Understanding The Mind, Stress, Religion & Placebo's w/Dr. Emeran Mayer EP 1139

This is episode number 1139 with Dr. Emran Meyer.

Welcome to the School of Greatness.

My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

Thomas Carlyle said, he who has health has hope, and he who has hope has everything. And Jim Rohn said, take care of your body. It's the only place you have to live. I'm excited about this episode because it's part two with my guest today, who is Dr. Emeran Meyer. And he is the executive director of the G Oppenheimer Center for neurobiology of stress and resilience and the co-director of the digestive diseases research center at the University of California at Los Angeles. His research has been supported by the National Institutes of Health for the past 25 years, and he has considered a Pioneer and world leader in the area of brain gut microbiome interactions. He's written a new book called the gut immune connection, how understanding the connection between food and immunity can help us regain our health. This, again, is part two of the previous episode, so make sure to check that out as well at lewishouse.com/1138 and listen more about the brain and gut connection there. But in this episode, we discuss what the mind actually the effects of religion and finding a higher purpose have on your mind. The biggest breakthroughs during Dr. Meyer's 40 years of research why Dr. Meyer wants the world to stop using the word placebo the effects that stress has on your immune system the key changes to make today to improve your health and so much more. If you're enjoying this, make sure to share this with a friend. Click the subscribe button over on Apple Podcast or Spotify if this is your first time here so you can stay up to date on the latest and greatest on the School of Greatness podcast. And we have some incredible stuff coming up. to dive in right now. So without further ado, in just a moment, I bring you the one and only Dr. Emmeran Meyer.

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What's the best definition of the mind for you that you've studied from either science or Buddhism and That's a difficult one. Like, what is the mind?

I tend to think that every complex system ultimately develops a mind. That's kind of...

The gut develops a mind, the brain develops a mind, the body develops a mind.

And it's not all the same, but they have their minds, you know, there's multiple minds. And there's a hierarchy of these minds based on the complexity of these systems. We've often asked that question, does the microbiome, so this is not just the gut microbiome, but the microbiome on the planet, because there's microbes everywhere. It's the most abundant life form. And we are connected in some ways, our microbes in the gut are connected to the microbes in the soil, microbes in the air, in the water. Does that system have a mind? You know, because it's so complex.

Yes.

It's widely distributed.

So the universe has a mind.

The universe has a mind. I have to say, you know, it's not very scientific.

That's why I love this.

But I had a migration in my, you know, so I was very open to these ideas before I finished medical school. Then in medical school, obviously, you have to be trained in not pursuing these ideas.

You never get trained in science.

Yeah, you do science, it's focused, it's hypothesis driven, it's linear. But then I think it comes with age, and coming back to my roots and my mind at the time, which was always this holistic. So coming back to this concept of interconnectedness, which I think is kind of the string theory of life really. There's no life without interconnectedness. and the systems so we can today, we can even in science, you know, we use mathematical tools and supercomputers to look at the interaction between genes, between molecules, between signaling molecules, between microbes, between immune cells. We look at them now as systems and we apply these mathematical tools. There's something called graph theory where you can quantitate, you know, and, and describe a system based on its nodes. So on the COVID of my new book, you can see this. There's nodes and there's connections. So the connections are the edges. It's called the edges. If a node has, the more connections one node has, the more it becomes a hub in the system. So I So I think ultimately systems like that, I think ultimately develop minds, you know, be it a technical system, you know, ultimately, I think, and this is sort of against what Dan Siegel says, you know, without a body, you couldn't have a mind. I'm not sure if that question has been answered yet. We'll see that. fast forward 20 years, the supercomputers will have then, will they develop some module that is like a body that is that necessary? But I think that this property of complex systems, developing minds, and these are not conscious minds, I think probably the human mind is the one that is self-consciousness, that it knows about itself and it's self-aware you know, all these other minds, I mean, they operate, but unless you believe in some, you know, Hinduistic concepts that there is these higher conscious levels of consciousness. Yeah, I don't want to go there really at this point. You know, people that take psychedelics tell me that you have these experiences of, contacting these entities, but this is beyond what I really mean with interconnectedness and minds.

So this is something that you were curious about as a teenager in your early 20s. Then when you went to medical school, you essentially had to say, I need to shut this out of my mind and focus just on the science, just on the research, just on the practical, I guess, or the findings through science. But do I hear you're kind of like opening back up to more of this, like figuring out the mind-brain-gut connection?

Yeah, I'm opening back up to this. And, you know, there's different dimensions. So there's that other healing traditions, Hippocratic medicine, for example, was a medicine of interconnectedness, the universe, with the weather, the climate, soil, same about traditional Chinese medicine or Ayurvedic medicine. They were all systems that had interconnectedness at their core belief. And I think we come back to that now. I don't know how these traditions came up with these ideas just by observation, you know. But they certainly have survived thousands of years. And I think they're more accurate, It just sounds funny coming from a scientist who spent his whole life doing science. I think they're closer aligned these interconnected models with reality of the planet than some of our Western ideas of simple linear mechanistic, you know, machine concept based ideas of reality. So there has been this, I mean, I also believe the mismatch that we're seeing today between the way the planet is really organized as one of the most complex networks with these minds, you know, and the way we have been interacting with it in the West, from the scientific, starting with the scientific Revolution. You could almost bring religion in it, the monotheistic religions, you know, which put humans at the center of the universe, which has been proven wrong over and over again, you know? But there's still this persistent idea, this mismatch between what's in our minds, the way we see reality, the way we teach our children. the self being the most important part rather than seeing the large picture. And I think that mismatch with reality is at the cause of many of our problems, be it climate change, be it medical problems.

So... You mentioned religion for a second, so I want to talk about that. How does religion play into the gut-immune connection? Does religion support our immune system or weaken it, in your opinion? And are you into any religion currently practicing a religion or is that not a scientist's role?

Well, so I've always been attracted to Buddhism, which is not a regular religion.

It's more of a philosophy. A spiritual philosophy.

And that to me is the one that matches the best, both my scientific beliefs and also the way I look at reality. With religions, your questions are really fascinating, I have to say.

You came to the School of Greatness, not the School of Average.

So.

Religion being connected, believing in some higher force or believing in the harmony of the universe, hence there's many studies that have shown that that is health promoting.

Health promoter, having a greater sense of, or believing in something greater than yourself.

Of connectedness.

Of connectedness. Being we're all connected, community.

Yeah.

Okay.

And I think it goes back to the original meaning of this term religio, I think from Latin, being connected. So this is clearly something, I think that's essential. Now, if there's some strange religious sects in this world now, you know, that I don't want to name any of these that were hatred and I mean, just look at what happens with some segment of Islam, what happened during Catholic beliefs in the Middle Ages, killing, burning millions of women. It has two sides to it.

The hatred side of religion is not supportive.

Yeah, and I don't know how these things could come up. So to my opinion, these people were really not religious. They had this illusion of if they go to church every day or do some ritual, they're religious. I think a truly religious person, there's certain concepts to that being connected to your community, being connected to nature, being connected to some higher entity. I think those are all health promoting ideas. And I think that has, there are studies, I think even tracing this back again to immune cells, to the health of immune cells and the gene expression patterns, you wouldn't think that something as high level as religion would go all the way down to these immune cells in your liver and in your spleen, or in your gut, 70% of immune cells live in the gut.

Really?

I think you have to be careful what people do for religion, anytime there comes hatred and intolerance into religion. I don't think it's a true religion. It shouldn't call itself a religion.

Sure, sure. It's an agenda. It's an agenda. So 70% of your immune cells are in the gut throughout your entire body, right? 70% is that what you're saying?

Yeah.

You said the main factor is diet for optimizing or hurting your immune system is the main factor.

Well, let's say that. It's one of the two main factors. The other one being the brain and the signals the brain sends down.

Is that the thoughts the brain sends.

Down or- Mainly the emotions. I think we know it about the emotions and we know it about stress. I think we know less about the influence of thoughts on that system.

Interesting.

But certainly belief systems I would say it's not been studied in as great detail as emotions and stress have.

So typically, what's the difference between an emotion and a belief system?

So an emotion is a programmed response in your brain that triggers a... So it's both an emotional feeling so you feel the emotion, then it's emotional response. And there are several of those almost like computer programs stored in our brain because humans have experienced these situations so many times that instead of reconstructing these emotions every time from scratch, you know, it's stored in a program.

So when we see or experience something, it's retriggered because it's been there for so long and we feel it again.

It's like an app, you know? It's like an app that says turn on and off.

So, an emotion is a program response in the brain or an emotional feeling in the brain.

Yeah, and so you have the emotional feeling in one part of the brain. It's the part called the insula cortex. And then you have the emotional response, which is another part of the brain, the cingulate cortex and the amygdala. that then generates the output to the body.

To the body and mostly to the gut is what I was saying. Or is it all throughout the body?

It's throughout the body, but it has the biggest impact on the gut because in the gut is the immune system and it's this hormonal system. So it has, yeah, so these emotional signals go to the heart and the heart beats faster. The heart is a very simple organ. It's a mechanical pump. and if you are anxious, it increases the heart rate. If you're depressed, it might slow it.

And then that impacts the body.

It doesn't impact the whole body in.

The same way as- It does or does not?

It does not.

It does not. And then- When the heart rate goes up or down, does that impact the body?

Well, you feel that. So it's fed back to the brain and it creates again this circular response, this emotion. But what happens with the gut is why it is so unique. Signal goes down from this emotional reaction.

Stored in the brain, signal goes down.

Yes, goes down to the gut and then it affects the immune cells. So then the immune cells carry that signal throughout the body all the way back to the brain. Also affects the microbes. The microbes produce molecules, what we call neuroactive molecules. for example, they play a big role in the serotonin production. And then these molecules, some of them get into the bloodstream, some act on the vagus nerve, and again it feeds back to the brain. So it's again this loop, you know, that, and the gut generates probably with its microbiome most of these feedback signals that go back to the brain. You know, other systems like the muscular system feeds back to the brain as well. So the sense of well-being after working out, clearly molecules that are generated by metabolism in your muscles have some effect on the brain as well, on your well-being. But quantitatively and the diversity of signals that are generated from the gut are much higher.

So the top two things are food, your diet, and your emotions. that affect your immune system.

It affects the gut and the immune system.

Wow.

And so what I'm hearing you say is that if someone doesn't learn how to regulate their emotions or process emotions in a healthy manner, it could weaken their immune system in a massive way. Is that correct?

It has potential. You know, there's always this important concept of resilience and resistance. So anytime you compromise the complexity of a network or an ecosystem, it becomes less resilient under stress, for example, or under when you get sick or, you know. So a good example is the pandemic that we have gone through. You know, there was a group of the population, both in this country but also worldwide that probably has a compromised gut ecosystem, including the microbes and the immune system. And they responded to that viral infection in a different way, either with being more likely to get infected, more likely to end up in the hospital, in the ICU, dying, developing long COVID. There seems to be this at risk, at high risk population. And if you look at them, they also have what's called comorbidities. They have other diseases, these chronic diseases like diabetes and metabolic syndrome and obesity and heart disease. And that's not a coincidence because all these diseases are also related to our poor diet. So, there's this common denominator, you know, that the ecosystem that is made up by the immune system in the gut and the nervous system in the gut and the hormonal system, that ecosystem is probably, if that is weakened, it's less resistant and less resilient to any perturbation. And we'll see this in the future, unfortunately, because I'm not sure if, if as a society, we're making a huge effort now to deal with these, these discrepancies of health in our country.

You know, I feel like it's more. Yeah, we're not focused on the nutritional side. It's healing through nutrition.

Right.

It's more like, how do we just put medicine or substances over top to kind of.

Yeah.

So all the, all the talk is about access to, to the health care system. That's the main. And, and that's a problem as well. You know, they're definitely But I think-- what about prevention?

What about optimization, prevention for your own body and your own health?

And that may not have to come from the healthcare system. That could come from other organizations, teachers, you know.

Yeah.

Early, I mean, all these things start obviously in childhood and the way children are raised and programmed, the immune system is programmed. you know, the brain is programmed early on in life. So you don't need a medical system to do that, to help with this programming. You know, you need other, I think, educational programs that, that do that, you know? And, yeah, I, I feel if you as society, if you want to prevent this in the future, it's obviously a colossal task. You know, we have to move like, it's like moving an aircraft carrier around, you know, 360 degrees.

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It's also changing belief systems, lifestyle and habits for decades for people that have eaten a certain way or thought about a certain thing.

You could almost give up on the colostomy, the size of that task. But then on the other hand, and I kind of regret that I didn't address this more in my book, this this whole socioeconomic inequality in the country that plays a big role in the vulnerability because it does affect all these systems that we've been talking about. They're not detached from, I mean, just think about the anger that we've seen with some of the movements and demonstrations. I mean, that anger is not just in the face or, you know, thrashing things. It's it's also at the gut level. It's at the gut level.

So, so the anger, when we feel anger, resentment or any of these anger emotions, let's say, less than joyful emotions, let's say, when we feel that, is that again, is this stored in the brain, a memory in the brain that is stored, or is it more stored in the gut?

I would say it's stored as a program routine that calls on multiple networks within the brain to generate a response. You can see it in our brain, in our face, the facial expression of anger, is one of these motor routines that go to the facial muscles and to your eyes and the pupils. But the same thing goes down to every organ and affects the gut in a particular way.

And.

Yeah, so just to re-emphasize this, so the emotional feeling, typically the emotional feeling does not stay by itself. It's not an isolated feeling. It always has a motor response to it. There's a word in science, the emotional motor system, which has, you know, all these apps for these different emotions. if you activate this, you get the motor system of anger or the motor system of anxiety or chalLenge. And when we talk about emotions, often also in psychotherapy, we just talk about the emotional feeling, you know, and you can deal with the emotional feeling over and over again. If you don't deal with the, with the, with the reaction, the physical reaction to it, you leave out a big part of it. I mean, there's a lot of therapists today that have some integrated view of mind and body.

So, you're saying if you just deal with the analytical thought about the emotion, you may not be able to transform it into something of a healing process without integrating the body connection to the feeling, is that right?

And that's for the reason, you know, so in my practice, even though I have experience and, you know, I've benefited a lot from this period of going through Jungian analytical therapy, we don't use it, we don't recommend this to our patients with, you know, these physical disorders. We recommend cognitive behavioral therapy. Cognitive to deal with the brain part and behavioral with how you change your response to that.

Your reactions to it. Interesting. This is fascinating. In your 40 years of doing the research and studying, what has been the biggest breakthrough for you personally as a human being? Where you discovered something and said, Wow, I've been doing this all wrong or I had no idea about this thing and now I need to implement this thing to improve my life. What has been that for you?

Probably the most exciting moment was when we did a study not that long ago, which triggered then writing the first book about that, you know, if you, so we studied healthy young women and they went on a four-week course of taking a probiotic cocktail. And we looked at their emotional symptoms. So they didn't have any physical symptoms. And we looked at their brain function with brain imaging. And we found that there were changes in the response of some of the networks in the brain.

In the brain. Four weeks of probiotics.

Yeah. And so that has obviously been taking as an indication so I can tell you if this actually had a positive psychological effect because there was no, so these were healthy women. They were not anxious.

They were healthy.

They were healthy.

Happy, healthy.

Yeah.

And so in retrospect, you could say we made a mistake. We should have studied anxious, you know, individuals.

Depressed, stressed, anxious.

Yeah. So.

So what happened with the result of these four weeks for these women?

So there were changes in the systems of the brain, the emotional recognition or emotional attention systems within the brain that were attenuated. So the emotional reaction was attenuated. You could speculate, yes, this is an important first step in not being as emotionally reactive or stress reactive. But that study. I mean, those are expensive studies. So, and it's not that easy. If I go with a protocol like this to the NIH for funding, they would much rather have you do this in mice to have a mechanistic study where you can say it's really this cell in the brain that responds and so in his human studies, much more heterogeneous, you have to do very large numbers. So we never followed this up in as an anxiolytic, you know, potential therapy, even though this has, this concept of psychobiotics has been promoted by colleagues of mine in Ireland, John Cryan has written a book about it as well.

Psychobiotics.

Psychobiotics. So the microorganisms that have a beneficial effect on on psychological issues.

Really? What are these psychobiotics?

These are particular strains of microbes that they've found in mice. See, the thing is, in mice you can show almost everything, you know, because you can control every aspect of the mouse, from the temperature, the food, to how many mice are in a cage, which you can never do in a human. So, you can see things and demonstrate things in these mouse models that are mind-boggling, you know, in terms of depression-like behavior that can be changed with microbes, anxiety-like behavior, social behavior, social isolation. So all the things that we think are models, preclinical models of human disease. But then it's been very hard to prove these same things in humans. And so one of our effort is, and I've I used to do animal experiments and cell experiments for a long time in my career. But then I sort of developed this ambition. I just want to do this now in humans. I want to see does this is really relevant for humans. It says work, yeah. And I would say ultimately, maybe none of the existing probiotics that are being marketed have dramatic effects on your mind. I wouldn't, if a patient comes to me with an anxiety disorder, I wouldn't say take this probiotic because it's been shown in the mouse to decrease anxiety. If somebody comes to me with anxiety and they say, I've been taking this probiotic cocktail, then I would say, if you think you benefit it, keep taking it. But let's add relaxation techniques or stress management or CBT, or in the worst case, medication. So, that's where we are today. This may change in the future. We may have microbial strains, either natural strains or genetically engineered strains that produce a particular neurotransmitter that is like a valium type of thing or increased serotonin production and they may have these effects. So, I think Psychobiotics are a possibility for the future. We just don't have clinically relevant examples.

Is there clinical research about the supplement world? Just supplements in general, taking supplements to improve the gut microbiome or immune system or to get the nutrients and the vitamins and the minerals that maybe we're not consuming in our foods. Has there been research on this that you have found or done?

I haven't done the research and it's a difficult question to answer because For example, the vitamins, you know, Linus Pauling was promoting vitamin C for everything. And this could, even though they did large studies and even though it was a Nobel Prize winner, you know, it could never really be proven that there's much more than a placebo effect. And I take vitamin C and even knowing for me that it's pretty placebo. And it works.

And it works.

It works. So, I don't really care if the vitamin does that.

Yeah, whatever. If it works in your mind, then it works in your body, right?

So I would say this applies to a lot of the supplements.

Do you take other supplements besides vitamin C or vitamin D maybe?

No, I don't.

Just vitamin C. No multivitamin, no probiotics.

And I do the vitamin C, the first sign of symptom I have of a cold coming on.

You take it.

If I miss that moment, it doesn't work for me.

Really?

So which also points towards the placebo you release molecules in your body that-.

Gosh, so how does the placebo affect the immune system? Because I grew up in a religion called Christian Science. It was all about the power of the thought and the mind of healing the body. And, you know, never took medicine, never had shots as a kid, like never had any of these things. We were just taught in like the spiritual practice of healing through the mind, through the thought, through the belief that you are whole already.

I mean, what do you think about that religion today based on what we have been talking about?

I feel like the religion in general, it is funny, I have not gone to church in a long time. I have kind of like just been, you know, for whatever reasons, nothing against the religion, but I feel like it is more relevant the findings, the practices, the science of the mind from when I was raised and this was discovered in the 1800s by a woman. It's like the more people I interview, like yourself, like other doctors, scientists, they're speaking about these concepts, quantum physics and, you know, drawing a word on a water and the molecules shifting. It's like they're speaking these ideas, healing yourself with your mind through breath work, through other practices than medical practices. And I'm like, well, yeah, this is what I was raised to learn, these types of idea concepts. So I feel like it's more relevant than ever. I don't think they've done a good job as a religion to make it as widespread as they could because of the format of the church, you know, process. But the ideas are more relevant than ever in my mind.

Absolutely. And yeah, I'm also a big believer in the placebo response and people have underestimated. I mean, they're beautiful studies, scientific studies. We know what we've done studies, what parts of the brain are being activated when you believe.

It's not even real, it's a belief. You're shifting the idea of the belief. The actual substance does nothing.

There's nothing. And the most interesting thing, a friend of mine at the Beth Israel Hospital, Tony Lambo, they did a study. where they actually, they had three groups. They had a placebo group where it was hidden from the subject that was it a drug or was it a placebo? They had a drug group and they had an un-concealed placebo. So they actually told them, this is a placebo pill.

Really? So they had a pill that they didn't know was a placebo but it was, yeah. Whatever, a sugar pill or whatever, right? the drug. And they had another pill.

It was an unconcealed pill.

They said, this is a placebo pill.

It's a placebo pill.

Which one worked the best?

The unconcealed placebo worked as well as the drug. Which is amazing.

That's crazy. They said, this is a placebo. There's no drug. It's a placebo. But if you believe it, it will work. It will work. Is that kind of what they said?

I don't know what the details in the instructions were. And I mean, I had a similar personal experience. That's crazy. You know, when I was a kid, so I had these warts on my fingers and, you know, it got pretty bad. And then the first time went to a surgeon, the surgeon resected them. I still had my scars on the middle finger. But then they came back and then somebody said, well, there are these people, you know, There's this old farmer in a village who does this praying over your words and they'll go away.

This is crazy you're telling me this because I had a similar situation. Tell me this.

I said, no way. I absolutely do not believe it. But then we went anyway. So this is where the difference is. I went anyway.

Right, you're like, I still want to figure out if there's a way.

I would have figured this out. So there was some hidden belief that this could work. within two days these words were gone.

No way.

So it's just. And I think there's many examples.

I have a similar story about that. I have a similar story. I had these in college.

I had.

I was playing football in college, and for whatever reason, the bottom of my foot started to get covered in, like, I think they're called Planters warts or something, like little black dots. It was so painful to walk. and I wore cleats, football cleats. So every time I'd press down and push off, like the cleat would kind of push up, it was so painful. The trainers, the athletic trainers, tried to scalpel them out. It was like so many of them, and the bigger ones, they tried to scalpel them out, wouldn't go away. They keep coming back. And it was like multiplying. And now I'm getting worried. I'm like, the bottom one foot is covered in these like plantar warts, these little like black dots that were so painful. I remember going to my sister, Heidi, she lived a few hours away and I went there I think during Thanksgiving break or something. And she put me through a healing process, a visualization technique. And she laid me down and she put on some soft music and she said, we're gonna practice something, we're gonna heal you right now. And I was like, no way, but I want to figure out if this will work. And literally she put me down And she kind of guided me through a visualization meditation process. She's like, I want you to imagine you're in a river. You're laying in a river and the water is flushing through the top of your head, through your body, and flushing everything out of your body. And it's loosening up the warts on your feet and it's just, they're falling away. Literally, I practice this every day for the next week and they were gone a week later. Yeah, that's amazing. And I was like, this is nuts. They couldn't get them out with a scalpel, but I was able to somehow release them through a visualization and a belief practice. And I think about it, it just sounds crazy.

No, it sounds crazy.

You did it too. Two days later, it was gone.

Yeah, it was, and no scar, nothing.

This was like a big warden.

Yeah, yeah.

So, what is that?

Well, so the only way that I can explain this is that deep inside of us, you know, this is obviously, I mean, placebo is sort of a negative by taste because of It's the enemy of the pharmaceutical industry. It's the enemy of medicine.

Science.

We always want to prove it's better than placebo. Even though placebo is incredibly powerful. There's so many studies that show that the medication adds even antidepressants at 10% above the placebo response. When you think about this, that without taking medication, you almost have the same therapeutic response as we're taking this chemical that's engineered based on decades of science. So the only way that I can explain it is it's a self-healing system that's built into our bodies. It's a property of the complex ecosystem that our bodies. And it's ancient. It probably was there from the very beginning of evolution. has improved, has saved the species from extinction many times with diseases and injuries that resilient people that, I mean, resilience, it's a state where you can bring this self-healing system better to the surface than if you're non-resilient. So you can almost trace it back now we talked about complex microbiome ecosystem is more resilient to infections. So it has its own self-healing or self-correcting properties. And I think it's so deeply ingrained that even if you tell somebody and this person consciously hears that, the system inside of you overcomes that conscious response. It doesn't care. if you go through this ritual that somebody gives you these pills and somehow deep inside your mind, it triggers this system. I think the best thing would be to get rid of that term placebo and just really change it.

To what? Belief?

Or just self-healing? Self-healing. And, you know, interestingly, it can go in the opposite direction too, and talking about, again, about this, you know, God's health. And so there's many, it's an epidemic now, this, what some people have called the national eating disorder epidemic, you know, that's how many people think of, I can't eat this and I can't eat this, and gluten makes me deadly sick.

Too much almond butter and now this.

And that's like- It's a multi-billion dollar industry, you know, and you, You see these ridiculous things, you get a water bottle and says gluten-free.

Soy-free, gluten-free, just water.

So it's, this sibling of the placebo response, which is the nocebo response.

So if you believe... Nocebo.

Nocebo.

What does that mean?

It means it's a substance that you believe hurts you or has a negative effect on your health.

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I think it goes back to, you know, the Latin word that it says something about damage, no serum. But anyway, I personally believe that talking about the supplements and these recommendations and these experiences, I would say 80%, maybe 75%, is either placebo with all the supplements or is nocebo with all the recommendations, what you can't eat or what you should avoid. and once this is ingrained in your mind, it's very powerful. I once sat next to a couple on a plane back from Barcelona from a meeting, and they had bought this delicious sandwich. It was sitting next to me, and I was observing this young couple, and they were opening up the plastic foil that delicious sandwich was there. Then they took this sandwich apart, took.

All the things off of it.

Took all the things off and then I dared to ask myself, why are you doing this? Do you have any, oh, we're allowed to do this and we're allowed to do this. I said, my God, it must be very difficult to enjoy a vacation in Spain or in Europe. If you're always afraid, it's always triggering this anxiety response. And then if they eat it, what we talked about earlier, the anxiety and the worry doesn't stay in your mind. It goes in your gut. So, once this food gets into your gut, you don't feel well because you've done something bad.

Oh, man. It's almost like you could do the reverse where it's like, you know what? There's this delicious pizza and ice cream and chocolate that is right in front of me and you could almost trick your brain to say, this is not going to affect me in a negative way. Like, this is gonna feel good, I'm gonna feel good afterwards, it's gonna taste great, I'm gonna feel joyful and happy by having this experience. Or is that impossible with the chemical compounds that are entering your body? Is it impossible to trick it in the other way? Like, I'm drinking this alcohol and I'm gonna be healthy tomorrow, you know?

Well, the problem is with some of these unhealthy foods, you actually feel temporarily good.

Momentarily.

So the comfort food or the alcohol, the drink in the evening. You get this temporary well-being, sense of well-being. Comfort food is a very good example. The high fat, high sugar food gives you this. And there's been studies on that. Temporarily makes you less anxious, less depressed. But then in the long term, It's the opposite.

It's interesting. So is there no way to train your mind to not have anxiety around what you're eating? Even though you know the no SIBO, it's like this is not good for me, but you know what? I'm gonna enjoy my life. It's, you know, I'm gonna do it in moderation and I'm just gonna be joyful in the process so that when emotionally, when it hits my gut, I'm happy as opposed to. No, I think I know this is not good for me, but I'm gonna do it anyways.

I think this is something you should do anyway. I mean, you should have the healthier diet, but you should always have this enjoyment, you know, and many studies have shown, for example, with the, you know, with the Mediterranean diet. So the Mediterranean, you know, people living in these, in these countries always had a very close and active social life of festivities. And I've experienced this, we have experienced this a couple of times. visiting with Italian families and it feels incredibly good, you know, to have a long table and... And even though knowing that some of the stuff that we ate was not that healthy, it was a good experience.

The enjoyment was still powerful, which probably didn't affect your gut as much.

And people have shown that that is part of the secret to the health benefit of these diets, you know, that this enjoyment, this social connection, the connectedness and the happiness and the.

Wow.

Yes. And we also have a friend, you know, who's, we've always, he's older than we are, but we've always enjoyed going out for dinner with him because his, his enjoyment is infectious, you know, picking the restaurant and picking the table in the restaurant that he knew beforehand. and bring a bottle of wine from his wine collection. Everything was passion, you know?

Yes.

And he's in his 80s. He had a very serious chronic disease, a miracle that he made into his 80s. I don't think he has paid a lot of attention to a healthy diet.

I think that passion- But he's got joy.

That joy and that passion is a big part of it. And I would say Speculation, you know, again, it's the brain-gut axis and the immune system that is affected by this passion.

How much does we talked about nutrition, but how much does stress, I guess we talked about emotions, but how much does the emotion of stress affect the immune system? If you're eating the right nutritional foods, but you are constantly in stress, consciously or unconsciously, how much does that suppress the immune system?

Yeah, that's a good question because, you know, as I said earlier, the stress effect has, the stress has an effect both on the microbes and on this barrier, the gut barrier, the leakiness. And so then you have two forces that go in opposite directions. I can't answer that question, you know. my guess is the, the easy answer would be if you say, if you have both the stress and the unhealthy diet, that's very, that's a no-brainer and that happened.

It seems like a lot of people have that a lot of healthy diet and they're stressed out all the time.

I would say that is the cause, the main, the root cause of this non-infectious chronic disease epidemic that we have.

The combination of those two factors, what are those diseases?

Cardiovascular disease, obesity, metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular disease, fatty liver disease, brain diseases, degenerative brain diseases.

Alzheimer's.

Cancer, colon cancer particularly.

Stress and diet are the two main factors that cause those things.

And now we know, I mean, there's obviously like when I say this all boils down to the gut barrier, it's obviously a very simplistic explanation. You know, the scientists working on every little step of these mechanisms, but the sort of luxury that I have at this stage of my career is I can look at the big picture.

Yeah.

And I think without this detailed science of each of these little details, we wouldn't be where we are today. But I think we also need this big picture and with, for the interventions and the recommendations to, to patients and prophylactically to families, because nobody's interested what molecule really is contributes like 1% of the variance to this disease. Scientists are, and industry is, because industry wants to patent this molecule to make a medication.

Right.

So my main interest is really spread the big picture, you know, to...

Yes.

And I feel pretty confident whatever Except for some of your questions, really intriguing questions about religion, which I cannot guarantee in any way scientifically, but most of the things that we talked about today, I think are supported by science.

Most of them, yeah. What would you say, a personal question, if you could recommend five things that everyone should do on a daily basis that would optimize their immune system, their brain-gut connection, and their overall well-being? Maybe these are things that you're doing or things you know you should be doing more of. It could be as simple as waking up with gratitude or falling asleep with gratitude. It could be making sure you call a loved one. It could be eating a healthy diet, meditating, breathing. What would you say are the five things you would recommend to optimize the immune system?

Yeah, so you mentioned this, you know, the mindfulness practices, waking up in the morning with gratitude, and focusing your mind, clearing it from all the chatter. Definitely something that you want to do upon waking up. And I'm not doing this enough. We're not, so my wife and I are not doing this enough. We wake up like probably millions of people and look at our iPhone. That's what you should not be doing. Right, right.

Okay.

The second one is daily regular moderate exercise unless you're a competitive athlete. Obviously you want to push that to the maximum. But for the average person, and this again supported by science, that moderate regular exercise can give you an extra in combination with these other lifestyle factors an extra 10 disease free years.

Really?

So if you're 50 and you take a questionnaire of what you're doing and compare this people that do this lifestyle, positive lifestyle things, the ones that do it, they add another 10 years of healthy.

That's crazy.

Which is amazing. There's no medication that can do this.

No.

Free.

Free.

Move your body.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

The next thing is, So we have the mindfulness, the exercise. The diet, clearly a major factor, a largely plant-based diet, which doesn't have to be vegetarian or vegan unless for ethical reasons, which then I think is really justified. Social interactions. so in terms of the diet, you know, alcohol, that's so always a question mark. There's some studies, and some people say even the smallest amount of alcohol is bad for you. I would go more with the, with the Mediterranean diet and a small amount of, like, the glass, a half, half glass of red wine in the evening is a lot better than taking a sleeping pill or a Valium. and it has, you know, poly, health promoting polyphenol molecules in it. And then having this sense of connectedness in some shape or form. And the connectedness would be to your friends, to some higher meaning in life, and that relates to compassion, empathy, And when I say these things, they sound very, you know.

Non-scientific.

Non-scientific. But a good friend of mine and colleague, superb researcher at UCLA, Steve Cole, who has done, quoted him a couple of times, done these studies looking at immune cells and the gene expression in these immune cells, he has shown that some of these like empathy or eudaimonia that It's like believing in a higher sense and, you know, not thinking that happiness, personal happiness makes you happy. But it's the reward you're getting from living a life based on a higher meaning and, you know, giving joy to other people. He has shown that that positively affects your immune cells, which is an amazing thing. These recommendations that I gave you, these five are not just my personal preferences that I came up with. They're based on science, which is amazing.

That's beautiful. I feel like I could go on for a couple more hours with you, but I want to wrap it up for the final few questions. Before I go into the final few questions, I want people to get the book, the Gut-Immune Connection, how understanding the connection between food and immunity can help us regain our health. This is going to help a lot of people. Make sure you guys get a few copies of this book, give it to some friends. And if you want Dr. Mayer to come back on and share more about these things, then let me know in the comments below. If you'd like to have him come back on and share more stuff. So this is great. It's got a lot of research in here, a lot of information, a lot of how to. So make sure you guys get a copy of this.

40 references at the end of the book.

40 references. Wow, there you go. 40 references, the gut immune connection. This is a question I ask everyone towards the end. It's called the Three Truths Question. And I feel like as a scientist and as a researcher, you also have a very spiritual part of you that you're always discovering and learning new things. I was reading your bio about, I think you've studied the Native American philosophies, I think it's the Amazon as well. You kind of studied these tribal, ancient wisdom and you've coupled it with modern science and you've tried to find a sense of meaning that works for you and your life, which has been really beautiful. This is called the Three Truths. So I'd like you to imagine a hypothetical scenario. It's your very last day on this earth, many years away. And you've accomplished everything you want to accomplish. You're happy, but you gotta go to the next place. This life is over. And for whatever reason, you've got to take all of your body of work with you. So all of your research, your material, your content, no one has access to it anymore. But you get to leave behind three things you know to be true from all your life lessons, the lessons you would leave behind. What would be those three truths for you that you would share?

Wow, that's a tough one.

So.

Yeah, I would say, you know, even though this is not really necessarily publicly available, so I've been very diligent for a long time in my life to write a very detailed, you know, diary where I went through why I made this decision and what happened and what were my dreams and That's definitely something probably nobody will ever get to read this. But I think it's something, it would be a good lesson to, because when I go back and look at these documents today, I see that there was something that I had in my mind as a goal, which goes to the things that I've arrived on today. you know, to. I mean, the details doesn't. That don't really matter. It's that you have these goals deeply ingrained in your mind early on and you pursue them and not let detours get in the way to change the direction. It's kind of this concept of individuation. recognizing who you are. And even though you may put things aside temporarily for various reasons, financially or never deviate from that path, I think.

That'S always come back to.

Always come back to it.

Okay, that's number one. Is that right?

Yeah.

Number two, truth.

You know, for my scientific. writings. Yeah, I mean, I would say it's, it's sort of strange today because for a long time when I pursued that science of brain-gut connection, nobody was interested in it. Now, suddenly the whole world writes about it and writes cookbooks about it. So I'm, I'm not sure if anybody would pay attention, you know, that, that we did this at a time where nobody was interested or believed it or, you know, for me, it's important that we did that. It feels good.

So.

It'S, it's something that it doesn't fully fit this criteria that you mentioned, you know. So would this also mean the, like, not something that I've written or just.

A lesson you would leave behind, like, the philosophy, the lesson, the truth. So one is like, you know, have the goals and make sure you always come back to them. Another one could be make sure you take care of your gut health.

Well, I'm not sure if I would put that at this high level. It would be more like look at the world in terms of interconnectedness.

I like that.

And base all your evaluations and decisions on that concept. that really involves everything. That involves your health, that involves your how you interact with others, you know, within your family, friends Beyond with human beings in general, with the environment, with the planet. I think that would probably be the biggest lesson.

Okay. Okay. That's two. And number three, truth.

Yeah, I would say live a life based on this concept of eudaimonia. that don't fall into the trap that you think material happiness will give you what humans are searching for. Eudaimonia.

Eudaimonia. What does that mean?

It means these two forms of happiness. So the material happiness that is possessing things, increasing your wealth based on yourself, the benefit of yourself. So the eudaimonia is believing in the higher meaning, which means making other people happy, spread happiness and contentment. There are many examples that people have studied. this principle. And again, it's good for your own well-being. It's good for your body, for your immune system, as we know.

To be altruistic, to be of service to something greater. More than to how do I gain as much for me, how do I collect as many things for me?

Yeah, and we live in a city, obviously, that completely believes in hedonism. and enriching yourself more and more and building bigger homes and, you know, bigger cars and more expensive cars. It's, it's sort of hard to maintain that belief in a society like that, we're surrounded and particularly for younger people that are more susceptible to this concept. And I think it comes with age that you believe more and more that there's another way. to happiness. It's not hedonism. It's this eudaimonia concept.

That's cool. I love these. I've got one final question for you. Before I ask the final question, Dr. Mayer, I want to acknowledge you for the incredible commitment and dedication you've had on this research and this science of the gut-brain connection, because I just feel like over the last four decades, America in general and the world has gotten sicker and sicker. It has relied more and more on medications to heal something as opposed to going to the roots. And by you studying what are the root causes of inflammation and disease and all these things from the gut, something that we really never understood until the last couple of decades, it's really inspiring. So I acknowledge you for your commitment to this solution. to understanding this complex system, which I'm assuming is still scratching the surface on what we really know about it. So thank you for doing the work. Thank you for putting yourself out there and starting to talk about this. Thank you for writing the books. And thanks for everything. It's inspiring.

Well, thanks for this opportunity. You know, I owe you a lot. I mean, your life is an inspiration when you read it, you know, and your success. in life and I'm sure if you know the happiness that you have gotten out of the paths that you have chosen. So it's a real honor, you know, to be in touch with you. I appreciate it.

I appreciate it. Final question for you. Also, they can follow you on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook. Amran Meyer over there. Amran Meyer over on all of those places. So make sure to check you out over there. Where are you most active? What platform?

I would say at the moment it's Instagram.

Okay, Instagram. Emran Meyer over on Instagram, so make sure to check out your Instagram for more information. You also have a website?

Yeah, the other one is the website emranmeyer.com, so when you go there you can sign up for our newsletter, which comes out twice a month, and email on the alternate weeks. where we pick topics related to the wider topic, brain-gut microbiome, the concept of one health that we didn't talk about today, but that I believe health is something that's not just in our body, but it's health of the planet, really.

Of course, absolutely.

So, yeah, if you go to the website, you'll find a lot of information. and ways to connecting.

Emery Meyer.com, gotcha, okay. Amazing. Final question is, what's your definition of greatness?

Wow, this interview was sort of back loaded with the most challenging questions coming at the end. What's the means of greatness? Probably very subjective thing, things that you do to realize your potential, I would say, to the fullest extent, which will involve all these other things that we talked about today.

So.

The belief that you have the ability to do great things. And that takes as a core belief that you think you believe in yourself, that no obstacle is big enough to prevent you from getting there. And that you take any setbacks as temporary setbacks and you're resilient as these ecosystems we talked about. Sure. And always bounce back. move to a higher level. So I think that to me is. It's greatness, Dr. Meyer.

Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Thank you, Louis. It was great.

Amazing.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode. Again, if you enjoyed it, make sure to share this with a couple of friends. You can text them, you can post it over on social media, tag me on Instagram @LouisHowes or Twitter or anywhere that you're sharing this and click the Subscribe button if this is your first time here over on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Spotify to stay notified and up to date on the latest and greatest here on the School of Greatness. Also, leave us a review over on Apple Podcast as well of the part that you enjoyed the most. I'd love to hear what you enjoyed, what you got out of this by leaving a review over on Apple Podcast. And I want to leave you with this quote from the Buddha who said, the secret of health for both mind and body is live the present moment wisely and earnestly. Whew, such a good reminder. when we have distractions or anxiety or stress or worry, we're not really living in the present moment a lot of those times. We're living in the past or we're.

Living in the future.

So remind yourself to live present, wisely and earnestly in this moment today. Really be grateful for another day, all the good that is in your life. Even if you've got a lot of stress happening right now, there's a lot of good that you can find as well if you take a moment to look, listen and really reflect on what those moments are. and I want to remind you, if no one's told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. I'm so grateful for you, and you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.

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