How David Beckham & A Heart Transplant Survivor Plan to Stay Strong at 80

For much of our lives, performance is measured in speed, strength, and output. As we get older, the equation changes. On this episode of The Dr. Hyman Show, I sit down with Sir David Beckham and Dr. Dawn Mussallem to explore what elite sport, stage IV cancer, and heart transplantation can teach us about prevention—and what it really takes to sustain health over time. Watch the full conversation on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcasts. Together, we explore: • Why your health trajectory is more changeable than you’ve been taught—especially after 40 • How sleep, stress, and metabolic health quietly shape your long-term disease risk • Which daily habits give you the biggest return on investment over decades • How to build resilience now so your body supports you later The real measure of health isn’t what you can achieve in your 20s or 30s. It’s the resilience you build so your body supports you for decades to come. View Show Notes From This Episode Get Free Weekly Health Tips from Dr. Hyman https://drhyman.com/pages/picks?utm_campaign=shownotes&utm_medium=banner&utm_source=podcast Sign Up for Dr. Hyman’s Weekly Longevity Journal https://drhyman.com/pages/longevity?utm_campaign=shownotes&utm_medium=banner&utm_source=podcast Join the 10-Day Detox to Reset Your Health https://drhyman.com/pages/10-day-detox Join the Hyman Hive for Expert Support and Real Results https://drhyman.com/pages/hyman-hive This episode is brought to you by Maui Nui, Made In Cookware, Timeline, Seed, Sunlighten and BON CHARGE. Learn more about the health benefits of venison and how to get yours, head over to mauinuivenison.com/hyman. Head to madeincookware.com and use the code DRHYMAN for 10% off your order. Receive 35% off a subscription at timeline.com/drhyman. Go to seed.com/hyman and use code 20HYMAN to get 20% off your first month. Visit sunlighten.com and use code HYMAN to save up to $1400. Upgrade your routine. Head to boncharge.com/hyman and use code HYMAN for 15% off. (0:00) Sir David Beckham and Dr. Dawn Mussallem on Health and Recovery (1:25) Defining Health and Wellness (2:33) David Beckham's Diet and Athlete Nutrition Evolution (8:23) Health Maintenance Post-Retirement and Turning 50 (14:50) Dr. Dawn Mussallem's Health Journey and Heart Transplant Experience (25:05) Lifestyle Changes, Sleep, and Nutrient Deficiencies (29:55) David Beckham's Daily Routine and Connection with Nature (41:21) Dawn Mussallem's Daily Health Practices and Mayo Clinic Research (44:54) Essential Habits for Sustained Health (47:17) Dietary Choices and Anti-Inflammatory Foods (52:00) Recovery Tools and Health Priorities in Later Life (56:10) Closing Remarks

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  When I retired, I thought that my body needed to just recover and I stopped working out. My body fell apart. I'm aging exactly the same as everybody else is aging. It's really about how I want to feel when I'm 80 years old, not right now.

• 0:14Speaker 01

  Let's switch over to you, Don, because your story is quite amazing.

• 0:16Speaker 00

  It's more than quite amazing.

• 0:18Speaker 02

  It was just a few weeks into medical school that I was diagnosed with stage four cancer. And they said, you have three months to live and you'll never be able to have children. Ultimately, I had a heart transplant.

• 0:26Speaker 01

  You were the first one to run a marathon within a year of having a heart transplant.

• 0:30Speaker 02

  When I took my first step, I thought, I think I made a big mistake. I was so decompensating. My calf muscles were literally indented. I had a three-person assist and a rolling walker.

• 0:39Dr. Mark Hyman?

  David Beckham is a global icon whose name is synonymous with elite performance. Over a 20-year career at the highest level of professional football, he redefined what longevity looks like for an athlete. Now at 50, he is applying that same world-class discipline to a new mission. Joining him is Dr. Don Musalem, previously a Mayo Clinic physician who survived stage four breast cancer and a heart transplant, only to run a marathon one year later. Together, they are stripping away the confusion of the wellness industry to reveal what it actually takes to stay elite at any age.

• 1:07Speaker 01

  So kind of walk us through a day of the life of David Beckham in terms of your health routine.

• 1:12Speaker 00

  I still want to live and feel like an athlete. Every part of my life, I treat as if I'm still playing.

• 1:19Speaker 02

  I think you should have him talk about his time in nature with his farm.

• 1:22Speaker 00

  This cockerel is the most handsome cockerel you'll ever see.

• 1:25Speaker 01

  So how do you define health now for yourself?

• 1:34Speaker 01

  David, Don, welcome to the podcast.

• 1:36Speaker 00

  Thank you very much.

• 1:37Speaker 01

  Well, it's so great to have you both here. You both have health journeys and stories to tell. You as an athlete, you as a survivor of breast cancer and a heart transplant. And also talk about how the average person can learn from the things that you've learned in ways that are remarkable. Both your stories are extraordinary. One, you as an elite athlete who's learned how to take care of his health from the beginning and then continually improving even at this age. I think you look better now than you did in pictures when you were like 20.

• 2:04Speaker 00

  Now you sound like my wife.

• 2:07Speaker 00

  She says the same thing to me all the time and I don't believe her.

• 2:10Speaker 01

  You're kind of a scrawny little kid though. I saw those pictures.

• 2:14Speaker 00

  That's very true. That's very true.

• 2:16Speaker 01

  And you know, you, you came back from two impossible things, which is stage four breast cancer and a heart transplant and you look fabulous and glowing. So everybody's going to want to know, what, what have you both done? David, let's start with you. You, you, uh, obviously everybody knows who you are. You're an elite athlete, you're a football player, or as we say here, soccer player. And you, you, um, we were chatting earlier, you're saying you've always been sort of paying attention to your health, but you kind of also grew up on crap food, like pie and mash and fish and chips and the, you know, East End of London and like, it wasn't a thing. And you know, you would go to Cheesecake Factory when you were playing to get your pregame meals. And they give you a few bucks from the team to play it. Tell us about how you've kind of

• 2:59Speaker 01

  thought about your own health as a, as a player, because you know, most athletes, when we're chatting about this, don't pay much attention to what they're eating. Uh, you know, some high performance Olympians obviously do, but the average people in major league sports, you know, football players, basketball players, soccer players, baseball players, or other football players.

• 3:20Speaker 01

  Don't really pay attention. They're eating crap. And I've seen it. I, we were chatting, I've seen, you know, what players eating, you know, friends that own basketball teams or football teams and I'll go in and after the game, like they're just eating like fried chicken and pizza and pasta and, you know, crap and burgers and hot dogs. And I'm like, if you have a, you know, million dollar racehorse, you're not going to feed it McDonald's and Coke and fries and a milkshake for, for a pregame Kentucky Derby meal.

• 3:48Speaker 00

  It's funny you say that though, because you know, being an owner of a team, you know, I want my players to be healthy. I want them to be doing the right things, eating the right things, drinking the same things or the right things. And each player has to be treated differently. I learned that when I was playing in, uh, in AC Milan, you know, each player was treated differently after a game. You'd go and get, you know, you'd go and have a blood test that tell you exactly how you, how much you've run, what you need to do in the next few games. So, you know, every, every, every player gets treated differently these days. It wasn't the same when I was playing. Um, but. I walked into our locker room, you know, uh, last season a couple of times and players are eating pizza.

• 4:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:30Speaker 00

  And I'm like, is this the right thing? And they're like, well, players just want something, something. They don't want something healthy. They don't want something that's that good for you. They just want something and, and pizza is the, the, the kind of food of choice on most of the players. And that's right after the game. But going back to my upbringing.

• 4:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:50Speaker 00

  You know, I, I grew up in the east end of London. My mum was an amazing cook, you know, my dad worked from six AM till nine PM every single day. So my mum was the one that was home looking after me and my two sisters. Now, my mum, like I said, she without knowing, prepared me for my career. Yes, we ate fish and chips. Yes, we ate pie and mash. But that was really a kind of a treat at the weekend or a Friday night. I don't know whether you know that, but on a Friday night, it's tradition that you have fish and chips.

• 5:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:24Speaker 00

  And I always used to go on a Sunday morning with my grandma and my granddad, not my granddad, cause he was, he was working. But my grandma and we'd always go to our local pie and mash. But.

• 5:36Speaker 01

  What is pie and mash for Americans? I don't.

• 5:37Speaker 00

  Okay, so pie and, pie and mash, I'll explain it. So pie and mash is, uh, it's like a minced meat pie. It's a very basic minced meat pie with pastry. And then you have, um, a mashed potato, but it's not your whipped creamy, you know, milky mashed potato. It is a mashed potato that is just mashed, is just potatoes and salt.

• 5:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:00Speaker 00

  And then here's, here's the part where everyone goes, ugh.

• 6:03Speaker 01

  Sounds so bad.

• 6:03Speaker 00

  It's called liquor and it's a kind of gravy, but it's made out of stewed ills and parsley. And it's mixed together and it's this green sauce that is.

• 6:14Speaker 01

  You're like those like the lizard. I mean, that, that, like a snake thing.

• 6:18Speaker 00

  And then you, and then you pile like pepper and salt and like chili vinegar, which is, it's my favorite meal. That was, that, that would be my last meal.

• 6:27Speaker 01

  That's amazing.

• 6:28Speaker 00

  So, so in all honesty, you know, those were treats. We understood that those, those are treats. But during the week, actually, and, and the night before I would play on a Sunday morning, my mum would always make me like a piece of steak or a piece of grilled chicken and pasta. So that really prepared me for, you know, probably gave me the longevity in my career. You know, from a, from a really early age, I was eating good things. You know, I might have the odd pie mash, fish and chips, but majority of the time I was eating good things. So that really has completely changed now, you know, in the world of football or soccer.

• 7:10Speaker 00

  Completely changed, you know, the scientific part of, you know, eating and looking after yourself and wellness now has completely gone. You know, full circle, in all honesty, because like I said, when I was, when I first joined Manchester United, we at lunchtimes, we used to have. Uh, steak and chips or pie and chips, baked beans. And for dessert, we'd have a chocolate pudding and chocolate custard every, every single day.

• 7:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:37Speaker 00

  Every single day.

• 7:39Speaker 01

  There are no vegetables in there.

• 7:40Speaker 00

  No vegetables, no vegetables. I mean, when you've got beans on your plate and chips, you know. We were like not worried about the vegetables and the fact that I then continued, I, I went on and played till I was thirty eight years old. So I, my, I had a long career.

• 7:56Speaker 01

  What's the average football players?

• 7:57Speaker 00

  At that time, it was probably thirty two, thirty four, if you were lucky.

• 8:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:03Speaker 00

  Um, but nowadays, obviously with all the science that's in with the teams now and the players. Players, their longevity of their careers now is going, some players are playing till thirty eight, forty, forty one, forty. So players are long in their careers because of what they're doing to their bodies now.

• 8:23Speaker 01

  And did you, did you change over time in terms of what you were doing to maintain your health as you're playing?

• 8:28Speaker 00

  No, I was pretty, I was honestly pretty consistent, you know, a lot of players obviously had to change because. You know, I've not talked about, you know, going for a pint, you know, on a Wednesday or a Thursday afternoon, you know, player, I didn't used to do that. But players used to do that, you know, before a game on a Saturday, they would go and have ten pints in. In the pub on a Wednesday or a Thursday before a game.

• 8:50Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 8:50Speaker 00

  You know, so.

• 8:51Speaker 01

  That's a lot of pints.

• 8:52Speaker 00

  I mean, I'm talking about thirty, forty years ago. I'm not talking about ten years ago. I'm talking about that time. So it was a different and and players were still performing.

• 9:01Speaker 01

  Five quarts of beer, I'd be like on the floor.

• 9:03Speaker 00

  I know.

• 9:05Speaker 00

  But that's really how I was able to, you know, I I did adjust. Of course, I adjusted because I had to, but I was pretty consistent through my whole career. You know, players used to go away after the end of the season, come back and they would be heavy. You know, and and I was never like that, you know, throughout the summer, I always looked after myself. I never overate. I never drank. I was never a big drinker in all honesty anyway. So I was able to go away for four or five weeks in the summer, eat what I wanted. But I always looked after myself.

• 9:38Speaker 01

  And trained.

• 9:38Speaker 00

  You know, the the the coach would always turn around to us and say, take four weeks or or just take two weeks and do nothing. I never did anything, nothing. I always did my training throughout those four weeks.

• 9:50Speaker 01

  And that's that's how you stayed so long in the game.

• 9:53Speaker 00

  I think so. I think so. Yeah.

• 9:55Speaker 01

  And how do how do you sort of navigate this now, you know, being fifty and like you're.

• 10:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, fifty, fifty last year.

• 10:02Speaker 01

  That's a big year, right?

• 10:03Speaker 00

  It was a big year. A lot happened last year for me. So it was a special year last year. Yeah, turning fifty was a a big milestone, but to be honest, everyone made, you know. I think my mate, my wife made a little bit more fuss about it than than than me turning fifty. She turned fifty the year before me, which I always remind her about, obviously. But she turned fifty the year before me, but I was excited about, you know, I just treated it like any other birthday. Um, I don't feel any different. I don't, I don't think I look any different, but a few more gray hairs. But apart from that, no, it's a.

• 10:40Speaker 01

  It hasn't made you think differently about your health because, you know, we're going to talk about it in a minute, but you created a new company, I Am Eight, which is about. Helping people create health on a simple daily regimen. And you recently launched the longevity product, which we're going to talk about, which I love. What made you sort of want to think differently about your own health that led to kind of this?

• 11:01Speaker 00

  Like I said earlier, the, you know, early on in my career, no one talked about the scientific part of looking after yourself or the wellness part or the supplement part or the vitamins part. No, no, no one talked about it. It wasn't really a thing that really got talked about. We didn't, we weren't sat down and said and told to take certain things. But I always looked at the market as something really interesting. You know, and I always looked at what was out there, you know? And even before the end of my career, I started looking at things and what I could do to make my performance better. You know, on more on the holistic side than than any other. So I was always looking for things. I was always looking for supplements.

• 11:45Speaker 00

  I was always looking for different vitamins and things and and different smoothies and what I could do to kind of keep myself as healthy and keep, you know, on that that level of of play and also a level of professionalism. So when I started coming towards the end and after my career, I then started to focus, okay, I've been an elite athlete for 22 years. Now I'm not an elite athlete. I still want to live and feel like an athlete. I still, you know, every part of my life, I treat as if I'm still playing. You know, I wake up, I have a schedule.

• 12:26Speaker 00

  I'm very regimented on what I do every single day, what I take every single day, how I look after myself. If I've got, if I've got an important day, you know, one day, I'll still go to bed at the right, at the same time as I, as I did when I played football. So I continued to treat myself and treat my body like when I was playing. But I looked at what was out there. And, you know, I had so many people come up to me and say, it's just so confusing. What do you take? What do you do? What do you put in your body? And I'm like, well, I want to be able to turn around to someone and say, okay, this is what I take. And I want it simple. And it's one of the things that I spoke to Danny Young about when, you know, when we first started the conversations.

• 13:11Speaker 00

  I said, all I want is simplicity. I don't want to be taking seventeen to twenty tablets every single morning. I want to put it in one drink and I want to put it in water and I'll mix it up and I want to take it and I want it easy and I want it to taste good. And I want, that funnily enough, that was one of my things.

• 13:32Speaker 01

  Well, it does actually. I'm having some right now.

• 13:33Speaker 00

  It's got to taste good and I want to feel, I want to feel an instant like, like impact. And, and I must admit, it's the one thing that people say to us every single day. Like the day after that week, they feel an instant impact.

• 13:58Speaker 01

  So when you turn fifty, do you think about your health differently? Or you're just like, I'm on the same regimen. I'm going to act like I'm twenty and keep.

• 14:06Speaker 00

  I, I don't think.

• 14:07Speaker 01

  What's your like daily regimen that you?

• 14:09Speaker 00

  I don't think of my time at fifty. I want to think of my time at eighty.

• 14:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what I mean.

• 14:14Speaker 00

  And, and that's really why I'm doing the things that I'm doing now. It's why I'm, I'm looking to the future rather than looking at fifty because I've done what I've done. I'm aging exactly the same as everybody else is aging. You know, I might have been an athlete for, you know, a, a long time. But I'm still aging the same as what you're aging, what everyone else is aging. So, you know, it's really about how I want to feel when I'm eighty years old, not, not right now. Because I've done what I've done to get myself to this point. I feel good. Um, and, and that's what I want to continue.

• 14:50Speaker 01

  Amazing. Let's switch over you, Don, because your story is quite amazing.

• 14:54Speaker 00

  It's more than quite amazing.

• 14:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, it's kind of like, I, I don't think I've ever met anybody who's had your story. And I also don't think I've ever really met anybody who looks as good as you who's had a heart transplant. You're a physician, you, you trained in sort of integrative medicine. You work at Mayo Clinic in, you know, teaching women who are going through breast cancer, how to do that in a holistic way. You have been a patient and that's led you on a health journey for yourself and made you so passionate about bringing this to so many people. And I think a lot of us who are in this field are like that. We've had some horrible thing happen to us. Regular medicine didn't figure it out and then we had to figure it out for ourselves. So maybe you could share a little bit about, as a patient survivor, like what was, what was it about your health journey that helped

• 15:40Speaker 01

  lead you to where you are now and this mission that you're on to bring help to so many and, and tell us a little bit about like what you went through.

• 15:48Speaker 02

  So thanks, Mark, and thank you, David. I know you're having to listen to this again. But it's powerful. And you know, so often I almost in the beginning was embarrassed and a little quiet about sharing my story, but then I was getting so much feedback about how inspiring it was and giving individuals hope. And I really want to help move individuals beyond hope to knowing that they too can attain their vitality without pause and flourish beyond a massive healthcare adversity, which is what I did. And much like you, David, you know, I, I lived a very healthy lifestyle growing up because my mom was at home. She cooked these healthy meals, you know, and that's a big part of it. When you have, I think, a solid foundation of health and wellness, you have much better outcomes. And so this

• 16:30Speaker 02

  is a big shout out because when I work with women, a lot of times they're very inspired to want to make change within themselves. But then quickly, the next thing they say is, yes, but my husband's not going to want to do this. What about my kids? And this is really a big shout out that the earlier we start, the more likely you're going to have a flourishing life, regardless of whatever may come to you, because we don't have total control over health adversity. Even if you're living a healthy lifestyle, it's not to blame yourself. These things sometimes just happen.

• 16:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, you didn't get breast cancer because you're eating crap or something. We live in a toxic environment and who knows, you know?

• 17:02Speaker 02

  I have so many women that come in and they ask that question, why me? And that was one thing I never did. I never felt like I was in a battle or I was fighting this. I just trusted, you know, I looked for lessons and I really felt it's like a more fat day. Like this was really happening, you know, for me, not to me. But it was just a few weeks into medical school that I was diagnosed with stage four cancer and it just

• 17:21Speaker 01

  And you were old?

• 17:22Speaker 02

  I was 26.

• 17:23Speaker 01

  That's crazy.

• 17:24Speaker 02

  So it was just really quite surprising that this was the diagnosis that had happened. And, you know, they came into the room. This was the year 2000, Thanksgiving weekend and they came in. I had actually collapsed. They had to take me to urgent surgery. I was in cardiogenic shock, 16 centimeter mass wrapped around my chest because I was misdiagnosed, misdiagnosed, misdiagnosed. Doctors really didn't think anything was wrong with me, but with the fast-paced medicine that people don't just pause. And this was, you know, starting back in the 2000s when healthcare was really starting to shift even back then. No one ever listened to my lungs. So I ended up getting diagnosed at a very late stage. And so I had this massive tumor wrapped around my heart that was compressing the great vessels.

• 18:07Speaker 02

  And that resulted in cardiogenic shock. They did a thoracotomy the next day.

• 18:11Speaker 01

  That's when they crack open your chest.

• 18:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, just big massive surgery. And you know, the next day they came in my room and they said, you have three months to live without chemotherapy, 20 months to live with chemotherapy. You have stage four cancer and you're going to need to drop out of medical school and you'll never be able to have children. It was like all these absolutes. And I thought, wow, you know.

• 18:29Speaker 01

  That's a lot to hold.

• 18:30Speaker 02

  It was interesting. You know, and I remember just feeling very sturdy though and steady. I'd always had faith in God and belief in something bigger than myself and I just trusted, you know. I was in medical school, so there was this element of curiosity, which was kind of an interesting psychology, but I, I never fought it. You know, I knew I needed to do the conventional therapy, so went on to do chemotherapy and bone marrow transplant, radiation therapy, stayed in school the whole time. But when I had my knowing, the, the great question you asked is how did you know you wanted to do what you did? Is I remember during my bone marrow transplant, my oncologist was very special. He had a bicycle in my room.

• 19:05Speaker 01

  You had surgery, you had chemo, you had radiation.

• 19:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:09Speaker 01

  And then you had a bone marrow transplant.

• 19:10Speaker 02

  And a bone marrow transplant. This was in 2000. So this was back when they just really gave you high doses of treatment to just totally deplete the immune system and then they gave it back to you. So it was pretty powerful.

• 19:21Speaker 01

  By the way, just for people listening who don't understand what a bone marrow transplant is, essentially they, they destroy your own immune system. They, they kill your bone marrow.

• 19:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:29Speaker 01

  And then they give you somebody else's bone marrow, which rebuilds your immune system and then hopefully will help you survive. But it's, it's a lot.

• 19:37Speaker 02

  That's exactly right. You know, and this was with the City of Hope. This was in a research study because they knew that, you know, otherwise there's no way really to cure this cancer. And so that's what they did.

• 19:46Speaker 01

  The Hail Mary.

• 19:47Speaker 02

  It's exactly, it's a Hail Mary. And so it was so fascinating, though. I kept my life the way it always is. I always wake up at 4am. I would ride the bike that was in my room. There was also a bicycle that my oncologist had at the nurses station so I could sneak out. And it was in that sneaking out to watch the sunrise, to go ride my bike at the nurses station. Everyone in the other room-

• 20:06Speaker 01

  Wait, wait, you brought a bike into the nurses station?

• 20:08Speaker 02

  The oncologist did. He was so cool.

• 20:09Speaker 01

  Like a stationary bike?

• 20:11Speaker 02

  Two stationary bikes. I had two bikes. One in my room for, on the days that he really didn't want me to leave. And he said, yeah, most mornings, everyone's tucked in the rooms. You're, you're fine to come out. And I'd ride my bike and watch the sunrise every day for about an hour. I mean, this is when my hemoglobin was like six. You know, it was crazy. It was really-

• 20:27Speaker 01

  Okay, wait a minute. You, you have to understand what she's talking about because I recently had surgery and my hemoglobin went to seven and I could barely sit up in a chair. And you hear you're saying you're riding your bike. That's when you have no blood in your body. It's like a third of the blood that you're supposed to have.

• 20:43Speaker 02

  It is true. But you know, I'm a smaller stature individual. I was very much into cardiovascular exercise, but you are too. And we each have our different reserves. But I was very fit. Prior to my cancer diagnosis, I would do Camelback Mountain in Arizona twice. I'd go up, come down, go up, come down. And then I'd even run after that. So I was very fit. I had a high VO2. So I had a lot of reserves. So when my hemoglobin was low, I would even climb Camelback with like hemoglobin was of seven. It was crazy. I just was very blessed to, to have this high vitality. But you know why? It's because I showed up for myself. I ate right.

• 21:12Speaker 01

  Mindset.

• 21:13Speaker 02

  I exercised regularly. And we know exercise during chemotherapy is incredibly powerful. We know it improves outcomes. In recent colorectal cancer studies, you're like on par with the benefits of chemo. It's really important exercise. You know, this is what you did your whole life.

• 21:27Speaker 01

  Exercise is medicine, yeah.

• 21:27Speaker 02

  Exercise is just so, so important that we move our body. But I just remember looking out and seeing everyone else in the rooms and they were dying in an effort to stay alive. You know, but I describe it as I attained my vitality without pause. And it was the lifestyle that made the difference. And I really do attribute that to why I'm here today. And unfortunately, those treatments were, you know, ones that we really didn't know what they would do to someone. They cured the cancer. What a blessing, right? Because otherwise I wouldn't be here. But they caused advanced heart failure. So

• 21:54Speaker 01

  You could cure the disease, but the patient died.

• 21:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. It's it's another testament to the importance of exercise because when I was found to have advanced heart failure, my ejection fraction, I I don't think I've ever heard of one lower was eight percent.

• 22:08Speaker 01

  And you were walking around?

• 22:09Speaker 02

  No, I was actually ready to collapse. I was in cardiogenic shock again. And this was in the year 2003. So it was about three years after my

• 22:16Speaker 01

  That's like that's like for people in plain English. It's like basically about a seventh of what your heart should be pumping. If it going beat and pump a seventh of the blood, that's what she had.

• 22:26Speaker 02

  It was really hard. And I had lived with heart failure for 18 years.

• 22:29Speaker 01

  That's insane.

• 22:30Speaker 02

  You know, and I I remained in I finished residency, did a hospital fellowship and heart failure, you get better, you know, you get worse because you overdo it, you get better, you get worse. There was a lot of procedures along the way and different interventions that they kind of would patch me up. You know, I'd work a little better for a while and I'd kind of decompensate.

• 22:45Speaker 01

  And the chemo is what destroyed your heart?

• 22:47Speaker 02

  You know, it's really fascinating. Well, this is super cool science. So, you know, ultimately, I had a heart transplant and they are investigating the heart and the genes in the heart and how this could have happened. And they identified something called the Titan gene. And this Titan gene is a gene that makes the myocytes, the the my the heart cells very sensitive to chemo and radiation and childbirth. And I was actually able to have a baby. And so I went into this end stage heart failure right after I delivered my child. So it was kind of like a triple hit. So most individuals, you know, if they have chemo, they're okay.

• 23:23Speaker 01

  Well, you had a baby and a heart failure. That's

• 23:25Speaker 02

  But all three.

• 23:26Speaker 01

  Now you're so smart. It's so impressive.

• 23:28Speaker 02

  It's just such a blessing. And you know, that's the the beauty of post traumatic growth, right? When if you have adversity and you rise above, you know how hard life can be. And now it's like I live this seamless, just truly blissful, glorious life, just a life without resistance is so easy. Life's so easy now.

• 23:45Speaker 01

  But you but you had a heart transplant in 2021, right?

• 23:50Speaker 02

  It's the ultimate longevity hack, I must say, because I have a very young heart in my body. So I'm not recommending anyone else to do it. But

• 23:57Speaker 01

  And you were the first one to run a marathon within a year of having a heart transplant. You're the only one who's had a heart transplant who's run a marathon.

• 24:05Speaker 02

  No, there's been, there's been other men. Actually, I don't believe that there's been a woman that's actually run it. I think there was one woman that walked one, but it was many years after her heart transplant. So this is exactly one year after my heart transplant. And after I said I was gonna do that, I thought, oh, when I took my first step, I thought, I think I made a big mistake. I was so decompensating. My, my calf muscles were literally indented. I had a three person assist and a rolling walker and I was just thinking, oh, I'm, I may not be able to do this. I was like, I better try. So I applied all those pillars lifestyle medicine.

• 24:35Speaker 01

  You mean after the surgery, you're on a walker?

• 24:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, after the surgery, you know, on a walker. I was on life support.

• 24:39Speaker 01

  But not during the marathon, you were not.

• 24:41Speaker 02

  No, I ran that hard, man. I shined. That was pretty cool. Yeah. But yeah, we have a cardio, uh, sports medicine specialist, uh, who's a cardiologist at Mayo and, and they ran races with me leading up to the marathon. I trained very smart. The truth is, I actually ran a marathon at the 11 month, uh, cause they, we wanted to run one marathon just to make sure I would be safe in terms of public. Cause we don't want like cameras on me and she like dies.

• 25:05Speaker 01

  Well, this sort of speaks to the really next question after you, which is you went through all this, which almost killed you. And these are serious diseases, you know, stage four breast cancer, heart failure. They're not really lifestyle diseases. I mean, heart failure was from chemo. How did it change how you think about your own health and investing in your health and your own sort of regimen for creating health? And then how did it affect, you know, your thinking about what you're doing in the world?

• 25:27Speaker 02

  It's been so inspiring to be able to figure out how important lifestyle is. And I always was really fascinated with food. So I've always really invested in eating healthy. But sometimes it was a little too restrictive and it wasn't balanced and it wasn't with harmony. There was a little bit of turbulence. Maybe I was doing it out of fear where now I really, you know, eat to live. And I embrace that in a way that it's, it's enjoyable and it's something that individuals should really try to do the same. I don't think that we should use fear tactics to inspire others to eat healthy. This is just what fuels our body. You know, you don't put, we, we've heard these analogies. You don't put junk in a car. You shouldn't put junk in your body.

• 26:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:03Speaker 02

  I, I mean, getting rid of the ultra processed food and David, that's what she said was so important is your mom was there cooking dinner. You didn't eat fake food.

• 26:10Speaker 00

  I was lucky.

• 26:11Speaker 02

  That's the most important thing.

• 26:12Speaker 01

  I think fish and chips and pie and mash actually sounds pretty healthy to me compared to what most people eat today.

• 26:17Speaker 00

  But I'm talking about fish and chips and pie and mash. And then we've got Dawn telling her. Inspiring story.

• 26:25Speaker 02

  Well, just really blessed and exercise and movement. I always moved my whole, you know, life and I continue to do that. So I think I was really blessed that I had this very healthy childhood that my parents really believed in. And it just set the stage for this to be just very natural for me in this entire transition. The one thing that I would say I really have to work on is sleep. I'm not very good with sleep.

• 26:43Speaker 00

  Me too.

• 26:44Speaker 02

  I'd rather be alive. Sleep is really hard. I sleep good, but I don't want to sleep. I want to like live. So that's my goal is find a pill that can replace sleep. There's a, there is a gene, and maybe we all have this, that you just don't require as much. Like, we think that these individuals can get restored to.

• 26:59Speaker 00

  I definitely have that gene.

• 27:01Speaker 02

  Do you? I think I do too.

• 27:02Speaker 00

  I must have that gene.

• 27:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, I have to have four hours.

• 27:04Speaker 00

  I feel like I'm missing out when I'm sleeping. Feel like I'm missing something.

• 27:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know.

• 27:09Speaker 00

  Something's going on that I want to be part of.

• 27:11Speaker 01

  It's the idea of you sleep when you're dead. Life's too fun.

• 27:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:15Speaker 01

  But you do, but you do need to sleep.

• 27:17Speaker 00

  You do need to sleep. It's important.

• 27:19Speaker 02

  You do need to sleep for metabolic health. And, you know, so I think that this is actually a very important thing that we had to focus on. And when I was running that marathon, that was one thing I really was mindful of. And you said another really important thing, David, is that you're very regular with your sleep and you have sleep consistency because there's research now that says, yeah, that's important. 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. You need that sleep. That's like the critical hours if you can be really regular, especially over a lifetime. So, but, you know, there's no magic bullet, but, you know, we all know, in my background was in exercise physiology. And so I did a lot of research early on and we called it ergogenic aids at the time. And that was nutraceuticals to support sports performance or peak performance, human existence. And so I really do believe in supplements

• 28:02Speaker 02

  as an adjunct to a healthy lifestyle. It's never going to replace a healthy lifestyle, but even the healthiest of lifestyles just isn't enough anymore. You know, you, there's a lot of nutrient gaps. You know, the ENHANZE data, you know, you talk about this often. It's hard to get what you need, even if you're eating what you think may be.

• 28:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:20Speaker 02

  An ideal diet.

• 28:21Speaker 01

  You know, the, what she's talking about, talking about in English is this is study that the government puts on called the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Essentially, it's a big study that's been going on for decades. It tracks everybody in America and. What they're eating and their health and their blood tests, their nutritional levels. And this studies find that over 90% are deficient or insufficient in one or more nutrients at the level, not that's optimal for health, but at the level you wouldn't get a deficiencies disease. So how much vitamin C do you need to not get scurvy? I think 10% of Americans are deficient in vitamin C at the level that would give them scurvy, or 80% are deficient in vitamin D, or 93% are low in omega threes, and you know, 50% are low in magnesium and zinc. And you know, it's like, it's a lot. And we're seeing this, you know, at Function Health, which is the company that I co-founded to help people track their own personal health data. It's shocking, 70% are

• 29:06Speaker 01

  low in the Quest reference range, which is the standard reference lab we use. And 70% are low in one or more nutrients at the level that's not the level I think is good, or you would think is good. Like vitamin D of 30 is not good, it should be 50, or a fair amount of iron stores of 16 is not good, it should be 45. It's between, you know, lower than 45, you'll get hair loss and fatigue and all kinds of sleep issues and other things. And, you know, omega 3 fats and vitamin D. And it's just, it's amazing to see the, the problems in a, in a population that actually is pretty health forward because they're actually going to do proactive things about their health. So what about the rest of the population, you know? So I think, I think providing basic nutrients is so important. But I kind of, I wanted to kind of loop back to you because what you said kind

• 29:48Speaker 01

  of struck me was, you know, you're not doing what you're doing now to stay healthy at 50, you're doing what you're doing now to stay healthy at 80. So kind of walk us through a day of the life of David Beckham, in terms of your health routine, and, and what are the foundational things?

• 30:02Speaker 00

  It's actually not that interesting. But I will tell you, but I will tell you, obviously, I have four children. So I have one, my daughter who's 14 years old, she's still obviously at school every single day. So my mornings really revolve around getting her out of bed, downstairs, breakfast inside her. I wake up at probably 6:15, 6:30 every morning because I like to go downstairs, make sure everything's set up, breakfast, the fire's on, lights are on, music's on, you know, radio's on, the radio station that she loves. So, and then she comes down around 7:30.

• 30:43Speaker 00

  Victoria's up by then as well, so she's a kind of an early riser as well. So she comes down around the same time as me. And then we wait for Harper to come down. She comes down, she has breakfast. Most of the time it's, she has scrambled eggs or some cereal or some fruit. And then I drive her to school. You're the chauffeur. Do you wear a hat? I should get a hat because I am, I, she likes to sit in the back sometimes when she's got her friend. But no, most of the time. I thought it was like, don't talk to me, you don't know me. Like just drop me off like a hundred yards from the door at school. I'm actually not there yet. She's not like embarrassed of me at the moment.

• 31:24Speaker 00

  So, yeah, and even if she shows any of those kind of sides, I, I'm all over her. Like I'll walk in, I'm kissing her, I'm telling her that I love her in front of her friends, her teachers. No, but, so I, but I love that time in the morning. I love, you know, Victoria goes into the gym. She starts her session quite early. So she does like 45 minutes before me and then we go in and we work out together. You do daddy duty. But I'll get to that. So I take her to school, I drop her off. And then obviously I drive back to the house. I go into the gym and that's like my time with Victoria to, to work out and laugh. I love to work out and laugh.

• 32:07Speaker 00

  And that's why I actually work out with my wife because she makes me laugh. And I make her laugh apparently, but she's laughing at me rather than anything else. So we do about, she does about 30 to 40 minutes on the stair climber first before I get there. And then we work out with one of my close friends who's actually an ambassador for I'm a, Bobby Rich. So he works us out and I mean, he loses his mind working out with me and Victoria because I'm very, I. Victoria always says that I procrastinate. Yeah, she she says, I'm always trying to like, talk to him about something to slow the session down.

• 32:47Speaker 00

  Um, but I'm always taking the right, like, time in between each each each set. Um, but she's like, okay, let's go, let's go, let's go. So she's always jumping on to it. So we work out together for an hour. We laugh a lot at each other. Um, and that's part of the routine, in all honesty.

• 33:04Speaker 01

  Family, connection, love, laughter, exercise. You already like, you already got like five really big health points.

• 33:11Speaker 00

  Yeah. And then obviously.

• 33:13Speaker 01

  Before you even have breakfast.

• 33:14Speaker 00

  Before before we've had breakfast. So then we're working out and actually there's one exercise which she actually cried once through this exercise because she found it so difficult. And every time I try and get Bobby to do it at least once a week because it makes me laugh. It makes me laugh to watch her go through this painful, like, exercise. But she does say there's exercises that I'm not very good at as well. So.

• 33:39Speaker 01

  What is that exercise that makes you cry?

• 33:41Speaker 00

  It's just, it's a, it's a pull up, but like you have to slowly let yourself down. And I don't know what she was having a moment during during that session. And all of a sudden I was like, you're not crying, are you? You're crying. And I made a big thing of it. So, um, but we laugh about it. Um, so we work out together. We have a lot of fun. And then I go up to, she goes up to shower and then I go up to make us a smoothie. Uh, we both have, uh, like a, a smoothie each with I M eight in it. And and she's obsessed with it. And and she's not easy to like change supplement, whatever she's taking, she's like very loyal to that. But then when we started the I M eight, you know, I think it was twenty twenty four that I started taking it.

• 34:26Speaker 00

  She was, she was very curious, but she was like, well, I've got my thing. It can't be as good as my thing.

• 34:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:31Speaker 00

  And I was like, well, you're gonna have to change at some point to show some loyalty to me. So, yeah, so she changed, uh, finally. But but then, so we have a smoothie, I go up and shower and then I head into the office. I I always eat at one thirty every day. I have grilled salmon, brown rice, vegetables. Um, then I have a full day in the office. I go and pick my daughter up every day at four o'clock. Um, which I I feel very blessed to be able to do that because not every parent gets that opportunity. I drive her home and then we prepare dinner and then, you know, put her in bed and then do exactly the same the next day.

• 35:10Speaker 01

  Amazing.

• 35:10Speaker 00

  So that's it. That's.

• 35:12Speaker 01

  That's good. You're eating healthy. You're with family. You're laughing. You're connected. I mean, that, that's it really. I mean, I think, you know, people don't understand that, that it's not that hard. It's just, it's just a consistency. It's their daily habits. It's building a routine and, and, and your sleep stuff is also important.

• 35:28Speaker 00

  The sleep stuff is really important because I think like me and Dawn just said, you know, I, I've not really been, I'm not great at sleeping, you know, like I always, I, I just wanna be awake, to be honest. Um, but throughout my career, I was pretty good. You know, I always went to bed, like 10 o'clock was the latest I went to bed, the night before a game. Um, and the games would always be at like either three o'clock in the afternoon or four o'clock or sometimes in the evening, but I would always go asleep at the same time every single night. And I always slept pretty well, unless it was a big game where I was a little bit, not, not nervous or anxious, just excited. You know, I was, I was not one of those nervous players. I was kind of excited

• 36:11Speaker 00

  about the game. Um, so, you know, my, my, my sleep these days is a lot better than what it was when I was playing. And, and that's down to Victoria. Victoria is always like, you were in bed early, we're sleeping early because we're up tomorrow early. So I always try and get, you know, at least seven, seven hours at least, um, every night. And I know you need a little bit more than that, but that's, that's pretty, that's pretty good for me.

• 36:38Speaker 02

  That's great.

• 36:39Speaker 00

  So that has really been, you know, part of my kind of thing that I've really worked hard on. Because I, when, when we talk about balance, you know, in people's diets, in people's lifestyle, it's not just about, you know, what you take. It's about everything else that you do. Like we've just said, you know, I laugh throughout my workout, you know, I walk my dogs, I take my daughter to school. I do have pie mash every now and again, you know, it's, it is about balance and we have to get that right. It's about a number of things that we do and sleep is a big part of that, you know, and I have worked harder at that. Like I've worked harder at drinking more water. You know, I was never great at drinking a lot of water, but now I'm great at it apparently.

• 37:22Speaker 00

  But, you know, you get up a few nights, a few times during the night, obviously, but if you drink too much water, but I.

• 37:36Speaker 02

  I think you should have him talk about his time in nature with his farm.

• 37:40Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, that's right. You're a beekeeper. You're a gardener.

• 37:45Speaker 00

  My life, yeah, it's a big part of my life.

• 37:48Speaker 01

  Nature is also medicine.

• 37:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. Is this in the UK?

• 37:51Speaker 00

  This is in the UK. It's in the Cotswolds, down in the countryside. And I started, you know, throughout lockdown, after lockdown, I was like, okay, I want to create our own, like, I want our own food. I want our own vegetables. I want to be able to grow things that we eat every, every weekend. So that's what I do. So I created this farm that's grown and grown and grown. And then we started, obviously, with the bees. The bees was the first thing, actually. The bees was the first thing which me and one of my children came to me throughout lockdown. And he was like, Dad, have you seen these beehives online?

• 38:31Speaker 00

  He said, let's get one. So we, we, we bought a, it was a flat pack bee hive. We, we stayed up till four in the morning building it. And then I was like, do the bees, I had no idea. This was my first time even thinking about bees and honey. And I was like, do the bees come naturally? And obviously, they don't. You have to buy the bees. So you buy the bees and a man, a man comes up in a white van. And he gets out with a cardboard box and he says, there you go. There's your bees. And you're stood there holding this box of bees.

• 39:04Speaker 01

  And you don't have one of those suits on yet?

• 39:05Speaker 00

  No, because they're all in the box still. So you've got this box of bees and there's 5,000 bees in each box.

• 39:12Speaker 01

  5,000?

• 39:13Speaker 00

  5,000. There's one queen bee and there's 5,000 bees. So I'm stood, so then I contacted a local beekeeper and she's amazing. So she came around and her name's Helen. She's unbelievable. She came around and she said, okay, this is how it works. We put the bee, we put the bee suit on. We put the bees, transferred the bees from the box into the hive. And, and that's really how it all began. But I must admit, I post a lot with my, with my, my, my, my stuff that I do in my garden. Because I have this amazing cockerel and I have this, these amazing hens. This cockerel is the most handsome cockerel you'll ever see.

• 39:52Speaker 00

  I'm going to show you a picture. He's so handsome and he struts around and he's gorgeous. He's so handsome, but.

• 40:01Speaker 00

  One of the things that is that I that I I get a lot of comments from, I like to walk around my garden in bare feet, you know, not when I'm planting, but I I once was planting a rose and I was digging with, yeah, obviously, I was digging with no shoes on and no socks on and it didn't go down very well. So everyone was had a lot of comments about that.

• 40:24Speaker 01

  Because of the roses.

• 40:25Speaker 00

  Because of the roses. But I love it, you know, it's one of those that I I always go down to the countryside for a day and just walk around in bare feet, walk around my garden, walk around the the vegetable garden and it's it's one of my big passions.

• 40:40Speaker 01

  Being in nature is something we're all deficient in, you know, and eat it and eat the food.

• 40:45Speaker 00

  And I eat the food.

• 40:46Speaker 01

  Chickens eat the eggs.

• 40:47Speaker 00

  Eat the eggs. We have, uh, we have, um, seven, uh, six hens, one cockerel. I have seven ducks. So we have duck eggs.

• 40:56Speaker 01

  Duck eggs.

• 40:56Speaker 00

  Duck eggs. We have, um, uh, we have some amazing apple juice actually at the house now as well. So we have apple juice. We have jam, um, plum jam.

• 41:05Speaker 01

  From the, from the trees.

• 41:07Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah. We have so many plum trees that I was just like, what am I going to do with all these plums? So one weekend, Victoria came down and the table was like covered in these plums. She was like, what are you doing? I was like, well, I'm gonna make some jam.

• 41:21Speaker 01

  I love it. I love it. Wow. And Don, how about you? I mean, in terms of your, your routine, I mean, you're, you've been, you're in your early 50s, you had two major illnesses, you know, that mostly would have killed people. And you look like you're just starting your life. So what, what is, what is your sort of routine and non-negotiables that you've kind of come to understand are, are part of, uh, you know, essentials for your life?

• 41:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, I wake up at 4am every morning. I love, I I start my work early. That's when my mind is nice and clear and I exercise in the morning. So I try to get a 60 minute run in the morning. I eat a whole food plant predominant diet, but for the most part, I've done that most of my life. When I'm traveling, I'll add in some fish here and there just because it gets hard to do whole food plant based. But I really stick to a healthy nutritional pattern, getting lots of vegetables and fruits. I really focus on that food diversity for the gut microbiome. I don't have a garden. I wish I did. I'm just so inspired by that story. It's just very hopeful. It's something I think I want to do in 2026.

• 42:17Speaker 01

  You should.

• 42:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, you've inspired me. I don't know if I can get roosters, but yeah, this is pretty exciting. Um, so I, I really live by what I speak to my patients about in my own lifestyle, but I have such meaning and purpose in my career. My work is not work. It is my love and my passion truly. So I start my day typically about eight or nine o'clock with patients and I have pretty long days. I go pretty late. Research projects, you know, keep me busy and I started the Lifestyle Medicine Residency Curriculum at Mayo Clinic. And I'm Medical Director for Employee Wellbeing where, you know, it's so meaningful because there are people that saved my life. So to help them be their healthiest version of themselves, they're caring for our patients.

• 42:59Speaker 02

  So really to help them learn how to cook healthy, started a fitness center at Mayo Clinic. So our staff at Mayo actually have access to a gym that's open 365 days a year, seven days a week, 24 hours a day and no charge. So it's pretty cool. So they can go and exercise right on site. And you know, this is really cool. So part of that employee wellbeing, we're actually doing a 100 person randomized controlled study with the IMA. This is a high stress group of individuals. So it's going to be fun to look at those nutrient deficiencies and you know, this nutrient gap.

• 43:30Speaker 01

  So you're testing them before?

• 43:32Speaker 02

  Yep. We're a large panel of testing and Danny Young has really invested appropriate. I mean, I don't know of any other nutraceutical company that dedicates resources to having a scientific advisory board as well as the research. So we're really excited about doing this study at Mayo Clinic and we actually brought IMA on to Mayo Clinic's Mayo Clinic Ventures because we're not allowed to collaborate with outside industry. But in this realm where we're building product and helping to advance the science, we're able to do this. So it's really exciting and it's fun to do it in the staff and the staff are really excited about it. You know, so we actually sell IMA in the Mayo Clinic Pharmacy. A lot of my patients do really nicely with it. They love the flavor. They love the convenience like we talked about.

• 44:15Speaker 02

  But it's really fun for me to be able to not just care for patients, but help to optimize staff as well. So it's been.

• 44:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, because healthcare workers are among the sickest in the country.

• 44:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, they really are. You know, and they're role modeling this behavior, which is so, so critical. And you know, I guess, you know, for me, winding down the end of the day, my daughter is in college now, she's 22. So you know, it's easy to kind of work a little bit later and I try to go to bed by 10 o'clock. You know, I don't get my seven hours sleep, but I just don't feel, I wake up, I like spring out of bed.

• 44:44Speaker 01

  Wow, so you got to bed at 10, wake up at 4, that's a.

• 44:47Speaker 02

  I love my 4am. Sometimes it's like 3:22, like this morning it was 3:22, but I'm in California, so we're allowed, it's really 6:22 my time.

• 44:54Speaker 01

  Let's, uh, let's dive into some, some, um, some round fire questions. Uh, what's one habit that is sort of non-negotiable that you, you would never give up? Or that you, maybe a bad habit that you like, that maybe is the problem?

• 45:06Speaker 00

  Uh, my one non-negotiable habit that I, to be honest, it's working out. It's working out because when I retired, I thought that my body needed to just recover and I stopped working out. I just sat and did nothing for, I, I planned to do nothing for six months because I thought my body has been through everything. It's been through surgery, it's been, you know, beating it up over the, the, that, that time. Um, but it was the worst thing I could have done. So from that day, I was like, I'm always doing something, whether it's.

• 45:39Speaker 01

  Did you do nothing for six months?

• 45:41Speaker 00

  I did nothing for six months.

• 45:42Speaker 01

  And what happened to you?

• 45:43Speaker 00

  My body fell apart. My body fell apart. Uh, I, I thought that, you know, my back would feel better, my knees would feel better, my ankle, I ruptured my Achilles through my career. I, I thought that the body needed to just recover and it was the worst thing I could have done. So, so gradually I started getting back into, you know, cycling. I started, you know, boxing. I tried everything. I tried everything and then I found a workout that worked for me and, and that's my non-negotiable. I will work out every single morning. And if I, if I'm traveling, I'll be doing press ups in my room. I'll do something. I'll always do something to just get my, because it's not what, I don't, it's not that I don't care about what I look like. It's not all about that. It's, it's actually what mentally and

• 46:26Speaker 00

  how I feel. Um, so that's my non-negotiable.

• 46:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, I agree for me too, you know, especially, you know, the, the older you get, the more non-negotiable it is.

• 46:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:35Speaker 01

  Like when you're young, you can get away with it.

• 46:36Speaker 00

  That's very true.

• 46:37Speaker 01

  You know, I've had many back surgeries and to me, it's, it's just, it's just a foundation for feeling good. If I don't, my back hurts.

• 46:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:46Speaker 01

  And so I know I have to do it just for keep myself going and, and, and it makes me feel good and it's just good for everything.

• 46:52Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 46:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. If you don't move, you won't.

• 46:58Speaker 01

  How are you done?

• 46:59Speaker 02

  My non-negotiable is waking up at 4am because I have so much I want to do, including move. I have a lot. So it is my quiet time. So it's just so peaceful, but my non-negotiable is 4am or earlier. Actually.

• 47:12Speaker 01

  I mean, I love that if you go to bed early enough.

• 47:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, I do. I try.

• 47:16Speaker 01

  I mean, yeah, I mean, I love getting up early and I love the quiet and I love that like nobody's bothering me. It's like, you know, we go at five and four or six and it's like the world's still asleep and you can have this moment. It's great. So what's, what's a food you could eat every day?

• 47:31Speaker 00

  Oh my goodness. A food I can eat every day.

• 47:35Speaker 01

  It could be pie and mash if you want.

• 47:37Speaker 00

  It could be pie and mash, but it shouldn't be pie and mash.

• 47:40Speaker 02

  But it can. That's okay.

• 47:41Speaker 00

  Oh my goodness.

• 47:42Speaker 02

  I mean, when you, when you do everything else right, it doesn't have to be about perfection. So.

• 47:46Speaker 00

  A food I could eat every day. You know what? And it's quite controversial. A radish.

• 47:52Speaker 01

  A radish.

• 47:53Speaker 00

  I love radishes.

• 47:54Speaker 01

  Spicy radishes?

• 47:55Speaker 00

  Spicy radish.

• 47:56Speaker 01

  From the garden.

• 47:57Speaker 00

  From the garden.

• 47:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:58Speaker 00

  From the garden. I, I pull them. I clean them a little bit and then I, I love radish.

• 48:03Speaker 01

  Leave some of the dirt on because then you get some more probiotics.

• 48:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're a good adjunct here, I made.

• 48:10Speaker 00

  Yeah. So radish.

• 48:11Speaker 02

  I like that. That's good. Oh, mine is easy. The purple sweet potato. I just love those. They're glorious. You had a pack. They're so gorgeous.

• 48:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, those are the Okinawa sweet potatoes and in Okinawa is one of the blue zones where people live a very long time. So.

• 48:26Speaker 02

  They have 150% more anthocyanins than blueberries. That powerful.

• 48:30Speaker 01

  I eat them almost three times a week. Like I, they're in my house all the time and if I can't find them in the grocery store, it's very upsetting.

• 48:38Speaker 02

  And they say, yeah, you're right. Or they'll sell out or they're a little bit out of season. So there's a way you can grow them. You should.

• 48:43Speaker 00

  I should grow them. Yeah.

• 48:45Speaker 02

  I get messages from people in the UK. Where can I get purple sweet potatoes? David Beckham has them.

• 48:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, those are great. Those are great.

• 48:51Speaker 00

  I'm gonna have a long queue outside my house.

• 48:54Speaker 01

  How about recovery? What's your most important recovery tool you use?

• 48:57Speaker 00

  Um, I may, I may actually as you know, I've had a couple of things in the last couple of years where I've had to have, you know, whether it be nasal surgery or, you know, dental surgery. And the one thing that I took every single morning and it helps me recover quickly was I may. Other than that, an ice bath. I love ice baths. It helps me recover from, actually it clears my head. It clears my head. You know, even if I've not worked out, I'll, I'll go and sit in an ice bath for 10 minutes.

• 49:28Speaker 01

  10 minutes? What temperature?

• 49:30Speaker 00

  Well, I go in and it's, um, it's like two, two degrees.

• 49:36Speaker 01

  Damn.

• 49:36Speaker 00

  Yeah. So it's cold.

• 49:38Speaker 01

  You're like Wim Hofing.

• 49:38Speaker 00

  It's cold.

• 49:40Speaker 01

  Holy cow. I know. Like, I don't know. Like somebody said, I had like 6% body fat. And if I, if I did that, I'd be like shaking for an hour.

• 49:47Speaker 00

  Yeah. You have to, you have to have a shower close to, to, to warm your bones up. But, uh, but, but ice bath, ice bath seems to recover muscles, you know, my muscles and, you know, my aches and pains. And, uh, I love it. I love ice bath.

• 50:02Speaker 01

  I have what I call a triathlon. It's a sauna, a hot tub and a cold plunge on my deck.

• 50:10Speaker 00

  I like that.

• 50:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. You can come over and do my triathlon.

• 50:15Speaker 01

  How about you, Don? What do you do?

• 50:16Speaker 02

  Oh gosh, you know, I feel like my life is a little bit complex. I, I feel like sometimes I get just so busy that, and I recover really quick because of my nutrition. And so I find that my whole food plant based nutrition just has such powerful anti-inflammatory properties that I can really just keep going. But I would say for me, it's not necessarily something I do every single day, but every three months I do a five day fasting mimicking diet with ProLon. I, I really, and I'm not sponsored by them, but I really love that. And I use that fasting mimicking diet for my patients during chemotherapy, actually. For their seven, you know, their 72 hour fast. So I'm a, I'm a big advocate for that. I, I'm not a good faster like daily. I like to eat as soon as I wake up.

• 50:55Speaker 01

  Well, you're a little and thin. So getting fast, like me and kind of waste away.

• 50:59Speaker 02

  And I need energy as soon as I wake up. I, I am intuitive. I listen to my body like I would never get that cold. Uh-uh. I get the hot.

• 51:05Speaker 00

  Now you're sounding like Victoria. Victoria's never got, actually she got in the ice bath once.

• 51:10Speaker 02

  Oh, good for her.

• 51:10Speaker 00

  Just the ones.

• 51:12Speaker 02

  That was love, by the way.

• 51:13Speaker 00

  It was love.

• 51:13Speaker 02

  Good for Victoria.

• 51:14Speaker 00

  Well, I, I actually told her it tightens skin. I was like, it tightens your skin. She was like, okay. She was like, I'm in, I'm in. So yeah, she only did it once. She, she didn't need it.

• 51:27Speaker 02

  Bring on the wrinkles. Yeah. So, so the fasting is what I would recommend. You know, I think that trying to get that 12 hours each night is great, but I just, I'm not good at that.

• 51:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's hard. You know, it's, it's what you said. I think I want to just double down on the anti-inflammatory diet. It, it should be a, a sort of a non-negotiable recovery tool because whether you're a professional sports or whether you're just a human being wanting to live up and feel good. It's so important. And I, and I think with my patients, see how much inflammation plays a role in their health or disease, actually. And how much an anti-inflammatory diet can actually help them feel better. And I created something called the 10 day detox diet, which was just, you know, just the name of what I did with my patients in elimination diet. As it adds in all the healthy foods and the anti-inflammatory foods and takes out all the inflammatory foods. And you do it for 10 days and people's lives are changed. I mean, not just they lose weight, but they, the inflammation goes out of their body.

• 52:17Speaker 01

  Their skin clears up, their rashes go away, their joints feel better, their headaches go away, their digestion gets better. And it's so simple. It's not, it's just basically taking out the bad stuff, putting in the good stuff. And it's, it's, um, in 10 days, we've done thousands of people. There's a 70% reduction in all symptoms from all diseases in 10 days. And it sounds like, like, like I'm hyperbolic, but actually that's what people find. And it's, it's so quick. And I, I just, I always say people don't believe how, how, um, they can feel better. They don't realize how close it is if they just change a few habits. So hopefully this inspires them to do some habit change. So anti-inflammatory diet, I don't know about the 10 minute cold plunge, but the workout for sure.

• 53:00Speaker 01

  What, what are you more strict about now at, at 50, in your 50s than you were when you were 18 that you're, you're sort of like doubling down on?

• 53:07Speaker 00

  Uh, sleep and drinking water. You know, I'm definitely stricter with that now. You know, I think that that's al- almost a non-negotiable. It's almost sleep and water.

• 53:20Speaker 01

  When you started to say drinking, I was like, drinking? Wait.

• 53:24Speaker 00

  I had to correct that really quickly.

• 53:26Speaker 01

  Sleep and drinking, water. Okay.

• 53:30Speaker 00

  There was a little bit too much of a pause between drinking and water. Definitely not ten points.

• 53:37Speaker 01

  And how about you, John?

• 53:37Speaker 02

  You know, for me, it's sleep too. And I really work on that. I'm very intentional because I found out when I wasn't sleeping, my metabolic health was more deranged. It wasn't because I had a body composition. I wasn't sleeping. So we really do need to honor our sleep. And you know, a unique thing I find in my patients is so much sleep apnea that would have otherwise been not detected. That's not necessarily my situation, but this is just a shout out. Sleep hygiene is is something really to focus in on. So for me, it would be sleep too.

• 54:02Speaker 01

  Sleep, I agree. Sleep is important. All right. So how how do you define health now for yourself? Both of you? David, you start.

• 54:09Speaker 00

  How do I define health? To be honest, I want to obviously look after myself, but I want my family to understand.

• 54:17Speaker 01

  What does health mean to you? Like, what is, like, when you think of health, what is it? What does it represent?

• 54:20Speaker 00

  Um, I think it represents everything that is in my life at the moment. Um, and that really wasn't, I'm not saying it wasn't as important when I was playing. Um, because when you're an athlete, you're surrounded by doctors, by nutritionists, by people that want to look after you and have to look after you. But now, obviously, for a long time, I've been looking after myself in a different way purely because I've had to. You know, of course, I have an amazing wife that does everything for me. She makes my smoothies when I'm not making them for her. So I have an amazing wife that does that. But my health.

• 54:58Speaker 00

  I've I've noticed how important it is for me because there's nobody else doing it for me other than myself and I have to do that. I have to do that.

• 55:07Dr. Mark Hyman?

  How about you, Don?

• 55:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think that's just so important. For me, it would be, you know, especially going through healthcare adversity, it's just to wake up each morning and feel good, you know, not have any resistance and impediments and things that are pulling you down, whether it's aches or pains or reduction in energy, shortness of breath, chest pain, whatever it may be, but just to live that life without those ailments. And, you know, I just find even in my patients during chemotherapy, when they're taking good care of their bodies, that they're able to attain that vitality. And then to use that vitality to really, you know, go after your meaning in life and then share that with others. And it just fulfills this beautiful, purpose-driven life.

• 55:47Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I think that's really important, Don. I mean, you know, a lot of people walk around with what I call FLC syndrome. You know what that is? That's when you feel like crap.

• 55:55Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And that and that, you know, that's something people think they have to live with. And, you know, the the work both you're doing, you know, with support, things like IMA, healthy diet, exercise, sleep, it's not that hard. Thanks for being on the show. Thanks for doing the work you do in the world and making a little bit better place.

• 56:11Speaker 02

  Thanks, Mark. This is a lot of things.

• 56:12Speaker 00

  Thank you so much, Mark. It's a pleasure. Thank you.

• 56:15Dr. Mark Hyman?

  If you love, when it comes to supplements, you only want the best for your body, the kind with the highest quality, cleanest and most potent ingredients you can get. That's exactly what you'll find at my supplement store, where I've hand-selected each and every product to meet the most rigorous standards for safety, purity and effectiveness. These are the only supplements I recommend to my patients, and they're also what I use myself. Whether you want to optimize longevity or reduce your disease risk, or you're looking to improve your sleep, blood sugar, metabolism, gut health, you name it, DrHyman.com has the world's best selection of top-quality, premium supplements, all backed by science and expertly vetted by me, Dr. Mark Hyman. So check out drhyman.com because when it comes to your health, nothing less than the very best will do. That's drhyman.com, D R H Y M A N dot com.

• 56:59Dr. Mark Hyman?

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

• 57:43Dr. Mark Hyman?

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