The Dr. Hyman Show - Creating Lasting Habits To Strengthen Immunity

Episode Date: December 8, 2021

This episode is brought to you by Paleovalley, Athletic Greens, and Tushy. I don’t like to look at what I do as treating disease. I’d rather look at it as creating health. And we have a lot of power to do that ourselves, each and every day. This is something I especially like to remind people of as we continue through the pandemic—the right choices and habits can help us stay more resilient and healthy during what feels like an uncontrollable world health crisis.  Today on The Doctor’s Farmacy, I talk to my good friend Ken Cook, as part of EWG’s CleanCon Conference. In this conversation, Ken interviews me about establishing better habits for human and planetary health. Ken Cook is widely recognized as one of the environmental community’s most prominent and influential critics of industrial agriculture and the nation’s broken approach to protecting families and children from toxic substances. Under Cook’s leadership, EWG has pioneered the use of digital technologies to empower American families with easy-to-use, science-driven tools to help reduce their exposure to potentially harmful ingredients in food, drinking water, cosmetics, and other household products.  This episode is brought to you by Paleovalley, Athletic Greens, and Tushy. Paleovalley is offering 15% off your entire first order. Just go to paleovalley.com/hyman to check out all their clean Paleo products and take advantage of this deal. Athletic Greens is offering my listeners 10 free travel packs of AG1 when you make your first purchase at athleticgreens.com/hyman.   Visit hellotushy.com and enter code HYMAN to save 10% off any Hello TUSHY purchase site-wide, including the new TUSHY Ace.    Here are more of the details from our interview (audio version / Apple Subscriber version):  The connection between poor diet and Covid-19 outcomes (4:53 / 1:48) Environmental toxins and the immune system (7:05 / 3:19) My journey into understanding the power of nutrition and health (8:15 / 4:13)  My approach to working with patients to promote behavior change (12:29 / 8:46) Improving your diet to improve your health (18:12 / 14:11) Creating structure to support healthy habits and behavior change (20:30 / 16:50) Understanding your body as one interconnected ecosystem (25:12 / 21:04)  Becoming Covid-resistant (29:18 / 24:04)  Learn more about the Environmental Working Group at ewg.org and follow EWG on Facebook @ewg.org, on Instagram @environmentalworkinggroup, and on Twitter @ewg.

Coming up on this episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. And the other question is, what does your body need to thrive? It needs the right nutrients. It needs the right food. It needs the right balance of hormones. It needs sleep. It needs activity, exercise, sleep, restoration, movement, you know, love, connection, meaning, purpose.

All those are the ingredients for health. Hey everyone, it's Dr. Hyman here. Now, so many of my patients ask me how I manage to work multiple jobs, travel frequently, well not so much anymore, and spend time with my family and still focus on my health. I know it can seem hard to eat well when you got a lot going on, but the trick is to never let yourself get into a food emergency and to stay stocked up with the right things to support your goals. So recently, I discovered Paleo Valley Beef Sticks. I keep these beef sticks at home and at the office so

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Just go to paleovalley.com forward slash hymen to check out all their clean paleo products and take advantage of this deal. That's paleovalley.com forward slash hyman to check out all their clean paleo products and take advantage of this deal. That's paleovalley.com forward slash hyman. I definitely recommend stocking up on the grass-fed beef sticks to keep in your house, in your car, and in your office. It's one of my favorite tricks to staying healthy while on the go. So many of my patients wait until they're sick to finally take care of their health. I've even had doctors as patients, well many actually, who just wait for their problems to get worse and worse and receive a diagnosis of disease before taking any kind of action. This is not the path to health. We can live longer, healthier, happier lives if we just prevent imbalances in our bodies in the first place.

And nutrition is a key part of this. Many of us don't get the optimal amounts of key nutrients through diet alone, even with a whole foods diet. And then when you add in all the stressors we're up against, like work demands, toxins, lack of sleep, we're even more likely to have a nutrient deficiency. So one of the things I use every day to optimize my intake of vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients, pre and probiotics is AG1 from Athletic Greens. It's a comprehensive superfood powder with a special blend of high quality whole food ingredients that work together to fill the nutritional gaps in your diet. It's specifically designed to support energy and focus, aid with gut health and digestion,

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Now let's get back to this week's episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. Welcome to a special episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. I recently sat down to talk to my good friend, the president and co-founder of the environmental working group, Ken Cook, as part of their EWG's CleanCon conference. And in this conversation, Ken interviews me about establishing better habits for human and planetary health. Let's dive in. Dr. Mark Hyman, how are you, my friend?

It has been way too long. And I know you've probably been even busier during this time with your medical practice and all the other things you're up to with COVID than you probably would have been ordinarily. And that's saying something. How are you? I'm doing okay.

You're right. We have 1,000 people on our waiting list for next year. But thank God because people are figuring out they need to get healthy. And part of the reason is that 63% of hospitalizations from COVID were because of poor diet in America. That should be a shocking statistic for people. That's a great statistic. So let's say more about that.

So first of all, we're at CleanCon 2021. And one of the themes of this whole three-day conference, Doc, is to talk to people about forming better habits of environmental health. And this is something you've pioneered, helping people get on the right track. And I want to get to that. But let's talk just a little bit first about the COVID environment

and what you've experienced as a physician, if you don't mind. I'd just love to get your perspective. Well, I've been incredibly frustrated because the focus has been on very expensive, literally trillion dollar efforts to address the economic impact, to develop new drugs, new vaccines. And almost nobody is talking about the reason why America is 5% of the population, but has 25% of the COVID cases and COVID deaths. Why is that? It might be because of what we're eating and because our toxic diet. And that is something

that is changeable, fixable, and addressable. I mean, think about it, Ken, if 63% of hospitalizations could have been avoided, we wouldn't be in the situation we're in now. We'd be all back to work and having a good time and going to parties. And I mean, that's the problem and no one has named it. And that's the most frustrating thing for me. A study came out recently that showed that if your vitamin D level was over 50,

now you could argue whether the study was good or bad or blah, blah, blah. But basically it was a pretty good, robust study. If your vitamin D level was over 50, your chance of death from COVID was zero. Wow. Zero. There's no zero from any other drug or vaccine or anything else. So, I mean, these are the kinds of things that don't make it into the news, don't make it in the headlines. And I've been super frustrated that no one's talking about immune health and what we need to be doing.

I mean, environmental toxins are also immunotoxins. They're not just poisons for our cells, which they are, but they're also immunotoxins. And they drive screwed up immunity and autoimmune disease and allergic disorders and a whole bunch of other things. So I think we really have to come to terms with this blind spot we have around the fact that we can upgrade our own health by upgrading our lives. And it's, you know, it's, you know, it's not just a personal thing, right? It is personal, but what we do to our bodies, we do to ourselves, right? But we also do to the planet, what we do to our planet, what we do to the bodies, what we do to the planet, we do to our bodies, it's all connected, right? Absolutely. We're constantly metabolizing our whole environment.

But you have dedicated your life to trying to understand the role of diet and nutrition and health. And so let's just rewind for a few people. This didn't start for you with COVID. This started with you a long time ago. You've written books about it. You've taught about it. You're at the Cleveland Clinic practicing it and in your private practice just generally. But where did the light bulb go on for you, Mark? When did you decide that the way we've been approaching medicine just isn't quite right. It was in college. I just, you know, I met a bunch of people and moved into a house with a wonderful group of people. And one of them was a PhD student in nutrition. And he was very focused on understanding nutrition and health. And he gave me a book

called Nutrition Against Disease by Roger Williams. This was back in the 70s. And I was like, whoa, the light bulb went off. And then he gave me a book by Ivan Illich called Medical Nemesis. And I began to start reading about ancient healing systems, about our environmental issues. And that was sort of an era where we were worried about nuclear power and nuclear war. And we still should be worried about nuclear war for sure. So I think we really, for me, it was an awakening. And then I began to explore my own diet and nutrition, living with them, and we cooked together and ate together. I began to explore yoga.

I was a big runner, and I became a yoga teacher. So I always sort of had this proclivity to understand health and wellness and well-being. And I've been like that my whole life, but I, it's gotten way more focused as I began to really understand the, the scope of the acceleration of the destruction of our species. I mean, I, I, I, you know, everybody's worried about the planet and the earth and the environment, you know, or it's going to be fine. Like we leave, it's going to reclaim itself. Just like with COVID, you know, people went inside and in a few weeks, all the animals are coming back and the fish were coming back. And it's like, you know, we put humans on pause. The earth is going to be fine. We, we, it's a self-cleaning oven. We are

not, we are, we are at high risk of extinction. And I, I'm concerned because we are not addressing the root causes, which are both our food system and our toxic system. I don't know what to call it, our environmental toxins. Yeah, absolutely. Is there a word for it? Well, you did leave something out that you didn't mention as part of what turned the light bulb on, which was medical school. Not so much in medical school. Oh, God, no. God, no. No, no, no, no god no no no no no no no no no no no

no i did ken i i went to medical school knowing i was going to be uh in a in a cult and and i i was going to be indoctrinated and i was going to be brainwashed and then i needed to you know make sure like i was like a like a good you Navy SEAL that I knew the techniques to resist the brainwashing. So I was the weird kid in the class doing yoga in the back and bringing his healthy food to school. It was a very interesting experience. And I learned it. I did very well. I was able to master the traditional medical model.

But I really knew it was just a footnote to what was really true about the way our bodies truly work, which is it's an ecosystem. And when you understand the environment, you understand ecosystems. But in terms of the human body, it's not a bunch of parts that are all stuck together randomly. They're a dynamic, adaptive, complex system that's constantly evolving, changing in relation to its environment, to the diet, to environmental toxins, to stress, to our thoughts, our feelings. All of it is really transmuting our biology literally every second. And that's functional medicine. That's the framework for it, right? And you've been a pioneer in that field.

I do wanna editorialize a little bit, like if there happens to be a Dean of a medical school out there, I hope you're listening now and give them just maybe a semester of nutrition. Would that be fine to ask? Yeah, exactly. You know, it's funny, you're right.

I mean, there really isn't, I'm actually working with a group that's starting a new medical school on how do we develop the right curriculum Yeah, exactly. You know, it's funny. You're right. I mean, there really isn't. I'm actually working with a group that's starting a new medical school on how do we develop the right curriculum. And I actually found out from somebody else that the dean of Stanford Medical School follows me on Instagram. But he only follows like 10 people. Like he doesn't follow a lot of people or something like that. I'm like, that's really interesting. That's really interesting. You know, like the light bulbs are going on for people.

It's just people don't know how to get to where they want to get to. So when you're seeing a patient, what methods do you use? What have been successful techniques in your practice to actually get people to make those very hard changes? Was it Margaret Mead who said it's harder to get someone to change their diet than it is to change their religion? What do you do? I think so, but please don't check it. I'm going to check that. That's a good one. They're about the same. How do you teach that in the time that you're caring for a patient? You know, when the theory of evolution was just sort of described by Darwin,

one of his contemporaries, Tate Huxley, said, how stupid not to have thought of that. And so I essentially sit down with people and I explain to them the new paradigm. I said, this is how your body works. This is how you can upgrade your health. This is why you are having these symptoms and why you're sick. I'm not like, oh, you have arthritis, take this pill. I'll see you in six months. Or you have a migraine, take this injection or take this. I don't do that. I explain to them how their bodies work and get them to be enrolled as a partner with me in their health. They're the CEO of their health. The other key lever for behavior change, and I do that through talking to them. I do that through

lab diagnostics. I show them, you know, and when you do a mercury test on someone, you see their mercury's off the chart. They're like, oh, okay. Or you look at their test on someone you see their mercury's off the chart they're like oh okay i gotta you know where you look to their blood test and they see their insulin levels sky high and they're have all these risk factors for heart disease and stroke it gets people's attention but but also the other piece of change is is i call the love diet it's essentially the power of community and connection to create change. So I know how to change people's biology. I can reverse diabetes like that.

Getting people to not eat the food that's causing diabetes is the hard part, right? Right. And so the power of our social networks, our community, our friends, that is what really drives behavior change. You're more likely to be overweight if your friends are overweight than if your family is overweight. The social threads that connect us are greater than the genetic threads. And so in that understanding, we know this is true. This is not just a theory. This is true. And I've demonstrated the Saddleback Church where we got 15,000 people to go in small groups and lose a quarter of a million pounds together in a year and reverse all sorts of

chronic health conditions simply by helping each other and supporting each other and loving each other through the changes that need to happen, holding each other accountable. You know, Rick Warren says, every body needs a buddy. Every body needs a buddy. Or getting healthy as a team sport is another way of saying it. Well, I think, you know, that's a theme in the conference. We've heard that from some of our other speakers that the environment you create around you the social environment you create around you is one of the most powerful drivers and it's pretty important to success that you try and shape that environment so do you if i mean listen if all your friends are smoking and alcohol right well guess what what are you

going to be and if all your friends are drinking and alcoholics, well, guess what? What are you going to be? And if all your friends are drinking green juice and doing yoga, well, what are you likely going to be doing? Exactly right. Exactly right. And so it does make all the sense in the world to try and create that environment. Hey, everybody. It's Dr. Mark. Are you feeling stumped on a healthy, sustainable gift for this year?

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dot com slash hymen. Now let's get back to this week's episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. In your practice, what have been some of the sort of keystone changes that patients can make that dramatically improve their health? I suppose everyone must be very different, but what are some examples? I don't know. I don't know, Ken. I mean, I just, you know, I think people think it's mysterious and complicated and difficult, and then I'm gonna come up with some great new secret, but the truth is it's actually quite simple. And I just did a group program in Spain with about 16 people. And basically it was called Growing a New Body

with a friend of mine, we run this program. And it's sort of a health immersion program. But essentially it's a group and food. And then they can do a little yoga and get a massage and, you know, like that. But it's basically the food and the group. And in one week we had people fill out a questionnaire of all their medical symptoms from all diseases. Arthritis, migraines, diarrhea, depression, insomnia, joint pain, whatever. You know, like, and we had them score at zero to four and at the end of the week after six days

after six days the average score collectively in the group went down by 70 there's no drug on the planet that can do that that's right so most people do not understand the power of food to create change. And so I'm really basically a cheerleader and a coach and evangelist to try to convince people, hey, you can do anything for 10 days. Try this and see what happens for two weeks, 10 days. What happens? And then they don't need to listen to me and say, oh, if you do this and this and this, you'll get better. They go, oh, my God, all these symptoms went away. Oh, my God, I feel better. Oh, my God. and then if they go back to eating the way they did eat then it comes back and then they can make the connection so their body is the smartest doctor

in the room to answer your question the most radical change comes from diet change yeah and and what what happens is that most people don't make enough of a radical change to see a difference. If you're drinking 12 Cokes and you only drink six, it might be better for you, but it's not going to change your life. That makes all the sense in the world. And so a lot of these simple dietary changes are very difficult for people to make. But what do you see when someone feels successful about it? How do they maintain the habit to eat well? Surround themselves when they can with people who are like-minded.

And it's very basic stuff, right? It's cut back on. It's structural. Yeah. It's structural, right? For them to follow, right? Well, yes, but it's it's cut back on it's it's structural yeah i mean it's structural right for them to follow right i mean well yes but it's also structural you know um there's many books written on how to change uh tiny habits is written by a professor at stanford it's really great he's at our conference he's what oh great okay yeah i made the connection yeah yeah and he's

he's a professor. I saw him in Hawaii when I was there. And basically he says, look, you have to have the desire, you have to have the ability, and you have to have a trigger, right? So, for example, I, this is early on, many years ago, I wasn't doing any strength training. I couldn't do a push-up. And, you know, I just saw a study that came out that if you can't do 10 push-ups,

your risk of heart disease is very high. And if you can do over 40, then it's a better predictor of your cardiovascular risk than a stress test. So I'm like, well, every day I take a shower. I want to do push-ups. So my trigger is, and I have the ability to do push-ups, because the trigger is taking a shower. So every morning I turn on the shower. It takes about three or four minutes for my shower to heat up because it's an old barn. And so I do my push-ups pushups and I get in the shower.

But I mean, it's building the structural things around you. So when I go downstairs in the morning, I have every ingredient I want for my smoothie on the counter. It looks a bit messy, but who cares? And that is basically a trigger for me to do the right thing. I make sure that I build into my calendar the things that are important to me. I plan a workout. I plan time with friends. I plan a walk. You have to build the structural things that make it easy. And if you want to go for a run and you don't have running shoes, well, you can't go running.

So it's that simple, really, is to build the structures and the strategies around you so that it's automatic. The easy choice is the best choice. Often in our society, the easy choice is the best choice. Often in our society, the easy choice is the worst choice. Yeah, that makes a lot. That makes tremendous sense. And BJ did speak to this whole sequence of steps that that really can help you and that behavior replace a not so healthy habit with a very healthy habit. And it's you know, know, it's not magic.

The system makes perfect sense. Have you, go ahead. When you go on vacation, you know, you plan where you're going, you plan your hotel, your flight, you know what you're gonna bring, you pack your suitcase. I mean, we don't do that for our lives, right? How do you organize your life so that, I know today I had a bunch of things,

I had a board meeting, I had this thing with you. I knew I know today I had a bunch of things at a board meeting I had this thing with you. I knew I wasn't gonna chance to cook dinner So last night I cooked double and now I went down and able to heat it up quickly and have dinner I had a 15-minute break which is not ideal But you know I was able to actually Take care of myself and I have to you know Eat some crap that I couldn't get to or not eat at all or so I'm very focused on how do I build the structural components of my life so that what

I need to do for myself that's good for me is automatic. Makes sense. I mean, if you want to brush your teeth, you got to have a toothbrush in the bathroom. So let me ask you the gender question. Why is that? I'm a male. I know the answer to that. But why is it that men find it so much more difficult, it seems to me anyway, to form these habits of environmental health than women do? Or is that not your answer? I think they're the inferior sex and species.

We're starting way behind in the ballgame. That's right. I think women are much more tuned in to their bodies, how they feel, what's going on. It's like that Monty Python movie. Just a flesh wound. Just a flesh wound. Arm cut off.

Just a flesh wound. And I think we're I've experienced I'm just I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm good. I'm good. I'm like, unless you're like, having a heart attack on the floor or something, you're fine. And I think it's a it's a male trait and to just push through and, and it's unfortunate because we don't actually take care of ourselves. And we end up in terrible situations, which could

have been easily prevented. Well, I used to go to my doctor when I lived in DC, a wonderful guy. And if I was a little late for the checkup, and I'm late right now for my checkup, by the way, so you can go ahead and wag your finger at me. He used to say, well, when was the last time you missed a checkup for your car? I'm like, Oh no, I never missed that. I make sure that I get it to the dealer, right, right within the window and add me right there. He had me right there. So do you tell me a little bit more about functional medicine and tell me a little bit more about what you're doing at the cleveland clinic because i think this audience would be super interested in in hearing more from you well well you know i think i think when people think of the environment they think of our planetary ecosystem

and and we are part of that ecosystem we're not a separate organism outside of that ecosystem. We are also inherently, our own biology is an ecosystem. And so when you begin to understand that your body is one interconnected system, and that everything you do impacts how it functions, then you can begin to kind of change the way you live your life to optimize or help and optimize function. That's what functional medicine is really about. It's about understanding how toxins how food how stress how infections or microbes um allergens all impact us and it basically comes down to two simple questions what is it that you need to get rid of that's upsetting your system it's causing an ecosystem imbalance toxin and there's a list of them and

environmental working group is like the leader in the world and we got the list you know way more about it than i do you got the list in fact i just did a i just did something about a cleaning home cleaning product company that you know was talking about the environmental working groups dirty dozen of household cleaning product toxins, right? So you guys do a great job with that. We have to sort of eliminate the toxins, eliminate the allergens, eliminate the microbes that are out of problem and figure out what's bugging us and get rid of it. And the other question is, what does your body need to thrive? It needs the right nutrients. It needs the right food. It needs the right balance of hormones. It needs sleep. It needs activity, exercise, sleep, restoration, movement, love, connection, meaning, purpose.

All those are the ingredients for health. So you take out the bad stuff, you put in the good stuff, the body naturally wants to heal. That's all we did. Like in this 60, 70 workshop, all we did was take out the bad stuff, put in the good stuff. Got sugar, alcohol, caffeine, processed food, getting them eating real whole food. I mean, it wasn't that complicated. And it's profound what happens to – because systems want to repair and heal. I mean, I don't know if you saw David Attenborough's latest film about his whole life story and how the environment's changed. At the end, he goes to Chernobyl.

And this is a place where basically a nuclear reactor went off and contaminated the entire area. And now it's like the Garden of Eden, right? The human body and the earth are self-cleaning organisms that if you provide the right conditions, will heal. I don't treat disease. I never do. I create health.

And as a side effect of creating health, disease and symptoms go away. That's functional medicine. as a country we've approached COVID. I mean, I'm just so focused right now on returning to normal. But there's something about what's going on now that's very positive when it comes to getting people to really absorb the vital significance of living a healthy life. Would that it had happened in another way. But the fact is, I think a lot of people have absorbed that lesson. I mean, we have a lot of people who aren't taking care of themselves during COVID, and we're reading about that all the time. But I also get a sense, and we hear this through our channels at EWG, through our social media followers and through email and just contacts, that some awakening has happened here as a result of this terrible pandemic. Is that your sense too? Yeah. I mean, I would say, you know, nobody wants to return to the normal that we had.

The normal we had was not good for us. It was a crazy, frenetic, driven world where nobody had time for anything. And I think people are resisting that. And I think people are resisting working in the same ways and being in the same places. And I know I'm doing that for sure. But I do think people are having an incentive that they didn't have to consider their overall health and well-being and how they can protect themselves from COVID. And so the message I give people is, you know, you can become COVID resistant. You can make your home, your host, your body, not a very friendly place for COVID. And I guarantee you, I've been exposed probably many, many times because I've been out and about. I'm, you sick even before a vaccine came on the market.

And I think I think it's because I'm very focused on doing all the things that you do to upgrade my immune system. And I think everybody's thinking about that and asking about it. Want to learn about it. Yeah. And I think taking, you know, those lessons those lessons from a very, a very bad time, uh, and holding onto them, uh, you know, if, if you're taking steps to ensure that you're as healthy as you can be during COVID, so many of those steps will, will carry over into the post COVID period. May it come as soon as possible right yeah i mean just one one simple thing people can do i mean a study came out recently that if your vitamin d level was over 50 that your risk of death from covid was zero zero like zero you don't get from vaccines or any medication or anything right zero now why don't we have a vitamin d mandate? We should. It should be given out free to everybody. Super cheap, very safe. Makes sense. All the sense in the world.

Well, Doc, thank you for your incredibly generous gift of this time. I hope to see you soon at a board meeting. If we have one in person, we have several coming up on Zoom. But I'm such a fan of the way you think about health, the way you think about the practice of medicine by helping people understand that their greatest engine of their own health is their ability to take care of themselves, eat right, and all the ways that functional medicine teaches you to live a whole life. Thank you so much for your life's work doing that. And I'm so thrilled you're on our board, buddy.

So we'll see you really soon. We'll talk soon. Absolutely. You guys take care. Bye-bye. Hey, everybody. It's Dr. Hyman. Thanks for tuning into The Doctor's Pharmacy.

I hope you're loving this podcast. It's one of my favorite things to do and introducing you to all the experts that I know and I love and that I've learned so much from. And I want to tell you about something else I'm doing, which is called Mark's Picks. It's my weekly newsletter. And in it, I share my favorite stuff

from foods to supplements to gadgets to tools to enhance your health. It's all the cool stuff that I use and that my team, to tools to enhance your health. It's all the cool stuff that I use and that my team uses to optimize and enhance our health. And I'd love you to sign up for the weekly newsletter. I'll only send it to you once a week on Fridays. Nothing else, I promise. And all you do is go to drhyman.com forward slash pics to sign up. That's drhyman.com forward slash pics, P-I-C-K-S, and sign up for the newsletter and I'll share with you my favorite stuff that I use to enhance my health and get healthier and better

and live younger longer. 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 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.