Why Whole Foods Founder John Mackey Is Tackling America’s Health

12:36John Mackey:It's my degree in philosophy about as usual.

12:38Dr. Mark Hyman:Yeah, taking a hike for a week in the Shenandoah Mountains. And I took Moby Dick and just me and myself and I and ended up realizing, well, maybe I should try to go to medical school and see if I liked it. And if I didn't like it, I would quit. You know, but so far, so good.

12:52John Mackey:You haven't met either your parents' doctors?

12:55Dr. Mark Hyman:No, no, nobody. The story was that my grandfather's grandfather, Russia, was the doctor to the czar, the last czar. But I think it's probably made up. I don't believe it.

13:07John Mackey:So you were not pushed into the - No, no, no. We'll say you were led by your - Yeah, I was led into it. You're led by your heart or your soul, your deeper spirit.

13:17Dr. Mark Hyman:And I was studying all these ancient healing systems, and I learned Chinese and studied Chinese medicine. And so I was very much thinking differently from the beginning.

13:26John Mackey:You have to write your story.

13:27Dr. Mark Hyman:I know. I will. I will. You've got a lot of books out there. You know, I always tell people, everybody should write a memoir.

13:33John Mackey:Yeah. Because in some ways, only looking retrospectively, a lot of patterns and threads came together in writing the book. It's like, wow, I never quite thought of it that way before. You know, as you know, when you write, it's a discovery process. Yeah. You're creative and you're discovering things. It's hard, but you are discovering things that you didn't necessarily put together before. And a memoir is also a gift to your family, your children, your descendants.

13:59Dr. Mark Hyman:Yeah, it's true. I think, you know, you're right, John. You can't always tell going forward where things are connecting. But looking back, you can see all the threads and all the choices and all the decisions that led you to the moment that you're doing what you're doing.

14:12John Mackey:It helps you actually, I think, moving forward as well. Because when you're clear about those patterns, then you have less sort of uncertainty.

14:20Dr. Mark Hyman:I think people live a lot in fear. I think it's one of the challenges.

14:23John Mackey:Fear is what keeps people from following their hero's journey. I think we're all called to a hero's journey, all in our own unique ways. But we're too scared. I'm scared we might fail, scared of ridicule, scared our parents won't approve, blah, blah, blah, blah. I just did it anyway.

14:38Dr. Mark Hyman:Yeah. And so did you. Yeah. I don't know what makes some people like that and others not. I was always like that. Actually, I have a title for my memoir, which I've started, but I haven't really finished yet, which is called Notes from God, Stumbling Toward the Truth. And it's basically this— You shouldn't tell that.

14:55John Mackey:that's such a great title. Keep that title to yourself. That's okay.

14:59Dr. Mark Hyman:You can actually, you can write Moby Dick. Nobody can copyright a title, so it's okay. But the idea is basically that when you're moving through life, there's these little doors that open, these little post-it notes from God, let's call them, and you can choose to go through or not. Somebody gave you a tab of acid and you're like, I'm going to try this and look what happened. And then you need a job, so you went, you worked in a whole natural food store and just one thing connected to the next, but you chose to actually do those things. And I think people live less from fear and more from love, which is why I love the title of your new company, the name Love Life.

15:36Dr. Mark Hyman:It's not an accident. No, it's not an accident. And those moments we often don't pay attention to in our life, those little notes from God. But I think the more you pay attention to those and listen to those things, the better your life's going to be. And I think what's happening around chronic disease in America is that people are not listening to their bodies, they're not listening to their conversation that they should be having with their soul, and so they end up in this narcotized, polluted self that's sick and unable to think clearly and feel right. 100%.

16:08John Mackey:You know what the thing about the notes from God is that they're always being written, and you can, even if you haven't been listening to them before, you can start listening to them. Yeah, it's true. You just have to, it's always so you just have to quiet. You have to be still, be quiet. And it's always speaking. And even if we make bad decisions, there's new notes. It's like - It's totally true. It's always waiting for us to listen to it and follow it. I had been thinking about Love Life or something like that for a long time. I was thinking -

16:36Dr. Mark Hyman:What just for people to think, what is Love Life? Love Life is a holistic health center, a one-stop holistic health wellness center.

16:44John Mackey:It's big. Our first flagship location here is in the LA area. It's down in El Segundo, Manhattan Beach. It's an old Best Buy, so it's big. So we have 45 ,000 square feet in there. So just real quickly, you go in, and of course, I want to get you there. I'd love to give you a tour and let you see what I'm doing. You go in. First, we have a healthy cafe. So healthy food is one of the foundations for people to be as healthy as possible. So starting with food. Then we have sort of this whole community space, co-working space, but also a big gather room, community room where we can do lectures. So let's say you were to come do a talk on functional medicine.

17:27John Mackey:Then we would invite members and the outside community. And we can get in that expanding it in the cafe. We probably get 75 people in there pretty comfortably. Then you go into a fitness center. So we've got like the category most people try to fit us into is like a gym because we have a really nice gym. But of course, that's just one little small part of what we're doing. And then in that fitness center, we're sort of state of the art, like I think Equinox in a way, sort of upscale. Lots of the most recent cool technologies in there. We have a physical therapy room. We have a physical therapist on staff.

18:03John Mackey:We really think physical therapy for many people that have injuries is very, very efficacious.

18:08Dr. Mark Hyman:Or you can go for your pickleball injury. Well, yes.

18:12John Mackey:We have lots of sort of biohacking stuff, which I'll get to in a sec. Speaking of pickleball, we have three pickleball courts. So I did hurt myself on the court. One of the biohacks we had, there's a PIMF machine. So I did that a couple of times. And I think that's helped.

18:27Dr. Mark Hyman:That's post-electromagnetic frequency, which helps to sort of reduce inflammation. Yes.

18:32John Mackey:Yes, it does. I think it helps a little bit of the circulation and starts to move some of the the inflammation out of the injured, in my case, my calf. So then we've got a yoga studio. We've got a Pilates studio. In that yoga studio, we do breath work. Besides yoga, we do breath work. We do sound baths. We do meditation classes. We're about all things to help people be the healthiest version of themselves, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Those are all part of the Love Life vision. We have a really nice spa. So you can do things you do in any really nice spa with lots of different kinds of massages, facials, wraps.

19:18John Mackey:It's not a medical spa per se. We're not doing Botox or other type of medical injections in that way. We have all this recovery stuff and all these sort of biohacks. So we've got our pimp machines. We've got two hyperbaric oxygen chambers. We've got cryotherapy. We've got four red light beds. We've got four infrared sauna rooms. We have a huge steam room. We have six cold plunges, and we have the biggest sauna you've probably ever seen. You can jam like 40 people in that sauna if we had to. So those are the recovery things. And then, of course, the real thing that sets us apart is that we have primary health care.

19:58John Mackey:We have a center. We do very comprehensive testing, like function health blood tests. We do a comprehensive blood test. We add a gut test because we work with partnering with Viome. So we do a gut test. We do oral test. We're doing checking the feces. We're doing a VO2 max.

20:17Dr. Mark Hyman:It's your fitness level.

20:18John Mackey:Yes. Trying to grip strength. We're doing lots of stuff.

20:22Dr. Mark Hyman:Body composition.

20:22John Mackey:Yes, body composition. We have a DEXA scan.

20:25Dr. Mark Hyman:It's really one-stop shopping. It is. All things health and wellness.

20:28John Mackey:One thing we don't have, although we have access to MRI because we have a deal with Pranova on that one, like Functions bought a company there. But I think in our next center, which we plan on that being in Austin, although we don't have the location yet, we will put the MRI in because we really want to have that executive health so you can come and do everything there. Bring a dermatologist in, maybe do a colonoscopy. so people can get a complete report card in depth. But after you get the testing, now we sort of know where you're at. You get your baseline. But that's the starting point. I mean, unfortunately, I've learned kind of the hard way.

21:08John Mackey:Knowledge is not enough to get many. Some people get the knowledge. That's all they need. They never look back. Others, that's interesting. But they don't really want to change anything they're doing.

21:19Dr. Mark Hyman:I want to eat my ice cream.

21:21John Mackey:That's right. I want to eat my ice cream. It tastes good. I like it. And I feel okay.

21:35John Mackey:Most people, actually, I found, actually don't want to get tested because they don't want to know because they don't want to change. Anyway, so once we've got that, we now have a well care team. We have a medical doctor that is function medicine trained. We have a nurse practitioner. She can do IVs. She can do everything. The doctor can really just, we don't have to pay quite as much. We've got a registered dietitian nutritionist who really knows her stuff. We've got medical assistants. We obviously have DEXA scan operators. We've got a whole well care team. And so then the whole idea is first we test, then we create a plan, and then we track.

22:17John Mackey:We track through additional testing, but also we can download into our app their Oura Ring results, their Apple Watch results, Garmin. We've got like, I don't know, 10 different devices we can put in. Continuous glucose monitor, we can put that data in there. That's another thing we test, by the way, is we have people wear that for a couple of weeks. So we get all that information out. Really comprehensive. But mostly it's about the care team. And problem you know, Mark, what's wrong with our medical system is basically, I call it, it's a plumber's model.

22:49Dr. Mark Hyman:Yeah.

22:49John Mackey:It's when you get a plumber. When your sink's broken. When your sink's broken, your pipe's leaking. The toilet's clogged, right? Exactly. Most people don't go to a doctor until something breaks. Yeah. And that might have been fine 150 years ago, but today, chronic diseases, not infectious diseases, are what are killing us. Yeah. And so we know heart disease is our number one killer. Then we got cancer. We know medical care itself is one of the leading causes for death, for too many prescription drugs, mistakes made, infections they get in hospitals, et cetera, et cetera.

23:19Dr. Mark Hyman:It's true. People don't realize that, but I think it's the third or fourth leading cause of death.

23:23John Mackey:It's the third leading cause of death. And obesity. Americans, I'm sad to say, is that 73 % of Americans are overweight, 73%, and 43 % are obese. Yeah. And the trend lines are continuing. It's not like we've peaked. It's still going up. The standard American diet is killing people.

23:41Dr. Mark Hyman:Yeah. I mean, when I graduated from medical school in 1987, there wasn't a single state that had an obesity rate over 20%. Now, there's not one under 30 and most are over 40.

23:49John Mackey:Is Colorado and Utah over 30? They were the two best. Yeah. The last time I looked at it, yeah.

23:55Dr. Mark Hyman:Yeah. I think they're popping over 30 now.

23:57John Mackey:Wow. Those trend lines keep going up. And basically, the United States, as you know, spends far more than any other country on healthcare. We spend almost 18 % of our GDP. It was$5 trillion.

24:11Dr. Mark Hyman:Yes, exactly.

24:12John Mackey:But where are we in terms of longevity? When I checked it out today, we were 48.

24:19Dr. Mark Hyman:Yeah, it's bad.

24:20John Mackey:Most money on healthcare, we have terrible results. I think we're worse than QB.

24:24Dr. Mark Hyman:I think we spend$184 a year.

24:26John Mackey:So I'm saying all that because Love Life, we think, is one of the solutions. We want people to join Love Life. We want them to enter into our medical programs. We do primary healthcare. We'll see them. It's not a concierge program, but besides the doctor times to go over your test results and work on your plans, we have 10 acute visits a year you can use that are part of your membership. As part of the membership, exactly. And I'll tell you one other story, so how I got to this thing. Yeah, because you know - At Whole Foods, we were self-insured. So we paid. It means we had UnitedHealthcare. It might have been the administrator, and they might have had a network.

25:03John Mackey:but we were actually paying all the cost of it. What we discovered was, as we tracked it, was that 10 % of our employees, team members, were spending 90 % of our healthcare dollars. That's right. So we began to think, how can we take these 10 %? If we can get them healthier, that's going to be a win-win-win, right? It'll be good for them, and it'll be good for Whole Foods, and it'll be good for everyone else as well, their families and everyone else connected to it. So we began to create what we call a total health immersion. And we worked with four different sets of, four doctors, and we worked four different times a year.

25:38John Mackey:And we would invite any team member to apply for it. We'd cover all the costs. Of course, we favored those who we knew were in our magic 10%. What ended up happening was pretty extraordinary. We'd go on a retreat setting for a week. And my biggest takeaway from the retreats was, did you know, I mean, you know this, the human body is far more resilient than I realized. 100%. If we just stop poisoning it, it starts to heal.

26:05Dr. Mark Hyman:Bingo.

26:06John Mackey:It's incredible.

26:07Dr. Mark Hyman:Yeah, it's that.

26:07John Mackey:I had not known that personally because I've sort of been on this gradual health journey for decades, right? Yeah. So I never had any radical improvements. But what we saw in those weeks were people that, if they were obese, they generally lose seven to 10 pounds in that week. We saw type 2 diabetics that could actually, in even just a week, get normalized and get off their meds. Yeah. We saw people's cholesterol drop 30 to 40 points in that week, and we saw blood pressure and sometimes drop 30 to 40 points.

26:37Dr. Mark Hyman:That's what people don't realize, John, is that people are just a few days away from feeling better. They are. And they don't know it. They don't know it, exactly. It's like Dorothy in the Ruby Red Slippers, you know? That's right.

26:45John Mackey:That's what's so powerful about a type of retreat-like setting. Now, here's another takeaway, though. Again, like knowledge, we taught people the principles. We showed them what to do. Some took that knowledge, Mark, and they never looked back. Their life was transformed. I'd travel around and visit our stores and then come up and hug me and say, thank you, thank you, thank you, Mr. Mackey. Changed my life. You know, I'm going to see my grandchildren now and I'm playing with my kids. It's so great. Thank you so much. And others who were apologizing because they had lost weight and then they gained it back because they went back to their diets.

27:18John Mackey:And the takeaway was, when you look a little further, was for people to really make lasting change, some people can do it on their own. Most people need a community of support.

27:28Dr. Mark Hyman:100%.

27:28John Mackey:And so Love Life aims to be that community of support for people who really want to become the healthiest version of themselves. If just like I say, let's say you're an alcoholic and we send you to rehab for 90 days and you come back sober, you don't crave alcohol any longer. But if you go back into the same social network.

27:47Dr. Mark Hyman:Yeah. All your friends are alcoholics, right?

27:49John Mackey:And you're going to fall off the wagon pretty quickly. So you need a new set of friends, basically. We found that out and it's like, that's my takeaway from the total health emergence. We need community of support.

28:00Dr. Mark Hyman:And how did you apply that at Whole Foods after that? Because I think that you're hitting on something that's very important is that we call chronic illness non-communicable disease, but that's completely wrong. It's not infectious, but it's contagious. Yes. And just as chronic disease can be contagious, you're more likely to be obese if your friends are overweight than even if your family's overweight because you're basically as healthy as your five closest friends. You know, if all your friends are drinking green juices and going to yoga, as opposed to drinking beer and having burgers and fries, you're going to be healthier, right?

28:33John Mackey:Yeah, that's why they, you know, it's like if you're a teenager hanging around kids that smoked, you're more likely to become a smoker.

28:39Dr. Mark Hyman:Yeah, and community is medicine. And we did this at the Saddleback Church with Rick Warren. We got 15 ,000 people to lose a quarter million pounds by doing it in community. And it was powerful. And I'm curious how at Whole Foods you did the community piece and the behavior change piece.

28:51John Mackey:Well, this was the flaw in the program. We're still doing the program. We still have follow-up with people afterwards. Here's the problem. We've got over 100 ,000 team members, and they're from all over the country, and Canada and the UK for that matter too. So they might go back, but the people they met, the community of people that they were with, they are scattering. So that community is not together. Now, if some of them came from the same store, then they have a little bit of community support. We can put them in touch with others that were on the journey. But again, they're so spread out.

29:26John Mackey:We didn't solve for it. It's still a problem. It's still a challenge. I really do think what Love Life's doing and what other wellness centers, holistic health centers will create will be also social places for people to go and hang out. We've designed it in that way. They are, when you see our space, you'll see the co-working space, the community areas, the cafe, the couches, the comfortable chairs are all set up for people to hang out, work, network with their friends that are there. You know, most health clubs formula is to get people to become members and just keep paying, but hopefully never come.

30:03John Mackey:We have the opposite philosophy. We really like people to spend a couple hours or more every day at Love Life. Come in after work, do some of the recovery modalities or do a workout, do some recovery, have a meal, meet some people, play some pickleball, take a class. We have all kinds of different classes there. There's so many. Stay around for one of our talks or one of our events that are happening. We really want to nurture community.

30:28Dr. Mark Hyman:And how do you see this intersecting with healthcare? Because people have their health insurance and people aren't very motivated usually to pay out of pocket for healthcare, which they think this should be.

30:38John Mackey:That's the biggest challenge, to be honest. Of course, everybody asks about that. We do create super bills for people, but most of our docs are out of network, most likely for them. For a lot of the testing that we're doing, you can also use your 125, your HSA, your HRA. I'll save these accounts. Those can all go towards this. I was talking to somebody about it recently, and I just said, you know what? Insurance will be one of the last dominoes to fall. It won't change until the market demands that it change, until people are complaining, and then until the government maybe steps in and starts saying, you need to cover this stuff too.

31:17Dr. Mark Hyman:But also, if you track your data at Love Life, you can see longitudinally how people do.

31:23John Mackey:Oh, we do.

31:24Dr. Mark Hyman:And that way you can actually show payers how this is actually saving them money. And that's going to change reimbursement.

31:30John Mackey:I really do think before we get the insurance companies to change, we think a B2B potential is big there. Remember I told you about how Whole Foods was self-insured? We think we can go to big employers in the area and do two things. We can say, look, give us your sick people because we know if you're self-insured that like Whole Foods, 10 % are spending 90 % of your money. Give us those people that are motivated, only the ones that want to come because we can't do anything if people don't want to heal themselves. And we can help them heal and we can help them heal pretty quickly and do that on a fee per person basis.

32:08John Mackey:But also, we'd like to go to those same corporations and say, now give us your up-and-comers, your executives, and get them an optimized gold membership at Love Life as a perk, as a benefit. These are the people you're counting on to make the most important decisions in your business. The healthier they are, the more vital they are, the better decision-making they're going to be. And the less likely they're going to leave because this is one of your perks that competitors are not offering. So there's two ways to approach the B2B. I think, again, the insurance will change, but it's like, it's just not.

32:43John Mackey:It's slow. We've got to go for the low-hanging fruit first.

32:47Dr. Mark Hyman:Yeah, no, I agree. I think you're right. And I think the question is, can you kind of force people into collective change together? I don't know the answer to that, but I know in Cleveland Clinic, we had a waiting list of 3 ,000 people for our Center for Functional Medicine.

33:03John Mackey:Wow.

33:04Dr. Mark Hyman:And so what we said was, you can't get into a one-on-one appointment, but you get into a group visit. And we were able to put people in group visits who necessarily maybe wanted to see someone privately, but they were willing to just get in. And what we found was that the health outcomes were three times better for the same condition treated by the same doctors in the same clinic. and we compared a doctor treating diabetes in a group versus a doctor one-on-one.

33:34John Mackey:Same, same.

33:35Dr. Mark Hyman:And it was three times better outcomes in the group. And the savings were far more. So better outcomes, lower costs is what healthcare is the holy grail, like value-based care. So it was interesting because not everybody really opted in. I mean, I guess they sort of opted in because they couldn't get an appointment, but it wasn't like they were motivated to be in a group. They actually were motivated to be seen.

33:57John Mackey:Yes.

33:57Dr. Mark Hyman:And that just was what we found. So I think if we can kind of encourage people to do that, and AA is a great example, Weight Watchers is a great example, people change in a collective.

34:08John Mackey:I totally agree. And that's why in the B2B approach, if we can get a group of peers that are coming in from the same company and they're motivated to try to heal themselves, we have a much better chance if they come in as a group, you might say. Right.

34:22Dr. Mark Hyman:So you're sort of an unlikely character. You're like a hippie from the 70s who started a health food store and now they're currently into Whole Foods. And then you help build this movement around conscious capitalism, which is sort of... I'd love you to sort of talk a little bit about that because I think it's part of what you're doing with Love Life, which is a business, but it's also bringing more light into the world as opposed the darkness.

34:48John Mackey:So Conscious Capitalism is a movement I co-founded and I wrote a book called Conscious Capitalism, co-authored that with my good friend Raj Sisodia. And as I built Whole Foods, what I began to realize was that because I didn't have a business background, I hadn't worked for any corporations, I began to realize that Whole Foods was very different than most other businesses. And that, you know, we had this higher purpose. We were really cared about all of our stakeholders. We were trying to create these cultures where humans were flourishing. We wanted to lead with love. It was, and these were just, you know, I just thought we were sort of just kind of one weird, a weirdo company.

35:30John Mackey:And then I read a book called Firms of Endearment by my co-author of Constance Capitalism, Raj Sisadio.

35:36Dr. Mark Hyman:Firms, not terms, but firms.

35:37John Mackey:Firms. Firms. Firms of endearment. And what 30 that he identified, he and his co-author, identified. And the firm of endearment was one, all the stakeholders loved the firm.

35:46Dr. Mark Hyman:Not the shareholders, but the stakeholders. The shareholders do too.

35:49John Mackey:Shareholders love them too, because they all perform really well economically. But the customers love them, their employees love them, their suppliers love them, they're sort of universally loved. And so Whole Foods was one of those 30 companies. And you know what got me excited when I read the book? I said, I'm not alone. There are other weirdos out there too, doing similar stuff. And so I got together with the authors and said, listen, can you put me in touch with some of these other people? And so they did. And I started to realize this is great. This is great. And I realized more people need to know about this because all of these people are financially very successful.

36:26John Mackey:Being loved by all your stakeholders and having a higher purpose is good business. It's a way to make more money. The money comes from practicing those principles, in other words. So people think there's this dichotomy between -

36:41Dr. Mark Hyman:It's like, honestly, when you're not motivated by money, you make more money.

36:45John Mackey:Yes. There's a good metaphor for it. If you pursue happiness, you probably won't find it. Because if people that pursue happiness the hardest, oftentimes end up being narcissists. Yeah. Happiness comes from, it ensues. It ensues from love, from goodness, from compassion, forgiveness, kindness, generosity. You become happy because of, not because you're pursuing it directly, but because it's a byproduct of these other qualities. Meaningful work, caring, loving, family. These things lead to happiness. So anyway, it's the same way with money, ultimately. Profits come from creating value for customers.

37:31John Mackey:or members or patients or whoever you're working with. That's the ultimate way profits come about. They're indirectly come about from creating value in the world. So conscious capitalism has four basic principles to it, Mark. First principle is higher purpose. Every business has its potential for higher purpose. For example, my body has to produce red blood cells or I'm going to be dead. But it doesn't logically follow that my higher purpose is to produce red blood cells. Similarly, businesses must make money or they will die. That's not why they exist. The purpose of creating value for their customers in Whole Foods' higher purpose was to nourish people and the planet.

38:15John Mackey:Love life is helping people to become the healthiest version of themselves. So every business has this higher purpose. Then you have stakeholders. They all are important. They all matter. Customers matter. Employees matter. Suppliers matter. And the investors matter. The community matters. The environment matters. And business has to create strategies where they're all simultaneously winning. Third is leadership. Leaders can't be in it just to line their own pockets. Leaders have got to be those who are purpose-driven, are serving the stakeholders, and they're ultimately servant leaders. And finally, we create cultures.

38:49John Mackey:A conscious business, a conscious leader creates cultures where human beings flourish, where they are happy, where they're fulfilled, where their work is meaningful, and they're part of a community that cares about them. That's conscious capitalism in a nutshell.

39:03Dr. Mark Hyman:Yeah, that's beautiful. And has it taken off? I mean, you heard, I think the guy who's, I think Larry Fink, who sort of writes this letter every year, one year, wrote a letter about how we need to think about our stakeholders, not only our shareholders. But I wonder how much that's really filtered into the business world.

39:23John Mackey:Well, you know, it's interesting. It has filtered in. And so when they had that roundtable, business roundtable came out basically checking off the principles of conscious capitalism, they got a lot of pushback, a lot of controversy in business circles. I found out later that women that had been the leader of that, the conscious capitalism had been their framework. The book had been their framework for those principles. They did not credit us. Yeah, yeah. Nevertheless, what any author wants to hear is that their ideas are having an impact and influencing things. So speaking of Larry Fink, we're having a special conclave down in Cabo for CEOs of very large corporations.

40:02John Mackey:There would be about, I think, I don't know, 30 or 40. And Larry's hosting it down there. And we're not calling it Conscious Capitalism Principles of Responsible Business or something like that. Anyway, I got an invitation for that. So I'm going to be going to that and excited to talk to some of these other – there's some big names going down there. I'm excited to be part of that.

40:26Dr. Mark Hyman:Yeah, because we live in such an extractive world, and we have extractive capitalism. It's the opposite of conscious capitalism. We have extractive agriculture. We have extractive healthcare.

40:35John Mackey:It's just they don't take a systems approach. Really, what we're talking about with conscious capitalism is viewing things in a larger context, the larger system. That actually leads to better business. It's harder. It's harder to do it. Think about healthcare, because that's what we've been talking about. As you say, that's like extractive healthcare because it's just dealing with symptoms. It's not dealing with root causes, right? Right. I mean, functional medicine, you're probably the leader in functional medicine. That's going to root causes and trying to root them out and help people to heal at the deepest levels.

41:12John Mackey:Yeah. That's revolutionary medicine. Yeah. It's a really, really big deal. So you should be really proud of what you've done. Thank you.

41:19Dr. Mark Hyman:Yeah, it's sort of what drives me is how do I needless suffering for millions of people? Because so many people don't have to suffer like you're talking about before when you would bring the team members of Whole Foods to these retreats. And they would have this radical transformation in a week and they were suffering before. And then they ended up in a short period of a week not suffering. And I think that I created something called the 10-Day Detox Diet, which essentially eliminates all the processed food and crap. It adds in all the good foods. And it's so powerful.

41:48John Mackey:10 days, it's like the seven-day. Yeah. 10 days is even better because it's three days longer. That's right. 30 days is better than that.

41:55Dr. Mark Hyman:I know, but if I called it a 30-day diet, no one would do it. That's right.

41:59John Mackey:People, you know, you decide 10 days was kind of the most you could hope for, the sweet spot.

42:04Dr. Mark Hyman:Yeah. And it's amazing to see that. And I think when people have the experience of what it's like to feel good, they actually can connect to something and come back to it, even if they kind of veer off.

42:16John Mackey:Those notes from God are a little more, you can hear them a little bit better.

42:19Dr. Mark Hyman:Exactly, yeah. And I think the work you've done around this conscious capitalism movement is so important because so much of the things that are happening in our world are all because of a lack of consciousness and a lack of awareness and a lack of understanding that value creation isn't just about the bottom line. It's about multiple bottom lines where everybody wins, where the planet wins, where you win, where your community wins, you know, where.

42:47John Mackey:Win, win, win.

42:47Dr. Mark Hyman:Yeah.

42:48John Mackey:I just did a TED Talk a few months ago on win, win, win.

42:51Dr. Mark Hyman:And what were you saying in there?

42:52John Mackey:The win, win, win is seeking, in its simplest, it's looking for everyone you interact with. You're looking a win for them, a win for yourself, and a win for the larger whole that we're all part of. If all three aren't winning, bad strategy.

43:07Dr. Mark Hyman:Yeah.

43:08John Mackey:So it's kind of giving your mind and your heart permission to go down that path. And so if you unleash your mind to look for the win-win-win, it will find it. And we generally make trade-offs, and we generally approach it win-lose. We're in a culture where sports and game metaphors are somebody wins, most people lose. Hey, that's the way life is. No, that's a particular approach to life, and it's not the best approach for your happiness or for the betterment of the world. The win-win-win strategy, I argue, is a universal ethical system. I challenge you to think of any ethical dilemma you're in where win, win, win isn't the best way to approach it.

43:59Dr. Mark Hyman:It's hard to get people out of the scarcity mindset and into this idea of abundance. And I find that the more I give, the more I get. The more I give money away, the more I give my time away, the more I give my love away, my energy away. the more it comes back.

44:14John Mackey:Because the universe is a mirror. It reflects exactly back what you're giving. The more love you give, the more love you receive. The kinder you are, the more kindness comes back. If people could understand that we are all connected, we are all one, that when they attack someone else, they're attacking themselves. If we can understand that love is the deeper reality and that we share love, it comes back to us. We help light somebody. Somebody lights the candle of love in us. We send it and give it to somebody else. And that's how this planet's going to heal. It's going to heal ultimately through people waking up and being more conscious about how they show up in the world and how transformative love is.

44:56John Mackey:I'm a big apostle of love.

44:59Dr. Mark Hyman:I think you're right on to something. But we live in such a divisive world now, and I feel like we're less connected and more divided. So it starts with yourself. Yeah.

45:09John Mackey:Only you can transform the world. I don't mean that in a narcissistic sense. I mean, as we offer love and peace, it is offered back to us. And right now, I can't worry about absolutely the whole world. That just puts you into despair. All I can do is show up every day. My wife has a mantra that I try to follow. It's just love everyone all the time. No exceptions. That's pretty good. That's a pretty good rule. Exactly. She says, John, it's so much simpler. You don't have to worry about, well, I'm mad at him. I like her. I'm not so sure about this guy. She says, no, don't have all those comparisons.

45:49John Mackey:Just show up open-hearted and love everyone.

45:52Dr. Mark Hyman:Yeah.

45:53John Mackey:And yeah, she's my teacher.

45:56Dr. Mark Hyman:That's actually an incredibly powerful way to live. And I don't know if I do that all the time in my regular life. Most of us don't. But as a doctor. That's how you show up. I sort of reflected on like, what is it that makes me good at what I do? And why do people keep coming back? And I think when I meet with someone, because when you're a doctor, you get into this sacred space with someone where they're sharing their vulnerabilities, their suffering, their fears, their relationship stuff, like whatever, their life story. And I take a very deep life story. I'm not the eight-minute doctor visit.

46:30Dr. Mark Hyman:I spend a couple hours with people initially, and then I get to know them.

46:34John Mackey:We can offer you a job at Love Life. If you're the kind of doctor we're looking for.

46:38Dr. Mark Hyman:I know. I wish I had more of me to go around. What I let myself do is love every patient, is to see who they are as a human being. And no matter who they are, where they're from, I mean, I used to work in the Idaho State Penitentiary, you know, when I, and I mean, as a part-time gig when I was a doctor in Idaho, and I would walk in there with murderers and rapists and people who had done horrible things. And I would just try to meet them and see who they were and love them. And what was really actually shocking to me was most of them were just scared little kids that didn't ever grow up.

47:11John Mackey:Yeah.

47:11Dr. Mark Hyman:And they did these horrible things out of their own trauma. And so to be able to sort of see that and, you know, and if you just stop and spend enough time with somebody and talk to them, like the homeless guy on the street.

47:21John Mackey:You were helping heal them because you were actually, you're being present like that and open is love.

47:26Dr. Mark Hyman:Yeah.

47:27John Mackey:You were radiating love to them, whether you were conscious of it or not. That was probably helping to heal them. Yeah. Because that's what everybody wants.

47:33Dr. Mark Hyman:I'm sure. I'm sure. And it also, yeah, helped them to feel safe. And it helped me to actually care for them enough to really work hard to figure out what was going on. And it's like, I don't know why I started out like that, but I've always been like that. And I remember being like three years old and seeing all these grownups who were just so unhappy and not nice and not acting out of love. And I'm like, didn't I get it? I literally remember saying to my three-year-old self, I'm like, I just was full of love all the time. And I didn't get why everybody wasn't all full of love all the time. You know, it's like, that's our natural state.

48:09John Mackey:Yes. You know? That's right. Love is the essence of what we are, but it gets blocked. It gets blocked by anger, fear, judgment, attack, envy, resentment, all those type of emotions clouded over so that the light doesn't shine through. But if we practice forgiveness and we work at opening and being present, the light begins to shine through us again. Here's an interesting thing that I've learned. It's maybe one of the most important tips I will give if you love everyone all the time. Don't we forget that every day at times? We go back into judgment. We judge, you're driving over here, somebody cuts me off, asshole.

48:49John Mackey:I'm not very loving when I'm thinking that or saying that. But what I've learned is that the past doesn't exist any longer. Yeah. All that's real is this moment. And no matter how many times I forget, I can go back in the next moment and choose love. I can choose to be present. I can choose to let my heart open. Even if I forget it, next moment I can choose it. If I forget it, next moment I can choose it. I can practice going back to it. And it's kind of like meditating. The more you practice it, the more skilled you get at it. The more you practice being present and opening to love, the easier it gets.

49:25Dr. Mark Hyman:It's such a simple idea, choose love over fear.

49:28John Mackey:Yes, choose love over fear. Kind of like that massive LSD trip I took, there's nothing really to be afraid of. Yeah. Because the things we're afraid of, like death or suffering or pain, in an ultimate sense, those things really aren't real in any ultimate sense. We make them real through our own minds. Yeah, our beliefs. Our beliefs are what keep us in prison. Exactly. And anyway, I found that, especially anyway, an important thing that I've learned is that no matter how many times I forget, I can always remember in the next moment. I'm always, I can be free in the next moment.

50:02Dr. Mark Hyman:Isn't that the truth, John? I mean, I've thought a lot about death and life because I almost died recently. Yeah. And I realized that the real secret, the meaning of life, like the purpose of life is to get free so you can be loved. Yes. It's like most of us are in a self-made prison of our beliefs, of our thoughts, of our conceptions, of our ideology. And we're always in this trap, but there's actually a way to get free. Yes. And when you're free, all you want to do is love. Yes. It's kind of like a magic trick.

50:39John Mackey:You know, I felt that about you the first time I met you. I felt like you were a very loving person. Thank you. You had a very open heart and you were very caring. and I felt that vibe from you. Yeah. And you know what? Here's the good news. It's a lot stronger now than when I first met you. Yeah. Well, I've gotten more free. I've gotten shit, all the old stories, all the bullshit.

51:01Dr. Mark Hyman:Oh, my God. It's hard work, you know? But I think this revolution in health and well-being that you're part of and this revolution in mental health, which in some ways love life is really helping to solve because you're building community and loneliness is one of the biggest causes of illness. And it's like the community aspect is such a big piece. And for me, at the end of the day, it's just about how do we sort of always move into the space of love rather than fear?

51:33John Mackey:We'll forget, but we can choose it the next moment. Just remember, no matter how many times you forget the past, you don't have to bring the past into the present. it can be free of the past by just letting it go realizing it's not real and in this moment be present be conscious let love flow but i think i think the psychedelic revolution and it was so

51:54Dr. Mark Hyman:your awakening and certainly it's part of mine and i think a lot of people's to be honest with you if

51:59John Mackey:you look at like steve jobs it's what knocked me off the path my parents had programmed into me

52:03Dr. Mark Hyman:exactly and you know we think about some of the big corporations that are going on i think that People don't talk about it, but Apple came out of psychedelics, right? And I think for me, and I think increasingly for the population at large, it's this sort of psychedelic revolution around psychedelic therapy is part of the answer to helping people to let go of the idea of separateness and to let go of the idea that they have to meet life with fear or that they are stuck. And I think I wish everybody could. I mean, I wish I could literally just take a giant bunch of mushrooms or LSD and put it in the water in Congress.

52:40John Mackey:That would be scary to people. One way to think about it, I read this book a long time ago, which it was a very simple little 50-page book. And it basically said, The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment.

52:53Dr. Mark Hyman:Oh, yeah. I don't remember that book.

52:54John Mackey:And it had one big idea in it. And that big idea was you're either expanding or contracting. So expanding opens our consciousness and opens our hearts for love. Contracting closes it down. That's right. So fear, judgment, hatred, anger, these all contract the heart, shut us down. And then forgiveness, love, generosity. I practice gratitudes every day. Gratitude is a huge expansion in everything, no matter how my little petty problems, that might be there at work or whatever, practicing the gratitudes in the morning is always expansive. It always reminds me, that's petty stuff. This is what really matters.

53:39John Mackey:I do think the daily practices are important for people if they want to help not get lost again.

53:46Dr. Mark Hyman:So why don't we sort of close by having you share with us your practices? How do you keep yourself mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually on track?

53:56John Mackey:Sure. I start out my day, pee, and then I weigh myself. But then I do my spiritual practices, which involve reading some type of spiritual text. I'm a longtime student of A Course in Miracles, so frequently that's what I'm reading. Then I do gratitudes, the expanse of gratitudes. And I just let my mind go whatever I feel grateful for and let that go as long as it feels right. Then I put forth what you can call them affirmations, you can call them prayers, intentionality. I put out there things that I would really like to see manifest. I put it out in a clear visualization of it. And then I meditate.

54:39John Mackey:After that, I'm going to go make a smoothie. I start every day off with a smoothie. It's 50 % fruit, 50 % vegetables. It's got some protein in it, but it's extremely nutritious. I make a whole two liters of that Vitamix. And I'm going to have two glasses for breakfast and then the rest, my wife will have a glass and the other glass will get finished off sometime later in the day. And then I exercise. I'm usually going for a walk. I'm playing pickleball. I'm doing Pilates. I'm doing yoga or I'm doing a couple of those. Then I will go, I might read or might go off to work depending on what's going on.

55:15John Mackey:I might have meetings. I will try to do some other kind of exercise at the end of the day. Now, for food, for me, I am ethical vegan, so 100 % plant-based. So I try to eat a whole foods, plant-based diet, minimize salt, minimize oil, minimize processed foods of all kinds. Not perfect in that regard, but probably compared to most people, I'm very high up the list there. I really think fruits and vegetables are extremely healthy. So I would say I'm on a high complex carb diet I'm eating because I'm eating a lot of fruits, a lot of whole grains, a lot of beans. I do get a lot of protein because I really do eat lots of foods that have a lot of protein in them.

55:59John Mackey:Greens, I eat tons of greens. I think my diet's healthy for me. And I think work, I think having purpose, I read a lot. I also have, I think, having purposeful work, like Love Life. I'm on six boards, so I've got other distractions that way. And then I spend a lot of time with my wife. She's kind of my spiritual group.

56:20Dr. Mark Hyman:You guys have a remarkable relationship. I mean, you've had Whole Foods for a long time, but you've also had this marriage.

56:26John Mackey:I've been with Debra for 35 years now. And she's, you know, I tell the story in the book, the woman in the dream, when I met her, She was seven years younger than me. And I considered myself, my ego being what it is, thought I was a pretty conscious dude. But I was just blown away on the very first date. Talk about the notes from God. My soul was saying, this woman is the most awake person you've ever come across. Don't blow it. Don't screw it up, John. I pretty much did because I was so nervous. First thing I did when I picked, it was a blind date. I'd never met her before. First I pick her up and first thing I do is I'm nervous.

56:58John Mackey:She's the most beautiful person of a woman I've ever seen. And I said, hey, mind if I look in your refrigerator? She says, that's weird, but sure, go ahead. Refrigerator biopsy? Well, you can tell a lot about a person in your refrigerator. That's right, the bookshelf in the refrigerator. I went to the bookshelf second. That was more socially acceptable. She ended up being the great love of my life. And I will tell you a story that I tell in the book. I call the chapter, The Woman in the Dream, because I had had a recurring dream, and this dream that I had many times. I'm going to this park, Peace Park in Austin, near where my house is, near Central Austin.

57:35John Mackey:I'm going there and I'm there. It's in the morning and I'm looking and this beautiful woman is walking to me. She's naked and she's radiating. She's shining. And she comes up to me and I break up a conversation. I start a conversation and I say, so who are you? And she says, you know who I am. I said, okay, well, what are you doing? She says, I've been waiting. What have you been waiting for? I've been waiting for you to catch up to me. Oh, wow. Well, why? And she grabs my hand and she says, so we can run together. And we take off running and then I wake up.

58:17Dr. Mark Hyman:That's amazing. Beautiful dream. Now, after I'd had the blind date, I had the dream again.

58:22John Mackey:And the first time I knew who she was, it was her. Deborah Wow

58:26Dr. Mark Hyman:That's incredible I got chills from that story I know

58:30John Mackey:Incredible story Beautiful note to end on

58:32Dr. Mark Hyman:I'm just really honored to be able to know you and your wife and being awesome with you and look forward to playing pickleball and more things and more conversations

58:39John Mackey:I really admire what you're doing you're making a big difference in the world I'm very appreciative and I wish just love and happiness to you in all ways Thank you so very much

58:48Dr. Mark Hyman:Thank you John Thanks for being on the podcast Thank you 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. 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.

59:22Dr. Mark Hyman: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. 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.

59:54Dr. Mark Hyman: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. So I'd like to express gratitude to sponsors that made today's podcast possible. Thanks so much again for listening.