The Dr. Hyman Show - Improve Your Relationships For Better Health

Episode Date: March 18, 2022

This episode is brought to you by Rupa Health, Athletic Greens, and InsideTracker.   Community is medicine, just like food or sleep. Without community, we can become isolated, which has been found to be connected with inflammation and can even negatively impact immune response. Moreover, whom you choose to be in community with also matters. Your immediate social circle—the four-to-five people you surround yourself with the most—has the greatest influence on your health. In today’s episode, I talk with Radha Agrawal, Dan Buettner, and Dr. Vivek Murthy about why community matters, what we have learned from cultures that prioritize community in their population, and how to take care of our needs first before giving to others. Radha Agrawal is the Co-founder, CEO, and Chief Community Architect of Daybreaker, the early morning dance and wellness move-ment. Daybreaker currently holds events in 25 cities and more than a dozen college campuses around the world and has a community of almost half a million people. She is also the author of the book, Belong: Find Your People, Create Community, and Live a More Connected Life.    Dan Buettner is an explorer, National Geographic Fellow, award-winning journalist and producer, and New York Times bestselling author. He discovered the five places in the world— dubbed Blue Zones hotspots—where people live the longest, healthiest lives.   Dr. Vivek H. Murthy served as the 19th Surgeon General of the United States from December 15, 2014 to April 21, 2017 and was confirmed by the United States Senate on March 23, 2021 as the 21st Surgeon General of the United States. In 2017, Dr. Murthy focused his attention on chronic stress and loneliness as prevalent problems that have profound implications for health, productivity, and happiness. He is the author of, Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World.   This episode is brought to you by Rupa Health, Athletic Greens, and InsideTracker. Rupa Health is a place where Functional Medicine practitioners can access more than 2,000 specialty lab tests from over 20 labs like DUTCH, Vibrant America, Genova, and Great Plains. You can check out a free, live demo with a Q&A or create an account at RupaHealth.com. AG1 contains 75 high-quality vitamins, minerals, whole-food sourced superfoods, probiotics, and adaptogens to support your entire body. Right now when you purchase AG1 from Athletic Greens, you will receive 10 FREE travel packs with your first purchase by visiting athleticgreens.com/hyman. InsideTracker is a personalized health and wellness platform like no other. Right now they’re offering my community 25% off at insidetracker.com/drhyman. Full-length episodes of these interviews can be found here: Radha Agrawal Dan Buettner Dr. Vivek Murthy

Coming up on this episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. The most generous act we can do as human beings is to create community. And yet we forget that. We just get trapped in the look at me selfie moments without realizing that that's actually the sort of the ladder down to isolation, loneliness, and sadness. 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 dot com.

People are always surprised when I tell them that even with a whole foods diet rich in plants, we can still be nutrient deficient. And addressing nutrient deficiencies is one of the lowest hanging fruits for optimizing our health and feeling better at any age. And that is why I'm a huge fan of AG1 from Athletic Greens. Now, since our soils no longer have the same levels of essential nutrients or not enough of microbiome in the soil because we've killed it with glyphosate and other stuff and they can't extract the nutrients we're up against issues like chronic stress toxicity sleep deprivation like never before our bodies actually need some extra help getting all the right information to work properly and that information comes in the form of vitamins minerals phytonutrients and good bacteria all of

which help our cells remember how to efficiently tackle their important jobs. Now, one of the things I use every day to support my diet 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. 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 that I can 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-N-S dot com slash Hyman. Now let's get back to this week's episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. Hi, this is Lauren Fee and one of the producers of The Doctors Pharmacy podcast. People who are connected to one another are both happier and live longer. Without community, we cannot survive

and we certainly cannot thrive. In fact, your immediate social circle, the four or five people you surround yourself with the most has the greatest influence on your health. In today's episode, we feature three different conversations about the value of building friendship and community. Dr. Hyman speaks with Radha Agarwal about why friendship and community are so vital for health. He talks to Dan Buechner about his expertise studying the blue zones and the effects of community on

longevity, as well as with Dr. Vivek Murthy about looking inward as the first step to creating and strengthening community in your life. Let's jump in. We are literally born inside of a mother's womb. So we are born in, right, we're born in community and without it, we cannot survive or thrive, right? And it's so clear that our lack of belonging or isolation is the actual essential issue that ladders down to every other societal problem that we are facing today. So gun violence. Unpack that for us, because it's a big statement that loneliness is a cause of so many of societal illness.

Of every societal illness. So obesity epidemic, our lack of, so. So tell us how each one, obesity because. Because, so being socially isolated is as harmful to your physical health as being an alcoholic and twice as harmful as obesity because cellularly, right?

We end up storing more. And again, you're the doctor here, but as there's so much sort of knowledge around and studies around when you don't belong, all of a sudden your cellular reactions become slower you're metabolizing food less fast um and there's actually a lot of studies that i've read around around that maybe you're depressed and anxious and using food as your source of well that too of course that too um but but it actually sets

off a cellular chain reaction our lack of belonging and isolation sets off this sort of cellular chain reaction that sort of slows down our metabolism as well. But also, you know, every anxiety and depression, you know, one in three college students are anxious or depressed today. One of the reasons we launched Daybreak on college campuses is because my fiancé's little brother, three of his best friends commit suicide in college. And turns out it's, what's the word? It's contagious. And so he. It's true. Both positive and negative behaviors are contagious.

Absolutely. Exactly. And so we looked into it and we realized, oh my gosh, there's such a huge issue on college campus around drinking and binge drinking. And, um, so you want to create David on college campuses to inspire connection

without substances as well. So we're now on 15 campuses. Cause we're getting up at six o'clock to go dance. Well, we start a little bit later cause they're definitely not going to come and we have to lure them with burritos but it's cool dancing with burritos yeah no but i you know i and so like unpacking some more like our political strife right now you know the the political polarization that we're facing today you know i think the make america great again hats you know the red hats that people are wearing on the Republican side,

it's a statement of connection and community. I'm a part of something. And these are disenfranchised community members often who are being recruited, who are saying, hey, join our barbecue. We're cooking for everybody. Here's some hats for you guys. And all of a sudden I went from feeling like I don't belong to here's a community that really is welcoming me with open arms. The pipe bombers, all of the gun violence that we're facing today, many of whom have mental illnesses, well, 85% of people experiencing mental illness are isolated or alone. And so because we ostracize them from society, they're not welcome because they're not mentally sort of abled, right? So that piece of it only sort of creates that sense of anger. And so it's on each and every one of us to, out there who's listening on this podcast right now,

to really make friends with everybody, whether it's someone who's older than you, younger than you, someone who's mentally sort you, younger than you, someone who's mentally experiencing mental illness. How can we actually bridge those divides that every single human on this planet can belong? And so the cover of my book has a doorway on it, right? Because the concept of neighborhood, neighborliness, is also lost. I live in New York City. We live in New York City.

Do you know your neighbors' names? Do you know the neighbor across the street? Yeah, we just moved in. Right, but I don't know my neighbors. I've been there for three years, you know? And I've tried to make friends with them, and there's sort of this kind of don't talk to me type of thing.

And so we're making a big effort. You know, we have a welcome committee, like little figurines outside our door that says, you know, welcome to our home. You know, if you need salt, come and borrow it. And we have a welcome committee, like little figurines outside our door that says, you know, welcome to our home. You know, if you need salt, come and borrow it. And we're trying, but it's on all of us. Society needs to embrace the concept of neighborhood again. Good thing, if you not need sugar, but if you need salt.

Yeah, salt. Yeah, exactly. You're not going to get a bag of white sugar and brought it to his house. Definitely. Yeah, so, but I think, you know know community if the most generous act we can do as human beings is to create community the most generous thing we can do for ourselves and for each other is to sort of extend our hand and say hey will you be my friend um so that come that's true for you know for me when i turned 30 years old i looked myself in the mirror i realized i didn't belong and that was the beginning of my journey to community and that's true for me when I turned 30 years old I looked myself in the mirror

and I realized I didn't belong and that was the beginning of my journey to community and that's the first page of my book in my 20s I spent sort of sleepwalking I was in sports bars watching football drinking beer that I didn't want to drink and trying to be cool and relevant

and hanging out with what I thought society sort of deemed as cool like going to clubs and getting drunk and blacking out all the time because I'm Asian and I can't handle my liquor. And then at 30 years old, I woke up and I had this like, whoa, aha moment where I was just like, what have I been doing?

Like, who am I? And that the light in my eyes was dim and I just could second. It's hard to imagine. I mean, right? But in this last nine years. You and your sister are like headlight high beams shining in the world. Well, this is the last nine years, right?

Like we totally, and you're such a dear friend now. And our community is what gives us that life. And so from 30 to 35, Mickey and I spent all of our effort and time focusing on community. And I'd create all these exercises for myself. And in my book, I talk about going in, right? You have to go in first to belong to yourself. So often with community building, we're grasping outside of ourselves to find those friends. But it really starts with this journey of self-exploration first to get to know who we are, what we value, what we can bring to a community and how we're showing up, how are we at listening,

how are we at connecting with everyone around us. It's almost like focusing on not only how to find a friend, but how to be a friend. Yes, that's exactly right. That's exactly right. So the first half of my book really challenges the reader in a gentle and loving way to go inside and ask themselves, how are we showing up and how how can we sort of shine a light on ourselves first

in a beautiful way, in a glorious way, before we go out? I think so much of self-help today also, it traps us. We get trapped in self-help. We get trapped in personal development. That we forget that the whole point of personal development is to do what? Is to better relate to the outside world, right? We go inside. It's called self-care, but it really should be we care. Yeah, right? Exactly. It's like, I'm going to get a massage. I'm going to take care. I'm going to

eat healthy so that I can take care of my children better, so I can serve my community better, so that I can show up for the world better. And yet we forget that. We just get trapped in the look at me selfie moments without realizing that that's actually the sort of the ladder down to isolation, loneliness, and sadness. So in Okinawa, which is one of the longest lived people in the world, they form a community at birth of babies that are kind of connected by their parents

that go through life together and go through all the ups and downs and trials and tribulations from birth to like 100 years old and it builds a sense of and it's not like a hundred people it's like five people or four people and it's uh you know most people can't even say there's one friend they have they can call up when they feel bad or sad who they can have a honest transparent conversation to that's really heartbreaking. And it's so much of a driver of so many of the ills of our society. It's something people don't talk about.

And it's what, you know, when we were with Rick Warren and Saddleback Church, I had the insight of using the power of community to help people create health. So suicide's contagious, but health is contagious. That's right. And obesity is contagious, but so is, you know. Good health. Good health. Healthy living. Right. And I think that's such an important thing you're creating in the world is this call to belong and not only to belong, but actually you've created a very specific roadmap. So I want to get into that now. You've talked about going in to go out. So let's talk about going in and what that means and how do you do that?

Right. So, you know, I have about 20 exercises in my book that really take you by the hand. The whole point is to get dirty in this journey of self-exploration and have fun. But going in starts with first an audit of who are you spending your time with, right? Just take a moment to write down who are the people I'm spending my time with today at work, at home, around me, family, friends, relatives. Who are all the people you're spending your time with? And just write that down on a piece of paper and take a look at this map. Right. And this map will begin to and what I like to do is color code it.

So work friends, I'll color code in green. Right. And family, I'll color code in green, right? And family, I'll color code in red. And friends that I choose, I'll color code in orange, right? So different colors, just to sort of see, ah, okay, cool. So, you know, and then I have this kind of axis of energy that I created in my book, in chapter one, or in part one of the book, where you sort of assess, okay, who are the community members who are bringing me up and who are the community members in my life

who are bringing me down? So looking around, you begin to see, ah, cool. So all the green quadrant sort of is up and to the right. So therefore, I realize that my work life is very positive. I have very positive community at work. But then maybe there's more red dots around family and friends in the negative quadrants so you're like ah okay i need to really understand and assess what's happening in my family life so i can really heal that or support that or ask myself

you know how do i connect and handle um family members and we've all you know we all we've all we're all uh we all go through that and um so so really looking although i know your family they're all pretty awesome well you know your mom's japanese my dad's yeah my sister's a doctor and then your sister's you know well you know it's and culturally it's interesting right like um uh you know my father my mother most some of the most loving community builders i know know, in fact, they modeled what community looks like for us. And yet it's interesting because culturally talking about love and sex and differently, you just don't talk about those things with your Asian parents. And so on one hand, they're the best community builders I've seen.

On the other hand, I do long for a little bit more kind of emotional honesty but I think again we all have those sort of issues I'm going through the motherhood process right now I'm seven months pregnant and I keep asking myself every day what kind of parent do I want to be

and anyway so plotting this graph you begin to sort of see a pattern of, ah, okay, cool. So here is my entire life map and it begins to give you sort of the beginning of that story. And then from there,

you ask yourself, okay, why am I spending my time with these people? Are they grandfathered in? Are they making excuses? Am I being lazy? Is it just easier to keep them around? You know, what is it? Do I not have energy givers or energy suckers? That's right. Exactly. And, and, and, and can I, and, and can I sort of be honest and vulnerable with that person and share, Hey, listen, this is how I'm feeling right now in this relationship. And it's not working for me, or I'm really, you know, sort of wanting to spend time with, you know, sort of more positive forces. I'm feeling right now in this relationship and it's not working for me or I'm really you know sort of wanting to spend time with you know sort of more positive forces I'm

going through pregnancy right now and I don't necessarily I just want to spend just some more time connecting with with the joy in my life you know and and things like that right being more honest and vulnerable and I've had those conversations and it's and it's wonderful either it becomes a mirror for that person to say, oh, wow, I realize I'm not showing up the way you want me to. Or they say, okay, I totally understand. And let's reconnect after you give birth. So I think that there's that honesty piece there that we forget.

We end up just ghosting our people in our lives. We end up running away or we end up shit talking and and it ends up being a very negative experience but um you know saying saying sort of this isn't the time to spend time with somebody right now because i want to level up with my community members is the best thing you can do for yourself and for your friend too because they will begin to see how they're showing up yeah and hopefully they'll go on the journey of self-exploration too so rather than just cut them off just have a real honest conversation with them that's right that takes courage and vulnerability on all of our ends but it doesn't create resentment on the other side that leads to negative storytelling and hurt and all other sort of you know larger issues um so so that's the

first step the first step in going in. So taking inventory. Yeah, taking inventory, exactly. Auditing community you spend time with. The second thing that I, this is what I did when I turned 30, and this is exactly what I outlined in my book, is my own journey that's taken me from feeling like I don't belong to this incredible, connected, joyful community

that gives me wings and lets me fly um the second thing i did was i wrote down a three column list and um which we'll get into and just say column one was all the qualities i was looking for in a friend right so i just wanted to write down and actually manifest and call in what were the qualities i was looking for in a friend right we do this type of audit again for our romantic relationships we do this for our professional careers right I want a job that pays this much I want a job that has this type of vacation I want a job that you know right like in terms of life it's interesting in terms of life planning we it's not a category it's like love work it is money exactly friend is not a category and it is the most important when i say the most important category in life to focus on and everyone says focus on money power

fame and building your business and but really none of it will happen and or will result in joy or joyful life experience if you don't have a community being like oh my gosh mark high five like whoa we get to celebrate your major win, New York Times bestseller list again. Holy shit, let's go and throw a giant party for you. You know what I mean? If you're just kind of like writing by yourself in your room and have no one to celebrate,

then at the end of it, you're empty again, you know? So it's so critical that we continue to put our laptops down and keep our word and go to those dinners with our friends and say yes to the dance floor and say yes to adventure because at the end of the day no matter no amount of success will mean anything if there's no one to celebrate it with right so um so so so column one was all the qualities i was looking for in a friend right so i wanted friends talked about ideas and not each other i wanted friends who said f*** yeah bleep that out

to life I wanted friends who you know really took care of themselves and took care of each other I wanted friends who were interesting

and interested right who were good listeners I wanted friends yeah I just so I wrote down everything I was looking for in a friend

which was kind of vulnerable because there's so much shame around saying I don't belong or there's so much shame around saying I don't belong or there's so much shame around writing down the qualities. It just feels desperate for some reason in today's society, right? But if we just removed... Not really. Right?

But that's what I'm saying. But if we removed all of that stigma, because there is stigma around FOMO, right? Fear of missing out and fear of being left out. You don't tell people like, yeah, I was left out from the party and it really hurt like you're we're so proud we don't really talk about that right but faux blow is a concept talk in my book quite a bit which is fear of being left out right which is a more subversive negative version of FOMO yeah right and then JOMO is joy of missing

out which is the joy of of of missing out and having the confidence to know there's other things to do yeah but so column so column two is all the qualities I don't want in a friend, right? So I don't want friends who are negative Nellies, lazies, shoulder shruggers. Debbie Downers. Debbie Downers, Netflix and chill watchers all the time, and homebodies. I wanted friends who were just really- Say yes to life. Say yes.

And I call it an FYF in my book. It's a very- And somebody else might want a friend who they can sit around and do knitting with. That's right. That's what I'm saying. Drink tea in the afternoon. Everyone's different. So your qualities are going to be very different

from my qualities, whoever's listening out there, right? And that's exactly what you want to do right now is ask yourself, where do I feel the most energized? And then column three, perhaps the most important column, was all the qualities that I need to embody

in order to attract the friends that I want. All the qualities that I need to embody in order to attract the friends that I want all the qualities I need to embody so I need to be less of a workaholic I love my work you know I need to put my laptop down I need to be less judgmental and and nitpicky and perfectionist and um you know I'm a CEO right I run companies for a living and so my job is to focus on what's going wrong right my job is to focus on what's going wrong, right? My job is to focus on how to improve what's going wrong. So if I bring that, I used to bring that into my relationships, into my friendships, I'd be nitpicking what's going wrong in those relationships instead of being grateful for what's going right. So that sort of understanding,

yes, that compartmentalization of in my work i'm going to be focused on really um kind of wanting to improve service and product and whatever but in my personal life to really compartmentalize and say hey wait let me really focus on what's going right um especially as you know as an asian woman you know you grow up in a household where it's like you're only loved if you get an a you know right a plus a plus you know so so it's it's um and you only loved if you get an A. Right, A plus. A plus. A plus. And you did all right. You went to Cornell and you were on the varsity soccer team.

But yeah, so I think it's so important to take that audit and look in the mirror and ask yourself, how are you showing up for your friends too? So that was a really important. Going in is doing an inventory of your life and what matters. Looking at yourself. Yeah, looking at yourself. Yeah, looking at yourself. Where you're not the best friend and what you want. That's right, the qualities looking for.

So what else is part of going in? So going in, there's also another exercise I do, and there's so many more, but I'll share one more before we go out. By the way, the book is full of these amazing practical exercises. It's not like, oh, you should be in a community and you should go have friends. It's like a roadmap, step-by-step, to take you through the process of how do you create community capacity in yourself and how do you build and find community.

And it's really, really awesome. Thank you. And I illustrated the book too, so every page is fun to read. It's not a bunch of words. It's very fun. I really like pictures and colors and it just makes the whole journey

of community building a lot more playful and colorful. So what are the other going in steps? So one more going in exercise I'll share before we move on to going out is I have you also assess what I call your VIA chart. So imagine a three sort of Venn diagram, three circles that you draw. So circle one is your values. The V in VIA is your values. The I in value in the VIA chart is your interests. And the A is your abilities. So just write down your values, your interests and your abilities in three concentric circles. And sit down with yourself and

ask yourself today, Mark Hyman, what do I value today? Because what you value today is going to be different than what you valued maybe 10 years ago. Maybe 10 years ago, you were a big party animal. And then now, you still are. I mean, you know, nothing's changed. I still see a Burning Man fist pumping on the dance floor. But today, you know, maybe you just got married to a beautiful wife.

You're nesting. You have a house in New York now. And so maybe your values today is more family-driven, whereas 10 years ago it might have been different. So I'm seven months pregnant today as well, so my values are different. And values are sort of kind of the guardrails through which you live your life.

What are the things that matter to you? And you can Google values and see sort of what values come up. And there's all kinds of lists that come up. In my book, I list out about 100 values that you can choose from. But it's also something you can find on the internet. And you can begin to sort of map out what do I care about today and really sit with yourself and connect to that essence. So write that down in one circle.

And that will give you, again, the beginning of a roadmap for the type of other people you want to connect with. Shared values are so critical, right? Yeah. And then the I. Because if you name it, then you can identify others, right? That's right. Exactly. And then the I in your VIA chart is your interests.

So what am I interested in today? So it's different from your values. And your values is more sort of kind of intrinsic qualities, family, community, work, life balance, that sort of thing, right? Whereas your interests might be things like hiking and yoga and mindful meditation and music festivals and, you know, and daybreaker. Yeah, thank you. And all kinds of right. So it's what are you interested in tangibly doing today? And, you know, some people I do this workshop with will say, Well, I don't know, I don't, we all have interests, right? So dig deep. If, you know, if you don't have an interest right now, then start cultivating them. And that's

what's so fun about this going in journey is that life is, we have 100 years to live on this planet. Let's really begin cultivating our interests that are outside of just work. Well, only 100 years if you eat right and follow my advice and connect in the community and follow Radha's advice. Then you get to 100. Exactly. If you read all of Mark's books, for sure and and and then your abilities are and I really think about abilities through the lens of what can you bring to your community so what are your abilities not just like I'm a good public speaker but what can you bring to your community so are you is one of your abilities to ask amazing

questions is one of your abilities to to amazing questions? Is one of your abilities to cook? Are you a good cook and chef? Can you cook for your friends? What's one of your abilities to gather people in your home? Is your home a really wonderful place to gather? One of my- I tell you, you're a great DJ. Exactly, exactly.

So two of my friends, I love giving this example. One of them, she always has a purse full of electric candles. She really doesn't like neon lighting. So she'll walk into any room and she'll just be like, oh, no, no, no, this is too harsh lighting. She'll turn off all the lights and break out all these electric candles and vibes out the place instantly. And it's incredible.

And you have these other friends who are great artists, musicians. Exactly, great instruments. Play great artists, musicians. Exactly. They bring instruments. Exactly. Play great things and do skits. That's exactly right. It's just so fun. Yeah.

So they bring instruments. Eli and I bring gold stars often to gatherings. So we'll say, Mark, you did great. It was a wonderful thing you just said. Here's a gold star for you. Right. We went to the hospital when Eli's father was sick. And we gave all the doctors and nurses gold stars

and said, thank you for what you're doing. Great job, you know, checking his pulse. And we looked at you like, what the? And they all started competing with each other for how many, the doctors, like serious doctors were competing with each other for how many. Just like kindergarten. Yeah, for how many gold stars they got

and they put on their badges and it was this like hysterical experience and we turned this sort of otherwise scary place into a playground. And, you know, it's whatever we can bring that feels good for us. It feels natural to us. Bring that to your community and your experience

and write that in your abilities chart. Hey everyone, it's Dr. Mark. Something I get more and more excited about every year is personalized medicine. When I began practicing functional medicine over 20 years ago, it was clear to me we have to look at how unique each body is. Now with the technology advancing in amazing ways, we can truly take that concept to the next level. One of the tools I recently discovered that can help us all do that from home is InsideTracker. Founded in 2009 by top scientists in aging genetics and biometric data from MIT, Tufts, and Harvard,

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And you'll see the discount code in your cart. Now, let's get back to this week's episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. You know, most of the things that people in the blue zones do to live a long time are also things that make you happy. You know, I did another cover story for National Geographic on happiness. So the fact that they're so social, that they make time for people, for face-to-face conversations, long lunches. And they live in villages where they bump into each other in the streets. And every day at 5 o'clock, they pour out into the streets and the little bars and that. And they make time for each other.

And, you know, that feels good. We are a species that evolved socially connecting. And now we know very clearly that people who are well-connected live eight years longer than people who are lonely, for example. And it's just natural there. You also probably notice that people haven't imploded in their devices yet. You know, people do have cell phones there, but they're not on them all the time. And, uh, they haven't, they haven't drank that poisonous Kool-Aid yet. Um, you know,

the, there are still shepherds that the real longevity phenomena in, um, Sardinia is mostly among the males, you know, even though females live, but the males are the,, even though females live, but the males are the really the longest lived people. Longest of men on earth are in right where you visit in Sardinia. So you start looking at their life and you know, even though it's Mediterranean this is the, where you went in the blue zones, actually a bronze age culture. This is a group of people who broke away from

what is today the boss country made their way through what what is today south of france corsica and set up shop uh you know 11 000 years ago so they're not the same as you know like spain and france and the rest of italy it's a bronze Age culture. And most Mediterranean cultures, the men are the sit at the head of the table when it's male-dominated. But I don't know if you know, in Sardinia, it's female-dominated. So women are running the household, and they're taking care of finances and up fixing the roof. And, by the way, they're the ones that carry the guns.

They probably never busted one up, but we saw these women busted out there because they're in charge of civil patrol. So, you know, what really surprised me that where men live the longest, women are in charge. Women are in charge. That's a good lesson. I think that's probably a good lesson. If women were in charge, this would be a very different world, i think quite honestly i think we'd all be better off i think you're right dan i think you're right wow i mean i believe it no no i agree so so i think you know you touched on something earlier which is this whole idea of community and loneliness and

loneliness is among the biggest risk factors for death and for disease and social isolation. And we know from animal experiments that if you give all the same inputs, food, water, light, whatever, to an animal like a monkey, but you don't give it a mother as opposed to the monkey that gets the mother, they age rapidly. They look decrepit. Their immune systems don't work. I mean, it's just, it's extraordinary, like when you see the graphic representation in some of these studies. And I think we see that increasingly here. We've all become an individualistic culture. I mean, there's a lot to be said for, you know, self-expression, for autonomy, for self-realization, for individualism, but not at the expense of connection and community. And I think a lot of

us have lived our lives, you know, going for that holy grail of success in whatever way you define it. And along the way, the debris of our life is the lost friendships, the lack of attention to the people that matter in our life, the lack of being present and connected. And that catches up with us. And that is actually a disease-causing phenomena that literally affects our genes, our epigenetics. All of it is driven through our social network. And our social threads that connect us are more important than the genetic threads in determining our longevity and our health. And that really is powerful. So how do you help people?

And what does the Blue Zones Challenge say about building this? Because especially with COVID and increasing isolation and people getting locked down, it's just hard. I mean, I'm finding one of the biggest challenges for me, which is not a big challenge, but I'm really having trouble with the masks. Not because I don't think they're necessary or we should be using masks to reduce the spread of viral particles and so forth. But I don't see people's faces anymore. I don't see that human expression. I don't see smiles. You know, like I went to shop and get something the other day and I told the joke to the lady at the cashier and I could see her kind of eyes a little bit.

But like I don't know if she laughed. All that natural sort of juice we get from interacting with humans, even that we're not close to this part of our community, is such an important nutrient for our souls, for our health, for our well-being. How do we start to bring that back into our culture? What have you found works, and what do you help guide people to in the Blue Zones Challenge? I'm going to answer that on a macro and a micro level, and they're both important.

So I'm sure you've seen this study that the casual social interactions throughout the day, the more you have is a bigger predictor of longevity than diet and exercise. And I mean, just as you're saying, the interaction with the woman at the grocery store, your postman or your barista, very important. And I argue that that's very much a function of your environment. Again, if you live in a city like Tampa, where you have to drive everywhere, you just don't have, you don't bump into people on the street. You're not seeing your postman except where if you live in a neighborhood like Boulder, Colorado or Santa Barbara or even where I live in Minneapolis or in where I live in Miami I'm out in the streets all the time and I just have get more face time and a lot of social

is a function of being in the presence of other humans so that's the macro answer. The micro answer, which I addressed in Blue Zone Challenge, is that your immediate social circle, those four or five people who you spend the most time with, have a profound impact on your health. If your three best friends are obese, there's 150% better chance you're going to be overweight. Alcohol use, drug use, unhappiness, and even loneliness is measurably contagious. That's actually Nicholas Christakis' work, not mine, but it underpins an important observation in the blue zones, especially in places like Okinawa with this notion of Moai, people pay attention to who they're spending time with. And their immediate friends tend to be eating the same healthy diet.

They tend to be walking places. They tend to care about you on a bad day. They tend to be people you can have meaningful conversations with. So in the Blue Zone Challenge, you know, this is the time of year people start making resolutions. As we all know, you know, resolutions have a half-life of about a week. And they're gone in four weeks. Instead of getting on the new fad diet, I take people through a process of, A, identifying the type of people who are going to favor your health and longevity, and, B, give them a strategy to actually bring them in their circle. And because when it comes to longevity, there's no

short-term fix other than not dying. There's nothing you can do this month or this year, even that's going to really favor your life expectancy in 30 years. So if you want to live a long, if you want to do things that will help you live longer, you have to think in terms of decades or lifetime. What am I going to do that's going to constantly influence me to eat better, move more, socialize more, live and express my sense of purpose and building that immediate social circle, that three or four friends who care about you on a bad day, that's about the most powerful, lasting thing you can do. Yeah, that's really important.

I think you mentioned it. I think we don't really cultivate that and prioritize that in our culture, in our life. And how many people, I think I've seen some data on this, but how many people can actually say that they have someone in their life that they can call up and tell anything to? And the most intimate feelings and secrets. It's Robert Putnam, a Harvard researcher. He wrote Bowling Alone. And Bowling

Alone, and it was written in the late 1980s, he calculated that we, each American, have about three good friends or friends you can count on on a bad day. I keep bringing this up. What that means is you've just broken up with your partner and you're crying your eyes out. You know, we all have backslap buddies, you know, who sure, I'll have a free beer with you on a good day. But I mean, friends will listen. You weep. And, you know, if you need to actually borrow money or you just need to pour your heart out. Well, those are the kinds of friends I'm talking about.

So with three people in the 1980s, we're now down to under two friends like that. And I still, again, I believe it boils down to this thing. More friends on Facebook, but no actual friends. That's right. No friends like Mark Hyman and Dan Buechner. You know, it's true. It's true. I find, you know, you know, I actually COVID and, you know, I went through a divorce and it was rough and I called my circle together. And, you know, I have a lot of guys I've known for a long time,

really close friends. We do men's work together. We know each other for 30, 40 years and we see each other periodically. But so I invited these friends to be part of the circle every week. And we, we do a zoom hangout with seven of us who've known each other 30, 40 years. And it's really about being transparent and honest and holding a container for each of us to be seen and heard, supported, loved. Sometimes we give each other advice and we just listen. And I, I mean, I don't even know how it would have gotten through the last year without it.

And I feel so blessed. I mean, just so beyond blessed to think about that. And I think, you know, part of my early evolution was really understanding the importance of community. And so I've spent a lot of time in my own life cultivating and nurturing and watering those friendships. So, you know, after 40 years, I can call them up and go, hey, I need you. And what was amazing was that I thought, oh, you know, I'm just going through a hard time and, you know, they're going to do it for me. But then I was like, well, can we do it maybe every other week for an hour? They're like, no, no, no. Let's do it every week for two hours. And I'm like, okay, okay. And then like,

they all were so in and I was like, wow, we all need this. We all want this. So I encourage you to think about how do you start to cultivate that and find those people and develop those relationships. And it really is the, it's the medicine that we're missing in our society. I would argue that that investment is way more important than trying to get on a diet or a supplement or, you know, training for a marathon or all these other defaults. You know, the thing is… You're going to eat my Chunky Monkey ice cream now? A little bit of that, but you start to ask yourself why. You look at the budget of the processed food industry, marketing budget, and it's north of $15 billion a year.

And then the beverage association, another $10 billion a year. What is the broccoli about? Broccoli is $100 billion, right? Broccoli advertising? I think it's $100., right? Broccoli advertising? I think it's $100. But also- Good luck. The exercise industry, another $120 billion.

So we are constantly marketed these ideas of what make us healthy. There's no money in creating a men's group. Nobody makes money off of that. Nobody makes money off of you knowing your sense of purpose and living it. Nobody makes money off of you putting your family first or investing in relationships beyond just, you know, the back and forth commerce of it. So, you know, it takes people like you with, you know, with you, you have a powerful mouthpiece here to not even normally tell people about it. But I mean, you also know the underpinning science and you're a doctor. You have MD after your name.

So people listen to you. And that's it's powerful. And I also think it's, you know, for 40 years, we've looked for the answer of better life in technology. And I think technology can help a little bit. But when you look back in places like the Blue Zones, those people are doing things a certain way that has evolved over 11,000 years. And they're still at work today, people's like, because they are working. And to pay attention to this idea of a guy will stop in the middle of the day and just talk to you, or they're either a certain way. And those practices are around because of a certain

social evolution that they've worked. And we ought to be paying more attention to that, in my opinion. Yeah, I think those are really important insights because, you know, the idea that loneliness is the biggest killer. I mean, we're talking about diet, exercise, supplements, longevity, but you know, this idea of community is just so underappreciated. A friend of mine, Rada Agraw, wrote a book called Belong, which is about how to build community. I encourage people to think about getting that book. She's been on the podcast as well.

And I want to move on to sort of talk about the thing that I see happening. And it was amplified during COVID, but for the last three million years, our life expectancy has been going up. And it went up pretty dramatically over the last century with the advent of public health and hygiene and sanitation and vaccinations, which was all great. And the development of antibiotics and the scourge of infectious disease, which killed a lot of people young. And yet now with COVID, this was happening even before COVID, but we're seeing data that shows our life expectancies going down. And with COVID, it went down three years for African-American, Hispanic populations, I think about a year and a half for occasion populations, but it's staggering.

And yet we have the most advanced medical system in the world. So how do we address this? And how do we understand the cause of this decrease in life expectancy? And how do we then sort of shift that around to create a formula for longevity? Well, by the way, it was dropping even before COVID, that's why i said yeah yeah but before you know and it's largely because of a diabetes type 2 diabetes heart disease some types of cancer even dementia all which are mostly avoidable if not almost completely avoidable like type type type type 2 diabetes and i you, I'm sounding like a broken record here. We have to stop beating the dead horse of individual responsibility

and thinking that we're somehow going to muster the discipline and presence of mind for the next 50, 60 years of our life to override this horrible food environment. So it's going to take the realization that we need to shape the way our food is made, shape the way our streets are designed, the advertising environment, what is permitted. You know, we've, we realized that people died prematurely because of smoking. And we use three levers to bring smoking down from 50% to, you know, in some places, 10%. And it's education. So it's knowing the real, the truth about

cigarettes, we need to tell the truth about processed foods. And I would argue we way too much meat, cheese and eggs, we need to secondly, tap use taxation. There's this idea of externality, you know, that it costs you and I about $10,000 a year to pay for obese people. Well, these people aren't obese because it's their fault. They're obese because of what they're eating. We should be charging the manufacturers of that food driving disease to pay for the externality of their costs. And then the last one is regulation. You know, when I work with these blue zone cities, one of the solutions I offer them is limit the number of fast food restaurants. We know that if you live in a neighborhood, Mark,

with more than six fast food restaurants in a half a mile radius from your house, you're 30% more likely to be obese than if there are fewer than three fast food restaurants. So me, the simple answer here is limit the number of fast food restaurants. But nobody, oh my God, that's limits freedoms. But these are freedoms to do unhealthy crap that we shouldn't be doing my father used to say you're you're my um my freedom ends where your nose begins you know and i think i think you know that's a great metaphor for you know the consequences of harm that are being caused by people's actions that should not be free. I mean, you're right.

The Rockefeller Foundation came out with a report that showed essentially it's three times what we actually spend at the grocery store that's the real cost of food in terms of its consequences on our health, on the environment, on social justice issues, on, you know, just a whole catalog of things. I encourage people to check that out. And that's staggering. So it should be, you know, three times the cost of the food to pay for all these consequences. I've seen calculations that the cost of a burger,

the social cost, the economic cost, and the health cost, is about $30 a burger. Now, if burgers were priced, uh, according to the damage they cause, we wouldn't have this problem because burgers would be a once a week, you know, it's no problem. Somebody, you know, you look in the blue zones are eating five times a month. If we were eating meat, cheese and eggs five times a month or junk food,

it'd be no problem. You know, we all get to, but it's this bacon for breakfast, a bologna sandwich for lunch and a pork chop for dinner. That's when we start getting into trouble. And snacking with packaged foods, which, you know, I think you've written about the sort of toxicity of all these artificial ingredients. Our connection to other people is ultimately built on having a strong connection to ourself. Now, what does it mean to have a strong connection to ourself? It means to know that we have a sense of worth and value. It means to recognize that we are human beings

who have something meaningful to add to the world. And that requires a combination of self-knowledge and self-compassion. Now, how do we develop self-knowledge? Well, we develop it partly by living life, but not only by living life, by having time to reflect and time to think. And much of that white space in our life that many people used to ponder and reflect on things on, that has disappeared. It's evaporated as now in the five minutes you have between events or when you're waiting

at the bus stop, we just pull out our devices and look at the news or check our inbox. But ultimately, if we are not able to support, particularly among our kids, a healthy sense of self, if we're not able to convey to them and help them understand what it is that makes them worthy and valuable, and that it's not what they're wearing or how much money their parents have in their pockets or how popular they are and what parties are getting invited to, then we are going to run into a situation where people feel less and less adequate. And then they will seek to be the people that they think other people want them to be. And when we do that, that's a recipe for loneliness. When we try to be something we're not,

when we can't inhabit our own skin, people feel lonely. That's why workplaces often struggle with loneliness because for years we have told people that, you know, don't bring feelings to the workplace and check all of that at the door. And, you know, you're not here to make friends. You're here to get work done and keep your friendships and your personal life outside. And the truth is that's just not a natural way of living. You know, we don't operate like that as human beings. And if we have to be somebody that we're not in the workplace,

that increases our likelihood of being lonely there too. That's true. I mean, we certainly get trained as doctors to not emotionally connect with our patients, right? And I fought that from day one. And when you sit and really get someone and you listen to them and what matters and what they care about

and you really are present with them, it's just so powerfully healing. Forget any other medicine, right? I think that's one of the real gifts. And I think I just want to come back to the whole service concept because I don't know if people understand what that means. When we look at how we're designed, there is a sort of altruism gene that we have. E.O. Wilson talks about the social conquest of the earth, this book, that we cannot survive in isolation and that we're hardwired to support each other, help each other, connect with each other,

and aid each other. And the biology of it's very fascinating. When you look at the areas of the brain that get stimulated by altruism or service or helping others um it actually is the same area of the brain that gets activated with heroin or cocaine or sugar and i you know i remember going to haiti and um you know it was just it was just an awful horrible scene with with 300,000 people dead, 300,000 wounded. I mean, the military who was there, the 82nd Airborne, said they'd never seen anything like this in their entire careers. And the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And we were in the middle of it. And I was working 20 hours a day. And it was horrible conditions. No food, no water. I mean, it was just really tough. And yet I was really happy in this weird way because I was just serving. I was helping. I was serving. It wasn't for me. It wasn't for my ego. It wasn't for anything, my bank account. I was volunteering. And it was,

it was a time that I felt most connected and most fulfilled. So it really mattered. And, and I really think, you know, we need to have a society where we are helping each other and are connecting with each other. And, and it doesn't require anything other than to look around you and see who's in need or, you know, what needs to get done in your community and trying to be that person who can be of service because it'll not only help you with your own emotional, physical, mental health, but it's going to create a culture, like you said, of kindness and love. And that's such what we need in America today, around the world globally, because we're sort of veering the opposite way. And I think that's why your book is so critical. And I encourage everybody to get a copy of

Together, The Healing Power of Human Connection in a sometimes lonely world. Because if all of us took up this book and implemented it in our own lives, and implemented it in our workplace, in our schools, in our families, in our communities, I think this country would turn around pretty fast. I certainly hope so. That's my dream, that we will together be able to build a more connected and more fulfilled society. And what are the challenges some people have to actually doing this in their life? Because it sounds like everybody would want to do this, but how do people get over those obstacles? It's a great question. I think there are a few key obstacles that come up. Number one, sometimes people feel that focusing on connections in their own life is somehow self-indulgent,

that they should be focusing on doing more at work, on getting that promotion, on building up their bank account, on taking their kids to activities. You know, busy parents, I think, are very interesting because I think a lot of them struggle with loneliness, especially in the early years, you know, when their kids are one, two, three, four years old before they're in school. You know, it can be very all-consuming as a parent to really take care of your children, and that can isolate you from others. But I think this feeling that somehow investing in our connections is a luxury, that it's self-indulgent, I think is one of the reasons why people don't do it more. I think the second reason is that, again, there's

a sense of shame that people have in even admitting to others that they need some more human contact, or they need some time with their friends. They don't want to seem desperate or needy or somehow, you know, again, not likable or an outcast in some way. So people have a hard time not just acknowledging to other people, even acknowledging it to themselves. And I think the last thing is there's a structural issue as well, which is that if you look at how our lives are designed, with spending so many hours at work, and many people have to commute many of those hours,

there's a question of time that comes up, which is where am I going to find the time to go and interact with other people and to take a vacation with my best friends, which I haven't done in a long time, or to finally make time to go away with my spouse for a weekend? And those questions feel really burdensome. I mean, they can feel really tiring when you think about it. Oh my God, that's so hard. Let me just keep going with life. But this is where I think it's so powerful and important to recognize that the dividends that come from just a small amount of time spent in connection can last for hours, days, weeks, or even longer. And that's why the five or 10 minutes that you spend with someone that you

love can be really powerful. I'll tell you about something I did in my own life that helped me, which is that, you know, I made a decision after residency training when I had just gone through several years of caring for incredibly sick people, including people who were very young. I remember being on the oncology service and half the patients I was taking care of were all young people in their 20s who had gastric cancer or other malignancies that were in their end stage.

And I remember at the end of that thinking, God, I need to think about my life. And I don't know, that could be me. And am I spending my time the way I want to be spending it? So I made a decision that I would make it a point to go home and visit my parents and my sister more often. And that's when the frequency of my visits actually changed. A year or two ago, I was actually out in Colorado for a fellowship retreat at a point where I was struggling to

figure out what I wanted to do with my life and was also feeling kind of isolated. I was in the throes of early parenthood also, and it was all consumed with the care of our kids, which was wonderful and such a blessing, but really not having much in terms of relationships outside. And I ran into these two friends there who I love, but who I rarely ever see. And we talked about how we wish we got together more often, but we just don't. And then in that moment, I said, why don't we do this? I said, why don't we build a Moai together? And Moai is a Japanese term. I actually have a whole story about MOI in the book. But it's an intentional community. So I said, why don't we just say, because we know we're not going to see each other, you know, probably for another six, nine months.

Why don't we say that every month that we are going to get on video conference together and that we're going to have a two-hour conversation. And let's also say that we're going to be real with each other, that we're going to talk about the issues that we are struggling with, the stuff that really matters to us. Things like health and finances and our relationships with family, which people don't get into often because they're sticky,

but it's the stuff that we all are struggling with. And so we've been doing that for the last year, and it's been so incredibly gratifying. So anyway, the point is that there are reasons to not connect. But once we realize the power of even a small amount of time spent connecting with others, once we realize that we don't need anything else to do that, we just need our intention and a willingness to show up, to listen, to be vulnerable and open with other people in

our life, then we can start building that road toward living a truly connected life. And I think that is what holds the key to greater health and also greater fulfillment. So true. 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

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