Matan Hakimi is the creator of "Gut feeling," Israel's most-listened-to independent health podcast, author of the book "Gut Rules," and many courses and retreats.. Diagnosed with colitis in his 20’s and told it was for life, he spent eight years on daily medication. At 28, he met a special healer, and reached full remission within six months. That journey created his life’s northern star: real health starts with sovereignty over your own body. In this open conversation we discuss life in Israel, exiting the Matrix, courage to speak out, Covid and the mRNA injections, the sun paradox, and the family unit.
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AI-Generated Takeaways:
Being told a condition is “for life” can say more about the limits of the treatment than the limits of the body. Matan spent eight years on six pills a day for ulcerative colitis, then reached full remission in roughly six months once he changed how he ate, how he slept and whom he trusted. The colonoscopy afterward found nothing.
Healing can begin at the moment of decision, before any remedy touches the body. Matan expected the healer to quote him a thousand dollars and instead heard “I believe in intent,” which made him realize how little he trusted anyone. He threw out his medication that same day. He is clear that step isn’t advice for everyone, but leaving victim mode is what set everything else in motion.
Sovereignty over your body quietly expands into sovereignty over everything else. If the body is yours, so are the choices, the emotions and even the accidents; in Matan’s framing, being hurt by someone’s words is also a choice. He admits he still snaps and slides into victimhood, which is exactly why it has to be practiced rather than declared.
Courage spreads by example. Matan grew braver watching others accept the risk of being canceled, jailed or worse, and Charlie Kirk’s “so what?” test stuck with him: at the end of a life, “I was afraid to lose my job” is a thin account for staying silent. Each backlash survived makes the next one smaller.
The freedom to make mistakes is being reserved for insiders. In Sri Lanka, Matan stops at intersections because he judges them dangerous, with no light or camera telling him to. Back in Israel, armed inspectors hand out scooter tickets while a fatal error that would send a bus driver to prison can earn applause in the right uniform.
Belief can be borrowed; faith has to be lived. Drawing on Alan Watts, belief is agreeing to think a certain way, while faith is a deeper trust that needs no outside permission. In Matan’s view, if you think the sun causes cancer, or that humanity’s survival hinges on a substance injected into your shoulder, fear has taken the place of faith.
Fear of the sun may be doing more damage than the sun. Western medicine calls most cancers genetic yet blames skin cancer on nature, while Matan points to a study of 470,000 people in which those with skin cancer were also sunscreen users, and to the link between low vitamin D and melanoma. A gradual, daily relationship with sunlight, a diet low in seed oils and the melanin it builds may protect better than any chemical filter.
A meter can teach you to fear what your body already knows how to handle. Summer heat that forecasts once showed as green and sunny now flashes red, and the habit of trusting a number over your own senses was rehearsed nightly with Covid case counts. Every crisis, from 9/11 to Covid, leaves behind a layer of control that rarely gets peeled back.
Leaving a country and leaving the matrix may be the same decision at different scales. Efrat left because there were things she could no longer bear without feeling like a hypocrite, while others choose to stay and fight. Going fully off grid is a third path, yet Matan wonders if surfing all day and raising kids by a river is abandoning what he came here to do.
Nobody teaches us what it means to be a man or a woman, so many of us improvise inside our relationships and call the results compatibility. Matan only saw afterward that he hadn’t held steady through every mood swing. For Efrat, each relationship cycle has shown where she sold out on her own dignity, and she walks into the next one knowing herself better and clear on what she will no longer compromise on.
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— Support my work —
I was recently banned from Stripe, so I cannot have paid memberships on Substack… but there’s always another way!
