Dr. Mark Hyman: How To Reclaim Your Health In A Food System Designed To KILL You

Welcome back to the School of Greatness. Today, I sit down with renowned physician and 15-time New York Times bestselling author Dr. Mark Hyman to uncover the shocking truth about America's health crisis and food system. Dr. Hyman reveals how our modern food industry is literally designed to make us sick, with 6 out of 10 Americans now suffering from chronic disease. But there's hope - through simple dietary and lifestyle changes, we can take back control of our health. Dr. Hyman shares inspiring patient success stories, breaks down exactly what's wrong with our food system, and provides practical steps anyone can take to start healing their body naturally. This conversation is a wake-up call about the state of our health and an empowering guide to reclaiming control of your wellbeing. Skip the waitlist and get EARLY access to Dr. Hyman's Function Health! Use the code GREATNESS100In this episode you will learn:The shocking truth about how 90% of the $4.1 trillion spent on healthcare in America goes to treating preventable chronic diseasesWhy ultra-processed foods are driving the epidemic of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer - and how to eliminate them from your dietThe five essential steps anyone can take to start reversing chronic illness and optimizing their health naturallyHow belly fat acts as a "toxic organ" in your body and the most effective ways to eliminate itWhy getting healthy is a team sport and how to build the right support system for sustainable lifestyle changesFor more information go to https://www.lewishowes.com/1695For more Greatness text PODCAST to +1 (614) 350-3960More SOG episodes we think you’ll love:Dr. David Perlmutter – greatness.lnk.to/1693SCDr. William Li – greatness.lnk.to/1410SCGlucose Goddess – greatness.lnk.to/1575SC Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

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

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  Six out of 10 Americans will have a chronic disease in their lifetime. Is that correct?

• 0:04Mark Hyman?

  No.

• 0:05Lewis Howes?

  Six out of 10 Americans today have a chronic illness.

• 0:07Mark Hyman?

  Six out of 10 have it now.

• 0:09Lewis Howes?

  We went from relatively healthy nation to one of the sixth nations in the world. Do you believe our food system is designed to help us heal or to kill us?

• 0:19Mark Hyman?

  Oh, that's easy.

• 0:21Mark Hyman?

  It's designed to kill us. Physician and wellness expert Dr. Mark Hyman.

• 0:25Speaker 02

  14 New York Times bestsellers, none other than Dr. Mark Hyman.

• 0:30Lewis Howes?

  We're spending more and more money. It's one of $5 in our economy. We're throwing more and more drugs on everybody, getting sicker and sicker. We're always asking why. I'm sorry, if another country was doing to our kids what we're doing, we'd go to war to protect them. What would you say are three to five things that could help someone reclaim their health and end chronic illness forever in their family?

• 0:51Mark Hyman?

  That's a beautiful question. I think I've thought a lot about it. And, uh...

• 0:56Lewis Howes?

  Welcome back, everyone, to the School of Greatness. I'm very excited about our guest. We have the inspiring Dr. Mark Hyman in the house. Good to see you, sir.

• 1:03Mark Hyman?

  Good to see you, buddy.

• 1:04Lewis Howes?

  Welcome back to the show. Uh, we've got a crazy stat here. You've got 15 New York Times bestselling books. You've got amazing businesses, podcasts, that are helping millions of lives around the world understand their health and understand what's causing them to get sick and unhealthy.

• 1:20Mark Hyman?

  That's right.

• 1:21Lewis Howes?

  And there's a stat that I saw online that said nearly 90% of the $4.1 trillion spent on healthcare in America each year is attributed to chronic disease. My first question to you is, do you believe our food system is designed to help us heal or to kill us?

• 1:41Mark Hyman?

  Oh, that's easy. It's designed to kill us.

• 1:44Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:45Mark Hyman?

  100%. It wasn't starting out that way, Louis. I mean, we, we had, after World War II, a need to feed a hungry, growing population around the world. And so the huge push to industrialize agriculture, to produce more calories, more starchy carbohydrate calories that could feed a growing, hungry world. And the unintended consequence of that was two things. One, producing massive amounts of sugar and starch. We actually have about 500 calories more per person in America than we did in 1970.

• 2:13Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 2:14Mark Hyman?

  Two, we also increased the amount of starch and sugar. And three, we industrialized agriculture in a way that has destroyed the environment because of the tillage that's destroyed the soil.

• 2:26Lewis Howes?

  Soil, yeah.

• 2:27Mark Hyman?

  That is now, you know, one-third of all the carbon in the atmosphere comes from the loss of soil carbon, which is the life in the soil. We destroyed our rivers and waterways because of the runoff from nitrogen that's caused eutrophication and has dead zones the size of New Jersey and in the Gulf of Mexico. There's 400 around those, around the world of those that feed a half a billion people.

• 2:46Lewis Howes?

  What's a dead zone?

• 2:47Mark Hyman?

  Dead zone means, you know, when you, when you have too much fertilizer in the, in the water, it makes the algae grow, sucks all the oxygen out of the water and all the fish die. That's a dead zone.

• 2:56Lewis Howes?

  So there's no fish.

• 2:57Mark Hyman?

  Dead fish. Dead fish. And so people are depending on that fish to live. And then, you know, we have the pesticides and the glyphosate, which is destroying the soil microbiome, our microbiome. It causes cancer. And so we have all these downstream consequences, not to mention how horrific factory farming is. So the whole industrial food system, from field to fork, is completely effed.

• 3:18Mark Hyman?

  And, and I've actually, I have a nonprofit called Food Fix Campaign that's based on my book, Food Fix, that's, was entitled, "How to Save Our Health, Our Economy, and Our Planet and Our Communities One By One At A Time." And it was really laying out from field to fork, what's wrong with our food system, with our food policies. And, and, you know, we, we really have to address this because it is why we've gone from, you know, a relatively healthy nation. If you look even back in the seventies, you know, you can't.

• 3:44Lewis Howes?

  Healthy, pretty fit.

• 3:45Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, I mean, you can't see that many overweight people. Now you, you can't find a skinny person. You know, like, if you look at the data, we've gone from, you know, about five to 10% obesity when I was born to now 42%.

• 3:58Lewis Howes?

  It's so interesting you say that because I was in Mexico City with, with Martha, my fiancee, the other week, and then we flew into St. Louis. And as we landed in St. Louis, which I lived in for about eight years. I grew up in Ohio, lived in St. Louis for a while, at high school, college. And as we landed, I said, notice what you see when we get off the plane.

• 4:16Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 4:16Lewis Howes?

  And if we're walking through the terminal, I said, what do you see? She goes, people a little bit bigger here.

• 4:21Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 4:22Lewis Howes?

  It's hard to find like, the majority was a bigger set of individuals.

• 4:26Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 4:26Lewis Howes?

  Walking through the airport. And I go, unfortunately, as much as I love the Midwest, the people in the Midwest are the best.

• 4:33Mark Hyman?

  That's right.

• 4:33Lewis Howes?

  The kindest, the best values. Yes, ma'am. Yes, sir. They'll be open the door. How's your day? Like beautiful people. But it just seems like a majority are leaning into chronic disease, prediabetic, diabetes.

• 4:47Mark Hyman?

  Everywhere.

• 4:47Lewis Howes?

  And I don't know if this is your stat or if this is something else online, but I saw that six out of 10 Americans will have a chronic disease in their lifetime.

• 4:55Mark Hyman?

  No, no. Six out of 10 Americans today have a chronic illness.

• 4:58Lewis Howes?

  Six out of 10 have it now.

• 5:00Mark Hyman?

  Four out of 10 have more than one. If you're, if you're over 65, it's 83%.

• 5:07Lewis Howes?

  Will have a chronic illness.

• 5:08Mark Hyman?

  Has a chronic disease. Heart disease, diabetes, cancer, dementia, autoimmune disease, you name it.

• 5:14Lewis Howes?

  And what is a chronic disease? What is the root of all chronic illness?

• 5:19Mark Hyman?

  Well, well, we're going to unpack that, but it's primarily our food and our lifestyle and our environmental toxins. I would say those are the, the big three things that are driving it. And we can unpack that, but I, I kind of would love to just help people understand the problem we're in. And it's really, you know, the sort of the frog in the boiling water, when you turn the heat up slowly, you kind of don't notice it. It's kind of where we are. You know, we went from relatively healthy nation to one of the six nations in the world. We've seen not, uh, uh, just sort of this rise in obesity and diabetes. We've, we've had a huge rise, for example, in heart disease. Uh, we think, you know, we're improving heart disease treatments, we're getting better and better healthcare. We went from spending, you know, 1.3 trillion dollars in 2000 to spending

• 6:04Mark Hyman?

  almost 4.9 trillion in 2023 on healthcare. Most of that's for chronic disease. Most of it's preventable. Most of it's caused by diet and lifestyle. And so we've seen a heart disease go up by 50% in the last 50 years. Cancer go up by 30%. It's gone up by 50% in those under 50. Like colon cancer. We're seeing young kids getting cancer now. Not, not the typical kid cancers like leukemia, but like adult, grown up cancers.

• 6:27Lewis Howes?

  And is the root cause of that our food?

• 6:29Mark Hyman?

  A hundred percent. Type 2 diabetes. When I went to medical school, Louis, which I'm, I'm ancient, but not that old, right? It's, I'm going to be 65 next month. There was nothing that was called type 2 diabetes. It was called adult onset and juvenile onset. Juvenile onset is basically an autoimmune disease requiring insulin. Type 2 diabetes is a lifestyle disease because of too much sugar. Now they threw out those terms because kids as young as two or three years old are getting type 2 diabetes. Kids as young as 15 are needing liver transplants from drinking soda. Wow. Yeah, this is a big problem. We're seeing autoimmune diseases, 100% increase in autoimmune diseases. We're seeing 100% increases in mental illness. What illness? Mental illness, depression, anxiety, especially in kids.

• 7:14Mark Hyman?

  You know, 20% of kids have some type of mental illness, autism, ADD, depression, anxiety. We've seen the rates of autism go up 1,000%. We've seen digestive issues go up doubling to 100% increase. So we've seen dementia go up 150%. And we're spending more and more money and we're getting worse and worse and worse. And we're spending more and more in drugs. That's even the other thing that's sort of shocking. How much are we spending on drugs a year? It's collectively, I haven't done the math, but just for example, statins alone is almost a $40 billion a year industry. That's the number one selling class of drugs. But if you look at the drugs that are sold, it's the lifestyle drugs we're selling. Heart disease prevention like statins, acid blocking drugs, mental health drugs,

• 8:00Mark Hyman?

  which are often lifestyle related. Now we understand there's a whole role of nutritional psychiatry, metabolic psychiatry, that it's, you had Casey Meehan on the show, but you know, there's, she talks about brain energy, but Christopher Palmer, who's a psychiatrist, talks about brain energy. How the loss of metabolic health in the brain causes psychiatric illnesses. Everything from depression to bipolar disease, to schizophrenia, to autism. So these are things that are- And brain health is affected by what we eat also, right? 100%, 100%. The brain is, there's a famous saying in medicine, psychiatrists pay no attention to the brain and neurologists pay no attention to the mind, right? And so they're connected. And often the mind doesn't work because the brain's not working.

• 8:42Mark Hyman?

  And the brain's not working because in large part we're eating a diet that's full of sugar and starch that causes insulin resistance in the brain. It creates a metabolic crisis in the brain, creates inflammation in the brain. And all these diseases are inflammatory diseases, even things that aren't like allergies and autoimmune disease. And we've seen allergy rates go up dramatically in kids. And we've seen- All these problems and we're spending more and more on all these drugs, we're spending more and more like we've seen a 400% increase in use of diabetes drugs, a 300% increase in the use of cardiovascular drugs. We've seen a 400% use of psychiatric drugs increase. We've seen increasing cancer therapies and 500% increase in the use of autoimmune drugs

• 9:23Mark Hyman?

  and respiratory drugs 200%, pain drugs 400%, GI drugs 300% increase. So we're pouring more and more drugs on everybody. We're getting sicker and sicker. We're spending more and more money. It's $1 and $5 in our economy.

• 9:36Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 9:37Mark Hyman?

  And we're, nobody's asking why. It's like, it's like we're just trying to plug the holes in, like if you've got 100 holes in the boat or we're trying to bail the boat while the boat's sinking instead of going, why are the holes in the boat?

• 9:49Lewis Howes?

  What is the, I want to ask you, why is this happening? And also, what needs to happen in order for America or the world to have a radical shift in their approach to health? Because it seems like there's more and more doctors like yourself who've been speaking up and educating the world and

• 10:09Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 10:09Lewis Howes?

  More books teaching us how to do these things, more documentaries showing the strategies and all these things. What needs to happen to America or the world in order for us to get healthy?

• 10:21Mark Hyman?

  Great question.

• 10:22Lewis Howes?

  Do we need to go through extreme pain and suffering and horrific death in order for us to wake up? Because I feel like that's

• 10:30Mark Hyman?

  I mean, we're kind of there, Lois.

• 10:31Lewis Howes?

  We're boiling, right? We're in the boiling water right now.

• 10:34Mark Hyman?

  We are. And you know, right now, probably we're talking about the, you know, the economy and inflation. I mean, probably there's $2 trillion added to our federal deficit every year because of unnecessary healthcare costs because of what we're eating and because of environmental toxins and because of our lifestyle that are totally fixable. And, and what's happened is, you know, companies develop, they create products, they, they make money, and then they keep wanting to do that. And so if you're making cigarettes, you want to sell more cigarettes. If you're making sugar, you want to sell more sugar, right? If you're selling Cali's Fruit Loops, you want to sell more Fruit Loops, right? And so there's only so much that you can do. So you have to get people to eat more and more of the same stuff. There's only so many people on the planet. And in the food industry, it's the number one industry on the planet. And if you look at the full industry from,

• 11:18Mark Hyman?

  you know, farming to food processing, to fast food, to processed food, to the restaurant industry. And in grocery, it's the number one industry on the planet. It employs more workers than anybody else. And so it's a huge economic driver. And there's an incredible set of insights that have now come out of the World Health Organization that I wrote about in my book. I didn't call it this, but essentially it's what they were talking about called the commercial determinants of health. We've all heard about the social determinants of health, which is, you know, if you're poor, you know, access to food, if you're stressed, if you have trauma, if you live in tough neighborhoods. Understand all that plays a huge role in our, in our risk of illness. But the commercial determines of health is the role that multinational corporations

• 12:01Mark Hyman?

  play in subverting public health and privatizing profits. And they will do it at any cost. They're amoral, they're immoral, they're amoral. So Coca-Cola just wants to sell more Coca-Cola. Right? Of course, they don't feed it to their kids.

• 12:14Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 12:16Mark Hyman?

  Yeah. If you go into this Coca-Cola building in Atlanta, they don't really drink a lot of Coke there. They drink all the other products like water, Darsani, and they're not, yeah. It's kind of, you know, like Steve Jobs wouldn't let his kids use an iPhone or an iPad, right? So I think there's something we know about that. And I think, so we now have a whole industry that profits off of doing the wrong thing. And governments are now paying the price, right? So we socialize the costs and we privatize the profits, right? We taxpayers are paying the price, right? One, with government money, we pay for farming, crop insurance that subsidize commodity crops like corn, soy, and wheat that are turned into ultra-processed food, that are deconstructed science projects. They're not actually food by definition.

• 12:57Mark Hyman?

  Food by definition is something that supports the growth and development of an organism. This doesn't do that. It makes you sick, right?

• 13:04Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 13:04Mark Hyman?

  So they're not actually food. And it's then turned into all sizes and shapes and colors of chemically extruded food-like substances that we are consuming. It's 60% of our diet, it's 67% of kids' diet, and it's dysregulating our biology, it's screwing up our microbiome, it hijacks our brain chemistry, it hijacks our metabolism, it creates inflammation in the body, and it leads to all these chronic illnesses. And, and there was a major published paper in The Lancet that recently showed there were like 32 or 37 different illnesses that were caused by or made worse by ultra-processed food, and yet this is what we're eating. So we pay for the growing of this food. Then with our largest government program, SNAP or food stamps,

• 13:43Mark Hyman?

  We pay for $125 billion of food for the poor, which is important. Over 46 million people depend on this. But 75% of that is junk food, is ultra positive, and 10% is soda. So our government is paying for over 10 billion servings of soda a year for the poor. Making us sicker. Yeah. The government food stamp program is 20% of Coca-Cola's American profits. No way. Yes. Wow. Yes, and then we pay on the back end for Medicare and Medicaid to take care of the illnesses that are caused by these foods. And then we, there's all these other collateral damage that we don't pay for directly, but we pay for indirectly, like we talked about the loss of all the fish, like the damage

• 14:25Mark Hyman?

  to the environment, the damage to our soil, the increases in climate change and the consequences of that. I mean, how much are these hurricanes costing, right? That's not even factored in. And when you calculate all that, this comes from climate destabilization because of how we're growing our food. And by the way, the food system is the number one source of changes in our climate. It's not fossil fuels. It's just people don't realize that. And partly it's because a lot of fossil fuels are used in the production of our food. 2% of global energy use is used to make fertilizer. Wow. Because it's a very energy intensive process, right? And so we're kind of in this vicious cycle where we have to actually have some serious policy changes. The WHO report is coming out next year on the commercial determinants of health.

• 15:06Mark Hyman?

  And the goal, and I talked to one of the scientists there, is to help educate governments on how they're kind of being manipulated by these companies in ways that are driving policies that are helping them, meaning them, the food industry, and to hurting the populations. Wow. And so we're left holding the bag. So we should be, we should be doing things that other countries are doing that we're not. For example, in Chile, they decided they were going to do some radical things a number of years ago. And this was because they had a doctor, Michelle Bachelet, who was a pediatrician, who was the president of Chile. Wow. And they had a doctor who was the vice chair of the senate. And they kind of got together and they said, this is our moment. Let's, let's do this.

• 15:49Mark Hyman?

  And then, of course, we're going to kick out of office, but let's do it anyway. They put in an 80% soda tax, which wasn't actually even the biggest thing they did. What they did was they ended marketing of junk food. No marketing of junk food. From 6:00 in the morning until 10:00 at night. So no, no, and they took off all the cartoon characters. So no more Tony the Tiger. No more, you know, on the frosted flakes, no more Fruit Loops with the Toucan.

• 16:14Lewis Howes?

  Cause they're not great.

• 16:15Mark Hyman?

  No, they're not. They're not great. No, they're not great. They got rid of all the cartoon characters. They got rid of all the junk out of schools.

• 16:22Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 16:23Mark Hyman?

  They got rid of all formula advertising. They put on front of package labeling, meaning they put, if you go to South America, I mean, Ben, but I think your fiance is from.

• 16:31Lewis Howes?

  Mexico.

• 16:32Mark Hyman?

  Yeah. So they have like these now stop signs on the front.

• 16:36Lewis Howes?

  Excessive calories.

• 16:37Mark Hyman?

  Yeah. Too much calories, too much sugar, too much whatever. And every different countries have done different things, but it's like a stop sign in black.

• 16:43Lewis Howes?

  It's a reminder. Yeah. When I'm in Mexico, I see these, I think it says excessive carreteras or something. It's like accessivo or something like that.

• 16:50Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 16:51Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. It's excessive calories and it's right in the front.

• 16:53Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 16:53Lewis Howes?

  There might be multiple of them.

• 16:55Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 16:55Lewis Howes?

  And it makes you, listen, you know, as a human being, my only vice is really sugar. It's like, I don't do drugs. Yeah. I don't do drugs. I don't smoke. I don't do alcohol. I don't do any of these things. I don't know if anything external is meant for us unless it's organic food.

• 17:09Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 17:09Lewis Howes?

  For me personally.

• 17:10Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 17:11Lewis Howes?

  I believe we have the, the most powerful pharmacy within us that can heal us and take us to astronomical universes and within our own mind. But that's for a whole nother conversation.

• 17:21Mark Hyman?

  That's right. The greatest pharmacy is between your ears.

• 17:24Lewis Howes?

  A hundred percent.

• 17:24Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 17:25Lewis Howes?

  And I don't think we need an outside drug unless you're in extreme cases or you've hurt yourself so badly that you need that for that moment. But I think that's another story.

• 17:36Lewis Howes?

  But being in, being in Mexico, it reminds me to pause. Do I really want that? Being here, I don't see it unless I turn it around and I see, oh, this has got 50 grams of sugar and this many calories. You know, it's, it's less of a pause.

• 17:51Mark Hyman?

  It's true. So we need a whole set of sweeping policies and I think the WHO is going to come out with a series of recommendations. In my nonprofit, the Fix Campaign, in my book, I also laid out a whole set of things that we're doing and we've been doing this in Washington, making some progress actually. We're working on front of package labeling in America. We can catch up with other countries.

• 18:07Lewis Howes?

  Right. I saw, I saw Vani Hari. Were you working with Vani Hari on this whole petition thing?

• 18:11Mark Hyman?

  Yeah. Yeah, we were, we were helping out.

• 18:13Lewis Howes?

  Supporting out.

• 18:13Mark Hyman?

  For sure. Yeah.

• 18:14Lewis Howes?

  But even with Vani, she had, I think it was 400,000 petitions, right? That she took to signatures, that she took to the headquarters of Kellogg's.

• 18:24Lewis Howes?

  And was she able to make any changes with this process? I know she's done it.

• 18:28Mark Hyman?

  I think it's gonna, think about, think about change. You know, it's like takes a grassroots movement. It takes years and years when you think of the end of slavery. Took a civil war. Hopefully you don't need that. You know, look at women's suffrage. Look at, and the right to vote. Look at civil rights, women's rights, gay rights. I mean, these are just things that slowly happened over a long period of time with a lot of people working for a long time to push Congress to make the changes they need to make. Right? And so that's how we are. We're, I was talking to Cory Booker, who's a friend, a senator from New Jersey. He's like, Mark, this feels like 1959 in the food movement. For example, he, he put a bill together. We were supporting it as part of our nonprofit, which is called the Safe School Meals Act.

• 19:11Mark Hyman?

  And essentially they found that 94% of school lunches in California are contaminated with pesticides and heavy metals.

• 19:19Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 19:20Mark Hyman?

  Things that should not be in the food that are, we're giving to our kids. And two, there's all these ingredients that are in the food, the additives and dyes and colors that are banned in other countries. You'd literally go to jail in Singapore if you put that in the food. If you're a food manufacturer, you go to jail for 12 years.

• 19:35Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 19:35Mark Hyman?

  According to, I mean, they're a little extreme. You get, you spit gum on the floor, they cane you, whatever. But it's, that's extreme. But the, the, the reality is that, you know, we, we allow things in this country that are banned in other countries. Like food marketing, many other countries have, have shut down. Pharmaceutical marketing, us and New Zealand are the only countries that allow that. It wasn't around when I was in, graduated. No, when I graduated medical school, there was no pharmaceutical marketing.

• 20:01Lewis Howes?

  When I go on and watch SportsCenter at night and, and the commercials happen, I have to turn them off.

• 20:07Mark Hyman?

  It's all the drugs.

• 20:07Lewis Howes?

  And my dad never allowed us to watch commercials growing up because he didn't want drug commercials.

• 20:16Lewis Howes?

  Telling us that you're gonna get sick and you're gonna need this.

• 20:19Mark Hyman?

  Right.

• 20:19Lewis Howes?

  So he didn't want the subliminal or conscious marketing. And so I have to mute them and turn them off. Because the commercials are fast food and drugs.

• 20:30Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, they're like, oh, the drug companies, oh, we have to charge all these high prices for these drugs. We put so much into R and D. BS. They spend twice as much on marketing than they do on research and development. Twice as much.

• 20:41Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 20:43Mark Hyman?

  So, I mean, yes, they spend money on R and D, but I'm telling you, it's it and and and those commercials are not for the patients, they're for the for the really they get to prescribe by the doctor. But they know from the data that forty percent of the time when a patient says, hey, doc, I saw this drug on TV and says blah, blah, blah. Can you prescribe it? They go, yeah. So they they're no.

• 21:06Lewis Howes?

  Is there any drug in the world that has zero side effects?

• 21:12Mark Hyman?

  No, you could die from drinking water. I mean, you can die from drinking water. The dose makes it poison. If you you know, people who are marathon runners and they overhydrate and they get seizures and they get dilute their blood, they get low sodium in their blood and they get seizure and they die. So water can kill you. Right? So, you know, there there are no even, you know, anything like a vitamin if you take the wrong dose. So I I think, you know, drugs used in the right way, prescribed by educated doctors, delivered by trained nurses that are not medical errors, are between the third and fourth leading cause of death in hospitals.

• 21:46Lewis Howes?

  Wait, drugs that are used the right.

• 21:49Mark Hyman?

  The right way, not right.

• 21:51Lewis Howes?

  Not the wrong way.

• 21:51Mark Hyman?

  Not the wrong way, no. Not like not like a mistake. I go, I gave you too much of this drug and it kills you. It was like.

• 21:56Lewis Howes?

  This is not like, oh, you were allergic to this thing and it killed. So I say this one more time. Drugs used the right way.

• 22:02Mark Hyman?

  This is not this is not my opinion. This is the Journal of the American Medical Association. It was published quite a while ago and there's more data recently. But basically, drugs prescribed by doctors in hospitals for the right patient, for the right indication, at the right dose.

• 22:18Lewis Howes?

  The right symptoms.

• 22:18Mark Hyman?

  The right symptoms delivered the right way is between the third and fourth leading cause of death.

• 22:23Lewis Howes?

  Holy cow. The third and fourth leading cause of death in in hospitals or just in total?

• 22:29Mark Hyman?

  In aggregate.

• 22:30Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 22:31Mark Hyman?

  Yeah. It's, I, well, I, I, I have to check that. I, I have to check that fact, but I think it's

• 22:36Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure, sure.

• 22:36Mark Hyman?

  Either way, it's, it's a lot.

• 22:39Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 22:39Mark Hyman?

  And, and I think that, you know, people

• 22:41Lewis Howes?

  How many people die in hospitals based on something just not working out? Like prescribing the wrong thing or a surgery that goes wrong? Like, how many people?

• 22:49Mark Hyman?

  There are medical errors and it's significant and the Institute of Medicine did a report on it. It's, it's not trivial. And, and, and there's, and the good news is there's better systems and processes now to help reduce those medical errors and better, you know, tracking of things and better, you know, systems. So I think they're getting less, but, but it's, it's not insignificant.

• 23:09Lewis Howes?

  Wow. Now, going back to chronic illness.

• 23:14Lewis Howes?

  Did you say, how many people are chronically ill now or will be chronically ill?

• 23:18Mark Hyman?

  Look, it's six in 10 Americans.

• 23:19Lewis Howes?

  Six in 10 Americans.

• 23:20Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, it's, it's 4, it's 51% of children, Louis.

• 23:23Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 23:24Mark Hyman?

  Have obesity, asthma, allergies, autoimmune diseases, type 2 diabetes, type 1 diabetes.

• 23:30Lewis Howes?

  Does it matter? And does it matter if we, can a, any certain politician, president, government, save us from being less chronically ill? Or what will save Americans from being healthy?

• 23:48Mark Hyman?

  What will help us get healthy, you mean?

• 23:49Lewis Howes?

  Yes. And can someone save us?

• 23:52Mark Hyman?

  I'm trying.

• 23:53Lewis Howes?

  Is there, is there, is there, is there a government that could save us? Is there one politician that could save us? Is there a company that could save us? Like, what will save us from being sick?

• 24:04Mark Hyman?

  Well, I, I think, I think we need a systematic understanding of the problem first. And I think whatever political party you adhere to, whatever you believe or not, the fact that, that there's a conversation now about health in America in a presidential campaign is important. And calling out the corruption in our systems, how the FDA is captured and the, and the NIH is captured and the HHS and USDA, I mean, I mean, the USDA has checkoff programs, which are supposed to be research programs and also promoting healthy products. They're the ones who came out with the Got Milk ads. So the US taxpayers paid for those ads with the Dairy Council. Those ads had to be stopped. If you notice, they don't have them anymore. Why?

• 24:49Mark Hyman?

  Because they were ineffective. Because the Federal Trade Commission said they needed to be stopped because they were unscientific and they were making claims in there that were not based on science, like it's good for your bones. Wow. Right? It's not. And this is not my opinion. There's a major published paper in the New England Journal of Medicine by Dr. Ludwig and Dr. Willett, two of the most esteemed researchers in the world, showing that milk and health, it was called Milk and Health, and all the fallacies in our belief about we should be drinking three glasses of milk a day. The US government says today, the dietary guidelines, that Americans need to drink three glasses of milk a day and kids need to drink two. There's no scientific data to support that. Why do we have it? Well, guess what? The Dairy Council is a huge influence on our policies.

• 25:30Mark Hyman?

  In fact, guess who was, after his last run as Secretary of Agriculture, between his current run as Secretary of Agriculture, was on the Dairy Council Board? Thomas Vilasak, who's our current Secretary of Agriculture. Wow. So the whole of- On the Dairy Board, right. The Dairy Council, which is basically this sort of trade group that represents the dairy industry, right? And so it's just so corrupt. And so someone needs to come in and go, Kate, we've got to address this problem. It's bankrupting our country. The US government collectively spends 40% of the money on healthcare. In other words, $4.9 trillion, 40% of that is footed by the taxpayer. When you're not just Medicare, but Medicare, Medicaid, the Health Service, Department

• 26:14Mark Hyman?

  of Defense, federal employees, the VA, I mean, you add up all the programs, end to end. It's $1 in $3 of our entire federal budget, which is over $6 trillion. $1 in $3 that we spend on our taxes is going to healthcare and about 80%, up to 90% of that is lifestyle preventable diseases that we can do something about. So it's going to take some sweeping changes and I think some really committed politicians in Washington. Hopefully, the next president will take this on. There's a lot of pushback from industries, like I said, the biggest industry, it's the biggest lobby group. I mean, just one bill to label GMOs, and by the way, I think us and Syria are the only countries that don't label GMOs.

• 26:56Mark Hyman?

  China does, Russia does, not known for transparency, right, those two countries, but they label GMOs. GMO labeling bill in this country, the Food and Industry spent $192 million lobbying for one bill. How like Pass it. To not pass it. To not pass that. To say To go against. Yes, you cannot label foods with GMO because that's going to make people not want to buy it. Oh, my gosh. Right, yeah, and then they did the same thing, they put in a, a bunch of them colluded, which they got, they got actually sued for by the Attorney General of State of Washington, and they had to pay the biggest fine ever assessed

• 27:36Mark Hyman?

  because they colluded to actually put a ballot initiative in that was anti-GMO labeling. Wow. To, to get people to vote against the labeling of GMOs in Washington, they did Washington. This is what's going on, and it's very dark, and it's, it's not, it's not like, oh gee, we don't know. Like, there's a lot of actually malicious intent. There's also people who are just trying to do their job and make better products. Sure. And do the right thing, but you know, look at Mark Schneider, who was the CEO of Nestle, biggest health company, I mean, the biggest food company in the world, got fired because he was pushing things too much in the health direction, and I was working with him. Really? Yeah, and there was, there was, there was the head of Pepsi, Andrew Newy, she got a lot of flak and got canned for trying to push Pepsi to be a healthier company. Wow.

• 28:18Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, so it's very complicated, and I think, I think we do need, we do need a strong leadership in, in Washington. We need an educated consumer base, we need grassroots movement, we need clear, you know, research to actually show what works and what doesn't work. Right. We need, you know, I mean, okay, $46 billion is spent on the NIH budget.

• 28:40Mark Hyman?

  The amount spent on nutrition is 121 million. It's point 02% or 002%. I'm not good at math, but anyway, that's what I'm trying to talk about. It's very little. And most of that is not actually for the nutrition research for chronic disease. It's other stuff. So it's almost nothing. And yet it's the number one cause of death and illness. And we're not even studying it.

• 28:59Lewis Howes?

  It sounds like what I'm hearing you say is that this is not something that's gonna happen overnight. This is gonna take time. It's gonna take time to make changes. I mean.

• 29:08Mark Hyman?

  It takes time until it doesn't, right? The Berlin Wall came down in one night.

• 29:11Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 29:12Mark Hyman?

  So it takes time. It takes decades and then it happens, right? So I'm kind of, you know, hopefully I'm gonna try to. I wrote a book called Young Forever on how to stay healthy. And I reversed my biological age four years in the last two years. So I'm counting on staying alive long enough till I can see this.

• 29:26Lewis Howes?

  It sounds like it's not gonna happen anytime in the next four to eight years.

• 29:28Mark Hyman?

  It might.

• 29:29Lewis Howes?

  It might. Maybe it does.

• 29:30Mark Hyman?

  It might, Louis. I see consumers are caring more about their health.

• 29:34Lewis Howes?

  But people are sicker than ever.

• 29:36Mark Hyman?

  People are sicker than ever. You know, I co-founded a company called Function Health, which allows people to access their own lab data, kind of disrupts the healthcare system so they don't have to go through a doctor insurance company. And people are flocking to that. We've had over 80,000 members, 300,000 people on the waitlist. We have, you know, over 110 million biomarkers we've now tracked. And we test like five times what you get in a normal doctor's visit and look at everything from your metabolic health, hormones and your nutrient levels, toxin levels, things that you should be looking at. And people are wanting this because they get that the healthcare system is broken. They're not getting the answer from their doctor. They want to get healthy. They want to be empowered. And so I think there's a grassroots movement. We saw the 400,000 people on Bhani Hari's, you know, petition. That's significant.

• 30:18Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's, there's movement, but it's still, most people have chronic illness.

• 30:23Mark Hyman?

  Yeah. And they don't know, they don't know they don't have to. That's the thing. They don't know this is optional. Even if you have it, you can reverse it with food. Food can heal and food can harm, and if you know how to use it.

• 30:34Lewis Howes?

  So then what are the most dangerous foods that cause chronic disease that we should be avoiding?

• 30:39Mark Hyman?

  Well, as a class, I think what's come to light in the last decade or so is this concept of ultra-processed food. Now, what is ultra-processed food? Well, everybody says it's whole food. That's an apple or an egg or a piece of chicken, right? Then there's minimally processed food. So if you make sauerkraut, well, you're taking cabbage, you're chopping it, you're fermenting it. It's still pretty much whole food, but it's got some processing. Then there's, you know, maybe some little more extra processing that can happen. It's not so bad like, you know, canning or something like that. Those are all real foods. Like if you buy a can of tomatoes that says tomatoes, water, and salt, you know what it is. Then there's ultra-processed food, which is not actually food. And it's, it's, this is based on the NOVA classification, which they developed

• 31:20Mark Hyman?

  out of Brazil. And it's not perfect, but it's, it's a pretty good barometer for what's, what to eat and not to eat. So ultra-processed food essentially is industrial foods, like commodity crops, corn, meat, and soy. They get chemically broken down. So you, the molecules are just completely disassembled. They're reassembled, but not in ways that our body recognizes or probably can process. They're incredibly inflammatory. They destroy microbiome. They dysregulate our appetite. Kevin Hall at NIH did a study where he took a group of people and he gave them Whole Foods diet for a few weeks, and then gave them a washout period, then a few weeks of an ultra-processed diet. Mm-hmm. When they, and they were pretty matched for calories in what they were available.

• 32:05Mark Hyman?

  They were matched for fat, protein, carbs, fiber. And what they found was that when these people were eating ultra-processed food, they ate 500 calories more a day. Now, if you do the math, in a week, that's 3,500 calories. That's a pound. Thirty-five, that's right. 3,500 calories is a pound of weight gain. And so in a year, that's 52 pounds. Holy cow. Right? If you, so this is what America's eating. If you're not burning those calories in some other way. Right. And by the way, if you, here's what happens. This is, it's a fuel partitioning issue. This might be a little too technical for reality, but I'll try to break it down. Part of the problem is that these foods are extremely starchy and sugary, for the most part. And they have, you know, bad fats, and they have, you know, other additives, ingredients, and weird things that make you addictive. But when you, when you eat sugar

• 32:50Mark Hyman?

  and starch, it causes your blood sugar to spike. Then your insulin goes up. And then the fuel goes into your fat cells. So it basically drives all the available fuel. So you store the fat in your belly. But then, in your blood, it feels like you're starving. So you eat more. You want to eat more. Because you're, you're actually not regulating your fuel properly. So it's a fuel partitioning issue. And so you're basically starving in the midst of plenty. So it's really crazy and so you want to eat more and more. That's how people can get to be two, three, four, or 500 pounds, you know, because they're so dysregulated by these foods. And I had a patient who was eating these foods for most of her life.

• 33:33Mark Hyman?

  And by the time she got to be 66, she was educated, but didn't know anything about food. She was from the Midwest. And she had heart failure, she had type 2 diabetes, she had multiple stents, she had high blood pressure, she had fatty liver, her kidneys were going. She was on a pile of pills, her copay was 20,000 a year. Oh. Who knows what we were paying for Medicare. She was on her way to a kidney and a heart transplant. Oh. Terrible. And we put in a program, it was a group support lifestyle change program. Put on a very cold foods, anti-inflammatory diet. Essentially what I wrote in my book, The 10 Day Detox Diet, which is really great for just resetting the body. And in three days, she was off insulin, which sounds crazy. In three months, she went, her A1C, which is a measure of blood sugar, went from 11 to 5 and 1/2.

• 34:16Mark Hyman?

  5 and 1/2 is normal, 11 is like you should be in the hospital, right? Her heart failure, which was significant for those doctors listening, it was 35% injection fraction, went back up to 50%, which is normal. So basically, that doesn't happen in medicine. You don't see that. Like, these are one-way diseases. Once you have high blood pressure, diabetes, heart failure, you can manage them, you can't reverse them. But you can, right? So she reversed her diabetes. She reversed, three months, she was off all her medications. I'd lost 43 pounds, everything was normal. And then in a year, she lost 116 pounds and got her life back. Wow. And she was on her way to the grave and she was able to resurrect herself just by using food as medicine. So food can heal or can harm. And if you understand how to use food in the right way, it has incredibly curative powers.

• 35:01Mark Hyman?

  So yes, food got us into this, but it can also get us out of this. So ultra-processed foods are, it sounds like the worst things. The worst, yeah. But that's where the food industry makes the most money. It's, I think, 73% of what's on the grocery store shelves. It's all, you know, it's stuff that looks like food that isn't. Like, Fruit Loops is not food, you know? And Top Tarts and Lunchables. And I mean, how did the USDA allow Lunchables to be in school lunches? I mean, this is just criminal, you know? And these foods are driving most of the problem. Now, a lot of these foods have also starch and sugar, which is the other big driver. So you mentioned sugar is your Achilles heel. It's not an accident, Louis. Nothing wrong with you. It's how we were designed.

• 35:44Mark Hyman?

  You know, think about bears, right? They kind of starve all winter. And they eat a lot of salmon at the beginning of the season when the salmon are running. They're a lot of protein and fat. They don't gain that much weight a little bit. Then it's berry season and they go to town and they gain 500 pounds. Literally 500 pounds of fat because they're eating sugar.

• 36:03Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 36:03Mark Hyman?

  Pretty fructose, which increases fat a lot. And then they go to sleep and they sleep all winter and they burn off. We just keep eating all winter, you know? And so our bodies are programmed when we find something starchy or sugary to eat it and to eat as much as we can. Because we don't know where we're gonna find our next root or berry. We don't wanna, we're gonna find our next animal to hunt and kill. Like, we didn't have grocery stores and Uber Eats, you know, hunter-gatherers, right?

• 36:29Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 36:29Mark Hyman?

  And so we're programmed to eat sugar because it's stored quickly. And that's good in a situation where there's scarcity, but not in America.

• 36:38Lewis Howes?

  I mean, it just seems like there's going to be more and more conveniences in life. You know, with the ability to push a button and have ice cream at your door in five minutes or go to the grocery store and see all the... Even if they stop all the marketing, even if they put the labels on there, there's still gonna be foods available that are not good for us.

• 36:56Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 36:58Lewis Howes?

  I was talking to Casey Means about this this morning, about how... She was saying that, you know, society, humanity is spiritually broken also. And we need to find spiritual healing so that we can just have awareness and make better choices.

• 37:15Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 37:16Lewis Howes?

  I don't know if that's a different mindset and being disciplined to just not take the action, to have the easy fix or the thing that's gonna make us feel good because we're in a fight or flight state or we're going through a breakup or we're going through stress at work or whatever it might be. And this is gonna make us feel comfortable, comfort foods. Or if it's a spiritual brokenness. And because we're spiritually broken or emotionally broken, we don't have a, we don't feel whole. And therefore we need to refuel things to try to make us feel better.

• 37:50Mark Hyman?

  That's right.

• 37:51Lewis Howes?

  But those things aren't healthy for us.

• 37:53Mark Hyman?

  No.

• 37:54Lewis Howes?

  And if we could start to heal ourselves spiritually.

• 37:58Mark Hyman?

  It's huge.

• 37:59Lewis Howes?

  Could we start to see and notice things and say, I don't need this right now?

• 38:02Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 38:03Lewis Howes?

  Or I'm gonna have this once in a while and it's okay.

• 38:06Mark Hyman?

  Yep.

• 38:06Lewis Howes?

  But it's not gonna be every day constantly to fuel something inside of me where I feel wounded, broken, less than, unworthy, guilty, shameful, needing this to feel quick fix and then take me to my grave.

• 38:20Mark Hyman?

  That's right. I would say it's not what you're eating, it's what's eating you. That's the problem.

• 38:23Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 38:24Mark Hyman?

  You know, and, and if you understand what's eating you and it's the stress of our modern life, it's the political division, it's the conflict around the world, it's the threat of nuclear war, the threat of climate change, the economic instability, the pressures to work hard, I mean, there's so much going on, the social, social media has created such a bunch of chaos in our life that, you know, technology, we should have sort of freed up time, seems to suck all our time, right? And so we're, we're kind of in a state where we're disconnected from nature, we're disconnected from each other, we're isolated, and so what do we do? We have to feed the emptiness, we have to fill that hole. And so, I get it, you know?

• 39:03Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 39:03Mark Hyman?

  When I feel like crap or had a stressful day, I want a pint of Chunky Monkey Ben and Jerry's.

• 39:07Lewis Howes?

  Sure, man.

• 39:07Mark Hyman?

  Tell me about it.

• 39:08Lewis Howes?

  Tastes amazing.

• 39:08Mark Hyman?

  I love it.

• 39:09Lewis Howes?

  Tastes great.

• 39:10Mark Hyman?

  I used to have to have it in the kitchen.

• 39:11Lewis Howes?

  I know.

• 39:13Mark Hyman?

  And sometimes my wife's having a bad night and she's like, orders a pint of ice cream and then she orders me another pint of the Sicilian Van Leeuwen Pistachio, which is my favorite.

• 39:22Lewis Howes?

  So good.

• 39:22Mark Hyman?

  But I'm like, I don't want that. And she's like, oh, I just got it for you. I'm like, no, you got it, so you didn't feel bad that you're eating it?

• 39:27Lewis Howes?

  Eating alone, yeah, exactly. But, but I really feel like it is, you know, something to what you were saying about the, you know, the spiritual brokenness of our society of, of feeling empty and needing to fill, fill something up because we feel broken or empty or less than.

• 39:41Mark Hyman?

  And trauma's a real thing, Louis.

• 39:43Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, of course, we talked about this before.

• 39:44Mark Hyman?

  When you look at the ACE questionnaire, which is, I think everybody should go and check this out, it's available online.

• 39:49Lewis Howes?

  It's like fifteen or sixteen different things?

• 39:51Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, it's adverse childhood events. And it's essentially a set of a few questions, you fill out, you get a score. Like, did my parents get divorced? Was any of my family an alcoholic? Did anybody go to jail? Was, did I get hit? Was I neglected?

• 40:02Lewis Howes?

  Sexual abuse, all these things.

• 40:03Mark Hyman?

  Right, sexual abuse.

• 40:04Lewis Howes?

  I think I hit every one of these things.

• 40:06Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 40:07Lewis Howes?

  And it's, it's real.

• 40:08Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, it's real. And so when you have that, and the more you have, it's almost more correlated with chronic illness than anything else. Smoking or diet, I mean, if you look at, you know, the risk of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, depression, suicide, I mean, you name it.

• 40:22Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 40:23Mark Hyman?

  Mental health issues, all of it, it's related to these traumas we have and we don't really have a great. way of thinking or dealing with it. And I look at my parents' generation, they just didn't have a language for it. Now we do. We're talking about psilocybin therapy and MDMA therapy and trauma. And there's got people like Gavir Mati out there talking. And so there's, there's a really interesting conversation happening around that. And I think for me, that we're a traumatized society, you know? And all of us to some degree or little degree. He talks about big T traumas, little T traumas. You know, big T would be sexual abuse. Little T would be your parents just didn't understand you and neglected you. And you know, we're just too busy and self-absorbed, you know? It doesn't matter. They all have an impact on us and they drive our behaviors. And the healing spiritually is a key part of this.

• 41:05Lewis Howes?

  And the challenge is if we're raised as a child, you know, even there's so many things that to go in here. It's like, were you? Were you born, you know, through a vaginal birth or through a cesarean birth? Did you have multiple shots as a kid? Did you not have shots as a kid? Were you given sugar right away? Were you breast? It's like all the decisions from birth could compound and impact you over time till in your twenties and you could be chronically ill, not knowing how you got there.

• 41:36Mark Hyman?

  That's right.

• 41:36Lewis Howes?

  Because your parents influenced what you ate and the environment and everything. And it's like, you have to unlearn it all and learn how to get healthy in your twenties or thirties when you finally start waking up to it.

• 41:48Mark Hyman?

  That's right.

• 41:49Lewis Howes?

  Right? It's like you're not aware when you're eight that I'm like, you know, I don't know, unless you're getting picked on or bullied, but it's like the food is available for you to eat that. Your parents are taking you out. You're eating sugar or junk food or whatever it is. They're not educated. And so you're in your twenties and you're just sick.

• 42:05Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, that's right. It's quite, it's quite astounding how many people are unwell. And, and you know, as I mentioned, this company Function Health, we've done, you know, tests now on 80,000 people. And this is a health forward population and like over 95% have some metabolic dysfunction, which means they have like abnormal cholesterol to small particles. Forty-six percent have high inflammation, 33% have an autoimmunity problem.

• 42:27Lewis Howes?

  And these are people that are actively focused on being healthy.

• 42:29Mark Hyman?

  67% have a nutritional deficiency. And this is at the level the lab says is deficient, not what I would think is a good level of vitamin D or iron or whatever, right? It's like vitamin D level should be over 50. Well, there's under 30 is, is over 30 is okay. Well, I'm like, 30 is not good. It should be 50. And so there's such a prevalence of people having all these low-grade things that they don't know about. And You know, illness doesn't just happen, Louis. It's not like one day you get dementia, heart disease, or cancer, or diabetes. These are slow, progressive things that happen over decades. And so there's a slow transition from wellness to illness, and we have not paid attention to that in medicine at all. We're like, you know, come back to me when you're sick, I'll give you a drug. Like, literally, I had a patient, I saw him, and his lab test showed how to have blood sugar was like 113, which is pre-diabetes. I said,

• 43:13Mark Hyman?

  "Did your doctor, you know, talk to you about this?" "Oh, yeah." I said, "What did the doctor say?" He said, "Oh, well, he says when it gets higher, and I get over 126, I have diabetes, then he can give me a medication." Oh, my gosh. This is straight up, straight up, Louis. Not talking about how to prevent it, or reverse it, or prove it. Right. "Oh, your autoimmune disease isn't so bad, but when you get worse, come back, and I'll, you know, I'll give you a drug." It's like, that's nuts, Louis. And so- The doctors, all of a sudden, aren't incentivized to help prevent people from being sick. It's true. They're not, because they don't make a living. So that industry is a little bit off. Oh, for sure. I mean, that's one of the things we're working on in medicine now, is how do we, in Washington, with the Food Fix Campaign, is how do we reimburse for

• 43:56Mark Hyman?

  nutrition services and healthcare? How do we get doctors paid to do the right thing instead of the thing that's paid for, right? I mean, you can get paid for doing an angioplasty, but you can't get paid for a lifestyle change program that will prevent them from eating the angioplasty, right? My daughter's in medical school, no nutrition education. Forty years later, I had none, she's got none, right? There are a mere few medical schools provide any nutrition education, and we're working on that. For example, we spend $17 billion a year, it's the federal government, paying to support graduate medical education programs. There's no strings attached. We're like, "Hey, maybe you should, that's a minimum competency requirement for nutrition. Hey, maybe on licensing exams for medical school, you should have nutrition questions, because that's what's killing all your patients." Yes.

• 44:39Mark Hyman?

  And so we're trying to change reimbursement, we're trying to change education. These are the kinds of things we're working on. Changing snack policies, changing food packaging, labeling, changing dietary guidelines, paying for medically tailored meals, you know, basically getting, and I used to have a, in a national institute of nutrition, we don't have that. Sure, sure, sure. Other countries have it. There's many levers to pull, front of package labeling, the FDA regulation, getting junk out of, there's so much to be done. Yes. And it's not going to be one thing, you know, ending food marketing to kids. I mean, just like, why should we, I mean, if we were doing to our kids, I'm sorry, if another country was doing to our kids what we're doing, we'd go to war to protect them, right? Think about it.

• 45:21Lewis Howes?

  I mean, it seems like there's a lot of levers to pull, a lot of different industries, policies, companies that need to make changes, but say that never happens. And each individual on this planet has to make their own decisions and own changes and take full responsibility of their health, no matter what these companies or governments do for them. What would be the three to five things that an individual, listening or watching right now, can say, "I want to take back responsibility and control of my health and my family's health." Start with myself and my family. And we're going to start implementing only three to five things, because anything more than that is overwhelming. I don't have the time, but it's already a struggle. We're already, you know, chronically ill or on the way there. It's tough.

• 46:06Lewis Howes?

  Life is tough. Responsibilities are hard. Managing it all, making money.

• 46:13Mark Hyman?

  Totally.

• 46:14Lewis Howes?

  Relationships are challenging. Marriage is tough. Kids are...

• 46:17Mark Hyman?

  It's not easy.

• 46:18Lewis Howes?

  There's ups and downs. Parents are dying, all these different things. I don't have much more energy, although I know when I do this, I'll have a lot more energy because I'm healthier.

• 46:26Mark Hyman?

  That's right.

• 46:27Lewis Howes?

  So I need to get through a three-month window to take actions on three to five things to help me reverse chronic illness and be the difference maker in my family to say, "I'm the one who stood up to this suffering. I'm the one who took responsibility and took ownership back in my life, and therefore I'm going to change my family's generational history because of decisions I make today."

• 46:50Mark Hyman?

  That's right.

• 46:51Lewis Howes?

  Based on what you say here, what would you say are three to five things that could help someone reclaim their health and end chronic illness forever in their family?

• 47:01Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, I mean, that's a beautiful question. I mean, I've thought a lot about it. And I think it's not as complicated as people think. Yes, it would be easy to do if we didn't live in a toxic food environment. Yes, it would be easy to do if the systems around us support us to do the right thing and...

• 47:17Lewis Howes?

  But even against all those odds.

• 47:18Mark Hyman?

  You know, we have the easy choice being the bad choice for us, unhealthy choice. We have the hard choice, you know, being the healthy choice. We don't want that, right? And I'll just tell you a story that kind of illustrates how this could be done. And I think, you know, I had a belief, and I'm just going to be upfront about it. I believe that people kind of knew what to do, they just didn't do it. They were lazy, they just liked to eat the junk food, they didn't really care. And I was like, a little bit arrogant, honestly. And about 10 years ago, or more actually, I went down to a place called Easely, South Carolina, as part of this film called Fed Up, that we did with Katie Couric and Laurie David, who did Inconvenient Truth. And I got interested in this family of five that lived in a trailer.

• 48:04Mark Hyman?

  They were on disability and food stamps. The father was 42, already had kidney failure, undialysis, from type 2 diabetes, which is usually you get later in life. But he's already so bad. The mother was easily 100 pounds plus overweight. The oldest kid was about 16, and he was 50% body fat. Now, a guy should be 10 to 20%, okay? He was practically diabetic, almost diabetic. And I'd rather than give him a lecture, I said, "Why don't we cook a meal together?" You know? And here's the truth, Lois. The food industry has hijacked and disintermediated us from our kitchens. They're basically like, "You deserve a break today. Convenience is king." You know?

• 48:50Mark Hyman?

  "Don't bother cooking, we'll do it for you." Right? And most people, families, don't have meals together. They don't cook together. They eat from a different package, made in a different factory, cooked in a microwave, all while they're on their phones or watching TV. Right? Not exactly conducive to health.

• 49:05Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 49:05Mark Hyman?

  So I went down to this family, and I said, "Let's cook a meal together. Let's get some simple ingredients." I'm on the board of the Environmental Working Group, and there's a guide called Good Food on a Tight Budget, which is how to eat well for you, well for your wallet, and well for your planet. Right? And I... They had some turkey chili recipe in there, a nice salad recipe, some roasted sweet potatoes, some simple stuff. And cheap ingredients. Real simple ingredients. And they lived in one of the worst food deserts in America. When you look at something called the Retail Food Environment Index, how many fast food and convenience stores are there to a grocery store or healthy food? It was like 10 to 1. It was like really bad. And, and I said, let's look at what's in your cupboards first.

• 49:47Mark Hyman?

  And so we took out all the packages and stuff in the freezer and the cans and the packaging. And they're like, you couldn't tell if it was a Pop-Tart or a corn dog by looking at the label and the ingredient list. I mean, it's just the same processed ingredients. So we're talking about all the, you know, the 2,500 things you see on a label, right? That you don't even know what they are, how to pronounce them or where they came from, right? See, you know, maltodextrin or butyl hydroxytoluene, you don't know what that is. Like, that's not something you sprinkle on your salad, right? Right, right. And so I started showing them, this is not good for you. And they had, oh, a Cool Whip, it's good because it's a, you know, low fat dressing. It says zero trans fats, but yes, it's all trans fat because the FDA was under the thumb of the food industry. And when they basically made them label trans fat, they said if it has less than half a gram per serving, you don't have to label it.

• 50:32Mark Hyman?

  And it says zero trans fats, but it's almost all trans fat because it's like mostly air, right? Sure. So it did all this crap. And so I showed them what they're, and they're like, oh, my God, this is terrible. We didn't know. So we cooked and didn't have cutting boards, didn't have knives. And we were cutting garlic and sweet potatoes with like a butter knife. And we did dinner, it was fine, it was delicious. And we all ate together and the son was like, Dr. Hyman, do you eat with your family like this every night? I'm like, yeah, I cook and eat. I'm like, that's my family. And he's like, this is amazing. And they loved the food. I said, listen, I don't know if you can do this, but here's, here's a guide on heating it well for less. Here's a cookbook that I wrote, you just follow it, on how to balance your blood sugar.

• 51:08Mark Hyman?

  And on my way home on the plane, I ordered them cutting boards and knives because they didn't even have them. And the first week, the mother texted me, she's like, we lost 18 pounds this week together. Wow. In a year, they lost over 200 pounds. The mother lost 100, the father lost 45, was able to get a new kidney, which was their motivation. The son lost 50, went to work at Bojangles after that. And that's like a fast food store in the South. And he's like putting an alcoholic to work in a bar. And he gained back the weight and then some. And then he reached out to me, he says, Dr. Hyman, will you help him? I'm like, sure. So I coached him and he lost 132 pounds.

• 51:46Mark Hyman?

  He then, a few years later, he was the first kid in his college to go to, family to go to college. Wow. A few years later, he wrote me, he said, Dr. Hyman, would you be willing to write me a letter of recommendation for medical school? Now he's a doctor. No way. Yeah. So that taught me something, which is that. You thought they knew the information. I thought they knew. And so it's, and it's not that hard. So what I would say to people is a few things. One is make your home a safe zone. Like, just, if you want to eat crap, do it, make it the hard, hard choice, right? You don't have to go to McDonald's, drive there. But, you know, in the home, only have stuff that's going to support your health and well-being. No ultra-processed food in the house. So that's really straightforward, simple.

• 52:27Mark Hyman?

  Honestly, that doesn't even look like food to me anymore. Like, if I see M and M's, like, if I'm at an airport and I'm craving sugar, I see a package of M and M's or a Hershey chocolate bar, I'm like, it doesn't look like food. It's like a rock. So I'm like, why would I eat the rock? Or why would I eat that camera? Or like, I always want to. Sure, sure. But, you know, I might eat like, real good chocolate. I might do that. Some dark chocolate, or some nuts. Yeah. So, um, so I just, you know, ultra-processed food is gotta go. Like, if you, if you really want to be healthy, that's just, you've just got to cut that out of your diet. The third thing is, is, uh, don't drink your liquid sugar calories. sodas, sweetened coffees, sweetened teas, energy drinks, sports drinks, Gatorade, this, that's just gotta go.

• 53:09Mark Hyman?

  It's, it, and artificial sweeteners aren't a whole lot better, really. Even if it says zero sugar. Yeah. But it's got artificial sweetener. They're problematic. The, the sugar alcohols can mess up your microbiome. There, there's some real research that's concerning that they might be increasing the risk of diabetes, obesity, affecting your microbiome. They, they, some of them may be okay, like stevia or monk fruit a little bit here and there. Not anti-sugar. Like, if you want, look. What about this whole? If you, if you get a 20 on soda, you're having like 15 teaspoons of sugar. That's a lot. You're not going to put 15 teaspoons of sugar in your coffee. So put a teaspoon of sugar in your coffee. That's fine. Right. Don't put 15, right? What about this allulose sugar? That can be a little better. That can be a little better. So there's little hacks, but I think, I think that's the addict in you talking, Louis. Yeah, yeah. How can I get around it? Negotiating.

• 53:54Mark Hyman?

  Exactly. Just don't do it. Well, that's okay. Uh, I'm not a yes or no extreme person, but it's just like, understand that, that liquid sugar calories, ultra-processed food, about keeping your home a safe zone. And then, I think the other thing that people don't realize is, you know, getting healthy is a team sport. Right? Find a buddy. Rick Warren, who I did this program with, this church with, called this Daniel Plan, where we got 15,000 people to lose a quarter million pounds in a year. Did it together in small groups. Wow. He says everybody needs a buddy. He wrote Purpose Driven Life, right? Yeah. Purpose Driven Life, so more books than any nonfiction. It was like 30 million books or something crazy, right? Yeah. That was huge back in the day. Huge, huge, yeah. So, so he's great, and we did this whole program, and, and it was the same thing.

• 54:39Mark Hyman?

  We used the community. So, community is medicine. Love is medicine. Just as food is medicine. So, if you, if you understand that, you know, part of the drivers of chronic illness is loneliness, is disconnection, is isolation, is, is focus on cultivating your friendships, cultivating your relationships. Invest in those. Yes. Those are the most important things. Even if you have two or three, doesn't have to be a million people, but how many people in America don't have somebody to pick up the phone and call when [BLEEP] goes down and they're struggling? A lot of people. A lot. And men, it's even worse. Most men don't have real friends. You know, it's like, hey, bro, let's go have a beer, watch some, you know, football. That's fine.

• 55:22Mark Hyman?

  There's nothing wrong with that, but like, can you talk about your marriage? Or can you talk about the stress you're having with your kids? Or you can talk about your worries about money? Or you can talk about your struggle with like, I'm sick and tired of this job and I want to figure out what to do with my life? Like, there are things that we, we need to be in community to thrive. And so, i- i- in terms of health, loneliness is like smoking two packs of cigarettes a day. Yeah. So... Getting healthy is a team sport. What would you say is the, the fifth thing, if you could add one more thing? Oh, you're letting me roll, huh? I think, you know, we have to live in our bodies. So, many people are disconnected from our bodies, and, you know, you're an athlete. Yeah, of course. I'm not an athlete, but I, I, I definitely love to exercise. And I think, you know, it doesn't have to be a lot.

• 56:07Mark Hyman?

  Going from zero to something, you see most of the benefit. So, going from zero to a half an hour walk a day, you get enormous benefit. Especially if you walk after dinner, because it helps to regulate your blood sugar and insulin, because you basically control your blood sugar through your muscles. And even without insulin, so even if you're insulin resistant, you can dispose of the sugar and fuel. So, I think exercise is, is, is again, such an incredible medicine, if you look at all the benefits of it. Across every aspect of health, it's as good as Prozac for depression.

• 56:39Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 56:40Mark Hyman?

  It helps prevent reverse diabetes, heart disease, cancer, just walking prevents dementia, cancer, arthritis. I mean, the list goes on and on. So in every metabolic biochemical level, and I can give you all the sciency parts of it, but the bottom line is exercise is medicine.

• 56:56Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 56:56Mark Hyman?

  And if it was a drug, it would be a multi-trillion dollar drug. Literally. It would be like, you would buy stock in that and you'd be a billionaire overnight.

• 57:04Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 57:05Mark Hyman?

  Because of all the things that it does for the body.

• 57:06Lewis Howes?

  And what about, you know, this, the business of supplements is a massive business. You know, I don't know how many supplement companies there are in the world.

• 57:16Lewis Howes?

  What is the science of supplements in terms of helping us prevent chronic illness?

• 57:21Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 57:21Lewis Howes?

  Is there any research on it helping us?

• 57:24Mark Hyman?

  For sure.

• 57:24Lewis Howes?

  Or is it like, all just kind of?

• 57:26Mark Hyman?

  No, no, there's a lot. There's a lot. I mean, there's a guy named Robert Heaney, who was one of the pioneer researchers on vitamin D, and he wrote a beautiful paper, was sort of a thought piece really, but with a lot of scientific evidence behind it, that was called long latency deficiency diseases. And what did he mean by that? Well, if you don't have enough vitamin D acutely, you get rickets, and your bones bend, and you, you know, what the kids used to get from being out of the, out of the sun and not having a vitamin D, right? And you get vitamin D from the sun or from, you know, wild fish and certain things like wild mushrooms. So you don't eat very much, like 30 units. But if you don't have optimal levels of vitamin

• 58:08Mark Hyman?

  D, let's say 50, uh, men have got destillator of your blood, right? And that would maybe require 1,000 to 5,000 units. So anywhere from like, you know, 20 to 100 times more than, than we typically think you need to prevent the deficiency disease. If you don't have that, you're going to get osteoporosis, you're going to be more prone to infections, you're going to die from COVID. Big men analysis just came out about COVID and vitamin D that prevents hospitalizations and deaths. So we need to have optimal levels of nutrients. Now, why don't we? And why do we need vitamins? I mean, Why should we? It wasn't a design flaw that all of a sudden God or whoever, nature, whatever you believe in, made us and we're screwed up and we have all these problems.

• 58:52Mark Hyman?

  No. If you look at the nutritional density of the hunter-gather diet, it was humongously more nutritious, really, in terms of vitamins, minerals, omega-3 fatty acids, all the things that we are deficient in now. And when you look at, you know, I was, I was actually talking to Bill Gates not too long ago and he was telling us about this bullion that he created for, this bullion tube with extra vitamins in it for the developing world because there were so many vitamin deficiencies. And I said, you know, Bill, there's a lot of nutritional deficiencies. And he, oh, there's no deficiencies here. He's got plenty of food and protein. I'm like, no, Bill. Just because he has it doesn't mean everyone else does. Yeah, yeah. Well, he, no, he just didn't, he just didn't know because he's focused on the developing world and that's great and, you know, whatever you think of it, but, but he just didn't quite get that in America, we're also nutrition deficient. Wow.

• 59:36Mark Hyman?

  When you look at the NHANES data, it's the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. It's a government research project. It's ongoing, which tracks blood work and tests and diet and everything. They found that over 90% of Americans are deficient in one or more nutrient at the minimum level to prevent a deficiencies disease like scurvy or rickets, right? Wow. And, and so we've got probably 90% deficient omega-3s, 80% insufficient, deficient in vitamin D, 45% deficient or insufficient magnesium, probably 30% zinc, up to 40% iron, you know, folate. Because there's, well, there's no vitamins in ultra-processed foods. No, there's not. So if that's what our diet is, we're not, you know. Unless you're outside in the sun getting vitamin D, you're not getting it from your food. No. I mean, I had a patient once. She was like, I don't want to take vitamins,

• 1:00:20Mark Hyman?

  but I'm willing to do whatever it takes to get my nutrients. I'm like, great. Okay. Well, I want to get 200 micrograms of slime. Okay. You need four Brazil nuts. Okay. I want to get 30 milligrams of zinc. Okay. You need 45 pumpkin seeds. Or like, you know, she was like, she had a whole spreadsheet of everything. And great. Good for her. You know, like I need to do this many Kansas sardines a week to get my omega-3s and I need to, so it's fine, but most people aren't going to do that. Those are whole foods. They're whole foods. Those are whole healthy foods. That's right. And so, you know, and also we have more toxins in our environment. We have more stress. We have more dysregulation, more circadian rhythm. We have foods, even if they're eating whole food, like if you're eating a broccoli today. The soil has gotten so destroyed that it's got 50% less nutrients than it did 50 years ago. Wow. Even the broccoli. Really? 50% less nutrients?

• 1:01:05Mark Hyman?

  Yeah. If you go to Europe, like I was in, when I did my research for my book, Young Forever, I was in Icaria and in Sardinia, and they have the old food ways that they haven't changed in thousands of years. And you eat a vegetable there, or you eat something there, it tastes totally different. Really? Yeah. What's it taste like? It just, it's like, you know, like when you go to the garden and you pick a tomato at the end of August, and it's like this cherry tomato explodes in your mouth with flavor. It's like, it's like that. Or you got a wild strawberry. It's like, it's just, and flavor always follows the nutritional density and the phytochemical richness of the food, naturally. So if you have to put a lot of stuff on food to make it taste good, which is what ultra-processed food is,

• 1:01:47Mark Hyman?

  it just tastes like garbage. But natural whole food tastes amazing if it's grown in the right way. And so it has to do with the soil health, it has to do with the soil microbiome, it has to do with the ability to extract nutrients. I mean, it was amazing. There was a guy who served me this pig meal, nose-to-tail meal, even ate the lung, which was kind of weird. But I never turned that far. And he's like, his name was Olinto, he says, "Mark, we flavor the meat before we kill the animal." I'm like, "What do you mean?" He said, "We know if we give it acorns, and we give it this carob thing, and we give it this plant, and this thing, that it tastes better." Wow. They're not doing it because it's good for you. They're doing it because it tastes better. They go, "Oh, we have all these goat and sheep. They're sheep herders."

• 1:02:30Mark Hyman?

  They know if they feed the sheep and the goat these certain wild plants at certain times of the year, like myrto and other plants, that the cheese and the milk taste better. But they're full of phytochemicals. And now we know, for example, you can get catechins in green tea, or they're a great compound for longevity, for health, they're antioxidants, detoxifying. That's why green tea is so great for you. You can get as high levels in the milk and the meat and the animals as you do from the green tea if the animals are eating that food. Wow. So it's not only what you're eating, it's what you're eating ate. The food's eating. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:03:07Lewis Howes?

  This is fascinating. This is fascinating. So supplements, you feel like.

• 1:03:09Mark Hyman?

  I think we need them. We need them. I mean, I think minimum a multivitamin, vitamin D, fish oil, magnesium for most people, and probably a probiotic because of all of the, I mean, I gave a talk the other day to like a thousand people and I was like, who's never taken antibiotic in this room? And like, one person raised their hand. You know?

• 1:03:29Lewis Howes?

  Right. Antibiotic, you said?

• 1:03:30Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:31Lewis Howes?

  So prebiotic or?

• 1:03:32Mark Hyman?

  No, antibiotic. In other words, people's guts are messed up.

• 1:03:34Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:03:35Mark Hyman?

  You know, one dose of antibiotics, you're changing your microbiome. So.

• 1:03:37Lewis Howes?

  So prebiotic or probiotic?

• 1:03:39Mark Hyman?

  Probotic.

• 1:03:40Lewis Howes?

  Probotic.

• 1:03:40Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, probiotics, yeah. So I think those are, you know, multivitamin, fish oil, vitamin D for sure. Magnesium, probiotic would be kind of rounding it out. But, you know, that's, you know, a penny a day. I mean, a dollar a day or less, you know?

• 1:03:52Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure, sure.

• 1:03:52Mark Hyman?

  You know, it's a fair bit of money, but it's doable.

• 1:03:55Lewis Howes?

  It's doable. Uh, there's one other thing I want to ask you about, and I don't want to scare people necessarily, but

• 1:04:04Lewis Howes?

  the, the belly fat that, I mean, I have belly fat, but the belly fat that a lot of people have, how dangerous is that for them, their, for their health, long term?

• 1:04:15Mark Hyman?

  Terrible.

• 1:04:16Lewis Howes?

  As a, as a doctor, you've been in this field for how long? Thirty, forty, forty something years?

• 1:04:20Mark Hyman?

  For forty-one years.

• 1:04:22Lewis Howes?

  How?

• 1:04:23Mark Hyman?

  No, I'm in medicine, in medicine, forty-one years.

• 1:04:25Lewis Howes?

  Forty-one years. Um, you've seen, you know, people extremely obese, you've seen a couple of people with just some, you know, belly fat and everywhere in between, right?

• 1:04:34Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:35Lewis Howes?

  What is the link to belly fat and I guess overall just long-term health or?

• 1:04:41Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:43Lewis Howes?

  How much is belly fat linked to chronic illness and disease?

• 1:04:46Mark Hyman?

  It's the main thing. So if you, if you look at, at.

• 1:04:50Lewis Howes?

  And I don't want to scare people, but I want to wake people up.

• 1:04:52Mark Hyman?

  No, please. I mean, people need to know, like, that fat around your middle is not just holding up your pants. It's a metabolically active organ that's spewing out harmful chemicals all the time. That's dysregulating your appetite, making you hungry, it's slowing your metabolism, it's causing inflammation, it's screwing up your hormones, it's bad. And, and, and what derives it is this, this sort of pharmacologic doses of sugar. As a hunter gatherer, you know, we would maybe get twenty-two teaspoons of sugar a year if we got lucky to find some honey or something, right?

• 1:05:25Lewis Howes?

  Right, right, right.

• 1:05:26Mark Hyman?

  We eat that every day in America. We eat 152 pounds of sugar and 133 pounds of flour per person, per year. Wow. That's 152 pounds of sugar? Uh huh. Per person, per year. That's almost a half a pound, sorry, three quarters of a pound of sugar and flour. By the way, flour is no different than sugar in your body. Although the necky body can't tell the difference between a bowl of cornflakes and a bowl of sugar.

• 1:05:51Mark Hyman?

  That's almost three quarters of a pound a day, per person. Now, I'm not having that much, so some people are eating a lot more. Maybe you are. But the bottom line with this belly fat is that, is that, you know, it was a good thing when we were hunter-gatherers if we could eat a lot of sugar, berries, whatever, honey, because we'd store it. Now, we just keep it on. And what happens is that, that fat is, is causing something called insulin resistance, which we talked about on the show, I think. That's like a form of prediabetes, or I call it diabesity, which is this continuum from optimal metabolic health to poor metabolic health. Now, this stat is terrifying to me. When you look at the, this recent data that

• 1:06:29Mark Hyman?

  came out, 93.2% of Americans have this. 6.8% of Americans don't have it. That's frightening to me. Wow. That means they have high blood sugar, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, or overweight, or have had a heart attack or stroke. 93.2% of Americans. And what that means is that they're all somewhere in that continuum of prediabetes to type 2 diabetes. Wow. And why is that connected to everything? It's the biggest driver of cancers. Pancreatic cancer, colon cancer, breast cancer, menopause cancers, prostate cancer, heart attacks, probably two-thirds of all heart attacks caused by this. Dementia, they're calling type 3 diabetes now. And of course, type 2 diabetes. These are the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Cancer,

• 1:07:15Mark Hyman?

  heart disease, diabetes, dementia, as you get older. All of them, every single one of them. Wow. Is driven primarily by insulin resistance and this metabolic dysfunction, which is caused by belly fat. Wow. Which is caused by starched sugar and ultra-processed food. It's not that complicated. That's the root cause, yeah. Yeah, the root cause. The challenge is, you know, in the last year, I've lost close to 25 pounds Wow. of fat. And I've been putting on muscle, too, so I've lost 25 pounds. And I remember, I, I, you know, I still have belly fat, a little bit of belly fat, right? It's like, I'm not where I want to be necessarily. I feel like...

• 1:07:49Lewis Howes?

  And I can speak for myself, but I feel like others might have a similar feeling. If they look in the mirror and they see belly fat, they might feel a little shame.

• 1:07:58Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:59Lewis Howes?

  They might feel a little guilt, a little shame. It's what I felt.

• 1:08:01Mark Hyman?

  It's not your fault, though. That's the problem.

• 1:08:03Lewis Howes?

  It's not your fault, but it's, it can feel so hard for people to make that change and see results. Cause it doesn't happen in a week or a month or a few months to like lose all the belly fat. It takes time. It took time to build it on and it takes time to, to get it off and then keep it off. It is a complete lifestyle shift.

• 1:08:24Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:08:25Lewis Howes?

  It's a complete identity shift of saying, I'm going to kill off the person I once was for 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 years and I'm going to become a new identity.

• 1:08:35Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:36Lewis Howes?

  And that is a big change.

• 1:08:40Mark Hyman?

  It is. I mean, the question I always ask people is why? Like Simon Sinek was our friend goes, why? What's your why? You know, why do you care? I want to feel better. I want to be able to show up and do the work I want to do and not feel like crap. And I watch TV all night. You know, I had a patient recently, it was like, you know, she was working really hard. She was a med student.

• 1:08:58Mark Hyman?

  She was eating crap to get through coffee, sugar, gain all this weight. And she said, look, I would come home and all I want to do is lay in bed and watch TV. I don't want to exercise. I don't want to do anything. I just want to eat more sugar and crap. And she was in this vicious cycle. And within like two or three days of changing her diet, she was like, my mood's better. I have energy. I just rode my bike 30 miles. I'm like, wow.

• 1:09:17Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:17Mark Hyman?

  So it's, it's, I always say, we're only a few days away from feeling better. Most people don't know how bad they feel until they start feeling good.

• 1:09:25Lewis Howes?

  And if you can start to feel good, you can, you can stay more consistent.

• 1:09:28Mark Hyman?

  That's right. So, so then you know, oh, if I'm doing this, I'm going to feel like crap. Most people don't connect that oxygen, what they eat and how they feel. It's just astounding to me. And I have very smart, educated patients in my patient cohort. And I'm like, God, really? Don't know that this is making you feel like this. And it's, people don't know. They just don't know. And that's part of why I created this, this program, which is basically an elimination diet. Where you put in whole foods, you take out the bad stuff, you put in the good stuff in 10 days. And most people do anything for 10 days. And we see a 70% reduction in all symptoms from all diseases in 10 days.

• 1:10:02Lewis Howes?

  That's amazing.

• 1:10:02Mark Hyman?

  Migraines, irritable bowel, depression. Joint pain, congestion, sinus issues, whatever. Just by eating the whole food for 10 days? Yeah, but it's a more extreme version. It's get rid of sugar, alcohol, all grains, all beans. Sugar drinks, yeah, yeah. All starchy foods. All grains, all beans. All beans, yeah, for a short period of time. To see, because a lot of people have gut issues and just can have inflammation from gluten and people don't know. So what do you eat? Get rid of dairy, lots of veggies, protein, nuts and seeds, berries. That's it. Some sweet potatoes. Ten days. Yeah, 10 days, and it's the most unbelievable thing. I lead these retreats around the world and people just have the most unbelievable transformation.

• 1:10:44Mark Hyman?

  So I would say to people listening, if you want to do something, just see doing something like that for 10 days, what you'll do. And I'm going to be running, starting in January, we're going to be launching an online 10-day detox course. You can find it on DrHyman.com. But essentially, it's a way for you to just hit the reset button. The way I explain it is like, imagine if you could, you know, put your body back to its original factory settings. When your computer's not working, you gotta reboot it or you gotta reinstall the software. It's kind of like that. And it's sort of, you can upgrade your biological software so fast. Like I said, this woman had diabetes on insulin. In three days, she was off the insulin. In three months, she reversed everything and she lost 43 pounds. So it's possible, if you know what to do. Yes. And you have the right information.

• 1:11:29Mark Hyman?

  And for you, you know, the question around shame and how you feel. I'm going to tell people something. This is a message that's been put out there by our culture, by the food industry, by doctors, by nutritionists, by our professional associations, whether it's the American Heart Association, American Diabetes Association, Academy of Nutrition Dietetics. It's the prevailing message out there that it's your fault, your weight. You're a lazy glutton is the subtext. Just eat less and exercise more.

• 1:12:01Mark Hyman?

  Subtext, you're a lazy glutton who doesn't want to do anything. Right? It's not about eating less and exercising more. It's about understanding what you're eating is more important than how much you're eating. And the quality matters more than the quantity because the quantity will take care of itself. Could you eat 10 rib eye steaks? Well, maybe you could, but you could eat, you could eat 10 giant chocolate chip cookies in a minute. Easily. You could eat a quart of ice cream, no problem. But you could eat 10 avocados? No. Your body will self-regulate. And so it's not your fault. It's number one. It's not about blaming yourself. It's about understanding that you are in a toxic food system that's set up for you to fail.

• 1:12:45Mark Hyman?

  And then the food industry has these talking points. There's no good and bad foods. It's all about moderation. Just eat less and exercise more. You know, it's okay, you're getting Coca-Cola as long as it's part of your calorie, you know, allotment for the day. Nonsense. It's, it's, it's, it's basically the food industry talking points and they're wrong. They're just wrong because when you start to accumulate this belly fat, it's hungry fat. It's literally hungry fat. That fat is going to make you crave and want more food. And this is a startling statistic. When I learned about this, there's something called the Yale Food Addiction Scale,

• 1:13:25Mark Hyman?

  which is a validated scientific scale of questions that you can take and find online. The link to the show, I'm sure in the show notes, that tells you whether you're a food addict. Like you have biological addiction based on the definition of substance abuse, whether it's heroin or cocaine or nicotine. And 14% of the population are food addicts. 14% of the adult population are alcoholics. What's even worse is 12% of kids are food addicts. I was at an obesity conference, a childhood obesity conference not too long ago, and there was a hepatic surgeon there. I'm like, what are you doing here? He said, oh yeah, well, we're seeing the need for liver transplants in kids now.

• 1:14:10Mark Hyman?

  Because their livers have cirrhosis from drinking so much soda.

• 1:14:16Mark Hyman?

  Right? That's what's going on. So this, this is not their fault. You know, a three-year-old with type 2 diabetes, it's not their fault.

• 1:14:23Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 1:14:24Mark Hyman?

  Okay? Like, this is just ridiculous. The fact that 40% of kids are now overweight? I mean, there was that one kid in my class when I was going up, Erica, and she wasn't, by today's standards, wasn't even that overweight. She was a little chubby, you know? And I'm like, and now, I mean, you see.

• 1:14:39Lewis Howes?

  We're all skinny growing up.

• 1:14:40Mark Hyman?

  We're all skinny growing up, yeah.

• 1:14:43Lewis Howes?

  There's, there's a couple of things I want to leave people with. One, what you said is getting healthy is a team sport.

• 1:14:49Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:49Lewis Howes?

  I think it's probably the hardest thing to try to do it on your own.

• 1:14:52Mark Hyman?

  100%.

• 1:14:53Lewis Howes?

  And maybe if you're watching or listening, you may not have the support you want, or people may not want to get on board with you, but it's, whatever you can, enroll a friend.

• 1:15:01Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:02Lewis Howes?

  Hire a coach.

• 1:15:03Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:03Lewis Howes?

  Find a nutritionist, someone to support you.

• 1:15:06Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:07Lewis Howes?

  If you can't afford a coach, find a friend and beg someone, you know, whatever it might be. Find the healthiest person you know and say, "Hey, can I just keep you accountable and you keep me accountable? And we go to the gym a few days a week and we just try to help each other?" Getting healthy is a team sport.

• 1:15:21Mark Hyman?

  Doesn't even have to be your healthiest friend. It could be anybody. You both feel like overweight or struggling.

• 1:15:25Lewis Howes?

  Getting healthy is a team sport. That's something I think that everyone here should be thinking about. Do not do it alone. The second thing is, you're, you're a new company that you're a part of called functionhealth.com. It gives people data. And I think when you get tested, you know, everyone's talking about glucose monitors or, or rings, or just something to get data.

• 1:15:47Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:47Lewis Howes?

  If you can get data about what's off inside of your blood work, and you can say, "Oh, I have the information. How can I just improve it a little bit here over time to improve the data inside of me?"

• 1:16:00Mark Hyman?

  That's right.

• 1:16:01Lewis Howes?

  And functionhealth.com offers a process where people can get blood work and have the information. Is that right?

• 1:16:09Mark Hyman?

  Super easy. It's like five minutes sign up online. You get to skip the waitlist of 300,000 people. Greatness100 is the skip the waitlist code.

• 1:16:18Lewis Howes?

  Greatness100, if you want to use it.

• 1:16:19Mark Hyman?

  And, you know, it's five minutes to sign up. You'll tell you a lab near your house. It's all on the top of Quest Labs, so it's thousands of draw centers. You go in, it's 15 minutes in and out. You get your labs in a beautiful dashboard. It not only tells you your lab results, but you're not a doctor, how do you know what they mean? But the results are. Interpreted based on knowledge input from the world's leading physicians and from all the scientific literature about what it means and what to do about it. So, well, okay, my blood sugar is high, now what? Or my thyroid is not right, now what? Well, it gives you a very clear idea of insights and education about what you can do and how to be an empowered consumer. And OR rings are great, I have one, you know, it's fine. But it's only skin deep.

• 1:16:59Lewis Howes?

  But blood work is what you need.

• 1:17:00Mark Hyman?

  It's only skin deep. And you can pick stuff up, it's causing you to feel like crap, and you don't even know it, right? Like a patient today, she had low iron, her hair was falling out, she was tired, her thyroid was off, she had all these different things going on that she didn't know about. They were easy fixes. They're easy fixes. And sometimes it's more serious, you have diabetes, or you have high blood sugar, whatever. I mean, we've had people actually, you know, just come up to us in a restaurant, we were having dinner, the team from the company, and this guy walks up, "Dr. Hyman, I use Function, I found out I had all these metabolic issues, and I changed my diabetes on what you guys said, and I did all these other things, and now I lost 20 pounds, and I feel great, and my numbers are great." So, you know, we don't have to wait for the healthcare system to catch up, right?

• 1:17:42Mark Hyman?

  We don't have to go through insurance and your doctor visits, it's a dollar thirty-seven a day for twice a year testing, you can add on other stuff if you want. In fact, we're doing cancer screening now, because as I mentioned earlier in the show, we're seeing a 50% increase to 60% increase in cancers, significant colon cancer, in people under 50, even in 30s. And so there's now a screening test called Gallery, which is a blood test for cancer, it's like liquid biopsy. So rather than having to like do a colonoscopy or a scan, it's pretty good at picking stuff up early. And we've, out of the people we've tested, it's 1 in 188 have had a positive cancer signal, which means then they can go get checked out. And early-stage cancer is pretty much curable, but if you wait till late, it's not.

• 1:18:23Lewis Howes?

  Right, right, right.

• 1:18:24Mark Hyman?

  And so we're figuring these early-stage cancers that people can get cured of. So it's really empowering, and I feel like, for me, it's a way for getting people to be the CEO of their own health, to understand what's going on in their bodies, and to be empowered with the data.

• 1:18:37Lewis Howes?

  And that's what I think is going to be the future, is having accountability and having your own data accessible and affordable, and it's something that FunctionHealth.com offers. And again, if you guys use greatness100 as a code, the first 100 people that use that will get early access to it, you'll skip the line, 300,000 people on the waitlist. So FunctionHealth.com for that. And then, um, and I think having that accountability, it's like, okay, twice a year, I'm getting blood work or quarterly or something where you can at least know the decisions I'm making are either helping me or hurting me.

• 1:19:09Mark Hyman?

  That's right.

• 1:19:09Lewis Howes?

  And you take back responsibility. You don't need government to change policy. You don't need a politician to make some changes. You don't need the food industry to change. Maybe they will, maybe they won't. But at the end of the day, you gotta take back the power.

• 1:19:21Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:22Lewis Howes?

  I think having data is extremely helpful. And you being aware of like, okay, my decisions now are hurting me moving forward.

• 1:19:30Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:30Lewis Howes?

  And I'm gonna get the blood work again and, oh, well, I did continue to eat processed foods.

• 1:19:35Mark Hyman?

  My sugar's going up.

• 1:19:36Lewis Howes?

  So it's, it's on me at the end of the day to take responsibility with the actions I'm taking once I'm informed.

• 1:19:41Mark Hyman?

  That's right.

• 1:19:42Lewis Howes?

  And at your website, um, drhyman.com, you've got a ton of free resources to continue to educate people.

• 1:19:50Mark Hyman?

  Right.

• 1:19:50Lewis Howes?

  Your Instagram is amazing with just quick, free resources as well and content. Did you say you have a program in January?

• 1:19:57Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, 10 Day Detox.

• 1:19:58Lewis Howes?

  10 Day Detox.

• 1:19:59Mark Hyman?

  It's great.

• 1:20:00Lewis Howes?

  So people can sign up for that.

• 1:20:01Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, sign up. It's a, it's a co-coach program. It's like, basically goes for a month of support and it's really, it gives people really a transformation.

• 1:20:08Lewis Howes?

  It's starting in January, so, um, drhyman.com, at Dr. Mark Hyman on social media, functionhealth.com and use code greatness100.

• 1:20:23Mark Hyman?

  If you're not sick of listening to me, you can check out my podcast, Dr. Hyman, Doctor's Pharmacy.

• 1:20:28Lewis Howes?

  Doctor's Pharmacy. You got another one, Health Hacks, right?

• 1:20:30Mark Hyman?

  Health Hacks, yeah.

• 1:20:31Lewis Howes?

  Health Hacks. So you got a couple of great podcasts. How else can we support you or get involved?

• 1:20:35Mark Hyman?

  Well, you're doing it. I think, I think for people actually taking ownership of their health is so important because, you know, once we, people start knowing what's going on with themselves, they start to kind of change. And when you create that change, it starts to create change in the system. You know, one of the, one of the best stories I ever heard recently was that one of the CEOs of this big food companies called up the CEO of Novo Nordisk and saying, "We're in trouble because with Ozempic."

• 1:21:00Mark Hyman?

  People are not eating as much of their

• 1:21:02Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:21:03Mark Hyman?

  Wow. Sales are going down.

• 1:21:05Lewis Howes?

  Now they're gonna start fighting the drug companies from, yeah, yeah.

• 1:21:08Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:08Lewis Howes?

  Wow. It's a whole nother conversation, but Dr. Mark Hyman, make sure you guys check him out. Follow his work. Get one of his 15 New York Times bestselling books. All the things. We appreciate you, Mark. Thanks for all your support and your service and helping us continue to heal from all this sickness that we have. We appreciate it.

• 1:21:28Mark Hyman?

  Thanks, buddy. Well, it's great to be here and love you, man. You've been doing this together for years now.

• 1:21:33Lewis Howes?

  Of course, man. Love you too. Appreciate it. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad-free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward.

• 1:22:12Lewis Howes?

  And I want to remind you, if no one has told you lately, that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.