The Dr. Hyman Show - Reversing Metabolic Disease

Episode Date: July 24, 2020

Reversing Metabolic Disease | This episode is brought to you by Paleovalley Only 1 in 8 Americans are considered metabolically healthy (think obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and hypertension). Our poor metabolic health is driving our chronic disease epidemic and putting people at higher risk of experiencing severe complications from COVID-19, if they are to get the virus. The good news is that it is possible to become metabolically healthy in a matter of months, if not weeks. In recent conversations with Dr. Aseem Malhotra and Chris Kresser, Dr. Hyman discusses the drivers of poor metabolic health and how, with the right support, making changes to your diet and lifestyle can rapidly optimize your health. Dr. Aseem Malhotra is a founding member of Action on Sugar and was the lead campaigner highlighting the harm caused by excess sugar consumption in the United Kingdom, particularly its role in type 2 diabetes and obesity. In 2015, he coordinated the Choosing Wisely campaign by the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges as lead author in a BMJ paper to highlight the risks of overuse of medical treatments. In the same year, he became the youngest member to be appointed to the board of trustees of UK health think tank, The King's Fund, that advises government on health policy. His first book, co-authored with Donal O' Neill, The Pioppi Diet, has become an international bestseller. Chris Kresser M.S., L.Ac is the co-director of the California Center for Functional Medicine, founder of Kresser Institute, and the New York Times bestselling author of The Paleo Cure and Unconventional Medicine. He is one of the most respected clinicians and educators in the fields of Functional Medicine and ancestral health and has trained over 1,500 clinicians and health coaches in his unique approach. His health coaching program, called ADAPT, is the one I recommend for my staff at Cleveland Clinic and he’s the guy I trust with my own health. Find Dr. Hyman’s full-length conversation with Dr. Aseem Malhotra, “How Diet Is Driving COVID-19 Outcomes,” here: https://DrMarkHyman.lnk.to/DrAseemMalhotra Find Dr. Hyman’s full-length conversation with Chris Kresser, “Is Meat As Bad As We Think: Breaking Down Nutrition Myths,” here: https://DrMarkHyman.lnk.to/ChrisKresser This episode is brought to you by Paleovalley. Paleovalley is offering Doctor’s Farmacy listener's 15% off your entire first order. Just go to paleovalley.com/hyman to check out all their clean Paleo products and take advantage of this deal. I definitely recommend trying the Grass-Fed Beef Sticks, Bone Broth Protein, and the Organ Complex.

Coming up on this episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. When you go to the doctor, you know, they've got the standard, you know, what's the blood pressure? Are you a diabetic? What's your cholesterol? And then we treat those individual so-called risk factors with separate medications. The overlying theme is metabolic disease. Hey everybody, it's Dr. Hyman. So many of my patients ask me how I manage to work multiple jobs, travel frequently, spend time with my family, and still focus on my health. I know it can seem hard to eat well when you have a lot going on, but the trick is to never let yourself get into a food emergency and to stay stocked up with the right things to support your goals. When I keep nourishing snacks and the right supplements to optimize my health at home and at the office, I know I'm helping myself make good choices in the future. And recently, I discovered some products from

Paleo Valley that I keep on hand to grab and go. They help me stay full and energized even when I'm super busy. Their grass-fed beef sticks and pasture-raised turkey sticks are some of my favorites as a quick go-to snack, and I love mixing their grass-fed bone broth protein into my morning smoothies or coffee. Another one of Paleo Valley's unique products that I really love is their grass-fed organ complex. When our ancestors ate animals, they used all the parts, and that included the extremely nutrient-dense organs like the liver, heart, and kidneys. Now, I know that not everybody's crazy about preparing organs in their own kitchen,

so this supplement is the perfect solution. The Organ Complex from Paleo Valley is an incredible natural source of vitamins A, B2, B3, B5, B6, B9, and B12, and minerals like selenium, iron, zinc. It's also rich in amino acids glycine and proline that benefit connective tissue joint and digestive health. And you'll see on their site that it has some really amazing reviews. Plus, it's completely tasteless. This supplement is the perfect way to eat nutritious grass-fed organs without having to prepare them yourself.

Right now, Paleo Valley is offering my listeners 15% off your entire first order. Just go to paleovalley.com forward slash hymen to check out all their clean paleo products and take advantage of this deal. That's paleovalley.com forward slash hymen. I definitely recommend trying the grass-fed beef sticks, bone broth protein, and the organ complex. All right, let's get back to this week's episode. Hi, I'm Kea Perowit, one of the producers of the Doctors Pharmacy Podcast. Things like your blood pressure, cholesterol, triglyceride levels, average blood sugar, and waist circumference are all reflections of your overall metabolic health. A recent study showed that only 12.2% of the U.S. population is considered metabolically healthy. Our poor metabolic health

is driving our current chronic disease epidemic and skyrocketing healthcare costs. Dr. Hyman recently explored this topic in his conversation with cardiologist Dr. Asim Malhotra. My goal as a functional medicine doctor is to make my patients more metabolically resilient. If you have diabetes, you are not metabolically resilient and if you have diabetes you are not metabolically resilient and you don't have many degrees of freedom in that but if you like you said if you're doing exercise and you're eating healthy most of time and you want to have a little pasta or a piece of bread it's not gonna kill you and you'll be fine you know handle it but if you look at my patients

who have severe metabolic disease and diabetes, they need aggressive treatment. And some of our colleagues and friends are using ketogenic diets, which basically eliminate all the carbohydrates from the diet, which is 5% carbohydrates. It's very, very low. And they're seeing reversal of diabetes, which is not something we learned about in medical school. You can't reverse type 2 diabetes, but it actually can be reversed. But it requires an extraordinary and often heroic change in diet, which is not easy for people. But, you know, if you've spent your life getting there in, you know, decades and decades of ruining your metabolism, it actually doesn't take that long. Within, you know, six months to a year, you're going to be really good if you do that.

Yeah. I mean, even within some of my patients, patients mark i'm sure you've seen it as well even within a few weeks you know i've seen people send their type 2 diabetes into remission in in 28 days oh yeah and i think that's a really important message with covid is that if people do these changes now they are going to be metabolically more resilient their immune system is going to be more resilient um you know within within the space of a month. Or less. And that's something I think we need to talk about is, you know, there are things you can do, which can rapidly reduce one's risk, and really reverse the metabolic syndrome. Quickly. I think maybe it's a good opportunity for us to really talk about what those five metabolic markers are, because it's not something that is part of conventional practice in medicine. You know that when you go to the doctor,

you know, they've got the standard, you know, what's the blood pressure? Are you a diabetic? What's your cholesterol? And then we treat those individual so-called risk factors with separate medications. But the overlying theme is metabolic disease. And just to give you some perspective, there's some very good data from the United States, which I referenced in my article in European Scientist. Only one in eight adult Americans are metabolically healthy. I mean, that is extraordinary. Seven out of eight are not. You're right. And I want to, before we get into the assessment of how we look at that and what we can do, I want to dig a little bit more into the data on how obesity is linked and overweight, not

just obesity, and even what we call metabolically obese normal weight, which I refer to as skinny fat. You look thin on the outside, but you're fat on the inside. You're metabolically unhealthy. That is up to 20% to 40% of thin people who are metabolically unhealthy. So when you think 75% overweight and then 30% to 40% of the rest of the 25% of thin people who are metabolically unhealthy. So when you think 75% overweight, and then 30 to 40% of the rest of the 25% of the people, the rest of the quarter population is not great. You're talking about like 90%. Mark, you're right. And I think that the most

severe metabolic disease can affect absolutely 20 to 40% of people with normal BMI. But in a more sensitive way, and on sort of the latest definitions. And that, again, is a very interesting paper that shows, you know, looks at American data over several years. The most recent data shows that less than one in three people, less than one in three people with a normal body mass index between 18 and 25 are metabolically healthy. That means two thirds of people of a normal weight are metabolically unhealthy,

which basically means, as I've said before, there's no such thing as a healthy weight, only a healthy person. And I think that also brings us on to the discussion briefly. I think that there is still a bit of a misperception or misunderstanding there that you can be fat and fit. Sorry, you can't. The data shows that even if you exercise, if you've got excess body fat, you are at higher risk. And I think that message also needs to get out to the public because there still seems to be a lot

of misinformation that, you know, you can outrun a bad diet. And as long as you're working out, I'm sure you see in America, there's probably lots of people who are overweight or obese, who are exercising now. We're not saying don't exercise. Of course, it's a good thing to do for you. But actually, you'd be doing a lot better if you also change your diet and got your weight down. Yeah, I mean, I would say you can't exercise your way out of a bad diet. That is far more an impact. And yes, if you clean up your diet and your exercise, that's ideal. And I do both. But if you see so many people who are very overweight who exercise a lot, it's because their diet is not right.

So that's the key. And what's interesting, it's not just any fat. It's a certain type of fat and a certain location of fat. So can you talk about this uniqueness of this type of belly fat that's causing the problem? Yeah, it's a visceral fat, isn't it? It's a fat that really surrounds the vital. Yeah, it's a visceral fat, isn't it? It's a fat that really surrounds the vital organs, the liver, the pancreas. That is what causes also the dysfunction, if you like, of those organs that link to, you know, dysregulated metabolic control

of glucose, insulin resistance. And over time, this is what causes all these, or is at the root of all these chronic diseases, heart disease, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, probably also cancer and Alzheimer's disease as well. Now, people say, well, you know, it's their poor diet, they should take care of themselves, they don't pay attention. But you've written a lot about how this whole idea of blaming the victim, personal responsibility is fundamentally flawed. Can you really talk about why we shouldn't be blaming the people who are eating the bad food? Yeah, Mark, I think, yeah. So personal responsibility, I think we have to define it first.

To exercise personal responsibility, two basic things you need is knowledge. You need the right information and you need choice. You need to have access. It needs to be affordable. You need to have access. So ultimately, because the food environment is really what drives our behavior more than anything else in terms of what we eat and ultra processed foods have become unavoidable. It's very difficult. So it's much more difficult to exercise personal responsibility. And more than 50% of what we consume in the UK, and I'm sure that it's similar in the US, is ultra processed junk food, Mark. More than 50% of our calories is junk. Yeah, it's not a competition we want to win, but it says 60%.

The prevalence of our sugary, starchy, ultra-processed food landscape has reached crisis level. These foods are nearly unavoidable, and even with the knowledge of how to avoid them, access and affordability issues are a major concern and disproportionately affect poor and black, brown, and indigenous communities. Yet when armed with knowledge, accessibility, and the right supports, phenomenal change can rapidly occur. Dr. Hyman discussed this in a recent interview with functional medicine practitioner Chris Kresser. There's this one woman, I just want to quickly tell her story, Janice, who was 65 and she was severely obese.

She had heart failure. She had type 2 diabetes on insulin for 10 years. She had kidney failure. Her liver was starting to fail. She had high blood pressure. She was on a pile of meds and felt like crap all the time and was on her way out. She came to the group and just started with the simple lifestyle changes. It wasn't like tons of functional medicine testing or tons of supplements or anything.

It was just like group support, lifestyle change, and a very powerful anti-inflammatory, low glycemic, whole foods diet. Yeah, ultra-vore diet. Basically, yeah. It was based, it's based on the 10-day detox. I would essentially, it's like mostly plants with some healthy animal foods and not starch or sugar. And in three days, she was off for insulin.

In three months, she lost 43 pounds, but that was not the significant part. Her heart failure reversed, which you never see in medicine. Her kidney failure reversed, which you never see in medicine. With any drug, her liver failure got better. Her high blood pressure went away.

She got off all her medications. And in a year, she lost 116 pounds and stayed that way. And what's more remarkable is that she said she saved out of her own pocket, her co-pays for her medications, 20,000 a year. Changing our behavior is the single most important step we can take to preventing and reversing chronic disease. I'm more convinced of that than I ever have been. It's so true.

And it's powerful because people can have a huge impact on each other. But telling people what to do to change their behavior doesn't work. I mean, look, do you like to be told what to do? I don't like to be told what to do. Most people don't like to be told what to do. We have this natural inclination to resist. According to the CDC, about 6% of Americans consistently engage in the top five health behaviors. And we're not talking about complex stuff like intermittent fasting and keto cycling. 6%. So these behaviors are maintaining a healthy weight, not smoking, not drinking excessively, getting enough physical activity and getting enough sleep. Okay. You and I are hopefully in the 6%.

6%. And Mark, it's not because people don't know. There is a lot of controversy over paleo, vegan, all that. There's not a lot of controversy about those five things. Everybody knows that they shouldn't be smoking a lot, drinking a lot. They should get some sleep and they should exercise. So are they not doing it because they don't know of course not they're not doing it because they don't know how to change and they don't have the support that they need to change but we know from the science very clearly that friend power is far more powerful than willpower to create behavior change and we talked about this but you know i created this faith-based wellness program

in a church where we got 15 000 people to lose a quarter million pounds in a year and get healthy it wasn't a weight loss program was a health program yeah and they did it in small groups with each other without a health coach without a nutritionist yeah without a doctor yeah but use the power of love and each other and connection and accountability and feedback and support, which is exactly what a health coach does. Absolutely. So it's, Rick Warren said it best. He says, everybody needs a buddy.

Yeah. When we join up with others who have the same values, struggles, and goals, some really amazing things can happen. We are actually more strongly impacted by our peers and social networks than by our genetics. This is a key learning when it comes to improving our health. Friend power is truly more important than willpower. And group-based healthcare solutions are starting to gain more traction. Not only does being a part of a group help people achieve their health goals, having a sense of community with strong relationships is linked to living longer, being happier, and staying physiologically and

physically healthy. COVID-19 has certainly introduced unique challenges when it comes to surrounding yourself with community support, but it has also created many new possibilities to virtually connect with communities who share your same values and health goals. The first step in reversing metabolic disease may very well be joining or creating a community to support your health. Thank you for tuning into this episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to check out Dr. Hyman's full-length interviews with Dr. Asim Malhotra and Dr. Chris Kresser.

Please also consider sharing this episode with a friend and leaving us a comment below. Until next time. Hi, everyone. I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. Just a reminder that this podcast is for educational purposes only. This podcast is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided on the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're

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