Stop Blaming Salt: Fixing High Blood Pressure by Treating the Root Cause

Most people think high blood pressure is just about “bad pipes,” but it’s really a whole–body problem driven by inflammation, insulin resistance, and years of eating sugary, processed foods. Hidden problems like sleep apnea, belly fat, toxins, and not getting enough key nutrients slowly damage your blood vessels and raise the risk of heart attacks, strokes, kidney failure, and memory loss. Instead of simply pushing the numbers down with medication, the Functional Medicine approach looks for the real “why” behind high blood pressure in each person—food choices, sleep, stress, genetics, environment, and more. By rebuilding health with real food and targeted nutrients, better sleep, movement, and stress relief, many of these root causes can be reversed or improved. The message is clear: high blood pressure isn’t destiny, and with the right changes, the body often has a powerful ability to heal. In this episode, I speak about, along with Dr. George Papanicolaou and Dr. Cindy Geyer, how high blood pressure is largely driven by inflammation and lifestyle factors, but with some foundational changes it can be reversed. Dr. George Papanicolaou is a graduate of the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine and is Board Certified in Family Medicine from Abington Memorial Hospital. Over time as the healthcare system made it harder for patients to receive personal care, Dr. Papanicolaou decided a change was needed. He began training in Functional Medicine through the Institute of Functional Medicine. In 2015, he established Cornerstone Personal Health—a practice dedicated entirely to Functional Medicine. In August 2017, Dr. Papanicolaou joined The UltraWellness Center. Dr. Cindy Geyer received her bachelor of science and her doctor of medicine degrees, with honors, from the Ohio State University. She completed residency in internal medicine at Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, N. Y. and is triple board certified in internal medicine, integrative medicine and lifestyle medicine. This episode is brought to you by BIOptimizers. Head to bioptimizers.com/hyman and use code HYMAN to save 15%. Full-length episodes can be found here:What Causes High Blood Pressure And How To Fix It Treating The Underlying Causes Of High Blood Pressure Treating High Blood Pressure at the UltraWellness Center How To Do The 10-Day Detox

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

• 0:00Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Coming up on this episode of the Dr. Hyman Show. You know, I was sort of really shocked to learn, you know, when I sort of got into functional medicine that high blood pressure wasn't just like a plumbing problem, that it was an inflammation problem and that the inflammation has many, many causes.

• 0:16Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Before we jump into today's episode, I want to share a few ways you can go deeper on your health journey. While I wish I could work with everyone one-on-one, there just isn't enough time in the day. So I built several tools to help you take control of your health. If you're looking for guidance, education and community, check out my private membership, The Hyman Hive, for live Q and As, exclusive content and direct connection. For real-time lab testing and personalized insights into your biology, visit Function Health. You can also explore my curated doctor trusted supplements and health products at drhyman.com. And if you prefer to listen without any breaks, don't forget you can enjoy every episode of this podcast ad-free with Hyman Plus. Just open Apple Podcasts and tap Try Free to start your seven-day free trial. That 93% of Americans have either high blood pressure, high cholesterol, high

• 1:00Dr. Mark Hyman?

  blood sugar, have had a heart attack or stroke, or overweight. That means that about 6.8% of Americans are actually healthy and don't have any of these problems. That's scary. That's adult Americans over 18. So why is this going on? It's because our diet is so bad. We have very inflammatory diet, creates a lot of oxidative stress and high blood pressure is a problem of inflammation and oxidative stress. And what's triggering that often is the insulin resistance, which is triggered by the mountains of sugar and flour we have every day. I mean, the average American has about 152 pounds of sugar and 133 pounds

• 1:40Dr. Mark Hyman?

  of flour a day, a year. That's almost a pound a day. And that is driving lots of metabolic issues, insulin resistance, organ fat, and that creates a whole cascade that drives up blood pressure and causes weight gain. And it's really, really important to address those causes. So there are other factors. You know, the heavy metals can be a big factor, often undiagnosed heavy metals lead mercury can drive a lot of issues. Sleep apnea, another big factor. If you have sleep apnea, you snore at night, it may be driving high blood pressure. Lots of nutritional deficiencies can be a factor. Omega 3, magnesium deficiency, very common magnesium deficiency, about half the population. Omega 3 is over 90% of

• 2:23Dr. Mark Hyman?

  the population. So these are really treatable causes.

• 2:29Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And obviously, stress, lack of exercise, certain environmental toxins, all can drive these problems of high blood pressure. And a quarter of the population who are adults worldwide have high blood pressure or hypertension. And a lot of people have pre-hypertension, which is sort of early hypertension. We know the levels we say of like 140 over 90, even when you're down 120 over 80, you're still have risk. Below 110 over 70, you're doing good. So, most of us don't have blood pressure like that because of our lifestyles, because of our diet, because of the stresses of our environment, because of lack of exercise, because of all the inflammatory things. And then, high blood pressure is a real killer. It's the silent killer. You often don't know you have it, but it's a huge driver of kidney

• 3:12Dr. Mark Hyman?

  failure, strokes, heart attacks, dementia. It's a big deal. Now, normally, it's treated with medications, and often combinations of medications, which can help reduce the risk of these complications, but it doesn't address the root cause. So, we've got to figure out the root cause. These medications are not risk-free. Often, they have side effects. In functional medicine, we really focus on dealing with the root cause, whatever it is. What's the cause of high blood pressure? So, what's really wrong with our current approach? We are just using whack-a-mole medicine. We treat the symptoms to suppress them with medication, without ever really digging into why. So, what about salt? Because that's

• 3:55Dr. Mark Hyman?

  a big question, right? Does salt the cause of high blood pressure? Well, no, we need salt. But the problem is, since we were hunter-gatherers, our ratio of salt and potassium is completely flipped. We used to be 10 times as much potassium as sodium, or potassium is salt. But now, we have 10 times as much sodium as potassium. And potassium helps you lower your blood pressure. Potassium actually is a very important mineral that we are not getting enough of, but it comes primarily from Plant foods. So when you're eating a lot of plant foods, you're getting a lot of potassium. If you're eating a lot of processed foods, you're getting a lot of salt. How do they make basically refined oils, flour and sugar taste edible? They often will add a lot of salt to the product.

• 4:40Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So it's really a problem with added salt in this country and lack of the right amounts of fruits and vegetables that can help to provide the right amount of potassium. So we need salt. It's not bad. And there are certain patients that are salt sensitive genetically, often African Americans that have to really restrict salt or watch their salt intake. But most of us don't really have to worry so much about salt if we're not eating processed food. It's not the salt that you add to your diet. It's the salt that's added by corporations in processed food. So if you want to add a little salt on your food, don't worry about it. If you are using salt, it's actually tricks. You can actually put it on after you cook and just put it on top of the food and you'll get the same kind of salt flavor without having even as much sodium.

• 5:25Dr. Mark Hyman?

  But the key is to actually increase dramatically your plant foods to include a potassium. And that's, that's really the issue. So a lot of unprocessed plant foods that have a lot of potassium or spinach, broccoli, squash, avocados, papayas, bananas. Also, you can make broth. If you make a lot of root vegetable broth, greens, mushrooms, boil them up. You know, you don't have to eat the mushy vegetables, but strain it and drink the broth full of potassium. I call it the ultra broth and there's an ultra broth recipe on our website. We'll link it in the show notes. Now, if you have high blood pressure, you know, you'll be told to cut your salt, but that may not be a great idea. And there's some studies that, that kind of say that maybe we shouldn't be so aggressive

• 6:09Dr. Mark Hyman?

  about lowering salt for everybody if we're having them eat a whole unprocessed diet. So in fact, in one study on heart failure patients, those who were salt restricted were 85% more likely to die or be hospitalized than those who did not limit their salt intake. Now, again, there are people who are salt sensitive, so be careful.

• 6:31Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So where are you gonna, where are you gonna get your salt? We'll get it from foods, which is naturally occurring in there. Basically, it's, it's high in things like meat and carrots and beets and beans. But you can add a little bit of salt, like Himalayan pink sea salt is great. Redmond salt is great from, from Utah. I like those. You wanna make sure though, you're, you're kind of, you know, adding a salt towards the end of cooking because it'll, it'll actually help bring out the flavor without having to eat as much. So you definitely can eat too much salt for sure. So it's not, it's not really unlimited, but be careful when you have high blood pressure. And watch what happens. Check your blood pressure, check your diet. Also iodized salt's really common.

• 7:14Dr. Mark Hyman?

  They add iodine into the salt because of deficiencies that we were, we had in the, in a population. And, and you, you, you do need iodine and it can cause problems if you don't have it. But often you can get it from fish and from seaweed and other sources. So I think, you know, it depends on your diet, but we might need a little extra iodine. Now, what can you do to actually fix high blood pressure? Well, the first is to reduce inflammation, to get rid of oxidative stress in your diet. And how do you do that? Well, you've got to get off of the junk, right? So eat, get rid of all the processed foods, eat a whole foods, plant rich diet. That's high in potassium rich foods. And I created something called the 10 day detox diet, which is a very simple 10 day approach to cutting all the inflammatory processed foods.

• 7:59Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And we found people's blood pressure drops up to 20 points when they do that in, in a week or seven days or 10 days. So it's very impressive when you see the results. You want to eat a lot of potassium rich foods. Like I said, the brats are great, fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, high fiber, good fats, calcium, magnesium. Magnesium is, is a relaxation mineral. It's really important for regulating blood pressure. In fact, when women come in with preeclampsia, which is a pregnancy induced high blood pressure condition, that can cause seizures and high blood pressure. What's the treatment? We give them intravenous magnesium. Now, I don't know why we start with all the drugs with blood pressure. Why don't we start with magnesium? And, and you can get a lot of, I can get a lot of magnesium for your diet. Greens, beans, nuts, seeds, a little chocolate too.

• 8:44Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Carbohydrates are a big factor, starch and sugar. So make sure you're cutting those down or cutting those out. And eating good carbohydrates, which are all the fruits and vegetables. Sugar is really the, the big, the big problem. It's driving insulin resistance that drives the high blood pressure. Eat the right fats. So omega three fats are really important. Help reduce inflammation, but also can help lower blood pressure. Those can come from wild fatty fish. I like the smash fish. Which are small, low in toxins, sardines, mackerel, herring.

• 9:15Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Anchovies, salmon. Those are all really good, good quality fats. So. You can get also grass fed meats often have omega threes like bison, grass fed lamb. Depending chickens, depending what they're eating. All great. Get real food. Just eat real food. Get rid of all the processed food. Like I said. Make sure you try to avoid inflammatory foods that maybe triggers for you like gluten and dairy. Those can be. Driving problems with blood pressure as well. That's why. The 10 day detox is a great way to start, reset. Also liquid sugar really bad, sodas, juices, all that affects you. Hydrogen fat, actually, we shouldn't be eating any of that anymore, but that also can be very inflammatory.

• 9:57Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Get protein and fat for breakfast, not starch and sugar. Most of our breakfast in America is cereal, bagels, muffins. Croissants, blah, bloody blah, all that stuff, pancakes, french toast. That's all. Dangerous to eat for breakfast. You want fat and protein. I usually have a protein shake. You can have eggs, avocados, those are great. Flaxseeds are great also, lots of fiber can help. Improve insulin resistance. And alcohol, alcohol can be a big factor. So I would, I would really minimize or eliminate alcohol for a little while. Stay hydrated, really important, keeping your blood pressure normal. And don't eat before bed. That worsens insulin resistance, weight gain. So you do all these dietary things, you're still maybe need a little help. What do you do?

• 10:41Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Well, there's some supplements that can really be helpful. I like magnesium and you can take magnesium citrate or glycinate. If you're a little constipated, use magnesium citrate. If you're not, you can use magnesium glycinate. CoQ10 has been shown to help with blood pressure. You can take potassium, omega-3 fats, B vitamins, extra fiber, good multi. All those are great strategies. What about exercise? Exercise actually can increase your blood pressure when you're exercising. But overall, it helps your cardiovascular system and lowers your blood pressure. It'll help you lose weight. I mean, even if you lose five to 10 pounds, we've seen that really have a big impact on blood pressure. Exercise is not a luxury. I mean, one cartoon I often use in my lectures says, would you rather exercise an hour a

• 11:26Dr. Mark Hyman?

  day or be dead 24 hours a day? So it's definitely not a luxury. It's an essential part of living, just like eating and breathing and brushing your teeth. So what about stress? Well, stress is a big factor and we know that stress drives blood pressure up. We know that it increases adrenaline, which increases blood pressure, cortisol. So practices like yoga, Tai Chi, meditation, guided imagery, breath work, all engage your parasympathetic nervous system and help lower your blood pressure and inflammation and help your metabolism and just basically healthy overall. Sleep also super important. A lot of us don't get enough sleep and you know, in fact, sleep can deprivation can be a factor in high blood pressure as well.

• 12:09Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So I encourage people to get good sleep and there's a lot of tricks for that. I mean, try to go to bed and wake up at the same time every day. Use your bedroom for sex and sleep only instead of working or doing a lot of stuff that we do in bed, watching TV. Make sure it's dark and quiet and cold in your room.

• 12:37Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Part of the problem with diagnosing blood pressure is that it's often hard to know if you have high blood pressure because one, it fluctuates all day long. Two, just getting one blood pressure reading in the doctor's office may not really tell you what's going on. You might have white coat hyper- Attention, meaning you get nervous and stressed, it goes up. I mean, when you exercise, your blood pressure goes up. When you're stressed, your blood, but what's your average blood pressure? So, one of the diagnostics we do is a 24 hour blood pressure test, which I found really effective because you can see what is happening when they're sleeping, when they're active, when they're inactive, and you get a really good sense of what their pattern is day, night, and average, and that'll tell you what, what your real risks are.

• 13:17Speaker 01

  Right. So doing 24 hour ambulatory monitoring is something that is really important to do, particularly if you're, you have any concern that the readings you're getting in your office are inappropriate. And you mentioned white coat hypertension, and that is not uncommon. It actually is fairly common. And so we will oftentimes recommend ambulatory blood pressure readings. And that gives us the clear, clear as picture possible.

• 13:38Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, it's true. As long as you can just get a cuff at home and have people monitor their blood pressure all day, and that, that'll help too. You know, I want to just dig into a little bit before we get talking about the difference with functional medicine and traditional medicine, right? Traditional medicine is you check your blood pressure, it's high, you get medication, you're moderate. We call it essential hypertension. Now, there are other causes of hypertension that we know of that are kidney diseases and other problems. But for the most part, people call it essential hypertension, which I joke and I say it means essentially we have no idea what's causing it. But

• 14:12Speaker 01

  We know that's not true.

• 14:13Dr. Mark Hyman?

  We know that's not true. So everything has a cause. Nothing is just random.

• 14:17Speaker 01

  Right.

• 14:18Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Right? If you have diabetes, it's not a random event. It's not like, oh, I, I got a virus. I, like, right? Something happened. And now, we, we know some of the major causes of high blood pressure are never addressed.

• 14:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 14:32Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And the two biggest ones that I see treating patients is insulin resistance.

• 14:37Speaker 01

  And sleep apnea.

• 14:38Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And sleep apnea. So one of the biggest factors is insulin resistance, which is an epidemic in this country. We have one in two Americans that are prediabetes or type 2 diabetes. 75% are overweight, 42% are obese, and they all have some degree of trouble regulating their blood sugar, which just causes them to get belly fat. And that belly fat is such a big factor in driving all sorts of diseases, everything from high blood pressure to cancer, to heart disease, to diabetes, to dementia, to depression, and so on.

• 15:12Dr. Mark Hyman?

  But the insulin resistance drives inflammation.

• 15:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:16Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And it drives inflammation throughout the body because those belly fat cells aren't just sitting there holding up your pants. They're dynamic hormonal and immune organs. Your belly fat is an immune organ and it drives inflammation throughout your body and that causes oxidative stress, which is really what causes rusting. So it's like your arteries and your pipes are rusting and stiffening, called hardening of the arteries. And that happens as a result of this inflammation and oxidative stress. And so insulin resistance is probably the biggest cause of that today in America and it's, it's really driven by diet. So I think people don't understand how powerful that is.

• 15:51Speaker 01

  Diet is, is very powerful and, you know, I call it, you, you mentioned the adiposity we have around our waist. I call that, I call that the toxic waist dump of the body.

• 16:00Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 16:00Speaker 01

  And it, it, that fat just does have a metabolic effect that is toxic to the body. As you said, it creates the hardening of the arteries, which is, you know, one important cause of high blood pressure.

• 16:12Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah. And the other, the other big thing is often misdiagnosed. And by the way, by the way, insulin resistance affects so many people, 90% are not diagnosed.

• 16:21Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 16:21Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So the way you diagnose it is you do a test for insulin and blood sugar.

• 16:25Speaker 01

  And it's a fasting glucose tolerance test that we do, I do on almost every patient.

• 16:30Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah. And this is the other test. It's a little more advanced where you take a sugar drink, basically drink the equivalent of two Cokes, check your blood sugar and insulin fasting, and then every one in two hours after. But most doctors just check blood sugar, but that's a very late finding. And you want to check insulin early on.

• 16:43Speaker 01

  And even doing a fasting insulin isn't going to give you an answer in some, you know,

• 16:46Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It'll help.

• 16:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:47Dr. Mark Hyman?

  But by the time your insulin goes up fasting, it, it's already down the road pretty far.

• 16:52Speaker 01

  Right.

• 16:52Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Right? So I agree. Uh, and then, and then we have this other issue, which is sleep apnea.

• 16:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:58Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Which is so under diagnosed.

• 17:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. So sleep apnea, there are about 25 million Americans that have sleep apnea. It is under diagnosed. It's not just a disease of people that are overweight. It's, you know, most people think about obstructive sleep apnea being related to just being overweight, but you also can have upper respiratory anatomy and muscular relaxation that even if you're thin, you can have obstructive sleep apnea.

• 17:23Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah. You have a narrow palate, a small airway.

• 17:25Speaker 01

  Right.

• 17:26Dr. Mark Hyman?

  You have sinus issues.

• 17:28Speaker 01

  And when, right, and when you have sleep apnea, that means you're just not getting enough oxygen. To your body, particularly your brain, also to your, you know, to all your blood vessels. Uh, and your cortisol levels rise. And then you get into that whole cycle you talked about before, which is an inflammatory cycle, which is an oxidative stress cycle, which can lead to hardening of the arteries. And when you're not getting oxygen to those blood vessels, then they, they're, they actually can't perform the work they need to do and create the energy they need to have. And so they, they can't contract and expand the way they should. And that can result in high blood pressure.

• 18:01Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah. And, and, and then it also drives insulin resistance. So if you have sleep apnea, it also causes you to be prediabetic.

• 18:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:08Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Independent of what you're eating.

• 18:09Speaker 01

  It causes weight gain. It leads to insulin resistance. It leads to diabetes, which complicates everything.

• 18:14Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I mean, I had this guy who couldn't lose 50 pounds. He was a, he was a lawyer and he told me this story. It was like, he said, look, I, I need to lose the weight. I don't know what to do. I'm trying to eat right. It's not working. I'm trying to exercise. I said, what is, what's your life like? Well, I'm a lawyer and I work really hard and, you know, but every day I have to stand up at my desk. I can't sit down. And this was before standing desk.

• 18:36Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 18:36Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And, and, and I'm like, why? He says, well, if I sit down, I fall asleep.

• 18:40Speaker 01

  Right.

• 18:41Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And I'm like, gee, maybe you have sleep apnea. So if you're falling asleep at work, if you're falling asleep in front of the TV, if you feel tired during the day, if your wife says you're snoring, now there's apps you can get that actually record your, you're on your phone, they record your snoring so you can see, cause people don't believe it. Oh, I don't snore.

• 18:57Speaker 01

  And I love that app, by the way.

• 18:59Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And then there's one called Sleep Cycle that I like. It's to record your story. And, and, and, uh, it, it, it's something that is easy to treat. I mean, it, it, there's different methods, there's CPAP and, you know, but, but it is a treatable condition and the weight loss then will happen and you'll feel better. So that's really important. I just want to talk about a few other causes that I think are really important and worth noting because those are the two biggest ones, but there's a lot of other ones. People who are nutritionally deficient.

• 19:24Speaker 01

  Right.

• 19:24Dr. Mark Hyman?

  In certain things can cause high blood pressure.

• 19:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:28Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Like magnesium.

• 19:28Speaker 01

  Right. So, and magnesium, you know, studies show that, you know, there's a very large percentage of people in our country have low magnesium.

• 19:37Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Forty-five percent of people have low magnesium, which is-

• 19:40Speaker 01

  And you know, magnesium, it's not magic, but, you know, when we replace magnesium in patients, we see amazing things happen. We see blood pressure come down. We see them being able to sleep better. We see muscle twitching and cramping go away. We see mood improve. Magnesium has a very important role in the body and certainly plays a big role in lowering blood pressure.

• 20:01Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, but I call it the relaxation mineral. And, you know, it's funny how in medicine we have these blind spots, but when I was training in obstetrics and gynecology, I was a family doctor, I delivered lots of babies. There's this common condition that women get called preeclampsia, which is high blood pressure in pregnancy. And when they come in and their, their blood pressure's high, which can cause seizures, the treatment isn't high blood pressure pills, because they don't tend to work. We give them intravenous magnesium-

• 20:28Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 20:29Dr. Mark Hyman?

  -to relax their blood vessels and save their life.

• 20:31Speaker 01

  Absolutely, yeah.

• 20:32Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So, we, we, and it's just a strange thing to me, we don't think about it that way. The other thing that is important is omega-3 fats and fish oil, because it helps relax your blood vessels, make them more pliable. But there's other causes that we also see. For example, environmental toxins. Heavy metals in particular, lead and mercury are really common, they're underdiagnosed. And when you go in your high blood pressure visit, your doctor's not checking your mercury and lead levels, not even your blood, and probably not on the most important test, which we do at the Ultra Wellness Center, which is a challenge test, where we give people a drug to pull out the metals, the chelator, and then we check their urine and see how much dumps in there. And if they have high levels, that's often a big factor as well.

• 21:11Speaker 01

  And I think you're, you know, you're, you're really hitting on all the things that I think about. And I, I tell people, when they come to me and hypertension is part of what they want me to work with, I said, "We're going to get your hypertension better by not treating your hypertension. We're not going to treat your hypertension. We're going to treat everything else that's causing your hypertension. We're going to find the sleep apnea, we're going to find your nutritional deficiencies, we're going to work on your stress levels, we're going to help you lose weight." And when you lose weight, I mean, you actually are going to drop your blood pressure.

• 21:40Speaker 02

  I mean, we do know that genetics play a role. So somebody who has strong family history of high blood pressure, we might want to be paying more attention. But as you've said so many times, our genes aren't our destiny. Those genes that we come into the world with are going to be influenced by so many other factors, many of which can unmask that potential and manifest as high blood pressure. So some of the root causes of high blood pressure, we know that weight gain and insulin resistance is a huge one. We know that diet plays a big role because of its effects on oxidative stress and endothelial dysfunction. Insufficient sleep, whether that's sleep quality, quantity, or timing, can play a role with high blood pressure. Loss of artery elasticity. So our endothelium

• 22:25Speaker 02

  is a target for a lot of the negative effects of lifestyle. We know that artery elasticity can be adversely affected by stress, by certain foods. And there's even emerging evidence that food sensitivities, disruptions in the microbiome, and toxic exposures can all have negative impacts on our arteries, leading to or contributing to high blood pressure.

• 22:47Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So basically, you're talking about modifiable factors that are treatable and fixable that cause the stiffening of our arteries that lead to high blood pressure. When you say endothelium, you mean the lining of the blood vessels, and that becomes dysfunctional because of inflammation and oxidative stress, which has many causes, right? So, you know, I was sort of really shocked to learn, you know, when I sort of got into functional medicine, that high blood pressure wasn't just like a plumbing problem, that it was an inflammation problem. And that the inflammation has many, many causes. And you outlined some of them, genetic predispositions, environmental toxins, change of the microbiome, or crappy high sugar processed diet, nutritional deficiencies, all these things impact the function of our blood vessels. And they're all treatable. So you're kind of treating patients, and

• 23:32Dr. Mark Hyman?

  you know, I want you to sort of present this case here of your patient who had who had high blood pressure, and what you kind of thought of, what you did diagnostically, and to kind of unpack some of the things we do at Ultra Wellness Center, which is doing a deeper dive on your biology, not just taking it face value, oh, your blood pressure's high, here's a pill. Well, we go into why, like, what's going on underneath the hood? How do we find things and search for things and hunt for things that may be treatable and modifiable factors that are driving? You touched on a bunch of them, you know, whether it's pre-diabetes and insulin resistance, whether it's

• 24:04Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Sleep apnea, whether it's nutritional deficiencies like magnesium or omega threes, or whether it's environmental toxins, there's some of which we can measure, some which we can't. But heavy metals have been linked to high blood pressure. So we kind of have to look for all these things. And that's what you did with your, with your patient that I'd love you to sort of share her story.

• 24:21Speaker 02

  Actually, Mark, I think I love this idea of personalizing the story and the recommendations because you could have 20 different people with high blood pressure and there may be different combinations of those variables that are playing a role for any individual patient. So we have to go back and understand who the person is sitting across, across the table from us.

• 24:40Dr. Mark Hyman?

  If you see one person with hypertension, you've seen one person with hypertension or any condition, whether it's autism or depression. And that's sort of one of the fundamental principles of functional medicine. You know, one disease can have many causes and one cause can create many diseases. We call N of one medicine. What, what is that person in front of me doing? What are their risk factors? What is their lifestyle? What are the other factors that may not even know about? And how do we dig into those? And that's, that's what we've been doing for decades at the Ultra Wellness Center. By the way, if anybody wants to learn more about what we're doing, go to ultra wellness center.com. You can learn more about how to become a patient. But now let's sort of dive into that. And that's case. And how did you think about this case?

• 25:15Speaker 02

  Sure. So this was a 56 year old woman and she had a long history of so-called white coat hypertension. We'll unpack that in a few minutes. She also had a strong family history of high blood pressure and late onset memory concerns. Her mother had recently been diagnosed with cognitive impairment at the age of 80, who also had a long history of white coat hypertension and then sustained hypertension. And she was starting to get concerned about, you know, what is this white coat variable telling her about her vascular system? How can she do everything she can to try to optimize vascular health and prevent disease down the road? For years, she'd been told with her blood pressure, don't worry about it. She'd go into the doctor, it would run 120s, 130s, maybe as high as 140.

• 26:00Speaker 02

  And she was told not to worry about it. So what do we do in conventional medicine? Either tell them not to worry about it, or you know, you think about it. You think about the case of, oh, your blood sugar's borderline. Come back and we'll check it in a year. Well, no, we want to do better than that. Or decide, okay, now we need to put you on a blood pressure medication. So what's different in functional medicine, as you already talked about, Mark? We really want to go upstream. We want to see what the variables are that played a role with this particular patient? Why she's showing up with this reactive blood pressure? What are the things we can do to modify those risk factors? And hopefully delay or prevent her from ever needing medication? And at the same time, keeping her heart and her brain healthy?

• 26:44Speaker 02

  And it starts by gathering the story.

• 26:46Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It's important to get into the story because you know, like I think of my, my, my parents, my mom and dad just obviously didn't listen to me. They ate crappy and they both run high blood pressure pills. And I'm 65 and my blood pressure is like 110 over 70, which is really highly unusual for someone my age. But it's not an anomaly. It's just because I understand what to do to regulate my biology and stay healthy as I get older. And most people don't do that. And our default in our society is basically leading us all to have these problems. That's why one in two Americans have high blood pressure and prediabetes. And by the way, I don't think it's an accident that one in two people in America have diabetes or prediabetes. And also one in two people have high blood pressure because they're very related.

• 27:25Speaker 02

  Going back to her story, I mean, she had a pretty uneventful early life. She had, she was born vaginally, she was breastfed. Back at a time when it wasn't the common thing to do. She didn't have a lot of infections, not a lot of situational stress. All of those early life exposures that we know can prime the vascular system to be more, potentially more reactive. She did have a history of allergies, but kind of unremarkable other than that. Started birth control pills at 19 and interestingly enough, developed hypertension on the birth control pills.

• 27:55Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Why is that?

• 27:56Speaker 02

  Well, the blood pressures, that can be, that can be genetically determined. It may be that it unmasks a potential for oxidative stress. I don't actually have the answer to that one, but I think there's some clues later.

• 28:09Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, I mean, the birth control pill is interesting because it, you know, estrogen does make you retain a little more fluid and, and that may be part of it. And the progesterone can also make you, you know, gain, gain weight sometimes. That may be part of it. So there, there are things that, you know, medications that may also, like the birth control may actually drive increased risk of hypertension.

• 28:27Speaker 02

  That's true, especially through the renin aldosterone system that we know plays a big role. And there are much higher doses in the birth control pills than what a woman would have made with her own natural cycling hormones. Other than that, pretty healthy until she had her first pregnancy at 35. It was a twin pregnancy and it was complicated by low amniotic fluid, preterm labor, and pregnancy-induced hypertension. She went on to carry her babies to term. She had a vaginal delivery. She nursed them for a year and a half. And that was when she started having the white coat periodic elevations in her blood pressure. Again, she was told, don't worry about it. It was attributed to the stress of being a young mom with two kids and

• 29:09Speaker 02

  maybe some sleep deprivation and working as an emergency room nurse. Fast forward, she in her early 40s, because she was snoring, probably related to her allergies and she had some daytime fatigue, she was sent for a sleep study that did not show sleep apnea. It showed a pattern that's called upper airway resistance syndrome, more common in women. That is a pattern we'll talk about in a few minutes, but it's where the airway becomes a little bit more collapsible, or there's a restriction in the ability to get air into your body, maybe because you've got nasal allergies, or you've got a small jaw, but you're not actually stopping breathing and you're not really dropping your oxygen level. So back then, there was no treatment

• 29:54Speaker 02

  recommended other than to work on her allergy symptoms.

• 29:57Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Just to double down on that, a lot of people who have high blood pressure have undiagnosed sleep apnea.

• 30:03Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 30:03Dr. Mark Hyman?

  You know, if you're snoring, or your partner says you're snoring, or you gasp for breath, or you have other symptoms of sleep apnea, meaning you fall asleep easily watching TV, or when you're driving, you feel tired. I mean, these are, these are clues. And it's important that people get this diagnosed because it, you know, it's treatable, often with weight loss and other things. But sometimes you need to take a breathing machine at night, and that can often resolve high blood pressure. So when I see someone, the first two things I think of are Pre-diabetes and insulin resistance and sleep apnea as both causes of

• 30:31Speaker 02

  Absolutely, Mark. And I'm so glad you said that because I think what's emerged is upper airway resistance syndrome isn't just benign. I mean, that's another area where it's like, don't worry about it. It's not sleep apnea. There's really nothing to do except treat your allergies. But what do we know about even that pattern? If you're having these subtle disruptions in the continuity of your sleep, even if you're not stopping breathing, you wake up tired, you have trouble with daytime fatigue, and it's associated with high blood pressure. This is also a more common pattern for women, and it gets overlooked all the time because we have a stereotype about who's the more likely person to present with sleep apnea. And it's usually an overweight man with the big neck circumference who snores really loudly.

• 31:15Speaker 02

  It gets missed in lean women in particular.

• 31:18Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And then what else did you find on her?

• 31:20Speaker 02

  So, well, the next piece was she had gone, she went through a pretty significant menopause, lots of heavy periods. Last period was finally around 49, tons of hot flashes and night sweats. Why is that important? Well, guess what? There's now been a recognized association between women who have more of those vasomotor symptoms, also being associated with more vascular reactivity and higher risk of cardiovascular disease. But at the time, again, we weren't, nobody was thinking along those lines. She had a conversation with her OB-GYN and decided to go on an estradiol patch and progesterone. She had good relief in her symptoms. Another

• 32:01Speaker 02

  really important thing, though, about the menopause transition is the changes in estrogen that happen can also unmask more effects of stress on the vascular system. We also know that insulin resistance tends to get worse in the menopause transition. So it's a potential window of opportunity to think beyond just should you take hormones or not? Because, again, fitting into her story, looking way upstream and trying to put things into place that are going to keep her heart and her brain healthy. She's always been physically active. Another piece of her story that I think is going to be relevant down the road, she's always been physically active. In fact, one of the main things that she sort of hung her hat on in terms of trying to keep her heart and brain

• 32:43Speaker 02

  healthy was to stay physically active. And she periodically would be plagued by multiple soft tissue injuries. She'd had plantar fasciitis, she'd had posterior tibialis tendonitis, she'd had epicondylitis. So she'd had a lot of these soft tissue injuries, which would periodically take her out of commission from her exercise. So that's sort of her backdrop. And it leads us to some interesting clues of some other things we might want to think about related to her blood pressure beyond just medications or not. And think back to her original goal. She's really concerned about future risks for cognitive decline. What's the connection between blood pressure and cognitive decline? We know that the blood-brain barrier, that critical interface between the body and the brain, it is really vulnerable

• 33:27Speaker 02

  to the effects of any kind of vascular risk factor, whether that's prediabetes, insulin resistance, high blood pressure, oxidative stress, inflammation. That blood-brain barrier can become more permeable or leaky. And it plays such an important role at selectively letting in the nutrients to the brain that we want getting in, keeping out toxins and microbes that we don't want getting in, and then also supporting the brain's waste removal system, the glymphatic system that removes waste from the brain. Any vascular insults are potentially going to contribute to that leaky blood-brain barrier. So optimizing her blood pressure, looking at those upstream factors is going to be really, really important for her to meet her goals.

• 34:11Dr. Mark Hyman?

  One of the things with your diagnostics is that you look at genetics related to high blood pressure, which we can now do. So these are tests that we do at the Telfer Wellness Center. It's a cheek swab. You can look at your full sort of panel of Risk genes, and we don't look at your entire genome because it's like too many things, 20,000 genes. We look at the ones that are common that we can do something about that are probably affecting your, your health in an immediate way and that we can actually modify. And so you found a number of things there. And I think there are a lot of variations and we can use the science of genomics and our understanding of the biology of what happens when you have certain variations to modify your risk factor. So the genes, like you said, you know, load the gun, the environment pulls the trigger. And there are certain people have salt sensitivity, which we can pick up through genetic testing.

• 34:55Dr. Mark Hyman?

  But not everybody with high blood pressure has a salt issue. You know, I think there's a real issue there with like, who, how many people are salt sensitive? And it's probably maybe, you know, 40% of people who have high blood pressure are, are salt sensitive. But a lot of people aren't. And there's, you know, real controversy about salt, whether it's the issue or not the issue. And, and there's been large population studies that kind of show that there's maybe a slight risk. There's an intersalt study, for example, in 1988. It was just a tiny, tiny little risk. And the question is, you know, is it the salt? Or is it, and this is just a question I have, is it the salt? Or is it the salt in connection with certain genetics? Or the salt in connection with prediabetes or insulin

• 35:36Dr. Mark Hyman?

  resistance, which makes you retain more water? Hence, you'll get high blood pressure because you have bigger fluid, fluid in your system. So what, what are your thoughts about that?

• 35:45Speaker 02

  You know, it's a great question mark. And I think it's not simple. Right? So we know that, that that subset genetically of people who are sensitive to salt, it's not, it's less than 50%. But there was an older mouse study that found that high sodium intake actually increased oxidative stress. So there may be another mechanism that it's not just about the sodium's effects on the renin, aldosterone, angiotensin system and fluid retention, but it also creates more opportunity to, to produce these free radicals that directly impact vascular health.

• 36:16Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So also like, nobody talks about the fact that historically, we had 10 times as much sodium, potassium as sodium in our diet as hunter gathers. Now we have 10 times as much sodium. So it's, it's not just the excess sodium, it's a lack of potassium. And where's potassium come from? It comes from all our vegetables and stuff. So we're not eating enough plant foods and those, those have really high, high levels of potassium.

• 36:39Speaker 02

  And magnesium.

• 36:40Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And magnesium. Yeah. Magnesium is the other nutrient where probably 45% of us are deficient in. So. Is it the salt or is it the balance of all these other electrolytes like magnesium and potassium and calcium that we can't ignore, but that we do look at in functional medicine, the traditional doctors won't look for that. Right. And they won't modify that, but it can be really a huge factor and you can give people potassium supplements, you can increase their potassium in their diet, you can do the same with magnesium in terms of dietary magnesium as well as supplements and same thing with calcium. So we had to be really aware, it's not just such a simple reductionist view that, oh, salt causes high blood pressure and so you should eat less salt.

• 37:19Speaker 03

  I find that most people have never connected the dots between how they feel and what they eat. They walk around with what I call S L D syndrome. That's when you feel like crap. And that is a big problem for people. What do I mean by that? Well, you might be tired, sluggish, you might have brain fog, maybe you have digestive issues, reflux, heartburn, ear or bowel, maybe you have nasal congestion, sinus issues, muscle aches, joint pains, headaches, insomnia. Should I go on rashes, acne? I mean, it goes on and on and on. And many of these things are caused by food. And the only way to know is to do a total body

• 38:03Speaker 03

  reset, like hitting the reset button on your computer when all the systems are jammed. It's a complete reboot. Well, how do you do a reboot? It's very powerful. And most people have never experienced this and this is why I love to do it with people. And I actually then told them all around the world, I hear people can come and actually experience this. We do programs where we have people do this just in five days, not even 10 days. People have a 70% reduction in all symptoms from all diseases. Now, I'm going to put in the show notes, the medical symptom questionnaire that I use in my practice, which essentially gives you a score based on the degree and frequency severity of symptoms. So if you have a headache, it's a zero, meaning never. Or four, you get it all the time, it's really bad. Or some version in between. And then you get a score at the end and you know, people

• 38:47Speaker 03

  have a score of 60, 70, 100. It should be less than 10, maybe even zero. Ideally, I should have a symptom that's not normal. Human beings that suffer this much. And that's really why I created this, this book and the program, the 10 day detox diet, because I was doing this with my patients and seeing such incredible results. So I do this personally regularly. I do it at least two or three times a year, four times a year to really reset my system to kind of get my body back on track, to get rid of all the bad stuff, put in all the good stuff. Now I want to walk you through how to do this. I'm going to teach you how to hit the reset button, reboot your system and to optimize your biology to help your gut, help your detox

• 39:27Speaker 03

  system, help your immune system, help reset your nervous system, and it's powerful. So if you want to really see how your body can feel and get rid of what we call FLC syndrome, I would do this. Most people are like a frog that's in cold water where you turn the heat up slowly and it starts to boil to death. We just kind of get used to it and think it's normal. These symptoms are not normal.

• 39:52Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 39:53Speaker 03

  I remember I wanted to do this at a junior high school once and the teachers were like, well, I, we might have to get permission from the parents to see if it's safe. You know, maybe they don't want their children doing this. Like, what is it safe to eat fruits and vegetables and nuts and seeds and protein and cut out sugar and starch and processed food? I mean, they should get a note that it's permission to eat the junk food that they have at school. The opposite. So anyway, yes, very same. Anybody could do this. And some people, by the way, you know, need more certain things or other things, but but basically this is a very universal approach to resetting your system. A second pillar, aside from what you're eating, the food is really important. And by the way, need the protein in the morning. You need to make sure you get rid of sugar and starch in the

• 40:37Speaker 03

  morning. Super important. A lot of people start their diet, their day with carbs, which is the worst thing you can do. Sugar sweetened coffees, teas, cereals, muffins, bagels, breads. Done. Second pillar are your daily habits. This essentially involves a pattern of eating and living that puts your body back in rhythm. It helps you reset your nervous system. And and there's two really important habits as part of the 1080. One is when you eat and also when you sleep. So let's talk about when you eat. Now, when you eat might be as important as what you eat. So any of us don't.

• 41:09Speaker 03

  Eat in the right pattern. We tend to, you know, eat all day long. We snack. We tend to eat before bed. We snack late at night. It's kind of bad. So basically, when you eat is very important. Research shows that doing that can really be bad for your health. Eat at night. So the first is make sure you give yourself at least 12 to 14 hours between dinner and breakfast. So dinner at six, breakfast at eight. That's a 14 hour fast. Okay? If you eat at six and then you keep snacking all night, that doesn't count, right? And it's the most simple formula we call timer chicken eating. And it's basically giving your body a rest and getting the body to reset.

• 41:51Speaker 03

  And I wrote a lot about this in my book, The Young Forever. But but basically, there's all process at night that happens called autophagy and cleanup and repair. You want to eat your body, the ability to do that. The next is food. Now, you can do a breakfast if you're eating, you know, for example, there at six and breakfast at eight or so. That's a 14 hour fast. Really important to have protein in the morning, not carbs and sugar. Also, not eating three hours before bed is really important. So most people eat snack after dinner. Don't do that. Have at least three hours of time you eat and you go to sleep. That way you will lose weight. Your body can repair and heal instead of trying to digest and store the food.

• 42:31Speaker 03

  What about sleep? Sleep is one of the most underrated pillars of health. It's probably even before exercise meditation, maybe even before nutrition. Because when you don't sleep well, you're going to eat sugar, carbs, you're going to crave more. So you want to focus on sleep and restore your rest. We know that getting in a routine of waking and sleeping can help with deeper and restful sleep. So try to stick the same bedtime every night. Try to get off your screens for an hour or two before bed. Keep your room dark or use blue block your glasses. Keep your room dark and cold, probably 65 to 68. Really important because your body does much better with sleep at night. Try to relax at night with meditation. Do a good imagery. Do breath work, stretching, journaling, gratitude practice, whatever you like. But do something. Very important.

• 43:17Speaker 03

  So your eating routine should be like set a bedtime of six to over 10 days. Turn your phone off and get it out of your bedroom. Turn the TV off for at least an hour or two before you go to bed. And then use the time of night to read, to journal, to meditate, to connect with people you love, and just kind of wind out. How with the third pillar? Is extra support we need on the journey, right? Now, we all need nutrients. They're called vitamins because they were vital amines, vital to life, right? And, and so we've seen a dramatic reduction in the nutrient density of our food. Our organic matter's gone out of our soil. Nutrients can't be extracted. Foods travel long distances.

• 44:01Speaker 03

  We have commodity crops which are bred to actually breed out the nutrients and in the starch and, and, and, you know, yield. And so foods aren't as nutritious as they once were. And probably ninety percent of Americans, according to the government's own surveys, are deficient in one or more nutrients at the minimum level to prevent deficiencies. How much vitamin D or you need, you not get? Rickets, not very much, like thirty units. How much you need for optimal health? Probably three to five thousand. So we need to really probably focus on nutrients. And even with a perfect diet, you know, because none of us are hunter gatherers anymore, or you know, kinds of food that we never ate and nutrient depleted. We need, we need the basics. So we need a basic set. It's a multivitamin and mineral foundational.

• 44:44Speaker 03

  Magnesium, a lot of us are deficient, probably forty-five percent are low or deficient magnesium. It's involved in over three hundred different enzymatic reactions. Super important, helps you relax your nervous system at night. It'll be calm down. Also, people get constipated, sometimes they change their diet. So taking magnesium citrate can help. And lastly, vitamin D. It's also like fish oil, but vitamin D is really important. Vitamin D, over eighty percent is lower deficient in vitamin D. That's, it's involved in so many different things in the body. So really important and helps your mood, helps your muscle function, helps your brain, your energy, helps inflammation, autoimmunity. It's just super important and most of us are low. Fish oil is also important and I, I often recommend fish oil to people or omega three fats. So what are the program steps in the ten eighty times?

• 45:29Speaker 03

  What should be the tips? And then we're going to go through this. The first step is to eat. From the 10 day detox approval list for 10 days. So eat what the hell you eat, right? Whole foods, uh, you know, whole food, uh, base shake in the morning. You could add, you know, protein powder, grass fed protein if you want. I have a grass fed protein called super simple protein, but you really need to make sure you have a good breakfast. Second is, um, commit to daily habits, right? Pick your designated eating window, right? Uh, you want a 12 to 14 hour a night fast, which means eating within a 10 or 12 hour window. Um, don't snack before bed. Try to have the same bedtime. Get off your technology an hour or two before. Practice some active relaxation. Huge impact on your health.

• 46:14Speaker 03

  Step three is adding the supplements. Now, you don't have to do this, but I really encourage you to have a multivitamin, magnesium, vitamin D, and fish oil. I'm going to list which products you should take in the show notes. You have it all listed there. Um, also what you should eat and what you should avoid during your 10 day detox. Let's go through that. Um, so here's a full food list. Um, you can, you know, we're going to have it in the show notes. You can take it with you in the store. It's in the book, the 10 day detox. It's in the 10 day cookbook. But essentially, uh, here's what you should eat and what you should actually get rid of. Uh, what you should eat is, um, protein. You need right protein, right? So grass fed or originally raised, uh, meats is great. You can have a pasture raised lamb,

• 46:55Speaker 03

  beef, bison, venison, elk, um, grass fed beef, pasture raised chicken, turkey, duck. All that's fine. What you should avoid is conventionally raised chicken, poultry, and, and eggs and so forth. And by the way, you can also have eggs that are pasture raised eggs. Um, meat, get rid of all processed meats, deli meats, all conventionally raised feedlot meats. Get rid of all that stuff. Um, but about fish and seafood. Lots of small fish are good. Big fish are bad, right? Big fish like swordfish, tuna, sea bass, halibut, most farm raised fish are pretty bad for you. What you should be consuming are things like the, I call it the smatch fish, uh, small wild salmon, uh, sardines, anchovies, herring, mackerel.

• 47:39Speaker 03

  Um, you can have black cod, shrimp, scallop, trout. All those are fine. Eggs, as I said, uh, pasture raised eggs are fine. Not organic. Regular eggs are not fine. What about nuts and seeds? Very important. Almonds, Brazil nuts, cashew nuts, hazelnuts, macadamia, pecan, pine nuts, pistachios, walnuts. All that's great. You even can count nims, chocolate, not chocolate, but where chocolate comes from. Seeds are great. Chia seeds, flaxseed, hemp seeds, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, all great. Nut butters also great, so unsweetened nut butter, so almond, cashew, pecan, macadamia, I love macadamia, walnut, all that's great.

• 48:20Speaker 03

  You also eat beans, if you're a vegan and you want to do this, you can use GMO free or non-GMO tofu or tempeh, it's your protein. What you should avoid are nuts that are with sugar, they are cooked in oils that are basically candy stuff. A lot of nut butters have sugar, hydrogenated fats. Peanut butter, peanuts can be okay, but I would say mostly avoid peanuts because they have aflatoxin, often are rancid, and so you want to be careful with that. What about oils and fats? Well, the ones you want to use are organic avocado oil. You can use organic coconut oil for cooking, grass-fed ghee.

• 49:05Speaker 03

  If you want to use tallow, lard, duck fat, chicken fat, that's okay, as long as they're they're a pasture raised or regenerally raised. For salads, and you can use some of those oils, like almond oil, black oil, hemp oil, macadamia oil, and olive oil. And you can cook with olive oil, but only like tomato sauces and things like that, things that are not high heat. Sesame oil, tahini is great as well, great fat. Sesame seeds kind of paste, almond oil, those are flavorful oils, they're not main oils. But you want to avoid the traditional oils, all the seed oils, like canola oil, partially hydrogenated oils, margarine, peanut oils, sunflower oil, safflower oil, trans fats, vegetable oil, vegetable shortening, all that stuff's bad. What about veggies? What should you eat? Well, you want to stick with lots of non-starchy veggies,

• 49:50Speaker 03

  or orange chokes, organic if you can. I use the Dirty Dozen Guide from my working group, BWG.org. Tell you which are the clean fifteen, meaning you can eat things that are not organic, or the dirty dozen, which you definitely not eat if they're not organic. But I love asparagus, artichokes, avocado, bean sprouts, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, celery, cucumber, eggplant, garlic, ginger, hearts of palm, kohlrabi, licorice greens, mushrooms of all kinds, onion peppers, radicchio, radish, rutabagas, all the kind of stuff. Seaweed is great, lots of minerals, shallots, summer squash, tomatoes, turnips, zucchini. List goes on, we have all in there. You can have some, uh, things like sweet potatoes. I like the Japanese purple sweet potatoes, winter squash, carrots, pumpkin.

• 50:35Speaker 03

  All that's fine. I mean, carrots are fine because unless you're doing carrot juice, that's a problem, but. Basically try to limit to a, like, one, uh, serving, which is like half a cup a day. Uh, what you should be avoiding is corn and white potatoes, mostly. A little, you know, some of the little, uh, fingerling potatoes or the prurient potatoes, purple potatoes, it can be fine. What about dairy? Um, you can eat pasture raised butter or ghee, but I encourage you to get all dairy, including sheep and goat, which are mostly fine for people. But I encourage people to just get all other dairy. If you're having, um, he encourages you to have, make sure it's grass fed or regularly raised. And what about beans? Well, uh, you can have green beans.

• 51:14Speaker 03

  You can have green peas, uh, you can have, uh, non-GMO, organic soy, that's just tofu or tempeh. Uh, you can have snap beans, you can have snow peas, um, but otherwise, definitely no, no beans. Uh, what about grains? No grains at all. So, uh, even healthy grains, quinoa, buckwheat, things like that. I encourage you to get off, off all of that. Why? Cause it just shuts down the insulin response, helps you lose weight, reduce inflammation. Not that these are necessarily all bad, but eventually you're gonna have them back. But basically get rid of all, all the other, all grains. Wheat, barley, rye, rice, amber, millet, oh, it's everything. Uh, get rid of it. Uh, fruit, fruit can be okay, but, um, small amounts of non-hydroxyemic grains.

• 51:59Speaker 03

  So, organic black derries, blueberries, cranberries, kiwi, lemons, limes, raspberries, all that's fine.

• 52:06Speaker 03

  Not too much, right? You know what I mean? Like, you know, two pounds of blueberries, but you gotta top half company, wanting to get rid of all the other fruit, all the high glycemic fruit, like bananas, pineapple, melons, cherry, grapes is the worst, even foods that, food so you think, you know, maybe good for you are actually good for you, right? Whether it's, you know, peaches, pears, lecterines, cherry, for example, but you don't want to eat them while you're on the tending to, you want to really shut down the blood sugar in some risk points. Uh, what about sugar sweeteners? Sorry, the tip, you can sometimes have a little bunk food or stevia you have in the shake, uh, we have, but generally tend to avoid all that stuff. Um, also just get rid of

• 52:47Speaker 03

  all the other artificial sweeteners, sugar, all that stuff. If you have to ask, basically,

• 52:54Speaker 03

  right? Um, then what should you be drinking? Well, lots of water, herbal tea, green tea, uh, caffeine, that's okay. A little green tea is fine. You know, be good coffee, sparkling water, mineral water, all this, you avoid alcohol, coffee, bottled water, it's plastic soda, obviously sugary beverages. Um, basically that's the program. So if you eat that way for 10 days, if you use a simple habits, your body is going to totally transform and you're going to see just how food is impacting your health, which is something most people don't have a clue about. And that's why I love this so much. Now, after the program, it's really

• 53:33Speaker 03

  important, if you do it for 10 days or 21 days or 10 weeks or 10 months, you have to be smart about getting off it or you can get into big trouble. Because when you go off of foods that are inflammatory, foods that are allergic to, and then you reintroduce them, you can get a lot worse symptoms. So let's say you had migraines before and they're gone. Wow, you're going to get a dizzy of a migraine. Unless you had gut issues before, you had a real problem. Unless you had sinus congestion or meaning dairy and then you eat it again, you might get a sinus infection. So you really have to be smart. So if you're feeling great, you want to continue and you, let's say you have a lot of weight to lose. Let's say you're having an immune disease. Let's say you're feeling great, you want to continue, no problem. You continue it, continue

• 54:16Speaker 03

  to do it. You can do it for another 10 days, you can do it for another 10 months. It's totally safe to eat. That's pretty much how I eat most of the time with a case of grains and meats.

• 54:26Speaker 03

  Also prioritize sleep and obviously your fasting window, not eating before bed. And then eventually people can transition slowly to the vegan diet, which incorporates a lot of the principles of the Tendinitox diet, but gets you more flexibility in your diet.

• 54:41Dr. Mark Hyman?

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

• 55:24Dr. Mark Hyman?

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

• 56:08Dr. 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.