EP #41 Why You're Not Leading a Healthy Life w/ Dr. Doris Taylor & Dr. Mark Hyman (Q&A)

0:00Welcome to moonshots and mindsets. I recently had a conversation with two extraordinary leaders in the health and longevity arena. Mark Heimann is best known as a functional medicine physician, the best -selling author most recently of young forever. In other books including The Blood Sugar Solution, Food, What the Heck Should I Eat, He's appeared on the Dr. A's show and CBS this morning. He's a dear friend and extraordinary thinker on health and our future in health with him I paired Dr. Doris Taylor Dr. Taylor is really out of the pages of science fiction novels She is a regenerative medicine researcher Previously at the Texas Heart Institute now at the Advanced Regenerative Manufacturing Institute with Dean Cayman and she is building pediatric heart, small hearts for children who need them.

0:54So you're going to join a conversation that comes from my private summit at abundance 360. It took place in March of 2023. We're going to talk about everything from understanding how to combat chronic disease with the food you eat and how you take care of yourself to what should we expect in the future. Do we have an extra set of spare organs. We truly are living during the most extraordinary time and I think health is the new wealth. Enjoy this episode. Let's dive in. Let's kick it off, Babs. Hey. Good morning. Thank you very much both of you from the obsadence of the spectrum, right? The question, right?

1:39We need replacement parts too if We screw up so it's okay. Yeah, anyway, it's a point of clarification for Doris that we ghost heart. What's the ghost heart and what part does it play? So the ghost heart is basically the scaffold that we on which we put your stem cells to pick heart from which we've removed every cell. And as we remove every cell, what's left is what we call the extracellular matrix. And it's basically hundreds of proteins and sugars and molecules that tell every single cell how to grow up and how to behave. Okay. And then it basically... It's called human heart after that. Yes.

2:29The human stem cells grow onto it, differentiate it very rarely. Right. Got it. Thank you. to scaffolding. And amazing. And if you come to the platinum event, you'll see that happening in real life. If we will be coming. Yeah, if you'll be there in August, yes, we're dead. Absolutely. Yeah. We'll miss it. We've been to last two. We just keep getting more and love it. Thank you. Thank you, Annie. I'm so blown away by our panel today. And Doris, I was working in biotech around the time that you started on this amazing journey. So thank you for this. I was blown away back when I entered the industry.

3:11I left thereafter for a number of reasons. But when I look at you creating a solution that can help save the number one killer in the world, and that we can accelerate that solution with the right resources within five years, at only $300 million to me. That's shocking, one. And number two with the resources, I'm part of a new fund out of the EU for biotech and innovation. And the EU has agreed to match that fund. And my question here for most of us here in the US, where's the matching dollars? And where is our industry? And I also want to talk to you afterwards, by the way. Fantastic. You'll meet each other at the patronage, for sure.

4:03Next to each other. Great. Thank you, Annie. Let's go to Jordy. Dr. Rose. Terrific. My question for Mark. A couple of years ago, I went almost entirely carnivore. So I eat aching eggs, almost exclusively. I feel terrific, best I've ever felt. But my cholesterol levels are through the roof. and my doctor put me on a statin, which I'm reluctantly taking. So that was question no more. And question number two, running or weightlifting, which is better. Well, at first I can't give you personal medical advice because I go to jail. I don't know, it's a California. But in general, I think the extremes of diet are interesting, you know, being a vegan or being a full carnivore.

4:49And I think they both have real limitations. I think, you know, for some people with a lot of inflammatory issues, a lot of gut issues who are eating a lot of processed food, gluten, sugar, dairy, it's not necessarily the meat that's fixing it, it's what you're not eating. And I think you can include, and I think there's a whole, the whole conversation about anti -nutrients and plant foods is, I think, a little bit misguided. There's a whole framework of what we call phyto -hormesis. Phyto -hormesis means when you eat stressed plants, wild plants, for generally raised plants, organic plants better than obviously conventional plants, they have more of these powerful defense molecules in them.

5:25And we use those to regulate our biology from an evolutionary perspective. And so, Emptor, for example, is positively affected by the polyphenols and copy and inhibits it, a lurapene in olive oil, the curcumin in turmeric, the, you know, the respiratory in red grapes. These all actually aren't inhibitors of Emptor, just like rapamycin or fasting or other inputs like exercise or hormisis therapies. So I think, you know, for a long term, I do worry about a carnivore diet, but I do know it can create remarkable change in health. But I think it's because of the elimination, not because of the need.

5:59Although I think meat is not a problem. We do need to have good quality meat as part of our muscle building strategy and preservation as we age. Emma Maranna was 117 years old when she died. Her doctor told her in her 90s because she was doingly need 150 grams of meat a day and she did. So I think that's important. Second, in terms of longevity, I think both cardio and resistance training are important, but I do think resistance training becomes more important as we get older because what happens is entropy and muscle loss if you don't do that. Muscle loss is conserved with before -mone and other hormones when you're younger.

6:36When you're older, it takes actual resistance training and adequate protein. That's probably a far more important intervention. and I think 20, 30 minutes before times a week is a powerful intervention for longevity to maintain muscle mass, to build muscle mass, to enhance my decontrol function, and to also induce a lot of these longevity switches that we talked about. Everybody, it's Peter. I want to take a break from our episode to talk about a health product that I love. It was a few years ago. I went looking for the best nutritional green drink on the market. So I went to Whole Foods, and I started looking around.

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8:34Alright, let's go back to the episode. Fantastic. Let's go to to Bob on mic 4th. Hey Mark this question is for you. I've followed basically what you've suggested for the last five years. I've turned around biological age 25 years in that process. Amazing. In the same token I've done the MRI every year and over the last three years I've watched my prostate almost double in size and form a tumor and in the you You are a book, you make a specific statement about if you have latent prostate cancer, don't take NMN. And I've started to get more people say that. And I jumped on NMN about four years ago.

9:14And I wonder if you could expand on that. I mean, I think, you know, this is a really important question. I think, you know, there's always what we call pleatropic effects of various molecules. NAD plus is a molecule that the body makes as part of its normal function when energy your levels drop, NAD goes up, and it's an activator of Sir Tumans, which then has all these downstream benefits. But there are some animal studies that seem to indicate that it may increase cancer risk, but I think they're really limited. And I think there's some real challenges with those studies that I think don't, to me, convince me that NAD will cause cancer.

9:51So it may be other things that are going on there. It's hard to say, looking at your genetics, diet, lifestyle, other things. I don't know if you're having symptoms prostate disease or if you're having a PSA increasing or you had latent prostate cancer, I don't know, but I think those are things to explore. But I think I wouldn't put the weight on the NMN that you took. And you could ask David Sinclair about it. He's the expert. But I think recently we're on a rebuttal to that whole cancer hypothesis. Thank you. Let's go to Anne on Zoom. Anne, what's your question? Where are you on the planet?

10:22Hello. So my question is for Dr. Taylor, but I did want to say Dr. Heimann, I live in a blue zone in the Ngoia Peninsula in Costa Rica. And I think, well, I hope you come back and maybe visit me. Yeah. Who else? Costa Rica. Well, you said about community and love. I mean, I see that it's so true. That's the biggest difference that I noticed. I lived in Chicago and then London and now in Costa Rica is that connection to family community and just brings this kind of general sense of joy That has really changed my life and It's something that I really wish I'm sorry. I'm so emotional. It's something that I really wish that We had more of in the United States Dr.

11:12Taylor. I just wanted to say thank you so much hearing your work and gave me so much hope because I spent the last year taking care of my mother flying back and forth because she was diagnosed with stage 4 and then end stage heart failure. And she was so afraid of ignoring the problem and then was really afraid of the only solution she 75 so heart transplant wasn't a solution. and thank goodness a few years ago the portable LVAD, the left ventricle assist device was approved. And so we spent in January days from dying. She said yes to having that surgery. And now we're dealing with the implications of her living because of a machine.

12:02And it's been so scary as a mother of two young children, her heart failure. I don't remember the term. but they don't know why. And everything else, she's 75, and she's really healthy, low cholesterol, low blood pressure, and so for me, it's been really scary. Thinking, is this something that's going to happen to me? And so I just wanted to say thank you, giving me so much hope. And if I had $3 million, I would give it to you. Oh. Can I speak to you? Please, yes.

12:35Well, first of all, thank you. And I want to make the point following up on what Frank Mark said and what you just said. You're building heart too. We're all building heart and the piece that Mark talked about love, it's really a piece of the future of all of this. So, hope matters, hope matters so much. And heart failure in women is often different than heart failure in men. And if you want to retouch afterwards, we can have a conversation about that. Because I'd love to talk more about it. And we have a biologic that is going to have an impact on heart failure with preserved ejection fraction, which is the heart failure that most women get and actually is increasing as men age.

13:32So thank you. Thank you, Anne. Thank you. Thank you. Guillermo. Wow. Glad to have you. Thank you, Peter. Yes. This is for Dr. Mike Hyman. Dr. is so exciting to have you here. your book, the ITFAC good thing, change so many life. And so many professionals, healthcare professionals and nutrition practitioners, way of practicing. So thank you for that. But following one of the questions today, how are your thoughts on after doing a high -fat diet and a low sugar diet, having your cholesterol levels raised? How do you see cholesterol being a marker of heart disease for the future or not. And second, if I can't do another one, we all know sugar is the number one cause of disease in the world.

14:26But what are your thoughts on blue light or artificial light causing the same insulin resistance that sugar can cause in our body? Oh, that's a great question. So I mean, I think in terms of the sugar issue and I think, you know, photo biomatulation is a real thing. I think blue light at night definitely affects our metabolism in an adverse way, but I don't think it compares to sugar. Honestly, I think it's such a much bigger effect. And your first question, what was that again? That cholesterol being a market of disease. Of cholesterol. Yeah, cholesterol. Okay, so cholesterol is a real controversial subject because is it the cause or is it a biomarker of something else going on?

15:13And I think we know that heart disease is an inflammatory state and the cholesterol elevations and the absence of inflammation are not a huge risk. Now there is huge genetic variability in the population when it comes to lipid metabolism in terms of lipid absorption of the gut in terms of lipid synthesis in the liver and in terms of the patterns of cholesterol of people form. So it's really got to be an individualized approach. I'm not opposed to to pharmacotherapy for lipid disorders, but most of the problems with lipids come from eating sugar and starch, not necessarily fat. Because it increases triglycerides, it lowers HDL, it increases the particle number, decreases the particle size, all these are the most dangerous type of cholesterol pattern.

15:56So your cholesterol could be 150, but if your HDL is 30 and your triglycerides 100, you're in terrible shape. Whereas if your cholesterol is 300 and your HDL is 80 and your triglycerides are 70, I'm not so worried, particularly if you have low inflammation. So it's really about a personalized approach and the right diagnostics. And I think fountain life is such an important company because it's helping people map out the right diagnostics, both laboratory, conventional tests, but things that your doctor may not be checking like lipid fractionation, which most cardiologists and doctors don't do.

16:26And it's the pretty much the only way to look at your lipids. In terms of saturated fat and high fat diets and lipids, again, there's real head or geneticity. I've had people go on a keto diet with butter and coconut oil, which is all saturated fat and their lipids drop like the stone, everything improves. Other people are, you know, lead athletes will say, I want to try keto and their cholesterol goes to hell. So, I think it's about understanding that there's genetic differences. For me, for example, I'm a, we'll call lean mass hyperresponder. There's a phenomena that in certain people, when they eat a lot of saturated fat, it actually raises the, you know, and creates an adverse cholesterol profile.

17:03And we don't exactly know why there's some genetics involved, but you've got a really persuasely approach. This episode is brought to you by levels. One of the most important things that I do to try and maintain my peak vitality and longevity is to monitor my blood glucose. More importantly, the foods that I eat and how they peak the glucose levels in my blood. Now glucose is the fuel that powers your brain. It's really important. High, prolonged levels of glucose, what's called hyperglycemia, leads to everything from heart disease, to Alzheimer's, to sexual dysfunction, to diabetes and it's not good.

17:38The challenges all of us are different. All of us respond to different foods in different ways. Like for me, if I eat bananas, it spikes my blood glucose. If I eat grapes, it doesn't. If I eat bread by itself, I get this prolonged spike in my blood glucose levels. But if I dip that bread in olive oil, it blunts it. And these are things that I've learned from wearing a continuous glucose monitor and using the levels app. So, levels is a company that helps you in analyzing what's going on in your body. It's continuous monitoring 24 -7. I wear it all the time. Really helps me to stay on top of the food I eat, I mean conscious of the food that I eat, and to understand which foods affect me based upon my physiology and my genetics.

18:24You know, on this podcast, I only recommend products and services that I use, that I use not even myself, my friends and my family that I think are high quality and safe and really impact a person's life. So check it out, levels .link slash peter. Give you two additional months of membership and it's something that I think everyone should be doing. Eventually this stuff is going to be in your body, on your body, part of our future of medicine. Today it's a product that I think I'm going to be using for the years ahead and hope you'll consider as well. All right, Kimberly. Hi, so my question, Dr.

19:03Mark Hyman, your book, The Food Fix, was phenomenal in an absolute game changer. And Dr. Taylor, hearing the statistic that $32 ,000 a month for these drugs is the current status quo. And so there's been a lot of money and profit made from people being sick and overweight. So how are you bridging the gap? What is the marketing strategy in essence to prove that having a fit, healthy society can actually be more profitable for people who have profited from sick care? The first thing we have to do is tell the truth about the status quo. And we don't currently talk about organ transplant not being a panacea.

19:51Everyone thinks, got a new organ, got a new lease on life, gonna go forward, life is great. That's not the reality. And I think telling the truth about costs and that you have to have access is a first step to because now there's a whole room of people who know that who didn't before this conversation and that may impact it. The other thing is it's just, it's no difference in smoking. If there's profit to be made, it's going to be marketed, it's going to be promoted, and we live in an industry where the addiction is sugar, and the poison is sugar. And the question is, will the government step in?

20:30We also live where people have freedom. The question is, do they know that it's not healthy? Most everybody does, they choose to ignore it. It's a quick fix. Mark, right? It's also less expensive. It's also less expensive, yes. Yes. So the question. I think, yeah, it's complicated. I wrote a whole book on this and I'll summarize in five minutes. But I think the essential idea here is that, you know, we're not facing the biggest national emergency we have, which is from our food system that's driving the majority of age -related diseases, the majority of costs, probably over 80 % of our $4 .1 trillion in health care costs, not to mention the additional indirect costs from disability dysfunction because of the food we're eating.

21:18It's the biggest national emergency. 11 million people die every year globally from poor food. I think that's an underestimate. And we're just not addressing it. I actually went on Tucker Carlson this week talking about this issue because I think we need to face this as we should be face COVID or any other national emergency and deal with it head on. And it requires a huge amount of change in industry innovation, in regulatory and legislative actions, in consumer education, behavior change. And it's a work that's going to take a while. And so that's why I started a nonprofit to change policy in Washington to drive the right changes around food as medicine in our system to really de -incentivize the wrong things and incentivize the right things.

22:01Right now it's just kind of a mess. So I think I'm hopeful for the future, but we're way too slow. We tend to deal with problems way after they happen rather than before. And we're seeing this juggernaut coming that I don't think policymakers have really grappled with clearly. Everybody, this is Peter, a quick break from the episode. I'm a firm believer that science and technology and how entrepreneurs can change the world is the only real news out there worth consuming. I don't watch the Crisis News Network, I call CNN or Fox, and hear every devastating piece of news on the planet. I spend my time training my neural net the way I see the world by looking at the incredible breakthroughs in science and technology.

22:43How entrepreneurs are solving the world's grand challenges. What the breakthroughs are in longevity. How exponential technologies are transforming our world. So twice a week I put out a blog. One blog is looking at the future of longevity, age reversal, biotech, increasing your health span. The other blog looks at exponential technologies, AI, 3D printing, synthetic biology, AR, VR, blockchain. These technologies are transforming what you as an entrepreneur can do. If this is the kind of you use you want to learn about and shape your neural nets with, go to demandus .com, backslashblog, and learn more.

23:22Now back to the episode. I want to go to two questions on Zoom. We go to Allison first and then Orlando then we go to you Michael Allison First of all, thank you so much. It's a so inspiring and I can't help thinking what would Mozart have done with the next 30 years Yes, I love that Steve deep thanks to both of you Mark. I'd love to hear from you your quick take on the microbiome and supplements you hear very good reviews and then Doris I would love to hear from you caring about hearts which of all of Mark's advice you actually take. It's fun question Ellison. Well the microbiome is so important and in fact it was not included in the original hallmarks of aging.

24:10I added it in my book because I thought it was so important. And the ear of the microbiome is just emerging. There's an enormous amount of research that needs to be done to categorize, classify, understand, what is going on in there. It's just like a black box. And we've learned so much in the last 10 years, 20 years on this, but we still have a lot more to learn. What's really exciting is that we know that as we age, our microbiome degrades are microbial diversity degrades. And we also know how to change that through various strategies by limiting things that are gut busting, sugar, starch, eat, processed food diets, food additives, and environmental chemicals all damaged.

24:49The glyphosate is one of the worst ones from our food supply. It's on 70 % of crops is the weed killer that we use. Also, the use of antibiotics, anti -inflammatory drugs, acid blocking drugs, I think it's acid blocking because of the third leading cause of drug use in this country or third leading category. I mean, and so we need to stop all the gut busting stuff. And then we had knee dead pre -bottles, probiotics, and polyphenols, which are the plant compounds that help fertilize the gut bugs. And then there's precision probiotic therapy. So not all probiotics are same. They have different uses for different things.

25:23So it's really important to try to restore gut. And I think one of the most important exciting discoveries is the importance of bifidobacterium and phantus in children. And a lot of us are taking antibiotics. Most women have. and their population of this particular keystone bacteria is either absent or very low. So when babies are born, they don't get it. When they born through C -section, they for sure don't get it. When they're antibiotics are used in pregnancy or in early life, it kills it all. So giving babies bifuritobacteria and phantis can actually colonize the gut with a really important keystone species that then regulates all the inflammatory diseases.

26:04Obviously, and diabetes. So we really kind of needed learn how to restore or got microbiome and I have a whole section of my book about how to do that. But it's really important to track it to measure it, to optimize it, and to constantly iterate on how to do that. We're going to go to Michael and then to Orlando on Zoom. But I hope that helped your answer question. Michael, please. So the topic of regrow in the heart is very close to me because my mom's heart disease for many years. So I've always fantasized whether we can grow, for your print, construct something like that. So I wanted to ask, what are kind of the steps remaining in a process because I know there might be challenges around human dynamics, the details of how cells are, you know, differentiated to be exactly like a human heart.

26:55I imagine there's animal trials are not like what is the rough road map you have always talked about we talked about doing an x -priced in that area at one point we'd be in yeah Michael's one of the founders of Oculus yes so there's our steps in the process obtained blood from an individual banked ourselves our rate limiting step for 10 years was how to grow billions of heart cells because by the way, heart cells don't divide. Right? So what we had to do was figure out, and the advent of human IPS cells changed this. It let us begin to think about personalized cells. So we grow 350 billion of your cells.

27:42We differentiate those to cardiac mesoderm. The cells that during development are gonna give rise to the heart. Then we actually treat about 70 % of those and make them become the different heart muscle cells, but not very mature. They're not even as mature as fetal heart cells. And then we take the other 30%, we put it all in our heart after we've built the vasculature, which we do first. And then we train it. So we have to train it electrically and we have to train it against a blood pressure and we have to dial that up over time And every heart's a little bit different because everybody sells are a little bit different That's amazing And and please get a chance to connect here while you're here together.