Sharper, Stronger, Smarter: Build a Better Brain at Any Age

Not long ago, conditions like Alzheimer’s were rare, but today, nearly one in two people over 80 are diagnosed with it. In contrast, in places like the Amazon, dementia affects only about one in a hundred—highlighting how modern lifestyle plays a major role in brain health. The brain isn’t an isolated organ; it’s deeply influenced by diet, sleep, movement, stress, toxins, and emotional well-being. Many people who once struggled with brain fog, depression, or memory loss have experienced dramatic improvements by healing their bodies—addressing gut health, detoxifying harmful substances, optimizing nutrition, and supporting the brain’s energy systems. With the right tools, including targeted nutrients, lifestyle changes, and even therapies like breathwork or plant medicines, it’s now possible not only to protect the brain from decline but also to enhance clarity, focus, and resilience at any age. In this episode, I discuss, along with Dr. Daniel Amen and Alberto Villoldo, how the body and brain are intimately connected and how we can think and feel better when we address our overall health first. Dr. Daniel Amen is a physician, double board-certified psychiatrist, twelve-time NY Times bestselling author, and founder and CEO of Amen Clinics, with 10 US locations. Dr. Amen is the author of many books including the mega-bestseller Change Your Brain, Change Your Life, as well as The End of Mental Illness, Memory Rescue, Healing ADD, and Your Brain Is Always Listening. In March 2022, Tyndale will publish his new book, You, Happier: The 7 Neuroscience Secrets of Feeling Good Based on Your Brain Type. Alberto Villoldo, Ph. D., is a medical anthropologist, psychologist and shaman, who studied the spiritual practices of the Amazon and the Andes for more than 30 years. While at San Francisco State University, he founded the Biological Self-Regulation Laboratory to study how the mind creates psychosomatic health and disease. Founder of The Four Winds Society, he instructs individuals throughout the world in the practice of energy medicine. Dr. Villoldo has written numerous bestselling books, including Power Up Your Brain: The Neuroscience of Enlightenment (with David Perlmutter MD), Shaman, Healer, Sage; and WSJ bestseller One Spirit Medicine. This episode is brought to you by BIOptimizers. Head to bioptimizers.com/hyman and use code HYMAN10 to save 10%. Full-length episodes can be found here: What Damages Your Brain And How To Reverse ItHow Creating A Healthy Brain Creates A Happy MindHow to “Grow a New Brain” for Lifelong Health

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

• 0:00Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Coming up on this episode of the Dr. Hyman Show.

• 0:02Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So fixing your brain starts with fixing your body and optimizing all the inputs into your system and minimizing the bad stuff, the bad inputs, whether it's stress, poor diet, toxins, allergens, bad bugs, drugs like caffeine, alcohol, sugar, whatever's causing your brain to not work.

• 0:21Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Before we jump into today's episode, I want to share a few ways you can go deeper on your health journey. While I wish I could work with everyone one-on-one, there just isn't enough time in the day. So I built several tools to help you take control of your health. If you're looking for guidance, education, and community, check out my private membership, The Hyman Hive, for live Q and As, exclusive content, and direct connection. For real-time lab testing and personalized insights into your biology, visit Function Health. You can also explore my curated doctor-trusted supplements and health products at drhyman.com. And if you prefer to listen without any breaks, don't forget, you can enjoy every episode of this podcast ad-free with Hyman Plus. Just open Apple Podcasts and tap "Try Free" to start your seven-day free trial.

• 1:01Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Your brain is not just this disembodied organ that is sitting in your skull, connected from the rest of what's going on in your body. We learned about the blood-brain barrier in medical school, but that's ridiculous. The brain is constantly interacting, communicating with everything going on in your body. Yes, you have a blood-brain barrier, but it's not like it's something that's just inviolable. It's permeable and things go across and impact it. So, everything that's happening in your body impacts your brain. In fact, the title of my book, The Ultra Mind Solution, was how to fix your broken brain by fixing your body first, right? Fixing your body first, and then you can see, well, then maybe I have some issues with my thoughts and my notions and my feelings and my trauma, whatever. But if you are eating a crappy diet, if you're drinking too much, if you're smoking, if

• 1:46Dr. Mark Hyman?

  you're not exercising, if you have mercury poisoning, if your vitamin D is low, if you're B12 deficient, if your thyroid's not working, your brain's not going to work. So you've just got to figure out how to get your brain healthy. So fixing your brain starts with fixing your body and optimizing all the inputs into your system and minimizing the bad stuff, right? The bad inputs, whether it's stress, poor diet, toxins, allergens, bad bugs, drugs like caffeine, alcohol, sugar, whatever's causing your brain to not work. The brain is pretty resilient and it can recover and heal, given the right conditions. And I've seen miracles. I've seen people reverse Alzheimer's, reverse autism, reverse ADD, reverse depression, things

• 2:27Dr. Mark Hyman?

  that bipolar disease, schizophrenia, I mean, just wouldn't even imagine how powerful this is. In fact, Christopher Palmer, who's been on the podcast, talked about how he used a ketogenic diet to reverse Alzheimer's and optimize mitochondrial function as a key way to treating mental illness. There's departments of metabolic psychiatry at Stanford, of nutritional psychiatry at Harvard. So we now actually have an understanding that the stuff I was talking about 15 years ago, by the way, was way ahead of its time and also extremely important to understand if we're going to fix our brains. About 30 years ago, almost, I developed chronic fatigue syndrome and it felt like I had dementia, depression, and ADD all at once. My brain was broken.

• 3:10Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I really couldn't focus, I couldn't pay attention. I used to be able to see 30 patients a day, remember all their medical history, dictate them at the end of the day with no problem. I couldn't like remember where I was at the end of a sentence from where I started. I couldn't read my kids a book out loud and actually understand at the same time. My brain really was broken. I couldn't sleep, I was exhausted. And I learned that I had mercury poisoning and that broke my brain. My brain was just a mess. I had terrible brain fog, I couldn't focus for much time. I was a physician trying to like practice medicine, it was really tough. I couldn't even remember my patient names and I knew I had to do something different. And that's when I discovered functional medicine, almost 30 years ago.

• 3:53Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And when I reversed my chronic fatigue, when I detoxed from mercury, when I fixed all the other systems in my body, my mitochondria, my gut, my immune system, everything that was going wrong, I was able to reverse my chronic fatigue syndrome and my brain got better. And then I've written 18 books in 20 years, my brain is great, I feel good, and I'm sharper, faster, and better than ever. So what's the worst things we do for our brains? Well, we have too much sugar and fine starch, carbs, and not enough good fats, and not enough intake of the right nutrients, a lot of nutrient deficiencies, omega-3s, vitamin D, magnesium.

• 4:28Dr. Mark Hyman?

  To name a few that are critical for brain health and may affect over fifty to ninety percent of the population with deficiencies in those nutrients. Also, we're exposed to all kinds of weird things that are diet, that are chemicals like artificial sweeteners, like MSG, environmental toxins that actually cause damage to the brain, heavy metals, all these things damage our brain. So, a lot of things cause brain damage, not just what I mentioned, but things like lack of sleep, too much stress, not exercising, overuse of certain substances like alcohol or, or other drugs. Now, I, I found over the years really fascinating to me, it's really quite amazing that people don't connect how they feel with what they eat, or how much they rest or sleep, you know,

• 5:12Dr. Mark Hyman?

  how, how much they exercise, or how much time they take for friends and community and connection, and, or how much bad news and media they're exposed to. I had a patient said, geez doctor, I'm so tired, I, I don't know what to do, I'm always tired, my brain's not working. I said, well, how much do you sleep at night? He goes, well, five, six hours. And I'm like, well, get eight hours sleep and try see what happens, right? So you don't connect the dots. Now, once you make those connections, you can start to change those simple habits that can have profound effects on your health long term and, and, and, you know, make a lot of little small changes that can make profound impact. Now, feeling fully focused, fully energized, having great brain health, it requires really

• 5:55Dr. Mark Hyman?

  following the principles of functional medicine, which is taking out the bad stuff and putting in the good stuff. It's taking out the bad food, toxins, allergens, microbe, stress, adding in the good stuff, the right whole foods, nutrients, bouncing hormones, light, air, water, sleep, relaxation, connection, meaning, love, purpose, all these things are necessary for our brain to function properly. And most of us don't get enough of the good stuff. We don't get whole, real food, we, we often are deficient nutrients, we're not exposed to enough natural light, we don't get enough fresh air, we don't drink clean water because most of it's polluted, we don't have periods of deep rest and relaxation, we don't sleep enough, we don't live in rhythm, we don't exercise, we're too focused on being busy in our careers and all kinds of stuff to focus on community and meaning and purpose and love.

• 6:39Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And, and so we basically have to optimize those things in order for us to be healthy. One of the things that I really focus on, well, food is the number one thing that controls your brain, and we've seen miracles by simply people changing their diet, from treating depression to Alzheimer's to.

• 6:55Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Everything from ADD to to even schizophrenia, as I mentioned. So eating real food is so important. When I say real food, I mean real food, not processed food or ultra-processed food. Whole, organic, fresh, local, unprocessed food. If it has a barcode or a label, you might want to get rid of it. If your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize it as food, don't eat it. Does she know what a Lunchable is or a Pop-Tart? Probably not. Junk food is just bad. Fast food is bad. Ultra-processed food is bad. Some processed food is okay. A can of sardines is processed, right? It's in a can. It's got salt, may oil. A can of tomatoes is processed. It's tomatoes, water, and salt. That's okay. But if you can't recognize where it came from, like a Pop-Tart, you probably don't want to eat it.

• 7:39Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And some things that seem like real food are really not, like yogurt. Yogurt is often filled with high-fructose corn syrup, colors, additives, gums, thickeners. All these things are pretty, pretty nasty for us. Also, you want to eat a lot of colorful fruits and vegetables. I know you hear me say this all the time, but these are full of phytochemicals. These impact the brain. The dark reds, yellows, oranges, greens, blues are so important because the color is where the phytochemicals are. It's where the medicine is. These are anti-inflammatory compounds. They're detoxifying compounds, antioxidants. They're mitochondrial boosting, energy-producing compounds, brain powering molecules. We need to eat that. So get lots of colorful plant foods, blueberries, dark green leafy vegetables.

• 8:22Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So go for the slow carbs, not the fast carbs, right? I'm not saying no carbs. I mean, basically broccoli is a carb, right? But it's quite different than white bread or from sugar. Cauliflower and ice cream are all carbs, right? But you know cauliflower is good for you, but an ice cream sundae is probably not, right? So eating whole plant foods also will have lots of fiber. Helps to reduce the surges of sugar that cause some of the problems. In fact, we call now Alzheimer's type three diabetes. It's like diabetes of the brain from too much sugar. So eating lots of fiber helps slow the surge of sugar. Nuts, seeds, lots of veggies, whole grains, beans, all really can be very helpful.

• 9:07Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And it also keeps your gut healthy. And by the way, your gut and your brain are connected. You need, you need to maintain your healthy microbiome to actually protect your brain health and prevent Alzheimer's. Also fat, the brain is made up of 60% omega-3 fat. It's mostly fat in your brain. So you need to be a fat head and going on low-fat diets are pretty bad for the brain.

• 9:31Dr. Mark Hyman?

  In my book, Eat Fat, Get Thin, I talk about fats a lot and when they're good fats, what are the bad fats? And how to get the omega-3 fats from your diet, from algae or fish. My brain worked pretty good before, but I actually have gotten on a better fat diet, including things like MCTO, which is really powerful for the brain. And my, my focus and my clarity has just gone through the roof. Now, also you want to optimize protein. We need protein because if you lose muscle, because you don't eat enough protein, it leads to this cascade of problems with low muscle mass. That's fatty deposits in your muscle, leads to prediabetes, lowers your testosterone, which you need for brain function, lowers growth hormone, which you need for brain repair,

• 10:16Dr. Mark Hyman?

  increases cortisol, which causes brain damage, literally causes the shrinking of your hippocampus, the memory center of the brain. So you want to make sure that you're having enough protein, ideally animal protein, which is better able to build muscle. And when you age faster, your brain takes a hit, it shrinks. So you can keep your brain good by eating good fats and the right amounts of protein, omega-3 eggs, protein shakes. I like regeneratively goat way for a protein shake in the morning, nut butters, fish for breakfast. All that is great. Also stop poisoning your brain. Get rid of all the bad stuff. Sugar, high fructose corn syrup, trans fats, food additives, preservatives, environmental chemicals, all which really are a problem.

• 10:57Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Supplements also very important for the brain. A good quality multi. Magnesium is important for the brain, calms the brain. It reduces the stimulation of the N D M A receptors, which is actually producing Alzheimer's risk. Vitamin D is important for the brain, omega-3 fats, probiotics, all the B vitamins, folate, B6, B12 are critical for your brain and your neurotransmitter function. And you can find all these. Versions, the best versions, the cleanest versions at my online store, at store.drhyman.com, along with other brain boosting supplements. So you need to design a plan for your life that includes your overall health, but you ought to incorporate some of these important practices for your brain. But the good news is what prevents brain problems, prevents heart disease,

• 11:41Dr. Mark Hyman?

  prevents cancer, prevents diabetes and everything else. So now you can do a million different things, but these principles are really important for brain health.

• 11:48Speaker 02

  Happiness is a brain function. So that's number one. When your brain is unhealthy, you're likely to be unhappy. And so, you know, it's like, why did I write this book? It's like Americans are the unhappiest they have been since the Great Depression. So given the pandemic, the political divide, the societal unrest,

• 12:17Speaker 02

  social media and the national media controlling the dialogue. And they go after fear because that activates the limbic structures in the brain. That gets people to pay attention. And so we're

• 12:35Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Limbic is like the fear, fight or flight. It's the reptile. So they appeal to your reptile.

• 12:40Speaker 02

  They do. And a lot of people wake up with negativity and sadness because that's been planted in our brain through evolution. Because thousands of years ago, you had to wake up and be afraid because that was a survival mechanism. So that is why the brain pays attention to negativity faster than to positive messages. And I'm like, okay, we're so unhappy that I want to spend a year thinking about studying, writing about happiness. And so I got 500 consecutive patients, Damon clinics,

• 13:25Speaker 02

  and we gave them the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire. And then we looked at their brains and what we found, the unhappier you were, the lower activity in the front part of the brain you had. And the lower activity in an area of the brain called the basal ganglia. Which has the nucleus accumbens, which is the part of your brain that responds to dopamine. And so things like head trauma or toxic exposure and so much of it I learned from you. I don't know if I, I know I've told you, but you've just been a huge mentor of mine that I buy your books for all of my doctors.

• 14:11Speaker 02

  We have almost 70 doctors now.

• 14:13Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Thank you. I'm getting so many royalties. Thank you.

• 14:16Speaker 02

  And I love looking at the brain, you know, that's sort of my thing, what I do. And it was just so clear, if your brain wasn't healthy, you were not likely to be happy. So the first strategy that nobody knows about is get your brain right and your mind will follow. And there are a whole bunch of strategies on how to do that. The second one.

• 14:47Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Could I stop you right there? Could I, I just, that is such an important statement you just said, I don't want to go over it so quickly. Your brain is your brain, which is this, you know, putty like structure in your skull and your mind is who you are. It's your thoughts, it's your feelings, it's your perceptions and your mind function is determined by your brain function. And yes, you can overpower your brain function if you're really strong willed in many ways, but it's really important insight to understand that your brain and the quality of the health of your brain determines the quality of your mind. That's a big insight that most people don't realize.

• 15:23Speaker 02

  Your brain creates your mind.

• 15:26Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Right. If people are sad, I'm depressed, I'm anxious, they go, oh, it's, it's, it's like a sore ankle. It's like a, like a, like a, like a stomach ache, but your brain can't have a stomach ache or a sore ankle. So it has a mood change, right?

• 15:38Speaker 02

  So you and I've been blessed to see some really cool people and I was in Justin Bieber's docu-series in 2020 called Seasons. And he came to me at a really low point and like many of these young superstars, they'll show up or not. They'll do what you say or not. And. When he got really low, he showed up and he said, I think I get what you're trying to tell me. My brain is an organ like my heart is an organ. And if you told me I had heart problems, I'd do everything you said. He said, so I'm gonna do everything you say,

• 16:18Speaker 02

  changed his diet, did hyperbaric oxygen, IV therapy. And he's better now than ever. He was just nominated for a bunch of Grammys and I'm so proud of him. But if you don't get your brain right, it's really hard. You know, if you think of it like hardware and software, got to optimize the physical function of your brain and then you can program it. And we have faulty programming. We'll talk about that. But you first have to get the hardware right.

• 16:50Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Exactly. So go keep going on the seven things. I stopped you after the first one.

• 16:55Speaker 02

  So the second one is happiness is geared to your brain type. One of the big lessons I learned from imaging early on is that all psychiatric illnesses, all of them, are not single or simple disorders. They all have multiple types. And giving someone the diagnosis of depression is exactly like giving them the diagnosis of chest pain. And nobody thinks about it like that, but it's absolutely true that, you know, nobody gets a diagnosis of chest pain. Why? Because it doesn't tell you what's cause of it and it doesn't tell

• 17:38Speaker 02

  you what to do for it. I mean, you're not going to give everybody nitroglycerin. I mean, that would be stupid, right? But now we think of depression, oh, you're depressed, take Lexapro, or you're depressed, take Luvox, which is really interesting. We may talk about that in the pandemic, but.

• 17:56Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, it turned out to go through for COVID.

• 17:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's really interesting and I think I know why, but.

• 18:04Speaker 02

  ADD is not one thing. It's seven different things. One of my bestselling books of all time, Healing ADD, I talk about seven different types. And then when I was thinking about happiness, I'm like, the thing that makes spontaneous people happy, like scary movies, having an affair, jumping out of an airplane, the persistent person would actually, those things would make him or her miserable. And so it's really important to know your type. There are five primary types that you balance. That means, you know, most any reasonable thing will make you happy. Spontaneous, you need novelty, or you're not happy. Persistent,

• 18:49Speaker 02

  you need routine, or you are not happy. Sensitive, you need connection. They were damaged most in the pandemic with the isolation. And the cautious people, they need peace to make them happy. And so know your type. I have an online quiz called our Brain Health Assessment, brainhealthassessment.com. You'll see which of the 16 types you have, and then, well, what are the things more likely to make you happy? And all of these strategies have questions. And for Get Your Brain Right, the question, little tiny habit, I don't

• 19:33Speaker 02

  know if you know BJ Fogg, but I worked with him for six months on tiny habits. So we have 50 tiny brain habits. But the mother of all tiny habits for the brain is for strategy one, is this good for my brain or bad for it? So when you go to do something, you just ask yourself, is this good for my brain or bad for it?

• 20:03Speaker 02

  So when we were at Saddleback, our first fight with Pastor Warren was, you gotta get rid of the donuts. Are it's good for your brain or bad for it? I mean, obviously it's bad for it. I don't know if you remember that, but...

• 20:16Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I do. The soda, the pancake, breakfast, the misty, the muesles, the whole thing. We had our work done. They did good, though. I would say, I was impressed that the scale of change that they did so quickly. It was very impressive.

• 20:29Speaker 02

  It's amazing. And then the question for the second strategy, am I doing something today that makes me uniquely happy? So it's really diving into happiness is not the same thing for everybody. So don't say it's novelty and gratitude and appreciation and fun and comedy, because it's different based on your type. Three, you'll appreciate is supplement your brain. We live in a society of deficiencies. And if you're nutrient deficient, especially

• 21:12Speaker 02

  serotonin, you know, most people don't know that birth control pills deplete serotonin. And I've seen this over and over in teenage girls. They go on birth control pills and now they're anxious or they're depressed. And no one's thinking it's changing their neurotransmitters. And my favorite happy supplement is saffron. I've been following the science of saffron for 20 years. 24 randomized controlled trials against Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Mipromin, Effexor, equally effective, but rather than being anti-sexual, you know,

• 21:56Speaker 02

  put someone on an SSRI and they have trouble having an orgasm or their libido goes down, saffron is pro-sexual. And it makes them more interested. And there are studies showing that saffron helps with memory, even in people with mild cognitive impairment. So when the pandemic started, I just released a product I love called Happy Saffron, Saffron Zic and Curcumin. And I'm like, Right, we had a pandemic. My dad died. I had to close our Manhattan clinic. It was a disaster. I'm like, I'm taking this. So this is the supplement. I take many of them, but that's my favorite one.

• 22:40Speaker 02

  And so I, I think we might agree, probably everybody should take a really good multiple vitamin.

• 22:47Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 22:47Speaker 02

  Everybody should take an omega three fatty acid. You should optimize your vitamin D level. Test it. Odds are it's low. And then work to get it high normal because we're in a pandemic.

• 23:03Speaker 02

  And then it depends on your brain type. So are spontaneous people do better with stimulating supplements? Like Rhodiola, are persistent people do better with serotonin boosting supplements like 5-HTP? The sensitive people do better with saffron or Sami and the cautious people do better with GABA, theanine, magnesium. I'm just a huge fan, and too often you see this, is people go to their family doctor, their nurse practitioner, and they end up on a benzo. And it's like, no, no, no. That's like 20th on the list. Let's do meditation, diaphragmatic breathing.

• 23:48Speaker 02

  Let's try GABA and magnesium. Please don't do that because why would you start something?

• 23:55Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Whatever.

• 23:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. Somebody can't stop. And I, I see them creating so many problems with, with inappropriate medication use.

• 24:08Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Well, they don't even work that well. That's the thing. If you took Prozac and you're cured and you're happy, life was good. Wonderful. But it just basically no better than a placebo for milder or moderate depression. So, you know,

• 24:18Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 24:19Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's another problem.

• 24:21Speaker 02

  Well, the pharmaceutical industry doesn't want to be in the order business. I mean, they consciously made the decision to be in the reorder business. That once you start something for a lot of psychiatric medications, they change your brain to need them in order for you to feel normal. So many people are just wickedly afraid of going off antidepressants because of the withdrawal from them. And I'm not opposed to medication. I'm just opposed to that's like the first and only thing you do without getting someone's diet right, without getting their habits right.

• 25:04Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Right. Well, that's so true. I mean, you also talk about in the book, this whole idea of four circles of happiness. It's an exercise you do to make you happy. What is that?

• 25:14Speaker 02

  Well, when I was in medical school, actually, the first week, our dean came in the classroom and he said, never think of patients as their diagnosis. Always think of them in four big circles. And it's just stuck with me. He went to the board and he drew the first circle, which is the biological circle. So, you know, as a doctor, you need to know all about their biology. And as a psychiatrist, for me, you know, our primary organ is the brain. So, brain health, as we talked about. The second circle is the psychological circle, which involves development and how they think. And secret number five is master your mind

• 25:57Speaker 02

  and gain psychological distance from the noise in your head, which we'll talk about, it's a super fun circle, but it's basically the psychological circle.

• 26:07Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Well, one of my favorite things you said is never, don't believe every stupid thought you have.

• 26:12Speaker 02

  I love that. And I didn't learn that till I was 28 years old in my psychiatric residency of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. And I'm like, my eyes got really big because, you know, I've struggled with anxiety. And I'm like, why didn't they teach me that in third grade? Right? Just because I have a thought has nothing to do with whether or not it's true, whether or not it's helpful, whether or not I should attach to. And it's not the thoughts you have that make you suffer. It's the thoughts you attach to that make you suffer. And then he drew the third circle, which is the social circle. He said, in the

• 26:54Speaker 02

  social circle, it's how are your, how are your patients' relationships? And what's their social situation? And, you know, two years into this pandemic, the social situation for so many people has just been a disaster from the societal unrest, the political divide. At Christmas, I had never seen family division like I have seen. And I'm saddened by it. And I kept telling my patients over and over and over again, without connection, you have no influence. So you're a vaxxer, you're an anti-vaxxer, whatever. You know, people

• 27:37Speaker 02

  were like not getting together and angry at each other. And I'm like, if you don't stay connected, you have no influence on the other person. And then the last circle, which I just love so much, is the spiritual circle. It's, why do you care? You know, what is your deepest sense of meaning and purpose, your relationship with God, with the planet, with the past, with the future? And really talking about that with my patients, and I have to tell you, Mark, nine out of 10 patients, when I ask them what their goals are, and why they think they're on the planet, they haven't thought about it.

• 28:18Speaker 02

  And I'm like, you know, a business is not going to go unless it has a mission statement and a purpose and a strategic plan. And so that's actually number seven of the happiness secrets is live each day based on clearly defined values, purpose, and goals. And purposeful people are happier. But if you don't know, and there's a great exercise in the book on how to find your purpose that I love. And, you know, one of my favorite patients that came out last year that I've been her doctor for about 11 years is Miley

• 29:01Speaker 02

  Cyrus. And I love her so much. And she has just grown up so much in the last couple of years. And she's very purposeful. She knows what she's about and what she wants to accomplish. And her bad habits didn't fit. And ultimately, that's the question to ask for secret number seven is, does it fit? Does my behavior fit the goals I have for my life?

• 29:32Speaker 03

  You know, especially when you look at the statistics, if you get to be 75, one out of two people will have diagnosable Alzheimer's. If you get to be eight, I'm sorry, one out of three, you get to be 80, one out of two people.

• 29:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:47Speaker 03

  This is, this didn't exist 100 years ago, before Dr. Alzheimer's got to put his name on this illness he identified. In the Amazon, the thing that amazed me is that the incidence of dementia is one out of 100 people. There's very little hard to see.

• 30:03Speaker 02

  There's 1% there and 20% here.

• 30:05Speaker 03

  20% here. It's crazy. And it's, of course, related to our lifestyles.

• 30:11Speaker 02

  So learning how to grow new brain, a pretty important topic.

• 30:13Speaker 03

  It's really important. And remember, the brain is fat. So you got to give it the good fats. You cannot turn on the higher brain until you go first in a ketogenic diet. It doesn't need to be, you know, eating meat three times a day. But you've got to go into autophagy, you've got to go into start recycling cellular waste and eliminating. Man, we know how to do that now. The beauty of it is not only do we have the diagnostics, we know how to reverse this stuff.

• 30:39Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 30:40Speaker 03

  We know how to create a new brain. We know how to help people grow a healthy brain that's not only going to prevent the dementias, it's going to let them step into this place of gnosis, of wisdom.

• 30:52Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah. It's interesting, you know, we've had Chris Palmer on the podcast, I'll probably have him back again, who's a Harvard psychiatrist, talking about mitochondria as the core dysfunctional unit that is causing most mental illness, everything from autism to schizophrenia to depression and bipolar disease. And then we have to treat the mitochondria. But you're also saying that in terms of the aging brain, and not just, not just that, but also just having a healthy brain, we really have to focus on

• 31:18Speaker 03

  You got it.

• 31:19Dr. Mark Hyman?

  on that. So how, how does that come up in your book?

• 31:21Speaker 03

  You know, the mitochondria, it's a big section on mitochondria and how do we restore mitochondria? There are fuel factories inside every cell, and your brain and your heart have the highest concentration of these fuel fact, energy factories in mitochondria, but they're not only producing energy, they are actually in charge of the death clock. And whoever runs the death clock runs the show. They tell cells when they need to die so new ones can be born, so regeneration can take place. But mitochondria have, they're actually, they don't belong to us. They are actually bacteria that join our cells, formed

• 32:00Speaker 03

  a eukaryotic cell millions of years ago, so that it cut a deal with these multi-cellular organisms, saying, hey, I'm going to give you energy, you keep me protected, keep me warm, keep me safe. And that's what, that's what they do. But what they do is they turn, basically, they store energy in the form of sunlight.

• 32:22Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 32:22Speaker 03

  Of ATP, of a molecule called ATP, adenosine triphosphate. This is like the little sparklers that kids use. And when that, they're depleted, that energy becomes, goes from being ATP to ADP, adenosine mono AMP, adenosine monophosphate, your fuel tank is empty.

• 32:43Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 32:44Speaker 03

  And the, so this process of Storing energy, processing energy, protecting the mitochondria who have thirty-eight genes in a ring that are unprotected. Because our DNA is twenty-four thousand genes in a double helix.

• 33:01Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And your brain cells have more mitochondria than any other cell in your body, per cell.

• 33:06Speaker 03

  And they are the feminine life force.

• 33:08Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Like twenty thousand, fifty thousand.

• 33:10Speaker 03

  Per neuron.

• 33:11Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Per, yeah, per cell.

• 33:12Speaker 03

  Yeah. And we only get the mitochondria from our mothers. So they're, they're what the, I heard the Amazon shamans saying, you know, your people, their feminine life force is very weak. And then David Perlmutter said to me, of course, it's mitochondria.

• 33:27Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's right.

• 33:28Speaker 03

  Because we get it from the mother. So how do we protect, repair? And here's where we get into zombie cells.

• 33:36Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah. Thoughts about zombie cells? These are the zombies like.

• 33:40Speaker 03

  Like the ones in Haiti?

• 33:41Dr. Mark Hyman?

  The spirituals? No, you're not talking about that.

• 33:43Speaker 03

  Kind of. Because zombie cells, these cells are neither living nor dead. And they're actually a cancer protection mechanism that every cell has. So if a cell is not able to copy its DNA, its information accurately to a daughter cell, mother cell, they're, they're mother cells and daughter cells. There are no, there are no daddy cells. If it doesn't copy correctly, it'll neuter that cell so it cannot replicate.

• 34:14Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 34:14Speaker 03

  Because we call that metastases.

• 34:16Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 34:17Speaker 03

  So it'll neuter it, but it won't kill it. So these cells are not able to reproduce, they're neither living nor dead, but they're mitochondria. They become fat and swollen and are starting to produce chemical signals, chemokines, cytokines that are pro-inflammatory and they're very toxic. But it's a cancer protection mechanism. But when you have too many of these. Remember, the problem here is the copying. If the copying is not accurate, they get neutered. And what interferes with the copying is a signal to noise ratio, all the toxins we're exposed to. These cells begin to build and we end up with cancers. These senescent cells are called, and they were discovered by James Kirkland at Mayo Clinic,

• 35:00Speaker 03

  who did a beautiful gerontologist who said, "I'm tired of prescribing walkers and wheelchairs. How do we begin to deal with the causes of aging?" And he found that there were senolytic agents that actually switched on, the kill switch, turned it back on in these cells. And you could get rid of them, you could do away with them.

• 35:23Dr. Mark Hyman?

  You could kill the zombie cells, which are also called senescent cells. Senescent. Senolytics is, senescence is aging and senolytic means to kill aging.

• 35:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 35:32Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Kill the aging cells.

• 35:33Speaker 03

  Kill the aging cells.

• 35:34Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So, so how does that work? How do you do that?

• 35:36Speaker 03

  Well, you, we don't know exactly, at least I don't know how they work, but they seem to switch back on the kill switch in mitochondria.

• 35:44Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And what are the therapies they're using?

• 35:46Speaker 03

  And the therapies are combining things like quercetin and folicin. Folicin is made from strawberries.

• 35:52Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 35:53Speaker 03

  And quercetin is, is polyphenol, it's made from onion skins, for a variety of products, natural products, and it's a hit-and-run intervention. Four or five days, and, and I have a senolytic protocol that we use in, in our retreat center in Chile that you've been to. And in four or five days, you do away, it's a one and done treatment. That you need to repeat, we're finding out three or four times a year because we got 40 years or 50 years of senescent cells in us. And that, what that does is to basically reset the system. You don't have this burden.

• 36:34Speaker 03

  Of zombie cells that you need to, that you're, that you're functioning with, it cleans you out.

• 36:39Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, it's true. Also, there's a great study out of Israel where they looked at, I talked about in my book, Young Forever, where they use hyperbaric oxygen.

• 36:46Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 36:46Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Over sixty sessions. I actually am doing it right now. I just came from it because of my back surgery to heal the wound. But the, uh, the beauty of the, the hyperbaric is that it, it actually creates a stress, but it kill also kills the zombie cells.

• 37:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. And this is, I think, essential, absolutely essential. Our protocol is not only the folicin quercetin, which is commonly used for this, because this will kill the zombie cells. But how do you get rid of them? So you've got to work on the transport system and support the liver in eliminating them. So we're combining it with, um, with alpha-lipophilic acid and with, um, uh, liver support, including glutathione or glutathione to help to transport and eliminate them out of the body. So they're not just sitting there.

• 37:32Dr. Mark Hyman?

  This is amazing. We're talking mitochondria, zombie cells, and microbiome, serotonin, uh, you know.

• 37:39Speaker 03

  But see, this is, this is plant-based. This is working with, and the reason you're, you're going to hear a lot more about senescent cells because we're getting to molecular solutions to pharmaceutical solutions.

• 37:52Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 37:53Speaker 03

  Um, but this is available today. Folicin strawberries. You'd have to eat thirty pounds of strawberries to get the same effect.

• 38:02Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And you can take it as a supplement.

• 38:03Speaker 03

  But it's an amazing supplement, four or five day intervention that lowers your burden.

• 38:09Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 38:10Speaker 03

  Of these toxic cells that are pro-inflammatory.

• 38:13Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah. One of the things that, you know, um, it, it's so fascinating is that, you know, we can start to embed these practices into our daily life. And you, and you, you've written this book, Growing a New Brain, which is not just talking about the theory. You talk about case stories, you talk about.

• 38:28Speaker 03

  And how to do it.

• 38:29Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And how to do it.

• 38:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:30Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So can you maybe share some stories about how this would be applied? What are the kinds of things people are doing? How's it work?

• 38:36Speaker 03

  First, let me share a story about how I kind of got into on this track. Um, because I was running a small lab at San Francisco State. We were looking at, can we create psychosomatic health? What are the mechanisms? And the, um, and I got frustrated at one point, shut the lab down and. And went to the Amazon to see what they did. People that had no technology, but they had the plants, the natural world, the plant world. And the mind, the power of the mind to create. You know, we know the placebo effect is the most tested medication in the world. Yeah. Because every pharmaceutical is tested against placebo. Yeah. And we know it's extraordinarily effective. Yeah.

• 39:21Speaker 03

  That, I mean, it's 68% as effective as morphine in the case of gunshot wounds. Amazing. So I began to looking at what's the placebo effect? We, we don't know what the mechanism is, but we know it works. We know it works even when the person you're giving the sugar pill to knows that it's a placebo. That's amazing. It's extraordinary. A lot of the shamanic healing is based on mobilizing this resource that we have to create health. That we call, that we dismiss derogatively as a placebo. That's just a sugar pill. Well, most of what you're getting in your pills that you take.

• 40:02Speaker 03

  Well, you're activating your psychopharmacology because I always say the best pharmacy is the one between your ears. The one between your ears, yeah. So this is how, what I became interested in. And so how do we do that for ourselves? Well, meditation seems to be one of those things. Practicing inner peace, breathing practices that begin, because that's the interface between your, that can allow you to self-regulate your, your physiology and your nervous system. So I think we have to discover what works for us. We have to provide the brain with the neuro nutrients, the support, get the serotonin. We're serotonin depleted right now. And, and this is things that we can do immediately.

• 40:47Speaker 03

  And then turn your kitchen into your laboratory. And then take part in what this number of people are calling the experiment of N is equal to one. Yeah. Where you have, you know, in medicine, if you have a research project, you want N, the number of participants to be as big as possible. But here the experiment is N is equal one. It's, my experiment is called Alberto. And yours is called Mark. Mark, I love experimenting on Mark. Yeah, me too. And the problem, the thing is that if you don't do the experiment, you get to be in the control group. And the control group is deadly, statistics.

• 41:23Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 41:24Speaker 03

  You want to be an outlier in that bell curve, so we need to take control of our brain today, not outsource it to our digital devices like we've done. You know, the, our memory functions are all outsourced to our digital devices. I was writing one of our blogs today and it said, this thing popped up, you want help with writing this blog? It was ChatGPT asking me if wanted me to do it. Soon, we're only gonna be here to clean the machines. So we need to really upgrade our brain, take the next step in human evolution. Because the one interest, a couple of interesting details. There are forty million species in this planet, more or less, and only three of those don't have a death program in their DNA.

• 42:08Speaker 03

  And they're humans, dolphins, and whales. Every other species in nature has a death program. There are no grandmothers in nature. There's, there's, um, they're eliminated. Whereas we have, not only have grandmothers, but we can live thirty, forty years after menopause. There are no menopause in nature. It doesn't exist.

• 42:26Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Interesting.

• 42:27Speaker 03

  Nature is doing a biology experiment with humans, dolphins, and whales in longevity. And to take part in that experiment, we need to be proactive in it. We need to attenuate the, the systems that create psychosomatic disease. The, um, the amygdala, the, uh, production of cortisol and adrenaline, and switch on the production of the psychedelics that the brain produces to awaken the higher brain. It requires the psychedelics.

• 42:59Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Well, let's talk about that. I was, I was gonna close with this because I think, I think this is really an important, uh, framework. Because historically, we thought of psychedelics as causing psychological effects. But, but now we know they're causing biological effects and literally structural and functional changes to the brain.

• 43:18Speaker 03

  Incredible.

• 43:19Dr. Mark Hyman?

  For example, by increasing BDNF and other

• 43:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 43:22Dr. Mark Hyman?

  brain trophic nutrients, things that are helping the brain grow, repair, heal, reduce inflammation. And, and things like, you know, DMT from ayahuasca, from You know, the Bufo from the Tsunorn Desert toad, the, you know, psilocybin medicines, MDMA, which is synthetic chemical, LSD, synthetic chemical, or that comes from plant ergot. All of these are, are things that have been around for hundreds of thousands of years.

• 43:47Speaker 03

  And they all act in serotonin receptors.

• 43:49Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And they act on the serotonin receptors, but what we're now learning about them is that, that they can really create profound lasting changes in the brain, in a way grow a new brain. What, keep, kind of think, tell us how you think about that.

• 44:01Speaker 03

  It's amazing, if you've seen the brain on, on drugs, on psychedelics, you find that there are 20 to 30 times the amount of neural networks.

• 44:10Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Not, not the Richard Nixon brain on drugs with the fried eggs, not that one.

• 44:13Speaker 03

  Not the one with the fried egg, yeah. And the, the problem is that many, they say we're doing this experimenting without a traditional sacred structure. So every culture that works with psychedelics knows that you need a diet to prepare for it, a diet that's rich in serotonin, for example, and some of the M A inhibitors.

• 44:32Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 44:33Speaker 03

  And you need to prepare a sacred space, a safe space, not just drop some acid or give somebody some ketamine and, but even then tremendous healing happens. So that's the chemical effect is what we're looking at. Other societies looked at the sacred. What was the environment? How do you create a safe space? How do you, um, are able to commune with the divine in whatever form you encounter it? And that's part of what we're looking for that we don't have the answer for.

• 45:05Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That, that's true. I think it's true. But I think what's, what's sort of exciting to me is this sort of, is this sort of revolution in brain science and the revolution in, in trauma healing, the revolution in psychedelic medicine, the revolution in nursing the body as a system and network, all these things are coming together. And I think it's gonna change everything. We think about the brain, the mind, our lives.

• 45:28Speaker 03

  Totally, it's gonna open up the door to explore the mind.

• 45:30Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So where does the future look like? Tell us about how you see the future.

• 45:33Speaker 03

  I am very optimistic. I see the future as tremendously exciting. I think that there have been five extinction events in the planet before. We're living in the fifth one right now. Started about fifteen, twenty years ago. More species are dying than the previous one. That's when a gigantic meteorite struck the earth and wiped out ninety percent of life forms.

• 45:52Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Wow.

• 45:53Speaker 03

  During extinction events, nature seems to take the foot off of the brake and step on the accelerator, evolutionary accelerator. So it's not only evolution in between generations, but now within generations, that we can become a new human.

• 46:08Dr. Mark Hyman?

  What is called epigenetic reprogramming?

• 46:10Speaker 03

  Epigenetic reprogramming to become a new human being that can have long life, long health, and can become a keeper, an earthkeeper, a steward of the earth, and can experience her and his divine nature.

• 46:27Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So beautiful, Alberto. I mean, I, you know, I think about it a little scientifically too, which is that this concept that's emerging from our scientific discovery, in a way, you know, we talk about shamanic healing, we talk about energy medicine, we talk about kind of healing from trauma, that this fundamental concept of epigenetics, which is relatively new, it's the idea that there's a control system regulating our genes. And our genes are fixed, but which ones are turned on or off is regulated by this sort of master coder. And the coder is the epigenome. And that gets programmed generationally. So trauma can be transmitted generationally.

• 47:08Speaker 03

  Totally.

• 47:09Dr. Mark Hyman?

  The impact of toxins or crappy food is transmitted generationally. And those impacts are found downstream, two or three generations down. So if your grandmother was exposed to glyphosate, you're at risk for all sorts of cancers and deformities, right? If your great-grandmother had a trauma, then that might be embedded in your DNA, like the Holocaust survivors.

• 47:28Speaker 03

  Precisely.

• 47:29Dr. Mark Hyman?

  My children, and their children and grandchildren are impacted.

• 47:31Speaker 03

  Have very low levels of cortisol. That's been happening for generations.

• 47:35Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So what's exciting is what you're talking about essentially is using the science to reprogram the epigenome.

• 47:41Speaker 03

  Precisely.

• 47:41Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So you can evolve. Within one generation. So there was this debate between Darwin and Lamarck. Darwin was like, species evolved through natural sex selection over time. Mark was like, species come fixed as they are. They're both right in a way, right? And so these traits, and he was like, traits can evolve even in a generation. So I think I

• 48:00Speaker 03

  Very rapidly.

• 48:01Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, very rapidly.

• 48:02Speaker 03

  Not only that, but we inherit not only the toxic legacy of our ancestors, both biological, chemical, emotional, but also the gifts, the extraordinary gifts of resilience, of courage, of endurance, of right, you know, and we have to begin to tap into that.

• 48:19Dr. Mark Hyman?

  When it comes to supplements, you only want the best for your body, 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.

• 49:02Dr. Mark Hyman?

  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 and is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional.

• 49:47Dr. Mark Hyman?

  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.