295: Dr. Andrew Weil – Cooking As A Form Of Meditation, Moods Are Contagious, Microdosing Psilocybin

Andrew: We know that allergies are learned responses of the immune system and anything learned can be unlearned. There is a very strong mind body component here and when I was able to let go of that I was able to unlearn that pattern.

Jesse: Hello and welcome to The Ultimate Health Podcast episode 295 Jesse Chappus here with Marni Wasserman and we are here to take your health to the next level.

Marni: Each week we will bring you inspiring and informative conversations about health and wellness, covering topics of nutrition, lifestyle, fitness, mindset and so much more.

Jesse: And this week we are speaking to Andrew Weil who received a degree in biology more specifically botany from Harvard in 1964 and an MD from Harvard medical school in 1968. Dr. Weil is the founder and director of the Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona. The center is the leading effort in the world to develop a comprehensive curriculum and integrative medicine. Dr. Weil is the editorial director of the popular website, drweil.com and appears and video programs featured on PBS. He is the founder and partner of the growing group of True Food Kitchen restaurants. A frequent lecturer and guests on talk shows. Dr. Weil is an internationally recognized expert on medicinal plants, alternative medicine and the reform of medical education.

Marni: Dr. Weil truly is a pioneer in the integrative medicine space and has been around for so long writing books and educating. I can’t even remember the first time that I learned about him but I definitely remember going to his restaurant True Food Kitchen in Scottsdale, Arizona. When it first opened and I was so in awe that this was the type of restaurant that anyone can eat at. Anyone could order what their heart desired, whether they were Vegan, Paleo, whatever it was and the food was so good. There needs to be more of these restaurants all around and luckily True Food has exploded. Such a great place. We are super excited to share with you a brand new resource that we’ve created and this is called The Ultimate Weekday Workbook. It is an all in one place that you can track and plan your daily health and wellness goals. And it also includes a place to track your six pillars in your day. And this includes things like how much water you need to drink, how you slept last night, the supplements you need to take. It also has a place that you can map out your week and the things you have to do. And most importantly a place to put all of your awesome notes from our episodes. So if you want to capture any quotes or any takeaways or any tips that any of our guests say we have a resource for that. And in addition, you’re also gonna get an amazing outline of the six pillars of health in more detail. So this is an awesome little workbook that we’re super excited about because we’ve gotten some feedback from you about the things that would help you keep your daily habits in check. And this workbook is exactly that. And to get it, you just have to go to ultimatehealthpodcast.com/workbook. You can get it there. And if you’re already subscribed to our newsletter, the best thing to do is to email us at contact@ultimatehealthpodcast.com and we will personally send it to you. So I hope you go ahead and get your workbook today. Okay, so back to today’s episode. The episode is as diverse as Andrew is as he knows so much about so many different things. So here is some of what we get into. The difference between doctors of the past and the present, cooking as a form of meditation, the therapeutic benefits of CBD, medicinal properties of mushrooms, the difference between matcha and green tea, the 4-7-8 breathing technique, why dogs are good for your health and how walking is the perfect exercise. Such a great conversation. We go so many different directions. Super excited for you to hear this. Here we go with Dr. Weil. Hi Dr. Weil how are you? Welcome to the show.

Andrew: I’m good. Thank you. Happy to be here

Jesse: Dr. Weil it’s great to have you on the show and there is so much to get into with you, but I want to dive in. Taking things back and talking about where you grew up and that’s Philadelphia. So take us back there. What was the health scene like at that time?

Andrew: Well, I grew up in a row house in Philadelphia, which was quite a neighborhood and my doctor was a general practitioner whose office was three blocks away. So I would walk over to see him and I had a very good relationship with him. He pushed me toward becoming a doctor or used to let me hang out in his office. You know, he was an old fashioned doctor who made house calls and everybody liked him. Back then doctors were really in authority and nobody questioned them. One thing that I recall is that prescriptions were written in Latin and that was done to prevent you from knowing what they were and you took them to a pharmacy and handed the prescription over a high counter, which was designed to prevent you from seeing what went on behind there and then you were given a bottle of medicine and nobody asked questions as to why you should take it or what it was. That was a very different world back then.

Jesse: And you mentioned how he inspired you to eventually become a doctor. What was it about him that was so inspiring?

Andrew: He worked very hard. People liked him. He was his own boss. This was an era in which I think medicine was a very desirable profession. Doctors could be autonomous. That’s all different today. I can’t tell you how many doctors I hear today say they wished they’d gone into another profession. They wouldn’t let a kid of theirs go into medicine today, it’s all changed and a lot of that has to do with for profit healthcare. Back then, I think we weren’t very conscious about a lot of what we know about nutrition today. But my family always sat down to two meals, at least two meals a day that were cooked from scratch. We didn’t eat fast food, we didn’t snack all day, you know, we ate out at restaurants occasionally and a lot of the food that we ate back then we would look at today is we could improve upon. But it was real food. It wasn’t someone else’s food, it wasn’t manufactured food.

Jesse: And where are you healthy as a kid or did you have any health challenges?

Andrew: I had a lot of allergies as a kid. I had hay fever, I used to get hives, had migraines, which disappeared in adolescence. And I think all that stuff, all the allergic stuff, that all went away in my late twenties when I changed my diet and took charge of my own health.

Jesse: And I know you had a cat allergy as a kid that later on vanished. And I want to get into that story in a little bit.

Andrew: Sure. But I think, you know, uh, we had a lot of home remedies. I don’t think, we didn’t run off to doctors for every little thing. I think my family and I, we’re generally healthy.

Marni: So what kinds of foods were prepared growing up that were generally healthy versus when you got healthier? When you were older? What was the difference? What were things that you added in that made that difference?

Andrew: A lot of it was what I took out. My father was a real meat and potatoes eater and my mother and I were more adventurous. I stopped eating meat when I was 28 years old. I haven’t eaten meat since then. We had salads all the time, fresh vegetables in season. We had some canned and frozen stuff. My mother used to cook fish, but it was a kind of mainstream diet that we ate. You know, I was given white bread. I never liked what I was served for breakfast and really didn’t know what I wanted to eat for breakfast until I went to Japan when I was 17 and lived with Japanese families and discovered that Japanese breakfast were just what I wanted to eat.

Marni: So can you describe what this Japanese breakfast look like?

Andrew: Yes, it was miso soup, steamed rice, pickles, seaweed, a piece of broiled fish, some steamed vegetables, some Tofu, green tea, and that suited me just fine.

Marni: And how do you feel when you eat a meal like this? Like do you find it really grounding? Do you find that you’re not hungry for hours? What is it about this breakfast that keeps you really satisfied?

Andrew: Well, first of all, let me say what I didn’t like about typical American breakfast. I never liked cereal. I didn’t like milk. If I ate any kind of pancake or waffle type thing I felt heavy and terrible and groggy and didn’t much like eggs. I didn’t eat bacon or sausage. When I ate Japanese breakfast not only did my stomach feel fine, but I felt very satisfied and that kept me going, you know, until I was ready to eat later in the day.

Jesse: And you mentioned going vegetarian at 28 let’s get into the details of that transition.

Andrew: Sure. I had started to do yoga and so vegetarian diet was part of yoga philosophy and also I had a number of friends who had become vegetarians and looked like they were going through good things. So I just did it as an experiment. I had no intention of staying on it and to my surprise, I found that agreed with me very much. I lost weight, I had more energy. I also found that I had greater variety of things to eat. I really began exploring vegetarian cookery for the start. I was a lacto vegetarian. I ate yogurt, I ate cheese, and I did not eat fish and I kept that diet for about 15 years, but I found it made travel very difficult, especially to Japan, which I like to go to and it is very difficult to not eat fish in Japan. So after about 15 years, both because of the difficulty of travelling, because I was reading more and more research about the benefits of fish in the diet, I started to eat fish. And so to this day I am a pesco-vegetarian. I mostly eat fish and vegetables. I don’t eat other animal foods, but I do still eat good quality cheese, occasional yogurt.

Marni: So on the realm of vegetarianism, let’s bring up veganism and do you think veganism is something that is sustainable long term or what are your thoughts on this?

Andrew: I think it can be sustainable long term with care. The problem is that it’s easy to become deficient in certain nutrients, micronutrients on a vegan diet, especially vitamin B, 12 vitamin D, omega three fatty acids. So I think it is possible to be healthy as a vegan. You just have to know what you’re doing.

Marni: Yeah, cause I found for myself, you know, I went vegan for a couple of years and it really took a lot out of me and a lot out of my body. But once I started to bring in a little bit of animal protein, even just from eggs and a little bit of goat and sheep cheese, that made a world of difference. So I, you know, just get feedback and little feelers from people who listen to our show. And over the years that I’ve done in the vegetarian cooking class realm, just hearing the difference of people even having that little bit of animal protein and how it makes a difference to their health.

Andrew: I agree with you. That’s been my experience also.

Jesse: Andrew, I want to come back to your story and fast forward a little bit to when you go away to college and you study psychology in the beginning and then shift into botany. So let’s talk about when you got into it, starting in psychology, what your thought process was there. Were you thinking of being a psychiatrists or where were you headed and then why the transition?

Andrew: I never knew what I wanted it to be. When I grew up, I was interested in science actually. I was very interested in consciousness and the mind, I wanted to know about consciousness and I thought psychology would be a way to study that. But it turned out at that time at Harvard psychology was behaviorism. It was running rats through mazes and it was not about what I was interested in. And so I kind of gave that up in disgust and I just happened on botany as an undergraduate major, which was a very lucky decision. I became a student of, and later a colleague of Richard Evans Shultes who was the director of the Harvard Botanical Museum and the father of modern ethnobotany. And he really kindled in me an interest in medicinal plants and also an interest in exploring other cultures, particularly in South America. So that really formed the basis of my philosophy before he went to medical school. And when I got into medical school, I was very dismayed to find that the people who taught pharmacology really knew nothing about the natural sources of the drugs that they were teaching about.

Jesse: And speaking of Botany, you’ve talked about how you’ve gotten into gardening through your mother and that actually transitioned down from her mother. So talk about being a kid and your first experiences getting in the garden.

Andrew: Well, first of all, as I said, I grew up in a row house, which had a very tiny plot of ground behind it. My mother and I planted things there. We really exploited that little bit of space. I always dreamed about having enough space to have a real garden and it took me awhile to do that. But now I have a garden both in my winter home in Tucson and wonderful garden at my home in British Columbia where, well, all the things I can’t grow in Tucson, I can grow there. So a lot of the food I eat I grow and there is no comparison between fresh produce out of the garden and stuff that you buy.

Jesse: And your interest in cooking started when you’re in medical school. So take us there. Did this happen at a necessity or how did you start getting in the kitchen?

Andrew: I think I was always fascinated by when one in the kitchen, but my mother kicked me out of it. She said, do you know you should be out playing? My father’s mother lived with us. She was a good cook and she let me cook with her some time. When I was in medical school in those days, we had very long periods when which had to be in hospitals that were 36 hour shifts. We went in in the morning and didn’t get out til night or the following day. And being in those hospitals was just horrible. It was like the worst environment imaginable and the food available there was horrendous worse than I can even begin to describe to you. And I found that when I came out of a period like that of 36 hours in those places, the best way that I found to get my mind back in a good space was to imagine something wonderful to cook and then buying the ingredients and preparing it and eating it. And that would put me back in a very good emotional place. So cooking for me started as a kind of meditation in a way of centering myself.

Jesse: Let’s talk about the early days in medical practice. So you graduate from school, you get into practice. What do you learn?

Andrew: Actually, I never practiced. I completed my clinical training in San Francisco in 1969 and I made a decision that I didn’t want to use that kind of medicine because I saw it do too much harm, especially from adverse drug reactions. I felt that if I were sick, I wouldn’t want done to me what I was taught to do to others. And most importantly, I’d learned nothing about how to keep people well. And it seemed to me that the main business of a physician should be to keep people healthy. I knew I didn’t want to do that, but I didn’t know what to do with in its place. So I dropped out of medicine for a number of years, made my living as a writer and journalist and found ways to travel around the world and look at healing practices and other cultures, meeting alternative practitioners just to see what I could learn.

Jesse: And where was the first place you traveled to?

Andrew: I first went to Mexico to learn Spanish and then I drove down to South America. I can’t imagine doing that today, but I drove all the way to Columbia where I lived for several years. And then Ecuador and Peru, I met with Shamans, I studied medicinal plants, you know, so a lot of stuff. And the irony is that at the end of three and a half years of doing that, I came back to the states and my car broke down in Tucson. It took six weeks to get fixed. I never left. And it turned out that the person who had the most to teach me had been in Tucson all along. He was in old osteopathic physician and old time DO, Robert Fulford, who was in his eighties when I met him and used only manipulation hands on healing and I think is the most effective healer I’ve ever met. And the main thing that he emphasized and taught me is about the healing power of nature and to respect that and to find ways to access that.

Jesse: And what kept you in Tucson?

Andrew: The desert, the natural environment. And then when my car broke down, it was February of a warm, wet winter. The desert was in full bloom and I never left. I found people that I wanted to be with. I found a wonderful place to live at the mouth of Remote Canyon and I’ve just felt very connected to the natural environment.

Marni: It seems like you’ve had this really organic and share any of that kind of led you to the right places at the right time.

Andrew: True. And I’ve ended up in places very different from that row house in Philadelphia.

Marni: So you’re in Tucson. What happens next?

Andrew: I never intended to be a practicing doctor. I wanted to learn about medicine. I felt that a medical degree would be useful to me. I began writing about alternative medicine and the University of Arizona College of Medicine found out that I was there and asked if I would come in and give a lecture on cannabis to first and second year medical students. This was about 1973-74 because cannabis was becoming of great interest and there was no one on the university faculty who knew anything about it. I had done the first double blind human experiments with cannabis in 1968 as a senior medical student. And that study got a lot of publicity. So the university asked me if I’d come in and give that talk. I did. It was well received and then they asked if I would come in and talk about addictions in general. So I did that for several years and then I said, you know, this is old stuff for me. I’d really like to lecture about alternative medicine and healing. People didn’t even know what alternative medicine was in those days. And most doctors, medical students were completely unaware that there were other systems out there. So I began giving lectures on alternative medicine and healing and mind body interactions. And those lectures eventually formed the basis for the first book that I wrote on that subject called health and healing. As a result of that and publicity about it, people started showing up at my doorstep wanting me to treat them and I found myself drawn into medical practice.

Jesse: You talked about giving that lecture on cannabis. And I want to get into your cannabis story a little bit and I’m just curious on the timeline. I know there was a period of your life, I think it might’ve been even up to 20 years, where you are personally using cannabis quite a bit recreationally. So how does that fit in timeline wise with doing the cannabis experiments?

Andrew: I was a user of cannabis at the time that I did the experiments and I was for some years thereafter I stopped using cannabis somewhere in my mid or late thirties it just didn’t do anything for me that was useful anymore and I have not pretty much used it since. And it seems ironic to me that now, you know, so many years later this has become such a mainstream subject and I’ve been drawn back into that world. I’m now the head of the scientific advisory board of a group called Maui Wellness Group, which got the first dispensary license in the state of Hawaii. So I’m involved somewhat in the medical cannabis world today, but I haven’t personally used it in a very long time.

Jesse: Take us back to those early experiments. What were you testing and at that time, how did you get permission to test.

Andrew: With great difficulty. There had been really no attempt to study marijuana in human beings and astonishing, you know, here it was 1968 there was so much concern interest in cannabis, so many people were using it and there had been no research on it. I just wanted to show that it was possible to study it in the laboratory and get away with it. People felt that it was not possible to do that in order to get permission to do it. I had to coordinate approvals from the Federal Bureau of Narcotics when the Food and Drug Administration from the state of Massachusetts and from two universities, Harvard and Boston University, which were both involved and it was a nightmare, and at one lawyer in Boston bet me that I would not get permission to do that, but I did.

Jesse: So take us through some of these experiments.

Andrew: We wanted to look at the effects of marijuana and people who had no expectations of it, so we wanted to give it to people who’ve never had it before. That was very controversial because the universities felt that, you know, if we introduced people to the substance, they would end up being heroin addicts and sue the university. I was just interested in getting some very basic information, such as what the physical effects were. I was interested in whether you smoked cannabis at dilated your pupils, because law enforcement agents would commonly say if they’d see someone with dilated pupils that was a sign that they were using and the cause for search. So we showed that cannabis does not cause dilation of pupils. I was interested in looking at effects on heart rate on blood sugar because people thought that the munchies might be due to low blood sugar. And we showed that there was no effect on blood sugar. And I think the most interesting findings were that we showed that in people who’d never had cannabis before, it was possible to demonstrate slight decrements in performance on simple psychological and psychomotor test. But in people who were experienced with it, you couldn’t really show that it had any such effects. So the general conclusion was that this was a relatively mild intoxicant and many people did not want to hear that at that time.

Jesse: Now we’re going to take a quick break from our chat with Andrew to give a shout out to our show partner Sproos.

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Marni: And since we’re on the subject, I’d love to know your thoughts on the use and popularity of CBD oil. It’s everywhere now and as someone who’s kind of been in the world and know so much about it. What are your thoughts on it? Is it as therapeutic as it said to be? Are there different kinds?

Andrew: I wish I could answer that, but the fact is that the only solid evidence we have for the therapeutic benefits of CBD are for the treatment of medication resistant seizures in kids and all the other uses that people claim we don’t really have good evidence for. I think CBD is certainly safe. I have no idea how to guide people to products because there’s such a variety of products out there on the market, whether they actually have CBD, what else they might have in them. I have no idea and I’m waiting to see some order come to all of this confusion out there.

Marni: So it’s probably not doing any excessive harm. It’s probably helping people, you know, feel good, go to sleep, maybe lower anxiety, but there’s, you’re saying there’s nothing conclusive to say that this is everything that it says that it is.

Andrew: True. One problem with medical cannabis is that it treats individuals so people respond very differently to it. Some people can take cannabis at bedtime and it helps them fall asleep. Other people are stimulated if they do that. So it makes it very difficult to recommend it. I think people have to try it for particular problems and see what works for them and then also find what the right preparation is. I wish we had some forms of cannabis available here that looked like medical preparations that doctors would be comfortable with, such as, um, this one called Sativex that’s produced in the UK and is available there and in many European countries, but the FDA will not let it in here. It’s a whole cannabis extract, best prepared as an oral spray that’s in a metered dispenser and that looks like a medical preparation. We don’t have anything like that here.

Jesse: Earlier I mentioned the story that I want you to eventually tell about having an allergy to cats and then eventually nullifying that, but before we get into the details of that, which has to do with psychedelics, I want to take this back to the beginning of your psychedelic journey and talk about your first experience with psychedelics.

Andrew: Sure. I was fascinated by psychedelics, reading about them. I think I first read about them when I was still in high school and when I got to college I was very interested in trying to get hold of a mescaline. I’d read about it and Aldous Huxley’s writings and I found a chemical company in New York that would sell it to me. This was 1960 and I first took mescaline in that year and I took it a number of times with some of my fellow students. I had variable reactions to it. The first time I took it, I didn’t feel very much. And on a subsequent occasion I had a very dramatic experience with it. And after I got out of medical school, I began experimenting with LSD and mushrooms. I had some very powerful experiences and some of them have to do with different physiological responses that you referred to. I had a lifelong allergy to cats. If a cat got near me, my eyes with itch. If the cat licked me, I’d get hives where it licked me. So I always avoided them. And if we’re reaching near me, I would withdraw. And one day I took LSD with friends. It was a spring day in Virginia, beautiful setting. I felt terrific. And in the midst of this, a cat jumped into my lap and I had an immediate defensive reaction. And then thought, no, this is really silly and I relaxed and began petting the cat and I did not have a reaction and I never had 1 since. So it was instant disappearance of a lifelong allergy. I think that’s quite remarkable.

Jesse: Any idea what might’ve caused that?

Andrew: Well, you know, we know that allergies are learned responses of the immune system and anything learned can be unlearned. You can show a person who has a strong rose allergy, a plastic rose and they’ll have an allergic response. So there is a very strong mind body component here and I think for my sense is that defensive reaction that I had is what primed the immune system to react in that way and when I was able to let go of that I was able to unlearn that pattern.

Jesse: You mentioned having your first psychedelic experience with mescaline. Can you explain what that is?

Andrew: Mescaline is the active principle of the peyote cactus. It’s one that’s been around for quite a long time and a lot of people experimented with it before. There was Timothy Leary and interested in mushrooms and LSD. There’s two broad families of psychedelics. The smaller one of which mescaline is part or stimulus that are structurally related to amphetamine. The other group, the much larger one, which is LSD and mushrooms and DMT are called indels and they resemble the pineal hormone, Melatonin and DMT. They are striking for being completely without toxicity on a physical level. I think they’re safer than any other drugs that we know. The risk to them are psychological and not physical, and I think the psychological risk can be contained by attending to set and setting to the environment in which the drug is used and the expectations that people have of it.

Jesse: So I know you had another profound experience on LSD and this had to do with when you’re doing the yoga pose plow and normally couldn’t get your feet all the way down to the ground. Tell us how LSD let you take things a little bit further.

Andrew: Well, I think this is important to me because it’s a model for what these agents can do for us. This was when I was 28 I had been practicing yoga. I had a lot of problems with the plow. I could get my feet within a foot of the floor and then I’d have very bad pain in my neck. And no matter how I worked at it, I couldn’t make any progress. And again, one day at this time, under the influence of LSD and feeling terrific and very elastic and free, I thought I ought to try it. And to my surprise, I found that my feet touched the floor. I thought they still had a way to go and I was delightful. I raised them and lower them. Terrific. The next day I tried to do it and I got my feet within a foot of the floor. It had horrible pain in my neck, but there was a difference, you know? Now I knew it was possible. And if I hadn’t known that, I don’t think I would’ve continued to practice. And by continuing to work at it and in a few weeks I was able to do it. So to me, what the great gift that these agents can give us is that they can show us possibilities that otherwise you wouldn’t believe in, but they don’t show you how to maintain those experiences. You have to find other ways of doing that?

Marni: And I want to talk about psilocybin being a mushroom and it’s use and firstly, do you have experiences of anything you want to share about psilocybin?

Andrew: Well, I have used mushrooms a lot and actually recently I’ve been experimenting with microdosing with mushrooms taking a very small dose, 10 milligrams, which is about a 10th of the dose that people would take to have a full experience. And as you know, many, many people are microdosing the psychedelics today. And I’m still evaluating this, but so far I like what it does for me. I, the way I feel like the way I feel afterwards, it doesn’t really change my perceptions, but it gives me energy. I think it may be having good effects on my mental function and creativity. There’s also now a lot of research on psilocybin and many people are promoting it as a novel kind of antidepressant. Also being used as a treatment for obsessive compulsive disorder. And as you know, there was just a successful effort to decriminalize mushrooms in Denver and there’s going to be an initiative on the ballot in Oregon this fall to legalize mushrooms. I think we’ll see movement in this area, probably the first substance that will be made available as MDMA. I think particularly for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder and then possibly we’ll see psilocybin made available for the treatment of drug resistant depression.

Jesse: How long have you been playing around with the microdosing and how often are you taking it?

Andrew: Well, I’d say I’ve been experimenting with it for the past few months and taking it maybe once every two weeks.

Jesse: Okay. Well speaking of mushrooms, I want to pivot into medicinal mushrooms and I know you’re the one that actually turned Paul Stamets onto medicinal mushroom cell. Tell us who Paul is and tell us the story of turning him on to these mushrooms.

Andrew: Paul Stamets is a very well known mycologist. His whole life has been the study and promotion of mushrooms for various purposes. I’ve known him for over 40 years and when I first met him, he was mostly interested in magic mushrooms. At that time, this was in the 1980s I had been reading about and got very interested in traditional Chinese medical philosophy. And one of the things I noticed is that the Chinese placed great value on mushrooms, they considered them superior drugs. And it struck me as odd that in western medicine we had paid no attention to mushrooms. They’re often thought of as having no nutritional value, no medicinal value that were likely to be harmful than useful. And that discrepancy seem very odd to me. So I began reading up on the medicinal properties of mushrooms. I got Paul interested in that subject and that’s now been a major professional and career interest of his and his company makes many high quality medicinal mushroom products.

Jesse: So what medicinal mushrooms are you currently into and how do you take them?

Andrew: Well, first of all, a lot of the mushrooms of medicinal interest are Asian mushrooms that have been used as food mushrooms, things like shiitake mushrooms, oysters, maitake, enokis. First of all, all of these are completely nontoxic and many of them have immune modulating effects. They seem to increase resistance to infection, both bacterial and viral infection improve general immunity, increased resistance to cancer. Some of them seem to be potentially useful in treating forms of cancer, so that’s one whole group of mushrooms that I think are very interesting and very worth knowing about and trying to incorporate into your diet or lifestyle. Then there’s other mushrooms that are really not food mushrooms because they’re either too woody or too bitter to eat. Things like Reishi for example or Chaga and a lot of these also have these general properties of increasing resistance to infection and cancer. And then some mushrooms have very specific effects that are I think are very useful. Reishi, for example, has antiinflammatory properties equivalent to Ibuprofen. And lion’s mane mushroom this is a white, fluffy mushroom that’s a food mushroom you can get extracts of. It has a unique nerve growth factor in it. And I recommend this frequently to people that have neuropathy cognitive problems. And I think it has great potential.

Jesse: And specifically what mushrooms are you taking right now. And are you taking them in tinctures, teas, capsules?

Andrew: Well, first of all, I eat mushrooms in my diet and whenever I can, especially shiitake mushrooms, maitake. I pick wild mushrooms when I have a chance. But I also take mushroom supplements and I use Paul’s products, the Host Defense brand. I take one mixture of a number of species called MyCommunity. I take another one called Stamats 7 that’s a liquid extract. So this has about seven different species of Asian mushrooms. And I think it’s useful to take more than one species at once.

Jesse: And zooming out and looking at supplements as a whole, are you a big fan of supplementation?

Andrew: Well, I don’t have a simple answer to that. I think supplements are not substitutes for the whole foods that contain them because at best they’re partial representations of the complexes that nature produces. And I don’t think taking supplements excuses you from eating a good diet. But having said that, I think supplements can be useful as insurance against gaps in the diet. For example, I said I grow a lot of my own food. I’m a careful shopper, I cook for myself and I also take a daily, multi nutrient supplement because we need these vitamins and minerals in the right doses every day. And for one reason or another, yesterday I traveled to California and back I was not able to eat the vegetables and fruits and herbs and spices that I would normally. So I take that multi nutrient supplement as insurance and also some of these micronutrients in higher doses than you can get from food. Have specific therapeutic or preventive effect that very useful to know about.

Jesse: And we know you’re consuming a vegetarian diet including fish, but can you take us through a typical day? I know you mentioned before what a breakfast might look like, but can you take us through what you might have for lunch and dinner?

Andrew: Sure. Well, lunch, I like leftovers so often I’ll eat something leftover from dinner or I make myself a big salad. I have at least one bowl of matcha green tea a day. That’s my favorite form of green tea. I think it has many great health benefits. I’ll be happy to talk more about that. I don’t eat much bread. I like high quality cheese. I may have some smoked salmon. Dinners, I’ll usually cook something with vegetables, broccoli, a stir fry, something with tofu or pressed tofu or tempeh or I make a piece of broiled fish.

Marni: Sounds delicious. And speaking of matcha Jesse and I are sipping on a mug full of Matcha Kari right now and it’s delicious. Not only delicious, it’s gorgeous and we love matcha. We’ve been having matcha for years, but this truly is a unique color, so I need to just comment on that and yeah. Tell us about matcha. Tell us about your fascination with it. How did this start?

Andrew: It started when I was 17 and I went to Japan and lived with a Japanese family outside of Tokyo. We had no common language. There was a son that was supposed to be an English major but couldn’t speak on the second night that I was there with my host mother took me next door to her neighbor who was a practitioner of tea ceremony. I sat with her as her neighbor whisked matcha in a bowl and there were two things that caught my attention. The first was the whisk, the bamboo whisk called a chasen. Which is a miracle of Japanese craftsmanship carved from a single piece of bamboo. I was just fascinated by that. And then the color of the matcha powder one of the most brilliant vibrant greens I’ve ever seen and the aroma and flavor of that when I drank it. So I was enchanted and when I came back to the states, nobody had ever heard of matcha and it was unavailable. And when I went to Japan, I used to bring some back. I turned people on to it. This was in the 1970s eighties before very few people had heard of matcha here except tea ceremony practitioners. I’ve been amazed to see the exploding popularity of matcha suddenly but was also dismayed that so much of the matcha that’s available here is of such poor quality. Matcha is extremely fine powder and it oxidizes very quickly and when matcha oxidizes it turns dark, becomes bitter, it has a yellow or greyish appearance and that’s all that many people have tasted. So I was determined to make high quality matcha available to people. I obtained the URL matcha.com which was a great coo and then set up this company Matcha Kari made contact with a very good matcha producer outside of Kyoto, a family that’s been in this business since 1600 and began importing this matcha into the states through this Matcha Kari company. So I hope your listeners will go to the website matcha.com and check it out. And we have a discount code for your listeners. It’s capital letters, U H P as in Paul, 15 one five and if they use that on the order they’ll get a discount.

Jesse: Perfect. Thank you so much. And you mentioned getting matcha.com how hard was that URL to obtain?

Andrew: It took some time. My business partner, Andre Fasciola tracked it down and when you clicked on that link, there were some travel pictures of Japan and then a lot of pictures of a cat that was the owner of the URLs cat a guy in Japan. I don’t think he knew what he had. So it took some time of negotiating with him and persuading him to sell it. I don’t think he knew what he had or what the value of it was. And when I tell people in Japan that we’ve got that, they say, how did you ever get that?

Jesse: Yeah, that’s incredible. Can you disclose how much it costs?

Andrew: No.

Jesse: Okay.

Andrew: No, it was significant amount, but it was much, much less than I think it was worth.

Marni: So can you describe what the differences between matcha and a typical green tea? This is something that we’ve been asked before and let’s get your answer on this.

Andrew: So I really like good Japanese green tea, which is called sencha brewed tea. And there’s a whole range of qualities of leaves. But the highest quality are leaves. And these leaves also prepared from which matcha comes are shaded for three weeks before harvest. So shade cloth is put over the tea plants, so it blocks out most of the sunlight. And in response to this, the leaves become bigger and thinner and the plant produces more chlorophyll which accounts for the greenness and higher concentrations of the flavoring compounds and L-theanine, this amino acid that has relaxant effects and modifies the effects of caffeine. So after three weeks of being grown in this dense shade, the leaves are harvested, steamed, dried, cleaned, and they are then chopped. And this product is called (inaudible) and it can be stored for a long time under proper conditions. And then as needed, this is ground between grooved granite stones. It’s a very slow process, used to be done by hand, now is mechanized, but still quite slow to grind the leaves into this very fine powder and then it’s packed. So one difference is that when you drink matcha, this is the only form of green tea in which you consume the whole leaf rather than just doing a water extract of it.

Jesse: And for somebody who is totally new to matcha, and they want to take advantage of this generous discount you are giving our listeners, what would you recommend if somebody went to your site and was browsing around?

Andrew: You know, we have a number of different qualities there. My personal favorite is our ceremonial grade, but that’s relatively expensive and there are other grades that I think are also quite delicious. We have one called morning ritual. We have one called first harvest. I would say look at these and try what you can afford and you know it is worth getting to know the different kinds of matcha. There also, the lower grades are often called culinary grades of matcha that people can use in cooking or in mixed beverages where you’re using other ingredients. But if you’re going to drink matcha by itself either in traditional hot water whisked into a froth in a bowl or cold or made into a matcha latte, I would recommend getting better kind and really experiencing the difference because the good stuff is just amazing.

Marni: I was just going to ask you that in terms of preparation, I know the traditional way is with a bowl and a whisk, but is adding it to a blender in a matcha latte with some, you know, coconut oil or collagen.

Andrew: I think that’s fine.

Marni: Okay good, that’s how we’re drinking it right now.

Andrew: Rather than a blender, a lot of people are using these electric frothers or whiskers. They’re relatively inexpensive. They work quite well.

Jesse: Now we’re going to take another quick break from our chat with Andrew to give a shout out to our show partner Four Sigmatic.

Marni: The key to supple, glowing skin is simple. It’s drinking enough water and most people are actually chronically dehydrated. And the problem is that so many people have a challenge drinking just water because they think water is just so boring. But there are ways to upgrade your water with nutrients that support your skin and maybe you’d be more inclined to drink your water if you knew that it was going to help your skin retain moisture and support collagen synthesis. And I have to say that the superfood beauty powder from Four Sigmatic is just that. It’s a unique blend of acerola cherry, tremella, which is a mushroom, schisandra, which is an adaptogenic herbs, and amla, which is a berry and it’s got coconut water, blueberry extract and a touch of sweetness from monk fruit. And it’s not even that sweet. I find it’s actually quite tart and quite sour. You just put a packet of it in your water and it’s super hydrating, so give the Superfood Beauty Powder from Four Sigmatic a try. It is truly amazing.

Jesse: As a listener of our show, you get 15% off the whole Four Sigmatic lineup and free shipping if you spend a $100 or more. To take advantage of this incredible deal, all you need to do is go to ultimatehealthpodcast.com/foursigmatic. Again, that URL is ultimatehealthpodcast.com/foursigmatic this is a brand new product be one of the first people to try it. Go put your order in today.

Marni: And now a shout out from our other show partner Organifi. Personally with my Hashimoto’s I’ve been dealing with inflammation for a few years and one of the supplements that I’ve been taking consistently is turmeric and I’m so grateful that Organifi has turmeric in capsules, something that I can take every day and include this in as well as my super healthy diet. And sometimes I also get turmeric in through a powder and my elixirs or I grate fresh ginger root in my food. But getting it in capsule form is an awesome way to know that I’m getting in that dose of turmeric and I’ve noticed over the years that may inflammation has gone down and I just love having turmeric part of the routine. So if you haven’t had turmeric part of your routine, I highly recommend getting a bottle of the turmeric caps from Organifi.

Jesse: As a listener of our show, you get 20% off the whole Organifi lineup. And to take advantage, all you need to do is go to ultimatehealthpodcast.com/organifi, again, that URL is ultimatehealthpodcast.com/organifi and Organifi ends in an I. Another great thing about the turmeric caps, they come in dark glass, a quality product and quality packaging. We love it. And now back to our chat with Andrew.

Marni: So Andrew, I know you’ve been using meditation for years in your own journey, your own healing. Can you take us through what your current practice of meditation is like and how you first got into it?

Andrew: Back when I was starting to do yoga and became a vegetarian, I also began reading about meditation. I first began reading about zen and meeting some people who practice zen meditation and on my own I started to try that, doing breath counting in a sitting position. Later I took some training in vipassana meditation, mindfulness meditation, and today I would say my practices. I do this first thing in the morning when I get up, I brush my teeth and then sit down on the edge of my bed and I begin by doing some simple breathing techniques, some a bellows breath first followed up by my 4-7-8 relaxing breath, and then I begin following my breath. I try to pay attention to body sensations, breath, and if I find that my attention has wandered to my thoughts, I just tried to bring it back to the present moment to what’s going on in the room and sensations in my body and my breath, and I do that for as long as it’s comfortable. I don’t have a fixed time in which I do it. I also try to carry that experience into a lot of my daily activities. For instance, I said earlier that cooking for me is a meditative practice, and it always has been for me, chopping vegetables, preparing things. I am in a meditative state when I do that. The goal is not just to be able to sit and meditate, it’s to be able to carry that centered presence state into all the things that you do during the day.

Marni: I love that. I think that’s so helpful because there are so many things and so many times during the day that we can just be mindful and tune into our body. So can you just walk us through your breath work?

Andrew: The main breath practice that I teach, and this is something that I learned from that old osteopathic physician, Dr. Fulford, it is a yoga breath. There are many variations of it, but the one that I teach is to inhale quietly through your nose to a count of four, hold your breath for a count of seven, and then blow air out through your mouth forcibly to a count of eight. So I call it the 4-7-8 breath. And at the beginning practice, you do this for four breath cycles only. It takes all of about 30 seconds, but you must do it at least twice a day. It’s a practice and what you’re doing is trying to change the function of your involuntary nervous system. So the theory is that by imposing this rhythm on the breath with your voluntary system, you gradually introduce it into the involuntary nervous system. And I would say if you do this a minimum of twice a day, you can do it more frequently. If you want, after six weeks, eight weeks, you begin to see some really remarkable physiological and mental changes. I can’t recommend this too highly, and if people will just Google 4-7-8 breath or my name and 4-7-8 breath, you’ll find videos of me doing it to get all the details.

Marni: And I’d love for you to explain why mouth breathing over nose breathing is better. I’ve, I’ve heard mixed responses on this, you know, some certain yoga practitioners or whether it’s in, you know, different courses will say through the nose is better. Yours is with the breath through the mouth. Why is this?

Andrew: I think when you blow air out through your mouth you can get more air out and it is desirable to deepen exhalation. Because exhalation is the phase of breath that you have more voluntary control over. If you can blow more air out, you automatically take more in. So that’s the only advantage I see to breathing out through the mouth. But I think in general it’s desirable to breathe in and out through your nose.

Jesse: So I want to come back to meditation and tie this into your story. And I know during your 20s-30s and 40s you suffered from depression and meditation was a tool that you use to help alleviate that depression. So take us back there and explain how you use this tool.

Andrew: I guess you know what I had would be called dysthymic disorder. You know, it wasn’t major depression. And I’ve written about this in my book, Spontaneous Happiness. I think this is something that I can see in retrospect, but as a result of practicing meditation over the years. I think my highs and lows have evened out. Now there’s a lot of other things that I do, I think to regulate my mood such as getting regular physical activity, making sure my diet has adequate Omega-3s and vitamin D, getting exposure to sunlight in nature, spending more time in the company of people around whom I feel happier. So there’s a whole lot of things that I do. I would say that meditation has been very good as a mood stabilizer.

Jesse: You mentioned spending time with quality people. I want to get deeper into that. How do you make sure this is a regular practice you fit into your day to day routine and what does that look like for you?

Andrew: Well, first of all, there is very solid research showing that moods are contagious. If you live within a half mile of a friend who is happy, you were likely to be happier and you can track the spread of emotions through groups of people. Just the way that you can track the spread of infectious diseases. So I think it’s very important to pay attention to who you associate with. If you hang around people who are anxious or depressed, that’s going to influence your mood. So all I can tell you is that I seek out the company of people who I feel in a good mood with when we’re together.

Jesse: Let’s talk about gratitude and how it fits into the whole practice of maintaining your wellbeing.

Andrew: There’s been very interesting research on gratitude. Mostly this is done by people in the positive psychology movement demonstrating remarkable effects of gratitude on emotions. One practice is to keep a gratitude journal, you can get a little book and keep it by your bed and throughout the day just make mental notes of things that you have to be grateful for. And at night when you go to bed, just jot a few of these down. There’s research showing that doing this for just one week can have a positive effect on mood for up to a month.

Jesse: And you’ve talked about how there’s two aspects of gratitude where you’re actually feeling grateful and expressing it. So can you differentiate there?

Andrew: You know, it’s easy to feel grateful and we often don’t take the time to express it. Expressing it can be writing it down in a gratitude journal. It can be speaking it aloud, it can be telling it to someone else. I think those two components have different effects and that’s I think useful to do both.

Jesse: So Dr. Weil the type of medicine that you’re a proponent of is called integrative medicine, and these days there’s a lot of talk of integrative medicine and also functional medicine. So is there any difference between the two and can you define both?

Andrew: Yeah, I think there are great differences. I have to say I’m not a big fan of functional medicine. I think functional medicine relies too much on biochemical theories that may not have any clinical relevance. It makes too much use of unvalidated diagnostic tests. The practitioners of it often get caught up in the business of selling supplements. You know, I think there are areas of overlap of functional medicine and integrative medicine, but to me integrative medicine is a much more solid robust system. So integrative medicine, the basic components of it are the emphasis of the bodies, intrinsic healing capabilities. Second, really seeing people as whole persons, mind, body spirits, community members, not just physical bodies, paying great attention to lifestyle and understanding how lifestyle choices influence health and risks of disease. Putting a lot of emphasis on the practitioner patient relationship and allowing time for that. And then finally looking around the world and throughout history to find ways of managing health conditions that are not dependent on expensive technology that are not going to cause harm and show reasonable evidence of efficacy like that 4-7-8 breath that I mentioned to you. That’s not even on the radar of conventional medicine and it’s a perfect example of the kind of thing that integrative medicine can bring into the mainstream. I also want to say that I firmly believe that integrative medicine is the way of the future as our healthcare system deteriorates. I think the wisdom of what I and my colleagues are doing will become more apparent because the great promise of integrative medicine is that it can improve health outcomes and lower costs and it can do that in two ways. One is by shifting the emphasis from disease management to health promotion and disease prevention through attention to lifestyle and secondly by bringing into the mainstream treatments that are not dependent on expensive technology.

Marni: So someone’s looking to find an integrative medicine practitioner. What can they start looking for if they’re doing searches online or if they’re checking in their local communities, you know is there certain designation or you know, just different clinics. They just want to see that behind the name.

Andrew: I would first go to the website of the University of Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine. That’s www.integrativemedicine.arizona.edu and you’ll find a practitioner link and then you can look by state or city or type of practice and find graduates of our fellowship. We have a very intensive thousand hour, two year fellowship. We’ve trained physicians from all specialties. We now have 1800 graduates who are in practice in all states and other countries. I’d start there. There is also a board certification for integrative medicine that’s done by the American board of physician specialties and you can access people who have that certification as well.

Marni: And just a comment on functional medicine, Jesse and I do see some functional medicine practitioners, but I feel like if you only see a functional medicine practitioner you might be cutting yourself short. We also see other types of practitioners, which I believe kind of brings in a little bit of an integrative approach. You know, I’ve got people who do body work on me, I’ve got a naturopath that chimes in, so I’ve kind of almost created my own little integrative team on an ad hoc way of doing it and that seems to be working for me. So just for anyone whose out there who does maybe work with a functional medicine team, maybe don’t be a hundred percent reliant on them. Make sure you’re involving other opinions and perspectives as well.

Andrew: That sounds very sensible.

Jesse: And Dr. Weil I know you spent half a year or a good portion of your time out west in Canada, when did you start heading to Canada and exploring up that way?

Marni: Our way should we say. This is where we live.

Andrew: Yeah. Where, where are you?

Marni: We’re in Windsor. Ontario.

Andrew: Ah Ha! Well I started going to Cortez Island, British Columbia in about 1983 at first to teach at a workshop center called HollyHawk. And I fell in love with that area and always dreamed about having a place up there. Took me awhile to do that. But now I have a wonderful home and garden on Cortez Island and I’m usually there most of June, July, August and as much of September as I can stay up there.

Jesse: And what do you love most about being in that area?

Andrew: Well, it’s a total contrast to the environment in Arizona and everything is green and water and you know, it’s just the exact opposite of the desert. And the desert is quite inhospitable in those months that I’m away, you know, it’s way too hot and dry. So I love being up there. But I also like the culture up there. I like Canadians, I like Canada. And especially in these days, it’s very refreshing to be up there.

Jesse: And what are you doing for exercise these days?

Andrew: First of all, I have two big dogs, rhodesian ridgebacks and they take me for a walk every morning and we go to a wash near my house and they go off leash and it’s a very wild desert country. So have a brisk walk through there. And then I swim every day. Swimming has become my favorite exercise, I’d say for the past 20 years at least. It suits my body very well and it’s something that I enjoy.

Marni: And you mentioned dogs, we’re big dog lovers. We have a dog at home and australian shepherd. So how do you think having a dog has played a role in your health and wellbeing? Not just the exercise component, but how else?

Andrew: I think tremendous. First of all, I can’t imagine life without dogs. They are my constant companions. I think about them a lot. They’ve really trained me in a non verbal communication. I think they do very good things for my mental and emotional health. There’s some really interesting studies on how living with dogs affects your microbiome and a very good way. I just can’t say enough about how important that is.

Jesse: And one of my favorite exercises is one of the things that you’re doing on a regular basis and that’s walking and you actually co-created an audio program titled Walking. Let’s get into the benefits of this simple, beautiful exercise.

Andrew: Well, it is really the perfect exercise. Our bodies are designed to walk. It’s the form of exercise that has the least risk of injury. Everyone knows how to do it. It doesn’t require any equipment. You can do it anywhere. You can even do it indoors. You can do it in the company of other people. And I think if you do it briskly and often, include some uphill walking, it can satisfy all of your cardio respiratory needs. So I think it’s great and it’s often is devalued in comparison with more intensive form of exercise. But I think it is just one of the best forms of physical activity.

Marni: Beautiful. And Andrew, you’re such a wealth of knowledge. We’ve covered so many different areas in this conversation, but one last question that we have for you is what does ultimate health mean to you?

Andrew: I think it means having a sense of wellbeing, having the energy to meet life’s demands, being able to have fun in life and enjoy it and deal with all the routine things that go wrong in your body, and simple methods of being as independent of health professionals as much as possible and trying to maintain that as you go through life. And I think what we’d all like to do is to be able to live long and well and then have a rapid drop off at the end. I think you do that by attending to all the factors under your control that we know influence health and disease.

Jesse: You mention having fun in life. What are some of the things other than walking the dogs and swimming that you’re doing just purely for having fun in life these days?

Andrew: Well, I think hanging out with people who are fun to be with traveling has been very important to me. And for me, traveling is often fun. Cooking is fun, eating is fun. Turning people onto new things is fun. I really enjoy teaching. I teach in our fellowship. I love seeing the people who come to us discover, you know, what medicine really is all about and how it can be in the future. So all of that brings me great pleasure

Marni: And I also have to thank you for creating such an awesome restaurant. True Food Kitchen. I’ve been there, the one in Arizona, way back when it opened. Amazing restaurant. So for those of you who live in an area where there’s a True Food Kitchen and there’s quite a few of them now, how many are there now?

Andrew: We have 29 of them now and I’m determined to get some in Canada as well. So these are based on my anti-inflammatory diet and it’s delicious. Wonderful food that happens to be good for you.

Marni: It is the type of restaurant that just needs to be everywhere because it does accommodate every single diet. Whether you are a vegan, paleo, keto, like you will find something on the menu and the lemonade, I have to comment on the lemonade it’s amazing. It’s a honey sweetened lemonade. It’s so good.

Andrew: Great. I’m glad you enjoy it.

Jesse: And before we let you go, we got to hear what’s the origin story of your restaurant chain.

Andrew: I’m a very good home cook and over the years a lot of people said to me, you ought to open a restaurant. I was smart enough to know that I didn’t know anything about the restaurant business and it looked like a very tough business and that never tempted me. But about 12 years ago, a mutual friend introduced me to a successful restauranteur here in Arizona. And I proposed in the concept of a restaurant that would serve really good food that was also healthy. He didn’t get it. He said, health food doesn’t sell. And I think he thought I meant tofu and sprouts. So I eventually cooked for him and his wife. He liked the food you could as the wheels turning. And he decided to give it a try. But he was very skeptical. And we opened the first one in Phoenix about 11 years ago. That’s probably the one that you ate at in Biltmore Fashion Park. Yes, and we really went back and forth. His tastes in food where cheeseburgers and steaks. We had a lot of compromising to do, but eventually came up with the basic menu and ever since that first restaurant opened, these have been very successful wherever they’ve been placed.

Marni: Amazing. So listeners, you guys got to go check out True Food Kitchen and grab one of your many books. How many books do you have now?

Andrew: Oh Geez. I think I got about 15.

Marni: Oh my gosh you’ve got so many books. Lots of books. So other than that, where else can our listeners connect with you?

Andrew: Well, my website is drweil.com d r e w e i l.com. We mentioned the matcha site, matcha.com, I have a newsletter, Andrew Weil’s Self Healing and as I said, please check out the website of the University of Arizona Center for integrativemedicine.arizona.edu.

Jesse: All right Andrew, we’re going to link all that up over at ultimatehealthpodcast.com for the listeners and we just want to thank you so much. This conversation is just packed with info pack with stories and it’s just such a pleasure chatting with you.

Andrew: Yeah, I enjoy talking to you. I hope we’ll get to talk again in the future.

Marni: We’d love that.

Jesse: I hope so.

Andrew: Okay,

Jesse: Take care. Thank you.

Andrew: Bye Bye.

Marni: I just absolutely loved this conversation with Dr. Weil. So much great information and so many things to be inspired by. So I hope you took something away from today’s show and we would love for you to let us know over on Instagram, give us a shout out tag @ultimatehealthpodcast and also tag @drweil let us know what you think and when you included in your stories and tag us. We collect all of those, and on Fridays we do a share. So we might just include yours in our Friday share. So let us know what your most loved takeaway was from today’s show.

Jesse: For full show notes, be sure and head over to ultimatehealthpodcast.com/295 we have links there to everything we discussed in a nice show summary, so be sure and check that out. And we’re also putting out a free worksheet downloadable for each episode now. So if you head over to the show notes, you can get yourself a copy of that as well. Before we let you go, I want to give some love to our editor and engineer Jase Sanderson over at podcasttech.com Jase you do such a great job putting the show together each week. We really appreciate it. And this weeks fun fact about Jase is that he’s currently really digging green smoothies. What a great addition to anyone’s healthy routine. Way to go, Jase. Have an awesome week. We’ll talk soon. Take care.

Disclaimer: This is a raw transcript and it may contain some errors. To listen to the complete audio interview, go to ultimatehealthpodcast.com/295.