need to have some kind of reset to be able to get back to clear thinking.

I don't mean to push it, but I'm telling you, the 10-day detox is literally like that reset. And that's one of the things that people say most often when they do it. That their brain fog will—

what are the, what are the steps? Basic steps.

It's getting rid of all the crap. It's adding in the good stuff, taking out the bad stuff. So it's lots of vegetables, fruit, nuts and seeds, good quality protein, lots of good fats, olive oil, eggs. You're taking out gluten.

Yeah.

Dairy, grains and beans. Not that they're wholesale bad, but for a temporary period, cuz they tend to be more starchy and cause some gut issues for people. Dairy, which our modern dairy is terrible. And I, I do like yogurt and I like typically sheep or goat yogurt, but, but just for a short period of time, these tend to be the very inflammatory foods that people are sick from. Yeah. And, and when you do that for, and you obviously take out all the ultra-processed foods and all the sugar and the sodas, all the sugar, all the starch, all the additives, all the chemicals, all that goes away.

Yeah.

All the alcohol, all the caffeine, all that goes out. And you do it for 10 days. I mean, anybody can do anything for 10 days. And when you do that, we see across the board, I've done this with thousands of people online and in person, there's a 70% reduction in all symptoms from all diseases in 10 days based on a symptom questionnaire that we do where we grade your symptoms like headaches, 0 to 1, 2, 3, 4, you know, irritable bowel, you know, 0 to 4.

And there certainly must be improvement in gut health too.

Yeah, 100%. Irritable bowel, reflux, all this stuff. I mean, one person came up to me at Cleveland Clinic and said, Dr. Hyman, I did this and my rheumatoid arthritis went away. Is that possible? I'm like, yeah, it's possible cuz you, it went away. You know, another woman was like, I've been in and out of psychiatric hospitals. I've been on so many psychiatric meds. I've never really felt good. And I feel completely normal.

So, so that's a baseline approach that anybody can do. Yeah.

It's basically free. All right.

Removing the bad, keep adding the good. Yeah. And trying to get to your own personal reset. Yeah.

It's like I put, I, I, what I say is it's like hitting the factory reset button. Yeah. I was like, how do you go back to the original factory settings on your phone so you don't get like it all screwed up? And that's, that's what most of us have no clue how to do. And I've just come upon this through practicing functional medicine and learning the science of food is medicine and all the things we were talking about. But it's, it's not that complicated. So if anybody's suffering from anything out there, it's worth a try. There are more extreme versions like a ketogenic diet, which is now being explored for schizophrenia and bipolar disease and OCD and, and cancer, cancer and severe depression and diabetes. And I mean, it's like, it's kind of like this weird thing where you kind of rechange the way your metabolic function works and it has broad reaching effects across so many disease categories. So whether it's diabetes or cancer or, Alzheimer's or autism.

Okay. So one of the things that I think, so we, we, you know, one of the things we just talked about is lowering inflammation, avoiding by eating better things that good for gut and polyphenols that lower inflammation. And then staying away from some of the lowering the harmful intake, adding more polyphenols to your diet. But you know, the latest research also begins to identify specific polyphenols and plant-based substances that can make your brain healthier.

Yeah.

Which then makes your mental state more optimized in any event. So for example, have you heard of amentoflavone?

No, I haven't.

Amentoflavone actually is a natural polyphenol substance that's found in cantaloupe.

Oh.

Breakfast food, okay? And that actually lowers anxiety.

Wow.

So amentoflavone has been shown to lower the state of anxiety. So we're, again, part of this flavorome, like everybody knows that characteristic characteristic scent or flavor of a cantaloupe, like a really ripe cantaloupe, right?

It's got a very strong flavor.

Exactly.

I meant the flavor. The smell.

I meant the flavor. That actually can lower, it's anxiolytic. It actually lowers anxiety. Okay. So that's a thing.

Cantaloupe is like a natural Valium.

Of sorts. What about anandamide? Do you know, have you heard of anandamide? All right.

Tell me.

I'm throwing something.

This is great. All this new stuff for me. I love it.

Right. Anandamides are actually found in foods that many people like, like dark chocolate right now. Chocolate is a candy, is a confection, but dark chocolate is made with more of the plant-based substance cacao. And cacao has these— all these polyphenols in it, like proanthocyanidin and others, including anandamide. All right. And what do anandamides do when you eat them? Um, they not only lower inflammation, but they, uh, stimulate the endocannabinoid system in your brain. So an endocannabinoid system is basically what marijuana, THC, stimulates. You feel better, you, you get more relaxed, you know, you kind of zone a little bit. You feel happier in general. Dark chocolate, you know, that, that happy feeling people have, anandamide activating the, that receptor system, which is related to the opioid system. System. Okay. The endocannabinoid system.

That's why I like chocolate.

Another food that people consider to alter your state of being towards happiness for people that like it are truffles.

Truffles, like, like, oh, not like the truffle chocolate.

I'm switching out the truffle for mushrooms. Well, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's not exactly a mushroom, but it's a, it's more related to a, like a fungus. But truffles, which are, you know, prize of the Mediterranean. Mediterranean at certain seasons, right? I think you and I had a meal once where we had some truffles and the fact of the matter is that it has this incredible aroma. And some people really love truffles and it makes them feel good. Anandamide in truffles and chocolate. So again, this whole idea of like elevating our mood, we're not always treating depression. Sometimes you're elevating your mood as well.

It's like enhancement.

It's like an enhancement.

There's a whole word called nootropics, which means compounds that actually help increase your cognitive function and mood. They're not, you know, actually treating a disease. They're just causing an elevation or an improvement. You know, I've always believed that one of the most powerful things you can do for your health is to cook your own food. In fact, I was at my house recently and made short ribs for a small group, slow braised, deeply flavorful, simple ingredients. And after, when someone said, wow, you're such a great cook, I laughed because I always tell people what my mother told me: if you can read, you can cook. Cooking isn't about being a chef, it's about following simple steps using real food and having the right tools. And that's why I love cooking with Made In. Their cookware heats evenly, it's beautifully designed, and is trusted by professional chefs as well as millions of home cooks. Whether I'm braising short ribs or searing wild salmon, I know I'm going to get consistent results. And when cooking feels easy, you actually want do it. That's how healthy habits stick. If you've been wanting to cook more at home or upgrade the pans you're using every day, this is a great place to start. Visit madincookware.com and use the code HYMAN10 for 10% off your order. You won't regret it. That's madincookware.com and use the code HYMAN10 today. Living a long and healthy life isn't about chasing shortcuts. It's about focusing on small daily habits that support the body at the cellular level, circulation, recovery, repair of your cells, which are the foundation of long-term health. And one ritual I built into my own routine is using an infrared sauna. Infrared works differently than a traditional sauna. Instead of just heating the air, it uses light energy that's absorbed into the body's tissues. In many ways, our bodies are like solar panels. We're designed to receive and use this kind of energy. And the research suggests that infrared may help support circulation, improve mitochondrial activity, and the body's own natural repair processes, all of which play a role in how we age.

Age.

It can also promote sweating, which supports the body's natural detox pathways while gently increasing your heart rate and your circulation. For me, it's become a longevity ritual that I try to do a whole bunch of times a week. And that's why I like Sunlighten. They've spent more than 25 years developing infrared technology designed to deliver precise wavelengths the body can absorb efficiently. Try it today and visit sunlighten.com and use the code HYMAN to save up to $1,600. That's right, $1,600. That's sunlighten, S-U-N-L-I-G-H-T-E-N,.com. And use the code HYMAN.

And that's the point I'm trying to get at, which is that we're not only trying to take a sledgehammer against inflammation, we're not only trying to, you know, remove harmful substances from your plate, but we're also thinking about for happiness and joy, elevating our own mood. And that's also connected to the, to the gut and the food that we choose.

Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, lion's mane is another mushroom that I, I, it looks like a the brain actually, and it has incredible effects on the brain in terms of connectivity, brain repair, healing. I've used a lot with people who have traumatic brain injury. It's quite interesting. Can you tell us more about that?

Well, lion's mane belongs to a whole family of medicinal mushrooms, which include reishi, turkey tail, you know, and—

In Chinese medicine, mushrooms are a big part of the therapy.

And sort of in Asian medicine traditions, you have all these medicinal mushrooms. Mushrooms. And by the way, it's distinguished from a culture perspective from culinary mushrooms where you get the portobello and the porcini and the white button mushrooms. But there are overlaps. So two overlaps are shiitake mushroom and maitake mushrooms are both medicinal and culinary. And increasingly people are now interested in looking at these medicinal mushrooms and incorporating them into their food. And that's another example of sort of a modern way of looking at food as medicine or medical foods into regular foods to see if we can actually elevate our mental state. And again, there's anti-inflammatory effects. There is no question that there are brain effects that are beneficial as well with some of these medicinal mushrooms.

Yeah, it's pretty amazing. And I think, speaking of mushrooms, psilocybin's undergoing a lot of research now for things like depression, anxiety, for PTSD. And it's kind of fascinating how it works. And I don't think it just works through its ability to reduce your anxiety through lowering the function of certain areas like your default mode network, which is your ego and your anxiety or amygdala. But I think it has other effects and, and it somehow has these nootropic effects using, uh, activation of things like BDNF or brain-derived neurotrophic factor, which increases the connectivity in the neurogenesis in the brain. It's like Miracle-Gro for the brain.

Neurogenesis. You, you said a word that we haven't talked about yet.

That's right.

Basically, as we get older, our nerves kind of start to get a little weaker, maybe not as vibrant as they once were. And importantly, our nerves actually, which are capable of regenerating, don't regenerate quite as quickly as they once did. And so this whole idea about foods that can stimulate regeneration is a really interesting one. So how does regeneration occur? Well, there are signals in the body that foods that you eat can trigger and release that will draw out stem cells that are naturally found in our body to help us regenerate silently. So, you know, most people think about stem cells on a, from like a therapeutic perspective, you go someplace to get your stem cells. Well, actually Mother Nature already packed the suitcases inside our body. Yeah. We already have our own stem cells. And so one of the interesting things are are foods that might help to stimulate neurogenesis. And this is where my field of angio or blood vessel growth connects to nerve growth, 'cause blood vessels and nerves go hand in hand. And nerves that grow out need blood vessels to support them because they're really, really metabolically active. Yeah. And so foods that stimulate angiogenesis can be beneficial. And I, we've already talked about dark chocolate as being beneficial. Barley can also be beneficial. Barley has beta-D-glucan, which is also found in mushrooms, culinary mushrooms as well as medicinal mushrooms. It's a kind of dietary fiber. They grow blood vessels and it can stimulate nerve growth as well.

Yeah.

So this is a whole other dimension of brain health and mental health is, you know, we're, you're, we're not stuck with what we were born with.

Yeah.

We can tend the garden by encouraging neurogenesis as well.

Well, it's interesting you say that cuz I, I did a podcast this summer with Nolan Williams about ibogaine, who is a Stanford researcher who sadly died this summer. But he talked a lot about ibogaine and Rick Perry, who was the former governor of Texas for 15 years, heard the podcast and invited me to this dinner at this group called Americans for Ibogaine. And at that dinner, I spent a couple hours talking to him about his experience. And he went down there and he had, you know, he's 75 and he went down there to address, you know, his own brain health. 'Cause there's data that improves brain health and the veterans who've had brain drama, I mean brain drama, brain trauma, traumatic brain injury and brain drama, actually PTSD, actually show that their brains repair looking at functional MRIs or quantitative MRIs. And I was like, wow. And he said, yeah, his brain grew significantly. Over the course of the months and weeks and months after he took the ibogaine. Rick Perry took it and I was like, holy crap. So I went down and did it and I did a quantitative brain MRI before. Okay. I have a functional MRI and I'm going to repeat it a week, in a week from now.

And is your brain growing?

I don't know. I got to repeat it. I did only, I only did this like less than a week ago. So I'm going to repeat it next week and I'm going to repeat it again in a few months and I'm going to report back on the podcast. Everybody got to stay tuned to the podcast because the data. 'Cause if, if, if, if there's a plant compound that can do that, it's, it's kind of revolutionary because you, you think you're aging, your brain shrinks and it decreases connectivity. But if you can actually reverse your brain aging, and I, I, and, and, and through Ezra, the company that is part of Function Health, it's an imaging company. So you can go to functionhealth.com, you can get your brain scan, you can do what I did. You don't have to go through a doctor. I just went, 'cause you know, I, I'm co-founder of the company. I can go do the brain scan and I, and anybody can do it. And I, and I measured my brain quantitative analysis, and I'm gonna continue to measure it.

When you say quantitative analysis, you're talking about the amount of brain or the activity of the brain, the blood flow in the brain.

It's not the blood flow. It's actually like they can measure through very sophisticated MRI, 3 Tesla machines, the, the size of each area of your brain. Like how big is your hippocampus? How thick is your cortical matter? How big are different structures and things in your brain? Very precisely. And then you can repeat it and see if that changes over over time. So to me, you know, when you're talking, and we're talking not about a drug, we're talking about a phytochemical, essentially plant compounds that are in this bark of this root that is from West Africa and some other plants.

The method of analysis you're talking about, getting functional brain scans.

Functional brain scans and quantitative.

Before, after, and quantitated, it actually is sort of setting the stage for the future of us understanding what we can actually do to improve our brain. You know, I mean, you're, you're obviously describing something that you personally experienced that gave you a reason to believe that there are significant changes occurring in how you feel. Now you're going to measure it. And then the other interesting things is where do you take it from there? How do you actually look at other plant-based substances that could actually achieve something?

Yeah, it's amazing. There was a guy there who had crippling anxiety, went and got treatment while I was there, came out, he says, my anxiety is completely gone. I've never experienced this. There was a woman there who spent 9 months a year in her bedroom because of crippling depression and would go out and work and she was a musician and would record and then she would go back and hide in her bedroom. She came there, had a treatment and was completely transformed. So we are, it's, we are like, almost like, you know, looking up at the sky with our kind of naked eye, looking at the stars, trying to imagine what's going on and seeing things. We're just starting to actually understand this field. And I think we're going to be in the next 5 to 10 years in a revolutionary period of understanding of the brain, the mind, how to repair the brain, how to heal the brain, how to deal with mood disorders, trauma, PTSD, brain injury, depression, anxiety. I mean, this, whether you talk about plant medicines and psychedelics or nutritional metabolic psychiatry or upregulating just mood through using all the things you mentioned, like from truffles, I'm like, it's a little expensive way to get your mood up.

You can afford a cantaloupe though.

Yeah, I can afford a cantaloupe.

So it's quite amazing.

Like we're in this—

Well, and it's also not just about the substance, it's also about how our body responds to it. And so this idea about discovering like new frontiers of discovery, like we didn't really think about when we were in medical school. In fact, we were encouraged to conclude that the brain can't regenerate.

No.

Right? Like basically once you had a stroke, that's it. Nothing, nothing's gonna fix that. And we were taught that. So that way, if you actually wiped out a big portion of your brain with a stroke, like, oh, it's too bad. You might take a year to recover, but that's about it. That's all you're gonna get. Turns out that's not really true. We can actually reverse some of these diseases or conditions or the consequences of disease by encouraging our body's own capability of regeneration. I wrote about this in my book, Eating Disease.

Yeah, you did.

I remember that. And the whole idea is that we are hardwired to repair ourselves from the inside out. The mental mental health aspect and the brain health aspect is, I think, one of the most exciting frontiers.

Yeah.

By the way, more recently, researchers are now beginning to focus on the eyes as a window into the brain and the status quo of the brain. Right? So think about it. When you go to the eye doctor, what do you do? You get your, you know, you look at the eye chart. Can you, what's the smallest lines you can actually read? But actually the imaging has become so much more sophisticated.

And the AI.

And the AI connected to the imaging, right? So anybody who's actually had a real serious back of the eye exam, what do you do? You put your chin on this rest, they flash these lights into you and they are looking at your brain.

Yeah.

And then with the images that are capturing, you can see the thickness of the retina, you can see the optic nerve, the connection between the layer of nerves that are the carpet on the back of your eye that connected to the big table that goes straight into your brain. We can see our brain, which is pretty amazing.

And they can tell Alzheimer's quite long. They can look at kidney function. I mean, it's crazy the stuff that they're able to detect and stuff that an ophthalmologist wouldn't be able to detect because the AI can start to see these things.

And now they're beginning to think about it and use AI to their advantage. So I was just sort of building on the brain scans, the functional scans you're doing. I think you should take a look at your retina.

Yeah. This is an amazing, amazing conversation as As always, Dr. Lee, you are just a delight. And, uh, I, I'm always amazed how your brain works and the depth of knowledge you have around food and medicine and food is medicine. Uh, I can't wait to see what you're up to next. You have another book coming out?

Working on it. It involves the brain.

Really? Okay. Well, we'll have to have you back on the podcast for that. Um, thanks for being here again. Thanks everybody. I think the take-home here is that you can change your brain, you can change your mind, and you can heal both by optimizing your health through food as medicine and helping your gut microbiome through all the things we talked about. So thank you so much for joining us, and, uh, we'll see you again.

Thanks for having me.

If you love that last video, you're gonna love the next one. Check it out here.