How to Protect Your Brain and Live Longer | Dr. Andrew Weil

Dr. Andrew Weil drops a counterintuitive truth right out of the gate: avoiding head trauma and quitting smoking are the two most powerful things you can do to prevent cognitive decline, yet almost no one talks about them in the brain health conversation. Most of us are chasing the latest supplement or biohack while ignoring the chronic stress quietly flooding our brains with cortisol and damaging the very region responsible for memory and emotion. Dr. Weil connects the dots between what you eat, how you breathe, who you spend time with, and how long your brain stays sharp. His 4-7-8 breathing technique alone has generated millions of views worldwide and outperforms anxiety medication in his clinical experience. More than any single protocol, though, he returns again and again to one root cause behind poor relationships, chronic illness, and unfulfilled potential: not yet learning how to genuinely love yourself. Dr. Weil’s books: Mind Over Meds Fast Food, Good Food True Food Spontaneous Happiness Why Our Health Matters Healthy Aging The Healthy Kitchen Eating Well for Optimum Health Eight Weeks to Optimum Health Spontaneous Healing Natural Health, Natural Medicine From Chocolate To Morphine Health and Healing In this episode you will: Discover the two most overlooked factors driving cognitive decline and what to cut from your life immediately to protect your brain Learn the free, 60-second breathing technique Dr. Weil calls the most powerful anti-anxiety method he has ever found Understand how your gut microbiome connects to your brain health and which fermented foods rebuild it most effectively Identify the foods and environmental toxins doing the most damage to your long-term cognitive function Explore why loving yourself is not a soft idea but the actual foundation of healthy relationships, emotional resilience, and lasting well-being For more information go to https://lewishowes.com/1913 For more Greatness text PODCAST to +1 (614) 350-3960 Follow The Daily Motivation for essential highlights from The School of Greatness More SOG episodes we think you’ll love: Dr. William Li Dr. Jeremy London Dr. Will Bulsiewicz Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

• 0:03Lewis Howes?

  I wanted to ask you first about cognitive decline. And I feel like a lot of people, especially over the last few years, have a fear of cognitive decline from foods they've eaten, from potential injections they've taken, or other things, or medicines that maybe are hurting or helping. So I wanted to talk about cognitive decline first, and your thoughts about this?

• 0:27Andrew Weil?

  I think there's a lot of fear out there about it, also because people know people with cognitive decline. You know, we, people have relatives who've developed dementia. We see people whose memories are failing. I know a lot of people, if they have memory lapses, immediately begin to think, "Am I getting Alzheimer's?" You know, there's just a lot of fear around that.

• 0:45Lewis Howes?

  What is the root cause of Alzheimer's?

• 0:48Andrew Weil?

  We don't know. I mean, there is a minority of cases are genetic or familial, but most of them aren't, and we really don't know. I have to say, my gut feeling with a lot of neurodegenerative disease, certainly with Parkinson's disease and ALS, I think these are environmentally caused, most.

• 1:04Lewis Howes?

  Really? Now, is that environment like what's in the air environment?

• 1:08Andrew Weil?

  It's probably everything, but a big one is things like exposure to agrochemicals. There's a higher incidence of Parkinson's in agricultural workers. I think all the stuff we're reading about plastics. I think it's good to be just cognizant of potential toxins in the environment.

• 1:23Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:24Andrew Weil?

  But I will tell you that in terms of preventing cognitive decline, probably the two most important pieces of advice I can give you is don't get hit in the head, you know, which means really being careful if you're playing football or basketball. And I must say, I don't know what the future of football is going to be, but I think we're going to see more and more concern about, you know, traumatic brain injury. And that has long-range consequences. And the other one, I would say, is don't smoke. You know, that tobacco smoking is the single greatest cause of preventable, serious disease, and it strongly affects brain function as well because nicotine constricts blood vessels, so it reduces blood flow. So those are just two, you know, basic pieces of advice that I would give you.

• 2:08Andrew Weil?

  Don't get hit in the head, don't smoke.

• 2:10Lewis Howes?

  Well, I think people don't understand like the... The sadness and the pain that happens when you watch someone that you care about mentally, cognitively, right? Like, my dad got in a traumatic car accident where the car came through the windshield and hit him in the head. He was in a coma for three months and he never recovered. He was all physically here, but mentally.

• 2:33Andrew Weil?

  Yeah, that's really sad.

• 2:35Lewis Howes?

  And it was really sad. For seventeen years, we lived with that experience with our father. It was extremely sad. Because you feel hopeless. You feel like there's nothing we can do. We tried everything and there's only so much farther he can go back to. So number one is definitely don't get hit in the head because that's what happened. But a lot of people don't get hit in the head and they still have a cognitive decline. Not a lot of people, but that happens for some people. And is it, I'm hearing environment, I'm hearing smoking, but there are also like foods or...

• 3:08Andrew Weil?

  No, there's a lot of other things. So let's talk about food nutrition first. We know that antioxidant protection is very good for the brain. So you want to make sure you're having an adequate intake of protective antioxidants, which you mostly get from consuming a variety of fruits and vegetables of good quality. And in general, it's a good idea to try to eat across the color spectrum. You know, because each color of fruits and vegetables has pigments that have particular beneficial effects. So that's just one good general rule. Another is to make sure that you've got an adequate intake of omega-3 fatty acids, which are very important for brain health, especially one of them, DHA.

• 3:50Andrew Weil?

  And you know, the best sources of these are oily fish. So it's salmon, sardines, herring, mackerel. But if you're not a fish eater, or you're a vegetarian or vegan, there are now algae-based omega-3 supplements that you can take. But very important to... Think where your omega threes are coming from. There are plant sources of omega threes, things like flax seeds and hemp seeds. Uh, but the plant sources don't give you exactly what the body needs. It has to convert them. So it's good to eat those, but it's good to get some of the preformed long chain omega threes from fish or algae.

• 4:28Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 4:28Andrew Weil?

  Uh, so.

• 4:29Lewis Howes?

  Is algae just as powerful as the fish?

• 4:31Andrew Weil?

  Yeah, it's the same. It gives you the same compounds. And, and that's only become available relatively recently.

• 4:37Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 4:37Andrew Weil?

  Cause I used to, you know, really argue with vegetarians and vegans saying you, you gotta eat some fish or take a fish oil supplement. But now I can tell them to take an algae supplement.

• 4:47Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 4:47Andrew Weil?

  Which is great. And, uh, there's another one class of compounds that seem particularly important are called polyphenols.

• 4:54Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 4:54Andrew Weil?

  It's a large group of compounds found mostly in fruits, vegetables, herbs, spices. Uh, tea is a good source of them, berries, chocolate. Uh, and, uh, you know, these have very protective effects on the brain. Now, as you know, I'm a big fan of, of green tea.

• 5:09Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 5:10Andrew Weil?

  Lot of research on that and being useful for cardiovascular health, cancer prevention, brain health. And, uh, so I think, and recently there was a, um, have you heard of the green Mediterranean diet?

• 5:22Lewis Howes?

  I was, I heard about it researching your current stuff, but I don't know any about

• 5:26Andrew Weil?

  No, it's just gotten some publicity. You know, we have a lot of, um, of scientific evidence for the benefits of the Mediterranean diet that in terms of.

• 5:35Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 5:35Andrew Weil?

  Overall longevity and reduced risk of disease.

• 5:38Lewis Howes?

  What's the green?

• 5:39Andrew Weil?

  So the green Mediterranean diet is, is reducing animal foods even more, increasing plant foods, uh, and particularly loading the diet with poly, sources of polyphenols. And they recommended, you know, berries and green tea particularly. Uh, and, uh, of these, of the forms of green tea, the one that I'm particularly fond of is matcha, which is the powdered green tea. Because of the way that it's grown, it has a higher content of antioxidant polyphenols. Uh, and it's also you consume the whole leaf. It's the whole powdered leaf. So that's, that's the one I would recommend.

• 6:14Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. Not the Starbucks matcha, which has got tons of sugar.

• 6:17Andrew Weil?

  Exactly, right, and is low quality to begin with, yeah. So, that's, you know, and those are the main nutritional recommendations that I would give you.

• 6:25Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha.

• 6:26Andrew Weil?

  Uh, then the other things are all the lifestyle recommendations that you make and I make, you know, getting adequate rest and sleep, uh, regular physical activity.

• 6:37Andrew Weil?

  You know, th- those are the obvious ones. Uh, practicing, learning and practicing some methods of neutralizing the harmful effects of stress. The, the main hormone that mediates stress is cortisol. Cortisol is directly toxic to cells in the brain.

• 6:57Lewis Howes?

  Really? So, the more stressed you are, the more...

• 6:59Andrew Weil?

  Cortisol circulating, and cortisol can kill brain cells.

• 7:03Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 7:03Andrew Weil?

  Particularly in the hippocampus, which is the region that mediates emotion and memory. So, just, that's all you need to know, that you want to do something to keep your cortisol levels, you know, moderate or low.

• 7:15Lewis Howes?

  So, would you say from that scenario, if someone has kind of a high level of ongoing stress for decades, are they more susceptible to cognitive decline?

• 7:26Andrew Weil?

  Well, I would say probably, I mean, I don't, I can't give you hard evidence for that, but knowing what we know about cortisol, that if you have higher levels than you should for your life, probably it's going to damage your brain.

• 7:36Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 7:37Andrew Weil?

  And there are many options for learning to control stress. My favorite are breathing techniques, and whenever you want, I can, you know, talk about...

• 7:45Lewis Howes?

  What's the top breathing technique?

• 7:47Andrew Weil?

  The four, seven, eight breath, it's so simple and free and takes no equipment. It's an ancient yoga technique, and I've popularized it, and it's got, it's got incredible traction. Uh, you know, the, uh, the YouTube videos of me teaching it are, all you have to do is put in four, seven, eight breath and my name, I mean, there are millions of views.

• 8:07Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 8:07Andrew Weil?

  And it's, every, every, like, every, yeah, I will, and a few, every few days, I get newspaper articles about it from India, from Indonesia, you know, another story about the four, seven, eight breath. A, a ballet company in Toronto produced a ballet based, based on the four, seven, eight breath, I have no idea what that was, was like. Like the, uh, the late Prime Minister of Japan who was killed, Abe, uh, gave an interview saying that I taught him the four, seven, eight breath and it was very helpful to him. I never met him, so I don't know what he was thinking. Maybe he read it somewhere. But you know, this is just, it's a great thing. So, and I learned it from, one of my mentors was an elder, elderly osteopathic physician. Uh, Robert Fulford, I met him when he was in his eighties, best healer I've ever met.

• 8:51Andrew Weil?

  Just used gentle, hands-on, and he said breathing was the most important function of the body.

• 8:57Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 8:57Andrew Weil?

  Yeah. And a lot of his work was designed to free up restrictions in breathing and he produced incredible cures. Anyway, he taught me this. So the basic method is you breathe in through your nose quietly to a count of four. Hold your breath for a count of seven, blow air out forcibly through your mouth to a count of eight. Repeat that for four breath cycles and that's it. It takes, uh, you know, all of thirty seconds, but it's a practice. So the benefits of it come from doing this regularly. So you have to do this religiously at least twice a day.

• 9:27Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 9:28Andrew Weil?

  Yeah. I do it in the morning when I first get up before I do some sitting meditation. I do it when I get in bed to fall asleep and I do it anytime in the day that I feel stressed or I want to relax. So I, I'll just show you what it looks like when you do it together. So it's if you're, you can do it in any position, but if you're seated, it's good to keep your back straight and your feet on the floor. So you, and in yo, this is a yoga breath and in yoga you're asked to keep your tongue in the yogic position, which is touching the tip of your tongue to the ridge of tissue behind your upper front teeth like that. So you blow air out around it. So it looks like this.

• 10:39Andrew Weil?

  That's it, four breath cycles. It's a little hard for me to come back and talk to you after.

• 10:43Lewis Howes?

  Because you're so relaxed.

• 10:44Andrew Weil?

  Yeah, no, it produces a very nice altered state of consciousness that I'd rather stay in.

• 10:49Lewis Howes?

  Right, for longer.

• 10:50Andrew Weil?

  Yeah, anyway, so only four breaths at one time. You can do it more frequently, but you gotta do it at least twice a day.

• 10:56Lewis Howes?

  Got it.

• 10:57Andrew Weil?

  And after a month, if you're comfortable, you can do it eight breath cycles. And then that's the absolute maximum. And it's good to learn how to slow it down as you practice. What limits you is how long you can comfortably hold your breath. But with time, you can extend that. And after, you know, four to six weeks, there are really amazing changes. It lowers heart rate, lowers blood pressure, improves digestion. It is the most powerful anti-anxiety method I have ever found.

• 11:25Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 11:25Andrew Weil?

  That makes the drugs we use for anxiety look pathetic. It gets better the more you repeat it. One of the most useful things I've ever discovered, and of all the, you know, I've explored the world for natural remedies. And of all the things that I've found and told patients to do, this is the one that I've gotten the most spectacular feedback on.

• 11:47Lewis Howes?

  And it's free?

• 11:48Andrew Weil?

  It's free, takes no equipment.

• 11:49Lewis Howes?

  There's no money involved?

• 11:51Andrew Weil?

  And by the way, this is, I think, a perfect example of what integrative medicine can do. It can find things that aren't even on the radar of conventional medicine and bring them into the mainstream and lower healthcare costs and improve outcomes. So, anyway, that is my personal favorite method of stress reduction to keep cortisol levels low. And one of the aims of that is preventing cognitive decline and promoting brain health. Now, other things you can do, you know, you're big into physical exercise, physical activity. I think mental exercise is very important, too.

• 12:25Andrew Weil?

  And there are many, many choices there. I love to do word puzzles. My favorite are acrostic. Which I find more interesting and challenging than crossword puzzles. And, uh, you know, I just love, I, you know, they're great. It's like, it's a, it's a brain exercise for me and, and it's fun. Uh, you know, the, the, have you played Wordle, which is called on? I've played a couple of times. Yeah, I need to get into it. Unbelievable how that has gained popularity all over. So I usually do, uh, you know, Wordle every morning when I get up. Really? And yeah, anyway, that, that keeps my brain active. Another wonderful method is to learn a language, another language. You don't have to master the language. It's the attempt to learn it that, that. It's challenging. Yeah. I'm gonna attempt right now and learn Spanish.

• 13:09Andrew Weil?

  It's so difficult, but it makes you like work your brain. Absolutely. I speak Spanish and I, and what, interesting, what I discovered is I, I, in high school, I, I studied German. It was horrible experience. I had, my teacher was from Berlin. He was a real

• 13:25Andrew Weil?

  sadistic German teacher. And it was four years of like, you know, drilling, blah, blah, blah. And I, afterwards I went to Germany and I could speak passively. But for Spanish, I just went and lived in Mexico, in a village in Mexico. And, uh, I was in a place where I was forced to, you know, speak Spanish. And in, um, in a month, you know, I was speaking passively and then I drove to South America. And when I got to Columbia where I lived for a few years, I gave a lecture in Spanish. Come on. Seriously. That's incredible. Now, so, you know, and what I've learned, and this is not, you know, big news, you know, babies do not have minds that learn grammar, right?

• 14:06Andrew Weil?

  And they learn language and the, all the, the only skills you need to learn a language are to be able to listen and imitate. And you have to have strong motivation. So babies have really strong motivation. To survive. To survive, right? So if you put yourself in a situation where you have to learn, uh, and you listen and you imitate, you learn, you don't need to learn grammar and, and study rules and, and all that, which makes it much harder. We, you know, we all have that capacity to do. Anyway, that's a very good thing for your, for your brain. Another is trying to learn a musical instrument. I'm terrible at that. I, you know, I, I failed. I was forced to try to play the clarinet when I was a kid as a dismal failure.

• 14:49Andrew Weil?

  So, uh, that, that didn't work for me. For some people, that's an example. Sure. Here's another one I'll give you. You know the frustration of trying to deal with a new computer operating system? You know, there's like several days-

• 15:03Lewis Howes?

  Switching from PC to Mac?

• 15:04Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 15:04Lewis Howes?

  Like, ah, I wanna go back.

• 15:05Andrew Weil?

  It's like, you know, there's a, there's a period where it is just, that's exactly where you wanna put your brain.

• 15:11Lewis Howes?

  You want to put it there.

• 15:12Andrew Weil?

  You want to put your brain in that place where it, ah, you know, where you have to like change gears, rewire, that, that's, that's good exercise for the brain.

• 15:20Lewis Howes?

  Is there too much of that, where it hurts the brain?

• 15:23Andrew Weil?

  Well, I don't, I, no, I think you just get frustrated and give up.

• 15:28Andrew Weil?

  And then one other tip I would give, I think it is very good to associate with people who are healthy, happy, who have positive outlooks.

• 15:39Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 15:40Andrew Weil?

  Um, and you know, when the, um, some years ago, the MacArthur Foundation did a study of successful aging. They, they identified a large group of people as successful agers. And they looked to see what they had in common. The two factors that stood out, and this overrode everything else, whether they took vitamins, whether they ate this, whether they exercised, the two that stood out were, it was maintenance of regular physical activity throughout life. And the second was maintenance of good social and intellectual connectivity. And I think that last one, that is a challenge. You know, it's a, first of all, in our society,

• 16:23Andrew Weil?

  as people get older, they tend to get isolated with other people, other old people.

• 16:28Lewis Howes?

  Why is that in our society?

• 16:29Andrew Weil?

  I think we don't want old people around. You know, we don't wanna look at them, they don't, they remind us that we're gonna get old.

• 16:34Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 16:35Andrew Weil?

  Yeah, we want them out of the way and like-

• 16:36Lewis Howes?

  But in other societies, they don't do that.

• 16:38Andrew Weil?

  Well, in some, like Japan is notably different. Uh, I would say in most Latin societies, you know, older people, it's like, they live with you.

• 16:46Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 16:47Andrew Weil?

  You know, they're not isolated in old age homes. Uh, but I think the, the, so I think the opportunities for social and intellectual connection diminish in this society as you get older. Uh, and I think that's been particularly bad during the pandemic. Uh, you know, there's been much greater social isolation, people staying at home, people interacting virtually. And I think that's, this looks really key to good brain health is like having, uh, you know, I'd say vibrant, social and intellectual relationships.

• 17:17Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 17:20Lewis Howes?

  It's interesting, because my girlfriend Martha, she's from Mexico and her her family is very socially connected.

• 17:27Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 17:28Lewis Howes?

  You know, activities all the time, you know, involving the grandparents with the grandchildren.

• 17:33Andrew Weil?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 17:34Lewis Howes?

  And like, and connecting the dots constantly. Playing games, having fun and singing music and playing instruments and like adventures.

• 17:43Andrew Weil?

  So I gotta hear, I've got a story for you, which is very powerful. Um, I knew a woman who was in a pediatric intensive care nurse. And she told me over a period, this was over a period of about six, seven years. Uh, she had seen a number of cases of kids, teenagers who'd been in devastating, and mostly motorcycle accidents, devastating head injuries, uh, who were in vegetative states in the hospital. And she said she saw, uh, I think it was like eight or 10 cases of, of kids who recovered completely to the astonishment of doctors. But after she'd seen about a certain number of them, she noticed that they were all Hispanic.

• 18:28Andrew Weil?

  And she'd never seen an Anglo kid in that state recover.

• 18:32Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 18:32Andrew Weil?

  And she so thought about what, what's the difference? And then she realized that with the Hispanic kids, there was always, at all hours, an extended family around the bed. People talking to the kid, touching the kid, and the white kids were always there by themselves.

• 18:47Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 18:47Andrew Weil?

  With nobody, yeah. And she said that clearly was what made the difference.

• 18:52Lewis Howes?

  Because that was the only difference, essentially, of seeing that environment.

• 18:55Andrew Weil?

  Yeah, they were all in basically the same vegetative.

• 18:58Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 18:58Andrew Weil?

  State. And some of these. But it was that kind of constant stimulation, touch, you know, that kept their brain, that made their brains recover.

• 19:06Lewis Howes?

  Even when they're in comas and vegetative states?

• 19:08Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 19:09Lewis Howes?

  And she said that they had, some of these had like full recoveries or big recoveries.

• 19:12Andrew Weil?

  Full recoveries, yeah.

• 19:13Lewis Howes?

  Walking around, talking to a wall, thinking clearly, whereas the other kids.

• 19:17Andrew Weil?

  Right, she'd never seen it happen in an Anglo kid, which had, who had nobody in the room with.

• 19:21Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 19:21Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 19:22Lewis Howes?

  Or maybe they would come for like an hour and then leave or something, right?

• 19:25Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 19:26Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 19:27Andrew Weil?

  So that's very powerful. And, uh, you know, I think that that's something we should really guard against, you know, is like not getting socially isolated and spending time with people that stimulate us.

• 19:38Lewis Howes?

  Well, it's interesting, because we were just talking about this beforehand. Um, you, you told me you're 80 years young.

• 19:43Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 19:43Lewis Howes?

  80 years young, I'm gonna be 40.

• 19:46Andrew Weil?

  You're a kid.

• 19:48Lewis Howes?

  But here's what the funny thing you said, you said, you know, when I was young, eighty seemed like, you know.

• 19:54Andrew Weil?

  Ancient.

• 19:55Lewis Howes?

  Ancient, and forty, you used to think like, oh, they're really old too.

• 19:58Andrew Weil?

  Yeah, right.

• 19:59Lewis Howes?

  When you're like eight.

• 20:00Andrew Weil?

  Right.

• 20:00Lewis Howes?

  You see a forty year old, you're like, you're old, man, right? So, um, I still feel like I've, I'm a child. In a lot of ways, childlike energy.

• 20:09Andrew Weil?

  Yeah, yeah, that's good.

• 20:09Lewis Howes?

  Not childish, but childlike energy. And I feel like you have that too.

• 20:13Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 20:14Lewis Howes?

  You've got this, you know, joyful, youthful energy about you. If you could go back to forty. I mean, you've lived an amazing life. You've been changing the world for the last forty years, but if you could go back. Is there anything you would do, add to support you for longevity? Now you know everything beyond what we talked about? Or anything you'd take away from habits you did to support you in, in setting yourself up for these last forty years and beyond?

• 20:44Andrew Weil?

  You know, I grew up in a row house in Philadelphia, in a city, so I was pretty disconnected from nature. And, uh, I, and then I was, you know, in school for a long time. I think if I could go back, I would spend much more time out in nature and, and in wilderness at an early age. Why is that? Cause I think that's very, it is very good for your spirit as well as your physical being. And, you know, I, I, I would like to have had more time for that when I was young. I didn't eat very wisely until, you know, in my early life. Uh, I didn't know. And, uh, you know, I would probably adopt better eating habits early on. Uh, I'd probably practice my four, seven, eight breath earlier in life, things like that.

• 21:29Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 21:29Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 21:31Lewis Howes?

  And speaking of the, you know, the bad eating, eating habits, what do you think are the foods that everyone should avoid?

• 21:36Andrew Weil?

  Oh, that's, that's, that's very simple.

• 21:38Lewis Howes?

  Of the brain.

• 21:39Andrew Weil?

  That's so simple. It's refined, processed and manufactured food. You know, it's, it's, that's, that's it. That's simple. You know, you want to try to eliminate that. It's all the stuff, mostly all the stuff in the middle of the supermarket. You know, all the snack food.

• 21:52Lewis Howes?

  Five percent of the stuff you should eat.

• 21:53Andrew Weil?

  Yeah, right. It's all that. And that's, that's, that's the first, you know, I advocate an anti-inflammatory diet because, you know, chronic low-level inflammation seems to be the root cause of most serious disease that kills and disables people prematurely. And the mainstream diet promotes inflammation.

• 22:13Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 22:13Andrew Weil?

  And it's, and that, all that processed, refined, manufactured food gives us the wrong fats, the fats that promote inflammation, the wrong kinds of carbs, and not enough of the protective elements like those polyphenols and antioxidants that are mostly in fruits, vegetables, herbs, spices.

• 22:29Lewis Howes?

  What causes more inflammation in the brain? Is it stresses of life or foods?

• 22:35Andrew Weil?

  I think it's, I don't think you can separate that. It's all of it.

• 22:38Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 22:38Andrew Weil?

  It's all of it.

• 22:39Lewis Howes?

  If you had to eliminate one, like, which one is less damaging, do you think? Like, if you eat healthy, perfectly, but you're constantly in a low level of stress or high level of stress versus, I have around beautiful people in a great environment, but I'm eating the worst

• 22:54Andrew Weil?

  I don't know. I don't know. And I, you know, I wrote a book on, on eating well for optimum health, and I quoted in it, I think she was a hundred and six, a hundred and six-year-old Russian woman, who was asked, what was the secret of her longevity? And she said, I never eat vegetables.

• 23:11Lewis Howes?

  It was like I went against everything.

• 23:13Andrew Weil?

  Right, right. So, and, and you know, when you see people who've smoked all their lives and drink like fish and, and they're, so they have very good genes.

• 23:21Lewis Howes?

  They have good genes, right.

• 23:22Andrew Weil?

  But maybe they could have lasted longer.

• 23:24Lewis Howes?

  Exactly, right, yeah.

• 23:26Andrew Weil?

  I've never ate vegetables.

• 23:27Lewis Howes?

  I never eat vegetables.

• 23:28Andrew Weil?

  That's hilarious.

• 23:29Lewis Howes?

  Secret of her long life.

• 23:31Andrew Weil?

  Oh, my goodness. Did she have a different type of diet? Was she like?

• 23:34Lewis Howes?

  I, I think she ate meat and potatoes.

• 23:36Andrew Weil?

  Wow. That's amazing. That's probably vodka.

• 23:40Lewis Howes?

  Now, how, we talked about this a little bit the last time, which I think is fascinating that you were willing to talk about relationship stuff, because I think it sounds like good social connections is the key to successful aging.

• 23:51Andrew Weil?

  Right.

• 23:52Lewis Howes?

  And probably a great intimate partner or relationships intimately are, can be supportive or harmful?

• 23:59Andrew Weil?

  You can't, yeah, exactly. You can go either way. Right, yeah.

• 24:03Lewis Howes?

  How does, how does one learn, with your amount of wisdom, to?

• 24:10Lewis Howes?

  Step into a healthy, loving relationship and sustain it.

• 24:14Andrew Weil?

  Well, I think a big key, we talked about this, you have to start by loving yourself.

• 24:18Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's so good. That's why I love this guy. So good.

• 24:22Andrew Weil?

  And that's a hard one for a lot of people, you know, that, that we, we seek love in, in another person, you know, we project something of ourself onto them and you know, but it has to start with loving yourself and from that place you can, I think, enter into good relationships with other people.

• 24:41Lewis Howes?

  When was the age where you feel like you fully loved and accepted yourself?

• 24:46Andrew Weil?

  I think it was not until my, it might not have been until my 40s.

• 24:50Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 24:51Andrew Weil?

  Yeah. So you got your right, right at the cusp there.

• 24:54Lewis Howes?

  Lots of pain and suffering before, now you know. Really in your 40s?

• 24:57Andrew Weil?

  Yeah. I don't know that I want to go back and be young again. I mean, in some ways I'd like to have a more elastic body and, and things like that, but I, I think it's, things are easier now for me.

• 25:08Lewis Howes?

  Why is that? Cause you love yourself?

• 25:10Andrew Weil?

  Yeah. And I think I'm more accepting of myself and more accepting of things. You know, when I, I wrote a book on healthy aging and one of the things that, one of the things I looked at was what gets better with age? Uh, and what can we see? What, what are examples out there where we see that things improve with age? One of them I wrote about was cheese. We were talking about cheese.

• 25:32Lewis Howes?

  Stinky cheese is the best.

• 25:33Andrew Weil?

  Okay, stinky cheese. So some cheeses get very better with age. Violins, old violins, old trees, you know, and, and you look at wine, you know, what, what are the qualities in these older things that we like? They're more complex, they're, they're deeper, they have more character. Right. So you can see that in people as well. Uh, and you know, that if we lived in a society where we valued old people instead of shutting them away, you know, they're, they can be great repositories of wisdom. And I've, I interviewed a lot of older people about what they saw get better. Interesting answers. A lot of people felt that they, uh, that

• 26:16Andrew Weil?

  They were more accepting of things as they got older. They had more equilibrium, that things didn't throw them off balance as much as when they were young.

• 26:24Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 26:24Andrew Weil?

  Uh, you know, that's interesting.

• 26:26Lewis Howes?

  They weren't as triggered, or they could like manage life easier.

• 26:29Andrew Weil?

  Yeah. Some, I, I've heard some scientists say that their memories have gotten better with age, and they think it's because they have more filed away. So when something new comes along, they, they have more to compare it to, to know where it fits. And that's interesting, you know, in terms, when we think about, you know, cognitive decline, if some, some things may get better.

• 26:49Lewis Howes?

  What have been the main benefits for you?

• 26:52Andrew Weil?

  I, I think great, greater self-acceptance, uh, you know, definitely as well, at, and in some ways, I'm sort of, I, I'm less patient with things and people that take up my time for no good reason. You know, I really want to spend time with, with people that make me feel good about myself, about the world.

• 27:17Lewis Howes?

  You say, you say no to a lot of things that you maybe would have said yes to.

• 27:20Andrew Weil?

  Yeah, exactly. Right, yeah. I think I'm more, more discriminating about.

• 27:25Lewis Howes?

  What, was there a process or like a moment that allowed you to say, oh, actually this, I can accept and love myself, and this is how I'm learning how to do it? Was there like a period of time?

• 27:34Andrew Weil?

  No, I think it was gradual, but it was in my, in midlife, definitely.

• 27:39Lewis Howes?

  Did you have a crisis before then? Did you go through a midlife crisis?

• 27:42Andrew Weil?

  I had a period of depression.

• 27:43Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 27:44Andrew Weil?

  Uh, of several years, yeah. Uh, and, you know, that just lifted at some point. I think some of it was becoming more physically active, some of it was changing my diet, uh, some of it was practicing, you know, meditation and my breathing technique, and some of it was, I think, a natural process that happened with getting older.

• 28:05Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. I've never had a, a, like a midlife cra- I, I don't want to have a midlife crisis.

• 28:11Andrew Weil?

  You never know.

• 28:12Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah, right. But what do you think causes that for people, like to go through a quarter-life crisis, midlife crisis, where they like say, I'm just gonna change everything, I'm gonna go through a divorce, I'm gonna... Get married to this, I'm gonna do that, I'm gonna, you know, buy a sports car, whatever it is that happens for people. Why do you, what causes a crisis?

• 28:30Andrew Weil?

  I, I, I guess, you know, people sometimes feel stuck. And, and, and it often just seems to happen around forty and that period.

• 28:39Lewis Howes?

  Right. Do you think it's because people aren't in alignment with like where they think they should be going? Or they're, they're not living their purpose?

• 28:45Andrew Weil?

  I, I think that's a big one.

• 28:47Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 28:47Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 28:48Lewis Howes?

  But you were, you were living your purpose though during that time. You were doing the medicine stuff.

• 28:51Andrew Weil?

  I was, I was off on my own and, but you know, I was, uh, uh, you know, people thought I was crazy because I dropped out of medicine. I wasn't practicing. I was, you know, living like a hippie.

• 29:02Lewis Howes?

  Exploring other.

• 29:03Andrew Weil?

  Exploring, right. Uh, and I did not get a lot of reinforcement from the world for what I was doing.

• 29:09Lewis Howes?

  Especially not back then.

• 29:10Andrew Weil?

  Back, back then, but I knew what I was doing was right and what I had to do.

• 29:13Lewis Howes?

  Right. You, so you lived in, you lived in Germany for a while?

• 29:17Andrew Weil?

  No, I visited there.

• 29:18Lewis Howes?

  Visited Germany, you lived in Mexico for a while?

• 29:19Andrew Weil?

  I lived in, in South America for a while. Colombia. Colombia especially, yeah.

• 29:23Lewis Howes?

  For how long?

• 29:24Andrew Weil?

  About three and a half years.

• 29:26Lewis Howes?

  What was it about the, the South American culture about longevity that inspired you?

• 29:34Andrew Weil?

  Well, I was interested in, uh, when I was growing up, I remember having a kid's book. It was about, uh, I think it was about the South American village, but it was about the Andes Mountains. I thought they were my mountains, you know, Andes Mountains.

• 29:50Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 29:51Andrew Weil?

  So I developed this.

• 29:53Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, so my mountains were out there.

• 29:54Andrew Weil?

  My mountains, yeah. So I had this, I know some, a deep thing I wanted to visit there. And then, uh, when I was a student at Harvard, my mentor there was, uh, Richard Schultes, who was the father of modern ethnobotany. And he had lived in the Amazon for fourteen years and discovered all sorts of hallucinogenic plants. And he was a fascinating teacher and he sent me down there to study medicinal plants. And, uh, so I think what really drew me down there was the, the, uh, culture that was very connected to nature and to plants. And, uh, so I learned a lot of things there, you know, I visited shamans and.

• 30:33Andrew Weil?

  Did all sorts of crazy things.

• 30:34Lewis Howes?

  Tried stuff, experimental, yeah, a lot of stuff.

• 30:36Andrew Weil?

  Right, exactly, yeah.

• 30:37Lewis Howes?

  Interesting. Um, how, you know, you, you joked about the woman who, you know, said my secret was not eating vegetables.

• 30:45Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 30:46Lewis Howes?

  About how important are plants in improving cognitive brain health in general?

• 30:52Andrew Weil?

  Well, as I said, you know, a lot of the, the, the main sources of these protective polyphenols and antioxidants are plants. Uh, and, uh, you know, there's so many plants out there with so many different properties. And, um, you know, the, the foods that have become popular up here are such a small slice of what's possible. So I've also spent a lot of time in Asia and in other cultures, and I always have interested in the foods that people eat. And I've tried to bring them back here and turn people on to them, yeah.

• 31:27Lewis Howes?

  What are the main foods that you try to have consistently, like, that are unique or different than kind of the standard American diet?

• 31:33Andrew Weil?

  Well, I, I, you know, I, I use a lot of herbs and spices in my own cooking. Uh, you know, one of the ones that I'm very big on these days is turmeric. Uh huh. You know, the yellow spice, uh, which Indians eat every, every meal from infancy to old age. Uh, and in, in, uh, North America until recently, the only way we got it was in yellow mustard, which is more a turmeric preparation, mustard preparation. Uh, and in curry. It's the, that's what makes curry yellow. But now, uh, I was, uh, when I was doing that research on aging, I went, I made a number of trips to Okinawa, uh, which at the time that I was doing it had the highest number of centenarians in the world.

• 32:15Andrew Weil?

  Uh, and I made, I made a number of trips there and the, the diet there is astonishing. You know, they have an incredible variety of sea vegetables, land vegetables, fish. Uh, it's not like the Japanese, mainland Japanese diet. Okinawa's are not Japanese, they're another. There's something else.

• 32:35Lewis Howes?

  What's different than the mainland?

• 32:36Andrew Weil?

  They drink jasmine tea, not green tea. They eat more pork and the pork is long cooked to reduce fat. They eat more tofu. The tofu has a higher fat content. They eat this great variety of unusual vegetables. But the beverage that I was, it was very hot and humid when I was there at the time of year. And a very popular beverage was cold unsweetened turmeric tea. Made from a fermented form of turmeric. Delicious, really delicious. And I'd just recently been able to bring it into this country and sell it through our matcha company.

• 33:12Lewis Howes?

  Wow, that's cool.

• 33:13Andrew Weil?

  You can drink it hot or cold, but anyway, turmeric is the most powerful natural anti-inflammatory agent that we know of.

• 33:19Lewis Howes?

  Turmeric?

• 33:20Andrew Weil?

  Yep.

• 33:21Lewis Howes?

  The most powerful, you think?

• 33:22Andrew Weil?

  It is. It's the most powerful natural anti-inflammatory agent. A lot of research on it. And interestingly, India has the lowest rate of Alzheimer's disease in the world. And people think that has to do with the amount of turmeric they consume.

• 33:39Lewis Howes?

  Lowest rate? I think they're also like tightly social, you know, family ties. It's like.

• 33:44Andrew Weil?

  They're not, I mean, their cardiovascular health is not great. Their food habits have changed. But they have some protection against Alzheimer's and a turmeric might be, yeah, that might be the factor that's accounts for that.

• 33:56Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 33:57Andrew Weil?

  Yeah. So anyway, that's, that's an example of something that I.

• 33:58Lewis Howes?

  They have the lowest amount of Alzheimer's.

• 34:00Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 34:00Lewis Howes?

  In the world.

• 34:01Andrew Weil?

  Yes.

• 34:02Lewis Howes?

  India. Is it regions of India or?

• 34:03Andrew Weil?

  I think rural India especially. Yeah.

• 34:06Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 34:06Andrew Weil?

  So interesting, but that's, you know, turmeric's a good thing to include in your diet.

• 34:11Lewis Howes?

  And even just like a turmeric supplement every day is a good thing also.

• 34:14Andrew Weil?

  That's fine.

• 34:15Lewis Howes?

  You don't have to cook with it, everything.

• 34:16Andrew Weil?

  Right, all that. You know, we can't like, we don't know how to cook with it, you know, like Americans.

• 34:22Lewis Howes?

  Throw it out. It's not gonna taste good on a steak, yeah.

• 34:24Andrew Weil?

  Yeah. And if you, and if you put too much, it's astringent, not pleasant. I had a student, a family physician from South India, and she was a very good cook. And she said she tells her patients to try putting a level teaspoon of powdered turmeric in beans, bean dishes, stews, soups. That level of it is, you know, good. Yeah.

• 34:45Lewis Howes?

  Level teaspoon and put it in and that's it.

• 34:46Andrew Weil?

  Yeah. But that fermented turmeric is a great drink. It's delicious.

• 34:49Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 34:49Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 34:50Lewis Howes?

  I've never been able to get into fermented.

• 34:52Andrew Weil?

  It doesn't, this doesn't taste.

• 34:54Lewis Howes?

  Doesn't taste fermented?

• 34:54Andrew Weil?

  No, no. But fermented things are good to get into.

• 34:57Lewis Howes?

  I know, that's what I hear, it's so good for the gut.

• 34:59Andrew Weil?

  But if you like stinky cheese, why don't you like fermented things?

• 35:02Lewis Howes?

  Man, the stinky cheese is amazing.

• 35:03Andrew Weil?

  Well, that's a fermented product, and that's got a living culture.

• 35:06Lewis Howes?

  It's got a different smell and taste than like a liquidy or like a fermented like, I don't know, vegetables, like, I don't know, it just doesn't, it's just like a weird aftertaste.

• 35:16Andrew Weil?

  Huh.

• 35:16Lewis Howes?

  The stinky cheese.

• 35:17Andrew Weil?

  Maybe you've never had good fermented stuff.

• 35:19Lewis Howes?

  Maybe that's what it is.

• 35:20Andrew Weil?

  Cause to me, good fresh, good fermented stuff, it's, it's got a fresh.

• 35:25Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 35:26Andrew Weil?

  Really fresh crisp. I make my own sauerkraut, I make kimchi, I make pickles. It's really delicious. You, you need to, I gotta get into some good stuff.

• 35:33Lewis Howes?

  I have the palate of a seven-year-old.

• 35:35Andrew Weil?

  No, if you like stinky cheese.

• 35:37Lewis Howes?

  Well, that's the only thing I can, but most stuff, like, I'm very picky, that's the challenge. What are the main benefits of fermented foods?

• 35:44Andrew Weil?

  Well, mostly you're eating, first of all, the, the foods are partially digested, so they're more assimilable. Uh, you know, the, the micro, the microorganisms have done work for you that your body doesn't have to do. But the living cultures are what's really important, you know, this is, this feeds your gut microbiome. And this, this is one of the most exciting revolutionary changes in medical thinking in my lifetime. When I was in medical school, you know, I learned that we have these organisms in our gut and that assist in digestion, and that was it. And that people who took, uh, ate yogurt, took acidophilus supplements were health nuts.

• 36:25Andrew Weil?

  And now, you know, we're, the gut microbiome, it looks like it's, it's involved in everything. I mean, it, it, it conditions your mental health, it influences your interactions with the environment. I mean, it just, it's, it's the key to health and how you move through the world.

• 36:44Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 36:44Andrew Weil?

  So. The gut microbiome in our society has changed for the worse in the in recent years as a result of several things. One is incredible overuse of antibiotics, which do wreak havoc on the gut microbiome, decline in breastfeeding, uh, cause breastfeeding gives provides organisms, you know, early in life, um, increased, um, consumption of these refined processed and manufactured foods, which feed the wrong kinds of organisms. And then, and finally, the unbelievable rise in cesarean deliveries.

• 37:22Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 37:23Andrew Weil?

  Because when babies are born, normally the, the, uh, organisms they pick up come from the birth canal and colonize the gut.

• 37:31Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 37:31Andrew Weil?

  When they're born by cesarean, they come from the skin and it's a different population of, of microorganisms and they get established for life.

• 37:38Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 37:38Andrew Weil?

  So the, the combination of those things, I think, has, I think, and this has to do with why there's a rise of allergies, autoimmune diseases, maybe things like ADHD. Uh, so you want to keep your gut microbiome healthy. So one way to do that is to eat fermented foods.

• 37:55Lewis Howes?

  Oh, man.

• 37:55Andrew Weil?

  Sorry.

• 37:56Lewis Howes?

  If I don't like, if I don't like the smell or the taste of fermented foods, is there anything else sized kombucha?

• 38:01Andrew Weil?

  Well, you can, you, no, you don't have to. I don't, I don't drink kombucha. Uh, I, I like sauerkraut. I like kimchi, good pickles, miso.

• 38:10Lewis Howes?

  Miso?

• 38:10Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 38:11Lewis Howes?

  Okay, I can do.

• 38:11Andrew Weil?

  That's a good one. All right.

• 38:12Lewis Howes?

  I can do miso soup.

• 38:13Andrew Weil?

  Okay.

• 38:14Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, that's, that's fermented.

• 38:15Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 38:16Lewis Howes?

  Miso soup.

• 38:16Andrew Weil?

  Miso's a fermented soy.

• 38:17Lewis Howes?

  It doesn't have the smell of the.

• 38:19Andrew Weil?

  No, I, I hear you. You know what I mean?

• 38:20Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 38:21Andrew Weil?

  Another one, did you ever eat tempeh?

• 38:23Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I can do tempeh.

• 38:24Andrew Weil?

  So tempeh's a fermented soy food also.

• 38:26Lewis Howes?

  I don't like soy as much, but I mean, that's got the benefits all.

• 38:29Andrew Weil?

  Well, ferment, the tempeh doesn't taste like soy.

• 38:32Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 38:33Andrew Weil?

  It tastes like, it's meaty.

• 38:34Lewis Howes?

  Right. Okay. So tempeh.

• 38:36Andrew Weil?

  Okay, you can take, you can take yogurt, you know, that has living cultures in there, kefir. Uh, you can take probiotic supplements, but they may not be as good as the, as the foods. And the other thing you can do is, is make sure you're consuming enough prebiotics, which are foods that feed the, the beneficial microorganisms. And that's mostly fiber containing foods.

• 39:00Lewis Howes?

  Fibers.

• 39:00Andrew Weil?

  Beans, beans, vegetables, whole grains.

• 39:04Lewis Howes?

  So you want prebiotics and probiotics, both? You want to consume a lot of them daily?

• 39:09Andrew Weil?

  Prebiotics you should have on a regular basis, you know, that should just be part of your diet. Uh, and probiotics, you know, whatever foods you can take, or you can take, as I said, a probiotic supplement.

• 39:20Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure. Okay. All right, so if I, I'm gonna have the palate of a seven year old, take the probiotic supplements.

• 39:25Andrew Weil?

  But especially important if for any reason you have to take antibiotics, you know, it's really important. It will be from the moment you start taking the antibiotic, yeah.

• 39:33Lewis Howes?

  What happens if you're taking antibiotics and you're not taking probiotics at the same time?

• 39:37Andrew Weil?

  It drastically changes your gut microbiome. You know, wipes out a lot of the good organisms.

• 39:43Lewis Howes?

  How long does it take to get back to like a healthy?

• 39:46Andrew Weil?

  We don't know. We don't know. I mean, maybe the body comes back pretty quick from that. I don't know.

• 39:53Lewis Howes?

  Wow. But it's important to take it before and during.

• 39:56Andrew Weil?

  Yep.

• 39:56Lewis Howes?

  And after, it sounds like.

• 39:58Andrew Weil?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 39:58Lewis Howes?

  To get it back to baseline. Man, because I just took some antibiotics a couple of weeks ago from a dental surgery I had to take. And so it didn't get infected.

• 40:06Andrew Weil?

  Right.

• 40:06Lewis Howes?

  But it's, I should be overloading now on probiotics, it sounds like. Okay. So I should have talked to you.

• 40:13Andrew Weil?

  You should have talked to me before. Too late in then.

• 40:18Lewis Howes?

  What is it, you mentioned that India is the lowest rate of dementia or Alzheimer's?

• 40:25Andrew Weil?

  Alzheimer's.

• 40:26Lewis Howes?

  What countries or regions are the highest rate of Alzheimer's? Do we know?

• 40:29Andrew Weil?

  I don't know the answer to that. I mean, Alzheimer's is pretty consistent around the world.

• 40:34Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 40:34Andrew Weil?

  Uh, so as I say, we don't.

• 40:36Lewis Howes?

  It seems lower in India.

• 40:38Andrew Weil?

  It seems lower in India, rural Indian population, yeah.

• 40:41Lewis Howes?

  But it's consistent around the world?

• 40:42Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 40:42Lewis Howes?

  There's not one country that has higher rates?

• 40:44Andrew Weil?

  Not that I know of. Not that I know of.

• 40:47Lewis Howes?

  That'd be interesting to see.

• 40:47Andrew Weil?

  Yes, I, I, maybe we do know that. I don't, I don't know that.

• 40:51Lewis Howes?

  It seems like it's, there's a, there's an issue in America. I mean, maybe I'm just hearing about it, but is it? And when does it usually?

• 40:57Andrew Weil?

  Well, you know, we used to call, when I was growing up, my, my mother's father was senile. So that's what we say, you know, people got senile. That was dementia. Now, there's different forms of dementia. Alzheimer's is one kind of dementia. That's associated with particular brain changes. So maybe there's an increase in, in our population. Maybe that's because we have more older people around. I don't know that it's actually increased. They may call it by a different name.

• 41:28Lewis Howes?

  But there are a lot of people, over a hundred, who don't have decline as well.

• 41:32Andrew Weil?

  Exactly, right.

• 41:33Lewis Howes?

  But it sounds like they're doing a lot of these things correctly. They have strong social ties, they're, they're doing the exercises and brain games or music or languages. They're doing something challenging for the brain. It's like making them think or puzzles or whatever it might be. They're also eating generally well. It sounds like with these types of foods and lyephenols and antioxidants and all these different things. And anti-inflammatory turmeric and stuff like that. So there sounds like they're doing more of these things. Obviously, there's exceptions.

• 42:04Andrew Weil?

  Yep.

• 42:04Lewis Howes?

  You hear someone smoking their whole life and living to a hundred.

• 42:07Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 42:07Lewis Howes?

  But in general, it sounds like you do a lot of these things. You could live a longer, healthier life.

• 42:12Andrew Weil?

  Now, the other one is, is trying to do whatever you can to avoid environmental toxins. And that's not so easy.

• 42:20Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 42:20Andrew Weil?

  You know, you can get a water filter for your home, which is a good idea. You know, maybe an air filter, depending. But I think things like getting plastics out of your life. Avoiding secondhand smoke.

• 42:36Andrew Weil?

  You know, just paying attention to all this, like, like, you know, I'm a big proponent of organic agriculture. Not mostly, not because I think the food's necessarily more nutritious, but to avoid. Contamination with things you don't want. And you know, it's gotten easier to get organic produce, but for many people, it's difficult. Either it's not accessible or it's expensive. So a good thing to do is to learn which crops are most likely to be contaminated. And a good source of information on that, there's a group in Washington called the Environmental Working Group, ewg.org, and they periodically publish a list of what they call the Dirty Dozen.

• 43:16Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 43:16Andrew Weil?

  Which are the 12 most contaminated crops. Strawberries are always at the top of the list.

• 43:21Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 43:21Andrew Weil?

  You know, other things like green beans, uh, you know, and, and then they have also a Clean 15 list, which is the, the least contaminated, things like avocados and bananas. So if you're buying something from the Dirty Dozen list, it's probably worth making an effort to get it organic or not eat it.

• 43:41Lewis Howes?

  Got it.

• 43:42Andrew Weil?

  From the Clean 15 list, doesn't matter. So that, that's a way of, yeah.

• 43:46Lewis Howes?

  So trying to get organic on that list if possible. But isn't sometimes like organic still has chemicals or pesticides, even if it says organic?

• 43:55Andrew Weil?

  No, we have good, we have good organic standards now. I mean, the industry is constantly trying to whittle them away.

• 44:01Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 44:02Andrew Weil?

  Uh, but we've beaten it back so far. I mean, there was when they first got that USDA organic certification. I remember there was an attempt to allow, the industry wanted to allow sewage sludge to be put on crops and still call it organic. That, that we beat that back.

• 44:17Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 44:18Andrew Weil?

  Yeah. Um, but if, if it's got that seal on it, it, it's good. Now, however, also realize that it costs money for farmers to get that certification. So small farmers often can't afford that. So if you're at local farmers markets and small growers, often growers will say that they're pesticide free. You know, they can't afford the USDA organic certification, but they'll say that their crops, they don't use pesticides.

• 44:43Lewis Howes?

  It's still good.

• 44:43Andrew Weil?

  Which is good, yeah. I also, you know, don't keep poisons around the house, herbicides, you know, pesticides. Um, all of those things, you don't want to be exposed to them.

• 44:55Lewis Howes?

  When you mentioned plastics, avoiding plastics, what does that include?

• 44:59Andrew Weil?

  That includes-

• 45:00Lewis Howes?

  Drinking out of plastic bottles, living with plastic in your life?

• 45:02Andrew Weil?

  Yeah, as much as possible, because what you see happening is that plastics that we've always considered safe turn out not to be.

• 45:10Lewis Howes?

  Like what?

• 45:11Andrew Weil?

  I don't remember what the latest, what the latest one that I've seen.

• 45:14Lewis Howes?

  So like drinking out of a plastic bottle or like-

• 45:17Andrew Weil?

  Yeah, drinking out of a plastic bottle, using plastic storage dishes for food. You know, use glass instead, use glass bottles.

• 45:25Lewis Howes?

  Or tin or something else.

• 45:26Andrew Weil?

  Right, with plastic wrap for food, there's, you know, some of them are have chemicals called salates in them.

• 45:33Lewis Howes?

  Plastic wrap, like a wrap to store the food?

• 45:36Andrew Weil?

  Yeah, but there are some brands that don't have that, right?

• 45:39Lewis Howes?

  So don't get plastic when you're wrapping-

• 45:41Andrew Weil?

  Or look, again, use that EWG site that I gave you, they rate all these products.

• 45:46Lewis Howes?

  EWG.org is-

• 45:47Andrew Weil?

  Yeah, the Environmental Working Group, EWG.org. They also have, you know, you can look up things like cosmetic products. Shampoos and lotions and creams and deodorants and they'll, you'll tell you which ones, you know, they have a color code, green being safe and red being no. Yeah, that's very useful.

• 46:07Lewis Howes?

  EWG has a lot of this stuff on all these products out in the market right now.

• 46:10Andrew Weil?

  Online, right, and they're rated by particular brands.

• 46:12Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 46:13Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 46:13Lewis Howes?

  Based on how environmentally friendly or if they have plastics or-

• 46:16Andrew Weil?

  And what chemicals they got in them, yeah, all that, right. They test them and, you know, it's a very good organization.

• 46:22Lewis Howes?

  Okay, I'm gonna look at that for sure.

• 46:24Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 46:27Lewis Howes?

  Who is more likely to go through cognitive decline in general, men or women? And why do you think?

• 46:36Andrew Weil?

  I don't know the answer to that. You know, women live longer than men and we don't know why that is either. When you look around the world, at areas where there are, you know, people over 100, when you get up in those age ranges, it's mostly women. There's one, one exception that I know is the island of Sardinia off Italy, that a high population of centenarians and men and women are equal and nobody knows why.

• 47:07Lewis Howes?

  Really, but that, there it's more equal versus-

• 47:10Andrew Weil?

  Yeah, other places, women greatly outnumber men when you get up in the upper 90s and hundreds. There's one theory that the Y chromosome is toxic, that it produces toxic gene products that do men in. I don't know the answer to that. I mean, it's also possible that men engage in more risky behaviors and.

• 47:31Lewis Howes?

  It's also like the size, you know, it's like, is it harder to pump blood and recover when you're bigger, you know, physically than a woman?

• 47:39Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 47:40Lewis Howes?

  I don't know if that has something to do with it. And maybe in Sardinia, there may be like tinier men. I don't know.

• 47:43Andrew Weil?

  We don't know. I haven't been there, so I can't say.

• 47:46Lewis Howes?

  What do you think is, you've been in this kind of health and wellness industry for a long time. You've seen trends come and trends go. You've seen new discoveries happen over the last, you know, forty, sixty years. What do you feel like we're missing in this, you know, health world that we need to be focusing on more? That we haven't actually leaned into or discovered yet? And what do you also think will be happening over the next five to 10 years with new discoveries?

• 48:15Andrew Weil?

  Can I say a word about psychedelics?

• 48:18Lewis Howes?

  Can you say what?

• 48:18Andrew Weil?

  A word about psychedelics?

• 48:20Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 48:20Andrew Weil?

  I never thought I'd write another book. You know, I've written fifteen books. My publisher has persuaded me to write a book on psychedelics.

• 48:28Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 48:28Andrew Weil?

  So I'm just starting work on that and it's titled Psychedelic Can Save the World, which I truly believe. And, you know, I've been involved with them since way, way back and I am very excited to watch this what's happening with them, you know, they are really entering the mainstream. I think they have tremendous potential for healing and I'm a little disappointed that all the attention has been on the possibility of using them in psychiatric medicine for depression and PTSD and so forth, which, you know, is great. But I think they have incredible potential for physical healing as well because I've seen that again and again. And frankly,

• 49:12Andrew Weil?

  I think it's the only thing I see out there that has a potential to save us from disaster.

• 49:16Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 49:17Andrew Weil?

  Yeah, because we are clearly headed for disaster. And it's only going to be through a transformation of consciousness.

• 49:24Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 49:25Andrew Weil?

  That I think we can save ourselves, and they have the potential to do that.

• 49:30Andrew Weil?

  And, you know, this is, it is amazing. Before the pandemic, when I was traveling around a lot and speaking, no matter where I was and what I was talking about, whether it was on an anti-inflammatory diet or integrative medicine or healthy aging, the questions I get would be about psychedelics. Where can I get them? How can I take them? How can I do this? A few months ago, Vogue magazine had a cover story on psilocybin.

• 49:55Andrew Weil?

  Town and Country magazine, of all places, recently had an article titled, "Why is Everybody Smoking Toad Venom?" I mean, this is like clearly becoming a mainstream phenomenon. Sooner or later, sooner I hope, they will be forced out of the restrictive drug schedule they're now in and they'll become available. And I think the potential out there is tremendous. And I've seen remarkable physical healings in people, instantaneous, you know, lifelong patterns that can change.

• 50:23Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 50:24Andrew Weil?

  Just by changing something in your head.

• 50:26Lewis Howes?

  Now, I want to ask you a question about this because I've never taken psychedelics. I've never been high. I've never been drunk in my life.

• 50:32Andrew Weil?

  Well, that's admirable.

• 50:33Lewis Howes?

  Never, yeah, I don't know if that's admirable, it's just a choice I'm inside of to make. Now, it doesn't mean I didn't have pain and suffering in other ways. And maybe getting high and smoking weed would have helped me relieve certain pains. I don't know, because I've never done it.

• 50:47Lewis Howes?

  But I want to ask you, I want to, I want to ask you a question about this because I think this is interesting. I've been, I've been conflicted with psychedelics. And I know a lot of people that do them and swear by them and say they've had these miraculous healings. I'm like, that's awesome if it's supporting you. And then I see other people that keep taking them and nothing changes. But they swear by it, well, I had this healing, but then they're still in darkness. And it's like, okay, you know, is it something we use consistently? Or is it a tool that unlocks us to start integrating like holistic?

• 51:19Andrew Weil?

  I don't think it's something you use consistently.

• 51:22Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 51:22Andrew Weil?

  And also weed is not a psychedelic.

• 51:25Lewis Howes?

  Right, right. But I mean, just like weed, but then psychedelics in general.

• 51:28Andrew Weil?

  Yeah, no, I think for many people, a single experience with them, you know, or occasional experience does it.

• 51:35Lewis Howes?

  Is enough.

• 51:35Andrew Weil?

  Yeah, and I wrote, my first book was called The Natural Mind, and it was about altered states of consciousness and drugs. Written in, it's 50 years ago.

• 51:45Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 51:45Andrew Weil?

  Came out, it's still in print and still used. And Alan Watts gave a blurb for the book.

• 51:54Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 51:55Andrew Weil?

  And he, and he, it was a quote that I really like, referring to using drugs frequently. He said, you know, when you get the message, you hang up the telephone.

• 52:04Lewis Howes?

  You don't need to keep using it.

• 52:05Andrew Weil?

  No, exactly.

• 52:06Lewis Howes?

  Now, here's another question for you. You know, you studied meditation and spirituality and a lot of these different things and studied with a lot of people as well, have done that. I have found that in my meditative practices, when I truly allow myself to be in calm, consistently, now this might take days to go, till I can get to that point, where I'm like fully disconnected from stresses and environmental things that are causing me to be, feel triggered or reactive.

• 52:34Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 52:35Lewis Howes?

  But when I am able to go into those places, which, you know, it's a privilege to be able to do that and take a few days and do that, I get it. When I'm able to do that, I feel like I'm having the most transcendental journeys in my mind and feeling the physical benefits of that as well, of healing through my own internal pharmacy, let's say, without an external thing causing the pharmacy internally to transform. It's also with the integrative of constant healing and applying the lessons I learned from that and having support in that ways, which allows me to keep integrating it. So what are your thoughts on first practicing like other holistic ways before the psychedelics?

• 53:18Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 53:19Lewis Howes?

  Cause I'm all for it if you've tried everything, you've spent time in nature, you've done different therapies, and you're still suffering and there's no way out. What I get worried about is when people say, "Ah, I feel like I'm stressed. Let me take a psychedelic." Or "I feel like I'm overwhelmed and I'm just like, I don't know how to manage this. Let me take a psychedelic." That's my only concern.

• 53:39Andrew Weil?

  Well, that's not how I think they should be used.

• 53:41Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 53:42Andrew Weil?

  You know, I think there should be preparation for the experience and so forth. First of all, it's very likely that we have an endogenous psychedelic in our brains.

• 53:50Lewis Howes?

  Inside of us.

• 53:51Andrew Weil?

  Yeah, it's probably DMT, uh, which is found in many plants.

• 53:56Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 53:56Andrew Weil?

  In that psychedelic toad. It's probably produced in the pineal gland.

• 54:02Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 54:02Andrew Weil?

  And maybe when you have profound experiences through other methods, there's a release of that in the brain.

• 54:09Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 54:09Andrew Weil?

  So that's, you know, first thing.

• 54:11Lewis Howes?

  The third eye.

• 54:12Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 54:12Lewis Howes?

  Getting into the pineal gland and moving the energy up into the pineal gland and having that DMT experience. We can create that without the drug, yeah.

• 54:21Andrew Weil?

  But I think the transformative experience that I've seen have mostly resulted when people have been prepared, have done preparation for not taking it casually and not to sort of fix themselves.

• 54:35Lewis Howes?

  Right, right. Okay, yeah. I'm just a big, I'm all for learning and exploring, but I'm also like, man, I've never done that stuff. So, and I know you have, but I know there's other healing modalities that are available without that.

• 54:49Andrew Weil?

  True. However, the other healing modalities tend to be slow. And the psychedelic can provide that almost instantaneously.

• 54:56Lewis Howes?

  It's true. Just going to talk therapy, you may not get those results. It might take years.

• 55:01Andrew Weil?

  Right.

• 55:01Lewis Howes?

  Of like going once a month before you get very little results.

• 55:05Andrew Weil?

  Yeah, also I heard a wonderful, I don't know who said this about talk therapy is that, you know, when you've got a poisoned arrow in you, you want to know how to get it out. You don't know, you don't want to know how it got there.

• 55:17Lewis Howes?

  Right, right. I hear you. That's funny, yes. And that's why I think when, you know, I've had to try to take the approach of like extreme. You know, measures when it comes to like healing, like really diving into like intensive workshops. Really diving into like intent. I've done eight hour therapy sessions where I'm like, no, let's get to the roots. Like, give it to me.

• 55:37Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 55:37Lewis Howes?

  So I think you've got to be willing to go there.

• 55:39Andrew Weil?

  Yeah, I agree.

• 55:40Lewis Howes?

  If you don't take the psychedelics, you gotta say, I'm gonna face this pain head on, bring it on, let's go. I'm willing to open up and do the work.

• 55:48Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 55:49Lewis Howes?

  Because if you don't, it's gonna just continue suffering. So anyway, that's my caveat for my consciousness, to make sure I speak about that as well. But I know I have friends who swear by ayahuasca and different psychedelics that have supported them in awakening. Things that are holding them back and then, but you've still gotta take the action consistently, once you're aware of it, so.

• 56:11Andrew Weil?

  Well, we'll see what happens, but I'm very hopeful about seeing this, you know.

• 56:14Lewis Howes?

  That you think that's gonna be the next wave, though, yeah.

• 56:16Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 56:16Lewis Howes?

  I hope people do it consciously and effectively and not just as like a, you know, a casual thing.

• 56:21Andrew Weil?

  No way.

• 56:22Lewis Howes?

  Challenge.

• 56:22Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 56:24Lewis Howes?

  Anything else you feel like we're missing that is gonna be coming with, after psychedelics? In terms of healing and wholeness because?

• 56:32Andrew Weil?

  You know, I'm a, I'm a big proponent of mind-body medicine and actually something that I've learned from psychedelics is that by changing things in your head, you can change things in your body and in the external world. And that, that has been so ignored in medicine. You know, conventional medicine and science, we don't believe in the mind and that the mind can affect the body.

• 56:56Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 56:56Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 56:56Lewis Howes?

  Our thoughts.

• 56:57Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 56:57Lewis Howes?

  Can affect the body.

• 56:58Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 56:59Lewis Howes?

  Our thoughts do affect the body.

• 57:00Andrew Weil?

  Yeah. Obviously, but that's, that's not taken advantage of, it's not acknowledged and it's because our science and medicine are totally dominated by a materialistic paradigm, which does not see the reality of the non-physical. Uh, I think that's gonna change and I think that'll bring a lot of good, it'll free a lot of things up.

• 57:20Lewis Howes?

  But there's so many frequencies that are not physical, not material. You know, the frequency of thinking, the frequency of feeling love.

• 57:29Andrew Weil?

  Of love.

• 57:29Lewis Howes?

  Those are frequencies that you can't

• 57:31Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 57:31Lewis Howes?

  measure physically, right?

• 57:33Andrew Weil?

  But they're real.

• 57:34Lewis Howes?

  And then, and you talked about last time how like, you know, you allowed yourself to heal more when you've, when you created love. You felt loved by another human and gotten relationships, your body healed.

• 57:44Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 57:45Lewis Howes?

  So how do we study that? And how do we get into that next of like studying the mind and the emotions with?

• 57:51Andrew Weil?

  Well, there, there, we're creeping up on it, you know, these new techniques of brain imaging, you know, we can, we can image living brains and we've been able to show that placebo responses really are, are associated with actual activity in certain brain regions or that experienced meditators have changes in the size of certain areas of the brain. So this begins to make it real for, for people.

• 58:17Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I went to a seven day meditation retreat with Dr. Joe Dispenza a few months ago, and he had a lot of different scientists there, I guess, you know, studying, I don't know, 15 different test points, I guess, from like brain imaging to blood, to feces, to saliva, to all these things, everyday mapping and exploring like the, the benefits. And it's amazing to see the natural pharmacy.

• 58:43Andrew Weil?

  Right.

• 58:43Lewis Howes?

  That we have in terms of healing ourselves.

• 58:45Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 58:46Lewis Howes?

  With thinking, with breathing, like you talked about the four, seven, eight.

• 58:51Andrew Weil?

  Breath.

• 58:52Lewis Howes?

  This is a healing experience and incorporating the mind body, I think is a very powerful thing. How can we start to learn to teach this earlier? So kids have this philosophy?

• 59:04Andrew Weil?

  You just do it. I mean, you can like to teach kids the four, seven, eight breath, for example.

• 59:10Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. This is beautiful stuff. I'm very excited about this and I'm excited about everything you're creating and the message you bring to the world. I want to mention, before I ask the final questions, I want to mention about your website at matcha.com. This thing is pretty cool. I'm going to try this integrative hydration matcha plus electrolytes.

• 59:32Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 59:33Lewis Howes?

  I think it's really cool. I'm a big fan of electrolytes, but why add matcha?

• 59:36Andrew Weil?

  Because you're getting, it's for the polyphenols and the antioxidants and all that good stuff. And, you know, while there is caffeine in matcha, it's moderated by this other amino acid, L-theanine, that, that has a calming effect. So the stimulation of, of tea and matcha in particular is very different from that of coffee and other caffeine plants. It's like, it's like a calm alertness people describe.

• 1:00:01Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:00:01Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:01Lewis Howes?

  So it's not a jittery?

• 1:00:02Andrew Weil?

  Not jittery.

• 1:00:03Lewis Howes?

  Like coffee?

• 1:00:03Andrew Weil?

  No.

• 1:00:04Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha. So when you add matcha with electrolytes, what does that do? It adds?

• 1:00:09Andrew Weil?

  Well, it's very tasty, first of all. You know, it's a very pleasant drink. You get, you know, a nice alert feeling from it. It's good. I'm a big fan of matcha and, you know, I started this company, matcha.com. It brings high-quality matcha and turmeric, fermented turmeric also.

• 1:00:24Lewis Howes?

  So now you've got fermented turmeric there as well.

• 1:00:27Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:28Lewis Howes?

  You can get.

• 1:00:28Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:29Lewis Howes?

  And what is the main website for you where people can learn about?

• 1:00:31Andrew Weil?

  It's drwile.com, D-R-W-E-I-L dot com. And also, I recommend that people check out the Integrative Medicine Center at the University of Arizona. It's integrativemedicine.arizona.edu. There are a lot of wonderful educational offerings, including a number for general public.

• 1:00:50Lewis Howes?

  Okay, cool. I asked you these two questions last time, my final questions. I'm curious where you're at at this season of life from two, almost two years later. Before I ask them, I want to acknowledge you, Dr. Wild, for how you keep showing up and keep being curious and keep trying to bring new ideas to the world and exploring and adapting them so that we can consume them. So I really acknowledge you for your generous wisdom that you continue to bring to all of us to optimize our health. I asked you this last time, so I'll have to go back and look and see what your response was. But it was the three truths question, three truths. So imagine you get to live as long as you want to live and accomplish everything you want to accomplish for the rest of your life. For whatever reason, you've got to take all of your work and your message with you.

• 1:01:34Lewis Howes?

  So we don't have this conversation, your books, everything's gone for whatever reason, hypothetical. But you get to share three lessons of wisdom you would share with the world from everything you've known about your life. I call it three truths you would share. What would be those three truths for you?

• 1:01:49Andrew Weil?

  Well, I think one of them is everything is as it should be.

• 1:01:52Lewis Howes?

  It's hard for people to accept.

• 1:01:54Andrew Weil?

  I know. I think another one is that you have the ability to heal yourself.

• 1:02:03Andrew Weil?

  And that it's really important to love yourself.

• 1:02:09Lewis Howes?

  Why do you think most people are never taught how to love themselves?

• 1:02:14Andrew Weil?

  That's a good question. Yeah.

• 1:02:17Lewis Howes?

  It's almost like that should be one of the first things.

• 1:02:18Andrew Weil?

  Absolutely.

• 1:02:19Lewis Howes?

  How to love and accept who you are. Even if you're not where you want to be, you can still love and accept who you are and the mistakes you've made and move forward. But and this could be my next book, How to Love Yourself, right? Figure that out.

• 1:02:32Andrew Weil?

  Good.

• 1:02:34Lewis Howes?

  I love those three truths. This is the final question. What is your definition of greatness?

• 1:02:41Andrew Weil?

  I think really using your full potential.

• 1:02:45Lewis Howes?

  There you go.

• 1:02:45Andrew Weil?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:46Lewis Howes?

  After a while, thanks so much. Appreciate you. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward.

• 1:03:26Lewis Howes?

  And I want to remind you, if no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.