November 12, 2019 • 20 mins
Andrew Weil, one of the most influential doctors in America, is known as a pioneer of integrative medicine who has always advocated for a natural approach to healthcare that focuses on healing and overall wellness.
In this episode, Dr. Weil is weighing on everything from matcha tea to psychedelics, even issuing a warning about one of the biggest viral health trends that he says everyone needs to hear.
For more, check out: www.drweil.com and www.matcha.com.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I think this is on the horizon of medicine in
the very near future. I think we're gonna be able
to have individualized treatment, will be able to prescribe drugs
with the assurance that they're going to affect an individual
in the way we want them to be affected. We
can make diethery changes based on individual genetic profiling. I
don't think we're quite there yet. I think, first of all,
there's a lot of inaccuracies in this information. Hi. I'm
(00:46):
Dr Oz and this is the Doctor Oz Podcast. He's
one of the most influential doctors in America. Andrew Wilde
is known as a pioneer of integrative medicine who has
always advocated for a natural approach to health here that
focuses on healing and overall wellness. Today, Dr While is
weighing in on everything from much at the psychedelics, even
(01:07):
issuing a warning about one of the biggest viral health
trends that he says everyone needs to hear. I love
you done incredible things in your career. I've been a
mentor to me and I appreciate you taking time to
spend some time in our studio. Thank you. I'm delighted
to be here. I want to start off with something
that a lot of folks don't appreciate. But the sentinel
role you played in American medicine is evidenced by the
fact that the University of Arizona Center of Integrative Medicine,
(01:28):
it's a mouthful. It's gonna sound much better with its
new name because it'll be called the Andrew Wild Center
for Integrative Medicine. And that's pretty cool. You'll be having
states named after you pretty soon. It's hard for me
to refer to myself from the third person, so I
just called the Center for Integrated Medicine. It is pretty cool, though,
then there are not many physicians who are still alive. Yeah,
that's right. Yeah, I feel lucky that I've been able
(01:49):
to see this in my lifetime. Did you ever anticipate
when you first started out, having graduated at Harvard, you know,
in remarkable pedigree, voyaging out into an area that I'm
sure most of you, Alex thought was absolutely wacky and crazy,
that you'd end up where you are now. No, uh,
you know, I always knew that I was doing the
right thing. I put one foot ahead of the other,
and I really didn't care if I got reinforcement from
(02:10):
the outer world, and it's been very gratifying to watch
mainstream society catch up with me. Why didn't you care?
I mean, most human beings care what their fellow humans
say about I knew what I was doing was right,
you know. I knew that there were better ways to
do medicine. I knew that this is what consumers wanted.
I knew that conventional medicine was doing too much harm,
(02:31):
especially with adverse drug reactions. UM. I saw great deficiencies
in all medical education, starting with nutrition and understanding my
body interactions and learning about these other systems that were
out there. So I knew all that had to be corrected.
So we tap into that wisdom. Yeah, first, my mom
just diagnosed with Alzheimer's, as many have written, and I'll
(02:55):
embrace what they're saying. Is one of the biggest challenging,
most challenging aspects of a caregiver, and there's sixteen million
of us taking care of people with Alzheimer's, is that
you don't even know what you don't know, and your
relatives don't appreciate that they have a disease that you're
trying to help ear with you've focused on mental health,
but more specifically cognitive health at the center. Give me
(03:16):
the tool kit you give to your family. Well, first
of all, you know, I emphasize prevention because I think
taking care of your brain really starts by not doing
harmful things to it, such as playing football. So you know,
I think, yeah, But I think avoiding concussions that that's
a big one. Another one is probably avoiding environmental toxins,
(03:38):
because I would bet money that some of the newer
degendative diseases, not Alzheimer's, but certainly Parkinson's and probably a
LS you're gonna be due to environmental toxic damage. Is
that right? As well a l S I'm certain of uh,
and Parkinson's also. I'll tell you why. There was a
maybe you remember this. I think it was in the seventies.
It was an epidemic of deaths from usthetic heroine called
(04:01):
China White. There was MOSTI to San Francisco, and people
who survived developed a developed Parkinson's and this was traced
not to the China white but to a contaminant. It
was identified, the molecules identified, but it was present in
extremely tiny amounts. So the fact that something in such
such minuscule amounts could cause that the generation the brain
(04:23):
I find very significant Parkinson's. I get that someone had
very well known his name. I'm not going to stay here,
but he told me that he he grew up in
a in an environment that where there was toxins around
his home and there were high doses of it the
families in the military, and he believes that's why he
got Parkinson. But I've never heard of. Okay, in Guam,
there is a high incidence of a disease. It looks
(04:45):
just a LS that has been found to be due
to consumption of seeds of a sago palm that have
in them an algae growing called microcistis that produces a
toxin and extremely potent neurotox and so this again suggests
to me, you know, maybe that there's multiple toxins out
there that caused the same sort of sequence of the
(05:07):
generation in the brain, well even in Alzheimer's. And I've
done enough shows on it to get people I trust
the most to share their their personal belief that there's
probably an infectious element to some else. Yes, it could
well be right. Also, we know that education is protective,
that the more education you have the more redundancy you
have in neural synapsis. Yeah, but you can afford to
(05:31):
lose more before deficit to show us. Then then in
terms of diet, I mean, we know that Alzheimer's has
an inflammatory components, so an anti inflammatory diet is very helpful.
I profen has a preventative effect, Turmeric has a preventive effect. Um,
you know, I think they're There are things you can
do to exercise the brain, like learning a new language.
(05:51):
So these are all in the realm of prevention. Once
Alzheimer's develops, I think our our options very limited because
we really don't understand what is the cause of that disease.
Do you recommend Have you looked to see if genetically
you're predisposed Alzheimer's, I haven't. I don't think I want
that information. You know, what would I do with it? Well,
I you know, I felt the way you do until
(06:12):
my mom had changes that were consistent with this. And
my mother has to a four proteins, the worst possible
one and she actually I believe her onset of Alzheimer's
was delayed because she's been on steroids for many years
from asthma. It turns out the steroids are as what
they used for her the control to reduce Alzheimer's, and
(06:33):
we don't want to be a lifelong steroids or avoid Alzheimer's.
But the point I was making it, she's she's gone
twenty years longer than she should have, probably because of
her lifestyle with this condition. That stated, I got myself checked, uh,
and I did it for my family, and then I
began looking around. A Shriver sort of did the same thing,
and I began to realize, well, what you said is true.
If prevention is important, what I prevent is going to
(06:54):
be a higher profile, higher importance to me if I'm
actually predisposed Alzheimer's versus, as an example, a cholesterol levels
so LDL cholesterol. Mine's not bad, right, So normally I
wouldn't treat it because my HDL is ninety. I wouldn't
think about treating it for a heart and I'm a
art specialists. I know the numbers well. However, in Alzheimer's
it changes the equation. Maybe in Alzheimer's is worth treating
(07:16):
if you're worried about interesting. Okay, So that's why I
can see that, right. There's lots more when we come
back where will genetic testing allow you, as an expert,
especially in integrative approaches, to micromanage people better. Well. I
(07:40):
think this is on the horizon of medicine in the
very near future. I think we're gonna be able to
have individualized treatment, will be able to prescribe drugs with
the assurance that they're going to affect an individual in
the way we want them to be affected. We can
make diethery changes based on individual genetic profiling. I don't
think we're quite there yet. I think, first of all,
there's a lot of inaccuracies and this information, and I'm
(08:01):
sure you've read these stories of people getting horrendous information
that turns out a lot to eat for no reason.
But I think this is coming, and it's coming pretty quickly.
I've always been interested in the things that capture your attention,
and I'm gonna touch on some of those that the
best hits things in the guys. Some of them makes sense,
some of them don't. Big deal or not. I think
(08:23):
it's a big deal. You know, this is something that
I discovered many years ago. I went to Japan when
I was seventeen in nineteen fifteen nine, and I lived
with Japanese families. How how did it make your AFS student?
What it was? It was a student exchange program and
I was a strange experimental school. It was fabulous. Anyway,
I got to live in Japan and Lincoln fifty nine
and uh, there was no common language with my host family.
(08:46):
But the second night I was there, the mother took
me next door to meet her neighbor who was a
practitioner of t ceremony. And the three of us sat around,
and this woman performed at the ceremony. Well, first of all,
the bamboo whisk that they used to wish just there
was something about the shape of Yeah, it's a scar
from a single piece of amboo. And then when she
(09:06):
opened the container of macha, I had never seen anything
so brilliant green. And she whisked this into this beautiful beverage.
So I was very taken with it. I brought it
some back with me, and then when I go to Japan,
I bring cans of it back. But nobody knew had
ever seen it here, and I would make it and
turn friends onto it. And this was also in the
seventies eighties. Uh. And then reading about it, you know,
(09:27):
for first of all this information beyond to come out
about how healthy green tea tea in general, but green
tea particularly and much is the only form of tea
that you consume the whole leaf and the process of
making it. The plants are shaded very heavily shade cloth
for three weeks before they're harvested, so in response to that,
the plants produced larger, thinner leaves with much higher amounts
(09:50):
of chlorophyll, which is why matches so green, but also
higher amounts of healthy ay and the calming element in
macha that modifies the caffeine, and higher elements of fla
of her compounds and any oxidants. So I think it's
a significant and I'm delighted to see it becoming so
popular here. However, I'm just made that so much macha
here is is very poor quality because it deteriorates very quickly,
(10:13):
It oxidizes very quickly. It always seems the most precious
things we have to share with each other tend to
be fragile. So how do you know if you're actually
getting the just almost fluorescent? It should be green and
it should taste delicious. It's it should there's a macho
have a hint of bitterness, but a sweet complex flavor
shouldn't be bitter. It shouldn't taste like seaweed. It shouldn't
taste like grass, definitely not like uh the So can
(10:40):
I just say, you know, because I was so dismayed
by that, I uh started a macha company and I
got the U R L Macha dot com, which is
a great coup. It took some doing, and I made
connections with a very good producer of macha outside of Kyoto,
and so through that website, UH sell you know, variety
of qualities and watch it, but they're all really good.
(11:02):
Good for you, Glad you're doing that. The the interesting
place that psychedelics have taken our society, it's worth putting
a few seconds and you've lived through the whole thing, right.
So in fifty nine when you came back from Japan,
when Timothy Leary and others were starting to drop out,
and the wisdom at the time these are all emissions,
was that LSD and psilocybin, these other psychedelics could um
(11:24):
could hallucinogens could play an important role in getting people
to connect. And I didn't realize at the time that
the founder of a A had stopped drinking because so
share that story and if you don't mind, give us
a little bit of history lessons where do you think
you can play a role in our lives? So because
people are petrified, I know, so I h You know,
I began writing about experimenting the psychedelics, but actually back
(11:45):
in the late sixties, and my first book, The Natural
Mind publishing two, has a lot about psychedelics and their
potential therapeutic uses. So you didn't go to jail, no,
And I was way ahead of the curve on now. So,
first of all, these drugs are probably the safe as
drugs in medicine. They are far safer on a physical level,
and anything we use therapeutically, you can't kill people with LSD. Uh.
(12:08):
The danger are psychological and those are consequences of set
and setting of people's expectations and the environment and the dose.
So I think it is very important to structure these
experiences in the right way to ensure that they're they're positive.
You know, there's been a lot of talk about the
use of these uh in psychological disorders, psilocybin for o
(12:32):
c D and drug resistant depression m d m A
for post traumatic stress disorder, but I've always been fascinating
about the potential for use in physical medicine because I
have seen many times, UH psychedelic experiences change people's experiences
of their bodies in way that allow chronic disease processes
to relax or disappear. And that's not just chronic pain,
(12:56):
but autoimmune conditions, So that there's tremendous potential there, and
it's fascinating to see these suddenly being so coming into
prominence and people are really interested in them. So I
saw a special k ketamine was a proof of PTSD
among US servicemen returning right from overseas wars um. You
mentioned a couple of the different options be more specific.
(13:16):
If someone want to let's say someone was a cigarettes addiction, right,
one of the most pregalent problems that ages us seemingly
benign if you want to get off cigarettes, I'm told,
or alcoholism, as it found a did before he found
that a right, he took magic showman stopped stopped breaking,
and he tried his whole career to get it back
into the curriculum. Could never pull it off, and not
surprisingly in the nineteen fifties, that was not well accepted
(13:37):
in the United States. If someone's listening right now, it
has an addictive personality or addiction to something like cigarettes
or alcohol, how do you actually find the person treat
you was illegal? That's a very good question. Note it
is not legal at the moment, although it's been legalized
in some cities like Denver and Oakland. Whether that how
that runs up against federal law. I have no idea,
but I think the trend is going to be that
(13:58):
these will become available. But then the then the problem
is how do you find a guide? I think, you know,
you want to take that with somebody who's qualified by
their own experience at to guide people in the right
directions with these. So that's tricky. I mean, there's a
wonderful organization out there called MAPS, the Multidisciplinary Association for
Psychedelic Studies, which has made a lot of done a
(14:21):
lot of work in advancing these things to the point
where they will become available therapeutically. They have a good website,
maps dot org, and that's one place to start. By
the way, if you have not seen a this video,
I would urge you to watch it and your listeners
as well. Go to YouTube and search for housewife on LSD.
It is priceless. It is. It is a video from
(14:43):
the late nineteen sixties of a psychiatrist who I knew
at U c l A who administers a dose of
LSD to a very straight woman and she has a
total spiritual, non dual experience. That's just fantastic to watch.
I've heard rumors people that are respected by all of
society micro docing LSD se jobs typically, but yeah, I've
(15:06):
heard that you do as well. I have tried it.
I've tried micro docing with Holt twice. I didn't like it.
I didn't like the feeling in my body. There was
like a foreign energy, and at lasted too long. I
have also experimenting with micro dosing with with mushrooms, and
this is about a tenth of the dose that people
would take to have a trip, and I found that
(15:27):
I got energized from it. Um I found it useful
for writing and creative thought. I have not done it
a whole lot, but it's something that I have experimented with.
I know people who do it very regularly and and
attribute a lot of creative growth to it. Does it
hurt their creativity when they're not on the micro dose
doesn't seem to see it doesn't seem to but I
don't know enough about it to give you a really
(15:48):
good answer to this transition. Is CBD, yes, which everywhere
in every street corner. And my concerns, I said sure
you articulate, is that the dosing is often way below
what could be therapeutic expensive and half we've checked that
most of what we check in our studios fake. Furthermore,
I think the only real evidence we have for therapeutic
(16:09):
effect is for drug resistance seizures and kids. You know
that is a proved effect. The rest of it, I
think is hypothetical and we don't really know. And some
people say it's great for pain, for joint pain, for sleep.
I don't think we have a definitive evidence on that.
You use it all in your practice, I don't. How
about the one thing I have I have, I've been
(16:30):
told that it's really good for anxiety and dogs. So
I have one dog that is prone if there's a
lightning and thunder who gets anxious. So I'm gonna try
giving her some CBD to see what happens. How about
bedical marijuana, Well, I think there's tremendous potential there but again,
uh there. I think the problem is that there's such
a profusion of products in the market, it's very hard
(16:53):
to know what they are. It's hard to know how
to tell people what to use. Also, in my experience,
responses to marijuana are very individual, So you know, it
can cause some people to fall asleep, some other people
to become wakeful. Uh. So you have to experiment to
see what it does for you, and then you have
to find the right form of it. And that's tricky
today because there's just so much different stuff out there.
(17:16):
More questions after the break. There's a lot of pop
wisdom around medical marijuana. I've learned about medical medical marijuana
from people who see themselves as exprests, many of them
aren't met in the medical field. But I've also called
(17:37):
the scientists for the biggest companies in this space, most
of them overseas. By the way, there are big concerns,
lots of money pouring into a Canada is really etcetera.
And what I learned from the scientist is very different
from what I'm hearing. We just said. Some people small seeps,
some people are creative, and the average person out there
who smokes possibly it's a tiva versus right. It's not.
It's not that the plants are all mixed, that there's
(17:57):
no pure plant any exactly right that you know. And also,
if doctors are going to use it, they want to
have some preparation that looks like a medical preparation. They're
not gonna be comfortable telling people to go smoke something. Uh.
There There is a very good product made in the
UK called sat EVAs that's an oral sper metered oral spray,
(18:18):
a whole cannabis extract. The FDA will not so far
let it in the US, but it's used to It's
available in Canada and the Netherlands and other European countries.
That looks like a medical drug, and I think doctors
would be comfortable with recommending that to people. You see
a seismic shift with the federal government in the next
two or three years saying enough, we don't want to
(18:40):
be in the business of enforcing medications like this. We're
getting out. I think that has to happen. I think
it's gonna be when when some critical massive states legalize
it and there's just a groundswell of momentum for it.
I think the federal government will have to give in
last question. Bio hacking. You know sensitive spots at andel Ells.
You know, I'm in touch with a lot of bio hackers.
(19:02):
I've done podcasts a lot of bio hackers. Something about
it makes me nervous. I mean that some of it
is like people trying to you know, they're trying to
hack the physiological system with extreme dietary manipulation, use of supplements.
But some of these people are injecting things into themselves
and doing stuff that makes me very nervous. So I
(19:24):
think there's some good there and I'm interested to watch
these experiments, but a lot of it I'm very questious about.
I love the smile you always have in your face.
It's a great, honest bed time with you, your friend,
Andrew Wild. Thank you. You can hear lots more from
Dr Wild on his brand new podcast, Body of Wonder.
It's coming out this year. Check it out read the
things he says. He's got a lot of wisdom in
this man. Thanks. And also, can I tell you that
(19:47):
I have a discount code for Macha for your listeners,
um which is um oz one five. Oh my goodness,
exactly
I think this is on the horizon of medicine in
the very near future. I think we're gonna be able
to have individualized treatment, will be able to prescribe drugs
with the assurance that they're going to affect an individual
in the way we want them to be affected. We
can make diethery changes based on individual genetic profiling. I
don't think we're quite there yet. I think, first of all,
there's a lot of inaccuracies in this information. Hi. I'm
(00:46):
Dr Oz and this is the Doctor Oz Podcast. He's
one of the most influential doctors in America. Andrew Wilde
is known as a pioneer of integrative medicine who has
always advocated for a natural approach to health here that
focuses on healing and overall wellness. Today, Dr While is
weighing in on everything from much at the psychedelics, even
(01:07):
issuing a warning about one of the biggest viral health
trends that he says everyone needs to hear. I love
you done incredible things in your career. I've been a
mentor to me and I appreciate you taking time to
spend some time in our studio. Thank you. I'm delighted
to be here. I want to start off with something
that a lot of folks don't appreciate. But the sentinel
role you played in American medicine is evidenced by the
fact that the University of Arizona Center of Integrative Medicine,
(01:28):
it's a mouthful. It's gonna sound much better with its
new name because it'll be called the Andrew Wild Center
for Integrative Medicine. And that's pretty cool. You'll be having
states named after you pretty soon. It's hard for me
to refer to myself from the third person, so I
just called the Center for Integrated Medicine. It is pretty cool, though,
then there are not many physicians who are still alive. Yeah,
that's right. Yeah, I feel lucky that I've been able
(01:49):
to see this in my lifetime. Did you ever anticipate
when you first started out, having graduated at Harvard, you know,
in remarkable pedigree, voyaging out into an area that I'm
sure most of you, Alex thought was absolutely wacky and crazy,
that you'd end up where you are now. No, uh,
you know, I always knew that I was doing the
right thing. I put one foot ahead of the other,
and I really didn't care if I got reinforcement from
(02:10):
the outer world, and it's been very gratifying to watch
mainstream society catch up with me. Why didn't you care?
I mean, most human beings care what their fellow humans
say about I knew what I was doing was right,
you know. I knew that there were better ways to
do medicine. I knew that this is what consumers wanted.
I knew that conventional medicine was doing too much harm,
(02:31):
especially with adverse drug reactions. UM. I saw great deficiencies
in all medical education, starting with nutrition and understanding my
body interactions and learning about these other systems that were
out there. So I knew all that had to be corrected.
So we tap into that wisdom. Yeah, first, my mom
just diagnosed with Alzheimer's, as many have written, and I'll
(02:55):
embrace what they're saying. Is one of the biggest challenging,
most challenging aspects of a caregiver, and there's sixteen million
of us taking care of people with Alzheimer's, is that
you don't even know what you don't know, and your
relatives don't appreciate that they have a disease that you're
trying to help ear with you've focused on mental health,
but more specifically cognitive health at the center. Give me
(03:16):
the tool kit you give to your family. Well, first
of all, you know, I emphasize prevention because I think
taking care of your brain really starts by not doing
harmful things to it, such as playing football. So you know,
I think, yeah, But I think avoiding concussions that that's
a big one. Another one is probably avoiding environmental toxins,
(03:38):
because I would bet money that some of the newer
degendative diseases, not Alzheimer's, but certainly Parkinson's and probably a
LS you're gonna be due to environmental toxic damage. Is
that right? As well a l S I'm certain of uh,
and Parkinson's also. I'll tell you why. There was a
maybe you remember this. I think it was in the seventies.
It was an epidemic of deaths from usthetic heroine called
(04:01):
China White. There was MOSTI to San Francisco, and people
who survived developed a developed Parkinson's and this was traced
not to the China white but to a contaminant. It
was identified, the molecules identified, but it was present in
extremely tiny amounts. So the fact that something in such
such minuscule amounts could cause that the generation the brain
(04:23):
I find very significant Parkinson's. I get that someone had
very well known his name. I'm not going to stay here,
but he told me that he he grew up in
a in an environment that where there was toxins around
his home and there were high doses of it the
families in the military, and he believes that's why he
got Parkinson. But I've never heard of. Okay, in Guam,
there is a high incidence of a disease. It looks
(04:45):
just a LS that has been found to be due
to consumption of seeds of a sago palm that have
in them an algae growing called microcistis that produces a
toxin and extremely potent neurotox and so this again suggests
to me, you know, maybe that there's multiple toxins out
there that caused the same sort of sequence of the
(05:07):
generation in the brain, well even in Alzheimer's. And I've
done enough shows on it to get people I trust
the most to share their their personal belief that there's
probably an infectious element to some else. Yes, it could
well be right. Also, we know that education is protective,
that the more education you have the more redundancy you
have in neural synapsis. Yeah, but you can afford to
(05:31):
lose more before deficit to show us. Then then in
terms of diet, I mean, we know that Alzheimer's has
an inflammatory components, so an anti inflammatory diet is very helpful.
I profen has a preventative effect, Turmeric has a preventive effect. Um,
you know, I think they're There are things you can
do to exercise the brain, like learning a new language.
(05:51):
So these are all in the realm of prevention. Once
Alzheimer's develops, I think our our options very limited because
we really don't understand what is the cause of that disease.
Do you recommend Have you looked to see if genetically
you're predisposed Alzheimer's, I haven't. I don't think I want
that information. You know, what would I do with it? Well,
I you know, I felt the way you do until
(06:12):
my mom had changes that were consistent with this. And
my mother has to a four proteins, the worst possible
one and she actually I believe her onset of Alzheimer's
was delayed because she's been on steroids for many years
from asthma. It turns out the steroids are as what
they used for her the control to reduce Alzheimer's, and
(06:33):
we don't want to be a lifelong steroids or avoid Alzheimer's.
But the point I was making it, she's she's gone
twenty years longer than she should have, probably because of
her lifestyle with this condition. That stated, I got myself checked, uh,
and I did it for my family, and then I
began looking around. A Shriver sort of did the same thing,
and I began to realize, well, what you said is true.
If prevention is important, what I prevent is going to
(06:54):
be a higher profile, higher importance to me if I'm
actually predisposed Alzheimer's versus, as an example, a cholesterol levels
so LDL cholesterol. Mine's not bad, right, So normally I
wouldn't treat it because my HDL is ninety. I wouldn't
think about treating it for a heart and I'm a
art specialists. I know the numbers well. However, in Alzheimer's
it changes the equation. Maybe in Alzheimer's is worth treating
(07:16):
if you're worried about interesting. Okay, So that's why I
can see that, right. There's lots more when we come
back where will genetic testing allow you, as an expert,
especially in integrative approaches, to micromanage people better. Well. I
(07:40):
think this is on the horizon of medicine in the
very near future. I think we're gonna be able to
have individualized treatment, will be able to prescribe drugs with
the assurance that they're going to affect an individual in
the way we want them to be affected. We can
make diethery changes based on individual genetic profiling. I don't
think we're quite there yet. I think, first of all,
there's a lot of inaccuracies and this information, and I'm
(08:01):
sure you've read these stories of people getting horrendous information
that turns out a lot to eat for no reason.
But I think this is coming, and it's coming pretty quickly.
I've always been interested in the things that capture your attention,
and I'm gonna touch on some of those that the
best hits things in the guys. Some of them makes sense,
some of them don't. Big deal or not. I think
(08:23):
it's a big deal. You know, this is something that
I discovered many years ago. I went to Japan when
I was seventeen in nineteen fifteen nine, and I lived
with Japanese families. How how did it make your AFS student?
What it was? It was a student exchange program and
I was a strange experimental school. It was fabulous. Anyway,
I got to live in Japan and Lincoln fifty nine
and uh, there was no common language with my host family.
(08:46):
But the second night I was there, the mother took
me next door to meet her neighbor who was a
practitioner of t ceremony. And the three of us sat around,
and this woman performed at the ceremony. Well, first of all,
the bamboo whisk that they used to wish just there
was something about the shape of Yeah, it's a scar
from a single piece of amboo. And then when she
(09:06):
opened the container of macha, I had never seen anything
so brilliant green. And she whisked this into this beautiful beverage.
So I was very taken with it. I brought it
some back with me, and then when I go to Japan,
I bring cans of it back. But nobody knew had
ever seen it here, and I would make it and
turn friends onto it. And this was also in the
seventies eighties. Uh. And then reading about it, you know,
(09:27):
for first of all this information beyond to come out
about how healthy green tea tea in general, but green
tea particularly and much is the only form of tea
that you consume the whole leaf and the process of
making it. The plants are shaded very heavily shade cloth
for three weeks before they're harvested, so in response to that,
the plants produced larger, thinner leaves with much higher amounts
(09:50):
of chlorophyll, which is why matches so green, but also
higher amounts of healthy ay and the calming element in
macha that modifies the caffeine, and higher elements of fla
of her compounds and any oxidants. So I think it's
a significant and I'm delighted to see it becoming so
popular here. However, I'm just made that so much macha
here is is very poor quality because it deteriorates very quickly,
(10:13):
It oxidizes very quickly. It always seems the most precious
things we have to share with each other tend to
be fragile. So how do you know if you're actually
getting the just almost fluorescent? It should be green and
it should taste delicious. It's it should there's a macho
have a hint of bitterness, but a sweet complex flavor
shouldn't be bitter. It shouldn't taste like seaweed. It shouldn't
taste like grass, definitely not like uh the So can
(10:40):
I just say, you know, because I was so dismayed
by that, I uh started a macha company and I
got the U R L Macha dot com, which is
a great coup. It took some doing, and I made
connections with a very good producer of macha outside of Kyoto,
and so through that website, UH sell you know, variety
of qualities and watch it, but they're all really good.
(11:02):
Good for you, Glad you're doing that. The the interesting
place that psychedelics have taken our society, it's worth putting
a few seconds and you've lived through the whole thing, right.
So in fifty nine when you came back from Japan,
when Timothy Leary and others were starting to drop out,
and the wisdom at the time these are all emissions,
was that LSD and psilocybin, these other psychedelics could um
(11:24):
could hallucinogens could play an important role in getting people
to connect. And I didn't realize at the time that
the founder of a A had stopped drinking because so
share that story and if you don't mind, give us
a little bit of history lessons where do you think
you can play a role in our lives? So because
people are petrified, I know, so I h You know,
I began writing about experimenting the psychedelics, but actually back
(11:45):
in the late sixties, and my first book, The Natural
Mind publishing two, has a lot about psychedelics and their
potential therapeutic uses. So you didn't go to jail, no,
And I was way ahead of the curve on now. So,
first of all, these drugs are probably the safe as
drugs in medicine. They are far safer on a physical level,
and anything we use therapeutically, you can't kill people with LSD. Uh.
(12:08):
The danger are psychological and those are consequences of set
and setting of people's expectations and the environment and the dose.
So I think it is very important to structure these
experiences in the right way to ensure that they're they're positive.
You know, there's been a lot of talk about the
use of these uh in psychological disorders, psilocybin for o
(12:32):
c D and drug resistant depression m d m A
for post traumatic stress disorder, but I've always been fascinating
about the potential for use in physical medicine because I
have seen many times, UH psychedelic experiences change people's experiences
of their bodies in way that allow chronic disease processes
to relax or disappear. And that's not just chronic pain,
(12:56):
but autoimmune conditions, So that there's tremendous potential there, and
it's fascinating to see these suddenly being so coming into
prominence and people are really interested in them. So I
saw a special k ketamine was a proof of PTSD
among US servicemen returning right from overseas wars um. You
mentioned a couple of the different options be more specific.
(13:16):
If someone want to let's say someone was a cigarettes addiction, right,
one of the most pregalent problems that ages us seemingly
benign if you want to get off cigarettes, I'm told,
or alcoholism, as it found a did before he found
that a right, he took magic showman stopped stopped breaking,
and he tried his whole career to get it back
into the curriculum. Could never pull it off, and not
surprisingly in the nineteen fifties, that was not well accepted
(13:37):
in the United States. If someone's listening right now, it
has an addictive personality or addiction to something like cigarettes
or alcohol, how do you actually find the person treat
you was illegal? That's a very good question. Note it
is not legal at the moment, although it's been legalized
in some cities like Denver and Oakland. Whether that how
that runs up against federal law. I have no idea,
but I think the trend is going to be that
(13:58):
these will become available. But then the then the problem
is how do you find a guide? I think, you know,
you want to take that with somebody who's qualified by
their own experience at to guide people in the right
directions with these. So that's tricky. I mean, there's a
wonderful organization out there called MAPS, the Multidisciplinary Association for
Psychedelic Studies, which has made a lot of done a
(14:21):
lot of work in advancing these things to the point
where they will become available therapeutically. They have a good website,
maps dot org, and that's one place to start. By
the way, if you have not seen a this video,
I would urge you to watch it and your listeners
as well. Go to YouTube and search for housewife on LSD.
It is priceless. It is. It is a video from
(14:43):
the late nineteen sixties of a psychiatrist who I knew
at U c l A who administers a dose of
LSD to a very straight woman and she has a
total spiritual, non dual experience. That's just fantastic to watch.
I've heard rumors people that are respected by all of
society micro docing LSD se jobs typically, but yeah, I've
(15:06):
heard that you do as well. I have tried it.
I've tried micro docing with Holt twice. I didn't like it.
I didn't like the feeling in my body. There was
like a foreign energy, and at lasted too long. I
have also experimenting with micro dosing with with mushrooms, and
this is about a tenth of the dose that people
would take to have a trip, and I found that
(15:27):
I got energized from it. Um I found it useful
for writing and creative thought. I have not done it
a whole lot, but it's something that I have experimented with.
I know people who do it very regularly and and
attribute a lot of creative growth to it. Does it
hurt their creativity when they're not on the micro dose
doesn't seem to see it doesn't seem to but I
don't know enough about it to give you a really
(15:48):
good answer to this transition. Is CBD, yes, which everywhere
in every street corner. And my concerns, I said sure
you articulate, is that the dosing is often way below
what could be therapeutic expensive and half we've checked that
most of what we check in our studios fake. Furthermore,
I think the only real evidence we have for therapeutic
(16:09):
effect is for drug resistance seizures and kids. You know
that is a proved effect. The rest of it, I
think is hypothetical and we don't really know. And some
people say it's great for pain, for joint pain, for sleep.
I don't think we have a definitive evidence on that.
You use it all in your practice, I don't. How
about the one thing I have I have, I've been
(16:30):
told that it's really good for anxiety and dogs. So
I have one dog that is prone if there's a
lightning and thunder who gets anxious. So I'm gonna try
giving her some CBD to see what happens. How about
bedical marijuana, Well, I think there's tremendous potential there but again,
uh there. I think the problem is that there's such
a profusion of products in the market, it's very hard
(16:53):
to know what they are. It's hard to know how
to tell people what to use. Also, in my experience,
responses to marijuana are very individual, So you know, it
can cause some people to fall asleep, some other people
to become wakeful. Uh. So you have to experiment to
see what it does for you, and then you have
to find the right form of it. And that's tricky
today because there's just so much different stuff out there.
(17:16):
More questions after the break. There's a lot of pop
wisdom around medical marijuana. I've learned about medical medical marijuana
from people who see themselves as exprests, many of them
aren't met in the medical field. But I've also called
(17:37):
the scientists for the biggest companies in this space, most
of them overseas. By the way, there are big concerns,
lots of money pouring into a Canada is really etcetera.
And what I learned from the scientist is very different
from what I'm hearing. We just said. Some people small seeps,
some people are creative, and the average person out there
who smokes possibly it's a tiva versus right. It's not.
It's not that the plants are all mixed, that there's
(17:57):
no pure plant any exactly right that you know. And also,
if doctors are going to use it, they want to
have some preparation that looks like a medical preparation. They're
not gonna be comfortable telling people to go smoke something. Uh.
There There is a very good product made in the
UK called sat EVAs that's an oral sper metered oral spray,
(18:18):
a whole cannabis extract. The FDA will not so far
let it in the US, but it's used to It's
available in Canada and the Netherlands and other European countries.
That looks like a medical drug, and I think doctors
would be comfortable with recommending that to people. You see
a seismic shift with the federal government in the next
two or three years saying enough, we don't want to
(18:40):
be in the business of enforcing medications like this. We're
getting out. I think that has to happen. I think
it's gonna be when when some critical massive states legalize
it and there's just a groundswell of momentum for it.
I think the federal government will have to give in
last question. Bio hacking. You know sensitive spots at andel Ells.
You know, I'm in touch with a lot of bio hackers.
(19:02):
I've done podcasts a lot of bio hackers. Something about
it makes me nervous. I mean that some of it
is like people trying to you know, they're trying to
hack the physiological system with extreme dietary manipulation, use of supplements.
But some of these people are injecting things into themselves
and doing stuff that makes me very nervous. So I
(19:24):
think there's some good there and I'm interested to watch
these experiments, but a lot of it I'm very questious about.
I love the smile you always have in your face.
It's a great, honest bed time with you, your friend,
Andrew Wild. Thank you. You can hear lots more from
Dr Wild on his brand new podcast, Body of Wonder.
It's coming out this year. Check it out read the
things he says. He's got a lot of wisdom in
this man. Thanks. And also, can I tell you that
(19:47):
I have a discount code for Macha for your listeners,
um which is um oz one five. Oh my goodness,
exactly
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Nikki Glaser Podcast
Every week comedian and infamous roaster Nikki Glaser provides a fun, fast-paced, and brutally honest look into current pop-culture and her own personal life.