293 Dr. Mark Hyman: The Truth About Eating Fat to Get Healthy

"Food is not just calories; it's information." - Dr. Mark Hyman If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes, video, and more at http://lewishowes.com/293 Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

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

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is episode number 293 with New York Times bestselling author Dr. Mark Hyman. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 0:33Lewis Howes?

  Thomas Jefferson said, "If the body be feeble, the mind will not be strong." I am super pumped you guys are here for this special episode with Dr. Mark Hyman. For those that don't know him, he is the Director of the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine, the Prickser Foundation Chair in Functional Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic, Chairman of the Institute for Functional Medicine, and Founder of the Ultra Wellness Center. He's also the number one bestselling author of 12 books and just came out with a new one called Eat Fat, Get Thin. And everything has to do with our health. You know, people would spend millions, billions of dollars,

• 1:16Lewis Howes?

  the richest people in the world would spend all of their money to cure their health if they had cancer and they had a few months left to live. Everything revolves around how we feel, our mind, our health, everything inside of us. Everything revolves around our health. And today, we've got one of the leading authorities, experts, minds in this space, Dr. Mark Hyman, who is, in my opinion, one of the most credible people to talk about health and food, and how food is medicine. And some of the things we're going to be covering are: What is the best first step to heal yourself if you do have a health issue? How we got it backwards on the role of fat in our diets?

• 1:59Lewis Howes?

  The key to changing your hormones so that you're not hungry all the time? What the US government just changed in their food recommendations, which is opposite of what they used to do? Why Dr. Mark Hyman says we must stop supporting factory farms and so much more. He dives into a lot of great statistics, research, data to talk about how to live a healthy, happy life. I'm super excited about this one. Make sure to share this with your friends. Check out the full show notes and the full video interview back at LewisHowes.com/293. Share it with your friends all over the place. This is a powerful one that everyone needs to listen to.

• 2:41Lewis Howes?

  And without further ado, let's dive into this with the one, the only Dr. Mark Hyman. Welcome everyone back to the School of Greatness Podcast. I'm very excited about our guest today. His name is Dr. Mark Hyman. Thank you so much for being here.

• 3:00Mark Hyman?

  So glad to be here, Les.

• 3:01Lewis Howes?

  Really excited about this. Now, you are one of the most influential authoritative leaders in the doctor space that I've been, you know, heard about. And you've been around for a long time, a number of New York Times bestsellers, a number of number one New York Times bestsellers. What are you on, number 12 now?

• 3:18Mark Hyman?

  12 books, nine New York Times bestsellers, a cookbook's didn't make it, and the last one, the 12th, is just coming out, so.

• 3:23Lewis Howes?

  12th is coming out, and it's called Eat Fat, Get Thin: Why the Fat We Eat Is the Key to Sustain Weight Loss and Vibrant Health. And essentially what you're saying is completely opposite of what we've been all told our whole lives, right? Why fat is the key to sustain weight loss.

• 3:41Mark Hyman?

  Yeah. Who would have thunk it, right?

• 3:43Lewis Howes?

  Aren't we not supposed to have fat in our diet? Isn't it bad for us? Doesn't it create heart disease and high cholesterol and all those other things that are bad for us?

• 3:51Mark Hyman?

  That's what we were all taught, right? That's the whole line. Our government told us to eat six to 11 servings of bread, rice, cereal, and pasta a day, to eat a low-fat diet. And fats and oils were sparingly only at the top supposed to be eaten. And yet, that advice led to the worst obesity epidemic and diabetes epidemic in the history of mankind. That's like the, the food charts that we all saw in school, right? Completely opposite of what we should be doing. And, and so the science has caught up with this bad advice. And the advice unfortunately, Lewis was based on really shoddy science, on very weak evidence, on a few population studies, not really experimental studies. In fact, all the experimental studies that told us to eat low fat diets, they actually didn't tell us that we should be doing that.

• 4:36Mark Hyman?

  They were actually contradicting the recommendations that were developed in 1980 by the UK and the USA. Really? So basically, if you looked at the actual randomized controlled trials, it were, there weren't that many, but there was a few of them. They all said that eating low fat wasn't beneficial, but the- These were outside of the US trials? No, trials all over. Trials in the US. Okay. They just didn't look at that evidence. So the guideline committees who were working on it didn't, they sort of dismissed that evidence. And they had this theory, and they went with the theory, but, because it made sense, right? If you, if you look at calories, for example, fat has nine calories per gram, carbs and protein have four calories per gram. So you think, well gee, if it has more calories per gram, if you eat less of it, you're gonna lose more weight.

• 5:19Mark Hyman?

  Logical, but unfortunately metabolism is not a math problem. Oh. You know? Yeah. It's, it's a metabolic problem. It's a hormonal problem. It's not energy balance. The whole idea of calories in, calories out. This is the biggest crock of, you know what, that's been pushed on the American public because there's a message implicit in that, which is, if you just told someone to lose weight by eating less and exercising more, if they don't do it, it's their fault, right? Just eat less, exercise more. If you don't, you're a lazy glutton. Right. Right? So it's your fault you're fat. Okay. Right? But the truth is that it's not. It's not just about calorie balance. In fact, that's what the, the global energy balance, quote, global energy balance network,

• 6:04Mark Hyman?

  which was actually funded by Coca-Cola. And that they actually, actually funded university scientists to kind of be the front people for this nonsense that's all about calories in, calories out, has been completely discredited. The, the New York Times wrote a, a big expose of this, but what we've been taught is that all calories are the same. They're actually not. So food is not just energy, it's actually information. It gives instructions. What do you mean by that? Right? Breakthrough in science, right? So food is not just calories, it's actually information. So the information in food communicates with your body every single minute. So every bite you take, it turns on or off genes that create health or disease that make you lose or gain weight. It turns on or off hormones that make you lose or gain weight or create health or disease.

• 6:49Mark Hyman?

  It's like a feedback for you. It's direct instructions and it works minute by minute. It's not something that takes a long time. It regulates inflammation, it regulates your hormones, as I said, it regulates your brain chemistry, it regulates even your gut microbiome, all the flora in your gut that we now know are linked to everything from weight gain, diabetes, to heart disease, to cancer, to autoimmune diseases, and so many other things. It's the gut health, right? Even depression and ADD and autism may be linked to changes in your gut flora. So we now know that when you eat food, it's not just about the energy in it. Because if that was true, then you could just survive on soda all day and it wouldn't matter as long as you only eat 1,800 calories of soda. And I had this argument. Right, right, right. I had this argument with the vice chairman of Pepsi.

• 7:33Mark Hyman?

  We had dinner together and I'm telling you. No way. Yeah, we had dinner and the guy in between us, because I was in here, you're sitting here, the guy was like, was like being in the middle of like a war zone. And I said to him, how can you say that, how can you say that eating 1,800 calories of soda is the same as having 1,800 calories of broccoli or almonds? He says, well, as long as you have that amount of calories, you're not gonna, it's not gonna be any different. I said, this is just not how the body works. You're not getting the nutritional value from that, right? Right. I mean, when you, well, it's not even nutritional, so just like look at 1,000 calories, let's say 750 calories of broccoli is 21 cups, 35 grams of fiber, half a teaspoon of sugar, and tons of phytonutrients, phytochemicals that upregulate your genes that, that actually

• 8:17Mark Hyman?

  help you prevent cancer, that improve hormone metabolism, so many things, right? Same calories from a big gulp, 750 calories, 46 teaspoons of sugar, right? High fructose corn syrup upregulates your liver to turn on a fat production factory that makes high triglycerides. Stores fat more, right? Stores fat, lowers triglycerides. I mean, raises triglycerides, lowers the good cholesterol, causes a fatty liver, raises hormones that, that make you. And women make them grow hair on their face and have lost hair on their head. Men, they drop their testosterones, they have no sex drive and they lose their hair on their bodies. All this from the same calories, right?

• 8:55Lewis Howes?

  The number of calories.

• 8:56Mark Hyman?

  Calories are the same, but the information in the food is very different. So now we have this concept that is actually really about the hormonal, I call it hormonal hypothesis. I talk about in Eat Fat, Get Thin, which is how do you change your hormones so you're not hungry all the time?

• 9:10Lewis Howes?

  Cause what? That's the key.

• 9:11Mark Hyman?

  The typical advice, you eat low fat and your fat actually makes you satisfied, right? Cause if you eat fat, you're not craving all the time, you're not hungry. And it actually is a brain actually food because it actually stops the addiction center in the brain from turning on. So you never feel hungry or have any cravings. It also speeds up your metabolism, fat speeds up your metabolism, yeah.

• 9:33Lewis Howes?

  So it helps you burn more fat at the same time, right?

• 9:36Mark Hyman?

  It releases fat from the fat cells.

• 9:38Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 9:38Mark Hyman?

  Right, so it makes you less hungry, it makes you burn more fat and it liberates the fat from the fat cells. So it's really a powerful, whereas if you eat sugar, the opposite happens. You get hungrier because you increase insulin. You dry, when you.

• 9:52Lewis Howes?

  I used to have so much sugar.

• 9:53Mark Hyman?

  It's terrible.

• 9:54Lewis Howes?

  I was addicted to it.

• 9:55Mark Hyman?

  All of us were, I mean, I was too. I was a vegetarian, I ate like tons of, you know, whole wheat bread and sugar and honey and everything. All, I mean, Grape Nuts and Ice Cream for breakfast.

• 10:06Lewis Howes?

  That's why, that was my life, right? So when did you stop, when did the research become known or the facts or the data become known?

• 10:13Mark Hyman?

  It's not even, it's honest, that's why I wrote this book.

• 10:16Lewis Howes?

  Cause you're a doctor and you were eating sugar.

• 10:17Mark Hyman?

  It's not even.

• 10:18Lewis Howes?

  When did you start to realize and when did this information about fat become, you know?

• 10:22Mark Hyman?

  Well, it's been mounting for decades, right? So it's building on a mountain of evidence. And in the book, I reviewed over a thousand studies or 500 quoted in the book that I referenced. They wouldn't let me put more because there was no room in the back of the book.

• 10:34Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 10:35Mark Hyman?

  And it's all well documented and the science of this is very powerful. One of my colleagues, David Ludwig, wrote a book called Always Hungry. He's a Harvard professor, he's done a lot of the research that this is based on. Where he gave two groups of people, same calories, okay, same calories, but changed the percents of fat and carbs. And it was a very well-controlled study. And in the first group, you know, they had 60% carbs, 20% fat, 20% protein. The other group switched it 60% fat, 20% carbs, you know, 20% protein. So it's the opposite. And the group that had the high fat diet burned 300 calories more a day by doing nothing else. Really? Just by having more fat? By eating more fat.

• 11:20Mark Hyman?

  Their metabolism sped up 300 calories. That's like running. Same amount of calories though. They ate the same calories in. But they burned 300 more. Right, because their metabolism sped up. Interesting. Right, so in other words, like running an hour a day without getting off the couch. Interesting. Right? That's powerful. Very powerful. Yeah, and I know for me, you know, as I've seen myself and my patients, transformation's amazing. And their cholesterol gets better. It's totally contradictory. Yeah. Right? Fat is supposed to raise your cholesterol, right? Eating cholesterol is supposed to raise your cholesterol. But for the first time since the dietary guidelines came out in 1980, the US government in 2015 completely reversed their stance on fat. There's no more restriction. Like January, first week of January 2016. This year? This year.

• 12:05Mark Hyman?

  Like a few weeks ago? A few weeks ago. They just changed this. They changed this completely. The whole guide? Completely. Really? First time, they said, "Forget about fat. You can eat as much as you want." No limit on fat. This is the government, huh? The government, the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee established these recommendations. This is a scientific group that establishes guidelines for the government, helps them shape policy. And then the government makes the policy. They kind of, they kind of. Based around this research or this. Yeah, they said, you know, "Don't worry about fat. Don't worry about cholesterol. Eggs are back, right? Eggs are back. You know, forget about the egg white omelets. Just eat the whole egg." No way. Completely. And they said, there's, it made me laugh. They said, "Cholesterol is no longer a nutrient of concern."

• 12:50Mark Hyman?

  Quote, "Nutrient of concern." Like, whoa, we got it wrong for 35 years. No way. Yeah. So it's like. It's totally different. And they also said that we should, for the first time, they said, "We should reduce sugar." Now, the policy advisors, who are the scientists, said, "We should limit sugar sweetened beverages because they're proven to be linked to obesity and diabetes." But the government, because of the food lobby. Change the wording to say, no, we should be restricting added sugars. So we should eat less added sugars. Now, what's an added sugar? It doesn't say added sugar on the label.

• 13:24Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 13:25Mark Hyman?

  So how do you know? Because the food labeling from the FDA is also influenced by the food lobby.

• 13:30Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 13:30Mark Hyman?

  So it should say added sugar on the label, not just sugar. Right? So you don't know.

• 13:35Lewis Howes?

  Right. Interesting.

• 13:36Mark Hyman?

  So it's designed to totally confuse people. But the truth is that this is a huge advance. And now we, we actually have come to realize that this is not true. So the science around fat and how your body burns fat and what makes you fat is all really clear now. And it's all based on this hormone idea of insulin, which is a fat storage hormone. So anything you eat that increases insulin, which is sugar, refined flour. I mean, white flour raises your blood sugar more than table sugar. So if you had two slices of white bread, it raises your blood sugar more than a tablespoon of table sugar. You're like, I don't eat whole wheat bread. It's just as bad. Unless the bread is so like dense that you can stand on it without it squishing, then you shouldn't eat it.

• 14:15Lewis Howes?

  Shouldn't eat it.

• 14:15Mark Hyman?

  No. Like the German rye bread.

• 14:17Lewis Howes?

  I love bread, though.

• 14:18Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, everybody loves bread. The bread we eat isn't the bread we ate. Right? So our ancestors ate very different bread.

• 14:23Lewis Howes?

  It's not the hard bread.

• 14:24Mark Hyman?

  It was very coarse. And we only had the, the grain mills that started in the 1800s. Before that, we couldn't eat refined grain. And, and now even whole wheat is super refined. It's just, you know.

• 14:34Lewis Howes?

  And are all grains bad as well, in your opinion?

• 14:36Mark Hyman?

  No, I don't think all grains are bad. I, you know, I joke, I say, you know, in the book, I talk about, you know, an induction plan, like basically a, a way to get quick start to change you from like just being storing fat to burning fat to eating fat to makes you thin. And that's a 21 day plan. And after that, I talk about how you transition to what I call a Pegan diet.

• 14:55Lewis Howes?

  Pegan?

• 14:56Mark Hyman?

  Pegan, as opposed to paleo or vegan. It's sort of a joke, because one day I was sitting.

• 15:00Lewis Howes?

  In between?

• 15:01Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, I was sitting on a panel with two friends of mine. One was a vegan cardiologist and the other was like a paleo doctor.

• 15:07Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 15:07Mark Hyman?

  And I was like, well, I don't know, I guess I must be a Pegan, because I'm in the middle here.

• 15:12Lewis Howes?

  Okay. What does a Pegan diet look like?

• 15:14Mark Hyman?

  So Pegan diet, you know, what's, what's amazing, Louis, is that the, the principles of paleo vegan are often very similar. So both groups believe that we should be eating whole, unprocessed, unrefined foods.

• 15:27Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 15:28Mark Hyman?

  We should get rid of food additives, hormones.

• 15:31Lewis Howes?

  Food from the ground.

• 15:31Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, everything. No antibiotics, no hormones, no pesticides, no GMO. We should be having no MSG, no artificial sweeteners, no high fructose corn syrup. Everybody agrees that, that, that's true. We also agree that everybody should be eating lots of fruits and vegetables.

• 15:46Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 15:46Mark Hyman?

  Right? A little heavy on the plant foods.

• 15:48Lewis Howes?

  Yep.

• 15:49Mark Hyman?

  Basic principles. Both agree that we shouldn't have dairy, which is interesting, right? We'll talk about that.

• 15:53Lewis Howes?

  And paleo, no dairy as well, right?

• 15:54Mark Hyman?

  No dairy, right. No dairy.

• 15:56Lewis Howes?

  I guess there's some of them that say like some specific cheeses or something.

• 15:59Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, you know, grass-fed butter, you know, like there's some things, but you know, but it's, but the, the proteins in dairy are very inflammatory. And the dairy, again, we eat isn't the dairy we ate. We've hybridized our cows. It's all fertilized by one bull.

• 16:11Lewis Howes?

  It's not organic dairy.

• 16:11Mark Hyman?

  And it's not organic. It's not raw. It's not how our ancestors ate it. Right. Even organic cows, they pump, uh, milk them when they're pregnant and they're, they're just full of hormones. So, and also, you know, it's, it's just not always tolerated well by many people.

• 16:24Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 16:24Mark Hyman?

  And then, um,

• 16:25Lewis Howes?

  What else do they both have in common?

• 16:26Mark Hyman?

  Everybody agrees that we should be, uh, eating foods that, that, um, are phytonutrient-rich, that are nutrient-dense. And, and we should be lots of nuts and seeds and lots of good oils like avocados and olive oil.

• 16:38Lewis Howes?

  What's, what's phytonutrient? What does that mean?

• 16:40Mark Hyman?

  Phytonutrient is a, is a chemical that's in plant foods. Phyto means plant. And it's not a vitamin or mineral. It's not a protein, fat, or carb or fiber. It's something else. So, for example, like broccoli has glucosinolates, which up-regulates detoxification.

• 16:58Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 16:58Mark Hyman?

  Catechins are in green tea, which are powerful detoxifiers of metal, powerful antioxidants. Uh, tomatoes have lycopene, which is a powerful, uh, cancer preventer for prostate cancer.

• 17:10Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 17:11Mark Hyman?

  Uh, so, so, uh, anthocyanins, you can have black rice, which has anthocyanins, which are powerful antioxidants that are in black rice. It's emperor's rice. Love that. It's also very low glycemic.

• 17:21Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 17:22Mark Hyman?

  So I think the, the, the things that they, they disagree on are basically beans, grains, and meat. Like where you get your protein from. Everything else is, everybody is the same.

• 17:32Lewis Howes?

  Paleo and vegan is the same, except for meat, beans.

• 17:35Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, and protein. I mean, uh, beans, beans, grains, and protein.

• 17:39Lewis Howes?

  Beans, grains, and protein, okay.

• 17:40Mark Hyman?

  Right. And I mean, you know, like, uh, you know, meat.

• 17:42Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 17:42Mark Hyman?

  And so, you know, what I realize is that, you know, I, I think many people who, who are sick. Do better when you take out certain things that can be inflammatory or high glycemic. So if you're, for example, carbohydrate intolerant and you're diabetic, which affects a lot of people. I talk about how do you find out if you're carbohydrate intolerant in the book? Which is as a questionnaire, you can tell if you actually know if you're someone who's carbohydrate intolerant. Like someone who's gluten intolerant. That means if they eat a lot of starch, that they have like two cups of rice, even if it's brown rice, or two cups of beans. It can adversely affect their sugar. So I talk about like having less, like having smaller portions of beans and grains. And the non gluten grains in particular, because gluten can be very inflammatory for many people. I think for some people who don't react to it, it can be fine, but not in large amounts.

• 18:28Mark Hyman?

  And then I think, you know, meat is a big, is the big issue, right? So meat is the big issue. So should we be?

• 18:32Lewis Howes?

  We just, we were just at dinner the other night.

• 18:34Mark Hyman?

  Right.

• 18:35Lewis Howes?

  We both had meat, right?

• 18:36Mark Hyman?

  We had fish.

• 18:36Lewis Howes?

  We had fish, yeah.

• 18:37Mark Hyman?

  Black cod.

• 18:38Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 18:38Mark Hyman?

  Which was, which was awesome.

• 18:40Lewis Howes?

  I had a mahi mahi. You had a black cod, is that what it was?

• 18:42Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, I had the black cod.

• 18:43Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 18:43Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, I had the black cod. The guy next to me had meatballs.

• 18:47Lewis Howes?

  Guy next to me had carne asada.

• 18:49Mark Hyman?

  But, you know, so, so the issues around meat also, I think are, everybody agrees, and fish, everybody agrees that if, if anybody eats meat, it should be humanely raised, it should be sustainably raised, it should be grass fed, it should be not harming the environment. The ethical and the environmental issues around animal eating are big and are real.

• 19:07Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 19:08Mark Hyman?

  I mean, I have many Buddhist patients, I have a Buddhist monk who's like an abbot, who's a, you know, is a diabetic and he's never going to eat an animal. You know, so I, I need to help him, help him understand how to, he never need an egg. How to eat a high, higher fat protein diet, which is low glycemic. So we can do that.

• 19:24Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 19:24Mark Hyman?

  Right? So more nuts and seeds, you know, less rice, more beans, you know, just there's, there's strategies for, for doing that.

• 19:31Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 19:32Mark Hyman?

  And he did great, he lost 35 pounds, reversed his diabetes, and now I have like tons of bun people, you know, praying for me.

• 19:39Lewis Howes?

  That's great.

• 19:39Mark Hyman?

  Yeah. And, and then the, the, the meat thing is tricky, because, you know, it's also an environmental risk if you're eating factory farmed animals. There's antibiotics in that. And there's runoff from the pesticides and fertilizers that damages our water supply.

• 19:55Mark Hyman?

  And rivers and lakes, there's climate change that happens from the methane produced. It's more, more toxic to the environment than carbon dioxide. There's so, and there's high energy use. One fifth of all our fossil fuels are used for growing animals for human consumption. Uh, you know, our water is, is being used up at incredible rates for, for feeding animals. There's, there's basically, uh, I think 70% of all water use, and there's basically only 5% of the world's surface is, is fresh water. Usable. Is fresh water. Yeah. Right, 1% is in Russia. Wow. And at least 4% for the rest of us. And, and 70% of that is being used for feeding animals for human consumption. So there's real environmental issues. Sure.

• 20:38Mark Hyman?

  So I think, you know, if factory farming just should be not supported in any way, and we need to change that. And that means we need to, to change our patterns of consumption around meat. We need to downsize our meat consumption. I call it having condiment meat. Condiment meat. Condiment meat, as opposed to con, like a condiment. Uh huh. Like condiment meat, you know, it should be as a side dish or a dressing if you're gonna eat it. Sure. And I think, um. Not a full plate of steak, you mean? You know, I think there's, there's three issues with, with meat, right? There's environmental issues, there's moral issues, and there's health issues. So we kind of talked about the moral. I think that's. Yeah. People are entitled to their beliefs, and they should be able to follow whatever they want and be healthy. The environmental issues are real, and I think everybody would agree, whether they're paleo vegan, that we need to stop harming the environment.

• 21:23Mark Hyman?

  And I think even if you're not paleo vegan, everybody really releases, believes that. In fact, the dietary advisory committee that was advising the government said, "We should limit meat consumption because of the environmental impact." Right? Now, if you, if you, if you have grass-fed meat, if you have sustainably raised meat, you can't, it's not as, as abundant, you can't produce as much, and so we all have to eat less of it. Right. And it's more expensive. So, but that's okay. And I think that, that from a health point of view, when I really looked at the literature, and I did this in Eat, Fat, Get Then, I looked at all the research that I could find on meat. Cause I was, I'm like, well, I don't know. You'd have to know for yourself, too. Yeah, I'm like, I'm, I'm recommending to my patients, I'm, you know, a human too, and I want to live a long time, and I don't want to be doing something stupid. Yeah.

• 22:07Mark Hyman?

  So I wanted to find out, what, what does the science tell us about meat?

• 22:12Lewis Howes?

  So you did all the research?

• 22:13Mark Hyman?

  So I looked at all the research and I wrote 8,000 words in the book on meat.

• 22:16Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 22:17Mark Hyman?

  There's a lot of research in there. And I address all these issues, you know, environmental, moral, and the health issues were quite interesting. You know, when we look at the studies on meat, and anybody can quote anything, saying anything, right?

• 22:26Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 22:26Mark Hyman?

  So you want the paleo people like, "Meat's healthy, here's all the research." And the vegan, like, "Meat's gonna kill you, here's all the research." So it's like, and then you're at the average Joe, you're totally confused. And your average doctor, you're totally confused, because we got no training in nutrition.

• 22:38Lewis Howes?

  And they haven't done the research themselves.

• 22:39Mark Hyman?

  No.

• 22:40Lewis Howes?

  So they're going off of their opinion or their theory.

• 22:42Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, they're like, average people like the rest of us in terms of nutrition science. They don't know, because it's not what we learn, right? I mean, I just, I'm at Cleveland Clinic, and we implemented a nutrition curriculum for the first time in the medical school there, that's integrated in, which is so great.

• 22:56Lewis Howes?

  That's awesome.

• 22:56Mark Hyman?

  And I helped Tim Ryan, who's a congressman from Ohio, introduce, Tim, he's great. Has he been on the show?

• 23:02Lewis Howes?

  He's been on here, yeah.

• 23:02Mark Hyman?

  He's great. You know, introduce a bill called the Enrich Act, which was a bill that is funding $15 million to fund nutrition in medical schools. Nutrition education for doctors.

• 23:14Lewis Howes?

  Interesting. That's what we need the most, because doctors,

• 23:16Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 23:17Lewis Howes?

  a lot of the time, I feel like could heal a lot of their patients through food.

• 23:21Mark Hyman?

  Oh my god. Well, food is the cause of most chronic disease. It's the cure for most chronic disease, and yet doctors know nothing about food.

• 23:26Lewis Howes?

  And they just medicate a lot of the times.

• 23:28Mark Hyman?

  I mean, listen, it's so bad. I mean, I use food as medicine. That's what I, food is the most powerful drug on the planet. I mean, that's why last week I was in Cleveland at the hospital, teaching 300 black women how to cook, in a cooking class. Like, that's what doctors should be doing. Yeah. Because that's how I'm gonna get people healthy.

• 23:43Lewis Howes?

  That's real medicine, right?

• 23:43Mark Hyman?

  That's real medicine.

• 23:44Lewis Howes?

  Now, just a quick side note.

• 23:46Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 23:46Lewis Howes?

  What is your involvement with, what is functional medicine? And what is your involvement at the Cleveland Clinic?

• 23:50Mark Hyman?

  Can I finish my meat?

• 23:51Lewis Howes?

  Yes, go ahead.

• 23:52Mark Hyman?

  Because I was still, I was still rolling on the meat.

• 23:53Lewis Howes?

  Go for it.

• 23:54Mark Hyman?

  And then we'll talk about functional medicine, and then we'll talk about Cleveland Clinic.

• 23:56Lewis Howes?

  Perfect, perfect.

• 23:56Mark Hyman?

  Because people want to know, like, they're like, "Well, what about meat?" They're like, probably listening.

• 23:59Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, let's do it.

• 24:00Mark Hyman?

  So, so the science, um...

• 24:01Lewis Howes?

  8,000 words.

• 24:02Mark Hyman?

  I'm not gonna give you 8,000 words, but I'll give you, I'll give you a few hundred.

• 24:05Lewis Howes?

  Perfect.

• 24:06Mark Hyman?

  So the science of meat was fascinating. So when I looked at the studies that showed it was harmful, here's what, here's what they were, they were mostly population studies, meaning they looked at groups of people, followed them, and then they asked questions of them. "What did you eat last year? What did you eat last week? What did you last, you know..." Month, you know, and they basically do these food frequency questionnaires. And then they correlate that with the risk of disease. And I try to control for all the confounding factors, but it's very tough. So the people who ate meat, yeah, they had more heart disease and more cancer and more death. But what else was? They're smoking, they're drinking, they went sleeping, they're stressed out. So if you look at the data, they ate 800 more calories a day. They almost eat no fruits and vegetables. Tons of sugar. They had tons of sugar in processed food, lots of fried foods.

• 24:49Mark Hyman?

  Drank more, smoked more, didn't exercise and didn't take any vitamins and minerals. Well, guess what? They weren't as healthy as the other people. So most of the studies were like that. Now, there was a few studies that were interesting, I found. One was a study of 11,000 people who shopped at health food stores. And they found there were like a lot of vegetarians and a lot of meat eaters. Like, so who are the people who were, you know, like healthy meat eaters who only eat grass fed meat? Or who, because most of these studies were not on grass fed meat either. They were on factory farmed meat, right? So then again, how do you generalize that? Sure. But then there were these 11,000 people and they followed them for many years. And they found that the meat eaters and the vegetarians, there was no difference in their health outcomes. Exactly the same. So if you're a meat eater who basically eats a healthy diet and has grass fed meat versus a vegan or vegetarian, no difference.

• 25:33Mark Hyman?

  And you have a healthy lifestyle. Healthy lifestyle, then there's no difference. So there's other factors like how it affects your gut flora and so on. And I think, you know, those are more complicated issues. I address all of them in the book, but at the end of the day, I think it's okay if you have no moral issues and you can eat sustainably raised meat and not in great quantities. And as part of your diet, I think it's okay. Yeah. Bottom line. So what does your daily diet look like? Oh, gosh. The doctor himself. So today I had, I was, I had a, I had a protein shake because I went to this friend of mine's company called Essential Foods, Living Foods, and he had this, it was like a hemp, coconut, chia, meringa, like coconut cream, like protein powder with lots of, yeah.

• 26:18Mark Hyman?

  And I had a couple of that with a spoon of coconut butter for fat and almond butter for fat. And blended that up. That was my breakfast. And then lunch was a big salad with lots of avocado, olive oil and some wild. Salmon, which has fat. So that was and dinner I haven't had yet. So

• 26:35Lewis Howes?

  Awesome.

• 26:36Mark Hyman?

  At dinner, I'll usually have, you know, a small piece of protein and like I'll, I'll put seventy five percent of my vegetable plate is vegetables.

• 26:42Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 26:42Mark Hyman?

  So if I go out to eat, I'll order like three sides of vegetables, right? And, and if, if you look at your plate, you know, by, by volume, seventy or eighty percent of your diet should be plant foods and non-starchy veggies, right?

• 26:56Lewis Howes?

  Potatoes and

• 26:57Mark Hyman?

  Right. And, right. And by, and by, um, calories, it should be like fifty to sixty percent fat. Because the fat doesn't take up a lot of space. So you can get a lot of calories and a little space and still eat like if you put a lot of olive oil in your thing or even coconut butter. So you don't have to worry about it. You just have to eat. And that, you know, the trick is I don't worry about how much I eat. I just worry about what I eat and I make sure I have stuff like I, I know that I'm going to be like here and I know how long it's going to be. So I always bring stuff in my pocket, almond butter. So I just have a pocket. I know I'm never going to be in a food emergency. So I'm not going to have to eat something crappy. And I, I, I, I think, you know, I eat very little grains, very little beans. I do eat them.

• 27:38Mark Hyman?

  I eat mostly vegetables and some low glycemic fruit and I eat lots of nuts and seeds and I eat, you know, good quality fish and, and, and animal protein.

• 27:47Lewis Howes?

  What's low glycemic fruit? What does that include?

• 27:49Mark Hyman?

  So I'm not eating like tons of pineapple and grapes and you know, like those are sugary things.

• 27:54Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha.

• 27:54Mark Hyman?

  And I eat like berries and, and I eat, you know, um, well, mostly berries and then like I'll eat like an apples or pear sometimes. Or kiwis or grapefruit or mangoes or papaya, things like

• 28:05Lewis Howes?

  Nice. Okay. Uh, so let's go back to functional medicine.

• 28:09Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 28:09Lewis Howes?

  What does that actually mean?

• 28:11Mark Hyman?

  So functional medicine is, is

• 28:12Lewis Howes?

  Compared to regular medicine?

• 28:13Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, my, I don't know if people listening really have a great understanding of like what's happening right now in science, but it's profound. But the shift that's happening in our understanding of the body is, it's like Columbus going, hey, the earth isn't flat.

• 28:25Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 28:26Mark Hyman?

  And

• 28:26Lewis Howes?

  Right now, the last few years.

• 28:27Mark Hyman?

  It's just like the last decade or two.

• 28:30Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 28:30Mark Hyman?

  With our understanding of the human genome, of systems biology, of the body as a biological network, as a system, it's like an ecosystem where everything's connected, working together. And so the way we organize medicine is according to these organs, you know, you've got your cardiovascular system, your neurologic system, your GI system, your, you know, and so you go to all these specialists. Right? And, and everybody teaches their part of your body. If you have a migraine. We're actually learning that might be related to gut flora. Wow. Or if you have heart it. I mean, now we know that you're you might be getting cancer because of your gut bacteria. Well, no oncologist is asking you what's going on in your gut microbiome. Right. And so now we know, for example, like the microbiome is a great example of this disruption that's happening in healthcare.

• 29:12Mark Hyman?

  You know, the microbiome, which is your gut flora, it's really, it's like 10 times as many cells as your own cells. It's 100 times as much DNA as your own DNA. So I we're kind of lazy. We have about as much DNA as an earthworm. Okay. But we borrow the DNA of the bichromes, the microbes in our gut to do things for us. And we we we borrow things from plants to do things for us, like, like, for example, glucosinolates. And so the the microbiome is this huge thing that's got two to three million genes. We only have 20,000 genes and it regulates your weight. You can swap out poop from a thin person into someone with diabetes and reverse it. Right? Wow. Amazing. We've seen we've seen people. I've heard stories of fecal transplants, not only curing things like that, but like, you know, autoimmune diseases and.

• 29:58Mark Hyman?

  Really? Parkinson's and people with MS and like crazy stories that I'm starting to hear. And there's research now going on aggressively in looking at fecal transplants for all sorts of diseases. Transferring poop from one person to another. Yes. What is that? How do you do that? Well. What's that process? Well, they collect the poop. There's actually a. I've never heard of this. Yeah, you've never heard of this? Never heard of this. Oh, my God, this is huge. So so the. What is it called? Fecal transplant. Okay. FMT, fecal microbial transplant. The way it came about was some doctor had a bright idea that there was this condition called C. diff, which is an infection of the intestines, happens after antibiotics, is life threatening. And there's a huge amount of people are now resistant to antibiotics of all the antibiotics in our feed and their in the animal production. So there's the drugs don't work.

• 30:43Mark Hyman?

  People die. Wow. And and somebody thought, well, gee, if I put the poop from a healthy person into a sick person, let's see what happens. And the doctor did it and the person was cured like that. Shut up. 98% effective, 98% effective. How do you do this? So. How do you understand this process? You want to get into it? Give me the 10. We could do the visual. Yes. So basically, they take like they take a fecal transplant specimen, like a donor specimen from a healthy person, and they screen them for all sorts of diseases. And then they spin it up with some saline, and then they inject it in with a catheter or a colonoscope. They're actually also shit. It just heals inside, or what's it do when it's? Well, it goes in, it's like massive probiotics, right? Oh, interesting. Yeah. And so. It's like an infusion of probiotics.

• 31:28Mark Hyman?

  Infusion of probiotics. And also, there are actually pills now. They actually are making special encapsulated poop pills, poop pills. And it's not, I mean, this is published in the New England Journal of Medicine. I'm not talking about like stuff that's wacky. Oh, my gosh. I'm talking about serious medicine that people are doing. But it's not just for that. Now they're looking in for all sorts of things. So people are cured right after one infusion. Yeah, yeah, it's amazing. So functional medicine is really understanding that the body as a system and network and understanding that the focus should not be on treating disease, but on creating health. So it's the science of creating health. It's the ultimate biohacking tool. You know, and it's interpreting all the data and the stories from your body that it tells through testing we do, for example, you don't have to do testing, but you can look into the body, look at your immune function and allergies and your gut flora and toxins and

• 32:13Mark Hyman?

  nutritional status. It's like doing a soil sample. So I'm like a soil farmer, organic soil farmer, rather than an industrial agriculturist. I don't put all these chemicals on my plants to make them better, like herbicides and pesticides. I create a healthy soil. Yeah. And then disease doesn't occur, right? You just, disease can't land in a healthy soil. Right. So that's exactly what functional medicine is. We help people get in balance. We take away the things that cause imbalance. We put in the things that help create balance. So for example, I had a woman come. She had a whole list of problems. This is why I call myself a holistic doctor, because I take care of people with a whole list of problems. So she had like psoriatic arthritis, was on a drug that cost 30 grand. Oh, my gosh. Called Stelara. And still was miserable. She also was overweight, had prediabetes, migraines, sinus

• 32:56Mark Hyman?

  problems, irritable bowel, reflux, depression, insomnia. She had like this whole list of things. Of course, she saw all these specialists, the sinus doctor, the migraine doctor, the autoimmune doctor, the skin doctor, the depression doctor, the gut doctor, like in, you know, everybody's treating her with their best practices. Their best drug, probably. But I mean, she's being seen at the top medical center. Yeah. Right? They're not doing bad medicine. They're doing standard of care. In fact, they're doing excellent standard of care. Right. But the standard of care is not the way we're gonna fix these problems. It's outdated or it's not? It's not. It's totally outdated. So rather than thinking about how all these were separate, I said, how are these all connected? Interesting. Right? How are these all connected? And so there were connections. It was all

• 33:36Mark Hyman?

  inflammatory. And I said, well, why don't we put you on an anti-inflammatory, low glycaemic diet, the Pegan diet, basically. Right. Took away anti-allergens and I cleaned out her gut because her gut was causing huge symptoms, bloating, and she had yeast reactions. She had like vaginal yeast and anal yeast and itching and itchy ears and yeast everywhere. Much from the... Yeast on her mouth and thrush. And so I gave her an antifungal. I gave her stuff to clear out the bad bugs in her gut. I put in good bugs. I put in enzymes. I put in things to heal the gut lining. I gave her fish oil, vitamin D, just some basic stuff, probiotics. Yeah. But it was really eliminating... Eliminating the bad foods. Eliminating the bad foods. Eliminating the bad bugs in her gut. And putting in... Putting in new bugs and putting in nutrients to help her body heal. Two months later, she comes back completely symptom-free. No way.

• 34:20Mark Hyman?

  No more arthritis, no more $20,000 drug, no more skin psoriasis, no migraines, no sinus problems, no irritable bowel, no reflux, no depression, no insomnia, and she lost 20 pounds. And it was all from food? Totally. And what was food and her gut flora? Right. I focused on her gut flora. Why? Because 60% or 50% of the immune system is in the gut. Interesting. Yeah. Why? Why is it in the gut? Why is it there? Because you're sticking pounds of food, of foreign material, every day in your body. You've gotta fight it off in your gut first, right? Yeah. And you've got, you know, you've got all the bad bugs in there and poop. It's like, it's like the danger zone, right? It's like, you're like, and it's one cell away. You're one cell away from a sewer every minute. Really?

• 35:03Mark Hyman?

  Yeah. It's one cell between you and that mass of food and poop, right? So your immune system is like, if anything happens, like right there. So when people have autoimmune disease, it's often a gut issue. It's often a gut issue.

• 35:14Lewis Howes?

  People didn't know this before, did they?

• 35:16Mark Hyman?

  No, no. So now like, now all this is really coming to light and functional medicine is the operating system to interpret the data. It's a new set of lenses to think about how to solve it. And it's a system of treatment that helps people get back in balance.

• 35:31Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 35:31Mark Hyman?

  That's what's powerful. And then at Cleveland Clinic, you know, the CEO of Cleveland Clinic, Toby Cosgrove, I call him the Wayne Gretzky of healthcare. He goes where the puck's gonna be, not where it is.

• 35:40Lewis Howes?

  Smart.

• 35:40Mark Hyman?

  Right? And he's basically came after me to go set up a center there.

• 35:46Lewis Howes?

  A functional medicine center.

• 35:47Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, I'm like, I'm not going to Cleveland Clinic. It's like a, you know, it's like, I'm not going to go to a place where I'm going to have to bang my head against the wall where it's traditional medicine, where they don't get this, where they're in the dark ages. I just.

• 35:59Lewis Howes?

  It's also known as one of the top hospitals in the world, right?

• 36:02Mark Hyman?

  Of course, but it's the top hospital in the old model.

• 36:04Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 36:04Mark Hyman?

  Right? So I'm like, but he knows, he knows what's happening.

• 36:07Lewis Howes?

  He sees where it's going.

• 36:07Mark Hyman?

  He knows what's happening. He's like, we need this here.

• 36:09Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 36:10Mark Hyman?

  And so he's investing tons of money, millions and millions of dollars, building this. We're building an 18,000 square foot facility. We'd started with a little space and we just outgrew it. We're hiring doctors. I have an interview with the doctor right after this. And we're, we're basically growing. We're doing research in all sorts of conditions. We're changing medical school education. We're changing policy. We're doing community work.

• 36:30Lewis Howes?

  Amazing.

• 36:30Mark Hyman?

  So we're really, he's really putting us on the map in the traditional world. And, and what's.

• 36:35Lewis Howes?

  Cause he's gonna go out of business if he doesn't start doing this.

• 36:38Mark Hyman?

  And but what's amazing to me, you know, Louis, I thought when I got there, people would be, you know, skeptical, negative, make it difficult for me and my team there. But it's the opposite. And I, at last.

• 36:52Lewis Howes?

  They want to learn.

• 36:53Mark Hyman?

  Last week when I was there, I had two deans of medical schools, two chairs of depart, two chairs of institutes, which are like big deals.

• 37:00Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 37:00Mark Hyman?

  And another doctor as patients.

• 37:03Lewis Howes?

  No way.

• 37:03Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, they're coming as patients.

• 37:05Lewis Howes?

  Because they're not being cured with the medicine.

• 37:07Mark Hyman?

  The executive team, the C-suite team, is sending all their family members to come see us.

• 37:11Lewis Howes?

  Do you know Dr. Lisa Rankin, running for chair?

• 37:13Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 37:14Lewis Howes?

  She, she's been on as well. And she talked about how she had all this medication she was treating herself and then.

• 37:19Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 37:20Lewis Howes?

  Started saying, oh, let me just change the way I eat and my relationships and my emotional health.

• 37:25Mark Hyman?

  Exactly. It's all.

• 37:26Lewis Howes?

  And she's like, oh, I got off all the medicine.

• 37:27Mark Hyman?

  That's right.

• 37:27Lewis Howes?

  And then I stopped. Giving medicine to my patients.

• 37:31Mark Hyman?

  Right.

• 37:31Lewis Howes?

  I started asking deeper questions.

• 37:32Mark Hyman?

  It's so powerful. So we're, we're at this, but we're at this fulcrum. It's not, it's not just I'm like the one lone doctor with a crazy idea. There's a whole movement going on here. We had dinner with James Maslow. He's helping move that movement forward. I'm the chairman of the Institute for Functional Medicine where we train doctors all over the world in this model and operating system of how to actually do this in practice. So we are, we are literally building an army of, of doctors that change healthcare and, and it's pretty exciting and it's, it's actually starting to really hit that hockey stick point where it's changing.

• 38:00Lewis Howes?

  Amazing.

• 38:01Mark Hyman?

  People want it. I mean, people are desperate for this model.

• 38:05Lewis Howes?

  So if someone is listening and they're on some type of medication or they're just feeling like constantly sick, you know, something that's constantly happening to them. What do you think is, because there's so much information online that is scary.

• 38:18Mark Hyman?

  It's scary. Right.

• 38:19Lewis Howes?

  You know, 11B stuff, just like looking up anything and Googling it and seeing all the nasty photos and just like, ah.

• 38:25Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 38:25Lewis Howes?

  What is an approach that someone should take if they have some challenges that's constantly happening in their health? Should they first analyze the food they're intaking and do like an analysis? Do you have like a process?

• 38:36Mark Hyman?

  Absolutely. Absolutely. It's a great question, Lewis. So, you know, what I am is a doctor and what I do is see patients in my office. That's my main job. Yes, I've written a dozen books. Yes, I do a lot of stuff, but that's my main job.

• 38:47Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 38:48Mark Hyman?

  And, and so I've learned over 30 years of doing this, how to create sustainable, practical programs to help people get from sick to well very quickly. And what I've done, because not everybody can come see me and there aren't that many of us out there yet.

• 39:03Lewis Howes?

  You have so many hours in a day.

• 39:05Mark Hyman?

  And there's not that many functional medicine. So I've written books and programs to help people operationalize this in their own lives. So EFAT Get Thin, and I'm, look, I'm, you know, and I could say, you know, do my program, but I'm not, I don't really care what program you do. As long as it's based on the basic principles. And there are a lot of my colleagues who are writing great books about this. It's all, it's all the same information because it's all the same science. And if you're telling the truth, there's only one story here, the truth, right? And so the, the, this, this EFAT Get Thin is a great program that I put together to make people have, you know, no friction. It's easy. It's very straightforward.

• 39:40Lewis Howes?

  21 days, right?

• 39:41Mark Hyman?

  21 days, practical goof proof, and it tells you what to eat. And when you get to the end of that, you'll see. How you feel because most people in 21 days will change their habits, but they'll also allow their body to reset. It's like putting your body back to its original factory settings, right? And then if something's left over, then you know, gee, maybe I need to go deeper. Like if you still don't feel great, maybe you have Lyme disease, maybe I have header metal poisoning, maybe your thyroid's not working. Maybe you have a parasite, maybe you know, like you could be in the perfect diet, but still feel bad. So.

• 40:09Lewis Howes?

  Do the 21 days first.

• 40:10Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, but most 80% of the time.

• 40:12Lewis Howes?

  You're gonna kill yourself.

• 40:13Mark Hyman?

  80%, I mean 80% of the time this works for people. And then the 20% who add to get extra help, they need to come see somebody.

• 40:20Lewis Howes?

  And the body's pretty incredible in how it can heal itself very quickly. Once you change habits, right?

• 40:24Mark Hyman?

  Unbelievable. We did the survey of a thousand people who did this. I mean, they lost weight. Yes. And they lost inches. Yes. And it was all, that's all impressive. And their blood sugar dropped 20 points and their blood pressure 10 points. But the thing that really matters to me is I have everybody fill out what I call the FLC quiz. You know what that is? That's when you feel like crap.

• 40:42Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 40:43Mark Hyman?

  So it's a quiz. How do you like, you know, do you have your bloating, do you have asthma, do you have headaches? Can you sleep like joint pain, muscle pain? What's your mood? Are you depressed? Like, so you fill this whole score and zero to four for every symptom. And you get a score. They do one before and after. And the before and after score, there was a 69% reduction in all symptoms from all diseases.

• 41:02Lewis Howes?

  Whoa.

• 41:02Mark Hyman?

  Because you don't have to treat everything individually. If you put in the right information, like I said at the beginning of the show, the body knows what to do.

• 41:10Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 41:10Mark Hyman?

  Right? So the information and food is so powerful that if you figure out what to eat, you don't have to worry about how much, you don't have to count fat grams, carbs, calories, nothing. I don't do that. I don't have time for that.

• 41:21Lewis Howes?

  Right, right, right.

• 41:22Mark Hyman?

  And I don't want to be on an app all day figuring it out. I just want to know how to get my body to naturally do what it's supposed to do.

• 41:27Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 41:28Mark Hyman?

  If you're off 100 calories a day, you're going to gain like 50 pounds in 30 years. Right? You can't, you can't do it by willpower. You have to use science and the science of using fat.

• 41:41Mark Hyman?

  And low glycemic food, like low sugar food is is really powerful. It's magical. I mean, I noticed my own body. I'm like 56 and I noticed.

• 41:49Lewis Howes?

  Young, man. You're like fit, healthy, energetic.

• 41:52Mark Hyman?

  No. Well, I I could tell you, I I was always been, you know, focused on health, but I was the doctor who was trained to eat low fat and to tell my patients to eat low fat. And I did that. And I also ate a lot of things that I thought were healthy, like pasta was a health food.

• 42:05Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 42:05Mark Hyman?

  Pasta was a health food.

• 42:06Lewis Howes?

  I used to eat so much pasta.

• 42:07Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, health food, right? Low fat.

• 42:09Lewis Howes?

  They sauced it all the time.

• 42:09Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, exactly. And so I I basically changed that and I started, you know, eating a lot less starch, a lot less sugar, a lot more fat. And I noticed my body, like, without any exercise, I'm like so lean, so fit.

• 42:24Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 42:25Mark Hyman?

  I'm like, wow, I got a six pack and I need to work out. It's like, and it's just stunning what happens when you're, when you do, and my brain is clear. I have more energy. My mood's better. I mean, you're, I know, so you're drinking like a bulletproof coffee, you know, that it works.

• 42:38Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's amazing. I mean, I started doing testing some different things at the beginning of this year in January. And the first week I did no sugar, the second week, no sugar, no gluten.

• 42:49Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 42:49Lewis Howes?

  Third week, no sugar, no gluten, no dairy. Fourth week, no sugar, no gluten, no dairy, no meat. That was last week. And I was just gonna see what what happened with my body.

• 42:58Mark Hyman?

  Pulling a Band-Aid off slowly.

• 43:00Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I should have just done it all.

• 43:01Mark Hyman?

  It's better to do it the other way. The way I I do with my patients, you you you do a detox. Basically, you get off everything.

• 43:08Lewis Howes?

  At once.

• 43:08Mark Hyman?

  You you feel bad for a couple of days and then you see how you feel.

• 43:11Lewis Howes?

  Feel amazing, yeah.

• 43:12Mark Hyman?

  Cause it, cause one of the rules of.

• 43:13Lewis Howes?

  I should have talked to you before this.

• 43:15Mark Hyman?

  And then you can add things back one at a time and see what bothers you.

• 43:17Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 43:18Mark Hyman?

  So, cause the rule in functional medicine is if you're standing on a tack, it takes a lot of aspirin to make it feel better, right? So if if something's bothering you, you have to get rid of the cause. But if you're standing on two tacks, taking one out doesn't make you 50% better.

• 43:30Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 43:30Mark Hyman?

  So if you're, if you're allergic to dairy and gluten, but you just take out gluten, you're not gonna feel better.

• 43:35Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 43:36Mark Hyman?

  Right?

• 43:37Lewis Howes?

  Right. So I did it the whole wrong way. Oh, well, it was an experiment. But the thing what I was gonna mention was I started doing uh, bulletproof in the morning.

• 43:45Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 43:45Lewis Howes?

  And fasting until 1:30.

• 43:47Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 43:48Lewis Howes?

  And not eating after 9:30 or whatever it is at night. And I realized that I wasn't hungry.

• 43:52Mark Hyman?

  No.

• 43:52Lewis Howes?

  In the mornings when I would do the coffee and I would only have like half a cup only.

• 43:56Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 43:56Lewis Howes?

  And I would be fine until 1:32 o'clock.

• 43:59Mark Hyman?

  Well, MCT oil puts you in ketosis, which is medium chain triglycerides. It's a super fuel, comes from coconut, which is in the coffee. It's what I recommend as part of my Eat Fat, Get Thin program. Speeds up your metabolism.

• 44:10Lewis Howes?

  It's your burning fat.

• 44:11Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, it actually makes your metabolism work faster and burn more calories.

• 44:14Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 44:15Mark Hyman?

  And it also affects your brain. Your brain is more alert, focused and clear. So I wrote most of Eat Fat, Get Thin on, you know, MCT oil and coffee in the morning.

• 44:22Lewis Howes?

  I love it, I love it. And why did you get in, I want to ask you a few more questions. Why did you get into medicine in the first place? What inspired you 30 plus years ago or whenever this was?

• 44:30Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, yeah, so, you know, I, I actually majored in Buddhism at Cornell. So I did not even think remotely about medicine or science. In fact, I only took science classes because they were required for my degree at Cornell, but I, I didn't even do that well in them. I got a C in biology and I think a C in chemistry. I think I got a C plus in biology. But they were, it was like the pre-med courses that everybody like, you know, jumps off the bridge for.

• 44:55Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 44:56Mark Hyman?

  And I, and I didn't take that seriously. So then I just wanted, I got my degree in Buddhism. But when I studied Buddhism, I, I found that it was actually a healing system. It was a therapeutic system for the mind. And in fact, it was, it was a way of looking at our perceptions, our beliefs, our attitudes, our thinking in such a way that freed us from suffering.

• 45:14Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 45:15Mark Hyman?

  And it was powerful. And it also had a tradition of healing. That all the doctors in Buddhist tradition were monks. So I was like, oh, this is cool. And then I, and then I kind of, you know, got this, this idea in my head. I was a young idealistic kid and I had this concept of Bodhisattva, which is this, this being who kind of betters himself, but rather than, you know, going to be, living in a cave and being by themselves and having a happy life, they come back in the service of others, to help others, also to reach enlightenment.

• 45:46Lewis Howes?

  Right, okay.

• 45:48Mark Hyman?

  So I kind of always had that in my, my head and I just, I, I always felt better when I was of service.

• 45:52Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 45:53Mark Hyman?

  You know, so.

• 45:53Lewis Howes?

  Most people feel better when they're in service.

• 45:54Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, you know, it's interesting, uh, Liz, when we look at the science of this altruism stimulates the same area in the brain as cocaine or sugar or heroin.

• 46:03Lewis Howes?

  Crazy.

• 46:03Mark Hyman?

  Right? So I get high from helping people.

• 46:06Lewis Howes?

  I think, uh, Stephen Coller talks about that in his book Flow or About Flow.

• 46:10Mark Hyman?

  It's so true.

• 46:10Lewis Howes?

  People get into flow, um, you know, and when they're in service, you become in flow and that triggers the same type of chemicals.

• 46:17Mark Hyman?

  Absolutely. You get out of your head. Like I went to Haiti after the earthquake and was, you know, up to my elbows in pus and amputations and blood and disaster. And just, it was like the worst scene you could imagine. But like, I didn't think of myself for one second.

• 46:31Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 46:32Mark Hyman?

  Right?

• 46:32Lewis Howes?

  Just in service.

• 46:33Mark Hyman?

  I was just in service and I felt good. Like I felt, and I'm like, you know, just grateful and happy, not happy like as I was there. It was a miserable place that was happening with the earthquake, but I, but I actually had this sense of inner peace and inner happiness and.

• 46:46Lewis Howes?

  Like your life mattered.

• 46:48Mark Hyman?

  Gratitude and service and.

• 46:50Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 46:50Mark Hyman?

  You know, I, I think that's really, um, in a way it's a little selfish.

• 46:53Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure. No, your giving is like the most selfish gift you can receive. It's like the best gift you can give.

• 46:59Mark Hyman?

  Yeah. So that's sort of how I got. And then I realized, gee, maybe I should practice medicine because it's, it's all, it's about healing and.

• 47:03Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 47:04Mark Hyman?

  And I sort of said, well, I'll try it. And I was a yoga teacher before I was a doctor.

• 47:07Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 47:08Mark Hyman?

  And.

• 47:08Lewis Howes?

  Back before yoga was cool.

• 47:10Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, that was like in nineteen seventy nine.

• 47:12Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 47:12Mark Hyman?

  Uh, yeah, took my first yoga class and.

• 47:15Lewis Howes?

  Amazing.

• 47:16Mark Hyman?

  I just went to yoga before I came here. So it's been going on a long time.

• 47:19Lewis Howes?

  Holy cow. That's awesome.

• 47:20Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 47:21Lewis Howes?

  Um, cool. Well, couple of final questions and I want to make sure everyone gets this book, Eat Fat, Get Thin. Why the fat we eat is, or why the fat we eat is the key to sustained weight loss and vibrant health. Essentially what everything we've said growing up was, is the opposite.

• 47:37Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, sorry guys. We kind of blew it.

• 47:39Lewis Howes?

  But eat fat, get thin, twenty one day process for discovering, you know, and healing yourself essentially.

• 47:46Mark Hyman?

  Yeah. I mean, it's not, it's not just for weight loss. It's actually for anybody who wants to reset their system.

• 47:50Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 47:51Mark Hyman?

  And gain back control of their body. And, and you know, so you, you actually naturally want the things that make you feel good. That you, you don't crave the bad things. That it's not, it's not difficult. I mean, you can't use willpower. It doesn't work. You have to use science.

• 48:04Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 48:04Mark Hyman?

  Right? And so it's so great.

• 48:06Lewis Howes?

  I like it. I got three questions for you. One is if you had an unlimited amount of money that you could spend on one thing to, to cure one thing in the world, what would that be?

• 48:15Mark Hyman?

  One disease or one?

• 48:17Lewis Howes?

  One thing in the world that you think needs curing.

• 48:20Mark Hyman?

  Um.

• 48:21Lewis Howes?

  Or solving one issue.

• 48:23Mark Hyman?

  Oof, gosh, I mean, so many things flooded into me when you said that. I mean, I think, um, you know, the thing that I think is driving so many of our economic and social ills is our food system. And, and if I had a magic wand,

• 48:43Mark Hyman?

  I would put in a, and I'm working actually on a petition right now that I've got 150,000 people on our fat summit, which is an online summit on, and we're, interview over 30 experts on fat. And it's available. Anybody can go to fatsummit.com and get to see this. And, and, you know, to kind of list, what are the policies that would really radically change things? Not just in America, but around the world if we became the, the beacon for this. And I met with the Surgeon General a couple of days ago and he asked me to come to Washington to help change and shape this policy. So the things that matter are, you know, ending food subsidy, ending agricultural subsidies for commodity products like corn, soy and wheat that go into all our processed industrial food. Subsidizing fruits and vegetables and things that actually promote health.

• 49:26Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 49:27Mark Hyman?

  Ending food marketing to kids, right? We, we, we market junk food to kids. I think we're one of only 50 countries that, that, that, that we are one, one of the only countries that doesn't do this. 50 countries control food marketing to kids.

• 49:40Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 49:40Mark Hyman?

  Regular, yeah. Us and Syria, no, are the only ones.

• 49:43Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 49:44Mark Hyman?

  I would end all use of antibiotics in animal feed, except, except in animal husbandry, except for treatment of disease. Full stop. I would have clear food labeling so that people know what they're eating. Is it good for you? Uh, green. Is it maybe, uh, you know, a little tricky? Well, eat with caution. Yellow. Is it bad for you? It might kill you. Red. Like, stop, simple.

• 50:06Lewis Howes?

  Like when you have cigarettes now, there's, this will cause cancer. This will kill you.

• 50:10Mark Hyman?

  And this is controversial, but I would, I would put a tax on junk food and soda, which has been proven to work and reduce consumption. This was just done in Mexico. It was super effective. Done in Berkeley. First place in America. Very effective.

• 50:20Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 50:20Mark Hyman?

  It's like cigarettes. Tax cigarettes. You know, if a Coke was actually $10, I would actually make things. Costs what they really cost. The only reason that McDonald's meal is so cheap is because the government pays for and subsidize it. Really? I met with the vice chair of Pepsi, he said, "Why are you using high fructose corn syrup in your soda?" He says, "Because, Mark, the government makes it so cheap for us by subsidizing agriculture and the growing of corn that turn into high fructose corn syrup." That's why we're using it. It's good business. I wouldn't use it if the government didn't make it so cheap. So it would end subsidies. Oh my gosh. I would end any food that wasn't promoting health in any federally funded program. Food stamps. You can buy $4 billion now of food stamps are spent on soda for the poor. $4 billion. It's the biggest single amount of item that's bought. Yeah, soda.

• 51:03Mark Hyman?

  Yeah. You can buy a four, a two-liter bottle of soda, but you can't buy a rotisserie chicken. You can't, you can't buy with food stamps online because of some stupid regulation. We're trying to change that. So I would, I would implement a whole series of policies like this. I would also make sure that we, we really promote science and nutrition in schools. So kids know very early on what's going on. There should be no food that doesn't promote health in schools. We know that there's clear evidence that kids who are fed poor foods, and I'm not talking about like school lunches that are quote healthy, right? I mean pizzas, pizza is considered a vegetable. Yeah. Pizza's a vegetable. According to Congress, pizza's a vegetable. Oh my gosh. That's all I ate every day.

• 51:45Mark Hyman?

  Yeah. And, and so, you know, we, we need, we need just clear policies that we could change all this in America. And I think people are ready for it. People want it. People know the issue is here. Uh, we need to end, uh, in the kinds of industrial agriculture we're doing that are actually promoting degradation in the environment. And, and we need to label GMOs because the centralization of seed production has caused huge problems. Glyphosate is now round up, is, is used on soybeans. 98% of soybeans are Monsanto soybeans. 98% is it? I think it's something like 98% of growth. So the centralization of seed production, and then it's made, you know, even if you debate GMOs are good or bad, they're using all this pesticides and herbicides. Yeah.

• 52:23Mark Hyman?

  Because of these that are actually now getting into the water. Now, we know that glyphosate now, according to the World Health Organization and an international board of scientists, is a cancer-causing agent. Which is, and I actually, I'm excited because I'm going to, in my practice, I'm going to start doing glyphosate testing. Okay. For like seed people, because people don't know what they're consuming. So I would do a series of things that would really, if I had all the money in the world to really change this. Michael Bloomberg, you know, he sort of tried to do this. He had all the money in the world. And, and he made huge policy changes in New York. He got rid of trans fats. He changed all kinds of food laws. He actually started to try to regulate soda, but the food industry came down so hard on him.

• 52:59Lewis Howes?

  So much money they had to, yeah. Wow. Amazing. That would solve a lot of problems.

• 53:03Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, and then it would.

• 53:04Lewis Howes?

  Change these things.

• 53:05Mark Hyman?

  It would, it would, it would help our environment. It would help our economy because, you know, Medicaid and Medicare are going to consume 100% of our federal budget in about 20 years.

• 53:14Lewis Howes?

  Oh, man.

• 53:14Mark Hyman?

  Right? Because of the obesity and diabetes. Like, one, one in three people is going to be diabetic by 2050.

• 53:21Lewis Howes?

  It's bad.

• 53:22Mark Hyman?

  Right? Right? One in three.

• 53:23Lewis Howes?

  Unless we change something.

• 53:24Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, right. It's, right, unless we change something. So we have to solve this. It's an economic issue. It's a national security issue because kids are too fat to fight. It's a global competitiveness issue because there's an achievement gap because we're like 25th and 28th, I think, in math and reading in the world because our kids are.

• 53:39Lewis Howes?

  Not clear, we're not focused, we can't.

• 53:41Mark Hyman?

  No, and this is well documented. It's a guy named Dr. Bosch at Columbia who's done a lot of the studies on this achievement gap. So the evidence is there across the board, environment, health, the economy, you know, competitiveness, national security. These are, these are big issues.

• 53:57Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 53:57Mark Hyman?

  And it all stems from the food system.

• 54:00Lewis Howes?

  Incredible, incredible. Two final questions. One is something I ask everyone at the end of this, this podcast, every episode is if many years down the road, it's your final year.

• 54:13Mark Hyman?

  Mm hmm.

• 54:13Lewis Howes?

  It's your final day. It's a very happy, healthy, joyful experience. You've got your whole friends and family there. And your 50 New York Times bestselling books at that time.

• 54:23Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 54:24Lewis Howes?

  Are all erased.

• 54:25Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 54:26Lewis Howes?

  And deleted and burned for some reason. It's just all gone. All the videos you've done online, which people should go watch, they're amazing videos. Uh, what do you call it? Office or what do you call it?

• 54:34Mark Hyman?

  House call with Dr.

• 54:34Lewis Howes?

  House calls, yes.

• 54:35Mark Hyman?

  House call with Dr.

• 54:35Lewis Howes?

  Make sure to check these out and we'll link up your YouTube and everything there on the show notes here in a second. Everything's gone. All the information you put up there, all your hard work is gone.

• 54:44Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 54:46Lewis Howes?

  And you have a piece of paper in front of you and your family and friends say, will you write down three things that you know to be true about your experience, your life, that you'd want to pass on to the rest of us? And this would be the only three truths that we get to remember you by. From all your books, how do you boil it down to three simple things?

• 55:05Mark Hyman?

  That's good, I love that. So, I think it wouldn't be hard.

• 55:07Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 55:08Mark Hyman?

  It wouldn't be hard. And it really has nothing to do with medicine, actually. It has to do with love. You know, if, if, if I would say, the most important thing is, is how we are in the world, how we show up. And if we bring joy and love and connection and laughter to those we meet, and those in our lives, our family, our friends, those we're connected to, the people we work with, every day is a chance to show up and bring that. And, and the more you do that, the more it comes back. And it's just like a, this, this process, it sounds kind of crazy, but it's just a very simple idea. It's an ancient idea, it's not my idea, but it's, it's all about how do we, how do we, and then how, the question, how do you get into that state where you can do that?

• 55:53Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 55:54Mark Hyman?

  Well, then you have to cultivate that. Part of it is, is taking care of your container, right? Because if you feel like crap, you're not going to want to do that, right? You're going to want to watch TV, you're going to want to like drink, you're going to want to like eat too much, right?

• 56:07Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 56:07Mark Hyman?

  But if you take care of the container, then, you know, you just basically will, will thrive. So, that, that would be probably number one, two, and three on my list.

• 56:15Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 56:15Mark Hyman?

  Show up, you know, be present, tell the truth, love, you know.

• 56:19Lewis Howes?

  Perfect. There you go. I love it. Awesome. Uh, final question before I ask it. Is there anywhere else we want to make sure we send people? DrHyman.com?

• 56:28Mark Hyman?

  DrHyman.com's a good spot.

• 56:30Lewis Howes?

  Get the book. We'll have it all linked up here in a second. I'll tell you guys where to go, but get the book, Eat Fat, Get Thin. Tons of videos, resources.

• 56:39Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, they can get a, a free sneak preview if they go to the website, Eat Fat, Get Thin. They can get a free sneak preview, check it out. There's tons of great videos, content, and support.

• 56:47Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah. Highly recommend your site as a great resource for just learning and understanding how to be healthier and live better.

• 56:53Mark Hyman?

  Thank you.

• 56:53Lewis Howes?

  So, um, so we'll check it all, check all this out. Make sure to buy the book, I highly recommend it.

• 57:00Lewis Howes?

  Before I ask the final question, I want to acknowledge you for a moment. I like to acknowledge all my guests for what opens up for me from the interview and I want to acknowledge you, Mark, for your incredible commitment to healing the world.

• 57:12Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 57:12Lewis Howes?

  And there's so much lack of information, there's so much ignorance that myself and so many people have experienced growing up, thinking we're supposed to live a certain way that's actually been killing us slowly every day.

• 57:24Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 57:24Lewis Howes?

  And it's people like you who are committed to greatness and excellence in curing this and doing the research, doing the work that no one wants to do.

• 57:34Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 57:34Lewis Howes?

  And the research that no one wants to do to put together useful information to guide us to living a healthier life. So I want to acknowledge you for your incredible commitment to service for humanity.

• 57:45Mark Hyman?

  Thank you.

• 57:45Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 57:46Mark Hyman?

  Thank you.

• 57:46Lewis Howes?

  And the final question is what's your definition of greatness?

• 57:50Mark Hyman?

  My definition of greatness is someone who fully shows up, is fully present in their life, is able to tell the truth with love and be in a state of loving and giving and presence.

• 58:04Lewis Howes?

  Mark Hyman, thanks for coming on, man. Appreciate it.

• 58:10Lewis Howes?

  There you have it. Great. I hope you enjoyed this episode and for me, I got a lot out of it. Again, there's always experts and different opinions on health and fitness and all these different things that we talk about. But for me, Dr. Mark Hyman is one of the most credible people. He's been doing it for the longest. He's got the Cleveland Clinic who comes to him and says, hey, implement the stuff you are teaching to the world in our clinic and that clinic is one of the best in the world at what they do. So for me, his information is great. I hope you guys check out his book. Again, you can get the full show notes and watch the full interview on my YouTube channel, but the link is back at lewishouse.com/293.

• 58:51Lewis Howes?

  And if you haven't yet subscribed to me on YouTube, make sure to do that. We are posting videos two, three times a week now. Lots of great video interviews, motivational videos, inspirational videos and things like that. So make sure to go to youtube slash Lewis Howes, click the subscribe button, share some of the videos with me. Your friends there as well. I am so pumped, guys. We have just begun this year and we've got so many great guests. We've got so many more great guests coming up each and every week. I'm super pumped. We've got my friend Joe Polish on the next episode, who is going to talk a lot about how to expand and grow your business. So one of the best marketers in the world and one of the most connected marketers in the world that I've met. So stay tuned for that one.

• 59:35Lewis Howes?

  And you guys know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.