Breaking the Shackles of Apartheid in Medicine

We need more doctors in the world like Dr. Frank Lipman. Western medicine is astounding when it comes to treating acute, isolated conditions — a catastrophic injury, an arterial blockage or a serious infection, for example. But how does it fare when it comes to preventing disease, particularly chronic illnesses like diabetes, heart disease, obesity and countless other conditions sweeping the globe like a modern day plague? Well, not so well. On this I think we can all agree. On that note, when was the last time your doctor focused his inquiry on things like increasing energy levels and general vitality, elevating mood, sustaining optimal body weight, or enhancing mental acuity and focus? Not recently I would imagine, if ever. He or she might advise you to reduce the stress in your life, “eat better” and/or “start taking care of yourself” — but these proclamations are rarely combined with an actual specific protocol to implement. And that, my friends is a shame. Dr. Lipman is working to break this paradigm. Early in his medical career, he began to see that the polarization between western modalities and other healing philosophies merely negated positive attributes of both. He began to see that true healing lay in a blend between the two. He now practices his unique method of what he calls “Good Medicine”, which merges the best of the west with many traditions more eastern or alternative in origin — a holistic form of medicine that is truly unique and integrative in its approach to patients. It's for this reason he has become the go-to, in-demand doctor for the celebrated — people like Donna Karan, Kevin Bacon, Gwenyth Paltrow, Peter Sarsgaard & Maggie Gyllenhaal. If pharmaceuticals are truly in order to rectify an acute medical issue, he is happy to prescribe. But disease management isn't what gets him out of bed every morning excited about life. Instead, it's taking the time to evaluate each patient as a complex web of interdependent systems, with a keen lens focused on disease prevention. The idea is to optimize the quality of his patients' lives through implementing techniques such as acupuncture; Chinese, herbal & functional medicine; nutrition; biofeedback; meditation; and yoga. When was the last time your doctor prescribed you to go to yoga? It's never happened to me, and I live in LA. In short, Dr. Lipman's ultimate goal for all his patients is simple: sustained, long-term, optimal wellness. Sustained, long-term, optimal wellness. If you know me, then you know I'm all about this subject. So it was an honor and a treat to sit down with Dr. Lipman in his office at Eleven Eleven Wellness Center in the Flatiron District of Manhattan — with its soothing meditation retreat / yoga studio vibe — where he generously offered up his perspective on medicine & the medical profession, nutrition & food allergies, and the types of things we can and should all focus on more intently if we want to maximize our “wellness” in the truest sense of this all-too often over-hyped word. I hope you enjoy the enlightening conversation. Leave a comment below and let me know what you think. And don't forget to give Tyler — my trusty podcast producer and stepson — a nice shoutout for all his hard work not just putting today's show together, but for all his amazing original music compositions that accompany the interview. Thanks Ty! Enjoy! Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 0:44Rich Roll?

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• 1:06Rich Roll?

  Welcome to episode 72 of the Rich Roll Podcast with Dr. Frank Lippman.

• 1:24Rich Roll?

  Hey, everybody. Welcome to the show. I'm Rich Roll. I am your host. This is the Rich Roll Podcast. Welcome back if you're tuning in again. If you're new, welcome to the show. Thanks for stopping by. There's a lot of podcasts out there. I realize that you have many choices at your disposal, and I appreciate you taking a chance on me. So what do we do here? Well, each week I bring to you the best, the brightest, the most forward-thinking, paradigm-busting minds in health, wellness, fitness, diet, nutrition, athletics, entrepreneurism, creativity, spirituality, yoga, meditation, you name it. We cast a wide net. Basically... I like to interview people that are interesting to me, that are leading amazing

• 2:07Rich Roll?

  lives and are of service to other people, helping other people to improve their condition. And the idea is to provide you with a ton of information so that you can take what resonates with you, incorporate it into your life, and unlock and unleash your best, most authentic self. That is my simple goal here. This week, I'm in New York, been having a blast. I came out here for a corporate speaking gig, that's what brought me out here, but took the opportunity to stay a couple of days longer and sit down with a bunch of interesting people and bang out some podcast guests. So I'm really excited to be able to share with you over the next couple of weeks, some of the amazing conversations that I've had with

• 2:52Rich Roll?

  new guests, new people. It's awesome. It's been really cool and it's been fun to be here. I always love coming to New York City. The energy, vitality, you just can't get it anywhere else and it definitely is like a reboot for my system. It recharges me and gives me a sense of, I don't know, renewal, excitement. And it's been cool. We got a big snowstorm here. I've been able to eat at a bunch of awesome restaurants, plant-based restaurants, Candle 79, always my favorite, Angelica Kitchen I'm going to tonight, Cafe Blossom, what else? Juice Press, of course. It's amazing to see how many healthy restaurants are cropping up all over the place, all over New York City. Essentially, there's a cold

• 3:35Rich Roll?

  pressed juice place almost on almost every corner here, which was not the case not too many years ago. So, I love it. I'm here with Tyler, my podcast producer, my son, who's been helping me out. And he actually even got to play a music gig at Sidewalk Cafe on the Lower East Side on Monday night. They have a legendary open mic night. It has launched many a musical career. It's a pretty cool room. And Tyler was able to step in and play a couple of songs for a live audience in his first trip to New York, which was really super cool. So, thanks Mishka, former podcast guest, Mishka Shabali, for helping hook that

• 4:15Rich Roll?

  up. It was awesome. And we've been having a great time. And one of the reasons we've been having such a good time is I got to sit down with Dr. Frank Lipman, today's guest on the show. So who is Frank Lipman? Well,

• 4:32Rich Roll?

  If you're in New York, you've probably heard of him. He gets a lot of press out here. There was recently a profile on him in the New York Times. I'll put a link up to that in the show notes. But he is quite a prominent wellness warrior out here, an internationally renowned doctor in the field of integrative medicine. So what is integrative medicine? Well, basically, that is a merging of east and west. He is trained in Western medicine practices. He's a doctor, he's an M.D. But what makes him unique and special is the way that he has merged his practice by integrating techniques from more eastern practices,

• 5:15Rich Roll?

  I guess you could say. Things like meditation, acupuncture, acupuncture, acupuncture, homeopathy, things like that, that we talk about today. And he's been doing this for about 20 years. A couple of years ago, I think 2010, he opened up his wellness center, which is called 1111s in the Flatiron District of New York. But he's been practicing this particular sort of customized brand of medicine for like 20 years. I mean, long before it was hip and cool and sort of a zeitgeist thing. And he's helped thousands of people reclaim their vitality and improve their lives over the years. His focus is on sustainable wellness,

• 5:57Rich Roll?

  which I love. I'm all about that. I'm not about the quick fix, or shedding five pounds, or, you know, kind of the, I don't know, the bio hack, or the life hack. Like, I'm looking at it from a perspective of permanent lifestyle alteration to kind of set you on a new trajectory for a healthier life. And, you know, he shares that perspective. He offers his patients this customizable blend of Western medicine, again, with like acupuncture, nutritional counseling, vitamins and supplements, which he believes in, herbs, relaxation techniques, physical therapy, bodywork. I mean, he doesn't love bodywork, right? And what's cool is

• 6:39Rich Roll?

  when you go to his office, it's not like stepping into a doctor's office. It's more like stepping into... I don't know, a meditation temple or a Kundalini yoga studio. You know, the elevator opens and you're in this suite with, you know, beautiful hardwood floors and it has this very warm inviting feeling to it. And you're immediately greeted by the office dog, Coconut. So, I mean, I'm telling you, it's unlike any other doctor's office that I've ever been in. And this is what doctor's offices should be like. They should make the patients feel warm and at home and, you know, feel like they're going to be

• 7:20Rich Roll?

  taken care of, that they're going to be listened to and that they're going to be in good hands. And in many ways, you know, Frank really is a doctor for the modern age, you know, the internet age. I mean, this is, he, you know, he gave a TED Talk. He blogs for the Huffington Post. He writes on his own blog. He makes videos, you know, he has his own sort of, uh, you know, personal brand behind what he does. But he's very interested in connecting with people in different ways outside of, you know, office hours. And that's what I love about him. He's super passionate about his message and he's really busy. So it was an honor and a privilege to sit down with a guy.

• 8:01Rich Roll?

  I mean, this is a guy who's, you know, has patients like, you know, Gwyneth Paltrow and Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard and like, this is, you know, this is a guy who, who doesn't have a lot of free time. And so it was, it was amazing to be able to grab him and get a quiet moment with him, um, to talk with him. So, uh, our conversation is amazing, inspiring. Uh, we talk about all these subjects, uh, over the course of, I don't know, hour and 15 minutes or whatever it is. Frank has also written two books, which I think you should check out. His first one's called Revive, Stop Feeling Spent and Start Living Again. And the second one is called Total Renewal, Seven Key Steps to Resilience, Vitality and Long-Term Health.

• 8:46Rich Roll?

  The funny thing was too, when our interview was over, uh, he went to his bookshelf and he grabbed, uh, a handful of CDs and handed them to Tyler. So basically every year he puts together like a mixtape and he makes a CD out of it. He gives it to his friends and his patients and, and I'm going to share the artwork for these CDs on the blog, so check it out there, but they're hilarious. They're like, I'll just read you a few of these. One's called Lipmose Upbeat Mix for 2011, Dance Locally, Listen Globally.

• 9:17Rich Roll?

  Lip Mo's Boogaloo upbeat mix 2010-19 international booty shakers. Like, he's got these crazy artwork on these insane mixtape CDs that he gives out. And I'm thinking like, what doctor does that? Like, that's awesome. So cool. Anyway, I love talking to him and I hope that you enjoy our conversation. If you want to check out his books and also if you want to support the podcast, the best way to do that, other than telling a friend, which is first and foremost in this free content, which will always be free, spread the word, tell a friend. Check out the Amazon banner ad at richroll.com.

• 10:00Rich Roll?

  If you click on that when you're going to buy something on Amazon, go to that first, click that, get whatever you're going to get on Amazon. It does not cost you a penny extra and Amazon kicks us a little bit of loose change our way, which helps pay the bills for the podcast. So, we appreciate everybody who's been doing that. And it was pointed out to me that some people might be concerned about privacy. Am I able to see what your purchases are? And no, I'm not. I have no idea what you guys are buying. I don't have access to that kind of information. All I know is I get, there's a number and they wire me a little bit of money every month and that's it.

• 10:42Rich Roll?

  So, if you're concerned about me having any knowledge about what your Amazon purchases are when you use the Amazon banner ad, I can put your mind at ease about that. There's nothing to be concerned there for. So, anyway, yes, Amazon banner ad, thanks so much for you guys who have been using it. We have a donate button at richroll.com for people that want to go the extra mile and show their support. Again, the show's free, you're not obligated to do that. That's only if it feels right to you. But we appreciate everybody who has done that. You can throw us a little loose change on a one-time basis, weekly, monthly, you know, whatever you want. But, anyway, thank you guys, everybody who's been doing that. And again, it's been a great week in New York.

• 11:25Rich Roll?

  I'm going to be bringing tons of amazing interviews to you guys over the next couple of weeks, which is, feels good, having a little fresh air on the podcast. And I wanted to thank everybody who gave such great feedback on last week's episode with Adam Scully Power. That was definitely a tearjerker, a very inspirational story. And...

• 11:45Rich Roll?

  I'm glad you guys enjoyed it. So looking to share more kind of everyman stories like Adam's coming up over the podcast because those seem to really hit a chord and people enjoy that. So anyway, without further ado, you guys, let's get into the interview. Ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Frank Lipman.

• 12:11Rich Roll?

  There's a certain poetry in the ethos behind your clinic and this idea that before there can be rebirth or renewal, there must be destruction. Yes. And this sort of is how you came up with the name 1111 for your center.

• 12:30Speaker 01

  Well, maybe I'll burst your bubble straight away. I came up with the name because at the time I was a little bit obsessed with this whole 1111. This was 1991 and the idea that there'd be a shift in consciousness. I got caught up in this whole 1111, the shift in consciousness. And that's how the name came about. It was sort of a spur of the moment thing.

• 12:56Rich Roll?

  Right. But it's Mayan in origin, right? Which means doom before the rebirth.

• 13:02Speaker 01

  Oh, I see what you mean. Yes, it is. Absolutely. Yes.

• 13:04Rich Roll?

  It's sort of like the Hindu goddess Kali, the goddess of destruction. Before there can be a rebirth.

• 13:11Speaker 01

  Okay, right. I've never thought of it.

• 13:13Rich Roll?

  We must tear it down first and create the foundation.

• 13:16Speaker 01

  Thank you. Okay. It's the first time I've seen it in that perspective. But yeah, that's true. That's exactly the way I feel about the medical system.

• 13:23Rich Roll?

  So, yeah, so tell me a little bit about what you do here.

• 13:26Speaker 01

  So I am trained in Western medicine. I'm a doctor, or was a doctor anyway, in a past life. And what I realized early on is in Western medicine, you know, we're really great at treating acute medical emergencies, acute surgical emergencies, if someone's acutely ill. And that's the way we get trained at medical school. You get trained to treat Heart attacks and take out appendices and treat acute pneumonia. But um when I went into practice after my training, people started coming to me with uh symptoms that they were feeling tired and they couldn't poop.

• 14:10Speaker 01

  And um their digestion was off and they were stressed out. And I had no tools in Western medicine to help these people.

• 14:18Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 14:19Speaker 01

  So uh any doctor, if they're really honest with themselves, realizes early on that we don't really have any tools to help most of the problems that people come to them with.

• 14:29Rich Roll?

  Right, it's more diagnose and prescribe if there's something that you can.

• 14:33Speaker 01

  I mean, our tools are medicine or surgery, it's drugs or surgery. We don't really have anything else.

• 14:38Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 14:39Speaker 01

  So um you know, I grew up in in South Africa and um the tribe that I was moving with, my friends and the people I was friendly with, we were doing quite a bit of drugs in those days. We we got the the sixties in the seventies in South Africa. Um uh and uh.

• 15:00Rich Roll?

  I saw Waiting for Sugar, man.

• 15:01Speaker 01

  Right, okay, so Sugar was my closest friend growing up.

• 15:04Rich Roll?

  Oh, is that right?

• 15:05Speaker 01

  Right, so so it's a sugar who who is my closest friend, you know,

• 15:12Speaker 01

  we we I think maybe smoking a lot of pot may have opened me up. And and these type of people were interested in alternatives. So I from an early on, I sort of started thinking there must be other ways.

• 15:24Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm, but this is before you even went to medical school?

• 15:27Speaker 01

  No, this is uh during and after medical school. This is in the late seventies.

• 15:31Rich Roll?

  Gotcha.

• 15:32Speaker 01

  And um.

• 15:33Rich Roll?

  In South Africa.

• 15:33Speaker 01

  In South Africa. And uh in in the practice that I worked with in South Africa, um he it was a general practice, this is after my training, and the doctor used to see all the lefties and all the artists. And these people were coming into the office. And um they were telling me, oh, they went to the homeopath and he gave me this and my stomach is better. Or they went to the acupuncturist and there was one acupuncture in Johannesburg. And their back was better. And I started thinking to myself that this is interesting. These are problems that I can't help and these people are going to these quacks and they're getting better.

• 16:10Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 16:10Speaker 01

  And I better start checking it out. And that was sort of my first real exposure. I mean, I had been exposed to traditional African medicine.

• 16:18Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 16:19Speaker 01

  And also noticed that sometimes that helped. So my mind started was being, you know, exploded open by all these factors, you know, the drugs that we were doing and the exposure I had to these alternatives. So it was sort of just common sense for me to start exploring these things. So this is late seventies, nineteen eighty. Um, I started studying homeopathy because that was a strong homeopathic tradition in South Africa at the time. Uh, you know, because it was an English colony that in in England, homeopathy was quite big. And we got that tradition. So I started studying homeopathy and started doing Tai Chi.

• 17:01Speaker 01

  And in nineteen eighty three, uh, my wife and I decided we just don't want to live under apartheid anymore.

• 17:07Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 17:07Speaker 01

  And we decided to leave and the doctor I was working with gave me a gift to go. And it was the Barefoot Doctor's Manual, which is this interesting book on on what the Chinese did in the rural areas. They used to train these barefoot doctors to go and treat them there. And he gave me this book, he said, go study acupuncture.

• 17:28Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 17:29Speaker 01

  Which was meaningless to me at the time, but um.

• 17:31Rich Roll?

  And this is relatively, I mean, it's more than progressive at the time.

• 17:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:36Rich Roll?

  This is not happening, you know, like it is to the extent that it is now.

• 17:39Speaker 01

  No, no, no, this is like thirty odd years ago. Yeah, this was pretty radical at the time. But for me, I was on such a journey, um.

• 17:49Speaker 01

  I knew it was right, so it wasn't even a question. It it was the same thing. I always give this uh, this comparison. Growing up in South Africa, when you grow up in South Africa during apartheid, you know it's a rotten system and you know it's wrong. Um, and you're looking around and everyone's sort of living like normally as if nothing's happening. And I felt exactly the same way about. The medical system, and it was so obvious, there's got to be a better way, and there obviously is a better way because these people were getting better. But no one's acknowledging it.

• 18:19Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 18:20Speaker 01

  So it was in a way easier for me because I knew apartheid was wrong. And I knew that the Western medical model was was limited as well, so.

• 18:29Rich Roll?

  But coming to the United States, did you have an expectation that you would be welcomed for this more progressive, you know, ideas about treating patients or?

• 18:38Speaker 01

  Well, no. Well, what happened was when I came to the United States, I got a job in the South Bronx because they sponsored me for a green card. And everyone said, well, you've got to do internal medicine, don't do family medicine. So I got this job, they sponsored me for a green card. And here I'm in this residency, doing something that I wasn't particularly interested in. And after a week or two. I came home and I said to my wife, I don't know if I can be a doctor here. Because even the part of Western medicine that I enjoyed in South Africa, taking a good history, examining a patient, really getting to know a patient. The the relationship was important because in South Africa, we couldn't do all these expensive tests.

• 19:17Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 19:18Speaker 01

  And here I come to the States and in the residency program, you had to take a quick history. You draw the bloods, you go study what the story is, and you look at the results, and you presented the next day to the professor. And there was nothing about taking a good history, spending time with the patient. I said to to my wife, you know, the things that I actually enjoy with patients, developing relationships with people, is just not happening. I don't want to be a doctor here.

• 19:48Rich Roll?

  Right. It's just a numbers game. You got to churn through so many people.

• 19:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:51Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 19:52Speaker 01

  So.

• 19:52Rich Roll?

  And some hard cases, I would imagine, in the Bronx, a lot of addiction cases.

• 19:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, in those days, that was a crack and heroin were epidemic. So you're seeing really sick people and.

• 20:05Speaker 01

  I'd heard about this acupuncture clinic was, which was actually attached to the hospital where they did drug detox. And I'd actually been taken there on a tour. When I first came to the hospital, there was Hispanic woman said, you know, we got talking, we got friendly. And she said, well, let me take you on a tour of the South Bronx to places you as a white boy are never gonna see.

• 20:27Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 20:27Speaker 01

  And she took me on this little tour of this burnt out area. And one of the places we stopped was this acupuncture clinic. And it's pretty mind blowing. So I thought, okay.

• 20:39Rich Roll?

  And you're remembering the words of your mentor back in South Africa.

• 20:43Speaker 01

  Exactly. So everything, you know, everything I saw was falling into place. So I walk over, you know, one day after a couple of weeks during my residency and I walk into this burnt out building again. And you walk into this building and you see about forty or fifty heroin addicts sitting quietly with needles in their ears. And I went, whoa, this is really interesting. These are the same patients that are pulling out IVs in the war. They were really difficult to deal with.

• 21:09Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 21:09Speaker 01

  And here they're sitting really quietly. So I thought I've got to, I've got to check this out. So I went and I spoke to the guy who ran the clinic, Mike Smith. I said, Mike, you know, this is a story. I'm from South Africa, yada, yada. And he was intrigued that I was from South Africa because you want to know more about South Africa. We've got sort of talking. And he said to me, look, you can come hang out here whenever you want. You know, you, you know, you can come do an acupuncture. I know you're doing your residency, but you know, feel free to come here. And I started going there more and more often.

• 21:42Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 21:42Speaker 01

  So I started living these two lives. One, at the hospital where I was seeing these acutely ill patients and Western medicine was fantastic. And then at the other place, I was seeing these acupuncture patients and patients were coming in with different problems. And you sort of could see, it was pretty easy to see that the one worked really well for the one type of problem and the other worked really well for the other type of problem. And it was obvious to me that the best medicine would be a combination of the two.

• 22:11Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 22:11Speaker 01

  If someone's really sick, they need surgery, if they need acute intervention, the ICU, western medicine's great, but if they have some chronic problem, or they have back pain, or they're tired, the acupuncture clinic and Chinese medicine was better.

• 22:25Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 22:25Speaker 01

  So I saw early on, this is like nineteen eighty-four, that obviously the best medicine's gonna be some type of combination of the two.

• 22:32Rich Roll?

  Right, so this is planting the seed, and where does that lead you after your residency?

• 22:37Speaker 01

  So, after my residency, I, I, I, well, during my residency, I spent more and more time at the acupuncture clinic, and by the time I finished my residency, I'd actually got my three hundred hours, which I needed as a doctor, to practice acupuncture in New York. So I knew I wanted to do something holistic, so I spent a little bit more time at the acupuncture clinic, and I got a job on the Lower East Side at this very interesting um, uh, community clinic that was interested in, in starting acupuncture and alternative stuff. Um, so I got a job there and I started doing some acu-, working as a doctor, but also

• 23:17Speaker 01

  doing acupuncture and using Chinese herbs, and also working at the acupuncture clinic where I was getting more experience with acupuncture. And at this clinic, um, he was, the guy, um, Paul Ramos, who's now died, was so ahead of his time, I mean, he was bringing this stuff to the Hispanic community on the Lower East Side, I mean, this is pretty wild.

• 23:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 23:38Speaker 01

  And he brought-

• 23:39Rich Roll?

  I mean, that was a jungle back then.

• 23:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. And he was a very cool guy, and he sort of knew, you know, the direction, and he brought me in, he brought a nutritionist in, and I got friendly with this nutritionist, Susan Luck, who sort of became like a mentor to me, and she told me about Jeff Bland. And if anyone doesn't know who Jeff Bland is, Jeff Bland is the father of functional medicine. So in nineteen eighty um eight, because at my residency I did eighty four to eighty seven, and then I started working at Batonsis in eighty seven. And then Susan introduced me to Jeff Bland, and Jeff was going around the country in those days already, lecturing whoever would listen to him. So I sort of, I met Jeff Bland in nineteen eighty eight.

• 24:22Speaker 01

  And Jeff was articulating exactly what I was feeling, because here I was um learning about Chinese medicine, and they were talking about chi and energy and, and this language that just didn't make sense from a Western perspective. It was a completely different language. And Jeff had put it all together. He was talking Chinese medicine, but he was talking from a physiology perspective and biochemistry. So it sort of made sense to me. It was like such an aha experience to listen to Jeff talking. Because he was using the philosophy of creating balance and improving function of Chinese medicine. But he is talking about physiology and biochemistry and everything that I'd learnt in Western medicine. So it is a perfect combination of the two.

• 25:05Rich Roll?

  Couching it in a vernacular that's translatable to sort of the Western logical mind and approach.

• 25:10Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 25:12Rich Roll?

  Back at that time, you know, what was the typical case that you would see of somebody coming in to this particular clinic in the Lower East Side? And, and, you know, what would the treatment protocol be? What were the results that you were seeing?

• 25:24Speaker 01

  Well, what was interesting was um at that stage, the AIDS epidemic was, was, was a major epidemic. And I very soon got the name, um the name in the HRV community that you could actually get acupuncture. And we started te- teaching Chi Kung, and we started doing this interesting stuff. I mean, we were all learning at the time. But because um the clinic took Medicaid, we started getting a lot of the, the word got out that you could get, on your Medicaid, you could go get acupuncture and um herbs and nutrition therapy at this Batonsis Health Unit. So very quickly, I developed this huge AIDS community of patients coming to see me.

• 26:07Speaker 01

  So I'd say um most of the patients were HRV patients coming with all various things.

• 26:14Speaker 01

  But, but I mean, I think somehow in that community, because they were sort of not used to getting drugs all the time, they were more open to alternative stuff. So a lot of the community people were coming in and were happy not to get drugs and, you know, talk about their diet or use some herbs or some supplements.

• 26:39Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm. And so what kind of relief were you able to provide?

• 26:43Speaker 01

  Well, I think in the, I mean, it's hard to say. I think in the, you know, the beauty of acupuncture is most people are going to feel a difference quite soon. I think my practice and our practice in general in those days wasn't particularly sophisticated. We were sort of using, we were using a Western, you know, we were using Chinese medicine, but it was, the, the way I was working there is I still, I was still thinking like a Western doctor and instead of drugs, I'd use herbs. So instead of something for indigestion, I'd use some herbs for it. So it was a different way. I wasn't, it hadn't been ingrained into me, the Chinese way hadn't been ingrained into me in those days, to actually look for

• 27:27Speaker 01

  the underlying imbalance or what the underlying cause was. I mean, I sort of learnt that, but it wasn't part of my, my being, which is completely different now. I mean, you know, the more you do it, you sort of get a sense of what's really good medicine. In those days, I was sort of practicing from a Western perspective and using sort of herbs or something to treat the way I was thinking, which is unfortunately what a lot of doctors still do. I mean, I don't think, until they really get it in them that it's not about just giving a name to something and treating the name, it's what's really

• 28:07Speaker 01

  going on underneath. I think Jeff Blans done a wonderful job of really training doctors to reprogram the way they think and to really look for the underlying causes.

• 28:18Rich Roll?

  You mean in a true sort of preventative medicine holistic sense?

• 28:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it goes way beyond preventive. I think it's treating problems downstream. So, you know, let's take an example. If, um, if, uh, uh, an asthmatic patient, or, uh, uh, let's take heartburn because more people probably have heartburn. Someone comes in with heartburn, the one way of treating it is saying, okay, you got heartburn. And here's some supplements that are gonna help your heartburn. So instead of taking your naxium, you take the, the aloe vera or the deglycinated licorice.

• 28:59Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 29:00Speaker 01

  Um, which is fine. I mean, I'm not, it's better to do that than to take the drug. The other way is saying, why is that person getting heartburn? What is, what is the underlying problem? Is that, um, there's too much acid, there's too little acid, which can cause heartburn? Is the imbalance of the good and the bad bacteria? Are certain foods triggering this problem? So you look at all the, the possible underlying issues that, that you need to address.

• 29:26Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 29:26Speaker 01

  Rather than just treating the symptoms.

• 29:28Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. I mean, to fast forward to kind of, you know, taking a, a bird's eye view of wellness today, the medical profession right now. I mean, we are in this bizarre kind of mashup situation where, uh, we've never been more sick as a society. Heart disease, obesity, diabetes, cancer, these, the statistics are insane.

• 29:50Speaker 01

  Ridiculous.

• 29:51Rich Roll?

  And yet, at the same time, we've never been more fascinated or intrigued by wellness. I mean, wellness is really, you know, at the advent, it's very much a zeitgeist thing in a way that maybe you might have not even predicted. You know, 20 years ago when you started this. So it's a really great time for the message that you're putting out there. And yet, there seems to be this disconnect between what's actually going on with the typical American. And, you know, what's going on on mindbodygreen.com or at 1111.

• 30:21Speaker 01

  Well, I have a very, I've been thinking about this a lot, more and more. As I get older, um, you, you know, you, your, your whole, in the old days, um, I was so like, I was so passionate about it. You know, you're, we're gonna do this and we've got to change this and yada, yada. Now that, as I get older, I start sort of. Trying to think about, you know, the perspective changes in terms of why did this actually happen? I was, in those days, I wasn't thinking of why it's happening. I just wanted, I saw it was wrong and I wanted to change it.

• 30:54Rich Roll?

  That's taking that Chinese medicine approach to a sociological problem.

• 30:58Speaker 01

  And I think, I think I know why. What happened, if you look at pictures of the fifties and sixties, and part of why I was attracted to America was the hippies, to be quite, because as I said, we got the hippies. And that was quite an attraction, you know, why I wanted to come to America. You know, Frank Zappa and all that, all that music and that culture sort of was quite attractive to me. If you look at those pictures, most of those people were skinny. This was the sixties and fifties. I mean, there are no clothes. Most people were skinny. And I've looked at pictures of people in the fifties, people were skinny. No one was talking about diet then either. And then in the sixties, we got into this thing, and I mean, I've started reading more and more about it.

• 31:42Speaker 01

  This whole low fat, this, this whole concept of what foods, you know, certain foods are bad and certain foods are good, and the food industry started proliferating and, and producing all this junk food. And we started getting these experts telling us to eat in a certain way. And it's only really since the sixties that we've had this major issue with diabetes and heart disease. And it was always around a little bit, but it's, it's much, much worse now. And if you look at even in South Africa, the same thing happened as we started putting that junk food and that crappy food into the, into the local cultures. Most of the, you know, the traditional black, um,

• 32:22Speaker 01

  uh, people, when they lived in, in the bush where they lived, they ate what was around. But when they came into the city, they started eating a white bread and, and all the white man's food. And they started developing the same diseases that the white man was getting. And if, and so I think a lot of this has to do. Um, and it's not really, I can't say this as conspiracy theory because I don't think it was done on purpose. But I think as um, the food industry and people started um, getting into ways of of of cheaper ways and more efficient ways of how we could feed the masses.

• 33:02Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 33:02Speaker 01

  Um, and we had these experts saying, well, low fat is bad and these whole grains are good. And the food industry sort of followed those principles. We created this disaster we're in.

• 33:16Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 33:16Speaker 01

  And um, I think from my perspective, I see so many, you know, most people shouldn't be insulin resistant or carbohydrate sensitive, but most people I see are that. And and we've become that because of all the crap in our food.

• 33:32Rich Roll?

  Right, you just, we just completely, excuse me, bombarding our systems with these refined sugars, refined grains, refined flours and all of these processed foods that just wear, they wear our system out. I mean, that's what creates that that sort of perpetual chronic inflammation.

• 33:49Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 33:50Rich Roll?

  And persistent state of eating these high sugar refined foods burns us, burns us out. It creates that insulin resistance. Is that fair to say?

• 33:58Speaker 01

  Exactly. That's exactly what happens. And our bodies just can't process that stuff. Now, some people can, um, but most people can't. And I think, you know, this, what I find interesting because, you know, as I said, I've been very reflective in seeing what's happened to the culture because I've been doing this for so long. What what's actually happening and which I love is you have people on the internet like you, who aren't the authorities, um, actually um, uh, talking about certain ways to eat and healthier ways of eating. So this information is actually coming. You know, through the internet, it's not coming from above, it's not coming from authorities,

• 34:40Speaker 01

  it's not coming from the government, it's not coming from the doctors or the people who should know this stuff. It's coming actually from the people.

• 34:47Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 34:48Speaker 01

  And there's this huge movement, whether it's Mind Body Green or what you're doing, or the Pali movement. It's this, these grassroots movement coming from people who are experimenting with, who's saying, obviously something's wrong, they're changing their diets, they're feeling much better, and they're going on the internet saying, wow, look, I did this, I feel much better.

• 35:08Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. Yeah, without anything, there's nothing to gain, you know, the people are just sharing their experience authentically and

• 35:14Speaker 01

  I love it.

• 35:15Rich Roll?

  And that creates a credibility that you don't get when you watch an advertisement, right? So there's that, combined with, I think there's a real appetite and thirst for sustainable, long-term solutions to diet, wellness, health.

• 35:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 35:32Rich Roll?

  And, and a reaction, you know, sort of this pendulum swinging backwards where people are saying like, I don't wanna live this any, this way anymore. And, you know, I don't believe all the hype about the latest diet fad that's coming down the pike, because I've seen it before, we all know what, where that leads, it's not working, so what is gonna actually work?

• 35:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 35:51Rich Roll?

  Right?

• 35:52Speaker 01

  So it's fascinating, I mean, I love it, I mean, I really, it's really fascinating for me to watch this whole thing blooming and

• 35:59Rich Roll?

  Well, it's so amazing because you've been doing this forever and now, like, there couldn't be more interest in what you're doing. And you could not have predicted this level of excitement about this, something you've been passionate about your whole life.

• 36:11Speaker 01

  Right, and, and what I, yeah, it's fantastic, and what I love about it, it's actually coming from the bottom up, it's coming from the people. The doctors still don't get it.

• 36:20Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:20Speaker 01

  I mean, it's interesting that what does it take for the medical to, the medical system to realize that there's something wrong with the system, I mean, what does it take?

• 36:31Rich Roll?

  I don't know. I mean, you know, that was one of my questions that I jotted down was, what is, you know, what does a typical conversation look like when you're speaking with a traditional Western doctor who's interested in what you're doing? I mean, is there, is there sort of curiosity? Is there resistance?

• 36:48Speaker 01

  All above. I think there's not enough curiosity. I mean, I still can't get over the fact when we have patients who come in, let's say with rheumatoid arthritis, and they change their diet, and they get better, and they go back to their doctor, and they tell their doctor what they've done, that the doctor isn't even interested in finding out what he did. They'd rather just push these, I mean, there's so many toxic drugs out there. So, so I think for the, I'm still amazed that there's not that much curiosity, because more and more people are actually getting better by doing things out of the medical system. And you'd imagine that doctors would be piqued at least a little bit to see what the hell these patients are doing. Most aren't. There is some

• 37:32Speaker 01

  curiosity. There's more and more doctors leaning in this, you know, are becoming more interested. Part of the problem I do see a lot of the time is they're still stuck in a model that is, is a little bit archaic, which they can't get over the fact that their model is wonderful at, at, acute care or emergency medicine. And it's not working for all these chronic diseases.

• 37:59Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 38:00Speaker 01

  Now, I think someone like Jeff Bland is doing a wonderful job at educating more and more doctors. But I think it is hard for it. It took me a long time to really get it, to really get it. It took me a number of years to really understand in my being, you know, not to think the way I got brainwashed to think, or to realize that that's great. You know, if someone's coming with a heart attack, With chess, Ben, I'm not going to give them acupuncture.

• 38:25Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 38:25Speaker 01

  So if you, once you start getting that, then it's easy.

• 38:29Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 38:29Speaker 01

  And I think more and more doctors are starting to get that.

• 38:32Rich Roll?

  Well, I think it has to be, there has to be a systemic change. I mean, it has to be part of the curriculum. It has to be part of their training. I mean, you, you had the impetus to seek it out on your own. You had this, you know, wild hippie flair to you that, that drew you to this, but you know, not necessarily everybody has that. And so if it's not presented to them, they can't be expected to have an understanding of how it fits in with everything else that they know about practicing medicine.

• 38:57Speaker 01

  Right. And also, what I, you know, the problem is also that a lot of the time, the way it's been presented to them in the system is sort of, okay, here's Western medicine. We'll teach you a little bit of alternative medicines to sort of add to what you're doing.

• 39:14Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 39:15Speaker 01

  What we really need is a completely different way of thinking about it. And that's not really happening enough, not happening in the institutions. And that's, that's the problem.

• 39:26Rich Roll?

  Well, we need more guys like you to make that happen.

• 39:40Rich Roll?

  So I want to switch gears a little bit and talk, talk about inflammation more specifically and food intolerances, because I know that's a big focus of what you do here. And I think that, you know, so when you cast the umbrella term of inflammation, that really is, you know, such a massive part of what is making people ill. And it seems to be something that can be easily rectified with some pretty simple lifestyle choice alterations.

• 40:07Speaker 01

  Right. So inflammation is interesting because inflammation can come from certain foods that trigger inflammation. And a lot of the foods that people are eating actually do trigger inflammation. The sugar, the gluten, I'm a huge believer and, you know, that gluten is a big problem. And that's because, you know, we see so many people who they stop gluten and all sorts of problems get better.

• 40:31Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 40:31Speaker 01

  But sugar, gluten. Dairy would be, you know, the three big ones that trigger inflammation. But I think what, what people, and, and even people in the alternative world are not really getting, and which I think is a major issue, is often the inflammation is coming from a gut that's imbalanced.

• 40:51Rich Roll?

  The microbial ecology.

• 40:52Speaker 01

  Exactly, your, your microbiome, you know, the balance of the good and the bad bacteria. And, and so many people, most people have this imbalance, partly because of the foods they're eating, the antibiotics in, in, in a lot of the animal products, the number of antibiotics they've taken over the years, other drugs they've taken, um, GMOs can do it. So you get this imbalance in the gut. And then what happens is firstly, you don't digest those foods that you're normally eating properly. And because they're not digested properly, they can go through a damaged gut wall and trigger inflammation. But even the toxins released by this, this imbalance in good and bacteria is a huge source of tox, of, of inflammation and toxicity.

• 41:37Speaker 01

  So I think people get that foods can do it, but probably more important is how that food is digested and what's going on in your gut. Because something I learned early on in Chinese medicine, I had this, you know, my, my second level of, of Chinese medicine,

• 41:57Speaker 01

  came through Harriet Banfield and Ephraim Korngold in San Francisco. They wrote a book called Between Heaven and Earth. Brilliant, brilliant people. I mean, they still, I love them. They just really, they really taught me how to think differently about the body. But to them, always the gut was the, the center, was the earth element. And when the earth goes off, everything goes off. And, um, even in, uh, most non-traditional medicines, I once got taught by a famous herbalist, when you don't know what's going on, you treat the gut. And I think in this day and age, in particular, the gut is a huge issue. And when you have this, this dysbiosis or this imbalance in the good and the bad bacteria,

• 42:42Speaker 01

  that's a huge source of toxicity and inflammation. And if you don't treat that, the inflammation's not going to go. It may get better when you remove the foods, it's not going to go away completely. So it's really.

• 42:53Rich Roll?

  Actually change that, the nature of that, that, the gut biome. I think that's super fascinating and I feel like.

• 43:03Rich Roll?

  That this interest and focus on the microbiome is something that's really only getting into public consciousness, even just in the last year.

• 43:12Speaker 01

  I know, it's fantastic. I think that's going to shift medicine more than anything.

• 43:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And when I kind of started my journey, I mean, back 2007 or eight, when I first began to like, change my diet and look at my, my lifestyle habits, et cetera. I have a good friend and somebody who's worked with me extensively named Compton Rom. He's a PhD in microbiology. And he started hammering home this idea to me, early and often, all the time. And he would, you know, concoct these crazy smoothies for me to help get my gut biome on the right track. And I became fascinated with this. And I, and I would talk about it and people would look like I'm crazy. But now, literally, in the last year, now it's, it's a thing, you know, and I think it's hugely important. But I think it's important to be able to give people some idea of how they can, of course, correct this. If they feel like they're on

• 44:01Rich Roll?

  the wrong track with it, or how do you even know if you're out of balance?

• 44:06Speaker 01

  Well, that's a good question. I think the easiest place, or the easiest way to know is if your digestion is off. If you're still getting bloated, or you're constipated, or you have loose stools, or you have indigestion, if you have any digestive symptoms, I usually assume that the, the microbiome is off. I, in my practice here, probably start 70 to 80% of the people who come in, we treat the micro, we, we, we, we give herbal antibiotics and probiotics. Because you've got to understand, the microbiome, there are, you know, there are more bacteria in your gut than you have cells in your body. You have thousands and

• 44:51Speaker 01

  thousands of different strains. And we don't really know exactly what's going on. So it's a crapshoot. So you're guessing. And what we usually do initially with most of our patients, we take them off all the common foods that can trigger inflammation, the sugar and the gluten and the dairy, and the soy and the processed food and the junk food and, and alcohol. And at the same time, we usually give them herbal anti, and I have a cleanse, and that's what, basically what the cleanse does. We give them herbal antibiotics in the cleanse. We often use probiotics as well. So I do it at the same time. And it's amazing how people respond. But I mean, some people will do well with just the dietary changes.

• 45:35Speaker 01

  But when you add those herbs that actually kill the bad bacteria, people do so well.

• 45:40Rich Roll?

  Right, it's amazing. And it sounds like such a foreign concept, but the example that I always use, and I'm interested in what you think of this, is, is when you watch the documentary, uh, what's it called? With Morgan Spurlock? Where he eats McDonald's every day?

• 45:56Speaker 01

  Oh, yes, yes, right.

• 45:57Rich Roll?

  I want to say fat, I can really do it. It's not, it's supersizing me.

• 46:00Speaker 01

  Right.

• 46:00Rich Roll?

  So, so you'll notice that, you know, the first couple of days that he's eating McDonald's all day long, he's getting sick, like he can't stand the idea of eating it. But when you fast forward two weeks later, he wakes up in the morning feeling sick and does not feel right until he eats the McDonald's. And then he says, "I feel great now." So, what I'm seeing is a shift in his microbiome.

• 46:23Speaker 01

  Right.

• 46:23Rich Roll?

  That microbial ecology has changed and it now needs to, it feeds on that McDonald's food. It needs that McDonald's food to survive and it's triggering his system to say, "Get me more of that, get me more of that."

• 46:35Speaker 01

  Right. And, and, I mean, it's complicated because there's no question that happens, but then there's also the, the, the idea of these foods are addictive. I mean, sugar and gluten and a lot of, and, and the, the food companies know this. I mean, they're putting, they're making foods that are addictive. And now we know that a lot of these foods actually trigger or light up the same part of the brain that heroin does. So, we're dealing with drug addicts. I mean, we saw a patient today who's an ex, he was an ex-heroin addict and he, and, and he got off heroin. And he comes in here and he's, and he, and the first thing he said, you know, because he knew he was gonna have to change his diet, he said, "He's not disciplined enough to change his diet."

• 47:20Speaker 01

  And I had to explain to him, "It's not really discipline. We have this idea that you've got to be disciplined. The problem is these foods are addictive. You are basically an addict. This is the same thing over again, except it's not heroin, but it's sugar and junk food and gluten. And they're causing and, and triggering the same..." Chemicals that your heroin did. So we've got to get it through to people that these are addictions that are being created. It's not just about being disciplined to not eat sugar.

• 47:48Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 47:48Speaker 01

  And gluten is not as simple as that. Your body, I mean, the same thing that happens to drugs happens when you eat these foods like what happened to Morgan Spurlock, what happens to all of us. You eat the food like you feel like crap initially and then your body adapts. And you stop feeling so bad from the food. That's what happens with drugs. So these are complicated things.

• 48:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, if people doubt that supposition, they should read Salt, Sugar, Fat, Michael Morris's book, where he explains this in detail and sort of uses the analogy of tobacco companies in the seventies and all the science and research that goes into specifically devising foods that are going to trigger that addictive response. And I think the appropriate way of dealing with that is to borrow from the parlance of recovery and say, this is not about willpower. This is about surrender. This is not about you being a weak person. We're dealing with a beast here and it needs a different. You need to shift your perspective on how you deal with it and deal with it in the same way that you would treat somebody who's struggling with a heroin addiction or something of that nature.

• 48:52Speaker 01

  And that hasn't got into the culture zeitgeist yet. And I think if we can get that in, that these are drugs, these are addictive drugs that you need to get over, that would help. And you talk about, you know, the tobacco industry. I think the junk food industry, the sugar industry is the same. They use exactly the same tricks that the tobacco industry uses. They put out this information to make people question that these are harmful to you.

• 49:22Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 49:22Speaker 01

  They're doing exactly, they're using exactly the same.

• 49:25Rich Roll?

  Because if the consumer is confused, that plays into them. As long as people are confused, then they'll continue to buy their product.

• 49:31Speaker 01

  And they want to keep the consumer confused. They're doing exactly what the tobacco industry. It's criminal what's going on. I mean, it's, these, these health issues have become political issues. I mean.

• 49:43Rich Roll?

  And emotional issues. I mean, there's nothing, you know, in my experience, talking about diet and food is about as emotionally charged as religion or politics. And I think that that confusion kind of trickles over into your sort of dietary peculiarities, whether you're. You're a low carb person, or you're a paleo person, or you're a vegan, or you're no sugar, no grains, or you know, then there's the, you know, the high fat crowd or whatever. And it's like, these people, you know, you know, of which we're each, we play a part in this whole sort of dialogue, of course. But to the extent that we argue amongst each other, that keeps the general pub public, the guy who's going to McDonald's every day, saying, well, they can't figure it out. So I'm just going to keep eating McDonald's until they do.

• 50:28Speaker 01

  Well, this is what we were talking about this thing exactly today, because the, the, the reality is, there is no one right diet for everyone. Some people do really well on a paleo diet, or, you know, no grains, no whatever. Some people do well on a, on just removing gluten. Some people do well on a vegan diet. I mean, there is no, it's hard to, to say there is one right diet. Um, you've got to play around and see what works for you. Having said that, the majority of people that we see in this practice are carbohydrate sensitive, should be cutting down on their carbohydrates, um, and, and do much better when they do that.

• 51:11Speaker 01

  Um, but if you're not carbohydrate sensitive, there's no, you know, I don't think that diet's going to work for you. So you really need to play around with it there and, and, but I think people really need to, I mean, it pisses me off, this paleo world and the vegan world, and everyone's got the, it doesn't work for everyone. People really need to get that. Got to see what works for you and go with it.

• 51:35Rich Roll?

  And I think you can look at, at the shared commonalities between all of them, which are really, you know, at their root about eating whole foods, close to their natural state. It's about eating an anti-inflammatory, more alkaline-forming diet. It's about getting rid of the processed foods. It's all these things that are kind of at the core essence of, of all these. And, and the rest is the cherry on top, you know, it's these details that we can quibble over. But I do, you know, I do like that idea of, you know, a patient coming in and, and you saying, well, we have to, we have to find out what's going on with you before we can say you should do this, that, or the other, whether it's your Your lifestyle habits, your dietary habits and or your blood work. Let's let's look at these food sensitivities and and that kind of dovetails into what I want to talk about next,

• 52:19Rich Roll?

  which is gluten and gluten sensitivity, you know, very popular subject right now. There's some controversy. Some people think it's overblown. You know, this idea of sensitivity versus celiac and, you know, all I know is in my own personal experience that when I eat gluten, I don't feel so good, you know, I feel sluggish, my eyes swell up, you know, I get puffy. There's an inflammatory response and I don't have celiac.

• 52:44Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 52:45Rich Roll?

  So somewhere I'm I'm somewhere on that spectrum of sensitivity and I'm not perfect at cutting gluten out of my diet, but I know that when I do, I feel better.

• 52:54Speaker 01

  Okay, so that's a great question because there is a misunderstanding and it's actually very simple. And I don't give a shit what experts say, we see this every day in in our practice. There is this whole spectrum of gluten sensitivity from not being sensitive to gluten, which is unusual, to celiac disease. And we see this all the time. People come in and they do the celiac test and it's negative. And the doctors say, well, you don't have celiac disease, you can eat gluten. It's nonsense. Most people actually fit on the spectrum somewhere like you, like me. I can have a little bit of gluten. It's not the end of the world. But I know if I have a little bit too much or if I'm starting to eat it a bit too frequently also, I start getting inflammation.

• 53:38Speaker 01

  I start first place I feel this is my toes. I actually get this like inflammation in my toes and I know something I've been eating and it's in it's often gluten.

• 53:49Speaker 01

  Or so I hardly eat gluten anymore and, you know, I'm not obsessive in sometimes if I see it. If I'm like in Italy or wherever and I want to eat, actually I don't get that reaction into Italy, interestingly enough.

• 54:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that gets into like the different ways that we refine our grains.

• 54:04Speaker 01

  So we'll talk about that, but you know, sometimes I want a piece of bread or some gluten and I have it. And then I suffer the consequences. But most people fit into that spectrum where they can have a little bit. And it's probably not a problem as they go over their tolerance level, they get symptoms. And I know, I know for sure. I don't have to have a study. I know that's the reality for most people because you know, I've just seen thousands of people where this happens, where their celiac test is negative, but they're still reacting to gluten. And it's probably because the gluten, you know, the wheat of today is very different to the wheat of our ancestors. It's an altered grain.

• 54:47Speaker 01

  And maybe because of that, I mean, there's so many theories. I mean, what I don't get into big, you know, you know, for instance, the paleo theory of why I, you know, why you should be eating this way. Whether that's true or not, I, I think I don't really care. You know, some people do well on a palate. I don't, some people don't do well. I don't know if it's just because of, you know, people can't tolerate grains and all the lectins. And I'm, I'm sort of just working clinically or, you know, uh, I sort of go by what I see clinically in my experience, but um, most people that we see in this practice are somewhat sensitive to gluten.

• 55:29Speaker 01

  Some people more so than others, but most people are somewhat sensitive. And I think that's because the wheat is is different. And I go to Italy and we have patients who go to Italy and have the pasta and the bread there and don't seem to have reactions. I thought that was crazy at first, but I've gone there, the same things happened to me. First of all, maybe I'm on holiday and maybe it's happening because of that.

• 55:50Rich Roll?

  You have an extra endorphin rush because you're in Tuscany and.

• 55:54Speaker 01

  Maybe, but we hear this over and over again. So there's something to, to it.

• 55:58Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. That's, that's very, very interesting. I mean, and so why is there such a controversial notion that, why are people pushing back on this?

• 56:05Speaker 01

  Well, I think, you know, same as people push, you know, the, the, the old guard will always push back initially. I mean, um, I think there's less and less pushback because more and more people feeling it in their bodies, but. There's always going to be pushback against something that sort of goes against their way of thinking.

• 56:26Rich Roll?

  So, so what are the, what are the main kind of trends that you see in the patients that are coming through your doors? I mean, we've talked about gluten sensitivity, we've talked about sort of this, this carbohydrate intolerance. I mean, what are the, what are the things that people should be looking out for? What are the kind of chronic conditions out there that are typical?

• 56:46Speaker 01

  Right, well, the trend, one of the trends that I see is younger and younger people, especially women, because it's the women who usually come in. I'm seeing younger and younger women come in with problems that I used to see older, you know, women are coming in, in their twenties when they used to come in in their forties, with more and more chronic conditions. I mean, I see so many people with what's labeled irritable bowel syndrome, which is a totally meaningless name for a, a whole host of, of, of problems. And I think we are seeing that, we're seeing a lot of autoimmune problems, thyroid autoimmune, rheumatoid arthritis.

• 57:28Speaker 01

  And I think all of these problems are a result of, as you're talking about these, the, the junk that's put into the food, the chemicals in the environment in general, this microbiome that's off. Because most of these problems, we actually treat in a very similar way. We take them off the common foods that trigger the inflammation and we treat the gut. Now, sometimes we support the liver, sometimes we, we do some other things. But most of the time, we're doing very similar things and most people get better. So, I think the trend is younger people reacting or, or presenting with these chronic problems,

• 58:13Speaker 01

  probably because they started when they were younger. We, you know, most of us our age started when we were older.

• 58:20Rich Roll?

  The advent of these foods wasn't really around in the earlier years.

• 58:24Speaker 01

  Exactly, so I think that's what I'm seeing, a lot, more and more autoimmune problems. But I, the, the other trend I'm seeing is much more openness in the younger generation to... Um, to wanna change your diet and, and feel healthy. So I, I, it's, you know, in the old days, I'd have to spend so much time trying to explain. My generation, I'm almost sixty. My generation, I like, it's like they're so difficult because you've got to convince them. You, you know, that's what my doctor said or whatever. Um, they're still caught up in this belief system of Western medicine and, and our Western way as being right. The younger generation get that we're doing something wrong and they're very open to change.

• 59:09Speaker 01

  So, you know, that's, you know, the success of Mind Body Green and, you know, what people like you are doing is people know that there's something wrong with the system and with what we've been taught up to now. And they're looking for change and, and that's so, uh, to me, that's so exciting.

• 59:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I'm incredibly optimistic and really optimistic, particularly with very young people. Because I think that they're very attuned to what's going on. They look around. They see obese people all over the place. And they see the, the lifestyle habits that are contributing to those problems that the older generation is having. And they're having this converse sort of, I don't want that in my life. You know, and that's, this is the first generation that's had to see that and experience that. And then at the same time, you can't walk a block in New York City without seeing Organic Avenue or a juice press place. And get your, your turmeric shot, you know, and we got here a little bit early.

• 1:00:07Rich Roll?

  And I said, oh, let's see if there's a place where we can go hang out for ten minutes so we don't, we don't bug, you know, the, the good doctor. And yeah, we went to the juice press place and had some kale chips and, you know, that would not have existed a couple of years ago.

• 1:00:18Speaker 01

  And it's happening quickly. It's really quickly.

• 1:00:21Rich Roll?

  It is, it is.

• 1:00:21Speaker 01

  So yeah, I, I feel extremely positive. I mean, I am so excited by the young generation. I mean, I have six now, seven health coaches working with me and these are all women who were disillusioned with what they were doing, wanted, you know, wanted to study nutrition, wanted to make a difference. They live this life and they went to study it further and they wanna, you know, do something to, to help people. So, and you know, this is, seems to be happening all the time. We have so many patients who come in here. They change their life and they, then they go to IIN to go study nutrition because they, they wanna make a difference. So yeah, I feel very positive and. And I feel positive because it's coming from the bottom.

• 1:01:05Speaker 01

  This is a consumer-driven movement. It's not coming from the top.

• 1:01:08Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:01:09Speaker 01

  I don't think it's ever going to come from the top. I don't feel positive that the government, that the politicians, that our institutions, that the medical system is ever going to change. It's too entrenched in the, in the medical, industrial, financial, whatever, complex that is creating wealth for whoever it's creating wealth for. So they're too entrenched in that. They're not going to change it. That's going to be very difficult to change. But there is a very strong, powerful consumer-driven movement, which is growing. I mean, look at Mind Body Greenism.

• 1:01:41Rich Roll?

  Oh, it's crazy.

• 1:01:41Speaker 01

  It's unbelievable.

• 1:01:42Rich Roll?

  I mean, every month, their website traffic seems to double. And Jason will say that, you know, all the web experts out there would tell him, oh, well, you'll never break the glass ceiling on this number because nobody's that interested in wellness. And, and he continues to, you know, blow away all those benchmarks. And it's, that's phenomenal. I mean, that speaks to the promise for all of us and for our country. You know, that definitely feeds the optimism.

• 1:02:07Speaker 01

  Right. And it is, it's young. I mean, it is a young movement, which is fantastic.

• 1:02:11Rich Roll?

  Right. And we have the, we all have the power to vote with our dollar. And so as much as it's consumer-driven, you know, we can support those businesses that are cropping up around that.

• 1:02:21Speaker 01

  And I think we all should be doing that. I think that's important. We should be supporting those businesses because, um, you, you know, there's so much, when we look at you in California, look at the GMO labeling and look what you, you have to come up against. I mean, this, these are, you know, billions and hundreds of millions of dollars fighting to keep, have you seen the latest thing? They want to label it themselves.

• 1:02:43Rich Roll?

  Yes.

• 1:02:44Speaker 01

  I mean.

• 1:02:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I know. It's, it, it never ends. And I'm constantly beating a dead horse with this issue on the podcast. So, I mean, but it is remarkable and amazing that they were able to defeat that, that, uh, that initiative, Prop 37.

• 1:02:58Speaker 01

  But I do think it's changing. I mean, there's no question because I've been in this movement a long time. And I, and every year it just, you know, it's not just slowly happening. It's like exponentially growing. And it's, it's, it's so exciting. It's wonderful. I mean, I, I'm very, very positive about the next generation.

• 1:03:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah, me too.

• 1:03:27Rich Roll?

  I know that you're a big proponent of doing detox cleanse, you know, fruit and vegetable detox cleanses, and that's something that was absolutely crucial in commencing my journey. Had I not done that, I'm not sure that I would have taken the next step. It was a profound thing for me. But it's also, that's another kind of sort of controversial thing, and it begs up, it begs the question of, you know, juicing in general, and there seems to be this idea now that, you know, we should never drink juice, you know, that the sugar in the juice is bad, and we should stay away from that. And, you know, I don't go a day without having, you know, my own juice

• 1:04:08Rich Roll?

  that I, we make at home, you know, vegetable fruit juice, or, you know, my Vitamix smoothies that I, you know, couldn't go two days without, so.

• 1:04:17Speaker 01

  Well, I have a slightly different take on this. I think someone like you, you're probably not carbohydrate sensitive, but too much fruit juice for some people is a problem. When I started getting into juicing many years ago, I bought a juicer and I started, my favorite was apples, carrots, beets, and ginger. I started juicing, and I started putting on all this weight. And that is too much sugar for me. So I'm not against juicing. I am against too much sugar in the juices, too much fruits for some people. But my, you know, to get back to your question about detox, to me, a detox is just an entry point into a healthy lifestyle.

• 1:04:58Rich Roll?

  Right. It's like a tablerraza.

• 1:05:00Speaker 01

  Exactly. It's just a way of getting into eating and living a healthy way. Because what I find with a detox, so my detox, isn't a juicing detox, although I'm not against juicing, especially if there's not too much fruit in it. My detox is really about cleaning out the gut. You know, we were talking about that earlier. Supporting the liver and the gut with the nutrients to help the detoxification system, and removing all the foods that could be triggering inflammation and toxicity. And once again, to me, it's just that entry point into getting, so, so people feel, after two weeks, feel so much better. They go, "Ah, I can actually feel like this." So they don't have to listen to me anymore. They

• 1:05:41Speaker 01

  listen to their bodies. And then we get them on a healthy plan. So that, to me... The detox is just such a great little boost, a sort of, you know, pushing the reset button more than um a long-term thing that anyone has to do. It's just a great way of getting healthy, starting that journey.

• 1:06:00Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right, starting over.

• 1:06:02Speaker 01

  But I think that you, you bring up an important point because I, you know, I'm not against juicing. I think juicing is a great way of resting the digestive system. I mean, I personally do smoothies every day. I'm a big Vitamix smoothie person. Um, and you know, I love my juices too, and Juice Press do make good juices.

• 1:06:22Speaker 01

  But I do think we do, you know, I am wary of giving people who carbohydrate sensitive, which is a lot of people, too much fruit juice. I think

• 1:06:30Rich Roll?

  I understand that, yeah.

• 1:06:31Speaker 01

  That, that is a, you know, you, you need to just be aware of that more than, than

• 1:06:37Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right.

• 1:06:38Speaker 01

  an issue for everyone.

• 1:06:39Rich Roll?

  And I would say that, that uh, to be clear, when I, when, when I and Tyler are sitting here, we make juices together at our house and, and they're very vegetable based. Like I almost use fruit just to cut the flavor, so it's a little more palatable.

• 1:06:52Speaker 01

  Absolutely, yes.

• 1:06:53Rich Roll?

  But it's usually kale, beet, spinach, you know, celery, things like that. So it's, it's much lower glycemic.

• 1:07:00Speaker 01

  Sure. And look, you're a perfect example of, of it working. Chris Carr is a perfect example of, of, of these things working. So I'm definitely not against it. I just tell people, just be careful of putting too much sugar because I know from my, my, you know, I like, I'm, I love the sugar, so I wanted this, I wanted the sweet.

• 1:07:19Rich Roll?

  Right, I got you. So if somebody's listening to this and they're kind of at that crossroads point in their life where they're, they're, they're grappling with how to live more healthy, uh, but they're not quite there yet, but they're interested. I mean, how does somebody begin this journey of trying to figure out, you know, what their food sensitivities are, what their intolerances are, and how to take that first right step?

• 1:07:43Speaker 01

  Okay, so the first thing, I mean, I rarely do blood tests for food intolerances. Now, for a couple of reasons, over the years, when I used to do them, I found that the, the results changed. So frequently and especially changed after you clean up the gut. So I usually don't do the blood tests. I put people on elimination diets as we were talking earlier. I tell people remove, you know, the sugar, the gluten, the dairy, you know, we have it on our, on my website, we have a cleanse diet and we have a be well living diet. Both of them, cleanse diets are a bit stricter, but we remove the common foods that cause a problem.

• 1:08:24Speaker 01

  I often at the same time clean out the gut, but then after that you start introducing foods and you see how you react to those foods. So we start with the foods that usually don't cause a problem, but sometimes do like the nightshades. You reintroduce them, you see how you feel. Then you can start with maybe a bit of soy, maybe a bit of dairy, whatever, but you slowly, one at a time, every two or three days, reintroduce a food or a food group and you see how you respond. And you listen to your body. And the beauty of that is you start becoming your own doctor. You start becoming, oh, it's awareness training. I think a lot of what we try to teach patients is awareness training, where it's aware of where your mind's going.

• 1:09:04Speaker 01

  But it's also aware of how you respond to food, to your peers, to, you know, to your boss. So the more aware you can become and including to how you react to foods, the, the better it's going to be for you in the long term.

• 1:09:18Rich Roll?

  Right. I think that's a, that's a great, you know, sort of introductory message. And I think that it is important that you do have to kind of clean things up first before you can really see how these different foods are affecting you. I mean, for example, if you just want to know if you have a gluten sensitivity and you cut out gluten from your diet, everybody's going to feel better because they're going, they're not going to be eating as much processed food. So by virtue of whether it's gluten or anything else, they're going to feel better. So you have to kind of get to a baseline, you know, from a scientific point of view for when, for, so that you can really objectively evaluate what's going on.

• 1:09:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that's important. I think it, you know, you know, a lot of people come in here and they say, well, I stopped dairy for a week and maybe, you know, stopped gluten for a week. Um, but I think it's much better if you cut out all these foods first and you start at a new baseline.

• 1:10:09Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm. Great. All right. So, uh, I'm gonna let you go.

• 1:10:13Speaker 01

  That's all right. I'm, I'm, I'm enjoying it.

• 1:10:14Rich Roll?

  You wanna keep going?

• 1:10:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:15Rich Roll?

  All right, good. So, uh, where do you see, where do you see, uh, wellness heading? Like in the, you know, in the next 10 years, if you had your druthers, I mean, what is the next thing?

• 1:10:27Speaker 01

  Oh, I think it's just a huge growing movement and, and part of it, um, I can tell because the financial guys, the, um, the money people are starting to get involved and, you know, uh, so many people, you know, wanna invest in my company, invest in something healthy. Coming to me for advice because they see wellness is hot. So I think that's good and can be bad. I mean, I think, but the fact that the, the investors are starting to realize that wellness is here. As they say, wellness is hot and it's, we, it's obviously here to stay.

• 1:11:04Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:11:04Speaker 01

  Um, so I think you're gonna see more and more big money coming in, um, supporting, whether it's mind, body, green or, or wellness companies. Um, and I think that's basically a good thing if we can all stay true to our truth and not sell out.

• 1:11:23Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think that there's a danger of being co-opted, just like you see.

• 1:11:25Speaker 01

  I think so. I agree.

• 1:11:27Rich Roll?

  A green, you know, all natural label on every food product that's essentially meaningless. Um, but at the same time, you see things like CVS saying, we're not gonna sell tobacco products anymore. Like that's real, that's a legitimate like shift.

• 1:11:40Speaker 01

  And I think it's up to us to try, stay true to the truth and not to sell out. And I think there will be some people that sell out, but I think there's gonna be a core. I mean, I honestly believe there's a lot of core people who, you know, who really believe in, in, in this and, and and will do it intelligently. So I think this is just gonna grow. They're going to be more and more healthy, and the same as you come to New York now and you see juice places all over. I think in five years' time, you're going to see healthy restaurants all over. I mean, New York is, I mean, this has been going on in L A for much longer. But when something grabs hold in New York, it grabs hold.

• 1:12:19Rich Roll?

  The rest of the world. I don't know. I mean, I I think New York rivals L A any day of the week in terms of healthy restaurants. I mean, there's so many.

• 1:12:28Speaker 01

  I think that's gonna, it's just gonna explode. I mean, grass fed meat, for instance, was so hard to get. Um, you're not a meat eater, but I eat, when I eat meat, I'll eat grass fed meat. Now I see more and more restaurants doing it. Well, gluten free is sort of almost, I say so many places are doing gluten free, but I I see more and more healthy restaurants, you know. Um, you know, I have, I have chefs who, who patients who, who say to me, uh, their priority is good tasty food, but we shouldn't be thinking of it, is it healthy or not healthy? They just want to make good tasty food that is automatically healthy.

• 1:13:04Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:13:05Speaker 01

  I think that's what's gonna happen. It's gonna not become, you know, do I have to eat uh, healthy and cardboard and, and uh, uh, food that isn't so tasty, but I want to eat healthy. Uh, I I see that happening, that these healthy, these healthy restaurants are becoming really good.

• 1:13:23Rich Roll?

  Oh, yeah, it doesn't, they don't have to say, uh, they're this kind of restaurant or that.

• 1:13:27Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:13:27Rich Roll?

  They're just delicious. I mean, if you go to Cafe Gratitude in Los Angeles, it doesn't say that everything is plant based and you don't have to ask the question. You eat your meal there. It's absolutely delicious. It's a wonderful environment and you're, you leave wanting to go back.

• 1:13:42Speaker 01

  And I think that's, yeah, and I think that's gonna happen more and more. Um, I think this young genera, I mean, there's so many

• 1:13:50Speaker 01

  so many people are getting into nutrition. I think the, the web has been. Um, such a positive, yeah, it's got its problems. But the, the, the way people are getting educated now, the young people is fantastic. So I definitely see this, this big shift with the twenty year olds and, and, and younger.

• 1:14:10Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:14:11Speaker 01

  A major shift in, in how they see things. I mean, I have so many patients who've come in with their mothers, like the young twenty year old woman who really been screwed around by the medical system and sick. They've discovered, they've been online and sort of worked out what is sort of going on with them. They've come here with their mothers and you go through everything with them and it makes perfect sense with them. And they keep looking at their mothers, they, I told you so, Mo, I told you so. We've seen this so often. I mean, it's becoming like a common thing. The mothers like, you know, thought the kid was crazy. Um, and it's just beautiful to see. And, and so I think there's more and more of this younger generation educating my generation. So I, I love it.

• 1:14:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's fantastic. I mean, I, we're seeing that, you know, one of the questions that always comes up is, well, how do you get your kids to eat more healthy? And there's no magic bullet answer to that, other than leading by example and providing healthy alternatives. And it takes time and being patient and being flexible when they go to a friend's house and all these sorts of things. And we have a particularly, uh, uh, sort of strong willed ten year old daughter who has her own ideas about how things should go. And was very resistant to healthy eating for many, many years. And now my wife's favorite thing is to post Instagram pictures of what she's choosing to pack in her lunch. You know, she's making healthy choices and she'll always like tag it with something like, you know,

• 1:15:38Rich Roll?

  my, the, the microbes are changing, you know, the, the, the microbiome is taking hold of her brain, you know? And it's really, it's amazing and, and encouraging to see that. Not because we told her she had to, but she's making that choice.

• 1:15:52Speaker 01

  And even going to Costco, I mean, they sell these big bags of organic almond flour at Costco. Things like, you know, um, the recipes that are on the web for these healthy desserts. You know, coconut, coconut milk and all, it's just, I, I, I'm amazed that, um, you know, and, and I've been helped a lot by my health coaches because. You know, over the years, it's been me telling people, okay, you shouldn't eat gluten. You shouldn't eat this, da yara, yara, yara. Now I have health coaches who actually give specifics to the patients and they come up with Pinterest pages with all these amazing recipes. And now my wife, in the last couple of years, has been making these unbelievable desserts

• 1:16:37Speaker 01

  because I love my sugar, I love that sweetness. And you know, now I can have my chocolate mousse made with raw cacao and coconut milk and chia seeds and a bit of stevia. I mean, things that, so, so the availability of having the same um, um, dessert or the junk food that we all crave, you can get it in a, in a healthy form now. I think that's becoming more ubiquitous, which I think is.

• 1:17:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's overcoming this idea that there's a sacrifice involved.

• 1:17:09Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:17:09Rich Roll?

  Because when, you know, at our age, you know, going to the natural food market meant going to that terrible place where everything tastes horrible.

• 1:17:16Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:17:17Rich Roll?

  And it's just not that way anymore.

• 1:17:18Speaker 01

  Thank you, that's.

• 1:17:19Rich Roll?

  They've really figured it out.

• 1:17:21Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:17:21Rich Roll?

  And that doesn't, you know, that me, that, well, I think that means two things. On the one hand, there are incredible, healthy, delicious alternatives to, let's say, ice cream because you can get this coconut milk stuff or you can make it yourself and it's absolutely fantastic. And you don't feel like you're sacrificing anything to eat it. At the same time, there's also the advent of, you know, lots and lots, many, many, many more processed foods. I'd say, this is gluten free, or this is dairy free, or this is sugar free, or this is fat free, or it's vegan, or whatever it is. And it, it plays a mind trick on you because you think, oh, well, this is this, so this must be healthy, when in fact, it's a heavily processed food. So I think you have to have some discernment when it comes to that.

• 1:18:03Speaker 01

  No, that's right on. I mean, I think there's so much of that junk health food out there. But at the same time, I mean, I think you nailed it. I think my idea of healthy dessert or healthy food was not really that taste. It was like, I'm eating it because it's healthy, not because it's delicious. Now, that's shifted. I mean, you get from, you know, everything can be. Absolutely delicious and healthy.

• 1:18:29Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:18:30Speaker 01

  And that's the way it should be.

• 1:18:31Rich Roll?

  When we were younger, it was the carob bar, right?

• 1:18:33Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:18:34Rich Roll?

  Horrible tasting.

• 1:18:34Speaker 01

  Exactly, and you had to make a choice and you used to eat this crap because you thought it was healthy. I mean, yeah.

• 1:18:40Rich Roll?

  It was terrible.

• 1:18:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that's changed. And that's probably only in the last five years that I've seen this real shift. That like, I don't need to get that crappy, you know, I can delicious, healthy food.

• 1:18:52Rich Roll?

  I think it also brings up an important issue though, which is um, the economics of all of it because.

• 1:18:57Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:18:58Rich Roll?

  You know, not everybody can go to Whole Foods and afford that coconut bliss ice cream and and that stuff's pricey. And when you see the blueprint juice that's twelve dollars and you know, yeah, I'm sure it's great, but it's like, that's ridiculous. So for somebody who's on a budget, it's very easy to be dismissive and say, well, you know, I'd I'd eat well if I could, but you know, it's not in the realm of possibility. So how do you help disabuse people of that idea that eating healthy do- it doesn't have to be a Whole Foods, you know, Whole Foods, whole paycheck?

• 1:19:30Speaker 01

  Right. Well, I'm gonna sort of answer it first by saying, uh, not really answer it, but I'd need to bring up the point that the problem is the foods that get subsidized by our government, by our tax dollars. Are all the unhealthy foods. I mean, they've just bailed out the sugar industry fairly recently in the last couple of months. So our tax money is going to subsidize all that food that we shouldn't be eating, and that's why it's cheap. Put that aside, what what's a practical, the practicalities of eating healthy on a budget? I I mean, I think it is partly a problem, but you know, uh, yeah, uh, what we tell people is, you know, the um,

• 1:20:15Speaker 01

  the EWG dot org, the Environmental Working Group, has a wonderful list of of the Dirty Dozen and the Clean Fifteen. So try buy your your your fruits and vegetables organic and the ones that are relatively or have fewer pesticides, those aren't as important. So we give people that list or we tell them to to look at that list.

• 1:20:35Rich Roll?

  Right. The Dirty Dozen is a list that comes out every Year that that identifies the 12 foods that really are really important that you get organic.

• 1:20:43Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:20:43Rich Roll?

  The pesticide levels are so high in those.

• 1:20:45Speaker 01

  Right, and that's ewg.org. So, you know, we do that, but then, you know, we start really teaching people to cook at home and eat at home, and that becomes much cheaper.

• 1:21:00Speaker 01

  And, you know, if you can't get organic ingredients, you don't get, you know, still get your fruits and vegetables. Just try eat food as close to nature as possible, foods that haven't been altered by

• 1:21:14Speaker 01

  by the food industry. So I think the more you encourage people to eat at home, the less expensive it's going to be. But I don't know if that, I mean, it's a problem. It is. It is sort of a middle class, upper middle class thing to do. It's very difficult to eat healthily on a very low budget. I mean, it's a problem. I don't know what the solution to that is. I mean, it's actually criminal, but that's just the way it is.

• 1:21:39Rich Roll?

  I had a guest on the podcast a couple of months ago, a guy called David Simon, and he wrote a book called Meatonomics, and he really did an economic analysis on the food subsidies and how this has impacted our economy. And when you do the math and you look at how much of our taxpayer dollars goes into subsidizing these, the manufacturing of, you know, whether it's livestock or greens or what have you, that that, you know, McDonald's Big Mac, which is whatever it is, two bucks, three bucks, actually comes out to, you know, some crazy number, like I can't remember what it was, but, you know, it's like nine dollars or something like that. So we are, we actually are

• 1:22:16Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:22:17Rich Roll?

  Paying for all this in our own way.

• 1:22:19Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:22:19Rich Roll?

  And to be able to kind of reframe it and think about it might be, I mean, it's not going to solve everybody's problem, but it's interesting to kind of think of it in those terms.

• 1:22:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:28Rich Roll?

  And I think until we really can enact some legislative change, you know, on Capitol Hill to really address that in a real way, it's going to be difficult to really change that paradigm, but I don't know how optimistic I am about that.

• 1:22:41Speaker 01

  Right. And the other, you know, and it's not happening enough, but I know, I work with a nonprofit in South Africa and we He started growing, uh, we started vegetable gardens at the school because these kids. I went there one year and the kids were getting bread and, and jam for lunch and that was their lunch. And I saw all this, you know, this, all this ground around and I thought, you know, I, I used to, I've been teaching at Rancho La Puerta, which is a spa in Mexico.

• 1:23:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah, we were just there. I was just there.

• 1:23:12Speaker 01

  How those vegetable gardens and what's his name, the gardener? Oh, he's an incredible guy. So I thought, why can't we do this here? So we started growing vegetable, we started vegetable gardens at the schools. And, um, first of all, you, we, the, the kids would learn about the vegetables. I mean, their health changed dramatically. I mean, the principals couldn't believe from ADD and a lot of them are HIV positive. Because this was the, the only meal that they were getting, but the point is if we can encourage people to grow their own vegetables, that would be great. I don't know how realistic that is, but, um.

• 1:23:48Rich Roll?

  Why can't it be that every public school has its own garden? I mean, what is, you know, why would that be so difficult to create? Even if they were small, little hanging gardens and it was part of your curriculum to learn and take care of like a small amount of growing carrots and kale or something.

• 1:24:05Speaker 01

  So I think this is the direction that I would like things to, you know, in the next couple of years.

• 1:24:12Speaker 01

  I think that's where I'm going to start putting some energy into these simple things that I think, um, can make a huge difference. I mean, I've seen it happen in South Africa. There's no reason why it can't happen here. I mean, I know it is happening a little bit, but it could become, you know, it, it, it should be spreading all over.

• 1:24:31Rich Roll?

  But they're doing it kind of on their own volition. There's no sort of policy from above. I mean, I went out, um, and, and visited the public school out in Queens that implemented the plant-based diet out there. P S, I forget what it's called. Do you know what I'm talking about?

• 1:24:47Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:24:47Rich Roll?

  Um, there's an amazing, uh, public school, it's the first public school in the country to implement a plant-based diet. And I went out there to meet with them and have them on the podcast and hear about. This and it got a lot of press because it's like, oh, vegetarian diet. But it really wasn't about that. It was that was almost a byproduct of a systemic commitment to wellness at this school, basically an elementary school for kids where it's woven into the fabric of their everyday existence and they're growing their food in the back and they have tower gardens in the library.

• 1:25:19Speaker 01

  That's fantastic.

• 1:25:20Rich Roll?

  And they're learning how to make healthy snacks in their after school programs and all this kind of amazing things that are happening. So there are these sparks that are occurring. We just have to fan those.

• 1:25:31Speaker 01

  I think so, yeah. And I think we all need to work together, whether you're a vegan or you're a paleo. And I mean, that's crazy.

• 1:25:38Rich Roll?

  God forbid, right?

• 1:25:40Speaker 01

  Right. And I think, you know, we need to, you know, somehow, and I know Mind Body Green is trying to do that type of thing. And I think the more we can create those type of forums, the better.

• 1:25:53Rich Roll?

  I think that's a beautiful way to end it.

• 1:25:56Speaker 01

  So even though I like to eat sort of paleo-ish, well, I'll make my peace with my vegan brother.

• 1:26:04Rich Roll?

  We'll smoke the peace pipe, African style, South African.

• 1:26:08Speaker 01

  But I, you know, I think it's crazy. Yeah. Because I agree with you. I think we're all saying the similar things and people just gets caught up with such dogma. It's absolute nonsense. Yeah.

• 1:26:18Rich Roll?

  I mean, you know, I share what's, what's worked for me, what's changed my life. I don't, I don't, I don't have any judgment on anybody else's decision over that. And it's not my prerogative to tell anybody what they should or they shouldn't do. I would like to put out a healthy message and try to help inspire people to

• 1:26:35Speaker 01

  Which you're doing.

• 1:26:35Rich Roll?

  Think about their health and their fitness.

• 1:26:37Speaker 01

  You're doing it and you're doing a great job. Yeah.

• 1:26:39Rich Roll?

  Well, so are you. You're an inspiration. I appreciate you taking the time.

• 1:26:43Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:26:44Rich Roll?

  You're a busy guy.

• 1:26:45Speaker 01

  Thanks. Thanks, Ray.

• 1:26:46Rich Roll?

  So I hope that our paths cross again soon.

• 1:26:48Speaker 01

  I'm sure they will.

• 1:26:49Rich Roll?

  All right. So, cool. Thank you so much.

• 1:26:51Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:26:52Rich Roll?

  All right. Peace. Plants.

• 1:26:58Rich Roll?

  All right, people, that's our show this week. I hope you enjoyed it. Frank was awesome. You want to learn more about Frank, go to his website, DrFrankLipman.com. You can find him on Twitter, you can find him on Facebook. You can find his Be Well products as well through his website. You want to read his books, again, they are called Revive, Stop Feeling Spent and Start Living Again, and his second book is Total Renewal, Seven Key Steps to Resiliency, Vitality, and Long-Term Health. You can find those on Amazon, just use the Amazon banner ad as your way to get there. You know how to do it. Want to learn more about plant-based nutrition, check out our course, The Ultimate Guide to Plant-Based Nutrition.

• 1:27:41Rich Roll?

  You can find that on MindBodyGreen.com, three and a half hours of streaming video content, and an online community, and downloadable tools, and everything you need to get more plants in your life, whether you've been eating plant-based for a long time, or this is brand-new to you, and you're just trying to wrap your brain around it. It's a good place to start. It's a great program. We're proud of it, so check that out. We've got schwag at RichRoll.com. We have our vitamin B12 supplement, and my Athletic Recovery product, Chai Repair, and we've got some other cool products there, too. I'm not even going to tell you what. Just go check it out. Go to RichRoll.com, and you will see for yourself.

• 1:28:24Rich Roll?

  What else? I think that's it. We're out of here. Nothing left, except to leave a comment on the blog page. Tell us what you think about the show. Leave us a review on iTunes if you have a minute. That helps us out. And again, tell a friend. Thanks for stopping by, you guys. Hope you dug it, and we'll see you next week. I'm out of here. Peace. Plants.