Realfoodology - Stop Feeling Like Crap | Dr. Mark Hyman

Episode Date: April 2, 2024

EP. 192: This weeks episode, we are joined by the amazing Dr. Mark Hyman. Mark Hyman’s book The UltraMind Solution is one of the books that really inspired me to go back to school and get my Master’s of Science in Nutrition. This is such a full circle moment for me. When I first started my podcast, I wrote a list of my top guests and Mark Hyman was on that list. Today we sit down and talk about his company Function Health and what it is. We also talk about what the current Allopathic Model is getting wrong in our standard of care, why our medical system is so messed up, and what our doctors are not testing for. Lastly we talk about the food industry’s impact on health Topics Discussed: 04:46 - The UltraMind Solution 05:30 - Preventative Root Cause 10:25 - The story behind Function Health  21:30 - Hormone panels and routine blood work 25:52 - Being an advocate for your own health 34:25 - Biological age, Metabolic health crisis  38:10 - The MF'er gene 40:00 - FLC Syndrome and disrupting the healthcare system 44:05 - Courtney’s results - Hemochromatosis  48:41 - Dr. Mark Hyman’s Roman Empire 55:46 - Making the connection between health and nutrition 58:53 - Addiction to Ultra Processed foods 01:06:50 - Mental Health and Nutrition 01:08:55 - Dr. Mark Hyman’s health non negotiables Check Out Dr. Mark Hyman Instagram Website Function Health The UltraMind Solution: The Simple Way to Defeat Depression, Overcome Anxiety, and Sharpen Your Sponsored By:  Organifi Use REALFOODOLOGY for 20% off at  www.organifi.com/realfoodology  ARMRA Get 15% off your first order at tryarmra.com/realfoodology NeuroHacker  Go to neurohacker.com/realfoodology for up to $100 off and use code REALFOODOLOGY for an extra 15% off BiOptimizers MagBreakthrough Get 10% off at bioptimizers.com/realfoodology with code REALFOODOLOGY Natural Cycles for 15% off go to naturalcycles.com with code REALFOODOLOGY Check Out Courtney: @realfoodology www.realfoodology.com My Immune Supplement by 2x4 Air Dr Air Purifier AquaTru Water Filter EWG Tap Water Database Produced By: Drake Peterson

On today's episode of The Real Foodology Podcast. We have so many millions and millions and millions of people who are suffering who don't need to suffer. And the reason is we're not giving people access to the right information and the right care. And that's why I helped co-found Function was to provide a place where people can start to have agency and take back their health. Hello friends, welcome back to another episode of The Real Foodology Podcast. I'm your host Courtney Swan and today's episode is with Dr. Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of The Real Foodology Podcast. I'm your host, Courtney Swan, and today's episode is with Dr. Mark Hyman. When I booked this, I had to take a moment and reflect back on my entire career. I found the work of Dr. Mark Hyman back in 2010. It was back in a time when I was, I've talked about this so many times on the podcast,

I was still touring with bands at that point. And I was getting really into health and wellness. And I was just finding the work of all these amazing thought leaders like Dr. Mark Hyman, Michael Pollan, Bonnie Hari started her blog around 2011. I was finding all these people that were really inspiring me and getting me just so excited about nutrition. Mark Hyman's book, The Ultramind Solution is one of those books that I found during that time that really inspired me to go back to school and get my master's of science and nutrition. So this is such a full circle moment for me right now. When I started my podcast, I wrote down a list of my

top guests and Mark Hyman was like my number two. So we sit down and talk about his new company, Function Health and what it is. So I'm not really going to dive into the details of that, but we also talk about what the current allopathic model is getting wrong in our standard of care. Why is our medical system so messed up? And what are doctors not testing for? We also talk about why is routine blood work so important? I give a little bit about my journey with Function Health. And we talk about the biological age, which is a really cool feature that Function has. And we also just talk about some of the standout features of the blood work. We also talk about what is Mark Hyman's Roman empire, something that lives rent-free in

his mind. So stick around for that. And then lastly, we talk about the food industry's impact on health. There was a recent study that came out that you probably saw showing that a diet high in ultra-processed food is linked to a greater risk of many diseases. Remember guys, logic is fast, science is slow. We have known this for a while that packaged product goods and foods

are not the healthiest for us. We've known this inherently. It's very logical. It makes sense. But it takes on average around 17 years for the science to back up what we know to be true intuitively and anecdotally. And it's just interesting that all these studies

are finally starting to come out and Mark Hyman and I talk a little bit about that as well. So it was such an honor to be able to sit down with him. I'm so grateful for you, the listener, because without your support, I would never be able to do this. So I just, from the deepest part of my heart, I'm just so grateful. Thank you so much for your support. Thank you for allowing me to continue to do this amazing work that truly lights up my soul. And I hope that it's really helping you and your family and your friends. So if you're loving the podcast, if you could take a moment to rate and review it, it really truly means a lot to me and it really helps this show. So thank you so much. I hope you enjoy the episode. If you're like me, you know the importance of eating healthy,

but you don't always have the time or the willpower to cook with all the colors of the rainbow. And your body is an amazing organic machine. It turns food into energy. It heals wounds, supports your consciousness, and so much more. But it needs the right fuel and signals to function at its best. Some of those signals include adaptogens. These are compounds that balance hormones and help you deal with stress in a healthier way. If you're feeling tired, these compounds give you a boost of energy. If you're stressed, they help you return to a natural state of calm. They literally help you adapt to the stress of life. My favorite source of adaptogens is Organifi. They create these delicious superfood blends that mix easily with

water. They make it so easyfood blends that mix easily with water. They make it so easy for me to get more adaptions in my day like ashwagandha, reishi, mushroom, rhodiola, and so much more. If you're looking for an easy way to support your amazing body, I highly recommend trying Organifi. To try Organifi today and save 20%, go to Organifi.com slash RealFoodology and use code RealFoodology. Again, that's Organifi.com. It's O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I.com and use code realfoodology. Mark, first of all, I just want to say thank you so much for coming on. So you don't know this. You actually made such an impact on me back in,

I found your book, Ultramind Solution back in 2010. Oh man, really? Yes. That was ages ago. So long ago. I was like 12 when I read it. I mean, literally same. You actually, I was working in music at the time and there were three people whose work I found and you were one of them. And also Vani Hari and Michael

Pollan that inspired me to go back to school and get my master's in nutrition. So I'm so honored to have you on today. Thanks for having me. That was my favorite book I ever wrote. I literally downloaded that. It was just like three weeks at the computer, like on the road with Jack Kerouac. It all came out. And it was basically, my joke is it could be called the ultra anything solution.

It's really a roadmap of how your body works and what you need to know and how to operate it. It's like the operating manual for your human body, which we never got when we were born. Yeah. Well, and it was revolutionary at the time too because you were one of the first people that really made me become online

to this whole concept of treating from root cause protocol and also just to really become aware of my body and how the food was affecting my body. And it just really, it was revolutionary for me and my whole career path. And how did you even get into that space of treating from preventative root cause? You were so, you were like first to the game.

I mean, listen, I've been a weirdo from early on. My joke is I have ODD, I'm odd. And I was really into this in college. I ended up living with a graduate student in nutrition at Cornell. I was getting his PhD and studying ruminants and the microbiome, we didn't call it that then, and nutrition and fiber and it was just a whole new world that opened up to me. So we really started to think about the body, how it worked, food, its medicine, all these ideas that I was back in the 70s.

And there was a book he gave me that really woke me out. It was called Nutrition Against Disease. And it was written by Roger Williams, who was one of the fathers of this whole concept of biochemical individuality. Now we call it personalized medicine. But he basically was a genius. He was actually the guy who discovered vitamin B5, but he really saw the future.

And he talked about this whole idea of how we can modulate our gene expression and our health through nutrition and treat chronic disease. And so that kind of got me thinking about it. And I studied all these ancient healing systems in college and Chinese medicine and all these ways of thinking that were quite different than traditional medicine. And when I graduated from college, I had a major in Buddhism,

which there wasn't a lot of job prospects for that. So I basically was like, geez, what can I do? And I was like, well, I really like compassion. I really like the idea of service. I don't think I want to become a monk, but a doctor, that could be a good job. And so I basically decided to go to medical school and I wasn't really attached to it. I said, well, if I get in, I'll go, if not. And if I get in, if I like it, I'll stay.

If I don't like it, I'll do something else. So I wasn't really attached to it and I actually liked it. And I began to really dive in. And then I got pretty pretty just really good at traditional medicine I did a family residency family practice residency and a UCSF program in Santa Rosa that was just community medicine so it was only that residents were family medicine residents so we did everything we did orthopedics and surgery and OB and emergency medicine and everything so and I went and practiced in a small town in Idaho as a family doc.

So I got really schooled in regular good medicine. But I realized that wasn't enough. I was just medicating patients and I was managing their symptoms and I wasn't really helping them that much. I was mitigating a little bit of their suffering but not enough. And I knew better, like I knew better. And so that's when I sort of shifted my career in my mid-30s and I started down this track of thinking about how to apply nutrition and lifestyle to treating people and around the same time I got very very sick like just kind of way life unfolded

for me I ended up getting chronic fatigue syndrome from mercury poisoning from living in China and so not only was I interested in this for my patients, but I was really desperate to get better. And I learned about functional medicine from one of the nutritionists, Kathy Swift, at Canyon Mantra I was working. And game over. Once I opened that Pandora's box, it was just no stopping. And I just devoured everything I possibly could on the topic.

And I ingested every audio book and tape and lecture and presentation. I mean, it wasn't a lot going on then, it was a little bit. And I started applying it to myself, applying it to my patients. And for those listening who don't know what functional medicine is, essentially it's medicine that is the science of creating health. It looks at the root causes of health and also the root cause of disease. So we don't really learn about health in medical school. And so the whole premise of functional medicine is

how do you understand what disturbs function and how do you optimize function? And so we do that through detailed history, laboratory testing, long list going on under the hood and diagnostics and it allows us to see what's going on and how the body really is a system. It's an ecosystem that you have to treat and create health in just like you create a healthy soil if you want to have a healthy garden, right? Yeah, yeah.

Okay, I love hearing that story. It's cool. I had a very similar story in the sense that once I opened that box, I could not get enough information. I mean that once I opened that box, I could not get enough information. I mean, I was just reading every book I could get my hands on. I was working in music at the time and I completely left that career and I went back to school to get my master's in nutrition and I created Real Foodology on the premise of real food. And here we are almost 20 years later, which is so crazy. But I just, I loved hearing that story. So

one of the things that you created pretty recently was Function Health, which is a really amazing, more affordable, accessible way for people to get yearly blood work. So what made you want to create Function and what were you seeing in the allopathic model that needed an upgrade? Yeah, great question. So, you know, I'm one doctor and I could be the smartest doctor in the allopathic model that needed an upgrade? Yeah, great question. So, you know, I'm one doctor and I could be the smartest doctor in the world and I could work all the time and I could only see so many patients. And so I realized what I've done in my career

is to really create a roadmap for people to create health and address the chronic disease epidemic, which affects six out of 10 Americans, address our severe metabolic health crisis, which affects 93% of Americans, the autoimmune crisis, mental health crisis, all these things that we're really crappy at dealing with medicine. If you need a new hip, great.

If you break your arm, awesome. If you need surgery, great. I had arrhythmia that's con's genetic that I needed a heart surgery for and I had a little electrical shock thing and boom, I was better. Thank God we have it. So no problem with that. It's just for most things people suffer from, it's not very good. And so function health was really the outgrowth of this idea

that we want to democratize health and health care. We want to give people access to their own data, their own biology. I mean, you now can wear an aura ring and learn about your sleep and your respiratory rate and your heart rate and your heart ability and deep sleep and REM sleep and all these wonderful things, how many steps you took and that's all great.

But that's just sort of looking at the coat on the car, like the paint. It's not looking under the hood, right? Yeah. How do you look under the hood? Because there's so much more data, right? There's all the laboratory testing that tells about all of our hormone function, our immune function, our gut function, our nutritional status,

heavy metals, our metabolic health, our cardiovascular health. I mean, it just goes on and on. And none of these things are properly used in medicine. We have these available for us for mostly conventional lab testing. But we met with, for example example the top guys at quest laboratory and we asked them like what percent of of cholesterol tests are the cholesterol tests that everybody should be having which is called lipoprotein fractionation instead of measuring measuring the weight of the cholesterol measures the size and the number of the particles which is a much better predictor of your cardiovascular risk. You could have a normal looking cholesterol panel,

but be at severe risk. And he said, less than 1% of the tests we get in, check for that. Even though this has been around for 40 years. 40 years. And so the adoption rate of new science into practice is so much delayed that we want to accelerate that. And we want people to have access to the latest testing,

the latest diagnostics to understand what's going on under the hood, be able to track their data. And, you know, this is rich person's medicine that now people can get access to for a really affordable price. I mean, we've been able to negotiate down prices and, you know, get for $4.99, 110 plus biomarkers and another round of tests at six months, about 60 biomarkers for $4.99 a year. Which is wild.

Which is, you know, a dollar or something a day. You know, like a dollar or something a day, like maybe less than you spend on your coffee every day. You can have a really great picture of your health and track your data over time. And you can then modify things. So I check my function panel regularly. I just got mine two days ago. And I did the last one about five, six months ago. And based on what I found, I made some

modifications, I changed a few things and I reversed my biological age in five months by one year. I did too. I've literally gone back. I was already like 10 years younger, but now I'm 11 years younger, but even though I'm a half a year older. So I've learned actually, you know, how, even through my own diagnostic testing, where things I need to work on are, even though I know all this stuff, right? So everybody should have access to that. And it gives you a really wonderful way to use insights from all the scientific literature, from all the world's experts. I mean, you know, I mean, I know a lot, but I don't know everything, right? So if I'm seeing a patient,

they're only getting the benefit of my own knowledge, experience, and training. Even if I'm the smartest guy in the room, it's still only a limited slice. But imagine if you could get the experts from all the scientific literature, from every paper ever published, from all the experts that are putting their knowledge into our knowledge system, using computational power to kind of look at the patterns, look at the correlations, create a predictive model of like what's going on with your body,

what are the top things that you might want to look at, what are the top things that you want to optimize, how do you do that through lifestyle, through diet, supplements, maybe medications, when do you need to go for follow-up testing, when should you go get something checked. So, for example, we did this with my mother-in-law and her husband, who's my stepfather. And, you know, they had kind of, they were in their early seventies,

very healthy exercise, ate well. And, you know, they had really abnormal lipid particles that were not picked up on a regular cholesterol test. And I was like, gee, you know, you probably need to do a heart scan. So we did an AI-interpreted heart scan looking at your coronary arteries. And we found out they had significant plaque and blockages and they needed more aggressive treatment. Now, they would have never known that if they had just gone to the regular doctor. And by the way, they had been going to the regular doctor. And there's so much missed every year. And the basic panel that we do as the annual physical

is like dinosaur age in terms of medicine. It's so backwards. It's so limited. And it doesn't really reflect the things that really go wrong. And so we've had over 30,000 members sign up. We're still in beta, but we have about 150,000 people on the wait list. We have seen over 3 million data points.

And what we're finding is kind of shocking. I mean, we're saying that 89% have metabolic health issues based on their type of cholesterol. 50% have a high something called ApoB, which is the most important cholesterol test that you need to do, that is not done by a regular doctor usually. It's not on your panel. But the data, the scientific literature, shows that this is the most important predictive number to tell whether you're at risk for a heart attack. And 56% have high levels.

46% have high CRP, which is a marker of inflammation. Again, not checked on your regular panel by most doctors. And inflammation is linked to every known chronic disease, from heart disease to cancer to diabetes to dementia. Even mental health issues are all inflammatory. Something is going on. Maybe this is post-COVID, I don't know, but I was shocked to see that many people have high levels.

30% had autoimmune markers that are walking around, they don't even know it. 13% had abnormal thyroid. 67% had a nutritional deficiency. I'm not shocked by that. At the level that is based on what the laboratory reference range is, not what's on optimal levels. Oh, wow.

So for example, ferritin, and we can talk about your tests if you want, ferritin is an important marker of your iron stores. It's like how much money you have in the bank, how much iron you have in the bank. So if you have a cut or blood loss, you can pull that iron stores, build up your blood again, and you're fine. And the reference range in the lab is 16 or less is considered abnormal. But ideally, you should have 45 or more. Now, if you're under 45, what happens? Well, you can have fatigue, you can have sleep issues, you can have hair loss, stuff that's kind of like, I don't know,

that's not a disease, but people are suffering needlessly from all sorts of problems that have easy fixes. People might have like a little bit of depression or a little bit of low energy or they have muscle aches or they have brain fog. It may be because they're low in vitamin D. And we see 80% of people have insufficient levels of vitamin D. So 67% of people we tested, and this is a health-forward population who are trying to learn more about their health and generally proactive

and not probably eating tons of crap. Generally the healthier version of Americans. And we're still seeing all this. And these are modifiable things. So it's not like, oh, you'd find this and you'd find something terrible and you can't do anything about it. No, no, we're finding things you can do something about. We found somebody had a pituitary tumor from their blood work.

What are the markers that show up for that? There's something called prolactin. It's a hormone, again, not checked, but it's common. And it's a slow-growing tumor in the pituitary that produces this hormone called prolactin, which is for lactation and other things. But this person needed a little minor brain surgery and cure them or you know things like that we're seeing they're quite amazing or we were doing

cancer screening with liquid biopsies so you know it's much more predictive than most screening tests like mammogram or colonoscopy and it's available now and people can get it and it's an add-on to function but you know we're seeing people who have early cancers that detected years before you show up on a imaging test or have a symptom that can be then treated and cured in an early stage so it's it's kind of exciting to see that that people are starting to really get enthusiastic about learning about their bodies i mean it's kind of this moment i mean after covid people are like oh gee i guess we should pay attention to our health and you know people are worried

about and we're like duh yeah so like you know I think people are like wearing all these biosensors and continuous glucose monitors and aura rings and whoops and great. That's all fantastic. And by the way, we're going to get all that data is going to come into function. So if you're wearing sensors, if you're your medical records or your electronic medical records, if you do genetic testing, omics, we're going to be able to actually get all that in. And so we're going to build the smartest healthcare system in the world where we take something from an analog age to a digital age. You know, we don't

have data-driven healthcare right now. We have analog healthcare and it's kind of a joke, honestly. I mean, you're basically relying on your doctor. Did he get a good sleep last night? Does he remember everything he learned in medical school? What experience did he have before? Has he seen the right patients? What else does he know? Does he know anything about nutrition? Does he know anything about health? And the truth is that as doctors, and I'm one of them,

we got trained zilch on the things that really matter. Like my daughter now is in medical school. I said, Rachel, are you learning about the microbiome? No. Are you learning about insulin resistance? The number one driver of all chronic illnesses and something we aggressively test for in function

which doesn't get tested normally like your insulin levels and so forth. No, I'm not learning about that. How about nutrition? Well, we learned about amino acids and fatty acids and carbohydrates.

I'm like, yeah, what are you going to tell your patient to eat for lunch? You know? Yeah. And so, I mean,

she's just in this system that is so outdated. And so what we're trying to do is leapfrog over a very antiquated system. It's not going to replace your doctor. It's not going to replace healthcare, but it's going to help you be the CEO of your own health and be a co-pilot. So you can actually know what to do for your own self-care and give you a sense of what to do if you need actual medical care. So what are the right questions to ask your doctor? What are the right things you should be looking for? Because they make, oh, you need a regular CT scan.

No, you don't need a regular heart scan. You need the AI interpreted coronary angiogram, which is the state of the art, right? Like this cholesterol panel is a state of the art. And it's not expensive. It's just nobody's ordering it. Nobody knows about it. Well, this is a trend that I have been seeing

for the last maybe five years or so is that people will ask me in my DMs, they'll say, okay, well, I'm dealing with hormone issue or something. And I'll say, go to your doctor and ask for a full hormone panel. And they'll come back and they'll say, oh, my doctor said I didn't need it.

So doctors are refusing to pull lab panels for some people. Or for example, if they need to get their thyroid checked, they won't do a full panel. They'll just test the T4 and T3, I believe. They'll just check TSH usually, sometimes T4. Yeah. And so there's not this standardized place where people can go to order all the tests. They're also asking me, well, what do I ask my doctor for? Half the time they're being refused or they're getting charged up the butt, like through the labs. And so it's cool to see that you guys are,

you're standardizing this now. And now the questions aren't anymore like, okay, what do I ask for? You guys already have that all in place and people can just go to you and go, okay, now I can get all the information I need. And then they can also monitor their health year from year. And that was another question I wanted to ask you about this is,

I was just talking about function with a friend of mine the other day because I've been with it for two years now. And my friend was like, oh yeah, I don't know if I want to pay for that every year because why do I need to get blood work every year? It seems like a lot. Why would somebody want to get routine blood work? I mean, don't you change your oil in your car on a regular basis? Don't you rotate the tires?

Don't you get your car checked out for its 10, 30, 20, 50,000 mile checkup? Why should we be any different? You don't want to wait until the check engine light goes on and you have a heart attack or you get a tumor or you get diabetes or you have something really serious. You want to find out what's going on early because disease doesn't happen like that. It's a transition from wellness to disease, wellness to illness. And anywhere along that

trajectory, you can intervene. And the earlier you intervene, the better you are. For example, let's just talk about what we see around metabolic health. So we know that 75% of Americans are overweight, 42% are obese. We know that 93.2% are metabolically unhealthy. What does that mean? It means they're somewhere in the continuum of insulin resistance, prediabetes to type 2 diabetes, meaning they have high blood sugar, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, they're overweight, or they've had a heart attack or stroke. Only 6% of Americans don't fit in that. I mean, it's wild. Yeah, it's shocking. How do you find out if you're one of those people? Well,

yeah, you can have high blood sugar or high blood pressure or high cholesterol, but that's a late stage phenomena. We actually measure something that is the most important test for me to know what's going on with someone long-term for the risk of heart disease, cancer, dementia, diabetes, metabolic health, and that's insulin. Doctors don't measure insulin. I don't know why. The literature is there. The science is there. I've been doing it for 30 years. It's one of the most revealing tests because your blood sugar does not go up until very late. So by the time your blood sugar goes up, you've already been having problems for years, if not decades. Insulin is an early warning sign. So your insulin starts to go up, which we measure as part of your routine function

health panel, you know there's a problem. It should be less than five. If you're five to 10, you're kind of moderate risk. If you're over 10, you're starting to get in trouble. And we see people 10, 20, 30, and these people are high risk, even if their blood sugar is normal. So this is for an example of one of the tests we check. And you mentioned thyroid, you know, a lot of people are walking around with low grade thyroid dysfunction. It affects one in five women, one in ten men, 50% are not diagnosed, even those who are diagnosed are not probably treated optimally because their levels aren't optimized for T3, which is the most important marker of the active thyroid hormone,

something that's on the functional panel. And what doctors don't do is they don't check the full panels, they don't check both the brain telling the thyroid to make hormone, they don't check the thyroid hormone that's being made and they don't check both the brain telling the thyroid to make hormone. They don't check the thyroid hormone that's being made. And they don't check the byproduct of that thyroid hormone that's the active thyroid hormone called T3. And they don't check antibodies against your thyroid because a lot of people are walking around with thyroid antibodies.

We found that over 13% of the population that we studied here in our functional health cohort, about 30,000 people, 13% have high thyroid antibodies. Meaning they have an autoimmune thyroid condition that they don't know about. Now, some of them may know, but probably a lot of them don't know. And they're walking around, even if their levels of TSH are normal, they're still usually symptomatic and they need to be treated. And so we wait until something really bad happens and then we do something. So this is totally backwards from what we should be doing in medicine and function is

really designed to fix that. Yeah. Well, and I was gonna say that's my beef with the allopathic model is that your doctor will just say every year, oh, everything looks great, you know, you're doing totally fine. And then boom, all of a sudden you have diabetes too. And there was a progression there along the way, but there's no one monitoring. I shouldn't say no one,

but in the allopathic model, traditionally they're not monitoring saying, hey, we're seeing these numbers go up. Let's do some diet and lifestyle interventions in order to bring them back down and monitor this so that you don't get full-blown type two diabetes. Yeah, or they'll say, yeah, your sugar is a little high. Why don't you eat better and exercise more?

And then that's all they say. How often does that work? And what does that mean exactly? And they don't even know how to define what that means. Yeah. And so we're not trained in that. So they may, in good faith, offer their patients guidance on improving their lifestyle. But there's no mechanism for doing that.

And then more often than not, they won't even say that. They'll say, well, you know, it's a little high. If it gets higher, we'll have to put you on medication. One patient came in and their blood sugar was like 110, 115. I'm like, gee, your sugar's high. Have you seen your doctor about that? And he said, well, yeah. I said, well, what did they say?

He said, well, he said it's getting a little high and I should wait until it gets higher and then come back and they'll put me on medication. Oh my God, that makes me so upset. Okay, well, that's probably not a good idea. So I think the beauty of function health is that given the convergence of technologies, it's really empowering people

to make use of the advances in medicine, the advances in systems thinking and understanding the body as a network and a system, the advances in diagnostic tools, the ability to get your labs done pretty much anywhere. We have a network of thousands of labs across the country we use to be able to get labs. It's 15 minutes in and out, make it super easy. You don't have to go through your doctor, You don't have to go through your insurance. One of my friends wanted

some lab tests, so I ordered her some lab tests. She was a patient. She sent me a note. She said, God, Mark, these labs are like $9,000. I'm like, wow, that should be like a few hundred dollars. The way healthcare works, just so you know, it's like a car.

You go to a Toyota dealer in one city and the next city and the next city. You know, a Camry is about the same price, right? Maybe a few dollars here and there. But it's like you're not going to get a Camry for $10,000 on one lot and $100,000 on another lot and $1,000,000 on another lot and $3 on another lot. That's what medicine is like.

So one lab, the vitamin D might be $10. Another lab might be $500. Same test. It's kind of rigged. And so, you know, big insurers and big healthcare systems will negotiate down prices and solve. But it's kind of a mess. It's like, why is a drug here

$500 a month and in Canada it's $20 a month. Same drug. So it's just the system is screwed up. And so what we've done is really made it this affordable, accessible, easy for everybody to access. You'll attract their data over time and know what's going on with your body and make adjustments that make a difference for people.

And we've seen this, the stories that people have are just amazing. And even for myself, like I said, I've learned things that I didn't know going on. And I had mine done recently and I was kind of a little lax on my fish because I was traveling and I ate fish that I wasn't always aware of and my mercury level was high I'll go damn like I got damn I got to get that down and so I mean I'm going to behave and take all the supplements I need to know when I but but then you get a you know get a clear roadmap

and insights about what it means here's what the test means here's how you understand how it impacts your health. Here's the common symptoms that might occur from this. Here's the common diseases might be associated with this. Here's the diet, lifestyle, and supplement recommendations that you might want to consider. And then if you are still stuck, here's the next steps you need to go see a doctor

or maybe you want to get these extra tests and see what's going on. And here's what you need to do to be an advocate of yourself when you go to get these extra tests and see what's going on. And here's what you need to do to be an advocate of yourself when you go to the doctor so you actually can be an informed patient. So it really gives you, it's not just a test,

it comes with an entire database of knowledge and information that's curated and guides you in exactly what you should be doing to optimize your health. Is it just me or is colostrum just totally taking the internet by storm? I mean, I'm so happy about it. And it's so interesting how certain things will

just become a massive trend. I've been taking colostrum for probably at least 10 years now, or so my mom got me on it. It's an ancient practice used for immune function. It really helps to strengthen and bolster the immune system. And I will say Armra Colostrum has really taken the internet by storm. And for good reason, it is a really good high quality colostrum. I get so many DMs from you guys just specifically asking me if I use Armra Colostrum. And yes, I do. I've been taking Armra specifically for almost a year now. I travel with it everywhere I go. I bring the little individual packets with me and I especially take it while I'm traveling because that's when we are most susceptible to getting sick. And you know what's really cool? There's actually a study that's been done

comparing the effects of the flu vaccine and colostrum and colostrum performed better in protecting the body from the flu. Isn't that wild? And this is a peer-reviewed study posted in a very well-renowned medical journal. So what is colostrum? It is the first nutrition we receive in life and contains all the essential nutrients we need in order to thrive. Armour is a proprietary concentrate of bovine colostrum that harnesses these 200 plus living bioactive compounds to rebuild your immune barriers and fuel cellular health for a host of research-backed benefits. Armaclostrum strengthens immunity. It ignites metabolism. It fortifies gut health. It helps activate hair

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formula that I'm talking about, Qualia Synalytic, is non-GMO, it's vegan, it's gluten-free, and the ingredients are meant to complement one another, factoring in the combined effect of all the ingredients together. If for some reason you don't like the product, you're not feeling the effects of it, it also has a 100-day money-back guarantee. If you want to resist aging at the cellular level, try Qualia Synalytic. Go to neurohacker.com slash realfoodology for up to $100 off and make sure to use code realfoodology at checkout for an additional 15% off. That's neurohacker, N-E-U-R-O-H-A-C-K-E-R.com slash realfoodology for an extra 15% off your purchase. Thanks to Neurohacker for sponsoring today's episode. It's so cool. I love it. Like I said, I'm a member. One of my favorite features was the biological age.

Oh, yeah. Because I actually reversed mine even lower too. I'm 39 and I'm 23.9 according to my biological age. I was like, okay. And last year it was 24 something. So I'm like actually lower. I'm Benjamin Buttoning chronologically. Yeah.

Which is very cool. So what are some of the standout features? We've talked a little bit about it, but what are some of the things that people, that you're testing for in function that people are not normally getting with their doctor? I think there's a couple of main things. One is, you know, we have this metabolic health crisis, right? And it's killing us. It's causing mental health crisis. It's causing diabetes, causing, it's causing diabetes,

causing obesity, causing heart disease, causing cancer, causing dementia. And it's related to things that we now can identify very early and treat. And most people aren't looking at it. So we look at, for example, what I mentioned, the special cholesterol test. It should be the standard across the country. The other one should be phased out. It's called lipoprotein fractionation, which looks at the size and the number of the particles, not just the total weight.

So when you go to your doctor, you get your cholesterol, it's like the weight, how much, like 200 milligrams per deciliter. That's how much weight it is. It doesn't tell you what, of that 200, is it small or large particles? Are they more likely to cause heart disease, less likely? You don't get any of that information. So that's really important. We also check your levels of inflammation, which are really important.

We check inflammation because it's associated with poor metabolic health. We check ApoB, another indicator of poor metabolic health. It's your cholesterol marker. We also look at genetic markers for heart, like LPA, which you wouldn't get normally, which affects a lot of people and increases risk of heart attacks and needs to be treated. We also look at your insulin levels, your blood sugar levels, your A1C levels, your average blood sugars. We look at all the metabolic parameters. And then we look at related stuff like your hormones, all right? So your sex hormones. And men and women, they act a little

differently when you have insulin resistance. But women get high testosterone, they can get PCOS. Men tend to have low testosterone, the more the insulin resistance they get. So a lot of looking at testosterone and female hormone levels as well. And we look at thyroid rate deeply, we look at nutritional levels. I mean, you don't get your nutrients checked when you go to the doctor. But 90% of Americans are low in one or more nutrients. Vitamin D we're checking. We're checking magnesium, which is, you know,

vitamin D is probably 80% or lower deficient. Magnesium is about 45% of the population is low. We're checking iron levels, which again, this is something doctors don't check. They check your blood count, but they don't check your iron stores. And they also miss them. We can talk about that in a minute. And it's both iron deficiency, but also iron excess that's common in the population. It's a genetic condition called hemochromatosis.

Which I have. Yeah, which basically means you store iron. So if you're eating iron from your diet, you absorb it more and you don't have a way of regulating how much comes in. So you just build up iron and then you rust. And about 10% of the population has that and we're picking that up. And then you can treat it easily. All you need to do is give a blood draw.

It's like donate your blood. But if you don't do that, you end up rusting. You get liver cirrhosis. You get heart failure. You get arthritis. You get dementia. All these horrible things that happen which are completely avoidable if you just learn what you have. Yeah. And this is such a simple thing. And again, it's part of the standard panel and iron deficiency affects, you know,

a huge portion of the population. And then we also look at omega-3 levels, which are really important and people don't realize that 90% of us are deficient. It's critical for our brain health. 60% of our brain is from omega-3s, mood, attention, inflammation, skin, hair, nails, all related to that. I mean, I got really hard nails because I take omega-3s. So there's a way to check for your nutritional status that people are missing. Homo cysteine, very important test. Again, never check. It's a marker of your B vitamin status, B12, folate, B6. These are things that are common deficiencies.

And are those affected by if you have the, what we call the motherfucker gene? Yeah, I wouldn't say that, but you said it. Yes. Yes. So this is a gene called MTHFR. And if you want to say it, it sounds like what you said. And essentially it's a gene that's about 30 to 40% of the population. And it means you have trouble converting the folate from your diet into the active form of folate that runs all the biochemistry,

regulates your gene expression, neurotransmitters, your detoxification, everything. And so you can check for the problem with this with a blood test called homocysteine. I'll just tell you a quick story. This wasn't a function patient before function, but this would have been picked up.

She had miscarriage after miscarriage after miscarriage, and when she even had a baby with anencephaly, which means no brain. The baby's born, but it's got no brain. Wow. Horrible. And she read an article I wrote about methylation, this process of B vitamin metabolism.

And she went to her doctor and said, I want you to check my homocysteine. He's like, oh, I don't know what's that. Okay, all right, I'll do it. He did it. He's like, oh, it's high. Oh, he says, oh, you need to take folate. She's like, no, no, no.

In Dr. Hyman's article, it says take five methylfolate, which is the active form and so she took that and then she ended up having this gene this mthfr gene and she ended up taking this vitamin and ended up having this beautiful baby that was so amazing and so she stopped having miscarriage and it was as simple as that it was as simple as that so um i've seen this over and over again it can cause, it can cause miscarriage, it can cause all sorts of issues, heart disease, dementia. And it's easily treatable.

Taking some B vitamins that are literally pennies a day. So a lot of things are fixable and it's not smart to wait until you already have something going on, right? Yeah. Like by the time you have a symptom, it's late. Yeah. You know?

Yeah, your body's already like turning on the signals to say, hey, something's going on here. We have a great biology. We compensate, compensate, compensate, compensate until we can't. Yeah, and then disease sets in. Yeah, and we see this all the time in medicine. But most people don't realize they have an option to really up-level their health and they don't have to walk around with what I call FLC syndrome.

You know what that is? No. It's when you feel like crap. There's a more serious version, it's called FLS. I think there's a pretty big... There's a pretty big part of our population that has that syndrome right now, I think.

100%. And it's fixable. And so, you don't know what to eat, you don't know what lifestyle recommendations you should follow, you don't know what to eat. You don't know what lifestyle recommendations you should follow. You don't know what supplements to take. You don't know what you should be looking at. And with function, you really have sort of a co-pilot for your health. Yeah.

And a co-pilot even for your doctor. Well, and it's cool, like I said, because now people can go somewhere and it's all in one place and they don't have to do digging and research to figure out what to test. Because so many of these doctors are not testing these markers. And you said this earlier, I will tell you, you'll love to hear the story. When I went in last year to get my labs, the quest nurse that was taking my blood started asking me about, she was like, who's your doctor that's ordering this? She goes, I see hundreds of people come to these doors a day and no one ever draws this much blood for this many markers.

And so I was telling her about Function and she was like, what they're doing is really cool because no one's testing for this stuff. I mean, I've been doing it for 30 years. And if people can get an appointment with me, that's great. They can have that experience. But what about the other 300 million plus people in America? Exactly.

It's really time we kind of disrupt the healthcare system by giving people agency and understanding of their own body and use that information to improve their health and to prevent disease and to feel better. It's just sort of a no-brainer, but I don't know why no one's ever done it before, but I guess it's sort of like Uber. The technology wasn't ready.

You needed all these things to happen, payment systems and GPS systems and all this stuff to kind of create an app where you could do something like that. And that's where we're kind of creating the Uber for health. I love that. It's so cool. Is there going to be an actual app eventually? 100% app, yeah. We're in beta.

Literally, we launched in April, not even a year ago. We're still building the systems, improving it, optimizing it, building the interface, building the app. It's like we're really still building it. We just didn't know. We thought a few people would join and we'd have time and it's just gone crazy. Because I think there's a huge unmet demand for people

who want to know what's going on under the hood in their bodies and to use that information for their own good and yeah and and you know the doctor is the gatekeeper right you go to the doctor oh i wanted this i want my home assisting can you check my ferritin can you check my insulin well no um can you check my lipoprotein infection well i don't know like your insurance isn't going to cover that or no you don't need that or i don't know or or they may not want to do it because they don't know about it and they don't want to be you know doing something they don't know or they don't they're not going to know how to interpret when it comes back or yeah you know so like you end up like having to go through the gatekeeper

then you have to go through your insurance and maybe they'll pay for it maybe they won't pay for it it's all rigmarole but for like basically less than a cup of coffee a day like a dollar out on 30 something change you, you can have regular information. And I'm like, people, yeah, why do I need my blood that often? Well, actually, you do need to see what's going on because things change and you can pick things up early and you can address things. So like I said, I've learned things about,

it's like, oh God, I just got to stop being, I thought the fish I was eating was okay, but it's probably not. So like I know better, right? Or what was the fish I was eating was okay, but it's probably not. So like I know better, right? Or what was the thing I noticed? Mine were pretty good, but like I got 13 that were improving. So from my last one, I had like, oh, you're improving on 13 that you weren't improving. So I'm like, great.

And then when I saw my biological age go back even a year, I was like, yeah, okay. So it's just kind of motivating and yeah. Yeah, it really is. Is there anything on my blood work that you saw? Because I know you looked at it. That was concerning or... Yeah, well, you mentioned you have hemochromatosis.

So I didn't know that. And when I saw, I saw a level of ferritin of nine. Now nine is low level. This is your iron stores. And it's common. The iron deficiency probably affects 40%. People, especially women, even kids, if you're vegan for sure,

you're going to be iron deficient unless you're taking iron supplements. So you kind of have to cast a net and see. And being iron deficient really affects you. It may not cause a disease that you see. It might not get frank anemia right away because maybe you've got enough iron in your blood, but you might not have enough if something happens. So if you have blood loss or you have a baby or you can end up with like really a shortage.

And so when I saw your level I'm like, oh, I wonder how she's sleeping, I wonder how her hair is, I wonder how her energy is, I wonder what's going on with her, is she having extra blood loss, are your periods heavy, do you need to do something to fix your hormones or is it something else? And when we got here you told me you had hemochromatosis so the treatment is taking out the blood. So you basically dumped a bunch of blood

until your iron levels drop, which is good because you don't want them high, but it'll equilibrate. And I think it's, I've been doing a lot of blood work recently, so that's probably why. But my doctor told me that pretty much every time I get my blood work done,

it's either going to be high or low. It's never going to be kind of in that normal range, she said, because it's just constantly. And I've seen that every time. It's like a totally different number. But again, this is something that's missed. I mean, so many people, about 10% of the population have a gene for this. So it's just being missed, you know? Yeah. And then you had a low white count, which can be a lot of things. When I see that, I go, oh, well, what's going on? Is your immune system stressed? Do you have a virus? Maybe you have a fungal overgrowth in your gut.

Endoline bacteria. Yeah, something going on. So we kind of start to dig and figure out what's going on. Okay, cool. Okay, so otherwise it looked good? Otherwise you were good. I was like, oh, this is good. Was my lipoprotein good?

No, but your cholesterol was really interesting because your cholesterol looked, quote, perfect. If you were to get a regular panel, your doctor would say, oh, man, she's got a perfect cholesterol. When I looked at it, I was like, oh, normally you want less than 1,000 LDL particles, which is the cholesterol that can be harmful. And yours was about 1,600. And then we also saw you had some smaller particles which aren't as good. So even though you're tall, thin, healthy, eat well,

you've got some metabolic thing going on. It could be genetic, which is good to know. Or it could be maybe you're eating too many cookies at night. And I don't know. But like something's going on. Yeah. Okay. So that's something to pay attention to.

Thank you. Yeah. I wonder what that is. I have never eaten red meat most of my life until I was 36. So I've only been really eating red meat the last couple of years. And I'm wondering if I'm eating too much. It could be that. But the main reason for higher cholesterol particles

is not sugar. It's sugar and starch, which is something we live on. And I have an underlying candida infection going on right now that we're treating. And so I'm a bit of a sugar monster for the normal. So that's probably what's happening. Yeah, that's right.

And then I could tell that you might have candida from the low white count. That's one of the things that comes to mind when I see the low white count. Okay, well it's something I'm aware of and I'm actively working on right now. But this is so cool. It's like a detective that's going through and just putting all the pieces together. You know, if you ask your financial advisor, how do they make decisions about what to invest in or whatever,

they're like, well, we use, you know, computers and analysis and take all the data and the graphs and charts. I'm like, as a doctor, you don't do any of that. It's so analog. So you're lucky if your doctor is able to track yourself over time because I have patients and they come all over, they have their lab tests. It's like PDFs.

I'm like, look at, okay, we did this this year. Okay, let me look at the one from last year and the one before that, and then we try to remember all the numbers in my head, or maybe I'll write them down, it'll take me an hour to write them down in a graph. It's like, I can't just track everything easily and see, oh, like I checked, you know, my,

what was it that was on mine that was, but my inflammation levels keep going down and down and down, right? Or my PSA level, which is my prostate. So I'm 64. So as you get older, sometimes your prostate gets enlarged. I'm living healthy, so I don't think so. But I made even improvements. And instead of getting worse, which is typically what happens as you get older,

I'm getting better. It wasn't abnormal, but it was just like starting to creep up. Yeah. No, no, it's going down now. It's like, wow, cool. My prostate is getting better. That's cool. So I can modify what I'm doing by doing things to help my prostate, whether it's dietary things or supplements or other lifestyle factors. Cool. Oh, this is so fascinating. I think people are going to love to hear all about this too. My prostate? I hope so. Right? They're like, wonder what his prostate numbers look like. Oh, okay. So I have a question that I feel like no

one asks you. What is your Roman empire? Meaning something that lives rent free in your brain. And I'll share an example of what mine is. I'm curious to hear what yours is. So I'm pretty much almost on a daily basis thinking of how the F are we going to get out of this mess that we're in right now. With rising rates of chronic disease, our healthcare costs are going through the roof. We have doctors that are training symptoms with pills instead of, you know, actually root cause and with medicine or with food. So that's kind of my Roman empire that I'm constantly thinking about. What would you say is yours? I mean, my Roman empire, what is my aspiration? Like what is something that lives in your brain rent free that you just think about all the time, like at least once a week. So there

was this trend that was going around on like TikTok and Instagram and girls were asking their boyfriends, like, how often do you think about the Roman empire? And all these guys were saying like, oh, I think about it like once a week, once a day. Like what's something that you're thinking about all the time? I mean, this, I mean, I, I, I, this, I mean, I, I just, you know, what really upsets me is that, you know, we have so many millions and millions and millions of people who are suffering who don't need to suffer. There are answers. There are solutions.

They're not getting them. And the traditional healthcare system doesn't provide them. And so whether you're suffering from depression or irritable bowel or migraines or arthritis or autoimmune disease or thyroid problems or diabetes or weight gain or whatever, eczema, you name it, unless you need some surgical intervention, which is great, our system just sucks at dealing with it. And so we're seeing escalating costs, we're seeing escalating disease, we're seeing increasing access to care and the whole system's getting worse and

the reason is we're not giving people access to the right information on the right care and that's why i helped co-found function was to provide a place where people can start to have agency and take back their health yeah and do it in a very methodical way that's based on evidence and research it's backed by science that That's not crazy. That actually gives them access to the latest data information to make decisions about their health. And so that's what takes up most of my consciousness is how do we get people to end needless suffering? There's things that we can't stop. I can't stop natural disasters and hurricanes and floods and war. I mean, I can't do that.

But this is a solvable problem. Like these are solvable problems. These are not like hard problems to solve. It's just connecting the dots. So function health is about helping people connect the dots to optimize their health and avoid the suffering. It really is needless. Did you know that magnesium is responsible

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mostly for skin issues like acne and cycle issues. And I remember at the time thinking that it was really cool to be on birth control. And I begged my mom to let me go on it and she wouldn't let me. And I am so grateful that she didn't because I can't tell you how many girlfriends I have now in our 30s that are now coming off of birth control, having been on it for 15, 20 years, having been put on it when we were, you know, 13, 14, and they really regret it. There's so many complications that can happen with birth control and women are dealing with fertility issues as they're coming off of birth

control. And there's a lot of research coming out now just about how these synthetic hormones are really affecting women's health. So what do I do for birth control? I use something called Natural Cycles. It's an FDA cleared app and you can either use a basal thermometer with it or you can use a wearable, something like an Oura Ring or an Apple Watch, but you absolutely do not have to have the wearable. But if you do have it, it really does help. I really like using my Oura Ring with it. And essentially what it does is my Oura Ring just takes an average of my temperature overnight. And then in the morning, I open my Natural Cycles app, I sync it to my Oura Ring, and then it delivers all the information to my Natural Cycles app. And then from there, the Natural Cycles app tells me, based on hormone-driven changes and body temperature, this algorithm that they have lets me know whether or not I'm fertile that day.

If I get a green day, it means that I'm not fertile and I'm good to go. If I get a red day, it means that I am fertile and I need to use another form of protection or abstain. And natural cycles is 93% effective with typical use and 98% effective with perfect use. Perfect use means no unprotected sex on your red days. If you are interested in trying natural cycles, go to naturalcycles.com and use code realfoodology. You're going to get 15% off an annual subscription plus a free thermometer. So go to naturalcycles.com and use code realfoodology, you're going to get 15% off an annual subscription plus a free thermometer. So go to naturalcycles.com and use code realfoodology, or you can go to naturalcycles.app slash realfoodology. This ad is sponsored by Natural Cycles and Natural Cycles is for 18 plus

and does not protect against STIs. Yeah, I love that so much. This is why I started Real Foodology is because I was telling you earlier, I got really into, you know, documentaries and books just talking about this very thing. Growing up, we don't really, we're not taught to make the connection of how we feel in our bodies and make the connection of what we're feeding ourselves, the lifestyle that we're living, and then as a result, like how we feel in our bodies and make the connection of what we're feeding ourselves, the lifestyle that we're living. And then as a result, like how we're feeling and all the symptoms that we have. We're not taught that at all.

And it's absolutely crazy to me that there in so much of our population still now, and I just see this every day online, people in the comments and the DMs, everyone fighting me saying, oh, well, once you have this, it's not treatable or curable. And it's absolutely maddening to me

because as you, I'm like, I see so many people suffering, people's parents suffering, people losing their parents too early, losing their children sometimes to chronic diseases. And like you said, there is a solution. And we're just trying to help people because we care so deeply

and my thing is how do we fix this messed up system that we have right now because we also have people stuck in this chronic disease state one, they're not getting the access to the information and two, they're not getting the access to foods, when you look at

Americans, 60% of their diet is ultra-processed foods they're not even eating real food. Right. You're right. I mean, that's what I spent my whole life doing. That's why I have a podcast to talk about these issues and educate people. That's why I've written 19 books. That's why I have started a center at Cleveland Clinic

to bring this into the mainstream of medicine. Why are we doing millions of dollars of research on this? Why I started a nonprofit called Food Fix to change our food policy, which is causing so much of the problem, leading people to grow and eat the wrong food. And it's really, it might be almost criminal what we're doing because we know the answers. We don't have to provide more access to health care,

we just need to do the right thing. I mean, we can give everybody free health care in this country and it's not going to fix the problem because we're not dealing with the cause of why people are sick in the first place which is stuff that's fixable and mostly doesn't require a doctor and so function health

is about understanding your body in a way that allows you insights into what's really going on and how to fix it and do it it's kind fix it. And do it. It's kind of DIY. Or is it DIY? Do it yourself. Do it yourself, yeah.

Yeah, do it yourself. DIY, yeah. Like DUI. DIY. Do it yourself. DIY. DIY. There we go.

DIY. It's DIY medicine for you. And it's not that you don't need the doctor. You still need to get a doctor and do different things. It's okay. And you need that expertise. But for most of the problems you're't need the doctor. You just need to get a doctor and do different things. It's okay. And you need that expertise. But for most of the problems you're going to the doctor for,

they're not really equipped to help you. They don't understand nutrition. They don't understand lifestyle interventions. They don't know how to optimize nutritional status. They don't know how to deal with toxins. They don't know how to fix your microbiome. They don't know how to do the main things that are things that you can usually do yourself without a doctor if you have the right guidance and the right insights. And that's what functional health does.

It provides you the insights and the roadmap to uplevel your health. Yeah, I love that. So what is outside of joining functional health, what are little things that people can do just to better their health? I mean, we know, so that study that just came out very recently, it feels like there's been this interesting pushback from some people to this study, but essentially showing that ultra-processed foods are linked to almost every major chronic disease. They are.

They're linked to all the chronic diseases that we're dealing with right now. And people are severely addicted to them. And how do we help people? Most people don't even know what ultra-processed food is. So let's define that first. Yeah. First, let's define food.

Food is something that supports the growth and health of an organism. So by definition, Cheetos are not food. By definition, Lunchables are not food. They don't support the health or growth of an organism. They do the opposite. So most of the things that are being consumed by Americans, and depending on the data you look at and how you slice it anywhere between 60% to 73% of our diet in America

is considered ultra-processed food. Now, what is ultra-processed food? I just did a podcast on this. You go to Doctors Pharmacy, listen to the whole thing. I talk for an hour about it. And I talk about the study you mentioned. Essentially imagine like it's a science project. You take raw food ingredients like wheat, soy and corn primarily,

you take them into a factory, into a science lab, you break them apart, you change the molecular structure, you deconstruct them into various compounds that are not food anymore. You strip out all the essential nutrients in them. You strip out the vitamins, the minerals, the fiber, the antioxidants, the phytochemicals. And you reassemble them into chemically designed, multicolored, extruded food-like substances.

That are designed to be overeaten. Well, yeah, they have certain properties, right? So they're highly palatable or hyper palatable. They're quickly absorbed. They are extremely dysregulating of your appetite regulating hormones. And studies have been done at the NIH where they looked at giving people the same people and it's called a crossover design

where they give the same group of people one diet and they give the same group of people another diet and see what happens. They group like regular whole food and eat whatever you want, have as much as you want. They ate a certain amount. Then they gave them ultra processed food and they all ate about 500 calories more a day.

That's a lot. What does that mean? Well, a pound of weight gain takes about 3,500 calories. So seven times five is 3,500. So in one week, you're going to get a pound a week. If you do that for a year, you're going to be 52 pounds overweight in a year. Wow.

And this food dysregulates your appetite regulation hormones like ghrelin and PYY and other hormones. GLP-1 is dysregulated by these things. So your appetite's... Leptin too, I think. Yeah, leptin. So all these hormones, we check a lot of these with a function panel like leptin.

And we see that people don't know how to regulate their behavior and it's not because they're weak-willed or they're morally corrupt or they're Luttons or they're just addicts in the worst way. They're addicts in a scientific way. When you look at the scientific criteria, this is from the Yale Food Addiction Scale. It's a medically validated, scientifically validated scale for measuring food addiction.

And there's a whole set of criteria, and you have to basically meet these criteria, cravings and withdrawal and just like any addictive thing. Based on this scale, 14% of the population has medically determined food addiction. 12% of kids. When you look at alcohol, it's 14% of adults. Wow.

So you're talking about more people are addicted to food. And one of the drugs, by the way, and the drug companies know this, right? One of the drugs to treat obesity contains naltrexone. What is naltrexone? Narcan. What is Nar narcan narcan is a drug you give to people who overdose on heroin to block the heroin receptors in the brain the opioid receptors yeah right to save someone's life because they'll won't die from respiratory

depression so they're giving these people who are overweight to those way why to block the pleasure that's given to the brain from sugar and all these ultra-processed foods that are hitting the addiction center in the brain called the nucleus accumbens. They know this. So this is an FDA-approved drug for obesity. Yeah, I know the drug,

but I didn't know that they were treating it for that. Yeah, it's a combo drug. It's like, it's a combo drug. It's, yeah, it's crazy. And so ultra-processed foods basically should not be allowed to be sold. Or if they're sold, they should have huge warning labels like cigarettes on the front of the package. And if you go to countries like Chile and Argentina and South America, they have these big warning labels on the front of the package.

This is going to kill you. Like, don't feed this to kids. It's not safe. I've seen them in Mexico, too. Like, don't feed this to kids. It's not safe. I've seen them in Mexico too. Like, really big warnings. It's like cigarettes, right? Yes. You go to Europe and you see cigarettes.

The entire package says, this will kill you. Like, literally. You can't even see the brand. It's like, this will kill you. You're like, I'm just trying to see where my Cheetos. And it should be like that. Listen, if you want to buy it,

you can find it. But it's like, we have to come to terms with the fact that this is the single biggest killer on the planet today. Outpacing smoking, war, terrorism, everything. It's the single biggest killer killing more people

every day than anything else. And yet we are doing nothing about it. Like nothing. I mean we're fully ignoring it in the political world right now. We ignore it. The only person who's talking about it is RFK Jr. Whether you like him or not, whether you think he's good or not. He's the only one talking about chronic disease, the epidemic of chronic disease,

and the role of our food and food system in it. And I think it's great. And I think somebody needs to talk about this. And I hope it gets on the national debate stage. But I think it's being ignored. And there's so many... I mean, I literally, I can't really say who I met with, but I met with somebody who's very high up in government

at the presidential level recently. And I said, listen, you know, ultra processed foods, like we should not allow these things or we should regulate these. Whatever I said, I was something about that. And they go, that's never going to happen. Like that's just never going to happen. Because the food industry is so insidiously

behind our government policies. Their food and ag lobby is the biggest lobby. Yeah. More than defense. Which is crazy. They, you know, we add pharma in there. It's pretty big, but it's huge. And they spend half a billion dollars just on the farm bill, which should be called the food bill because it's mostly food stamps and WIC and so forth. And $100 billion is spent on SNAP or food stamps. And 75% is junk food and ultra-processed food.

10% is soda. So our government says don't eat sugar in the dietary guidelines or eat less sugar. And eat more vegetables and fruit. But we fund the growth of these crops or eat less sugar and eat more vegetables and fruit, right? But we fund the growth of these crops that are turned into high fructose corn syrup and sugar and we don't fund eating fruits and vegetables.

2% of our subsidies go to specialty crops known as fruits and vegetables. Most of them go to these commodity crops that turn into ultra processed food. And then we pay for $10 billion of soda for the poor through food stamps. That's like 30 billion servings a year that we are paying for with our tax dollars. And then we pay for it multiple times, right? You know, we pay for it through Medicare and Medicaid.

We pay for the damage to the environment by growing those foods the way we grow them with agrochemicals and destruction of the soil and a depletion of our water resources to grow these foods. So we have so many layers of dysfunction in our society, but ultra-processed foods are the biggest killer. And this new study was like looking at 9 million people, looked at the impact of these foods, dramatically increased risk of heart disease.

And I think it's shocking to people, and I did a whole podcast about this before this article came out, because there's data, the other data to support this. But basically it said that there's a 50% increased risk of mental health issues, depression, anxiety, simply from eating these foods because they screw up your brain. Yeah, well, and they screw up your gut too.

And we know that we have the vagus nerve. That's the direct connection with the brain as well. And we're seeing all these mental health issues and then we're wondering what's happening, but we're not addressing the real cause. Totally, we're not. And I think it's really why I work so hard. It's why I think Function Health is such an important company

because it's going to allow people to really understand. It's like one thing, oh yeah, these foods aren't good for me. It's another thing to go, oh my God, I'm like one step away from diabetes. I better do something about this, right? And not only that, here's what you can do based on the science that will fix this,

that you're not hearing from your doctor. Exactly. Well, hopefully as word gets out more and more and people really understand not only the health implications, but also just how addictive these foods are. Because I know when I really started learning about this, it was more,

it was obviously that I was protective of my health, but it was also like, I don't want these food companies to have this power over me. You know, it became this like empowerment thing for me where I was like, I'm going to take back my own health and not allow these companies to destroy my health and also laugh all the way to the bank while doing it,

you know? So hopefully we have this really like grassroots movement of people that are just like, F you, we want to change this. I think, you know, functionality is going to be part of the solution because I think people are understanding how important it is for them to understand what's happening in their bodies and not be in the dark about it. And, you know, you can walk around for decades before you have a symptom,

but if you check your labs, you go, geez, I'm really insulin resistant. I'm pre-diabetic. I had no idea. We're seeing so many people finding this out and they change. And then we see their results improve. We see them come back and read their tests. It's like super exciting. So cool.

I love that you guys are doing that. It's really cool. Well, before we go, I just want to ask you a personal question that I ask all my guests at the end. Okay. Which is, what are your health non-negotiables? So these are things no matter how crazy your day is, how crazy your week is, that you prioritize for your own health.

Good question. I basically try to prioritize sleep. So eight hours at least in bed. I definitely prioritize strength training at this point in my life. So I do, like this morning I was short on time, so I did like a quick 20-minute intense band workout and I'm allowed to do 30 minutes or so. And I have my morning routine of shake and supplements and that's

for my non-negotiables and it gets me going for the day. I love that so much. Well, please let everyone know where they can find Function Health and where they can find you, your podcast. Yeah, they can go to functionhealth.com if you kind of want to get access early and jump the wait list, you can go to functionhealth.com forward slash Mark

that's my first name. They can learn more about me at drhyman.com forward slash Mark. That's my first name. They can learn more about me at DrHeinman.com. My podcast is The Doctor's Pharmacy. Everywhere you get your podcasts, social media, I'm DrMarkHeinman, just DrMarkHeinman. You can find me everywhere. Thank you so much for your time, Mark. This was amazing. Yeah, thank you.

Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of The Real Foodology Podcast. If you liked the episode, please leave a review in your podcast app to let me know. This is a Resonant Media production produced by Drake Peterson and edited by Mike Fry. The theme song is called Heaven by the amazing singer Georgie. Georgie is spelled with a J. For more amazing podcasts produced by my team, go to resonantmediagroup.com. I love you guys so much. See you next week. The content of this show is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not a substitute for individual medical

and mental health advice and doesn't constitute a provider patient relationship. I am a nutritionist, but I am not your nutritionist. As always, talk to your doctor or your health team first.