The Dr. Hyman Show - Ask Mark Q&A #1: The Best Oils, Food Activism, What To Eat To Prevent Diabetes, And More

Episode Date: June 30, 2020

In this new Q&A series, Dr. Mark Hyman takes live questions from his community. For a chance to speak with Dr. Hyman during a future Ask Mark Q&A, text your question to 413-225-8995 using the hashtag #AskMark Topics covered in this episode include: The best and worst oils for cooking How to get involved in improving our food system Staying healthy on a vegetarian diet How medical students can work towards becoming physicians who understand larger systems issues How to get restorative sleep The #1 change Dr. Hyman would make to improve food policy Gluten, heartburn, and GERD High intensity exercise and autophagy What to eat to prevent diabetes Mentioned in this episode: Eat Fat Get Thin by Dr. Mark Hyman Food: What the Heck Should I Eat by Dr. Mark Hyman Food Fix by Dr. Mark Hyman The UltraMind Solution by Dr. Mark Hyman Food Fix Action Guide  Food Policy Action  Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine Patient Programs   Chicago Food Policy Action Council  Karen Washington, Rise and Root Farm  Ron Finley, Gangsta Gardener The Moral Determinants of Health by Donald M. Berwick, MD, MPP Institute for Functional Medicine Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine Dr. Hyman’s Sleep Master Class Dr. Hyman’s 10-Day Reset Dr. Hyman’s 10-Day Reset: How To Do The 10-Day Reset (Without the Kit) Virta Health

Hey everybody, it's Dr. Mark. How y'all doing? I'm so excited. This is a new live Q&A show I'm doing for my community. We're calling it Ask Mark, and it's where I take questions from my text community and invite those folks to join me live and ask their questions. So we have about 10 to 12 people that will join us today to ask their question. And if you want to ask a question in the future, all you have to do is text me at 413-225-8995 with the hashtag Ask Mark. That's 413-225-8995 with the hashtag Ask Mark. And my team is going to pick the right question for me to answer. I'll pick your question hopefully soon, and we'll get into it together. Lastly, I just can't give you medical advice. It's illegal. I go to jail. You don't want me in jail. It's not a good thing. But I can give you big picture advice on how I would

approach a person with a similar condition or a health challenge. So let's jump in with our first guest. Hi, Mark. Hi there, Elizabeth. How's it going? I'm well. How are you doing? I'm good. So my first question first, thank you for being on the show, letting me be on the show. I'm a big fan of yours.

Oh, thanks. My question, and I watch a lot of your cooking, your recipes and how you cook. They're pretty funky. They're pretty funky. They're pretty funky. They're pretty funky. They're great. What are your favorite oils to cook with and how do you choose? Okay. Well, I'm very particular about oils because most oils that are on the market today are industrial oils that are made through a particular process that uses heat, solvents, and various chemical agents to extract the oil. And it's made from a lot of oils that are GMO oils like canola oil or corn oil, soybean oil.

Soybean oil is probably the most common oil. It's about 10% of our calories and mostly in the form of processed food. So if you're not eating processed food, you're probably not getting a lot of soybean oil unless you're putting it on your food. So I'm very careful to avoid industrial oils because they are easily oxidized. They basically become rancid and they can be damaged easily. And that oxidized fat, it's like rancid fat in your blood, is really bad for you. It causes all sorts of problems with your cholesterol and heart disease and so forth. So I really am very careful about not having a lot of these refined oils. Now, there's a lot of literature that says omega-6 oils and polyunsaturated fats from

these oils are actually good for you. But I think that it's problematic because when you look at the diet, they're really found in whole food diet forms like nuts and seeds and whole grains and so forth. That's okay. But when you extract them and you increase the amount by a thousand fold in our diet, it's pretty harmful for us. So I'm not really a big fan of those oils. And there's a lot of controversy about it, but I'm in the better safe than sorry category. If it's not something your great-great-grandmother had in your kitchen, then you probably don't want to eat it, right? And she probably didn't have industrial soybean oil.

And by the way, it's got glyphosate in it and all the other issues. So when I'm picking oils, I'm very careful to pick oils for the right use. So for non-high temperature cooking, so if you're making a tomato sauce, or if you're just putting oil on your food, extra virgin olive oil is number one. And I probably go through, I don't know, a liter a week, at least. And there's one study that's called the PREDIMED study in Spain. They looked at 7,000 people and they gave a control group, you know, just told them to eat the regular Mediterranean sort of low-fat diet. And then the other group, they gave either a liter of olive oil a week that they had to consume or basically a handful, a big handful of nuts every day. And when they gave either a liter of olive oil a week that they had to consume or basically a handful of big handful of nuts every day. And when they gave them the olive oil handful of nuts, their heart disease went down as much as taking a statin drug, about 30%. So, and olive oil, extra virgin olive

oil is a really traditional food. It's been around for thousands of years. It has all kinds of polyphenols in it and phenolics that are extremely potent compounds that benefit your health. For example, alluropene is a very potent antiviral. So you can actually use it to help strengthen your immune system and act as an antiviral. So I'm really a big fan of extra virgin olive oil. You want to be careful because a lot of crappy olive oil on the market and a lot of the Italian olive oils are actually kind of run through the mafia. And so they're often adulterated or have other oils mixed in. So you want to make sure you get a really good olive oil, organic, and then you can put it in the back of your tongue. If it's got like a little bit of a burny feeling, then you know it's a good olive oil. It should create a little like spicy thing in the back of your tongue. If it's got a little bit of a burny feeling, then you know it's a good olive oil. It should create a little spicy thing in the back of your throat. So that's my

main oil. And then for cooking, high temperature cooking, my main oil is avocado oil. And that's sort of like a monounsaturated fat, sort of like olive oil. But what it has also is a very high smoke point. So it's not going to cause oxidation so you want to avoid oils that smoke so if you use olive oil you cook in a pan it'll oxidize very quickly because it'll break down and it'll become dangerous and then i use sometimes for special cooking i might use coconut oil or i might use ghee i like ghee which is also high temperature smoke point so i like I like ghee quite a lot. And then there are other oils I'll use for flavoring. I'll use organic toasted sesame oil

when I make Chinese cooking. Or you can have oils you put in your salad like walnut oil or macadamia oil. Those are fine. But it's when you start to heat these up. And I'd also look for cold press or expeller press oils. I look for organic and obviously non-GMO. So that's generally my spiel on oils. Awesome. Thank you so much. What do you use? I usually use extra virgin olive oil primarily, but I do heat it up. I use that in its purest state and then also like, you know, in a frying pan as well.

Yeah, well, you know, the frying pan thing is interesting because I once had my metabolome measured my entire metabolome, which is all the metabolites in your blood and all the different byproducts for everything you're eating. And I found that I had really high levels of oxidized olive oil in my blood. And I was like, Oh, that's not good. So I stopped, you know, cause I thought I'm not cooking at that high heat. And I wouldn't never put it in a frying pan. If you like put it like, for example, you put it in like tomato sauce and you're cooking the sauce and it's like, fine, it's not going to get crazy oxidized. But if you're, if you're actually just like stir frying with, it's not a good idea.

I'll stop doing that then. I'll switch over to avocado oil. Okay, great. Thank you. Great. Well, next guest, we have next guest ready, hopefully. And that was interesting. You know, oils and fats are confusing. I wrote a whole book on it called Eat Fat, Get Thin. And if you want to learn more about that,TF should I eat, which I think is a better title. Anyway, and I go through all the science of oils and fats and, and what we should know and, and what to pick. And I even in food, but actually talk about how you can find olive oils that are not adulterated. So you know what you're getting. So if you want to learn more, you can certainly

go there. Hi, Shelly, what's your question? Well, I'm also a huge fan. So this is like such an honor. And I read those two books that you just talked about. And I remember when you posted about a year ago, you had the president of Black Lives Matter on your podcast. Yes. Talking about the racial disparities and food marketing. And then I saw your post the other day. And I was like, now out of any time ever, something should be done about this. And hopefully with everything being so heightened, we can help move some of these initiatives forward. Yeah.

And I remember reading about in your book that, you know, we spend like Snaps milkaps spends about 8 billion or $7 billion a year, I think, just on soda. That's right. So how can we, what can we do at the local level? Who do we write to? What petition do we sign? What can be done? Great question. So I don't know if you saw my book, Food Fix.

Did you, did you have a look at that? That's the one I haven't gotten yet. Okay. Well, that has all the answers. So I wrote a book because these issues became more and more evident to me. And about three years ago, it was on the anniversary, the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s speech about Vietnam at the Riverside Church in Harlem. And it was a year later to the day that he was shot and killed. And in that, on the anniversary of his death, I gave a speech about food oppression. And you can go on my website and find, I think it's released as a podcast too. It's just 10

minutes. And I go through the challenges that we're facing as a society, particularly when it comes to health disparities, racial disparities, and all the things that are sort of embedded in our structural systems that drive disease and disability and dysfunction and mental health issues. They're all connected. And I realized a lot of this has to do with our structural policies, the ways in which our government has created regulations that drive a food system that makes us sick and fat, basically, and that causes all this collateral damage of environmental destruction, climate change, social injustice. And so I think, you know, in the book, I go through a lot of the things that you can do as an individual. In fact, if you don't want to buy the book, you can go on the foodfixbook.com and download the Food Fix Action Guide.

And it's like 20 pages of things that you can do, including 20 steps for citizens, what policies you should do, how you get involved in political action. So for example, there's foodpolicyaction.org where you can go and find your congressmen and senators. You can look at their actually voting record on food and health and ag issues.

And you can see, are they, you know, voting for stuff that's not great or, or what are they, what are they doing? Some are very progressive. Some are very, very much not. And, and, and, and, and citizens make a difference, you know, in this, this, this is one thing they did where they create a social media campaign against two congressmen who were really bad actors around the food space. And they got them out of Congress. They literally created a massive campaign that got them voted out. So whether it's working at that level, whether it's, you know, working with those in your community who are struggling, and I think there's a real opportunity for going into these communities and being on the ground with them, depending on what, you know,

what you have an appetite for. For example, in Cleveland, we built community-based programs with African-American community where we ran groups, and there were groups about lifestyle change and diet and food. And it was just amazing how hungry they were for this kind of information, how hungry they were to learn more about how they can take control of their own health and how little they were being paid attention to. So I think, you know, there's a lot of places you can plug in, depending on your preference, whether it's you attention to. So I think, you know, there's a lot of places you can plug in, depending on your preference, whether you want to be a community organizer, whether you want to just sign a petition,

whether you want to donate money to a group that's making changes. And there's a lot of great groups out there just doing really good things in this space. I mean, I was just, for example, on the phone with a friend who is starting something in Chicago, where they have a Chicago Food Policy Action Group, and they're really looking at aggregating all the resources to help brown and black farmers in the urban area to actually be supported and networked into ways to actually rebuild their communities. So, you know, Karen Washington is in the Bronx, for example, and she's built community gardens that have, you know have been really effective in helping educate her local community and change the health.

And Ron Finley is in South Central L.A. Yeah, I think it's South Central L.A. Yeah, and that's just a horrible, broken down area. And instead of creating, you know, having a food desert, he's creating food forests with having people plant their front yards full of giant vegetable gardens and building community gardens. And so there's lots of places to plug in. And a lot of that's in my book, but I think it's great that you want to do it. And I think it's sort of highlighting this issue because, you know, we think about right now, 30% of certain populations, like in Louisiana and Chicago or African-American, but it accounts for 70% of the deaths. You know, it's, and we really do have these structural issues around racism. When you think in Louisiana, in Chicago are African American, but it accounts for 70% of the deaths.

And we really do have these structural issues around racism. When you think about, for example, in the Vietnam War, African Americans were 11% of the population, but made up about 30 plus percent of the military there on the frontline. If you look at in prisons, about 6% of the male population is African American. In America, it accounts for 40% of the prison population. I mean, you know, so we're seeing all these things happening structurally in our system. And I believe a lot of them are connected to food, because when you take a population and you don't provide them with adequate quality food that's affordable,

it drives disease. It drives disability. It drives mental health issues. I just was reading a number of studies that I actually include in my book about violence and behavior. And they found that if you take people who are in prisons, who are violent criminals, by giving them a healthy diet and a multivitamin, you can reduce violent crime by 80%. Same thing happened in juvenile detention centers where they got rid of the junk and they got healthy food. And it probably wasn't even that healthy. It was probably just not junk, right? It wasn't like something that we might want to eat, but just the profound effects of those things. So when you look at these transgenerational effects of the effects on their cognitive performance, their academic performance,

their ability to get a job, to succeed, it just becomes this legacy of destruction that has got many, many causes. But I do believe that a really important one is food. Because if you start looking developmentally at these kids, if they're cognitively impaired and nutritionally deficient when they're little, they're going to have trouble in school, they're going to have behavioral issues, they're going to have, you know, problems learning, going to college. And there was one guy I met once who started a charter school in Washington, DC, one of the poorest areas, a very underserved area, mostly African American immigrant area. And these kids were, you know, the graduation rates were dismal. Like they were like almost non-existent. Nobody

was going to college. Within a very short time, he provided three meals a day for these kids, got them a good curriculum. And these kids were all going to college and they were, instead of going to jail, they were going to college. And then all the white families wanted to send their kids to the school because their scores were so high. And a lot of it had to do with the food they're eating. So I think it's great that you want to be part of this. I think it's really an important area. And you know, where do you live? Virginia Beach. Okay. So if there's places in your community where there's need, it's certainly possible to plug in. And I think people are really looking for ways to sort of make remedies here. And I think the food space is a huge one.

I agree. Thank you. Thanks, Shelly. That was a great question. I think we're ready for our next guest now. Hi, Mark. Hi, Sarah. So I just was into nutrition between the end of last year and all this year. And I am aspiring to be a nutritionist once I finish school. I just became vegetarian, I think, four months ago. And I was wondering if you could explain to me maybe like the pros and cons or any impact that it could have on you.

Sure, sure. So being a vegetarian means you eat animal products, but mostly dairy or eggs. So then you're getting a lot of nutrients that are not in plants that are often missing in a pure vegan diet. Now, it's possible to be a healthy vegan, and there are many people out there. But I think it's very important to understand that your diet should be right for you and your biology and not be driven by ideology. And I think this is really important for people to understand because you can do something you think is the right diet for you from a health point of view or an environmental or climate point of view. But if you feel bad on it, if you become nutritionally deficient, it's not good for you. So I think a friend of mine just became a, you know, vegetarian, I think he became vegan. He's like, you know, I just want to, what advice you have to me,

because I started doing this, but I don't have as much energy. I feel like I'm losing muscle. I'm tired. What do I do? And I think, you know you know as a vegetarian you can eat eggs you can have whey protein you can have yogurt you can have cheese and so if you're not dairy intolerant uh this can actually be a helpful way of of eating and i i was a vegetarian for over 10 years and a vegan for part of that uh but it didn't actually you know it didn't actually work for me long term in terms of my my vitality. But if you're a vegetarian, you're getting the right amino acids from dairy, for example, a lot of the amino acids you need to build protein in muscle, you actually are relatively low in plant proteins, you can eat

a lot of plant proteins and get that, but you have to like three, four cups of beans, you know, so it's harder. Tofu and tempeh are great sources of protein because they have low starch carbs, but they they're good absorbable forms of protein. So I love those forms and they should be non GMO. I think in terms of the things that if you're vegan, the typically are deficient is B12 and also vitamin D, iron, iodine. Sometimes iron you have to be careful of because if you're menstruating female, you are losing blood and the best absorbable forms of iron are heme iron, which is in meat, and you're not getting that. So that may be something to check to see if your iron levels are okay and take extra iron, checking your vitamin D levels. Yeah. So you think multivitamins

would be a good alternative to getting the nutrients that I need? Yeah, I think a good multivitamin, vitamin D and if you're not eating, you know, if you're not eating fish, you're not getting omega three fats in the form you need them. There are omega three fats in plant foods, but they're not typically well converted. There's an enzyme called delta 60 saturates, delta five, two saturates that converts the ALA that's in flax and hemp and chia seeds and walnuts into DHA and EPA, which are the main fats you need. But the body often can't do that very well. And there's a lot of things that mess it up. So fish oil, vitamin D and multivitamin usually will cover

most of it. I think the other question I have for you, Sarah, is what is your motivation? Is it health? Is it animal rights? Is it environmental, climate? What are the reasons? Well, I wasn't very into health back before I started high school. And once I was in health class, I sort of realized health is a big factor to the way you live. Of course, the food that you eat is, of course, determines how you live and i was very passionate to learn more about different foods that can help you in the long run so it's more on health rather than anything else yeah i mean you know i always talk about having a plant uh rich diet plant-based and i believe that most of our diets should be coming from a variety of plant foods.

And the thing is that if you're a vegetarian, you can be eating chips and soda and be a vegetarian, right? I mean, Coca-Cola is vegetarian. So I think people get in trouble by eating a lot of starch, a lot of sugar, a lot of foods that aren't whole foods. So if you're a whole foods vegan, whole foods vegetarian, that's okay. And if most of your diet is plants, that's fine. And if you're getting a little extra protein from the dairy and the eggs, that's great. So I think you should be okay, but you wanna make sure that you do feel good

if you notice any changes in your health or you pay attention to it. Yeah, thank you. Sure. And I think we have somebody else coming up now. Erin. Hi, Erin. How are you?

Good. How are you? Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you, too. You've got a nice painting behind you. Oh, yes. A cow. A cow.

All right. So I'm about to start my first year of medical school, and I'm planning on going in family medicine and functional medicine. So my question is, how do you think medical students can work towards becoming physicians that understand larger systems? So like our food system and systemic racism when those aren't always at the forefront of medical education? It's a great article. I mean, a great a great comment. aren't always at the forefront of medical education. It's a great article. I mean, a great comment. I was just thinking about an article called

The Moral Determinants of Health that I read the other day by Don Berwick, who was formerly running Medicare. But he's a brilliant systems thinker. And he talks about the bigger issues around health care that we can't solve unless we address the bigger social structural issues around healthcare that we can't solve unless we address the bigger social structural issues around food systems, around racism, around health, around economic inequalities. So I think it's really important to take a big picture. And I can't tell you, Aaron,

how excited I am to hear that you are interested in thinking this way as a doctor, because most medicine is pretty reductionist, and it's about the microscopic level of function in the body. But we live in a context. We live in a context of an ecosystem we live in. We live in a context of the social systems we live in, and we can't divorce our health from that. And it's really something that's mostly ignored within traditional healthcare, unfortunately, because the real drivers of health are not what happens in the doctor's office, right? So when you look at maybe it's 80% of health is determined outside of health care, right? It's your social structure, it's loneliness, it's access to food, water, it's basically your exposure to toxins, your food systems, your lifestyle, exercise, sleep,

all those are the real drivers of health that have nothing to do with what happens in a doctor's office. So you can't help but looking at it. And I think for you, what I would say is, if you're really interested in this, is start to learn about these things on your own, because you're not going to get it in medical school. And the Institute for Functional Medicine has great training programs. They know introductory lectures that are on their website that are free but there's also a five-day training course you can do online and and honestly it's something that i would think of of taking um almost before you go into medical school and and here's why my daughter is actually applying too so i'm gonna give her the same advice. But if you have a framework

to understand something, then all the data you're getting makes sense. So if you, for example, if you learn the structure of a language, then when you get new words, you know where they go and how they fit in, right? If you're just learning all the sort of the minutiae of medicine without having a context and a framework for systems biology, network medicine, you're not, it's going to be hard to understand why it's important or what's important or how to make sense of it all. So if you have that as a foundation of like, this is actually how the body's organized and how things really work. And when I'm learning medical school, it's just filling in the blanks and I can put it in the right bucket.

You're going to have a much better time. Otherwise, you're going to be like frustrated, I think. And I think in terms of food systems and structural racism issues, I mean, these are things that you can certainly learn more about. And there's a lot of time trying to connect the dots between the food system and our health, the economy, our climate, environment, social justice issues, education, national security, mental health, and putting all that together. And it's just fascinating to me. Like I, you know, I wrote a book about 12 years ago called The Ultra Mind Solution about

how the body affects the brain, talked about mental health and food and metabolic issues around the brain. And it was just way out there. Like I was talking about the microbiome in the brain before anybody said those two words in a sentence. And the reason was I was just seeing this in my practice. I was just seeing the evidence of, oh, when I treat this person's gut, their mental health issues go away. I'm like, how did that happen? Right. And, and so when I wrote this book, you know, it was kind of out there and now I'm seeing, you know, at Stanford, there's metabolic psychiatry department at

Harvard, there's a nutritional psychiatry department. And I'm like, wow, this is really becoming more evidence. So connecting all those dots really is important. And it sounds like you already are predisposed to think that way, which is pretty awesome. And I live in Cleveland right now, and I'm going to Ohio State for med school. Oh, you like at the Cleveland Clinic or anywhere around here? Do you have any opportunities that are like tailored towards students? Absolutely, absolutely. Right now, it's a little wiggy because of COVID-19, but normally we had rotations for medical students, rotations for intern residents at the Center for Functional Medicine in Cleveland Clinic.

So you can go Google it, Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine, and you'll find it and you can learn more about it. Okay. Great. Good luck. Good luck, Erin. Thanks. All right. I think Belina is next.

Belina, how do you say your name? Oh, hi. Hi, Dr. Hyman. Hi. It's an honor to talk to you. Nice to talk to you too. You can take a deep breath. It's fine. Take a deep breaths. Okay. I just did yoga too, so. Oh, good, good. Okay. Well, amidst this pandemic, this economic decline and this moral unrest, what are some tips that you can offer? I know you have a lot of them.

Cultivating restful sleep, because I know everybody has a lot of anxiety around what's happening right now. Yeah, that's a great question. So we actually create a sleep course, which is a whole curriculum on how to actually hack your sleep. So that's a great place to start and get a lot of support to do that. The other piece is just fall back on habits that we know work, right? So I've written a lot about this, but there are very specific techniques that you can employ on a regular daily basis to really optimize your sleep. First is develop a regular sleep-wake cycle. So wake and sleep at the same time every day. Two, don't eat three hours before bed.

Three, make sure your room is a sanctuary. Take everything out except, you know, your pillows and your sheets and maybe a book. Like no electronics, no TV. Make sure it's blackout shades. Use eye shades. Use earplugs. Really important to make sure your temperature is right in the room. 68, there's a great thing I use called Chili Pad because my wife likes it warm.

I like it cold. And so I have this thing on the bed that makes it cold. It's called the chili pad. Yeah, it's really awesome. And then, you know, you can you can do a hot bath. My favorite way to get really good night's sleep is take a hot bath at night with Epsom salt and lavender. Lavender lowers cortisol, the stress hormone. You can take some essential oil, lavender drops, a couple of cups of Epsom salt, stick the bathtub soak in there for 15 minutes that really helps do a little yoga meditation breathing stretching before bed that also helps read a book and i think um and then

there's sort of supplements you can take magnesium melatonin there's a bunch of herbs they're out there that are great people using cbd for sleep there's a lot of things that can be done so if you put all those things together it usually works for most people oh so because i always go on to my essential oils because i am an aromatherapist but yeah it's good that you said that especially with the epsom salts yes also but it's it's just that this anxiety is always it's just in the atmosphere and sometimes it is is. Getting in nature is great. Meditating is great. I mean, I try to limit my consumption of the toxic news cycle because it's always just depressing.

So, I mean, I try to know what's going on, but I try not to let it just permeate every aspect of what we're doing. Yeah. It's good to just close that out for a while. Yeah. I mean, I don close that out for a while. Yeah. I mean, I don't even turn the TV on. I just have, I sometimes look at the news on my phone, but I don't really spend that much time because, you know, it's just, you know, you've got to take care of your own personal health, but also be there for your family and friends.

If you're sucked into this cycle of negative news, it's going to keep you up at night. Sure. Self-care is a discipline. That's for sure. Oh, thank you so much. Thank you. Hey, Jason. Jason. Hi, Jason. How's it going? Good. Good. We're just here watching your podcast. And I think we got a good question for you. Okay, where are you? We're in South Florida. Oh, nice, all right. Yeah, hunkering down during COVID. So our question to you is, if you were president of the United States and could pass one executive order

pertaining to food policy, what would it entail? I thought about that question and I think I came up with an answer, which if it was implemented, would make a massive difference. And it would be this simple idea that in every single aspect of the government that touches food, that nutritional quality has to be primary. So whether it's food stamps, or what we feed our soldiers, school lunches or dietary guidelines or all the purchasing we do for all the institutions or what food we grow, right? We're growing food that is mostly

commodities that turn into corn syrup and flour and soybean oil from corn, wheat, and soy. We can't grow that because it's not healthful, right? It doesn't have nutritional quality to it. So if nutritional quality has to be the guiding principle for every single policy, then everything would get fixed. Climate change would be over. People would lose weight. Kids would be smart. We would have really low healthcare costs. Everything would be great. So that's a great question because I'm going to, I'm going to actually use that. Cause I've been talking to the Biden campaign and, you know, I've known lots of people in Washington. So I think that this has actually made me think about it. Cause I was like, what is the one thing that's going to make a difference across the whole

sector? And I think that's it. But you can tell me if you think another one is good. I'm open to listening. No, well, that's the thing, right? I mean, you think of, you talk about all the time in your, in your book and on your podcast snack, you know, it has that's the thing, right? I mean, you think of, you talk about all the time in your book and on your podcast, Snap. You know, it has nutrition in the name, but it's really not about nutrition. Yeah, you got to put the N back in the Snap. So yeah, it's unconscionable that we spend, you know, probably 75 billion a year on junk food for the poor. I mean, yes, they should have access to food. And yes, food insecurity is a real issue. But, you know, you deal with hunger, but you don't deal with the consequences of eating food that drives disease and obesity and the costs associated with it. So it's really, yeah, a problem. Well, thank you for having us on. And thank you for the question.

Thank you. All right. Thanks so much all right we got matt coming up hey matt what's up you got a tie on look at you yeah i'm sitting here at work taking a quick coffee break ask all right good all right big fan first time caller uh i'm in fissures indiana and my question's about gluten um why is gluten so bad for folks that don't have celiac disease? And why should we avoid it? And then the second portion is, can it cause heartburn or GERD in people that aren't celiac? Because I feel like I may be one of those cases. Very, very good question. I love that question. Okay, let's just talk about gluten. What is this

thing with gluten, gluten here, gluten free this, gluten free that? It's like a fad. Who cares? Is it really true? Is it just a bunch of baloney, right? Well, here's the deal. The wheat we're eating isn't the wheat that we used to eat. Here's what happened. We developed a different form of wheat called dwarf wheat. It was developed by Norman Borlaug. He won the Nobel Prize for it. And it's extremely hardy. It is drought resistant and it's weather resistant, but it's also pest resistant and also grows a super starchy kernel. But there are downstream consequences to this. And then on top of that, we started growing it in ways using industrial agriculture where we spray it with glyphosate or Roundup right at the end of harvest, just before harvest to desiccate and dry it out to

make it easier to harvest. So like Agent Orange, just like takes all the plants off and just leaves all the leaves off and just leaves the star. So the dwarf wheat has super high levels of something called amylopectin A, which is a super starch, which is why bread has a higher glycemic index than sugar. Meaning if you eat two slices of bread, it's worse for your blood sugar than having two tablespoons of sugar, right? Think about that. Even whole wheat bread is the same, unless it's whole kernel bread. So the Germans make bread. Basically, my rules for bread is that you can eat it if you can stand on it and it doesn't squish, okay? So if it doesn't squish, like in Germany, you go to somebody's house and they have those meat slicers like they have in the deli,

except they're not for cutting meat. They're for cutting bread, because you can't cut it with a knife. It's so dense. So that's okay. But this modern wheat is super high levels of the starch. Second, it has been bred together to get these traits that it has. And when you breed plants, it's not like humans where you get 46 pairs of chromosomes, 23 from your mom, 23 from your dad. You add them together. So it's like 46 and 46. So it's like 92. So that means you have more genes. More genes mean more proteins. And the more proteins in wheat are often gliadin proteins, which is what is gluten. But they're much more inflammatory than typical wheat than, for example, kama or safaro or, you know, einkorn wheat, more heirloom grains of wheat. And so you've got all these problems. And then on top of that, you spray it with glyphosate.

And so the gluten proteins in there are causing more inflammation. And there has been a real increase of about 400% in celiac disease, true celiac disease, in the last 50 years. It's not an artifact. And they basically had stored blood from military recruits from, like, 50 years ago in 10,000 samples, and they compared it to a 10,000-sample person today, and it was a 400% increase in celiac. So then on and then they,

on top of that, if that wasn't bad enough, they preserve the wheat with something called calcium propionate. Calcium propionate is a preservative that keeps the flower fresh, but it also has been linked to autism and ADD and behavioral issues. And it's a neurotoxin. And when they inject this into animals' brains, they literally become autistic like that. Wow. So it may explain a lot of the behavior people have around wheat. And it's also very addictive.

So wheat tends to have these things that get converted in the body to gluten. They call them gluteomorphins, which are morphine-like compounds that make it very hard to stop eating, right? So you're not going to binge on a bag of avocados, but you're going to probably binge on a sheet cake, right? So that's a problem. And I'm not done yet. I know it's terrible, but I'm not done yet. And then the other thing that happens is that aside from the starch, aside from the extra gluten proteins, the calcium propionate, the glyphosate, which destroys your microbiome, by the way, and linked

to cancer, and the glutamorphins, which make it addictive, the gluten causes damage to your gut. Now, what it does is the scientist Alessio Fasano from Harvard discovered this protein called zonulin, which is what causes the cells in the gut to come apart and become leaky. So you have basically one cell between you and a sewer in your gut. And it's the size of a tennis court. If you lay it all out, the surface area would be the size of a tennis court. And when that – these cells are stuck together like Legos. And when these Legos come apart, food and bacteria and toxins leak in. You might have heard the term leaky gut.

Well, gluten tends to cause leaky gut, even in healthy people. So most people can tolerate a little bit of it. But if you look at the data, probably about 20% of the population has real gluten sensitivity. And it's called non-celiac gluten sensitivity. About 1% of celiac. And then many, many more may have other reactions to wheat based on all these things I talked about. And there's also a third form of gluten sensitivity, which is really called the innate immune response, which is the ancient immune response. So, you know, like your antibody

system that fights gluten is like a smart bomb, right? Whereas the older immune system just makes a lot of noise and tries to kill things in by creating like a, like a, like a carpet bombing as opposed to a smart bomb. And that also can be a factor and you can't measure that easily on tests. So the best test to figure out if gluten is a problem for you or not is just don't eat any of it for three weeks and then try it and see what happens. Yeah, I had narrowed it down to gluten and dairy. And my doctor told me that the dairy likely wouldn't be causing heartburn. But I've had.

Well, they can. So, yes, in terms of your heartburn question, yes. Yes, dairy and gluten definitely can cause heartburn. And, you know, I've created something called the 10-Day Reset, which would be great for you to try. And you can download the guide free at getpharmacy.com. It explains how to do it. You can also get the additional shakes and things that go with it. But the key part of this is it eliminates all these inflammatory foods.

It gets rid of all the starchy, sugary foods. It increases all the plant-rich foods and fiber. So it's good for your gut. It's detoxifying. It's anti-inflammatory foods. It gets rid of all the starchy, sugary foods. It increases all the plant rich foods and fiber. So it's good for your gut. It's detoxifying. It's anti-inflammatory. And it's a great thing to try if you think you're having issues with food. Awesome. Thank you. Okay. We have another person coming up. It's Brian. Hey, Doc. Hey, Brian. What's going on? Great to see you.

Good to see you too. Yeah. Thanks for having me. Of course. What's your question? It has to do with exercise. Oh, yes. And high intensity exercise in a mildly fasted state. hear people talking about enhancing autophagy and, you know, maybe if you're fasting a little bit more full, you know, three day, you know, would it even help to increase stem cell production? Some of those benefits seem to go together. Okay. So for those of you who don't know what Brian's talking about, autophagy is a process that your body does to clean things up. Auto, it means auto means self and phagy means to eat. So it's like little Pac-Man that are eating up all the debris in your cells, all the products, recycling. So it's like taking the waste, it's like recycling and making it into proteins and new things. And it's really important in terms of aging. And it's really important finding of the last few decades, looking at how autophagy plays

a central role in keeping us young and healthy. When you do things that increase autophagy, you will live longer. And what are those things? Well, we talk about intermittent fasting, which maybe is not eating a day a week or longer periods of fasting or time-restricted eating, which is a eight, 10, or 12-hour window in which you eat. And we should all be doing some form of that, which is called breakfast, right? If you eat dinner at 6 at night and you don't eat until 8 the next morning, that's a 14-hour fast, okay?

So it's not that hard. And that makes a big difference. We need to take a break instead of just eating all the time. The other ways of doing it are, for example, ketogenic diets. Also doogenic diets also do that and also calorie restricted diets. So that's not fun. And they all do the same thing. They increase autophagy, they decrease inflammation, they increase antioxidant systems, they build muscle, they build bone density, they increase cognitive function, they help with longevity in multiple ways, and they even increase stem cell production. So what these

techniques have in common is something called, and I'm getting to your question, I promise. What these techniques have in common is something called hormesis. Hormesis is a very big medical word, but essentially it means a positive stress, right? So when you exercise, that's a positive stress. If you're lifting weights, you're damaging some of the cell fibers in their muscle fibers, and they're coming back stronger. When you are, when you are, hey, Brian, could you stop wiggling around so much? You're making a lot of noise. Sure. My dog is. Oh, your dog is causing problems. Okay. Okay. All right. So, so basically when you, when you do anything that's a little bit of a stressful experience, it pushes your body to bounce back even stronger.

And so when you do autophagy through time-restricted eating or some of these calorie-restricted diets, it actually is a stress that makes you come back stronger. Exercise is the same thing. And actually it's why exercise maybe has so many of its health benefits is through inducing autophagy. So yes, Brian, exercise induces autophagy. And it's another way to accelerate the process of repair and healing in the body

that's so essential to health and to healthy aging. So you recommend that people... Yes. Short answer is yes. So eat some high intensity exercise in a fasted state. Yeah. Do you do that? I know you're- I do. I do. I don't like to eat and exercise. I just never felt good when I did it. Right. So I tend to exercise when I haven't eaten for a long period of time. Yeah. No pre-workout supplementation and some of the things that are out there.

No, sometimes like if I'm going for like a three-hour bike ride or something, I will take some MCT oil. Sure. But that can really help. But that keeps you in a ketotic state so it doesn't break the cycle. I've been taking MCT oil for about,

I think, 25 years. Wow. When it first came on the market, I was... Oh, that's great. Yeah, yeah. All right, fantastic. Well, you look very healthy and fit, so keep up the good work.

Well, thanks, Doc. Thank you so much. You too. All right, we have another guest coming, and that is Karen. Hi, Karen. How's it going? Great.

I love this format that you're doing. I think it's really great to have your fans be able to speak with you and do it live. Sure. It's fun. Fun for me. I just talk into a whole black hole. This is fun. I get to talk to people, especially during COVID-19. I don't get to see too many people. I know. We're doing virtual exercises, everything, you know, online. Great. It's really great. So I have a, this is a big question. So, you know, with, I think the numbers are at 30 million people have diabetes in the U.S. And one in three are pre-diabetic. My question is, if you're borderline, what are the best ways to prevent you from getting diabetes?

Great. Great question. Well, first of all, I don't think there's any such thing as borderline, except maybe in personality disorders. You know, this is a continuum. People have to understand that, you know, your ideal blood sugar is 70 to 80. If it's 85, it's not as good as being 80. If it's 90, it's not as good as being 80. If it's 90, it's not as good as being 85. And it goes all the way up with increasing risk.

So these arbitrary levels of blood sugar, oh, it used to be 140 was diabetes. Then it's 126. And now prediabetes is 100. But what if you're 99 or 98? It's a continuum. And anywhere along that, you are at risk of disease. It's not like you have to get diabetes to be at risk of a stroke or a heart attack or cancer or dementia. Prediabetes causes

predimension. It causes heart attacks. It causes cancer and stroke. So you have to optimize your blood sugar and insulin if you want to be healthy. It's the most important thing you can do. That's why I've written so many books about it because it's such a pandemic. You sort of mentioned the issue here, but we have a pandemic of over fat. Here's a scary statistic. 12% of Americans are metabolically healthy. That means 88% are not, including the 75% who are overweight and 20 to 40% of thin people, because even though they may not be overweight, they're over fat. In other words, they have lost muscle and they are fat on the inside, thin on the outside. And that, again, is just as bad as being overweight in terms of its metabolic consequences. So it's really important to make sure you understand how to address this.

Now, the simplest way to do this is to really limit your starch and sugar intake. So flour products and sugar products make up a huge portion of our diet, probably over 60% of our calories. That needs to go. I mean, sugar is fine. Think of it as a recreational drug, have a piece of chocolate, no problem. But not every day having half a pound of sugar, which is what about Americans tend to have. Every single day, it's about 152 pounds a year. And flour is the same thing. So even if it's whole wheat flour or whatever, it's not good.

So as a treat once in a while, if you're not celiac, fine. Even all the sort of gluten-free flours, gluten-free cake and cookies, it's still cake and cookies. So it's really important for people that really, if they're worried they're pre-diabetic or diabetic, to really dramatically cut that down. And then increase the amount of fats. So lots of avocados, nuts and seeds, olive oil. That really, really helps cut the hunger and balance your blood sugar. Good amounts of protein, not excess amounts, but, you know, moderate amounts of protein, and then lots and lots of veggies, lots and lots of veggies,

non-starchy veggies, so not potatoes. A little sweet potato is fine occasionally, but really increasing the amount of veggies and fiber in your diet. Fiber also really helps. So it's not that hard. I've written about it in many, many, many of my books, Food, What to Actually Eat, The Blood Sugar Solution, Eat Fat, Get Thin, coming out with a new book called The Pagan Diet, which sort of breaks down some of these principles a little more. And I think it's really a simple thing to fix. Dr. Sarah Halberg is a friend of mine, and they've actually done studies using Virta Health with hundreds of diabetic patients who are really poorly controlled. I mean, blood sugar 3, 400, they reverse diabetes in 60% of them, not just pre-diabetes, just completely gone off medications, normal blood

sugar, and 90% get off insulin, 100% get off the main diabetes medication. Their weight loss average is about 40 pounds. It's pretty impressive studies. So the diet plays a huge role and it's something we easily, easily can fix if people want to take control of it. And the 10-day reset diet, which is something I've created with my patients for the last 30 years, super effective. It does so many things about, they've got microbiome and inflammation, but also it's really designed to dramatically cut insulin levels and blood sugar. Because as long as your insulin levels are high, you can't lose weight. So cutting your insulin is so key.

And the way you do that is cutting out the starch and sugar, processed food, and increasing fats and veggies. How much exercise? Now, you mentioned everything about the diet and food. I get that. And it's great advice. But how much exercise would you say a person should do along with that? Well, you know, I've had people lose 100 pounds without, you know, taking five steps. Because

diet is number one, two, and three in importance in regulating your biology. You cannot exercise your way on a bad diet. You eat one cookie, you have to walk four miles. You drink one 20-ounce soda, you have to run four miles. You know, you just, you can't, you can't outrun a bad diet. However, with that said, exercise is critically important because it makes you insulin sensitive. It helps reduce inflammation, increase your antioxidant systems. It's, it's really one of the secrets of healthy aging is exercise. So it's not going to fix the problem if your diet sucks, but it's going to accelerate your results if you are eating the right way. I just want to ask you this.

If you're a pasta lover and you want to cut that, which ones of the made out of grains or, I mean, lentil or chickpea, which ones do you recommend? I mean, there are some good ones that are made out of, like, chickpeas and lentils, and those are quite good. I actually like the shirataki noodles, which are actually made from cognac root, which is a Japanese root. It's super fibrous. It's got zero carbs. Is that in a plastic bag?

Yeah, that one, yeah. That's the one? Yeah, they're good. And you heat it up? Oh, okay. Yeah, I mean, it's not like, you know, having Italian pasta. Right, right, right. But, you know, sometimes there are these alternative pastas that are actually quite good that are made from other beans or sometimes things like quinoa.

They're actually pretty good. Yeah, Barilla makes a pretty good red lentil one. Yeah, Barilla. That's a great company. Yeah. At least they got out of the regular pasta business. Yeah. Well, Karen, thank you so much for that question. It's going to help so many people. I really, really have the honor to speak with you. Great. It was so fun talking to everybody. And it was just so fun doing this. I'm really excited to have this live Q&A with

so many people. And if you love the show, if you want to ask me a question in the future, you can text me 413-225-8995 and use the hashtag Ask Mark. And my team might pick your question for one of our future calls. So I really love chatting with you all and talking about all these issues. I could go on forever, as you probably noticed. Thanks so much for joining us. And we'll see you next time on The Doctor's Pharmacy. Hi, everyone. I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. Just a reminder that this podcast is for educational purposes only. This podcast is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided on the understanding that it does not constitute

medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your journey, seek out a qualified medical practitioner. If you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, you can visit ifm.org and search their find a practitioner database. It's important that you have someone in your corner who's trained, who's a licensed healthcare practitioner, and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health.