"These HEALTHY Foods Will COMPLETELY HEAL YOUR BODY!" | Mark Hyman & Lewis Howes

1. 0:00 – 3:49

   How Food Drives Mood and Brain Inflammation

   1. MHDr. Mark Hyman0:00

      Uh, I see panic attacks, anxiety disorders often caused by the food we're eating.

   2. LHLewis Howes0:04

      What would you say are the three foods we should all stay away from in order to increase the happiness of our mental health?

   3. MHDr. Mark Hyman0:13

      Oh, that's not hard. So [laughs] ...

   4. LHLewis Howes0:15

      [laughs]

   5. MHDr. Mark Hyman0:16

      Uh...

   6. LHLewis Howes0:16

      I think you gotta have a dream. The school of greatness. Really?

   7. MHDr. Mark Hyman0:19

      [laughs] Yeah.

   8. LHLewis Howes0:20

      Please welcome Lewis Howes. How much does food play a part with mental health in your mind?

   9. MHDr. Mark Hyman0:26

      Absolutely. You know, Lewis, we are in a mental health crisis. Uh, we are in a immune crisis. We are in a food crisis. [laughs] We are in a social crisis that, that is s- sort of the likes of which we- I don't think we've seen in our lifetime.

   10. LHLewis Howes0:41

       Mm-hmm.

   11. MHDr. Mark Hyman0:41

       Uh, maybe back in the '60s it was a little bit riotous. I was around then, but I was like eight. [laughs]

   12. LHLewis Howes0:45

       [laughs]

   13. MHDr. Mark Hyman0:47

       And, and I think what's happened is that we've, we've gotten so, um, confused about what to eat and, and, and our diet has changed so much that it's driving so many chronic diseases, and most people don't understand the connection between food and mood.

   14. LHLewis Howes1:01

       Hmm.

   15. MHDr. Mark Hyman1:02

       So to your question, how does food affect our brain? Well, I wrote a book about 13 years ago called The UltraMind Solution about how the body affects the mind. We often know about the mind-body effect, which is real, but there's also the other direction going on. And it turns out that food is probably the biggest driver of dysfunction in the brain when it comes to mood, behavior, attention, memory. And, and this is not just sort of hypothetical, but there's a whole department, for example, at, uh, Harvard of nutritional psychiatry. There's a whole-

   16. LHLewis Howes1:35

       Hmm

   17. MHDr. Mark Hyman1:35

       ... department at Stanford of metabolic psychiatry. I've had both of them on my podcast, The Doctor's Farmacy. The doctors from those institutions are talking about the role of food in, in the brain and the mood. And we see depression, anxiety, irritability, stress. It turns out that when you eat the American diet, or otherwise known as the SAD diet, the standard American diet-

   18. LHLewis Howes1:55

       [laughs]

   19. MHDr. Mark Hyman1:55

       ... that, [laughs] that people, uh, are damaging their brains in ways that create inflammation in the brain. And we now know that mental illness often is an inflamed brain. You know, when you-

   20. LHLewis Howes2:07

       Hmm

   21. MHDr. Mark Hyman2:07

       ... cut yourself and you get infection, it's red and hot and sore and inflamed. If you sprain your ankle, it's sore. If you get a sore throat, it's sore and red. When your brain is inflamed, it doesn't hurt. The only way your nose, brain knows how to say ouch is by getting depressed or anxious or angry or irritable or having even more serious consequences. And so the food that we're eating, predominantly the sugar and starch and processed ingredients, additives, the lack of good fats, the predominance of bad fats and refined oils, the nutrient depletion of our diet. I mean, 95% of us are deficient probably in omega-3 fats. Uh, you know, 90-plus percent of Americans are deficient in one or more nutrients at the minimum level to prevent deficiency-

   22. LHLewis Howes2:48

       Hmm

   23. MHDr. Mark Hyman2:48

       ... which all play a role in mood, like folate, magnesium is incredible for anxiety, iron, zinc, all these, vitamin D, all these play a role in the brain function. When you hear about winter blues, you know, that's because of lack of vitamin D. So we know about this intimate connection between food and mood and, uh, nutritional status and mood. And, and the clinical trials have been really staggering, showing that people who eat a whole foods diet and get rid of the junk actually can get rid of depression. Uh, I see panic attacks, anxiety disorders often caused by the food we're eating. Just an example, when you eat sugar or starch, your cortisol level goes up, which is the stress hormone. Your adrenaline goes up. So if you eat a bagel or a cookie, your body literally has the same reaction as if you're running from a saber-toothed tiger.

   24. LHLewis Howes3:35

       Wow.

   25. MHDr. Mark Hyman3:35

       [laughs] And, and that, and that can create anxiety. It can create-

   26. LHLewis Howes3:39

       Internally with the insulin spike.

   27. MHDr. Mark Hyman3:40

       Internally.

   28. LHLewis Howes3:41

       Yeah, yeah.

   29. MHDr. Mark Hyman3:41

       Yeah. I mean, you could be totally fine and calm and take five deep breaths before your meal, but if you eat all that crap, your brain is gonna feel it, your, your body's gonna feel it. And it can prove-

2. 3:49 – 8:50

   Belly Fat Signaling and the Frontal Lobe–Amygdala Disconnect

   1. LHLewis Howes3:49

      So what hap- what happens to the brain when the, when you're eating a bagel or an ice cream cone or whatever it is, and it goes into your gut? Does it send signals to your brain, and then it starts to, uh, you know... What does that do? Is it inflame it in that moment? Does it take time to inflame something?

   2. MHDr. Mark Hyman4:06

      Yeah. So, so there's a whole cascade of things that happens when you eat mostly the starch and sugar that's 60% of our diet, right? It's ultra-processed food.

   3. LHLewis Howes4:13

      Mm-hmm.

   4. MHDr. Mark Hyman4:14

      It's the main ingredients of corn and flour and sugar that are in everything. And, and what happens is you get this spike in blood sugar, which then creates a spike in insulin. At the same time, you get an immediate spike in cortisol and adrenaline. That's the first phase of response. Of course, it affects your liver and screws up your cholesterol and all that. But what happens next is even more concerning. It, it drives all the available fuel in your bloodstream from all the food you've eaten, sugar and starch and whatever bad fats, drives it into your fat cells, and it's a one-way street into your fat cells, called your adipocytes, around your belly. Those belly fat cells. Those fat cells in turn create a whole series of chemicals, like hundreds of chemicals, hormones, inflammatory marker, markers and messengers, neurotransmitters. It's, it's quite striking when you look at... They're not just like holding up your pants. It's fat there. It's like [laughs] it's actually doing stuff. And when you eat in that way, it drives hunger, it stores fat, it shuts down your metabolism, and it slows, literally slows your metabolism. And even worse, it locks the fat cells so that fat can't get out.

   5. LHLewis Howes5:22

      Oh.

   6. MHDr. Mark Hyman5:22

      It's like a one-way turnstile, only can get in. And then on top of that, it releases all these inflammatory messenger molecules, we call them adipocytokines. They go to your brain, and they create inflammation in the brain. So it's a kind of a downstream effect of our chronic eating this way. If you have one cookie or one bagel, it's not gonna kill you, right?

   7. LHLewis Howes5:38

      Right.

   8. MHDr. Mark Hyman5:38

      But if you're constantly eating this stuff, and we're talking about the average American eats a pound, almost, of flour and sugar a day.

   9. LHLewis Howes5:47

      Wow.

   10. MHDr. Mark Hyman5:47

       A pound. Like 152 pounds of sugar and 133 pounds of flour. You add that up and it's... And I know I'm not that, eating that much and you aren't, so a lot of people are making up for the difference. [laughs]

   11. LHLewis Howes5:57

       [laughs] Right. Right. So food affects your mood for sure.

   12. MHDr. Mark Hyman6:02

       Yeah, and not, not only that, it's not even just, uh, you know, what, what it was striking, and I, I don't know if you had David Perlmutter on the show, but he wrote a book called Brain Wash, and it's, it's, it really speaks to what happens to the brain when you don't eat real whole foods and you eat too much of this, uh, American diet that we're, we're all eating. It disconnects the frontal lobe from the amygdala.

   13. LHLewis Howes6:22

       Mm.

   14. MHDr. Mark Hyman6:22

       Now, what does that mean in English? The frontal lobe is the grown-up.

   15. LHLewis Howes6:24

       Of course

   16. MHDr. Mark Hyman6:24

       ... it's the adult in the room. It's like, it's like you think, uh, you're gonna punch that guy, but you go, "I better not punch that guy," right? [laughs]

   17. LHLewis Howes6:31

       Right, right, right.

   18. MHDr. Mark Hyman6:31

       It's that, it's that, it's that adult in the room that sort of is your higher self. And the amygdala is your reptile brain, it's your lizard brain, that's gonna just run or fight or flee.

   19. LHLewis Howes6:41

       Uh-huh.

   20. MHDr. Mark Hyman6:42

       And it's... And, and what happens is literally, physiologically, these parts of the brain are connected, but when you eat crap, they get disconnected, and so you're constantly reacting from your amygdala with no grown-up in the room, which is why we see this level of divisiveness and hatred, and I mean, just all the upheaval we're seeing in society now. I think a large part of that has to do with, uh, our brains being constantly triggered by this reptilian, uh, insult that is driving, uh, behavior change. And when we look at, at, and we look at the fact of, of other data to support, it's not just a theory. In prisons, if you give prisoners healthy food, swapping out all the crap they eat in prisons, which is pretty darn bad, there's a 56% reduction in violent crime in the prisons.

   21. LHLewis Howes7:26

       Wow.

   22. MHDr. Mark Hyman7:26

       If you add a multivitamin, it's an 80% reduction.

   23. LHLewis Howes7:29

       Come on.

   24. MHDr. Mark Hyman7:30

       If you look at kids, and this is in juvenile detention centers, they've done clinical trials, 'cause they've got these people locked up, so you've got a... It's a really great kind of study. Now, these kind of studies are hard to do 'cause mostly we're free, we call them free-living humans who don't really behave and they'll do whatever they want and they don't follow-

   25. LHLewis Howes7:43

       Sure

   26. MHDr. Mark Hyman7:43

       ... the study protocol. When you're locked up, you get what you get, right?

   27. LHLewis Howes7:46

       [laughs]

   28. MHDr. Mark Hyman7:47

       And so they took these kids-

   29. LHLewis Howes7:49

       The envi- the environment's the same for everyone, yeah, all that stuff.

   30. MHDr. Mark Hyman7:51

       That's right. And they took these kids and they, and they, uh, these were kids who were disruptive, violent, aggressive, oppositional, suicidal. It was, by cleaning up their diet and giving them whole foods, there was a 91% reduction in all violent behavior. You know, oppositional behavior, ne- need for restraints went down. Suicide went down 100%. I mean, it's the third leading cause of death in that age group. It went down 100%, no, no suicides.
3. 8:50 – 13:54

   Three Foods to Avoid and the Pegan Diet Principles

   1. LHLewis Howes8:50

      What would you say are the three foods we should all stay away from in order to increase the happiness of our mental health?

   2. MHDr. Mark Hyman8:59

      Oh, that's not hard. So [laughs] ... [laughs] Uh, I mean, I, you know, I, in, in my book, The Pegan Diet, it's called 21 Practical Principles for s- uh, Reclaiming Your Health in a Nutritionally Confusing World. [laughs] And, and it's really practical, and there's a bunch of stuff's at the end, but, but I think, you know, uh, the, the, the real dangers are, one, um, high-fructose corn syrup, because anything with high-fructose corn syrup, almost by definition, is a highly processed food-

   3. LHLewis Howes9:25

      Mm

   4. MHDr. Mark Hyman9:25

      ... that comes with all kinds of other bad crap. So if you're reading labels, like if you just can eliminate that, that would be like number one.

   5. LHLewis Howes9:31

      That's number one.

   6. MHDr. Mark Hyman9:31

      Number two would be trans fats, hydrogenated fats, which-

   7. LHLewis Howes9:35

      What is that? What's good-

   8. MHDr. Mark Hyman9:35

      Really-

   9. LHLewis Howes9:35

      What's that in? What foods is that in? Is that processed, packaged foods?

   10. MHDr. Mark Hyman9:38

       What?

   11. LHLewis Howes9:38

       Is that-

   12. MHDr. Mark Hyman9:39

       Hydrogenated fats or sugar?

   13. LHLewis Howes9:40

       Is that fried food?

   14. MHDr. Mark Hyman9:41

       Hydro-

   15. LHLewis Howes9:41

       Is that French fries? Yeah, what are-

   16. MHDr. Mark Hyman9:42

       So hyd- hydrogenated fats have literally been, have been banned by the FDA, essentially ruled not safe to eat. But they're still out there, okay? There's, you can still find them. It's less, but it's... And they used to be really, that's, it makes Crisco shortening. So anything that comes with a baked good-

   17. LHLewis Howes9:57

       Mm

   18. MHDr. Mark Hyman9:57

       ... or any, any processed food. Uh, and the third thing would be, you know, you should only eat foods with ingredients that you would have in your cupboard, can pronounce and recognize.

   19. LHLewis Howes10:08

       Mm.

   20. MHDr. Mark Hyman10:08

       In other words, would you have butylated tr- hydroxy toluene in your cupboard that you sprinkle on your salad-

   21. LHLewis Howes10:14

       [laughs] No

   22. MHDr. Mark Hyman10:14

       ... you know? Which is also known as BHT. It's a preservative that's been linked to cancer. It's banned in Europe. We have it in everything here. You know, so if you wouldn't have, you know, azodicarbonamide in your cupboard that you would use in your stir fries, you probably shouldn't eat it. And yet this is in so much of our foods. In fact, uh, in, in America it's legal. This is an ingredient that's used in breads to make them fluffier.

   23. LHLewis Howes10:36

       Mm-hmm.

   24. MHDr. Mark Hyman10:37

       Subway used it in their Subway sandwiches-

   25. LHLewis Howes10:38

       Didn't they have to take it out?

   26. MHDr. Mark Hyman10:39

       ... in their flatbread.

   27. LHLewis Howes10:39

       Didn't Bari get it taken out?

   28. MHDr. Mark Hyman10:41

       Yeah, yeah.

   29. LHLewis Howes10:41

       Yeah.

   30. MHDr. Mark Hyman10:41

       So our friend, our friend shamed them into taking it out, but it's still legal here. It's not illegal. They just, she just shamed them publicly by trying to eat her yoga mat in front of the Subway-
4. 13:54 – 15:42

   Personalized Nutrition: Listening to Your Own Body

   1. MHDr. Mark Hyman13:54

      so she wasn't overweight at all, but metabolically she was super unhealthy. She had, you know, acne and she had, her gut was a mess, and she had very low protein, like very, very low amino acids. She had very low vitamin D, extremely low B12-

   2. LHLewis Howes14:07

      Mm

   3. MHDr. Mark Hyman14:07

      ... very low iodine, very low zinc. I mean, and, and, um, you know, sh- she was e- extremely unwell a- and, and her diet was just so, uh, not fit for her.

   4. LHLewis Howes14:18

      Mm.

   5. MHDr. Mark Hyman14:18

      So we've had, we had to sort of upregulate it and change it a little bit. I had to get her on some different protein shakes, which she needed. I had to upregulate her vitamins. I had to sort of get her off the sugar. I mean, it, it, but I, you know, it takes a lot of work. So the key is how do you personalize a diet and get away from the, uh, basically religious nutrition that we [laughs] all have?

   6. LHLewis Howes14:37

      Which is either all vegan, vegetarian, keto-

   7. MHDr. Mark Hyman14:40

      Right, right

   8. LHLewis Howes14:40

      ... carnivore. There's all these extreme diets, right?

   9. MHDr. Mark Hyman14:42

      Yeah, exactly, yeah. And, and, and again, I only encourage people to listen to the smartest doctor in the room, which is their own body.

   10. LHLewis Howes14:49

       Theirself.

   11. MHDr. Mark Hyman14:50

       Right?

   12. LHLewis Howes14:50

       Yeah, yeah, yeah.

   13. MHDr. Mark Hyman14:50

       Like, how do you feel? Uh, do you feel great? Do you feel bad? How's your stomach? How's your head? How you're clear? You have energy? Are you... I mean, what, what is happening to you? So I think it's important to understand that, that, that, um, you know, we are all different and that the future of medicine is personalized medicine. There's a whole section here on personalized nutrition and how do you identify your particular needs by various kinds of testing, whether it's genetic testing, whether it's metabolic testing, food sensitivity testing, and how do you actually figure out how to dial in your perfect diet.

   14. LHLewis Howes15:18

       Everyone's kind of swearing by their way is the way, uh, but it seems so extreme in my mind, you know? And I-

   15. MHDr. Mark Hyman15:25

       Yeah

   16. LHLewis Howes15:25

       ... and I, I empathize with vegans and I'm like, "Yeah, I don't wanna hurt animals either," and I, you know? But then I've tried it for a while and I'm also like, "Gosh, but I miss meat." And it's like-

   17. MHDr. Mark Hyman15:35

       Yeah, yeah

   18. LHLewis Howes15:35

       ... what is the way? And what I'm hearing you say is that there is not one size fits all. You have to really figure out what works for you.

5. 15:42 – 21:43

   Regenerative Agriculture, Meat Quality and Soil

   1. MHDr. Mark Hyman15:42

      Yeah. The, the one size that fits all is quality, is, is, is understanding food is information. Just meat, for example. So feedlot meat is an abomination. It's, it's horribly cruel to the animals. It, it, it, it grows the animals in ways that are extremely destructive to the environment by, uh, these monocrop corn and soy fields we use to grow feed, the feedlots that produce tremendous amounts of pollution, all the hormones and antibiotics that we use, and the quality of the meat is very different. And the, um, you know, so it's basically bad for you, bad for the planet, bad for the animals. [laughs]

   2. LHLewis Howes16:15

      Sure.

   3. MHDr. Mark Hyman16:15

      They should be banned 100%.

   4. LHLewis Howes16:17

      Yeah, yeah.

   5. MHDr. Mark Hyman16:17

      But that doesn't necessarily mean that eating a wild buffalo is bad for your health, [laughs] right?

   6. LHLewis Howes16:22

      Mm-hmm. Sure.

   7. MHDr. Mark Hyman16:23

      And, or eating a fully grass fed-

   8. LHLewis Howes16:24

      Wild salmon or something, yeah

   9. MHDr. Mark Hyman16:25

      ... yeah, or eating a fully grass-finished, regeneratively raised cow or animal is bad for you. In fact, there's a, a chapter in the book, uh, one of the principles is, is, you know, eat, is, is meat medicine, right?

   10. LHLewis Howes16:37

       Mm.

   11. MHDr. Mark Hyman16:37

       And, and it's kind of a joke in a way, like a little bit of provocative comment, but what's really fascinating to me, there's an article just published a couple of days ago, another one, about how if you look at, you know, feedlot meat, it produce inflammation in the body. It, it, it actually is, is really not that great for us. But if you look at these animals that have foraged on hundreds of different plants with all different phytonutrient co- compositions and all different vitamin and mineral contents, they literally seek out and forage medicines in their diet. And there's a guy I had on my podcast, Fred Provenza, who has studied rangeland animals his whole life and is working with researchers at Duke, and they've discovered in properly raised meat actually phytochemicals, and this blew my mind. Meaning you have plant compounds like catechins that you find in green tea at the same levels in certain meat depending on what they eat.

   12. LHLewis Howes17:28

       Wow.

   13. MHDr. Mark Hyman17:28

       So you, you have all these antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, detoxifying compounds found in meat that's raised properly. Uh, and the other argument obviously is climate. And yes, you know, uh, I think the, the, the, the factory farming of animals is an abomination and it is a huge contributor to climate change, um, and, and environmental degradation, ecological collapse. However, that doesn't mean that, you know, we had 169 million ruminants roaming around the plains in America hundreds of years ago. I mean, we shot them, we shot them all. Like, we, like, we basically, Buffalo Bill said, "For every, every buffalo killed is an Indian dead." And they literally decimated like 60 million buffalo to down to a few hundred.

   14. LHLewis Howes18:08

       That's crazy.

   15. MHDr. Mark Hyman18:08

       Uh, to, yeah. And, and so those, those buffalo and those ruminants put in 50 to, 8 to 50 feet of topsoil across America, which is why we had such rich agricultural lands. Now we've lost over a third of that topsoil because of our farming methods like monocropping and tilling that's degenerated the soil so that the soil can't hold the carbon because- Plants breathe carbon from the atmosphere. They suck it into the plant, it goes down to the ground into the roots, and it feeds the microbiome of the soil, and the microbiome of the soil then feeds the plants, 'cause you need... It's this, it's this beautiful symbiotic relationship where the i- nutrients from the soil cannot be extracted unless the microbiome is healthy in the soil. So you get, we get all these nutrient-depleted plants, and then we lose the carbon in the s- in the soil, and we end up with, you know, climate change at an accelerated level. In fact, the food system itself end to end is the number one cause of climate change, by about 50% of it. Not, not even fossil fuels.

   16. LHLewis Howes19:02

       Food. Food is. Wow.

   17. MHDr. Mark Hyman19:03

       Yeah, more than fossil fuels. 'Cause when you look at end-to-end, you know, factory farming, deforestation, soil erosion, food waste, you know, refrigeration, transport, all that stuff, it's, it's huge.

   18. LHLewis Howes19:14

       Mm-hmm.

   19. MHDr. Mark Hyman19:14

       And so, yes, factory farming should be banned, but it turns out that regenerative agriculture, and, and I talk about how to be a regenitarian in the book, which is a really kind of interesting concept that nobody can disagree with, right? You wanna regenerate human health, you wanna regenerate planetary and ecological health.

   20. LHLewis Howes19:29

       Yeah.

   21. MHDr. Mark Hyman19:29

       Who's gonna be against that?

   22. LHLewis Howes19:30

       Right, right.

   23. MHDr. Mark Hyman19:30

       Like, you can be vegan or paleo, but, like, you can't be against that.

   24. LHLewis Howes19:33

       Yeah. [laughs]

   25. MHDr. Mark Hyman19:34

       It's like being against motherhood or apple pie.

   26. LHLewis Howes19:36

       [laughs]

   27. MHDr. Mark Hyman19:36

       So [laughs] and I, and so I, I basically create, um, a framework of understanding the science around how if we use animals in an, in a ecosystem on a farm, we can dramatically accelerate the production of soil.

   28. LHLewis Howes19:51

       Mm-hmm.

   29. MHDr. Mark Hyman19:51

       And Gabe Brown is a s- is a farmer in North Dakota who was a traditional farmer, monocrop, went through cycles of destruction of his farm through hail and storms and droughts, and was gonna go bankrupt, and then discovered the writings of Thomas Jefferson, and discovered that the practices that they used a long time ago to preserve and conserve soil, cover crops, crop rotations, you know, putting in animals as part of the ecosystem and having roots in the ground at all time, all these very simple ideas that are regenerative agriculture. And he was able to turn his farm around and has built 29 inches of topsoil, makes, makes 20 times his n- what his neighbor does in terms of profit, makes more food, better food, does not use any chemicals, inputs, or water. It's unbelievable, and it's, and it's something that is now scaling up across the country. And the UN says that if we took... And by the way, 40% of agricultural land around the world is not suitable for growing crops. So even if you're a vegan and you wanna grow crops, you can't do that on that land, and it's just going to waste. And what animals do is they have, like, all these stomachs and the ability to eat stuff that is in- inedible to us and turn it into incredibly high-quality nutrients and food.

   30. LHLewis Howes20:57

       Dirt and grass and yeah.
6. 21:43 – 24:05

   Tasting Wild Meats and the Native American Diet

   1. LHLewis Howes21:43

      Kangaroo meat?

   2. MHDr. Mark Hyman21:44

      Same... Well, and it was done in Australia-

   3. LHLewis Howes21:46

      Interesting

   4. MHDr. Mark Hyman21:46

      ... where they have a lot of kangaroos. [laughs]

   5. LHLewis Howes21:47

      Wow.

   6. MHDr. Mark Hyman21:49

      You can actually go in the grocery store and buy kangaroo meat there.

   7. LHLewis Howes21:51

      No way.

   8. MHDr. Mark Hyman21:51

      It's interesting. Yeah, yeah.

   9. LHLewis Howes21:53

      I wonder what that tastes like. That's interesting. Have you had it before?

   10. MHDr. Mark Hyman21:56

       Uh, I've had, I've... No, but I've had, I've had, um, I've had the llamas from, um, from South America.

   11. LHLewis Howes22:02

       What was that like?

   12. MHDr. Mark Hyman22:02

       Guanacos. The guanacos. It was incredibly delicious.

   13. LHLewis Howes22:05

       Wow. [laughs]

   14. MHDr. Mark Hyman22:05

       It was, uh, it was Patagonia has a guanaco.

   15. LHLewis Howes22:08

       Wow.

   16. MHDr. Mark Hyman22:08

       That was the closest thing I've had to a kangaroo. [laughs]

   17. LHLewis Howes22:10

       That's interesting.

   18. MHDr. Mark Hyman22:11

       But I've had ostrich. I've had king- I've had buffalo. I've had elk. I've had venison.

   19. LHLewis Howes22:16

       What's the best-tasting meat you've ever had?

   20. MHDr. Mark Hyman22:18

       I like elk. Oh, God, a good elk chop is, like, the best. I just don't know why, but it's so good. [laughs]

   21. LHLewis Howes22:24

       Interesting. It tastes better than a-

   22. MHDr. Mark Hyman22:25

       Yeah

   23. LHLewis Howes22:26

       ... a steak?

   24. MHDr. Mark Hyman22:27

       Yeah, I really do think so. And there's this company, I have nothing to do with this company, but a friend of mine turned me onto it, called Wild Idea Buffalo, uh, which is basically grass-finished wild buffalo, and they sh- harvest in really humane ways, and it's super yummy and tasty and tender and delicious, and, you know, you're eating basically like the Native Americans did, so.

   25. LHLewis Howes22:47

       Wow. Okay.

   26. MHDr. Mark Hyman22:47

       I, I mean, honestly, the, the, the Plains Indians, the Native Americans, they lived, um, very long. They were, at the turn of the last century, they were the longest-lived people, uh, had the highest number of centenarians-

   27. LHLewis Howes22:59

       Really?

   28. MHDr. Mark Hyman22:59

       ... yeah, in 1900. And pretty much all they ate was buffalo, with a few berries and seeds and stuff [laughs] that they gathered.

   29. LHLewis Howes23:05

       Did they have fruit, or, or did they not have fruit?

   30. MHDr. Mark Hyman23:07

       A little bit, yeah. You know, you've heard of pemmican, right? You know what pemmican is?
7. 24:05 – 31:28

   Hormesis, Wild Plants and Himalayan Tartary Buckwheat

   1. MHDr. Mark Hyman24:05

      Well, all those foods were so more nutrient-dense. I mean, a- another example of food is medicine, you know, we talked about the, the, the meat is medicine, but, you know, one of the most exciting things I've, I've heard about recently is, you know... Well, here, here's a concept. When, when you look at plants, the harder... or animals, the harder they have to work to survive- ... the more nutritious they are. So-

   2. LHLewis Howes24:26

      So what are those plant-

   3. MHDr. Mark Hyman24:27

      If you-

   4. LHLewis Howes24:27

      What are those plants?

   5. MHDr. Mark Hyman24:28

      So if you're eating a monocrop vegetable or plant or grain, it's the worst. It's almost devoid of nutrients. It's bred for starch and sugar. When-

   6. LHLewis Howes24:35

      Monocrop means?

   7. MHDr. Mark Hyman24:37

      Meaning like you have a giant corn field or a giant soybean field or-

   8. LHLewis Howes24:40

      It's one, one crop-

   9. MHDr. Mark Hyman24:40

      You know, you, you have like-

   10. LHLewis Howes24:41

       ... acres

   11. MHDr. Mark Hyman24:42

       ... you know, right, you have like, you know, 2,000 acres of broccoli or [laughs] whatever, you know?

   12. LHLewis Howes24:46

       That's the least nutrient dense broccoli.

   13. MHDr. Mark Hyman24:49

       Yes, yes. And then if you get a... And then if you get, then if you get organic, a little better. If you get regenerative, it's even better, 'cause the soil is so nutrient dense. 'Cause the soil, think about like, uh, these traditional crops you're growing now, they're grown basically in dead soil.

   14. LHLewis Howes25:02

       Yeah.

   15. MHDr. Mark Hyman25:03

       And all the nutrients have to go in. So it's like, it's, it's like they're getting the NPK, which is essentially the, the, the basic nu- nutrients for plants, nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, but they don't get all the other stuff, right? And so they don't get all the, the rich things that come from the microbiome of the soil, extracting all these incredible minerals, nutrients. I mean, your broccoli today is 50% less nutritious than it was 50 years ago. So they don't, they don't get all these incredible nutrients from the, from the soil. And, and, and so when you're looking at these incredible, uh, stresses on plants that happen, for example, in a regenerative system, which is a little harder for them to grow, or a wild system, the nutrient content is so much higher.

   16. LHLewis Howes25:43

       Mm.

   17. MHDr. Mark Hyman25:43

       Because w- there's this phenomena in science, in medicine called hormesis. Hormesis means a stress, but then that stress makes you stronger. So it's essentially what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right? So if you lift weights, you know, you're gonna tear your muscles, but then they'll get stronger. If you do interval training, you're gonna like feel like crap, and it's hard, it's stress on you, but it'll make you stronger. Or if you, you know, do any kind of stress to your system, it actually can create a, a, a rebound effect. Like ozone does that, and many other therapies will literally create a stress, and then the body will come back and fight it.

   18. LHLewis Howes26:13

       Mm-hmm.

   19. MHDr. Mark Hyman26:14

       Wild plants are, are the most nutritious. So a wild blueberry is better than a regenerative blueberry, better than organic blueberry, better than a field, uh, I mean a monocrop blueberry farm, right, that's full of pesticides and chemicals-

   20. LHLewis Howes26:26

       Sure

   21. MHDr. Mark Hyman26:26

       ... and so on.

   22. LHLewis Howes26:27

       So not all-

   23. MHDr. Mark Hyman26:27

       Then there's this pl-

   24. LHLewis Howes26:27

       Not all broccoli is created equal.

   25. MHDr. Mark Hyman26:29

       No, not all plants are created... So I like to eat weird food. I like to eat strange food. I'm here in Hawaii and, and I'm going to the farmers market, and I'm eating stuff I never ate before. Like I don't even know what half of these fruits are. I had a Surinam cherry, which was like a explosion of flavor and color. I'd never even eaten or heard of it in my life. So I'm like big, big on eating weird food. Uh, we eat about three crops, 60% of our diet is three crops, basically corn, wheat, and soy. And in, uh, the rest of the world it's often rice. Uh, and then about 12 plants comprise the other part of our diet. And there's like 800 species of, of plants we used to eat. There's many livestock species. We've lost 90% of our edible plant species, 50% of our livestock species, so we're eating all this mono junk. When you go to Europe, you get a lot more, you know, artisanal stuff and... So anyway, what's amazing about, um, food is that when you eat the right foods, and you're eating quality foods, you a- literally can, can activate all these healing mechanisms in your body-

   26. LHLewis Howes27:19

       Mm

   27. MHDr. Mark Hyman27:20

       ... by using the plant's defense mechanisms to help you. So here's a really cool story that explains how food is medicine, and last night, you know what I had for dinner?

   28. LHLewis Howes27:29

       What's that?

   29. MHDr. Mark Hyman27:30

       I had pancakes.

   30. LHLewis Howes27:31

       Ooh, that sounds good. [laughs]
8. 31:28 – 34:21

   Phytochemicals, Soil Rebuilding and the Impossible Burger Comparison

   1. MHDr. Mark Hyman31:28

      So I, I think we are just beginning to understand this. In fact, the, uh, the Rockefeller Foundation has funded hundreds of millions of dollars into studying what they call the periodic table of phytonutrients, which means they're classifying the 25,000 plus phytochemicals found in plant foods. And everybody's heard about this. Oh, wine has resveratrol, and green tea has catechins, and broccoli has sulforaphane, and, you know, Himalayan tartary buckwheat has, you know, a whole list of stuff, right? So we're kind of familiar with the idea of phytochemicals. Why do you eat blueberries? 'Cause they have proanthocyanidins, right? But they're, they're cataloging all of these, and there's many unknown ones. Like in Himalayan tartary buckwheat, we're discovering ones we never even knew about before, and we wanna be eating these. These are the, these are the medicines that are in food.

   2. LHLewis Howes32:13

      Mm.

   3. MHDr. Mark Hyman32:13

      This is when the, the animals are foraging around, eating this, they literally can get these in their meat. And the thing about the, the climate change thing, when you actually look at, at the regenerative agriculture model for raising animals... Now, you don't have to eat them or not, right? You don't have to eat them, but you have to include them in the, in the cycle because without them, you cannot build soil at a rapid rate, right? We've lost a third of our topsoil.

   4. LHLewis Howes32:37

      Mm.

   5. MHDr. Mark Hyman32:38

      We are projected to lose all of it within 60 to 80 harvests. This is according to the UN and also an Obama report, uh, from, from Soil. So the only way to rebuild soil is to include animals in the process of agriculture.

   6. LHLewis Howes32:51

      By, by having the manure, by having-

   7. MHDr. Mark Hyman32:53

      Yeah, yeah. So you poo, and pee, and move around. They move around like in this, uh, we call it adaptive grazing, uh, or, uh, there's different, different terms for it. But essentially, it's, it's a way of, of raising animals in herds and moving them around quickly in different fields, not letting them overgraze, and they chomp down and... Like the, like the buffalo did or the elk did. They'd move, they'd eat, and they'd move to the next spot, and they wouldn't ruin the land. They would j-

   8. LHLewis Howes33:13

      Mm

   9. MHDr. Mark Hyman33:13

      ... and that peeing and pooing, and their hoofs digging in, the saliva from their mouth, that saliva would literally fertil- like makes the plants grow more. It's like, it's like fertilizer for the plants. So they, they get all the saliva, and then the plants come back stronger, and they put more roots down, and it pulls more carbon in the atmosphere, and it creates this virtuous cycle. So if you're looking at, for example, eating a vegan burger, plant, uh, plant-based burger, like an Impossible Burger, yeah, it's better than a feedlot burger, but they're growing the soy with glyphosate-rich monocrop culture, uh, soy cultures and it's, it's destroying the soil, it's destroying the microbiome of the soil. The glyphosate destroys your microbiome. But in terms of climate change, it, it adds three and a half kilos of carbon to the environment.

   10. LHLewis Howes33:51

       Mm.

   11. MHDr. Mark Hyman33:51

       Whereas a regeneratively raised beef burger removes three and a half kilos of carbon.

   12. LHLewis Howes33:55

       Mm.

   13. MHDr. Mark Hyman33:55

       So it's seven car- kilos of carbon, kilograms of carbon less than-

   14. LHLewis Howes34:01

       Mm

   15. MHDr. Mark Hyman34:01

       ... a f- uh, Impossible Burger. So we have to sort of get into the nuances a little bit and, and that's why I like to just people to eat real food and follow the principles of nature. And, uh, and, and it's amazing. Not only will it be good for the animals and good for the planet, but it will regenerate your health, and that's really what I see with my patients, that the food is the most powerful drug on the planet.

9. 34:21 – 38:21

   Longevity: Lifestyle, Hacks and Social Connection

   1. LHLewis Howes34:21

      What are you doing personally to help with, uh, staying young, anti-aging? What... Beyond food, are you doing stem cell?

   2. MHDr. Mark Hyman34:29

      Yes.

   3. LHLewis Howes34:30

      Bone mar-

   4. MHDr. Mark Hyman34:30

      Yeah, so I actually, I actually-

   5. LHLewis Howes34:31

      Bone marrow

   6. MHDr. Mark Hyman34:31

      ... I have-

   7. LHLewis Howes34:31

      Bone marrow. Everything you're doing.

   8. MHDr. Mark Hyman34:33

      Yeah. [laughs] I have a, I have a, uh... In the book, I have a whole section on how to eat for longevity.

   9. LHLewis Howes34:37

      Okay.

   10. MHDr. Mark Hyman34:37

       So that's, you know, that's a lot of the principles there. Uh, but in addition to the food... And I think if, if you were to pick the number one, two, and three thing around longevity would be your diet.

   11. LHLewis Howes34:47

       Yeah. Really?

   12. MHDr. Mark Hyman34:47

       And then, you know... Yeah, for sure. I mean, you cannot exercise your way out of a bad diet. I can't, I can't-

   13. LHLewis Howes34:52

       I hope I look as good as you when I'm your age, so.

   14. MHDr. Mark Hyman34:53

       Ha. I'm 61.

   15. LHLewis Howes34:55

       I... It's unbelievable, man.

   16. MHDr. Mark Hyman34:56

       [laughs]

   17. LHLewis Howes34:57

       It's great.

   18. MHDr. Mark Hyman34:57

       You just... I've been working out, yeah. So I think exercise obviously is really important, sleep, meditation, all those things. Those are the foundational things.

   19. LHLewis Howes35:04

       Mm-hmm.

   20. MHDr. Mark Hyman35:04

       And then there's all the, the hacks, right? And I think there's a whole class of things that people are using from things like NAD to peptides, to exosomes, to hyperbaric chambers, to ozone. I think these are, we're all, where these are all around the corner and, and I, I use a lot of them personally. I use ozone, I use peptides, I'll use exosomes. Uh, I'd love to get a hyperbaric chamber, but I can't get that. You know, but there, there are, there's a lot of, um, there's a lot of really cool things out there around longevity and I think... Uh, we just launched our Longevity Roadmap docuseries, which discusses all this sort of emerging technology around aging-

   21. LHLewis Howes35:37

       Interesting

   22. MHDr. Mark Hyman35:37

       ... and people are, I think, uh... It's called Longevity Roadmap. I think they just Google it.

   23. LHLewis Howes35:41

       Okay. Yeah, that's interesting.

   24. MHDr. Mark Hyman35:42

       Yeah.

   25. LHLewis Howes35:42

       What would you say are the, the, the three things you, you would keep doing for as long as you could to help you with anti-aging and, and living longer, and, uh, and staying young? Would it be the peptides? Would it be something else, or?

   26. MHDr. Mark Hyman35:56

       I, I... Listen, I think it, it's like those are, those are like... There's the 80 and that's the 20.

   27. LHLewis Howes36:00

       Yeah.

   28. MHDr. Mark Hyman36:00

       So that's the 20 is all that fancy stuff, and the 80 is-

   29. LHLewis Howes36:03

       Food

   30. MHDr. Mark Hyman36:03

       ... your food-
10. 38:21 – 44:23

    Insulin Resistance, Chronic Disease and COVID

    1. LHLewis Howes38:21

       You talked about insulin resistance as one of the leading causes of chronic disease today. What is insulin resistance? How do we prevent it? And then how do we treat it?

    2. MHDr. Mark Hyman38:31

       Yes. Well, uh, great question and, and, and I think, uh, we hinted about it a little bit before, but, uh, you know, 88% of Americans are in poor metabolic health, right? That's staggering. That's almost nine out of 10 of us, and that is... Poor metabolic health means insulin resistance, and I'm gonna unpack that in a minute. 75% are overweight, 42% are obese, 40% of kids are overweight. I mean, it's, it's, it's terrible. One in two Americans has pre-diabetes or Type 2 diabetes. All this is caused by the amount of, of starch and sugar in our diet, right? Broccoli is a carbohydrate. That's fine to eat. But white flour is also a carbohydrate. It's worse than sugar in your body. So the, the volume of starch and sugar that's predominantly our calories is driving this poor metabolic health. And what happens when you eat starch and sugar, which by the way, we really didn't have, right, for most of our human history. We basically were hunters and gatherers till 10,000 years ago, and then, you know, if we had grains, we had whole grains. The, the milling of flour didn't happen till about 150 years ago, and when that started and they started to actually refine the flour is when we saw these nutritional deficiencies-

    3. LHLewis Howes39:40

       Really

    4. MHDr. Mark Hyman39:40

       ... like scir- like beriberi and pellagra and, and these horrible vitamin deficiencies. Um, it was [laughs] really terrible, and they, they actually, uh, um, you know, they, they actually discovered vitamins because they started de- depleting the food. So when we, when we eat in a way that has all this starch and sugar, it, it causes our blood sugar to go up. That causes our insulin to respond to try to keep the blood sugar down. So you can have normal blood sugar if you go to your doctor. You can have a normal A1C, which is your average blood sugar, but if your insulin's high, you're in big trouble. I saw a guy who was 400 pounds. His blood sugar was perfect. His average blood sugar was perfect. His insulin was like 20 times normal [laughs] 'cause it was keeping everything down.

    5. LHLewis Howes40:22

       Oh, man.

    6. MHDr. Mark Hyman40:22

       Now, insulin gets that high because the body becomes resistant to the effects of the insulin. It's like the boy who cried wolf. So you need more and more and more insulin to get the blood sugar down, more and more insulin. What does that do? Well, insulin has a number of roles. Uh, in, in a small amount it's good, keeps your blood sugar good. If you're healthy, fine. If you have no insulin, you get Type 1 diabetes, you need insulin shots. But most people have what we call Type 2 or pre-diabetes or insulin resistance, and it turns out that this is a driver of cancer.

    7. LHLewis Howes40:48

       Hmm.

    8. MHDr. Mark Hyman40:48

       Like the most common cancers, prostate, breast, colon cancer, pancreatic cancer. Heart disease, most heart attacks are caused by this. Diabetes, obviously. Dementia they're calling Type 3 diabetes. Depression. So, so many issues are driven by this insulin resistance that are burdening our society with chronic disease, which affects six out of 10 people. And so when you have this phenomenon in your body, it drives inflammation. It drives fat storage in your belly. It causes more hunger. It slows down your ability to lose weight, and it creates this vicious cycle of muscle loss and fat gain that just... It's like super fuel on, on the aging process.

    9. LHLewis Howes41:27

       Mm-hmm.

    10. MHDr. Mark Hyman41:28

        That's why you see diabetics, you know, have, you know, far more heart attacks. They're four times the risk of dementia. They're more likely to get cancer. They're... It, it's just all related to this phenomena. And the, i- if you're talking about the game of longevity, you know, I, I remember this lecture I heard, like, 20-plus years ago from a Harvard professor who was talking about, you know, preventive cardiology. He said, "Mark, if you could take a group of 100-year-old people who have perfectly clean arteries, they'd have one thing in common." I said, "What's that?"

    11. LHLewis Howes41:56

        What's that?

    12. MHDr. Mark Hyman41:57

        He says, "They're insulin sensitive," meaning they are able to easily regulate their blood sugar with very minimal amounts of insulin.

    13. LHLewis Howes42:05

        How?

    14. MHDr. Mark Hyman42:05

        But most of us... Well, most because they're basically healthy or they have genetics that help them or they eat, you know, well. But the key is to keep your in- the game of aging is to keep your insulin low.

    15. LHLewis Howes42:14

        Hmm.

    16. MHDr. Mark Hyman42:15

        Right? And if you keep your insulin low, you're going to be activating all these anti-aging mechanisms in your body. If your insulin's high, you're gonna accelerate all the aging. So that's why-

    17. LHLewis Howes42:24

        So when, when, when-

    18. MHDr. Mark Hyman42:24

        ... starch and sugar are poison

    19. LHLewis Howes42:26

        ... when insulin is high, it's weakening your immune system, it's increasing inflammation, which is making you age faster essentially, and get sick, right?

    20. MHDr. Mark Hyman42:35

        Yes. And not only that, Lewis, what right is happening now with COVID in America, why are we the worst country in the world with COVID? It's not just political mismanagement. The fact is in, is that we- We're the sitting duck, perfect place for COVID to land and cause havoc. Why?

    21. LHLewis Howes42:51

        'Cause we're obese.

    22. MHDr. Mark Hyman42:52

        Because we're obese, we're overweight, we have chronic diseases, and these are all diseases of inflammation. So we are pre-inflamed.

    23. LHLewis Howes43:01

        Mm-hmm.

    24. MHDr. Mark Hyman43:02

        And when COVID hits, it just, it's like gas on the fire, right? It just blows up your immune system, which is why you see these cytokine storms and this overwhelming inflammation in the body. It's not the virus that kills people, it's bo- it's people's own body's overactive inflammation because it's primed because of our inflammatory diet. And so nobody's talking about this. I think Bill Maher's the [laughs] only one I've seen talking about it in the media. Who says, "Hey, guys, the thing we can do, yes maybe we need to be protecting ourselves and practicing social distancing," maybe getting vaccines, that's a whole rabbit hole we shouldn't go down. But, but nobody's talking about-

    25. LHLewis Howes43:39

        Getting healthy

    26. MHDr. Mark Hyman43:39

        ... our diet.

    27. LHLewis Howes43:40

        Yeah. [laughs]

    28. MHDr. Mark Hyman43:40

        Or losing weight, or immuno-rejuvenation, or even things like vitamin D, which are so cheap and simple. I mean, if I were president, I would literally give free dose of vitamin D to every man, woman, and child in America. Just boom. Give it to 'em-

    29. LHLewis Howes43:51

        There's a lot of research-

    30. MHDr. Mark Hyman43:52

        ... take it or take it
11. 44:23 – 47:24

    Fats, Insulin Control and Cooking Oils

    1. MHDr. Mark Hyman44:23

       Well, h- it's... Guess what? I wrote a book.

    2. LHLewis Howes44:25

       [laughs]

    3. MHDr. Mark Hyman44:25

       It's a really good book. It's called The Pegan Diet.

    4. LHLewis Howes44:27

       Yes. [laughs]

    5. MHDr. Mark Hyman44:27

       And it helps you, [laughs] it helps you do that. And i- essentially the principles are, you know, things that I- I - I'm almost embarrassed, Lewis, that I- I have my career telling people to do stuff that's so self-evident.

    6. LHLewis Howes44:40

       [laughs]

    7. MHDr. Mark Hyman44:40

       Right? Like-

    8. LHLewis Howes44:41

       That we all know

    9. MHDr. Mark Hyman44:41

       ... eat real food.

    10. LHLewis Howes44:42

        What we all know, yeah.

    11. MHDr. Mark Hyman44:43

        [laughs] Eat real food, don't eat crap. You know, eat lots of vegetables, eat lots of good fats, get good quality protein. It's, it's not that hard. Uh-

    12. LHLewis Howes44:54

        It's not that hard

    13. MHDr. Mark Hyman44:54

        ... and, and, and, and, and the key to insulin control is fat, and here's why. If you, if you, uh, look at protein, if you eat a lot of protein, that can spike insulin 'cause there's a process called gluconeogenesis where the protein gets turned to sugar when you meet your protein needs. If you eat sugar or starch, yes, you'll jack up your insulin. If you eat fat, there's zero insulin response.

    14. LHLewis Howes45:16

        Really?

    15. MHDr. Mark Hyman45:16

        So what's interesting, if you look at the fat thing, people go, "Oh, fat's fattening, it's gonna make you fat." It only makes you fat in the context of insulin. So if you look at type 1 diabetics, their, their pancreases are gone, they can't make insulin. These people are starving all the time because insulin gets the fuel in the cells-

    16. LHLewis Howes45:35

        Mm-hmm

    17. MHDr. Mark Hyman45:35

        ... so they literally are metabolically starving, and they're losing weight. So they could eat 10,000 calories a day and would lose weight. It's not the calories, it's the insulin. So the, the, the foods to, to help you in terms of insulin and the fats are avocados, olive oil, nuts and seeds. Those are all sources of great fats. Ma- macadamia nuts, you know, pumpkin seeds, walnuts, all the great nuts. And, and then, you know, depending on, on your metabolism, your genetics, you might tolerate saturated fats like coconut oil or grass-fed ghee or grass-fed butter. Um, those are all fine. I would stay away from all the refined oils, which are called plant-based oils.

    18. LHLewis Howes46:17

        Right.

    19. MHDr. Mark Hyman46:18

        They're problematic for a number of reasons, because they're extracted with hexane, solvents, they're oxidized easily, they're unstable, and we eat them in huge quantities that we never ate before.

    20. LHLewis Howes46:28

        Right.

    21. MHDr. Mark Hyman46:28

        So I'm sort of, uh, a little bit of an evolutionary eater in the sense that, you know, like we never... We had 22 teaspoons of sugar a year when we were hunters-gatherers. We found a honey thing somewhere-

    22. LHLewis Howes46:37

        Now, now we have how many a day?

    23. MHDr. Mark Hyman46:40

        22 a day.

    24. LHLewis Howes46:41

        Wow.

    25. MHDr. Mark Hyman46:41

        And some kids have 34 teaspoons of sugar a day or more.

    26. LHLewis Howes46:43

        [laughs]

    27. MHDr. Mark Hyman46:45

        And, and so w- you know, uh, the fats we're eating are, are totally different than we used to eat. 10% of our diet is, is soybean oil, which is, uh, something that's increased a thousandfold in the last 100 years, and it's not something our bodies really handle. So I- I- I think my fats that I have in my kitchen are olive oil, avocado oil, coconut oil, ghee, and a little grass-fed butter. And then, you know, I have a little toasted sesame oil for flavoring for Asian dishes, and you can get, you know, various kinds of nut or seed oils-

    28. LHLewis Howes47:10

        Mm-hmm

    29. MHDr. Mark Hyman47:10

        ... that are l- you know, processed with expeller pressed or, or cold pressed so they, they're not, uh, highly refined, and you can use those as flavorings like walnut oil or macadamia oil and so forth. So I, but I think the majority of the oil should be that.

12. 47:24 – 55:34

    Functional Medicine, the Microbiome and Akkermansia

    1. LHLewis Howes47:24

       And can you share, uh, there are seven systems of functional medicine, is that right?

    2. MHDr. Mark Hyman47:28

       Hmm. Yes.

    3. LHLewis Howes47:30

       What, what is it-

    4. MHDr. Mark Hyman47:30

       So, so here-

    5. LHLewis Howes47:31

       ... so people are understanding?

    6. MHDr. Mark Hyman47:31

       Yeah, so okay, well, at high level, what is functional medicine? I always joke it's the opposite of dysfunctional medicine. [laughs]

    7. LHLewis Howes47:37

       [laughs]

    8. MHDr. Mark Hyman47:38

       And the, the body is not organized the way that we all learn in medical school. In medical school, you know, you have your head doctor and your joint doctor and your stomach doctor and your heart doctor and your lung doctor, your this doctor, your that doctor. One patient said, "I have a doctor for every inch of me." None of them talk to each other. And the truth is that these are all connected. These sp- body systems are all connected. Your body is a network. It's a ecosystem. And so the siloed approach to medicine based on diagnosis and symptoms really has nothing to do with the natural laws of biology. They're just things we've observed, and we're in a very primitive state of medicine right now. We're gonna look forward in maybe five, 10, 20 years and go, "What were we thinking?" The, so, so functional medicine goes right to the root cause. So we're treating, we're treating the symptoms, functional medicine treats the causes. You know, we're suppressing symptoms, functional medicine is addressing the mechanisms of a- of, of, of these diseases.

    9. LHLewis Howes48:34

       Mm-hmm.

    10. MHDr. Mark Hyman48:35

        So if, you know, for example, you can take all the diabetes drugs you want, you can take all the, the blood pressure drugs you want, but if your, if your lifestyle and your diet is, is causing the diabetes, it's not gonna work, right?

    11. LHLewis Howes48:46

        Right.

    12. MHDr. Mark Hyman48:46

        And you c- a- a- the joke is if you're standing on a tack, it takes a lot of aspirin to make it feel better.

    13. LHLewis Howes48:50

        [laughs]

    14. MHDr. Mark Hyman48:50

        But you can just take out the tack, right?

    15. LHLewis Howes48:52

        Sure, sure.

    16. MHDr. Mark Hyman48:53

        So, so, uh, you know, that's what Western medicine... So functional medicine has these, um, this framework which is- Your predisposing factors, genetics, triggers, stresses, exposures, toxins, whatever, allergens, infections, interact, um, with your lifestyle to drive imbalances or to create balance in seven key systems in your body, and this is the key to health. So we treat these systems by getting rid of the bad stuff and putting in the good stuff, whether it's food or whether it's meditation or sleep, whatever, nutrients, and, and it's really what this book is founded on. It's how do you activate and optimize these seven functional systems that are all interconnected, that are web-like. They're l- they're biological networks. It's one big network. How do you activate them through food? And I, I talk about how food influences each of these systems. Like for example, your microbiome is one of them. Your immune system is another. Your energy system is another. Your detoxification system is another. Your communication systems, hormones, neurotransmitters, is another. Your structural system is another, which is your biomechanical structure all the way to your cell structures and so forth. So these are the systems we focus on.

    17. LHLewis Howes49:55

        Mm.

    18. MHDr. Mark Hyman49:55

        But let's just take for example one, the microbiome. Well, we know that... A- and this is striking to me. I, I used to talk to gastroenterologists all the time like, "Well, don't you think food has something to do with maybe what's going on with the irritable bowel or reflux or you know?" Like, "Oh, yeah. Well, eat more fiber," or, "Yeah, don't eat, don't eat, drink coffee or alcohol or eat spicy foods or whatever. [laughs] Don't eat fried foods." Like, that was the extent of their advice. I said, "Didn't, didn't it ever occur to you that, you know, you've got this entire tube there with all this stuff in it, you're putting pounds of foreign material in it every day, don't you think that would have something to do with what's going on in there and your digestive diseases?" And they're like, "Wow, what a novel idea."

    19. LHLewis Howes50:27

        [laughs]

    20. MHDr. Mark Hyman50:27

        "I just never thought of that." I'm like, "Wow." [laughs]

    21. LHLewis Howes50:30

        [laughs]

    22. MHDr. Mark Hyman50:30

        So, um, [laughs] which it's really striking actually. And, and, you know, the microbiome, turns out, is the big regulator of most of your bodily functions, your immune system, your mitochondria, your brain function, your levels of inflammation, uh, i- it, vitamins and mineral production. It, it really controls so much of what's going on in your body. Detoxification. And we just are-- It's like th- just the, the new frontier. 'Cause we thought it was just poop. Oh, y- who cares? It's just poop. It's just waste. It doesn't matter. Turns out it is the most important organ in your body that controls everything. In fact, probably a third to a half of all the metabolites in your blood come from the microbes in your gut.

    23. LHLewis Howes51:08

        Mm.

    24. MHDr. Mark Hyman51:08

        You've got 10 times as many bugs in your gut as your own cells, 100 times as much DNA. So you might have 20,000 genes. There might be two or three or four or five million genes of bacteria in your gut, and those genes are producing proteins. Those proteins are, are being absorbed in the body, and they're interacting with your biology, and they're regulating all these chemical pathways for good or for bad. So if you have bad bugs growing, like weeds, it's gonna kill you.

    25. LHLewis Howes51:29

        Yes.

    26. MHDr. Mark Hyman51:29

        It'll make you sick. If you have good bugs, it's gonna make you healthy. So here's an example [smacks lips] again how food is medicine. So it's not just eat more fiber, have probiotics or whatever. Turns out that there's a bacteria in your gut that's super critical. It's called Akkermansia muciniphila. This bug [smacks lips] creates a mucus coating lining on the gut so you don't get a leaky gut and you don't have damage to the barrier. Think about like a second skin.

    27. LHLewis Howes51:53

        Mm-hmm.

    28. MHDr. Mark Hyman51:53

        Like if your, if your skin is damaged and you put it in the dirt, you'll get an infection, right?

    29. LHLewis Howes51:57

        Mm-hmm.

    30. MHDr. Mark Hyman51:57

        But if your skin's intact, you can stick it anywhere and it's fine. Like that with your gut. So this bacteria helps produce this sort of barrier layer in the gut.
13. 55:34 – 1:01:47

    Book Bonuses and Hyman's Personal Reassessment

    1. LHLewis Howes55:34

       I, I, I've got, I've got, I've got one or two final questions, and I'm gonna let you go. I wanna m- make sure people get this though, The Pegan Diet: The 21 Practical Principles for Reclaiming Your Health in a Nutritionally Confusing World. It's very confusing right now for a lot of people, so make sure you guys get this book. You can get it online, Amazon. You can go to, uh, your site as well. Is there any bonuses for people if they pick up the book or any type of-

    2. MHDr. Mark Hyman55:56

       Uh, yes. If they go to pegandiet.com, they can get a whole list of amazing foods. We've partnered with all sorts of, like, regenerative farmers and our great food suppliers and wonder- wonderful bonuses. So you can go on pegandiet.com and check it out, and there's a nice video there explaining a little bit what it is and some bonus, bonus material as well.

    3. LHLewis Howes56:12

       I love it. If you guys have enjoyed this, and this is just the beginning of what you'll get inside of this book. Uh, treat sugar like a recreational drug. I need to al- always remind myself that. That's one of your chapters. Lots of good stuff about eating brain-boosting foods, balancing blood sugar, uh, all the things you need to, to know to heal yourself with food. So make sure you guys get this book. I'm curious, final question for you. Uh, and we've had, uh, Mark on a few other times, so if you guys wanna hear his three truths and his definition of greatness, we'll link up the previous episodes. You can check those out. I'm curious, you're 61, you said, Mark? Is that right?

    4. MHDr. Mark Hyman56:47

       Yes, yes.

    5. LHLewis Howes56:48

       61. You're, you're about to be a 14-time New York Time bestselling author.

    6. MHDr. Mark Hyman56:53

       [laughs] Thank you. I hope you're right. [laughs]

    7. LHLewis Howes56:54

       You're, you're extreme- you're extremely educated on so many things about the body, the mind, about, uh, food, nutrition. Uh, you're, you're well-connected to some of the brightest minds in the world in medicine, religion, spirituality, business. What's your biggest personal challenge right now at this stage of your life that you have yet to figure out how to overcome, or something you're dealing with that you're still struggling with, whether it's personally, professionally, health, whatever it may be?

    8. MHDr. Mark Hyman57:23

       Yeah. It's a great question. Well, an interesting moment, right, for all of us 'cause COVID has really forced us all into introspective time to think about the meaning of our lives, what we're doing, what's important, what's not important, how we spend our time, who we spend our time with. And, and for me, um, and I've gone through some personal challenges, uh, recent, you know, separation from my wife-

    9. LHLewis Howes57:44

       Mm

    10. MHDr. Mark Hyman57:44

        ... which is fine. I mean, it was really loving and great and, but it's still hard. And I had a recent back surgery last summer that I fully recovered from and working out, you know, two, three hours a day sometimes. Uh, but what, what's more important is, is sort of at this stage of my life where, you know, I've accomplished a lot and, you know, 13 New York Times bestsellers. I have a clinic in Cleveland, a clinic in Lenox, s- you know, m- uh, online, an online presence doing all sorts of wonderful things. And I sort of decided to take a minute to stop and, and sort of reassess what I want for the next 30 years.

    11. LHLewis Howes58:15

        Mm.

    12. MHDr. Mark Hyman58:15

        So my first 30 years were essentially becoming who I was. The next 30 were doing what I was, right? Really full on 30-plus years of grinding it out, but in a way that actually was great for me 'cause it led to so much goodness, but I was working really hard, to a question of what's the next 30 years look like-

    13. LHLewis Howes58:36

        Mm

    14. MHDr. Mark Hyman58:36

        ... for me? So I took a moment to, instead of becoming somebody, to become nobody for a minute. [laughs]

    15. LHLewis Howes58:41

        Wow.

    16. MHDr. Mark Hyman58:42

        So I've gone to Hawaii, and I'm, I'm still doing a little bit of work, but I've taken more time off. And I'm, I'm looking forward and saying, "How do I, how do I design my life in a way to create the most impact which will bring the most healing and love to the world, but also do it in a way that helps me to be fully fulfilled and happy and regenerate my own wellbeing?" You know, 'cause I, I sacrificed myself and my body at the altar of service for way too long.

    17. LHLewis Howes59:12

        Sure, sure.

    18. MHDr. Mark Hyman59:12

        I mean, I, I mean, I was on the road 50% of the time. You know, I just, I was a master of hotels, car services, airports. Like, I was just... You know, I, I, I was an expert at things I didn't wanna be an expert at. And I just realized how much of a toll that took on-

    19. LHLewis Howes59:25

        Mm

    20. MHDr. Mark Hyman59:26

        ... my social connections, on my own health and wellbeing, on, you know, my ability to really savor life. And so my challenge is, is how do I sort of change gears a little bit and start to design a life that allows me to have the most leverage and impact to change the things I wanna see changed in the world, but at the same time, um, help me thrive and live in a way that I can savor life, that I can, that I can inhabit the moment, and I can have more spaciousness to do the things that are the m- most important that, that I think, you know, uh, I can do for the next phase of my life.

    21. LHLewis Howes59:59

        Yeah.

    22. MHDr. Mark Hyman59:59

        So it's going from being, like, a warrior on the battlefield-

    23. LHLewis Howes1:00:03

        [laughs]

    24. MHDr. Mark Hyman1:00:03

        ... to being more of like a, a Merlin king position where I can-

    25. LHLewis Howes1:00:06

        [laughs]

    26. MHDr. Mark Hyman1:00:07

        You know. But I'm, I'm sort of working through it all.

    27. LHLewis Howes1:00:09

        Sure.

    28. MHDr. Mark Hyman1:00:09

        And I feel like I'm getting close, uh, getting close, and it's just a, it's just an interesting moment for me, uh, in this, in this time to think about how do I, you know, how do I struggle with, with, uh, letting go of the things that define me-

    29. LHLewis Howes1:00:21

        Mm

    30. MHDr. Mark Hyman1:00:21

        ... and, and actually reimagine things that will, uh, redefine me to be, uh, who I want in the next phase of my life.

Episode duration: 1:01:47