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How To STAY YOUNG Forever: Top Habits To LIVE LONGER & Prevent Disease | Mark Hyman & Jay Shetty

Today, I am talking to Mark Hyman, MD. Dr. Hyman is the director of the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine, and founder and director of The Ultra-Wellness Center.

Dr. Mark HymanguestJay Shettyhost
Jan 2, 20231h 6mWatch on YouTube

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Transcript

  1. 0:00 – 2:27

    Intro

    1. MH

      Everything in our society automatically creates disease. Our processed diet, we're sleep-deprived, we're exposed to unnatural light at the wrong times of day, all the things in our food supply that are, that are damaging our guts. So we have literally a disease-producing culture

    2. JS

      The bestselling author and host- The number one health and wellness podcast-

    3. MH

      On Purpose with Jay Shetty.

    4. JS

      Hey, everyone. Welcome back to On Purpose, the number one health podcast in the world. Thanks to each and every one of you that are tuning in who are here every week to become happier, healthier, and more healed. Now, today's guest is one of your favorites. I am so excited because this is the first time we're in the same room, in the same space together. Uh, but I've been a follower and a fan and an admirer of his work for a very, very long time. I'm talking about Dr. Mark Hyman, a practicing family physician and an internationally recognized leader, speaker, educator, and advocate in the field of functional medicine. Dr. Hyman is the founder and director of The Ultra-Wellness Center, senior advisor for the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine, a 14-time New York Times bestselling author, and board president for clinical affairs for the Institute for Functional Medicine. Dr. Hyman is the host of one of the leading health podcasts, The Doctor's Farmacy. If you haven't subscribed, make sure you do. And Dr. Hyman is a regular medical contributor to several television shows and networks, including CBS This Morning, Today, Good Morning America, The View, and CNN. He's also an advisor and co-host on many shows. And today we're talking about his new book, Young Forever: The Secrets to Living Your Longest, Healthiest Life. And I know this is what you want.

    5. MH

      [laughs]

    6. JS

      So when you go and grab a copy of this book, it's available as we speak. Uh, make sure you go and order a copy of the book. This step-by-step program is to reverse disease, ease pain, and renew energy. Uh, please welcome to On Purpose for the second time, Dr. Mark Hyman.

    7. MH

      Oh, thank you so much.

    8. JS

      Mark, good to see you.

    9. MH

      Jay, it's so great to see you, man.

    10. JS

      No, thank you for being here. I, I, I mean it. You know, your work is so practical. It's so accessible. I'm glad we get to finally be in person, and I remember last time you came on the show, everyone absolutely loved it. Uh, so I can't wait for this in-human person connection. Uh, but I want to start because I... When I was reading through this book, a lot of stuff came up. This, this really stood out to me. Really stood out to me. I want to dive straight in.

    11. MH

      Go. Let's

  2. 2:27 – 7:19

    The effects of ultra-processed food

    1. MH

      go. I-

    2. JS

      You said for every 10% of your diet that is ultra-processed food-

    3. MH

      Oh, yeah

    4. JS

      ... your risk of dying goes up 14%.

    5. MH

      Mm.

    6. JS

      So wait, I'll repeat that for everyone. For every 10% of your diet that is ultra-processed food, your risk of dying goes up to 14%. You're saying that's for every 10%.

    7. MH

      Yeah.

    8. JS

      That's worrying.

    9. MH

      It's 60% of our diet and 67% of kids' diets today in America. And what's ultra-processed food? It's basically food-like substances. It's not really food. I mean, processed food is not bad. Sauerkraut's processed food, miso's processed food [laughs] , you know, canned sardines and canned tomatoes, that's processed food. That's okay. But it's the ultra-processed food, which is where they take the raw materials from soy, wheat, and corn that are grown through industrial agriculture. They break them apo- apart to their component parts. They reassemble them in food-like substances, which are all colors, sizes, and shapes of chemically extruded foods that have no resemblance to anything we've ever eaten for most of our evolutionary history and are extremely triggering for all the ancient pathways to cause disease. So if you want to get sick and die early, eat processed food. [laughs]

    10. JS

      Yeah. Well, with this conversation of how our diet and our gut health being linked to longevity-

    11. MH

      Yeah

    12. JS

      ... and aging, it's something that's, I mean, been around for, for a long, long time.

    13. MH

      Yeah.

    14. JS

      But I feel like we're only really having this conversation now, and more and more people are moving in that direction. Would you agree with that or?

    15. MH

      I think it's true. I don't think... Uh, and honestly, Jay, I've been practicing medicine for over 30 years, and I can't tell you how shocking it is to so many of my well-educated patients that food has anything to do with how they feel.

    16. JS

      Mm.

    17. MH

      [laughs] I mean, like, forget about disease. It's like... And most doctors, if you ask, you know, "Does food have anything to do with arthritis or rheumatoid arthritis or, you know, cancer or dementia?" They're gonna go, "No." You know, but, uh, it's absolutely the biggest driver.

    18. JS

      Mm.

    19. MH

      It's the single biggest thing we do every day, which is interact with literally pounds of foreign material that we have to digest, break down, and assimilate. And in the food is not just calories, it's information, it's instructions, it's code that regulates every aspect of your biology for good or bad. And so we now understand how these ancient systems in our body that either can activate longevity and healing or can cause disease are influenced by the information in food.

    20. JS

      Mm.

    21. MH

      So food is medicine, but it can also be poison. So ultra-processed food is literally poison.

    22. JS

      Mm.

    23. MH

      It's addictive. It drives inflammation. It accelerates every age-related disease we know of, from cancer to heart disease to diabetes to dementia, depression, any- everything you can possibly imagine. Even violence and divisiveness and hatred in our society are driven by food. And I talked about this in my last book, Food Fix, where in, in prisons, if they give prisoners healthy food, the violent crime goes down by 56%. If they give it in juvenile detention centers, their, uh, violence goes down by over 90%. The restriction that they use, the restraints, goes down by 75%. Suicide goes down by 100%. That's the third leading cause of death in this population. So food is so important to so many aspects of our physical and mental health. So we need to understand how our bodies interact with food and how we've co-evolved with food and how to turn on the right signals in the body to activate well-being and joy and, and pleasure and also all these ancient longevity switches.

    24. JS

      Yeah.

    25. MH

      So that's really a lot of what my book Young Forever is about, is about how do we activate these ancient longevity switches, these ancient healing systems. So the quote from the book, from the Ary- Ayurvedic science, was that when diet is wrong, medicine is of no use, and when diet is correct, medicine is of no need.

    26. JS

      Yes. Yeah.

    27. MH

      And so I think [laughs] that's a ancient bit of wisdom from your culture, but it's-

    28. JS

      Yeah

    29. MH

      ... it's as true as it ever was.

    30. JS

      Yeah. No, it's, it's really interesting to me. So my, my wife's an Ayurvedic practitioner, and so-

  3. 7:19 – 10:34

    What is aging us faster?

    1. JS

      So when you talk about being young forever, what are the things that we're doing that are aging us faster?

    2. MH

      Uh, there's so much. I mean, the first thing I'd say is that, you know, the purpose of being young forever is not to live a hedonistic life and seek pleasure and just be narcissistic. It's about being able to show up in your life fully, being able to love and serve and do the things that you wanna do to engage in life in a meaningful, purposeful way, to be able to be present in relationships, to show up for your friends and family and community, to give a, be of service. You know, like Neem Karoli Baba said, "Love everybody, serve everybody, feed everybody." I think that sort of sums up the book. [laughs]

    3. JS

      [laughs]

    4. MH

      And I think, I think that there's so many things that we are doing unconsciously that are disrupting our ability to live well and age well and feel good. And there are many cultures around the world, like the Blue Zones, which I visited, like Sardinia and Ikaria, where the defaults are all automatically making them healthy. If all you have to eat is your local wild foods and whole unprocessed foods, you're gonna eat that. If, if you have to hike five miles a day up and down rocky terrain to shepherd your goats and sheep, you're gonna [laughs] do that. You're not gonna go to the gym, right?

    5. JS

      Yeah.

    6. MH

      If you have to, like, lift big logs and build things, that's how you're gonna stay strong. Your, y- their community and their relationships are such an embedded part of their whole culture, so they have these automatic defaults that create health. Everything in our society automatically creates disease: our processed diet, which we just talked about, our sedentary lifestyles, chronic stress. You know, I was with this guy Silvio on top of this mountain in Sardinia who was, uh, had 200 sheeps and goat, and his family lived there for 100 years. And we had this beautiful dinner of all his food that he grew and he made and all this l- sheep cheese, everything. And so I said to him, I said, "Silvio, so do you have any stress in your life?" And he, he looked at me like it was the weirdest freaking question he'd ever been asked.

    7. JS

      [laughs]

    8. MH

      And he's... It took him a while. He saw it and he pondered, and then he said, "Yeah, you know, sometimes at night a goat gets loose, and I have to go get it." [laughs]

    9. JS

      [laughs]

    10. MH

      I'm like, "Holy cow." So we live in such a chronically stressed life. We're sleep-deprived. We, we're exposed to unnatural light at the wrong times of day. We are exposed to an overload of environmental toxins. We have a horde of drugs we're being given that are destroying our microbiome, antibiotics, and all the things in our foods applied that are, that are damaging our guts. So we have literally a disease-producing culture, and we have a society that's focused on individualism and success and achievement. And, you know, in Sardinia and Ikaria where I was, people weren't, like, on this big goal to achieve, you know, something. They were just living. They were just enjoying life. They were celebrating together. They were savoring the sweet things in life. They were just enjoying being as enough. And you know, I think so much, uh, uh, of our culture is about doing and making and creating, which is not bad. I do it, but I think it can come at a cost if we are unbalanced in how we do it.

    11. JS

      Where are the starting points for people in creating longevity in their life? Because I find, like, what you just said, you're so right, and sometimes what I find is that the world is overwhelming in the way that it's set up.

    12. MH

      Mm.

    13. JS

      But even trying to change your habits can be as overwhelming as well-

    14. MH

      Yeah

    15. JS

      ... where people go, "I don't know where to start." Like-

    16. MH

      Yeah

    17. JS

      ... "I don't know where to start with my diet. I don't know where to start with my stressed lifestyle. I don't know..." You know, so

  4. 10:34 – 20:26

    The foundational basics of self-care

    1. JS

      where do you encourage people to start figuring out what the root cause of their challenges are and, and where they go from there?

    2. MH

      Well, you know, everybody's different. But I would say, you know, it sounds maybe obvious, but the fundamental things that, that keep us healthy and keep us living long are really quite simple. And, and you know, there was a study many years ago by James Fries that we published in The New England Journal of Medicine where he looked at what he called the compression of morbidity, the idea that we could have our health span equal our life span. Most of us spend the last 20% of our lives sick, right? So you might live to 80, but the last 20, 20% of your life, maybe 20 years or a little bit less, you're gonna be unwell.

    3. JS

      Mm.

    4. MH

      That's not fun.

    5. JS

      Mm.

    6. MH

      And he found if you just kept your ideal body weight, if you exercise and you didn't smoke, you live a long, healthy life, and you would die quickly, painlessly, and cheaply. But if you didn't, you would die long, expensive, painful deaths, and early, right? [laughs]

    7. JS

      Mm-hmm.

    8. MH

      So I, I think where do people start, I think they start with the very foundational basics of self-care, which is food and exercise and stress reduction tools. Like you have in Calm where you teach people seven-minute meditations. You don't have to go to a monastery like you did for three years, you know? [laughs]

    9. JS

      [laughs] Yeah.

    10. MH

      Uh, you, you can, uh, learn how to increase your sleep quality. These are really foundational, basic things that everybody needs to know how to do, and there's little differences for everybody. But the food stuff is really pretty straightforward. Eat real food.

    11. JS

      Mm.

    12. MH

      If it's basically grown in a plant, eat it. If it's made in a plant, stay away from it, right? [laughs]

    13. JS

      [laughs]

    14. MH

      Uh, I would have another... I, I used to do, uh, a lot of work with churches and faith-based healing and wellness. Not, not faith healing, but faith-based cultures and wellness. [laughs]

    15. JS

      Mm-hmm.

    16. MH

      And, uh, although I'm not opposed to faith healing either. [laughs] And I used to say, "It's really simple to know what to eat. Leave the food that man made. Eat the food that God made."

    17. JS

      Mm.

    18. MH

      It's something a five-year-old can understand. Did God make an avocado? Yes. Did he make a c- Twinkie? No.

    19. JS

      [laughs]

    20. MH

      It's not, it's not that hard. So stick with things that are as close to what their original form was. Eat foods that are rich in plants. Plant f- I call it plant-rich diet, which is all the phytochemicals in plants are medicines. Make sure you have adequate protein as you get older because that is important for building muscle, and muscle is the currency of aging, and we get frail and decrepit as we get older because we lose muscle. Learn some simple practices of exercise that work for you, whether it's taking a walk. Resistance training is pretty important as you get older, which is either bands or body weight or weights or some- there's all kinds of techniques out there. But build... I, and I was lazy about this. I didn't start till I was 60, but I, I really transformed my body even starting at 60 years old compared to where I was at 40. I'll show you a picture later of my-

    21. JS

      [laughs]

    22. MH

      ... before and after, but it's pretty impressive. And I think the other part is, you know, optimizing your sleep, and all, all the practices of how to do that are in the book.

    23. JS

      Mm-hmm.

    24. MH

      Uh, and then there's, you know, extra layers of things you can do, which is the right supplements, and then there's all these emerging longevity therapies that are out there f- that are called hormesis, which means the s- things that are stressful to your body but that won't kill you. So exercise is a stress. If you're lifting weights, you're tearing muscles. You build new muscle. Everybody's familiar with that, and you get stronger. Basically, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. And there's phytohormesis, which are these plant compounds that are the plant's defenses that we consume but that help our bodies activate healing responses. So, like, all the colorful vegetables, Fisetin in strawberries. There's things in pomegranate, urolithin A, the catechins in green tea, and I, you know, the list goes on, and there's lists and lists of them in the book and how to optimize that. And then there's really simple ways to sort of optimize your, your, um, timing of eating to activate repair systems. So one of the key strategies around food is to use it to activate these ancient longevity switches. So we weren't meant to eat all the time. We have hundreds of genes that help us adapt to starvation, but very few that help us adapt to abundance or excess, which we have now. So when you have p- periods of fasting, which has been done throughout the centuries for various religious or spiritual reasons and various practices, but it could be just an overnight fast for 12 hours or for 12 hours or s- 14 hours or 16 hours. That gives your body a chance to clean up. Imagine, like, being in your kitchen and cooking every night and never washing the dishes and never cleaning up and never, you know, like [laughs] like, you wouldn't do that. Your body needs that repair system to be activated, and it'll only be activated when you're not eating-

    25. JS

      Mm

    26. MH

      ... for a period of time. So that, that is a very powerful way to activate these ancient switches that shut off inflammation, that increase your antioxidant systems, that boost your stem cell production, that cause autophagy, the cellular cleanup where you have little Pac-Man cells going around and cleaning up old damaged cells and tissues and proteins. It's a very important strategy for improving your overall quality of life and health and metabolism. So there's a lot of, uh, hacks that you can use from a food perspective that I encourage, but there's also other treatments that are out there like, that, that are not just fasting for hormesis, but hot therapies and cold therapies. So you, you might have heard about, like, saunas or cold plunges, and it's kind of all the rage now, but the science around this is really remarkable. Like, in Finland, if you just take a sauna a few times a week, your risk of death goes down by 24%. If you do it four or five times a week, it goes down by over 40%, and that was compared to a control group in Finland which took a sauna once a week, 'cause everybody has a sauna in Finland.

    27. JS

      [laughs]

    28. MH

      And they say... I think there's enough saunas in Finland for the entire population to be in one-

    29. JS

      I've heard about that, yeah. [laughs]

    30. MH

      ... at once, right? [laughs] And then that increases your innate immune system. It, it activates something called heat shock proteins that kill, uh, th- clean up all the damaged proteins and help refold them and make them work better. And one of the hallmarks of aging, these 10 things that go wrong as we age, uh, is damaged proteins. And so there's all these benefits. Cold plunges also activate your mitochondria and brown fat and help stimulate all these longevity pathways. So we can take a cold shower in the morning like I did, a hot bath at night. If you have a sauna, great, or a cold plunge, great. And there's even, you know, other therapies like hypoxia therapies or hyperbaric oxygen or m- you know, even ozone, which is being used now for all kinds of things. So we have a lo- a lot of very cool stuff on the margins, but the foundations are so key.

  5. 20:26 – 27:10

    Your social circle affects your habits

    1. JS

      how have you thought about, as you're helping guide people in this journey, like, how have you found, even for yourself, you went from yoga to then being able to do 80 pushups today. What were the key tenets in helping you change your habits? Because I find that we're in a habits crisis right now more than anything.

    2. MH

      I mean, I've been always pretty self-disciplined. Uh, I, I think the, the, the thing that I've really learned though, Jay, is that it's, it's your community that matters. It's your social... Not your social network online, but your actual social [laughs] network in person that drives so much of your behavior. And I, I know I, I, I for decades studied the, the, the sort of molecular biology and physiology and biochemistry and genetics, and I was sort of in deep into, like, the inner workings of the human body. And, you know, Einstein said, "I'm not interested in the thoughts, in the elem- on the spectrum of this or that element. I'm interested in the thoughts of God. The rest are details."

    3. JS

      [laughs]

    4. MH

      So I, I feel like I was so interested to know the mind of God by understanding the natural laws of biology, which is what functional medicine is. It's what's described in Young Forever. But, but I had kinda missed something, which is how do we get people to change behavior? 'Cause I can change biology. I can take someone with diabetes and heart failure and all these problems, and I can reverse it. And I went to Haiti after the earthquake in 2010, and I met Paul Farmer, who basically took care of, uh, uh, people who were the most underserved people in the world. Haiti is the poorest civilization in the West- Western Hemisphere. Half of the population lives on less than a dollar a day, and these people were basically neglected by the public health community, and they had TB and AIDS. And he said, "Look, I can cure these diseases with drugs. These are easy. But people don't have the ability to take the drugs, and they don't have the w- clean water, and they don't have a watch, know when to take it." And so he realized that the power was community, so he created this model of accompaniment. We're gonna accompany each other to health. And so he used community health workers, essentially. And then I realized that, wow, you know, we call all these chronic illnesses of aging, we call them non-communicable diseases. They're not infectious, but they are contagious. We know that if you're overweight, your family's overweight, it's not as strong a predictor of obesity as if your friends are overweight. If your friends are overweight, you're 171% more likely to be overweight than if your family's overweight. [laughs]

    5. JS

      Wow, I didn't know that.

    6. MH

      Which is crazy. This is Christakis's work from Harvard. And so it's our social fabric that determines our behavior. These social threads that connect us are more important than our genetic threads. So if your, all your friends are, you know, drinking beer and having fries and burgers and watching football, which may not be a bad thing, but you might like that, you might not be as healthy as if all your friends are drinking green juices and going to yoga every day, right? So it's a very different framework. So I realize that the power of community is so important, so we did a program at this church, Saddleback Church, in California, where we used the small groups that they already had built, and we put a healthy curriculum, loving curriculum, through those groups. And we thought a few hundred people would show up. 15,000 people signed up the first week, and they accompanied other to health, and they lost a quarter million pounds in the first year. And through this process, I really learned that it was the power of each other to help each other get healthier, to lift each other up, to inspire each other, to hold each other accountable. It's like AA or it's like Weight Watchers. These things work because they have a community connected component. And that was one of the things I learned from the Blue Zones, Jay, that was so important. There was no nursing homes. [laughs] You know, they, their whole society was built around relationships and community and connection and celebration together. So people weren't isolated and lonely and disconnected like they are in the society, but they were deeply connected. The sangha, right? It's like... That's the, the sangha is the, one of the three pillars of enlightenment, which is community that helps you build and work towards the right action and the right life and the right kind of loving and the right behavior, all these things. So I think we really underestimate the power of that. So what I would say to people is find a someone, a friend, a buddy, a group. You know, uh, my friend Rick Warren, the pastor of Saddleback Church, said, "Every body needs a buddy." [laughs]

    7. JS

      [laughs] Yeah, and it sounds so simple when you say it like that, like- You know, it can feel like such a complex question sometimes, and then when you put it like that, you're like, "Oh, yeah, that makes so much sense." And I start thinking about the people I spend time with, and I think people struggle with points of transition in communities in their life. So it's like they've built a community, they've built a group of friends. Now they want new visions with their life. They have new habits they wanna adopt, and it's like letting go of an old set of habits which are linked to a group of people is the most difficult part, right? If you're used to going and watching football with a group of people who you all drink together and eat unhealthily together, to you, you're not just giving up the food, you're almost giving up company. That's what it feels like.

    8. MH

      Right. Well, I mean, my friends, if you're an alcoholic and you're hanging out with other alcoholics, you gotta find new friends. [laughs]

    9. JS

      Yeah.

    10. MH

      You know?

    11. JS

      Yeah, and that's the hard part. And that's the hard part. And I think that's, uh... What I found, having made many transitions in my life of groups of friends and habits, I found that the first thing was don't try leave your friends or break relationships, but try and build new ones first. And so a lot of people spend time going, "Okay, well, I've gotta somehow talk to this person about how we're not gonna spend time together." And it's almost the other way around. Find the new community first. Find the new sangha first. And the more you start associating with that group of people, it becomes natural for these things to have less energy and less time for. And the second thing was that I found that the people who wanted to be in my life continued to be in my life.

    12. MH

      Right. That's right. They'll come along.

    13. JS

      Yeah, they'll come along.

    14. MH

      And you'll inspire them. Like, "God, he- Jay's doing so good. He looks so good. He's, he's feeling good. I wanna know what he's doing. What's he smoking?" You know? [laughs]

    15. JS

      Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And the people that want to be in your life will come along with you, and I think that we sometimes just get so tied in, in those groups that we just can't break out of them.

    16. MH

      Yeah.

    17. JS

      But I, I love that answer. I wanna talk about some of the, uh... In the book, you talk about the 10 hallmarks of aging.

    18. MH

      Yes.

    19. JS

      And I wanna dive into this because I think we're just, again, and, and I come at this as a patient of the book. Like as, as-

    20. MH

      Yeah, yeah

    21. JS

      ... you know, when I'm reading the book, I don't count myself as someone who knows. I count myself as someone who is... considers myself quite uneducated when it comes to physical, biological health. And when I'm reading this, I'm going, "I don't even think most of us know."

    22. MH

      No.

    23. JS

      Like, we're just not even aware. So I wanna pick out a few-

    24. MH

      Wait, you, you didn't get a handbook when you were born that says this is how your body works?

    25. JS

      I didn't get a handbook. Yeah, I didn't at all.

    26. MH

      [laughs] I mean, most people can run their iPhone like nobody's business, but they don't know how to run their body. [laughs]

    27. JS

      Don't know how to run our bodies at all. And so I wanna pick a few that, that I-

    28. MH

      Yeah, yeah. Sure, sure

    29. JS

      ... that really stood out to me. And we've talked about a couple of these, but, uh, hallmark one is disrupted hormone and nutrient signaling. And I wanted to

  6. 27:10 – 35:44

    Link between inflammation and aging

    1. JS

      talk about the link between inflammation and aging.

    2. MH

      Yeah.

    3. JS

      Because I find that that's something that people are learning about slowly, or at least if you're not learning about it, you're experiencing inflammation.

    4. MH

      Oh, for sure.

    5. JS

      Yeah.

    6. MH

      Yeah, a lot of the diseases of aging are inflammation diseases, right?

    7. JS

      Yeah.

    8. MH

      Heart disease, cancer, diabetes, dementia. I, I think, you know, before we kind of dive into those, I, I just wanna sort of set the stage, which is-

    9. JS

      Yes, please. Of course

    10. MH

      ... you know, what's really exciting for the first time, and I talked about the mind of God, for the first time we're understanding these fundamental laws of biology like we understand the laws of physics. And from a very few natural laws of physics, we can then see and create an enormous amount of phenomena, right? Think about the things that we can create with physics. This rocket ship going to the moon, a, you know, a bridge, and bu- build a building, and m-may- e- talk on the m- [laughs] podcast. It's all physics, right? And, and that's amazing to me, and it's just from a few natural laws. What are those natural laws of biology? They haven't really been described. So scientists for the first time are understanding these fundamental laws that describe all the disease phenomena we see. The diseases are way downstream, and medicine is focused on whack-a-mole treatment. You know, you just find the cure for heart disease and diabetes and cancer and d- dementia. What if they're all the same? What if it's all the same disease with just different manifestations, like leaves on a tree, where the trunk and the roots are the same?

    11. JS

      Mm.

    12. MH

      So this is what we're finding, and the hallmarks of aging are these things that go wrong as we get older that cause all these diseases. And if we just cured heart disease and cancer from the face of the earth, like, how many years would we live longer? And these are the number one and two killers.

    13. JS

      Mm.

    14. MH

      Three to five years, which is kind of shocking, right? If we dealt with these hallmarks, these causes, we might get another 30 or 40 years.

    15. JS

      Wow.

    16. MH

      And what's important to understand is that scientists are looking at how do we treat these, and that's helpful. But from my perspective, and I think what's unique about my book Young Forever, is that I go to a deeper level. What is the cause of the hallmarks? 'Cause if the hallmarks are the cause of disease, what causes the hallmarks? [laughs]

    17. JS

      Yes.

    18. MH

      And it's really quite simple. It's either too much of something that our body doesn't like or not enough of something that our body needs to thrive. What are the impediments to health and the ingredients for health?

    19. JS

      Mm.

    20. MH

      And it's a short list. The impediments for health are bad food, too much stress-

    21. JS

      Mm

    22. MH

      ... physical or psychological, environmental toxins, microbes, can be, you know, gut microbiome being messed up or in- infections, and, and, uh, also allergens, things that cause inflammation. So those are the fundamental things. And what does our body need to thrive? We need the right food, the nutrients, right balance of hormones, light, air, water, connection, meaning, purpose, rest, restoration, sleep, exercise, movement. All these things are the ingredients for health. It's a very short list. So that's the framework of functional medicine. You're either dying of too much or dying of too little, [laughs] right? And so understand the information coming in from food and what to do with it. So when we eat protein and sugar and fat, our bodies know how to handle this. We have all these pathways that digest and metabolize these things. When these sensing pathways are overloaded with too much of the wrong stuff, if you have... You know, we need glucose and sugar, fine. But if you ea- are eating, like- A pound a day of sugar and flour, or almost, which is what most Americans do today, that's like an avalanche of sugar and flour. That's a toxic, you know, poisonous pharmacologic dose. So that overloads, for example, the insulin signaling pathway, one of these f- four longevity switches that are part of our nutrient sensing system, that overloads it and causes you to have a cascade of downstream effects from inflammation to increasing belly fat to oxidative stress to mitochondrial injury, to all these things that lend to a rapid aging process. So that's the biggest one, and that's kinda sugar and starch. So if you wanna do one thing to extend your life, cut out or cut down dramatically on the amount of sugar and starch you're eating every day and, and have more fat and have more vegetables and have more, you know, good quality proteins. Those will all help you, you thrive. Uh, the other is the pathway around the nutrient sensing. It's something called mTOR, and this is something people have heard about maybe, maybe not. [laughs] But essentially, it's kinda cool because there's this pathway that is, um, so important in activating the cellular cleanup mechanism called autophagy. And now we've heard about this, which is why we talk about intermittent fasting or time-restricted eating or ketogenic diets or all these things that people are kinda tossing around. It- the reason those are important is they give your body a chance to do cleanup at night, right? [laughs] And we need to clean up like the kitchen instead of leaving it, the dishes in there for a week or a month. So that process is so important. So we need times of not eating to activate, uh, this autophagy process, and that happens by the inhibition of mTOR. Now, mTOR, uh, when it's overstimulated by too much protein all the time or too much sugar all the time, will just keep making stuff in the body, and it's like, you know, if you just keep making food in your kitchen, it's gonna overflow, and it's gonna be a mess, and that's what happens inside your body. So what we found was there was this compound that they f- that they discovered in Rapa Nui, which is Easter Island. Now, who s- who knows the aliens came down and put those things there? I don't know. [laughs] It's those statues that are on the, this island off the coast of Chile, right?

    23. JS

      Yeah, yeah.

    24. MH

      They scraped off some stuff off the back of the statue, and they took it back to the lab, and they said, "Well, maybe this is an antifungal. No, it doesn't work so well. Maybe it has some immune properties," and it's used in transplant medicine. But then they discovered it, it inhibits mTOR. In fact, the name mTOR stands for mammalian target of rapamycin. Rapamycin is named after Rapa Nui or Easter Island. So the drug that they've developed is named after this, and this inhibits mTOR and is now being studied for longevity. And so we need periods of time to inhibit mTOR, uh, fasting and not eating anything, and we need times to stimulate mTOR to build muscle so we don't get frail and decrepit as we age. And then there's other pathways like sirtuins and AMPK that are part of our nutrient sensing system that detect scarcity and will activate DNA repair. And people have heard about, for example, resveratrol and, and longevity, and this is the work of Dr. David Sinclair. And this, you know, they work, but they gave them, you know, it's from red wine, the equivalent of 1,500 bottles of red wine, so you don't wanna practice this at home. [laughs]

    25. JS

      [laughs]

    26. MH

      But, but it was amazing. What they saw were these animals living longer, and they got healthier. Even eating a bad diet, they, if you activate these longevity switches, it's so powerful. And the beautiful thing is that a lot of the plant foods that we can eat, the phytochemicals that are rich in this plant foods all activate these ancient longevity pathways like green tea or pomegranate or, or r- um, there's resveratrol from red grapes, and, and the list goes on. And so we have these ancient systems that we can play with, and so the book is really about how do we turn on the longevity switches?

    27. JS

      Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

    28. MH

      How do we activate those in the right way? How do we eat in a way to optimize each of those in the right time at the right way?

    29. JS

      When, when I hear that, in my head, I've, I've become more close and clear about this because of my wife.

    30. MH

      Yeah.

  7. 35:44 – 41:44

    Damaged proteins

    1. JS

      Uh, number four I wanted to talk about, you talk about damaged proteins-

    2. MH

      Yeah

    3. JS

      ... uh, and dysfunctional molecules. I think that was-- I think damaged proteins is something we're not very well educated on.

    4. MH

      No, I think-

    5. JS

      Yeah

    6. MH

      ... you know, what, what happens is, you know, your, your body has-- It's just, it's just a miracle to me, Jay, that the body has this, this ancient systems to handle things that go wrong and to repair things and clean up things. So we are constantly making proteins. People don't really realize this, but what does your DNA do? Right? Your DNA, all it does is code for proteins. Proteins do all sorts of things from, you know, build tissues, your muscles and joints, to building your immune cells, to s- being communication systems. And small proteins like peptides are messengers. There's 80,000 that tell your body what to do and regulate all kinds of things from brain chemistry, to hormones, to sexual function, to metabolism, to mitochondrial function. I mean, the list goes on. So proteins are so important. But as we age, those proteins can get damaged or they, they are injured, and they are misfolded, and they're broken. And so the body has to, one, address this, and two, hopefully prevent you from making these. So one of, one of the things that happens, for example, that's really dangerous, is when you eat sugar, it kind of binds with proteins in your body, and it damages them and causes glycation, which is basically just the, the phenomena that, it's a... that happens when you get a, a crispy chicken skin or a crust on a bread or crème brûlée, and you get that, like, little crackle-

    7. JS

      So good. [laughs]

    8. MH

      It's so good, right? We all love that stuff.

    9. JS

      Yeah.

    10. MH

      But that, that, that reaction happens in your body. The, and, and that, and that creates what we call AGEs, advanced glycation end product, which ages us, and that binds to RAGEs, receptors for advanced glycation end products. So that RAGE, literally it's aging and raging is what happens. So when you, when you eat a lot of sugar and starch, you're causing these damaged proteins. So the measurement, for example, of, your diabetes control, we call hemoglobin A1C, that's a measure of damaged proteins. That's sugar binding to hemoglobin and damaging it, and we can see that on a blood test.

    11. JS

      Mm.

    12. MH

      But this is happening throughout your body. And what's amazing is, uh, things like, we talked about hormesis and these stresses like saunas. Saunas create heat shock proteins, which are actually repairing proteins or cleaning up proteins. When you have autophagy, which is, is we talked about, which is a self-cleaning mechanism, you actually clean up these old proteins and you recycle them. So the body has a recycling system. Basically, like, takes up all these old, damaged things, gloms onto them like a Pac-Man, digests them, breaks them down into component parts, and says, "Okay, I got new parts. Let's make new proteins" and you start over. It's pretty amazing, actually. [laughs]

    13. JS

      That's, yeah, it's unbelievable. It... I've never, I've never heard anyone say that before about how the body has a recycling mechanism.

    14. MH

      It does. It's amazing.

    15. JS

      Yeah.

    16. MH

      I mean, the, like, that's what's so exciting to me is, you know, w- when I went to school, I, I, I... in medical school in their second year, we get a book called The Pathologic Basis of Disease, which is really great. It's like the foundational textbook. But I didn't get the scientific basis of wellness textbook. I, I didn't learn anything-

    17. JS

      [laughs]

    18. MH

      ... about that. Like-

    19. JS

      Right

    20. MH

      ... so how do you create health? If you say to your doctor, "I want you to treat this" He says, "Okay, take this drug" If you say, "Doctor, I want you to make me optimally healthy" They're like, "Okay. Well, eat better-

    21. JS

      Yeah, yeah

    22. MH

      ... exercise, take vitamins. I don't know" But, like, they don't have an answer, right?

    23. JS

      Yeah.

    24. MH

      But it, but it's scientific wellness. What is scientific wellness? Why is... What is the science of creating health? That's what functional medicine is, and that's really what I've given people is an owner's manual for their body, how to detect what's wrong, what tests to do, how to find out what's out of balance, and, and how to correct it-

    25. JS

      Yeah

    26. MH

      ... and how to optimize each of the systems in your body so you can create health.

    27. JS

      Absolutely.

    28. MH

      And, uh, and, and what's really exciting is now we have a, a metric called a, a biological age clock-

    29. JS

      Mm-hmm

    30. MH

      ... that we can measure. So before we'd kind of say, "Oh, is this working or not? Maybe your blood res- works better. Maybe your weight- weights are better. Blood pressure's better" Those are all in- sort of indirect markers. But there is something that we now have discovered, which is a biological clock.

  8. 41:44 – 48:07

    Clean diet activates the body’s healing mechanisms

    1. JS

      what's really interesting to me is, uh, how commonly people are experiencing brain fog today.

    2. MH

      Yeah.

    3. JS

      And I think as we experience brain fog, I don't think we often know what to do about it. We often also start going internal. This is also the same thing as connecting what you talk about in the book to our mental health. I think a lot of the time when we're experiencing mental health challenges, we're trying to solve it through the mind.

    4. MH

      Correct.

    5. JS

      And I think that that's not working, right? It's, it's actually very difficult and- I recently had, and I know you know Mona Sharma well, who-

    6. MH

      Sure. Of course

    7. JS

      ... who I work with there.

    8. MH

      I love her, yeah.

    9. JS

      Mona works with me on my diet and-

    10. MH

      I love her, yeah

    11. JS

      ... and my plan and everything.

    12. MH

      Yeah, great.

    13. JS

      And, uh-

    14. MH

      Yeah, she's a functional medicine nutritionist.

    15. JS

      Yes. And so we, I, I did a vitamin D test, and my vitamin D was 10.

    16. MH

      Ay-ay-ay.

    17. JS

      Right?

    18. MH

      Ay, ay, ay.

    19. JS

      And that's, like, very... And, and I'm still functioning, doing everything I do-

    20. MH

      For sure

    21. JS

      ... on, on vitamin D. And she was just like, "Jay, most people who have that level are, like, have forms of depression."

    22. MH

      Depression, muscle aches-

    23. JS

      And I'm not-

    24. MH

      ... fatigue

    25. JS

      ... yeah, and I'm, and I'm not having, you know, the depressive aspect of that. And so, which, which was great for me, but my point being that there is this big connection between physical and mental health or, like, physical diet, sleep, energy levels-

    26. MH

      Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah

    27. JS

      ... and then impact. So talk to us a bit about that.

    28. MH

      It's so huge, Jay. You know, I think, you know, there's, there's so much to work on on your biology. But I wrote a book, uh, probably 15 years ago now called The Ultra Mind Solution about how to fix your brain by fixing your body first. So you can meditate all you want-

    29. JS

      Mm

    30. MH

      ... but if you're mercury poisoned or your thyroid's not working or you're vitamin B12 or vitamin D deficient or your microbiome's a mess, it's gonna be hard to-

  9. 48:07 – 51:47

    The power of a healthy diet

    1. JS

      But I think the challenge is that for so long we've been trying to deal with our health in silos. So if we have a mental health challenge, we try and deal just with our mind.

    2. MH

      Yeah.

    3. JS

      And if we have a physical health challenge, we try and just deal with our body. And we don't realize that they're so interconnected

    4. MH

      They're not separate. There's no mind-body, body-mind. It's, it's one thing.

    5. JS

      Yeah.

    6. MH

      Right? It's all one thing. And, and to try to separate it out doesn't make any sense. And, and so medicine has really bifurcated psychiatry and the rest of medicine [laughs] and it, it just doesn't make any sense to me. And w- when I call myself the accidental psychiatrist 'cause I basically wasn't treating people's mental disorders, but I was treating their physical health and, and I saw their brains get better and their mind get better and their mood get better and bipolar disease go away, schizophrenia get better, autism get better, ADD get better, depression get better. I'm like, "What is going on here?" And it just blew my mind.

    7. JS

      Could you give us a few examples of those or people that you worked with in those spaces? Because I think that's something we don't hear about as much. Like, I think we hear a lot today about when people are struggling with those things, they're going to therapy-

    8. MH

      Yeah

    9. JS

      ... but we're not doing physical-

    10. MH

      Oh my God, I had one patient who, uh, you know, was just severely depressed and was struggling for years and years. And, uh, and, and, you know, I, I found out she had mercury poisoning, and we got the mercury out of her system, and she got better. There was a patient, uh, who, not even a patient of mine, it was, uh, someone who was part of the Daniel Plan, this faith-based wellness program I mentioned, who came up to me after the six-week part of the program. We started, and six weeks later, we had another rally and a gathering. And she said, "Dr. Hyman, I don't get it. Like, I've been in and out of psychiatric hospitals my whole life. I've been on every psychiatric medication. I'm about to get divorced. I'm about to lose my job. I'm, I'm just was struggling so much, and I changed my diet, and in three days it all went away, and I feel so good now. Is that possible?" I'm like, "Yeah, it's possible. It happened to you, so it's clearly possible." So people don't realize how quickly we can see these changes, and so that was really remarkable. I had a kid with ADD who was just so out of control, and his behavior, he couldn't pay attention, he couldn't focus. He was kicked out of kindergarten, if you can imagine being that bad, [laughs] being kicked out of kindergarten.

    11. JS

      Wow. Yeah.

    12. MH

      You know?

    13. JS

      That's, yeah.

    14. MH

      And, uh, but he had all these other health issues. He had asthma and he had irritable bowel and he had all these, you know, headaches and cramps. And so I basically treated his biology. Turned out he had a leaky gut and food sensitivities and lead toxicity, and he, he ate a total junk food diet, so he was so nutritionally deficient in omega-3s and zinc and magnesium, B vitamins. And so we just fixed all that. We just cleaned up his gut. We gave him good food. We gave him good nutrients. Two months later, he came back, and all of his symptoms were gone physically, and all of his mental symptoms were gone. And his handwriting, which we can show in the, in the, in the show notes and on the video, the, his handwriting went from being illegible at 12 years old to being perfect penmanship, and it wasn't 'cause I gave him handwriting lessons. [laughs]

    15. JS

      Wow.

    16. MH

      It was 'cause his brain went from completely chaotic and disorganized to completely coherent and functional.

    17. JS

      Yeah, I hope everyone who's listening to this, if you're struggling with anything based on your mental health, your brain health, I hope that you're also going to take some time out to research on your diet, to, of course, read this book because I just want people to make that connection quicker.

    18. MH

      Yeah.

    19. JS

      Uh, I, and I spent years doing the opposite, Mark, like, and that's why I'm so fascinated by all the work you do.

    20. MH

      Yeah.

    21. JS

      Because I spent years, and I got to a place where I'd mastered my mind, but my body was just not catching up.

    22. MH

      Right. Exactly.

    23. JS

      And so I could take care of my thoughts and my emotions and my feelings, but my body couldn't match that pace. And so I've kinda come the other way.

    24. MH

      Yeah, it's great. It's great.

    25. JS

      And, um, hey, I, I want to-

    26. MH

      Whatever doorway you get is a good one.

    27. JS

      Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Uh, you talk to us about... And again, we're only doing a very high level of the book because I want people to get a sense of-

    28. MH

      Yeah

    29. JS

      ... some of the depth of what you talk about in this

  10. 51:47 – 1:00:07

    The core biological systems of the body

    1. JS

      book. Could you explain to us again at that top level what the seven core biological systems are?

    2. MH

      Yeah. So this is really important, Jay.

    3. JS

      Yeah.

    4. MH

      So, so like I said, you know, what are the laws of biology? What's the mind of God? And right now we're going, undergoing a revolution in medicine that's as big as anything that's ever happened in history, you know, from the discovery of the germ. It, it, it's remarkable how we're now understanding the body as an ecosystem. This is called systems biology or s- or functional medicine is the clinical model that applies this. And so the hallmarks of aging are, are what these emerging scientists in longevity are talking about that go wrong with aging. But what is causing them is what functional medicine's really good at figuring out. And what happens is that these seven core systems in the body that go wrong, they get out of balance. Just like in Ayurveda they have the doshas.

    5. JS

      Mm-hmm.

    6. MH

      You know, or in Chinese medicine they have the five elements, or... And we have, you know, the yin and yang, and we have the, you know, imbalances and deficiencies or excesses, and this is exactly how the body works. These ancient technologies from thousands of years ago figured it out. We just now are putting scientific language on it and understanding. And so there's, instead of 155,000 diseases, there's these disturbances in these core systems, many of which are also the hallmarks of aging, like your microbiome, your immune system, how you make energy, your mitochondria, your detox system, how you get rid of toxins, your transport system, how you move things around in your body and through your circulation and lymph system. Uh, communication systems, which is your hormones, your neurotransmitters, your peptides, all the millions of chemical reactions that happen all the time that have to be coordinated. And your structural system, from your biomechanical structure, your skeleton, to your subcellular structures. All of those systems have to be in balance for you to be healthy.

    7. JS

      Yeah.

    8. MH

      And so as a functional medicine doctor, as a systems thinker, I look at how do we find out why they're out of balance? How do we take out the stuff that's causing imbalance and put back the stuff that's creating balance? So let's say the gut, for example. Well, you might have food sensitivities. You might have bad bugs growing in your gut, so you gotta remove those things. You gotta remove those foods like gluten or dairy, and you gotta get rid of, um, you know, the bad bugs that are growing in the gut. Maybe you need some herbs or an even an antifungal or an, an, an antibiotic. And then how do you repair that? How do you give the gut what it needs? You need prebiotics and probiotics and polyphenols, and you need the right nutrients like zinc and vitamin A and, and omega-3 fats to help the gut heal, and glutamine. So we know what the ingredients are for each to take out and put in. And so we apply that to each thing, including the immune system. I mean, uh, you know, one of the most shocking things to me during COVID was that, you know, we are about 4% of the world's population in America, and we have an extraordinary healthcare system and spend twice as much as any other developed nation, and we were 16% of the cases of COVID and deaths. So 4% of the population of the world, four times as many deaths as we probably should have had, and we probably should be even less than the rest of the world 'cause of our healthcare system. Why was that? It's because- Our diet is so bad that we're pre-inflamed. So when COVID came, it was like throwing gas on the fire, and we were pre-inflamed 'cause we were obese, 'cause we were chronically ill, 'cause we have all these diseases of inflammation. And so that's really why, and it was, it was sort of shocking to me that, that, you know, nobody has talked about this, and yet we have the power to regulate our immune systems by what we're eating. Sugar suppresses your immune system. [laughs] You know? Being overweight suppresses your immune system. Even the response to vaccines, if you're overweight or you're elderly, because you're inflamed, your immune system doesn't respond to vaccines.

    9. JS

      I think everyone's experiencing a, a low immunity, you know, in, in general as well because of all these factors-

    10. MH

      Yeah

    11. JS

      ... that you've talked about today as well. And I just want everyone to see, I wanna point this out for everyone who's watching the show. If you're listening, then I'm explaining what I'm doing. I just wanna show this to everyone who's watching because you can actually see how the book breaks down the Young Forever program, which is the program that Mark recommends in the book Young Forever. And what I love about it is that as you're flicking through this book, you're just gonna see a very systematic and formulaic breakdown-

    12. MH

      Yeah, it's-

    13. JS

      ... of the system. It's not just-

    14. MH

      It's a how-to manual-

    15. JS

      Yes

    16. MH

      ... for how your body works, so. [laughs]

    17. JS

      Yes, yes. And I just-

    18. MH

      If you didn't, if you didn't get born with that instruction manual, this is a good one. [laughs]

    19. JS

      Yeah. And I wanna point that out to everyone who's sitting there going, like me, often I can get, you know, I can often start thinking, "Wow, this is a lot of information. I don't know enough. Where do I start? What do I do?" But the book, to me, it does a great job at simplifying it.

    20. MH

      Yeah.

    21. JS

      And it's-

    22. MH

      I mean, the book is really s- uh, three parts. The first is, is the why.

    23. JS

      Yeah.

    24. MH

      Like, why are we aging? What's going on? A little bit of science, geeky. If you don't like any of that, you can skip it.

    25. JS

      [laughs] I love that stuff, yeah.

    26. MH

      But I like to know why.

    27. JS

      Yeah.

    28. MH

      And then there's the what, like, there's the what to do.

    29. JS

      Yeah.

    30. MH

      And then there's the how to do it.

  11. 1:00:07 – 1:06:00

    Dr. Hyman on Final Five

    1. JS

      Uh, Mark, we end every episode with a final five, uh, which are a fast five, so every answer has to be given in one word to one sentence maximum.

    2. MH

      Okay, got it.

    3. JS

      Um, and so Mark, these are your final five. Uh, question one, what's the best health advice or diet advice you've ever received?

    4. MH

      It's probably Michael Pollan's eat food, not too much, mostly plants.

    5. JS

      [laughs]

    6. MH

      It's just so simple, so clear, uh, and it needs to be defined, like, eat food. What food? Real food.

    7. JS

      Yeah.

    8. MH

      Whole food. You know? But-

    9. JS

      Yeah

    10. MH

      ... yeah.

    11. JS

      I love it. Uh, second question. What's the worst- ... advice you've ever had, health advice you've ever had, received, or been given?

    12. MH

      Oh, God. Eat a high-carb diet. 6 to 11 servings of bread, rice, cereal, and pasta a day to save your life, which has caused more deaths and more disease than almost anything in history, which was the government's food pyramid in 1992.

    13. JS

      And that's so common in all meals today, right?

    14. MH

      Oh, it's terrible.

    15. JS

      Yeah.

    16. MH

      Yeah, we're still, we're still... Yeah, we're still promoting that stuff. It's not great.

    17. JS

      Question number three, uh, what's something that you used to think was true about health but now you've changed your mind about it?

    18. MH

      I think I used to believe, this is a very controversial topic, which was much healthier to be a vegan or vegetarian. And I think as I've sort of gotten to understand the science and the biology of longevity, that we need adequate protein as we get older. And if we don't eat enough, we can't make muscle, and muscle is the currency of aging. So I think it's eating the right stuff. And, you know, I think if people have a moral issue with animals, I, I... We can work around it. But I think from a health perspective, eating regeneratively raised animals that are well cared for, that are humanely raised, that regenerate ecosystems, increase biodiversity, reverse climate change, and create nutrient-dense food is, is really a, was a big shift for me from being a vegan, vegetarian to kind of seeing what happened when I did that.

    19. JS

      Amazing. Thank you for that answer. Uh, and I'll pick your brain about that.

    20. MH

      Please.

    21. JS

      Uh, question number four, what's the smallest change someone can make today to experience some positive impact in their way they feel?

    22. MH

      I, I think it's do one small thing. You know, when they say floss one tooth?

    23. JS

      Yeah, yeah.

    24. MH

      [laughs] Do one pushup.

    25. JS

      Yeah.

    26. MH

      And tomorrow do two.

    27. JS

      Yeah.

    28. MH

      So start with small things. You know, uh, you know, maybe you're drinking 12 Cokes a day. Go to 11.

    29. JS

      [laughs]

    30. MH

      [laughs] Go to 10. You know?

Episode duration: 1:06:00

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