Dr. Mark Hyman: The Secret to Aging Backwards and Improving Your Health | Mental Health | YAPClassic

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19:43Hala Taha:But when I hear you talking about it and you're talking about personalization and figuring out like, you know, your biologically to me, that's you know, I've been doing this podcast for six years and had a lot of people on the show. And it sounds a lot like biohacking. So so what's the difference?

19:56Dr. Mark Hyman:Well, I think biohacking tends to be around things like hot and cold plunges, hyperbaric chambers, red light therapy, all these devices and tools and things to optimize your health, which are fine. They work and they're mediated by biological processes, and I use those. However, if someone comes in like that woman that I just described to you, no biohacker in the world is going to fix her because they don't understand the science around functional medicine. Now, if they're a trained practitioner, fine. They'll figure it out. Hopefully, they'll figure it out. But when you just use these modalities without trying to understand what the underlying root cause is, it's another symptomatic treatment.

20:36Dr. Mark Hyman:You might feel better for a little bit. You go on a sauna. You go on a cold punch. You feel good. But then what? You still have your arthritis. You still have autoimmune disease. You still have your migraine. You still have whatever you got. And no one's telling you how to figure out the root of that. So I'm not opposed to it. And Dave's a good friend. And I love Dave Asprey. And we hang out and talk all the time. And I learned from him. I mean, there's other, there's all kinds of great tools that I personally use and have. I'm just saying that functional medicine is sort of the OG biohacking in a sense, because it's really about understanding at a much deeper level what's going on biologically, biochemically, genetically, you know, with your microbiome and ways that I think, you know, most people just, it's a lot to take in.

21:15Dr. Mark Hyman:And the problem is, you know, there's 37 billion, billion chemical reactions to your body every second. Nobody can understand all that. You have tens of thousands of metabolites in your blood and chemicals. We do 19 on a regular panel. With Functional Health, we do$499, which is$15 ,000 to test for less than$500. And you get over 110 biomarkers. And you can add on other things as well to go deeper dives into whether you're exposed to chemicals, whether you're at Alzheimer's risk, whether you have immune issues. I mean, so whether you have Lyme disease, we provide you a really deep, robust platform where you get to be driving the bus.

21:47Dr. Mark Hyman:You don't have to go to a doctor. You don't have to ask for permission. You don't have to beg for the requisition. You have to go to the, you know, try to find a lab that will order you to get, you know, your insurance to pay for it. I mean, I have insurance. I go to the lab and my doctor ordered some stuff that I wanted to do. And it was outside of Function. And she's like, well, it'll pay for this test, but not this test, and this test, but not this test. You know, I'd be charged for that. You'd be charged. I'm like, oh, you know, it's like, but that's what Function solves all of that. And you have this beautiful integrated dashboard where you have your data forever and you track it over time.

22:16Dr. Mark Hyman:You get an app which helps give you direct feedback. and it's a very, very integrated experience into your life.

22:22Hala Taha:Yeah. And I feel like it's really needed because to your point, the rest of the medical world is kind of stuck in this traditional process that really isn't working. And the other thing that's not working is actually treating aging's symptoms and not the root cause. And one of the other big principles that you talk about is treating aging like an actual disease. So why is that important?

22:42Dr. Mark Hyman:Well, I think you come to sort of accept that as you get older, you have cancer, you get heart disease, you get diabetes, you lose muscle, your brain function declines, you lose your ability to do things. These are not normal consequences of aging. Frailty is not a normal consequence of aging. It's a consequence, a phenomenon that happens as we get older if we don't do something about it. And all of us have seen those 90-year-old ladies doing gymnastics, the 100-year-old people running the 100-yard dash. It's kind of crazy stuff like that, right? And so what is it about those people? Well, they have understood by accident or by studying that there are certain behaviors that foster optimal health.

23:25Dr. Mark Hyman:It's eating whole foods, unprocessed diet. It's low sugar and low starch and full of phytochemicals and fiber and got to with some amounts of protein, especially more protein than animal protein as you get older because it's harder to assimilate and build. You need to make sure you exercise and do strength training and you need flexibility. You need cardiovascular training and stability training. They understand you need good sleep. They understand they have managed their stress and their own emotional regulation. And they also have deep social connections and relationships that foster a sense of belonging, which all are ingredients for optimal health.

23:57Dr. Mark Hyman:And when you look at people like in the blue zones, that's basically what they have. It's not that they were vegans or not vegan. It was that they had these other factors and that they were profoundly impacted just by default by these situations that they found themselves born into. which we totally in the West don't have. Like we're the opposite. We have dysregulated sleep schedules. We have tremendous amounts of stress. We eat crappy food. You know, we don't exercise enough. We, you know, like we got my R-ring told me I didn't exercise enough yesterday. I was a busy day. So, you know, there's all these things that we're doing to impede our ability to actually live a vibrant, long, healthy life.

24:32Hala Taha:Well, you seem to be doing a good job because your biological age is 43, but you're in your 60s. Is that right?

24:40Dr. Mark Hyman:Yeah, well, I got my biological age done. when I was 62 and I was 43, then I implemented more of the things that I learned and some, you know, some other strategies. And I went, I got two years older at 64 and I redid my biological age. It was 39. So I went, even though I got two years older chronologically, I got four years younger biologically. So that's, that's the power we have. And this is what we call epigenetic reprogramming. Now I mentioned earlier, the Aminaka factors and so forth. These are, these are sort of behind the sky things that have to be tested in humans and make sure they're safe and effective but right now i mean even with what we know by optimizing and tweaking you can actually still reverse your epigenetic biological age at any point in your life and you can it's it's it can go backwards or forwards you know like if you kind of go on a bender or whatever you don't sleep and you party and you eat crappy food you'll get older biologically and then you can change that and reprogram and go back i wouldn't recommend that give us like concrete things like what did

25:39Hala Taha:you do to reverse your age 20 years?

25:43Dr. Mark Hyman:Well, I've been doing this my whole life. So it wasn't like I was 64 and then I, uh, biologically, and then I, in five years, I reversed it to 43. So, okay. I, I have been eating whole foods my whole life. I've been not eating processed foods. I don't remember the last time I had a Zoda. I mean, I probably was a kid. Uh, I exercised my entire life for the last 50 years. I have, um, you know, make sure I prioritize community connection, sleep and and and men's stress and and all those things play a role and then i've done things to optimize my microbiome my mitochondria my immune system and those are all really help so all those things kind of just kind of nudge you back into a healthier state and there's some supplements and things i've taken i think can have made a difference i've taken neural fna i take uh amino acids that help be assimilated i also take um something that's called nmn which is a precursor of NAD that helps also revitalize your cells.

26:40Dr. Mark Hyman:So I do a number of different things that I think are important from a supplement perspective, but I think most of it's, that's like the 10%. It's like the rest of it is the 80 to 90%.

26:51Hala Taha:And that's what, if we were to use function, the platform, it would help us figure out like, okay, what's our biological age? And like, these are the things you need to do really to function and to help. That's what it does.

27:03Dr. Mark Hyman:Yeah, we do a calculation based on your biomarkers of what your biological age is based on scientific data that shows certain blood biomarkers correlate with your epigenetic biological age. And you can see it go backwards or forwards. Now, if you do different tests, you're going to get different numbers, right? Some tests will be like five years younger or 10 years younger. And so you may not kind of be able to compare apples to apples by switching tests. But if you stay with the same tests consistently, you'll see the changes. Yeah.

27:32Hala Taha:Okay. So I want to get really nerdy because I'm sure people have been listening and they're like, I have no idea what epigenetics is. And so there's two terms I want you to break down, epigenomes and exposome, right? I know that. So one is about how genes are expressed. One is our environmental exposure. So break those down.

27:49Dr. Mark Hyman:Yeah. So basically the concept that I think is really important called the exposome. We all have been taught that our genes control who we are. They're our destiny. Whatever we got, we got. We can't change it. You know, our parents got diabetes. Our parents got cancer. or our parents got whatever heart disease it's just kind of in our future your genes are not your destiny they're they may provide you with a roadmap of what your predispositions are but not your destiny so what controls your destiny it's something called the exposal that is a sum total of everything that you're exposed to throughout your life that washes over your biology including your genes and reprograms them based on what you're doing if you're eating like me if you you had a whole foods diet, if you exercise, you do all these things for 50 years, you're going to be biologically younger.

28:33Dr. Mark Hyman:Your epigenetics are going to track as if you're younger. And I'll talk about what epigenetics are. So the exposome is what you eat. It's your exercise, your nutrient levels. It's stress management. It's community. It's sleep. It's all the things we've just talked about. Light, air, water, all those things. I went on bright sunlight this morning for 20 minutes. All those things matter. That influences how your biology is regulated. We're biological organisms, and we're controlled in the same way by our external factors. So the exposome is literally everything from toxins to your gut microbiome to your diet to sleep, everything that your body is exposed to.

29:09Dr. Mark Hyman:That's why we call it the exposome. Your epigenome is how the exposome regulates your biology. Now, what is the epigenome? Epi means above. So you've got your genes. You've got about 20 ,000 genes. uh your epigenome and then think about like the uh the keyboards on a on a on a piano right you got 88 keys they ain't changing you know i got 20 000 genes they ain't changing unless i do gene editing or splicing or some other weird thing that's coming around the corner they're not changing what can change is how those genes are expressed how they're turned on or off whether they're upregulated or downregulated whether they drive inflammation or stop inflammation whether they're accelerating aging or slow aging.

29:50Dr. Mark Hyman:And they are basically the control mechanisms to turn on or off genes. So think of them like switches or knobs. And you can dial them up or down based on what you're doing. And that's how almost all of the impacts of a lot of the lung practices we talked about have their effect. That's how the exposome regulates your health and lung severity, your biology, and your risk of disease. is through your epigenome, then translates into the expression of genes and proteins and biological functions. And you want to have a healthy epigenome. And, you know, there was a great example, for example, a brand new journal who discovered this kind of phenomenon was these mice that are bred to be obese.

30:30Dr. Mark Hyman:So they're yellow, they're fat, basically yellow fat mice. He gave a series of the females who are pregnant certain nutrients called methylating nutrients that regulate the epigenome. So it's a little complicated, but there's something called methylation, which is a chemical process that regulates your genes. It involves B6, folate, and B12. So vitamins and minerals are extremely important. They run everything in your body. Every biochemical reaction needs a vitamin or mineral. And if you don't have them or they're insufficient, you're going to have gummed up biochemistry. And gummed up biochemistry translates into disease.

31:02Dr. Mark Hyman:So he basically gave these pregnant mice some B vitamins and a few other amino acids and things to help to support this process. The offspring were perfect. They were thin. They were healthy. They were gray. They were not yellow fat mice, even though genetically they were bred to be yellow fat mice. And this was a massive discovery. And I think this is what really has led to our understanding of this whole process of how we can modify our epigenome and the outcomes. So when your mother's eating when she's pregnant with you, you know, the stresses you experience in utero that your mother might have experienced or all your early childhood experiences.

31:42Dr. Mark Hyman:All those imprint on your epigenome and can affect you, toxins you're exposed to. So this is why we have to pay attention to how we live, because if we want to feel good and do good and engage in life and do the work we want to do and be successful in our work and have great relationships and enjoy life and be happy, if you feel like crap, it's not that much fun.

32:02Hala Taha:Yeah, so true. And so from what I read like 90 % of disease and aging risks has to do with our environment, our, our exposome, right? And so the earlier that we start, the better is what you were just saying, right? We can even start from in the womb if our, if our, if our mothers are smart enough.

32:21Dr. Mark Hyman:That's right. Yeah. You know, like, uh, you know, I've seen, you know, women wanting to be pregnant. I mentioned their toxin load. I'm like, Whoa, we got to do something about this. We got to reduce your exposures, the toxins. You've got to get these heavy metals down because you want have a healthy baby. And so we really proactively do preconception work. I had a whole podcast about that on the doctor's pharmacy, and now it's called the Dr. Hyman Show. And we dove deep into what you need to know preparing for a baby, what happens when you're pregnant, how do you take care of yourself, what are the things that matter scientifically to optimize the chance of having a healthy baby.

32:52Hala Taha:On the flip side, is there any time that's like too late to get started on this?

32:57Dr. Mark Hyman:Oh, God, no. I mean, what's really amazing, in none of the animal studies, they've given rapamycin which is something that is a drug discovered in rapinui that inhibits this pathway called one of the longevity switches i call longevity switches uh that they control so much so mTOR is one of these and mTOR essentially is a pathway that is going to help you build muscle but also when it's activated and when it's inactivated or or inhibited in some way it's going to allow the cells to replenish repair called uh through this process called autophagy which basically means you're eating your old cells and you're reusing the parts it's recycling so it's cleaning up the mess that we make all the time in our bodies where does that garbage go right if somebody has to fix it so rapamycin inhibits that and accelerates the autophagy process and then given in the right ways it extends life and extends health in in animal models consistently and reliably uh and so there are there are interesting ways that we can sort of activate these longevity switches and pathways and i talk about that a lot in my book young forever.

33:57Dr. Mark Hyman:And how do we understand how these work, what we can do? And it's not complicated. There's a few simple practices, sometimes a few supplements that can really help modulate some of these pathways to activate the longevity switches.

34:09Hala Taha:Okay. So one more really nerdy question, and that's about mitochondria. So you say the difference between a three-year-old and a 90-year-old is the number and the state of their mitochondria. So help us understand what mitochondrial dysfunction has to do with aging. Yeah.

34:23Dr. Mark Hyman:Great, great question. So this is one of the hallmarks of aging is mitochondria function it's key to so many diseases your mitochondria i think of them like the powerhouse of your cell the energy factories they take food and oxygen turn into energy that your body uses and we use you know gasoline or carb um and it combusts and you know creates energy it what we run on is something called atp it's just a molecule produced from food and oxygen and the waste products are carbon dioxide which we breathe out and water which we pee out and some free radicals which we have antioxidant mechanisms to control and what happens is they're your energy, right?

34:55Dr. Mark Hyman:So if you have poor functioning mitochondria, you're going to have low energy. You're going to be weaker, you're going to have lower muscle mass. So the key to longevity is keeping your mitochondria healthy and keeping them strong and actually having better, more mitochondria. And so the way to do that is by exercise. So resistance training builds muscle in mitochondria. Sprint training or HIIT training does that as well. Exercise with oxygen therapy. Hypoxia training does that. There's a lot of ways to do it. There's supplements like urolithin A, which has caused mitophagy and mitochondrial renewal.

35:27Dr. Mark Hyman:Their mitochondrial support supplements sometimes that you need. So there are a lot of ways to optimize your mitochondria, but they're injured by too much food, too much sugar and starch, too many environmental toxins. All those things from the microbiome that are bad, all those things can damage your mitochondria. So learning about your mitochondria, how to take care of them is really important. And again, it's one of the things we kind of can look at as we start to test things and see what's going on in our bodies.

35:50Hala Taha:So interesting.

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38:33Hala Taha:So why do you actually want to live so long?

38:35Dr. Mark Hyman:Well, I love life. And as long as I can enjoy life and be with my friends and do the things I love and ride my bike and hike and enjoy what I'm doing and have meaning and purpose and contribute to the world and add value. I'm 65. I kind of figured a few things out by now. Wisdom always doesn't come with age, but I've had a bunch of hard knocks, and that's really taught me a lot. And so I kind of feel happy and content and satisfied, and I want to keep going. So I mean, I don't really care if I get to 120 or 100 or 99 or 95 or 90. I just want to feel good and do good.

39:09Hala Taha:It makes a lot of sense. And I'm really excited for this generation of 60-year-olds because I just feel like in the past, you know, when you're in your 60s, it's all about like retirement. And I feel like a lot of people right now are actually like taking on second careers and realizing that they really have a lot more time to live and people are taking advantage of that. So like, what are your thoughts in terms of people around your age who like want to take on a new career or? Yeah. Yeah. Tell me.

39:37Dr. Mark Hyman:I mean, I, you know, I'm 65 and two years ago, I co-founded a company that's a big startup company right now. So, I mean, who does startups in their sixties? Most people are like looking at golf courses and not startups. And, and I, I mean, I want to contribute to the world. I want to do things. I get excited. We're building, we're creating, we're, we're dreaming. We're imagining a different future for healthcare and medicine. We're adding value to people's lives. I mean, it's something to get up for every morning and be excited about and take all the things that I know that are almost impossible for any single doctor to synthesize and to sort through and make sense of and provide each individual with a personalized approach to their health that's going to actually optimize how they feel.

40:20Dr. Mark Hyman:And that's really the key here is to end needless suffering. And for me, that's my purpose. And that's my mission. and plus having fun, enjoying my life and my wife and everybody around me.

40:30Hala Taha:Yeah, I love that. So it's hard for me to imagine at the same time, like I see people living older, but it's also hard for me to imagine, especially in the West, because I feel like things are more unhealthy than ever. The food in the grocery store is terrible. It's like everything comes in a cardboard box. Our water supply is really scary and it feels like there's no good water. It's either like you're getting plastic or you're drinking from, you know, a dirty faucet, right? And so for me, it just feels almost impossible to kind of navigate food, which you say is medicine. So talk to us about how we should try to navigate our diets and also like maybe like what changes need to happen in America for us to actually live healthier lives and longer lives.

41:18Dr. Mark Hyman:This is something I've been working on for a long time. And I wrote a book called Food Fix, which lays out from field to fork what's wrong with our food system. And, you know, if there's one thing that's killing us, aside from environmental toxins and stress and our sleep schedule, it's probably 80 % food. And it's something that we can control and do something about. And unless we actually take it seriously and fix our food system, we're kind of in a mess. And so right now there's a resurgence of interest in health around the country. There's the Make America Healthy Again movement. And so there's an energy happening.

41:49Dr. Mark Hyman:And in Washington, working on policies to bring those changes to the average American. For example, in West Virginia, they got rid of red dyes and other dyes. In California, they did the same thing. These are great steps to start to push the food system to produce healthier food for all of us.

42:04Hala Taha:And something that's really hot right now is GLPs, right? I have mixed feelings about them. I feel like it's good for personal. I'm not a doctor, right? But I think it's good if you have a real problem. but I see normal people who might just need to lose 10, 20 pounds take GLP. So what are your thoughts around that?

42:23Dr. Mark Hyman:I think for most people, and I literally just got a text from somebody this morning saying, my cousin read your book. They lost a hundred pounds. My, my person's working with me in Washington around food policy. She lost 112 pounds in the last few years working with me. And without taking any trucks. Now, some people are really stuck. And if you're stuck and you need help and you have not really addressed the underlying reasons why you eat that. Sometimes it's not what you're eating, it's what's eating you. You got to figure that out. It's really important to do that. And I think when people do that, they don't necessarily have to take these drugs, which are helpful.

43:00Dr. Mark Hyman:They can be extremely helpful, but they also come with side effects, muscle loss, weight regain if you stop. They can have other issues, like pancreatic issues and pancreatitis. They can cause bowel obstruction if you're taking it for a long time. So they can be a good tool, but they're just a tool. They're not a panacea. And I think they've helped a lot of people. I'm not against them. I think they're kind of used in ways that sometimes don't make sense to me. Why give a six-year-old an ozempic shot for the rest of his life? It's not his fault he's overweight. It's the environment he's in. And I think that can actually get really fixed.

43:34Dr. Mark Hyman:So I think it's important for people to understand that they have power. The food industry has basically hijacked our brain chemistry, our metabolism, our desires for different foods. And these are things that can actually be changed. You can literally change your brain chemistry and have an incredibly powerful shift in your cravings and your desire for foods. For example, people going keto, they don't really need OZM because naturally the way they're eating will shut off that craving. And the food addiction is a real thing. About 14 % of adults and kids are addicted to food, biologically addicted.

44:17Dr. Mark Hyman:This is really based on good evidence from Yale Food Addiction Scale and deep science around the world. We looked at this. This is just horribly sad and horribly unfortunate because we really don't need to do that. We can fix our food supply. We can fix this problem. And it has to be done at a grassroots level. It has to be on a state level. It has to be on a federal level. It's going to take time. But we're working with the FDA, working with the USDA, with HHS, the administration as best we can to try to push changes through my nonprofit.

44:49Hala Taha:I've also heard that there's food companies already trying to figure out how to like circumvent GLPs so that people still crave their food, right? So this is going to figure out how to get around it.

45:00Dr. Mark Hyman:That's even crazy when you think of it. Like, wow, they're really just going to go there? They're literally going to just kind of circumvent Ozempic by making food even more addictive.

45:11Hala Taha:Yeah, that's the state of the world that we're in. So we've got to take control. So let's talk about our ancestors. Because when I was listening to your book, I was surprised because we're always thinking about how we live so long now. And when you think about the past, you might think like people died at like 30, 40. But there's actually cases in history where people have lived to be a very old age. So talk to us about how our ancestors ate and maybe some examples of people who lived really long back in the day.

45:39Dr. Mark Hyman:I think, you know, when you look, for example, at the Native Americans, one of the longest populations in the world at the turn of the 1900s was the Plains Indians. They had almost most of their diet from bison. And then they had berries and they had probably wild stuff they gathered. But predominantly their diet was meat. and they live to be like well over 100 and highly functional and active and you know the these populations around the world where you see people like i was in turkey and they know this is not a technical blue zone but man they were a lot of really old people who are doing great you know we're in their 80s 90s still working still thriving still make part of their community and i think it's when you stop you stop like i think retirement is the worst idea ever invented you know i don't really get it but but you know people don't retire they just shift and change what they're doing.

46:31Dr. Mark Hyman:And I think in these communities, and when you see these people living to be very old, it's because they found meaning, purpose. They've learned how to not sort of internalize the stresses of life. They've learned how to modulate their own diet and lifestyle to optimize their health. And they just kind of figured it out.

46:48Hala Taha:Let's stick on community a bit because you say it's also a factor in longevity. You say you're only as healthy as your five closest friends. Tell us about it. Yeah.

46:58Dr. Mark Hyman:Well, think about it. If all your friends are, you know, going to McDonald's and drinking beer and, you know, 202 liters of soda a day and watching TV all the time, that's kind of what you're going to be probably like. And if you have friends who are healthy and go to yoga and drink green juices and exercise and eat whole foods and, you know, get together and share these things, then you're more likely going to be healthy. uh and it's just it's just so clear christakis from harvard did a lot of work on this he wrote a book called connected but he published research in the new england journal of medicine showing that for example from the framingham data which is a large study of one of the largest studies long-scoring studies in the world uh in framingham massachusetts tracking their population he found that those people who actually um when they looked at the patterns around obesity that you were about you know 40 percent likely to be overweight if your parents or siblings were overweight but you are 171 % more likely to be overweight if your friends are overweight.

47:57Hala Taha:Wow.

47:57Dr. Mark Hyman:Yeah. So your social connections matter and your relationships matter. You know, like, I mean, if you're a, if you're somebody who just stays up all night playing video games and you're living in America and your friends are playing video games in, in Australia, I mean, your sleep, wake cycle, your circadian rhythm, everything's going to be off. So the people in the communities that you have to surround yourself with, make sure are people who are leaning in towards wellness and health as opposed to, you know, not that.

48:24Hala Taha:That's so interesting. Now, I don't want everybody tuning in to like become like fat phobic, you know, like we've got, but at the same time, you've got to pay attention to your, it's the same thing. If people are like doing drugs around you, you're more likely to do drugs. So food can also be as bad as a drug. We've got to think of it that way. So if there was one thing that you could remove from the grocery stores, what would it be?

48:49Dr. Mark Hyman:It would be high fructose corn syrup. Like that, you'd kind of cut out most of the in the grocery store. Yeah, that's probably what I would do. Yeah.

49:01Hala Taha:And then what is your, oh, go ahead.

49:04Dr. Mark Hyman:No, that's what I would, I think, you know, trans fats have been removed for the most part, which is great.

49:13but you want to make sure you're getting rid of those two things, trans fats and

49:19Dr. Mark Hyman:africanous corn syrup. Just getting rid of that alone will make a huge difference. Or just even reading the ingredient list. If there's an ingredient on there that you don't have at home that you wouldn't use in your kitchen, like betylated hydroxychloroquine or maltodextrin or mono and diglycerides, you probably shouldn't eat it.

49:38Hala Taha:I heard something once, if you can't kill it or grow it, you shouldn't eat it. And I always like think about that when I'm eating food. Yeah, totally right. So a lot of our listeners are entrepreneurs. They have very busy schedules. Sometimes it can get really overwhelming trying to follow different nutrition advice. So in the simplest terms, what should we be eating?

50:00Dr. Mark Hyman:I've written so many books about this food. What should I eat? the pegan diet, which is sort of a condensed version and with some kind of fun stuff in it. And it's really, you know, what we agree on is more than what we disagree on. You know, you can get on the margins about vegan or paleo or keto or this or that. But the truth is, we all agree we shouldn't be eating processed, ultra processed, but we all agree we should be reducing starch and sugar and refined carbohydrates in our diet. We shouldn't be eating things that aren't food technically, like, you know, maltodextrin or, you know, butylated hydroxychloroquine, We eat a red dye number three.

50:33Dr. Mark Hyman:We should be eating foods that are high in phytochemicals, that we think of as food as medicine, where it changes everything in our biology in real time. We should be thinking about having good quality fats from nuts and seeds and avocados and wild fish, small fish. And even for some people to tolerate animal fats very well, especially if it's regeneratively raised. They have very different qualities of fats. So there's a lot of really good things you can do that are available from the diet that you can get even anywhere. I mean, I've worked with people in the worst food deserts in America, and they've actually been able to make a huge impact and change their diet if they actually do the right things.

51:13Dr. Mark Hyman:And they will. They'll actually have a huge shift in their diet by actually doing this. So I'm pretty thrilled by how simple it is. But when people understand how to do it, then it often changes.

51:28Hala Taha:Okay, so talk to us about exercise. I feel like there's a lot of mixed advice when it comes to exercise. What's your take on the right amount, too much exercise?

51:39Dr. Mark Hyman:I think exercise is critical. Your body needs to move. There's no doubt about it. We were designed to be moving organisms all the time. And that's kind of how we evolved. now most of us don't do enough and that's unfortunate um and i think you know we don't uh i think i think eight percent get the optimal amount 23 percent we get some moderate amount but the the key is to actually um understand what's good for you and it's different at different times your life you know but i think you need at least 30 minutes of good cardio four or five times a week three times a week is strength training probably a week or a day or two of flexibility and training and stability training.

52:18Dr. Mark Hyman:That's kind of bare minimum. If you can do that, you're going to maintain your health and be good for a long time.

52:24Hala Taha:You've said in the past that strength training is the best anti-aging medicine. What's so good about it?

52:29Dr. Mark Hyman:Because what you're doing is you're building muscle, you're building mitochondria, you're increasing muscle mass. And what really kills people is frailty. When you get older, you get frail. You're not able to get up out of a chair. You're not able to do what you love to do. Your mobility has decreased. Your functions decreased. That's all totally preventable by strength training. And you have to work harder as you get older because the body doesn't really, unfortunately, it doesn't work as well. So you have to do a little more effort to get the same benefit. And I think that's, you know, that's, that's, that's something people have to do, but it's, it's not optional.

53:01Dr. Mark Hyman:Like exercise is just not optional.

53:03Hala Taha:I agree. Okay. Last question for you. And then we're going to close out this interview. So the average listener's age on my podcast is 35 years old and they're typically an entrepreneur. So let's say he gave you a 35 five-year-old, they're stressed, exhausted, running on coffee. If you had a year to transform their health and performance, what are the things that you would change?

53:26Dr. Mark Hyman:I would immediately have them get on a whole foods diet that I just talked about. I'd have them just follow the principles of eat real food, low sugar starch, good fats, adequate protein for where you are in your life phase and varies depending on where you are. Lots of phytochemicals, lots of fiber, and just start there. And if you're really having any health issues, I'd probably do my 10-day detox program, which is essentially a reset. It's just 10daydetox.com with the 10-day detox. And what really is amazing about it is that people get a reset. It's like putting your body back to its original factory settings, and you can see where food is impacting you.

54:02Dr. Mark Hyman:Oh, I didn't know that, oh, my rash was caused by food, or I didn't know that my migraines were caused by what I was eating, or I didn't know that my joint pain was caused by anything, or my sleep problem was caused by eating. So you get a really quick reset and then you can start to add foods back in. So that would be number one, get your food straight. And that's timing, planning, organizing. It's really important. The amount of time you spend on your business, the fraction of that you spend on your health, you'll get a lot of dividends from that. Get in a regular exercise routine. Not that hard.

54:29Dr. Mark Hyman:Maybe if you just want to walk 30 minutes, a few walking phone calls, that's good, better than nothing. You can have a walking treadmill. You can do more fun things. I like to bike. I like to do more mountain biking and road biking and tennis and other things that kind of are fun for me. I like to make exercise fun. Strength training, I've gotten into more and more, and it's been profound in terms of effect on my body, even as I'm older. I think learning how to regulate your nervous system is important. Self-soothing is not something we learn how to do. We get activated, reactive, but learning how to practice, whether it's breath work or meditation or some practice where you're resetting your nervous system because we're all in parasympathetic uh deficit we need to be relaxing more and then i think build community because you know as you're building something and going through stuff you know when getting isolated is the worst thing you can do for a human being and so i think having that ability to sort of work with uh your friends to kind of build a fun community experience is really important and that's something that you know it's been really important to me especially as i've gotten older is just invest in your friendships because when everything else goes, that's what will be left.

55:36Yeah.

55:37Hala Taha:So that was great advice on an individual level. And a lot of the people tuning in are entrepreneurs and we help move society forward. And, you know, we have this big shift from traditional to functional medicine. We're trying to combat the food industries. Can you talk to us about some of the opportunities that you see for entrepreneurs to kind of capitalize on all these changes?

55:57Dr. Mark Hyman:Well, I think, you know, the health and wellness market is a trillion dollar market. and you know there's a lot of ways people are entering that but you can figure out you know what you love and the intersection of what you love and you know what people need often businesses are started from people's own needs like i need to i need to fix my own health so i as a physician i got very sick when i was in my 30s i got chronic fatigue syndrome from heavy metals and i was struggling a lot and i had to actually sort of figure it out and that forced me to learn about what i learned about it forced me to study the way i studied to actually find this field of functional medicine to use it on myself to heal and repair and so that's that's kind of what i encourage you to do is figure out that intersection of what you love that's just driven me because it's not like a choice i don't have a choice like i'm you know making widgets or something that it's fine to make widgets we all need widgets but the key is really is really to kind of uh figure out how you can do this in a way that it syncs with what you love, because otherwise you won't really do it.

57:00Hala Taha:Great advice. Okay. So I end my show with two questions. I ask all my guests. It could be like totally different from what we talked about today. Just answer from your heart. So what is one actionable thing our young and profiters can do today to become more profitable tomorrow?

57:15Dr. Mark Hyman:Well, what your success is really determined by the quality of how you feel. So if you're able to function at a high level and do the things you want to do and not be held back by illness or struggles, you're going to be able to function at a much higher level and do whatever you want to do, whether it's just kind of buzz off and go kind of get early retirement or whether it's you want to build a company or whatever you want to do. You know, you have the capacity to be highly functional when you feel better. And so investing in your health is such an important thing from my perspective. Like, you know, I see a lot of people who have great businesses and companies and they build these things.

57:53Dr. Mark Hyman:They're rich. They have all this stuff and they're lonely. They're isolated. They're unhealthy. They're sick. They don't feel good. I mean, that is the last thing you want, right?

58:01Hala Taha:Totally. And your book, Young Forever, really is just like a blueprint for how to do that.

58:07Dr. Mark Hyman:Absolutely.

58:08Hala Taha:Yeah. And what would you say your secret to profiting in life is? And this can go beyond business.

58:13Dr. Mark Hyman:I mean, the secret of profiting in life, again, is to focus on the things you love and to do what you're passionate about. Because, you know, if you try to force something in your life, you know, the best things that happen are often serendipitous. They often come to you, their ideas, their people, their experiences. I feel like there's sort of an underlying kind of current where we can kind of jump into it. and if we're if we're present well we're able to see actually what pulls us in and when we do that you become more profitable i've never i've never sought to make money in my life i've never tried to make money i've never said i'm going to do a business to make money i'm going to do this to make money i'm doing what i'm doing because i feel like it's critical for for myself and for the people who i i care about and for the population at large it's like i just can't help myself.

59:05Dr. Mark Hyman:So I think when you do that and you have a mission and you're, you're driven, you know, then it's not about the money.

59:12Hala Taha:Love it. And Mark, where can everybody learn more about you and everything that you do? I know you're so easily found, but where do you want to point people to?

59:18Dr. Mark Hyman:Well, you go to drhyman.com. If you want to try the 10 day detox, you'd go to drhyman.com. You'll find it there, but just go to 10 day detox diet. I'm on social media, Dr. Mark Hyman, and I have a podcast, the Dr. Hyman show top 200 podcasts out there. So it's doing well.

59:33Hala Taha:Awesome. Cool. thank you so much for joining us on Young and Profiting Podcast.

59:37Dr. Mark Hyman:My pleasure. My pleasure.

59:41Hala Taha:Hey, App Fam, we're about to launch something that might be my favorite thing we've ever done on the podcast, a brand new series called How We Profit. Now, I've been doing Young and Profiting Podcast for eight years, and my listeners are successful. We are real entrepreneurs with real businesses, and a lot of you guys are crushing it behind the scenes. You may not be super famous, You may not be a billionaire yet, but you've got a business that you've learned how to scale. And we want to hear from you. One of the best ways to learn as an entrepreneur is from your peers. And I found it super helpful to be in these peer entrepreneurship groups and learn from other entrepreneurs who are at my level, but just in a different industry.

1:00:21Hala Taha:So that's what I want to bring to this podcast. I want this to be our own peer group, but on the podcast. And so I'm going to be interviewing people who are making anywhere from$500 ,000 to$10 million a year. They're not super famous. They're not the typical billionaires that are on my show. These are real entrepreneurs who are crushing it behind the scenes, and we're going to uncover what they do to sell, how they get their customers, what their profit margin looks like, how they market, and so much more. If this sounds like you and you want to be featured on Young and Profiting podcast for our How We Profit series, just head to youngandprofiting.com slash apply and share your story.

1:00:56Hala Taha:Let me know why you think you should be featured on the show. Again, that's youngandprofiting.com slash apply. And who knows, maybe you'll be our next guest on Young and Profiting Podcast.