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I literally return any packet around.
Search this video
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Everything is canola oil, palm oil, and the effects, all of which are terrible.
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Although the fatty acid profile is okay, most of the commercially produced canola oil is heavily contaminated with agrichemicals, and it's extracted with heat and solvents, and that denatures the oil and creates carcinogenic products.
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The best-selling author and host The number one health and wellness podcast with Jay Shetty Hey everyone, welcome back to On Purpose, the number one health podcast in the world.
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Thanks to each and every one of you that come back every week to become healthier, happier, and more healed.
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Now, you know that I'm a curious person who wants to learn more and more about our mind, our body, our health, and tools and techniques that can improve that for us.
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And I like sitting down with individuals who've dedicated their lives and their life's work to understanding what can improve the lives of others.
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Today's guest is someone I've been really looking forward to having on the show.
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I know you'll be really excited as well.
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Uh we're going to be talking about a wide array of subjects, but I'm going to give you really practical, insightful tips and tools that you can put into your life and day immediately to make an impact. My guest today is Dr.
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Andrew Weil, a world-renowned leader and pioneer in the field of integrative medicine.
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Combining a Harvard education and of practicing natural and preventive medicine, Dr.
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Weil is the founder and director of the Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona, where he is a clinical professor of medicine and professor of public health.
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A New York Times best-selling author, Dr.
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Weil is the author of 15 books on health and well-being. Dr.
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Weil is also the founder and partner in the growing family of True Food Kitchen restaurants. Dr.
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Weil's current project include matcha.
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com, bringing the world's best matcha to the west.
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I am so excited to welcome Dr. Andrew Weil.
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Andrew, thank you for being here.
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I'm delighted to be here.
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Very excited to learn from you about a subject matter that has so much, as we were talking about briefly before, has no insight, bad insight, you know, I feel people are underserved in this space.
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And so so let's dive straight in.
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The first thing I wanted to ask you and dive into you with was this um was this thought around what are the diet and lifestyle habits people need to do every day to live longer, healthier, and prevent cognitive decline?
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Well, you know, that's fairly simple.
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The The first rule of healthy eating is to avoid refined, processed, and manufactured food.
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You know, that that's what's doing us in.
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And I'm one of the first people to have begun talking about the importance of containing inappropriate inflammation.
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And I have developed an anti-inflammatory diet based on the Mediterranean diet, but I added Asian influences to that because I spent a lot of time in Asia and there are things there like mushrooms and turmeric and tea that I find very useful.
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But we It really looks there's more and more evidence that chronic low-level inappropriate inflammation is the root cause of most of the serious diseases that do people in prematurely.
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So containing inflammation is very important and diet has a major influence there.
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But again, the first step of an anti-inflammatory diet is to try to eliminate refined, processed, and manufactured foods.
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In terms of other lifestyle practices, basic ones, maintain physical activity throughout life, get good rest and sleep, learn and practice some methods of neutralizing the harmful effects of stress on the mind and the body, um maintaining good relationships, especially spending time with people in whose company you feel more positive.
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I mean, those are very simple steps.
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As for cognitive decline, this is of great concern to many people, uh you know, because we all know people who have experienced cognitive decline, and we want to avoid that.
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So, I think two very practical pieces of advice.
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One is don't get hit in the head.
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And that may mean, you know, taking precautions if you're doing hazardous activities and being, you know, I don't recommend that people play American football, uh for example.
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And another is don't smoke because nicotine constricts blood vessels, reduces blood flow to the brain.
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So, those are two two simple steps.
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I think also I recommend practices like doing word puzzles to keep your mind active, learning another language.
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You don't have to master the language.
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Just the attempt to learn it is very useful.
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So, so those are some there's some pieces of practical information.
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Yeah, I think you've given us a beautiful spectrum of things to focus on there, and I think I definitely in my life try and tackle one of those areas every year Uh good.
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because I feel that they're so big in and of themselves, and my biggest mistake in the past was when I tried to change everything.
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everything all at the same time.
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You're trying to improve your relationship, you're trying to improve your gut, you're trying to improve your workout regime.
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And so, I love what you're saying that there's all these things, and I would list everyone who's listening and watching, please try to choose one thing that you're going to try to deeply improve this year that you feel is the one you're struggling with the most that may be having the most negative impact on you because you'll start to see how they all affect each other.
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Yeah, it doesn't have You don't have to wait a year, however.
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I have I have a book called Eight Weeks to Optimum Health, which is a program.
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Each week, you know, you do something.
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Like you start by walking 10 minutes a day and each week you add, you know, 5 minutes to that. There we go.
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Um but I think you're you're quite right that a big mistake that people make is to try to do global change and then they give up.
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So I think it's best to take it in small bites.
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Yeah, let's dive into some of those because I think they're easier said than done.
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So what you just spoke about with diet, that's something that I've genuinely been focusing on probably for the past 12 months in terms of not eating any packaged foods and refined sugars and um processed foods and so I'm eating only natural foods.
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I'm I'm already plant-based in my diet uh but making sure that I'm eating vegetables and trying to avoid anything that's out of a packet.
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It's easier said than done.
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It took a lot of time for me to kind of move in that direction.
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I had to find a meal prep service.
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I have an amazing wife who's an incredible cook and chef and so that helps, you know, a million times over.
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For people that are trying to make simple steps to changing specifically their diet to an anti-inflammatory diet, what are certain simple steps people can take the 8-week version almost?
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Well, you know, I in the in the book I said learn how to be friendly with broccoli.
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Broccoli is a very easy vegetable to cook, but most many people overcook it and it's not very appetizing and there's a very simple way of cooking it for about 2 minutes, uh so it's bright green and crunchy.
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Put some olive oil on it, garlic if you want.
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Uh but that's a wonderful powerhouse vegetable with cancer-protective effects.
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Uh add some berries to your diet because they're full of antioxidants.
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Uh we talked about I mentioned tea.
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I think tea is a very helpful beverage.
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It's one of the main sources of protective antioxidants.
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Um I think it's good to learn different types of tea and and how to add that find which ones you like.
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What specific teas have you found to have those benefits?
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Well, I'm a big fan of green tea because I've spent a lot of time in Japan and particularly matcha green tea, which I think is, you know, has the highest levels of some of these protective elements in them.
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But I think all tea is beneficial.
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When I was doing research on healthy aging, I made a number of trips to Okinawa, which at the time that I was doing it had the highest concentration of centenarians in the world.
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And one of the things that I observed there was that in in very hot weather, people were drinking cold unsweetened turmeric tea. Delicious.
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And you know, in North America, people are really unfamiliar with turmeric except as as it occurs in yellow mustard and and curry.
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But this form of turmeric in Okinawa was fermented, and which makes it more bioavailable and tastier.
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It dissolves very quickly in cold water. It's really delicious.
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So, that's one that that I recommend, you know, learning how to get more turmeric into your diet.
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It's the most powerful anti-inflammatory agent, natural anti-inflammatory agent that we know. Wow.
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Yeah, turmeric's a big part of the Indian diet, so Indians eat Indians eat it every meal. Yes.
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And you know, one of the interesting correlations in the I think rural India especially has the lowest rate of Alzheimer's disease in the world.
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And many researchers think that's related to the regular consumption of turmeric because Alzheimer's begins as inflammation in the brain.
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And there's some animal research showing that turmeric can protect rats that are genetically programmed to develop Alzheimer's from developing it.
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So, I think turmeric is a very good thing to become friendly with.
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That's that's a great insight.
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I love that story of going to Okinawa.
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I went to Sardinia a few years ago.
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Ah, well, that's one of the healthy healthy aging places. of the blue zones.
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Yeah, and what's interesting I I want to hear what you saw there, but the you know, if you go to these areas around the world where there are unusual concentrations of very healthy old people, women outnumber men by a long shot.
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You know, when you get up in the range of upper 90s, hundreds, it's almost all women.
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Uh Sardinia is the one exception.
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Uh, Uh that there men and women are equally in those ranks of the oldest old and we don't know why. Yeah, yeah.
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I I was really fascinated to see the few things and it's and it's all on the spectrum of things you mentioned.
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But what was really interesting is that their workouts were natural. Of course, right.
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they were walking, they were taking care of the land. Same in Okinawa.
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They were pulling fishing nets and gardening.
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I saw a I think a 102-year-old woman who was hoeing the the garden in front of her house.
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So, they're not going to gyms, they're not working with trainers. Yes.
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It's just daily activity.
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Yeah, and then the other thing was that they were eating foods only in season.
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So, everything was picked locally, everything was uh locally grown or locally found and they weren't eating things that were just artificially available.
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And what about social connectedness?
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I mean, that was a big part of it.
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I mean, people were living in bigger families or living closer by to families with children.
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So, children weren't just being raised by two people but by 10 people and uh every evening and even during the middle of the day they would get together and I think that's very important.
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Uh the MacArthur Foundation uh some years ago did a study of successful aging that identified a population of people they considered successful agers and then they looked to see what were the the outstanding commonalities.
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And the two that stood out and this dwarfed everything else, whether they took supplements, whether they, you know, dietary patterns, the two were maintenance of physical activity throughout life and maintenance of social and intellectual connectedness. Mhm.
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I want to dive into two things that you mentioned earlier and I want to dive into them deeply because I think again they're buzzwords, people know about them, but I'd like people to really understand the benefits.
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So, let's talk about matcha because that's your favorite daily plant.
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Uh an ally which you say has this incredible mind-body benefit.
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I think it has already seeped its way into mainstream culture. amazing, you know. But but yeah.
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I went to Japan when I was 17 and uh lived with families.
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Uh one family outside of Tokyo and this was 1959.
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Japan was a very different place and the second night that I was there my host mother, we had no language in common, took me next door to her neighbor who practiced tea ceremony.
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So the three of us sat around and the neighbor did a tea ceremony and presented me with a bowl of matcha and two things about it totally caught my attention.
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One was the color, you know, this vibrant green and the other was the bamboo whisk you use to whisk the the matcha tea into a froth in a bowl of water.
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It's carved from a single piece of bamboo, just a miracle Japanese craftsmanship.
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So I I fell in love with matcha.
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When I got back to the states, nobody knew anything about it or ever heard of it.
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Over the years when I would go to Japan, I'd bring matcha back and I'd turn people on to it.
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I tried starting in the 1980s, I partnered with a Japanese company to try to sell it on my website.
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There was no market for it.
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I did that again in the 1990s.
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Anyway, it's quite amazing now to see this, you know, penetrating our culture.
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Matcha is prepared in a very unique way.
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The the tea plants are heavily shaded for 3 weeks before harvest.
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A 90% shade cloth, so it cuts out almost all sunlight.
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In response to that, the leaves get bigger and thinner and produce more chlorophyll trying to take advantage of what light is there and they also produce more antioxidants and flavor compounds and this amino acid L-theanine that has a calming effect and moderates the action of caffeine.
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So for that reason, matcha I think is is more helpful than other forms of tea and also you consume the whole leaf, not just an infusion of it.
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So that's one that I'm quite enthusiastic about and I started a company. We got the URL matcha.
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com which was which was a great deal.
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How how when did you get that URL? I'm fascinated.
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Did you have to buy it recently or you've had it for like years?
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No, it's like six or six or seven years. We tracked it down.
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It was owned by a Japanese man who had no idea what he had.
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He had if you went to the site, he had pictures of his cats.
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And my business partner Andre Fassiola managed to negotiate with him and we got it at a quite reasonable price.
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People in Japan can't believe we've got we've got that.
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Anyway, we import very high-quality matcha.
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And by the way, if your if your listeners use a discount code J, Mhm.
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we'll give them a very generous discount on our products. you go. There you go, Evan.
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So, I'm a big fan of matcha.
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I'm delighted to see that getting traction.
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However, a lot of the matcha here is not very good because it's such a fine powder that unless it's carefully protected, it oxidizes very quickly, loses its brilliant green color, becomes bitter.
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And many people have tried matcha and say it would they don't like it, but they've never tasted good matcha.
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So, I as I said, I think a lot of research has been done on green tea in particular, but all tea has beneficial effects.
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And frankly, you know, I don't want to bash coffee, but I would love to see more of a tea culture develop here. Me, too. I'm a big tea fan. Yeah. Good. I know. Yeah, yeah.
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So, coffee, you know, the the stimulant effects of coffee and tea are very different.
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Coffee is much more jangling.
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It it is much more associated with truly addictive behavior.
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There's a real crash coming down from coffee.
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You don't see any of that with tea.
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And some of it is because of this modifying effect of of L-theanine.
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But also, I find it interesting that the historically and culturally, the associations with coffee coffee was always associated with kind of argumentative behavior, loud, raucous gatherings of people, political activism.
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Whereas tea, the historical associations are much more with contemplation, meditation.
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Uh I think it'd would be very beneficial to see a greater tea culture develop in North America.
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You know, that could work its way into some of the coffee culture that's now so dominant.
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Yeah, when me and my wife launched our tea company, we said we wanted to make tea as hot as coffee.
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Like that Like that was the goal because Yeah, we we grew up with tea culture both from our British and Indian heritage. Sure.
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Yeah, I found it so therapeutic.
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I I like you love the color. Yeah. Love the scent. Yeah.
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Uh love the experience of having to drink it slow.
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You don't really have tea on the go. exactly.
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There's there's a meditative process within and a healing property to it. And it's a big change.
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When I was growing up, uh tea was what old people and sick people drank in this country.
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And it's wonderful to see that change now. Yeah, absolutely.
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And the other one that I wanted to ask you about was the the green Mediterranean diet. Yes. Mediterranean diet.
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It's just recently been in the news.
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You know, we have so much scientific evidence for the benefits of the Mediterranean diet in terms of of longevity, overall lowest risks of disease.
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And I think most of your listeners are familiar with the Mediterranean diet.
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You know, it's heavily on fruits and vegetables and whole grains, olive oil as the main cooking fat, meat used very occasionally, oily fish, relatively low in sugar, so forth.
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So, recently a green Mediterranean diet has been proposed as being even healthier.
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And this reduces animal products even further, uh increases uh fruits and vegetables, especially sources of a class of compounds called polyphenols.
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Uh and these are antioxidant compounds that are found in plants and fruits, vegetables, especially berries, uh tea, and dark chocolate.
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Uh so, the this green Mediterranean diet specifically recommended green tea uh to add, and they noted chocolate, but they mentioned all tea.
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So, I think this is fascinating, you know, to see uh and these are researchers really uh you know uh not really trying to promote any agenda.
17:20
Yeah, have has your work led to any of the research that I'm recently seeing around like canola oil, palm oil and the negative harmful effects versus what now I'm only eating in is avocado oil and olive oil? Yep. Uh as my primary oil.
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other that you should check out is algae oil if you don't know about that.
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Yeah, I know This is a new product that's out there uh and it's it's made through uh it's called cultured oil and it's it's microorganisms that have been uh been altered in all to produce oil which is almost all mono unsaturated fat.
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Uh is has a very high smoke point, neutral taste, and also has one of the omega-3 fatty acids in it.
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So, that's another choice, but those are the ones I use also avocado and olive.
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And what are some of the harmful effects of the canola palm oil that Because they're pretty much literally if you turn any packet around everything is canola oil, palm oil and Well, palm oil, aside from all the environmental effects of them which are terrible.
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There are two kinds of palm oils.
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There's an oil extracted from the fruit of the oil palm which is red and is used in Africa as a cooking oil and is okay, but we rarely see that.
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And then there's the oil extracted from the kernel and that is very high in in the unstable unsaturated fatty acids that oxidize quickly.
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It's also very high in saturated fat.
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Uh so, that's not a good one.
18:45
Canola oil is a you know, the word means Canadian oil and it was developed by Canadian scientists uh I think in the 1920s or 1930s from a traditional cooking oil that you know in India, rapeseed oil. Mhm.
19:00
Yes, and that's another one. Right.
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And rape has a toxic fatty acid in it possibly the Canadian scientists uh worked with it to develop one that was low in that in that fatty acid.
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Problems with canola oil although the fatty acid profile is okay, most of the commercially produced canola oil is heavily contaminated with agrichemicals and it's extracted with heat and solvents and that denatures the oil and creates carcinogenic products.
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So, it's one I would stay away from now.
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I recommend it in the past but I don't anymore.
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I'm a big fan of olive oil. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
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No, everyone cook cook with olive oil.
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By the way, I've tw- you know, I've I've worked with a number of Indian patients you know, who were very uh convinced that ghee can do no harm.
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You know, and it's pure butter fat and it's probably not healthy and the rates of cardiovascular disease in India are pretty high and I've taught people to uh use ghee as a flavoring and you cook with a healthy oil like avocado and then at the end you can drizzle some ghee over to get the flavor you want. Yeah.
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And I've also suggested I had a a a student of physician from Kerala where coconut you know, or it's the land of coconuts and they use uh uh coconut oil and coconut full-fat coconut milk and I taught her to use cashew milk which is very easy to make and it's much healthier fat than than coconut.
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It's mono unsaturated not saturated and the taste is delicious.
20:30
Wow, that's good to know about ghee cuz yeah, it's one of those things that my mom never wants me to miss. Right, I know.
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But then I always hear this like Yeah.
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in between but I like I like the Yeah, use it as a flavoring at the end.
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Yeah, I like the happy medium the happy balance.
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And that makes it should be happy to hear about the turmeric.
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That's like and saffron's the other one she's like never telling me to miss. And that's a good one. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
20:52
But the turmeric, you know, our company also sells that fermented turmeric from Okinawa and we'll send you some to try. Please, I'd love that. That sounds amazing. It's fascinating.
21:00
You you mentioned earlier uh limiting the smoking of cigarettes and the negative effects of nicotine.
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What about when it comes to marijuana?
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I think that, you know, marijuana is such an interesting topic for so many people today.
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There is There are so many perspectives.
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Most of them out there are like positive, but I'd love to know from your perspective, how are you seeing marijuana affect the brain?
21:19
How are you seeing mar- mar- marijuana affect the actual First of all, I'm going to call it I'm going to call it cannabis because the word marijuana has negative connotations.
21:28
So, uh let's talk about cannabis. Yeah, sure.
21:32
So, I I I did the first controlled human experiments with cannabis in the 19 Jeez, 1964. Oh, wow.
21:42
Uh it was the first time anyone had given that to uh human subjects in a controlled fashion to see what it did.
21:48
So, it's a plant that I've been involved with for some time.
21:50
And let me say, you know, this is also a plant very well known in India.
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It's, you know, native to uh the to Asia.
21:57
Um the word uh it's can- the main species is cannabis sativa. The sativa means useful. And cannabis is hemp.
22:06
It's the same root as canvas because canvas used to be made from hemp fiber.
22:10
Uh but it did This is a very useful plant.
22:13
It provides uh an edible seed, an edible oil, a fiber, a medicine, and an intoxicant.
22:19
That's a lot of ways for one plant, you know, to to serve us.
22:24
And it really only wants to serve us.
22:25
And I think we have really not been wise in the way we've dealt with that plant.
22:30
So, in terms of the intoxicating properties of cannabis, um this is a it's a difficult subject to talk about because the chemistry of that plant is so complex. Mhm.
22:40
There's so many different strains.
22:43
And there's so much variation in individual reaction to it.
22:47
You know, there are people who can smoke cannabis before bed and have a great night's sleep.
22:52
Other people smoke it before bed and they can't sleep the entire night.
22:55
So, there's that kind of disparity in reactions to do First of all, that it is one of the least toxic drugs that we know.
23:02
You can't kill people with it, and you can't say that about any drug that we use in medicine.
23:09
And every drug has a lethal dose, and in some cases, the lethal dose is relatively close to the useful dose.
23:15
You can't calculate a lethal lethal dose for cannabis.
23:17
So, on a physical level, it's extremely safe.
23:19
I mean, there is concerns about smoking it and whether that's how harmful that may be for lungs.
23:25
You know, that goes back and forth.
23:26
I don't think it's a great idea to smoke anything.
23:28
You know, in a minute inhale smoke into the lungs, probably not a good idea. Okay.
23:32
But, certainly not as I think not as toxic as tobacco, and it doesn't have anything in it as addictive as nicotine, which is one of the most addictive drugs that we know.
23:41
Um I I think the medical usefulness of cannabis, there's a lot of potential there.
23:48
Um and I think this is a subject that's open at the moment.
23:53
You know, there's a lot of research on ways it can reduce muscle spasticity.
23:56
It can help people with um you know, all sorts of of neuromuscular problems, with digestive problems.
24:06
But again, a lot of individual reaction to it.
24:07
Uh we're seeing this plant, you know, being made available to people.
24:14
Uh and it's it's I think it's about time that it gets out of that restrictive drug schedule and made available for therapeutic use.
24:21
I was just talking yesterday.
24:23
Um our center does a podcast, and I was interviewing a nurse who is a who is a member of the American Cannabis Nurses Association.
24:30
I didn't know there was such a thing.
24:33
But, there is a large group of nurses who have now become trained in using cannabis therapeutically. Yeah.
24:40
They use all different forms.
24:40
Uh and they base that on the individual patient.
24:45
But, I think they're in a much better position to do this than physicians because there's no cannabis preparation out there that most doctors are going to feel comfortable using.
24:53
Uh and until we have something like that, I I think doctors are going to go near it.
24:59
They don't understand it.
24:59
But, it's great that nurses are using a lot of them are using it for pain control.
25:03
Uh, they're also using it in in the hospice situations, especially with people with terminal cancer.
25:09
And they say they find it very useful.
25:11
So, I I think it's, you know what, I I'm happy to see this becoming used.
25:16
I think there's a lot we don't know about it.
25:18
And I find it very difficult when people ask my advice about it.
25:22
I don't know what preparations to recommend to people.
25:24
Uh, you know, that that it's confusing.
25:26
What's your take on the more social use of it?
25:30
Well, I was, you know, I was part of that culture in my 20s and 30s.
25:32
And, uh, you know, it was it was it was it was fun back then, you know, it was a fun social uh, experience, you know.
25:40
And and then I I also found that it was very um, stimulated my imagination, creativity, helped me write.
25:47
Uh, but at some point that changed.
25:49
And it I it it the my reactions to it changed.
25:52
I became more introspective, withdrawn.
25:54
And then eventually it became an unproductive habit that just made me groggy.
25:59
And it was hard for me to separate myself from it. And So, what was that?
26:03
Yeah, what do you think that was?
26:04
Because I think that's that's such a interesting arc of a journey with it.
26:09
I think a lot of people feel that way.
26:10
That's kind of like an arc.
26:12
I had a lot of friends who initially started for those reasons and then ended up paranoid or ended up Yeah.
26:18
confused or ended up lethargic or I don't know.
26:20
Maybe, you know what, maybe it has something to do with with changes as we age. Possible. Mhm.
26:23
But, it was such a striking change in in the effects for me.
26:28
You know, so something that I thought of as an ally that was helping me really it ceased being that. Yeah, yeah. Okay.
26:35
That's that's really interesting to know because, yeah, I feel I had a lot of friends in the same bucket.
26:40
I never really, um, I never really dabbled with it deeply, but but in in my brief experiences it was far very brief experiences it was far more the creative or the spark, but it I never got deep into it, but my friends who did, they they went on the same arc that you did.
26:55
interesting, and I don't know that I have not seen anyone write about that or talk about that or investigate what the cause of that is. Yeah, yeah.
27:01
Also, you know, today the preparations of cannabis that they're out there are much, much stronger than those that were available when I was using it way back.
27:10
the ones that are available from a leisure perspective or leisure use?
27:14
I will I will tell you a story.
27:14
A physician colleague of mine in San Francisco sent me three preparations of cannabis that had come from a medical dispensary, and he wanted me to try them.
27:25
And I was, you know, I'm a little leery about that since I'm, you know, haven't used it in so long.
27:29
One of them was a a kind of oil that was in a tube, a little syringe, and it came with a very professionally printed brochure.
27:40
And it was recommending it for pain control especially, and it said to start with a a an amount the size of a grain of rice and work up from there.
27:46
So, I took a piece half the size of a grain of rice, and my friend had said take it at bedtime.
27:54
Took it at bedtime, went to sleep, woke up about an hour later in full-blown delirium with hallucinations as vivid as those I've had from using LSD. I couldn't move.
28:04
I had no equilibrium, had burning thirst.
28:06
I couldn't reach for a glass of water.
28:09
I couldn't call for help, and it kept coming on stronger and stronger, and I had no idea when this was going to end, and I had to use all the tricks that I've learned in meditation and breath control to keep myself centered, and when when it finally subsided about 8 hours later, my equilibrium was off for 2 days.
28:27
I had very bad balance, and I was really angry.
28:29
I mean, and this brochure said work up from there, and I'm thinking there are people out there, you know, taking this.
28:36
I mean, that was like very, very powerful thing, and I thought fairly dangerous.
28:42
What what brought you into this so early on because we're we're at a point in culture I feel where these things are now coming to the forefront.
28:50
I mean, of course, I'm probably sure you're seeing cycles of that.
28:54
You probably saw it come Well, I was, you know, I I'm I'm just starting work on a book about psychedelics and um a lot of it I'm telling my own history cuz I knew everyone involved in all of that.
29:05
But my interest goes back to about, I think it was I can a specific day in 1960 right before I went to Harvard and there was an article in the newspaper of Philadelphia about the supposedly the death of a student at a California university who was taking mescaline for inspiration for a creative writing course and it said mescaline was a vision-inducing drug. I'd never heard of it.
29:32
And and they made the mistake of quoting from his last paper and I just remember this phrase galaxies of exploding colors.
29:38
When I read that, I knew I wanted mescaline.
29:43
So, I I inquired about it.
29:43
I came across Aldous Huxley's book The Doors of Perception which had been written a few years before.
29:48
Um and when I got to Harvard, I had the very good fortune to become associated with Richard Evans Schultes who was the director of the Harvard Botanical Museum and he had been one of the great explorers of the Amazon and discovered a lot of hallucinogenic plants down there.
30:08
So, he really through him, I became very interested in in psychedelic plants.
30:10
At the same time, Richard Alpert and Timothy Leary were just starting their work with psilocybin at Harvard.
30:17
Um there were you know, these drugs were not controlled substances then.
30:23
Uh I was able to obtain mescaline from a chemistry chemical company.
30:28
I took it a number of times.
30:30
Um had interesting experience but I was very disappointed.
30:34
I didn't have vision I I didn't see galaxies galaxies of exploding colors. I was very disappointed.
30:40
Anyway, so that was before I'd ever tried cannabis, but uh as a result of of being in that place at that time, I really got to meet and come across all of the people who worked in that field with Albert Hofmann, who was the discoverer of LSD, Gordon Wasson, who rediscovered the mushroom cults in Mexico, Sasha Shulgin, who invented many of the designer drugs.
31:06
So, I had a long period of experimentation with psychedelics, and I you know, have had a lot of benefit from them.
31:15
I don't I really don't use them anymore.
31:17
Um my first book, The Natural Mind, which was about the importance of altered states of consciousness. I know you can carry on.
31:25
Yeah, I'm making sure they see it.
31:26
Yeah, making sure they see it.
31:27
But Alan Watts wrote a blurb for it, in which he said, "When when you get the message, you hang up the telephone."
31:34
And so, I think I got I got what I had to learn from psychedelics, and I didn't feel the need to continue to use them.
31:40
But, I've learned a lot of things from them, and a lot of that has formed my philosophy of integrative medicine, especially the the very subtle, complex interactions of mind and body.
31:52
And I have seen very powerfully that you can change external reality by changing internal reality.
32:01
Let's dive into psychedelics, because that was also what really intrigued me and drew me to your work, because again, I feel like my generation, generations after me, they're starting to hear these terms in mainstream culture a lot more often.
32:14
And, you know, I feel like my role is to try and find the deepest experts in this space to help everyone have as much information they can have in order to make better decisions for themselves, their friends, their family, and and anyone that's there.
32:29
And so, I'm going to ask questions that may seem really simple and and basic, but by design, because I want people to So, what are psychedelics for someone who keeps hearing that term from their friends and they keep nodding along pretending to know what that is.
32:42
What does it mean and and what what comes under that umbrella?
32:46
word was it was a coined word which means mind-manifesting.
32:48
You Previously people had called these psychotomimetic drugs meaning they mimic psychosis which is, you know, a very negative term.
32:58
They are psychedelics are are a a a large group of compounds many of which are found in plants.
33:05
There's one we know from an animal source.
33:08
Many are synthetic or semi-synthetic drugs.
33:13
They fall into two chemical families with very distinctive molecular structures.
33:19
Ketamine is not a psychedelic even though many people call it that.
33:23
Cannabis is not a psychedelic.
33:23
Doesn't have any chemical resemblance to that.
33:27
Um MDMA is part of that chemical family related to mescaline but its effects are not typical of psychedelics.
33:35
It has a unique effect that makes people emotionally open.
33:39
I think it is a very useful substance.
33:41
I guess I would call it a psychedelic but it's not a classic psychedelic in terms of the perceptual changes that it causes.
33:46
One fact about this this group of compounds is they are strikingly non-toxic physically much as with with cannabis.
33:55
You know, that's just not an issue physical toxicity.
33:57
The main dangers are psychological and those are almost entirely results of set and setting that is the expectation of the person taking them and the physical environment in which they're taken.
34:09
So, you know, if to put it in a very crude way, if you if you take a very high dose of LSD on a New York subway on a day when you're feeling anxious, you're likely to have a bad trip.
34:20
On the other hand, if you take the right sort of dose in nature when you are prepared for the experience and in the company of people who have who can guide you in the right direction, the chances are you can have a positive experience. Mhm.
34:34
Uh the penetration of psychedelics into mainstream culture at the moment is quite astonishing.
34:39
Uh you know, before the pandemic, I was traveling a lot and speaking in various places, and no matter what subject I was talking about, whether it was nutrition, healthy aging, integrative medicine, the I would get questions about psychedelics.
34:52
You know, where can we get them? How can we use them?
34:54
How do you find somebody who can guide you?
34:56
Um you know, a few months ago, Vogue magazine had a cover story on psilocybin.
35:01
Town & Country magazine, of all places, had an article titled Why Is Everybody Smoking Toad Venom?
35:06
I mean, this is it is really going mainstream in a big way, and it is absolutely absurd to have these in federal schedule one, which is defined as drugs that are have high potential for abuse and no therapeutic potential.
35:21
The therapeutic potential of these drugs is enormous.
35:25
Now, you know, there is currently a lot of research documenting uh benefits in mental emotional conditions, things like MDMA for PTSD and OCD, psilocybin for drug-resistant depression, for example, and treatment of of addictions of various kind.
35:43
I mean, there's a long growing list of conditions for which clearly there are good results obtained.
35:50
But beyond that, I think there is a tremendous potential uh of these to cause spiritual awakening.
35:59
Uh some of that has been documented at the Johns Hopkins Center for psychedelics, which is really good.
36:02
I mean, a single experience with psilocybin and people who had no sense of a spiritual dimension to life suddenly are aware of that.
36:12
Um in my own, you know, experimentation with them, uh I I have had very profound realizations that my consciousness extends to everything.
36:23
You know, that everything out there is conscious, not just animate objects, but rocks and everything.
36:30
And that that same, whatever that is, it's in me, it's in everything, it connects me with everything.
36:37
I think having that realization is one of the things that guided me in my philosophy of medicine and my methods of treating patients.
36:46
I think it's also changed my attitude toward nature.
36:51
And you know, I really the title of the book I'm working on is like it all is going to save the world.
36:55
And I really believe that and I think it may be the only thing out there that has that possibility because you know, we are clearly headed for disaster.
37:01
And I think the only thing that can save us is a collective transformation of consciousness.
37:07
I think that can result from enough individuals having a transformation of conscious that it catalyzes some general movement.
37:13
I mean, for instance, if you just look at the issue of the climate disaster that we're facing, I think if people realize that they are part of nature, that they're continuous with it, they change their behavior.
37:27
That's just that's just one example.
37:30
And I saw some research recently showing that people who'd had experience with I think it was psilocybin particularly become tend to become involved with the environmental movement.
37:38
So, that is the great hope that I have.
37:40
So, I'm I'm I you know, I think this could go a million different ways in terms of whether, you know, for-profit businesses get involved, whether people are going to be using these to party, but I think it doesn't matter.
37:53
I think just having these out there in the in the general culture and freed from that restrictive way that they've been placed, I think that holds great positive potential.
38:01
You like the idea of these things becoming more mainstream and accessible and available because they have so many positive benefits, but there's a part of you that understands or is accepting of the dangers that come in with self-diagnosis and self-use where it isn't being administered in a healthy dose or a way.
38:20
dose or a way. What are some of the Because like the example you gave of getting on the train, like I look at that and I go, you know, as these things become more available, how do we stop people going off the edge because they don't know how to
38:35
administer and monitor and actually Well, I would say by training as many people as we can to be guides who who will behave in an ethical fashion and are experienced and can structure a psychedelic experience in a way to minimize any harmful potential and maximize positive potential. So, there are a
38:53
So, there are a number of groups around the country that have training programs for psychedelic guides.
38:58
We need a lot more of them.
39:00
Uh and you know, my hope is that we'll start to see that.
39:04
Yeah, because I do I do worry that I I love the benefits of of so many incredible sources out there.
39:10
I do worry that when people are untrained in in anything that has that much power, uh it can be it can be worrying, too, because, you know, you could have a whole world of people who could be saved and supported, but in the wrong way could you know, could end up in a much worse place psychologically, as you said, uh because there isn't that responsibility around it, if that makes sense. Would you agree or yeah? yeah.
39:34
So, uh that's my hope is that we'll see, you know, some large numbers of responsibly trained people who can guide people in the right direction.
39:43
Yeah, I just wanted to clarify that with you because it's it's kind of how I feel about technology, right?
39:47
Like if you look at technology, technology is like a drug in one sense in in the way the chemicals that are released when we use them.
39:53
It's It could really be likened to a drug.
39:55
Obviously, it's not been talked about that way. That's not the language.
39:58
We're only seeing those experiences now, and we're seeing the challenges with technology addiction.
40:04
We're seeing the challenges with technology obsession and the things that come from it, whether it's envy, comparison, fear of missing out, anxiety, insecurity.
40:14
Uh and you think, "Oh, wait a minute.
40:16
Well, if we had technology coaches, and if people were trained in how to use technology effectively before we were given a phone, chances are we'd be better at handling it, and we wouldn't be doing this backwards job that we're in right now, which is like, oh gosh, like my kids are all to you know.
40:32
Yeah, I think we have no idea what this is doing to the kids' brains.
40:36
You know, I think it obviously is changing them.
40:39
Uh but I don't think we know the full ramifications of that. Yeah.
40:41
So, it's definitely a concern.
40:43
And you're saying there's enough insight on the effects of psychedelics on the brain for us to kind of be able to see the right amount of doses and Yes, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Right.
40:53
Let's dive into some of the more popular ones and how they're used because again, we hear these names a lot, and I think people are unaware of like, well, what is that used for? How is it administered? Um who does it help?
41:05
So, you were mentioning there MDMA.
41:07
Could you tell us what is MDMA?
41:09
What How is it used currently?
41:11
Yeah, so MDMA is a synthetic psychedelic, um and it it resembles the structure of mescaline, that family of groups.
41:18
Does not cause many visual changes like, you know, a lot of the classic psychedelics.
41:24
It is a stimulant, but it has a very reliable uniform effect in most people, which is to produce a state of uh non-defensiveness, calmness, positive emotional feeling, emotional openness.
41:40
So, it's the a name that's been proposed for it is an empathogen, something that creates empathy.
41:44
Uh I've used it a lot, and actually it was it was invented by my friend Sasha Shulgin, and he uh sent me some in I think somewhere around 1975, and said, "What do you think of this?" And I said, "Send more."
41:59
You know, you know, and I've seen many, many people use it with very, very good results.
42:06
I think it can be incredibly healing for relationships.
42:11
Uh I've seen some remarkable uh physical changes in people with disappearance of allergies and chronic pain.
42:17
And there's a quite a lot of research on its usefulness in dealing with PTSD.
42:22
You know, sometimes one structured MDMA session can eliminate that after you know, people have tried all sorts of psychotherapy, talk therapy that hasn't produced results.
42:33
So, I think it's very likely that's going to be the first one that's going to be made therapeutically available.
42:38
And probably for the treatment of PTSD.
42:40
Yeah, and and that's PTSD obviously is such an extreme experience.
42:45
And so, it sounds like how how uh I guess what are people experiencing when they do it?
42:51
So, it sounds like they're more vulnerable, they're more they're more empathetic to themselves as well.
42:56
it's I'd say it is a heart-centered experience, you know, with strong feelings of loving connection with others, uh calmness, relaxation, uh and and a strikingly uniform effect from person to person.
43:10
Whereas the other you know, a lot of the others, the classic psychedelics, there's tremendous variation in in in response depending on set and setting. MDMA is pretty uniform.
43:20
Yeah, and again, you don't see this as something it sounds like this is not something you do for the rest of your life. This is a Right.
43:24
a medicinal almost of like there's a certain thing to treat and work through.
43:29
You're working with a practitioner.
43:31
Yes, you may not have to use it that many times. Right, right, right.
43:34
But I think that that that's one that we we really should have access to and use.
43:38
I lived as a monk for 3 years in India.
43:41
I was in a monastery where we spent hours every day deep in meditation and reflection and the study of spiritual texts and literatures and had very strict diets and but we were trained in the development of a lot of these uh almost like the purification and the detoxing to get to compassionate and empathetic states.
44:03
And so, when you were describing some of your experiences, I was like, I had that experience through meditation of that connectedness with nature and with uh the universe and with each individual soul, whether it be animate or inanimate.
44:15
So, I remember those through meditation.
44:17
And so, our journey was very slow, uh very step-by-step, a lot of pain and a lot of like a lot of obstacles to clear the way.
44:26
Uh I I'm intrigued by how does someone feel after the dose has run its course?
44:31
Like, are they able to stay compassionate and empathetic with their partner? What happens?
44:38
I'm just intrigued, yeah.
44:38
Well, the effect of the drug wears off.
44:39
And since because it's a stimulant, you feel there's a period of time when you feel tired and somewhat depleted of energy.
44:47
But the feelings you you remain and you can reconnect with those.
44:50
And I think it I see permanent change in people.
44:53
Um by the way, in the in the early days when uh people were talking about the spiritual potential of psychedelics, it really angered a lot of spiritual teachers, you know, who said that this was artificial, that these experiences.
45:09
Um and I think they were kind of resentful of people having them without going through the time and work that like you put in.
45:16
Uh so, I you know, I think there are many valid paths uh to achieve those kinds of of feelings.
45:23
But psychedelics are fast and they offer the the possibility of giving many more people access to them.
45:29
Yeah, I've seen in in my personal experience with the right people around me and with people I know that have experienced them, I found them to be great window openers for people or door openers.
45:41
It's kind of what you described, like this idea that you got to have a glimpse into a new reality that you didn't know existed.
45:50
But but I think I'm always intrigued by how people have that versus it becomes addictive where you're just constantly wanting to live in that new reality.
45:57
But I think psychedelics have a kind of self-protective quality to them, which is if you try to take them frequently, the experience disappears. Right.
46:07
Uh so, I think people quickly there there's not a lot of motivation to use them with any sort of great frequency. Yeah, got it.
46:14
And in terms of carryover effects, I've told this story a lot, you may have heard it, but just as an example, um and this is on the you know, physical level, I had a lifelong allergy to cats.
46:25
Uh if a cat got near me, my eyes would itch.
46:27
If a cat licked me, I'd get hives where it licked me.
46:29
So, I always avoided them.
46:31
And one day when I was 28, I was I was living in the country in Virginia.
46:36
It was a beautiful spring day.
46:36
I took LSD with a group of friends outdoors.
46:41
It was just I felt wonderful.
46:41
I mean, I really felt just high, connected with nature, terrific.
46:47
And in the midst of this, a cat jumped into my lap.
46:48
And I had an immediate defensive reaction.
46:50
And then I thought, you know, this is silly, and I just relaxed and played with the cat.
46:54
I had no allergic reaction, and I've never had one since. Mhm.
46:59
No, instantaneous disappearance of a lifelong allergic pattern.
47:05
Is that a common pattern with that particular with LSD or no?
47:08
No, I think it's not not peculiar to LSD.
47:09
I think it can happen with any psychedelic.
47:11
It doesn't happen automatically necessarily. Yeah.
47:14
But I could imagine you know, what Dr.
47:16
Weil's allergy clinic if these become available.
47:18
You know, where you give people start with a full dose and and expose them to the allergen and then like once a week you'd reduce the dose till at some point they were getting just a placebo. Yeah.
47:28
I think you can allergies can be unlearned and that's a powerful tool for doing it. Yeah.
47:32
What are What are the other ones that you think going to become more accessible in the is the one that's been most researched.
47:41
This is the main compound found in the magic mushrooms, which traditionally were used by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico and Central America.
47:50
There are many species of them.
47:50
Some can easily be cultivated.
47:52
Some grow wild, especially in the Pacific Northwest.
47:54
Um it's a very well-known compound now and it is being intensively studied and used and especially for mental health conditions, for drug-resistant depression, for obsessive-compulsive disorder, for addictive disorders. It looks quite safe.
48:14
Uh, you know, it it is What's quite safe?
48:16
Well, again, no physical issues with it at all.
48:19
No cognitive No, nothing.
48:21
And in fact, you know, there've been studies of people who've used these uh, compounds quite frequently over a long lifetime and there's been studies of their brains and they look perfectly healthy.
48:32
So, I don't think there's any issues there.
48:34
Uh, so this is one that that I think also is going to be made therapeutically available fairly soon.
48:41
Specifically for For for for mental health conditions first, but I think it again, one that has a lot of potential uses Yeah. in medicine as well.
48:48
So, that, you know, the a main difference between psilocybin and LSD is duration of action.
48:52
Um, LSD lasts 10 to 12 hours, which can be inconvenient.
48:57
Uh, and psilocybin is 4 to 6 hours, so it's much more much more manageable.
49:02
And some people are using it recreationally, too, and and how do you Yeah.
49:07
Well, again, I'm not going to be critical of people who do that.
49:07
I think I think that just trying to Yeah, I'm I'm just trying to Yeah.
49:12
rather have people use that than alcohol recreationally. Because Yeah, let's see.
49:16
Because it's much safer on a physical level and I probably safer on a psychological level as well.
49:20
When you look at the numbers of homicides, accidental deaths that are related to alcohol, it's tremendous and you don't see anything like that with psilocybin.
49:30
Can you drive after Well, I you can.
49:30
I wouldn't recommend it probably, but if somebody's familiar with it, you certainly can. Right, right, right.
49:37
it doesn't impair coordination on a physical level like alcohol does. Yeah.
49:41
Yeah, no, no, and and I don't have any side or any uh, what's the right word?
49:45
Any any dog in the fight. Yeah, all right. I hear you.
49:49
Yeah, I'm I'm asking from I'm just being so curious as to like I know my community would ask these questions and I'm thinking all right like I want I want them to have such a real genuine understanding of of what this is because So let me talk about another compound that is of great interest is DMT. Yes, of course. Dimethyl tryptamine.
50:06
So this is a it's a very simple chemical compound and it's related to serotonin the neurotransmitter and melatonin the pineal hormone.
50:16
It's found in many plants especially in South America and is used by indigenous people mostly as snuffs.
50:27
They prepare powdered preparations from plants and inhale it and often this occurs with another compound called 5-MeO-DMT which is the one that's found in the toad that has become pop toad venom.
50:38
At any rate DMT is if you smoke it it's it's a very rapid effect.
50:45
You know, within seconds you are off in another reality and is extremely visual.
50:52
You know, incredible visual trips and then you after several minutes you come back to ordinary reality.
50:57
The 5-MeO-DMT version is not visual.
51:00
People describe it as a rocket ship into the void.
51:04
Your ego dissolves and when it reconstitutes it's very pleasant.
51:07
It is very likely that DMT is our endogenous psychedelic that is made by the pineal gland and it may explain why some people have psychedelic like experiences whether it's from meditation or fasting or other things.
51:23
It may be from release of endogenous DMT and and some people think this may also mediate the near-death experience.
51:30
You know, that so many people report.
51:32
So I do believe we have an endogenous psychedelic and it's very likely to be you know, DMT. Wow.
51:39
Yeah, and and I we talked about this earlier and I I love hearing about your travels.
51:44
Have you have you been to the Amazon?
51:46
Yes, you know, Shulgin sent me down there a long time ago.
51:50
I made a number of trips.
51:50
I was investigating medicinal plants, ayahuasca, mushrooms, uh and work spent time with shamans to learn what tricks I could learn from them.
52:02
So, yes, so that was a that was in the 1970s, 1980s.
52:04
I I made a number of trips down there.
52:07
Wow, and and why do the Amazonians have no problems with taking drugs like DMT?
52:12
Well, this is an interesting thing.
52:12
You know, there are there are so many uh psychedelic plants and preparations in South America and in in Mexico and Central America.
52:21
And there are so few in the old world.
52:23
You know, there's one plant in Africa called iboga, the source of a drug called ibogaine, which has I know a client who was using that recently.
52:32
Yeah, for addictive behavior. This what's right.
52:34
There's a possibility of one from uh from India.
52:36
You know, there's been great speculation as to what this preparation soma was that's referred to in the Vedas.
52:43
So, this possibly there was some psychedelic preparation there.
52:47
And the uh the Eleusinian Mysteries in ancient Greece involved drinking a potion that almost certainly was made from ergot.
52:55
Uh and it was a way of detoxifying that fungus and producing an LSD-like drink.
53:01
But otherwise, you know, you've got this huge abundance of psychedelic preparations in the new world.
53:06
You know, it doesn't make botanical sense that there'd be that disparity.
53:10
So, it must be something about the people.
53:14
You know, in the old world in in Africa and Asia, people I think are as drawn to altered states of consciousness, but they get into them especially in Africa through drumming, uh prolonged wakefulness, dancing, uh rather than taking substances. Mhm. Mhm.
53:28
Yeah, yeah, so is that the difference that you see in how we take them and how how they take them in Yeah, it seems right.
53:34
But in if you look at the indigenous peoples in South America and the Amazon especially, the these, they are always used ritually.
53:43
Uh they're often, you know, under the direction of shamans who are trained way. trained in their use. Yeah, absolutely.
53:52
Um and you know, I think there the potential for abuse in those populations is Very little. minuscule. Right.
53:59
Yeah, that that's really fascinating.
54:01
Yeah, I I feel like yeah, it was always sacred.
54:02
It was part of a holy ritual of some kind.
54:04
It was always used medicinally and understood.
54:10
And it's kind of yeah, it's Rituals are very powerful tool for containing the harmful potential of substances.
54:15
Yeah, that's why they were created in around those, I guess.
54:17
Yeah, no, that's And that's always really interesting for me to hear because I feel like Yeah, there's a there's a And and I'm just reflecting on it as an individual.
54:26
I I look at it and I think I really trust things that can are very focused on the intention in which they're taken, uh administered by someone who understands what the power and effect of this is, and it's in an environment that allows you to have a uh fulfilling, powerful experience with a certain goal or or place to reach to.
54:49
Uh that all of those things to me uh feel very coherent uh with how I would do anything, whether it's getting an operation or, you know, like I got an operation last year and I wish I did more research on the doctor.
54:59
You know, like I felt the same way about that.
55:01
I was like, you know, we blindly trust the doctor you got placed with and someone told you that they were great and I wasn't happy with the doctor at all.
55:08
And so, you know, it's it it applies to all parts of my life.
55:13
I think this idea of like, am I intentional with the doctor I chose, the hospital I chose, the Am I Am I being thoughtful about these things?
55:20
And in the same way, I don't think it's different.
55:21
I think it almost has to be thought about in the same way.
55:23
If that You know, even yeah, even with alcohol, there's some very interesting lessons from history. Please.
55:28
When distilled alcohol became available, and it was a sudden invention uh, of the Dutch, you know, so it was in the 1600s.
55:38
Uh, in the wake of that, there was an epidemic of drunkenness, alcoholism, unlike anything that we've ever seen.
55:45
And even in this country, in America, in the early 1800s, 1700s, 1800s, every store had a barrel of whiskey, and people went in, you just have a ladle of whiskey, and people started drinking early in the morning, all day long, drunks were lying in the street.
56:00
You know, it was it was an uncontrollable epidemic of alcoholism.
56:05
And gradually, you know, over several decades, there was a social consensus that grew up that it was unseemly to be drunk.
56:12
And that, you know, rituals grew up around the use of distilled alcohol, one of which is a cocktail party, you know, which is not going to happen at 10:00 in the morning, you know, we're going to do this late in the day, there'll be food present and friends present, and it's for social as a social lubricant, and that kind of conscious use and and ritual helped contain the negative possibilities that could result from such a strong drug. Right. Right.
56:37
And and of course, I mean, with alcohol, there's so many proven negatives Right.
56:43
and issues even now, whether it's gut, brain, etc. , etc.
56:46
Could you talk about some of those just so that we Well, alcohol, you know, it is extremely toxic to the nerve to the brain and to the liver.
56:56
Uh, and there's a there's arguments go back and forth all the way whether or alcohol moderate consumption of alcohol is beneficial, you know, some people say, you know, even one or two drinks is harmful for some people.
57:06
So, this goes back and forth.
57:09
I think many of the the benefits ascribed to alcohol are benefits of relaxation.
57:13
And for many people, that is a main method of relaxation. Yeah.
57:16
Uh, but I think the fact is that, you know, it is a strong toxin, and you have to be very careful about using it.
57:23
And there's some people, like women that have genetic risk for breast cancer, probably shouldn't use it at all. Right. Yeah.
57:29
I was This fascinated me when I was looking at your work.
57:34
Your book chocolate to morphine was pivotal and often the most stolen books in colleges in the last 40 years.
57:40
Could you tell us a bit about the book and and then about the story? a very good book.
57:44
It's it's still in print and the main point of it which enraged some people was that there were no good and bad drugs.
57:50
There were just good and bad relationships with drugs.
57:55
And I very firmly believe that.
57:55
And I mean there's no there are no drugs that have inherent good or horrible qualities.
58:00
It's how people use them and how they think of them. Yeah.
58:04
Some obviously are more difficult to form good relationships with than others.
58:09
And some of them naturally like chocolate as as a victim of chocolate have addictive traits like you know, it's it's I I was I've talked about this many many times, but I was genuinely addicted to chocolate. Uh-huh.
58:23
And it took my wife and me like you know, when I say addicted in the sense of like I could eat like a full slab in a moment like a family pack version like easily on my own no issues.
58:36
And it took a long time for me to take chocolate out of my diet because of the amount of sugar I was taking in too.
58:40
And so Well, I I put chocolate at the very top of my anti-inflammatory diet pyramid. How?
58:47
Be- because it's a it is it out. No, I put it back. I it's there.
58:50
It's the very top of the anti-inflammatory diet pyramid.
58:54
So something that I recommend in moderate moderate consumption.
58:57
It has very useful antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects.
59:01
to change my relationship with chocolate.
59:03
Yeah, dark chocolate has to be at least 70%.
59:04
Yeah, but a little bit on a regular basis is fine. Yeah.
59:07
What's a little bit on a regular basis? Not not a slab a day. Not a slab a day.
59:14
You have this real love for for this plant medicine that can have such a big benefit on people.
59:18
And and it must be hard because so much of it's been demonized or or talked about in a certain way and and I love what you just said now.
59:25
It's like you're arguing that it's about your relationship with these things.
59:30
And that's really fascinates me because I I feel like that it's almost like that's how we would talk about it's our relationship with technology.
59:36
It's our relationship with money.
59:37
It's our relationship with fame.
59:38
It's There is nothing inherently evil about technology.
59:42
You know, it's something that's true of so many things.
59:44
It's it's how we relate to it and the uses of it.
59:47
use it and our relationship is with it.
59:49
Yeah, that's that's really fascinating.
59:51
I also wanted to dive into the idea of where you mentioned earlier around the spiritual awakening piece.
59:58
Because I I definitely am not I'm I'm I would say even though I studied in such a traditional and rigorous way personally, which has led to so many beautiful spiritual awakenings and realizations, I'm very not I wouldn't consider myself to be closed-minded as to how other people find their paths.
1:00:16
I I find that I have my path and it was beautiful, but I'm I'm very open to people finding their paths and some people are at different stages in their journey where they need different things.
1:00:25
Could you walk me through what specifically be used been used in a spiritual way and what have been some of the results Well, first of all, let me say for me spirituality means being aware of and acknowledging the non-material aspect of existence.
1:00:42
Working in the medical field, I am so aware of and frustrated by the power of the materialistic paradigm.
1:00:52
You know, that many scientists and many physicians don't believe in anything that's not physical.
1:00:57
So, when you try to talk about let alone not spirit, but even if you try to talk about the mind and the influence of the mind on the body, they don't believe that.
1:01:07
I mean, in the materialistic paradigm, if you observe a change in a physical system, the cause has to be physical.
1:01:13
Non-physical causation of physical events is not allowed for in that paradigm.
1:01:17
So, this is what you know, there's a whole range of mind-body interventions that we make use of in integrative medicine, hypnosis, guided imagery, visualization therapy.
1:01:30
But, and these methods are very cost-effective, very effective, and they're totally underutilized because people don't believe in it.
1:01:38
And and that's why we haven't really made sense of the placebo response, you know, all of that.
1:01:44
So, I would love to see that change.
1:01:46
You know, I'd really love to see a paradigm shift.
1:01:48
And to me, that's what spiritual awakening is about, you know, it's becoming aware of the non-physical dimension and the reality of the non-physical.
1:01:59
And I make a very short distinction between spirituality and religion.
1:02:02
You know, religion is about institutions, and institutions are mostly concerned with perpetuating themselves.
1:02:08
You know, spirituality is is this connection with acknowledging the non-physical and its importance in interacting with the physical dimension.
1:02:18
I think there's lots of ways you can awaken to that.
1:02:19
I I said, you know, for me and for many people, I've seen psychedelic experience be become a very powerful way of doing that.
1:02:27
Yeah, and how does how have you and others sustain that?
1:02:29
Like you were saying yourself, like you you don't take them anymore, but it become a way of life for you. It feels like that.
1:02:36
Yeah, well, you know, I meditate, I do breathwork, and you know, I've always I've been fascinated by the fact that the words breath and the word spirit are the same in most Indo-European languages.
1:02:45
And then I think when we when we focus our attention on our breath, we're looking at the movement of spirit in the body. Mhm.
1:02:51
Uh so, that's you know, I think that is one very practical, powerful way, and most people ignore it.
1:02:58
We have that right under our noses. Mhm.
1:02:59
And we don't make use of it.
1:03:01
I mean, you know, for for you to have been at Harvard, to have done this research, to have been in this space for so long, it is beautiful to hear you bring science and spirituality together. Yeah. Yeah.
1:03:11
Because I feel for so long they've been seen as opposite. Opposite, yeah.
1:03:15
Yeah, and and I've never understood that Right.
1:03:18
as as considering myself a spiritual scientist or a, you know, it's in that sense of I've always been fascinated by neuroscience.
1:03:23
I've always been fascinated by the brain and at the same time I consider myself a spiritualist.
1:03:29
And so, hearing you as like a doctor doing all of this medical work, but then finding the spiritual part and the functional part of saying parts of medicine, what did you always have that when you were studying?
1:03:40
Because obviously you went off to become a doctor.
1:03:42
Like when did that I I think I did always have Because where did that don't know.
1:03:47
I think I was born with it. Right.
1:03:49
I can remember always being fascinated by the mind and and how it related to the body and from as far back as I can remember.
1:03:57
And I tried to study that at Harvard and I was very frustrated that I couldn't, you know, I I started off majoring in psychology, but at that time psychology at Harvard was completely dominated by the behaviorists.
1:04:09
It was running rats through mazes and they weren't interested in consciousness.
1:04:12
I wanted to know about consciousness. Wow.
1:04:15
And nobody was interested in doing that.
1:04:18
And then also in the scientific and medical world, consciousness is seen as a product of brain chemistry or electrical connections in the brain.
1:04:25
And you know, I came to feel that consciousness is primary.
1:04:29
I think consciousness organizes matter. Mhm.
1:04:32
You know, I think it organizes matter into more and more complex forms, you know, including the human brain.
1:04:37
But that, you know, that enrages scientists when I try to talk that much.
1:04:43
think we'll ever be able to prove the existence of consciousness in in a way that in a language in a way that Yes.
1:04:49
This is what I see as part of the psychedelic awakening because I think that that this really has the potential to to chip away at that materialistic paradigm and the influence it now has on our way of thinking.
1:05:01
There is, you know, an a name for uh this idea that consciousness is primary. It's called panpsychism.
1:05:10
And that used to be, you know, no scientist would you know, look at that.
1:05:15
And now that's become a respectable movement and philosophy.
1:05:17
You know, the idea that everything is consciousness down to atoms and and I I look forward to seeing that grow and have greater and greater influence. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
1:05:27
Yeah, I've I've always considered consciousness to be like the first self. Yeah, absolutely.
1:05:33
And and you know, obviously from a spiritual perspective, but even the excellent explanation behind so many near-death experiences or outer body experiences or of of the sort and when I have read scientific studies or even research or accounts of those experiences there's a there's a truth that's not been uncovered yet. Absolutely.
1:05:52
And as I said, this may be mediated by release of our own endogenous psychedelic, which could very well be DMT. Right, right. Amazing.
1:05:59
What a fascin- what a fascinating direction.
1:06:01
I'm excited for your book and I'm excited for the work.
1:06:05
Andrew, is there anything that we haven't touched on that you really want to that was a pretty wide-ranging conversation.
1:06:09
There's lots more I could talk about, but you know what?
1:06:10
I well, I'm hoping this is going to be the first of many. That would be great.
1:06:15
I think this is a great conversation for people to I mean, I'm sure everyone already knows about your work, but for new people to get introduced to your work, for people to really get a sense of who you are and and you know, your your journey and parts of your story and your expertise and I'm hoping that we'll continue to go deeper I would I would love that. I would love that.
1:06:31
this is honestly been one of those um it's been exactly what I wanted.
1:06:34
I I needed the the dummy's guide. Yeah.
1:06:36
Uh and and that's really helpful because I think so often that steps like missed. I know.
1:06:44
And then the majority of the world just doesn't know what's going on.
1:06:47
And so I try my best to to stay grounded and rooted with my ear to the ground and be like, well, people are hearing these ideas, but they don't know what to do and where it is.
1:06:54
Well, you're doing a very good service. Well, thank you.
1:06:57
You're very kind and I hope that everyone goes to macha. com, use the code J.
1:07:03
The books that we were referring to in this episode of the Natural Mind, uh, which is right here.
1:07:10
Um, and then this other book I have from Dr.
1:07:12
Andrew Weil is Spontaneous Happiness, but there is a new book on the way as well.
1:07:15
So, these are two great starters, uh, and look out for Andrew's new book, which I'm sure he'll be back on the show to talk about I would love to.
1:07:24
uh, when it comes together.
1:07:24
So, Andrew, thank you so much for your time and energy.
1:07:27
Thank you for being here.
1:07:27
I It's actually just wonderful being in your presence, too, and, uh, I I love how much, you know, life you've lived and and it sounds like you have so many more incredible experiences and stories to share that I look forward to learning. Okay.
1:07:43
Um, but thank you so much for being here.
1:07:44
Thank you for sharing your your journey, your work.
1:07:46
Thank you for for giving us so much of a great education today. You're very welcome. Amazing.
1:07:51
Everyone who's been listening and watching back at home, make sure you tag, uh, Dr.
1:07:54
Andrew Weil and I on Instagram, on Twitter, on TikTok, whatever platform you use, and let us know what you learned from this episode.
1:08:02
I hope this gave you an insight into a world that you're probably hearing about, but may not have too much information on.
1:08:07
Maybe you're an expert, maybe you knew all of this, but hopefully this will help you introduce it to a friend who may not be as aware as well.
1:08:13
Uh, again, thank you so much for listening.
1:08:16
Make sure you go and follow Andrew across social media.
1:08:17
If you're a fan, go and order some of the books as well.
1:08:21
And thank you so much for joining us on On Purpose.
1:08:23
I'll see you on the next one.
1:08:25
If you love this episode, you'll enjoy my interview with Dr.
1:08:29
Daniel Amen on how to change your life by changing your brain.