Arianna Huffington: Why Willpower Fails — and What to Do Instead

We often think that better health is just a matter of trying harder, but science tells a different story. On this episode of The Dr. Hyman Show, I sit down with Arianna Huffington to explore why willpower isn’t enough—and what actually drives meaningful, lasting change. Arianna shares how her work with Thrive AI Health is helping people build better habits through microsteps, personalization, and community. Catch the full conversation on YouTube for a hopeful, science-backed look at behavior change. We cover: • How “too small to fail” microsteps can help you make real, lasting change • Smart strategies you can use to protect your energy and avoid burnout • Why feeling good might just start with sixty seconds and a reset • Ways to use tech as a supportive tool, not a source of stress If you’ve ever felt stuck trying to get healthier, this conversation is a reminder that feeling good is often closer than you think. View Show Notes From This Episode 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 Health https://drhyman.com/pages/10-day-detox Join the Hyman Hive for Expert Support and Real Results https://drhyman.com/pages/hyman-hive This episode is brought to you by Seed, Timeline, Sunlighten, Pique and Paleovalley. Visit seed.com/hyman and use code 25HYMAN for 25% off your first month of Seed's DS-01® Daily Synbiotic. Support essential mitochondrial health and save 10% on Mitopure. Visit timeline.com/drhyman to get 10% off today. Visit sunlighten.com and save up to $1400 on your purchase with code HYMAN. Receive 20% off FOR LIFE + a free Starter Kit with a rechargeable frother and glass beaker at Piquelife.com/Hyman. Get nutrient-dense, whole foods. Head to paleovalley.com/hyman for 15% off your first purchase.

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.

• 0:02Speaker 01

  Seven percent of our health outcomes are dependent on our genes, but our daily behaviors impact not just more than our genes, like 10 times more than our genes, but more than medical care if we are healthy.

• 0:16Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Arianna Huffington is a global entrepreneur.

• 0:18Speaker 01

  Founder of the Huffington Post and Thrive Global.

• 0:21Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Solutions that aren't at the bottom of pill bottles.

• 0:23Speaker 01

  Nobody should be having their legs amputated because of diabetes and 150,000 people have their legs or toes amputated every year. Just think of it for a minute, what that does to somebody's life, to their family, how close we are to feeling good. Isn't that sort of a wonderful thought?

• 0:46Dr. 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. Well, Arianna, it's so good to have you back on the podcast. You've created something

• 1:30Dr. Mark Hyman?

  called Thrive Global, then now Thrive Health AI partnership with OpenAI to really get people to shift their behavior. That's revolutionary because you were using live coaches and now you're going to be also using digital coaches.

• 1:45Speaker 01

  My goal, and I know your goal, is to democratize this coaching. You know, we don't want just to reach the people who are already interested in this. We want to reach everyone.

• 1:59Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's right.

• 2:00Speaker 01

  And you can't do that. It's prohibitive cost-wise, but AI can help. It's not just the cost. It's also that the power of AI is personalization.

• 2:12Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's right.

• 2:13Speaker 01

  And the problem with a lot of health advice is that it's generic.

• 2:17Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Right.

• 2:18Speaker 01

  And it's very hard to move the needle. When the advice is generic, you know, you can have some impact. But the more personalized, the better.

• 2:29Dr. Mark Hyman?

  You know, one of the things that that is really hard is we know what to do. I mean, if you ask me how to reverse diabetes, no problem. I can tell you how to do it in a week. But to get people to do the behaviors is really hard. And that's something you focused on because you, you know, your story is great. You can share it, but you know how you basically ran yourself into the ground, crashed and then woke up and realized you had to take care of yourself. And you started to make those changes for yourself.

• 2:56Speaker 01

  And also like you, I'm an evangelist.

• 2:58Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 2:58Speaker 01

  So in fact, that's what happened, you know, Thrive started very much as a political site. And then after my collapse in 2007, that's when you and I started working together because I wanted to bring to the world everything I had learned about sleep and food and exercise and stress. So I started covering these issues pretty exhaustively. You know, my board kind of complained when I launched a dedicated sleep section.

• 3:29Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, right.

• 3:29Speaker 01

  In 2007.

• 3:31Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 3:31Speaker 01

  Why are we launching a section on sleep? Because remember that was the time when everybody thought I'll sleep when I'm dead.

• 3:38Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Exactly.

• 3:38Speaker 01

  You snooze, you lose.

• 3:40Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's right.

• 3:41Speaker 01

  And and then, you know, I wrote these two books, Thrive and The Sleep Revolution. But by 2016, I really felt exactly what you said. I don't want to spend the rest of my life raising awareness. I want to help people change behaviors.

• 3:57Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 3:58Speaker 01

  That's hard, but doable. And in order to do it, I had to stop running a media company and launch a behavior change technology company. So that's what I did in 2016. And you know, it's a hard decision to leave behind something successful.

• 4:16Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 4:17Speaker 01

  To start again. But I'm so happy I did it. And I'm so happy that we're at this moment now when a lot of the pioneering work you've done is really becoming mainstream.

• 4:29Dr. Mark Hyman?

  You know, we really have a problem too, because most of the diseases that people are suffering from are either caused or worsened by our behaviors. What we eat. The way we move or don't, the lack of sleep or poor sleep, which affects seventy million people, stress, lack of social connection, relationships. It's an area of medicine that's been massively neglected. We're really good with technology, with a, you know, drugs and surgeries and procedures and interventions, but those things don't solve the why of why we get sick and actually don't even reverse the problems, right? So if you have these chronic illnesses, which are bankrupting our country and creating suffering for hundreds of millions of people, the, the solutions aren't at the bottom of

• 5:14Dr. Mark Hyman?

  pill bottle. You know, they're, they're down at the end of your fork or on your pillow or in the jam, you know, and your, and your connections and, and that's what you focused on. And, and I think I'd love you to talk about, you know, how you think about behavior change because you talk about it as the miracle drug.

• 5:32Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 5:32Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Right? Can you kind of pack that for us?

• 5:34Speaker 01

  So first of all, let us kind of make it very clear that everything we're saying about the impact of, of behaviors on health outcomes is science based. This is not just like some warm and fuzzy wellness thing.

• 5:50Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Science of behavior change.

• 5:52Speaker 01

  Very clear, science of health, that seven percent of our health outcomes are dependent on our genes. But our daily behaviors impact, if we're healthy, more than, not just more than our genes, like 10 times more than our genes, but more than medical care if we're healthy. Of course, if we're sick and need surgery.

• 6:19Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Rescue medicine. I can't rescue medicine.

• 6:21Speaker 01

  Rescue medicine, then you are living in the best country in the world for a sick healthcare system, but not a healthcare system. And that's what really we're trying to change. So it starts for me with people realizing this is all science based. And the five behaviors that Thrive works on are.

• 6:41Speaker 01

  Food, sleep, we don't even call it exercise. We call it movement.

• 6:46Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 6:47Speaker 01

  A lot of people don't leave their couches.

• 6:50Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Right.

• 6:50Speaker 01

  So you need to start somewhere. Stress management and connection. And these are the foundational daily habits that affect our health. The second point is to convince people that you can change behaviors. I mean, look at smoking, Mark.

• 7:06Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 7:07Speaker 01

  Look at smoking, you know, nineteen sixty-five, forty-two percent of Americans were smoking. Now it's twelve percent.

• 7:15Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 7:16Speaker 01

  You know, we should be zero, but it's twelve percent.

• 7:19Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Big change.

• 7:20Speaker 01

  And you know, you have drunk driving, you have seat belts. The key, and we've worked with an incredible number of scientists to develop a behavior change methodology over the last eight years, including B.J. Fogg at Stanford, Kevin Volpat at Wharton. And the key is to break it down into micro steps that we call too small to fail, which is the exact opposite of New Year resolutions.

• 7:51Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, too big.

• 7:52Speaker 01

  You know, New Year resolutions, you know, I'm going to go to the gym an hour a day, I'm going to give up all sugar. And within two weeks, eighty percent of people give up their New Year resolutions. They feel like a failure and it's harder to get back on the horse.

• 8:08Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 8:08Speaker 01

  We want to build success muscles. We start really, really small. We have a lot of, say, sixty-second resets, we call them, to reduce stress. For sleep, you know, my favorite micro step is turn off your phone. And at least one night a week, we don't say every night, charge it outside your room.

• 8:32Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 8:33Speaker 01

  You'll see the difference.

• 8:34Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 8:35Speaker 01

  Because the phone, you know, it's not really a phone. Nobody calls anybody anymore.

• 8:40Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's true.

• 8:40Speaker 01

  You know, it's a nuclear weapon that has all your projects and your problems and you want to separate yourself from it. Again, with food, we do a lot around swaps. We are working in Arkansas with Alice Walton and

• 8:54Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 8:54Speaker 01

  She said to me, I love Cheetos. I said, I get it, you love Cheetos. Let me show you some alternatives. You know, there's this company called Lessereville and they have some

• 9:06Speaker 01

  They have a snack, you know, is it as good as an apple or an orange? No, but you got to start somewhere.

• 9:13Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Somewhere, yeah.

• 9:13Speaker 01

  And you can't make the perfect, the enemy of the good, of beginning somewhere. So at least the, the, the cheetah swamp that lesser evil makes doesn't have dyes.

• 9:24Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 9:25Speaker 01

  Doesn't have as many chemical ingredients. People need to feel that they have some support on the journey. The other thing that's key for behavior change is no judgment. You know, we're all works in progress.

• 9:41Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 9:41Speaker 01

  And people have been so judged.

• 9:44Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Mm hmm, and they judge themselves.

• 9:45Speaker 01

  And they judge themselves and they feel judged by the world. That's where AI, you know, the AI health coach that we are developing is so great because the AI coach does not judge you.

• 9:56Dr. Mark Hyman?

  No.

• 9:57Speaker 01

  It's a little bit like a GPS in your car.

• 9:59Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Google Maps, if you make a wrong turn, it doesn't say you stupid idiot, why did you go that way?

• 10:02Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly.

• 10:04Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Turn at the next left.

• 10:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, let's recalculate, let's.

• 10:08Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Rerouting.

• 10:09Speaker 01

  Let's reroute, let's start again.

• 10:11Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 10:12Speaker 01

  So I feel that we know so much now about behavior change around micro steps. And also our healthy habits are developed in community. We work with self insured employers. That's a community, the place where you work is a community. So we do a lot of things like challenges, role model stories, where people write about what they are doing, which inspires others. Accountability bodies, you know, a whole system of community support and storytelling. You know, storytelling is amazing. In our work with Walmart, which is now in its seventh year, you know, we've worked with a lot of associates.

• 10:53Speaker 01

  We've had, you know, a lot of problems, prediabetes, or diabetes, obesity, hypertension. And we don't give medical advice, we're not doctors like you.

• 11:04Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 11:04Speaker 01

  Our advice, our micro steps, everything we do is purely around lifestyle changes and.

• 11:10Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Which is the most powerful medicine, by the way.

• 11:13Speaker 01

  That's, that's all we do.

• 11:14Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 11:15Speaker 01

  But just with that, and then Walmart had given us a million dollars a year to spend in financial rewards. When people change, when they meet their goals.

• 11:26Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 11:26Speaker 01

  And it was so moving to read. People's stories, in order to participate in this project, they had to tell a story of what they did and how they did it.

• 11:36Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 11:36Speaker 01

  And the stories, Mark, were not just by a lost weight or I reversed my diabetes or I'm no longer dealing with hypertension. The stories were my relationship with my husband is better.

• 11:47Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 11:48Speaker 01

  I can now take my baby up the steps. You know, they're like human stories.

• 11:54Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's right, yeah.

• 11:55Speaker 01

  You know, they're not just focusing on the medical result or the weight. It was their life. And that's why I, I don't know what podcast I heard you on, but I absolutely loved it where you said there's so much suffering right now. And, you know, there is a lot of suffering in the world that we can't do something about right now. You know, that's not in our hands, but this is in our hands. We can actually change this suffering. And what got me so passionate about it, actually, at the next level of passion, it's an article that I have on my desk in New York, in the New York Times, showing a picture of a man called Robert Perez

• 12:39Speaker 01

  in San Antonio, a record producer, forty-three years old, being fitted with a prosthetic because he had his leg amputated because of diabetes.

• 12:49Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 12:50Speaker 01

  In America, in twenty twenty-five, nobody should be having their legs amputated because of diabetes. And hundred and fifty thousand people have their legs or toes amputated every year.

• 13:02Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's right.

• 13:03Speaker 01

  And he said, he said, when I was diagnosed with diabetes four years ago, I never thought it would come to that. And, you know, just think of it for a minute, what that does to somebody's life, to their family. But also think of what it does to costs.

• 13:17Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 13:17Speaker 01

  Surgery, prosthetics, complications, infections. No wonder, you know, our.

• 13:25Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Health care bill is so high.

• 13:26Speaker 01

  Health care bill is so high now, four point nine. Trillion dollars.

• 13:31Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Getting worse every year. It's it's it's it's true. And I think, you know, we live in a world where our healthcare system doesn't really provide healthcare, provide sick care. And what you're talking about is a platform through Thrive Global and now through Thrive AI Health, where you're actually be able to support people to make the changes. And what you said before was really important about behavior change. In community, it's a lot easier.

• 13:54Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 13:55Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Christakis from Harvard, he's on a lot of the key work around this by looking at the Framingham data, which is the biggest data set of people tracked over decades from Framingham, Massachusetts. And he found that people were much more likely to be overweight if their friends were overweight than if their family members were overweight. So like the genetics were less important than your social network. And so he, you know, when I, when I heard that, I was like, wait a minute, we call these diseases noncommunicable diseases, but that's not accurate. They're not infectious, but they're contagious. And just as though disease can be contagious and obesity or diabetes, depending on the community environment you live in, health is also contagious. And that's what you're talking about with the types of interventions you're making through Thrive Global and now through

• 14:41Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Thrive AI Health, where you're able to help people understand how to build community, connection, relationships, share stories, build connection, and inspire each other to actually make a difference. That's what these stories are so important because the point isn't to like not be able to take your medication or have diabetes. The point is to be able to live more fully.

• 14:59Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And that's where stressing that is key.

• 15:02Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 15:03Speaker 01

  And also that's where we now have this amazing convergence of a lot of forces that make me incredibly optimistic. Did you call yourself once pathologically optimistic?

• 15:15Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, I did. Good memory. I'm a pathological optimist.

• 15:19Speaker 01

  I think I'm a pathological optimist to a kind of, you know, Greek optimist, American optimist.

• 15:26Dr. Mark Hyman?

  The good news is optimists live longer even if they're wrong.

• 15:29Speaker 01

  Okay, but we are going to be right. This convergence of forces is really the healthcare costs that we are mentioning, which also amongst self insured employers are raising alarm bells. So more and more self insured employers that we work with want to get directly involved. They don't want just to pay their insurance bill because

• 15:52Dr. Mark Hyman?

  They're seeing it doesn't work.

• 15:53Speaker 01

  They're seeing it doesn't work. They're seeing the healthcare costs going up and health outcomes getting worse. And we all talk about productivity. Well, the biggest productivity multiplier is health.

• 16:04Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 16:05Speaker 01

  You know, if you're sick, how can you be productive?

• 16:08Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, there's actually a study on this. Presentism, which is being at the job but not on the job, accounts for $2 trillion in lost productivity globally. So when you feel like crap, you don't perform, you can't focus, you can't concentrate. And what you're talking about are these small, simple nudges around behavior that make a difference and add up over the long term.

• 16:30Speaker 01

  So that's one big force. The other is that that people are now much more engaged in their own health. As you know, over 60% of people, you know, Google or ChatGPT things online, they want to be empowered. And that's why I love function that empowers people. They don't want just to go to their doctor and hand their fate over to the medical system.

• 16:58Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Doctor is God, or has passed, I think.

• 17:00Speaker 01

  Yes, I think it has passed. And, you know, there are great doctors and thank God for them. But also, one of our mottos is health is also what happens between doctor visits. You know, the idea that you go and have an executive physical once a year and that's it. It's like, what are you doing every day? Are you sleeping? What are you eating? Are you stressed out? Are you exercising? These are now the questions that people are more engaged with. And consumer engagement.

• 17:34Speaker 01

  Is kind of key here. If you think of it, in every other industry, we're obsessed with consumer engagement, you know, the UX, the design of the experience, except in healthcare.

• 17:47Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, we're good at making people addicted to everything except their health.

• 17:50Speaker 01

  Except their health. I was talking with Neil Lindsay, who runs Health at Amazon, and I said, you know, you talk about being customer obsessed. When it comes to health, you know, we are like customer hosta.

• 18:02Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 18:03Speaker 01

  At best, customer indifferent.

• 18:05Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 18:06Speaker 01

  But now there is that recognition that we need to engage people in their own health. And that includes making everything kind of delightful. You know, I was showing you the cookbook that we published.

• 18:23Dr. Mark Hyman?

  This one here.

• 18:24Speaker 01

  Which, basically, we publish to give it away for free. It's not like a profit center. Because when we tell people about eating healthier, which involves beginning to learn and enjoy cooking, we wanted to deal with the fact, oh, it's so expensive. So invited famous chefs like Ina Garten and Jose Andres to donate recipes with five ingredients or less, and everything affordable. And then we made the book delightful with pictures and easy recipes. And the reason for that is that if we want people to eat healthier, we can't just tell them to eat their broccoli. Although I love broccoli.

• 19:07Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Well, you have to show them how.

• 19:09Speaker 01

  But you have to show them how, and you have to to make it compelling and interesting. And so that's really another big force right now, this recognition that users, consumers, patients want to be engaged in their own health, and our job is to make it easier.

• 19:29Dr. Mark Hyman?

  When you say our job, I think you're talking about, you know, people who are involved in healthcare, and Thrive Global really has worked with big employers to get changes in people's health through these behavior changes. How do we do this? What are the mechanisms by which, you know, Thrive and Thrive Global and soon Thrive AI Health is going to be helping people make those changes?

• 19:51Speaker 01

  So many ways, you know. Over the last eight years, we've done it by working with employers, bringing in this behavior change support around these five behaviors, doing webinars, seminars, group coaching, individual coaching, challenges, the whole gamut.

• 20:14Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Are you using real-life coaches?

• 20:15Speaker 01

  Real-life coaches, yeah. And we work in multiple countries, you know, 12 languages. Everything is translated, which is so easy now with AI. And that's both like executives and contact center operators. You know, we've had incredible success with contact centers, which is highly interesting because there are many professions where you are regularly yelled at. So the levels of stress are through the roof, including attrition, health problems. So we developed this 60-second reset, again, based on science,

• 20:58Speaker 01

  the neuroscience that shows us how we can move people from the sympathetic to the parasympathetic nervous system because stress is inevitable.

• 21:08Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 21:08Speaker 01

  There isn't anybody who doesn't have stress in their lives. But cumulative stress is avoidable. And in 60 to 90 seconds, as you know, by focusing on conscious breathing, focusing on images that bring you joy or gratitude, music, quotes, you can change how you show up in your life. We have hundreds of them. Different employers choose different moments to bring them to the contact center operator's dashboard. Some of them are super sophisticated, like voice recognition, when you know somebody is very stressed.

• 21:49Speaker 01

  Some of them are super simple, like if a call was longer than twenty minutes or elevated to a supervisor. And then you have no idea the impact they have. We only do three a day because, you know, contact centers are run like a military operation. You know, we can't even... Do you know that we have served sometimes a sixty-two second reset? And we've been asked to shorten it to sixty seconds? Because it's all about handle time. And my favorites, I mean, there are amazing data that we've collected. But my favorite is actually Synchrony, a financial group that we work with,

• 22:30Speaker 01

  did a survey and asked people who are served these resets three times a day, would you prefer to continue being served these resets? Or instead get three, five-minute breaks?

• 22:43Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 22:44Speaker 01

  And seventy-eight percent shows the resets. And the reason is that if people are given a five-minute break, what do they do?

• 22:51Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Have coffee, have sugar, they go online.

• 22:54Speaker 01

  They go online and they doom scroll the news? Or they go on social media and compare our messy lives with somebody's highlight reel?

• 23:04Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Right.

• 23:05Speaker 01

  And they feel more stressed. While this is like designed to help you connect with something deeper in yourself, you know? You know, I say that, Mark, because ultimately, everything we're talking about is hinges on how we see human nature. I mean, as you know, I've had this conversation many times. I profoundly believe that every human being, whether they call themselves spiritual or atheist or anything in between, has this center, this place of peace, strength, wisdom, harmony, we all have it, it's our birthright.

• 23:44Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Most of us is locked away pretty hard.

• 23:45Speaker 01

  Most of us is locked away. Thich Nhat Hanh said it's never been easier to run away from ourselves, but it's there. And the reason why these resets work is because there is something you can tap into. You're not creating it. You're just kind of unbearing it.

• 24:06Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's amazing. I mean, I think most of us don't realize how close we are to feeling good with just some small, simple steps in every day, and they get cumulative, it creates a cascade effect over time.

• 24:19Speaker 01

  That's a great thing. I'm going to endlessly quote you on that.

• 24:22Dr. Mark Hyman?

  You could steal it.

• 24:23Speaker 01

  How close we are to feeling good. Isn't that sort of a wonderful thought?

• 24:27Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, we see it all the time when you just guide people into how to how to take care of their biology, which most of us don't learn. And most of us don't learn how to take care of our bodies. We don't get an operating manual when we're born, and we don't have any instruction book. And we kind of aimlessly find our way through life trying to do the right thing. But most of us don't really understand the basic functioning of our body and how to get it to function better. And what you're delivering is at scale, a solution that helps with tiny little nugget bite sized pieces of, you call them micro steps, to help people advance towards and lean in towards more healthy behaviors. And they see the results, and then they're leaning more.

• 25:06Speaker 01

  Exactly. And it's really, how do you reduce the friction? How do we make it easier? When we onboard a user, we onboard everything about them that they give us access to, you know, their biometric data, their lab data, their medical data, but also their preferences. What foods do they like? How do they move? What do they like to do? Their calendars, if they give us access. So as much information as possible.

• 25:33Dr. Mark Hyman?

  You want my calendar?

• 25:34Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. I need to take hold of your calendar and feed you lots of resets between meetings.

• 25:41Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I know. I think I need it.

• 25:42Speaker 01

  Actually, joking apart, we're going to make you a personalized reset. That's my favorite thing. That's like the one that has the most impact.

• 25:50Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 25:51Speaker 01

  And you can create it on our platform in five minutes with pictures of the people you love, your wife. And do you have a dog?

• 25:59Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I do have a dog now. I just got a dog. He's six months old.

• 26:02Speaker 01

  What's the dog's name?

• 26:03Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Lenny.

• 26:04Speaker 01

  Lenny. A song you love, quotes you love, I mean, I'll send you my personal reset. So immediately, as you know, gratitude and stress and anxiety cannot coexist. So suddenly you have 60 seconds of what you love about your life. Maybe during a moment when your life sucks. You know, we all have those moments during the day.

• 26:31Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 26:32Speaker 01

  So how can we help you get out of that quickly?

• 26:45Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And you know, the, the, the power of AI is that it's so intelligent and that it has a capacity to learn over time and it has a capacity to store memory and understanding of you. And then can use that knowledge to create more nuanced nudges for you that, that are truly meaningful to you rather than some abstract piece of information. And you're also able to sort of get not just people's personal lifestyle habit data, but actual other hard data, whether it's wearables, now function health and Thrive AI Health, they're partnering to be able to, be able to upload your lab data, which you might not know that that person is on their way to diabetes, but you can find out and then you can personalize it. So, so all these incredible applications that were never possible before to help guide people.

• 27:29Speaker 01

  No, I think it's an incredible moment and I'm loving our partnership with Function Health and the fact that people again are empowered to take charge of their own health, to get all their biomarkers. And, and as you know, I'm talking with your team about also starting this program called Know Your Numbers.

• 27:48Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's right.

• 27:49Speaker 01

  So people can know, again, you won't be able to know or remember everything that you learn from your function blood tests, which are fantastic because you go deeper. But I mean, we are working. With three numbers, and I'm sure you probably will add more, or maybe not agree that these are the most important, but here we go.

• 28:10Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Here we go, I'm curious.

• 28:11Speaker 01

  CRP as your inflammation marker, APOB

• 28:15Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 28:16Speaker 01

  As your lipid cholesterol number, and APOB, now there's a lot of evidence is a more powerful marker than LDL and HDL, and then A1C.

• 28:29Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's right.

• 28:30Speaker 01

  So, you know, obviously, there are tons of

• 28:32Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Those are good. You had somebody good advising you.

• 28:33Speaker 01

  But if you can know these numbers, and we are friends, so we say, how are you doing, Mark? And how are you doing, Ariana? And then you check them, and you see the trend lines.

• 28:45Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 28:46Speaker 01

  And this is like the exact opposite to what's happening now, when a lot of people don't even have access to their blood tests.

• 28:53Dr. Mark Hyman?

  No, access, the doctor can't track it over time, you're looking at

• 28:56Speaker 01

  And the whole thing is over time.

• 28:59Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 28:59Speaker 01

  That's the key. What are you doing? And how are you how are you monitoring how your behaviors are affecting your health? In the same way we do, I'm wearing an Oura ring.

• 29:12Dr. Mark Hyman?

  A nice one.

• 29:13Speaker 01

  The nice one, yes. They don't make them anymore. They did a partnership with Gucci.

• 29:17Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Ah.

• 29:17Speaker 01

  And produced these Oura rings. So I'm sorry, they don't make them anymore. But I love it, because if I don't get a good night's sleep, I can see what did I do differently. I stopped drinking, so that's not an issue, but, you know, I mean, people who, and I stopped drinking because I think over a certain age, it has a bigger impact

• 29:37Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 29:37Speaker 01

  on your body. And, and I prefer how I feel.

• 29:41Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Exactly.

• 29:42Speaker 01

  It's not a sacrifice, because I like the feeling of going to sleep more easily, waking up with clarity. Are you saying that if you have three glasses of wine, it affects your sleep compared to two glasses of wine? These are the kind of, this is the kind of data you can collect through an Oura ring, or a hoop, or whatever you are wearing.

• 30:03Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And that, and that really helps you understand the impact of your choices on how you feel. Because at the end of the day, for me at least, it's, it's really how people feel, and their quality of life, and their quality of energy, and their quality of attention, and quality of relationships, and the quality of the effort they're able to put in their, their life and their work. I mean, those things are, are kind of more nebulous, but they're all determined by your health. If you don't actually Have a pathway to to get better because you don't know what to do or how to do it. Or there's too much convicting information out there, or your doctor doesn't really understand lifestyle medicine. You're going to be kind of wandering around in the dark and think, or take this pill to treat your diabetes, or take this pill to treat your high blood pressure, or you're too stressed, here's some Prozac.

• 30:47Dr. Mark Hyman?

  But that's not the way we should be treating people. And and it's creating accelerating costs and increasing burden on our economy, increasing suffering because people are not actually resolving the problem, they're just mitigating it slightly, or maybe not at all. And so I wonder from your perspective, how you think these these kind of shifts in AI-driven behavior first interventions are going to reverse this trend of chronic illness? Do you think it's key? Because I I think I remember talking to Paul Farmer, or answer the question, I was going to just say one thing, is you knew Paul Farmer, I think. He's an incredible man who helped reverse TB and AIDS in some of the worst places in the world through the power of community. He said, you know, we need to create a million community health workers to solve our chronic

• 31:31Dr. Mark Hyman?

  disease problem in America. We need people helping people, neighbors helping neighbors. And and essentially, what you're creating is a sort of a digital neighborhood where people can be neighbors to help each other change. You know, having that much infrastructure and a million community health workers, or 10 million, or however many we need in America, it's a it's a big lift and it's very expensive. But now with technology,

• 31:54Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 31:54Dr. Mark Hyman?

  we can actually humanize that.

• 31:57Speaker 01

  That's what I'm most excited about with AI. You know, when we talk about AI and health, most people tend to think of, oh, it's going to accelerate drug development.

• 32:07Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Or read my radiology scan.

• 32:08Speaker 01

  It's going to give us, you know, better diagnostic tools. And these are all very important considerations. But I think the mother lode, the most important thing is how it's going to help us change behaviors. Because that's at the heart of the chronic disease epidemic.

• 32:26Dr. Mark Hyman?

  100%.

• 32:27Speaker 01

  And if we can help people. Realize that through these nudges and recommendations that are personalized to them, they can have a real impact on their lives. And build that success muscle around what they're doing. And see the impact it has and feel constantly supported and not judged. It's going to be revolutionary and that's what I'm most excited about. You you mentioned AI superpower being memory. And that's another thing. Personalization is one thing, memory is the other. My Greek compatriots, you know, put on the temple of Apollo in Delphi, know thyself.

• 33:11Speaker 01

  AI will help us know ourselves and also know us better than we know ourselves.

• 33:19Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 33:19Speaker 01

  So that it can feed us.

• 33:21Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, it's interesting. I I was talking to a friend. He said he uses ChatGPT for therapy. If he's got issues with his wife or he's trying to deal with a tough problem. He uses it as virtual AI therapist. I was like, wow, that's really interesting. I hadn't thought of that, you know.

• 33:38Speaker 01

  I think what people love about AI therapy is that they don't feel judged.

• 33:42Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 33:43Speaker 01

  I like AI therapies. I don't like AI friends.

• 33:46Dr. Mark Hyman?

  No, no.

• 33:47Speaker 01

  You know, the idea that people don't have enough friends or they're going to have bots as friends. I don't like that at all.

• 33:54Dr. Mark Hyman?

  But if you're learning how to deal with a difficult situation, whether it's a medical problem or.

• 33:58Speaker 01

  But it's like whether it's a medical problem or a human problem, you can be helped. But human connections cannot be replaced with AI connections.

• 34:09Dr. Mark Hyman?

  One thing I want to ask you about is is the micro steps and how they lead to cumulative changes. Because at the end of the day, if you want to reverse diabetes, it requires bigger change.

• 34:21Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 34:22Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And it's not just not having that one cookie or not having that one soda. It's it's a bigger change. So are you seeing in your work that the micro steps add up to macro steps?

• 34:32Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 34:32Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And bigger changes over time?

• 34:34Speaker 01

  Yes, and you it's really about you have to start somewhere. And if you start small, you are more likely to sustain the change. And we want sustainable change. You know, people have lost hundreds of pounds cumulatively and put them back and lost them and cut them. So what Microsteps does, it makes the changes in your life sustainable. And the key for me, from all the data we're collecting, is that it's not just food. If you're sleep deprived, you're going to crave bad carbs and sugars. You know, just physiological.

• 35:17Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 35:17Speaker 01

  Because I think what we've done is we've siloed these behaviors and we need to integrate them. If you're stressed out, you are going to be more likely to binge eat or binge drink or...

• 35:31Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Or adversely affect your relationships.

• 35:33Speaker 01

  Exactly. But even if we take food as the central determining factor of a lot of diseases.

• 35:40Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 35:40Speaker 01

  The other habits are incredibly important. They impact how much you're going to eat and what food you're going to eat and the so-called comfort foods.

• 35:49Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 35:50Speaker 01

  And if you don't move from your couch, that's going to affect what you eat too.

• 35:55Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 35:55Speaker 01

  You become sluggish, right? Your metabolism goes down. And if you don't have connections, you're going to get a Haagen Dazs ice cream bucket, you know, and need to...

• 36:05Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's gonna be your friend, right?

• 36:06Speaker 01

  So that's, I think, what we're discovering, that even when you make food primary, you need to surround it with what you are doing with the other behaviors. And the changes do become cumulative. And you pick your favorite microsteps, you know, out of the hundreds and hundreds. And then they become bigger and bigger steps. And then you begin, listen, I... Ended up completely giving up sugar. It didn't happen overnight, but now like even my my daughter's birthday party and I have like two spoonfuls. I feel like I poisoned myself.

• 36:45Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 36:45Speaker 01

  It's like.

• 36:47Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I remember there's this funny picture we took of ourselves at your apartment where it was during that one of the events you had around health and then we were joking and because it was a cake there and we like both were pretending to eat this, you know, very big piece.

• 37:00Speaker 01

  But we didn't need it. So then basically what happens is that if I had tried to give up all sugar when I started on this journey, I would have failed.

• 37:10Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 37:10Speaker 01

  And I would have felt like a failure. I just started gradually and we have a great nutrition director, I want to introduce her to you called Tess Braderson. And she is the expert on swaps. So, you know, I gave up sugar relatively easily because, you know, we all have different things we are more prone to be addicted to, right? Mine was cheese.

• 37:34Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Cheese.

• 37:35Speaker 01

  Like if you left me alone, I could live on cheese. You know, forget, you can take everything else away. But no, no, for me, again, because I I've done all these tests genetically, I'm what they call a high absorber.

• 37:50Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Of cholesterol.

• 37:51Speaker 01

  Of cholesterol.

• 37:52Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, fat, yeah.

• 37:53Speaker 01

  So, you know, like you may eat cheese and and absorb 10%. I absorb 90%.

• 38:00Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 38:00Speaker 01

  So, you know, it was not working for my genes. That's the 7% of genes, right? So she gave me like honestly, probably 40 substitutes, you know, plant-based, nut-based cheeses that didn't have the same impact.

• 38:16Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 38:17Speaker 01

  And I hated like 90% of them, but then I

• 38:20Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I was gonna say.

• 38:21Speaker 01

  I found, you know, one or two that I liked.

• 38:23Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 38:24Speaker 01

  And it's like the 80/20 rule.

• 38:26Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 38:27Speaker 01

  Occasionally if I want to. Have a treat. I'll have a piece of great Parmesan cheese or feta cheese. But it's really, it's what you do chronically that matters. It's not what you do occasionally.

• 38:41Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's right. And so, so you're able to sort of get off sugar and see the changes that happen in your health. And I mean, you look healthy and I've seen you in years. So I don't know what you're doing, but like it's working.

• 38:50Speaker 01

  Well, I think it's the food, which now, you know, through, again, it didn't happen overnight. You've known me for over 20 years. So you've seen progressively

• 38:59Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 39:00Speaker 01

  Things, you know, getting more optimal, working out.

• 39:05Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 39:06Speaker 01

  You know, I'm not a naturally athletic person, you know, I'm not a natural like marathon runner. I would rather curl up on the couch and read a good book.

• 39:15Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Right, that's right.

• 39:17Speaker 01

  But now I love it.

• 39:19Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 39:20Speaker 01

  You know, I got into my daily strength training. And here's also the other thing I did. Habit stacking is one of the things.

• 39:28Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Habit stack.

• 39:29Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 39:30Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Tell us about that.

• 39:31Speaker 01

  So I started it during COVID. You know, during COVID, when I saw a lot of friends putting on weight because they would sit on the couch binge watching the news or their, or their favorite shows, I made this rule for myself, which I have not broken since, which is I do not allow myself to watch any show unless I'm on my treadmill or my bike or my elliptical.

• 39:56Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's good.

• 39:57Speaker 01

  Or on my machines.

• 39:59Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 40:00Speaker 01

  It's been incredible. I remember when Succession was on and I was obsessed with it. I ended up being on my treadmill for two and a half hours because I wanted to get to the end.

• 40:11Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's good. That's a good habit stacking.

• 40:13Speaker 01

  And you love it because you are like, some people like music, whatever it is, just don't make it so hard on yourself. See, how can you make it easier? Because we are, willpower is a diminishing resource.

• 40:27Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 40:27Speaker 01

  A lot of people think they're going to get healthier through willpower.

• 40:30Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's be fun. That's be easy.

• 40:31Speaker 01

  You have to make it fun. You have to make it delightful. You have to forgive yourself when you fall off the wagon and you. Eat something you wish you hadn't eaten or don't move. And then you have to learn what are the obstacles along the way. So my biggest obstacle when it came to exercising was when I traveled.

• 40:53Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 40:54Speaker 01

  Like I'm religious at home.

• 40:56Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 40:57Speaker 01

  Then I would travel.

• 40:58Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Then your schedule's full and you gotta early.

• 41:00Speaker 01

  And so what did you do? I started getting a trainer in the hotel. And I remember, you know, I was in London and I meet my trainer in the gym of the hotel. And I had to deal with something in my office. So I get on the bike and I'm on the phone for half an hour. So he looks at me, he says, why did you book me? I said, because if I had not booked you, I would be in my room. So whatever you can do, you know, whatever is possible. But also, again, to go back to a mutual obsession, how do we democratize that?

• 41:33Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 41:34Speaker 01

  You know, how do we make it available to millions of people? Because right now, the 1% is actually in on this.

• 41:42Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, they're doing it.

• 41:43Speaker 01

  And people are doing it in different degrees of success. But people know about it and they're doing it. And I feel that it's our job to spread it.

• 41:55Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, because it's, I mean, I agree, because there's so many people suffering out there who don't know or don't have the resources. And I love the fact that you created this cookbook for people who have, you know, not big budgets for food, who can learn how to make simple food that's delicious, that feels good, that tastes good, that makes their body heal as opposed to making them sick. And this is what most people are doing. And this is democratizing food in a way that I don't think most people realize is possible. And that is honestly very subversive, because the food industry wants us to believe that it's difficult, it's time consuming, it's expensive.

• 42:28Speaker 01

  Oh, my God, how often do you hear that?

• 42:30Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, it's just propaganda. And they're like, well, you know, you deserve a break today. The propaganda machine is very big. And it's kind of, it sort of blames the individual for being overweight. You just eat less, exercise more, there's no good and bad foods. It's all about moderation. But there are good and bad foods. I mean, eating ultra-processed food affects your brain differently, affects your metabolism differently, your microbiome differently. And so the foods that you kind of have in this book are just simple, real food that are created by top chefs to help people eat simply and deliciously and in a way that's good for them and good for their body. And good for their wallet. And most people don't really understand that the things that actually make the most difference for your health are scalable and available to everybody

• 43:12Dr. Mark Hyman?

  and are not expensive, are not difficult. And, and that we, a little bit of support, a little bit of nudging, a little bit of guidance through different tools, whether it's Thrive Global's tools, or the work you're doing with employers to get their employees healthier, or the new Thrive AI Health platform, which I'm so excited about because it has been, it's been a big thing to think about. How do we unlock the help that people need to make change? Because it's hard to do on your own. It's hard to do just on your, on your own merits, because there's so much in our culture that fosters us to actually not have good behaviors, that supports unhealthy behaviors and unhealthy choices. And the easy choice is the unhealthy choice, and the hard choice is the healthy choice. That's

• 43:56Dr. Mark Hyman?

  all got to change. And so, these little beautiful things you've created seem so common sense, so obvious, but they're not employed by healthcare, they're not employed by most large corporations who have employees, they're not thought of as, as real medicine. But I think you're right. I think these behavior change strategies are the miracle drive.

• 44:15Speaker 01

  And you know, there are many companies and people that want to help when you engage them. Like, we are working with Shark Ninja, that produces a lot of kitchen equipment, and they donate it to people who are trying to change their habits. Because you talked once about a family you were helping change their habits.

• 44:34Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 44:35Speaker 01

  And they didn't have any equipment.

• 44:37Dr. Mark Hyman?

  No, no, cutting board, knives, nothing.

• 44:39Speaker 01

  In their kitchen.

• 44:40Dr. Mark Hyman?

  They'd never cooked.

• 44:41Speaker 01

  They never cooked. So, helping people in every possible way is really our dream. Making it as easy and as engaging as possible. And again, back to the alternative, which is the suffering people are going through. There's another story in the New York Times recently, which chronicled the day of a nurse in West Virginia, going from home to home, visiting her patients. They were all under 65, they were not Medicare patients. She describes the first patient. She had diabetes and and heart disease. And she arrives to check her and the woman has just finished her breakfast, which was two Pepsis.

• 45:25Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 45:26Speaker 01

  And peppermint combos.

• 45:28Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Mm hmm.

• 45:28Speaker 01

  Um, which I checked, it don't know how many chemical ingredients and dyes were there. Now, is this woman ever going to get well?

• 45:38Dr. Mark Hyman?

  No.

• 45:38Speaker 01

  No, her movement was like from her bed to the bathroom. So we can, how can we address what is going on around the world? It's not just around the country, millions of times a day. If we want to really um change, you know, the chronic diseases that we are suffering from.

• 46:00Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, no, it's it's imperative because it's taking humanity down. I think there are a lot of existential threats. There's nuclear war, there's the threat of generative AI. All this sort of scary things that people talk about cybersecurity. But I I think the decline in the health of the human population is just staggering. I mean, I've been a doctor for almost forty years and just in my lifetime, we've seen cataclysmic change in our health globally, the rise of chronic diseases, the amount of suffering. And these are mostly caused by the changes in our society and the behavioral nudges in the wrong direction. Right, making available ultra-processed food everywhere we go. Overproduction of food and calories, the fact we don't even get up off our couch to do anything anymore.

• 46:45Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And so we've kind of created a culture which is not helping people in all.

• 46:49Speaker 01

  But on the other hand, a good news here is when people use the argument that there are all these food deserts where people are going to find food. We work with Instacart.

• 46:59Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 47:00Speaker 01

  Instacart can deliver in ninety five percent of food deserts.

• 47:04Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, that's right.

• 47:05Speaker 01

  So again, how do we use technology to serve food deserts? How do we use technology to guide people on this journey? That's really what's exciting right now.

• 47:17Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So what's coming up in the world of health and wellness and? This whole revolution that you've been such a pioneer and what what most excites you that's happening now?

• 47:25Speaker 01

  So what most excites me is to go back to what we said at the beginning, which is that using this AI revolution as a forcing mechanism to have a conversation about human nature. I did a FaceChat with Sam Altman recently and I asked him, what is the world your children are going to inherit going to be like? And he said, my children will be the first generation of people that will never be more intelligent than AI. And there is a sort of consensus among AI leaders that in the next few years, if not in the next year, because everything has accelerated so much, AI will be more intelligent than we are.

• 48:09Speaker 01

  And my point is good for the machines. Let's let them be more intelligent and let us be more wise. We need to stop defining humanity by our intelligence. We are more than our cognitive abilities. You know, we have a soul, we have the capacity to love, to feel compassion, to be resilient. You know, all these human qualities that AI will never replicate. That's what I would like us to focus on. And this is all very connected to our health. Because, you know, you've talked recently a lot about, we need to stop separating physical health and mental health.

• 48:48Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Totally, yeah.

• 48:49Speaker 01

  It's like health. And I would say even spiritual health. And I use it very broadly because when we threw out religion, we threw out the baby with the bathwater.

• 48:59Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, that's true.

• 49:01Speaker 01

  And so bringing all that together is what excites me.

• 49:05Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Well, I think that's a really important distinction you just made. I want to double down on that, which is, intelligence is not wisdom.

• 49:12Speaker 01

  No, intelligence. We are at the moment drowning in data and starved for wisdom. And when people talk about AI, they tend to focus, oh, my God, you know, your PowerPoint presentations are going to be so much easier. But I said, great, good, fine. But that's not the best thing about it. You know, it's like, we are now just productivity machines.

• 49:36Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So what is the world that looks like in the future 10 years from now, where you've actually kind of? Facilitated the behavior change that you want through Thrive AI Health, but also cultivated a culture of wisdom.

• 49:50Speaker 01

  If I can wear my pathologically optimistic hat

• 49:54Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Please.

• 49:55Speaker 01

  that you and I share, I'll pass it on to you afterwards. That's a world where we have companies that recognize that human beings are a mixture of good and bad. You know, it's not like these are the good people and these are the bad people. I mean, Alexander Solzhenitsyn said, there is a line between each human heart that separates within each heart, good and evil. And so if we recognize that, right now, most technology, social media companies have focused on tapping into what's worst in us.

• 50:33Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's right.

• 50:34Speaker 01

  Our addictions, our biases, our rage, our anger. I believe profoundly that companies can make big profits by appealing to what's best in us. You know, right now, most companies have hijacked kind of the operating system of civilization, tapped into what has led to this incredible polarization, depression, anxiety, suicides, deaths of despair. But I want companies, for-profit companies, to prove that you can make a profit by appealing to what's best in people.

• 51:14Dr. Mark Hyman?

  You can do well by doing good.

• 51:16Speaker 01

  Yes, and it doesn't have to be just not-for-profits, because we want this to scale.

• 51:21Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 51:21Speaker 01

  And so that's kind of my hope for the future and my belief that we'll do it if we approach it this way. And when it comes to health, you know, having both doctors and self-insured employers and families all together on this, learning from each other, starting with small steps, habit stacking, you know, making it as easy as possible and supporting each other on this journey, because we're all works in progress.

• 51:52Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That is so true. And I think, you know, what you're sharing is a vision of a very different kind of world where the

• 52:01Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Things that divide us will be sort of put aside.

• 52:05Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 52:05Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And then we'll be able to sort of leverage the humanities wisdom to bring us together in ways that we haven't before. And that the work you're doing particularly around engaging people with their health is, is going to create a more generative world, a more connected world, a more engaged world, the world where people feel good and want to do good and not in this sort of doom spiral that we're in right now, which it feels scary to I think a lot of people. And your, your optimistic vision is powerful because it, it gives us hope that we can actually do something differently. And I think the, the ability to actually lean into a vision of a world where the tech can do what tech does, but we're facilitated to be more human and to

• 52:50Dr. Mark Hyman?

  learn the simple things that can actually help us feel better and be more alive, which is what it takes to be more human is just such a beautiful vision.

• 52:58Speaker 01

  Well, let's make it happen.

• 53:00Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Thank you, Arianna. This is such a great conversation and thank you for getting me my start in this world of health and health communication. Without you, I don't think I'd be sitting where I am today. And I was just sort of as nobody doctor without a lot to say in a loud mouth. And I started writing articles in the mid 2000s. And the only place I could get them published was Huffington Post. And they actually were quite popular.

• 53:23Speaker 01

  It was actually amazing.

• 53:25Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, without Huffington Post and publishing literally hundreds of articles. I would write every week an article or two and would get out there. And it really led people to know about the work I do, about functional medicine. It drove my practice. It was like, it was really consequential for my life.

• 53:41Speaker 01

  People loved it. Oh, Mark, thank you for everything you've done and for so many lives that you've touched.

• 53:48Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Thank you. So good. We'll keep, keep working together and making a difference. 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,

• 54:33Dr. Mark Hyman?

  D-R-H-Y-M-A-N dot com. 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 Dr. Mark Hyman. 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 Dr. Mark Hyman 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

• 55:15Dr. 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.