The Dr. Hyman Show - Prevent Cancer with These Essential Diet and Lifestyle Changes

Episode Date: July 12, 2024

Did you know that what you eat and the toxins in your environment can significantly influence your risk of developing cancer? In this episode, I’m tackling a major concern that's been making headlin...es: the dramatic rise in cancer among young people. We'll explore the root causes, from chronic inflammation and insulin resistance to lifestyle and dietary choices that are actively impacting your wellbeing. Join me as I provide research-backed solutions and practical strategies to help you reduce your cancer risk and improve your overall health. View Show Notes From This Episode Get Free Weekly Health Tips from Dr. Hyman Sign Up for Dr. Hyman’s Weekly Longevity Journal This episode is brought to you by AG1, Our Place, and Happy Egg. Get your daily serving of vitamins, minerals, adaptogens, and more with AG1. Head to DrinkAG1.com/Hyman and get a year's worth of D3 and five Travel Packs for FREE with your first order. Upgrade your cookware, appliances and more with Our Place. Head over to FromOurPlace.com and enter code HYMAN at checkout to receive 10% off site-wide. Shopping for better eggs shouldn’t be confusing. Look for the yellow carton at your local grocery store or visit happyegg.com/farmacy to find Happy Egg near you.

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Coming up on this episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. A 10% increase in ultra-processed food in your diet, you're gonna have a 13% higher overall risk of cancer, an 11% higher risk of breast cancer, and a 30% higher risk for colon cancer, and a 50% increased risk for pancreatic cancer, which is almost universally deadly. No matter your genetics or lifestyle choices,
Starting point is 00:00:22 as humans, we all share the same basic needs, like adequate nutrition, for example. But with the industrialization of agriculture and toxins in our environment, it's getting harder and harder to get your body the nutrients it needs through food alone. That's where AG1 comes in. AG1 is a foundational nutritional supplement that supports your body's universal needs, like gut optimization, stress management, and immune support. I trust AG1 because, unlike so many products, their entire formula is backed by research studies, not just ingredients. Over 14 years, AG1 has focused on innovation, delivering a trusted nutrient-dense blend that complements my healthy diet. I trust their research and how they're validating the product working in the
Starting point is 00:00:56 body. Try AG1 and get a free one-year supply of vitamin D3, K2, and 5 AG1 travel packs with your first purchase at drinkag1.com slash hyman. That's D-R-I-N-K-A-G-1, the number one, dot com slash hyman. Check it out today. I'm a firm believer that using your kitchen regularly is one of the most important things you can do to be healthy, and it gives you complete control over what food goes in your body, and that's why I cook most of my meals at home. But have you ever thought about whether your cookware itself was healthy? Well, the problem is that so much nonstick cookware contains PFAS. Those are those nasty little chemicals that can permanently damage our health and the environment. They're so bad that the EU, the European Union,
Starting point is 00:01:33 is in the middle of banning them. And the US government has committed $9 billion to address and limit them in a rare bipartisan agreement. And that's why I made the change to OurPlace. OurPlace cookware and appliances are PFAS- free and offer the most durable toxin-free ceramic coatings, ensuring a healthy, safe, easy to clean cooking experience. My team and I have been using their products and raving about them for nearly five years now. And I love that I can use them to whip up truly healthy meals on my own, in my own kitchen, without having to worry about food sticking to the surface or chemicals leaching into my meals. So check out Our Place's cookware, appliances, and more. Just go to fromourplace.com and enter my code HYMAN, H-Y-M-A-N, at checkout to receive 10% off site-wide.
Starting point is 00:02:14 That's F-R-O-M-O-U-R-P-L-A-C-E.com and use the code HYMAN. Our Place offers a 100-day trial with free shipping and returns. Now, before we jump into today's episode, I'd like to note that while I wish I could help everyone by my personal practice, there's simply not enough time for me to do this at scale. And that's why I've been busy building several passion projects to help you better understand, well, you. If you're looking for data about your biology, check out Function Health for real-time lab insights. And if you're in need of deepening your knowledge around your health journey, well, check out my membership community, Dr. Hyman Plus.
Starting point is 00:02:49 And if you're looking for curated, trusted supplements and health products for your health journey, visit my website, drhyman.com, for my website store and a summary of my favorite and thoroughly tested products. Hi, I'm Dr. Mark Hyman, and welcome to Health Bytes. Today, we're confronting a pressing issue that's been grabbing headlines everywhere, the alarming rise in cancer among young people. Now, early onset cancer rates are up nearly 80% from 1990 to 2019. That is terrifying. In the US alone, the American Cancer Society estimates over 2 million new cancer cases that will show up in 2024. We're seeing significant spikes in cancers of the digestive system like colon cancer,
Starting point is 00:03:30 breast cancer, prostate cancer, uterine cancer, and lung cancers. And notably, colorectal cancer has become a leading cause of cancer deaths, particularly striking men under 50 and rising as a major concern for young women. But why? What's driving this influx of cancer rates in younger generations? That's exactly what we're going to cover in today's episode of this podcast. And unlike the news and social media, I'm not just going to spotlight the problem. I'm going to offer real research-backed solutions. We'll delve into the root cause of cancer and explore the impact of chronic inflammation and how our everyday lifestyle choices are creating a cancer-feeding frenzy, accelerating biological aging, and discuss actionable steps to mitigate these risks.
Starting point is 00:04:14 From the importance of early screening to diet and reducing exposure to environmental toxins, my goal is to help you get equipped with practical strategies to take control of your health. Now, cancer is increasing in young people. The rate of more than a dozen cancers has been increasing since the 1990s, especially among young adults. So what types of cancers are on the rise? Well, it's estimated that in 2024, there will be over 2 million cancer cases in the U.S. alone, equal to about 5,480 new diagnoses every single day, over 600,000 cancer deaths. Digestive system cancers, which affect esophagus, stomach, small intestine, colon, rectal, and pancreas, are the biggest ones. And then there's, for women,
Starting point is 00:04:59 the biggest, which is breast, and prostate, uterine, and respiratory cancers rank the highest among all the new cases. Now, could our ultra-processed diet be to blame? Well, I think so. In a 2023 systematic review in The Lancet exploring the relationship between ultra-processed food and cancer risk, nine out of 11 studies found a positive association between ultra-processed food and all cancers except prostate cancer. Now, each 10% increase in ultra-processed food in the diet correlated, and you got to get this, just 10% increase. And there's, by the way, the average American has about 60% of their diet is ultra-processed food, and kids at 67%. If you have a 10% increase in ultra-processed food in your diet, you're
Starting point is 00:05:45 going to have a 13 percent higher overall risk of cancer, an 11 percent higher risk of breast cancer, and a 30 percent higher risk for colon cancer, and a 50 percent increased risk for pancreatic cancer, which is almost universally deadly. That's terrifying. And this is even more infuriating because recently the Dietary Guidelines Committee of America for a dietary guideline said that there's not enough data to say ultra-processed foods make you gain weight, and they basically didn't look at anything else. Well, we know that they both make you obese, diabetic, and cause a host of other diseases, including cancer. So let's take this from a framework of functional medicine.
Starting point is 00:06:20 What is the root cause? Like, how do we get to the root cause of cancer? What's going on where we're seeing such a rapid spike in cancer cases? Well, people are getting sicker younger and they're aging at an accelerated rate. I mean, across the board, not just for cancer, but everything else. Diabetes. I mean, like, you know, I talked about this before, but, you know, we used to call, now we call it type 2 diabetes. We used to call it adult onset diabetes because we never saw in kids. Now we see it in kids all the time. and it's because of their crappy diet. A new research presented at this year's American Association for Cancer Research annual meeting revealed that people born in or after 1965
Starting point is 00:06:52 might be experiencing accelerated cell aging, which could be driving cancer at an earlier age. And in fact, researchers from the University of Washington School of Medicine reported that accelerated aging was associated with higher risks of developing early onset cancers, such as lung cancer, 42% increased risk, GI cancers, 22% increase, uterine cancer, 36% increase, and genetics only account for a small portion of that variability in longevity, about 25%, probably not even that much. What's really driving our accelerated aging is our epigenome, which is how our genes are expressed based on everything we do to them every day. What we eat, our lifestyle, toxins in our environment, and these things can all turn on cancer genes. So there's a huge role of our diet in driving
Starting point is 00:07:36 cancer, particularly sugar and starch, and we'll talk about that, and environmental toxins, which are increasingly on the rise. Petrochemical, plastics, phthalates, endocrine-controlling cancers, heavy metals, you name it. We've done a lot of discussions on the Doctors' Pharmacy podcast about this. Now, I talk about this in my book, Young Forever. We'll link to it in the show notes. But there's a number of things that go wrong as we get older, all of which can contribute to cancer, right? We call these the 10 hallmarks of aging. There's now like 13, but they're basically more or less the same. People don't really understand this, but there's a huge link between type 2 diabetes, prediabetes or metabolic syndrome, obesity, and the risk for a whole slew of cancers. So if your blood sugar is out of whack and your insulin is out of whack and you have some
Starting point is 00:08:20 degree of insulin resistance, you are at much higher risk of a whole host of cancers. Not all cancers, but all the big ones that are killing us. Colorectal cancer, liver cancer, pancreatic cancer, breast cancer, uterine cancer, and many other cancers. I mean, smoking used to be the biggest risk factor. Now, it's our food. And it's all the other cobalt amenities that are driving cancer. So 4% to 8% of all cancers are attributed to obesity.
Starting point is 00:08:49 I think it might even be more than that, but that's on a conservative note. Obesity is associated with 40% greater odds of early onset colon cancer and rectal cancer. So if you're obese, you have 40% higher risk of getting early onset colon and rectal cancer. 45% of adults 59 and younger are obese. So this is a huge thing. And up to 80% of cancer patients have type 2 diabetes or impaired glucose tolerance at the time of diagnosis. So think about that.
Starting point is 00:09:20 Pancreatic cancer is a huge killer. And if you have insulin resistance, if you have type 2 diabetes, if you have impaired glucose tolerance, if you're on that spectrum of poor metabolic health, you're driving a dramatic increase in the risk of getting pancreatic cancer. Studies also show that diabetes significantly increases the risk of cancer and that many people who have cancer have a high rate of diabetes. Now, there's 38 million adults, about 1 in 10 who have diabetes. In some populations, it's a lot more like the African-Americans, Hispanic populations, and the Native Americans.
Starting point is 00:09:51 100 million people have prediabetes. I think it's probably way more than that. It's very conservative. One in three are basically Americans. If you look at the, you know, that's based on this very strict criteria. But if you look at a more detailed criteria of insulin resistance, it's probably affecting over 90% of Americans, which is probably 300 million people. It's scary. The incidence of type 2 diabetes has been going up by about 5% every year since 2002 in young
Starting point is 00:10:19 people. Not in older people used to get it. So what do most chronic diseases have in common? Well, these chronic diseases and aging itself and cancer all have in common something called insulin resistance. I co-founded a company called Function Health. So you can access your data and learn about your own blood work and lab tests and find out if you indeed have any degree of insulin resistance by measuring insulin levels, A1C, blood sugar, lipoprotein fractionation, measure inflammation levels, nutritional levels, all things that play a big role in cancer risk. We're going to talk a little bit about what testing you should get, but you can go to functionhealth.com forward slash mark and jump the wait list. It's about 200,000 people on that,
Starting point is 00:10:59 but you can jump it if you want to look at what really is going on. And we need to do this. There's even newer, more sensitive testing called an insulin resistance score that's available through Quest that actually is very sensitive and can pick up insulin resistance way before any other test. Now, why is insulin bad? Well, it's a growth hormone. It can bind to malignant cells, which often overexpress insulin receptors. And it can also cause cancer cells directly to grow. High insulin levels can also increase the production of something called IGF-1, or insulin growth factor one, or insulin-like growth factor one. And now it's a hormone that increases cell division and growth and inhibits something called autophagy, which is what you need to clean up old damaged cells,
Starting point is 00:11:42 which is what's happening when you're preventing yourself from getting cancer. I mean, all of us have cancer right now in our body. Just realize that. Everybody does. But if our immune system's working, it's surveying the landscape, it's finding those cancer cells, it's sending out the natural killer cells to hunt and destroy, and usually we're good. But if we don't have this process of improving our immune system by having the proper lifestyle and diet, I detail this all in my book, Young Forever, then we're going to get in trouble. Now, high blood sugar is a huge issue. High blood sugar is a huge issue in cancer cases.
Starting point is 00:12:16 High blood sugar is found in 39 to 99% of cancer cases. And that leads to insulin resistance, to free radicals or oxidative stress, and more inflammation. Now, what about alcohol? Alcohol is a big problem. 750,000 global cases of cancer in 2020 could be directly attributed to alcohol, according to a study published in Lancet. Now, we're going to put all the references, everything I'm saying, there's links, there's references, there's scientific data. I'm just not making this stuff up, so you can check in the show notes for that. Now, while heavy drinking accounted for most of the cancers, even light to moderate drinking accounted for about 100,000 cases.
Starting point is 00:12:54 When it comes to eggs, quality matters. And that's why I choose Happy Egg. They're the top free-range egg brand in the nation. And it's easy to see why. Their hens are raised on over eight acres by small family farmers, resulting in eggs with deep orange yolks that look and taste incredible. Their farming standards, coupled with the humane treatment of their hens, leads to superior tasting eggs.
Starting point is 00:13:15 And the proof is right inside the shell. I invite you to taste the difference for yourself. Look for the yellow carton in a store near you and choose Happy with Happy Egg. Remember, when it comes to the food you eat, quality matters. Visit happyegg.com slash pharmacy to get 50% off your next dozen. That's H-A-P-P-Y-E-G-G.com slash pharmacy, F-A-R-M-A-C-Y, to get 50% off your next dozen eggs. How does alcohol increase cancer risk? Well, according to international bodies that look at carcinogens, it's a group one carcinogen, according to the IARC. Now, when alcohol or
Starting point is 00:13:57 ethanol is metabolized in the body, it's first converted to something called acetaldehyde. It's a highly reactive and a toxic compound. Now, acid aldehyde can cause DNA damage. It can produce harmful mutations that lead to cancer. It also interferes with DNA repair mechanisms. Now, alcohol metabolism in cells, particularly the liver, leads to the production of reactive oxygen species. It damages also your cellular components
Starting point is 00:14:22 like lipids, proteins, DNA, and it promotes inflammation. It also impairs the absorption of really important nutrients like vitamin A and C and D and folate, as well as increases the excretion of minerals that you need for your immune system. So you can see alcohol causes cancer in all sorts of ways. It also can increase circulating estrogen levels. So the more alcohol you drink, the higher estrogen level, even if you're a man. And it's a risk factor for breast cancer. And we're even seeing breast cancer in men now because of the increase in estrogen in their bodies because of the extra fat that they accumulate.
Starting point is 00:14:55 And fat produces estrogen. Now, one of the major modifiable risk factors for breast cancer is getting rid of alcohol. For every 10 grams of alcohol per day, which is about one drink, the risk for breast cancer goes up 10%. The average risk if you, for example, a woman, you have one glass of wine a day, it increases your risk of breast cancer by 40%.
Starting point is 00:15:15 Now, chronic alcohol consumption also causes other problems, right? So a little bit, you're getting a risk, right? But there's more aggressive use of alcohol that can cause liver cirrhosis, scarring of the liver, and that's another big risk factor for liver cancer. Alcohol also damages mucous membranes in the mouth, the throat, the esophagus, the larynx, the stomach,
Starting point is 00:15:34 and the colon and the rectum. And that's why it increases the risk of all these digestive cancers. 30 grams or more, which is about three drinks per day of alcohol increases the risk of colorectal cancer. And the problem is alcohol consumption increased during the pandemic, which maybe has led to the rise in cancers we're seeing after the pandemic, or maybe due to COVID. We're not sure if the coronavirus in some way creates this chronic low-grade inflammatory
Starting point is 00:15:58 state that increases cytokines, even when the virus seems to be over, there's this lingering effect of long COVID. And that may be why we're seeing this increase in cancer risk and rates after COVID. Also, nutrient deficiencies are a big factor. And in fact, having adequate vitamin D levels is protective against cancer. So you need to get your levels tested. You need to know your numbers because you can't just guess. You can't know what your vitamin D level is because some people need more or less. Most people are deficient. And vitamin D is so critical because it has so many cancer fighting functions within the body. And there's also a large body of evidence that vitamin D is so protective against cancer and that low vitamin D is a huge risk factor for getting cancer and having high vitamin
Starting point is 00:16:45 D is a big factor in reducing the risk of most types of cancer. So how does vitamin D work to fight cancer? Well, it inhibits cancer cell growth and proliferation. It reduces cancer metastases or the spread of cancer. It stimulates the maturation of healthy cells. So it makes your cells turn into normal cells. It induces the death of cancer cells, what we call apoptosis or programmed cell death. That's a good thing. It prevents the blood vessel growth in tumors or angiogenesis. It prevents inflammation associated with cancer, and it reduces the incidence and or death due to
Starting point is 00:17:22 cancer. So basically, it lowers the chance of getting it and of dying from it. Women with a mean vitamin D serum level greater than or equal to 40 nanograms had a 71% lower risk of cancer than women with serum levels less than 20. And that was looked at over a period of about four years for all invasive cancers combined,
Starting point is 00:17:44 excluding skin cancer. Maybe that's because they go in the sun. Now, that's just stunning to me. And in most lab reference ranges, say 20 is normal. Some have moved up to 30. But certainly 40 is considered a higher end level of vitamin D, according to most lab reference ranges, because the reference range is 20 or 30, not 50, which is probably what it should be.
Starting point is 00:18:04 Colorectal cancer is another big factor in vitamin D. Meta-analysis of many randomized controlled trials report a 30% reduction in disease progression or death from colorectal cancer among patients who supplemented with vitamin D. So even if you had cancer and you took vitamin D, it seemed to reduce your risk. Another meta-analysis of 15 studies in 14 countries reported dose-response relationship between serum vitamin E level and the risk for colorectal cancer. So the more elevated your vitamin E level was, the lower your risk of colon cancer. 30 nanograms was associated with a 33% lower risk of colorectal cancer.
Starting point is 00:18:42 But if your level was 50, which is I think it should be 50 or more, it was associated with a 60% lower risk of colorectal cancer. So the most reference range is quote the bottom limit of normal, but I don't think that's normal. I think that's suboptimal. What else can cause cancer? Well, our sedentary lifestyle. Exercise is one of the best tools that we have to prevent cancer. It's anti-inflammatory. It produces all sorts of antioxidants. It supports your blood and lymph flow and helps balance your blood sugar, helps you detoxify. It's great, right? Everybody knows exercise is good for them. And a sedentary lifestyle means we're missing out on all the
Starting point is 00:19:20 benefits for physical, metabolic, hormonal, and overall health. So you got to exercise. There's no way about it. Now, what else might be going on? Well, up to 10% of cancers may be genetic, but just because you have the genes doesn't mean you're going to get the cancer for sure. In fact, there was this twin study, I think it was in Denmark, it was 88,000 twins, 44,000 twin pairs. And they looked at cancer in that group and they found only 10% of cancers kind of matched with identical twins. So 90% is environmental. How, that's a pretty depressing bunch of news, right? Cancer risk is going up.
Starting point is 00:19:53 It's younger people. There's all these things that cause cancer, the coronavirus. I don't know, what are we going to do, right? Well, the good news is we know a lot about how to lower our risk. So what would be a coherent and a comprehensive functional medicine approach? Well, first you need to do testing because you don't want to guess, you want to test. And you want to look at testing
Starting point is 00:20:12 that indicates your risk of cancer. For example, insulin, very important. Fasting insulin is a highly predictive of insulin resistance. And there's actually a newer test that Quest is doing called insulin resistance. And there's actually a newer test that Quest is doing called insulin resistance score, which combines an insulin test with a C-peptide test. That's a precursor of insulin. And it looks at the ratio. And it's using a very sophisticated measurement called
Starting point is 00:20:37 mass spectrometry, much more accurate than what you get in a regular blood test. So this is the test I'm going to be using for all my patients, because even is better than anything else we're using right now. Also, you need to look at lipid panel to see if you have insulin resistance through lipoprotein fractionation, your blood sugar, your A1C as we talked about, your blood count, which can detect many blood cancers, the whole nutritional analysis because vitamin D, omega-3s, B vitamins like folate, B12 and B6 affect cancer risk, zinc, iron, magnesium, looking affect cancer risk. Zinc, iron, magnesium. Looking at inflammation levels with CRP, cortisol. Looking at metabolic factors like leptin, uric acid, which we talked about.
Starting point is 00:21:15 Sex hormones, you know, if your estrogen is really high, it may be a factor. Fatty liver also drives cancer risk. So looking at your liver enzymes, heavy metals. All these things can be done with our test called Function Health Test. And as I mentioned before, I co-founded a company called Function Health to allow easy access to testing without going through doctor insurance. It's $15,000 worth of tests for less than 500 bucks. And it's twice a year testing with a membership model. And you can learn all this about yourself.
Starting point is 00:21:40 In fact, we also have a test available there called Gallery by Grail, which is a liquid biopsy of 50 different cancers that is highly predictive of what's going on, less than a half a percent false positive rate, which is far lower than most other screening tests like mammograms and so forth. And it also is accurate about 70% of the time, meaning 75% of the time you have a cancer, it'll pick it up. Now it'll miss maybe very early ones, but it's actually better than most screening tests. It picks cancer up a year or two or even three before you'd see it on any other screening test. And that's part of our offering with Function Health. And we've already picked up a significant number of cancers and saved many lives as a result of this early testing. And it's in young people too. And I recommend doing it
Starting point is 00:22:28 every year as a screening test. It's well worth the effort and the time and the money. And you can learn more about Function. You can go to functionhealth.com forward slash mark. And there's other things you might want to do as well. You like stool analysis, looking at genetics, looking at even toxin levels in your cells. I've been recently using a lab in Germany called IGL that does deep toxin testing and mitochondrial testing and looks for DNA damage and very, very helpful. And you need that with a physician who understands that, a functional medicine doctor. But first you got to test and see what's going on and you got to correct all those things. And those are all treatable things. So what can we do in addition to testing to lower our risk of cancer? Well,
Starting point is 00:23:08 many cancers are lifestyle related. And according to the WHO, an estimated between 30 to 50% of cancer cases are preventable through a healthy lifestyle and avoiding occupational carcinogens and environmental toxins. So that's a lot. I mean, think about it. You can cut up to 50% of cases down by simply living a healthy lifestyle and avoiding toxins. Pretty good. Now, I mean, you have to know what to avoid, right? And it's not that hard, right? Don't smoke, don't drink. Or if you drink, keep it to a bare minimum because we know that there's really not even a safe level, even red wine. Also food, right? Just get your diet sorted out. I mean, I think if you're listening to me, you probably already know that I'm very passionate about food as medicine,
Starting point is 00:23:48 and you want to eat the right drugs, and you want to avoid the wrong drugs, right? Because food can heal, but food can harm. And you want to make sure you're eating the foods that are healing, not harmful. So obviously avoiding ultra-processed foods, starch, sugar, refined grains, all those things. I mean, if you're going to have grains, don't have them refined. If you're going to have starch, don't have too much. You're going to have sugar occasionally as a treat. Obviously, don't eat fast food. Don't eat sugar-sweetened beverages. Don't eat hot dogs, hamburgers, low-quality meats. I mean, if it's obviously a grass-fed hamburger, that's fine. Dairy products also may be increasing the risk of cancers through their load of hormones that are naturally in them,
Starting point is 00:24:26 as well as hormones that can be added. There's also pesticides and try to eat organic when you can. So just be smart. I don't eat anything that comes in a package of the long list of ingredients you can't pronounce. I mean, I did a whole health bite episode on ultra processed foods. We're going to link to it in the show notes. Artificial sweeteners, interestingly, it's listed by the IARC, which is an international body that looks at carcinogens, classified aspartame as a group 2B carcinogen, which is possibly carcinogenic to humans, including equal and nutra-sweet. So, you know, no reason to really have those artificial sweeteners. You know, if you want a little stevia or monk fruit, that's fine, but stay away from all the weird stuff.
Starting point is 00:25:07 A reduced fructose intake, not in the form of fruit, but in the form of table sugar, high fructose corn syrup, ultra processed food, liquid fructose, and things like soda, fruit juice, not okay. Whole fruit is okay. It has all the fiber, the phytonutrients, polyphenols, it makes it fine. Obviously, don't eat fried foods charred foods sugary sauces and barbecued foods those will cause the advanced glycation end products they raise your a1c of course what you should eat is real food right keep your blood sugar balanced with a low
Starting point is 00:25:35 glycemic anti-inflammatory diet get lots of disease-fighting phytochemicals and antioxidants which come from plants in fact the lancet paper reported that a low intake of vegetables and fruit, along with other dietary risk factors, led to about 11 million deaths a year. And that is not just not having the protective foods, but also eating a lot of processed food. And about 255 million years of disability-adjusted life in 2017. So whether it kills you or not, it's going to make you sick and unhealthy and feel bad. Just try to cook more meals at home. Eat out less. Eat a variety of whole colorful plant foods. More color, more benefit, right? That's where all the phytochemicals are. Eat fruit, but have low glycemic fruit that's got lots of fiber, polyphenols, berries of all kinds, pomegranate, apples, stone fruits like plums and nectarines, peaches, cherries. And don't eat high glycemic
Starting point is 00:26:24 fruits a lot, right? If you're diabetic, for sure, but things like pineapple, peaches, cherries, and don't eat high glycemic fruits a lot, right? You know, if you're diabetic, for sure, but things like pineapple, melons, things like that, grapes, not so great. Eat plenty of fiber, at least 30 grams or probably 50 grams a day is where to shoot for, ideally, and that keeps your microbiome healthy, prevents cancer. Make most of your plate non-starchy veggies. Eat foods that help you detox, environmental toxins
Starting point is 00:26:43 like the Christopher's vegetable family, bok choy kale cauliflower broccoli collard greens dandelion greens you know have whole grains and legumes but um make sure you have the ones that are not full of glyphosate and sprayed and don't definitely you know if you want to eat wheat have wheat berries that are regeneratively grown don't't eat the modern dwarf wheat, which is just full of gliadin and inflammatory compounds. You also want to make sure you reduce your toxic exposures, right? Water filter, air filter, don't use plastic stuff. Go to ewg.org, the environmental working group, to really dive into all the resources they have to help you reduce your exposures to toxins in your food, your household cleaning products, your skincare
Starting point is 00:27:23 products, your food, everything. Make sure you focus on simple changes that can make a profound difference over time. It's not the one big thing you're going to do. It's all the little things that add up over time. But I think the good news is we know now a lot of what causes cancer. We can do a lot to prevent it. And we need to be basically the CEOs of our own health. So check out your lab test at functionhealth.com forward slash mark.
Starting point is 00:27:42 You know, I wouldn't get too depressed about it because there's so much now we can do, especially with the Grail gallery testing for liquid biopsies. That made me feel a lot better because I have, at least my mother had some cancer, my father died of cancer, my sister died of cancer. So I deeply understand the concern about cancer and I definitely don't want it. So I'm going to get that test every year. So by understanding these trends and making good health choices, we can really all take great steps for preventing cancer and promoting longevity in our own life and our community. So stay informed, stay proactive. Let's use this knowledge to positively impact our health and the health of future generations. And I'll see you next time on the podcast. Thanks for listening today. If you love
Starting point is 00:28:25 this podcast, please share it with your friends and family. Leave a comment on your own best practices on how you upgrade your health and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And follow me on all social media channels at Dr. Mark Hyman. And we'll see you next time on The Doctor's Pharmacy. I'm always getting questions about my favorite books, podcasts, gadgets, supplements, recipes, and lots more. And now you can have access to all of this information by signing up for my free Marks Picks newsletter at drhyman.com forward slash Marks Picks. I promise I'll only email you once a week on Fridays and I'll never share your email
Starting point is 00:28:57 address or send you anything else besides my recommendations. These are the things that have helped me on my health journey and I hope they'll help you too. Again, that's drhyman.com forward slash Mark's Picks. Thank you again, and we'll see you next time on The Doctor's Pharmacy. This podcast is separate from my clinical practice at the Health and Wellness Center and my work at Cleveland Clinic and Function Health, where I'm the chief medical officer. This podcast represents my opinions and my guests' opinions,
Starting point is 00:29:20 and neither myself nor the podcast endorses the views or statements of my guests. 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. Now, if you're looking for your help in your journey, seek out a qualified medical practitioner. You can come see us at the Ultra Wellness Center in Lenox, Massachusetts. Just go to ultrawellnesscenter.com. If you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner near you, you can visit ifm.org and search, find a practitioner database. It's important that you have someone in your corner who is trained,

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.