Dr. Mark Hyman: It's What You Eat!
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By definition, most of what people are eating is not technically food. Food is something that's supposed to support the growth and health of an organism. Those things don't do either. So we're kind of not eating food. We're eating science projects. Hey, everybody. It's me. It is literally. I turned 60 recently, and I'm redoubling my efforts to live a healthy life, which I think I've been pretty good at.

Um, those of you know what I'm about, know that I, that I am, you know, I've, I've been eating the Atkins way forever, you know, lots of big, lots of high proteins and, you know, cutting down your carbs and, you know, the way we all should be eating. But today I've got one of the experts in the field of, I mean, it's really almost everything, but it's, it's longevity, but it's all around diet, gut, nutrition.

And what we're doing wrong as a society and what we are starting to do right. We have Dr. Mark Hyman, who has an amazing podcast of his own called Doctor's Pharmacy and who has a new book coming out called The Young Forever Cookbook. I'm going to get some answers, man, right now. I need the deets. I need to crack the code because I'm planning on living to be 150, as some of you know. Let's get going. And the doctor is in.

Wait, you're in Montecito right now? Yeah, I'm in Montecito. Yeah, I just was with Maria Shriver yesterday. She says she's coming up for your birthday tomorrow. Wow.

Unbelievable. So tell what brings you there? What do you do? You on a little vacay? You got some work? Yeah. I have some friends here who's staying in this gorgeous house and we're having a little friend reunion of, you know, some of my closest friends for the weekend and just kind of chill and hang. Unbelievable. Well, listen, I'm going to Lucky's after this. Come by for lunch, man. We'll catch, we'll catch up.

Okay. You can tell me what to eat and what I can't eat and all that stuff. You can come over here. We got this gorgeous house. A chef made delicious food, a la Hyman approved. Well, I need your help. I need, because, you know, I turned 60 this week and I'm recommitting to

I mean, not that I've I've always been very super health conscious. I mean, you know, I've been eating sort of the Atkins route before it was even fashionable. And yeah, I guess here's I want to ask you, I want you to tell me what is the number one thing people are doing today that they're getting wrong in two categories of people, people who don't know what the fuck they're doing.

and the people who think they know what they're doing. What are they doing wrong? That's a great question. The people who don't know what they're doing wrong is probably most of America, which is so sick right now. 93% of us are metabolic and healthy, and it's really because you're eating a diet that's high in starch and sugar and ultra-processed food, and that is the biggest thing we're doing wrong across America and increasingly globally. So we really have to understand this is killing us. It's not only causing...

heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and dementia, but it's also causing a huge mental health crisis, anxiety, depression, brain fog, PTSD. All of these things are related to what we're eating. Even things like bipolar disease, schizophrenia, psychosis are connected to diet, autism, ADD. All these things are driven by our diet. And if we don't eat the right stuff, our brains can't work. So it's a really serious problem. So that's the first thing that people are doing wrong.

The people who think they know what they're doing are doing things differently. Some people may be overdoing it on intermittent fasting, maybe overdoing it on keto. I think people are kind of

You need to understand that there's a way to regulate your metabolism that doesn't require huge extremes, that you can kind of walk down the middle and actually do really well and thrive. And sort of what I wrote about in my book, The Pegan Diet, which is kind of a spoof on paleo-vegan. So like you're a pegan, I'm a paleo-vegan. So they're basically almost the same except for a few things, right? Except where you get your protein. Otherwise, they're the same. So it's really, what are the principles of nutritional common sense?

informed by science. And it's really in the middle. Everybody agrees on the basics, which is to eat real food, don't eat crap, have good fats, get good quality phytochemicals in your diet, lots of fiber. And the protein conversation is a little bit challenging on the vegan paleo side, but we can kind of navigate that if you want. Okay, I have lots of questions. Okay, so this is going to sound stupid. It's going to sound like I didn't hear you. I did. The people who don't know better...

And starches, sugars, we all know what those are, right? I mean, I think we all know what those are. They're potatoes, potato chips, anything processed, anything in a bag, anything. Sugar is sugar. That's desserts. It's sodas.

Um, is there any sneaky thing that you might not know? Is that that you're like, that's, it's not easy to cut out. I'm not saying it's, it's believe me, it's not. I love sodas. Jesus Christ. Oh no.

After 60s, no more, Rob. That's it. Let me ask you this. Let me ask you this. What about Coke Zero? No sugar. It's got something else horrible in it, right? Well, I just came back from Argentina. And in South America, they have very clear labeling laws on the front of package, which highlight things that are harmful to you. As opposed to this country, which has health claims on the label, which masks things that are harmful to you. So if it has a health claim, it's probably bad, right? Gluten-free potato chips, not a good idea.

but in South America and Argentina, they had, you know, this warning labels on Coke zero, which said this should not be eaten by children and have not be consumed by children because it has dangerous additives. Now,

If it's not good for kids, why is it good for the rest of us? How did, how did the Coke lawyers let, let that slide down there? I mean, Oh, well they, they fought it. Like, trust me, they fought it. There was a president of Chile. Um, a woman was a pediatrician and there was a vice president or chair of the Senate in Chile. There was also a doctor, um,

And they got together and they totally revolutionized all their food policies. And they put these front of package labeling on for the things that are dangerous. They eliminated all advertising for junk food on television from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. They eliminated all junk from schools. They eliminated

put an 18% set of tax. They did a whole series of things, no infant formula advertising. I mean, it was really quite an aggressive policy change and it worked. And that population is getting healthier. They're losing weight. People aren't buying the crap. It's working. So we are actually working on a food policy initiative in Washington. I've got a nonprofit and one of the things we're doing is child-friendly labeling. Make the grade. A to F. Yeah.

You make the grade. Is it good for you or is it bad for you? And it's easy to understand as opposed to nutrition facts, labels, ingredient lists. And so a lot of people think they're doing the right thing, but they don't really know how to read labels. They don't know an ingredient list. They don't understand what's going on. So they're buying quote healthy stuff, but it's actually really bad for you, right? Like gluten-free cake and cookies is still cake and cookies. Listen, I, I, I know that because as I said, I, I, I work with Atkins and they,

the, the protein bars that we have, they're, they're, they're just amazing. But you look at the amount of sugar in some of the competitor healthy bars. I don't want to name any names. Yeah. You can't believe how much sugar is in it. Yeah. Yeah. Cause people don't eat stuff that tastes like cardboard. So it's put sugar. Some minute. Right. Yeah. Um, yeah. Yeah.

So that's why when you look at old photos of people walking down the street or whatever in the 50s, there are no obese people. Nobody's overweight. Nobody. I saw some Instagram the other day and it was like a colorized video of the 30s in New York. And you see hundreds of people walking by and it was not a single person overweight. And now you can't literally walk down the street without it.

being inundated with people who are just struggling with weight and it's 75% of Americans and 42% are obese. I mean, it's a slow motion disaster and we're just going to be beginning to see the consequence of that in terms of our productivity society as far as our academic performance, as far as our economic burden from it, which is driving most of our federal deficit. So I think it's a big problem. We go back in a time machine.

We're a night where it's post-World War II. We've won the war. Yeah. Assuming we survived it, I'm a dude coming home. I'm fit as a fiddle. I'm shredded. Yeah. What happens to me between now and...

between then and now that makes me have a weight issue? Why did this happen? What happened to America? Yeah, when did the meteor hit? When all of a sudden... I'll tell you, I'll tell you. Well, first of all, you know, when I was born, which is a little bit older than you, but in 1959, there was 5% of the population that was obese. Now it's 42%. Wait, wait, wait, hang on. I went on it, wait. 5%? Yeah. Now it's 42? Yeah, yeah.

yeah it's bad it's like it's bad and uh what happened was after world war ii we decided we need to feed a hungry growing world population and so we started industrial agriculture and and the production of commodity crops corn wheat and soy at scale and mono crops with with tillage and tractors and more horse no more horse pulled plows we use industrial chemicals that were busy left over from the war so what are the things we use on

agricultural farms that are growing our food. We use fertilizer, which is nitrogen that was used to build bombs. And we use pesticides, which are neurotoxins that were bioweapons. So that's actually what happened. These factories started making industrial chemicals for agriculture.

And then we started producing all these massive amounts of commodity crops that then got turned into processed foods. So they were able to be preserved, to be produced at scale, to be shipped around the world, to feed a hungry population. And people didn't really understand the consequences of industrial agriculture on the climate, on the soil, on the

pesticide effects. I mean, Rachel Carson started to talk about it in the early 1960s, but there really wasn't a clear sort of sense that these were harmful. And then the food industry got involved and they started sort of breeding

creating this whole model of convenience as the value that we should have around food, right? You deserve a break today, right? Remember Betty Crocker? Yeah, sure. Had the Betty Crocker cookbook. Well, she was a figment of the food industry's imagination, basically concocted to insinuate processed food into the American kitchen through the recipes where, if you remember, they have add one can of Campbell's cream of mushroom soup to your casserole or put like a

roll of Ritz crackers on your thing or put a thing of Velveeta cheese. And so it's really taking processed foods and insinuating them into the kitchen. And they basically disintermediated Americans from their own kitchen. And then we had TV dinners and Salisbury steaks. I don't remember that. We had the TV dinner tray. Yes. All that crap. I remember eating that with watching like Batman and eating TV dinner. Yes.

And, uh, potato, little tater tot going in there. Exactly. Tater tot. It was so bad. So, so we, and then it's gotten even worse in the seventies and eighties. We just started even ramping up our production of these foods and we produced an extra 500 calories more a day on the form of processed food. And, and that processed food now is, is the biggest killer in the world.

It kills over 11 million people a year. It increases the risk, I said, of all these chronic diseases, mental health issues. It was just a review of over 9 million people looking at their diets over a long period of time, published recently, showing all these harmful effects. So we know that this has sort of happened slowly by drip, and now we're kind of in this sea of toxic foods that aren't really food. And Rob, you know, I don't know if you know the definition of food, but

By definition, most of what people are eating is not technically food. Food is something that's supposed to support the growth and health of an organism. Those things don't do either. So we're kind of not eating food. We're eating science projects.

That's insane. That's so, we're not eating food. We're not, no, here's, here's something I struggle with. I think your, um, Pagan diet, what Pagan, right? That's it. No, I'm not Pagan, not Pagan. Are you a Pagan? No, I'm not a Pagan. I'm Jewish. Um, but, but he, okay. The Pagan diet is 70. You ideally is 75% plant-based. Am I getting this right?

Yes, I would call it plant rich diet. Explain that to me. I can't find 70%, 75% of plants I want to eat. Please help me. You don't like veggies? You want fries and burgers? Yes, I do. That's right. Like I'm like, you know, the, the apoc, it's not an apocryphal story. Al Michaels, I don't know if you're a sports fan or not. Al Michaels, the great,

football announcer do you believe in miracles yes like he's the greatest he's apparently never eaten a vegetable in his life proudly i'm not that bad and how old is he he's still alive he's still what does he look like no i how do you literally on a plate you want 75 of my plate like an example so like for dinner i would have like a piece of protein like chicken fish meat and

And then I would make three sides of veggies. So I would make either salad or I'd have some stir-fried broccoli or I'd have some roasted mushrooms, a sweet potato. So basically on my plate, like 75% of it is veggies and like, you know, 25% is a piece of protein. And that gives you a lot of fiber, phytochemicals and lots of nutrients and getting really very high protein.

nutrient-dense foods and that's what's going to drive your health because in the food is medicine and if you want to stay healthy you have to have the right medicines we're eating basically toxic poisons right now uh and uh you know we need to actually shift our diet to understand that food is not just calories or energy it's actually information it's like code and you're programming your biological software with every single bite it's changing your gene expression your

hormones, your brain chemistry, your metabolism, your microbiome, your immune system, literally with every bite. And so when we eat crap, we feel like crap and we get sick. And COVID was a perfect example of this. People who were overweight or had chronic illnesses, those are the ones who got in the hospital. Those are the ones who died. That's right. And so when you look at the data, it's really clear. 63% of all deaths in hospitalizations are

by people eating a healthier diet because it suppresses the immune system. So we really have to get our shit together. You know, we're in trouble. Okay, let me ask you another thing. It's a great truism. If nature made it, eat it. If man made it, don't. That makes it super easy. But okay, so nature made a cow. Can I have, is milk bad for me? Cheese? Help me with that stuff. Okay, great.

So the basic principle is try to eat things as close to their historical origins as possible. So we have hybridized plants. For example, the corn that the Native Americans ate was fine. The corn that we eat has been hybridized and changed completely.

that makes it more starchy, less protein, less phytochemical. Same with wheat. You know, the ancient forms of wheat had less gluten in them. They were full of fiber. I mean, the Azea wheat was what, was what the Alexander the Great used to fuel his conquest of the world back, back in the day. And, and so it depends on where, what the food is, is, is, is how it's grown, what strains of the seeds are and so forth. So for cows, we've hybridized cows to actually create, you know,

you know, high milk producing cows, we've changed their genetic kind of makeup so that they're producing a form of acene, which is the protein in milk, one of the proteins. It's super inflammatory called A1 casein. It's linked to cancer and diabetes and autoimmunity,

And congestion and sinus and allergic issues as well as all kinds of inflammatory things, insulin resistance. So traditional dairy, I would say that we're eating now or conventional dairy from factory farming of dairy should not be eaten. And then the milk, the cows when they're pregnant and there's over 60 different hormones in them naturally. There's also give them hormones and growth hormones. So you don't want to eat that.

For example, I was in Sardinia and Ikaria where the blue zones are. And it's amazing there. I spent quite a bit of time there. And you go to hang out with the farmers and the shepherds and they're taking their sheep and they're going around. And they know to feed them certain plants at certain times of the year because the milk and the cheese will taste better because they're eating phytochemicals in the plants and it actually affects the flavor.

So flavor of food always follows the phytochemical richness of a food. And they know that then they take the milk and even the meat from these animals and it tastes better. So it depends on what you're eating has eaten. And then these sheep and goat actually have a different form of casein called A2 casein, which is not inflammatory, which is better tolerated. So for example, I can't tolerate regular dairy, but I can eat sheep or goat and it's fine. So I think it depends on what. It's not the cow, it's the how. Yeah.

Yes. Okay. This is very good. Okay. Now tell me why all of a sudden everybody's talking about inflammation.

Like, like all, like no one ever talked about that ever until about, I want to feel like three years ago. And now it's all anybody talks about. What the hell are people talking about? Well, I did write a book about 20 years ago where I was shouting from the rooftops about inflammation, but you know, it's, it's finally catching on. It is caught on. You know, first of all, what is inflammation? Well, people know if they get a sore throat or if they cut their finger and they get an infection, they, they've seen inflammation. They felt inflammation. If your joint swells up, right. Right.

That's all inflammation. That's fine. Your body's normal response to some insult or injury infection. Supposed to do that. What's not supposed to happen, Rob, is chronic silent inflammation. And this chronic silent inflammation is the biggest driver of every single chronic disease we have, including heart disease, cancer, diabetes, dementia, of course, autoimmunity, allergies, and many other diseases that are inflammatory, but also mental health issues.

We're seeing huge amounts of inflammation in the brain. So brain inflammation is what's driving so much of our chaotic society, I believe, Rob, because of the ultra-processed food. I just did a podcast on this on my podcast at Doctors Pharmacy. We talked about how ultra-processed food affects the brain. It basically creates inflammation in the body and inflammation causes inflammation in the brain and that disrupts neurotransmitter function. It

disconnects the frontal lobe which is your adult in the room and the amygdala which is a reptile brain and so the the there's like a crazy wild reptile lizard in the house with no adult governing it and that's why we see all these crazy divisive behavior oppositional behavior violence aggression not to mention depression anxiety and all these things so inflammation is driving all these things that we see in society from you know just feeling like crap to all

all the way to serious diseases and even death. So inflammation is the biggest driver of aging, it's the biggest driver of all these chronic illnesses, and it's driven primarily by our ultra processed diet and lack of protective foods. So we don't want to get rid of the bad foods, we want to add protective foods. And that's all the things we talked about, the vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, oil, good fats and so forth, and protein, lots of fiber and feeding your microbiome. So there's a lot of ways to reduce inflammation.

So I know you've said that 80% of its diet, you wish it wasn't. You can just hit the gym and eat whatever you want, but you can't, right? Because food is regulating all the biochemical processes and driving inflammation. Now, stress also causes inflammation. Toxins cause inflammation. Being sedentary causes inflammation. Not sleeping causes inflammation. So not just food. There's a lot of factors that drive this incredibly...

horrific problem we're having globally in the world and increasingly killing so many of us. Isn't this depressing? It is and it isn't. It's a little bit of both. We can choose, right? We can choose what we're doing. It's all fixable.

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Qualifying plan required. Wi-Fi were available on select U.S. airlines. Deposit and Hilton Honors membership required for 15% discount terms and conditions apply. Okay, what about this? Where are you with caffeine? Well, I had a cup of coffee this morning, so it's wearing off now. But I think coffee's fine. It's actually the source of most of the antioxidants and phytochemicals in the American diet. Not because it's such a great source. It's because they don't eat any fruits and vegetables, right? Yeah.

And, and so it's, but it's got all sorts of benefits. It may help Parkinson's disease may help, you know, obviously alertness and so forth. So I don't think it's bad. I think for some people it can be bad. So different people have different genetic ways. They metabolize it and some are fast and some are slow metabolizers. So, you know, that person is, I can have an espresso and go right to sleep at night. That's me. Yeah. I, I, no, I can't do that. If I have a, like a coffee past noon, um,

Like I'm like, I can, I can have an, I can have an espresso drive home from the restaurant and go to bed. That's amazing. That's beautiful. So you're a fast caffeine metabolizer. Other people aren't. Uh, also if you tend to have be anxious or have pressure or have other issues, you might not want to drink a lot of coffee, but a cup,

or so in the morning is generally fine for most people. But it's what you put into matters, right? If you go to Starbucks and you have a, Oh yeah, then it's a milkshake. It's a milkshake. It's like, there's actually more sugar in some of those Starbucks coffees than there are in a same amount of Coca-Cola. Oh, 100%. I see people going in there and they literally look like they've come out of Baskin and Robbins.

That's right. Um, yeah. But I joke is Starbucks is not a coffee shop. It's a sugar dispense free masquerading as a coffee shop. No, that's really true. Okay. Let me, so all the new drugs is MPEG. You can go get it now at, uh, Target or some shit. I don't know. They, there's some announcement this week that you can go like, don't even need a prescription. Do you still need a prescription? I don't know. Oh yeah. I think you do. So, I mean, you can,

you can buy it online on some shady sites that, you know, sell the peptides, uh, that are, you know, non, non-osebic related, but they're the same peptide. Okay. So look, it's been revolutionary for a lot of people. Yeah. Some very famous ones.

And first of all, how long can somebody live on it? Yeah, that's a great question, Rob. That's a great question. The answer is we don't know because it's not been out long enough. There's a great study in the New England Journal that I read once that said, an article that said, be sure to use new drugs as soon as they come out before the side effects develop. Yeah.

That's amazing.

But it's not without risks. So let me just unpack it for a minute. Can I unpack it for a minute? No, this is actually the main thing I really wanted to talk about. So yes, please. Okay, let's go. Okay, so what is Ozempic? It's a peptide. It's made by the body. It's something that's been re-synthesized in a lab, like insulin, for example, is made by the body. Another peptide that's been made so people can take it for diabetes.

And Ozempic, which is semaglutide, is a GLP-1 agonist. GLP-1 is something that helps suppress appetite and regulate insulin, blood sugar control. So it's something the body uses normally, and we can naturally increase it by dietary things and other things, supplements.

But Ozempic is basically giving a pharmaceutical dose of this compound that then makes you feel full, lowers your appetite, and improves your blood sugar and helps with weight loss. So it does work. Now, what else does it do? Well, when you lose weight with it, you lose half muscle and half fat. When you lose half muscle, that's bad because muscle is where your metabolism is. So muscle burns seven times the calories of fat,

So you can end up, if you kind of go with this, you end up what we call skinny fat. You look thin, but you're fat on the inside.

And your body composition changes. So the way to mitigate that is high amounts of protein, about a gram per pound. So if you're 150 pounds, that's 150 grams. It's a fair bit of protein. It's less strength training. You got to hit the gym and pump iron. If you do that, you can mitigate some of that. If you stop the drug, most people gain the weight back, right? About 65 or more percent of the weight is gained back. That's a stat I want to really write down. Yeah. 65% of the people who take a Zempik

In the way back. In the way back. And then some, you know, some variation of gain a little bit or whatever. But unless you change your lifestyle, unless you change the cause of why you gained weight in the first place, which is, you know, eating a high glycemic diet, it's, you know, eating ultra processed food, it's not exercising. Unless you change those behaviors and you get off it, you're going to just pop right back.

So what about the effects long-term? That's what you asked me. What about long-term? Well, the initial data is coming out and it's a little bit concerning to me. One is, you know, when we see an effect like, you see what Govely, right? It's a weight loss version of Ozempic. That was just approved for cardiovascular risk reduction, like a statin, because it lowers cardiovascular risk. The study showed that it lowered risk by 20%. Seems like a good amount, but it's actually not that much.

So when you look at the side effects, right, the side effects of taking Ozempic, if you look at bowel obstruction, for example, where basically it slows the bowel down, it thickens the bowel wall over time. And it leads to something called bowel obstruction, small bowel obstruction, which means you need to go to the hospital and either have a tube stuck down your nose and decompress your stomach and your intestines, or you need to have surgery. And

That's a serious complication. And it's about a 450% increase. So we jump up and down when there's a 20% change. This is a 450% increase. Pancreatitis, another serious side effect. That means your pancreas becomes inflamed. You can't make insulin. You can't digest your food. It can be very serious. That

is increased by 900%. So this is, these are serious conditions. Now, when you give Mozempic to a large enough population over a long enough time, you're going to start to see more and more complications. So I'm cautious about it. If I, if I have a patient who really struggled, I may use it, but I put them on aggressive lifestyle change program. I get the jam, I get the protein in their body to build muscle. And I, and I,

Give it to them for a period of time and then transition off it. Because I don't think long-term it's going to be found to be safe. I think we're in this ozempic halo right now. And then probably in five, ten years, we're going to go, oh, shit. You know, all this stuff's coming out about it. So I think we're starting to see it and the warning signs are there. Do you remember that, I want to say 20 years ago, there was some Fen-Fen. Fen-Fen, right.

Right? Am I wrong? Heart issues. Yeah, exactly. So like I said, all these drugs they give them and then like thalidomide, you know, that came out. It was great for women and prevent miscarriages. But guess what? All the babies had like, you know, flipper arms and no legs. And so that was a problem. So we kind of get excited about these drugs and we don't have a long-term follow-up data. And I think we're there with those impact in these drugs. And I think...

I'm a little nervous about it at scale. I think the cost is so much. It's not accessible to a lot of people. And, you know, you scale that up to give it to everybody who's obese in America, it would be $5 trillion, which is more than our entire healthcare spend. So it just doesn't make sense. So the key is it's not scalable for so many people who need it.

And maybe the price will come down, but still it's like, it's the risk, high risk, but it's a tough thing, Rob, because you know, people overweight, that also is a risk. So how do you, how do you help overall fix the problem? And it's really about fixing the root cause, which is our food system and giving people access to real food and teaching them what to do and can bring education. We've kind of missed that boat. So here's, I'm going to put words in your mouth and you tell me you'll accept these words or you reject these words. Okay. Here we go. So, um,

Okay. Here's, here's a Dr. Hyman says moment of the show. If you've struggled historically with your weight, you can change your lifestyle and it will save you. It will do everything you need to do, but it's, it takes, it doesn't happen overnight, but you do a Zempik and you lose the weight. You still do the lifestyle change. You get off a Zempik.

And that's the perfect, why is that not the perfect combination? If I change my lifestyle and I don't take Ozempic, right? Hypothetically. Yeah. I'm looking at two and a half years to get the results I'll get with Ozempic in six months. And I'm changing my lifestyle anyway. Yeah. Maybe. I guess what I'm saying is, why wouldn't you jumpstart Ozempic?

With Ozempic, as long as you then do, you know, one of the great diets, whether it's your diet or Atkins or any, any of the other high protein, low carb diets. Yeah.

Great question. I mean, I think it's okay for some people. And again, there are a few people who I have prescribed it to, but if people are willing and able to make a real change, we see dramatic differences. I just had a patient at Cleveland Clinic who was 66 years old. She'd had heart failure, diabetes on insulin. She had high blood pressure. She had multiple stents in her arteries. She had fatty liver. Kidneys were starting to go. She was basically on her way to a kidney and heart transplant.

And I said, well, I don't know. We can help. Let's try. So we radically changed her diet from the crappy food she was eating. And we put her essentially on a very low glycemic, high phytochemical, high fiber, good fat diet. In three days, she was off her insulin. In three months, she lost 42 pounds. Jesus. All her meds. In a year, she lost 116 pounds. Wow. It was completely fine. So it's not that hard to do. It's just...

Knowing what to do and, and being willing to do it. Now, some people really struggle, even if they know what to do. There's a lot of other issues, trauma, emotional issues. A lot of people eat their feelings. It's not what they're eating. It's what's eating them that matters. Right. So you have to kind of deal with those things.

I actually know psychedelics. I have a theory that maybe psychedelics could help with obesity, particularly Ibogaine, which is used for addiction. And we know that 14% of people have food addiction, 12% of kids, which is about the same as alcohol, except the kids aren't alcoholics.

And so we see, we're seeing the biological basis of how these foods affect the brain. And it's very similar to heroin or cocaine. And when you look at animal studies, they literally have withdrawal. Even human studies, they show literally withdrawal. If you're binge eating a lot of stuff and you stop eating it, you'll have withdrawal symptoms.

You'll have cravings. Oh, for sure. It'll disrupt your life. And so if you look at the Yale food addiction scale, which is a validated scientific scale, 14% of the population is food addict. I didn't know there was a food addiction. I'm very familiar with the addiction. I think it's 10 questions for addiction, but I didn't know there was a food one. There

There is. It's called the Yale Food Addiction Scale. People can look it up online. And people will recognize they might have to have the severe version, but they could have some version. Is it one of those things where if you're like, oh, I only had one, and then you get to the end of it, by the way, if you had only one, you're addicted to food. Like, oh, God. Exactly. And so basically, I'm thinking about Ibogaine, which you're giving to heroin addicts, blocks withdrawal, blocks cravings, changes their brain chemistry. It could help. Yeah.

And in fact, one of the drugs, I don't know if you know this, Rob, but one of the drugs we use for obesity is Narcan. What? Yeah. Narcan is a drug that's used for heroin overdose to block the opioid receptors so you don't get respiratory depression and die. Right? So it's an emergency drug, but it's used in a combination with another drug as a treatment for obesity to block the pleasure centers in the brain that make you crave any food. Now, if the pharmaceutical industry got this, maybe...

maybe we should be thinking about other solutions. So I think we deal with issues in a holistic way. A lot of people who are overweight do have trauma and a lot of people have trauma and it's the way they deal with it, whether it's sexual trauma or just whatever. There's another question

questionnaire that people can take them again it's online this is a few questions called the adverse childhood events questionnaire or ace questionnaire and it talks about you know did your family you know violent place would you get hit was there sexual abuse is somebody in your family in jail they're divorced and it gives you all these two questions and if you score high then you know you're more likely to be overweight have diabetes have autoimmune disease have chronic disease depression suicide all that and and that's something you can deal with so it's not just about what you're eating but it's looking at the whole picture

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I mean, listen, you set me down with a bowl of Haagen-Dazs and I am high as fuck. I am euphoric. Euphoric. What's your flavor? What's your flavor? Raisin? No, no. Vanilla Swiss Salmon. Those are mine. That was my favorite until they started making this chocolate peanut butter. Oh, gosh.

Yeah. I don't like peanut butter and ice cream for some reason. I don't really like that. I do. And that why I used to be a, a, a, like a traditionalist. And I used to like scoff at Ben and Jerry's. I was like, how about, I don't want to, I don't want pie in my, now I'm all about like whatever shit you can put in it. Now I'm down. Yeah. Well, a chunky monkey is my kryptonite for sure. I don't keep it around. I don't look at it. I won't touch it.

shit. But that's the other, the other year I might have a bad, really bad day or I feel really stressed and I might just go break down and have a pint of chunky monkey, but not that often. And you don't, and look, and that's the other thing. It's, it's, it's the long game, not the short game. So like I, I got a little bit of a party my wife is throwing for me and it's all my favorite foods. And, and by the way, when they say, what are your favorite foods? Notice they, they're not asking you what are the healthiest foods you're like? They're not saying they're asking that. Right.

So this party is not going to be that. So if I come to your party, there's nothing I can eat. Well, I mean, look, there, there are, there are things that one, I mean, this is not like left to my own terrible devices. There would be a hostess cart where literally you could go, I want the hostess fruit pie. I'm going to have the ho-hos. Oh no. Cause that's what I grew up with.

Me too. Hostess cupcakes. I love those. The cream filled cupcakes with that little squirrely icing on the top and the black. Yeah, that was good. The fruit pies are mine. Like give me that fruit pie. And by the way, if I buy it in a gas station, it tastes even better. Oh, because it's been, it's been, it's been, uh, fermented aging. Well, like wine, it's going to be like a shelf for years, you know? So it's got, but, um, but no, I'm, I, I actually, I am beyond that. Um, I, I truly am, but, uh,

You have to have a cheat. What's your thing on cheat days? Because here's the other thing. Is this true? Like if I get off of sugar, like really get off it, which I've done off and on many times, like literally I'm not a fascist about is there five grams of sugar in this salad dressing type? I'm not doing that. I mean, no desserts, no sodas, no obvious sugars. Yeah.

Is it like heroin where you go back and you're back at your, get the monkey on your back again? Well, not necessarily because if you're, if you kind of regulate your body to be resilient, then you can tolerate a little bit here and there. And I think it's when you can't control your behavior, that's the problem. So you start noticing you're not in control. Then you're, you should go off the reservation. You got to go back on. I wrote a book actually about food addiction called the 10 day detox diet, but how to really detox from food addiction. So it's always a great way to reset. You just hit the reset button.

like on your computer when it's fritzing out and your body will recalibrate your hormones will reset your insulin will come down your leptin will regulate your ghrelin will normalize your hormones will regulate appetite hunger weight gain you'll have lower inflammation everything will kind of reset and then your body's going to more more in equilibrium and it's about resiliency so do i never have any crap no i do but there's a rule i have if it's food i'll eat it right but if it's not food i'm not going to eat it so twinkies are not food i would never eat that but i

Would I have ice cream? Sure, because it's food, right? It's a cheat thing. But would I have chocolate? Yeah. Would I have cookies? Yeah, if it's made from, you know, butter and flour. That's food. I recognize what it is. But if it's some highly processed science project, I won't touch it. You're not eating a Twizzler. No, never. It never goes. And it doesn't look like food anymore to me. Even when I go to Starbucks and I go to get a coffee and I see this whole thing

thing stuff. And I'm like, it just looks like a rock. Like, why would I eat that? Like, it doesn't even call my name anymore. Right. Yeah, for sure. Ice cream does, but I can't. Pies, pies, cakes, cookies, ice cream. Yes. They ate that in the fifties. Make it yourself. If you want a cookie, make it yourself. Basically you want ice cream, make yourself. And that's a good rule. If you want to eat crab and then you want French fries, great. Make them yourself. Um, where are you on, uh,

fast fasting and intermittent fasting? Yeah, I think it depends on the person, right? So if you're extremely overweight and you have diabetes, it can be a powerful therapy. If you're someone like you or me,

you have to be careful because when you fast too much or too long, you lose muscle. And muscle is the key to longevity. It's the key to health as you get older. If you lose muscle, you lose function, you lose your metabolism, you get more inflammation, you get more prediabetes, you get lower testosterone, lower growth hormone for repairing tissues, you get higher cortisol. So having muscle loss is a disaster. So it's kind of a fine balance between giving your body times to rest and repair and times to feed. So

I would say 12 hours overnight, 14 hours is fine. Like everybody should do that. It used to be called breakfast, breaking the fast, but now we eat all night and we eat when we wake up. So basically don't give our bodies a chance to do the cleanup and repair and recycling that happens at night, which is called autophagy. I wrote about this in my book, Young Forever, where we talked about how we, how do we activate these healing repair mechanisms? And fasting is a way to do that, but it's not the only way.

I think it's really important for people to see what their body's like and what happens. People do great, some don't. And I think if I do it too much, I'll lose too much weight or I'll lose too much muscle. And I think you just have to be smart about it and see what's going on with you and your body and your other health issues. So it's not a hard and fast rule, but it can be a powerful therapy for some people. Do you ever work out in a fasted state? Do you have a feeling one way or the other about that?

Yeah, I usually do. So I don't, I can't, I don't know about you, but I can't really exercise when I eat a meal. I can't run or go for a bike ride or I can't do anything. So I wake up usually and I work out. So I do a strength training routine. Uh, and I, and that's kind of my do or today I didn't have time because I drove up here. So I'm going to, after this podcast, I'm going to work out and then have lunch. So yeah.

I tend to do it on a fasted state, but you can have a little protein or whatever. So people want to know more. Your, your podcast, the doctor's pharmacy. Yeah. Do you have guests? Do you, what's the, yeah. Tell me all about my stick. What's your, what's your, what kind of thing you foisted on America over there, doc?

Yeah, well, I just wanted people to have a chance to hear about a different paradigm in medicine, how they can optimize their health and their bodies using the model of functional medicine. So I did it, I think it started in 2017, maybe 2018. And it's done really well. It's been great. She was the top 100, 200 podcasts. And I have guests, all kinds of guests, everybody from people who talk about speech.

spirituality and trauma to scientists talking about cancer metabolism and mitochondrial function. So we go deep on topics. Yesterday I had Maria Shriver on talking about her health and her... Women's health. Maria has devoted her life to it. Yeah, it's great. She's amazing. And so also I'll do individual

individual topics by myself with deep dives called Health Bites. It's our Friday episode. And we go deep in. So I did a whole long one on ozempic. I did one on ultra-processed food. I did one on mental health and our diet. So I do new ones on erectile dysfunction or male sexual health. So I'll just spend, you know, 30 to 60 minutes going really deep on the science, getting people really practical information about how to up-level their health. And the book, The Young Forever Cookbook is...

Coming out. Coming out June 4th. Yeah. It's a sequel to the Young Forever book, which is came out last year. No, I need the recipes. I need, I need, I need the deets, man. They're actually quite good. And the beautiful, it's a beautiful cookbook. Yeah. I need, I need the deets. Cause like I said, I, I made huge health decisions three times in my life. I, at 26, I gave up alcohol and drugs. Amazing. And, um, at, I would say around 30, um,

five, I stopped eating like a teenager. Do you know what I mean? Like I realized, oh, I just can't. You gave up the hoses cupcakes? Well, it's like, I thought I could work it off. I thought I could, if I, if I destroy myself consistently in the gym, it's licensed to eat any way I want.

No, and it gets, you can when you're younger, but as you get older, it just doesn't work that way. And, uh, it happened for me at 35 and, and, and then, so it's six, I'm, it's, I'm 60 now. And so the new thing is, all right, you got to get serious on the veggies and, you know, cause I, I, I eat really well. I mean, obviously I do. Um, but, but I need to, I need to pump up. I'm good with the proteins. I'm good with the low carbs. I'm, I'm even pretty much good with, with,

the, you know, cutting out sugar, but I got to ramp up the vegetables. Well, the reason is, Rob, is that in food, there's medicine. So plants make defense molecules to protect themselves from hardship, from pests, from drought, from weather changes. And these phytochemicals that the plants make

We've co-evolved with, and these compounds are in colorful fruits and vegetables. And the more tough the life is a vegetable or plant,

the better it is for you. So if it's wild, it's way better. Like if you're at a wild strawberry, it's like, Oh, it's unbelievable. It's like an explosion of flavor. You can imagine in a tiny little packet where you get these big strawberries, you know, at the grocery store, it tastes like cardboard. Right. So, and how about, how about tomato? I really see it with tomatoes. You get a, like a long Island tomato right out of the ditch. It's insane. Yeah.

Insane. So that is where all the medicine is. When you have foods like that, they have the medicine in them. And these medicines we've co-evolved with and they interact with our receptors and our biological pathways and our microbiome to do all kinds of amazing things. So I'll just give you one example. If you have pomegranate, pomegranate has these red color phytochemicals in them. If you have a healthy microbiome, your gut,

The compounds, we call them elagitanins, in the pomegranate will get metabolized by the bacteria. The bacteria will create something called a postbiotic. Instead of prebiotic or probiotic, it's a postbiotic made by the bacteria. Your body absorbs it. It's called urolithin A. This then goes and improves the function and health of your mitochondria, which are key to healthy aging. They cause autophagy, which cleans up old mitochondria. They build new muscle. They increase your fitness without even exercising.

So your VO2 max and your performance and exercise tests improves without even exercising. And it also reduces inflammation and has a whole host of other benefits. And this is just from eating pomegranate. If you have healthy, you've got bacteria.

Now, you can take this as a supplement, but we want to get as many of these compounds in. I'll just give you one example, but there's dozens and dozens of examples of these compounds like green tea or curcumin in white and curries or the brand of sanadins in the berries or the compounds in broccoli or in that whole family, glucosinolates, all regulate these pathways in our body designed to keep us healthy. So we need these medicines to thrive. When we don't eat them, our body's too great.

Okay. One last thing. This one last thing is probably a podcast in and of itself. Gut health.

How do you, what's the best way to reset your gut? I don't know what's going on in my gut, for God's sakes. How do we figure that out? Well, we're entering the whole era of the microbiome and poop tests will become as routine as a pee or a blood test. And they will tell you what's going on in there and the ecosystem, whether it's good or bad. And the truth is that most of our microbiomes have degraded in modern society for a whole host of reasons. One,

We are born by C-section, a third of us. Two, we're often formula fed, which screws up our microbiome. Three, we're given antibiotics as kids. Our mothers get antibiotics. We don't start out with a healthy microbiome. And then we process food.

And then we don't need a fiber. And then we don't need the phytochemicals we need. And then we take drugs like antibiotics and steroids and acid blocking drugs, which are the third biggest source of drug sales after statins and psychiatric drugs. They block acid in your stomach that screws up your whole microbiome. And then, you know, we take hormones like birth control pill. All these things mess up our gut. So most of us are walking around with a

unhappy ecosystem. And think about like a rainforest. We want it to be thriving and happy. And we tend to get lower diversity. We tend to get inflammatory bugs. We feed the bad guys all the processed food. They love that shit. So you really want to learn how to tend your inner garden. It's not that hard. Basically cut out all the crap, eat the way we're talking, lots of fiber, prebiotic and probiotic foods, things like asparagus or jicama or artichokes. These are

or prebiotic foods that fertilize the good bugs. And probiotic foods are like sauerkraut or kimchi or miso or things like that. And then

We have a fiber, which is general fiber we can eat from fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds, beans and grains. All this fertilizes the good bugs. So you just have to learn how to take out the bad stuff, put in the good stuff. And then you can take probiotics, and I recommend taking probiotics given how crappy our diet and life is. And I also recommend sometimes people even take prebiotic fibers. So I created a product called Gut Food, which is a combination of polyphenols, which we talked about these phytochemicals that feed the good bugs,

prebiotics and probiotics. And it's a powder you can take every morning. It's like a multivitamin for the gut. This is amazing. One last thing with nuts. I'm always like,

okay, I need to eat more nuts. And then I was like, whoa, that's, you can't eat that, but not that nut. Not, not that nut. Which nut? Which nut? It's always the nut I want. Whatever nut I want is always suddenly the nut, the one nut. The bad nut. The bad nut. There are no bad nuts. There are no bad nuts. Macadamia nuts, bad nuts. Oh, those are great. Those are great nuts. But I hear they're horrible for you. Why? They're full of monounsaturated fats, like the olive oil of nuts. Okay. You don't, if you don't eat them,

If they're fresh and not rancid, they're really good for you. They're high in protein, high in fat, and they're incredibly healthy. So I would eat macadamia nuts, walnuts, pecans, all the seeds, too. Pumpkin seeds, chia seeds. Where did I get this in my head? How did I get this? Maybe Instagram, TikTok. I don't know. You're a great source of medical science research on the internet. Let me put it this way. Is there a nut?

That I should avoid. I mean, you know, peanuts are not really nuts. And a lot of people consume peanuts. They're not bad per se. They're a legume. That's right. They're a legume bean. But one of the problems is they often have mold on them. And so there's something called aflatoxin. And that's the very carcinogenic compound. So if you're going to eat peanuts or peanut butter, they can't be rancid. They have to be fresh. And they want to make sure that they're, you know,

not having these small toxins. And it's hard to get, but you can. And almond, that's why almond butter is better. Yeah. Almond butter, cashew butter, macadamia butter. Seeds are great too. I mean, seeds are amazing. People don't need no seeds. I mean, you know, if you eat a handful of nuts or a couple of handfuls of nuts a day, it's one of the most protective things you can do for your health.

There was a large trial called a predimed study in Spain, where they gave you either a liter of olive oil, or you had to eat a couple handfuls of nuts a day. And then the other group was having a low-fat diet. So it was basically too high fat compared to low fat. And a handful of nuts in the olive oil, it reduced your risk of heart attack as much as taking a statin. So I'd rather eat a couple handfuls of nuts than take a statin. And what seeds do you like? Oh, I like pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, and

I think those are seeds. Sesame seeds, chia seeds, all those are great.

They're full of phytochemicals or full of fiber. Omega-3 fats are great. I've got, I've got my homework. I'm very excited about it because I've always been a pleasure to have in class. I always did the homework. So this is great. This is, this is, I could go on for another hour with you and we'll, we'll, we'll pick it up either on your podcast or you'll come back here again and we'll do it. Anytime. Uh, this is great. Hopefully I'll see you wandering around Montecito for sure. For sure. For sure, buddy. Well, great to be on your podcast and happy birthday and, uh,

I'm glad you're getting religion about what you have to do to stay healthy and live a long, vibrant life. I will be spreading the word. You can use whatever drug you want. At the end of the day, you still got to figure out how to live beyond it. That's the key. All right. Thanks, man. Appreciate you. Of course. All right. I'm going to get my handful of nuts, chia seeds. I'm doing it. Are you doing it? You guys going to get some nuts or are you just going to act nuts? I might do both, but I learned a lot.

I'm actually super excited to learn that kind of info. And I like when we do these kind of more educational podcasts. Do you guys let me know? I think they're kind of fun to mix in with the more entertainment oriented stuff. Anyway, and I think we're going to be doing some more of these. I think we did body today. I think we might have one about spirit and spirituality coming up, which would be fun. Keeps us interesting and fresh. Anyway, thanks for listening as always. And I'll see you next time here on Literally.

You've been listening to Literally with Rob Lowe, produced by me, Sean Doherty, with help from associate producer Sarah Begar and research by Alyssa Grau. Engineering and mixing by Joanna Samuel. Our executive producers are Rob Lowe for Low Profile, Nick Liao, Adam Sachs, and Jeff Ross for Team Coco, and Colin Anderson for Stitcher. Booking by Deirdre Dodd. Music by Devin Bryant.

Special thanks to Hidden City Studios. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time on Literally. It's okay if you aren't ready for kids right now. It's okay if you don't want to be a mom now or even ever. It's nobody's decision but yours. But do you know what's not okay? Not knowing how effective your birth control is. Talk to your doctor about effective birth control options so you can make an informed decision. Tap to learn more.

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