This Decreases Your Lifespan Everyday (& Doctors Won’t Warn You) | Anti-Aging Reset w/ Mark Hyman

1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee0:00

   It's almost hard to not come to the conclusion that you simply do not know how many of your symptoms are related to food until you address your food, right?

2. MHDr. Mark Hyman0:15

   That's right.

3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee0:15

   And it's, it is madness, isn't it, that people still go to their doctor today all over the world, and they're being treated for symptoms that may well be related to food. Not always, but until you change the diet, you don't know. And I always say, "Listen, let's just figure out," you know, as we've spoken on your show before, that these, these four pillars, food, movement, sleep, and stress. And, and let's just start with food. Let's just get these all, things all cleaned up as much as we can, and then let's see what's left. And a lot [laughs] of the time, there's not much left, right? A lot of the time-

4. MHDr. Mark Hyman0:48

   Right

5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee0:48

   ... you realize, oh, wow, these are downstream symptoms from me not paying attention to the creation of health in my body. But of course, that's the, leads to that wider point, Mark, doesn't it, whereby we're not taught as Western medical doctors how to create health. We're simply taught to treat disease.

6. MHDr. Mark Hyman1:08

   That's right. That's right. I mean, that's exactly it. Uh, you nailed it on the head. We- if you go to the doctor and say, "Gee, I want you to help me optimize my health or create great health," they go, "Well, gee, you don't have any symptoms. Your labs are normal. Your exams are normal. There's nothing wrong with you, so go home, and if you're really feeling bad, then it must be you need Prozac." [laughs] You know? And the, and the truth is that most people wanna understand how to feel better and not just th- survive, but thrive. And for me, for me, the goal here is to teach people how this meat suit that we've got works. Uh, you know, we've learned a lot through science, a tremendous amount through medicine, but we haven't gotten into the clinic yet.

7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:48

   Yeah.

8. MHDr. Mark Hyman1:48

   We haven't gotten into the average doctor's office yet. And so what we're trying to do is change that from 17 years to 17 seconds [laughs] and, and get people quickly to kind of understand, here's how your biology works. Y- you know, if you had a million-dollar racehorse, would you feed it McDonald's, a Big Mac and a fries and a Coke? No, you wouldn't. But that's what we do to ourselves. It's, we do it to our kids. We wouldn't feed to our dog what we feed to our kids.

9. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:15

   Yeah.

10. MHDr. Mark Hyman2:15

    We literally would not. And so why do we think it's okay to feed to our kids? It's because the culture, and predominantly the food industry, has made us believe that it is good, that convenience is good, that, that it should be fine if it's ultra-processed, that it's safe, it's shelf-stable. You know, if, if the, if it's in the food, it's gotta be safe 'cause the government must be protecting us. Well, that is not true. The government is not protecting us, and especially in the United States. I think it's better in Europe. Uh, you know, we're looking now at revising all of our standards for food safety and what, what should be in and out of the food.

11. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:46

    Yeah. The problem is, Mark, though, and, and you're really speaking to this, and I know we've spoken about this before, but the culture around us, the food environment around us is so toxic that when you try and eat in a way that's appropriate with our evolution, right, in, in a way that our body's expecting to receive things, you almost come across like a health nut these days, right? Because the norm is so unhealthy that when you start to really try and eat well, and y- you know, "What oil did you cook that in? What..." You, you come across as actually someone who's obsessed. But I don't think it is that you're obsessed. You know, 93% of Americans are messing about looking unhealthy. We're not that far behind in the, in the UK. Normal is not what you want to be in 2025, is it?

12. MHDr. Mark Hyman3:38

    No, and, and normal, just so people understand, is, is basically a statistical number, and it has to do with the averages in a population. So if you're a Martian landing in America today, and you look at what is the normal weight of an American, it's overweight because 75% of us are overweight. So you and I would be anomalies. We'd be abnormal 'cause we're probably at the two standard deviations below the mean in terms of weight.

13. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee4:07

    Yeah.

14. MHDr. Mark Hyman4:07

    Because the whole curve of normal is shifted over to the right, which means, in English, that we basically have normalized the bad thing, which is being overweight, and we think that it's okay.

15. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee4:19

    Yeah.

16. MHDr. Mark Hyman4:19

    But it's really not, and the foods we're eating, you know, if our great-grandmothers had a look at them, they wouldn't even recognize them as food, right? They wouldn't know what a Lunchable was or a Go-Gurt was or a Pop-Tart or a Twinkie. I mean, they, they would be like, "What is this thing?" [laughs]

17. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee4:32

    Yeah.

18. MHDr. Mark Hyman4:32

    "I don't understand."

19. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee4:34

    Why in your 10-day detox do you recommend that people cut out gluten and dairy? Because these are two things that seem to be quite controversial with doctors as to whether they should be cut out or not, but I'd love to hear from your perspective-

20. MHDr. Mark Hyman4:48

    Yeah

21. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee4:48

    ... uh, why, why those two are in there.

22. MHDr. Mark Hyman4:52

    Well, it's not arbitrary. It's not 'cause I just have a, um, some kind of vendetta against gluten or dairy. I think they're both delicious, you know? I think the, the reality is that the wheat we eat and the dairy we eat is not the wheat we ate or the dairy we ate. And so our biology is really affected by the new versions of these that are now in our food supply that are creating havoc. We've seen a 500% or 400% to 500% increase in true celiac disease in the last 50 years. Now, this is a very serious disease. It's not just some little gluten sensitive. It's true damage to your gut, and you get very sick when you have this condition, and it creates a whole host of other autoimmunities. So why would that happen? Well, the, these two foods have been so modified by breeding, not... I wouldn't say by GMO, but just by breeding, and because of the way they're grown, that they have adverse effects on us. For example, wheat, uh, is mostly dwarf wheat, and this dwarf wheat is an incredible advance in agriculture which won the Nobel Prize 'cause it created a very sturdy, short wheat stalk with very dense, starchy grains. But the side effect of that was that it-Also has way more gluten proteins. 'Cause when you breed plants, it's not like breeding humans. You know, you get 23 chromosomes from your mom, 23 from your dad. You get, you know, 23 pairs or 46 chromosomes. It's like 46 with 46, so it's like 92 if you're a plant. And so those genes make proteins, and they make more gluten proteins, and those gluten proteins turn out to be more inflammatory, and they cause leaky gut, they cause inflammation in the body, and they're linked to all sorts of issues that we have, dozens and dozens of different diseases. Same thing with dairy. We hybridize the cows, so the modern cows have, uh, a different composition of the protein in there called A2 casein versus A1 casein. So modern cows have A1 casein, whereas o- heirloom cows and goat and sheep have A2 casein, which again is a lot less in- in- inflammatory. I mean, you look at the science around dairy, you know, Dr. Ludwig and Willett from Harvard, who are the top nutrition scientists in the world, among the most cited ever, they both wrote an article together in New England Journal of Medicine, which is not like some third-rate hippie journal, but [laughs] basically the... one of the most prestigious journals other than The Lancet in, in the world, and it, it documented the science or the lack of science showing the benefit of milk in health. In fact, it was an adverse outcome for the most part, and milk didn't create strong bones. It weakened bones. It didn't make... If you drank skim milk, skinny kids, it made fat kids 'cause they ate more 'cause there was no fat. It link... It's linked to autoimmune diseases, to type 1 diabetes, to cancer. So I, I think it's a very inflammatory food, and the way we raise these cows is often in feedlots with hormones. We milk them while they're pregnant, and, and they become very inflammatory. So a lot of times when people have congestions, allergies, digestive issues, eczema, skin issues, rashes, dairy, acne, these are often dairy issues. So I, I find it very easy if you just take out the two biggest culprits. Even if just... you just did those two, that would be amazing. But you're right. If you just do one, let's say you're allergic to gluten and dairy and you just take out dairy or you just take out gluten, you're not gonna know which it was because you're still gonna feel bad until you take it all out, and that's why I like 10 days, 'cause it's just... it's like resetting the clock, and it doesn't take that long, and then you can decide what you wanna do.

23. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee8:17

    Yeah. Mark, uh, we're, we're... on gluten for, for just a moment, so, um, you're saying that the concentration now of gluten in, let's say, bread is very different to how it was several decades ago. Okay.

24. MHDr. Mark Hyman8:30

    Yeah.

25. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee8:30

    You're saying that celiac disease is on the rise, but we also know that many people are self-reporting that they feel better when they go off gluten. Now, what's really interesting, we have seen a ton of people get better when you put them on elimination diets, right? But within the medical profession, there's still a view that if you do not have celiac disease, you should absolutely not be cutting out gluten from your diet, which I've always found a little bit odd and quite remarkable. It's not as if gluten per se has any health benefits, like give me more gluten to help me with my well-being. I understand that there are some gluten-containing foods which have got fiber, so I think some dieticians get concerned that if people are cutting gluten out, are they getting enough fiber? I know that's one of the concerns that's often raised. But what's your take on that? Why do you think there's a case for some people who do not have celiac disease to not eat gluten?

26. MHDr. Mark Hyman9:26

    Well, celiac disease is defined as a biopsy-proven atrophy of your small bowel. So when you take a scope, you put it down your throat, you take a biopsy of your small intestine, and it looks flattened, that's celiac disease. Okay? But [laughs] there's a spectrum of disease, and this is where medicine just gets it 100% wrong.

27. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee9:44

    Yeah.

28. MHDr. Mark Hyman9:45

    Yeah. You have the disease or you don't. You have diabetes or you don't. Now they have pre-diabetes. Oh, okay, 'cause we're recognizing that's consequential in and of itself. It doesn't mean that you just might be at risk for diabetes. It means even though you have a blood sugar that's within the, quote, "normal range," it's a little higher than normal. That still puts you at risk for heart attack, strokes, cancer, dementia, and everything else. There's now pre-hypertension, pre-autoimmune disease, and the phenomena is that gluten, like any other thing that can be a trigger for illness, the dose affects people, and they... and different people are sensitive at different doses. And also, people have sensitivities even though they might not fully be celiac. Now, when you look at the literature, about 35% of the population has the gene for celiac, but it's not expressed fully unless it's about 1% of the population. But about 20%, I would say, this is just ballparking it, have some level of gluten sensitivity that they might not be aware of. So the, the idea is here that we should be paying attention to, one, how we feel, and that's the best barometer.

29. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee10:52

    Yeah.

30. MHDr. Mark Hyman10:52

    Stop it for three weeks, start it again, and listen to your body. Like, don't let a doctor tell you what's right or wrong. Listen to how you feel. How's your stomach? How's your energy? How's your skin? How's your brain function? How's your sleep? How's everything else that matters to you? And if you also, you know, look at antibodies, you can see there's a spectrum of antibodies. Like, if you're, if you're diagnosed with celiac disease, you can be diagnosed by blood work. Let's say your gluten antibodies are 20 or more. That's considered celiac. But what if it's 19? What if it's 18? What if it's 17? Does that mean you're fine? No, not necessarily. If it's zero, you're probably okay, and I see many patients with zero antibodies. But I also see a lot of people in that gray zone, and so if you're in that gray zone, it's worth doing an elimination diet to see if you're gonna be affected by it or not.

Episode duration: 1:59:14