The Dr. Hyman Show - How to Get Your Health Back on Track - ENCORE

Episode Date: December 29, 2025

As we wind down for the holiday season, we’ll be taking a short break. But I didn’t want to leave you without something meaningful to explore. So for today’s Monday episode, we’re revisiting one of our most powerful deep-dive topics of 2025.Thank you for being part of this community. We’ll be back in the new year with brand-new episodes and I truly can’t wait to share what’s coming next. In today’s episode, we feature four segments about hitting the reset button on our diet and lifestyle choices and establishing new behaviors for our overall wellbeing. We all get off track sometimes. Life gets busy, we indulge a little too much during the holidays, or we ignore the messages our body is sending us to sleep more and eat better. This can leave us feeling super sluggish, run-down, or unable to think clearly. This is what I call FLC syndrome? It’s when you feel like crap!  This episode is brought to you by BIOptimizers. Head to ⁠⁠bioptimizers.com/hyman⁠⁠ and use code HYMAN to save 15%. Full-length episodes can be found here: How To Do The 10-Day Detox Are There Any Healthy Sugars And Sweeteners? How Much And What Types Of Exercise Are Needed To Age Well? The Surprising Key To Longevity

Coming up on this episode of the Dr. Hyman Show. It's such an essential part of longevity and of health in general and just of enjoying life. It's not about doing it now for some result later. It makes you feel better now. The holidays are supposed to be joyful, but for many of us, they're stressful. Between travel, family, busy schedules, and late nights, our bodies burn through magnesium fast. Magnesium is responsible for over 600 processes in the body, including sleep, muscle, relaxation, mood, and stress response. most of us are deficient without even knowing it that's why i take magnesium breakthrough from bioptimizers it has all seven essential forms of magnesium in one capsule so your body can actually absorb and use it this holiday season give your body what it needs to feel calm and sleep better visit bioptimizers dot com slash hymen and use code hymen to say 15%

if you jump into today's episode i want to share a few ways you can go deeper on your health journey while i wish i could work with everyone one-on-one there just isn't enough time in the day so i've built several tools to help you take control of your health if you're looking for guidance, education, and community, check out my private membership, the Heimann Hive for live Q&A's exclusive content and direct connection. For real-time lab testing and personalized insights into your biology, visit Function Health. You can also explore my curated doctor-trusted supplements and health products at Dr.hyman.com. And if you prefer to listen without any breaks, don't forget, you can enjoy every episode of this podcast, add-free with Hyman Plus. Just open Apple Podcasts and tap try free to start your seven-day free trial. I do this personally, regularly, I do it at least two or three times a year, four times you're going to really reset my system to kind of get my body back on track,

take your all the bad stuff, put it all the good stuff. Now, I want to walk you through how to do this. I'm going to teach you how to hit the reset button, reboot your system, and to optimize your biology to help your gut, you help your detox system, help your immune system, help reset your nervous system, and it's powerful. So if you want to really see how your body can. can feel and get rid of what we call FLC syndrome, I would do this. Most people are like the frog that's in cold water where you turn the heat up slowly and it starts to boil to death.

We just kind of get used to it and think it's normal. These symptoms are not normal. So one of the principles, one of the foundational killers of the 1080s program and what what can you do now basically anybody can do this. People go, I know, I want to do this with a junior high school one. And the teachers are like, well, we might have to get permission from the paris to see if it's safe. You know, maybe they don't want their children doing this. I'm like, what, is it safe to eat fruits and vegetables and nuts and seeds and protein and cut out sugar and starch and processed food?

I mean, they should get a note that it's permission to eat the junk food that they have in school. It's the opposite. So, anyway, yes, it's very same. Anybody can do this. And some people, by the way, you know, need more of certain things or other things. But basically, this is a very universal approach to resetting your system. So one of the first principle, the first pillar, is eat real food, real, whole food. Understand that food is medicine.

It's not just energy or calories. It's truly medicine. It's information, it's instructions, it's code that literally programs your biology with every bite. It regulates your gene expression, your hormones, your brain chemistry, your immune system, your microbiome. Pretty much everything is controlled by food. And if you're eating a wrong food, you're sitting all. one message to be the right food you're today the right message so they're the 10-day detox you're basically taking out the bad stuff and putting in the good stuff you're taking all the foods that

cause inflammation that are toxic to your system that are inflammatory invest with your gut and you're putting in foods that actually help reset your system and it's pretty much a very simple approach it's lots of veggies so mostly veggies lots of good fat lots of fiber lots of good clean protein Well, and what does that look like? It's tons of non-starchy veggies like broccoli. Any kind of veggie you think up, it's not a basically a potato. No, sometimes sweet potatoes are okay for people. Um, avocado, those good shots, amicados, olive oil, nuts and seeds, lots of good protein,

grass-fed, organic regenerative meat, fish chicken. Sometimes we, you know, for vegetarians, we can, are vegans, plant-based proteins like um, tempe or non-gimo, organic soy, tofu, uh, those are the most dense sources of protein, but you do need protein that you detoxify. So for the 10 days, you're going to be get away while they're just, right, processed food, uh, other carbs, sugar, dairy, coffee, gluten, alcohol, uh, pretty much actually all grains and beans. Uh, and the reason we get rid of getting them being this and all bad is a lot of people have issues a lot of issues with their gut a lot of people have issues inflammation a lot of people have issues of gluten a lot of

issues with um insulin resistance and prediabetes and obesity and they can be problematic these people so basically get off all the best though now it's not calorie counting you can eat as much as you want we're not like crazy how much macronutrients and percent of this and percent of that no it's just pick the right foods and we focus on what to eat you don't have to focus on how much to eat, right? So, um, when you look at your plants, you basically look like this. Three quarters of it should be non-stargey veggies. And I use author will put two or three veggies in my dinner. I'll make mushrooms. I'll have, uh, a, uh, you know, broccoli. I'll make some, maybe a salad. So I have lots of veggies and, and I'll have a portion of protein that's

essentially, uh, the size of my palm, four to six ounces, usually 30 to 40 grams of protein. Now, it's a good amount of protein, but you don't need that much. if you're having an all protein it should be regentily raised should be pasture raised chicken wildcott fish should be low mercury obviously all that and we'll put all the show notes lots of good fats with dinner like avocados that's the seeds olive oil and your veggies you can even use for example ghee which is a kind of butter but it actually has the inflammatory proteins remove casein weight so basically has just the the fat it's called clarified butter very common

You can get my book, Tending Tox Diet, you can get the 1080s Diet cookbook, whatever you want. Put all the show notes and the legs together. The second pillar, aside from which you eat, the food is really important. And then by the need to be approaching the morning, you need to make sure you get rid of sugar starch in the morning. Super important. I'm looking at will start their diet, their day with carbs, which is the worst thing you can do with sugar, sweet, coffee, teas, cereals, muffins, bagels, breads. Second pillar are your daily habits.

loves a pattern of eating and living, they put your body back in rhythm. It helps you resale your nervous system. And there's two really important habits as part of the tend to talk. One is when you eat and also when you sleep. So let's talk about when you eat. Now, when you eat might be as important as what you eat. So many of us don't eat in the right pattern. We tend to, you know, eat all day long. We tend to snack. We tend to eat before bed. We snack late at night. it's kind of bad. So basically, when you eat is very important. Research shows that doing that can really be bad for your health, if you eat at night. So the first is make sure you give yourself at least 12 to 14 hours between dinner and breakfast. So dinner

is six, breakfast at eight, that's a 14 hour fat. Okay. If you eat at six and then you keep snacking all night, that doesn't count, right? And it's the most simple form of what we're called time or chicken eating. And it's basically giving our body a rest and getting the body to reset and I wrote a lot about this in my book the um you know forever but but basically there's all the process at night that happens about autophagy and clean after repair you want to eat your body uh the ability to do that the next is food now you can do a breakfast if you're eating you know for example there at six and breakfast at eight or so that's a 14 hour fast really important to have protein in the morning or not carbs and sugar um also not eating three hours before bed

It's really important. So most people eat and snack after dinner, don't do that. Have at least three hours of the time you eat and you go to sleep. That way you will lose weight, your body can repair and heal instead of trying to digest and store the food. Here's a full food list. You can, we're going to have it in the show notes. You can take it with you in store.

It's in the book, the 1080 talks, it's in the 1080 cookbook. But essentially, here's what you should eat and what you should actually get rid of. What you should eat is protein, you need right protein, right? So grass-fed or regionally raised meats is great. You can have path to raise lamb, beef, bison, venison, elk, grass-fed beef, pasturized chicken, turkey, duck, all that's fine. What you should avoid is conventionally raised chicken and poultry and eggs and so forth. And by the way, you can also have eggs if they're pasturized eggs, meat, get rid of all processed meats, deli meats, all conventionally-raised feedlot meats, get rid of all that stuff. Um, but about fish and seafood. Lots of small fish are good. Big fish are bad, right? Big fish like

swordfish, tuna, sea bass, halibate, most farmaged fish are pretty bad for you. What you should be consuming are things like the, I call this matchfish, a small wild salmon, sardines, anchovies, herring, a mackerel. Um, you can have black cod, shrimp, scala, trout, all those are fine. Eggs, as I said, uh, pastures egg are fine, not organic, regular are not fine. What about nuts and seeds? Very important. Amids, Brazil nuts, cashew nuts, hayl nuts, macadamia, pecans, pistachios, walnuts, all that's great. Um, you know, can have cacao nymphs, chocolate, that's where chocolate comes from. Uh, seeds, chia seeds, flax seeds, hemp seeds, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, all great. Uh,

nut butter is also great. So, um, uh, unsweetened nut butter, so almond, cashew, pcan, mecademia, I love macadamia. A walnut. Oh, that's great. You also eat beans. If you're a vegan and you want to do this, you can use GMO-free or non-GMO tofu or tempe as your protein. What you should avoid are nuts that are with sugar, they're cooked in oils that are with basic candied stuff. A lot of nut butters have sugar, hydrogen and fats. Peanut butter, peanuts can be okay, but I wouldn't They mostly avoid peanuts because they have aphotoxin, they often are rants. And so you want to be careful with that. About oils and fats, well, the ones you want to use are organic avocado oil. You can use organic coconut oil for cooking, grassland ghee. If you want to use tallow, lard, duck fat, chicken fat, that's okay. As long as they're path to raise or regenerated for salads.

And you can use different kinds of oils like almond oil. oil, flax oil, hemp oil, macadamia oil, it can work to olive oil. And you can cook with olive oil, but only like tomato sauces and things like that. Things that are not high heat. Sesame oil, tahini is great as well, great fat. Sesame seed kind of paste, wilded oil. Those are flavorful oils. They're not made oils.

But you want to avoid the traditional oils, all the seed oils, canola oil, partially hydrogenated oils, margarine, peanut oils, soybean oil, sunflower oil, sapo oil, trans fats, vegetable oil, vegetable shorting, all that stuff's bad. bad. What about veggies? What should you eat? Well, you want to stick with lots of large veggies or orange chokes. Organic, if you can. I use the Dirty Dozen Guide from the Environmental Working Group, EWG.org. Tell you which are the clean 15, meaning if you can eat they're not organic, where the Dirty Dozen, which you definitely not eat if they're not

organic. But I love asparagus, artichokes, avocado, bean sprouts, broccoli, Russell Sprouse, cabbage, cauliflower, celery, cucumber, eggplant, garlic, ginger, hearts of palm. Corabi, leaky greens, mushrooms of all kinds, onions, peppers, radichia, raditch, rootabegas, all the kind of stuff. Seaweed is great, lots of minerals, shallots, summer squash, tomatoes, turnips, zucchini. The list goes on. We have all in there. You can have some things like sweet potatoes.

I like the Japanese purple sweet potatoes, winter squash, carrots, pumpkin. All that's fine. I mean, carrots are fine because unless you're doing carrot juice or that's a problem. But basically try to limit to like one serving, which like half a cup a day. We should be avoiding is corn and white potatoes, mostly. A little, you know, some of the little, uh, ingling potatoes or the Peruvian potatoes, purple potatoes, it can be fine. What about dairy?

Um, you can eat pasturase, butter, or ghee, but I encourage you to get up all dairy, including sheep and goat, which are mostly fine for people, but I encourage them to skin all other dairy. And if you're having, um, he encourages you to have, make sure it's grass, grass fed, or we're generally raised. And what about bees? Well, uh, you can have green beans. You can have green peas.

You can have a non-GMO or organic soy, that's just tofu or tempe. You can have snap beans. You can have soapies. But otherwise, definitely no beans. What about grains? No grains at all. So even healthy grains, quinoa, buckwheat, things like that, I can't really have all of that. Why?

Because it just shuts down the insulin response, helps you lose weight, reduce inflammation. Not that these are just all bad, but eventually you can add them back, but basically get rid of all the other all grains. Mead, barley, rice, emerald, militev, oats, everything. Get rid of it. Fruit. Fruit can be okay, but small amounts of non-hyglycemic fruits. So organic blackberries, blueberries, cranberries, kiwi, lemons, lines, raspberries, all that's fine. Not too much, right?

You know what I mean? Like, you know, two pounds of blueberries, but you got out of top half a company. I want to get rid of all the other fruit, all the high glycemic fruit, like bananas, pineapple, melons, cherry, grapes, is the worst. Even foods that fruits that you think, you know, maybe good for you are actually good for you, right? Whether it's, you know, peaches, pears, ecturines, cherry, for example, but you don't want to eat them while you're on the 10-day detection. You want to really shut down the blood sugar and some response.

What about sugar sweeteners? Sorry, good. You can sometimes have a little monk fruit or stevia. You have in the shake, we have, but generally they tend to avoid all that stuff. Also, just get all the other artificial sweeteners, sugar, all that stuff. If you have to ask, the answer is no, basically. Then what should you be drinking? Well, lots of water, herbal tea, green tea, all this is caffeine.

That's okay. A little green tea is fine. You can help you get a coffee, sparkly water, mineral water, all this point. We should void, alcohol, coffee, coffee. bottled water, plastic, soda, obviously sugar beverages. Basically, that's the program. So, if you eat that way for 10 days, if you use those simple habits, your body is going to totally transform and you're going to see just how food is impacting your health, which is the thing most people don't have a clue about. And that's why I love this so much. Now, after the

program, it's really important. You do it for 10 days or 21 days or 10 weeks or 10 months. months, you have to be smart about getting off of it where you can get into a big trip. Because when you go off of foods that are inflammatory, foods they're allergic to, and you reintroduce them, you can get a lot worse symptoms. Let's say you had migraines before and then they're gone. Wow, you're going to get a duty of a migraine. Or unless you had gut issues before, you get a real problem. Or unless you had sinus congestion, or meeting dairy, and you eat it again, you might get a science infection. So you really have to be smart. So if you're feeling great, you want to continue and you let's see have a lot of weight to lose,

Let's say you're an autoimmune disease. Let's say, you just want to continue, you want to continue it, continue to do it. You can do it for another 10 days. You can do it for another 10 months. It's fine. It's totally safe to eat. It's pretty much how I eat most of the time on the occasion grains and beans. Also prior to sleep and obviously your fasting window and not eating before bed.

And then eventually people can transition slowly to the Pagan diet, which incorporates a lot of the principles of the 10-day detox diet, but it gets you more flexibility in your. diet. You could add some gluten-free grains, you can have some grass-fed dairy or sheep or goat. Maybe you want to do it most of the time, but you know, occasionally have a glass of wine or dessert occasionally, all that's fine. Remember, when you're adding things back, you want to do it smartly. And in the 10-80-you-talk book, we'll put in the show notes. You have to add one thing at a time. So if you're adding back gluten, just do that for three days. Don't have a pizza, which has gluten and dairy. You won't know what is affecting you feel that. You want to know. So give yourself three days and then,

take the next food. So start gluten, then dairy, then grains, other grains, whatever. You'll slowly add foods back and you'll see how you feel. And that's your best parameter. The smartest doctor in the room is your own body and that's what you want to focus on. This time of year can be packed with connection and joy, but it can also be hard on our health. Stress goes up, sleep goes down, and we often feel tired, tense, or overwhelmed. One simple reason why most of us are deficient in magnesium. Magnesium is involved in energy production. calming the nervous system, regulating mood, relaxing tight muscles, supporting digestion, and improving sleep quality. But most magnesium supplements only include one or two forms,

which your body can't fully absorb. That's why I take magnesium breakthrough from bioptimizers. It includes all seven essential forms of magnesium, so it gets into your cells where it actually works. I take it every night to support deep sleep and help my body manage stress, especially this time of year. If you want to feel calmer, sleep better, and support your overall health during the holidays, I highly recommend trying it. Just go to bioptimizers.com slash hymen and use code hymen to get 15% off your order. I wrote a book called The Blood Sugar Solution, 10-day Detox Dietact, which is about sugar addiction, and it takes you through in 10 days how to reset your whole nervous system.

And not only you not crave sugar anymore, but your average person lost about seven or eight pounds in a week. They, at 10 days, their blood sugar dropped 1020 points. Their blood pressure dropped 1020 points. They reduced all symptoms from all diseases by about 70%. So if you have migraines, digestive issues, sleep problems, joint pain, whatever it was, everything dropped 70% by getting your system healthy. So that's important to remember. It's quick.

You don't have to wait forever to see the results. So we had a woman in our Cleveland Clinic program called Functioning for Life. within three days of joining the program. This woman was on insulin for 10 years, was severely overweight. In three days, she was off her insulin by changing her diet. In three months, she reversed her diabetes completely and her heart failure and everything else.

Pretty impressive. Next thing you should know about sugar is there's many ways to say sugar. To quote, Shakespeare, you know, a rose is but arose by any other name. The other thing you should know is that, you know, we have many names for sugar, you know, in, I think, you know, the Inuit from the, you know, the Arctic, say they have 100 words for snow. And we have so many ways of saying sugar, and often we miss it

on the label because it's kind of hidden. So you know what food companies will do? They'll literally put four or five different kinds of sugar in some product because you're forced to list the ingredients in order of the amount on the label. So basically, if they put five during kinds of sugar, they can list like a healthier ingredient first, like flour or something, and not actually put sugar as the main ingredient. So it's really, really sneaky what they do.

Then other thing you should be aware is there's a lot of words that you might see like agave, cane sugar, corn, anything, rice, even brown rice syrup, any kind of evaporated cane juice. What the heck's that? That's called sugar. Even fruit, you might see fruit concentrator, fruit juice. I mean, that's just basically sugar.

Anything with oase in the end, like fructose, dextrose, maltose, trilose, sucrose, these are all sugar, anything with malt in it, like malt syrup, flow maltodextrin, also sugar. Anything with iso, like isoglucose, isomaltose. Basically, there's a million names for sugar, syrup. right, maple syrup, sorghum syrup, corn syrup, pancake syrup, which is usually per fructose, molasses, anything with the word sugar in it, date sugar, coconut sugar, brown sugar, beet sugar, confection sugar, it's all sugar. So sugar, sugar, sugar, now is high fructose corn syrup a little worse? Yes, but in the end, it's all bad. Next thing you need to know is that

artificial sweeteners are also not so great for you. So here's a class example of what happens and you try to outsmart mother nature. Rather than accepting that, you know, we really shouldn't be eating a lot of sugar or we shouldn't be having a lot of artificial sweeteners and rather than accept the fact that we just should try to eat less and, you know, not have so much sugar, we kind of want the hack, right?

We want the magic loophole to avoid doing what's really good for us. We tried this with fat, right? We thought, oh, you know, butter is bad and saturated fats, bad. So let's have margarine. Margarine. I grew up on Fleischman's margarine. But it turns out that trans fats are not only not good for you. They're very bad for you.

And they've killed hundreds of thousands of people. And they cause heart disease, diabetes. And they're really unsafe. And the government finally, after 50 years and a lawsuit, finally caved and said, oh, gee, it's not safe anymore. They called it a grass, generally recognize as safe. They removed the grass label. The problem is, it's still in the marketplace because there are FTAs and cahoots with the food industry.

And essentially, they gave them a lot of loopholes and ways to kind of leave it in there. So I go to the store regularly and I kind of hunt for products. Now, a lot of companies have taken it out, but what they're replacing with may not be any better, right? So I think we have to be very careful, like palm, palm shortening, which can be from, you know, palm trees. but they're often, they're often, you know, kind of harvested in ways that destroy rainforests and destroy habitats of orangutans. I mean, it's really bad. So also, there are also five things that have received FDA approval.

There are sweeteners, saccharine, sweet and low, as a sulfotame, which is sunnet or sweet one, an aspartame, Nutrivate, Equal, and others, sucralose, which is Splenda and Neotame. So these are all things you should avoid. They're really bad for you and don't have them. People who drink diet drinks every day in a study about heart disease had a greater risk of diabetes and metabolic syndrome. They are carcinogenic in animal studies. They destroy your gut microbiome.

I mean, they're really bad for the good bugs in your gut and they cause more glucose intolerance, diabetes. Certain compounds are cytotoxins like damaged neurons like the aspartame in the brain, have neurologic issues. So not so good. And you go, well, what about sugar alcohols, are those not bad? Because you don't absorb them. Well, sugar alcohols sound great, but they're kind of these weird, strange names.

They're derived from plants, fruit and vegetables sometimes. And they're in everything candy, to bubble gum, the cough drops, the chewable vitamins, to smoothies, to even quote of health foods often have these. Now, they're kind of less sweet than traditional artificial sweeteners. They do have calories, but we don't absorb them because they're too. big. So anything with the word all on it, like manitol, maltatol, sorbitol, xylatol, erythral, these are things you don't want to eat. When you do, they tend to cause a lot of gut issues. They cause the bugs in your gut. They love these. They just munch them down and they'll

create bloating. I mean, I remember once when these first came out like 25 years ago or something, this patient of mine gave me this chocolate bar. Look, Dr. Hyman, here's a chocolate bar. and there's no sugar and it's amazing and it tastes good and I'm like great and I'm like okay I'm going to eat it so I was tired that day I think and I just scarfed the whole thing down in the afternoon I was hungry you know I was seeing patients and my stomach blew up like a balloon like I literally my gut bacteria did not like it so I would not really consume these at all they can cause diarrhea bloating gas all kinds of digestive issues they mess with your gut for us. So there's something that are a little bit better, like erythyrtol, but still be very, very

careful with these. Don't, don't think you have a free pass. And it can ferment. It can cause all kinds of issues. So, so don't, don't take it, especially if you have gut issues. Now, some natural sweeteners are a little bit better than others. So I'm not, I mean, listen, we all like sweet stuff, but kind of my view is if you're going to have something so we just have it. You know, you know you have like you know like a large like like a sort of sugary kind of coffee drink in the morning you know that can have more sugar than a soda that can have like eight or nine teaspoons of sugar or more in in in that now you wouldn't you wouldn't put eight or nine teaspoons of sugar in your coffee right if you even take like a teaspoon of sugar and you put in your coffee that's probably

a lot better than trying to do all these other things and and being really aware so I would say you know, not more than five teaspoons a day, but that can be even too much for some of us. Most adults consume 22 teaspoons a day, kids about 34 teaspoons. Artificial sweeteners, as we said, not good. Sugar alcohol is not good. So, Dr. Hyman, like, you're killing me. What am I going to do? I mean, well, first of all, I just, if you stay healthy, right, if you're metabolically tuned up, right?

If you are, if you're metabolic engine and your muscles and your mitochondria and your weight and you don't have a lot of organ and belly fat and you want to have a little sugar and you exercise regularly, okay, it's not going to kill you, right? But if you are not metabolically tuned up, which by the way is 93.2% of Americans are not in good metabolic health, which is frightening to me. And how you tell is check your insulin. If your insulin is less than five, you're probably okay. If it's less than two, you're good.

but if your insulin's high, you know, you're kind of in trouble and you're not going to have a lot of tolerance and what I call it metabolic degrees of freedom. We get more metabolic degrees of freedom by being healthier. We have more resilience, metabolic resilience. Most of us are metabolically just a train wreck. So be careful. But let's say you want to have a little something. I mean, I'm not against having a little maple syrup, a little honey, a little, you know, actual sugar sometimes. but but I would not I would not use this kind of hacks like agave or corn syrup or brown rice syrup. They're just not healthy for you and they're going to be mostly fructosa and not a good thing. Date sugar can be okay.

They might have antioxidants, molasses actually has iron and things. That could be okay a little bit. You can use dates just as a sweetener, little maple syrup, a little raw honey. Okay, fine. But, you know, it's not the sugar that you add to your food. That's the problem. It's the sugar that's added by corporations. That's the problem.

If you have 120 ounce soda, that's 16 teaspoons of sugar. You wouldn't put that in your coffee, all right? For non-caloric sweeteners, stevia can be okay. But I would say the whole plant stevia, not rebicide A, which is made by Cargill and Pepsi and Coca-Cola. So that should tell you something about it. Also, there's other kinds of sweeteners that you can use, which is like a monk fruit sweetener, which is, I think, my favorite.

It's generally well-tolerated. It's tasty. I don't particularly like stevia because I think it causes a problem. But any sweetener could be this brain stimulant. So be careful. Look for a product with the rainforest Alliance certified seal to make sure your steve was grown in ways that are sustainable. If you want honey, you can check out the ethical consumer guide.

We'll provide the link in the show notes. And sweeteners, you know, what are things we can include? Well, juice, pureed fruit juice, molasses, organic palm sugar, date sugar, coconut sugar. It's got a little lower glycemic index. Monk fruit sweetener, which is a non-cloric sweetener, organic maple syrup, honey, as I mentioned. Stephen Monk food, I typically are the ones I would recommend. But sparingly, an erythruital, some people can tolerate it, but don't have that much. And what should we avoid? Well, we shouldn't be any mountains of sugar of any kind, but artificial sweeteners, like big no-no, liquid sugar calories. If you want to do one thing for

your health besides the high-fructose corn syrup, it's getting rid of shrew. sugary beverages. Liquid sugar calories are the worst because of how they affect your metabolism. High-futose corn syrup, don't eat that. Anything with the word syrup in the name except maple syrup. Any things that are all natural, you know, agave is natural, sugar cane is natural, evaporated cane juice, natural, brown ice soup is natural. That means good for you.

So is arsenic, that's natural. Packaged foods that have added sugar, just stay away from that stuff. In order to make a food taste good that's industrial food, they have to add sugar or salt or fat. And it's surprising, you know, there's more sugar in a serving of prego tomato sauce than there are in two Oreo cookies, right? So salad dressings, granola, cereals, ketchup, soups, candy, yogurt. I mean, I was surprised. I'm Jewish and we had Passover and I didn't even look at the label. I just bought a jar of gifiliphylifish that my mother used to buy.

And I'm like, this is kind of sweet. I kind of looked at the label. It was like, full of sugar. And I'm like, why do they put sugar and fish? You know, it's like, so it's pretty much everything. And obviously, you know, refined sugars of all kinds, brown sugar, aspartame, sucralocaccharine, just pass on those things.

And there are a lot of ways to enjoy sweetness. Also, a little hack, use a continuous glucose monitor from levels. That'll help you find out what things are affecting you and what or not. You can also eat protein and fat before. or you eat something sweet or carbony. For example, if you drink a glass of wine or alcohol and empty stomach, you get a quick buzz, right? But if you basically have it after a meal

or in the middle of the meal, you don't get that instant buzz. Why? Because of the quick absorption. Same thing with sugar. We may not get, you know, a buzz, but our bodies don't get the buzz if we eat protein and fat before. Combine with diet, exercise is really the most powerful tool for staying healthy and extending your life. My mom used to say, whenever she had the urge to exercise, she would lie down until it went away, which I think she got from any young men or some comedian.

But she followed that advice, unfortunately, and she didn't exercise, despite my hounding her. Of course, parents never listen to their kids. I mean, kids, whatever, something like that, parents never listen to their kids. And she ended up being pretty frail and disabled the last decade of her life and not too functioning. So when you start thinking about how to take this approach of incorporating movement and exercise in your life, you can get really amazing benefits. I'm just going to kind of go through them because they're just so profound. It actually unlocks the body's longevity switches, the regenerative and reparative systems that are built into our biology. It activates all the longevity switches that I talk about in the book, particularly the four that have to do with nutrient sensing pathways that are sort of mess.

to everything else, insulin signaling, mTOR, which is really important in terms of autophagy and cleaning up your cells, certuans, which are important in DNA repair, and also NPK, which helps regulate blood sugar, insulin sensitivity, inflammation, and many other things. So it's pretty, pretty darn exciting. It also activates the body's antioxidant systems. It improves your cognitive function and your mood. It supports, I mean, they found that just walking helps prevent dementia, which is pretty cool. it supports your microbiome, it reduces inflammation.

It helps you produce more mitochondria and help them work better and be more efficient and have better function because mitochondria is where you make energy and as you get older, you lose energy so you want to boost that. It also keeps you strong and functional. You know, I just came back from skiing out in Switzerland and I had really great time. It was privileged to be able to go there. And I was amazed. Like I was just skiing along like I was when I was 30 or 40 and I was probably going

a little too fast, but, you know, I like to do that. And, and, you know, I felt strong and able to do it. And it was keeping up with people half my age. So I think the body has the capacity at Nitiage to do this. It also makes you happier and improves your mood and even improves your sex life, believe it or not. So what does the research say? Let's talk about some of the nitty gritty about how it works. If you really, you know, maybe you want to know about the science, maybe that'll motivate you. I probably doesn't motivate most people, but it kind of gets me all excited. I kind of like that. I'm a little weird. But it really, the research is just, it's just unbelievable blood exercise. When I started to dig into, you know, obviously you can look at

exercise in anything and search on PubMed and learn about it. But I started to look at exercise and longevity and what it does. So we covered a little bit of this, but I want to sort of expand on it. It improves your telomeres, which are little caps at the end of your chromosomes that start to shorten as you get older and shorten your life. It actually lengthens your telomeres by exercising. It protects your telomeres. It optimizes all these longevity switches like AMPK, which regulates blood sugar. People say, oh, I'm going to take metformin for longevity. Well, exercise is way better than metformin for regulating AMPK.

It also activates certuance, which help DNA repair, reduce inflammation, and improve your blood sugar control, which are really important. It also improves your cardiovascular and heart health, we all know. It reduces the risk of heart attacks and strokes and improves your brain function and cognitive function. It also helps certain types of cancer, as I said. You know, we see the regulation of our biology through exercise being meted through all these mechanisms that have to do with immunity and cancer prevention. So it's super great. And, of course, it extends your health span and your lifespan.

I remember being in Sardinian. I mentioned this guy, I think, before, but his name is Pietro. He was 95 years old. And he was like a shepherd. And he was just running up and down the mountains all day, five miles a day in this really regular terrain. And he was bolt upright, you know, booming voice, clear eyes, you know, strong. and mentally sharp, and I was like, wow, this guy's 95 years old.

You know, most people in 95 in America barely can kind of walk across the street or get from their bedroom to the bathroom. And here he is, you know, running up the mountain. So we have the ability to do that. And he exercised every day as a shepherd, not, quote, exercise, but he just, that was his life. It also, it's incredible for diabetes, for blood sugar control. I mean, just walking after dinner is a great way to keep your blood sugar down, helps you become more insulin sensitive.

And very importantly, it helps you build muscle. mass and function. Because as you get older, you lose muscle. It's called sarcopenia. And that leads to all these hormonal and metabolic changes that accelerate aging and lower testosterone, high cortisol, the stress hormone, higher blood sugar, worsening cholesterol. I mean, just lower growth hormone and increased cortisol. Like I said, it's just, it's really bad news. So building muscle is really important. And that's clearly only done by exercise. So hopefully, listening all this, you realize you can't afford not to move. My basically philosophy is if you don't move, you won't. Literally, it'll be dead. So how can you actually incorporate more movement?

What can you do without having to drag yourself to the gym? Now, I go to the gym sometimes, but I'd rather play. And I think there's a lot of options. And you can just do simple things. Like start with simple things, even five minutes a day. And if you don't have five minutes a day to do something, there's something wrong with your life. So you better. Look at that. So, you know, for example, I figured out I couldn't do 10 pushups when I was 50. So I started, I'm going to do pushups. So I take a shower most days.

So I basically would wait for the shower heat up because it was, it's, I live in a barn and it's really tall and it takes a while for the hot water to get upstairs. And I would do pushups. And I went for me able to not able to do 10 to be able to do almost 100 pushups without stopping. So we can train our bodies and it's really simple. Or maybe while your coffee's brewing. maybe do some stretching and yoga.

Walker, bike instead of driving. And many countries, they do this. I just met this guy who was a seal of a big company, and he lived in Switzerland. And he, I mean, he runs a $6 billion company. And he rides his bike straight up the hill or the matches of the mountain to work, 2,000 feet elevation every day. And he's in an incredible shape. He's 53 years old.

And his V-O-2 max, which is a measure of fitness, is that of an elite athlete. and someone who's like half of a half his age so it's it's very impressive you don't have to sort of you know do something like that but just you know parking further away in the parking lot taking the stairs instead of the elevator the escalator just simple things to start moving also try a standing desk or a stability ball if you're you know at a desk you sit on a ball it kind of helps you move and move your body and increase your core strength i have a friend mike roysen who is a Cleveland clinic with me and he used to have a a treadmill desk He was on calls and working and working on its computer and walking all day long, which is

impressive. Make your leisure time, active time. So if you're watching TV or movie, maybe you put a stationary bike in your house. I remember I worked in Idaho as a family doc, and there was this patient that came in and she lost like 100 pounds. I'm like, what happened to you? And she's like, well, I decided instead of sitting in front of the TV and eating all day, I would get a stationary bike and just ride the bike.

all day instead of eating. She did, and she lost 100 pounds. So pretty impressive. Maybe also you can listen to podcasts and an audiobook or do something like that when you're exercising or taking a walk and just makes it more fun and motivating. And also do it with somebody else. As my friend Rick Warren said, everybody needs a buddy. So it's important that if you maybe are having some trouble getting out there and doing stuff,

find somebody else to do it with. It's much more fun for me to play tennis with somebody else or play basketball or go on a bike with somebody else and do by myself. So I try to do with friends and it's way more fun. Maybe pickleball is the latest craze. Joy to pickle ball league and go outside and just do fun stuff. So these are just a few examples of how to incorporate movement and exercise in your life and simple natural ways to do it. And it doesn't matter what you do. It's just it matters that you do it. So according to science and particularly the science of longevity that I talk about in my book, Young Forever. Go get a copy, please. It's really amazing. I like it a lot. It's one of my favorite books I've ever written, maybe the favorite because I think I'm obviously

more interested in this because I'm getting older. It's such an essential part of longevity and of health in general and just of enjoying life. It's not about doing it now for some result later. It makes you feel better now. And we really can't afford not to exercise. So start where you are, build up slowly, even 10 minutes a day of walking can help. Start strength training, weight resistance, training, whatever you want, body weights, bands. I use bands mostly because I travel with them. Do more movement throughout the day. I get up, walk around, do stuff.

And I write a lot about what kinds of exercise, how much exercise, how to optimize it, and at least amount of time. I cover all that in my book, Young Forever. So I want to share a little bit about a study that kind of reflects the power of this. And it was an 80-year study called the Harvard Study of Adult Development. and it's been producing data on so many different things on on who lives longer, happier, happier lives. And they wanted to understand not what makes people sick, but what makes people thrive,

what makes them well. So what were the lessons from this study was 84-year study, right? Long study. They were tracking the same people and over generations asking thousands of questions, hundreds of measurements to find out what really makes people healthy and happy. And they were giving these people were giving regular. updates on their life, their health, their income, their employment, their marital status. They filled out questionnaires and were part of interviews where they revealed their fears and

their hopes or disappointments or accomplishments or regrets, life satisfaction, and lots more. And this had a really incredible impact by providing lots of data. Then researchers use this data to assess how people's lives, their experiences, their attitudes, affect their well-being. and one of the thing that was so powerful from this study was sort of surprising it wasn't career achievement it wasn't exercise it wasn't a healthy diet that determined the quality and happiness of your life it was good relationships good relationships keeps us healthier and happier that was

powerful and the studies leaders that are i mean obviously that people started the study your dad the current leader of the study robert waldinger from Harvard and mark shultz have a new book It's called The Good Life, Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness. And it's a great book. I actually had Robert Waldinger on the podcast, The Doctors Pharmacy, and you can learn more about the book and things there. But what are the things that we can do? What are the lessons learned from the study?

But how do we improve the quality of our relationships? First, we have to look at ourselves, right? Who are we? What is our life like? What are the choices we're making? How are we not prioritizing relationships? So we can get really busy. We can do all sorts of stuff that we think is helping us get ahead.

We can spend too much time on social media. But we often don't really think about building and investing in the quality and the number of our relationships. And for me, I know personally that my relationships, my friendships, my community is the most important thing for me. It really is what keeps me grounded, keeps me healthy, keeps me happy. And then more and more as I get older, I focus more on this. as opposed to like when you have kids in a career and you try to just kind of get by. And it's like sometimes friends can fall by the wayside, but it's really important to find and it even can be just one or two good friends.

It makes a huge difference. Now, when these people in the study actually were interviewed, they really actually benefit from this interviews because it helped them realize where they neglected their relationships and then they considered sort of looking and finding, well, how can we improve that? maybe look at your own life, what's your social life like? Who are the people in your life that you care most about, that you want to have a relationship? Think about how they support you and how often you spend time together and maybe do a little bit of effort to actually focus on what matters to you most and help you make decisions

that actually can enhance the quality and number of your relationships. So maybe spend more time with people who make you laugh and who elevate you and less time with people who drain you and are, you know, energy saps. So I, you know, I, I think it's important to, to find friends and community members that help bring you up and not take you down. You know, sometimes you meet with people. All we want to do is complain and go on and on about everything. And I think there, you know, there are, there are other people who, when you're around

and you laugh, you have fun, you play, and it's just, that's what you want. You know, prioritize relationships. We schedule in exercise. We make ourselves maybe time to make a healthy diet. We focus on our career and work, but we don't focus on prioritizing those relationships that matter and being showing up and being present for us. Rather than zoning out on social media, you know, rather than like, you're doing a million things at once, focus on your relationships.

You know, during COVID, I think we all felt a little isolated. And so I reached out to about six of my close male friends. And we all have known each other for 40, often plus years, maybe 35. small, the fewest, I think was 25 years. And so we've known each other. And we formed this group. And every, every Tuesday at 6 o'clock, we meet for an hour and a half and spend time together and share about our lives. And it's been one of the most impactful things I've done. And it's something you can do. It doesn't take any organization. You just need to Zoom link or it's really pretty easy. And you can have these deep connections and relationships that allow you

to be seen and known and can really help activate so many healing pathways in your body. Make time to talk to people, right? And it came in sometimes with small relationships that matter, but a study in the University of Kansas found that the simple act of just reaching out to somebody, a friend, for conversation once a day, dramatically increases happiness and lowers their stress hormones. So hanging out with friends, lowers your stress hormones. It's pretty good.

And also, it's not all about you, right? So take time to ask questions. find out what's exciting for them, find out what they're struggling with, find out what makes them happy, have them share their life with you and value their opinions, be present, focus, and don't just kind of be superficial with them, but go deep. So maybe try to have one conversation a day and put that in your calendar and see what the effects will be over time.

Super important. Next thing is be kind. My grandmother used to ask my mother when she came home and said, I met this new friend. She says, are they kind? And I think kindness was such an important value in my family, and how do we be kind to each other? And, you know, the relationship happiness is determined by how you are in that relationship. And there was a research study at Michigan State that looked on data for our 2,500 married couples.

And they found they were, you know, how good they were in five different dimensions. Were the extroverts? Were they agreeable? were they conscientious, where they stable emotionally, where they open to doing new things and experiences. And the ones who had higher levels of agreeableness and emotional stability also had higher happiness. So the more kind of kind and positive you were,

the more likely you were to be happy. So people invest a lot of time in finding someone who's perfectly compatible, but that might not be the whole story. It's more about being kind to the people you care about in fostering those deep connections. Also, a friend of mine had a word that I really loved, which is called cop-to-itiveness, which is where you cop to it.

If you screw up, if you make a mistake, you cop to it. And it's really about learning to apologize, learning to repair relationships, learning how to have nonviolent communication and owning your stuff. Like I said, also a great way to build relationship is to ask questions. Instead of talking about yourself, ask questions about somebody, show that you care, show that you're interested in what they care about or thinking about. If someone wants advice, don't just give them your opinion. Ask them questions to guide them to the right answer that they know themselves.

Also, don't be shy about expressing your love. There are lots of ways to love and lots of ways to express it. Maybe it's simple things, you know, I had a flight that came in the other night late And I usually take the Uber home. And my partner, she showed up unexpected and picked me up at the airport. It was like just brought me such joy and delight. It was such a simple thing. You know, we're 15 minutes from the airport here.

And it wasn't a big deal for her, but it made a huge difference in terms of my own happiness. And it was really powerful. So help your friends with a project, you know, ask them what they need to do, whether it's clean up the garage or work on a project together. You know, call an old friend. maybe they haven't heard from you a while maybe you just want to check in on them ask them how they're doing maybe you want to focus on on helping somebody who's trying to do something that may be difficult for them trying to support them and and give them some love also when you have a

partner or a close friend do little acts of kindness give them a little gift you know buy them something they like you know get them something that makes them smile can be super simple you know when when you often don't do these acts kind of life just it's a little bit flatter and when you do them it's super fun like like i said my partner picked me up the airport it was like wow you know i got that she really cared also tell people how they you feel about them don't wait until their eulogy to tell them all the things you like about them be specific give people feedback about what you love about them what you like about them what makes you happy and how you feel in their presence who would you be without them?

You know, who would you be now that you're with them? What do they inspire you to do? And thank them for what they do and how they show up for you. Don't be shy. Like I said, don't wait until someone's dead to write a eulogy about them. It's better to have eulogies when you're alive. And I actually had a group, friend group where we would get together. And on people's birthdays, we would basically go around.

And for everybody's birthday, we would share a little bit about what their, like and what we what we like about them what we love about them something that inspires about them and it's like it's like getting a living eulogy it's pretty awesome so um i really really invested in my own friendships in my own community and i think it's a critical aspect of our health and as i get older it becomes more and more important so make sure that you take the time to invest in good relationships because good relationships is just important or maybe more than eating healthy and exercising and getting up to sleep. Do you have a question about my favorite books, supplements, or recipes?

Then sign up for my free Marks Picks newsletter at Dr.heimen.com slash Mark's Picks, where I'll share all of this information with you and so much more. You'll get emails from me every Friday with recommendations on things that have helped me on my health journey, and I hope they can help you too. Thank you so much again for tuning in. We'll see you next week on the Dr. Hyman Show. If you love this podcast, please share it with someone else you think would also enjoy it. You can find me on all social media channels at Dr. Mark Hyman.

please reach out. I'd love to hear your comments and questions. Don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe to the Dr. Hyman Show wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget to check out my YouTube channel at Dr. Mark Hyman for video versions of this podcast and more. Thank you so much again for tuning in. We'll see you next time on the Dr. Hyman Show. This podcast is separate from my clinical practice at the Ultra Wellness Center, my work at Cleveland Clinic, and Function Health, where I am chief medical officer. This podcast represents my opinions and my guest's opinions. neither myself nor the podcast endorses the views or statements of my guests. This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional care

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