Your Baby's Metabolism is Being Decided Right Now | Jessie Inchauspé

20:51Dr. Mark Hyman:Four eggs a day. And so there's two really interesting clinical trials I want to mention where they've supplemented moms with enough choline. So the first one is from Cornell University, and they took two groups. One group of moms got 430 milligrams per day, which is basically the bare minimum recommendation. And the other group of moms got 900 milligrams a day, which is even more than the recommendation. And then the scientists wanted to see if they could measure differences in the kids. And they saw that in that first year of age, the kids who had had more choline in the womb were reacting faster to this very important test, which is just an image reaction test, like how quickly does the baby react to images, but it's connected to IQ as an adult.

21:32That's why this test is used. And they saw that in the choline babies, there was 10 % faster reaction time during that first year of age. so the amount of choline available in the womb seems to be shaping the development of the brain in a way that we can measure and there's many things we can't measure we can't measure how it feels to be in someone's brain it's possible that if you have enough choline you'll just feel better in your brain and when i learned about the studies i called my mom because i've had a lot of mental health issues in my life so i was like mom how many eggs did you eat when you were pregnant with me she was like oh honey i ate barely any eggs she ate special k sugar and orange juice so for sure I didn't have enough choline.

22:08So for sure, my mom is to blame everything. No, I'm kidding. But it matters. There's another study also showing placebo group that's receiving zero choline and another group that's receiving 930 milligrams of choline during pregnancy. And the scientists then looked at the kids at three years old and they sent the parents a questionnaire asking about their kids. So is he patient? Is he cruel to animals? How well-tempered is he? This is a questionnaire that it's linked to adult mental health issues. And the choline group did better on the results of this questionnaire. So we could detect differences in the baby's behavior at three years old, depending on how much choline was given to the moms.

22:49Dr. Mark Hyman:So should women take choline supplements? You don't need to. You don't need to because it's much better absorbed from eggs, for example. So if you have four eggs a day, you're getting the bare minimum. Plus, if you have two other sources of animal food during the day, you're going to get to 700 milligrams, which is really high. You can supplement, especially if you're vegan and you don't eat any animal foods, you must supplement with choline. It's very important. I mean, four eggs is 600 milligrams. You were saying 900 milligrams, and people don't really want to eat four eggs. I know, but it's important.

23:20I didn't really want to eat four eggs. I did it anyway, because I was like, I need to get enough choline.

23:24Dr. Mark Hyman:And you're saying it's better utilized than taking oral choline? Yeah, it's better absorbed. Yes, you can also take supplements of choline if you want. in a lot of like sort of forward, cutting edge prenatal supplements you'll find choline. But moms are not told about this, Mark. And actually in formula, which is, you know, milk for babies, they put choline in there because they know it's important. But somehow nobody's telling pregnant moms to also do that during pregnancy. Like what's going on? Why is this information not being communicated? It's very confusing. Yeah, it's one of those things you bring up that was, you know, I was aware of, but it's something that most people don't know and doesn't get talked about.

23:59Dr. Mark Hyman:and most obstetricians don't recommend for their patients. It needs to change. If you can tolerate liver, I highly recommend it. Beef liver has a lot more. It's a very good source of choline. Chicken liver is great. So I think that's an important aha that I think most people will not know about. We kind of jumped over the glucose. There's four pillars. I want to come back to the glucose thing because it's such a big thing. And we have such an epidemic of diabetes and obesity. And it's literally programmed in your genes if you eat a lot of sugar when you're pregnant. And it's not just sugar, it's anything that turns to sugar.

24:32Dr. Mark Hyman:So white flour, refined starches, ultra-processed food, it's everywhere. It's almost impossible not to eat that if you're a free-ranging human. And you have to be... You don't grow your own food. Yeah, you have to be very diligent. Most people shop and buy stuff and they're not even aware of what's in it. And you go out to eat or you go to try to food graze when you're in the airport or I mean it's everywhere like it's just amazing you go to Starbucks and it's like just sugar you know like it's just sugar and I went to buy like a green juice I'm like oh green juice I mean look like 37 grams of sugar that's how much almost as in a can of coke and that's way past the 25 grams recommended maximum amount by the WHO there's a really cool thing that I want to share so in the UK in 1940 the government started a sugar ration I don't know if you knew this, but for 13 years, the entire population of the UK was given only 40 grams of sugar per day versus before the ration, they were at about 80 grams per day, which is very high.

25:38But it was the war and they had to ration the import of sugar. And this meant that everybody in the country, including pregnant moms, all of a sudden dropped their sugar intake by half. And so recently, scientists looked back and called 60 ,000 of these babies who were born just at the end of the sugar ration or just after. And they wanted to see, did this small, very precise change have any impact on their health? What do you think happened?

26:05Dr. Mark Hyman:Obviously, it did. So the babies who were developing in the womb during the sugar ration had 15 % less lifetime risk of diabetes compared to their peers who were born just after the ration ended, so who had moms who ate more sugar. So just by reducing your sugar intake by 40 grams, You can be protecting your child from diabetes. It's huge. Because what happens in the womb really sets you up for life. It's the moment where your organs are being created. Your metabolism is finding its set point. And something really interesting from the research, Mark, is I started to understand that the food you eat when you're pregnant sort of sends a sort of like postcard to your baby telling him what world he's going to be born into.

26:49So if you're eating a lot of sugar, your baby's thinking, oh man, I'm going to be born into a world with so much sugar. I have to prepare my body for this. So insulin goes up, fat storage goes up, and you're priming your baby from birth to be more likely to get the sugar-driven diseases. It's wild.

27:06Dr. Mark Hyman:But you also say in your book that it's not just diabetes or obesity that you're going to get or heart disease, that the high amounts of sugar lead to neurodevelopmental issues. Okay, so that's a big one. Brain development and cause more inflammation in the brain. Let's talk about that. And can lead to autism and ADD. Well, it's associated with it. In your womb, your baby's developing all of his neurons in his brain cells. And there are these tiny little cells called microglia, which are in the baby's brain. And they're sort of like the rangers. They're patrolling. Oh, is this neuron developing properly?

27:36Is this one not okay? I need to go and kill that neuron because it's not doing okay. These are immune system cells that are patrolling, surveying, and pruning your baby's brain as it develops. Now, when you have high glucose levels as a mom, your baby also has high glucose levels. That leads to inflammation. And scientists believe that high inflammation in the womb makes these microglia a little bit overactive because they respond to inflammation.

28:04Dr. Mark Hyman:Yeah, the glia are your brain's immune system. Exactly. So they start essentially pruning neurons they shouldn't be pruning. And this is why scientists believe, this is the leading sort of theory behind why we see that moms with gestational diabetes are slightly more likely to have a baby who has autism. So if we look at millions of mom-baby pairs, we see that on average, if you've had gestational diabetes, your baby has a 25 % higher likelihood of developing autism. Now, I want to be very cautious here. I'm not saying that the diabetes is causing the autism. It's an association. And the overall risk.

28:43That's a strong one.

28:44Dr. Mark Hyman:What was the hazard ratio? The overall risk is still low. So 3 in 100 to 4 in 100. That's the overall prevalence, right? So it's 25 % increase. And so if you have diabetes, in moms with diabetes, 4 in 100 kids have autism versus in moms without diabetes, 3 in 100 kids have autism. There's signal there. It's not necessarily causing it, but we know that high inflammation in the womb is not good news for your baby's brain. I mean, just to put it in plain English, like if you eat a lot of sugar when you're pregnant, your baby's going to have high risk of obesity, diabetes, and heart attacks, and maybe even neurodevelopmental issues and many other things.

29:24Dr. Mark Hyman:So really important. And you're the glucose goddess. You teach women how to eat sugar the right way. In a way that doesn't create more cravings in a way that creates fewer glucose spikes. So it's protective for your baby also. I mean, this is something called the glycemic load of a meal, which is essentially the way in which a meal in total affects your blood sugar. So for example, I always make the joke, if you put like, you know, three tablespoons of Metamucil in a can of Coke, it's going to not affect your blood sugar as much because you've got all the fiber, it's going to swell up, but the sugar won't be absorbed as fast.

29:57Dr. Mark Hyman:So the matrix of your meal matters, protein, fats, sugar. if you eat protein and fat, you're going to slow the absorption. You're going to mitigate the rise in blood sugar. You're going to mitigate the rise in insulin. And the inflammation. Yeah, the inflammation. So not that you can eat huge amounts, but it's not like don't eat anything, right? So talk about how, what are the simple steps? And you've written about this in your other books, but I think it's important because just for everybody and also especially for pregnant women, what are the simple steps and hacks that you can use so that you keep your blood sugar more even and balanced and now we have these amazing glucose monitors which really almost didn't really exist even on a widespread level when you sort of we started talking years ago and now people can see yes i mean i just as an anecdote i got a glucose monitor i want to try it out it was kind of like i don't know three years ago or something and and i was my friend's house with the summer and he or he's like a food fanatic he just only is perfectly clean regenerative or organic no sugar or nothing and he ordered this incredible meal from this farm in Martha's Vineyard.

30:58Dr. Mark Hyman:It was like lamb and veggies and we just gorged ourselves. Like we both had the blood sugar model on. We didn't eat bad things. We just ate a lot of things. We were stuffed. And I do that occasionally, but not too often. And we both called each other like at, you know, nine o 'clock at night and said, what's going on? Our blood sugar is like 160, which is crazy because both of us are thin, we're fit. And so it's not just the, what you're eating, It's also the volume can be a thing, too, with blood sugar and insulin. Well, if you eat, like, you know, 10 pounds of sweet potatoes, sweet potatoes are fine for you.

31:32But that's going to be a big glucose load anyway. Exactly, right. Okay, so first thing we already mentioned, protein-rich breakfast. Super important because it sets your glucose levels for the day. Second thing.

31:41Dr. Mark Hyman:Wait, what is protein-rich breakfast? Okay, so a breakfast built around protein. So good protein sources are, well, eggs. We talked about it. It can be some full-fat dairy. It can be some leftover meat or fish from the night before. crack it in the pan. You can use protein powder unsweetened if you want to make a smoothie, for example. You just want to make sure there's always a protein source. And honestly, for me, it's eggs or dairy. That's my favorite go-to in the morning. I also like leftovers from dinner. It's an easy way to get some animal protein. And you could have full-fat Greek yogurt, which has more protein, and you can add nuts.

32:17Yes.

32:18Dr. Mark Hyman:Ball nuts, almonds, pumpkin seeds, whatever. And some berries. And some berries. So the more nuts you eat and the more thick the yogurt is, the Greek yogurt has higher protein. So that's important to know. And a key thing for breakfast also is to avoid anything sweet except whole fruit, if you want, for taste. But the base should be really the protein and the healthy fat. And the more French toast. For dessert, Mark. You can have that for dessert. That's another hack. So if you want to eat something sweet, have it for dessert. Is French toast French? No. Okay. Because you're from France. Well, it's like pain perdu.

32:52I mean, yes, we have a French version of it. I don't know if it was invented in France. Okay. Did Americans just call it French toast? Maybe. Because we don't call it French toast.

33:00Dr. Mark Hyman:And you probably don't call French fries French fries either. No. You know what we call French toast? American fries. American fries. We call it pain perdu, which means lost bread. And I think maybe it is French. I think we use sort of old bread. Yeah. So lost bread. So French toast or anything sweet, have it for dessert after a meal. Okay. At any point. Even if you're pregnant and you want a donut, have it after your lunch or after your dinner, not on an empty stomach. That's going to reduce the glucose spike for you and your baby. Okay. So that's helpful. Move after eating. After that big feast, if you had gone for a one-hour walk, you would have seen a much smaller spike.

33:32Dr. Mark Hyman:Even 20 minutes. Even 20 minutes. Even doing 50 squats in the living room for fun would have helped because as you move, your muscles absorb some of the glucose you just ate. So you should have thought about that, Mark. Not very glucose goddess of you. No, I was just so stuffed. I was like a stuffed pig and just needed to like. Well, if you're very stuffed, I have a trick. So you can do calf raises. So if you were really stuffed after the meal on your couch, just do little calf push-ups. You know what I mean? You go up and down on the balls of your feet like this, and your calf muscle will soak up glucose that you just ate.

34:04Think about me next time. So I do finger push-ups?

34:07Dr. Mark Hyman:Yes. So this is something that Mark Hyman just invented, everybody. Finger push-ups, very effective for glucose spikes. You heard it here first. another one okay put clothing on your carbs so that means never eat your carbs naked so if you want bread or pasta or rice or cookie don't have them naked add some protein cheese on a bread yeah like cheese on bread like almonds with your cookie like a greek yogurt with the donut like chicken with your pasta always add clothing we're not recommending donuts here folks just No, but you know what I mean. I get the message. Listen, if you're going to eat the donut, have some almonds with it.

34:46So those are some core hacks that you can use anytime.

34:48Dr. Mark Hyman:I think that's important. Put clothing on your car, meaning don't eat them alone. It's the Metamucil and the Coca-Cola. That's what you're doing. You're putting clothing on the Coke. And one more thing I would say is try to start your meals with vegetables. Because studies show that if you eat the vegetables first at the beginning of your meal, you're creating this sort of protective mesh in your intestine that slows down how quickly the glucose from carbs arrives in your bloodstream. Fiber. Fiber, exactly. There's been interesting studies on wine and eating when you eat what in a meal and what that does to your weight and metabolism.

35:22Dr. Mark Hyman:And everybody knows that if you are hungry and you have a glass of alcohol or wine or whatever, you'll feel a buzz. But if you wait till halfway through the meal and then you have the same amount of wine, you don't get the rapidity of this buzz and you don't get the same spike. So that's the idea. You're just trying to lower the glucose spike. Yes, exactly. You're just trying to lower the spike. And so if you fill your stomach with fiber at the beginning of your meal, you can eat the same pizza or pasta afterwards, but it's going to arrive more slowly into your bloodstream. Therefore, a smaller spike.

35:53Therefore, you get a smaller crash. So not more cravings. So you don't have to get rid of all the carbs you eat, but if you eat them in the right order, time, combination, you're not going to kick off a cravings rollercoaster because that's what I used to be on. I would have sugar in the morning and then at 10 a.m. at noon, at 2, at 4, at 6, at 8 p.m., I wanted more sugar. I was on a big roller coaster.

36:14Dr. Mark Hyman:I think that's such an important thing that you just mentioned is the cravings because a lot of people believe that this is just who they are. I'm just like a sugar addict and I can't stop these cravings and there's nothing I can do about it. I remember once teaching a workshop and it was on ultrametabolism, one of my first books, and it was really about like balancing your blood sugar. And we had a very specific diet we had for them. And we had protein shakes and we had green juices that were not sugary and broth and all that stuff. And this woman says like, look, I'm going to try to do the program, but there's no way.

36:49Dr. Mark Hyman:I'm like 50 years old. This has been my whole life. I've never been able to not have cravings. I'm going to try my best, but like, I just telling you, it's not going to work. Literally the next day, she's like, this is amazing. I don't have any cravings. And I'm like, it's not that hard. It's like a day or two. And you sometimes will go through withdrawal, depending on how much you're eating. But you literally can break the cycle if you eat the way you're talking. And it wasn't, she was not somebody with cravings. The cravings were a symptom. I like to think of symptoms as messages. I like to think of symptoms as your body being like, hey, please, Jesse, stop with the sugary breakfast.

37:25Those cravings were her body saying to her, you need to balance your blood sugar.

37:29Dr. Mark Hyman:Okay, so we did blood sugar, we did choline. Let's talk about, you choose. We can do protein or omega-3s. Let's do protein. Because protein is like, you know, the new dietary guidelines just came out and one of the big recommendations was eat protein, increase protein recommendations. And there's a lot of fast food companies that are just putting protein in foods like we put, you know, fiber or whatever. Tell us about protein. So when you're building a baby, you're building a human body from scratch. And the human body is very high in protein. So protein is not just muscles. People think protein is just muscles and bodybuilding.

38:01So many things in your body are protein. The collagen in your skin is a protein. Insulin, the hormone that keeps your blood sugar steady, is a protein. Your immune system is made of proteins. So proteins are key. And by the time your baby's born, if you exclude water, he is 50 % protein. 50 % protein. So you need to eat protein to build that protein in your uterus. So naturally, the amount of protein in your diet should increase. But this is not something that pregnant moms are told. And there's new studies. The fancy word for them is the indicator amino acid oxidation method. This is a fancy word to say we now have better tools to understand how much protein you need to eat when you're pregnant.

38:42And it's more than we previously thought.

38:44Dr. Mark Hyman:What's the amount? So first trimester, 1.2 minimum grams per kilo per day. Second and third trimester, 1.5 grams per kilo. and breastfeeding 1.9. Yeah. And that, by the way, mirrors the new dietary guidelines, which is 1.2 to 1.6. Yeah. And during pregnancy, you have to be cautious and really consciously think, okay, I need to be getting more protein. And also what's tough is that as pregnancy goes on, you have less space in your stomach. Your stomach gets smaller, so it's harder to eat bigger quantities. So you kind of have to focus almost entirely on protein. That should be the main thing around which you're building your diet because that's the most important thing for your baby and for you.

39:21Mm-hmm. So increase the amount of protein that you eat. In animal studies, again, we can do many studies in animals around pregnancy, not so many in moms as you can imagine, because we can't manipulate pregnant moms and see what happens. But in animals, what they find is that, again, having to do with epigenetics. If a mom has low protein intake during pregnancy, her baby is epigenetically programmed to have lower muscle mass.

39:45Dr. Mark Hyman:Wow. Yeah, it makes sense. The baby's receiving not that much protein, so his body setting is like, We're not going to be born into a world with a lot of protein. I should keep my muscles small. Prioritize essential organs. And we have dozens of decades of years of research on animals. When you reduce protein in the mom, the baby is born smaller with less muscle mass and a higher likelihood of disease later in life. Protein is key. And especially in these studies, if you keep calories adequate and you just reduce protein, this still happens. It's not about not eating enough. It's about not eating enough protein.

40:23And today, 70 % on average of moms are not hitting the minimum protein requirements. That's incredible, 70%.

40:30Dr. Mark Hyman:I mean, there's such a protein debate in this country right now because the new Dietary Godness came out and there's a whole group that are saying, we don't need that much protein. The previous recommendations were 0.8 grams per kilo. This is too much. There's no way we can feed the world with this. I mean, there's a lot of criticisms. And 0.8 grams per kilo was the amount to prevent protein deficiency. So it's how much vitamin C do you need to not get scurvy? Exactly. It's like 60 milligrams. You know, how much vitamin D do you need to not get rickets? Maybe 30 units. Or how much vitamin D do you need to not get osteoporosis?

41:04Dr. Mark Hyman:Maybe 5 ,000 units, right? And for water, it could be the same, right? Like maybe one glass of water is enough to not die, but everybody knows you should be drinking more than one glass of water a day. It's kind of the same concept. Yeah. So we need protein during pregnancy because we're building another body. So what did that look like? So listen, for me, that worked out to about 100 grams of protein a day minimum. So I would have four eggs in the morning, which is 30 grams. And then I would just have protein at every snack and every meal. I built it all around protein. I have recipes in my book of all the stuff I ate.

41:33I was making this like supercharged snack almost every day. It was a skir yogurt, which is higher in protein, plus two scoops of grass-fed whey. So that snack was about 80 grams of protein. and I was putting passion fruit and berries and sea salt and tahini and peanut butter. I had that every single day. The recipe's in my book.

41:54Dr. Mark Hyman:That sounds good. But 80 grams of protein right there. I'm not pregnant, but I'm going to eat that. Yeah, exactly. I'll send you the recipe. You could be pregnant. Who knows? I'm kidding. So yeah, that was a great snack. So just make sure you're eating enough protein and you kind of have to spend time to measure how much you're eating. So in the book, I have a big table where you can note what you're eating and kind of see where you fall. Yeah, like four ounces of chicken is 30. 30 grams. Four ounces of meat is 30 grams. Six ounces of fish is 30 grams. And protein powder, like whey protein is great.

42:23Dr. Mark Hyman:It's an incredibly good thing. I use goat whey or regeneratively raised whey. I mean, you want to get clean stuff that's not full of crap. And just remember the amount of protein you eat is sending a message to your baby. So it's important to give him enough because otherwise things shift. Your baby's DNA might have a plan, but then depending on the amount of protein available, that plan changes and adapts and it can have lifelong ripple effects. So why is it important then for people to have higher muscle mass? Ooh, because muscle is the organ of longevity. Because having a lower muscle mass is linked to a higher risk of all-cause mortality.

42:57Muscle mass is not only a sink for excess glucose levels. It's also a beautiful metabolic organ that keeps you healthy, that keeps you vibrant and alive. It's very, very key. And it also prevents, you know, long-term frailty, breaking bones, which are a big risk factor when you get older.

43:13Dr. Mark Hyman:I agree. in my book, Young Forever, I call it The Currency of Longevity. I personally was a yoga teacher. I ran five miles a day. I rode my bike. I always exercised for the last 50 plus years, but I hated the idea of gym. When I was 50, I couldn't do 10 pushups. I was intimidated because I was kind of skinny and tall and I didn't like to go to the gym with all these guys with giant muscles and I smelled and it was like, I don't know. And I thought it was just for meatheads and I had so much judgment about it. And then I decided I better get my act together because I was telling all my patients to do this.

43:53Dr. Mark Hyman:So at 59, I started working with a trainer and started, and I can show you pictures after, but like I had a picture of me when I was 26 and now when I'm 66, it's like a different body. And I didn't think I could do it at this age, but at any age, you can start to do this. There's a book I gave my mom. She got very mad at me for her 60th birthday. It's called Growing Old is Not for Sissies. And it's all about these elder athletes because she, her thing was basically, she would say, every time I have the urge to exercise, I lie down until it goes away. And she suffered from it. She lost so much muscle.

44:29Dr. Mark Hyman:She was so frail. She got severe osteoporosis when she was older. I mean, it was her frailty and lack of fitness that killed her. It's so important. And what you're saying, and this was really, I didn't even know this data that you're saying is that the protein that the mother eats during pregnancy determines the limit of the muscle that the child can build when they get older. And you see this, right? You might have two friends and they have the exact same workout routine. They both lift the same amount of weights, but one builds muscle easily and the other one doesn't. So there's many reasons for this, but what was taking place in the mother's womb during pregnancy could be a factor in determining your epigenetic ability to put on muscle.

45:09This blew my mind when I saw it. Because imagine the ripple effect, you know, imagine how much better life is if you can build a lot of muscle that protects you. So that's protein. It's really important. It's really key. And I don't think people talk about this enough. So as a pregnant mom, really, protein should be one of your main focuses. And then the fourth pillar is omega-3s. I know you love omega-3s. So DHA is an omega-3 fat that builds your baby's brain as well with choline. And in particular, what DHA does is that it helps guide the long arms of the brain cells that go and connect with each other.

45:46So it's really, really cool. And in lab experiments, you see that if you're trying to grow neurons in a petri dish, you have to add DHA, otherwise they don't connect with each other. And DHA is a fat that is made by micro algae in the ocean.

46:01Dr. Mark Hyman:That's right. And then it's eaten by fish and it goes up the food chain. And us as humans, the way that we have it is by eating fatty, oily fish. So salmon, anchovies, mackerel, sardines, et cetera. Herring. Yeah, herring. The recommendation is 300 milligrams per day, which kind of works out to fish twice a week. Now, again, kind of like choline, you have the bare minimum recommendation, but studies show that having more than that could be even more beneficial for babies. I mean, it's kind of crazy. If you look at the data, 68 % of US adults have deficiencies in vitamin D and 95 % have suboptimal levels.

46:42Dr. Mark Hyman:95%. That's a huge number of Americans. So think of the amount of women who are pregnant who have low levels of omega-3 fats and determines neurologic development, cognitive function, risk for neurodevelopmental disorders, for metabolic health. It's so important. It's so important for the brain. And part of the problem is, you know, historically, omega-3s were everywhere. That's why humans had them. They were in all the wild plants. They were in all the wild animals we ate, all the wild fish. You know, if you eat a deer or elk or bison that's wild, it's going to have a higher concentration of omega-3s.

47:16Dr. Mark Hyman:Obviously, fish. It used to be the, it was such a valued currency. I don't know if you know this, but in the Northwest, the Pacific Northwest, the Native Americans used these extremely oily fish. I forget what they were called, but they were like, they were like money. Huh. They were so valuable. I don't think they knew about omega-3s back then, but they just knew that it was such an important source of fat and food. And it builds the brain. And in studies, when you supplement moms with about a gram and a half of DHA per day, scientists can measure a four-point increase in the IQ of the baby at four years old.

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49:40Dr. Mark Hyman:it's huge can you imagine in europe um you probably know this but the formulas have dha in america it's not mandatory it's not mandatory and and very few companies have it and there's a few who do and i just interviewed a woman who started a formula company part of the podcast bobby is the name of the company and it has dha in it so why is it in formula but nobody's telling pregnant moms to also take it. But it's not mostly here. It hasn't been for years. Well, it's getting into formula in Europe. Even in Europe, you know, my whole pregnancy was in France where DHA is in baby formula. But nobody told me to take it during pregnancy, which is even more important than during breastfeeding and formula.

50:18So it's wild. And also there's another piece of information that's worth mentioning is that since the 80s, the rates of preterm birth, so baby being born too early, has gone up 30 % in the U.S. 30 % higher than in 1980. babies being born preterm. And one of the main links is the increase in omega-6 inflammatory fats and the decrease in omega-3 fat consumption. And in fact, and this is well established, when you supplement with omega-3s, you reduce the risk of preterm birth. So all moms should be eating enough fish and also probably supplementing to make sure that they're getting enough for their baby because the recommendation of fish twice a week doesn't significantly increase the amount of omega-3s in your cells.

51:04Like really, you should be having more than that, like at least a gram.

51:07Dr. Mark Hyman:I mean, part of the problem is that, you know, fish is really healthy until humans came along and poisoned the oceans through coal and burning of coal, which releases lead and mercury and other toxins. And then you get that in the oceans, sort of acid rain, it's metal rain, goes in the oceans and the algae absorb it, and the little fish eat the algae, and the bigger fish, the little fish, and the bigger fish eat the bigger fish, and all the way up to the sharks, and the swordfish, and the tunas, which are laden with mercury. Yes. And they're also extremely high in omega-3s, so that's the problem.

51:41Well, it's actually not, I don't think it's that big of a problem because in the studies you see that during pregnancy, but also any time, the benefits of eating fish that are high in omega-3s outweigh the downsides of the heavy metals. Like it's better to eat fish to get omega-3s than to not eat them, even though today they're not as healthy as these.

51:59Dr. Mark Hyman:I would agree. Just don't eat fish that eat other fish. Like eat the little fish. Anchovies. Sardines. Sardines, herring, mackerel. Those are the best. Even wild salmon, if you're eating small salmon, it can be okay. But even grass-fed, like we used to see everything, it makes me crazy. Everything we used to see was organic. Everything was grass-fed. Like there wasn't anything else, right? Everything was a pasture-raised chicken. It was just normal, right? when my grandparents you know were alive that's what they ate and if you have grass-fed butter you get pretty good levels of omega-3s yeah but not as much as you get in fish like fish for sure and even farmed fish today Mark like they even supplement the fish with do you say algae or algae in English both tomato tomato okay cool so they even supplement the farmed fish with algae oil to make sure they have high omega-3 levels so even if the only thing you can get is farmed fish it's still gonna be beneficial absolutely So I did fish three times a week, plus I supplemented with omega-3s.

52:57And the omega-3 supplementation world is a whole other can of worms because you have to make sure it's like low in toxicity, etc. So in my book, I explain how to find one.

53:04Dr. Mark Hyman:How to find a good one. Yeah, exactly. But I do think most women should take an omega-3 supplement. I do think they should take a vitamin D supplement. They definitely need, obviously, a prenatal with the right types of folate. Exactly. And they also, so I probably need, you know, to eat a dot high in choline, like you said. But I don't know if it's bad to supplement choline. No, it's not bad. I did, actually. My prenatal contained choline. But nonetheless, you can't get everything you need from supplements. You need to also make sure that you're getting it from food, because just the format of the molecules is better absorbed by you and your baby.

53:34But the supplements are an insurance policy. You need to make sure that your diet is also containing all this important stuff. You can't supplement yourself out of a bad diet. You can't just eat McDonald's every day and be like, it's okay, I'm taking supplements.

53:46Dr. Mark Hyman:No, you can't. People do that. Same thing with stats. I can take whatever I want and I'm taking a stat. It doesn't work like that. So your book really lays out these principles. It gives people practical suggestions of how to do this, recipes that are delicious, and it doesn't guilt trip women, but it just educates them about what to do to actually help take care of their own bodies. And by the way, the diet you're eating is not just good for your baby. It's good for you too. I felt great during pregnancy because I ate better during pregnancy than any other time, to be honest. How much weight did you gain?

54:20Dr. Mark Hyman:11 kilos 22 pounds yeah ish that's normal yeah 25 pounds the baby's like six seven pounds like you don't need you got a placenta you got fluid you got other stuff but you know sometimes when they get 40 50 60 70 80 100 pounds and they don't like there's a cultural framework that that's okay because you're pregnant and i think it's really a mistake some of my friends were like oh when i was pregnant i was gonna be fat anyway so i just ate everything i could never eat otherwise and i I was like, this is actually really not a good idea for your baby. But we have so many myths and moms are not told about this stuff.

54:54And I think on the topic of guilt, it's important because as I was sharing this information on Instagram, I got a few DMs from moms like, oh, I feel guilty now. I'm like, listen, my opinion on this is that when you're pregnant, you're going to feel a sense of responsibility. There's pressure. You're building another human. Like, it's complicated. You might feel stressed. You might feel overwhelmed. I don't think we can take that away. But what Nine Months That Count Forever, the book, is trying to do is help you navigate the pressure in a healthier way. So, you know, if you do these four things, you're really setting up your baby with a good base.

55:23And it's simple. It's really simple. It's simple.

55:25Dr. Mark Hyman:Balance your blood sugar, eat more protein. Choline and DHA. Get choline and DHA. Yeah, exactly. Pretty simple. Pretty simple. And I hope that this book becomes completely irrelevant very fast. Like, I hope everybody gets this, all doctors start talking about it, and this book is not useful anymore. Yeah. No, I'm so glad you wrote it because, you know, as I said, I delivered 500 babies. Can you talk about that a little bit? Like, I want to know more about that. About what? How I did that? About delivering 500 babies. It was amazing. I mean, I was a family doctor. I got trained in a community hospital in Northern California where there was only family doctors.

55:58Dr. Mark Hyman:I learned to do C-sections. And then after my, and I actually was really interested to be even in an internship. I went to this small town in Sault Ste. Marie, Canada. No, somewhere. I don't even know where I was. I didn't remember the town. It was a little town. and it was 24 seven. I lived in the hospital and just, I basically barely slept and just delivered babies nonstop for a month. And then, and then I went to work in a small town in Idaho called Orofino, which nobody had ever heard of. It was a logging town with 3 ,500 people, no stoplights and not even a McDonald's or any kind of, any kind of a chain of any sort.

56:30Dr. Mark Hyman:And, uh, there was five, uh, family doctors and one drunk surgeon. I was probably the most highly trained in obstetrics and also in C-sections. I was a C-section guy. So I had to cover all my own patients and I didn't cover their patients. And so I was exhausted after four years, but it was an amazing experience. I mean, delivering babies is just one of the highlights of my whole career. I mean, it's such a joy. And I was very deliberate with my pregnant women about how to stay healthy. And I didn't really - Talk to them about it. A hundred percent. I didn't even know what I know now, but I studied nutrition in college.

57:06Dr. Mark Hyman:I was always a healthy eater. I really studied a lot about this just out of my own interest before medical school. And I actually took nutrition at Cornell. So I was really very aware of it. It was one of the highlights of my career. And I was so frustrated that people just didn't understand this and didn't understand how important it was to regulate their biology in a way that you have a sacred duty here to create a little human. And how do you create a healthy little human? And that's what we're talking about here. How do you give your baby the best chance at a good and healthy life? How do you not program it by eating the wrong things or by not eating the right things?

57:44It's about vulnerability.

57:45Dr. Mark Hyman:Yeah. And this whole field of epigenetic research is so important. So I think people are starting to become aware of it. But you're literally writing in the genetic expression software. You're the great programmer of your baby's DNA. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. So you can program it. It's quite a responsibility. Yeah. It kind of is. and I'm like, my daughter just recently became pregnant. So I'm like, oh God, what is she doing? She's exhausted. She's an orthopedic surgery resident. She's working 14 hours a day. The hospital food is shit. So I'm like, I can't chew meals. Well, any small step that you can take is going to be beneficial.

58:25And also, you know, if you already had kids before or you're learning about this late in pregnancy, it's okay. Like your baby will be okay. I was on the cusp of prediabetes at 25 years old, even though I was eating pretty healthily, probably linked in some way to my mom's diet, but I was able to fend it off. You know, you're able to work with your epigenetic programming and your vulnerabilities. But for my son, I was like, if I can set him up to not be on the cusp of prediabetes at 25, I want to do what I can to do that. So when you know more, you know, you change what you do. But just one part.

58:57Dr. Mark Hyman:This is so great. So Jesse, people can get your book anywhere, nine months to count forever, how pregnancy diet shapes your baby's future. It's out now. And you also have written other books, The Glucose Goddess Method and The Glucose Revolution. Where can people find you and learn more about what you're doing? The best place is Instagram, at Glucose Goddess. That's me. At Glucose Goddess. Check it out. Thank you, Mark. Yeah, thanks for being here. Thanks for coming all the way from France. Your baby, I hope, is somewhere close by. Yeah, yeah. He's back in France. He's fine. No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding.

59:34Dr. Mark Hyman:And I wish you the best of luck and thank you for raising the awareness around sugar. You know, I was beating that drum for a long time, but I wasn't as smart or as good as you at it. Oh, stop it. So I thank you for doing the work and getting this out there, really. Thank you, Mark. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure. Like a pleasure. If you love, do you have a question about my favorite books, supplements, or recipes? Then sign up for my free Mark's Picks newsletter at drhyman.com slash Mark's Picks, where I'll I'll share all of this information with you and so much more. You'll get emails from me every Friday with recommendations on things that have helped me on my health journey, and I hope they can help you too.

1:00:08Dr. Mark Hyman:Thank you so much again for tuning in. We'll see you next week on The Dr. Hyman Show. 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.

1:00:42Dr. 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.

1:01:14Dr. 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.