The Dr. Hyman Show - If You Want to Live Longer, Fix These 8 Things Today

Episode Date: December 17, 2021

This episode is sponsored by Rupa Health and Athletic Greens. We are in an epidemic of chronic illness. Despite the advances in conventional medical care over the last decades, this system of medicine is governed by a persistent myth that if you know the name of your disease, you know what’s wrong with you. Once you have a label, you are put in the group of people who have the same label, and it is assumed you carry the attributes of this group. Unfortunately, this approach or method of thinking is outdated, increasingly useless, and often dangerous. Functional Medicine, on the other hand, looks at the body with a systems-based approach, understanding how all our different parts work together and looking at a symptom as a sign of dysfunction that we need to get to the root cause of, not just tame. In this compilation episode, I take you through eight things you can do to reset your body and reduce chronic illness. I also talk about the risks of a fatty liver, how inflammation impacts the body, and the importance of good sleep. This episode is brought to you by Rupa Health and Athletic Greens.   Rupa Health is a place for Functional Medicine practitioners to access more than 2,000 specialty lab tests from over 20 labs like DUTCH, Vibrant America, Genova, Great Plains, and more. Check out a free live demo with a Q&A or create an account here.    Athletic Greens is offering my listeners 10 free travel packs of AG1 when you make your first purchase here.

Coming up on this episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. If you eat a lot of sugar and flour, if you have a little bit of belly fat, or if you crave sugar and carbs and starch and sugar, you probably have some degree of a fatty liver. Repeatedly, the research shows that it's carbs, not fat, that causes more fat in your body. Hey everyone, it's Dr. Mark. I know a lot of you out there are practitioners like me helping

patients heal using real food and functional medicine as your framework for getting to the root cause. What's critical to understanding what each individual person and body needs is testing, which is why I'm excited to tell you about Rupa Health. Looking at hormones, organic acids, nutrient levels, inflammatory factors, gut bacteria, and so many other internal variables can help us find the most effective path to optimize health and reverse disease. But up till now, that meant you were usually ordering tests for one patient from multiple labs. And I'm sure many of you can relate how time-consuming this process was, and then it could all feel like a lot of work to keep track of. Now there's Rupa Health,

a place for functional medicine practitioners to access more than 2,000 specialty labs from over 20 labs like Dutch, Vibrant America, Genova, Great Plains, and more. Rupa Health helps provide a significantly better patient experience, and it's 90% faster, letting you simplify the entire process of getting the functional medicine lab tests you need and giving you more time to focus on patients. This is really a much needed option in functional medicine space and I'm so excited about it. It means better service for you and your patients. You can check it out and look at a free live demo with a Q&A or create an account at rupahealth.com. That's r-u-p-a-health.com. So many of my patients wait until they're sick to finally

take care of their health. I've even had doctors as patients, well, many actually, who just wait for their problems to get worse and worse and receive a diagnosis of disease before taking any kind of action. This is not the path to health. We can live longer, healthier, happier lives if we just prevent imbalances in our bodies in the first place. And nutrition is a key part of this. Many of us don't get the optimal amounts of key nutrients through diet alone, even with a whole foods diet. And then when you add in all the stressors we're up against, like work demands, toxins, lack of sleep, we're even more likely to have a nutrient deficiency. So one of the things I use every day to optimize my intake of vitamins, or even more likely to have a nutrient deficiency. So one of the things I use

every day to optimize my intake of vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients, pre and probiotics is AG1 from Athletic Greens. It's a comprehensive superfood powder with a special blend of high quality whole food ingredients that work together to fill the nutritional gaps in your diet. It's specifically designed to support energy and focus, aid with gut health and digestion, and support a healthy immune system, which we all need right now. I've made AG1 part of my daily ritual because I feel better knowing I have a little extra nutritional insurance to complement my healthy diet. It also gives me a nice energy boost without feeling overstimulated. I like to think of it as a huge

leafy green salad shrunk down into a simple glass of water I could take anywhere. Right now, you can get 10 free travel packs of AG1 when you make your first purchase. Just go to athleticgreens.com forward slash hyman. That's A-T-H-L-E-T-I-C-G-R-E-E-N-S.com slash Hyman. Now let's get back to this week's episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. Hi, this is Lauren Feehan, one of the producers of The Doctor's Pharmacy podcast. Sadly, we are in an epidemic of chronic illness, everything from metabolic syndrome to brain disorders, autoimmune disease, and more. The good news is

that there is a lot we can do to improve our health and live longer. On today's compilation episode, Dr. Hyman takes you through eight things you can do to reset your body and reduce chronic illness. He also talks about the risks of fatty liver, how inflammation impacts the body, and the importance of good sleep. Let's jump in. A fatty liver is a dangerous disease and it's highly misunderstood. Now some of you may have heard of foie gras. Foie gras is that French term for fatty liver that's used to describe a delicacy made from duck or goose liver. What happens to the livers of these animals as a result of the controversial practice of overfeeding is what you could be doing to your own liver without knowing it. For those people who have fatty liver, which is about,

by the way, 70 to 90 million Americans and is now the number one cause of liver transplants, it's essentially what they have. It's like foie gras, the liver. They have a liver that's full of fat and it's a major cause of chronic disease, of inflammation in the body, of heart attacks. You see, foie gras is made by force-feeding ducks or geese, not fat, but sugar in the form of corn and starch. It's a really sad, horrible practice. In the body, this sugar turns on a fat production factory. In the liver. It's a process known as lipogenesis or the genesis or birth or making of fat, which is lipo, which is the body's normal response to sugar. In fact, fructose, which is the sugar and high fructose corn syrup, actually ramps up the lipogenesis response like crazy. Fatty liver creates a whole cascade of issues. It causes inflammation in

your body. And this inflammation creates insulin resistance and prediabetes, which causes your body to deposit fat, not just in your liver, but also around your organs and your belly. It's called organ fat or visceral fat. It's the dangerous fat. This dangerous belly fat that's caused by sugar and starch in your diet then creates even more problems. It causes you to have high triglycerides and low good or HDL cholesterol. And it causes you to have these small dangerous LDL or cholesterol particles that are really the cause of heart attacks. In fact, having a fatty liver puts you at great risk for having a heart attack and most people have no idea they have it. And shockingly now we see 12 year old boys

who lived on soda for years needing liver transplants from fatty liver. Now that's pretty scary. We really need to think about what we're doing to our kids by feeding them these toxic substances. So you don't wanna end up with a fatty liver or a liver transplant. You don't wanna end up needing to be on medications

to fix the complications a fatty liver or a liver transplant. So you don't want to end up needing to be on medications to fix the complications of fatty liver, like high blood pressure and diabetes and heart attacks and high cholesterol. You want to get to the root of the problem. The good news is there's hope. As you now know, unlike sugar or refined carbs, even a little bit of protein. Dietary fat does not cause insulin to be secreted by your pancreas. So the fat you eat gets burned, not stored, unless of course you eat it with carbs. That's bad news. That's called sweet fat. You don't want that. That's like a bagel with butter or a donut or a french fries, right? Fat and carbs. When you eat more of the right fat, you increase the speed of your metabolism, you stimulate fat burning, and you cut your hunger. Fat turns off. Now get this, fat,

eating fat turns off the fat production factory in your liver, so no fatty liver and no liver transplants. Considering that fatty liver is caused by too much sugar and carbs, and is now the most common liver disease and the leading cause of liver transplant, cutting the carbs and boosting the saturated fats may be part of the solution. Now, I know it seems kind of confusing, but repeatedly the research shows that it's carbs, not fat, that causes more fat in your body and in your belly and in your liver and bad cholesterol.

So you see, it's actually the carbs that trigger inflammation through the liver. We've all been so focused on saturated fat as the bad guy that we miss the real bad guy, which is sugar and fructose. Our government tells us to limit our saturated fats to seven to 10% of our calories, while at the same time telling us it's okay to have up to 25% of our calories, while at the same time telling us it's okay to have up to 25% of our

calories from sugar. Really? One quarter of our calories from sugar. Now, the good news is the 2015 dietary guidelines said we should reduce added sugar to less than 10% of our calories. This was a big advance. The take-home message here is that saturated fats lower inflammation when, only get this, when consumed with a low refined carb and low sugar diet. It's also high in fiber, lots of veggies and nuts and seeds, and that has a lot of omega-3 fats, which is like sardines and fish oil and so forth. Now there are blood tests available that can detect a fatty liver. You can also see it on an ultrasound or a CAT scan. And if your test comes back abnormal, you're kind of in trouble. But even if your test comes back normal, you might not be out of the woods.

It's important to know that a liver function test does not always detect a fatty liver. An ultrasound can be more sensitive. The bottom line is, if you eat a lot of sugar and flour, if you have a little bit of belly fat, or if you crave sugar and carbs and starch and sugar, you probably have some degree of a fatty liver. Now, when you have a fatty liver, you need to think about the damage it's causing. You don't want to end up with a liver transplant. You don't want to end up needing to be on tons of medications to fix the complications of a fatty liver, like high blood pressure and diabetes and heart disease and bad cholesterol. You want to get to the root of

the problem. So there's some really simple things you can do with your diet, with exercise and with supplements to help heal your fatty liver. First, cut out all high fructose corn syrup from your diet, period. 100% cold turkey, no exceptions. If you see it on any label for any product, whether it's salad dressing or ketchup or tomato sauce or yogurt, don't eat it. Now think about it. Most servings of tomato sauce you buy in a jar have more sugar per serving than two Oreo cookies. Get rid of all that high fructose corn syrup from your diet. 100% no exceptions. Also, reduce or eliminate starchy foods. Get rid of white processed flour.

Even whole grain flours can be a problem. It's common to find too much of these starchy foods in the classic American diet or what we call the SAD diet. That's Standard American Diet. All those things are going to produce a fatty liver. Next, add some good things to your diet to help heal your fatty liver. Good quality vegetables, non-starchy, nuts and seeds, some fruit, some good quality animal protein like chicken, fish, grass-fed meat, and good oils like olive oil, macadamia nut oil, avocados, nuts and seeds, coconut butter, and fish oil. Because in fact,

MCT oil, which is in coconut oil, has been shown to reverse fatty liver in animal studies. That's impressive. Even while they were still giving them a liver toxin, alcohol, which causes fatty liver, when they gave them MCT oil, their fatty liver got better. Now that doesn't mean you should drink a lot and take MCT oil. It just means you should take MCT oil. Good fats like these are really anti-inflammatory and they help repair your liver. There's also some supplements you can take as well to help your fatty liver, which I talk about in my book. Now the plan in my new book, Eat Fat, Get Thin, is the perfect way to reset your body for optimal health. You can also improve your metabolism through exercise. Now this is a fabulous way to improve insulin resistance and reduce fatty liver. And of course, use the right supplements. Now these things help boost

something in your liver called glutathione. I encourage you to read my blog on glutathione. This is a powerful antioxidant and detoxifying compound that your body makes and you can help make more of it when you take certain supplements, including N-acetylcysteine, lipoic acid, milk thistle, and some of the B vitamins. Now we also use other things like B vitamins and magnesium and all these things help repair and heal your liver. They're also detoxifying, liver repairing superfoods that I recommend eating. Focus on the broccoli family. I love this family of foods. I try to have at least a cup or two every day. Kale, collards, cabbage, brussel sprouts, broccoli, arugula, daikon radish. All these are wonderful foods that can help

repair and heal your liver. Also, garlic and onions are great. They're full of sulfur. It's a great detoxifier. I promise you, you do not want a fatty liver. You need a healthy liver to help you deal with all the junk and chemicals in her environment. There are so many people with autoimmune disease. There's 80 million, if you add them all up, from all sorts of diseases, whether it's rheumatoid arthritis or lupus or Hashimoto's, thyroiditis or Raynaud's, you name it. There are so many autoimmune diseases that now, in fact, more people have autoimmune disease than have cancer, diabetes, and heart disease combined. And it's cost twice as much to take care of these patients every year than it does to take care of cancer patients. So what are we doing wrong? And why are there so many people with autoimmune

disease? Not just what disease do they have, but why? Well, it's really a critical question. And the answer lies in figuring out what the drivers of disease are. What's making your immune system so pissed off, right? Is it something that just randomly happens to you? Just randomly wake up with MS or randomly wake up with Hashimoto's thyroiditis or randomly wake up with lupus or rheumatoid arthritis? The answer is no. There are real causes that we've identified for autoimmune disease. And in functional medicine, there are basically five causes of all disease. And these causes interact with your genes and with deficiencies or imbalances that you have in things that you need to thrive.

So what are those things? There are toxins, there are microbes or bugs, there are allergens, there's poor diet and stress. And those things interact with your body and your genes to create insults that your body's reacting to. And on the other hand, you have to look at what it takes to create a healthy human. What are those ingredients for health? Food, the right whole fresh food, real food, the right nutrients. You need perhaps sometimes a balance of hormones, light, air, water. You need sleep, you need movement. You need connection, love, meaning,

purpose. All those are the ingredients for creating a healthy human. So when you have too much of the bad stuff and not enough of the good stuff, your body gets out of balance. And one of the major things that happens is inflammation. So I've seen so many patients over the years with autoimmune disease that have remarkable recoveries using this approach. I just recall this one little girl named Isabel who was so cute. She was 10 years old. She had inflamed everything. She had what we call mixed connective tissue disease, which is everything's inflamed. She had all sorts of autoantibodies in her blood. Her liver was affected. Her skin was affected with rashes. Her joints were affected. Her white blood cells were affected and red cells, so she had low levels of cells, and she had all sorts of other issues. Now, rather than give her more drugs, which her doctors were doing, giving her steroids and chemo drugs to shut off her immune system, I'm like,

why is her immune system so pissed off? And it turned out she had a horrible diet, tons of sugar, which is inflammatory. She ate lots of dairy, had lots of antibiotics, which can destroy the gut and create a leaky gut and cause yeast problems. And she also loves sushi since she was about three years old and was eating tons of sushi. So when she came to me at 10, she had an overload of heavy metals and mercury. So rather than give her more drugs,

I took away the bad stuff, cleaned up the bad foods in her diet, got her off of gluten and dairy, which are inflammatory, fixed her gut, got her to clear out the yeast with an antifungal, put in probiotics, a few basic nutrients to help balance her immune system, fish oil, vitamin D and probiotics and it was remarkable within two months dramatic improvement. Within a year all her lab tests were normal, her symptoms were gone and she was off all her chemo drugs and her steroids, which are suppressing her immune system.

That's the power of functional medicine. And I see this over and over again. What is it in bread that can kill you? It's gluten, a protein found in wheat, barley, rye, spelt, camomile, and oats. And it's hidden in most processed foods. You see, gluten is the staple of the American diet. Pizza, pasta, bread, wraps, rolls, you name it. And the scariest finding is that 99% of people who have a problem with eating gluten don't even know it. They ascribe their ill health or their symptoms to something else, not gluten sensitivity,

which is 100% curable. A recent large study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that people with diagnosed, undiagnosed, and latent celiac disease or gluten sensitivity had a higher risk of death, mostly from heart disease and cancer. This study looked at almost 30,000 patients from 1969 to 2008 and examined deaths in three groups. Those with full-blown celiac disease, those with inflammation in their intestine, but not full-blown celiac, and those with latent celiac or gluten sensitivity,

which meant elevated gluten antibodies, but a negative intestinal biopsy. The results were dramatic. There was a 39% increased risk of death in those with celiac, a 72% increased risk of death in those with gut inflammation related to gluten, and a 35% increase in risk in those who had gluten sensitivity but no celiac disease. That's remarkable. This is groundbreaking research which proves that you don't have to have full-blown celiac with a positive intestinal biopsy, which is what we used to think, or what conventional thinking tells us, to have serious health problems and complications from eating gluten, even death. What's even more shocking is that another study comparing the blood of 10,000 people from 50 years ago to 10,000 people today found that there was a real increase in full-blown celiac disease by 400% based on elevated TTG antibodies or autoimmune

antibodies. If we saw a 400% increase in heart disease or cancer, this would be headline news, but we hear almost nothing about this. Not diagnosing gluten sensitivity and celiac disease creates needless suffering and death for millions of Americans. I'm going to explain why I think we have seen that increase in a moment, but, let's explore the economic cost of this hidden impact. Undiagnosed gluten problems cost the healthcare system oodles of money. Dr. Peter Green studied 10 million subscribers at Cigna and found that those who were correctly diagnosed with celiac used less medical services and reduced their healthcare costs by over 30%. The problem is that only 1% of those with actual celiac disease

were diagnosed. That means that 99% are walking around suffering without knowing it, costing the healthcare system millions. Why haven't you heard much about this? Well, actually you have, but you just don't recognize it. Celiac disease and gluten sensitivity masquerades as dozens and dozens of other diseases with different names. A review paper in the New England Journal of Medicine listed 55 diseases that can be caused by eating gluten, that protein found in wheat, barley, rye, spelt, camomile, and oats.

These included osteoporosis, arthritis, irritable bowel, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, multiple sclerosis, inflammatory bowel disease, anemia, cancer, fatigue, canker sores, and almost all autoimmune diseases. They also include many psychiatric and neurologic diseases, including anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, dementia, migraines, epilepsy, neuropathy, or nerve damage. Gluten has even been linked to autism. We used to think that gluten problems or celiac disease were confined to those children who had diarrhea, weight loss, and failure to thrive. But now we know that you can be old, fat, and constipated and still have celiac disease or gluten sensitivity.

Gluten sensitivity is actually an autoimmune disease that creates inflammation throughout the whole body with a wide-ranging set of effects, including effects on your brain, heart, joints, digestive tract, and more. In order to correct many of these diseases, you don't need to treat the symptoms, but treat the cause, which is gluten in so many. That's not to say that all cases of depression or autoimmune disease or any of the other problems associated with gluten are caused by gluten in everyone, but it is important to look for it if you have any of those chronic illnesses or any chronic illness, in fact, I believe. Gluten can be the single cause behind many different diseases. These diseases are not treatable with better medication, but simply 100% elimination of gluten in the diet. The question then is,

why are we so sensitive to this staff of life, the staple of our diet? Well, the reasons are many. They include our lack of genetic adaptation to grasses, particularly gluten in our diet. Wheat was introduced into Europe during the Middle Ages, and 30% of those of European descent carry the gene for celiac disease, which increases susceptibility to health problems from eating gluten. Now, keep in mind that American strains of wheat have a much higher gluten content, which is needed to make those fluffy, light, wonder bread, and giant bagels. This super gluten was recently introduced into our agricultural food supply and has now infected nearly all wheat strains in America.

But how many people does the problem really affect? More than you think, especially in the population who is chronically ill. Problems with gluten are widely underdiagnosed. The most serious form of allergy to gluten, celiac disease, affects 1 in 100 or 3 million Americans, most of whom are not diagnosed. But milder forms of gluten sensitivity are even more common, affecting up to one-third of the American population. Now, while tests can help you identify this condition, the only way you'll really know if it's a problem for you is to

eliminate all gluten for a short period of time, like two to four weeks, and see how you feel. But you have to be 100% gluten-free, no exceptions, no hidden gluten, and then eat it again and see what happens. This teaches you better than any test. If you feel badly in any way, then you will need to be permanently off gluten. Did you know that most of you are inflamed and living an inflammatory lifestyle? That being inflamed makes you fat and sick? And that being fat and sick makes you inflamed? It's a vicious cycle. So what is inflammation anyway, and why does it make us sick and fat? Well, inflammation can be a good thing, right? It's

part of your body's own defense mechanism. If you have a cold or an infection, you bang yourself, inflammation helps your body heal. But it's bad when it goes out of control. Now, what makes us inflamed and what makes the inflammation get out of control? It's mostly our diet. It's bad food, sugar, trans fats, food allergens that are hidden, lack of exercise, stress, even hidden infections. All these things promote inflammation. So how do we deal with it? Well, we detox from inflammatory foods, but just get rid of them for a little while, one week, see what happens. Things like sugar, processed food, junk food, caffeine, alcohol. But what else is important? And I want to spend a little time talking about this other factor that mostly gets ignored. It's called hidden food sensitivities or hidden food allergens. And they're delayed.

They're not like, you know, you eat a peanut and your tongue swells up and you have to go to the emergency room. I'm not talking about that. I'm not talking about shellfish allergy where you can nearly die from it. What I'm talking about are delayed, subtle, and often unrecognized symptoms that come from delayed reactions to the things we're eating. And these symptoms can include weight gain, fluid retention, fatigue, brain fog, irritable bowel syndrome, mood disorders, headaches, sinus problems, joint pains, acne, eczema, and much more. Now, why do we get it? Let me just say something first. This is an unrecognized epidemic. And most physicians, most practitioners ignore this type of allergy. It just hasn't hit the radar.

And yet it's the biggest thing I do in my medical practice to help people feel better quickly and to lose weight quickly. So you have to recognize that it's not the same for everybody. That one man's medicine is another man's poison. And if you're eating something that doesn't agree with you, that you've developed a food sensitivity to or an allergy, you can develop a whole host of problems. In fact, in this country, we have an epidemic of inflammatory and allergic diseases. We have 24 million people with autoimmune disease. We have 50 million with allergic diseases. We have 30 million with asthma and over 60 million with irritable bowel syndrome. And all of these are connected by inflammation.

So the question is, why have we become so sensitive? Why is our immune system acting this way? Obviously, we weren't designed to have an immune system go awry and create tremendous amounts of inflammation all the time, make us sick and fat. So something's gone wrong. What has gone wrong? Well, it has to do with the idea that food is not just energy, right? I've talked about this before. Food is information. So it can be good information, right? Good information from phytonutrients, things that are found in plants, colorful antioxidants, detoxifying and anti-inflammatory molecules found in plant foods. So that's good information. But it can also be bad information. And that can include bad information from allergens and from toxins. So when does it become a problem? Well,

it becomes a problem when we get something called a leaky gut. The medical term for this is increased intestinal permeability. But it basically means that the stuff on the inside of your gut, which should stay on the outside of your immune system, gets in and leaks into your body and is exposed to your immune system, which then doesn't like it. And the cause of this leaky gut or damaged membrane in your intestinal tract is a bad diet, lack of fiber, too much sugar. It's drugs, antibiotics, which kill all the healthy bacteria, hormones, which promote yeast overgrowth, anti-inflammatories, which damage the lining of the gut, acid blockers, which change your whole digestive process, and even stress can cause a leaky gut. So when this all happens, the lining of the gut, acid blockers, which change your whole digestive process,

and even stress can cause a leaky gut. So when this all happens, the lining breaks down, and all hell breaks loose. What happens is then that on the inside of your intestinal tract, there's basically a sewer, all the stool, food, junk, particles, things that should be protected from your immune system, starts leaking in across this leaky membrane and is exposed to your immune system, 60% of which is right under that lining. When that happens, your immune system goes, ah, and starts attacking these, quote, foreign molecules. But it's really just food that you haven't properly digested or that should have been broken down, but it's suddenly exposed to your immune system. And that's when you start getting sick and fat. The brain responds to all

sorts of insults and the same insults as the rest of the body. Stress, poor diet, toxins, lack of exercise, lack of sleep, nutritional deficiencies, and lots more. So all we have to do is give the brain a tune-up and we can see miracles. In a minute, I'm going to tell you about a few miracles in my practice, but you should know first that this is a big problem and it's growing every day. 10% of 65-year-olds, 25% of 75-year-olds, and 50% of 85-year-olds will get Alzheimer's at a cost of $60 billion a year to society. And it's predicted that the number of people with Alzheimer's will triple in the next few decades. Now, is this preventable? Can we slow it, treat it? I believe the answer is yes. But first, I want to explain just why naming the disease, whether it's dementia or anything else,

is becoming increasingly unhelpful unless you want to match the drug to the disease, which is the only thing doctors are trained to do. Now, rather than surgeons, actually. Now, we have to think about individuals, not diseases. You know, in medicine, our differences, you know what I mean, our genetic differences are more important than our similarities. Now, sometimes the practice of medicine lags behind science, right? And sometimes the practice gets ahead of science. Now, genetic testing puts us squarely in the middle of that dilemma. In fact, we're at the crossroads where the old ideas we have about disease and diagnosis become less and less meaningful as we understand more and more about the importance of individual, namely the genetic differences in controlling health and

disease and determining illness. And this is a time when personalized medicine will replace medicine based on diagnosis and disease. In fact, disease and diagnosis, as we know it, will soon be an obsolete concept, an artifact of medical history, kind of like bloodletting or phrenology, which is the art of diagnosis based on the shape of your skull. It was really popular in the 19th century. Now, take, for example, the story of a patient who had a diagnosis of dementia and came with his wife to see me because he couldn't manage his business affairs. He'd been unable to function at home. He had to withdraw from family and relationships, and he was desperate as he felt himself slipping away. Now, there is no known effective treatment for dementia, but we do know a lot about what

affects brain function and aging. Our nutrition, vitamin deficiencies, omega-3 fat deficiencies, inflammation, toxins, stress, exercise, hormonal deficiencies, and many genes have been found to contribute to dementia. Now, it's not one gene, right? It's the interaction among many genes and the environment that puts someone at risk for a chronic disease like dementia. And we also know that many things affect how our genes function, right? Our diet, vitamins, minerals, toxins, allergens, stress, lack of exercise, lack of sleep, and lots more. Even though no long-term studies have been done looking at dementia and treating dementia based on genes, there are so many scientific threads that if we kind of weave them together, we can get a picture of how and why our brains age and what genes are involved.

Now for this man whose mind and life were evaporating, I looked deeply into his genes and the biochemistry his genes controlled. And I found the places where we can improve things. He had a gene called ApoE4. That's a high-risk gene for Alzheimer's disease. It also made him hard from to lower his cholesterol or to detoxify his brain from mercury. He also had a version of a gene for detoxing metals and other toxins called GST that was very inefficient, and it made him accumulate more toxins over his whole life. He had another gene, in fact, called MTHFR that made him require very high doses of folic acid to lower something called homocysteine in his blood, which is a very toxic substance to the brain. And lastly, he had a gene

called CETP that caused his cholesterol to be high, which also contributes to dementia. Now, when we treated him and found what was going on, we found that he had very high levels of mercury. And then we helped him detoxify with foods like kale and watercress and cilantro and herbs such as milk thistle. We gave him nutrients like zinc and selenium, which helped detox. And we gave him medications to overcome his difficulties getting rid of toxins. We lowered his cholesterol with diet and herbs. And we lowered his homocysteine with high doses of folate, B12 and B6. And after a year of aggressive therapy that was matched to his genes,

not his diagnosis, he had a remarkable and dramatic recovery. Now, before I saw him, he could not manage his business, nor did his grandchildren want to be around him because they were scared of his behavior. him, he could not manage his business, nor did his grandchildren want to be around him because they were scared of his behavior. And after matching his treatment to his genes, he was again able to function. His grandchildren loved to be with him again. Now, to put this in perspective, mental decline happens progressively and sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, but never gets better according to our traditional medical thinking. But just like

we thought heart disease and plaque in the heart couldn't be reversed before we thought that, now we have proof that does happen. And I believe that dementia can be reversed if caught early enough by attending to all the factors that affect brain function. Diet, exercise, stress, nutritional deficiencies, toxins, hormonal imbalances, inflammation, and more. It's really quite simple. It's like everything I describe in ultra wellness. Get rid of the bad stuff, put in the good stuff, and the body heals. It's common sense. But we are so far from that in the way we treat chronic illness in America today. So if you know someone with memory loss, I would be extremely aggressive in looking at all the keys to ultra wellness to find what imbalances are present and how to fix them. And there will be no one treatment that works for everybody because

everyone is different. What you eat and exercise are actually important, but what most people don't know is that sleep deprivation makes you fat and it leads to depression, pain, heart disease, diabetes, and much more. In fact, besides eating whole foods and moving your body, getting enough sleep is the most important thing you can do for your health. In fact, one of my patients, he had sleep apnea. It's a condition where you have interrupted sleep all night because your airway closes off, so your body startles awake and you don't suffocate. Well, it's a very common problem. It's way underdiagnosed. It affects 18 million people in America and most are not treated. 90% are not diagnosed. So anyway, one of my patients was so tired he had to stand up

at his computer to work during the day so he wouldn't fall asleep. His wife reported horrific snoring and gasping episodes at night and he fell asleep at the wheel when driving and he would fall right asleep as soon as he sat down to watch TV. Now, when we got his sleep apnea diagnosed with a sleep study in a sleep lab and got him treated with a device to keep his airway open at night, he lost 50 pounds, his blood pressure returned to normal, and he got his life back. Now, those with sleep apnea are not the only ones in trouble, right? It's estimated that 70% of Americans are sleep deprived. Let me tell you, the era of Starbucks has been surpassed by the prescription stimulants to keep people awake and functioning like dexedrine or Ritalin, otherwise known as speed or amphetamines, right? Surprisingly,

I see an increasing number of patients, not prescribed by me, but prescribed these uppers by their psychiatrist because coffee is not enough. I mean, if we can't do 10 things at once, then there must be something wrong with us, right? Wrong, right? Our bodies and our biological rhythms that keep us healthy produce cyclic pulses of healing and repair hormones, including melatonin and growth hormone. And when those rhythms are disturbed by inadequate or insufficient sleep, disease and breakdown really get the upper hand. Now, most of us need at least eight hours of restful sleep a night. Getting this is more and more difficult. I mean, we evolved with the rhythms of day and night that used to signal us to a whole cascade of hormonal neurochemical reactions that

keep us healthy by repairing our DNA, building tissues and muscle, repairing our bodies, regulating our weight and our mood chemicals. And the advent of the light bulb changed everything, right? In fact, when I learned that shift work, like I did when I worked in the emergency room, leads to shortened life expectancy, I quit. You know, when we are sleep deprived, our cortisol levels rise with all its harmful effects. It's a stress hormone, including brain damage and dementia, weight gain, diabetes, heart attacks, high blood pressure, depression, osteoporosis, depressed immune system, and lots more. You know, good sleep is not something that just happens, right? Unless you're a baby or a teenager, maybe. There are clearly defined things that interfere

with or support healthy sleep. Now, follow these guidelines to restore your natural sleep rhythm. It may take weeks or months, but using these tools in a coordinated way will eventually reset your biological rhythms. First thing we have to do is prioritize sleep. You know, I thought MD stood for medical deity and meant I didn't have to follow the same sleep rules as every other human being. Was I wrong, right? I got very sick from all the sleep deprivation. Our lives are infiltrated with stimuli

and we keep stimulating until the moment we get into bed. This is not the way to get restful sleep, right? Is it any wonder we can't sleep well when we eat late dinner or answer emails, surf the net or do work and get right into bed and watch the evening news all about disaster, pain, and suffering in the world? We must take a little holiday, right, at the end of the day, in the two hours before bed. Maybe you can create a sleep ritual, a special set of little things you do before you get into bed to help you ready your system physically and psychologically for sleep. And

these can guide your body into a deep and healing sleep. We all live with a bit of post-traumatic stress syndrome, or maybe we should say traumatic stress syndrome, because for many of us, there's nothing post about it, right? Now, much research has actually been done on the effects of sleep and traumatic experiences and images on sleep. And if you follow the guidelines for restoring normal sleep here, your post-traumatic stress or your traumatic stress may truly become a thing of the past. Okay. Now here's how to get a good night's sleep. Practice regular rhythms of sleep, right? Go to bed and wake up at the same time every day and try not to nap. And only use your bed for sleep and sex, no reading or television.

Create an aesthetic environment that's helpful for sleep by using serene and restful colors in your bedroom. Get rid of clutter and distraction. Create total darkness and quiet. Maybe consider even eye shades and earplugs. Avoid caffeine. Now, it may seem to help you stay awake, but actually makes your sleep worse. Avoid alcohol. It helps you get to sleep, but makes your sleep interrupted and at a much poorer quality. And get regular exposure to daylight for at least 20 minutes a day. And the light from the sun, it enters our eyes and triggers our brain to release specific chemicals and hormones like melatonin that are vital to healthy sleep and mood and aging. And the next thing is don't eat later than three hours before bed. So don't eat anything a couple hours before bed. And also don't eat a heavy meal prior to bed

because that'll lead to bad night's sleep. Don't exercise vigorously after dinner. It sort of wakes you up. You can take a walk, but don't run a marathon or go for a five-mile jog. And also try writing down your worries before bed. One hour before bed, write down things that are causing you anxiety and make plans for what you might have to do the

next day to reduce your worry. And it'll free your mind up and energy to sort of move into a deep and restful sleep. Try taking a hot soda and salt bath with aromatherapy, which I write about, called the ultra bath. It raises your body temperature and helps you induce sleep. And then I would suggest try a massage. Maybe you can stretch or do some yoga before bed, just simple things. Use a heating pad on your solar plexus or your belly or snuggle next to a warm body. Warming your middle raises your core temperature, and this helps trigger the proper chemistry for sleep. Avoid also medications that can interfere with sleep, things like sedatives, which help a little bit, but ultimately cause dependence and screw up your normal sleep pattern. Antihistamines,

stimulants, cold medications, steroids, headache medications with caffeine, these all interfere with sleep. Try some relaxing minerals like magnesium and calcium. Use some herbs like valerian or passionflower, and maybe try to find the right blend. Try melatonin even. And also consider getting a tape or CD to help you sleep. Consider also getting tested for sleep disorders. You know, there's a lot of them. But if you have all the symptoms of sleep apnea, daytime sleepiness, fatigue, snoring, and have been seen to stop breathing in the middle of the night, get tested for sleep apnea. So remember, don't skimp on sleep. It's one of the most important healing treatments for your body that's available to you every day.

Are you one of the one in three Americans today struggling through life with a broken brain? Maybe you fear losing your job because you're tired, unfocused, and attentive, and your memory's failing, so you can't properly perform your tasks at work. Maybe you feel depressed or hopeless or disconnected or disengaged from life. Or maybe you see your relationships breaking down because you're mentally and emotionally absent or numb. Or maybe you forget appointments or to go meet friends and you can't figure out how in the world you forgot.

If any of these apply to you, you're not alone. Because right now, here in America, there's a rising tide of broken brains and conventional medicine can't cure it. This epidemic of conditions like depression, anxiety, bipolar disease, psychosis, attention deficit disorder, autism, dementia, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, as well as more subtle symptoms like mood swings or sleep problems or poor concentration or just plain brain fog. Consider this, one in 10 Americans today are using antidepressants, while more than 8 million children are taking stimulants like Ritalin. Do you think there's something wrong with this picture? Is this part of the normal human

condition? Are we defectively designed so that we can't be happy or concentrate or remember things without pills? I mean, is depression a Prozac deficiency? Is ADD a Ritalin deficiency? Is Alzheimer's an Aricept deficiency? I think not. But here's the really big news. These diseases don't really exist, at least not in the way we think they do. So let me explain. Let's say you have feelings of sadness and despair. We might say you have something called depression. But depression isn't the cause of your sadness or despair. It's just a name we use to group people together for the purposes of giving them all the same drug therapy. If you feel sad and despairing, then you have depression and you need an antidepressant.

But do we know the reasons for these symptoms? Do we know the causes? Are they even the same from one person to another? Think about it. You and the person sitting next to you could have the exact same chronic symptoms. Let's say headache. Maybe your pain is caused by drinking too much wine every night and their pain is caused by being hit on the head with a wine bottle every night. As you can imagine, these two chronic headaches can't be cured in the same way because their root causes are different. But that's exactly what the current medical community is doing. Drugs like antidepressants don't cure the disease. They just mask the symptoms. You see, we don't need to continue using these same drug treatments that don't work, that make things worse

or provide tons of side effects or at best give just a little bit of relief. There is a proven medical solution and it's called the Ultra Mind Solution. I know because I cured myself using this simple but powerful method. You see, my own brain broke one beautiful day back in 1996. In fact, I felt like I contracted ADD, depression, and dementia all at once. The worse my body felt, the worse my brain worked. My eyes would get red and swollen and I couldn't focus. I had rashes or diarrhea and I couldn't remember what I just said. I couldn't feel joy and I was constantly exhausted, but yet had trouble sleeping. You see, I saw doctor after doctor after doctor. I saw a psychiatrist. No one could find the cause for my symptoms or agree on a diagnosis. Some said I had depression. Others suggested chronic fatigue. Some said I had anxiety or fibromyalgia, but I decided I had depression. Others suggested chronic fatigue. Some said I had anxiety or fibromyalgia,

but I decided I had to find the answers for myself. And by scouring the medical literature, consulting with doctors and scientists, and experimenting with my own body and mind, I finally came to understand that it wasn't just one thing that caused my brain to break, but the accumulation of many things. And the cure wasn't one magic pill, but it was balancing the seven core systems of my body, what I came to call the seven keys to ultra wellness. And here they are. Optimize nutrition, balance your hormones, cool off inflammation, fix your digestion, enhance detoxification, boost your energy metabolism, and calm your mind. These keys are the underlying causes of all illness. You see, it turns out that

not only are your joint pains, skin rash, irritable bowel, and depression all connected, but the only way to find your way out of this mess of chronic disease is by using a new map, one that allows us to see how everything is connected. This new map is the basis of something called functional medicine, and it's a rich new method of fundamental change in our thinking. A whole different paradigm, like the world is round, not flat kind of shift. It changes our approach to the very way we think about illness in the human body. And unlike our current medical system, you don't

need expensive therapies or medications in order to join this revolution. You just need a fork, a pair of sneakers, and an understanding of your body's seven key systems. Now, I'm going to tell you the truth about acid-blocking medication. At least 10% of Americans have episodes of heartburn every day, and 44% have symptoms at least once a month. Overall reflux, or GERD, affects a whopping 25 to 35%

of the United States population. As a result, acid-blocking medications are the third leading class of drugs sold in America today. Two of these drugs to treat reflux, Nexam and Prevacid, are in the top 10 best-selling drugs and account for $5.7 and $4 billion in sales annually. These things certainly have been changed since I was in medical school. In those days, GERD wasn't even considered a serious disease. It said people had heartburn or ulcers, but that was pretty much it. When acid-blocking drugs first came on the market, even the pharmaceutical representatives warned us how powerful these

drugs were. They told us not to prescribe them any longer than six weeks and only for patients with documented ulcers. What a difference a few decades make. Now these drugs are given like candy to anyone who ate too many hot dogs at a ball game, and one drug, Prilosec, is now available without a prescription. No wonder these drugs are so popular. Their manufacturers have created the illusion that we can eat whatever we want with no consequences just by popping a pill. They even have commercials showing a family rushing up to stop their father from eating a big sausage with fried onions and peppers, and he tells them not to worry because he took this acid-blocking pill. I know someone who used to work for the makers of Pepsid. He told me that when it was first available over

the counter, teams of drug company representatives would stand at the gates of country fairs and southern barbecues and hand out free samples. Talk about sending a bad message. In reality, acid-blocking drugs are a double-edged sword. Let's look at some of the research on the dangers of these drugs. Acid-blocking drugs obviously block acid that can cause symptoms of heartburn and reflux, but your body actually needs stomach acid to stay healthy. We know that stomach acid is necessary to digest protein and food, to activate your digestive enzymes in the small intestine, to keep the bacteria from growing where they shouldn't be in the small intestine, and to help you absorb important nutrients like calcium, magnesium, and B12.

So what happens when you take acid-blocking drugs? Well, there's evidence that these medications can prevent you from properly digesting your food, can cause vitamin and mineral deficiencies, and lead to problems like irritable bowel syndrome, depression, hip fractures, and more. Studies show that people who take acid-blocking medications for the long term can become deficient in vitamin B12, which can lead to depression, anemia, fatigue, nerve damage, even dementia, especially in the elderly. The research also tells us that taking these drugs can cause dangerous overgrowth of bacteria in the small intestine called Clostridia leading to life-threatening infections. For many more people, low-grade overgrowth of bacteria in the small intestine leads to

bloating gas, abdominal pain, and diarrhea, many of the common side effects noted in the warning for these drugs. This can cause what we know as Irritable Bowel Syndrome. In fact, a recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that chronic use of acid-blocking drugs leads to an increase in the development of osteoporosis and an increase in hip fracture because acid-blocking drugs prevent the absorption of calcium and other minerals necessary for bone health. Now, all this is only part of the problem. There have even been some reports that these drugs may increase the risk of certain cancers. These are serious problems, and it's pretty clear that in this case, the cure of acid-blocking drugs is worse than the disease of reflux. But that's of

little comfort when you're suffering from heartburn. So if the drugs aren't the answer, what is? We need to find the real causes of reflux and heartburn and get rid of them. We need to use the right food, nutrients, and lifestyle therapies to heal the problem. So what causes GERD? Well, fried food, alcohol, caffeine, soda, all trigger reflux. Spicy, tomato-based, citrus foods can also cause problems for some people. Smoking increases the problem. Being overweight and having belly fat push your stomach up can prevent it from emptying, triggering reflux. Having a hiatal hernia where your stomach pushes up through your diaphragm can also cause trouble and be diagnosed by an x-ray. Eating large meals and eating before bed are two guaranteed ways to get reflux. But there are also other often overlooked causes. Food is supposed to go down, not up when you eat. That's why there are two

main valves, the sphincters, that control food going in and out of the stomach. One at the top and one at the bottom. When you're stressed, the valve on top relaxes and the valve on the bottom tightens up. The result? Food goes up, not down. So stress also contributes to reflux. Magnesium deficiency is another cause of reflux because magnesium helps the sphincter at the bottom of the stomach relax, allowing the food to go down. Now, while this is controversial, I believe that infection can not only cause just ulcers, but reflux as well. The bug that causes this infection is called H. pylori and can be identified by a simple blood test. It needs to be treated even if you don't have an ulcer, I believe. Food sensitivities or

low-grade allergies can also cause reflux. Common culprits include dairy and gluten-containing foods like wheat, barley, rye, and oats. Plus, overgrowth of bacteria in the small bowel or the yeast overgrowth in the gut can cause reflux. These are all treatable conditions that you don't need powerful acid-blocking drugs to fix. To properly diagnose the causes you may need to do the following. One, ask your doctor for an H. pylori blood antibody test. Two, consider getting an IgG food sensitivity test and a test for celiac disease. Three, get a breath test or urine test to check for small bowel bacterial overgrowth. Now if you don't get better with the suggestions below, consider getting an upper endoscopy or upper GI series x-ray to see if there's anything else

wrong in there. Now, I'm going to give you three steps that can help you permanently overcome heartburn and acid reflux. First, treat the bugs if you have them. If you have H. pylori, treat it. If you have yeast overgrowth, treat it. If you have bacterial overgrowth in the small bowel, treat it. The second step is change your diet. Try to eliminate gluten and dairy for a few weeks. See if it makes a difference. Get rid of alcohol, citrus, caffeine, tomato based, and spicy foods. Don't eat three hours before bed.

Don't eat junk food. Don't eat processed food. And eat cooked foods like fish, chicken, cooked veggies, and avoid raw foods for a short while and see if it makes a difference. Eat smaller, more frequent meals at least four or five times a day. And the last step is to try some natural remedies to help soothe the gut. You can use digestive enzymes, you can use probiotics, you can use something called zinc carnosine, you can use glutamine, even chewable tablets of a form of licorice called DGL, as well as magnesium. So as you can see, there's no need to suffer from heartburn and reflux or take expensive

acid blocking drugs. Just deal with the cause. That's the whole purpose of functional medicine. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. One of the best ways you can support this podcast is by leaving us a rating and review below. Until next time, thanks for tuning in. Hey everybody, it's Dr. Hyman. Thanks for tuning into The Doctor's

Pharmacy. I hope you're loving this podcast. It's one of my favorite things to do and introducing you all the experts that I know and I love and that I've learned so much from. And I want to tell you about something else I'm doing, which is called Mark's Picks. It's my weekly newsletter. And in it, I share my favorite stuff from foods to supplements to gadgets to tools to enhance your health. It's all the cool stuff that I use and that my team uses to optimize and enhance our health. And I'd love you to sign up for the weekly newsletter. I'll only send it to you once a week on Fridays.

Nothing else, I promise. And all you do is go to drhyman.com forward slash PICS to sign up. That's drhyman.com forward slash PICS, P-I-C-K-S, and sign up for the newsletter. And I'll share with you my favorite stuff that I use to enhance my health and get healthier and better and live younger, longer. Just a reminder that this podcast is for educational purposes only. This podcast is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided on the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your

journey, seek out a qualified medical practitioner. If you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, you can visit ifm.org and search their find a practitioner database. It's important that you have someone in your corner who's trained, who's a licensed healthcare practitioner, and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health.