AVOID THESE FOODS To Prevent Cognitive Decline & HEAL THE BRAIN | Dr. Andrew Weil & Lewis Howes

The gut microbiome, it looks like it's involved in everything. I mean, it conditions your mental health, it influences your interactions with the environment. I mean, it's the key to health and how you move through the world.

So, I think you gotta have a dream. The School of Greatness.

Really?

Yeah. Please welcome, Lewis Howes. I wanted to ask you first about cognitive decline. And I feel like a lot of people, especially over the last few years, have a fear of cognitive decline. from foods they've eaten, from potential injections they've taken, or other things that are medicines that maybe are hurting or helping. So I wanted to talk about cognitive decline first and your thoughts about this.

I think there's a lot of fear out there about it also because people know people with cognitive decline. People have relatives who've developed dementia. We see people whose memories are failing. I know a lot of people, if they have memory lapses, immediately begin to think, am I getting Alzheimer's? There's just a lot of fear around that.

Yeah.

So, what is the root cause of all this? We don't know.

We don't know. I mean, there is a minority of cases are genetic or familial, but most of them aren't and we really don't know. I have to say my gut feeling with a lot of neurodegenerative disease, certainly with Parkinson's disease and ALS, I think.

These are environmentally caused mostly. Really? Now is that environment like what's in the air environment?

Is it- It's probably everything, but a big one is things like exposure to agrochemicals, there's a higher incidence of Parkinson's and agricultural workers. I think all the stuff we're reading about plastics, I think it's good to be just cognizant of potential toxins in the environment. But I will tell you that in terms of preventing cognitive decline, probably the two most important pieces of advice I can give you is don't get hit in the head, which means really being careful if you're playing football or basketball. And I must say, I don't know what the future of football is going to be, but I think we're going to see more and more concern about you know, a traumatic brain injury, and that has long range consequences. And the other one I would say is don't smoke. You know, that tobacco smoking is the single greatest cause of preventable serious disease. And it strongly affects brain function as well because nicotine constricts blood vessels, so it reduces blood flow. So those are just two, you know, basic pieces of advice that I would give you. Don't get it in the head. Don't smoke.

Well, I think people don't understand.

The.

Sadness and the pain that happens when you watch someone that you care about mentally decline.

Yeah, cognitively. Really. Right?

Like, my dad got in a traumatic car accident where the car came through the windshield and hit him in the head. He was in a coma for three months and he never recovered. He was all physically here, but mentally--.

Yeah, that's really sad.

It was really sad. For 17 years, we lived with that. with our father was extremely sad. Because you feel hopeless, you feel like there's nothing we can do. We tried everything and there's only so much farther he can go back to. So number one is definitely don't get hit in the head because that's what happened. But a lot of people don't get hit in the head and they still have a cognitive decline. Not a lot of people, but that happens for some people. And is it, I'm hearing environment, I'm hearing smoking, but they're also like foods or other things.

There's a lot of other things. So let's talk about food nutrition first. We know that antioxidant protection is very good for the brain. So you want to make sure you're having an adequate intake of protective antioxidants, which you mostly get from consuming a variety of fruits and vegetables of good quality. And in general, it's a good idea to try to eat across the color spectrum. because each color of fruits and vegetables has pigments that have particular beneficial effects. So that's just one good general rule. Another is to make sure that you've got an adequate intake of omega-3 fatty acids, which are very important for brain health, especially one of them, DHA. And the best sources of these are oily fish. So it's salmon, sardines, herring, mackerel. But if you're not a fish eater or you're a vegetarian or vegan, there are now algae-based omega-3 supplements that you can take. But very important to think where your omega-3s are coming from. There are plant sources of omega-3s, things like flax seeds and hemp seeds. But the plant sources don't give you exactly what the body needs. It has to convert them. So it's good to eat those, but it's good to get some of the preformed long chain omega-3s from fish or algae.

Right.

Is algae just as powerful as the fish?

Yeah, it's the same. It gives you the same compounds. And that's only become available relatively recently. Interesting. Because I used to really argue with vegetarians and vegans saying you gotta eat some fish or take a fish oil supplement. But now I can tell them to take an algae supplement, which is great. And there's another one class of compounds that seem particularly important are called polyphenols. It's a large group of compounds found mostly in fruits and vegetables, herbs, spices, tea is a good source of them, berries, chocolate. And, you know, these have very protective effects on the brain. Now, as you know, I'm a big fan of green tea.

Yes.

A lot of research on that and being useful for cardiovascular health, cancer prevention, brain health. And so I think, and recently there was a, have you heard of the green Mediterranean diet?

I heard about it researching, your current stuff, but I don't know any of that.

No, I just gotten some publicity. We have a lot of scientific evidence for the benefits of the Mediterranean diet in terms of overall longevity and reduced risk of disease. What's the green Mediterranean diet? So the green Mediterranean diet is reducing animal foods even more, increasing plant foods, and particularly loading the diet with sources of polyphenols, and they recommended berries and green tea particularly. And of the forms of green tea, the one that I'm particularly fond of is matcha, which is the powdered green tea, because of the way that it's grown, it has a higher content of antioxidant polyphenols. And it's also you consume the whole leaf, it's the whole powdered leaf. So that's the one I would recommend.

Yeah, not the Starbucks matcha, which has got tons of sugar in it.

Exactly. Right, and it's low quality to begin with. Those are the main nutritional recommendations that I would give you. Then the other things are all the lifestyle recommendations that you make and I make, you know, getting adequate rest and sleep, regular physical activity. Those are the obvious ones. Learning and practicing some methods of neutralizing the harmful effects of stress. The main hormone that mediates stress is cortisol. Cortisol is directly toxic to cells in the brain. Really?

The more stressed you are, the more.

Cortisol circulating and cortisol can kill brain cells, particularly in the hippocampus, which is the region that mediates emotion and memory. So, all you need to know that you want to do something to keep your cortisol levels moderate or low.

So, would you say from that scenario, if someone has kind of a high level of ongoing stress for decades, are they more susceptible to cognitive decline?

Well, I would say probably. I mean, I can't give you hard evidence for that, but knowing what we know about cortisol, that if you have higher levels than you should for your life, probably it's going to damage your brain. And there are many options for learning to control stress. My favorite are breathing techniques, and whenever you want, I can talk about what's.

The top breathing technique?

The 4-7-8 breath, it's so simple and free and takes no equipment. It's an ancient yoga technique and I've popularized it and it's got incredible traction. The YouTube videos of me teaching it are, all you have to do is put in 4-7-8 breath on the name. I mean, there are millions of views. And it's every single day, yeah, I will. And every few days I get, newspaper articles about it from India, from Indonesia. You know, another story about the 478 press. A ballet company in Toronto produced a ballet based on the 478 press. I have no idea what that was. It was like the late Prime Minister of Japan who was killed Abe gave interviews saying that I taught him the 478 press and it was very helpful to him. I never met him, so I don't know what he was thinking. Maybe he read it somewhere. But this is just, it's a great thing. And I learned it from one of my mentors was an elderly osteopathic physician, Robert Fulford. I met him when he was in his 80s, best healer I've ever met. Just used gentle hands-on. And he said breathing was the most important function of the body. Really? Yeah.

And a lot of his work was.

Designed to free up restrictions in breathing and he produced incredible cures. Anyway, he taught me this. So the basic method is you breathe in through your nose quietly to a count of four, hold your breath for a count of seven, blow air out forcibly through your mouth to a count of eight, repeat that for four breath cycles and that's it. It takes all of 30 seconds but it's a practice. So the benefits of it come from doing this regularly. So you have to do this religiously at least twice a day. Really?

Yeah.

I do it in the morning when I first get up. before I do some sitting meditation. I do it when I get in bed to fall asleep. And I do it any time in the day that I feel stressed or I want to relax. So I'll just show you what it looks like when we do it together. So you can do it in any position, but if you're seated, it's good to keep your back straight and your feet on the floor. So this is a yoga breath. And in yoga, you're asked to keep your tongue in the yogic position, which is touching the tip of your tongue to the ridge of tissue behind your upper front teeth like that. So you blow air out around it. So it looks like this. That's it, four breath cycles. It's a little hard for me to come back and talk to you after it.

Because you're so relaxed.

Yeah, no, it produces a very nice altered state of consciousness. I'd rather stay in. Right, for longer.

Yeah.

Anyway, so only four breaths at one time. You can do it more frequently, but you gotta do it at least twice a day. Got it. And after a month, if you're comfortable, you can do it eight breath cycles. And then that's the absolute maximum. And it's good to learn how to slow it down as you practice. What limits you is how long you can comfortably hold your breath, but with time you can extend that. And after, you know, four to six weeks, there are really amazing changes. It lowers heart rate, lowers blood pressure, improves digestion. It is the most powerful anti-anxiety method I have ever found. That makes the drugs we use for anxiety look pathetic. It gets better than where you repeat it. One of the most useful things I've ever discovered and of all the, you know, I've explored the world for natural remedies and of all the things that I've found and told patients to do, this is the one that I've gotten the most spectacular feedback.

It's free.

It's free. No equipment.

There's no money involved.

No, and by the way, this is, I think, a perfect example of what integrative medicine can do. It can find things that aren't even on the radar of conventional medicine and bring them into the mainstream and lower health care costs and improve outcomes. So anyway, that is my personal favorite method of stress reduction to keep cortisol levels low. And one of the aims of that is protect preventing cognitive decline and promoting brain health. Now, other things you can do, you know, you're big into physical exercise, physical activity. I think mental exercise is very important too. And that there are many, many choices there. I love to do word puzzles. My favorite are acrostics, which I find more interesting and challenging than crossword puzzles. And, you know, I just love, you know, they're great. It's like, it's a brain exercise for me. for me, and it's fun. Have you played Wordle, which is going on?

I've said a couple times, I need to get into it.

Unbelievable how that has gained popularity all over. So I usually do Wordle every morning when I get up.

Really?

Yeah, anyway, that keeps my brain active. Another wonderful method is to learn a language, another language. You don't have to master the language, it's the attempt to learn it. It's challenging.

I'm going to attempt right now to learn Spanish. It's so difficult. But it makes you like work your brain.

Absolutely. I speak Spanish. Really? And what interesting, what I discovered is in high school, I studied German. It was horrible experience. I had it, my teacher was from Berlin. He was a real sadistic German teacher. Anyways, four years of like, you know, drilling, blah, blah, blah. And afterwards, I went to Germany and I could speak passably. But for Spanish, I just went and lived in Mexico, in a village in Mexico, and I was in a place where I was forced to speak Spanish. And in a month, you know, I was speaking passively, and then I drove to South America, and when I got to Columbia, where I lived for a few years, I gave a lecture in Spanish.

Come on.

Seriously.

That's incredible.

Now, so, you know, and what I've learned, and this is not big news, you know, babies do not have Minds that learn grammar, right? And they learn language and all the only skills you need to learn a language are to be able to listen and imitate and you have to have strong motivation. So babies have really strong motivation to survive. So if you put yourself in a situation where you have to learn and you listen and you imitate, you learn. You don't need to learn grammar and study rules and all that, which makes it much harder. We all have that capacity. to do. Anyway, that's a very good thing for your brain. Another is trying to learn a musical instrument. I'm terrible at that. I failed. I was forced to try to play the clarinet when I was a kid as a dismal failure. So that didn't work for me. But for some people, that's an example. Here's another one I'll give you. You know the frustration of trying to deal with a new computer operating system? You know, there's like several switching from PC to Mac.

Yeah, I don't want to go back.

You know, there's a period where it is just, that's exactly where you don't want to put your brain. You want to put your brain in that place where it goes, you know, where you have to like change gears, rewire. That's good exercise for the brain.

Is there too much of that where it hurts the brain or is it okay?

Well, I don't know. I think you just get frustrated. You give up a bit. And then one other tip I would give, I think it is very good to associate with people who are healthy, happy, who have positive outlooks.

And.

Some years ago, the MacArthur Foundation did a study of successful aging. They identified a large group of people as successful agers and they looked to see what they had in common. The two factors that stood out, and this overrode everything else, whether they took vitamins, whether they ate this, whether they exercised, the two that stood out was maintenance of regular physical activity throughout life, and the second was maintenance of good social and intellectual connectivity. And I think that last one, that is a challenge. You know, first of all, in our society, As people get older, they tend to get isolated with other people, other old people.

Why is that in our society?

I think we don't want old people around. You know, we don't want to look at them. They remind us that we're going to get old.

Really?

Yeah, we want them out of the way.

And like- But in other societies they don't do that.

Well, in some, like Japan, is notably different. I would say in most Latin societies, older people, it's like they live with you. Yeah. You know, they're not isolated in old age. homes. But I think the opportunities for social and intellectual connection diminish in this society as you get older. And I think that's been particularly bad during the pandemic. There's been much greater social isolation, people staying at home, people interacting virtually. And I think that this looks really key to good brain health is like having, I'd say, vibrant social intellectual relationship.

Yeah, it's interesting because my girlfriend Martha, she's from Mexico and her family is very socially connected. You know, activities all the time, you know, involving the grandparents with the grandchildren and like and connecting the dots constantly. Playing games, having fun and singing music and playing instruments and like adventures.

So I've got a story for you. It's very powerful. I knew a woman who was in a pediatric intensive care nurse and she told me over a period of about six, seven years, she had seen a number of cases of kids, teenagers who'd been in devastating, mostly motorcycle accidents, devastating head injuries, who were in vegetative states in the hospital and she said she saw I think it was like eight or ten cases of kids who recovered completely to the astonishment of doctors. But after she'd seen about a certain number of them, she noticed that they were all Hispanic. And she'd never seen an Anglo kid in that state recover.

Really?

And she so thought about what's the difference? And then she realized that with the Hispanic kids there was always at all hours an extended family around the bed. People talking to the kid, touching the kid, and the white kids were always there by themselves.

Really?

Yeah.

And she said that clearly was what made the difference.

That was the only difference, essentially, is seeing that environment.

They were all in basically the same vegetative state. But it was that kind of constant stimulation, touch, you know, that kept their brain, that made their brains recover.

Even when they were in comas and vegetative states.

Yeah.

And she said that they had some of these have like full recoveries or big recoveries.

Full recoveries, yeah.

Walking around talking to them all, thinking clearly, whereas the other kids.

She'd never seen it happen in an Anglo kid who had nobody in the room with them.

Wow. Or maybe they would come for like an hour and then leave or something.

Yeah, wow. So that's very powerful. And, you know, I think that that's something we should really guard against, you know, is like not getting socially isolated and spending time with people that stimulate us.

Before the interview continues. If you feel like you're not living your most authentic life, not leaning into your purpose, and not living the life that your future self would be extremely proud of. I've written a new book called the greatness mindset, and I think you're going to love this. Through powerful stories, science back strategies, and step-by-step guidance, the greatness mindset will help you overcome all the different challenges in your life to design the life of your dreams and then turn it into your reality. Make sure to click the link below in the description to get your copy today. Okay, let's get back to this video. Well, it's interesting because we were just talking about this beforehand. You told me you're 80 years young.

Yeah.

80 years young, I'm gonna be 40.

You're a kid.

But here's the funny thing you said. You said, you know, when I was young, 80 seemed like, you know, ancient. Ancient. And 40 used to think like, oh, they're really old too.

Yeah, right.

When you're like eight. You see a 40 year old.

Yeah, a 40 year old.

You'Re old, man, right? So, I still feel like I've, I'm a child in a lot of ways. Childlike energy.

Yeah, yeah, that's good.

Not child ish, but childlike energy. And I feel like you have that too.

Yeah.

You've got this, you know, joyful, youthful energy about you. If you could go back to 40, I mean, you've lived an amazing life. You've been changing the world for the last 40 years. But if you go back, is there anything you would do, add to support you for longevity now you know everything beyond what we talked about or anything you take away from habits you did to support you and in setting yourself up for these last 40 years and beyond.

You know, I grew up in a row house in Philadelphia in a city so I was pretty disconnected from nature and then I was, you know, in school for a long time. I think if I could go back, I would spend much more time out in nature and and in wilderness at an early age. Why is that? Because I think it is very good for your spirit as well as your physical being. And I would like to have had more time for that when I was young. I didn't eat very wisely in my early life. I didn't know. And I would probably adopt better eating habits early on. I probably practice my 478 breath earlier in life, things like that. Sure.

Yeah.

And speaking of the, you know, the.

Bad eating habits, what do you think are the foods that everyone should avoid? Oh, that's the biggest killer. That's very simple.

I mean, it's so simple. It's refined, processed and manufactured food. You know, it's, it's, that's, that's it. That simple. You know, you want to try to eliminate that. It's all the stuff, mostly all the stuff in the middle of the supermarket. You know, all the stuff you should eat. Yeah, right. It's all that. And that's, that's, that's the first, you know, I advocate an anti-inflammatory diet because, you know, chronic low level inflammation seems to be the root cause of most serious disease that kills and disables people prematurely. And the mainstream diet promotes inflammation. Yeah. And it's, and that all that Processed refined manufactured food gives us the wrong fats, the fats that promote inflammation, the wrong kinds of carbs, and not enough of the protective elements like those polyphenols.

And antioxidants that are mostly in fruits, vegetables, herbs, spices. What causes more inflammation in the brain?

Is it stresses of life or foods that cause that? I don't think you can separate that.

It's all of it. It's all of it. If you had to eliminate one, which one is less damaging, do you think? If you eat healthy perfectly, but you're constantly in a low level of stress or high level of stress versus I am around beautiful people in a great.

Environment, but I'm eating well for optimum health. And I quoted in it, I think she was 106, 106-year-old Russian woman who was asked what was the secret of her longevity. And she said, I never eat vegetables.

It was like they went against everything.

Right, right.

So.

And, you know, when you see people who've smoked all their lives and drink like fish and. And they're. So they have very good genes. They have good genes. Right.

But maybe they could have lasted longer.

Exactly. Right. Yeah.

I've never ate vegetables.

I never eat vegetables. That was their secret of her long life.

Oh, my goodness. Did she have a different type of diet? Was she like.

I think she ate meat and potatoes.

That's amazing.

Probably vodka.

Now, how we talked about this a little bit the last time, which I think is fascinating that you were willing to talk about relationship stuff, because I think it sounds like good social connections is the key to successful aging.

Right.

And probably a great intimate partner or relationships intimately are, can be supportive or hard.

You can't. Yeah, exactly. It can go either way.

Right.

Right.

Yeah.

How does one learn with your amount of wisdom to step into a healthy, loving relationship and sustain it?

Well, I think a big key we talked about this, you have to start by loving yourself.

Man, it's so good. That's why I love this guy. It's so good.

And that's a hard one for a lot of people, you know, that we seek love in an other person. We project something of ourselves onto them. But it has to start with loving yourself. And from that place you can, I think, enter into good relationships with other people.

When was the age where you feel like you fully loved and accepted yourself?

I think it was not until my, it might not have been until my 40s.

Really?

Yeah. So you're right at the cusp there.

Lots of pain and suffering before that. Yeah, yeah. really in your 40s?

Yeah.

I don't know that I want to go back and be young again. I mean, in some ways, I'd like to have a more elastic body and things like that. But I think things are easier now for me.

Why is that? Because you love yourself?

Yeah. And I think I'm more accepting of myself and more accepting of things. You know, I wrote a book on healthy aging and one of the things that one of the things I looked at was what what gets better with age? And what can we see? What are examples out there where we see that things improve with age? One of them I wrote about was cheese. We were talking about cheese.

Stinky cheese.

Okay, stinky cheese. So some cheeses get very better with age. Violins, old violins, old trees, you know, and you look at wine, you know, what are the qualities in these older things that we like? They're more complex, they're deeper, they have more character. Right, so you can see that in people as well. And you know that if we lived in a society where we valued old people instead of shutting them away, you know, they can be great repositories of wisdom. And I've interviewed a lot of older people about what they saw get better. Interesting answers. A lot of people felt that.

They.

Were more accepting of things as they got older. They had more equilibrium, that things didn't throw them off balance as much as when they were young. that's interesting.

They weren't as triggered or they could manage life easier.

I've heard some scientists say that their memories have gotten better with age and they think it's because they have more filed away so when something new comes along they have more to compare it to, to know where it fits. That's interesting when we think about cognitive decline, some things may get better.

What have been the main benefits for you?

With AIDS? I think greater self-acceptance, you know, definitely, as well. And in some ways, I'm sort of, I'm less patient with things and people that take up my time for no good reason. You know, I really want to spend time with people that make me feel good about myself, about the world.

So you say.

You say no to a lot of things that you maybe would have said yes.

Yeah, exactly. Right. Yeah. I think i'm more. More discriminating about it.

What was there a process or, like, a moment that allowed you to say, oh, actually, this. I can accept and love myself. And this is how i'm learning how to do it. Was there, like, a period of time?

No, I think it was gradual, but it was in my. In midlife. Definitely.

Did you have a crisis before then?

Did you go through midlife crisis? I had a period of depression. Really? Of several years, yeah. And that just lifted at some point. I think some of it was becoming more physically active, some of it was changing my diet, some of it was practicing meditation and my breathing technique, and some of it was, I think, a natural process that happened with getting older.

Yeah. I've never had a midlife crisis. I don't want to have a midlife crisis. It's not like a long, long, long, you never know. But what do you think causes that for people to go through a quarter-life crisis, midlife crisis, where they say, I'm just gonna change everything. I'm gonna go through a divorce. I'm gonna get married to this. I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna buy a sports car, whatever it is that happens for people. What causes a crisis?

I guess people sometimes feel stuck and it often just seems to happen around 40. that period.

Right. Do you think it's because people aren't in alignment with like where they think they should be going or they're not living their purpose?

I think that's a big one.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But you were living your purpose though during that time. You were doing the medicine stuff.

I was, I was off on my own and but you know, I was, you know, people thought I was crazy because I dropped out of medicine. I wasn't practicing. I was, you know, living like a hippie.

I was exploring other things.

Exploring, right. and I did not get a lot of reinforcement from the world for what I was doing, especially not back then. Back then. But I knew what I was doing was right and what I had to do.

Right.

So you lived in Germany for a while?

No, I visited there.

You lived in Mexico for a while.

I lived in South America for a while.

Columbia.

Columbia especially.

For how long?

About three and a half years.

What was it about the South American culture about longevity that inspired you.

Well, I was interested in, when I was growing up, I remember having a kids book. It was about, I think it was about a South American Village, but it was about the Andes Mountains. I thought they were my mountains, you know, Andes Mountains. So I developed this.

Yeah.

So my mountains were in my mountains.

Yeah. So I had this, I know someone. a deep thing I wanted to visit there. And then when I was a student at Harvard, my mentor there was Richard Schultes, who was the father of modern ethnobotany. And he had lived in the Amazon for 14 years and discovered all sorts of hallucinogenic plants. And he was a fascinating teacher. And he sent me down there to study medicinal plants. And so I think what really drew me down there was the culture that was very connected to nature and to plants. And so I learned a lot of things there. You know, I visited shamans and did all sorts of crazy stuff. Tried stuff, experimented.

Yeah, a lot of stuff. Interesting. How, you know, you joked about the woman who, you know, said my secret was not eating vegetables.

Yeah.

But how important are plants? in improving cognitive brain health in general?

Well, as I said, a lot of the main sources of these protective polyphenols and antioxidants are plants. And there's so many plants out there with so many different properties. And the foods that have become popular up here are such a small slice of what's possible. So I've also spent a lot of time in Asia and in other cultures, and I always am interested in the foods that people complete eat, and I've tried to bring them back here and turn people onto them.

Yeah.

What are the main foods that you try to have consistently like that are unique or different than kind of the standard American diet?

Well, I, you know, I, I use a lot of herbs and spices in my own cooking. You know, one of the one that I'm very big on these days is turmeric, you know, the yellow spice, which Indians eat every, every meal from infancy to old age. And in North America until recently, the only way we got it was in yellow mustard, which is more a turmeric preparation than mustard preparation. And in curry, it's what makes curry yellow. But now, when I was doing that research on aging, I made a number of trips to Okinawa, which at the time that I was doing it had the highest number of centenarians in the world. And I made a number of trips there and the diet there is astonishing. They have an incredible variety of sea vegetables, land vegetables, fish. It's not like the Japanese mainland Japanese diet. Okinawans are not Japanese, they're another, there's something else.

What's different than the mainland?

They drink jasmine tea, not green tea. They eat more pork and the pork is long cooked to reduce fat. They eat more tofu, the tofu has a higher fat content. they eat this great variety of unusual vegetables. But the beverage that I was very hot and humid when I was there at the time of year. And a very popular beverage was cold, unsweetened turmeric tea made from a fermented form of turmeric. Delicious, really delicious. And I just recently been able to bring it into this country and sell it through our matcha company, matcha.com. you can drink it hot or cold. But anyway, turmeric is the most powerful natural anti-inflammatory agent that we know of.

Turmeric.

Yep.

The most powerful, you think?

It is. It's the most powerful natural anti-inflammatory agent. A lot of research on it. And interestingly, India has the lowest rate of Alzheimer's disease in the world. And people think that has to do with the amount of turmeric they consume.

I think they're also like tightly social family ties.

It's like, they're not, I mean their cardiovascular health is not great, their food habits have changed, but they have some protection against Alzheimer's. And turmeric might be, that might be the factor that accounts for that. Wow. Yeah, so anyway, that's an example of something.

We have the lowest amount of Alzheimer's in the world.

Yes.

India. Is it regions of India or...

I think rural India especially. Yeah.

Wow.

So interesting, but that's, you know, turmeric is a good thing to include in your diet.

And even just like a turmeric supplement every day is a good thing.

Yeah, that's fine. And you have to cook with it, everything.

Right, all that.

You know, we can't like, we don't know how to cook with it, you know, like Americans.

It's not gonna taste good on a steak.

Yeah, and if you put too much, it's astringent, not pleasant. I had a student, a family physician from South India, and she was a very good cook. And she said, she tells her patients to try putting a level teaspoon of powdered turmeric in beans, bean dishes, stews, soups. That level of it is good. Yeah. But that fermented turmeric is a great drink. It's delicious. Interesting. Yeah.

I've never been able to get into fermented. It doesn't. This doesn't taste fermented. No.

Okay. That's good. But fermented things are good to get into.

I know.

That's what I hear. It's so good.

But if you like stinky cheese, why.

Don'T you like fermented? the sticky cheese is amazing. Well, that's a fermented product and that's.

Gotta live in the fridge. It's got a different smell and taste than like a liquidy or like a fermented, like, I don't know, vegetables. Like, I don't know, it just doesn't.

It'S just like a weird aftertaste. The stinky cheese. Maybe you've never had good fermented stuff. Maybe that's what it is. 'Cause to me, good fermented stuff, it's got a fresh, really fresh, crisp. I make my own sauerkraut, I make.

Kimchi, I make pickles.

It's really delicious. You need to, I gotta get you some good stuff.

I have the palate of a seven-year-old. No, if you like stinky cheese. Well, that's the only thing I can think of. But most stuff, like I'm very picky. That's the challenge.

What are the main benefits of fermented foods? Well, mostly you're eating, first of all, the foods are partially digested, so they're more assimilable. You know, the microorganisms have done work for you that your body doesn't have to do. But the living cultures are what's really important. This feeds your gut microbiome. And this is one of the most exciting revolutionary changes in medical thinking in my lifetime. When I was in medical school, I learned that we have these organisms in our gut and that assist in digestion and that was it. And that people who took, ate yogurt or took acidophilus supplements were health nuts. And now, the gut microbiome, it looks like it's involved in everything. It conditions your mental health, it influences your interactions with the environment. It's the key to health and how you move through the world. So, the gut microbiome in our society has changed for the worse. in recent years as a result of several things. One is incredible overuse of antibiotics, which do wreak havoc on the gut microbiome. Decline in breastfeeding, because breastfeeding provides organisms early in life. Increased consumption of these refined, processed, and manufactured foods, which feed the wrong kinds of organisms. And then finally, the unbelievable rise in cesarean deliveries. Because when babies are born, normally the organisms they pick up come from the birth canal and colonize the gut. When they're born by cesarean, they come from the skin and it's a different population of microorganisms and they get established for life. So, the combination of those things, I think, and this has to do with why there's a rise of allergies, autoimmune diseases, maybe things like ADHD. So, you want to keep your gut microbiome healthy. So, one way to do that is to eat fermented foods. Oh, man.

Sorry. If I don't like the smell of the taste of fermented foods, is there anything else besides kombucha?

Well, you can, no, you don't have to, I don't drink kombucha. I like sauerkraut, I like kimchi, good pickles, miso, Miso.

Yeah. Okay.

That's a good one.

All right.

Okay.

Yeah, that's fermented.

Yeah. This is a fermented.

It doesn't have the smell of the.

No, I hear you. You know what I mean?

Yeah.

Another one. Did you ever Tempeh? Yeah, I could eat Tempeh.

So Tempeh is a fermented soy food. Okay.

I don't like soy as much, but, I mean, if that's got the benefits all. Well, for me, the Tempeh doesn't taste like soy.

Yeah.

Yeah. It's like it's meaty. Right. Okay. So Tempeh. Okay. You can take You can take yogurt that has living cultures in it or kefir. You can take probiotic supplements, but they may not be as good as the foods. And, the other thing you do is make sure you're consuming enough prebiotics, which are foods that feed the beneficial microorganisms. And, that's mostly fiber containing foods.

Fibers.

Beans. Beans, vegetables, whole grains.

So you want prebiotics and probiotics both. You want to consume a lot of them daily or.

Prebiotics you should have on a regular basis. You know, that should just be part of your diet and probiotics, as, you know, whatever foods you can take or you can take, as I said, a probiotic supplement.

Sure, sure. Okay. All right. So if I, I'm going to have.

The palate of a seven-year-old take the probiotic supplements, but especially important if for any reason you have to take antibiotics, you know, it's really important. it will be from the moment you start taking the antibiotic.

What happens if you're taking antibiotics and you're not taking probiotics at the same time?

It drastically changes your gut microbiome. It wipes out a lot of the good organisms.

How long does it take to get back to like a healthy space?

We don't know. We don't know. I mean, maybe the body comes back pretty quick from that. I don't know. Wow.

It's important to take it before and during and after, sounds like.

Yeah.

To get it back to baseline. Man, because I just took some antibiotics a couple weeks ago from a dental surgery I had to take. And so it didn't get infected.

Right.

But it's, I should be overloading now in probiotics.

Yeah.

I was like, okay, see, I should have talked to you before.

I should have talked to you before. Too late now.

What is it? You mentioned that India is the lowest rate of dementia or Alzheimer's?

Alzheimer's.

What countries or regions are the highest rate of Alzheimer's?

Do we know? I don't know the answer to that. I mean, Alzheimer's is pretty consistent around the world.

Yeah.

So as I say, we don't-- It.

Seems lower in India.

It seems lower in India, rural Indian population.

Yeah.

But it's consistent around the world.

Yeah. There's not one country that has higher--.

Not that I know of.

Not that I know of. That'd be interesting to see.

Yes, maybe we do know that.

I don't know that.

It seems like there's an issue in America. I mean, maybe I'm just hearing about it, but is it, and when does.

It usually- well, you know, we used to call, when I was growing up, my mother's father was senile. So that's what we say, you know, people got senile. That was dementia. Now there's different forms of dementia. Alzheimer's is one kind of dementia that's associated with particular brain changes. So, maybe there's an increase in our population, maybe that's because we have more older people around. I don't know that it's actually increased. They may call it by a different name.

But there are a lot of people over a hundred who don't have decline as well.

Exactly.

Right.

But it sounds like they're doing a lot of these things correctly. They have strong social ties, they're doing the exercises in brain games or music or language exactly. They're doing something challenging for the brain that's like making think or puzzles or whatever it might be, they're also eating generally well, it sounds like, with these types of foods and polyphenols and antioxidants and all these different things and anti-inflammatory turmeric and stuff like that. So it sounds like they're doing more of these things. Obviously, there's exceptions. You hear someone smoking their whole life and living to 100. But in general, it sounds like you do a lot of these things, you could live a longer, healthier life.

Now, the other one is trying to do whatever you can to avoid Environmental toxins and that's not so easy. You know you can get a water filter for your home which is a good idea. You know maybe an air filter depending but I think things like getting plastics out of your life, avoiding secondhand smoke, you know just paying attention to all this like you know I'm a big proponent of organic agriculture not mostly not because I think the foods are necessarily more nutritious, but to avoid contamination with things you don't want. And, you know, it's gotten easier to get organic produce, but for many people it's difficult. Either it's not accessible or it's expensive. So a good thing to do is to learn which crops are most likely to be contaminated. And a good source of information on that, there's a group in Washington called the Environmental Working Group, EWG.org. and they periodically publish a list of what they call the Dirty Dozen, which are the 12 most contaminated crops. Strawberries are always at the top of the list. Other things like green beans, and then they have also a Clean Fifteen list, which is the least contaminated things like avocados and bananas. So, if you're buying something from the Dirty Dozen list, it's probably worth making an effort to get it organic or not eat it.

Got it.

From the Clean 15 list doesn't matter. So that's a way of. Yeah, it's a way of trying to.

Get organic on that list if possible. But isn't sometimes like organic still has chemicals or pesticides even if it says organic?

I mean, no, we have good organic standards now. I mean, the industry is constantly trying to whittle them away. Okay. But we've beaten it back so far. I mean, there was when they first got that USDA organic certification. I remember there was an attempt to allow, the industry wanted to allow sewage sludge to be put on crops and still call it organic.

Oh my gosh.

We beat that back.

Wow.

Yeah. But if it's got that seal on it, it's good. Now, however, also realize that it costs money for farmers to get that certification. So small farmers often can't afford that. So if you're at local farmers markets and small growers often growers will say that they're pesticide free, you know, they can't afford the USDA organic certification, but they'll say that their crops, they don't use pesticides, so it's still good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I also, you know, don't keep poisons around the house, herbicides, you know, pesticides, all of those things, you don't want to be exposed to them.

When you mentioned plastics, avoiding plastics, what does that include? That includes plastic bottles, living with plastic in your life?

Yeah, as much as possible. because what you see happening is that plastics that we've always considered safe turn out not to be.

Like what?

I don't remember what the latest one that I've seen.

Like drinking out of a plastic bottle.

Or like... Yeah, drinking out of a plastic bottle. Using plastic storage dishes for food. You know, use glass instead. Use glass bottles.

Or tin or something else. Yeah.

With plastic wrap for food, there's Some of the merkins have chemicals called phthalates in them.

Classic wrap, like a wrap to spoil the food.

Yeah, but there are some brands that don't have that.

So don't get plastic when you're wrapping this.

Or look again, use that EWG site that I gave you, they rate all these products.

EWG.org is the website.

Yeah, the Environmental Working Group, EWG.org. They also have, you can look up things like cosmetic products, shampoos and lotions, creams and deodorants, and they'll tell you which ones, you know, they have a color code, green being safe and red being no. Yeah, that's very useful.

EWG has a lot of this stuff on all these products out in the market.

Online, right. And they're rated by particular brands. Really?

Yeah.

Based on how environmentally friendly or if they have plastics or chemicals.

What chemicals? Yeah, all that.

Right.

They test them and, you know, it's a very good organization.

Okay, I'm gonna look at that for sure.

Yeah.

Who is more likely to go through cognitive decline in general, men or women? And why do you think?

I don't know the answer to that. You know, women live longer than men, and we don't know why that is either. When you look around the world at areas where there are, you know, people over 100, When you get up in those age ranges, it's mostly women. There's one exception that I know is the island of Sardinia off Italy, that a high population of centenarians and men and women are equal and nobody knows why.

Really? But there it's more equal versus other places.

Yeah, other places women greatly outnumber men when you get up in the upper 90s and 100s. There's one theory that the Y chromosome is toxic. that it produces toxic gene products that do men in. I don't know. Interesting answer to that. I mean, it's also possible that men engage in more physically risky behaviors. It's also like the size, you know.

It'S like, is it harder to pump blood and recover when you're bigger, you know, physically than a woman?

Yeah.

I don't know if that has something to do with it. And maybe in Sardinia, there may be like tinier men. I don't know.

We don't know. I haven't been there, so I can't say.

Yeah, yeah. what do you think is, you've been in this kind of health and wellness industry for a long time. You've seen Trends come and Trends go. You've seen new discoveries happen over the last, you know, 40, 60 years. What do you feel like we're missing in this, you know, Health World that we need to be focusing on more, that we haven't actually leaned into or discovered yet? And what do you also think? will be happening over the next five to ten years with new discoveries.

Can I say a word about psychedelics? Can say what? A word about psychedelics. I never thought I'd write another book. I've written 15 books. My publisher has persuaded me to write a book on psychedelics. So I'm just starting work on that. And it's titled, Psychedelics Can Save the World, which I truly believe. And I've been involved with them. since way, way back. And I am very excited to watch this, what's happening with them. You know, they are really entering the mainstream. I think they have tremendous potential for healing. And I'm a little disappointed that all the attention has been on the possibilities of using them in psychiatric medicine for depression and PTSD and so forth, which, you know, is great. But I think they have incredible potential for physical healing as well because I've seen that again and again. And frankly, I think it's the only thing I see out there that has a potential to save us from disaster. Really? Yeah, because we are clearly headed for disaster. And it's only going to be through a transformation of consciousness that I think we can save ourselves and they have the potential to do that. and it is amazing. Before the pandemic when I was traveling around a lot and speaking, no matter where I was and what I was talking about, whether it was on anti-inflammatory diet or integrative medicine or healthy aging, the questions I get would be about psychedelics. Where can I get them? How can I take them? How can I do this? A few months ago Vogue magazine had a cover story on psilocybin. Town and Country magazine of all places recently had an article titled, titled why is everybody smoking toad venom? I mean, this is like clearly becoming a mainstream phenomenon. And sooner or later, sooner I hope, they will be forced out of the restrictive drug schedule they're now in and they'll become available. And I think the potential out there is tremendous. And I've seen remarkable physical healings in people, instantaneous, you know, of lifelong patterns that can change just by changing something in your head.

Now, I want to ask you a question about this because I've never taken psychedelics. I've never been high, I've never been.

Drunk in my life.

Well, that's admirable. I don't know if that's admirable or just a choice I've decided to make. Now, it doesn't mean I didn't have pain and suffering in other ways and maybe getting high and smoking weed would have helped me relieve certain pains. I don't know because I've never done it. But I want to ask you a question about this because I think it's interesting. I've been conflicted with psychedelics. I know a lot of people that do them and swear by them. and say they've had these miraculous healings. I'm like, that's awesome if it's supporting you. And then I see other people that keep taking them and nothing changes. But they swear by it. Well, I had this healing, but then they're still in darkness. And it's like, okay, you know, is it something we use consistently or is it a tool that unlocks us to start integrating like holistic.

I don't think it's something you use consistently.

Okay.

And also weed is not as like it does.

Right, right. But I mean, just like drugs, weed, but psychedelics in general.

Yeah, no, I think for many people, a single experience with them, or occasional experience, does it.

Is enough.

Yeah, and I wrote, my first book was called the Natural Mind, and it was about altered states of consciousness and drugs written in, it's 50 years ago, came out, still in print, and still used.

And.

Alan Watts gave a blurb for the book.

Wow.

And there was a quote that I really like, referring to using drugs frequently. He said, When you get the message, you hang up the telephone.

You don't need to keep using it.

No, exactly.

Now here's another question for you. You studied meditation and spirituality and a lot of these different things and studied with a lot of people as well, have done that. I have found that in my meditative practices, when I truly allow myself to be in calm, consistently. Now, this might take days to go so I can get to that point where I'm like fully disconnected from stresses and environmental things that are causing me to feel triggered or reactive. But when I am able to go to those places, which, you know, it's a privilege to be able to do that and take a few days and do that, I get it. But when I'm able to do that, I feel like I'm having the most transcendental journeys in my mind. and feeling the physical benefits of that as well, of healing through my own internal pharmacy, let's say, without an external thing causing the pharmacy internally to transform. It's also with the integrative of constant healing and applying the lessons I learned from that and having support in that ways, which allows me to keep integrating it. So what are your thoughts on first practicing like other holistic ways before the psychedelics. I'm all for it. If you've tried everything, you've spent time in nature, you've done different therapies, and you're still suffering and there's no way out. What I get worried about is when people say, I feel like I'm stressed. Let me take a psychedelic. Or I feel like I'm overwhelmed and I'm just like, I don't know how to manage this. Let me take a psychedelic.

That's my only concern. Well, that's not how I think they should be used.

Right.

I think there should be preparation for the experience and so forth. First of all, it's very likely that we have an endogenous psychedelic in our brains.

Inside of us?

Yeah, it's probably DMT, which is found in many plants in that psychedelic toad. It's probably produced in the pineal gland and may be when you have profound experiences through other methods. there's a release of that in the brain. So, that's the first thing.

The third eye, getting into the pineal gland and moving the energy up into the pineal gland and having that DMT experience, we can create that without the drug.

But I think the transformative experience that I've seen have mostly resulted when people have been prepared, have done preparation for the use not taking it casually and not to sort of fix themselves.

Right, right. Okay.

Yeah.

I'm just a big, I'm all for learning and exploring, but I'm also like, man, I've never done that stuff. So, I know you have, but I know there's other healing modalities that are available without that.

True. However, the other healing modalities tend to be slow. True. And the psychedelic can provide that almost instantaneously.

True. Just going to talk therapy, you may not get those results. It might take years of going once a month before you get very little results.

I heard a wonderful, I don't know who said this about talk therapy, is that when you've got a poisoned arrow in you, you want to know how to get it out. You don't want to know how it got there.

And that's why I think when I've had to try to take the approach of extreme you know, measures when it comes to, like, healing, like, really diving into, like, intensive Workshop, really diving into, like, intent. I've done eight hour therapy sessions where I'm like, no, let's get to the roots.

Like, give it to me.

Yeah. So I think you've got to be willing to go there. Yeah, I agree. If you don't take the psychedelics, you're gonna say, I'm gonna face this pain.

Head on, bring it on.

Let's go. I'm willing to open up and. And do the work. Yeah. Because if you don't, it's gonna just continue to suffer. so anyway, that's my caveat for my consciousness to make sure I speak about that as well. But I know I have friends who swear by Ayahuasca and different psychedelics that have supported them in awakening things that are holding them back. But you still got to take the action consistently once you're aware of it.

Well, we'll see what happens, but I'm very hopeful about seeing this.

You think that's going to be the next wave though?

Yeah.

I hope people do it. consciously and effectively. Of course, this is a casual thing. It's not a challenge. Anything else you feel like we're missing that is going to be coming after psychedelics in terms of healing and wholeness?

I'm a big proponent of mind-body medicine. And actually, it's something that I've learned from psychedelics is that by changing things in your head, you can change things in your body and in the external world. and that that has been so ignored in medicine, you know, conventional medicine and science, really don't believe in the mind and that the mind can affect the body. Really?

Yeah.

Our thoughts.

Yeah.

Can affect the body.

Yeah.

Our thoughts do affect the body.

Yeah, obviously. But that's. That's not taken advantage of. It's not acknowledged. And it's because our science and medicine are totally dominated by a materialistic. paradigm which does not see the reality of the non-physical. I think that's going to change and I think that'll bring a lot of good, it'll free a lot of things up.

There's so many frequencies that are not physical, not material. You know, the frequency of thinking, the frequency of feeling love. Those are frequencies that you can't measure physically, right?

But they're real.

And you talked about last time how you allowed yourself to heal more when you when you created love and you felt loved by another human and got into relationships, your body healed.

Yeah.

So how do we study that and how do we get into that next of like studying the mind and the emotions with?

Well, there, there, we're creeping up on it. You know, these new techniques of brain imaging, you know, we can, we can image living brains and we've been able to show that placebo responses really are, are associated with actual activity in certain brain regions or that experienced meditators have changes in the size of certain areas of the brain. So, this begins to make it real for people.

Yeah, I went to a seven-day meditation retreat with Dr. Joe Dispenza a few months ago and he had a lot of different scientists there, I guess, studying, I don't know, 15 different test points, I guess, from brain imaging to blood to feces to saliva to all these things, everyday mapping and exploring the benefits. And it's amazing to see the natural pharmacy that we have in terms of healing ourselves with thinking, with breathing, like.

You talked about the 4-7-8 breath.

This is a healing experience and incorporating the mind-body, I think, is a very powerful thing. How can we start to learn to teach this earlier so kids have this philosophy.

You just do it. I mean, you can teach kids the 4-7-8 breath, for example.

This is beautiful stuff. I'm very excited about this and I'm excited about everything you're creating and the message you bring to the world. I want to mention, before I ask the final questions, I want to mention about your website at matcha.com. this thing is pretty cool. I'm going to try this integrative hydration matcha plus electrolytes.

Yeah.

Which I think is really cool.

I'm a big fan of electrolytes. But we'll try this. Well, try this. Because it's for the polyphenols and the antioxidants and all that good stuff. And, you know, while there is caffeine in matcha, it's moderated by this other amino acid, L-theanine, that has a calming effect. So, the stimulation of tea and matcha in particular is very different from that of coffee and other caffeine plants. It's like calm alertness people describe. Really?

Yeah.

So, it's not a jittery, not jittery, like coffee.

No.

Gotcha. So, when you add matcha with electrolytes, what does that do?

It adds. Well, it's very tasty, first of all. You know, it's a very pleasant drink. You get, you know, a nice alert feeling from it. It's good. I'm a big fan of matcha and, you know, I started this company matcha.com brings high quality matcha and turmeric fermented turmeric also.

So now you got fermented turmeric there as well.

Yeah.

It's amazing. I love matcha.com it's a great domain.

I'm inspired by it. And we'll give you know your listeners a discount. What do we got?

Just the code is SOG. SOG. And they get a discount.

Yeah.

Awesome.

What do they get?

How much off do we know?

I don't remember what it is. They'll give you a percentage.

I'll give you a percentage.

Go to matcha.com Use S-O-G when you check out and you'll get it. We'll get you a discount there. I love that. And what is the main website for you where people can go?

It's drweil.com, D-R-W-E-I-L.com and also I recommend that people check out the Integrative Medicine Center at the University of Arizona. It's integrativemedicine.arizona.edu. There are a lot of wonderful educational offerings including number for general public.

Okay, cool. I asked you these two questions last time, my final questions. I'm curious where you're at at this season of life from almost two years later. Before I ask them, I want to acknowledge you, Dr. Weil, for how you keep showing up and keep being curious and keep trying to bring new ideas to the world and exploring and adapting them so that we can consume them. So, I really acknowledge you for your generous wisdom to bring to all of us to optimize our health. I asked you this last time, so I'll have to go back and look and see what your experience was. But it was the three truths question, three truths. So imagine you get to live as long as you want to live and accomplish everything you want to accomplish for the rest of your life. But for whatever reason, you got to take all of your work and your message with you. So we don't have this conversation, your books, everything's gone for whatever reason, hypothetical. But you get to share three lessons of wisdom you would share with the world from everything you've known about your life? I call it three truths you would share. What would be those three truths for you?

Well, I think one of them is everything is as it should be.

It's hard for people to accept.

I know. I think another one is that you have the ability to heal yourself.

And.

That.

It's really important to love yourself.

Why do you think most people are never taught how to love themselves?

That's a good question.

Yeah.

It's almost like that should be one of the first things.

Absolutely.

How to love and accept who you are. Even if you're not where you want to be, you can still love and accept who you are and the mistakes you've made and move forward. And that's gonna be my next book, How to Love Yourself, right? Figure that out.

Good.

I love those three truths. This is the final question. What is your definition of greatness?

I think really using your full potential.

There you go.

Yeah.

Dr. Wilder, thank you so much.

Appreciate it.

Pleasure. If you enjoyed that interview, then I know you'll love what we have coming up right now. What would you say are the brain foods that would actually help increase.

The.

Function of our mood to feeling better, not in an addictive, I need this all the time McDonald's hit, but overall calming, happy, healthy mood.

Well, I think that Omega-3 source is huge. We know those are really necessary for brain health. So, oily fish are the best sources. I think there are some of the mushrooms, the one, most studied is lion's mane, which is a very good edible mushroom, but that really looks as if it improves cognitive function and protects the brain. I think anti-inflammatory agents like turmeric, ginger are great.

Olive oil is great.

Olive oil, of course.

Do you take supplements yourself?

I do. I take a, you know, a multi-nutrient supplement. I take CoQ10. I Magnesium, I take a number of mushroom formulas.

Really? And you make them yourself?

I don't make them, but a friend of mine does and I'm a great believer in mushrooms and their medicinal benefits.

How long have you been studying mushrooms?

Geez, probably since the 1970s also. You know, I first became interested in, well, I grew up, my mother was very fearful of mushrooms, as many people were. You know, she said, Don't even touch them, you'll get poisoned.

Really?

Yeah. And so I first got interested in food mushrooms and then started when I began reading about Chinese medicine to see how much they were valued in Chinese medicine. And in Western medicine, we never paid any attention to them. So that interested me. And I began looking at what are the effects of these things and why are they so much loved in Asia? And they're really interesting. A lot of these affect immunity, resistance to cancer, viruses, You know, they're just, they're great.

So.

I began, you know, I really became knowledgeable about mushrooms.

Really?

Yeah.

So, you take them daily or weekly?

Yeah, I take, yeah. And I eat mushrooms whenever I get the chance.

Mushrooms are powerful, huh?

They're real powerful.

Wasn't there a documentary called like the Magic Power of Mushrooms or something?

I'm sure.

You see this on Netflix, I think.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

How many species of mushrooms?

Countless. I don't think we know. Thousands, right? Yeah, thousands and thousands. And the percentage of them that can kill you is very tiny. So, when you go out, you know, when you learn to pick wild mushrooms, the first thing you want to do is learn the ones that can kill you. And those are fairly easy to learn. And then once you learn those and avoid them, you can experiment. And the worst thing you're going to get is a stomach ache of one sort or another.

For a few hours and you'll be fine. Yeah. Tell me Tell me, talk to me about teas, because I'm interested in teas and the power of teas. And what is the purpose of tea and why do people drink it so much in general?

Okay, first of all, tea all comes from one plant. It's Camellia sinensis, the tea plant. A lot of things people call teas are herbal infusions, you know, that aren't made from the tea plant. So, chamomile tea is not tea. It's not tea. Rooibos tea is not tea.

What is it? It's just herbs.

It's an herbal infusion. you know, but if you're talking strictly about tea, it's all from this one species of plant.

Where does this species grow? It can grow anywhere.

Yeah, it's native to China and India, but it can, I hear people are cultivating tea in Oregon now. I haven't tried any of it yet. Anyway, so it can grow over a wide, you know, in, can't take frost, but it can grow in, you know, a lot of different areas. But then there are many varieties of depending on how the tea is grown, how it's treated, whether it's steamed, dried, roasted, toasted, how long it's oxidized, and you've got like everything from white tea, which is very delicate, green tea, oolong tea, black tea, and you know, there's all sorts of different preferences. When I was growing up, tea was what old people and sick people drank.

Right, right. Or iced tea on a hot summer day. With a lot of sugar in it, yeah.

And the only tea that we had available was tea in bags. And that's the common stuff is literally the sweepings from the floor of tea estates. So it's been only relatively recently that people in this country have become aware of good tea.

What are the benefits of tea? Why drink tea?

Well, it's agreeable. I mean, throughout, for centuries, people have found it to be agreeable. It's a stimulant. It's got caffeine.

All tea, or I guess.

All true tea has caffeine. Some has more than others.

Like a mint tea that's non-caffeine.

That's not tea. There is, however, mint-flavored tea. So you gotta read the label.

That's with caffeine.

Yes, that's with caffeine. Caffeine, right. Now, the stimulation, however, of tea is very different from that of coffee. Coffee has more caffeine in it, but they have different other things in them. And tea has a compound called L-theanine that you've probably heard of that's a relaxant. and I think that combination really affects the quality of stimulation of caffeine.

So, it's got caffeine which gives you sharper energy but also a relaxation.

Yeah, so people, you know, I think it describe it as a relaxed alertness.

Interesting.

Different from the stimulation of coffee which I personally think is much more jangling.

A jittery alertness versus a calm alertness.

Exactly.

A focused alertness.

Exactly. Now, the other observation I make, I don't want to bash coffee too badly, but I see an awful lot of people who are addicted to coffee and physically addicted. If they try to stop, they have a withdrawal syndrome. It's like lethargy and then a pounding headache and it lasts for 48 hours and instantly relieved if you have some coffee.

You don't see that with tea.

Rarely. I need my tea.

Yeah, I need my tea. Rarely.

I'm on my tea. Exactly. And also, when I was actively seeing patients, I used to say that I would produce one miracle cure a week by getting somebody to stop drinking coffee. And it was from everything from hand tremors to irregular heartbeats, to bladder problems, GI problems, stomach problems, a whole range of stuff. And they had no idea that the coffee was doing it to them.

But you got them off the coffee and they were like, two weeks later, they were fine.

Fine. And these were often problems that had been going on for years and nobody ever told them, though.

You're breaking people's hearts.

Nobody ever told them, though. Exactly right. But also there's a huge variation in how people respond to caffeine in general and coffee in particular. I see people who have no idea that the one cup of coffee they have in the morning is the reason they can't sleep at night. And I see other people who can drink a pot of coffee at bedtime and fine. So, you got to find out where you are on that spectrum.

Yeah, I can have a cappuccino at night, like 10 o'clock and pass out the next day.

So, you're relatively caffeine insensitive.

Yeah.

Not that I need it. I just like little taste or whatever. And I wonder, and I'll drink it in the mornings and it doesn't give me more energy. I feel like I have energy.

Right.

But when people say they get energy from coffee, it's their energy. You know, coffee just bunches it up. and when it wears off, you're left with a depletion of energy. Really?

What do you mean?

It's their energy of bunches it up. Caffeine isn't giving you a gift of coffee isn't giving you a gift of energy. It's like it's forcing your body to.

Give up chemically stored energy that it.

Would normally not release all at once. Like stored where in the fat cells or in the... No, in all cells. It's in all cells, energetic compounds in all cells. But when you release that energy, then when the drug wears off, you have depletion of energy.

And you feel tired.

Yeah, you have a crash.

And why does tea not do that specifically?

Probably because it's first because it's less caffeine so it's gentler stimulation and it's also got this other compound that moderates the thing. So, I guess you can find, you could find tea addicts. I don't see them very often. And, I don't see many people who say they get a crash from tea. From tea drinking. And also coffee does have, you know, there are health benefits of coffee, but there's been a tremendous amount of research on health benefits of tea, especially green tea.

Like, what are the benefits?

Overall lower death rates.

Really?

Yeah, there's a huge population study in Japan.

Is that because of the tea or because of all the other factors, the environment, friends?

We don't know, but there's a clear association between the more tea people drink, lower causes, all causes of death. It's got improved cardiovascular health, lower rates of cancer, you know, all sorts of stuff like that. And, of the various forms of tea, personally, I think green tea has been most studied.

Here's the thing, when I drink green tea in the morning with no food, it makes me feel a little upset.

Like, I've thrown up before.

I have heard this from people.

I get a little nauseous sometimes. I hear this from people, so you want to have food in your stomach.

Right.

That's fairly simple fix.

Gotcha. Gotcha.

Why is that, do you think? I don't know. And it's- If it's coffee, I'm fine. I mean, interesting.

I don't know. I don't drink coffee in the morning and not eat all day. I do not know why.

Maybe there's a compound in the tea stimulating something.

Possibly. Interesting.

So, my preferred form is matcha green.

Tea, which is the powdered tea. Yeah, but matcha doesn't make me feel sick.

Okay, good.

I like matcha. Oh, good. I'm glad to hear that.

You gotta try our matcha, which is the best. Which you guys have, I mean, the.

Best domain in the tea world of matcha.com.

Yeah, what was a good score?

I mean, why, why is, why did you get in, how did you get in the matcha?

When I was 17, I was on a student exchange program. This was 1959. No, actually it was an experimental school called the International School of America.

Your whole life just sounds woo-woo out there, which I love.

This was great. I got to travel around the world for nine months. and live with native families in different countries. It's changed my life. Anyway, a quick story there before you tell it.

My dad, we had seven exchange students live with us when I was a kid. So, it's like we didn't have the money to travel.

Right, but you brought it to you.

We brought it to me. So, we had people from all over the world teaching us the culture and.

The food and the language. There was a substitute for that. Amazing. No substitute for that for knowing about other cultures. Yeah. Anyway, so I lived with Japanese families outside of Tokyo and Kobe and the Japanese family outside of Tokyo, there were supposed to be a student studying English, but there was no language.

No one spoke English.

So the second night that I was there, the mother through gestures made known she wanted to take me next door to her neighbor who was a tea ceremony practitioner. So it was cool. So the three of us sat around And this woman in Kimono made matcha. So first of all, the color of the matcha just blew me away. I mean, it's this brilliant green powder. I'd never seen green like that. And then the whisk that they whisked it in a bowl to a froth is a marvel of Japanese craftsmanship carved from a single piece of bamboo. And that whisk just, oh, I loved that. I wanted one of those. So I then in the 1970s, I began going to Japan. fairly regularly for different things. And whenever I'd go, I'd bring matcha back and turn people onto it. Nobody had ever heard of matcha. And I'd make it for people. And somewhere in the 80s, maybe 90s, I started importing matcha from a company in Japan that I met and selling it on my website, drweil.com way ahead of its time. You know, there was no awareness of matcha.

Starbucks made it popular.

Yeah, yeah. But then watching matcha suddenly become popular here, I was amazed but also disappointed that so much of the matcha here was terrible.

Well, it's just sugar infused.

But also the matcha itself, because it's such a fine powder, it's got a huge surface area, it oxidizes very quickly. So if it's not stored properly, it loses that ring color, becomes sort of yellowish green or gray green, it gets bitter and a lot of people, that's the only matcha they've tried, is stuff like that. So I really wanted to turn people onto good matcha.

What are the benefits of matcha in general?

Well, it's the only form of tea in which the whole leaf is consumed. And it's got a higher content of antioxidants and flavor compounds than that L-theanine and other forms of tea. So it's grown in an unusual way. like they're specialty plants. And starting about three weeks before they harvest it, they cover the plants with shade cloth. That's about a 90% shade cloth, so pretty dark. And in response to that, the leaves get bigger- To try to get the sun. To get bigger and thinner. They produce more chlorophyll to try to make more energy. And they produce more antioxidants and more flavor compounds. And then The leaves are harvested, steamed, dried, aged, and then they're ground between stones. It used to be done by hand, now they're sort of mechanically driven, but it's these grooved granite stones to this superfine powder. And so it's a special form of tea that has higher content of all the good stuff.

I'm gonna have to come to Tucson and have you make me some of this stuff.

I would love to do that.

Whisk it up for me. I would love to go to Japan. find a specialty place and but meantime.

You can get it from our website matcha.com matcha.com there you go you guys.

Teach how to make it to you.

And there's instructional videos we sell everything everything everything's all there that's exciting yeah that's fun so it's been fun to.

Turn people onto that so why matcha over jasmine or green what's the I.

Think it's personal preference whatever you like I like the first of all I just like the look of matcha I like the taste of it I like the ritual of whisking it. Well, you can do it any way you want.

And is it, you know, the Starbucks way is like you put almond milk in it or something, but how would you, is this with water?

Is this with milk? Yeah, I like it just with water, no sweetener. That's just the way I like it. I also like iced matcha. I use an electric whisk in room temperature water and then put ice cubes in it. And when it's hot weather, I like that a lot. Wow. to drink green things.

What's the, are you drinking one tea a day? Do you have more than that?

I'd say one a day.

For you?

Yeah, usually one a day or early in the day. I mean, occasionally I'll have another one, but I usually don't need more than one.

What's your nighttime ritual?

My nighttime ritual, I eat early.

What's that?

Five, seven. Four to five, I would say.

That's your dinner.

Yeah, I like to cook. so even if I'm by myself, you know, I usually cook for myself, simple stuff, but I, you know, I like simple, delicious things.

So.

And I like cooking for other people. And then after dinner, I like to often read, watch movies, depending on the weather, of course. I mean, if it's off of Fullerton, BC, and it's late till 10 o'clock, I'm, you know, Outdoors and.

Right.

Right.

You live in a dream. You've done so many different interesting things. What's the thing you're most proud of that you've created?

There is now a center at the University of Arizona College of Medicine named the Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine.

That's pretty cool.

Yes.

That's pretty cool.

And we're the world leader in education in this field. Wow. You know, as I said, we've graduated over 2,000 physicians from our trainings. We train medical students. We have our curriculum in 80 residency programs. We train other health professionals. We train chiropractors, dentists, nurses in integrative medicine. And I've always said one day we'll be able to drop the word integrative. It'll just be good medicine. And that's coming.

And integrative is, is that the exclusion of medicine, like traditional medicine?

No, it builds on conventional medicine.

So you still can prescribe traditional Yeah.

You know, I've always said if I'm in a serious car accident, I don't want to first go it away to a Christian Science practitioner or a chiropractor or shaman. I want to go to a trauma center and get put back together. But then I'd use other methods I know to speed up healing. So, I think the, frankly, one of the things I can see happening, I think that a lot of smaller and community hospitals aren't going to be there in the future. I think nobody's going to be able to afford that stuff and that what we call conventional medicine, allopathic medicine, that may become a specialty for dealing with trauma, for critical illness, and there'll be one large facility in cities that has all the hardware, and there'll be new kinds of institutions that'll come into being that I think of as healing centers. That's one possible future.

You've seen the obesity go up in America since the last 50 years. It probably wasn't two-thirds back then. It's probably one-third maybe, or not even, I don't know that. what it was back then.

Well, I remember watching, you know, a few years ago I watched the whole Ken Burns documentary on World War II. Okay. It was on PBS. And there were many crowd scenes, both military and civilian, thousands of people. You don't see a single fat person in those crowds.

Is it because they didn't have the money to buy food?

Is it because they were... No, it's not. And you know, the other interesting thing is if you look what people were eating in those days, they didn't know a lot of what we know now.

They weren't processing food as much too.

So, yeah, so I mean, but people ate, you know, they were eating potato, meat and potatoes and pies and whatever. But it was real food made from scratch. You know, they were not eating manufactured food. They weren't eating fast food. There was no fast food then.

Right.

But there's an enormous change in how people looked. You know, I read, it was a book that came out a few years ago that was trying to argue that the obesity epidemic was an artifact of statistics, the way we were measuring people. bullshit. You just look at this, you know, it's like unbelievable how people have changed.

Everyone was fit or looked runner back then, right? And now everyone looks fatter. What do you think in the next 50 years we're gonna be as a country in terms of obesity?

You know, I saw this a couple years ago. I read that the military is really having problems finding people who are qualified for military service because of obesity. So if it's really, so if it's threatening national defense, you'd think, you know, now people are going to take it seriously, we've got to do something.

Just because they're not in shape enough to pass the test, the physical test.

Yeah.

You know, we're in such a mess in this country with regard to food and nutrition, it's hard to know where to start. Where I would start is if we could get people to stop drinking sweet liquids.

Right.

That would be, we had to put it so far out of the curve. Soda pop. And it's not just soda pop, it's also fruit juice, it's energy drinks, it's putting sugar and coffee and tea, all the Starbucks magic. That would be one place to start, just to not drink sweet liquids.

You know, that would be a big step.

What about alcohol consumption? I don't, you know, sure, I think, you know, the whole key with alcohol is moderation.

Yeah.

You know, there's constant arguments about whether it's beneficial or harmful. And I think moderation is the key. I don't think that's nearly as big a factor as sugar.

And when you created the anti-inflammatory diet, right, when was that?

Long ago. And, you know, I have a history of being ahead of the curve in a lot of areas now that I've been able to foresee see trends. I was, I think, the first people to warn people about trans fats 10 years before people took notice of that. So, I became aware of this beginning of this hypothesis that chronic inflammation was the root cause of a lot of different kinds of serious chronic diseases. And that just fascinated me because when I was in medical school, I was taught that cardiovascular disease had nothing in common with cancer and that had nothing in common with Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease. And now suddenly it looks like all of these things are linked. They have a common root of chronic inflammation. Inflammation. And if that's the case, the good news is then there's a common strategy for dealing with them if you can reduce inappropriate inflammation. So, I think there's a lot of misunderstanding about inflammation. Inflammation is the cornerstone of the body's healing response.

Inflammation is good when you're in pain.

Well, it's good, you know, it's the way the body gets more nourishment and more immune activity to an area that's injured or under attack. So, we all know it on the surface of the body, you know, it's redness, swelling, you know, pain, heat, but we aren't aware of it necessarily internally and especially if it's low level. Inflammation is so powerful and it's so potentially destructive that it's very important that it ends when it's supposed to end and stay where it's supposed to stay. So, you don't want it throughout your body. No, information persists. If it outlives its purpose, then it causes disease. And it looks now, if you can't produce enough inflammation, you're vulnerable to infection. If you produce too much inflammation, you're vulnerable to allergies and autoimmunity. And it looks like if you've got low-level chronic inflammation going on for a long time, you greatly increase risks of cardiovascular disease, of neurodegenerative disease, and cancer. And so I think one of the best things we can do is learn how to contain it. So what are the factors that influence it? It's partly genetic, it's stress, exposure to environmental toxins is a big one. Secondhand cigarette smoke is a very powerful pro-inflammatory agent. But diet has a huge influence, and that's one that's potentially under control.

Right.

And I think there's no question that the mainstream North American diet is strongly pro-inflammatory it gives us the wrong kinds of fats, the wrong kinds of carbs, and not enough of the protective elements, which are mostly in fruits, vegetables, herbs, spices, tea, things like that.

Yeah. So, what would be the anti-inflammatory diet?

So, a base of high quality produce, you know, and the government always tells us to eat more fruits and vegetables. But the emphasis really should be on vegetables because fruits are sugar sources. And you want to, you know, veggies. More veggies. More veggies. You want to avoid pro-inflammatory fats, which are things like, you know, hydrogenated fats, margarine, vegetable shortening, and the polyunsaturated vegetable oils. Okay, so, you know, you want to eat Olive oil should be your main thing. Main thing.

Fat, avocado oil.

Avocado oil, yeah. Gotcha. Nuts, seeds, good. They're good, yep. Yes. In terms of carbohydrate, it's not that carbohydrates are bad, it's that you want to reduce consumption of quick digesting ones, the ones that turn quickly into blood sugar. So, everything made with flour, and that's all the snack foods, all the, you know, it's everything. Everything, yeah. and sweeteners in general. I mean, that doesn't mean you live without sugar completely, but you want to really keep that to a minimum.

So, is this all flour or is this just more?

It's all flour. I think the one of the almond flour and- well, that's a nut. So, that's better. But with grains, I think there's such misunderstanding. If I ask people to name a whole grain food, the usual answer I get is whole wheat flour or whole wheat bread. Where's the whole wheat bread is not a whole grain food. Where's the grain? You know, it's and the FDA doesn't get that. They let that put labels on it saying this is a whole grain food and good for you. Most whole wheat bread is colored white bread. You know, when you have a grain, the starch is tightly compacted, very dense, and it's surrounded by a more or less by a fibrous brand and it takes time for digestive enzymes to get in there and convert the starch to sugar. When you mill a grain into flour, whether or not the bran is present, whether or not the germ is present, you convert the starch into a material with an infinite surface area, and it's a snap for digestive enzymes to turn that into sugar. So, people don't understand this. You know, it's that there is a big difference between a whole grain you can see your grain cracked into a few big pieces and flour.

Mushrooms have an incredible array of compounds.

These polysaccharides, that turn out are immune.

Modulating, anti-cancer, adaptogenic, and so we need to be including a lot more good mushrooms. And you can take mushrooms as supplements, but you can also eat a lot more of the good mushrooms.

Also, garlic and onions are really important for sulfur.