Understanding The Mind, Stress, Religion & Placebo's w/Dr. Emeran Mayer EP 1139

“Every complex system develops a mind.”Today's guest is Dr. Emeran Mayer. 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. His research has been supported by the National Institutes of Health for the past twenty-five years, and he is considered a pioneer and world leader in the area of brain-gut microbiome interactions. This is actually part 2 of my interview with Dr. Mayer, so make sure to visit www.lewishowes.com/1138 to listen to part 1 all about the brain and gut connection! In this episode Lewis and Dr. Emeran Mayer discuss what the mind actually is, the effects of religion and finding a higher purpose have on your mind, the biggest breakthroughs during Dr. Mayer’s 40 years of research, why Dr. Mayer wants the world to stop using the word “placebo,” he effects that stress has on your immune system, the key changes to make today to improve your health, and so much more! For more go to: www.lewishowes.com/1139Check 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 1,139 with Dr. Emeran Meyer.

• 0:06Lewis Howes?

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

• 0:27Lewis Howes?

  Thomas Carlyle said, "He who has health has hope, and he who has hope has everything." And Jim Rohn said, "Take care of your body. It's the only place you have to live." I'm excited about this episode because it's part two with my guest today, who is Dr. Emeron Meyer. And 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. His research has been supported by the National Institutes of Health for the past 25 years, and he is considered a pioneer and world leader in the area of brain-gut microbiome interactions. He's written a new book called

• 1:09Lewis Howes?

  The Gut Immune Connection: How Understanding the Connection Between Food and Immunity Can Help Us Regain Our Health. This, again, is part two of the previous episode, so make sure to check that out as well at lewishouse.com/1138 and listen more about the brain and gut connection there. But in this episode, we discuss what the mind actually is, the effects of religion and finding a higher purpose have on your mind, the biggest breakthroughs during Dr. Meyer's 40 years of research, why Dr. Meyer wants the world to stop using the word placebo, the effects that stress has on your immune system, the key changes to make today to improve your health, and so much more. If you're enjoying this, make sure to share this with a friend. Click the subscribe button over on Apple Podcasts or

• 1:54Lewis Howes?

  Spotify if this is your first time here, so you can stay up to date on the latest and greatest on the School of Greatness podcast. And we have some incredible stuff to dive in right now. So without further ado, in just a moment, I bring you the one and only Dr. Emeran Meyer.

• 2:10Lewis Howes?

  What's the best definition of the mind for you that you've studied from either science or Buddhism? That's a difficult one. Like, what is the mind?

• 2:26Emeran Mayer?

  I tend to think that that every complex system ultimately develops a mind. That that's kind of my.

• 2:32Lewis Howes?

  The gut develops a mind, the brain develops a mind, the body develops a mind.

• 2:35Emeran Mayer?

  And it's it's not all the same, but they they have their minds, you know, there's multiple minds.

• 2:39Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 2:40Emeran Mayer?

  There's a hierarchy of these minds based on the complexity of these systems. We've often asked that question, does the microbiome, so this is not just the gut microbiome, but the microbiome on the planet, because there's microbes everywhere. It's the most abundant life form. And we are connected in some ways, our microbes in the gut are connected to the microbes in the soil, microbes in the air, in the water. Does that system have a mind? You know, because it's so complex.

• 3:10Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 3:11Emeran Mayer?

  It's widely distributed, so.

• 3:13Lewis Howes?

  The universe has a mind, right?

• 3:14Emeran Mayer?

  The universe has a mind. I have to say, you know, it's it's it's not very scientific.

• 3:21Lewis Howes?

  That's why I love this.

• 3:23Emeran Mayer?

  But but I I had a migration in my, you know, so I was very open to these ideas before I finished medical school. Then in medical school, obviously, you have to be trained in not pursuing these ideas. You never get a grant.

• 3:36Lewis Howes?

  You have to be trained in science.

• 3:37Emeran Mayer?

  Yeah, you do science, it's focused, it's hypothesis driven, it's linear. But then I I think I think it comes with age, you know, and coming back to my roots and my my mind at the time, you know, which was always this holistic. So coming back to this concept of interconnectedness,

• 3:57Emeran Mayer?

  which which I think is kind of the string theory of of of life, really, you know, it's not, there's no life without interconnectedness. And the the system, so we can today, we can, even in science, you know, we use mathematical tools and supercomputers to look at the interaction between genes, between.

• 4:21Emeran Mayer?

  Molecules between signaling molecules, between microbes, between immune cells. We look at them now as systems. And we apply these mathematical tools. There's something called graph theory, where you can quantitate, you know, and describe a system based on its nodes. So on the cover of any book, you can see this. There's nodes and there's connections. So the connections are the edges. It's called the edges. If a node has, the more connections one node has, the more it becomes a hub in the system. So I think ultimately, systems like that,

• 5:06Emeran Mayer?

  I think ultimately develop minds. You know, be it a technical system. You know, ultimately, I think. And this is sort of against what Dan Siegel says. You know, without a body, you couldn't have a mind. I'm not sure if that question has been answered yet. We'll see that. Fast forward 20 years, the supercomputers will have then. Will they develop some module that is like a body? That, you know, is that necessary? But I think that this property of complex systems, developing minds. And these are not conscious minds.

• 5:49Emeran Mayer?

  I think probably the human mind is the one that is self-consciousness, that it knows about itself and it's self-aware. You know, all these other minds, I mean, they operate. But unless you believe in some, you know, Hinduistic concepts, that there is this higher conscious levels of consciousness. Yeah, I don't want to go there really at this point. Sure. People that take psychedelics tell me that you have these experiences of contacting these, you know, entities.

• 6:28Emeran Mayer?

  But this is this is beyond what what I really mean with interconnectedness and minds.

• 6:33Lewis Howes?

  So this is something that you were curious about as a teenager in your early twenties. Then when you went to medical school, you essentially had to say, I need to shut this out of my mind and focus just on the science, just on the research, just on like the practical, I guess, or like

• 6:48Emeran Mayer?

  Yeah.

• 6:49Lewis Howes?

  the the findings through science. But do I hear you're kind of like opening back up to more of this, like figuring out the mind, brain, gut connection and?

• 6:58Emeran Mayer?

  Yeah, I'm I'm I'm opening back up to this and, um, you know, there's different dimensions. So there's that other healing traditions.

• 7:09Emeran Mayer?

  Hippocratic medicine, for example, was a medicine of interconnectedness. So the universe, with the weather, the climate, soil. Same about traditional Chinese medicine, Ayurvedic medicine. They were all systems of that had interconnectedness at their core belief. And I I think we come back to that now. I don't know how these traditions came up with these ideas, just by observation, you know. But they certainly have survived thousands of years and I I I think they're more accurate. This just sounds funny coming from a scientist. I spent this whole life, you know, doing that.

• 7:49Emeran Mayer?

  I I think they're they're closer aligned, these these interconnected models with reality of the planet than some of our Western ideas of of simple linear mechanistic,

• 8:06Emeran Mayer?

  you know, machine concept based ideas of of of of reality.

• 8:12Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 8:12Emeran Mayer?

  So

• 8:15Emeran Mayer?

  there has been this, I I mean, I also believe.

• 8:20Emeran Mayer?

  The mismatch that we're seeing today between the way the planet is really organized as one of the most complex networks with these minds, you know, and the way we have been interacting with it in the West, from the scientific, starting with the scientific revolution. You can almost bring religion in it, the monotheistic religions, you know, which put humans at the center of the universe, which has been proven wrong over and over again, you know. But there's still this persistent idea, this mismatch between what's in our minds, the way we see reality, the way we teach our children,

• 9:03Emeran Mayer?

  the self being the most important part, rather than seeing the large picture. And I think that mismatch with reality is at the cause of many of our problems. You know, be it climate change, be it medical problems, so.

• 9:22Lewis Howes?

  You mentioned religion for a second, so I want to talk about that. How does religion play into the gut immune connection? Does religion support our immune system or weaken it, in your opinion? And are you into any religion, currently practicing religion? Or is that not a scientist's role?

• 9:40Emeran Mayer?

  Well, so I've always been attracted to Buddhism, which is not a regular religion, you know.

• 9:45Lewis Howes?

  It's a philosophy, a spiritual philosophy.

• 9:48Emeran Mayer?

  And that, to me, is the one that matches the best, you know, both my scientific beliefs and also the way I look at reality. With religions, your questions are really fascinating, I have to say.

• 10:04Lewis Howes?

  You came to the school of greatness, not the school of average.

• 10:08Emeran Mayer?

  So.

• 10:11Emeran Mayer?

  So religion being connected, believing in some something, some higher force or believing in the harmony of the universe, has there's many studies that have shown that that is health promoting?

• 10:23Lewis Howes?

  Health promoting, having a greater sense of, or believing in something greater than yourself?

• 10:28Emeran Mayer?

  Of connectedness.

• 10:29Lewis Howes?

  Of connectedness, being all connected, community, yeah, okay.

• 10:33Emeran Mayer?

  And I think it goes back to the original meaning of this term religio, I think from Latin, being connected.

• 10:40Lewis Howes?

  Oh, sure.

• 10:41Emeran Mayer?

  So this is clearly something, I think that's essential. Now, if there's some strange religious sects in this world now, you know, that, I don't wanna, you know, name any of these that were hatred and, I mean, we just look at what happens with some segment of Islam, what happened during Catholic beliefs in the Middle Ages, you know?

• 11:12Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 11:13Emeran Mayer?

  Killing, burning millions of women. So it has two sides to it.

• 11:18Lewis Howes?

  The hatred side of religion is not supportive.

• 11:20Emeran Mayer?

  Yeah, and I don't know how these things could come up. So to my opinion, these people were really not religious, you know, they had this illusion of if they go to church every day or do some ritual, that they're religious. I think a truly religious person, there's certain concepts to that, being connected to your community, being connected to nature, being connected to some higher entity, I think those are all health promoting ideas.

• 11:56Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 11:57Emeran Mayer?

  And I think that has, there are studies, I think even tracing this back again to immune cells, to the health of immune cells and the gene expression patterns, you wouldn't think that something as high level as religion would go all the way down to these immune cells in your, you know, in your liver and in your spleen, or in your gut, 70% of the immune cells live in-

• 12:22Lewis Howes?

  In the gut, really?

• 12:24Emeran Mayer?

  So, but that's-

• 12:27Emeran Mayer?

  Yeah, I think you have to be careful what people do for religion. Anything, anytime there comes hatred and intolerance into religion, I don't think it's a true religion.

• 12:37Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 12:38Emeran Mayer?

  Shouldn't call itself a religion.

• 12:39Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure. It's an agenda, right?

• 12:42Emeran Mayer?

  Yeah.

• 12:43Lewis Howes?

  It's like an agenda. So seventy percent of your immune cells are in the gut throughout your entire body, right? Seventy percent, is that what you're saying? You said the main factor is diet for optimizing or hurting your immune system is the main factor.

• 13:00Emeran Mayer?

  Well, let's just say that. It's, it's one of the two main factors.

• 13:06Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 13:06Emeran Mayer?

  The other one being the brain and the signals the brain sends down.

• 13:10Lewis Howes?

  Is that the thoughts the brain sends down or?

• 13:13Emeran Mayer?

  The, mainly the emotions. I think we know it about the emotions and we know it about stress. I think we know less about the influence of thoughts on, on that system.

• 13:25Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 13:25Emeran Mayer?

  But, but certainly belief systems. I would say it's, it's not been studied in as great detail as emotions and stress have. So typically.

• 13:37Lewis Howes?

  What's the difference between an emotion and a belief system?

• 13:41Emeran Mayer?

  So, an, an emotion is a, is a programmed response in your brain. That triggers a, so it's, it's, it's both an emotional feeling. So you feel the emotion, then it's emotional response. And there's several of those, almost like computer programs stored in our brain. Because humans have experienced these situations so many times that instead of reconstructing these emotions every time from scratch, you know, it's stored.

• 14:17Lewis Howes?

  Stored.

• 14:18Emeran Mayer?

  It's stored in a program.

• 14:19Lewis Howes?

  So when we see or experience something, it's re-triggered because it's been there for so long and we feel it again?

• 14:25Emeran Mayer?

  It's, it's like an app, you know?

• 14:27Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 14:27Emeran Mayer?

  It's like an app that says turn on and.

• 14:29Lewis Howes?

  So an emotion is a programmed response in the brain or an emotional feeling in the brain?

• 14:33Emeran Mayer?

  Yeah, and so you have the emotional feeling in one part of the brain. Well, it's a part called the insular cortex. And then you have the emotional response, which is another part of the brain, the the cingulate cortex and the amygdala that then generates the output, you know, to the body.

• 14:52Lewis Howes?

  To the body, and mostly to the gut is what I'm saying, or is it all throughout the body?

• 14:56Emeran Mayer?

  It's throughout the body, but it has the biggest impact on the gut because in the gut is the immune system and this hormonal system and it's uh, so it has um, yeah, so the these emotional signals go to the heart and the heart beats faster. The heart is a very simple organ, it's a mechanical pump. And if you are anxious, it increases the heart rate. If you're depressed, it might slow it, you know.

• 15:24Lewis Howes?

  And then that impacts the body.

• 15:25Emeran Mayer?

  It doesn't impact the whole body in the same way.

• 15:27Lewis Howes?

  It does or does not?

• 15:28Emeran Mayer?

  It does not.

• 15:29Lewis Howes?

  Does not?

• 15:30Emeran Mayer?

  And then.

• 15:30Lewis Howes?

  When the heart rate goes up or down, does that impact the body?

• 15:33Emeran Mayer?

  Well, you feel that, so it's being fed back to the brain and it creates again this circular response, this emotion. But what happens with the gut is why it's so unique. Signal goes down from this emotional reaction.

• 15:50Lewis Howes?

  Stored in the brain, signal goes down.

• 15:52Emeran Mayer?

  Yes, goes down to the gut and then it affects immune cells. So then the immune cells carry that signal throughout the body, all the way back to the brain, also affects the microbes. The microbes produce molecules, what we call neuroactive molecules. For example, play a big role in the serotonin production. And then these molecules, some of them get into the bloodstream, some act on the vagus nerve, and again, it feeds back to the brain. So it's again this loop, you know, that and the gut generates probably with its microbiome, most of these feedback signals that go back to the brain.

• 16:33Emeran Mayer?

  You know, other systems like your muscular system feeds back to the brain as well. So the sense of well-being after working out. Clearly, molecules that are generated by metabolism in your muscles, you know, have some effect on the brain as well, on your well-being. But quantitatively and the diversity of signals that are generated from the gut are much, much higher.

• 16:58Lewis Howes?

  So the top two things are food, your diet and your emotions.

• 17:03Emeran Mayer?

  Yeah.

• 17:04Lewis Howes?

  That affect your immune system.

• 17:06Emeran Mayer?

  Affects your immune, affects the gut and the immune system.

• 17:08Lewis Howes?

  Wow. And so what I'm hearing you say is that if someone doesn't learn how to regulate their emotions or process emotions in a healthy manner, it could weaken their immune system in a massive way. Is that correct?

• 17:24Emeran Mayer?

  It makes.

• 17:25Lewis Howes?

  It has the potential.

• 17:26Emeran Mayer?

  You know, there's always this important concept of resilience and resistance. So anytime, anytime you compromise the complexity of a, of a network or an ecosystem, it becomes less resilient under stress, for example, or under, when you get sick or, you know. So I mean, a good example is, is, is the pandemic that we have gone through. You know, there was a group of the population, both in, in this country, but also worldwide, that, that probably had, has a compromised gut ecosystem and including the microbes and the immune system.

• 18:09Emeran Mayer?

  And they responded to that, to that viral infection in a different way, either with being more likely to get infected, more likely to get, end up in the hospital, in the ICU, dying, develop long COVID. There seems to be this, this at risk, at high risk population.

• 18:30Emeran Mayer?

  And if you look at them, they also have what's called comorbidities. They have other diseases, these chronic diseases like diabetes and metabolic syndrome and,

• 18:42Emeran Mayer?

  you know, obesity and heart disease.

• 18:46Emeran Mayer?

  And that's not a coincidence because all these diseases are also related to our poor diet. So there's this common denominator, you know, that the ecosystem.

• 18:58Emeran Mayer?

  That is made up by the immune system in the gut and the nervous system in the gut and the hormonal system. That ecosystem is probably, if that is weakened, it's less resistant and less resilient to any perturbation. And we'll see this in the future, unfortunately, because I'm not sure if as a society we're making a huge effort now to deal with these discrepancies of health in our country.

• 19:28Lewis Howes?

  I feel like it's more, yeah, we're not focused on the nutritional side. Healing through nutrition, right? It's more like, how do we just put medicine or substances over top to kind of?

• 19:38Emeran Mayer?

  Yeah, so all the talk is about access to the healthcare system. That's the main, and that's a problem as well, you know, definitely.

• 19:46Lewis Howes?

  But I think- What about prevention? What about like optimization, prevention for your own body?

• 19:52Emeran Mayer?

  And that may not have to come from the healthcare system. That could come from other organizations, from teachers, you know. Early, I mean, all these things start, obviously, in childhood and the way children are raised and programmed, the immune system is programmed and, you know, the brain is programmed early on in life. So you don't need a medical system to do that, to help with this programming, you know, you need other, I think, educational programs that do that, you know. And, yeah, I feel if you, as a society, if you want to prevent this in the future, and it's obviously a colossal task, you know, we have to move like it's like moving an aircraft

• 20:36Emeran Mayer?

  carrier around, you know, 360 degrees.

• 20:38Lewis Howes?

  It's also changing belief systems and lifestyle and habits for decades for people that, yeah, have eaten a certain way or thought about a certain thing.

• 20:49Emeran Mayer?

  You could almost give up on the colossal, the size of that task, but then on the other hand, and I kind of regret that I didn't address this more in my book, this whole-

• 21:04Emeran Mayer?

  You know, socioeconomic inequality in the country that is plays a big role in the vulnerability. Because it does affect all the systems that we've been talking about, you know, they're not, they're not detached from, I mean, just think about the anger that we've seen with some of the, you know, some of the movements and demonstrations, I mean, that anger is not just in the face or, you know, thrashing things, it's, it's also at the gut level.

• 21:36Lewis Howes?

  It's in the gut level.

• 21:36Emeran Mayer?

  It's at the gut level.

• 21:37Lewis Howes?

  So, so the anger, when we feel anger, resentment, or any of these anger emotions, let's say, less than joyful emotions, let's say, when we feel that, is that, again, is this stored in the brain, a memory in the brain that is stored? Or is it more stored in the gut?

• 21:59Emeran Mayer?

  I would say it's stored as a, as a programmed routine that calls on multiple networks within the brain to generate a response. You can see it in our brain, in our face, the facial expression of anger. It's one of these motor routines that go to the facial muscles and to, you know, your eyes and the pupils. But the same thing goes down to every organ and affects, you know, the gut in a particular way. And, yeah, so just to reemphasize this, so the emotional feeling, typically, the emotional feeling does not stay by itself.

• 22:40Emeran Mayer?

  It's not an isolated feeling. It always has a motor response to it. There's a word in science, the emotional motor system, which has, you know, all these apps for these different emotions. If you activate this, you get the motor system of anger, or the motor system of anxiety, or jealousy.

• 23:06Emeran Mayer?

  And when we talk about emotions, often also in psychotherapy, we just talk about the emotional feeling. You know, and you can deal with the emotional feeling over and over again. If you don't deal with the with the with the reaction, the physical reaction to it, you leave out, you know, a big part of it. I mean, there's a lot of therapists today, you know, they have so an integrative view of of mind and body.

• 23:32Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 23:32Emeran Mayer?

  So.

• 23:32Lewis Howes?

  So you're saying if you just deal with the the analytical thought about the emotion, you may not be able to transform it into something of a healing process without integrating the the body connection to the feeling, is that right?

• 23:48Emeran Mayer?

  And that's yeah, and that's for the reason, you know, so in in my practice, even though I have experience and and, you know, I've benefited a lot from this from this period of going through Jungian analytical therapy, we don't use it, we don't recommend this to our patients with

• 24:07Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 24:07Emeran Mayer?

  with, you know, these these physical disorders. We recommend cognitive behavioral therapy.

• 24:12Lewis Howes?

  Ah, okay.

• 24:13Emeran Mayer?

  Cognitive to deal with with with the brain part and behavioral with, you know, how you change your your your response to that.

• 24:21Lewis Howes?

  Your reactions to it, yeah. Interesting. This is fascinating. In your forty years of doing the research and studying, what has been the biggest breakthrough for you personally as a human being? Where you discovered something and said, wow, I've been doing this all wrong? Or I had no idea about this thing? And now I need to implement this thing to improve my life? What has been that for you?

• 24:47Emeran Mayer?

  Um, probably the most exciting moment was when we did a study not that long ago, which triggered in the writing the first book about.

• 25:00Emeran Mayer?

  That, you know, if you, um, so we studied healthy young women and they went on a four-week course of taking a probiotic cocktail, um, and we looked at their emotional symptoms. So they, they didn't have any physical symptoms. And we looked at their brain function with brain imaging and we found that there were changes in the, in the response of some of the networks in the, in the brain.

• 25:29Lewis Howes?

  In the brain. Four weeks of probiotics.

• 25:32Emeran Mayer?

  Yeah. And so that has obviously been taken as an indication. So I can tell you if this actually had a, a positive psychological effect because there was no, so these were healthy women, they were not anxious.

• 25:48Lewis Howes?

  They're already healthy.

• 25:49Emeran Mayer?

  They were healthy.

• 25:49Lewis Howes?

  Happy, healthy.

• 25:51Emeran Mayer?

  Yeah, and so in retrospect, you could say we made a mistake, we should have studied anxious, uh, you know, individuals.

• 25:57Lewis Howes?

  Depressed, stressed, anxious, yeah.

• 26:00Emeran Mayer?

  So.

• 26:01Lewis Howes?

  So what happened, what happened with the result of these four weeks for these women?

• 26:06Emeran Mayer?

  So there were changes in the, in the systems of the brain, the emotional recognition, um, or emotional attention systems within the brain that were, um, attenuated. So the emotional reaction was, was attenuated.

• 26:23Emeran Mayer?

  You could speculate, yes, this is an important first step in, in not being as emotionally reactive or stress reactive. But that study, um, I mean, those are expensive studies, you know, so, and it's, it's not that easy. If, if I go with a protocol like this to the NIH for funding, they would much rather have you do this in mice, um, to have a mechanistic study where you can say it's, it's really this cell in the brain that responds and, um, so in these human studies, much more heterogeneous, you, you have to do very large numbers of.

• 27:04Emeran Mayer?

  So we never followed this up in as an anxiolytic, you know, potential therapy, even though this has this concept of psychobiotics has been promoted by colleagues of mine in Ireland. John Cryan has written a book about it as well. Psychobiotics? Psychobiotics, so basically microorganisms that have a beneficial effect on on on psychological. Really? What are what are these psychobiotics? These are particular strains of microbes that they're found in mice. See, the thing is, in mice, you can show almost everything, you know, because you can control every aspect of the mouse. Right.

• 27:46Emeran Mayer?

  The temperature, the food, how many mice are in a cage, which you can never do in a in a human. Human, yeah. So you can see things and demonstrate things in in these mouse models that are mind-boggling, you know, in terms of depression-like behavior that can be changed with microbes, anxiety-like behavior, social behavior, social isolation. So all the things that we think are models of preclinical models of human disease. But then it's been very hard to prove these same things in humans. And so one of our efforts, and I've I used to do animal experiments and cell experiments for a long time in my career.

• 28:28Emeran Mayer?

  But then I sort of developed this ambition, I just want to do this now in humans. I want to see that this is really relevant for. Right, this work, yeah. And I would say ultimately, maybe none of the existing probiotics that are being marketed have dramatic effects on your mind. I wouldn't, if a patient comes to me with an anxiety disorder, I wouldn't say, take this probiotic because it's been shown in the mouse, you know, to decrease anxiety.

• 29:00Emeran Mayer?

  If somebody comes to me with anxiety and they say, I've been taking this probiotic cocktail, then I would say, if you think you benefit it, keep taking it, but let's add relaxation techniques or stress management or CBT, or in the worst case, medication. You know, so that's where we are today. We're not, this may change in the future. You know, we may have microbial strains, either natural strains or genetically engineered strains that produce a particular neurotransmitter that is like a valium type of thing, or increased serotonin production, and they may have this effect. So I think psychobiotics

• 29:45Emeran Mayer?

  are a possibility for the future. We just don't have clinically relevant examples.

• 29:51Lewis Howes?

  Is there clinical research about the supplement world, just supplements in general, taking supplements to improve the gut microbiome or immune system, or to get the nutrients and the vitamins and the minerals that maybe we're not consuming in our foods? Has there been research on this that you have found?

• 30:08Emeran Mayer?

  I haven't done the research, and it's a difficult question to answer because, for example, the vitamins, you know, Linus Pauling was promoting vitamin C for everything, this could, even though they did large studies and even though he was a Nobel Prize winner, you know, it could never really be proven that there's much more than a placebo effect. And I take vitamin C, and even knowing for me that it's probably placebo, and it works.

• 30:36Lewis Howes?

  And it works.

• 30:36Emeran Mayer?

  It works. So I don't really care if the vitamin does.

• 30:39Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, whatever, if it works in your mind, then it works in your body, right?

• 30:42Emeran Mayer?

  So I would say this applies to a lot of the supplements.

• 30:46Lewis Howes?

  Do you take other supplements besides vitamin C or vitamin D maybe?

• 30:51Emeran Mayer?

  No, I don't.

• 30:54Lewis Howes?

  Just vitamin C?

• 30:55Emeran Mayer?

  Yeah.

• 30:56Lewis Howes?

  No multivitamin, no probiotic?

• 30:58Emeran Mayer?

  And I do the vitamin C, the first sign or symptom I have of a cold coming on.

• 31:04Lewis Howes?

  You'll take it.

• 31:05Emeran Mayer?

  If I miss that moment, it doesn't work for me.

• 31:08Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 31:08Emeran Mayer?

  So which also points towards placebo, you release molecules in your body that.

• 31:13Lewis Howes?

  Gosh, so how does the placebo affect the immune system?

• 31:19Lewis Howes?

  Because I grew up in a religion called Christian Science. It was all about the power of the thought and the mind of healing the body. And, you know, never took medicine, never had shots as a kid, like never had any of these things. We were just taught in like the spiritual practice of healing through the mind, through the thought, through the belief that you are whole already.

• 31:40Emeran Mayer?

  I mean, what do you think about that religion today, based on what we've been talking about?

• 31:45Lewis Howes?

  I feel like the religion in general, it's funny, I haven't gone to church in a long time. I've kind of like just been, you know, for whatever reasons, nothing against the religion, but I feel like it's more relevant, the findings, the practices, the science of the mind from what I was raised, and this was discovered in the 1800s by a woman. It's like the more people I interview, like yourself, like other doctors, scientists, they're speaking about these concepts, quantum physics and, you know, drawing a word on a water and the molecules shifting. It's like they're speaking these ideas, healing yourself with your mind through breathwork,

• 32:29Lewis Howes?

  through other practices than medical practices. I'm like, well, yeah, this is what I was raised to learn, these types of idea concepts. So I feel like it's more relevant than ever. I don't think they've done a good job as a religion to make it as widespread as they could because of the format of the church, you know, process, but the ideas are more relevant than ever in my mind.

• 32:55Emeran Mayer?

  Absolutely, and yeah, I'm also a big believer in the placebo response and people have underestimated. I mean, there are beautiful studies, scientific studies, you know, we know what, we've done studies, what parts of the brain are being activated when you believe, you know.

• 33:11Lewis Howes?

  It's not even, it's a belief, you're shifting the idea of the belief. The actual substance does nothing.

• 33:17Emeran Mayer?

  Does nothing, and the most interesting thing, a friend of mine at the Beth Israel Hospital, Tony Lambo, they did a study.

• 33:25Emeran Mayer?

  Well, they, actually, they had three groups. They had a placebo group where it was hidden from the, from the subject that, was it a drug or was it placebo? They had a drug group and they had a, um, an unconcealed placebo. So they actually told them, this is a placebo pill.

• 33:44Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 33:44Emeran Mayer?

  And

• 33:45Lewis Howes?

  So they had a, a pill that, that they didn't know was a placebo, but it was.

• 33:49Emeran Mayer?

  Yeah.

• 33:50Lewis Howes?

  Whatever, a sugar pill or whatever, right? They had the drug.

• 33:53Emeran Mayer?

  Yeah.

• 33:54Lewis Howes?

  And they had another pill.

• 33:55Emeran Mayer?

  It was an unconcealed.

• 33:56Lewis Howes?

  This is a placebo pill.

• 33:57Emeran Mayer?

  This is a placebo pill.

• 33:58Lewis Howes?

  Which one worked the best?

• 34:00Emeran Mayer?

  If, the, the, the unconcealed placebo worked as well as the drug. Which is amazing.

• 34:08Lewis Howes?

  That's crazy. They said, this is a placebo. There's no drug.

• 34:12Emeran Mayer?

  Yeah.

• 34:12Lewis Howes?

  It's a placebo.

• 34:13Emeran Mayer?

  Yeah, so.

• 34:14Lewis Howes?

  But if you believe it, it will work, it will work? Is that kind of what they said, or?

• 34:18Emeran Mayer?

  I, I, I don't know what the details, the instructions were and, I mean, I had a similar personal experience.

• 34:25Lewis Howes?

  That's crazy.

• 34:25Emeran Mayer?

  You know, when I was a kid, so I had these warts on, on, on my fingers and, you know, it got pretty bad and then the first time went to a surgeon, the surgeon resected them, I still had my scars on the middle finger. But then, then they came back and then somebody said, well, there are these people, you know, there's this old farmer I know in, in a village who does this, you know, praying over your warts and they'll go away.

• 34:50Lewis Howes?

  This is crazy, you're telling me this, because I've had a similar situation. Tell me this, yes.

• 34:54Emeran Mayer?

  No way.

• 34:56Lewis Howes?

  Tell me this.

• 34:56Emeran Mayer?

  I absolutely do not believe it, you know, but then we went anyway. So this is where the difference is. I went anyway, so.

• 35:03Lewis Howes?

  Right, you're like, I still want to figure out if there's a way.

• 35:05Emeran Mayer?

  I would have figured this out. So there was some hidden belief that this could work and within two days, these warts were gone.

• 35:12Lewis Howes?

  No way.

• 35:13Emeran Mayer?

  So it's just, um. And I think there's many examples.

• 35:18Lewis Howes?

  I have a similar story about that. I have a similar story. I had these in college. I had, I was playing football in college and for whatever reason, the bottom of my foot started to get covered in like, I think they're called plantar's warts or something, like little black dots. It was so painful to walk. And I wore cleats, football cleats. And so every time I pressed down and push off, like the cleat would kind of push up. It was so painful. The trainers, the athletic trainers tried to scalpel them out. It was like so many of them and the bigger ones, they tried to scalp them out, wouldn't go away. They keep coming back. And it was like multiplying. And now I'm getting worried. I'm like, the bottom one foot is covered in these like plantar's warts.

• 36:02Lewis Howes?

  These little like black dots that were so painful. I remember going to my sister Heidi. She lived a few hours away and I went there, I think during like Thanksgiving break or something. And she put me through a healing process, a visualization technique. And she laid me down. And she put on some like soft music and she said, we're going to practice something. We're going to heal you right now. And I was like, no way, but I want to figure out if this will work. And literally she put me down. And she kind of guided me through a visualization meditation process. She's like, I want you to imagine you're in a river. You're laying in a river and the water is flushing through the top of your head, through your body and flushing everything out of your body. And it's loosening up the warts on your feet and it's just, they're falling away.

• 36:47Lewis Howes?

  Literally, I practiced this every day for the next week and they were gone a week later.

• 36:52Emeran Mayer?

  That's amazing.

• 36:52Lewis Howes?

  And I was like, this is nuts. They couldn't get them out with a scalpel, but I was able to somehow release them through a visualization and a belief practice. And I, I think about it, it just sounds crazy.

• 37:05Emeran Mayer?

  No, it sounds crazy.

• 37:06Lewis Howes?

  You did it too. Two days later it was gone.

• 37:07Emeran Mayer?

  Yeah, it was, it was, and, and no scar.

• 37:10Lewis Howes?

  And this was like a big ward in your.

• 37:11Emeran Mayer?

  Yeah, yeah. So what is that? Well, so the only way that I can explain this is that, deep inside of us, you know, this is obviously, I mean placebo is sort of a negative bytaste because of, it's the enemy of the pharmaceutical industry, it's the enemy of medicine. Science. We always want to prove it's better than placebo. Even though placebo is incredibly powerful, you know, there's so many studies that show that the medication adds, even antidepressants, adds 10% above the placebo response. When you think about this, that without taking medication, you know, you almost have the same therapeutic response as we're taking this chemical that's engineered based on, Right. you know, decades of science and...

• 37:56Emeran Mayer?

  So the only way that I can explain it is, it's a self-healing system that's built into our bodies.

• 38:05Emeran Mayer?

  It's a property of the complex ecosystem in our bodies and

• 38:11Emeran Mayer?

  it's ancient, it probably was there from the very beginning, you know, of evolution, has improved, has saved, you know, the species from extinction many times with diseases and injuries that resilient people that, I mean resilience, it's a state where you can bring this self-healing system better to the surface than if you're non-resilient. So you could almost trace it back now, we talked about, you know, complex a complex microbiome ecosystem is more resilient to infections. So it has its own self-healing or self, you know, self-correcting properties.

• 38:57Emeran Mayer?

  And I think it's so deeply ingrained that even if you tell somebody and this person consciously hears that, the system inside of you overcomes that conscious response, you know, it doesn't care. If you go through this, to this ritual that somebody gives you these pills. Yes. And somehow, deep inside your mind, you know, it triggers the system.

• 39:23Emeran Mayer?

  I mean, I think the best thing would be to get rid of of that term placebo and just really change it.

• 39:30Lewis Howes?

  To what, belief? Or just?

• 39:33Emeran Mayer?

  Self-healing.

• 39:35Lewis Howes?

  Self-healing.

• 39:35Emeran Mayer?

  Self-healing. And, you know, interestingly, you can go in the opposite direction too, and talking about, again, about this, you know, God's health and so there's many.

• 39:47Emeran Mayer?

  It's an epidemic now, this, what some people have called the the national eating disorder epidemic, you know, that so many people think, oh, I can't eat this and I can't eat this and gluten makes me deadly sick.

• 40:02Lewis Howes?

  Too much almond butter, now this.

• 40:04Emeran Mayer?

  Yeah, and a multi-billion dollar industry, you know, and you you see these ridiculous things, you get a water bottle and it says gluten-free.

• 40:11Lewis Howes?

  Soy-free, gluten-free, just water.

• 40:14Emeran Mayer?

  So it's, this is this this sibling of the placebo response, which is the nocebo response, you know, so if you believe.

• 40:23Lewis Howes?

  Nocebo?

• 40:23Emeran Mayer?

  Nocebo.

• 40:24Lewis Howes?

  What does that mean?

• 40:25Emeran Mayer?

  It it means it's a substance that you believe hurts hurts you or has a negative effect on your health. And

• 40:37Emeran Mayer?

  I think it goes back to, you know, the Latin word

• 40:41Emeran Mayer?

  that says something about damage, nocebo. But but anyway,

• 40:48Emeran Mayer?

  I personally believe that talking about the supplements and these recommendations and these experiences. I would say eighty percent, maybe seventy-five percent is either placebo with all the supplements or is nocebo with all the recommendations, what you can't eat and what you should avoid.

• 41:08Emeran Mayer?

  And once this is ingrained in your mind, it's very powerful, you know. I once sat next to a couple on a plane back from Barcelona from a meeting. And they had bought this delicious sandwich. It was sitting next to me and I was observing this young couple and they were opening up the, you know, the plastic foil. It's delicious sandwich was there. Then they took this sandwich apart, you know, and took-

• 41:33Lewis Howes?

  Took all the things off of it?

• 41:34Emeran Mayer?

  Took all the things off. And then I dared to ask him, I said, "Why are you doing this? Do you have any..." "Oh, we're allergic to this and we're allergic to this." I said, "My God, this must be, must be very difficult to enjoy a vacation in Spain,"

• 41:48Lewis Howes?

  Right, right, right.

• 41:49Emeran Mayer?

  "If you're always afraid. It's always triggering this anxiety response."

• 41:53Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 41:54Emeran Mayer?

  And then if they eat it, so what we talked about earlier, the anxiety and the worry doesn't stay in your mind. It goes in your gut. So, once this food gets into your gut, you don't feel well because you've done something bad.

• 42:08Lewis Howes?

  Oh, man. It's almost like you could do the reverse where it's like, you know what? There's this delicious pizza and ice cream and chocolate that is right in front of me and you could almost trick your brain to say, "This is not going to affect me in a negative way. Like, this is going to feel good. I'm going to feel good afterwards. It's going to taste great. I'm going to feel joyful and happy by having this experience." Or is that impossible with the chemical compounds that are entering your body? Is it impossible to trick it in the other way? Like, "I'm drinking this alcohol and I'm going to be healthy tomorrow," you know?

• 42:48Emeran Mayer?

  Well, the problem is with some of these unhealthy foods, you actually feel temporarily good.

• 42:55Lewis Howes?

  Momentarily.

• 42:56Emeran Mayer?

  So, the comfort food or the alcohol, the drink in the evening, you know, you get this, this temporary well-being, sense of well-being. A comfort food is a very good example. The high-fat, high-sugar food gives you this. And there have been studies on that, you know, temporarily makes you less anxious, less depressed. But then, in the long term, it's the opposite.

• 43:18Lewis Howes?

  Right. So, is there no way to- Train your mind to not have anxiety around what you're eating. Even though you know the nocebo, it's like this is not good for me, but you know what? I'm gonna enjoy my life. It's, you know, I'm gonna do it in moderation. And I'm just gonna be joyful in the process. So that when emotionally, when it hits my gut, I'm happy. As opposed to, I know this is not good for me, but I'm gonna do it anyways.

• 43:44Emeran Mayer?

  I, I think this is something you should do anyway. I mean, you should have the healthier diet, but you should always have this enjoyment, you know? And many studies have shown, for example, with the, you know, with the Mediterranean diet. So the Mediterranean, you know, people living in these, in these countries always had a very close and active social life festivities. And I've, I've experienced this, we have experienced this a couple of times, visiting with Italian families. And it's, it feels incredibly good, you know, to have a meal at a long table.

• 44:19Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 44:21Emeran Mayer?

  And even knowing that some of the stuff that we ate were not that healthy. It was a good experience.

• 44:27Lewis Howes?

  The enjoyment was still powerful, which probably didn't affect your gut as much or...

• 44:32Emeran Mayer?

  And, and people have shown that that is part of the secret to the health benefit of these diets. You know, that's this enjoyment, the social...

• 44:42Lewis Howes?

  Connection, the connectedness.

• 44:43Emeran Mayer?

  Connectedness and the happiness and the...

• 44:47Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 44:49Emeran Mayer?

  Yes, I mean, also have a friend, you know, who's, we've always, he's, he's older than, than we are. But we've always enjoyed going out for dinner with him because his, his enjoyment is infectious. You know, picking the restaurant and picking the table in the restaurant that he knew beforehand. And bring a bottle of wine from his wine collection. Everything was passion, you know?

• 45:12Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 45:13Emeran Mayer?

  And he's in his eighties. He had a very serious chronic disease. Miracle that he made into his eighties. I don't think he has paid a lot of attention to a healthy diet. I, I think that passion...

• 45:27Lewis Howes?

  But he's got joy.

• 45:28Emeran Mayer?

  That, that joy and that passion is a big part of it. And I, I would say...

• 45:34Emeran Mayer?

  Speculation, you know, again, it's the brain gut axis and the immune system that is is affected by this passion.

• 45:41Lewis Howes?

  How much does, we talked about nutrition, but how much does stress, I guess we talked about emotions, but how much does the emotion of stress affect the immune system? If you're eating the right nutritional foods, but you are constantly in stress, consciously or unconsciously, how much does that suppress the immune system?

• 46:01Emeran Mayer?

  Yeah, that's, that's a good question, because, you know, as I said earlier, the stress effect has, the stress has an effect both on the microbes and on this barrier, the gut barrier, the leakiness.

• 46:16Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 46:17Emeran Mayer?

  And so then you have two forces that go in opposite directions. I'm not, I can't answer that question, you know. My guess is, the, the easy answer would be if you say if you have both the stress and the unhealthy diet.

• 46:39Lewis Howes?

  That's.

• 46:40Emeran Mayer?

  That's, that's a no-brainer, and that happened.

• 46:42Lewis Howes?

  It seems like a lot of people have that.

• 46:44Emeran Mayer?

  A lot of people have this.

• 46:45Lewis Howes?

  Unhealthy diet, and they're stressed out all the time.

• 46:48Emeran Mayer?

  I would say that is the cause, the main, the root cause of this, you know, non-infectious chronic disease epidemic that we have. The combination of those two factors.

• 47:00Lewis Howes?

  Like, what, what are those diseases?

• 47:02Emeran Mayer?

  Cardiovascular disease.

• 47:05Lewis Howes?

  Obesity, diabetes.

• 47:06Emeran Mayer?

  Yeah, so obesity, metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular disease, fatty liver disease, brain diseases, degenerative brain diseases.

• 47:16Lewis Howes?

  Alzheimer's.

• 47:17Emeran Mayer?

  Alzheimer's, colon cancer, colon cancer particularly.

• 47:21Lewis Howes?

  Stress and diet are the two main factors that cause those things.

• 47:26Emeran Mayer?

  And, and, and now we know, I mean, there's obviously, like, when, when they say this all boils down to the, the gut barrier, it's obviously a very simplistic explanation, you know, the scientists working on every little step of these mechanisms, but. The sort of luxury that I have at this stage in my career is I can look at the big picture.

• 47:48Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 47:49Emeran Mayer?

  And I think without the detailed science of each of these little details, we wouldn't be where we are today. But I think we also need this big picture view and with the interventions and the recommendations to patients and prophylactically to families. Because nobody's interested what molecule really contributes like 1% of the variance of this disease. Scientists are and industry is because industry wants to patent this molecule to make a medication.

• 48:26Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 48:27Emeran Mayer?

  But so my main interest is really spread the big picture, you know.

• 48:32Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 48:33Emeran Mayer?

  And I feel pretty confident whatever, I mean, except for some of your questions, really intriguing questions about religion, which I cannot guarantee in any way scientifically. But most of the things that we talked about today, I think, can be, are supported by science.

• 48:50Lewis Howes?

  Most of them, yeah.

• 48:51Emeran Mayer?

  Most of them.

• 48:52Lewis Howes?

  What would you say, a personal question, if you could recommend five things that everyone should do on a daily basis that would optimize their immune system, their brain-gut connection and their overall well-being? Maybe these are things that you're doing or things you know you should be doing more of. It could be as simple as waking up with gratitude or falling asleep with gratitude. It could be making sure you call a loved one. It could be eating a healthy diet, meditating, breathing. What would you say the five things you would recommend to optimize the immune system?

• 49:22Emeran Mayer?

  Yeah, so you mentioned this, you know, the sort of mindfulness practices, waking up in the morning with gratitude and focusing your mind, clearing it from all the chatter.

• 49:40Emeran Mayer?

  Definitely something that you wanna do upon waking up and I'm not doing this enough, we're not, so my wife and I are not doing this enough. We wake up like probably millions of people and look at our iPhone.

• 49:51Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 49:52Emeran Mayer?

  That's, that's what you should not be doing.

• 49:55Lewis Howes?

  Right, right, okay.

• 49:56Emeran Mayer?

  The, the second one is

• 50:00Emeran Mayer?

  daily, regular, moderate exercise. Unless you're competitive athlete, obviously you wanna push that to the, to the maximum. But for the average person, and this again is supported by science, that moderate, regular exercise can give you an extra, in combination with these other lifestyle factors, an extra ten disease-free years.

• 50:24Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 50:24Emeran Mayer?

  So if you're fifty and you take a questionnaire of what you're doing and compare this to people that do this lifestyle, positive lifestyle things, the ones that do it, they, they add another ten years of healthy.

• 50:39Lewis Howes?

  That's crazy.

• 50:40Emeran Mayer?

  Which is amazing, there's no medication that can do this.

• 50:42Lewis Howes?

  No, free.

• 50:43Emeran Mayer?

  Free.

• 50:44Lewis Howes?

  Just move your body.

• 50:45Emeran Mayer?

  Yeah.

• 50:45Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, okay.

• 50:46Emeran Mayer?

  The next thing is, so we have the mindfulness, the

• 50:50Lewis Howes?

  Exercise.

• 50:51Emeran Mayer?

  Exercise. The diet, clearly major factor, a largely plant-based diet,

• 51:00Emeran Mayer?

  which doesn't have to be vegetarian or vegan unless, for ethical reasons, which then I think is really justified.

• 51:11Emeran Mayer?

  Social interactions.

• 51:19Emeran Mayer?

  So in terms of the diet, you know, alcohol, that's always a question mark. There's some studies and some people say even the smallest amount of alcohol is bad for you. I would go more with the, with the Mediterranean diet and a small amount of, like the glass or half, half glass of red wine in the evening is a lot better than taking a sleeping pill or a Valium. And it has, you know, health-promoting polyphenol

• 51:48Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 51:48Emeran Mayer?

  molecules in it.

• 51:51Emeran Mayer?

  And then having this sense of connectedness in some shape or form. And the connectedness would be to your friends, to some higher meaning in life. To, you know, and that relates to compassion, empathy. And like when I say these things, they sound very, you know.

• 52:17Lewis Howes?

  Non-scientific.

• 52:18Emeran Mayer?

  Non-scientific, but a good friend of mine and colleague, superb researcher at UCLA, Steve Koll, who has done, quoting him a couple of times, has done these studies looking at immune cells and the gene expression in these immune cells. He has shown that some of these like empathy or eudaimonia, that it's like believing in a higher sense and, you know, not thinking that happiness, personal happiness makes you happy. But it's the reward you're getting from living a life based on a higher meaning and, you know, giving joy to other people. He has shown that that positively affects your immune cells, which is an amazing thing.

• 53:03Emeran Mayer?

  So these recommendations that I gave you, these five, are not just my personal, you know, preferences that I came up with, they're based in science, which is amazing.

• 53:15Lewis Howes?

  That's beautiful. I feel like I could go on for a couple more hours with you, but I want to wrap it up for the final few questions. Before I go into the final few questions, I want people to get the book, The Gut Immune Connection: How Understanding the Connection Between Food and Immunity Can Help Us Regain Our Health. This is going to help a lot of people. Make sure you guys get a few copies of this book, give it to some friends. And if you want Dr. Mayer to come back on and share more about these things, then let me know in the comments below if you'd like to have him come back on and share more stuff. So this is great. It's got a lot of research in here, a lot of information, a lot of how to, so make sure you guys get a copy of this.

• 53:53Emeran Mayer?

  Forty references.

• 53:54Lewis Howes?

  Forty references. Wow, there you go. Forty references. The Gut Immune Connection. This is a question I ask everyone towards the end. It's called the three truths question. And I feel like as a scientist and as a researcher, you also have a very spiritual part of you that you're always discovering and learning new things. I was reading your bio about you went, I think you went, you've studied the Native American. Philosophies, I think it's the Amazon as well. You've kind of like studied these tribal ancient wisdom and you've coupled it with modern science. And you've tried to find a sense of meaning that works for you in your life, which has been really beautiful. This is called the three truths. So I'd like you to imagine a hypothetical scenario.

• 54:38Lewis Howes?

  It's your very last day on this earth, many years away. And you've accomplished everything you want to accomplish. You're happy, but you gotta go to the next place. This life is over. And for whatever reason, you've got to take all of your body of work with you. So all of your research, your material, your content. No one has access to it anymore. But you get to leave behind three things you know to be true from all your life lessons, the lessons you would leave behind. What would be those three truths for you that you would share?

• 55:10Emeran Mayer?

  Wow, that's a, that's a tough one.

• 55:16Emeran Mayer?

  So, um.

• 55:20Emeran Mayer?

  Yeah, I would say, you know, even though this is not really necessarily publicly available. So I've been very diligent for a long time in my life to write a very detailed, you know, diary where I went through why I made this decision and what happened and what were my dreams. And that's definitely something, probably nobody will ever get to read this.

• 55:48Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 55:51Emeran Mayer?

  But, but I think it's something, it's, it would be a good lesson to, because when I go back and, and, and look at these documents today, I see that there was something that I had in my mind as a goal that, which, which goes to the things that I've arrived on today, you know, to.

• 56:17Emeran Mayer?

  I mean, the details doesn't, don't really matter. It's that you have these goals deeply ingrained in your mind early on, and you pursue them and not let detours get in the way to change the direction.

• 56:34Emeran Mayer?

  Kind of this concept of individuation,

• 56:39Emeran Mayer?

  recognizing who you are, and even though you may put things aside temporarily for various reasons, financially, or never deviate from that path. I think that's...

• 56:51Lewis Howes?

  Always come back to it.

• 56:52Emeran Mayer?

  Always come back to it.

• 56:53Lewis Howes?

  Okay. That's number one, is that right?

• 56:56Emeran Mayer?

  Yeah.

• 56:56Lewis Howes?

  Number two, truth.

• 57:00Emeran Mayer?

  You know, for my scientific writings,

• 57:07Emeran Mayer?

  yeah, I mean, I would say it's sort of strange today because for a long time when I pursued that science of brain-gut connection, nobody was interested in it. Now the whole world writes about it and writes cookbooks about it.

• 57:24Emeran Mayer?

  So I'm not sure if anybody would pay attention, you know, that we did this at a time when nobody was interested or believed it or, you know. For me, it's important that we did that. It feels good. So it's something that... It doesn't really fit this criteria that you mentioned, you know.

• 57:50Emeran Mayer?

  So would this also mean like not something that I've written?

• 57:53Lewis Howes?

  Just a lesson you would leave behind, like the philosophy, the lesson, the truth. So one is like, you know, have the goals and make sure you always come back to them.

• 58:05Lewis Howes?

  Another one could be make sure you take care of your gut health.

• 58:08Emeran Mayer?

  Well, I'm not sure if I would put that at this high level. You know, it would be more like, look at the world in terms of interconnectedness.

• 58:16Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, I like that.

• 58:17Emeran Mayer?

  And base all your evaluations and decisions on that concept. And that really involves everything. That involves your health, that involves your... How you interact with others, you know, within the family, friends beyond, with human beings in general, with the environment, with the planet. I think that would probably be the biggest lesson.

• 58:40Lewis Howes?

  Okay, okay, that's two. And number three, truth.

• 58:48Emeran Mayer?

  Yeah, I would say live a life based on this concept of eudaimonia. That don't fall into the trap that you think material happiness will will give you what you, what humans are searching for.

• 59:04Lewis Howes?

  Right. Eudaimonia?

• 59:05Emeran Mayer?

  Eudaimonia.

• 59:07Lewis Howes?

  Eudaimonia, what does that mean?

• 59:11Emeran Mayer?

  It means this, this, these two forms of, of, of happiness. So the material happiness that is, you know, possessing things, increasing your wealth, based on, on yourself, the benefit of, of yourself. So the, the eudaimonia is believe in the higher meaning, which means making other people happy, spread happiness and contentment. There's many examples that, you know, people have studied this, this principle. And, and again, it's good, it's good for your own well-being. It's good for your body, for your immune, for your immune system, as we know.

• 59:53Lewis Howes?

  To be altruistic, to be of service to something greater, yeah. More than to, how do I gain as much for me? How do I collect as many things for me?

• 1:00:03Emeran Mayer?

  Yeah, and, you know, we live in a city, obviously, that completely believes in hedonism and, and enriching yourself more and more and building bigger homes and, you know, bigger and bigger cars and more expensive cars. It's, it's sort of hard to maintain that belief in a society like that where it's surrounded and particularly for younger people that are more susceptible to this concept. And I think it comes with age that you believe more and more that there's, there's another way to happiness. It's not hedonism, it's this, this eudaimonia concept.

• 1:00:42Lewis Howes?

  That's cool. I love these. I've got one final question for you. Before I ask the final question, Dr. Mayer, I want to acknowledge you for the incredible commitment and dedication you've had on this research and this science of the gut-brain connection, because I just feel like over the last four decades, America in general and the world has gotten sicker and sicker, has relied more and more on medications to heal something as opposed to going to the roots. And by you studying what are the root causes of inflammation and disease and all these things from the gut, something that we really never understood until in the last couple of decades, is really inspiring. So I acknowledge you for your commitment

• 1:01:26Lewis Howes?

  to this solution, to understanding this complex system, which I'm assuming is still scratching the surface on what we really know about it. So, thank you for doing the work. Thank you for putting yourself out there and starting to talk about this. Thank you for writing the books. And thanks for everything. It's inspiring.

• 1:01:46Emeran Mayer?

  Well, thanks for this opportunity. You know, I owe you a lot. I mean, your life is an inspiration when you read it, you know, and your success in life. And I'm sure, you know, the happiness that you have gotten out of the paths that you have chosen. So, it's a real honor, you know.

• 1:02:03Lewis Howes?

  I appreciate it. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. Final question for you. Also, they can follow you on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook. Ameren Mayer over there. Ameren Mayer over on all of those places. So make sure to check you out over there. Where are you most active? What platform?

• 1:02:22Emeran Mayer?

  I would say at the moment, it's Instagram.

• 1:02:24Lewis Howes?

  Okay, Instagram. Ameren Mayer over on Instagram. So make sure to check out your Instagram for more information. You also have a website?

• 1:02:32Emeran Mayer?

  Yeah, the other one is the website, amerenmayer.com. So, when you go there, you can sign up for our newsletter, which comes out twice a month, and an email on the alternate weeks, where we pick topics related to...

• 1:02:49Emeran Mayer?

  The wider topic, you know, brain, gut, microbiome, the concept of one health that we didn't talk about today, but that I believe, you know, health is something that's not just in our body, but it's health of the planet, really.

• 1:03:06Lewis Howes?

  Of course, absolutely.

• 1:03:07Emeran Mayer?

  So, yeah, if you go to the website, you'll find a lot of information and ways to connecting.

• 1:03:13Lewis Howes?

  emmerindmeyer.com, gotcha, okay. Amazing. Final question is, what's your definition of greatness?

• 1:03:20Emeran Mayer?

  Wow. This interview was sort of backloaded with the most challenging questions coming at the end. What's the essence of greatness? Probably a very subjective thing. Things that you do to realize your potential, I would say, to the fullest extent, which will involve all these other things that we talked about today.

• 1:04:00Emeran Mayer?

  So, the belief that you have the ability to do great things and that takes as a core belief that you think you believe in yourself, that no obstacle is big enough to prevent you from getting there and that you take any setbacks as temporary setbacks and you're resilient as these ecosystems that we talked about and always bounce back and move to a higher level. So I think that to me is...

• 1:04:39Lewis Howes?

  That's greatness, Dr. Meyer. Thank you so much, appreciate it.

• 1:04:41Emeran Mayer?

  Thank you, Louis, it was great.

• 1:04:43Lewis Howes?

  Amazing. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. Again, if you enjoyed it, make sure to share this with a couple of friends. You can text them. You can post it over on social media, tag me on Instagram at Lewis Howes, or Twitter, or anywhere that you're sharing this, and click the subscribe button if this is your first time here over on Apple Podcasts or Spotify to stay notified and up to date on the latest and greatest here on the School of Greatness. Also, leave us a review over on Apple Podcasts as well of the part that you enjoyed the most. I'd love to hear what you enjoyed, what you got out of this by leaving a review over on Apple Podcasts. And I want to leave you with this quote from the Buddha who said, "The secret of health for both mind and body is live the present moment wisely and earnestly." Whew, such a good reminder. When we have distractions, or anxiety, or

• 1:05:27Lewis Howes?

  stress, or worry, we're not really living in the present moment a lot of those times. We're living in the past, or we're living in the future. So remind yourself to live present wisely and earnestly in this moment today. Really be grateful for another day, all the good that is in your life. Even if you've got a lot of stress happening right now, there's a lot of good that you can find as well if you take a moment to look, listen, and really reflect on what those moments are. And I want to remind you, if no one's told you lately, that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. I'm so grateful for you. And you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.