Dr. Mark Hyman: How To Reclaim Your Health In A Food System Designed To KILL You

Summary

The School of Greatness: Dr. Mark Hyman – How To Reclaim Your Health In A Food System Designed To KILL You

Podcast Information

• Title: The School of Greatness
• Host/Author: Lewis Howes
• Guest: Dr. Mark Hyman
• Episode: Dr. Mark Hyman: How To Reclaim Your Health In A Food System Designed To KILL You
• Release Date: November 18, 2024

Overview In this compelling episode of The School of Greatness, host Lewis Howes engages in a profound conversation with Dr. Mark Hyman, a renowned physician, wellness expert, and New York Times best-selling author. Dr. Hyman delves into the alarming rise of chronic diseases in America, attributing it to a food system that prioritizes profit over health. The discussion navigates through the systemic flaws of industrialized agriculture, the pervasive impact of ultra-processed foods, and actionable strategies for individuals to reclaim their health amidst a detrimental food environment.

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1. The Alarming Rise of Chronic Diseases

Statistical Insight

• Lewis Howes [00:00]: “Six out of 10 Americans will have a chronic disease in their lifetime. Is that correct?”
• Dr. Mark Hyman [00:04]: “No. No. Six out of 10 Americans today have a chronic illness.”

Key Points

• America has transformed from a relatively healthy nation to one of the sickest in the world.
• Dr. Hyman [00:06]: “Six out of 10 have it now. Four out of 10 have more than one. If you're over 65, it's 83%.”

Chronic Illnesses Discussed

• Heart disease, diabetes, cancer, dementia, autoimmune diseases, mental illnesses (e.g., depression, anxiety), and digestive issues.

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2. The Food System: Designed to Kill

Systemic Flaws

• Dr. Hyman [00:18]: “Oh, that's easy. It's designed to kill us.”
• Post-World War II industrialization aimed to feed a growing population but led to excessive sugar and starch production.
• Environmental degradation due to intensive farming practices.

Environmental Impact

• Soil destruction contributing to carbon emissions.
• Waterway contamination causing eutrophication and dead zones (e.g., Gulf of Mexico).

Ultra-Processed Foods

• Dr. Hyman [04:25]: “The whole industrial food system from field to fork is completely effed.”
• Increased caloric intake with higher sugar and starch content.

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3. The Surge of Ultra-Processed Foods and Their Impact

Definition and Consequences

• Dr. Hyman [34:54]: “What is ultra processed food? It's not actually food.”
• Based on the NOVA classification, ultra-processed foods are industrial formulations not recognized by the body.
• Leads to inflammation, microbiome disruption, insulin resistance, and appetite dysregulation.

Study Highlight

• Dr. Hyman [35:00]: “Kevin Hall at the NIH found that people ate 500 extra calories a day on an ultra-processed diet compared to a whole foods diet.”

Health Repercussions

• Weight gain, obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, certain cancers, and mental health issues.

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4. The Food Industry’s Role and Policy Implications

Economic Drivers

• The food industry is the largest global industry, influencing policies to maximize profits.
• Dr. Hyman [13:42]: “Coca Cola just wants to sell more Coca Cola.”

Lobbying and Corporate Influence

• Dr. Hyman [31:29]: “The food industry spent $192 million lobbying against GMO labeling.”
• Examples of corporate resistance to health-focused policies (e.g., Kellogg’s, Nestlé).

Policy Recommendations

• Front-of-package labeling to highlight excessive calories, sugar, etc.
• Banning marketing of junk food to children.
• Implementing soda taxes and restricting ultra-processed foods in school lunches.

Global Comparisons

• Countries like Chile have implemented strict regulations, such as an 80% soda tax and removing cartoon characters from junk food packaging.

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5. Reclaiming Health: Individual Strategies

Key Recommendations by Dr. Hyman

1. Create a Safe Home Environment

   • Remove all ultra-processed foods from your home.
   • Dr. Hyman [58:17]: “If you really want to be healthy, you just got to cut that out of your diet.”

2. Avoid Liquid Sugars

   • Eliminate sodas, sweetened coffees, teas, and energy drinks.
   • Dr. Hyman [58:44]: “Don't put 15 teaspoons of sugar in your coffee.”

3. Adopt a Whole Foods Diet

   • Focus on vegetables, proteins, nuts, seeds, berries, and sweet potatoes.
   • Incorporate anti-inflammatory diets to reverse conditions like diabetes and heart disease.

4. Engage in Regular Exercise

   • Dr. Hyman [61:22]: “Exercise is medicine.”
   • Even moderate activities like walking for half an hour a day can significantly improve metabolic health.

5. Build a Support System

   • Healthier as a team sport with friends, family, or support groups.
   • Dr. Hyman [60:05]: “Community is medicine, love is medicine, just as food is medicine.”

6. Utilize Comprehensive Health Data

   • Access personal lab data through platforms like Function Health to track and improve health metrics.
   • Dr. Hyman [83:08]: “It's like a few days away from feeling better.”

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6. Supplements and Nutrient Deficiencies

Necessary Supplements

• Dr. Hyman [62:53]: “Minimum, a multivitamin, vitamin D, fish oil, magnesium, and a probiotic.”
• Addresses widespread nutrient deficiencies in the American population.

Nutrient Deficiencies Highlighted

• Over 90% of Americans are deficient in one or more essential nutrients, including omega-3s, vitamin D, magnesium, zinc, and iron.

Supplement Benefits

• Enhancing immune support, cognitive function, and overall metabolic health.

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7. Overcoming Psychological Barriers

Addressing Trauma and Stress

• Traumatic experiences and chronic stress significantly contribute to chronic illnesses.
• Dr. Hyman [44:04]: “These traumas... drive our behaviors.”

Cultivating Spiritual and Emotional Healing

• Lewis Howes [42:05]: Importance of spiritual healing to foster awareness and make healthier choices.
• Reducing reliance on comfort foods by addressing emotional and spiritual needs.

Breaking the Cycle

• Understanding that belly fat is not just physical but metabolically harmful.
• Dr. Hyman [71:44]: “The fat around your middle is a metabolically active organ that's spewing out harmful chemicals.”

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8. Success Stories and Empowerment

Reversing Chronic Illness

• Dr. Hyman [39:05]: “She lost 116 pounds and got her life back.”
• Case studies where dietary changes led to significant health improvements.

Empowering Individuals

• Programs like the 10-Day Detox and Function Health empower individuals to take control of their health through informed dietary and lifestyle choices.
• Dr. Hyman [77:00]: “Just see doing something like that for 10 days, what you'll do.”

Call to Action

• Encourage listeners to participate in health programs, get their lab work analyzed, and make informed dietary choices.
• Dr. Hyman [86:58]: “If you want to do something, just see doing something like that for 10 days, what you'll do.”

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Conclusion

Dr. Mark Hyman presents a stark analysis of America's food system and its catastrophic impact on public health. By identifying ultra-processed foods as a primary culprit behind the rise in chronic illnesses, Dr. Hyman emphasizes the urgent need for both systemic policy changes and individual responsibility. Through actionable strategies—ranging from creating a safe home environment and avoiding liquid sugars to engaging in regular exercise and building a supportive community—listeners are empowered to reclaim their health. The episode culminates with inspiring success stories, reinforcing that significant health transformations are achievable through informed choices and community support.

Notable Quotes

• Dr. Mark Hyman [00:18]: “It's designed to kill us.”
• Dr. Mark Hyman [61:22]: “Exercise is medicine.”
• Dr. Mark Hyman [60:05]: “Community is medicine, love is medicine, just as food is medicine.”
• Dr. Mark Hyman [71:44]: “The fat around your middle is a metabolically active organ that's spewing out harmful chemicals.”
• Dr. Mark Hyman [86:58]: “If you want to do something, just see doing something like that for 10 days, what you'll do.”

Resources Mentioned

• Food Fix Campaign: Dr. Hyman’s nonprofit organization focused on reforming the food system.
• Function Health: A platform providing comprehensive health data to empower individuals.
• Dr. Hyman’s Book: Food Fix – outlining strategies to save health, economy, and planet through food.
• 10-Day Detox Diet: An elimination diet program offered by Dr. Hyman to reset the body.

Final Thoughts This episode serves as a wake-up call to the pervasive influence of the food industry on public health and the environment. Dr. Hyman's insights underscore the importance of returning to whole, nutrient-dense foods and adopting a holistic approach to health that encompasses diet, exercise, community, and emotional well-being. Listeners are encouraged to take proactive steps towards a healthier future, both personally and within their families.

Transcript

[Lewis Howes]

Six out of 10Americans will have a chronic disease in their lifetime. Is that correct?

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

No. No. Six out of 10Americans today have a chronic illness.

[Lewis Howes]

Six out of 10 have it.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Now we went from relatively healthy nation to one of the sickest nations in the world.

[Lewis Howes]

Do you believe our food system is designed to help us heal or to kill us?

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Oh, that's easy. It's designed to kill us. Physician and wellness expert Dr. Mark Hyman.

[Lewis Howes]

14 New York Times bestsellers. None other than Dr. Mark Hyman.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

We're spending more and more money. It's one of five dollars in our economy. We're pouring more and more drugs on everybody getting sicker and sicker. Nobody's asking why. I'm sorry. If another country was doing to our kids what we're doing, we'd go to war to protect them.

[Lewis Howes]

What would you say are three to five things that could help someone reclaim their health and end chronic illness forever in their family?

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

That's a beautiful question. Something I thought a lot about.

[Lewis Howes]

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[Lewis Howes]

Welcome back everyone to the School of Greatness. I'm very excited about our guests. We have the inspiring Dr. Mark Hyman in the house. Good to See you, sir. Buddy, welcome back to the show. We've got a crazy stat here. You've got 15 New York Times best selling books. You've got amazing businesses, podcasts that are helping millions of lives around the world understand their health and understand what's causing them to get sick and unhealthy.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

That's right.

[Lewis Howes]

And there's a stat that I saw online that said nearly 90% of the $4.1 trillion spent on healthcare in America each year is attributed to chronic disease. My first question to you is, do you believe our food system is designed to help us heal or to kill us?

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Oh, that's easy. It's designed to kill us.

[Lewis Howes]

Really?

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

100%. It wasn't starting out that way, Louis. I mean, we had after World War II, a need to feed a hungry, growing population around the world. And so the huge push to industrialize agriculture to produce more calories, more starchy, carbohydrate calories that could feed a growing, hungry world. And the unintended consequence of that was two things. One, producing massive amounts of sugar and starch. We actually have about 500 calories more per person in America than we did in 1972. We also increased the amount of starch and sugar. And three, we industrialize agriculture in a way that has destroyed the environment because of the tillage, that's destroyed the soil. Soil that is now, you know, one third of all the carbon in the atmosphere comes from the loss of soil carbon, which is the life in the soil. We destroyed our rivers and waterways because of the runoff from nitrogen that's caused eutrophication and has dead zones the size of New Jersey and in the Gulf of Mexico. And there's 400 around those, around the world of those that feed a half a billion people.

[Lewis Howes]

What's a dead zone?

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Dead zone means when you have too much fertilizer in the water, it makes the algae grow, sucks all the oxygen out of the water, and all the fish die. That's a dead zone.

[Lewis Howes]

Dead fish. There's no fish.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Dead fish. And so people are depending on that fish to live. And then we have the pesticides and the glyphosate, which is destroying the cell microbiome, our microbiome, it causes cancer. And so we have all these downstream consequences, not to mention how horrific factory farming is. So the whole industrial food system from field to fork, is completely effed. And I've actually, I'm a nonprofit called Food Fix Campaign that's based on my book Food Fix, that was entitled how to Save Our Health Our economy and our planet and our communities one bite at a time. And it was really laying out from peel to fork. What's wrong with our food system, with our food policies. And we really have to address this because it is why we've gone from, you know, a relatively healthy nation. If you look even back in the 70s, you know, you can't. Pretty healthy, pretty fit. Yeah. I mean, you can't see that many overweight people now. You, you can't find a skinny person. You know, like, if you look at the data, we've gone from, you know, about 5 to 10% obesity when I was born to now 42%.

[Lewis Howes]

It's so interesting you say that because I was in Mexico City with, with Martha, my fiance, the other week, and then we flew into St. Louis. And as we landed in St. Louis, which I lived in for about eight years, I grew up in Ohio, lived in St. Louis for a while at high school, college. And as we landed, I said, notice what you see when we get off the plane.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Yeah.

[Lewis Howes]

And if we're walking through the terminal, I said, what do you see? She goes, people a little bit bigger here.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Yeah.

[Lewis Howes]

It's hard to find, like the majority was a bigger set of individuals walking through the airport. And I go, unfortunately, as much as I love the Midwest, the people in the Midwest are the.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

That's right.

[Lewis Howes]

Kindest, the best values. Yes, ma'am. Yes, sir. Let me open the door. How's your day? Like, beautiful people. But it just seems like a majority are leaning into chronic disease, pre diabetic diabetes, everywhere. And I don't know if this is your stat or if this is something where else online, but I saw that 6 out of 10Americans will have a chronic disease in their lifetime.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Is that correct? No. Six out of 10Americans today have a chronic illness. Six out of 10 have it now. Four out of 10 have more than one. If you're over 65, it's 83%.

[Lewis Howes]

We'll have a chronic illness, has a.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Chronic disease, heart disease, diabetes, cancer, dementia, autoimmune disease, you name it.

[Lewis Howes]

And what is a chronic disease? What is the root of all chronic illness?

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Well, we're going to unpack that, but it's primarily our food and our lifestyle and our environmental toxins. I would say those are the big three things that are driving it. And we can unpack that. But I kind of would love to just help people understand the problem we're in. And it's, you know the story of the frog in the boiling water when you turn the heat up Slowly, you kind of don't notice it. It's kind of where we are. You know, we went from relatively healthy nation to one of the sickest nations in the world. We've seen not just sort of this rise in obesity and diabetes. We've had a huge rise, for example, in heart disease. We think, you know, we're improving heart disease treatments. We're getting better and better health care. We went from spending $1.3 trillion in 2000 to spending almost 4.9 trillion in 2023 on healthcare. Most of that's for chronic disease. Most of it's preventable. Most is caused by diet and lifestyle. And so we've seen heart disease go up by 50% in the last 50 years. Cancer go up by 30%. It's gone up by 50% in those under 50, like colon cancer. We're seeing young kids getting cancer now, not the typical kid cancers like leukemia, but like adult grown up cancers.

[Lewis Howes]

And that's the root cause of that are food.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

100% type 2 diabetes. When I went to medical school, Louis, which I'm ancient but not that old, right. It's I'm going to be 65 next month. There was nothing that was called type 2 diabetes. It was called adult onset and juvenile onset. Juvenile onset is basically an autoimmune disease requiring insulin. Type 2 diabetes is a lifestyle disease because of too much sugar. Now, they threw out those terms because kids as young as 2 or 3 years old are getting type 2 diabetes. Kids as young as 15 are needing liver transplants from drinking soda.

[Lewis Howes]

Wow.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Yeah. This is a big problem. We're seeing autoimmune diseases, 100% increase in autoimmune diseases. We're seeing 100% increases in mental illness.

[Lewis Howes]

What illness?

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Mental illness? Depression, anxiety, especially in kids. 20% of kids have some type of mental illness. Autism, ADD, depression, anxiety. We've seen the rates of autism go up 1,000%. We've seen digestive issues go up, doubling to 100% increase. So we've seen dementia go up 150%. And we're spending more and more money and we're getting worse and worse and worse, and we're spending more and more on drugs. That's even the other thing that's sort of shocking to me.

[Lewis Howes]

How much are we spending on drugs a year?

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

It's collectively. I haven't done the math. But just for example, statins alone is almost a $40 billion a year industry. That's the number one selling class of drugs. But if you look at the drugs that are Sold. It's the lifestyle drugs. We're selling. Heart disease prevention, like statins, acid blocking drugs, mental health drugs, which are often lifestyle related. Now, we understand there's a whole role of nutritional psychiatry, metabolic psychiatry, that it's. You had Casey Mead on the show, but she talks about brain energy. But Christopher Palmer, who's a psychiatrist, talks about brain energy, how the loss of metabolic health in the brain causes psychiatric illnesses, everything from depression to bipolar disease to schizophrenia to autism. So these are things that are.

[Lewis Howes]

Brain health is affected by what we eat also, right?

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

100%. 100% the brain. Says the famous saying in medicine. Psychiatrists pay no attention to the brain and neurologists pay no attention to the mind. Right. And so they're connected. And often the mind doesn't work because the brain's not working. And the brain's not working because in large part, we're eating a diet that's full of sugar and starch that causes insulin resistance in the brain. It creates a metabolic crisis in the brain, creates inflammation in the brain. And all these diseases are inflammatory diseases, even things that aren't like allergies and autoimmune disease. And we've seen allergy rates go up dramatically in kids, and we've seen all these problems. And we're spending more and more on all these drugs. We're spending more and more. Like, we've seen a 400% increase in these with diabetes drugs, a 300% increase in the use of cardiovascular drugs. We've seen a 400% use of psychiatric drugs increase. We've seen increase in cancer therapies and 500% increase in the use of autoimmune drugs and respiratory drugs, 200% pain drugs, 400%, GI drugs, 300% increase. So we're pouring more and more drugs on everybody. We're getting sicker and sicker. We're spending more and more money. It's one to five dollars in our economy.

[Lewis Howes]

Wow.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

And nobody's asking why. It's like, we're just trying to plug the holes. Like if you got 100 holes in the boat, or we're trying to bail the boat while the boat's sinking. Instead of going, why are the holes in the boat?

[Lewis Howes]

What is the. I want to ask you, why is this happening? And also what needs to happen in order for America or the world to have a radical shift in their approach to health? Because it seems like there's more and more doctors like yourself who've been speaking up and educating the world, and more books teaching us how to do these things. More documentaries showing the strategies and all these things. What needs to happen to America or the world in order for us to get healthy?

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Great question.

[Lewis Howes]

Do we need to go through extreme pain and suffering and horrific death in order for us to wake up? Because I feel like that's.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

I mean, we're kind of there, Lois.

[Lewis Howes]

We're boiling, right? We're in the boiling water right now.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

We are. And, you know, right now, probably we're talking about the, you know, the economy and inflation. I mean, probably there's $2 trillion added to our federal deficit every year because of unnecessary health care costs, because of what we're eating and because of environmental toxins and because of our lifestyle that are totally fixable. And what's happened is companies develop, they create products, they make money, and then they keep wanting to do that. And so if you're making cigarettes, you want to sell more cigarettes. If you're making sugar, you want to sell more sugar. If you're selling Kellogg's Fruit Loops, you want to sell more Froot Loops. There's only so much that you can do is you have to get. People eat more and more of the same stuff. There's only so many people on the planet, and the food industry is the number one industry on the planet. And if you look at the full industry, from, you know, farming to food processing to fast food to processed food to the restaurant industry end in grocery stores, it's the number one industry on the planet. It employs more workers than anybody else. And so it's a huge economic driver. And there's an incredible set of insights that have now come out of the World Health Organization that I wrote about in my book. I didn't call it this, but essentially it's what they were talking about called the commercial determinants of health. We've all heard about the social determinants of health, which is, you know, if you're poor, you don't have access to food, if you're stressed, if you have trauma, if you live in tough neighborhoods, understand all that plays a huge role in our risk of illness. But the commercial determinants of health is the role that multinational corporations play in subverting public health and privatizing profits. And they will do it at any cost. They're amoral. They're not immoral. They're amoral. So Coca Cola just wants to sell more Coca Cola. Of course, they don't feed it to their kids.

[Sponsor]

Right?

[Lewis Howes]

Right.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Yeah. If you go into the Coca Cola building in Atlanta, they don't really drink A lot of Coke there. They drink all the other products like water, Darsani, and they're not. Yeah, it's kind of, you know, like Steve Jobs wouldn't let his kids use an iPhone or an iPad. Right. So I think there's something we know about that and I think. So we now have a whole industry that profits off of doing the wrong thing. And governments are now paying the price. So we socialize the costs and we privatize the profits. We taxpayers are paying the price. One with government money. We pay for farming, crop insurance that subsidize commodity crops like corn, soy and wheat that are turned into ultra processed food that are deconstructed science projects. They're not actually food by definition. Food by definition is something that supports the growth and development of an organism. This doesn't do that. It makes you sick, right?

[Lewis Howes]

Yes.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

So not actually food. And it then turned in all sizes and shapes and colors of chemically extruded food like substances that we are consuming. It's 60% of our diet, it's 67% of kids diet. And it's dysregulating our biology, it's screwing up our microbiome, it hijacks our brain chemistry, it hijacks our metabolism, it creates inflammation in the body, and it leads to all these chronic illnesses. And there was a major published paper in the Lancet that recently showed there were, I think, 32 or 37 different illnesses that were caused by or made worse by ultra processed food. And yet this is what we're eating. So we pay for the growing of this food then with our largest government program, SNAP or food stamps, we pay for $125 billion of food for the poor, which is important. Over 46 million people depend on this. But 75% of that is junk food is ultra positive. And 10% is soda. So our government is paying for over 10 billion servings of soda a year for the poor, making us sicker. Yeah. The government food stamp program is 20% of Coca Cola's American profits.

[Lewis Howes]

No way.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Yes.

[Lewis Howes]

Wow.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Yes. And then we pay on the back end for Medicare and Medicaid to take care of the illnesses that are caused by these foods. And then there's all these other collateral damage that we don't pay for directly, but we pay for indirectly. Like we talked about, the loss of all the fish, like the damage to the environment, the damage to our soil, the increases in climate change and the consequences of that. I mean, how much are these hurricanes costing? Right. That's not even factored in. And when you calculate all that, that comes from climate destabilization because of how we're growing our food. And by the way, the food system is the number one source of changes in our climate. It's not fossil fuels. People don't realize that. And partly it's because a lot of fossil fuels are used in the production of our food. 2% of global energy use is used to make fertilizer.

[Lewis Howes]

Wow.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Because it's a very energy intensive process. Right. And so we're kind of in this vicious cycle where we have to actually have some serious policy changes. The WHO report is coming out next year on the commercial determinants of health. And the goal, I talked to one of the scientists there is to help educate governments on how they're kind of being manipulated by these companies in ways that are driving policies that are helping them, meaning them, the food industry. And two, hurting the populations. And so we're left holding the bag. So we should be doing things that other countries are doing that we're not. For example, in Chile, they decided they were going to do some radical things a number of years ago. And this was because they had a Dr. Michelle Bachelet, who was a pediatrician, who was the president of Chile.

[Lewis Howes]

Wow.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

And they had a doctor who was the vice chair of the Senate. And they kind of got together and they said, this is our moment, let's do this. And then of course we're going to get kicked out of office, but let's do it anyway. They put in an 80% soda tax, which wasn't actually even the biggest thing they did. What they did was they ended marketing of junk food.

[Lewis Howes]

They do no marketing of junk food. Fast food.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Six in the morning until 10 at night. So no. And they took off all the cartoon characters. So no more Tony the Tiger.

[Lewis Howes]

Wow.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

No more on the Frosted Flakes. No more Froot Loops with the Toucan character.

[Lewis Howes]

Because they're not great.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

No, they're not great. No, they're not great. They got rid of all the cartoon characters. They got all the junk out of schools. Really. They got rid of all formula advertising. They put on front of package labeling, meaning they put. If you go to South America, you've been. But I think your fiance is from Mexico. Yeah. So they have like these now stop signs on the front of package. Excessive calories, too much calories, too much sugar, too much whatever. And different countries have done different things. But it's like a stop sign in black.

[Lewis Howes]

It's a reminder. Yeah. When I'm in Mexico, I see these I think it says excessive cut areas or something. It's like excessivo or something like that. Yeah, it's excessive calories and it's right in the front.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Yeah.

[Lewis Howes]

There might be multiple of them. And it makes you listen. You know, as a human being, my only vice is really sugar. It's like, I don't do drugs. Yeah, I don't do drugs. I don't smoke. I don't do alcohol. I don't do any of these things. I don't know if anything external is meant for us unless it's organic food. For me personally, I believe we have the most powerful pharmacy within us that can heal us and take us to astronomical universes within our own mind. But that's for a whole nother conversation.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

That's right. The greatest pharmacy is between your ears, 100%.

[Lewis Howes]

And I don't think we need an outside drug unless you're in extreme cases or you've hurt yourself so badly that you need that for that moment. But I think that's another story. But being in Mexico, it reminds me to pause. Do I really want that being here? I don't see it unless I turn it around and I see, oh, this has got 50 grams of sugar and this many calories. It's less of a pause.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

It's true. So we need a whole set of sweeping policies, and I think the WHO is going to come out with a series of recommendations in my nonprofit, the Fee Fix Campaign. In my book, I also laid out a whole set of things that we're doing, and we've been doing this in Washington, making some progress, actually. We're working on front of package labeling in America so we can catch up with other countries.

[Lewis Howes]

Right. I saw. I saw Vani Hari. Were you working with Vani Hari on.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

This whole Kellogg thing? Yeah, I was helping out, supporting out, for sure. Yeah.

[Lewis Howes]

But even with Vani, she had, I think it was 400,000 petitions. Right. That she took to signatures that she took to the headquarters of Kellogg's. And was she able to make any changes with this process? I know she's done.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

This other thing about change, it takes a grassroots movement. It takes years and years. When you think of the end of slavery, took a civil war, hopefully you don't need that. You know, look at women's suffrage, look at the right to vote, look at civil rights, women's rights, gay rights. I mean, these are just things that slowly happen over a long period of time with a lot of people working for a long time to push Congress to make the change they need. To make right? Yeah. And so that's how we are. I was talking to Cory Booker, who's a friend, a senator from New Jersey. He's like, Mark, this feels like 1959 in the food movement. For example, he put a bill together we were supporting as part of our nonprofit, which is called the Safe School Meals Act. And essentially they found that 94% of school lunches in California are contaminated with pesticides and heavy metals. Things that should not be in the food that we're giving to our kids. And two, there's all these ingredients that are in the food, the additives and dyes and colors that are banned in other countries. You can literally go to jail in Singapore if you put that in the food. If you're a food manufacturer, you go to jail for 12 years.

[Lewis Howes]

Wow.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

According to. They're a little extreme. You spit a gum on the floor, they cane you, whatever. But that's extreme. But the reality is that we allow things in this country that are banned in other countries, like food marketing. Many other countries have shut that down. Pharmaceutical marketing. Us in New Zealand are the only countries that allow that. It wasn't around when I was in.

[Lewis Howes]

Really?

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

No. When I graduated medical school, there was no pharmaceutical marketing.

[Lewis Howes]

When I go on and watch SportsCenter at night and the commercials happen, I have to turn them off. My dad never allowed us to watch commercials growing up because he didn't want drug commercials telling us that you're going to get sick and you're going to need this. So he didn't want the subliminal or conscious marketing. And so I have to mute them and turn them off because the commercials are fast food and drugs.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Yeah. They're like, oh, the drug companies. Oh, we have to charge all these high prices for these drugs. So we put so much into R and D BS they spend twice as much on marketing than they do on research and development. Twice as much.

[Lewis Howes]

Wow.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

So, I mean, yes, they spend money in R and D, but I'm telling you. And those commercials are not for the patients or for the deferred that really to get the prescribed by the doctor. But they know from the data that 40% of the time when a patient says, hey, Doc, I saw this drug on TV and says, blah, blah, blah, can you prescribe it? They go, yeah. So they're no.

[Lewis Howes]

Is there any drug in the world that has zero side effects?

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[Dr. Mark Hyman]

No, you could die from drinking water. I mean, you can die from drinking water. The dose makes them poison. If you know people who are marathon runners and they overhydrate and they get seizures and they dilute their blood, they get low sodium in their blood and they get seizure and they die. So water can kill you. So there are no even anything like a vitamin if you take the wrong dose. So I think drugs used in the right way, prescribed by educated doctors, delivered by trained nurses, that are not medical errors are between the third and fourth leading cause of death in hospitals.

[Lewis Howes]

Wait. Drugs that are used the right way.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

The right way, not the wrong way.

[Lewis Howes]

Not the wrong way.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Not like a mistake. I go, I gave you too much of this drug and I killed you. It was like, this is not like.

[Lewis Howes]

Oh, you were allergic to this thing and it killed. So let's say this one more time. Drugs used the right way published.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

This is not my opinion. This is the Journal of the American Medical association and it was published quite a while ago. And there's more data recently, but basically, drugs prescribed by doctors in hospitals for the right patient, for the right indication at the right dose, the right symptoms. The right symptoms delivered in the right way is between the third and fourth leading cause of death.

[Lewis Howes]

Holy cow. The third and fourth leading cause of death in hospitals or just in total?

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

In aggregate, really? Yeah. Wait, I have to double check that. I have to check that fact.

[Lewis Howes]

But I think, sure, sure.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Either way, it's a lot. Wow. And I think that people, how many.

[Lewis Howes]

People die in hospitals based on something just not working out, like prescribing the wrong thing or a surgery that goes wrong. How many people.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

There are medical errors and it's significant. And the Institute of Medicine did a report on it. It's not trivial. And the good news is there's better systems and processes now to help reduce those medical errors and better tracking of things and better systems. So I think they're getting less, but it's not insignificant.

[Lewis Howes]

Wow. Now, going back to chronic illness, did you say how many people are Chronically ill now or will be chronically ill.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Look at 6 in 10Americans.

[Lewis Howes]

6 in 10Americans.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Yeah. It's. It's 51% of children, Louis.

[Lewis Howes]

Wow.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Have obesity, asthma, allergies, autoimmune diseases, type 2 diabetes, type 1 diabetes.

[Lewis Howes]

Does it matter? And does it matter if we. Can any certain politician, president, government save us from being less chronically ill? Or what will save Americans from being healthy?

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

What will help us get healthy? I mean.

[Lewis Howes]

Yes. And can someone save us? Is there a government that could save us? Is there one politician that could save us? Is there a company that could save us? Like, what will save us from being sick?

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Well, I think we need a systematic understanding of the problem first. And I think whatever political party you adhere to, whatever you believe or not, the fact that there's a conversation now about health in America in a presidential campaign is important. And calling out the corruption in our systems, how the FDA is captured and the NIH is captured, and the HHS and usda. I mean. I mean, the USDA had checkoff programs, which are supposed to be research programs and also promoting healthy products. They're the ones who came out with the Got Milk Ads. So the US Taxpayers paid for those ads with the Dairy Council. Those ads had to be stopped. If you notice, they don't have them anymore. Why? Because they were very effective. Because the Federal Trade Commission said they needed to be stopped because they were unscientific. And they were making claims in there that were not based on science. Like, it's good for your bones. Right? Not. And this is not my opinion, this major published paper in the New England Journal of medicine by Dr. Ludwig and Dr. Willett, two of those esteemed researchers in the world, showing that milk and health. It was called Milk and Health. And all the fallacies in our belief about we should be drinking three glasses of milk a day. The U.S. government says today in the Dietary Guidelines that Americans need to drink three glasses of milk a day and kids need to drink two. There's no scientific data to support that. Why do we have it? Well, guess what? The Dairy Council is a huge influence on our policies. In fact, guess who was, after his last run as Secretary of Agriculture, between his current run as Secretary of Agriculture, was on the Dairy Council Board, Thomas Vilsack, who's our current Secretary of Agriculture.

[Lewis Howes]

Wow.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

So the whole.

[Lewis Howes]

The Dairy Board. Right.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

The Dairy Council, which is basically this sort of trade group that represents the dairy industry. Right. And so it's just so corrupt and that. So someone needs to come in and go, okay, we've got to address this problem. It's bankrupting our country. The US government collectively spends 40% of the money on healthcare. In other words, $4.9 trillion. 40% of that is footed by the taxpayer. When you. Not just Medicare, but Medicare, Medicaid, the Indian Health Service, Department of Defense, Federal employees, the va. I mean, you add up all the programs end to end. It's one in three dollars of our entire federal budget, which is over six trillion dollars. One in three dollars that we spend on our taxes is going to healthcare. And about 80%, up to 90% of that is lifestyle preventable diseases that we can do something about. So it's going to take some sweeping changes and I think some really committed politicians in Washington. Hopefully the next president will take this on. There's a lot of pushback from the industry. Like I said, the biggest industry, it's the biggest lobby group. I mean, just one bill to label GMOs. And by the way, I think US and Syria are the only countries that don't label GMOs. China does. Russia does not known for Transparency. Right. Those two countries, but they label GMOs. The GMO labeling bill in this country. The food industry spent $192 million lobbying for one bill. You know, to pass it. Yeah, to not pass it.

[Lewis Howes]

To not pass it.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

To say to go against. Yes, you cannot label foods with gmo because that's going to make people not want to buy it.

[Lewis Howes]

Oh, my gosh.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Right. Yeah. And then they did the same thing. They put in a bunch of. Them colluded, which they got. They got actually sued for by the Attorney General of state of Washington. And they had to pay the biggest fine ever assessed because they colluded to actually put a ballot initiative in that was anti GMO labeling to get people to vote against the labeling of GMOs in Washington, state of Washington. This is what's going on. And it's very dark and it's. It's not like, oh, gee, we don't know. There's a lot of actually malicious intent. There's also people who are just trying to do their job and make better products and do the right thing. But look at Marc Schneider, who was the CEO of Nestle, biggest health company, I mean, the biggest food company in the world got fired because he was pushing things too much in the health direction. And I was working with him. Really? Yeah. And there was the head of Pepsi, Andrew Nguyen. She got a lot of flack and God can for trying to push Pepsi to be a Healthier company.

[Lewis Howes]

Wow.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Yeah. So it's very complicated. And I think we do need a strong leadership in Washington. We need an educated consumer base. We need grassroots movement. We need clear research to actually show what works and what doesn't work. I mean, okay, $46 billion is spent on the NIH budget. The amount spent on nutrition is 121 million. It's 0.02% or.002%. I'm not good at math, but anyway, that's my shock. But very little. And most of that is not actually for the nutrition research for chronic disease. It's other stuff. So it's almost nothing, and yet it's the number one cause of death and illness, and we're not even studying it.

[Lewis Howes]

It sounds like what I'm hearing you say is that this is not something that's going to happen overnight. This is going to take time to make changes.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

I mean, it takes time until it doesn't. Right. The Berlin Wall came down in one night. So it takes time. It takes decades, and then it happens. Right. So I'm kind of, you know, hopefully I'm going to try to. I wrote a book called Young Forever on how to stay healthy. And I've reversed my biological age four years in the last two years. So I'm counting on staying alive long enough till I can see this.

[Lewis Howes]

It sounds like it's not going to happen anytime in the next four to eight years.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

It might. I might.

[Lewis Howes]

Maybe it does.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

It might, Louis. I see consumers are caring more about their health, but people are sicker than ever. People are sicker than ever. You know, I co founded a company called Function Health, which allows people access to their own lab data. Kind of disrupts the healthcare system. So go through a doctor insurance company, and people are flocking to that. We've had over 80,000 members, 300,000 people on the wait list. We have, you know, over 110 million biomarkers we've now tracked. And we test like five times what you'd get in a normal doctor's visit. And look at everything from your metabolic health, hormones and your nutrient levels, toxin levels, things that you should be looking at. And people are wanting this because they get that the healthcare system is broken. They're not getting the answer from their doctor. They want to get healthy. They want to be empowered. And so I think there's a grassroots movement. We saw the 400,000 people on Bani Hari's petition. That's significant.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah, there's movement, but it's still. Most people have chronic illness.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Yeah. And they don't know. They don't know. They don't have to. That's the thing, they don't know. This is optional. Even if you have it, you can reverse it with food. Food can heal and food can harm. And if you know how to use it.

[Lewis Howes]

So then what are the most dangerous foods that cause chronic disease that we should be avoiding?

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Well, as a class, I think what's come to light in the last decade or so is this concept of ultra processed food. And what is ultra processed food? Well, everybody understands whole food. That's an apple or an egg or a piece of chicken, right? Then there's minimally processed food. So if you make sauerkraut, well, you're taking cabbage, you're chopping and you're fermenting it. It's still pretty much whole food, but it's got some processing. Then there's maybe some little more extra processing that can happen. It's not so bad, like canning or something like that. Those are all real foods. Like if you buy a can of tomatoes, it says tomatoes, water and salt, you know what it is. Then there's ultra processed food, which is not actually food. And this is based on the NOVA classification, which they developed out of Brazil. And it's not perfect, but it's a pretty good barometer for what's to eat and not to eat. So ultra processed food essentially is industrial foods like commodity crops. Corn, meat and soy. They get chemically broken down so the molecules are just completely disassembled. They're reassembled, but not in ways that our body recognizes or probably can process. They're incredibly inflammatory, they destroy microbiome, they dysregulate our appetite. Kevin hall at the NIH did a study where he took a group of people and he gave him whole foods diet for a few weeks and then gave them a washout period. Then a few weeks of an ultra processed diet. And they were pretty matched for calories in what they were available. They were matched for fat, protein, carbs, fiber. And what they found was that when people were eating ultra processed food, they ate 500 calories more a day. Now, if you do the math, in a week, that's 3,500 calories. That's a pound 35. That's right. 3,500 calories is a pound of weight gain. And so in a year, that's £52.

[Lewis Howes]

Holy cow.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Right? So this is what America's eating.

[Lewis Howes]

If you're not burning those calories in some other way, you have to work on it.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Right. By the way, if you. Here's what happens. It's a fuel partitioning issue. This might be a little too technical for reality, but I'll try to break it down. Part of the problem is that these foods are extremely starchy and sugary for the most part. And they have bad fats and they have other additive ingredients and weird things that make you addictive. But when you eat sugar and starch, it causes your blood sugar to spike, then your insulin goes up and then the fuel goes into your fat cells. So it basically drives all the available fuel. So you store the fat in your belly, but then in your blood it feels like you're starving, so you need more, you want more because you're actually not regulating your fuel properly. So it's a fuel partitioning issue. And so you're basically starving in the midst of plenty. So it's really crazy. And so you want to eat more and more. That's how people can get to be 2, 3, 4, £500 because they're so dysregulated by these foods. I had a patient who was eating these foods for most of her life. And by the time she got to be 66, she was educated but didn't know anything about food. She was from the Midwest and she had heart failure, she had type 2 diabetes, she had multiple stents, she had high blood pressure, she had fatty liver, her kidneys were going, she was on a pile of pills, her co pay was 20,000 a year. Who knows what we were paying for Medicare. She was on her way to a kidney and a heart transplant. Terrible. And we put on a program, it was a group support lifestyle change program, put her on a very whole foods anti inflammatory diet. Essentially what I wrote in My book, the 10 Day Detox Diet, which is really great for just resetting the body. And in three days she was off insulin, which sounds crazy. In three months she went. Her A1C, which is a measure of blood sugar went from 11 to five and a half. Five and a half is normal. Eleven's like you should be in the hospital. Right. Her heart failure, which was significant, for those doctors listening, it was 35%. Ejection fraction went back up to 50% which is normal. So basically that doesn't happen in medicine. You don't see that these are one way diseases, once you have high blood pressure, diabetes, heart failure, you can manage them, you can't reverse them, but you can. Right. And so she reversed her diabetes, she reversed three months she was off all her medications, had lost 43 pounds everything was normal. And then in a year, she lost 116 pounds and got her life back.

[Lewis Howes]

Wow.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

And she was on her way to the grave, and she was able to resurrect herself just by using food as medicine. So food can heal or can harm. And if you understand how to use food in the right way, it has incredibly curative powers. So, yes, food got us into this, but it can also get us out of this.

[Lewis Howes]

So ultra processed foods sounds like the worst.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

The worst, yeah.

[Lewis Howes]

But that's where the food industry makes the most money.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

I think 73% of what's on the grocery store shelves, it's all, you know, it's stuff that looks like food that isn't. Like, Froot Loops is not food. You know, like, and top tarts and lunchables and. I mean, how did the USDA allow lunchables to be in school lunches? I mean, this is just criminal, you know, and these foods are driving most of the problem. A lot of these foods have also starch and sugar, which is the other big driver. So you mentioned sugar is your Achilles heel. It's not an accident, Louis. Nothing wrong with you. It's how we were designed. You know, think about bears, right? They kind of starve all winter, and they eat a lot of salmon at the beginning of the season when the salmon are running a lot of protein, fat, they don't gain that much weight. A little bit. Then it's berry season, and they go to town and they gain 500 pounds, literally 500 pounds of fat. Because they're eating sugar, right? Bringing fructose, which increases that a lot. And then they go to sleep, and they sleep all winter, and they burn off. We just keep eating all winter. And so our bodies are programmed, when we find something starchy or sugary, to eat it and to eat as much as we can, because we don't know where we're going to find our next root or berry. We don't when we're going to where we're going to find our next animal to hunt and kill. Like, we didn't have grocery stores and Uber Eats, you know, when we were hunter gatherers. Right?

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

And so we're programmed to eat sugar because it's stored quickly, and that's good in a situation where there's scarcity, but not in America.

[Lewis Howes]

I mean, it just seems like there's going to be more and more conveniences in life, you know, with the ability to push a button and have ice cream in your door in five minutes or go to the grocery store. And see all the. Even if they stop all the marketing, even if they put the labels on there, there's still going to be foods available that are not good for us.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Yeah.

[Lewis Howes]

I was talking to Casey Means about this this morning about how she was saying that, you know, society, humanity is spiritually broken also, and we need to find spiritual healing so that we can just have awareness and make better choices. I don't know if that's a different mindset. And being disciplined to just not take the action to have the easy fix or the thing that's gonna make us feel good because we're in a fight or flight state or we're going through a breakup or we're going through stress at work or whatever it might be. And this is gonna make us feel comfortable. Comfort foods or if it's a spiritual brokenness, and because we're spiritually broken or emotionally broken, we don't have a. We don't feel whole. And therefore we need to refuel things to try to make us feel better.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

That's right.

[Lewis Howes]

But those things aren't healthy for us.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

No.

[Lewis Howes]

And if we can start to heal.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Ourselves spiritually, it's huge.

[Lewis Howes]

Could we start to see and notice things and say, I don't need this right now, or, I'm going to have this once in a while. And it's. But it's not going to be every day, constantly to fuel something inside of me where I feel wounded, broken, less than, unworthy, guilty, shameful, needing this to feel. Quick fix and then take me to my grave.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

That's right. I always say, it's not what you're eating, it's what's eating you that's the problem.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

You know, and if you understand what's eating you and it's the stress of our modern life, it's the political division, it's the conflict around the world, it's the threat of nuclear war, the threat of climate change, the economic instability, the pressures to work hard. I mean, there's so much going on. Social media has created such a bunch of chaos in our life that technology should have freed up. Time seems to suck all our time. And so we're kind of in a state where we're disconnected from nature, we're disconnected from each other, we're isolated. And so what do we do? We have to feed the emptiness. We have to fill that hole. And so I get it, you know, when I feel like crap or I've had a stressful day, I want to find a chunky monkey. Ben and Cheese. Tell me about It. It tastes amazing.

[Lewis Howes]

It tastes great.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

I just try not to have it in the kitchen. And sometimes my wife's having a bad night, and she orders a pint of ice cream, and then she orders me another pint of the Sicilian Van Leeuwen pistachio, which is my favorite, but I'm like, I don't want that. And they're like, oh, I just got it for you. I'm like, no, you got it. So you didn't feel bad that you're eating it, Eating it alone?

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah, exactly. But I really feel like it is, you know, something to what she was saying about the, you know, the spiritual brokenness of our society, of feeling empty and needing to fill something up because we feel broken or empty or less than.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

And trauma's a real thing. Louis.

[Lewis Howes]

I mean, of course we talked about this before.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Look at the ACE questionnaire, which is. I think everybody should go and check this out. It's available online.

[Lewis Howes]

It's like 13 or 16 different things.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Yeah, it's adverse childhood events, and it's essentially a set of a few questions you fill out. You get a score. Like, did my parents get divorced? Was any of my family an alcoholic? Did anybody go to jail? Did I get hit? Was I neglected?

[Lewis Howes]

Sexual abuse? All these things, right?

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Sexual abuse.

[Lewis Howes]

I think I hit every one of these things. And it's real.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Yeah, it's real. And so when you have that and the more you have, it's almost more correlated with chronic illness than anything else. Smoking or diet. I mean, if you look at the risk of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, depression, suicide, I mean, you name it. Mental health issues, all of it, it's related to these traumas we have. And we don't really have a great way of thinking or dealing with it. And I look at my parents generation, they just didn't have a language for it. Now we do. We're talking about psilocybin therapy and MDMA therapy and trauma. And there's got people like Gabor Mate out there talking. And so there's a really interesting conversation happening around that. And I think, for me, that we're a traumatized society, you know, and all of us, to some degree or a little degree, he talks about big T traumas, little T traumas. You know, big T would be sexual abuse, little T would be your parents just didn't understand you and neglected you, were just too busy and self absorbed. You know, it doesn't matter. They all have an impact for us, and they drive our behaviors. And the healing spiritually is a key part of this.

[Lewis Howes]

And the challenge is, if we're raised as a child, you know, even there's so many things to go in here. It's like, were you, were you born, you know, through a vaginal birth or through a cesarean birth? Did you have multiple shots as a kid? Did you not have shots as a kid? Were you given sugar right away? Were you breastfeeding? It's like all the decisions from birth could compound and impact you over time to when you're in your 20s and you could be chronically ill not knowing how you got there.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

That's right.

[Lewis Howes]

Because your parents influenced what you ate and the environment and everything. And it's like you have to unlearn it all and learn how to get healthy in your 20s or 30s when, when you finally start waking up to it.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

That's right.

[Lewis Howes]

Right. It's like you're not aware when you're eight that I'm like, you know, I don't know unless you're getting picked on or bullied, but it's like the food is available for you to eat that your parents are taking you out, you're eating sugar or junk food or whatever it is. They're not educated. And so you're in your 20s and you're just sick.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Yeah.

[Lewis Howes]

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[Dr. Mark Hyman]

All ATF are subject to risk, including possible loss of principal. Alps Distributors, Inc. Distributor. That's right. It's quite, it's quite astounding how many people are on wealth. And, you know, as I mentioned, this company, Function Health, we've done, you know, tests now on 80,000 people and it's a health for population. And like, over 95% have some metabolic dysfunction, which means they have like abnormal cholesterol, too. Small particles. 46% have high inflammation, 33% have an autoimmunity problem.

[Lewis Howes]

And these are people that are actively.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Focused on 67% have a nutritional deficiency. And this is at the level the lab says is deficient, not what I would think is a good level of vitamin D or iron or whatever. Right? It's like vitamin D level should be over 50. Well, there's under 30 is over 30 is okay. Well, I'm like, 30 is not good. You should be 50. And so there's such a prevalence of people having all these low grade things that they don't know about. And illness doesn't just happen, Louis. It's not like one day you get dementia or heart disease or cancer, diabetes. These are slow, progressive things that happen over decades. And so there's a slow transition from wellness to illness. And we have not paid attention to that medicine at all. We're like, come back to me when you're sick, I'll give you a drug. Like, literally. I had a patient, I saw him and his lab tests showed how to high blood Sugar was like 113, which is prediabetes. I said, did your doctor talk to you about this? Oh, yeah. I said, what did the doctor say? He said, oh, well, he says when it gets higher and I get over 126, I have diabetes, then he can give me medication.

[Lewis Howes]

Oh my gosh. This is straight up, straight up, not talking about how to prevent it or reverse it or like, prove it.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Right? Oh, you don't. Your autoimmune disease isn't so bad. But when you get worse, come back and I'll, you know, I'll give you a drug. It's like, that's nuts, Louis.

[Lewis Howes]

So the doctors also aren't incentivized to help prevent people from being sick. They're not because they don't make a living. So that industry is a Little bit off.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Oh, for sure. I mean, that's one of the things we're working on in medicine now is how do we in Washington with a food fix campaign is how do we reimburse for nutrition services and healthcare? How do we get doctors paid to do the right thing instead of the thing that's paid for? Right. I mean, you can get paid for doing an angioplasty, but you can't get paid for a lifestyle change program that will prevent them from needing the angioplasty. Right. My daughter's in medical school. No nutrition education. Forty years later, I had none, she's got none. Right. Very few medical schools provide any nutrition education, and we're working on that. For example, we spend $17 billion a year as a federal government paying to support graduate medical education programs. There's no strings attached. We're like, hey, maybe you should have some minimum compensating requirements for nutrition. Hey, maybe on license for medical school you should have nutrition questions because that's what's killing all your patients.

[Lewis Howes]

Yes.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

And so we're trying to change reimbursement, we're trying to change education. These are the kinds of things we're working on. Changing SNAP policies, changing food packaging, labeling, changing dietary guidelines, paying for medically tailored meals. You know, basically getting NI used to have a National Institute of Nutrition. We don't have that.

[Lewis Howes]

Sure, sure.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Other countries have it. There's many levers to pull front of package labeling, FDA regulation, getting junk out of school. There's so much to be done, and it's not gonna be one thing ending food marketing to kids. I mean, just like, why should we allow? I mean, if we were doing to our kids, if another country was doing to our kids what we're doing, we'd go to war to protect them. Right. Think about it.

[Lewis Howes]

I mean, it seems like there's a lot of leverage to pull a lot of different industries, policies, companies that need to make changes, but say that never happens and each individual on this planet has to make their own decisions and own changes and take full responsibility of their health, no matter what these companies or governments do for them. What would be the three to five things that an individual listening or watching right now can say? I want to take back responsibility and control of my health and my family's health. Start with myself and my family, and we're going to start implementing only three to five things, because anything more than that is overwhelming. I don't have the time. But it's already a struggle. We're already, you know, Chronically ill or on the way there, it's tough. Life is tough, responsibilities are hard, managing it all, making money totally. Relationships are challenging, marriage is tough, kids are. There's ups and downs, parents are dying, all these different things. I don't have much more energy, although I know when I do this I'll have a lot more energy because I'm healthier. So I need to get through a three month window to take actions on three to five things to help me reverse chronic illness and be the difference maker in my family. To say I'm the one who stood up to this suffering. I'm the one who took responsibility and took ownership back in my life and therefore I'm going to change my family's generational history because of decisions I make today.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

That's right.

[Lewis Howes]

Based on what you say here, what would you say are three to five things that could help someone reclaim their health and end chronic illness forever in their family?

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Yeah, I mean, that's a beautiful question. I thought a lot about and I think it's not as complicated as people think. Yes, it would be easy to do if we didn't live in a toxic food environment. Yes, it would be easy to do if the systems around us support us to do the right thing. But even against all those odds, we have the easy choice being the bad choice for us, unhealthy choice. We have the hard choice being the healthy choice. We don't want that. Right. And I'll just tell you a story that kind of illustrates how this could be done. And I think I had a belief and I'm just going to be up front about it. I believe that people kind of knew what to do. They just didn't do it. They were lazy, they just liked to eat the junk food. They didn't really care. And I was like a little bit arrogant, honestly. And about 10 years ago or more actually, I went down to a place called Easley, South Carolina as part of this film called Fed up. That we did with Katie Couric and Laurie David who did Inconvenient Truth. And I got introduced this family of five that lived in a trailer. They were on disability and food stamps. The father was 42, already had kidney failure on dialysis from type 2 diabetes, which is usually you get later in life. But he's already so bad. He had type 2 diabetes. The mother was easy, 100 pounds plus overweight. The oldest kid was about 16 and he was 50% body fat. Now a guy should be 10 to 20%. He was practically diabetic, almost Diabetic. And I, rather than give him a lecture, I said, why don't we cook a meal together? And here's the truth, Lois. The food industry has hijacked and disintermediated us from our kitchens. They basically, like, you deserve a break today, convenience is king. You know, don't bother cooking, we'll do it for you. Right? And most people, families don't have meals together. They don't cook together. They eat from a different package made in a different factory, cooked in a microwave, all while they're on their phones or watching tv. Right. Not exactly conducive to help.

[Lewis Howes]

Right.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

So I went down to this family and I said, let's look in your. Let's cook a meal together. Let's get some simple ingredients. I'm on the board of the Environmental Working Group, and there's a guide called Good Food on a Tight Budget, which is how to eat well for you, well for your wallet, and well for your planet. Right. And I. They had some turkey chili recipe in there, a nice salad recipe, some roasted sweet potatoes. Simple stuff and cheap ingredients, relative ingredients. And they lived in one of the worst food deserts in America. When you look at something called the Retail Food Environment Index, how many fast food and convenience stores are there? To a grocery store, healthy food, it was like 10 to 1. It was like, really bad. And I said, let's look at what's in your cupboards first. And so we took out all the packages and stuff in the freezer and the cans and the packaging, and they were like, you couldn't tell if it was a Pop Tart or a corn dog by looking at the label on the ingredient list. I mean, this is the same processed ingredients we were talking about all the ultra, you know, the 2,500 things you see on a label. Right. That you don't even know what they are, how to pronounce them or where they came from. Right? See maltodextrin or butyl hydroxy toluene. You don't know what that is. Like, that's not something you sprinkle on your salad, Right? And so I started showing this is not good for you. And they had, oh, with Cool Whip, it's good because it's a, you know, low fat dressing. It says zero trans fats. But yes, it's all trans fat. Because the FDA was under the thumb of the food industry. And when they basically made them label trans fat, they said if it has less than half a gram per serving, you don't have to label it. And it Says zero trans fats, but it's almost all trans fat because it's like mostly air, right?

[Lewis Howes]

Sure.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

So it does all this crap. And so I showed them what they're. And they're like, my God, this is terrible. We didn't know. So we cooked and didn't have cutting board, didn't have knives. We were cutting garlic and sweet potatoes with like a butter knife. And we did dinner. It was fine. It was delicious. And we all ate together. And the son was like, Dr. Hyman, do you eat with your family like this every night? I'm like, yeah, I cook and eat every night like this in my family. And he's like, this is amazing. And they love the food. I said, listen, I don't know if you can do this, but here's the guide on heating it well for less. Here's a cookbook that I wrote. You just follow it on how to balance your blood sugar. And on my way home on the plane, I ordered them cutting boards and knives because they didn't even have them. And the first week, the mother texted me, she's like, we lost £18 this week together.

[Lewis Howes]

Wow.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

In a year, they lost over 200 pounds. The mother lost 100. The father lost 45, was able to get a new kidney, which was their motivation. The son lost 50, went to work at Bojangles after that. And that's like a fast food store in the South. And he says he's like putting an alcoholic to work in a bar. And he gained back the weight and then some. And then he reached out to me, he says, Dr. Hyman, will you help him? Like, sure. So I coached him and he lost 132 pounds. He then a few years later, he was the first kid in his college to go to family to go to college.

[Lewis Howes]

Wow.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

A few years later, he wrote me and said, Dr. Hyman, would you be willing to write me a letter of recommendation for medical school? Now he's a doctor. No way. So that taught me something, which is.

[Lewis Howes]

That you thought they knew.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

I thought they knew. And so it's not that hard. So what I would say to people is a few things. One is, make your home a safe zone. If you want to eat crap, do it. Make it the hard, hard choice. Right? You have to go to McDonald's, drive there. But in the home, only have stuff that's going to support your health and well being. No ultra processed food in the house. So that's really straightforward, simple. Honestly, that doesn't even look like food to me anymore. Like, if I See M and Ms. Like, I'm at an airport and I'm craving sugar. I see a package of M and Ms. Or a Hershey chocolate bar. I'm like, it doesn't look like food, it's like a rock. So I'm like, why would I eat the rock? Or why would I eat that camera? Or like, I was wondering. But you know, I might eat like real good chocolate. I might do that.

[Lewis Howes]

Some dark chocolate or some nuts.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

So I just, you know, ultra processed food has got to go. If you really want to be healthy, you just got to cut that out of your diet. The third thing is don't drink your liquid sugar, calories, sodas, sweetened coffees, sweetened teas, energy drinks, sports drinks, Gatorade. That's just got to go. Artificial sweeteners aren't a whole lot better.

[Lewis Howes]

Really? Even if it says zero sugar, but it's not artificial sweetener.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

They're problematic. The sugar alcohols can mess up your microbiome. There's some real research that's concerning that they might be increasing the risk of diabetes, obesity affecting your microbiome. Some of them may be okay, like stevia or monk fruit, a little bit here and there. Not anti sugar. Like, if you want.

[Lewis Howes]

Look, what about this whole.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

If you get a 20 ounce soda, you're having like 15 teaspoons of sugar. You're not going to put 15 teaspoons of sugar in your coffee. So put a teaspoon of sugar in your coffee, that's fine.

[Lewis Howes]

Right?

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Don't put 15.

[Lewis Howes]

Right. What about this allulose sugar?

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

That can be a little better. Give me a little bit. So there's little hacks, but I think that's the addict in you talking, Louis.

[Lewis Howes]

Yeah, yeah. How can I get around it?

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Negotiating.

[Lewis Howes]

Exactly.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Don't do it. It's okay. I'm not a yes or no extreme person. But it's just like, understand that liquid sugar, calories, ultra processed food, about giving you a homosafe zone. And then I think the other thing that people don't realize is getting healthy is a team sport. Right. Find a buddy, Rick Warren, who I did this program with his church with called the Daniel Plan, where we got 15,000 people to lose a quarter million pounds in a year. Did it together in small groups.

[Lewis Howes]

Wow.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

He says everybody needs a buddy.

[Lewis Howes]

He wrote A Purpose Driven Life, right?

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Yeah, Purpose Driven Life. So more books than any Nonfiction other.

[Lewis Howes]

Than 30 million books or something. Crazy, right?

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Yeah.

[Lewis Howes]

That was huge back then.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Huge. Huge. Yeah. So he's great. And we did this whole Program. And it was the same thing. We used the community. So community is medicine, love is medicine, just as food is medicine. So if you understand that part of the drivers of chronic illness is loneliness, is disconnection, is isolation, is focus on cultivating your friendships, cultivating your relationships, invest in those, yes, those are the most important things. Even if you have two or three, doesn't have to be a million people. But how many people in America don't have somebody to pick up the phone and call when goes down and they're struggling? A lot of people.

[Lewis Howes]

A lot.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

And men, it's even worse. Most men don't have real friends. You know, it's like, hey bro, let's grab a beer, watch some football, that's fine, there's nothing wrong with that. But like, can you open up? Can you talk about it, your marriage? Or can you talk about the stress you're having with your kids? Or you can talk about your worries about money, or you can talk about your struggle with like, I'm sick and tired of this job and I want to figure out what to do with my life. Like there are things that we, we need to be in community to thrive. And so in terms of health, loneliness is like smoking two packs of cigarettes a day.

[Lewis Howes]

So getting healthy is a team sport. What would you say is the fifth thing if you could add one more thing?

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Oh, you let me roll, huh? I think, you know, we have to live in our bodies. So many people are disconnected from our bodies. And you know, you're an athlete. Yeah, of course I'm not an athlete, but I definitely love to exercise. And I think, you know, it doesn't have to be a lot going from zero to something, you see most of the benefit. So going from zero to a half an hour walk a day, you get enormous benefit, especially if you walk after dinner because it helps to regulate your blood sugar. And insulin, because you basically control your blood sugar through your muscles. And even without insulin, so even if you're insulin resistant, you can dispose of the sugar and fuel. So I think exercise is again, such an incredible medicine. If you look at all the benefits of it across every aspect of health, it's as good as Prozac for depression. Wow. It helps to prevent reverse diabetes, heart disease, cancer. Just walking prevents dementia, cancer, arthritis, I mean, just the list goes on and on. So in every metabolic, biochemical level, and I can give you all the sciency parts of it, but the bottom line is exercise is medicine. Yeah. And if it was a drug, it would be a multi trillion dollar drug. Literally, it would be like you would buy stock in that and you'd be a billionaire overnight. Wow. Because of all the things that it does for the body.

[Lewis Howes]

And what about, you know, this? The business of supplements is a massive business. You know, I don't know how many supplement companies there are in the world. What is the science of supplements in terms of helping us prevent chronic illness?

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Yeah.

[Lewis Howes]

Is there any research on helping us.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

For sure, for sure, or is it.

[Lewis Howes]

Like all just kind of.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

No, no, there's a lot. There's a lot. I mean, there's a guy named Robert Heaney who was one of the pioneer researchers on vitamin D and he wrote a beautiful paper, was sort of a thought piece really, but with a lot of scientific evidence behind it that was called long latency deficiency diseases. And what did he mean by that? Well, if you don't have enough vitamin D acutely, you get ericets and your bones bend and you, you know, what the kids used to get from being out of the, out of the sun and not having vitamin D. Right. And you get vitamin D from the sun or from, you know, wild fish and certain things like wild mushrooms. So you don't need very much, like 30 units. But if you don't have optimal levels of vitamin d, let's say 50 nanograms of your blood. Right. And that would maybe require 1,000 to 5,000 units. So anywhere from like 20 to 100 times more than we typically think you need to prevent the patient's disease. If you don't have that, you're going to get osteoporosis, you're going to be more prone to infections, you're going to die from COVID Big meta analysis just came out about COVID and vitamin D that prevents hospitalizations and deaths. So we need to have optimal levels of nutrients. Now, why don't we? And why do we need vitamins? I mean, why should we? It wasn't a design flaw that all of a sudden God or whoever, nature, whatever you believe in, made us and we're screwed up and we have all these problems. No, if you look at the nutritional density of the hunter gatherer diet, it was humongously more nutritious, really, in terms of vitamins, minerals, omega 3 fatty acids, all the things that we are deficient in now. And when you look at, you know, I was actually talking to Bill Gates not too long ago, and he was telling us about this bullion that he created for this bullion cube with extra vitamins in it for the developing world because there were so many Vitamin deficiencies. And I said, you know, Bill, there's a lot of nutritional deficiencies. Oh, there's no deficiencies here. He's got plenty of food and protein. I'm like, no, no, Bill, just because.

[Lewis Howes]

He has it doesn't mean everyone else says, yeah, yeah.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Well, he. No, he just didn't. He just didn't know because he's focused on the developing world and that's great. And, you know, whatever you think of him, but he just didn't quite get that in America, we're also nutritionally deficient.

[Lewis Howes]

Wow.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Can we look at the in Haines data? It's the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. It's a government research project that's ongoing, which tracks blood work and tests and diet and everything. They found that over 90% of Americans are deficient in one or more nutrient at the minimum level to prevent deficiency disease like scurvy or rickets. Right. And so we've got probably 90% deficient in omega 3s, 80% insufficient, deficient in vitamin D, 45% deficient or deficient magnesium, probably 30% in zinc, up to 40% in iron, folate.

[Lewis Howes]

Because there's no vitamins in ultra processed foods.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

No, there's not. So that's what our diet is. We're not.

[Lewis Howes]

Unless you're outside in the sun getting vitamin D, you're not getting it from your food.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

No, no. I mean, I had a patient once, she was like, I don't want to take vitamins, but I'm willing to do whatever it takes to get my nutrients. I'm like, great. Okay, well, I want to get 200 micrograms of selenium. Okay, you need four Brazil nuts. Okay. I want to get 30 milligrams of zinc. Oh, can you eat 45 pumpkin seeds? Like, you know, she was like that. She had a whole spreadsheet of everything and great, Good for her. You know, like, I need to do this many cans of sardines a week to get my Omega 3s and I need to. So it's fine. But most people aren't going to do that.

[Lewis Howes]

Those are whole foods.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

They're whole foods.

[Lewis Howes]

Those are whole, healthy foods.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Right? That's right. And so, you know, and also we have more toxins in our environment. We have more stress, we have more dysregulation of our circadian rhythm. We have foods even if they're eating whole food. Like, if you're eating a broccoli today, the soil has gotten so destroyed that it's got 50% less nutrients than it did 50 years ago. Wow.

[Lewis Howes]

Even the broccoli.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Really 50% less nutrients.

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[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Yeah, if you go to Europe like I was in when I did my research for my book Young Forever, I was in Ikaria and in Sardinia, and they have the old food ways that they haven't changed in thousands of years. And you eat a vegetable there or you eat something there, it tastes totally different. Really? Yeah.

[Lewis Howes]

What's it taste like?

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

It just. It's like, you know, like when you go to the garden and you pick a tomato at the end of August and it's like this cherry tomato explodes in your mouth. Full flavor. It's like that. Or you get a wild strawberry. It's like, it's just. And flavor always follows the nutritional density and the phytochemical richness of the food naturally. So if you have to put a lot of stuff on food to make it taste good, which is what ultra processed food is, you won't taste. It just tastes like garbage. But natural whole food tastes amazing if it's grown in the right way. And so it has to do with the soil health. It has to do with the soil microbiome. It has to do with ability to extract nutrients. I mean, it was amazing. There was a guy who served me this pig meal, a nose to tail meal. I even ate the lung, which was kind of weird, but I've never done that before. And he's like. His name was Olinto. He says, mark, we flavor the meat before we kill the animal. I'm like, what do you mean? He said, we know if we give it acorns and we give it this carob thing and we give it this plant and this thing, that it tastes better.

[Lewis Howes]

Wow.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

They're not doing it because it's good for you. They're doing it because it tastes better. They go, oh, we have all these goat and sheep. They're sheep herders. They know if they feed the sheep and the goat these certain wild plants at certain times of the year, like myrtle and other plants, that the cheese and the milk taste better, but they're full of phytochemicals. And now we know. For example, you can get catechins or in green tea, or they're a great compound for longevity, for health, or antioxidants, detoxifying. That's why green tea is so great for you. You can get as high levels in the milk and the meat and the animals as you do from the green tea if the animals are eating that food. So it's not only what you're eating, it's what you're eating. Ate the foods eating. Yeah.

[Lewis Howes]

This is fascinating. This is fast. So supplements, you feel like.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

I think we need them. We need them. I think minimum, a multivitamin, vitamin D, fish oil, magnesium for most people and probably a probiotic because of all of the. I mean, I gave a talk the other day to like a thousand people, and I was like, who's never taken antibiotic in this room? And like, one person raised their hand, you know.

[Lewis Howes]

Right. Antibiotic, you said.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Yeah.

[Lewis Howes]

So prebiotic or probiotic?

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

No, antibiotic. In other words, people's guts are messed up. One dose of antibiotics, you're changing your microbiome.

[Lewis Howes]

So prebiotic or a probiotic?

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Probiotic.

[Lewis Howes]

Probiotics, yeah.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Probiotics, yeah. So I think those are multivitamin fish, Vitamin D for sure. Magnesium probiotic would be kind of rounding it out. But that's a penny a day. I mean, a dollar a day or less. It's a fair bit of money, but it's doable. It's doable.

[Lewis Howes]

There's one other thing I want to ask you about. And I don't want to scare people necessarily, but the belly fat that, I mean I have belly fat, but the belly fat that a lot of people have, how dangerous is that for them there for their health? Long term?

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Terrible.

[Lewis Howes]

As a doctor, you've been in this field for how long? 30, 40, 40 something years?

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

For 41 years? How in medicine, 41 years?

[Lewis Howes]

41 years you've seen, you know, people extremely obese. You see people with just some, you know, belly fat and everywhere in between. Right. What is the link to belly fat and I guess overall just long term health or how much is belly fat linked to chronic illness and disease?

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

It's the main thing. So if you look at, not scare.

[Lewis Howes]

People, but I want to wake people up.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

No, please. I mean people need to know like that fat around your middle is not just holding up your pants. It's a metabolically active organ that's spewing out harmful chemicals all the time, that's dysregulating your appetite, making you hungry, it's slowing your metabolism, it's causing inflammation, it's screwing up your hormones. It's bad. And what drives it is this sort of pharmacologic doses of sugar. As a hunter gatherer, we would maybe get 22 teaspoons of sugar a year if we got lucky to find some honey or something. Right? We eat that every day in America. We eat 152 pounds of sugar and 133 pounds of flour per person per year. Wow, that's 152 pounds of sugar per person per year. That's almost a half a pound. Sorry, three quarters of a pound of sugar and flour. By the way, flour is no different than sugar in your body below the neck. Your body can't tell the difference between a bowl of cornflakes and a bowl of sugar. That's almost three quarters of a pound a day per person. Now I'm not having that much. So some people are eating a lot more. Maybe you are. But the bottom line with the belly fat is that it was a good thing when we were hunter gatherers. If we could eat a lot of sugar, berries, whatever, honey, we'd store it. Now we just keep it on. What happens is that fat is causing something called insulin resistance, which we talked about on the show. I think that's like a form of pre diabetes or I call it diabesity, which is this continuum from optimal metabolic health to poor metabolic health. Now this stat is terrifying to me when you look at this recent data that came out 93.2% of Americans have this. 6.8% of Americans don't have it. That's frightening to me. That means they have high blood sugar, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, or overweight, or have had a heart attack or stroke. 93.2% of Americans. And what that means is that they're all somewhere in that continuum of pre diabetes to type 2 diabetes.

[Lewis Howes]

Wow.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

And why is that connected to everything? It's the biggest driver of cancers. Pancreatic cancer, colon cancer, breast cancer, many cancers, prostate cancer, heart attacks, probably two thirds of all heart attacks caused by this dementia they're calling type 3 diabetes now. And of course, type 2 diabetes. These are the Four Horsemen of the apocalypse. Cancer, heart disease, diabetes, dementia. As you get older, all of them, every single one of them, is driven primarily by insulin resistance and this metabolic dysfunction, which is caused by belly fat, which is caused by starch and sugar and ultra processed food. It's not that complicated.

[Lewis Howes]

That's the root cause. Yeah, yeah, the root cause, the challenge is, you know, in the last year, I've lost close to 25 pounds of fat and I've been putting on muscle too. So I've lost £25 and I remember I still have belly fat, a little bit of belly fat, right. It's like I'm not where I want to be necessarily. I feel like, and I can speak for myself, but I feel like others might have a similar feeling if they look in the mirror and they see belly fat. They might feel a little shame, they might feel a little guilt, a little shame. It's what I felt.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Not your fault, though. That's not your fault.

[Lewis Howes]

But it can feel so hard for people to make that change and see results, because it doesn't happen in a week or a month or a few months to like lose all the belly fat. It takes time. It took time to build it on and it takes time to get it off and then keep it off. It is a complete lifestyle shift. It's a complete identity shift of saying, I'm going to kill off the person I once was for 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 years, and I'm going to become a new identity. And that is a big change.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

It is. I mean, the question I always ask people is why? Like Simon Sinek, who's our friend, goes, why? What's your why? You know, why do you care? I want to feel better. I want to be able to show up and do the work I want to do and not feel like crap and want to watch TV all night. You know, I had A patient recently, it was like, you know, she was working really hard. She was a med student, she was eating crap to go through coffee, sugar gained all this weight. And she said, look, I would come home and all I want to do is lay in bed and watch tv. I wouldn't want to exercise, I want to do anything. I just want to eat more sugar and crap. And she was in this vicious cycle. And within like two or three days of changing her diet, she was like, my mood is better, I have energy, I just rode my bike 30 miles.

[Lewis Howes]

I'm like, wow.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

So I always say we're only a few days away from feeling better. Most people don't know how bad they feel until they start feeling good.

[Lewis Howes]

If you can start to feel good, you can stay more consistent.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

So then you know, oh, if I'm doing this, I'm going to feel like crap. Most people don't connect that ostrogen, what they eat and how they feel. It's just astounding to me. And I have very smart, educated patients in my patient cohort. And I'm like, God, really don't know that this is making you feel like this. And people don't know, they just don't know. And that's part of why I created this program, which is basically an elimination diet where you put in whole foods, you take out the bad stuff, you put in the good stuff, and 10 days. Most people can do anything for 10 days. And we see a 70% reduction in all symptoms from all diseases in 10 days.

[Lewis Howes]

That's amazing.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Migraines, irritable bowel depression, joint pain, congestion, sinus issues, whatever.

[Lewis Howes]

Just biting the whole food for 10 days.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Yeah, but it's a more extreme version. It gets rid of sugar, alcohol, all grains, all beans, sugary drinks, all starchy.

[Lewis Howes]

Foods, all grains, all beans, all beans.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Yeah. For a short period of time to see. Because a lot of people have gut issues and just can have inflammation from gluten and people don't know.

[Lewis Howes]

So what do you eat?

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Get rid of dairy, lots of veggies, protein, nuts and seeds, berries, that's it. Some sweet potatoes.

[Lewis Howes]

10 days, simple.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Yeah, 10 days. And it's the most unbelievable thing. I leave these retreats around the world and people just have the most unbelievable transformation. So I would say to people listening, if you want to do something, just see doing something like that for 10 days, what you'll do. And I'm going to be running, starting in January, we're going to be launching an online 10 day detox course. You can find it on drhiman.com but essentially it's a way for you to just hit the reset button. The way I explain it is like, imagine if you could put your body back to its original factory settings. When your computer's not working, you got to reboot it or you got to reinstall the software. It's like that. You can upgrade your biological software so fast. Like I said, this woman had type 2 diabetes on insulin. In three days, she was off the insulin. In three months, she reversed everything and she lost 43 pounds. So it's possible if you know what to do and you have the right information. And for you, you know the question around shame and how you feel. I'm going to tell people something. This is a message that's been put out there by our culture, by the food industry, by doctors, by nutritionists, by our professional associations, whether it's the American Heart Association, American Diabetes Association, Academy, Nutrition, Dietetics. It's the prevailing message out there that it's your fault you're overweight. You're a lazy glutton, is the subtext. Just eat less and exercise more. Subtext. You're a lazy glutton who doesn't want to do anything. It's not about eating less and exercising more. It's about understanding what you're eating is more important than how much you're eating. And the quality matters more than the quantity, because the quantity will take care of itself. Could you eat 10 ribeye steaks? Well, maybe you could, but you could eat 10 giant chocolate chip cookies in a minute easily. You could eat a quart of ice cream, no problem. But you could eat 10 avocados. No. Your body will self regulate. And so it's not your fault. It's number one. It's not about blaming yourself. It's about understanding that you're in a toxic food system that's set up for you to fail. And then the food industry has these talking points. There's no good and bad foods. It's all about moderation. Just eat less and exercise more. It's okay. You've been in Coca Cola as long as part of your calorie allotment for the day. Nonsense. It's basically the food industry talking points, and they're wrong. They're just wrong. Because when you start to accumulate this belly fat, it's hungry fat. It's literally hungry fat. That fat is going to make you crave and want more food. And this is a startling statistic. When I learned about this, there's something called the Yale Food Addiction scale, which is a validated scientific scale of questions that you can take and find online LinkedIn. I'm sure our show notes that tells you whether you're a food addict. Like you have biological addiction based on the definition of substance abuse, whether it's heroin or cocaine or nicotine. And 14% of the population are food addicts. 14% of the adult population are alcoholics. What's Even worse is 12% of kids are food addicts. I was at an obesity conference, a childhood obesity conference, not too long ago, and there was a hepatic surgeon there. I'm like, what are you doing here? He said, oh, yeah, well, we're seeing the need for liver transplants in kids now because their livers have cirrhosis from drinking so much soda. Right. That's what's going on. So this is not their fault. You know, a three year old with type 2 diabetes, it's not their fault. Right, right. Okay. Like, this is just ridiculous, the fact that 40% of kids are now overweight. I mean, there was that one kid in my class when I was growing up, Erica, and she wasn't, by today's standards, wasn't even that overweight. You know, And I'm like, and now, I mean, you see, we're all skinny growing up.

[Lewis Howes]

We're all skinny growing up. Yeah. There's a couple things I want to leave people with. One, what you said is getting healthy is a team sport.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Yeah.

[Lewis Howes]

I think it's probably the hardest thing to try to do it on your own 100%. And maybe if you're watching or listening, you may not have the support you want, or people may not want to get on board with you, but it's whatever. You can enroll a friend, hire a coach, find a nutritionist, someone to support you. If you can't afford a coach, find a friend and beg someone, whatever it might be. Find the healthiest person you know and say, hey, can I just keep you accountable? And you keep me accountable. And we go to the gym a few days a week and we just try to help each other. Getting healthy is a team sport.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Doesn't even have to be your healthiest friend. It can be anybody you both feel like overweight or struggling.

[Lewis Howes]

Getting healthy is a team sport. That's something I think that everyone here should be thinking about. Do not do it alone. The second thing is a new company that you're part of called functionhealth.com it gives people data. I think when you get tested, you know, everyone's talking about glucose monitors or, ora rings or just something to get data. If you can get data about what's off inside of your blood work and you can say, oh, I have the information. How can I just improve it a little bit here over time? To improve the data inside of Mae.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

That's right.

[Lewis Howes]

And functionhealth.com offers a process where people can get blood work and have the information. Is that right?

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Super easy. It's like five minutes. Sign up online, you get to skip the waitlist of 300,000 people. Greatness 100 is the skip the waitlist code.

[Lewis Howes]

Greatness 100 if you want to.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

And you know it's five minutes to sign up. You'll tell you a lab near your house. It's all on the top of Quest Labs. So it's thousands of draw centers. You go in, it's 15 minutes in and out. You get your labs in a beautiful dashboard that not only tells you your lab results, but you're not a doctor. How do you know what they mean? But the results are interpreted based on knowledge input from the world's leading physicians and from all the scientific literature about what it means and what to do about it. So. Well, okay, my blood sugar is high. Now what? Or my thyroid is not right now what? Well, it gives you a very clear idea of insights and education about what you can do and how to be an empowered consumer. And Oura rings are great. I have one. No, it's fine. But it's only skin deep.

[Lewis Howes]

Blood work is what?

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

It's only skin deep and you can pick stuff up. It's causing you to feel like crap and you don't even know it. Right. Like a patient today. She had low iron. Her hair was falling out, she was tired, her thyroid was off. She had all these different things going on that she didn't know about. They were easy fixes. They're easy fixes. And sometimes it's more serious. You have diabetes or you have high blood sugar, whatever. I mean, we've had people actually just come up to us in a restaurant. We were having dinner, the team from the company, and this guy walks up, Dr. Hyman, I used function. I found out I had all this metabolic issues and I changed my diet based on what you guys said, and I did all these other things, and Now I lost 20 pounds and I feel great. All my numbers are great. So we don't have to wait for the healthcare system to catch up. We don't have to go through insurance and your doctor visits. It's $1.37 a day for twice your Testing, you can add another stuff if you want. In fact, we're doing cancer screening now because as I mentioned earlier in the show, we're seeing a 50% increase to 60% increase in cancers, particularly colon cancer, in people under 50, even in 30s. And so there's now a screening test called gallery, which is a blood test for cancer. It's like a liquid biopsy. So rather than having to do a colonoscopy or a scan, it's pretty good at picking stuff up early. Out of the people we've tested, it's 1 in 188 have had a positive cancer signal, which means then they can go get checked out. And early stage cancer is pretty much curable, but if you wait too late, it's not.

[Lewis Howes]

Right, right, right, right.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

And so we're figuring these early stage cancers that people can get cured of. So it's really empowering. And I feel like, for me, it's a way for getting people to be the CEO of their own health, to understand what's going on in their bodies and to be empowered with the data.

[Lewis Howes]

That's what I think is going to be the future is having accountability and having your own data accessible and affordable. And it's something that functionhealth.com offers. And again, if you guys use greatness100 as a code, the first hundred people that use that will get early access to it. You'll Skip the line. 300,000 people on the waitlist. So functionhealth.com for that. And then, and I think having that accountability, it's like, okay, twice a year I'm getting blood work or quarterly or something where you can at least know the decisions I'm making are either helping me or hurting me.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

That's right.

[Lewis Howes]

And you take back responsibility. You don't need government to change policy. You don't need a politician to make some changes. You don't need the food industry to change. Maybe they will, maybe they won't. But at the end of the day, you got to take back the power. Yeah, I think having data is extremely helpful. And you being aware of like, okay, my decisions now are hurting me moving forward. And I'm going to get the blood work again. And, oh, well, I did continue to eat processed foods.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

My sugar is going up.

[Lewis Howes]

So it's. It's on me at the end of the day to take responsibility with the actions I'm taking once I'm informed.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

That's right.

[Lewis Howes]

And at your website, drhiman.com youm've got a ton of free resources to continue to educate people. Your Instagram is amazing with just quick free resources as well and content. Did you say you have a program in January?

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Yeah, ten day detox.

[Lewis Howes]

Ten Day Detox.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Great.

[Lewis Howes]

So people can sign up for that.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Yeah, sign up. It's a cold coach program. It's basically goes for a month of support and it's really. It gives people really a transformation.

[Lewis Howes]

It's starting in January. So. Dr. Hyman.com rmarkheimen on social media function health.com and use code greatness100 if you're.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Not sick of listening to me, you can check out my podcast, Dr. Hyman. Doctor's Pharmacy.

[Lewis Howes]

Doctor's Pharmacy. You got another one. Health hacks.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Right, Health hacks.

[Lewis Howes]

So you got a couple great podcasts. How else can we support you or get involved?

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

You're doing it. I think for people actually taking ownership of their health is so important because once people start knowing what's going on with themselves, they start to kind of change. And when you create that change, it starts to create change in the system. One of the best stories I ever heard recently was that One of the CEOs of those big food companies called up the CEO of Novo Nordisk and saying we're in trouble because with Ozempic people are not eating as much of their rights. Sales are going down.

[Lewis Howes]

Now they're gonna start fighting the drug companies from. Yeah, yeah. Wow. It's a whole nother conversation. But Dr. Mark Hyman, make sure you guys check him out, follow his work, get one of his 15 New York Times best selling books. All the things we appreciate you, Mark. Thanks for all your support and your service and helping us continue to heal from all this sickness that we have. We appreciate it.

[Dr. Mark Hyman]

Thanks buddy. Well, it's great to be here and love you, man. You've been doing this together for years now. Of course, man.

[Lewis Howes]

Love you too. Appreciate it. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and.

[Sponsor]

It inspired you on your journey towards greatness.

[Lewis Howes]

Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links and if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally as well as ad free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our greatness+channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on.

[Sponsor]

Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review.

[Lewis Howes]

I really love hearing feedback from you.

[Sponsor]

And it helps us figure out how.

[Lewis Howes]

We can support and serve you moving forward.

[Sponsor]

And I want to remind you if.

[Lewis Howes]

No one has told you lately that.

[Sponsor]

You are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out.

[Lewis Howes]

There and do something great.

[Sponsor]

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