The Gut-Brain Connection with Emeran Mayer

Is your gut controlling your brain? Neil deGrasse Tyson, Gary O’Reilly, & Chuck Nice dive into the gut-brain connection, GLP-1, and how this connection plays a role in conditions like anxiety, IBS, and even neurodegenerative diseases with gastroenterologist Emeran Mayer.

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

• 0:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did we just take one to the gut?

• 0:01Gary O'Reilly?

  We did.

• 0:03Chuck Nice?

  Look at that. I see what you... A gut punch of a show?

• 0:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A gut punch of a show.

• 0:07Chuck Nice?

  How many more puns can we come up with?

• 0:08Gary O'Reilly?

  They will leave you with food for thought.

• 0:10Chuck Nice?

  Oh, another pun. I love it. Okay, you guys just gotta tune in to figure out what we're talking about.

• 0:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The mind-body-gut connection, coming up on StarTalk.

• 0:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk, special edition, which means I got Gary O'Reilly. Gary? Hey Neil. How you doing, man? I'm good. Chuck?

• 0:44Chuck Nice?

  Hey.

• 0:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good to have you, man.

• 0:45Chuck Nice?

  Good to be here, of course.

• 0:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. Today?

• 0:48Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 0:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm checking out the subject. I love it.

• 0:51Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 0:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. The gut-brain connection.

• 0:54Chuck Nice?

  Ah, some people's brains are the gut.

• 0:58Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh, we're waiting for the suffocial straight away.

• 1:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, Gary, tell us why... what's going on in this episode?

• 1:06Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay, so, we've had everybody for our lives tell us they've had a gut feeling about something.

• 1:11Chuck Nice?

  Gut feeling?

• 1:12Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah. And then we've seen people under stress dive...

• 1:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They don't say I have a brain feeling.

• 1:16Gary O'Reilly?

  No, this is exactly it. And we've seen people who are under stress dive into the fridge. We've seen people who are depressed, not want to eat at all. And then we kind of work out that our guts are not standalone systems within our body.

• 1:31Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 1:32Gary O'Reilly?

  That there is actually a direct gut-brain connection. So, that gut feeling may actually be a fact, not a fictional imagination of somebody. Now, imagine, just imagine this, that every emotion you have has a mirror image within your gut.

• 1:50Chuck Nice?

  Oh, that makes sense.

• 1:51Gary O'Reilly?

  Right?

• 1:52Chuck Nice?

  They call it hangry, don't they?

• 1:53Gary O'Reilly?

  Don't they just?

• 1:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm hangry!

• 1:55Chuck Nice?

  I'm hangry, you know?

• 1:56Gary O'Reilly?

  And spoiler, pun coming, that is obviously our food for thought.

• 2:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, I see what you did there.

• 2:03Speaker 03

  Now it's hard time for an espresso.

• 2:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And now I'm hungry.

• 2:06Speaker 03

  There you go.

• 2:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I see what you did there. Okay, we have with us here in New York City, uh, visiting us at the Hayden Planetarium, right here in my office, a gentleman based at UCLA. We have Emeran Meyer.

• 2:22Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 2:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think I said your name correctly. You're a medical doctor at UCLA. You're a gastroenterologist, which is a lot of syllables to say you're a gut man, I think. We like that. That, am I correct?

• 2:35Speaker 03

  Scrabble winner.

• 2:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're also a neuroscientist. You hardly ever see those two in the same phrase, because your brain and the gut. Well, more increasingly you do now. Maybe so, all right. And you're also an author. Uh, and the books I got him here, I, very, very simple, it's just mind and gut.

• 2:53Speaker 03

  Mind-Gut Connection.

• 2:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mind-Gut Connection. That was in 2016 with Harper Collins. And then mind, gut, and you added a word.

• 3:02Speaker 03

  Immune connection.

• 3:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Immune connection. Ooh. So the mind, gut is taking over the, the body here. Yeah. All right. We'll see where that can take us. And so my notes here say you're also a documentary filmmaker. What, what's up with that?

• 3:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, I almost, um, didn't go into medical school because I was fortunate. Um, a retired businessman invited me several times to accompany him as a sound assistant to places in New Guinea and, um, on the, uh, Orinoco River to the Yanomami, um, Indians. And very formative experiences. And the nice thing is I can now reconnect back. I mean, I was just a, you know, first year medical student, had no idea about any of the things I know today. These people that we visited and, and lived with, the Yanomami. A very interesting group of people that have the the healthiest microbiome on the planet.

• 3:58Chuck Nice?

  Really?

• 3:59Speaker 03

  Found that out.

• 4:00Chuck Nice?

  And how do you?

• 4:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They poop three times a day.

• 4:02Chuck Nice?

  I was gonna, well, that's where I was, that's where I was getting, I was like, how exactly did we determine that? That they have the healthiest?

• 4:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Are you digging into their poop in the forest?

• 4:12Speaker 03

  So there was a scientist Gloria Dominguez, married to a very famous gastroenterologist and researcher. And they had the interest in in studying the microbes of of peoples around the world with what they called the vanishing microbe. You know, losing microbes. So they went to the Yama Mami and did the most elaborate analyses, didn't do it there, obviously took the samples. And it turned out that this microbial system that these people had is the most diverse and richest of anybody.

• 4:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They must have thought you were crazy. Can I have some of your poop for my lab?

• 4:51Chuck Nice?

  I don't know, I know some places in New York where you get charged extra for that.

• 4:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So just to finish your your resume here, so you're a professor in the departments of medicine, physiology and psychiatry. So that's an evidence of your your breadth and what you brought together for your studies.

• 5:11Speaker 03

  And it's and it's guided me, so my career has led me down this path at starting in the gut and then always having an interest in the brain and the nervous system. And at some point, it said it was necessary to, you know, connect to these other departments.

• 5:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. Let's just get this started. What is the brain gut connection? And if I understand the timeline correctly, nobody was really talking about this until your books came out.

• 5:40Chuck Nice?

  Oh, really?

• 5:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you wrote the book?

• 5:42Chuck Nice?

  You're a pioneer.

• 5:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On the?

• 5:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was, it was a surprise to me because I've struggled in my professional career for literally decades to get this concept of brain gut connections accepted as a major factor. Not just as an epiphenomenon, but as a major disease factor in like inflammatory bowel disease and irritable bowel syndrome, many of these what we call functional gastrointestinal.

• 6:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's the IBS, I guess.

• 6:08Chuck Nice?

  IBS, you hear it all the time now.

• 6:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, on TV commercials.

• 6:11Speaker 03

  And so it was like. It was kind of amazing that enthusiasm that gradually developed after the book, not the first year, it was not really popular the first year, but then gradually it picked up. And now if you could go online, I mean, every second word is gut health and brain gut connection.

• 6:28Chuck Nice?

  You hear about it all the time now in more of a cursory fashion. You know, there's not a lot of in-depth talk about it. But what is your gut?

• 6:39Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, the gut, I would say, is after the brain, the most complex organ we have in the body.

• 6:44Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 6:44Speaker 03

  It's not just a digest, it's a tube from, you know, from the mouth to the anus. And for a long time, digestion and absorption and storage of waste has been sort of the main focus of interest. In the meantime, we know that, you know, 70% of our immune system is embedded in the gut. Big portion of our hormonal system, endocrine system is embedded in the gut. There's a separate nervous system in the gut, it's called the little brain. My gosh, I'm here from New York, Columbia, sort of being a pioneer in describing and popularizing that concept.

• 7:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, so some people literally have their brain in their ass?

• 7:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 7:25Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes. I know, we probably don't know the same person, but we know they're like that.

• 7:31Speaker 03

  But to sort of ramp up the answer, all these systems in the gut are interconnected with each other. So the gut is like a brain.

• 7:39Gary O'Reilly?

  So who's talking to who? Is the brain talking to the gut or is the gut talking to the brain?

• 7:43Speaker 03

  No, first, within the gut, we have the immune system and the, you know, the microsols that live in the gut and the nervous system in the gut, they all communicate with each other all the time. So you don't know it, you know, right now, if I could look inside of you with the right lens, you know, I would see all these things interacting and talking to each other. Then you add the brain to it and it's the same thing. There's a bidirectional communication going on 24/7, even when you sleep, always. Anything that happens at the brain level, as I said earlier, has a mirror image in the gut, which we don't see. You see it on your face, so if you're angry, I can see it on your face. We can see that the gut contracting when you're angry.

• 8:28Speaker 03

  But also a lot of things that go on in the gut generate emotional feelings or...

• 8:35Speaker 03

  Most of it, ninety-five percent, doesn't become conscious. So that's the thing about the...

• 8:40Gary O'Reilly?

  So we have receptors and transmitters. I can say it, but what are they? How are they activated? How are they working? Obviously not emailing each other, but...

• 8:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And just to clarify, when you said it's not conscious, it means, if I understand that, it means you will have a feeling, and you won't know why, but you'll then act on that feeling. And if it's your mind-gut connection controlling it, it means you have behavior that's being commanded to you by microbes that you need a microscope to see.

• 9:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, but what I want to say is for a lot of people, they're not aware of this. You know, they're very oblivious to their body.

• 9:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They just have urges.

• 9:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. But like a sensation that everybody knows is satiation, hunger and satiation.

• 9:28Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely.

• 9:29Speaker 03

  So these are the most basic gut feelings that people have.

• 9:32Chuck Nice?

  And it's so funny you say that. When I was younger, my mother used to say, I would eat, and then I'd say, "I'm still hungry." And she would say, "Just wait ten minutes, and your stomach will talk to your brain and let it know that you're not hungry anymore."

• 9:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Will catch up with the... Your brain will catch up with your stomach.

• 9:50Chuck Nice?

  And I don't think, I don't know where she got that from, but damn if that's not the case.

• 9:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, a lot of people have lost that mechanism. You know, like a big part about obesity is that that signal that comes from the gut, this GLP-1, this molecule that everybody talks about,

• 10:06Chuck Nice?

  Everybody talks about it.

• 10:07Speaker 03

  Is produced in cells in the gut and goes to the hypothalamus in your brain and tells your brain to stop eating because you're full. A lot of people have lost that mechanism, that feedback. Why that is, but it's not clear. But so what do you now do with mega doses of this hormone?

• 10:27Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 10:28Speaker 03

  Hundred times higher than what the gut produces.

• 10:30Chuck Nice?

  These are the GLP-1 injections that everybody sees on TV now, right?

• 10:34Speaker 03

  So that gives you that sensation. But, you know, in a...

• 10:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  GLP-1, excuse me. What a pharmacist sitting here among us.

• 10:41Gary O'Reilly?

  We can't help it, it's on every TV channel.

• 10:46Chuck Nice?

  And by the way, how do you think I lost twenty pounds?

• 10:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, you're saying, so this, I didn't know this. So this chemical that we see advertised a hundred times a day

• 10:55Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 10:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that molecule but heightened?

• 11:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To create this sensation that really your body should have been producing all along.

• 11:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, it does a lot of other things. We don't know many of them because now all of a sudden, you know, it seems to be effective in substance use disorders. Right.

• 11:13Chuck Nice?

  People who take it find that their urge to drink, so people who have an alcohol abuse problem.

• 11:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 11:19Chuck Nice?

  They stop abusing alcohol. They're like, yeah, I just didn't want to drink or, you know, so.

• 11:24Speaker 03

  And, you know, it's kind of ironic. When I first came to LA as a research student, I studied that hormone, you know, and also it's sibling called GIP that there's another medication that has that. And at the time, we didn't know, we were just excited to find all these substances in the gut, but nobody had a clue what they do. It took really literally 35 years or 40 years.

• 11:59Speaker 04

  I'm Nicholas Costella and I'm a proud supporter of StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 12:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How is this received when you emerged with this idea that your brain and your gut are connected in ways no one understood previously? Because as I understand, medical school, you study the brain, you study the brain. You study the gut, you study the gut. And there's a siloing of the body where we are just bits and pieces assembled into one thing.

• 12:37Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely.

• 12:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the idea that there's a connection will require that somebody in that mix has interest in more than one aspect of the human physiology.

• 12:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, I would say, you know, I've had a longstanding interest in college on, in psychology and, you know, read all the stuff, Jungian stuff. And so I came into medical school already with this background in, you know, in brain science.

• 13:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With a perspective.

• 13:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, with a perspective. And I would actually say that the main reason I ended up in medical school, I thought I was going to go into psychiatry because that, but then spending a month in a psychiatry rotation convinced me this is not what I want to do.

• 13:19Chuck Nice?

  Those people are crazy. Okay.

• 13:22Speaker 03

  I might do it today. I might do it today because psychiatry has moved on a lot.

• 13:26Chuck Nice?

  It really has, yeah.

• 13:27Speaker 03

  But I had a very open-minded, a very charismatic mentor, who really supported me in this, you know, from the beginning.

• 13:36Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 13:36Speaker 03

  So he was interested in isolating all these molecules, like the GLP-1, not necessarily on the brain, and I said, can we combine this, you know, with the brain? And he was very open-minded, unusual. And but most of my colleagues either ignored it, didn't find that interesting, or then there were, like in the IBS field, for example, there were like really entrenched interests of people that say, IBS is a gut disorder.

• 14:03Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 14:03Speaker 03

  Forget about the brain, you know, and.

• 14:06Chuck Nice?

  Which is so counterintuitive from the fact that when we're all kids, we learn that the hip bone is connected to.

• 14:13Gary O'Reilly?

  It's as simple as that.

• 14:14Chuck Nice?

  The thigh bone, the thigh bone is connected to. Like you would think that it would be just, you know. The gut bone connected to the brain bone. It would make perfect sense, right? It's the first thing we learn when we learn anatomy.

• 14:27Gary O'Reilly?

  Day one.

• 14:29Speaker 03

  So, but it goes further than that. I think, you know, medicine, western medicine, very successful, obviously, in many aspects. But it is based on a reductionistic view of the body, not an interconnected, not a systems biological. And it's gradually changing from the, there's a couple of developments. Like there's an entity now called functional medicine, non-scientific entity. But also in science, there's more and more scientists that think in systems biological.

• 14:58Chuck Nice?

  Interconnectivity between the systems.

• 15:00Speaker 03

  So it will, it will take another 10 years, I think, and then it will, it will change.

• 15:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I mean, they'll catch up with you.

• 15:06Chuck Nice?

  How about that?

• 15:07Gary O'Reilly?

  So we spoke about GLP-1, but you've got cortisol and serotonin.

• 15:12Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 15:12Gary O'Reilly?

  The stress.

• 15:13Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 15:13Gary O'Reilly?

  I suppose we love eating. We have an experience when we eat certain foods that maybe you'll tell me yes or no, with serotonin being released in the gut or dopamine. And then the cortisol, like I say, you're diving into the fridge because you're under stress and you're going for the sugars or the fats or whatever it is. I mean, how long did it take us to work all of that out?

• 15:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we've got this image of the person who just broke up.

• 15:39Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 15:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With their, their loved one.

• 15:41Gary O'Reilly?

  A gallon of ice cream.

• 15:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A gallon of ice cream.

• 15:43Chuck Nice?

  A holligan doll.

• 15:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Watching a sad movie, crying.

• 15:46Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 15:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's up with that?

• 15:49Gary O'Reilly?

  Myself sad movies, dude. It, it, right.

• 15:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The gut likes Haagen Dazs ice cream.

• 15:53Gary O'Reilly?

  Or any other ice cream.

• 15:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so, so.

• 15:56Speaker 03

  So there's some very smart people who have worked in this area. So surprisingly, it was never really identified as the brain gut connection. You know, they always talk about appetite and stress and substance use disorders. But, but it never really became sort of an essential part of, but, but that's really how it started. You know, we, we knew these things for, for quite some time. Very good scientific studies supported. But, but it's not really become a specialty, you know, it's, it's because of this dominant paradigm, I think.

• 16:25Gary O'Reilly?

  Right, yeah. So going back to Chuck's insight into anatomy. That the knee bone is connected to several other things in the body.

• 16:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Connected to the brain bone.

• 16:35Gary O'Reilly?

  So how, how is the gut connected, A, to the autonomic system? And then the vagus nerve, spelt with an A, not an E. And what does the vagus nerve do? Cause we've heard about it. I couldn't tell you actually where it is in the body, but.

• 16:46Chuck Nice?

  It's right here.

• 16:47Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 16:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The vagus nerve.

• 16:48Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay.

• 16:49Chuck Nice?

  Above your clavicle, where your neck is, and it runs down.

• 16:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why are you telling this and not the, the good doctor?

• 16:55Chuck Nice?

  All right, Doc, tell us, where's the vagus nerve?

• 16:59Speaker 03

  Where you said.

• 17:01Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 17:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, so the vagus nerve, first of all, it's a, it's a bidirectional pathway. You know, it's like a bidirectional freeway.

• 17:08Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay.

• 17:09Speaker 03

  Most of the traffic goes from the gut to the brain, to the brain stem, and then to higher emotional centers. And 10% goes the other way. So for example, to stimulate your, the acid production in your stomach, that's a vagal phenomenon. That's why people used to do, cut the vagus nerve for ulcer disease. This was a dominant.

• 17:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 17:30Speaker 03

  Which, which is amazing when you think about this is only like 30 years ago that we have absolutely no understanding.

• 17:36Chuck Nice?

  It's like cutting off your foot because you have an ingrown toenail.

• 17:39Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 17:39Chuck Nice?

  That's insane.

• 17:40Speaker 03

  That's comparable.

• 17:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, so where, where on your body is the vagus nerve?

• 17:43Speaker 03

  It goes down from your brain stem.

• 17:45Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay.

• 17:46Speaker 03

  Down your neck.

• 17:47Chuck Nice?

  Just like, that sounds like just what Chuck Nice said.

• 17:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did Chuck say that 90 seconds ago?

• 17:54Speaker 03

  Just so you know.

• 17:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 17:56Speaker 03

  But what's important is to realize, so the vagus nerve has branches to all your organs. It monitors every organ function 24/7. The ones to the gut have received a lot of attention because we were always wondering why is 90% of the traffic going from the gut to the brain? There's not that much happening that the brain needs to know. So now we know there's all these receptors on the vagus nerve for serotonin, for these, for GLP-1, for the GIP. So disproportionate, what we call affrent or sensory signal to the brain is related to this complexity that goes on in the gut and the signals it gets from the microbes. It's a processing hub. Yeah.

• 18:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I'm still confused. How does any of that relate to your immune system?

• 18:41Speaker 03

  So the immune system, which I told you more than 70% is located in the gut, sandwiched between the layers. Seven zeros. Seven zero. Sandwiched between the layers of the gut and very close communication to the microbes in the gut, microns away. You know, so how nature could engineer something like that has a potentially deadly influence of microbes.

• 19:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A micron is a millionth of an inch. I mean, a millionth of a meter, I guess. Right, so that would be a thousandth of a millimeter would be a micron.

• 19:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, so the immune system is very close to the vagus. Some of the sensory nerves go into this immune system in the gut and they pick up signals that the immune system produces, like cytokines, for example, this studied. And that has all kinds of effects in your behavior, you know, like cytokines, fatigue, chronic pain. Inflammation. So.

• 19:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah. All right, well, I gotta come at, so I'll pause, then. What is the urge that people have to, what do you do when they clean out the colon?

• 19:47Chuck Nice?

  A cleanse.

• 19:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cleanse. This is urge to get it all out.

• 19:51Chuck Nice?

  Oh, I'm gonna, I can answer that for a doctor.

• 19:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And or people prepping for a colonoscopy, they're cleaning everything out. So, all these microbes that it set up shop to communicate with the brain, they just flow out your body just for the benefit of one of your colleagues to look up your butt.

• 20:09Chuck Nice?

  Alright.

• 20:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, are we destroying this hard-earned microbiome? Every time we get ready. Okay Chuck had an answer. What's your answer, Dr. Chuck?

• 20:19Chuck Nice?

  Okay, so here's my answer. For the cleanse, that's bullshit. So, that's the first answer.

• 20:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But yeah.

• 20:26Chuck Nice?

  No, no. I'm saying, the actual cleanse itself. I mean, I know it's supposed to get rid of your stuff.

• 20:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was a joke.

• 20:32Chuck Nice?

  Oh, I'm sorry.

• 20:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wasn't that a good joke?

• 20:33Chuck Nice?

  Oh, I thought you were saying it like, okay, nevermind.

• 20:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You said it's bullshit, no, it's human shit.

• 20:37Chuck Nice?

  You said, no, it's human shit.

• 20:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 20:38Chuck Nice?

  See, we missed the no. Cause I would have laughed at that. Cause that's funny.

• 20:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excuse me.

• 20:42Chuck Nice?

  I'm sorry. I missed the no. But, the colonoscopy, that's so that they can look at your intestinal lining.

• 20:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 20:50Chuck Nice?

  And the good stuff that's, that you need is in the walls of your intestinal lining. So, cleaning that out so they can look at it, you're not getting rid of. So.

• 21:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 21:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, so two answers from my side. The first one, I would contradict what you said.

• 21:04Chuck Nice?

  Oh, you think it's real?

• 21:06Speaker 03

  So, well, you know, Ayurvedic medicine for thousands of years has propagated these, these, these colonic cleanses.

• 21:13Chuck Nice?

  Alright, so what is the, what is the benefit? Let's, cause everything that I read says that the benefits are negligible at the best. Okay?

• 21:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Unless, well, that would be health benefits, but suppose you just feel better? Doesn't that count?

• 21:27Chuck Nice?

  I mean, you know.

• 21:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're talking about how you feel.

• 21:29Chuck Nice?

  I feel better when I punch a puppy. Does that make it?

• 21:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What?

• 21:32Chuck Nice?

  I'm sorry, did I say that out loud? Okay.

• 21:34Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 21:34Chuck Nice?

  Anyway, tell me, tell me why it's good. Before I get arrested.

• 21:39Speaker 03

  So, so for a long time, this has been dominated or driven or motivated by this concept of cleansing. So, humans are obsessed with cleansing, you know? They, they, they spend a lot of money on, on cleansing, so not just cleansing the colon, but a cleansing diet and a...

• 21:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In not 19th century Europe, but in modern times, yes. Cleansing.

• 21:59Speaker 03

  But it's become very popular again.

• 22:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're talking about your ancestors here. I know. I need, I need to dig. You take a bath once a year and only if necessary. Yeah, but it's our birthday. You gotta celebrate.

• 22:10Speaker 03

  So with microbiome science, there's a certain potential explanation why people have been doing this over thousands of years.

• 22:19Chuck Nice?

  Why?

• 22:20Speaker 03

  Well, because it reestablishes a balance within your colonic microbiome.

• 22:27Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 22:27Speaker 03

  Has not been studied scientifically, but it's certainly...

• 22:31Chuck Nice?

  You're saying it's feasible, though? So even though we don't have empirical scientific peer-reviewed studies, it's a feasible concept that this could be the case?

• 22:38Speaker 03

  It is conceivable, and so the blueprint for your microbiome doesn't disappear with that. So you cleanse out the population. The blueprint is there, and the body can reconstruct the...

• 22:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so it's a jumpstart.

• 22:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, a jumpstart.

• 22:53Chuck Nice?

  A jumpstart.

• 22:54Gary O'Reilly?

  All right, fine.

• 22:55Chuck Nice?

  You have changed my mind on this.

• 22:57Gary O'Reilly?

  It's like stripping off a layer of paint, and then it re-evolves itself to bring in a new layer of paint that's nice and shiny. So if our microbes are not important in our gut over evolution, we'd have got rid of them. It's like sleep. We are never more vulnerable than when we're asleep, right? Yet, we've not evolved to do without sleep. Why haven't we evolved to do without microbes in our gut? What? How? How come this? Because they're the OGs. They're the original life forms on this planet.

• 23:28Speaker 03

  They've been here for four billion years. You know, it's three and a half billion...

• 23:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can't get more OG than that.

• 23:33Chuck Nice?

  That's for sure.

• 23:34Speaker 03

  Three and a half billion before...

• 23:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Original gut.

• 23:38Chuck Nice?

  Nicely done.

• 23:41Speaker 03

  But it's been the most successful evolutionary development because every organism today, from the cockroach to the butterfly to humans, has a microbiome, a gut microbiome.

• 23:51Chuck Nice?

  Whoa.

• 23:52Speaker 03

  There's not a complex...

• 23:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So there's a number I calculated, and it just freaks people out, that if you go to your large intestine and take one centimeter slice through it...

• 24:01Chuck Nice?

  Just one centimeter?

• 24:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One centimeter, that's four tenths of an inch, for those who... For mercs.

• 24:07Chuck Nice?

  For Americans. Merka. That's right. Don't bring any of that metric crap over here. Talking about merka, boy. You better talk to me in inches. You're talking about millimeters, centimeters.

• 24:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That four tenths of an inch lives and works more microbes than the total number of humans who have ever been born.

• 24:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that we, we, we think that like we're in charge. Yeah. But we're just a We're an darkened anaerobic vessel of fecal matter for microbes. We're an Uber ride. That's what we are. We're an Uber ride for microscopic organisms. For microbes.

• 24:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, I read something recently in a book by one of my favorite scientific authors, Antonio Damasio, on this comparison, the early life forms, you know, which, which had a lot of intelligence. I mean, these microbes on the planet must have a phenomenal amount of intelligence collected over three and a half billion years.

• 25:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But they couldn't do long division, so.

• 25:09Speaker 03

  Yeah. But I mean, they don't have a mind and obviously they can do, they can live in homeostasis with each other and with the world. Their main benefit is that they now can connect to our brains and can influence a much, a conscious entity.

• 25:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But what, I mean, So they do have a mind.

• 25:29Gary O'Reilly?

  So if we've got the original gut microbes, the OGs, as we now like to refer to them, three and a half billion years, they've invented their own language. They've got, they've had to have an own, their own alphabet of sorts. So how are they communicating with us from their little hidey hole in the gut?

• 25:49Speaker 03

  You know, they have millions of genes compared to our, you know, meek number of 10,000. In these genes is stored all this information, how to build these molecules, how to, how to use them. So their language is basically stored in, in, in their genome.

• 26:06Gary O'Reilly?

  So their own history of three and

• 26:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 26:09Gary O'Reilly?

  And Yeah, I know. I was, I was about to square before I got to the B.

• 26:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Billions and billions. Okay.

• 26:17Speaker 03

  So then when they settled, the first microbes settled in this floating tubes of the first, you know, marine animals, they interacted with these floating tubes and there's something called lateral gene transfer, that they transfer some of these genes that they had about their language into these animals. And, you know, fast forward.

• 26:39Speaker 03

  That was the first version of the so-called the little brain of the gut or the enteric nervous system. And then with animals developing heads, becoming polar organisms, some of the same information about language was transferred to the brain.

• 26:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What is a polar organism?

• 26:54Speaker 03

  Having a head and the opposite end, whatever that is.

• 26:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, okay.

• 26:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, so our language, our ability to think comes, uses the same buildings, blocks as the microbes developed over billions of years. I mean, that to me is one of my most fascinating ideas.

• 27:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Incredibly fascinating.

• 27:11Gary O'Reilly?

  So seeing as how we have the gut-brain connection, we're seeing as how microbes have their way of communicating with us, is this the superhighway that is used for psychedelics? Because we're ingesting and yet everything's going off up here in the brain, but not so much down in the gut. So is this a sort of exploration here?

• 27:35Speaker 03

  There's a lot of things going on in the gut that we don't know yet, like serotonin plays a big role, as you know, with the psychedelic experiences, activating a particular serotonin receptor, the 5H2A receptor, which is in the brain. So these psychedelic experiences seem, many of them seem to be related to that receptor in the brain. Now, the same receptor is also in the gut and on microbes. And we don't know what effect this actually has, but one is also-

• 28:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it can't be an accident, right?

• 28:05Speaker 03

  It's not an accident.

• 28:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a co-evolutionary thing, right? Okay.

• 28:08Gary O'Reilly?

  So is the mind desperate to try and expand? And that's why it's so active to find something like these psychedelics and then just whizz them up to the brain?

• 28:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, humans have probably used psychedelics for a long time.

• 28:22Gary O'Reilly?

  Long, long time.

• 28:23Speaker 03

  Long, long time. And based on their experiences, probably initially by accident that they ingested a mushroom and all of a sudden sort of world.

• 28:30Gary O'Reilly?

  Is that the sort of, when you talk about in evolution, just by accident eating a mushroom, is that sort of the beginning of a stoned ape theory of evolution?

• 28:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a phrase. Stoned ape?

• 28:41Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 28:42Chuck Nice?

  What is the stoned ape? I mean, I've been to the zoo, but I've never seen him, you know, an ape get high. I would just love to sit there and watch a chimpanzee tripping his balls off. I would love that, but I haven't had the pleasure.

• 28:54Gary O'Reilly?

  Well, in, out in the wild, I'm guessing they'll stumble across a mushroom, be curious and eat it and go, whoa.

• 29:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So isn't the basis of where Gary's coming from, why do we have receptors for psychedelics at all? Unless it was the purview of the microbiome that delighted in it.

• 29:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's a really interesting question. I, I, I can't really answer it. I can only say, partially based on personal experience, I guess I can say this here, even though it's, you know, it's, it's, it's not, not recommending for people.

• 29:24Chuck Nice?

  I am, I'm recommending for you to do it. All right, the good doctor here can't, I'm letting you know, everybody should do psychedelics.

• 29:32Speaker 03

  I mean, I can't do it for legal, medical reasons.

• 29:34Chuck Nice?

  Okay, and sue me, please, but do it.

• 29:38Speaker 03

  But the experience, you know, that you have, and everybody says it's, it's, it's a universal human experience. It's not that one person gets this, this, this realization of the interconnectedness of yourself with the, with the, your environment, the planet, like you get a totally different paradigm.

• 29:56Chuck Nice?

  Oh, yes, without a doubt.

• 29:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you, Chuck, you.

• 29:58Chuck Nice?

  Oh, God, yes.

• 29:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You missed a few shows a few while back, because you, you.

• 30:02Chuck Nice?

  I traveled to Costa Rica to do ayahuasca for an entire week.

• 30:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 30:07Chuck Nice?

  And I will tell you that it changed my entire life. It changed my perspective on everything.

• 30:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did you get funnier?

• 30:14Chuck Nice?

  Not at all. And that, and you know what? While I was in my, one of my, uh, while I was in one of my, uh, transmeditative states, uh, Mother Aya came to me and said, I, I, I can't help you with the funny son. I'm so sorry.

• 30:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So just to be clear, when you did this, it was a fully supervised.

• 30:33Chuck Nice?

  Oh, got you.

• 30:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Activity.

• 30:35Chuck Nice?

  Uh, you know, they are licensed, they're fully supervised, and they have medical staff on, on hand.

• 30:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It wasn't somebody who sold you something on the street?

• 30:42Chuck Nice?

  No, nobody on the street.

• 30:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you did it in a back alley?

• 30:44Chuck Nice?

  Now that I do not recommend. I say, please find a professional and have somebody there to supervise, make sure that there's medical staff on hand. Do not go to somebody's house, okay? And do not go to some dude with a ponytail who's just like, dude, I've been a shaman for like so long now, and I would love to turn you on to the universe. Yeah.

• 31:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But if he doesn't have a ponytail, it's okay.

• 31:06Speaker 03

  And it's not a party drug.

• 31:08Chuck Nice?

  No, it's not.

• 31:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, okay.

• 31:10Chuck Nice?

  If you're looking to get high, don't do it because it's not that kind of high.

• 31:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 31:13Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 31:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, so like one of my speculations, I mean, again, partially based on self-experience. So there's different phases to the psychedelic experience. You know, there's the initial, you know, rush that you get and with a lot of visual and auditory experiences. But then it has this long-lasting effect. I mean, at least 24 hours that you notice it, if you pay attention to it, was your ability to communicate and to talk that you've never talked like this before about yourself and your emotions. And then even past that, one experience, a lot of people say that one experience, just like you said, can have a life-changing effect because from now on, you're going to look at the world differently.

• 31:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I, that's easy to understand, knowing that it interferes with brain neurosynapses. How does that connect back to the gut?

• 32:06Chuck Nice?

  Ooh.

• 32:06Speaker 03

  Well, the slow effect, you know, I mean, the thing that what happens in your brain initially is a fast response. It's being absorbed in the small intestine.

• 32:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, because you ingest it.

• 32:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, you ingest it.

• 32:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it's got to get through your, so it only gets to your brain as the, as the microbiome allows it.

• 32:22Chuck Nice?

  Right, true.

• 32:23Speaker 03

  But it's, it's the part that is not absorbed in your small intestine, which happens immediately after ingestion. It's the part that goes down into your colon. And then these longer-lasting effects, I would not be surprised if they're mediated by microbial, you know, they add things to it. When they stimulate it with the 5HDA 2A receptor, they produce other molecules that then create this long-term experience.

• 33:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, given that there's this connection, there's so many other psychological features of human behavior, some good, some bad, some failures of our psychological profile, neurological diseases, this sort of thing, how much of that can we blame on our microbiome?

• 33:25Speaker 03

  Our current knowledge is pretty much based on what we call association studies or correlations. You take a big population of people that have a particular diagnosis and then you look at their gut microbiome and it's different.

• 33:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You have to even know to do that as part of the study, right?

• 33:43Speaker 03

  But it doesn't prove causality, that's the thing. So, I personally think of, I'll give you a few examples. I think anxiety, in my opinion, I've studied this pretty intensely for the first part of my career. We know so many mechanisms in the brain that, you know, and the effect of early life adversity, that predispose you to have greater anxiety. So we know so much about the brain mechanisms that some people try to propose, you know, it's your microbes that cause anxiety.

• 34:13Gary O'Reilly?

  Has any of your research gone into diet relation to Alzheimer's development?

• 34:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, so we're part of a big US/European consortium on Alzheimer's disease, funded by the NIH. There's definitely pretty strong evidence that...

• 34:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's the NIH National Institutes of Health.

• 34:32Speaker 03

  The National Institutes of Health. Said goodbye to that. Thank God, thank God we have it. Thank God we have it now. What time is it? What time is it? Because let me tell you something.

• 34:42Gary O'Reilly?

  Now you sound like Flavor Flav.

• 34:44Speaker 03

  Yeah. And I would say there's, there's pretty solid evidence that, again, what we call dysbiosis or altered composition of the gut microbiome plays a role. And there may be heterogeneity, you know, it's not, Alzheimer's is not one disease, maybe different pathways. Diet, and what we now have, you know, has become sort of the magic word. Systemic immune activation or systemic inflammation is clearly one of the main risk factors for not just Alzheimer's, but also all the other ones like Parkinson's. But Alzheimer's is also, it's interesting. So anything preventive for any of these chronic diseases,

• 35:29Speaker 03

  you want to go to what's been referred to as an anti-inflammatory diet, basically.

• 35:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's an emergent awareness of our health.

• 35:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 35:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that butyrate, anti-inflammatory, the phenols?

• 35:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, and butyrate is

• 35:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The polyphenols and those sort of things, yeah.

• 35:43Speaker 03

  A largely plant-based

• 35:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 35:47Speaker 03

  Once you have Alzheimer's, severe symptoms, there's evidence that a ketogenic diet, you know, which is not a good diet for the average person because it starves your microbes. But in that case, it's beneficial and there's one disease entity, refractory seizures in young children, where a ketogenic diet is also

• 36:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh my god! Ketogenic is basically protein all the time.

• 36:12Speaker 03

  Fat and protein.

• 36:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Fat and protein. Right. Keeping your body in ketosis, a state of ketosis. Right, right. Which means you don't have access to sugars or any carbohydrates. Correct. So your body basically uses the fat.

• 36:23Speaker 03

  So that has

• 36:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, and of course, presumably before we were agrarian, our ancestors, they ate dead animals. Right? Or berries, of course, if they could find them. But they were, the caveman diet is this, correct?

• 36:38Speaker 03

  Well, but, you know, going back to my personal experience on the

• 36:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As a caveman?

• 36:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You had to say that, didn't you? I was just hanging there. I was just hanging there. I didn't do it.

• 36:49Speaker 03

  Living with the Yanomami on the Apurinoka River, I mean, so they're surrounded by animals, you know, by birds, by fish, the big mammals. They only eat a very small amount of animal products. They mainly eat tubers and berries and plant-based stuff. That's why they have the healthy microbiome.

• 37:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's why they have the healthy microbiome.

• 37:08Speaker 03

  And that has been studied all the way, a colleague of mine at UCLA, Elaine Chao, all the way into The production of neurotrans- of GABA, this inhibitor neurotransmitter in the brain on a ketogenic diet, that's sort of like Valium, you know, it it sort of tuned tones down the nervous system.

• 37:26Gary O'Reilly?

  How how much of this is us really knowing a lot of it, or how much of this is us just beginning to understand? I know you've been doing this research for decades, but just how much more of this do we not know yet?

• 37:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What can we look forward to?

• 37:37Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 37:37Speaker 03

  I I think we're just scratching on the surface.

• 37:39Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh, really?

• 37:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, I I think, well, I was just thinking about these millions of of genes that the microbes have, we we only know.

• 37:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why don't they have more genes than we do? That ain't right.

• 37:49Speaker 03

  We have.

• 37:50Gary O'Reilly?

  Been around a little bit longer.

• 37:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or or is it the collection of genes represented in the diversity of microbes that you're referring to as millions of genes?

• 37:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 37:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so if someone prepping for a colonoscopy, they just got rid of the entire population of microbes. So why, other than the value of the exam to prevent colon cancer, how do you get back your microbiome if it's all in the toilet?

• 38:14Speaker 03

  It comes back fairly quickly, you know, it I I would say.

• 38:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where's the recipe? Where? Who's?

• 38:19Speaker 03

  Oh, the so so the blueprints to reassemble it is in your.

• 38:22Gary O'Reilly?

  It's inside your gyning.

• 38:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why don't I'm asking the medical doctor here.

• 38:26Gary O'Reilly?

  Well, I'm telling you.

• 38:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did I ask the two of you?

• 38:29Gary O'Reilly?

  No, but you got it anyway.

• 38:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, so you need to know, so.

• 38:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so you're saying we we are chemically equipped to reproduce the microbiome that is suitable for us?

• 38:42Speaker 03

  So there's a form of colitis, or a very serious form after antibiotics, where you basically just destroy your microbiome.

• 38:50Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 38:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, because the antibiotics, while it's getting rid of whatever was your condition, it's it's it's biotics.

• 38:56Gary O'Reilly?

  Killing everything.

• 38:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Killing everything.

• 38:58Speaker 03

  So it's called seedy fecal colitis, that's that's the name. So one therapy that is very effective is a fecal microbial transplant. It's the only disease where that works.

• 39:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A poop transplant.

• 39:08Gary O'Reilly?

  It's a poop transplant.

• 39:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So whose poop are you taking?

• 39:10Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh, you had to ask?

• 39:11Chuck Nice?

  Uh, I'll tell you this, not dog poop.

• 39:15Speaker 03

  So there's now, people have identified donors that are free of any disease, any families who have disease, so, and that have a diverse healthy microbiome. So these are the donors. So, one of the most effective therapies is to get one of these transplants, these poop transplants. And, so for a while then, the person who got this transplant has the microbial composition of the donor.

• 39:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 39:41Speaker 03

  Because he or she himself didn't have it. But if you look at this like a few weeks later, a few months later, the person's own microbiome is being reassembled.

• 39:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hmm.

• 39:50Speaker 03

  And the reason is possible because the microbes are not just floating inside the lumen, the inside of the gut, but they also inhabit the mucosal lining. And that's probably where that information is stored, of the blueprints.

• 40:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's exactly what Chuck said.

• 40:04Chuck Nice?

  I did say that earlier, but that's okay.

• 40:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 40:07Chuck Nice?

  You know, I don't need to be right, I just need to be funny.

• 40:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But if you're right and funny, that's even better.

• 40:15Chuck Nice?

  I guess right, yeah, I guess so.

• 40:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, what about advertisements for gut ailments? And every time I see them, I say, "Do I have that? Or could that happen to me?" And one of them shows up a lot is IBS, or Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Do we know the cause of that? And can gut health fix that?

• 40:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, so, yeah, this is something that myself and my group have studied for, you know, like, I would say, four decades.

• 40:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're failing badly, because people still have it.

• 40:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 40:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Get back to work. What are you doing here?

• 40:45Speaker 03

  Well, fortunately, finally, after thirty years of, you know, writing articles and review articles on it, it's basically called a disorder of altered gut-brain interactions.

• 40:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They did bring the brain in. How about that, finally?

• 41:02Speaker 03

  And it's, the most effective therapies are brain-targeted therapies, meaning simple relaxation techniques, mindfulness-based, stress reduction, gut-directed hypnosis, cognitive behavioral therapy. They're better, more effective than any of these medications.

• 41:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now you're getting all new agey on this. So how is this received by, quote, "Western medicine"?

• 41:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 41:24Speaker 03

  A lot of resistance and also the pharmaceutical industry.

• 41:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of course, you need a pill. They need a pill.

• 41:28Speaker 03

  They need a pill, yeah.

• 41:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can't meditate a pill.

• 41:32Speaker 03

  So you've got, I mean, we're getting inundated with supplements. We're getting inundated with probiotics.

• 41:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, probiotics too. There's always, you know, eat this yogurt because it's got the bacillus, the active microbes. Do we really need that?

• 41:47Speaker 03

  So the official organization of gastroenterology has published, you know, they always publish these statements, these expert statements. And they said there's not good enough scientific evidence to actually recommend probiotics in general as a treatment for IBS. However, there are patients, you know, who benefit and there's also, there's different types of probiotics. If you now go on the internet, you know, yeah.

• 42:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it's a whole industry.

• 42:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's a whole industry. And like when I wrote my book, somebody came to me who was a retired, um, Yuli Packard engineer who said, you want to be my partner? I want to start a probiotic company. So we, so we just go to these big warehouses and get our organisms and then we package them and then, you know, market them. So that's, a lot of people have.

• 42:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you said no, and he's a billionaire now. Is that what you're saying?

• 42:38Speaker 03

  I have not seen him since then.

• 42:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so there's a lot on the table right now and, and we're inundated by ads that are telling us one thing or another about medicines that are being put forth. What would you say is the best practice going forward? Not that you're prescribing for an audience that is surely diverse, but what kind of things should we be aware of as we put food in our pie hole?

• 43:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just a glimpse on your diet.

• 43:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So judge me because I like pie.

• 43:12Speaker 03

  So first of all, I would say it's not just the food, you know, it's the lifestyle. It's, the food is a big part of lifestyle. Same with the Mediterranean diet. I never, I, I, I no longer call it the Mediterranean diet, but the Mediterranean lifestyle. If you go to Italy in summer, you will experience that, the social interactions and the, uh, which is a big part of it, you know, like all the studies.

• 43:33Gary O'Reilly?

  Does it not go back further than just lifestyle?

• 43:35Chuck Nice?

  Being around people.

• 43:36Gary O'Reilly?

  Does it not go back further than that to the soil? Where, where our plants come from and that the, the, the animals eat that, then it comes down the food chain to us?

• 43:44Speaker 03

  Yeah. So like the awareness of, of, of why your gut health may not be optimal is key to start out with. Because then you realize it's not just, it's not just what you eat, but where it's grown and how it's grown. And how do you eat it in which context and you know?

• 43:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's easy to say, but suppose I don't care about any of that and I do poop regularly. What is, what should I be worried about? And I don't have mood swings. I don't have IBS. So, uh, does that make me rare on this spectrum of gut biome issues?

• 44:18Speaker 03

  It seems right now, you know, all of a sudden since this has become acceptable as a topic for dinner parties.

• 44:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 44:25Speaker 03

  Which, which was not the case, you know, even 10 years ago.

• 44:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 44:29Speaker 03

  It seems like everybody now has, you know, like 40 or 60% of the population has some kind of a, a poor gut health. You know, I'm not sure if that's true or not, but.

• 44:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, but the people you studied, you said they have the best gut health in the world. What is it about them that manifests this fact? Do they live longer? Are there, did they never have diarrhea or constipation? What is the metric for you to arrive at that conclusion?

• 44:55Speaker 03

  You know, for these people, um.

• 44:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cause we should just do what they do, if that's what you're saying.

• 44:59Speaker 03

  If, if you lived with them, you would realize you can't, we can't go back, you know, there's no, there's no way, there's no way back.

• 45:06Gary O'Reilly?

  There's no streaming.

• 45:07Chuck Nice?

  I'm not eating leaves and grubs and.

• 45:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Grubs?

• 45:09Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 45:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tasty grubs? Some are tasty.

• 45:11Speaker 03

  But what we know about them is, you know, so they have an interesting thing. They, they have a lot of little wars and the wars are invading another village to get women from other villages. And they do this to prevent inbreeding, you know, so this is part of their culture that they always.

• 45:27Chuck Nice?

  They could just have a dance, you know, just, hey, everybody.

• 45:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A social.

• 45:32Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, just come on over here. We're gonna have a little dance. Y'all meet one another, you know?

• 45:35Speaker 03

  Anyway, so.

• 45:37Chuck Nice?

  Sorry.

• 45:37Speaker 03

  Um, so a lot of them die early because they're bitten by a snake or eaten by a crocodile or.

• 45:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A lot of good, the, the healthy gut biome did for them.

• 45:47Speaker 03

  But, but if they. But that crocodile has the healthiest gut of all the crocodiles.

• 45:54Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes. And that's why crocodiles smile.

• 45:58Speaker 03

  But here comes the interesting part. If they don't die early from one of these accidents, they live into their 80s without any medication.

• 46:05Chuck Nice?

  With no medication.

• 46:05Speaker 03

  No medication. And no medical system.

• 46:08Chuck Nice?

  And no medical system. That is impressive.

• 46:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And no medical insurance or anything.

• 46:11Speaker 03

  Well, yes.

• 46:12Chuck Nice?

  Well, we don't have that here either. So, let's be honest. This is America. We do not have healthcare. All right? It's an illusion, people. Don't get mad at me. Vote differently. Okay? All right.

• 46:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, you've spoken of a mixture of traditional Western medicine and lifestyle, a diet, even sort of eastern philosophies and ways of living. Is there a way to sift the fact from the fiction for someone who's just exposed to all these ads and other YouTube videos?

• 46:46Gary O'Reilly?

  Someone who's seeking guidance and not being inundated with all of this misinformation.

• 46:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thank you.

• 46:52Speaker 03

  Very difficult for the average person. Very difficult.

• 46:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Especially in today's media climate.

• 46:58Speaker 03

  And it's gonna get worse, you know?

• 47:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 47:00Speaker 03

  For political reasons, I think.

• 47:01Chuck Nice?

  Listen, don't blame me. I'm very healthy. I have a doctor who said that I am the best health that anybody could ever be. You know it, and I know it. So healthy is what I am.

• 47:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, one of my missions at this stage of my career is really to provide that answer for people and the trust and the transparency. I think there always has to be, there's always has to be evidence supported. And the evidence could come from scientific studies, high quality, not, you know, five mice, and then claim that this is... But it also can come from traditional success. If I have this, I have this criteria. Somebody is stuck around for five or 6,000 years. There's gotta be something to it. You know, you cannot, you cannot just dismiss it. A turmeric is a good example.

• 47:52Chuck Nice?

  That's so true.

• 47:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 47:53Speaker 03

  Anti-inflammatory. There's now scientific studies. Ginseng is another. So there's several things that I think you can... But then there's, obviously, in the middle of all of this is an enormous number of stuff that's placebo. And placebo is not a bad thing. If people feel better... And they wanna spend the money.

• 48:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  People poo poo, I shouldn't use that phrase. Yeah. People denigrate placebos, but if it works, we should study placebos.

• 48:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, and so there's a lot of, you know, high, high quality research on the place, on the brain's mechanism.

• 48:30Gary O'Reilly?

  Is that another gut-brain connection, the placebo? If your brain perceives that it's working?

• 48:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, so the placebo is a evidence-based therapy that the body does itself. You know, it's, it's not, it's the enemy of the pharmaceutical industry, obviously. That's why it's bad mouthed. It's, it's a wonderful thing. If, if you're a really good doctor and healer, you utilize the placebo response extensively.

• 48:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hmm, interesting.

• 48:56Gary O'Reilly?

  Isn't it?

• 48:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That is, that's pretty wild, man.

• 48:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, Doctor, what, what brings you to New York City? It wasn't just to do this show with us.

• 49:03Speaker 03

  So, I have an invitation to this integrative health symposium that's going on tomorrow and, and into Saturday. And I have a couple of, one panel on IBS and, and one talk about increased stress responsiveness of people.

• 49:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, especially, stress is a buzzword.

• 49:25Gary O'Reilly?

  A killer.

• 49:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of, of late.

• 49:26Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 49:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're all stressed. Well, quarters all in stress, very, uh, and that's really linked, so. Well, welcome to the town. Yeah. And, uh, thanks for making some time in your schedule. And speaking of gut biome, don't eat any dirty dogs, okay? Hot dogs? Yeah, man. Oh, no, that, no, you need that. Yeah, you know, you gotta, you gotta live here. See, the people who eat it every day. Oh, oh, they're, they're immune. You can't be not from here and do it. Right. It'll kill you. It'll kill you. Yeah, we've, we've built up a resistance. It'll kill you within the hour. Right.

• 49:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But you go to the one with the dirtiest fingernails. That's what you do, that's it. That's the best one. That's the guy. Don't look at me like that.

• 50:01Speaker 03

  Thanks, Neil and team, it was a pleasure to be here.

• 50:04Gary O'Reilly?

  Pleasure was ours, sir.

• 50:05Speaker 03

  You guys are an amazing team. I've, I've never done a lot of podcasts, but not, not like this.

• 50:10Gary O'Reilly?

  There's not too many out like this.

• 50:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dr. Ameren Mayer with the 2016 book, Mind and Gut Connection, followed six years later by Mind and Gut.

• 50:22Speaker 03

  Immune.

• 50:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Immune Connection. Nice. All right. It's all there and more. Gary, thanks for being here. Pleasure. All right, Chuck. My stomach hurts.

• 50:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, go talk to your gut and see what happens. My gut is feeling just fine. Good to know. Thank you. So this has been StarTalk, special edition. Neil deGrasse Tyson here, as always, bidding you to keep looking up.