Doctor Mau on rebuilding trust in medicine.
Highlights:
- According to Doctor Mau, great ideas come from connecting disciplines. Broad interests help solve complex problems and drive innovation.
- Career paths don’t have to be linear. Doctor Mau’s impact grew by combining nutrition, medicine, entrepreneurship, and communication rather than choosing only one path.
- The people who shaped him taught far more than medicine.
- Trust is built through communication. Explaining how doctors think and make decisions can rebuild confidence in science more effectively than simply correcting misinformation.
- Deep expertise is essential, but stepping outside your own “tribe” and integrating perspectives from other fields leads to better decisions and a broader understanding of the world.
I was interested in absolutely everything, from theology to economics, literally everything.
Mauricio González Arias
“I never had that classic story where my mom got sick, went to the hospital, and I watched doctors save her life,” says Dr. Mauricio González Arias, better known as Dr. Mau. He is a physician, entrepreneur, and specialist in Internal Medicine, Emergency Medicine, and Obesity Medicine in New York. He is also a UNICEF ambassador and one of the most influential Spanish-speaking health communicators, with millions of followers across social media. “I was interested in absolutely everything, from theology to economics, literally everything,” he recalls about his early years.
Throughout his life, he admired people who seemed to have everything figured out. Those who knew exactly what they wanted to study and where they wanted to end up. “Those are the successful people, right?” he remembers telling himself. For a long time, he believed success depended on choosing a single path. But over the years, he realized he was different. What he calls the lateralization of knowledge has become one of the defining principles of his life. He came to understand that he did not have to confine himself to a single discipline and that moving across different fields allowed him to connect lessons from each of them. That is why, alongside his medical practice, he is involved in business, events, and science communication, finding value in the diversity of his interests. “My thesis is that when you lateralize your knowledge, when you know about music, art history, religion, and technology, you begin to find points of connection that help you navigate the uncertain waters we live in.”
Research has even shown that people responsible for exceptional innovations often share broad interests beyond their primary field. Leonardo da Vinci, for example, was a painter, engineer, anatomist, and inventor, among many other things. Leon Battista Alberti, an architect, mathematician, and philosopher of the Renaissance, famously argued that “a person can do all things if they will.” Science calls this phenomenon polymathy, the ability to develop expertise across multiple fields over the course of a lifetime. In fact, a study published in Creativity Research Journal found that many Nobel Prize laureates possess broad interests and actively explore diverse areas of knowledge rather than limiting themselves to a single discipline.
I realized rather late that you need lateralization to solve many problems.
Mauricio González Arias
We have not always thought about knowledge this way. For centuries, the sciences and the humanities were not nearly as separate as they are today. The boundary between them was blurred. Today, however, they often seem to stand in opposition. Much of this is the result of increasing specialization, which has allowed knowledge to deepen while simultaneously fragmenting the way we understand the world. “I realized rather late that you need lateralization to solve many problems,” he says.
“I first understood this through the work of” Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist and author of Thinking, Fast and Slow. Together with Amos Tversky, Kahneman demonstrated that our judgments are shaped by cognitive biases. More often than not, our brains rely on mental shortcuts that save time and effort. That is precisely why exposure to different perspectives matters. Every discipline offers its own way of interpreting problems and can reveal insights that remain invisible when we think within a single mental framework. The lateralization of knowledge is about integrating those perspectives by connecting different fields.
At the end of the day, in medicine you’re involved from the very beginning, with laboratory tests, imaging studies, and the responsibility of prescribing medications.
Mauricio González Arias
Dr. Mau first studied Nutrition in Puebla. “By the time I graduated, I was passionate about lifestyle medicine and disease prevention,” he says. But he realized that his impact on health would be limited if he remained solely within nutrition, so he decided to pursue medicine. “At the end of the day, in medicine you’re involved from the very beginning, with laboratory tests, imaging studies, and the responsibility of prescribing medications,” he explains. He felt he needed that broader perspective to truly make a difference in patients’ lives. “I moved from one career into another.”
Toward the end of medical school, the dean of his medical program in Campeche told him, “We have an agreement with a program at the University of Miami and Jackson Memorial Hospital, and we’d like to send you.” He spent three months rotating through cardiology, internal medicine, and endocrinology. That experience eventually led him to the New York Medical College.
“We ended up in New York. I completed Internal Medicine from 2015 to 2018. Then I decided to pursue Emergency Medicine from 2018 to 2021. After graduating, I also became board-certified in Obesity Medicine. Then I thought, ‘I’ve always loved endocrinology and metabolism,’ so I applied for a fellowship,” he recalls.
A mentor has to be willing to show up.
Mauricio González Arias
Along the way, many of his most valuable lessons came from people who helped him understand how the world works. Dr. Visco, for example, introduced him to personal finance in the United States, teaching him how to invest and how the stock market works. “He taught me about life,” Dr. Mau remembers. Something similar happened with Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa, widely known as Dr. Q, whose book Becoming Dr. Q: My Journey from Migrant Farm Worker to Brain Surgeon became a major source of inspiration. Even today, Dr. Q tells him, “Mauricio, I’m so proud of everything you’ve accomplished.” That kind of mentorship, he believes, is priceless. He wishes Mexico had a stronger culture of mentorship, not only in medicine, but also in business, finance, and life itself. “A mentor has to be willing to show up. They have to answer your calls. They have to ask how you’re doing,” he says.
I know how to listen, I know how to speak, and I know how to focus on the ideas that matter.
Mauricio González Arias
After years of moving across different areas of medicine, Mauricio realized that one of his greatest strengths was his ability to translate ideas and connect with people. “I know how to listen, I know how to speak, and I know how to focus on the ideas that matter,” he says. He pays close attention to what people care about. He can read a scientific paper and immediately recognize the parts that will resonate most with his patients and the millions who follow Doctor Mau Informa. “For me, it’s very natural to step out and communicate something,” he explains.
I’m showing people how doctors think and how we make decisions so that they can believe in us again.
Mauricio González Arias
Through his work on social media, he is helping rebuild public trust in the medical profession, a trust that has gradually eroded over time. “I’m showing people how doctors think and how we make decisions so that they can believe in us again,” he says. He argues that opposition to certain public health measures does not necessarily stem from bad intentions or a deliberate rejection of science. “I’m not even sure the right expression anymore is ‘fighting misinformation.’ Maybe we should be trying to understand how it spreads,” he says. We often assess risks based on what we see around us. When a disease becomes rare, as happened in many countries with measles thanks to vaccination, it becomes easy to assume that it is no longer a threat and that vaccination is no longer necessary. At the same time, even extremely rare side effects can seem disproportionately important because they are easier to imagine. These examples help explain why reasonable people can reach very different conclusions about the same health issue.
For Dr. Mau, a fundamental part of the problem is that all of us see the world through a limited lens. And, as he points out, this is not unique to medicine. “The more specialized you become, the more you start belonging to a tribe. The tribe of cardiologists, endocrinologists, internists, psychiatrists. You stop seeing the whole picture,” he explains. Many of the ideas that have most profoundly shaped the way he practices medicine, he says, did not come from medicine itself. In the end, he built a career by connecting disciplines and skills that, at first glance, seemed unrelated. Perhaps that is why he can move so naturally from a scientific paper to a patient consultation, from an educational video to a conversation about entrepreneurship. And in the end, everything is connected.
