The School of Greatness - 616 Dr. Mark Hyman: Heal Your Body with Food

Episode Date: March 19, 2018

“FOOD IS MEDICINE. IT WORKS FASTER, BETTER, AND CHEAPER THAN ALMOST ANY DRUG.” I know how hard it is to eat a healthy diet. It requires time and energy that you often feel like you don’t have. But what if I told you the time and energy you think you don’t have is because of the food you’re currently putting into your body? It's easy to be skeptical about this idea. But that’s what the food industry wants us to think. It wants us to continue eating its food, not giving a second thought to the sugars and fat we’re putting into our system. To break free from this mindset, it's really helpful to talk to the experts. And today, I have one of the most knowledgeable people in the field: Dr. Mark Hyman. Dr. Mark Hyman, M.D. is the founder and medical director of the UltraWellness Center, Director of the Cleveland Clinical Center for Functional Medicine, and the Chairman of the Board of the Institute for Functional Medicine. He is a New York Times bestselling author with books like 10-Day Detox Diet and Eat Fat, Get Thin. His latest book Food: What The Heck Should I Eat? provides an explanation of the nutritional science around food and why the political, environmental, economic and social issues corrupt our understanding of food. Dr. Hyman is one of my favorite people to learn about health from because he is so honest about what's going on. Instead of trying to push his own agenda, he's got humanity's best interest at heart. If you’re looking to learn about the connection between food and energy or how the food industry manipulates what we see on TV, tune into Episode 616 to forever change your eating habits. Some Questions I Ask: How does our food impact everything? (6:45) How does funding affect the public discourse about food? (12:47) Do you think all inflammation, chronic pain and disease can be eliminated from the foods we eat? (16:30) Can you gain muscle mass living a fully vegetarian/vegan lifestyle? (20:48) What are the 3 basic food rules you live by? (24:55) What do you think the main thing people are feeding themselves that’s hurting them? (30:42) What’s the biggest challenge you face in your life? (32:13) Is there anything now you believe in that you think will eventually be debunked? (38:15) In This Episode You Will Learn: How Dr. Hyman sees food affecting our environment (8:13) When Dr. Hyman’s opinion was influenced by the food industry (12:59) What Dr. Hyman, being a functional doctor, sees as the root of disease (16:38) The question Dr. Hyman asks himself when food shopping (25:00) What Dr. Hyman sees as the greater footprint beyond your own health (28:24) How Dr. Hyman sees the power of the individual vs. the food system (34:00) What Dr. Hyman sees as the problems with grouping disease by symptoms and not causes (38:15)

This is episode number 616 with number one New York Times best-selling author, Dr. Mark Hyman. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a 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. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, the first wealth is health. And if you are not thinking about your health, my friends,

you need to start making it a priority every single day. How can I optimize my nutrition, the way I move, the way I think, the way I feel? How can we optimize this? Because an optimal health will give you an optimal life. But if your health is under attack on a consistent basis or it's struggling, it will build negative momentum over the long run and you will suffer and struggle, my friends. That's why we brought on the number one New York Times best selling author, Dr. Mark Hyman, who's the director of the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine, chairman of the board of the Institute of Functional Medicine, and founder and director of the Ultra Wellness Center. He's an 11-time

New York Times bestselling author, and his books include Eat Fat, Get Thin, The Blood Sugar Solution, and many other massive books. His newest book, Food, What the Heck Should I Eat?, provides an explanation of nutritional science, the political, environmental, economic, and social issues around food. This is fascinating stuff. And then it dives deep into food as we eat it and the questions surrounding the food and provides a guide on how to make the best choice for real food in each category. And Tony Robbins said, if you're confused about what to eat, then read this book. And what we cover are some fascinating things. Number one, how what we hear on TV shows about health is actually manipulated

by sponsors and a lot of time not actually true or good for you. Also, the five causes of disease and which one is the biggest that Mark talks about? Why Mark is a reliable doctor to listen to over the other nutritional experts? And I ask him that question. Also the connection between our food and our mood and our energy and why your genetic makeup isn't as significant as you think.

This is gonna be interesting. I'm so excited about this. Again, I don't wanna be confused about my nutrition, my food and what is going to be interesting. I'm so excited about this. Again, I don't want to be confused about my nutrition, my food, and what is good to eat, what's bad, how to optimize your health and nutrition. That's why we bring on the expert, the one and only Dr. Mark Hyman. Welcome back to one of the School of Greatness podcast. We have the legendary Dr. Mark Hyman in the house. Good to see you, sir. Thank you, Louis.

Very excited. The last time you were on was two years ago, actually. Two years ago. Talking about fat. Talking about fat. And now we're talking about food. What the heck should I eat is the new book. Make sure you guys check it out.

New York Times bestseller already. Crushing it and helping a lot of people. The No-Nonsense Guide to Achieving Optimal Weight and Lifelong Health. So what should I eat? You know, you were talking about this before, that every day we get multiple times to vote on what we want to put inside of our body, right?

And what we should be eating. And we have control over this. Or I guess most people do, right? Most people do, not everybody on the planet, but most people do have a choice about what they eat and what they put in their bodies and how it impacts everything that matters in the world. How does it impact everything? Well, I wrote this book because people are confused. Like, they don't know what to eat.

They're hearing paleo, vegan, keto, low-fat, high-fat, low-carb, high-carb, raw, whatever. No sugar. No sugar. It's like, you know, there's no soda diet that everybody believes in, but pretty much everything else, you know? Right. And so I really want to answer that question. And in answering that question, it really became clear to me that the field is so confused

because there's so much money in the food system that's driving the food we eat. And the way we grow the food and the kind of food that we produce and the way it's marketed and the way it's distributed and the way it's promoted are literally driving almost everything that's wrong with our society. And people don't understand how it all connects together. For example, yes, we know that we eat bad food, we get sick and fat. But the truth is that food is the most powerful driver of chronic disease, which affects one out of two people now. And it costs 84% of our $3.2 trillion healthcare costs or for chronic disease. So that's a big

deal. And that is affecting our economy, right? Because most people don't understand that Medicare and Medicaid are going to go bankrupt in 20 years because 100% of our federal revenue from taxes will be required to pay for Medicare and Medicaid for chronic disease. Today, one third of the budgets of most states is for chronic disease through Medicaid. That's just the health and economy. Then it goes on, the climate. Food system itself is the number one cause of climate change. Food waste, we waste 40% of food.

We grow food in terms of soil practices that deplete the soil. We've lost 1.1 billion acres of arable land to deserts, which then affects carbon in the environment because soil holds carbon. Healthy organic soil actually sequesters carbon that if built back up at scale could take us back to the pre-industrial era of climate change. On top of that, the carbon goes in the environment, goes in the oceans, and then kills the phytoplankton by acidifying the oceans. The phytoplankton are these single-celled organisms that are essentially the bottom of the food chain in the ocean, but they produce 50% of our oxygen.

Every other breath you take comes from the ocean, not the rainforest. So the way we're growing food, tilling, industrial agriculture, all is damaging that. Factory farmed animals is really the number one cause of climate change. Factory farmed? Why is that?

Just because all the pollution they put out? Yeah, because one, we use industrial agriculture practice to grow the food. So 70% of our agricultural lands are to grow food for animals for human consumption. In other words, soybeans and corn and all the feedlot cows that eat, not grass, but eat corn and soybeans. They're not supposed to eat. And who knows what other junk.

Right. Plus given antibiotics and so forth. Then all the chemicals that are used in industrial agriculture, the fertilizers, the pesticides, the herbicides, all run off into the waterways. Then it kills the waterways. And you have dead zones the size of New Jersey in the Gulf of Mexico from our agricultural practice. And so all these things are combining to actually drive climate change. Plus one-fifth of our fossil fuel consumption is used for industrial agriculture. So it's a huge problem that most people don't realize. So our environment and our climate are being driven by the food we eat. And then of course there's the social issues.

People don't understand that the quality of the food we eat, the processed food, the refined oils, the sugars, the chemicals, the additives, affect behavior. We know for example, Lewis, that in prisons, if you give people a healthy diet in prisons, they will reduce violent crime in the prison by 56%. If you add a vitamin supplement, it goes down by 80% because they're all nutritionally depleted. I mean, I had a patient, not a patient, he was a, I don't know, he was a guy who was in jail. He was a murderer. He wrote me a handwritten letter years ago. He said, I followed your program in jail. I realized I was a murderer. My behavior was so violent my whole life. And when I changed my diet, I became a completely different person.

I realized it was what I was eating. And now I'm so thankful for having my life back. So you think our diet also determines our behavior? Absolutely. There's clear evidence about that. I was just reading a study the other day that showed that people who eat a lot of carbohydrates and sugars and starches have much more violent behavior. We know that people eat refined oils, which we now have 10% of these as our calories from soybean oil. It's in everything. It's not necessarily put in our food. It's in every package processed food.

That has led to increase in homicides and violence and suicides around the world. And we've gotten higher on these refined omega-6s and low on omega-3s. So the evidence of how it affects behavior, mood, poverty, it keeps poor communities down. And then the food industry targets these communities disproportionately. So you have all these things happening at the same time. And then kids, kids can't learn in school

because they're eating Doritos and Coke and they can't actually focus and learn and their behavior's all erratic and they're on these chemicals which alter their behavior. That's why one out of six kids has some neurodevelopmental problem, which is enormous, right? ADD now affects one out of 10 kids. I think 14% of kids have ADD, and about one in 10 kids are on medication. You think ADD can be removed if we have a better diet? Or is that something that happens?

Absolutely. Is that something? Absolutely. Is that something like the brain? No, it's not a brain problem. It's a body problem. And the body problem is caused by our diet and by environmental toxins. And I've had hundreds of ADD patients who've transformed their lives. I mean, we're talking about the Broken Brain documentary series I did. I had a guy, I was in a New York Russian bathhouse the other day.

So I come to that. I saw your series, I've been on AD medication my whole life and it helped me get off my medication. We see this. So you've got health, you've got the economy, you've got social justice and poverty issues, you've got climate, you've got environment, you've got education. It's all connected. And the issue is that most people don't connect the dots, number one one and most people don't realize that we're in this situation because of money in the food system that's driving our policies you were mentioning how there's some press hits that you do i won't mention who but that would say you can't talk about certain things because of a sponsor that's funding the program oh yeah you can't talk negative about one brand or one product because of that. That's right.

I was told, well, you can't cover this subject because we get our funding from this sponsor. I can tell you a story from the past because the show's not on the air anymore. It was the Martha Stewart Show. And I was on the show, and we were working with a producer, and we were talking about getting healthy and working out and detoxing, and Martha had her trainer there. And the producer says, well, we're going to have to do a bit as part of the segment on dairy and how dairy is such a great sports recovery drink.

No way. Yes. And so I was like, you know, I'm just sorry to tell you, but there's all this evidence that that's not true. So I downloaded all the scientific papers documenting the science behind the fact that dairy isn't a sports drink. And he's like, I know, but we kind of have to because this spot is sponsored by the Dairy Council.

Oh my gosh. If you're ever on television, you know that the experts don't get notes. They don't get cue cards. They don't get teleprompters. They have to know their stuff. Well, this woman, who was the trainer, had all these cue cards that was being held up about dairy with all the bullet points of why dairy is such a great food and sports drink.

It's insidious. So we think we're getting news. We're thinking getting authentic information. From experts too. From doctors or specialists or experts. And we are influenced by these experts. Huge. I mean, the evidence is so clear

that industry is heavily funding science. And they're funding corrupt science. So if you look at the data, for example, artificial sweeteners, 99% of the studies done by the food industry show that they are safe. 99% of the studies on artificial sweeteners done by independent scientists find that they're not safe. If your industry funds a study,

they're 8 to 50 times more likely to find a positive benefit for their product. Right, of course. And then you look at the American Heart Association, the American Diabetic Association, the American Nutrition, I mean, the American Nutrition Dietetic Association. These are all funded by the food industry. I mean, if you look, it's Coca-Cola, it's Pepsi, it's Cargill. It's frightening to see how much money is. You have Trix cereal for kids as a heart-healthy cereal. Cocoa Puffs, Lucky Charms. I mean, Trix has seven teaspoons of sugar. Red dye, blue dye, yellow dye, you dye.

You know? Like it's all in there and it's a heart-healthy food. Why? Because they get $300,000 for every time they put that check on a box. Yes, way. And this is happening globally. Globally, I mean there's a huge battle going on

in Malaysia now because Nestle has promoted this drink called Milo, which I never heard about, but it's a big drink in the developing world and in Asia and South America. It's basically Ovaltine. It's basically a malted beverage with sugar that has the same glycemic index as Coca-Cola. They have athletes on there and sports characters and how it's a great drink for health and they had this commercial which I saw which was a Filipino rock star singing this great rap song about how

Everybody who's a kid has an energy gap four out of five kids have this thing called an energy gap I was in medical conference. What's an energy gap mean? I was at a medical conference of 1500 doctors I says anybody here heard of an energy gap that four out of five kids have? No. They completely made this up and they say these kids need Milo for the energy gap. No way. Yeah.

And this guy who lives over in Malaysia called them out on this and they came out with this huge propaganda campaign against him to discredit him and manipulating the facts

and lying. And I was just watching this whole thing. It's unbelievable. So it's not an accident that we're in this situation. Wow. The manipulation. Yeah. And do you think that all inflammation, chronic pain, and disease can be eliminated from the foods we eat or is caused by foods? I think- Besides having like a car accident or something? Yeah. I'm a functional medicine doctor. I run the Center for Functional Medicine at Cleveland Clinic.

And so we look at the root causes of disease. And there are many, right? There's environment. There's lifestyle. There's genetics. All affect these various systems in your body, right? So we always say there's five causes of all disease based on how they influence your genetics and combine with your lifestyle. Toxins.

So environmental toxins, that's not your fault. That's just the fact that we put 80,000 chemicals in the environment without testing them. We have 3,000 food additives we eat every year. As Americans, about three to five pounds of it, which is frightening. And there are heavy metals and pesticides everywhere. So we're exposed to a lot of toxins. They make people sick. Infections, which we can get, whether it's viral infections and bacterial infections,

Lyme disease, tick infections, allergens, which are increasingly common, or food sensitivities, things where your body's creating an immune response, whether it's gluten or dairy, those are big. And then poor diet and stress. All of those are contributing to disease. But by far, the biggest cause is food. By far. What's amazing is it's not like a little bit.

It's like people say, oh, my migraines or my arthritis or my irritable bowel. People don't connect the dots between how they feel and the food they're eating. And then when you switch, people have transformations very quickly. Yeah. You know? They notice it quickly. Quickly, yeah. I mean, and pain goes away.

The weight goes off. All these things. Yeah. I mean, I always say food is medicine. It's not just like a medicine. It works faster, better, and cheaper than almost any drug. I mean, we have people who are off insulin who are type 2 diabetics within a week and get off all their medications.

I mean, there was a huge study just published on a ketogenic diet intervention for type 2 diabetics. And I don't think ketogenic diets are right for everybody, but in extreme situations where your metabolism is so broken, it can help reset things. Basically reducing carbs to 30 grams a day, 70% fat, and help in the context of a healthy plant-rich diet. And they were able to get 100% of the people in a year over diabetics off of the main diabetes medication and 94% off insulin or dramatically lower with an average weight loss of 30 pounds, about 12% of body weight and this is unprecedented in the research because

food if you know how to apply it in the right way at the right dose for the right person it's the most powerful drug hmm yeah here's the thing you talked about in the book that you've been studying food for 35 years 40 now I can I 40 years I was like I did the math I It's 2018. I started in 1978 in college. And I'm like that old. Here's the thing. You've got 11 New York Times bestselling books. You've probably done how many books total?

14. 14 books. 11 New York Times, including this one, Food, What the Heck Should I Eat? And for 40 years, you've been studying food. And you say even the experts are confused by the science. They are. They are. So how come you're. How come I figured it out? How and you say even the experts are confused by the science. They are. They are. So how come you're—

How come I figured it out? How come you know all the answers? I don't think about— After 40 years. I don't think I know all the answers, but I don't have a bone to pick. Yeah, yeah. In other words, I haven't spent my life dedicated to the low-fat diet. I haven't been dedicated my life to—

Paleo. Veganism. I mean, I'm looking at what works. And the other thing I know is that I'm not an academic. I do research, but that's not how I started. I'm looking at what works. And the other thing I know is that I'm not an academic. I do research, but that's not how I started. I'm a practicing doctor. So what's happened over the years is the latest thing comes in, I try it, see what happens, see what happens to the patient.

So seeing tens of thousands of patients doing thousands and thousands of lab tests over the years, seeing what happens when people change their diet and how their biology responds, that's the best laboratory you'll ever see. I even noticed it myself. I was a vegetarian for 10 years. I see pictures of myself when I was 28 and I am so scrawny even though I ate really healthy. I ran five miles a day. I did yoga all the time.

I look at myself now doing far less exercise and I am far more muscular and have more muscle mass than I did when I was 28 because I learned how to change my diet. And we know that the right kind of high-fat diet and adequate protein actually increases muscle mass. Wow. Yeah. I mean, I literally just got off the phone with a friend who says, you know, I went on a vegan diet and three days into it,

like, I can't lift anymore. Yeah. But then you see some, like, you see some athletes that are all vegan who have gained muscle mass and gained strength in their life. Maybe they're taking steroids. I don't know. Who knows? So you think living a vegetarian or vegan,

fully vegan or vegetarian lifestyle, that it's hard to gain muscle mass? I think it's hard. It's hard. It's not impossible. I mean, if you really work at it and really work out, and there are great vegan athletes out there, but there's never been a historically voluntary vegan society ever.

And when you look at- The Blue Zones or- No, they were never exclusively vegan. Really? They always had some animal food. Got the fish or something. Yeah. And as hunter-gatherers, we ate 800 species of plants.

So we had a very plant-rich diet. But we also included wild animals when we could catch them. Right, exactly. You know? It's part of our evolutionary history. And our bodies are well adapted. And the protein in vegetables is different. So for example, there's something called leucine, which is an amino acid that is the rate-limiting

amino acid for muscle synthesis. In other words, in order to milk muscle, you need this amino acid. And it's very low in plant proteins, very high in animal proteins. Right. So why not just live a plant-based diet and then have the supplements? You could. You could. And I have patients who are vegans, monks. I mean, I'm not going to force people not to eat it, but it's much harder to do and you have to know what you're doing. And I see people over time, initially, when they switch from a processed American diet to a whole foods vegan diet, they are going to get so much better. Of course, yeah.

But the real issue is compared to what? Right. Right? And they've looked at over time in these big studies, looking at animal and plant proteins and stuff over time, looking at what people do. There was a vegan vegetarian omnivore study, which was 245,000 people. It was an observational study, but they didn't find any difference in outcomes. Another study, 42 country study, but they didn't find any difference in outcomes. Another study, a 42-country study looking at food pattern consumption over long periods of time, showed actually the people who had animal fat and protein did far better than people who focused on cereal grains in their diet.

Less heart disease. Another study, the PURE study, just came out recently, 135,000 people. It was five continents, I think 18 countries, 10 years. And there was actually an improvement when people had more saturated fat and more good fats and less cereal grains and more animal protein. More animal protein or more animal protein? Yeah. It was not a risk factor. Right.

Now, these are difficult studies to interpret sometimes because they're observational. But you look at interventional studies where you intervene by giving people high fat, protein diets with lots of plant foods, people do better metabolically. So, yeah, it's very hard to eat a low glycemic diet if you're a vegan. You can, but it's very hard. I have a friend who's a keto vegan, and she's a type one diabetic, and she's rocking it.

But you have to know what you're doing. And you're super disciplined, super smart about it. That's challenging. Yeah, I think, you know, it. That's challenging. Yeah. I think, you know, and the data on meat, honestly, which I go into the book in great detail, is confusing for people. Because there's this— So it depends on the factors of the meat. Yeah. How you get it, the environment it's in, how it's fed, how it's raised, the stress of it.

Exactly. How it's processed, everything, right? Totally, right. So people go, we shouldn't be eating meat because it's bad for the animals, better for the environment. Right, right. Yes, we should not be eating factory farmed meat. This is really bad. It's bad for the animals. It's bad for the planet. It's bad for us because the quality of the meat is very poor. But let's say a wild elk or a grass finished bison or even cow, very different. And it turns out that these animals actually have higher levels of omega-3 fats and higher

levels of antioxidants and minerals and nutrients and beneficial fats and actually are a great source of protein and don't have the harm that we think they do. When you look at the studies that showed there was harm, the reason they show that is because when you do an observational study, you give people a questionnaire every year. So you take 10,000 people, 100,000 people, and every year you give them a questionnaire every year So you take 10,000 people 100,000 people and every year you give a questionnaire would you would you last week when do you know? I if you can remember and people answer according to what they think they should answer a lot of times, right? So if meat is bad, they're gonna underestimate the amount of meat they're eating So during the time of these studies meat was considered bad

So people who ate meat didn't really care about their health So they smoke and the data show it when you look at the factors of these people, their characteristics, which you can read in the studies, which I read, they were overweight. They smoked. They drank. They didn't eat fruits and vegetables. They didn't exercise. They didn't take vitamins. They ate more processed food, more sugar. Of course, they were sicker. Wow. Yeah. Now, what are the three basic food rules that you live by? Me? Yeah. Well, I was joking.

I used to teach a lot of churches, and I go, ask yourself one question when you're shopping. Did God make this, or did man make this, right? Did God make a Twinkie? No. Did God make an avocado? Yeah. Pretty simple rule. Yeah.

And you can even take that to its logical extreme. Did God make a feedlot cow? No. Did God make a grass-fed cow? Yes, right? Sure. So you can kind of go down the line on all that. That's the first principle.

The second principle is we should be eating mostly plant-based diet. Yeah. We call it plant-rich. I like to call it plant-rich. You've got 80-20, right? Yeah, 80%, 70% of your foods on your plate should be lots of vegetables, nuts and seeds, fruit, whole foods. And the third principle is we need a lot of good fats. Avocados, olive oil. I think there's controversies about certain things. Nuts and seeds are good, but then there's the whole saturated fat

debate, which we can get into with refined oils. But essentially, we need a lot of good fats, low starch and sugar, plant rich diet, and stay away from processed food. Yeah, now should that be true for everyone or does it depend on your body type, your blood type, your genetics? I jokingly call this the pegan diet, right? Because I was sitting on a panel with friends of mine,

one was paleo, one was vegan, they were fighting, and I'm like, listen guys, you're paleo, you're vegan, I must be a pegan, and I was joking. And then it occurred to me that there was more in common than there was different, and we could come up with these general nutritional principles that nobody's gonna disagree with, right? Nobody thinks we should be eating a lot of starch and sugar.

Everybody thinks we should be eating more plants. Everybody thinks if we eat animal protein that we should eat only sustainably raised or harvested or grass-finished protein, that we should eat fish, but it should only be fish that's low in mercury and toxins that doesn't overfish the oceans. If it's farm-raised, it should be sustainable. We should eat lots of good fats.

I mean, there are a few outliers who still are holding on to low-fat dogma, but the train has left the station on that one. And so there's these simple, that nobody thinks we should be consuming pesticides and herbicides and GMO, that we should be having three pounds of food additives per person every year.

I mean, nobody thinks we should be eating those things. Like nobody's gonna say, okay, I think you should have more butylated hydroxy toluene with your salad, right? Or red dye number 40, right? These are things that are sort of inserted into our diet. So those are principles that I've sort of outlined, and it's adaptable. What about grains and beans?

Well, some people do well on them, some people don't, and it really is individual. But I talk about if you are going to, here's the things to know about grains and beans? Well, some people do well on them, some people don't, and it really is individual. But I talk about if you are going to, here's the things to know about. Here's the grains to eat. Here's what you should or shouldn't do. Gluten, why is it a problem? Who is it a problem for?

Is our current wheat the wheat we used to eat? No, it's not. So that has an impact, which should we focus on? Could you have rye, which has gluten in it, but it's probably, if you're not gluten sensitive,

a much better food. So it goes through every single chapter. I go in it, but it's probably, if you're not gluten sensitive, a much better food. So it goes through every single chapter. I go through meat, poultry, fish, eggs, vegetables, fruit, nuts, seeds, beans, grains. I talk about the controversies. What are the people fighting about? What does the science say? What do we know?

What do we not know? There's still stuff we are learning, right? We're still discovering every day. So it's really kind of a foundational principle book. It's not extreme. It's sort of the middle of the road. This is kind of the Bible for you then. Kind of. All the things you've learned.

Pretty much. 40 plus years now. 14 books. Yes. It's actually different than other books I've written because the other books are more topic specific. They're on the brain or they're on metabolism or diabetes or sugar. This is really, if you're an eater, and there's about 9 billion of us, it's probably something

that'll help. And I also talk about how do you eat, not just for your own health, right? But what is the overall footprint of the food you eat? What's the health footprint, the economic footprint, the carbon footprint, the environmental footprint, the educational footprint, the national security footprint, and even poverty and social justice footprint of what you eat? Because there are things we can't change as individuals. We can't end nuclear war.

We can't single-handedly end climate change. But we can change what we eat because we do it all the time. And the choices we make matter. I mean, I was just with the vice chairman of Pepsi, who's my new best friend. You can imagine. We had a great time together. And, you know, we don't agree on a lot of things. But it was fascinating listening to him talk about what's happening in the company as they're trying to shift to meet the consumer demand. Really? So they're like, how do we create special? And he introduced me to this engineer

who was working for him. How do we create special types of packaging that's compostable, but that keeps the food fresh. We don't need to use preservatives or artificial ingredients, and we can have whole foods that we distribute globally. I'm like, wow, that's a great thing to be looking at, right? Right. So they're thinking, and he said, I was also asked to talk to the USDA annual meeting, the agriculture department. And I'm like, ask Pepsi to come talk to them.

But he's talking about regenerative agriculture. He's talking about how we're losing water by our farming practices. We're losing soil. We need to change that. And they have enormous power, because they count their bottling facilities. They're probably the number one food company in the world,

up there with Nestle. And they are interested in doing this. And I'm like thinking, wow, here's the vice chairman of Pepsi talking about regenerative agriculture. I'm like, holy cow. You know, it's pretty cool. They want to in doing this. And I'm like thinking, wow, here's the vice chairman of Pepsi talking about regenerative agriculture. I'm like, holy cow. That's pretty cool. They want to make an impact.

Yeah, they can have an impact. But they're responding to the demands of the culture. They're responding to people who are voting with their forks. So it's a hopeful message. You not only get to change yourself, but you get to impact everything. I mean, imagine if everybody in the world for one day had an eat-in where they only ate real fresh whole food and they didn't shop or buy anything in a package that's processed in any way and didn't go to any fast food restaurants and just ate at home and cooked a meal together. Game changer. Totally. Just for one day. Imagine if we did that for a week or a

month. The whole system would change. Wow. Yeah. Now, as a functional medicine doctor, I believe that you're more of like a therapist for a lot of people too. They come to you with all their challenges. They feel pain in one thing, but there's something else that's affecting them, right? Yeah. What do you think is the main thing that they're feeding themselves, maybe that's not food, that affects them on the pain or their body? Yeah. I think people are feeding their feelings a lot of time.

I mean, food has such an effect on mood. It's so connected to how we think and feel. And so when we're feeling sad or depressed, we can stimulate our biology through food, whether it's caffeine or alcohol or sugar or other chemicals in food that actually stimulate our brain to sort of feel better for a minute. Right. And so we do that and we're human and we don't understand the difference and we don't know what's going on. We don't see we're in this vicious cycle. And it's tough. And people have hard lives and hard situations. But I believe in the power of community. I believe in the power of each other to help support the change. It's got to happen that way. And that's what we do.

We work with communities. We work in churches. We help people become empowered in schools to actually start to do this together. And it's so much more fun. It holds people accountable. It inspires people to change. And it works. And if we look at behavior change, which is the biggest thing we're talking about here, the hardest thing to do is on your own. I always say friend power is far more powerful than willpower. It's way easier to stay consistent with something with someone else supporting you, an accountability partner, a coach, whatever it may be, than trying to do it on your own. Absolutely. It's almost impossible to do it on your own.

Right. And that's why people listen to your podcast and seek out these things, because they're looking for some connection to something that they can hold on to that inspires them, that uplifts them, that gives them an idea of how they can be better. What's the biggest challenge you face in your life right now that you could improve on or get better at? Health-wise? Anything. challenge you face in your life right now that you could improve on or get better at health-wise anything you know you're this this top expert super credible doctor the cleveland clinic seems like you got it all figured out but what's the thing either personal or fitness or emotional

or yeah i mean i think you can improve on well i'm i recently got married and i have the most amazing wife and i'm just growing and growing and learning. And how do I be like the best version of myself? How do I be fully expressed and honest and in integrity and like value what's actually happening? And I think that's like my most important work. A lot of my career, I just focus on my work, work, work. And I'm like, wait a minute, you know, this, this, something else here going on. Right, so what's the biggest challenge you face with this new chapter? I think my phone. So I actually, I'm giving her

for our anniversary present a box, which is a little sealed box that I'm going to put my phone in when we're together. For what, an hour? No, for a weekend or longer. Okay. And I'm going to tell my assistant if she needs anything to call her phone if it's an

emergency. But I'm like, it's symbolic, but it's sort of invasive. And I'm like, nothing is that important that should interfere with our human connections. Right, right. There's one other thing, though, I'm working on. It's struggling. connections. Right, right. There's one other thing, though, I'm working on. It's struggling. It's a struggle for me because I feel like I've been lucky enough to see the emerging patterns that are changing in medicine and how we've come to think about disease quite differently based on

the science called functional medicine. But it's taking a long time to get it up to running in scale. And that's a challenge to figure out how to do that well. And the second thing is the food system. Because I feel like if we can all get how powerful we are as individuals, as communities, when we band together to do something around the food system, it's bigger than anything we could ever do. Because, you know, for example, civil rights, that affects one group of people. Women's rights, a large group of people. Gay rights, a large group of people, but small. Food affects everybody. And people don't understand how our food system is keeping them down and is limiting our ability to thrive and succeed as individuals or as a society. That's my real, I think my next phase of my work is figuring out how do we empower people around

the food system to understand these connections, to understand how to become empowered, how to activate movements and communities to sort of change the way we do things, and to then inspire policy change. Because it all has to come to that. Right now, our food policies, I mean, just the farm bill alone, which is every 10 years, it's about a trillion dollar bill. There's 600 lobbyists that spend half a billion dollars funding and lobbying congressmen on this farm bill. And I remember when I went to Washington during the Obamacare era, and I was advocating for

funding for lifestyle interventions so we could incentivize doctors to do the right thing, not just do medicine or surgery. And everybody was like, this is the greatest idea, greatest idea. And they would say what lobby group are you from like who are you from i'm like nobody i it's just i'm here for the patients and the science like i'm lobbying for the science and it was it was flabbergasted all these uh staffers and the congressmen the senators we met with they were like they didn't understand it because they don't experience individuals advocating

and not as part of some big, massive lobby group. Right, right, right. That's interesting. I'm curious now, when did you become a doctor? When did you? When did I go to medical school? 40 years ago when you got licensed? I graduated medical school 31 years ago.

41 years ago. 31 years ago. 31 years ago. I graduated medical school, yeah. Graduated. But you got into it 40 years ago. Yeah, well, I got into nutrition when I went to college. Gotcha. Okay, so 31 years you. 31 years ago. I graduated medical school, yeah. Graduated. But you got into it 40 years ago. Yeah.

Well, I got into nutrition when I went to college. Gotcha. Okay. So 31 years you've been, is it called licensed doctor or what do you call it? Certified doctor? Yeah. I got my MD degree 1987. Okay.

31 years ago. I'm curious, what were the beliefs that you had going in 31 years ago that was industry standard? going in 31 years ago that was industry standard. That was like, this is the belief of medicine or food or the body that you believed in so wholeheartedly, but now you've realized 31 years later is completely false. Well, actually, I have ODD. You know what that is? What's that?

I'm odd. And I was weird from the beginning. So I was a vegetarian in college. I was a yoga teacher before I was a doctor. I studied systems thinking in college. I studied alternative systems of healing and medicine from around the world. My thinking was already there. And I was studying herbal medicine.

I was going to go to China. I spoke Chinese. I was going to go to China and study Chinese medicine, but I didn't want to grow up in a communist dictatorship. So I basically said, I'll try medical school and see if I like Chinese. I was going to go to China and study Chinese medicine, but I didn't want to grow up in a communist dictatorship. So I basically said, I'll try medical school and see if I like it. And I was fascinated with the body. And I really never went away from it, although I did really take it all in. I had to suspend all my criticism, disbelief, and just learn it as a system.

Then I could unpack it. disbelief and just learn it as a system then I could unpack it and so then I began to sort of unpack it and discovered functional medicine early on and since then I've just been focused on that as the new model for thinking about the body as a whole dynamic system was there any belief that you had after you learned everything from medical school where you realize you believed in something that became debunked over the last 31 years. Yeah, I mean, I really believe that there were these diseases that we label and name and that they were real things. Just like, you know, when you get TB bacteria, that's a real thing,

that you get tuberculosis when you have TB bacteria exposure. But chronic disease isn't like that. So we've created these categories of disease, like dementia or diabetes or cancer or rheumatoid arthritis or irritable bowel or whatever it is. And we group people according to symptoms, not according to causes. You know, I was just with Thomas Insel, who is the former head of the National Institutes of Mental Health. And I'd asked him before, I said, what do you think of the DSM-5, which is the diagnostic category for psychiatric illness? He says, I think it has 100% accuracy, meaning it groups people according to depression or

anxiety. It's very good. But it has 0% validity. Meaning it's not valid because it doesn't describe the why, only the what. And that was a big aha for me to understand that all these diseases I learned about in medical school as these finite things, they weren't something you get. You don't get heart disease. You don't get diabetes. You don't get dementia. You can get a cold, but you don't get these things. And it's a very different way of thinking about disease. It's a systems problem.

It's how the body is out of balance. It's a way of working with the body that looks at the body as a whole dynamic interacting ecosystem that you can change by taking out the bad stuff and putting in the good stuff. But that was a belief you had early on through medical school, because that's what was taught, right?

Yeah. Now is there anything now that you believe in that you think will eventually be debunked in 30 years or 10 years or five years that you're like this is the truth this is the facts but who knows maybe there's not enough research or science or proof in that and in 30 years i think it's going to turn out that our genes aren't as important as we think because that's where a lot of this stuff is coming from the genes all about your genes. We were in the genomic era.

In the omics era. Genomics and proteomics and metabolomics and all this stuff. Genes aren't important in terms of disease? Yeah. I think that that's the diseases we're seeing. So yes, if you have Huntington's Korea or you have Down syndrome or you have

some horrible inherited genetic condition that's a dominant disease, which is we call autosomal dominance, a type of genetic single gene mutation that's kind of fixed. Although you can modify how those people do. I'm talking about the rest of the chronic disease we have. And I think it turns out, looking at the research, that your zip code turns out to be more important as a determinant of your health than your genetic code. That your friends and your social network is a bigger determinant of your health than your family. We know from Christakis' work at Harvard looking at obesity, that people who are obese, they're

more likely to be obese if they have obese friends than if they have obese parents or siblings because it's our social connections that drive our behavior. If you're eating fries and soda and burgers and watching TV all day and all your friends are doing that, you're more likely to be overweight. If you're going to yoga and drinking green juices, you're going to probably be healthier if all your friends are doing that. So if your friends are modeling healthy behaviors, and we live in a totally peer, socially driven world. I mean, look what happened with the Me Too environment.

All of a sudden, it was OK to say the truth. And then you had like millions of women speaking up because it was OK. It was socially acceptable. The peer group said, yes, that's how powerful. And I think I'm hoping for that kind of change around food. Right. So you think genetics don't play as much of a role as we know? I think we're going to be disappointed by the human genome project. It's already failed to give us a lot of what we hoped it would give us. Really? Yeah.

Powerful. Yeah. I mean, there's something called the exposome, which is how our genes are exposed to different factors, right? So we call the exposome what you eat, what you think, what you feel, your stress level, exercise, sleep, environmental toxins, your microbiome, all that is the world you're exposed to. It's what your genes are being washed over with every day. Turns out 90% of chronic disease is determined by the exposome, not the genome. Fascinating. Yeah. Pretty amazing stuff. Which is very empowering because you think, oh, it's my genes. My dad had Alzheimer's. My dad had heart disease.

My dad had diabetes. My mom was this. You're like, okay, what can I do? But the truth is it's a very empowering message because people can change. They can change your gene expression. You can't change your genes, but you can change which ones are turned on or off and how they work. Now, did you believe at one point that the genes did play a big role? Oh, yeah, for sure. All of us did. Yeah. Powerful. I love it. A couple of questions left. Make sure you guys get the book though before we finish up. Food,

what the heck should I eat? The No-Nonsense Guide to Achieving Optimal Weight and Lifelong Health. Make sure you guys pick it up. New York Times bestseller. It's crushing already. This is called The Three Truths. I don't know if I asked you this last time. You might have. Maybe. But we'll do it again and see what comes up. So imagine your final day.

You live until you're 300 years old because you're the fountain of youth right now. Almost 60, right? Almost 60. 58? Is that bad? Yeah, almost 60. I'll be 60 next year. You look like you're 25 and in the book.

I love it. 60 next year? Yeah. Wow. I'm 2019. I'll be 60. I hope I look like you're 25 and in the book. I love it. 60 next year? Yeah. Wow. 2019, I'll be 60. I hope I look like you when I'm 60. But you're going to live for as long as you want. And imagine it's your final day.

And you choose the day. You've done everything you want to do. You've done it all. And you say, you know what? It's time for me. I'm ready to go. Yeah. You go on your terms.

You've written 75 New York Times bestsellers. God forbid. You know, every topic you could imagine. There's a book out there that you've come out with. You've done 75 New York Times bestsellers. God forbid. Every topic you can imagine, there's a book out there that you've come out with. You've done everything you want to do, but for whatever reason, you have to take it all with you. So no one has access to any of it. You've got to take it all with you. It goes with you in the grave, but you get a piece of paper and a pen to share your final three truths with the world, your final lessons and truths. And that's what would stay behind, but everything else you take with you. So they don't have access to anything else.

But these three truths that you would write down, what would you say are yours? I would say the first thing is don't take yourself seriously. Show up with love in every interaction and everything you do and have fun. It's powerful. I like it. It should be the book. Yeah, there's no more books. That's powerful. I like it. It should be the book. Yeah, there's no more books. That's it. I want to acknowledge you for constantly showing up

for four decades of the work you've been doing to help humanity live a better life. And I just acknowledge you for constantly showing up with love, with humility, with fun and passion.

You make it easier for us to understand the complicated and scary things because this stuff is really scary for a lot of people to understand what's happening to me. Why am I feeling this way? Why do I have this pain? Am I going to die? And so to have someone of your level of credibility and authority who's doing the work, researching

the science, and giving us simple ways to make better decisions. It's a powerful thing. So I acknowledge you for that. Thanks, Lewis. Of course. It means a lot. Of course. Now, where can we follow you the most online and the book? You can look at the book.

Lots of great free information at foodthebook.com. Or you can check me out at drhyman.com, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. I'm everywhere. At drhyman.com, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. I'm everywhere. At drhyman everywhere pretty much. It's Mark Hyman MD on Instagram and on Twitter. And it's Dr. Mark Hyman and Facebook. And it's not hard to find. All over the place.

Awesome. Is there anywhere you hang out personally the most that you like to check in on on social media? I don't really like it that much. I think it's distracting. It is distracting. I like Facebook because I keep in touch with my friends. I like to see what they're doing and my son and what he made last night for dinner. Cool. Awesome. Make sure you guys get the book. Awesome book. Awesome man. The final question is, what is your definition of greatness? My definition of greatness is showing up, being present, and love with everything you do.

Dr. Mark Hyman. Thanks, sir. Thanks. Appreciate it. And there you have it, my friends. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, please leave us a review over on iTunes and share this with your friends. LewisHowes.com slash 616. The full video

interview, the resources, the notes, the book that you can get of Mark Hyman is back at that link as well, lewishouse.com slash 616. Make sure to check it all out and tag Dr. Mark Hyman over on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook and all the places. And let me know what you thought of this one as well over on Instagram. I hope you guys enjoy this one again. And as Ralph Waldo Emerson said, the first wealth is health. I love you. Take care of your health. It's the most important thing. And you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great. you