Episode 412: Dr. Mark Hyman: How Ultra-Processed Foods Are Fueling America's Obesity Epidemic

Listen to the full episode here: https://youtu.be/NHgsW0l4mf8?si=MXfk9odHeMwBEGRX Have you ever wondered why America is the fattest country in the world, with 75% of the population overweight and 42% obese? In this Habits and Hustle bonus episode, Dr. Mark Hyman shares eye-opening insights into the root causes of this epidemic. We discuss how ultra-processed foods disrupt our biology, leading to cravings and overeating as our bodies search for missing nutrients. We also discuss the staggering healthcare costs of metabolic dysfunction and chronic diseases driven by the Standard American Diet. Mark Hyman, MD is a practicing family physician and an internationally recognized leader, speaker, educator, and advocate in the field of Functional Medicine. He is the founder and director of The UltraWellness Center, Founder and Senior Advisor for the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine, a fifteen-time New York Times best-selling author, and Board President for Clinical Affairs for The Institute for Functional Medicine. He is the founder and chairman of the Food Fix Campaign, dedicated to transforming our food and agriculture system through policy. He is a co-founder and the Chief Medical Officer of Function Health. He is the host of one of the leading health podcasts, The Doctor's Farmacy with 150+ million downloads. Dr. Hyman is a regular medical contributor to several television shows and networks, including CBS This Morning, Today, Good Morning America, The View, Fox, and CNN. What We Discuss: Ultra-processed foods and weight gain America's obesity and chronic disease crisis Metabolic dysfunction prevalence in the U. S. Economic costs of preventable chronic diseases Fad diets vs. eating real, quality foods Reversing cognitive decline and Alzheimer's disease Rising rates of Alzheimer's and its root causes Toxins in the food supply and environment Differences in food regulations between the U. S. and Europe …and more! Thank you to our sponsors: AquaTru: Get 20% off any purifier at aquatru.com http://aquatru.com/ with code HUSTLE Therasage: Head over to therasage.com http://therasage.com/ and use code Be Bold for 15% off TruNiagen: Head over to truniagen.com http://truniagen.com/ and use code HUSTLE20 to get $20 off any purchase over $100. Magic Mind: Head over to www http://www/.magicmind.com http://magicmind.com//jen and use code Jen at checkout. Air Doctor: Go to airdoctorpro.com http://airdoctorpro.com/ and use promo code HUSTLE for up to $300 off and a 3-year warranty on air purifiers. Find more from Jen: Website: https://www.jennifercohen.com/ Instagram: @therealjencohen Books: https://www.jennifercohen.com/books Speaking: https://www.jennifercohen.com/speaking-engagement Find more from Dr. Mark Hyman: Website: https://drhyman.com/ www.functionhealth.com http://www.functionhealth.com use code HUSTLE100 to save Podcast: The Doctor's Pharmacy https://drhyman.com/blogs/content/tagged/podcast

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

• 0:01Speaker 00

  Hi guys, this is Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits and Hustle. Crush it.

• 0:07Jen Cohen?

  Hey friends, you're listening to Fitness Friday on the Habits and Hustle Podcast, where myself and my friends share quick and very actionable advice for you becoming your healthiest self. So stay tuned and let me know how you leveled up.

• 0:30Speaker 02

  The NIH study by Kevin Hall looked at this very carefully, and he did what we call a crossover trial, which is one of the best types of study designs, where he took the same people, gave them a diet, and then let them have a break, call a washout period, and then give them another diet for a few weeks, and then measure what happened. First part of the diet was eating real food. Match for protein, fat, carbs, calories. Then they gave them ultra-processed food, and they can eat whatever they want. Eat whatever you want, eat as much as you want, without restrictions. When they were eating ultra-processed food, they ate 500 calories more a day, because their biology was dysregulated. Kids who are iron deficient will eat dirt. The

• 1:09Speaker 02

  body is going to crave more food and want more food, because it's looking for nutrients. But we're looking for love in all the wrong places, right? And so what happened is that you get dysregulated. And think about that. 500 calories a day in a week is 3,500 calories. That's a pound of weight gain. If you don't offset it with exercise, in a year, that's 52 pounds of weight gain. If you eat ultra-processed food, why is America the fattest country in the world? Like, we have 75% of us that are overweight, 42% are obese. It's increased fourfold since I was born. And you've seen diabetes increase 400%. I mean, it's in the last 30 years. It's insane.

• 1:52Speaker 02

  And, you know, the metabolic dysfunction, even if you're not overweight, because you can be skinny fat. In other words, you look thin, but you're actually fat on the inside.

• 2:03Jen Cohen?

  Right, your percentage is fat.

• 2:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, your body fat, where the fat is, if it's in your belly, visceral fat, that's 90%. Three point two percent of Americans have metabolic dysfunction. That means that six point eight percent of us are healthy. And what does that mean? That ninety three point two percent has either high blood sugar, high blood pressure, abnormal cholesterol, all by the way, caused by too much starch and sugar in our ultra-processed diet, or they've had a heart attack or stroke, or they're overweight.

• 2:30Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, that is unbelievable.

• 2:32Speaker 02

  It's unbelievable. And so we're killing ourselves and it's the costs are staggering. I mean, the government, the US government pays forty percent of the national healthcare bill, which is now four point nine trillion dollars. Probably a good two trillion of that is totally preventable and is now being added to our federal deficit every year. And imagine what that two trillion can do for the economy, what we could do with social programs, how we could improve our infrastructure, how we could improve so many innovation, how we could fund different kinds of research. I mean, we're wasting that money and most people don't realize that. You know, it's one out of every three taxpayer dollars is for healthcare.

• 3:09Jen Cohen?

  It's unbelievable. What I find to be unbelievable is that everyone seems to look for these quick fad diets or quick fixes, but yet like it's pretty, again, what you're saying is pretty basic, right? Like it's the same things that like if they watch what they eat, quality of the food, inflammation, like these.

• 3:26Speaker 02

  It's not that hard.

• 3:27Jen Cohen?

  It's not that hard, but yet people are trying to over or they're overwhelmed with like all this like noise.

• 3:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:33Jen Cohen?

  You know? The other thing I wanted to ask you about Ozempic or any of these or Gove's or whatever, can your body acclimate over time anyway? And so you end up even eating what you ate before you even started taking it?

• 3:44Speaker 02

  Sometimes these drugs affect people differently. I had a patient who I didn't prescribe it, but he, he was telling me he lost, you know, he did Ozempic for six months. He lost two pounds. It didn't really make him feel great. He had all these side effects. He switched over to what I told him to do. He lost sixty pounds and he's reversed his diabetes and, you know, he's on his way back to full, full health.

• 4:05Jen Cohen?

  You keep saying patience. Do you still see patients?

• 4:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, I saw two this morning. I had a whole patient day yesterday. Yeah.

• 4:10Jen Cohen?

  So you actually still see like one of them?

• 4:12Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 4:13Jen Cohen?

  You know, but this was, this was like the.

• 4:14Speaker 02

  I don't just play one on TV.

• 4:15Jen Cohen?

  No, you don't just play. Listen, this is very refreshing. I thought of all the. People of all the doctors, you wouldn't have time because do you know how many times I've seen doctors sit in the same chair you are and they are they're doctors? Yeah, I guess they have a certificate, but they don't practice, they write books and they like to do media and they like to do all these other things.

• 4:33Speaker 02

  It keeps it real. It keeps you humble.

• 4:35Jen Cohen?

  But people don't like to do it. Like it's impossible to find. The big joke is I can't find a doctor.

• 4:41Speaker 02

  I love it. I mean, I love taking care of people. It's so, I mean, it's amazing.

• 4:44Jen Cohen?

  You actually are like, would you take another another patient? I need a doctor because there is such a shortage of doctors.

• 4:51Speaker 02

  You're a live girl.

• 4:52Jen Cohen?

  I know. Like, what is the waiting list for that? Like, do you have like a crazy waiting list?

• 4:57Speaker 02

  I I wish I could see everybody. I really wished. I I mean, it's the heartbreak of my life and I can't tell you, I probably get five to 10 texts, emails, requests every day.

• 5:07Jen Cohen?

  Easy.

• 5:07Speaker 02

  My mother this, my friend this, I'm sick this. And like people who are close to me and I'm like, I just wish I could help everybody and I can't. And and so that's really why I co-founded Function Health.

• 5:17Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 5:17Speaker 02

  Was to take what I know and make it accessible, not to a few hundred or thousand people, but to millions and millions. We have an eight billion person problem.

• 5:26Jen Cohen?

  That's exactly true.

• 5:27Speaker 02

  And what I what we're creating at Function is something that is revolutionary. It's why we're the fastest growing healthcare company in the world. We're creating something called Medical Intelligence. You know, you have ChatGPT and all this, but think about where you take all your own data and all your data is sorted through with use of technology. Because now we we can process, I mean, just in your microbiome alone, there's a hundred thousand terabytes of data. I don't even know what a terabyte is, but it's a lot of information.

• 5:52Jen Cohen?

  I guess, yeah.

• 5:54Speaker 02

  So you, no human mind can comprehend all that. So we're able to take all this data and actually understand what's happening to you and input it all into the system and then gives you a predictive model of where you are, the trajectory from wellness to illness. Because things don't happen overnight, right? For example, we were mentioning some of these Alzheimer's tests, like P T O S two seventeen or eighty forty two forty or neurofibrillary light chain. There's other biomarkers and we're now able to see from a blood test that, you know, you could be developing early, early cognitive injury, brain injury that you don't even know about because you're not symptomatic. You can tell with brain imaging. Up to thirty to forty years before you get Alzheimer's that you're starting to get trouble in the brain. But now with these blood tests, we can detect it.

• 6:37Speaker 02

  And then you can do something to intervene and actually reverse that trajectory. That's never been possible before.

• 6:41Jen Cohen?

  How is it even possible? I thought there was no cure. You couldn't. Well, could you give us?

• 6:46Speaker 02

  Well, there is. Of course there is. I mean, you know.

• 6:48Jen Cohen?

  Like what? Give us some things that we can do for our brain.

• 6:51Speaker 02

  This is, this is, this is actually fact. I mean, if you look at the studies being done out of your, the finger trial, the pointer trials. These are large scale clinical trials using aggressive lifestyle intervention, risk factor modification, and actually showing not, showing not just reverse, slowing down or, or delaying the progression of Alzheimer's, but reversing.

• 7:12Jen Cohen?

  How? How can we reverse Alzheimer's?

• 7:15Speaker 02

  What you eat, I mean, exercise, stress management, sleep optimization, the nutritional optimization, hormone optimization, addressing all the root causes, toxins, the gut microbiome. I mean, it's a, it's a process. It's a deep, involved process. And I've written a book about this called The Ultra Mind Solution about fifteen years ago. It was way ahead of its time, still ahead of its time. And colleagues of mine like Dale Bredesen have taken that and really upgraded it. And he's got a re code program now. He's written a book called The End of Alzheimer's, which talks about the root causes. This is not just happening in a vacuum. It's such a random event. Why have we seen Alzheimer's increased by a hundred and fifty percent?

• 7:49Jen Cohen?

  Why? Tell us.

• 7:50Speaker 02

  Why? Because we, we have a shitty diet.

• 7:53Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 7:53Speaker 02

  Which is sugar. I mean, they're calling Alzheimer's type three diabetes now, which is in some resistance. Why we have ninety three percent of the population have some degree of resistance.

• 8:02Jen Cohen?

  But what, this one I don't understand.

• 8:03Speaker 02

  Toxins, environmental toxins.

• 8:04Jen Cohen?

  There's more education out than ever before, right? We're more educated, you'd think, like this information out there. How is it instead of getting less obese, we're getting more obese? Instead of getting healthier, we're getting more sick? When all we, we are overloaded with people and information, like the health industry, longevity industry, it's a trillion dollar business.

• 8:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, we live in a toxic cesspool of food and toxins. I mean, it's just the truth. I mean, the food industry has produced food that is making us sick and making us die early. And we also have completely unregulated environmental toxins in the society that people are just polluted. You know, if we were food, we wouldn't be safe to eat as human beings are so polluted.

• 8:49Jen Cohen?

  Why is it different here than the UK?

• 8:50Speaker 02

  Well, in other countries, they don't allow the same ingredients. I mean, you might have heard the recent ruffle about Kellogg's and these are friends of mine.

• 8:57Jen Cohen?

  I was gonna ask you about that.

• 8:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, like, you know, it's ridiculous. Like, in Europe, they have regulations. They have something called the REACH legislation in the European Union, which limits the use of chemicals. So here, the way it works is you, if you're a company, you get to use whatever you want. And you get approved as generally recognized as safe. And then you only get to have it taken off the market if it's shown later to be harmful. So innocent until proven guilty.

• 9:23Jen Cohen?

  Wow.

• 9:24Speaker 02

  As opposed to you have to prove this is safe before you put it in the food.