745. Want To Age Backwards? Dr. Mark Hyman on Fad Diets, Longevity + Inflammation
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Welcome to the Almost 30 Podcast. I'm Lindsay. And I'm Krista. And we're your hosts, guides, and friends on this path. Almost 30 is not about your age. It's about the feeling. All of us are almost something, seeking community and resources to support the rumblings of transformation within us. Our conversations are deep dives, shepherded by our insatiable curiosity and desire for connection, enduring inspiration, and a sense of levity that we can all benefit from.

We're looking to find the magic in the human experience. Buckle up, baby. Your evolution is waiting. Hello and welcome to the Almost 30 Podcast. Hi, everybody. It's Linz. I am introducing the episode today with Dr. Mark Hyman. Dr. Hyman is a

Dr. Mark Hyman and I sat down in New York City. I was so thankful we got to have this conversation in person. There is just something about connecting in front of one another feet away. You know what I mean? So I'm so excited. If you have not heard of Dr. Mark Hyman, honestly, I'm surprised. He is just one of the leaders in health and wellness.

And at the forefront of really providing information and support to live a truly vibrant life. You know, all of us talk about we want to live forever. How do we live longer? But are we living longer and also healthy and enjoying our lives at the same time?

So Dr. Mark Hyman, he is the co-founder of Function Health, which I want to talk about in a moment because I recently did an extensive blood panel with them. He's also the senior advisor of the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine, the board president for clinical affairs for the Institute of Functional Medicine and the founder and medical director of the Ultra Wellness Center in Lenox, Massachusetts.

He directs a team of physicians, nutritionists, and nurses who really utilize the comprehensive life-changing approach to health involving diet and lifestyle. It has changed thousands of people's lives, this integrative approach, and I'm so thankful

We get to have these types of conversation. Yes, there is room for Western and Eastern medicine when we take care of people and provide them information and support to just living really, really well. So in this conversation, we talk about biological age, your true biological age and what you can do to be

basically decrease your biological age, lifestyle changes, nutrition changes, some that I think will really surprise you, to be honest. I recently did the Function Health really, really extensive blood panel and my biological age, I'm sorry, I have to brag for a moment. And this is going to be something that I probably chip away at and say,

I want to be like 10 years younger than that. My biological age is 25. So I am 37. My biological age is 25. So that's like 12 years younger than I truly am. I'm surprised and not surprised. I do feel like I have an intense focus on my health and well-being and I make lifestyle changes based on how I'm feeling and very in tune with my body. But recently, you know, I became a new mom. I

I feel like I'm not at my absolute best. So the fact that that's my biological age at this point, I'm excited to improve that even more. We also talk about how to tune into the right diet for our bodies. We are like bombarded with so much information.

about diet and exercise and what to take and all this stuff. How do we tune in and get the information that our bodies are giving us so that we can make decisions for our bodies? I think it's easy to be like, well, let me try magnesium because everyone's trying magnesium and maybe you don't need all that magnesium.

So that was really interesting. We also talk about inflammation. This is kind of like a silent killer, a silent just disturber of the everyday for people. So we talk about the most common causes of inflammation and how we can make our lifestyle more anti-inflammatory and why it matters. What does inflammation actually do to the body, actually do in terms of aging? And

He also had some really interesting thoughts on detoxing, fasting, and other modalities that seemingly reset the body. Like what's actually happening? Is it working? Who should be doing it? Who should not be doing it? Um,

And then we talk about a lot about different nutrition choices. I asked him about a bunch of like fad diets and, you know, we're hearing protein, protein, protein right now, what his thoughts are on that. And then we also talk about health span versus lifespan. So are we actually healthy as we're living longer, not just living longer, like who wants to be 90 and

feeling like crap, not me. So we talk about that, what that means, where in the world the health span is the highest and why it's really, really fascinating. And then I also talked to him about some recent news, um, RFK coming into office and what he feels like that means. He has worked with administrations in the past. Um, he's also, um,

you know, connected to RFK in various ways. And I think you will find it fascinating and also hopeful. And he really puts into perspective what could happen in this administration.

And finally, we talk about function health. I have to say I was blown away. I am blown away thus far by my experience with function health. So basically I did an extensive blood panel through function health. They make it incredibly easy through their platform. They basically walked me through. They're like, okay, now we are going to make the appointment. And

Now it is a week away from your blood draw. Why don't you stop taking your supplements, please? And blah, blah, blah. And then it's a day before they said, they texted me and said, hey, make sure you fast for 12 hours before your blood draw, drink only water. It was so supportive. I felt like my doctor was calling me just being like, hey, reminder, reminder. So I did two separate blood draws one week from each other. It was really, really easy and painless.

And quickly, my results were uploaded to the Function Health portal, my portal. And in a matter of like a week or two, it was over the holidays, the processing. So even that, I felt like it was really fast. And I got over it.

80 biomarkers checked, which is pretty incredible, including my Alzheimer's risk, including autoimmunity, heavy metals, heart health, kidney, liver, metabolic health, pancreas, stress and aging, my thyroid. Happy to say thus far, and this is where I'm at in the process, I'm waiting on some clinician notes and specific recommendations for me. But I'm happy to say that

Actually, it was 106 biomarkers. Wow. I'm happy to say that 96% of my biomarkers were within range. So in the green, 10 were out of range. So I'm looking forward to seeing what the clinician has to say. But what I love and what I've been digging into is they have recommendations as far as

foods and supplements right now as a part of my action plan. So just to give you an idea, my top five foods that I should be consuming a bit more of, mackerel, sardines, strawberries, thyme, and adzuki beans. That's right.

So I'm going to talk to the clinician just about why these recommendations are such, what I can be focusing on, what supplements I can take out of my routine, what supplements I can add, different lifestyle choices. So this is a revolutionary way to take care of yourself. It is affordable.

and convenient. And this is something you can do every year. Every year you start with 100 plus lab tests and insights from top doctors. It's your health, y'all. It is time to own your health. All of this, all of this.

for $499. Pretty incredible. Dr. Hyman also shared some wild and profound stories around early detection of thousands of diseases.

that people have found through Function Health, people finding cancer early on and being able to catch it, treat it, and go into remission, thyroid, celiac, hyperthyroidism, strokes, PCOS,

it's really, really, really important that we are catching these things early so you can monitor for early indicators of thousands of diseases through function health. Okay, and for our listeners, please listen up. This is really awesome.

Dr. Hyman is sharing a code with us so that the first 100 people to use the code will be able to get early access to function and skip the 300,000 person wait list. I know. I was shocked as well. It's pretty incredible. So try Function Health before anyone else at functionhealth.com and use the code almost30. That's almost three zero. The first 100 people to use the code will be able to get early access to function and skip the 300,000

300,000 person wait list. I am so excited for you to take ownership of your health and really focus on your health span moving forward. Okay, y'all, I am excited to introduce Dr. Mark Hyman. Enjoy this conversation and I will see you on the other side.

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So I just came from an incredible event that you and your team put on for Function Health. And you mentioned that this is like a, there's a window right now to really impact

the state of health and healthcare in our country. And, you know, we don't get political on the show, so I'm not going in that direction. It's more so like everyone has a body. Everyone has their health. So I guess what is your vision? The human body isn't red, blue or purple. Exactly. Exactly. And everybody is suffering. Yeah. The whole country is suffering. You know, we've got 93% of us have cancer.

some degree of prediabetes. It's insane. 38% of teenage boys have prediabetes. It's insane. Why? Because we're eating a diet that's complete crap. It's ultra processed food. We eat 152 pounds of sugar.

and 133 pounds of flour per person per year in America. That's almost a pound a day. I have about three quarters of a pound. I'm not good at math, but it's a lot. And that's a pharmacologic dose. It's destroying our metabolism. So we've got a metabolic crisis in this country and it's driving everything from heart disease to cancer to diabetes to Alzheimer's to even things like depression. And we have to understand that we've got to dig into this seriously because we're spending more and more

on healthcare. We've gone from 1.3 trillion in 2000 to 4.9 trillion last year. We're 40th in life expectancy. Every disease is on the rise. Heart disease by 50%, cancer by 100% in some areas, 60% in those under 50 increases.

We've seen a thousand percent increase in autism, a 400% increase in diabetes, 150% increase in Alzheimer's. It's allergies, 200%, 300%. And then medication use for each of these conditions is going up, not by an equivalent amount, but by 300%, 400%. So we're spending more and more. We're doing more and more medication. And people are getting sicker and sicker. Like, what's wrong with this problem here? And so Function Health is really an attempt to try to shift healthcare

toward understanding the body from the root cause perspective and dig deep into what we now can do through really affordable lab testing that was really only accessible to the wealthy even just a few years ago. For $15,000 for the labs, you get a lot to

to figure it out, but we offer it for $4.99, $1.37 a day, which is less than you spend on your coffee probably. Not everybody can afford 500 bucks, a lot of money, but still, you know, most people can invest in their health. You invest now or you invest later, you know? And I think what, what's really happening is that people are starting to wake up to the fact that we have to take agency over our health, that, you know, COVID was sort of this moment where everybody was like,

called into question our medical system, how it works, the pharmaceutical industry, how we handle it. And people started to realize that, wow, we are 4% of the population versus 16% of the COVID cases and deaths. Why is that? It's because we're sick. And so the science is really clear on this. 63% of all hospitalizations and deaths from COVID could have been prevented by a healthier diet.

So people are just like, wait a minute, I need to be in charge. And so people are using oil rings and glucose monitors and all these cool gadgets and Apple watches to track their health data. Oops, fine, all great.

but people need to go a little bit deeper. And before you had to go to the doctor, you had to get your insurance to pay for, you had to convince your doctor, I want you to check my vitamin D level, or I want to check my hormones. I want to check blah, blah, blah, toxin levels. And they're like, oh, you don't need that. It's unnecessary. There's nothing wrong with you. You're fine. You don't have a disease. So everything's cool. But the truth is that there's so much going on under the hood for people in our society from, you know, metabolic dysfunction that we're seeing in over 96% of our

which is astounding to me, but it mirrors what's happening in the general population. So we see autoimmune diseases, 33% have autoimmunity. If you add in the thyroid antibodies, it's like 46% have autoimmunity. That's crazy. And these are things that we shouldn't be suffering from, 67% nutritional deficiencies. And these are all things that will cause you to feel bad now.

There may be subtle ways that aren't a disease, quote unquote a disease, but they're going to be eventually a disease if you leave them untreated. And so a lot of things that we find are things that people can do to themselves. So the idea is how do you be the CEO of your own health? How do you have agency over your own body? Because when you go to the doctor, they're looking for diseases. If you say, doc, hey doc, I want you to give me a program to optimize my health. They're like, nah, I'm bad.

I don't know. I don't have a prescription for that. And it's not because they're having any malintent. It's because they're just not trained. Sure. And we're trained to diagnose and treat disease. That's it. And so we never took a class on creating a healthy human 101, right? We just had to sort of diagnose and treat disease. But by the time you get a disease, it's been going on for 20, 30, 40 years. Alzheimer's, we can pick up 40 years early around brain scans. We're now offering soon an Alzheimer's lab test where we can do blood biomarkers. Wow.

where you don't have to wait until you get symptoms. You can find things are starting to go wrong and then reverse those things. We now can reverse the early stages of Alzheimer's with lifestyle interventions. This is not my opinion. This is proven by people like Richard Isington, who was at Cornell. And we're seeing people with metabolic problems that can be reversed. We're seeing people with

heavy metals that they didn't know they had or with nutritional deficiencies. And these things are really things that people can fix cancer. I mean, before you had to go get a pap test, a mammogram, a colonoscopy, like invasive tests, prostate exam, not a fun stuff. And now through a liquid biopsy, which is essentially a blood test, we can find over 50 different cancers that

In your blood, 75% sensitive, meaning it'll pick the cancers up 75% of the time you have something. False positive is less than half a percent, which is way better than any other test, meaning it's going to show a positive. It's not really positive. It will show this positive. So you got to kind of scared for nothing.

but that's very low, but mammograms are much worse. You know, like that's a much worse. There's so much noise when you go get a regular screening test. We're finding people with cancer that they didn't know they had when they're very young. And so this is really revolutionary where, you know, you should go to your doctor and say, I want this test or you can't afford it or the insurance is going to pay for it. You know, I don't know anything about how to interpret it, so I'm not going to order it. It's like, you know, so this is really a way for people to kind of be empowered with their own health. And I think there's something, you know, uh,

a service like this, a platform like this, it really like a movement is there's some reprogramming in the people that I think is happening where taking ownership of your own health feels a little bit foreign and a little overwhelming. Yeah. But, you know, I think to your point, your content that you've been putting out for a very long time,

It is like a day-by-day, hour-by-hour choice that can become your normal. That's right. It's your little choices. But the beautiful thing about function is it's not just here's your data, like good luck. It's really informed by massive amounts of scientific evidence. So, for example, I'm one doctor. If I wanted to read the 10 million scientific papers that are published, that have been published and are available, I could never do that in my lifetime. Right.

But a computer can do that in five minutes. Yeah, the beauty of AI is really apparent. So we can use the interpretive science to help guide our recommendations. We use knowledge experts who help sort of inform the information within the platform. And then we use your data that's personalized to help customize and create a personalized, unique set of recommendations that

that are things you can do yourself. Okay, well, you have high insulin and high A1C. Well, you should do a diet that is a low-glycemic diet that's higher in good fats. It's got more fiber. Cut out these foods. You add these foods. Here's the supplements that might be helpful. You might need extra berberine or you might need lipoic acid or you might need different things that work to help with your metabolic health.

And then, you know, if you're not getting things under control, yeah, okay, well, then you need to go see an endocrinologist. Maybe you need to be on medication or maybe not if you do what we tell you. Here's how to exercise. Here's how to manage stress. Here's how you manage sleep. And we provide deep guidance on how to do that that's evidence-based. And so it really provides people with a robust, personalized roadmap for their health, where they are and where they're headed.

predictively and how to reverse that by adopting some simple behavior changes. And ultimately, I think we're going to have models where we help people do this together in cohorts. We know we just started. We're basically like a three-month-old baby. I barely can walk. I barely can smile. But the trajectory and the team behind it is really... Yeah.

We've done so much in New York since April of 23, when we launched now of a hundred thousand members, 400,000 people on the waiting list. We've had probably 20 million biomarkers we've measured. We have so much information about our cohorts and we're,

constantly in you know in beta i mean gmail was in beta for four years we're still in beta and trying to build the system that we're growing but but we're we're right now even as it is it's it's it's heads and shoulders above anything else out there that you can get to understand what's going on with your biology and take action that's meaningful that will impact how you feel now meaning if you're tired i just had a friend who showed me her results and i was like you know

You have antibodies to your thyroid. Your thyroid's kind of high normally, your TSH. Things would not be checked by your regular doctor. You have vitamin D deficiency. You're iron deficient. This is why you feel like crap. This is how to fix it. It's super easy. At this event we were at, someone showed me their labs, and I'm like, you know, you have autoimmune issues. You're pre-diabetic. You have high levels of homocysteine, which is a measure of folate and B12 deficiency that's linked to cancer and heart disease and

mood issues. And I said, here's the simple things you can do to fix it. And it's quite amazing. It is really, really incredible. So people find these things and maybe they know they're not being checked for. So your doctor's not checking for autoimmunity. You mentioned at the event, one of the things that people don't check for often is insulin. Insulin, yeah. So really important. Can we talk about that? Sure. Well, I said 93% of people are metabolic and healthy. What does that actually mean? Yeah.

So when you eat starch and sugar, from an evolutionary perspective, we're designed to store that extra calories as fat.

It's a protective mechanism. So if you're a bear, at the beginning of the season, you're eating salmon and protein and fat. And then at the end of the season, in the summer, you're eating berries, which is sugar. And they gain 500 pounds. They become diabetic, hypertensive. Do they really? Yeah. Wow. And then they go to sleep. Wow. And they burn it off all winter. Wow.

We just keep eating all winter. And so what happens is when you're eating, you know, the average Paleolithic human, hunter-gatherer, had maybe 22 teaspoons of sugar a year if they found some honey or some berries. We eat 22 teaspoons a day as adults and 34 as children.

And it's a pharmacologic dose of sugar that our biology has never adapted to. And so this is why we see the accumulation of belly fat. And you walk around America, you go to the airport, you go to a mall, you go down the street. I mean, you know, there are pockets of health in America. I don't know, New York being, you know, I have to walk everywhere so people have more exercise. You know, it's astounding. And you try to find someone who's not overweight. It's hard, you know. It's hard.

And that belly fat is driving all these downstream problems because the fat is hungry fat. So it becomes a fat that makes you eat more because your body is basically dumping all the calories from your blood into the fat cells. So your body thinks I'm starving, even though there's plenty of fuel around. It locks the fat in there. So once it gets in, it can't get out.

And two and three, your metabolism slows down. So you're hungrier, your metabolism slows down, the fat gets locked in the fat cells, and it's just a vicious cycle. And this is why people gain, gain, gain. And the early indicator of the problem is insulin. So the first thing that happens when you start to eat too many sugars and carbohydrates, refined carbohydrates, because broccoli is a carbohydrate, that's fine to eat. It starts to raise your insulin level. Insulin level is the first thing to go up. Not your blood sugar.

So by the time your blood sugar is up on a test, it's 100, which is what the reference range is. It probably should be 85. But when you're at 100, then you're diagnosed as prediabetes.

But your insulin is going to go up way before that. And listen, 1% of all tests that people do, doctors do, include insulin. It's probably the most important test to look at your metabolic health. And what would be even better is this newer test that we're going to be offering, which is called an insulin resistance score, which is a measuring C-peptide, which is a precursor of insulin, plus insulin using a technology called mass spectrometry, which is...

lab-a-dee-ball lab testing lingo, but essentially it's an extremely accurate way to measure these two molecules. And then they do a ratio. And they can tell, based on this ratio, whether you're insulin resistant or not. And then you can follow it over time

after you do certain interventions like change my diet, exercise, sleep better, whatever, taking supplements, and then you can see a change. And it's as accurate as the most sophisticated laboratory research technology for measuring your insulin resistance, which is called the euglycemic clamp test, which you don't want to do. It's not fun. And then you can do it

glucose tolerance test with insulin, but then you have to drink two Coca-Colas basically and drink all this sugar and then see what happens. That's what we did for years. But now with this new test we're going to be offering, it's kind of amazing. So, you know, when I say 93% of Americans are metabolic and healthy, that's what I'm talking about. And that's causing this sort of acceleration of disease. And, you know, we treat all the diseases as separate, but the truth is the body has some root causes. And one of the biggest ones is insulin resistance.

You've been practicing for quite a long time. Too long. And, you know, I guess you've seen so many patients, you've seen so many lab results, you've really dug in. Did you see kind of like a...

Was there a turning point in people's health? Because I guess when we see videos from the 1950s and 60s, we see people on the beach and they're pretty overall healthy. I guess what did you observe? I mean, it's astounding. Okay, so I graduated medical school in 1987. When I graduated medical school, there was not a single state with an obesity rate over 15%. Wow. Now there is not a state under 30%.

And most are over 40%. And the average rate of obesity in America is 42%. I think Colorado is kind of a little bit less there, but everywhere else. And if you look at the map of America...

It's the red states that are the most affected. It's the states in the South, the Midwest, that have the highest prevalence of metabolic dysfunction, the highest prevalence of diabetes, the highest rates of diabetes. 14 out of the 15 states with the highest diabetes mortality rate are red states. And it's just, it's unfortunate. And I'm actually, you know, we're doing this like a couple of days after the election and, you know, President Trump, you know, is a polarizing figure, but...

he's the first presidential candidates ever talked about addressing this chronic disease epidemic. Even before Bobby Kennedy kind of joined camps with him, he released a video a year ago. And I was like, what is this? You know, I've never heard this on a presidential campaign. Who's telling him to do this? And I was like, wow, you know, like this is a turning point where, where, you know, we've kind of just can't ignore this problem anymore. I agree. Yeah. It's a, it's like an exciting thing that it's being, you know, looked at and talked about and hopefully, you know,

I guess, how do you see, what would need to change on like that national level from your perspective? What are the policy initiatives that I would, if I were king, what would I do? Yeah. I'll tell you. You want to know? Yeah, I do. It's not, some of these are not easy to implement. Yeah. They're conceptually straightforward.

If there was the political will to do it, it would be easy to do. But there's so much pushback from industry against it that it's going to be hard. Like food industry, pharmaceutical, et cetera. So what would be my wish list? One, I would...

Create a National Institute of Nutrition at the NIH to study the link between chronic disease and food and really dig into how food is medicine, how to reverse chronic disease with food. Second, I would have the NIH say to every single academic institution in medical school, which they fund with research grant dollars, that we're not giving you one penny unless you implement a robust nutrition curriculum in medical school. Because that's not happening right now.

No. I mean, my daughters in fourth year medical school learned nothing about it. No way. Nothing. Nothing. Zero. Oh, dad, I learned about nutrition. What did you learn? Oh, I learned about amino acids and fatty acids and sugars. And what are you going to tell your patient for lunch? Wow. Like, great. You learned amino acids. Wonderful. But like, that's not nutrition. And then at the FDA, I would try to match our

guidelines around food additives to that of the Europeans, which are much more stringent and have determined that many of the things that we add in our food are not safe. And in fact, they're not allowed. You've heard of my name is Kellogg's, you know, uproar. I mean, I've been involved in that and you know, it's crazy that Fruit Loops have all these toxins in the food in America for kids, but they don't have it in Canada or Europe, same product. And it goes, whether it's macaroni cheese or cereal, um,

That needs to stop. Second, I would have clear front of package labeling that gives people the servings of fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, healthy fats, whole grains, and beans. And then I would also put on a front of package labeling

a clear warning label that is determined by the quality of the food and the processing of the food so that people have an understanding of what they're eating. So you can kind of quickly tell, because right now, if you look at a nutrition label, an ingredient list, unless you're like a PhD in nutrition, what the hell does it mean? Grandma this, like, does anybody know that, you know, one teaspoon of sugar is four grams and that if you see 28 grams or whatever, uh,

or you know they're not doing the math 40 grams of sugar it's 10 teaspoons of sugar nobody knows that right on purpose it's not an accident if you if you saw the package and said said 12 teaspoons of sugar on the package you probably wouldn't buy it but we don't do that two cans salmon right that's right so that would be straightforward then in terms of the

HHS policies, which is the Health and Human Services, I would immediately implement reimbursement for nutrition services and Medicare, which would also invest in lifestyle change programs. So they would be reimbursing for things that work

And then we would also do more research and Medicare demonstration projects on these lifestyle change programs. I would pass the bill for medically care meals, which is now in Congress that I've been working on, which takes people who are chronically ill with diabetes, heart failure, and provides them free food, which is designed to be food as medicine to reverse their diseases. I would also make sure that the dietary guidelines move into HHS from the USDA. Why should the agency...

that's governing what food is grown and basically pushing commodity crops and is sort of mandated to do that, why would we trust them to make guidelines about foods like sugar and so forth? So I would bring all that in and I would have an independent scientific panel. It's not linked to industry. Right now, for example, they rule that ultra-processed foods have no linkage to chronic disease or weight or anything like this.

It's absurd. I mean, the British Medical Journal published a robust analysis, meta-analysis of all the scientific literature looking at all diseases across the spectrum and found that ultra-processed food was causal or linked to 32 different illnesses that are the most common things that people suffer from. And yet the current dietary guidelines are not even going to comment on it in the new dietary guidelines. That needs to be fixed so the dietary guidelines can be fixed.

We need to also have the money invested in the dietary guidelines process to review the literature, to have the National Academy of Sciences to do a revision of all the basic nutrients, like the protein, fats, carbohydrates, vitamins, and minerals, so they can actually have updated guidelines that match what's optimal for humans. Not how much protein do you need to not get a deficiency disease or how much vitamin D do you need to not get rickets. Not very much. They need to be all revised. So that's sort of the HHS. And also,

I would make sure that for the USDA, we completely reform the food programs and the agriculture programs. So we need to fund agriculture transition models for farmers to convert to regenerative agriculture that revitalizes rural communities, that makes farmers more money, that produces better food, that's more nutritious, that protects the environment, that reduces the need for inputs. Rick Kark from...

and a big farmer, corn farmer, he's in Common Ground, the movie that I was in that was talking about regenerative agriculture. He saves $2 million a year by not having to buy the seeds and the chemicals and the fertilizers and the pesticides and the herbicides.

because he's farming in a way that mimics nature, which is what regenerative farming is. And it's scalable. And so it's a win-win-win. It's a triple bottom line. And then you get better soil. You get less runoff in the waterways. It kills all the fish from the fertilizer. You get less pesticide contamination. Life is the same. Besides, you don't destroy the soil. You don't release carbon. You reduce climate change. I mean, it's a win-win-win across the board.

And then as far as the food programs for SNAP, I would just have them mirror WIC. WIC is basically Women, Infants, and Children's program that doesn't allow you to buy crap if you're a mother or for your baby or your kid. So you can't buy soda on WIC. So you basically just mirror that for the SNAP program, which we know can be modified. But again, there's so many forces pushing against it. 20% of Coca-Cola's U.S. profits come from food stamps.

They're not going to like it. Okay. So we can risk soda. We get rid of processed food as part of snap. It's going to be hard. And yeah, people can buy a crap if they want on their own dollars, but the government should not be funding more disease. And then we pay for it with Medicare, Medicaid on the back end. And then we cut subsidize the crops.

that corn, meat, and soy that are turned into ultra processed food that we're then paying for with SNAP dollars, $125 billion a year. And then we're paying for Medicare and Medicaid, which is almost over a trillion dollars. So it's like, it's the whole thing is nuts. And so that all needs to be fixed. And then, you know, school lunches need to be upgraded so that kids can actually eat healthy food. And we get rid of all the junk food in schools like they did in Chile. We get rid of advertising to targeting children. We get rid of pharmaceutical advertising. So these are the kinds of things that

I think would have huge impact downstream. I read a book about a year ago called Food Fix, and I have a nonprofit that tries to work on these issues, but it's incremental. But there's a moment where we can have really consequential change if there's this, you know, it's like things, you know, happen slowly and then they happen overnight, right? Yeah. So you think about, there's been a food boom for a long time.

Right. Think about women's rights. Think about, you know, voting for women. Think about civil rights. Think about gay rights. These things took decades and then happened overnight. You know, the Berlin Wall came down in one day. Right. And the Soviet Union wasn't going away, but it did. So I think, you know, we're in a moment where even slavery, I mean, think about slavery was so central to our economy.

I mean, it was a civil war about this. I mean, hopefully we don't have a civil war, but economies can change. We go from horse and buggies to cars, right? Whole industries went out of business. That's okay. It's okay that we don't have 8-track tapes anymore. It's okay. Maybe vinyl's coming back. I got a new house, and I bought a record player and bring out my own vinyl, and I got some new vinyl albums. But I think it's interesting just, you know,

When I think about, you know, America and how, you know, ideally the powers that be want to be the most powerful nation in the world. And part of that, I'm like, don't we want a people that are

in a health sense powerful but maybe not with the powers that have been because they want to control them but we won't go there but it's just so interesting i'm like don't you want us to be so vital so in our bodies so yeah just alive that we can contribute to this yeah it's interesting you know i think our educational system was set up to create factory workers

And so it hasn't created a culture of people who think independently, who have, who are taught to have critical thinking capacity. And I mean, there's some colleges that does do that, but it's not really foundational to how we evolve. And so we're just sort of automatons. And then we get, you know, the media coming at us, social media and advertising, and we're highly manipulated. And we think we're making our own independent choices, but we're not.

And, you know, 40% of the time people see an ad for drugs on TV and they go ask their doctor for it. They get that drug. So that's how the system works. So we've kind of created a society of people who are not healthy, are not mentally healthy.

curious, are not able to think critically. And part of that's because our brains have been now poisoned by the food we're eating. So we think about now we have a society where, you know, 70% of military recruits are unfit to fight because they're overweight or unhealthy. We're 30 plus in math and reading in the world. You know, we have great academic institutions, but the average American is not getting educated properly.

They're not doing well in terms of thorough productivity, the amount of chronic disease, how that affects productivity in the workplace. We're using probably a couple of trillion dollars a year globally from laws of productivity because of processed food. Because it gives you brain fog and you get tired and you feel like crap. So productivity goes down. So we're affecting our global economic competitiveness globally.

So we're losing our national security, our global competitiveness. We're threatening our future generations. I mean, kids born today will live sicker and die younger than their parents. That's unconditionally true. Life expectancy is going down for the first time in history, even as we're learning how to extend lifespan and healthspan. I mean, it's kind of a crazy moment. I want to talk about lifespan versus or in correlation with healthspan and healthspan

The mission, if I'm getting this correctly, of function is 100 healthy years. 100 healthy years. Which I love. There's no reason, given the science we have today, that everybody can't live 100 healthy years. But what you have to understand is that disease doesn't just show up like that. Yeah. It's a slow transition from wellness to illness. And there are signals and clues all along the way. And if you pick up those signals and clues all along the way, you can stop that trend and you can reverse it.

And that's the goal here. Most people spend the last 20% of their life in poor health. Their health span is 80% of their life. Their lifespan is like 100%. You want them to be the same. And so you've got to pick up those signals early. And that's the purpose of function health, which is to help people identify where they are in that spectrum. Like the woman I saw today, she had lots of inflammation. She had autoimmune antibodies.

sort of slight having rheumatoid arthritis sort of antibodies. Wasn't quite have rheumatoid arthritis yet, right? But she was heading there. She had prediabetes. Wow. You know, she had stuff that was super fixable. And so by adjusting her diet or maybe some further testing we might recommend or doing some other lifestyle factors, she could actually reverse all that. I think, you know, one of the

chronic issues as well for a lot of demographics, but our demographic of women 25 to 35 is kind of this mental health decline. Can you talk to us about what you've seen in your work, whether nutritionally, lifestyle-wise, that we can do to just really bolster our mental health? I mean, the joke is in medicine that neurologists pay no attention to the mind and psychiatrists pay no attention to the brain. Right.

But the brain affects how the mind works, right? And it's biological. It doesn't just stop at your neck, which is crazy. I mean, the psychiatrists don't look below the neck. What we found is that in medicine, I wrote a book about this 15 years ago called The Ultramind Solution, but the body affects the brain, whether it's Alzheimer's or depression or ADD or autism or

And all that work that I did back then has been validated in spades, which is one that mental health is often a metabolic dysfunction in the brain. So insulin resistance is a big factor. Sugar is a big factor. Nutritional deficiencies are a big factor. Toxins are a big factor. Hormones are a big factor. The microbiome is a big factor. And so we're not checking for all that. And with a simple $1.37 a day test,

You can get a deep dive on the things that do cause mental health issues. Omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin D, magnesium, your hormones, thyroid, thyroid antibodies, heavy metals, insulin resistance, B12, folate, through sophisticated tests called methylmalonic acid and homocysteine, which are the gold standards. We can see that people have these dysfunctions and by correcting them, they will get better.

I had a friend who was a vegan. I just shared this story earlier, but he was very depressed and he didn't know why. And we did function and he had severe low levels of omega-3 fatty acids. Now 60% of your brain is made up of these fats. Wow. It's critical for brain development, for function, for mood, for cognition, for prevention of dementia. And he started taking huge doses of fish oil and...

The depression was gone. So, you know, we often kind of misappropriate meaning to mental illness. We think, oh, it's psychological. Right. Or you're stressed or whatever. And sometimes that's true. Sometimes, you know, you've lost a spouse or something.

You know, you have some traumatic event in your life or you're, you know, you have real serious stuff happening and that sure can affect you. But, you know, a lot of people don't have that. It's just a normal daily stuff of life and they don't feel good or they're moved. I mean, mental health crisis is the biggest crisis. When you look at the cost of society and indirect costs, because the direct costs aren't as much, but indirect costs from loss of productivity and activism and a

loss of function in life, and if you're depressed, you're just not going to be engaged in life. It's staggering how much money that costs us, and it's staggering how much human suffering there is that's unnecessary.

So part of the goal of function is to relieve unnecessary suffering through empowering people with their own health data and giving them guidance that's, you know, based on science to help optimize their health. Right. And I think that like, it's the, it's the foundation. So, you know, if I'm having an off day, I'm checking in, am I hydrated? Did I have, you know, healthy meals today? How did I sleep? And this is like checking in on that in a more complex way. Cause I think when people think of mental health, they're like, well,

you know, I have it in my family and I have it, I'm cursed with it or, you know, I don't have any friends, you know, whatever it is. So I like that kind of base level approach as well. Yeah. You need to do a friend biopsy too. That's really important. I was going to talk about just kind of that. You've talked about loneliness related to wellbeing because I think

you know, it's really funny. Like we live in a society that, I mean, we're social beings by nature, but yet we're on social media, but we're more disconnected than ever. Should be called a social media or anti-social media. Yeah, it really should be. And just there's this loneliness epidemic, I feel like. And I think there are periods of loneliness that might be purposeful and all of that, but

Can you talk to us about what's happening within our bodies when we are not connected to other human beings? Well, you know, it's fascinating. You know, I came up with this idea after...

reading the work of Christakis out of Harvard around the effect of our social networks on our health, and then working with Paul Farmer in Haiti who used the power of community health workers to help deal with these epidemics of TB and AIDS that were intractable in these countries by basically having neighbors helping neighbors. And then I realized that, you know, based on Christakis' work that, you know, he did a lot of, for example, analysis around obesity. He found if you were

obese you know if your friends were obese you were 170 more likely to be obese than if your family was overweight so it's not your genetics that matter it's your social group and and the truth is that that chronic illness is also a social disease but now we understand the science of this we know that that gene expression is tightly connected to your social relationships so if you're in a

a conflicted relationship or just you know whether you're you know fighting or you're not in a good relationship you're going to express genes that promote inflammation but if you're on loving connected relationship you're going to express genes that turn off inflammation and by the way by the way mental illness is inflammation of the brain depression is inflammation of the brain add autism bipolar schizophrenia

OCD, these are inflammation of the brain. And treating inflammation fixes it. I mean, we know this, for example, from OCD. There's a condition called PANDAS, which is an accepted medical conditions, pediatric associated autoimmune neurologic disease, right? And it's basically caused by strep.

And strep will cause this inflammatory response that creates this persistent effect in the brain. It can cause all these neurological and psychological symptoms like OCD.

And the treatment is treating the strep or getting rid of it. I had a kid who had this and we used intravenous ozone to help clear his body of the infection in the strep and OCD went away. So that just doesn't mean all OCD is caused by that strep, but it's an example of how inflammation of the brain can play a role. Wow. Yeah.

Yeah, I feel like that's a sound bite that people will really remember. The inflammation of the brain causing all of those different conditions. And is it different parts of the brain associated with those different conditions or is it the whole brain? You know, different people are affected based on their genetics and predispositions in different ways.

But it's a general systemic brain inflammation. There's a whole, it's called chronic sterile inflammation. It's not like from an infection necessarily, although it can be, but it's basically our inflamed diet because the diet we eat is an inflammatory diet. Ultra processed food destroys our microbiome, which is the source of our immune system and our gut and

that causes all these systemic problems and it also causes insulin resistance, which causes inflammation. So all that belly fat we're talking about, that's like a fire factory. It's just basically spewing out inflammation throughout your whole body. So inflammation is central to all the chronic diseases we have, everything from Alzheimer's to autism, from diabetes to heart disease, from depression to cancer. They're all inflammatory diseases.

When we're thinking about nutrition and... And by the way, your doctor's not checking for those things. Yeah, of course. And we check for that on function. Wow.

Yeah. The connection to diet is so important. It's a very like duh thing to me, but I'm also like, we're going so fast on the day to day. We're just kind of putting things in our mouth. We're a society of convenience overall, I feel like. And so we're not thinking about those connections, but I guess, can you walk us through ideally what you would recommend? And I know everyone is different, but-

as far as diet goes for an anti-inflammatory approach or diet, are we prioritizing proteins and fats? You know, does the food pyramid kind of play? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I've written so many books. I wrote Food, What the Heck Should I Eat? The Peking Diet. I mean, my new book, Young Forever, all lays out what that means and what it is and how to do it. I mean, Food, What the Heck Should I Eat? is more of an in-depth view. The Peking Diet is sort of like a

quick and easy user guide. But essentially I lay out every single food. How do you, how do you choose the right proteins, the right nuts, the right grains, the right kind of form of dairy, the right vegetable, like what should you be eating? Right. And what is the science behind it all? And it's really not that hard. I mean, it's just eat real food. I mean, yeah.

Because ideally, if we're eating real food and real healthy food, do we need supplementation or we do now that our soils are kind of crappy? We do. I mean, unless we're hunting and gathering our own food and living without any exposure to environmental toxins. Sure.

breathing clean air and drinking pure clean water and having nine hours of sleep a night and waking up with the sun and going to bed with the sun and exercising all the time to chase and hunt our food. Well, you probably don't need vitamins and minerals. And if you look at the studies on the research on the paleolithic diet, it was so nutrient dense, 150 grams of fiber. We have eight. It had higher levels of vitamins and minerals and omega-3 fatty acids and higher potassium, lower sodium. I mean, the data is so clear on how nutrient dense that food was.

So we just eat an impoverished diet, even if we're eating real food. And the soils are less able to extract the nutrients. But basically, you want to eat lots of colorful fruits and vegetables, lots of nuts and seeds, lots of good fats like olive oil, avocados, and nuts and seeds, lots of high-quality protein. Depending on where you are in your trajectory and what you're doing, anywhere from 0.7 to 1.0.

gram per pound of ideal body weight. So if you're 120 pounds, it's anywhere from 100 to 120 grams per protein day. Not that hard to do if you pay attention. And cut out all the ultra-processed food. Realize that sugar and starch are drugs and you can use them occasionally if you want, but they're, you know, so you want to have a

glass of tequila, shot of tequila once in a while, fine, but you're not going to have two or three shots every day. It's bad for you. So sugar can be enjoyed as a recreational drug, but not as a staple. And understand that your metabolic health is the most important thing. And so that is driven by inflammation.

So our anti-inflammatory diet is really important. Now, there's degrees of an anti-inflammatory diet. For example, I wrote a book called The 10-Day Detox Diet, which is about getting off of sugar and sugar addiction, but also eliminates all the common foods that drive inflammation. For example, dairy, gluten, sometimes even grains and beans can be factors. So I get rid of all ultra-processed foods, sugar, dairy, gluten, artificial sweeteners, additives.

And it's amazing how much inflammation comes down in just 10 days. It's unbelievable. In fact, we're launching a 10-day detox in January for our community online, drhyman.com, and people can go and sign up. And it's unbelievable. We did a beta on it, and I've done this for thousands of people over the years. We see a 70% reduction in all symptoms from all diseases. You have migraines, you have irritable bowel, you have depression, you can't sleep, your joints hurt, you're congested, you have sinus issues, you have asthma, whatever it is.

70% of symptoms, sorry, there's a 70% reduction in the symptoms in just 10 days. So that's how powerful food is. And most people have no idea that they're feeling bad. They think it's just normal. It's like the frog in the slowly boiling water. But when you do this 10-day program, you literally reset your entire biology. It's like hitting the reset button, going back to your original factory settings in your body.

And then you can see, oh, well, I'm going to add back this. I'm going to add back that. And oh, I add dairy. But like, I know if I have cow dairy, I'm going to get stomach issues and I'll get pimples and my nose will congest right away, like within minutes. If I have goat or sheep, it doesn't do it because it has A2 casein. So I know I'm sensitive to A1 casein. So I know that by my body. Now, other people might be fine with that, you know, but most people aren't. I know. I think when you do those, you know, experiments or elimination diets,

it's really the number one thing I think it does is you get in tune with your body. You realize, because I think you're on autopilot most of the time. I didn't realize at one point in my twenties, I was drinking quite a bit of wine and I was wondering why my nose was stuffy all the time. You know, I wasn't making that connection. Honestly, it's so amazing. I've interacted with so many highly educated people who are interested in their health and it's stunning to me how,

rare it is for them to connect what they're eating with how they feel. Like, it's just like, I also think that we are, I don't know if it's information overload. If people are overwhelmed, if they're too busy, if they're, if it's a, I don't know what it is. It's just a,

I don't think people want to take that time and make that effort. It feels like too much. Do you feel that way? No, I think, I think people just don't know. It's overwhelming. People don't know. What do I do? Who do I listen to? How do I figure this out? That's why function is really sort of so great because it gives people a toolkit. Yes. And it gives you a guide on nutrition, on exercise and stress reduction, on sleep, on avoiding environmental toxins, on how do you address each individual biomarker that's abnormal? How do you know we're going to be pulling in your medical history and,

And what are the conditions of how do you optimize your health around that? So it's sort of a coherent, you know, reliable science-based tool. That's not a big kind of bunch of selling something on social media because the only thing we're selling is access to your own data. We're not selling any other products. We're not affiliated with any other products. It's not like, oh, take your lab test and buy these supplements or take your lab test and take these hormones. Like, no, there's a lot of companies doing that, which I have a problem with.

Because then how do you know the integrity of what you're doing? Yeah, that's what's hard these days. Oh, you need to buy this extra product from us because we found all these things and you need to take these 25 supplements and take these hormones. And I'm like, no, no, no, we're not doing that. Yeah, and I think that's happening so much that we kind of become immune to it. I have red flags that go off because I feel like I'm kind of in that world. Yeah, who do you trust, right? Yes, exactly. So we're just providing you guidance and it's evidence-based, it's agnostic guidance.

We don't say take this brand or that brand. We say take this many units of vitamin D per day of D3 and make sure when you pick a supplement, you do your homework and you make sure you look at who the manufacturer is. Do they use good manufacturing practices? Do they use pharmaceutical-grade manufacturing practices? Do they third-party test their product before and after they produce the product to make sure there's no contaminants or heavy metals?

Do they make sure that the potency is exactly what it says on the label? It says 5,000 units of vitamin D. Is it 5,000 or is it 1,000 or is it 10,000 or 50,000? Do they actually do quality in terms of the other things that are in the product? Are there fillers? Are there additives? Are there preservatives? Are there coloring? Is there gluten? Is there dairy? A lot of supplements have lactose in them or gluten in them. It's just like crazy. So you don't want all that. So we have a guide on how do you be an educated consumer

Buyer, right? It's like teaching someone to fish rather than giving them a fish. This episode is brought to you by IQ Bar, our exclusive snack sponsor for today's episode.

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Yeah. The specificity of the test I think is so important because again, we're kind of being fed like take this supplement. You absolutely need this. And people are like, okay, I'll take it. And then people don't know if it's working because they don't know if they actually need it. What are you seeing as like the top deficiencies in our testing in the test? Yeah. It's kind of stunning to me, honestly, because you know, I've done this for a long time and I, and I think,

The amount of nutritional efficiency we have are really something. I was actually talking to Bill Gates the other day at an event I was at, and he was talking about this incredible work they've done around putting vitamins and minerals in bullion cubes.

for nutritional deficiencies in the developing world. And I said to Bill, you know, there's a lot of nutritional deficiency in the developed world as well. In America, it's really bad. He said, oh, no, there's not. You know, we eat plenty of food and there's plenty of protein and everything's enriched and nobody's got deficiencies. I'm like, no, no, no. We've just done 100,000 blood tests. And I can tell you that 67% of Americans are deficient, not at the level that I would think is optimal or that is really optimal,

based on the science, but what the reference range is in the lab. So for example, the way we determine what a reference range is is based on a population. So it's two standard deviations from the mean. So it's just a normal, it's just a statistical number. It doesn't mean it's optimal. So if I was a Martian and I landed in America in 2024,

I would think it's normal to be overweight because 75% of us are overweight. If you're thin, you're an anomaly, right? I'm a weirdo because I'm like, I'm on the, I'm on the way into the bell curve, right? Cause my body mass index is 21 instead of like 25 or 30. Right. So, you know, people, Oh, you're scamming out. I'm like, normal. This is normal. I'll give you like, this is normal. They're like looking around the airport. They're like, really? Yeah. And, and so,

The reference ranges are based on a sick population. So if everybody's living and working inside and has no exposure to sunlight and is slathering themselves with sunscreen, everybody's shifted toward vitamin D deficiency. So the reference range for vitamin D is 30. It should be 50. Wow. So even based on the reference ranges for a sick population...

67% are deficient. If we expanded that to optimal ranges, which we're going to calculate what that is, I bet it's much more. We're finding the biggest deficiencies are vitamin D, methylation factors like homocysteine, methylotic acid. So these are B12 and folate, iron, magnesium, zinc.

omega-3 fatty acids. These are happening at such great rates in the population. And we know this. This is not new information. The government has done something called the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. They have a continuous ongoing study for decades. And the government tests large cohorts of people. They check their blood. They do their history. They look at their diet.

And their own data show that over 90% of Americans are deficient in one or more nutrients at the minimum level to prevent deficiency. So how much vitamin C do you need to not get scurvy? Not very much, right? So how much vitamin C do you need to optimize your health and immune system? A lot more. Same thing. So I think, you know,

Just that data is out there. 80% are deficient in vitamin D or insufficient. 90% are omega-3 deficient. 45% are magnesium deficient. Probably about 45% are iron deficient, especially for a menstruating woman. It's really common. And so we're missing this whole swath of easily treatable things. And you have to understand, think about scurvy.

Like you're going to die from scurvy. Your teeth fall out. You bleed everywhere. Your gums are like mad. Everything goes terrible. And you take literally like milligrams of something, like just a tiny drop of something cures the disease instantly.

Same thing with like pellagra or beriberi, which are diseases of B vitamins, which they found when they started refining grains. They started seeing these really increasing rates of these horrible diseases that cause terrible skin rashes and dementia and all these horrible things, like serious illnesses. And literally, you give people tiny milligrams of something, and a miracle happens. It's gone in literally days. Wow.

- Wow, that's amazing. - But drugs don't do that, right? Drugs manage disease, they don't get rid of it. And so nutrients are the hub of your entire biochemistry. 'Cause every single chemical reaction, there are 37 billion trillion,

chemical reactions in your body every second. Billion, trillion. I don't even know what that is. I think it's like 37 zeros. And every single one of those chemical reactions requires an enzyme and every enzyme requires a cofactor or helper. Those are vitamins and minerals.

Each mineral or vitamin can influence hundreds and hundreds of chemical reactions. So if you're low in something, your basic biochemistry isn't working, which then leads to chronic illness over time.

These are called long-latency deficiency diseases. Because, you know, 10% of Americans don't get enough vitamin C that gives them scurvy, still today, right? But most people don't have scurvy, but they have other things that are related to lower levels or folate, you know.

Maybe, like the woman I saw today, she had insufficiency of folate. Maybe it's not going to cause what we call an acute deficiency, which causes anemia with large red cells. Maybe it's going to cause cancer because she doesn't have folate, or it's going to cause heart disease or cause dementia because her level of homocysteine was almost 14. If your homocysteine, which is a measure of your B vitamins, was high, we test this in Function Health.

If it's over 14, your risk of dementia is up by 50%. What? And all it requires is taking certain B vitamins in certain forms to fix it. Now, when you go to your doctor and say, oh, just take folic acid. Well, no, that's not the right form. You're going to make it worse. You take a methylated folate or methylfolate. And so we explain why and how the biochemistry works. One third of your entire DNA codes for enzymes. Four.

Think about it. One third of your entire DNA codes for enzymes. All those enzymes need vitamins and minerals and different enzymes and variations in those enzymes may require you to have more of a certain nutrient. For example, we test genetics, including the gene that is involved in this really key biochemical process called methylation or it's called MTHFR. About 35% of the population has a variant of this gene that makes it difficult for them to methylate folate, which means their biochemistry doesn't work right.

And so you need to take this extra special forms of folate. And it's, it's, I just say a quick story about this. It's, you know, before function, but there was a woman that was a director of a movie called fed up that I was in. It was about childhood obesity. It was I think 10 years ago. Yeah. And the, the, the, the sad thing was she had miscarriage after miscarriage after miscarriage. And then she had, you know, a baby born with anencephaly, which is no brain, right?

It's terrible. Terrible. I mean, it was just horrible. And so she read this article I wrote about methylation, which is kind of esoteric. And it's about how this is such a key biochemical process. And so many of us have problems with it. And in there, I explained, you know, what to test for. You check for homocysteine, you adjust the gene, you do this, how it can cause miscarriages, how it can cause spinal birth defects, which she had the anencephaly. And

She read this thing and she went to her doctor and said, doctor, I want you to test me for this gene. And he tested her. Sure enough, she had the gene that... So the methylfolate she was taking was not working. No, she wasn't taking any. And so she was taking just a prenatal vitamin that didn't have the right folate. It didn't work. So then she said to her doctor, he says, oh yeah, I want you to take more folic acid. She's like, no, Dr. Hyman in this article said anything is methylfolate. And so she took it.

and ended up during the movie premiere, she had had a baby. It was 10 months old. And we were driving around New York City going to different media events. And she was breastfeeding in the back of the car. Wow. She had this beautiful, healthy baby just simply by taking the right form of a nutrient. That's how powerful these are. And like I'm just going to say again, 67% of our health forward cohort at Function Health have something. And if you expand the definition to optimal, it's probably like 90%. Wow. Wow.

So you got to know this stuff and your doctor's not checking your omega-3 fats, not checking your vitamin D, not checking your red cell magnesium, not checking your homocysteine, not checking your methylmolic acid, not checking your zinc level, not checking all the things that really matter to know what's going on with your biology. When we talk about movement, exercise, I feel like there's differing information around

how much we need, what do we need minimally, optimally, et cetera. I guess if we're talking to, you know, the person out there listening who has like not even an hour to move their bodies, how are you thinking about movement? Not just exercise, maybe it's, you know, choices to walk places during the day.

How do you talk to your patients about movement? I mean, listen, any little bit matters, right? So just getting up and doing jumping jacks for 30 seconds can be a lot, you know, taking a five minute walk. If that's all you can do, you know, I mean, you just went to an event. I just walked 15 minutes back to the apartment rather than taking a

a taxi you know um i worked out this morning i had you know 25 minutes before i could go and i had a workout routine that i do with bands so all i need is my body weight and bands and i can do a quick routine and travel with it and just learning the basic skills like people have to learn how to cook they have to learn how to activate their parasympathetic system and relax their nerve

nervous system, which is over activated with stress. People have to learn how to move their bodies in ways that support their health. It doesn't have to be a lot of time. It can be 30 minutes, three or four times a week at minimum, not that much. Talk about 90 minutes a week. I mean, if you can't find that time, you should re-examine your life because it's, it's, yeah. And it's, the problem is though, here's, here's what happens for most people is they're eating a crappy diet.

They feel like crap. They don't want to move. And what's interesting, and this is very interesting, it's very interesting biology. David Ludwig has really mapped a lot of this out from Harvard. He basically said, we have a fuel partitioning problem. So what happens is you're eating all this food. It gets pushed into your belly fat. It's locked in there. Your body thinks you're starving. So what does it do? One, it makes you eat more. And two, it makes you exercise less.

Because your body thinks you're starving. You want to conserve energy. So you're not going to want to exercise. Right? So basically what he's seeing is it's, you know, it's not overeating that makes you gain weight. It's this sort of starting of this belly fat that causes the overeating. Okay. It's hungry fat. So if you look down and you got belly fat, you don't have it. You don't have it. I don't have it. But like a lot of people have it. It's like, oh, 93% have it.

If you have that belly fat, visceral fat, organ fat, that's different than fat on your butt or your legs or your arms. Sure. And that fat, one, makes you hungry and two, makes you lazy. So it's not eating too much and exercising not enough that makes us gain weight. It's actually having this belly fat that starts with too much sugar that makes us eat more and not exercise.

Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for that. I, I noticed on days, even when I have like a little indulging session, I'm like, man, oh man, I thought I was going to have that. Exactly. So we, yeah, I think just give it today. I was literally thinking about you this morning. I was like, I wonder if Mark got up and work. I was with my son who woke up at the crack of dawn. I was like, I'm sure he did. Um, last question. Um,

I was just also thinking about you when we were at this event. I know your schedule is so packed and traveling and the like. I'm curious how you stay well. You know, what is your what are your non-negotiables? What are you bringing with you when you travel? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So basically my routine is...

I bring my band. So I have like a, you know, stretchy resistance bands. It takes about this big. It takes like maybe a pound or less. All I need is a door, the doorknob and a floor.

And I don't even need anything else. I don't need shoes. I can do it in my underwear in my hotel room. And I have a set of routines. TB12 has a great app, which you can follow. And I use that. Personally, there's so much on YouTube. You can just do body weight resistance exercise. Give me a 30-minute routine and pop. I mean, it's great to have access to all this stuff now. So there's also apps. There's no lack of guidance on how to do it.

So that's non-negotiable. Getting eight hours sleep is pretty non-negotiable, although sometimes it's seven. So last night I went to bed and at 11, I got up at like 6.30. So I had about seven hours sleep. I like eight, but I'm okay on seven. And I got a little work done in the morning, worked out, and then went to the event. So I work out and I make sure that I get my food sorted. So I'm very careful about making sure I have

usually a day's worth of food with me kind of like a squirrel you know i have like my bag is full of nuts so i basically have nuts and proteins you have like what nuts are you eating right now i eat like macadamia nuts which are the highest caloric density and highest fat and they're like the olive oil of nuts so they're really great and like you eat a bag of that and you're like that's good you know if you're hungry you don't get you don't get you know

you know, hungry and then you have, you know, in a food emergency and need to eat crap and just eat a donut or whatever's around. Right. Right. So, um, make sure I had that. Make sure I like, you know, venison sticks. So Maui doing makes these great venison sticks. So there's, there's lots of stuff and I, that's protein and fat and fiber. And then, um,

You know, I take my vitamins. So I have, I have like little pack baggies like this and I fill them, you know, for my trip, whatever it is, my trips a week, two weeks, I fill up the whole time worth and I make sure I take those. So if you notice, but I was at the event, I had my little baggie and I had my food and then I take my vitamins and, and then, you know, what I'm going to do is,

Because if I go on longer trips, one thing I miss is my protein shake in the morning. So I bought a portable little hand blender. Cool. Okay. And then I'm going to have little baggies and I'll put my protein powders and all the goodies I like to put in there. And I'm going to take that with me.

That's my new plan. That's a genius move. And then I do like dried berries. I think it's Northeast Wild something. I forget the name of the company. But basically they provide frozen berries that are wild. But they also have the powdered dried stuff. You can put that in. Okay, great. So yeah. So there's all little hacks you can do. Yeah, of course. Because I just can't imagine. I mean, I think a lot of people when they're very, very busy, everything else falls to the wayside. So this is great.

I mean, you know, it's not as good as when I'm home. I get my sauna, my cold plunge. I got to be on my stuff. Say no more. I was thinking about it. I was like, what does Mark have in his house? But right after this, I'm going to the Russian bathhouse for a sauna. Good. Okay, good. I got to squeeze it in before the next event.

So I got to hang out with a friend that I haven't seen and just take an hour to myself. How much more time do those choices give you, right? Like you just feel so much better. Yeah, for sure. You can be so much more present. I'm so thankful. Thank you for being here. This was phenomenal. Congratulations just on function health thus far. And I know it's going to just make a huge impact.

on health in our country and globally. So I'm excited for our community. And there's some good news for your community. We have a 400,000 people waitlist. Yeah. And guess what? The first 100 people to sign up on functionhealth.com can use the code ALMOST30 and skip the 400,000 person waitlist. Do it now. A little gift to you. Yeah, that's going to be gone in two seconds. I just did my testing, so I'm excited to share about my results with you all in a couple weeks. So ALMOST30 is the

Early access code, FunctionHut.com. And yeah, you won't be sorry. You will not be sorry. Thank you so much, Mark. Thank you. Thanks. We'll see you on the next one. Bye. Bye.

Thank you all so much for listening to this episode with Dr. Mark Hyman. You can find him on Instagram at DrMarkHyman. And the first 100 people to use the code ALMOST30 at functionhealth.com will get early access to Function. It's an incredible platform that supports you extensively and thoughtfully in taking ownership of your health. You will be able to get over 100 biomarkers. What?

I was blown away and I'm so excited to continue my journey with them. So again, that's functionhealth.com. Code is almost 30, the first 100 people. Thank you so much for listening. We appreciate you as always. We know there's a lot of pods out there. So the fact that you have come back to almost 30, that you've subscribed to almost 30, that you've shared this with friends means the world to us. And just a reminder,

Kristen and I have written a book. It's coming out in June and it would mean so much to us if you would pre-order our book. I know it's six months away. Why would you pre-order a book? No, this is important. This is really important. It's going to be on your doorstep.

and be sent out the day it launches. And it would just mean the world, the world to us. We're very, very, very proud and excited to share this work with you. This is a guide to help you transition from your twenties to your thirties and really navigate any season of change. It's called Almost 30, the definitive guide to a life you love for the next decade and beyond. And yeah, we're really proud. So thank you again. You can go to almost30.com

Almost 30 to learn more. You can follow us on Instagram at almost30podcast, same on TikTok. And we'll see you on the next one. Thanks so much, y'all. See ya.

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