Is It Burnout Or Something Deeper? The High-Functioning Trap | Dr. Judith Joseph

If we're wired for joy, why do so many successful people feel exhausted, disconnected, or emotionally flat? On this episode of The Dr. Hyman Show, I sit down with psychiatrist, researcher, and author Dr. Judith Joseph, whose team conducted the first peer-reviewed clinical study on high-functioning depression. We talk about why feeling "fine" on the outside doesn't always reflect what's happening beneath the surface—and why so many people struggle to feel fully alive. You’ll learn: Why achievement and productivity don't always lead to fulfillment How to tell whether you're burned out—or struggling with high-functioning depression The surprising connection between unresolved trauma, people-pleasing, and chronic stress What your phone, social media habits, and screen time may be doing to your mood How to start reclaiming joy when life feels flat, exhausting, or unfulfilling Like many people, I've spent periods of my life focused on achievement and productivity, believing fulfillment would follow. I've learned that the most important work isn't always doing more—it's understanding what's keeping us from fully experiencing joy in the first place. Want to explore this further? Dr. Judith Joseph offers several self-assessments under the "Quiz" tab on her website, including tools for anhedonia, high-functioning depression, and trauma. View Show Notes From This Episode Sign up for Dr. Hyman’s Brainshaping Academy to learn how to nourish the biological systems that support your mental, emotional, and cognitive health https://drhyman.com/products/brainshaping?utm_source=dr_hyman_show&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=may_27&utm_content=link Get Free Weekly Health Tips from Dr. Hyman https://drhyman.com/pages/picks?utm_campaign=shownotes&utm_medium=banner&utm_source=podcast Sign Up for Dr. Hyman’s Weekly Longevity Journal https://drhyman.com/pages/longevity?utm_campaign=shownotes&utm_medium=banner&utm_source=podcast Join the 10-Day Detox to Reset Your Healthhttps://drhyman.com/pages/10-day-detox Join the Hyman Hive for Expert Support and Real Resultshttps://drhyman.com/pages/hyman-hive This episode is brought to you by Big Bold Health, BIOptimizers, Rho, Sunlighten, Paleovalley, and Pique. Go to bigboldhealth.com/drhyman and use code HYMAN15 to save 15% on your first order. Head to bioptimizers.com/hyman and use promo code HYMAN at checkout to save 15%. Head over to rhonutrition.com and use code HYMAN to get 20% off their entire product line. Visit sunlighten.com and use code HYMAN to save up to $2100 today. Head to paleovalley.com/hyman to save 15% off your first order today. Secure 20% off your order plus a free starter kit at piquelife.com/hyman. (0:00) High functioning depression, burnout, and Dr. Hyman's personal experience (2:37) Introduction Dr. Judith Joseph (5:13) Depression among medical professionals and defining anhedonia (7:04) Joy as part of our DNA and identifying high functioning depression (13:23) Biological causes, biomarkers, and differences between burnout and high functioning depression (18:18) Avoiding trauma processing by staying busy; hedonism and anhedonia (22:14) Identifying roots of trauma, childhood patterns, and using transitional objects (25:51) Finding points of joy amidst depression and people pleasing in high-functioning individuals (30:39) Neurological shifts, lack of joy, and the biopsychosocial model of depression (36:56) Digital depression, reducing screen time, and healthy tech relationships (49:09) Women's hormones, midlife shifts, and distinguishing hormonal from psychiatric conditions (58:30) Reclaiming joy, the five v's, and processing emotions (1:01:21) The significance of venting, emotional boundaries, and healthy outlets (1:05:28) Defining values, mind-body connection, and social relationships (1:09:05) Planning and scheduling future joy and connection (1:13:22) The evolution of psychiatry, spirituality, and Gen Z's spiritual study (1:18:03) Finding meaning, purpose, and learning more about high functioning depression

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Dr. Mark Hyman?

  You know, you talk about this idea of high functioning depression. How is that different from just burnout?

• 0:04Speaker 01

  Well, burnout is a workplace phenomenon. High functioning depression is different. This is the high functioning brain in the workplace. You still have the stress, the pressures from the outside. You remove that brain from the workplace and they don't get better. This is someone who, when they sit still, they cannot relax. They're humans doing, not human beings, right? What we found was that there was a high correlation between unprocessed trauma and pain and HFD, high functioning depression. So the theory is that they're in the workplace, they have the symptoms. They're out of the workplace, they still have the symptoms. That unresolved trauma and pain is being carried with them. It's not being processed.

• 0:39Dr. Mark Hyman?

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• 1:24Dr. Mark Hyman?

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• 2:07Dr. Mark Hyman?

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• 2:49Dr. Mark Hyman?

  If you've been dealing with anxiety, low energy or trouble focusing and still feel like you're missing something, you're not alone. And that's why I created the brain shaping academy, a new program that looks in places most people never think to check, like nutrient deficiencies, the health of your gut, metabolism, your immune system and lots more. Welcome Judith to the podcast. It's good to have you here.

• 3:11Speaker 01

  It's so great to see you again.

• 3:13Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Your work is quite fascinating because you, you've had a kind of a flip on the typical thinking in psychiatry and now just as in, in the world of sort of health, you know, in medicine, we think of, of, you know, you're okay if you don't have a disease, like the, you know, the absence of disease is health, but that's not true. Right? And I think health is something else. It's a sense of positive vitality, well being. And in psychiatry, it's the same thing, you know, if you don't have these clinical depression by these scales or anxiety or whatever it is, then you're fine. But there's another level of like full expression, happiness, joy, feeling that so many of us don't have and we walk around living our lives in this.

• 3:57Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And I'm speaking for myself here, you know, just overdoing, overachieving, driving and you're high functioning. Like I was very high functioning. I wrote 20 books in 20 years. I'm like, have a practice. I've done all these things. I started Center for Function Medicine, Cleveland Clinic. I was just so driven. But I remember moments in that journey where I was like, just in it and I wasn't happy. Like I was just kind of going through it. And there was a deep sense of lack of joy and lack of liveness that I felt.

• 4:29Speaker 01

  I don't think anyone ever used the word joy when I was in medical school or training.

• 4:33Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah. You don't learn about joy in psychiatry?

• 4:35Speaker 01

  Not at all. If you use the word joy, people would look at you like something was wrong with you. And I think, you know, it's interesting. A lot of people who went to medical school, experienced depression. I know I did. I didn't know what to call it then because I was very high functioning. I was waking up, getting good grades.

• 4:54Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 4:54Speaker 01

  You know, being the teacher's pet.

• 4:56Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Being the good girl.

• 4:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, the good, the very good girl. But I, when I look back, I think I went through several bouts of depression. But in psychiatry, if you're not meeting criteria for lacking functioning and you're having all these symptoms of depression, you don't get the diagnosis and you don't get help. And even in medicine, when doctors recognize actual clinical depression, there's this apprehension about actually reporting it and getting help for it because by law, you're supposed to report your mental health conditions. So imagine you're a doctor and you're struggling and you don't report it because you don't want it to be on your license or on your, you know, records. And you have all the student debt, you know, like you're thinking, well, what's the, what's going to happen?

• 5:38Speaker 01

  Am I going to not be able to practice? I have to pay off these loans. So it really is a system that discourages the healers getting help and becoming healed.

• 5:47Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And it's not just, it's not just doctors. There's so many people who are just in society who've kind of taken on the mantle of like, okay, I've got to achieve. I've got to do, I've got to succeed. And, you know, many of us have childhoods where we felt unworthy or unloved. And so, I mean, I know I did this. I, you know, overperformed for love and overachieved. And then there's a lot of side effects, which are good, you know, I've been successful. Have made impact. I've written a lot of books. I've done a lot of things, but underneath it, sometimes I remember and I really come out of that, but I remember periods of my, my life where I was like just going, going, going and didn't have this sense of joy. And you talk about this idea of anhedonia, you know, which is lack of, I guess, joy or pleasure. Can you kind of define what that is and why, why it's so important to understand?

• 6:31Speaker 01

  It's a word that's been around for close to 200 years in medicine. And it's something I think a lot of people experience this, you know, lack of feeling excited about things, lack of interest, feeling meh, bleh, right? Many of us go through periods of our time when things just don't light us up, but we don't know that there's an actual term for that. We just think that's life. I have to tell my clients that that's not, that's not the way that life is made to be. We are built with the DNA for joy. It is literally encoded in our DNA. So why is it that we can't access it? And I think looking at children, because I, I treat children, adolescents,

• 7:11Speaker 01

  adults and elders in my practice, and I have these cameras in my lab because sometimes kids are busy bodies and they have ADHD. You don't want them running out, right? I observe them in the waiting area and a child will be like sitting on the furniture and then standing on the furniture, jumping off, making, you know, paper planes and so forth, having all of this excitement.

• 7:30Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Joy.

• 7:31Speaker 01

  Joy, yeah. And you don't have to teach them how to do that. Whereas the adult who has it all will be sitting there on their phone, on their devices, and then like coming into the session, super stressed, you know, their mind is somewhere else. So by the time they actually get engaged in the therapy, we have five minutes left, right? So we're built with the DNA for joy, but then things happen, life happens, trauma happens and we lose sight of it. We can't access it.

• 7:56Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah. And I think, you know, you, you talk about this sort of trauma. It doesn't have to be a big, heavy duty trauma, but these little sort of micro cuts to our psyche and our soul that happened when we're younger, that kind of set us up for the programming for. Doing things in life in a way that that are kind of things we feel like we should or have to do without actually being authentic and whether it's people pleasing or you know, overachieving in different ways. People don't really have a language for what this experience is, which is, I'm not really fully alive, you know, I don't wake up every morning and go, hell yeah, I'm like so excited to be alive. What's going on today? Right? That's what we should be feeling. What I'd love you to sort of walk us through is how do people identify if

• 8:38Dr. Mark Hyman?

  they're in this thing? You have a quiz or a scale to kind of recognize yourself if you're in this sort of state. Can you kind of walk us through what that is? So people can see, oh, is this me? Or what are we talking about here?

• 8:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was really important for me to create these rating scales because, you know, in psychiatry, it's really difficult to say, okay, let me get a blood test. And then, okay, you have depression. There's just nothing like that. We don't have a, let's scan your brain and you definitely have this. There are correlations, there are patterns, but there's just no direct test. We use psychometric rating scales in my lab in order to get a medication, FDA approved, we participate in these clinical trials and these trials are standardized. So these sites all over the world use the same psychometric rating scales and we're videotaped, we're audiotaped because we want to make sure that the data is clean and consistent. But a lot

• 9:31Speaker 01

  of times, the rating scales are just so archaic. And one of the ones that I use, I mean, one of the pioneers in joy and happiness is the Snaith-Hamilton rating scale, the SHAPS.

• 9:43Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 9:44Speaker 01

  But there are questions on there that are very, I guess, out of touch, right? Like, and it's a British scale. So things like, you know, when you drink, when you sip your tea, how do you feel? You know, like, people don't sip tea in America. They just don't.

• 9:57Dr. Mark Hyman?

  You have your tea and scones before you have your, what's your state of mind?

• 10:00Speaker 01

  So I had to update that scale to be relevant. And so I added things that are daily pleasures in modern times. And when you think about Joy, it's not just this one feeling, this one emotion of happy. Joy, it's a plethora of sensations. So when you're adding up points of joy, you're asking people things like, when you ate your food, was it savory? Did you, did you taste it? When you were lonely and you reached out to a loved one, did you feel connected, seen and heard? You know, when you were stressed, believe it or not, stress is a part of joy. Were you able to calm and self-soothe? When you were tired and you took a nap, did you feel well-rested? Did you wake up refreshed? You know, these are all these basic human experiences that when we add it up in the research,

• 10:45Speaker 01

  that's how we see if you're becoming happier. But when people think of the ideas of being happy, they think of, when I get a partner, I'll be happy. When I finally pay off my debt, I'll be happy. You know, when I graduate, I'll be happy. It's always something external that has to happen. Joy is that internal.

• 11:01Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Good luck with that.

• 11:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know that. Once you finally get the 20.

• 11:05Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It doesn't work like that. Doesn't work like that.

• 11:07Speaker 01

  Right, yeah. I mean, I was the same way.

• 11:10Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 11:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was always, I came from a background of scarcity. So I came to this country when I was very young from Trinidad. Sometimes we didn't have food to eat at times. And I always thought like, I'm gonna get educated, I'll become a doctor, make lots of money, and I'll be happy. But then you get, you know, you get into the Ivy League Medical School, still not happy. You know, you become the, the doctor, still not happy. You have a successful business, still unhappy, married, you know, all these things. So I, you know, grew up thinking that if I finally achieve these things, I will finally feel full. And I was actually getting further away from joy. Right? So creating this skill is really important because I want people to realize that joy is within their reach. It's all of those points that you're leaving on the table.

• 11:55Speaker 01

  When I started talking about the anhedonia rating skill, I think on one podcast, 10,000 people filled it out at once and it crashed on a website.

• 12:02Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Wow.

• 12:02Speaker 01

  So I was on to something. People were feeling this lack of joy. They just didn't know that there was a name for it.

• 12:07Dr. Mark Hyman?

  How do people find it? Don't, I know people are gonna, how do I take that quiz?

• 12:11Speaker 01

  It's on my website.

• 12:12Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, which is?

• 12:12Speaker 01

  Drjedithjoseph.com.

• 12:14Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Okay.

• 12:14Speaker 01

  Under quizzes.

• 12:15Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 12:15Speaker 01

  And there are several there. There's the anhedonia, there's the menopause and mental health quiz, the ties quiz, the high functioning quiz, and a trauma inventory.

• 12:24Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Okay, good. Well, that's good. It's good to gotta get a metric for how you're, you know, you know, you're right, they're not, they're not a really clear, single biomarker or imaging test where you can say, this is depression, or this is anxiety, or this is. Any kind of mental distress, but, but there are biomarkers of mental health. Like there are things that, you know, that are causative that, you know, sometimes are not because of your psych- psychological state, but your biological state. So if you're hypothyroid, you're going to be depressed. If your vitamin D is low, you're going to be depressed. If you don't have enough B vitamins, you're going to be depressed like this. There are things, if you have heavy metals, you'll be depressed. So there, there's things that, that are physiological causes that you should for sure rule out. But if you've done that and you know, function health is a great platform to get all that

• 13:07Dr. Mark Hyman?

  information like, oh, my omega threes are super low. Omega threes are important for mood and mental health. So, you know, there, there's things you can find out, but if all those are fine and you still don't feel the sense of pleasure, joy, well-being, which I think is kind of a birthright.

• 13:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:22Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Right? These quizzes really help you identify like where you're at. Then you can start to think about how to navigate out of that. And I will talk about that. You have this framework called the five Vs, which I really like, which is a way of sort of reorienting your, your life to, towards joy and happiness, which I love. I mean, I think it's like, we, we talk so much about disease and pathology and all this stuff, but we don't talk about what is it to be a fully expressed human? You know, you talk about this idea of high functioning depression and, and I guess I said, you know, we both, it sounds like we both experienced that at some point in our lives. How is that different from just burnout, from just like overwork and overdoing? How is that different?

• 13:55Speaker 01

  Well, burnout is a workplace phenomenon. And when you, if, if you look at the history of burnout, it really only starts to show up 30, 40 years ago in the concrete medical literature, but that doesn't mean that it didn't exist before. You know, I think people have, especially in the industrial age and with the rise of capitalism, burnout is something that has been around for a while.

• 14:17Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 14:18Speaker 01

  But it is an occupational hazard. So when the World Health Organization included it in the nomenclature or the literature, they looked at it as being caused by the workplace. So the workplace pressure is causing the symptoms. And I often have this brain in my lab and I use it to demonstrate, um, you know, these principles with my patients, but. Like imagine this is the brain. This is the brain in the workplace and you're getting all this pressure, right? And stress from the workplace and you're experiencing symptoms of irritability, low energy, low motivation, anhedonia, lack of joy. And then you remove that brain from the workplace. Over time, you start to feel better. You know, you're getting distance from the stressor. High functioning depression is different.

• 15:03Speaker 01

  So this is the high functioning brain in the workplace. You still have the stress, the pressures from the outside. The symptoms are there, you know, low motivation, anhedonia, irritability, low energy. You remove that brain from the workplace and they don't get better. This is someone who, when they sit still, they cannot relax. When they're not working, they feel restless. They're humans doing, not human beings, right? And I thought about this because there must be something in the individual that no matter what setting they're in, they're experiencing these symptoms. And in the study that we conducted in the lab, the first peer reviewed study in the world on high functioning depression, what we found was that there was a high correlation between unprocessed trauma and pain

• 15:47Speaker 01

  and HFD, high functioning depression. So the theory is that, okay, they're in the workplace, they have the symptoms. They're out of the workplace, they still have the symptoms. That unresolved trauma and pain is being carried with them. It's not being processed. And that's why no matter what setting they're in, they're experiencing these symptoms.

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• 18:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, rather than trauma in the way that we classically think about it, because in the lab, we've conducted PTSD studies as well. When you think about trauma, you think of people avoiding people, places, situations, trying to avoid triggers. But with high functioning folks, they are avoiding not people, places, situations, they're avoiding processing the pain by busying themselves. So that's why when they sit still, they're restless. When they're not working, they feel empty. They're constantly doing, they're not being. And that concept, I think, really resonates with a lot of us because this Anne Haddony, this, why do I feel this way when I'm like, not doing anything? It's all tied together. The traumatized, unhealed brain has a very difficult time accessing joy.

• 19:01Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's, that's really an important framework here, which is There's underlying things that you haven't processed that show up in this way. And that it's the sort of little or big traumas that happen as you go through life, especially when you're a kid. It's sort of set the framework of how you approach your life. And I think most of us don't really have the tools and the knowledge and the understanding of actually how to resolve that trauma or to actually kind of work through how to process it in a way that gets us free from it. And I want to sort of go into in a minute how you've kind of created a framework to do that, which I think is really important. But I kind of wanted to double down on this word anhedonia and hedonism because it comes from the word hedonism.

• 19:44Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And hedonism is basically a sort of a philosophical framework from the Greeks, which, you know, we typically think of it as sex, drugs and rock and roll. And, you know, kind of in a pejorative sense, you're hedonist, it's bad, it's you're just seeking pleasure for pleasure's sake. But it's kind of this ethical theory that people should pursue happiness, pleasure, well being. And it's not actually a bad thing. And it's kind of like this gulf of trying to find long-term fulfillment, purpose, connection, growth. And it's kind of a reframe of hedonism. So in a way, what you're, what you're kind of encouraging us all to be is find our way back to hedonism, right?

• 20:21Speaker 01

  Well, not necessarily hedonism. It's more about those simple joys that we leave on the table.

• 20:26Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 20:27Speaker 01

  Right? Like for example.

• 20:28Dr. Mark Hyman?

  But it's pleasure, it's fine. It's like you're saying, it's anhedonia is a lack of pleasure in things, right? So it's like, how do you get back to the sense of joy and pleasure in things as a, as a framework? I kind of like that.

• 20:39Speaker 01

  More controlled hedonism, more strategic and intentional hedonism versus just seeking pleasure out of a lack of understanding what's happening inside. And, you know, when you think about processing and acknowledging what you're going through, you know, in a given day, I do this now. I didn't years ago when I wasn't self-aware of what I was going through and why I was working so hard and what I was trying to compensate for. But now, when I do these tiny, you know, adjustments or intentional adjustments in my day, I'm thinking, well, why am I getting worked up?

• 21:15Speaker 01

  This email that I just saw, you know, like, how is that going to increase a point of joy for me? It's not. It's actually going to reduce one point. And that's one point that I'm acknowledging I'm going to leave on the table just to focus on this one thing. So I do these like very tiny adjustments throughout the day that I've had to teach myself how to do. But the first step was having to acknowledge, well, what am I actually experiencing now? Let me face what I'm going through and then I know what to do next.

• 21:42Dr. Mark Hyman?

  As you kind of have this sort of reframing, you've clearly worked through stuff that was the origin story of why this pattern got set up. And it's true for so many people. I know for myself, when I I was reading your book and kind of going through the philosophy that you've developed and the approach, I was like, oh, this is kind of me. Like, I'm, I'm somebody who's, you know, self-worth was tied to achievement, to overdoing, to success, to more productivity and, and I know where now it came from because I've had to do excavation into my own life. I'm curious for you, like, how do people go back and look at their life and their traumas and their childhood? Identify what are the things that happened and what are the stories that get created? And how, how does this pattern get set up for people early on?

• 22:27Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Because I think in order to really get rid of it or to deal with it, you have to understand.

• 22:31Speaker 01

  One of the symptoms of trauma is forgetting. There's like a 30 list checklist of trauma symptoms called on the CAPS five, which is the VA's, the VA hospital's gold standard for assessing PTSD in combat veterans. But we use the CAPS five for civilians. And think about it, 30 plus symptoms of trauma, most of us only think of like flashbacks, nightmares, hypervigilance. But there are so much more. One of those is forgetting. So your brain will push down the memories to protect you. So you can function, right? Which is what, you know, the old psychiatry used to really go for, right? Being able to function. But if you can't remember, there are different tools that you can use. Usually you want to work with a therapist because, you know, your brain is pushing those memories down for a reason.

• 23:16Speaker 01

  And you want to feel safe. And I use transitional objects in my practice all the time. There are these tools that are real tools, like pictures, blankets, tokens from childhood. They're basically memorabilia that sometimes can jog the mind to remember certain things. So I ask my patients who can't remember the last time they really felt joy. To bring in things from childhood or from past memories or experiences where they may have been happier. So they'll bring in these objects and then we'll look at them together and then we'll talk about them. And it is excavating. It's like being the archaeologist of your own psychological history. You're dusting off the past. You're trying to discover the points of joy that got lost and buried along the way.

• 24:00Speaker 01

  And I'll give you an example of a client, obviously disguised, but he, for a long time, did not understand why he couldn't be happy. He was the typical New Yorker coming to my office. I have everything, Dr. J. My patient's called me Dr. J. You know, why is it that I can't experience joy? You know, why am I, blah, blah? And so we dusted off the past. We looked at the old pictures and the items from his past. And we realized that when he was much younger, he used to spend a lot of time in nature. And I thought, well, you know, there are all these pictures, these all these things. What happened? Well, you know, at around, you know, seven or eight, my parents got divorced and we used to camp all the time. We used to go out together as family. And after that, we just, we just stopped, you know?

• 24:45Speaker 01

  And that was a very painful divorce for the family. And he just, they just collectively lost that joy. So his assignment with me was, okay, we're going to start baby steps. We're going to gradually expose your brain to the idea of getting back into nature. So we started off with looking things up online, like hiking trails and then, you know, going to the boot store and getting some hiking boots and then going to Central Park after work every day. And slowly built up to these hikes upstate. And he was like, you know, my life isn't perfect. I still have bouts of depression, but I can access these points of joy, which I think is, I think people really need to understand the difference. The aim is not to get rid of the depression because depression is a, it's a, it's a chronic illness.

• 25:29Speaker 01

  And maybe one day we will, there are new medications being developed. Hopefully psychedelic therapy will, you know, really advance that. But it's something that you have to manage at times, right? And so he can access these points of joy where there are weeks where he's being able to feel alive, where he's excited, where he's moving forward versus not having that at all in the past. It's about these small wins.

• 25:51Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It's almost like introducing play back into your life, right? Like you mentioned, the kids in the waiting room, playing around and fooling around. And that's kind of as adults, we lose that sense of play and. Creativity is amazing. You talk a lot in the book about sort of self-worth issues and fear as sort of being linked to why we do this and to like high productivity in life and and that fear and self-worth drive this. And I know that was for sure for me. Like, I didn't want to, you know, be like my dads who were failures. And I was like afraid and that was part of my overachieving. But I also was like, you know, to feel self-worth and seen and loved, I felt like I had to over overachieve. It wasn't conscious, but it was like it was driving the show for a long time. And you talk about these kind of tendencies of people pleasing

• 26:36Dr. Mark Hyman?

  or masochism. Like I was just working 100 hours a week. It was kind of masochistic. I didn't, I never really thought of it that way until you kind of talked about it. But can you talk about what that means in this context of your framework of, you know, high functioning, depression and the sort of new model you're trying to get out there?

• 26:53Speaker 01

  Well, masochism is not just a dirty word in psychiatry, but when people, you know, in regular life, think about masochism, they think of like S and M, right? But the masochism in psychiatry is different. So masochistic personality disorder is one that was classified in like the old DSM, which is the Diagnostic Statistical Manual, basically the bible of psychiatry. And it was in there with this, I think the last time it was there was like the 80s, because there were these people who were classified as being, you know, people pleasers. They bend over backwards for others and didn't expect much in return. In fact, they felt uncomfortable receiving praise and love. People who basically don't think about their own needs

• 27:37Speaker 01

  and end up in these situations with those who treat them poorly, or even at times abuse them. The reason it was very political and it was removed from the DSM was because unfortunately, a lot of practitioners were using the term masochistic personality disorder for women who were experiencing intimate partner violence or domestic violence. And so it was highly problematic. But I think that in getting rid of masochistic personality disorder, we we should have probably just kept in a little bit of the people pleasing and just, you know, said, hey, this could happen to both men or women and it's not victim blaming, you know? Some of us end up in these patterns where we believe that we're only worthy when we're doing for others, that we are unlovable unless we're sacrificing.

• 28:21Speaker 01

  We're modern day martyrs and-

• 28:23Dr. Mark Hyman?

  People pleasing is almost a form of capitalism is what you're talking about. That's interesting.

• 28:27Speaker 01

  PC version.

• 28:28Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Wow, okay.

• 28:29Speaker 01

  And many of us, because we've tied our self-worth to what our role is, we don't know how to be. We've forgotten who we are. And over time, others will pick up on that. They'll see that, oh, we can treat this person like this and it's human nature. If you're given, I'm taking, right? It doesn't mean the person's a bad person. Some people are. Some people are actually, you know, abusive. But most people, you know, if you're given freely and they don't have to return, they'll take.

• 28:54Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Right.

• 28:55Speaker 01

  And this happens at the job, you know, the people pleaser at work is, you know, overlooked for the promotion because why give her the promotion? She's going to do it anyway, you know?

• 29:04Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Right.

• 29:04Speaker 01

  They are overlooked in relationships, you know, why commit to you're gonna, you're gonna give me what I want anyway. They're overlooked even in families, you know, the eldest daughter syndrome and all that. I think when we realize why we're giving without receiving and we realize that it's tied to our low internal core belief that we are not worthy unless we're providing something for others and we challenge that a bit and we say, well, what's the worst that can happen if I say no? If you say no, if you believe that they're not going to love you, test it out. I do this with my clients all the time. And they're like, you know, Dr. J, they actually called me more. They actually, you know, respected me more. The opposite of my, the thing that I feared the most-

• 29:46Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 29:47Speaker 01

  -was what happened.

• 29:48Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's, that's, that's a big lesson for me because I had that people pleasing thing pretty severely.

• 29:52Speaker 01

  I did too.

• 29:54Dr. Mark Hyman?

  You know, I didn't actually think of myself as having low self-worth because, you know, I have a good life, I've been successful. I, you know, I just, I didn't, I didn't actually identify with that. But when I, when I did, I began and I kind of went back into my childhood and I saw what happened to me and I saw the things that kind of led me to believe, you know, that I needed to perform for love. I realized that was coming from a lack of self-worth and I did not even realize that. And I was like, it was a big kind of shock to my nervous system. But once I realized that, I was able to kind of really shift how I'm showing up and to actually take care of myself more and not be in this constant state of self-sacrifice. And I didn't think of it, but it actually is a form of masochism, right?

• 30:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:39Dr. Mark Hyman?

  A lot of us who have this, and I'm sure a lot of people listening have this because it's pretty common, our brains aren't working the same. Like there's some kind of neurological shift that makes it difficult for us to sort of feel joy and that we're in this kind of revved up anxious state. Can you talk about that kind of neurologic phenomenon that's going on and why it's so hard to kind of shift out of that?

• 30:58Speaker 01

  It's so, I think, fascinating because, and that's why I say you can't just have an imaging and then say, okay, you have this, because we're all so different. With my clients, I ask them to say, you know, look at your hand and imagine that, you know, the joy is built in there, you just have to find it. But also look at your hand and remember, your fingerprint is different than someone else's. So why are you trying what works for someone else on yourself without really understanding the science of your happiness? And there's a tool in medicine that we've been using forever, but we don't teach our patients about it. And I think frankly, a lot of us just kind of like, forget it. We're like, oh, we learned it in med school. That's it. But it's the bio-psycho-social and it's super

• 31:41Speaker 01

  simple. And I imagine it to be like a fingerprint. No two bio-psycho-socials are alike. Even twins don't have identical bio-psycho-socials. So when you look at the biological component of depression for some people, for those of us in midlife who are women, there's a huge hormonal component to our depression. And this happens because in midlife, for some people, late 30s, early 40s and perimenopause, you start to experience fluctuations in your hormones. And that can impact the way that your brain processes melatonin for sleep, serotonin, GABA for anxiety, you know, all of these neurotransmitters are being modulated by these very unpredictable shifts in hormones.

• 32:26Speaker 01

  And so a depression for a woman may be very different than depression for a man who, let's say, perhaps maybe struggling with something like an autoimmune condition, right? Or that typically happens in women, but high inflammatory states if you're not taking care of your health, right? If you have like a lot of belly fat and so forth. So even the biological components of depression are different across individuals.

• 32:50Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 32:50Speaker 01

  Looking at, you know, the other part, the psychological component of depression, the second part of the bio-psycho-social, women tend to go through a lot more traumas, sexual traumas, right?

• 33:00Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 33:00Speaker 01

  And, you know, there is attachment theory where depending on how you're raised or you were cared for or neglected, you may have an anxious attachment or an avoidant attachment, and that's playing out in your relationships. You know, in the psychology part, some of us have histories of ADHD and neurodivergence, and that plays a role in our masking all day long. So even that psychological component is different for individuals. And then for, you know, the social part, we're all in different parts of the world. So socially, some of us don't have access to nature. Others have better access to nutritious foods and organic foods. Some of us only have processed, you know. Depending on our environment, some of us drink a lot or smoke a lot or use substances.

• 33:44Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 33:45Speaker 01

  Or our relationships. So when you look at that bio-psycho-social and encourage my patients to draw them out, because they do shift over time, and then figure out where is it that you're losing more of your joy?

• 33:55Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Hmm.

• 33:56Speaker 01

  You know, rather than trying something that works for someone else, think about yourself as this individual that is so rare, because there's only one you, right? There will only ever be one you.

• 34:05Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 34:06Speaker 01

  And the chances of you existing are so small, so you are here for a reason. So just look at that and figure out where are you losing your joy. Yes, there are classic models of depression. Yes, there's dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin, but we're learning that it's not, yeah, it's not that simple.

• 34:21Dr. Mark Hyman?

  No.

• 34:21Speaker 01

  And that there are different avenues for joy, and that's why.

• 34:24Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It's not like a full chemical imbalance or something.

• 34:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that's why the nutritional aspect is so important, and it's being taught now in residencies and training, because we're learning that we can't just focus on one thing. We have to look at what people are eating, their inflammatory states. There's high inflammation with, with mental health.

• 34:42Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I mean, that's it. That's what you're saying is so important, and I'm going to double click on that because. Most of psychiatry has not been around what's happening biologically. It's just psychological. And you're now talking about this idea of inflammation, which is so prevalent in our society because of the food we eat, the stress we have, the lack of exercise, environmental toxins, the change in our gut microbiome, nutritional deficiencies, which are so common. All these things drive inflammation in the body.

• 35:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:06Dr. Mark Hyman?

  You know, when the science is looking at the brain of someone who's having psychiatric symptoms, it's often an inflamed brain. You know, like always say, you know, your, your, your brain can't really experience pain. Like if you have a swollen knee from inflammation, it hurts. But when your brain is quote hurting from inflammation, it manifests as mental illness.

• 35:26Speaker 01

  It does.

• 35:27Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Or psychiatric symptoms, right?

• 35:28Speaker 01

  And also like a lot of the medications for psychiatric conditions cause several severe metabolic side effects. And I think for a lot of time we're, we're thinking, well, that's just something people have to deal with and we just have to treat it. We'll add on a metformin, we'll add on a topamax. And but then scientists started looking and saying, well, what if they're linked? What if things in the body are actually causing some of these symptoms in the brain?

• 35:52Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So amazing.

• 35:53Speaker 01

  And now, you know, so we're in this really, I think, very cool area of psychiatry where we're, you know, it used to be like, okay, that's a surgeon, that's a psychiatrist. Like they're never going to talk to each other. And now people are coming together and saying, we have to work on this together. This is true holistic medicine.

• 36:09Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 36:09Speaker 01

  And it's the biopsychosocial, but we've ignored it for so long.

• 36:12Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It is. I mean, it is. I mean, there's a lot of psychology and trauma and things that are real psychological impacts that affect you. But then there's this whole world of somatricional metabolic psychiatry and psychedelic psychiatry, which is emerging as new tools to actually work with these psychiatric problems. And the high functioning depression concept, I think, doesn't necessarily require those things because often it comes from childhood stuff. But I think it's important for people to recognize that if they're having psychiatric symptoms, it's not all in their head. Right? And, and that's, that's the problem with psychiatry is it's sort of like you've got this, you know, kind of. Kind of border between your neck and your, and your head and your body. And it's like, they're not communicating, but they are.

• 36:54Speaker 01

  They are. They're so connected.

• 36:56Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So I want to sort of shift a little bit and talk about what you call digital depression. And we, we talk about kids and their phones and distraction and ADD and, but you talk about this also for adults and how it's kind of robbing us of joy. And it's, it's sort of constantly like creating a state for us of comparison and, and, and affecting our mood, affecting our, our sense of well being. And maybe even, you know, causing some depression. So you talk about like that phenomenon, not just for kids, but for, for adults.

• 37:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. Most of us are familiar with the literature on children because that great book came out, The Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt.

• 37:30Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 37:31Speaker 01

  And.

• 37:32Dr. Mark Hyman?

  He's been on the podcast.

• 37:32Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. I think we're, we're well aware of what's happening with kids, but it was a bit too late. You know, we didn't know what was happening back when children were on devices we know now. But yeah, that there is literature and very recent literature on what happens to adults. There's actually this entire center at Stanford called the Stanford Zoom Fatigue Center where they study what happens.

• 37:55Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I think I have that Zoom fatigue.

• 37:59Speaker 01

  I mean, they literally study what happens when you're on your screen all day and meetings back to back. And what they found is that, you know, we're supposed to, when I look at you, I don't see my face next to you.

• 38:09Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Right.

• 38:09Speaker 01

  Imagine if I were talking with you and then I saw my face, I'd be looking at my face.

• 38:13Dr. Mark Hyman?

  There's actually a feature on Zoom where you can hide your face. I encourage people to do that. Get yourself off the screen.

• 38:18Speaker 01

  But also, you know, and that, that causes you to scrutinize yourself. And so when we're on FaceTime, even when we're talking to our loved ones, we're seeing our face. Many of us are not just physicians, we're physician content creators. We're constantly looking at our faces. It's just not natural.

• 38:34Dr. Mark Hyman?

  There are no, there are no natures in mirror, maybe like a pond or something on a.

• 38:39Speaker 01

  Narcissist, the, the Greek, I think it's Greek, but yeah, looking at a mirror is one thing. And even, I'm glad you brought that up because sometimes I walk into a room and I, and I see myself in the mirror and I jump. I'm like, oh, I thought it was, it's weird. It's weird for us to see ourselves outside of ourselves. And there's a term in. Psychiatry called the autoscopic phenomenon where when people who have true psychosis, like schizophrenia or bipolar with schizophrenia with psychosis, they hallucinate and they see themselves outside of their body and they become very depressed, very anxious. We're doing that to ourselves.

• 39:11Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Interesting. Wow.

• 39:12Speaker 01

  So we really have to be mindful of what we're doing to our brains and protect our brains. Also, we're not really built to look at 10 people at once. You know, whenever, whenever I go on a virtual meeting, I'm like tense and I really look at my body. I'm like, if these people were around a table, I would not be that way. But you're looking at like 10, five, 10 people at the same time, also not natural. So be very mindful of getting off screen, you know, not showing yourself all the time, making it a priority in your workplace to do, you know, walking meetings where we're just on audio zooms, you know, getting movement because we're losing so much of that natural movement. We're losing all these points because we're planted in front of a screen versus if we were around a table,

• 39:55Speaker 01

  we'd be moving this way. All these little shifts matter.

• 39:58Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 39:59Speaker 01

  So that's one thing. And then there was a recent study out of one of the schools not far from here, actually in Texas, where they took the smartphone capacity away from adults for four weeks. And so you still had your flip phone, you know, a version of a flip phone. You could text and call, but you couldn't get online. You couldn't be on social media. And what they found is that after four weeks of being away from a smartphone, the happiness scores went up as if they had treated these folks with an antidepressant.

• 40:26Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 40:26Speaker 01

  So they thought, well, what's happening here? And when they looked at these individuals and spoke with them, they found that these people were getting better sleep because they weren't on their screens at night. So that's a point of joy that we measure in the research. They were actually socializing more, another point of joy. They were spending time in nature, another point of joy, you know, eating their food and tasting it, not like just staring at a screen and just shoveling, shoving it in their, in their mouths. So they were losing all of these natural points of joy just by being on their screen.

• 40:54Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I think that's so true. And I think I remember, I remember, you know, different moments in my life where I've been off, like I was, you know, I remember being in Mongolia, you know, riding horseback for like 10 days and there was like no cell service. It was no phone. I just put my phone in my bag. And it just, you just, life felt different. And I, I mean, I'm old enough to know when there was no phones and how different the quality of my days were and then my experience was and how much more present I was and how much more experienced this sort of subtle textures of life and the subtle joys and the subtle things that you kind of don't notice when you're constantly like this all the time, any spare moment, you pop up your phone, you're looking at your messages, you're looking at, you know, your Instagram, whatever the hell you're doing. And it is kind of toxic.

• 41:39Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And I think what you're saying is that our addiction to our devices is actually causing mental health crisis, not only for kids, but for grownups.

• 41:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is. I think we went through this collective trauma in 2020 of not knowing the uncertainty of the pandemic, I think rewired our brains to wanting to know too much. Like that trauma of not knowing what was going to happen and then being connected, the only way to be connected was through a device, has made us believe that, well, as long as we know things, we'll be safe. It's creating so much havoc for us in terms of our anxiety. And with some of my clients, I say, let's do an experiment because you're so important. Let's see what happens when you don't have your phone at this party, you know, leave it home. And no one has said, oh, my gosh, I missed something. They're like, you were so right.

• 42:30Speaker 01

  I did not need that because think about it, 30, 40 years ago, that's what we did. We did not have access to our emails. We did not have access to our boss, our kids, all the time. We had a life.

• 42:40Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, there's a great restaurant in New York I like to go to where they have like a box in front of it in the center of the table. So put your phones in here and everybody puts their phone in and it's great. You have a great dinner conversation. Nobody's distracted, nobody's, you know, just checking their messages. It's pretty good. So what, what does a healthy, like, relationship with technology look like? Because these things aren't going away. Like, we're gonna, we're gonna have our phones. We're not giving them up. So what, what is the right relationship that can actually help manage some of these sort of psychiatric impacts of our technology?

• 43:09Speaker 01

  Well, I developed something called the reset method. And initially, it was to help these children and these parents who were both on the phones and the devices together, right? I'd had these parents coming in, they're like, my kid, every time they take the device away, there's a meltdown, we have these huge fights, all of our fights are centered around technology. And then I would talk to with the parents and be like, okay, like, tell me about your technology patterns. And they were like, this is not about me, this is about my kid. But then when we, when we sat down and we looked at things, they were on their screens just as much as their kids were. So it's one thing to tell your kids to do something, but if you're doing it, they're not going to listen to you, right? So the reset method, the R is realize how screens are impacting you.

• 43:54Speaker 01

  So are screens helping you to stay connected? You know, I want you to make a list of pros and cons. Is it making you more distracted? Is it causing you to get worse sleep? Is it creating a lot of fights in your family? You know, how is it impacting you, the good and the bad? That's the realization. The E is the education part, you know, educate yourself about the recent data. There's so much on kids, but you know, there's emerging data on adults like I just, we just talked about, right? How is it impacting you from the science? And then the S is your strategy. What's your plan? As a family, are you going to say, everyone off of devices during dinner? As a family, are you going to say, you know, after nine, no devices? As an individual, are you going to say, I'm only going to follow these account and unfollow those?

• 44:38Speaker 01

  I'm only going to use this, you know, at one hour a day? Have a clear strategy, you know? And then for kids in the household, know the ages that are recommended, you know, like the American Academy of Pediatrics, they often put out recommendations, you know, under 18, no screen time, and so 18 months, no screen time. You know, there's an organization called Wait Until 8th to not give devices to kids.

• 45:02Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Under 18 months, I mean, wow.

• 45:04Speaker 01

  I see it all the time, toddlers on the screens and they know how to swipe, you know? So really know what the recommendations are and follow those.

• 45:11Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Before they can talk, they can swipe?

• 45:13Speaker 01

  They can. It's really something.

• 45:16Dr. Mark Hyman?

  As you know, I talk a lot about protein, especially as we age. But not all proteins are the same. Collagen is actually the most abundant protein in your body. It's the glue that holds you together. Your skin, your joints, your bones, your connective tissues. And after the age of 20, our bodies start producing less collagen, which contributes to the changes we notice in skin, in joints, and in bones over time. Traditionally, we got collagen from nose to tail foods, things slow-cooked stews, bone broth, and connective tissue. But most modern diets don't include those foods, which is why supplementing with high-quality collagen source can be really helpful. And that's why I like Paleo Valley's 100% grass-fed bone broth protein. It's made from bones of grass-fed and finished cattle raised on American regenerative farms. And it's made simply with water and bones.

• 46:01Dr. Mark Hyman?

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• 46:45Dr. Mark Hyman?

  and it can boost mood, memory, metabolism, even sports performance. But coffee can also be addictive. It can spike your stress hormones. It can irritate your gut, and it can leave you crashing later. Now, some people handle it fine, while others don't. It really depends on your biology, your stress level, and your habit. And that's why I enjoy Nandaka from Peak. It's a coffee alternative designed for people who think in decades, not hours. Nandaka gives you calm, sustained energy while supporting cellular resilience and immune balance, without the jitters, without the crashes, or gut issues of ordinary coffee. Full-spectrum reishi, the mushroom of immortality, is studied for immune signaling and cellular stress response, while the pu-erh tea and L-theanine delivers steady focus and clarity. Add in ceremonial cacao, the perfect fat for a luxurious, satisfying morning ritual.

• 47:29Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It tastes like an artisanal coffee experience, but it's built like a longevity stack. You feel alert, calm, and ready for your day. A ritual that compounds over time, not just a quick jolt. If you want a smarter, more sustainable way to start your mornings, get up to 20% off Nandaka and begin your intentional wellness journey at peaklife.com/hyman. That's P I Q U E life.com/hyman. Yeah, I'm about to have a grandson and I'm like, hmm. I'm going to talk to my daughter and I think, I think she's probably very much with this program because I'm like, the kids shouldn't have a phone until they're maybe in high school or later.

• 48:09Speaker 01

  Eighth grade, I say wait until eighth. It's when they're, they start to, based on developmental stages, they start to know who they are based on their peers. And if they're getting that access to bullying 24/7, imagine, I was a nerd, so I got bullied. I cannot imagine being bullied 24/7 because of phone, right? Because Snapchat is always on, you know? So we really have to be mindful of developmental stages and what our children are experiencing. That's, and that's the strategy part. And then the, the next E in reset is expectation. What are you hoping to get out of this? So like, are you hoping to feel less stressed, get better sleep, feel more motivated, better connections, have clear expectations? And then the T in, in reset is thoughtfulness. Did this work? Was this plan too rigid?

• 48:53Speaker 01

  Was it too relaxed? You know, what do we have to modify here? And reset is a clear guideline. We all need to feel safe. We need a plan and it allows people to have a discussion, families to have a discussion around their tech use.

• 49:05Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, so it's important. I mean, we, we all are addicted to our devices and I think, including myself. I think it's, it's in the time that I feel most alive, the time that I feel most joy, which is what we're talking about today. Is when I'm not connected to a device, when I'm just in nature or with my friends or, you know, like, you know, last night I had some friends over for dinner and like there would, nobody was on their phone. I mean, nobody looked at their phone. We just spent four hours talking and going really deep and it was, it was amazing, actually. I was like, oh, this is cool. I didn't look at my phone. And I think that's kind of what we're all craving. We're all craving connection through our phones, but it's actually interrupting our connection.

• 49:45Speaker 01

  And include like computers into that, too. Recently, I got locked out of my, um, my, my, my, uh, computer crashed and I was locked out of it for a day and it was so freeing.

• 49:54Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 49:55Speaker 01

  I was, I, I told my team, like, make sure you're not missing any important research or, you know, patient emails, but like, it was so nice. My daughter often grabs my phone and she throws it into the bedroom. She's like, that's staying in there, you know, while we play. She's learned.

• 50:08Dr. Mark Hyman?

  How old is she?

• 50:09Speaker 01

  She's nine.

• 50:09Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Oh, that's amazing. Uh, I want to talk about the five Vs in a minute, but I want to talk about the sort of women hormones and the sort of midlife shit that happens. And you talk about this sense of lack of joy and pleasure being really common in women, uh, and I'm particularly married perimenopause and it's, it's happening like both biologically and, and emotionally. So what, what's going on and like, what are women feeling and, and, you know, why are so many women mislabeling what they're experiencing as they go through this?

• 50:36Speaker 01

  Well, I got into this work, I think accidentally, because when I was in medical school, we, I think we probably got one course on menopause and that is, I'm learning.

• 50:46Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Mean one class.

• 50:48Speaker 01

  Literally a one class.

• 50:49Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Not a course.

• 50:49Speaker 01

  So, yes, one class.

• 50:52Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Class.

• 50:53Speaker 01

  Literally one class. And I remember who gave it. It was someone that I greatly admired and she's a forward thinker. She's an OBGYN. That was it. And so when I was practicing in my research lab several years ago, we had just started working on the first, um, which is now the first FDA approved medication in postpartum depression. So it's a neurohormone and, um, Brexanolone, Zeranolone. Um, and so what I was seeing with these patients who were more on the older end of, um, the maternal spectrum was that when they were, you know, going after the, giving birth, they were having Like a repeat depression, not postpartum, but in midlife. And I just thought, what's going on here? And I was seeing a lot of the similar symptoms.

• 51:38Speaker 01

  Fatigue, brain fog, moodiness, irritability. And I thought, is this hormonal? You know? And I started to really look out for seminars and branch out to other doctors who were looking at perimenopause and menopause. And getting so many referrals of women in midlife who were like, I have ADHD for the first time in midlife. And I thought, that's, I mean, it is possible. Women are not diagnosed as much as boys are not, boys are over, I think, more diagnosed than than girls. So it's not impossible, you know, to get a late diagnosis of ADHD. But it was just a sudden ADHD. Like you didn't have symptoms of lack of focus when you were younger. You didn't have inattention or multitasking issues. And why all of a sudden now? And ADHD by definition is a childhood diagnosis.

• 52:22Speaker 01

  So you have to have the symptoms before the age of 12. And it's persistent throughout life. So it doesn't just suddenly pop up in midlife. So.

• 52:30Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Oh, yeah, I think a lot of have acquired ADD because of our culture and our stimulation. So it's like, you know, maybe, maybe that's the wrong term for it, but it just feels like we live in a distracted world.

• 52:39Speaker 01

  But usually, so ADHD has to be present in two settings. So it can't just be at work where, you know, or at home. It has to be in two settings since childhood.

• 52:48Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 52:49Speaker 01

  And definitely things contribute to a lack of focus. But ADHD has, you know, symptoms of impulsiveness, you know, people getting into heated arguments and rejection sensitivity. You know, losing things, having a hard time, you know, organizing attention to detail. So it's, it's really a lot of symptoms. And, you know, what these women were actually experiencing was a lack of concentration due to, you know, these hormonal fluctuations. And so putting them on a stimulant, yeah, it might help a little bit because everyone benefits from a stimulant at some point. But it doesn't really correct the course of what's happening because they're also having these physical symptoms.

• 53:29Speaker 01

  They're having the dry, itchy skin, the hair, you know, changes, the poor sleep, the urinary issues and so forth. So I developed this system called the TIES method to help my patients identify whether or not they were going through something related to hormones versus another psychiatric condition like depression. And it's interesting because. Major depressive disorder, when you look at the DSM five and in all the research, there are no physical symptoms under major depressive disorder. And so at first I started teaching my clients about the three Ps. So how do you know if it's depression or if it's mood symptoms or related to perimenopause? Mammal shifts, yeah.

• 54:11Speaker 01

  Right. So the first P is period changes. There is nowhere in the literature under major depressive disorder where your period should be changing in terms of like how heavy it is, how infrequent it is, you know, the cycling. So if you're having period changes and mood changes, talk to your doctor about perimenopause or menopause. The second P is physical changes. You know, I mentioned some of those, the urinary, you know, having to urinate a lot. You know, the itchy skin, the hot flashes, the palpitations. None of those are under major depressive disorder. Yes, you can have palpitations with generalized anxiety disorder, but not major depressive disorder. So another red flag. And then the third is your past history, the last P.

• 54:52Speaker 01

  People who have a history of things like PTSD, bipolar disorder, trauma, they're going to be more vulnerable during midlife with those hormonal fluctuations. So even if you have a history of ADHD, it will get worse during midlife because hormonal fluctuations impact your brain chemicals. They impact dopamine, serotonin, GABA for anxiety, melatonin for sleep. So it's all, you know, tied together, no pun intended. And then the S in ties, so those are the three Ps, but I'll go into the ties method. So the T is the thinking, thinking, memory problems like brain fog. You're about to say something, tip of your tongue, you forget it. The I in ties is identity issues. So a lot of women will say that they don't know who they are anymore.

• 55:36Speaker 01

  They feel like they're losing themselves. The E is the symptoms of emotional fluctuations like mood, moodiness, anxiety and so forth. And then the S is sleep. So you have problems with sleep. So the three Ps help you to distinguish whether it's, you know, due to a primary psychiatry condition versus hormonal fluctuations causing these psychiatric symptoms. And then the ties allows you to understand what are the mental health symptoms related. To these hormonal fluctuations. So you get the right treatment because it's very different getting hormonal treatments. And then having your body feeling relieved and then your brain feeling relieved versus someone, you know, giving you an antidepressant. And then you still have all these physical symptoms.

• 56:16Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I mean, you're saying it's so important, you know, there, there's, there, there's this sort of continuum between psychological causes of mood disorders and biological causes. And they overlap and they kind of reinforce each other. But it's important to get the biological things out of the way so you can deal with the psychological things.

• 56:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, you, you may still need an SSRI. You still may benefit from the support of a stimulant. But it's very difficult to get through a day and not feel moody if you're sweating.

• 56:43Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 56:43Speaker 01

  You know, if you're, if you're feeling itchy and you're not happy with the way you look.

• 56:47Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah. My joke is I always say it's much easier to be enlightened if your B12 level is normal or your thyroid's working or you're not mercury poisoned. You know, like you, you can meditate on it all you want, but if these things are not optimizing your biology, then your brain can't function properly and then your mood is affected and your wellbeing is affected and your ability is, your joy is affected. And all these things can be actually managed. And so you kind of have to work on both ends of the spectrum. You know, both your psychological patterning and your beliefs and your childhood traumas. But also, you know, we have so many people with biological things going on in function health. We, we got 80 million biomarkers now and half a million people.

• 57:26Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And it's, it's just stunning to me to see the number of, of people with undiagnosed things that are affecting the quality of their life. And it's, you know, like 13% have autoimmune thyroid disease. 70% have a nutritional deficiency at the minimum level for deficiency disease, not what's optimal, like vitamin D or iron or, you know, omega threes. And, and we're seeing that and we're seeing it's 46% of people with inflammation that's affecting them. We see probably 90% with some metabolic insulin resistance.

• 57:57Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Problem that's on the spectrum of that. We have 65% who have insulin levels that are over the limit of the lab test, which is way too high. It's like 18 for insulin. It should be five or less and 65% of people who do our diagnostics, and these are health toward people are over 18. So this is a staggering problem. And if we don't deal with the biological effects, it's going to be hard to deal with the psychological stuff. But that kind of let's, let's kind of shift over to, to this joy, because I think that's ultimately what we want to feel. And we want to be happy. We want to, Dalai Lama talks about this. It's sort of like, how do you, how do you find happiness, right? And, and you talk about these five Bs and reclaiming

• 58:40Dr. Mark Hyman?

  joy and the future of sort of mental health. So I'd love you to kind of walk through how, how we can approach this differently. You say we're wired for joy, but we forget how to access it. Like, what does that mean? And can you walk us through the five Bs and how someone start applying these, this framework? And I love your little acronyms.

• 58:58Speaker 01

  I teach student, medical students and doctors. So you have to have the acronym. They, you know, we love that in medicine, right? Well, when I, when I developed the five Vs, I wanted people to have a very simple way of tapping into one or two tools to reclaim joy, not doing all five at once. Like, don't be high functioning like that. Pick one or two.

• 59:18Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Don't overachieve.

• 59:21Speaker 01

  Because sometimes you become super unhappy trying to chase after these points of joy. But really think about one or two things. And I think starting with validation is important. Like how you mentioned, when you finally realized that it was your need to be loved and your need to find self-worth that allowed you to realize, I don't have to do everything. I can actually relax a bit. I think many people struggle with the first V, which is, I think, the most important. So validation is accepting and acknowledging what you're experiencing and feeling without judgment. You know, and that's super hard for many of us who are

• 1:00:02Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Whatever it is, if it's sadness or depression.

• 1:00:05Speaker 01

  And I think for many of us who are accustomed to pushing down our feelings, we just push down, we push down. But the problem with that is if you continue pushing down the negative and not processing, then you push down the ability to feel that joy. And so with validation, imagine you're in a very dark room and you can't see anything. And you're like, you hear this loud crash, you know, some of us would start screaming, some would start swinging, depending on how you were raised. Others would just like freak out, right? But if you turn the light on and you saw that, oh, it was just like a vase that fell. Then you're, you feel safe, you know, the mess is still there, the problem's still there, but at least you know what you're dealing with.

• 1:00:45Speaker 01

  And so when you shared your story about, I finally understood, you know, what it was that was driving me. You know, the problem's still there.

• 1:00:54Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:55Speaker 01

  But at least you know what you're dealing with and the human brain does not like uncertainty. So knowing what you're working with is very powerful, but many of us try to run from it.

• 1:01:05Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Validating your emotions, what you're feeling.

• 1:01:08Speaker 01

  And accepting it without judgment.

• 1:01:10Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Saying, okay, this is what's happening for me.

• 1:01:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it sounds so simple and granolary, but it is, I think, the hardest step for a lot of high functioning folks. They don't want to deal with it. They're trying to outrun it.

• 1:01:21Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Right.

• 1:01:21Speaker 01

  And they think they're chasing happiness, but they're trying to outrun something they haven't processed in the past. And then the second V is venting. And this is how you express in an authentic way what you're going through. So venting can be verbal, you know, if you have a therapist, great. Like when people come to see me, you know, you're paying me, so you can say whatever you want. Sometimes people just come in, they're like, they don't even ask how you're doing, it's just like right into the session, which is fine, you're paying for that, right? But when you don't have someone who's a mental health professional and you're venting, be very careful. Because, you know, some people use it against you. So be thoughtful about who you're going to vent to. Is it one or two people where there is confidentiality? Yeah. And I go to you, you come to me, we don't gossip, it stays here.

• 1:02:07Speaker 01

  And there's reciprocity, you know, I'm gonna ask for consent before emotional content. Is this a good time? Can I talk to you about something?

• 1:02:15Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Can I dump on you right now?

• 1:02:17Speaker 01

  It's like the opposite of trauma dumping. It's like, can we, can we get together and talk? Because I need to process something. And it's not with the expectation that they're gonna tell you what you want to hear. I think a lot of us pick people that we wanna, they're gonna tell us what we want to hear. So that's where we go to them. Venting in the right way is intentional. You, you want to come up with a solution that's going to help you and help you to grow and move forward. And then really think about the hierarchy. Who are you venting to? It shouldn't be your kids, because your children will not reject you. They want to attach to you, but they'll worry about you. You know, your employees, they're not gonna say, shut up, boss, right? They're gonna say, oh, all right, I'm listening to this guy, but they're gonna go home and then trauma dump on their family, right? So really be mindful about the hierarchy.

• 1:03:02Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I have a question.

• 1:03:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:03Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Given that, I mean, what about if your kid, your, your children are adults, you know, like, what if they're mature adults? Like, what, because I, I struggle with that. How much do I tell my kids? How much do I tell my daughter, like, what I'm going through? Like, what, how, how do you think about that? Because your kid's nine, obviously, you're not gonna do that. But mine's thirty eight, almost thirty nine. So.

• 1:03:21Speaker 01

  I think, I think that's a really great question, because developmental level is super important. And I have this conversation about a host of things with parents in my office. When, let's say, there's like a death of a grandparent, and they have to be able to deliver that news to a child, right? So there are developmental stages you want to think about. If you have an adult child, and this is not something that you've done since the child was young, right? You don't want to re-traumatize them. You know, it's different than if you had a child, you know, you're, when the child was very young, and you told them about your problems, and you continue to unpack on to them.

• 1:03:57Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It was not good. I'm just saying, that was not good.

• 1:03:59Speaker 01

  It's not, because, you know, it's, it's really burdening

• 1:04:02Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:03Speaker 01

  this child, and they worry. And they don't want, that, that's how they've learned to attach to you is by like, being your go-to. And that's, well, who is their go-to, you know? It becomes very unsafe for them. So it's very different if that was not. Your relationship when your child was young and then they're an adult now and they're professional. Totally fine. I think once you do set like they're not your person that you dump everything on to. It's like, oh, I need help with something. I think that's appropriate.

• 1:04:29Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:29Speaker 01

  But you want to also think about that adult child too, because if this is an adult child who has their own mental health, you know, challenges and they have their own traumas and they're not and they're fragile, then then maybe not an appropriate person. So it's a great question, but it is case by case.

• 1:04:44Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So the that validation, venting, and it gave me through journaling, through other healthy outlets, through processing, through workshops, through all kinds of ways to kind of get stuff out.

• 1:04:54Speaker 01

  Journaling is a great way. I mean, once there's something about that hand eye coordination and getting something onto paper and unpacking it and then putting it away that I find powerful for many of my young, my Gen Z clients, they love to journal. And they're just like, Dr. J, I just like wrote it all out and I put it and then it was there.

• 1:05:10Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:11Speaker 01

  It was like a compartmentalization for them. But for my older clients, like, you know, people who are my dad's age, they're very faith based. And so I joked that my dad's a pastor. I joked that he'll never go to therapy, but that man can pray. He prays three times a day and that's his venting. So you have to do what feels authentic for you.

• 1:05:29Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So then the next B is values.

• 1:05:31Speaker 01

  Values. One that I struggled with for a long time because I was chasing these things that were the clout, you know, the degrees. At one point I was like, I want to get a JD too. And I was like, this is, this is out of control. Like MDMA and a JD, like what are you trying to prove here? Plus it's very expensive. But, you know, when I started to focus on the things that really mattered, like my faith.

• 1:05:53Dr. Mark Hyman?

  You're only going to be a doctor, a lawyer and a CEO, right? I love that.

• 1:05:57Speaker 01

  But yeah, you know, we chase the things that are the superficial values, like we need money, we need clothing, we need shelter. Right? We still need those things, but we also have to prioritize things that, let's say, when we have five minutes left on this earth, well, how, how would we want to spend that time? And I often think about my daughter and I think about my family and I think about my faith. And, you know, this tiny island, Tobago, where my dad was born, that was so beautiful. I always say, I need to spend more time there, you know? So all of these things that are deep, meaningful, purposeful values that we just put on the shelf, we need to prioritize those things more.

• 1:06:33Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, I think it's important, like, you know, not living through obligations, achievement, people pleasing, like what, what actually matters to you and how do you focus more on that and on those things? And what's the next fee?

• 1:06:45Speaker 01

  Vitals, which is your expertise, the mind-body, the body-mind connection, right? Thinking about what you eat, what you're putting into your body, you know, how much you're moving, how much you're sleeping. Those are the traditional vitals doctors will tell you about. But the non-traditional vital signs are things like technology, which we've talked about, our relationship with that, our relationship with our work, you know, leaving work at work and having a life outside of work. And then our relationships with people. You know, the research around people in your life and having strong, solid relationships being the key to a lot of our longevity factors. Having a physically healthy life depends on who we're around.

• 1:07:28Speaker 01

  And, you know, I joke with my clients when they're struggling with relationships. I never tell my clients what to do, right? With their, with their relationships, unless they're in harm, right? And I say, you know, you can eat all the kale in the world, but that guy is going to be a jerk forever, you know? And he's going to drain your life, right? So think about who you're surrounding yourself with. I'm Caribbean, we can't cut people off. You know, you ain't cutting me off, you know, you're stuck with me. But I could put you at a, I could set limits with you. I could say, I'm only going to see you twice a year under these circumstances. I'm not going to cut you off. So think about who's draining your life and really pour into people who have your back. We take people for granted. We say, oh, that's a good friend I don't need to call. That is who you should be investing in.

• 1:08:11Speaker 01

  Many of us are chasing after the friends who don't even like us, you know, who are jealous of us, who treat us like, you know, crap. But we're like, oh, we, well, we have to save that. It's like the rubber band effect. We're like running after them and they're pulling away. Focus on the ones who are actually making your life better. Pour into them.

• 1:08:29Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, I mean, I think that's important. I think the, the cultivation of our social network is important. And I don't mean, uh, social media, I mean, actually people. And it requires a deliberate, intentional thing to reach out, to go see them, to spend time, to cultivate that. It's, it's to me, one of the most important aspects of my happiness and joy at this point in my life is, is that. And, and I make it a real priority because it's so easy. It's just kind of fall into just. Work, technology obligations and not actually take the pause. And then you have a fifth fee, which is vision.

• 1:09:05Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:09:05Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:06Speaker 01

  How do you, how do you, how do you move forward? How do you have something to look forward to so you don't get stuck in the past? And it's different than goals. It's more about, okay, I know the science of my happiness. For me, it's connection. I know what makes me happy.

• 1:09:22Speaker 01

  Because during the points in my life when I was the most unhappy, I was the least connected to people in my life. You know, when during 2020, I was sitting in my lab and by all means on the outside of success. You know, I have so many degrees, I can't even hang them, right? Literally, they're under my bed.

• 1:09:43Speaker 01

  You know how it is. On the outside, people thought I had it all. I had married to a physician, cute little daughter, the businesses, you know, always on TV. But no one knew I was struggling, not even my therapist. Like I hid that from my therapist and I'm a psychiatrist.

• 1:09:59Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:59Speaker 01

  And, uh, you know, she was really surprised when I was going through my divorce shortly after that. And she was like, you never really talked about it. And I said, well, I didn't want to worry you, which is like so, you know, the people pleasing. I'm paying this woman, I don't want to bother her.

• 1:10:15Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Okay, that's a good one.

• 1:10:16Speaker 01

  We went through EMDR, um, which is a trauma focused type of treatment. And it just unpacked so much for me.

• 1:10:25Speaker 01

  And I thought I really think, I started really thinking about the points in my life when I was the most joyful. And it was always when I was around the people that I loved and I was connected to them, even though I had very little, you know, uh, my, I have three siblings and, you know, we used to play together and we didn't have toys, but we'd make toys out of like boxes and so. And those were the happiest times for me when I was a broke med student, you know, hanging out with my, my medical student colleagues, that, that was joy for me. But the more successful I got, the least connected I was with people that I loved the most. So for me. It's really important to plan points of joy where there's a lot of connection.

• 1:11:06Speaker 01

  So whenever we finish a big study in our lab, we don't just say on to the next, right? That used to be the old me, like, we gotta get the next study, I gotta get the next one, right? Now it's about, okay, let's celebrate, you know, let's, when are we gonna get together for our like, our retreat? When are we going to get together in the lab just to like, have a little dessert? Because I'm celebrating the point of connection, not the idea of happiness, which is the goal.

• 1:11:31Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:32Speaker 01

  That, oh, check the box, we did that study. And when I prioritize that and I plan it and I put it on my schedule and I protect it, I have found that that's when I'm the happiest, right? So plan things in your future, in your future. I have this practice where every day after I drop my daughter to school, I sit in my living room and I drink this cup of coffee. And I found it, I discovered it in St. Martin and I figured out how to get it here in the US. But it's like this rum cream flavor, there's no rum in it, there's no alcohol, but it's just so delicious. It literally transports me back to the Caribbean. And I sit there, everyone knows that's my time and I just like savor it and then I go to work.

• 1:12:12Speaker 01

  I used to just go straight to work and like, okay, let's, but I've found that when I take these moments to just like intentionally relax, that I actually make better decisions, I'm less grumpy, you know? I'm, I am more successful, more productive, all the things I feared, the fear of running out of resources, all those things, the opposite happened. The abundance just flowed. So really understand, you know, what is it that brings you true joy? And then protect that in your schedule and look forward to it.

• 1:12:44Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, I love that. I think that's important because we schedule all these other things, but we don't schedule joy. Or time to actually cultivate it or feel it, it's beautiful.

• 1:12:52Speaker 01

  Or to celebrate the wins, it's always on to the next. But what's the point of it if like, you're not enjoying it?

• 1:12:58Dr. Mark Hyman?

  A lot of this you talk about in your book, High Functioning, Overcoming Your Hidden Depression and Reclaiming Your Joy. I think that's such an important kind of concept because it's, you know, most psychiatric kind of focus is on pathology, not on well being. And I love the kind of flip of that. And I think this is what's happening in psychiatry in general. We're kind of moving into this really interesting moment where, you know, when I was in college, I read this book called Madness and Civilization. And it was by this French philosopher that talked about the history of mental illness throughout time and how we have different meanings we attribute to it. It's, you know, it's a possession by demons or it's like imbalance in your humors. Or it's, you know, Freud and his, you know,

• 1:13:42Dr. Mark Hyman?

  had a biscomplex or whatever like, and then it's the chemical imbalance theory. And then we're kind of, kind of moving through all these attempts to try to explain the human condition. And I think now we're kind of entering in a really interesting moment in psychiatry. We're seeing this convergence of metabolic and nutritional psychiatry and functional medicine approaches to mental health, along with psychedelic psychiatry. Can you kind of talk about where we're going in the future and how these things are going to shape and change the field of psychiatry?

• 1:14:11Speaker 01

  Well, I'm particularly very excited about this. You know, I mentioned I grew up in a church. My dad's a pastor and psychedelic therapy has a lot of elements of spirituality. Right? And years ago, whenever we'd have the ground rounds of the spirituality person, you know, at the places I trained, it was always like, oh, that's not the important lecture. I want to come back for the guy on schizophrenia and the brain and like all the imaging stuff. But now we're realizing that when you look at Gen Z and the younger folks, they're actually going back to religion and spirituality. So why is that? You know, why is it that they're doing that? Well, we are in an age. Where the machines are taking over and we feel this loss of control.

• 1:14:54Speaker 01

  All right, the jobs are being scooped up. But what are the things that are inherently human? Love is human. A machine can't learn love. If you talk to an AI therapist and they spit back something to you like, oh, I get it. I know how you feel. Do you? Do you really know how I feel? Have you ever had a breakup? Have you ever had a loss? Right. Has anyone died in your family? Oh, forgot, you don't have a family, right? Right. And that's why. They're good at faking it. They're so good at faking it. But they're not human. But the things that are human are things like love, loss, faith, like spirituality. And I think we're really rebelling. Some of us are rebelling against the machines and we're trying to feel connected into things that are inherently human art.

• 1:15:39Speaker 01

  AI can replicate art, but what is that inspiration from? It's from a human experience. So we have to really protect things that make us worth being on this planet for allowing us to survive through evolution and protect what's really human. Psychedelic therapy is very spiritual. In fact, you hear these anecdotes stories of people going away, but then coming back. And then some of them saying they're cured forever. And this happened for some, but most will say, I had to go back and I had to continue to get dosed. Well, the reason that a lot of the treatments aren't sustainable is because there are several elements of psychedelic therapy that involve spirituality. You're not just getting dosed.

• 1:16:21Speaker 01

  In our unit, in our psychedelic unit, it looks like an apartment. It doesn't look like a lab. We have a lab that looks very sterile and then we have a part of the lab that looks very cozy. And therapists will sit with the individual after a dosing and they'll go through all of these grounding and mindfulness tools. And then they'll have integrative sessions after the dosing to build on the principles. So it's not just about one dose. It's about, okay, what have you learned from that session? How do we build on it? How do we continue to change your brain over time? And so. A lot of the research and a lot of the future, I think, in mental health is leaning towards spirituality and incorporating it. It's different than religion, very different.

• 1:17:03Speaker 01

  Religion is mostly having to do with rules and do's and don'ts and social constructs. Spirituality is different. You don't have to believe in a deity to be spiritual. You could feel connected to a greater thing like nature, feel a sense of awe. You don't necessarily have to be religious. So I think that's where we're moving in. We're actually doing a study in our lab. One of our sub investigators, Dr. Deepa Viladi, is heavily into the spirituality world and we're looking at Gen Z and whether or not people in the Gen Z group are happier being spiritual versus religious. So we're really excited about that. I don't know how it's going to turn out, but we'll see.

• 1:17:44Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Well, it's really a sense of meaning, right? It's like, you know, I talked about the ingredients for health and then one of them is meaning and purpose and how we find those, how we achieve those, how we think about them is really important. And I think a lot of it has traditionally been through religion, which is an attempt to codify spirituality. But spirituality, as you said, is separate from religion and from dogma. And it's really our sense of connection to something greater or something meaningful or something that gives us purpose or belonging. And I think that's what we're all craving. So I kind of love this reframe. I love the fact that you're talking about joy as a state that we should be cultivating. And if we don't feel that or we don't have it, it's something

• 1:18:28Dr. Mark Hyman?

  we should pay attention to. And I think people can learn more about all this by reading your book, High Functioning, and following you on your social and your website's Dr. Judith, or it's judithjoseph.com, right?

• 1:18:40Speaker 01

  Dr. Judith Joseph.com, yes.

• 1:18:41Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And also you have so much online and so many resources. And I think people can kind of dive in and actually see what's happening for you. And you've got, the website for the book is

• 1:18:53Speaker 01

  Hi, functioningbook.com, but you can find it on my website, DrJudasJoseph.com.

• 1:18:58Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Great. Well, thank you for your work. Thanks for pioneering a whole new frame and thank you for the joy you brought into my podcast. It's really great. I can feel it and it's good to see you again. And thanks for just kind of being a voice for something that's, you know, being unspoken in our society and how to navigate through that for us. And sure, for me, I had a, when I was kind of prepping for this podcast, like, oh, God, I kind of think I'm one of those guys who has experienced that. And I think it was very helpful for me to understand your framework. So, thank you.

• 1:19:27Speaker 01

  Thank you for your work. My patients benefit from your work and thank you for your vulnerability. I think that's what most impressed me when I met you was your vulnerability. A lot of men are not vulnerable. And I truly believe that if they were and they opened up and they prioritized their joy, the world would be better. The research shows that joyful people are like physically healthy, they have better relationships, but they also are more likely to help the world and make the world a better place. So, imagine if every man focused on their joy and, you know, were vulnerable and reflective like.

• 1:20:00Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Well, I think, I think that's the mistake people make, especially men, is that they associate vulnerability with weakness, not strength. But it's the opposite.

• 1:20:06Speaker 01

  It is. Yeah.

• 1:20:08Dr. Mark Hyman?

  All right. Well, thank you.

• 1:20:09Speaker 01

  Thank you for having me.

• 1:20:09Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Thank you. If you love this podcast, please share it with someone else you think would also enjoy it. You can find me on all social media channels at DrMarkHyman. Please reach out. I'd love to hear your comments and questions. Don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe to the Dr. Hyman Show wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget to check out my YouTube channel at DrMarkHyman for video versions of this podcast and more. Thank you so much again for tuning in. We'll see you next time on the Dr. Hyman Show. This podcast is separate from my clinical practice at the Ultra Wellness Center, my work at Cleveland Clinic, and Function Health, where I am Chief Medical Officer. This podcast represents my opinions and my guests' opinions. Neither myself nor the podcast endorses the views or statements of my guests. This podcast is for educational purposes only

• 1:20:51Dr. Mark Hyman?

  and is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided with the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your journey. Please seek out a qualified medical practitioner. And if you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, visit my clinic, the Ultra Wellness Center at UltraWellnessCenter.com, and request to become a patient. It's important to have someone in your corner who is a trained, licensed healthcare practitioner and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health. This podcast is free as part of my mission to bring practical ways of improving health to the public. So I'd like to express gratitude to sponsors that made today's podcast possible. Thanks so much again for listening. When it comes to supplements, you only want the best for your body,

• 1:21:36Dr. Mark Hyman?

  the kind with the highest quality, cleanest and most potent ingredients you can get. That's exactly what you'll find at my supplement store, where I've hand-selected each and every product to meet the most rigorous standards for safety, purity, and effectiveness. These are the only supplements I recommend to my patients, and they're also what I use myself. Whether you want to optimize longevity or reduce your disease risk, or you're looking to improve your sleep, blood sugar, metabolism, gut health, you name it, DrHyman.com has the world's best selection of top-quality, premium supplements, all backed by science and expertly vetted by me, Dr. Mark Hyman. So check out DrHyman.com because when it comes to your health, nothing less than the very best will do. That's DrHyman.com, D-R-H-Y-M-A-N dot com.