Dr. Mark Hyman: The Secret to Aging Backwards and Improving Your Health | Mental Health | YAPClassic

Dr. Mark Hyman’s health broke down in his thirties when chronic fatigue syndrome and heavy metal toxicity left him struggling to function. Conventional medicine, the very system he was trained in, had no real answers for him. Forced to search deeper, he discovered functional medicine, used it for self-healing, and later reversed his biological age by more than two decades. In this episode, Dr. Mark shares how entrepreneurs can take control of their health, slow aging, and use small daily habits to boost performance and live a longer, more fulfilling life. In this episode, Hala and Dr. Mark will discuss: (00:00) Introduction (01:45) The Science of Healthy Aging and Longevity (07:09) How Functional Medicine Optimizes Health (12:51) Biohacking vs. Functional Medicine Science (15:34) How to Reverse Biological Aging (20:12) The Role of Diet, Sleep, and Toxins in Aging (28:15) Living Longer With Purpose and Meaning (30:19) Navigating Modern Food Challenges (36:08) Why Your Social Circle Matters for Longevity (38:45) Diet and Exercise for Healthy Aging (41:39) Practical Wellness Strategies for Entrepreneurs Dr. Mark Hyman is a practicing family physician, bestselling author, educator, and advocate in the field of functional medicine. He is the co-founder and Chief Medical Officer of Function Health, a personalized health platform that helps people understand and optimize their biomarkers. Dr. Mark is also the founder of the UltraWellness Center and the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine. Through his work, he teaches people how to address the root causes of disease and build lasting wellness. Sponsored By: Indeed - Get a $75 sponsored job credit to boost your job's visibility at Indeed.com/profiting Shopify - Start your $1/month trial at Shopify.com/profiting. Quo - Run your business communications the smart way. Try Quo for free, plus get 20% off your first 6 months when you go to quo.com/profiting Remitly - Transfer money internationally across 100+ currencies with no hidden fees. Download the Remitly app or visit remitly.com to get started. Use code BUSINESS to get a $100 bonus after you send $300 or more. New customers only. Prolon - Reset your body with Prolon’s five-day plant-based program. Go to ProlonLife.com/PROFITING for 15% off sitewide plus a $40 bonus gift when you subscribe to their 5-Day Program. Northwest Registered Agent - Get a complete business identity with Northwest. Visit northwestregisteredagent.com/YAPFree and start using free resources to build something amazing. Resources Mentioned: Dr. Mark’s Website: drhyman.com Dr. Mark’s Book, Young Forever: bit.ly/YoungForeverBook Dr. Mark’s Podcast, The Dr. Hyman Show: bit.ly/DrHymanShow Active Deals - youngandprofiting.com/deals Key YAP Links Reviews - ratethispodcast.com/yap YouTube - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting Newsletter - youngandprofiting.co/newsletter LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ Social + Podcast Services: yapmedia.com Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com/episodes-new Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurship Podcast, Business, Business Podcast, Self Improvement, Self-Improvement, Personal Development, Starting a Business, Strategy, Investing, Sales, Selling, Psychology, Productivity, Entrepreneurs, AI, Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Marketing, Negotiation, Money, Finance, Side Hustle, Startup, Mental Health, Career, Leadership, Mindset, Health, Growth Mindset, Motivation, Manifestation, Brain Health, Life Balance, Positivity, Happiness

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

• 0:00Hala Taha?

  Today's episode is sponsored in part by Northwest Registered Agent, Whatnot, Mod, and AG1. Northwest Registered Agent gives you the tools and guidance to build a complete business identity. Start using free resources at northwestregisteredagent.com/ yapfree. Whatnot helps sellers grow through live shopping, community, and real-time connections with buyers. Search Whatnot, W-H-A-T-N-O-T, in the App Store, download, and you can start selling right away. Mod connects qualifying patients with licensed medical providers for modafinil to support sustained energy, focus, and alertness throughout the day. Visit mod.com for a free consultation and get 10% off your first order plus free shipping with promo code PROFITING.

• 0:45Hala Taha?

  See their website for important safety information. AG1 Next Gen supports your nutritional foundation with vitamins, minerals, pre- and probiotics, and superfoods. Go to drinkag1.com/profitting and get a free immune support bundle with your first subscription order. As always, you can find all of our incredible deals in the show notes or at youngandprofiting.com/deals. You want to live to be 120 years old. Why do you actually want to live so long?

• 1:13Speaker 01

  I love life. What is the definition of health? It's not the absence of disease. It's something else. How do we unlock the keys to optimal biological performance? I've spent the 40 years studying the science of function of the body. Frailty is not a normal consequence of aging. It's a consequence, a phenomenon that happens as we get older if we don't do something about it. We have dysregulated sleep schedules, we have tremendous amounts of stress, we eat crappy food, we don't exercise enough. There's all these things that we're doing to impede our ability to actually live a vibrant, long, healthy life.

• 1:44Hala Taha?

  What did you do to reverse your age 20 years?

• 1:47Speaker 01

  I have been eating.

• 1:49Hala Taha?

  Let's say they gave you a 35-year-old, they're stressed, exhausted, running on coffee. If you had a year to transform their health and performance, what are the things that you would change?

• 2:00Speaker 01

  I would immediately have them get...

• 2:03Hala Taha?

  Yeah fam, what if aging wasn't something that just happened to you, but something you could actually control? What if the fatigue, the brain fog, the chronic conditions we've been told are just part of getting older, are actually preventable? That's exactly what today's guest is here to talk about. Dr. Mark Hyman is a renowned functional medicine physician, bestselling author, and one of the leading voices in the science of longevity. His mission is simple: help people not just live longer, but better. In this conversation, Mark is going to share some science-backed insights to help you improve your health, extend your lifespan, and defy aging. There's some serious gems in this one, so tune in and take notes. I'm so excited for this conversation, and there's so much to talk about, but I just want to jump in and get started.

• 2:46Hala Taha?

  So, I was reading your book, I was researching you, and I found out that you want to live to be 120 years old.

• 2:53Speaker 01

  Oh, if I can do everything I love to do, yes. If I can, no.

• 2:56Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 2:57Speaker 01

  If I'm still riding my bike at 119, I'll keep going.

• 3:02Hala Taha?

  That would be amazing. I also interviewed Dave Asprey a few times, and he tells me he wants to live to be 180 years old. So there's this trend of biohackers like you guys that want to live to be 120, 180 years old.

• 3:15Speaker 01

  I would just say, I'm not a biohacker, I'm a functional medicine physician, and so I use deep science, and it's not... I mean, some of the tools are similar, but it's... functional medicine is really the ultimate biohacker.

• 3:25Hala Taha?

  Yes, yes, and we're going to talk all about functional medicine, and I'm going to try to help my listeners understand what that is if they're not familiar. But you guys are on a quest to live as long as you can, right? So that's the two things that you guys have in common. Maybe it's not biohacking. But when I think about that, I think about frail, old, bedridden.

• 3:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:46Hala Taha?

  I don't, you know, really want to live to be 120 years old, at least by today's standards. So I want to understand, when you imagine yourself at 120 years old, what do you actually imagine yourself being capable to do? What does 120-year-old and thriving look like?

• 4:04Speaker 01

  I mean, it means being able to do whatever you'd love to do. If it's sitting there rocking Jeremy to book, it's that. If it's hiking up the mountain, it's that. If it's making love with your partner, then it's that. So for me, it's really being able to get up in the morning and do what you love to do and not be encumbered by some of the conditions that are mostly preventable that we seem to think of as normal of parts of aging. They're not really. And what's happening on the science is quite exciting. We were seeing a lot of research, for example, there's a Washington Post article recently about the aminox factors, which is basically a scientific discovery that won the Nobel Prize. It allows you to reprogram your genes back to be younger you. It's called epigenetic reprogramming, and it's being researched by the Altos Lab, the Chirbizos, and also by Sam Alman's lab.

• 4:46Speaker 01

  So there's a lot of really amazing research going on in this right now in longevity space. That's going to be a unlock. For most of us, I think we can expect to get to our 90s or be 100, you know, vigorous and good health if we know what to do to take care of our bodies. And I saw this all over the place. Man, I was in Sardinia, and I was in Egeria, and I just saw people who are like really old and really thriving. And you know, this woman was like 87 years old, and she was like running up and down the side of this mountain. I couldn't keep up with her. And she was tending to her giant gardens and farm and animals and trees. And it was quite, it's quite amazing to see. So I think if we, if we understand the things that impede our health, we can remove those. And we understand the things that enhance our health, we can add those. And it's really not that hard.

• 5:31Speaker 01

  It's just knowing what to do.

• 5:33Hala Taha?

  Yeah. And I hope we can unpack some of that in this interview today. So I was listening to your audiobook, Young Forever. It was really entertaining. And you were talking about how you went to Sardinia and went to the Blue Zones. But talk to us about what actually sparked your interest in longevity?

• 5:50Speaker 01

  Well, I've always been interested in the science of optimization in terms of how we, how we function. I mean, whether it's the word functional medicine, or the company I co-founded, Function Health. The the core value is how do we unlock how to function at your best and how to unlock the keys to optimal biological performance? And and it's it's really something that we're now only discovering. No one's really asked the question in medicine before. What is the definition of health? It's not the absence of disease. It's something else. And if you go to your doctor, you feel good, say, I want to feel better. I want to optimize my health. They don't know what to do. Like, if you have symptoms, great. If you have a disease, they'll give you a drug. But do they understand the science of creating health?

• 6:35Speaker 01

  No. That's what I've spent my life studying after medical school. The science of creating health. And it's something we now know how to do. And that's what's so exciting. We know we know the basic biological systems that go right. And in the field of longevity, the science is really getting exciting because we're talking about these concepts called the hallmarks of aging. The hallmarks of aging are these fundamental biological things that go wrong or break down as we get older that are underlying all disease. It's like the roots or the trunk and all the branches and the leaves are all the diseases and all the specialties. So it is heart disease or cancer, diabetes or Alzheimer's or whatever it is, autism, depression, they share common roots. And and there are only really a few things that that impede health. You have to identify what those are.

• 7:18Speaker 01

  There are toxins, there are allergens, there's microbes that change your microbiome, which is your physical or or psychological stress and poor diet, which most of us eat. And then there's a few things our bodies need to thrive. You need to get rid of the bad stuff and put in the good stuff. And then there's ways to even sort of accelerating the optimization of things. For example, like how do you optimize your mitochondria? How do you optimize your microbiome? How do you optimize your neurotransmitter function? How do you optimize your immune system? These are things that we now know how to do. You say to your doctor, I want to optimize my mitochondria and figure out how to optimize my immune system. And and they're not going to know what to do. How do I optimize my microbiome? Take a probiotic, you know, E fiber. You know, they're not going to really understand because it's not what they do. And I've spent the 40 years studying the function of the body. And and that's really what what we kind of have come to in terms of understanding how

• 8:03Speaker 01

  to create these shifts in our biology that create abundant and vibrant health and that don't provide a breeding ground for disease.

• 8:11Hala Taha?

  So with traditional Listen, really, they're focused on like a specialty, right? They don't treat the whole body holistically. So can you give us an example of like, okay, I go to the doctor and I'm like, hey,

• 8:21Speaker 01

  I'll give you an example. I'll just tell you a patient, an actual patient I had, I'm not going to use her name, but she was a business coach by 50 years old. She was overweight, she had prediabetes, she had depression, she had migraines, she had reflux, she had irritable bowel, bloating. She had a terrible story, she had arthritis, which is this horrible condition where you get psoriasis on your skin, the skin and body, and you also get arthritis, which is debilitating. So she was on a drug for that that cost $50,000. She was seen by the best docs, one of the best healthcare centers in the world. And she was getting the best GI treatment for reflux, the best treatment for irritable bowel, the best treatment for depression, quoted the best, I mean, the best traditional view, the best treatment for migraines, the best treatment for her prediabetes, the best treatment for psoriatic arthritis.

• 9:03Speaker 01

  And she was seeing a doctor for every inch of her, and no one said, what is linking all these problems together? For her, it was inflammation. She had tremendous amounts of inflammation that were driving all of these conditions. Now, we know that depression is inflammation, right? We know that if your gut's upset, it's inflammation. We know that obviously if you have inflamed skin and arthritis, that's inflammation. So we know that diabetes is inflammation, or prediabetes, or obesity is inflammation. So I said to myself, well, what are the root causes for her? You know, she was having so many gut issues that I believe those are the cause. She had severe bloating, she had all these history of taking antibiotics, the steroids for various things, like for her autoimmune condition. And I said, why don't we just do something really simple? Rather than taking all these drugs, you can continue to take them.

• 9:47Speaker 01

  But in the meantime, let's just try you on a Whole Foods low sugar, low starch diet, which removes the common inflammatory triggers. And for my practice, for people who have autoimmune disease, getting rid of grains and beans, dairy, gluten, which is part of the grains, sugar, processed food, alcohol, really makes a difference. So I said, put her on that diet. I said, let's kind of reset your gut. I gave her an antibiotic and an antifungal to reset her gut. And then I gave her probiotics and things to rebuild her gut. And I gave her, I think, vitamin D and some fish oil, not a lot of stuff. And six weeks later, she comes back, she says, Dr. Hyman, I got off all my drugs. I'm like, wait, I didn't tell you to do that. She said, no, no, I just was feeling so good. I stopped everything. And she had no more static arthritis, her skin cleared up, she had no more migraines,

• 10:32Speaker 01

  she had no more depression, she lost 20 pounds, her prediabetes was gone, her reflux was gone, her irritable bowel was gone. And so I just treated the root cause, not the symptoms. And, and this is, this inflammation is a common trigger for most chronic diseases. And for her, it was, it was, you know, for me, after seeing this for, you know, 30, 40 years of patients like this, I can see it, you know, when I, when they walk in, I know that was going on. And, and it's not that hard to treat, but she was getting all these symptom suppression treatments that weren't really working. They were marginally working, they were keeping her functioning, sort of, but they didn't really deal with the problem. So functional medicine is about really understanding the body as a network, as a system, as a system of systems that you have to keep optimized in order to live well. And they map almost entirely perfectly across the hallmarks of aging the scientists ever

• 11:17Speaker 01

  discovering. So when your mitochondria don't work, when your detox system doesn't work, when you have no immune imbalances, or hormone imbalances, or neurotransmitter balances, or your guts off, these are things that we know, actually know how to treat. Your mitochondria aren't working. These are the things we know how to treat with functional medicine.

• 11:34Hala Taha?

  And talk to us about how your company function services these types of problems.

• 11:39Speaker 01

  What we've done with function is really create the first health platform that allows people to fully access their own data. Now, people are wearing Oura rings, they're wearing Apple watches, they're wearing glucose monitors, that's all great, that's just a few data points. But what if you could unlock all of your biology? What if you could know all of your biomarkers and your metabolome and your microbiome and your genome, imaging, your wearables and your medical history and your EMR, your medical records, all gets into a platform that is personalized, personalized to you and allows you to identify where the imbalances are, where the dysfunctions are, and issue deep insights and content based on machine learning AI to help you actually optimize your health for you. Because no two people are alike, and everybody's different.

• 12:22Speaker 01

  And if we try to treat to the mean, we often miss the mark. And this is what medicine does, it treats to the mean. There's no average person, right? Everybody's different and you know, the studies work by something called randomized controlled no blind trials, which means control means you you basically have two populations that are as identical to each other as possible. So you want to be a 70 kilogram white male from Kansas and you get 100 of those people and you put 51 group and 15 other group and you give them a drug. You see what happens at the other side. That's how medicine operates. That that 70 kilogram white male is not like 90% of us out there. Not you, it's not me. And and so how do we, how do we move towards where medicine is going, which is personalization? We call precision medicine, personalized medicine, whatever you want to call it.

• 13:07Speaker 01

  It's where we're going. And so function health is the first platform that is able to actually do this for you in an amazing way that helps people revolutionize their health. And it and we just started, honestly, this is a startup and we didn't realize how much success we were going to have. And so, you know, we have almost 150,000 members, we have, you know, millions, tens of millions of data points on people. We're seeing all kinds of trends in the data. We see that people actually, you know, when they get their first test and then now we've been going two years, we can see that when they follow up and do the follow up testing, that their biomarkers get better, their blood sugar gets better, their cholesterol gets better, their inflammation gets better, their vitamin D gets better, whatever, whatever is off. And we give them a deep dive into what's going on with their biology, not just from a traditional perspective, traditional sort of Western medical perspective, but also this

• 13:53Speaker 01

  emerging field of systems network and medicine, which is what functional medicine has been doing, but now the rest of the science is catching up, which is very, very exciting to me.

• 14:04Hala Taha?

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• 14:48Hala Taha?

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• 15:13Hala Taha?

  What's up, Yap gang? I recently had Gary Vee on the podcast and he told me something that really stuck with me. If you've got sales DNA, you've got to be paying attention to live selling, because it's one of the biggest opportunities right now online. And that really got me curious, so I checked out an app that he told me about called Whatnot. I jumped into a live show and I instantly got it. The seller was showing products in real time, answering questions in the chat, and building a real relationship with the buyers. It didn't feel like boring shopping. It felt like a community. Whatnot is the largest live shopping marketplace in the country. And for entrepreneurs, the results are really hard to ignore. Sellers on Whatnot can sell up to 10 times more than traditional marketplaces. And the number of sellers making over a million dollars a year on the platform has doubled.

• 15:58Hala Taha?

  So if you've got products to sell and you're looking for a new way to reach customers, search Whatnot, W-H-A-T-N-O-T, in the App Store. Download it and you can start selling right away. That's Whatnot in the App Store.

• 16:12Hala Taha?

  What's up, Yap fam? You guys know we love reading on this show, so I'm always excited when I find a book I genuinely think is worth sharing. Life at the Speed of Play: Launch Products People Love by Mark Pincus is one of those books. Mark is a legendary Silicon Valley entrepreneur and investor. And this fast-paced 170-page book is his playbook for testing ideas quickly, navigating uncertainty, and figuring out what's actually worth pursuing. One of my favorite concepts is what he calls the abyss. Those moments when you feel stuck or unsure of what's next. Instead of fearing uncertainty, He shows you how to use it as a tool for discovery. Right now, Mark is doing a buy one, get one offer for Yap listeners.

• 16:56Hala Taha?

  Go to getmarksbook.com/ yap, buy one copy for $32 and get a second copy free. So you can keep one for yourself and give the second to a friend, future co-founder, or someone who needs a little push. My first question to you, I mentioned biohacking and you kind of like, got like a little offended when I, when I, when I tried to compare what you were doing with biohacking. But when I hear you talking about it and you're talking about personalization and figuring out like, you know, your biological age, to me, that's, you know, I've been doing this podcast for six years and had a lot of people on the show and it sounds a lot like biohacking. So, so what's the difference?

• 17:31Speaker 01

  Well, I think biohacking tends to be around things like, you know, hot and cold plunges, hypovole chambers, red light therapy, all these devices and tools and things. Optimized your health, which are fine, they're, they're, they work and they're mediated by biological processes. And I use those. However, if someone comes in like that woman that I just described to you, no biohacker in the world is going to fix her because they don't understand the science around functional medicine. Now, if they're a trained practitioner, fine, they'll, they'll figure it out. Or hopefully they'll figure it out. But, but when you, when you, when you just use these modalities without trying to understand what the underlying root cause is, you're, you're, it's another systematic treatment. You might feel better for a little bit. You go on a sauna, you go on a cold plunge, you feel good.

• 18:14Speaker 01

  But then what? You know, you still have your arthritis, you still have your autoimmune disease, you still have your migraines, you still have whatever you got. And no one's telling you how to figure out the root of that. So I'm not, I'm not opposed to it. And Dave's a good friend and I love Dave Asprey. And, you know, we, we, we hang out and talk all the time and I learned from him. And there's other, there's all kinds of great tools that I personally use and have. I'm just saying that this functional medicine is, is sort of the OG biohacking in a sense, because it's really about understanding a much deeper level, what's going on biologically, biochemically, genetically, you know, with your microbiome and ways that I think, you know, most people just, it's, it's a lot to take in, you know, and the problem is, you know, there's 37 billion, billion chemical reactions in your body every second. Nobody can understand all that. And you have tens of thousands of metabolites in your blood and chemicals.

• 18:59Speaker 01

  You know, we do nineteen on a regular panel with Function Health. We do four ninety-nine, which is, you know, fifteen thousand dollars for the test for less than five hundred bucks. And you get over a hundred head biomarkers and you can add on other things as well to go deeper dives into whether you're exposed to chemicals, whether you're at Alzheimer's risk, whether you're having immune issues. I mean, so when you have Lyme disease, we we provide you a really deep, robust platform where you where you get to be driving the bus. You don't have to go to a doctor. You don't have to ask for permission. You don't have to beg for the requisition. You don't have to go to the, you know, trying to find a lab that will order you to get, you know, your insurance to pay for it. I mean, I I have insurance. I go to the lab and I I my doctor ordered some stuff that I wanted to do. And it was outside of function. And it's like, well, it'll pay for this test, but not this test and this test, not this test.

• 19:41Speaker 01

  You want to be charged for that. You'll be charged. I'm like, oh, you know, it's like, that's what Function solves all of that. And you have this beautiful integrated dashboard where you have your data forever and you track it over time. You get an app which helps give you direct feedback and it's it's a very, very integrated experience into your life.

• 19:57Hala Taha?

  Yeah, and I feel like it's really needed because to your point, the rest of the medical world is kind of stuck in this traditional process that really isn't working. And the other thing is that's not working is actually treating aging's symptoms and not the root cause. And one of the other big principles that you talk about is treating aging like an actual disease. So why is that important?

• 20:16Speaker 01

  Well, I think you come to sort of accept that as you get older, you have cancer, you get heart disease, you get diabetes, you lose muscle, your brain function declines, you lose your ability to do things. These are not normal consequence of aging. Frailty is not a normal consequence of aging. It's it's a consequence of phenomena that happens as we get older if we don't do something about it. And and, you know, you all of us have seen those, you know, ninety year old ladies doing like gymnastics and a hundred, like, the the hundred year old people running the hundred yard dash, you know, it's kind of crazy stuff like that, right? And and so what what is it about those people? Well, they they have understood by accident or by studying

• 20:56Speaker 01

  that there are certain behaviors that foster optimal health. It's eating whole foods, unprocessed diet, it's low sugar and low starch and full of phytochemicals and fiber and got it with amounts of protein, especially more protein. And the animal protein as you get older, because it's harder to assimilate and build. You need to make sure you exercise and do strength training and you need flexibility. You need cardiovascular training and stability training. They understand you need good sleep. They understand they have managed their stress and their own emotional regulation. And they also have deep social connections and relationships that foster a sense of belonging, which all are ingredients for optimal health. And when you look at people like in the blue zones, that's basically what they have. It's not that they were vegans or not vegan.

• 21:37Speaker 01

  It was that they had these other factors and that they were profoundly impacted just by default by these situations that they found themselves born into, which we totally in the West don't have. Like we are, we're the opposite. We have dysregional sleep schedules. We have tremendous amounts of stress. We eat crappy food. You know, we don't exercise enough. We, you know, we got my, my R ring told me I didn't exercise enough yesterday. I was a busy day. So, you know, there's, there's, there's all these things that we're, we're doing to impede our ability to actually live a vibrant, long, healthy life.

• 22:07Hala Taha?

  Well, you seem to be doing a good job because your biological age is forty three, but you're in your sixties, is that right?

• 22:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I got my biological age done when I was sixty two and I was forty three. Then I implemented more of the things that I learned and some, you know, some other strategies. And I went, I got two years older at sixty four and I redid my biological age when I was thirty nine. So I went, even though I got two years older chronologically, I got four years younger biologically. So that's, that's the power we have. And, and this is what we call epigenetic reprogramming. Now, I mentioned earlier the aminos factors and so forth. These are, these are sort of part of the sky things that have to be tested in humans and make sure they're safe and effective. But right now, I mean, even with what we know, by optimizing and tweaking, you can actually still reverse your epigenetic biological age at any point in your life.

• 22:59Speaker 01

  And you can, it's, it's, it can go backwards or forwards. You know, like if you kind of go on a bender or whatever, you don't sleep and you party and you eat crappy food, you'll get older biologically and then you can change that and reprogram and go back. I wouldn't recommend this.

• 23:12Hala Taha?

  Give us like concrete things, like what did you do to reverse your age twenty years?

• 23:18Speaker 01

  Well, I've been doing this my whole life. So it wasn't like I was sixty four and then I biologically and then I in five years I reversed that to forty three. So, okay, I I have been eating whole foods my whole life. I've been not eating processed foods. I don't remember last time I had a Zeta. I mean, I probably was a kid. I exercised my entire life for the last fifty years. I have, you know, make sure I prioritize community connection, sleep and and and manage stress and and all those things play a role. And then I've done things to optimize my microbiome, my mitochondria, my immune system, and those all really help. So all those things kind of just kind of nudge you back into healthier state. And there's some supplements and things that I've taken, I think,

• 24:00Speaker 01

  have made a difference. I've taken Urolithin A, I take amino acids that help these assimilated. I also take something that's called N M N, which is a precursor of N A D that helps also revitalize your cells. So I do, I do a number of different things that I think are important from a supplement perspective, but I, you know, I, I think most of it's, you know, that's like the ten percent. It's like the rest of it is the eighty to ninety percent.

• 24:26Hala Taha?

  And that's what if we were to, you know, use function, the platform, it would help us figure out like, okay, what's our biological age and like, these are the things you need to do really to function and to help. That's what it is.

• 24:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, we do a calculation based on your biomarkers of what your biological age is based on scientific data that shows your, you know, certain blood biomarkers correlate with your epigenetic biological age. And you can see it go backwards or forwards. Now, if you do different tests, you're going to get different numbers, right? Some tests will, you know, like some tests will be like five years younger, ten years younger. And so you, you may not, you, you may not kind of be able to compare apples to apples by switching tests. But if you stay with the same test consistently, you'll see the changes.

• 25:06Hala Taha?

  Yeah. Okay. So I want to get really nerdy because I'm sure people have been listening and they're like, I have no idea what epigenetics is. And so there's two terms I want you to break down. Epigenomes and exome, right? I know that. So one is about how genes are expressed. One is our environmental exposure. So break those down.

• 25:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. So so basically, the concept that I I think is really important called the exposed We all have been taught that our genes control who we are. They they're our destiny, whatever we got, we got, we can't change it. You know, our parents got diabetes, our parents got cancer, our parents got whatever, heart disease, it's just kind of in our future. Your genes are not your destiny. They're they may provide you with a roadmap of what your predispositions are, but not your destiny. So what controls your destiny? It's something called the exposome. That is a sum total of everything that you're exposed to throughout your life that washes over your biology, including your genes and reprograms them based on what you're doing. If you're eating like me, if you had a whole foods diet, if you exercise, you do all these things

• 26:05Speaker 01

  for fifty years, you're going to be biologically younger. Your epigenetics are going to track as if you're younger. And and I'll talk about what epigenetics are. So the exposome is what you eat, it's your exercise, your nutrient levels, it's stress management, it's community, it's sleep, it's all the things we just talked about, light, air, water, all those things. I went on bright sunlight this morning for for twenty minutes. All those things matter. That influences how your biology is regulated. We're biological organisms and we're controlled in the same way by our external factors. So the exposome is literally everything from toxins to your gut microbiome, to your diet, to sleep, everything that your your body is exposed to. That's why we call it the exposome. Your epigenome is how the exposome regulates your biology.

• 26:50Speaker 01

  Now, what is the epigenome? Epi means above. So you've got your genes, you've got about twenty thousand genes. Uh, your epigenome, and and then you think about like the uh the keyboards on a on a on a piano, right? You have eighty eight keys, they ain't changing. You know, I got twenty thousand genes, they ain't changing unless I do gene editing or splicing or some other weird thing that's coming around the corner. They're not changing.

• 27:13Speaker 01

  What can change is how those genes are expressed, how they're turned on or off, whether they're upregulated or downregulated, whether they drive inflammation or stop inflammation, whether they're accelerating or slow aging. And they they are basically the control mechanisms to turn on or off genes. So like thinking of them like switches or knobs, and you can dial them up or down based on what you're doing. And that's how almost all of the impacts of of a lot of the practices we talked about have their effect. That's how the exposome regulates your health and longevity, your biology and your risk of disease is through your epigenome. Then translates into the expression of genes and proteins and biological functions. And you want to have a healthy epigenome.

• 27:55Speaker 01

  Uh, and, and you know, there was a great example, for example, of Randy Journal, who discovered this kind of phenomenon was took these mice that are bred to be obese. So they're, you're yellow, they're fat, basically yellow fat mice. He gave a series of the, the females who are pregnant, certain nutrients called methylating nutrients that regulate the epigenome. So it's a little complicated, but there's something called methylation, which is a chemical process that regulates your genes. It involves B six, folate, and B 12. So vitamins and minerals are extremely important. They run everything in your body. Every biochemical reaction needs a, a vitamin or mineral. And, and if you don't have them or they're insufficient, you're going to have gummed up biochemistry. And gummed up biochemistry translates into disease.

• 28:37Speaker 01

  So he basically gave these pregnant mice some B vitamins and a few other amino acids and things to help to support this process. The offspring were perfect. They were thin, they were healthy, they were gray, they had, they were not yellow fat mice. Even though genetically they were bred to be yellow fat mice. And this was a massive discovery. And I think this is what really has led to our understanding of this whole process of how we can modify our epigenome and the outcomes. So when your mother's eating, when she's pregnant with you, you know, the stresses you experience,

• 29:12Speaker 01

  you know, uh, in utero that your mother might have experienced or all your early childhood experiences, all those imprint on your epigenome and can affect you. Toxins you're exposed to. So this is why we have to sort of pay attention to how we live, because if we want to feel good and, and do good and engage in life and do the work we want to do and be successful in our work and have great relationships and enjoy life and be happy. If you feel like crap, it's not that much fun.

• 29:37Hala Taha?

  Yeah, so true. And so, uh, from what I read, like 90% of disease and aging risks has to do with our environment, our, our exome, right? And so the earlier that we start, the better is what you were just saying, right? You can even start from. In the womb, if our, if our, if our mothers are smart enough.

• 29:55Speaker 01

  That's great. Yeah.

• 29:57Hala Taha?

  Yeah.

• 29:57Speaker 01

  You know, like, uh, you know, I've seen, you know, women wanting to be a pregnant. I measure their toxin load. I'm like, whoa. We gotta do something about this. We gotta reduce our exposures of toxins. We've got to get these heavy metals down because you want a healthy baby. And so we really proactively do preconception work. I had a whole podcast about that on the doctor's pharmacy and now it's called the Dr. Hyman Show. And we, we go deep into what, what you need to know preparing for a baby, what happens when you're pregnant, how do you take care of yourself, what are the things that are matter scientifically? Optimize the chance of having a healthy baby.

• 30:27Hala Taha?

  On the flip side, is there any time that's like too late to get started on this?

• 30:32Speaker 01

  Oh God, no. I mean, what's really amazing in, in none of the animal studies, they've given them rapamycin, which is something that is a drug. Discovered in rapunyui that inhibits this pathway called one of the longevity switches, I call them longevity switches. Uh, that they control so much. So mTOR is one of these. And mTOR essentially is a pathway that is going to help you build muscle. But also when it's activated and when it's inactivated or, or inhibited in some way. It's going to allow the cells to replenish repair called, uh, through this process called autophagy, which basically means you're eating your old cells and. You're reusing the parts. It's recycling. So it's cleaning up the mess that we make all the time in our bodies. Where does that garbage go? Right? If somebody has to fix it.

• 31:15Speaker 01

  So rapamycin inhibits that and accelerates the autophagy process. And then given in the right ways, it extends life and extends health in, in animal models consistently and reliably. Uh, and so there are, there are interesting ways that we can sort of activate these longevity switches and pathways. And I've talked about that a lot in my book, Young Forever. And how do we understand how these work, what we can do? And it's not complicated. There's a few simple practices, sometimes a few supplements that can really help. Modulate some of these, these pathways to activate the longevity switches.

• 31:44Hala Taha?

  Okay, so one more really nerdy question, and that's about mitochondria. So you say the difference between a three-year-old and a nine-year-old is the number and the state of their mitochondria. So help us understand what mitochondrial dysfunction has to do with aging.

• 31:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, great, great question. So this is one of the hallmarks of aging is mitochondrial dysfunction. It's key to so many diseases. Your mitochondria, I think of them as like the powerhouse of your cell, the little energy factories. They take food and oxygen, turn into energy that your body uses. And we use, you know, gasoline or carb. And it combusts and, you know, create energy. What we run is something called ATP. It's a molecule produced from food and oxygen. And the waste products are carbon dioxide, which we breathe out, and water, which we pee out, and some free radicals, which we have antioxidant mechanisms to control. And what happens is they're your energy, right? So if you have poor functioning mitochondria, you're going to have low energy. You're going to be weaker, you're going to have a lower muscle mass. So, you know, the key to longevity is keeping your mitochondria healthy and keeping them strong

• 32:40Speaker 01

  and actually having better, more mitochondria. And so the way to do that is by exercise. So resistance training builds muscle and mitochondria. Sprint training or HIIT training does that as well. Exercise with oxygen therapy, hypoxia training does that. A lot of ways to do it. There's supplements like Urolithin A, which is caused by topogene, mitochondrial renewal. There are mitochondrial support supplements sometimes that you need. So there are a lot of ways to optimize your mitochondria, but they're injured by too much food, too much sugar and starch, too many environmental toxins. All those things from microbiome that are bad. All those things can damage your mitochondria. So learning about your mitochondria, how to take care of them is really important. And again, it's one of the things we kind of can look at as we start to test things and see what's going on in our bodies.

• 33:25Hala Taha?

  So interesting.

• 33:29Hala Taha?

  What's up, Yap gang? I recently had Gary Vee on the podcast and he told me something that really stuck with me. If you've got sales DNA, you've got to be paying attention to live selling because it's one of the biggest opportunities right now online. And that really got me curious, so I checked out an app that he told me about called Whatnot. I jumped into a live show and I instantly got it. The seller was showing products in real time, answering questions in the chat, and building a real Relationship with the buyers. It didn't feel like boring shopping. It felt like a community. Whatnot is the largest live shopping marketplace in the country. And for entrepreneurs, the results are really hard to ignore. Sellers on Whatnot can sell up to 10 times more than traditional marketplaces. And the number of sellers making over a million dollars a year on the platform has doubled.

• 34:13Hala Taha?

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• 34:28Hala Taha?

  What's up, Yap fam? You guys know we love reading on this show. So I'm always excited when I find a book I genuinely think is worth sharing. Life at the Speed of Play: Launch Products People Love by Mark Pincus is one of those books. Mark is a legendary Silicon Valley entrepreneur and investor. And this fast-paced 170-page book is his playbook for testing ideas quickly, navigating uncertainty, and figuring out what's actually worth pursuing. One of my favorite concepts is what he calls "the abyss." Those moments when you feel stuck or unsure of what's next. Instead of fearing uncertainty, he shows you how to use it as a tool for discovery. Right now, Mark is doing a buy-one-get-one offer for Yap listeners.

• 35:12Hala Taha?

  Go to GetMark'sBook.com/Yap, buy one copy for $32 and get a second copy free. So you can keep one for yourself and give the second to a friend, future co-founder, or someone who needs a little push.

• 35:28Hala Taha?

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• 36:09Hala Taha?

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• 36:52Speaker 01

  Well, I love life and I, as long as I can enjoy life and be with my friends and do the things I love and ride my bike and hike and enjoy what I'm doing and have meaning and purpose and contribute to the world and add value. You know, I'm 65. I kind of figured a few things out by now and, you know, wisdom always doesn't come with age, but I've had a bunch of hard knocks and that's really taught me a lot. And so I kind of feel happy and content and satisfied and like, I want to keep going. So I mean, I don't really care if I get to 120 or 100 or 99 or 95 or 90. I just want to feel good and do good.

• 37:25Hala Taha?

  It makes a lot of sense and I'm really excited for this generation of six-year-olds because I just feel like in the past, you know, when you're in your 60s, it's all about like retirement. And I feel like a lot of people right now are actually like taking on second careers and realizing that they really have a lot more time to live and people are taking advantage of that. So like, what are your thoughts in terms of people around your age who like wanted to take on a new career or?

• 37:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:52Hala Taha?

  Yeah, tell me.

• 37:53Speaker 01

  I mean, I, you know, I'm 65 and two years ago, I co-founded a company. It's a big startup company right now. So, I mean, who does startups in their 60s? Most people are like looking at golf courses and not startups. And, and I, I mean, I want to contribute to the world. I want to do things. I get excited. We're building, we're creating. We're dreaming, we're imagining a different future for healthcare and medicine. We're adding value to people's lives. I mean, it's something to get up for every morning and be excited about. And take all the things that I know that are almost impossible for any single doctor to synthesize and to sort through and make sense of, and provide each individual with a personalized approach to their health. It's going to actually optimize how they feel.

• 38:36Speaker 01

  And that's really the key here is to end needless suffering. And for me, that's my purpose and that's my mission. And plus having fun, enjoying my life and my wife and everybody around me.

• 38:46Hala Taha?

  Yeah, I love that. So it's hard for me to imagine, at the same time, like I see people living older, but it's also hard for me to imagine, especially in the West, because I feel like things are more unhealthy than ever. The food in the grocery store is terrible. It's like everything comes in a cardboard box. Our water supply is really scary and it feels like there's no good water. It's either like you're getting plastic or you're drinking from, you know, a dirty faucet, right? And so for me, it just feels almost impossible to kind of navigate food, which you say is medicine. So talk to us about how we should try to navigate our diets. And also like, maybe like what changes need to happen in America

• 39:30Hala Taha?

  for us to actually live healthier lives and longer lives?

• 39:34Speaker 01

  This is something I've been working on for a long time. And I wrote a book called Food Fix, which lays out from field to four, what's wrong with our food system? And, you know, if there's one thing that's killing us, aside from environmental toxins, stress and our same schedule, it's probably 80% food. And it's something that we can control and do something about. And unless we actually take it seriously and fix our food system, we're kind of in a mess. And so right now, there's a resurgence of interest in health around the country. There's the Make America Healthy Again movement. And so there's an energy happening. And in Washington, working on policies to bring those changes to the average American. For example, in West Virginia, they got rid of red dye and other dyes. In California, they did the same thing.

• 40:16Speaker 01

  These are great steps to start to push the food system to produce healthier food for all of us.

• 40:20Hala Taha?

  And something that's really hot right now is GLPs, right? I have mixed feelings about them. I feel like it's good for personal, I'm not a doctor, right? But I think it's good if you have a real problem. But I see normal people who might just need to lose 10, 20 pounds, take GLP. So what are your thoughts around that?

• 40:39Speaker 01

  I I think um for most people, and I literally just got a text from somebody this morning saying, "My cousin read your book, they lost a hundred pounds." My my uh person who's worked with me in Washington around food policy, she lost a hundred and twelve pounds in the last few years working with me. And and without taking any of these drugs. Now, some people are really stuck, and if you're stuck and you need help and you you have not really addressed the the underlying reasons why you eat that. Sometimes it's not what you're eating, it's what's eating you. You gotta figure that out. It's really important to do that. And and I think when people do that, they they don't necessarily have to take these drugs, which are are helpful. They can be extremely helpful, but they also come with side effects.

• 41:20Speaker 01

  Muscle loss, weight regain if you stop, they can have other issues, you know, like pancreatic issues and pancreatitis, and uh they can cause bowel obstruction if you've taken it for a long time. So th- they can be a good tool, but they're just a tool. They're not a panacea, and I think I think they've helped a lot of people. I'm not against them. I think they're kind of used in ways that sometimes don't make sense to me. Why give a six-year-old an Ozempic shot for the rest of his life? You know, it's not his fault, he's overweight, it's the environment he's in. And I think that can actually get get really fixed. So I think it's important for people to to understand that that they they have power in it. The the food industry is basically a hijack their brain chemistry, their metabolism, or our our desires for different foods.

• 42:04Speaker 01

  And these are things that can actually be changed. You can literally change your brain chemistry and and have an incredibly powerful shift in your cravings and your desire for foods. You know, for example, people going keto, they don't really need uh Ozempic because naturally, they're the way they're eating will shut off that that craving. And and the food addiction is a real thing. About fourteen percent of adults and kids uh are addicted to food, uh biologically addicted. This is really based on good evidence from Yale Food Addiction Scale and big deep science around the world. We looked at this. This is just horribly sad and horribly sort of unfortunate because we we really don't need to do that.

• 42:48Speaker 01

  We we really, we can't, we can't fix our food supply, we can't fix this problem. And it has to be done on grassroots level, it has to be done at state level, it has to be done at federal level. It's gonna take time, but we're working with the FDA, working with the USDA, with HHS, the administration as best we can to try to push changes through my nonprofit.

• 43:05Hala Taha?

  I've also heard that there's food companies already trying to figure out how to like circumvent GLPs so that people still crave their food, right? So, so this is how to figure out how to get around it.

• 43:15Speaker 01

  That's like, that's, that's even crazy when you think of it like, wow, they're really just gonna go there. They're literally gonna just kind of circumvent Ozempic by making food even more addictive.

• 43:27Hala Taha?

  Yeah, that's the state of the world that we're in. So we've got to take control. So let's talk about our ancestors because when I was listening to your book, I was surprised because we're always thinking about how we live so long now. And when you think about the past, you might think like people died at like 30, 40. But there's actually cases in history where people have lived to be a very old age. So talk to us about how our ancestors ate and maybe some examples of people who lived really long back in the day.

• 43:55Speaker 01

  Well, I think, you know, when you're looking, for example, at the, at the Native Americans, one of the longest populations in the world until turn of the 1900s was the Slaves Indians. They, they had almost, most of their diet from bison. And then they had berries and they had probably wild stuff they gathered. But predominantly their diet was, was meat. And they lived to be like well over 100 and highly functional and active. And, you know, the, these populations around the world where you see people like I was in Turkey and they know this is not a technical blue zone, but man, they were a lot of really old people who are doing great. You know, where their 80s, 90s still working, still thriving, still making part of their community. And I think it's, it's when you stop, you stop.

• 44:39Speaker 01

  Like, I think retirement is the worst idea ever invented. You know, I don't really get it. But, but, you know, people don't retire, they just shift and change what they're doing. And I think in these communities, and, and, and when you see these people living to be very old, it's, it's because they, they found meaning, purpose. They've learned how to not sort of internalize the stress of life. They've learned how to modulate their own diet and lifestyle to optimize their health. And they just kind of figured it out.

• 45:04Hala Taha?

  Let's stick on community a bit because you say it's also a factor in longevity. You say you're only as healthy as your five closest friends. Tell us about that.

• 45:14Speaker 01

  Well, think about it. If all your friends are, you know, going to McDonald's and drinking beer and, you know, 200, 200, 200 liters of soda a day. I'm watching TV all the time. And that's kind of what you're going to be probably like. And if you are have friends who are healthy and go to yoga and drink green juices and exercise and eat whole foods and, you know, get together and share these things, then you're more likely going to be healthy. And it's just, it's just so clear. Chris Stock is from Harvard did a lot of work on this. He wrote a book called Connected, but he published research in the New England Journal of Medicine showing that, for example, from the Framingham data, which is a large study, one of the largest studies, longest going studies in the in the world, in Framingham,

• 45:55Speaker 01

  Massachusetts, tracking their population, he found that those people who actually, when they looked at the patterns around obesity, that you were about, you know, forty percent likely to be overweight, if your parents or siblings are overweight, but you were one hundred and seventy one percent more likely to be overweight if your friends are overweight.

• 46:12Hala Taha?

  Wow.

• 46:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. So your social connections matter and your relationships matter. You know, like, I mean, if you're, if you're somebody who just stays up all night playing video games and you're living in America and your friends are playing video games in Australia, I mean, your sleep wake cycle, your circadian rhythm, everything's going to be off. So the people in the communities that you have to surround yourself with, make sure that people who are leaning in towards wellness and health as opposed to, you know, not, not that.

• 46:40Hala Taha?

  That's so interesting. Now, I don't want everybody tuning in to like, become like fat phobic, you know, like, we've got, but at the same time, you've got to pay attention to your, it's same thing. If people are doing drugs around you, you're more likely to do drugs. So food can also be as bad as a drug. We've got to think of it that way. So if there was one thing that you could remove from the grocery stores, what would it be?

• 47:05Speaker 01

  It would be high fructose corn syrup. Like that, you'd kind of cut out most of the in the grocery store. Yeah, that's probably what I would do. Yeah.

• 47:17Hala Taha?

  And then what is your, oh, go ahead.

• 47:20Speaker 01

  No, that's what I would, and I think, you know, trans fats have been removed for the most part, which is great. But.

• 47:28Speaker 01

  It's you want to make sure you're you're getting rid of those two things, trans fats and African corn syrup. Just getting rid of that alone will make a huge difference. Or just even reading the ingredient list. If there's an ingredient on there that you don't have at home, that you wouldn't use in your kitchen, like butylated hydroxytoluene, or maltodextrin, or mono and diglycerides, you probably shouldn't eat it.

• 47:54Hala Taha?

  I heard something once, if you can't kill it or grow it, you shouldn't eat it. And I always like think about that when I'm eating food.

• 48:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, totally right.

• 48:03Hala Taha?

  So a lot of our listeners are entrepreneurs. They have very busy schedules. Sometimes it can get really overwhelming trying to follow different nutrition advice. So in the simplest, you know, terms, what should we be eating?

• 48:15Speaker 01

  I've written so many books about this food. What should I eat? The Pegan Diet, which is sort of a condensed version and with some kind of fun stuff in it. And it's it's really, you know, what we agree on is more than what we disagree on. You know, you can get on the margins about vegan, or pale, or keto, or this or that. But the truth is, we all agree we shouldn't be eating processed, ultra-processed food. We all agree we should be reducing starch and sugar and refined carbohydrates in our diet. We shouldn't be eating things that aren't food technically, like, you know, maltodextrin, or, or, you know, butylated hydroxytoluene, or red dye number three. You know, we should, we should be eating foods that are high in phytochemicals, that, that we think of as food as medicine, where it changes everything in our biology in real time. We should be thinking about

• 49:00Speaker 01

  having good quality fats from nuts and seeds and avocados and, and wild fish, small fish. And even though for some people tolerate, tolerate animal fats very well, especially if it's regeneratively raised, they have very different qualities of fats. So there's a lot of really good things you can do that are available from the diet that you can get even anywhere. I mean, I've worked with people in the worst food deserts in America, and they've actually been able to, to make a huge impact and change their diet if, if they actually do the right things. And they, they, they will. They'll actually have a huge shift in their, in their diet by, by actually doing this. So I'm very, I'm pretty thrilled by how simple it is. But when people understand how to do it, then, then I think it changes.

• 49:44Hala Taha?

  Okay, so talk to us about exercise. I feel like there's a lot of mixed advice when it comes to exercise. What's your take on the right amount, too much exercise?

• 49:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think I think, you know, exercise is is critical. Your body needs to move. There's no doubt about it. We're designed to be moving organisms all the time. And that's kind of how we evolved. Now, most of us don't do enough, and that's unfortunate. And I think, you know, we don't, uh, I think, I think eight percent get the optimal amount. Twenty three percent get some moderate amount, but the the key is to to actually um, understand what what's good for you and at different at different times of your life, you know, but I think you need at least thirty minutes of good cardio. Four or five times a week, three times a week is strength training, probably a week or a day or two of flexibility and training and stability training. That's kind of bare minimum. If you can do that, you're going to maintain your health and be and be good for a long time.

• 50:40Hala Taha?

  You've said in the past that strength training is the best anti-aging medicine. What's so good about it?

• 50:45Speaker 01

  Because what you're doing is you're building muscle, you're building mitochondria, you're increasing muscle mass, and what what really kills people is frailty. When you get older, you get frail, you're not able to get up out of a chair, you're not able to do the you love to do. Your mobility is decreased, your functions decrease. That's all totally preventable by strength training. And when and you have to work harder as you get older because the body doesn't really, unfortunately, um, it doesn't work as well. So you have to do a little more effort to get the same benefit. Uh, and I think that's, you know, that's that's uh, that's something people have to do, but it's it's not optional. Like, exercise is just not optional.

• 51:19Hala Taha?

  I agree. Okay, last question for you, and then we're going to close out this interview. So the average listener's age on my podcast is thirty five years old, and they're typically an entrepreneur. So let's say I gave you a thirty five year old, they're stressed, exhausted, running on coffee. If you had a year to transform their health and performance, what are the things that you would change?

• 51:42Speaker 01

  I would immediately have them get on a whole foods diet that I just talked about. I'd have them just follow the principles of eat real food. Low sugar starch, good fats, adequate protein for where you are in your life phase and various depending where you are. Lots of phytochemicals, lots of fiber and just start there. And if you're really having any health issues, I'd probably do my 10 day detox program, which is essentially a reset. Just 10 day detox.com with the 10 day detox. And what, what really is amazing about it is that people get a reset. It's like putting your body back to its original factory settings and you can see where, you know, where food is impacting you. Oh, I didn't know that.

• 52:20Speaker 01

  Oh, my rash was caused by food or I didn't know that my migraines are caused by what I was eating. Or I didn't know that my joint pain was caused by what I was eating or my sleep problem is caused by eating. So you get a really quick reset and then you start to have foods back in. So that would be number one and get your food straight. And that's your timing, planning, organizing. It's really important. The amount of time you spend on your business. The fraction of that you spend on your health, you'll get a lot of dividends from that. Getting a regular exercise routine, not that hard, just. Maybe just want to walk 30 minutes. If you walk and phone calls, that's good, better than nothing. Uh, if you have a walking treadmill. You can, uh, you know, do fun, more fun things. I like to bike. I like to, you know, do more, more, you know, mountain biking and road biking and

• 52:58Speaker 01

  tennis and other things that kind of are fun for me. I like to make exercise fun. Uh, strength training. I've, I've gotten into more and more and it's, it's been profound in terms of effect on my bo- body, even as, as I'm, as I'm older. I think learning how to regulate your nervous system is important, you know, self-soothing is something we learn how to do. We get activated, reactive. But learning how to practice with this breath work or meditation or some practice where you're resetting your nervous system because we're all in parasympathetic, uh, deficit. We need to be relaxing more. And then I think build community because you know, as you're building something and going through stuff, you know, when getting isolated is the worst thing you can do for a human being. And so I think having that ability to

• 53:38Speaker 01

  to sort of work with, uh, your friends to kind of build a fun community experience is really important. And I, and that's something that, you know, it's been really important to me, especially as I've gotten older, is just investing in your friendships. Cause when everything else goes, that's what will be left.

• 53:53Hala Taha?

  Yeah. So that was great advice on an individual level and a lot of the people tuning in are entrepreneurs and we help move society forward and you know, we have this big shift from traditional to functional medicine. We're trying to combat the food industries. Can you talk to us about some of the opportunities that you see for entrepreneurs to kind of capitalize on all these changes?

• 54:13Speaker 01

  Well, I think, you know, the, the, the health wellness market is a billion dollar market. You know, there's a lot of ways people are entering that, but you can figure out, you know, what you love and the intersection of what you love and, you know, what people need. Often businesses are started from people's own needs, like I need to, I need to fix my own health. So I, as a physician, I got very sick when I was in my thirties. I got chronic fatigue syndrome from heavy metals. And I was struggling a lot and I had to actually sort of figure it out. And that forced me to learn about what I learned about. It forced me to study the way I studied, to actually find this field of functional medicine, to use it on myself, to heal and repair.

• 54:54Speaker 01

  And so that's, that's kind of what I encourage people to do is, is figure out that intersection of what, what you love. That's just driven me because it's not like a choice. I don't have a choice. It's not like I'm, you know, making widgets or something that it's fine to make widgets. We all need widgets, but the, the key is really, is really to, to kind of, uh, figure out how you can do this in a way that, that it syncs with what you love. Cause otherwise you will, you won't really do it.

• 55:16Hala Taha?

  Great advice. Okay. So I end my show with two questions I ask all my guests. It could be like totally different from what we talked about today. Just answer from your heart. So what is one actionable thing our young improfitters can do today to become more profitable tomorrow?

• 55:31Speaker 01

  Well, what your success is really determined by the quality of how you feel. So if you're able to function at a high level and do the things you want to do and not be held back by illness or struggles, you're, you're going to be able to function at a much higher level and do whatever you want to do, whether it's, you know, just kind of buzz off and go kind of get early retirement or whether it's who want to build a company or whatever you want to do. You know, you have the capacity to, to be highly functional when you feel better. And then so investing in your health is such an important thing for, for my perspective. This, you know, I see a lot of people who have great businesses and companies and they build these things. They're rich, have all this stuff. And they're lonely, they're isolated, they're unhealthy, they're sick, they don't feel good. I mean, that's the last thing you want, right?

• 56:17Hala Taha?

  Totally. And your book, Young Forever, really is just like a blueprint for how to do that. Yeah. And what would you say your secret to profiting in life is? And this can go beyond business?

• 56:30Speaker 01

  I mean, the secret to profiting in life, again, is to focus on the things you love and to do what's your passion about. Because, you know, if you if you try to force something in your life, you know, the best things that happen are often serendipitous. They're often they're often come to you, their ideas, their people, their experiences. I feel like there's sort of an underlying kind of current where we can kind of jump into it. And if we're if we're present, we're able to see actually what pulls us in. And when we do that, you become more profitable. I've never I've never sought to make money in my life. I've never tried to make money. I've never said, I'm going to do a business to make money. I'm going to do this to make money. I'm doing what I'm doing because I feel like it's critical

• 57:12Speaker 01

  for for myself and for the people who I I care about and for the population at large. It's like I just can't help myself. So I think when you do that, and you have a mission and you're you're driven, you know, then it's not about the money.

• 57:28Hala Taha?

  Love it. And Mark, where can everybody learn more about you and everything that you do? I know you're so easily found, but where do you want to point?

• 57:34Speaker 01

  Well, you go to Dr Hyman dot com. If you want to try the 10 day detox, you go to Dr Hyman. Don't tell me you'll find it there, but just go to 10 day detox diet. I'm on social media, Dr Mark Hyman, and have a podcast, The Dr. Hyman Show, top 200 podcasts out there. So doing well.

• 57:49Hala Taha?

  Awesome. Cool. Thank you so much for joining us on Young and Profiting Podcast.

• 57:53Speaker 01

  My pleasure. My pleasure.