The School of Greatness - The Gut & Brain Connection and Ending Inflammation w/Dr. Emeran Mayer EP 1138

Episode Date: July 19, 2021

“Any emotions that you experience chronically or frequently have a mirror image in your body.”Today's guest is Dr. Emeran Mayer. He's one of the world’s foremost experts on the gut brain connection and for over the past 40 years, his research and published work has offered groundbreaking evidence of the critical connection between the brain and the gut. He is the executive director of the G. Oppenheimer Center for Neurobiology of Stress and Resilience and the co-director of the Digestive Diseases Research Center at the University of California at Los Angeles. Our conversation was so powerful that I wanted to split into 2 parts! So look out for part 2 coming later this week!In this episode Lewis and Dr. Emeran Mayer discuss the biggest triggers for inflammation, the foods we should eat & avoid to improve our gut health, why we’ve become so addicted to sugar & the effects it has on our body, whether our brain or gut health affects our body more, how our digestive system functions, and so much more!For more go to: www.lewishowes.com/1138Check out his new book : THE GUT-IMMUNE CONNECTIONThe Wim Hof Experience: Mindset Training, Power Breathing, and Brotherhood: https://link.chtbl.com/910-podA Scientific Guide to Living Longer, Feeling Happier & Eating Healthier with Dr. Rhonda Patrick: https://link.chtbl.com/967-podThe Science of Sleep for Ultimate Success with Shawn Stevenson: https://link.chtbl.com/896-pod 

This is episode number 1138 with Dr. Emmerin Meyer. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

I've got a big announcement. The School of Greatness is available on American public television. That's right. When I started my podcast, I had zero listeners and I kept going because I wanted to help people get the information that I didn't have access to growing up. Now, not only have we become one of the top podcasts in the world, but I'm excited to tell you that the School of Greatness show is on TV. And you can go to lewishouse.com slash watch to see when it's available on your TV. Every person tuning in really helps us right now. So if you're able to also share this with anyone you think would find it valuable that doesn't consume podcasts regularly, that would be greatly appreciated.

Again, that's lewishouse.com slash watch. Check it out now. My guest today is Dr. Emmerin Meyer, and I'm so excited about this one. He's one of the world's foremost experts on the gut-brain connection, and for over the past 40 years, his research and published work has offered groundbreaking evidence of the critical connection between the brain and the gut. He's the executive director of the G. Oppenheimer Center for Neurobiology of Stress and Resilience and the co-director of the Digestive Disease Research Center at the University of California at Los Angeles. He's written a new book called The Gut-Immune Connection, how understanding the connection between food and immunity can help us regain our health. And our conversation was so powerful that I wanted to break it up into two different parts. So look out for part two coming later this week. In this

episode, we discussed the biggest triggers for inflammation, the foods we should eat and avoid to improve our gut health, why we've become so addicted to sugar and how that affects our body, whether our brain or gut health affects our body more, how our digestive system functions, and so much more. And if you're enjoying this and you know someone that could be inspired by this, please share this with a friend. And if this is your first time here, click the subscribe button on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or anywhere else that you're listening to this right now, as I'm so pumped about

this one and I can't wait for you to listen to it. Welcome back, everyone, to the School of Greatness podcast. Very excited about our guest, Dr. Emron Mayer. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here. Thanks. Very, very, of course, I'm very excited about this because I've been fascinated by the mind, the brain, and now more and more as I'm researching this about the brain and the gut connection. And my friend, our friend, Shawn Stevenson said, you've got to bring this guy on who's been doing this for 40 years, studying and researching and applying the intersection between the brain and the gut and how it all connects to ending stress, inflammation, optimizing

the body, feeling better, and all these things. So you've been doing this for a long time. Now you're coming out into the world and revealing and sharing these lessons and these findings from the science that you're doing and the research you're doing. And I'm curious, in your studies, what are the biggest triggers for inflammation in the body? Is it environment? Is it what we consume? Is it toxins on our body that we're putting on ourselves? Is it environment? Is it what we consume? Is it toxins on our body that we're

putting on ourselves? Is it stress hormones? What are these biggest triggers for inflammation? Well, I mean, you listed them all. So the way the body works, it integrates influences from multiple sources, particularly the central nervous system, the brain. And it's sort of like this supercomputer applying artificial intelligence to these influences. And then it extracts patterns and decides on relevance and salience. And based on that salience, it makes responses, you know, in terms of this needs to be, we need to adjust this system, we need to adjust this system. And it's doing obviously a phenomenal job because a lot of the influences

that we're exposed to, the brain in evolution is never encountered. You know, the chemicals, the kind of food that we eat, we never, humans never were exposed to that kind of food. The visual experiences, you know, so, yeah, the brain and the brain-gut system, because I really always like to link, keep those together, and we can talk about this later, why, is a master in this, you know, in this computation of salience and responding to it. And that system has worked so well that it's kept us alive as a species. And, you know, we're thriving.

I'm not sure what's happening now. The salience, there's some sort of a mismatch now between the salience assessment and what's good for us on the planet. But, you know, there will be corrections in that as well, I'm sure. Right. Now, do you think, is the brain influencing the body more or is the gut influencing the brain more? So you could, you know, I've compared this to a central government and local governments in the states and counties.

And there's a lot of influence that goes, that comes from the body. And that plays a big role in our emotions, you know, emotional states. And as I'll talk about, you know, there's a lot of stuff now going on with this low-grade immune system activation that we all, most people are now exposed to because of our diet. And that's a stream of information that constantly goes to the brain. You don't feel it. You don't, it doesn't hurt doesn't generate any any symptoms but over time it does change your brain structurally and then functionally so a big influence subliminally that goes to the brain all the time and also big things so people have said you know we can't yes we can generate

artificial intelligence but it won't have emotions because it doesn't have the body to send this constant signals to it. But then on the other hand, I mean, the brain is obviously the most sophisticated computer in the universe up to now. And it does, it sends signals to the body all the time. There's a part of the nervous system called the autonomic nervous system that reaches pretty much every cell in your body. You have a sensory part, the vagus nerve, that reports anything that goes on anywhere constantly to the brain. And then the brain has a system to respond to that.

And, again, it can influence every cell in distinct patterns. It doesn't always kick in because they would be overwhelmed. It kicks in when it's necessary, when there's a threat. I'm curious about, I don't know if you've studied this, but I'm curious about when human beings look themselves in the mirror and they see themselves and they shape an identity, they perceive an identity, and maybe they look chiseled. They're like this Greek god maybe they look chiseled. They're like this

Greek god that's just chiseled. They're athletic, but they don't believe they're healthy or fit for whatever reason. Their identity has made them look like they're not. They don't love themselves, or they don't believe that they look good, or whatever it is. Is there anything to play around identity that we shape for ourselves, the image of ourself, and making us either healthier or more susceptible to diseases or a weakened immune system? Am I out there too much by asking this, but I'm curious. Dr. Yeah, no, no.

So, I mean, this is definitely something that happens a lot, I mean, to a lot of people, that their identity is...it's obviously shaped early on in life. You know, typically, there could also be genetic factors, but most of it will happen early in life. The feedback you get from your parents and from your friends, if that's generally positive or negative, if it's negative, you know, it can have two effects. One is it can really damage your self-identity and your self-worth. Or you could rebel against it and say, I'm not going to accept this. I'm creating my own identity.

I think it will have, almost certainly, it does have. I mean, anything that happens in the brain in terms of these emotional, like, or identity. Like, in my own research, I've always been more concerned about the emotional influences on the body. So, any emotion that you experience either chronically or, so more of these emotions that are present all the time, background background options that that has a mirror image in your body really so give me an example if you're thinking if you're feeling an emotion of not enough or lack or sick or stress if you're feeling and thinking that consistently then the body will mirror that the body body will mirror it. And so I focus primarily on the gut, you know, because it's kind of a unique organ because it has all these other things in it, not just

the gut wall, but the immune system and the nervous system of the gut and hormonal system. But that will, so this is not separate. You know, this is like, just as some people, you look at them and you look at their face and you can tell what's going on, you know, if you're good in that. The, you know, the furrows between your eyebrows and, you know,

it's, unless you're a poker player, you exhibit these emotions in your face. But the same thing happens in every part of your body you know your your heart and your i'm not sure about organs like you know like the kidneys and the liver that they're not sort of more mechanical devices or chemical devices not as much these computational as so the heart's also the heart is basically a pump. But the gut is something that is in a different realm. It's very sensitive to emotions. And I would say...

The gut, is that why you feel butterflies? You feel sick when you see something, you feel it in your gut? Yeah. And also this self-identity. Quite honestly, before you asked the question, I never even thought about this, but I'm absolutely convinced. I'm, you know, quite honestly, before you asked the question, I never even thought about this, but I'm absolutely convinced. I'm fascinated by this. I'm absolutely convinced that your gut has a mirror image of your sense of identity. Really? Yeah. I think if you have an inferiority complex, that will affect the gut. And now, you know, since we talked a lot about the gut microbiome that lives inside the gut, which communicates very closely with the gut, even that system gets these messages, you know,

from the brain. And this is different. So if you, you know, are threatened by a wild animal, you will have a peak in your stress response. And within a couple of seconds or minutes, it will go down and be normal again. With these background emotions or something like a sense of identity, that's with you all the time. Always. You're always thinking and feeling like I'm not enough or imposter syndrome or something. And it's ingrained in your unconscious. It comes out in your dreams. So what does that do to the body or the immune system if you're kind of constantly thinking

these things or have a belief system that I'm not enough or comparing to someone else or something else or in lack or in scarcity? What does that do to the immune system, the gut, the body? Yeah, so I'm talking about the immune system. If you have this, I talked about this acute threat or this acute emotion of an acute stress, it will temporarily increase the activity of your immune system because... Like spike up cortisol or something? Yeah, yeah. Of your immune system because... Like spike up cortisol or something? Yeah, yeah.

Of your stress system. Gotcha. But if it's chronic, it has a totally different effect on it, so often the opposite effect. And it will... I mean, there's many studies coming out on this now, you know, that even early adverse life events that play a big role in shaping this identity have been found to have an effect on the gene expression pattern in your immune cells, in some of your immune cells, which in an adult person, so

you can...there's a memory in these immune cells that reflects what, that reflects what happened to you at the age of, you know. Five, seven, nine, whatever. And that obviously shapes when these immune cells are called into action, that shapes the immune response. There's a trigger that you'll feel when you see something that reflects what you went through. Right? So there's a memory, there's an immune memory, I mean, there's clearly also this brain memory in our unconscious. It's probably the way the body's organized that some of the systems, particularly the nervous system and immune system, can form these memories that then later really influence many functions in your body and then also your behavior.

So how do we heal these things? If we have this memory of something from the past in our immune system or in our DNA and in our cells, how do we heal or move beyond it so it doesn't hold us back? Well there's different ways. There's some people that do this on their own you know they pull themselves out of it there's other people that you know go into psychoanalysis so I mentioned in my first book you know I went through Jung Yen dream analysis for several years at some point in my life during some of an existential crisis and found that extremely helpful connecting to,

I mean, just watching your dreams for a while and realize some are recurring. I mean, those are the ones that obviously have a big influence on, because they're there all the time. So if you imagine every night, you know, these experiences are recalled and even during a sleep effect, systems within your body. So that's another way. There's ways today,

cognitive behavioral therapy doesn't deal with the roots of it. They just change your behavior. It's another way of dealing with it. So forget about reversing or patching up what happened early on. And then there's the most modern way, it's the psychedelics. I'm not an expert on this, but I've gotten really interested in that for a variety of reasons. Because when I first came to UCLA for training, I was fascinated by this whole counterculture.

There were workshops in SLN organized by the Ojai Foundation. And I listened to many of these leading figures at the time, you know, giving these workshops. So this was in the early 70s, you know, and they, well, early 80s, I'd say, when I experienced it. well early 80s i say when i experienced it and um they talked about you know psychoanalysis with lsd or with ketamine and um and then it was completely you know closed off for science from for decades and now it's coming back coming back rapidly you know and um there's some fascinating stuff coming out. And also in my travels during college in South America, I've stayed with some of these tribes on the Orinoco River, and they use the same substance, a similar substance to what's in Ayahuasca. And we've seen how they get into these trans states.

And so now, fast forward 35, 40 years, I find it fascinating that this is now back in the mainstream. And it will, so this is just a way of removing the control, if you say it in a simplistic way, removing the control that we have, the prefrontal cortex to suppress these things. You loosen that control and then this stuff will bubble up, maybe very painful. I think you shouldn't do it without the guidance of an experienced shaman or psychotherapist. But that's another way of processing. Now the majority of people go through life without ever dealing with this. They get sick. They get their heart attack, diabetes.

They never think about this. Wow. I'm curious about the gut. When you say the gut, what is included in that? What are all the elements of gut? Yeah, so let's start with when I went to medical school, the gut was basically the digestive organ. Dr. The digestive organ. Dr. The digestive organ. So something that we know very well from the esophagus,

the stomach, the small intestine, large intestine, each of those regions has a special task. And the ultimate goal, we we thought is the breaking down of food into absorbable and you know components that are then provide the nutrients for for our body that was the thought but then um you know when i came to ucla to UCLA initially as a research fellow, worked in a lab, late John Walsh, and so they found at the time that there were molecules in the gut that somewhat didn't fit that description. You know, they were neurotransmitters. And so to make a long story short... Transmitters from the brain to the gut.

Same molecules. And the receptors, and then people thought about why is that? And it was the discovery of a nervous system in the gut, you know, 150 million neurons that are there, and very similar in their... 150 million neurons in the gut. In the gut. Sandwiched. So if you look at a gut, you wouldn't see it. The gut has several layers.

And in between these layers, there's a net of nerve cells that wraps around it. But because the gut is so long, it adds up with the numbers. And the main function of that system is really to completely regulate the gut. In an animal model, you can take out the gut, put it in a test tube, and this gut will still have the same functions, peristalsis and secretion, as it has when it's connected to the rest of the body. You can put it in a tube, and it'll still process food? Yeah.

It'll still run it through the same way. So what does that tell us? So it tells us that gut, or this little gut in the brain, is really the primary regulator of our gut functions, the digestive functions. But then there was another realization that these same, you know, these same transmitters were also present within the brain as in the gut.

That caused a lot of surprise, you know, that why would you have that? Then, again, a long story, the evolution. In evolution, we started out the most primitive organisms with that gut brain. And then gradually as animals, this was marine creatures, tiny marine creatures in the oceans. As in evolution, polar animals develop with a head, then some of these nerves migrated to the head and formed, you know, at the beginning of the central nervous system. And then there was some division of labor at some point that before the gut brain did everything, because there was no head and no other functions, no other organs.

So later our big brains then took over the regulation, the response to the environment, the coordination of organs within the regulation, the response to the environment, the coordination of organs within the body, and the digestive side was left to the brain in the gut, the nervous system. But that means there's a very intimate relationship between these two, more than with any other organ in the body. Clearly the heart gets a lot of signals from the brain when we're stressed,

or the blood vessels, the blood pressure goes up. But it's nothing compared to what goes on in this multi-lane highway between the brain and the gut. So, and, yeah, I would say, so a lot of people then think, you know, are our emotions processed by the gut's nervous system? Or that's probably not the case. I think there's still the more sophisticated things happen at the brain level. Okay. But it's just this constant signal, you know signal in a bidirectional way that...

Like when we see something, or we feel triggered, or we see a threat, or see something we like or we don't like, and then we feel it in our gut, is it first processed through the eyes into the brain and then connects down to the gut? Or is it we see something and it goes from the gut up to the brain. No, I would say this happens first in the brain, then within milliseconds, it's boom. It's a signal down. It's instant, right.

And as you said, it can be good or bad, this arousal mechanism. Yeah, it can be pleasure or pain or stress, right? Yeah, it can be you go in your first state and you have people talking about butterflies in their stomach, and it can be when you have to give a speech the first time. When you're nervous. Or an actor. So it's the same mechanism. It's value neutral, that arousal.

But then there's also emotion-specific signals that happen. So anger, anxiety. We don't know about something like jealousy. That hasn't really been studied. But anger and fear, that has been studied. We know exactly the patterns that happen in every level of the gut when you have these emotions. And one of the reasons that these emotions then hang around for a long time, it's not like you can

turn them off. Anger. So some people train themselves, you know, to have more equanimity and not get carried away by the anger. But a lot of people, that anger sticks with them or the fear. And then that's because it reverberates in these gut circuits. Really? In between the gut and the brain, and it sets up this vicious cycle, and the brain cannot easily shut it off unless you train it, train yourself to do it. How do you train yourself to let go of anger? Well, it's a lot of the meditative techniques of mindfulness that you… It's the practice.

It doesn't happen overnight. It's like a practice of doing it over and over. It's the practice. You experience that emotion and you train yourself to let it go, to see it float away. Not hold on to it. You studied Buddhism for a while as well, right?

This is something I've always been fascinated by. Looking back, I don't even know why I was interested. It's probably my own personal issues. But but that stuck with me that interest and I find now more than ever the the wisdom that is in these Buddhist concepts both in terms of emotional regulation I mean who would have thought that mindfulness based stress reduction would become a commonly used household name or an app.

When I was interested, it was an esoteric thing. People say, yeah, it's crazy, Buddhism. In the last decade, it's become the mainstream, mindfulness meditation. And that all has to do with these concepts that we just talked about, to train yourself not to be stuck with these emotions. Because these emotions, if they hang around, as we now said several times, it's not just within your brain. They circulate through your body.

Your whole body is affected. And it's a very unhealthy situation to be in that state. Now I've been studying a lot of breath work over the last four or five years. I've studied to become a meditation instructor in India. Then I've been learning from Wim Hof. I'm not sure if you're familiar with Wim Hof and his practices. There's the yoga practices in general and breath work. How much connection is there between the way we breathe, the style of breathing, the shortness

or the length and the calmness, the intensity of breathing in affecting the immune system and the gut-brain connection? Is there science around breath? Dr. Yeah, there's a science. And I have to admit, I'm not an expert on the various techniques that people have been using. So we've been using in our work the simplest form, the abdominal breathing or diaphragmatic breathing, where you basically just switch from your typical adult pattern. So if you have 10 people and you tell them take a deep breath, they all take it into their chest.

Yes. You know, this is it. And to switch that pattern to inhaling into your body, into your stomach, does wonders. And the reason it is because the diaphragm is closely connected and the lung closely connected to the vagus nerve with the brain, with these emotional centers within the brain. So if you're stressed and you consciously now tell your diaphragm to go into a pattern that is associated with relaxation, the body sends signals to the brain now

that are incompatible with the stress perception. And if you are good in doing this, train yourself, then you will be able to overcome it quickly. Really? So I've been doing this again. You asked me why I started these things. doing this again, you know, he asked me why I started these things. I mean, I had some issues when I was younger where I thought this was, somebody taught me, a psychologist taught me this, and I've been practicing this for 60 years, you know, in the car, if I have to give a talk in the car to the, and I've gotten so good in it that within seconds I

can switch it. What is the practice? Well, the initial practice is you just spend 15 minutes three times a day lying down and breathing and counting your breaths and then combining it

with the mindfulness practice that anytime you exhale you let the negative emotions of anxiety go. And the only focus is on your breath and nothing else. You clear your mind

of any distracting thoughts. And then if you do this long enough, it takes you a second to do this and you feel the warmth in your stomach. It's an interesting thing. So it comes back to the gut. So what happens second to do this and you feel the warmth in your stomach. It's an interesting thing. So it comes back to the gut. So what happens when you do this and why do you get this feeling of warmth and relaxation

in your abdomen, which- And then it sends signals to the brain. It sends signals to the brain and it forces the brain to change. To shift. To shift. To shift. The only humans that do this spontaneously are young kids, infants. If you watch a child, they breathe into their belly spontaneously. Automatically. Automatically.

And with becoming a teenager and being an adult, it switches to the chest. Why is that? Why do we shift from our natural state to an unnatural state? I'm not sure. Yeah, I'm not sure. We don't teach our children that. You know, it's something that happens maybe because as an adult we go into a more stressful interaction, confrontational interaction with the world.

I also can answer this question if you ask me do women breathe more through their belly than men do? My guess would be yes. Because women are generally more in touch with their emotional side. But it's something we have this biofeedback device with us. You don't need to hook yourself up to electrodes or to EEG. You know, you can just sense it.

Yeah, I would say this should be, something should be trained in kindergarten. In kindergarten. Like many other things, like a healthy diet. Absolutely. Speaking of healthy diet, when we have sugar or processed food or something that is not whole healthy foods, what is that doing to the gut-brain and the brain connection? to the gut-brain and the brain connection. The moment we intake something that is processed, sugary, alcohol, something that we know is not the healthiest consumption. What does it do to the gut?

How does it affect the immune system and the brain? Yeah, so there's a short-term, a quick effect, and there's something that takes longer. So the short-term effect, we have a lot of receptors in our mouths, you know, like sweet taste receptors and bitter taste receptors, also receptors that sense texture. So that's the immediate reaction. The brain gets this immediately, and it forms memories of this, and it forms the gain of these receptors is determined, again, early on in life. You know, your sweet preference is programmed early on in life.

And we do this extensively with our kids that any positive event like birthdays or celebrations, lots of sugar, you know. Oh, right. They want it more and more. Yeah. They want it more and more. Yeah. And then, for example, in Mexico with the former Mexican president, Fox, who was also the CEO of Coke.

Oh, man. So they promoted sweet drinks like Coke to mothers with young children to calm down their children. So one of the reasons for their big obesity problem is that their taste preferences have been programmed. Now, this program is not permanent. You can change this as an adult. If you go to a sugar-free diet, initially it's hard because you have to overcome that set point. But you'll notice that after a short period of time, a few months, your sensitivity to sugar changes. And you actually

develop an adversity to sugary foods, which is a very interesting experience. Same thing can be said about spices, bitter taste. As kids, we hate bitter taste. As adults, we love some drinks that are really bitter. And these receptors, quite interesting, they're not just in our mouth, but they're also in our gut. Obviously, in our gut, they don't transmit conscious information. So if I infuse something sweet into your intestine, you wouldn't know if it's sweet or not. Really?

It's more through the tongue? It's the tongue and the rest of your oral cavity. Huh. So if I just put it into my gut, I wouldn't know it's sweet? Then you wouldn't notice it, but it still has generate signals back to the brain. I'd feel probably more sick than anything. I'd probably feel like, ugh. Because when you intake it, it tastes good. And then 10 minutes later, you're like, oh, my stomach

hurts. Right? Yeah. Why is that? Why is something that tastes good going in but hurts you after? Yeah, because different mechanisms kick in. Your mouth, so the first impression is all about the hedonic aspect of food. It's the thing that nature has designed us to go after sweet berries. So there wasn't that much sugar around like a million years ago. So when human ancestors found something sweet, they wanted to make sure they devoured

it. It was rare, too. It was rare. It was scarce. Now it's abundant. It's in everything. It's in everything. And so what has happened now, it's no longer an adaptive mechanism to find these important things, but it's a maladaptive mechanism that causes all kinds of downstream problems. There's another thing about fat. The same thing

fat is this hedonic quality, like butter. People love butter. People love chocolates with a lot of fat in it. Not just the dark chocolate. The bitter kind, yeah, yeah. So that's another one. And it's another one of these adaptive mechanisms where you want to have, when things were rare,

you were craving for this, you know, high-caloric, these high-caloric supplements, sugar and fat. But when it gets downstream, other things happen. So it changes, so both the sugar and the fat changes the receptors that sense it in a way that, for example, fat that goes down into your intestine, they desensitize the vagus nerve so normally the vagus nerve generates a feeling of satiety and fullness so you don't want to stop eating if you're in a high fat diet these receptors get desensitized and you no longer get that feeling so now you can keep on eating

because the feedback mechanism that shuts off this is no longer, and the same with the sweet taste receptors. So our diet, with having packed it with these high-caloric, high-density foods, has hijacked the system, and it's moved into an opposite direction. Also the microbes, you know, so by eating these kinds of foods that are so overabundant in our diet now, you select a different population of microbes. And it's particularly true about, so we crave the sugar,

but not the complex carbohydrates, which are the good form of energy that we should be eating. So sugar is an easily digestible, you know, immediately digestible and absorbable carbohydrate. The complex carbohydrates, which are mainly in plants, they cannot be absorbed quickly. They need the microbes. So if you you on a diet that's high in these absorbable sugar molecules and deficient in the in the non-absorbable carbohydrates you select

a population of microbes that is does not produce the beneficial things in in your in your gut. So you will ultimately, steps of events create a, you know, it's been called a leaky gut. So a gut that leads to the activation of the immune system in the gut that is not adaptive. So a lot of things that are happening today have become maladaptive. Evolution has assigned us this optimal machine that was perfect for hundreds of thousands of years, but we have changed the environment so dramatically

that evolution never anticipated that. So now we have this big mismatch of the diet that feels good initially, but has a lot of downstream negative effects on us. More depressed, but also most importantly engages the immune system in a way that then affects the brain. Some people with a subset of patients with depression have an immune component, brain inflammation, but then also with these neurodegenerative diseases, Alzheimer's and

Parkinson's. So, yeah, diet plays a big role at multiple levels, you know, and what we have to realize is that what we were designed for, these optimal survival machines, we have to fundamentally change that concept. You know, we can no longer follow that and trust nature that will take care of this. We have to really consciously change it because we're not, otherwise we just continue to run into the health issues that we're facing now. What would you say are the five foods we should be eating that will optimize our brain-gut connection? If we could choose these five foods consistently, what would you recommend? Well, they would all fall into, the majority would fall into the category of plant-based

foods. So it could be leafy vegetables, roots, seeds, nuts, and a big variety of these foods. and a big variety of these foods. So if you just eat tomatoes or if you just eat kale, nothing else, it won't give you that benefit. Really? And the reason for that is, I mean this is what I push in my book. We should really refocus our diet

on feeding the optimal food to our microbes. To the microbes, the microbiome of the microbes. Everything else will happen by default because we are designed, our ancestors lived on a diet, a very low caloric density. They were harvesting and gathering, They were harvesting and gathering herbs and nuts and seeds and tubers and things that were around them, all very low caloric density, very low sugar in it, lots of fiber. Initially, humans weren't even able to process them.

Then with cooking, we were able to break down some of the fibers. But if you think about it, the design of our bodies and our digestive system was really made with dealing with these types of foods that, you know, people encountered hundreds of thousands of years ago. In nature. In nature. So, you know, we had a very large intestine, our fermenting system with all the microbes, and very little was absorbed in the small intestine, and a lot of it happened, the salvage of calories happened by the microbes, with the help of the microbes in the large intestine.

We've completely reversed this. Now we have a diet that is 99% absorbed in the small intestine. We've completely reversed this. Now we have a diet that is 99% absorbed in the small intestine. What does that mean? That means we've taken out modern agriculture. You mean because with no fiber or something and then it's processed in the small intestine, but fiber is more in the large intestine?

Yeah, taking out most of the fiber molecules so we don't eat wild rice, but we eat the white rice. And we don't eat the types of potatoes, like the sweet potato, but we eat the potato. The white potato. Yeah, the white potato or the French fried potato. Right, right, right. That's the dominant form.

The sweet potato is the better one. And they've all been selected really based on these taste preferences, you know, which have taken us on the wrong way. There's also a lot of molecules in plants, in addition to the fiber, that are non-absorbable, just polyphenols or antioxidants. They're not absorbable. They need the microbes to break them down. So if you're on a diet that's deficient or very low in plant-based foods, you have a

diet deficient in polyphenols and fiber. You have a diet deficient in polyphenols and fiber. And so you prevent your microbes to get their normal service or normal servings of foods. And the microbes respond to that in a pattern that ultimately leads to shrinkage of the compromise of the gut barrier, activation of the immune system. And so my lesson is always, you know, let's go back to a diet primarily that's optimized for the microbes. The microbes, which is in the large intestine.

It was the large intestine. And that will be the remedy for prevention of colon cancer, prevention of cardiovascular disease, probably most likely also prevention of Alzheimer's, Parkinson's. Diabetes. Yeah, all of those. So those foods to help prevent all those things are a big variety of leafy veggies, roots, seeds, nuts. What other foods were you mentioning? So it's also a few seafoods.

You know, there's mussels. There's the small fish like anchovies. Like all the small fish that are basically the bait for the big fish. Really? The small fish are still, there's several reasons for that. They're still abundant in the ocean. There's no decrease, no threat of extinction. They also are the lowest on the food chain,

so they don't have this accumulation of heavy metals and toxins. Interesting. They're going direct to the source, not being eaten by something else, not being eaten by something else that's being eaten by something else. And, you know, they're very popular in the Mediterranean cuisine. So if you go to Spain or Italy,

you'll see them in the market. You know, go to restaurants. Here, it's hard to find them, other than in canned form. Yeah, which is probably not the best form, is it, or is it okay? I mean... I can't answer that question, but it's

the only one that's available here. And there are companies that source these to sustainable fisheries in Spain that I would probably trust more than the marketing campaign that you see here. Mussels also, very low on the food chain. Now these, and then wild salmon. So wild salmon is a controversial thing because on the one side,

if everybody switched to wild salmon, there would be nothing left. So there are, again, a few sources for the sustainable harvest of salmon. They're typically more expensive than the farmed salmon. But the main health ingredients is omega-3 fatty acids. They are in all these. They're in the small fish. They're in the mussels. And they are in all these. They're in the small fish, they're in the mussels, and they're

in wild salmon. They're not in the... The bigger fish. Well, they're not in the bigger fish, and they're also not in the salmon that are farmed because they get a totally different nutrition. They don't get the food that, I mean, ultimately, you know, these omega-3 fatty acids come from the algae and the small fish feed on the algae and then the salmon feeds on it.

So if you remove that, you know, that source of omega-3 from the plants, then your fish will have a much lower concentration of these health-promoting molecules. What does omega-3 do for the gut-brain connection? So omega-3 fatty acids have always been, for a long time, been found to be promoting for brain health in general,

you know, both the growth and the function. There's now also studies that these omega-3 fatty acids have an influence on the microbes. And I can't tell you exactly. I mean, it's probably complicated because sort of, I mean, I hope this is not too complicated for you listeners. So when you ingest fats, they are processed in our small intestine. There's bile acids that make them absorbable. bile acids and make them absorbable.

Then the kind of bile acids that are produced from the type of, depending on the type of fat that you eat, and there's probably a large variety of these bile acids. So the pattern of these bile acids that are produced, then stored in your liver, in your gallbladder, excreted into the small intestine, they are metabolized by your microbes. Depending on what microbes you have,

they break them down into reabsorbable molecules that then get back into circulation. So what ends up back in your circulation, even though it starts out with facilitating fat absorption, once they get back into your circulation, they have a totally different function. They become signaling molecules to all your organs, including the brain. So now in Alzheimer's disease, for example, we know that short-chain fatty, not short-chain fatty, I said that secondary bile acids play a role in the neurodegeneration. So if you eat the fats that contain omega-3 or omega-6 or other saturated fatty acids, that has an effect on this system, which ultimately gets back into your blood and signals to your organs.

So it's complicated, but I mean, everything, once you get into the brain gut microbiome axis gets complicated. It's not linear. It's usually circular processes. And there's some unexpected players in this that we, you know, in our typical nutrition education, don't really pay attention, or in medicine. What would you say are the key factors to destroying our gut? What would those be?

Is it just all unhealthy food? Is it certain types of food? Is it other substances, drugs, or alcohol? What are the main things destroying it? Yeah, so, you know, destroying it. That causes leaky gut and inflammation. Yeah, so the factors that are worse for gut health, I would say, is that, probably number one, diet.

You know, and there it's the standard American diet with the deficiencies in... The SAD diet, right? The SAD, that's kind of a really appropriate acronym. There's deficiencies in all the components that are essential for a healthy microbiome and ultimately then for a healthy gut barrier. ultimately then for a healthy gut barrier. So then there's other things.

There's toxins that come with the food and chemicals. So even if you're a vegetarian and you don't pay attention to where your food comes from, you may be absorbing a lot of stuff that are herbicides or pesticides or insecticides that are used, or pesticides or insecticides that are used, for example, for the production, for the industrial-style production of soybeans, for example. So, you know, beans are very healthy. It's a high-fiber, high-protein kind of food,

so beans and lentils are probably one of the healthiest foods, but if they're produced with Roundup and all these chemicals to destroy the things around them in increasing amounts, you now start having the opposite effect. You're killing certain microbes and many of these insecticides and herbicides, they do have an effect on the microbes. They do not have a direct effect on our gut cells. So that's been worked out in early studies. That's why they were FDA approved.

But they do have an effect on the microbes. And that science has not been pursued in a great way. And what effect this ultimately has on, you know, so for example, the Central Valley in California has an epidemic of Parkinson's disease. Really? Central Valley in California? Yeah, so the main producer of vegetables, so if you're a vegetarian, you would think,

oh, this is the place where all my food comes from. But it is produced in an industrial agricultural style with the Roundup. So people are always worried about the genetically engineered food. I don't think we have evidence that that by itself is actually harmful, even though we may not have the latest, the last answers on that. The problem is that what's been thrown onto these plants. The chemicals on top of the plants. So wait, the Central Valley in California is the highest density of Alzheimer's?

Of Parkinson's. Of Parkinson's, sorry. It's an epidemic in that area, so colleagues at UCLA studies that population. Because they're getting their food from that location. Well, they're exposed, so first of all, the people are exposed. These dust croppers fly over these.

And so it's just exposed in the air as well. It's exposed in the air, probably possibly the water as well. It's exposing the air, possibly the water as well. But then these foods have on the surface residues of these increasing amounts of chemicals that are being sprayed on them.

And the kind of washing that you do at home, you know, just like a rinse doesn't work. It's not going to do it. Really? Because is it baked inside the DNA of the vegetable, the fruit?

It's what the chemical reaction is and the physical reaction between these herbicides. And it's multiple. It's pesticides and herbicides that are both sprayed on these plants that probably play a big role. So if you're a vegetarian or a vegan, I think you need to be concerned about the source, where your produce comes from. Wow, and Parkinson's is the, is that the, what's that disease?

Is that the physical? Yeah, so Parkinson's is a neurogenic disease. The advanced, classical symptoms. It's like the shaking, the tightness. Yeah, the gait, the posture, you know, the compromised walking. Wow. But that's the end result. You know, this disease in the majority of people starts in the gut, in the nervous system of the gut. So the first

degenerations happen at the gut level, and then they migrate, these degenerative bodies, these Lewy bodies, they migrate up the vagus nerve into the nucleus of the vagus nerve in the brainstem, and from there later, you know, to higher centers, emotional regulation. Wow. Are you able to reverse Parkinson's then through diet or once you… Well, this is the big hope. So the time from when the damage first shows up in your gut to the time it shows up in your brain can be up to 14 years. Oh.

So there's a long, wide open window where you can do interventions. And, you know, that's for the time where dietary interventions would have the biggest effect. I don't think that once it has affected you and you develop depression and gait abnormalities that you can reverse this, you know with with diet alone there's you know there's obviously the medications that we have in the future there may be other ways of doing it but for now the biggest hope is that that we can diagnose this early they see it the first symptoms and so one of the first symptoms is kind of interesting, is a new onset constipation because when these nerves

in the gut are affected, it doesn't function as properly anymore. Wow. 99% of physicians and patients will not make that connection. This is the first sign

of constipation. Like consistent constipation. Yeah, first onset and some of you never had that problem. When you've never had it before, gotcha. You know what's interesting? I'm going to share a personal problem with you.

When I was 16, I had eight teeth removed. I had my wisdom teeth removed and then four other teeth. I was supposed to get braces. They were doing it to create gaps, spaces, so that I could get braces. to get braces. They were doing it to create gaps, spaces so that I can get braces. I never got the braces until 20 years later, I decided to finally get Invisalign. They're not in right now. I take them out during interviews. And my jaw or my mouth or my teeth started to grow in a way where my back teeth never touched after that moment. So for 20 years, my back teeth never clenched down. It was just the front two teeth. And it would be very tiring

to chew with just your front two teeth. So I would just swallow things after a few bites. And sometimes I would have constipation because it was just whole foods in my gut, and it was hard to break down. And in the the last two years I've been finally able to chew again fully and it's crazy the ability to just flow you know when I go to the bathroom as opposed to feeling that I'm curious if I did some long-term damage to my gut. It wasn't always like that but I wonder if there is hope that I could reverse some of that whatever damage i might have done internally well let me ask you what kind of diet are you on are you know now i'm

pretty healthy yeah i would say i'm 80 healthy conscious on the weekends you know have a pizza have sugar have some ice cream but you're an omnivore or carnivore? I eat meat, yeah, yeah. I eat fish and chicken mostly. So there's an interesting side to that. So our stomach is very capable of breaking down foods mechanically. So if you don't chew things properly, the stomach will handle a lot of this. Compress it. And the stomach then has a mechanism, almost like a filter. You won't let any particle leave the stomach until it's one millimeter in diameter.

To go down through the intestine. So it goes into the stomach first, and then through the small intestine, to the large intestine, and then where? Well, the large intestine is being stored, and then ultimately you expel it with your bowel. Expel it. Is that the whole gut, the stomach, the large and small intestine? Is that it?

Starts with the esophagus. Esophagus. And you could almost say, since you mentioned it, that your oral cavity is part of it. It's part of the gut. It's the first step of it. I mean, there's multiple elements

in your mouth and your tongue, but you could almost say part of it is already the entry zone to your gut. So is that included in the scientific research of the gut, the mouth, and the tongue? Yeah, so I was telling you about these taste receptors that were first studies on the tongue and then later discovered also further downstream. It's certainly in terms of digestion, this relationship between the chewing and the,

so the more you chew, the faster it will leave your stomach. If you don't chew it, the stomach could take two hours you know to break it down i'm assuming we want to chew it more we don't want it to be stored in our stomach for eight hours right we want it to process quickly is that correct um that's probably you you could say it's i mean the human body is so adaptable. You know, our ancestors, they might have just gobbled. Swallowed because they're starving. They just stayed there for 24 hours. Yeah, and if you look at some animals, the way they gobble things down.

So I think we're adapted to different situations that we live in quite well. that we live in quite well. But what you describe doesn't make 100% sense to me that this is so related to your bowel movements. But certainly, you know, because of this... It might have been diet, too, because I just didn't have a good diet, you know. I was just eating whatever I wanted

because I was young and working out all the time. I think that could be more... That might have been it. Okay. And now I'm eating more consciously and green juices and smoothies as I was young and working out all the time. I think that could be more. That might have been it, okay. And now I'm eating more consciously. Green juices and smoothies and healthier vegetables, you know, all that stuff.

But the good thing is that you didn't, you know, that your constipation didn't kick in now. Because if you told me you always had normal bowel movements and your constipation just set in recently out of the movements, and the constipation just set in recently out of the blue. I would look, so what I do in my clinic, if somebody comes to me like that, I look at their hand movements, you know, and this is characteristic pathognomonic movement where people use their thumb and their index fingers

to have this movement, which is characteristic for Parkinson's disease. And I'm- If you see someone doing what? What's the movement? It's this rolling movement between, like without having anything there. Yes.

Between your thumb and your index. First two fingers. Middle finger. So if you see someone doing that kind of throughout the day or randomly, then that's a... And that person comes to me and says, God, I can't believe my bowel movements have changed so dramatically. And I've done that. I've sent people like that to a neurologist for an early diagnosis.

Really? And several times it was correct. So you've seen this in person before? I've seen this, yeah. You've seen people come in, usually typically men or some women as well? I've seen this for a million men. So they'll come in, and how old are they?

What's the age range? I've seen it in their 50s. And you'll notice them touching their fingers in this motion? Yeah, so have you always had this? And have you noticed this? The person said, no, I haven't noticed it. I haven't even noticed it. Really? So you're observing this as they're telling you

about their bowels or about their constipation? Really? So this has been really fascinating. And so this is why I think, ha, in terms of novel therapies, and what we can make a big impact on a disease that's really devastating, is if we have these early diagnoses, we have a window before the main, where during REM sleep you have these vivid dreams, and the only reason that you don't thrash around and hit your spouse next to

you is because the brain is a mechanism to inhibit your motor system. So when you have these vivid dreams, your brain shuts off the… Your motor system. Yeah, the motor system. It feels like you're running and jumping, but you're just late. Yeah, and so that's another thing that some patients, the spouses, so I always ask the spouses also, from what you have been used to, that the person next to you hits around or falls out of bed or something like that. So that's something that happens.

So the REM sleep is regulated by a nucleus in your brainstem, very close to the nucleus of the vagus. And that's an indication that some of this migration has happened to the brainstem. But if you have that abnormality, you almost have 100% certainty that you'll develop Parkinson's disease. And is there a way to reverse this?

We don't know. We don't know yet. We don't know yet. Maybe there's a way to delay it or to try to prevent. Delay it. It could be medications to break up these determinative bodies. Wow. So a lot of effort going into this now.

So I think it's very exciting. That's crazy that you can just notice this from people and see these signs. I am fascinated by all this. And I want to take it another direction for a second about, we talked about the gut brain connection. There's a gut brain and then there's the brain and then the gut and the brain connection, correct? But what about the gut mind connection and the way we think? The I guess outside of the brain you know the mind or wherever you want to you know our thoughts outside of the brain what is that connection like the gut and the mind yeah so I don't I mean

you know this was something when I published my first book people got fascinated by the idea does that gut have idea, does the gut have a mind? Does the gut have a mind? Does the enteric nervous system have a mind? Because it's similar to the brain. Because the mind-gut connection was your first book. Yeah. And I would say, I don't think we have any evidence for that.

But as a scientist, I never ruled something out. Based on our current knowledge. There were concepts about the mind. Dr. Dan Siegel, for example, was a prominent expert on the mind. He also doesn't believe that the mind is a property of our big brain. What is it a property of?

It's a system. It's a system how our brain interacts with the environment, with the people around us, and there's this loop that goes so that the mind is not an isolated self. I mean, this gets into this Buddhist discussion. Self is kind of an illusion. The mind is something bigger that connects us with

the people around us, with their minds. And I would say I kind of like this idea, but I would include feedback loop back to the gut. So it's a brain, gut, mind, and people around you.

That's the system of the mind. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. I hope you got some value out of this. If you did, make sure to share this with a friend and spread the message of greatness to the people in your life. You can post it on social media. Just tag me, Lewis Howes, as well, and let me know that you're listening to this. And if this is your first time here, click the subscribe button over on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

As well as leave us a rating or review over on Apple Podcasts. And let me know the part of this interview that you enjoyed the most. The part that you got the most value from this. I'd love to hear your thoughts over there. And I want to leave you with this quote from Julius Irving. Who said, if you don't do what's best for your body, you're the one who comes up on the short end. And that is true. It's all about having the knowledge,

seeking the wisdom, and then applying the wisdom into daily practice to optimize your body. The gut and brain connection is real and it's so powerful. And I can't wait to bring you part two coming next of this powerful interview with Dr. Emmerin Meyer.

And I want to remind you today, if no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And I'm so grateful for you. And you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.