The Habits & Foods to Increase Brain Function, Eliminate Inflammation & Live Healthy Longer w/ Dr Andrew Weil EP 1108

“The art of medicine is how you present treatments in ways that activates their belief.”Today's guest is Dr. Andrew Weil, who is an internationally recognized expert on medicinal plants, alternative medicine, and the reform of medical education. He’s the founder and Director of the Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine, the founder and Chairman of the Weil Foundation, and the founder of Healthy Lifestyle Brands. He is co-founder and matcha curator for the rapidly growing matcha.com whose mission is to import the highest quality and best-tasting matcha from Japan. In this episode Lewis and Dr. Weil discuss the most important factors in living over 100 years old, the relationship between the mind and body, the foods you should eat for increased brain function and to live longer, how stress in our relationships can affect our health, and so much more! For more go to: www.lewishowes.com/1108Use Code "SOG15" for 15% off all orders: www.matcha.comCheck out his website: www.drweil.comCheck out the links he mentioned: intergrativemedicine.arizona.eduThe Wim Hof Experience: Mindset Training, Power Breathing, and Brotherhood: https://link.chtbl.com/910-podA Scientific Guide to Living Longer, Feeling Happier & Eating Healthier with Dr. Rhonda Patrick: https://link.chtbl.com/967-podThe Science of Sleep for Ultimate Success with Shawn Stevenson: https://link.chtbl.com/896-pod Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

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

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is episode number 1,108 with Dr. Andrew Wile. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 0:29Lewis Howes?

  Bethany Frankel said, "Your diet is a bank account. Good food choices are good investments." And Caroline Mace said, "What drains your spirit drains your body. What fuels your spirit fuels your body." My guest today is the inspirational Dr. Andrew Wile, who is an internationally recognized expert on medicinal plants, alternative medicine, and the reform of medical education. He is the founder and director of the Andrew Wile Center for Integrative Medicine, the founder and chairman of the Wile Foundation, and the founder of Healthy Lifestyle Brands. He is also the co-founder and matcha curator for the rapidly growing Matcha.com, whose mission is to import the highest quality and best tasting matcha from Japan. And in

• 1:13Lewis Howes?

  this episode, we discuss the most important factors in living over 100 years old, the relationship between the mind and the body, the foods you should eat for increased brain function and to live longer, how stress in our relationships can affect our health, the biggest misunderstandings about inflammation in the body, and so much more. I'm so excited about this one. If you enjoy this at any moment, make sure to share this with someone that you think would be inspired by this as well. Just copy and paste the link wherever you're listening to this, or you can use lewishouse.com/1108 and text it to a few friends, post it on social media, and make sure to tag me over on Instagram or social media as well, @lewishouse. Okay, in just a moment, the one and only Dr. Andrew Wile.

• 2:00Lewis Howes?

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• 2:43Lewis Howes?

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• 3:03Lewis Howes?

  Welcome back everyone to the School of Greatness Podcast. Very excited about our guest, the legendary Dr. Andrew Weil in the house. Good to see you, sir.

• 3:11Andrew Weil?

  Good to see you.

• 3:11Lewis Howes?

  Very excited. You've been doing integrative nutrition and I guess integrative functional medicine for a long time.

• 3:18Andrew Weil?

  Not functional medicine.

• 3:19Lewis Howes?

  Functional is actual medicine like pills, right?

• 3:23Andrew Weil?

  Yeah, functional is a lot of biochemistry and stuff.

• 3:26Lewis Howes?

  Integrative medicine is...

• 3:27Andrew Weil?

  It's the whole, it's the whole picture, you know?

• 3:29Lewis Howes?

  Everything else.

• 3:30Andrew Weil?

  Mind, body, connection.

• 3:31Lewis Howes?

  Spiritual. Gotcha. Okay. And you got it in this in the 70s?

• 3:37Andrew Weil?

  Yes. Well, I studied botany as an undergraduate.

• 3:41Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 3:41Andrew Weil?

  And got really interested in ethnobotany and native plants. I did a lot of traveling in South America, looking at the... Medicinal plants, psychoactive plants, then I went to medical school. Um, got very disillusioned with what I had learned. At medical school? Yeah, I mean, I, I learned nothing about health or healing. Uh, you know, and the methods that I was taught, I saw do too much harm. So when I finished my clinical training, this was nineteen sixty eight, sixty nine. I just decided I didn't wanna learn anymore of that. I, I, that was, I wanted to learn how to keep people well. And, you know, I didn't know how to do that. So I found ways to travel around the world, look at healing practices in other cultures.

• 4:26Andrew Weil?

  Um, gradually put together my own system that I first called natural and preventative medicine. Then I came to call integrated medicine. And then, uh, my car broke down in Tucson, Arizona. And I ended up living in this remote canyon and I started writing about, you know, what I'd seen and. In Tucson? In, outside of Tucson, yeah. And then, uh. Wait, so your car broke down and you stayed? I stayed, it took six weeks to get fixed. Really? It was on, yeah, an English Land Rover that I had driven to South America without incident. Uh, but when I got it back here, I didn't get parts for it. And, uh, so anyway, the, it was February of a warm, wet year. The desert was in full bloom and I never left.

• 5:06Andrew Weil?

  Uh, and then the University of Arizona found out I was there and they asked me to start giving lectures to medical students. Uh, first about marijuana, because I had done the first human experiments with, with marijuana in nineteen sixty eight. And then about other. Well, people were experimenting with it before. Yeah, but nobody knew, you know, the, in the medical world, there was nobody that knew anything about it. Gotcha. Um, and then, uh, I started giving lectures on alternative medicine. Nobody even knew what that was in those days and, uh. What is alternative medicine? Well, it was things like other systems, like Chinese medicine and chiropractic and osteopathy and naturopathy. Yeah. All that, you know, the people in the world of medicine didn't know anything about that. Really?

• 5:50Andrew Weil?

  No, they didn't even know they existed. So, uh, I had also, uh, I was really always interested in how the mind and body interacted. I studied, uh, medical hypnosis, uh, at Columbia University, which was fascinating. What is medical hypnosis? It's like using hypnosis, using a suggestive state to access healing in the body. And it has incredible potential. You know, I, I, I watched a film of someone having a cesarean delivery with no anesthesia except hypnosis. Uh, I, you know, you can-

• 6:23Lewis Howes?

  A C-section.

• 6:23Andrew Weil?

  A C-section.

• 6:24Lewis Howes?

  Cut open.

• 6:25Andrew Weil?

  Cut open.

• 6:26Lewis Howes?

  No medicine, no injections.

• 6:28Andrew Weil?

  No, she was told to sing Row, Row, Row Your Boat, and she was wide awake.

• 6:32Lewis Howes?

  Well, they cut her open.

• 6:33Andrew Weil?

  No pain. I mean, that's just an example. You can take a good hypnotic subject and touch them with a finger and say it's a piece of red hot metal and they get a blister, a real blister. Uh, so, you know, that's an example of, you know, how the mind and body interact and you can take advantage of that to access healing. So I was, you know, all this, I all, put all this together into this system of integrative medicine. Anyway, patients started showing up at my doorstep and it was not an easy doorstep to get to. I lived in this, let me tell you.

• 7:02Lewis Howes?

  They kept hearing about this guy somewhere in the middle of Arizona.

• 7:04Andrew Weil?

  And, uh, you know, I, I began seeing really interesting people and I, I refined my system and through the 1980s, uh, I got a larger and larger following in the general public, but none of my medical colleagues paid any attention to me.

• 7:18Lewis Howes?

  They didn't, they didn't respect you or trust you or think you were credible.

• 7:21Andrew Weil?

  Off the wall.

• 7:22Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 7:22Andrew Weil?

  And there was a period in the late 1970s, there was a holistic medical movement in this country. And I remember in Arizona, there was a Southern Arizona Holistic Medical Society and it was nurses, psychologists, social workers, not one single physician, you know, joined it. So that's the way it was in those days. Anyway, that changed around in the early 1990s. Um, uh, my best friend from Harvard Medical School, who was a cardiologist, was named Chief of Medicine at the University of Arizona College of Medicine, and he came with a new dean. Uh, they both came from the University of Massachusetts and when they got here, he, I had dinner with him and he said, "Well, now you have friends in high places, what do you want to do?" And I said, "Well, I want to change all of medicine."

• 8:06Andrew Weil?

  So he said, "How do you want to do that?" And I said, "I'd like to start a residency in a field that I want to call integrative medicine." He said, "Let's talk to the dean." So the dean said, "You can't start a residency in a field that doesn't exist." He said, why don't you back up a step and think about creating a fellowship, which is how, you know, what people do after residency to specialize. And he said, then you wouldn't be accused of tampering with unformed minds.

• 8:30Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 8:30Andrew Weil?

  So anyway, he gave me a green light, no money, but you know, I was given a, actually it was a glorified broom closet in a trailer in the parking lot behind the College of Madison. And I had one assistant and this was, you know, around 1990. And I put a think tank together. We met at Canyon Ranch in Tucson and we hammered out a basic curriculum. And then advertised for people to come. And we got four physicians who took a big risk to come to Tucson for two years.

• 8:59Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 8:59Andrew Weil?

  And do this fellowship in this field that didn't exist. That covered all the things that doctors should learn, but don't like nutrition and mind body interactions and herbal medicine and the strength.

• 9:11Lewis Howes?

  Breath work.

• 9:12Andrew Weil?

  Weaknesses of breath, all of it. And you know, we began training four people a year. And the main criticism I got was how possibly you're going to change anything by training four people a year. But over the years, we graduated about 35 people from this. And some of them are now in very powerful positions in academic medicine. But more importantly, we got to refine the curriculum and then translate it to a distance learning format. And now we have graduated over 2,000 physicians from this very intensive training. And we also have a shorter curriculum that's in 80 or 90 residency programs throughout the world. And you know, it's really becoming, we're really influencing people now.

• 9:56Andrew Weil?

  And we've trained people in every specialty, all ages. So the goal is one day, you know, whether you go to a dermatologist or a psychiatrist or a gastroenterologist, that person will have learned the basics of nutrition and mind body medicine and will know what Chinese medicine is good for. And you know, all the rest that they should know.

• 10:14Lewis Howes?

  It seems like there's been a movement, especially the last five years that I've seen many doctors leaving the, I guess, what do we call the functional practice? The traditional practice and the functional medicine.

• 10:24Andrew Weil?

  Yep.

• 10:25Lewis Howes?

  Leaving their practices because they're realizing it's not working.

• 10:29Andrew Weil?

  It's not working and they're really unhappy. You know, when I was in medical school, medicine looked like a very desirable profession. Uh, one of the, one of the things it promised was autonomy. You could be your own boss. Well, that's all gone out the window. You know, you have to work for somebody these days. You have to work for a corporation that tells you how to do it and.

• 10:49Lewis Howes?

  And what pills to use and.

• 10:51Andrew Weil?

  Yes, you have no autonomy anymore and the, all the satisfaction of a doctor-patient relationship has disappeared. You know, if you've got eight minutes to see a patient, it's unlikely that you can form that kind of therapeutic relationship. Yes, and as you say, a lot of it's not working and the, uh, you know, I could go on a great length about this, but the, our so-called healthcare system is a total mess. You know, we are, we spend more per capita than any other country in the world on, on healthcare. You know, by a long shot, uh, if you look at a bar graph of NATO nations per capita expenditures on health, we're off the chart. And at the same time, we have worse health outcomes than any developed country.

• 11:33Andrew Weil?

  The, the World Health Organization rates us 38th on a par with Serbia. And that's any way you look at it. It's infant mortality, longevity, rates of chronic disease. Something is, what's wrong with this picture? You know, and a problem is we've got these epidemics of lifestyle-related diseases that conventional medicine doesn't work for, as you say.

• 11:53Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 11:54Andrew Weil?

  And we're trying to deal with that all in the same way, mostly by giving, you know, medications.

• 11:58Lewis Howes?

  A pill, right. What's the, in your experience, it's been 50 years now you've been working on this?

• 12:03Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 12:03Lewis Howes?

  Fifty, roughly 50 years. What's been the common theme for the root of most pain that people have?

• 12:10Andrew Weil?

  Well, I have to.

• 12:10Lewis Howes?

  Lifestyle, is it food, is it relationships, is it lack of sleep?

• 12:15Andrew Weil?

  I have to say that in, in my clinical experience, uh, more often than not, I find the root causes of problems to be in, not in the physical body, but more in the mental, emotional or spiritual.

• 12:28Lewis Howes?

  The holding on to anger.

• 12:30Andrew Weil?

  Whatever. I mean, it's often unconscious stuff, you know, but it, but it's, it's, unless you. Work in that area, if you just deal with the physical body, it doesn't solve it.

• 12:40Lewis Howes?

  It's superficial.

• 12:40Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 12:41Lewis Howes?

  Superficial.

• 12:41Andrew Weil?

  I mean, if you just look at, look at pain, are you familiar with John Sarno's work?

• 12:45Lewis Howes?

  No.

• 12:46Andrew Weil?

  He wrote, uh, he was, he's passed about a couple of years ago. He was a rehab medicine specialist in New York and a healer. And he has a one book called Healing Back Pain, another called Mind Over Back Pain. And he taught that almost all back pain is of psychological origin. That's not to say it's not real, but he, know that the problem is it's, it's spasms of small muscles that cut off blood supply. And it becomes a vicious cycle in which the contraction of muscles further, you know, cuts off blood supply, but the origin of this problem is in the mental compartment. And he, he used to require that people who came to him go to two evening lectures he

• 13:30Andrew Weil?

  gave in, in one week. A great many people who did that, their pain disappeared forever.

• 13:35Lewis Howes?

  What was that, the thing they realized?

• 13:37Andrew Weil?

  It's, it's just hearing this message from this guy that it was not in their back.

• 13:41Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 13:42Andrew Weil?

  Uh, anyway, I, I, and, and you know, this goes along with the fact that you can look at x-rays and scans of people's backs and they look so horrible, you can't believe that this person could move and they have no symptoms. And you look at other ones that look terrific and the people are crippled by pain. So there's no correlation between objective findings and subjective experience, which, which goes along with his theory. Anyway, I'm, this is just my observation is that more, you know, then this is the, I think one of the great limitations of conventional medicine is it's only focused on the physical body and it does not, it ignores this whole other realm.

• 14:19Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I, I interviewed, I don't know if you know Dr. Lisa Rankin, I interviewed her years ago, maybe six, seven years ago, where she had more of a traditional practice. And then I think she was taking seven or eight medications herself. She was unhappy, sick. And then she started healing her relationship. Uh, she started, you know, healing other things in her life and she realized she didn't need as much medication. And then she started kind of doing talk therapy in a little bit where she would say to her patients, well, why don't you go? You know, heal this with your partner, your husband or whoever. And then the pain started to go away for these individuals. She realized, and other doctors have done this as well. You know, they realize, okay, just prescribing medicine isn't the solution.

• 15:00Andrew Weil?

  And it's not just pain. I, I've written a lot of these cases up in my book. I'll tell you just two stories. And this one caught my attention because they both, I saw these two women both at the same time. There were two women, both in their, I think they were late 30s, early 40s, who had very severe systemic lupus, you know, a major autoimmune disease.

• 15:19Lewis Howes?

  Okay. What does lupus create? What is that?

• 15:21Andrew Weil?

  Well, it, it, it can affect any system of the body, but usually there's joint involvement and there's usually arthritis, skin problems.

• 15:29Lewis Howes?

  Like eczema type problems or rashes?

• 15:31Andrew Weil?

  Yeah, but this is a severe one. It's not just the surface of the body. It goes in.

• 15:34Lewis Howes?

  Internally, gotcha.

• 15:35Andrew Weil?

  Yeah, so one, one of the, one woman had a, had brain involvement and was psychotic as a result of this. And the other woman had her kidneys were involved and she was near death in the hospital. So the first woman, the one with the brain involvement, had a religious conversion to some variety of fundamentalist Christianity in the hospital. And the other woman fell in love and subsequently got married. And both of them, the disease disappeared. And I often say, you know, I can't always arrange for my patients to have religious conversions or fall in love, but to see that, just to know that that's possible, you know, then you want to sort of find some way to flip that switch. And, and the switch is in the mind, it's not in the body.

• 16:20Lewis Howes?

  If people believed in a higher power and felt loved.

• 16:25Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 16:25Lewis Howes?

  You think that would help with a lot of pain?

• 16:26Andrew Weil?

  I think it'd help a lot, yeah. I think it would help a lot.

• 16:30Lewis Howes?

  Is it the, is it the fear in the mind, the loneliness, the anxiety, the stress that causes the tension in the back or the pain?

• 16:37Andrew Weil?

  Yeah, it could be all of that. And, and what, what Sarno's teaching was, you just constantly tell yourself over and over, it's not my back and my back is fine. And he was actually opposed to any therapies directed at the back. And he said, you shouldn't even do massage or acupuncture because it reinforces the illusion that the problem is there.

• 16:55Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 16:56Andrew Weil?

  It's just so, and I had one, I also wrote this guy up. This was a friend of mine who was my age. He was in his late 30s at the time this happened. He was a basketball player. He was a professor at Princeton, worked with drug policy, very bright guy, crippled by back pain. Had had injuries in sports and he was within, literally within 24 hours of having neurosurgery. The neurosurgeon said they'd never seen a spine in such bad condition and you know, the only option was surgery.

• 17:27Lewis Howes?

  Wait, neurosurgery in the brain?

• 17:29Andrew Weil?

  No, back spine.

• 17:30Lewis Howes?

  Okay, in the spine.

• 17:31Andrew Weil?

  Yeah, the spinal nerves were being compressed.

• 17:33Lewis Howes?

  The nerves in the spine, gotcha.

• 17:34Andrew Weil?

  I told him to read Sarno's book. He said, "This is bullsh-" and I said, he was in New York, I said, "Why don't you go see him?" And he said that this made no sense to him. This was completely silly. He had, you know, he'd seen these neurosurgeons and it was back. Anyway, he went, he heard, Sarno, Sarno told him to come to his evening lecture. He was laughing during the lecture.

• 17:57Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 17:58Andrew Weil?

  That this was so silly. And he went home and was having dinner and suddenly in the middle of dinner realized his back pain was gone. You know, amazing, this kind of stuff.

• 18:07Lewis Howes?

  Is it, is it more of the awareness, having the awareness that the pain is not in the back for that example, or is it the, the information on how to continue to transform the mind?

• 18:19Andrew Weil?

  The tricky part is that the part of the mind that does this is the unconscious mind and you can't directly access that. So, I don't know, you have to trick yourself in some way.

• 18:27Lewis Howes?

  How do we tap into the unconscious mind?

• 18:29Andrew Weil?

  Well, I mean, there are things you can do to make it more likely. You can meditate, you can, you know, you can do affirmations, you can do hypnosis, you can see somebody who is a healer. But I think it's, these are all ways of somehow getting around whatever that gap is between where you think and the part of the brain that connects to the body.

• 18:50Lewis Howes?

  What's been the biggest challenge you've faced in your body? Biggest pain you've had to overcome? And what was the practice you used to overcome it?

• 18:57Andrew Weil?

  You know, I had, I'll tell you, I've had, can give you many examples, but one was, this must be about 12 years ago, I had had meniscus pain in my right knee and I'm not sure it was from, I can't relate it to any specific injury, but you know, I've been very active and- You know, with episodes where it got bad, I came to California on a business trip and suddenly in the space of a few hours, the pain got so bad I couldn't walk and I actually had to get in a wheelchair, had to get back home to Tucson. And I saw, you know, it subsided a bit. I went to see an orthopedist to x-ray my knees. He said there was no cartilage left.

• 19:40Andrew Weil?

  Started talking about knee replacement. I had a friend and colleague in New York who's a very good body worker that I'd seen and had been great. And I went to see him and he said, you know, this is all a matter of balance and weight and weight bearing. And he did some work on me, vanished.

• 19:59Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 20:00Andrew Weil?

  Vanished.

• 20:01Lewis Howes?

  You could walk fine after that?

• 20:02Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 20:03Lewis Howes?

  So maybe you were leaning on one side too much or your hips.

• 20:05Andrew Weil?

  Who knows? Something, something. But if I had.

• 20:08Lewis Howes?

  So the one doctor is saying you have no cartilage. You gotta, you have surgery. Otherwise you're not gonna be able to walk.

• 20:15Andrew Weil?

  And maybe that's true. Maybe I don't have cartilage. But, but you know, you can live with that and not have pain.

• 20:20Lewis Howes?

  Right. You look like you're in pretty, you look like you're jacked.

• 20:24Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 20:25Lewis Howes?

  You're pretty good shape, man.

• 20:26Andrew Weil?

  Not bad.

• 20:27Lewis Howes?

  What do you, what do you attribute to staying so young physically?

• 20:31Andrew Weil?

  Again, I think it's really mental, you know, like hanging out with people that make you feel alive. I mean, I'm, you know, I'm, I'm reasonably active. I swim every day. I have two big dogs that take me for walks. But I think it's like, I don't know, I think it's an attitude and, you know, doing things that I'm engaged with and that I, you know, turn me on.

• 20:55Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. Have you had any surgeries?

• 20:57Andrew Weil?

  No, I had my tonsils out when I was really little.

• 21:01Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 21:02Andrew Weil?

  And no, nothing major.

• 21:03Lewis Howes?

  Wow. So that was one instance with the knee. Was there another?

• 21:07Andrew Weil?

  Oh, I can give you some, I can give you so many things like that. I mean, some of these I've put in my books, stories like this. But, you know, and when I. I like to tell people about this because in my experience, most people do not have great confidence in their body's ability to repair itself. And I think this is where all good medicine starts, is with the body has incredible healing potential. And it's, I find it, you know, it's easier to talk with kids about that than doctors. You know, when a kid gets an owie, you say, look what happens, you know, watch how your body heals that. And you can plant the seed of the idea that the body has a healing system, you know, it can repair itself. Most doctors think that's new age woo woo.

• 21:51Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 21:52Andrew Weil?

  But it's not. I mean, it's like that the body has unbelievable capacity to adapt, to repair, to regenerate.

• 21:59Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 22:00Andrew Weil?

  And I feel one of my jobs as an integrative physician is to instill that kind of confidence in people, to make them, you know, you don't have to run off to a practitioner, you know, every time something goes wrong.

• 22:13Lewis Howes?

  When something goes wrong, what should be the first thought we have? Physical pain?

• 22:18Andrew Weil?

  Well, you know, you really want to have a sense of when things are beyond your ability to deal with, you know, when you really do need outside help.

• 22:26Lewis Howes?

  What does that look like?

• 22:27Andrew Weil?

  So if you have, if you have a symptom you've never had before, if you have a symptom that you've had before, but it's more severe than anything you've had before, you know, then maybe it's worth checking to see what that's about.

• 22:39Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 22:40Andrew Weil?

  But, you know, as I say, I think people just don't have that kind of confidence. I remember once interviewing for our fellowship, a family medicine doctor. She was a native German and she came to this country when she was a teenager, I think. And she said that growing up in Germany, that neither she nor her siblings, nor any of her friends ever went to a doctor. She said, you don't go to a doctor in Germany unless there's something really wrong with you.

• 23:11Lewis Howes?

  Unless you break a leg, right?

• 23:12Andrew Weil?

  Yeah, her parents had a whole... Repertory of home remedies that worked. I mean, that's very different from what you see in our in our part of the world.

• 23:19Lewis Howes?

  It's interesting. I grew up in a religion called Christian Science.

• 23:22Andrew Weil?

  Oh, sure.

• 23:25Andrew Weil?

  Great.

• 23:25Lewis Howes?

  And so I grew up in a, what you might consider a woo woo way of thinking.

• 23:29Andrew Weil?

  Yeah, really, right.

• 23:30Lewis Howes?

  I never went to the doctor. I never, you know, took medicine. I never got vaccinated for anything. You know, I had to have like permission slips that like, I don't need to go to go to school for vaccinations and things like that, which is, seems like the world is changing these days for even religious acceptance to not vaccination. And I was trained in an early mind, early time that the mind heals the body.

• 23:54Andrew Weil?

  Right.

• 23:55Lewis Howes?

  This was something that was constant and my father would just engrain this in me. Anytime I felt like sick or whatever, he was just like, know the truth that your mind has power, your body can heal itself and constantly focusing on the mind, the mind. And it was just like, you're, you are love.

• 24:11Andrew Weil?

  Right.

• 24:11Lewis Howes?

  You're a truth.

• 24:12Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 24:12Lewis Howes?

  You're a conscious like, and focusing on that. But I'd be like, but dad, this hurts.

• 24:17Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 24:17Lewis Howes?

  You know, I'd be like, but why is this hurt? Why, why is this like? So I was always conflicted, but that training, I had multiple quick healings.

• 24:26Andrew Weil?

  Uh huh.

• 24:27Lewis Howes?

  Multiple quick healings where I was like, huh, I shouldn't have been able to like heal the bone this quick or this. And so I saw these instances that I was like, okay, this is believable and the body can heal with the mind in the right place. But if the mind's in constant fear and anxiety, it's hard to heal. And so I was always

• 24:46Andrew Weil?

  Interesting.

• 24:46Lewis Howes?

  learning this process of like, and what I really learned is like have a common sense. You know, if you're in a lot of pain, like, okay, if you can't clear your mind, go get it checked out, you know? And so that's what I do now. It's like, okay.

• 24:57Andrew Weil?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 24:58Lewis Howes?

  Usually I can heal

• 24:59Andrew Weil?

  Right.

• 24:59Lewis Howes?

  Minor stuff quickly.

• 25:00Andrew Weil?

  Sometimes you need help.

• 25:02Lewis Howes?

  And go get it checked out.

• 25:03Andrew Weil?

  Did you ever read Mark Twain's essay on Christian Science?

• 25:05Lewis Howes?

  I, I bought the book because he wrote a book called Christian Science.

• 25:08Andrew Weil?

  Right. But there's one very funny essay where he, he has a broken leg and he first goes to, he says, a horse doctor who wanted to charge him for setting the bone. And then he sees a Christian Science practitioner and she tells him that the, the pain is all imaginary.

• 25:24Lewis Howes?

  It's in the mind.

• 25:25Andrew Weil?

  Right. Yeah. And so he pays her in imaginary money.

• 25:30Andrew Weil?

  And she sends him a very real bill and threatening letter that she's gonna take him to court.

• 25:35Lewis Howes?

  That's funny, yeah. Well, I guess it's kinda crazy because Mary Baker Eddy and Mark Twain were like, kind of rivals.

• 25:40Andrew Weil?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 25:41Lewis Howes?

  They respected but didn't respect each other and...

• 25:44Andrew Weil?

  Right.

• 25:44Lewis Howes?

  I think he was upset because she kept having bestseller after bestseller.

• 25:48Andrew Weil?

  Yes, right.

• 25:48Lewis Howes?

  For the same book.

• 25:49Andrew Weil?

  Now, another, another piece of information I got, because I was really interested in Christian Science.

• 25:53Lewis Howes?

  Did you study Christian Science a lot?

• 25:54Andrew Weil?

  Yeah, I did, I did, yeah. Is that when Christian scientists have to go to doctors.

• 25:58Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 25:59Andrew Weil?

  They respond fantastically to treatment. Uh, and do- and doctors that I know who've dealt with Christian Science, they love working with them.

• 26:07Lewis Howes?

  Why is that?

• 26:07Andrew Weil?

  Okay, because I think their belief is so focused, it's negative, you know, that, that conventional medicine, but it's a very strong belief. And it doesn't matter whether it's a plus or minus sign, it's the...

• 26:19Lewis Howes?

  Once you go to the medicine and you believe it's gonna work, and then it works for you.

• 26:24Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 26:24Lewis Howes?

  It's the belief that, no, this is not real, the pain is not...

• 26:28Andrew Weil?

  Or the belief that conventional medicine is evil, but I'm gonna have to do it, but it's like, you're believing it.

• 26:33Lewis Howes?

  Believe in it.

• 26:33Andrew Weil?

  Right. And it works for you.

• 26:35Lewis Howes?

  I think belief is a lot of it.

• 26:36Andrew Weil?

  Terrific.

• 26:37Lewis Howes?

  Isn't it?

• 26:37Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 26:37Lewis Howes?

  Belief in general, like, I mean, it's what placebo is, right? It's like, do you believe this pill is gonna actually help me? Whether it actually chemically does or not, studies have shown that.

• 26:47Andrew Weil?

  Absolutely.

• 26:48Lewis Howes?

  Placebo in the mind.

• 26:49Andrew Weil?

  But you know, it's so interesting, the, the two free, the commonest way I hear the word placebo used in medicine is in, how do you know that's not just a placebo effect? And the most interesting word there is just, or we have to rule out the placebo effect. That's what you should be trying to rule in, that's what you want. You know, that's the, that's pure healing from within, you know, mediated by the mind.

• 27:12Lewis Howes?

  Believing it, whether you're taking something or not.

• 27:15Andrew Weil?

  Right.

• 27:15Lewis Howes?

  Believing inside.

• 27:16Andrew Weil?

  So I never give patients sugar pills, I give them things I believe in, but I prefer to give people things that are dilute, that are less potent, you know, like, like botanicals, rather than pharmaceuticals if I can. But, you know, you, you want, you, the art of medicine is how you present treatments to people in ways that activate their belief.

• 27:38Lewis Howes?

  How would you approach this? Say I'm having extreme stomach pain right now. And it just keeps coming for days and I don't know how to get rid of this stomach pain.

• 27:48Andrew Weil?

  Well, first, I'm gonna, I'm gonna ask you what you're eating, what you're doing. By the way, that's a good one because you know, one of the worst categories of medications out there are these proton pump inhibitors, the acid blocking drugs, Nexium, the purple pill. These are really bad drugs.

• 28:03Lewis Howes?

  Bad for the gut, right?

• 28:04Andrew Weil?

  Bad. Once you start taking them, it's very hard to stop taking them.

• 28:07Lewis Howes?

  Because it relieves pain temporarily or what?

• 28:09Andrew Weil?

  It suppresses, when you suppress something like acid production in the stomach, what's the body gonna try to do? It's gonna try to produce more acid. So when you try to reduce the dose or stop, there's an outpouring of acid.

• 28:21Lewis Howes?

  And then you're in more pain.

• 28:21Andrew Weil?

  You're in more pain. Anyway, so you shouldn't even get on them in the first place. But that, you know, that's a great example. But I cannot tell you how many people I've seen who were put on these things without ever a dietary history being taken. Nobody asked them what they're eating. How much coffee you're drinking? Are you drinking alcohol? Do you smoke? What's your stress level? You know, often by addressing those things, you can deal with a lot of that. For more, and then there's natural remedies that, you know, that there's a licorice extract that increases the mucus coating in the stomach. It's benign. Anyway, but for more serious stuff, a strategy, I can't, again, can't always do this, but if you can introduce a patient to someone who has had their condition and is now well,

• 29:05Andrew Weil?

  that is a very powerful way to, you know, get their belief in the possibility that they can get better.

• 29:11Lewis Howes?

  Why is that? Someone else has done through, gone through this and they got better?

• 29:14Andrew Weil?

  Yeah, you can see it with your own eyes that they, you know, it's possible because often people get the message in, especially in their interactions with regular medicine that you have to live with it, you can't get better and so forth. I, one of the things that I've written, you know, our, our National Institutes of Health, it's funny, if you look at the list of the institutes that make it up, you know, where is the Institute of Health and Healing? There isn't one. These are the National Institutes of Diseases and Body Parts. It's the National Cancer Institute, the National Kidney and blah, blah, blah.

• 29:43Lewis Howes?

  About health.

• 29:44Andrew Weil?

  There's nothing about health. So what I would do, if I were king, I would create a National Institute of Health and Healing, and one of its missions would be to compile a national registry of remission. So if you get diagnosed with something serious, you know, ulcerative colitis, whatever, you can contact this agency and they will put you in touch with people in your area who have had your disease and are now well.

• 30:13Lewis Howes?

  Isn't it true that just connecting to a group of someone or someone who've gone through something similar gives you more relief and connection?

• 30:23Andrew Weil?

  If the outcomes are good, you know, one of the problems like, you know, with I see with cancer patients, someone newly diagnosed with cancer and then is told they have to start chemotherapy. So they go to oncologist's office and they're sitting in the waiting room and what do you see? You know, you see really not good looking people, you know.

• 30:40Lewis Howes?

  Doesn't encourage you.

• 30:40Andrew Weil?

  Doesn't encourage you. So, you know, it's really important to have, be able to have those messages about that it's possible to get better, that you can be well. And that's, you know, something that I often, often find that in my work with patients is to constantly give that message that, you know, sometimes I'll say to people, you know, I know you can get better. I don't know exactly how you can get better. I'm going to give you suggestions of things to try and you let me know what works and what doesn't, but I know you can get better.

• 31:10Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. And I've heard you say before that every, you know, every body or every human type should be treated differently. You can try different things, but you might need something else than will work for this person. And so you've got to address your whole life.

• 31:21Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 31:22Lewis Howes?

  Your whole life strategy and what you've been up to. What would you say, if you could choose how old you want to live till? What age would you love to live?

• 31:30Andrew Weil?

  Well, till it's, till it's, you know, not fun anymore.

• 31:33Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. What would, what would that be?

• 31:35Andrew Weil?

  I don't know. It might be mid eighties, 90. I don't know. I don't know that I want to live much longer than that.

• 31:40Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 31:40Andrew Weil?

  Really.

• 31:42Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 31:42Andrew Weil?

  Yeah. I mean, when I look around me, I mean, there are, there are some exceptional individuals. You know, I have one friend.

• 31:48Lewis Howes?

  She seems super sharp and healthy.

• 31:50Andrew Weil?

  Yeah, but who knows? I mean, I, you know, who knows? We don't know. At some point, you know, you see people when bodies begin to break down and it's not fun anymore. And another problem is that, you know, when people live too long, all your contemporaries are gone. You know, you don't have

• 32:07Lewis Howes?

  You lose all your friends.

• 32:08Andrew Weil?

  Right, you lose all your friends. And another one, I quoted, I wrote a book on healthy aging and I quoted a woman who was in her, she was a hundred and two, something like that. And she said that, you know, look at the way the world is now, look at the way it's going. And look what it's gonna be, you know, yeah, I don't know that I wanna see it.

• 32:25Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 32:27Andrew Weil?

  You know, so there's, there's, it's not as simple as just wanting to live a certain number of years. You know, i- if you wanna live without, relative without pain.

• 32:35Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 32:36Andrew Weil?

  You wanna be having fun and connected with things and, you know, you don't wanna live when the world gets increasingly terrible, which it could.

• 32:45Lewis Howes?

  For, for people that do wanna live over a hundred, let's say, for people that aspire to live over a hundred, healthy, sharp minds, you know, memory, can see, everything can move functionally, what would you say would be three to five?

• 33:03Andrew Weil?

  Okay, so, you know, some years ago, the MacArthur Foundation did a, a study of what they called successful aging and they interviewed fairly large number of people who were identified as being successful agers to see what they had in common. The two factors that stood out above everything else were maintenance of physical activity throughout life. And that doesn't mean, you know, running marathons or working out with trainers, it's just being physically active. And the second was maintaining social and intellectual connectivity. And those two factors overrode nutrition, whether people were taking supplements, yeah, those were the two that most stood out. Now, when I was researching that book, I made several trips to Okinawa, which at the

• 33:48Andrew Weil?

  time was in the eighties, nineties.

• 33:50Lewis Howes?

  Is that the blue, a blue zone there?

• 33:52Andrew Weil?

  Yeah, it was, Okinawa had the highest concentration of centenarians in the world. So, I went there, you know, it's a fabulous place, it's a tropical Pacific paradise, clean air, clean water. It's not Japan, it's a very different culture, different genetics, different culture, it's halfway between Southeast Asia and Japan, the people look, some people look more Cambodian than Japanese.

• 34:13Lewis Howes?

  Okinawa.

• 34:13Andrew Weil?

  Okinawa, it's a, a chain of islands at the southern end of Japan, and it wasn't part of Japan until relatively recently. Anyway. You know, it's the first thing I realized when I went there. Everything is so different. You know, you can't say that any one thing is responsible for this. You know, it's clean air, clean water. People are, the diet, amazing. I mean, one of the most varied, interesting diets I've ever seen. Not different from the Japanese diet. They eat more pork than the Japanese. And the pork is long-cooked to remove fat. They drink jasmine tea, not green tea. They eat a tremendous variety of land and sea vegetables, seafood. They, very physically active.

• 34:57Andrew Weil?

  You know, they don't work out with trainers. They, but you know, they, they hole net, fishing nets and garden and stuff like that. But the, so very hard to disentangle, you know, what may be responsible for it. But the one thing that really struck me going there from America was the different value placed on aging there. That, and the best example I can give you is that the, a, a story that I got repeatedly. In traditional Okinawan society, a major cause of sibling fighting was over who is going to get to take care of the aging parents.

• 35:33Lewis Howes?

  No way.

• 35:33Andrew Weil?

  That's a little different from what, a little different from what we see here.

• 35:36Lewis Howes?

  The fighting was over.

• 35:38Andrew Weil?

  Who is going to get to.

• 35:39Lewis Howes?

  No, I'm gonna take care of grandma or parents.

• 35:41Andrew Weil?

  Exactly, exactly. Yeah.

• 35:43Lewis Howes?

  No, I'm gonna take care of them. No, yeah. Wait a minute, people here like.

• 35:46Andrew Weil?

  It's like get away. Yes.

• 35:49Lewis Howes?

  What is that?

• 35:50Andrew Weil?

  Well, we're, I don't think, we don't like to look at old. You know, old makes us think of our own mortality and, and we want it out of sight. Anyway, the old people that I saw there. They, the oldest old are considered living treasures. And whole communities make efforts to include them in all community activities. And they have a glow about them, you know, they were, the.

• 36:13Lewis Howes?

  They're idolized almost.

• 36:14Andrew Weil?

  Yeah, exactly. And they, they look old. I mean, they don't use botox, they're wrinkled and some of them are stoop. But they have a, a glow that I don't see among many old.

• 36:23Lewis Howes?

  A wisdom, a confidence.

• 36:25Andrew Weil?

  Yeah, they're valued.

• 36:28Andrew Weil?

  So to me, that was very striking as such a different from something that I see here. Now also, I have to tell you then in the years that I was going there, Okinawan longevity plummeted, especially among men. And that was attributed entirely to the popularity of American fast food, particularly McDonald's, which became very popular there. And you wonder, you know, I saw there was an article in New York Times about that. And they quoted a middle aged Okinawan man who said, "The first time he tasted a McDonald's hamburger, he thought he had died and gone to heaven." I mean, how could that be? They have the most wonderful food available. It really makes you think that the people who designed that kind of stuff have really done a lot of research to figure out what appeals to some

• 37:11Lewis Howes?

  The brain.

• 37:11Andrew Weil?

  Basic wiring in the brain, you know, it's some combinations of salt, crunch, fat.

• 37:15Lewis Howes?

  The sugar, the all of it. It's like, ah, this is like, yeah, turning my mind on that. I want more and more and more.

• 37:22Andrew Weil?

  But anyway, I think, you know, you asked me the factors. I think being physically active throughout life.

• 37:28Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 37:29Andrew Weil?

  Personally, I know I, I think diet does have a big role, but very hard to make, you know, recommendations that apply to everyone. But I think the one I feel sure of is you want to really try to avoid refined, processed and manufactured food.

• 37:44Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 37:44Andrew Weil?

  And eat foods as close to the way nature produces them as possible.

• 37:47Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 37:48Andrew Weil?

  I think the social intellectual connectedness is huge. And, you know, really saw that in Okinawa.

• 37:56Lewis Howes?

  What is the thing you fear the most at your age?

• 38:05Andrew Weil?

  It's hard to say. I guess, you know, I, I, I, I don't feel any changes in my mental function. I mean, I feel the same as I did when I was, you know, seven or eight.

• 38:18Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 38:19Andrew Weil?

  Yeah. My body is obviously different. I have more aches and pains and I don't have the energy level that I had. And, you know, I don't, I don't want, you know, I don't want my bodily complaints to take over my awareness. So, you know, that's, that's, I guess, what I would be afraid of.

• 38:39Lewis Howes?

  Right. Are there things that you can do to, to prevent that or to?

• 38:43Andrew Weil?

  Well, I think I'm doing them, you know? I, I do as much as I can, but nonetheless, time marches on, you know? I'm going to be 79 in a month and, you know, it's getting up there.

• 38:55Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I was talking with. Gosh, a doctor from Harvard on anti-aging. I'm forgetting his name right now.

• 39:05Lewis Howes?

  And he said, you know, it's horrible what we see with our elders these days in America where they get sick and we extend their lives in pain for 10, 20 years of suffering. Whereas the key would be they live a long time, they get sick and then they die the next week.

• 39:24Andrew Weil?

  Alright, so there's a technical term for that. It's called compression of morbidity, where morbidity has the medical meaning of sickness. So the idea is you want to squeeze the time of inevitable disability and decline at the end of life into as short a period as possible.

• 39:38Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 39:39Andrew Weil?

  So you live long and well and then you have a rapid drop off at the end.

• 39:42Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 39:42Andrew Weil?

  So that's what we'd like to do.

• 39:43Lewis Howes?

  What's it called?

• 39:44Andrew Weil?

  Compression of morbidity.

• 39:46Lewis Howes?

  As opposed to what are we doing right now in general where it's?

• 39:49Andrew Weil?

  Extension of morbidity, prolongation of that period.

• 39:53Lewis Howes?

  Just keeping someone alive to keep them alive.

• 39:55Andrew Weil?

  So how do you do that? I mean, how do you increase your chances of experiencing that? So I think it's by attending to all the factors under our control that we know influence how you age. So it is, it is diet, it's physical activity, it's getting good rest and sleep, it's managing stress, which I think is huge. You know, you want to find some, you can't live without stress, but you can find ways to neutralize its harmful effects. It's being socially and intellectually connected.

• 40:25Lewis Howes?

  Have you done a lot of research on the person you marry or your partner and how long you'll live? Like, how important it is to have a certain level of peace in your marriage?

• 40:38Andrew Weil?

  Right, absolutely.

• 40:40Lewis Howes?

  I don't know what the factors are that'll help extend the quality of your health and lifespan.

• 40:45Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 40:46Lewis Howes?

  Do you know what those factors are?

• 40:47Andrew Weil?

  No, I can guess.

• 40:50Lewis Howes?

  Like, the more stress in a marriage, I'm assuming is chances for more pain and suffering and shorter, or shorter death.

• 40:56Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 40:57Lewis Howes?

  Shorter life.

• 40:58Andrew Weil?

  I mean, I think the more stress in any area of your life, you know, whether it's work or, or, or relationships or, you know, whatever, I think that, as I said, I don't think we live without stress. That's part of living, but you can learn and practice methods to neutralize its harmful effects.

• 41:16Lewis Howes?

  What would be the, uh, the five foods? That if you could only have these five foods to support the overall quality of your, your mind, your body, your, your health, your longevity, what would those five foods be for you?

• 41:29Andrew Weil?

  That's tricky. I would say, uh,

• 41:31Lewis Howes?

  For you personally?

• 41:31Andrew Weil?

  Okay, maybe salmon.

• 41:33Lewis Howes?

  Okay. Uh, Why, why salmon?

• 41:35Andrew Weil?

  Cause it's a good source of omega three fatty acids and I like it.

• 41:39Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 41:40Andrew Weil?

  Broccoli, uh, cause it's a cruciferous vegetable that has lots of protective compounds in it. Uh, berries, uh, which I think are, you know, really good fruits that are low in glycemic load and have a lot of protective compounds in them. Uh, I would say green tea.

• 41:59Lewis Howes?

  Really? Over jasmine tea?

• 42:01Andrew Weil?

  Yeah. My prefer, and my preferred form is matcha.

• 42:04Lewis Howes?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 42:05Andrew Weil?

  Which we'll talk about.

• 42:07Lewis Howes?

  Why green tea over jasmine tea like the Okinawa community?

• 42:10Andrew Weil?

  Um, I, I think that there've been more studies on green tea and its antioxidant, uh, and its association with healthy longevity.

• 42:20Lewis Howes?

  And the fifth?

• 42:21Andrew Weil?

  And the fifth one, maybe dark chocolate.

• 42:25Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 42:26Andrew Weil?

  At least 70% cocoa.

• 42:27Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. Okay.

• 42:29Andrew Weil?

  And maybe olive oil. That would be a toss up.

• 42:31Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, olive oil is, why is olive oil being talked about so much? Dr. Stephen Gundry obsesses about olive oil, like getting as much in your body on a daily as possible, like liters a week or something, he's saying.

• 42:44Andrew Weil?

  Well, the average Italian family, I found out, goes through a liter a week. Uh, it is, first of all, it tastes great.

• 42:51Lewis Howes?

  It does.

• 42:51Andrew Weil?

  It's from a fruit. You know, there aren't many oils from fruits and most,

• 42:55Lewis Howes?

  Oils are fruits.

• 42:56Andrew Weil?

  Most, yeah, most oils come from seeds and the fatty acid composition of oils that come from fruits, uh, the other one is avocado, uh, are really heart healthy. And olive oil is unique in having a, an anti-inflammatory compound in it. Um, that no other oil has and that is very good to contain inappropriate inflammation. And it tastes great.

• 43:21Lewis Howes?

  It does. A lot of calories, but it tastes good, right?

• 43:23Andrew Weil?

  Yes.

• 43:23Lewis Howes?

  It tastes good. What would be, um, The non-negotiables for you on a daily basis right now at this stage of your life moving forward that you need to think about, meditation, a prayer practice, a wake-up time, an activity? What's the not, a conversation you have with your daughter?

• 43:40Andrew Weil?

  I go to bed early, you know, I have for a long time, you know, I'm usually in bed by 8:30 or 9. I get up at, usually 4, 4:30. That's just my pattern.

• 43:49Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 43:50Andrew Weil?

  I meditate when I get up, which I've done for a long time. I practice breath work, which for me is, you know, that's both a spiritual practice and a physical practice, and I think that, I teach that to all people. I think that's the real key to good physical health.

• 44:08Andrew Weil?

  I, you know, have relationships that I value with my daughter, with my wife.

• 44:16Andrew Weil?

  I have companion animals. I'm a dog lover and I can't imagine life without dogs.

• 44:23Andrew Weil?

  You know, I spend time outdoors and I have, I have rewarding work.

• 44:29Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 44:30Andrew Weil?

  It's very satisfying.

• 44:32Lewis Howes?

  How important is nature, in your opinion, versus living in a concrete jungle?

• 44:36Andrew Weil?

  Well, even if you're living in a concrete jungle, you can have plants indoors and go to a park. You know, so you can find ways to access nature even if you're in a, even if you're in a city.

• 44:47Lewis Howes?

  Right. How important is it for you to just be able to walk around in the, in the nature in your backyard?

• 44:52Andrew Weil?

  It's important.

• 44:53Lewis Howes?

  Important. Really?

• 44:55Andrew Weil?

  Yeah. I've always liked the garden. I grow a lot of my own food. I take great pleasure in that. My house is filled with plants and I have, you know, I live in the desert in Tucson, but I have a summer place on an island in British Columbia, which is the exact opposite.

• 45:09Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 45:09Andrew Weil?

  You know, it's all green and

• 45:11Lewis Howes?

  Lush and water.

• 45:12Andrew Weil?

  Water, yeah. So, you know, I get that best of those worlds.

• 45:16Lewis Howes?

  That's exciting. What, what brings you more peace? Which, which location? Desert or?

• 45:22Andrew Weil?

  They both, both. Except the desert not in, not in July.

• 45:27Lewis Howes?

  No peace, you can't go outside.

• 45:28Andrew Weil?

  And British Columbia not in January, February.

• 45:32Lewis Howes?

  See, flip-flop.

• 45:33Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 45:35Lewis Howes?

  How long you been married?

• 45:37Andrew Weil?

  Well, this is my second marriage and I've been married for two years.

• 45:43Lewis Howes?

  Okay. And when we go, when you go through challenging times in relationships, you don't have to get into detail here, but when you've been through challenging times, whether it be a family member, partner, friends, colleagues, how much does that impact your health?

• 45:58Andrew Weil?

  Enormous.

• 45:59Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 46:00Andrew Weil?

  Yeah. Enormous.

• 46:02Lewis Howes?

  Is it the conflict itself or the unresolved conflict?

• 46:07Andrew Weil?

  That's a hard question. I guess it's the unresolved conflict that's more damaging. But you know, I'm very sensitive to that and it really affects my sleep, my digestion.

• 46:17Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 46:18Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 46:20Lewis Howes?

  When you realize that you start to resolve the conflict in your life, what happens to your health? Do you notice it physically in your stomach digestion?

• 46:29Andrew Weil?

  Yeah, and sleep especially.

• 46:32Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 46:33Lewis Howes?

  And how important is sleep for longevity?

• 46:38Andrew Weil?

  Yeah, I think there's a, there's a, the percentage of people that don't either get enough sleep or good quality sleep is very high in this country. And there's enormous consumption of medications, both prescribed and over the counter for sleep, and they're all horrible.

• 46:54Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 46:54Andrew Weil?

  None of them reproduce natural sleep. They suppress dreaming, they're addictive, interfere with cognitive function.

• 47:01Lewis Howes?

  What happens when we take an over the counter pill or prescription pill in general? When we take a substance, a chemical substance, no matter what it's treating for, the stomach or pain?

• 47:13Andrew Weil?

  Well, you know, the body is, our bodies are very good at dealing with all sorts of stuff. And you know, we can handle things like that. But in one of the things-

• 47:22Lewis Howes?

  Over the counter?

• 47:23Andrew Weil?

  Well, it doesn't matter. Some of the strongest ones are over the counter. Like with sleep, you know, the, the most common over the counter sleep aid in products like Unisom, for example, and Somenex is Benadryl. It's a diphenhydramine and anahistamine. That makes you drowsy and it's now been found to increase long-term dementia risks if you take it regularly.

• 47:46Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 47:46Andrew Weil?

  So that's an over the counter, you know, a nice little over the counter substance. However, you know, one of, one of the things that, uh, that happens that, that I think many people don't realize, a lot of the, most of the medications we use are counteractive. They, they counteract physiological processes. And that's why most of the names begin with anti, you know, it's anti-hypertensive, anti-histamines, anti-spesmodics, anti-this, anti-that. When you use that kind of a medication, you're pushing against the body with an outside force.

• 48:20Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 48:21Andrew Weil?

  What does it do? It pushes back. Now that's something called homeostasis, you know, the body tries to maintain equilibrium. So, and I think people don't realize this, if you give one of these counteractive medications over time, long-term, the homeostatic reaction may get you in more trouble than you had to begin with. And that's what happens with these acid blocking drugs. You know, after, there was even a, an experiment reported a few years ago where they took a group of young, healthy men who had no GI problems, put them on one of these medications for, I think, six weeks and then stopped it suddenly and they all developed reflux disease. So the drug caused the problem that was meant to treat.

• 49:04Andrew Weil?

  You know, and this is, this is something, same thing happens with antidepressants, you know, that you give these things that increase serotonin at neural junctions in the brain. And what happens over time, the body stops making serotonin and it drops serotonin receptors.

• 49:18Lewis Howes?

  Makes you more depressed when you get off of it.

• 49:20Andrew Weil?

  Exactly. Exactly. So that's something that people just don't, that, you know, don't think about. They don't realize that problem. And, you know, it is, it, if you're dealing with an acute situation, it's nice to have these things that push the body back in the right place. But once you get there, you want to back off their use and find other ways to maintain that improvement because if you stick with the medication, you're going to run more often than not into that kind of problem.

• 49:45Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 49:45Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 49:46Lewis Howes?

  So if someone's been, I mean, it seems like this, especially with social media culture, comparison culture on social media, the addictiveness. Now, I, I agree, everyone has the ability to just put the phone down.

• 49:57Andrew Weil?

  Right.

• 49:58Lewis Howes?

  Right?

• 49:58Andrew Weil?

  Yeah, not so easy though.

• 49:59Lewis Howes?

  Everyone has the ability to say, I'm turning my phone off and I'm going to go do something else. But with this culture of not enough, instant gratification, comparing to all these other people who look better, whatever, and me needing to fulfill something that I'm not doing. What would you say to the younger generation that has all of these things coming in to their mind? All this attention to how they're not enough? What would you say if they're in extreme depression, feeling moody? I don't know if that's all teenagers in general, but if they're having that, how can they start to find more peace?

• 50:35Andrew Weil?

  I think you want to limit your time on devices in general, you know? And realize how addictive and seductive it is and to just set some kind of limits to it. Because it's, it really affects brain function. I don't think we know the full extent of that at the moment.

• 50:49Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 50:52Andrew Weil?

  That's a big problem.

• 50:53Lewis Howes?

  Are you, do you use devices a lot?

• 50:55Andrew Weil?

  I do, but I'm pretty, I'm better than most people that I see. You know, and usually at some point in the day, which is, you know, maybe middle of the day, I'm, I'm out of there. You know, and I try not to look at email or any of that stuff anymore.

• 51:09Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, and you're out in nature, you're connected with family and.

• 51:11Andrew Weil?

  Right.

• 51:12Lewis Howes?

  And speaking of family, how long were you married, the first marriage?

• 51:16Andrew Weil?

  Seven years.

• 51:17Lewis Howes?

  Seven years?

• 51:17Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 51:18Lewis Howes?

  And then how long was there a time between the first marriage and current marriage?

• 51:22Andrew Weil?

  That must have been, that was fairly long.

• 51:24Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 51:25Andrew Weil?

  I was in a long-term relationship.

• 51:27Lewis Howes?

  Just not married. Okay, got you.

• 51:28Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 51:30Lewis Howes?

  What's the reason for getting remarried at this age?

• 51:34Andrew Weil?

  That's a good question.

• 51:35Lewis Howes?

  And what are the benefits or non-benefits to your overall health?

• 51:39Andrew Weil?

  Okay, well, one of the benefits is that I'm married to Canadian, so I can get into Canada. So I can get into Canada.

• 51:46Lewis Howes?

  You can get to your second home.

• 51:47Andrew Weil?

  Can get to my second home, right. Uh, she's also much younger than I am. Uh, she's 43 and she's.

• 51:54Lewis Howes?

  You are.

• 51:55Andrew Weil?

  I'm 70, about to be 79.

• 51:57Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 51:57Andrew Weil?

  And she's very athletic and outdoorsy, so that's very good for me. Uh, you know, she's a runner and all sorts of things. So, uh, she pulls me in directions that otherwise I might not.

• 52:09Lewis Howes?

  That you'd be like, I want to relax.

• 52:10Andrew Weil?

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah, right.

• 52:12Lewis Howes?

  Move your butt.

• 52:12Andrew Weil?

  So that's good.

• 52:13Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 52:14Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 52:15Lewis Howes?

  That's interesting. Where do you think your health would be if you weren't in a relationship where someone was actively trying to move?

• 52:21Andrew Weil?

  I probably would be lazier and, uh, you know, I think my, I, I take pretty good care of myself, but probably not as good as it is at the moment.

• 52:30Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 52:31Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 52:32Lewis Howes?

  So Mary Young.

• 52:34Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 52:37Lewis Howes?

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

• 52:53Andrew Weil?

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

• 53:24Lewis Howes?

  Olive oil is good too.

• 53:25Andrew Weil?

  Olive oil, of course.

• 53:28Lewis Howes?

  Do you take supplements yourself?

• 53:29Andrew Weil?

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

• 53:40Lewis Howes?

  Really? And you make them yourself?

• 53:42Andrew Weil?

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

• 53:47Lewis Howes?

  How long you been studying mushrooms?

• 53:49Andrew Weil?

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

• 54:03Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 54:04Andrew Weil?

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

• 54:41Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 54:42Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 54:43Lewis Howes?

  So you take them daily or weekly?

• 54:45Andrew Weil?

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

• 54:48Lewis Howes?

  Mushrooms are powerful, huh?

• 54:50Andrew Weil?

  They're real powerful.

• 54:51Lewis Howes?

  Was there a documentary called like The Magic Power of Mushrooms?

• 54:53Andrew Weil?

  I'm sure.

• 54:54Lewis Howes?

  Did you see this on Netflix?

• 54:55Andrew Weil?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 54:57Lewis Howes?

  There's, how many species of mushroom?

• 55:00Andrew Weil?

  Countless, I don't think we know.

• 55:02Lewis Howes?

  Thousands, right?

• 55:02Andrew Weil?

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

• 55:13Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 55:13Andrew Weil?

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

• 55:21Lewis Howes?

  For a few hours and you'll be fine.

• 55:22Andrew Weil?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 55:25Lewis Howes?

  Tell me, tell me, talk to me about teas, because I'm interested in teas.

• 55:29Andrew Weil?

  Sure.

• 55:29Lewis Howes?

  And the power of teas. And what is the purpose of tea and why do people drink it so much in general?

• 55:35Andrew Weil?

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

• 55:50Lewis Howes?

  It's not tea.

• 55:50Andrew Weil?

  Rooibos tea is not tea.

• 55:51Lewis Howes?

  What is it? It's just herbs?

• 55:53Andrew Weil?

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

• 55:59Lewis Howes?

  Where does this species grow? It can grow anywhere.

• 56:01Andrew Weil?

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

• 56:44Andrew Weil?

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

• 56:47Lewis Howes?

  Right, right. Or iced tea and the golf course.

• 56:49Andrew Weil?

  With a lot of sugar.

• 56:50Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 56:51Andrew Weil?

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

• 57:08Lewis Howes?

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

• 57:10Andrew Weil?

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

• 57:18Lewis Howes?

  All tea, or I guess?

• 57:19Andrew Weil?

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

• 57:23Lewis Howes?

  Like a mint tea that's non-caffeine?

• 57:25Andrew Weil?

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

• 57:30Lewis Howes?

  But that's with caffeine.

• 57:31Andrew Weil?

  Yes.

• 57:31Lewis Howes?

  If it's tea, it has caffeine.

• 57:33Andrew Weil?

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

• 57:56Lewis Howes?

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

• 58:00Andrew Weil?

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

• 58:05Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 58:06Andrew Weil?

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

• 58:11Lewis Howes?

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

• 58:15Andrew Weil?

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

• 58:35Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 58:35Andrew Weil?

  You don't see that with tea, you know, rare.

• 58:37Lewis Howes?

  Like I need my tea this morning.

• 58:39Andrew Weil?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 58:40Lewis Howes?

  I'm on my feet, talking about tea.

• 58:42Andrew Weil?

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

• 59:06Lewis Howes?

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

• 59:10Andrew Weil?

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

• 59:13Lewis Howes?

  You're breaking people's hearts.

• 59:14Andrew Weil?

  And nobody ever told them though.

• 59:16Lewis Howes?

  You're breaking people's hearts.

• 59:17Andrew Weil?

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

• 59:39Lewis Howes?

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

• 59:43Andrew Weil?

  So you're relatively caffeine insensitive.

• 59:45Lewis Howes?

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

• 59:56Andrew Weil?

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

• 1:00:05Lewis Howes?

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

• 1:00:07Andrew Weil?

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

• 1:00:19Lewis Howes?

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

• 1:00:21Andrew Weil?

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

• 1:00:32Lewis Howes?

  And you feel tired.

• 1:00:33Andrew Weil?

  Yeah, you have a crash. So.

• 1:00:35Lewis Howes?

  And why does tea not do that specifically?

• 1:00:37Andrew Weil?

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

• 1:00:50Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:00:51Andrew Weil?

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

• 1:01:06Lewis Howes?

  Like, what are the benefits?

• 1:01:08Andrew Weil?

  Overall, lower death rates.

• 1:01:10Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:01:10Andrew Weil?

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

• 1:01:14Lewis Howes?

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

• 1:01:19Andrew Weil?

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

• 1:01:37Lewis Howes?

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

• 1:01:44Andrew Weil?

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

• 1:01:46Lewis Howes?

  I could get a little nauseous sometimes.

• 1:01:47Andrew Weil?

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

• 1:01:49Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:01:50Andrew Weil?

  That's a fairly simple fix.

• 1:01:51Lewis Howes?

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

• 1:01:53Andrew Weil?

  I don't know, and it's not.

• 1:01:54Lewis Howes?

  With coffee, I'm fine.

• 1:01:55Andrew Weil?

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

• 1:01:57Lewis Howes?

  I can drink coffee in the morning and not eat all day.

• 1:01:58Andrew Weil?

  I do not know why.

• 1:02:00Lewis Howes?

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

• 1:02:05Andrew Weil?

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

• 1:02:09Lewis Howes?

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

• 1:02:11Andrew Weil?

  Okay, good.

• 1:02:11Lewis Howes?

  I like matcha.

• 1:02:12Andrew Weil?

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

• 1:02:15Lewis Howes?

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

• 1:02:19Andrew Weil?

  Yeah, well, it was a good score.

• 1:02:20Lewis Howes?

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

• 1:02:24Andrew Weil?

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

• 1:02:35Lewis Howes?

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

• 1:02:38Andrew Weil?

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

• 1:02:44Lewis Howes?

  You didn't speak the language.

• 1:02:45Andrew Weil?

  Changed my life, anyway.

• 1:02:47Lewis Howes?

  It's quite a quick story there, before you tell it. My dad, we had seven exchanges live with us when I was a kid. So, it's like, we didn't have the money to travel.

• 1:02:54Andrew Weil?

  Right, but you brought it to you.

• 1:02:56Lewis Howes?

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

• 1:03:00Andrew Weil?

  There's no substitute for that.

• 1:03:02Lewis Howes?

  Amazing.

• 1:03:03Andrew Weil?

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

• 1:03:05Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:06Andrew Weil?

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

• 1:03:22Lewis Howes?

  No one spoke English.

• 1:03:22Andrew Weil?

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

• 1:03:33Lewis Howes?

  That's kinda cool.

• 1:03:34Andrew Weil?

  So it was cool. So the three of us sat around, and this woman in kimono made matcha. So first of all, the color of the matcha just blew me away. I mean, it's this brilliant green powder. I'd never seen green like that. And then the whisk that they whisked it in a bowl to a froth is a marvel of Japanese craftsmanship, carved from a single piece of bamboo. And that whisk just, oh, I loved it. I wanted with us. So I then, in the 1970s, I began going to Japan fairly regularly for different things. And whenever I'd go, I'd bring matcha back and turn people on to it. Nobody had ever heard of matcha. And I'd make it for people.

• 1:04:16Andrew Weil?

  And somewhere in the 80s, maybe 90s, I started importing matcha from a company in Japan that I met and selling it on my website, drweil.com, way ahead of its time. You know, there was no awareness of matcha.

• 1:04:30Lewis Howes?

  Before Starbucks made it popular.

• 1:04:31Andrew Weil?

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

• 1:04:42Lewis Howes?

  Well, it's just sugar infused.

• 1:04:44Andrew Weil?

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

• 1:05:08Lewis Howes?

  What are the benefits of matcha in general?

• 1:05:11Andrew Weil?

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

• 1:05:41Lewis Howes?

  To try to get the sun.

• 1:05:42Andrew Weil?

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

• 1:06:12Lewis Howes?

  We'll have to come to Tucson and have you make me some.

• 1:06:14Andrew Weil?

  I would love to do that.

• 1:06:15Lewis Howes?

  Whisk it up for me.

• 1:06:16Andrew Weil?

  I would love to do that.

• 1:06:17Lewis Howes?

  Or just go to Japan and find a specialty place.

• 1:06:20Andrew Weil?

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

• 1:06:23Lewis Howes?

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

• 1:06:26Andrew Weil?

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

• 1:06:29Lewis Howes?

  The bowls and everything.

• 1:06:30Andrew Weil?

  Everything, everything's all there.

• 1:06:31Lewis Howes?

  That's exciting.

• 1:06:32Andrew Weil?

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

• 1:06:34Lewis Howes?

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

• 1:06:38Andrew Weil?

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

• 1:06:47Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:48Andrew Weil?

  Or you can do it any way you want.

• 1:06:49Lewis Howes?

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

• 1:06:55Andrew Weil?

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

• 1:07:10Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:07:10Andrew Weil?

  I like to drink green things.

• 1:07:12Lewis Howes?

  What's the, are you drinking one tea a day?

• 1:07:18Andrew Weil?

  I'd say one a day.

• 1:07:19Lewis Howes?

  For you?

• 1:07:20Andrew Weil?

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

• 1:07:26Lewis Howes?

  What's your nighttime ritual?

• 1:07:29Andrew Weil?

  My nighttime ritual, I eat early.

• 1:07:31Lewis Howes?

  What's that, five, seven?

• 1:07:33Andrew Weil?

  Four to five, I would say.

• 1:07:35Lewis Howes?

  That's your dinner?

• 1:07:35Andrew Weil?

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

• 1:08:01Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 1:08:04Lewis Howes?

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

• 1:08:09Andrew Weil?

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

• 1:08:18Lewis Howes?

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

• 1:08:20Andrew Weil?

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

• 1:08:50Lewis Howes?

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

• 1:08:56Andrew Weil?

  No, it builds on conventional medicine.

• 1:08:57Lewis Howes?

  So you're still can prescribe traditional medicine?

• 1:09:00Andrew Weil?

  Absolutely. Yeah, you know, we, we, if, I've always said, if I'm in a serious car accident, I don't want to first go to a, to a Christian Science practitioner or a chiropractor or shaman. You know, I want to go to a trauma center and get put back together. But then I'd use other methods I know to speed up healing. So I think the, frankly, I could, one of the things I can see happening, I think that a lot of smaller and community hospitals aren't going to be there in the future. I think nobody's going to be able to afford, you know, that stuff. And that, what we call conventional medicine, allopathic medicine, that may become a specialty for dealing with trauma, for critical illness. And there'll be one large facility in cities that has all the hardware. And there'll be new kinds

• 1:09:43Andrew Weil?

  of institutions that'll come into being, you know, that I think of as healing centers. That's, that's one possible future.

• 1:09:51Lewis Howes?

  You've seen the obesity go up in America since the last 50 years. It probably wasn't two thirds back then. It was probably about one third maybe, or not even. I don't know what it was back then.

• 1:10:01Andrew Weil?

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

• 1:10:08Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:10:08Andrew Weil?

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

• 1:10:17Lewis Howes?

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

• 1:10:19Andrew Weil?

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

• 1:10:26Lewis Howes?

  They weren't processing food as much too.

• 1:10:28Andrew Weil?

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

• 1:10:40Lewis Howes?

  There was no fast food then.

• 1:10:41Andrew Weil?

  Right. But there's an enormous change in how people looked. You know, I read, it was a book that came out a few years ago that was trying to argue that the obesity epidemic was an artifact of statistics, the way we were measuring people? Bullshit. You just look at this, you know, it's like unbelievable how, how people have changed.

• 1:10:59Lewis Howes?

  Everyone was fit or looked thinner back then, right? And now everyone looks fatter.

• 1:11:04Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:05Lewis Howes?

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

• 1:11:12Andrew Weil?

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

• 1:11:30Lewis Howes?

  Just because they're not in shape enough to pass the test?

• 1:11:32Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:33Lewis Howes?

  The physical test?

• 1:11:34Andrew Weil?

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

• 1:11:47Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:11:48Andrew Weil?

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

• 1:11:50Lewis Howes?

  Soda pop.

• 1:11:51Andrew Weil?

  And it's not just soda pop, it's also fruit juice, it's energy drinks, it's putting sugar in coffee and tea, all the Starbucks matcha.

• 1:11:58Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:59Andrew Weil?

  That would be, that would be one place to start, is to not drink sweet liquids.

• 1:12:02Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:12:03Andrew Weil?

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

• 1:12:06Lewis Howes?

  What about alcohol consumption?

• 1:12:08Andrew Weil?

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

• 1:12:13Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:13Andrew Weil?

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

• 1:12:24Lewis Howes?

  As sugar, really?

• 1:12:26Andrew Weil?

  Right.

• 1:12:26Lewis Howes?

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

• 1:12:29Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:29Lewis Howes?

  When was that?

• 1:12:31Andrew Weil?

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

• 1:13:14Lewis Howes?

  Inflammation.

• 1:13:15Andrew Weil?

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

• 1:13:31Lewis Howes?

  Inflammation, so inflammation is good when you're in pain?

• 1:13:34Andrew Weil?

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

• 1:13:41Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:13:42Andrew Weil?

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

• 1:14:05Lewis Howes?

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

• 1:14:07Andrew Weil?

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

• 1:14:52Andrew Weil?

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

• 1:15:33Andrew Weil?

  You want to avoid pro-inflammatory fats, which are things like, you know, hydrogenated fats, margarine, vegetable shortening, and the polyunsaturated vegetable oils. Okay. So, you know, you wanna eat, olive oil should be your main. Main thing. Fat. Or avocado oil. Or avocado oil, yeah. Gotcha. Uh, nuts, seeds, good. They're good, yeah. Yes. In terms of carbohydrates, you know, it's not that carbohydrates are bad. It's that you wanna reduce consumption of quick-digesting ones, the ones that turn quickly into blood sugar. So everything made with flour. Uh, and that's all the snack foods, all the, you know, it's everything, everything, yeah. And, and sweeteners in general.

• 1:16:18Andrew Weil?

  I mean, that doesn't mean you live without sugar completely, but you wanna really keep, keep that to a minimum. So is this all flour or is this just more? It's all flour, you know, I think the, one of the. Almond flour and? Well, that's a nut, so that's, that's better. But with grains, I, I think there's such misunderstanding. You know, if I ask people to name a whole grain food, the usual answer I get is whole wheat flour or whole wheat bread. Where's the whole wheat bread is not a whole grain food. Where's the grain? You know, it's and the FDA doesn't get that. They let that put labels on it saying this is a whole grain food and good for you. Most whole wheat bread is colored white bread. You know, when you, when you have a grain, the starch is tightly compacted, very dense.

• 1:17:01Andrew Weil?

  And it's surrounded by a more or less by a fibrous bran and it takes time for digestive enzymes to get in there and convert the starch to sugar. When you mill a grain into flour, whether or not the bran is present, whether or not the germ is present. You convert the starch into a material with an infinite surface area. And it's a snap for digestive enzymes to turn that into sugar. So I people don't understand this, you know, it's that it's that there is a big difference between a whole grain that you can see or grain cracked into a few big pieces and flour.

• 1:17:37Lewis Howes?

  Can you eat whole grain? Like, are you supposed to eat the whole grain?

• 1:17:40Andrew Weil?

  We do. I mean, we eat cracked grains.

• 1:17:42Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha.

• 1:17:43Andrew Weil?

  Or you cook, you cook barley and you cook buckwheat and you cook wild rice.

• 1:17:47Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, okay. That's what we're supposed to be doing.

• 1:17:49Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:50Lewis Howes?

  But not converting it to.

• 1:17:51Andrew Weil?

  But not grinding it into flour.

• 1:17:53Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:17:54Andrew Weil?

  Yeah. Or you just use little bits of that because that's the stuff that raises blood sugar quickly. And that's what causes insulin resistance and, you know, in a lot, a lot of people.

• 1:18:02Lewis Howes?

  What about oatmeal?

• 1:18:04Andrew Weil?

  I, I think relatively, especially steel cut oatmeal where you're dealing with chewy grains.

• 1:18:09Lewis Howes?

  Is okay.

• 1:18:10Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:11Lewis Howes?

  Okay. Steel cut, but not like the nut mush.

• 1:18:17Andrew Weil?

  Not, not cream of mush.

• 1:18:20Lewis Howes?

  I eat so much cream of wheat when I was growing up. That's so bad for you. Pouring brown sugar on top, man.

• 1:18:26Andrew Weil?

  I know.

• 1:18:27Lewis Howes?

  Oh, the sad American diet is what I had growing up.

• 1:18:29Andrew Weil?

  You know, that is the standard American diet is sad. Yeah, right. Yeah.

• 1:18:36Lewis Howes?

  So this consists of the anti-inflammatory diet. How long do you go on that for?

• 1:18:39Andrew Weil?

  I think it's, it's the way you live.

• 1:18:41Lewis Howes?

  You live that way?

• 1:18:41Andrew Weil?

  Yeah. You know, and, and in terms, I think it's also good to reduce animal foods in the diet. I don't tell people to become complete vegans or vegetarians, but it is desirable to reduce consumption of animal foods. And also, not only for personal health, but for planetary health.

• 1:18:57Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:18:57Andrew Weil?

  You know, when you look, um. You know, I've been, I've written and thought a lot about the pandemic and you know that we are at tremendous risk for these, they're called zoonotic diseases, diseases that jump from animals to people, of which this is one.

• 1:19:13Lewis Howes?

  If we're consuming it, we're more risk.

• 1:19:16Andrew Weil?

  Right, but these diseases are becoming more frequent and worse, you know, AIDS is one of these and, you know, all these things and COVID certainly. And the reasons that this is happening more and why we're at greater and greater risk, it's climate change, it's deforestation, it's too many people, it's too many people living in too dense concentrations, it's the way we raise animals and treat them. And you look at this and you think like, you know, which of these things can we do anything about? It's not clear. The one thing that we could do something about is reducing our dependence on animal foods.

• 1:19:52Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:19:53Andrew Weil?

  That would, that would be one concrete step to, you know, help the environment.

• 1:19:59Lewis Howes?

  Have you seen this documentary Sea Spiritcy?

• 1:20:01Andrew Weil?

  No.

• 1:20:02Lewis Howes?

  If I can imagine. I love your thoughts on it, but, so are you, do you eat just less food? I hear you like fish, but you're eating less meat?

• 1:20:11Andrew Weil?

  I don't, I haven't eaten meat in a very long time.

• 1:20:14Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:20:15Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:16Lewis Howes?

  You eat fish, a lot of fish?

• 1:20:17Andrew Weil?

  I eat fish and vegetables.

• 1:20:18Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:19Andrew Weil?

  Mostly. And I eat a lot of plant protein as well, you know, and it's great to see more, you know, good kinds of plant protein foods available.

• 1:20:25Lewis Howes?

  You said in Japan or Okinawa, they have more pork.

• 1:20:29Andrew Weil?

  Pork, interestingly, I mean, they like pork and that's a cultural preference.

• 1:20:34Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha.

• 1:20:35Andrew Weil?

  You know, I don't, I don't, I choose not to eat animal foods.

• 1:20:40Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:41Andrew Weil?

  Except for fish.

• 1:20:42Lewis Howes?

  Fish, when did you cut out animal foods?

• 1:20:43Andrew Weil?

  I can tell you exactly, Thanksgiving of 1970.

• 1:20:47Lewis Howes?

  Come on, what happened?

• 1:20:49Andrew Weil?

  I was...

• 1:20:50Lewis Howes?

  The turkey was just not cooked right and you're like, what did I do?

• 1:20:53Andrew Weil?

  No, it's funny, I was, I did it as an experiment. I was starting to do yoga and, you know, that was part of yoga philosophy and also I had friends who became vegetarian, so I thought I would just do it as an experiment, see what happened and to my surprise, I lost weight, I had more energy, I felt great and I stuck with it.

• 1:21:13Lewis Howes?

  Stuck with it.

• 1:21:14Andrew Weil?

  I didn't eat fish at first, I was a lacto vegetarian for about 15 years and then, you know, I was, I told you I was going to Japan, it is not easy to be in Japan and not eat fish.

• 1:21:25Lewis Howes?

  Everything's fish.

• 1:21:26Andrew Weil?

  Everything's fish, you know, the sauces, the broth, so... So first I was reading about the health benefits of fish. And then I was traveling a lot, so I started eating fish and then that's pretty much what I've stuck with.

• 1:21:37Lewis Howes?

  That stuck, gotcha. And when you think about the inflammation that people are having a lot, is it, can inflammation also be caused with the mind? Or is it only through like the food and environment?

• 1:21:53Andrew Weil?

  No, I said absolutely, absolutely the mind and stress are a factor, absolutely. A factor. In fact, there's a whole, I mean, there's quite a lot of research on how the, how the brain and the immune system interact and how the mind plays into that. In fact, this is fascinating. The, you know, the, the current theory of depression, which is dominant medicine, it's called the serotonin hypothesis of depression, is that it's a deficiency of serotonin in the brain. And that's why we give these drugs and increase serotonin.

• 1:22:25Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:22:25Andrew Weil?

  Which don't work that well, you know, there's increasing evidence that they don't work that great. Well, there's an alternative hypothesis that's been out there, that's been building, which I, which is right. It's called the cytokine hypothesis of depression. This is an interesting story. There's, it's long been known that when domestic animals get sick, cows, pigs, sheep, that they exhibit a cluster of symptoms that's called sickness behavior. They, and it's usually sick with some sort of infectious disease. They stop moving, they stop socializing.

• 1:23:00Lewis Howes?

  Stop eating.

• 1:23:01Andrew Weil?

  They lose interest in sex, they stop eating. So farmers had, had always thought this was a result of fatigue associated with infection. But in the 1970s, to everyone's surprise, it was found that it was mediated by a bloodborne factor, that you could take blood from an animal with sickness behavior, inject it into a well animal, and that animal showed the same symptoms.

• 1:23:24Lewis Howes?

  Come on.

• 1:23:24Andrew Weil?

  So nobody knew what it was in blood, you know, it was called factor X. And then it turned out, this was identified as a group of regulatory substances called cytokines, which mediate inflammation. And it looks as if there's a correlation between increased inflammation, increased immune activity and depression. To the extent now that they find that, that some people with severe depression respond to anti-inflammatory drugs much better than to antidepressant drugs.

• 1:23:55Andrew Weil?

  So, and if you think about it, you know, evolutionarily, that makes sense because if you've got, you know, if you've got an infectious disease, it makes sense to stop moving, you know, and stop eating. You want to conserve your energy, but there's a mood change that goes along with that. So it's like, you know, there's a back and forth connection that depression and inflammation are connected.

• 1:24:18Lewis Howes?

  What do you think we should be thinking on a daily basis in terms of our thoughts? If the thought is what, you know, somewhat regulates our mindset and our mood sets throughout the day, what do you think about and what do you prescribe as thought?

• 1:24:34Andrew Weil?

  Well, one thing I, you know, one reason that I tell people to practice breath work and to do some forms of meditation is that practicing putting your attention on your breath, that is a safe place to have your attention. It's like putting your mind in neutral. It's much better than having your attention on your thoughts because very often it's thoughts and images in the mind which are sources of anxiety, of negative feelings, and you often can't stop them, but what you can do is try to just disconnect your attention from them. And that's, you know, breath is one way to do that.

• 1:25:08Lewis Howes?

  Has there ever been a point in your life where your thoughts took over?

• 1:25:12Andrew Weil?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:25:12Lewis Howes?

  And your mind took over and you went spiraling?

• 1:25:15Andrew Weil?

  Yes.

• 1:25:17Lewis Howes?

  How did you overcome that?

• 1:25:19Andrew Weil?

  I think one was just moving through, moving through it, trying various things.

• 1:25:26Lewis Howes?

  Were you aware of it when it was happening?

• 1:25:28Andrew Weil?

  Oh, yeah, definitely.

• 1:25:28Lewis Howes?

  So you're like, okay, this is something I've been practicing for years, but I'm in this.

• 1:25:32Andrew Weil?

  Definitely.

• 1:25:33Lewis Howes?

  So you're not immune to these challenges also?

• 1:25:36Andrew Weil?

  No, not at all.

• 1:25:37Lewis Howes?

  Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt.

• 1:25:38Andrew Weil?

  No, I know that very well.

• 1:25:41Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:25:42Andrew Weil?

  Yeah. It's been a while since I've gotten caught in that, but there were periods in my life when, yes, that was, that was, you know, and I, I tried all sorts of things and, you know, didn't, a lot of things I tried didn't work. I think, you know, having practiced meditation for a long time, that it was not a quick fix, but long-term, I think that's been very helpful.

• 1:26:04Lewis Howes?

  It helped.

• 1:26:05Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:05Lewis Howes?

  How long was the, the worst time of being in that spiral for you?

• 1:26:10Andrew Weil?

  I think a couple of years.

• 1:26:12Lewis Howes?

  Just kind of like low level anxiety consistently?

• 1:26:14Andrew Weil?

  More depression than anxiety.

• 1:26:16Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:26:17Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:17Lewis Howes?

  What age range was this?

• 1:26:19Andrew Weil?

  I would think that was in my 40s.

• 1:26:23Lewis Howes?

  Do you know what caused it?

• 1:26:25Andrew Weil?

  I think some of it was being isolated. I think some was being socially isolated. Yeah, I think it was some I was living in Latin America, some in Tucson. Really also not feeling I had a purpose.

• 1:26:42Lewis Howes?

  But you were healing lives and changing the world and bringing this education to so many people.

• 1:26:47Andrew Weil?

  Well, this was before, really before that.

• 1:26:50Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:26:50Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:51Lewis Howes?

  So a lack of purpose.

• 1:26:53Andrew Weil?

  Lack of purpose, social isolation, yeah. I would try to maintain my habits, especially habits of of physical activity. But my sleep was not good. But it was a it was a thing that was with me for some time. I wrote about that and I have a book called Spontaneous Happiness, which is about emotional wellness. And I wrote about that experience.

• 1:27:18Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 1:27:19Andrew Weil?

  I tried an antidepressant drug and it didn't do much for me.

• 1:27:23Lewis Howes?

  When did you start to see yourself come out of it? What were the things that caused the change? Did you move somewhere?

• 1:27:30Andrew Weil?

  Yeah, I think it was when.

• 1:27:35Andrew Weil?

  I did, I moved, I got in a relationship that led to my first marriage.

• 1:27:41Lewis Howes?

  Love heals people.

• 1:27:43Andrew Weil?

  Love heals people, yeah. I wrote a my first book that was really a big best seller, you know, I just was.

• 1:27:51Lewis Howes?

  Which one was that?

• 1:27:52Andrew Weil?

  It's called Spontaneous Healing.

• 1:27:54Lewis Howes?

  That was the one?

• 1:27:54Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:55Lewis Howes?

  Interesting. You wrote that one while you were depressed?

• 1:27:57Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:59Lewis Howes?

  Because you were just seeking the answers?

• 1:28:00Andrew Weil?

  I don't know, I don't know, I don't know.

• 1:28:04Lewis Howes?

  Okay, so you had more purpose and you got.

• 1:28:06Andrew Weil?

  Right. But you know, I think having experiences like that. I feel stronger as a result of it. First of all, it makes me much more compassionate with people.

• 1:28:16Lewis Howes?

  Having the pain, the frustration, the suffering.

• 1:28:18Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:20Lewis Howes?

  That's powerful. I love learning about the mind and the thoughts and how to heal our body through that.

• 1:28:25Andrew Weil?

  Yeah, well, it's your back.

• 1:28:27Lewis Howes?

  That's where I grew up in, yeah. I got a couple of final questions with you and I'll be respectful of your time. This is fascinating. This is a question I ask everyone towards the end of our show called the three truths. Hypothetical question and scenario. Imagine it is your last day on earth, many years away.

• 1:28:43Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:43Lewis Howes?

  And you accomplish everything you want to accomplish. But for whatever reason, you've got to take all of your work with you. All of your books, this podcast, your writing, your blog, like everything you've written or done audio or video goes with you to the next place. But you get to leave behind three things you know to be true about the lessons you've learned in your life that you'd like to share with the world. I call it the three truths. What would you say would be your three truths?

• 1:29:09Andrew Weil?

  I think it's all okay.

• 1:29:12Lewis Howes?

  It's all okay.

• 1:29:13Andrew Weil?

  It's all okay.

• 1:29:16Andrew Weil?

  I would say, you know, don't worry, be happy.

• 1:29:18Lewis Howes?

  Yep.

• 1:29:19Andrew Weil?

  And

• 1:29:23Andrew Weil?

  just trust in your own, trust in yourself, you know, really find your own light.

• 1:29:30Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:32Lewis Howes?

  Wise words from a wise man. I want to acknowledge you, Dr. Wow, for the consistent relentlessness you have towards finding the information and providing it for us to find healing within ourselves.

• 1:29:45Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:46Lewis Howes?

  I think the world is better for you in it for teaching us things and bringing us things that we had no idea decades before. For being a trailblazer in this space and I really acknowledge your openness, your honestness, your realness. And I appreciate you showing up today and providing this with our audience.

• 1:30:05Andrew Weil?

  Yeah, thanks. I really enjoyed meeting you and talking with you.

• 1:30:08Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, of course. I want people to Uh, check out your work and go to matcha.com if they want matcha. I'm going to be getting some matcha there as well. You're all over social media, Dr. Wild. Uh, it's drweil.com as well.

• 1:30:22Andrew Weil?

  That's my, my website, which has a great deal of health information.

• 1:30:25Lewis Howes?

  Tons of great content and resources and blogs and articles, which has been extremely informative for me. Uh, Dr. Wild everywhere on Instagram and.

• 1:30:34Andrew Weil?

  Yeah. And check out the, um, the University of Arizona website too, which is integrativemedicine.arizona.edu.

• 1:30:41Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:30:41Andrew Weil?

  And among other things there, there's a find a practitioner link. So you can find one of our graduates. Uh, we have graduates in all states and a lot of places who are doing integrative medicine.

• 1:30:51Lewis Howes?

  So if someone's dealing with pain or.

• 1:30:54Andrew Weil?

  Anything.

• 1:30:55Lewis Howes?

  Illness or anything, they can go to the website and they can find a practitioner.

• 1:30:59Andrew Weil?

  Yeah. In a specialty that's relevant to.

• 1:31:01Lewis Howes?

  And they've gone through your program at the university.

• 1:31:04Andrew Weil?

  Our very intensive training. Yeah.

• 1:31:05Lewis Howes?

  How long is that training?

• 1:31:06Andrew Weil?

  Two years.

• 1:31:07Lewis Howes?

  Two years. And these are already medical doctors who've gone through it?

• 1:31:10Andrew Weil?

  Medical doctors who've completed residencies, you know.

• 1:31:12Lewis Howes?

  So they've gone through the traditional medical school of five years.

• 1:31:16Andrew Weil?

  Four years plus, plus.

• 1:31:18Lewis Howes?

  Eight, four more years.

• 1:31:19Andrew Weil?

  Usually a three-year residency and then a fellowship and a specialty.

• 1:31:23Lewis Howes?

  So eight years at least, then they've gone to your program for two years. So they have 10 years.

• 1:31:27Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:28Lewis Howes?

  Of medical training from functional to integrative.

• 1:31:32Andrew Weil?

  Yep.

• 1:31:32Lewis Howes?

  Medicine.

• 1:31:33Andrew Weil?

  Yep.

• 1:31:34Lewis Howes?

  And so they're more, uh, evolved hopefully and more in tune with.

• 1:31:38Andrew Weil?

  Yeah. Yeah. They've got this philosophy that the body can heal itself and that.

• 1:31:42Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:31:42Andrew Weil?

  You know, all these different modalities are available.

• 1:31:44Lewis Howes?

  And there's 3,000 of them.

• 1:31:46Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:46Lewis Howes?

  Around the world.

• 1:31:47Andrew Weil?

  Right. A lot in the U.S., but we've got people in, in many countries now and it's a real movement that's building.

• 1:31:54Lewis Howes?

  And so they can go there, they can, it tells them how to contact.

• 1:31:57Andrew Weil?

  Yes, yes, yes.

• 1:31:58Lewis Howes?

  Based on location and everything. Um, you've got tons of great books. Is there anything else that we can support you with in this moment?

• 1:32:05Andrew Weil?

  Oh, no, that's plenty.

• 1:32:06Lewis Howes?

  A lot of good stuff on your website, but, uh, matcha.com. I'm excited to check this out.

• 1:32:11Andrew Weil?

  Yeah, we'll get you some of the good stuff.

• 1:32:12Lewis Howes?

  Of course, of course. Um, okay. This is my final question for you. What's your definition of greatness?

• 1:32:19Andrew Weil?

  Of greatness?

• 1:32:22Andrew Weil?

  Uh, I think whatever resonates with truth.

• 1:32:27Lewis Howes?

  There you go.

• 1:32:27Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:28Lewis Howes?

  Awesome. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed this episode. I hope it was helpful for your health, your mind, your body, and your soul. If you enjoyed it, please spread the message of greatness to a few friends. You can text them. You can post it on social media. You can email them. You can just call them up and say, hey, check out this episode on the School of Greatness with Dr. Andrew Wile. Whatever you gotta do, spread the message of positivity forward so we can keep changing lives together. Use the link lewishouse.com/1108 or just copy and paste this link wherever you're listening to this and post it all over on social media and make sure to tag me and Dr. Andrew Wile as well. If this is your first time here, welcome to the community of greatness. If you want to continue to be uplifted and inspired by some of the best in the world on how to improve the

• 1:33:12Lewis Howes?

  equality of your life, then click the subscribe button over on Apple Podcasts or Spotify right now or wherever you're listening to this podcast and stay subscribed for all the amazing guests we have coming each week. And if you want to be inspired every week via text message, to be constantly motivated and held accountable on your dreams and your goals through text communication, then text the word PODCAST right now to 614-350-3960. And I want to leave you with a quote from the Buddha who said, "To keep the body in good health is a duty. Otherwise, we shall not be able to keep our minds strong and clear." It's our job to continue to improve the quality of our body and our health. We have tools. The tools are available for us. It's time that we make conscious decisions

• 1:33:57Lewis Howes?

  to improve the quality of our life. It's not easy. It's challenging to stay consistent. That's why it's important to have accountability, to have tools like this podcast, to have friends to support you, and to have goals that you can aim towards. And I want to remind you, if no one's told you lately, that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And you know what time it is? It's time to go out there and do something great.