The Gut & Brain Connection and Ending Inflammation w/Dr. Emeran Mayer EP 1138

“Any emotions that you experience chronically or frequently have a mirror image in your body.”Today's guest is Dr. Emeran Mayer. He's one of the world’s foremost experts on the gut brain connection and for over the past 40 years, his research and published work has offered groundbreaking evidence of the critical connection between the brain and the gut. He is the executive director of the G. Oppenheimer Center for Neurobiology of Stress and Resilience and the co-director of the Digestive Diseases Research Center at the University of California at Los Angeles. Our conversation was so powerful that I wanted to split into 2 parts! So look out for part 2 coming later this week! In this episode Lewis and Dr. Emeran Mayer discuss the biggest triggers for inflammation, the foods we should eat & avoid to improve our gut health, why we’ve become so addicted to sugar & the effects it has on our body, whether our brain or gut health affects our body more, how our digestive system functions, and so much more! For more go to: www.lewishowes.com/1138Check out his new book : THE GUT-IMMUNE CONNECTIONThe 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 1,138 with Dr. Emeran Meyer. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, 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.

• 0:28Lewis Howes?

  I've got a big announcement. The School of Greatness is available on American public television. That's right. When I started my podcast, I had zero listeners and I kept going because I wanted to help people get the information that I didn't have access to growing up. Now, not only have we become one of the top podcasts in the world, but I'm excited to tell you that the School of Greatness show is on TV. And you can go to lewishouse.com/watch to see when it's available on your TV. Every person tuning in really helps us right now. So if you're able to also share this with anyone you think would find it valuable that doesn't consume podcasts regularly, that would be greatly appreciated. Again, that's lewishouse.com/watch. Check it out now.

• 1:09Lewis Howes?

  My guest today is Dr. Emeron Meyer, and I'm so excited about this one. He's one of the world's foremost experts on the gut-brain connection. And for over the past 40 years, his research and published work has offered groundbreaking evidence of the critical connection between the brain and the gut. He's the executive director of the G. Oppenheimer Center for Neurobiology of Stress and Resilience, and the co-director of the Digestive Disease Research Center at the University of California at Los Angeles. He's written a new book called The Gut Immune Connection: How Understanding the Connection Between Food and Immunity Can Help Us Regain Our Health. And our conversation was so powerful that I wanted to break it up into two different parts. So look out for part two coming later this week.

• 1:53Lewis Howes?

  In this episode, we discuss the biggest triggers for inflammation, the foods we should eat and avoid to improve our gut health, why we've become so addicted to sugar, and how that affects our body. Whether our brain or gut health affects our body more, how our digestive system functions, and so much more. And if you're enjoying this, and you know someone that could be inspired by this, please share this with a friend. And if this is your first time here, click the subscribe button on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or anywhere else that you're listening to this right now, as I'm so pumped about this one, and I can't wait for you to listen to it.

• 2:27Lewis Howes?

  Welcome back everyone to the School of Greatness Podcast. Very excited about our guest, Dr. Emeran Mayer. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here.

• 2:35Emeran Mayer?

  Thanks.

• 2:36Lewis Howes?

  Very, very, of course, I'm very excited about this because I've been fascinated by the mind, the brain, and now more and more as I'm researching this about the brain and the gut connection. And my friend, our friend Sean Stevenson, said, you gotta bring this guy on who's been doing this for 40 years, studying and researching and applying the intersection between the brain and the gut and how it all connects to ending stress, inflammation, optimizing the body, feeling better and all these things. So you've been doing this for a long time. Now you're coming out into the world and reviewing and sharing these lessons and these findings from the science that you're doing and the research you're doing. And I'm curious, in your studies, what are the biggest triggers for inflammation in the body?

• 3:21Lewis Howes?

  Is it environment? Is it what we consume? Is it toxins on our body that we're putting on ourselves? Is it stress hormones? What are these biggest triggers for inflammation?

• 3:33Emeran Mayer?

  Well, I mean, you know, you listed them all. So I mean, so the way the body works, it's a, it integrates influences from multiple sources, particularly the central nervous system, the brain. And it's sort of like this supercomputer applying artificial intelligence to these influences. And then it extracts patterns and decides on relevance and salience. And based on that salience, it makes responses, you know, in terms of this needs to be, we need to adjust this system, we need to adjust this system. And it's doing obviously a phenomenal job because a lot of the influences that we're exposed to, the brain in evolution has never encountered, you know, the chemicals, the

• 4:18Emeran Mayer?

  kind of food that we eat, we never, humans never were exposed to that kind of food.

• 4:24Emeran Mayer?

  The visual experiences, you know, so, so, yeah, the brain and the brain-gut system, because I really always like to link, keep those together, and we can talk about this later, why, is a master in this, you know, in this computation of salience and responding to it. And that system has worked so well that it's kept us alive as a species and, you know, we're thriving. I'm not sure what's happening now, the salience, there's some sort of a mismatch now between the salience assessment and what's good for, for us on the planet, but, you know, there will be corrections in that as well, I'm sure.

• 5:08Lewis Howes?

  Right, right. Now, do you think, is the brain influencing the body more, or is the gut influencing the brain more?

• 5:16Emeran Mayer?

  Um, so you could, you know, I've compared this to, to a central government and local governments in the states and counties, and there's, there's a lot of influence that goes, that comes from the body and that plays a big role in our emotions, in our emotional states. And as, as I'll talk about, you know, there's a lot of stuff now going on with this low-grade immune system activation that we all, most people are now exposed to because of our diet and, and that's a stream of information that constantly goes to the brain.

• 5:59Emeran Mayer?

  You don't feel it, you don't, it doesn't hurt, doesn't generate any, any symptoms, but over time, it does change your brain structurally and functionally. So a big influence, subliminally, that goes to the brain all the time.

• 6:18Emeran Mayer?

  And also, big things, so people have said, you know, we can't, yes, we can generate artificial intelligence, but it won't have emotions, because it doesn't have the body to send this constant signals to it. But then, on the other hand, I mean, the brain is obviously the most sophisticated computer in the universe, up to now. And it does, it sends signals to the body all the time. There's a part of the nervous system called the autonomic nervous system that reaches pretty much every cell in your body. You have a sensory part, the vagus nerve, that reports anything that goes on anywhere constantly to the brain. And then the brain has a system to respond to that. And again, it can influence every cell

• 7:03Emeran Mayer?

  in distinct patterns. It doesn't always kick in, because they would be overwhelmed. It kicks in when it's necessary, when there's a threat or when it's, you know.

• 7:11Lewis Howes?

  I'm curious about, I don't know if you've studied this, but I'm curious about when human beings look themselves in the mirror, and they see themselves, and they shape an identity, they perceive an identity. And maybe they look chiseled. They're like this Greek god that's just chiseled. They're athletic, but they don't believe they're healthy or fit, for whatever reason. Their identity has made them look like they're not, they don't love themselves, or they don't believe that they look good, or whatever it is. Is there anything to play around identity that we shape for ourselves? The image of ourself and making us either healthier or more susceptible to diseases or a weakened immune system? Is this, am I out there too much by asking this? But I'm curious.

• 7:55Emeran Mayer?

  Yeah, no, no, so I mean, this is definitely something that happens a lot, I mean, to a lot of people, that their identity is, it's obviously shaped early on in life, you know. Typically, there could also be genetic factors, but most of it will happen early in life. The feedback you get from your parents and from your friends, if that's generally positive or negative. If it's negative, you know, it can have two effects. One is it can really damage your self-identity and your self-worth. Or you could rebel against it and say, "I'm not going to accept this." You know, "I'm creating my own, my own identity."

• 8:37Emeran Mayer?

  I think it will have, almost certainly, it does have, I mean, anything that happens in the brain in terms of these emotional, like, or identity, like in my own research, I've always been more concerned about the emotional influences on the body, so any emotion that you experience either chronically, or, so more of these emotions that are present all the time, background emotions, that that has a mirror image in your body.

• 9:09Lewis Howes?

  Really? So give me an example, if you're thinking, if you're feeling an emotion of not enough, or lack, or sick, or stress, if you're feeling and thinking that consistently, then the body will mirror that?

• 9:24Emeran Mayer?

  The body will mirror it, and, so I focus primarily on the gut, you know, because it's a kind of a unique organ, because it has all these other things in it, not just the gut wall, but the immune system, and the nervous system of the gut, and hormonal system.

• 9:43Emeran Mayer?

  But, that will, so this is not separate, you know, this is like, just as some people, you look at them and you look at their face and you can tell what's going on, you know, if you're good in that. The, you know, the furze between your eyebrows, and, you know, it's, unless you're a poker player, you exhibit these emotions in your face. But the same thing happens in every part of your body, you know, your heart and your, I'm not sure about organs like, you know, like the kidneys and the liver, that they're not a sort of more mechanical devices, or chemical devices, not as much, these computational

• 10:22Emeran Mayer?

  as, so the heart's also, the heart is basically a pump, and, you know, but the gut is something that has, is in a different realm, you know, it's very sensitive to emotions, and I would say-

• 10:33Lewis Howes?

  The gut, is that why you feel butterflies, you feel sick, when you see something, you feel it in your gut?

• 10:38Emeran Mayer?

  Yeah, and also this self-identity, I'm-

• 10:42Emeran Mayer?

  You know, quite honestly, before you asked the question, I never even thought about this, but I'm absolutely convinced.

• 10:47Lewis Howes?

  I'm fascinated by this.

• 10:48Emeran Mayer?

  I'm absolutely convinced that your gut has a mirror image of your sense of identity.

• 10:54Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 10:55Emeran Mayer?

  Yeah, I think if you have, if you have an inferiority complex, that will affect the gut. And now, you know, since we talked a lot about the gut microbiome that lives inside the gut, which communicates very closely with the gut, even that system gets these messages, you know, from the brain. And this is different. So if you, you know, are threatened by a wild animal, you will have a peak in your stress response, and within a couple of seconds or minutes, it will go down and, you know, be normal again. With these, with these background emotions, or something like sense of identity, that's with you all the time, you know.

• 11:37Lewis Howes?

  Always. You're always thinking and feeling like, I'm not enough, or imposter syndrome or something.

• 11:43Emeran Mayer?

  And it's ingrained in your unconscious, you know, it comes out in your dreams.

• 11:48Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh. So what does, what does that do to the body or the immune system if you're kind of constantly thinking these things, or have a belief system that I'm not enough, or comparing to someone else, or something else, or in lack, or in scarcity? What does that do to the immune system, the gut, the body?

• 12:07Emeran Mayer?

  Yeah, so I'm talking about the immune system. If you have this, you know, I talked about this acute threat, or this acute emotion of an acute stress, it will temporarily increase the activity of your immune system. Because...

• 12:22Lewis Howes?

  Like spike of cortisol or something?

• 12:24Emeran Mayer?

  Yeah, yeah. Of your, of your stress system.

• 12:28Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha.

• 12:29Emeran Mayer?

  But if it's, if it's chronic, it has a totally different effect on it, so often the opposite effect. And it will, I mean, there's, there's many studies coming out on this now, you know, that... Even early adverse life events that play a big role in shaping this identity have been found to have an effect on the gene expression pattern in your immune cells, in some of your immune cells, which in an adult person, so you can, there's a memory in these immune cells, that reflects what happened to you at age of, you know.

• 13:08Lewis Howes?

  Five, seven, nine, whatever.

• 13:10Emeran Mayer?

  And that obviously shapes when these immune cells are called into action, that shapes the immune response.

• 13:17Lewis Howes?

  There's a trigger that you'll feel when you see something that reflects what you went through, right?

• 13:23Emeran Mayer?

  So there's a memory, there's an immune memory. I mean, there's clearly also this brain memory in our unconscious. It's probably the way the body is organized, that some of the systems, particularly the nervous system and immune system, can form these memories that then later really influence many functions in your body and then also your behavior, you know.

• 13:45Lewis Howes?

  So how do we heal these things? If we have this memory of something from the past in our immune system or in our DNA and our cells, how do we heal or move beyond it so it doesn't hold us back?

• 13:58Emeran Mayer?

  Well, there's different ways. There's some people that do this on their own, you know, they pull themselves out of it. There's other people that, you know, go into psychoanalysis. So I mentioned in my first book, you know, I went through Jungian dream analysis for several years at some point in my life, during sort of an existential crisis and found that extremely helpful connecting to, I mean, just watching your dreams for a while and realize some are recurring. I mean, those are the ones that obviously have a big influence on, because they're there all the time. So if you imagine every night, you know,

• 14:40Emeran Mayer?

  these experiences are recalled and even during your sleep effect, you know, systems within your body. So that's another way.

• 14:50Emeran Mayer?

  There's ways today, you know, cognitive behavioral therapy doesn't deal with the roots of it, they just change your behavior. It's another way of dealing with it, so forget about reversing or patching up what happened early on. And then there's the most modern way, psychedelics, you know. Right. I'm not an expert on this, but I've gotten really interested in that for a variety of reasons, because when I first came to UCLA for training, I was fascinated by this whole counterculture, you know, they were workshopping in S L N and organized by the Ojai Foundation.

• 15:30Emeran Mayer?

  And I listened to many of these leading figures at the time, you know, giving these workshops. So this was in the early seventies, you know, and they, well, early eighties, I'd say, when I experienced it. And they talked about, you know, psychoanalysis with LSD or with ketamine. And then it was completely, you know, closed off for science for decades, and now it's coming back. It's coming back. Rapidly, you know, and there's some fascinating stuff coming out. I've, you know, and also my travels during college in South America, I've stayed with some of these tribes on the Orinoco River.

• 16:14Emeran Mayer?

  And they use, you know, the same substance, similar substance to what's in Ayahuasca. Plant medicine. And we've seen, you know, how they get into these trance states. And so now, you know, fast forward thirty-five, forty years, I find it fascinating that this is now back in the mainstream, you know, and it will. So this is just a way of removing the control, if you say it in a simplistic way, removing the control that we have by prefrontal cortex to suppress these things. You loosen that control and then this stuff will bubble up, maybe very painful. I think you shouldn't do it without a guidance of an experienced, you know, shaman or psychotherapist. But that's another way of processing and.

• 17:01Emeran Mayer?

  And the majority of people go through life without ever dealing with this. You know, they they get sick, they they get their heart attack, diabetes. They never think about this, you know, so it's.

• 17:14Lewis Howes?

  Wow. I'm curious about the gut. What is, when you say the gut, what is included in that? What are all the elements of gut?

• 17:23Emeran Mayer?

  Yeah, so let's start with, you know, when I went to medical school, the gut was basically the the digestive organ.

• 17:30Lewis Howes?

  The digestive organ.

• 17:31Emeran Mayer?

  It was something that we know very well from the esophagus, the stomach, the small intestine, large intestine. Each of those regions has a special task. And the ultimate goal, we thought, is the breaking down of food into absorbable and, you know, components that are then provide the nutrients for our body. That that was the thought. But then, you know, when I came to UCLA as initially as a research fellow, worked in a lab, late John Walsh, and so they found at the time that there were molecules in the gut

• 18:14Emeran Mayer?

  that somewhat didn't fit that that description, you know, there were there were neurotransmitters. And so make a long story short.

• 18:26Lewis Howes?

  Transmitters from the brain to the gut.

• 18:28Emeran Mayer?

  Same same molecules, and the receptors. And and then people thought about, why is that? And it was the discovery of a nervous system in in the gut, you know, 150 million neurons that are there and very similar in their.

• 18:44Lewis Howes?

  150 million neurons in the gut?

• 18:46Emeran Mayer?

  In the gut, sandwiched. So if you look at a gut, you wouldn't see it. Gut has several layers, and in between these layers is a net of nerve cells that wraps around it. But because the gut is so long, you know, it adds up with the numbers. And. The main function of that system is really to completely regulate the gut. In an animal model, you can take out the gut, put it in a test tube, and this gut will still have the same functions, parastolosis and secretion, as it has when it's connected to, you know, the rest of the body.

• 19:21Lewis Howes?

  You can put it in a tube, and it'll still, like, process food?

• 19:24Emeran Mayer?

  Yeah.

• 19:24Lewis Howes?

  It'll still run it through the same way?

• 19:25Emeran Mayer?

  Yeah.

• 19:26Lewis Howes?

  So what does that tell us?

• 19:27Emeran Mayer?

  So it tells us that that gut, or this little gut in the brain, is really the primary regulator of our gut functions, the digestive functions. But then there was another sort of realization that these same, you know, these same transmitters were also present within the brain, as in the gut. That caused a lot of surprise, you know, that why would you have that? Then, again, a long story, the evolution. In evolution, we started out, the most primitive organisms, with that gut-brain.

• 20:07Emeran Mayer?

  And then gradually, as animals, this was marine creatures, tiny marine creatures in the oceans. As we, as in evolution, polar animals developed with a head, then some of these nerves migrated to the head and formed, you know, at the beginning, the central nervous system. And then there was some division of labor at some point, that before, the gut-brain did everything, because there was no head and no other functions, no other organs. So later, our big brains then took over the regulation, the response to the environment, the coordination of organs within the body.

• 20:47Emeran Mayer?

  And the digestive side was left to the brain in the gut, the intersternal nervous system.

• 20:56Emeran Mayer?

  But that means there's a very intimate relationship between these two, you know, more than with any other organ in the body. Clearly, the heart gets a lot of signals from the brain when we're stressed or the blood vessels, the blood pressure goes up. But it's nothing compared to what goes on in this multi-lane highway between the brain and the gut.

• 21:17Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 21:19Emeran Mayer?

  So, and yeah, I would say, so a lot of people then think, you know, our emotions processed by the gut's nervous system or that's probably not the case. I think there's still the more sophisticated things happen at the brain level. But it's this constant signal, you know, in a bidirectional way that.

• 21:48Lewis Howes?

  Like when we see something, we feel triggered, or we see a threat, or see something we like or we don't like, and then we feel it in our gut. Is it first processed through the eyes into the brain and then connects down to the gut? Or does we see something and it goes from the gut up to the brain?

• 22:05Emeran Mayer?

  No, I would say this happens first in the brain, and within milliseconds, it's a signal down.

• 22:10Lewis Howes?

  Instant, right.

• 22:11Emeran Mayer?

  And as you said, it can be good or bad, you know, this arousal mechanism.

• 22:15Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it can be pleasure or pain or stress, right?

• 22:18Emeran Mayer?

  Yeah, it can be, you go in your first state and you have, people talk about butterflies in their stomach. And it can be when you have to give a speech the first time.

• 22:25Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, and you're nervous.

• 22:26Emeran Mayer?

  Or an actor, you know, so it's the same, the same mechanism. It's value neutral, you know, that arousal. But then there's also emotion-specific signals, you know, that happen that. So anger, anxiety, we don't know about something like jealousy, you know, that hasn't really been studied, but anger and fear.

• 22:50Emeran Mayer?

  That has been studying, we know exactly the patterns that happen in every level of the gut when you have these emotions. And one of the reasons that these emotions then hang around for a long time, it's not like you can turn them off, anger, you know. So some people train themselves, you know, to have more equanimity and not get carried away by the anger. But a lot of people, that anger sticks with them, or the fear. And then that's because it reverberates in these gut circuits.

• 23:21Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 23:22Emeran Mayer?

  Between the gut and the brain, and you know, it sets up this vicious cycle. And the brain cannot easily shut it off unless you train it, train yourself to do it.

• 23:32Lewis Howes?

  How do you train yourself to let go of anger?

• 23:36Emeran Mayer?

  Well, it's a lot of the meditative techniques of, you know, mindfulness that you...

• 23:42Lewis Howes?

  It's the practice. It doesn't happen overnight. It's like a practice of doing it over and over.

• 23:46Emeran Mayer?

  It's the practice, you experience that emotion and you train yourself to let it go, you know, to see it float away.

• 23:53Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, not hold on to it. You studied Buddhism for a while as well, right, or are you...

• 23:57Emeran Mayer?

  Yeah, and this is something I've always been fascinated by. Looking back, I don't even know why I was interested. It's probably my own personal issues.

• 24:08Emeran Mayer?

  But that stuck with me, that interest, and I find now more than ever the wisdom that is in these Buddhist concepts, both in terms of emotional regulation. I mean, who would have thought that mindfulness-based stress reduction would become a,

• 24:24Emeran Mayer?

  you know, a commonly used, like a household name, you know, or an app. Like when I was first interested, it was an esoteric thing. People say, "Ay, ay, this crazy, you know, Buddhism."

• 24:34Lewis Howes?

  In the last decade, it's become the mainstream, you know, mindfulness meditation.

• 24:39Emeran Mayer?

  And that all has to do with these concepts that we just talked about, you know, to train yourself not to be stuck with these emotions. Because these emotions, that if they hang around, as we've now said several times... It's not just within your brain, it circulates through your body.

• 24:55Lewis Howes?

  Your whole body is affected.

• 24:56Emeran Mayer?

  And it's, it has, it's a very unhealthy situation to be in that state.

• 25:03Lewis Howes?

  Now, how, I've been studying a lot of breath work over the last four or five years. I was studying, you know, to become a meditation instructor in India. Then I've been learning from Wim Hof. I'm not sure if you're familiar with Wim Hof and his practices. There's the yoga practices in general of breath work.

• 25:21Lewis Howes?

  How much connection is there between the way we breathe, the style of breathing, the shortness or the length and the calmness, the intensity of breathing in affecting the immune system and the gut-brain connection? Is there science around breath?

• 25:39Emeran Mayer?

  Yeah, there's, there's a science. And I have to admit, I'm not an expert on the various techniques that people have been using. So we have been using in our work, the simplest form, the abdominal breathing,

• 25:52Emeran Mayer?

  or diaphragmatic breathing, where you basically just switch from your typical adult pattern. So if you have 10 people and you tell them, "Take a deep breath," they all take it into their chest.

• 26:03Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 26:04Emeran Mayer?

  You know, this is it. And to switch that pattern to inhaling into your body, into your stomach, does wonders. And the reason it is, because the diaphragm is closely connected and the lung closely connected to the vagus nerve with the brain, with these emotional centers within the brain. So if you, if you're stressed and you consciously now tell your diaphragm to go into a pattern that is associated with relaxation, it sends, so the body sends signals to the brain now that are incompatible with the stress perception.

• 26:47Emeran Mayer?

  And if you are good in doing this, train yourself, then you will be able to overcome it quickly, you know.

• 26:57Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 26:59Emeran Mayer?

  I've been doing this again, you know. And you asked me why I started these things. So I mean, I had some, some issues when I was younger. Where I thought this was, somebody taught me, a psychologist taught me this. And I've been practicing this for sixty years, you know. Do it in the car, if you have to give a talk in the car to the. And I've gotten so good in it that within seconds, I can switch it, you know.

• 27:25Lewis Howes?

  What is the practice?

• 27:26Emeran Mayer?

  Yeah, with, um, well, the initial practice is you just, you know, spend like fifteen minutes, three times a day, uh, lying down and, and breathing and counting your breath. And then combining it with, uh, with, uh, the mindfulness practice that anytime you exhale, you let the negative emotions of anxiety go. Uh, and the, the only focus is on your, on your breath and nothing else. You clear your mind of any, uh, distracting thoughts. And, um, then if you do this long enough, it takes you a second to do this and you feel the warmth in your stomach. It's an interesting thing, so it comes back to the gut. So what, what happens, you know, when, when you do this and why, why does you get this?

• 28:11Emeran Mayer?

  And where do you get this feeling of warmth and relaxation in your, in your abdomen? Which

• 28:19Lewis Howes?

  And then it sends signals to the brain.

• 28:20Emeran Mayer?

  It sends signals to the brain and it forces the brain to, to change.

• 28:23Lewis Howes?

  To shift.

• 28:24Emeran Mayer?

  To shift. The only, the only humans that do this spontaneously are, are young kids, infants. If you watch, um, you know, a, a child, they breathe into their belly spontaneously.

• 28:39Lewis Howes?

  Automatically.

• 28:39Emeran Mayer?

  Automatically and with becoming a teenager and being adult, it switches to the chest.

• 28:45Lewis Howes?

  Why is that? Why do we shift from our natural state to an unnatural state?

• 28:50Emeran Mayer?

  I'm not sure. Uh, yeah, I'm, I'm not sure. We don't teach our children that, you know. It's, it's, it's something that happens. Maybe because as an adult, we go into a more stressful interaction, confrontational attraction with the world. Um, I, I also can answer this question if you ask me. Do women breathe more through their belly than men do? You know, my guess would be yes.

• 29:17Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 29:18Emeran Mayer?

  But, um. You know, because women are generally more in touch with their emotional side. And but it's something we have this biofeedback device with us. You don't need to hook yourself up to the electrode or to EEG. You know, you can just sense it. And yeah, I would say this should be something should be trained in.

• 29:44Lewis Howes?

  Kindergarten.

• 29:44Emeran Mayer?

  In kindergarten, like many other things, like a healthy diet, you know.

• 29:48Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely. Speaking of healthy diet, when we have sugar or processed food or something that is not whole, healthy foods, what is that doing to the brain, to the gut brain and the brain connection? The moment we intake something that is processed, sugary, alcohol, something that we know is not the healthiest consumption. What does it do to the gut? How does it affect the immune system and the brain?

• 30:17Emeran Mayer?

  Yeah, so there's a short term, a quick effect, and there's something that takes longer. So the short term effect, we have a lot of receptors in our mouths, you know, like sweet taste receptors and bitter taste receptors that also receptors that sense texture. So that's the immediate reaction. The brain gets this immediately and it forms memories of this and it forms. The gain of these receptors is determined again early on in life. You know, your sweet preference is programmed early on in life. And we do this extensively with our kids that any positive event like birthdays or celebrations, lots of sugar, you know.

• 30:59Lewis Howes?

  Oh, right. And they want it more and more.

• 31:00Emeran Mayer?

  Yeah. And then, for example, in Mexico with the former Mexican president Fox, who was also the CEO of Coke.

• 31:10Lewis Howes?

  Oh, man.

• 31:11Emeran Mayer?

  So they promoted, you know, sweet drinks like Coke to mothers with young children to calm down their. So they, one of the reasons for their big obesity problem is that their taste preferences have been programmed, you know, to. Now, this program is not permanent. You know, you can change this as an adult. If you go to a

• 31:35Emeran Mayer?

  to a sugar-free diet. You won't initially it's hard because you have to overcome that set point. But you'll notice that

• 31:45Emeran Mayer?

  after a short period of time, a few months, you're sensitive to sugar changes.

• 31:50Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 31:50Emeran Mayer?

  And you actually develop an adversity to sugary foods, which is a very interesting experience. Same thing can be said about spices, bitter taste. You know, as kids, we hate bitter taste. As adults, we love some drinks that are really bitter.

• 32:08Emeran Mayer?

  And these receptors, quite interesting. They're not just in our mouth, but they're also in our gut. You know, obviously, in our gut, they don't transmit conscious information. So if you if I infused something sweet into your intestine, you wouldn't know if it's sweet or not, you know?

• 32:25Lewis Howes?

  Really? It's more through the tongue?

• 32:27Emeran Mayer?

  It's the tongue and, you know, the rest of your oral cavity.

• 32:33Lewis Howes?

  Huh. So if I just put it into my gut, I wouldn't know it's sweet?

• 32:36Emeran Mayer?

  Then you would notice it, but it still has generated signals back to the brain.

• 32:40Lewis Howes?

  I'd feel probably more sick than anything. I'd probably feel like, uh. Because when you intake it, it tastes good. And then 10 minutes later, you're like, oh, my stomach hurts.

• 32:48Emeran Mayer?

  Yeah.

• 32:48Lewis Howes?

  Right?

• 32:49Emeran Mayer?

  Yeah.

• 32:49Lewis Howes?

  Why is that? Why is something that tastes good going in, but hurts you?

• 32:54Emeran Mayer?

  Well, because, yeah, because different mechanisms kick in.

• 32:59Emeran Mayer?

  You know, your mouth, so the first impression is all about the hedonic aspect of food. You know, it's the thing that that nature has designed us to, you know, go after sweet berries or two. So there wasn't that much sugar around, you know,

• 33:19Emeran Mayer?

  like a million years ago. So whenever human ancestors found something sweet, they wanted to make sure they devoured it.

• 33:27Lewis Howes?

  It was rare too.

• 33:28Emeran Mayer?

  It was rare.

• 33:29Lewis Howes?

  It was scarce.

• 33:29Emeran Mayer?

  So it's

• 33:31Lewis Howes?

  Now it's abundant. It's in everything.

• 33:33Emeran Mayer?

  It's in everything and

• 33:36Emeran Mayer?

  So what has happened now, it's no longer an adaptive mechanism to find these important things, but it's it's it's a maladaptive mechanism that causes all kinds of, you know, downstream problems. There's another thing about fat, you know, the same thing, fat is a sedonic quality, you know, like butter, you know, people love butter, you love, you know, people love chocolates with a lot of, you know, fat in it, not the the the The bitter kind, yeah, yeah. So that's another one, and it's another one of these adaptive mechanisms where you want to have, when things were rare, you want, you were craving for this, you know, high-caloric, this high-caloric substance, sugar and fat.

• 34:21Emeran Mayer?

  But when it gets downstream, other things happen. So it changes, so both the sugar and the fat changes the receptors that sense it in a way that, for example, fat that goes down into your intestine, they desensitize the vagus nerve. So normally, the vagus nerve generates a feeling of satiety and fullness, so you don't want to stop eating. If you're on a high-fat diet, these receptors get desensitized, and you no longer get that feeling. So now you can keep on eating, because the feedback mechanism that shuts off this is

• 35:03Emeran Mayer?

  no longer, and the same with the sweet taste receptors, you know, it does not. So our diet with having, you know, packed it with these these high-caloric, high-density foods, has hijacked the system, and it's moved into an opposite direction. Also, the microbes, you know, so by eating these these kinds of foods that are so overburdened in our diet now, you select a different population of of of microbes, and it's particularly true about, so we we crave the sugar, but not the complex carbohydrates, which are

• 35:45Emeran Mayer?

  the good form of of of energy that we should be eating. So sugar is an easily digestible, you know, immediately digestible and absorbable carbohydrate, the complex carbohydrates, which are mainly in plants.

• 36:02Emeran Mayer?

  They cannot be absorbed quickly, they need the microbes. So if you're on a diet that's high in these absorbable sugar molecules and deficient in the non-absorbable carbohydrates, you select a population of microbes that does not produce beneficial things in your gut. So you will ultimately, through steps of events, create a, you know, what's been called a leaky gut.

• 36:33Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 36:34Emeran Mayer?

  A gut that leads to the activation of the immune system in the gut that is not adaptive. So a lot of things that are happening today have become maladaptive. You know, evolution has designed us as this optimal machine that was perfect for hundreds of thousands of years. But we have changed the environment so dramatically that evolution never anticipated that. So now we have this big mismatch of the diet that feels good initially, but has a lot of downstream negative effects. We're more depressed, but also, most importantly, engages the immune system

• 37:18Emeran Mayer?

  in a way that then affects the brain. So some people with, subset of patients with depression have an immune component.

• 37:27Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 37:27Emeran Mayer?

  Brain inflammation. But then also with these neurodegenerative diseases, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. So, yeah, diet plays a big role at multiple levels. You know, and what we have to realize that what we were designed for, these optimal survival machines, we have to fundamentally change that concept. You know, we can no longer follow that and trust nature that will take care of this. We have to really consciously change it because we're not, otherwise we just continue to run into the health issues that we're facing now.

• 38:09Lewis Howes?

  What would you say are the five foods we should be eating that'll optimize our brain-gut connection?

• 38:18Emeran Mayer?

  So.

• 38:18Lewis Howes?

  If we could, if we could choose these five foods consistently, what would you recommend?

• 38:23Emeran Mayer?

  Well, they would all fall into, the majority would fall into the category of, of plant-based foods. So it could be leafy vegetables, roots, seeds, nuts.

• 38:38Emeran Mayer?

  And, and, and a big variety of, of these foods, not, so not, so if you just eat tomatoes, or if you just eat kale, nothing else, it won't, it won't give you that benefit.

• 38:50Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 38:52Emeran Mayer?

  And, and the reason for that is,

• 38:56Emeran Mayer?

  I mean, this is what I push, you know, in, in, in, in, in my book. We, we should really refocus our diet on feeding the optimal food to our microbes.

• 39:07Lewis Howes?

  To the microbes, the microbiome of the microbes, yeah.

• 39:10Emeran Mayer?

  Everything else will happen by default because we are designed. Our ancestors lived on a diet, a very low caloric density. They were harvesting and gathering,

• 39:26Emeran Mayer?

  you know, herbs and nuts and seeds and tubers and, and things that were around them, all low, very low caloric density, very low sugar in it, lots of fiber.

• 39:35Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 39:37Emeran Mayer?

  Initially, humans weren't even able to process them. Then with cooking, we're able to break down some of the fibers. But if you think about it, the design of our bodies now, the digestive system, was really made with,

• 39:50Emeran Mayer?

  dealing with these types of foods that, you know, people encountered hundreds of thousands of years ago.

• 39:57Lewis Howes?

  In, in, in nature.

• 39:58Emeran Mayer?

  In nature, so, you know, we had a very large, large intestine, our fermenting system with all the microbes. And their little was absorbed in the small intestine. And a lot of it happened, the salvage of calories happened by the microbes, with the help of the microbes in the large intestine. We've completely reversed this. Now we have a diet that is 99% absorbed in the small intestine.

• 40:27Lewis Howes?

  What does that mean?

• 40:28Emeran Mayer?

  That, that, that, that means we've, we've taken out.

• 40:33Emeran Mayer?

  Modern agriculture and

• 40:34Lewis Howes?

  You mean because with like no fiber or something and then it's processed in the small intestine? But fiber is more in the large intestine?

• 40:41Emeran Mayer?

  Yeah, it's taken out all the, most of the fiber molecules. So we don't eat wild rice, but we eat the white rice. And, you know, we don't eat the, the types of potatoes, like the sweet potato, but we eat the potato.

• 40:56Lewis Howes?

  White potato?

• 40:58Emeran Mayer?

  Yeah, the white potato or the french fried potato.

• 41:00Lewis Howes?

  Right, right, right.

• 41:01Emeran Mayer?

  It's the dominant form.

• 41:03Lewis Howes?

  The sweet potato is the better one.

• 41:04Emeran Mayer?

  And, and they've all been selected really based on, on, on, on these taste preferences, you know, which, which have taken us on, on the, on the, on the wrong way. There's also a lot of molecules in plants, in addition to the fiber, that are non-absorbable. Um, these polyphenols or antioxidants. They don't, you know, they're not absorbable. They need the microbes to break them down and then. So if you're on, on a diet that's deficient or very low in plant-based foods, um, you have a diet deficient in polyphenols and fiber. And so you, you, um,

• 41:49Emeran Mayer?

  you know, prevent your microbes to get their normal, um, you know, service of normal servings of, of, of, of foods. And the microbes respond to that in a pattern that ultimately leads to shrinkage of the, the, the compromise of the gut barrier, activation of the immune system. And, um, so my lesson is always, you know, let's go back to a diet primarily that's optimized for, for the microbes.

• 42:19Lewis Howes?

  The microbes, which is in the large intestine?

• 42:21Emeran Mayer?

  It was in the large intestine and that will be the remedy for, you know, prevention of colon cancer, prevention of cardiovascular disease, probably most likely also prevention of Alzheimer's, Parkinson's.

• 42:36Lewis Howes?

  Diabetes?

• 42:37Emeran Mayer?

  Yeah, yeah, all of those.

• 42:38Lewis Howes?

  So what are those, so those foods to help prevent all those things are a big variety of leafy veggies, roots, seeds, nuts. What other foods were you mentioning?

• 42:49Emeran Mayer?

  Um, so it's also a few seafoods. Um, you know, there's, there's mussels.

• 42:56Emeran Mayer?

  There's the small fish, like anchovies.

• 43:02Emeran Mayer?

  Like all the, all the small fish that are basically the, the bait for the big fish. The small fish are, are still, there's several reasons for that. They're still abundant in the ocean. There's no decrease, no threat of extinction. They're also the lowest on the food chain, so they don't have this accumulation of, of heavy metals and toxins.

• 43:22Lewis Howes?

  Interesting. They're going direct to the source, not being eaten by something else that's being eaten by something else.

• 43:28Emeran Mayer?

  And, you know, they're, they're very popular in, in, in the Mediterranean cuisine. So if you go to Spain or Italy, you'll see them in the market, you know. Go to restaurants. Here it's hard to find them, other than in canned form.

• 43:40Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, which is probably not the best form, is it? Or is it okay? I mean?

• 43:43Emeran Mayer?

  Um, I can't answer that question, but it's the only one that's available here. Um, and there are companies that, you know, source these to, um, sustainable fisheries in, in, in Spain that, that I would probably trust more than the, the marketing campaign that, that you see here. Um, mussels also, um, you know, very low on the, on, on the food chain. Now, these, and then, you know, wild salmon. So, but wild salmon is a controversial thing, because on the one side, if everybody switched to wild salmon, there would not be...

• 44:19Lewis Howes?

  There'd be none left, yeah.

• 44:20Emeran Mayer?

  There, there's nothing left. So there, there are, again, a few sources where there's sustainable harvest of, of salmon. Um, they've, um, you know, they're typically more expensive than the farmed salmon. But the main health ingredients is omega-3 fatty acids that are in all these. They're, they're in the small fish, they're in the, um, in the mussels, and they're in, in wild salmon. They're not in the...

• 44:52Lewis Howes?

  The bigger fish.

• 44:53Emeran Mayer?

  Well, they're not the bigger fish and they're also not in the salmon that, you know, that are farmed because they get a totally different nutrition. They don't get the food that, so I mean ultimately, you know, these omega-3 fatty acids come from the algae and the small fish feed on the algae and the salmon feeds on it. So if you remove that, you know, that source of omega-3 from the plants, then your fish will have a much lower concentration of these health-promoting molecules.

• 45:29Lewis Howes?

  What does omega-3 do for the gut-brain connection?

• 45:35Emeran Mayer?

  So omega-3 fatty acids have always been, for a long time, been found to be promoting for brain health in general, you know, both the growth and the function and the,

• 45:51Emeran Mayer?

  there's now also studies that these omega-3 fatty acids have an influence on the microbes.

• 46:00Emeran Mayer?

  And I can't tell you exactly, I mean, it's probably complicated because sort of, I mean, I hope this is not too complicated for your listeners. So when you ingest fats, they are processed in our small intestine, there's bile acids that make them absorbable.

• 46:24Emeran Mayer?

  Then the kind of bile acids that are produced from the type of, depending on the type of fat that you eat, and there's probably a large variety of these bile acids. So depending on these bile acids that are produced, then sorting your liver, in your gallbladder, excreted into the small intestine, they are metabolized by your microbes. Depending on what microbes you have, they break them down into reabsorbable molecules that then go back into circulation. So what ends up back in the circulation? Even though it starts out with facilitating fat absorption, once you get back into your circulation, they have a totally different function.

• 47:08Emeran Mayer?

  They become signaling molecules to all your organs, including the brain. So now, in Alzheimer's disease, for example, we know that short chain fatty, um, that not short chain fatty, I said that, that secondary bile acids have, play a role in the neurodegeneration. So if you eat the fats that contain omega three or omega six or other saturated fatty acids, that has an effect on this, on this system, which ultimately gets back into your blood and signals to your organs. So it's, it's complicated, but I mean, everything, once you get into the brain gut microbiome access, gets complicated.

• 47:50Lewis Howes?

  Of course.

• 47:51Emeran Mayer?

  It's not, it's not linear, it's, it's usually circular processes. And there's some unexpected players in this that we, you know, in our typical nutrition education, don't really

• 48:05Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 48:06Emeran Mayer?

  pay attention to in medicine, you know.

• 48:08Lewis Howes?

  What would you say the main, uh, the key factors to destroying our gut? What, what would those be? Is it just all unhealthy food? Is it certain types of food? Is it other substances, drugs or alcohol? And what's, what are the main things destroying it?

• 48:26Emeran Mayer?

  Yeah, so, you know,

• 48:29Lewis Howes?

  That causes leaky gut and, you know, inflammation.

• 48:31Emeran Mayer?

  Yeah, so, so, yeah, the gut, so the factors that are worst for gut health, I would say is it point number one diet, you know. And there it's the standard American diet with the deficiencies and

• 48:47Lewis Howes?

  The SAD diet, right?

• 48:48Emeran Mayer?

  The SAD, that's a kind of a really appropriate acronym. There, there's deficient in all the components that are essential for a healthy microbiome. And ultimately then for a healthy gut barrier and so then there's, there's, there's other things, there's toxins that come with the food and chemicals.

• 49:12Emeran Mayer?

  So even if you're a vegetarian, you know, and you don't pay attention to where your food comes from, you may be absorbing a lot of stuff that are herbicides or pesticides or insecticides that are used, for example, for the for the production, food industrial style production of soybeans, for example. So, you know, beans are very healthy. It's a high fiber, high protein kind of food. So beans are pretty, beans and lentils are one of the healthiest foods, but if they, if they're produced with, with Roundup and all these chemicals to destroy the things

• 49:51Emeran Mayer?

  around them, in increasing amounts, you now start, you know, having the opposite effect. You're killing certain microbes and many of these insecticides and herbicides, they do have an effect on the microbes. They do not have a direct effect on our gut cells. So that's been worked out in early studies. That's why they were FDA approved. But they do have an effect on the on the microbes. And that science has not been pursued in a, in a great way. And what effect this ultimately has on, you know, like, so, so, for example, the Central

• 50:34Emeran Mayer?

  Valley in California has an epidemic of Parkinson's disease.

• 50:38Lewis Howes?

  Really? Central Valley in California?

• 50:40Emeran Mayer?

  Yeah, so the main producer of vegetables. So if you're a vegetarian, you would think, oh, this is the place, you know, where all my food comes from. But it is produced in an industrial agricultural style, you know, with, with these, with the Roundup. It's not, so people always worry about the genetically engineered food. I don't think we have evidence that that by itself is actually harmful, even though we may not have the latest, the last answers on that. The problem is that what's been thrown onto these.

• 51:13Lewis Howes?

  The chemicals on top of the plants. So wait, the Central Valley in California is the highest density of Alzheimer's?

• 51:20Emeran Mayer?

  Of Parkinson's.

• 51:21Lewis Howes?

  Of Parkinson's, sorry.

• 51:22Emeran Mayer?

  It's a, it's a, it's, it's an epidemic in that area. So a colleague of mine, UCLA, studies that population and.

• 51:30Lewis Howes?

  Because they're getting their food from that location.

• 51:33Emeran Mayer?

  Well, they're exposed. So first of all, the people are exposed. You know, these dust crappers fly over.

• 51:38Lewis Howes?

  And so it's just exposing the air as well.

• 51:41Emeran Mayer?

  It's, it's exposing the air, probably, you know, possibly the water as well. But then these foods, you know, have on the surface residues of these increasing amounts of chemicals that are being sprayed on them. And the kind of washing that you do at home, you know, this.

• 52:00Lewis Howes?

  Just like a rinse doesn't work.

• 52:01Emeran Mayer?

  It's not good.

• 52:01Lewis Howes?

  Really? Because is it baked inside the DNA of the vegetable or the fruit?

• 52:05Emeran Mayer?

  It's what the chemical reaction is and the physical reaction between these.

• 52:11Lewis Howes?

  Huh.

• 52:12Emeran Mayer?

  These herbicides, and it's multiple. It's pesticides and herbicides, you know, that are both sprayed on these plants that.

• 52:23Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 52:24Emeran Mayer?

  That probably play a big role. So if you're a vegetarian or a vegan, I think you need to be concerned about the source where your food comes from.

• 52:33Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 52:33Emeran Mayer?

  You know.

• 52:34Lewis Howes?

  Wow, and Parkinson's is the, is that the, what's that disease? Is that the physical?

• 52:40Emeran Mayer?

  Yeah, so Parkinson's is a neurodegenerative disease. The advanced classical symptoms.

• 52:45Lewis Howes?

  The shaking, like the tightness.

• 52:46Emeran Mayer?

  Yeah, the gait, the posture, you know, the compromised walking.

• 52:53Lewis Howes?

  Wow, so.

• 52:54Emeran Mayer?

  But, but that's, that's the end result. You know, see, this disease in the majority of people starts in the gut, in the nervous system of the gut. So the first degenerations.

• 53:05Lewis Howes?

  Huh.

• 53:06Emeran Mayer?

  Happen at the gut level. And then they migrate, these, these degenerative bodies, these Lewy bodies, they migrate up the vagus nerve into the nucleus of the vagus nerve in the brainstem. And from there later, you know, to higher centers, emotional regulation.

• 53:23Lewis Howes?

  Wow. Are you able to reverse Parkinson's then through diet or once you?

• 53:28Emeran Mayer?

  Well, this is the big hope. So the time from when the damage first shows up in your gut to the time it shows up in your brain. Can be up to fourteen years.

• 53:41Lewis Howes?

  Oh.

• 53:42Emeran Mayer?

  So there's a long, a wide open window where you can do interventions.

• 53:49Emeran Mayer?

  And, you know, with, that's, that's for the time with dietary interventions would have the biggest effect. I don't think that once it has affected you and you develop depression and gate abnormalities that you can reverse this, you know, with, with diet alone. Um, there's, you know, there's obviously the medications that we have. In the future, there may be other ways of doing it, but uh, for now, the biggest hope is that, that we can diagnose this early, uh, they see it, the first symptoms. And so one of the first symptoms is, it's kind of interesting, is a new onset constipation, because when these nerves in the gut are affected, it doesn't function as properly anymore.

• 54:32Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 54:33Emeran Mayer?

  Ninety-nine percent of physicians and patients will not make that connection. This is the first sign of, of.

• 54:41Lewis Howes?

  Constipation, like consistent constipation.

• 54:43Emeran Mayer?

  Yeah, first onset in some, you've never had that problem.

• 54:45Lewis Howes?

  When you've never had it before, gotcha. You know what's interesting? I'm gonna share a personal, a personal problem with you. Uh, when I was sixteen, I had eight teeth removed. I had my wisdom teeth removed and then four other teeth. I was supposed to get braces. They were doing it to create gaps, spaces, so that I can get braces. I never got the braces until twenty years later. I decided to finally get Invisalign. They're not in right now, I take them out during interviews. And my jaw or my mouth or my teeth started to grow in a way where my back teeth never touched after that moment. So for twenty years, my back teeth never clenched down. It was just the front two teeth.

• 55:30Lewis Howes?

  And it would be very tiring to chew with just your front two teeth. So I would just swallow things after a few bites. And sometimes I would have like, you know, it'd be constipation because like, it was just whole foods in my gut and it was hard to break down. In the last two years, I've been finally able to chew again fully. And it's crazy, the ability to just flow, you know, when I go to the bathroom as opposed to feeling that. I'm curious if I did some long-term damage to my gut. It wasn't always like that, but I wonder if there is hope that I could reverse some of that, whatever damage I might have done internally.

• 56:07Emeran Mayer?

  Well, let me ask you, what kind of diet are you on?

• 56:10Lewis Howes?

  Now, I'm pretty healthy, yeah. I would say I'm eighty percent healthy, conscious. On the weekends, you know, have a pizza, have sugar, have some ice cream.

• 56:19Emeran Mayer?

  But you're an only war or carny war?

• 56:21Lewis Howes?

  I eat meat, yeah, yeah. I eat fish and chicken mostly.

• 56:25Emeran Mayer?

  There's an interesting side to that. So, um, our stomach is, is, is very capable of breaking down foods mechanically. So if, if you don't chew things properly, the stomach will handle a lot of this.

• 56:41Lewis Howes?

  Compress and...

• 56:42Emeran Mayer?

  And the stomach then has a mechanism, almost like a filter. It won't let any particle leave the stomach until it's one millimeter.

• 56:51Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 56:52Emeran Mayer?

  In diameter.

• 56:52Lewis Howes?

  To go down through the intestine. So it goes into the stomach first, and then through the small intestine, to the large intestine, and then, then where?

• 57:01Emeran Mayer?

  Um, well, the large intestine is being stored, and then ultimately you expel it with your...

• 57:05Lewis Howes?

  Expel it. Is that the whole gut, the stomach, the large and small intestine? Is that it comprised of it?

• 57:10Emeran Mayer?

  Starts with the esophagus, you know.

• 57:12Lewis Howes?

  Esophagus.

• 57:13Emeran Mayer?

  And you could almost say, since you mentioned it, that your, you know, your oral cavity is part of it.

• 57:19Lewis Howes?

  It's part of the gut.

• 57:20Emeran Mayer?

  It's part of, it's the first step of it. I mean, there's multiple elements in, in, in your mouth and your tongue, but you could almost say part of it is already, you know, the, the entry sewn to your, to your gut.

• 57:32Lewis Howes?

  So is that included in, in the scientific research of like the gut, the, the mouth and the tongue and the...

• 57:37Emeran Mayer?

  Yeah, so the, um, so I was telling you about these, these taste receptors, you know, that were first studies on, on the tongue and then later discovered also further downstream. It's, it's certainly in terms of digestion, this relationship between the, the chewing and the, um...

• 57:59Emeran Mayer?

  So the more you chew, the faster it will leave your stomach. If you don't chew it, the stomach could take two hours, you know, to break it down.

• 58:07Lewis Howes?

  I'm assuming we want to chew it more. We don't want it to be stored in our stomach for eight hours, right? We want it to process quickly, is that correct?

• 58:16Emeran Mayer?

  That's probably... You could say it's... I mean, the human body is so adaptable. You know, our ancestors, they might have just gobbled.

• 58:26Lewis Howes?

  Swallowed because they're starving.

• 58:27Emeran Mayer?

  Yeah.

• 58:28Lewis Howes?

  They just stayed there for 24 hours, yeah.

• 58:30Emeran Mayer?

  Yeah, and if you look at some animals, the way they gobble things down. So I think we're adapted to different situations that we live in quite well. But what you describe

• 58:47Emeran Mayer?

  doesn't make 100% sense to me that this is so related to your bowel movements. But certainly, you know, because of this...

• 58:54Lewis Howes?

  It might have been diet too, because I just didn't have a good diet, you know? I was just eating whatever I wanted because I was young and working out all the time.

• 59:02Emeran Mayer?

  I think that could be...

• 59:03Lewis Howes?

  That might have been it, okay. And now I'm eating more consciously and green juices and smoothies and healthier vegetables, you know, all that stuff, so...

• 59:11Emeran Mayer?

  But the good thing is that you didn't, you know, that you diet, that your constipation didn't kick in now, you know? Because if you told me you always had normal bowel movements and the constipation just set in recently out of the blue, I would look... So what I do in my clinic, if somebody comes to me like that, I look at their hand movements, you know? And this is characteristic pathognomonic movement where people use their thumb and their index fingers to have this movement, which is characteristic for Parkinson's disease.

• 59:50Lewis Howes?

  If you see someone doing what, what's the movement?

• 59:52Emeran Mayer?

  It's this rolling movement between, you know, like without having anything there.

• 59:57Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 59:58Emeran Mayer?

  Between your thumb and your index...

• 59:59Lewis Howes?

  The first two fingers.

• 1:00:00Emeran Mayer?

  Middle finger.

• 1:00:01Lewis Howes?

  So if you see someone doing that kind of throughout the day or randomly, then that's a...

• 1:00:04Emeran Mayer?

  And that person comes to me and says, "God, you know, I can't believe that my bowel movements have changed so dramatically." I would, and I've done that, I've sent people like that to... To a neurologist for an early diagnosis.

• 1:00:18Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:00:18Emeran Mayer?

  Several times it was correct, you know.

• 1:00:21Lewis Howes?

  So you've seen this in person before?

• 1:00:22Emeran Mayer?

  I've, I've, I've seen this, yeah.

• 1:00:23Lewis Howes?

  You've seen people come in, usually men or some women as well?

• 1:00:27Emeran Mayer?

  Um, I've seen this from a million men.

• 1:00:30Lewis Howes?

  So they'll come in, and how old are they? What's the age range?

• 1:00:33Emeran Mayer?

  Uh, I've seen it in their fifties, you know.

• 1:00:38Lewis Howes?

  And you'll notice them touching their fingers in this motion?

• 1:00:41Emeran Mayer?

  Yeah, so then, so have you always had this? And have you noticed this? I've had, it's a person that, no, I haven't noticed it. Have you noticed it?

• 1:00:46Lewis Howes?

  Really? So you're observing this as they're telling you about their bowels or about their constipation? Really?

• 1:00:52Emeran Mayer?

  So this has been really fascinating and, so this is why, I think, um,

• 1:00:56Lewis Howes?

  huh.

• 1:00:57Emeran Mayer?

  In, in terms of novel therapies, you know, and what we can make a big impact on, on a disease that's really devastating is if we have these early diagnoses, we have a window before the main, so before this migration to the brain has happened, you know. Um, I mean, there's another manifestation of Parkinson's disease that people, um, have this, what's called a REM sleep abnormality. Um, where, um, you know, during REM sleep, you have your, these vivid dreams and, and the only reason that you don't thrash around and, and hit your spouse next to you.

• 1:01:33Lewis Howes?

  You're right.

• 1:01:34Emeran Mayer?

  Is because the, the brain has a mechanism to inhibit your, your motor system. So, you know, when you have these vivid dreams, your, your brain shuts off the, the.

• 1:01:45Lewis Howes?

  Your motor system.

• 1:01:46Emeran Mayer?

  Yeah, the motor system.

• 1:01:47Lewis Howes?

  It feels like you're running and jumping, but you're just laid.

• 1:01:50Emeran Mayer?

  Yeah, and so that's another thing that some patients, the spouses, so I always ask the spouses also, have you noticed there's something different? Um, from, uh, you know, from, from what you have been used to that, you know, that the person next to you hits around or falls out of bed or something like that. And, um, so that's something that happens. So the REM sleep is regulated by a nucleus in your brain stem, very close to the vagus, um, the nucleus of the vagus. And that's an indication that some of this migration has happened to the brainstem.

• 1:02:31Emeran Mayer?

  So, but if you have that abnormality, you almost have a hundred percent certainty that you'll develop Parkinson's disease.

• 1:02:38Lewis Howes?

  And is there a way to reverse this?

• 1:02:40Emeran Mayer?

  We don't know.

• 1:02:41Lewis Howes?

  We don't know yet.

• 1:02:42Emeran Mayer?

  We don't know yet, so.

• 1:02:43Lewis Howes?

  Maybe there's a way to delay it or to throw up events?

• 1:02:45Emeran Mayer?

  Uh, delay it, it could be medications to break up these determinative bodies.

• 1:02:50Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:02:51Emeran Mayer?

  So a lot of effort going into this now, so I think it's very exciting.

• 1:02:56Lewis Howes?

  That's crazy that you can just notice this from people and see these signs. Um, I am fascinated by all this and I want to take it another direction for a second about, we talked about the gut-brain connection. There's a gut-brain and then there's the brain and then the gut and the brain connection, correct? But what about the gut-mind connection? And the way we think? The mind, I guess, outside of the brain, you know, the mind or wherever you want to, you know, our thoughts, outside of the brain. What is that connection like, the gut and the mind?

• 1:03:37Emeran Mayer?

  Yeah, so I don't, I mean, you know, this was something when I published my first book, people got fascinated by the idea, does the gut have a mind?

• 1:03:45Lewis Howes?

  Does the gut have a mind?

• 1:03:47Emeran Mayer?

  Does the enteric nervous system have a mind? Because it's similar to the, to the brain.

• 1:03:52Lewis Howes?

  Because the mind-gut connection was your first book.

• 1:03:54Emeran Mayer?

  Yeah, and I would say, I don't think we have any evidence for that. But as a scientist, I, I never rule something out, you know? If, based on our current knowledge.

• 1:04:07Emeran Mayer?

  There were concerts about the mind, um, you know, um, Dr. Dan Siegel, for example, was sort of a prominent, um, you know, expert on the mind. They, he also doesn't believe that the mind is a property of, of, of our big brain.

• 1:04:25Lewis Howes?

  What is it a property of?

• 1:04:26Emeran Mayer?

  It's, it's, it's a system. It's a system, how a brain interacts with the environment.

• 1:04:33Emeran Mayer?

  With the people around us and there's this loop, you know, that goes so that the mind is not an isolated self, but so the self, I mean, this gets into this Buddhist discussion, you know, self is kind of an illusion. The mind is something bigger that connects us with the people around us, with their minds. And I would say, I kind of like this idea, but I would include the feedback loop back to the gut, you know, so it's a, it's a brain, gut, mind.

• 1:05:03Lewis Howes?

  Mind.

• 1:05:04Emeran Mayer?

  Mind and people around you. That's the system of the mind.

• 1:05:08Lewis Howes?

  Thank you so much for listening to this episode. I hope you got some value out of this. If you did, make sure to share this with a friend and spread the message of greatness to the people in your life. You can post it on social media, just tag me, Lewis Howes as well, and let me know that you're listening to this. And if this is your first time here, click the subscribe button over on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, as well as leave us a rating or review over on Apple Podcasts and let me know the part of this interview that you enjoyed the most, the part that you got the most value from this. I'd love to hear your thoughts over there. And I want to leave you with this quote from Julius Irving, who said, "If you don't do what's best for your body, you're the one who comes up on the short end." And that is true. It's all about having the knowledge, seeking the wisdom, and then applying the wisdom into daily practice to optimize your body. The gut and brain connection

• 1:05:53Lewis Howes?

  is real and it's so powerful. And I can't wait to bring you part two, coming next, of this powerful interview with Dr. Emeran Meyer. And I want to remind you today, if no one has told you lately, that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And I'm so grateful for you. And you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.