Dr. Andrew Weil ON: How to Use Foods to Fight Inflammation & Scientific Ways to Spark Your Creativity

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Literally, if you turn any packet around, everything is canola oil,
palm oil, and palm oil. Aside from all the environmental
effects yeah, which are terrible. Although the fatty acid profile
is okay, most of the commercially produced canal oil is
heavily contaminated with agrichemicals and that's extracted with heat and solvents,
and that natures the oil and creates coarcinogenic products. Hey everyone,

(00:30):
welcome back to On Purpose, the number one health podcast
in the world. Thanks to each and every one of
you that come back every week to become healthier, happier,
and more healed. And I am so excited to be
talking to you today. I can't believe it. My new book,
Eight Rules of Love is out and I cannot wait

(00:50):
to share it with you. I am so so excited
for you to read this book, for you to listen
to this book. I read the audiobook. If you haven't
got it already, make sure you go to eight Rules
of Love dot com. It's dedicated to anyone who's trying
to find, keep, or let go of love. So if
you've got friends that are dating, broken up, or struggling

(01:10):
with love, make sure you grab this book and I'd
love to invite you to come and see me for
my global tour Love Rules. Go to j Sheedy tour
dot com to learn more information about tickets, VIP experiences,
and more. I can't wait to see you this year. Now,
you know that I'm a curious person who wants to
learn more and more about our mind, our body, our health,

(01:34):
and tools and techniques that can improve that for us.
And I like sitting down with individuals who've dedicated their
lives and their lives work to understanding what can improve
the lives of others. Today's guest is someone I've been
really looking forward to having on the show. I know
you will be really excited as well. We're going to
be talking about a wide array of subjects, but I'm

(01:55):
going to give you really practical, insightful tips and tools
that you can put into life and day immediately to
make an impact. My guest today is doctor Andrew Wilde,
a world renowned leader and pioneer in the field of
integrative medicine. Combining a Harvard education and a lifetime of

(02:15):
practicing natural and preventive medicine. Doctor Wile is the founder
and director of the Andrew wild Center for Integrative Medicine
at the University of Arizona, where he is a clinical
Professor of Medicine and Professor of Public Health. A New
York Times best selling author, Doctor Wile is the author

(02:35):
of fifteen books on health and wellbeing. Doctor While is
also the founder and partner in the growing family of
True Food kitchen restaurants. Doctor Wild's current project includemacher dot
com bringing the world's best matcha to the West. I
am so excited to welcome doctor Andrew. While Andrew, thank
you for being here. I'm very excited to learn from

(02:58):
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,
and so let's dive straight in. The first thing I
wanted to ask you and dive into you with was
this was this thought around what are the diet and

(03:23):
lifestyle habits people need to do every day to live longer,
healthier and prevent cognitive decline. Well, you know, that's fairly simple.
The first rule of healthy eating is to avoid refined
process and manufactured food. You know, that's what's doing us
in And I'm one of the first people to have
begun talking about the importance of containing inappropriate inflammation. And

(03:47):
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. But 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

(04:10):
do people in prematurely. So containing inflammation is very important
and diet has a major influence there. But again, the
first step of an anti inflammatory diet is to try
to eliminate refined process to manufactured foods. In terms of
other lifestyle practices, basic ones maintain physical activity throughout life,

(04:30):
get good rest and sleep, learn and practice some methods
of neutralizing the harmful effects of stress on the mind
and the body. Maintaining good relationships, especially spending time with
people and whose company you feel more positive. I mean,
those are very simple steps. As for cognitive decline, this

(04:51):
is of great concern to many people because we all
know people who have experienced cognitive decline and we want
to avoid that. So I think two very practical pieces
of advice. One is don't get hit in the head,
and that may mean, you know, taking precautions if you're
doing hazardous activities and being you know, I don't recommend

(05:12):
that people play for American football, for example. And another
is don't smoke because nicotine constricts blood vessels reduces blood
flow of the brain. So those are two two simple steps.
I think. Also I recommend practices like doing word puzzles
to keep your mind active. Learning another language. You don't

(05:32):
have to master the language, just the attempt to learn
it is very useful. So those are those. There are
some pieces of practical information. 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. Great because I
feel that they're so big in and of themselves. And

(05:55):
my biggest mistake in the past was when I tried
to change everything everything at the same time, you're trying
to improve your relationship, you're trying to improve your gut,
you're trying to improve your workout regime, and so I
love what you're saying that there's all these things, and
I would listen, 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

(06:17):
you're struggling with the most, that maybe having the most
negative impact on you, because you'll start to see how
they all affect each other. Yeah, it doesn't. You don't
have to wait a year, however, right. I have a
book called eight Weeks Stop Them Health Program. Each week,
you know, you do something like you start by walking
ten minutes a day and each week you add you know,
five minutes to that. But I think you're quite right

(06:40):
that a big mistake that people make is to try
to do global change and then they give up. So
I think it's best to take it in small bites. Yeah,
let's dive into some of those, because I think they're
easier said than done. So what you just spoke about
with diet, that's something that I've genuinely been focusing on,
probably for the past twelve months, in terms of not
eating any pack foods and refine sugars and processed foods,

(07:04):
and so I'm eating only natural foods. I'm already plant
based in my diet, but making sure that I'm eating
vegetables and trying to avoid anything that's out of a packet.
It's easier said than done. It took a lot of
time for me to kind of move in that direction
to find a meal prep service. I have an amazing
wife who's an incredible cook and chef, and so that
helps you a million times over. For people that are

(07:26):
trying to make simple steps to changing specifically their diet
to an anti inflammatory diet, what a certain simple steps.
People condemn it the eight week version almost well, you know,
in the book, I said, learn how to be friendly
with broccoli. Broccoli is a very easy vegetable to cook,
but most many people overcook it and it's not very appetizing.

(07:46):
And there's a very simple way of cooking it for
about two minutes, so it's bright green and crunchy. Put
some olive oil on a garlic if you want. But
that's a wonderful powerhouse of vegetable with cancer protective effects.
Add some ores to your diet because they're full of antioxidants.
We talked about, I mentioned tea. I think tea is
a very healthful beverage. It's one of the main sources

(08:08):
of protective antioxidants. I think it's good to learn different
types of tea and how to add find which ones
you like. What specific teas have you found to have
those benefits. Well, I'm a big fan of green tea
because I've spent a lot of time in Japan and
particularly maucha green tea, which I think is you know,
as the highest levels of some of these protective elements
in them. But I think all tea is beneficial. When

(08:31):
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. And one of the things that I
observed there was that in very hot weather, people were
drinking cold, unsweetened turmeric tea delicious. And you know, in

(08:51):
North America people are really unfamiliar with turmeric except as
it occurs in yellow mustard and curry. But this form
of turmeric and Okinawa was fermented and which makes it
more bioavailable and tastier. It dissolves very quickly in cold water.
It's really delicious. So that's one that I recommend, you know,

(09:13):
learning how to get more turmeric into your diet. It's
the most powerful anti inflammatory agent, natural anti inflammatory agent
that we know. Wow. Yeah, turmeric is a big part
of the Indian diet. Sod Indians eated at every meal. Yes,
and you know, one of the interesting correlations India. I
think rural India especially has the lowest rate of Alzheimer's
disease in the world, and many researchers think that's related

(09:36):
to the regular consumption of turmeric because Alzheimer's beiglins as
inflammation in the brain, and there's some animal research showing
that turmeric can protect rats that are genetically programmed to
develop Alzheimer's from developing it. So I think turmeric is
a very good thing to become friendly with. That's that's
great insight. I love that story of going to Okinawa.

(09:57):
I went to Sardinia a few years ago. Well, that's
one of the healthy, one of the blue zones. Yeah,
and what's interesting, 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 out and number men by a
long shot. You know, when you get up in the
ranges of upper nineties hundreds. It's almost all women. Sardinia

(10:21):
is the one exception that there men and women are
equally in those ranks of the oldest old and we
don't know why. Yeah, yeah, I was really fascinated to
see the few things and it's and it's all on
the spectrum of things you mentioned. But what was really
interesting is that their workouts when natural. Of course it
was farming. They were walking, they were taking care of

(10:41):
the land. Same in Okinawa, they were tauling, fishing nets
and gardening. I saw a thin one hundred and two
year old woman who was hoeing the garden in front
of her house. So that they're not going to gyms,
they're not working with trainers, it's just daily activity. Yeah.
And then the other thing was that they were eating
foods only in season. Everything was picked locally, everything was

(11:02):
locally grown or locally found, and they weren't eating things
that were just artificially available. And what about social connectedness,
I mean that was a big part of it. I
mean people were living in bigger families or living closer
by to families with children, so children weren't just being
raised by two people, that by ten people. And every
evening and even during the middle of the day they

(11:23):
would get together, and I think that's very important. They
MacArthur Foundation some years ago did a study of successful aging.
They identified a population of people they considered successful agers,
and then they looked to see what were the outstanding
commonalities and the two that stood out and this worked
everything else, whether they took supplements, whether they dietary patterns.

(11:45):
The two were maintenance of physical activity throughout life and
maintenance of social intellectual connectedness. 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. So let's talk about macha because that's
your favorite daily plant. Yeah, an Ally, would you say,

(12:07):
has this incredible mind body benefit? I think it has
already seeped to twin mainstrement. Yea's quite amazing. Yeah. I
went to Japan when I was seventeen and lived with families,
one family outside of Tokyo, and this was nineteen fifty nine.
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

(12:30):
who practiced tea ceremony. So the three of us sat around,
and the neighbor did a tea ceremony and presented me
with a bowl of macha. And two things about it
totally caught my attention. When was the color, yeah, you know,
this vibrant green. And the other was the bamboo whisk
that you used to whisk the macha tea into a
froth in a bowl of water. It's carved from a

(12:51):
single piece of bamboo. Just a miracle of Japanese craftsmanship.
So I fell in love with macha. When I got
back to the States, nobody knew anything about it or
ever heard of it. Over the years, when I was
go to Japan, i'd bring macha back and I turned
people onto it. I tried starting in the nineteen eighties,
I partnered with the Japanese company to try to sell
it on my website. There was no market for it.

(13:14):
I did that again in the nineteen nineties. Anyway, it's
quite amazing now to see this penetrating our culture. Macha
is prepared in a very unique way. The tea plants
are heavily shaded for three weeks before harvest and ninety
percent in shade cloth, so it cuts out almost all sunlight.
In response to that, the leaves get bigger and thinner

(13:36):
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 al ponine that has
a calming effect and moderates the action of caffeine. So
for that reason, macha I think is more healthful than
other forms of tea. And also you consume the whole leaf,

(14:00):
just an infusion of it. So that's one that I'm
quite enthusiastic about. And I started a company. We got
the uurlmacha dot com, which was which was a great two.
How when did you get that? Last? Did you have
to buy it? It's like six or six or seven years.
We tracked it down. It was owned by a Japanese
man who had no idea what he had. He had

(14:20):
if he went to the site. He had pictures of
his cats, and my business partner, Andre Fasciola, managed to
negotiate with him and we got it at a quite
reasonable price. People in Japan can't believe we've got we've
got that. Anyway, We've repoured very high quality matcha. And
by the way, if your if your listeners use a

(14:40):
discount code J, we'll give them a very generous discount here.
So I'm a big fan of matcha. I'm delighted to
see the gaining traction. 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. And many people

(15:04):
have tried much and say they don't like it, but
they've never tasted good much. So, as I said, I
think a lot of research has been done on green
tea in particular, but all tea has beneficial effects. And frankly,
you know, I don't want to bash coffee, but I
would love to see more of a tea culture developed
here too. Good. I know, so coffee, You know, the

(15:26):
stimulant effects of coffee and tea are very different. Coffee
is much more jangling, It is much more associated with
truly addictive behavior. There's a real crash coming down from coffee.
You don't see any of that with tea. And some
of it is because of this modifying effect of ALTHENI.
But also I find it interesting that the historically and

(15:48):
culturally the associations with coffee Coffee was always associated with
kind of argumentative behavior, loud, raucous gatherings of people, political activism,
whereas tea, the historical associations are much more with contemplation, meditation.
I think it would be very beneficial to see a

(16:09):
greater tea culture develop in North America. You know, that
could work its way into some of the coffee culture
that's now so dominant. Yeah. When me and my wife
launched our tea company, we said we wanted to make
tea as hot as coffee, like that, like that was
the goal, because yeah, we grew up with tea culture
boats from our British and Indian heritage. Sure. Yeah, I
found it so therapeutic. I like, you love the color,

(16:32):
love the scent. Yeah, I love the experience of having
to drink it slow. You don't really have tea exactly exactly.
There's a meditative exactly process with any healing property too. Yeah,
and it's a big change. When I was growing up,
tea was what old people and sick people drank. In
this country, and it's wonderful to see that change now. Yeah. Absolutely.

(16:53):
And the other one that I want to ask you
about was the Green Mediterranean diet. Yes, this is interesting.
It's just recently been in the news. We have so
much scientific evidence for the benefits of the Mediterranean diet
in terms of longevity overall, lowest risks of disease. And
I think most of your listeners are familiar with the
Mediterranean diet. You know, it's heavily on fruits and vegetables

(17:15):
and whole grains, olive oils, I mean cooking fat and
meat used very occasionally, oily, fish relively low, and sugar
so forth. So recently a green Mediterranean diet is proposed
as being even healthier, and this reduces animal products even further,
increases fruits and vegetables, especially sources of a class of

(17:37):
compounds called polyphenols. And these are antioxidant compounds that are
found in plants and fruits and vegetables, especially berries, tea,
and dark chocolate. So the Green Mediterranean Diet specifically recommended
green tea to add and they noted chocolate, but they

(17:57):
mentioned old tea. So I think this is fascinating, you know,
to see and these are researchers really, you know, not
really trying to promote any agenda. Yeah, 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 his avocado

(18:18):
oil and olive oil yep, as my product. There's one
other that you should check out as algae oil. If
you don't know. Okay, this is a new product that's
out there and it's it's made through culture. It's called
cultured oil, and it's it's microorganisms that have been been
altered in to produce oil which is almost all mono

(18:40):
unsaturated fat. Is has a very high smoke point, neutral
taste and also has one of the Omega three fatty
acids in it. So that's another choice. But those are
the ones I use. Also avocado and olives. 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 o palm oil palm oil.

(19:02):
Aside from all the environmental effects which are terrible. There
are two kinds of palm oils. 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. And then there's
the oil extracted from the kernel, and that is very
high in the unstable unsaturated fatty acids that oxidize quickly.

(19:27):
It's also very high unsaturated fat so that's not a
good one. Canola oil is a you know the word,
it means Canadian oil and it was developed by Canadian scientists,
I think in the nineteen twenties and nineteen thirties from
a traditional cooking oil that you know in India, rape
seed oil. Yes, that's right, and rape has a toxic

(19:50):
fatty acid and it possibly the Canadian scientists worked with
it to develop one that was low in that in
that fatty acid problems with canola oil. Although the fatty
acid a profile is okay, most of the commercially produced
cannel oil is heavily contaminated with agrichemicals and it's extracted
with heat and solvents, and that denatures the oil and

(20:12):
creates carcinogenic products. So it's one I would stay away
from now. I recommend it in the past, but I
don't anymore. I'm a big fan of olive oil. Yeah, absolutely, yeah,
absolutely no, everyone cook cook with olive by the way.
I've taught, you know, I've I've worked with a number
of Indian patients, you know, who were very convinced that

(20:32):
gee can do no harm, you know, and it's pure
butter fat and it's probably not healthy, and the rates
of cardiovascar disease in the air pretty high. And I've
taught people to use ge as a flavoring, you know,
cook with a healthy ore like avocado, and then at
the end you can drizzle some ge over to get
the flavor you want. Yeah, and I've also suggested I

(20:52):
had a student, a physician from Kerala where coconut you know,
our land end of coconuts, and they use coconut oil
and coconut have full fat coconut milk, and I taught
her to use cashing milk, which is very easy to
make and this much healthier fat than than coconut. It's

(21:13):
mono un saturated and not saturated, and the taste is delicious. Wow,
that's good to know about gee because yeah, it's it's
one of those things that my mom never wants me
to miss, right, I know, but then I always hear
this like yeah, in between, but I like I like
the yeah, use it as a flavoring. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I like the happy medium, the happy balance. That makes
it sure we happy to hear about the turma. It good,
that's like and saffron's the other one. She's like, never

(21:35):
telling me to miss and that's a good one. Yeah.
But the turmeric, you know, our company also sells that
for men, a turmeric from Okinahwa. And I will send
you something to try please. That's delicious. That sounds amazing,
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(24:36):
se zippercruter the smartest way to hire. It's fascinating you
mentioned earlier. Limiting the smokeing of cigarettes and the negative
effects of nicotine. What about when it comes to marijuana.
I think that you know, marijuana is such an interesting
topic for so many people today. There there are so
many perspectives. Most of them out there are like positive.

(24:57):
But I'd love to know from your perspective, how are
you seeing marijuana affect the brain? How are you seeing
marijuana affect the actual First of all, I'm gonna call it.
I'm gonna call it cannabis because the word marijuana has
negative connotations. So let's talk about cannabis. Yes, so I
did the first controlled human experiments with cannabis in the

(25:18):
nineteen he's nineteen sixty four. It was the first time
anyone had given that to human subjects in a controlled
fashion to see what it did. So it's a plant
that I've been involved with for some time. And let
me say, you know, this is also a plant very
well known in India. It's you know, native to uh

(25:38):
To Asia. Um. The word it's the main species Cannabis ativa.
The stiva means useful, and cannabis is hemp. It's the
same root as canvas because canvas used to be made
from hemp fiber. But this is a very useful plant.
It provides an edible seed, in edible oil, a fiber

(25:59):
of metal, us and intoxic and that's a lot of
ways for one plant to serve us, and it really
only wants to serve us, and I think we have
really not been wise in the way we've dealt with
that plan. So in terms of the intoxicating properties of cannabis,
this is a it's a difficult subject to talk about
because the chemistry of that plant is so complex, there's

(26:23):
so many different strains, and there's so much variation in
individual reaction to it. Now, there are people who can
smoke cannabis before bed and have a great night's sleep.
Other people smoke it before bed and they can't sleep
the entire night, So there's that kind of disparity in
reactions to it. First of all, that it is one
of the least toxic drugs that we know. You can't

(26:46):
kill people with it, and you can't say that about
any drug that we use in medicine. And every drug
has a lethal dose, and in some cases the lethal
dose is relatively close to the useful dose. You can't
calculate a lethal dose for cannabis, So on a physical level,
it's extremely safe. I mean, there's concerns about smoking it
and whether that's how harmful that maybe for lungs. You know,

(27:06):
that goes back and forth. I don't think it's a
great idea to smoke anything, you know, and inhale smoke
into the lungs. Probably not a good idea, but certainly
not as I think, not as toxic as tobacco when
it doesn't have anything in it, as addictive as nicotine,
which is one of the most addictive drugs that we know.
I think the medical usefulness of cannabis, there's a lot

(27:27):
of potential there and I think this is a subject
that's open at the moment. There's a lot of research
on ways it can reduce muscle spasticity, it can help
people with you know, all sorts of neuromuscular problems, with
digestive problems, but again a lot of individual reaction to it.

(27:50):
We're seeing this plant being made available to people and
it's it's I think it's about time it gets out
of that restrictive drug schedule and made available for therapeutic use.
I was just talking yesterday. Our center does a podcast
and I was interviewing a nurse who who was a
member of the American Cannabis Nurses Association. I didn't know

(28:14):
there was such a thing, but there is a large
group of nurses who have now become trained in using
cannabis therapeutic way. They use all different forms and they
based that on the individual patient. But I think they
were 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, and until we

(28:36):
have something like that, I don't think doctors are going
to go near it. They don't understand it. But it's
great that nurses are using a lot of them are
using it for pain control. They're also using it in
the hospice situations, especially with people with terminal cancer, and
they say they find it very useful. So I think
it's you know, I'm happy to see this becoming used.

(28:58):
I think there's a lot we don't know about it,
and I find it very difficult when people ask my
advice about it. I don't know what preparations to recommend
to people. Uh, you know that it's confusing. What's your
take on the more social use of it? Well, I was,
you know, I was part of that culture in my
twenties and thirties, and uh, you know, it was it was,
it was. It was fun back then, you know, it

(29:18):
was a fun social experience, you know. And then I
also found that it was very stimulated my imagination. Creativity
helped me write. But at some point that changed and
the my reactions to it changed. I became more introspective
withdrawn and then eventually it became an unproductive habit that

(29:40):
just made me groggy and it was hard for me
to separate myself from it. And what was that? Yeah,
what do you think that was? Because I think that's
that's such an interesting arc of a journey with it.
I think a lot of people feel that way. That's
kind of like an arc. I had a lot of
friends who initially started for those reasons and then ended
up paranoid, who ended up yeah, confused, or ended up

(30:00):
I don't know. Maybe you know what, Maybe it has
something to do with changes as we age, possible, But
it was such a striking change in the effects for me. No,
so something that I thought of as an ally that
was helping me, really it ceased being that. Yeah, Yeah, okay,
that's that's really interesting to know, because yeah, I feel
I had a lot of friends in the same bucket.

(30:21):
I never really I never really dabbled with it deeply,
but but in my brief experiences, it was very brief experiences.
It was far more the creative or the spark. But
I never got deep into it. But my friends who did,
they went on the same argue. So that's interesting. And
I don't know that I have not seen anyone right
about that or talk about that, or investigate what the
cause of that is. Yeah. Yeah, Also, you know, today,

(30:44):
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. I mean the ones that are
available from a leisure perspective, Yeah, everywhere. Well, I'll tell
you a story for a physician colleague of mine and
San Francisco sent me three preparations of cannabis that had

(31:04):
come from a medical dispensary and he wanted me to
try them, and I was, you know, I'm a little
leery about that since I'm having used it so long.
One of them was a kind of oil that was
in a tube, a little syringe, and it came with
a very professionally printed brochure and it was recommending it
for pain control especially, and it said to start with

(31:24):
an amount the size of a grain of rice and
work up from there. So I took a piece half
the size of a grain of rice, and my friend
that said take it at bedtime. It 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, I had no equilibrium,

(31:48):
had burning thirst, I couldn't reach for a glass of water,
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 it finally subsided about
hours later, my equilibrium was off for two days. I

(32:09):
had very bit bounds and I was really angry. I mean,
and this brochure said work up from there, And I'm
thinking there are people out there, you know, taking this.
I mean, that was like a very very powerful thing,
and I thought, fairly dangerous. What brought you into this
so early on? Because we're at a point in culture

(32:29):
I feel where these things are now coming to the forefront.
I mean, of course, I'm probably sure you're seeing cycles
of that. You probably saw it come well if I was.
You know, I'm just starting work on a book about psychedelics,
and I'm a lot of it. I'm telling my own
history because I knew everyone involved in all of that.
But my interest goes back to about I think it

(32:51):
was a specific day in nineteen sixty, right before I
went to Harvard, and there was an article in the
news paper in Philadelphia about the supposedly the death of
a student at a California university who was taking mescalin
for inspiration for a creative writing course, and that said
mescalin was a vision inducing drug. I'd never heard of it,

(33:13):
and they made the mistake of quoting from his last paper,
and I just remember this phrase, galaxies of exploding colors.
When I read that, I knew I wanted mescald so
I inquired about. I came across Aldice Huxley's book The
Doors of Perception, which had been written a few years before,
and when I got to Harvard, I had the very

(33:35):
good fortune to become associated with Richard Evans Schulties, 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 lucinogenic plants down there, so
he really through him, I became very interested in psychedelic plants.
At the same time, Richard Albert and Timothy Leary were

(33:57):
just starting their work with sili. I've been at Harvard Um.
There were you know, these drugs were not controlled substances.
Then I was able to obtain mescalin from a chemistry
chemical company. I took it a number of times, had
interesting experience, but it was very disappointed. I didn't have vision.
I didn't seek out. Very disappointed anyway. So that was

(34:21):
before I had ever tried cannabis. But as a result
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 Hoffman, who was
the discover of LSD, Gordon Wasson who rediscovered the mushroom

(34:42):
cults in Mexico, U Sasha Shulgan who invented many of
the designer drugs. So I had a long period of
experimentation with psychedelics U and I you don't have had
a lot of benefit from them. I don't. I really
don't use them anymore. M my first book, The Natural Mind,
which was about the importance of altered states of consciousness,

(35:09):
but Alan Watts wrote a blurb for it and which
he said, when you get the message, you hang up
the telephone. 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. But I've
learned a lot of things from them, and a lot
of that has formed my philosophy of integrated medicine, especially
the very subtle, complex interactions of mind and body. And

(35:33):
I have seen very powerfully that you can change external
reality by changing internal reality. Let's dive into side cedelics,
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

(35:54):
mainstream culture a lot more often. 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 anyone that's there.
And so I'm going to ask questions that may seem
really simple and basic, but by design because I want people. So,

(36:17):
what are psychedelics for someone who keeps hearing that term
from their friends and they keep nodding along pretending to
know what that is? What does it mean? And what
comes under that? You know the word, it's a coined word,
which means mind manifesting. Previously people have called these psychotomymetic drugs,
meaning they mimic psychosis, which is, you know, a very
negative term. They are. Psychedelics are a large group of compounds,

(36:46):
many of which are found in plants. There's one we
know from an animal source. Many are synthetic or semisynthetic drugs.
They fall into two chemical families with very distinctive molecular structures.
Can mean is not a psychedelic, even though many people
call it that. Cannabis is not a psychedelic, doesn't have
any chemical resemblance to that. MDMA is part of that

(37:11):
chemical family, related to esclin, but its effects are not
typical of psychedelics. It has a unique effect that makes
people emotionally open. I think it is a very useful substance.
I guess I would call it a psychedelic, but it's
not a classic psychedelic in terms of the perceptual changes
that it causes. One fact about these this group of

(37:32):
compounds is they are strikingly non toxic physically, much as
with cannabis. You know, that's just not an issue physical toxicity.
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. So, you know, to put it in a

(37:53):
very crude way, 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.
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 can guide
you in the right direction, the chances are you can
have a positive experience. The penetration of psychedelics into mainstream

(38:18):
culture at the moment is quite astonishing. 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. I would get
questions about psychedelics. You now, where can we get them,
how can we use them? How do you find somebody
who can guide you? You know, a few months ago,

(38:39):
Vogue magazine had a cover story on philocybin talent, and
Country Magazine, of all places, had an article titled why
is everybody smoking toad venom? I mean, 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 high potential for abuse

(39:01):
and no therapeutic potential. The therapeutic potential of these drugs
is enormous. Now, you know, there is currently a lot
of research documenting benefits in mental emotional conditions, things like
MDMA for PTSD and OCD psilocybin for drug resistant depression,
for example, and treatment of addictions of various kind. I mean,

(39:24):
there's a long growing list of conditions for which clearly
there are good results obtained. But beyond that, I think
there is a tremendous potential of these two cause spiritual awakening.
Some of that has been documented at the Johns Hopkins
Center for Psychedelics, which is really good. I mean a

(39:46):
single experience with psilocybin and people who had no sense
of a spiritual dimension to life suddenly or aware of that.
In my own experimentation with them, I have had very
profound realizations that my consciousness extends to everything. You know,

(40:06):
that everything out there is conscious, not just animate objects,
but rocks and everything, and that that same whatever that is,
it's in me, it's in everything. It connects me with everything.
I think having that realization is one of the things
that guided me in my philosophy of medicine and my
methods of treating patients. I think it's also changed my

(40:29):
attitude toward nature. And you know, I really the title
of the book I'm working on as psychedelis can save
the world. 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,
and I think the only thing that can save us
is a collective transformation of consciousness. I think that can

(40:50):
result from enough individuals having a transformation of conscious that
it catalyzes some general movement. 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. That's just one example. And I saw

(41:11):
some research recently showing that people who had had experience,
I think it was psilocybin particularly, tend to become involved
with the environmental movement. So that is the great hope
that I have. So I'm 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

(41:31):
going to be using these the party, But I think
it doesn't matter. I think just having these out there
in the general culture and freed from that restrictive way
that they've been placed, I think that holds great positive potential.
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 to understands, or is

(41:54):
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 healthy way. What are some of
the because like the example you give 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

(42:15):
know how to administer and monitor and actually, well, I
would say by training as many people as we can
to be guides who will behave in an ethical fashion
and are experienced and can structure psychedelic experience and way
to minimize any harmful potential and maximize positive potential. So

(42:35):
there are a number of groups around the country that
have training programs for psychedelic guides. We need a lot
more of them, and you know, my hope is that
we'll start to see that, Yeah, because I do I
do worry that I love the benefits of so many
incredible sources out there, I do worried that when people
are untrained in anything that has that much power it

(42:58):
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, because there isn't that responsibility around it.
If that makes sense, would you agree with yeah? Yeah,
So that's my hope is that we're seeing, you know,

(43:19):
some large numbers of responsibly trained people who can guide
people in the right direction. Yeah, I just wanted to
clarify that with you because it's it's kind of how
I feel about technology, right, Like, if you look at technology,
technology is like a drug in one sense, in the
way the chemicals that are released when we use them.
It's it could really be likened to a drug. Obviously,
it's not been talked about that way. That's not the language.

(43:40):
Where only seeing those experiences now, and we're seeing the
challenges with technology addiction. 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, and you think, oh,
wait a minute, Well, if we had technology coaches and
if people were trained in how to use technology effectively

(44:02):
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, my kids are all you know. Yeah, I
think we have no idea what this is doing to
the kids brains, you know. I think it's obviously is
changing them, but I don't think we know the full
ramifications of that. Yeah, So it's definitely a concern, and

(44:25):
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. Yes, exactly. Yeah, yeah, right,
Let's dive into some of the more popular ones and
how they use 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? Who does

(44:45):
it help? So you were mentioning the MDMA, could you
tell us what is MDMA? Watch how is it used currently? Yeah?
So MDMA is a synthetic psychedelic and it resembles the
structure of MASCAL and that family of groups does not
cause many visual changes, like you know a lot of
the classic psychedelics. It is a stimulant, but it has

(45:08):
a very reliable, uniform effect in most people, which is
to produce a state of non defensiveness, calmness, positive emotional feeling,
emotional openness. It's a name that's been proposed for it
is an empathogen, something that creates empathy. I've used it
a lot and actually was It was invented by my

(45:32):
friend Sasha Shulgin and he sent me some and I
think somewhere around nineteen seventy five and said what do
you think of this? And I said, send more, you know,
you know, and I've seen many many people use it
with very very good results. I think it can be
incredibly healing for relationships. I've seen some remarkable physical changes

(45:54):
in people with disappearance of allergies and chronic pain. And
there's quite a lot of research on its usefulness in
dealing with PTSD. You know, sometimes one structured MDMA session
can eliminate that after people have tried all sorts of psychotherapy,
talk therapy that hasn't produced results. So I think it's

(46:17):
very like that's going to be the first one that's
going to be made therapeutically available and probably for the
treatment of PTSD. Yeah, and that's PTSD obviously is such
an extreme experience, and so it sounds like, how I guess,
what are people experiencing when they do it? So it
sounds like they're more vulnerable, they're they're more empathetic to themselves,

(46:37):
I'd say it. I'd say it is a heart centered experience,
you know, strong feelings of loving connection with others, calmness, relaxation,
and a strikingly uniform effect from person to person, whereas
the others, you know, a lot of the others a
classic psychedelics, this tremendous variation and in response depending on

(46:58):
set and setting. MDMA is pretty uniform. 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 medicinal almost of like there's a certain
thing to treat and work through your working with the practicitioners.
You may not have to use it that many times, right, right, right,
But I think that that that's one that we really
should have access to. In years, I lived as a

(47:19):
monk for three years in India. I was in a
monastery where we spent hours every day deep in meditation
and reflection, in the study of spiritual texts and literatures,
and had very strict diets. But we were trained in
the development of a lot of these almost like the

(47:40):
purification and the detoxing to get to compassion and empathetic states.
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 the universe and with
each individual soul, whether it be animate or inanimate. So
I remember those through meditation, and so our journey was

(48:00):
very slow, very step by step, a lot of pain
and a lot of a lot of obstacles to clear
the way. I'm intrigued by how does someone feel after
the doses run its course, Like are they able to
stay compassionate and empathetic with their partner? What happens? I'm intrigued. Yeah, Well,
the effect of the drug wears off, and it's because

(48:22):
it's a stimulant. You feel. There's a period of time
when you feel tired and somewhat depleted of energy, but
the feelings you remain, and you can reconnect with those,
and I think I see permanent change in people. By
the way, in the early days, when people were talking
about the spiritual potential of psychedelics, it really angered a

(48:44):
lot of spiritual teachers, you know, who said that this
was artificial, that these experiences, and I think they were
kind of resentful of people having them without going through
the time and work that, like you put in. So
you know, I think there are many valid pains as
to achieve those kinds of feelings, But psychedelics are fast

(49:06):
and they offer the possibility of giving many more people
access to them. Yeah, I've seen in my personal experience
with the right people around me and with people I
know that have experienced them, I've found them to be
great window openers for people, or door openers. It's kind
of what you describe like this idea that you've got
to have a glimpse into a new reality that you

(49:28):
didn't know existed. 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. 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, So I think people quickly there's

(49:50):
not a lot of motivation to use them with any
sort of great frequency. Yeah, and in terms of carryover effects,
I've told this story a lot and you may have
heard it, but just as an example, and this is
on a physical level, I had a lifelong allergy to cats.
If a cat got near me, my eyes would itch.
If a cat licked me, I'd get hives where it

(50:10):
licked me. So I always avoided them. And one day
when I was twenty eight. It was doing in the
country in Virginia. It was a beautiful spring day. I
took LSD with a group of friends outdoors. It was
just I felt wonderful. I mean I really felt just
high connected with nature, trific And in the midst of this,
a cat jumped into my lap and I had an

(50:31):
immediate defensive reaction, and then I thought, you know, this
is silly, and I just relaxed and played with the cat.
I had no allergic reaction, and I've never had one since.
No instantaneous disappearance of a lifelong allergic pattern. Is that
a common path with that particular with LSD or No? No,
I think it's not not peculiar to LSD. I think
it can happen with any psychedelic It doesn't happen automatically necessarily. Yeah,

(50:55):
but I could imagine no doctor Wile's allergy clinic if
these become a yeah, you know, where you give people
start with a full dose and expose them to the
allergy and then like once a week you'd reduce the
dose till at some point they were getting just a placebo. Yeah.
I think you can. Allergies can be unlearned and that's
a powerful tool for doing it. Yeah, what are the

(51:16):
other ones that you think going to become more exist
This is the main compound found in the magic mushrooms,
which traditionally were used by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico
and Central America. There are many species of them, Some
can easily be cultivated, some grow wild, especially in the
Pacific Northwest. It's a very well known compound now and

(51:40):
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, you know, it
is what's quite safe? Well again, no physical issues with
it at all, no cognitive, no nothing. And in fact,

(52:03):
you know, there've been studies of people who've used these
compounds quite frequently over a long lifetime, and there's been
studies of their brains and they look perfectly healthy. So
I don't think there's any issues there. So this is
one that I think also is going to be made
therapeutically available fairly sif for mental health conditions first, but

(52:25):
I think again one that has a lot of potential
uses in medicine as well, so that you know, the
main difference between psilocybin and LSD is duration of action.
U LSD last ten to twelve hours, which can be inconvenient,
and psilocybin is four to six hours, so it's much more,
much more manageable. And some people are using a recreationally too,

(52:45):
and yes, how do they are? Yeah, well, again, I'm
not going to be critical of people who I think either,
I'm just trying to Yeah, I think I'd rather have
people used that than alcohol recreationally because yeah, that's because
it's much safer on a physical level, and I'd probably
be safer on a psychological level as well. When you
look at the numbers of homicides accidental deaths that are

(53:06):
related to alcohol, it's tremendous and you don't see anything
like that with psilocymon. Can you drive after Well you can.
I wouldn't recommend it, probably, but if somebody's familiar with it,
you certainly you can. I mean, it doesn't impair coordination
on a physical level like alcohol. Yeah, yeah, no, no,
And I don't have any side or any what's the
right word, any any dug in the fire, right I hear? Yeah,

(53:31):
I'm asking from I'm just being so curious as delay.
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 what this is. Because
so let me talk about another compound is of great
interest is DMT. Yes, of course, dimetyl trip to mean.
So this is a it's a very simple chemical compound,

(53:52):
and it's related to serotonin, the neurotransmitter, and melatonin, the
pineal hormone. It's found in many plants, especially in South America,
and is used by Indigenous people, mostly as snuffs. They
prepare powdered preparations from plants and inhale it. And often
this occurs with another compound called five mathoxy DMT, which

(54:16):
is the one that's found in the toad that has
become pop foad venom. At any rate, DMT is if
you smoke, it's it's a very rapid effect. You know,
within seconds you are often another reality, and it's extremely visual,
you know, incredible visual trips, and then you after several minutes,

(54:38):
you come back to ordinary reality. The five mathoxy virgion
is not visual. People describe it as a rocketship into
the void. Your ego dissolves, and when it reconstitutes, it's
very pleasant. 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,

(55:02):
whether it's from meditation or fasting or other things, it
may be from release of endogenous DMT. And some people
think this may also mediate the near death experience. You
know that so many people report. So I do believe
we have an endogenous psychedelic and it's very likely to
be you know, DMT. Wow. Yeah, and we're talking much earlier.

(55:24):
And I love hearing about your travels. Have you have
you been to the Amazon Yes? Yeah, you know, Shulty
sent me down there long ago. I made a number
of trips. I was investigating medicinal plants, ayahuasca, mushrooms, and
we spent time with shamans to learn what tricks I
could learn from them. So yes, So that was that

(55:44):
was in the nineteen seventies, nineteen eighties. I made a
number of trips down there. Wow. And and why do
the Amazonians have no problems we're taking drugs like DMT. Well,
this is an interesting thing, you know, there there are
so many psychedelic plants and preparations in South America and
in Mexico and Central America, and there are so few
in the Old World. You know, there's one plant in

(56:07):
Africa called Eboga, the source of a drug called ibigang,
which is yeah for addictive behavior. This what's right. There's
a possibility of one from from India. You know, there's
been great speculation as to what this preparation soma was
that's referred to in the vadas, so there's possibly there
was some psychedelic preparation there. And the Eleusinian mysteries in

(56:31):
ancient Greece involved drinking a potion that almost certainly was
made from urgat and there was a way of detoxifying
that fungus and producing an LSD like drink. But otherwise,
you know, you've got this huge abundance of psychedelic preparations
in the New World. You know, it doesn't make botanical
sense that there'd be that disparity, so it must be

(56:53):
something about the people. You know, in the Old World.
In African Asia, people I think are as drawn to
altered states of consciousness, but they get into them, especially
in Africa, through drumming prolonged wakefulness dancing rather than taking substances. Yeah. Yeah,
so is that the difference that you see in how

(57:13):
we take them and how how they take them? And yeah, right,
but if you look at the indigenous peoples in South
America and the Amazon especially, these they are always used ritually. Uh,
they're often you know, under the direction of shamans who
were training trained in their use. Yeah. Absolutely, and you know,

(57:34):
I think they're the potential for abuse in those populations
is very minuscule. Right, Yeah, that's really fascinating. Yeah, I
feel like, yeah, it was always sacred, it was part
of a holy ritual of some kind. It was always
used medicinally and understood and it's kind of yeah, it's
ritual is a very powerful tool for containing the harmful

(57:55):
potential of substances. Yeah, that's why they were created around
those I guess. 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 I'm just reflecting on it
as an individual. I look at it and I think
I really trust things that can are very focused on
the intention in which they're taken, administered by someone who

(58:16):
understands what the power and effective this is, and it's
in an environment that allows you to have a fulfilling,
powerful experience with a certain goal or place to reach to.
That all of those things to me feel very coherent
with how I would do anything, whether it's getting an
operation or you know, like I got an operation last

(58:38):
year and I wish I did more research on the doctor.
You know, I felt the same way about that. I
was like, you know, we blindly trust the doctor. You
got placed with it, and someone told you that they
were great, and I wasn't happy with the doctor I
had at all, And so you know, it's it applies
to all parts of our life. I think this idea
of like am I intentional with the doctor? I chose
the hospital? I chose that? I am I being thought

(58:59):
for about these things? And in the same way. I
don't think it's different. I think it almost has to
be thought about in the same way. In fact, you know,
even with alcohol, there's some very interesting lessons from history.
When alcohol became available and it was a sudden invention
of the Dutch, you know, so it was in the
sixteen hundreds. In the wake of that, there was an

(59:21):
epidemic of drunkenness, alcoholism, unlike anything that we've ever seen,
and even in this country, in America in the early
eighteen hundreds something in eighteen hundreds, every store had a
barrel of whiskey and people went in, you just have
a ladle a whiskey, and people started drinking early in
the morning. All day long, drunks were lying in the street.

(59:42):
You know. It was it was an uncontrollable epidemic of alcoholism.
And gradually, you know, over several decades, there was a
social consensus that grew up that it was unseemly to
be drunk, and that rituals grew up around the use
of distilled alcohol, one of which is the tale party,
you know, which is not going to happen at ten

(01:00:02):
in the morning. You know, we're going to do this
late in the day. There'll be food present and friends
presents for social as a social lubricant, and that kind
of conscious use and ritual helped contain the negative possibilities
that could result from such a strong drug, right right,
And of course, I mean with alcohol, there's so many

(01:00:22):
proven negatives, right, and issues yea, even now, whether it's
got brain, etcetera, etcetera. Could you talk about some of
those just that well, alcohol, you know, it is extremely
toxic to the nerve, to the brain, into the liver,
and there's a there's arguments go back and yeah, that's all.
Whether it are alcohol or moderate consumption, alcohol is beneficial.

(01:00:45):
You know, some people say no, even one or two
drinks is harmful for some, So this goes back and forth.
I think many of the benefits ascribed to alcohol or
benefits of relaxation, and for many people that is a
main method of relaxation. But I think the fact act
is that you know, it is a strong talk and
then you have to be very careful about using it.
And there's some people like women that have genetic risk

(01:01:07):
for breast cancer, probably shouldn't use it at all. Right, Yeah,
I was this fascinated me when I was looking at
your work. Your book Chocolate to Morphine is pivotal and
often the most stolen books in colleges in the last
forty years. You tell us a bit about the book,
and yeah, it's and then about this it's a very
good book. It's it's still in print. And the main
point of it, which enraged some people, was that there

(01:01:30):
are no good and bad drugs. There are just good
and bad relationships with drugs, and I very firmly believe that.
And I mean there's no there are no drugs that
have inherent good or horrible qualities. It's how people use
them and how they think of them. Yeah, some obviously
are more difficult to form good relationships with them all,
and some of them, naturally, like chocolate, as as a

(01:01:53):
victim of chocolate, have addictive you know, it's it's I was.
I've talked about this any many times, but I was
genuinely addicted to chocolate. 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

(01:02:14):
on my own, no issues, I see. And it took
a long time for me to take chocolate out of
my diet because a sugar I was taking into it
so well. I put chocolate at the very top of
my anti inflammatory diet pyramid. How because it's taking it out,
No I put it back. It's there. It's the very
top of the anti inflammatory diet pyramid. So it's something

(01:02:36):
that I recommend in moderate moderate consumption. It has very
useful antioxidant I might have to change my relationship with
dark chocolate, yeah at least. Yeah. Yeah, but a little
bit on a regular basis is fine. Yeah, what's a
little bit on a regular basis not a slab? It's
not a slab. You have this real love for this

(01:02:57):
plant medicine that can have such a big benefit people,
and it must be hard because so much of it's
been demonized or or talked about in a certain way.
And I love what you just said. Now, It's like
you're arguing that it's about your relationship with absolutely and
that's really fascinates me because I feel like that it's
almost like that's how we would talk about It's our
relationship with technology, it's our relationship with money, fame. There

(01:03:21):
is nothing inherently evil about technology, you know. I think
that's true of so many things. It's it's how we
relate to it. Yes, as we use in our relationship
is with it. Yeah, that's that's really fascinating. I also
wanted to dive into the idea where you mentioned earlier
around the spiritual awakening piece, because I definitely am not
I'm I'm I would say, even though I studied in

(01:03:43):
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 parts. I find that
I have my path and it is beautiful. But I'm
very open to people finding their parts, and some people

(01:04:03):
are at different stages in their journey where they need
different things. Could you walk me through what specifically 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. Yes, working in the medical field,

(01:04:26):
I am so aware of and frustrated by the power
of the materialistic paradigm. You know that many scientists and
many physicians don't believe in anything that's not physical. So
when you try to talk about not let alone, not spirit,
but even if you try to talk about the mind
and the influence of the mind on the body, they

(01:04:48):
don't believe that. I mean, in the materialistic paradigm, if
you observe a change in a physical system, the cause
has to be physical. Non physical causation of physical events
is not allowed for in that paradigm. So this is
what you know, there's a whole range of mind body
interventions that we make use of, an integrative medicine, hypnosis,

(01:05:08):
guided imagery, visualization, therapy. But and these methods are very
cost effective, very effective, and they're totally underutilized because people
don't believe in it, and that's why we haven't really
made sense of the placebo response all of that. So
I would love to see that change, you know, I'd
really love to see a paradigm shift. And to me,

(01:05:31):
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. And I make a very sharp distinction
between spirituality and religion. You know, religion is about institutions,
and institutions are mostly concerned with perpetuating themselves. You know.
Spirituality is this connection with acknowledging the non physical and

(01:05:56):
its importance in interacting with the physical dimension. I think
there's lots of ways you can awaken to that. I said,
you know, for me and for many people, I've seen
psychedelic experience become a very powerful way of doing that. Yeah,
and how does how have you and others sustained that,
like you were saying yourself, like you you don't take
them anymore, but it's become a way of life for you.
It feels like that. Yeah, well, I meditate, I do

(01:06:19):
breath work, and you know, I've always been fascinated by
the fact that the words breath and the words spirit
are the same and most end of European languages, and
that I think when we when we focus our attention
on our breath, we're looking at the movement of spirit
in the body. So that's you know, I think that
is one very practical, powerful way, and most people ignore it.
We have that right under our noses, and we don't

(01:06:41):
make use of it. I mean, you know, 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 too together, Yeah,
because I feel for so long they've been seen as opposite, opposite. Yeah, yeah,
And I've never understood that as as considering myself a
spiritual scientist or you know, it's in that sense of

(01:07:03):
I've always been fascinated by neuroscience, have always been fascinated
by the brain, and at the same time, I consider
myself a spiritualist, 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 same parts
of medicine. Did you always have that when you were studying,
because obviously you went off to become a doctor, Like

(01:07:24):
when did I think? I think I did always have
some of that. I don't know. I think I was
born with it. You know. I can remember always being
fascinated by the mind and how it related to the body,
and from as far back as I can remember. And
I tried to study that at Harvard, and I was
very frustrated that I couldn't, you know, I started off

(01:07:45):
majoring in psychology, but at that time, psychology at Harvard
was completely dominated by the behaviorists. It was running rats
through mazes, and they weren't interested in consciousness. I wanted
to know about consciousness, wow, and nobody was interested in
doing that. And then also in the scientific and medical world,
consciousness is seen as a product of brain chemistry or

(01:08:06):
electrical connections in the brain. And you know, I came
to feel that consciousness is primary. I think consciousness organizes matter,
you know, I think it organizes matter into more and
more complex forms, you know, including the human brain. But
that you know that enraged scientists when I try to
talk that one. Do you think we'll ever be able
to prove the existence of consciousness well in a way

(01:08:28):
that in a language, in a way that I think
this is what I see as part of the psychedelic awakening,
because I think that that this really has the potential
to chip away at that materialistic paradigm and the influence
it now has on our way of thinking. There is
you know, a name for, uh, this idea that consciousness
is primary. It's called panpsychism. And that used to be

(01:08:52):
you know, no scientist would you know look at that,
And now that's become a respectable movement in philosophy, you know,
idea that everything is consciousness down to atoms. And and
I look forward to seeing that grow and have greater
and greater influence. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, Yeah, I've I've always
considered consciousness to be like the first self. Absolutely and

(01:09:14):
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 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. Absolutely,
and as I said, this may be mediated by release

(01:09:36):
of our own endargeness psychedelic, which could very well be
DMT right right, amazing, What a fascinating, what a fascinating direction.
I'm excited for your book and I'm excited for the
work Andrew, is there anything that we haven't touched on
that that was a pretty wide ranging conversation. There's lots
more I could talk about, but yeah, well, I'm hoping
this can be the first to many. That would be great.
I think this is a great conversation for people to

(01:09:57):
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 you know, your your journey and parts of
your story and your expertise. And I'm hoping that we'll
continue to go deep when the books come out, because
this is this has honestly been one of those um
it's been exactly what I wanted. I needed the dummies

(01:10:18):
guide and that's really helpful because I think so often
that steps like missed and then the majority of the
world just doesn't know what's going on, and so I
try my best 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. Well, you're doing a very good service. Well,
thank you, You're very kind, and I hope that everyone

(01:10:40):
goes to match dot com use the codeju The books
that we were referring to in this episode of The
Natural Mind, which is right here. And then this other
book I have from doctor Andrew Wile is Spontaneous Happiness.
But there is a new book on the way as well.
So these are two great starters, and look out for

(01:11:01):
Andrew's new book, which I'm sure I'll be back on
the show to talk about when it comes together. So, Andrew,
thank you so much for your time and energy. Thank
you for being here. It's actually just wonderful being in
your presence too. And I love how much you know
life you've lived, and it sounds like you have so
many more incredible experiences and stories to share that I

(01:11:21):
look forward to learning that. Thank you so much for
being here. Thank you for sharing your journey, your work,
Thank you for giving us so much of a great
education today. You're very welcome, amazing everyone's been listening and
watching back at home. Make sure you tag doctor Andrew
Wile and I on Instagram, on Twitter, on TikTok, whatever
platform you use, and let us know what you learn

(01:11:42):
from this episode. I hope this gave you an insight
into a world that you're probably hearing about but may
not have too much information on. 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. Again, thank you so much
for listening. Makes you go and follow Andrew across social
media if you're a fan, go and order some of
the books as well. And thank you so much for

(01:12:04):
joining us on on purpose. I'll see you on the
next one. If you love this episode, you'll enjoy my
interview with doctor Daniel Aiman on how to change your
life by changing your brain.

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