The Dr. Hyman Show - How To Eat Smarter with Shawn Stevenson

Starting point is 00:00:00 Coming up on this episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. Nobody's talking about that in these cookie cutter diets, that you need to address the inflammation in your brain in order for you to lose weight, right? So these are all, and the beautiful part is it's possible. It's not just possible, it's probable when you have the right information and we avoid the things that create the inflammation.

Starting point is 00:00:23 Hey everyone, it's Dr. Mark Hyman. It's pretty obvious that I love to cook and I especially love using real whole foods to bring people together. And there are a few ingredients that I just can't live without. And one of the most important ingredients in my kitchen cabinet, hands down, is sea salt.

Starting point is 00:00:40 Now I've tried lots of different brands, but Redmond's Ancient Sea Salt has become a favorite. It's packed with more than 60 beneficial minerals, and that natural light pink color is actually a sign of all the trace minerals it contains. I also love that it's mined right here in the U.S. in Utah. Now, some of you might be thinking, isn't salt bad for us? And the answer is yes, when it comes to the highly refined salt with additives and anti-caking agents that's completely overused to enhance flavor and highly processed food just to make it edible. But when it comes to your own kitchen, using high quality, 100%, real salt like Redmond's can be part of a healthy, balanced diet. Now, Thrive Market is my go-to place to buy Redmond's salt and all my other must-have kitchen staples, and they offer 25% to 50% off all their items compared to other retailers, so I save a ton of money. And their different membership options make it easy to find the right fit for you and

Starting point is 00:01:35 your family. You can choose from a one-month or a 12-month plan, and each one will save you lots of money on your groceries and get you all your favorite healthy ingredients delivered right to your door. Now Thrive has a huge selection of natural and organic foods and you can shop by diet type. You can get entire meals shipped to you. You can even get sustainably made low sugar wines for those special occasions. Thrive offers 25 to 50% off all their items compared to other retailers and they have a huge selection of natural and organic foods. They even have skincare products, cleaning products, and meal delivery kits, all at a huge discount. Right now, Thrive is offering all Doctors Pharmacy listeners an amazing deal. Select a free gift from Thrive Market when you sign up for a one-year membership, and at any time you spend more than $49, you'll get free carbon neutral

Starting point is 00:02:26 shipping. Just head over to thrivemarket.com forward slash hyman. That's thrivemarket.com forward slash hyman. My main goal with diet is to use food as medicine. But even when we eat super well, most of us are missing out on certain essential nutrients. Our soils have become depleted and our digestive tracts just aren't working so great. They're compromised by stress and toxins and they just can't absorb nutrients as efficiently as they should. And that's why I always use, and I recommend to my patients, a multivitamin mineral as nutritional insurance.

Starting point is 00:02:57 It covers the basics for all our day-to-day body functions, all the things that we need that our food might be missing. But there are so many products out there I wouldn't go near because they contain artificial fillers or inactive ingredients, and you have to be pretty picky. The one I trust and take myself is Athletic Greens. They use high-quality, highly absorbable forms of vitamins and nutrients from real whole foods.

Starting point is 00:03:22 Athletic Greens comes in a powder that tastes great and mixes easily with water or smoothies and specifically supports my gut health, immunity, energy, and recovery. And it's not just vitamins and minerals. It has phytonutrient-rich superfoods and adaptogens and pre and probiotics and even digestive enzymes. I love that they add the digestive support in their powder since so much of our immune strength and overall wellness starts in the gut. It's really one supplement that covers so many bases and you'd be hard-pressed to find something else in this comprehensive form in any single other product. I use Athletic Greens in the morning as part of my daily routine and I love having it with me

Starting point is 00:04:00 whenever I travel. I also love that it's diet friendly, whether you're vegan, paleo, keto, dairy-free, or gluten-free. Right now, Athletic Greens is offering my audience a full year supply of their vitamin D3K2 liquid formula, free with your first purchase. Now, these two nutrients are also so vital for a strong immune system and strong bones, and many of us are not getting enough of them. I use the Athletic Greens powder and their D3K2 formula to make sure I get extra nutrients that complement my diet. They're also going to give you five free travel packs as well. Just go to athleticgreens.com forward slash hymen

Starting point is 00:04:37 to get your free year supply of vitamin D3 and K2 and five free travel packs with your first purchase. You'll get it delivered straight to your door and I promise you'll feel the difference Athletic Greens can make in your daily wellness routine. Again, that's athleticgreens.com forward slash Hyman. Now let's get back to this week's episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. Welcome to The Doctor's Pharmacy. I'm Dr. Mark Heim. That's pharmacy with an F-A-R-M-A-C-Y, a place for conversations that matter. If you've ever struggled with your weight, if you've ever tried to figure out why it's so hard to lose weight, or tried a million different things and want to know how your

Starting point is 00:05:17 body really works, you better listen up because today's conversation is with Shawn Stevenson, who is a master of the human body. He's investigated in ways that most physicians haven't, most nutritionists don't know, and will give you insights into how your body works that are pretty remarkable. So I would pay close attention to this podcast. Sean is an incredible guy. He's the author of Sleep Smarter. He's been on the podcast talking about that. He's the creator of the Model Health Show, which has been listed as the number one health podcast in the US, has millions of downloads. He's done so many great things, but the most important thing he's done is care about us, care about you and how to fix

Starting point is 00:05:55 what's going on. And he came to this the hard way from growing up in really difficult circumstances, not knowing anything about food and experiencing all the bad stuff that the food toxic food world has brought us so welcome sean to the podcast mark is an honor to be here i love talking with you all right me too all right let's get right into it i'm going to open up by reading from the opening of your book eat smarter and your book is titled eat smarter use the power of food to reboot your metabolism upgrade your brain and transform your life sounds like a good plan i Use the Power of Food to Reboot Your Metabolism, Upgrade Your Brain, and Transform Your Life. Sounds like a good plan. I think I'm up for that.

Starting point is 00:06:29 Out late December 2020. All right, here we go. In the book, you start out by saying food is complicated. It's one of the most valuable, multifaceted things in our universe, and I completely agree with that. It's a key controller of our state of health or disease. It's a social centerpiece that complements the a key controller of our state of health or disease. It's a social centerpiece that complements the most important moments of our lives. It's the building blocks that create

Starting point is 00:06:50 our brain, enabling us to have thoughts and feelings and emotions. It's the very stuff that makes up our bodies. We literally are what we eat and what we see looking back at us in the mirror. Food isn't just food. It's the thing that makes us who we are. But food is also ridiculously simple because you just put it in your mouth. Your body handles the fine print after you chew. It's because of food's simple side that we sometimes miss just how miraculous it actually is. Still, even if we don't know the details, food is able to work on us, to change us,

Starting point is 00:07:22 to literally shape our lives. So, Sean, this is a beautiful opening statement for your book. Tell us how you got into this. What is your journey? Because you had your own struggles with food and this really shaped your life's work and inspired you to do what you're doing today. Yes. Thank you so much for that, Mark. And that was my mission really is to bring about the dynamic aspect of food you know because as you know in this field we tend to put food into this pithy box or diet most folks link up diet the word diet to body weight and we don't really get an analysis or overarching understanding of how food impacts every single area of our lives and of course grew up, I had no idea that food mattered at all.

Starting point is 00:08:06 I just thought it was just stuff you eat. And that's the end of the story. I grew up in what you referred to and you've shared so much information about in a food desert. We oftentimes, we were on WIC food stamps. We got our food from local shelter oftentimes, and, you know, just trying to find ways to get by. You know, food stamp Christmas, you said. Yes, yes. Lovingly referred to as food stamp Christmas. That would come around. I would like to know, what was that? What did you eat at food stamp Christmas? Oh, man. I mean, we didn't have Cheerios. We had Toastios, you know. So, we take those food stamps and we go buy a bunch of off-brand food. And these were the things I was making my body out of, you know, and of course we were habitually eating fast food, you know, as much as we possibly could. And some of the things we'll talk about today, the economics made it very affordable and made, you know, what we call higher quality food, something that was much more complicated for us to get.

Starting point is 00:09:06 And so being that I was making my food, my body out of these things, which I had no idea that it mattered, I thought that I can eat whatever I want if I just work out. But I grew up in a family of folks who are obese, and it was just our culture was the nature of what I was around. And that played out for me, kind of a genetic predisposition, but we, of course, we know about epigenetics today, but I ended up at track practice just 15 years old. And I was an incredible, inspiring athlete. And I was doing a time trial and just 15 years old, I ended up running, doing a time trial, and I broke my hip just from running around the track because my bones were so brittle, my bone density.

Starting point is 00:09:46 And, you know, for a lot of folks, we just get the marketing side of bone density. Calcium is like at the front door. And we don't realize that your bone density, dozens, if not hundreds of different compounds come together to make your bones. And if you're deficient in these things, what do you think your body's going to do? But I had no idea. And it wasn't. There's also a lot of things you were doing to dissolve your bones, right? You're drinking lots of soda, which has phosphoric acid. And that actually is one of the biggest drivers of osteoporosis is the phosphoric acid that leaches out the calcium from your bones. It was just a daily part of my life, you know, drinking soda, drinking, you know, so-called punch, Hawaiian punch,

Starting point is 00:10:26 you know, it was like 1% juice. And of course, sugar has an impact on your bone density and so many other factors. Omega-3s, I had no idea that any of these other things mattered, but I was deficient in so much. And so fast forward the story, at the age of 20, I was finally diagnosed with degenerative bone disease, degenerative disc disease. So it's essentially arthritis of the spine. And my physician told me I had the spine of an 80-year-old man when I was just 20 years old. You're 20 going on 80.

Starting point is 00:10:55 Yeah, right. I was like Benjamin Button, like the wrong way. And so I also had two herniated discs that were causing me a tremendous amount of pain. And unfortunately, he told me that this situation was incurable. There's nothing I can do about it. And I went about my life for the next two years just in a lot of pain and suffering. My fat genes, I was kind of the skinny kid in my family, but my fat genes kicked on with a vengeance at that point.

Starting point is 00:11:21 And so I gained a bunch of weight and I was scared. I was scared to move around because every physician I of weight and I was scared. I was scared to move around because every physician I see, and by the way, I want to encourage everybody, whenever you do get bad news like this, I highly encourage you to get a second, third opinion before taking any type of action. And in most cases, if you have time. And I did that, but it was the same bill of goods. And to put a bow on the story, because obviously it turned out okay. It wasn't until the final physician that I saw telling me the same thing that I started to change the question that was going on in my mind habitually.

Starting point is 00:11:57 And I talk about this in the book as well. There's a brain reflex. It's called instinctive elaboration. And your brain is really running off the questions that you ask constantly. And oftentimes they're unconscious because it helps to filter out the trillions of bits of data that your brain is trying to process to basically give you the most important information that you need to survive in your environment. And so I was habitually asking, why me?

Starting point is 00:12:21 Why did this happen to me? Why won't anybody help me? And so I'm just looking, scanning my environment constantly to affirm those questions and answer those questions on how much my life sucked and why I was so alone. And in an instant after I really realized like, truly they do mean well, but they don't walk in my shoes. I finally asked, what can I do to get healthier? It's just like a light bulb got turned on. And I started to ask different questions. Okay, my spine is degenerating. What is my spine

Starting point is 00:12:52 made out of? And started asking these questions. The obvious question, right? Right. And it starts to send me down this wonderful journey. And long story short, I use several different protocols. I started off trying to lose weight with SlimFast. I was drinking a shake a day, two shakes a day, and then a healthy dinner, all that. But eventually, by asking different questions, the right data showed up. And I started to really look at food as one of the primary inputs to get these raw materials my body needed, my bones needed, my spine needed. And I completely reversed the condition about nine months later when I got a scan done. And it really just set in place a very strong passion to help other people and to serve. And it really transformed my world. But Mark, I got to share

Starting point is 00:13:37 this one little nugget. It wasn't just that my body changed, the way that I thought changed, my mind changed. Yeah. Okay. Tell me about that because, okay, this is really important because right now we're seeing so much violence and anger and hatred and divisiveness that we've never seen in our society. And if you look at the mirroring of that with our obesity epidemic and with our increased consumption of processed food, there seems to be, for sure, an associative link. But when you look at the research on behavior, violence, mental health, depression, anxiety, you know, disruptive

Starting point is 00:14:11 behavior, ADD, even gun violence, it's connected to our diet because our diet shapes our thoughts, our feelings, our moods, our brain function, and activates the fight or flight response. Literally, when you eat junk food, you activate cortisol and adrenaline. It's literally like you're being attacked by a tiger when you eat this food. Even though there's no immediate threat or danger, your body doesn't know the difference. And so, your emotions respond like that. Absolutely. And this is some of the most important data for me personally that I wanted to really get out to the world. And I'm so grateful, you know, Eat Smart is going to be available at a prominent feature in target stores across the

Starting point is 00:14:49 country. Oh, that's good. For everyday folks to get this information, because there was one fascinating study, and this was conducted by researchers at The Ohio State University. And they want to see what it was like in couples trying to problem solve and perspective take and solve their issues when they had big swings in their blood sugar, which is largely related to the food that they're eating. And they found shockingly or not so shockingly that this term we use today of being hangry had a massive impact on their ability to communicate with each other. They found that test subjects were much more angrier and aggressive towards their problem and less likely to resolve their conflict when they were having these swings in blood sugar. And we think this is a joke. We think this is some small thing, but how often

Starting point is 00:15:33 do we create conflicts in our relationship on the smallest, silliest things? And there's a checklist that I go through in the book of like really tuning in with yourself and asking, am I hungry? You know, is my partner hungry or deficient in something? Yeah. Are we sleep deprived? You put like a snacks in your pocket. So in case you're going to fight, you're like you feed your daughter snacks. Just give your wife a little snack.

Starting point is 00:15:58 You don't want to throw Scooby snacks at your lady. But, you know, you just want to be aware. Well, you eat them yourself. Right. Give yourself a few to do the shaggy thing. But that's just a small slice of it. And as you mentioned, right now we're living at a time when there's an incredible amount of divisiveness and a lack of empathy because we can solve so many of our problems if we

Starting point is 00:16:23 can communicate and talk. Yes. And my point being, and the data clearly shows that it's not that it's impossible, but it's much more difficult to communicate with other people when you don't feel well. And so the data, one of the things that you kind of pointed to, and this was a fascinating study done by researchers at Oxford University, they had to look at prison inmates, which ironically, it's a really great way to track these results because it's a ward study. Everything is controlled, unfortunately, at the same time. But after, what they did was they took a group of inmates and they gave them more nutrition. They gave them

Starting point is 00:17:02 essential vitamins and minerals and omega-3 fatty acids and tracked them against a control group who got a placebo. And at the end of the study, they compiled all the data and they found that there was about a 37% decrease in violent offenses simply by getting higher quality nutrition into people's bodies. I mean, they were just given a multivitamin and not even changing their diet that much. Right. And when the same studies were done with dietary change, there was a 56% reduction in violent crime with the food alone. And you add a multivitamin, it goes down by 80%. I mean, imagine if there was something we could do that 80% would reduce the anger, violence, divisiveness, gun violence. I mean, all of it, you know. It's crazy. And this is the situation we're in

Starting point is 00:17:45 right now. We have folks who are deficient and unhealthy who are battling it out and trying to communicate with other folks who are deficient and unhealthy. Now, I'm not saying this to be mean. I'm saying this on the strength of a recent study, massive meta-analysis determining that only 12% of United States citizens are metabolically healthy. Yeah. We see the numbers, but we don't really get it. And I'm going to continue to share these numbers because they're important. We have over 200 million folks here in the United States that are overweight or obese. We have about 135 million folks who are type two diabetic or pre-diabetic right now in this country, and it's continuing to grow.

Starting point is 00:18:26 And we have about 115 million people who are chronically sleep deprived. What are we doing? And this is just some of the numbers. This is just some of the numbers. Pretty bad. But you know, in your book, you describe some of the solutions to this problem, right? And Eat Smarter, you talk about our idea of calories being a little bit misconstrued, that the whole science of calories in, calories out, something I've talked a lot about is kind of not really true. And just so you know, Sean, you know, even though you and I have looked at the science, and we're, you know, we're not PhDs in nutrition, you know, we don't work at big academic centers, although I do work at Cleveland Clinic.

Starting point is 00:19:07 There are endocrine societies and specialists and so forth that look at all the data. What I know is, having a conversation with my colleague from Harvard, David Ludwig, who's been researching the science of calories and glycemic load and index for 30 years, and has really clearly established, through very carefully designed experiments, not just population studies, but carefully designed interventional experience with randomized control groups looking at different effects of metabolic health and different calories. And he did one study where he literally found if you ate exactly the same calories

Starting point is 00:19:38 but low carb and higher fat, you would actually burn 450 calories more a day than the control group eating exactly the same calories just because of the different effects of these macronutrients on your metabolism. And what I was shockingly informed of by him the other day were two position papers by the Endocrine Society that reiterated that weight loss is all about calories. Why is this so wrong? Yeah. Well, first of all, in Eat Smarter, we go back and look at the inception of the calorie. And I'm a big fan of doing this. Where did this whole thing come from?

Starting point is 00:20:18 And looking at how this became such the focal point in nutrition, it really revolves around the calorie, which when it was invented, it wasn't even utilized. Nobody was looking for anything to measure energy and food, by the way. It was used in physics and engineering, but it made its parlay into the nutritional world thanks to Wilbur Atwater, which we have the Atwater system, which kind of goes on a lot of food labels right now, which is very skewed, by the way. But what really impressed it upon our culture, there was a massive bestseller in the early part of the 1900s, Dr. Lulu Hunt Peters. And it sold like 2 million copies, which is like a billion copies today.

Starting point is 00:20:58 You know, it's just like everybody had this book. And she made the shift in that point as a popular paradigm in the culture of looking at food in terms of numbers, no longer looking at food in terms of food and the dynamic aspects that it has on our bodies as far as its relationship to our endocrine system and our neurotransmitters and all those other things. And so she said, from this point forward, we will no longer look at a slice of bread. We'll no longer say a slice of bread. We'll say 100 calories of bread. We'll no longer say a slice of pie.

Starting point is 00:21:29 We'll say 350 calories of pie. Within that indoctrination, she also began the widespread association of food with morality and impressing upon culture as a character defect if you're not able to manage your weight and using terms like punishment and sin. And this was also during the time of World War I. So it was widespread food rationing going on, too. And so one of her quotes and I went back and read this old fangled book. I just couldn't believe some of this stuff in here. But she said that essentially for every hunger pang you feel, you should have a double joy in knowing that you are preventing the pangs in another starving child. Wow.

Starting point is 00:22:10 Basically, you're supporting your country, making sure other people can eat. And this also is very important because it associated weight loss with hunger. You know it's working when you're hungry. And these things have continued to proliferate in our culture unchecked. Now, just going back to your point with calories in particular. Now, this is one of the most fascinating aspects of this because it's not that calories are not valuable. It's a measurement. It's a measurement of energy.

Starting point is 00:22:39 It's a tool of measurement. But it's different because a meter is a measurement of distance, but that's consistent. Within the human body, it's completely eliminating the complexity of digestion. And so one of the fascinating things that I want folks to know and starting to really evolve the concept of calories is that the type of food matters. And one of the studies highlighted in Eat Smarter, this was from the journal Food and Nutrition Research. And they took test subjects and they had them to consume a meal of either whole foods or processed foods to see what it did on the rate of calorie burn. And it

Starting point is 00:23:16 was shocking. The whole food meal was what they call, they call this whole food meal was what they call they call this whole food meal multi-grain bread and cheddar cheese while the processed food meal was white bread and cheese product which is cheese product by the way that's craft all right it's crap you know we can't actually call it cheese it's cheese product it has to be 51 cheese that's why it's called American slices, not American cheese. And it shouldn't be your first warning. It's a cheese-like substance. Exactly. And so they compiled all the data. They had test subjects eat either or. And after they compiled the data, listen to this, this is what happened. The folks who consumed the processed food sandwich, even though it was the same amount of calories, the same amount of protein, carbs, and fats on paper, the folks who ate the processed

Starting point is 00:24:12 food sandwich had a 50% reduction in calorie burn after consuming that meal of processed food. It changed the way their body was managing the calories they consumed and it caused their body to retain and hold on to more of that processed food energy. All right. That's just one aspect. And we go through about five or six of the different dynamics. So what you're saying is what you eat is probably more important than how much you eat. It is definitely a major factor, you know, and if folks can start to make this shift and just evolve, take it up a notch, because we tend to get into this, unfortunately, like you just mentioned,

Starting point is 00:24:52 we have amazing colleagues who do work in this field. I just taught a neuroscience class at NYU yesterday. I get to do all of these really cool things. But the science on food and metabolism and weight loss, it tends to be very lopsided, even for the quote experts, the best in the business who are just like, you need, just need to be in a calorie deficit. You need to be in a calorie deficit and completely ignoring the complexity of the endocrine system and digestion. And also one of the things we really dive into and provide the cutting edge research

Starting point is 00:25:22 is the effect that your microbiome has on the rate of calorie burn. Absolutely. I mean, this is really functional medicine, right? Food is information. It's not just calories. When you eat, and it's different than if you burn a calorie in the lab. I mean, if you burn a calorie in a lab and 500 calories of soda and 500 calories of broccoli are exactly the same. They both release the same amount of energy. And that's defined as how much energy it takes to raise one liter of water, one degree centigrade. That's a calorie.

Starting point is 00:25:53 And it's fine. When you eat them, it's very different because when you're eating the foods, they're going through all sorts of different mechanisms that change what happens. So they alter your microbiome which changes your weight you literally can swap out bugs from a thin mouse to a fat mouse and that fat mouse will lose weight because of the thin making microbiome right so you're feeding the microbiome you're driving inflammation or cooling it off which drives weight gain you're regulating hormones like insulin testosterone estrogen by what you eat you You're regulating your mitochondria, which is really about how much energy you burn. You're regulating all these various factors that are so critical for weight regulation,

Starting point is 00:26:34 your brain chemistry, your hormones. You write all about this in Eat Smarter, which is why it's such a smarter book because you actually address these scientific issues that still are staggering to me that most traditional doctors, nutritionists, academicians, and nutrition societies, and the government all don't buy into. And it's really, honestly, I hate to say this, but a lot of it has to do with the fact that the food industry wins by all calories being the same. Because then you can have 100 calorie soda or 100 calorie bunch of blueberries and there's no difference. But that's just absurd. Even a fifth grader or a kindergarten kid would understand that, you know, 500 calories

Starting point is 00:27:15 of soda and 500 calories of blueberries are pretty different when you eat them. And it's your fault. It's your fault. It's your fault. You're overweight, right? Because if you just ate less and exercise more, everything would be great. Manage those calories. It's your fault. You're overweight, right? Because if you just ate less and exercise more, everything would be great. Manage those calories and you'll lose weight. And the entire paradigm is really skewed. And I got to reiterate this because when you just

Starting point is 00:27:36 mentioned the research in mice, for example, now we have paralleled research in humans. This is cutting edge data that's getting out to the world right now. And one of the fascinating studies, this was published in Cell. They looked at what's happening in mice depending upon their microbiome cascade. And they found that there's specific, I'm sorry, specific, I'm so excited, specific bacteria that is found in mice that actually reduced the amount of calories that they were absorbing from the food that they were eating. Now you take that piece of data and marry that with the human data that we have now. And this was conducted at the Wiseman Institute of Science. And what they did was they were taking, this is well known right now, guys, but I want everybody to get it today,

Starting point is 00:28:20 that when folks, once our bodies start to venture into being overweight and obese, our microbiome changes massively. And now we know that there's a kind of a bacteria cascade that is associated with being overweight. All right. It's like a fingerprint, right? It's a very unique kind of dynamic thing are all of our metabolism, but there is a very specific spectrum that you see when folks start to become obese. And what they did was they took these human fat bacteria associated with obesity and put them into lean mice. And then the mice inherently gained weight. Their insulin sensitivity went down and they gained body fat versus taking the bacteria from a healthy human subject

Starting point is 00:29:00 and putting into the mice and the mice continue to stay lean. Changing the bacteria in our bodies has a massive impact. And one of the other studies took a set of twins, all right? And all they did was they had them on the same calorie-reduced diet, but one of them had a microbiome associated with obesity and one had a microbiome associated with leanness on the same diet. And they're twins on the same diet. The one had a microbiome associated with leanness on the same diet and they're twins on the same diet. The one with the microbiome associated with obesity continued to gain weight while the other one didn't. So this is real stuff. So what do we do to fix this is where we really got to put our focus. I agree. And I think, you know, I just want to sort of summarize a few key elements here that are worth underscoring. And then I want to talk about the three major things that cause problems when you want to

Starting point is 00:29:47 try to lose fat. So if you eat ultra processed food, by the way, it's 60% of our calories. It's most of what Americans eat, all the starch, sugar, processed food, anything sort of made in a factory that's not from real ingredients. One, if you're eating it, even if it's the identical same calories as whole food, your metabolism is slower. That's what you just said. Two, in another study, they found that if you let people eat ultra-processed food compared to regular whole foods, they'll eat 500 calories more a day. So they'll eat more and they'll be hungrier. And three, it changes your microbiome in ways that increase bad bacteria that cause weight gain. And of course, there's a lot of other things that drive

Starting point is 00:30:31 inflammation, hormone, and appetite issues, which are really the things that really you talk about that are three major things when it comes to fat loss. So let's dig into those three things, inflammation, hormone dysfunction, and appetite problems. I had a doctor call me about one of his patients for advice. He said, this guy really exercises a lot of time. Really focused on eating healthy, but he's just hungry all the time. I'm like, well, it's probably because of what he's eating that's driving his brain chemistry and his immune system and all the mechanisms that drive hunger.

Starting point is 00:31:05 So we have to change that. And it's not that hard to do. So tell us about those three things. Absolutely. And the thing that I really wanted to usher in and bring to the forefront, because it sounds the most ghostly, it sounds like cast with a ghost, like it's not even a real thing, is inflammation and how inflammation has an impact on your body composition. And the data exists, it's just that a lot of folks don't know about it.

Starting point is 00:31:30 And the way that it really manifests when we're talking about inflammation is that it has this very detrimental impact on our organs that are related to our body's production and utilization of our fat loss-related hormones. So namely, let utilization of our fat, kind of fat loss related hormones. So namely, let's take our liver, for example, your liver is incredibly important in regulating your metabolism. You know, when we're talking about a relationship with how it manages insulin, even the production of fat takes place in your liver too. The storing of glycogen can take place in your liver. If your body's overburdened by glucose, your liver can literally convert that into fat right there on

Starting point is 00:32:11 the spot. If something is damaging your liver, it's going to inherently damage your endocrine system and your process of metabolism. Inflammation, and I've just shared some of the data in the book, damaging your liver. This is is one of the most fast growing issues in our country is non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. This is really a kind of chronically inflamed situation taking place in our liver. And also- How do we get fatty livers? Because I think people should know, we go to fancy restaurants and they give you foie gras, which is French for fatty liver. And how do they get the ducks to be like that? And how do they get us humans to have 90 million Americans with fatty liver? Everybody should know by now. Very simple. The fastest way to damage your liver and to create that fatty liver,

Starting point is 00:33:04 by the way, it's called non-alcoholic fatty liver disease because we associate it with alcohol, but sugar. Sugar, absolutely. Sugar, starch, flour. It's so bad. It's so bad, particularly hyper-dispensary. Your liver has to take on the brunt of it because your liver is really, even the name liver, it's responsible for so much. Like every minute it's filtering your entire blood supply. It's so important. But to take this one step further, and I'll just drop this little nugget so we can move on to the other topics, but also the master regulator, often referred to, of course, you know, I've even taught this in my conventional university setting, but your hypothalamus, right? Your hypothalamus is one of the major regulators and communicators with your thyroid, with your liver, with your adrenals, all the organs related to fat loss and fat storage.

Starting point is 00:34:01 The governing kind of master gland is called the master gland is your hypothalamus. That's in your brain. Right. And now we've got data that this new term neuroinflammation, inflammation specifically regarding the function of your hypothalamus can damage what's happening with your metabolism. But nobody's talking about that in these cookie cutter diets that you need to address the inflammation in your brain in order for you to lose weight. Right. So these are all the beautiful part is it's possible. It's not just possible. It's probable when you have the right information and we avoid the things that create the inflammation.

Starting point is 00:34:38 And namely, you just mentioned sugar, but we go through a whole subset of the different things. Yeah. And in functional medicine, we also look at, you know, food sensitivities and environmental toxins and the microbiome and all, there's so many things that drive inflammation. And if you're overweight, you're inflamed. And for those listening, you know, think, oh, you know, I'm a few pounds overweight, a little extra belly fat, you know, maybe I need to lose 10, 20 pounds, or maybe you're more overweight or obese. You should really pay attention to what Sean's saying because right now during this COVID pandemic, what we're finding is those people who are overweight or obese or have even a little bit of extra fat are much more likely to get sick, much more likely to end up in the hospital,

Starting point is 00:35:18 the ICU, and to die from COVID-19 because of poor metabolic health. What's so beautiful about the body is that you think, oh my God, I've taken years and years to get here. Within a couple of weeks, you can change all of that. You might not lose all the weight in a couple of weeks, but you can change your inflammation markers, your hormones, your brain chemistry, literally in a couple of weeks of changing your diet and following the principles that are in Eat Smarter, which is Sean's new book, which you should all get a copy of. Thank you, Mark. And just to reiterate what you just said, it's so important. The CDC's

Starting point is 00:35:48 recent report found that about 90 folks, 94% of the folks who lost their lives had an average of 2.6 chronic diseases or comorbidities. And we've got to get our citizens healthier. And the big thing in the beginning of this was, well, we can't get people healthier overnight. When? When are we going to start? And truly, it's up to us in conversations like this. So I just wanted to share that, but also leaning into this topic and just, you mentioned environmental toxins, but I'm going to share something that's a little bit controversial. And this has to do with supplements supplements because there's been a big shift taking place that it went from about 7% to 20% of hospitalizations related to liver damage are related to supplements because this is because like Mark, when I was trying to turn

Starting point is 00:36:41 my health around, I became a natural pill popper first. I didn't get it with the food. And so I'm taking, I've got like my grandma's like pill full of like 20, 30 different things that I'm trying to take to get these nutrients. And so not to say that the right supplements aren't helpful, but it's a largely unregulated field on top of that. But also we need to target and understand that your liver is responsible for metabolism of all these supplements. And it's also responsible for drug metabolism. And now we've got about 70% of the United States population on pharmaceutical drugs right now.

Starting point is 00:37:17 And your liver is responsible for that drug metabolism. So just want to throw those things out there. But to shift gears, to go from inflammation, that's one of the major causative factors behind an inability to lose weight. And the other one is hormone dysfunction. And your hormone response, this is where the real magic happens. This is where the show is going on. Your hormones are like the little chemical messengers that are communicating with all the cells in your body and really create communicating the message on what they need to do. And so there are hormones that are specifically related to fat storage and there are hormones specifically related to fat utilization. And just to give a super overarching look at this insulin, insulin is our body's major kind of energy storing hormone it's a beautiful thing insulin's not a bad guy that is storing energy slash fat it's it's helpful we need it it's part of our evolution to have it now it's getting it's being hyper utilized and heightened and put to work chronically and it can get overworked and it can just be like, I quit, you know? So we've got insulin, but on the other side,

Starting point is 00:38:26 insulin has a brother, glucagon. Glucagon really does the opposite. And they're both produced at, you know, from their loving mother, Ms. Pancreas. And so they each have opposing roles, but glucagon can't do its job unless insulin sits down. You two things is a binary process, but insulin literally triggers the cell to open up to use that energy. And there are specific nutrients involved in these communications and these pathways and nutrients that make these pathways kind of suppressed and create hormonal clogs. So a big mission with the book is taking folks through and teaching them about all of these fat loss and fat storage related hormones to give them really good education, but in a way that's fun and it makes sense. We get a conversation about thyroid hormone, your adrenals, all those things.

Starting point is 00:39:15 Hormone dysfunction, regardless of what diet you're on, we have to find ways to optimize what's happening with your hormones. They play a huge role in regulating your metabolism, as you said, and they're driven in large part by what you eat. People don't understand their testosterone levels and your sex drive is controlled by what you eat if you're a guy. If you're a woman, your level of estrogen and fat is determined by what you're eating. Certain foods increase estrogen, like sugar and alcohol that's why they

Starting point is 00:39:45 give estrogen to male steers to fatten them up marble their fat before they take them to market right there's no there's no lack of science about this we just don't understand and then of course there's the appetite issue which is such a big thing for people yeah oh mark and this is so important this goes back to when I mentioned Dr. Lulu Hunt Peters, impressing upon society that hunger is related to weight loss. And unfortunately, millions of people still believe this. And hunger is a bio feedback. It's biological feedback that something is awry here. All right. And this could be a nutrient deficiency. This could be related to some form of like habitual, you know, addictions, things like that. But

Starting point is 00:40:30 our hunger isn't the issue. We want to make sure that we're not hungry because that hunger is associated with overeating, of course. And we could try to battle our biology, but eventually it's going to win out against our willpower, which is finite. And so with that said, let's get folks educated on how our appetite works. And now these terms that we've been talking about, you and I, probably for over a decade at least, but now a lot of folks know about the power of leptin and the power of ghrelin. These are the kind of the major players, but we go deeper than that. And now we know that leptin, for example, leptin is your body's major satiety hormone, and it's actually produced by your fat cells. Now here's the catch. Folks, and this is one of the studies that I put into Eat Smart as well,

Starting point is 00:41:17 and this was published in the New England Journal of Medicine, found that folks who are overweight and obese actually have plenty of leptin that should make them satisfied. Well, they have leptin resistance. Exactly. And inflammation causes leptin resistance. Exactly. It all starts to go together. They're still getting the DM. The leptin DM is being sent, but it's going to spam.

Starting point is 00:41:36 You know, it's just like been too much. It's going to spam. I like that. And so that's what creates that leptin resistance. And that's just one aspect. And then ghrelin is this glorified hunger hormone. There are specific things we can do with our nutrition, obviously, that encourages leptin sensitivity and really helps to get ghrelin in check.

Starting point is 00:41:55 But there's so many other players. Adiponectin is one that you're going to be hearing a lot more about related to satiety. And adiponectin has been found to help to move more of the kind of troublesome body fat in the visceral fat area and actually transfer that to the subcutaneous fat area, which makes it a little bit more protected. We still want to address both of these kind of white adipose tissues, but the visceral belly fat is what's really dangerous, the most dangerous. What's fascinating about adiponectin is that when you have high levels of adiponectin you can't actually mobilize fat and and you know what causes high levels of adiponectin is

Starting point is 00:42:37 insulin resistance which is pre-diabetes which is eating too much sugar so it all comes down to the starch and sugar so your book is just filled with wisdom and information about these key mechanisms about how different foods and nutrients affect your brain function, about the microbiome, how it affects relationships, how it impacts our communities and stress levels. I mean, it's so full of beautiful things that are far beyond just what to eat. You talk about love languages in the book. It's just, it's such a fantastic book. And I just want to sort of close by talking about the research around sitting down for a meal with people you love and what that does to your health, your food choices,

Starting point is 00:43:22 to your body composition, because we've kind of lost that. I think, you know, the idea of a family dinner, the idea of cooking together, eating together, being together, it's like I think the average family has dinner together a couple of nights a week, usually all while eating different foods made from different factories, heated up in a microwave that are eaten while watching TV or being on their phone, not exactly conducive to health. So tell us about this research about eating together. Yeah. And this is incredibly powerful because it's not just what we're eating, but it's also how we're eating and who we're eating with has a major impact on our overall health. And I share this story in Eat Smart of that. I grew up,

Starting point is 00:44:11 it might sound a little far-fetched for some folks, just like people aren't sitting down to eat together. I can count on my hands how many times I sat down and ate a meal with my family growing up. Wow. Wow. This was an incredibly rare occasion. This is usually, if it wasn't a holiday, by the way, holidays a little bit different, but it's usually just a free for all. We might eat at the same time, but we're not eating together and or we're eating in front of the television or playing a video game or something like that. And so this is not abnormal, by the way. This is really shifting to be the norm. And here's some of the healing factors of this. Researchers at Harvard University uncovered that folks who consistently eat dinner with their

Starting point is 00:44:50 families frequently consume more fruits and vegetables and less processed foods and sodas. And one of the most, I think this can get overlooked in the study. They found that folks who consistently eat dinner with their families also had higher intakes of some of the most important nutrients that regulate our fat storing hormones and your fat burning hormones as well. So things like calcium, folate, B vitamins. Also, they found they had a generally lower intake of dangerous compounds, like trans fats and toxicants in our food. So this is really powerful. But one other study, and this is the most important for myself personally in this mission, and this was published in the Journal of Nutrition, Education, and Behavior.

Starting point is 00:45:40 And they found very similar results. And now it gets into numbers. They found that folks who eat with their family, and this can be any meal of the day, breakfast, lunch considered higher risk, which was minority children, minority families. So this isn't just about fixing the environment around the thing. It's the personal responsibility as well, knowing you have leverage because the simple act of eating together as a family helps to increase, improve the health outcomes for the children and the adults as well. It's so true. My friend, Laurie David, who was involved in the movie Fed Up that I was in years ago, I wrote a book called The Family Dinner. together and you're making it together and you're enjoying real food that the kids have less likely less likely to have obesity eating disorders violence do better in school have less drug use I mean just so many benefits that you wouldn't even think I mean better grades I mean just right by eating dinner together so I think that's really important I think it's it's beautiful how you

Starting point is 00:47:00 combine the the understanding of the deep science around food and how to optimize your metabolism with the science around relationships and love and connection. And that's really what food is about. It's about joy and pleasure and connection, but it's also about having us live our best lives because the tagline in the book title, Transform Your Life, actually is true. And food has the power to do that. And eating smarter will teach you how to do that. So I encourage everybody to get a copy of Eat Smarter. Use the power of food to reboot your metabolism,

Starting point is 00:47:32 upgrade your brain and transform your life. You can check it out at eatsmarterbook.com. Sean is the man. I love him. He's doing the real work. And you should all check out his stuff. If you love this podcast, please share it with your friends and family on social media.

Starting point is 00:47:46 If you know anybody who struggled with weight, and that's probably 90% of Americans, share with them, leave a comment, tell us about what you've learned about your body and how food can help you be smarter and eat smarter. And subscribe for every year podcast and we'll see you next time on The Doctor's Pharmacy. Hey everybody, it's Dr. Hyman.

Starting point is 00:48:09 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 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.

Starting point is 00:48:24 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.

Starting point is 00:49:02 Now back to this week's episode. Hi, everyone. I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. 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.

Starting point is 00:49:16 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.

The Dr. Hyman Show - How To Eat Smarter with Shawn Stevenson

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