The Power of Words and How They Can Affect Your Health | Dr. Andrew Weil on Health Theory

All right, welcome everybody to another episode of Health Theory. I'm here with Dr. Andrew Weil. Um Dr. Weil, thank you so much for joining me, man. I am super excited. As somebody who grew up in the '80s, you are so familiar to me. Uh so, this is awesome. Happy to be here. Anybody that that can talk about medical hexing uh has me at hello. That notion of the power of belief and how much um the things that a practitioner or medical practitioner can sort of leak out and just things that they say, maybe an offhanded comment, whatever, the the kind of impact that that can have on somebody by framing something as either, you know, that they can get over it or not is super fascinating. Well, this is something that uh physicians are not trained in. It's the It's falls under the heading of the art of medicine and the power of words is very great. And I think many doctors say things unconsciously without realizing the impact they have and in one way or another tell patients that they're not going to get better and saying things like, "Well, you'll just have to live with it." for example. Um I I have found in my career as a practitioner that um being able to give messages to people that they can get better is unbelievably powerful. I've had many patients come back to me and tell me that the most important thing that I did for them was that I was the only doctor they saw who told them they could get better. And that makes me sad in a way, you know, that that there's such pessimism about the possibility of healing because I think healing is, you know, universal and quite common. Yeah, one one thing that I really like about the way that you talk about that cuz I am I am super sensitive to woo-woo and people that take things that are like even the word healing. I know you've talked about how that nobody talked about that in medical school, which is pretty crazy. Um but I as somebody who started as a pretty die-hard skeptic to that stuff, I actually get it because words like that have sort of become infused with things that aren't necessarily um scientifically sound, but I think that there's very much been a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater and your ability to sort of traverse both of those and talk about things in a scientifically sound way, but also acknowledge that the body has a natural way of healing. And so when you remove that from your vernacular, uh you go into sort of equally useless territory. Yep. Uh you know, the idea that the body can heal itself is hardly new. Hippocrates in the 5th century BC said that we should review the healing power of nature. Uh but that idea has really been lost in in uh modern times. And how do you approach that? The fact that you have a a degree from Harvard in botany, uh obviously I was super surprised by that. I I was surprised that they even offered the course, but was it that notion that drew you to that or was it something else? Um I was always interested in plants. That's from the time I was a little kid and uh In what way? Well, my mother had a green thumb and uh we used to garden together and and she turned me on to the growing growing things and was fascinated by that. So when I had a chance to study botany, I jumped at it. Now, I had the good fortune to be mentored by the godfather of modern ethnobotany, Richard Schultes, who was director of the Harvard Botanical Museum. So that really awoke my interest in medicinal plants and psychoactive plants, uh and that was my undergraduate work. I went to medical school and it was a real shock to discover that the people teaching me subjects like pharmacology had no knowledge of nature or the natural sources from which drugs came. And uh I I think that gave me a great advantage to have that background in natural science and plant science. Now, what's the difference between botany straight up and ethnobotany? Ethnobotany is the uh study of plants as they are used in other cultures, particularly by traditional peoples. Uh so, uh you know, my mentor Schultes had spent a great deal of time in South America and got me interested in going down there and looking at traditional uses of plants, food plants, medicinal plants, drug plants, you know, by native peoples. And so how does that begin to play into your own journey in terms of were you first drawn to medical stuff? Were you first drawn to psychedelics? Did you actually go travel to these places and see how they were being used sort of in their natural habitat? What did that journey look like? Well, well actually all of that, but you know, I was experimenting with psychedelics and interested in that before I went to medical school and interested in all this botanical stuff in other cultures. I had a I really never saw myself being a practicing physician. I thought a medical degree would be very useful to me and it has been. How do you How did you see being useful? How did you see it as being useful if you didn't plan on practicing medicine? Well, first of all, this was during the Vietnam War. So, going to medical school was a good way of deferring all of that. And also, I had too many interests growing up and everybody told me I had to, you know, narrow down and concentrate on something and going to medical school made people go away, you know, it uh But I also had a sense that given the things I was interested in, the mind, how the mind affected the body, plants, drugs, that it'd be very useful to me to have a medical degree and it has been. I mean, I don't think I could have done a lot of the stuff that I've done if I didn't have that credential. So, I know that you never had like any sort of big medical scare or anything that led you to this. Were there some early authors or something that drew you to this? It seems so This seems obscure now. If somebody told me that they were into ethnobotany, which now with psychedelics making a resurgence you could sort of trace a line, but back when you would have been doing this it seems like it would be ultra contrary to what everybody else is pursuing. What sort of began to tick that over in your mind? I think there are a lot of threads that that played into it. One was this interest in plants was I said went back a very long I as long as I could remember I was fascinated by the mind and how the mind affected the body. And I tried to study that at as a Harvard undergraduate, but psychology there was behaviorism. It was running rats through mazes mazes and they weren't interested in consciousness, which what was what I was interested in. Talk to me about that. So I know you studied under B.F. Skinner, who's sort of like the godfather of behaviorism and people know his studies even if they don't know him by name. Yeah. And the thought that you studied directly under him and sort of got fed up with all of that. What what what was it about consciousness that drew you in and what do you why weren't they asking those questions? Well, consciousness see just seemed to me that's the most fascinating thing. It's in our head. What is it? You know, there still is like science can't agree as to whether consciousness is exists apart from the brain. I I I'm delighted to see these days that there is a growing number of people who are buying into the idea that consciousness exists apart from the brain, that consciousness may be primary and prevailing. Now you're talking about like panpsychism? Yeah. Yeah, I think that's a fascinating idea. do you know Annika Harris? Yes. So what do you that is my only foray into panpsychism. So I had her on the show and I if you had introduced me to the idea before I researched it, I would have dismissed it out of hand. Like it sounds apparently ridiculous. Right. And then as I to me as somebody who is like obviously I'm fascinated by the brain and that's been a huge driver in my own life. But the one problem about the brain that I have historically found sort of I don't understand why people are obsessed with it is consciousness. And then so researching her, reading her book consciousness, getting into panpsychism, it and seeing somebody so intelligent attack this problem so seriously, it really did open a door for me. What's your take on panpsychism? Is that how you approach it? Is that what you think that the punchline is going to be? I mean, I don't know. All I can tell you is that for my own experiences, some of which having to do with psychedelics, I have a sense that everything is conscious and that consciousness pervades the universe and that that's that is the ultimate reality. What gives you that intuition? Is that strictly psychedelics or did you sort of have that sense before that kicked off? I I can't tell you that, but but I will tell you, you know, I studied hypnosis after I finished medical school at Columbia University. It was a fascinating course. And to see the power of how of the mind caused changes in the body, you know, how you could affect physical reality by changes in the mind, it's just, you know, it's incontrovertible. And yet that that idea is that's not paid attention to in medicine. That was very frustrating for me. You know, the mind is seen as unreal. And that if you observe a change in the body in a physical system, the dogma is that the change the cause has to be physical. And I don't see it that way. I think cause and effect can go both ways. Just as one example, you know, we the the whole field of mental health is completely dominated by the biomedical paradigm, which says that, you know, all disordered thinking and emotion is a result of disordered brain biochemistry. And therefore the only treatment is psychiatric medication. Those drugs, which are incredibly used and overused, are very ineffective. And if that if that dogma was right, we should have greater power to change consciousness and emotion and mood through brain chemistry. Why why shouldn't it be the other way around? Or why can't it go both directions? Why can't disordered brain why can't disordered emotions produce disordered brain biochemistry? I mean, I think it goes both ways, but this is a real limitation of the that cuz I I think that that is um it's very profound and I think a lot of people miss that. Um so two things on that. One, I would say it experientially it seems self-evident that thoughts when repeated are going to hardwire like they'll they'll become when I talk about um experientially it's self-evident. You you feel that, right? The more you think something the easier it is to think it and you return to that. And when I think about it from a evolutionary perspective, that makes sense, right? Your your brain is calorically ravenous. And so if you're trying to have an animal that, you know, is going to have periods of um unintentional fasting, you know, you're going through a mini famine or a proper famine, it's like, "Okay, I've got to do things to reduce the caloric needs of the brain." And having something that you do repeatedly get moved off into the default mode network so that it takes less energy to think about it. That that makes a lot of sense. So there you have a thought is literally changing the physical structures of your brain. It's actually going through the myelination process. It's becoming actually hardwired. So that to me makes all the sense in the world and and um certainly is backed up by science in terms of actually being able to show that through repetition that you can uh improve your skill set or that you actually do impact the myelination or that a a musician can change the the actual density of brain matter in certain regions of the brain. Yeah. All of that makes sense to me. Um where I begin to break down my understanding maybe and that brings in the skepticism for me is I can buy into that notion, that reciprocal nature. Same with emotions and facial expressions for instance, right? So if you make a facial expression actually makes you feel an emotion the same way that feeling an emotion will will grant you that facial expression. So I get all of that. Where where I um am skeptical is how does that then transpose outside of the body? And and I'll I'll anchor it with Phineas Gage. Right? So, Phineas Gage working on the railroad, tamping rod shoots up through his jaw, out through his brain, never loses consciousness, but it fundamentally changes his personality forever. Um so, disturbances of the physical structures of the brain are going to [ __ ] you up. How How is it then that consciousness is somehow existing outside of that? And maybe we have to define consciousness. That might be a place to start. I don't know if we can define it, but I know it. I mean, it's in it's in my head. It's awareness. pornography? Yes. It's awareness. By the way, I saw Phineas Gage's skull once in a Seriously? Yeah, they had it in the in that sort of museum attic at Harvard Medical School. Uh it was very impressive. What? What? Anyway. Did you Can you see the exit wound? I'm super curious. Yeah, there was a big Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Went through his head and How How big are we we talking? than that. It was like about like that. That's crazy. Yeah, so how did that happen? I don't know. But uh I I screwed around with firewalking for a while, which fascinated me. And it's really interesting the scientific explanation of of how people can walk on hot coals is One is that there's a small layer of air that insulates the heat that's formed from evaporation of sweat. I mean, that's [ __ ] Uh another one is that hot coals don't really conduct heat that well. It's like putting your arm in a hot oven that the air is not a good conductor, so you can keep it there for a bit. So, I have gotten my feet burned on shorter, cooler firewalks, and I've had un absolutely nothing from a 40-ft firewalk that was trying to set a record for the longest and hottest done, and it had to do with my mental state. It didn't have to do with any physical explanation. That's interesting. So, I I I actually I did firewalking as well. Um I did it with Tony Robbins, and it was It felt dangerous. Like when I was doing it and your feet touched the heat, it's like, "Fuck, if I stop, I'm done. And you really have to psych yourself up. Now, did I feel like it was because of my mental state? No, but I definitely felt like I was playing with fire, quite literally. So, um I could see, and they warn you ahead of time like, "Hey, people really get burned doing this [ __ ] so don't [ __ ] around, don't take a selfie, don't slow down, don't stop. Like, you need to go." And they tell you, I don't know if they said the same thing to you, but you have to say to yourself, "Cool moss, cool moss, cool moss, cool moss." Um and and it worked, man. And I've only done it once, um but it was psychologically pretty powerful. Like, you feel the [ __ ] heat, man. So, when you will yourself to walk across it, and everything in my body was telling me not to do it. And so, when you will yourself to do it, it's pretty interesting. But, so, are you tying that to to consciousness being outside the brain? I did not feel the [ __ ] heat, by the way. I mean, I felt it as I approached the fire pit. This was like a 40-ft long, very hot walk. But, there was no sensation on my feet of heat. It was like walking on crunchy croutons. Because you had put yourself in a psychological state. know if I think I did, I think he did, because there was like incredible group energy, and you know, he could tell when you were ready to do it. I was in a in a very altered state. Uh and I had no I mean, I I've been in states like that. So, it was a trance state of some sort. My consciousness was very focused, but in that state, my body behaved differently. It was able to somehow absorb that energy and not whereas at other times when I tried it, when I was not in the right mental state, it felt like walking on [ __ ] red-hot coals, and I was sort of, you know, leaping across, and I had blisters from that, and there was pain. This was like a totally different experience. So, to me, that's and it just that is a powerful example of how a change in consciousness produces a change in how you interact with the physical world. Okay, so I'm down with that. Nothing in that seems too controversial to me, but that doesn't explain to me the idea of consciousness being somehow removed from the the the physicality of the brain. I'll keep it to now, and I know that you're saying it's far broader than the brain. So, let me rearticulate what I heard you say. So, you can get the your psychology in a place, and there's such an interconnectivity between the cells of your body and your brain, and so you can get yourself into a psychological state at which point your cells actually react differently than you would necessarily predict based on historical patterns of reaction. Cool. I think most people will be able to get behind that. Now, let's go to if I damage Phineas Gage's physical structures of his brain, fundamental things about what we would say he is change. Now, that may be because we're miss that we have a assumed definition of what consciousness is, or it may be because we really are anchored to our physicality. I would say it's it probably does warrant defining consciousness, and I know that's hard, and if you're not comfortable, I will posit a definition, and you can tell me if it's crazy. But, I actually think that we really are anchored to physical structures. So, can consciousness exist apart from the brain? I mean, what about experiences of of awareness out of your body. People that have have out-of-the-body experiences. I had one as an adolescent as a reaction to a I had anaphylactic shock shock from a hay fever desensitization shot. And, you know, I was not breathing, and I was rushed to a doctor's office, and I left my body. I was floating somewhere on the ceiling looking down on it, and I was in a very blissful calm state, and I could not understand why these people were rushing around, and they gave me an adrenaline shot, and I saw my heart start to beat fast, and I was yanked back to my body, and it was very unpleasant. Uh that's the one experience I had of like, you know, my consciousness existing apart from my physical body. Interesting, but then you talk to people that have had more profound experiences that sort. I think that has to be taken seriously. Well, so let's talk through that one. So, um when you talk about psychedelics, I know you said that there are certain drugs produce um some Well, actually, the way you said it was if you have a shaman who can walk you through something and tell you like, "Hey, what you're going through is is sort of an expected experience." Um there there's a calming element to that. Now, the fact that it is a predictable experience tells me that certain situations or molecules will give a certain um ooh, human interpreted reality, right? So, it may be that oxygen deprivation, when it gets to a certain level, creates the sense of elevating out of the body or I don't know. Right? And so, when you get people in a very similar physiological state, they all report that same sense of I'm looking down at my body. It's so consistent the way that people describe it. Now, it could be what you're saying, right? Which is, "Hey, it is so consistent that you have to accept that there's there might be something going on here that you don't understand." Which, by the way, I'm actually fully prepared to accept. Um but it may also be that that's just like the way the human mind interprets that thing. So, So, here's what I'd say. I think there is no way of deciding between those alternatives. I think they are two different ways of looking at reality and ourselves. So, but I think you have a choice as to which one you buy into. For me, the the one that looks at consciousness being primary opens up a lot more interesting possibilities. All right. Now, that's interesting. So, can you define It makes for it it makes for a more fun reality. It may even make for some more profound changes. And if if the argument is um especially coming from somebody who focuses on healing the way that you do and it's like, "Look, life has reinvented I'm putting words in your mouth, so tell me if I'm wrong here, but life has shown me that, um, you can either take your body out of a healing state by doing things mentally or put your body into a healing state by doing certain things mentally. Even if it's not objectively true, it actually has served me and others to view it that way." Like, uh, there's certainly, um, power in that. Go ahead. But I'm interested when there is objective confirmation of it, you know, such as the not feeling pain and no damage to the feet. That's really interesting. Mhm. But what's happening there? Or you met you I saw you talked about petting bumblebees in in one of your things. I mean, that was a very profound experience for me then. It was in an It was in an altered state. If I had not been in that altered state, I don't think I could have pet that bumblebee. That's, um, So, walk me through that. That particular example, uh, was the altered state induced through meditation or induced through an exogenous substance? was MDMA. And I was in a very relaxed state in a canyon, in a beautiful setting and, you know, at one with everything and the bumblebee landed in my hand. I had was eating an orange and it came down to drink some of the orange juice and it just stayed there. You know, I tried I had tried I had heard somebody talk about petting bumblebees and it just, you know, [ __ ] that sounds really interesting. So, I tried to pet bumblebees, but they don't want to be petted. They're going about their business, you know, they don't want to be touched. And this one just stayed there for about, I don't know, 10 minutes and I was able to pet it and it was furry. It was great. No, maybe it was drunk maybe it was drunk on orange juice. I don't know, but it was a wonderful experience. Yeah, that's interesting. Um, I've heard you reference the housewife LSD experiment, which I found utterly fascinating. And it would be interesting to see all of that from the outside, right? When you hear people recount their trips, I don't know if you um how familiar you are with Sam Harris, but he Yes, I am familiar So, did you hear his podcast about um his heroic dose blindfolded of Oh my god, it is so interesting to hear him describe what that experience was like, and I think it was 5 g of some kind of mushroom. Dude, it So, A, I've never done psychedel- Well, that's not true. I've microdosed because I'm a total chicken. Um I've never done a a heroic dose. Uh but hearing him describe it was really really interesting. And I was like, "Oh my god, I wish he had had a camera on it because obviously internally he's going through like this just insane experience. Yeah. But what would it look like from the outside? Right? So, was the bumblebee really in your hand for 10 minutes? Or or if we were watching it with a camera, would it be totally different? But before we um go too far off on a tangent, I'm super interested because even though I'm skeptical, you cannot imagine how much I buy into the power of thought and belief, and that whether it is objectively true is somewhat irrelevant to me because I'm interested in the outcome. So, talk to me about skep- It's good to be skeptical. And I think there's a difference between being an open-minded skeptic and a closed-minded skeptic. You know, I consider myself an open-minded skeptic. I'm willing to look at things. You know, if people tell me something is so and I haven't experienced that myself, I'm willing to, you know, look at it, but until I can confirm with my own experience that I'm not going to buy into it. But that's different from There's so many people out there, and I run into them all the time in science and medicine, who are closed-minded skeptics. And it's like no matter what you show them, they're not going to change the way they think. You know, I I had a debate with uh the former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine who challenged me to a public debate. This was some years ago. And uh it it was really interesting. And one of the things we got into was about mind-body interactions. And I said to him, you know, there's been 30 years of very good research in the area of mind-body interactions, and yet the therapies that are based on that are very underutilized in medicine, even though they're cost-effective, highly effective, even fun. I asked him, "What would you do to increase their usage?" His response was, "There is no evidence for mind-body interactions." And then you you show him something like, you know, research in hypnosis. said, "Oh, well, you He All he would said, "All you have to do is show me the evidence. I just believe in evidence." So then you show him something he says, "That's not evidence. Would you call that evidence?" So there's That's a That's closed-minded skepticism. Yeah. Uh, that is a an utterly fascinating element of human nature. So in business, one thing I've learned is you really do have to have um certainty. You have to have um convictions. But the best quote that I've ever heard is, "Have strong convictions loosely held." I like it. When when you're in that place, because humans respond to when you're talking about leadership and being able to galvanize a team and get them pointed in a direction, obviously this is in a business context. Um, if you don't have that certainty, they they won't follow you. And so you have to be able to say, "I believe this. This is right. We're going to do this. We're going to go hard." And you you can inject them with that energy, and you realize how much moods are contagious, and you can get other people excited and and going. But I always tell my team ahead of time, "Look, I have strong convictions but they're loosely held." And the reason that I have strong convictions that are loosely held, I have the strong conviction cuz we need the clarity to move forward, otherwise we'll never make progress. But they're loosely held because I know that the things that I know and understand have already taken me as far as they're going to take me. And for me to go farther than I am now, I have to develop new skills. So I'm legitimately hungry to see where I'm wrong. Now that's because it it's a whole host of what you build your self-esteem around, what your goals are, and all that stuff makes up that cocktail of why you would be willing to change. But when I look at human nature and I'm just like, okay, you have strong convictions, great, you're halfway there, but once the strong convictions become dogma, then you fall prey to the quote Andrew, this keeps me up at night. Yeah. That genius is a young man's game. Now, as somebody in his mid-40s, I've absolutely uh I just a dogmatic unwillingness to give myself over to that. And the only way that I can think of to break that is what is it about youth that is so potent? And look, it's many things, obviously, but one of them is there's a certain amount of naivete. They just don't know yet. So, they have these really bold things that they're out there testing and trying to see if they work, but over time they calcify into dogma and now they're not able to learn. They're not able to step out of that. They're not They they actually the psychological immune system kicks in, is protecting their self-narrative, and and can actually reject empirical data. And that to me is is so dangerous. I don't know why people embrace that. Yeah, I see that all the time. Yeah, one thing that really scares me on that same idea is and I think it was Planck that said it. Um Advances in science move forward one funeral at a time. Funeral by funeral, yeah. I mean, I just thought, how do you not hear that quote and go, okay, cool, I'm not going to fall prey to that? Yeah. How How have you stayed and and I we we cannot go too far until I get you to define what it means for consciousness to be primary. But how do you How do you stay nimble? Uh you know, I always go for new experiences. I have traveled very widely. I put myself in other cultures. I put myself around people who think differently from me. Uh I consider ideas that are different from the ones that I hold. I'm willing to change my mind. Uh you know, things that I've written, if I get new evidence, I change what I've written in my recommendations to people. So, I think it's it's keeping flexible just as you keep your body flexible, you keep your mind flexible. And is that just a rule that you have for yourself or is there a value system it. I just think that's that's how I am and I've always been that way and it's been a great asset. That's really interesting. Um okay, I have I have to know, what does it mean for consciousness to be primary? Okay, the the prevailing view, the materialistic view is that consciousness is a byproduct of electrical activity and biochemistry in the brain. So, it's secondary. Uh and what's primary is the physical mechanisms. The other way of looking at it is that consciousness exists prior to matter and has organized matter into more and more complex forms which have increasing self-awareness. And I as I say, I don't think you can decide between those two. They're just two different ways of looking at it. And by that you mean you can't prove it. You can't prove it. That you can never settle that question. It's just which way you choose to look at it. But to me, the idea that consciousness primary not only is it very appealing, but it seems to me consistent with as I can understand, you know, discoveries in modern physics and quantum physics that, you know, that that you can't disentangle the observing mind from the physical phenomena that, you know, particles pop into existence. You know, I I think that that as I said, I think consciousness organizes matter and is primary to it. That's how I choose to look at it and that opens up more interesting possibilities in my life. Yeah, and that's that's what I want to talk about. So, what possibilities does that open for people? Well, one is that you you can that if you dislike things out there, you can change them by doing operations in your head. For example, you know, with with something like a bee, I know um where I'm up where I'm talking to you from up in British Columbia and we have uh certain times of year there yellow jackets up here that are can be quite aggressive and nasty. And I've never had problems with them, but I know people, you know, if they appear, they instinctively go like this. And whatever that internal thing is, it produces the very behavior that they don't want. From the bee, you mean? Yeah, or from I mean, many people have the experience with dogs, for example. You know, I I have I had a big male Rhodesian Ridgeback who all he wanted to do was climb in your lap and cuddle. And I came home one day to find him in full attack posture. He had a worker at that my place cowering against the tree brandishing a rake. There was no way of telling that guy that it was his fear that was producing that result. You know, that that was not he thought I had trained this vicious attack dog. And so, when people flip that switch in their mind, what happens? Well, just the idea that you can transform external reality by doing transformations in your head. I think that's a very powerful idea. You know, there's a lot of things in the world that we don't like right now. You know, the world is pretty [ __ ] up out there. You know, how can you change it? Well, I think that the only way you really change it is by changing what's in your head, and that influences other people, but it actually influences physical reality as well. And I think if, you know, if if there's a a transformation in consciousness that starts in you, it can catalyze that in other people, and that can really transform our external reality. All right, I'm going to float something. I think this is what you mean, but if it's not, um bring me back cuz it's I'm I'm so interested um in what's happening in the world right now. I'm legitimately concerned for the first time in my life um at at sort of that level. And Right. something that I when I when I'm talking about relationships, so I've been um with my wife now for almost 20 years. We've been married 18 years in just a a couple weeks. And the thing I always tell people when you go into an argument with your significant other, you want to fill your heart with love. Now, I think that sounds stupid, but I don't have a better way to say it. But that's what it feels like. And so when I heard you say like the thing with the dog where you just have to flip a switch and you you have to let it go. You can't you can't have that fear because there is something that you send out. Maybe it's micro expressions, maybe it's posture, maybe it's pheromones, maybe there is some energy. I I I don't know what happens, but it's pretty clear that you give something off that that dog is picking up on. Is that what you mean? Yes. Um and I don't know what it is, but I think it's it's arising from so what's happening in your head. It's how you are perceiving things, how you're conceiving of things, how you're feeling and that obviously has some physical expression and the dog may be reacting to that. It's interesting. When I think about what I'm trying to get at what I'm grasping for words for when I say fill your heart with love is you can shift pretty quickly between what I'll call a neurological state. So you talk a lot about breathing, so powerful. And by the way, thank you for that insight about how many cultures breathing and spirit are the same word. Which is is feels to me true. Um and it is interesting that we don't have that in America, in English. Um So yeah, strange. When when I started meditating, it was such a rapid and profound change in my psychological state that I was like, "Whoa, how many other ways are there to to radically shift um how I feel?" So I'll call it a a shift of frame of reference. Everything feels differently when you're calm than when you're anxious or stressed or in fight or flight mode. And when I fill my heart with love and um let's say my wife and I are arguing, we've learned that a lot of times it's better just to stop arguing because what you need is a what I would translate as a change of neurochemistry. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And once the neurochemistry changes, then you can come back. Um so talk to me about what is the the sort of switch that people can flip or those aren't your words and and I'm very curious to know what words you would use where they could change their consciousness and begin to, you know, ease some of the tensions that we're all feeling. Well, first of all, I'm sure you're aware of this body of research growing that shows that meditators actually have changed physical structures in the brain. So that's a very powerful piece of evidence that you know, something you're doing on the level of consciousness is actually affecting the physical brain. Now, I think that's fascinating and and 20 years ago, nobody no neuroscientist would ever believe such a thing. Um you know, one of the reasons that I teach breathing techniques and emphasize that, I think that the breath is a very safe place to have your consciousness. It's when you're focusing on your breath, it's like putting your mind in neutral. There's far worse places to have your attention such as on your thoughts or on visual imagery which are usually the sources of anxiety and and unhappiness. So one practical suggestion in that situation you mentioned is to just focus on breathing. That's like a very safe place to have your mind and that, you know, breaks that cycle that you might be in. Talk to me about mental health in general. I think that even before everything kicked off that we're, you know, in the middle of right now, um it'd be pretty fair to say that there's a mental health crisis going on. Talk to me about the tie between mental health declines and um modernity or even affluence Um, and what you think is going on. That's that's such a big subject. I have a book called Spontaneous Happiness, which goes into all of that. And one is, you know, one is where did this epidemic of depression come from? You know, some of it is manufactured by the pharmaceutical industry, which has convinced people that ordinary states of sadness are matters of disordered brain biochemistry that need pharmacological treatment. You know, we're supposed to be unhappy some of the time. We're not supposed to be happy all the time. Uh, but I think say that? That's that's pretty profound. Because everything varies, you know, the weather varies, you know, everything varies. Emotions vary, too, you know, we're we're sometimes higher, sometimes lower. You don't want that to be extreme variation, and you don't want to get so low that you're paralyzed, but it's normal to have, you know, variations in mood. Um, I I think so many factors enter into what's happening today to undermine mental health. One is disconnection from nature. You know, when you look at um, the few hundred gatherer societies that are left in the world, there is no depression. You know, you don't see these anxieties Well, there's so many reasons for that. I mean, one is they're eating natural diets. They're not plugged into all these devices, which are affecting them. I know they're living in relatively clean environments, but I think the connection to nature is very important. Um, I think that's one thing that's undermined things. I think social isolation has greatly increased in in our era for all sorts of reasons. I mean, now look at what's happening with the the pandemic and more people interacting virtually rather than in person or, you know, using social media. I I think having person-to-person contact is very important for mental health. So, I think there's so many things that are are undermining mental health today. Nutrition, a big factor. You know, there are a lot of deficiencies of micronutrients that are affected, and you know, few people have looked at that. There's a very interesting connection between inflammation and depression and diet that produces inflammation, which is the mainstream Western diet, and that certainly is a factor in it as well. Yeah, diet seems to be the one that uh man, if you were if you were going to tell me, all right, you can only recommend one change, what change would you recommend? Ooh, diet all day long. Um how do you And one by the way, the one piece of advice with that is the simplest rule is you stop eating refined, processed, and manufactured food. You know, that simple, that puts you way ahead of the game. Yeah, no question. Um give me give me some rough guidelines around diet. Obviously, you've stayed incredibly sharp your entire career. Um you are what, mid to late 70s? Uh 78. Yeah, see, I never would have guessed that, dude. I I had heard that. I didn't know when the interview had been recorded, but I thought, what the hell? So, it's pretty extraordinary. What what are some of your tips and tricks? Well, I'm a I'm a pescetarian. I've eaten mostly fish and vegetables for most of my my life. I I have visited Japan a lot. I really like uh Japanese food. I grow a lot of my own food. Um I I love gardening and harvesting. I think it's good to eat a lot of vegetables. Um fruits in season, but fruits are sugar sources, so I think you want to be more moderate about that. Uh I think you want to know about which fats are good, you know, like uh olive oil particularly and uh the fat in fatty fish. Uh you know, it I don't think it's a good idea to throw a whole micro macronutrient under the bus, you know, either not eat fat or not eat carbohydrate. You know, there are there are different carbohydrates. Some are digested slowly and have okay effects, and some are digested rapidly and are not good for you. But it's not a matter of saying grains are bad or beans are bad. You know, all these in in the right forms are fine. Um I think sugar is a big is a big problem for many of us. You want to keep intake of sugar low um and be aware of you know, if there's one change we're in such a nutritional mess in this country. I mean, things are so bad, it's hard to know where to begin. You know, we've made the the unhealthiest food cheapest and most available, and people eat what's cheap and what's available. But, if there is one step we could take that would be helpful, if we could get people to stop drinking sweetened liquids of all kinds. It's not just soda, it's also fruit juice, it's energy drinks, it's putting sugar in coffee and tea. That one step would be great. Just stop drinking sweet liquids. Now, is it the the sugar? What is it specifically about that? Uh one is that the fructose content of sweet things, because the body can't metabolize fructose well. It deranges liver metabolism and contributes to insulin resistance. That that's one, you know, one problem with it. Uh I don't think you can avoid all all sugar. You know, I think you want to be moderate about it and choose what you like. I like dark chocolate, you know, I like you know, I like ripe fruit once in a while. I but, you know, not the way people are doing it right now. Uh I I I'm I'm not going to tell people not to eat meat, but I think it's good to reduce the percentage of animal foods in the diet. And by the way, not only for your own personal health, but for planetary health. You know, when you look at, you know, for instance, this is Let me just say this. You know, I've read up a lot about zoonotic diseases and pandemics in the past few months. And you know, we've been subject to these all along, and we and what we're seeing now is not necessarily as bad as it can be. I mean, we could have a much worse uh pandemic, you know, come around not that far in the future. And a lot of these are new No, no joke. A lot of these are diseases that are jumping from animals to humans. And this is happening more frequently and more seriously. And you look at, why is this happening more frequently and more seriously? There are too many people, there are too many people living in too dense concentrations. We have encroached on habitats of animals. We have changed the climate in the way that favors this. Our agricultural practices contribute to this and a big piece is raising animals for food. Now, you look at all this, you know, where can you start? I mean, you look how about the too many people problem? You know, people aren't going to stop doing that. You know, I just drives it drives me up the [ __ ] wall if I happen to hear some radio interview and and they're interviewing some guest and they ask how many kids they have and they say nine and the audience applauds. I mean, what the [ __ ] Now, what I've heard though is that we're going to peak out at like 9 billion and then it's actually going to be a problem of we're going to go backwards. Let's hope. But meantime, this is a it's a root problem. And but you know, of the things that we could change, the one of them that stands out is the is the dependence on animals for foods because that is such a major contributor to climate change, to the environmental changes that favor these this disease jumping from animals to humans. You know, I think we got to change our ways or we're in for worse trouble than we're seeing now. Yeah, worse trouble than we're seeing now, man. That's interesting and I'm glad that you said that not only could we face something that's worse, we faced things that are worse in the past. I know that your your grandmother lived through the flu of 1918. Yeah, this is fascinating. I was I grew up in Philadelphia, which was a city that was the hardest hit by the 1918 flu and this was my father's mother and she told me stories of that when I was pretty young and the stories included things like horse-drawn wagons of corpses going through the streets of Philadelphia. You can imagine the impression that made on my young mom. That was a horrible thing. That sounds like something out of the Middle Ages. But then, even more interesting, when I was in high school, I tried to find out about it and there was no information. You know, I looked in books, I looked in newspapers. It was as if the whole thing had been repressed and forgotten. You know, it was like so heavy. I think people couldn't deal with it and it was only in the 1990s that scientists began thinking about what was it about that flu that made it so deadly. You know, it killed selectively killed young healthy people. Unlike unlike what we're seeing now. I mean, this was like there were many stories of people in the peak of health who had a headache in the morning were dead in the evening. And only and only in the 1990s did people take an interest that they exhumed Inuit bodies in the Arctic and got the virus and began to sequence the DNA. You know, it took that long. I think it was there was this cultural amnesia about this thing that killed, you know, may have killed 100 million people in 6 months. Yeah, that to put it in context, have you seen the movie 1917? Mhm. So, fascinating, right? So, you you get a movie called 1917 and you see what World War I looked like and then you realize a year later 100 million people are going to die around the world from a flu. And you you begin to understand why people have the cultural amnesia. Yeah, exactly. The life lost in World War I was so horrifying. And then to chase that with the deadliest flu in modern history is like good lord. That that's a pretty gnarly one-two punch. But we better pay attention to that because, you know, that the the flu virus has the potential to do that again. You know, we're very vulnerable to that kind of stuff and uh so I hope this the current pandemic will be a wake-up call. You know, we screwed up badly in this country. And uh you know, I hope it gives us a chance to, you know, think about what we do if we're faced with something even worse. Yeah, for sure. When people started referring to what we're going through now as a dry run, I thought, man, I really hope I really hope people are thinking, hey this could happen again and the 1917 to 1918 is is an elucidation of the fact the virus does not care that you've been through a lot as as a country or a planet. It's going to happen when it's going to happen and if you're already on your knees from something else it will take advantage of that. It certainly isn't going to wait. So, you know, just because we're coming out of this doesn't mean that we don't have something else coming down the pipe and unless we're really thinking about what does preparation look like it's going to be gnarly. It's going to be gnarly. Well, one one belief that I have from my experience in integrative medicine is that healthy organisms aren't naturally resistant. So, one thing you can do is you know, you work to keep yourself in optimum health. I remember once seeing a a demonstration farm. There were field a field of soybeans and half of the crop had been deprived of of certain nutrients. The other half was you know, well nourished and the the malnourished one was being viciously attacked by insect predators. That's interesting. Just chewing up and the other one was relatively immune. So, that's a good general principle, you know, keeping yourself you know, in optimum health you are going to be naturally more resistant. So, that's you know, just something good that we should keep in mind. Yeah, that cycles back to diet. When you think about so my wife went through a profound digestive problem started about oh god, I think 5 years ago now and realizing how much of the immune system is actually there in your gut. Absolutely right. And then when the key piece of information for me that just brought a lot home was that makes sense because that's where you're most likely to intake a pathogen is when you eat. And I thought oh my god, that really does make a lot of sense. And so disrupting your microbiome is going to disrupt your overall health. And so, if your diet is screwed up, then your microbiome is screwed up, your immune system's in trouble, and now you're you're a prime candidate for getting ruined by something like COVID. Yeah. Yeah, super interesting. tell you one thing that made me think of is that, uh, one of the categories of drugs that I'm most upset about are the proton pump inhibitors, these things that shut off stomach acid that are given for the treatment gastroesophageal reflux. You know, when I was growing up, there was no such thing as GERD. It was people had heartburn, and they treated it by taking Tums, which is a very safe preparation of of calcium carbonate. Uh, and I think most people understood that heartburn was your stomach's way of telling you that you had mistreated it. You know, either you ate too much or too much of the wrong things. Now, this has been medicalized into this condition, and the problem is seeing it's too much stomach acid. So, we have these very powerful drugs that shut off stomach acid production. That's not a good idea. Stomach acid is your main defense against pathogens coming in by that route. So, when people are walking around with no stomach acid, they are breeding a lot of these germs that get in by the oral route that can be, you know, pretty bad for us. Uh, that's just one example of, you know, wrong way of thinking about things. Yeah, that's interesting. Um, I think it's really powerful the way that you talk about medicine right now that we've got this super dysfunctional system that's really just, um, dealing with the symptoms of a disease rather than trying to make sure that people don't get sick. You've talked about creating some sort of, um, institution. I don't know if that's the word you would use for like health and wellness. Uh, God, that isn't what you call it either, but it's the the right idea. Walk me through that, and how would we actually do that? the medical medical system has always been dysfunctional in in recent years. This is just really blo- made it obvious, but it is not a it is not a health care system. It's a disease management system that's functioning very imperfectly, and most of the diseases that we're trying to manage are lifestyle related, which could be prevented if we did a better job at promoting health and preventing illness, but they don't pay. So, until we can change all that around, you're not going to get anywhere. Uh I I think the the whole system is too dependent on technology, which is very expensive, and these escalating costs of health care cannot be contained. It's not sustainable. It's going to sink the economy. You know, we have to have a whole new way of doing it, and I and I think the first step is to shift the whole enterprise in the direction of health promotion and and prevention. Um you know, that's got to be it. You know, these chronic diseases that are, you know, rampant in our society, they have to do with how people eat, with how they exercise or don't exercise, if they're how they handle stress or don't handle it, and so forth. Mhm. If you were going to um attack it at sort of an institution level, what would that look like? Like, how do we begin to change the paradigm? The problem is the, you know, it's the economics of it that are very dysfunctional because as, you know, as bad as the system is, it's generating rivers of money, and that money is flowing into very few pockets. It's the pockets of the big pharmaceutical companies, the manufacturers of medical devices, and the big insurers, and they don't want anything to change. And they have total control of our elected representatives. So, until that situation changes, we're not going to get anywhere. And the only way that's going to change is if there's a grassroots social and and political movement and enough people get angry enough about things that we start electing different kinds of representatives. And I don't see that happening yet. Yeah, it's interesting. I do feel like there is a um the internet has given birth to a lot of information. There are beginning to be people like you that now have a huge voice. I mean, you've always been pretty good at getting your voice out there. Um and you've always been an iconoclast, which is pretty interesting. And your staying power is extraordinary. Um but you're you're now able to reach a whole new generation of people. There are other people like you picking up that torch. Um so, I'm certainly encouraged. Um you know, even when I look at So, I the world thinks of me more as a a business guy, a mindset guy, but my shows on health perform extraordinarily well. And when I first started doing them, everyone was like, "Why?" Well, so I started as a a I had a nutrition company. And so, I I Yeah, I actually started talking about mindset. People like, "Why is the protein bar guy talking about mindset?" And then when I started this company, people were like, "Why is the protein bar guy or sorry, why is the mindset guy now talking about health?" And my whole thing was, "Look, you you have got If you want to have a life of fulfillment, joy, feeling good, like you've got to take care of your mind, you've got to take care of your body. Like, there's just no two ways about it." And I don't even find the stuff around the body that interesting. Like, I wish I didn't need to work out. I wish I could just eat ice cream all day. That would truly be Like, if I could live and be healthy and be like, you know, still cognitively there, that would be extraordinary. But, it unfortunately doesn't work that way. So, I'm like, "If you want to perform at the highest level, if you want to find success, however you define it, I promise you're going to have to think about the body." And so, I'm super encouraged by how well the the things that I do around health are doing. So, That's great. Good to hear. Yeah, I I I hope that this is the beginning of a groundswell where younger people are certainly taking it more seriously, um you know, than people have historically. That would be huge. you know, yeah, I think we should be doing real health education from kindergarten on up. You know, the basic principles are not that hard. I mean, just as an example, I think many people young people don't know that all the muscle mass and all the bone mass you have for life are built up mostly in your teenage and teenage years and early 20s. You know, once you get to your late 20s, that stops, and it's all downhill from there. And all you can do after that is slow loss. You can't add new tissue. So, I think true even if you do HRT? Yes. Yes. It is. That is profoundly bad news. I know, but if you want if people understood that, that would be real motivation, you know, in in when you're young to really do not do stupid things that are going to undermine bone formation and muscle mass. I think, you know, I think people will move in the right direction if they get the idea and they have motivation to do it. It's not that hard to explain those things. Mhm. Yeah, a lot of this comes down to who you're around, who you listen to, who you choose to get your information from. And putting you in context, and the more that we talk, the more I am driven to find out more about your grandmother. The fact that she was telling you stories about corpses being wheeled through the the streets, um what was that like? Was your family like unusual? Uh you are so iconoclastic. Like What was that middle class, very middle class family. My parents were shopkeepers. They had a ladies hat store. I couldn't imagine anything less interesting than selling ladies hats. Uh but the good thing was that they encouraged me they both encouraged me to follow my curiosity and my passion. Um and I was a very curious person. I was interested in experimenting and doing stuff and they did not uh not try to stop uh squash them. That's cool. Are you still experimenting with stuff now? And if so, what what are you on right now? Well, I'm always doing I'm always looking for new foods and things, you know, as you know, I have a matcha company and I'm a great believer in matcha green tea. I uh I have never had matcha, ever. You've never had matcha? How awful. I I don't even know what it tastes like. I've no concept. It's delicious if the good stuff is delicious, but there's a lot of really bad matcha out there because it it oxidizes very quickly and it It's worth telling people what it is because until I started researching you, I didn't know what it was. It's the powdered form of green tea that's uh used in traditionally in the tea ceremony in Japan, but now has escaped that. Uh it's from tea leaves that are grown in special conditions. They're heavily shaded a few weeks before harvest, so the leaves get thinner and they produce more chlorophyll and more bioactive compounds and it produces this brilliant green powder. It's just beautiful and it's whisked into the water. Uh I I drink it unsweetened in the traditional way, but it's it's uh the only preparation of tea that you in which you consume the whole leaf and it has a very high content of antioxidants and beneficial phytonutrients. It tastes great and uh I can't believe you've never tasted matcha. So, I will send you some with directions how to try it. It's great. So, that's my main beverage and I'm always when I travel around, I'm always looking for new things that I can bring back and and play with. Uh I don't know. I'm I'm I'm curious. I'm experimental. I try things, you know, I I I'm on the um my house is on the ocean here. The ocean's pretty cold and I try to jump in the ocean every day. So, when we finish talking, I'm going to go jump in the ocean. Nice. That's not a joke. For anybody that's never been in the water in the Pacific Northwest, woah. Like it it isn't cold like California oceans. California oceans are chilly. Washington, it's like being stabbed with knives. I can only imagine it's even colder when you go up into Canada. So, uh you're a brave man. I like to do that. Well, I'm always experimenting. That's interesting. So, I want to talk about some of the when you take somebody who has a medical degree, who's experienced in botany, and who experiments, um talk to me about some of the plants that we should be experimenting, whether it's uh for allergies. I've heard you talk about that. I actually want to try what I know you will suggest for that. Uh you know, talk to me about MDMA or uh some of the other uh psilocybin and stuff. All right, the allergy plant is nettles. That's what they're called, stinging nettles. And I've been stung by them. I'm sure so. Yeah. Well, a freeze-dried preparation of the leaves is the most effective allergy remedy I've ever found. You know, for instance, form or Capsules, yeah. For like sneezing, itchy eyes, that kind of stuff with hay fever, makes the symptoms go away within minutes, no side effects. And I find it if when I started using that instead of anything else, over a couple of years my allergy symptoms really faded away. I've given that to many, many people. It's a wonderful example of an herbal remedy, really good. You mentioned MDMA. I mean, this is the probably is going to be made legal for treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder. You know, very good. think that works so well? And what's MDMA derived from? It's a semi-synthetic drug that is related to a chemicals found in a few plants. It's It's in the amphetamine family, but it has a completely unique effect of just producing a calmness and heart opening. And I think as a therapeutic agent, very powerful. So, I've I had a I've had a lot of good experience with that. Psilocybin, you know, that probably is going to be made available for treatment of drug-resistant depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder. I think that's a little trickier because I mean, that's very important to take that, you know, with a guide in a proper setting to ensure that the experience is, you know, channeled in a good direction. I'm fascinated to see these things becoming mainstream today, you know, after all this time. I think there's a lot of therapeutic potential there. Mhm. So, talk to me a little bit about marijuana. So, there are people in my life who are extraordinarily enthusiastic about marijuana. I've tried it a few times and, dude, I don't know what it is. Sex is rad. Sex on on marijuana is awesome. And if I could turn it on and off, I I do it a lot, but the problem is then after that you've got four or five more hours of feeling like somebody is pressing play and pause on my brain. I absolutely hate it. Uh but I I want to like drugs, as weird as that sounds. Like I want them to take me to some place that's creative and new and open doors of perception and all of that. Um so talk to me a little bit about marijuana. Do you think that there are just people metabolize it differently? Like Yeah, I think it it it affects people so differently. You know, some people can smoke it before pop before they go to bed and it helps them sleep and other people say if they do that they're awake all night. So it's very individual reactions to it. And there's so many different preparations of today. In in my life it was very useful to me in my in my 20s. Um you know, I used it frequently. I had a lot of great experiences with it socially, uh you know, humanistically. Uh I'd help it stimulate my imagination. And then in my 30s it started being just made me sedated and stupid and sometimes paranoid and it just was an unproductive habit. And it's it's ceased being an ally for me and I haven't used it in many many years. I've no interest in it. And when I look at the you know, I'm interested in the possible medicinal uses of it, but there too that's confusing because there's so many different preparations of it out there. I don't know what's in them. It's very hard to advise people how to use it. And people react to it so differently. It's very non-toxic. So I think it's worth trying to find ways to to use it medically, but you know, obviously you're you're someone that's not that's not the right fit. Yeah, sadly I've tried edible. I've tried smoking it. Um because there are so many people in my life that honestly when I watch the way that it shifts their personality, I like it. I like the way it shifts their personality. Yeah, right. Yeah. And and it takes them from like a a hard edged like they they almost seem frustrated and agitated and then when they smoke and and at a low level, I mean they're lovely people whether they're you know smoking or not, but there really was it was watching them smoke and thinking they don't get dumb, they are still there. You can it feels quite frankly unless they tell me they've smoked in the beginning I wouldn't have known. Oh. Whereas I feel like it's patently obvious. Like I I collapse into myself, I don't want to talk to anybody. Yeah, yeah, I know that's the Yeah, it's so interesting. Um Do are there certain things that you think people should try? I'll even grant that you're saying only medically supervised and all of that all the sort of safety caveats, but are there certain things that people should give a shot? Like I'm desperate to try MDMA for instance. You you should try MDMA. That would be a very good one for you. I think that the risk of a bad experience with that is very very small and I think you could would find that very useful. What do you think about you try anything else. I've heard of people combining MDMA with some sort of psychedelic. I don't know if it's psilocybin or mushrooms. but don't do that until you've tried MDMA on its own. Okay, very fair. first. That would be that would be fine. And let me know I'd be interested how you like it. Yeah, no, I I'll report back for sure. That would be extraordinary. Uh should I have it with my my new tea, my matcha or uh treat those two separately? No, well, you should have matcha by itself first and see if you like it and then see if you want to make that part of your daily ritual. Very fair. Uh I've had so much fun, man. Thank you so much for coming on. Tell people where they can find out more about you, your matcha, your restaurants. We didn't get a chance to talk about your restaurants. Uh yeah, give people a quick rundown. So, uh I have a website drweil.com d r w e i l.com a great deal of of health information there. Uh I direct a an academic center at the University of Arizona College of Medicine. It's now called the Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine and you can look at integrativemedicine.arizona.edu. We train physicians and other health professionals. It's a really good, you know, a really good thing. I have many books which are all available on print, all available on Amazon on, you know, a variety of subjects. The restaurants are True Food Kitchen. I think we have 30 of them now. You've been to one I assume or more? haven't eaten at one but I I I didn't know they were you to be honest. It wasn't until I was doing the research and I was like, what? Uh so, yeah. It's great. A lot of the recipes are mine and it's my anti-inflammatory diet and you know, that that's a really good thing. The matcha company is we got the URL matcha.com. So, just look at matcha.com and I will send you some samples for you to try. Nice. I'm looking forward to it. Well, again, thank you so much for joining me. Guys, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe and until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Thank you guys so much for watching and being a part of this community. If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. You're going to get weekly videos on building a growth mindset, cultivating grit, and unlocking your full potential.