Episode 412: Dr. Mark Hyman: How Ultra-Processed Foods Are Fueling America's Obesity Epidemic

0:01Hi, guys. It's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits & Hustle. Crush it. Hey, friends, you're listening to Fitness Friday on the Habits and Hustle podcast, where myself and my friends share quick and very actionable advice for you becoming your healthiest self. So stay tuned and let me know how you leveled up.

0:29The NIH study by Kevin Hall looked at this very carefully, and he did what we call a crossover trial, which is one of the best types of study designs, where he took the same people, gave them a diet, and then let them have a break, call a washout period, and then give them another diet for a few weeks, and then measure what happened. First part of the diet was eating real food. Wow, yeah. Match for protein, fat, carbs, calories. Then they gave them ultra-processed food, and they can eat whatever they want. Eat whatever you want, eat as much as you want, there's no restrictions. When they were eating ultra-processed food, they ate 500 calories more a day because their biology was dysregulated.

1:05Kids who are iron deficient will eat dirt. The body is going to crave more food and want more food because it's looking for nutrients, but we're looking for love in all the wrong places, right? And so what happened is that you get dysregulated. And when you think about that, 500 calories a day in a week is 3 ,500 calories. That's a pound of weight gain if you don't offset it with exercise. In a year, that's 52 pounds of weight gain. If you eat ultra processed food, why is America the fattest country in the world? Like we have 75 % of us that are overweight, 42 % are obese. It's increased, you know, fourfold since I was born.

1:47And you've seen diabetes increase 400%. I mean, it's in the last 30 years, it's insane. And, you know, the metabolic dysfunction, even if you're not overweight, because you can be skinny fat. In other words, you look thin, but you're actually fat on the inside. Right, your percentage is fat. Yeah, your body fat, where the fat is, if it's in your belly, visceral fat. That's 93.2 % of Americans have metabolic dysfunction. That means that 6.8 % of us are healthy. And what does that mean? That 93.2 % has either high blood sugar, high blood pressure, abnormal cholesterol, all, by the way, caused by too much starch and sugar in our ultra-processed diet, or they've had a heart attack or stroke, or they're overweight.

2:30Yeah, that is unbelievable. It's unbelievable. And so we're killing ourselves and it's the costs are staggering. I mean, the government, the US government pays 40 % of the national healthcare bill, which is now$4.9 trillion. Probably a good$2 trillion of that is totally preventable and is now being added to our federal deficit every year. And imagine what that$2 trillion can do for the economy, what we could do with social programs, how we could improve our infrastructure, or how we could improve so many innovation, how we could fund different kinds of research. I mean, we're wasting that money.

3:04And most people don't realize that. You know, it's one out of every three taxpayer dollars is for healthcare. It's unbelievable. What I find to be unbelievable is that everyone seems to look for these quick fad diets or quick fixes, but yet like it's pretty, again, what you're saying is pretty basic, right? Like it's the same things that like, if they watch what they eat, quality of the food, inflammation, like these - It's not that hard. It's not that hard, but yet people are trying to over or they're overwhelmed with like all this like noise. Yeah. You know, the other thing I wanted to ask you about Ozempic or any of these or Govies or whatever, can your body acclimate over time anyway?

3:40And so you end up even eating what you ate before you even started taking it. Sometimes these drugs affect people differently. I had a patient who I didn't prescribe it, but he, he was telling me he lost, you know, he did Ozempic for six months. He lost two pounds. It didn't really make him feel great. He had all these side effects. he switched over to what I told him to do. He lost 60 pounds and he's reversed his diabetes and he's on his way back to full health. You keep on saying patients. Do you still see patients? Yeah, I saw two this morning. I had a whole patient day yesterday, yeah. So you actually still see like one of them.

4:12I'm a doctor, yes. I don't just play one on TV. No, you don't just play one. Listen, this is very refreshing. I thought of all the people, of all the doctors, you wouldn't have time because do you know how many times I've seen doctors sit in the same chair you are and they're doctors, yeah, I guess they have a certificate, but they don't practice. They write books and they like to do media and they like to do all these other things. It keeps it real. It keeps you humble. It keeps you learning. But people don't like to do it. Like, it's impossible to find. Like, the big joke is I can't find a doctor.

4:41I love it. I mean, I love taking care of people. It's so, I mean, it's amazing. You actually are, like, would you take another patient? I need a doctor because there is such a shortage of doctors. You're a lying girl. I know. Like, what is the waiting list for that? Like, do you have like a crazy waiting list? I wish I could see everybody. I really wish. I mean, it's the heartbreak of my life. And I can tell you, I probably get five to 10 texts, emails, requests every day. Oh, easy. My mother this, my friend this, I'm sick this. And like people who are close to me and I'm like, I just wish I could help everybody.

5:13And I can't. And so that's really why I co-founded Function Health. Right. Was to take what I know and make it accessible, not to a few hundred or thousand people, but to millions and millions. We have an 8 billion person problem. That's exactly true, right? And what we're creating at Function is something that is revolutionary. It's why we're the fastest growing healthcare company in the world. We're creating something called medical intelligence. You know, you have chat, GPT and all this. But think about where you take all your own data and all your data is sorted through with the use of technology.

5:45Because now we can process, I mean, just in your microbiome alone, there's 100 ,000 terabytes of data. I don't even know what a terabyte is, but it's a lot of information. It's a lot, I guess, yeah. I would say. So no human mind can comprehend all that. So we're able to take all this data and actually understand what's happening to you and input it all into the system and then give you a predictive model of where you are and the trajectory from wellness to illness because things don't happen overnight, right? For example, we were mentioning some of these Alzheimer's tests like PTAUS 217 or AD4240 or neurofibrillate light chain.

6:17There's other biomarkers. And we're now able to see from a blood test that you could be developing early cognitive injury, brain injury, that you don't even know about because you're not symptomatic. You can tell with brain imaging up to 30 to 40 years before you get Alzheimer's that you're starting to get trouble in the brain. But now with these blood tests, we can detect it. And then you can do something to intervene and actually reverse that trajectory. That's never been possible before. How is it even possible? I thought there was no cure. Can you give us a couple? Well, there is. Of course there is.

6:47I mean, you know. Like what? Give us some things that we can do for our brain health, brain fog. This is actually fact. I mean, if you look at the studies being done at the FINGER trial, the POINTER trials, these are large-scale clinical trials using aggressive lifestyle intervention, risk factor modification, and actually showing not just reverse, slowing down or delaying the progression of Alzheimer's, but reversing. How? How can we reverse Alzheimer's? What you eat, I mean, exercise, dress management, sleep optimization, the right nutritionals optimization, hormone optimization, addressing all the root causes, toxins, the gut microbiome.

7:25I mean, it's a, it's a process. It's a deep, deep involved process. And I've written a book about this called the Ultramind Solution about 15 years ago. It was way ahead of its time, still ahead of its time. And colleagues of mine, like Dale Bredesen, have taken that and really upgraded it. And he's got a recode program now. He's written a book called The End of Alzheimer's, which talks about the root causes. This is not just happening in a vacuum. It's not just a random event. Why have we seen Alzheimer's increase by 150 %? Why? Tell us. Why? Because we have this shitty diet, which is sugar. I mean, they're calling Alzheimer's type 3 diabetes now, which is insulin resistance.

7:58Why? We have 93 % of the population have some degree of insulin resistance. But why? That's what I don't understand. Toxins, environmental toxins. There's more education out than ever before, right? We're more educated, you'd think, like there's information out there. how is it instead of getting less obese we're getting more obese instead of getting healthier we're getting more sick when all we we are overloaded with people and information like the health industry longevity industry it's a trillion dollar business yeah we live in a toxic cesspool of food and toxins i mean it's just the truth i mean the the food industry has produced a food that is making us sick and making us die early and and we also have completely unregulated environmental toxins in this society that people are just polluted.

8:45You know, if we were food, we wouldn't be safe to eat as human beings are so polluted. Why is it different here than the UK? Well, in other countries, they don't allow the same ingredients. I mean, you might've heard the recent kerfuffle about Kellogg's and these are friends of mine. I was going to ask you about that. Yeah. I mean, like, you know, it's ridiculous. Like in Europe, they have regulations. They have something called the REACH legislation in the European Union, which limits the use of chemicals. So here, the way it works is, if you're a company, you get to use whatever you want, and you get it approved as generally recognized as safe.

9:17And then you only get to have it taken off the market if it's shown later to be harmful. So innocent until proven guilty. Wow. As opposed to, you have to prove this is safe before you put in the food.

9:37Thank you.