The Dr. Hyman Show - Daily And Weekly Practices To Stay Young Forever

Episode Date: May 5, 2023

This episode is brought to you by Rupa Health and Mitopure. Our biology is designed to function in very particular ways. With our modern lifestyles, most of us simply aren’t getting enough of the good things we need—the things that are designed to help us thrive. And just as much as we need to cut out the bad, we must increase the good to be able to truly live happy, meaningful, and fully engaged lives. In today’s episode of my series I’m calling Health Bites, I talk all about what we need to increase or add to our lives to create health. This episode is brought to you by Rupa Health and Mitopure. Rupa Health is a place where Functional Medicine practitioners can access more than 2,000 specialty lab tests from over 35 labs like DUTCH, Vibrant America, Genova, and Great Plains. You can check out a free, live demo with a Q&A or create an account at RupaHealth.com. Mitopure is the first and only clinically tested pure form of a natural gut metabolite called urolithin A that clears damaged mitochondria away from our cells and supports the growth of new, healthy mitochondria. Get 10% off at timelinenutrition.com/drhyman and use code DRHYMAN10 at checkout. Here are more details from our interview (audio version / Apple Subscriber version): Using food as medicine (4:04 / 1:44)  Principles of the Pegan diet (5:30 / 2:08)  How to practice good sleep hygiene (10:26 / 8:07)  Exercise and longevity (16:06 / 13:46)  My weekly exercise routine (17:50 / 15:30)  Building community and a sense of purpose (18:25 / 17:20)  Practices for stress management (22:30 / 20:11)  Mentioned in this episode Sleep Master Class

Coming up on this episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. Ultra-processed food should have zero part of your diet, like zero. Additives, chemicals, pesticides, herbicides, hormones, antibiotics, all should be completely eliminated. If you're going to have sugar, that's okay. Think of it as a recreational drug. Small amounts occasionally can be fine, but not as ideally stable. Hey everyone, it's Dr. Mark.

Now, I know a lot of you out there are healthcare practitioners like me, helping patients heal using real food and functional medicine as the framework for getting the root cause of the issues. Now, in my practice, this often means looking at lots of internal variables to find the most effective path to optimize health and reverse disease. But up until now, that meant we were usually ordering tests for one patient from multiple labs. Now, I'm sure many of you can relate to how time-consuming and complicated lab ordering can be for functional medicine practitioners like me and our patients. That's why I love using Rupa Health.

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I'm super excited and proud of this book because it takes my decades of functional medicine experience and distills it into a program anyone can adopt to reverse the effects of aging. As I've dug into the research on aging while writing my book, one thing has become super clear. We need to take care of our mitochondria. These are our cellular energy factories. Now, as we age and we eat too much and we sit at our desks and are exposed to too many toxins, our mitochondria deteriorate and our bodies suffer. And that is why I'm happy to recommend MitoPure from Timeline Nutrition, a product that specifically regenerates mitochondria and supports cellular energy production. MitoPure clears away the damaged mitochondria from ourselves and supports the growth of new healthy mitochondria. And as an added bonus,

the latest research shows that healthy mitochondria improves immune function too. Now I've been using MitoPure for almost a year now, and at 63, I feel stronger and more energized than ever. Right now, Timeline Nutrition is offering my community 10% off MitoPure, which you can get in a capsule powder or protein blend at timelinenutrition.com forward slash Dr. Hyman. That's D-R-H-Y-M-A-N. That's T-I-M-E-L-I-N-E.com slash Dr. Hyman, D-R-H-Y-M-A-N, and use the code DrHyman10. And now let's get back to this episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. Welcome to The Doctor's Pharmacy. I'm Dr. Mark Hyman. That's pharmacy with an F, a place for conversations that matter. And today I'm bringing you a health bite to help improve your health by making small steps that can create big changes over time.

And today's health bite is about five simple steps that you can take for better health. Okay, this is what I do every day. And if you want to know how I stay strong and healthy, if you're wondering how I do that and I'm 63 years old and still going strong while many of my peers at my age are winding down, why I'm able to go skiing and dramatically improve my tennis game and build more muscle and outperform my 30-year-old friends biking up a mountain and lifting heavier weights. Well, how do I do that? I'm going to tell you. And the reason I do it is so I can have the ability to do things I want in life, to show up for my friends and family, to do the work I want to do in the world, to make the world a little

bit better place before I die. And I want to turn my biological clock back. So I'm 63 chronologically. I'm biologically 43. I want to try to get to maybe 30 or 25. We'll see how it goes. We'll let you know. So what are the five simple things you can do for better health? What are the daily and weekly practices that I use to keep me biologically younger as I grow chronologically older?

First is food. As you know, I'm a big food as medicine guy. I'm a practicing physician. I focused on nutritional medicine, functional medicine for 30 years on real patients, and I've used food as medicine. And I am just blown away and humbled by how our human bodies work and how we need to personalize our nutritional approach. But there are a few universal principles that can guide you to the right diet. And I think there aren't too many people who are on either spectrum. I mean, maybe the extreme carnivore might disagree with something I'm going to say, but most people, whether they're paleo or vegan or keto or whatever, agree on these principles. One, we should get rid of ultra-processed food. We need to dramatically lower our intake of refined starches and sugars and processed foods

that are killing us. Two, we should be eating food that's the highest quality we possibly can. And ideally, we need to personalize our diet and we need to think of food as medicine, which is the guiding principle for all we're eating. I don't think there'd be anybody in the nutrition space who would disagree with any of those four ideas. And so when you personalize your diet, it should be based on your genetics, your metabolism, your preferences, obviously, but these are really simple principles. So within that that there's a lot of room for what you can eat personally i think a balanced view that's not too extreme is what i call the pegan diet and it was sort of poking fun at the extremes of diet right of paleo and vegan uh but we now know that

these principles are and i've written a book about it called The Pagan Diet, which lays out principles for eating in a nutritionally confusing world. And how do we optimize our health by focusing on quality, focusing on food as medicine, and personalization. So first thing, we should be understanding that food is the single biggest bioregulator that we are interacting with. It's the single biggest thing that modifies our biochemical, physiological, hormonal, neurotransmitter, pretty much every function, microbiome. Everything is going in your body. Your gene expression is controlled by what you eat in real time. So you want to

eat high quality food as best you can. Lots of colorful fruits and vegetables, not a ton of sugary fruits, but lots of good fruits can be fine if you're metabolically healthy. Lots of good fats, avocados, olive oil, nuts and seeds are really important. Also, people who eat more nuts and seeds have more longevity and better health. Animal foods are definitely a big question mark for people, but I think without going into too much detail here, because we're trying to cover all the five things, I think the data on meat, I've discussed deeply in food, what the heck should I eat, in the vegan diet, and also in Young Forever, I talked about protein and the need for certain kinds of protein as we age.

So having good meat is important. I recently visited a ranch out here in Texas where I'm staying and it was called Rome Ranch and they provide incredible care to these bison that really regenerated the soil and increased the water tables and increased biodiversity. Bald eagles are coming back. Creeks are coming back. They'd have been dead for generations. Plants that had been dormant for a hundred years are coming back creeks are coming back they've been dead for generations plants that have been dormant for 100 years are coming back because the bison poop fertilizing them was quite amazing and they produce really healthy regeneratively raised meat and there's a company called force of nature where you can get animal that are you know sort of raised in a way

that's in their natural habitat and their natural species uh as they as they have for centuries and provide really high quality meat that's full of phytochemicals and protein and vitamins and minerals and things that are really essential for us. I think eggs also, pasture-raised eggs are great. They had duck eggs on the farm, which I got, which were really great. If you're going to eat fish, make sure it's low in mercury and toxins. Eat what I call the smash fish, sardines, mackerelackerel herring anchovies um and salmon a small salmon ideally uh if you're going to eat grains make sure you eat more heirloom grains you eat whole grains not whole grain flours or some can be fine like himalayan tartary buckwheat

completely minimally processed flours if they're if they're in the original heirloom state, they're higher in protein, lower in glycemic, triggering starches. They have higher levels of nutrients, vitamins, and minerals. I love Himalayan tartar buckwheat, but I definitely would not be eating flour for most sources. And I would be avoiding gluten mostly, especially from the American dwarf wheat. Some ancient forms of grain can be fine if you're not gluten sensitive. Beans are great, and I think they can be fine if you're not gluten sensitive. Beans are great. Um, you know, and, uh, and I think they can be a great part of a healthy diet. Obviously, uh, you know, you can't get, you can't get as much protein from beans and grains as you would from

like four, six ounces of chicken or meat. You can get 30 grams of protein. You'd need six cups of brown rice and two cups of beans or two cups of beans to get that same amount. So it's a little harder as we get older. Sugar, obviously processed food sugar, that's just a problem. Ultra processed food should have zero part of your diet, like zero. Additives, chemicals, pesticides, herbicides, hormones, antibiotics, all should be completely eliminated. If you're going to have sugar, that's okay. But just think of it as a recreational drug. Small amounts occasionally can be fine, but not as a daily staple. And eat real sugar.

Have maple syrup. Have honey. I mean, have sugar. But don't eat all those artificial weird things. Refined oils can be a problem. I think there are expeller-pressed oils. There are hieroglyphic oils. There are oils that have good mixtures of omega-3s and 6s.

So I think the sort of narrative, it's all seed oils are bad or none oils are bad, are higher calaic oils there are all that have good mixtures of omega-3s and sixes so i think the sort of narrative it's all cedals are bad or not alls are bad i think it's problematic but we have to be more more specific and it's a little nuanced but i talk about what that is in my book and dairy can be great if it's from sheep or goat and if you're not allergic but most traditional cow dairy is pretty bad for you not because you know because of all the hormones in it because of the a2 a1 casein was just super inflammatory where as the casein which is the protein in milk that's in sheep or goat is much less inflammatory so that's sort of the high level on diet and if you follow these principles you can eat lots of different ways

but they're just really core principles of how you should be eating. Next is sleep. Sleep is so important and we don't prioritize sleep in this culture. We think we can cheat sleep and still do well. We can't. We need to practice good sleep hygiene. So what does that look like? And again, you know, people say I have insomnia, I can't sleep. Well, they often don't practice good sleep hygiene. So go to bed and wake up at the same time every day as best possible. Use your bed for sleep and romance or sex, not TV or work. Create a nice environment in your bedroom. Really limit all the clutter and distractions. Keep it serene, muted colors.

Get rid of all that crap. Make sure you have blackout shades, or at least an eye mask. You know, light plays a huge role. And even if our eyes are closed and it's bright out, light will get in and it can affect our melatonin levels and affect our ability to sleep. Keep it quiet.

You know, if you're living in a noisy area, use earplugs, get grounded. And I think one of the things that we don't realize is the electromagnetic frequencies can be a factor. And there are actually grounding sheets and grounding tents. In New York City, you know, I had a Geiger counter, which measures like basically not a Geiger counter, but like basically like a EMF detector. And essentially it measures the ambient EMF or electromagnetic frequencies. And it basically says, danger, danger, get out of our apartment because of all the Wi-Fi and, you know, there's like all these buildings and all these people with their own Wi-Fi.

And there's like 100, you know, Wi-Fi things going on. And so we put up kind of like a basically like a Faraday cage, which is it blocks all the EMFs. And you couldn't make a phone call inside the tent over your bed. So I encourage you to either shut off your Wi-Fi at night to get a kind of Faraday tent for your bed or something like that and try to keep all the electrical stuff away from your bed and don't check your devices and just get your device out of bed. Also, get rid of blue light exposure at night. You can use red light bulbs at home at night. You can use blue blocker glasses. You want to avoid computers, smartphones, tablets at least two hours before bed.

Really use a blue-black glass after sunset. It can be great. Caffeine can be fine for people, but if you're a slow metabolizer, you can have a cup in the morning, and that can affect your sleep at night. So it can really interfere with sleep. If you're really struggling, I would encourage you to get off caffeine. Alcohol, I occasionally like to drink, but it is a super bad sleep disruptor. And I can tell when I wear my Oura ring or when I'm, you know, you're tracking my sleep. When I drink something at night, my sleep is always much worse and I actually feel worse the next day. So I've pretty much given up mostly drinking. Occasionally,

I'll have a shot of tequila, but not on a regular basis. Also, make sure in the morning you get light exposure. Getting 20 minutes of bright light exposure in the morning, it activates the light receptors in your eyes, it affects your brain, your penile gland, and sets rising cortisol levels and lower melatonin and kind of helps you actually reset your system so you can get a deeper sleep at night. Also, don't eat three hours before bed. So give yourself three hours before your last meal and bed. I can't always do that, but having a heavy meal and going to bed, it's going to screw up your sleep. I went to a dinner party last night and I'm like, I'm sure the guy wants to eat at six o'clock. And we didn't eat

till nine o'clock at night. I came home and I went to bed at, you know, 1130. I was still, by the time I finished dinner was 10, you know, gotten to bed 1130. It wasn't enough time. And I, and I definitely could feel the effects today of not having as good a sleep. Also don't work out at night. Exercising at night will stimulate you and interrupt your sleep. Also get the crap out of your head that's spinning. So write down your worries. Maybe an hour before bed, do a little journaling. Write down what causes you anxiety. Get stuff off your head that you're worth your to-do list, what your plans are. Just free up your mind a little bit. One of my favorite hacks is a hot bath. I use Epsom salt and lavender oil to lower cortisol. Hot water helps to raise your body

temperature, which helps you fall asleep faster. And magnesium is absorbed through the skin, which helps you relax. And it's great. So you get the cortisol lowering effects of lavender. And it's just a great, fun way to kind of wind down at night. Also, if you can, stretch at night. Do a little yoga, stretching. If you're lucky, get a massage. Some of the best sleeps I've ever had were when I got a massage at night and then go to bed. It's like I just go into a whole different state. Also, heating pads can be great. Warming your middle, a heating pad, a water bottle, a warm body helps. Don't take medications that mess up sleep. Sedatives, antihistamines,

stimulants, cold medications, steroids, often headache medication that takes caffeine in them. Be careful of those. Those can script your sleep. Try some herbs, passion flower, valerian root, magnolia. A lot of these things can be very helpful for sleep. Magnesium is one of my favorites. Take magnesium before bed, two to 400 milligrams. You can take magnesium citrate if you tend to be constipated glycinate if you're more likely to you know just have normal bowels um some of those melatonin half a milligram to two milligrams can be helpful for some people um other things amino acids like gaba theanine 5-htHTP, really helpful. Try guided meditation. Sometimes I'll listen to binaural beats at night,

which is you can listen to them online and get a headphone, and it really helps to really reset your brain. Yoga nidra, guided relaxation, whatever you like, but I would encourage you to try that. And try my sleep masterclass. You can go to drhyman.com forward slash sleep. So sleep's important and exercise also important. Obviously, if it was a longevity pill, it would be exercise. Certain types of

exercise are far more effective for optimizing our health and metabolism or lifespan. Aerobic conditioning, strength, keeping your muscle mass, being flexible, being agile, super important for staying healthy. You want to be able to, you know, do what I call the centenarian Olympics. Basically, Peter Atiyah talks about the centurion, I know, decathlon, which is like, what do you do? Get up off the floor, play with your grandkids, tie your shoes, you know. But that requires you to be fit and agile and flexible and build muscle. So really important. It has really powerful effects.

It's like a stress and it's this hormesis strategy, which is a stress that doesn't kill you, that makes you stronger. And what are the main ways we need to do this? One is by boosting your VO2 max. Your VO2 max is basically how much oxygen you can burn a minute. And that is an indirect measurement of your fitness level and also your mitochondrial function and your metabolism. So the higher it is, the longer you'll live. And the way to get it up is by high intensity interval training and like sprints. Also muscle, super important.

Maximizing muscle is key. So strength training, 30 minutes, three times a week minimum, and having adequate protein after. Getting flexible, yoga classes, stretching, key to keeping your body supple. You know, the stiff old man syndrome is a real thing. So make sure you keep your muscles, tendons, ligaments pliable, flexible. It'll help with your mobility, agility, balance, living pain-free yoga is really great so i encourage you to pick up some yoga you can there's online classes easy to do what do i do well um i do four to six days of cardio with interval training i do road bike

mountain biking tennis is my favorite because i don't even know i'm exercising hiking sometimes i do classes swimming 30 to 60 minutes a session. I do strength training. I use TV12 sports, resistance bands. Sometimes I use weights. I'll do that 30 minutes, four or five times a week. And yoga. I love yoga. So hot yoga, vinyasa yoga a couple of times a week, stretching a little bit every day. But I definitely get into the yoga. I wish I could do that every day, actually. Also, one next and sort of the last, one of the last major things is building community and a sense of purpose. You know, a lot of us, you know, don't have a deep community and loneliness and isolation

are big risk factors for disease and early death. So also your mind, you know, what happens between the ears determines so much about your health. So develop a growth mindset. Learn about the world. Explore and be curious about yourself and the world. Fear what's not working in your life and take action to fix it. Create a vision statement for yourself.

Like what matters to you? What are your goals? What are your dreams? Do good things for other people. Altruism is actually a medicine literally it affects us in a positive way in our biology our brain circuits get rewarded with dopamine like they do with heroin and cocaine with altruism and it's much safer and much healthier uh so find something that matters to you um be part of making the world a better place there was a well-known

indian guru named neem karoli baba who who said, you know, you could reach awakening with a simple plan. Love everyone, serve everyone, and he added, feed everyone. So that's pretty simple rules for living. Volunteer, give back to your community, practice kindness to those around you. Also, there's a way to take your struggles and your pain and transform them into a purpose. Many of us have had traumas in our lives. We've experienced hard things. And we can use those things to help others. And I certainly did that.

I got very sick when I was in my 30s. I had chronic fatigue. And that led me to understand the body in a different way and discover functional medicine. And I saw how many people were suffering that don't need to with solutions that are available to them. Also, find out what makes you happy, what lights you up, what you're passionate about, and do those things. I love to play tennis. I love to be in nature. I love to hang out with my friends.

I love to listen to music. So I find those things that give me joy, and I go do them. Find out what you care about and what your dreams are and follow those dreams uh you can reinvent your life at any age so just make sure you take the time to explore your life and make those changes that you need to actually bring more passion and joy to your life and and make sure you're connected to community because that's so powerful it's a part of our medicine is this community is medicine it's and many of us are as i mentioned socially isolated and it doesn't matter what it is it could be a book club it could be bowling buddies it can be anything but the more connected you are to people the healthier you are the more your relationships

are solid in your life the better your health is going to be and the longer you're going to live um also find out and see people who inspire you. You're only as healthy as the five people you spend the most time with. So if all your friends are eating McDonald's and drinking soda all day, somebody called it diabetes water, then that's probably what's going to happen to you. But if all your friends are watching Netflix and binging on junk food, you're probably going to be in trouble. If your friends are drinking green juices and doing yoga, probably, and they're focused on growth and development,

you're probably going to be healthier too. Also, be nice to yourself. Most of us are pretty hard on ourselves. And if we actually talk to our friends the way we talk to ourselves with our inner dialogue, we probably wouldn't have any friends. Ram Dass talks about this idea of non-judgmental, loving self-awareness. How do we recognize our negative inner dialogue and how do we

overcome that? Also prioritize your own self-care. It's not selfish to take care of yourself. The more you take care of yourself, the better you can be in your life for others. So you're going to become a source of energy and light for yourself and for others. And I think, you know, focusing on productivity is not the answer. It's on filling up our hearts and our souls. So do those simple things that bring you back to yourself and support your health. And I know it's for me, it's super important. So after this, I'm going to go for a walk with a friend. And then I'm going to go play tennis later this afternoon. And I invited some family members over for dinner tonight.

So I try to do this on a daily basis to add those things that bring value. Also, learn how to manage your stress response. We can't stop stress. It's happening all the time. But we can manage it. And we have to learn those techniques. It can be breathing techniques, meditation, yoga, guided meditation, forest bathing. We just call it taking a walk in the woods, writing down your feelings, journaling, super helpful.

You know, gratitude journal, super important. It's actually data on this. It's not just some goofy idea. It's actually something where there's real data on practicing gratitude as a method for healing your body and healing yourself. Martin Seligman talks about this in his book, Flourish, where he unpacks a science of gratitude and it's how it affects your health and happiness. So focus on what's right and good, not on what's wrong and bad. A lot of us are focusing what's wrong instead of what's right. And I think we just shift our focus and we'll often be much happier. Also build your friend network. Take time to invest

in your friends, whether it's, you know, gatherings you have weekly, it could be a breakfast club, it could be a Zoom gathering you have with your friends all over the country or world. Just make sure you invest in that. Massage is great if you can do it. It helps breathing out stress. I love my favorite techniques. You can trade massage with a friend with a partner you can get a professional apology if you can afford it exercise also a great way to reduce stress so there's so many things the five different things you can do uh they're so important what you eat exercise your um your sleep your your meaning purpose uh and learning how to manage stress all super important for living a long and healthy life. And that's it for today's Health Byte. I hope you liked it, learned a few things. You know, it's a lot,

but if you follow these guidelines, I think you're going to find yourself healthier and happier and living a longer, better life. So please share it with everybody. I'd love for them to learn too. And we'll see you next week on The Doctor's Pharmacy. Hey everybody, it's Dr. Hyman. Thanks for tuning into The Doctor's Pharmacy. 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 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.