I've Had 6 Back Surgeries And Almost Died: Here's What 40 Years of Medicine Actually Taught Me

This week, I’m the one answering the questions in a deeply personal conversation about my health journey. I speak openly about some of the hardest parts of that journey, the treatments I’ve tried, the beliefs I’ve reconsidered, and what a lifetime devoted to health has taught me about what matters most. Here’s some of what I share: How becoming the patient changed the way I practice medicine How nearly dying changed what longevity means to me and what I believe a healthy life is actually for Which wellness and longevity therapies I personally use, and how I decide what’s worth trying Why the pursuit of optimal health can sometimes become unhealthy What I’m still trying to understand about myself at this stage of my life I’ve spent much of my life trying to understand how we can live longer and feel better. But nearly losing my own life reminded me that health isn’t the destination. It’s what allows us to be present for the people we love, remain curious, and experience our lives more fully. I hope this conversation encourages you to ask yourself what you want your health to make possible. Continue exploring: Watch my conversation with Dr. Tyna Moore here. Learn more about my Brainshaping Academy here. View Show Notes From This Episode Sign up for Dr. Hyman’s Brainshaping Academy to learn how to nourish the biological systems that support your mental, emotional, and cognitive health https://drhyman.com/products/brainshaping?utm_source=dr_hyman_show&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=may_27&utm_content=link Get Free Weekly Health Tips from Dr. Hymanhttps://drhyman.com/pages/picks?utm_campaign=shownotes&utm_medium=banner&utm_source=podcast Sign Up for Dr. Hyman’s Weekly Longevity Journalhttps://drhyman.com/pages/longevity?utm_campaign=shownotes&utm_medium=banner&utm_source=podcast Join the 10-Day Detox to Reset Your Healthhttps://drhyman.com/pages/10-day-detox Join the Hyman Hive for Expert Support and Real Resultshttps://drhyman.com/pages/hyman-hive This episode is brought to you by Paleovalley, BIOptimizers, Timeline, Rho, Sunlighten, and Pique. Shop nutrient-rich foods and supplements at paleovalley.com/hyman and save 15% off your first order. Shop Magnesium Breakthrough at bioptimizers.com/hyman and save 15% with code HYMAN. Support healthy aging and get up to 20% off when you subscribe on top of the new starting price of $79 at timeline.com/drhyman. Explore science-backed products at rhonutrition.com and use code HYMAN for 20% off the entire site. Discover why so many people are using sunlighten.com. Use the code HYMAN to save up to $2,100 today and free shipping. Elevate your daily wellness ritual at piquelife.com/hyman and enjoy 20% off plus free gifts. (0:00) Dr. Hyman's health decline, initial back surgery, and introduction to Q&A session (1:51) Dr. Hyman's early career, first herniated disc, and subsequent back surgeries (10:55) Mercury poisoning and its impact on health (17:06) Discovery of functional medicine and Jeffrey Bland's influence (20:27) Impact of personal health journey on Dr. Hyman's career and recovery from major surgery (24:04) Reflections on mortality, peace during surgery, and the role of spirituality and psychedelics (26:21) Changes in perspective on longevity, health, and specific recovery strategies (30:06) Navigating physiological depression and relationship with body as we age (33:48) Rapid-fire health tools: cold plunges, sauna, and more (43:32) IV therapy, red light therapy, and stem cell therapy for recovery (47:26) Exosomes and critique of wellness industry trends (50:31) Risks of over-testing, over-supplementation, and underrated treatments in functional medicine (58:13) Dr. Hyman's personal life, hobbies, and balancing passion with well-being (1:04:51) The Ultramind Solution, mental health, and root cause analysis in MS (1:07:06) Focus on strength training, functional health, and shifts in health understanding (1:09:23) Surprising changes in beliefs and impact of becoming a grandfather (1:11:42) Career reflections, ongoing curiosity, and closing remarks (1:14:38) Disclaimer and gratitude to sponsors

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

• 0:00Dr. Mark Hyman?

  The last surgery, hailemer surgery was, I was pretty sick. I couldn't move. I couldn't sit up in bed. I was, I'd lost 25 pounds. I was just a skeleton. And surgeon was like, look, we don't really know if we can help you, but otherwise you're gonna die. And they're like, well, you have a five to 10% chance of making it through the surgery.

• 0:16Speaker 01

  Now that you've kind of had a second life, has it changed your view on like longevity, what that means to you?

• 0:23Dr. Mark Hyman?

  The things that really matter come to the forefront, like family, friends, community, your health. These are things that are just the most important things in life. One thing I've learned over the years is that healthy eating gets a lot easier when you have better options available before you're starting. Whether I'm traveling in between meetings or just getting a quick bite, Paleo Valley sticks are one of the snacks that I reach for most often. They're made with 100% grass-fed and finished beef, organic spices, and unlike most meat sticks, they're naturally fermented instead of relying on unnecessary additives or shortcut additives. And just as important, they actually taste good. They're tender, savory and satisfying, so you're not choosing between convenience and quality.

• 1:02Dr. Mark Hyman?

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• 1:45Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Go to bioptimizers.com/hyman and use the code HYMAN to save 15% off your order. Hey everybody. Today we're gonna do something different. I'm joined by my producer, Emma. We're gonna do a little Q and A for Dr. Mark.

• 1:57Speaker 01

  Mark, you spent your career helping other people figure out what's wrong with their health. But you've also had a pretty extraordinary health journey yourself. You've dealt with mercury poisoning, chronic fatigue, Lyme disease, mold exposure, multiple injuries, and now you've had six back surgeries. So you've experimented with everything from functional medicine and supplements to some pretty cutting-edge longevity therapies. Today, instead of you answering questions about our health, I wanted to turn the table and ask you questions about yours. So what you've learned from being the patient, what you've changed your mind about, what you've tried that worked and what didn't? And what 30-plus years in medicine has taught you about what actually matters for health?

• 2:37Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Forty, actually.

• 2:39Speaker 01

  Forty is a forty.

• 2:40Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Well, next year I'll be 40 years being a doctor.

• 2:43Speaker 01

  Wow. After spending decades of self-obsessed with health and longevity, what actually matters to you now? So I wanna start out by you taking us back to when your health journey first really fell apart. I believe you're 32, you're living in Idaho. Kind of take us back to that moment and tell us what was happening then.

• 3:01Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Well, I was a family doctor. I was working in a small town. I lived at the end of this dirt road up on the top of a mountain. And there were five family doctors in this small town where we had a cashmere about 10,000 people. And I was the one who did the C-sections and I ran the ER one day a week. It was just like a lot. So I delivered lots of babies, ran the ER, worked full-time, had two little kids. My wife at the time was not mentally very well and I took the burden of it all, literally on my back. And I was chopping wood and getting wood ready for the wood stove for the winter.

• 3:40Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And I, you know, was tired, exhausted, working really hard, hadn't been exercising as much because I was just working too much. And I was carrying a lot of heavy, heavy logs, pieces of wood into the house. And I just carried them in a way that was really biomechanically bad. And I herniated, really ruptured a disc. And the next day, that was like a Sunday, the next day I had a baby that I was working to deliver. There was some mother who was quite sick with preeclampsia and I noticed that I was limping and I had no motor function in my foot. I didn't have any pain at the time. And then within two or three days, I ended up like being rushed to the hospital,

• 4:19Dr. Mark Hyman?

  had a kind of pretty emergency surgery to relieve the compression of the nerve. And that was my first back surgery. So it was pretty rough. And I was left with a permanent residual weakness in my calf. And so I managed okay with it, but it's, it was the beginning of a long journey of back issues.

• 4:38Speaker 01

  And you're only 32 at that time that that happened?

• 4:40Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 4:41Speaker 01

  Wow. So at that time you were a physician. Did you assume like being a doctor meant you'd be able to figure out what was wrong with you? Did it take you some time to kind of seek external help?

• 4:51Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, well, I mean, at that moment I was, you know, I had motor weakness. I was very, it was, took it very seriously. And I then went to see the neurologist in the local town, which is about 50 miles away in Lewiston. And, and they immediately saw that I had a hernia, I had a hernia disc on MRI and had the surgery. But the thing was, I re-herniated the disc like 10 days later and I went back and they, they weren't listening to me. And I said, listen, something's wrong. They weren't listening. And that's why I ended up with a permanent disability because I didn't go back in and operate. So it was my first experience of like, you know, doctors missing the ball and, and actually causing a permanent lifelong long problem that I've had. They could have easily relieved if the doctor had been attentive, had listened to what I said and paid attention.

• 5:35Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And it's kind of unfortunate because doctors sometimes can be, you know, very stuck in their ways. And, and this, this time it left me with a problem. So I learned very quickly that I can't rely just on the quote, experts to have all the answers.

• 5:49Speaker 01

  What do you think when that happened, like was your scariest symptom? I know you said you had lost function. Would you say that was the most concerning bit? Or did you kind of see the future that you might have had in front of you?

• 6:01Dr. Mark Hyman?

  No, I mean, it was, you know, I, I clearly was, was very alarmed by losing motor function. So that, you know, not being able to walk was a big thing. So that was my, that was my biggest concern. You know, I didn't, I didn't even know how to navigate the after effects because I, the surgery went well, but then I re-herniated the disc. And that, that led to some permanent issues and I should have had that handled right away. But when I went back to the doctor, they just sort of ignored me and it's fine. It's just, you're just fine. Don't worry about it. It'll be fine. And then it wasn't fine.

• 6:35Speaker 01

  How did you re-herniate the disc? Were you just like going about life as usual, not kind of taking time to recover?

• 6:41Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, I was in recovery. I was home for six weeks recovering, but the truth was I picked up a log like 10 days in and put it, just one piece of wood and put it in the wood stove. And I think that, that caused a re-herniation. And that was just sort of, it's like one moment in time that shapes your whole life. But I managed to, you know, continue to be active and ride my bike. I ran for years. I played tennis. I ski. I do whatever I want to do. And, you know, I have a little bit of handicap, but I don't let that stop me.

• 7:12Speaker 01

  I'm probably gonna circle back and jump around a bit, but that's two, one surgery. Can you kind of lead me down to the other surgeries, maybe like two through four?

• 7:23Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Well, yeah. I mean, I think, you know, I did well from 1992 until 2020. And then I always had a little bit of back pain here and there, but it didn't really have significant disc issues. And then I was chopping wood.

• 7:40Speaker 01

  There's a theme.

• 7:41Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It's a theme. Yeah. It was Memorial Day. We were, we were making a fire and we just wanted to have a barbecue, whatever. I don't remember exactly. And then I was like, oh shit, I, something is wrong. And I, and I herniated L4, five. And I had five, one S, L5S1 before. And I was like, oh, I, I really, I did something. And I started feeling, you know, tingling and numbness and weakness. And then again, I had to have another surgery in June of 2020 in COVID in New York City, which was very intense. And right after the surgery, I was in the recovery room and I said, they were about to send me home because it was gonna be like a outpatient procedure. It was a microdiscectomy.

• 8:25Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And he said, the procedure went well. When I came back in to see me, the surgeon, who was the head of neurosurgery at Cornell, said, look, I said, look, I'm not, something's wrong. Like I'm in a lot of pain. Something is really wrong. And he's like, oh, it's fine. It's fine. I didn't, I think something's wrong. We gotta check. And so we did an MRI. And they did MRI. It was a big hematoma, another big blood clot that had just formed in my spine, which was very unusual. He said, he, you know, he was a 60-something-year-old neurosurgeon, head of neurosurgery. He said, last time I saw this was in my residency. So it was very uncommon, but I got bad luck. So then I had to be rushed back to the surgery again. And it was a very hard, long recovery after that. So I had worked with Tom Brady's system of training bands.

• 9:07Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And I, I worked on physical therapy and really kind of committed to it. And I built myself back up and ended up, you know, getting really fit after that and going to Maui and working out and riding my bike and getting back in my body again. So that was really amazing. And, but you know, it just was like, wow, that was a big one. And that was like the third and second and third surgeries. And then passed forward to 2024. Had another herniated disc, L34, because my back was just sort of generating and had to have another surgery, which went okay, but I still had a lot of pain. And then I ended up having an epidural injection to relieve some of the pain and I got infected. And then I had an abscess.

• 9:48Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I had another surgery. It left me kind of for dead, honestly. And it was really quite bad. The surgeon didn't really know how to operate on me, didn't know the technique and wasn't willing to kind of tell me to go somewhere else. And I finally found another surgeon who's a top neurosurgeon in the country and complex spine surgery in California UCSF. And they took me and they did another surgery. So those are all the six surgeries. It was a lot.

• 10:11Speaker 01

  I didn't realize that the majority of them had happened in the last six years as well. So that's a lot.

• 10:16Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Five of them happened in the last, yeah, six years. Yeah. I mean, two of them were within very quick succession in one day. And then the last two were a month apart was like, but I finally had, you know, a fusion and hardware in there. And I, and actually I'm pretty good. I'm hiking. I'm, I'm riding my bike. I'm, I'm, you know, working out. So I, you know, I feel like I, I'm not a hundred percent, but I feel like I'm doing pretty good.

• 10:41Speaker 01

  I will probably come back to that, like hail, hail Mary surgery, as you call it, that you had, that kind of last one. But I want to jump backwards kind of in time now. When did mercury enter the picture within your health journey?

• 10:55Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Well, I, I don't exactly know, but I lived in China for a year in 1994 and ended up, you know, in the middle of the winter, breathing in all this soot and black air and ended up, you know, accumulating a lot of mercury. Plus, I think I ate a lot of fish. I had fillings. I mean, who knows where I got eaten fish all the time when I was a kid. So I think, you know, there was a, a real buildup and I don't have the genetics to detoxify properly. So I was doing really well. I came back from China. I was working in the ER. And then one day I was up in Maine. I don't know what happened, something I ate something or I got something from the lake there, were swimming in it and I got a severe stomach infection, like severe bloating, pain, like just unbelievable. And from that day on, it was like, I just went into full

• 11:40Dr. Mark Hyman?

  chronic fatigue syndrome and I didn't know what was going on. I, my gut was a mess. I severe brain fog. I couldn't sleep. My muscles were aching. I was exhausted. And I just didn't know what was happening. I started getting rashes, all this autoimmunity, weird symptoms. And nobody could help me. And I went to doctor after doctor. I went to Harvard. I went to Columbia. I was, I had all these crazy symptoms, fasciculations and twitching of muscles. I had ALS. And it was just quite, quite bad. And I could barely function and I, and ended up having to really discover a different world of medicine, which was functional medicine. And that helped me understand what was happening. I met a doctor who said, maybe you have, you know, mercury

• 12:20Dr. Mark Hyman?

  issues. So I tested myself and he was right. And I had very, very, very, very high mercury. One of the highest I've seen actually in my practice, doing this for 40, 30 years. And, and then I was able to get, you know, chelate myself, treat myself, work on fixing my gut. And basically it was how I learned functional medicine was from the inside out. Cause every system I had collapsed, you know, my gut collapsed, immune system was dysregulated, my mitochondria weren't working. I elevated muscle enzyme, CPK, my muscles were breaking down. I had hormonal dysregulation, adrenal dysfunction, I mean, sex hormone dysfunction. Everything was just completely screwed. So I basically learned functional medicine because chronic fatigue basically touches almost all aspects of your health and all of your biology.

• 13:05Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And I, and it really helped me to understand not just on a conceptual level, but on the cellular level, what actually people are suffering through and able to was able to heal myself and use that knowledge to really help my patients.

• 13:17Speaker 01

  I have a couple more questions back there. One, I'm curious, what were you doing in China?

• 13:21Dr. Mark Hyman?

  In China? Yeah. Well, I studied, I studied Buddhism in college and majored in Chinese and spoke pretty fluent Chinese and ended up kind of connecting with this guy who was building health clinics for foreigners in China, because they had no health, health clinics for Westerners. So I, I was there to help develop relationship with the hospital and, and design and develop a, you know, basically a primary care clinic for, for expatriates. And that was, that's what I was doing there.

• 13:47Speaker 01

  And so how long were you in China for?

• 13:49Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I was there for a year. Yeah, I was there for a year and then.

• 13:52Speaker 01

  And then you came back to America and you said the first symptom was severe stomach bulging. Is that correct?

• 13:58Dr. Mark Hyman?

  No, no, no. I came back to America and I was fine for a couple of years. So my body was able to cope. My body was able to cope with it until some big insult happened. And so the insult was some stomach infection or gut infection. And then everything just collapsed. So I literally collapsed from one day to the next. I went from riding my bike 100 miles a day and remembering 30 patients without notes to not, you know, being able to walk up the stairs and not remembering where I was at the end of a sentence. So I had, I had, I had just complete breakdown and, and I knew that it wasn't psychological. I mean, there was a lot of stress going on. I was going through divorce and getting custody of my kids. It was like, it was a lot, but I ended up, you know, really in a, in a situation where, you know, my whole system's just collapsed and I

• 14:41Dr. Mark Hyman?

  had to, I had to figure out what was going on. And I was, you know, given Xanax. I was given like Prozac. I was given all these drugs for everything. It was, I never took most of them, but the doctor was like, you've got depression, you've got irritable bowel, you've got this, you've got that. I'm like, no, something's going on. And they just, they just weren't able to find it through their normal channels of, of traditional medicine. People ask me all the time, what supplements I take personally. I'm constantly evaluating new research, new compounds and new products. And the truth is there aren't many that make the cut. One that does is Timeline powered by Mitopure. If you follow my work, you've heard me talk about mitochondrial health. Now mitochondria are responsible for producing about 90% of the energy in your body. And when they're functioning well, you feel the difference, more vitality,

• 15:26Dr. Mark Hyman?

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• 16:11Dr. Mark Hyman?

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• 16:55Dr. Mark Hyman?

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• 17:06Speaker 01

  You said there earlier as well, that you had found a doctor that had told you to get tested for mercury poisoning. Was that Jeffrey Bland? Like where does he kind of enter your story?

• 17:14Dr. Mark Hyman?

  No, actually, I, I'm, I was a doctor at Kenya Ranch and I met a nutritionist who said, you've got to come hear this guy speak. And, and I went to Boston and heard Jeffrey Bland for the first time. And I realized, oh, either he's a genius or he's quack. If you're saying, what he's saying is true, then it's, it's really incumbent upon me to dive in and learn and figure out if there's truth in it because it's such a radical departure from what I learned. And at that point I was just desperate for help. So I, I basically went down that rabbit hole. And then I went to a conference and I was, you know, flying to a functional medicine conference in Maui and ended up meeting this guy on the plane. He said, you know, he was a naturopath and I started telling him my symptoms, what was going on. And he's like,

• 17:58Dr. Mark Hyman?

  oh, I mean, you should check. So that was what happened. And I was really serendipity. Otherwise I would not have known. But it took me, it was a good year plus of being sick until I really. Actually found someone who said, maybe you should look at this and you know, no, no doctor that I saw, traditional doctor ever said to me, oh, just maybe you have, I know something going on that's underneath, that's causing this infection, or whether it's mercury or toxins, or who knows what. I mean, there was so much, you know, so.

• 18:30Speaker 01

  As a, as a doctor and knowing all the information you know, how did you navigate that? Like knowing there was more to it, there needed to be answers, you know, just being kind of that patient in a clinical setting. What was that experience like?

• 18:44Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, well, I, I really, I was a patient and I had to, and I understood the helplessness and the fear and the anxiety around not being able to get answers and what that felt like. It was terrible. It was a really lonely, terrible experience to try to navigate all that on my own without any guidance or support. And so I feel like, you know, I'm, I'm in this moment where I, I was just having to kind of navigate almost in a vacuum and, and what I learned really wasn't helping me and I needed to go in a different direction. And that's really where I dove down the rabbit hole of functional medicine. That's where I understood the body was designed differently.

• 19:24Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Then I learned in medical school that, you know, really, really deeply understood the map of the human body in a way that I never, never learned. And then I was applying it to my patients and they were all getting better. And I was like, damn, this stuff works, you know, people with autoimmune diseases, with gut issues, the mood issues, metabolic health issues, with skin problems, with autism, with ADD, with dementia, with, I mean, just to name it, it was quite incredible to see the dramatic changes that happened to people's health. And I was like, what? Cause it was like, I was sort of shocked anytime someone would get better from doing the things that I said and following the principles of functional medicine. I was like, well, how did that happen? But once you begin to understand human biology, which we don't really in traditional

• 20:07Dr. Mark Hyman?

  medicine, then you can really start to use that map of this new biology to really help people get to the root cause of their, their issues and help them, you know, help them actually where, where traditional medicine can.

• 20:19Speaker 01

  As devastating as I imagine and challenging your health journey was, it was pivotal, I guess, for your career and the work that you do now with your patients as well.

• 20:26Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Totally.

• 20:27Speaker 01

  Okay. I want to jump back to the, to the back situation and your back surgeries. I want to go to that last one because I'm guessing that last surgery you've, again, you've, you've called it yourself, the Hail Mary surgery. Was that the most challenging one? Because I want to get into recovery and kind of hear about when maybe the most challenging point with your back was throughout your whole journey.

• 20:48Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Well, I mean, clearly that last one was the worst.

• 20:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:53Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And I think that I really didn't understand at that moment, like how sick I was. And it all happened very fast. I mean, when you have a small space in your back and you get an infection and an abscess, it just takes off like wildfire. And so, you know, that last surgery, Hail Mary surgery was, was, I was pretty sick. I was septic, had an infection, fever. I couldn't move. I couldn't sit up in bed. I was, I'd lost 25 pounds. I was just a skeleton. And the surgeon was like, look, you know, I'd already been in bed for a month. And he's like, look, we don't really know if we

• 21:33Dr. Mark Hyman?

  can help you, but otherwise you're going to die. So we should do the surgery. And I was like, okay. And they were like, well, you have a five to 10% chance of making it through the surgery. And I was like, wow, okay. So I had really had to see my family, say goodbye, my wife, my friends, you know, to wrap up, lose sense of my business, you know, it was quite, it was, it was quite an intense experience. And then they went in and they, they did a full fusion. They removed the abscess. They cleaned it all up, washed it out. They, you know, put in big drains. I had a scar that was like, you know, probably a foot and a half long on my back. You know, I was pretty weak.

• 22:14Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I couldn't walk. I couldn't literally walk. The first day I got up after surgery, I had a walker and I had a physical therapist behind me, holding me up because my legs couldn't support my weight. And I, and I had to literally build myself back up from that. And I put on 25 pounds of muscle in about eight or nine months of working really hard and recovering was really hard. I mean, I needed to use all the tools at my disposal. And at 65, I had no idea that I could actually recover at, at that age. It was, it was something that actually was doable. I didn't know. I mean, I knew if I was younger, I'd probably be fine. I'd been around the block and I was like, am I going to

• 22:56Dr. Mark Hyman?

  get back from this? And the truth is now I'm healthier than ever. I'm stronger than ever. I, I have no pain. I'm really doing well. I have like a commitment, like I, to me, to go say, oh, you know, I'm like, whatever. It, I have to do it. It's not, it's not like a, a negotiable for me. It's, it's, I have to move my body. I have to stretch. I have to get strong every day. And I put that time in, it's just compounding interest. It's like anything you put, you put in half an hour a day, it makes a difference over the course of a year and a half. And so that's really, that's really important. And then it taught me a lot about what, what it takes to actually heal, recover.

• 23:37Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Took a lot of protein that I needed, a lot of nutrients that I needed, but I gave myself the time to rest. I mean, I slept four hours a night for six weeks, so I had to recover my sleep. It was, was a lot. But, you know, I think it taught me that, that the body has this incredible repair capacity, this incredible renewal capacity, that all we have to do is really just do the right things. That we need to understand how the body works and provide the right inputs and the body can thrive.

• 24:03Speaker 01

  Um, going back to that moment when you were told, okay, we're going to go into this last surgery. We don't know what the outcome is going to be. Are you, if it's not too personal, are you kind of able to share what was going through your mind in that moment? Just kind of potentially facing your own mortality and saying goodbye to your friends and family? What was that experience like for you?

• 24:22Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I mean, it was weird because I was quite at peace with it all. I mean, I've lived a really good life. I've made a great contribution to the world. I have, you know, done well with my friends and my family. And I feel like I've, I lived a full life. And so I was, I was at peace and I was okay with, with pausing whatever was this incarnation and moving on if I had to. I didn't want to, obviously, but I, I was really quite at peace. And I thought, you know, this could be it. This really could be it. And, and I just had to surrender to it. And it was very peaceful. I wasn't, I wasn't scared. I wasn't sad. I was a little sad, but I wasn't, you know, it was, yeah,

• 25:06Dr. Mark Hyman?

  it was, it was an interesting thing to recognize that I knew I wasn't my thoughts. I wasn't my emotions. I wasn't my body. That there, there was something else that was inside of me that I felt like true, that I, I felt at peace. And so I didn't, I wasn't attached to this whole physical reality that we're in.

• 25:26Speaker 01

  That's beautiful. Do you think that your experience with like spirituality, psychedelics, do you think those experiences kind of helped you come to that moment?

• 25:38Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Absolutely. I mean, I've been, you know, on a spiritual path most of my life and, you know, studied Buddhism and psychedelics and things like I began to really understand myself and my brain and my, my mind. And so it was really, yeah, really very, very powerful and, and very, you know, deep experience. So I, I feel quite empowered and peace for how I went through it all and taught me a lot about, you know, how to think about life.

• 26:01Speaker 01

  Now that you've kind of had a second life, you're like a cat that has nine lives. Coming out of that experience, how do you think that, has it changed your view on like longevity, what that means to you, what a healthy life means to you? I know you had said that exercise is now like a non-negotiable. Is there anything else?

• 26:21Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, the things that really matter come to the forefront, like family, friends, community, your health. These are things that are just the most important things in life. And we get distracted and we get pulled in a million directions, but the, the reality is that every day is precious and we don't know how long we're going to be here. And to me, it's really about just savoring every day and being in gratitude every day and, you know, actually meeting, meeting the moment fully as opposed to, you know, just being distracted and jumping around and chasing something. So it's just made me way more at peace and also much more committed to the things that really matter in my life.

• 27:05Speaker 01

  Going back to the recovery piece, I know you had kind of given us some broad ideas about the things and the tools that helped you out, but I want to get more specific. I know you said you increased like your protein intake and you really learned a lot about that sleep. Were there any other specific tools that you used coming out of that final surgery? I mean?

• 27:23Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I mean, yes. I mean, I, I was, I was, I was using all the things that I knew from a nutrition perspective to improve my overall muscle gain again, which was a higher protein intake. I used creatine. I also used a lot of, a lot of phytochemically rich foods that are anti-inflammatory. And also made sure that I was working on my microbiome because I'd been on a lot of antibiotics. I was taking a lot of prebiotics and probiotics and trying to restore my gut health. Those are the main things that I focused on, food, exercise, sleep. And I also did a lot of physical therapy, a lot of body work, a lot of dry needling,

• 28:07Dr. Mark Hyman?

  just really to kind of make tissues and body moving again. So I really, at first I couldn't even do anything. I could just lay on the floor and put a band around my knees and open my knees up and that was it. That was my whole exercise routine. You know, I could lift a five pound weight and then now, you know, it's like I'm doing 50 pound weights or more. So I feel like it's just, your body has, has the capacity to kind of slowly rebuild itself after being even in a catastrophic situation like I was. And I think most people would give up. I think I, I have a very strong will and I have a very strong mind and I, I was, I was like, I know that I can climb out of this. And, and the truth is that for most of the first six to 70 months, I was still in severe pain. I was still really weak. I was still really quite tired and, and I, no

• 28:52Dr. Mark Hyman?

  matter how bad I felt, no matter how sick I was, no matter how exhausted, I would just make sure I got my physical therapy and I worked, went to the gym and I did what I had to do despite, you know, feeling so badly. Like it was absolutely critical. So I think, I think for people who, you know, often like, oh, I stubbed my toe, I'm not gonna exercise. You know, I think, you know, there's always a way. There's always a way. Um, you know, I, and there's always something you can do. And, you know, whether it's just sitting in a chair or laying on a bed, or there's, there's ways you can move your body that actually will help you recover. So I think, I think people often are too quick to just give up. Uh, for me, it was, it was just really this sort of desire to

• 29:35Dr. Mark Hyman?

  keep, to get my body back. And it was, it was quite amazing to see like the transformation. It took, it took like a while. I was, I lost half my blood volume. I was super anemic. I took a long time to make sure I had plenty of meat in order to actually to get my iron back up. Uh, cause I was, I lost half my blood. And so I think, you know, just all these things work together to synergize. I took the right supplements. I took things to help, you know, my, my inflammation. Uh, so yeah, it was, it was a comprehensive plan, but I, I was able to actually repair myself.

• 30:06Speaker 01

  You've mentioned in that kind of recovery period that you navigated depression. I imagine like being your body having one experience and then knowing in your brain, you know, the vitality you still have, the passion and the drive for life. How did you kind of navigate through, um, those darker moments of, of, of your mental health?

• 30:27Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's a great question. You know, I, I had physiologic depression. So, you know, I wasn't psychologically depressed and, and it was really interesting to see the distinction because you can be depressed, but there's also a part of you that's not depressed. How do I explain that? So the part of me that felt exhausted, depressed, no desire to do anything. But I also had this other part of me that knew that that was just, it was like having a sprained ankle. Like I knew I couldn't quite walk, but I knew, I knew it was gonna get better. I knew that it wasn't me. Like that it wasn't, I didn't identify with the depression and it was physiological. So my thyroid was messed up. My hormone, my testosterone was very low. Uh, you know, all the things that, my

• 31:10Dr. Mark Hyman?

  nutrient, I was very anemic. I mean, all the things that were going on, inflammation in my body, all drive depression. So it was a physiological depression and I, and I was able to really just have this other part of me that was aware and that knew and that wasn't afraid of it and knew that I would just have to keep going to walk my way through the rest of this, this recovery to get to a place where I could feel good again. So it took, it took quite a while. It took, you know, eight or nine months of really just hard work and feeling like crap all the time. I started to feel better. Yeah.

• 31:43Speaker 01

  I imagine then knowing the reason kind of, and like knowing it was situational was one helpful to, as you said, separate yourself from it. But then also too, do you think that contributed to your drive and your motivation to be like, I gotta get through this. I gotta show up every day. I have to exercise.

• 31:58Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I mean, it was really, it was really just, you know, being steady and consistent, focused and, you know, it was a, it was a powerful, yeah, it was, it was really a powerful moment of just like, you know, locking into what I had to do and I just had to do it. And it, it, it just, I was lucky I had support and I had, you know, people helping me, but it was, it wasn't simple.

• 32:23Speaker 01

  Switching gears slightly now and thinking more about like longevity and future and, and our bodies changing and time passing. As you have gotten older, how has your relationship with your body changed?

• 32:36Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, I'm much more focused on taking care of it. Well, I think, you know, I don't think there's any, any realm for, you know, kind of going off the reservation or letting myself go. Like I can't go more than like two days without exercising. I make sure I eat really well. I take my supplements. I'm focused on, you know, basics, you know, stress reduction, sleep habits, all the basic foundational things. It's, they're sort of non-negotiable. And for me, you know, it just, it made me realize that at any age, you know, that we can recover, we can get healthy. And I've done this with so many patients, you know, where they're really, even they're late 60s who are obese, diabetic, heart failure, kidneys going, you know, liver going. And these people

• 33:19Dr. Mark Hyman?

  can get better and they lose a hundred pounds, lose a hundred fifty pounds. I mean, the body, it's quite amazing when you see putting in the right inputs in how resilient we are. But most of us are just burdening our bodies and our minds with things that cause us to be sick. And that's all, that's all optional for most of us.

• 33:37Speaker 01

  Okay. You've called yourself a bit of a guinea pig in the past. I know you're always trying new things. I've seen your house. I've, I've seen all the fun experiments you get to. I'm thinking back to when we were in Austin and you walked into the recording room with some device on your head. You were trying some sort of red light therapy. Um, I want to quickly rapid fire mention some experiences, tools. Um, and I want you to let me know if you do actually personally use it. Cold plunges?

• 34:10Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Absolutely. Absolutely. I use them. I think they're great for inflammation, for mitochondrial activation, for increased mental clarity, focus. I mean, so they're, I think they're, they're really can be a useful tool. Not, they're not great for everybody, but I, I personally use them and like.

• 34:24Speaker 01

  What do you mean they're not great for everyone? What would be an example of someone they wouldn't be?

• 34:28Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Well, if you're ill or you're, you're thin, if some women in their, you know, in their luteal phase or second half of their cycle, you know, it can be challenging and, and some women don't actually feel that great from it. So you have to pay attention to what your body likes and doesn't like.

• 34:41Speaker 01

  And when do you do it? Around your training? Do you do it before? Are you doing it after?

• 34:45Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Usually before, you do it before in the morning or you can do it after, four hours after. If you do it right after, you're gonna reduce the muscle gain that you're trying to achieve. So you're, you won't get the hypertrophy or the increased muscle size.

• 34:57Speaker 01

  So in contrast to that, what about the sauna?

• 34:59Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Saunas are great. You can do a sauna after workout. I do saunas again, almost every day if I, if I can. Uh, there's a lot of science on the benefits of saunas and increases heat shock proteins that, that kind of gets rid of all the damaged, damaged proteins in your body. It helps your immune system, your native immune system. It helps your heart variability and metabolic health, cardiovascular health, uh, helps you, you know, a lot of toxins are excreted during, during sweating. So there's a lot of benefits to it.

• 35:28Speaker 01

  And so is it a dry sauna you're in? How long are you usually in for?

• 35:32Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I usually do like a couple of rounds of 15 minutes or 15 minutes cold plunge, 15 minutes cold plunge. So if I can do half an hour, I like that. You know, sometimes you can do more, but that's kind of a rare amount of time.

• 35:41Speaker 01

  What about continuous glucose monitors? Do you use them?

• 35:44Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I have used it in the past just to see as an example, to learn about it. I, I, I really metabolically very healthy. I have low insulin, I have low blood sugar, I have low A1C. I don't have, you know, any, any poor metabolic health markers. So I don't really need to track it. Um, and I don't really eat much sugar or starch anyway. So I think for people who are learning about their health, who have metabolic issues, who are overweight, I mean, like 93% of Americans are in poor metabolic health. I'm not in that 93%, but that doesn't mean that everybody else is. And, and they, they probably would benefit from knowing what, what's going on. Like at least a two or three week, uh, tracking of, okay, well, gee, I know if I eat a banana, my sugar spikes

• 36:25Dr. Mark Hyman?

  or geez, if I eat, you know, apples, I'm fine. Or, or gosh, I'm, you know, eating pasta and I, my, my, my sugar's fine. But if I eat bread, it's off the chart. You know, like, so you, you know, you really wanna know what's happening in your body. Everybody's different and you have to sort of find out what's right for you.

• 36:41Speaker 01

  What about wearables? I believe there is at least one that you use. Can you share?

• 36:46Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, I wearables. I think they're important to track. Uh, you know, I think people get obsessed with them. They can kind of over, overtake your life and people get, you know, kind of all anxious about their numbers. But as a way to see what's happening, what's impacting you. Like for example, you know, I went and had sushi last night and I had a little sake and I don't really drink very much, maybe once a month or a couple of months. And, you know, I had a little bit of sake, but it definitely affected my sleep. And I'm like, oh, you know, that's interesting. I see that and my score from 93 to 70. And I'm like, oh, okay. That's not good.

• 37:18Speaker 01

  So is Mark, I'm in hungover today?

• 37:20Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Uh, maybe. I, I, I didn't see, I was like very restless. I, I had a very restless night. So I don't know if I'm hungover. I only had enough to get hungover, but I, I'm very sensitive to it.

• 37:32Speaker 01

  Um, what about biological age testing?

• 37:34Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, biological age testing is, is a big, complex field and there are many, many ways to check your biological age through epigenetic clocks, through something called the need and pace, through calculated derivative calculations, uh, through organ age. And there's just so many different clocks. They're all different. There, there's a lot of science going on to determine like, you know, what are valid, what are not. If you use the same clock over and over again, then you see changes in your health. You'll see like, I got 10 years older on function health, biological age, which is a calculated number based on your biomarkers. So if there's inflammation or the things, it'll go up. So my, I got 10 years older after my surgery, but then over the last,

• 38:16Dr. Mark Hyman?

  you know, year, I've been able to get 10 years younger by reversing it. So you could, you know, as long as you're doing the same measurement, you can, you can kind of rely on the delta. It's really about, are you impacting it for the better or worse?

• 38:28Speaker 01

  Another hot topic that everyone's talking about right now, especially online is peptides. Do you use any peptides?

• 38:35Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yes. I think, you know, peptides are, are really not something quote new. They've been peptides, have been around for a long time. Insulin is a peptide that's been used since the twenties, 1920s. You know, GLP-1s are peptides. So Ozempic, those are peptides. Uh, and there's other peptides that are FDA approved, for example, for female sexual arousal disorder called by Lisi, uh, also known as PT141. So there's a lot of peptides that are in the market that are FDA approved, that are prescribed by doctors, that are part of medicine. Um, what's happening now is sort of this upsurge in, uh, interest in peptides, uh, for many different uses.

• 39:16Dr. Mark Hyman?

  The data is limited to mostly animals. There's, you know, safety data, there's, there's animal data. There's not a lot of large clinical trials. So it's really, you're really kind of experimenting with yourself. But I can tell you, like, there are, that I do use them. Like, for example, I use thymus and alpha one often when I travel. I don't get sick, or if I'm getting sick, I use that. BP157 is another peptide I'll often use for injury or repair of tissue. And there are mitochondrial peptides, there's growth hormone secretagogues that help growth hormone release. There's ones that help testosterone, there's one that help libido, there's ones that help inflammation, there's one that's help fight infection. So there's, there's so many different peptides,

• 39:59Dr. Mark Hyman?

  thousands and thousands of peptides that the body makes. And these are things that the body uses to regulate itself. So they're, like, they're, they're not new, but there, there's this interest in them and the way they're being prescribed is new. And the problem is, there's a, there's, you know, compounding pharmacies that now make them that can be high quality. There are gray market sites which sell it, which is not great, which is, you know, kind of unregulated, and those are getting shut down. There's a black market, which is sort of totally underground, like, in a peptide market from China and stuff. So I think there's, you want to work with a doctor, you want to work with someone who understands peptides, you want to work with a compounding pharmacy that's reputable. And you want to do this judiciously and understand that you're experimenting,

• 40:44Dr. Mark Hyman?

  because we just don't have the data on, on how these things work long term. Are they safe? You know, the animal data is limited, we need more human data. So that, that's really key. And the problem is, these often are not patentable. So there's not a lot of interest and investment in them, like Ozempic was, because they modified it to make it longer, and they put it in a pen, and they were able to kind of tweak it. So it's like proprietary, but it's, um, yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's important to understand that there are, there are many risks to it, and there's not a lot of data. And you want to, if you want to use them, be, be aware of this, and also use them with a trained practitioner who can help guide you. One of the things I talk about constantly with patients is the idea that the body isn't broken, it's just not getting what it means to do its job. That's really the whole promise

• 41:29Dr. Mark Hyman?

  of functional medicine. We're not playing whack-a-mole with symptoms. We're asking, what do the underlying systems need to actually function? And one of the tools I keep coming back to in my own routine is my Sunlight and Sama. Infrared therapy is one of the most underrated recovery inputs out there. And I say input intentionally, the same way I talk about sleep or nutrition. Not a luxury, it's a condition your body can use. What separates Sunlight specifically is their pulse IQ technology. It delivers red light plus near, mid, and far infrared wavelengths independently. So you're not just getting blended wavelengths plus heat, you're getting a targeted personalized session. If you're already dialed in on food and exercise, this is the piece most people are missing. Go to sunlighten.com and use the code HYMAN, you'll save up to $2,100 plus get free shipping.

• 42:15Dr. Mark Hyman?

  One of the biggest myths in health and wellness is that younger looking skin comes from what you put on your skin. The truth is that skin is often a reflection of what's happening inside your body. Chronic inflammation, oxidative stress, and poor hydration can all accelerate the visible signs of aging, no matter how many expensive products you use. And that's why me and my team recommend the Radiant Skin Duo from Peak. It combines two powerful tools for healthy aging. Sun Goddess Matcha provides antioxidant compounds that help combat oxidative stress while delivering calm, focused energy without the crash. And the BT Foundation is a beauty-focused electrolyte designed to support deep cell hydration with ingredients like hyaluronic acid, ceramides, and trace minerals. What

• 42:56Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I love is that this approach addresses two of the biggest drivers of aging in the skin, inflammation and dehydration. Together, they help support brighter, healthier looking skin, while also supporting energy, metabolism, and overall wellness. It's a simple daily ritual that helps nourish your body from the inside out. To try the Radiant Skin Duo, visit peaklife.com/hyman and receive 15% off. That's P-I-Q-U-E life.com/hyman.

• 43:23Speaker 01

  I know you just did a really great valuable episode with Dr. Tina Moore, where you also went into this as well, too, specifically about like GLP-1s, which we can also link in the show notes as well, too. The next one we have is IV therapy. Is that something you personally use?

• 43:38Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yes. I mean, I think, you know, IV therapy was a really key thing for me in order to actually recover from my chronic fatigue. I use a lot of glutathione, vitamin C, B vitamin cocktails. I use a lot of things to help me detoxify. So IV therapy was, was quite helpful for me. I think, you know, there's lots of IVs that people can do. There's different therapies that you can do. There's minerals, there's vitamins, there's amino acids, there's phytochemicals, there's phospholipids, there's glutathione, there's chelators. It's, it's a whole field of intravenous medical therapy. It's been around for quite a while. It's not in traditional medicine, but, but I found it very helpful in a subset

• 44:21Dr. Mark Hyman?

  of patients who really do much better when they, when they get IV therapy as part of their overall plan. But it's not just a standalone treatment.

• 44:27Speaker 01

  Is there something people should be mindful of, like, if they are going to explore those kinds of therapies?

• 44:32Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, again, you want to, you know, you want to make sure you're working with a reputable doctor, they check your blood work. In other words, if you get a high dose of vitamin C IV, you want to make sure you check something called G6PD, which if you have, is genetic variation, it can make IV vitamin C quite harmful. So you need to know, you need to know what you're doing. You need to have a practitioner who's trained in this. You need to do it in a reputable clinic or center where they're, they follow sterile technique, where they, where they source materials from the right pharmacy, pharmacies. So it, it is, it's important to do it right. Next Health is actually a great company that we're affiliated with through my practice. I don't have any direct involvement, but they're, they're, they're, we work with the Ultra Wellness Center and our patients to help, you know, get therapies that we don't offer there. And because they're in many, many cities,

• 45:15Dr. Mark Hyman?

  we're just in Massachusetts. And so we, we were collaborating with them. And they do a lot of IV therapy, and they have a really great, a great model.

• 45:22Speaker 01

  The next one is red light therapy. And I do know you use this because I remember after your bike accident, we would meet with you, and it was fascinating to see how quickly you had recovered. And I remember you mentioning, at that time, that was a huge marker in it. So can you explain your experience with red light therapy?

• 45:41Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, I mean, red light therapy reduces inflammation, activates mitochondria, increases ATP production, and, and tissue repair and healing. And so I, I used it when I was in an accident, and I had a lot of bumps and bruises and scrapes, and it really accelerated wound healing tremendously. So I think, I think, you know, for many, many purposes, it can be helpful, but it's a great regenerative technique. And photobiomitulation is a well-established sort of medical procedure now. And it's, there's a lot of literature about the benefits of it.

• 46:08Speaker 01

  So do you just have the panels? How often are you using it? How long do you use it for?

• 46:13Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, I have a, I have a big panel that goes over most of my body. And I, you know, it usually goes for 20 minutes or so. You don't have to do it that long. It could be very helpful.

• 46:23Speaker 01

  The next one is stem cells.

• 46:24Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, I mean, stem cells are, are something that are, again, part of medicine, that are undergoing a lot of research. They're being used in clinical practice in America. They're also being used, you know, in other countries in a different way, because it can expand the cells, which we can't quite do, although some, some of the laws are changing around that now. So I think, I think they're, they're basically regenerative, part of what we call regenerative medicine, which is using things that are the body's own repair systems to optimize your health. So that, for example, it will help to, you know, activate your own body's healing system, and induce inflammation, and increase tissue repair, and kind of create, you know, an improvement overall health. So I think for select patients, it's

• 47:08Dr. Mark Hyman?

  expensive, but it can be helpful. I've had it in joints, I've had it in, you know, intravenously. And I think, you know, I am willing to experiment myself. I don't, so I recommend to some patients. But, but I've noticed a difference, and it does, it does help improve my overall well-being and health.

• 47:24Speaker 01

  The last one we have is exosomes.

• 47:26Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Exosomes are part of stem cells, or the active little packets of, of information and repair factors that are basically produced in stem cells. And the exosomes are excreted by the stem cells, and then gets distributed throughout the body. So you can actually just take the exosomes directly. The benefit of that is you're not getting any of the DNA of the stem cells, you're not potentially creating an inflammatory reaction, you're using your own stem cells, you know, you're often, well, they're older, or if you're using umbilical stem cells, sometimes there's a risk of an immune reaction. So there's always, you know, some downsides, but, but the exosomes are quite safe, and are actually, you know, very helpful for inflammation. I remember when I had COVID, and I had severe brain fog, and I couldn't focus, I couldn't think, and I was just struggling for weeks

• 48:11Dr. Mark Hyman?

  after. And I did some intravenous exosomes, and it went away immediately. It was like quite amazing.

• 48:17Speaker 01

  I want to switch gears now, and I want to talk more about like the wellness industry. So you mentioned, you've been in the industry for almost 40 years now. Is that what you said at the start?

• 48:26Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, well, I've been a doctor for 40 years. I've been doing this for 30 years, functional medicine, yeah.

• 48:30Speaker 01

  So I'm sure you've seen many things over the decades, and you've seen it go from like, functional medicine not being as popular, and it being more of a niche movement, to becoming now a massive industry. I want to hear your thoughts on where it's going, what worries you, et cetera. So to start out, what's something that you're seeing in mainstream media, the culture on social media, that's making you cringe?

• 48:56Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Well, that's a great question. I mean, just to be transparent before I answer that, is, you know, I, I am in the industry, I have co-founded Function Health, that is helping people access their own biology and bring it online. And, and, you know, there's something I believe is important, that people get empower their own data. I, you know, have this podcast, I have sponsors, I, you know, I'm definitely part of it. So if, if I just want to be transparent about that. As far as the The things that makes me cringe, I think, you know, what I think I I kind of see is this set of over indexing on the things that are secondary to health, not primary.

• 49:38Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And so the basic things of good nutrition and exercise and sleep and stress reduction and management, taking your basic supplements is minimized while things like, you know, peptides or exosomes or stem cells or red light therapy or whatever is is over emphasized. And I think that's a problem. So that that kind of makes me a little concerned where people are looking for a quick fix. I go, yeah, but just take a shot, but don't bother learning about nutrition. Don't bother working out and building and maintaining your muscle. So I think I think it's important for people to really understand that if they don't deal with the foundational things, all these other secondary enhancements around health or

• 50:21Dr. Mark Hyman?

  biohacking, it doesn't make any sense. And it's kind of a waste of money, you know, eating McDonald's every day and doing red light therapy. Well, it's not gonna help.

• 50:31Speaker 01

  One of the questions we were gonna ask you is, is there such thing as people kind of going too much the other way now of over testing, over supplementing, over restricting their diets, and kind of maybe losing sight of, I guess, those those main principles, I guess, is kind of, you've answered that question for me.

• 50:49Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I think it's true. I mean, I think like the diagnostics are different. I think people need to know what's happening under the hood. And I think we're finding people think that people have not known about their health and are saving lives. It's real. And I and I've been doing extensive diagnostic testing on tens of thousands of people for decades. And there's so much that is being missed that is directly impacting people's quality of life, their health and their risk of future disease. There are things that are modifiable, that are fixable, that are treatable, and they're often totally ignored by traditional medicine. So I co-founded Function Health in order to empower people with their own data to make it very affordable. It's a dollar a day. You get a really deep dive on your health. A lot of, you know, a lot of the competitors say they're doing like a hundred

• 51:33Dr. Mark Hyman?

  plus biomarkers or not. They're doing derivative biomarkers. So they're calculating a triglyceride HDL ratio and counting that as a biomarker. We're doing literally 160 different blood tests for $365. And and that's for a year membership. And then, of course, you're gonna add on things, you can do imaging. But it empowers people with their data. And so I think that, you know, for me, I want, I recognize that traditional medicine is not going to solve the people's problems, that I believe function health with the help of AI and with all of a person's data, including their history, their family history, their EMR, their lab testing, their wearables, imaging, you put all that together, their genomics, or stool

• 52:15Dr. Mark Hyman?

  testing, it creates a picture of health that's never been possible before. It still is important for people to focus on the foundational principles of diet, exercise, sleep, stress management, and optimizing their nutrient status and announcing their hormones. But you know, there's so much more that can happen when you really know what's what's going on with your body. And people are walking around with with all sorts of stuff that they don't need to, that if they knew what was going on under the hood, they could they could really address and fix.

• 52:43Speaker 01

  I'm fully with you that it's been so great to see the awareness of the wellness industry grow. And we are very involved in it. We believe in it. We're very passionate about it. But I do know there's also the rise with that of many different trends, or maybe individuals who are not doctors that are claiming they're experts on things. So when something new emerges, when are you personally willing to experiment with it, be the guinea pig of it? So how do you decide when there's enough evidence to experiment on something that's new and maybe cutting edge? And when does it kind of cross the line into maybe just like a trend or hype?

• 53:21Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, I mean, it's framing this different bars that I set for myself or my patients. So I may be willing to try things that are a little on the edge because I am willing to be a guinea pig. I think for me, it's like, you know, what is the evidence? What is the basic biological mechanism and plausibility? Does this make sense? Is there some data on it? Is it safety data? Is it animal data? Is there some directionality to it? You know, what are the risks of it? You know, if there's something that's, you know, higher risk, then I it's it's no different. For example, I will happily take vitamin D, and I know there's no really downside risk unless I overdose. I know it has a lot of benefit. I know there's evidence to it. Same thing with creatine. I know there's no, there's

• 54:04Dr. Mark Hyman?

  really no significant downside if you're if you're healthy and can, you know, exercise with that, and it'll help your brain, it'll help your muscle. So there's things that I use that I feel are pretty solid. And then there's things that are emerging that, you know, we just don't know about. And for example, peptides are one of those things. So will I experiment with those things? Yes. But again, I'm very aware that, you know, what's the risk reward? If something has a high risk, then I'm probably not gonna do it. For example, metformin has been talked about as a drug to help with longevity. Now, I've really looked carefully at the research. And while it does do a really important thing, which is help with insulin resistance and blood sugar control, and it works on a particular

• 54:46Dr. Mark Hyman?

  enzyme called AMPK to activate it, which is good in longevity, it also inhibits something called mitochondrial complex one, which makes it hard to build muscle. So if you're taking metformin, and you do strength training versus taking a placebo and do strength training after 12 weeks, the metformin group won't have built muscle, and the other group will. And so to me, you know, there's a risk there. Now, I don't want to impact my ability to maintain or gain muscle as I age. So for me, I would never take metformin, even though a lot of people are doing it for longevity. I don't think it's a good idea, given that that that particular mechanism and mitochondria is so important. So that's kind of how I look

• 55:28Dr. Mark Hyman?

  at things. I try to understand what is going on? What are the risks? How do I? How do I navigate this? And what, you know, what makes sense? For example, getting an IV of vitamins is very low risk, other than just the injection site or, you know, getting infection or bleeding, which can happen, but it's very rare. So I think I think I I do, I do a hierarchy of of of risk. And if something is a potential benefit and risk is low, cost is okay, you know, I'll do it. If something's gonna cost me a hundred grand and it's safe, I might not do it, you know, if there's not a lot of evidence. But, you know, if it costs me, you know, a hundred bucks, I might do it.

• 56:04Speaker 01

  You mentioned there metformin and overhyped is not the correct medical professional word, but you kind of mentioned essentially it was overhyped at the moment, or you saw, I guess, reasons to not do it. Is there something to counter that that you think is underrated right now, that people are not pursuing enough, or science isn't leaning into enough that you think they should?

• 56:26Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Is there a treatment or modality I think would be would be helpful for people?

• 56:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's kind of overlooked and and and not as popular at the moment.

• 56:36Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, I mean, I think I think, you know, helping people really understand how to reset their gut is important. And I think it's not well understood in traditional medicine. People don't really know how to do it. Functional medicine has a whole methodology called the five R program. It's really about resetting the gut and the microbiome. So it's really important to like, really help people get get the right kind of gut health in order to help their overall health. So that's kind of one thing I think is is quite important that's often ignored. I think there are some other treatments out there that I think are quite interesting, that need a lot more research. One is called phospholipid exchange. And

• 57:18Dr. Mark Hyman?

  in, you know, all of our toxins end up in our cells, our mitochondria are very stressed by our lives, and it's very hard to to repair, rebuild our cells and tissues. This is more like a cellular repair methodology that's been developed called the PK protocol. And I've used it with a number of patients. I've used it myself. It's quite profound, I think, in terms of its ability to detoxify all the environmental chemicals we're exposed to, to rebuild our cell membranes, to improve our mitochondrial function, to reduce oxidative stress, inflammation. And I and I found it very clinically useful. It's not something that is patentable. There's no big pharma company behind it. Nobody's putting a lot of money into researching it. But I, you know, use it with patients with Alzheimer's

• 58:00Dr. Mark Hyman?

  and Parkinson's and, you know, all kinds of, all kinds of health issues, chronic fatigue. And it really, it really can be a powerful modality. So I think that's something I think is out there that doesn't have enough data or research that really should be focused on.

• 58:13Speaker 01

  So we've kind of gone into, we've been talking a lot to Dr. Mark Hyman. And I want to switch gears now, and I want to learn more about Mark. Who is Mark when he's not being Dr. Mark Hyman? So I want to know, what are you up to when you are not busy working? What are you doing in your spare time?

• 58:30Dr. Mark Hyman?

  What am I doing?

• 58:34Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I'm living. I'm trying to enjoy life. I exercise. I like to ride my bike. I like to yoga. I like to be with my friends. I like to cook. I like to read. I like to dance. I like to travel. I like to ski. I do a lot of things. I like to spend time with my family, my new grandson I just, you know, saw, he's very cute.

• 58:59Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I never, never really lack for things to do or to enjoy. I think community is very, very important to me. So connecting with people, building relationships, having the time to really invest in in the people you love is really important. And I think that's something we neglect in our society. We don't spend time and prioritize that. In Europe, they're much more about like, social connection and time together and enjoying life. And we're all just so driven and focused and on everything and on our devices. And I think for me, I, you know, I just had an amazing trip to Greenland with, you know, a whole bunch of friends. And we got to dance and play and have fun and see part of the world

• 59:41Dr. Mark Hyman?

  that we'd no one had seen. And and, you know, nobody had their devices on all the time. There was no service. We were out there in the middle of nowhere. And I and I felt like so happy, you know, just to be. It was just a time to be.

• 59:54Speaker 01

  That's beautiful. So you mentioned there that you're with some of your closest friends. We want to know, what is something that your closest friends might tease you about?

• 1:00:02Dr. Mark Hyman?

  We had a very, we had a very fun thing on the boat where where we were gonna do the 10 day detox for the whole boat, about 150 people. And then after the first day, there was mutiny on the boat. And then people were freaking out that they couldn't have their wine or their bread or their wine. And so there was a whole

• 1:00:23Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Buffet line and there was the just the healthy, you know, food and there was like the not Dr. Hyman approved food and so I had these signs in front of all the food that said not Dr. Hyman approved. So basically people were making fun of me all the whole thing about Dr. Hyman approved and uh, and it was pretty funny.

• 1:00:43Speaker 01

  Once I found out what the 10 day detox actually was, they they got a little cold feet, I guess.

• 1:00:48Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Well, yeah, well, we probably wasn't marketed the best way to them.

• 1:00:52Speaker 01

  We want to know what's something that you would say you're terrible at?

• 1:00:55Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Uh, singing. I can't play an instrument. I, I like to sing, but it doesn't sound great. And I, and I, and I, you know, I don't have it and I don't play an instrument. I like, I could probably play a few chords on the guitar, but I would wish really I was, I was able to do that. It makes me so happy to hear the musicians.

• 1:01:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, music is, is an amazing thing. What is something that people assume about you that's actually completely wrong?

• 1:01:19Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I, it's a great question. I actually don't know the answer because I don't, I don't pay too much attention. I think people project onto me a lot of things and I think people, uh, you know, they idolize some idea version of me and they don't realize I'm just a regular human. And, uh, you know, I think they don't realize that I also eat ice cream and cookies.

• 1:01:42Speaker 01

  I still like that answer though. It's a good one. Um, what's something you've become less serious about as you've gotten older?

• 1:01:47Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Less serious? You mean less, less, uh, focused on or less?

• 1:01:51Speaker 01

  You could take it either way, but let's say less focused on.

• 1:01:54Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I was quite obsessed with, with bringing functional medicine to the world and I'm not any less obsessed about it. Um, but I did it in a way that neglected my own wellbeing and drove myself really hard for a long time. And so I'm in a place now where, um, it's much more important for me to just, to just be at a pace that is sustainable, uh, and that, that I can focus and do good work, but not have it consume my whole life. So to what some ways I'm less serious about, you know, just working 14, 16, 18 hours a day, you know, settle for eight.

• 1:02:34Speaker 01

  I imagine too, when you're passionate about something, when it's had an impact on you personally, I remember talking to you, you, you had said, cause we had, I kind of asked you, like, you could have maintained being a doctor and practicing functional medicine, but at some point in your career, you decided to become more public. You decided to write a book. You decided to start sharing it more broadly. And I kind of asked what that turning point was. And correct me if I'm wrong, but you had kind of mentioned you, you were just so, um, it had had such an impact on your life. You almost wanted to like scream it from the rooftops. Am I correct?

• 1:03:08Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah. I mean, you know, when I got sick and I was so ill and then I discovered a model of medicine, a way of thinking that provided a different map for the body and helped me recover and help my patients recover. I was simultaneously both excited and, and angry. And I was angry that I didn't learn this in medical school. I was angry that the system was so resistant to this way of thinking. And I, I know it's true, you know, yes, we need studies. Yes, we need more research. Yes, we need, you know, better data, but I can tell you from treating thousands, literally tens of thousands of patients with this approach

• 1:03:53Dr. Mark Hyman?

  that it works. It doesn't work all the time for everybody completely. And yes, there's things that are hard to manage and do deal with, but for most of the things people suffer from today in the modern world, we have a much better roadmap with functional medicine and a much better way to help people recover from things that are often quote incurable. And we're doing a whole podcast series called the incurables where, where people had things that were, you know, impossible to recover from like MS and they get better. So these are, you know, these are the things that are really important. People understand that there's, there's actually a methodology. And so, uh, when I first sort of realized

• 1:04:34Dr. Mark Hyman?

  this, I was like, I, I have to tell the world. Like I can't just do this and sit in my office. I have to write a book. I have to tell the story and then I have to write another one and another one. And the more I learned, the more I learned. And then, you know, I was learning about metabolism. So I wrote also metabolism, my second book. And then I, and then I was seeing all these people with mental health issues and neurodegenerative issues get better from autism to Alzheimer's, ADD, depression to OCD to bipolar. I was like, what the hell is going on here? And I wrote a book called the Ultra Mind Solution, which was really important and part of our brain shaping academies about how do we take all that and bring that back into, into, into our, you know, discourse around how

• 1:05:18Dr. Mark Hyman?

  to help people with any kind of psychiatric or neurodegenerative issue because we, we now have the knowledge of how to do this. And I, and I wrote this book just out of seeing the, the phenomenon, you know, like Albert San Giorgi, who's the guy who discovered vitamin C. He said, discovery consists in seeing what everybody else has seen and thinking what no one else has thought. So, you know, when, when, when I see a patient with MS, I'm not thinking this person has MS. I'm thinking this person could have Lyme disease, could have mercury poisoning, could have gut issues, could have infections, could have a lot of things that are causing it. And, and my job is to really not just take it at face value. So that, that's really the, the, the thing that's driving me is, is

• 1:06:02Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I, I think we have to, we have to, uh, move forward and get people the, the solutions to these problems that they really have mostly been, you know, badly treated by traditional medicine. Not, not that they're not trying to do a good job. They are, they're using the best tools they have, but it's the wrong, it's the wrong tool. Like you can't, you know, you can't open a can opener with this. I mean, I can't open a can with a spoon. You know, like, I mean, maybe you can, I don't know, but it's tough. I have to like jam it in. But I think we just, we just don't have the right tools. And so functional medicine is a whole different set of constructs, of lenses, of a map for the human body. It's really focused on the laws of biology and, and the tools are agnostic. It can be anything,

• 1:06:47Dr. Mark Hyman?

  but it can be drugs, it can be surgery, it can be a vitamin, it can be, you know, chromatic, whatever. Food is medicine, but it's really understanding how to apply those from a root cause perspective.

• 1:06:57Speaker 01

  So we just talked about something that you have become less serious or focused on. I want to counter that with what's something you've become more serious or focused on, um, as you've gotten older.

• 1:07:06Dr. Mark Hyman?

  For my personal health or for my work in the world?

• 1:07:08Speaker 01

  Um, whatever comes to mind first.

• 1:07:11Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Well, the first thing that came to mind, I mean, other than, uh, doubling down on strength training, which I'd never did my whole life, um, uh, until I was 59 is, is for me, uh, no, I'm 66 and I've spent my life trying to bring functional medicine into the world. I think it's, it's, it's happened in an incremental way, but it's not really still accessible to people. And I think that the thing I'm most excited about is, is how function health can really bring democratized healthcare at scale based on root cause medicine to millions, if not billions of people and using AI to help navigate

• 1:07:51Dr. Mark Hyman?

  massive data sets into a coherent map of your body and what's happening now and what you're at for in the future and how to work with all that in a way that, that really will transform medicine and healthcare in a way we've never seen before. So to me, this is as big a discovery as the internet, as, you know, discovering bacteria or like, you know, just penicillin. I mean, this is a huge, huge paradigm shift in medicine. Um, it's like as big as the earth is not flat paradigm shift. So to me, it's never going to happen from inside the institutions that hold on to it. It has to happen from the outside. And that's really what functional health is. It's like a, a way for people to access healthcare and health and their own health in a way that's never been possible

• 1:08:36Dr. Mark Hyman?

  before in human history. So that's what I'm most excited about.

• 1:08:39Speaker 01

  Um, so I want to kind of wrap up with a couple of final questions here. Um, after more than 30 years, nearly 40 years of practicing medicine, um, what do you understand about health today that you didn't understand when you first became a doctor?

• 1:08:54Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I mean, it's quite simple. I think when I first became a doctor, I sort of learned the body as a bunch of different discrete organs and specialties. And now, uh, I see the body as a network, as an interconnected web of functions that, um, are in this beautiful dance and that get imbalanced when there's different insults. And that's really how we need to think about health. So that, for me, that's, that's the, the biggest shift.

• 1:09:23Speaker 01

  Piggybacking off of that, you, if, correct me if I'm wrong on this, but you began as a family physician in rural Idaho. That was your beginning, right?

• 1:09:30Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yes.

• 1:09:30Speaker 01

  When you graduated? Okay.

• 1:09:31Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:32Speaker 01

  So you, were you around 30, 32 at that point?

• 1:09:35Dr. Mark Hyman?

  30, I was 30.

• 1:09:37Speaker 01

  Wow. Okay. If 30 year old Mark Hyman were sitting across from you right now, what would surprise him the most about what you believe today?

• 1:09:47Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Around medicine?

• 1:09:48Speaker 01

  It could be a personal, uh, realization or, or.

• 1:09:51Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I mean, for me, the biggest thing I would say that would surprise the 30 year old would be that, that I would have been able to be part of something that is just transforming all of healthcare and medicine in a way that I never dreamed possible. I think it just, it would have astounded me to think that I could be part of a movement and even a company like Function Health that, that can really transform medicine and healthcare ads in a way that, that, that is as big as anything we've ever had in medicine.

• 1:10:23Speaker 01

  You've recently become a grandfather, which is a big chapter in an individual's life. Has that changed what you want longevity for or what you think about your legacy should be?

• 1:10:33Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yes. I mean, I think it's important, you know, to think about.

• 1:10:38Dr. Mark Hyman?

  How do, how do I keep myself healthy so I can show up and be there for my grandson? And how, how can I be a model for how to live and how to be in the world and how to love and how to, you know, just be a good human? And so for me, keeping myself in good shape and keeping my body working and, and taking care of myself is this huge priority because, you know, now at this point in my life, I get to, you know, I enjoy all the blessings that, that come after living a full, good life. And I have tremendous abundance and friends and community and family and I, and I want to be able to show up for it.

• 1:11:21Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So, you know, for me, you know, like, I, it kind of reminded me last night, like I had the Saki, I liked it, it was okay. But like, I don't really need to do that anymore. Like I just, it's probably not worth it in terms of the cost, you know? So I think, I think it's just, it's just trying to just think about what are those things that really matter and how do I want to spend my time and what's precious?

• 1:11:42Speaker 01

  Okay, I have two more. First one is of everything you've accomplished so far, what are you most proud of?

• 1:11:48Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I think I'm most proud of the persistence that I've had to stay true to what I believe and what I know is true, which is that, that we got the wrong map for the body when I was in middle school and there's a different map, there's a different understanding of human biology that, that we had these laws of biology that were really not taught to us. And, and to me, that's the thing I'm most proud of, that, that this whole field has advanced, that has moved forward and then now people are know functional medicine, there are people all over the world doing functional medicine. And, and it was sort of a non-existent thing when I was 30 years ago.

• 1:12:28Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And that, you know, also that, you know, to take function from nothing, an idea a few years ago to, you know, a substantial company that's changing people's lives.

• 1:12:38Speaker 01

  Amazing. Our final question is, what are you still most curious about?

• 1:12:45Dr. Mark Hyman?

  What am I still most curious about? I mean, I'm just, I'm just fascinated by human biology. I'm just fascinated by, by the mystery of how we're built and how we're made and how we work and how things relate and connect to one another. And I just, I'm just sort of flabbergasted by the magic that's really the human body. And I just, I still kind of want to learn all the time, how do things work? Why is this happening? What about this biology? Just kind of going on the rabbit hole of, it's kind of nerdy rabbit hole of like, you know, functional medicine and biology.

• 1:13:21Speaker 01

  Well, after grilling you for over an hour here, I just want to say thank you for your time, for your honesty, your openness, and for your willingness to answer all my questions, Mark. That's all I have for you today.

• 1:13:34Dr. Mark Hyman?

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

• 1:14:19Dr. Mark Hyman?

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

• 1:15:03Dr. Mark Hyman?

  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.