Change Your Brain Every Day - What You Should Be Eating in 2020, with Dr. Mark Hyman

Episode Date: February 25, 2020

It may come as a surprise to some, but one of the biggest historical culprits of environmental deterioration has been the food industry. Many of its practices, whether motivated by green or ignorance, has essentially put the world at risk for various hazards and disasters. In the second episode of a series with “Food Fix” author Dr. Mark Hyman, he and the Amens discuss what we can do to live healthier lives for ourselves and those who will be here when we’re long gone.

Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. In our podcast, we provide you with the tools you need to become a warrior for the health of your brain and body. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we have been transforming lives for 30 years using tools like brain spec imaging to personalize treatment to your brain. For more information, visit amenclinics.com. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is also brought to you by BrainMD, where we produce the highest quality nutraceuticals to support the health of your brain and body. To learn more, go to brainmd.com. Welcome back. We are having such a good time this week with our friend, Dr. Mark Hyman. This time we're talking about his new book, Food Fix. And it's

fascinating because I was thinking, oh, how to fix your kitchen when I first heard the title, but no, this is like much, much bigger. You're talking about fixing the food industry. And if you didn't hear our last podcast, you should go listen to it because he's really going after some big, big policies and big ideas. And we want to talk about how people can get involved. We started touching on that in the last one. So let's continue down that vein

and how can people sort of get involved and what can they take away? What are some practical takeaways from your book? Oh, i talk about uh i have an action guide about one of the top 20 citizen food fixes and you know focus on eating for your health and the health of the planet and that will have ripple effects right uh and i talk about that as a joke only the peak and dive it will help improve mental health kicks cognitive and behavioral issues help social justice issues. And that's what you can do in your own kitchen, in your own life.

And then, you know, make sure when you buy food that you don't buy food that's from in the industrial food system, whether it's glyphosate-ridden soybeans or whether it's high fructose corn syrup or refined soybean oil. Avoid all the additives, chemicals. You know, if you basically don't have it in your kitchen, like azodicarbonamide or, you know, butylated hydroxy toluene, you probably shouldn't have it in your food, right? And try to seek out as best you can non-GMO foods and organic foods.

It's a little more expensive, but there's great resources on how to do that. And that keeps pushing the demand, the the changes what the food companies do can you talk just for a minute about genetically modified foods so many of them are there is such controversy around that how do you think about gmos well that's a great question so i think i think there's two issues what what is the effect of the gene insertion on the plant that affects human health and i think there's a lot of concern about that i think the science is mixed and i don't think we know when we're right we don't know right uncontrolled experiment on humanity and the two genes that are really out there it's not like a ton one is the gly. And the two genes that are really out there,

it's not like a ton. One is the glyphosate-resistant gene, so it's the herbicide-resistant gene. And the other is the Bt gene, which is cotton mostly, which is a pesticide-resistant gene. But it's not led to the promises that were made. So there's no greater yields. There's, in fact, an increased use of pesticides and herbicides,

not a decreased use with GMO, which we thought would happen. And Europe has not allowed it, and they actually have better yields and less use of chemicals and better outcomes. So from that point of view, I think it's a challenge. It's also the challenges of it are that it's a kind of agriculture that's inherently destructive and is driving climate change. So just for that reason alone, it's good to avoid it. And the third is what goes on those GMO plants, which is the herbicides and pesticides.

And I think there's increasing evidence that glyphosate or the Roundup or the herbicide, the most abundant chemical used in agriculture, is toxic. It's toxic to the microbiome. It affects epigenetic changes. It's been linked to cancer. And we just can't be putting this stuff in our bodies willy-nilly without really being concerned about it. So I think those are the issues that we should be worrying about.

And I think if you're not getting a GMO food, you're getting food that's grown in a better way. So maybe it even isn't the issue, but if you see a non-GMO label, probably it's better for you. It's made from ingredients that aren't from industrial agriculture, which will help you and help the plant. And so there's a lot of other things you can do as well. I mentioned the community-supported agriculture, the farmers markets, start a garden on your windowsill in your backyard or community garden, choose restaurants that are more focused on this. There's increasingly, you know, farm to table restaurants and regenerative food restaurants. You know, you can be an agent of change in your

workplace by encouraging, you know, better practices and getting rid of all the crap. Like the Cleveland Clinic, we got rid of all the soda. Many institutions are really upregulating their quality of their food. You know, there's really something to start out of. Compost pile, your food waste is a big issue. Most of us throw out our food. Food waste is, you know, 40% of our food is wasted. It's about $2.6 trillion a year. If it would be looking at how much land is required to grow that food we throw out, it would basically be this entire land that's China. It's like buying groceries and coming home and throwing 40% of your groceries in the garbage. And it's harmful not just because it's a waste of resources.

It actually causes climate change when it goes to landfills and off-gases. So if it were a country, like I said, it would be the third largest emitter of greenhouse gases after the U.S. and China. So that really matters. That's all we can do. And then you, like I said, turn up the heat on food companies, turn up the heat on politicians. People make a difference. People care. Whether it's ballot initiatives or donate to the right campaigns or lobby with your local representatives to shift policies that you think are important you know and use that the you know use the the food policy action website to learn about things and maybe you want to get involved in regenerative agriculture in your community maybe you want to learn more about it you can become educated watch films like kiss the ground and the biggest little farm and and people doing a big difference um and there's even companies where you can invest your money.

So a lot of the times, you know, we're talking about harm that we're doing to the climate through investments. And the biggest, I think the biggest venture hedge fund, I think it was Blackstone or Black something. I'm not a big money guy, so I don't know, but it was one of the biggest money managers in the world. They said, we're not going to invest anything that actually causes climate change, which is huge.

Interesting. And I think you can support those businesses that are doing those good things and switching that out. So I think those are all things that we can do as individuals uh and and of course you know we can we can demand different kinds of health care where we activate our policymakers to talk about food and including food as medicine as their uh strategies to pay for things that really work you know like like dietary interventions which we don't know well speaking of that um you and i really bonded over the daniel plan so we knew each other before then but when pastor rick warren called us and said i'm fat my church is fat will you help us back in 2010 we created the daniel plan to really get the world healthy through churches.

And I know you've personally been involved in launching it in many different places. Talk about the impact you've seen from, which I just think is a great model on how organizations can get involved in the health of the people they serve. Absolutely. You know, what's fascinating is that, you know, we did this whole thing in Cleveland. Then we worked to create together a six-week program, a year-long curriculum. It's all digital. It provides information for pastors and their sermons it provides small group study guides and there's videos on how to do it we're all part of creating that and it's this incredible body of work that it's so powerful that it can be scaled across organizations and churches and actually in fact we have 27 churches in Cleveland where we've implemented the Daniel

plan with over 1600 participants and we're doing research on that. Like we wanted to do, remember Daniel? Sorry to convince a church to do research. Now they got the Cleveland Clinic involved. We got like better, better luck with that. But it's, uh, it's incredible to see the results people have and the power of love and community. And I, you know, I call it love medicine, you know, like food is medicine, but love is medicine. And that was sort of the secret sauce of the Daniel plan was as people loved

each other well. And I think that's, that's a missing ingredient in how we change behavior. Cause I could talk all day about what to eat and you could too. And you know, whether people do it or not, that's the problem. So how do you get people to change behavior? It's really through the power of community and friend power. And I think that's, what's so great about the Daniel Plan. But we're doing that in the clinic. I think I've told you, Daniel, we created something called Functioning for Life, which is a

functional medicine group program, kind of like the Daniel Plan. It's driven up of the same intellectual property of food is medicine. And we're seeing incredible results. Just remarkable stuff. And we're doing research on every single patient. So we're seeing incredible results. Just remarkable stuff. And we're doing research on every single patient. So we're looking at outcomes and staggering the benefits we're seeing. And yet, you know, people just don't take advantage of that.

And what I loved was the small groups. These people had an automatic built-in accountability and support. And so when you're trying to do it by yourself, it's a lot easier. You don't have that accountability and support. But with a you're trying to do it by yourself, it's a lot easier. You don't have that accountability and support. But with a group, when they didn't know what to do, they had someone to reach out to.

When they were going to go off and they felt guilty, I mean, all of the challenges that come up, they just had their group right there. And I think that was one of the big reasons they made it. Well, and for people that don't know, it's really based on five pillars. It's faith which is basically why do you care food fitness focus which was really brain health and friends we get

better together or we get sick together contagious and that's where you know the fastest way to get healthy is find the healthiest person you can stand and then spend as much time around him or her as possible. I love that. I mean, it's so true. Like if your friends are all eating crap and sitting on the couch, binging on donuts. Beer and chips, you're more likely to do that. It's like, yeah, not being so healthy, but all your friends are drinking green juices and yoga. Like when I went to your house and stayed there, it was amazing.

I got like green smoothies and I got like all kinds of nut balls. It was awesome. It was like, I was like, you know, I didn't have to like be in some strange city and eat crap. I had like a little amen care package. The best, you know. I still like a little in an amen care package. It was the best. You know? The nut balls. I still remember that

like it was yesterday. Well, you're welcome anytime. So during the Super Bowl this year, rather than watch football, I looked at my database. So I have this crazy database of 160,000 scans. You got to talk. If you're doing that on,000 scans. You got to talk.

If you're doing that on a Sunday night, you got to talk. But it was really interesting. You'll like this study. I have BMIs on 20,038 patients and their scans. linear correlation in virtually all areas of the brain that as their weight went up, the function of virtually every area of the brain went down from normal weight, overweight, obese, morbidly obese, was horrifying. And given that 72% of us are overweight, 40% of us are obese, just like you're saying, this is the biggest brain drain

in the history of the world. Because we've exported it to every other country virtually. So if we don't get a handle on this, we're going to decrease the lifespan of our children and our grandchildren. All right, when we come back. Before you go off of that, I just want to sort of emphasize because what you do is so important, Daniel, because you connect the dots between food and the brain and obesity in the brain. But

what's really clear is that so many of our bad decisions are a result of bad brain function and poor choices and it's leading to this epidemic of mental illness yep it's connected to food of divisiveness in our society what is all this conflict i never remember all this growing up i hate. I mean, it's just like, it's weird. It's like we live in a civil war in America. And all of that, I think not only from the food, obviously, but a large part of it has to do with how screwed up the brain is from the food.

I mean, you know, David Perlmutter just wrote a book called Brainwash. Fascinating about how this is a limbic system, which is the, you know, the fight or flight, you know, reptile in the room. And the predal system which is the you know the fight or flight you know reptile

in the room and the predal which is the adult in the room are not talking to each other because the inflammation from our diet and that's just scared the crap out of me because i'm like no one no wonder we're having so much mental health issues i mean and i and in terms of chronic disease in terms of quality of years of life lost it's a far bigger burden and in terms of chronic disease, in terms of quality of life lost, it's a far bigger burden to society in terms of the economic impact than things like diabetes or heart disease. Even though those cause more death, it's like people not being able to function, being depressed. That's right. And your brain controls everything. And when you damage it.

So we'll talk more about that when we come back. Stay with us. We're here with Dr. Mark Hyman. We're talking about his new book, Food Fix, but also some of the other amazing things Mark is doing in the world. Stay with us. If you're enjoying the Brain Warriors Way podcast, please don't forget to subscribe so you'll always know when there's a new episode.

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