Dr. Andrew weil is one of the worlds leading voices on Holistic Health. Hes a graduate of harvard medical school. Hes also widely known for establishing the field of Integrative Medicine. If you dont know already thats the combination of the best tenets of conventional and alternative medicine to create a more holistic treatment plan for patients. Dr. Weil is the founder and director of the center for Integrative Medicine at the university of arizona. Hes authored 10 books that have sold more than 10 million copies worldwide. One of the cornerstones of his philosophy on Better Health is diet. Hes recreated the food pyramid to emphasize antiinflammatory foods, including organic fruits and vegetables. Hes also a fan of seafood and healthy fats. Dr. Weil believes reducing chronic inflammation within the body can offset many health problems. I recently sat down with dr. Andrew weil in washington, d. C. To get his insights on the connection between food and Better Health and discuss his new role as a restaurateur. Let me. Let mestart off by saying, when i set out to get into my career, i wanted to be a broadcaster. Um, i dont think people generally wake up one morning and say, i want to be a guru, which is what youve become. How do you get from, you know, the kid to where youre sitting here today . Weil well, i think ive really followed my bliss and my truth. Uh, i was always a maverick. When i finished my medical studies, i knew that i hadnt learned how to keep people healthy. I thought there was more to medicine than what id been taught. And, uh, i began traveling around the world and meeting other kinds of practitioners and thinking, and gradually put together my own blend ofof medical theory and practice that i came to call Integrative Medicine. And i was just putting out what i thought was right. And, increasingly i got a following in the public. Mike talk to me about that because initially, um, youre just this thinker. Weil yup. Mike and you come up with this concept, but then you started to get like a parade of people that came forward and then the books and. Weil right, but interestingly for up through the first decades of my work, i had a larger and larger following in the general public, but none of my medical colleagues paid any attention to me. It was really only in the 1990s when the economics of health care began to sour that medical colleagues and institutions began to Pay Attention to what id been saying. And now, Integrative Medicine is really becoming a mainstream phenomenon. Mike but there was pushback then; theres still pushback weil theres still pushback and there probably always will be. But, clearly this is the way of the future. This is what people want. They want medicine thats costeffective, that emphasizes health and healing, that makes use of natural therapies, not just pharmaceutical drugs. And, um, i think whats really driving this movement now is economics because our Current Health care system is clearly not sustainable, and Integrative Medicine offers the promise of lowering costs while preserving or enhancing outcomes. Mike Integrative Medicine for those who arent familiar how would you describe weil the short answer is its the intelligent combination of conventional and alternative medicine, but its really much more than that. Its medicine thats focused on the bodys innate healing mechanisms, that looks at people as whole persons, not just physical bodies, that looks at all aspects of lifestyle, and therefore is really able to offer preventive advice, that values the practitionerpatient relationship, and then, you know, makes use of all available methods of managing disease. Mike breathing, uh, meditation. Weil breathing, dietary adjustment, exercise, uh. Taking advantage of the mindbody connection as well as conventional medicine. Integrative medicine does not reject conventional medicine. We build on that and enlarge it. Mike you were named by Time Magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2005. How did that change your life . [weil chuckles] weil uh, well, you know our society is very celebritydriven, and um. That cuts both ways in my life. My celebrity has really enabled me to do what i do in academic medicine. You know, i direct a center of excellence at the university of Arizona College of medicine, which trains physicians in Integrative Medicine. I dont think id have been able to do that if, you know, i had not had the, uh, celebrity that comes with things like that. Mike and then Television Appearances . Weil yeah. Mike so now when you go into the airport, people are like there he is. Weil yes, everybody watches what i eat, for example. Ha ha mike do you eat bad every once in a while . Weil im pretty good. You know, i pretty much follow what i preach. Mike well, speaking of eating were in an eating establishment. Um, its interesting you say you follow your bliss but somehow you followed into the restaurant business, which i suspect, it was not on your agenda early on. Howd that come about . Weil im a very good home cook. Uh, and over the years, many people who have eaten my food have said, you know, you ought to open a restaurant. I was smart enough to know that i knew nothing about the restaurant business, and it looked like a very tough business. So i was never tempted by that. But about 7, 8 years ago i was introduced to a very successful restaurateur, sam fox, in arizona, and i proposed to him the concept of a new kind of restaurant that would bring together the worlds of Good Nutrition and fine dining. He didnt get it. He said, health food doesnt sell. And i think he thought i meant tofu and sprouts. Uh so i invited him and his wife to my home. I cooked for them. He liked the food. His wheels began turning. And he said he was willing to try it, but he was very skeptical. So we opened this first one in phoenix about 6 years ago just as the economy tanked. Mike thats always good. Weil always good from the moment it opened its doors, it wasit was a stunning success. And sam initially said, well, cant tell anything about a new restaurant because everybodys going to come. But after 6 months, he said hed never seen anything like this, hed never had people come up on the street and hug him for opening a restaurant. Hed never had people from all over the country begging him to open one of these. Uh, hed never had a restaurant where people would come in and eat dinner 4 and 5 times a week, the same people. So i think weve hit on a really good concept that people like. And its been great fun for me. I do not have to do much on the business side. You know, i get to design menus and create recipes and oversee the food philosophy. And thats, for me, the fun part. Mike what about china or spreading outside the United States . Weil actually, weve had requests to open, um, these in canada, in china, in japan, uh in dubai, but i think for the moment, our focus is on the u. S. And, uh, you know, we want to get up to a certain number of restaurants here, but then i would be certainly open to looking into foreign markets. Mike lets talk about some of the stuff that you, uh, talk aboutchronic inflammation. Can you talk to us about what that is and what it can produce . Weil yeah. We all know inflammation on the surface of the body. Its local redness, heat, swelling, and pain in an area thats been injured or under attack. And inflammation is the cornerstone of the bodys healing response. Its how the body gets more nourishment and more immune activity to an area that needs it. But inflammation is so powerful. And its so potentially destructive that its very important that it stay where its supposed to stay and end when its supposed to end. If inflammation persists, if it serves no purpose, it becomes productive of disease. And it now looksand this is a relatively new idea in medicine, that chronic lowlevel imperceptible inflammation is the root cause of all of the major diseases of agingthings like cardiovascular disease alzheimers disease, even cancer. Um, and, therefore, containing inappropriate inflammation seems to be the best overall strategy for maximum longevity and health. There are a lot of influences on inflammation uh, genetics, stress, exposure to environmental toxins, but diet has a huge influence. And i think theres no question that the mainstream diet in north america favors inflammation. It gives us the wrong kinds of fats, the wrong kinds of carbohydrates, and not enough of the protective elements that are found mostly in fruits and vegetables and herbs and spices. So i designed about 10, 12 years ago an antiinflammatory diet. I based it on the mediterranean diet because we have very strong Scientific Evidence that thats the way of eating thats best correlated with overall General Health and longevity. But i tweaked that to make it more powerful by adding asian influences. Ive spent a lot of time in asia; im familiar with asian ingredients. Um, so ive come up with this antiinflammatory diet and antiinflammatory diet pyramid. And that really is the basis of the menu thats at true food kitchen. Mike uh, you had talked earlier about some of the criticism and we do have kind of a silobased medical profession where you might be in one silo and the others are. But one critic wrote this about you, and i want to get your thoughts on it. And im sure youve heard all the criticism, so this wont come as a surprise. He looks like an aging 1960s rock star. Hes quite charismatic. No physician that i can think of has over the course of his lifetime done more to promote the rise of quackamedic medicine. um, when they say quack or quackamedic, um, it has to sting, doesnt it . Weil no, because i know that what i do is right and based in Scientific Evidence. First of all, a great deal thats done in conventional medicine does not have a good Scientific Evidence base. Uh secondly, statements like that are really ignorant because a lot of, um, what is dismissed as quackery, in fact has very strong evidence. For instance, im trained as a botanist as well as a physician. And medical botany is one of my career interests. Theres an awful lot of good Scientific Evidence for the efficacy and safety of many plant medicines. And this is all dismissed, you know, in one sentence by people like this. I saw an article recently in which all of chinese medicine was equated with, uh crystal healing. Thats just ignorant. You know, that chinese medicine includes acupuncture, which has been validated for conditions like, um, back pain. And it also includes very sophisticated herbal treatments. Um, in many cases, these plants produce effects for which we dont have pharmaceutical drugs. Mike tell me about, uh, your thoughts on traditional chinese medicine because you just talked a little bit on it. Uh, there are a lot of people who are turning to that as welland for many of the reasons you just said. Weil its made great inroads in our culture, and i think its a mixture of ideas and practices that are sensible and some that arent. But ill tell you one aspect of chinese medical philosophy that i find very appealing. I have a colleague in new york uh, dr. Zhang, whos trained in china, has an m. D. A very smart man. And i had him out to arizona to lecture to our physicians. And he said that if he could summarize all of chinese medical philosophy in one sentence, it would be to dispel evil and support the good. Western medicines whole thrust is on dispelling evil. You know, we identify germs and develop weapons against germs. We do very little to support the good, which is the bodys natural Defense Mechanisms its natural resistance. So i think both of those approaches are necessary. And, uh, to me, an integration of that chinese and western philosophy produces the best medicine. Mike fruits and veggies. Youre a big proponent of those, but you also say you should take the supplements. If i get enough, why do i need them . Weil thats a good question. I mean, i think ideally, if youre eating a balanced diet every day, you should be able to cover all your nutritional bases. But, you know i grow a lot of my own food. Im a very careful shopper. I cook for myself. And i take a daily multivitamin, multimineral supplement because there are days, like two days ago when i traveled here from arizona when for one reason or another i dont eat the fruits and vegetables that i should be eating. So i think that these things can be useful as insurance against gaps in the diet. And some, like vitamin d um, i think have specific therapeutic or preventive effects that you really cant get enough from the diet. Mike how many marriages do you think youve impacted . Because i already pointed out to you my wife gets an email from you every day. Shes Walking Around in your shoes. Shes telling me how to live my life. Weil well, its interesting. You know, women really have been the leaders in this movement. Um, theyre the greatest readers of health magazines. Theyre the chief buyers of books on health. One interesting phenomenon is thatyou know, our Center Offers twoyear intensive fellowships to doctors who want to get up to speed in all the things they didnt learn in medical school. A lot of them have been sent there by their wives who read my books and told them they have to go. Mike will you send her a note one of these days saying im ok and im trying to stay good . Weil ha ha yeah. Mike um, if i were to, uh, go to the store and buy essentials, uh, and you were to make out my Shopping List for me, what should i have in my kitchen . Weil well, first of all, what you should not haveyou really want to try to not have refined, processed, and manufactured food. Thats really the source of all the trouble. Id say youd want to have good extra Virgin Olive Oil. You want to have a variety of herbs and spices. Certainly garlic, which is a nutritional powerhouse. Um, you want to have good quality produce. Um, im a great believer in eating greens of one sort or another, whether its kale or spinach or collards. I think these are very good to have. I think its good to have oily fish in the diet, which are sources of omega 3 fatty acids. And very inexpensive ones that you can get in any supermarket are sardines or. Or smoked kippers in cans. Theyre cheap. Theyre very good sources of omega3 fatty acids. Mike you like asian mushrooms, too . Weil i love asian mushrooms. Uh, you know this is everything shiitake maitake, enokis, oyster mushrooms. These have, uh, many unique medicinal properties. They lower cholesterol. They help our bodies fight infection, and they increase our defenses against cancer. Mike will you take us on a little tour of your kitchen . Weil sure. Mike all right. Thanks so much. Ok, so we transitioned into the kitchen, and its busy here. Its busy out here, i might add, as well. What are you going to make for us . Weil well, one of our Signature Dishes is tuscan kale salad. Mike sounds good. Weil uh, this is black kale. Its an italian heirloom variety. Mike wow. Weil easily gettable. So you remove the stalks on this. Its been chopped up. And now im going to put over this a dressing thats extra Virgin Olive Oil fresh lemon juice, salt, red pepper flakes, and garlic. Mike looks good. Weil now the secret of this salad is that the leaves have to sit in the dressing ideally for 30 minutes. And the salt and lemon juice soften the kale and take the bitterness out of it. If you just try to eat raw kale, its not so pleasant. [laughter] mike so you have to experiment to get to this stage, i guess. Weil yeah. So you want to theni would say normally let it sit now for 30 minutes. And then to this we put on a sprinkling of toasted breadcrumbs and some, uh grated parmesan. And thats our salad. But, you know, youyoure not going to like it so much right now because it hasnt. Well, ill give you some finished to try, but you can take a bite. Mike ill take a little shot at it. Youve already prepped me that it may not be the best thing. Let me ask you about, uh eating practices. I know you said mediterranean. You like that style. Weil yes. Mike um, the american style of diet, i mean, you just look aroundit seems everybodys obese. Weil well, the huge problem is that most people are eating great amounts of refined processed, and manufactured food. Thats the big change thats happened in our culture. Mike what about, uh moving from mediterranean any other, uh, healthy, uh, diet lifestyles . Weil well, im a big fan of asian cooking. Uh, i spent a lot of time in japan. I think japanese food is very healthy; chinese food, if its well prepared; vietnamese food, all of that. So you like it, even though it hasnt. . Mike i know you warned me but that tastes very, very good. Weil ok, good. Mike ill even go in for another bite. Hows that . Weil all right. Mike how often do you put this together . This isnt very complicated, is it . Weil its easy and its something that a home cook can do. And one of the other advantages of this is that itll keep. You can keep this for several days in the refrigerator, so you make a large quantity, and it remains good. Mike so i may take it with me. Weil yes please do. Mike let me put this back. Its been a delight. Weil a pleasure. Mike thank you so much. We really appreciate it. Well be back in just a moment. Its good stuff. When we come back, the hightech engineering of the perfect bite. Do you know whats really in some of your Favorite Foods . Mike sadly, the american obesity epidemic is spreading around the globe. Why . Because the socalled western diet is replacing traditional meals in many emerging nations. The average american eats 33 pounds of cheese and 70 pounds of sugar annually. They also take in twice the recommended daily allowance of salt. Indeed, everything is bigger in america. As full frame contributor Sandra Hughes found out, making healthy food choices requires consumers to decode what is really in their Favorite Foods. Sandra niki tehranchi started eatz l. A. Cooking courses to share her love for freshly made foo