How To Reduce The #1 Risk Factor To Your Health [MASTERCLASS] EP 1311

Today’s episode is a masterclass around inflammation, why it's sometimes necessary, and how to reduce chronic inflammation. Three experts on health & nutrition share their perspectives and advice for how to manage and better understand inflammationIn this episode, William Li, physician, scientist, and author, explains why inflammation is necessary and the foods to eat to help reduce inflammation. Shawn Stevenson, best-selling author and creator of ‘The Model Health Show’, shares the significance and benefits of how good sleep combats inflammation. Andrew Weil, founder and director of the Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine, teaches us the optimal diet for our brains and why you should be drinking more tea. For more, go to lewishowes.com/1311Full Episodes:William Li: https://link.chtbl.com/1207-podShawn Stevenson: https://link.chtbl.com/1140-podAndrew Weil: https://link.chtbl.com/1108-pod Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  A lot of people, when they hear about inflammation, they think about it as a bad guy. The key about inflammation is that you don't.

• 0:06Lewis Howes?

  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.

• 0:30Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to this special masterclass. We've brought some of the top experts in the world to help you unlock the power of your life through this specific theme today. It's going to be powerful, so let's go ahead and dive in.

• 0:46Lewis Howes?

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• 1:30Lewis Howes?

  All you have to do is visit athleticgreens.com/soG. Again, that is athleticgreens.com/soG to take ownership of your health and pick up the ultimate daily nutritional insurance.

• 1:48Lewis Howes?

  What would you say are the best ways to reduce inflammation in the body quickly? Is it through food? Is it through medicine? Is it through fasting? Is it through, you know, less, you know, more sleep? Is it through a better environment? What would you say is the?

• 2:02Speaker 00

  So, you know, a lot of people, I think, when they hear about inflammation, they think about it as a bad guy. And what I want to tell you is that inflammation is normal and it's just part of our immune system. So when you actually have a bacteria or a virus invading your body, uh, let's say you get a cold. Your immune system uh sets up a little bit of inflammation in your nose. Okay. Which is why we have a stuffy nose, a runny nose, and then it takes, it tackles the invader right then and there. And then hopefully that's all, that's all that matters. And by the way, uh, another sure sign of inflammation is if you um cut yourself uh in the kitchen.

• 2:44Speaker 00

  And you see that little cut will pretty quickly swell up, turn red and swell up. Inflammation, that's your immune system trying to tackle all the bacteria that might be trying to get into your skin. Inflammation is good, but it goes up to protect you and then it comes right down. I think about, I call it like a, like the volume switch in a car radio. Like you get in a car, you want to hear some tunes, got to turn it on. But what the problem with inflammation is when it doesn't go back down. It keeps on going more, more, more. It's chronic and it keeps on going up. And that's like getting in your car and having somebody, a passenger, turn up that volume and keep cranking that volume. And you're like, hey, man, turn that thing down, right? Doesn't go down and you just can't go on. Right.

• 3:27Speaker 00

  And that's what happens inside your body. So what's it, what are some of the different ways to actually deal with that? Well, the first thing to do is think about lifestyle. Cause we can actually give anti-inflammatories. I could tell you to go out to take some Motrin, Tylenol, whatever. That'll take down your inflammation, but actually there are ways of actually doing, if you actually just um, if you stopped and just calmed yourself and took some breathe, did some breaths and start to meditate. Your inflammation, your body's inflammation will start to calm down. Okay? If you actually got a good night's sleep. Your body will start to, the inflammation will start to calm down. It's, it's kind of like,

• 4:10Speaker 00

  you know, everything is going crazy. Just let everything, let the thing settle a little bit. So that's your inflammation settling down. Now there are foods that have a lot of anti-inflammatory properties that can be very helpful. So for example, cranberries have a lot of anti-inflammatory polyphenols. Chocolate even also has anti-inflammatory properties. Vitamin C is pretty anti-inflammatory. Strawberries, guava, red bell peppers, all really good, really good. And, and I, you know, I think that the other thing to think about is lots of fruits and vegetables, lots of fruits

• 4:48Speaker 00

  in particular have anti-inflammatory properties. So the key about inflammation is that you don't want to get rid of it altogether.

• 4:58Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 4:58Speaker 00

  Okay. Like if you, if you got pumped up on steroids, it would shut down your inflammation. You might get infected because you don't have any inflammation. You want your body to get its set point. You want to get back to balance. So I think that, you know, there's lifestyle, there's diet, foods you can choose, there's sleep. All of these things can actually help to calm inflammation. It's not a single on and off switch.

• 5:26Lewis Howes?

  I'm curious, what would you say are the, the most harmful foods then? If you said here are three foods that we should be eliminating, what would be those most harmful foods that cause the spike in inflammation consistently and causes a lot of these other diseases and cancerous cells to occur?

• 5:41Speaker 00

  Right. Well, I'll tell you three foods that actually harm the body's health defenses and including the immune system by ratcheting it up inflammation and then lowering the defensive properties, but also harm to your DNA. Also harm your microbiome, also blunt and stun your stem cells and also wreck your body's ability to control its blood supply. So it's a lot worse than simply causing triggering inflammation. And by the way, that's the whole point, right? Like we try to take the silver bullet approach to everything. Let's match this, let's match that. What I'm telling you is that the body is a system.

• 6:18Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 6:18Speaker 00

  So either you introduce something good to it and you'll probably light up a lot of good systems. And if you put something bad to it, you'll probably trash a lot of it, right? Okay, so what are some three foods that actually we know can trash your body's health defenses? One is soda, so sugar sweetened beverages like soda. All right, so you know, the favorite ones, it's tough, right?

• 6:43Lewis Howes?

  Because I wish I could go back to my younger self and say, put down the Dr. Eight cans of Dr. Pepper a day, you know, when you're like eight years old, man.

• 6:52Speaker 00

  Well, I, and I'm telling you like this is one thing that I always try to coach people on. If you really, really love sodas, okay, try to come off it, you know, just by going down one can a day. Cause most people drink multiple cans, go down one can a day and get to as low as you can because the added sugar actually overloads your body, your body's ability to be able to handle the sugar. And then it makes you inflamed just by the nature of the sugar.

• 7:19Lewis Howes?

  I cut out, I cut out soda years ago. I mean, maybe I have it once in a couple of months or something for like a treat, but

• 7:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 7:26Lewis Howes?

  It used to be almost an addiction probably for how much I drank it growing up as a kid in the summers. You're just drinking it nonstop like water. Um, but then when I learned about nutrition more, when I was playing sports and realizing this is making me tired. It's not quenching my thirst. That's when I said, okay, I need more of a competitive edge and kind of got it cut out of my life, so.

• 7:45Speaker 00

  Well, not only, not only does it, does soda, actually the sugar in soda cause inflammation. It really wrecks your microbiome, your gut bacteria as well. Your gut bacteria just can't tolerate that much sugar. Okay, um, uh, and then guess what? Uh, and then, you know, you say, well, wait a minute, uh, that's why we have diet soda, right? Turns out that those artificial sweeteners in soda. Screw your microbiome, your gut bacteria even more.

• 8:14Lewis Howes?

  Ooh, more than regular can of soda.

• 8:16Speaker 00

  More than a regular can of soda.

• 8:17Lewis Howes?

  Come on. So if it says zero sugar and it's a soda or a pop, you're saying that could be more harmful than just the-

• 8:24Speaker 00

  For your gut microbiome.

• 8:25Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha, gotcha.

• 8:26Speaker 00

  Right? Because a zero sugar is actually to prevent, you know, glucose spikes in your body. But in point of fact, it actually wrecks your gut microbiome. And remember what I told you? That gut microbiome communicates your brain, communicates your immune system, communicates your healing systems. That is not a system you want to screw with. And so that's why, you know, I try to tell people, um, you really got to watch out for those, uh, artificial sweeteners. Uh, they are, they, they, they do some bad things. So that's one thing.

• 8:57Lewis Howes?

  So what are the best, before you go to the next thing, what are the best sweeteners we should be looking for when we're adding something into food? Or we see it on the packaging?

• 9:07Speaker 00

  Well, natural sugars, um, uh, in, in fruits and vegetables. People go, well, I don't want any sugar in them, but what about in a peach? There's nothing better than a summer peach to me. And that natural sugar is okay, because when you eat the peach, you're not just getting the sugar, you're also getting all these other bioactives and a fiber and everything else. Hundreds, hundreds of thousands of, of natural chemicals that are good for you from Mother Nature's kind of pharmacy with an F. Okay? So that's different than just, you know, having sugar in a glass.

• 9:42Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 9:42Speaker 00

  Or corn syrup, right. Uh, high fructose corn syrup, not, not good for you. Um, maple syrup, a good way to sweeten.

• 9:48Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 9:48Speaker 00

  Honey is also a good way, way to, uh, sweeten as well. Monk fruit is actually a really, really sweet, uh, tasting, uh, gourd. That's a shell, um, that is also a decent, uh, sweetener. Stevia, actually pretty powerful sweetener. Um, I've been doing some research on it. I haven't been able to find anything wrong with it. Uh, but, but for people that are looking at stevia, be very careful. Pick up that package and look at the side of the box and what you, and read what's on there, because a lot of things that are called stevia actually have a lot of other things added to it.

• 10:24Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 10:25Speaker 00

  So you want to get the pure stuff. I always tell, if it's in a box, look at what's inside it before you buy it.

• 10:31Lewis Howes?

  There you go. Okay. So soda and pop is the number one thing that is one of the worst things you could be eating. Um, to uh, or, or the things that could cause more disease and cancers.

• 10:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:42Lewis Howes?

  In your, in your body. Okay. That's number one. Number two.

• 10:46Speaker 00

  Uh, processed meats. Now, all of us that were kids grew up, you know, at the, you know, eating deli meats. Turkey and a ham, right? I mean, like, that's basically you, you, what is your mom, what is your mom pack in your lunch bag, right?

• 11:02Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 11:03Speaker 00

  Okay. Well, that's, that's a relic of the nineteen fifties, you know, of this sort of ultra-processed foods that are everywhere laden with chemicals. That's not what we want to be doing. Now, I have to say, it doesn't mean categorically that, uh, that, uh, hams or sausages are bad for you because if you go to Italy, or if you go to places in Asia or Latin America, where they create, they, they create dried meats, kind of the old way. They're not putting chemicals in there and they're not manipulating it. But here, you know, where you go to the deli counter and, you know, like,

• 11:44Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 11:45Speaker 00

  take, take a look at that deli meat. Like, that's not, meat doesn't come like that. Okay? So, here's the thing. Uh, processed meats are actually classified by the World Health Organization as a carcinogen.

• 12:01Speaker 00

  And, you know, linked to the, uh, causation of cancer. You gotta eat a lot of it, but a lot of people actually eat, I mean, how many hoagies or sows? Right? Um, and I gotta say, you know, like, when I was growing up as a kid, I, I loved those kind of like fancy, kind of, uh, like the deli meats and stuff like that. Totally not good for you. So, that's not good for you. Uh, it also damages the gut microbiome. Uh, oh, and it can actually damage your DNA. So you want to kind of be cut down or cut out, uh, sodas and processed meats. And then the other thing is really a category, and I call these ultra-processed foods.

• 12:38Speaker 00

  So, things are in a box or in a can that, you know, like are instant this or, you know, uh, scoop it out and, and eat it quick. You know, I don't want to name any particular products. Um, uh, I don't want to call any products out, but I think we all know the stuff, a lot of stuff we grew up with and were advertised on television to kids, you know, the frosted this, the pop that, the things that you, that, you know, they're like the TV dinners, like things that used to be. Like instant foods. Gotta be really careful about that because if you take a look at the packaging and I'm telling you, there's one thing your viewers can get from me about things to watch out for.

• 13:19Speaker 00

  Whatever you buy, pick it up. If it's in a box or in a can and look on the side. Don't look just at the, at the label. Look at the, I mean, at the name of it. Look at the side and see if you recognize the ingredients. If, if you start, you know, if you lose, start losing track and you can't pronounce and you don't know what most of that stuff is. It's an ultra-processed food. That harms your DNA. That lowers your immunity. That screws up your gut microbiome. It impairs angiogenesis. It actually causes our cells to age faster. Those telomeres burn down faster. Oh, man, by those processed foods. Yeah. Ultra, ultra-processed foods. Ultra, right? What's the difference between ultra and processed?

• 14:02Speaker 00

  So, look, processing is technically any type of food you manipulate. I like, if you pick a tomato and you cut it up and you make spaghetti sauce at home, that's processing. You're processing it. Okay? If you're taking flour and an egg and you're making homemade pasta, you're processing it. I'm talking about ultra-processed. You know, there's a term called extrusion. Have you heard of this? Yes. Okay. So basically you've got these die-cut machines that like this goop gets thrown into. And like the big oil, like crazy oils get thrown in there and then it just like pushes out uh like Play-Doh, chunks of food that get cut and dried. That's what I'm talking about. Like that's the ultra-processing.

• 14:42Speaker 00

  It takes, I guess maybe the definition, it takes food and transforms it into a form you don't recognize.

• 14:51Shawn Stevenson?

  You know, if you look at the root word, you know, coming from the Greek and the Latin, it means to set on fire. Right? And so there are these

• 14:57Speaker 00

  Flame.

• 14:59Shawn Stevenson?

  And these are some of the outward symptoms we might think about. It's just like pain, swelling, bruising, burning, aching, those type of things. But there's a massive, the majority of the inflammation that folks are experiencing oftentimes go unnoticed. There are these little kind of chronic low-grade fevers or little fires burning that are contributing to a lot of different metabolic disorders. And the reason that our bodies are doing it is really the inflammation is sending out a distress signal. From different tissues to recruit and call in the immune system to support in defending against infections and repair. And the list goes on and on. Inflammation is actually not a bad thing.

• 15:34Lewis Howes?

  Right. It's a healer, right?

• 15:36Shawn Stevenson?

  Right. If we would get a wound, we would never heal without inflammation. If we got an infection, it would be deadly without inflammation. It's an important part of our evolution and our health.

• 15:45Lewis Howes?

  What's the difference between that and chronic inflammation?

• 15:47Shawn Stevenson?

  Right. So what we generally think about is acute inflammation. We think about like a short-term intrusion, maybe an injury or an infection, for example, which the inflammation might last a few hours, even a few days. But if inflammation is lasting for a long amount of time and also showing up in the wrong places, it can be devastating. And so now we're talking about chronic inflammation. And if we're venturing into chronic inflammation, we've got to look at what are the underlying components? What is creating the fire? What is throwing gasoline on the fire as well? And so if we take one of the conditions that you mentioned, so right now here in the United States, we've got about 242 million of our citizens are overweight or obese.

• 16:29Lewis Howes?

  Out of how many?

• 16:30Shawn Stevenson?

  Right around 330,000.

• 16:33Lewis Howes?

  330 million?

• 16:34Shawn Stevenson?

  I'm sorry, 330 million.

• 16:36Lewis Howes?

  So 240 million are obese.

• 16:38Shawn Stevenson?

  So we're looking at somewhere in the ballpark of 70 to even upwards of 80% of our citizens.

• 16:42Lewis Howes?

  How is that possible now?

• 16:43Shawn Stevenson?

  Exactly.

• 16:44Lewis Howes?

  How have we gotten this far? Is it just food is too accessible or the wrong kinds of foods are too accessible to so many people now? The, you know, social media, is it laziness? Is it, why have we shifted from being a healthy nation, I don't know, probably 60, 70 years ago, to an unhealthy nation?

• 17:03Shawn Stevenson?

  Yeah. It's really a perfect storm of all the things. So the first thing to look at and to ask is what's going on? Because our genes expect certain things from us. Our DNA expects certain things to have healthy outcomes or healthy cell replication, healthy expression. And so we've got to look at what are the things our genes expect of us? Our genes expect us to move, for example. We're the most sedentary culture in the history of Humanity and recorded human history, we're the most sedentary culture to ever exist right now.

• 17:33Lewis Howes?

  All of humanity or just USA?

• 17:34Shawn Stevenson?

  Right, especially the US. We're the LeBron James. We're the king of sedentary.

• 17:40Lewis Howes?

  We're the Homer Simpsons.

• 17:41Shawn Stevenson?

  We're the dope. Yeah, we're the, you know, we're really leading, leading the league in these things. And so that's number one. Also, our genes expect us to get adequate sleep. This is something that we've talked about multiple times in the show, but this is, it's built into our evolution. And if you think about sleep, it's very strange because you're incredibly vulnerable, you're unconscious. You'd think we might evolve out of it just for safety. Uh, but the thing is so many wonderful, absolutely amazing things take place during sleep that we just haven't found a way to replicate. Right? So even with the reduction of inflammation, which we'll talk about more, you know, with, we have micro glial cells in our brain. Which are, it's kind of the brain's immune system and it's, it's primarily active when we're sleeping.

• 18:27Shawn Stevenson?

  To reduce inflammation, to clean out metabolic waste and things of the like, so.

• 18:31Lewis Howes?

  What would you say the five biggest benefits of the greatest night of sleep consistently? Like, what are the five main benefits that you get? If you get deep REM sleep for seven, eight hours a night consistently, no interruptions, no light exposure, all the things you talked about in your other book, Sleep Smarter. What are the five main benefits that come from that versus, you know, interrupted sleep, four hours of sleep, you know, staying up late with the phone, you know, having coffee late at night, all that stuff. What's the benefits?

• 19:02Shawn Stevenson?

  We'll just power, power pack bullet point these. Um, number one, and this is because our culture, we are, we, I always like to connect to something visceral. And people, we care about how we look.

• 19:14Lewis Howes?

  Of course.

• 19:15Shawn Stevenson?

  And so.

• 19:16Lewis Howes?

  You're younger.

• 19:17Shawn Stevenson?

  Right. Nobody's waking up like, I want to look so old today. I want to get my George Burns on. I want to be as old as possible, or I want to, I want to feel bad today about the way that I, that I, that I look or, and I'm waking up like, I just want to look terrible and feel terrible today. And I've run, in my clinical practice, I never met one person, and people might argue these things and get into a, because of our cognitive biases. I've never met anybody who wants to be unhealthy.

• 19:43Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 19:43Shawn Stevenson?

  Every single person wants to be healthy.

• 19:45Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 19:46Shawn Stevenson?

  Now, with that said, this is where sleep really comes into the, into the fray because over the years, me being a nutritionist, I really. Me being a nutritionist, I thought that food was everything. You know, because it was, it was for me, it was my bridge. But there's many paths to the goal. When you're sleeping, it is the most powerful anabolic state that you can be in. So it's just, you're just teeming with what we call these quote anti-agent hormones. You know, the release of human growth hormone, for example, that really it's also known as the youth hormone. Yeah. You know, and also with, in that lane, lane of body composition and, and overall health and fitness. Researchers at the University of Chicago did a very simple study. They brought folks in and they wanted to see what would happen with their weight loss.

• 20:30Shawn Stevenson?

  They put them on a calorie restricted diet. And they wanted to see what would happen with weight loss when they were well rested versus when they're sleep deprived. And so they put them under both conditions. And I love studies that do that, that put people under both conditions to see what would happen. And so they allow folks to get eight and a half hours of sleep in one phase of the study. And they tracked all their metrics, their weight loss, et cetera. And then they sleep deprived them for the other phase. So they was getting eight and a half hours, now they're getting five and a half hours. Tracked all their metrics. Same group. Same group on the same exact calorie restricted diet. Same calories, yeah, everything. But when they were sleep deprived, when they were sleep deprived versus when they were adequately, adequately rested. When they were getting enough sleep, they lost 55% more body fat. Just by sleeping more. That's crazy.

• 21:15Shawn Stevenson?

  It's, it doesn't even make sense. Were they working out the same or was it like no movement? What was it just like? Everything is the same. This is what I love too, it's a ward study. So they're under the conditions where they can track everything. Now here's another part of the study I don't often talk about is that they actually did biopsies. So they actually took Fat cells. Fat cells to see what would happen with their fat cells under the different conditions. And what they came to the conclusion was that your fat cells actually need sleep too. Oh. Because when the fat cells were not, when you, when they weren't adequate, adequately rested. Their fat cells actually became more insulin resistant, which should become like, that should put up a huge red flag. Because insulin resistance is one of the classic signs is carrying more belly fat. Right?

• 21:56Shawn Stevenson?

  So the fat cells themselves, looking at them versus when you're well rested versus when you're sleep deprived. Your fat cells themselves become insulin resistant. And it's just going to lead to downstream problems with your liver, lipogenesis, the creation of new fat. The list goes on and on. So that's just one part, one thing. So number one, number two, the cognitive performance. And

• 22:17Shawn Stevenson?

  I love this study, this was published in The Lancet. And they wanted to see what would happen when physicians, they took physicians and had them to complete a task. And tracked all their numbers. And they sleep deprived them for 24 hours, which is not abnormal in the field of medicine. And had them to complete the same task, which is a simulation of different like surgical type of simulation. They made 20% more mistakes. Doing the exact same thing. And it took them 14% longer to do the exact same thing. Alright, so and this is a big problem in our culture, again, we mistake being busy for being effective. Right, and so that's the number, that's the number two thing, the cognitive performance. Number three, and this, it parallels with cognitive performance is the health of our brain.

• 22:59Shawn Stevenson?

  And so researchers at UC Berkeley did brain imaging scans and, you know, we talked about this before, but they actually looked at the sleep deprived brain, just again, 24 hours of sleep deprivation. And the part of the brain that's associated with executive function, right, so. Decision making, distinction between right and wrong, social control, so the prefrontal cortex, the more human part of our brain. That part of the brain goes cold, the activity of that part of the brain just. Literally as we're more and more tired, just shuts down. With a lack of sleep. With the lack of sleep. Coupled with more activity in the amygdala, which is very much more primitive, driven by emotion, very much concerned with survival of self. And so that part of the brain just lights up like a Christmas tree or Las Vegas sign, you just came back from Vegas.

• 23:41Shawn Stevenson?

  So, these changes happen in the brain very quickly and that leads into. Number, well, number three, reduced cognitive performance, so being able to manage our emotions, being able to manage our decisions. And then we'll go to number four is, is gonna lean into this as well with the brain function. Is, I talked a little bit about this earlier, during sleep is when your glenphatic system. Which is the brain's waste management sys, waste management system. Cleansing it all out. Is 10 times more active when you're sleeping than when you're awake. So, and your brain is doing literally trillions of activities every second. And there's a lot of metabolic waste that takes place.

• 24:22Shawn Stevenson?

  And you have to have this cleansing system, this cleaning system, or you're gonna have a buildup of things like amyloid beta plaque, for example, which. That is strongly, strongly correlated with Alzheimer's disease. It's an inability of the brain to clean itself. And also insulin resistance in the brain, we could talk about later. But we're wondering again, why are these issues going up? Why is brain inflammation going up? These are the things, are we getting enough sleep for the processes that normally just naturally want to happen, they do it on their own, are we getting that? The final thing. So four is the cleansing. Right, cleansing, so this is associated with disease prevention of the brain, longevity of the brain.

• 25:01Shawn Stevenson?

  And number five, you know, this is tough, there's so many different, different things that this can benefit, but I would say for me and you as well, like, we want to be able to perform, you know, we want to be able to use our body and our mind to compete, to get out and to play, to have a good time. And one of the fun things I talked about in my, in my first book, Sleep Smarter, was research that was done on basketball players, collegiate basketball players at Stanford, and they found that simply by increasing the amount of sleep that they were getting, not training more, not doing anything else differently, this shaved a full second off of their sprint time, just by increasing their sleep.

• 25:45Shawn Stevenson?

  They improved, significantly improved their free throw shooting and their three-point shooting, just by getting more sleep, alright? And these are things that we just kind of, on a periphery, you kind of know that, but at the same time, are we utilizing it? So some of the greatest athletes in the world right now, sleep is a part of their training. LeBron James, it's a part of his training. Usain Bolt, same thing, it's a part of his training. Now Serena Williams, the list goes on and on and on. These things weren't taught to us when we were in high school, it was just like. Get up before you ever left. Yeah, right, just go, just go right into somebody, you know what I mean? Make a play, make a play. But today, you know, it's really built into the, into the system, also the strength training programs are built into the system, which is beautiful because again, when we were

• 26:30Shawn Stevenson?

  in high school, it was very, I mean, some stuff was starting to take place with folks being in the weight room, but it wasn't a big emphasis. Whereas now, if you look at different sports like. A good friend, which I'm, it's so weird for me to say this right now. This is like the coolest thing. I actually got chills. Ozzy Smith, right? So having the opportunity.

• 26:49Lewis Howes?

  Same as Icon, man.

• 26:50Shawn Stevenson?

  Icon. When I was a kid, my two idols were Ozzy Smith and Michael Jackson.

• 26:55Lewis Howes?

  Wow, yeah.

• 26:56Shawn Stevenson?

  I tried to wear the thriller jacket to school and I got drove. That was not a good look, but Ozzy Smith could be my role model and I could just, I wanted to, to play. I wanted to compete, play baseball. And so I actually met him at the gym and so he was there. I think he was probably in his, around in his mid sixties maybe at the time. Uh, but he was there getting strong, like, and he was one of the first, if not the first high level elite baseball players to really embrace strength training. Way back in the eighties. And the reason that he did it, funny enough, was he tore his rotator cuff and he didn't want to be out. Like this was back in the day where it's just like literally you pat, you do whatever it takes to get on the field. And he wanted to be there for his team. And so he just tried, had to find out a way to strengthen everything around it.

• 27:40Shawn Stevenson?

  Because he didn't want to have surgery, he would have been out for a year at the time. And now, you know, of course surgeries have advanced tremendously since then. But, so he found in that, he strengthened everything in his shoulder, but also he started throwing from a completely different arm angle. And still won thirteen consecutive gold gloves.

• 27:57Lewis Howes?

  Crazy.

• 27:58Shawn Stevenson?

  It's crazy. It's crazy.

• 28:00Lewis Howes?

  Back flipping at the same time.

• 28:01Shawn Stevenson?

  Right. He's out there back flipping with the glove on.

• 28:04Lewis Howes?

  It's cool.

• 28:04Shawn Stevenson?

  So powerful. But it's a big part of what our genes expect is to, is to be strong in some different domain. And we talked about this before the show. That translates over into our lives as well, you know? So that's strength. If you can train your body and your mind, because your mind is in play too. Life gets a little bit easier in many aspects. You know, like you feel more physically ready to handle whatever life throws at you. You know, and so in the context that, that final one is being able to, to perform at a high level, to recover from the training that we do. All the magic happens when you're sleeping.

• 28:40Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely.

• 28:40Shawn Stevenson?

  When you're up in the gym and, and training or you're out on the field competing, you're just tearing your body up. That's all catabolic stuff. You get the anabolic reward when you go to sleep.

• 28:49Lewis Howes?

  When I was interviewing Andrew Huberman, the neuroscientist out of Stanford, he was saying that even learning a new skill. It's like the neurons connect when you're sleeping. Like, when I do Spanish class sometimes, I'm just like, I'm not getting this. You know, there's moments where I'm like, gosh, this hurts my brain, it's so challenging. But then I come back the next day or two days later, I'm like, oh, I'm, you know, I've connected the neurons, or it's like in your sleep, and things are moving and processing for you to really connect those things you're learning, those new skills, those challenging things. So I think it's, and if I wasn't sleeping, I probably wouldn't connect the dots on a new skill. So something to think about there as well. I'm curious about this. Have you seen a study around, or any research around how our belief

• 29:33Lewis Howes?

  about our identity, how we view ourselves in the world, whether we think positively of ourselves, we have confidence, we believe in ourselves, or our lack thereof, we have a bad view of ourselves. Do you, is there any research about how that affects the brain, our actual mindset of the brain and ourselves?

• 29:52Shawn Stevenson?

  Absolutely.

• 29:53Lewis Howes?

  Have you seen any of this?

• 29:54Shawn Stevenson?

  The number one driving force of the human psyche is to stay congruent with the ideas that we carry about who we are. Every, every thought that we think, every action we take is really correlated with who we believe ourselves to be. And this is why change can be so uncomfortable. You know, when we start to think things that I, I don't think that way, or these are things that I don't do, our, our physiology, this stuff really gets hardwired into us, and so it creates discomfort, because we're literally going to start creating new neural pathways, and potentially start to break down old ones. And a mutual friend, Dr. Caroline Leaf, and I love her so much.

• 30:31Lewis Howes?

  She's great.

• 30:32Shawn Stevenson?

  And she's really brought to the forefront. And I talked a little bit about this in Eat Smarter, in my, in my new book, and how our thoughts really affect our biology, even how food affects us based on our beliefs about food. And so, one of the biggest things to really come from her work, that unfortunately, it wasn't embraced, even though she's been in the field for 40 years, she really knows her stuff, and it's affected so many different lives. But it takes time for kind of collegiate training to, to change, for the books to change. But one of the big takeaways is, our thinking, your, your thoughts create your brain. Really? The process of thinking itself is creating your brain. And we think that the brain is in and of itself just kind of off-shooting our thoughts.

• 31:17Shawn Stevenson?

  Now, we can absolutely have thoughts stored in our brain, but thinking is so much bigger. Our mind is creating our brain.

• 31:24Lewis Howes?

  So, thinking is a part of the mind. Is that right?

• 31:28Shawn Stevenson?

  Also, the brain as well.

• 31:29Lewis Howes?

  It's both.

• 31:30Shawn Stevenson?

  Yeah, it's kind of within the brain, then we start to create it. She shares, I don't know if she did this with you, but she brings up the little trees and all these things.

• 31:36Lewis Howes?

  And the branches and this.

• 31:37Shawn Stevenson?

  Yeah, so we start to create these with a thought, little thought trees start to bear fruits. But we can supersede it. Your mind is bigger than just your brain. We tend to think that because everything is kind of up here, but our mind is in our toe as well. And our mind is just so much. Yeah, in our gut.

• 31:55Lewis Howes?

  I've talked to Dr. Emeron, uh, Emeron Mayeron.

• 31:57Shawn Stevenson?

  Yeah.

• 31:58Lewis Howes?

  He was talking about the mind in the gut and how it's all connected to the brain as well. The gut-brain and the brain-brain and fascinating.

• 32:07Shawn Stevenson?

  It's so fascinating.

• 32:08Lewis Howes?

  The mind is connected throughout all, throughout your body as well.

• 32:10Shawn Stevenson?

  Yeah, so, for example, even our heart, within the gut, the human brain itself is just an absolute universe of neurons. So, it's like eighty-four billion neurons, right? I was thinking about human cells overall. So, we have about eighty-four billion neurons in the brain. We have about a hundred million in the gut. All right, so this is like nerve tissue. It's like a mass of neurotissue in the gut. But the heart also has neurons as well. So, when it's called, and anybody can go to Dr. Google and look this up, it's called the heart-brain. All right, so your brain, your heart actually has this kind of ability to think. And there's this electromagnetic energy that it's expressing. And there's a field also. It's called a tube torus that's been monitored

• 32:55Shawn Stevenson?

  that's expanding beyond our body to be able to see this. And if folks want to check out the work from HeartMath Institute.

• 33:01Lewis Howes?

  HeartMath.

• 33:02Shawn Stevenson?

  HeartMath Institute is phenomenal. I've been, you know, um... Probably for about ten to fifteen years, uh, connected with, with HeartMath Institute. It's just absolutely phenomenal.

• 33:13Lewis Howes?

  So there's a field around the heart. Does that mean like quantum physics we're talking about? Or is this something else?

• 33:18Shawn Stevenson?

  So.

• 33:19Lewis Howes?

  What is this field, an energy field?

• 33:20Shawn Stevenson?

  We'll keep it real, real simple first, which is if we think about the elec- the electrical energy that the heart is kicking off, like when you, when you're in the hospital, right? And you see the monitor, boop, boop, it's not reading the, the, the, the smoke coming off your heart, it's reading the electrical energy that's coming off the heart, right? So we got EKGs and things of that nature. So we can read the electrical currency that the body is, is throwing off.

• 33:47Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 33:48Shawn Stevenson?

  Your body is just teeming with energy. And there's even a form of energy that we generate, it's called piezoelectricity, right? Just from moving, we're generating energy and electricity. So just from a very simplistic level, the heart is, is kicking off energy that we can't see. That's the thing about it, right? It's, it's, it's emanating from beyond us. Even our skin is emanating energy. We just see a certain spectrum of light as humans. We see a certain spectrum of energy.

• 34:15Lewis Howes?

  How far does this energy go beyond the body?

• 34:17Shawn Stevenson?

  So the two toruses from HeartMath Institute's data and being able to, to measure it and monitor it, it can be upwards of, at last checked, around eight feet from your body. And so now this is getting into some freaky stuff, alright?

• 34:29Lewis Howes?

  Give it to me.

• 34:31Shawn Stevenson?

  I'm a very logical, analytical human, so seeing is believing for me. But then we get into, there's many things that are just, and also I'm, I'm very open-minded as well. And there's many things that we don't understand. But when we talk about people being in your space and you picking up people's energy and interacting, and that stuff is very real. You know, you can pick up people's vibes, you know, bad, bad vibes. So we don't want to downplay that. Because other, other species of animals, they have that bigger connection. And we can, we can attribute, like bees, for example, you know, in this quote hive mind. But we throw that away when it comes to us. And so for me, for years, I've been seeking to find, how can I explain this to people to make sense? Because I'm

• 35:13Shawn Stevenson?

  a very solid thinker, you know, I'm a very logical person. And one of the things I came across was Princeton University researchers, they found that they just took two strangers and they put them together and they had them to just chat. And they found out within a matter of minutes, all they had to do was create some rapport and their brainwaves started to sync up.

• 35:33Lewis Howes?

  Come on.

• 35:34Shawn Stevenson?

  Their brainwaves started syncing up just by having rapport and talking to another person. We start syncing up. And this is, this happens all the time.

• 35:43Lewis Howes?

  What does that mean that we sync up? The brain is what?

• 35:46Shawn Stevenson?

  So it's like it's, again, this is, this is expanding beyond our kind of normal concept of what the brain is. Because it's not just the brain, it's also the mind that's controlling the brain, right?

• 35:59Lewis Howes?

  The mind is controlling the brain? The brain isn't controlling the mind?

• 36:02Shawn Stevenson?

  We, we tend to think that it's the brain that's running the show.

• 36:04Lewis Howes?

  But it's not, the mind. So what is the mind?

• 36:07Shawn Stevenson?

  That's, put Dr. Caroline Lee's episode in. She could dive in deeper on, on what that is.

• 36:13Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 36:14Shawn Stevenson?

  Uh, from a more clinical aspect, however, I'll tell you this.

• 36:21Shawn Stevenson?

  The mind is, it's something that we're still having a hard time to identify what it is and where it's located. That's the thing.

• 36:28Lewis Howes?

  Where is it? Like here, is it around here?

• 36:30Shawn Stevenson?

  It's definitely not in your brain alone. Your, your mind is everything about you. Everything about you. We, the problem is that we tend to think that the brain is the master controller.

• 36:41Lewis Howes?

  It's not.

• 36:42Shawn Stevenson?

  It's not.

• 36:43Lewis Howes?

  What is?

• 36:44Shawn Stevenson?

  The mind is.

• 36:45Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 36:45Shawn Stevenson?

  The mind. And we still are trying to, to dictate what the mind is.

• 36:54Lewis Howes?

  The brain foods that would actually help increase our mood, the function of our mood to feeling better, not an addictive, I need this all the time McDonald's hit, but overall calming, happy, healthy mood.

• 37:08Andrew Weil?

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

• 37:39Lewis Howes?

  Olive oil is good too.

• 37:40Andrew Weil?

  Olive oil, of course.

• 37:43Lewis Howes?

  Do you take supplements yourself?

• 37:44Andrew Weil?

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

• 37:55Lewis Howes?

  Really? And you make them yourself?

• 37:57Andrew Weil?

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

• 38:03Lewis Howes?

  How long you been studying mushrooms?

• 38:05Andrew Weil?

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

• 38:19Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 38:19Andrew Weil?

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

• 38:57Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 38:57Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 38:58Lewis Howes?

  So you take them daily or weekly?

• 39:00Andrew Weil?

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

• 39:04Lewis Howes?

  Mushrooms are powerful, huh?

• 39:05Andrew Weil?

  They're real powerful.

• 39:06Lewis Howes?

  Wasn't there a documentary called like The Magic Power of Mushrooms?

• 39:09Andrew Weil?

  I'm sure.

• 39:09Lewis Howes?

  Did you see this on Netflix?

• 39:10Andrew Weil?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

• 39:12Lewis Howes?

  There's, how many species of mushroom?

• 39:16Andrew Weil?

  Countless. I don't think we know.

• 39:17Lewis Howes?

  Thousands, right?

• 39:18Andrew Weil?

  Yeah, thousands and thousands. And the percentage of them that can kill you is very tiny. So when you go out, you know, when you learn to pick wild mushrooms, the first thing you want to do is learn the ones that can kill you.

• 39:28Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 39:29Andrew Weil?

  And those are fairly easy to learn. And then once you learn those and avoid them, you can experiment. Then the worst thing you're going to get is a stomach ache of one sort or another.

• 39:36Lewis Howes?

  For a few hours and you'll be fine.

• 39:38Andrew Weil?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 39:39Lewis Howes?

  Tell me, tell me, talk to me about teas. Cause I'm interested in teas and the power of teas. And what is the purpose of tea? And why do people drink it so much in general?

• 39:51Andrew Weil?

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

• 40:05Lewis Howes?

  It's not tea.

• 40:06Andrew Weil?

  Rooibos tea is not tea.

• 40:07Lewis Howes?

  What is it? It's just herbs?

• 40:08Andrew Weil?

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

• 40:14Lewis Howes?

  And where does this species grow? It can grow anywhere.

• 40:16Andrew Weil?

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

• 40:59Andrew Weil?

  When I was growing up, tea was what old people and sick people drank.

• 41:03Lewis Howes?

  Right, right. Or iced tea.

• 41:04Andrew Weil?

  With a lot of sugar.

• 41:06Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 41:06Andrew Weil?

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

• 41:23Lewis Howes?

  What are the benefits of tea? Why, why drink tea?

• 41:25Andrew Weil?

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

• 41:33Lewis Howes?

  All tea or I guess?

• 41:35Andrew Weil?

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

• 41:39Lewis Howes?

  Like a mint tea that's non-caffeine?

• 41:41Andrew Weil?

  That's not tea. There is however, mint flavored tea. So you've got to read the label.

• 41:45Lewis Howes?

  But that's with caffeine.

• 41:46Andrew Weil?

  Yes.

• 41:47Lewis Howes?

  If it's tea, it has caffeine.

• 41:48Andrew Weil?

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

• 42:12Lewis Howes?

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

• 42:16Andrew Weil?

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

• 42:21Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 42:21Andrew Weil?

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

• 42:26Lewis Howes?

  A jittery alertness versus a calm alertness, a focused alert.

• 42:30Andrew Weil?

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

• 42:53Lewis Howes?

  Like I need my tea this morning.

• 42:55Andrew Weil?

  Yeah, exactly. Rarely.

• 42:56Lewis Howes?

  I'm on my feet talking about tea.

• 42:57Andrew Weil?

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

• 43:22Lewis Howes?

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

• 43:25Andrew Weil?

  Fine. And, and these were often problems that had gone on for years.

• 43:29Lewis Howes?

  You're breaking people's hearts.

• 43:30Andrew Weil?

  And nobody ever told them though.

• 43:31Lewis Howes?

  You're breaking people's hearts.

• 43:32Andrew Weil?

  Exactly, right. But also there's a huge variation in how people respond to caffeine in general and coffee in particular. I, I see people who have no idea that the one cup of coffee they have in the morning is the reason they can't sleep at night. And I see other people who can drink a pot of coffee at bedtime and fine. So you got to find out where you are on that spectrum.

• 43:54Lewis Howes?

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

• 43:58Andrew Weil?

  So you're relatively caffeine insensitive.

• 44:01Lewis Howes?

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

• 44:11Andrew Weil?

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

• 44:20Lewis Howes?

  Really? What do you mean it's their energy that bunches it up?

• 44:23Andrew Weil?

  Caffeine isn't giving you a gift of, coffee isn't giving you a gift of energy. It's like, it's forcing your body to give up chemically stored energy that it would normally not release all at once.

• 44:34Lewis Howes?

  Like stored where, in the fat cells or in the?

• 44:36Andrew Weil?

  No, in, in all cells and, and it's in all cells and energetic compounds in all cells. But when you, when you release that energy, then when, when the drug wears off, you have a depletion of energy.

• 44:47Lewis Howes?

  And you feel tired.

• 44:48Andrew Weil?

  Yeah, you have a crash, so.

• 44:50Lewis Howes?

  And why does tea not do that specifically?

• 44:52Andrew Weil?

  Probably because it's, first because it's less caffeine, so it's gentler stimulation. And it's also got this other compound that moderates the, the thing. So I guess you can find, you could find tea addicts. I don't see them very often.

• 45:06Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 45:06Andrew Weil?

  Uh, and I don't see many people who say they get a crash from, from tea drinking. And, and also coffee does have, you know, there are health benefits of coffee. But there's been a tremendous amount of research on health benefits of tea. Especially green tea.

• 45:22Lewis Howes?

  Like, what are the benefits?

• 45:23Andrew Weil?

  Overall lower death rates.

• 45:25Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 45:26Andrew Weil?

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

• 45:29Lewis Howes?

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

• 45:34Andrew Weil?

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

• 45:53Lewis Howes?

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

• 45:59Andrew Weil?

  I have heard this, I've heard this from people.

• 46:01Lewis Howes?

  I could get a little nauseous sometimes.

• 46:03Andrew Weil?

  I hear this from people, so you want to have food in your stomach.

• 46:05Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 46:05Andrew Weil?

  That's a fairly simple fix.

• 46:07Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha, gotcha. Well, why is that, do you think?

• 46:09Andrew Weil?

  I don't know.

• 46:09Lewis Howes?

  With coffee, I'm fine.

• 46:10Andrew Weil?

  I mean, interesting, I don't know why.

• 46:12Lewis Howes?

  Drink coffee in the morning and not eat all day.

• 46:14Andrew Weil?

  I do not know why.

• 46:16Lewis Howes?

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

• 46:21Andrew Weil?

  So my preferred form is matcha green tea, which is the powdered tea.

• 46:24Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, but matcha doesn't make me feel sick.

• 46:26Andrew Weil?

  Okay, good.

• 46:27Lewis Howes?

  I like matcha.

• 46:27Andrew Weil?

  Oh, good. I'm glad to hear that. You gotta try our matcha, which is the best.

• 46:30Lewis Howes?

  What you guys have, I mean, the best domain in the tea world is matcha.com.

• 46:34Andrew Weil?

  Yeah, well, it was a good score.

• 46:35Lewis Howes?

  And why, why is, why did you get in, how did you get into matcha?

• 46:40Andrew Weil?

  When I was seventeen, I was on a student exchange program. This was nineteen fifty-nine. No, actually, it was an experimental school called the International School of America.

• 46:51Lewis Howes?

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

• 46:54Andrew Weil?

  This was great. I got to travel around the world for nine months and live with native families in different countries.

• 47:00Lewis Howes?

  Didn't speak the language.

• 47:01Andrew Weil?

  Changed my life. Anyway.

• 47:02Lewis Howes?

  It's a quick story there before you tell it. My dad, we had seven exchanges live with us when I was a kid.

• 47:08Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 47:08Lewis Howes?

  So it's like, we didn't have the money to travel.

• 47:10Andrew Weil?

  Right, but he brought it to you.

• 47:11Lewis Howes?

  He brought it to me, so we had people from all over the world, teaching us the culture and the food and the language.

• 47:16Andrew Weil?

  There's no substitute for that.

• 47:17Lewis Howes?

  Amazing.

• 47:18Andrew Weil?

  No substitute for that, for knowing about other, other cultures.

• 47:21Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 47:21Andrew Weil?

  Anyway, so I lived with, with Japanese families outside of Tokyo and Kobe, and the Japanese family outside of Tokyo, there was supposed to be a student studying English, but there was no language.

• 47:37Lewis Howes?

  No one spoke English.

• 47:38Andrew Weil?

  No one spoke English. So the second night that I was there, the mother, through gestures, made known she wanted to take me next door to her neighbor who was a tea ceremony practitioner.

• 47:48Lewis Howes?

  That's kinda cool.

• 47:49Andrew Weil?

  So it was cool. So the three of us sat around, and this woman in kimono made matcha. So first of all, the color of the matcha just blew me away. I mean, it's this brilliant green powder. I'd never seen green like that. And then the whisk that they whisked it in a bowl to a froth is a marvel of Japanese craftsmanship, carved from a single piece of bamboo. And that whisk just, oh, I loved it. I wanted one of those. So I then in the nineteen seventies, I began going to Japan. Fairly regularly for different things and whenever I'd go, I'd bring matcha back and turn people on to it. Nobody had ever heard of matcha and I'd make it for people and somewhere

• 48:32Andrew Weil?

  in the eighties, maybe nineties, I started importing matcha from a company in Japan that I met and selling it on my website, drwild.com, way ahead of its time. You know, there was no awareness of

• 48:45Lewis Howes?

  Before Starbucks made it

• 48:46Andrew Weil?

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

• 48:58Lewis Howes?

  Well, it's just sugar infused.

• 48:59Andrew Weil?

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

• 49:24Lewis Howes?

  What are, what are the benefits of matcha in general?

• 49:27Andrew Weil?

  Well, it's the only form of tea in which the whole leaf is consumed and it's got a higher content of antioxidants and flavor compounds than that L-theanine than other forms of tea. So it's grown in an unusual way. It's like they're, they're specialty plants and starting about three weeks before they harvest it, they cover the plants with shade cloth. It's about a 90% shade cloth, so pretty dark. And in response to that, the leaves get bigger.

• 49:57Lewis Howes?

  To try to get the sun.

• 49:58Andrew Weil?

  To get bigger and thinner. They produce more chlorophyll to try to make more energy and they produce more antioxidants and more flavor compounds. And then the leaves are harvested, steamed, dried, aged, and then they're ground between stones. It used to be done by hand, now they're sort of mechanically driven, but it's these grooved granite stones to this super fine powder. And so it's, you know, it's a special form of tea that has higher content of all the good stuff.

• 50:27Lewis Howes?

  We're gonna have to come to Tucson and have you make me some sometime.

• 50:29Andrew Weil?

  I would love to do that.

• 50:30Lewis Howes?

  Whisk it up for me.

• 50:31Andrew Weil?

  I would love to do that.

• 50:32Lewis Howes?

  Or just go to Japan and find a specialty place and...

• 50:36Andrew Weil?

  But meantime, you can get it from our website, matcha.com.

• 50:39Lewis Howes?

  Matcha.com, there you go. Do you guys teach how to make it too?

• 50:42Andrew Weil?

  Yes, there's instructional videos and we sell everything.

• 50:44Lewis Howes?

  The bowls and everything.

• 50:45Andrew Weil?

  Everything, everything's all there.

• 50:46Lewis Howes?

  That's exciting.

• 50:47Andrew Weil?

  Yeah, that's fun. So it's been fun to turn people on to that.

• 50:49Lewis Howes?

  So why matcha over jasmine or green? What's the...

• 50:53Andrew Weil?

  I think it's personal preference, whatever you like. I like the... First of all, I just like the look of matcha. I like the taste of it. I like the ritual of whisking it.

• 51:03Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 51:03Andrew Weil?

  Well, you can do it any way you want.

• 51:05Lewis Howes?

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

• 51:11Andrew Weil?

  Yeah, just... I like it just with water, no sweetener. That's just the way I like it. I also like iced matcha, sort of use electric whisk and room temperature water and then put ice cubes in it. And then when it's hot weather, I like that a lot.

• 51:25Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 51:26Andrew Weil?

  I like to drink green things.

• 51:27Lewis Howes?

  What's the... Are you drinking one tea a day? Do you have multiple...

• 51:33Andrew Weil?

  I'd say one a day.

• 51:35Lewis Howes?

  For you?

• 51:35Andrew Weil?

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

• 51:41Lewis Howes?

  What's your nighttime ritual?

• 51:44Andrew Weil?

  My nighttime ritual? I eat early.

• 51:47Lewis Howes?

  Early? What's that, five, seven?

• 51:49Andrew Weil?

  Four to five, I would say.

• 51:50Lewis Howes?

  That's your dinner?

• 51:51Andrew Weil?

  Yeah. I like to cook. So even if I'm by myself, you know, I usually cook for myself. Simple stuff, but I, you know, I like simple delicious things. So, and I like cooking for other people. And then after dinner, I like to often read, watch movies, depending on the weather, of course. I mean, if it's up at FOMC and BC and it's light till 10 o'clock, I'm, you know, outdoors and...

• 52:17Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 52:19Lewis Howes?

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

• 52:25Andrew Weil?

  You know, I, I, I, there is now a center at the University of Arizona College of Medicine, named the Andrew Wiles Center for Integrative Medicine.

• 52:34Lewis Howes?

  That's pretty cool. That's pretty cool.

• 52:35Andrew Weil?

  And we're the world leader in education in this field.

• 52:39Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 52:40Andrew Weil?

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

• 53:06Lewis Howes?

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

• 53:11Andrew Weil?

  No, it builds on conventional medicine.

• 53:13Lewis Howes?

  So you're still can prescribe traditional medicine?

• 53:15Andrew Weil?

  Absolutely. Yeah, you know, we, we, if, I've always said, if I'm in a serious car accident, I don't want to first go to a, to a Christian Science practitioner or a chiropractor or shaman. You know, I want to go to a trauma center and get put back together. But then I'd use other methods I know to speed up healing.

• 53:30Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 53:30Andrew Weil?

  So I think the, frankly, I could, one of the things I can see happening, I think that a lot of smaller and community hospitals aren't going to be there in the future. I think nobody's going to be able to afford, you know, that stuff. And that, what we call conventional medicine, allopathic medicine, that may become a specialty for dealing with trauma, for critical illness. And there'll be one large facility in cities that has all the hardware. And there'll be new kinds of institutions that'll come into being, you know, that I think of as healing centers. That's, that's one possible future.

• 54:06Lewis Howes?

  You've seen the obesity go up in America since the last 50 years.

• 54:11Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 54:11Lewis Howes?

  It probably wasn't two-thirds back then. It was probably a one-third maybe, or not even. I don't know what it was back then.

• 54:17Andrew Weil?

  Well, I remember watching, you know, a few years ago, I watched the whole Ken Burns documentary in World War II.

• 54:23Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 54:23Andrew Weil?

  It was on PBS. And there were many crowd scenes, both military and civilian, thousands of people. You don't see a single fat person in those crowds.

• 54:32Lewis Howes?

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

• 54:35Andrew Weil?

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

• 54:41Lewis Howes?

  They weren't processing food as much too.

• 54:43Andrew Weil?

  So, yeah, so I mean, but people ate, you know, they were eating potato, meat and potatoes and pies and whatever. But it was real food made from scratch. You know, they were not eating manufactured food. They weren't eating fast food.

• 54:55Lewis Howes?

  There was no fast food then?

• 54:56Andrew Weil?

  Right.

• 54:57Lewis Howes?

  What do you think's gonna, what do you think in the next 50 years? We're gonna be as a country in terms of obesity?

• 55:03Andrew Weil?

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

• 55:21Lewis Howes?

  Just because they're not in shape enough to?

• 55:23Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 55:23Lewis Howes?

  Pass the test?

• 55:24Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 55:24Lewis Howes?

  The physical test?

• 55:25Andrew Weil?

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

• 55:38Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 55:38Andrew Weil?

  That would be, we'd have to put it so far out of the curve.

• 55:41Lewis Howes?

  Soda pop.

• 55:42Andrew Weil?

  And it's not just soda pop. It's also fruit juice. It's energy drinks. It's putting sugar in coffee and tea. All the Starbucks. That would be, that would be one place to start, just to not drink sweet liquids.

• 55:54Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 55:55Andrew Weil?

  Uh, you know, that would, that would be a big step.

• 55:57Lewis Howes?

  What about alcohol consumption?

• 55:59Andrew Weil?

  Eh, I don't, you know, sure. I think the whole key with alcohol is moderation.

• 56:04Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 56:05Andrew Weil?

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

• 56:16Lewis Howes?

  As sugar, really?

• 56:17Andrew Weil?

  Right.

• 56:18Lewis Howes?

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

• 56:21Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 56:21Lewis Howes?

  When was that?

• 56:22Andrew Weil?

  Long ago. And you know, I, I, I have a history of being ahead of the curve in a lot of areas. You know, that I've been able to foresee trends. I was, I think the first people to warn people about trans fats 10 years before people took notice of that. So I became aware of this, beginnings of this hypothesis that chronic inflammation. Was the root cause of a lot of different kinds of serious chronic diseases. And that just fascinated me because when I was in medical school, I was taught that cardiovascular disease had nothing in common with cancer and that had nothing in common with Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease. And now suddenly it looks like, you know, all of these things are linked. They have a common root of chronic.

• 57:06Lewis Howes?

  Inflammation.

• 57:06Andrew Weil?

  Inflammation. And, and if that's the case, the good news is then there's a common strategy for dealing with them, if you can reduce inappropriate inflammation. So I think there's a lot of misunderstanding about inflammation. You know, inflammation is the cornerstone of the body's healing response. That's.

• 57:23Lewis Howes?

  Inflammation, so inflammation is good.

• 57:25Andrew Weil?

  Good.

• 57:25Lewis Howes?

  When you're in pain.

• 57:26Andrew Weil?

  Well, it's good, you know, it's the way the body gets more nourishment and more immune activity to an area that's injured or under attack.

• 57:33Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 57:33Andrew Weil?

  So we all know it on the surface of the body, you know, it's redness, swelling, you know, pain, heat. But we aren't aware of it necessarily internally. And especially if it's low level. It's, inflammation is so powerful and it's so potentially destructive that it's very important that it ends when it's supposed to end and stay where it's supposed to stay.

• 57:57Lewis Howes?

  So you don't want it throughout your body all the time?

• 57:59Andrew Weil?

  If inflammation persists, if it outlives its purpose, then it causes disease. And it looks now, if you, if you can't produce enough inflammation, you're vulnerable to infection. If you produce too much inflammation, you're vulnerable to allergies and autoimmunity. And it looks like if you've got low level chronic inflammation going on for a long time, you greatly increase risks of cardiovascular disease, of neurodegenerative disease and cancer. And so I think one of the best things we can do is learn how to contain it. So what are the factors that influence it? It's partly genetic, it's stress, exposure to environmental toxins is a big one. Secondhand cigarette smoke is a very powerful pro-inflammatory agent.

• 58:44Andrew Weil?

  But diet has a huge influence and that's one that's potentially under our control.

• 58:48Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 58:48Andrew Weil?

  And I think there's no question that the mainstream. North American diet is strongly pro-inflammatory. It gives us the wrong kinds of fats, the wrong kinds of carbs, and not enough of the protective elements, which are mostly in fruits, vegetables, herbs, spices, tea, things like that. Yeah. So what would be the anti-inflammatory diet? So a base of high-quality produce. You know, and the government always tells us eat more fruits and vegetables, but the emphasis really should be on vegetables because fruits are sugar sources and you want to, you know. Veggies, more veggies. More veggies. You want to avoid pro-inflammatory fats, which are things like, you know,

• 59:31Andrew Weil?

  hydrogenated fats, margarine, vegetable shortening, and the polyunsaturated vegetable oils. Okay. So, you know, you want to eat, olive oil should be your main. Main thing. Fat. Or avocado oil. Or avocado oil, yeah. Gotcha. Uh, nuts, seeds, good. They're good, yeah. Yes. In terms of carbohydrate, it, you know, it's not that carbohydrates are bad, it's that you want to reduce consumption of quick-digesting ones, the ones that turn quickly into blood sugar. Is that bread? So everything made with flour. And that's all the snack foods, all the, you know, it's everything, everything, yeah. And, and sweeteners in general. I mean, that doesn't mean you live without sugar completely, but you want to really keep, keep that to a minimum. So is this all flour? Or is this just more?

• 1:00:16Andrew Weil?

  It's all flour. You know, I think the, one of the- Like almond flour and? Well, that's a nut. So that's, that's better. But with grains, I, I think there's such misunderstanding. You know, if I ask people to name a whole grain food, the usual answer I get is whole wheat flour or whole wheat bread. Where's the, whole wheat bread is not a whole grain food. Where's the grain? You know, it's, and the FDA doesn't get that. They let that put labels on it saying this is a whole grain food and good for you. Most whole wheat bread is colored white bread. You know, when you, when you have a grain, the starch is tightly compacted, very dense, and it's surrounded by a, more or less by a fibrous bran, and it takes time for digestive

• 1:01:00Andrew Weil?

  enzymes to get in there and convert the starch to sugar. When you mill a grain into flour, whether or not the bran is present, whether or not the germ is present, you convert the starch into a material with an infinite surface area, and it's a snap for digestive enzymes to turn that into sugar.

• 1:01:18Lewis Howes?

  Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's show with all the important links. And also make sure to share this with a friend and subscribe over on Apple Podcasts as well. I really love hearing feedback from you guys, so share a review over on Apple and let me know what part of this episode resonated with you the most. And if no one's told you lately, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.