← Habits and Hustle
Habits and Hustle
Episode 401: Dr. Mark Hyman: Why Only 6.8% of Americans are Healthy + His Recommended Anti-Aging Solutions
01:10:36
Loading summary
Transcript398 lines
- [00:02]
A
Hi guys, it's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits and Hustle. Crush it.
- [00:09]
B
Before we dive into today's episode, I first want to thank our sponsor, Therassage. Their Trilite panel has become my favorite biohacking thing for healing my body. It's a portable red light panel that I simply cannot live without. I literally bring it with me everywhere I go. And I personally use their red light therapy to help reduce inflammations in places in my body where honestly, I have pain. You can use it on a sore back, stomach, cramps, shoulder, ankle, red light therapy is my go to. Plus it also has amazing anti aging benefits, including reducing signs of fine lines and wrinkles on your face, which I also use it for. I personally use Therassage Trilight everywhere and all the time. It's small, it's affordable, it's portable and it's really effective. Head over to therassage.com right now and use code BEBOLD for 15% off. This code will work site wide. Again, head over to Therassage T H E R A s a g e.com and use code bebold for 15% off any of their products. You guys, this is a, 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. He's probably the most famous doctor I think I know. I've known about you for a hundred years.
- [01:47]
A
At least a hundred.
- [01:48]
B
At least a hundred. He's written eighteen New York Times, nineteen nineteen New York Times bestselling books. He is an MD and a functional medicine doctor. Right?
- [01:58]
A
Same thing.
- [01:58]
B
Yeah, same thing. Well, I mean it's. You have the both, you have the Eastern and the Western.
- [02:02]
A
Well, functional medicine is fully western. It's fully science based. It's not, you know, acupuncture and ayurveda. I'm going to explain that if you want.
- [02:10]
B
Well, only explain it because people always. 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. 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. 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.
- [02:43]
A
He'll be 113 next week. So it's really.
- [02:47]
B
No.
- [02:48]
A
No.
- [02:48]
B
But do you mind saying how old you are?
- [02:50]
A
No, I'm going to be 65 in a month. Yeah.
- [02:53]
B
And you, do you feel like you are aging backwards?
- [02:56]
A
I am, actually. I just. In the last two years, I did my biological age test, which is 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 highly modifiable. You can't change how old I am on the birthday calendar. Right.
- [03:14]
B
On this birthday.
- [03:14]
A
But I can change what's going on under the skin.
- [03:16]
B
Right.
- [03:17]
A
And so When I was 62, I did my biological taste 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. I wrote a book called Young Forever.
- [03:27]
B
Yeah.
- [03:28]
A
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.
- [03:42]
B
Are you kidding me?
- [03:43]
A
No.
- [03:44]
B
Oh, my God. So, like, so like, Brian Johnson has nothing on you, right?
- [03:48]
A
Like, well, I got a bigger spread in my age, but he's younger, so I don't know.
- [03:52]
B
Well, he's. Yeah, that's my whole point. Like, that's a ma. That's a massive difference. So what did you do different in those few years?
- [03:59]
A
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. And I did also a whole bunch of senolytic herbs and treatments like fisetin. I also started to do various treatments like plasma phoresis. I started rapamycin. 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. I don't necessarily recommend that to all my patients, but 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.
- [04:35]
B
Wow. Okay, so you said a bunch of things. So urolithin A. I was told by them actually that it actually helps to build muscle after 30 years. Is that true?
- [04:44]
A
Yeah. So, yeah. So, you know, it's. It's fascinating story, you know, backing up a little bit, you know, you know As I began to dive into the research around longevity, 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. 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. And so I call these the longevity switches. And, and they only recently have been mapped out, and how they interact has been mapped out, and what affects them has been mapped out. 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. So if I, if I said, you, what are the biggest killers in the world? You'd say, oh, yeah, heart disease and cancer. 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. But if we address the root causes of aging itself, which is not a, you know, 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. But the biological process of aging, in the way we experience it in the west, is not normal. You know, you see people who are a hundred years old or riding horses or hiking mountains, running races. You know, these are outliers, but no, they are people who actually are taking advantage of things because of what they've learned of their lifestyle to actually activate these longevity pathways. So, you know, we, we see people become decrepit, frail, diseased people, spend the last 20% of their life in poor health. Their health span is shorter than the lifespan, meaning they, they, 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. And, 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? So may, for me, that would be maybe getting to a 110 or 120, right. So I'm moving 40 years. So we're now discovering what those are. 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. It wasn't considered a problem, but it is. Yeah, like the decline, decrepit to disease, Frailty that happens as we get older is not animal part of aging. It's a consequence of bad inputs that cause our biology to malfunction that we think is normal. So just at a high level, these longevity switches are part of these hallmarks of aging. And one of the key pathways is we call in longevity sort 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? So inflammation, insulin resistance, muscle building, autophagy, or cell cleanup, antioxidant pathways, DNA repair pathways. 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. One has to do with mtor, which has to do with basically building muscle or inducing autophagy, which is clean cellular cleanup. One has to do with ampk, which is also involved in blood sugar sirtuins. These are things that are now well studied. And so a lot of the interventions that I did were to regulate these longevity switches in a scientific way. So now backing into your question, Urolithin A is a molecule that works on these longevity switches. And this is kind of mind blowing when you think about, like, nature and how we evolved. 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 helps reduce muscle loss, that has all these incredible benefits. How does that know what to do? What. What happens when you eat pomegranate or similar plants like berries? They have something called ellagic 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. Now, most of us don't do that because we. Even if we eat pomegranate, we have a messed up microbiome. 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. Everybody, everybody's 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. 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, it inhibits mtor, which uses autophagy. So it has all these incredible benefits.
- [09:52]
B
But is there things we can do without supplementing? I know you wrote a book about food for medicine and all these things, like, if we just eat a bunch of pomegranates, I know that's not going to be the answer, but at the core, root, you said, you said something and I was going to even ask you about it, was at the core, the root cause of a lot of problems, I was under the impression, is inflammation. Right.
- [10:14]
A
For sure.
- [10:14]
B
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? Let's just say, like simple things that people can do to help reduce their inflammation.
- [10:30]
A
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. It's asking why? Why do you have this problem? Not what disease do you have and what drug do I give? It's understanding the body as a network, as a system, and, and restoring the ecosystem of your body to be healthy. And we go to doctors for every different part of our body. Every organ has a different doctor.
- [10:54]
B
Right, exactly.
- [10:55]
A
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. It's not a particular specialty or modality or treatment. It can be anything from exercise to exorcism. Whatever the treatment is, what works for the patient, I'm going to use it. 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. And inflammation is really the underlying biology of almost all 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. Skin problems, it's all inflammation. So the question is, you know, what's causing inflammation? That's really what functional medicine does. It gets to the why, what's the cause? 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.
- [11:47]
B
Right.
- [11:47]
A
Toxins are harder to deal with. You can really address your gut microbiome. And the diet is the Biggest factor. And so I, I, I, and practicing functional medicine for almost 30 plus years now. More, more than 30 years. I guess I've, 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 excess inflammation in your body, that so many things get better. So I, I wrote a book ten years ago called the Ultra the Ten Day Detox Diet.
- [12:18]
B
Did you remember all the titles? So many.
- [12:20]
A
Barely. Barely. I know it. And essentially it was, it, it grew out of my experience with my patients where I was treating people with complex chronic illness. And it was, 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 in the results that I just, I wrote a book about it so that everybody could access it.
- [12:45]
B
Yeah.
- [12:46]
A
And 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 Dr.hyman.com to learn more about it. But basically what this is is eliminating the foods that are the most inflammatory. So ultra processed food, which was 60% of our diet, which is not really food by definition, it's just science projects. 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, and also we get rid of grains and beans. 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, there's a, do you.
- [13:28]
B
Do it one at a time or everything together?
- [13:29]
A
No, no, everything together. Because you know, people do, oh, I'm just going to like do one thing and then see what's happening. Do nothing. But if you have three or five things 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 attack, it takes a lot of aspirin. Make it feel better. So take out the tack, get rid of the cost and you're standing on 2 tax. Taking one of them out doesn't make you 50% better. Right. So if you're gl 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 still reacting to dairy.
- [14:01]
B
Right, right, right.
- [14:02]
A
So this diet is really a way to reset everything. Those 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 between 60 and 70%. Or there's a migraine or irritable 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 outta your system. 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. You could have Lyme disease, you got a mold exposure, you could have metal toxicity, you could have severe gut issues that need to be treated more directly, you know. But most people will get a significant improvement.
- [14:53]
B
So what are they eating instead? If they're taking out, that's like everything. If you're not eating good, not drinking everything.
- [14:58]
A
No, you're.
- [14:59]
B
What are you eating? Air? Drinking water?
- [15:01]
A
No, you eat what basically you ask how. I'm like, look what I look like.
- [15:05]
B
Yes. Tell me what you eat every day in the morning. What are you eating in the morning?
- [15:09]
A
I have a protein shake, usually after a workout.
- [15:12]
B
What do you put in the protein shake?
- [15:13]
A
Well, I use goat whey, which is dairy, but it's a very low inflammation type of dairy. But you can use other forms.
- [15:19]
B
Goat whey. Where do you get this from?
- [15:22]
A
Amazon.
- [15:23]
B
Really?
- [15:23]
A
Yeah. Regeneratively raised goat whey. There's Mount Capra, there's naked Goat, there's a lot of brands out there.
- [15:27]
B
And what's the benefit of goat whey versus regular?
- [15:30]
A
Regular Way regular whey is usually factory farmed cows, which is just criminal.
- [15:34]
B
Yeah.
- [15:35]
A
Two, it's got lots of hormones, antibiotics, pesticides they use in the growing of it. 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 a one casein that's very inflammatory. So goats have a two casein. So the sheep less inflammatory and better Tolerated. So that's what I. But, but then you don't. You don't have to have dairy. You could, you could make it with nuts and seeds and.
- [16:00]
B
But wait, hold on. I've got so many questions. I mean, just so much information. Okay, so goat whey. How about like, what. What would you say, compared that to, let's say almond milk or, yeah know, cashew milk? Alternative milk?
- [16:12]
A
Well, 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.
- [16:21]
B
Okay.
- [16:22]
A
Which is a lot more than people are drink eating.
- [16:24]
B
Right.
- [16:25]
A
The RDA, the recommended dietary allowance is 0.8 grams per kilo, not per pound.
- [16:30]
B
Oh, wow. Yeah.
- [16:31]
A
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.
- [16:46]
B
Right.
- [16:46]
A
How much vitamin D do you need to not get rickets? Not much. 30 units.
- [16:50]
B
Wow.
- [16:50]
A
Rickets is when your bones bend and you get, you know. Which is vitamin D deficiency.
- [16:54]
B
Yeah.
- [16:54]
A
How much vitamin do you need? Not get osteoporosis or to build your immune system or. Not get Covid or the flu. Probably four to five thousand. Over a hundred times that dose.
- [17:03]
B
Wow.
- [17:04]
A
Right. So. Right, so the deficiency. The numbers for the recommended Dietary Intake or allowance are based on deficiency disease. How much vitamin C do you need? Not get scurvy. Not what you need for optimal health.
- [17:14]
B
Right. Optimization and deficiency is very different.
- [17:16]
A
Very different. Right. And so protein is really key. And you need bioavailable protein, especially as you get older. 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. Without muscle, you become frail and weak and disabled. The reason people end up in nursing homes is not because they're sick. It's because they can't have their shoes or get up out of a chair or get up out of bed.
- [17:41]
B
Right, Right.
- [17:42]
A
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.
- [17:50]
B
Right.
- [17:51]
A
So you got to get on it.
- [17:53]
B
Strength training.
- [17:53]
A
Strength training and protein is the magic sauce. So. So you gotta do that. Yeah, you gotta do that. That's my breakfast. So what are you putting in it?
- [18:01]
B
You're putting the.
- [18:02]
A
I put in. Yeah, I put in my whey protein. I put in mito pure Actually the, the pure lin a 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.
- [18:15]
B
Every day?
- [18:15]
A
Every day.
- [18:15]
B
Do you eat eggs?
- [18:16]
A
I eat eggs. So for example, I'm traveling. I'll eat an omelette 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 protein. So like lunch you can make a salad. 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. All the ingredients are there in my kitchen. Make it easy, set myself up for success.
- [18:42]
B
Right.
- [18:42]
A
Lunch. And I'll get pre washed arugula. I'll get little cherry tomatoes, organic. I'll throw in pumpkin seeds, I'll throw in avocado, I'll throw in olives. I'll throw in a can of wild salmon or mackerel or have a sardines as my protein and then pour olive oil, vinegar and you've got a lot of fat. I call it my fat salad. Yeah, lots of fat and lots of veggies, different cucumbers, whatever you want in there. Carrots. And then dinner is usually a piece of protein and, and regeneratively raised meat if I can get it, bison, elk, venison or just to regenerate beef, chicken, pasteurized chicken, small fish and then usually two or three side dishes of veggies. So my main courses are veggies, meats, a side dish. But it's, it's at least you know, 6 ounces to some, 8 ounces of protein. And then the, the, I'll have roasted mushrooms. I'll have you know, usually every day some form of the cruciferous vegetable. So two or three cups of broccoli or collards or kale or brussels sprouts.
- [19:39]
B
Right.
- [19:39]
A
And then usually like a Japanese sweet potato, like a purple sweet potato I love. And that's, that's kind of what I eat. And then you know, a little dark chocolate if I want something sweet.
- [19:48]
B
But this is, if you're like, this is for people who are home 24 hours a day. Most people travel, they're working, they're going. Especially you're from.
- [19:54]
A
Yeah. So I'm traveling. You know, I have, I always carry, if you look at my bag I've got me. I've got enough calories in there, but I don't worry about eating anything the rest of the day. 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 emergencies. I don't have to eat crap if I don't want to.
- [20:11]
B
Right. You don't get, like, that, like, feeling of, like. Yeah.
- [20:13]
A
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.
- [20:21]
B
Right? You just have to ask. What about fruit? You didn't mention anything.
- [20:24]
A
Fruit's fine. So I. Berries in the morning, I'll have fruit. And I think fruit can be fine. You know, I think. I think, you know, fruit juice is not good.
- [20:32]
B
Right, Right, Right.
- [20:32]
A
So, you know, yeah, you can eat an apple but don't have apple juice.
- [20:35]
B
Right. But in terms of, like, grapes, mangoes, like, things are high. High.
- [20:39]
A
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. Bananas are higher glycemic index, so you want to be careful with those. You can enjoy them, but don't, like, pig out. Right.
- [20:52]
B
Well, I ask because, you know, there's a controversy kind of because people are like, don't eat fruit because it's very high in sugar, obviously. Others are like, you never see a 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. I can have five pounds of grapes in two segments. Gain weight.
- [21:11]
A
That's a problem. Right, so it's just a dose. The dose, right?
- [21:13]
B
Yeah. It's all about, like, how much you're eating of everything. Right, Exactly. 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 because you're very, very lean and thin.
- [21:27]
A
Well, I mean, I do probably four times a week. I have a routine. I do 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. 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 a pound, maybe or less. Takes up this much space I put in my suitcase, and all I need is a door and a floor. So if I can hook the thing to doorknob, I can get resistance.
- [21:53]
B
That's what you're doing.
- [21:54]
A
Yeah.
- [21:54]
B
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. So as we age, I do believe that cardio is something that we should all be doing.
- [22:06]
A
Absolutely. I mean, you can't just pick one form of training you need. You know, VO2 max is a really important number. This is a number that measures your mitochondrial function. Your mitochondria are the key to healthy aging. Partly why your lithium A works and exercise works and strength training works. VO2 max is, is correlated directly with longevity. So if you look at your ability to burn oxygen per minute, which is a measure of how basically, like if you look at Lance Armstrong, for example, he had a V2 Max in the 90s, meaning he can just go, go, go, like, you know, like Energizer Bunny. Whereas, you know, the average 30 year old has a VO2 max in the 30s.
- [22:40]
B
Right, right, right, exactly right. By the way, Lance still has a cr ot. Like he's.
- [22:45]
A
Mine's like 45.
- [22:46]
B
Wow.
- [22:46]
A
Even at 65, 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. So you kind of push and stress yourself. So you can do half an hour, two or three times 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 down a treadmill on a bike. It's like sprinting, you know, we call it wind sprints and high school.
- [23:11]
B
Right, right, right. Remember 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. You know, is there?
- [23:25]
A
Let's say if you just take multivitamin, fish oil and vitamin D, you know, less than a dollar a day, you.
- [23:30]
B
Can, you can do all these things.
- [23:32]
A
Yeah. I mean, dollar a day is not nothing. But, you know, think of what people spend on their coffee or their just junk or their Netflix subscription. I mean, like all. What do you want to invest in your, you know, Invest in your health. You pay now or pay later.
- [23:43]
B
Well, I think the problem is that right now we're, we're so inundated with information, right? Especially with social media. Everyone talks about this, supplement that supplement, do this, don't do that, do more of that. Like, and things ebb and flow and trend, right? So like things that we talked about, remember when carbs was a thing that we should be doing and not eating all this protein, are there things that kind of like you've learned in your whole, in, in your evolution that you're like, wow, this is, I was totally wrong about this. I was completely, this is the way. 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?
- [24:24]
A
Well, you know, I think what sells books and what gets people to click on social media is extremes. So you've got carnivores on one side, the vegans on the other side, and you know, like, it's kind of extreme. And I think, I think I take a more middle of the road position based on the science, which is one, there's certain principles that you follow that allow you to have a wide variety of diets, culturally different diets, personal preference differences that you might like. But the principle should be the same one. Food is medicine. So you have to understand every bite you take is information and is 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, everything is literally affected in real time by every single bite of food you have. So the quality of your food matters. Second is, and that food is information and can upgrade your downgrade your biology with every bite. Second is that we should think about nutrition from the perspective of personalized nutrition. 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, need more carbs. And there's now genetics we can do to actually see what, what people do better on or worse on and what people respond better to worse to. 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. 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. So it's not actually even the same molecular structure. And it reassembled into all sizes. Color shapes of chemically extruded food, like substances that have nothing to do with nutrition don't actually meet the definition of food. If you look at the Webster's definition of food, right? It's basically some. 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. Right?
- [26:30]
B
Eat food.
- [26:31]
A
I mean, Michael Pollan said, eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants, you know?
- [26:34]
B
Yeah, that's what he. I bet he says all plants. And there are people who think, no.
- [26:37]
A
He didn't say all plants.
- [26:38]
B
Mostly plants.
- [26:39]
A
Mostly plants.
- [26:39]
B
He said. He said mostly plants. What about microwaving your food? Because it changes the glycogen.
- [26:46]
A
Heating stuff up for a few seconds is fine. But if you're cooking food and microwave, it's a bad idea because you get the production of something called AGEs or advanced glycation end products. Essentially, it's. Think about a crispy skin on a chicken or creme brulee. 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. And, you know, hemoglobin A1C, which is your blood sugar average, is an example of one of those. But there's many, and they. They bind to receptors, they activate inflammation, and so they just create this vicious 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. Been putting microwave stuff in plastic with the plastic cover on. It's like.
- [27:27]
B
Like, oh, my God, it's terrible.
- [27:29]
A
So bad.
- [27:29]
B
But do you. Would you ever microwave your food for, like, a minute? Like, that's. Yeah.
- [27:33]
A
So, like, if I'm lazy and, like, I'm in a hurry, I 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.
- [27:41]
B
But I got rid of mine thinking that it was, like, very dangerous.
- [27:44]
A
I mean, listen, radiation. Ideally, probably no. But, like, you know, so you're not.
- [27:50]
B
So crazy one way or the other. Like, you are. You are. You do seem a little bit more like, middle of the ground.
- [27:55]
A
Yeah, I mean, like, just. It's. It's. Here's the deal. You want to optimize your health. You want to become resilient. You don't want to live in a bubble.
- [28:02]
B
Right.
- [28:02]
A
Like you don't want to be a bubble boy.
- [28:04]
B
No.
- [28:04]
A
And so there are people who are so fragile like you, they can't, you know, go anywhere and they can't travel, they can't stay in a hotel room. Like there may be people who truly have chemical sensitivities and are that sensitive. And I, I, I, I'm not saying they're crazy. And I, I treat them as patients and you can get them better. But if you're resilient and healthy, your body can handle a lot. So for example, if you're a diabetic and you have a can of coke, it'll send you over the limit.
- [28:27]
B
Right.
- [28:28]
A
But if you're like a regular 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, your insulin resistant, super dialed in. You, you have, you know, my insulin levels 2, 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.
- [28:48]
B
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. Like are you wearing a glucose monitor, Are you wearing an aura ring or a whoop or what is your.
- [29:00]
A
Yeah. Test don't guess is my motto.
- [29:03]
B
I like that.
- [29:03]
A
Test don't guess. And in fact I co founded a company called Function Health.
- [29:07]
B
Yeah.
- [29:08]
A
To allow people to go deeper. The aura rings are great. CGMs are great. Woo. You know Apple watch all but skin deep. They're just skin deep.
- [29:16]
B
Yep.
- [29:17]
A
You know Google Spotter is a little better because you get a continuous read of your Gl glucose. But there's so many other biomarkers. So what I realized was that most doctors aren't checking these things. Most patients don't know what to ask for.
- [29:29]
B
Right.
- [29:29]
A
If they do, they have to argue with their doctor to order it because they usually don't know what it is. And then they argue with their insurance company to pay for it, which they usually don't. So we 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.
- [29:47]
B
That's a lot.
- [29:48]
A
Yeah. And it's a bunch of tubes of blood but basically it's, 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, for example, your metabolic health. People get their cholesterol checked and they just look at the basic numbers. 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 number of lipid particles and cholesterol particles and small particles. And so we look at a more advanced cholesterol test, look at the size and number and the quality of cholesterol, not just the weight.
- [30:22]
B
Right.
- [30:22]
A
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. That's like a 50 year old test, you know. Yeah, we're looking at inflammation, we look at autoimmune markers and 30 plus percent of people have an autoimmune biomarker. 13% of autoimmune thyroid disease. 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. We check your hormones like male sex hormone, female sex hormones. We look at your cortisol and we look at your metabolic health, measuring insulin, which, you know, we're working with quest as our provider of the lab testing. 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.
- [31:08]
B
So basically, how does it work? That's what I'm curious about. Do you, do people walk into a quest?
- [31:12]
A
I'll tell you. 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. We're seeing, you know, so much going on in the, in the, 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 you, you with your listeners? We provided, yeah. Early access code, which is hustle 100. So thank you. You go to hustle 100. The first hundred listeners to sign up will skip the waitlist, which is 300,000 people.
- [31:43]
B
Okay, well, listen to that guys. That's very big. So if you guys use a code, hustle 100. You skip the 300,000 people guess wait list. Wait, wait list. And you get, you get early access.
- [31:53]
A
Yeah. And then, and then you, once you sign in a few minutes questionnaire to sort of get your basic demographics and everything. And then you'll get a text from our team. 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, 8:00. And you go in, you show me there's a little scanning machine. You put your driver's license in there. They register you second, you walk in, they draw your blood, 10, 15 minutes, you're out. And then the, all the data gets loaded up into your dashboard, which is data you own. It's your, it's your data. You can track it over time. I mean, I mean I, Wow. It's so frustrating for me as a doctor because medicine's so analog.
- [32:29]
B
Yeah.
- [32:29]
A
You know, we don't use tech and medicine at all. It like even an electronic medical record, it's just a paper record in the office.
- [32:36]
B
Yeah.
- [32:36]
A
And so you know, if I want to know, okay, let me look at your cholesterol. What was it last year and, or the year before and what are the trends? I have to like open a PDF, 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. So this is a beautiful dashboard. You can see your trends over time. You get a deep set of insights. So it's not just a data because that, you know, the average person doesn't know what to do with their data. Right. Doesn't. Right, doesn't know what the tests mean. But we spent, you know, 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 biomarkers. Let's say you have 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? What, what would you do from a lifestyle perspective, from a supplement perspective? What are the diagnostic tests might you need? When do you know, need to go to the doctor 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 Sea of your own health. Totally not, not abdicating that to the healthcare system. You know, my friend Chris Carr had cancer and she, she, she's an incredible woman 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.
- [33:50]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [33:50]
A
So she, she sort of said, joke that she started a new company called Save My Ass Technologies, Inc. You know, like, oh my gosh, it was just basically her owning her own health. And that's what we all need to do. And our goal at Function Health is to help people do a hundred healthy years, which I think is achievable for most people.
- [34:07]
B
That's amazing. 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 a hundred times more polluted than outdoor air. According to the epa, Indoor air pollutants can cause respiratory symptoms like sneezing, congestion, scratchy throat, and even more serious health problems like lung and heart disease. So what's the Solution? Introducing Air Doctor, the air purifier that filters out 99.99% of dangerous contaminants so your lungs don't have to. This includes allergens, pollen, pet dander, dust mites, mold spores, and even bacteria and viruses. Air doctor comes with a 30 day money back guarantee, so if you don't love it, just send it back for a refund minus the shipping. Head to air doctor pro.com and use promo code Hustle and you'll receive up to $300 off air purifiers exclusive to podcast customers. You will also receive a free three year warranty on any unit, which is an additional $84 value. Lock in this special offer by going to Air Doctor Pro and use promo code HUSTLE. That's Air Doctor Pro.com promo code HUSTLE. 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 all your doctor assigned?
- [35:55]
A
Or you get, you get a clinician summary of all your results generated and then you have the insights that are delivered to you personally. Like, what should you be eating that.
- [36:04]
B
Says this is what you should be doing?
- [36:05]
A
Yeah. What lifestyle changes do you need to make? What toxins do you need to avoid? What you need in terms of exercise? How do you optimize your microbiome? If you need to do that, how do you. What supplements might be helpful for the particular issue you have you know, if your vitamin D is low, how do you know which vitamin D to take, what form of vitamin D, what dose you take? How do you pick the right supplement? We don't recommend products.
- [36:23]
B
Right.
- [36:23]
A
Just we aren't selling anything other than the service of owning your own data.
- [36:27]
B
Yeah, right.
- [36:28]
A
So we're not like hawking different companies.
- [36:30]
B
Right, right.
- [36:30]
A
Product stuff. And so it's, it's, it's just provides you the scientific information. Everything's deeply referenced with scientific literature. All the data is there, you can look at it yourself and then it guides you into a personalized program. 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.
- [36:48]
B
That's amazing, actually. And I can't believe how many biomarkers you're checking for. That's a lot.
- [36:53]
A
And then of course we already, we 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. There's now blood biomarkers for Alzheimer's disease, which you don't even need a brain scan for. And you have to wait to have memory issues, but you can, you can actually detect things and then do interventions that will reverse those biomarkers and normalize them.
- [37:12]
B
Wow.
- [37:13]
A
We were also measuring, for example, cancer screening. You know, 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. They kind of come off cancer cells that you can detect in the blood. It's like a liquid biopsy and it picks up about 50 different cancers. 75% of the time it'll detect it. It'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. Is it going to show positive? But it's really not a cancer. Very rare to have that happen. 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. And this takes detects cancer a year to three years before it shows up.
- [37:55]
B
Anywhere else, by the way, just in that alone is worth doing it.
- [37:59]
A
Yeah. 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.
- [38:07]
B
So you can pick up cancer, you can pick up potential Alzheimer's.
- [38:11]
A
Yeah. And we're, you know, we're doing a whole bunch of stuff on autoimmune testing, on nutritional testing, on toxin testing. We're now able to test things like pfas for chemicals in your blood, heavy metals, bpa, other chemicals that are.
- [38:25]
B
I'm going to take this test. I'm going to. Seriously, I'm going to. By the way, even before you were on this, on this show podcast, I was told about your program. Like, a few people told me about it because they. I was told it was like way above other programs out there because everyone now is all, you know, jumping on these bandwagons. Right. Like personalized health, telemedicine, all the things. But yours does sound like super extensive.
- [38:48]
A
Yeah, it's very deep. Yeah. I mean, it's because I sort of am the kind of intel inside.
- [38:53]
B
Yeah.
- [38:54]
A
You know, my background has been, you know, as a doctor at Canyon Ranch, which is a health Resort, for almost 10 years. And there we did, you know, five to $10,000 for the testing on everybody.
- [39:03]
B
Is that how you started at Canyon Ranch?
- [39:05]
A
I was, yeah. My joke is I'm a resort doctor because I worked at a health resort. And the doctor of last resort.
- [39:11]
B
That's. That's funny. So that's how you started.
- [39:14]
A
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. And I've seen millions and millions and millions and millions of biomarkers on tens of thousands of people. 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? Because in the scientific literature, this discoveries get made. And you know, for example, we've known about lipoprotein fractionation, which is the test we do at Function Health for your cholesterol. This is the standard of the care. This should be the state of the art test that everybody gets. It's not expensive, not hard to get.
- [39:49]
B
Yeah.
- [39:49]
A
And yet we ask Quest how many cholesterol tests that you get are from doctors around the country. And you're the biggest lab.
- [39:56]
B
Yeah.
- [39:57]
A
Are for this test.
- [39:58]
B
What do they say?
- [39:59]
A
Less than 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. So what happens is it takes decades for the science to turn into clinical practice.
- [40:13]
B
That's Crazy.
- [40:14]
A
You know, it is crazy. So my daughter's in medical school now. She's not learning anything about insulin resistance, nothing about the microbiome, nothing about nutrition, nothing about environmental toxins. 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.
- [40:30]
B
Where's she going to medical school?
- [40:32]
A
Well, it's a very good medical school. It's the University of Utah. It's a great medical school. And it's pretty much what is going on, because we have a pharmaceutically driven healthcare system that. That is in large part funded by the pharma industry.
- [40:45]
B
Yeah.
- [40:46]
A
So a lot of academic centers, you know, they're not getting money from the government. 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. Yeah, 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 raking in the money. And Novo Nordisk, which is the maker of Ozempic in Denmark, is the single biggest contributor to the gross domestic product, or GDP of Denmark.
- [41:31]
B
That is crazy.
- [41:32]
A
And, yeah, it's a huge, huge. And it's like, it's the Eli Lilly. The number one selling drug is Mounjaro. Billions and billions of dollars a year from these drugs, 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. They work because they give people lose weight and the weight loss is what's working. Yeah, it's like a study that they did on gastric bypass. They said, well, gee, gastric bypass, you can reverse diabetes in two weeks. Someone has a gastric bypass, it's a miracle.
- [42:03]
B
Right?
- [42:03]
A
Right. Even if they're still overweight and you're still £400, two weeks later, after you do the surgery, you don't have diabetes anymore and your inflammation goes down, your numbers get better. Well, how does that happen? Because of the food they're eating? Because they don't eat what they breed. 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 a gastric bypass and another match control group, not the bypass, but just fed them the food as if they would have had the bypass. So on the same diet.
- [42:32]
B
Right.
- [42:33]
A
Same results?
- [42:33]
B
Same result.
- [42:34]
A
No different. 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 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. I can get $150 million from pharma that funds my department, that funds my programs, that funds my fellowship, that funds everything. 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.
- [43:04]
B
That's so crazy to me. And the funny that. Not funny at all is that now you have people who are on these, these, these ozempics and wegovies who shouldn't be on them. They're like thin people.
- [43:16]
A
Yeah. 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.
- [43:21]
B
Is that a true thing?
- [43:24]
A
Yes. And you, you lose subcutaneous fat and you lose muscle. And this is, 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 right. And that they do it. And two, that they commit strength training at least three times a week. 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. 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? 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 to 20 pounds, you're going to gain it back all as fat, which means your metabolism is going to be slower even at the same weight that you were when you started, which means you need to eat less in order to just stay at that weight. So you'll gain more weight even. And 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.
- [44:48]
B
Exactly. It's great.
- [44:50]
A
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 there's really clear data on this. I mean Virta Health is a company that a friend of mine started, Sami Inikin, it basically uses ketogenic diets for reversing type 2 diabetes. And they've scaled this up. 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, it's pretty advanced in 60% of patients.
- [45:21]
B
Wow.
- [45:21]
A
The average of 12% weight loss, which is astounding amount of weight loss. And they have 100% get off the main diabetes medication. Almost 90 plus percent get off insulin or dramatically reduce their insulin. And all the lipid biomarkers improve. And the, all the secondary things that are being measured by these drug companies that are saying they're the benefits of Oz Epic, all those get better. It's not the ozempic, it's the diet.
- [45:44]
B
It's the diet. So it basically does come down to what you eat, your food and how much you eat of it.
- [45:50]
A
It's not how much is not of an issue. It's really the quality of what you eat.
- [45:55]
B
The quality.
- [45:56]
A
Because if you eat the right food, you can't overeat. In other words, if I said I want you to eat ten 12 ounce steaks, no way. If I said eat ten avocados, no way. If I said Eat ten chocolate chip cookies, no problem. If I see a quart of ice cream, no problem. You know, and, and our bodies when we eat this stuff that's not really food, doesn't know how to regulate it. And the studies that 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, 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.
- [46:40]
B
Wow. Yeah.
- [46:40]
A
Natural protein, fat, carbs, calories. Then they gave them ultra processed food. Then they can eat whatever they want. Eat whatever you want, 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.
- [46:56]
B
Right.
- [46:56]
A
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, Right?
- [47:10]
B
Yeah.
- [47:10]
A
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. If you don't offset it with exercise in a year. That's 52 pounds of weight gain if you eat ultra processed food. Why is America the fattest country in the world? Like, we have 75% of us that are overweight, 42% are obese. It's increased, you know, fourfold since I was born. And you've seen diabetes increase 400%. I mean, it's, it's in the last 30 years. It's insane. And you know, the metabolic dysfunction.
- [47:47]
B
Yeah.
- [47:47]
A
Even if you're not overweight because you can be skinny fat. In other words, you look thin, but you're actually fat on the inside.
- [47:54]
B
Right. Your percentage is fat.
- [47:56]
A
Yeah. Your body fat, 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? 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.
- [48:21]
B
So, yeah, that is unbelievable.
- [48:23]
A
It's unbelievable. And so, you know, we're killing ourselves. And it's. The costs are staggering. I mean, the government, the US government pays 40% of the national healthcare bill, which is now $4.9 trillion. 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 can do for the economy, 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. I mean we're wasting, wasting that money. And most people don't realize that, you know, it's one out of every three taxpayer dollars is for healthcare.
- [49:00]
B
Some believe. 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 getting what you're saying is pretty basic, right? 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. It's not that hard, but yet people are trying to over or there's, they're overwhelmed with like all this like noise.
- [49:24]
A
Yeah.
- [49:24]
B
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 and so you end up even eating what you ate before you even started taking it?
- [49:35]
A
Sometimes these drugs affect people differently. I had a patient who, I didn't prescribe it, but he, he was telling me he lost, you know, he did Ozempic for six months. 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. He lost 60 pounds and he's reversed his diabetes and you know, he's on his way back to full, full health.
- [49:56]
B
You keep us saying patients. Do you still see patients?
- [49:59]
A
Yeah, I saw two this morning. I had a whole patient day yesterday. Yeah.
- [50:01]
B
So you actually still see doctor? Yes.
- [50:05]
A
I don't just play one on tv.
- [50:07]
B
No, you don't just play. 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.
- [50:25]
A
Keeps it real. It keeps you humble.
- [50:27]
B
But people don't like to do it. Like it's impossible to like the big joke is I can't find a doctor.
- [50:32]
A
I love it. I mean, I love taking care of people. It's so, I mean it's amazing.
- [50:36]
B
You actually are like, would you take another, another patient? I need a doctor. Because there is such a short doctors. I know, like, what is the waiting list for that? Like, do you have like a crazy waiting list?
- [50:48]
A
I wish I could see everybody. I really wished I, I, I mean it's it's the heartbreak of my life. And I can tell you, I probably get five to 10 texts, emails, requests every day, easy. 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. And, and so that's really why I co founded Function Health.
- [51:08]
B
Right?
- [51:08]
A
To give people just to take what I know and make it accessible not to a few hundred or thousand people, but to millions and millions. We have an 8 billion person problem.
- [51:17]
B
That's exactly true.
- [51:18]
A
Right. And what I, what we're creating at Function is something that is revolutionary. It's why we're the fastest growing healthcare company in the world. We're creating something called medical intelligence. You know, you have ChatGPT and all this, but think about where you take all your own data and all your data is sorted through with the use of technology. Because now we, we can process. I mean, just in your microbiome alone, there's a hundred thousand terabytes of data. I don't even know what a terabyte is, but it's a lot of information.
- [51:43]
B
A lot, I guess, yeah.
- [51:45]
A
So you. No human mind can comprehend all that. So we're able to take all this data and actually understand what's happening to you and 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. For example, we were mentioning some of these Alzheimer's tests like P Taus217 or 84,240 or Neurofibrillary Light chain. There's other biomarkers 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. You can tell with brain imaging up to 30 to 40 years before you get Alzheimer's that you're starting to get trouble 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.
- [52:32]
B
So I, how is that even possible? I thought there was no cure that you couldn't. Well, so can you give us.
- [52:37]
A
Well, there is, of course there is. I mean, you know, like what?
- [52:40]
B
Give us some things that we can do for our brain health.
- [52:42]
A
This is not my opinion. This is, this is, this is actually fact. I mean, if you look at 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 slowing, not showing, not just reverse, slowing down or delaying the progression of Alzheimer's, but reversing.
- [53:04]
B
How can we reverse Alzheimer's?
- [53:06]
A
What you eat, I mean exercise, stress management, sleep optimization, the nutritional optimization, hormone optimization, addressing all the root causes, toxins, the gut microbiome. I mean it's a, it's a process. It's a deep, 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 and still ahead of its time. And colleagues of mine like Dale Bredesen had taken that and really upgraded it and he's got a recode program now. 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. Why have we seen Alzheimer's increase by 150%?
- [53:40]
B
Why? Tell us why.
- [53:42]
A
Because we, we have the shitty diet, right? Which is sugar. I mean they're calling Alzheimer's type 3 diabetes now, which is insulin resistance. Why? We have 93% of the population have some degree of insulin resistance.
- [53:53]
B
But why this one? I don't understand.
- [53:54]
A
Toxins, environmental toxins.
- [53:56]
B
There's more education out than ever before, right? We're more educated, you'd think like this information out there. How is it instead of getting less obese, we're getting more obese? Instead of getting healthier, we're more sick. When all we, we are overloaded with people and information. Like the health industry, longevity industry, it's a trillion dollar business. Yeah.
- [54:19]
A
We live in a toxic cess pool of food and toxins. I mean it's just the truth. I mean the, the food industry has produced food that is making us sick and making us die early and it, and we also have completely unregulated environmental toxins that in this, in the society that people are just polluted. Polluted. You know, if we were food we wouldn't be safe to eat as human beings are so polluted.
- [54:40]
B
Why is it different here than the uk?
- [54:42]
A
Well, in the, in other countries they don't allow the same ingredients. I mean you might have heard the recent about Kellogg's and these are friends of mine.
- [54:49]
B
I was going to ask you about that.
- [54:50]
A
Yeah, I mean like, you know, it's ridiculous. Like in, in Europe they have regulations, they have something called the reach legislation in the European Union which limits the use of Chemicals. So here, the way it works is you. If you're a company, you get to use whatever you want and you get approved 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.
- [55:15]
B
Wow.
- [55:15]
A
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.
- [55:21]
B
Right.
- [55:21]
A
Crisco was invented in 1911. Shortening.
- [55:24]
B
Yeah, I remember it.
- [55:25]
A
Why they call it shortening?
- [55:26]
B
No, because shortening.
- [55:27]
A
Shortening. No, that's not why they call it that one.
- [55:30]
B
Oh, I thought that's why you call this. Okay. Why they call it that, I don't know. But anyway, that was a joke. It was a Dr. Joke.
- [55:37]
A
Dr. Joke.
- [55:38]
B
Like a dad joke.
- [55:39]
A
It's like, yeah, I don't eat red meat. I only eat it. Well done.
- [55:41]
B
Yeah.
- [55:42]
A
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.
- [55:51]
B
Wow.
- [55:51]
A
That it was killing people, hundreds of thousands of people a year. And the FDA still did not change its policies. And there was a scientist that was researching this for 50 years.
- [56:03]
B
Wow.
- [56:03]
A
He finally, in his 90s, sued the FDA, 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, 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, you know, butylate, hydroxy, toluene, and different dyes and additives and colors are added to food here, like Kellogg's, Fruit Loops that you don't get in craft macaroni and cheese in this country. It's 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 very orange, you know, neon.
- [56:40]
B
All these chemicals.
- [56:41]
A
Yeah. Which, of course, I grew up on craft.
- [56:43]
B
Me, too. Right? We all did. I mean, that was the first thing.
- [56:46]
A
I learned how to cook.
- [56:47]
B
Me too. I think that was like, kind of like every child, you know, like my. My daughter.
- [56:51]
A
You boil the noodles and you put the cheese in and the milk in and the.
- [56:54]
B
Totally, totally. Where did you grow up, by the way?
- [56:57]
A
I. All over. I was born in Spain. You grew up in New York City and Queens and then moved to Toronto and.
- [57:03]
B
I'm from Toronto. You're Canadian?
- [57:05]
A
No, my mother married a Canadian after my parents Were divorced.
- [57:08]
B
I met like. You grew up in Toronto?
- [57:09]
A
Yeah. From 8 to 18. Yeah.
- [57:12]
B
Where?
- [57:12]
A
Debut in York Mills.
- [57:14]
B
Really?
- [57:14]
A
Yeah.
- [57:15]
B
Oh, my God, that is hilarious. Where'd you go to medical school?
- [57:18]
A
University of Ottawa.
- [57:19]
B
I'm from Ottawa. Are you serious? Does anybody know this about you? All the Canadians. So are you surprised? I have to ask you because, like, when you started all of this stuff, your, Your career, it wasn't like trendy and cool to be a doctor. It wasn't trending. It wasn't like a massive industry. It was like what we were talking about earlier. And then I've blown up to be like the hot thing. 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? Did you expect this all?
- [57:53]
A
I don't know. Really? 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 that got me thinking about. This was given to me by a PhD student on nutrition that I was living with. We shared a house together.
- [58:11]
B
Oh, okay.
- [58:12]
A
And so I got, you know, kind of in Ottawa. Yeah. You know, in Cornell.
- [58:14]
B
Okay, Cornell.
- [58:15]
A
Cornell, yeah. Where I went to undergraduate and I, you know, I just got into health and wellness and herbal medicine and yoga and I was a yoga teacher before I was a doctor.
- [58:24]
B
And you were.
- [58:25]
A
Yeah.
- [58:26]
B
So. And also, I know you're into Buddhism and all that stuff too, right. Are you still. Are you still into that stuff?
- [58:30]
A
I mean, Tefli 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?
- [58:42]
B
Right. Although that's a good. That's a good way of putting it. 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 this.
- [58:54]
A
I mean, look, you know, functional medicine is a way of thinking. It's a. An operating system and it's agnostic and it's whatever the right set of tools. So there's a whole bunch of tools in the toolkit from meditation and yoga to breath work to do you acupuncture to drugs, to supplements, to diet, to plasma freesis to whatever.
- [59:12]
B
What is that? You said that in the beginning of the.
- [59:15]
A
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. So as we get older, we. It's like, you know, think about your car. If you don't change the oil, it gets 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.
- [59:33]
B
How do you do it?
- [59:34]
A
You take blood out of one arm, you put it through a machine that filters everything out. It's like dialysis, you know.
- [59:38]
B
Yeah.
- [59:38]
A
And it goes back in the other arm.
- [59:40]
B
And so how accessible is this to the.
- [59:42]
A
Not that accessible. It's expensive. It's, you know, between 5 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. Irina Conboy is one of the leading researchers out of, you know, the Palo Alto area in this field. And it's pretty exciting. So I think is 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. It's been around forever in medicine.
- [60:09]
B
Yeah. Dialysis, that you were saying, like, it's not dialysis.
- [60:12]
A
It's. It's used for. It's used for different kinds of autoimmune diseases and neurologic problems in hospitals. But these are. This is a broadening the use of it to different kinds of indications. And it's. I think it's one of the most exciting therapies. And I know it helped me for. I had long Covid, not super long because I caught it early, but I basically had Covid and I developed arthritis. Afterwards. 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 plasmapheresis and the next day I woke.
- [60:37]
B
Up and I was completely better in one session.
- [60:39]
A
One session? Yeah.
- [60:40]
B
Wow. And how long does it take to do it?
- [60:42]
A
Usually two to three hours, depending on your brains. An hour and a half? Two hour? Three.
- [60:46]
B
Wow. A friend of mine developed long Covid and he had a horrible gut problem and it was terrible.
- [60:52]
A
Yeah.
- [60:53]
B
Would you suggest, would this type of thing that you just said be good for all different sorts of long Covid?
- [60:58]
A
100%. In fact, there's some good data out of Europe, Germany, where they looked at long COVID patients and they measured all the auto antibodies and all the inflammatory compounds. Before and after they did plasma freesis, 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.
- [61:16]
B
Wow. Okay. And then you said something else in the beginning about what you do. You said you were. You were riffing off a few. You said that. And so you said another thing that you do that's kind of on the cutting edge. What was that?
- [61:26]
A
Rapamycin?
- [61:27]
B
No, not rapamycin, but you can talk about that too. Isn't that just a supplement, though?
- [61:31]
A
No, it's a drug.
- [61:33]
B
Oh, wait. Isn't that the drug that people take for Covid, though?
- [61:35]
A
No. Rapamin? No, Rapamycin is a drug that's used for immune suppression for transplants. But. But in low doses, in intermittently, it seems to work for longevity.
- [61:46]
B
So really. So would you suggest people take trying it?
- [61:51]
A
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. And if they're a longevity enthusiast and they understand the risks and the.
- [62:00]
B
Is there risks?
- [62:01]
A
I mean, there are some risks. It can suppress immune system function if taken in certain ways, and it depends on the person. So you have to monitor.
- [62:08]
B
Okay. Anything. What was the other thing that you said that you're doing that's a little bit more unique?
- [62:13]
A
I don't know. Exosomes, What I say? I don't remember.
- [62:15]
B
No. Ex. What do you think about exosomes, stem cells in the U.S. versus outside the U.S. are they different?
- [62:21]
A
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, 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.
- [62:40]
B
Yeah.
- [62:41]
A
Yeah.
- [62:41]
B
And so, okay, so exosomes, anything else that you do?
- [62:44]
A
Oh, I do a lot of stuff. Exercise, take all my supplements, do all this stuff.
- [62:48]
B
What supplements are you taking?
- [62:50]
A
Oh, I take a cocktail of stuff. You know, my multi fish oil, vitamin D, magnesium. But then I also take a look at my longevity stack, which is urolithin A. I take Himalayan tartary buckwheat, which is incredible. This compound that has quercetin and all these immunorejuvenating properties. I take the sprout powder, I put in my shake every morning. I take probiotics. I take this senolytic compound, which is A cocktail of different herbs and things like fisetin, curcumin. Green tea that helped her kill zombie cells.
- [63:22]
B
Where did you get that from a.
- [63:23]
A
Company I used called Qualia. I don't have any relation with them. But they're Qualia.
- [63:27]
B
Yeah, I know them. Okay.
- [63:30]
A
And I take. I take NMN and I take.
- [63:34]
B
Why NMN and not nr?
- [63:36]
A
Like, why don't they're interchangeable? I think.
- [63:38]
B
Do you think they're similar?
- [63:39]
A
Yeah.
- [63:40]
B
Really? I. I heard that. Nr, from what I understand, it gets into your cells easier. Is that.
- [63:46]
A
Yeah, it depends who's doing the research and making money. I was telling you.
- [63:49]
B
Exactly. That's a. That's a good point.
- [63:51]
A
And who's selling what?
- [63:52]
B
I know, but that's Isn't. And a man. Sinclair. Right?
- [63:55]
A
Yeah.
- [63:56]
B
Okay, you must be friends with Sinclair. Are you friends with.
- [63:57]
A
I'm friends with David, yeah. He's a character, but I love him.
- [63:59]
B
Okay, so that's why. Okay, so you're taking that. What else would you say you're doing besides all those stacks? And I want to list it. I think.
- [64:07]
A
I think, you know, one of the killers that is really not talked about a lot is loneliness and isolation and disconnection and, you know, when I. When I went to the Blue Zones, it was amazing there, you know, there were no nursing homes.
- [64:21]
B
Right.
- [64:22]
A
Even if people didn't have kids, you know, they were taken in by their niece and nephew if they were old or, you know, it was just quite an amazing thing. And they had the deep sense of connection and community and belonging. Meaning, purpose. Those are more sort of intangible things. But. But no, investing in your friendships, in your relationships, in your community is one of the most important things for longevity.
- [64:42]
B
I actually think that loneliness is our biggest pet.
- [64:45]
A
Like, it's like smoking two packs of cigarettes a day.
- [64:47]
B
Yeah. People can die from loneliness, so. I totally agree. I know. You need to get out of here. 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?
- [64:59]
A
I don't know.
- [65:00]
B
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, even maybe check your own DMs?
- [65:12]
A
I mean, it's just chronic illnesses. People have, you know, autoimmune diseases, you know, have mood 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, and we're spending more and more. We're getting less and less. 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.
- [65:38]
B
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?
- [65:51]
A
Oh, my God. Yeah. I mean, ADHD now affects about, you know, 10% of kids. 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.
- [66:05]
B
Nature deficit disorder. Is that more like you're on your social media too much? Yeah, yeah.
- [66:09]
A
Playing and being in nature 100.
- [66:11]
B
This is why I'm asking the question.
- [66:13]
A
Because 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. So how to fix your broken brain by fixing your body first, right? So your, your body affects your brain. And. And I had a kid I talk about in that book who was severely ADD on Ritalin for years, kicked out of kindergarten, you know, like, wow. Behavior, had all these other health issues, had asthma and allergies, had gut issues, had headaches, had this and that. Totally crap diet, processed food, did a bunch of testing, had severe nutritional deficiencies, had a totally messed up gut, had bad bugs growing too much yeast, had lead also in his system. So he basically just got his gut healthy, put him in a Lenation diet, kind of got his body. He was 12 years old at the time. And it was like a miracle. Like, two months later, it 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. And it was a thing that got me going, oh, my God, what's going on here? Because his handwriting, you know, is. Was illegible. A lot of these kids have what we call dysgraphia. They can't. Their writing is just terrible penmanship. And then two months later was perfect writing. And it wasn't because he had occupational therapy and handwriting lessons. It was because his brain went from being chaotic and dysfunctional, incoherent to being synchronized and coherent. And Functional. And that was what got me to really understand 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. 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. They're both wrong. Right. You need. There's no brain, there's no brain. Mind thing. It's all one thing in the body. Brain, body, mind, body. It's just. It's all the 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 psych psychiatrists or psychologists. And you can't talk your way out of, you know, a gluten intolerance is causing brain dysfunction or heavy metal toxicity or a vitamin deficiency. You've got to treat that.
- [68:19]
B
Yeah. 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, you guys. So we said for Dr. Hyman's new and most his new company, Function 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. You're going to skip the line and you are going to get early Access.
- [68:48]
A
Yes. Function health dot com.
- [68:51]
B
Function health dot com. Tell them everything. Tell them everything. All your 90,000 books and all the things you know.
- [68:57]
A
Well, that's where I go. I did you. I get yourself checked because most people don't realize how, how bad things are under the hood. And so that's really important. So just you go to Function, you can log in, bypass the wait list, get in the beta, and it's, you know, it's easy to do. Just use the code. Hustle 100. If you want to learn more about me, you can go to my website, Dr. Hyman.com. social media is Dr. Mark Hyman and podcast is the doctor's pharmacy, although might be changing name soon.
- [69:20]
B
So they know all about. You're 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.