← All the Hacks: Money, Points & Life
All the Hacks: Money, Points & Life
The Science of Nutrition and Its Impact on Your Body with Dr. Mark Hyman
00:51:09
Loading summary
Transcript54 lines
- [00:02]
A
Today, we're diving deep into the food on your plate and the power it holds over your health, energy and longevity. I'm joined by Dr. Mark Hyman, a leading expert in functional medicine and nutrition, who's here to reveal why 60% of what many of us eat isn't even real food. As he says, recognize that food is.
- [00:20]
B
Medicine and information and code that every bite you take will upgrade or downgrade your biology.
- [00:25]
A
We'll explore how to spot ultra processed foods, build a nutrient dense diet, and even optimize your microbiome for better mental and physical health. By the end, we'll give you practical steps to take control of your nutrition and transform your well being. I'm Chris Hutchins. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend or leave a comment or review. And if you want to keep upgrading your life, money and travel, click follow or subscribe now. Let's get into it right after this. This episode is brought to you by Storyworth. If you're spending time with loved ones for the holidays, chances are you are going to hear a lot of stories. The ones you love and the ones you've heard too many times. But have you ever wanted to help your loved ones capture those timeless stories not just for themselves, but for you, your family and future generations? It can seem daunting to write an entire book of life memories, but Storyworth makes it fun and easy, which is why I've given it as a gift so many times. Each week, Storyworth emails your loved ones a thought provoking question that you get to help pick things like what's the bravest thing you've ever done? Or what's the farthest you've ever traveled? And all they need to do is reply with a story. Long or short? Doesn't matter. After that year of fun, Storyworth compiles your loved ones, stories and photos into a beautiful keepsake hardcover book which I am excited to have in our family for generations to come. Families love Storyworth, which is why it has more than 35,000 five star reviews on Trustpilot with millions of stories shared over the last decade. So help your family members share their story this holiday season with storyworth. Go to allthehacks.com storyworth to save $10 on your first purchase. That's allthehacks.com S-T O R Y W O R T h to save $10 on your first purchase. Allthehacks.com Storyworth.
- [02:15]
C
Mark how do you define nutrition and why do you think it's so important to our Health.
- [02:20]
B
Well, actually, it's so funny you asked that, because most of what we eat is not food. And the definition of food is quite different than what we're eating. Food is basically any nutritious substance that people or animals eat or drink or that plants absorb in order to maintain life and growth. Now, if you go by that definition of food, what most of us are eating does not maintain life or growth. It actually harms us. So it's not actually food. In fact, 60% of our calories are ultra processed food from corn, wheat and soy that are industrially grown, that are deconstructed into their chemical elements, that are reassembled into all sizes, colors and shapes of chemically extruded food, like substances that have nothing to do with nutrition. And yet that is what Americans are eating. And that, my friend, is why we are a sick nation. And so part of the reason is we're not eating food. We're eating things that we think might be related to food or they might look like food, but it really should be thought of more like a rock or, or a stick that we shouldn't be eating. That has no value to our biology. And so when I think of food, nutrition, what I think of is food as medicine, food as information, food as instructions or code that can literally upgrade or downgrade your biological software with every single bite. And I'm not talking about over days or months or weeks, I'm talking literally over seconds and minutes. Every single bite of your food is, is full of information. Not just proteins and amino acids and fatty acids and fats and carbohydrates, but it's got a whole array of other things. And phytochemicals, for example, I don't even know. We've cataloged them all. Probably well over a hundred thousand or more phytochemicals. The Rockefeller foundation is now cataloging these in the periodic table of these plant based molecules that you might have heard about, like resveratrol and red wine, or maybe you've heard about catechins and green tea or broccoli being good for you because it's got things that help prevent cancer, like sulforaphane. I mean, these are molecules that are in nature that have huge biological impact. And when you eat any bite of food and you're eating this immense cocktail of components that are literally regulating everything in your body. Every gene that's turned on or off or expressed, it affects your epigenome, which is the master regulator of your genes. It's affecting your hormone regulation, your brain chemistry, your immune System, your microbiome, your metabolism, literally with every single bite of food you eat. And so people need to understand that every bite of food they eat is consequential and has profound implications for how they feel now and how they're on the transitions from wellness to illness, how they're going to end up with disease or look to be a hundred healthy years. So when I think about nutrition, it's really quite simple. When you pick up anything in the grocery store, ask yourself one simple question. Did God make this or did man make this? And if you don't believe in God, did nature make this or did man make this? And I usually say man because it's usually man who did all this. And the answer is like, did God make an avocado? Yeah. Did he make a gogurt or a lunchable? No. Why are we feeding that to our kids? And so for me, food is really about understanding how to use the things that we eat every day to not just be, quote, healthy and stay our ideal weight and prevent disease, but it's really about the quality of our life, how we feel, how much energy we have, how our brain, brain functions, how our immune system functions to love the people we want to love, the way we love, to have a mission in life, to feel like we have time for being present with our friends and our family. Because when you feel like crap, which is what I call FLC syndrome, which is something most Americans suffer from, and most people have no clue that what they're eating is affecting how they feel and how they're literally just days away from feeling dramatically different. And I run these programs around the world, I put people on a very healthy healing diet, take out all the crap, sugar, processed food, alcohol, get rid of most grains, beans and dairy. Just because a lot of people have intolerance to that, try to put them on a whole foods anti inflammatory DIET and within 10 days we see a 70% reduction in all symptoms from all diseases. We see people's inflammation go down, their energy improve, their depression get better, their digestion system improved, their joints feel better, their skin clear up. But it's not miraculous, it's just science. Because the instructions and the code in food is regulating every system in your body. So when I think of nutrition, I think it should be fun and delicious and satisfying and nourishing, but it also should be up regulating your biology so you can be whoever you want to be.
- [06:50]
C
I know there's a spectrum, right? You can have ultra processed and processed. You know, you said, did nature or God make this or did man make this? Is there stuff in between that has a place in our diet?
- [07:03]
B
So there's a classification system called the Nova classification system. It's quite straightforward and it's really about how do we think about the four classifications of food. So unprocessed, minimally processed food is essentially an apple or an almond or an egg or a piece of chicken. It's just what it is, right? Pretty simple. So the group one unprocessed or minimally processed foods, and these are just the edible parts of plants, animals, algae, fungi, pretty obvious what they are. There may be foods that are minimally processed with fermentation, for example, like sauerkraut or yogurt or things like that. Then there's sort of processed and culinary ingredients which are used in seasoning. They're not full of additives. Crushed seeds and nuts and olive oils. If you want honey or maple syrup, you've got to extract it from the tree. You want to make butter, you've got to kind of process it. These are processed culinary ingredients that are coming from raw materials that we still kind of recognize. Right? And then there's processed foods that are preserved through various kinds of things that help improve shelf life. They can be cheese, canned vegetables, dried fruit, canned fish. Those are all things that we recognize. Ultra processed food is the Group 4 classification. And this is stuff that's just strange. Non food things like high fructose corn syrup that is not found in nature. It's made through an industrial process, often using alkali that creates heavy metals in the corn, like mercury. The fructose is there, not like in fruit. In a whole fruit, it's actually removed from the bond that fructose usually has with glucose to make sugar. Table sugar is glucose and fructose 50, 50 separated out, it's much easier absorbed. Hydrogen oil, like soybean oil or something, and you hydrogenated, which is adding under chemical processes extra hydrogen atoms to make solids. You can basically get Crisco. These are really weird foods. And then there's, you know, all the weird things that you have emulsifiers and additives, anti foaming and gelling and glazing agents and sweeteners and thickeners. What is that stuff? So if it's not something you have in your cupboard and you would cook with, and it's most likely ultra processed food. And that is something that is now 60% of the American diet. It's 67% of children's diets. It's 73% of the foods that are on grocery store shelves. They've exploded in their processing and they're dangerous because they're hyper palatable, they're made to be addictive, they're obviously shelf stable, have a long shelf life, but they are essentially driving this epidemic of chronic illnesses. And when you look at the data, more and more studies are coming out every day. There was just a large study that looked at adverse health outcomes across the board and the Meta analysis umbrella view published in the British Medical Journal. And they looked at all the different studies combined together and they found that it was associated with high risk of adverse health outcomes in terms of cardiovascular health, metabolic health, mental health issues, death. So we've got this incredible thing that's been promulgated on the world population over the last 50 years, which is new to human history, and it's causing this epidemic of chronic ill. So that to me is not food. So I would say if you could listen to one piece of advice, ask yourself, is this something made from God or nature, or is this something that was constructed in a factory? And Michael Pollan said it. Well, he said, eat food that was grown in a plant, not made in a plant.
- [10:12]
C
What's interesting is when I first heard you say that, I was like, gosh, there's no room for bread. And for most breads, I think you'd find that they're ultra processed. And maybe there is no room for those. But things that you bake at home, it's not that there's no room for them if they're made with the right ingredients.
- [10:28]
B
Yeah.
- [10:28]
C
And I think saying, you know, is this made from man or is it constructed from whole foods? It leaves some room there. So you mentioned flour and sugar are not on their own. Completely get rid of them, which I think a lot of people might have thought you would say. So it's interesting to hear that there is some place that those could exist in a diet.
- [10:49]
B
Absolutely. So last night was a Jewish New Year. I don't want to hear this podcast. And usually it's a year of celebration of the sweetness of the new year. So we have apples and honey. Honey is a somewhat processed food from taking it out of the honeycomb. We had almond cake with almond flour and eggs and a little bit of sugar. And that's fine if you're having that as an occasional treat. But, you know, the average person In America has 22 teaspoons of sugar, which is 88 grams of sugar a day. That's per person in America. That's a pharmacologic dose of sugar. Right. I mean, think about it there could be up to 14 teaspoons of sugar in your morning. Starbucks, wheat and coffee. Right. And people don't realize it.
- [11:31]
C
And I think when I look around the grocery store, it seems more and more like the distinction being made is like, is this organic or not? And not is this ultra processed or not? You know, I imagine I'm putting these on a spectrum. It's like, okay, the ultra process seems way more important. Where does whether something's organic or not fall in the importance?
- [11:52]
B
We want to eat foods that are not going to harm us. And what we're learning now is that there are more and more things that are inadvertently in food. It's not like pesticides are added to food for flavor or for hyper palatability. They happen to be there because of our industrial agricultural system, which uses literally millions and millions of pounds of pesticides and herbicides and fertilizer that are harmful to humans. They're harmful to the soil. We destroyed our waterways because of the runoff of fertilizers. So our agricultural system is really bad. So I think when you look at one, what's good for you, what's good for the planet is to eat food that has not been grown in industrial ways. And it's harder to do that because it's hard to find these foods. They're more expensive sometimes. But Walmart is now the biggest organic grocery store in the world. They're affordable and they're economical. And so that's a good step. I'm on the board of the Environmental Working Group and we have a guide called Good Food on a Tight Budget, which is how to eat well for less. But there's also a guide on the Dirty Dozen and the Clean 15. The Dirty Dozen are the most contaminated fruits and vegetables, and the clean 15 are the least contaminated. So if you're on a budget and you're trying to figure out what to eat, you know, for example, strawberries are the worst. Spinach, kale, mustard greens, grapes, peaches, pears, nectarines, apples, bell peppers, cherries, green beans. Just never eat those unless they're organic. On the other hand, the clean 15 might be foods that you can actually eat that are not as problematic. So the clean 15 list is things like avocados and pineapple and onions and papaya and eggplant. Things that have peels.
- [13:25]
C
Yeah, I was thinking like a banana.
- [13:26]
B
Yeah, or banana. Or even mush cabbage or broccoli. You can be a little more judicious about what to eat. So the lowest residue of pesticides is things like sweet corn Avocados, pineapples, cabbage, onions, paellas, asparagus, kiwi, that kind of stuff. So I think you for sure should try to eat as much as you can from the organic list and you'll be okay. There also is another layer of beneficial food called regenerative food, which is again harder to find, which is food that's grown in a way that restores the soil, restores healthy ecosystem, creates more nutrient density, because even organic food can cause destruction of soil if they do over tilling and things like that.
- [14:02]
C
One thing I noticed was, and I'll give an example, we have two daughters, 2 and 4. Their favorite thing in the world is macaroni and cheese. And I remember looking at the store at all these macaroni and cheeses and I was like, products like that aren't on the clean 15, the dirty dozen. It's like, does organic matter here? And one of the things I started doing was I'll just use ChatGPT and I'll be like, how processed is this food? And I'll just take a picture of all the ingredients. And I noticed that you might not care about whether the flour is organic, but most of the times foods that are prepackaged, that are organic, are less likely to be ultra processed. So we found that when it comes to buying macaroni and cheese in a box, the organic ones fall in the non ultra processed, but the Kraft macaroni and cheese falls in as ultra processed as it comes.
- [14:49]
B
Totally. And what's even interesting is in this other countries, even these big food companies like Kraft will make macaroni and cheese full of artificial dyes and colors in the United States. But in England, in Europe, where they sell the same stuff, they've changed the formula to make it natural dyes, like from carrots or from beets. Right. So we really have to be smart. Why are we allowing our kids to be poisoned in this country where the same companies are manufacturing different foods that basically are the same wrap macaroni and cheese with profoundly different health consequences, and they do it probably because it's cheaper, it's easier here, and people don't seem to be aware. And the government doesn't actually seem to give a crap about protecting our children and our health by regulating the things that we know are harmful. We should have to establish safety before we actually allow it to be in the food, not allow it to be in the food, wait 50 years and find out it's killed millions of people and then get it off the market. Right now I think we're Working on changing the DA's regulation of some of these ingredients that we know are harmful. So I think nutrition is not that hard really. It's just eat real food, think of food as medicine, eat a lot of colorful fruits and vegetables, get quality protein, good fats, lots of fiber. It ain't that hard. And I think people just make it complicated and just stay away from the crap.
- [16:02]
C
There's one thing you mentioned earlier, briefly, you touched on dairy, and I'm curious where that fits into the equation, because I feel like, at least in my childhood it was like the staple. You know, you're drinking your glass of milk, you're putting in your cereal. How have you changed or rethought about dairy?
- [16:18]
B
We're the only species that consumes dairy after weaning, right? And historically, dairy has been part of modern human agricultural practices for probably 10,000 years. You know, we did introduce animal husbandry and we did have animals. Now I just got back from Sardinia and Ikaria when I saw they had sheeps and goat, and they've been actually growing and raising these animals in the same way for thousands of years. And they know they need to feed the animals different plants at different times of the year. For example, they know that at certain seasons this plant is good and that plant is good. And they go, we know if they do that, the milk and the cheese tastes better. And the reason it tastes better is because of the phytochemicals and the medicinal properties that are in the plants that the animals are eating. So, for example, if you have goat milk in Sardinia and it has as high a level of these protective anti cancer longevity compounds called catechins that are in green tea. And we know green tea is so healthy for you. So if you're talking about dairy, it's not this monolithic thing. Then we come to kind of the federal guidelines, which is that everybody should have three glasses of milk a day and every kid should have two glasses of milk a day. There is zero data to support that. In fact, there was a big review paper by two Harvard scientists called Milk and Health, basically reviewing the literature, saying, hey, guys, despite what the US government says, despite the fact that the Dairy Council has captured the US government and the usda, in fact, our current Secretary of Agriculture was on the Dairy Council before he came to be this agriculture. And it's just kind of a revolving door. Unfortunately, the dairy we have now is not the dairy we used to eat. If we were basically raising goats and sheep and cows in olden times. And so most modern dairy, it comes from cows that have been hybridized to create large volumes of milk. They're usually Holstein cows. They have a casein, a form of protein in there that's highly allergenic inflammatory cancer causing called A1 casein. Most goats, sheep, and most heirloom cows like Guernsey or Jersey cows have A two casein. And so they may be better tolerated by people who may be sensitive to dairy. And then there are other things in terms of how we grow our modern cows through industrial practices, through providing tons of antibiotics and hormones and growth hormone. And so we're seeing a lot of health consequences from the excess consumption of dairy. And as a practicing physician, I see it's one of the biggest levers I have to pull when I want to try to get someone better. Just try a trial of dairy free diet for three weeks and see what happens. And people often like, wow, my acne clears up, my stomach pains are gone. Not having post insulin drip. I have so much more energy. The stories are quite amazing and it's not an accident because what we're eating is not traditional forms of these foods. So it's really not what you're eating. It's just understanding more of the food chain and where it came from and what the quality is. Because quality matters.
- [19:08]
A
This episode is brought to you by BILT Rewards. As the year comes to a close, I'm already starting to plan for some amazing trips next year. And as you all know, I love using my points for travel and I'm always looking for ways to earn more points. So here's a great one. BILT lets you earn points on rent payments and redeem them towards flights, hotels and a lot more. You don't even need to check with your landlord, so let me explain. There's no cost to join BILT and as a member you'll earn valuable points on rent and your everyday spending. Built points can be transferred to your favorite hotels and airlines and even ones you haven't heard of. There are over 500 airlines and 700,000 hotels and properties around the world. You can redeem your built points towards points can also be redeemed towards a future rent payment and unique experiences that only BILT members can access. So if you're not earning points on rent, my question is why not start earning points on rent you're already paying by going to allthehacks.com BILT that's allthehacks.com bilt B I L T Make sure to use our URL so they know we sent you allthehacks.combilt to start earning points on your rent payments today. I love a great deal as much as the next person, but the best deals are the ones that are easy with no hoops to jump through and no bs. That's why I love the deal from our sponsor Mint Mobile because you can get a wireless plan for $15 a month with the purchase of a three month plan. And it's so easy to switch from your existing carrier unless you have to wait on hold with them. But that'll at least be the last time you have to do that. To get started, go to allthehacks.com mintmobile There you'll see that your first three month plan is only $15 a month, including the unlimited plan. After that it's still a great deal and we've loved having the line on Mint Mobile for the past year, so you should definitely check it out. All plans come with high speed data and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. You can bring your phone number and use your own phone with any Mint Mobile plan to get this new customer offer and your new 3 month unlimited wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month. Go to allthehacks.com mint mobile that's allthehacks.com mintmobile M I N T Mobile cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month at allthehacks.com mintmobile $45 upfront payment required, equivalent to $15 a month new customers on first 3 month plan only speed slower above 40 gigabytes on unlimited plan. Additional taxes, fees and restrictions apply. See Mint Mobile for details.
- [21:36]
C
Are there any other foods that maybe have a misconception in society that are worth touching on? I heard you mentioned beans and protein that kind of share a similar profile to dairy, where the average person might not realize that some of the research might be contradicting what they grew up with.
- [21:50]
B
I was sitting on a panel with a cardiologist who was a vegan and another physician who was Paleo and they were fighting like cats and dogs and I was sitting in the middle. I'm like, well if you're paleo and you're vegan, I must be pegan. And everybody laughed and I thought, oh, that's kind of interesting. And I mean, I think about it, it's like, okay, well they agree on almost everything. The only difference is really where to get your protein, from animals or from beans and grains. Beans and grains have been a part of our diet for 10,000 years. They weren't much before that. And so this is relatively new. Animal protein has been part of our diet for 200,000 years of being humans. And so we have to look at the individuals and how they feel and how they respond. Being dogmatic about a particular way of eating doesn't make any sense because we're all different, we're all unique, we're all individual. And I always say the smartest doctor in the room is your own body. Listen to what it says. It'll tell you whether it likes it or doesn't like it, how you feel, if you feel good or bad. There's really clear science, though, around the benefits of eating animal protein as you get older, Particularly because in order to eat enough protein, and protein is the only macronutrient we need in large amounts. In other words, human requirement for carbohydrates, zero. If you never had another carbohydrate in your life, you would be fine. There's requirements for fat that are called essential fatty acids, but they're required in small 1 or 2 gram amounts like omega 3 fats. And then there's protein, which we need in large amounts, like anywhere from 60 to 100, 60, 70, 80, 200 grams of protein, depending on your size, in your activity level, which is a massive amount. The question is, where do you get your protein from and what does it do? Well, as you age, you need to build muscle, and it's harder to build muscle as you get older. And so the dietary guidelines that we have are based on the minimum amount of protein you need to not get a deficiency disease like kwashiorkor marasmus, which is just a bare minimum. It's not what you need for optimal health. I think with protein, we typically need high quality protein. We need high amounts of an amino acid called leucine, which is the rate limiting amino acid for protein synthesis. And as you get older, and particularly throughout your life, muscle is critical because it's the sink for your food. It's moves your body around, but it also is hormonally active, immunologically active. It's an incredibly critical organ in your body that we need to maintain their health of. And when you have plant protein, it's very hard to get enough leucine. It's very low in leucine. You can take processed protein powders, you can add leucine to it, you can add amino acids to it, and there are products out there that do that, but you're not gonna get it from real food. You have to eat six cups of rice, or you have to have two cups of Beans to equal four ounces of chicken or meat. Imagine who's gonna eat six cups of rice or two cups of beans. So that's the problem. I think you have to figure out what works for you. And there's some of you who forget about autoimmune diseases where grains and beans can be really problematic. So it's really about figuring out what is the right diet for you and what your body likes and what it.
- [24:33]
C
Doesn'T like to just double click a little on protein. Getting 150, 160 grams of protein is probably not something the average person who's not thinking about it is doing. And so if someone's listening to this, it's like I'm way under that. What's the right answer? Is it supplementing? Is it just eating more chicken and fish and things that are high in protein? Is it protein shakes? What's the right approach to ensure you're getting enough?
- [24:57]
B
Well, with what I do is, is I typically have a goat way in the morning, which is really nice. It's a very well tolerated. I use regeneratively raised goat way. It's got a 2 casein and I can get, you know, 40 or 50 grams of protein and shake in the morning, no problem. It keeps me going even throughout the day. At lunch I would have a call a fat salad, which would be lots of veggies and then put avocado, I put pumpkin seeds, I'll put olive oil, olives in there so all those contain fat. And then I'll put on a can of sardines or mackerel or herring. And then for dinner I'll have usually 6 ounces to 8 ounces of meat, fish or chicken. And that really gets me my approaching requirements for the day. It's not that hard, but you have to pay attention to it.
- [25:35]
C
You mentioned the microbiome earlier and I would say I don't know if everyone really even understands the role gut microbiome plays into our overall health. What do you think people should understand in that department?
- [25:48]
B
The microbiome is an incredibly important area of research in functional medicine, which I've been doing for years. It's basically the fundamental way we get people better is start with healing the gut. Because everything starts in the gut, from things that are obvious, like digestive issues, all the way from autism to Alzheimer's, from heart disease to cancer to asthma to obesity. All these things are related to the gut microbiome. Even from schizophrenia to depression to anxiety to ocd, all can be related to changing the microbiome and so we're at this sort of frontier of microbiome research that is now helping us understand how critical the microbiome is in every aspect of our health. And yet, unfortunately, doctors don't pay attention to it, don't do anything about it, don't focus on it, because they don't learn about it. But it's fundamental to the practice of functional medicine and what we've been doing for decades. So learning how to take care of your microbiome, tending your inner garden is one of the most essential things you can do. And I've written about this in many of my books, particularly Young Forever, where I talk about it and how to keep your gut healthy. It's an essential feature. And just by eating the right foods, by having lots of fiber and vegetables and fruits and polyphenols, it's super, super easy to basically get the needed nutrients for your gut. That's what I think is important to understand.
- [27:02]
C
You mentioned with different diets, you know, it's really about what's right for you. We could make all the changes we talked about first, right? And then you could cut out ultra processed foods. Is that enough or are there other factors when it comes to changing how much you eat? Should we just be looking at calories or when you eat, should we be fasting? You know, aside from what you put in your mouth, there's the quantity and the when.
- [27:25]
B
One of my good friends, David Ludwig, who's a Harvard researcher, one of the most, you know, preeminent scientists in the world, he does clinical interventions. So he's really very effective in actually doing clinical trials. And he's looked at metabolism and what matters and how we have to eat. And he says, look, if you focus on what you eat, you don't have to focus on how much you eat, right? So if you focus on high quality, nutrient dense food. My first book I wrote 24 years ago got him old. All right, Anyway, had this concept called the nutrient to calorie ratio, which essentially is how many nutrients per calorie are you getting? For example, Coca Cola has zero nutrients, tons of calories. Broccoli has tons of nutrients, very few calories, right? So you want to have a high nutrient to calorie ratio. And that's just a nice concept when you look at anything you're doing. So I don't really focus on calorie counting. I think it's notoriously inaccurate. I mean, unless you weigh and measure every bit of food you eat, even then it doesn't matter. Because if you think of the effect of calories on your body. They do matter, but it's not so much all about energy balance. Because, for example, if you eat foods that are extremely high in fiber along with high calorie foods, you're going to reduce the absorption of the food you're eating. If you're eating foods that are nutrient dense as opposed to nutrient poor, they're going to have a profoundly different effect on your body. If I give you a thousand calories of almonds or a thousand calories of Coca Cola, same calories, it's going to profoundly affect your body differently. One is going to speed up your metabolism, one's going to make your metabolism slow down, one's going to make you help you lose weight, one's going to help you gain weight. And we know this from the data is very clear. And it's not. I'm trying to fight physics here. I mean, I think people go, oh, well, you're arguing against the laws of thermodynamics. The first law of thermodynamics is energy is conserved in a closed system. So what is the definition of a calorie? A calorie is the amount of energy required to raise 1 liter of water 1 degree centigrade. Very simple. If you take a thousand calories of almonds and a thousand calories of Coca Cola and you stick them in a lab and you burn them, you get exactly that, right? But when you eat them, it's very different. So a calorie burned is different than calorie eaten. And so that food you're eating is regulating all of those things in real time. So the quality of the calories matters more than the quantity. How much you eat is not important as what you eat. As far as the timing goes. I think it is important to understand that our bodies need a break from food. The idea that we need to snack and have snack foods and eat all the time and eat between meals, and eat after meals and eat at night, I mean, it's just killing us. In fact, we have an extra 500 calories of surplus food per person in America since the 1970s. That has made a whole industry of snack foods and processed foods that were sold and marketed that have extremely harmful effects and then keep us addicted and eating more and more. So I would say give yourself at least a 12 hour break between dinner and breakfast. If you eat dinner and finish by 8 at night, that means you can eat at 8 in the morning. It's not that hard because at night is when your body repairs and cleans and heals. It's called autophagy or self cleaning or self eating. It's really important for longevity and most of us don't take advantage of that.
- [30:32]
C
What about within the hours that you are eating? Are there things that it matters if you're eating earlier in the day, later in the day, before, after one another?
- [30:41]
B
Well, they've actually done studies. For example, if you eat your calories at night, you're going to typically gain weight. If you eat more in the morning, less likely. So you always hear that saying, breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and supper like a pauper. Right. It's old wisdom, but it actually has some merit. And I think the data, the science support the fact that if you're looking at people who even will eat 2,000 calories in the morning or 2,000 calories at night, let's say their effect on their weight metabolism will be different depending on when they eat the food. So my view is you don't want to overstuff yourself ever. That you want to eat during a window of time, it could be 10, 12 hours. If you're metabolically unhealthy and you have pre diabetes or obese, you might benefit from more time restricted eating. Where you eat an eight hour window, it does help you reduce your calorie intake, which can help, but also just gives yourself this process of repair and healing and burning and metabolism. So I think the idea that we should be doing anything in a rigid way, I think I want to get away from, but I want to really help people understand that they need to listen to their body understand what works, what doesn't work and how they feel.
- [31:45]
C
I guess one area we haven't touched on when it comes to dieting is around the growth and popularity of these GLP1 agonists. How do these fit into the whole world of diet and nutrition and where you think we might be going?
- [31:58]
B
Well, you know, I've been doing this for a long time and I'm going to be 65 next month. And I would say that I practiced long before we had these GLP1 agonist drugs and was able to help people lose 100, 200 pounds, 150 pounds without any problem. Because once you teach people how their bodies work and they work with it rather than against it, they naturally will regulate their GLP1. And this is body's own molecule, right? GLP1 is not a foreign drug, even though it's called Ozempic and it's sold as a drug. It's a peptide, it's Something your body makes, like your pancreas makes insulin. Except the way we live causes our GLP1 to go down, which means our appetite's dysregulated. And all the ways in which the food industry is basically bastardized foods to make it highly addictive and hyper palatable is overriding our normal appetite control signals. So when you're eating real food, your normal appetite control signals are going to tell you when to stop eating. When you're eating food that is ultra processed and sugar and starch, it's dysregulating that. So yes, if you take a GP1 agonist and you're addicted to food, it will help you stop. And that is not necessarily a bad thing. I think they have a role in medicine like any drug, but the fact that they think that we're going to give them to every single one of the 93% of population that's metabolically healthy or that needs to lose a few pounds, it's just a bad idea. Because one, the cost is staggering, even if the price comes down, it's still a lot. And two, there are significant side effects and the doses are quite high. I think it can be life saving for some people. I'm not totally against it, but you can achieve the same results by just the weight loss and eating healthy food. For example, there's a company called Virta Health that does ketogenic diets for diabetes and they reverse diabetes in 60% of the cases. Zempic won't reverse diabetes. I mean, if you lose enough weight you will, but often there's a plateau. And what he found was that looking at the biological outcomes that are reported for or these BLP1 agonists compared to the effects of a ketogenic diet on biology, looking at all the same biomarkers and health metrics, there was no difference. So what we're seeing now is billions of dollars from the drug industries being poured into the research on these drugs for every possible conceivable condition, from cognitive decline to heart disease to obviously obesity and diabetes, but also to autoimmune diseases to mental health issues. So literally every indication, they're trying to like get this approved for everything, right? And when you look at the data, if you just ate real food and did the right thing for your metabolism and corrected it naturally, you would have all those same benefits without all the side effects.
- [34:22]
C
It's kind of wild.
- [34:23]
B
One of the things I've done is co founded a company called Function Health which allows democratized access to your own lab data. And before now, you had to go through your doctor, your insurance company. You'd have to hopefully ask for the test you want. Then you'd hope your insurance company will pay for it, which they probably won't if they do order it. The markups are crazy. And the tests that we offer, you know, are almost five times what you'll get on a normal checkup. And you get a really deep analysis of what's going on with your body so you can not guess. You can test and find out where the dysfunctions or deficiencies are that are causing issues with you or that may lead to issues down the road. And so I think people should really know what's happening in their body. Why do I want to know what my sleep is and what affects my sleep? And I'm like, oh, if I drink something and I like alcohol, well, I know my sleep is disrupted. And I can say, oh, my heart rate is bad, or my heart rate doesn't come down, or my temperature is up, or like, oh, I need to adjust things. So it's like, where are the check engine lights on your body? You don't have one, right? So wouldn't it be nice? Your car is so smart. It tells you when the tire pressure is low or when you need more insulin, wipe, the flu, or when you're like, need to check your engine. I mean, wouldn't that be nice to have that? And that's really what function health is about. It's about giving people the data and the empowerment to learn about their own biology without having to go through the morass of the healthcare system, which is, as we know, so messed up.
- [35:39]
A
This episode is brought to you by Fabric by Gerber Life. I had a great Thanksgiving. And while I was counting all the things I'm grateful for, my family, my friends, a house full of pie, I was also reminded how important it is to plan for their future. If you have loved ones who depend on you, life insurance is one of the most meaningful ways to show them you care. And Fabric by Gerber Life is term life insurance. You can get done right here, right now. You could be covered from your couch in under 10 minutes with no health exam required. And if you're young and healthy, the time to lock in low rates is now. They have flexible, high quality policies that fit your family and your budget, like a million dollars in coverage for less than a dollar a day. It's all online and on your schedule, so apply when it's convenient for you. There's absolutely no risk. There's a 30 day money back guarantee and you can cancel at any time. So join the thousands of parents who trust fabric to protect their family. Apply today in just minutes@meetfabric.com allthehacks that's meetfabric.com allthehackerS me etfabric.com alltheHacks Policies issued by Western Southern Life Assurance Company not available in certain states. Prices is subject to underwriting and health questions Today's episode is brought to you by Daffy. Let's take a minute to reflect on two things and how we can put them together to save on taxes. First, the market is up 26% this year, which is incredible. And second, it's a time of year to reflect and be thankful. And I know so many of you are making generous donations to causes you care about. So let's talk about how you can use a donor advised fund or daft with Daffy to save on taxes. Let's say you have some stocks, ETFs or crypto that's up from when you bought them. If you just sold them, you'd pay capital gains tax, but instead if you donate them to a charitable organization, you get the tax deduction on the full amount. Then you can just rebuy them at today's price with the cash you would have otherwise donated to charity. So you make the same contribution you would have already made, except you've either reduced your capital gains tax or increase your cost. Basis is a win win for you and the charity. Unfortunately, it's not that easy to donate stock to every organization and that's where Daffy comes in. Their app makes it so easy to set up a DAF and give to any charity across the US with just a few taps. I know because I've been using it for years. So if you want a better system for giving, head over to allthehacks.com daffy where you can get a free $25 to give to the charity of your Choice. Again, that's AllTheHacks.com D A F F Y For a smarter way to give I just want to thank you Kwik for listening to and supporting the show. Your support is what keeps this show going. To get all of the URLs, codes, deals and discounts from our partners, you can go to allthehacks.com deals so please consider supporting those who support us.
- [38:34]
C
Are there things that are common that people are deficient in that are the most surprising frequent results of people that dig into their data that are things people should be most acutely looking at.
- [38:46]
B
Function Health we launched April last year. It's exploded. We have 70,000 members, 300,000 people on the wait list. And by the way, your listeners can jump that wait list by using the early access code. All hacks, 100. And the beautiful thing we're learning is that after over 10 million biomarkers, we're seeing these incredible patterns. One, obviously a poor metabolic health. And this is a health forward population. So we're seeing over 90% have abnormal lipid tests, 96% have small LDL, which is not tested on a regular cholesterol test, which is a more risky cholesterol particle. We're seeing over 50% have IAPOB, which is probably the most important cholesterol test that your doctor doesn't test you. Typically 50%, we're seeing over 40% have levels of inflammation where 33% have high autoimmune antibodies like A and A. 13% have undiagnosed autoimmune thyroid disease, 67% have nutritional deficiencies and things that really make a difference in how you feel, like mental health and energy immunity like vitamin D and iron and the B vitamins like B12, folate, and B6. And it's kind of shocking. America is just sick. So all of us are struggling, and I think people just don't know how efficient they are in things. I had a woman the other day was like, she didn't know she was a young healthy woman, but she was always getting sick. And her vitamin D level is 26, which is very, very low. So I think these are simple things you can find out about, easy to fix and tune up and optimize your health with.
- [40:11]
C
And for a lot of the things, I think everything probably has a different intervention. I've gone through the lipid panel, cholesterol high, ABO B, follow on to going to get a coronary CT scan, which is not that expensive. And I've told family members of mine that have really high cholesterol, like, this is probably something you could consider for a few hundred bucks. Are supplements the answer to a lot of these missing things, or can we change our diet and reduce the need for supplements? I feel like the supplement industry in my mind is booming. And, you know, I hear lots of people taking 5, 10, 20 different types of things. Does that become necessary when you understand where you're at? Or can food solve a lot of those issues?
- [40:53]
B
I wish. If you look at the nutritional density of the food we eat today compared to the density of food of hunter gatherers. I mean, I just was in Africa And I was with the Hadza, which is one of the last hunter gatherer tribes. And they're eating wild food all the time, 150 grams of fiber by all these roots and tubers that they eat. Everything is extremely nutritionally dense. Wild food is way more nutritionally dense. They're running around naked in the sun. So they have no vitamin D deficiency, right? They have like one cloths on. And so the average person living in the modern world is typically nutritionally deficient. And the food we're eating is grown in soil that's been damaged because there were industrial agricultural practices. Or broccoli today has got 50% less nutrients than it did 50 years ago. So it's really tough. I mean, if you go to Europe, if you go to other countries, the food is grown differently, it tastes differently, and taste always follows the nutritional density of the food, right? So if you eat a tomato that's picked in August, it's a cherry tomato off your organic garden in your backyard, it's like an explosion of flavor. Like you can imagine. You go in the middle of winter and you get this thing that looks like a tomato and it's got no flavor and tastes like cardboard. There's no nutritional value there, Right. So I think we've grown foods for shelf stability, for transport, for storage, for appearance, but not for flavor and not for nutritional density. And that's really what's happened. And so even, you know, grains, I mean, if you look at the Indian corn, I mean, it's very different nutritional density of the food. So I think everything we're eating today is so nutritionally depleted that we do need a multivitamin, a fish oil, vitamin D, probably magnesium, and a probiotic for almost everybody I think on the planet would do a lot to actually up level our overall health.
- [42:24]
C
One other thing I don't think we actually touched on, which is the interplay between a lot of other factors in your life and nutrition. And it kind of goes both ways. And I'm curious how much the food we eat might affect our mental health, our mood, our cognitive function, but also how much our mental health, mood, cognitive function might affect. Affect the way we process food. Are both directions of that important for people to understand?
- [42:50]
B
Yeah, I think that's a very interesting kind of frame for sure. Very clearly our diet is affecting our mental health. There's no doubt about that. In fact, one of the big unappreciated phenomena is that the diet we eat is a big cause of depression, of anxiety, of behavioral issues, of addiction, of aggression, of violence. I mean, the data on this is just overwhelmingly clear and interventional data. In other words, if you actually swap out crap for real food, whether it's prisoners or people in juvenile detention centers or people who are depressed, the results are astounding in terms of the improvement in mental health. In fact, I wrote a book about this 15 years ago because as a doctor, I wasn't really treating mental health. I call myself the accidental psychiatrist because I was noticing that as I was treating people's physical issues, their inflammation, their gut microbiome, their autoimmune disease, that their mental health symptoms were getting better. I was like, well, what's going on here? Whether it was ADD or even autism or depression, anxiety, ocd, schizophrenia, bipolar disease, I'm like, what's happening here? How is this working? And it was really clear to me that the body's dysregulated, and the primary way it's dysregulated by what we eat and the effect on our microbiome. And of course, there's environmental toxins that play a role that are partly in our food, in our environment, but all those do affect our mental health. And similarly, you know, our mental health from stress affects our biology in a bidirectional way. So it's the body mind effect, and it's the mind body effect. So the body mind effect is, yeah, if your microbiome screwed up, you're eating crap and you've got bad bugs in there that are producing toxins that are creating inflammation and your brain's inflamed. An inflamed brain is a mentally ill brain. Whether you're looking at any of the mental health issues or even neurodegenerative issues like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, or whether you're looking at the attention and neurodevelopmental issues like autism and add, all of those are related to brain inflammation. And the biggest source of the inflammation is our inflammatory diet and the damaged target microbiome. But on the other hand, if you're stressed, your digestion's not going to work properly. You're not going to absorb nutrients as well. Your fat cells are literally innervated by your nervous system. So when you're stressed, it tells you to stop metabolizing your food and it shuts your digestion down. And so you end up with this sort of other significant problem, which is that stress itself can cause you to have a dysfunctional metabolism and affect your obviously, mental health just from the external stress. But I think it's important to not sort of Bifurcate the body as a body mind or mind body. It's like one system. Right. Just because psychiatrists and neurologists don't pay attention to anything below the neck doesn't mean it's not connected well.
- [45:32]
C
It's interesting because you can have a negative effect from this flywheel where it's like you're really stressed out, you eat poor, because you eat poor, it affects your stress and you kind of spiral. The flip side of that is if you start to improve your nutrition, it might improve the way you feel, which might improve the way your body absorbs nutrients. And it can actually kind of be a positive compounding factor where all of these things can kick into place. Which is probably why when you Talked earlier about 5, 10 days of completely switching the way you eat, you can see really noticeable impact. So it's kind of cool to think about the fact that multiple things could be making your body life, health better. That kind of play off each other.
- [46:13]
B
Absolutely. So it's all synergistic functional medicine. What I do is quite simple. It's take out the bad stuff, put in the good stuff. Your body's smart, it will correct itself and know what to do. Right.
- [46:22]
C
Some people might be overwhelmed thinking, gosh, I've got to get rid of half the food in my house. I've got to change everything. What do you think is kind of the small, practical way that most people can start putting a lot of this into practice?
- [46:35]
B
It's really simple. Just start with the basics. Because 80% it comes down to what you do every day and the habits you build. And I think most of us by default are doing the wrong things. And our society and our culture sets us up to, to do the wrong things. So start your day in a way that actually helps you to reset what our culture and environment does. And there's basically four foundational pillars of health. What you eat, exercise, your sleep, and how you manage stress. And then I would sort of add maybe your nutritional support through nutritional supplements that are foundational. But if you get those things right, 80% of the time, you're going to deal with most of the stuff you have going on. So start with doing a fridge biopsy. If you pick up something and has a label and you don't recognize the ingredients, throw it away. Start just choosing real food and doesn't have to be expensive. You can go to Costco, you go to Walmart, you can go to the big box stores, they have organic, they have stuff in bulk and you know, you can eat well for Less. And there's a big myth out there that it's expensive and difficult and time consuming to eat well. It's not. I think the environmental working group has a great guide called good food on a tight budget. Could you check it out? And it's how to eat well for yourself, well for your planet, and well for the wallet. Second is, you know, move your body. Everybody needs to take a walk for 30 minutes a day, do some simple resistance training. It can be your body weight. There's tons of things on YouTube and online to learn from. You don't need a lot of equipment, and it's important to stay fit. Next is optimize your sleep. And it requires you to understand what that means. And there's a great book by Matthew Walker called why we sleep. He's also been on my podcast. I have a whole sleep course. You can go to my website, Dr.hyman.com, it's free sleep masterclass with a lot of experts talking about how to optimize your sleep and the environment in which you sleep. And then, of course, managing stress. How do you deal with that? It's individual. Some people like to do breath work or meditation or guided imagery, or they use sound healing or binaural beats or apps like calm or headspace. Doesn't matter. Watching a sunset, just doing nothing can be really great. My favorite ways, I just take a hot bath with Epsom salt. At night, I just lay there and I kind of check out for the day, get my nervous system to calm down. So everybody needs to figure out how to regulate their nervous system. And most of us never learn how to do that. Those are just foundational things, and they're not that hard to do. And then they make an enormous difference. And sometimes it's challenging to fit those in. For example, if you look at your screen time, how much time you spend scrolling on Instagram or social media and futzing around on your phone, even a few minutes of that for yourself can make a profound difference. I mean, if you don't have a lot of time for stress reduction, I recommend the take five practice, which is five breaths, count of five in, count of five out, five times. Really simple, deep, slow breaths.
- [49:07]
C
Yeah, I think everyone can find time for that in their day. Then just to recap, why do you think proper nutrition is so important? And what impact do you think it might have on people's lives?
- [49:18]
B
So the key things to optimize your nutrition are quite simple. One, recognize that food is medicine and information and code that every bite you take will upgrade or downgrade your biology with every bite. Two, understand it's personalized that you have to find out what works for you. And that's about listening to your body. And three, stick with real food. If it's something you don't know and you can't pronounce and it's not something you find in nature, stay away. The impact of doing that is profound because every bite of food you take is controlling every single one of the biological processing in your body. And there are 37 billion trillion chemical reactions every second. And all those are dependent on what you're eating and whether you're screwing up your metabolism and your biology or you're optimizing it depends on the food you stick at the end of your fork. Love it.
- [50:11]
C
Looping back to function. I've gone through this process. One thing we didn't touch on is that you guys are also providing recommendations. So if you're looking at this, you're like, oh, this thing's out of range. It's not. Just go figure it out. There's advice there. So I wanted to flag that cause we didn't talk about it. And I've really enjoyed getting to do it and compare it with my wife's and we've talked about some of these things. Again, the code was all hacks 100, which we'll put in the show notes for anyone who's looking for it. But if anyone wants to go deeper on nutrition or really anything you've worked on, where should we send them?
- [50:42]
B
Function Health is a great place to start. You go to functionhealth.com use the code ALLHACKS100 to bypass the waitlist and you'll get deep insights about your health. And also of course, you can follow my work. I've got a podcast called the Doctor's pharmacy. My website's Dr. Hyman.com Everywhere on social media is Dr. Mark Hyman. Just Dr. Mark Hyman. I think you can't help but finding me out there.
- [51:03]
C
Yeah, very Googleable. Mark, thanks so much for being here.
- [51:06]
B
My pleasure.
- [51:08]
A
Such a great episode. Thank you so much for listening. I really hope you enjoyed it. And if you did, please consider clicking that Follow or subscribe button if you haven't already. It really helps us out and there's no better way to support us than doing that. Or sharing the show with a friend, colleague or family member or even a.
- [51:26]
C
Random stranger is totally appreciated.
- [51:28]
A
Also, links to everything in this and all other episodes are at allthehacks.com where you can also find all the deals we find, as well as links to the top credit card bonuses. Finally, if you have any feedback, want to get in touch or share a question you have for a future Mailbag episode, you can email me at podcast@allthehacks.com that's it for this week. I'll see you next week.