Arianna Huffington: Why Willpower Fails — and What to Do Instead

23:42We all have it. It's our birthright.

23:44Dr. Mark Hyman:Most of us is locked away pretty hard. Most of us is locked away. Thich Nhat Hanh said it's never been easier to run away from ourselves, but it's there. And the reason why these resets work is because there's something you can tap into. You're not creating it. You're just kind of unbearing it. That's amazing. I mean, I think most of us don't realize how close we are to feeling good with just some small, simple steps in every day, and they get cumulative. it creates a cascade effect. Oh, that's a great thing. For more time. I'm going to endlessly quote you on that. You could steal it. How close we are to feeling good.

24:25Isn't that sort of a wonderful thought?

24:28Dr. Mark Hyman:Yeah, we see it all the time when you just guide people into how to take care of their biology, which most of us don't learn. I mean, most of us don't learn how to take care of our bodies. We don't get an operating manual when we're born. We don't have any instruction book. And we kind of aimlessly find our way through life trying to do the right thing. but most of us don't really understand the basic functioning of our body and how to get it to function better. And what you're delivering is at scale, a solution that helps with tiny little nugget bite-sized pieces of, you call the micro steps, to help people advance towards and lean in towards more healthy behaviors.

25:03Dr. Mark Hyman:And they see the results and then they're leaning more. Exactly. And it's really, how do you reduce the friction? How do we make it easier? When we onboard a user, we onboard everything about them that they give us access to. You know, their biometric data, their lab data, their medical data, but also their preferences. What foods do they like? How do they move? What do they like to do? Their calendars, if they give us access. So as much information as possible. You didn't want my calendar. Calendar, oh my God. I need to take hold of your calendar and feed you lots of resets between meetings. I think I need it.

25:41Actually, choking apart, we're going to make you a personalized reset. That's my favorite thing. That's like the one that has the most impact. Yeah. And you can create it on our platform in five minutes with pictures of the people you love, your wife. Do you have a dog?

25:59Dr. Mark Hyman:I do have a dog now. I just got a dog. Okay. He's six months old. What's the dog's name? Lenny. Lenny. A song you love, quotes you love. I mean, I'll send you my personal reset. So immediately, as you know, gratitude and stress and anxiety cannot coexist. So suddenly you have 60 seconds of what you love about your life. Maybe during a moment when your life sucks. You know, we all have those moments during the day. So how can we help you get out of that quickly?

26:45Dr. Mark Hyman:and you know the the power of ai is that it's so intelligent and that it has a capacity to learn over time and it has a capacity to store memory and understanding of you and then can use that knowledge to create more nuanced nudges for you that that are truly meaningful to you rather than some abstract piece of information and you're also able to sort of get not just people's personal lifestyle habit data, but actual other hard data, whether it's wearables, now Function Health and ThriveA Health, they're partnering to be able to upload your lab data, which you might not know that that person is on their way to diabetes, but you can find out and then you can personalize it.

27:25Dr. Mark Hyman:So all these incredible applications that were never possible before to help guide people. No, I think it's an incredible moment. And I'm loving our partnership with Function Health and the fact that people, again, are empowered to take charge of their own health, to get all their biomarkers. And as you know, I'm talking with your team about also starting this program called Know Your Numbers. So people can know. Again, you won't be able to know or remember everything that you learned from your Function blood tests, which are fantastic because you go deeper. But, I mean, we are working with three numbers, and I'm sure you probably will add more or maybe not agree that these are the most important, but here we go.

28:10Here we go.

28:10Dr. Mark Hyman:I'm curious. CRP as your inflammation marker, APOB as your lipid cholesterol number, and APOB, now there's a lot of evidence, is a more powerful marker than LDL and HDL, and then A1C. That's right. So, you know, obviously, there are tons of other numbers. Those are good. You had somebody good advising you. But if you can know these numbers, and we are friends, so we can say, how are you doing, Mark? And how are you doing, Ariana? And then you check them, and you see the trend lines. And this is like the exact opposite of what's happening now, when a lot of people don't even have access to their blood tests.

28:53Dr. Mark Hyman:No, you don't have access. The doctor can't track it over time. You're looking at... And the whole thing is over time. That's the key. What are you doing and how are you monitoring how your behaviors are affecting your health? In the same way we do, I'm wearing an aura ring. The nice one. The nice one, yes. They don't make them anymore. They did a partnership with Gucci and produced these aura rings. So I'm sorry, they don't make them anymore. But I love it because if I don't get a good night's sleep, I can see what did I do differently. I stopped drinking, so that's not an issue. But, you know, I mean, people who...

29:32And I stopped drinking because I think over a certain age, it has a bigger impact on your body. And I prefer how I feel.

29:41Dr. Mark Hyman:Exactly. It's not a sacrifice because I like the feeling of... going to sleep more easily, waking up with clarity. Are you saying that if you have three glasses of wine, it affects your sleep compared to two glasses of wine? These are the kind of data you can collect through an aura ring or a hoop or whatever you are wearing. And that really helps you understand the impact of your choices on how you feel. Because at the end of the day, for me at least, it's really how people feel and their quality of life and their quality of energy and their quality of attention and the quality of relationships and the quality of the effort they're able to put in their life and their work.

30:20Dr. Mark Hyman:I mean, those things are kind of more nebulous, but they're all determined by your health. If you don't actually have a pathway to get better because you don't know what to do or how to do it, or there's too much conflicting information out there, or your doctor doesn't really understand lifestyle medicine, you're going to be kind of wandering around in the dark. I think, or take this pill to treat your diabetes, or take this pill to treat your high blood pressure or you're too stressed, here's some Prozac. But that's not the way we should be treating people. And it's creating accelerating costs and increasing burden on our economy, increasing suffering because people are not actually resolving the problem.

30:59Dr. Mark Hyman:They're just mitigating it slightly or maybe not at all. And so I wonder from your perspective, how you think these kind of shifts in AI-driven behavior-first interventions are going to reverse this trend of chronic illness? Do you think it's key? Because I think, I remember talking to Paul Farmer before I answer the question. I'm just going to say one thing. You know Paul Farmer, I think. He's an incredible man who helped reverse TB and AIDS in some of the worst places in the world through the power of community. And he said, you know, we need to create a million community health workers to solve our chronic disease problem in America.

31:33Dr. Mark Hyman:We need people helping people, neighbors helping neighbors. And essentially what you're creating is sort of a digital neighborhood where people can be neighbors to help each other change. You know, having that much infrastructure and a million community health workers or 10 million or however many we need in America, it's a big lift and it's very expensive. But now with technology, we can actually humanize that. That's what I'm most excited about with AI. You know, when we talk about AI and health, most people tend to think of, oh, it's going to accelerate drug development. Or my radiology scan.

32:08It's going to give us better diagnostic tools. And these are all very important considerations. But I think the mother load, the most important thing is how it's going to help us change behaviors because that's at the heart of the chronic disease epidemic.

32:26Dr. Mark Hyman:A hundred percent. And if we can help people realize that through these nudges and recommendations that are personalized to them, they can have a real impact on their lives and build that success muscle around what they're doing and see the impact it has and feel constantly supported and not judged. It's going to be revolutionary. And that's what I'm most excited about. You mentioned AI superpower being memory. And that's another thing. Personalization is one thing. Memory is the other. My Greek compatriots put on the temple of Apollo in Delphi, know thyself. AI will help us know ourselves and also know us better than we know ourselves so that it can feed us.

33:21Dr. Mark Hyman:Yeah, it's interesting. I was talking to a friend. He said he uses ChatGPT for therapy. If he's got issues with his wife or he's trying to deal with a tough problem, he uses it as a virtual AI therapist. I was like, wow, that's really interesting. I hadn't thought of that. I think what people love about AI therapy is that they don't feel judged. Yeah. I like AI therapy. I don't like AI friends. No, no. The idea that people don't have enough friends or they're going to have bought us friends, I don't like that at all. But if you're learning how to deal with a difficult situation, whether it's a medical problem or a behavioral thing.

33:58But it's like whether it's a medical problem or a human problem, you can be helped. But human connections cannot be replaced with AI connections.

34:09Dr. Mark Hyman:One thing I want to ask you about is the micro steps and how they lead to cumulative changes. Because at the end of the day, if you want to reverse diabetes, it requires bigger change. And it's not just not having that one cookie or not having that one soda. It's a bigger change. So are you seeing in your work that the micro steps add up to macro steps and bigger changes over time? Yes, and it's really about you have to start somewhere. And if you start small, you are more likely to sustain the change. And we want sustainable change. You know, people have lost hundreds of pounds cumulatively and put them back and lost them and cut them.

34:54So what MicroSteps does, it makes the changes in your life sustainable. And the key for me, from all the data we're collecting, is that it's not just food. If you're sleep deprived, you're going to crave bad carbs and sugars. You know, just physiological. Because I think what we've done is we've siloed these behaviors and we need to integrate them. If you are stressed out, you are going to be more likely to binge eat or binge drink or...

35:31Dr. Mark Hyman:Or adversely affect your relationships. Exactly. But even if we take food as the central determining factor of a lot of diseases, the other habits are incredibly important. They impact how much you're going to eat and what food you're going to eat and the so-called comfort foods. And if you don't move from your couch, that's going to affect what you eat too. Yeah. You become sluggish, right? Your metabolism goes down. And if you don't have connections, you're going to get a Häagen-Dazs ice cream bucket, you know, and eat through it. That's going to be your friend, right? So that's, I think, what we're discovering, that even when you make food primary, you need to surround it with what you're doing with the other behaviors.

36:17And the changes do become cumulative. and you pick your favorite micro steps, you know, out of the hundreds and hundreds, and then they become bigger and bigger steps. And then you begin, listen, I ended up completely giving up sugar. It didn't happen overnight, but now like even my daughter's birthday party and I have like two spoonfuls, I feel like I poisoned myself. It's like...

36:47Dr. Mark Hyman:I remember there's this funny picture we took of ourselves at your apartment where it was during that one of the events you had around health. And then we were joking and it was a cake there. And we like both were pretending to eat this, you know, very big piece. But we didn't eat it. So then basically what happens is that if I had tried to give up all sugar when I started on this journey, I would have failed. Yeah. And I would have felt like a failure. I just started gradually. And we have a great nutrition director, I want to introduce her to you, called Tess Braddison. And she is the expert on swabs.

37:25So I gave up sugar relatively easily because we all have different things we are more prone to be addicted to, right? Mine was cheese.

37:34Dr. Mark Hyman:Cheese. Like if you left me alone, I could live on cheese. Forget, you can take everything else. It would be the worst thing. No, no, for me, again, because I've done all these tests, genetically, I'm what they call a high absorber. Of cholesterol. Of cholesterol. Yeah, that, yeah. So, you know, like you may eat cheese and absorb 10%, I observe 90%. Yeah. So, you know, it was not working for my genes. That's the 7 % of genes, right? So she gave me, honestly, probably 40 substitutes, plant-based, nut-based cheeses that didn't have the same impact. And I hated 90 % of them, but then I found one or two that I liked.

38:24And it's like the 80-20 rule. Occasionally, if I want to have a treat, I'll have a piece of great Parmesan cheese or feta cheese. but it's really, it's what you do chronically that matters. It's not what you do occasionally.

38:40Dr. Mark Hyman:That's right. And so you're able to sort of get off sugar and see the changes that happen in your health. And I mean, you look healthy and I've seen you in years, so I don't know what you're doing, but like it's working. Well, I think it's the food, which now, you know, through, again, it didn't happen overnight. You've known me for over 20 years. So you've seen progressively things, you know, getting more optimal. working out. I'm not a naturally athletic person. I'm not a natural marathon runner. I would rather curl up on the couch and read a good book. But now I love it. I got into my daily strength training.

39:24And here's also the other thing I did. Habit stacking is one of the things. Habit stacking. Yes. Habit stacking. Tell us about that. So I started it during COVID. During COVID, when I saw a lot of friends putting on weight because they would sit on the couch binge-watching the news or their favorite shows, I made this rule for myself, which I have not broken since, which is I do not allow myself to watch any show unless I'm on my treadmill or my bike or my elliptical or on my machines.

39:59Dr. Mark Hyman:Yeah. It's been incredible. I remember when Succession was on and I was obsessed with it. I ended up being on my treadmill for two and a half hours because I wanted to get to the end. That's good. That's a good habit stacking. You love it because you are like, some people like music. Whatever it is, just don't make it so hard on yourself. See, how can you make it easier? Because willpower is a diminishing resource. A lot of people think they're going to get healthier through willpower. That's be fun. That's be easy. You have to make it fun. You have to make it delightful. You have to forgive yourself when you fall off the wagon and you eat something you wish you hadn't eaten or don't move.

40:44And then you have to learn what are the obstacles along the way. So my biggest obstacle when it came to exercising was when I traveled. Like I'm religious at home.

40:56Dr. Mark Hyman:Yeah, yeah. then I would travel. And your schedule's full and you got to early. And so what did I do? I started getting a trainer in the hotel. And I remember, you know, I was in London and I meet my trainer in the gym of the hotel and I had to deal with something in my office. So I get on the bike and I'm on the phone for half an hour. So he looks at me and says, why did you book me? I said, because if I had not booked you, I would be in my room. So whatever you can do, you know, whatever is possible. But also, again, to go back to our mutual obsession, how do we democratize that? How do we make it available to millions of people?

41:38Because right now, the 1 % is actually in on this. And people are doing it in different degrees of success, but people know about it, and they're doing it. And I feel that it's our job to spread it.

41:55Dr. Mark Hyman:Yeah, because it's, I mean, I agree, because there's so many people suffering out there who don't know or don't have the resources. And I love the fact that you created this cookbook for people who have, you know, not big budgets for food, who can learn how to make simple food that's delicious, that feels good, that tastes good, that makes their body heal as opposed to making them sick. I mean, this is what most people are doing. and this is democratizing food and food in a way that I don't think most people realize is possible. And that is honestly very subversive because the food industry wants us to believe that it's difficult, it's time-consuming, it's expensive to take care of yourself.

42:29Dr. Mark Hyman:How often do you hear that? Yeah, and it's just propaganda. And they're like, well, you deserve a break today. The propaganda machine is very big. And it sort of blames the individual for being overweight. You just eat less, exercise more. There's no good and bad foods. It's all about moderation. but there are good and bad foods. I mean, eating ultra-processed food affects your brain differently, affects your metabolism differently, your microbiome differently. And so the foods that you kind of have in this book are just simple, real food that are created by top chefs to help people eat simply and deliciously and in the way that's good for them and good for their body and good for their wallet.

43:04Dr. Mark Hyman:And most people don't really understand that the things that actually make the most difference for your health are scalable and available to everybody and are not expensive, are not difficult. And that we, a little bit of support, a little bit of nudging, a little bit of guidance through different tools, whether it's Thrive Global's tools or the work you're doing with employers to get their employees healthier, or the new Thrive AI Health platform, which I'm so excited about. Because it has been, it's been a big thing to think about. How do we unlock the help that people need to make change? Because it's hard to do on your own.

43:39Dr. Mark Hyman:It's hard to do just on your own merits. It's because there's so much in our culture that fosters us to actually not have good behaviors that supports unhealthy behaviors and unhealthy choices. And the easy choice is the unhealthy choice. And the hard choice is the healthy choice. That's all got to change. And so these little beautiful things you've created seem so common sense, so obvious, but they're not employed by healthcare. They're not employed by massage corporations who have employees. They're not thought of as real medicine. But I think you're right. I think these behavior change strategies are the miracle drug.

44:15And you know, there are many companies and people that want to help when you engage them. Like we are working with Shark Ninja that produces a lot of kitchen equipment, and they donate it to people who are trying to change their habits. Because you talked once about a family you were helping change their habits, and they

44:35Dr. Mark Hyman:didn't have any equipment to cook in their kitchen. They'd never cooked. They never cooked. So helping people in every possible way is really our dream, making it as easy and as engaging as possible. And again, back to the alternative, which is the suffering people are going through. There's another story in the New York Times recently, which chronicled the day of a nurse in West Virginia, going from home to home, visiting her patients. They were all under 65. They were not Medicare patients. She describes the first patient. She had diabetes and heart disease, and she arrives to check her, and the woman has just finished her breakfast, which was two Pepsis and peppermint combos, which I checked.

45:30I don't know how many chemical ingredients and dyes were there. Now, is this woman ever going to get well?

45:38Dr. Mark Hyman:No. No. Her movement was like from her bed to the bathroom. So how can we address what is going on around the world? It's not just around the country. Millions of times a day, if we want to really change, you know, the chronic diseases that we are suffering from. Yeah, no, it's imperative because it's taking humanity down. I think there are a lot of existential threats. There's nuclear war, there's the threat of generative AI, all this sort of scary things that people talk about, cybersecurity. But I think the decline in the health of the human population is just staggering. I mean, I've been a doctor for almost 40 years, and just in my lifetime, we've seen cataclysmic change in our health globally, the rise of chronic diseases, the amount of suffering.

46:29Dr. Mark Hyman:And these are mostly caused by the changes in our society and the behavioral nudges in the wrong direction, right? Making available ultra-processed food everywhere we go, the overproduction of food and calories, the fact we don't have to even get up off our couch and do anything anymore. And so we've kind of created a culture which is not helping people at all. But on the other hand, a good news here is when people use the argument that there are all these food deserts where people are going to find food. We work with Instacart. Instacart can deliver 95 % of food deserts. Yeah, that's right. So again, how do we use technology to serve food deserts?

47:10How do we use technology to guide people on this journey? That's really what's exciting right now.

47:17Dr. Mark Hyman:So what's coming up in the world of health and wellness and this whole revolution that you've been such a pioneer in? What most excites you that's happening now? So what most excites me is to go back to what we said at the beginning, which is that using this AI revolution as a forcing mechanism to have a conversation about human nature. I did a fireside chat with Sam Altman recently, and I asked him, what is the world your children are going to inherit going to be like? And he said, my children will be the first generation of people that will never be more intelligent than AI. And there is a sort of consensus among AI leaders that in the next few years, if not in the next year, because everything has accelerated so much, AI will be more intelligent than we are.

48:09And my point is good for the machines. Let's let them be more intelligent and let us be more wise. We need to stop defining humanity by our intelligence. We are more than our cognitive abilities. We have a soul. We have the capacity to love, to feel compassion, to be resilient. All these human qualities that AI will never replicate, that's what I would like us to focus on. And this is all very connected to our health because, you know, you've talked recently a lot about we need to stop separating physical health and mental health.

48:48Dr. Mark Hyman:Totally. It's like health. And I would say even spiritual health. And I use it very broadly because when we threw out religion, we threw out the baby with the bathwater. Yeah, that's true. And so bringing all that together is what excites me. Well, I think that's a really important distinction you just made. and I want to double down on that, which is intelligence is not wisdom. No, intelligence. We're at the moment drowning in data and starved for wisdom. And when people talk about AI, and they tend to focus, oh my God, you know, your PowerPoint presentations are going to be so much easier. But I said, great, good, fine.

49:28But that's not the best thing about it. You know, it's like, we are not just productivity machines.

49:36Dr. Mark Hyman:So what is the world that looks like in the future 10 years from now where you've actually kind of facilitated the behavior change that you want through Thrive A. Health, but also cultivated a culture of wisdom? If I can wear my pathologically optimistic hat that you and I share, I'll pass it on to you afterwards. That's a world where we have companies that recognize that human beings are a mixture of good and bad. You know, it's not like these are the good people and these are the bad people. I mean, Alexander Solzhenitsyn said, there is a line between each human heart that separates within each heart, good and evil.

50:24And so if we recognize that, right now, most technology, social media companies have focused on tapping into what's worst in us. Our addictions, our biases, our rage, our anger. I believe profoundly that companies can make big profits by appealing to what's best in us. You know, right now, most companies have hijacked kind of the operating system of civilization, tapped into what has led to this incredible polarization, depression, anxiety, suicides, deaths of despair. But I want companies, for-profit companies, to prove that you can make a profit by appealing to what's best in people.

51:14Dr. Mark Hyman:You can do well by doing good. Yes. And it doesn't have to be just not-for-profits because we want this to scale. And so that's kind of my hope for the future and my belief that we'll do it if we approach it this way. And when it comes to health, you know, having both doctors and self-insured employers and families all together on this, learning from each other, starting with small steps, habit stacking, you know, making it as easy as possible and supporting each other on this journey because we are all works in progress. That is so true. And I think what you're sharing is a vision of a very different kind of world where the things that divide us will be sort of put aside.

52:05Yes.

52:05Dr. Mark Hyman:And they will be able to sort of leverage the humanity's wisdom to bring us together in ways that we haven't before. And that the work you're doing, particularly around engaging people with their health, is going to create a more generative world, a more connected world, a more engaged world, a world where people feel good and wanna do good and not in this sort of doom spiral that we're in right now, which it feels scary to I think a lot of people. And your optimistic vision is powerful because it gives us hope that we can actually do something differently. And I think the ability to actually lean into a vision of a world where the tech can do what tech does, but we're facilitated to be more human and to learn the simple things that can actually help us feel better and be more alive, which is what it takes to be more human.

52:56Dr. Mark Hyman:It's just such a beautiful vision. Well, let's make it happen. Thank you, Ariana. This is such a great conversation. And thank you for getting me my start in this world of health and health communication. Without you, I don't think I'd be sitting where I am today. And I was just sort of as nobody doctor who had a lot to say and a loud mouth. And I started writing articles in the mid-2000s. And the only place I could get them published was having it in post. And they actually were quite popular. It was actually amazing. Yeah, without having it in post and publishing literally hundreds of articles.

53:29Dr. Mark Hyman:I would write every week an article or two and would get out there. And it really led people to know about the work I do, about functional medicine. It drove my practice. It was really consequential for my life. People loved it. Oh, Mark, thank you for everything you've done and for so many lives that you've touched. Mm, thank you. So good. Well, keep working together and making a difference. If you love this podcast, please share it with someone else you think would also enjoy it. You can find me on all social media channels at Dr. Mark Hyman. Please reach out. I'd love to hear your comments and questions.

54:02Dr. Mark Hyman:Don't forget to rate, review and subscribe to The Dr. Hyman Show, wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget to check out my YouTube channel at Dr. Mark Hyman for video versions of this podcast and more. Thank you so much again for tuning in. We'll see you next time on The Dr. Hyman Show. This podcast is separate from my clinical practice at the Ultra Wellness Center, my work at Cleveland Clinic, and Function Health, where I am Chief Medical Officer. This podcast represents my opinions and my guests' opinions. Neither myself nor the podcast endorses the views or statements of my guests. This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional.

54:36Dr. Mark Hyman:This podcast is provided with the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your journey, please seek out a qualified medical practitioner. And if you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, visit my clinic, the Ultra Wellness Center at ultrawellnesscenter.com and request to become a patient. It's important to have someone in your corner who is a trained, licensed healthcare practitioner and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health. This podcast is free as part of my mission to bring practical ways of improving health to the public.

55:08Dr. Mark Hyman:so I'd like to express gratitude to sponsors that made today's podcast possible. Thanks so much again for listening.