Episode 401: Dr. Mark Hyman: Why Only 6.8% of Americans are Healthy + His Recommended Anti-Aging Solutions

Speaker 1 Hi guys, it's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits and Hustle, Gresham.

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Speaker 2 You guys,

Speaker 2 this is a big treat for me. I wasn't just saying that on the story, the Instagram story.
We have Dr. Mark Hyman on the podcast today.
And guys, I'm sure you know who he is.

Speaker 2 He's probably the most famous doctor. I think I know.
I've known about you for 100 years.

Speaker 1 At least 100. At least 100.

Speaker 2 He's written 18 New York Time, 19, 19 New York Time best-selling books. He is an MD and a functional medicine doctor, right?

Speaker 1 Same thing, yeah. Same thing.

Speaker 2 Well, I mean, you have the both. You have the Eastern and the Western.

Speaker 1 Well, functional medicine is fully Western. It's fully science-based.
It's not, you know, acupuncture and Ayurveda. You can explain that if you want.

Speaker 2 Well, only explain it because people always,

Speaker 2 I know it's maybe changed a little bit in terms of the perception, but like people are like, oh, I'm an MD or I'm a whatever I am. But I want to go on about all your accolades.

Speaker 2 The biggest, by the way, is he walked in. He looks like he's like 30 years younger than he actually is.
So everything you're doing, I need to know about it. It is unbelievable.

Speaker 2 He's like a fountain wealth of information. So I don't even know where to begin except for what are you doing every day to look this good, this young? You are a walking longevity poster child.

Speaker 1 He'll only be 113 next week. So that's really

Speaker 2 no, no. But do you mind saying how old you are?

Speaker 1 No, I'm going to be 65 in a month. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And you, do you feel like you are aging backwards?

Speaker 1 I am actually.

Speaker 1 I just, in the last two years, I did my biological age test which is uh yeah measuring your dna methylation which looks at your epigenetics which is how your genes are controlled and they're influenced by your environment and your lifestyle so they're highly modifiable you can't change how old i am on the birthday calendar right on this but i can change what's going on under the skin right and so when i was 62 i did my biological test and i was 43 which i thought was pretty good And then I did a whole bunch of things over the last few years.

Speaker 1 I wrote a book called Young Forever,

Speaker 1 which helped me actually get deeper into the science of longevity. And I implemented a whole bunch of treatments and I redid the test at 64 and I went backwards four years.
So now I'm 39 biologically.

Speaker 1 Are you kidding me? No.

Speaker 2 Oh my God. So like, so like Brian Johnson has nothing on you, right?

Speaker 1 Like, well, I got a bigger spread in my age, but he's younger. So I don't know.

Speaker 2 Well, he's, yeah, that's my whole point. Like that's a mat, that's a massive difference.
So what did you do different in those few years?

Speaker 1 Well, I ramped up my strength training, my protein intake. I increased my intake of a number of compounds that have been well researched around longevity, like urolithin A and NMN.

Speaker 1 And I did also a whole bunch of seniolytic herbs and treatments like Vicetin. I also started to do various treatments like plasmaphoresis.
I started rapamycin.

Speaker 1 I did a whole bunch of things that I think are, you know, still in the research phase. So, I'm my own guinea pig.

Speaker 1 I don't necessarily recommend it to all my patients or anybody just to try it, but I'm always willing to sort of put myself out there and see what happens. So I was like, wow, that's pretty good.

Speaker 2 Wow. Okay.
So you said a bunch of things. So urolithinae, I was told by them actually that it actually helps to build muscle after 30 years.
Is that true? Yeah.

Speaker 1 So, yeah. So, you know, it's a fascinating story.
You know, backing up a little bit, you know,

Speaker 1 as I began to dive into the research around longevity,

Speaker 1 it was really clear to me that there was a biological system that we all have that's all built in from basically worms and yeast organisms all the way to humans that are conserved that are survival pathways that are pathways designed to heal, regenerate, repair, renew, and upgrade our biology.

Speaker 1 So whenever we had stresses and we were starving, when we didn't have enough food or we had too much this or that, our bodies learned how to adapt in a way that made us stronger.

Speaker 1 And so I call these the longevity switches. And they only have recently have been mapped out and how they interact has been mapped out, and what affects them has been mapped out.

Speaker 1 And they're part of what we call the hallmarks of aging, which are these fundamental things that go wrong as we get older that underlie all disease.

Speaker 1 So, if I said to you, what are the biggest killers in the world? You'd say, oh, yeah, heart disease and cancer.

Speaker 1 And I said, well, if I had a magic wand and I could just get rid of heart disease and cancer from the face of the planet, how much longer would we live? Well, probably only five to seven years longer.

Speaker 1 But if we address the root causes of aging itself, which is not a

Speaker 1 normal phenomena, like the process of getting older, we can't do anything about on the clock, right? I was born a certain date. I'm getting older every year.

Speaker 1 But the biological process of aging in the way we experience it in the West is not normal.

Speaker 1 You know, you see people who are 100 years old or riding horses or hiking mountains, running races, you know, where these are outliers.

Speaker 1 But no, they are people who actually are taking advantage of things because of what they've learned or their lifestyle to actually activate these longevity pathways.

Speaker 1 So, you know, we see people become decrepit, frail, diseased. People spend the last 20% of their life in poor health.

Speaker 1 Their health span is shorter than the lifespan, meaning they are okay for a bunch of their life and then they get sick and the last 20% of their lives are spent with chronic disease, which is affecting so many people now.

Speaker 1 And when you address these hallmarks of aging, these fundamental mechanisms that we can talk about, you actually can extend life by 20 or 30 years, right?

Speaker 1 So maybe for me, that would be maybe getting to a 110 or 120, right? So or maybe even 40 years. So we're now discovering what those are.

Speaker 1 There's been billions of dollars now spent on aging and longevity research. It was a neglected science.
It wasn't even something that people thought of studying.

Speaker 1 It wasn't considered a problem, but it is.

Speaker 1 The decline, decrepitude, disease, frailty that happens as we get older is not an inevitable part of aging.

Speaker 1 It's a consequence of bad inputs that cause our biology to malfunction that we think is normal. normal.
So just at a high level, these longevity switches are part of these hallmarks of aging.

Speaker 1 One of the key pathways that we call in longevity set of hallmarks of aging is deregulated nutrient sensing, which is a big mouthful, but essentially it means how our bodies regulate different phenomena that have to do with what we're eating, right?

Speaker 1 So inflammation, insulin resistance, muscle building, autophagy or cell cleanup, antioxidant pathways, DNA repair pathways.

Speaker 1 So there's all these incredible longevity switches, and there's four of them. And one has to do with insulin signaling and blood sugar.

Speaker 1 One has to do with mTOR, which has to do with basically building muscle or inducing autophagy, which is clean cellular cleanup.

Speaker 1 One has to do with AMPK, which is also involved in blood sugar or sirtuins. These are things that are now well studied.

Speaker 1 And so a lot of the interventions that I did were to regulate these longevity switches in a scientific way.

Speaker 1 So now backing into your question, urolithin A is a molecule that works on these longevity switches.

Speaker 1 And this is kind of mind-blowing.

Speaker 1 When you think about like nature and how we evolve, like how does a molecule from a plant, like a pomegranate, end up changing our biology in a way that actually makes us live longer, that reduces inflammation, that builds muscle, that increases our exercise performance, that increases our VO2 max, that...

Speaker 1 helps reduce muscle loss, that has all these incredible benefits. How does that know what to do? What happens when when you eat pomegranate or similar plants like berries?

Speaker 1 They have something called elagic acid. And when you have a healthy microbiome, which most of us don't, that becomes converted by healthy bacteria into a molecule called urolithinate.

Speaker 1 Now, most of us don't do that because we, even if we eat pomegranate, we have a messed up microbiome.

Speaker 1 Because, you know, I did a talk the other day to a thousand people and I asked everybody to raise their hand if they'd never taken antibiotics. There wasn't a single person that raised their hand.

Speaker 1 Everybody, everybody is taking an antibiotic at some point somehow. And so, you know, when you destroy your microbiome because you take an antibiotic or you affect it, then you can't make.

Speaker 1 So if you take this as a supplement, it induces mitophagy, which is cleaning up of your mitochondria. They make energy.
It reduces inflammation. It helps build muscle.

Speaker 1 It inhibits mTOR, which induces autophagy. So it has all these incredible benefits.

Speaker 2 But is there things we can do without supplementing? I know you wrote a book about food for medicine and all these things.

Speaker 2 Like if we just eat a bunch of pomegrans, I know that's not going to be the answer. But at the core root,

Speaker 2 you said something and I was going to even ask you about it. It was at the core, the root cause of a lot of problems, I was under the impression is inflammation, right?

Speaker 1 For sure.

Speaker 2 And so what can people do who don't have access to supplements, who don't have access to all the fancy latest and greatest? What are like easy strategies?

Speaker 2 Let's just say like simple things that people can do to help reduce their inflammation.

Speaker 1 Great question. So as a functional medicine doctor, which we can talk about what that is, but essentially by looking at root causes, it's looking at the science of creating health.

Speaker 1 It's asking why, why do you have this problem? What disease do you have and what drug do I give?

Speaker 1 It's understanding the body as a network, as a system, and restoring the ecosystem of your body to be healthy. And we go to doctors for every different part of our body.

Speaker 1 Every organ has a different doctor, right? Exactly. But they're all connected.
Your body's one system. And so functional medicine is really systems medicine, and it's a way of thinking.

Speaker 1 It's not a particular specialty or modality or treatment. It can be anything from, you know, exercise to exorcism, whatever the treatment is that works for the patient, I'm going to use it.

Speaker 1 So in functional medicine, the framework really that we use is looking at these fundamental systems that go wrong. And one of them is our immune system.

Speaker 1 And inflammation is really the underlying biology of almost all.

Speaker 1 chronic diseases and most diseases, including obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, dementia, autism, depression, autoimmune disease, allergies, gut issues. I mean, the list goes on.

Speaker 1 Skin skin problems. It's all inflammation.
So the question is, you know, what's causing inflammation? And that's really what functional medicine does. It gets to the why, what's the cause.

Speaker 1 And, you know, the big cause for most of us is really our diet and our gut microbiome. It's gone awry and environmental toxins.
Those are the big three. Right.
Toxins are harder to deal with.

Speaker 1 You can really address your gut microbiome. And the diet is the biggest factor.
And so I am practicing functional medicine for almost 30 plus years now, more than 30 years, I guess.

Speaker 1 I've really come to understand that, you know, if you do a short-term reset with an elimination diet, an anti-inflammatory diet that supports your microbiome, that lowers your blood sugar, that gets rid of all the extra inflammation in your body, that so many things get better.

Speaker 1 So I wrote a book 10 years ago called the Penn Day Detox Diet.

Speaker 2 Did you remember all the titles?

Speaker 1 Yeah, no, barely. So many.
Barely, barely.

Speaker 2 I know.

Speaker 1 And essentially,

Speaker 1 it grew out of my experience with my patients where I was treating people with complex chronic illness and

Speaker 1 it was trying to get them to reset their body to the original factory settings see if we clean up their diet and took away every possible thing that could be driving inflammation what would happen and how fast would they get better and so it was so profound uh in the results that I just I wrote a book about it so that everybody could access it yeah and uh actually it's fun in January this year we're launching a online program to help people do this together in community called the 10-day detox and you can go to drhyman.com to learn more about it but basically basically what what this is is eliminating the foods that that are the the most inflammatory.

Speaker 1 So ultra-processed food, which was 60% of our diet, which is not really food by definition. It's just science projects.

Speaker 1 Sugar and starch, which are really the drivers of so much inflammation in our body. Gluten and dairy, which are the other two big factors.
And also, we get rid of grains and beans.

Speaker 1 Not that they're bad, but for some people, they create inflammation. And it's like just trying to get everything off rather than just doing incrementally.
What do you do?

Speaker 2 Do you do it one at a time or everything together?

Speaker 1 No, everything together because you know people oh i'm just gonna like do one thing and then see what's happening do nothing but if you have three or five things uh that are bothering you you just take out one or two you're not going to feel better right right there's a rule in functional medicine called the tack rules by my mentor sydney baker basically if you're standing on a tack it takes a lot of asterisk to make him feel better so take out the tack get rid of the cost and you're standing on two tacks taking one of them out doesn't make you 50 better right so if you're glue if you're allergic to gluten and dairy or you have sensitivity to gluten and dairy and you just take out gluten you're not going to get 50 better because you're you're still reacting to dairy right right right so this diet is really a way to reset everything it was basically protein veggies lots of good fats nuts and seeds berries whole foods delicious non-deprivation diet not a calorie restriction diet you can eat as much as you want and what happens is in 10 days is remarkable in terms of inflammation not only do people lose a ton of fluid and weight inflammation but they have a reduction in all symptoms from all diseases by between 60 and 70 percent whether it's a migraine or it will bowel or depression or joint pain or headaches or whatever it is, congestion, sinus issues, it's remarkable how fast it works to just get inflammation out of your system.

Speaker 1 So you can just do this food-based, and after 10 days, you'll know. Now, if you don't get better, there's something else going on.

Speaker 1 You could have Lyme disease, you could have mold exposure, you could have metal toxicity, you could have severe gut issues that need to be treated more directly, you know.

Speaker 1 But most people will get a significant improvement.

Speaker 2 So what are they eating instead? If they're taking out, that's like everything. If you're not eating good,

Speaker 1 everything. No, you're what are you eating? Air, drinking water oh you eat what but basically uh you asked how i'm like look what i look like i i so

Speaker 1 tell me what you eat every day in the morning what are you eating in the morning i have a protein shake usually after a workout what do you put in the protein shake well i use goat whey which is dairy but it's a very low uh inflammation type of dairy but you can use other forms goatway where do you get this from amazon really yeah we're generally raised goat way there's mount capra there's naked goat there's a lot of brands out there and what's the benefit of goat way versus regular Regular whey?

Speaker 1 Regular whey is usually factory farmed cows, which is just criminal. Yeah.
Two, it's got lots of hormones, antibiotics, pesticides they use in the growing of it.

Speaker 1 Three, it's got, it's coming from cows that are more modern cows that are hybridized to produce a certain type of casein in the milk, which is A1 casein. It's very inflammatory.

Speaker 1 So goats have A2 casein, so do sheep, less inflammatory. and better tolerated.
So that's what I, but then you don't, you don't have to have deer. You could, you could make it with nuts and seeds.

Speaker 2 But wait, wait hold on that so many questions I mean if there's so much information Okay, so goat way How about like what would you say compared that to let's say almond milk or

Speaker 1 Yeah, you know cashew milk alternative milk Those are those are really just not high protein things protein is key. So as you get older you need about a gram per pound of ideal body weight.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 1 So which is a lot more than people are drinking eating. But the RDA, the recommended dietary allowance is 0.8 grams per kilo, not per pound.

Speaker 1 oh wow yeah right so it's far less now you have to understand how they came up with these guidelines these guidelines are designed to prevent a deficiency disease so how do you not get protein deficiency you don't need that much how much you need for optimal health very different number right how much vitamin d do you need to not get rickets not much 30 units wow rickets is when your bones bend and you get you know it's just vitamin d deficiency yeah how much vitamin d do you need to not get osteoporosis or to build your immune system or not get covet or the flu probably four 4,000 to 5,000, over 100 times that dose.

Speaker 2 Wow.

Speaker 1 Right. So

Speaker 1 the deficiency, the numbers for the recommended dietary intake or allowance are based on deficiency disease. How much vitamin C do you need to not get scurvy? Not what you need for optimal health.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 2 Optimization and deficiency is very different.

Speaker 1 Very different. Right.
And so protein is really key. And you need bioavailable protein, especially as you get older.

Speaker 1 You need a certain amount of an amino acid that stimulates one of the longevity switches called mTOR to make muscle. Muscle is the currency of longevity.

Speaker 1 Without muscle, you become frail and weak and disabled. The reason people end up in nursing homes is not because they're sick.

Speaker 1 It's because they can't tie their shoes or get up out of a chair or get up out of bed. Right.
Right.

Speaker 1 It's because they've lost muscle. If you don't do anything, you will lose muscle steadily and progressively every year starting in your 30s.
Right.

Speaker 1 So you've got to get on it. Strength training.
Strength training and protein is the magic sauce. So it's, so you got to do that.
Yeah, you got to do that. That's my breakfast.

Speaker 1 So what are you putting in it you're putting the you're eating i put in yeah i put in the my whey protein i put in a mitopure actually the the pure lithina i put in creatine which helps build muscle i also put in you know nut milk like macadamia milk i like put in berries and then blend it up every day every day do you eat eggs i eat eggs so for example i'm traveling i'll eat eight omelet or i'll have eggs so that'll be my breakfast so i'll have more more other proteins in the morning and then you know lunch and dinner can be like just tons of veggies and proteins so like lunch i can make a salad.

Speaker 1 It's really quick. I can make three meals in half an hour total.
So like I'm busy. I got a lot going on and I like to cook.
So my shake takes me three minutes in the morning.

Speaker 1 All the ingredients are there in my kitchen. Make it easy.
Set myself up for success. Right.
Lunch, you know, I'll get pre-washed arugula. I'll get little cherry tomatoes, organic.

Speaker 1 I'll throw in pumpkin seeds. I'll throw in avocado.
I'll throw in olives.

Speaker 1 I'll throw in a can of wild salmon or mackerel or sardines as my protein and then pour olive oil, vinegar, and you've got a lot of fat. I call my fat salad.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Lots of fat and lots of veggies, different cucumbers and whatever you want in their carrots. And then dinner is usually a piece of protein and

Speaker 1 regeneratively raised meat. If I can get it, bison, elk, venison, or just a regeneratively raised beef, chicken, pasteurized chicken, small fish, and then usually two or three side dishes of veggies.

Speaker 1 So my main courses are veggies. Meat's a side dish, but it's at least six ounces to some eight ounces of protein.

Speaker 1 And then I'll i'll have roasted mushrooms i'll have uh you know usually every day some form of the cruciferous vegetable so two or three cups of broccoli or collards or kale or mussel sprouts right and then usually like a japanese sweet potato like a purple sweet potato i love that and that's that's kind of what i eat and then you know a little dark chocolate if i want something sweet but this is if you're like this is it for people who are home 24 hours a day most people travel they're working they're going you especially you're probably yeah so i'm traveling i you know i have i always carry if you look in my bag i've got me i've got enough calories in there but I don't have to worry about eating anything the rest of the day.

Speaker 1 I've got macadamia nuts, I've got, you know, other nuts and seeds in there. So I have basically enough food in my bag.
So I don't get enough food emergency.

Speaker 1 So I don't have to eat crap if I don't want to.

Speaker 2 Right. And you don't get like that feeling of like, yeah.

Speaker 1 And then, you know, usually wherever I go, you can order protein and veggies. You know, give me a salad, give me extra veggies, three sides of veggies.
It's not that hard. You just have to ask.

Speaker 2 Right. You just have to ask.
What about fruit? You didn't mention it.

Speaker 1 You know, fruit's fine. So I have berries in the morning.
I'll have fruit. And I think fruit can be fine.
You know,

Speaker 1 I think, you know, fruit juice is not good. Right, right, right.
So, you know,

Speaker 1 you can eat an apple, but don't have apple juice. Right.

Speaker 2 But in terms of like grapes, mangoes, like things are high, highly industrial.

Speaker 1 Well, yeah. So if you're eating fruit, you know, it depends on the volume, right? Especially there's like grapes and certain melons and pineapple and things like that.

Speaker 1 Bananas are higher glycemic index. So you want to be careful with those.
You can enjoy them, but don't like pig out. Right.

Speaker 2 Well, I asked because, you know, there's that controversy kind of because people are like, don't eat fruit because it's very high in sugar, obviously.

Speaker 2 And others are like, you never see a fat fat person who only eats fruit. But I will say, I'm a massive fruit eater.
I love fruit and I do gain weight. If I, like, I love grapes.

Speaker 2 I can have five pounds of grapes in two seconds.

Speaker 1 Gain weight. That's a problem.
Right. So it's just the dose.
The dose. Right.

Speaker 2 Yeah. It's all about like how much you're eating of everything, right?

Speaker 1 Exactly.

Speaker 2 Okay. So let's go back then.
So that's what you eat every day. That's, that makes sense.
Now, what about strength training? You say you're doing it how many times?

Speaker 2 Because you're very, very lean and thin.

Speaker 1 Well, I mean, I do probably four times a week. I have a routine I do with different bands and I do a whole bunch of different routines.
So I travel with it. So when I'm home, I have a home gym.

Speaker 1 So I have equipment. I have weights.
I have all this stuff. But when I travel, I just bring my bands, which basically takes about

Speaker 1 a pound, maybe or less. Right.
Takes up this much space. I put in my suitcase.
Right. And all I need is a door and a floor.
So if I can hook the thing to the doorknob, I can get resistance.

Speaker 1 That's what you're doing?

Speaker 2 Yeah. How about cardio? There's all this controversy over cardio, especially as we age, right? You know, people say that cardio breaks down muscle mass, right?

Speaker 2 So as we age, I do believe that cardio is something that we should all absolutely.

Speaker 1 I mean, you can't just pick one form of training. You need, you know, BO2Max is a really important number.
This is a number that measures your mitochondrial function.

Speaker 1 Your mitochondria are the key to healthy aging.

Speaker 1 Partly why urolithin A works and exercise works and strength training works. BO2MAX is correlated directly with longevity.

Speaker 1 So if you look at your ability to burn oxygen per minute, which is a measure of how they see, like if you look at Lance Armstrong, for example, you he had a VO2 max in the 90s, meaning he can just go, go, go, like, you know, like energize our bunny.

Speaker 1 Whereas, you know, the average 30-year-old has a VO2 max in the 30s. Right, right, right.
Exactly. Right.

Speaker 2 By the way, Lance still has a crazy VOT.

Speaker 1 Like he's mine's like 45. Wow.
Even at 65,

Speaker 1 you can train to get it to go up. And the longer, the higher it is, the longer you live.
And the order to do that, you need to do cardio and you do interval training.

Speaker 1 So you kind of push and stress yourself.

Speaker 1 So you can do half an hour, two or three times a a week of that and that'll get you pretty good you do as fast as you can for 45 seconds to a minute then slow for three minutes do it again you can do it on a treadmill on a bike it's like sprinting you know we used to call wind sprints in high school right right right over that do you so okay so let's just talk about the lot about and we're still on inflammation okay so for inflammation that you said all the things about that is there anything else we can do because like supplements i know like you know is there let's

Speaker 1 say if you just take multivitamin fish and vitamin d you know less than a dollar a day you can

Speaker 1 do all these things. Yeah.
I mean, a dollar a day is not nothing, but, you know, think what people spend on their coffee or their just junk or their Netflix subscription.

Speaker 1 I mean, like, what do you want to invest in your, you know, invest in your health? You pay now or pay later?

Speaker 2 Well, I think the problem is that right now we're, we're so inundated with information, right? Especially with social media.

Speaker 2 Everyone talks about this supplement, that supplement, do this, don't do that, do more, more of that. Like, and things ebb and flow and trend, right?

Speaker 2 So like things that we talked about, remember when carbs was a thing that we should be doing and not eating all this protein?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Are there things that kind of like you've learned in your whole, in your evolution that you're like, wow, this is, I was totally wrong about this. I was completely, this is the way.

Speaker 2 And what are things like intermittent fasting, for example? Like, what is your, what's your thoughts on things that are so trendy now that I feel have had a little bit of a backlash to some people?

Speaker 1 Well, you know, I think what sells books and what gets people to click on social media is

Speaker 1 extremes. So you've got carnivores on one side, the vegans on the other side.

Speaker 1 And, you know, like, it's kind of extreme.

Speaker 1 And I think, I think I take a more middle-of-the-road position based on the science, which is, you know, one, you know, there's certain principles that you follow that are allow you to have a wide variety of diets, culturally different diets, personal preference differences that you might like.

Speaker 1 But the principles should be the same. One, food is medicine.

Speaker 1 So you have to understand every bite you take take is information and it's regulating your biology with every single bite and changing your gene expression, your epigenome, your hormones, your brain chemistry, your metabolism, your microbiome, immune system.

Speaker 1 Everything is literally affected in real time by every single bite of food you have. So the quality of your food matters.

Speaker 1 Second is, and that food is information and it can upgrade your, downgrade your biology with every bite. Second is that we should think about nutrition from the perspective of personalized nutrition.

Speaker 1 Everybody's different. Some people are great on a vegan diet.
Some people get really sick on a vegan diet. Some people need more protein.
Some people need more fats. Some people need more carbs.

Speaker 1 And there's now genetics we can do to actually see what people do better on or worse on, and what people respond better to or worse to.

Speaker 1 And then, you know, thirdly, it's really a simple principle to eat real food. Like, don't eat stuff that's not food.
Like, you know, ultra-processed food is not food. A Pop-Tart is actually not food.

Speaker 1 It's made from deconstructed science ingredients that have been processed from commodity crops, broken down to their chemical individual components. The chemical structures have been changed.

Speaker 1 So it's not actually even the same molecular structure.

Speaker 1 And it reassembled into all sizes, colors, shapes of chemically extruded food-like substances that have nothing to do with nutrition, don't actually meet the definition of food.

Speaker 1 If you look at the Webster's definition of food,

Speaker 1 it's basically something that supports the health and growth of an organism. Well, these don't.
They do the opposite, right? And so technically, we're not actually eating food. So eat food.

Speaker 1 Right, eat food. I mean, Michael Pollen said, eat food, not too much, mostly plants, you know?

Speaker 2 Yeah, and that's what he, but he says all plants. And there are people who think, no, he didn't say all plants.
Mostly plants. Mostly plants.
He said, he said mostly plants.

Speaker 2 What about microwaving your food? Because it changes the food.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so there's, you know, the, you know, heating stuff up for a few seconds is fine.

Speaker 1 But like if you're cooking food, a microwave is a bad idea because you get the production of something called ages or advanced glycation end products.

Speaker 1 Essentially, it's like, think about like a crispy skin on a chicken or creme brulee.

Speaker 1 And this is the proteins and sugars combining in a way that creates a harmful inflammatory compound in the body. And so a lot of aging is caused by these compounds.

Speaker 1 And hemoglobin A1C, which is your blood sugar average, is an example of one of those, but there's many. And they bind to receptors.
They activate inflammation.

Speaker 1 And so they just create this facial cycle. So for sure, don't.
cook in a microwave. For sure, don't even heat up anything in plastic in a microwave.
That's a disaster.

Speaker 1 People putting microwave stuff in plastic with the plastic cover on. It's like, oh my God.

Speaker 2 It's terrible.

Speaker 2 So bad. But would you ever microwave your food for like a minute? Like that's.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So like if I'm lazy and like I'm in a hurry, I'll might like throw a sweet potato in there or something for this that's already cooked.
I might warm it up or something like that.

Speaker 2 But I got rid of mine thinking that it was like very dangerous.

Speaker 1 I mean listen radiation.

Speaker 1 Ideally, probably no, but like, you know.

Speaker 2 So you're not so crazy one way or the other. Like you are, you are, you do seem a little bit more like middle of the ground.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I mean, like, this, it's, it's, here's the deal.
You want to optimize your health. You want to become become resilient.
You don't want to live in a bubble. Right.

Speaker 1 Like, you don't want to be a bubble boy. No.
And so there are people who are so fragile, like they can't, you know, go anywhere and they can't travel. They can't stay in a hotel room.

Speaker 1 Like there may be people who truly have chemical sensitivities and are that sensitive. And

Speaker 1 I'm not saying they're crazy. And I treat them as patients and you can get them better.
But if you're resilient and healthy, your body can handle a lot.

Speaker 1 So, for example, if you're a diabetic and you have a can of Coke, it'll send you over the limit. Right.

Speaker 1 But if you're like someone like me and you work out, you know, five times a week and you strength train and your diet's predominantly like super low sugar and starch, you're insulin resistant, super dialed in.

Speaker 1 You have, you know, my insulin level is two. My blood sugar is perfect.
You know, my A1C is very low. You know, I, I can, you know, have some sweets once in a while.
It's not going to kill me.

Speaker 2 So you're saying all these numbers, right? Which means that you're monitoring all these things and stats. So that tells me that you are a big believer in wearables, right?

Speaker 2 Like, are you wearing a glucose monitor?

Speaker 1 Are you wearing an aura ring or a whoop or what is your. yeah, test, don't guess is my motto.
Yeah, I like that. Test don't guess.
And in fact, I co-founded a company called Function Health

Speaker 1 to allow people to go deeper. The aura rings are great.
CGMs are great. Woop, you know, Apple Watch, all, but skin deep.
They're just skin deep. Yep.

Speaker 1 You know, glucose monitor is a little better because you've got a continuous treat of your glucose, but there's so many other biomarkers.

Speaker 1 So what I realized was that most doctors aren't checking these things. Most patients don't know what to ask for.

Speaker 1 If they do, they have to argue with their doctor to order it because they usually don't know what it is.

Speaker 1 And then they have to argue with their insurance company to pay for it, which they usually don't.

Speaker 1 So we've co-founded a company called Function Health that allows people for $1.37 a day to get twice a year testing of over 110 biomarkers that gives you a profoundly deep view of your health.

Speaker 1 That's a lot. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And it's a bunch of tubes of blood, but basically it's giving you a deep insight in your metabolic health and it's checking things that don't get checked that are the most relevant things. Like what?

Speaker 1 For example, your metabolic health. People get their cholesterol checked and they just look at the basic numbers.

Speaker 1 So today I had a patient this morning before I came here who had perfectly normal cholesterol on the regular cholesterol test, but she had severe metabolic dysfunction because she had high numbers of lipid particles of cholesterol particles and small particles.

Speaker 1 And so we look at a more advanced cholesterol test. It looks at the size and number and the quality of your cholesterol, not just the weight.

Speaker 1 We look at what we call ApoB and lipoprotein A, which are really the most important, some of the most important biomarkers for your risk for a heart attack, not the ones you're getting at your doctor's checkup.

Speaker 1 That's like a 50-year-old test.

Speaker 1 We're looking at inflammation. We look at autoimmune markers and 30 plus percent of people have an autoimmune biomarker.
13% have autoimmune thyroid disease.

Speaker 1 We have 46% with high levels of CBR protein, which is inflammation. So we check your immune system.
We check your toxin levels of heavy metals like mercury and lead.

Speaker 1 We check your hormones like male sex hormone, female sex hormones.

Speaker 1 We look at your cortisol and we look at your metabolic health, entering insulin, which, you know, we're working with Quest as our provider of the lab testing.

Speaker 1 So it's not some, you know, it's not some rat crazy thing. This is like the biggest lab in the country.
In the world.

Speaker 2 So basically, how does it work?

Speaker 1 That's what I'm curious about.

Speaker 2 Do people walk into a Quest? I'll tell you.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I'll tell you.
It's pretty easy. I just want to finish with the testing.
So we do, we do nutritional testing, 67% of people have nutritional deficiencies at the minimum level.

Speaker 1 We're seeing so much going on

Speaker 1 in the dysfunctions that are not being looked at. So the process is very easy.
Just go to functionhealth.com. We're in beta now.
So

Speaker 1 with your listeners, we've provided a early access code, which is hustle100. So

Speaker 1 you go to hustle100. The first 100 listeners to sign up will skip the waitlist, which is 300,000 people.

Speaker 2 Okay, well, listen to that, guys. That's very big.
So if you guys use a code hustle100, you skip the 300,000 people guest

Speaker 2 waitlist, and you get... you get early access.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and then once you sign in, a few minutes of questionnaire to sort of get your basic demographics and everything. And then you'll get a text from our team.

Speaker 1 They'll say, okay, you're living this zip code. Your closest lab is a mile away.
When do you want your appointment? Okay, Tuesday. Okay.
I'll go in at Tuesday, eight o'clock.

Speaker 1 And you go in, you show them your, there's a little scanning machine. You put your driver's license in there.
They register you a second. You walk in.
They draw your blood. 10, 15 minutes, you're out.

Speaker 1 And then all the data gets loaded up into your dashboard, which is data you own.

Speaker 1 It's your data. You can track it over time.
I mean, I mean,

Speaker 1 it's so frustrating for me as a doctor because medicine is so analog. Yeah.
You know, we don't use tech in medicine at all. Like even an electronic medical record is just a paper record in

Speaker 2 the office. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And so, you know, if I want to know, okay, let me look at your cholesterol. What was it last year or the year before? And what are the trends? I have to like open a PDF.

Speaker 1 I have to look at it, try to remember what it said, then come to the new one and look at that one, compare them all in my head or write it down, which takes me time. It's just a pain in the ass.

Speaker 1 So this is a beautiful dashboard. You can see your trends over time.
You get a deep set of insights.

Speaker 1 So it's not just a data because that, you know, the average person doesn't know know what to do with their data, right? Doesn't know what the tests mean. But we spent

Speaker 1 enormous amounts of time sifting through all the scientific literature, bringing knowledge experts in, including me, and writing, you know, tens of thousands of pages of content that are then become delivered to you based on your biomarker.

Speaker 1 So let's say you have an inflammation and your CRP is high. Okay, what does it mean? Why does it matter? Why would it be high? How do you figure it out? What do you do about it?

Speaker 1 What would you do from a lifestyle perspective, from a supplement perspective? What are the diagnostic tests might you need? When do you need to go to the doctor?

Speaker 1 And And what do you need to be informed with to be able to actually be the best advocate for your own health? Because I believe you should be the C of your own health. Totally.

Speaker 1 Not abdicating that to the healthcare system. You know, my friend Chris Carr had cancer and she, she, she's an incredible woman.

Speaker 1 And she, she was like, she had some really weird, rare cancer, and they told her she was going to die. And she's like, well, that's not okay.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 So she, she sort of said and joked that she started a new company called Save My Ass Technologies Inc., you know, like, oh my gosh.

Speaker 1 Basically her owning her own own health. And that's what we all need to do.
And our goal at Function Health is to help people do 100 healthy years, which I think is achievable for most people.

Speaker 2 That's amazing.

Speaker 2 Americans take up to 20,000 breaths a day and spend an average of 90% of their time indoors. The indoor air that we breathe can be up to 100 times more polluted than outdoor air.

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Speaker 2 Lock in this special offer by going to airdoctorpro.com and use promo code hustle. That's airdoctorpro.com.

Speaker 1 Promo code hustle.

Speaker 2 So, wait, so after you get all the testing and you have the dashboard, do you have someone who helps you kind of understand? Like, do you get like a doctor assigned?

Speaker 1 Or is it all just a second? Do you get a definition summary of all your results? Yes. Generated.
And then you have the insights that are delivered to you personally. Like, what should you be eating?

Speaker 1 That says what you should be doing. What lifestyle changes do you need to make? What toxins do you need to avoid? What do you need in terms of exercise?

Speaker 1 How do you optimize your microbiome if you need to do that? How do you, what supplements might be helpful for a particular issue you have?

Speaker 1 If your vitamin D is low, how do you know which vitamin D to take? What form of vitamin D? What dose do you take? How do you pick the right supplement? We don't recommend products. Right.

Speaker 1 Just we aren't selling anything other than the service of owning your own data. Yeah.
Right. So we're not like hawking different company

Speaker 1 product stuff. And so it's, it's, it just provides you the, the scientific information.
Everything's deeply referenced with scientific literature. All the data is there.
You can look at it yourself.

Speaker 1 And then it guides you into a personalized program.

Speaker 1 And then, you know, there's an interactive app that we're about to launch, which will kind of help, you know, support you in implementing the recommendations.

Speaker 2 That's amazing, actually. And I can't believe how many biomarkers you're checking for.
That's a lot.

Speaker 1 And then, of course, we already added almost another 200 that if you want to do extra stuff, you can. For example, let's say you have a family history of Alzheimer's.

Speaker 1 There's now blood biomarkers for Alzheimer's disease, which you don't even need a brain scan for.

Speaker 1 And you don't have to wait to have memory issues, but you can actually detect things and then do interventions that will reverse those biomarkers and normalize them. Wow.

Speaker 1 We were also measuring, for example, cancer screening.

Speaker 1 We offer one of the, we're one of the biggest providers in the country of something called Gallery, which is a multi-cancer detection test using fragments of DNA that kind of come off cancer cells that you can detect in the blood.

Speaker 1 It's like a liquid biopsy. And it picks up about 50 different cancers.
75% of the time it'll detect it.

Speaker 1 There's only half a percent false positive rate, which is much better than all their current screening tests. In other words, well, I'm going to do this test.

Speaker 1 Is it going to show positive, but it's really not a cancer? Very rare to have that happen.

Speaker 1 One in 188 people who we've been testing actually has a cancer we've identified and we've saved people's lives that they didn't even know because we pick it up early.

Speaker 1 And this text detects cancer a year to three years before it shows up anywhere else.

Speaker 2 By the way, just in that alone is worth doing it.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I I mean, you know, my sister died of cancer, my father died of cancer.
You know, they would have not both had died of cancer if they'd had this test.

Speaker 2 So you can pick up cancer, you can pick up potential Alzheimer's.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And we're, you know, we're doing a whole bunch of stuff on autoimmune testing, on nutritional testing, on toxin testing.

Speaker 1 We're now able to test things like PFAS forever chemicals in your blood, heavy metals, BPA, other chemicals that are. I'm going to get this test.

Speaker 2 I'm going to, seriously, I'm going to, by the way, even before you were on this, on this show podcast, podcast, I was told about your program.

Speaker 2 Like a few people told me about it because they, I was told it was like way above other programs out there. Cause everyone now is all, you know, jumping on these bandwagons, right?

Speaker 2 Like personalized health, tele ed medicine, all the things. But yours does sound like super extensive.
Yeah, it barely.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I mean, it's because I sort of am the kind of Intel inside.
Yeah. Well, you know, my background has been, you know, a doctor at Canyon Ranch, which is a health resort for almost 10 years.

Speaker 1 And there we did, you know, five to $10,000 worth of testing on everybody. Is that how you started at Canyon Ranch? I was, yeah.

Speaker 1 My joke is I'm a resort doctor because I worked at a health resort and the doctor of last resort.

Speaker 1 That's funny.

Speaker 2 So that's how you started?

Speaker 1 Yep. And then I started 20 years ago, I started my own practice after that.
And again, had a clientele who could afford to do deep testing. And we've done really extensive testing.

Speaker 1 And I've seen millions and millions and millions and millions of biomarkers on tens of thousands of people.

Speaker 1 And so I really understand what's going on in there and things that doctors were not checking. And we're always like looking to the future.
Like, what does the science say?

Speaker 1 Because in the scientific literature, this discoveries get made.

Speaker 1 And, you know, for example, we've known about lipid protein fractionation, which is the test we do at Function Health for your cholesterol. This is the standard of the care.

Speaker 1 This should be the state-of-the-art test that everybody gets. It's not expensive, not hard to get.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And yet, we asked Quest, how many cholesterol tests that you get are from doctors around the country? And you're the biggest lab.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Are for this test? What do they say? Less than 1%.

Speaker 1 And this test has been around for decades. I've been doing it personally for 30 years.
The science is over 40 years old on this.

Speaker 1 So what happens is it takes decades for the science to turn into clinical practice. That's crazy.
You know, it is crazy. So my daughter's in medical school now.

Speaker 1 She's not learning anything about insulin resistance, nothing about the microbiome, nothing about nutrition, nothing about environmental toxins.

Speaker 1 These are the things that are causing people to be sick. She knows nothing about how to take care of mitochondrial problems.
I mean, it's just, it's astounding to me.

Speaker 2 Where's she going to medical school?

Speaker 1 Well, it's a very good medical school. It's the University of Utah.
It's a great medical school.

Speaker 1 And it's pretty much what is going on because we have a pharmaceutically driven healthcare system that is in large part funded by the pharma industry. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So a lot of academic centers, you know, they're not getting money from the government.

Speaker 1 Sometimes they're getting NIH grants, but a lot of their funding comes from pharma that is funding the professors to study a statin or study the Ozempic or study.

Speaker 1 ozempic is a great example you know we've got you know a drug now that's like the panacea for weight loss and everything everybody's sort of like we should be all taking this and you know they're studying it for everything so they're studying for depression for autoimmune disease for neurodegenerative disease for obviously heart disease for obesity for diabetes and and this these companies these pharma companies are just reeking in the money and

Speaker 1 Novo Nordisk, which is the maker of Ozempic in Denmark, is the single biggest contributor to the gross domestic product or GDP of Denmark.

Speaker 2 That is crazy.

Speaker 1 And yeah, it's a huge, huge. And it's like, it's the Eli Lilly, the number one selling drug is one jaro.
They're billions and billions of dollars a year from these drugs.

Speaker 1 And they're pouring billions into research to prove the benefit of these drugs across a wide range of health conditions. They work not because there's some magic to the drug.

Speaker 1 They work because they give people lose weight. And the weight loss is what's working.

Speaker 1 It's like a study that they did on gastric bypass. They said, well, gee, gastric bypass, you can reverse diabetes in two weeks.
Well, someone has a gastric bypass. It's a miracle.
Right. Right.

Speaker 1 Even if they're still overweight and you're still 400 pounds, two weeks later, after you do the surgery, you don't have diabetes anymore and your inflammation goes down, your numbers get better.

Speaker 1 Well, how did that happen? It's because of the food they're eating because they don't eat what they were eating. They don't eat what they eat.

Speaker 1 But they did a study where they just, instead of giving them the gastric bypass, they did a randomized trial where they gave half the people.

Speaker 1 a gastric bypass and another match control group, not the bypass, but just fed them the food as if they would have had the the bypass. So on the same diet.
Right. Same result.
Same result.

Speaker 2 No different.

Speaker 1 So it's not the Ozempic. And so, you know, I was talking to my friend who was the head of cardiology at Harvard.
And he's like, I said, no, why don't you study lifestyle changes in heart disease?

Speaker 1 Because they work better than the medications. He's like, I know, Mark.
He says, but I can't get $5 to study diet and lifestyle.

Speaker 1 I can get $150 million from pharma that funds my department, that funds my programs, that funds my fellowship, that funds everything.

Speaker 1 So I'm going to do that study that they want me to do because, you know, they're paying the bills. That's how it works.
It's super corrupt.

Speaker 2 That's so crazy to me. And the funny, not funny at all is that now you have people who are on these, these Ozempics and Grigovis who shouldn't be on them.
They're like thin people. Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's like, oh, God. And I see it.
It's like, oh, wow, I can tell. You know, they get that, they get that look.
They get that Ozempic face.

Speaker 2 Is that a true thing?

Speaker 1 Oh, that was a face. Yes.
And you lose subcutaneous fat and you lose muscle. And

Speaker 1 this is a catastrophe because I do not think, I think it's personally, I think it's malpractice to prescribe one of these drugs unless that person has diet counseling and understands they need to eat a gram of protein per pound of ideal body weight and they're taught how to do it.

Speaker 1 Right. And that they do it.
And two, that they commit to strength training at least three times a week.

Speaker 1 Because if you don't, what happens is this, you lose the weight, but up to half of the weight is muscle. Now, muscle is your metabolic engine.
It burns seven times the calories of fat.

Speaker 1 And when you lose muscle, your metabolism slows down. So then what happens? Then you stop the drug because of the side effects or you can't afford it forever.
And then what happens?

Speaker 1 You gain back the weight. So let's say you start out and you lose 20 pounds and then you gain back the 20 pounds.
When you gain back the 20 pounds, you're going to gain it back all as fat.

Speaker 1 which means your metabolism is going to be slower,

Speaker 1 even at the same weight that you were when you started, which means you you need to eat less in order to just stay at that weight so you'll gain more weight even and it's it's a disaster so there's got to be listen these drugs like any drug are a tool you know a gun is a tool you can go hunt a deer and get dinner or you can kill somebody exactly it's great it's a tool i'm not i'm not opposed to these drugs what i'm opposed to is their widespread use is the lack of research on other interventions that work better and and and and there's there's really clear data on this.

Speaker 1 I mean, Verta Health is a company that a friend of mine started, Sammy Inakin, that basically uses ketogenic diets for reversing type 2 diabetes. And they've scaled this up.

Speaker 1 They're covered by Medicare Advantage. They save an average of $6,000 per patient.
And they've compared the results they get using that for type 2 diabetes. They reversed completely type 2 diabetes.

Speaker 1 It's pretty advanced in 60% of patients. Wow.
Average of 12% weight loss, which is an astounding amount of weight loss.

Speaker 1 And they have 100% get off the main diabetes medication, almost 90 plus percent get off insulin or dramatically reduced their insulin, and all the lipid bar markers improve.

Speaker 1 And all the secondary things that are being measured by these drug companies that are saying they're the benefits of Ozempic, all those get better. It's not the Ozempic.

Speaker 1 It's the diet.

Speaker 2 It's the diet.

Speaker 2 So it basically does come down to what you eat, your food, and how much you eat of it.

Speaker 1 It's not how much is not

Speaker 1 of an issue. It's really the quality of what you eat.
The quality. Because if you eat the right food, you can't overeat.

Speaker 1 In other words, if I said, you know i want you to eat 10 12 ounce steaks no way if i said eat 10 avocados no way if i said eat 10 chocolate chip cookies no problem if i eat a quart of ice cream no problem you know and and and our bodies when we eat this stuff that's not really food doesn't know how to regulate it and the studies have been done on this the nih study by kevin hall looked at this very carefully and he did what we call a crossover trial which is one of the best types of study designs where he took the same people gave them a diet and then let them have a break yeah call a washout period and then give them another diet for a few weeks and then measured what happened first part of the diet was eating real food wow yeah match for protein fat carbs calories then they gave them ultra processed food and they could eat whatever they want eat whatever you want eat as much as you want there's no restrictions when they were eating ultra processed food they ate 500 calories more a day because their biology was dysregulated right you know kids who are iron deficient will eat dirt The body is going to crave more food and want more food because it's looking for nutrients, but we're looking for love in all the wrong places.

Speaker 1 Right. Yeah.
And so what happened is that you get dysregulated. And think about that.
500 calories a day in a week is 3,500 calories. That's a pound of weight gain.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 If you don't offset it with exercise. In a year, that's 52 pounds of weight gain.
If you eat all your processed food, why is America the fattest country in the world?

Speaker 1 Like we, we have 75% of us that are overweight. 42% are obese.
It's increased

Speaker 1 fourfold since I was born. And you've seen diabetes increase 400%.
I mean, it's in the last 30 years. It's insane.
And

Speaker 1 the metabolic dysfunction, even if you're not overweight, because you can be skinny fat. In other words, you look thin, but you're

Speaker 1 actually... fat on the inside.

Speaker 2 Right. Your percentage is fat.

Speaker 1 Yeah, your body fat,

Speaker 1 where the fat is, if it's in your belly, visceral fat. That's 93.2% of Americans have metabolic dysfunction.
That means that 6.8% of us are healthy. And what does that mean?

Speaker 1 That 93.2% has either high blood sugar, high blood pressure, abnormal cholesterol, all, by the way, caused by too much starch and sugar in our ultra-processed diet, or they've had a heart attack or stroke, or they're overweight.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that is unbelievable. It's unbelievable.
And so

Speaker 1 we're killing ourselves. And it's the costs are staggering.
I mean, the government, the U.S. government pays 40% of the national health care bill, which is now $4.9 trillion.

Speaker 1 Probably a good $2 trillion of that is totally preventable and is now being added to our federal deficit every year. And imagine what that $2 trillion could do for the economy.

Speaker 1 what we could do with social programs, how we could improve our infrastructure, how we could improve so many innovation, how we could fund different kinds of research.

Speaker 1 I mean, we're wasting that money. And most people don't realize that.
You know, it's one out of every three taxpayer dollars is for health care.

Speaker 2 It's unbelievable. What I find to be unbelievable is that everyone seems to look for these quick fad diets or quick fixes, but yet like it's pretty, again, what you're saying is pretty basic, right?

Speaker 2 Like it's the same things that like if they watch what they eat, quality of the food, inflammation, like these, it's not that hard.

Speaker 2 It's not that hard, but yet people are trying to over or this, they're overwhelmed with like all this like noise. Yeah.

Speaker 2 You know, the other thing I wanted to ask you about Ozempic or any of these or govies or whatever, can your body acclimate over time anyway?

Speaker 2 And so you end up even eating what you ate before you even started taking it?

Speaker 1 Sometimes these drugs affect people differently. I had a patient who I didn't prescribe it, but he was telling me he lost, you know, he did Ozempic for six months.

Speaker 1 He lost two pounds. It didn't really make him feel great.
He had all these side effects. He switched over to what I told him to do.

Speaker 1 He lost 60 pounds and he's reversed his diabetes and, you know, he's on his way back to full, full health.

Speaker 2 You keep on saying patience. Do you still see patients?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I saw two this morning.

Speaker 2 I had had a whole patient day yesterday yeah so you actually still see like one of the children

Speaker 2 i don't just play one on tv no you don't just play one i listen this is very refreshing i thought of all the people of all the doctors you wouldn't have time because do you know how many times i've seen doctors sit in the same chair you are and they are their doctors yeah i guess they have a certificate but they don't practice they write books and they like to do media and they like to do all these other things it keeps it real it keeps you humble right but people don't like to do it like it's impossible to find like Like, the big joke is that I can't find a doctor.

Speaker 1 I love it. I mean, I love taking care of people.
It's so, I mean, it's amazing.

Speaker 2 You actually are like, would you take another patient? I need a doctor because there is such a shortage of doctors.

Speaker 1 You got a live girl. I know.

Speaker 2 Like, what is the waiting list for that?

Speaker 1 Like, do you have like a crazy waiting list?

Speaker 1 I wish I could see everybody. I really wished.
I mean, it's the heartbreak of my life. And I can tell you, I probably get five to 10 texts, emails, requests every day.
Easy.

Speaker 1 My mother, this, my friend, this, I'm sick, this. And like people who are close to me, and I'm like, I just wish I could help everybody.
And I can't.

Speaker 1 And so that's really why I co-founded Function Health. Right.
To get to take what I know and make it accessible, not to a few hundred or a thousand people, but to millions and millions.

Speaker 1 We have an 8 billion person problem. That's exactly true.
And what we're creating at Function is something that is revolutionary. It's why we're the fastest growing healthcare company in the world.

Speaker 1 We're creating something called medical intelligence.

Speaker 1 You know, you have chat, GPT, and all this, but think about where where you take all your own data and all your data is sorted through with the use of technology.

Speaker 1 Because now we can process, I mean, just in your microbiome alone, there's 100,000 terabytes of data. I don't even know what a terabyte is, but it's a lot of information.
A lot, I guess. Yeah.

Speaker 1 That's what I say. So no human mind can comprehend all that.
So we're able to take all this data and actually understand what's happening to you.

Speaker 1 input it all into the system and then give you a predictive model of where you are in the trajectory from wellness to illness because things don't happen overnight, right?

Speaker 1 For example, we were mentioning some of these Alzheimer's tests, like P-TAUS 217 or ADA, 4240 or neurofibrille light chain. There's other biomarkers.

Speaker 1 And we're now able to see from a blood test that, you know, you could be developing early, early cognitive injury, brain injury that you don't even know about because you're not symptomatic.

Speaker 1 You can tell with brain imaging up to 30 to 40 years before you get Alzheimer's that you're starting to get trouble.

Speaker 1 in the brain but now with these blood tests we can detect it and then you can do something to intervene and actually reverse that trajectory. That's never been possible before.

Speaker 1 So, I mean, how is it even possible?

Speaker 2 I thought there was no cure.

Speaker 1 You couldn't, well, can you give us a well, there is, of course, there is. I mean, you know, like give us some things that we can do for our brain.
This is not my opinion.

Speaker 1 This is this is this is actually fact.

Speaker 1 I mean, if you look at uh, the studies being done out of Europe, the finger trial, the pointer trials, these are large-scale clinical trials using aggressive lifestyle intervention, risk factor modification, and actually not showing not just reverse, uh, slowing down or or delaying the progression of Alzheimer's, but reversing

Speaker 2 how can we reverse Alzheimer's?

Speaker 1 What you eat. I mean, exercise, stress management, sleep optimization, the right nutritional optimization, hormone optimization, addressing all the root causes, toxins, the gut microbiome.

Speaker 1 I mean, it's a process. It's a deep involved process.
And I've written a book about this called The Ultra Mind Solution about 15 years ago. It was way ahead of its time, still ahead of its time.

Speaker 1 And colleagues of mine, like Dale Bredison, have taken that and really upgraded it. And he's got a recode program now.

Speaker 1 He's written a book called The End of Alzheimer's, which talks about the root causes. This is not just happening in a vacuum.
It's not just a random event.

Speaker 1 Why have we seen Alzheimer's increase by 150%?

Speaker 1 Why?

Speaker 2 Tell us.

Speaker 1 Why? Because we have this shitty diet, which is sugar. I mean, they're calling Alzheimer's type 3 diabetes now, which is insulin resistance.

Speaker 1 Why we have 93% of the population have some degree of insulin resistance. But why, that's what I don't understand.
Toxins, environmental toxins.

Speaker 2 There's more education out than ever before, right? We're more educated. You'd think, like there's information out there.
How is it instead of getting less obese, we're getting more obese.

Speaker 2 Instead of getting healthier, we're getting more sick. When all we, we are overloaded with people and information, like the health industry, longevity industry, it's a trillion-dollar business.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we live in a toxic cesspool of food and toxins. I mean, it's just the truth.
I mean, the food industry has produced food that is making us sick and making us die early.

Speaker 1 And we also have completely unregulated environmental toxins in the society that people are just

Speaker 1 polluted. You know, if we were food, we wouldn't be safe to eat as human beings.
We're so polluted.

Speaker 2 Why is it different here than the UK?

Speaker 1 Well, in other countries, they don't allow the same ingredients. I mean, you might have heard the recent

Speaker 1 ruffle about Kellogg's and these are friends of mine.

Speaker 2 I was going to ask you about that.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, like, you know, it's ridiculous. Like in Europe, they have regulations.
They have something called the REACH legislation in the European Union, which limits the use of chemicals.

Speaker 1 So here, the way it works is you if you're a company you get to use whatever you want and you get it proved as generally recognized as safe and then you only get to have it taken off the market if it's shown later to be harmful so innocent until proven guilty wow as opposed to you have to prove this is safe before you put it in the food for example trans fats is a great example right crisco was invented in 1911 shortening yeah i remember it why they call it shortening no because shortens are alive yeah no that's not why they call it that way oh i i thought that's why you call it short okay no why they call it that i don't know oh but anyway um that was a joke a doctor joke doctor joke like a dad joke it's like yeah i don't eat red meat i only eat it well done yeah

Speaker 1 so the reality is that the science started coming around in the 60s and 70s and the 80s and it was just really a compelling data wow that it was killing people hundreds of thousands of people a year And the FDA still did not change its policies.

Speaker 1 And there was a scientist that was researching this for 50 years. Wow.
He finally, in his 90s, sued the FDA.

Speaker 1 And based on that suit, they changed the regulations to recognize it as something that was not safe. So they took it off the safe list.

Speaker 1 And then they encouraged companies to remove it from the food supply. But it's still out there.
And again, we should have never had that for that long in the food. So we're having

Speaker 1 butylate hydroxytoluene and different dyes and additives and colors are added to food here like calicox fruit loops that you don't get.

Speaker 1 Kraft macaroni and cheese in this country has got all kinds of weird dyes. And if you go to Europe, it's got, you know, basically carrot dyes to make it orange, not weird, orange, you know, neon

Speaker 1 all these chemicals. Yeah, which, of course, I grew up on craft macaroni.

Speaker 2 Me too, right? We all did.

Speaker 1 I mean, that was the first thing I learned how to cook. Me too.

Speaker 2 I think that was like kind of like every child, you know, like my daughter, right?

Speaker 1 You boil the noodles and you put the cheese in and the milk in.

Speaker 2 Totally, totally.

Speaker 1 Where did you grow up on that?

Speaker 1 All over. I was born in Spain, grew up in New York City and Queens, and then moved to Toronto.

Speaker 1 I'm from Toronto. You're Canadian? No, my mother married a Canadian after my parents were divorced.

Speaker 2 I met like you grew up in Toronto?

Speaker 1 Yeah, from 8 to 18, yeah. Where? David and York Mills.
Really? Yeah.

Speaker 2 Oh, my God. That is hilarious.
Where did you go to medical school?

Speaker 1 University of Ottawa. I'm from Ottawa.

Speaker 2 Are you serious? Does anybody know this about you?

Speaker 2 All the Canadians. So are you surprised? I have to ask you, because like when you started all of this stuff, your career, it wasn't like trendy and cool to be a doctor.

Speaker 2 It wasn't trendy and it wasn't like a massive industry like what we were talking about earlier. And then it blown up to be like the hot thing.

Speaker 2 You know how there's all these different trends we're talking about, entrepreneurship, health, longevity. Like, are you surprised of how like you've become so popular in the trajectory of your career?

Speaker 2 Did you expect this?

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 1 I don't know. I just, I just saw the issues way.
I mean, I studied nutrition 45 years ago and college and wrote a, read a book called Nutrition Against Disease by Roger Williams.

Speaker 1 It got me thinking about this. It was given to me by a PhD student on nutrition that I was living with.
We shared a house together. Oh, okay.
And so I got, you know, kind of. In Ottawa? Yeah.

Speaker 1 No, in Cornell. Okay, Cornell.
Cornell. Yeah.
Where I went to undergraduate. And I, you know, I just got into health and wellness and herbal medicine and yoga.

Speaker 1 And I was a yoga teacher before I was a doctor.

Speaker 1 You were? Yeah.

Speaker 2 So, and also, I know you're into Buddhism and all that stuff too, right? Are you still, are you still into that stuff?

Speaker 1 I mean, it definitely has very much informed my way of thinking about the world and my mind and suffering and, you know, compassion and why, why are we getting all the mess we get into? Right.

Speaker 2 That's a good, that's a good way of putting it.

Speaker 2 What do you think about all the other modalities that can help like meditation, all the other things that help with like lowering your, I guess, your, your stress levels that help.

Speaker 1 I mean, look, you know, functional medicine is a way of thinking. It's an operating system and it's agnostic and it's whatever the right set of tools.

Speaker 1 So there's a whole bunch of tools in the toolkit from meditation and yoga to breath work to acupuncture to drugs to supplements to diet to plasmaphoresis to whatever.

Speaker 2 What is that? You said that in the beginning of the plasmaphoresis.

Speaker 1 So it's basically filtering your blood to get all the crap out. And it's one of those therapies that's being heavily researched for longevity.

Speaker 1 It's as we get older, it's like, you know, think about your car. If you don't change the oil,

Speaker 1 crap in it. And it's sort of like that.
It's like you filter your blood out, you take out the cells, you take out the plasma, you throw it out, you put a new. How do you do it?

Speaker 1 You take blood out of one arm, you put it through a machine that filters everything out. It's like dialysis, you know? Yeah.
And then it goes back in the other arm.

Speaker 2 And so how accessible is this to the

Speaker 1 accessible? It's expensive. It's between $5,000 and $10,000 time.
It's going to come down in price and it's going to be more accessible. And there's a lot of research going on now.

Speaker 1 Irina Conboy is one of the leading researchers out of, you know, the Powell area in this field. And it's pretty exciting.

Speaker 1 So I think it's one of those therapies that can be used for long COVID, for autoimmune disease, for cognitive issues, for Alzheimer's, for longevity. So I think we're just beginning to understand.

Speaker 1 It's been around forever in medicine. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I mean, dialysis, as you were saying, like it's not dialysis.

Speaker 1 It's used for different kinds of autoimmune diseases or neurologic problems in hospitals. But this is a broadening the use of it to different kinds of indications.

Speaker 1 And I think it's one of the most exciting therapies.

Speaker 1 And I know it helped me because I had long COVID, not super long because I caught it early, but I basically had COVID and I developed arthritis afterwards.

Speaker 1 My hand blew up and I felt like crap and I was exhausted and my brain wasn't working. And I just did a course of plasmaphoresis.
And the next day I woke up and I was completely better.

Speaker 2 In one session? One session, yeah. Wow.
And how long does it take to do it?

Speaker 1 Usually two to three hours to be in your veins, an hour and a half, two hours, three.

Speaker 1 Wow, a friend of mine developed long COVID and he had a horrible gut problem

Speaker 2 and it was terrible. Yeah.
Would you suggest, would this type of thing that you just said be good for all different sorts of long COVID?

Speaker 1 100%.

Speaker 1 In fact, there's some good data data out of Europe, Germany, where they looked at long COVID patients and they measured all the autoantibodies and all the inflammatory compounds before and after and they did plasmapheresis and then they looked at their clinical outcomes and they found that actually it worked to actually help people recover and to reduce all these biomarkers of long COVID.

Speaker 2 Wow. Okay.
And then you said something else in the beginning about what you do. You said you were riffing off a few.
You said that.

Speaker 2 And you said another thing that you do that's kind of on the cutting edge. What was that?

Speaker 1 Rapomycin?

Speaker 2 No, not rapamycin. But you can talk about that too.
Isn't that just a supplement, though?

Speaker 1 No, it's a drug.

Speaker 2 Oh, wait. Isn't that the drug that people take for COVID, though?

Speaker 1 No, no, rapamycin is a drug that's used for immune suppression for transplants, but in low doses,

Speaker 1 intermittently, it seems to work for longevity.

Speaker 1 Really?

Speaker 2 So would you suggest people take trying it?

Speaker 1 I don't think the data is there for the average person to take it. But like I said, I'm willing to try it on myself as a guinea pig.

Speaker 1 And if they're a longevity enthusiast and they understand the risks and the... Is there risks? I mean, there is some risks.

Speaker 1 Um, it can suppress immune system function if taken in certain ways, and it depends on the person. So you have to monitor.

Speaker 2 Okay, what was the other thing that you said that you're doing that's a little bit more unique?

Speaker 1 I don't know. Exosomes, what I say, I don't remember.
No, exoses.

Speaker 2 What do you think about exodome stem cells in the U.S. versus outside the U.S.? Are they different?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of regulation in the United States that makes it difficult to get younger stem cells or umbilical stem cells. Exosomes are easier to get,

Speaker 1 but still not quite regulated. And I think, you know, it's unfortunate, but in other countries, they're doing far more advanced work than we are.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And so, okay, so exosomes, anything else that you do?

Speaker 1 Oh, I do a lot of stuff, exercise, take all my supplements, do all my stuff.

Speaker 2 What supplements are you taking?

Speaker 1 Oh, I take a cocktail of stuff, you know, my malty, fish oil, vitamin D, magnesium, but then I also take

Speaker 1 my longevity stack, which is urolithin A. I take Himalayan tartary buckwheat, which is incredible.
This compound that has querstin and all these immuno-rejuvenating properties.

Speaker 1 I take the sprout powder I put it in my shake every morning. I take probiotics.
I take

Speaker 1 this senolytic compound, which is a cocktail of different herbs and things like physetin, curcumin, green tea that helped to kill zombie cells.

Speaker 2 Where did you get that from?

Speaker 1 A company I used called Qualia. I don't have any relationship with them, but they're

Speaker 1 I know them. Okay.

Speaker 1 And going to write that. And

Speaker 1 I take NMN and I take.

Speaker 2 Why NMN and not NR? Like, why don't you?

Speaker 1 They're interchangeable.

Speaker 2 Do you think they're similar? Yeah. Really?

Speaker 2 I heard that NR, from what I understand, it gets into your cells easier.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it depends who's doing the research and making money. I was telling you.

Speaker 2 Exactly.

Speaker 2 That's a good question.

Speaker 1 And who's selling what?

Speaker 2 I know, but that's, isn't NMN

Speaker 2 Sinclair, right? Yeah. Okay, you must be friends with Sinclair.
Are you friends with Scotland?

Speaker 1 I'm friends with David. Yeah, he's a character, but I love him.

Speaker 2 Okay, so that's that's why. Okay.
So you're taking that. What else would you say you're doing besides all those stacks?

Speaker 1 And I want to listen to that. I think, you know, one of the killers that is really not talked about a lot is loneliness and isolation and disconnection.

Speaker 1 And, you know, when I, when I went to the blue zones,

Speaker 1 it was amazing that, you know, there were no nursing homes. Right.
Even if people didn't have kids, you know, they were taken in by their niece and nephew if they were old.

Speaker 1 Or, you know, it was just quite an amazing thing. And they had the deep sense of connection and community and belonging, meaning, purpose.

Speaker 1 Those are more sort of intangible things, but, but, you know, investing in your friendships, in your relationships, in your community is one of the most important things for longevity.

Speaker 2 I actually think that loneliness is our biggest pen.

Speaker 1 Like it's like smoking two packs of cigarettes a day.

Speaker 2 Yeah, people can die from loneliness. So I totally agree.
I know you need to get out of here.

Speaker 2 Is there anything else that you want to, we can talk about that's a little bit like, what's the number one question people ask you?

Speaker 1 Oh, I don't know.

Speaker 2 i mean what's the one thing that you hear the most people say like is like is it the gut is it brain what's like the one thing like right now that you're getting the most text messages the most dms about not like you even maybe check your own dms i mean it's just chronic illnesses people have you know autoimmune diseases you know have

Speaker 1 food disorders have gut issues have just people are just struggling in our traditional healthcare system we're getting sicker and sicker we're making more and more drugs, which aren't working.

Speaker 1 And we're spending more and more. We're getting less and less.

Speaker 1 You know, we're now spending you know more than twice any of the nation in healthcare costs per capita and we also are 48th in life expectancy it's crazy so i have one question focus and adhd do you think that that's a real thing do you think that we can eat better to actually have a better focus being more alert oh my god yeah i mean adhd now affects about you know 10 of kids um it's something that's now diagnosed in adults you know there's a lot of reasons for it you know nature deficit disorder, nutritional deficiencies, microbiome issues, environmental toxins.

Speaker 2 Nature deficit disorder. Is that more like you're on your social media too much? Yeah.

Speaker 1 And cut off the playing and being in nature.

Speaker 2 100%. This is why I'm asking the question.

Speaker 1 I have kids. And I think, you know, it's a real problem.
And I wrote, again, I wrote a book about this called the Ultra Mind Solution, same book, talking about the brain.

Speaker 1 So how to fix your broken brain by fixing your body first. Right.
So your body affects your brain.

Speaker 1 And I had a kid I talk about in that book who was severely ADD, on Riddle in for years, kicked out of kindergarten, you know, like

Speaker 1 behavior,

Speaker 1 had all these other health issues, had asthma, had allergies, had gut issues, had headaches, had this and that, totally crapped diet, processed food, did a bunch of testing, had severe nutritional deficiencies, had totally messed up gut, had bad bugs growing, too much yeast, had lead also in his system.

Speaker 1 So he basically just got his gut healthy, put him in a lination diet, kind of got his body. He was 12 years old at the time.
And it was like a miracle.

Speaker 1 Like two months later, he came back completely normal. And what was amazing, and you know, you can get to the link to look at the imaging, but you can see his handwriting before and after two months.

Speaker 1 And it was the thing that got me going, oh my God, what's going on here? Because his handwriting, you know, is illegible. A lot of these kids have what we call dysgraphia.

Speaker 1 They can't, their writing is just terrible penmanship. And then two months later, it was perfect writing.
And it wasn't because he had occupational therapy and handwriting lessons.

Speaker 1 It was because his brain went from being chaotic and dysfunctional and coherent to being synchronized and coherent and functional. And that was what got me to really understand

Speaker 1 that that the body was influencing the brain in ways that we could modify and change, whether it was depression or ADD or OCD or autism or Alzheimer's, whatever it was.

Speaker 1 And so much, you know, the joke in medicine is that, you know, neurologists pay no attention to the mind and psychiatrists pay no attention to the brain.

Speaker 1 They're both wrong.

Speaker 1 There's no brain, there's no brain, mind thing. It's all one thing.
The body, brain, body, mind, mind, body. It's just,

Speaker 1 it's all the same.

Speaker 1 same and so you know basically what happens below the neck is pretty much ignored by most other you know kind of neurologists or psych or psychiatrists or psychologists and you can't talk your way out of you know a gluten tolerance is causing brain dysfunction or heavy metal toxicity or a vitamin deficiency you've got to treat that Yeah.

Speaker 2 And also exercise overall, this moving your body, going outside, all these things are so good for your overall productivity. Mark, you're amazing.
Thank you for being on the show on the podcast.

Speaker 2 You guys, so we said for Dr. Hyman's new and most, his new company,

Speaker 2 Function Health, which is probably now the fastest growing health company, you said, on the planet. He's giving everybody the first hundred people.
The code is a hustle 100.

Speaker 2 You're going to skip the line and you are going to get early access.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's functionhealth.com.

Speaker 2 Functionhealth.com. Tell them everything.
Tell them everything. All your 90,000 books and all the things, you know? Well, that's where I go.

Speaker 1 I get yourself checked because most people don't realize how bad things are under the hood. And so that's really important.
So just you go to functionhealth.com.

Speaker 1 You can log in, bypass the waitlist, get in the beta, and it's, you know, it's easy to do. Just use the code hustle100.
If you want to learn more about me, you can go to my website, drhyman.com.

Speaker 1 Social media is dr. Mark Hyman, and podcast is the doctor's pharmacy, although it might be changing name soon.

Speaker 2 So they know all about you. Like you're like have millions of followers.
Okay. Thank you so much.
You're an awesome, awesome guest. And I appreciate you being here.