The Dr. Hyman Show - Exclusive Dr. Hyman+ Ask Mark Anything: My Go-To Breakfast, Alcohol Consumption, And More

Episode Date: May 30, 2023

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Hey podcast community, Dr. Mark here. I'm so excited to offer you a seven-day free trial of my revolutionary new platform called Dr. Hyman Plus. For seven days you get special access to all the private content included in Dr. Hyman Plus entirely free. It's so easy to sign up. Just go to Apple Podcast on your phone and click try free button on the Doctors Pharmacy podcast. You'll get exclusive access to ad-free Doctors Pharmacy podcast episodes and functional medicine deep dives where a practitioner dives into topics like heart health, muscle health, insulin resistance, and more to help you understand the root cause of specific ailments and walk you through the steps to improve your health today. You'll also get access to all my Ask Mark Anything Q&As where

I answer the community's biggest health and wellness questions. Because I'm so sure you're going to love this platform, I am offering you free access to all of this content for seven days and a teaser of my brand new Ask Mark Anything episode. Head on over to the Doctors Pharmacy podcast on Apple podcast and sign up for your free trial. Okay, here we go. Hi everyone. Welcome to another episode of Ask Mark Anything. My name is Herschel Perth. I'm the Dr. Hyman Plus Community Manager, and I'm joined by Darcy Gross. Hi, Darcy. Hi. And Darcy is one of the producers of the Longevity Roadmap docuseries, and of course, we're here with Dr. Hyman. Hi, Dr. Hyman. Hi, everybody. Well, thanks for being here with us today, and we're ready to ask Mark anything. So we're going

to start off with a fun question today. Dr. Hyman, would you eat for breakfast this morning? Well, I did my workout, my little TV 12 workout before the podcast, and I made my shake, which basically I use regeneratively raised goat whey. I have some pecan powder left, sorry for those of you who like it and no more available, but I have some left. I use that. I throw in some creatine for muscle building. I use an adaptogenic mushroom blend, Stamets 7. I put in Mito Pure, which is urolithinate to help my mitochondria rejuvenate. And what else did I put in there? Blueberries, banana, a little bit of banana and macadamia milk. Oh yeah. And gut food. I put in a scoop of gut food for my tummy. So that's my basic shake. And

I had that and I'm, that keeps me like even my mood, my energy, uh, even throughout most of the day. I mean, I literally can have that good shake like that for breakfast and probably 40 grams of protein in it. And it lasts me well into the afternoon. So I'm, I'm, I'm really happy. I had my shake this morning. Yeah, so are we. Seems like you're all ready to go for our questions. So we'll go ahead and get started. I was about to do this and then I was like, oh geez, I better, because I was up and I didn't want to eat early. I want to have a little time restricted eating. So I kind of worked out and I just got a little crunch for time. So I basically kind of had my shake and then I'm good now.

Okay. Well, I'm so excited that you're all ready to go and pumped up and had your protein. And so you're ready to pull out all the information and answer all these questions. So Darcy, I'll go to you for the first actual question. Yeah, for sure. All right. Jumping right in. What is the purpose of betaine hydrochloric acid, HCL, as a supplement? Yeah, so this is, I mean, something that has many benefits. So betaine is a methyl donor, and the hydrochloric acid part really helps to improve digestion. So a lot of people have achlorhydria, which is a, or some version of it. And that's common as we get older, we lose stomach acid, and we have trouble with digesting our food. We may see undigested food in our stool. We might see, we might have like a heartburn, even though it's paradoxically, you think, oh, I'm having heartburn and actually may need more digestive support. You might feel bloated or distended. You might have

maybe overgrowth of yeast and other things that can happen as a result of not having enough stomach acid. And so there's a lot of reasons for it, but often people who have really struggled with digestion and can actually take this before they eat and can help improve their overall digestion. We often do a challenge or loading test, which essentially you take an increasing amount before every meal until you start feeling a little burning in your stomach,

and then you reduce the dose. And over time, you'll need less and less. And once you heal your gut, you probably won't need it at all. But it is a very, very helpful therapeutic strategy for people with various kinds of gut issues. Is that something that can be achieved by taking other types of acids like apple cider vinegar? Yeah, I was going to say that.

So people use other remedies, whether it's bitters, which are something that have been used for centuries as an herbal remedy for digestion, which help, or using apple cider vinegar can help too. So there's a lot of ways to do this, but I think I found for, and I don't use it a lot, but I do find it for certain select patients can be extremely helpful. Yeah, for sure. Thank you. And over to you, Herschel. So we've talked a lot about pancreatic health in previous episodes, but this question is about supplements. So are there any supplements or medications that a person should or should not be taking in order to protect their pancreas if they have a history of pancreatic cancer? Yeah, I mean, I think I understand the question. I think, you know, I want to sort of reframe it a little bit. You know, pancreatic cancer,

we've talked about, but it's a really serious problem and often hard to diagnose and diagnose late. And it's generally caused by insulin resistance, which seems paradoxical, but it actually, the pancreas makes insulin, among other things, digestive enzymes, and the high levels of sugar and starch in a diet are driving an increase in insulin resistance, which increases your risk of pancreatic cancer. So from a dietary point of view, it's really important to eat a low glycemic, higher fat, healthy diet with full of phytochemicals, basically the vegan diet. You also need to take supplements that can help with regulating blood sugar and some of those fiber, extra fiber, things like magnesium, fish oil, vitamin D, all of these help improve insulin

sensitivity. And I think there are other herbs that I often will use as well. So it's like berberine we talked about in a previous AMA. So I think there's a lot of things we can do supplement wise, but it really is more of a lifestyle disease. And I think it's more concerning. Also, there's actually a new diagnostic test that's worth considering if you have a family history. Pancreatic cancer usually doesn't present until very late as symptoms. So you can have it and be fine. And then boom, you're at stage four pancreatic cancer and you're done in a year. So it's not great. And there's no good screening test for it. There's no good ways to look for it. Until recently, there's a new test called

the gallery test. And that gallery test measures a liquid biopsy. Now it measures DNA fragments from cancers, and it can be very specific to the cancer and where it's from. So I recently had a patient who was seen by their doctor who had had breast cancer, had a clean bill of health. Everything was normal. He said, you're fine to worry. It's five years out. And we did a grail test, a scallery test by grail, and she had breast cancer that lit up. So we did a PET scan. We found she had nodes in her hilum, which is in the chest. So she had lymph nodes that were affected and it spread. So it wasn't great news, but we were able to get it a lot earlier and deal with it, which I will, I think, hopefully save her life. Same thing with pancreatic cancer. You go, I don't want to know. I don't want to know. But if you know,

then you can actually do something about it. So I think knowledge is power. And the more knowledge we have, the more ability you have to actually take control of your life and to be proactive among that and other cancers. There's 50 cancers that it actually screens for 60% of the most common cancers. So it's not a perfect test, but it does actually help in making decisions about what to do, particularly if you have a family history and you're worried. Oh, that's super helpful. Is that something that you feel is available around the country or do you have to go to specific locations to get it? Yeah. So, you know, I offer it in my practice. Uh, you know, you can kind of Google it and learn about it. Um, it's part of function health, which is a company I co-founded. Um, we offer it so people can go

to quest and they'll draw the lab, um, along with their membership. It's a $500 a year membership for $15,000 for the test. It helps empower you to take control of your own health. And one of the things that we offer is a grail test. So you can actually just get that even without a doctor's order and find out what's going on. And then of course, you know, if you find a result, you've got to learn how to deal with it. And we, you know, there's a whole team that can help guide you on what to do and where to go and how to manage it. Okay. Super helpful. Darcy over to you for the next one. All right. So kind of switching gears, do you believe that alcohol impacts women and men differently if, let's just say, for example, all the other factors are the same, you know, age, diet, activity level, et cetera? Yeah, for sure. It 100% does because what alcohol is,

is a poison and it poisons the liver and it causes particularly for women higher levels of estrogen high levels of estrogen over time increase the risk of breast cancer and ovarian cancer and uterine cancer and so we know that for example if a woman has one glass of wine at night one glass the risk of breast cancer goes up by 40%. And many people have more than that. So alcohol is really much more concerning. And it can also cause what we call estrogen toxicity, independent of cancer. It increases the estrogen levels and then the relative ratio of estrogen progesterone is higher. So you have higher estrogen to progesterone and that can lead to uterine fibroids, to uterine cancer,

to heavy menstrual periods, to worsening PMS, to perimetopausal symptoms that are worse, to menopausal symptoms that are worse. So it absolutely is worse for you as a woman than it is for a man. Not good for a man either. Obviously it has all the downside effects of increased cancer risk, brain deterioration, impaired sleep, you know, other issues. So I don't really think there's a safe level of alcohol as a recreational substance buying once in a while. It's not going to hurt you. But what about the blue zones? They all wine and everything like they did but they literally had everything else right like they literally had everything else right their diet was rich in phytochemicals and medicines they didn't have any of the processed food we eat they exercise every day of their life just as an

all part of how their life was had meaning and purpose and sense of belonging that community and love they they had these deep social connections that are so important in determining your longevity and your health. So I think, you know, we can't just kind of go by that. I think we have to really look at the data. And I think depending on your genetics too, you might be more or less susceptible to issues. So I think for women, it is at a bigger risk. Yeah, for sure. Well, that's helpful. Thank you, Dr. Hyman and Rachel. So the next question is about peptides. What are peptides and who can benefit from their use?

Great question. You know, peptides are sort of emerging in the medical field as a powerful therapy for many different problems and people are becoming more aware of them. Their doctors are prescribing them, mostly sort of alternative-ish doctors, but people don't understand what is a peptide. Peptide is a small protein, like a mini protein made up of 20 or less amino acids. Proteins usually have more than 20. And so it's kind of a mini protein. Now, what do proteins do in the body? Think of them as like the communication superhighway, the information superhighway. And there are thousands and thousands of peptides

that your body uses as regulators of every function of your body, your immune system, repairing tissues, hormones, brain function, mitochondrial function metabolism now you're familiar with a couple of peptides insulin is a peptide okay um ozempic which you might have heard about in the news or on tv or somewhere from your doctor i hope not but ozempic is a peptide called semaglutide, which is important in regulating something called GLP-1, which is a glucagon-like peptide 1 agonist. Essentially, it helps with blood sugar control. It's good for diabetics. It also has central effects in regulating appetite. It makes you feel full. It can sometimes cause digestive issues. And so it's being now touted as a solution for obesity, which is kind of ridiculous because the solution for obesity is changing our toxic food

environment and our lifestyle and our diet. And it works better than medication without any side effects. So when these, these, they're over, you know, I think 70 peptides that have been approved by the FDA for various kinds of medical interventions. And they definitely have a huge role in medicine. I personally use them for various conditions. I've had, for example, injury or I'd work out a lot. So I basically, you know, pull this or pull that. And they use this peptide called BP157. It's powerful for repair regeneration. It's quite amazing. I just like injected if my bicep tendon has been irritating me i injected it and it's like almost gone within a day so i think there's a lot of powerful benefits of peptides um they can have side effects um uh you know like like time of glue tide and you have to be conscious of what they are but but many many people who have

chronic conditions um can can benefit from it for example the immune peptides like thymus and alpha-1 and others can actually be helpful in regulating immunity. So for example, if I'm exposed to somebody who's sick or if I'm going to a concert and I don't want to get COVID, I'll shoot up with a bunch of thymus and alpha-1. And I actually was with someone who had COVID in a car for an hour and a half before they knew they had COVID. I never got it because I use these peptides and it's impressive. So they have many, many uses and there are many, many different peptides. I do write about them in Young Forever, some of the most common peptides, what they're used for, how they're used. And I think we're going to see more and more of this over time. Yeah, super helpful. Thanks for that information.

Darcy, over to you. All right. So what is the best way to assess your circulatory and or like blood vessel health? And how about we'll tack on and also how to support that as well. Great. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, your blood pressure cuff is a good way. You could see, are you have high or low blood pressure? That's a great way to look in directly at your blood vessel health. There are also ways to look at your health through imaging. If you're looking at your coronary circulation, you can use something called the CLEARLY test, which is an AI test, basically that uses a CT scan, but uses an AI software to look at soft plaque and inflammation

within that plaque. And it's a much better predictor, for example, of cardiac events and heart attacks than a typical coronary calcium score or, you know, an EKG or a cardiac stress test. So you can get a really good idea of what your vessels look like, how much plaque is there, what kind of plaque is there, is it soft plaque, is it hard plaque, is it inflamed, is it non-inflamed, and it's a really great advance in medical diagnostics. Also, a carotid ultrasound is a great way to look at your blood vessels. You can look at your carotids, which are the main arteries that feed your brain. If they have thickening or plaque, you can see and you can actually intervene to do things about that. Also, you can look at your heart

variability, that sort of an indirect measure of your parasympathetic, sympathetic tone that can measure the sort of health of your blood vessels. There's also something called an endopat machine, which looks at the kind of elasticity of your blood vessels and the more elastic, the more flexible they are, the healthier. If you have stiff, you know, pipes, you know, it's like thinking about like a brand new like hose, you know, it's flexible, it's soft, it can work, but if you leave it on the sun, it gets cracked and dried out, you know, it'll break and be brittle. It's the same thing with your blood vessels. You want to have these soft, pl blood vessels and so you can look at the kind of endovascular you know elasticity through some of these tests that measure blood vessel function so there's a lot of diagnostics you can use um and i think you know we we um we can we can

i mean there's many many tests i don't know how deep we want to get into it but like looking for vascular disease in your legs and uh you know, lower kind of blood pressure impedance tests, vascular impedance tests, looks at blood flow in your lower circulation. So there's a lot of diagnostics we do in medicine to look at your blood vessel and circulatory health. Also, you can just look at your blood numbers, you know, CRP is a measure of inflammation, oxidative stress. You can right away see that your blood vessel is going to be problematically harmed. In terms of things to do about it, I think obviously the same usual diet and lifestyle things that I recommend. There's a few supplements that can be helpful. Artericil, which is a really new product, relatively new product that helps with the inflammatory responses.

Bioflavonoids we talked about, which are important, which you can get from all kinds of plants and take them as well. And there's just, you know, things that increase nitric oxide, very helpful for your circulation, like breathing through your nose and certain foods that contain arginine, like almonds and even sort of supplements that can boost nitric oxide, like arginine. So I think there's a lot of things you can do to improve your circulatory and vascular health. Well, I hope you enjoyed that teaser of exclusive content that you get every single month with Dr. Hyman Plus.

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