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

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 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 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, 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 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

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 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 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 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 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

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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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,

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 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. 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 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 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 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,

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 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. 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 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 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 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 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. 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, 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 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 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. 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 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, 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 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 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 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

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 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 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, 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. 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 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

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 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 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 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. 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, really good. This show is sponsored by Better Help. When you're at your best, you can do great things, but sometimes life gets you bogged down and you may feel overwhelmed or like you're not showing up the way you

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web address to try zipp recruiter for free. Zipp recruiter dot com forward slash on purpose again that zippercruter dot com forward slash o n p U r p O 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. 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

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 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 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 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 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,

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 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. 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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. 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, 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 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 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, 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

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 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 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, 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 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 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

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 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, 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 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

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, 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, 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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, 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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,

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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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, 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, 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 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, 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, 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. 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 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 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 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 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

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, 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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, 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

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,

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, 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.