Dr. Mark Hyman on Function Health & GLP-1 microdosing | E2334

This Week In Startups is made possible by: Odoo - http://Odoo.com/twist Northwest Registered Agent - https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/twistdomain Rippling - http://Rippling.ai/twist Today's show: Your doctor almost certainly isn't testing your insulin. Dr. Mark Hyman sits down with Jason to explain the broken system that Function is fixing, and what 100 million biomarkers say about how sick America actually is. Learn why insulin beats blood sugar as an early warning for TKTKTK. Why might "normal" lab ranges be unreliable? PLUS, how does an expert like Dr. Hyman feel about GLP-1s and psychedelics? Guests: Dr. Mark Hyman on X: https://x.com/drmarkhyman Function: https://www.functionhealth.com/ Relevant Links: The Dr. Hyman Show — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-dr-hyman-show/id1382804627 Function pricing — https://www.functionhealth.com/pricing Ezra — the full-body MRI company Function acquired https://ezra.com/ Galleri (GRAIL) — the multi-cancer early detection blood test — https://www.galleri.com/ Tufts / JACC study — the source of the "93% of Americans have metabolic dysfunction" — https://now.tufts.edu/2022/07/05/only-7-american-adults-have-good-cardiometabolic-health American College of Cardiology — https://www.acc.org/ Dr. Jorge Plutzky — https://www.health.harvard.edu/authors/jorge-plutzky-md OpenEvidence — https://www.openevidence.com/ Stanford Metabolic Psychiatry Clinic — https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2022/11/metabolic-psychiatry.html Stanford Medicine on the ibogaine findings → https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2024/01/ibogaine-ptsd.html Texas SB 2308 — the $50M state investment in ibogaine trials — https://www.texastribune.org/2026/03/31/texas-ibogaine-research-clinical-trials-psychedelics/ Timestamps: 0:00 What Function actually is 6:43 Healthspan vs. sick care 10:16 Odoo - The all-in-one business platform. Your first app is free! Get started today at https://Odoo.com/twist 11:32 A $300 vitamin D test vs. a $10 one 18:08 Should a 25-year-old get a whole-body MRI? 20:42 Northwest Registered Agent - Got a new business idea? Northwest Registered Agent helps you bring it to life. Get a free domain, email, phone number, and more - with no purchase required! Learn more at https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/twistdomain 24:23 Why medicine is still running on paper 25:41 The study where the chatbot beat the doctors 27:02 micro1, doctors in the loop, and why AI still needs guardrails 28:50 Wearables, records, and the CD-ROM problem 30:07 Rippling - Thanks to our partners at Rippling! Head to https://Rippling.ai/twist and get the only AI built to give you full visibility across your startup and take complex actions across your entire business. 32:51 The wearable that caught Jason's Covid 34:31 Alcohol, sugar, and why almost nobody tests your insulin 40:00 GLP-1s: Jason's 213-to-168 story 42:22 Microdosing GLP-1s, muscle loss, and "skinny fat" 48:48 Overdiagnosing mental illness: SSRIs, Adderall, and a lost decade 50:17 The biology underneath depression and anxiety 54:32 Psychedelics: ketamine, ibogaine, and the second revolution in psychiatry Subscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.com Check out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.com Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp Follow Lon: X: https://x.com/lons Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis Thank you to our partners: Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/ Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland Check out Jason's suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis Follow TWiST: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Most doctors don't use any kind of tech to make decisions.

• 0:03Speaker 01

  One in three Americans are like skipping going to talk to a doctor when they have an issue because they can't afford it.

• 0:10Speaker 00

  Six out of 10 with chronic illness, 93% with metabolic dysfunction, you know, or have 75% are obese or overweight. I mean, this is just, we have a staggering problem that is not being addressed by our system. And we spend more and more money, we're getting sicker and sicker, 65% with high insulin levels which never get checked.

• 0:26Speaker 01

  A Harvard study, ChatGPTs and the large language models basically were as accurate or more accurate than doctors. The preference of the patient in the bedside manner, the results from the LLM are better.

• 0:41Speaker 00

  It's gone from terrible to actually pretty good.

• 0:44Speaker 02

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• 1:27Speaker 01

  All right, everybody. Welcome back to the program. Super excited to have podcaster, entrepreneur, doctor, an all-around great guy, Dr. Mark Hyman is here. How are you doing, Dr. Mark?

• 1:41Speaker 00

  Great. I'm feeling great.

• 1:43Speaker 01

  Awesome, awesome.

• 1:44Speaker 00

  Life is good.

• 1:45Speaker 01

  How do you, you do have a great life. How do you split your time? I mean, you've got this great podcast. I tune in once in a while. You know, I look at the topic and then I jump in. Sometimes it's for ladies, sometimes it's for guys. But it, but it's great because you're so candid and honest during it. You obviously have function health is surging. I'm going to talk a lot about the entrepreneurial journey there. And then are you a doctor as well? Like, out there being a doctor?

• 2:13Speaker 00

  I'm a real doctor. I have a practice up in Massachusetts where I'm now and I, I see patients. I have a limited patient roster compared to how I used to, which was just full-time, all the time. I know after tens of thousands of patients, I'm like, slow down a little bit. Actually, you know, function is my main focus because it's really a way to scale what I'm doing to millions, if not billions of people. And I think I could sit and see patients all day, every day, and I'd never be able to sort of bridge the gap that's happening in healthcare right now, which is really to get people to understand their biology and using technology to help accelerate their ability to create healthier life.

• 2:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, and, and you were very early to this, which I describe, and I don't know if I'm using the right descriptor, as self-directed healthcare, people taking ownership of it. I think, you know, my friend Tim Ferriss, maybe they call it biohacking.

• 3:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 3:03Speaker 01

  You know, the Joe Rogans of the world have their own view on it. But what is function health? And how should we look at this movement of, hey, I'm not just going to be a passive participant in my healthcare? What, what, what is the proper term here? And, and more importantly, what is the philosophy that we as patients should have in the age of AI? And all these amazing services available to us?

• 3:27Speaker 00

  Function is really about giving people agency, democratizing healthcare, and allowing people access to their own biology. Because up until very recently, you know, and I'm a doctor and I'm in healthcare system, you had to go to the doctor, you had to ask for what you want, if you even knew what to ask for. You had to hope they would, he or she would agree to do it. You have to hope your insurance would pay for it. And if they did, you know, it usually was quite a bit of money. And people didn't, didn't have a real understanding of what's happening under the hood. And so function health is really an attempt to bring your biology online, to help people have access to their data, to own their own health data, and to use that information to understand where they are, the trajectory of their health,

• 4:09Speaker 00

  and how to either identify current problems and issues, which we do very often with function, or just see where you're headed in the trajectory and, and go get on the off-ramp. If you're heading down toward a serious disease like diabetes or Alzheimer's or, or something terrible. So function is really about empowering people with their own data and using technology and AI to help understand that data. It makes sense to me because, you know, we're a complex beings and we have so much going on all the time. And, and the human mind can only comprehend so much. And that's why we have super subspecialization, but the body's not a bunch of different parts or organs, it's one system.

• 4:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, and as a doctor, well, two questions. One, this just term functional health, I, I never knew what that meant.

• 4:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 4:50Speaker 01

  The name of your company's function, that's what people refer to it as.

• 4:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:56Speaker 01

  Should I understand what the word functional health means?

• 4:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So functional medicine and function health are two different things.

• 5:02Speaker 01

  But functional medicine is a discipline, yes.

• 5:04Speaker 00

  Yes, so function health is really our personal health platform that's empowering people with their own data. And it's informed by all traditional medical science that all are, are most emerging understandings. For example, traditional medicine understands that the microbiome plays a role in health, but there's really no focus on it clinically. Or, you know, there's a real understanding that, you know, nutrition plays a role in health, but doctors don't really understand how to apply that and don't learn about it in medical school. And so a functional medicine is a, is a framework for understanding the body as a net, not as a bunch of organs and parts, but actually as a cohesive system. And that it's really more focused on the science and creating health than treating disease.

• 5:49Speaker 00

  It's focused on lifestyle medicine, your diet, exercise, stress, sleep, your nutritional status, hormonal balance, and also like understanding the role of your gut microbiome and your mitochondria and inflammation and toxins and things that are in the ether that people are hearing about. But they don't understand that there's actually a system of medicine that helps you see the world through a different set of lenses that gets to the root cause of disease. So it's really root cause focused, it's really systems focused, it's creating health focused. And that, and those principles are embedded in function health. But it's not all that function health is. Function health is really the full spectrum of medicine from soup to nuts, and it includes all that.

• 6:25Speaker 01

  This is one of the key differences, I think, in this movement is people are now pursuing this with trying to have their health span increase and feel healthier as opposed to looking at the healthcare system, which is in this country, I'm sure we'll get into this at some point. That could be a whole nother episode, is quite dysfunctional. I mean, when I just read the statistic when I was getting ready to talk to you, that one in three Americans are like skipping going to talk to a doctor when they have an issue because they can't afford it.

• 6:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:59Speaker 01

  In America, in the, in this like incredible country, these people are delaying medical care. It's just really tragic. But there are people who have a little bit of privilege, who have had to have these, you know, personalized doctors and they have this concierge doctor experience.

• 7:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 7:16Speaker 01

  And they get to experience something very different than the majority of Americans. And my perception is the role of function, your company, is really to take what I started experiencing in the last decade, once I had made a little bit of money that I didn't experience in the first 40, 40 years of my life, when sometimes I didn't have healthcare and I was like, you know what? I don't, I can't afford to see the doctor. So explain what the products and services are in the stack in the product now that help bridge that gap between what somebody with a concierge doctor, which these things cost 25, 50K a year.

• 7:51Speaker 00

  Or more, or more, more.

• 7:54Speaker 01

  Some people are charging 250K a year. I don't want anyone to get in trouble here, but I have heard of these numbers. I pitched on that number once, to spit out my espresso. But putting all that aside, can't put a price on the good time. Explain to me like where you saw the wedge to say, hey, wait a second. There's, there's a way to get in here because as an investor in companies, man, I wanted to invest in so many healthcare companies and I was just like, ah, this just feels like we're not going to make any progress. This is too dysfunctional, but you figured it out.

• 8:25Speaker 00

  We did, somehow we did. It's quite amazing the, the way this took off in the last four years. I mean, we launched three years ago and we, you know, we have just an extraordinary growth trajectory. And I think that just speaks to the fact that people are hungry to be able to own their own health and to check their health. And I think, you know, the, the, the offering is, is very similar in a way to a concierge doctor because you get a really deep analysis of your biology. Your full medical history is in there that you put in, it can access your EMR. All your wearables can be connected. You get a deep stack of lab testing, which is over 160 biomarkers tested twice a year, plus add-ons if you want for a dollar a day, which is so affordable. Like the membership is basically a dollar a day.

• 9:10Speaker 00

  Now, I've done these labs for years and years on patients and the retail price on these is like $15,000. It's really inaccessible.

• 9:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:18Speaker 00

  And, and

• 9:20Speaker 01

  Why are those tests so expensive? Is it just the dysfunction of our insurance kind of at hospitals? And, but then you have like, everybody seems to be using Quest or there's some Platform behind it that is actually turns out to be really cheap, but they don't give you any interpretation of it. So you're kind of flying blind.

• 9:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, we, we, we don't actually own lab. We partner with Quest, who's our testing partner. And there's over 2,000 draw stations across the country and they'll draw and process the labs. We also, you know, them in-house and home both a lot of me, so you can get labs shot at home. They also have imaging, whole body imaging, whole body imaging you can get for, I think it's $8.99 now, quite affordable. And it's very quick.

• 10:03Speaker 01

  Wait, $899?

• 10:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:06Speaker 01

  That is a fraction of, I used another service three or four years ago, and it was $3,000. This price is coming down dramatically.

• 10:15Speaker 00

  It's coming down.

• 10:16Speaker 01

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• 10:59Speaker 01

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• 11:24Speaker 00

  Healthcare is funny. It's like that. I don't know if you ever saw that. If healthcare operated, the airlines operated like healthcare, it would be, what would be like, it's so terrible. And, and, you know, I, I used to work at Cleveland Clinic and there in the Cleveland Clinic lab of vitamin D would be $300. If you go to Quest, it might be $10. That's kind of how healthcare is. So you could buy, imagine buying a Toyota on one lot for 10 grand and then the same Toyota on another lot for a hundred grand. That's kind of how healthcare is. There's no transparency in pricing. It's very bizarre. So we know the kind of, kind of democratized the access through the pricing. And, and then you imagine all your data gets fed into your personal health platform that you have access to, that is a dashboard for your health, that integrates all this information, that provides an AI

• 12:09Speaker 00

  chat and helps you understand what's going on, gives you an action plan after understanding what's happening with your biology and, and identifies a lot of things. And we're seeing so much going on in the population. This is a health for the population, but we saw a lot of sort of Americans who are just sort of, you know, middle-class Americans. I think, I think the average income is, is under a hundred grand. And the, the results we're seeing are astounding. We're seeing like 65% with high insulin levels, which never get checked. We're seeing almost 70% of people, the nutritional deficiency at the level that the lab says is low, which is not what I would say is optimal. We're seeing, you know, 54% with high ApoB, which is a lipid biomarker that, that most doctors don't check, that, that is more important than LDL or any other cholesterol biomarker based

• 12:54Speaker 00

  on the American College of Cardiology literature. And yet it's not checked. So we, we, we're really going deep and looking at heavy metals or hormones, nutritional status, your metabolic status. And, and it really gives people understanding what's happening. You can even look for cancer through multi-cancer early detection testing. And there's newer.

• 13:11Speaker 01

  There's a blood test. Yes, I took this blood test a couple of years ago. That is a, just a generic blood test for cancer. And you obviously have to follow up. I was told it's 80% accurate or 90%. There could be false positive, yada, yada. But is, that's like a new, a relatively new thing to be able to take a blood test for, to screen for just generalized cancer.

• 13:34Speaker 00

  It's quite amazing, actually, because many cancers are, you know, we don't have screening tests for, you know, you can get a colostomy, you can get a, you know, PSA for prostate. There's controversy about that. A mammogram, you can get a PAP test. But it's like, there's not a lot. And, and I, we believe that, you know, cancer's greatest enemy is early detection. And, you know, getting it later is hard. I mean, cancer treatments are improving, but it's still not great. And so there's this new developments in cancer diagnostics, which are quite amazing. And then this is the, the multi-cancer early detection test called Gallery. We offer that. And it, it looks at over 50 different cancers. It's about 75% good at picking up things, doesn't get everything all the time. And it has very low false positive rate. So not only going to show you have a positive, it's

• 14:18Speaker 00

  not there. There's also newer, newer emerging tests that are coming out, proteomics tests, we're going to be adding, and other things that are quite exciting, that are really even, even better. So there's, there's.

• 14:28Speaker 01

  So there are tens of thousands of people now on function, hundreds of thousands. I know that the company is very big, but I'm trying to get an idea of like, what's the footprint of the data you have in just three?

• 14:38Speaker 00

  We've done over 100 million biomarkers, 100 million biomarkers. So we have a lot of data.

• 14:44Speaker 01

  Divide that by some number per person. Like, maybe you don't disclose the number of people on it, but I'm assuming it's at least tens of thousands of people.

• 14:49Speaker 00

  No, no, no, no, it's hundreds, hundreds and hundreds.

• 14:51Speaker 01

  Hundreds of thousands. Okay. Yeah.

• 14:52Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, I mean, we're reaching, we're reaching millions of people through all the things that we do. So it's, it's, yeah. And I think, you know, the, the growth and success is really speaks to how hungry people are to, to not just advocate their healthcare to the healthcare system. And it's great when you have an acute injury, but for, for, you know, preventive care, for proactive care, for care that's actually focused on creating health, dealing with a lot of common problems people have, we don't really have a good model. And, and I think function health has just hit that sweet spot in the market where there was a big gap. And we didn't even know how big it was until we, we, we thought, you know, I don't know. I didn't know, basically, I was sitting on a porch in Hawaii during COVID. And it's like, came up with this idea with my friend. And we're like, okay. And here we go.

• 15:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that, you know, 400 bucks a year, whatever the membership is, and I guess you can do two blood tests a year. So.

• 15:44Speaker 00

  The 365 account counts for twice your testing.

• 15:48Speaker 01

  Wow. And, and I'm sure there's some upsells on like more detailed testing.

• 15:51Speaker 00

  Yes. Yes. You can do more testing.

• 15:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. You can get into maybe low thousands, one, two, 3,000.

• 15:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, sure.

• 15:58Speaker 01

  Probably the max you could spend here.

• 15:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, you can do a lot. I mean, we do, we do brain health screening, we do toxin screening, we do cancer screening, we do more hormone analysis, we do more nutritional analysis, more metabolic analysis. We do.

• 16:11Speaker 01

  And the difference here with all those is I decide, I'd say, I'm reading in the app, this seems like something I would like to know. This seems like something, if I'm going to spend $10,000 going on a vacation, or I treat myself to a business class flight for $5,000 or something, you know, now a person can say, you know what, instead of buying a $5,000 bag or watch, I'm going to buy a $1,000 one, and I'm going to put $3,000 or $4,000 into my health and get all this stuff checked. And that's, I think, what you guys have inspired in people and that I'm starting to see amongst friend groups, that the, the wealth is in the health and that.

• 16:52Speaker 00

  100%.

• 16:53Speaker 01

  Who cares about your health insurance? Just like, if it's a thousand dollars or less, just do it. Like, why wouldn't you just do it? And then that is not just from a person of privilege. This is now, the middle class can say that, yeah.

• 17:05Speaker 00

  Yeah. 100%. I mean, this isn't really, you know, we have in America is more disease insurance, not so much health insurance. Like, you know, doc, I want you to help me get healthy. They're like, well, I don't know.

• 17:16Speaker 01

  What code is that? What hurts?

• 17:19Speaker 00

  We don't, we don't, we don't really have that. And so I think, I think we're good at acute care medicine. But when it comes to the, the crisis that's happening in America today, which is, you know, six out of 10 with chronic illness, 93% with metabolic dysfunction, you know, we're have 75% are obese or overweight. I mean, this is just, we have a staggering problem that is not being addressed by our system. And we spend more and more money. We're getting sicker and sicker. And I think, you know, people are sick and tired of being sick and tired. And so that's why I think function has hit, hit such a note. And this is not culture.

• 17:48Speaker 01

  You mentioned the full body scan. I want to double and then triple click on it. You bought a company, Ezra, last year.

• 17:55Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 17:56Speaker 01

  They do this full body scanning.

• 17:58Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 17:59Speaker 01

  My friend from Spotify, Daniel, like, he's got one. There's another one in the market. I can't remember the name of it. I did it.

• 18:04Speaker 00

  That's different. That's not MRI. Yeah.

• 18:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:06Speaker 00

  Daniel's is not, but yeah.

• 18:07Speaker 01

  Daniel's is not. So explain to me what this general area is, the differences, and.

• 18:14Speaker 01

  When I did the one I did with I think Prunovo, if I'm pronouncing correct, my doctor was like, don't do it. You know, this is my concierge doctor. I said, well, I'm sorry, what, don't do it. Why? And they were like, it's, you're going to find a nodule, you're going to find something. And then you're going to be super anxious. I'm like, I, I, I'm fine. I'd rather know I got it. And so I was like, you know, all due respect, I'm doing it. Um, and they don't even know what to interpret. He's like, I don't, he's like, I have a lot of patients talking about or doing it. So it was very confusing for me to have a concierge doctor then telling me it's a waste of time.

• 18:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:46Speaker 01

  You, you tell me, Dr. Mark, tell me, Dr. Mark, what, what should I think about these? And that general reaction from classic doctors?

• 18:54Speaker 00

  Well, we're entering a whole new era of data-driven healthcare, which we never had before. Doctors are trained very specifically to the minimum amount necessary to make the diagnosis and then find the drug or the surgery to treat that diagnosis. It's not about gathering lots of data to really have a deep understanding of human biology. But that's never been possible before. And so doctors have a very bad bias against testing and against imaging unless it's for confirmation of what a presumed diagnosis is. That's how we're trained. What's happening now, Jason, is that we're in a data-driven healthcare model where we're able to get, you know, hundreds and hundreds of biomarkers, where you look at metabolomics, which is 6,000 metabolized proteomics, which is tens of thousands of proteins,

• 19:37Speaker 00

  genetics, which is 20,000 genes and millions of SNPs, where you have a look at your microbiome, which has, you know, petabytes of data in there. We have imaging now, where we can get, you know, terabytes of data on, on your own body to imaging and, and make sense of it all. Cause no, no human mind can make sense of all that data. And Lee Hood has done a lot of this work. He's the founder of the Insupersist's Biology. He's now got a program called Phenom Health, which is sort of almost like a nonprofit version of Function, where they're gathering large data sets on people looking at trends in a predictive model. It calls it P4 medicine, which is preventive, predictive, personalized and participatory. And you have to do stuff to get better. And that's where we should be going with P4 medicine.

• 20:22Speaker 00

  And that, that's really what Function is focusing on. And, and I believe we're going to be entering an era where, where, we're going to start to be able to make sense of all this data with AI in a way that is going to really help highlight where you are now with your biology, what's out of whack and what to do with it and what to optimize your health to feel better now and to live 100 healthy years. And that's, that's really the mission of Function.

• 20:42Speaker 01

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• 21:27Speaker 01

  Northwest Registered Agent is the best way to establish your new company. Learn more at northwestregisteredagent.com/twistdomain. Let's talk about those scanners. What are you looking for when you tell somebody, hey, get a scan? And is that something a 30-year-old should do, a 20-year-old should, you know, if you had a nephew, a cousin, whatever, and they were 25 years old and they're like, I got the money to do it. Should I do it or not?

• 21:52Speaker 00

  I mean, baseline, there's no downside during MRI. It's basically non-radiation. It's with our technology, which would be that they approve, we get 22-minute whole-body scan, which is amazing, using AI to help sort of compress the data. And we were able to sort of sequentially over time, you know, do it at an affordable price. It allows you to get a longitudinal picture. So one, any one data point is, is not that helpful, unless you really find something. But over time, if you, you need less time in the scanner, you get better data and you're able to see cheese over time that can predict where you're headed. Now you will sometimes find stuff that's an incidental finding. It's not a problem, like a kidney cyst or a liver cyst or something like that. Usually the radiologist can tell what

• 22:36Speaker 00

  that is. Sometimes you'll find stuff that, you know, might be concerning and you need to follow it up. And we found aneurysms, we found pituitary tumors, we found, um, you know, people with, with more serious problems. And, and, and it's, if you find a cancer in an early stage, it's curable. Right? Stage one is, is curable. Whereas if you wait till three or four, it's definitely not. So I think, you know, the imaging is, is, is accessible now, it's affordable now, and, and longitudinally is where it really becomes high value.

• 23:05Speaker 01

  Got it. If you and I had it, I'm, I'm 55. You, I think you're like my bigger brother, maybe one or two years older, but.

• 23:12Speaker 00

  No, I'm sorry. I'm going to be 67, Jason.

• 23:14Speaker 01

  Amazing. Look at me. I don't know how you look better than me, but okay, here we are. I guess you have the inside track on this, uh, but I've been on a health journey myself. And if we had this, you know, if you and I had it from our, you know, from the seventies, the eighties, the nineties, like what would that have, what would that unlock for us potentially? When we do a consultation with a doctor or God forbid, something comes up?

• 23:37Speaker 00

  I think the, the more data you have and the, the better it's sorted with AI, the better you're going to be able to engage with your own health and your healthcare system and your doctor to ask the right questions, to find the right things. And, um, and I think, you know, it's, we're in this real pivotal moment from like episodic, fragmented, disease-based, symptom-based care to, you know, proactive, um, data-driven, longitudinal, continuous healthcare. And with tech, we can finally achieve that. And I, I don't know if most people listening realize this, because I know you focus on tech, but healthcare is, is so antiquated and anachronistic in terms of data.

• 24:20Speaker 00

  Like when I, when I tell you that most doctors don't use, um, any kind of tech to make decisions. Like in other words, if you're a financial analyst, you have to use spreadsheets and you.

• 24:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, you got a Bloomberg terminal, you've got analysts working for you.

• 24:36Speaker 00

  If you're a doctor, you basically take a history, you get some lab tests, you process in your brain, and you're right, and you use electronic medical records, which is basically just like a, uh, computer, you know, two-dimensional paper in a computer. And, and for the first time, we're able to actually start to have AI help us assemble large data sets and make sense of it and, and, and create a model that never existed before in healthcare. So I think, you know, it still needs to get kind of worked out, but I think we're, we're going to, we're going to rapidly iterate and get there. And then we have decision support. So now, you know, I have a company like Open Evidence, which is amazing. So now I can, you know, take a case of mine, I can throw it all in there. I can, you know, get the best available literature and I can actually, as a doctor,

• 25:17Speaker 00

  interact with an AI model that makes me a better doctor, that makes me, you know, a better able to understand the data that my patient's presenting. Cause I might not have seen, you know, 45 cases of X, Y, or Z. I might have had three and I'm, I'm, I'm going to need a kind of refresher. And so it, using AI as a decision support for providers and for your own personal health is really where we're all going.

• 25:37Speaker 01

  And this is really interesting because there was a Harvard study, um, recently, last couple of years, it might've been the last year, and the ChatGPTs and the large language models basically were as accurate or more accurate than doctors in comparable situations. And then the one that kind of shocked me was in terms of the preference of the patient and the bedside manner, the results from the LLM are better.

• 26:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:07Speaker 01

  So we take from that what we will. Um, but in your sort of anecdotal experience, like using this and then obviously constructing the product and putting rails on it and harnesses to make sure you give people good advice. Where are we at here in this, you know, summer of 2026? If you could have a choice, like you're, I don't know, a person in a disadvantaged place and you just, it's going to take you six months to go see a doctor, or you can make a decision with ChatGPT today. I'm giving you like hard situations here to be illustrative of the, of the progress. What, what would you advise that person to do? Take the raw response on their cold or their, you know.

• 26:48Speaker 00

  Maybe, but I, I mean, the beauty of the function is that it's $365 and you get access to your data. And then there's a doctor in the loop. So it's not just the AI. There's a doctor in the loop that makes sure that the output that you're getting is actually vetted. So it's kind of like a guardrail on it.

• 27:05Speaker 01

  I'm asking a super hypothetical, person's on a desert island, but let's put that out of the thing. Just in general, do you trust the data coming out of them right now? When it, when I put in, you know, here's how I'm feeling, um, here's my symptoms. What should I do next? I'm constantly amazed. And then I bring that to a doctor or an urgent care and they're like, yep, that's exactly right.

• 27:26Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, it's fun. I, I can tell you just personally using it and trying it out over years and, and, and also in the context of trying to understand it from Function. Just in the last year, four years, since it's all been going, it's gone from terrible to actually pretty good. I don't think we're quite there to unleash it without any guardrails.

• 27:45Speaker 01

  From terrible to pretty good, no guardrail. We need guardrails. Got it. So it's like a seven out of 10 or something?

• 27:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, I would say trust, trust to verify.

• 27:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. Kind of makes sense to me. And, you know, I think at the core of it, I'm not sure if you're aware of these companies, but we invested in a company, Micro One, they do data, you know, it's like enhanced data label and they hire doctors, they hire accountants, and they very specifically look at all of the output of the LLMs and then retrain them and actually certify. Yes.

• 28:12Speaker 00

  That's what we're doing. That's, that's exactly.

• 28:14Speaker 01

  And you're doing that too. Yeah.

• 28:16Speaker 00

  Within our company, where we have lots of doctors who are reviewing everything that are actually. Coming out of the L L M's and making sure that, you know, it comports with what actually a clinical perspective is, it's a human, which is good.

• 28:31Speaker 01

  So we didn't get to wearables yet. You guys don't have a wearable, but you authenticate with them.

• 28:37Speaker 00

  Yeah. So you can, you can actually all your wearable connected into function. You just have to click a button. It'll connect everything. It will also, you can do your email like that. You can also upload all your other lab data. So if you had other imaging, other lab data, you can put it in there. So it basically becomes your own health repository data. And that doesn't exist now. Like when you, when I see a patient, they got a lab from here. They went to this hospital, went to that doctor. They're like, it's impossible for me as a provider to try to make sense of all. And I have like, you know, chart that we call chart of megalogy, where people come in with a chart like, you know, this stick.

• 29:10Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 29:10Speaker 00

  And, and you're have to kind of read through everything and it's a nightmare. But now.

• 29:14Speaker 01

  And this HIPAA compliance, you just, even if you ask your own doctor, can I have my thing? They're like, yeah. I'm like, okay, great. Here's my email. And they're like, sorry, I'm going to have to send you a C D ROM with a lock code on it. And then you're going to have to turn the key at the same time as me. I'm like, we're not, we're not taking off a nuclear bomb, a rocket here. Like, just, I don't care if my healthcare gets hacked. I'm going to tweet it anyway. So like, I'm tweeting my scores. Nobody gives a shit. But this HIPAA has like, made it impossible to just share records, which is insanity. Like in your system, can I just like, give access to my doctor and say, hey?

• 29:49Speaker 00

  You, you can right now, you, you can provide them your password and your, your, your email to get in. They can see it all. Or you can download the, the, the things and send it to them. And eventually there's going to be that integration.

• 30:00Speaker 01

  Multiplayer mode is what we need. We really need multiplayer mode in this. And I mean, I hope function can be that sort of place. It happens to every business at some point. You're nearing the end of the month, or maybe it's the quarter, and your sales team is at risk of missing their quota. You could waste days pulling together data from across the entire organization, or you could just ask Rippling AI. Rippling's already built on your real time people and business data, obviously. So Rippling AI can pull metrics from both Rippling and your CRM into a meeting ready dashboard. See exactly how close you are to hitting that quota. Break down your revenue by region, or sales rep, or more, all in just seconds with Rippling AI. Look, you're running a company, you're busy, you have critical questions that you need immediate

• 30:45Speaker 01

  answers to, and you can't just file a ticket and wait a week for your team to get around to sending you a report. And you don't want to sit around waiting for reports. You need an actionable insight right now. So if you're ready to rule your business, head to rippling.ai/ twist to get the only AI built to give you full visibility and let you take complex actions across your startup. Do you wear a wearable? Do you think it's important to obsess over sleep, the whoops, the auras, the apples? Because I've gotten a little obsessed with these things. Over time, I'm looking at my recovery, my HRV, my sleep, everything stress. I have a little OCD when I get.

• 31:22Speaker 00

  That makes you more stressed watching it than it's probably not.

• 31:25Speaker 01

  Not more stressed, but it has shaped my behavior. And I'm like, wow. Going out till 2:00 AM wrecks you for three days. Going to Japan, like, your sleep is just, just screwed for six, seven days. And then I started feeling a little guilty about it. But I'm like, oh, but I'm in Japan. It's pretty cool. So I think I'll let myself go on my recovery score.

• 31:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

• 31:46Speaker 01

  Do you wear one? Do you think it's like an important part of the mix? Or is it just like?

• 31:50Speaker 00

  I think it is important because I think, you know, we're able to, through these technologies, pick up very subtle signals where things are off. And whether it's heart disease, blood pressure, there's a lot of, you know, COVID. I mean, there's a lot of things that show up. So if you have the data integrated in a way with technology, it, it, it, it's a good, it's a good barometer of where you're at. And also, like, it helps you change behavior. So people really shift. I mean, I know, for example, myself, like, I noticed I used to drink a little bit here and there. And I'm like, I, I'm like, wow, it really wrecked my sleep. And that problem is, I, I went to the All In Summit, and I bought your friggin tequila. And so.

• 32:33Speaker 01

  Be careful with that. Oh, it's very smooth.

• 32:35Speaker 00

  I bought tequilas. I'm like, wait a minute. Now, what do I do?

• 32:39Speaker 01

  You sip it. I mean, I, I think it's like, really super important because I did learn, I, I think twice in like, two or three years of like, the latest wearable I've been experimenting with. I had one time, it was like, hey, by the way, your HRV is really off. What's going on? And then I had a cold. And then another time, it was like, your skin temperature is crazy. And then I go, I want to get checked. I have a cold. And I was like, wait a second. This is incredible, because if that was COVID, if I am correct, that would mean I would have taken whatever that flaxin, whatever, Paxlovid in the window, because you have a window to take it. It would have actually, if I'm correct in my, the time I got it. And that's what exactly it was.

• 33:23Speaker 01

  It was COVID. It was so crazy. And my, my skin temperature went up two degrees. And it was like, hey, dummy, something's wrong. And I was like, okay. And my wife said, hey, dummy, take a COVID test. I took a COVID test.

• 33:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's great. Yeah, I think, I think it is, it is exciting, Jason. I think, you know, we're seeing a convergence of multiple things happening all at the same time. We're, we're seeing the convergence of like, AI with the emerging model of systems medicine and biology, with the quantified self wearable movement, with capacity to sort of get large data sets on individuals, with, you know, the omics revolution, where we're able to get, you know, very cheap genomes very soon, very full, you know, omics, which gives you so much more data. You know, the average doctor would be like, 20 lab tests. We do 160. But you've got 6,000 metabolites in your blood from metabolomics. You've got, as I said, tens of thousands of proteins and all these genes. And, and that,

• 34:15Speaker 00

  that, that, that's useful information. I think, I think more information for me as a doctor is always better. The more data I have, the more intelligent decision I can make, the better I can help my patients, the better people can learn about themselves and make empowered decisions about how to activate their own health.

• 34:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. The, the alcohol and sugar, those are the two really, I think people underestimate the negative impact of those two compounds. Yeah.

• 34:40Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, actually, you mentioned the sugar thing. Yes. I think we have an epidemic of, of poor metabolic health, which means people are somewhere in the spectrum of diabetes, from prediabetes or pre, pre, prediabetes to prediabetes and type 2 diabetes. And, and we, and we see 90, according to the data from TOS, 93% of Americans have some version of this. And not full prediabetes, but like, some degree. Any estimates are maybe one in two to, you know, maybe three in four have prediabetes, depending on the definition. And, and what's going on is, you know, doctors don't test for it, because there's no easy drug for it. I mean, GLP-1s can help, but there, there's no testing for this on a systematic basis. And so if function health,

• 35:25Speaker 00

  we check insulin. It is probably one of the most important biomarkers for your health, period. And it's super cheap. It's like, literally dollars. It's like, under $10. I don't even know. It's maybe a couple of dollars. It's, I've been testing it for 30 years. I asked Quest, of all the labs that get submitted to you, what percent include insulin? They're like, oh, less than 1%. So doctors are not looking at this. They don't know how to interpret.

• 35:46Speaker 01

  That should be the first thing people are checking in America with the obesity epidemic.

• 35:50Speaker 00

  It is. And, and I literally just had a patient this morning, whose blood sugar was normal, but his insulin was like 100, which is extremely high. So the insulin keeps things normal. And but she was overweight, she had no visceral fat, she was not healthy, but her blood sugar was quote, normal. And doctors check your blood sugar, but that's a very, very late sign. That's like, by the time your blood sugar goes up, you've already been, you know, going down the road of metabolic crisis for a long time. So insulin is super important. And it's, it's one of those things that I think everybody should have tested. And that's, you know, one of the key things we test with function. And we check your A1C. And we check your particle number and size for cholesterol, which gives you an idea of what's going on with your metabolic health, too. So we.

• 36:31Speaker 01

  What about these glucose monitors? People, I'm noticing a lot of healthy people, like the Health Nut group, wearing a glucose monitor. Like, well, you're like a beast. You look like an Adonis. What are you doing? They're like, oh, yeah, no, like, I really want to understand my body. Those things seem to cost like, I don't know, low hundreds of dollars a month, I think.

• 36:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:52Speaker 01

  And people are kind of getting into that. Is that something you recommend for people to understand their metabolism better, especially people who maybe, like myself, were obese for some period of time?

• 37:02Speaker 00

  Absolutely. I mean, absolutely. I don't think, I don't think you have to use it forever, but as a way to understand how different foods affect you, it's really important. And everybody's different. The microbiome affects your glucose surges. And so everybody needs to check what's, foods are good for them and are not. And I think.

• 37:19Speaker 01

  Why is that? Why is it that my body, when I eat a bowl of cereal, might be different than your body when you eat a bowl of cereal?

• 37:27Speaker 00

  There's a lot of reasons. Genetics play a big role. So like, for example, the Native Americans are a great example. You know, the 80% have type 2 diabetes. But 150 years ago, there was zero cases of type 2 diabetes. It was because their genetics were really good at starvation and storage, you know, whereas other, others are not. And if you might have a, you might have a can of Coke, and your insulin might go up really high, mine might go up a little bit. Same can of Coke. So it's not the, it's not the food, it's your, it's your biology and how it responds to it. And so I think people are learning what foods affect them, and which foods surge their blood sugar, which foods don't, how to construct a meal to, to balance your blood sugar is so important, because balanced blood sugar is the key phenomena that you have to have for healthy aging. I remember

• 38:11Speaker 00

  a lecture that I heard from the head of preventive cardiology at Harvard, Dr. Jorge Pluski, years ago. And he said, if you were to take a group of 100-year-old people that have clean arteries, they'd have one thing in common. And I said, what's that? He said, they'd be insulin sensitive, meaning their blood sugar would be well regulated, and they would not be insulin resistant, which most Americans are. Like, like at least three quarters of, of, or two thirds, sorry, of our members at Function, have a, it's a level that is over the reference range.

• 38:43Speaker 00

  For for the lab, which is eighteen optimal should be like

• 38:47Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 38:47Speaker 00

  Under ten or even five. So the way we come up with the quote normal ranges is we say, what's, what's the average in a population two standard deviations away? So if you're like a Martian, you land in America, it's normal to be overweight because seventy five percent of us are overweight. It's not optimal, but it's normal.

• 39:02Speaker 01

  That doesn't make any sense. I mean, that sounds like somebody doing an insurance table or something fugazi is trying to to make that happen. And then I I also learned, like, I was like this, I would get hungry eleven o'clock at night. I have a bowl of cereal. Then I have a second bowl.

• 39:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:18Speaker 01

  And I watch, I'm like, oh, my God, I'm spiking like crazy. Then I do the experiment. I have some Haagen Dazs. It barely spikes. I'm like, wait a second. Come on, I can have a scoop of ice cream instead of a bowl of cereal.

• 39:30Speaker 00

  Well, because it's fat and protein in it. It's got fat and protein in it.

• 39:33Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 39:34Speaker 00

  And cereal and when starches, those sugars are just deconstructed industrial science projects that spike your sugar crazy. So, yeah.

• 39:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. And we am sold on our whole life. Yeah, just have a bowl of Wheaties. You're good. It's like, no, that's like, I might as well have three bowls of cereal, three bowls of sugar.

• 39:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm like, I have a confession to make. I'm a serial killer. C E A R.

• 39:54Speaker 01

  It's so good. Serial killer. Exactly. I loved it myself. And then the other thing I learned doing it was the order of like eating stuff matters. So it's like,

• 40:01Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 40:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, if you want to have some mashed potatoes, um, yeah, after you have your steak or after you have your fish, you can have some of the pasta, but just eat it in that order. I'm like, so I did that experiment.

• 40:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:12Speaker 01

  And then the final one that was incredible was, oh, yeah, walk ten minutes to your car after dinner.

• 40:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:18Speaker 01

  And it's a whole different profile. So then I made this tiny adjustment. You go to the parking lot where you I'm going to a restaurant. I don't use the valet. I saved twenty bucks, Dr. Mark. I park on the street five blocks away on purpose.

• 40:31Speaker 00

  That's great.

• 40:32Speaker 01

  Save twenty dollars. And then if I'm five blocks away, it's a half mile together. So here I go. And sometimes I'll make a loop. These are very simple things that I would never have done if I didn't actually run experiments myself. That's, I think.

• 40:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, don't eat carbs first, you know, walk after eating. It's very simple, right? Don't eat cereal, eat ice cream.

• 40:53Speaker 01

  Well, I, so let's talk about GLPs for a second. I think this is really interesting. I was listening to a podcast with my friend, Tim Ferriss, and his pal Kevin Rose, four or five years ago during COVID.

• 41:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:05Speaker 01

  Uh, and my friend, um, Kevin Rose, who did the website dig, was saying, you know, he's a biohacker. He's like, yeah, I'm using this Ozempic thing. I'm taking this pen. It's for diabetics because I want to get rid of some visceral fat, yada, yada, here it. Go to my doctor. I say, listen, I want to get on this thing. I'm literally two hundred thirteen pounds. I'm five eight and a half. Like, I was forty plus pounds overweight. And my doctor's like, I don't know what you're talking about. That's for diabetics. I'm like, yeah, can you listen to this podcast? He's like, what's a podcast? I'm like, okay, here we go again. I'm paying this guy fifty thousand a year.

• 41:32Speaker 00

  What's a bike? Yeah.

• 41:33Speaker 01

  What's a podcast? Anyway, I said, listen, if you can get me this, great. If you don't get it, I'm going to another doctor. And this is the end of the relationship. I want to do this experiment. You should want to do it, too, because this is the future. He's like, all right, whatever, Jake, I'll do it. I do it. Unbelievable. Just, and I start to intermittent fasting. Boom.

• 41:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:52Speaker 01

  I I also have a friend who is not me, who tested doing some Redditch True Tide. It was someone who is not me. Swim, my friend Swim, was not me. And I was just able to go from two thirteen to one sixty eight, you know, just very elegantly. And I feel great. I had a little muscle. What is this magic of GLPs? And then where is this going to be in another year or two? Because I had a couple of people in my life, they refused to take that little shot. There now I have three people in my life who are taking the pill. And is it advisable? Because I got a lot of friends who are part of this Austin fitness lunacy, and they're look like Adonis is from the cast of Three Hundred. And they're taking a microdose. They're taking

• 42:35Speaker 01

  a microdose. Is everybody going to be on a microdose?

• 42:38Speaker 00

  I think it's a great question. You know, I think, I think, you know, we have had really altered microbiomes and our diets are are not optimizing our microbiome. And a healthy microbiome is necessary for actually your own endogenous GLP one production because the body makes GLP one. And so we have kind of a lot of reasons why we kind of have this whole obesity epidemic. And I think GLP ones are at cool, like any other tool. They're not a panacea. They do have concerns and side effects. You know, there's about a four percent serious adverse side effect profile with these. Now, four percent doesn't sound like a lot, but if you took a hundred million people and put them on it, that's four million people. And and about seventy five percent have digestive issues. There's muscle loss.

• 43:22Speaker 00

  The people aren't focused on maintaining muscle. So I think used in the right way for the right person, probably not the person who just wants to lose like five pounds, but you know, you can, you can do it in conjunction with a doctor who focuses on nutrition, adequate protein consumption and strength training. So you don't lose muscle because that that's a big problem. If you lose muscle, then you're losing your metabolic engine. You burn less calories at the same weight. And if you gain back the weight, which most people do if they stop, then you end up in an even worse situation because you're getting back all the weight that's fat.

• 43:55Speaker 01

  Then you're skinny fat.

• 43:56Speaker 00

  You're skinny fat, yes.

• 43:57Speaker 01

  Technical term.

• 43:58Speaker 00

  Yes. All right. They're called toe feet, thin on the outside, fat on the inside. Skinny fat, yeah. And and that's not great. So I think, you know, my view is in they're prescribed, they should be prescribed with nutrition and exercise program. And in terms of microdosing, there's a lot of people doing it. There's not a lot of data on it. You don't really know the long term benefits, consequences. People are, you know, raving about it. I personally don't think it's that necessary. I think if you understand your own biology, if you understand what works and what doesn't, you know, I'm sixty six, I'm going to be sixty seven, I have ten percent body fat, I have no visceral fat, you know, I I know what to do. I don't take any of these drugs. I know how to exercise. I know how to eat well.

• 44:42Speaker 00

  Do I have have ice cream? For sure. I have ice cream and cookies and like everybody else. But they're just a they're a very small part of my diet. So I think, I think that's not to say that people like, you know, who struggle and and you've been one of those people who, you know, they're in American culture, who've eaten all the shitty processed food, who, you know, get stuck. These drugs can be a lifesaver. And I.

• 45:05Speaker 01

  That was the thing I I figured out from it is that like I gained two or three pounds a year. I used to be a marathon runner. I was rail fan. I was one hundred and sixty two, one hundred and sixty three pounds, running marathons. And then just got married, had kids, had two, three pounds a year. All of a sudden, I look up, I'm like, well, how am I forty five pounds overweight? It's like, and then I looked at my Weathing scale, and it was literally like every year, two or three pounds. And then you wake up one day and you're like, wow, everything hurts. So let's go to the the working out part of this. Um, you know, I have been, you know, I listen to all your podcasts and everything. This rucking thing is really interesting. I got the weight vest. I started rucking around my ranch here out in the hill country. And it's a game changer of all game changers.

• 45:46Speaker 01

  Then I had the farmer's walk to it. And I don't like workout with weights. I don't do serious cardio anymore. I just walk a mile or two in a weight vest, twenty, thirty pounds.

• 45:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:56Speaker 01

  And then I do a half mile, uh, alternating days or whatever, with anywhere from ten to twenty pounds on each arm, walk a half mile, my heart rate goes crazy, and I sleep like a baby. Talk to me about this. Like, what is the optimal working out that we figured out from the science? Because I know running, my knees hurt at this age from so many marathons. What's optimal for humans? And is it rucking and this like farmer, load on, walking through the woods? What's optimal?

• 46:26Speaker 00

  Yes, I mean, weight, weight, uh, uh, resistance to your body weight is important. And I whether whatever it's with the trucking or carrying weights or doing bands or doing weights or doing kettlebells, whatever it is, muscle is the currency of longevity. If you want to live a long, healthy life, you need muscle because it is not just there moving your skeleton around. It's the metabolic sink for your body. In other words, when you eat and you move, you're most of it's going to your muscles do that. And and it's basically soaking up all the glucose and doing all the things you need to do. And if your muscles inefficient, if you actually have a, you know, a ribeye instead of or a wagyu ribeye instead of like a filet mignon, which is what a lot of people end up having,

• 47:09Speaker 00

  they get marbled fat, it doesn't function well. And it creates inflammation, it creates heart disease, creates diabetes, creates cancer risk, dementia risk. And so so strength training is really important. And I think it doesn't have to be a lot. It can be twenty minutes, three times a week. Uh, but you want to do all the major muscle groups. And then, you know, walking is, if people don't do anything, walking is great. And if you want to do more, great. Carrying, you know, carrying a weight vest is great also because that that puts extra strain on your body, helps with, um, you know, bone density and metabolic health. So there's a lot of ways to do it. You just do what you like. I I mean, I like to ride my bikes. I'm going to go for a bike ride after this. And I enjoy being in the country. Um, you know, I I do work out with bands when I'm traveling and I can't get jam, I'll go to the gym. But I'm pretty consistent about it. And I can

• 47:53Speaker 00

  tell you, it's really transformed my life. And as you're getting older, you know, losing muscle is what causes frailty, disability, dysfunction, and then the sort of a downward spiral. So I think, um, you know, I plan.

• 48:08Speaker 01

  In the fifties and sixties, you should be trying to add a little bit of muscle to the frame and make the muscles strong so that it doesn't atrophy too much.

• 48:15Speaker 00

  I mean, I'll send you a picture of me and in my forties and then me now. I look, it's kind of distorted because on my forties, I was skinny. I was a runner, I bike, but I didn't do any strength training. And now I started doing strength training when I'm fifty nine. And my body's completely transformed. Uh, I mean, I don't look like the Hulk. I'm still a tall, thin guy.

• 48:33Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, ten percent body fat, pretty, you're getting close to Michael Jordan level there. Um, all right, as we wrap, um, you, it's your choice here. Um, I want to talk about this, uh, the massive amount of what I believe is over diagnosis of mental illness, and then people using all kinds of SSRIs and, you know, anxiety medications. And I, you know, whether it's young kids or just I'm Gen X, so we were the first Prozac generation. I just have a lot of friends who've been on these things for far too long. They're taking speed, AKA Adderall.

• 49:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:06Speaker 01

  Uh, and they think it's a productivity thing. And then I have some of them come to me and they're like, you know what? After twenty years of doing this, it's the biggest mistake of my life. I've lost a decade. They go on Kwonopin, they're on SSRIs. And it went from being like, I'm having a tough time in life to being. This is my standard way I'm going to manage my brain chemistry.

• 49:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:28Speaker 01

  And, you know, friends of mine would, on two or three of them, I just watch them lose a decade. It's like tragic. And then with the kids, they want to put like every kid on speed, riddle and this, that, because they are behind in math. And I'm like, who cares?

• 49:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:44Speaker 01

  The, the, the L L M in the sky is going to do all the math. They'll solve every math problem in the world.

• 49:48Speaker 00

  Like, yeah.

• 49:49Speaker 01

  Why are we scrambling people's brains? What's your take on the, the over prescribing of this stuff? The, and then everybody's got a mental disorder.

• 49:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:57Speaker 01

  There can't possibly be this many people who are on the spectrum.

• 50:01Speaker 00

  We've met, we've met, we've met. No, no, you're not crazy. We've medicalized psychiatry. I mean, it's just, I, I think, you know, we do have a mental health crisis in America, and I think it's not, uh, well understood by traditional psychiatry, which likes to label people and then give them drugs for those labels, whether it's depression or A D D or O C D or whatever. The truth is that, and I, and I, I think function is highlighting this because there, there's a lot of biology that's underneath problems with mental health. And I literally this morning, I just was reviewing a, a, a patient's results and who'd done function. And they, they had low omega threes, they had low vitamin D, they had low B vitamins, based on a homocysteine test, which we do. They had insulin resistance.

• 50:46Speaker 00

  All of these things cause psychiatric symptoms, whether it's depression or anxiety or low magnesium can do that. And so there are biomarkers of mental health and there are biological causes. Uh, and they're now, there's now a whole school of, um, nutritional psychiatry at Harvard, metabolic psychiatry at Stanford. There's a lot of research going on in this. They're just doing nutritional interventions. Our ultra-processed diet is driving a huge mental health crisis. And there's a lot of data on this. This is well established in the scientific literature. And so I think, you know, um, we are, we are not treating the, the, the cause, we're treating the symptom. Um, and I, I wrote about, this is one of my books, I was researching, you know, kids and all these mental health issues.

• 51:29Speaker 00

  And, and I've seen a lot of these in my practice and you, when you, when you get them healthy, they, these things go away. But in this one study, they looked at, uh, people in detention centers and kids who are violent and aggressive, and they were able to give them whole real food and get rid of the crap. And the violent crime went down by 97% in the, the juvenile detention center.

• 51:47Speaker 01

  Amazing.

• 51:47Speaker 00

  The use of restraints went down 75% and suicide went down 100% in these teenage boys, which is the number, uh, third leading cause of death in that age group. So food plays a huge role and, and people aren't looking. So I think, you know, we do over prescribe psychiatric drugs. We are medicalizing things. We're not dealing with the causes. And I think, you know, company like Function Health is giving people access to data that allows actually to see these things and treat them. And I think that's, that's important.

• 52:13Speaker 01

  I see, I always thought Tom Cruise was right. When he started ranting about this and he's like, you know, diet, exercise, like, um, and that, you know, and he, and he, it's basically his rant is what you just said to a certain extent. And I was like, wow, how, how did he figure this out before anybody else? Like, and this psychiatry movement and the talk therapy movement, all stuff. Okay, perhaps well intentioned and I'm sure there's great practitioners and everything, but they send people down this path of like, just take a pill.

• 52:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:42Speaker 01

  And it's like, if you exercise, if you have anxiety and you go socialize and exercise and you meditate, and I, I do this with my kids. Say, if you're feeling blue or something's not right, have you, your diet, your exercise, your sleep, your meditation and your socialization. Those are the big five.

• 53:02Speaker 00

  A hundred percent.

• 53:02Speaker 01

  And I said, these are the five I work on, because sometimes I feel blue or I feel anxious or like depressed and I had a great life. And I'm like, did I go have dinner with my friends? Have I meditated? Have I, what's my sleep like? What's my diet? When's the last time I exercised? Whenever I'm feeling blue, I have a 1.5 out of 5 score.

• 53:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 53:19Speaker 01

  When I feel great, I've got a four or, you know, three, four or five out of five.

• 53:23Speaker 00

  That's right. As you're right. I mean, it is, it is really, uh, important that people understand that a lot of psychiatric problems can be treated with lifestyle and with foundational things that you talk about. And the data's there, the data that about nutrition, about exercise, about meditation, about, you know, just overall nutritional status. So I think, I think you're, you're hitting the nail on the head. And I, I think for me, this is, this has been a big passion of mine is, is how do we, how do we re-think, reframe and rethink about mental health in this country? Because what we're doing is terrible.

• 53:53Speaker 01

  I mean, we just, it's reframing it. Like if you, if you had a dog and the dog was not behaving well, and you say, oh, on the days when the dog goes for a long walk, it's such a delightful dog. And the days when it's cooped up inside, it's like biting people.

• 54:06Speaker 00

  Right.

• 54:07Speaker 01

  So how different are we?

• 54:09Speaker 00

  Not that.

• 54:09Speaker 01

  Let's end on psychedelics. Let's end on this incredible research. We're starting to see PTSD, incurable depression, or supposedly incurable depression. At Stanford, I have a friend who's doing incredible work, um, uh, uh, in, um, uh, ketamine drips, specifically for people with like incurable cancer, I think curable depression, it's very severe. And, and they will have two weeks of like, uh, incred, these are people who would, you know, 20 years depressed, and then they have two amazing weeks or six months. Nobody knows. Like it's like a, it could go either way. Um, and then Ibogaine and all these stories of people with PTSD coming back from wars. They take Ibogaine, they tell me, I have a couple of friends who did it. They said, oh, my, my entire hard drive got refragmented and

• 54:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 54:54Speaker 01

  I'm, for some reason, I'm not thinking about these horrible things that I witnessed in my life or I experienced. But then on the other side, a lot of biohackers with, you know, ketamine prescriptions of unknown origin.

• 55:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's not good.

• 55:08Speaker 01

  And, and I'm like a little had a couple of friends and I'm like, hey, you're taking ketamine on a Tuesday while watching Netflix and you're

• 55:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 55:16Speaker 01

  Like, why?

• 55:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 55:17Speaker 01

  Like, what is this about? And it's like, I'm bored. And I'm like, you're bored and you're scrambling your brain for no reason. Like, so, so how, how do you think the United States should look at that class of compounds? And then what's the right modality if people were interested in, you know, understanding or learning more about them? And then what's the wrong way?

• 55:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, that's definitely not a function health question. And we don't, and function health, we don't really.

• 55:45Speaker 01

  But you've talked about it on your pod.

• 55:46Speaker 00

  But I, but I, but, you know, from the, from, as a doctor, uh, talking about this, what I would say is that we're undergoing a phenomenal revolution in psychiatry that's really two-pronged. One is this nutritional metabolic psychiatry and the other is psychedelic psychiatry. And I think, you know, we need more data, we need more investment. And I think, God, you know, Texas is putting out a bunch of money, the U S government is putting out a bunch of money. I think this is an all good thing. And the data, early data is promising around psilocybin, around MDMA, around Ibogaine. We just need more data. And it's not ready for prime time yet. It's not ready for expansion to the population as a whole. I think there are people doing it underground, but I think it really should be done carefully, rigorously and scientifically.

• 56:26Speaker 00

  And I think we will see that these compounds probably are doing things that involve repair of the brain, the neuroplasticity. You know, I've seen reports of, you know, MRI scans improving from brain trauma with Ibogaine, for example. These are doing some really remarkable things that are just, not just symptomatic treatment, they're literally, like you said, almost refragging or rewriting the software code in your brain. And, and I think it's really exciting because nothing like this has come up in psychiatry ever. So.

• 56:54Speaker 01

  I mean, and if given the choice, you know, if we as a society are going to look at this, you know, you have people who are suffering and they take the route of opioids. And man, the, the doctor class had a big part in that, right? Like, you just take a higher dosage of Percocet or, or OxyContin. Like they just seem to be obsessed with that pain relief. Um, and then people do street drugs, fentanyl, whatever, they try to like fix whatever's wrong with them. And then you have this like middle part SSRIs and anti-anxiety and let's hop you up. And then you have this third option, I, it, or these third and fourth option, your health, your diet, and then psychedelics. Like, these two seem to be the last two, the place where we can really think as a society

• 57:37Speaker 01

  of investing in research and, and really, you know, looking at that as potential modellers. This is my personal feeling.

• 57:44Speaker 00

  No, I agree. I think, I think we're, we're in this, we're in a, quite an exciting era. I think medicine's changing as a whole. I think function is at the forefront of that. I think psychiatry is changing. And I think it's, it's a good, it's a good moment. I think it's a good moment.

• 57:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. Perfect, uh, spot for us to end. You got to go on your bike ride and your time is valuable. Functionhealth.com, everybody. Functionhealth.com. Go to functionhealth.com, sign up. Get your blood work done and, uh, yeah, get, get, get it dialed in. Take control of your health. There you go, folks. An hour with Dr. Mark Hyman. I got a couple of personal questions and I'm good. Got my free consultation with my new concierge doctor.

• 58:18Speaker 00

  There you go.

• 58:20Speaker 01

  I do have them all out here. What should I do? You know, my shoulder, I did a B P C from 157 over here. All right, everybody, we'll see you next time.

• 58:27Speaker 00

  All right.