How to Improve Your Vitality & Heal From Disease | Dr. Mark Hyman

1. 0:00 – 1:48

   Dr. Mark Hyman

   1. AHAndrew Huberman0:00

      Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Mark Hyman. Dr. Mark Hyman is a medical doctor and an internationally recognized leader in the field of functional medicine. He is a practicing physician, and the head of strategy and innovation at the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine. Today, we discuss what is functional medicine, how the different systems of the body interact to improve or degrade our health, the science of mitochondria and metabolic health, nutrition, inflammation, and how you can leverage these factors to improve your physical and mental health and cognitive performance at any age. We also talk about how to confront any health challenges you might face by taking a systems-level approach. Dr. Hyman's work is unique in that it integrates conventional medicine, because after all, he is an MD, with what he calls good medicine, which is an amalgamation of the best practices from both traditional and alternative approaches. During today's discussion, you'll see that Dr. Hyman's expertise on a diverse range of topics really comes through. For instance, we talk about food, both sourcing, micronutrients, macronutrients, timing. We talk about exercise, and we talk a lot about supplementation and which supplements can provide tremendous benefit for certain people in particular. Dr. Hyman grounds all that knowledge in the latest discoveries in human biology to provide you with actionable tools that you can apply in any case and at any age. By the end of today's episode, I'm certain that everybody will glean at least one and very likely several important protocol updates that they can incorporate to improve their general health. And now for my discussion with Dr. Mark Hyman. Dr.

2. 1:48 – 8:51

   Functional Medicine, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Mercury; Systems Medicine

   1. AHAndrew Huberman1:48

      Mark Hyman, welcome.

   2. MHDr. Mark Hyman1:50

      Thanks, Andrew. (laughs) So good to be here.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman1:51

      Great to see you. We go back a few years.

   4. MHDr. Mark Hyman1:54

      Uh, l- yeah, like almost 10. (laughs)

   5. AHAndrew Huberman1:56

      Yeah. It's been awesome to see your arc, and you were at it long before I met you. I think to kick things off, probably best if you explain to people what functional medicine is and what your orientation towards health and medicine is.

   6. MHDr. Mark Hyman2:11

      Yeah.

   7. AHAndrew Huberman2:11

      Because I think there are a few misconceptions out there, both about functional health and you, but I think also you provide a very unique perspective. You've been at this vista that no one else has had where you know people who are deans of medical schools, you know people who are biohackers, you know the general public-

   8. MHDr. Mark Hyman2:29

      (laughs) Yeah.

   9. AHAndrew Huberman2:30

      ... you've treated and treat patients-

   10. MHDr. Mark Hyman2:31

       Yeah.

   11. AHAndrew Huberman2:31

       ... and you also are an experimentalist with yourself-

   12. MHDr. Mark Hyman2:34

       Yeah.

   13. AHAndrew Huberman2:35

       ... to the extent that, um, you find and can, uh, make suggestions about things that can help people. So yeah, tell us how you parachuted into this whole thing and how you look at this whole thing that we call health and medicine.

   14. MHDr. Mark Hyman2:49

       Yeah. Thank you, Andrew. And it, it, you know, I, I would say that, you know, I didn't choose what I'm doing, it chose me. Uh, I was super healthy, fit, you know, riding my bike 100 miles a day. I was 36 years old and then wham, I got really sick, and I went from being able to memorize 30 patients in a day and dictate their notes and ride my bike 100 miles to not knowing where I was at the end of a sentence and not being able to barely walk up the stairs, and I got hit with chronic fatigue syndrome. And I tried to figure out what it was. I went to, you know, doctors at Harvard, at Columbia, here, everywhere, and they, "Oh, you're depressed, take some Prozac," this and that, and I realized that I, I, you know, I... traditional medicine wasn't having the answers. And even though I sort of came from the perspective of like a yoga teacher before I was a doctor, you know, studied Buddhism-

   15. AHAndrew Huberman3:39

       Were you?

   16. MHDr. Mark Hyman3:39

       Yeah.

   17. AHAndrew Huberman3:39

       A yoga teacher?

   18. MHDr. Mark Hyman3:40

       I was, it was back in the '80s.

   19. AHAndrew Huberman3:41

       You're a tall guy, long mat. (laughs)

   20. MHDr. Mark Hyman3:42

       It was, it was... they didn't have yoga mats when I was doing yoga. You put a towel on the ground, there was no Lululemon.

   21. AHAndrew Huberman3:48

       Okay.

   22. MHDr. Mark Hyman3:48

       It was, it was like on top of like the, it was this bookstore in New York City, there was like one yoga class in the early '80s.

   23. AHAndrew Huberman3:54

       Okay.

   24. MHDr. Mark Hyman3:55

       That was it. Uh, and I studied Buddhism in college, but I also studied systems thinking and systems theory and Gregory Bateson and, you know, the nature of the network effect of life and biology and everything else. And so I kind of went through medical school, but when I came out, I was pretty straight traditional medicine doctor. But then I got sick, and it turned out I had gone to China to live there for a year and work as a doctor to help start expatriate medical clinics 'cause there were no Western medical clinics in China, and people were terrified who were 60,000 expatriates to go to the Chinese hospital. So I spoke Chinese 'cause I studied Asian studies, I went there. But what I n- inadvertently had happened was I got exposed to huge amounts of mercury from the air, 'cause they burn coal, and coal expels lead and mercury and lots of other toxins, and they... there's 10 million people in Beijing in the city at the time and they all heated their homes with raw coal, and I had an air filter that I would clean out every day and breathe the black soot in, so I got like a whopping dose of mercury. And it took a couple of years for it to kind of cause this problem, but from one day to the next, I went from being great to not being great, and my gut broke down, I had diarrhea for years, and my cognitive function completely went south, it was like I had dementia, ADD, and depression all at once. I ended up ha- having autoimmune stuff going on, and just rashes and sores and I couldn't think. I literally almost had to go on disability. And I met a person who introduced me to this guy Jeff Bland, who studied with Linus Pauling and had a very different view of health that really was more around the framework of the body as a network, as a system, as an ecosystem where everything is connected and that it wasn't reductionist, it was inclusive. And when, when we go to medical school, we're, we're taught to ask for the symptoms, look for the signs, do the lab testing, and come up with a singular diagnosis to explain everything. And, you know, if, if there's extraneous symptoms that don't fit the thing we're looking for-... then we dismiss it. You know, if you go to the, the, the, the, the doctors for, uh, for migraines and you say, "Well, I got irritable bowel." "Oh, go see the GI doctor." Or, "I have this rash." They go, "Oh, see the dermatologist." But the truth is, the body's connected and everything's connected. And so functional medicine is really about understanding the body as a network, as a system. And it's a, it's a meta-framework for understanding biology. It's like a ne- it's, I think of it as an operating system.

   25. AHAndrew Huberman6:16

       Mm-hmm.

   26. MHDr. Mark Hyman6:16

       Uh, it's not based on just diagnostic testing or supplements, which a lot of people think it is. It's really based on understanding the network about. So we were doing microbiome testing. We didn't call it that. It was just poop testing back then. (laughs) You know, we were, we were looking at hormones, at mitochondria, at inflammation, at insulin resistance, at all the things that are toxic, environmental toxins and their role in health. And we were trying to understand how the body started to sort of work. And it's through that process, I literally had to reverse engineer my way back to health, by understanding all the systems. So my adrenals shut down. My thyroid wasn't working. My mitochondria were terrible. My muscle enzymes were super high, like CPK were super high 'cause I had a mitochondrial injury, which is the little, you know, the factories in your cells that make energy. I had severe cognitive issues and neurotransmitter issues and sleep issues, I mean, uh, immune issues, rashes. So my whole system broke down, so I literally had to learn every system of the body and how it worked and how it connected to every other system, and then create, uh, a healing plan for myself, and that allowed me to recover. So that really taught me that there's this new way of thinking. And I remember when I, I was working at Canyon Ranch as a, as the medical director, and I would see all these patients coming in. And I, I, I started to think, "Well, you know, I'm gonna try to do this on my patients and see what happens, and just apply these principles." Uh, I call them the laws of biology, right? We don't have laws, laws of biology that we can easily describe, or laws of medicine. We have laws of physics, but there, it doesn't mean there aren't laws of biology. And what functional medicine, I believe, is, is the, is the first clinical application of this understanding of the laws of biology. And there's, like scientists like Leroy Hood who created the Institute for Systems Biology and folks like at Harvard, but Likehosian Barabasi was studying this and wrote a book called Network Medicine about the body as a network. But for me, I had to start to, you know, apply this in clinic, and so I would... Pe- people would come in with autoimmune diseases or with intractable depression or with terrible gut issues or dementia or autism or you name it, diabetes, and I would apply these principles, and they'd get better. And I literally always said, "Eat this way. Don't eat that." You know, simple stuff. Like it was not, (laughs) you know, that complicated.

   27. AHAndrew Huberman8:23

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   28. MHDr. Mark Hyman8:24

       And six weeks later, I'd say at their follow-up visit, I'd say, "Oh, so how you doing?" "Oh, all my symptoms are better." I'm like, "What? Really?" (laughs) "Your migraines are gone?" Like 'cause I couldn't believe it. Like it was such a shock to me as a ph- traditionally trained physician that people were actually getting better. And so then I knew. I knew this was something real, even though it was sort of 30 years ago. It was just sort of not even on the radar. It still is pretty, pretty much not on the radar, although like New York Times-

   29. AHAndrew Huberman8:46

       Mm-hmm.

   30. MHDr. Mark Hyman8:46

       ... is doing articles about it now.
3. 8:51 – 12:19

   Metabolic Psychiatry; Medicine, Creating Health vs Treating Disease

   1. AHAndrew Huberman8:51

      which sort of, um, dovetails with the question I was going to ask, which is, um, how did the medical establishment view this stuff? You know, these days, it's so complicated without, you know, um, taking off on a tangent here, you know, the word expert is gated politically.

   2. MHDr. Mark Hyman9:08

      Yeah.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman9:08

      Like one side feels like they, you can only be called expert if you're with their camp.

   4. MHDr. Mark Hyman9:12

      Yeah.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman9:12

      The other side is now associated with kind of more of a, um, like a, like a wellness aspect.

   6. MHDr. Mark Hyman9:19

      Yeah.

   7. AHAndrew Huberman9:19

      And, you know, and I don't even have to say which side I'm referring to here, and it's, it's become a real clash of-

   8. MHDr. Mark Hyman9:24

      Yeah.

   9. AHAndrew Huberman9:24

      ... you know, we only believe in randomized control trials or, um, you know, there's clearly evidence that, you know, nutrition matters. And it's like, of course both things are important.

   10. MHDr. Mark Hyman9:34

       Right, right.

   11. AHAndrew Huberman9:34

       And so what you're describing here is that you-

   12. MHDr. Mark Hyman9:36

       This intersection.

   13. AHAndrew Huberman9:37

       This intersection, and there really isn't a political home for the intersection-

   14. MHDr. Mark Hyman9:40

       No.

   15. AHAndrew Huberman9:41

       ... unfortunately. Maybe in these, um, new, uh, in this new obviously-

   16. MHDr. Mark Hyman9:45

       I didn't know cells had a political ideology. (laughs)

   17. AHAndrew Huberman9:49

       (laughs) That's right. That's right. Um, no. That's, that's right.

   18. MHDr. Mark Hyman9:51

       Like the red cell and the blue cell.

   19. AHAndrew Huberman9:53

       That's right. Exactly.

   20. MHDr. Mark Hyman9:53

       (laughs)

   21. AHAndrew Huberman9:53

       And, and that's what I love about you is that you, you are, you have friends in both camps, and, and you're willing to trudge forward. What, what did the medical establishment think?

   22. MHDr. Mark Hyman10:01

       Yeah.

   23. AHAndrew Huberman10:01

       And, um, and how many of you are there now?

   24. MHDr. Mark Hyman10:07

       Yeah.

   25. AHAndrew Huberman10:07

       You know?

   26. MHDr. Mark Hyman10:07

       It's a great question. I mean, I remember talking about leaky gut-

   27. AHAndrew Huberman10:10

       Mm-hmm.

   28. MHDr. Mark Hyman10:11

       ... almost 30 years ago and talking to allergists and immunologists and g-

   29. AHAndrew Huberman10:14

       People thought you were crazy.

   30. MHDr. Mark Hyman10:15

       And people thought I was a Looney Tune.
4. 12:19 – 15:06

   Sponsors: Joovv & Eight Sleep

   1. MHDr. Mark Hyman12:19

   2. AHAndrew Huberman12:19

      I'd like to take a quick break and thank our sponsor, Joovv. Joovv makes medical grade red light therapy devices. Now, if there's one thing that I have consistently emphasized on this podcast, it is the incredible impact that light can have on our biology. Now, in addition to sunlight, red light and near infrared light sources have been shown to have positive effects on improving numerous aspects of cellular and organ health, including faster muscle recovery, improved skin health and wound healing, improvements in acne, reduced pain and inflammation, even mitochondrial function, and improving vision itself. What sets Joovv lights apart and why they're my preferred red light therapy device is that they use clinically proven wavelengths, meaning specific wavelengths of red light and near infrared light in combination to trigger the optimal cellular adaptations. Personally, I use the Joovv whole body panel about three to four times a week, and I use the Joovv handheld light both at home and when I travel. If you'd like to try Joovv, you can go to Joovv, spelled J-O-O-V-V, .com/huberman. Joovv is offering an exclusive discount to all Huberman Lab listeners with up to $400 off Joovv products. Again, that's Joovv, spelled J-O-O-V-V, .com/huberman to get up to $400 off. Today's episode is also brought to us by Eight Sleep. Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity. Now, I've spoken before on this podcast about the critical need for us to get adequate amounts of quality sleep each and every night. Now, one of the best ways to ensure a great night's sleep is to ensure that the temperature of your sleeping environment is correct. And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop about one to three degrees. And in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase by about one to three degrees. Eight Sleep automatically regulates the temperature of your bed throughout the night according to your unique needs. Now, I find that extremely useful because I like to make the bed really cool at the beginning of the night, even colder in the middle of the night, and warm as I wake up. That's what gives me the most slow wave sleep and rapid eye movement sleep. And I know that because Eight Sleep has a great sleep tracker that tells me how well I've slept and the types of sleep that I'm getting throughout the night. I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for four years now, and it has completely transformed and improved the quality of my sleep. Their latest model, the Pod 4 Ultra, also has snoring detection that will automatically lift your head a few degrees in order to improve your airflow and stop you from snoring. If you decide to try Eight Sleep, you have 30 days to try it at home, and you can return it if you don't like it, no questions asked. But I'm sure that you'll love it. Go to eightsleep.com/huberman to save up to $350 off your Pod 4 Ultra. Eight Sleep ships to many countries worldwide, including Mexico and the UAE. Again, that's eightsleep.com/huberman to save up to $350 off your Pod 4 Ultra.

5. 15:06 – 19:48

   Wholistic View of Body, Root Causes

   1. MHDr. Mark Hyman15:06

      For example, can I tell you a quick story?

   2. AHAndrew Huberman15:07

      Please.

   3. MHDr. Mark Hyman15:08

      I, I wanna tell a story about a patient I had at Cleveland Clinic, which actually, by the way, was amazing that Toby Cosgrove, who's one of the most renowned figures in medicine and is CEO of, was the CEO of Cl- Cleveland Clinic for years, invited me to come start a center for functional medicine there. And we, we've done, you know, been 10 years now. We've done a ton of research. This one patient came to see me, and she had a whole list of problems. And that's why I jokingly call myself a holistic doctor 'cause I take care, care of people with a whole list of problems. I wanna know everything. And functional medicine's inclusive rather than exclusive. It's like rather than discarding things that don't fit your h- diagnosis, we wanna know everything about you, how you were born, whether you were breastfed, whether you took antibiotics, any traumas, any toxins you're exposed to, whether you eat fish. Like, we wanna know everything. (laughs) And so this woman came to see me. She has psoriatic arthritis, which is a terrible disease where your joints break down. You got, you know, those p- hard, breakout psoriasis, the rashes and itchy plaques on your skin. But she had a whole bunch of other stuff too. She had migraines. She had pre-diabetes. She had depression. She was a 50-year-old health coach who li-, I mean life coach who, and business coach who was very successful but was struggling. She had terrible reflux, irritable bowel syndrome. So she had all these clusters of diseases. And I said, "Gee, what do these things have in common? What's the root?" Inflammation. And I know you've talked a lot about this on your podcast, but inflammation is a, sort of the root of many chronic illnesses, whether it's obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, dementia, autism, depression. I mean, the list goes on and on. Autoimmune, allergy, obviously. And I said, "Why don't, you, you, why don't we look at your gut? Because you're having a ton of gut symptoms." You have terrible bloating, distension, and what I call food baby. (laughs) You know?

   4. AHAndrew Huberman16:38

      Mm-hmm.

   5. MHDr. Mark Hyman16:38

      You know when you eat something, it's like, get a food baby.

   6. AHAndrew Huberman16:40

      Mm-hmm.

   7. MHDr. Mark Hyman16:41

      And she also, um, had been on a history of lots of antibiotics and steroids for her rheumatoid, her psoriatic arthritis. And so I said, "Look, why don't we just treat your gut and then see what happens?" So we put her on an elimination diet, and we eliminated all the inflammatory foods and things that were causing fermentation that could kind of cause the bac- bad bacteria in her gut to ferment the foods and cause the bloating and leaky gut. We, uh, basically took out dairy, gluten, grains, sugar, processed foods, put her on a whole foods, anti-inflammatory, microbiome-healing diet. We gave her a, I think, I think we were on vitamin D, fish oil, some probiotics, really simple stuff. And I says, "Come back in six weeks, and we'll do some diagnostics, and in the meantime, do, do this program, then come back." She came back. She says, "Well, all my symptoms are gone, and I stopped all my medication." I'm like, "Oh, I didn't ask you to stop your medication."

   8. AHAndrew Huberman17:28

      Right, right. (laughs)

   9. MHDr. Mark Hyman17:29

      But she was on Stelara, which costs $50,000 a year.

   10. AHAndrew Huberman17:32

       Wow.

   11. MHDr. Mark Hyman17:32

       It's a immune biologic. She was on a host of other do- drugs from her psychiatrist, from her migraine doctor for her irritable bowel, for her reflux. I mean, it was like a whole pile of pills. She was off everything, and she had no symptoms, and she was all better, and she lost 20 pounds.And it wasn't an, it was an anomaly or a miracle, it was just following the principles of how the body works. You know, and, and, uh, in that textbook Network Medicine, they talk about how we need to understand mechanisms and causes, not just symptoms and diagnoses. And we need to understand that, that there's multi-causality for different problems. So, it may be not just one thing-

   12. AHAndrew Huberman18:05

       Mm-hmm.

   13. MHDr. Mark Hyman18:05

       ... that causes the disease. Right? You might have toxins, it might be your diet, you might have your microbiome issues, you might, you know, have some other trauma or stress. And all those things, like, kind of are the soup that then breaks the system down so it gets sick. And so, my job is basically to see where the things that are broken down and how do I help repair them, how to remove the root causes, whether it's mercury, or whether it's mold, or whether it's, you know, your microbiome having dysbiosis, or whether it's a trauma that you can deal with through MDMA-assisted psychotherapy-

   14. AHAndrew Huberman18:36

       (laughs)

   15. MHDr. Mark Hyman18:36

       ... which hopefully will be passed soon. You know, there's all sorts of things to do to help the body, but we have to have the, the framework for having the right assessment of someone, otherwise they don't get better. And, and, you know, I've had the privilege as, uh, working at Canyon Ranch and my own private practice, of doing tens of thousands of dollars worth of testing potentially on tens of thousands of patients over decades, and seeing literally millions and millions of data points of their story and their labs and their treatment and their outcomes. And so, I have this really deep understanding of all the ways in which these systems interact and connect. And so, I think people, you know, can map out what's happening in their biology in ways that now tell them what's really going on. And we're seeing that happening, that the testing community is growing and, uh, that people wanna know what's going on in their bodies, and they're using wearables and they're using CGMs and all ki- uh, of self-diagnostic tools, which I think are important 'cause people aren't getting the answer from the traditional medical system.

   16. AHAndrew Huberman19:28

       Well, and a lot of physicians, unlike you, frankly, don't look very healthy, which people can say, "Okay, well, it shouldn't be about, about looks." But, you know, if I was at the dentist-

   17. MHDr. Mark Hyman19:39

       (laughs)

   18. AHAndrew Huberman19:39

       ... and I look up and my dentist is snaggle toothed and decaying teeth, it doesn't bring me a lot of confidence.

   19. MHDr. Mark Hyman19:45

       I look pretty good for 100, huh?

   20. AHAndrew Huberman19:46

       Yeah. (laughs)

   21. MHDr. Mark Hyman19:47

       (laughs)

   22. AHAndrew Huberman19:47

       You look great and

6. 19:48 – 26:30

   Medicine & Research; “Exposome”, Impediments & Ingredients for Health, Whole Foods

   1. AHAndrew Huberman19:48

      you're s- and you're super vital. I think, you know, this, this idea of, of systems, biology, and health, um, is really important for people to understand because, you know, I, I always say, um... Well, there are two sayings. I didn't say the first. The first one, uh, was taught to me when I was a graduate student, which is, you know, a drug is a substance that when injected into an animal or human produces a scientific paper, meaning-

   2. MHDr. Mark Hyman20:09

      (laughs)

   3. AHAndrew Huberman20:10

      Meaning, anytime you manipulate a variable... Uh, there are two things-

   4. MHDr. Mark Hyman20:13

      Yeah.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman20:13

      ... that if you... Uh, oftentimes-

   6. MHDr. Mark Hyman20:15

      Yeah.

   7. AHAndrew Huberman20:15

      ... i- if you inject a drug at a high enough dose, you'll see an effect.

   8. MHDr. Mark Hyman20:18

      Yeah.

   9. AHAndrew Huberman20:18

      If you deprive sleep, you'll see an effect. And that points to several things, but I think both of them, uh, have a vector in the direction of this, uh, systems biology.

   10. MHDr. Mark Hyman20:30

       Mm-hmm.

   11. AHAndrew Huberman20:30

       You know, if... Everything modulates everything else, so if your gut is off, it's gonna modulate your sleep, which is gonna modulate your cognition. And if your, um, if you were to boost your, uh, you know, some vitamin level, um, ridiculously high or have it ridiculously low-

   12. MHDr. Mark Hyman20:45

       Mm.

   13. AHAndrew Huberman20:45

       ... it's involved in thousands of processes in the body.

   14. MHDr. Mark Hyman20:48

       Yeah.

   15. AHAndrew Huberman20:48

       And so if you look at any one of those, you might see a subtle effect. I think the challenge of reductionist science and reductionist medicine is, because the goal in good science is to isolate variables-

   16. MHDr. Mark Hyman20:59

       Yeah.

   17. AHAndrew Huberman20:59

       ... you can't, by definition, actually look at a whole system. Although now with AI, maybe you could explore how adjusting one variable impacts pretty much every major system of the brain and body.

   18. MHDr. Mark Hyman21:11

       Yeah.

   19. AHAndrew Huberman21:11

       But it's just very hard to do. And as somebody who's done laboratory science for, gosh-

   20. MHDr. Mark Hyman21:15

       Yeah.

   21. AHAndrew Huberman21:15

       ... well over 25 years and instructed other people how to do it, and graduate students and postdocs, I mean, it's, it's, it's an art, but it's a, it's limited in terms of what it can reveal.

   22. MHDr. Mark Hyman21:26

       Yeah.

   23. AHAndrew Huberman21:26

       And, and we work as a system. So, I think this is what we're getting at here.

   24. MHDr. Mark Hyman21:30

       So, you're saying the scientific process itself precludes us from really understanding things because we can't study things in the way that need to be studied?

   25. AHAndrew Huberman21:36

       Well, yeah. Like, let's say you come into my lab and I wanna study, um, how, uh, you know, increasing L-carnitine, for instance-

   26. MHDr. Mark Hyman21:42

       Mm-hmm.

   27. AHAndrew Huberman21:43

       ... um, impacts your mood, immune system function, and sleep. I can do that study, but even that is just an infinitely complex study. I gotta do dose response. I'll probably do oral versus injectable. And then I can't control, unless it's in laboratory animals-

   28. MHDr. Mark Hyman21:57

       Yeah.

   29. AHAndrew Huberman21:57

       ... on a, on a same genetic background, I can't control whether or not one person's, you know, having a Snickers and the other person is having a Snickers and telling me, and then one person's lying.

   30. MHDr. Mark Hyman22:07

       (laughs)
7. 26:30 – 36:27

   Seed Oils, Starch & Sugar, Ultra-Processed Foods; Obesity Rise

   1. AHAndrew Huberman26:30

      you, uh, we'll just quickly double-click into there. What's your view on seed oils?

   2. MHDr. Mark Hyman26:36

      Oy. (laughs) So, so, so, so-

   3. AHAndrew Huberman26:37

      No, just, you know, I mean, I'll say mine. I like olive oil and butter-

   4. MHDr. Mark Hyman26:40

      Yeah.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman26:40

      ... uh, coconut oil, and things like avocados and some Brazil nuts and walnuts and stuff. So, I, since I don't count calories, I kind of have an intuitive sense-

   6. MHDr. Mark Hyman26:49

      Yeah.

   7. AHAndrew Huberman26:49

      ... um, of what I'm taking in, how much fat, how much protein, how much-

   8. MHDr. Mark Hyman26:52

      Yeah.

   9. AHAndrew Huberman26:52

      ... starch, how much, you know, fibers, carbs, et cetera. So for me, like, I wouldn't pick canola oil 'cause I could pick olive oil.

   10. MHDr. Mark Hyman27:00

       Right. Right.

   11. AHAndrew Huberman27:00

       Um, and I make sure it's real olive oil. And, uh, but, it, I don't think seed oils necessarily will kill me, but guess why they, I know they won't kill me. 'Cause I don't eat them.

   12. MHDr. Mark Hyman27:10

       We should be eating whole food fats as much as possible, right?

   13. AHAndrew Huberman27:13

       Mm-hmm.

   14. MHDr. Mark Hyman27:14

       Avocados, coconut, nuts and seeds, you know, omega-3 fats from fish. Uh, olive oil, which is minim- the most minimally processed oil you can get, extra-virgin olive oil. And, and, a- a- and when we're eating nuts and seeds, we're getting a lot of omega-6s. So, the big theory behind seed oils is that it's omega-6 rich, it's imbalanced with omega-3s, they cause inflammation. The way they're produced and grown is problematic. They're usually GMO crops, like canola oil. They spray lots of chemicals on them. Those chemicals get in the oil. They are manufactured in an industrial way that oxidizes them, that uses hexane to get rid of sort of the, some of the compounds in it. Deodorizes them, bleaches them, and then they're easily oxidized. So, would I want to eat an industrial food product? Probably not. Do we know for sure that it's a problem? I think the data is mixed. I mean, there's some studies that show epidemiologically that, you know, people who eat more of these plant-based oils or seed oils have reduced risk of diseases. But we don't know what they're doing, and there's food frequency questionnaires-

   15. AHAndrew Huberman28:15

       Yeah.

   16. MHDr. Mark Hyman28:15

       ... and there's, these studies are proving correlation, not causation.

   17. AHAndrew Huberman28:18

       And what it's replacing. Sorry to interrupt here, but you know, I'll see the, uh, data that seed oils are better for people than butter. Okay. I like grass-fed butter, but I don't eat it in excess.

   18. MHDr. Mark Hyman28:29

       Yeah.

   19. AHAndrew Huberman28:30

       I once joked about that, and then I, like, um ...

   20. MHDr. Mark Hyman28:32

       (laughs)

   21. AHAndrew Huberman28:32

       I made some jokes early on in having a podcast, not realizing the implications.

   22. MHDr. Mark Hyman28:35

       (laughs) Yeah, yeah, yeah.

   23. AHAndrew Huberman28:36

       But anyway, I am very careful now. Uh, I have some butter in moderation.

   24. MHDr. Mark Hyman28:40

       Yeah.

   25. AHAndrew Huberman28:41

       But, so I could imagine that if you're eating a lot of lard and butter and bacon fat, and you replace it with seed oils, you'll get healthier, but-

   26. MHDr. Mark Hyman28:47

       Maybe.

   27. AHAndrew Huberman28:47

       Maybe.

   28. MHDr. Mark Hyman28:48

       Maybe.

   29. AHAndrew Huberman28:48

       But you could imagine ... I, I guess it depends on what else you're ingesting.

   30. MHDr. Mark Hyman28:50

       Yeah.
8. 36:27 – 40:05

   Sponsors: Function & ROKA

   1. MHDr. Mark Hyman36:27

   2. AHAndrew Huberman36:27

      I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Function. I recently became a Function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing. While I've long been a fan of blood testing, I really wanted to find a more in-depth program for analyzing my blood, urine, and saliva to get a fuller picture of my heart health, my hormone status, my immune regulation status, my metabolic function, my vitamin and mineral status, and other critical areas of my overall health and vitality. Function not only provides testing of over 100 biomarkers key to physical and mental health, but it also analyzes these results and provides insights from top doctors. For example, in one of my first tests with Function, I learned that I had an elevated level of mercury in my blood. Function not only helped me detect that, but also offered insights on how to best reduce my mercury levels, which included limiting my tuna consumption, and frankly, I had been eating a lot of tuna at that time, while also making an effort to eat more leafy greens and supplementing with NAC and acetylcysteine, both of which can support glutathione production and detoxification. And by the way, it worked. My mercury levels are now well within healthy range. Comprehensive lab testing like that is super important for health, because basically, a lot of things are going on in our blood and elsewhere in our body that we can't detect without a quality blood and urine test. And while I've strived to get those tests for many years, it's always been overly complicated and frankly, quite expensive. Function dramatically simplifies all of it and makes it very affordable. I've been so impressed by Function that I decided to join their scientific advisory board, and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring this podcast. If you'd like to try Function, you can go to functionhealth.com/huberman. For this week only, April 14th to April 20th, 2025, Function is offering a $100 credit to the first 1,000 people to sign up for a Function membership. To get this $100 credit, use the code Huberman100 at checkout. Visit functionhealth.com/huberman to learn more and get started. Today's episode is also brought to us by ROKA. I'm excited to share that ROKA and I recently teamed up to create a new pair of red lens glasses. These red lens glasses are meant to be worn in the evening after the sun goes down. They filter out short wavelength light that comes from screens and from LED lights, which are the most common indoor lighting nowadays. I want to emphasize, ROKA red lens glasses are not traditional blue blockers. They do filter out blue light, but they filter out a lot more than just blue light. In fact, they filter out the full range of short wavelength light that suppresses the hormone melatonin. By the way, you want melatonin high in the evening and at night. Makes it easy to fall and stay asleep. And those short wavelengths trigger increases in cortisol. Increases in cortisol are great in the early part of the day, but you do not want increases in cortisol in the evening and at night. These ROKA red lens glasses ensure normal, healthy increases in melatonin and that your cortisol levels stay low, which is again, what you want in the evening and at night. In doing so, these ROKA red lens glasses really help you calm down and improve your transition to sleep. ROKA red lens glasses also look great. They have a ton of different frames to select from, and you can wear them out to dinner or concerts and you can still see things. I don't recommend you wear them while driving, just for safety purposes. But if you're out to dinner, you're at a concert, you're at a friend's house, or you're just at home, pop those ROKA red lens glasses on and you'll really notice the difference in terms of your levels of calm and all the sleep stuff I mentioned earlier. So it really is possible to support your biology, be scientific about it, and remain social at the same time, if you like. If you'd like to try ROKA, go to roka.com, that's R-O-K-A .com, and enter the code Huberman to save 20% off your first order. Again, that's roka.com and enter the code Huberman at checkout.

9. 40:05 – 46:25

   Tool: Ingredients for Health, Personalization; Multimodal Approach

   1. AHAndrew Huberman40:05

      So, um, so the '90s low fat thing.

   2. MHDr. Mark Hyman40:08

      Yeah. Was a disaster. And I wrote a book-

   3. AHAndrew Huberman40:10

      Was a disaster.

   4. MHDr. Mark Hyman40:10

      ... called Eat Fat, Get Thin, where I cataloged the whole history of how we got there and what the problems were and what the science is telling us about what we should be eating, about the... reconsidering saturated fat being bad. It's bad if you're eating it in the context of starch and sugar. For most people it's not. And if you're obese or metabolically unhealthy, it actually can be better for you. (laughs) There's a lower risk of diabetes in epidemiological studies with butter and milk fat. So I don't... I think e- I think we have to kind of like... I know nutrition's a very complicated subject, but I mean-

   5. AHAndrew Huberman40:40

      Or not, right?

   6. MHDr. Mark Hyman40:41

      (laughs)

   7. AHAndrew Huberman40:41

      I don't know. I'm beginning to think that nutrition-

   8. MHDr. Mark Hyman40:42

      Well, it's contro-

   9. AHAndrew Huberman40:42

      ... is a very straightforward subject.

   10. MHDr. Mark Hyman40:44

       It should be. It should be.

   11. AHAndrew Huberman40:45

       But the... Yeah, and I- I confess, I've had some pretty diametrically opposed views, uh, from guests on this podcast. We had Robert Lustig on the podcast.

   12. MHDr. Mark Hyman40:52

       Mm-hmm.

   13. AHAndrew Huberman40:52

       We had Layne Norton on the podcast.

   14. MHDr. Mark Hyman40:53

       Oh, yeah.

   15. AHAndrew Huberman40:53

       You get those two on separate podcasts, and they are, like, at loggerheads with one another.

   16. MHDr. Mark Hyman40:58

       Yeah.

   17. AHAndrew Huberman40:58

       Right? Now, Layne's correct in that total caloric load matters.

   18. MHDr. Mark Hyman41:03

       Yeah.

   19. AHAndrew Huberman41:03

       It's not everything, but it matters.

   20. MHDr. Mark Hyman41:04

       Yeah.

   21. AHAndrew Huberman41:05

       I would say many people have a hard time limiting their intake of starchy carbohydrates, especially if you put a little bit of fat on there.

   22. MHDr. Mark Hyman41:14

       Yeah.

   23. AHAndrew Huberman41:14

       It just becomes a different food entirely.

   24. MHDr. Mark Hyman41:16

       Yeah.

   25. AHAndrew Huberman41:17

       Eating a bowl of white rice is pretty tasty. Eating a bowl of white rice with a pat of butter-

   26. MHDr. Mark Hyman41:21

       (laughs)

   27. AHAndrew Huberman41:21

       ... and a little bit of salt on there-

   28. MHDr. Mark Hyman41:22

       Right. Totally.

   29. AHAndrew Huberman41:22

       ... is a completely different experience. A piece of sourdough bread is one thing. A piece of sourdough bread soaked in a little bit of olive oil with some salt?

   30. MHDr. Mark Hyman41:30

       Yeah.
10. 46:25 – 56:54

    Essential Supplements, Omega-3s, Vitamin D3, Multivitamin, Iodine, Methylated B12

    1. MHDr. Mark Hyman46:25

       so, um, terrible about traditional medicine, it has many wonderful features, is that at least it, the way it's communicated in this country is that it assumes that people are lazy and uninterested in their own health, and I fundamentally disagree, hence this podcast, your podcast, et cetera. Thank you, I agree too. (laughs) I believe people want and are willing to take care of themselves if they know how. Mm-hmm. Okay, so le- let's just assume that the pillars of health, right, like, like, sleep, sunlight, um, exercise, nutrition, social connection, stress modulation, microbiome- Yes. ... et cetera, okay. Assuming that people are making some effort to do those things correctly, or a lot of effort, what are some of the things that you believe cannot be accessed through diet and behaviors- Yeah. ... that warrant s- supplementation? And there, and I've been interested in supplements and taking supplements for 35 years. So to me when people say, "Oh, supplements aren't regulated," I say, "Actually they are regulated to some extent," right? Like there's, they're m- monitored. Um, you wanna find ones that are third-party tested. Um, indeed there are a lot of junk supplements out there. There are probably a lot of supplements that don't do much. There are probably a lot of supplements that are only, uh, use cases for certain people who have a major deficiency. But what are some of the things that are just very difficult to get from food and from sun? Um, because we hear, you know, the soil's depleted in magnesium. It's hard to get enough D3. Like, what, if you, if you were to list out- A hierarchy? ... let's just say about ten things that you f- you feel like, listen, you probably could get it from food, but it's just hard to get these micronutrients. Yeah. What are those things? And w- and by the way, folks, this is not a preloaded conversation. We've never had this conversation. No, no. (laughs) I know what I take, but I'm just curious. What, what would you... n- because people will try hard to get things from food. Yeah.

    2. AHAndrew Huberman48:09

       But w- what are the things that they can't get from food, or can't get from food easily, that you believe everyone should take?

    3. MHDr. Mark Hyman48:14

       Yeah. H- great question. I, I thought you were going somewhere else. I thought you were going where, what are the things that if you did everything perfectly and you're still sick, what do you do?

    4. AHAndrew Huberman48:20

       Oh. Well, we'll get to that.

    5. MHDr. Mark Hyman48:22

       (laughs)

    6. AHAndrew Huberman48:22

       We'll get to that because-

    7. MHDr. Mark Hyman48:22

       'Cause there, there's a list of the things that you-

    8. AHAndrew Huberman48:24

       W- we will get to that.

    9. MHDr. Mark Hyman48:24

       80% of it, you can take care of it.

    10. AHAndrew Huberman48:25

        Yeah.

    11. MHDr. Mark Hyman48:25

        But there's some things you need help.

    12. AHAndrew Huberman48:27

        Yeah. Yeah.

    13. MHDr. Mark Hyman48:27

        And that, we can talk about that.

    14. AHAndrew Huberman48:28

        Yeah.

    15. MHDr. Mark Hyman48:29

        I, I think because of how dramatically our diets changed after the industrial revolution and because of urbanization and our disconnection from nature, we have a l- lower nutrient intake than we did as hunter gatherers. You know, I, I just came back from Africa. I went to the Hadza tribe, which is one of the last hunter gatherer tribes. And I got to spend a few days with them. And the, the nutrient density of the diet was so much higher, omega-3s, vitamin D. You're outside running around in loincloth, or if you're not, you're living in some coastal area where eating extremely fatty fish, which is one of the great sources of vitamin D in the food. Um, they were eating phytochemicals at an incredible rate through eating 800 different species of plants. Now we have three main ones, and 12 of the, or, uh, altogether comprise probably 95% of our diet instead of 800 plants with all kinds of phytochemicals and vitamins and minerals. The soils we're growing food in have depleted the organic matter because of industrial farming and soil erosion. And the organics matter, the living soil is what actually helps to allow the plants take up the nutrients from the soil so that there's a symbiotic relationship between organisms in the soil and the plant. And it uses them to help get nutrients free so they get into the plants, or there's less magnesium, there's less zinc, there's less all these things in our diet. And when you look at the surveys of the American population, there's an ongoing government survey called the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. And essentially goes around the country with vans, tests people's blood all the time. And so it's like decades old survey. And it's incredible 'cause you get all this data. They find that like 90 plus percent are low on omega-3s. Uh, probably 80% are insufficient or low in vitamin D. 50 something percent are, are magnesium deficient. About the same iron, you know, zinc a little bit less, selenium a little bit less. And it depends on where you live and what you do, and also depends on your diet, you know, so... and what your stage of life is and what your age is and how your absorption is. For example, when you're older, you know, your, you get decreased ability to absorb nutrients and decreased ability to absorb, for example, vitamin B12. So at different ages you might need different things.

    16. AHAndrew Huberman50:33

        Mm-hmm.

    17. MHDr. Mark Hyman50:33

        Right? Uh, and so one of the basics that I think everybody should take, I think everybody should take omega-3 fats, at least a gram or two of EPA/DHA. Most people need between 2 to 4,000 international units of vitamin D3. I think a good multivitamin can cover the rest for most people. And when I say good multivitamin, I mean one with the right bioavailable forms of nutrients.

    18. AHAndrew Huberman50:55

        (laughs)

    19. MHDr. Mark Hyman50:56

        I was in the hospital recently for back surgery, and this resident came by and he was, uh, you know, attending and saying, "Well..." I said, "I think I need some, you know, magnesium because I, I, I'm taking all these painkillers for my surgery and I don't wanna be constipated." He says, "Oh, you can get this one." I'm like, I said, "That's magnesium oxide. That's not well absorbed and it doesn't... N- not the greatest for-"

    20. AHAndrew Huberman51:16

        You mean magnesium citrate?

    21. MHDr. Mark Hyman51:17

        Yeah. So I said... and I was... he was like, "Oh, that's really interesting. I didn't know that." He wrote it down. But like... (laughs) so I think-

    22. AHAndrew Huberman51:22

        Yeah. I have a lot of friends who are physicians.

    23. MHDr. Mark Hyman51:24

        (laughs)

    24. AHAndrew Huberman51:24

        And I'll tell you, they come to me for health advice.

    25. MHDr. Mark Hyman51:26

        (laughs)

    26. AHAndrew Huberman51:26

        So that tells you something.

    27. MHDr. Mark Hyman51:28

        That's right.

    28. AHAndrew Huberman51:28

        I'm not an MD. Yeah, folks, magnesium, magnesium citrate, l- great laxative.

    29. MHDr. Mark Hyman51:33

        Yeah. Glycinate-

    30. AHAndrew Huberman51:34

        Malate for muscles, glycinate and anthranionate for-
11. 56:54 – 1:02:54

    Supplements & Traditional Medicine; Limited Budget & Nutrition

    1. AHAndrew Huberman56:54

       make sure that we talk about the impediments, things like mold, air, um, water, cleanliness, things of that sort. But I wanna spend just a little bit longer on this, um, supplement thing.

    2. MHDr. Mark Hyman57:07

       Hm.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman57:08

       Um, maybe 'cause it's so near and dear to my heart-

    4. MHDr. Mark Hyman57:10

       (laughs)

    5. AHAndrew Huberman57:10

       ... and because it's, has sparked a lot of confusion for me, not supplements per se, but the reaction to them. W-

    6. MHDr. Mark Hyman57:17

       By traditional medicine or by-

    7. AHAndrew Huberman57:18

       Yeah. Uh, w- why is it that supplementation has received, um, so much pushback from the medical community, and yet I would argue that since 2020, you're going to find vitamin D3 and omegas, uh, essential fatty acids and magnesium in many, many more people's kitchens, meaning they're taking it than prior to that?

    8. MHDr. Mark Hyman57:48

       Yeah.

    9. AHAndrew Huberman57:48

       And, and this reminds me of yoga, resistance training. You know, yoga was for yogis. Resistance training was for bodybuilders and people in the military. Now everybody knows, uh, men and women-

    10. MHDr. Mark Hyman57:59

        Yeah.

    11. AHAndrew Huberman57:59

        ... maybe even young people should do it. Uh, there's some argument that they should. Um, I- I have my thoughts about young people lifting really heavy, but, um, in any case, the, uh, breath work, you know, there's a lot of science now, meditation. There's tons of science.

    12. MHDr. Mark Hyman58:12

        Yeah. Yeah.

    13. AHAndrew Huberman58:13

        So, these things that at one point were considered niche, biohacking, woo, and unsafe-

    14. MHDr. Mark Hyman58:18

        Yeah.

    15. AHAndrew Huberman58:20

        ... inevitably have be- seemed to become, uh, mainstream.

    16. MHDr. Mark Hyman58:24

        Yeah. Yeah.

    17. AHAndrew Huberman58:24

        And I think supplements is starting to happen now.

    18. MHDr. Mark Hyman58:27

        Yeah. Well, what was interesting, when I got to Cleveland Clinic in 2014, I said, "Let's do a survey." There's 3,000 physicians. "Let's do a survey of the physicians about their beliefs, practices, desires, goals, needs around supplements." (laughs) I was shocked. We got a lot of answers. And I, I'm, I'm cr- I'm not remembering the exact percentages, but I'll give you the sort of ballparks. Like, it was over, like, h- "Do you take supplements yourself?" Like, over 70% of the doctors did. "Do you recommend supplements to your patients?" Probably like 20% (laughs) or less did. "Would you like to have a source where you knew the quality and had recommendations about the safety?" "Yes, we desperately want to do that." "Would you prescribe them to your por- patients more if you did?" Yes, and like, and it's used. If you look at every medical specialty, car- uh, cardiologists are using CoQ10, right, and fish oil, and you've got gastroenterologists using probiotics, and obviously, OB-GYNs recommend supplements for prenatal vitamins, and you've got, you know, pediatricians recommending certain vitamins for kids. And so, you look across all the specialties, and you're like, "Well, they're already kind of integrated, kind of on the margins, but integrated into their practices." I think there's this kind of weird thing where you go to a conference, and I would do this. "Doctors, how many people recommend supplements to their patients?" And, you know, a few hands would go up. "How many of you guys take supplements?" And like, (laughs) most of the audience would raise their hand. And I thought that was so peculiar because in medicine, we're told from a scientific perspective that they're probably expensive urine, and yet most doctors personally (laughs) want to take them for themselves. That says a lot, and I-

    19. AHAndrew Huberman1:00:01

        It does say a lot. I do think-

    20. MHDr. Mark Hyman1:00:02

        ... and I think we're entering an era where I think there's more and more science. We're understanding more about the complexity of individuality and biochemical individuality. And this was, this was, you know, this personalized precision medicine, this is where we're all headed, right? And, uh-... one of the, one of the fathers of, sort of, the thinking in functional medicine was Roger Williams, who discovered pantothenic acid or vitamin B5. He wrote a book called Biochemical Individuality. And actually, his book was the one that got me interested in this in college, 'cause I lived with a nutrition PhD student who was talking about the, basically, the gut flora of cows, which he was studying to understand fiber and the microbiome. And he gave me a book called Nutrition Against Disease by Roger Williams. And it was... This is, like, in 1980. And I read it, and I was like, "Oh, wow, this is... nutrition is such an important thing." So, I think doctors are beginning to understand the value of nutrition, the value of nutritional, um, uh, sort of supplements, the value of testing for nutrients. It's still slow, but, you know, I think, I think we're gonna get there.

    21. AHAndrew Huberman1:00:57

        There's a whole generation of physicians and scientists that I do think, in the current shift in funding for science, different conversation entirely, are going to retire. And, um-

    22. MHDr. Mark Hyman1:01:10

        (laughs)

    23. AHAndrew Huberman1:01:10

        ... I'm not sure it's a bad thing.

    24. MHDr. Mark Hyman1:01:11

        Yeah. (laughs)

    25. AHAndrew Huberman1:01:12

        I, I, I don't mind saying this. I've, I, I'm-

    26. MHDr. Mark Hyman1:01:14

        (laughs)

    27. AHAndrew Huberman1:01:14

        I don't mind saying it. I think they've done a really wonderful job, and, and now it's time to pass the baton. The younger generation and the forward-thinking, you know, uh, people in their 60s and 70s are changing the game.

    28. MHDr. Mark Hyman1:01:27

        Yeah.

    29. AHAndrew Huberman1:01:27

        It's a very different game now.

    30. MHDr. Mark Hyman1:01:29

        Yeah.
12. 1:02:54 – 1:09:03

    Air, Tool: Air Filters; Tap Water Filter; Tool: Health, Expense & Whole Foods

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:02:54

       air. We had fires here in Los Angeles.

    2. MHDr. Mark Hyman1:02:57

       (laughs)

    3. AHAndrew Huberman1:02:58

       It was dreadful. The beach now, all the way down to Marina Del Rey, I ran down there yesterday, it was com- completely littered with chunks of charcoal. They mow it under the sand. It's going out to ocean. Um, most people don't... listening to this probably don't live in Los Angeles. How bad is our air in the United States, Northern Europe, Australia? Like, like is, is there any clean air left?

    4. MHDr. Mark Hyman1:03:22

       I mean-

    5. AHAndrew Huberman1:03:23

       You know?

    6. MHDr. Mark Hyman1:03:23

       ... yeah, maybe in the mountains in Colorado. (laughs)

    7. AHAndrew Huberman1:03:26

       Okay, so, so the air is dirty.

    8. MHDr. Mark Hyman1:03:27

       I think, I think, you know, compared to what is the answer. Like, if you go to India or China or some of these developing nations, or not even developing anymore, the air is so bad. I mean, they have all kinds of petrochemical products they, they burn. They have coal factories. I mean, it's just, it's really bad. So, in America, I think the air quality, in general, is much, much higher. I think when you have things like wildfires, it's a different ballgame. Than just the f- wood smoke itself, if it's just the trees burning is bad enough, but then you're burning houses and batteries-

    9. AHAndrew Huberman1:03:59

       Fiberglass.

    10. MHDr. Mark Hyman1:03:59

        ... and plastics and fire-

    11. AHAndrew Huberman1:04:01

        Yeah.

    12. MHDr. Mark Hyman1:04:01

        ... you've got PFAS chemicals. And we te- actually found that those chemicals go up on their function testing in people living in LA who've actually been in the fires.

    13. AHAndrew Huberman1:04:09

        Yeah, I need to get tested again-

    14. MHDr. Mark Hyman1:04:11

        Oh.

    15. AHAndrew Huberman1:04:11

        ... since... 'cause it... I haven't been tested since the fires. I mean, I feel fine-

    16. MHDr. Mark Hyman1:04:14

        Yeah.

    17. AHAndrew Huberman1:04:14

        ... but I got out of town. I drove up to San Luis Obispo-

    18. MHDr. Mark Hyman1:04:17

        Yeah.

    19. AHAndrew Huberman1:04:17

        ... parked myself at a, um, at a big pink hotel called the Madonna Inn and, uh-

    20. MHDr. Mark Hyman1:04:23

        (laughs)

    21. AHAndrew Huberman1:04:23

        ... looked, looked at the horses and worked on my book.

    22. MHDr. Mark Hyman1:04:25

        That's good.

    23. AHAndrew Huberman1:04:26

        Uh, cl- the air felt clean.

    24. MHDr. Mark Hyman1:04:27

        Yeah.

    25. AHAndrew Huberman1:04:28

        But is the air clean when there isn't a fire?

    26. MHDr. Mark Hyman1:04:31

        I mean, not necessarily. I mean, for example, and i- just, just to help people understand that air, air moves. It's not like there's just LA air or, you know, Colorado air.

    27. AHAndrew Huberman1:04:41

        Mm-hmm.

    28. MHDr. Mark Hyman1:04:42

        I- in Seattle, they had a big mercury problem in the air because of China. Because Northeast China, like Beijing and Harbin, in the winters, they just burn huge amounts of coal. And it goes up in the air, and it goes across in the, in the gulf streams and the, and the, and the airstreams or whatever they call them. Uh, uh, and it gets all the way to Seattle, and it rains heavy metal rain. And so, no matter where you live, you're, you're kind of exposed to the collective air. There's some, for sure, areas that are much cleaner, but, but I think that... And most people, if they have an air filter in your house where you spend sort of most of your time, you're probably okay.

    29. AHAndrew Huberman1:05:16

        So, is it a separate unit air filter?

    30. MHDr. Mark Hyman1:05:18

        Yeah.
13. 1:09:03 – 1:14:23

    Food Industrialization, Processed Foods

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:09:03

       the reasons food and nutrition is so complicated in this country is that, with the exception of the hamburger, the hot dog, apple pie, and ice cream, that there isn't really an American cuisine? You know, um-

    2. MHDr. Mark Hyman1:09:16

       What's wrong with all that?

    3. AHAndrew Huberman1:09:17

       Years ago-

    4. MHDr. Mark Hyman1:09:17

       Hot dogs, hamburgers, apple pie, ice cream? (laughs)

    5. AHAndrew Huberman1:09:19

       Yeah, well, right. Well, years ago, I, I, uh, I had a, a girlfriend who was from the south of France. Um, she did, she grew up very, uh, modestly-

    6. MHDr. Mark Hyman1:09:29

       Mm-hmm.

    7. AHAndrew Huberman1:09:29

       ... did not have, um, a, uh, wealth at all. But her family ate very well. They put a lot of effort into food.

    8. MHDr. Mark Hyman1:09:36

       They had gardens, they had animals.

    9. AHAndrew Huberman1:09:37

       They put a lot of time into food, and, and she knew about... Um, she was in her early 20s, I was in my, my mid-20s then. Um, she knew probably 200 recipes-

    10. MHDr. Mark Hyman1:09:46

        Wow.

    11. AHAndrew Huberman1:09:46

        ... for soups and souffles-

    12. MHDr. Mark Hyman1:09:48

        Yeah. Yeah.

    13. AHAndrew Huberman1:09:48

        ... and, like (laughs) , I mean, it was, like, it was amazing, uh, very well.

    14. MHDr. Mark Hyman1:09:52

        Yeah. Yeah.

    15. AHAndrew Huberman1:09:53

        So, I feel like one of the things that's really missing in this country is a sense of pride in the healthy food that we can produce here.

Episode duration: 2:42:20