The School of Greatness - 293 Dr. Mark Hyman: The Truth About Eating Fat to Get Healthy
Episode Date: February 22, 2016"Food is not just calories; it's information." - Dr. Mark Hyman If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes, video, and more at http://lewishowes.com/293 ...
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This is episode number 293 with New York Times best-selling author, Dr. Mark Hyman.
Welcome to the School of Greatness.
My name is Lewis Howes, former pro-athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur.
And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness.
Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.
Thomas Jefferson said,
If the body be feeble, the mind will not be strong.
I am super pumped you guys are here for this special episode with Dr. Mark Hyman. For those that don't know him, he is the director of the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine,
the Prickser Foundation Chair in Functional Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic,
Chairman of the Institute for Functional Medicine, and founder of the Ultra Wellness Center.
He's also the number one bestselling author of 12 books
and just came out with a new one called Eat Fat, Get Thin.
And everything has to do with our health.
You know, people would spend millions, billions of dollars.
The richest people in the world would spend all of their money
to cure their health if they had cancer
and they had a few months left to live.
Everything evolves around how we feel, our mind, our health, everything inside of us.
Everything evolves around our health.
And today we've got one of the leading authorities, experts, minds in this space, Dr. Mark Hyman,
who is, in my opinion, one of the most credible people to talk about health
and food and how food is medicine.
And some of the things we're going to be covering are what is the best first step to heal yourself
if you do have a health issue, how we got it backwards on the role of fat in our diets,
the key to changing your hormones so that you're not hungry all the time, what the U.S. government
just changed in their food recommendations, which is opposite of what they used to say,
why Dr. Mark Hyman says we must stop supporting factory farms, and so much more.
He dives into a lot of great statistics, research, data to talk about how to live a healthy,
happy life.
I'm super excited about this one. Make sure to share this with your friends. research data to talk about how to live a healthy, happy life.
I'm super excited about this one.
Make sure to share this with your friends.
Check out the full show notes and the full video interview back at lewishouse.com slash 293.
Share it with your friends all over the place.
This is a powerful one that everyone needs to listen to.
And without further ado, let's dive into this with the one, the only
Dr. Mark Hyman. Welcome everyone back to the School of Greatness podcast. I'm very excited
about our guest today. His name is Dr. Mark Hyman. Thank you so much for being here.
So glad to be here, Lewis.
Really excited about this. Now you are one of the most influential, authoritative leaders in the doctor space
that I've heard about.
And you've been around for a long time.
A number of New York Times bestsellers, a number of number one New York Times bestsellers.
What are you on, number 12 now?
12 books, nine New York Times bestsellers.
The cookbooks didn't make it.
And the last one, the 12th, is just coming out.
So the process is coming out.
And it's called Eat fat get thin why the fat we eat is the key to sustain weight loss and vibrant health and essentially what you're saying is completely opposite of what we've been
all told the whole life right why fat is the key to sustain weight loss yeah good health who would
have thunk it right aren't we not supposed to have fat in our diet?
Isn't it bad for us?
Doesn't it create heart disease and high cholesterol and all these other things that are bad for
us?
That's what we were all taught, right?
That's the whole line.
Our government told us to eat 6 to 11 servings of bread, rice, cereal, and pasta a day to
eat a low-fat diet.
And fats and oils were sparingly only at the top supposed to be eaten.
That diet and fats and oils were sparingly only at the top supposed to be eaten.
And yet that advice led to the worst obesity epidemic and diabetes epidemic in the history of mankind.
That's like the food charts that we all saw in school, right?
Completely opposite of what we should be doing. And so the science has caught up with this bad advice.
And the advice, unfortunately, Lewis, was based on really shoddy science, on very weak
evidence, on a few population studies, not really experimental studies.
In fact, all the experimental studies that told us to eat low-fat diets, they actually
didn't tell us that we should be doing that.
They were actually contradicting the recommendations that were developed in 1980 by the UK and
the USA.
Really?
Really.
So basically, if you looked at the actual randomized controlled trials, there weren't
that many, but there was a few of them.
They all said that eating low-fat wasn't beneficial.
These were outside of the US trials?
No, trials all over.
Trials in the US.
They just didn't look at that evidence.
So the guideline committees who were working on it didn't sort of dismiss that evidence.
And they had this theory, and they went with the theory.
Because it made't, they sort of dismissed that evidence. And they had this theory and they went with the theory because it made sense, right?
If you look at calories, for example, fat has nine calories per gram.
Carbs and protein have four calories per gram.
So you think, well, gee, if it has more calories per gram, if you eat less of it, you're going
to lose more weight.
Logical.
But unfortunately, metabolism is not a math problem.
You know?
Yeah. It's a metabolic problem problem it's a hormonal problem it's not energy balance the whole idea of calories and calories
out this is the biggest crock of you know what that's been pushed on the american public because
there's a message implicit in that which is if you just told someone to lose weight by eating
less and exercising more if they don't do it, it's their fault, right?
Just eat less, exercise more.
And if you don't, you're a lazy glutton, right?
So it's your fault you're fat, right?
But the truth is that it's not.
It's not just about calorie balance.
In fact, that's what the Global Energy Balance, quote, Global energy balance network, which was actually funded by Coca-Cola.
And they actually funded university scientists to kind of be the front people for this nonsense
that's all about calories in, calories out.
It has been completely discredited.
The New York Times wrote a big expose of this.
But what we've been taught is that all calories are the same.
They're actually not.
So food is not just energy. It's actually information. It gives instructions, right?
So this is like a big breakthrough in science, right? So food is not just calories. It's
actually information. So the information in food communicates with your body every single minute.
So every bite you take, it turns on or off genes that create health or disease that make you lose or gain weight.
It turns on or off hormones that make you lose or gain weight or create health or disease.
It's like a feedback for you.
It's direct instructions.
And it works minute by minute.
It's not something that takes a long time.
It regulates inflammation.
It regulates your hormones, as I said.
It regulates your brain chemistry.
It regulates even your gut microbiome, all the
flora in your gut that we now know are linked to everything from weight gain, diabetes, to heart
disease, to cancer, to autoimmune diseases, and so many other things. Even depression and ADD and
autism may be linked to changes in your gut flora. So we now know that when you eat food, it's not
just about the energy in it. Because if that was true, then you could just survive on soda all day and it wouldn't matter as long as you only eat 1,800 calories of soda.
And I had this argument.
Right, right, right.
I had this argument with the vice chairman of Pepsi.
We had dinner together.
No way.
Yeah, we had dinner.
And the guy in between us, because I was sitting here, he was sitting here.
The guy was like being in the middle of like a war zone.
sitting here, he's sitting here. The guy was like being in the middle of like a war zone.
And I said to him, how can you say that
how can you say that eating
800 calories of soda is the same as having
1800 calories of broccoli or almonds?
He says, well, as long as you
have that amount of calories, you're not
going to, it's not going to be any different. I said, this is just
not how the body works. You're not getting the nutritional value
from that, right? Right. I mean, when you,
so just like look at a thousand
calories, let's say 750 calories of broccoli is 21 cups, 35 grams of fiber, half a
teaspoon of sugar, and tons of phytonutrients, phytochemicals that upregulate your genes that
actually help you prevent cancer, that improve hormone metabolism, so many things, right?
Same calories from a big gulp, 750 calories, 46 teaspoons of sugar, right?
High fructose corn syrup upregulates your liver to turn on a fat production factory
that makes high triglycerides.
Stores fat more, right?
Stores fat.
Lowers triglycerides.
I mean, raises triglycerides.
Lowers the good cholesterol.
Causes a fatty liver.
Raises hormones that make you, in women, make them grow hair on their face and have lost hair on their head.
Men, they drop their testosterone.
They have no sex drive and they lose their hair on their bodies.
All this from the same calories, right?
The number of calories.
Calories are the same, but the information in the food is very different.
So now we have this concept that is actually really about the hormonal hypothesis that I talk about
in Eat Fat, Get Thin, which is how do you change your hormones so you're not hungry all the time?
That's the key.
The typical advice, you eat low fat and your fat actually makes you satisfied, right? Because if
you eat fat, you're not craving all the time. You're not hungry. And it actually is a brain
actually food because it actually stops the addiction center
in the brain from turning on.
So you never feel hungry or have any cravings.
It also speeds up your metabolism.
Fat speeds up your metabolism.
Yeah.
So helps you burn more fat at the same time, right?
Helps you burn more fat.
It releases fat from the fat cells.
Interesting.
Right.
So it makes you less hungry.
It makes you burn more fat
and it liberates the fat from the fat cell so
it's really a powerful whereas if you sugar the opposite happens you get hungrier because you
increase insulin you drive when you used to have so much sugar it's terrible i was addicted to it
all of us were i mean i was too i was a vegetarian i ate like tons of of you know whole wheat bread
and sugar and honey and everything all i mean, grape nuts and ice cream for breakfast.
That was my life, right?
So when did you stop?
When did the research become known or the facts or the data become known?
It's not even.
It's honest.
That's why I wrote this book.
Because you're a doctor and you're eating sugar.
It's not even.
When did you start to realize it?
When did this information about fat become, you know?
Well, it's been mounting for decades, right?
So it's building on a mountain of evidence.
And in the book, I reviewed over 1,000 studies or 500 quoted in the book that I referenced.
They wouldn't let me put more because there was no room in the back of the book.
Yeah, yeah.
And it's all well documented.
Wow.
And the science of this is very powerful.
One of my colleagues, David Ludwig, wrote a book called Always Hungry.
He's a Harvard professor.
He's done a professor. He's
done a lot of the research that this is based on, where he gave two groups of people same calories,
okay, same calories, but changed the percents of fat and carbs. And it was a very well-controlled
study. And in the first group, they had 60% carbs, 20% fat, 20% protein. The other group switched it.
60% fat, 20% carbs, 20% protein.
So it's the opposite.
And the group that had the high-fat diet burned 300 calories more a day by doing nothing else. Really?
Just by having more fat?
By eating more fat.
Their metabolism sped up 300 calories a day.
It's like running.
Same amount of calories, though.
They ate the same amount of calories in. But they burned 300 more. Right, because their metabolism sped up 300 calories a day. It's like running- Same amount of calories, though. They ate the same amount of calories in-
But they burned 300 more.
Right, because their metabolism sped up.
Interesting.
Right.
So in other words, it's like running an hour a day without getting off the couch.
Interesting.
Right?
That's powerful.
Very powerful.
Yeah.
And I know for me, as I've seen myself and my patients, transformation's amazing.
And their cholesterol gets better.
It's totally contradictory.
Yeah.
Right? Fat is supposed to contradictory. Yeah. Right?
Fat is supposed to raise your cholesterol.
Right?
Eating cholesterol is supposed to raise your cholesterol.
But for the first time since the dietary guidelines came out in 1980, the U.S. government in 2015
completely reversed their stance on fat.
Really?
There's no more restriction.
Like January, first week of January 2016.
This year?
This year. Like a few weeks ago. A few weeks ago. They just changed this. They changed, first week of January 2016. This year? This year.
Like a few weeks ago.
A few weeks ago.
They just changed this.
They changed this completely.
The whole guide.
Completely.
Really?
First time, they said, forget about fat.
You can eat as much as you want.
No way.
No limit on fat.
This is the government, huh?
The government, the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee established these recommendations.
This is a scientific group that establishes
guidelines for the government, helps them shape policy, and then the government makes the policy.
They kind of- They based around this research or this-
Yeah. They said, don't worry about fat, don't worry about cholesterol. Eggs are back, right?
Eggs are back. Forget about the egg white omelets, just eat the whole egg.
No way. Completely. And they said, it made me laugh.
They said, cholesterol is no longer a nutrient of concern, quote, nutrient of concern. Like,
well, we got it wrong for 35 years. No way. Yeah. So it's like-
It's totally different. And they also said that we should, for the first time, they said we should
reduce sugar. Now, the policy advisors who are the scientists said we should limit sugar,
sweetened beverages because they're proven to be linked to obesity and diabetes. But the government,
because of the food lobby, changed the wording to say, no, we should be restricting added sugar.
So we should eat less added sugars. Now, what's an added sugar? It doesn't say added sugar on
the label. So how do you know?
Because the food labeling from the FDA is also influenced by the food lobby. So it should say
added sugar on the label, not just sugar. So you don't know. So it's designed to totally
confuse people. But the truth is that this is a huge advance. And now we actually have come to
realize that this is not true. So the science around fat and how your body burns fat and what makes you fat is all really clear now.
And it's all based on this hormone idea of insulin, which is a fat storage hormone.
So anything you eat that increases insulin, which is sugar, refined flour.
I mean, white flour raises your blood sugar more than table sugar.
So if you had two slices of white bread, it raises your blood sugar more than a tablespoon of table sugar.
People are like, I don't mean whole wheat bread.
It's just as bad.
Unless the bread is so dense
that you can stand on it without it squishing,
then you shouldn't eat it.
You shouldn't eat it.
No, like the German rye bread.
Gosh, I love bread, though.
Yeah, everybody loves bread.
The bread we eat isn't the bread we ate, right?
So our ancestors ate very different bread.
It's not the hard bread.
It was very coarse.
And we only had the grain mills that started in the 1800s.
Before that, we couldn't eat refined grain.
And now even whole wheat is super refined.
It's just, you know.
And are all grains bad as well, in your opinion?
No, I don't think all grains are bad.
You know, I joke.
I say, you know, in the book, I talk about, you know, an induction plant, like basically
a way to get quick start to change you from just being
storing fat to burning fat to eating fat to makes you thin. And that's a 21-day plan. And after that,
I talk about how you transition to what I call a pegan diet.
Pagan.
Pagan, as opposed to paleo or vegan. It's just kind of a joke because one day I was sitting-
In between?
Yeah, I was sitting on a panel with two friends of mine. One was a vegan cardiologist and the other was like a paleo doctor.
And I was like, well, I don't know.
I guess it must be a pegan because I'm in the middle here.
Okay.
What does a pegan diet look like?
So a pegan diet, you know, what's amazing, Lewis, is that the principles of paleo vegan are often very similar.
So both groups believe that we should be eating whole, unprocessed, unrefined foods.
Yes.
We should get rid of food additives, hormones.
Foods from the ground.
Yeah, everything.
No antibiotics, no hormones, no pesticides, no GMO.
We should be having no MSG, no artificial sweeteners, no high fructose corn syrup.
Everybody agrees that that's true.
We also agree that everybody should be eating lots of fruits and vegetables.
Yes. Right? A little heavy on the plant
foods. Yep. Basic principles.
Both agree that we shouldn't have dairy,
which is interesting. Yes. Right? We'll talk about that. In paleo,
no dairy as well. No dairy, right. No dairy.
I guess there's some of them that say like some
specific cheeses or something. Yeah, you know,
grass-fed butter. There's some
things, but the
proteins in dairy are very inflammatory, and the dairy, again,
we eat is in the dairy we ate.
We've hybridized our cows.
It's all fertilized by one bowl.
It's not organic dairy.
And it's not organic.
It's not raw.
It's not how our ancestors ate it.
Even organic cows, they milk them when they're pregnant, and they're just full of hormones.
And also, it's just not always tolerated well by many people.
Right.
And then- What else do should be eating foods that are phytonutrient rich, that are nutrient dense, and we should be lots of nuts and seeds and lots of good oils like avocados and olive oil.
What's phytonutrient?
What does that mean? Phytonutrient is a chemical that's in plant foods.
Phyto means plant.
And it's not a vitamin or mineral.
It's not a protein, fat, or carb, or fiber.
It's something else.
So, for example, like broccoli has glucosinolates, which upregulates detoxification.
Catechins are in green tea, which are powerful detoxifiers of metal, powerful antioxidants.
Tomatoes have lycopene, which is a powerful cancer preventer for prostate cancer.
So anthocyanins, you're going to have black rice, which has anthocyanins,
which are powerful antioxidants that are in black rice.
It's emperor's rice.
Love that.
It's also very low glycemic. Sure.
So I think the things that they disagree on are basically beans, grains, and meat, like where you get your protein from.
Everything else is the same.
Paleo and vegan is the same except for meat, beans, and more.
Yeah, and protein.
I mean, beans, grains, and protein.
Beans, grains, and protein.
Okay.
Right?
I mean, like meat.
Right. I mean, you know, like, you know, meat. Right. And so, you know, what I realized is that, you know, I think many people who are sick
do better when you take out certain things that can be inflammatory or high glycemic.
So if you're, for example, carbohydrate intolerant and you're diabetic, which affects a lot of
people, I talk about how do you find out if you're carbohydrate intolerant in the book,
which is a questionnaire you can tell if you actually know if you're someone who's carbohydrate intolerant, like someone who's gluten
intolerant. That means if they eat a lot of starch, that they have like two cups of rice,
even if it's brown rice or two cups of beans, it can adversely affect their sugar. So I talk about
like having less, like having smaller portions of beans and grains and non-gluten grains in
particular, because gluten can be very inflammatory for many people. I think for some people who don't react to it, it can be fine, but not in large amounts.
And then I think meat is the big issue, right?
The meat is the big issue.
So should we be eating meat?
We just had dinner the other night.
Right.
We both had meat, right?
We had fish.
We had fish, yeah.
We had black cod.
Yes, that's great.
Which was awesome.
I had a mahi-mahi.
You had a black cod.
Is that what it was?
Yeah, I had the black cod.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I had the black cod.
The guy next to me had meatballs. Yeah. The guyahi. You had a black cod. Is that what it was? Yeah, I had the black cod. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I had the black cod.
The guy next to me had meatballs.
Yeah.
The guy next to me had carne asada.
But, you know, so the issues around meat also, I think, are everybody agrees, and fish, everybody agrees, that if anybody eats meat, it should be humanely raised.
It should be sustainably raised.
It should be grass-fed.
It should be not harming the environment.
The ethical and the environmental issues around animal eating are big and they're real. I mean, I have many Buddhist patients. I have a Buddhist monk who's like an abbot who's a diabetic and he's never going to eat an animal.
So I need to help him understand how to never eat an egg, how to eat a higher fat protein diet,
which is low glycemic. So we can do that. So more nuts
and seeds, less
rice, more beans. There's
strategies for doing that.
And he did great. He lost 35 pounds, reversed his diabetes,
and now I have tons of bun
people praying for me.
That's great.
And then the
meat thing is tricky, because it's
also an environmental risk.
If you're eating factory-farmed animals, there's antibiotics in that,
and there's runoff from the pesticides and fertilizers that damages our water supply in rivers and lakes.
There's climate change that happens from the methane produced.
It's more toxic to the environment than carbon dioxide.
And there's high energy use. One-fifth of all our fossil fuels
are used for growing animals for
human consumption.
Our water is being
used up at incredible rates for
feeding animals. There's
basically, I think
70% of all water use, and there's
basically only 5% of the world's
surface is
fresh water. It's usable. It's fresh the world's surface is fresh water.
It's usable.
It's fresh water.
1% is in Russia.
Wow.
And at least 4% for the rest of us.
And 70% of that is being used for feeding animals for human consumption.
So there's real environmental issues.
Sure.
So I think, you know,
a factory farming just should be not supported in any way,
and we need to change that.
And that means we need to change our patterns of consumption around meat.
We need to downsize our meat consumption.
I call it having condom meat.
Condom meat.
Condom meat, as opposed to like a condiment.
Like condom meat. You know, it should be a side dish or a dressing if you're going to eat it.
And I think—
Not a full plate of steak, you mean?
You know, I think there's three issues with me, right?
There's environmental issues, there's moral issues, and there's health issues.
So we kind of talked about the moral.
I think that's—people are entitled to their beliefs, and they should be able to follow whatever they want and be healthy.
The environmental issues are real.
And I think everybody would agree, whether they're paleo-vegan, that we need to stop harming the environment.
And I think even if you're not paleo-vegan, everybody really believes that.
In fact, the Dietary Advisory Committee that was advising the government said we should limit meat consumption because of the environmental impact.
Now, if you have grass-fed meat, if you have sustainably raised meat, it's not as abundant.
You can't produce as much.
And so we all have to eat less of it. it's more expensive so but that's okay and i think that
that from a health point of view when i really looked at the literature and i did this in eat
fat get thin i looked at all the research that i could find on meat because i was i'm like well i
don't know i don't know for yourself too yeah i'm like i'm i'm recommending to my patients i'm you
know a human too and i want to live a long time and I don't want to be
doing something stupid. So I
wanted to find out what does the science tell
us about meat?
So you did all the research. So I looked at
all the research and I wrote 8,000 words in the
book on meat. That's a lot of research
in there. And I address all these issues,
environmental, moral, and the health issues were quite
interesting. When we look at the studies on meat,
and anybody can quote anything saying anything, right? So you want the paleo people, meat's healthy, here's all the research. And the health issues were quite interesting. You know, when we look at the studies on meat, and anybody can quote anything saying anything,
right?
Right.
So you want the paleo people, like, meat's healthy.
Here's all the research.
And the vegan, like, meat's going to kill you.
Here's all the research.
So it's like, and then you're at the average Joe, you're totally confused.
And your average doctor, you're totally confused because we get no training in nutrition.
And they haven't done the research themselves.
No.
So they're going off of their opinion or their theory.
Yeah, they're like average people like the rest of us in terms of nutrition science.
They don't know because it's not what we learn, right?
I mean, I just am at Cleveland Clinic, and we implemented a nutrition curriculum for the first time in the medical school there that's integrated in, which is so great.
That's awesome.
And I helped Team Ryan, who's a congressman from Ohio, introduce Tim.
He's great.
He's great.
Has he been on your show?
He's been on here, yeah.
He's great.
Tim. Introduce Tim.
He's great.
He's great.
Has he been on your show?
He's been on here, yeah.
He's great.
Introduce a bill called the Enrich Act, which was a bill that is funding $15 million to
fund nutrition in medical schools, nutrition education for doctors.
That's what we need the most because doctors, a lot of the time, I feel like could heal
a lot of their patients through food.
Oh, my God.
Well, food is the cause of most chronic disease.
It's the cure for most chronic disease
and yet doctors
know nothing about food.
And they just medicate
a lot of the time.
I mean, listen,
it's so bad.
I mean, I use food as medicine.
That's what I,
food is the most powerful
drug on the planet.
I mean, that's why last week
I was in Cleveland
at the hospital
teaching 300 black women
how to cook
in a cooking class.
Like, that's what doctors
should be doing
because that's how
I'm going to get people
That's real medicine, right?
That's real medicine.
Now, just a quick side note.
What is your involvement with – what is functional medicine and what is your involvement at the Cleveland Clinic?
Can I finish my meat?
Yes, go ahead.
I was still rolling on the meat.
Go for it.
I'm going to talk about functional medicine and then we'll talk about Cleveland Clinic.
Perfect, perfect.
Because people want to know.
They're like, well, what about meat?
They're like probably listening.
Yeah, let's do it.
So the science –
8,000 words.
I'm not going to give you 8,000 words, but I'll give you a few hundred.
Perfect.
So the science of meat was fascinating.
So when I looked at the studies that showed it was harmful, here's what they were.
They were mostly population studies, meaning they looked at groups of people, followed
them, and then they asked questions of them.
What did you eat last year?
What did you eat last week?
What did you eat last month?
And they basically do these food frequency questionnaires. And then
they correlate that with the risk of disease. And I try to control for all the confounding factors,
but it's very tough. So the people who ate meat, yeah, they had more heart disease and more cancer
and more death. But what else was- They were smoking, they were drinking,
they weren't sleeping. Exactly. So if you look at the data, they ate 800 more calories a day.
They almost ate no fruits and vegetables.
Tons of sugar.
They had tons of sugar in processed foods, lots of fried foods, drank more, smoked more,
didn't exercise and didn't take any vitamins and minerals.
Well, guess what?
They weren't as healthy as the other people.
So most of the studies were like that.
Now, there was a few studies that were interesting I found.
One was a study of 11,000 people who shopped at health food stores.
And they found there were a lot of vegetarians and a lot of meat eaters.
So who are the people who are like healthy meat eaters who only eat grass-fed meat or who –
because most of these studies were not on grass-fed meat either.
They were on factory farmed meat, right?
So then again, how do you generalize that?
Sure.
But then there were these 11,000 people and they followed them for many years
and they found that the meat eaters and the vegetarians, there was no difference in their health outcomes.
Exactly the same.
So if you're a meat eater who basically eats a healthy diet and has grass-fed meat versus
a vegan or vegetarian, no difference in health outcomes.
And you have a healthy lifestyle.
Healthy lifestyle, then there's no difference.
So there's other factors like how it affects your gut flora and so on.
And I think those are more complicated issues.
I address all of them in the book.
But at the end of the day, I think it's okay if you have no moral issues and you can eat sustainably raised meat and not in great quantities. And as part of your diet, I think it's
okay. Yeah. Bottom line. So what does your daily diet look like? Oh gosh. The doctor himself.
So today I had a protein shake because I went to this friend of mine's company called Essential
Foods, Living Foods, and he had this, it was like a hemp, coconut, chia, moringa, like
coconut cream, like protein powder with lots of, yeah.
And I had a couple of that with a spoon of coconut butter for fat and almond butter for
fat and blended that up.
That was my breakfast.
And then lunch was,
um,
and a big salad with lots of avocado,
olive oil,
and some wild salmon,
which has fat.
So that was,
and dinner I haven't had yet.
So awesome.
And dinner,
I'll usually have,
you know,
a small piece of protein and like,
I'll,
I'll put 75% of my vegetable plate is vegetables.
Really?
So if I go out to eat,
I'll order like three sides of vegetables.
Right. And, and if, if you look at to eat, I'll order like three sides of vegetables, right?
Interesting.
And if you look at your plate, by volume, 70% or 80% of your diet should be plant foods
and non-starchy veggies, right?
Non-potatoes.
Right.
And by calories, it should be like 50% to 60% fat.
But fat doesn't take up a lot of space, so you can get a lot of calories and a little space
and still eat like if you put a lot of olive oil in your thing or even coconut butter.
So you don't have to worry about it.
You just have to eat.
And the trick is I don't worry about how much I eat.
I just worry about what I eat.
And I make sure I have stuff.
I know that I'm going to be like here
and I know how long
it's going to be
so I always bring stuff
in my pocket.
Almond butter.
So I just have a pocket.
I know I'm never going to be
in a food emergency
so I'm not going to have
to eat something crappy
and I think,
you know,
I eat very little grains,
very little beans.
I do eat them.
I eat mostly vegetables
and some low glycemic fruit
and I eat lots of nuts
and seeds
and I eat,
you know,
good quality fish and animal protein. What's low glycemic fruit and I eat lots of nuts and seeds and I eat good quality fish
and animal protein.
What's low glycemic fruit?
What does that include?
So I'm not eating tons of pineapple
and grapes.
Those are sugary things.
And I eat berries
and I eat mostly berries
and then I'll eat an apples or pear sometimes
or kiwis or grapefruit
or mangoes or papaya, things like that.
Nice.
Okay.
So let's go back to functional medicine.
Yeah, yeah.
What does that actually mean?
So functional medicine is –
Compared to regular medicine.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, you know, I don't know if people listening really have a great understanding of like what's happening right now in science.
But it's profound that the shift that's happening in our understanding of the body is – it's like Columbus going, hey, the earth isn't flat.
Wow.
Right now, the last few years.
It's just like the last decade or two with our understanding of the human genome, of systems biology, of the body as a biological network, as a system.
It's like an ecosystem where everything is connected, working together.
And so the way we organize medicine is according to these organs.
You know, you've got your cardiovascular system, your neurologic system, your GI system, your, you know, and so you go to all these
specialists, right? And everybody treats their part of your body. If you have a migraine,
we're actually learning that it might be related to gut flora, but, or if you have heart, I mean,
now we know that you might be getting cancer because of your gut bacteria. Well, no oncologist
is asking you what's going on in your gut microbiome.
Right.
And so now we know, for example, like the microbiome is a great example of this disruption that's happening in healthcare.
You know, the microbiome, which is your gut flora, it's really, it's like 10 times as many cells as your own cells.
It's 100 times as much DNA as your own DNA.
So we're kind of lazy.
We have about as much DNA as an earthworm.
But we borrow the DNA of the microbes in our gut to do things for us.
And we borrow things from plants to do things for us, like, for example, glucosinolates.
And so the microbiome is this huge thing that's got 2 to 3 million genes.
We only have 20,000 genes.
And it regulates your weight.
You can swap out poop
from a thin person into someone with diabetes
and reverse it.
Amazing. I've heard
stories of fecal transplants not
only curing things like that, but like
autoimmune diseases and
Parkinson's and people
with MS and crazy stories that I'm starting
to hear. And there's research
now going on aggressively in looking at fecal transplants for all sorts
of diseases.
Transferring poop from one person to another.
Yes.
What does that, how do you do that?
What's that process?
Well, they collect the poop.
There's actually a-
I've never heard of this.
Yeah.
You've never heard of this?
Never heard of this.
Oh my God.
This is huge.
So the-
What is it called?
Fecal transplant.
Okay.
FMT, fecal microbial transplant.
The way it came about was some doctor had a bright idea that there was this condition called C. diff,
which is an infection of the intestines, happens after antibiotics, is life-threatening.
And there's a huge amount of people that are resistant to antibiotics.
There's all the antibiotics in our feed and in the animal production.
So the drugs don't work.
People die.
Wow.
And somebody thought, well, gee, if I put the poop from a healthy person into a sick
person, let's see what happens.
And the doctor did it, and the person was cured like that.
Shut up.
98% effective.
98% effective.
So how do you do this?
I'm going to start this process.
You want to get into it?
Give me the 10, the 22nd version.
So basically, they take a fecal transplant specimen, like a donor specimen from a healthy person,
and they screen them for all sorts of diseases.
And then they spin it up with some saline, and then they inject it in with a catheter or a colonoscope.
And then it just heals inside, or what's it do?
Well, it goes in.
It's like massive probiotics, right? Oh, interesting.
Yeah. It's like an infusion
of probiotics. Infusion of probiotics. And also,
they're actually pills now. They actually are making
special encapsulated poop pills.
Poop pills. And it's, I mean,
this is published in the New England Journal of Medicine. I'm not talking
about stuff that's wacky. I'm talking about
serious medicine that people are doing. But it's not just
for that. Now they're looking in for all sorts of things.
People are cured right after one infusion.
Yeah, it's amazing. So functional
medicine is really understanding
the body as a system
and network and understanding that
the focus should not be on treating disease
but on creating health. So it's the science
of creating health. It's the ultimate biohacking
tool. And it's
interpreting all the data and the stories from your
body that it tells through
testing we do.
For example, you don't have to do testing, but you can look into the body and look at
your immune function and allergies and your gut flora and toxins and nutritional status.
It's like doing a soil sample.
So I'm like a soil farmer, organic soil farmer, rather than an industrial agriculturist.
I don't put all these chemicals on my plants to make them better, like herbicides and pesticides.
I create a healthy soil, and then disease doesn't occur, right? You just, disease can't land in a healthy soil. So that's exactly what functional medicine is. We
help people get in balance. We take away the things that cause imbalance. We put in the things
that help create balance. So for example, I had a woman come, she had a whole list of problems.
I call myself a holistic doctor because I take care of people, but they a whole list of problems. That's why I call myself a holistic doctor because I take care of people with a whole list of problems. So she had like psoriatic
arthritis, was on a drug that cost 30 grand. Oh my gosh. Called Stelara. And still was
miserable. She also was overweight, had prediabetes, migraines, sinus problems, irritable bowel,
reflux, depression, insomnia. She had like this whole list of things. Of course, she
saw all these specialists, the sinus doctor, the migraine doctor, the autoimmune doctor, the skin doctor,
the depression doctor, the gut doctor.
Like, you know, everybody's treating her
with their best practices.
Their best drug probably.
But I mean, she's being seen in the top medical center.
Yeah.
Right?
They're not doing bad medicine.
They're doing standard of care.
In fact, they're doing excellent standard of care.
Right.
But the standard of care is not the way
we're going to fix these problems.
It's outdated or it's not?
It's not.
It's totally outdated.
So rather than thinking about how all these were separate, I said, how are these all connected?
Interesting.
Right?
How are these all connected?
And so there were connections.
It was all inflammatory.
And I said, well, why don't we put you on an anti-inflammatory, low-glycemic diet, a
vegan diet, basically.
Right.
Took away anti-allergens
and I cleaned out her gut
because her gut was causing huge symptoms,
bloating and she had yeast reactions.
She had like vaginal yeast and anal yeast
and itching and itchy ears and yeast everywhere.
Thrust from the-
Yeast on her mouth and thrush.
And so I gave her an antifungal.
I gave her stuff to clear out the bad bugs in her gut.
I put in good bugs.
I put in enzymes.
I put in things to heal the gut lining.
I gave her fish oil, vitamin D, just some basic stuff, probiotics.
Yeah.
But it's really eliminating the things she was eating.
Eliminating the bad bugs in her gut and putting in new bugs and putting in nutrients to help
her body heal.
Two months later, she comes back completely symptom-free.
No way.
No more arthritis.
No more $230,000 drug.
No more skin psoriasis. No migraines. No more arthritis, no more $230,000 drug, no more skin psoriasis, no migraines,
no sinus problems, no audible bowel, no reflux, no depression, no insomnia, and she lost 20
pounds.
It was all from food.
Totally. And what was food and her gut flora. I focused on her gut flora. Why? Because 60%
or 50% of the immune system is in the gut.
Interesting.
Yeah. Why is it in the gut?
Why is it there?
Because you're sticking pounds of food,
of foreign material every day in your body.
It's got to fight it off in your gut.
Yeah, and you've got all the bugs in there and poop.
It's like the danger zone, right?
You're like, and it's one cell away.
You're one cell away from a sewer every minute.
Really?
Yeah, it's one cell between you and that mass of food and poop, right?
So your immune system is like, if anything happens, it's like right there.
So when people have autoimmune disease, it's often a gut issue.
It's often a gut issue.
People didn't know this before, did they?
No.
No.
So now all this is really coming to light and functional medicine is the operating system
to interpret the data.
It's a new set of lenses to think about how to solve it and it's a system of treatment that helps people get
back in balance that's what's powerful and then at cleveland clinic you know the ceo of cleveland
clinic toby cosgrove i call him the wayne gritsky of health care he goes where the puck's gonna be
not where it is smart right and he's basically came after me to go set up a center there.
Functional medicine center.
Yeah.
I'm like, I'm not going to Cleveland Clinic.
It's like a, you know, it's like, I'm not going to go to a place where I'm going to
have to bang my head against the wall where it's traditional medicine, where they don't
get this, where they're in the dark ages.
I just-
It's also known as one of the top hospitals in the world.
Of course.
But it's the top hospital in the old model.
Yes.
Right?
So I'm like, but he knows what's happening.
He sees where it's going.
He knows what's happening.
He's like, we need this here.
Wow.
And so he's investing tons of money, millions and millions of dollars building this.
We're building an 18,000 square foot facility.
We started with a little space and we just outgrew it.
We're hiring doctors.
I have an interview with the doctor right after this.
And we're basically growing.
We're doing research in all sorts of conditions.
We're changing medical school education.
We're changing policy.
We're doing community work.
So he's really putting us on the map in the traditional world.
Because he's going to go out of business if he doesn't start doing this.
But what's amazing to me, you know, Lewis, I thought when I got there, people would be, you know be skeptical, negative, make it difficult for
me and my team there, but it's the opposite.
And last week when I was there, I had two deans of medical schools, two chairs of institutes,
which are like big deals, and another doctor as patients.
No way.
Yeah, they're coming as patients.
Because they're not being cured with the medicine.
The executive team, the C-suite team,
is sending all their family members to come see us.
Do you know Dr. Lissa Rankin by any chance?
Yeah.
She's been on as well,
and she talked about how she had all this medication
she was treating herself,
and then started saying,
oh, let me just change the way I eat
and my relationships and my emotional health. Exactly. And she's like, oh, I got off change the way I eat and my relationships and my emotional health.
Exactly.
And she's like, oh, I got off all the medicine.
That's right.
And then I stopped giving medicine to my patients.
I started asking deeper questions.
It's so powerful.
So we're at this fulcrum.
It's not just I'm like one lone doctor with a crazy idea.
There's a whole movement going on here.
We had dinner with James Maskell.
He's helping move that movement forward.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. where it's changing. People want it. I mean, people are desperate for this model. So if someone is listening
and they're on some type of medication
or they're just feeling like constantly sick,
you know, something that's constantly happening to them,
what do you think is,
because there's so much information online
that it's scary.
It's scary, right.
Well, here's what I would say.
You know, WebMD stuff,
just like looking up anything and Googling it
and seeing all the nasty photos
and just like, oh.
Yeah.
What is an approach that someone should take if they have some challenge that's constantly happening in their health?
Should they first analyze the food they're intaking and do like an analysis?
Do you have like a process?
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
It's a great question, Louis.
So, you know, what I am is a doctor.
And what I do is see patients in my office.
That's my main job.
Yes, I've written a dozen books.
Yes, I do a lot of stuff office. That's my main job. Yes, I've written a dozen books. Yes, I do a lot of stuff.
But that's my main job.
And so I've learned over 30 years of doing this how to create sustainable, practical programs to help people get from sick to well very quickly.
And what I've done, because not everybody can come see me, and there aren't that many of us out there yet.
You've got so many hours on the day.
And there's not that many of us out there yet you have so many hours on the day and there's not that many functional medicine so i've written books and programs to help people operationalize this in their own life so each fact get thin
and i look i'm you know you know i could say you know do my program but i'm not i don't really care
what program you do as long as it's based on the basic principles and there are a lot of my
colleagues who are writing great books about this it's all it's all the same information because it's all the same science, and if you're telling the truth,
there's only one story here, the truth, right? And so this EFACT Get Thin is a great program
that I put together to make people have no friction. It's easy. It's very straightforward.
It's 21 days, right?
21 days, practical, goof-proof, and it tells you what to eat. And when you get to the
end of that, you'll see how you feel because most people in 21 days will change their habits, but
they'll also allow their body to reset. It's like putting your body back to its original factory
settings, right? And then if something's left over, then you know, gee, maybe I need to go deeper.
Like if you still don't feel great, maybe you have Lyme disease. Maybe you have heavy metal
poisoning. Maybe your thyroid's not working. Maybe you have a parasite.
Maybe, you know, like you could be eating the perfect diet but still feel bad.
Do the 21 days first.
Yeah, but 80% of the time.
You're going to cure yourself.
Yeah, 80%.
I mean, 80% of the time, this works for people.
And then the 20% who have to get extra help, they need to come see somebody.
And the body's pretty incredible in how it can heal itself very quickly once you change habits, right?
Unbelievable.
We did the survey of 1,000 people who did this.
I mean, they lost weight, yes, and they lost inches, yes, and that's all impressive.
And their blood sugar dropped 20 points and their blood pressure 10 points.
But the thing that really matters to me is I have everybody fill out what I call the FLC quiz.
You know what that is?
That's when you feel like crap.
Okay.
So it's a quiz.
How do you, like, you know, do you have
bloating? Do you have asthma? Do you have headaches?
Can you sleep? Like, joint pain? Muscle
pain? What's your mood? Are you depressed? Like, so
you fill this whole score in zero to four
for every symptom, and you get a score.
You do one before and after. And the
before and after score, there was a 69%
reduction in all symptoms from all diseases.
Whoa. Because you don't have to treat
everything individually. If you put in the right information, like I said at the beginning of the show, the body
knows what to do.
Wow.
Right?
So the information in food is so powerful that if you figure out what to eat, you don't
have to worry about how much.
You don't have to count fat, grams, carbs, calories, nothing.
I don't do that.
I don't have time for that.
Right, right, right.
And I don't want to be on an app all day figuring it out.
I just want to know how to get my body to naturally do what it's supposed to do.
Sure.
If you're off 100 calories a day, you're going to gain like 50 pounds in 30 years.
Right?
You can't do it by willpower.
You have to use science.
And the science of using fat and low glycemic food, like low sugar food, is really powerful.
It's magical.
I mean, I noticed my own body.
I'm like 56, and I noticed.
You're young, man.
You're like fit, healthy, energetic.
No.
Well, I can tell you, I was always been focused on health,
but I was the doctor who was trained to eat low fat
and to tell my patients to eat low fat, and I did that.
And I also ate a lot of things that I thought were healthy,
like pasta was a health food. Oh, my gosh. Pasta was a health food. I used to eat so much pasta.
Yeah, health food, right? Low fat. I used to eat sauce all the time. Yeah, exactly. And so I
basically changed that. And I started eating a lot less starch, a lot less sugar, a lot more fat.
And I noticed my body, without any exercise,, I'm like so lean, so fit.
I'm like, wow, I got a six pack and I didn't even work out.
It's like, and it's just stunning what happens when you're, when you, and my brain is clearer.
I have more energy.
My mood's better.
I mean, I know, so you're drinking like a bulletproof coffee.
You know that it works.
Yeah.
It's amazing.
I mean, I started doing, testing some different things at the beginning of this year in January.
And the first week I did no sugar. And the first week, I did no sugar.
The second week, no sugar, no gluten.
Third week, no sugar, no gluten, no dairy.
Fourth week, no sugar, no gluten, no dairy, no meat.
That was last week.
And I was just trying to see what happened with my body. That's like pulling a Band-Aid off slowly.
Yeah.
I should have just done it all.
It's better to do it the other way.
The way I do it with my patients, you do a detox.
Basically, you get off everything.
At once.
You feel bad for a couple of days, and then you see how you feel.
I feel amazing, yeah.
Because one of the rules of-
I should have talked to you before this.
I don't know what else to say.
And then you can add things back one at a time and see what bothers you.
Interesting.
Because the rule in functional medicine is if you're standing on a tack, it takes a lot
of ass to make it feel better, right?
So if something's bothering you, you have to get rid of the cost.
But if you're standing on two tacks, taking one out doesn't make you 50% better.
So if you're allergic to dairy and gluten, but you just take out gluten, you're not going to feel better.
Right.
Right?
Right.
So I did it the whole wrong way.
Oh, well.
It was an experiment.
But the thing that I was going to mention was I started doing Bulletproof in the morning
and fasting until 1.30 and not eating after 9.30 or whatever it is at night.
And I realized that I wasn't hungry in the mornings when I would do the coffee.
And I would only have like half a cup only.
And I would be fine until 1.30, 2 o'clock.
Well, MCT oil puts you in ketosis, which is medium chain triglycerides.
It's a super fuel.
It comes from coconut, which is in the coffee.
It's what I recommend as part of my Eat Fat, Get Thin program.
Speeds up your metabolism.
It's your burning fat.
Yeah.
It actually makes your metabolism work faster and burn more calories.
Wow.
And it also affects your brain.
Your brain is more alert and focused and clear.
So I wrote most of Eat Fat, Get Thin on MC2L and coffee in the morning.
I love it.
I love it.
And why did you get in?
I want to ask you a few more questions. Why did you get into medicine in the first place?
What, what inspired you 30 plus years ago or whenever this was? Yeah. So, uh, you know, I,
I, uh, actually majored in Buddhism at Cornell. So I did not even think remotely about medicine
or science. In fact, I only took science classes cause they were required for my degree at Cornell,
but I, I didn't
even do that well in them.
I got a C in biology and I think a C in chemistry.
I think I got a C plus in biology.
But it was like the pre-med courses that everybody jumps off the bridge for.
Sure.
And I didn't take that seriously.
So then I got my degree in Buddhism.
But when I studied Buddhism, I found that it was actually a healing system.
It was a therapeutic system for the mind.
And in fact, it was a way of looking at our perceptions, our beliefs, our attitudes, our thinking in such a way that freed us from suffering.
And it was powerful.
And it also had a tradition of healing.
All the doctors in the Buddhist tradition were monks.
So I was like, oh, this is cool and then i and then i
kind of you know got this this idea in my head i was a young idealistic kid and i had this concept
of bodhisattva which is this this being who kind of betters themselves but rather than you know
going to be living in a cave and being by themselves and having a happy life they come
back in the service of others to help others,
also to reach enlightenment.
Right.
Okay.
So I kind of always had that in my head.
And I always felt better when I was of service.
Sure.
Most people feel better when they're in service. Yeah.
You know, it's interesting, Lewis, when we look at the science of this,
altruism stimulates the same area in the brain as cocaine or sugar or heroin.
It's crazy.
Right?
So I get high from helping people.
I think Stephen Kotler talks about that in his book, Flow, or about flow.
It's so true.
When people get into flow, you know, and when they're in service, you become in flow and
that triggers the same type of chemicals, right?
Absolutely.
You get out of your head.
Like I went to Haiti after the earthquake and it was, you know, up to my elbows and
pus and amputations and blood and disaster.
And just, it was like the worst thing you could imagine.
But like, I didn't think of myself for one second.
Right.
Right.
Just in service.
I was just in service and I felt good.
Like I felt, and I'm like, you know, just grateful and happy, not happy.
Like, cause I was there, it was a miserable place that that was happening with the earthquake.
But I, but I actually had this sense of inner peace and inner happiness and gratitude and service.
And, you know, I think that's really, in a way, it's a little selfish.
Sure, sure.
No, giving is like the most selfish gift you can receive.
It's like the best gift you can give.
Yeah.
So that's sort of how I got it.
And then I realized, gee, maybe I should practice medicine because it's about healing.
Sure.
And I sort of said, well, I'll try it.
And I was a yoga teacher before I was a doctor.
Wow.
Back before yoga was cool.
Yeah, that was like in 1979.
Wow.
Yeah, I took my first yoga class.
Amazing.
I just went to yoga before I came here, so it's been going on a long time.
Holy cow.
That's awesome.
Yeah.
Cool.
Well, a couple final questions.
And I want to make sure everyone
gets this book, Eat Fat, Get Thin, Why the Fat We Eat is the Key to Sustained Weight Loss and
Vibrant Health. Essentially, everything we've said growing up is the opposite.
Sorry, guys. We kind of blew it. But Eat Fat, Get Thin, 21-Day Process for Discovering and Healing Yourself, essentially. Yeah. I mean, it's not process for discovering and healing yourself, essentially.
Yeah.
I mean, it's not just for weight loss.
It's actually for anybody who wants to reset their system and gain back control of their
body.
And so you actually naturally want the things that make you feel good, that you don't crave
the bad things, that it's not difficult.
I mean, you can't use willpower.
It doesn't work.
You have to use science, right?
I like it. It's so great. I like it you can't use willpower. It doesn't work. You have to use science, right? I like it.
It's so great.
I like it.
I got three questions for you.
One is if you had an unlimited amount of money that you could spend on one thing to cure one thing in the world, what would that be?
One disease or one?
One thing in the world that you think needs curing or solving one issue.
Oh, gosh.
I mean, so many things flooded into me when you said that.
I mean, I think, you know,
the thing that I think is driving so many of our economic
and social ills is our food system.
And if I had a magic wand, I would put in a,
and I'm working actually on a petition right now.
I've got 150,000 people on our FAT Summit, which is an online summit.
And we interview over 30 experts on FAT.
And it's available.
Anybody can go to fatsummit.com and get to see this.
And to kind of list what are the policies that would really radically change things, not just in America, but around the world, if we became the beacon for this?
And I met with a surgeon general a couple of days ago,
and he asked me to come to Washington to help change and shape this policy.
So the things that matter are ending food subsidy,
ending agricultural subsidies for commodity products like corn,
soy, and wheat that go into all our processed industrial food,
subsidizing fruits and vegetables and things that actually promote health.
Ending food marketing to kids, right?
We market junk food to kids.
I think we're one of only 50 countries that doesn't do this.
50 countries control food marketing to kids.
Really?
Yeah.
Us and Syria, no, are the only ones.
Oh, my gosh.
I would end all
use of antibiotics in animal feed except
in animal husbandry except for treatment
of disease. Full stop.
I would have clear food labeling
so that people know what they're eating. Is it
good for you? Green. Is it
maybe a little tricky?
Well, eat with caution. Yellow.
Is it bad for you? It might kill you. Red.
Like, simple. Like when you have cigarettes now It might kill you, red. Like, simple.
Like when you have cigarettes now, this will cause cancer.
This will kill you.
I would, and this is controversial, but I would put a tax on junk food and soda, which
has been proven to work and reduce consumption.
This was just done in Mexico.
It was super effective.
Done in Berkeley, first place in America, very effective.
Interesting.
It's like cigarettes.
Yeah.
Tax cigarettes.
You know, if a Coke was actually $10, I would actually make things cost what they really cost.
The only reason a McDonald's meal is so cheap is because the government pays for it and
subsidize it.
Really?
I met with the vice chair of Pepsi.
He said, why are you using high fructose corn syrup in your soda?
He said, because Mark, the government makes it so cheap for us by subsidizing agriculture
and the growing of corn that's turned into high fructose corn syrup.
That's why we're using it.
It's good business.
I wouldn't use it if the government didn't make it so cheap.
So I would end subsidies.
I would end any food that wasn't promoting health in any federally funded program.
Food stamps.
You can buy $4 billion now of food stamps that are spent on soda for the poor.
$4 billion.
It's the biggest single amount of item.
Pop.
Yeah.
Soda.
Yeah.
You can buy a two liter bottle of soda, but you can't buy a rotisserie chicken.
You can't buy with food stamps online because of some stupid regulation.
We're trying to change that.
So I would implement a whole series of policies like this.
I would also make sure that we really promote science and nutrition in school so kids know very early on what's going on.
There should be no food that doesn't promote health in schools. We know that there's clear
evidence that kids who are fed poor foods, and I don't want to talk about school lunches that are
quote healthy, right? I mean, pizza is considered a vegetable. Pizza is a vegetable. According to
Congress, pizza is a vegetable. Oh my gosh. That's all I ate every day.
Yeah.
And so, you know, we need just clear policies that we could change all this in America.
And I think people are ready for it.
People want it.
People know the issue is here.
We need to end the kinds of industrial agriculture we're doing that are actually promoting degradation of the environment.
And we need to label GMOs because the centralization of seed production has caused huge problems.
Glyphosate is now used on soybeans.
98% of soybeans are Monsanto soybeans.
98% is it?
I think it's something like 98% of gross.
Oh, my gosh.
So the centralization of seed production, even if you debate GMOs are good or bad, they're
using all this pesticides and herbicides because of these that are actually now getting into the water.
Now, we know that glyphosate now, according to the World Health Organization and an international
board of scientists, is a cancer-causing agent, which is... And actually, I'm excited because
in my practice, I'm going to start doing glyphosate testing.
Okay.
Because people don't know what they're consuming.
So I would do a series of things that would really, if I had all the money in the world,
to really change this.
Michael Bloomberg, he sort of tried to do this.
He had all the money in the world.
And he made huge policy changes in New York.
He got rid of trans fats.
He changed all kinds of food laws.
He actually started to try to regulate soda.
But the food industry came down so hard on him.
So much money they had to, yeah.
Wow.
Amazing.
That would solve a lot of problems if you change these things.
It would help our environment.
It would help our economy because Medicaid and Medicare are going to consume 100% of our federal budget in about 20 years.
Oh, man.
Right?
Because of the obesity and diabetes.
One in three people is going to be diabetic by 2050.
That's bad.
Right?
Right.
One in three.
Unless we change something.
Right.
Unless we change something. So we have to solve this. It's bad. Right? One in three. Unless we change something. Right, unless we change something.
So we have to solve it. It's an economic
issue. It's a national security issue
because kids are too fat to fight. It's a
global competitiveness issue because
there's an achievement gap because we're like 25th
and 28th, I think, in math and reading in the world
because our kids are... We're not clear.
We're not focused. No, no. And this
is well documented. It's a guy named
Dr. Bosch at Columbia who's done a lot of studies on this achievement gap.
So the evidence is there across the board.
Environment, health, the economy, competitiveness, national security.
These are big issues.
Yeah, yeah.
And it all stems from the food system.
Incredible.
Incredible.
Two final questions.
Incredible.
Incredible.
Two final questions.
One is something I ask everyone at the end of this podcast, every episode, is if many years down the road it's your final year, it's your final day, it's a very happy, healthy, joyful experience.
You've got your whole friends and family there.
And your 50 New York Times bestselling books at that time are all erased and deleted and burned for some reason.
It's just all gone.
All the videos you've done online, which people should go watch.
They're amazing videos.
What do you call it?
Office?
House Call.
House Call, yes.
Make sure to check these out, and we'll link up your YouTube and everything there on the show notes here in a second.
Everything's gone.
All the information you put up there, all your hard work is gone. Yeah. Yeah. And you have a piece of paper in front of you and your family and friends say,
when you write down three things that you know to be true about your experience, your life that
you'd want to pass on to the rest of us. And this would be the only three truths that we get to
remember you by all your books. How do you boil it down to three simple things?
That's good.
I love that.
So I think it wouldn't be hard.
Okay.
It wouldn't be hard.
And it really has nothing to do with medicine, actually.
It has to do with love.
You know, if I would say the most important thing is how we are in the world, how we show up.
how we are in the world, how we show up.
And if we bring joy and love and connection and laughter to those we meet and those in our lives, our family, our friends,
those we're connected to, the people we work with,
every day is a chance to show up and bring that.
And the more you do that, the more it comes back.
And it's just like this process.
It sounds kind of crazy, but it's just a very simple idea.
It's an ancient idea. It's not my idea, but it's just a very simple idea. It's an ancient idea.
It's not my idea, but it's all about how do we, and then the question, how do you get into that
state where you can do that? Well, then you have to cultivate that. Part of it is taking care of
your container, right? Because if you feel like crap, you're not going to want to do that, right?
You're going to want to watch TV. You're going to want to like drink.
You're going to want to like eat too much, right?
But if you take care of the container, then, you know, you just basically will thrive.
So that would be probably number one, two, and three on my list.
Okay.
Show up, you know, be present, tell the truth, love, you know.
Perfect.
There you go.
I love it.
Awesome.
Final question before I ask it.
Is there anywhere else we want to make sure we send people?
DrHyman.com.
DrHyman.com is a good spot.
Get the book.
We'll have it all linked up here in a second.
I'll tell you guys where to go.
But get the book, Eat Fat, Get Thin.
Tons of videos, resources.
Yeah, they can get a free sneak preview.
If they go to the website, Eat Fat, Get Thin, they can get a free sneak preview.
Check it out.
There's tons of great videos,
content, and support. I highly recommend
your site as a great resource
for just learning and understanding how to be healthier
and live better. Thank you.
We'll check all this out.
Make sure to buy the book. I highly recommend it.
Before I ask the final question, I want
to acknowledge you for a moment. I'd like to acknowledge
all my guests for what opens up for me from the interview. I want to acknowledge you for a moment. I'd like to acknowledge all my guests for what opens up for me from the interview.
And I want to acknowledge you, Mark, for your incredible commitment to healing the world.
And there's so much lack of information.
There's so much ignorance that myself and so many people have experienced growing up,
thinking we're supposed to live a certain way that's actually been killing us slowly every day. And it's people like you who are committed to greatness and excellence in curing this
and doing the research, doing the work that no one wants to do and the research that no
one wants to do to put together useful information to guide us to living a healthier life.
So I want to acknowledge you for your incredible commitment to service for humanity.
Thank you. Yeah. And the final question is what's your definition of greatness?
My definition of greatness is someone who fully shows up, is fully present in their life,
is able to tell the truth with love and be in a state of loving and giving and presence.
Thanks for coming on, man.
Appreciate it.
Thank you.
There you have it, greats.
I hope you enjoyed this episode.
And for me, I got a lot out of it.
Again, there's always experts and different opinions on health and fitness
and all these different things that we talk about.
But for me, Dr. Mark Hyman is one of the most credible people.
He's been doing it for the longest.
He's got the Cleveland Clinic who comes to him and says,
hey, implement the stuff you are teaching to the world in our clinic,
and that clinic is one of the best in the world at what they do.
So for me, his information is great.
I hope you guys check out his book.
Again, you can get the full show notes
and watch the full interview on my YouTube channel.
But the link is back at lewishouse.com slash 293.
And if you haven't yet subscribed to me on YouTube, make sure to do that.
We are posting videos two, three times a week now.
Lots of great video interviews, motivational videos, inspirational videos, and things like that.
So make sure to go to youtube slash
Lewis Howes click the subscribe button
share some of the videos with your friends
there as well I am so
pumped guys we have just begun
this year and we've got so many great
guests we've got so many more great guests coming
up each and every week I'm
super pumped we've got my friend Joe Polish
on the next episode
who is going to talk a lot about
how to expand and grow your business. So one of the best marketers in the world and one of the
most connected marketers in the world that I've met. So stay tuned for that one. And you guys
know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.