Andrew Weil


Andrew Thomas Weil is an American celebrity doctor who advocates integrative medicine.

Early life and education

Weil was born in Philadelphia, on June 8, 1942, the only child of parents who operated a millinery store, in a family that was Reform Jewish. He graduated from high school in 1959, and was awarded a scholarship from the American Association for the United Nations, giving him the opportunity to go abroad for a year, during which he lived with families in India, Thailand, and Greece. From this experience, he became convinced that American culture and science was insular and unaware of non-American practices. He began hearing that mescaline enhanced creativity and produced visionary experiences, and finding little information on the subject, he read The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley.
In 1960, Weil entered Harvard University, where he majored in biology with a concentration in ethnobotany. At Harvard, he developed curiosity about psychoactive drugs. He met Harvard psychologists Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert, and separately engaged in organized experimentation with mescaline. Weil wrote for Harvard Crimson. One published account of the period describes a falling out of Weil from the group that included the faculty—among whom the experimentation with drugs was contentious, and with regard to undergraduates, proscribed; the falling out involved an exposé on drug-use and supply that Weil wrote for the Crimson. Weil wrote of faculty experimentation with drugs in a series of Crimson pieces:
  • "Better Than a Damn",, his apparent first Crimson piece;
  • "Alpert Defends Drugs on 'Open End," ; and
  • "Investigation Unlikely in Dismissal of Alpert",.
and that this reporting included the claim that "undergraduates had indeed been able to obtain access to psilocybin from members" of the Harvard faculty research team that was involved in such research. As late as 1973, Weil's name appears in conjunction with an editorial regarding the 1963 firing of Alpert, which stated the view that it would be "unfortunate if the firing of Richard Alpert led to the suppression of legitimate research into the effects of hallucinogenic compounds," distancing himself and the Crimson from the "shoddiness of their work as scientists ... less of incompetence than of a conscious rejection of scientific ways of looking at things."
Weil's undergraduate thesis was titled "The Use of Nutmeg as a Psychotropic Agent," specifically, on the narcotic properties of nutmeg, chair of the Department of Social Relations, and a former director of Harvard's Center for Research in Personality. In 1964, he graduated cum laude with a B.A. in biology.

Medical training

Weil entered Harvard Medical School, "not with the intention of becoming a physician but rather simply to obtain a medical education." He received a medical degree in 1968, although "the Harvard faculty ... threatened to withhold it because of a controversial marijuana study Weil had helped conduct" in his final year. Weil moved to San Francisco and completed a one-year medical internship at Mount Zion Hospital in 1968–69. While there, he volunteered at the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic. Weil went on to complete one year of a two-year program at NIH, resigning due to "official opposition to his work with marijuana."

Career

Following his internship, Weil took a position with the National Institute of Mental Health that lasted approximately one year, to pursue his interests in research on marijuana and other drugs; during this time he may have received formal institutional permission to acquire marijuana for the research.
Weil is reported to have experienced opposition to this line of inquiry at the NIMH, to have departed to his rural northern Virginia home, and to have begun his practices of vegetarianism, yoga, and meditation, and work on writing The Natural Mind. At the same time, Weil began an affiliation with the Harvard Botanical Museum that would span from 1971 to 1984, where his work included duties as a research associate investigating "the properties of medicinal and psychoactive plants." His interests led him to explore the healing systems of indigenous people, and with this aim, Weil traveled throughout South America and other parts of the world, "collecting information about medicinal plants and healing," from 1971 to 1975, as a fellow for the Institute of Current World Affairs.
In 1994, Weil founded the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona College of Medicine in Tucson, Arizona.
Andrew Weil is the founder of True Food Kitchen, a restaurant chain serving meals on the premise that food should make one feel better. There are currently 44 restaurants in the chain.
Weil is credited with popularizing the 4-7-8 breathing technique.

View of conventional medicine

is a stated central component of the higher-order "system of systems" Weil envisions integrative medicine to be. It is clear that in both scholarly/academic and popular settings, Weil's statements suggest practices from alternative therapies as being something to add to conventional medical treatment plans. However, Weil is also on record speaking disparagingly of conventional, evidence-based medicine, both in academic and popular contexts. For instance, he is quoted as having said to a group commencing after a month-long training program in integrative medicine at the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine that "that evidence-based medicine, at its worst, 'is exactly analogous to religious fundamentalism'".

Influences and philosophy

Weil acknowledges many experiences and individuals that have influenced his philosophical and spiritual ideas, and the techniques he considers valid in his approach to medicine. Weil has been open about his own history of experimental and recreational drug use, including experiences with narcotics and mind-altering substances. Among the individuals who strongly influenced his personal and professional life is the late osteopath Robert C. Fulford, who specialized in cranial manipulation. Weil has further stated that he respects the work of psychologist Martin Seligman, who pioneered the field of positive psychology and now directs the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania. Weil has also professed admiration for the work of Stephen Ilardi, professor of psychology at the University of Kansas, and author of The Depression Cure.
Weil is widely recognized as having a seminal role in establishing the field of integrative medicine, where this field is defined as: He says that patients are urged to take the Western medicine prescribed by their physicians, and—in what Publishers Weekly describes as a message "becoming a signature formula"— "bend the 'biomedical model' to incorporate alternative therapies, including supplements like omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin D, and herbal remedies; meditation and other 'spiritual' strategies." Proper nutrition, exercise, and stress reduction are also emphasized by Weil. In particular, he is a proponent of diets that are rich in organic fruits, organic vegetables, and fish, and is a vocal critic of foods and diets rich in partially hydrogenated oils. In an interview on Larry King Live, Weil focused on a view that sugar, starch, refined carbohydrates, and trans-fats are more dangerous to the human body than saturated fats.
Regarding treatment strategies, their side effects, and their efficacy, Weil advocates for the use of whole plants as a less problematic approach in comparison to synthetic pharmaceuticals. In addition, Weil is an advocate of incorporating specific medicinal mushrooms into one's diet.
Weil has expressed opposition to the war on drugs, and takes a measured, nuanced approach to the use of recreational drugs.

Publications

Overview

While Weil's early books and publications primarily explored altered states of consciousness, he has since expanded the scope of his work to encompass healthy lifestyles and health care in general. In the last ten years, Weil has focused much of his work on the health concerns of older people. In his book Healthy Aging, Weil looks at the process of growing older from a physical, social, and cross-cultural perspective, and in his book Why our Health Matters is focused on health care reform.
Of his books, several have appeared on various bestseller lists, both as hardbacks and as paperbacks, some of them being Spontaneous Healing, Eight Weeks to Optimum Health, Eating Well for Optimum Health, The Healthy Kitchen, Healthy Aging, and Spontaneous Happiness.

List of popular works

Books

  • The Natural Mind: An Investigation of Drugs and the Higher Consciousness ;
  • The Marriage of the Sun and Moon: A Quest for Unity in Consciousness ;
  • Health and Healing ;
  • From Chocolate to Morphine: Everything you need to know about mind-altering drugs with Winifred Rosen ;
  • Natural Health, Natural Medicine ;
  • Spontaneous Healing ;
  • Eight Weeks to Optimum Health ;
  • Eating Well for Optimum Health ;
  • The Healthy Kitchen with Rosie Daley ;
  • Healthy Aging ;
  • Why Our Health Matters
  • Spontaneous Happiness
  • True Food: Seasonal, Sustainable, Simple, Pure
  • ''Fast Food, Good Food: More Than 150 Quick and Easy Ways to Put Healthy, Delicious Food on the Table''

    James Beard Awards">James Beard Foundation Award">James Beard Awards

  • Focus on Health
  • Vegetarian/Health Focus

    Ask Dr. Weil collections

Published collections of answers to questions received on his DrWeil.com website:
  • Women's Health
  • Healthy Living
  • Natural Remedies
  • Common Illnesses
  • Vitamins and Minerals
  • ''Your Top Health Concerns''