These Foods & Habits BOOST BRAIN HEALTH & End Inflammation! | Andrew Weil & Lewis Howes

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, I think you gotta have a dream.

The School of Greatness. Really?

Yeah.

Please welcome Lewis Howes. You've been doing integrative nutrition and, I guess, integrative functional medicine for a long time.

Not functional medicine anymore.

Functional is actual medicine, like pills, right?

Functional is a lot of biochemistry and stuff. Integrative medicine is the whole picture, you know? Everything else. Mind, body, Spiritual.

Gotcha. Okay. And you got into this in the 70s?

Yes. Well, I studied botany as an undergraduate. Wow. And got really interested in ethnobotany and native plants. I did a lot of traveling in South America looking at medicinal plants, psychoactive plants. Then I went to medical school. Got very disillusioned with what I had learned.

By medical school.

Yeah, I mean, I learned nothing about health or healing, and the methods that I was taught, I saw it do too much harm. So when I finished my clinical training, this was 1969, I just decided I didn't want to learn anymore of that. I wanted to learn how to keep people well, and I didn't know how to do that. So I found ways to travel around the world, look at healing practices in other cultures, gradually put together my own system that I first called natural and preventive medicine, then I came to call integrative medicine. And then my car broke down in Tucson, Arizona, and I ended up living in this remote canyon and I started writing about what I'd seen.

In Tucson.

Outside of Tucson, yeah. Wait, so your car broke down and you stayed? I stayed. It took six weeks to get fixed.

Really?

It was an English Land Rover that I had driven to South America without incident. But when I got it back here, I didn't get Parkinson's for it. And so anyway, it was February of a warm, wet year. The desert was in full bloom and I never left. And then the University of Arizona found out I was there and they asked me to start giving lectures to medical students. First about marijuana because I had done the first human experiments with marijuana in 1968. And then about other- well, people were.

Experimenting with it before that.

But nobody knew it, you know, in the medical world. the medical world, you didn't know anything about it. And then I started giving lectures on alternative medicine, nobody even knew what that was in those days.

What is alternative medicine?

Well, it was things like other systems like Chinese medicine and chiropractic and osteopathy and naturopathy, all that. People in the world of medicine didn't know anything about that. No, they didn't even know they existed. So, I had also I was really always interested in how the mind and body interacted. I studied medical hypnosis at Columbia University, which was fascinating.

What is medical hypnosis?

It's like using hypnosis, using a suggestive state to access healing in the body and it has incredible potential. You know, I watched a film of someone having a cesarean delivery with no anesthesia except hypnosis. A C-section. A C-section.

Cut open.

Cut open.

No medicine, no injections.

No, she was told to sing row, row, row your boat and she was wide awake.

Well, they cut her open.

No pain. I mean, that's just an example. You can take a good hypnotic subject and touch them with a finger and say it's a piece of red hot metal and they get a blister, a real blister. So, that's an example of how the mind and body interact and you can take advantage of that to access healing. So, obviously, I put all this together into this system of integrative medicine. Anyway, patients started showing up at my doorstep and it was not an easy doorstep to get to. I lived in this.

I kept hearing about this guy somewhere in the middle Arizona.

And, you know, I began seeing really interesting people and I refined my system and through the 1980s, I got a larger and larger following in the general public, but none of my medical colleagues paid any attention to me.

They didn't respect you or trust you.

Or think you were credible. They lived off the wall.

Yeah.

And there was a Period in the late 1970s, there was a holistic medical movement in this country. And I remember in Arizona, there was a Southern Arizona Holistic Medical Society, and it was nurses, psychologists, social workers, not one single physician joined it. So that's the way it was in those days. Anyway, that changed in the early 1990s. My best friend from Harvard Medical School, who was a cardiologist, was named Chief of Medicine at the University of Arizona College of Medicine, and he came with a new dean. They both came from the University of Massachusetts and when they got here, I had dinner with them and he said, well, now you have friends in high places. What do you want to do? I said, well, I want to change all of medicine. So he said, how do you want to do that? And I said, I'd like to start a residency in a field that I want to call integrative medicine. He said, let's talk to the dean. So the dean said, you can't start a residency in a field that doesn't exist. He said, why don't you back up a step and think about creating a fellowship, which is how, you know, what people do after residency to specialize. and he said, Then you wouldn't be accused of tampering with unformed minds. So anyway, he gave me a green light, no money, but I was given a, actually it was a glorified broom closet in a trailer in the parking lot behind the College of Medicine, and I had one assistant, and this was around 1990, and I put a think tank together. We met at Canyon Ranch in Tucson, and we hammered out a basic curriculum, and then advertised for people to come, and we got four physicians who took a big to come to Tucson for two years and do this fellowship in this field that didn't exist. That covered all the things that doctors should learn but don't, like nutrition and mind-body interactions and herbal medicine and the strength of the breath. Breathwork, all of it. And we began training four people a year and the main criticism I got was how possibly you're going to change anything by training four people a year. But over the years, we graduated about 35 people from this, and some of them are now in very powerful positions in academic medicine. But more importantly, we got to refine the curriculum and then translate it to a distance learning format. And now we have graduated over 2000 physicians from this very intensive training. And we also have a shorter curriculum that's in 80 or 90 residency programs throughout the world. and, you know, it's really becoming, we're really influencing people now and we've trained people in every specialty, all ages. So, the goal is one day, you know, whether you go to a dermatologist or a psychiatrist or a gastroenterologist, that person will have learned the basics of nutrition and mind-body medicine and will know what Chinese medicine is good for and, you know, all the rest that they should know.

It seems like there's been a movement, especially the last five years that I've seen many doctors leaving the, I guess, what do we call the functional practice? The traditional practice and functional medicine, leaving their practices because they're realizing it's not working.

It's not working and they're really unhappy. You know, when I was in medical school, medicine looked like a very desirable profession. One of the things it promised was autonomy. You could be your own boss. Well, that's all gone out the window. You have to work for somebody these days. You have to work for a corporation that tells you how to do it.

And what pills to use.

Yes, you have no autonomy anymore and all the satisfaction of a doctor-patient relationship has disappeared. If you've got eight minutes to see a patient, it's unlikely that you can form that kind of therapeutic relationship. Yes, and as you say, a lot of it's not working. I could go on at great length about this, but our so-called healthcare system is a total mess. We spend more per capita than any other country in the world on healthcare. By a long shot, if you look at a bar graph of NATO nations per capita expenditures on health, we're off the chart. At the same time, we have worse health outcomes than any developed country. The World Health Organization rates us 38th on a par with Serbia, and that's any way you look at it. It's infant mortality, longevity, rates of chronic disease, something is what's wrong with this picture. And the problem is we've got these epidemics of lifestyle-related diseases that conventional medicine doesn't work for, as you say. And we're trying to deal with that all in the same way, mostly by giving medications.

A pill, right. What's the, in your experience, it's been 50 years now you've been working on this? Yeah. 50, roughly 50 years. What's been the common theme for the root of most pain that people have? Well, is it lifestyle?

Is it food?

Is it relationships? Is it lack of sleep?

I have to say that in my clinic, clinical experience, more often than not, I find the root causes of problems to be in not in the physical body, but more in the mental, emotional or spiritual.

The holding on to anger, whatever.

I mean, it's often unconscious stuff, you know, but it's unless you work in that area, if you just deal with the physical body, it doesn't solve it.

It's superficial.

I mean, if you just look at pain, are you familiar with John Sarno's work? He wrote, he's passed about a couple of years ago. He was a rehab medicine specialist in New York and a healer. And he has one book called Healing Back Pain, another called Mind Over Back Pain. And he taught that almost all back pain is of psychological origin. That's not to say it's not real, but the problem is it's spasms of small muscles that cut off blood supply and it becomes a vicious cycle in which the contraction of muscles further cuts off blood supply. But the origin of this problem is in the mental compartment. And he used to require that people who came to him go to two evening lectures he gave in one week. A great many people who did that, their pain disappeared forever.

What was that the thing they realized?

It's just hearing this message from this guy that it was not in their back.

Right.

Anyway, and you know that this goes along with the fact that you can look at x-rays and scans of people's backs and they look so horrible, you can't believe that this person could move and they have no symptoms. And you look at other ones that look terrific and people are crippled by pain. So there's no correlation between objective findings and subjective experience, which goes along with his theory. Anyway, this is just my observation is that more, you know, and this is the, I think one of the great limitations of conventional medicines, it's only focused on the physical body and it does not, it ignores this whole other realm.

Yeah, I interviewed, I don't know if you know Dr. Alyssa Rankin, I interviewed her years ago, six, seven years ago where she had more of a traditional practice. And then, I think she was taking seven or eight medications herself. She was unhappy, sick, and then she started healing her relationship. She started, you know, healing other things in her life and she realized she didn't need as much medication. And then she started kind of doing talk therapy in a little bit where she would say to her patients, well, why don't you go, you know, heal this with your partner, your husband, whoever. And then the pain started to go away for these individuals. She realized, and other doctors have done this as well. You know, they realize, okay, just prescribing medicine isn't the solution.

And it's not just pain. I've written a lot of these cases up in my book. I'll tell you just two stories. And this one caught my attention because they both I saw these two women both at the same time. There were two women both in their, I think they were late 30s, early 40s, who had very severe systemic lupus, you know, a major autoimmune disease.

Okay. What does lupus create? What is that?

Well, it can affect any system of the body, but usually there's joint involvement and there's usually arthritis, skin problems, like.

Eczema type problems or rash.

Yeah, but this is a severe one. It's not just the surface of the body. It goes in internally. Yeah, so one woman had a had brain involvement and was psychotic as a result of this. And the other woman had her kidneys were involved and she was near death in the hospital. So the first woman, the one with the brain involvement, had a religious conversion to some variety of fundamentalist Christianity in the hospital. And the other woman fell in love and subsequently got married. And both of them, the disease disappeared. And I often say, you know, I can't always arrange for my patients to have religious conversions or fall in love. But to see that, just to know that that's possible, you know, then you want to sort of find some way to flip that switch and, and the switch is in the mind. It's not in the body.

If people believed in a higher power.

Yeah.

And felt loved.

Yeah.

You think that would help with a lot of.

I think it would help a lot.

Yeah.

I think it would help a lot.

Is it the, is it the fear in the mind, the loneliness, the anxiety, the stress that causes the tension in.

The back or the pain? Yeah, it could be all of that. And, and what Sarno's teaching was, you just kind you constantly tell yourself over and over, It's not my back and my back is fine. And he was actually opposed to any therapies directed at the back. You know, he said you shouldn't even do massage or acupuncture because it reinforces the illusion that the problem is there. Interesting. It's just so interesting. I had one, I also wrote this guy up. This was a friend of mine who was my age. He was in his late 30s at the time this happened. He was a basketball player. He was a professor at Princeton. worked with drug policy, a very bright guy, crippled by back pain, had had injuries in sports, and he was within, literally within 24 hours of having neurosurgery. The neurosurgeon said they'd never seen a spine in such bad condition and the only option was surgery.

Neurosurgery in the brain or the back?

No back, spine.

Okay, in the spine.

Yeah, the spinal nerves were being damaged.

The nerves in the spine, gotcha.

I told him to read Sarno's book. He said, this is bullshit, And I said, he was in New York. I said, why don't you go see him? And he said that this made no sense to him. This was completely silly. He had, you know, he'd seen these neurosurgeons and it was back. Anyway, he went, he heard Sarno told him to come to his evening lecture. He was laughing during the lecture that this was so silly. And he went home and was having dinner and suddenly in the middle of dinner realized his back pain was gone. Amazing, this kind of stuff.

Is it more of the awareness, having the awareness that the pain is not in the back for that example, or is it the information on how to continue to transform the mind?

The tricky part is that the part of the mind that does this is the unconscious mind and you can't directly access that. So, I don't know, you have to trick yourself in some way.

How do we tap into the unconscious mind?

Well, I mean, there are things you can do to make it more likely. You can meditate, you can do affirmations, you can do hypnosis, you can see somebody who is a healer. But I think these are all ways of somehow getting around whatever that gap is between where you think and the part of the brain that connects to the body.

What's been the biggest challenge you've faced in your body, the biggest pain you've had to overcome? and what was the practice you used to overcome it?

You know, I had, I can give you many examples, but one was, this must be about 12 years ago, I had meniscus pain in my right knee, and I'm not sure it was from, I can't relate it to any specific injury, but I've been very active and I'd have episodes where it got bad. I came to California, on a business trip and suddenly in the space of a few hours the pain got so bad I couldn't walk and I actually had to get in a wheelchair to get back home to Tucson. And I saw, you know, it subsided a bit. I went to see an orthopedist who x-rayed my knees. He said there was no cartilage left. Started talking about knee replacement. I had a friend and colleague in New York who was a very good body worker. that I'd seen and it had been great. And I went to see him and he said, you know, this is all a matter of balance and weight bearing and he did some work on me. Vanished.

Really?

Vanished.

You could walk fine after that.

Yeah, and never had a problem.

So maybe you were leaning on one side too much.

I don't know. I don't know. Something, something, but if I had...

So they have one doctor saying you have no cartilage, you gotta have surgery, otherwise you're gonna be able to walk.

And maybe that's true. Maybe I don't have cartilage, but you know, you can live with that and not have pain.

Right.

You look like you're pretty, you look like you're jacked. Yeah, I'm pretty good shape, man.

Not bad.

What do you attribute to staying so young physically?

Again, I think it's really mental, you know, like hanging out with people that make you feel alive. I mean, you know, I'm reasonably active. I swim every day. I have two big dogs that take me for walks. but I think it's like, I don't know, I think it's an attitude and, you know, doing things that I'm engaged with and that I, you know, turn me on.

And. Yeah.

Have you had any surgeries?

No, I had my tonsils out when I was really little.

Yeah.

And no, nothing major. Wow.

So that was one instance with the knee. Was there another?

Oh, I can give you some. I can give you so many things like that. I mean, some of these I've put in my book. stories like this. But, you know, and when I, I like to tell people about this because in my experience, most people do not have great confidence in their body's ability to repair itself. And I think this is where all good medicine starts is with the body has incredible healing potential. And it's, I find that, you know, it's, it's easier to talk with kids about that than doctors. You know, when a kid gets an owie, you say, look what happens, you know, watch how your body heals that. and you can plant the seed of the idea that the body has a healing system. It can repair itself. Most doctors think that's new age woo-woo. But it's not. It's like that the body has unbelievable capacity to adapt, to repair, to regenerate. And I feel one of my jobs as an integrative physician is to instill that kind of confidence in people, to make them you don't have to run off to a practitioner every time something goes wrong.

When something goes wrong, what's to be the first thought we have? Physical pain?

Well, you really want to have a sense of when things are beyond your ability to deal with. When you really do need outside help.

What is that?

So, if you have a symptom you've never had before, if you have a symptom that you've had before but it's more severe than anything you've had, before, you know, then maybe it's worth checking to see what that's about. Right. But, you know, as I say, I think people just don't have that kind of confidence. I remember once interviewing for our fellowship, a family medicine doctor. She was a native German, and she came to this country when she was a teenager, I think, and she said that growing up in Germany, that neither she nor her siblings nor any of her friends ever went to a doctor. She said, you don't go to a doctor in Germany unless there's something really wrong with you that her parents had a whole repertory of home remedies that worked. I mean, that's very different from what you see in our part of the world.

It's interesting, I grew up in a religion called Christian Science. Oh, sure.

Great.

And so I grew up in a, what you might consider a woo-woo way of thinking. Yeah, really. Which I never went to the doctor. I never had, you know, took medicine. I never got vaccinated for anything. You know, I had to have, like, permission slips that, like, I don't need to go to go to school for vaccinations and things like that, which is, seems like the world is changing these days for even religious acceptance to not need vaccination. And I was trained in an early mind, early time that the mind heals the body. This was something that was constant in my father would just ingrain this in me. Anytime I felt like sick or whatever, he would just like know the truth that your mind has power, your body can heal itself and constantly focusing on the mind. And it was just like you are love, you are truth, you're conscious and focusing on that.

But I'd be like, but why is this hurt? Yeah, right.

I'd be like, but why is this hurt? why is this like... So I was always conflicted, but that training, I had multiple quick healings, multiple quick healings where I was like, huh, I shouldn't have been able to like heal the bone this quick. And so I saw these instances that I was like, okay, this is believable and the body can heal with the mind in the right place, but if the mind's in constant fear and anxiety, it's hard to heal. and so I was always interesting learning.

This process of, like, and what I.

Really learned is, like, have a common sense. You know, if you're in a lot of pain, like, okay, if you can't clear your mind, go get it checked out, you know? And so that's what I do now. It's like, okay.

Yeah, exactly. Usually I can heal. Right.

Minor stuff.

But sometimes you need help and go get it checked out.

Did you ever read Mark Twain's essay on Christian science?

I, I bought the book because he wrote a book called Christian science.

Right.

But there's a one very funny essay where he, he has broken leg. And he first goes to, he says a horse doctor who wanted to charge him for setting the bone. And then he sees a Christian Science practitioner and she tells him that the pain is all imaginary.

It's in the mind. Right.

And so he pays her an imaginary money.

I love that.

And she sends him a very real bill and threatening letter that she's going to take him to court.

That's funny.

Yeah.

Well, I guess it's kind of crazy because Mary Baker Eddy and Mark Twain were like kind of rivals.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

They respected but didn't respect each other and I think he was upset because she kept having bestseller after bestseller. Yes, right. In the same book.

Now, another piece of information that I got, because I was really interested in Christian Science. Did you study Christian Science? Yeah, I did. Yeah, really. Is that when Christian scientists have to go to doctors, they respond fantastically to treatment. And doctors that I know who've dealt with Christian Scientists love working with them. And I think, okay, because I think their belief is so focused it's negative, you know, that conventional medicine, but it's very strong belief. And it doesn't matter whether it's a plus or minus sign, it's the belief.

Once you go to the medicine, you believe it's gonna work, and then it works for you. It's the belief that, no, this is not real, the pain is not... Or.

The belief that conventional medicine is evil.

But I'm gonna have to do it, but it's like you're believing it. You're believing it. And it works for you. I think belief is a lot of it.

Terrific, isn't it?

Yeah. Belief in general, like, I mean, it's what placebo is, right? It's like, do you believe this pill is gonna actually help me? Whether it actually chemically does or not, studies have shown that.

Absolutely.

See by the model.

You know, it's so interesting that the two free, the commonest way here, the word placebo used in medicine is in how do you know that's not just a placebo effect? And the most interesting word there is just. or we have to rule out the placebo effect. That's what you should be trying to rule in. That's what you want. That's pure healing from within mediated by the mind.

Believing it, whether you're taking something or not. Believing inside.

So, I never give patients sugar pills. I give them things I believe in, but I prefer to give people things that are dilute, that are less potent like botanicals rather than pharmaceuticals if I can.

But.

The art of medicine is how you present treatment to people in ways that activate their belief. How would you approach this?

Say I'm having extreme stomach pain right now. Okay. And, it just keeps coming for days and I don't know how to get rid of the stomach pain. Well, first, I'm going to ask you.

What you're eating, what you're doing. By the way, that's a good one because one of the worst categories of medications out there are these proton pump inhibitors, the acid-blocking drugs. Nexium, the purple pill. These are really bad for the gut, right? Bad. Once you start taking them, it's very hard to stop taking them.

Because it relieves pain temporarily or what?

It suppresses something like acid production in the stomach. What's the body going to try to do? It's going to try to produce more acid. So, when you try to reduce the dose or stop, there's an outpouring of acid. And then you're in more pain. You're in more pain. Anyway, so you shouldn't even get on them in the first place. But that's a great example. but I cannot tell you how many people I've seen who were put on these things without ever a dietary history being taken. Nobody asked them what they're eating, how much coffee you're drinking, are you drinking alcohol? Do you smoke? What's your stress level? You know, often by addressing those things you can deal with a lot of that. And then there's natural remedies that, you know, there's a licorice extract that increases the mucus coating in the stomach. It's benign. Anyway, but for more serious stuff, a strategy, I can't, again, can't always do this, but if you can introduce a patient to someone who has had their condition and is now well, that is a very powerful way to, you know, get their belief in the possibility of getting better. Why is that?

Someone else has gone through this and they got better.

Yeah, you can see it with your own eyes that they, you know, it's possible because often people get the message in, especially in their interactions with regular medicine that you have to live with it, you can't get better and so forth. One of the things that I've written, our National Institutes of Health, it's funny, if you look at the list of the institutes that make it up, where is the Institute of Health and Healing? There isn't one. These are the National Institutes of Diseases and Body Parts. It's the National Cancer Institute, the National Kidney, and blah, blah, blah. Not health. There's nothing about health. So what I would do, if I were King, I would create a National Institute of Health and Healing. and one of its missions would be to compile a national registry of remission. So if you get diagnosed with something serious, you know, ulcerative colitis, whatever, you can contact this agency and they will put you in touch with people in your area who have had your disease and are now well.

Isn't it true that just connecting to a group of someone or some ones who have gone through something similar gives you more relief and connection.

If the outcomes are good. One of the problems, like with cancer patients, someone newly diagnosed with cancer and then is told they have to start chemotherapy. So they go to an oncologist's office and they're sitting in the waiting room and what do you see? You see really not good looking people. Doesn't encourage you. So, it's really important to be able to have those messages about that it's possible to get better, that you can be well. And that's, you know, something that I often find that in my work with patients is to constantly give that message that, you know, sometimes I'll say to people, you know, I know you can get better. I don't know exactly how you can get better. I'm going to give you suggestions of things to try and you let me know what works and what doesn't, but I know you can get better.

Yeah, and I've heard you say before that every, you know, everybody or every human type should be treated differently. You can try different things, but you might need something else than exactly work for this person.

Yeah.

And so you've got to address your whole life.

Yeah.

Your whole life strategy and what you've been up to. What would you say if you could choose how old you want to live till what age would you love to live?

Well, till it's, till it's, you know, not fun anymore.

Yeah.

What would that be?

I don't know. It might be mid 80s, 90. I don't know. I don't know that I want to live. much longer than that. Really? Really.

Yeah.

I mean, when I look around me, I mean, there are some exceptional individuals. You know, I have one friend who.

Seems super sharp and healthy.

Yeah, but who knows? I mean, who knows? We don't know. At some point, you know, you see people when bodies begin to break down and it's not fun anymore. And another problem is that, you know, when people live too long, all your contemporaries are gone. You know, you lose all your friends. Right, you lose all your friends. And another one, I wrote a book on healthy aging and I quoted a woman who was in her, she was 102, something like that, and she said that, you know, look at the way the world is now. Look at the way it's going and look at what it's going to be. You know, I don't know that I want to see it.

Wow.

You know, so it's not as simple as just wanting to live a certain number of years. you know, if you want to live without relative, without pain, you want to be having fun and connected with things and you know, you don't want to live when the world gets increasingly terrible, which it could.

For people that do want to live over a hundred, let's say for people that aspire to live over a hundred healthy, sharp mind, you know, memory can see everything can move functionally, what would you say would be three to five?

Okay, so you know with some years ago the MacArthur Foundation did a study of what they called successful aging and they interviewed fairly large number of people who were identified as being successful agers to see what they had in common. The two factors that stood out above everything else were maintenance of physical activity throughout life and that doesn't mean you know running marathons or working out with trainers it's just being physically active. And the second was maintaining social and intellectual connectivity. And those two factors overrode nutrition, whether people were taking supplements. Yeah, those were the two that most stood out. Now, when I was researching that book, I made several trips to Okinawa, which at the time was in the 80s, 90s.

Is that a blue zone there?

Yeah, it was. Okinawa had the highest concentration of centenarians in the world. So, I went there, you know, it's a fabulous place. It's a tropical Pacific paradise, clean air, clean water. It's not Japan. It's a very different culture, different genetics, different culture. It's halfway between Southeast Asia and Japan. Some people look more Cambodian than Japanese. Okinawa, it's a chain of islands at the southern end of Japan. And it wasn't part of Japan until relatively recently. Gotcha. You know, it's the first thing I realized when I went there, everything is so different. You know, you can't say that any one thing is responsible for this. You know, it's clean air, clean water. People are the diet amazing. I mean, one of the most varied, interesting diets I've ever seen, not different from the Japanese diet. They eat more pork than the Japanese, and the pork is long cooked to remove fat. They drink jasmine tea, not green tea. they eat a tremendous variety of land and sea vegetables, seafood. They very physically active, you know, they don't work out with trainers. They but, you know, they they hold that fishing nets and garden and stuff like that. But the so very hard to disentangle, you know, what may be responsible for. But the one thing that really struck me going there from America was the different value placed on aging there. And the best example I can give you is that a story that I got repeatedly in traditional Okinawan society, a major cause of sibling fighting was over who was going to get to take care of the aging parents.

No, that's a little different from one.

A little different from what we see here.

The fighting was over who is going to get... No, I'm going to take care of Grandma. Grandma.

Exactly.

Yeah.

No, I'm gonna take care of them. No.

Yeah.

Wait a minute. People here, like, it's like, I can't.

Wait for the way. Yes.

What is that?

Well, we're. I don't think we don't like to look at old. You know, old makes us think of our own mortality, and. And we want it out of sight. Anyway, the old people that I saw there.

They.

The oldest old are considered living treasures, and whole communities make efforts to include them in all Community activities. and they have a glow about them. They're idolized almost. Yeah, exactly. And they look old. I mean, they don't use Botox. They're wrinkled and some of them are stoop, but they have a glow that I don't see among many old people.

A wisdom, a confidence.

Yeah, they're valued. Wow. So, to me, that was very striking as such a different from something that I see here. Now, also, I have to tell you, in the years that I was going there, OkInawAan longevity plummeted, especially among men, and that was attributed entirely to the popularity of American fast food, particularly McDonald's, which became very popular there. And you wonder, I saw there was an article in the New York Times about that, and they quoted a middle-aged OkInawAan man who said, the first time he tasted a McDonald's hamburger, he thought he had died and gone to heaven. I mean, how could that be? They have the most wonderful food available. It really makes you think that the people who design that kind of stuff have really done a lot of research to figure out what appeals to some-- the brain. Basic wiring in the brain. You know, it's some combinations of salt.

Fat, fat, the sugar, all of it that's like, ah, this is like turning my mind on that I want more and more and more.

But anyway, I think, you know, you asked me the factors. I think being physically active throughout life, Personally, I think diet does have a big role, but very hard to make recommendations that apply to everyone. But I think the one I feel sure of is you want to really try to avoid refined, processed and manufactured food and eat foods as close to the way nature produces them as possible. I think the social intellectual connectedness is huge and really saw that in Okinawa.

What is the thing you fear the most at your age?

It's hard to say. I guess, you know, I don't feel any changes in my mental function. I mean, I feel the same as I did when I was, you know, seven or eight. Really? Yeah. My body is obviously different. I have more aches and pains and I don't have the energy level that I had. And, you know, I don't want my bodily complaints to take over my awareness. So, you know, that's, I guess, what I would be afraid of.

Right.

Are there things that you can do to prevent that or to- well, I.

Think I'm doing them. You know, I do as much as I can, but nonetheless, time marches on. You know, I'm going to be 79 in a month. and, you know, it's getting up there.

Yeah.

I was talking with, gosh, doctor from Harvard on anti-aging I'm forgetting his name right now. And he said, you know, it's. It's horrible what we see with our elders these days in America where they get sick and we extend their lives in pain for 10, 20 years of suffering. whereas the key would be they live a long time, they get sick, and then they die the next morning. All right, so there's a technical term for that.

It's called compression of morbidity, where morbidity has the medical meaning of sickness. So the idea is you want to squeeze the time of inevitable disability decline at the end of life into a shorter period as possible. Right. So you live long and well, and then you have a rapid drop off at the end. Yes. So that's what we'd like to do. What's it called? Compression of morbidity.

As opposed to what are we doing right now in general where it's extension.

Of morbidity, prolongation of that period.

Just keeping someone alive to keep them alive.

So how do you do that? I mean, how do you increase your chances of experiencing that? So I think it's by attending to all the factors under our control that we know influence how you age. So it is diet, it's physical activity, it's getting good rest and sleep, it's managing stress, which I think is huge. You know, you want to find some, you can't live without stress, but you can find ways to neutralize its harmful effects. It's being socially and intellectually connected.

Have you done a lot of research.

On.

The person you marry or your partner and how long you'll live? Like, how important it is to have a certain level of peace in your marriage or, I don't know what the factors are that'll help extend the quality of your health and lifespan. Do you know what those factors are?

No, I can guess.

Like the more stress in a marriage, I'm assuming, is chances for more pain and suffering and shorter death. Shorter life.

I mean, I think the more stress in any area of your life, whether it's work or relationships or whatever, I think that, as I said, I don't think we live without stress. That's part of living. But you can learn and practice methods to neutralize its harmful effects.

What would be the five foods that if you could only have these five foods to support the overall quality of your mind, your body, your health, your longevity, what would those five foods be for you?

That's tricky. I would say... For you personally. Okay, maybe salmon. Okay.

Why salmon?

Because it's a good source of omega-3 fatty acids and I like it. broccoli, because it's a cruciferous vegetable that has lots of protective compounds in it. Berries, which I think are really good fruits that are low in glycemic load and have a lot of protective compounds in them. I would say green tea, really my.

Preferred-- Over jasmine tea?

Yeah.

And my preferred form is matcha.

Oh, yeah.

Which we'll talk about.

Why green tea over jasmine tea like the Okinawa community?

I think that there have been more studies on green tea and its antioxidant and its association with healthy longevity. And the fifth one, maybe dark chocolate. At least 70% cocoa.

Yeah. Okay.

And maybe olive oil. That would be a toss up.

Yeah, olive oil is Why is olive oil being talked about so much? Dr. Stephen Gundry obsesses about olive oil, getting as much in your body on a daily as possible, like liters a week or something. He's saying.

Well, the average Italian family I found out goes through a liter a week. It is, first of all, tastes great. It's from a fruit. There aren't many oils from fruits. Olives are fruits. Most oils come from seeds. the fatty acid composition of oils that come from fruits, the other one is avocado, are really heart healthy. And olive oil is unique in having an anti-inflammatory compound in it that no other oil has. And that is very good to contain inappropriate inflammation. And it tastes great. It does.

A lot of calories, but it tastes good, right? It tastes good. What would be the non-negotiables for you on a daily basis right now at this stage of your life moving forward that you need to think about a meditation or prayer practice, a wake up time, an activity. What's the not a conversation you have with your daughter?

I go to bed early. You know, I have for a long time. You know, I'm usually in bed by 8 30 or 9. I get up at usually 4 4 30. That's just my pattern.

Yeah.

I meditate when I get up, which I've done for a long time. I practice breath work, which for me is, you know, that's both a spiritual practice and a physical practice. And I think that I teach that to all people. I think that's the real key to good physical health. I, you know, have relationships that I value with my daughter, with my wife. I have companion animals. I'm a dog lover, and I can't imagine life without dogs. You know, I spend time Outdoors, and I have used. I have rewarding work.

Yeah.

It's very satisfying.

How important is nature in your opinion versus living in a concrete jungle?

Well, even if you're living in a concrete jungle, you can have plants indoors, you can go to a park. You know, so you can find ways to access nature even if you're in a city.

Right. How important is it for you to just be able to walk around in the nature in your backyard and in the garden?

It's important.

Really? Yeah.

I've always liked the garden. I grow a lot of my own food. I take great pleasure in that. My house is filled with plants. And I have, you know, I live in the desert in Tucson, but I have a summer place on an island in British Columbia, which is the exact opposite. Yeah. You know, it's all green and lush and water. Yeah. So, you know, I get that best of those worlds.

That's exciting. What brings you more peace? which location? Desert or...

They both, except the desert not in July.

No peace, you can't go outside.

And British Columbia, not in January, February.

See you flip-flop.

Yeah.

How long have you been married?

Well, this is my second marriage and I've been married for two years.

Okay. And When you go through challenging times in relationships, you don't have to get into details, but when you've been through challenging times, whether it be a family member, partner, friends, colleagues, how much does that impact your health?

Enormous.

Really?

Yeah. Enormous.

Is it the conflict itself or the unresolved conflict?

That's a hard question. I guess it's the unresolved conflict that's more damaging. But I'm very sensitive to that. it really affects my sleep, my digestion.

Really?

Yeah.

When you realize that you start to resolve the conflict in your life, what happens to your health? Do you notice it physically in your stomach digestion?

Yeah. And sleep especially.

Yeah.

And how important is sleep for very important.

Yeah, I think there's a, there's a, the, the percentage of people that don't either get enough sleep or good quality sleep is very high in this country. And there's enormous consumption of medications both prescribed and over the counter for sleep and they're all horrible.

Really?

None of them reproduce natural sleep. They suppress dreaming. They're addictive, interfere with cognitive function.

What happens when we take an over-the-counter pill or prescription pill in general? When we take a substance a chemical substance, no matter what it's treating for, the stomach or the brain.

Well, you know, the body is, our bodies are very good at dealing with all sorts of stuff. And, you know, we can handle things like that. But in one of the things- Over the counter. Well, it doesn't matter. Some of the strongest ones are over the counter. Like with sleep, you know, the most common over the counter sleep aid in products like Unison, for example, and Somninox is Benadryl. it's diphenhydramine and antihistamine that makes you drowsy. And it's now been found to increase long-term dementia risks if you take it regularly. So that's an over-the-counter, you know, nice little over-the-counter substance. However, you know, one of the things that happens that I think many people don't realize, a lot of the most of the medications we use are counteractive. They counteract physiological processes. and that's why most of the names begin with anti, you know, it's anti-hypertensive, anti-histamines, anti-spasmodics, anti-this, anti-that. When you use that kind of a medication, you're pushing against the body with an outside force.

Interesting.

What does it do? It pushes back. Now, that's something called homeostasis, you know, the body tries to maintain equilibrium. So, and I think people don't realize this. If you give one of these counteractive medications over time, long term, the homeostatic reaction may get you in more trouble than you had to begin with. And that's what happens with these acid-blocking drugs. You know, after there was even an experiment reported a few years ago where they took a group of young healthy men who had no GI problems, put them on one of these medications for I think six weeks and then stopped it suddenly and they all developed reflux disease. So the drug caused the problem it was meant to treat. you know, and this is, this is something, same thing happens with antidepressants, you know, that you give these things that increase serotonin at neural junctions in the brain. And what happens over time, the body stops making serotonin and it drops serotonin receptors.

So it makes you more depressed when you get off.

Exactly. Exactly. So what's something that people just don't, that, you know, don't think about. They don't realize that problem. And, you know, it is, it, if you're dealing with an acute situation, it's nice to have these. that push the body back in the right place. But once you get there, you want to back off their use and find other ways to maintain that improvement because if you stick with the medication, you're going to run more often than not into that kind of problem.

Really? Yeah.

So if someone's been, I mean it seems like this, especially with social media culture, comparison culture on social media, the addictiveness, I agree everyone has the ability to just put the phone down.

Right.

Yeah, not so easy though.

Everyone has the ability to say, I'm turning my phone off and I'm going to go do something else. But with this culture of not enough, instant gratification, comparing to all these other people who look better or whatever, and me needing to fulfill something that I'm not doing, what would you say to the younger generation that has all of these things coming into their mind, all this attention to how they're not enough? What would you say if they're in extreme depression, feeling moody, I don't know if that's all teenagers in general, but if they're having that, how can they start to find more peace?

Geez, I think you want to limit your time on devices in general, you know, and realize how addictive and seductive it is and to just set some kind of limits to it because it really affects brain function. I don't think we know the full extent of that at the moment.

Yeah.

That's a big problem.

Do you use devices a lot?

I do, but I'm better than most people that I see, you know, and usually at some point in the day, which is, you know, maybe middle of the day, I'm out of there, you know, and I try not to look at email or any of that stuff anymore.

Yeah, and you're out in nature, you're connected with family.

Right.

And speaking of family, how long were you married the first marriage?

Seven years.

Seven years. And then how long was there a time between the first marriage and current marriage?

That must have been, that was fairly long.

Really?

I was in a long-term relationship.

Just not married.

Okay, I got you.

Yeah.

What's the reason for getting remarried at this age? That's a good question. What are the benefits or non-benefits to your overall health?

Okay, well one of the benefits is that I'm married to Canadian. So I can get into Canada. So I can get into Canada.

You can get to your second home.

You can get to my second home, right. She's also much younger than I am. She's 43. And she's... You are. I'm about to be 79.

Wow.

And she's very athletic and outdoorsy, so that's very good for me. You know, she's a runner and all sorts of things. So, she pulls me in directions that otherwise I might not.

That you'd be like, I want to relax.

Yeah, exactly. Let's go. Yeah, right.

Move your butt.

So, that's good. Wow. Yeah.

That's interesting. Where do you think your health would be if you weren't in a relationship where someone was actively trying to make me healthy?

I probably would be lazier and, you know, I think my, I take pretty good care of myself, but probably not as good as it is at the moment.

Really?

Yeah.

So Mary Young.

Yeah.

What would you say are the brain foods that would actually help increase our mood, 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, you know, omega-3 sources, those huge. You know, we know those are really necessary for brain health. So, you know, oily fish are the best sources. I think there are some of the mushrooms. And 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 multi-nutrient supplement. I take CoQ10, I take 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?

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. They're great. So I began, I really became knowledgeable about mushrooms. Mushrooms.

Really?

Yeah.

So you take them daily or weekly?

You take. Yeah, I take.

Yeah.

And I eat mushrooms whenever I get the chance. Mushrooms are powerful, huh?

They're real powerful. Was there a documentary called, like, the.

Magic power of mushrooms?

I'm sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

There's. How many species of mushroom? 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.

Right.

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.

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 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. But if you're talking strictly about tea, it's all from this one species of plant.

Where does the 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 tea 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. Or off course with a lot of sugar in it.

Yeah, right. And the only tea that we had available, you know, 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.

Well, all true tea has caffeine. Some has more than others.

Like a mint tea that's not 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 tea. It has 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, 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.

I need my tea.

I need my tea.

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.

You're breaking people's hearts.

And nobody ever told them, though.

You're breaking people's hearts, seriously.

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. Coffee just bunches it up. 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, when the drug wears off, you have a 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, 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 I've heard this from people.

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

Right.

That's fairly simple fix.

Gotcha. Gotcha.

Why is that, do you think? I don't know.

And it's coffee. I'm fine.

I mean, interesting.

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

I do not know why. Huh? Maybe there's a compound in the tea that's stimulating something. 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. Oh, good.

I'm glad to hear that.

You got to try our matcha, which is the best. But you guys have, I mean, the the best domain in the tea world of matcha.com.

Yeah, what was a good score?

And 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.

You're getting experience.

Changed my life.

Anyway, it's 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.

It was a substitute for that. Amazing. No substitute for that. For knowing about other cultures.

Yeah.

Anyway, so I lived with with Japanese families outside of Tokyo and Kobe. And the Japanese family outside of Tokyo, there was 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.

That's cool.

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. I wanted one of those. So I then in the 1970s, I began going. 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. There was no awareness of matcha.

Starbucks made a barista. Yeah, yeah.

So, 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, and 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. It's like they're 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, you know, 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.

I would love to do that.

Whisk it up for me. I would just go to Japan. I'd love to do 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.

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 multiple cups?

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 Fulton in BC and it's light till 10 o'clock, I'm, you know, outdoors and.

Right.

Right.

You're living the 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. 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 medicine?

Absolutely. if 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, you know, 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, I could see 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 out of 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're not? 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 They weren't processing food as much too.

So, yes, 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, there 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 how people have changed.

Everyone was fit or looked better back then.

Right.

And now everyone looks fatter. Yeah. What do you think is going to where do you think in the next 50 years we're going to be as a country in terms of obesity?

You know, I saw I saw this. This is 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 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. That would be, we had to put it so far ahead 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 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, as sugar.

Really? And when you created the anti-inflammatory diet, right? When was that long ago?

And, you know, I, I have a history of being ahead of the curve in a lot of areas now that I've been able to foresee 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 of 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. 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 our 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 olive oil should be your main thing. Or avocado oil. Yeah.

Gotcha.

Nuts, seeds, good.

They're good.

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, 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.

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 that you can you can see your grain cracked into a few big pieces and flour.

Can you eat whole grain? Like, are you supposed to eat the whole grain?

We do. I mean, we eat cracked grains. Gotcha. Or you cook barley and you cook.

Buckwheat and you cook wild rice. Yeah, okay.

That's what we're supposed to be doing.

Yeah.

But not converting it into flour. That's fine, but not grinding it into flour. Really?

Yeah.

Or you just use little bits of that because that's the stuff that raises blood sugar quickly and that's what causes insulin sugar and resistance and, you know, in a lot of people.

What about oatmeal?

I think relatively, especially steel-cut oatmeal, where you're dealing with chewy grains.

He's okay.

Yeah.

Okay. Steel cut, but not like the nut mush. Not cream of mush.

I eat so much cream of wheat when I'm throwing up. That's so bad for you. When pouring brown sugar on top, I know. The sad American diet is what I had growing up.

You know, that is the standard American diet. It is sad, yeah.

Right.

So, this consists of the anti-inflammatory diet. How long do you go on that for?

I think it's the way you live.

You live that way.

Yeah.

And in terms, I think it's also good to reduce animal foods in the diet. I don't tell people to become complete vegans or vegetarians, but it is desirable to reduce consumption of animal foods and also not only for personal health but for planetary health.

Right.

You know, when you look, you know, I've been, I've written and thought a lot about the pandemic and, you know, that we are at tremendous risk for these, they're called zoonotic diseases, diseases that jump from animals to people, of which this is one.

If we're consuming it, we're more risk, as well.

Right.

But these diseases are becoming more frequent worse. AIDS is one of these and all these things and COVID certainly. And the reasons that this is happening more and why we're at greater and greater risk, it's climate change, it's deforestation, it's too many people, it's too many people living in too dense concentrations, it's the way we raise animals and treat them. And you look at this and you think, which of these things can we do anything anything about. It's not clear. The one thing that we could do something about is reducing our dependence on animal foods. That would be one concrete step to help the environment.

Have you seen this documentary Seaspiracy?

No.

I love your thoughts on it. Do you eat just less food? I hear you like fish, but are you eating less meat?

I haven't eaten meat very long time.

Yeah.

Huge fish. A lot of fish.

I eat fish and vegetables mostly. And, and I eat a lot of plant protein as well. You know, and it's great to see more, you know, good kinds of plant protein Foods available.

You said in Japan or Okinawa, they have more pork.

Pork, interestingly. I mean, they like pork, and that's a cultural preference. You know, I don't. I don't. I choose not to. animal foods, except for fish.

When did you cut out animal foods?

I can tell you exactly, Thanksgiving of 1970.

Come on. What happened? I was, Turkey was just not cooked right. You were like, what am I doing?

No, it's funny, I did it as an experiment. I was starting to do yoga, and that was part of yoga philosophy, and also I had friends who became vegetarian, so I thought I would just do it as an experiment, see what happened. and to my surprise, I lost weight, I had more energy, I felt great, and I stuck with it. Stuck with it. I didn't eat fish at first. I was a lacto-vegetarian for about 15 years. And then, you know, I was, I told you I was going to Japan. It is not easy to be in Japan and not eat fish. Everything's fish. Everything's fish. You know, the sauces, the broth. So, first of all, I was reading about the health benefits of fish.

Fish.

And then I was traveling a lot, so I started eating fish, and then that's pretty much what stuck. That stuck.

Yeah.

Gotcha.

And.

When you think about the inflammation that people are having a lot, is it. Can inflammation also be caused with the mind, or is it only through, like.

No, I said, absolutely. Absolutely the mind and. Really? Absolutely a factor. In fact, there's a whole. I mean, there's quite a lot of research on how the brain and the immune system interact and how the mind plays into that. In fact, this is fascinating. The current theory of depression, which is dominant medicine, it's called the serotonin hypothesis of depression, is that it's a deficiency of serotonin in the brain. That's why we give these drugs and increase which don't work that well. There's increasing evidence that they don't work that great. Well, there's an alternative hypothesis that's been out there that's been building, which is right. It's called the cytokine hypothesis of depression. This is an interesting story. It's long been known that when domestic animals get sick, cows, pigs, sheep, that they exhibit a cluster of symptoms that's called sickness behavior. they, and it's usually sick with some sort of infectious disease. They stop moving, they stop socializing, they lose interest in sex, they stop eating. So farmers had always thought this was a result of fatigue associated with infection. But in the 1970s, to everyone's surprise, it was found that it was mediated by a blood-borne factor that you could take blood from an animal with sickness behavior, inject it into a well animal, and that animal showed the same symptoms. Come on. So nobody knew what it was in blood. It was called factor X. And then it turned out this was identified as a group of regulatory substances called cytokines, which mediate inflammation. And it looks as if there's a correlation between increased inflammation, increased immune activity, and depression. To the extent now that they find that that some people with severe depression respond to anti-inflammatory drugs much better than to antidepressant drugs. And if you think about it, evolutionarily it makes sense because if you've got an infectious disease, it makes sense to stop moving and stop eating. You want to conserve your energy, but there's a mood change that goes along with that. So it's like there's a back and forth connection that depression and inflammation are connected.

What do you think we should be thinking on a daily basis in terms of our thoughts? If the thought is what somewhat regulates our mindset and our mood sets throughout the day, what do you think about and what do you prescribe as thought?

Well, one thing I, you know, one reason that I tell people to practice breath work and to do some forms of meditation is that practicing putting your attention on your breath, that is a safe place to have your attention. It's like putting your mind in neutral. It's much better than having your attention on your thoughts because very often it's thoughts and images in the mind which are sources of anxiety, of negative feelings and you often can't stop them but what you can do is try to just disconnect your attention from them. Breath is one way to do do that.

Has there ever been a point in your life where your thoughts took over?

Oh, yeah.

And your mind took over and you went spiraling?

Yes.

How did you overcome that?

I think one was just moving through. Moving through it, trying various things.

You.

Know, were you aware of it when it was happening?

Oh, yeah.

So you're like, okay, this is something I've been practicing for years.

Definitely.

But I'm in this.

Definitely.

So you're not immune to. These challenges also.

No, not at all.

Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt.

No, it's okay.

Yeah.

I know that very well.

Really? Yeah.

It's been a while since I've gotten caught in that, but there were periods in my life when, yes, that was, you know, and I tried all sorts of things and, you know, didn't, a lot of things I tried didn't work. I think having practiced meditation for a long time, It was not a quick fix, but long term, I think that's been very helpful.

That helped. How long was the worst time of being in that spiral for you?

I think a couple of years.

Just kind of like low level anxiety consistently.

You went through more depression than anxiety. Really?

Yeah.

What age range was this?

I would think that was in my 40s.

Do you know what caused it?

I think some of it was being isolated. I think some was being socially isolated. Yeah, I think some of some I was living in Latin America, some in Tucson. Really also not feeling I had a purpose.

But you were healing lives and changing the world.

Yeah, none of that.

Bringing this education to so many people.

Well, this was before, really before that.

Really?

Yeah.

So lack of purpose, lack of purpose, social isolation. and yeah, I would try to maintain my habits, especially habits of physical activity, but my sleep was not good. But it was a thing that was with me for some time. I wrote about that and I have a book called Spontaneous Happiness, which is about emotional wellness, and I wrote about that experience.

Interesting.

I tried an antidepressant drug and it didn't do much for me.

When did you start to see yourself come out of it? What were the things that caused the change? Did you move somewhere?

Did you? Yeah, I think it was when I did. I moved, I got in a relationship that led to my first marriage.

Love heals people.

Love heals people, yeah. I wrote my first book that was really a big bestseller. Which one was that? It's called Spontaneous Healing.

Interesting. You wrote that one while you were depressed.

Yeah.

Because you were just seeking the answer.

I don't know. I don't know.

Okay, so you had more purpose and you got...

Right. But you know, I think having experiences like that, I feel stronger as a result of it. First of all, it makes me much more compassionate with people.

Having the pain, the frustration, the suffering.

Yeah. That's powerful.

I love learning about the mind and the thoughts and how to heal our body through that.

Yeah, well, it's your back, man. That's what grew up in there.

Yeah. I got a couple final questions with you. I want to be respectful of your time. This is fascinating. This is a question I ask everyone towards the end of our show called the Three Truths, hypothetical question and scenario. Imagine it is your last day on earth, many years away, and you accomplish everything you want to accomplish.

English.

But for whatever reason, you've got to take all of your work with you. All of your books, this podcast, your writing, your blog, everything you've written or done, audio or video, goes with you to the next place. But you get to leave behind three things you know to be true about the lessons you've learned in your life that you'd like to share with the world. I call it the three truths. What would you say would be your three truths?

I think it's all okay.

It's all okay.

It's all okay. I would say, you know, don't worry, be happy.

And.

Just trust in your own, trust in yourself, you know, really find your own light.

Wise words from a wise man. I want to nod you, Dr. Weil, for the consistent relentlessness you have towards finding the information and providing it for us to find healing within ourselves. I think the world is better for you in it for teaching us things and bringing us things that we had no idea decades before for being a trailblazer in this space. And I really acknowledge your openness, your honesty, your realness. And I appreciate you showing up today and providing this with our audience.

Yeah, thanks. I really enjoyed meeting you and talking with you.

Yeah, of course. I want people to check out your work and go to matcha.com if they want matcha. I'm going to be getting some matcha there as well. You're all over social media. Dr. Weil is drweil.com as well.

That's my website which has a great deal of health information.

Tons of great content and resources and blogs and articles which has been extremely informative for me. Dr. Weil everywhere on Instagram and- yeah.

And check out the University of Arizona website too which is integrativemedicine.arizona.edu and among other things there, there's a find a practitioner link so you can find one of our graduates. We have graduates in all states and a lot of places who are doing integrative medicine.

So if someone's dealing with pain or illness or anything they can go to the website and they can find a practitioner.

Yeah, in a specialty that that relevant to.

And they've gone through your program. How long is that training?

Two years.

Two years. And these are already medical doctors.

Medical doctors who've completed residencies.

So they've gone through the traditional medical school of five years.

Plus, plus, say four more years. Usually a three-year residency and then a fellowship in a specialty.

So eight years at least. Then they've gone to your program for two years. So 10 years of medical training from functional to integrative medicine. And so, they're more evolved, hopefully, and more in tune with- yeah, they've got.

This philosophy that the body can heal itself and that all these different modalities are available.

And, there's 3,000 of them around the world.

Right, a lot in the US, but we've got people in many countries now. It's a real movement that's building.

And so they can go there, they can, it tells them how to contact us based on location and everything. You've got tons of great books. Is there anything else that we can support you with in this moment?

Oh no, that's plenty.

A lot of good stuff on your website. But macha.com, I'm excited to check this out.

Yeah, we'll get you some of the good stuff.

Of course, of course. Okay, this is my final question for you. What's your definition of great?

Of greatness. I think whatever resonates with truth.

There you go.

Yeah.

Awesome. Thanks so much. Appreciate it. If you're looking for more ways to improve your life, then make sure to check out this powerful video with Jordan Peterson.

If you discipline someone properly, they become disciplined, right? That It means they're competent.

They're organized. They have structure.

They can control themselves.

So I'll give you an example.