Friendship Is Medicine: The Surprising Science Behind Connection | Simon Sinek

Friendship isn’t just a feel-good concept—it’s essential for your health, happiness, and longevity. In this episode of The Doctor’s Farmacy, I sit down with world-renowned author and leadership expert Simon Sinek to explore the science and psychology of friendship—why we need it, how it impacts our biology, and what it takes to build deep, meaningful relationships in an increasingly disconnected world. In this fascinating conversation, we discuss: The surprising link between friendship and physical health—how loneliness drives inflammation, chronic disease, and even early death. Why your five closest friends determine your habits, health, and overall well-being. The social contagion effect—how behaviors like diet, exercise, and even emotions spread through friend groups. Why food, fitness, and lifestyle interventions won’t work unless we also address social health. The biggest friendship mistakes people make—and how to fix them. The missing conversation in longevity research—why friendship might be the ultimate “biohack.” If you’ve ever wondered why making friends as an adult feels so hard, or how to create stronger connections in your life, this is an episode you won’t want to miss. View Show Notes From This Episode Get Free Weekly Health Tips from Dr. Hyman Sign Up for Dr. Hyman’s Weekly Longevity Journal This episode is brought to you by Seed, PerfectAmino, Fatty15, Sunlighten, and AirDoctor. Seed is offering my community 25% off to try DS-01® for themselves. Visit seed.com/hyman and use code 25HYMAN for 25% off your first month of Seed's DS-01® Daily Synbiotic. Get pure essential amino acids today. Go to bodyhealth.com and use HYMAN20 to get 20% off your first order. Head to fatty15.com/hyman and use code HYMAN for 15% off your 90-day subscription Starter Kit. Visit sunlighten.com and save up to $1400 on your purchase with code HYMAN. Get cleaner air. Right now, you can get up to $300 off at airdoctorpro.com/drhyman.

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

  And I think that friendship is the ultimate bio hack. I think if you can master friendship, a lot of those other things correct themselves. Friendship and the microbiome.

• 0:11Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 0:11Speaker 01

  You know, get the microbiome right, a lot of stuff just falls into place. Get friendship right, a lot of stuff just falls into place.

• 0:18Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Now, before we jump into today's episode, I'd like to note that while I wish I could help everyone by my personal practice, there's simply not enough time for me to do this at scale. And that's why I've been busy building several passion projects to help you better understand, well, you. If you're looking for data about your biology, check out Function Health for real time lab insights. And if you're in need of deepening your knowledge around your health journey, well, check out my membership community, Dr. Hyman Plus. And if you're looking for curated trusted supplements and health products for your health journey, visit my website, drhyman.com for my website store and a summary of my favorite and thoroughly tested products.

• 0:58Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Welcome to the Dr. Hyman Show. Today, we have an amazing conversation with one of my close friends, hero and brilliant thinker about the things that matter in life, Simon Sinek, who's got an incredible vision of humanity that I love, who's a spark that ignites passion ideas. He envisions a world where people wake up inspired, feel safe and end the day fulfilled. He's an unshakable optimist, much like myself, a pathological optimist, I call myself. He's a trained ethnographer. He's fascinated by people and organizations that make a lasting impact. And he's discovered remarkable patterns in how they think, act, and communicate reveals how people perform at their best. And he's known for his TED

• 1:40Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Talk on why and his viral video on millennials in the workplace. I think his TED Talk has gotten over 80 million views. He's got many bestselling books. Start with why and his podcast, A Bit of Optimism, which is amazing. You should listen to, continues to inspire so many people. He's the founder of the Optimism Company and Optimism Press. And he shares all kinds of innovative views on leadership, which attract intention from all over the world. He recently had President Biden ask him to come to the White House to be on his podcast, to be on Simon's podcast. He works with the US government, with the military, Corporation and he's just doing cool shit. So let's jump right into our conversation with Simon, where we talk about friendship, which I think is one of the neglected topics of our time. The thing that matters most about how we live and feel. And the other day, if we aren't connected,

• 2:23Dr. Mark Hyman?

  we can't be healthy. And so I think you're gonna love this conversation about friendship, both from a humanitarian perspective and even a physiological perspective where we dive into the biology of friendship. So I think you're gonna love it. Let's just jump right in. So Simon, it's great to have you back. I'm so excited about our topic today, which is friendship.

• 2:38Speaker 01

  Thanks, Mark. Good to be back.

• 2:39Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It's it's such an important topic. So let's jump right in and get to it.

• 2:43Speaker 01

  So you are a world renowned doctor on the cutting edge of functional medicine. You're one of the leaders of the functional medicine movement. You have a new company where you are helping people have easier access to those kinds of tests and community, etc. My big thing right now is I'm writing about friendship.

• 3:04Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 3:05Speaker 01

  And I'm sort of mildly obsessed with it. And so

• 3:08Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It's a good thing to be obsessed with.

• 3:09Speaker 01

  It's a good thing to be obsessed with. So I'm sure people are asking, what is, what do these two things have to do with each other?

• 3:16Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 3:16Speaker 01

  Right? Now, they're a lot more closely related than I think. I mean, they're a lot more closely related, right? And I want to go down that path.

• 3:26Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 3:26Speaker 01

  I want to go down the path of the connection between health and community and health and friendship.

• 3:33Speaker 01

  You made a comment that you can't be a good friend if you're not healthy.

• 3:35Dr. Mark Hyman?

  If you feel like shit, you know, you can't show up and be present and

• 3:39Speaker 01

  Be there for someone.

• 3:40Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And be there. And yeah, just even be present to have a conversation if you're foggy and fatigued and you feel like crap and you're dealing with all kinds of issues. It's hard to really be present. And that's what you need to do to be a friend.

• 3:53Speaker 01

  I'll show you a perfect example of this.

• 3:54Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 3:55Speaker 01

  A friend of mine is going through serious depression.

• 3:57Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 3:57Speaker 01

  He's going through, I mean, it's bad, bad, bad.

• 4:00Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 4:01Speaker 01

  Suicidal ideations, the whole, the whole thing, right? And he, he, he did this exercise where he um kept a diary for uh twenty eight days and he only answered three questions every night. Uh what gave you energy, what sapped your energy and what did you learn? And you're not allowed to read the entries until after twenty eight days. So every, for twenty eight days, he, he did this and he's, you know, his career is up and down.

• 4:28Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 4:28Speaker 01

  And he thinks that it's this career stress that's causing his depression.

• 4:33Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Depression, yeah.

• 4:33Speaker 01

  Right? And so he went through this exercise and after twenty eight days, he went back and he read all the entries.

• 4:38Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Entries.

• 4:38Speaker 01

  And what he discovered was career stress really accounted for like two days of sapping his energy. It really was a

• 4:43Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And what was the rest of it?

• 4:44Speaker 01

  A non-factor. Lack of sleep.

• 4:47Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 4:47Speaker 01

  Poor diet.

• 4:48Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 4:49Speaker 01

  Excessive cellphone.

• 4:51Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Excessive cellphone use.

• 4:52Speaker 01

  Excessive social media.

• 4:53Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It's, it's a paradox because you need mental health to be a good friend.

• 4:56Speaker 01

  Right.

• 4:56Dr. Mark Hyman?

  But if you don't have friends, it's hard to have good mental health.

• 5:00Speaker 01

  Right.

• 5:01Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So they're, they're kind of synergistic and the depression, you know, is interesting phenomenon because we have such a crisis of mental illness in this country. And part of it's because of loneliness, isolation, disconnection, you know, social media. All the things that, you know, I think you're, you're thinking about and, and, and actually writing about, hopefully with your new book on friendship.

• 5:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 5:22Dr. Mark Hyman?

  But, you know, from my lens, you know, when I look at people's mental health, I look at it through the lens of biology. Because we now understand that the brain is obviously connected to the body, which has not actually been part of medicine.

• 5:38Speaker 01

  Isn't that a weird thing that that's a discovery that the brain is actually a part of the body?

• 5:41Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I mean, the, the old joke in medicine is psychiatrists pay no attention to the brain and neurologists pay no attention to the mind.

• 5:47Speaker 01

  Right.

• 5:48Dr. Mark Hyman?

  But now psychiatrists are paying attention to the brain and they're finding that brain dysfunction, brain inflammation is actually driving much of mental illness, everything from depression to anxiety to OCD to bipolar to schizophrenia to autism. All these things are connected to brain dysfunction. And yes, it can be caused by an external stressor like a spouse dying or trauma or things that are external, but it also can be caused by nutritional deficiencies and your microbiome and environmental toxins and things that actually are treatable and measurable. And, and so I think, you know, I was just back, for example, here a few weeks ago in LA and I, I was at an event, this guy comes up to me, Dr. Hyman, I have to tell you, I had severe bipolar disease when I was a teenager. I was on a pile of medications.

• 6:30Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I was on antipsychotic drugs and I started, you know, reading your book on the brain and the mind called Ultra Mind Solution and I followed your directions. I changed my diet. I took these supplements. I did that and, and now I'm good. And I, I got off of my medications and I'm a high functioning human at a, you know.

• 6:46Speaker 01

  So, so do you have evidence? Do you have data to show that in our modern world with excessive packaged goods and processed foods and unhealthy microbiomes and unhealthy gut and all the junk and excess sugar? Can you show from data that the, the increased amount of shit that we're putting in our body in this modern day is directly contributing to the mental fitness challenges that so many people are struggling with?

• 7:19Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Absolutely. I mean, so much data on this time. I mean, there's a very famous trial in Australia called the Smiles trial. They come up with all these great names for studies.

• 7:27Speaker 01

  But it was Dr. Smiles?

• 7:29Dr. Mark Hyman?

  No, they essentially, no, I forgot the acronym, but it was essentially, they swapped out, you know, did a randomized controlled trial of giving people healthy whole foods and then versus processed food. And there was a huge improvement in mental health by eating whole foods on a depressed population. They've done studies, for example, in, in, in juvenile detention centers where there's a lot of, you know, sort of mental illness and these kids, by swapping out the crap for healthy food, had a 97% reduction in violence.

• 8:00Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 8:00Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And 75% reduction, reduction in use of restraints, 100% reduction in suicide rates, which is the third leading cause of death in teenage boys. Profound in prison is the same thing. You get prisoners healthy food compared to crap. Fifty six percent.

• 8:14Speaker 01

  And it's not like you're putting them on, like, you, they eat the food you give them. It's not like they're going to the fridge and choosing.

• 8:18Dr. Mark Hyman?

  No.

• 8:19Speaker 01

  So it's a great, it's a great space for a controlled study.

• 8:21Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It is, it is, right.

• 8:22Speaker 01

  Because there's no, there's no choice involved.

• 8:24Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It is, yeah. And so it's.

• 8:25Speaker 01

  It's not like they have a mindset of health.

• 8:27Dr. Mark Hyman?

  No.

• 8:27Speaker 01

  They're just eating whatever they're given.

• 8:29Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And then they, you know, they violently crime does down fifty six percent prisons. If you add a multivitamin, it goes down to eighty percent. And with function health, we're finding a huge amounts of nutritional deficiencies. I just had a friend who's a vegan and he was severely omega three deficient, very depressed. And he's piling on omega threes and his mood is completely different. And we know that omega threes play a huge role in mood. We know that folate and B vitamins play a huge role. And we know that many people are deficient in these nutrients. And we can measure those biomarkers with testing that wasn't available before for people. Now it's accessible to anybody.

• 8:59Speaker 01

  Do you know what I think is really significant about this little insight? Especially as we're relating it to friendship and, and having the mental capacity to be there for someone, to having the, the strength of mind to be present for someone else as they're dealing with happiness or sadness, whatever they're dealing with, or just, just being there to be a friend. Is that so often when we talk about nutrition, we talk about eating right, we talk about you. We talk about so that you can be healthy, so that you can live longer, so that you don't suffer from chronic disease. And most of us, let's be honest, it's the same reason we don't save money. Eh, you know, if it doesn't have an immediate impact.

• 9:30Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 9:30Speaker 01

  You know, it's the, it's a slow boiling frog.

• 9:32Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 9:33Speaker 01

  You know, ah, you know, nobody plans to get diabetes.

• 9:37Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Right.

• 9:37Speaker 01

  You just kinda, it kinda just shows up after years of being like, I'll deal with this tomorrow. In other words, we're crap at doing things for ourselves, even though the data is overwhelming. But if you just exercise, sleep and eat right, you'll be fine and healthier. But to, to think about eating well as an act of service.

• 9:54Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, to others, yeah.

• 9:55Speaker 01

  That I choose to eat well, not for me, though I may get benefits from it. You know, as an unintended byproduct.

• 10:03Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 10:04Speaker 01

  I choose to eat well so that I can be a better friend to you. I choose to eat well so that I can be a better parent to my kids. So I'm less grumpy and less agitated.

• 10:11Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's right.

• 10:12Speaker 01

  And to think of that, I think as a, as an act of service.

• 10:15Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 10:16Speaker 01

  You know, cause like for me, like I'm, I am perfectly comfortable disappointing myself.

• 10:24Dr. Mark Hyman?

  You shouldn't be.

• 10:25Speaker 01

  No, I'm genuinely completely fine with it. Like if I wake up early, like before, you know, whatever my calendar says I have to do at the beginning of the day. And I was like, and I wake up, let's say I wake up two hours before my alarm.

• 10:36Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 10:37Speaker 01

  Right? I'm like, oh, I could totally work out right now. I have excessive time to work out.

• 10:43Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, but I'd rather not.

• 10:45Speaker 01

  I'll just sit in bed and do the crossword puzzle.

• 10:48Speaker 01

  And, uh, and I'm, I'm, I'm fine with that. I, I have, I suffer no guilt.

• 10:52Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 10:53Speaker 01

  I'm just like, ah, shit. And then I go about my day. But if I'm meeting someone early to work out before my day starts.

• 11:01Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 11:01Speaker 01

  I'll set the alarm, I'll be ready, and I will not disappoint them.

• 11:04Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, that's right.

• 11:05Speaker 01

  Right?

• 11:05Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Well, illness, illness starts with I, wellness starts with we.

• 11:09Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah. Isn't that true? And so, and so I think the correlation, and this is the thing that it drives me nuts. When we think about things like, uh, innovation, or we think about things like so, or, or health. Is we make it a very I thing. You have to get healthy, you have to take a multivitamin, you have to exercise, you have to sleep.

• 11:29Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 11:29Speaker 01

  But we don't make it about a we.

• 11:31Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Right.

• 11:31Speaker 01

  And, and you know, the data better than I do, that when, you know, there's a group of people who are overweight and one of them decides to go on a diet. The disproportionately high number of them will decide to go on a diet.

• 11:40Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 11:40Speaker 01

  If there's a group of smokers and one of them says, I'm going to stop smoking disproportionately high number.

• 11:44Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, getting healthy is a team sport.

• 11:46Speaker 01

  Getting healthy is a team sport and, and we are absolutely influenced by our friends.

• 11:50Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, you're only as healthy as your five closest friends.

• 11:53Speaker 01

  So it raises, right? So it raises the question, because clearly we're failing as a people, as a nation. At doing all the things you recommend, because most of the things you recommend, at the high level, what you recommend is a lot of work. Right?

• 12:07Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It can be or not, it's just what you set up for yourself.

• 12:09Speaker 01

  But at a functional level.

• 12:12Speaker 01

  A lot of the stuff that you recommend is not difficult, not expensive, and pretty basic.

• 12:18Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, it's kind of silly, but it is.

• 12:19Speaker 01

  Right? And yet, for not any more money.

• 12:24Speaker 01

  I mean, you can buy broccoli cheaper than you can buy McDonald's, you know? For not more money, a little bit of effort, but not complicated things. You can live, we can all live much healthier lives and yet we're not. And so it raises the question, you know, are we banging against our heads against the wall? We're repeating the same behavior expecting a different result? That maybe the drumbeat from the health establishment of change the way you eat, get more sleep, you know? Maybe work out, like we're all exhausted, we all know that. It's not like, it's not like, it's not like you're.

• 13:01Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I think a lot of us know it, but there's a whole subset of our population that doesn't know what it means to eat well.

• 13:08Speaker 01

  Different problem.

• 13:09Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 13:10Speaker 01

  Different problem, completely agree.

• 13:11Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It's shocking to me, but it's true even in the, and it's because the food industry has been so good at manipulating the public to think that certain foods are healthy that are not. And they put health claims on labels of stuff that's the worst possible food.

• 13:25Speaker 01

  All natural, which means nothing.

• 13:26Dr. Mark Hyman?

  My, my, my basic rule is if it has a health claim on the label, it's bad for you, don't eat it. You know?

• 13:31Speaker 01

  If it has a health claim on the label.

• 13:32Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, because it's trying to hide something, it's trying to hide something.

• 13:35Speaker 01

  Right.

• 13:35Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It's like low fat, low sugar, sugar free, like what else is going on in there?

• 13:39Speaker 01

  Right. It's like, it's like my, my, like I love.

• 13:43Dr. Mark Hyman?

  High fiber.

• 13:43Speaker 01

  My favorite ones are, you know, uh, you know, new and improved formula, like what was in the old one?

• 13:49Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 13:50Speaker 01

  Like, uh-oh.

• 13:51Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So, so you were, you were kind of going in the trap of, uh, you know, we know what to do, why don't we do it?

• 13:56Speaker 01

  Why don't we do it? And I'm asking the question, maybe if we refocused our attention in a different place, let's call it friendship. You know, and I, look, I, my, the way I've been talking about it is with the rising rates of anxiety and depression and, and, and and mental fitness challenges and inability to cope with stress, and then the worst case suicide, even the obsession with longevity, I'll go and I'll, I'll throw that one in as well. Friendship is the ultimate biohack.

• 14:20Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It is.

• 14:21Speaker 01

  Friendship literally fixes all of those things.

• 14:23Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It is.

• 14:23Speaker 01

  We know the data that people who have close relationships live longer. People have close relationships, you know, uh, um, uh, are happier. And, and you look at Dan Buettner's work.

• 14:33Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 14:33Speaker 01

  And the Blue Zones.

• 14:34Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 14:34Speaker 01

  And so much attention is put to them walking to the house and to the, the, and so much attention is put into what they're eating and how they're eating.

• 14:43Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 14:43Speaker 01

  But not enough attention is put into the fact that they're eating with their friends every single day.

• 14:48Dr. Mark Hyman?

  You're so right, Simon. I, I actually, I spent a lot of time in Sardinia and in Ikaria or Akaria, however you pronounce it. And it was just stunning to see the level of community and connection, even if, if someone, for example, like this woman Julia was a hundred and she was, I'm a hundred and three months, like, you know, like I'm five and three quarters, I'm a hundred and three months.

• 15:05Speaker 01

  I think when you're very young and you're very old.

• 15:07Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Every month.

• 15:08Speaker 01

  The half, the quarter count. Yeah.

• 15:10Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And, and now she didn't have kids, but she lived with her niece and nephew and there were no nursing homes. People just took care of each other, you know, and it was really remarkable. And there was this guy, um, Carmine, who basically had this huge farm that he had his whole life and his family had, and he was eighty six years old and he was raising animals and had fruit trees and gardens. And he, you know, he was feeding his whole community and family had meaning and purpose. And he would, you know, live with his kids and his wife had died, but it was all this incredible sense of connection and community and it's, it's so essential. And I, I learned this lesson when I went to Haiti after the earthquake. And I was the first medical team on the ground at the main hospital, uh, the general hospital in Port-au-Prince. And it was, it was a disaster. I mean, you can't imagine the scope.

• 15:54Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It was three hundred thousand people injured and three hundred thousand people dead.

• 15:58Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 15:58Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It was, it was an unbelievable massacre, uh, that was a natural occurrence, but it was, it was horrible. And so we got there and, and the, you know, there was, there were people helping, everybody was helping. You know, there was a sense of community and service and connection. And I got to meet Paul Farmer, who was a hero of mine. And he, he was a man doctor who went to Haiti and decided that even though the whole world had neglected. This community of people who are suffering from TB and AIDS because they were poor, they didn't have sanitation, they didn't have clean water, they didn't have watches, they couldn't take the drugs, since it's complicated at that point to take the drug regimens for multi-resistant, drug-resistant TB or for AIDS.

• 16:40Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And he realized it wasn't a medical problem, it was a social problem. And he called it structural violence, what are the social, economic and political conditions that drive disease? And it wasn't that we needed better drugs or surgery, we knew how to solve it. But the entire public health community given up on them. So he started to help by building a network of community health workers, neighbors helping neighbors, friends helping friends. And, and I realized, and he called it accompaniment. It was French, but I'm not good at pronouncing French, so I'm gonna skip that. Accompaniment. Accompaniment, yeah, something like that. And, and, and he built this whole model and it scaled around the world. It was adapted by the Clinton Foundation, the Gates Foundation to help. He did this in Peru, he did this in prisons in Russia, he did this everywhere, wherever people were struggling in Rwanda, built hospitals.

• 17:25Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And it was an incredible model. And I realized that most of the diseases we have now in the West are not infectious diseases, they're chronic illnesses which are called non- What's the difference? Well, infectious diseases like, you know, malaria, right? Or measles or TB, right? These are the things that all were killing us a century ago. Now they're pretty much not, except in certain parts of the world. But the, the diseases we now have are what we call non-communicable diseases. But that's a fallacy because they are very communicable. They're not infectious, but they're contagious. And chronic diseases like heart disease, diabetes, cancer, dementia, autoimmune diseases, these are diseases that are driven through, through many things, including our diet,

• 18:08Dr. Mark Hyman?

  toxins, but also through our social networks. And I realized that our social networks were more important than our genes, that are, that the- The the social threads that connect us are more important than the genetic threads. And that you're and the data is really clear on this. Christakis's work out of Harvard outlined this very clearly. He was, he wrote a book called Connected about this. But he's published the research that showed you, for example, if your friends are overweight, you're 170 times more likely to be overweight than if your family's overweight, where you're 40 times more likely to be overweight. That your your social networks are driving your behaviors for good or bad.

• 18:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:41Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So I realized that, yes, we have a society where the default is to do the wrong thing. And that we, as a society, aren't supporting each other to do the right thing. And I realized that community was medicine, just like food is medicine. And that love is medicine.

• 18:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, and we that's I mean, look, that's our that's our anthropology, right? Like, we grew up in we're tribal animals that grew up, you know, historically in tribes, you know, about 150 people, and that's how we lived.

• 19:08Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 19:08Speaker 01

  We lived in these relatively small, we help each other communities, communes.

• 19:12Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 19:12Speaker 01

  I mean, that's the history of of humankind. We've only started farming 10 or 12,000 years ago. But for most of human history, we lived in these in these small groups where we couldn't have populations larger than about 150.

• 19:23Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 19:25Speaker 01

  What's very interesting about the little statistic that you threw out, and the thought that I had, which is and I which is when our family is overweight, we're 40 times more likely.

• 19:33Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Forty percent.

• 19:34Speaker 01

  Sorry, 40% more likely to be overweight. But when our friends are overweight, we're 170 times, percent, I mean, more likely to be overweight. And that's, you know, the the immediate thing that popped into my head was when you think about children, right? Children, all all they want is their parents' approval. Hey, Mom, hey, Dad, watch me, watch me, watch me, watch me, right? And they have no inhibitions in the outside world. They don't care what the world thinks about them at all. I'm gonna dress like a princess, I'm gonna dress like Spider-Man, you know? But I want Mom and Dad to watch me jump off the step.

• 20:07Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Right.

• 20:08Speaker 01

  And I desperately want Mom and Dad's approval, right? And and that's where all of the learning about what's appropriate, what's inappropriate, comes from, strictly from our parents, nothing else.

• 20:20Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 20:20Speaker 01

  Until they reach about adolescence. And

• 20:23Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's a period.

• 20:23Speaker 01

  And adolescence, we convert to only needing our parents' approval, to only needing our friends' approval. frustrating for the parents, but very, very important for social animals because what we're doing is acculturating outside of our families, beyond our families into the into the broader tribe.

• 20:39Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 20:39Speaker 01

  And that lasts for the rest of our lives. We don't actually go back to the family. It's all it's all friends. Which is which is why I have to believe, and I'm just sort of thinking about this out loud now, I have to believe that's the reason so many of us go on Instagram and wish our parents happy birthday when our parents aren't on Instagram. Right? It's for the social approval that I'm a good kid and showing all the pictures of my dad, holding me when I was a baby, like scroll through all those pictures and everybody likes that I'm a good son. And yet, my dad's not on Instagram. Right? And so I have to wonder if that same drive, that same weird need to want social approval

• 21:22Speaker 01

  for being a good son is the same, it comes from the same root.

• 21:26Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I mean, a hundred percent if your if your friends are all drinking green juices and doing.

• 21:29Speaker 01

  Then you're gonna drink green juice.

• 21:30Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Then you're gonna do the same thing if all your friends.

• 21:32Speaker 01

  The amount of shit that I take, simply because their friends like, you should do, you know, you know, it's equivalent to, and I this because you because you're in the industry, I'm gonna say something that's potentially insulting to you now.

• 21:41Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Please.

• 21:41Speaker 01

  This is what I like to do, I like to have, I like to, I like to talk to guests and then insult them. But this is potentially.

• 21:47Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Okay, we're friends, everybody, so I.

• 21:48Speaker 01

  So this is potentially insulting, so I need you to work this through me with me, right? It feels like, I can't say that it is, but it feels like that the complete explosion in the supplement, in the supplement. Industry. Where nothing is evaluated by the FDA.

• 22:09Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 22:09Speaker 01

  And every influencer now has a vitamin or a supplement or a powder or a drink with all kinds of nonsense claims, maybe they're good, maybe they're bad. It feels like we're living in the dot com boom of supplements. That, you know, in the dot com boom, you were like, I'm investing in this, in this, in this, in this tech company. Because my neighbor told me I had to.

• 22:37Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 22:37Speaker 01

  And now that's been replaced with, I'm now taking these eighty seven pills per day. Because one friend told me to take these four, another friend, and just like the dot com boom. You can't live in a bubble like that. It's gonna have repercussions and it's gonna be, it's gonna be unexpected and it's gonna be pretty violent.

• 22:56Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Right.

• 22:57Speaker 01

  When, like, so riddle me this, like, is it time for the FDA to get involved? Is it like, you know, like, it's, it's, like, I can no longer tell the difference between a claim on a product you're selling

• 23:09Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yes.

• 23:10Speaker 01

  or a claim on something that some,

• 23:12Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Right.

• 23:12Speaker 01

  like, literally, their only, their only qualification is they have a following on Instagram.

• 23:17Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 23:19Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Isn't, isn't that a job?

• 23:20Speaker 01

  We're living in a-

• 23:20Dr. Mark Hyman?

  An influencer.

• 23:22Speaker 01

  We're living, we're living-

• 23:23Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Where was my course in college, Influencer 101?

• 23:26Speaker 01

  We're living, we're living, I think we're living in, in a supplement boom.

• 23:30Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, it's, it could be.

• 23:31Speaker 01

  And it's gonna, and it's gonna, I don't know how, I don't know how it suddenly, you know, kicks back.

• 23:37Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 23:38Speaker 01

  But this can't, this can't last forever.

• 23:41Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, I, I think there-

• 23:42Speaker 01

  And it's counter to everything you're trying to do.

• 23:45Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Uh, yeah, I, what I want people to do is do the right thing. And I think, you know, it's, it's what I've, I've spent my whole life trying to do is help people understand how to create health. And part of the, the new company I co-founded, Function Health, is really empowering people with their own health data to make choices that are personalized, that aren't just random because somebody said do this or do that. And so that's what I, I love about the medicine. I had a, for example, a, a friend the other day who showed me her results from Function and she was low in zinc, she was low in iron, she was low in vitamin D, she was low in omega-3 fats. I'm like, oh, that's why you feel like crap. You know, you need to take these things and here's what to choose. But most people don't have a way of navigating this sort of morass of products that have, again, no regulations in terms of quality or efficacy. Now,

• 24:26Dr. Mark Hyman?

  that, that was sort of a deliberate decision. It was sort of put forth by Aron Hatch, who was from Utah, where there's a big supplement industry and it was called the DSHY Act. It's, it's got a lot of problems because people aren't protected in the sense that they don't know if the product they're taking has the uh, exact ingredient it says, if the dose is what it says on the label, if there's any contaminants in it, if there's any fillers or products that kind of may be harmful to you. So it's kind of a shit show. And so as a physician, I've spent a lot of time investigating which companies are using pharmaceutical manufacturing practices, which do testing before and after their product. So they know that the purity and potency is exactly right. And that they throw the product out if it isn't. So there, there are good companies that are doing that.

• 25:09Speaker 01

  But I don't even know.

• 25:10Dr. Mark Hyman?

  You, you can't unless you, unless you know what to ask.

• 25:12Speaker 01

  I did a thing a while ago. Where

• 25:15Dr. Mark Hyman?

  There's a way to learn about it.

• 25:16Speaker 01

  Where they took my blood and they evaluated all of everything in my blood from, I mean, you name it. All the minerals and everything I'm supposed to get and have.

• 25:27Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 25:27Speaker 01

  And then they made

• 25:29Dr. Mark Hyman?

  A personalized cocktail.

• 25:30Speaker 01

  A cu- a personalized smoothie.

• 25:31Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 25:32Speaker 01

  That replaced all my things and I'm supposed to come back every six months.

• 25:35Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 25:36Speaker 01

  And it was really interesting and they introduced, then I talked to a doctor who walks me through my results.

• 25:41Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 25:41Speaker 01

  And then they give me my smoothie and the only choice I get is what flavor? And, and it sounded good until I was like, I don't even know if this is bullshit.

• 25:51Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 25:51Speaker 01

  If they're just like, I don't actually.

• 25:53Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Well, that's a problem. If someone's, if someone's selling you something off of something else, that, that's, that's, that can be a problem. It's not always a problem, but if you're saying

• 26:00Speaker 01

  I've done all of the things for a little bit. Like I took AG1 for a few months and that was fine until I was like, eh, I don't know. Maybe just vegetables is better.

• 26:08Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Did you do the, the customized shake that they gave you or not?

• 26:12Speaker 01

  I just did the generic AG1 that they

• 26:14Dr. Mark Hyman?

  No, no, but the, when you got your results of all the tests, they, they gave you the, the recommendation, did you try it?

• 26:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I did it for a while. I, I, I mean, I do all these things, I feel the same. Like, like I'm, I've done AG1, I've done Clostrum, I've done, I mean, I've, you know, and again, all because somebody's like, you should try it. And there are people who I trust, that's why I did it.

• 26:34Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 26:35Speaker 01

  And, you know, they like, you take these things like it boosts your immune system. And

• 26:40Dr. Mark Hyman?

  How do you measure that, right?

• 26:41Speaker 01

  I, I, exactly. I, I got a cold. So does it work or does it not work? Well, it would have been worse if you'd, I mean, like, I don't know.

• 26:48Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Right, right, right.

• 26:48Speaker 01

  And I, you know, you, I start, I get very cynical. Sometimes I'm all in and sometimes I'm very cynical. I'm in a very cynical mode right now.

• 26:54Dr. Mark Hyman?

  No, I hear that, I hear that. And I think it's fair and you're right to be cynical. And I think there's a lot of, of garbage out there and a lot of people pushing stuff. And there's a lot of companies, for example, doing tests and then selling you products on the backend. I think there's a problem with that.

• 27:04Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 27:05Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Uh, for example, Function Health, we don't do that at all. We just say, okay, for example, you, you have these things that you found that you need to fix that are affecting your health and wellbeing. And here's how to make a decision. For example, we have a 30-page guide on how to choose the right

• 27:17Speaker 01

  And you don't take

• 27:18Dr. Mark Hyman?

  We don't sell anything.

• 27:19Speaker 01

  And you don't take kickbacks from the products that you recommend?

• 27:21Dr. Mark Hyman?

  No, no, no, no, no kickbacks. No, we don't, no, no, we're completely agnostic. We don't have any

• 27:26Speaker 01

  Do whatever you want, you just need this.

• 27:27Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, but, but, no, but not only do I want, but if you're going to, if you need something, here's how to choose the right product.

• 27:32Speaker 01

  Got it.

• 27:33Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And here's how to investigate the company. And here's the questions to ask. And here's what to look for. And here's how to make a good decision. So we teach you how to fish, not give you no fish.

• 27:50Speaker 01

  I, I like that you're doing this, but I, I'm, remember, I'm in a cynical mode.

• 27:56Dr. Mark Hyman?

  What else is new?

• 28:01Speaker 01

  Which is when there's, when there's a good business model, even if it's for the, for the greater good, because money is fuel, and that's totally fine. That means you will have competition and other people will start doing similar things. And then we're back at square one, which is all of these companies are going to be funded by VC. And you and I know too well, unfortunately, the way VC and PE works, which is they all are wonderful.

• 28:24Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Or return.

• 28:25Speaker 01

  They're all fantastic in the beginning, and they're so behind you in your vision at the beginning. And just wait, you know, three to five to seven years. And all of a sudden, the pressures start to show up and the growth, we want growth because that's our business model, not your business model. And then all of a sudden, especially if you've given up controlling interests, you will have built up this beautiful brand. You get fired from your own company and they're, I mean, the number of companies that have like, that were the brand of Vada, Burt's Bees, Kashi. You know, Amy's, these were

• 28:57Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Well, they got bought by Kraft.

• 28:59Speaker 01

  You know, they were all great brands that built their brands based on like Aveda or Burt's Bees, natural ingredients, Kashi. And we believed it because the founders were true. And then they sold

• 29:10Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 29:10Speaker 01

  To Kraft and L'Oreal and whoever buys these companies. They strip the beautiful things out, put the shit in because they can increase margin. But we're none the wiser. We don't know which CEOs got fired from beautiful companies. We don't know that these companies are owned by large conglomerates that are driven by shareholder value. And then we end up suffering for these products that we were told were good, and they were good until they weren't good. And we're back at square one.

• 29:38Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yes.

• 29:38Speaker 01

  So I think we should just have friends and

• 29:41Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Well, let's get back to the conversation about friendship because I think, I think that, that, you know, the, the, the fundamental thing is.

• 29:47Speaker 01

  We should, we should garden and farm with our friends.

• 29:50Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's.

• 29:50Speaker 01

  And then eat our own food.

• 29:51Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Well, we can't live, you know, I mean, when you look, when you look at the.

• 29:55Speaker 01

  Subsistence farming, that's.

• 29:57Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I, I think that's right. I mean, I think, you know, community gardens are amazing. I think they're a great service for people. And I, I think that what we're finding is that loneliness is as big a killer as anything else. Some have said it's equivalent to smoking two packs of cigarettes a day. And how many, especially men, don't have someone who's a good friend?

• 30:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:19Dr. Mark Hyman?

  How many people don't have somebody to call?

• 30:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:22Dr. Mark Hyman?

  When shit goes down. Right?

• 30:24Speaker 01

  I've talked about this before where, you know, as I've been on this journey of understanding friendship and learning friendship,

• 30:31Speaker 01

  I was having a conversation with a friend of mine who's active duty military. And what people don't understand about active duty military and veterans, what people don't understand about military is that it's, it's a highly emotional enterprise. It's a very, very human enterprise because life and death is the, is the thing. And, and higher calling and service are big, very human themes. And so I've hugged more people in uniform than I've ever hugged in suits. I've cried with more people in uniform than I've ever cried with in suits. I've sat around dinner tables with, with generals who were sort of telling stories at the dinner table and we're all crying. I've never done that with CEOs, ever.

• 31:11Speaker 01

  And, and I remember he's a very close friend of mine and we were just catching up. And at the end of our hour long conversation, he, we're getting off the phone and he says, I love you. Not love ya, not love you, I love you.

• 31:27Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 31:27Speaker 01

  And to your point, you know, I think men really struggle with saying those words to the people who they genuinely love.

• 31:34Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 31:35Speaker 01

  And so I did an experiment with my friends. I remember that feeling of what it gave to me when he said those words to me. It took me aback and it felt amazing.

• 31:43Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, it felt amazing.

• 31:44Speaker 01

  And, and so I started experimenting. I have a couple of friends who, if you met them, you wouldn't describe them as warm. They're wonderful people.

• 31:52Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 31:53Speaker 01

  They're generous and they're kind.

• 31:54Dr. Mark Hyman?

  They're not fuzzy.

• 31:55Speaker 01

  But they're not, they're not warm.

• 31:57Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 31:57Speaker 01

  You know, if I told you this is one of my best friends, you'd be like. He's a little distant is what your reaction would be.

• 32:03Dr. Mark Hyman?

  He has Asperger's.

• 32:04Speaker 01

  They don't have Asperger's. They're just, they're just a little, they're just a little cold. They're just a little guarded. They're guarded. Let's call them guarded.

• 32:11Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 32:12Speaker 01

  And one of them, I was leaving his house and as I was getting ready to leave, I said, I love you. And I watched him, I watched him. No, he didn't react. I just wa, I could see the reaction. And since then, he has been much more emotionally open with me and I don't even think he realizes it.

• 32:26Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 32:27Speaker 01

  I don't think he realizes he wasn't before and that he's more now. And the other one I tried it with and I sort of said, I love you. And I gave him a kiss on the cheek as I was saying goodbye. And he did not know how to react. And I did it again the next time I saw him and he hugged me the second time like I was his son.

• 32:46Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 32:46Speaker 01

  Which he'd never done before. He's, he's always nice to me. He's, he's, you know, he's one of my best friends. He's never hugged me like that before.

• 32:53Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 32:53Speaker 01

  And I realized that to take the risk to say, I love you, if you mean it, it's gotta mean something. It's hard, it's easy to say, love you.

• 33:01Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 33:01Speaker 01

  It's easy to say, love you. It's very hard to say, I love you. Right? Those three words together are brutally hard to say, especially for men. And I, to your point, you know, I, I wonder, and, and this goes to this idea of service again, which is whose responsibility is it to say it? Right? And I go back to the work that I did some years ago when I was writing Leaders Eat Last with Alcoholics Anonymous. You know, if you want to overcome alcoholism as a 12 step program, most of us are familiar with the first step. You know, admit you have a problem.

• 33:36Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 33:36Speaker 01

  Okay, let's say I'm depressed or I'm lonely. Let's, let's admit that's the problem, right? But it's the 12th step that people don't talk about.

• 33:44Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Right.

• 33:44Speaker 01

  And Alcoholics Anonymous knows, exactly. Alcoholics Anonymous knows that you can master 11 steps. And not the 12th, and you will succumb to the disease. And it's the, exactly to help another alcoholic. It's service.

• 33:55Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 33:56Speaker 01

  And so I think to, to have, to find the courage to say, I love you. I think the people who are the most lonely are the ones who have to go first. Because the way to solve your problem is to help your friend who's suffering from the same problem. If you're an alcoholic, you help another alcoholic. If you're lonely, help a friend who's lonely. And, and I think that the, the therapeutic, the therapeutic benefits of helping someone who's struggling with the same thing that you're struggling with, rather than worrying about yourself, goes right back to the gym.

• 34:28Dr. Mark Hyman?

  There's a huge biology to it, dude. I don't know if you know, but there's a whole field of sociogenomics, which is how our social interactions affect our gene expression.

• 34:37Speaker 01

  Say more.

• 34:38Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So if you're in a conflictual relationship with someone, your inflammatory genes are turned on, literally not just your emotions are inflamed, but your biology turns on the inflammation system.

• 34:50Speaker 01

  Like fight or flight kind of stuff?

• 34:51Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Not fight or flight, just if you're like in a shitty relationship, or if you're fighting with someone, or you have a conflict, you turn on inflammatory genes that then increase expression of cytokines that cause inflammation and that cause disease and all chronic disease from depression to heart disease to diabetes to obesity, Alzheimer's are all inflammatory diseases. Conversely, if you have a connected, loving relationship with somebody, it turns on anti-inflammatory genes. And, and this-

• 35:20Speaker 01

  And inflammation is the core of like everything.

• 35:22Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah. And, and we, and maybe there's studies with entrainment, you know, where you have, where if you sit with someone and you have a, an authentic connection that you can put EEG and EKGs on, basically brainwaves and heartwaves. You can see the heartbeat of someone you're having a deep connected relationship with in your brainwaves. It's wild. So it's not just a feel-good thing on an emotional level, it's a physiological response that happens of being in connection. If you take animals and put them in, you know, cages and separate animals and feed them exactly the same thing and have everything else the same. The one that's isolated versus the ones that are connected will shrivel and die and get sick.

• 36:05Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Right? And so humans are the same way. And we, we've gotten, we've gotten in a situation where friendship and connection is, is sort of like-

• 36:13Speaker 01

  Okay, so why aren't doctors, why aren't doctors prescribing to spend more time with friends?

• 36:17Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I do.

• 36:19Speaker 01

  Like, like doctor, I'm suffering from X, Y, and Z.

• 36:21Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 36:22Speaker 01

  Okay, I'd like you to try and get an extra hour of sleep, go to bed a little earlier, I'd like you to stop eating before, you know, eat no, don't eat past eight o'clock at night, and I want you to spend at least three hours a week with, with a friend. How come that's not on a, on a prescription?

• 36:34Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It should be, it should be. I mean, I, I prescribe it. In fact, I, I actually, based on this work that I did in Haiti, I, I met a pastor after Rick Warren, who wrote The Purpose Driven Life.

• 36:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure.

• 36:46Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And had a church with thirty thousand members. And I met him, he came to my office and we started talking and I said, hey, you know, Rick, tell me about your church, because I'm really, I'm a Jewish doctor from New York, I don't know much about evangelical Christian churches. Like, yeah, we got thirty thousand people. Like, wow, that's a lot of megachurch. He's like, yeah, we got five thousand groups that meet every week, small groups in the church to help each other live better lives. I'm like, oh, this isn't a megachurch, this is thousands of mini churches.

• 37:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:11Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And I had that, the lightbulb moment, I'm like, well, I just come back from Haiti, I said, why don't we put a healthy living program into the groups and see what happens?

• 37:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:19Dr. Mark Hyman?

  He says, great idea, because I was baptizing my church last week, and after about the eight hundredth person, I'm like, man, we're a fat church, and I'm fat, and we gotta do something about it.

• 37:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:27Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And so we put a program together through the small groups where people were just helping each other. There was no doctor, nutritionist, health coach, nobody. There was just a curriculum.

• 37:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:35Dr. Mark Hyman?

  We had a big rally, you know, sort of a big event where we talked about, and Rick talked about the biblical rationale for why God wants us to be healthy. I gave a bunch of speeches and talked about how, you know, God lives in you, why are you feeding him crap and things like that?

• 37:49Speaker 01

  I mean.

• 37:50Dr. Mark Hyman?

  You know, if Jesus came to dinner, what would you feed him? You know, big mac fries and a Coke? And they got it.

• 37:54Speaker 01

  Ain't that the truth?

• 37:56Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And, uh.

• 37:56Speaker 01

  Ain't that the, if Jesus came to dinner, what would you feed him?

• 38:00Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Exactly. So, they got it. I said, you know, if you feel like crap, how are you gonna serve God? How are you gonna serve each other? You've got to take care of your body. And, and so they got it. And they did this together in community, it was jogging for Jesus and they all these incredible. It was incredible. And they lost together a quarter of a million pounds in the first year, and they did it together. And then I took that same model and I applied it at Cleveland Clinic, where we created small groups where people helped each other. And we had, we did research on us and published it. There were three times better health outcomes on validated metrics of health outcomes compared to one-on-one visits for the same condition with the same doctors.

• 38:36Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 38:36Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So the doctors at our clinic could see them in one-on-one or they support them in a group.

• 38:40Speaker 01

  Right.

• 38:41Dr. Mark Hyman?

  The group was three times as good as seeing the doctor one-on-one in terms of.

• 38:45Speaker 01

  So why, but why aren't these things then being implemented across the medical field?

• 38:49Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I'm trying.

• 38:50Speaker 01

  Why aren't, why aren't we, why aren't we going to the doctor with our friends?

• 38:54Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 38:55Speaker 01

  To dealing with similar issues. Why aren't we, like, everything's so.

• 39:00Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 39:00Speaker 01

  Siloed, literally, it's in.

• 39:02Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, it is essential. I mean, I think, you know, the models of support, whether it's coaching, whether it's one-on-one coaching or support, whether it's group models, they have to be the thing that's going to change because we, we get healthy together or we get sick together. So a quote from Benjamin Franklin is, we must all hang together or surely we will all hang separately.

• 39:22Speaker 01

  I mean.

• 39:22Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And I think that's kind of where we're at in society.

• 39:24Speaker 01

  Where we are, yeah. I, I'm very glad that we are talking about this because I have a lot of respect for your work and the fact that you're validating all this friendship stuff that I'm doing from a, from a, from a, from a physician's standpoint.

• 39:38Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 39:38Speaker 01

  Not a kumbaya, isn't it nice?

• 39:40Dr. Mark Hyman?

  There's so much science on this. We read a book about this work called the Daniel Plan, after Daniel from the Bible who resisted the king's temptation of rich food and was better for it. And, and we talked about the five F's, you know, food, fitness, focus, which is your mental fitness, faith and friends.

• 39:59Speaker 01

  Why aren't friends number one?

• 40:00Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Well, they were maybe in there somewhere. I don't know. I don't know the order, but it was like, food, probably friends. But the whole point is friends are such a key part of our wellbeing, whether it's understanding the blue zones or how, whether it's AA or Weight Watchers, it's how we change.

• 40:13Speaker 01

  I mean, AA, all of these things, Weight Watchers, they're all community-based things.

• 40:15Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Hundred percent.

• 40:16Speaker 01

  And one of the problems we have in our society is community things, you know, bowling leagues don't exist anymore, you know?

• 40:21Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Church, church attendance is down.

• 40:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:24Dr. Mark Hyman?

  You know, so in church attendance and faith are not the same thing. You know, you can have faith and not go to church and you can go to church and not have faith.

• 40:31Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 40:31Dr. Mark Hyman?

  You know, the church would rather that they, they're overlapping, but, but, but the idea of doing things in commune, in community.

• 40:41Speaker 01

  Um, this is why I love things like Comic Con or Burning Man or whatever your, you know.

• 40:46Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Now, you've never been to Burning Man.

• 40:48Speaker 01

  I have been to Burning Man.

• 40:48Dr. Mark Hyman?

  You have?

• 40:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:49Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Oh.

• 40:50Speaker 01

  Or, or, or, uh, Sturgis. Is that what it's called? Yeah, it's called the motorcycle thing.

• 40:56Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Hell's Angels.

• 40:58Speaker 01

  Like, all of these things. Like, I, I, like, I don't, like, politics aside, like, I don't care what it is. Going to church, you know, doing things in community with people who have common interests. And, you know, one of the questions I'm getting since I've started talking about friendship. It's amazing how many people are coming up to me who are of all ages, of all income levels.

• 41:22Speaker 01

  Who are saying to me, I'm, I, I don't know how to make friends.

• 41:26Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 41:26Speaker 01

  I struggle to make friends.

• 41:28Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Cause they're afraid to be authentic. I mean, that's the hard part, right?

• 41:30Speaker 01

  Is, is. Have you ever struggled to make friends?

• 41:32Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Uh, when I was a kid, I didn't have any. I was a weird kid. I just was in my head, read a lot of books, was a little weird and, uh, you know, kind of a nerd. And I just didn't.

• 41:43Speaker 01

  And you had a lot of health issues when you were younger.

• 41:44Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Not, not, not really.

• 41:46Speaker 01

  They came later, right?

• 41:46Dr. Mark Hyman?

  When I was in my thirties.

• 41:47Speaker 01

  Okay, okay.

• 41:48Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Uh, and I just, I was living in Toronto in the seventies. It was spiritual wasteland and I was just, did not kind of relate to anybody. And it wasn't until I left and went to college and went to Cornell and I found other people who were like, oh, wow, you, you know, you actually think like me and you read the same books. You do the same things. And in fact, I actually, my first real friend I met on the top of a mountain in the Canadian Rockies. We were backpacking and it was a week out in the middle of nowhere by myself. And he was a week out and we crossed over on Badger Pass, uh, in Alberta in Banff National Park. And, um, we just had this kind of moment of connection.

• 42:32Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And we both found out we're going to be at Cornell in the fall. He was in Ithaca College, I was at Cornell. We climbed this mountain the first night called Bracquipod Mountain. It's like 11,000 feet. It was like this kind of. Kind of, kind of prototypical, pointy top mountain. We sat on the ridge and watched the sunset at eleven o'clock at night and then ran down the screen. And we just had this extraordinary experience and we got back and we got together and, you know, we didn't know if we were going to be friends or not. But we, we became like brothers and

• 43:01Speaker 01

  Still friends today?

• 43:02Dr. Mark Hyman?

  He's my best friend. Yeah, we forty, forty six years later.

• 43:05Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 43:06Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, forty six years later, we do mountain bike trips all over. We, we're, we're very close and, um, you know, we help each other. And when one's down, the other picks one up. When I'm down, he picks me up. When he's down, I pick him up. And we've had this really sustained, deep, authentic, intimate relationship for forty five years.

• 43:23Speaker 01

  That's amazing.

• 43:24Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And we love each other. We hug each other. We cry together. We laugh together. And it, you know, it was a place where, where I could say and be and do anything. And it was, it was, it was a remarkable experience for me to actually feel seen and loved. It was like the first person who loved me who didn't actually have to love me like my parents.

• 43:44Speaker 01

  They didn't have to love you.

• 43:46Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That was like, and that friendship for me has been like an anchor in my life. Throughout all the troubles and tribulations and successes and diseases and, uh, you know, his wife committed suicide. I went through three divorces. I got very sick.

• 44:00Speaker 01

  You're such an overachiever.

• 44:02Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, I know.

• 44:03Speaker 01

  The, the

• 44:05Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I'm an expert at relationships now.

• 44:07Speaker 01

  I mean, what did W C. Field say? Quitting smoking is the easiest thing I've ever done. I've done it hundreds of times.

• 44:11Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's right.

• 44:13Speaker 01

  Marriage is the easy thing I've ever done. I've done it four times.

• 44:16Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I got it right, though.

• 44:19Speaker 01

  Here, here's something I discovered about close friendships, right? Which is we always talk about close friends as the person you would call in, when you're in need, when you need help, the person you can cry with, the person, you know, we, we, the person when you're in pain.

• 44:32Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 44:33Speaker 01

  And I actually think that's true. That's a level of close friendship that you can call that person when you, when, in a time of struggle or need. But I think there's even a closer level of friendship, which is when you can call somebody when something amazing happened.

• 44:46Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And they're not jealous.

• 44:47Speaker 01

  And there's no jealousy and you can call them and what you're doing is bragging, but not really. You just need to tell someone about this amazing thing that you accomplished.

• 44:55Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 44:56Speaker 01

  Or that was given to you or that you won or that, you know, whatever it is. And if you were told anybody else, they'd be like, They think you were bragging.

• 45:03Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 45:03Speaker 01

  But to that friend, they have unbridled joy with you and for you. And what I've learned is the number of people I would call with good news is actually smaller than the number of people I would call with bad news.

• 45:16Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's interesting. Well, you can call me with good news.

• 45:18Speaker 01

  Oh, thank you.

• 45:19Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I'll celebrate you.

• 45:20Speaker 01

  But you know what I mean?

• 45:21Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 45:21Speaker 01

  It's like to, you know, and, and like a friend of mine called me recently about something amazing that happened in his life. And, and he was, I was the first person he called. And we, and I, I had no jealousy. And I was, I was like, I was quelling like a parent.

• 45:38Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 45:38Speaker 01

  You know, I was so proud of him for what he did. And, and you realize that that was actually more intimate.

• 45:46Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 45:47Speaker 01

  Than being there in pain.

• 45:48Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 45:48Speaker 01

  And so I started making lists of who are the people I would call for the insanely good things.

• 45:53Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 45:53Speaker 01

  And it's a smaller number.

• 45:54Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Well, it is. It's important to take an inventory of your life and your friends. And, and if you don't have good friends, it's really important to cultivate them, to invest in them, to find them. And there's ways to do that. I mean, there's ways to put yourself in environments and situations. And part of it's like who you are, right? For me, you know, I wear my heart on my sleeve and I'm just who I am. Like when we met.

• 46:17Speaker 01

  Oh, I remember.

• 46:19Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It was a weekend and I just got through this very intense emotional process. I, you know, worked through a lot of this trauma that I was, had experienced as a kid. And I was just like, kind of like in this altered state. And then I met you and I.

• 46:32Speaker 01

  Oh, I remember.

• 46:34Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And I, I think that's why we became friends.

• 46:36Speaker 01

  You put it on your sleeve.

• 46:37Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Because I just, I just shared authentically and, and we just then had this connection. And it was, that's kind of what I'm talking about is in order to actually create friendship, you, you have to be open. You have to open your heart.

• 46:50Speaker 01

  Do you know what I think? I think people sometimes treat.

• 46:52Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And not be afraid of being judged.

• 46:54Speaker 01

  I think people sometimes treat friendships like bad food. Right? So.

• 47:01Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I don't get that.

• 47:02Speaker 01

  So, so, but here's what I mean, like, like, you know, I, I just had this conversation with a friend of mine just, just very recently. She's in a relationship and, um, she's, if she, she's afraid of being alone. She knows the relationship is imperfect. She knows that if she were in a different place in her life, she wouldn't be with this person.

• 47:30Speaker 01

  But that partner fills a space for her for where she's at. She's more afraid of the loneliness than being in an imperfect relationship. Yeah. And and I don't know how healthy that is. The devil you know is better than the devil you don't. And she can rationalize it, like they go on adventures together and they laugh a lot together, which is all true. But then now, as I'm talking to you, it kind of sounds like cake, which is, I know I shouldn't eat this, but it's so tasty and so chocolatey. Yeah. And just so good. And I'll worry about it later. Yeah, yeah. You know, what's another little piece? I'm just having a little piece of cake.

• 48:13Speaker 01

  And the goodness, I can, I can, I can, I enjoy the goodness so much that I can ignore the badness. Yeah. And We tolerate a lot. We tolerate a lot. And, you know, this is one of the downsides of human beings, which is we're incredibly adaptable people. We're incredibly adaptable species. Oh, I did that for so many years in relationships. I was like, oh, it's good enough. All this bad stuff, I just rationalize away and. So how do we, okay, you're a doctor. You know, one of the things I'm taught, one of the things that I'm, I'm exploring when this friendship book is how to make friends. Yeah. How to foster friendship. That's the thing I think most of us fall down on. How to navigate tension in friendships and how to end friendships. Hmm.

• 48:57Speaker 01

  How to recognize that I really like this chocolate cake, but I think I need to not be in friendship or in relationship with this chocolate cake. And maybe we'll just hang out now and then. Yeah. You know, because I do have fun with you and I do like you. But this is not healthy. At a certain dose. At a cer- there's a certain dosage. And I've adopted wholeheartedly, by the way, just as a quick aside, you know, something you say regularly, which is treat sugar like a recreational drug. That's right. So I enjoy sugar, but I know to do it just occasionally. Right, right. You know, it's okay. I don't, I don't, I, I read once, and you can affirm whether this is correct or not, that when people stress about eating dessert,

• 49:38Speaker 01

  the cortisol released from the stress about eating the cake is actually worse for you than the chocolate cake. It might be, yeah. So if you're gonna have a little piece of junk, like just enjoy it.

• 49:48Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Well, you're right, Simon. The greatest pharmacy is the one between your ears. And it can actually kill you, or it can heal you, literally. I mean, that's how, you know, voodoo works. It's not like they just kind of like put a hex on you, you die. I mean, people, that actually happens.

• 50:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:03Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Uh, so I, I, I think how we think about things matters. So if you, you want to eat a cookie, eat that cookie and love the cookie.

• 50:11Speaker 01

  Just enjoy it.

• 50:11Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And enjoy every bite.

• 50:12Speaker 01

  And treat it like a recreational drug. Just have one, two at the most. You know, one of, one of my tricks, if there's like a bowl of M and M's.

• 50:19Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 50:19Speaker 01

  If you take a handful of M and M's and throw them in your mouth, that counts as one. That's one mouthful.

• 50:24Dr. Mark Hyman?

  No.

• 50:24Speaker 01

  And then you take another handful and put it in your mouth, that's two. But if I have one M and M, that's also one.

• 50:30Dr. Mark Hyman?

  One.

• 50:30Speaker 01

  And if I have another, that's because you count mouthfuls, not M and M's.

• 50:33Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 50:34Speaker 01

  And so if you just go from handful to one or two, you would drastically reduce the sugar intake. Anyway, but we digress. How, how have you ever, I, I want to understand the health issues of staying in unhealthy friendships or unhealthy relationships? Where we know, where we know, and when we're in, in the, the dark parts of the night, we will admit to our, admit to ourselves out loud. This is not a good relationship and I shouldn't be in this, but I fear the alone more than, than the thing that I'm in.

• 51:06Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 51:07Speaker 01

  Talk, talk about the physiological impact of being in an, in an unhealthy relationship.

• 51:11Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, well, we sort of touched on it before, but when you, when you're in a conflictual relationship, your physiology changes to a state of disease. Cortisol goes up, your inflammatory cytokines go up, your microbiome can change. I mean, a whole series of things happen in your body that make you more sick. And, and we see, we see this happening. You know, we see people who are in, in bad relationships just do poorly and get sick more often. Uh, and so I think, I think the data is there. It's just really, the question is, how do we, how do we navigate a world where friendship is not of value? It just it just seemed like the last thing on the totem pole, you know, and after work,

• 51:56Dr. Mark Hyman?

  after success, after social media, after whatever else we're doing, exercise, food, it's it's not something we invest in. And it it's it's a crisis. It's a it's a severe crisis. I mean, I don't, you probably saw those articles in New York Times about men and friendships. And it was just, it was just so heartbreaking. And for me, it's it's it's been a value I've had my whole life, and I've intentionally invested in friendships. And when COVID happened, you know, we're all isolated, we're all alone. And September 2020, my wife and I split up. I had just had back surgery. I was alone. It was COVID. And what did I do? I sent an email to my closest men friends, six other men, who I, you know, done men's

• 52:41Dr. Mark Hyman?

  work with, done men's retreats with, done medicine journeys with. And I said, hey, guys, like, can we start a little Zoom once a week for an hour, maybe? And they're like, how about we do two hours every week, you know? And we've been going for, it's plus four years now. And it's it's remarkable to have this container. And what's been interesting to watch is that even though these these were all my close friends for 40 years, 30 years, that the the depth of our friendship has gotten more profound, the more vulnerable we've gotten, the more we open our hearts, the more we share our fears, the more we share our successes, the more we share, whatever is going on in our life doesn't matter.

• 53:24Dr. Mark Hyman?

  There's always something with one of us. And it's it's it's, to me, it's like an anchor. And and most of us don't have that. And in Okinawa, one of the Blue Zones, there's a thing called a moai, which is when you are born, you're stuck together with like three or four other kids, babies. And that's your basically group for your life. And you

• 53:47Speaker 01

  Isn't that amazing?

• 53:48Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, and you you're there throughout everything.

• 53:50Speaker 01

  You didn't even pick the friends. I mean, this happens with like the Marine Corps, or any boot camp for that matter, you know? These become lifelong friendships because you go through hardship together. Or in the Israeli army, one of the reasons they're historically been very successful is when you go through bootcamp, that's your unit for the rest of your, that's for the rest of your military career.

• 54:09Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 54:09Speaker 01

  Is the, is the, you don't get split up.

• 54:11Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 54:11Speaker 01

  And they, but, so what I think's really interesting is these, these friend groups aren't chosen. They're kind of like arranged marriages, like you're just thrown together by zip code or by, you know, and you're, in the case of babies, like, oh, you're born on the same day, you're friends.

• 54:25Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 54:25Speaker 01

  Right? And I think what's really interesting about that, which is, you know, sometimes just like, I think sometimes we overanalyze, you know, who should be a friend. Am I, is that right?

• 54:38Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Well, I mean, listen, we have, we have to.

• 54:39Speaker 01

  I'm trying to think, maybe I disagree with myself as I'm saying the words.

• 54:42Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I mean, it depends on the situation. When you're, if you go through shit with somebody, even if you don't, you don't have all the same background, you can get close, right?

• 54:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:48Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And I, I mean, I was in Haiti, I was thrown together.

• 54:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, because we, we know that shared hardship produces cortisol. I mean, uh, shared hardship produces oxytocin.

• 54:55Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 54:56Speaker 01

  So when you go through shared hardship with someone, it, it creates a bond of.

• 54:58Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 54:59Speaker 01

  It creates bonds. But, but, but now that I think about it, I'm going to go back on what I said, which is I also know friendships and have had friendships where time is the only bond. Where we really don't.

• 55:12Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's not enough though sometimes.

• 55:13Speaker 01

  We, we, like, we used to grow together, but now, you know, it's sort of grown apart. And, you know, we have fun, I guess, you know?

• 55:22Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Sometimes being a friend is, is actually calling people out. But in other words, when you see, like, if you're growing.

• 55:27Speaker 01

  But I think we stay in friendships unnecessarily, simply because, oh, but we've been friends for 30 years. Like, so what? So what? If it's no longer, it's like, you wouldn't stay in a marriage that is, it is dysfunctional just because you've been married.

• 55:42Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's right.

• 55:42Speaker 01

  And yet we seem to have a different standard for, like, nobody says, when you say, you know, I've been married to my wife for 25 years, but. You know, we've struggled for a lot of years and quite frankly, I think we've just decided mutually. You know, it's amicable, but we've decided to call it quits. Nobody says, I think you should stay in the marriage. You've been married for 25 years. Like, I think you, I think you should try and go another 25. Nobody says that.

• 56:03Dr. Mark Hyman?

  But part of the friendship.

• 56:05Speaker 01

  But we say that in friendship, like, how can you end the friendship? You've been friends for 25 years.

• 56:08Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Well, you can, if it's.

• 56:10Speaker 01

  But I'm saying people, it's a different standard. Time becomes the only bond.

• 56:13Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It's true, but sometimes when you depart or some people change, like if you're changing and you're growing, or I was changing and growing, and your friend isn't, and you see this sort of.

• 56:20Speaker 01

  It's hard.

• 56:21Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Split happening, you have one or two choices. You can either go, okay, well, we're just moving apart and it was a nice while it lasted. Or you can actually kind of go in for kind of a surgical, spiritual surgery. And, and, and sometimes it's painful, but I've done this with friends where I've seen them be in bad relationships or be in a job they didn't like, or doing things that were contracting their life and becoming smaller when they were expansive, open beings when I knew them earlier. And I had a choice where I was gonna just kind of let this happen. Or was I gonna go in for.

• 56:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 56:54Dr. Mark Hyman?

  A surgery. And was I gonna do a spiritual surgery on this person? And, and some of those people are over to it, some of them are not.

• 57:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:01Dr. Mark Hyman?

  But, you know, I had to drug him.

• 57:04Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Literally, I had to give him MDMA. I had to like literally spend hours acid and basically get him to really see how his life.

• 57:13Speaker 01

  That's a little extreme.

• 57:14Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Contracted. And, and it, it, he needed that, you know, like, and, and he needed to kind of break the cycle of his pattern of thinking. And now, you know, he's lost 40 pounds, he's out of the relationship, he's free, he's got out of his job, he's, you know, kind of having the time of his life, he's exploring his own development, he's growing, he's let go of his fears around money and this and that. I mean, it's, it's amazing to see a transformation, but it wouldn't have happened if I hadn't leaned in.

• 57:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I have, I have a friend who sat down with me to give me some life advice.

• 57:43Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 57:44Speaker 01

  And the conversation started like this. I need to tell you something and you need to hear this. And I need you to know that you're not gonna like what I have to tell you.

• 57:53Dr. Mark Hyman?

  But I love you.

• 57:54Speaker 01

  He didn't say that. He said, you're not gonna like what I have to tell you. And I recognize that you may be so angry with me for telling you this, that you might end the friendship with me. And I want you to know that I'm willing to risk our friendship to tell you this, because you need to hear it.

• 58:11Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Wow. And how did that land for you?

• 58:14Speaker 01

  I mean, he picked the right person because I'm like, yeah, I mean, you're not gonna lose the friendship, but bang, you know, game on, right? And he gave me something that was very hard to hear that I that needed to be said. And I love him even more.

• 58:27Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 58:28Speaker 01

  For risking the whole friendship out of love.

• 58:30Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 58:31Speaker 01

  Like, he was willing to throw away the friendship because he cared about me so much to tell me this. And that is, that's a high bar.

• 58:37Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That is, I mean, I think that speaks to, I think what's what.

• 58:40Speaker 01

  He's a remarkable human being.

• 58:41Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Defines friendship in my mind, what defines friendship is the ability to be authentically who you are and to be authentic and transparent with your friend. Just like your friend was, right?

• 58:54Speaker 01

  I mean, he gave me the whole preamble.

• 58:55Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah. And that's, that's a, that's a, it's a very scary thing for people to actually let down their guard.

• 59:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:03Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Right? To be open and to risk. And, and it's fearful, but, but that's what creates real friendships.

• 59:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think so.

• 59:10Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's what creates real friendships.

• 59:11Speaker 01

  Another friend of mine is struggling, um, I'm, I'm like, I'm so attuned to friends these days. Another friend of mine is struggling with one of her friends. And she asked herself, if I was in a marriage and my marriage, or just a romantic relationship, a long-term romantic relationship, and the, the relationship was struggling, we wouldn't just break up. We would, we would get help. We would seek therapy, couples, couples counseling.

• 59:33Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 59:33Speaker 01

  And so she went to her friend and said, this is tension has been going over too long. Um, we're gonna go to therapy together. Friends therapy.

• 59:41Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 59:42Speaker 01

  And again, why, why do we instinctively understand that if a marriage or a relationship is struggling, that we expect people to at least try, to at least try the couples therapy before you call the whole things quit? Before you call the whole thing quits? And yet we don't do that with friendships. When we have tension with friendships, we're quicker to end the friendship or sit in weird tension or avoid the person than to go to the therapy with the person to try and work through the struggles. We may still end up breaking up.

• 1:00:12Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:12Speaker 01

  But let's at least put in a, put in the effort.

• 1:00:15Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:15Speaker 01

  To rescue this friendship that we claim we care about.

• 1:00:19Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:20Speaker 01

  I love the idea of friendship counseling.

• 1:00:22Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, I mean, and it speaks to that same point about like not just co-living in a sense of just doing things together.

• 1:00:30Speaker 01

  Existing together.

• 1:00:31Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:31Speaker 01

  Going to movies together and having fun together, but rather.

• 1:00:33Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, just superficial dinner.

• 1:00:35Speaker 01

  And by the way, I will stress that I don't believe all friendships need to be at this level. Like, it is perfectly fine to have friends.

• 1:00:41Dr. Mark Hyman?

  At least a couple, two or three.

• 1:00:43Speaker 01

  You need at least a handful. Some have more, some have fewer. You need, but having friends where they're not deep, you know, bonds of vulnerability, you just have fun together, totally fine.

• 1:00:54Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:54Speaker 01

  You know, you have adventure partners or activity partners, totally fine. I don't mean, and I think that's one of the problems we have in our country, if not the world. I don't know about other languages. I only know about English. But like, you know, one of the problems I think is language. So for example, if you have stage four liver cancer, or you have a mild melanoma, the problem is both of those things are called cancer, but they're clearly not the same thing.

• 1:01:18Dr. Mark Hyman?

  No.

• 1:01:19Speaker 01

  But we use the same word.

• 1:01:20Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Right. I have a skin cancer.

• 1:01:21Speaker 01

  Right, exactly. I was like, you're fine, you know?

• 1:01:24Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Right.

• 1:01:24Speaker 01

  What did Larry David say? It's the good cancer. And I think we do, I think we have very few taxonomies. We have very few words for friends. You know, and so I've started using.

• 1:01:36Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Best friend, friend.

• 1:01:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's pretty much it. And even then, best friend is sometimes a little overused.

• 1:01:40Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:41Speaker 01

  You know, so I've started really trying to add more language. When somebody says, hey, aren't you friends with them? I go, I'm friendly with them. Or somebody says, aren't you close with them? I'm like, no, they're an acquaintance. Or they're a work friend.

• 1:01:55Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:56Speaker 01

  You know, and so I've actually started to use the language for my own clarity and for other people's clarity, that everybody that I know is not my friend.

• 1:02:05Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Right.

• 1:02:05Speaker 01

  I know them.

• 1:02:06Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:07Speaker 01

  Sometimes I like them.

• 1:02:08Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:08Speaker 01

  Sometimes, or I'll say, it's a new friendship.

• 1:02:10Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:02:11Speaker 01

  Or we're friendly.

• 1:02:13Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:13Speaker 01

  And I've become really good about.

• 1:02:18Speaker 01

  Sort of categorizing people because some I want to invest in. And some I'm okay with them being at that level, but I want. Both myself and everyone around me to make no mistake, not everybody I know is my. Friend that I'm gonna like.

• 1:02:30Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Can't have an infinite number.

• 1:02:31Speaker 01

  I can't have an infinite number.

• 1:02:32Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It takes, it takes time.

• 1:02:33Speaker 01

  It takes time and there's investment is a real thing.

• 1:02:36Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, and that's the, that's the thing I think we neglect, right, is, is. Making a deliberate effort to spend time with friends, to do special things, to kind of. Take the time to slow down and stop.

• 1:02:48Speaker 01

  I think so.

• 1:02:48Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And actually have conversations that matter. And that, that's, it's the kind of the last thing we tend to think about.

• 1:02:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:55Dr. Mark Hyman?

  But as we talked about earlier on, this is a central part of, of happiness, of joy, of longevity, of health.

• 1:03:05Speaker 01

  By the way, go back to that longevity thing. You're in that space and.

• 1:03:11Speaker 01

  You know more of them, but I know some of the folks who are sort of like the longevity folks. And I find a lot of them are very unhappy people.

• 1:03:17Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah. Joy, right, where's the joy?

• 1:03:19Speaker 01

  These guys, mostly men, who are obsessed with longevity. And they're taking all of the measurements and they're taking all their vitamins and supplements and they're doing all the exercises and. They're doing all the things and everything's scheduled and highlighted. And I find them not very happy people.

• 1:03:35Dr. Mark Hyman?

  No.

• 1:03:36Speaker 01

  You know?

• 1:03:37Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Find the joy.

• 1:03:38Speaker 01

  Find where, like where, like maybe work out a little less. Don't worry about if you miss the supplement and maybe just. Hang with friends, I bet. I, I mean, the data will prove it out. Like, we have to wait a bunch of years because the longevity obsessives. The only way we'll know if it works or not is when they die.

• 1:03:57Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:58Speaker 01

  And, and if they will be happy and healthy in old age, because nobody wants to live a long time and be decrepit.

• 1:04:04Dr. Mark Hyman?

  No.

• 1:04:04Speaker 01

  You know, and so we have.

• 1:04:06Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's why I like, I.

• 1:04:07Speaker 01

  We'll have to wait it out.

• 1:04:08Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Most of my friends are in their thirties and forties now because. You know, a lot of my older friends have just sort of checked out.

• 1:04:15Speaker 01

  But, but, but we have to, we have to redo this podcast in 40 years and see if all the longevity, all the longevity obsessives, if they're still around or if they're dead. I'm gonna put, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do a Vegas betting pool here, which is I would bet that the people who are healthy-ish, like they don't, they're not unhealthy, but they're not obsessively healthy.

• 1:04:35Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:35Speaker 01

  Right? Like, yes, they get enough sleep. Yes, they eat mostly well, you know, like good.

• 1:04:40Dr. Mark Hyman?

  They do the basics.

• 1:04:40Speaker 01

  They do the basics. You know, sometimes a little better, sometimes a little worse. Like on vacation, they're terrible, you know? Like, they're not obsessive, but they're, they're, they're not unhealthy.

• 1:04:49Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:50Speaker 01

  Is the way I would define them. But they're, spend a ton of time with friends and they have a fantastic sense of humor.

• 1:04:56Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:04:57Speaker 01

  And they love to laugh. I will bet money that those people will live longer than all of the folks who are measuring and.

• 1:05:04Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I agree.

• 1:05:05Speaker 01

  Powdering and.

• 1:05:06Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I mean, it's, it's evolutionary. I mean, I don't know if you know, Ian Wilson wrote a book called The Social Conquest of the Earth about from ants to humans, how we have to work together to survive.

• 1:05:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:16Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And in fact, altruism is a built in phenomenon and that it activates the same neural circuits as heroin or cocaine or sugar in terms of the nucleus accumbens and the pleasure. And I, I remember this, it sounds kind of weird to say, but when I was in Haiti and I was sleeping four hours a night and I was working, you know, helping people all day.

• 1:05:36Speaker 01

  You were happy.

• 1:05:36Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Barely eating anything, you know, probably dehydrated in the hot sun. I felt like this sense of happiness and joy like I'd never felt. And it was weird because I was in the middle of this disaster with people, you know, with limbs amputated and dead people everywhere. It was, it was, the stench was amazing, but something was happening in me where I was in service of others. I wasn't thinking about myself. And it's sort of, why do what I do? I mean, I, I'm always in service of others and, and I always am happiest when I'm serving others.

• 1:06:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:05Dr. Mark Hyman?

  You know, like before this podcast, I came because I was helping somebody and I was late because. This person said, my kid, you know, needs help and he's sick and he's got this issue. Could you also help him? And I'm like, okay.

• 1:06:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:06:15Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I get it and you know, because I can, I do.

• 1:06:18Speaker 01

  There's a book called Survival of the Friendliest.

• 1:06:20Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's good.

• 1:06:21Speaker 01

  And it makes, it makes an argument that we've completely misunderstood Darwin. That the idea of survival of the fittest, we have always attributed to brute strength.

• 1:06:32Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:32Speaker 01

  And so if you can overpower someone, you're more likely to survive. And they make an argument for social animals and mammals that that's actually completely incorrect. That what he meant by fittest was most fit to create community and take care of each other. And survival of the fittest is actually nothing to do with brute strength.

• 1:06:49Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Fascinating.

• 1:06:49Speaker 01

  But it's actually to do with the ones who were better at taking care of each other.

• 1:06:52Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So as you start to think about this book, Simon, and I can't wait to read it, even though you haven't written it yet.

• 1:06:59Speaker 01

  That's a good sign. I should put it up on Amazon, drive those pre-sales before.

• 1:07:03Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I'm gonna order it, I'm gonna preorder it.

• 1:07:05Speaker 01

  Cover to come, title to come, yet untitled book, yeah.

• 1:07:10Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And you know, as I think about it, I don't, I don't, I can't think of a lot of books on friendship.

• 1:07:14Speaker 01

  Well, this is, this is the reason my friend Will and I decided, my friend Will Gader and I decided to write this. Because it seems to make sense that you should write a book about friendship with a friend.

• 1:07:22Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:22Speaker 01

  Writing a book about friendship by yourself doesn't make sense. So Will and I decided to write together and you know, the, we came to the realization that there's an entire industry to help us be better leaders, an entire industry to help us be better parents, an entire industry to help us you know, thrive in our relationships, how to eat better, how to exercise better, how to live longer, and yet precious little.

• 1:07:44Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I've written many of those books.

• 1:07:44Speaker 01

  And yet, you've written all those books and yet precious little, yet precious little on, on how to be a friend.

• 1:07:52Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's right.

• 1:07:52Speaker 01

  And when you look at all the challenges, as we said, in the world of depression and anxiety and all of the, all these epidemics that, you know, doctors and, and, and well-intended folks are talking about, no one is talking about friendship as the antidote.

• 1:08:06Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:06Speaker 01

  And I think that friendship is the ultimate biohack. I think if you can master friendship, a lot of those other things correct themselves.

• 1:08:13Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So let's talk about that.

• 1:08:14Speaker 01

  Like friendship, like friendship and the microbiome.

• 1:08:17Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:17Speaker 01

  You know, get the microbiome right, a lot of stuff just falls into place. Get friendship right, a lot of stuff just falls into place.

• 1:08:22Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It's true, it's true. So, so as you're thinking about this book.

• 1:08:25Speaker 01

  The reason I said that is because that's, that's your thing.

• 1:08:28Dr. Mark Hyman?

  The microbiome.

• 1:08:30Speaker 01

  You like a microbiome.

• 1:08:31Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I do, well, it's a, if your bugs aren't friendly.

• 1:08:33Speaker 01

  You love a gut health.

• 1:08:34Dr. Mark Hyman?

  If your bugs aren't friendly, you're not happy.

• 1:08:36Speaker 01

  Can I just? I have to interrupt here. Can you talk to me about probiotic sodas if they're a pile of shit or not?

• 1:08:43Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Well, if there's sugar in them and there's artificial sweeteners in them, they definitely aren't good for your gut.

• 1:08:48Speaker 01

  Okay, so just that they put, okay.

• 1:08:51Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's what I said, if it has a health claim on the label, I avoid it.

• 1:08:54Speaker 01

  Got it.

• 1:08:56Speaker 01

  What about kombucha?

• 1:08:57Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Again, it's like a lot of sugar. It's a lot of sugar.

• 1:09:00Speaker 01

  I was surprised, one of my favorite kombucha brands, I looked at it the other day.

• 1:09:03Dr. Mark Hyman?

  A lot of sugar.

• 1:09:04Speaker 01

  Twenty-two grams of sugar in the bottle, I was like, that's ridiculous.

• 1:09:07Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's four and a half teaspoons of sugar, or five and a half teaspoons of sugar.

• 1:09:10Speaker 01

  You would never put five and a half teaspoons of sugar in your coffee, and why are you putting five and a half teaspoons of sugar in your, your quote unquote, healthy drink?

• 1:09:16Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yep, my, rest my case, if it has a health claim, don't eat it.

• 1:09:20Speaker 01

  If it has a health came, claim, don't eat it.

• 1:09:21Dr. Mark Hyman?

  High fiber, low fat, low, low sugar, I didn't know, it's just, if, if, you know, an egg doesn't have a label on it, you know, broccoli and apple doesn't have a label or a barcode or an ingredient list, stick with that.

• 1:09:38Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So, so speaking of friends, let's go back to friends, I think this is really important, we're talking about the importance of friendship, we're talking about how critical it is for your health, we're talking about how it's critical is for your overall mental health and well-being. But a lot of people listening are isolated and disconnected, you know, and don't know.

• 1:09:53Speaker 01

  Clearly, they're listening to a podcast.

• 1:09:55Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Maybe, I, I listen to podcasts.

• 1:09:57Speaker 01

  With your friends? Nobody listens to podcasts with their friends.

• 1:09:59Dr. Mark Hyman?

  My wife and I do.

• 1:10:00Speaker 01

  It's a lonely experience.

• 1:10:02Dr. Mark Hyman?

  My wife and I listen to podcasts together quite a bit, actually.

• 1:10:04Speaker 01

  Podcast listenership should be going down. If we want the world to be healthy.

• 1:10:08Dr. Mark Hyman?

  But it, you know, and you know, there's, there's a great book I read once called Refrigerator Rights, which is how many people in your life do you have the right to go in their house and open their fridge and eat whatever you want?

• 1:10:17Speaker 01

  Love that.

• 1:10:18Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And that's a measure of the quality of your friendships and the health of your

• 1:10:21Speaker 01

  Yes, I love that, I have one friend that makes fun of me, their family makes fun of me, that I just go into their pantry.

• 1:10:27Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's right, that's good, you want that, I, I'm staying at a friend's house and I went in their fridge this morning and I took out some food because I had to go and I was busy today and I.

• 1:10:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, you didn't ask permission.

• 1:10:35Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I know, I just took out the.

• 1:10:36Speaker 01

  Were you politely go? Can I, can I keep, can I?

• 1:10:39Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I'm gonna tell them after, but there were these Maui Newey venison sticks and I knew I had a long day and I didn't have time to eat and I, you know, it was, so I was like, yeah, so, so that I had refrigerator rights in that house.

• 1:10:49Speaker 01

  That's very good. I, I, the New York version of that is you, is you go into a friend's house that you have refrigerator rights, an apartment, there's no houses, you open up their fridge and you see, there's nothing in there except half a carton of milk and a, and a, and a box of Chinese takeout.

• 1:11:06Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:07Speaker 01

  And you say to your friend, can I eat this Chinese? You scream out and they scream back, I wouldn't, it's been there for two weeks. You go, okay. And you just close the fridge and you leave the Chinese food in there. That's refrigerates in New York City.

• 1:11:17Dr. Mark Hyman?

  If it's so important, people listening, I, I, I imagine are thinking, oh, this is great. I feel this. I know this is so important. And I, and I feel the, the disconnection.

• 1:11:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:27Dr. Mark Hyman?

  But I don't know how to make friends. I don't know how to, where to start. I don't know how to take the friends I have and make them better or find new friends. I don't know how to make friendship the medicine that I need in my life.

• 1:11:37Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:11:38Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Where, where does a drugstore for friendship, you know? How, how are you thinking about this? And, and as you start to think about this book, how are you thinking about?

• 1:11:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:44Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Supporting, coaching, imagining how to build that network of friends.

• 1:11:47Speaker 01

  So, so the good news is there's new organizations that are starting that are encouraging people to come and have a dinner, you know, five, with five strangers and stuff like that. So there's like, there's these new businesses that are trying to replace the bowling leagues and stuff like that. Cause you used to join, sign up for the bowling league and you'd, you'd be put on a team. And that's your team. You know, maybe one of them was your friend, maybe not, but you, that was your team. We're going to church. So I think starting with, with, with common interests. Sign up for a ceramics class and go by yourself. Or if you're too nervous to go by yourself, go with a friend, but talk to the person you're sitting next to. First time, you know, cause the great thing about doing a thing with common interests is the icebreaker is really, really easy. You just have to say, is this your first time here? Have you done

• 1:12:29Speaker 01

  this before? And it pretty much starts the conversation. And so, and, and if you don't, you don't have to form a deep, meaningful relationship out of it. But I think starting to do hobby things. And I think having hobbies, and we've seen a decline in hobbies even.

• 1:12:44Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:45Speaker 01

  You know, and doing hobbies with people. That's why I say.

• 1:12:47Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Join a club.

• 1:12:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. That's why I said, um, go play chess, you know, in a, in a park, you know? Um, that's why I've said, uh, I think things like Comic Con and things like that are spectacular. Because when you find a group of people who, you know, When people laugh at your hobby and you find a group of people who we've all been laughed at, but now we're the we're the norm here, it's incredibly easy to make friends. And like the thing that's so I've been to Comic Con many, many times. And and, you know, it's it's nerd vanna.

• 1:13:19Dr. Mark Hyman?

  What is Comic Con?

• 1:13:20Speaker 01

  You don't know what Comic Con is?

• 1:13:21Dr. Mark Hyman?

  No, vaguely.

• 1:13:22Speaker 01

  It's it's a well, it's changed over the years, but basically it's a it's a comic book convention.

• 1:13:29Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's what I thought it was.

• 1:13:29Speaker 01

  That's the that's the history, but it's but these days comic books are only a part of it. It's also science fiction and hero movies, you know, Marvel stories and Star Wars and, you know, DC and all of that. And it's it's it's all that nerdy kind of pop culture stuff. And there's a lot of cosplay that happens. So people will dress up as their favorite cartoon character or superhero or, you know, some obscure character and some of them are super creative and some.

• 1:13:54Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:13:55Speaker 01

  And it's and, you know, some people are there for the the content of the convention and some people are there just to walk around and costume and have fun. And what's so wonderful about it is it's an incredibly polite group of people. So if you are in a great costume where you see want to see someone who's in a see someone who's in a great costume and you want to have a picture with them or they want a picture with you, everybody asks, everybody goes, can I have a picture with you, please? Or, hey, may I have a picture with you, please? And so there's a lot of interaction. You can go up to somebody and say, I love your costume and they will be friendly back. There's not a lot of cynicism. And the it's, you know, I'm I met one of my ex-girlfriends there. I literally went up to her and said, you look amazing. Can I have a picture with you? And she goes, absolutely. We took a picture together because I just loved her costume.

• 1:14:41Speaker 01

  I don't remember how the conversation started, but we ended up talking a little bit for just a few minutes. I don't know how we got to it, but we ended up trading phone numbers. And then we ended up having sort of a really great relationship. And the best part about that is I still have the photograph. Not from our first date, I have the photograph from the moment we met.

• 1:15:00Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's amazing.

• 1:15:01Speaker 01

  Which doesn't happen in relationships. You don't say, nice to meet you, let's take a selfie just in case.

• 1:15:05Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Right.

• 1:15:05Speaker 01

  You know, but I have the photograph of the time that we, the minute we met.

• 1:15:09Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:09Speaker 01

  And, and it's just, again, it's, I think when you go to places where people like the things you like, it's going to increase the odds. It's not that you increase the odds that you'll find a deep, meaningful relationships, but it makes it easier to break the ice.

• 1:15:24Dr. Mark Hyman?

  To just get started.

• 1:15:25Speaker 01

  To get started. And that's, I think, where people struggle. They struggle on how to start.

• 1:15:27Dr. Mark Hyman?

  One of the things I'm curious about, I love your opinion on this, is, you know, my experience is two things really help foster deep friendships. One is curiosity.

• 1:15:36Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:15:36Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So being deeply curious about who that person is and asking questions about, what, what are they afraid of, what makes them laugh? What makes them most excited in life? What brings them joy? You know, what are they struggling with? What's going on? Just getting curious about somebody and then letting them talk. Most people don't get that chance to have someone really be present and listen. And the second is to be vulnerable yourself. So to, to let down your guard.

• 1:16:02Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:16:02Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And to share what's in your heart. Because it all of a sudden gives permission for the other person to start to do that.

• 1:16:07Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:16:08Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And then, once you get past that kind of first layer of soil, you get down into the mother lode.

• 1:16:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:14Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Of, of authentic human relationship.

• 1:16:15Speaker 01

  It's a seesaw, right? Which is you kind of expect someone to be vulnerable if you're not willing to be vulnerable back, because it creates, it creates imbalance.

• 1:16:22Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:22Speaker 01

  And I actually had this, I actually met some new friends just very recently. They're friends of friends. I went up to Seattle for work. And one of my friends who's from Seattle said, oh, you need to meet my friends. They live up there, you guys will get along. So we all showed up as strangers, the three of us showed up as strangers. I mean, they know each other. Um, uh, they're married. Um, uh, but I went out with them just because our mutual friends said you guys should meet. And so we all took time to meet.

• 1:16:48Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:49Speaker 01

  And, uh, I can't remember who started, but there was a lot of vulnerability happening.

• 1:16:55Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Hmm.

• 1:16:56Speaker 01

  And you, you know, you could feel. That one side had opened up more than the other. It was lopsided, right? And I think it was me who opened up a lot. And then they said, "Here, let us balance this out."

• 1:17:09Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:10Speaker 01

  And they were keenly aware of the balance of vulnerability. They started opening up an offering to make me feel safer.

• 1:17:17Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:17Speaker 01

  Right? Because it was lopsided, which is, it's, you feel safe for a while until you start to feel insecure because it's so lopsided.

• 1:17:24Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:25Speaker 01

  And they were so aware of that seesaw that they literally said, "Let me balance this out for you."

• 1:17:31Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:31Speaker 01

  Or, "Do you want us to go first so that you're comfortable to speak?" You know? And we were, it was amazing. And we talked about it. We actually, that became one of the topics of conversation, is how we were managing vulnerability as we were getting to know each other for the first time, that we were, we were keeping the balance. We were both taking turns to manage the balance. And I thought it was incredibly interesting and sophisticated. And by the way, amazing people.

• 1:17:54Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:54Speaker 01

  Like, now they're like, I'm like mad about them.

• 1:17:57Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:57Speaker 01

  You know?

• 1:17:58Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:58Speaker 01

  Like genuine friends.

• 1:17:59Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, and I think, I think it's hard for people to do that, though. And how do you, how do you invite people to?

• 1:18:04Speaker 01

  You kind of do with everyone. I think that's where people get it wrong. It's not a prescription. Right? You can't say, "Here are the five things you need to do," because if somebody's not willing to match you or go with you, it will feel unbalanced or insecure. And, or you might open up so much and the other person doesn't want to, and then you'll make yourself feel uncomfortable. You make them feel uncomfortable, too.

• 1:18:22Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:23Speaker 01

  And so, this is why I say it's a dance, which is, you know, you, you give a little bit and do you get a little bit back? And if you don't get anything back-

• 1:18:29Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I'll show you mine if you show me yours.

• 1:18:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And if you give a little bit and you get nothing back, you can take another risk and give a little bit more. But at some point, you're gonna have to stop. And it's not that they're bad people or that they won't make friends. It's some people are a little slower at opening up.

• 1:18:41Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:41Speaker 01

  And some people are a little quicker. And we have to allow these things to go at their own pace. But I think you have to manage the balance. Or you can say it out loud, "Hey, usually I, I come out and sort of share everything, but, you know, I'm, I, I'm gonna be a little more measured today because I, I don't wanna, you know, I feel a little insecure today, if I'm honest." You know, "I don't really know you," you know, and I think that's okay.

• 1:19:04Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:05Speaker 01

  But I think it's, I think that's where people get it wrong, which is there's no prescription and everybody's different. And you kind of have to read the room.

• 1:19:11Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:12Speaker 01

  You know? I think that's where people make the mistakes. And I've definitely made that mistake. I've projected safety where it didn't exist.

• 1:19:18Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:18Speaker 01

  Where I started opening up because I wanted them to make me feel safe.

• 1:19:22Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah. And then, and then did you feel like you, you, you?

• 1:19:28Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Suffered because of that, or was it because, or was it just kind of like?

• 1:19:30Speaker 01

  No, I created uncomfortable situations by accident, either for myself or for them.

• 1:19:33Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:34Speaker 01

  I overshared.

• 1:19:36Speaker 01

  I overshared.

• 1:19:37Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, that's always, it's an interesting question, like, is oversharing?

• 1:19:41Speaker 01

  Depends on the person.

• 1:19:42Dr. Mark Hyman?

  A problem?

• 1:19:43Speaker 01

  Depends on the person who's listening.

• 1:19:44Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:44Speaker 01

  For some people, if you overshare and they are able and have the skill set to hold that space without judgment, there's no problem at all. But if somebody is ill-equipped to hold space for an oversharer, it's gonna be uncomfortable.

• 1:19:56Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Not even just asking, hey, I'd like to share this.

• 1:19:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think asking permission, I think asking permission.

• 1:20:02Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that's great. It's like when you have a-

• 1:20:04Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That kind of resets their barometer.

• 1:20:06Speaker 01

  Cause that's the technique for having difficult conversations, right? You're like, I need to have a difficult conversation with you, can I have that with you now? And people be like, can we do it later? You know? Like, I think asking permissions, like, I need to give you some difficult feedback, can I give that to you?

• 1:20:19Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:19Speaker 01

  Go ahead. You know, like my friend-

• 1:20:21Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Like your friend, right?

• 1:20:21Speaker 01

  My friend said, I gotta tell you something, you know, this may risk the whole friendship. And you're like, okay, you know, like, that little preamble that lets you sort of take the breath. And I think that's very wise counsel, which is to say, can I share something personal with me, with you? And they may say, honestly? I don't think I'm comfortable. But if they say yes, then I think they're co-conspirators.

• 1:20:42Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So what's, what's your, what's your goal with your book? What's the sort of aim you're, you're targeting?

• 1:20:47Speaker 01

  It's, it's everything we said before, which is there's so much advice on how to succeed as a leader, as a parent, as a, you know,

• 1:20:55Speaker 01

  in a, in a romantic relationship. And I want people to succeed in friendship. And you're, you know, I'm somebody who has had very few long-term relationships in my life, and the world criticizes me for that. I'm seen as unhealthy, or I've been judged as having commitment issues.

• 1:21:09Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Love relationships or just friendships?

• 1:21:10Speaker 01

  Love relationships.

• 1:21:11Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:11Speaker 01

  You know, I've never been married, I don't have a 10-year romantic relationship, I haven't had it. You know? And even some of the women I've dated, they're like, what's wrong with you?

• 1:21:19Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Me neither, I've been divorced four, five, three times.

• 1:21:22Speaker 01

  What's wrong with you is what I hear a lot.

• 1:21:23Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Right.

• 1:21:24Speaker 01

  And I have a, I have a friend who was in a 16-year relationship, an unhealthy relationship.

• 1:21:29Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:30Speaker 01

  For 16 years. She freely admits that she should have stayed in that relationship for one year.

• 1:21:35Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:21:36Speaker 01

  And yet, society looks at her and says, she got it right and I got it wrong. Which is twisted. And if you look at the quality of my friendships, like, I have a lot of really, really good friends.

• 1:21:46Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:47Speaker 01

  And I am fulfilled in almost every aspect of my life.

• 1:21:50Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yep.

• 1:21:51Speaker 01

  But just not necessarily all from one person.

• 1:21:53Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's right.

• 1:21:54Speaker 01

  And, look, I like relationships and I love being in a relationship and I love being a partner to someone. And, you know, people say, well, why haven't you, why haven't you been married? I'm like, isn't it obvious I haven't met the right person yet? That's such a stupid question. But, uh, but I, I, I found comfort in recognizing that by fostering friendship, I don't have to feel guilty or bad or explain myself why I haven't had a, a marriage or a 10-year romantic relationship.

• 1:22:20Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And friendships outlast relationships.

• 1:22:22Speaker 01

  And friendships outlast, and friendships are there to help you through relationships. And if you don't have good friendships, you'll struggle in your relationships, relationships, because you have to have somebody to ask advice or vent to. You can't always go to one person. It won't work. And so I think we don't give enough credit to friendship. Clearly, because nothing's written about it, or so little is written about it. We don't give enough credit to friendship and we don't give credit to people who are good at friendship. We give credit to people who stay in relationships, even those relationships, even if those relationships aren't healthy. And I think we just need to reevaluate how we're managing relationship in general in our lives. And I want, I want to be a part of the friendship movement.

• 1:22:58Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I love that. I mean, that's, it's, it's really that one of the chapters of our book around how to get healthy is friends. With five Fs.

• 1:23:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Amen. And, and on that note, my friend, thank you so much.

• 1:23:13Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So, yes, Simon, thanks for talking about friendship and your vision and your incredible, like kaleidoscopic mind focusing on this topic, because it's, I think, one of the most existential topics of our time. The disconnection, the isolation, the loneliness, and that investing in friendships, understanding what they are, how to cultivate them, how to create them, how to foster them and nurture them, how to be a good friend. It's the best medicine. 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.

• 1:23:58Dr. Mark Hyman?

  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. 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,

• 1:24:41Dr. Mark Hyman?

  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.

• 1:25:03Dr. 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.