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Speaker 2The average newborn baby today has 287 toxins in their umbilical cord blood before they take their first breath.
Speaker 3The ongoing debate over which foods are most healthy is the subject of co-founder and chief medical officer of Function Health, Dr.
Speaker 2Mark Hyman.
Speaker 1What is inflammation
Speaker 2doing to your body? Inflammation is the root cause of almost all chronic illnesses and aging itself. That visceral fat is like an incubator for inflammation. A fire in your belly causes heart attacks, strokes, cancer, diabetes. What are the highly inflammatory foods? It's the sugar and starch. In America, average, you eat a pound of sugar and flour a day.
Speaker 1Per person. What do you think the U.S. healthcare system needs to be focused on?
Speaker 2All the ultra-processed food, which is 60% of our diet. You know, we have a whole food system that's turned into ultra-processed food that we're consuming in massive amounts. It's 73% of what's on the grocery store shelves.
Speaker 1Can someone know that they have some symptoms of an autoimmune disease?
Speaker 2You might be a little bit tired. You might be a little constipated. You might have a little dry skin. Your nails might crack a little bit. You might feel a little depressed. You might have lower sex drive. Gain a little bit of weight. People don't think of these as a disease, but when you add them all together, If someone's listening right now and they're thinking,
Speaker 1I feel like crap, what do they do?
Speaker 3The number one health and wellness podcast. Jay Shetty. Jay Shetty.
Speaker 2He
Speaker 3won the only Jay Shetty.
Speaker 1Hey everyone, welcome back to On Purpose, the place you come to become happier, healthier, and more healed, where we talk to the experts and the thought leaders who illuminate to us how we can truly transform our lives. Today's guest is one of your favorites, one of our favorites here on On Purpose. Someone that I know personally and grateful to know off the screen, as well as on the screen, talking about none other than Dr. Mark Hyman. Dr. Mark Hyman is a practicing family physician, founder of the Ultra Wellness Center, and founder of the Functional Medicine Center at the Cleveland Clinic. A leader in functional medicine, Dr. Mark Hyman authored 15 New York Times bestsellers and hosts the Dr. Hyman Show, a podcast that you should definitely subscribe to if you haven't already. And he's known for his food as medicine philosophy and work in addressing the root causes of chronic disease through nutrition and lifestyle. Please welcome back to On Purpose, Dr. Mark Hyman. Mark, it's always great to have you on the show. I'm so happy to have you back.
Speaker 2Thanks, Jay. It's good to be here. I love this place.
Speaker 1Mark, I'm actually really grateful you're here because we actually had a date scheduled for you to be on the show. Yeah. And then I sadly learned from your team that it had to be canceled, but it was for.
Speaker 2Because I almost died.
Speaker 1Yeah, it was really extreme. Yeah. Talk to us about this near-death experience because I've known you to be a longevity expert, a health expert. You always look in great health. You're always feeling great health. Every time I've been around you, your energy's radiant. You carry it with you. I know you practice what you preach. I know it's not made up. Yeah. You're an authentic person, and the work that you do, it impacts millions of people worldwide. And then you have a near-death experience.
Speaker 2Yeah. Walk me through what happened. Yeah. You know, thanks, Jay, for asking. I joke that my biological age is 39, but my back age is 139. And when I was 32, I lived in Idaho in a logging town. I was chopping wood and carrying heavy wood, and I ruptured a disc. And it basically caused massive damage and a permanent paralysis of my right calf. So I've limped for 30-odd years and my back's just degenerated. And I developed, you know, a lot of degenerative disc disease. And so I've had a lot of back pain. And I ended up having an injection, which is a pretty common treatment to help relieve pain. And one of the risks of injections of any needle is infection. And in a closed space of the spine, it just took off. And very quickly, within a couple of days, I couldn't walk. Within a week, I had surgery. They opened me up. They closed me up because they couldn't reach the abscess. It was on the front. And they said, "We can't do anything," and basically left me to die. Gave me antibiotics and said, "Cross your fingers, and here's some painkillers." -
Speaker 1They said there was no cure. -
Speaker 2Mm-mm. And then a friend of mine was, a doctor called me, said, "What's happened? I heard you're sick." And I told him, he says, "You need a second opinion." So I got an opinion from the top neurosurgery center in the world, the UCSF. And they said, "Get out here right away." So I took an ambulance jet and had another surgery. A month later, that really relieved the abscess. But in that intervening period, I got septic. I was feverish. I lost 25 pounds from where I am now. I was in bed. I couldn't eat sitting up. I literally had to lay down with four pills under my leg. And after the surgery, thank God, it worked. But it was a Hail Mary surgery. And they said I was maybe a couple of days away from dying. And I remember going under anesthesia on the day of the second surgery. And I was like, "This could be my last moment of consciousness." And in the aftermath of that, I was on a walker. I couldn't stand up. I couldn't brush my own teeth. I couldn't wipe my own ass. I was like, it was bad. And I had to depend on other people. But slowly, just determined, I clawed my way back to health. And using every principle that I know of how to create health. And I'm 65. I'm not a spring chicken. And I know what to do. And I did it. And I wasn't sure if it was going to work at 65. And how much can you get back? But I put on more muscle. And I'm stronger than I was even before the surgery. And I just did it every day. It was like compounding interest. Every day, I ate the best I could. I got in the gym with my physical therapist, a trainer, every day. Sometimes twice a day. I got treatments and acupuncture. And I just clawed my way back. Took my supplements, took my creatine, took all the things I needed to do. And it took about five months. And then I really started to kind of come back. And it's only been-- it's been seven months from the recording of this podcast. And so I'm back. And I feel good. And I feel actually better than I ever have, because I've doubled down on my health practices.
Speaker 1Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2But it sort of shows you, if you know the laws of nature, the laws of biology, how the body works, how it's designed, how to create health-- because doctors don't learn about that. They don't learn about how to create health. They learn about how to diagnose and treat disease, which is important. But if you say to your doctor, how do I create health, doctor? And they're like, well, I don't know. Just eat better, exercise. But there's-- it's-- it's a very specific methodology. It's really what functional medicine is about. It's about how do you create optimal function? And how do you create optimal health? And what is the science of that? And so doing that, I was able to actually build myself back up and create health and actually feel better now than I did before the surgery.
Speaker 1Oh my gosh. What did it take for you to rebuild? Because we always talk about being proactive. We always talk about being well first, which you focused on. And you have. And when you end up in a position like that, it's hard mentally. And then, of course, it's harder physically. As you said, your body is 65, even if your biological age is 39. There's a reality to that. What were the key things you had to work on? You talked about building muscle again. What were the things you had to do in order to get back to standing in front of me right now and looking great?
Speaker 2The biggest component, I think, of your health is the thing that's between your ears. It's your mindset, something you talk about. You talk about a lot. It's your determination. It's the belief that you can actually get better. And I was physiologically depressed. I lost half my blood volume. So my blood count was half of what it should have been. I was super anemic. My hormones all were in the toilet. My testosterone, my thyroid, nothing was working. I was very nutritionally depleted. I hadn't been able to eat. And so for me-- For me, it was just the will to get up every day little things, even when my mind was like, just stay in bed, just give up. It's not worth it. You know? And I think for a lot of people, it's hard to divorce your thoughts from reality. I think you, you know, you lived in a monastery and that's basically what you learn is how you're not your thoughts. You're not your beliefs. You're not your body. You're not right. And, and so, you know, but when you're in it, like it's, you're in a body, you're in a physical body that feels bad. How do you, how do you fix that? And so that's what I've done for 30 plus years with my patients with functional medicine is when they feel bad, a lot of Americans out there feel bad, you know, six out of 10 of us have a chronic illness and 93% of us are metabolically unhealthy. Most of the population has what I call FLC syndrome. That's when you feel like crap, you know, whether it's just little things like painful periods or headaches or constipation or joint aches or, skin rashes or whatever it is, you know, people suffer and there is a way through that. And so for me, it was, it was a mindset of not believing my thoughts and no matter how physiologically depleted I was to just do the baby steps every day that got me to where I am now, which is feeling awesome. And I was in the gym at Equinox working out for an hour this morning. I was like,
Speaker 1right. That's amazing. And I'm so, I'm so glad that you've, I mean, you've helped so many people over the years, but, it's a special feeling when you reuse your own work to rebuild. I mean, you must have so much conviction and confidence and everything you're about to share in this episode now to help everyone else. You must have a double sense of affirmation that this stuff works because you've had to do it in the most dire of circumstances.
Speaker 2Absolutely. And I had to track all my blood work and I had to track my, my nutrient status and, you know, adjust it and customize it. But it was, you know, having the knowledge that I have in the data, which really now is, is through the magic of technology and the explosion of the changes in our scientific framework of how we understand the body. Like we're in this paradigm shifting moment in, in medicine and healthcare and, and the, the, the promise of actually reversing chronic disease of creating health of people getting free from a lot of the suffering, the needless suffering that they have is, is now really possible. And that's really what I'm so excited about. I mean, I'm just, like 65 and I'm working harder than I've ever worked because I believe that there's this moment where all the things that I've done one-on-one with people or through my books or, you know, people come up and say, oh, Dr. Hyman, you saved my life or whatever. I'm like, it's one by one by one. But what if, what if this can scale through, through the ability of technology to make sense of all your personal health data, customize an exact plan for you and guide you exactly on what to do, when to do it and how to adjust it over time. It's, in fact, it's where we are. It's pretty, it's pretty cool.
Speaker 1Absolutely. Yeah. What do, if someone's listening right now and they're saying, Dr. Mark Hyman, I feel like crap. Yeah. Like if someone's listening right now and they're thinking, I feel like crap. Yeah. Where should they start? What do they do?
Speaker 2That's a great, great question. You know, there's a more serious version, Jay, it's called FLS. That's when you feel like shit. Yeah, right. But, you know, I, I, you know, have found that food is the most powerful tool to change your biology. It's basically code or instruction. It changes your physiology with every single bite. It changes your gene expression. It changes your hormones, your brain chemistry, your immune system, your microbiome, your neurotransmitters. Everything has changed, not in like years or decades, but literally in minutes. And, and so food is the most powerful way to quickly shift your biology. And most people, Jay, have no clue that what they're eating is making them feel bad or that their sense of how they are and their conditions that they're suffering from are caused by food. And so what, what I've done through functional medicine is, is it's often called an elimination diet, but I like to call it an addition diet because you're, you're adding in all the healing medicinal foods in your diet and you're taking out the inflammatory foods. And so I created a program that I've used my patients called the 10 day detox diet. And sometimes I would have people on for a year. You know, if I call it the 10 year detox diet, nobody would do it. No one's going to sign up. But, but I call it the 10 day detox diet. And I call it the 10 day detox diet. Because in 10 days, it's, it's kind of miraculous. And I run programs around the world where I have people come together and we spend a week and, and the average reduction in symptoms from the FLC syndrome, you know, whether it's, you know, sinus issues or allergies or irritable bowel or headaches or joint pains or acne or insomnia or depression or all the little stuff that isn't like, you know, cancer or dementia or, you know, heart attack that's more serious, all that stuff, literally you don't have to suffer from.
Speaker 1In 10 days.
Speaker 2Yeah. And it's, there's a 70% reduction in all symptoms from all diseases in 10 days. I mean, I had, I was like, when I first got to Cleveland Clinic, I gave a talk and this gentleman comes up to me and says, Dr. Hyman, I have rheumatoid arthritis, but I did your 10 day detox and it went away in 10 days. Is that possible? I'm like, yeah, it's possible. What happened to you?
Speaker 1You know. Walk me through the, the two types. What are the medicinal foods and what are the highly
Speaker 2inflammatory foods? So the highly inflammatory foods are obviously all the ultra processed food, which is 60% of our diet. You know, we have a whole food system that's designed to produce commodity crops that's turned into ultra processed food that we're consuming in massive amounts. It's hard to get away from it. And it's, it's, you know, stuff that, you know, you wouldn't have in your kitchen. You wouldn't have butylated hydroxy toluene to sprinkle on your vegetables or mono and diglycerides and bottle it to put on your salad dressing, right? It's maltodextrin, like all the crab that's in there is super inflammatory. The emulsifiers, additives, colors, dyes. And then there's just the sugar and starch. I mean, we, we each in America average eat a pound of sugar and flour a day per person. That's an insane amount of sugar and flour. And that's incredibly inflammatory. Some people react to dairy. Some people react to gluten or grains. And so I take away all the things that, that are potentially reactive, not that they're necessarily bad foods, but a lot of people have gut issues and that, that people have gut issues, have trouble with grains and gluten in this country is very different than other places like in Europe, where we were just talking about what you both were this summer. And, and they're the, it's a different genetic strain. They don't use the same chemicals on it. They don't spray it with glyphosate, which is a microbiome destroyer. And so that, that often is a factor in causing leaky gut and inflammation. So I remove that, remove all that sugar, processed food, flour, grains, and add in all the foods that are healing alcohol, caffeine sometimes, and then add in lots of fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds, you know, good quality protein, lots of good fats, avocados, coconut, all that stuff. It's just pretty simple. It's like, it's not that hard and it doesn't have to be that expensive. And in a very short amount of time, people feel better. The first few days, people feel bad because what happens is when you stop eating the foods that you're reacting to, you get what's called a die-off reaction. So basically all the immune cells, that are busy dealing with all the crap you're eating all the time, have nothing to do. So they form these things called immune complexes. It's like they glomp together. And then it's like, you feel like you have the flu. And that lasts maybe a couple of days. And then after about day three, four, five, you're like sleeping better. You have more energy, your head's clear, your symptoms are getting better. And even in five, six days, 70% reduction. And we have an online program, it's called the 10-Day Detox Diet. You can go to 10daydetox.com. We've done it with the 10-Day Detox Diet.
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Speaker 2Yeah. Well, you know, the inflammation is something that now is being understood to be at the root cause of almost all chronic illnesses and aging itself. You know, and you'll know if you have inflammation, right? You have a sore throat, you get an infected finger from a splinter, you sprain your ankle, you know, those are signs of inflammation. Yeah, those are signs of inflammation. But there's another kind of inflammation that's important to us. And that's inflammation. There's another kind of inflammation that's a little more silent. And we can measure that through blood tests like C-reactive protein, which we do through Function Health. And the amount of people who are inflamed is just so massive because of our diet. And so that creates this elevation in these molecules in our body called cytokines. And you, from COVID, everybody heard about the cytokine storm. What killed people was this overwhelming inflammation. And why did Americans die at a far greater rate than Americans? Why did Americans die at a far greater rate than Americans? We are 4% of the population, but 16% of the deaths and cases of COVID in the world. So four times what we should have been. And it wasn't because we didn't have access to medical care or we didn't have good doctors. It's because we're all pre-inflamed. We're all metabolic and healthy. And the worst kind of inflammation is that that comes from your belly fat. So I just saw a guy a couple of days ago who was 52 years old and, you know, looked pretty healthy, but he had like a little gut on him. And he was like, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. And he had 32% body fat in his belly. And that visceral fat is like an incubator for inflammation. It's basically a fire in your belly. And that visceral fat causes heart attacks, strokes, cancer, obviously diabetes. And he had a blockage, a 90% blockage in his heart. And it was because he had this inflamed, silent killer inside of him. And so it's not just the inflammation that by getting a sore throat, it's the quiet inflammation that you don't know you have. And that leads to all these things like, not just the obvious things like autoimmune diseases, which we can talk about, allergies, but things that are more subtle, whether it's hormonal issues like menstrual cramps or issues like migraines or headaches or fatigue. All these are signs of this fire raging through your body that you don't know about that's killing you. And so by eating an anti-inflammatory diet, you're going to be able to get rid of that inflammation. Inflammatory diet and removing the inflammatory foods, like your body will quickly reset. I mean, your body has innate intelligence. This is such a miracle for me. When you think about it, your body is a healing machine. Like, look what happened to me. Like, I mean, I was in bed. I was, I couldn't walk. I was on a walker. I was emaciated. I was close to death. And when I put the right inputs in, my body healed. And it's amazing. I've had patients who are 65 with heart failure, diabetes, hypertension, kidneys failing, liver failing, who actually didn't take 10 days, but like, you know, three months, they were off all their medications, all the reverse, all these conditions. Even at 65 or 66 years old, the body can do that. And so that's really what I want for people. I want them to have access to the knowledge, the ability, and the tools to be able to do this for themselves and to try it. And I don't say the smartest doctor in your room is your own body. If you listen to it, gee, when I eat this, my stomach doesn't feel good. When I have that, I get a headache. But most people don't connect the dots between what they eat and how they feel.
Speaker 1Yeah. We base it all on lifestyle. And we also, like the gentleman you were treating, we still live in this world of, oh, I'm not that big, small. We're looking at this physical attribute when actually the inflammation is all happening on the inside.
Speaker 2Yeah. He was jogging every day. He was eating healthy.
Speaker 1Yeah. He's doing all the right things, but there's this hidden part. One of those hidden things is sugar. I find it really shocking when I was playing pickleball the other day and someone said to me that, oh, let's have this drink. We didn't have any water accessible at the time. We were all feeling thirsty. It was pretty hot. And he had these packs of drinks. And so he handed to me. My wife has trained me to look a label. I turned it around and it was like 40% of your daily sugars in this little pack, right? It was tiny. I don't even know what it's called. 40% of your daily sugars. 40% of your daily sugars at all these other non-natural ingredients that I didn't recognize at all. Massive list. And I said to him, I said, dude, like-
Speaker 2I'm not drinking this.
Speaker 1Yeah. I was like, I'm not going to have it. I was like, I'm not going to have 40% of my sugars in this. And I try and avoid refined sugar anyway. But to him, that was crazy. He was just like, oh, dude, it's fine. We're running for like three hours. It's just a hydration. And I was like, yeah, but you don't need the sugar with it. And I find that sugar is something I still get a lot of pushback on. Really? Yeah. People- That's my reaction. Because I feel like I've been so well-educated by yourself, the other experts on the show, my wife, who are constantly- because I used to be addicted to sugar.
Speaker 2Wow. Easy to-
Speaker 1And all of a sudden you get- so talk to me about sugar, because I think there's a way in which we've been brainwashed to think it's okay.
Speaker 2Yeah. No, actually, Jay, we know alcohol is addictive, right? But there's been large studies done using the Yale food addiction scale, which is a scientifically validated metric that measures food addiction. And it's- And it's primarily sugar and starch. And 14% of people in this country are alcoholics. But 14% are also addicted to food. And 14% of kids, which is a lot of kids. So it's biologically addictive. A little bit, it's not going to hurt you. If you're healthy, if you're fit, you can have some. It's just the volume that we have in this culture. I mean, it's something that our biology doesn't know what to do with. Historically, we were hunter-gatherers. We had 22 teaspoons a year. Now the average person has 22 teaspoons a day. Wow. Yeah. That is mind-blowing. Yeah, if you had-
Speaker 122 teaspoons a year.
Speaker 2A year. So you were a hunter-gatherer, you'd like, get some honey. Oh my God, I found honey, you know? And you'd eat it. But it was hard to get sugar.
Speaker 1And you were more active then, too.
Speaker 2Yeah, and you were running all the time.
Speaker 1Because you're looking for that jar of honey once a year. No jar, sorry.
Speaker 2It was actually, I was in Hadza tribe, which is one of the last hunter-gatherer tribes in Africa. And they eat a lot of honey. They eat like about 20% of calories of honey, but they're super fit and healthy because they're just like eating tons of fiber. So they basically, all the roots and the tubers have massive amounts of fiber. Americans eat about eight grams of fiber a day. We were historically, as hunter-gatherers, having 150 grams a day. And fiber basically is like a sponge. So for example, if you take your Coca-Cola and you throw in a bunch of Metamucil, it's going to have a very different effect on your blood sugar. It's going to turn to gel. First of all, if you leave it there for long enough, and then if you drink it, it's not going to cause the same spike. So it's just the whole context of our diet is it's become highly processed, lots of sugar, and it drives the visceral fat. So sugar and starch, and by the way, below the neck, your body can't tell the difference between a bowl of cornflakes and a bowl of sugar or a loaf of bread and a bowl of sugar. It's the same. In fact, sometimes in terms of glycemic index, the bread is worse because it's pure glucose, whereas sugar is fructose and glucose. Which has different effects on your blood sugar. But basically, they're both the same. And what that does is that drives the deposition of belly fat. And that belly fat, which is not just holding up your pants, it's metabolically very active. It produces tons of inflammation, screws up your hormones. It causes infertility. It causes Alzheimer's disease. It causes cancer. It causes diabetes. It causes heart attacks. It causes aging itself. When you look around in America, 93% of us, well, 93.2% to be exact, have this metabolic dysfunction. That means 6.8% of us don't, which is frightening. Frightening, yeah. Frightening. And that's not how humans evolved. We didn't evolve like that. People are the Native Americans. They're genetically diabetic. Well, no, they're not. Like the Pima Indians 100 years ago had no diabetes, no obesity, no heart attacks. And now 80% get diabetes by the time you're 30. And even two-year-olds get type diabetes because they're just drinking tons of sugar, sodas, and flour, and all the commodities that we send to the reservations that are all the crap we shouldn't be eating. So, yeah, if you put your genes in the wrong environment, the genes may load the gun, but the environment pulls the trigger.
Speaker 1I want to give a shout out to this incredible company that you brought my way, Function Health. When you first brought it to me, I was so impressed at what it does because I think everything we're talking about. The challenge is we don't know until we feel something in quite an extreme way, right? So we just don't know as humans. we don't know these things. We were never taught them. If I didn't meet my wife, if I didn't have this podcast, I wouldn't be educated. I just, how would I know this? And when you talk about the 93.2%, that's all of us who just don't know. And then you, my wife and you and people like that, the 6.8%. - I love your wife, by the way, she's great. - And all of a sudden you get educated and then that's what functional health does. The fact that you can take these tests. - You look under the hood. - You can get all the results. You know it from being at home or popping to get a test done. You have access to actually know what's happening inside your body. And I became a proud investor in the company when you first brought it to me because I'd never seen someone make that kind of data available at mass and at scale. I was going to some concierge services, which I'm very fortunate to have access to, but I didn't see how the world, the 93.2% could have access to these things. And that's what functional health's doing. -
Speaker 2Yeah. I mean, imagine driving your car. You don't have any dashboard. You don't know how fast you're going. You don't know how much gas in the car. You don't know how much oil's in there. You don't know if the engine light's good. You don't know if your tire pressure's good. I mean, think of the amount of sensors and information you get from your car these days, right? We practice medicine today, like listening to the noises a car makes and hoping we can figure it out. Instead of looking under the hood. And so, you know, I believe we should be testing and not guessing what's going on with our health. And the wearables are great, you know, Oura Ring or Fitbit or, you know, Apple Watch. Apple Watch, awesome, boop. They tell you a lot, but they don't go under the skin. And so you need to know what's happening in your biology. And the truth is a disease doesn't just happen like that one day and you get a heart attack. It's a slow progression over decades. And you can see the continuum of what happens. And you can see slight changes and variations that will compound over time and make you ultimately very sick. And the beautiful thing about functional health is you can actually get your biomarkers done. There's over 110 biomarkers for initial tests. You do a second test mid-year. You can add on tests for looking at other things, whether you want toxins or allergens or Lyme disease, whatever you want to know about yourself. And then you get this beautiful dashboard that shows you exactly what's going on. And like, you know, you get like in a car dashboard and you can see the change over time. And then you can learn what to do about it and what's going on with your body and how to make adjustments. And you get all the information that's supported by all the scientific literature in the world, by knowledge experts, by your own personal data set. And it's really medicine designed for you. And it's really quite a remarkable thing. And people seem to have taken to it because we have, you know, hundreds of thousands of members and people are learning so much about their health. And I've been shocked at the data that we're finding. You know, like we found all these cancers. I was just reviewing our cancer screening and God, you know, people don't know they have cancer. I mean, I had a friend who just died like a month ago from breast cancer at 45 years old. It was heartbreaking, you know? And now through the blood tests you can get through functional health, you can actually see, like a liquid biopsy for 50 different cancers. And I was reviewing the spreadsheet of all the people and what they found and in a follow-up. And I'm like, they didn't know they had cancer. And then they found it in an early stage and then it saves their lives, as opposed to waiting until too late. So, you know, it's always, and the whole thing of the metabolic health. I mean, most doctors don't check insulin, which is extremely important to know about because insulin is what goes up first, not your blood sugar. And most doctors don't look at the right cholesterol test. ApoB is the most important test. I had a friend send me an article. He said, Dr. Hyman, look at this article. It's about this latest new test for predicting heart attack risk. It's better than any other test. I'm like, what is it? I'm like, I looked it up and I was like, oh, it's called ApoB. I'm like, I've been testing that for 30 years. It's the most predictive, but people check your LDL cholesterol. That's not the thing that matters. And so we do that and we do deeper analysis of your metabolic health, your nutritional health, looking at toxins, your hormones, and we're finding autoimmune diseases. I mean, I looked it up before I came on the podcast. I was curious 'cause about 8% according to the CDC of Americans have an autoimmune disease. But when I looked at our data, we're seeing 33% have a positive autoimmune antibody, which is incredible. I mean, that's a third of Americans have some either autoimmune disease or pre-autoimmune disease. And there's stuff you can do about it and get to the root cause. And what's beautiful about it is that we use root cause medicine, not just, oh, you have an autoimmune disease, take this drug, or you have high cholesterol, take this drug. It's like, well, how do I solve this using all the world scientific knowledge about how to best do this through lifestyle and dealing with root causes and creating health rather than just mitigating symptoms or suppressing symptoms. So it's pretty exciting. And I think we now have full body imaging for 499. You can get your whole blood test for 499, $1.37 a day. -
Speaker 1I'm really impressed by what you offered. And I love what Function Health has done so much that I didn't just invest. I got every member of my team a membership. - That's amazing. - Because I couldn't think of a better gift to give people than accessing their knowledge and knowing what's happening inside their body. Like if I want people to perform at work and feel their best and care about their health, to me, it felt like the right thing to do. And I know you've actually created a discount for our community, for us.
Speaker 2What are you doing for us? - It's functionhealth.com/jsheddy and you get $100 off your membership. It's a membership, twice your testing. So it's 400 bucks or 399 and you get to know what's going on. And the gift of health is what you did for your employees is amazing because there is no better gift than the gift of health. -
Speaker 1You only realize that when it goes away. - Yeah. - I've had many episodes in my life where my health has not been great. - Yeah. - And that's when you realize just how valuable it is to know sooner, you know, earlier and know before. And, you know, I'm glad. So that's great. So functionhealth.com/jsheddy. - That's right. - $100 off. - Yeah. - And as I said, I'm an investor and, you know, really proud to be involved and really excited to get it out. I want to talk about the autoimmune diseases because it feels like, I feel like right now I'm at that age where I'm either hearing about autoimmune or cancer or sadly people dying more than I ever have in my entire lifetime. That's not just because I'm getting older though. - No. - It's becoming more prevalent. -
Speaker 2It is. I mean, the hockey stick of chronic diseases is going like this. It's really striking. I mean, things that were rare 150 years ago, you know, turn of the, or 120 years ago, turn of the 1900s, if you had a heart attack in a hospital, it would be like seeing this rare case of malaria in like Manhattan, you know, like all the doctors would rush around to see this unusual case. - Wow. - Diabetes wasn't even the thing, type two diabetes. If you look at the records of Mass General in the 1850s, it wasn't even a diagnosis, you know, people didn't have it. So why are we seeing this explosion? And autoimmune disease, there are over a hundred different autoimmune diseases, you know, everything from Hashimoto's thyroiditis, which is affecting one in five women, that's an autoimmune thyroid condition, one in 10 men. Lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, MS, colitis, Crohn's disease. There are over a hundred different autoimmune diseases and people are suffering from these things. And the drugs that we use are incredibly toxic. They basically suppress your immune system. They have all these side effects and they're extremely expensive and they don't necessarily always work that well. And the question then is, why are we doing this? I mean, this is what functional medicine is about, is what function is created on the basis of this idea of why. What disease do you have and what drug do I get, but why? And the reason why we're seeing such an explosion of autoimmune disease is a combination of different factors. One, our diet has changed dramatically over the last 50 to 70 years because of industrialization of agriculture, the use of pesticides, herbicides. The increasing rates of C-section means you don't colonize your gut and 60% of your immune system is in your gut. And a lot of autoimmune disease is caused by trouble with the gut. The increasing rates of formula feeding, you know, not breast milk, which protects the baby's immune system is necessary for the development of the, I mean, 25% of the calories in breast milk is not digestible by the baby. It's to feed the microbiome, which is amazing. - Wow. - Yeah, it's crazy. And when you have formula, you don't have that in there. And so the microbiomes are disturbed and then you get leaky gut. We use lots of antibiotics in children. We have accelerated vaccine schedules. Vaccines I believe in, I think they're important, but like when I was a kid and when my kids were kids, which was that long ago, there was a limited set of vaccines and now it's free-for-all and the vaccine- -
Speaker 1That's like you gotta take 15 or 16. -
Speaker 2Yeah, it's like 72 different jabs of shots. And so that affects your immune system and they do things that affect your immune system by putting in irritants like aluminum. And then the exposure to environmental chemicals has exploded, heavy metals, pesticides. Newborn baby today, Jay, has 287 toxins in their umbilical cord blood before they take their first breath, including stuff that's been banned for years, like DDT and dioxin, PCBs, phthalates, flame retardants, lead, mercury, pesticides, herbicides. I mean, you name it, it's in there. And so all that has an impact and they're called autogens. There's a whole science around this. These are environmental toxins that cause autoimmunity. And I've seen many patients with, autoimmune diseases that are cured by getting rid of their heavy metals or detoxifying their bodies. And so these toxins, a huge factor. And then you've got all the modern stresses. We're low on sleep. We're under too much chronic stress, light pollution, who knows what, EMF. I don't even know if that's a thing, but I'm not saying it is. I'm saying it's all this stuff that we never had to deal with. And we're just seeing our immune system become so dysregulated. And the ultra-processed food revolution has been another huge factor because in ultra-processed food, there's all these emulsifiers. Emulsifiers are basically the things that make stuff creamy. And if you ever got some of the nut milks and they separate out when you put in your coffee, it's because they don't use emulsifiers. And emulsifiers basically make things creamy. And they're using almost all ultra-processed food. And they damage the gut lining. And they cause what we call a leaky gut where the cells come apart. And then food and bacteria leak in between your cells. And then right underneath your cell lining, which is just one cell thick, is most of your immune system. And think about it. Why is most of your immune system in your gut? Well, it's because we're exposed to most of the foreign stuff every day. You're putting pounds of foreign food in there. And you're putting all the bacteria from your microbiome. There's three pounds of bacteria in there that is basically a sewer. And it's like you're one cell away from a sewer. And so when that breaks down, your immune system will go, this isn't me. What's going on? And it starts attacking things. And then it creates just a lot of mistaken identity, things we call molecular mimicry, where it thinks it's attacking a bacteria or food. But then it'll attack your joints or your eyes or your nerves and get MS and your thyroid gland. So basically, we're seeing this explosion. And the beautiful thing is by understanding the root causes, that you can actually reverse it. I had an autoimmune disease. I actually had mold in my house. I've gotten everything known to man. I've got Lyme disease, mold disease. And I lived in an old barn. I got really bad mold poisoning. And then on top of that, I had a root canal. Had it removed. Had an antibiotic. The antibiotic caused something called C. diff, which is a bacteria that causes really bad gut infections. That turned into ulcerative colitis. My whole intestinal tract was just one big red mess. And I had to heal it. And so there is a methodology for creating health. And that's what I want people to know. That's why functional health is so important, because it teaches you how to turn on your own innate healing system. You've got a new repair and renewal system. That's why I could come back from the dead, because I knew how to turn on. And that's what I want everybody to know. And that's really why I do what I do, why I have the podcast, why I write books, why I travel around speaking like you. It's the same movie, different story. What are the signs
Speaker 1for someone who's listening of a weak immune system and a strong immune system? How do they tell?
Speaker 2The inflammation immune system are a little bit different, because you can be inflamed, but have a weaker immune system. So frequent infections, frequent colds, feeling run down. I mean, there are signs that your immune system's not working. And you get less resilient to stress. You get sick more easily. And so those are signs that there's problems. And one of the things we find through functional health is that so many people have nutritional deficiencies. And nutrients like zinc and vitamin D and iron, these play a big role in your immune function. And so there's a lot of signs that your immune system is not working. -
Speaker 1It's actually, even supplements is such a bad word for supplements, because it sounds like something that you're just supplementing, but it's like- -
Speaker 2Like it's not necessary. -
Speaker 1Yeah, exactly. That's what I mean, right? The word supplement in and of itself feels like it's an add-on, rather than like, this is necessary. I think we're still living in this time where supplements haven't become the norm. People see it as some health hack tip, as opposed to no, this is just what your body needs as nutrients. - My joke is,
Speaker 2I don't think anybody needs to be supplemented. I think anybody needs supplements, but only under certain conditions. They have to hunt and gather their own wild food. They have to drink pure, clean water, be exposed to no environmental toxins, have no chronic stress, sleep nine hours a night, go to bed with the sun, wake up with the sun, right? Then if you do all that, you might not need supplements. -
Speaker 1Yeah, I'm good with the last six, but bad with the first three. -
Speaker 2You haven't gone hunting today? - Yeah, I didn't go hunting today, yeah. - And so our soils have become damaged because of industrial- - Soil. - The soil, right? And the way your plants get, get nutrients is because of the organic matter in the soil. It has a symbiotic relationship with the microbes in the soil and with the plant roots that then allows it to extract the nutrients. But if you basically grow plants in dirt, not soil, where there's no nutrients or they're not accessible because the body, the plants can't get them because they don't have the right organic matter to create the symbiotic relationship. Your broccoli today is 50% less nutrients than it did 50 years ago. Plus, you know, we do a lot of things to cause more stress for our bodies and we need more nutrients. And like magnesium is a very big nutritional deficiency because when you're stressed, you pee out magnesium. And then we don't eat a lot of magnesium-rich foods like nuts and seeds and beans and leafy greens, right? It's not a big part of Americans' diet. So a lot of people are low in magnesium and low in vitamin D. We see 80% of people being insufficient or deficient in vitamin D, which is incredibly important for immune function. And I mean, COVID, if your vitamin D was low, you were not going to be able to get enough vitamin D. You were going to be 75% more likely to end up in the ICU and die. Whereas if your vitamin D was over 50, this big Israeli study, there were no deaths. So it's that powerful. There are things that regulate almost every biochemical reaction in your body. And you've got 37 billion, trillion chemical reactions every second happening. Every one of those, and that's a big number. I don't know how many zeros that is. I think it's 27 zeros. And every single one of those reactions requires a nutrient to work as a cofracture. And that's what we're talking about here. We're talking about a cofracture for the enzymatic reaction. And most of us are deficient. In fact, with function health, we do deep nutritional testing, omega-3s, vitamin D, all the B vitamins, iron, so forth. And we find 67% of our members who you think would be forward thinking about their health are deficient in nutrients, not at the level that I would think would be optimal, but at the level that prevents a deficiency disease. So not the ideal amount, but the bare minimum so you don't get rickets or scurvy. And that's 67%. So if you expanded the criteria to be what's optimal, it would probably be even
Speaker 1more. Yeah. It's scary to think about it, but it's so important to start being aware right now. Is it possible?
Speaker 2Well, there's pre-autoimmune disease, like there's pre-diabetes or pre-hypertension. And I don't like those terms because they imply that you haven't gotten into trouble yet, but you are in trouble. There is something bad happening. And so you have to actually look at the blood work to help you identify if you're heading in the wrong direction and you can see. But then you could be somebody who's suffering from low-grade symptoms. You might not know it. Like thyroid is really common. You might be losing the outer third of your eyebrow. And these things people don't really, getting a little bit of weight. People don't think of these as, as a disease. But when you add them all together, it's an autoimmune thyroid issue, right? And even, even gut issues, you know, irritable bowel, a lot of people have digestive issues. And it's really a continuum from irritable bowel to autoimmune bowel disease, which is where you get colitis or Crohn's disease. And so it's a continuum. A lot of people have this low-grade inflammatory stuff going on in their bodies. And, and it's really, it's unfortunate because we know how to fix it. And, and this is really what we do in functional medicine. It's why I think, like testing and understanding what's going on with your body before you get into trouble. It's like, you know, the first symptom of a heart attack, you know what it is for most people? For 50% of people with heart disease, the first symptom is sudden death. Dropped out of a heart attack. Like this guy was telling you about, he was jogging and he kept having chest pain and he was ignoring it. And then he finally decided to go check it out because his girlfriend made him go and, and turned out he had a 9% blockage and he wouldn't know anything. He could have literally just dropped out of a heart attack like that.
Speaker 1Before we dive into the next moment, let's hear from our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by AG1. When it comes to looking after ourselves, consistency will always matter more than complexity. The best routines are the ones that are easy to keep up. And that's the beauty of AG1. One scoop, once a day, one simple daily health drink foundation that fits easily into your routine. And if you're someone who trains regularly or wants to get more from that routine, there's AG1 Pro. It has the same foundation as NextGen with added creatine, CAHMB, and zinc carnosine. Because a healthy routine doesn't need to take over your life. It just needs to give you something you can do day after day without thinking twice. Go to drinkag1.com forward slash on purpose and get a free immune support bundle, including vitamin D3 plus K2 with your first subscription of AG1 NextGen or AG1 Pro. That's drinkag1.com forward slash on purpose. This episode is brought to you by Bioptimizers. People often ask how I keep traveling, filming, and speaking across time zones. It's all about sleeping well. A few years ago, on my on-purpose tour, my sleep fell apart. That's when my doctor recommended Magnesium Breakthrough from Bioptimizers. Magnesium is responsible for over 300 essential functions in the body, and most supplements only give you one or two forms of it. This one has seven, including glycinate, the go-to form for sleep, plus malate and taurate, tied to energy production, and heart function. If you want to try it yourself, go to bioptimizers.com forward slash jsheddy and use code Jay Shetty for 15% off your first order. That's B-I-O-P-T-I-M-I-Z-E-R-S. This is Breakthrough Science I trust. This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn ads. Everyone at some point spends on things that appear great, but fail to impress. Like an expensive restaurant that looks great, but doesn't live up to the hype. That's a common feeling for marketers. Chasing the metrics that look great, impressions reach reactions. But when those numbers don't create revenue, well, not an easy conversation with the boss. LinkedIn has a word for that, bull spend. So invest in what looks good and works. LinkedIn ads generates the highest ROAS of all major ad networks. Plus, you can target buyers by company, industry, job title, and more. Cut the bull spend, advertise on LinkedIn, the network that works for you. Spend $250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn ads and get a $250 credit for the next one. Just go to linkedin.com forward slash on purpose. That's linkedin.com forward slash on purpose. Terms and conditions apply. Thanks for taking a moment for that. Now back to the discussion. What are the shifts we should be making right now? If someone's listening, they're going to go get the test if they can. If they can't, because for whatever reason, they don't live in the States because we're not available internationally. No, not yet.
Speaker 2We're getting there.
Speaker 1Not yet. Yeah. I get a lot of that in my comments section. There's a lot of people I know in UK and Europe who really want it and Australia and other places. But you've got your results. You know what's going on. Where would you encourage people to begin if they don't have anything serious right now, but they want to make sure they get this right?
Speaker 2Yeah. I mean, I'm not trying to sell anything here, but I think doing a short-term reset is powerful. The way I think about it is how do you turn your body back to its original factory settings? When a baby comes out, it's generally perfect, right? It's beautiful. It's healthy. Everything works, right? And then things break down. But imagine if your computer's not working or it's on the fritz and my WhatsApp wasn't working today and I just had to reboot it, right? Or reboot my computer. How do you do that with your body? And that's really what this dietary change that I call the 10-Day Detox Diet is about. It's about really putting your body back to its original factory settings. For most people, it will create a dramatic shift. If you don't get better from it, it's usually because there's something more serious like you have Lyme disease, you have mold exposure that's causing toxicity, you have maybe environmental toxins or Lyme disease or something serious that needs another treatment. But for most people, just a simple 10-day approach to resetting your system by getting enough sleep, by cutting out the bad stuff, by taking walks, by doing a little breathing exercises and radically changing your diet, you'll go, oh my God. You could do that at home.
Speaker 1This isn't, you don't, you know. No, and it's basically- You can't afford to go on a diet. You can't afford to go on a diet. You can't afford to go on a retreat or whatever. You can do this at home. No, you do it.
Speaker 2A hundred percent. Most people do it at home. And it's so, it doesn't really cost you any extra. Maybe it'll cost you less because you're not buying all these extra crap. And so- 10-day reset. 10 days. Commit. And if you try it, it's like the body just has this desire to be healthy. And illness is just your body's best attempt to deal with a really shitty set of circumstances. Change of circumstances, meaning what you're exposed to, your diet, lifestyle, and then you'll change. You know, because 93% it's been determined of our health issues are not genetic. They're from our collective environment, what we call the exposome, not our genome. Our exposome is what it sounds like. It's everything that we're exposed to. It's what we eat. It's movement. It's sleep. It's stress. It's our gut microbiome. It's environmental toxins. It's our thoughts. Our thoughts actually transform our biology, literally. It's the biggest pharmacy between your ears. And so all those things you have control over, which is what's so- exciting to me. It's about being empowered to actually make those changes. And people just suffer so badly. I mean, I think I told you maybe that I did a program with a faith-based wellness program with Rick Warren at this church where we got a quarter million pounds lost out for 15,000 people in a year by doing a faith-based wellness program. And the amount of people that had radical changes in their health was just so remarkable. This one woman had been in and out of psychiatric hospitals. She'd been on every psychiatric medication. She'd been on every you could imagine from antidepressants to anti-anxiety medications to antipsychotic medications. She was, you know, about to commit suicide. You know, she was also overweight and she did this dietary change. Essentially, I did the faith-based wellness program, included the 10-day detox diet. And she's like, I'm completely cured. Like, I don't have any depression. I'm off all my medications. I feel good. How is that possible? And, you know, that's the other thing, Jay. You know, there's so much mental illness. There's so much depression, anxiety, bipolar disease, you know, more serious things like severe OCD or even schizophrenia. These things actually are physiological problems or not always emotional problems. So sometimes they are. Like, you know, your spouse dies, you're depressed. Yeah, I get it. You know, but a lot of times, and for many people, there's actually a physiological reason. You know, we talk about the mind-body effect, which is how the mind affects the body, which is profound. But there's also the body-mind effect. So if you're magnesium deficient, you can be anxious, right? If you're vitamin D deficient or omega-3 deficient, you can be depressed or you can have ADD. If you don't have enough folate or B12, you can get depressed. I mean, these are things that you can fix. If you have heavy metals, which I did, it can cause you to have depression and insomnia and anxiety. I mean, I'm treating a turned out she had a strep infection that turns into this autoimmune reaction against your brain that's causing her to have OCD behaviors like tics and weird things that we think is psychological. So I think, you know, I often call myself the accidental psychiatrist because I was treating people for all these physical things and then these psychiatric problems would get better. And I wrote a book about it called The Ultra Mind Solution, How to Fix Your Broken Brain by Fixing Your Body First. And you can just get that off the table. And then, you know, if you have other deeper trauma or things, yeah, I think the revolution now in metabolic psychiatry, nutritional psychiatry, and then psychedelic medicine and psychiatry are, I think, going to change the face of mental health care for the long term.
Speaker 1Absolutely. What are some of the mistakes you see people making in curing autoimmune diseases? What are some of the mistakes? What are the things we get wrong?
Speaker 2Well, because they don't treat the cause is the biggest thing. You know, I had a patient when I was at Cleveland Clinic who was a business coach who was 50 years old. And she had a. I'm. I'm. I had a lot of problems. And I jokingly call myself a holistic doctor because I take care of people with a whole list of problems, you know? And she had everything. You know, she had irritable bowel. She had reflux. She had migraines. She was depressed. She had pre-diabetes. And she had this horrible autoimmune disease called psoriatic arthritis. You know, the heartbreak of psoriasis. These horrible, thick, scaly, red, itchy plaques on your skin. And it also can attack your joints. And it was attacking her joints. She was on a drug. And she was seen by the top doctors. And she was on a drug. And she was on a drug that cost $50,000. And it wasn't really fixing her. And she was seeing the top specialists for neurology for her migraines, psychiatry for depression, gastrology for her gut, an endocrinologist for her pre-diabetes, a rheumatologist for her arthritis and her skin issues, a dermatologist. I was like, right? She had a doctor for every inch of her. And I said, gee, you know, you're getting all these medications. You're not really better. You're getting all these medications. And so because she had so many digestive symptoms and she'd been on lots of antibiotics, she'd been on lots of steroids for her arthritis, that really messed up the gut too. I said, you have reflux, you have bloating after eating, you have all these gut issues. Why don't we treat your gut? So I basically gave her an antibiotic to kill off all these bad bugs that were in her gut. And I gave her an antifungal because she had a lot of fungal overgrowth from all the steroids and the antibiotics. And I said, gee, you're getting all these medications. And she to kill off the bad bugs. I gave her some probiotics. I put her on the 10-day detox diet, basically. Got rid of all the inflammatory foods, got rid of the sugar, processed food. She comes back in six weeks and she's like, I'm all better. I mean, what do you mean? She's like, well, I stopped all my medications. Well, I didn't tell you to do that. She's like, no, I just was feeling so good. I stopped everything. I don't have migraines. I'm not depressed. I lost 20 pounds. My skin's cleared. My joints don't hurt. My reflux is gone. My irritable bowel is gone. And so if you treat the root, which was her gut in this case, I just gave her the initially diet and I gave her the antibiotics and the antifungals. I gave her probiotics, vitamin D, some fish oil, not a lot. And in six weeks, not only was she feeling better, but she saved the healthcare system tens of thousands of dollars.
Speaker 1Yeah. It's almost like it sounds like magic when you're listening to it and you go, yeah, no, it's not because we've just been trained to believe that this way makes sense. Yeah. Well, it's funny. We're more convinced that, manufactured pill will solve our body than the things that our ancestors have lived off. That's right. For years and years and years.
Speaker 2That's right. So if you, if you, if you don't know how to turn on the body's healing system, then yeah, you need medication. And, and what's so exciting to me, Jay, is like, we're in this revolution in medicine right now where we're finally understanding root causes and it's in the scientific literature, but it takes decades for that to get into clinical practice. I mean, to change medical education, to change the medical system, to change the medical system, to change reimbursement, to change how doctors practice. It's just such a, it's like, it's like we're all flat when it's really round and so this paradigm shift is such a profound change in how we think about disease that it's going to revolutionize everything we do and it's and it's only now be accessible to people through things like function because we're able to through technology be able to get the amazing amount of world scientific literatures you know ai can read it in like five seconds right and it can synthesize it and then it's your own personal health data set it's not like you're you know doctors treating you based on a study that was on 70 kilogram white men from kansas which doesn't apply to a uh an indian guy you know or somebody who's in like you know vietnam right and and so basically we are treating to the masses where we should be treating to the individual we call this precision medicine personalized medicine but medicine should be personalized it should be predictive it should be preventive and it should be proactive that you actually don't have to react like we do in medicine but be proactive and and that's really you know my life's work is not only you know taking people with very serious illnesses and reversing them but actually getting people earlier i mean benjamin franklin said it right an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure and so i can give a pound of cure but it's a lot harder than an ounce of prevention
Speaker 1what are you most excited about at the forefront of medicine and functional medicine at the moment yeah is it ai is
Speaker 2it yeah well you know i said to you like there's 37 billion trillion chemical reactions in the body it's the body is so complex it's it's physics is complex i think about how complicated a rocket is right like i can't even understand that but that's a knowable thing right scientists and physicists can figure it out and then send a guy to the moon or build a spaceship that goes to mars like elon musk but like the body is so infinitely complex and we we see it in this reductionist way where every different organ has a different specialist and the body is all these different parts but that's not how we're designed everything is an ecosystem everything's connected you know we're one whole web-like organism where where everything's interacting with everything else all the time and and so that paradigm of thinking that way and functional medicine isn't a test it's not a supplement it's not a new specialty it's literally a meta framework for thinking about the nature of health and disease based on root causes and based on the body's system and based on asking the question why not what disease do you have and what drug do i get but why do i have this and and how do i create health not because i'm not treat disease and when i create health disease goes away as a side effect and so that scientific paradigm is is now emerging and before it you know you know it was frustrating for me doing this work for 30 years because you know just it was hard to convince people like look the earth is round like no no it's flat see right there it's flat and they go there's that disease and it's real like yeah you know rheumatoid arthritis is a thing but it's not how we think about it and we're thinking about it the wrong way and so i'm so excited now because of ai and and the ability to synthesize synthesize massive data sets i mean you have a hundred thousand petabytes of data in your microbiome a petabyte is a million gigabytes okay your computer has four terabytes maybe right which is a thousand gigabytes or something i mean it's just such a massive amount of information that's just in your microbiome and so you your body is so complex and we need technology and ai to help us start to understand that and then apply it to you as an individual and then help create a roadmap for looking at where your weak points are and how do you correct those and then how do you optimize and so that's what i'm so excited about and that's that's why at 65 i'm like doing this startup i mean i was i was with uh one of the uh one of the investors on a panel and i'm like she's like somebody said well how do you how do you uh figure out what companies to invest in they go well we invest in the founders i'm like well have you ever had a founder that's been on medicare before you know and i'm like what am i i mean like i mean hope to live to be 100 and something but you know i'm doing this because i don't want to see so many people suffering they don't have to suffer and i get these calls every day from friends and would you help this one they help that one no one can help me and i'm like i'm only one guy i could like work 24 hours a day for the rest of my life and i wouldn't make a dent in the amount of suffering there is in the world but imagine if we could put you know a thousand or a hundred thousand doctors in your pocket that are trained on the future paradigm of medicine and make it accessible to you in real time on a day-to-day basis to guide you and coach you and support you that's what functional health is aiming to do and i'm so excited about it because it's like wow we couldn't do this before we couldn't take this amazing complexity of human biology and help a single doctor understand it's just hard like i i see the pattern so i can look at something quickly and i know in a few minutes like what to do but it's only because i've seen tens of thousands of patients and millions and millions of biomarkers that i can make those connections and i'm not that good compared to like what technology is going to
Speaker 1be able to do yeah what what do you wish doctors were taught today
Speaker 2oh my god don't get me started my daughter just graduated from medical school she's brilliant and she she's now going to be an orthopedic surgeon which i think is great because you need that like you know if you break your hip you need to have uh so that's a kind of medicine that i'm going to be able to do and i'm going to be able to do a lot of medicine that i think is we're really good at is is acute care medicine but what what she didn't learn about was nutrition which okay we have a chronic disease epidemic in this country it's caused primarily by food it can be cured mostly by food and yet doctors know nothing about food right so nutrition didn't learn about the microbiome didn't learn about environmental toxins didn't learn about how to create health didn't learn about the body's networks and systems didn't learn about mitochondria i mean yes she got like her first you know semester she learned about the krebs cycle and biochemistry but didn't understand how to diagnose people with mitochondrial issues which is our energy powerhouse and how how everything works in our body so those are things that doctors don't learn anything about didn't learn about how to optimize your immune function didn't learn about how to treat uh gut issues in the right way by fixing a leaky gut so there's so many areas that that are part of the framework of functional medicine that they don't learn anything about yeah so no
Speaker 1wonder when you go and talk about how you're feeling yeah you're not getting the information
Speaker 2that you need i mean you know you go out doctor you know i feel this and that the other thing and they go well you know i did your exam that's okay your lab tests look okay because they do a very limited set and you know you're fine just go home and take prozac you know but there's only one or two things that's true one either you're crazy and making it up or your doctor's missing something and nine times out of ten they're missing something because they don't know how to think they don't know how to think about the human body except in a very reductionist way and it's just not how things are you know we we are a dynamic ecosystem and everything is interacting with everything else in real time and changing and how do you play with that how do you as a as a as a practitioner or even as an individual learn how your body works i mean most of us have no clue how our bodies work and how to create a better functioning body you know we take better care of our animals than we do our health right i mean you wouldn't feed your dog a big mac fries and a coke would you definitely and a milkshake no we give that to our kids yeah right as someone
Speaker 1who grew up in london england and had the national health care service and then you moved to the united states and of course most of it's private and yeah there's not really any health care available as far as i know you know what do you think the u.s health care system needs to be
Speaker 2focused on yeah a hundred percent well i'm excited i mean i'm working right now with medicare and with the nih on how do things need to change because they're very open and they're very interested in changing the way we look at things and i think you know the even having access to good health care which we don't in this country i mean in the uk you have the nhs the national health service is great but you know maybe the quality isn't always as good the reality is that you know most of your health is not happening in the doctor's office eighty to ninety percent of it is not happening in the doctor's office it happens with things that you can have control over it happens in your kitchen and happens you know where you play and eat and pray and work that's where health happens i mean my wife's now uh studying at columbia for her master's in public health and she's just so excited telling me that how she's learning about how they're talking about the real drivers of disease and it's like eighty and ninety percent is not stuff that the doctor has control over it's it's the environment that you live in and it's your choices every day and so those things you don't really need health care for and so i think if we can build a health system that activates people around that then you won't need the doctor yeah most of the time and then they're there for acute care medicine you know if you like i had back surgery thank god there's some guy who knows how to deal with a spine infection and can put in hardware and like you know kind of build my back up great thank god but you know but if i if i said to him like what do i do to recover and become stronger than i was before he's like i don't know just do physical therapy or eat better or yeah it's a great answer very
Speaker 1helpful great answer how do we hold ultra processed food manufacturers more accountable for getting away with putting excess sugars emulsifiers unidentifiable objects into our food yeah yeah good
Speaker 2question i mean i think you know we've had a pretty lax system of regulations country and you know we have i think 10 000 chemicals that are allowed in our food here in europe is about 400 chemicals and and they go through a very different standard of regulation in terms of ultra processed food and they they're very restricted restrictive around gmo and around herbicides and lots of things that we don't do here and i think you know that's changing there's this whole maha movement people are waking up and it was with my friend a couple days ago jason carp who was really founded a huge chocolate if people like you chocolate and uh he's been was very vociferous writing a letter as a shareholder of kellogg's to the company saying you have fruit loops that you make in america that have all these dyes and chemicals that are known to cause hyperactivity or immune issues or other problems in kids and in europe they don't allow it you make the same fruit loops but with natural colorings like from blueberries or whatever and basically they were ignoring him and then my friend vani hari they all went to battle creek michigan and they had a protest in the fall in october of 24 and finally this week kellogg's agreed they're gonna actually take all that you out wow yeah and uh you know the fda uh has now said they're they're working with food companies to either voluntarily or mandatorily have them remove food additives and colors and dyes that's brilliant i mean i've been i have a non-profit called the food fix campaign i wrote a book called food fix remember the new one's coming out called food fix uncensored next february and it basically talks about how this problem needs to get fixed from field of the fork and what regulations need to happen but this i've been working with my nonprofit for the last 5 years and it's been amazing and the woman who was my key person who's my seeing eye dog in washington is now the governor wife of west virginia she's the first lady of west virginia and that was the first state because of her to ban food dyes wow and then they also got snap waivers which means they are going to limit what you can purchase with food stamps to not be allowed to buy soda or certain kinds of junk food and this is happening across the country there's like over 30 plus states where now there's there's uprisings and i'm living in texas right now and this woman uh um senator cole course is the head of the health and human services committee she listened to my podcast she was a huge fan and she got so excited about this that she introduced a bill called sb25 in texas that limited the crap in the food that limited crap in schools that mandates nutrition education for doctors that starts a chronic nutrition advisory group and it passed the senate it passed the house there and it got signed by the governor into law and i testified at the at the hearing and so there's this movement happening now which i never thought would happen in my lifetime that there's a shift and i think the food companies want to do the right thing but they're they're all in competition with each other so no one company can act independently because their competitors will eat their lunch so literally and so they they now that this is happening at a nationwide level they're they're fighting and they're kicking and screaming but it's going to happen and the new dietary guidelines are going to come out which i've helped advise on and and that is really exciting to me to actually have something out there that's going to help guide people on what to eat food labeling is changing and working with the fda on food labeling hopefully we can make progress on food marketing you know like that's a big one you know like like in europe if if stuff has some dye in it or that's going to cause problem with kids it'll say you know this is bad for your kid and if it eat if your kid eats it they'll get add and whatever hyperactivity and and so the food companies don't want that so they change their formulations so food marketing is a big big driver of behavior and these companies know and they spend 13 billion dollars marketing junk food every year uh and there's a lot of ways to fix that you know the first amendment might prohibit us from limiting the advertising but they could have warnings like they do in drugs they could you know prevent them from being having a tax deduction for some reason or something like that and so there's a lot of ways to put pressure changing medical school education also important i think doctors more engaged in this so it's it's a it's a multi-headed hydra that needs multiple solutions across a lot of government policies and also people making different choices at the checkout counter you can
Speaker 1vote with your fork mark i am so grateful that you survived oh me too i got more work to do yeah you've got so much work to do and i'm so thankful that you're doing it because uh you're doing a great job and i'm so thankful that you're doing it because uh you've got so much work to do and i'm so thankful that you're doing it because you've got so much work to do and i'm so thankful that you're doing it because uh you know you are a startup founder at 65 years you've got so much renewed energy and enthusiasm it's such important work and i'm so grateful that you came back on the show to share it because it's important work all the way from the micro level of the individual to the macro level of talking about government level change and national level change yeah and i'm so excited for people to listen to this conversation because i think there's some really quick fixes that people can take completely and there's been a lot of warnings in this episode that i really appreciate you share just i think sometimes we need to feel a sense of just how challenging it will be yeah if we don't make changes now and i feel like you've really headlined some of them for us so thank you so much yeah i mean
Speaker 2you know jay for me it's like people people have all these things that they suffer with and they just think that they're they've got to live that way yeah they've got to live with that and and for me i've been so sick so many times from so many different things and i've had to recover and and i see so many millions of people suffering needlessly i mean i can't end war i can't end floods and you know famine and i mean but like this is a solvable problem and they're not hearing about it they're not learning about it and that's why i'm obsessed and that's why i'm a founder of a company at 65 years old yeah
Speaker 1grateful mark thank you so much and again i'm encouraging everyone to head over to function health.com forward slash j shetty to get 100 off to get all your 110 biomarkers uh of course as i said i'm an investor in the company so very excited to give access to the knowledge and information that you need to manage your health better to take to your doctor to have healthier conversations to actually be aware and i think all of our change as we know starts at awareness and that's the baseline that's the baseline that's the baseline that's the baseline and that's the foundation so very excited for you all to check that out i hope you'll make the most of it i want to give a big shout out to dr mark hyman again for being here and thank you so much for sharing so many incredible insights i hope you keep coming back please i hope you stay well and uh again let me know what you're trying what you're testing what you're giving a go maybe you're going to try the 10-day detox whether you're going to do it at home or with dr mark hyman maybe you're going to go off and get all the access to the data through function health and you're going to take a look at what you can avoid for you and your health so thank you so much mark hyman thank you so much and i hope you're going to keep doing that and i hope you're going to keep doing that and i hope you're going to family or maybe you're going to start making little changes whether it's to your diet by adding more fiber taking out ultra processed foods getting better sleep all these tiny shifts can make such a huge difference tag me and dr mark hyman on instagram x tick tock let us know what you're changing what you're shifting what you're working on i love seeing how you're turning these episodes into action and i'll see you again on another episode of on purpose thanks for listening and thank you mark nice if you love this episode you'll enjoy my interview with dr daniel amon on how to change your life by
Speaker 4changing your brain if we want a healthy mind it actually starts with a healthy brain you know i've had the blessing or the curse to scan over a thousand convicted felons and over a hundred murderers and their brains are very damaged ulcerative
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