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The average newborn baby today has 287 toxins in their umbilical cord blood before they take their first breath.
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The ongoing debate over which foods are most healthy is a subject of >> co-founder and chief medical officer of Function Health, Dr. Mark Hyman.
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What is inflammation doing to your body?
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>> Inflammation is at the root cause of most all chronic illnesses and aging itself.
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And visceral fat is like a incubator for inflammation, a fire in your belly.
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Causes heart attacks, strokes, cancer, diabetes.
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What are the highly inflammatory foods? >> The sugar and starch.
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In America, average you eat a pound of sugar and flour a day per person.
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What do you think the US healthcare system needs to be focused on?
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All the ultra-processed food, which is 60% of our diet.
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Now, we have a whole food system that's turned into ultra-processed food that we're consuming in massive amounts.
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It's 73% of what's on the grocery store shelves.
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Can someone know that they have some symptoms of an autoimmune disease?
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>> You might be a little bit tired.
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You might be a little constipated.
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You might be a little dry skin.
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Your nails might crack a little bit.
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You might feel a little depressed.
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You might have lower sex drive.
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Gaining a little bit of weight.
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People don't think of these as a disease, but when you add them all together, If someone's listening right now and they're thinking, I feel like crap. What do they do?
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The number one health and wellness podcast. Jay Shetty. Jay Shetty.
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The one, the only Jay Shetty.
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Hey everyone, welcome back to On Purpose, the place you come to become happier, healthier, and more healed.
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Where we talk to the experts and the thought leaders who illuminate us how we can truly transform our lives.
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Today's guest is one of your favorites, one of our favorites here on On Purpose.
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Someone that I know personally and grateful to know off the screen as well as on the screen.
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Talking about none other than Dr. Mark Hyman. Dr.
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Mark Hyman is a practicing family physician, founder of the Ultra Wellness Center, and founder of the Functional Medicine Center at the Cleveland Clinic.
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A leader in functional medicine, Dr.
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Mark Hyman authored 15 New York Times best sellers and hosts the Dr.
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Hyman Show, a podcast that you should definitely subscribe to if you haven't already, and he's known for his food as medicine philosophy and work in addressing the root causes of chronic disease through nutrition and lifestyle.
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Please welcome back to On Purpose Dr. Mark Hyman.
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Mark, it's always great to have you on the show.
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I'm so happy to have you back. Thanks, Jay. It's good to be here. I love this place.
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Mark, I'm actually really grateful you're here because we actually had a date scheduled for you to be on the show. >> Yeah.
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And then I sadly learned from your team that it had to be canceled.
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But it was for Cuz I almost died.
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Yeah, it was really extreme.
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Talk to us about this near-death experience because I've known you to be a longevity expert, a health expert.
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You always looking great health, you always feeling great health.
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Every time I've been around you, your energy's radiant. Yeah.
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You you carry it with you.
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I know you practice what you preach. I know it's not made up. Yeah.
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You're you're an authentic person in the work that you do.
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It impacts millions of people worldwide.
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And then you have a near-death experience. >> Yeah.
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Walk walk me through what happened. >> Yeah.
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Uh you know, thanks, Jay, for asking.
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I um I joke that my biological age is 39, but my back age is 139.
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And when I was 32, I lived in Idaho in a logging town.
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I was chopping wood and carrying heavy wood, and I ruptured a disc.
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And it it basically caused massive damage and a permanent paralysis of my right calf.
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So, I've limped for 30-odd years, and my back's just degenerated, and I developed, you know, a lot of degenerative disc disease.
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And so, I had a lot of back pain, and I ended up having an injection, which is pretty common treatment to help relieve pain.
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And one of the risks of injections of any needle is infection.
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And in a closed space of the spine, it just took off.
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And very quickly within a couple of days, I couldn't walk.
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Within a week, I had surgery. They opened me up.
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They closed me up because they couldn't reach the abscess. It was on the front.
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And they said, "Uh we can't do anything."
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And basically left me to die.
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Gave me antibiotics and said, "Cross your fingers and here's some painkillers."
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And They said there was no no cure? Mhm.
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And and then a friend of mine was uh a doctor called me and said, "What's happening? I heard you're sick." And I told him.
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He said, "You need a second opinion."
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So, I got an opinion from the top neurosurgery center in the world in UCSF.
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And they said, "Get out here right away."
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So, I took a ambulance jet.
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And and had surgery another surgery a month later that was really relieved the abscess.
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But in that intervening period, I got septic. I was feverish.
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I lost 25 lb from where I'm now. I was in bed.
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I couldn't eat sitting up.
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I literally had to lay down with four pillows under my leg.
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And after the surgery, thank God, it worked.
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But it was a it was a Hail Mary surgery.
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And they said I was maybe a couple of days away from dying.
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And I remember, you know, going under anesthesia on the day of the second surgery.
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And I was like, "This could be my last moment of consciousness."
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In the aftermath of that, you know, I had to I was on a walker. I couldn't stand up.
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I couldn't brush my own teeth.
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I couldn't wipe my own ass. I was like it was bad.
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And I had to depend on other people.
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But slowly, you know, just determined, I clawed my way back to health.
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And using every principle that I know of how to create health. And I'm 65.
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I'm not a spring chicken. And I I know what to do. And I did it.
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And it And I wasn't sure if it was going to work at 65.
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You know, how much can you get back?
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But I put on more muscle and I'm stronger than I was even before the surgery.
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Uh and I just did it every day.
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It was like compounding interest.
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Every day I ate the best I could.
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I got in the gym with my physical therapist and trainer every day, sometimes twice a day.
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I got treatments and acupuncture and I just clawed my way back.
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I took my supplements, took my creatine, took all the things I needed to do.
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And it took about 5 months and and then I really started to kind of come back and it's only been 7 months from the recording of this podcast.
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And so I'm I'm back and I feel good and I feel actually better than I ever have because I've doubled down on my health practices. Oh my gosh.
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>> sort of shows you, you know, if you if you know the laws of nature, the laws of biology, how the body works, how it's designed, how to create health, right?
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Because doctors don't learn about that.
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They don't learn about how to create health.
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They learn about how to diagnose and treat disease, which is important.
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But if you say to your doctor, "How do I create health, doctor?"
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And they're like, "Well, I don't know.
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Just eat better, exercise."
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But there's is it's a very specific methodology.
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It's really what functional medicine's about.
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It's about how do you create optimal function?
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And how do you create optimal health?
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And what is the science of that?
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And so doing that I was able to actually build myself back up and create health and actually feel better now than I did before this surgery. Oh my gosh.
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What did it take for you to rebuild because we always talk about being proactive.
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We always talk about being well first, which you focused on and you have. Yeah.
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And when you end up in a position like that, it's hard mentally. Yeah.
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And then of course it's hard to physically as you said, your body's 65, even if your biological age is 39.
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There's a reality to that. Yeah.
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What were the key things you had to work on?
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You talked about building muscle again.
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What what were the things you had to do in order to get back to standing in front of me right now and looking great.
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The the biggest component I think of of your health is the thing that's between your ears. It's it's your mindset.
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Something you talk about a lot. It's your determination.
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It's the belief that you can actually get better and and I was physiologically depressed.
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I lost half my blood volume, so my blood count was half of what it should have been. I was super anemic.
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I my hormones all were in the toilet, my testosterone, my uh thyroid, nothing was working.
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I was very nutritionally depleted. I hadn't really eat.
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And and so for me it was it was just the will to get up every day and do the little things even when my mind was like, just stay in bed. Just give up.
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It's not worth it, you know?
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And I think for a lot of people it's hard to divorce your thoughts from reality.
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I think you you you know, you lived in a monastery and that's basically what you learn is how you're not your thoughts, you're not your beliefs, you're not your body, you're not right?
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And and so you know, but when you're in it, like if you're in a body, you're in a physical body that feels bad, how do you how do you fix that?
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And so that's what I've done for 30 plus years with my patients with functional medicine is when they feel bad and a lot of Americans out there feel bad, you know, six out of every 10 of us have a chronic illness and 93% of us are metabolically unhealthy.
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Most of the population has what I call FLC syndrome.
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That's when you feel like crap, Yeah.
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you know, whether it's just little things like painful periods or headaches or constipation or joint aches or skin rashes or whatever it is.
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You know, people suffer and there is a way through that.
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And so for me it was a it was a mindset of not believing my thoughts and no matter how physiologically depleted I was to just do the the baby steps every day that got me to where I'm now, which is feeling awesome.
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I was in the gym at Equinox working out for an hour this morning. I was like, what?
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Well, that's amazing and and I'm so I'm so glad that you've I mean, you've helped so many people over the years, but it's a special feeling when you reuse your own work to rebuild.
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I mean, you must have so much conviction and confidence in everything you're about to share Yeah.
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>> episode now to help everyone else.
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You must have a double sense of Yeah.
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affirmation that this stuff works because you've had to do it in the most dire of circumstances.
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>> And I had to track all my blood work, and I had to track my my nutrient status, and you know, adjust it and customize it, but it was, you know, having the the knowledge that I have and the data I have, which really now is is through the magic of technology and the explosion of the changes in our scientific framework of how we
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understand the body, like we're in this like paradigm shifting moment in in medicine and health care and and the the promise of actually reversing chronic disease, of creating health, of people getting free from a lot of the suffering, the needless suffering that they have, is is now really possible. And that's
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And that's really what I'm so excited about.
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I mean, I'm just like 65 and I'm working harder than I've ever worked because I believe that there's this moment where all the things that I've done one-on-one with people or through my books or you know, people come up and say, "Oh, Dr.
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Hyman, you saved my life." or whatever.
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I'm like, it's one by one by one.
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But what if what if this can scale through to the ability of technology to make sense of all your personal health data, get customized an exact plan for you, and guide you exactly on what to do, when to do it, and how to adjust it over time.
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It's It's like that's where we are.
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It's pretty It's pretty cool. Absolutely. Yeah.
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What do If someone's listening right now and they're saying, "Dr.
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Mark Hyman, I feel like crap." Yeah.
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Like if someone's listening right now and they're thinking, "I feel like crap." >> Yeah. Where should they start? What do they do?
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That's a great great question.
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You know, there's a more serious version, J, it's called FLS.
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That's when you feel like >> Yeah, yeah, right.
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But uh, you know, I I um, you know, I have found that food is the most powerful tool to change your biology.
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It's basically code or instructions that changes your physiology with every single bite.
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It changes your gene expression.
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It changes your hormones, your brain chemistry, your immune system, your microbiome, neurotransmitters.
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Everything is changed not in like years or decades, but literally in minutes.
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And and so, food is the most powerful way to quickly shift your biology.
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And most people, Jay, have no clue that what they're eating is making them feel bad.
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Or that their sense of how they are and their conditions that they're suffering from are caused by food.
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And so, what what I've done through functional medicine is is it's often called an elimination diet, but I like to call it an addition diet because you're you're adding in all the healing medicinal foods in your diet and you're taking out the inflammatory foods.
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And so, I created a a program that I use with my patients called the 10-Day Detox Diet.
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And sometimes I would have people on for a year.
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You know, if I called it the 10-Year Detox Diet, nobody would do it. >> up. Yeah.
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No one's going to sign up.
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But But I call it the 10-Day cuz in 10 days it's it's kind of miraculous.
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And I run programs around the world where I have people come together, we spend a week.
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And and the average reduction in symptoms from the FLC syndrome, you know, whether it's you know, sinus issues or allergies or irritable bowel or headaches or joint pains or acne or insomnia or depression or all the little stuff that isn't like, you know, cancer or dementia or you know, a heart attack that's more serious, all that stuff literally you don't have to suffer from. In 10 days?
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Yeah, and and there's a 70% reduction in all symptoms from all diseases in 10 days.
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I mean, I had I was like when I first got to Cleveland Clinic, I I gave a talk and this gentleman comes up to me and says, "Dr.
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Hyman, I have rheumatoid arthritis, but I did your 10-Day Detox and it went away in 10 days. Is that possible?"
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I'm like, "Yes, possible. It happened to you." You know.
13:28
Walk me through the the two types.
13:28
What are the medicinal foods and what are the highly inflammatory foods?
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>> highly inflammatory foods are obviously all the ultra-processed food, which is 60% of our diet.
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You know, we have a whole food system that's designed to produce commodity crops that's turned into ultra-processed food that we're consuming in massive amounts.
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It's 73% of what's on the grocery store shelves.
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It's hard to get away from it.
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And it's it's you know, stuff that you know, you wouldn't have in your kitchen.
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You wouldn't have butylated hydroxytoluene to sprinkle on your vegetables or mono and diglycerides in bottle to put on your salad dressing, right? It maltodextrin.
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Like all the crap that's in there is super inflammatory.
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Emulsifiers, additives, colors, dyes.
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And then there's just the sugar and starch.
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I mean, we we each in America average eat a pound of sugar and flour a day per person.
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That's an insane amount of sugar and flour and that's incredibly inflammatory.
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Some people react to dairy.
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Some people react to gluten or grains.
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And so I take away all the things that that are potentially reactive.
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Not that they're necessarily bad foods, but a lot of people have gut issues.
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And that that people have gut issues have trouble with grains and gluten in this country is very different than other places like in Europe where we were just talking about we both were this summer.
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And and there the it's a different genetic strain.
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They don't use the same chemicals on it.
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They don't spray it with glyphosate, which is a microbiome destroyer.
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Uh and so that that often is a factor in causing leaky gut and inflammation.
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So I remove that all that sugar, processed food, flour, grains, uh and add in all the foods that are healing.
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Alcohol, caffeine sometimes.
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And then add in the lots of fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds, you know, good quality protein, lots of good fats, avocados, coconut oil. All that stuff. It's just pretty simple.
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It's like it's not that hard.
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And it doesn't have to be that expensive, and uh in a very short amount of time, people feel better.
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The first few days people feel bad because what happens is when you stop eating the foods that you're reacting to, uh you get what's called a a die-off reaction.
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So, basically all the immune cells that are busy dealing with all the crap you're eating all the time have nothing to do.
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So, they form these things called immune complexes.
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So, they glob together, and then it's like you feel like you have the flu.
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And that lasts maybe a couple days, and then after about day three, four, five, you're like sleeping better, you have more energy, your head's clear, your symptoms are getting better, and even in 5, 6 days, 70% reduction.
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And it and uh you know, we we have an online program that's called the 10-day detox diet.
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You can go to 10daydetox. com.
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We've done it with thousands of people, and it's it's like I'm always astounded when I see like, does this really work that well, you know, cuz it's like it's it's almost sounds too good to be true. That's incredible.
16:11
Uh but it's just it just shows you that food is medicine, and it's not it's not metaphorically medicine, it literally is medicine.
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And a lot of people have digestive issues. Yeah.
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And it's it's a really continuum.
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A lot of people have this low-grade inflammatory stuff going on in their bodies, and and it's really it's unfortunate because we know how to fix it.
16:29
And when a baby comes out, it's generally perfect, right?
16:31
It's beautiful, it's healthy, everything works, right?
16:35
And then things break down.
16:35
But imagine it like if your computer is, you know, not working or it's on the fritz, and like my WhatsApp wasn't working today, and I just had to reboot it, right? Or reboot my computer.
16:45
How do you do that with your body?
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93% it's been determined of our health issues are not genetic. Mhm.
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It's everything that we're exposed to.
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It's what we eat, it's movement, it's sleep, it's stress, it's our gut microbiome, it's environmental toxins, it's our thoughts.
17:00
Our thoughts actually transform our biology, literally.
17:02
Uh it's the biggest pharmacy is between your ears.
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18:11
I want to dive into each of those three areas of the inflammatory foods.
18:17
First of all, for anyone who's not aware or doesn't totally understand, what is inflammation?
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What is that doing to your body?
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Why is it important to have medicinal foods and avoid inflammatory foods? >> Yeah.
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Well, you know, the inflammation is is something that now is being understood to be at the root cause of almost all chronic illnesses and aging itself.
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You know, and you'll know if you have inflammation, right?
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You have a sore throat, you get an infected from a splinter, you sprain your ankle, you know, those are signs of inflammation. >> thought.
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Yeah, those are signs of inflammation.
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But, there's another kind of inflammation that's a little more silent and and we can measure that through blood tests like C-reactive protein, which we do through Function Health.
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And the the amount of of people who are inflamed is just so massive because of our diet.
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And so, that creates this elevation in in these molecules in our body called cytokines.
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And you from COVID, everybody heard about the cytokine storm.
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What killed people was this overwhelming inflammation.
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And and why did Americans die at a far greater rates?
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We are 4% of the population, but 16% of the deaths and cases of COVID in the world.
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So, four times what we should have been.
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It wasn't cuz we didn't have access to medical care or we didn't have good doctors.
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It's cuz we're all pre-inflamed.
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We're all metabolically healthy.
19:40
And the the worst kind of inflammation is the that that comes from your belly fat.
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So, I I just saw a guy a couple of days ago who was 52 years old and, you know, looked pretty healthy, but he had like a little gut on him. Like not big.
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And he had 32% body fat in his belly.
19:58
And that visceral fat is like a incubator for inflammation.
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It's basically a fire in your belly.
20:04
And that visceral fat causes heart attacks, strokes, cancer, obviously diabetes.
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And and that he had he had a blockage a 90% blockage in his heart.
20:12
And and it was because he had this inflamed silent killer inside of him.
20:18
And so so it's not just inflammation that you know by getting a sore throat.
20:23
It's it's the quiet inflammation that you don't know you have. Yeah.
20:25
And and that leads to all these things like like not just the obvious things like autoimmune diseases which we can talk about, allergies, but you know, things that are more subtle whether it's you know, hormonal issues like menstrual cramps or um issues like migraines or headaches or fatigue or all these things are are signs of of this fire raging through your body that you don't know about that's killing you.
20:49
And so by eating an anti-inflammatory diet and removing the inflammatory foods, like your body will quickly reset.
20:55
I mean, your body has this innate intelligence.
21:00
This is what's such a miracle for me when you think about it.
21:01
Your your body is a healing machine.
21:04
Like look what happened to me.
21:06
Like I mean I was in bed, I was couldn't walk, I was on a walker, I was emaciated, I was close to death.
21:15
And when I put the right inputs in, my body healed. And it it's amazing.
21:18
I've had patients who were 65 with heart failure, diabetes, hypertension, kidneys failing, liver failing, who actually didn't take 10 days, but like, you know, 3 months they were off all their medications, they all had a reversal of these conditions.
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The even at 65 or 66 years old, the body can do that.
21:35
And so that's really what I want for people.
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I want them to have access to the knowledge, the ability, and the tools to be able to do this for themselves. And to try it.
21:44
And I don't I don't think the smartest doctor in your room is your own body.
21:48
If you listen to it, "Gee, when I eat this, my stomach doesn't feel good.
21:53
When I have that, I get a headache."
21:53
But most people don't connect the dots between what they eat and how they feel.
21:58
Yeah, we base it all on lifestyle.
21:58
And we also, like the gentleman you were treating, we still live in this world of "Oh, I'm not that big, small."
22:07
We're looking at this physical attribute, when actually the inflammation's all happening on the inside.
22:12
>> Yeah, like he was jogging every day, he was eating healthy, he was exercising. >> Yeah.
22:15
He's doing all the right things.
22:18
But but there's this hidden part.
22:18
One of those hidden things is sugar.
22:20
I find it really shocking when I was playing pickleball the other day.
22:26
And someone said to me that oh, let's have this drink.
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Like we didn't have We we We didn't have any water accessible at the time.
22:33
We were all feeling thirsty. It was pretty hot. Yeah.
22:34
And and he had these like packs of drinks. And so he handed to me.
22:38
My wife has trained me to Look at labels. So I turned it around.
22:41
And it was like 40% of your daily sugars in this little pack, right? It was tiny.
22:46
It was I don't even know what it was called.
22:48
40% of your daily sugars, and all these other non-natural ingredients that I didn't recognize at all. Yeah. Massive list.
22:56
And and I said to him, I said, "Dude, like I'm not drinking this.
22:57
Yeah, I was like I'm not I'm not going I'm not going I was like I'm not going to have 40% of my sugars in in this and I try and avoid refined sugar anyway. Yeah.
23:04
And but to him that was crazy.
23:08
He was just like, "Oh dude, it's fine.
23:09
Like we're running for like 3 hours.
23:11
Like we you know, it's just a hydration."
23:13
And I was like, "Yeah, but you don't need the sugar with it."
23:14
And and I find that sugar is something I still get a lot of pushback on. Really?
23:19
Yeah, people even That's that's my reaction.
23:23
Cuz I feel like I've been so like well educated by yourself, the other experts on the show, my wife who are constantly cuz I used to be addicted to sugar. >> Wow. Easy to do.
23:30
>> And all of a sudden you get so Talk to me about sugar because I think there's a way in which we've been brainwashed to think it's okay.
23:38
Yeah, no, actually Jay, you know, we know alcohol's addictive, right?
23:40
But there's been large studies done using the Yale food addiction scale, which is a scientifically validated metric that measures food addiction and it's primarily sugar and starch.
23:52
And 14% of people are in this country are alcoholics, but 14% are also addicted to food and 14% of kids, which is a lot of kids.
24:00
So it's it's a biologically addictive.
24:04
A little bit is not going to hurt you.
24:06
If you're healthy, if you're fit, you can have some.
24:10
It's it's just the volume that we have in this culture.
24:12
I mean, it's something that our biology doesn't know what to do with.
24:15
Historically, we were hunter-gatherers.
24:17
We had 22 teaspoons a year.
24:18
Now the average person has 22 teaspoons a day. Wow. Yeah.
24:21
That that is mind-blowing.
24:25
>> Yeah, if you had 22 teaspoons a year.
24:25
So you were a hunter-gatherer, you'd like get some honey.
24:30
Oh my god, I found honey, you know. Um and and you'd eat it.
24:33
Uh but it was hard to get sugar.
24:36
And you're more active then, too.
24:38
>> Yeah, yeah, and you're running all the time.
24:40
Cuz you're looking for that jar of honey once a year. Not jar, sorry.
24:43
Actually, I was I was in the Hadza tribe, which is one of the last hunter-gatherer tribes in in Africa.
24:46
And they they they eat a lot of honey.
24:49
They eat like 20% of calories as honey, but they're super fit and healthy because they're just like eating tons of fiber.
24:57
So, they basically all the the roots and the tubers have massive amounts of fiber.
25:00
Americans eat about 8 g of fiber a day.
25:03
We were historically as hunter-gatherers having 150 g a day.
25:08
Uh and and fiber basically is like a sponge.
25:10
So, for example, if you take your Coca-Cola and you throw in a bunch of Metamucil, it's going to have a very different effect on your blood sugar.
25:18
It's going to turn to gel first of all if you leave it there for long enough.
25:21
And then if you drink it, it's not going to cause the same spike.
25:22
So, it just It's just the whole context of our diet has just become highly processed, lots of sugar, and it and it drives the visceral fat.
25:30
So, sugar and starch and by the way, below the neck your body can't tell the difference between a bowl of cornflakes and a bowl of sugar or a loaf of bread and a, you know, a bowl of sugar. Uh it's the same.
25:40
In fact, it sometimes in terms of glycemic index, the the bread is worse cuz it's pure glucose whereas sugar is fructose and glucose which has different effects on your blood sugar.
25:50
But, basically they're both the same.
25:52
And and what that does is that is that drives the deposition of belly fat.
25:57
And that belly fat, which is not just holding up your pants, it's it's metabolically very active.
26:04
It produces tons of inflammation, screws up your hormones, it causes infertility, it causes Alzheimer's disease, it causes cancer, it causes diabetes, causes heart attacks. It causes aging itself.
26:16
And when when you look around in America, 93% of us, well, 93.
26:22
2 to be exact, have this metabolic dysfunction. That means 6. 8% of us don't. Which is frightening. >> Frightening, yeah. Frightening.
26:31
And and it's not how humans evolved.
26:33
We didn't evolve like that.
26:35
People say Native Americans, they're, you know, genetically diabetic. Well, no, they're not.
26:39
Like the Pima Indians 100 years ago had no diabetes, no obesity, um no heart attacks.
26:44
And now they're, you know, get 80% get diabetes by the time they're 30.
26:49
And even 2-year-olds get type diabetes cuz Cuz drinking tons of sugar, sodas, and flour, and all the commodities that we sent to the reservations that are all the crap we shouldn't be eating. >> Yeah.
26:59
Uh so so yeah, if you put your genes in the wrong environment, the genes may load the gun, but the environment pulls the trigger. Mhm.
27:04
I want to give a shout out to this incredible company that you brought my way, Function Health. >> Yeah.
27:12
When you first brought it to me, I was so impressed at what it does because I think everything we're talking about the challenge is we don't know until we feel something in quite an extreme way. Yeah. Right? So, we just don't know.
27:24
As humans, we don't know these things.
27:26
We were never taught them. Yeah.
27:30
>> If I didn't meet my wife, if I didn't have this podcast, I wouldn't be educated.
27:33
I just How would I know this? Yeah.
27:34
And when you talk about the 93.
27:34
2%, that's all of us who just don't know.
27:39
And then you, my wife, and you, and people like that are the the 6. 8%.
27:40
I love your wife, by the way. She's great.
27:44
>> all of a sudden, you get educated, and then that's what Function Health does.
27:48
The fact that you can take these tests >> Look under the hood.
27:51
you can get all the results, you know it from being at home or or, you know, popping to get a get a test done, you have access to actually know what's happening inside your body. >> Yeah.
28:03
And I became a proud investor in the company when you first brought it to me because I'd never seen someone make that kind of data available at mass and at scale.
28:14
I was going to some concierge services, which I'm very fortunate to have access to, but I didn't see how the world, the 93.
28:21
2%, could have access to these things.
28:23
And that's what Function Health's doing. Yeah.
28:25
I mean, imagine imagine driving your car.
28:27
You don't have any dashboard.
28:29
You don't know how fast you're going and how much gas is in the car.
28:32
You don't know how much oil's in there.
28:33
You don't know if the engine light's good.
28:34
You don't know if your tire pressure's good.
28:35
I mean, think of the amount of sensors and information you get from your car these days, right?
28:40
We practice medicine today like listening to the noises a car makes and hoping we can figure it out instead of looking under the hood.
28:45
And so, you know, I believe we should be testing and not guessing on what's going on with their health.
28:51
And the wearables are great, you know, Oura Ring or a Fitbit or, you know, Apple Watch, awesome boob.
28:56
They tell you a lot, but they don't go under the skin.
28:58
And so, you need to know what's happening in your biology.
29:01
And the truth is a disease doesn't just happen like that one day you get a heart attack.
29:06
It's a slow progression over decades and you can see the continuum of of what happens.
29:10
And you can see slight changes and variations that will compound over time and make you ultimately very sick.
29:17
And the beautiful thing about functional health is you can actually get your biomarkers done.
29:22
There's over 110 biomarkers for initial test.
29:24
You do a second test mid-year.
29:26
You can add on test for looking at other things, whether you want toxins or allergens or Lyme disease, whatever you want to know about yourself.
29:32
And then you get this beautiful dashboard that shows you exactly what's going on.
29:35
It's like, you know, you got like in a car dashboard and you can see the changes over time and then you can learn what to do about it and what's going on with your body and how to make adjustments.
29:45
And you get all the information.
29:45
It's supported by all the scientific literature in the world, by knowledge experts, by your own personal data set.
29:51
And it's really medicine designed for you.
29:54
And it's it's really quite a remarkable thing and people seem to have taken to it cuz we have, you know, hundreds of thousands members and people are learning so much about their health and I've been shocked at the data that we're finding, you know, like we found all these cancers.
30:07
I was just reviewing our our cancer screening and God, you know, people don't know they have cancer.
30:12
I mean, I had a friend who just died like a month ago who from breast cancer at 45 years old is heartbreaking, you know, and and now through the blood test you can get through Function Health, you can actually see like a liquid biopsy for 50 different cancers.
30:28
And I'm I was reviewing the spreadsheet of all the people and what they found and then the follow-up and like, they didn't know they had cancer and then they found it in early stage and then it saves your lives as opposed to waiting until too late.
30:38
So, you know, it's always and and the whole thing of the metabolic health, I mean, most doctors don't check insulin, which is extremely important to know about because insulin is what goes up first, not your blood sugar.
30:51
Most doctors don't look at the right cholesterol test.
30:52
ApoB is the most important.
30:55
I just had a friend send me an article. He said, "Dr.
30:56
Hyman, look at this article.
30:58
It's about this latest new test for predicting heart attack risk that's better than any other test." And like, "What is it?"
31:05
And like, I looked it up and I was like, "Oh, it's called ApoB."
31:08
And I'm like, "I've been testing that for 30 years.
31:09
It's the most predictive but people check your LDL cholesterol.
31:14
That's not the thing that matters."
31:15
And and so, we do that and we do deeper analysis of your metabolic health, your nutritional health, looking at toxins, your hormones, and we're finding autoimmune diseases.
31:25
I mean, I looked it up before I came on the podcast.
31:29
I was curious cuz it you know, about 8% according to the, you know, CDC of Americans have an autoimmune disease.
31:39
But when I looked at our data, we're seeing 33% have a positive autoimmune antibody, which is incredible.
31:45
I mean, that's a third of Americans have some either autoimmune disease or pre-autoimmune disease.
31:51
And there's stuff you can do about it and get to the root cause.
31:53
And and what's beautiful about it is that we use root cause medicine, not just, "Oh, you have an autoimmune disease, take this drug."
31:59
Or you have high cholesterol, "Take this drug."
32:01
It's like, "Well, well, how do I solve this using all the world's scientific knowledge about how to best do this through lifestyle and dealing with root causes and creating health rather than just mitigating symptoms or suppressing symptoms.
32:15
So, it's it's pretty exciting and I think, you know, we we we now have full body imaging for $4. 99.
32:20
You know, you get your whole blood test for $4. 99 a day. $3. 37 a day.
32:27
>> I'm really impressed by what you offered and I love what Function Health has done so much that I didn't just invest, I got every member of my team a membership. >> That's amazing.
32:36
Because I think of a better gift That's it.
32:38
give people than accessing their knowledge and knowing what's happening inside their body.
32:44
Like, if I want people to perform at work and feel their best and care about their health, to me it felt like the right thing to do.
32:50
And so, and I know you've actually created a uh you've created a discount for our community.
32:56
So, what are you doing for us?
32:56
It's It's functionhealth.
32:58
com/jayshetty and you get $100 off your membership. It's a membership. Twice your testing.
33:05
So, it's you know, 400 bucks or 399.
33:09
And and uh and you get to know what's going on.
33:10
It's And the gift of health is, you know, what you did for your employees is amazing because there is no better gift than the gift of health.
33:16
Well, you only realize that when it when it goes away.
33:18
And I've had many episodes in my life where my health has not been great.
33:22
And that's when you realize just how valuable it is to know sooner, you know, earlier, and know before. And you know, I'm glad. So, that's great. So, functionhealth.
33:31
com/jayshetty >> That's right. $100 off. >> Yeah.
33:35
And and as I said, I'm an investor and you know, really proud to be involved and really excited to to get it out.
33:41
I want to talk about the autoimmune diseases because it feels like I feel like right now I'm at that age where I'm either hearing about autoimmune or cancer >> Yeah.
33:52
or sadly people dying >> Yeah.
33:55
more than I ever have in my entire lifetime.
33:58
That's not just because I'm getting older, though. >> No.
34:00
It's becoming more prevalent.
34:02
>> I mean, the the the the hockey stick of chronic diseases is going like this. It's really striking.
34:06
I mean, things that were rare 150 years ago, you know, turn of the or 120 years ago, turn of the 1900s, if you had a heart attack in a hospital, it would be like seeing this rare case of malaria in like Manhattan, you know?
34:21
Like, all the doctors would rush around to see this unusual case. Wow.
34:23
Diabetes wasn't even a thing, type 2 diabetes.
34:27
If you look at the records of Mass General in the 1850s, it wasn't even a diagnosis.
34:33
You know, people didn't have it.
34:36
So, why why are we seeing this explosion?
34:38
And autoimmune disease, there are over 100 different autoimmune diseases, you know, everything from Hashimoto's thyroiditis, which is affecting one in five women, that's an autoimmune thyroid condition, one in 10 men.
34:49
Um lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, MS, colitis, Crohn's disease, there are over 100 different autoimmune diseases, and people are suffering from these things.
34:59
And the drugs that we use are incredibly toxic.
35:01
They basically suppress your immune system.
35:03
They have all these side effects, and they're extremely expensive, and they don't necessarily always work that well.
35:11
And the question then is, why are we doing this?
35:13
I mean, this is what functional medicine is about, is what function is created on the basis of this idea of why, not what disease you have and what drug do I get, but why?
35:20
And the reason why we're seeing such an explosion of autoimmune disease is a combination of different factors.
35:25
One, our diet has changed dramatically over the last 50 to 70 years because of industrialization of agriculture, the use of pesticides, herbicides, the increasing rates of C-section means you don't colonize your gut, and 60% of your immune system is in your gut, and a lot of autoimmune disease is caused by trouble with the gut.
35:44
The increasing rates of formula feeding, you know, not breast milk, which protects the baby's immune system, is necessary for the development of the I mean, 25% of the the calories in breast milk is not digestable by the baby.
35:59
It's to feed the microbiome, which is amazing. Wow. >> it's crazy.
36:06
And when you eat have formula, you don't have that in there.
36:11
And so, the microbiome's are disturbed, and then you get leaky gut.
36:13
We use lots of antibiotics in children.
36:17
We have accelerated vaccine schedules.
36:20
Now, vaccines I believe in, I think they're important, but like when I was a kid, and when I was my kids were kids, which isn't that long ago, there was a you know a limited set of vaccines and now it's a free-for-all and the vaccines >> It's like you got to take 15 or 16.
36:32
>> Yeah, it's like 72 different jabs of of shots and so that that affects your immune system and they they they do they do things that affect your immune system by putting in irritants like aluminum.
36:43
Uh and then the exposure to environmental chemicals has exploded.
36:46
Heavy metals, pesticides.
36:46
The average newborn baby today, Jay, has 287 toxins in their umbilical cord blood before they take their first breath including stuff that's been banned for years like DDT and dioxin, PCBs, phthalates, flame retardants, lead, mercury, pesticides, herbicides.
37:03
I mean, you name it, it's in there.
37:06
And so all that has an impact and they're called autogens.
37:10
There's a whole science around this.
37:12
These are environmental toxins that cause autoimmunity.
37:15
And I've seen many patients with with um autoimmune diseases that we I cured by getting rid of their heavy metals or detoxifying their bodies.
37:24
Uh and so these these toxins are a huge factor.
37:26
And then you've got all the modern stresses, you know, we don't sleep, you know, we're we're too much chronic stress, you know, light pollution, who knows what EMF.
37:34
I don't even know if that's a thing, but I'm not saying it is.
37:37
I'm just saying it's all this stuff that we never had to deal with and we're just seeing our immune system become so dysregulated.
37:41
And the ultra-processed food revolution has been another huge factor because in ultra-processed food, there's all these emulsifiers.
37:50
Emulsifiers are basically the things that make stuff creamy and you know, like if you ever got some of the like nut milks and they separate out when you put it in your coffee, it's cuz they don't use emulsifiers, right?
37:59
And emulsifiers basically make things creamy and they're used in almost all ultra-processed food and they damage the gut lining and they they cause a what we call leaky gut where the cells come apart and then food and bacteria leak in between your cells and then right underneath your cell lining, which is just one cell thick, is most of your immune system.
38:20
And think about why is why is most of your immune system in your gut?
38:24
Well, it's cuz we're exposed to most of the foreign stuff every day.
38:27
You're putting pounds of of foreign food in there and you're putting there's all the bacteria from your microbiome.
38:33
There's 3 lbs of bacteria in there that is, you know, basically a sewer, you know?
38:40
And and it's like one you're one cell away from a sewer and so when that breaks down your immune system is going to go, "This isn't me. What's going on?"
38:45
And it starts attacking things and then it creates just a lot of of mistaken identity, things we call molecular mimicry, where it thinks it's attacking a bacteria or food, but it then will attack your joints or your eyes or your your your nerves and get MS and your thyroid gland.
39:01
So, basically we're seeing this explosion and and the beautiful thing is by understanding the root causes that you can actually reverse it.
39:09
I had an autoimmune disease.
39:11
Um I actually had mold in my house.
39:11
I've I've gotten everything known to man.
39:16
I've got Lyme disease, mold disease.
39:16
And I had a I lived in an old barn and I got really bad mold poisoning.
39:21
Um and then on top of that I had a root canal had it removed, had an antibiotic.
39:27
The antibiotic caused something called C.
39:29
diff, which is a bacteria that causes really bad gut infections.
39:31
That turned into ulcerative colitis.
39:33
My whole intestinal tract was just one big red mass and I had to heal it.
39:38
And so, uh you know, there is a methodology for creating health.
39:43
And that's that's that's that's what I want people to know.
39:46
That's why functional health is so important because it teaches you how to turn on your own innate healing system.
39:52
You've got a healing, regenerative repair and renewal system.
39:55
That's why I could come back from the dead because I knew how to turn it on, you know?
39:59
And that's what I want everybody to know.
40:00
And that's really why I do what I do, why I have the podcast, why I write books, why I travel around speaking like you.
40:05
It's the same It's the same movie. Yeah.
40:06
Different different story.
40:08
And you know >> What are What are the signs for someone who's listening of a weak immune system and a strong immune system. How do they tell?
40:19
I mean, you know, the inflammation immune system are a little bit different cuz you're you know, you you you you you can be inflamed but have a weaker immune system.
40:25
So, um frequent infections, frequent colds, um feeling run down.
40:29
I mean, there there are signs that that your immune system's not working.
40:33
Um and and uh you get, you know, less resilient to stress, you get sick more easily.
40:39
And so, there's those are signs that there's problems.
40:41
And and one of the things we find through Function Health is that so many people have nutritional deficiencies.
40:46
And nutrients like zinc and vitamin D and iron these play big role in your immune function.
40:52
And and It's actually even supplements is such a bad word for supplements because it sounds like something that, you know, you're just supplementing.
41:00
But it's like No, yeah, exactly.
41:02
That's what I mean, right?
41:02
The word supplement in and of itself feels like it's an add-on rather than like this is necessary. Right?
41:08
Like I think we're still living in this time where supplements haven't become the norm. Yeah.
41:14
People see it as some health hack tip as opposed to No, this is just what your body needs as nutrients.
41:19
My joke is I don't think anybody needs supplements but only under certain conditions.
41:23
They have to hunt and gather their own wild food.
41:26
They have to drink pure clean water, be exposed to no environmental toxins, have no chronic stress, sleep 9 hours a night, go to bed with the sun, wake up with the sun, right?
41:33
Then then if you had do all that, you might not need supplements.
41:37
Yeah, I'm good with the last six but bad at the first three.
41:42
You haven't got hunting today? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
41:43
I didn't go hunting today. Yeah.
41:45
And and so, our soils have become damaged because of industrial soil, right?
41:50
And the way your plants get nutrients is because of the organic matter in the soil because it has a symbiotic relationship with the microbes in the soil and with the plant roots that then allows it to extract the nutrients.
42:03
But if you basically grow plants in dirt, not soil, where there's no nutrients, or they're not accessible because the body that the the plants can't get them because they don't have the right organic matter to create the symbiotic relationship, your broccoli today is 50% less nutrients than it did 50 years ago.
42:23
Plus, you know, we do a lot of things to cause more stress for our bodies we need more nutrients.
42:25
And like magnesium is a very big nutritional deficiency cuz when you're stressed, you pee out magnesium.
42:33
And then we don't eat a lot of magnesium-rich foods like nuts and seeds and beans and leafy greens, right?
42:37
It's not a big part of Americans' diets.
42:38
So, a lot of people are low in magnesium.
42:40
Uh and low in vitamin D, we see 80% of people being insufficient or deficient in vitamin D, which is incredibly important for immune function.
42:47
And and I mean COVID, if your vitamin D was low, you were 75% more likely to end up in the ICU and die.
42:55
Whereas if your vitamin D was over 50 in this big Israeli study, there were no deaths.
43:00
So, it's that's that powerful.
43:00
There There There are things that regulate almost every biochemical reaction in your body.
43:05
And you've got 37 billion trillion chemical reactions every second happening.
43:09
And every one of those and that's a big number.
43:11
I don't know how many zeros that is. A lot of zeros. I think it's 27 zeros.
43:13
Um and and every single one of those reactions requires a nutrient to work as a cofactor for the enzymatic reaction.
43:22
And most of us are deficient.
43:24
In fact, with Function Health, we do deep nutritional testing, omega-3s, vitamin D, all the B vitamins, iron, so forth.
43:30
And we find 67% of our members who you think would be forward thinking about their health are deficient in nutrients, not at the level that I would think would be optimal, but at the level that prevents a deficiency disease.
43:42
So, like not the ideal amount, but the bare minimum so you don't get like rickets or scurvy or you know, like And that's only And that's 67%.
43:52
So, if you expanded the criteria to be what's optimal, it would probably be even more. Yeah.
43:56
It's It's scary to think about it, but it's so important to start being aware right now.
44:03
Can someone know that they have some symptoms of an autoimmune disease. Like is it possible?
44:10
Well, there's pre-autoimmune disease like there's pre-diabetes or pre-hypertension and I don't like those terms because they imply that it's you haven't gotten into trouble yet.
44:18
But but you are in trouble.
44:20
You're there is something bad happening.
44:22
And so you have to actually look at at the the blood work to help you identify if you're heading in the wrong direction and you can see.
44:30
But then you could you could be somebody who's suffering from low-grade symptoms. You might not know it.
44:34
Like thyroid is really common.
44:35
You might be a little bit tired.
44:36
You might be a little bit constipated.
44:38
You might have a little dry skin.
44:39
Your nails might crack a little bit.
44:41
You might be losing the outer third of your eyebrow.
44:43
You might feel a little depressed.
44:44
You might have lower sex drive.
44:45
And these things people don't really gain a little bit of weight.
44:49
People don't think of these as a disease, but when you add them all together it's an autoimmune thyroid issue, right?
44:55
And even even gut issues, you know, irritable bowel.
44:57
You know, a lot of people have digestive issues.
44:58
And it's a really continuum from irritable bowel to autoimmune bowel disease, which is where you get colitis or Crohn's disease. And so it's a continuum.
45:08
A lot of people have this low-grade inflammatory stuff going on in their bodies and and it's really it's unfortunate because we know how to fix it.
45:16
And and this is really what we do in functional medicine.
45:19
It's why I think testing and understanding what's going on in your body before you get into trouble.
45:23
It's like you know, the first symptom of a heart attack, you know what it is for most people?
45:26
For 50% of people with heart disease, the first symptom is sudden death.
45:32
Dropped dead of a heart attack.
45:32
Like this guy I was telling you about.
45:33
He was jogging and he kept having chest pain.
45:37
And he was ignoring it and then he finally decided to go check it out cuz his girlfriend made him go.
45:40
And and turned out he had a 90% blockage and he wouldn't know and he could have literally just dropped dead of a heart attack like that.
45:49
What are the shifts we should be making right now?
45:50
If someone's listening they're going to go get the test if they can.
45:54
If they can't because you know, for whatever reason they don't live in the states cuz we're not available internationally. >> No, not not yet. We're getting it. >> Yeah, not yet.
46:00
Yeah, I get a lot of that in my comments actually.
46:01
Like, "Hey Jaden, when are we getting it?"
46:05
There's a lot of people I know in UK and Europe who really want it and and Australia and other places.
46:07
But, uh you've got your results.
46:10
You know what's going on.
46:11
Where would you encourage people to begin if they un- they don't have anything serious right now, but they want to make sure they get this one.
46:19
>> Yeah, I mean I'm not trying to sell anything here, but I think doing a um a short-term reset is powerful.
46:23
I The way I think about it is how how do you turn your body back to its original factory settings?
46:31
You know, when a baby comes out, it's generally perfect, right?
46:34
It's beautiful, it's healthy, everything works, right?
46:38
And then things break down.
46:38
But, imagine it like if your computer is, you know, not working or it's on the fritz and like my WhatsApp wasn't working today and I just had to reboot it, right? Or reboot my computer.
46:47
How do you do that with your body?
46:49
And that's really what the this dietary change that I call the 10-day detox diet is about.
46:54
It's about really putting your body back to its original factory settings.
46:57
For most people, it will create a dramatic shift.
47:00
If you don't get better from it, it's usually cuz there's something more serious like you have Lyme disease, you have mold exposure that's causing toxicity, you have maybe environmental toxins or Lyme disease or something serious uh that needs another treatment.
47:15
But, for most people, just a simple 10-day approach to resetting your system by getting enough sleep, by cutting out the bad stuff, by taking walks, by doing a little breathing exercises, and radically changing your diet, you'll go, "Oh my god."
47:32
>> You can do that at home.
47:32
This isn't You don't Yeah.
47:34
No, and it's basically >> to go on a retreat or you can do this at home. >> you 100%.
47:38
Most people do it at home.
47:38
And it's so it it doesn't really cost you any extra.
47:42
It maybe will cost you less cuz you're not buying groceries or grab.
47:46
And so, 10-day reset commit.
47:49
>> And if you try it, it's like the body just has this desire to be healthy.
47:52
And illness is just your body's best attempt to deal with a really shitty set of circumstances.
47:59
Change the circumstances, meaning what you're exposed to, your diet, lifestyle, and then you'll change.
48:03
You know, cuz 93% has been determined of our health issues are not genetic. Mhm.
48:10
They're from our collective environment, what we call the exposome, not our genome.
48:15
Our exposome is is what it sounds like.
48:17
It's everything that we're exposed to.
48:20
It's what we eat, it's movement, it's sleep, it's stress, it's our gut microbiome, it's environmental toxins, our thoughts.
48:25
Our thoughts actually transform our biology, literally.
48:28
Uh the biggest pharmacy is between your ears.
48:32
And so, all those things you have control over, which is what so exciting to me.
48:36
It's about being empowered to actually make those changes.
48:37
And and people just suffer so badly.
48:39
I mean, I think I told you what maybe that I did a a program with a a faith-based wellness program with Rick Warren at this church where we got a quarter of a million pounds lost out for 15,000 people in a year by doing a a faith-based wellness program.
48:54
And the amount of people that had radical changes in their health was just so remarkable.
48:59
This one woman had been in and out of psychiatric hospitals.
49:03
She'd been on every psychiatric medication you could imagine, from antidepressants to anti-anxiety medications to antipsychotic medications.
49:11
She was, you know, about to commit suicide.
49:13
You know, she she was also overweight.
49:15
And she did this dietary change.
49:18
Essentially, I did the faith-based wellness program, included the the 10-day detox diet.
49:22
And she's like, "I'm completely cured.
49:24
Like, I don't have any depression.
49:26
I'm off all my medications. I feel good. How is that possible?"
49:30
And, you know, that's the other thing, Jay.
49:32
You know, there's so much mental illness.
49:33
There's so much depression, anxiety, my polio disease, you know.
49:39
Think more serious things like severe OCD or even schizophrenia.
49:41
These things actually are physiological problems.
49:46
They're not always emotional problems. So, sometimes they are.
49:48
Like, you know, your spouse dies, you're depressed. Yeah, I get it.
49:53
You know, but a lot of times and for many people, there there's actually a physiological reason.
49:59
You know, we talk about the mind-body effect, which is how the mind affects the body, which is profound.
50:03
But there's also the body-mind effect. >> Mhm.
50:06
So, if you're magnesium deficient, you can be anxious, right?
50:11
If you're vitamin D deficient or omega-3 deficient, you can be depressed or you can have ADD.
50:17
Uh and if you're don't have enough folate or B12, you can get depressed.
50:19
I mean, these are things that you can fix.
50:23
If you have heavy metals, which I did, it can cause you to have depression, insomnia, and anxiety.
50:27
I mean, I'm treating a little girl right now who's got severe OCD, and it turned out she had a strep infection that turns into this autoimmune reaction against your brain.
50:38
It's causing her to have OCD behaviors like tics and weird things that we think is psychological.
50:42
So, I I think, you know, I I I often call myself the accidental psychiatrist because I I was treating people for all these physical things, and then they psychiatric problems would get better.
50:53
And I wrote a book about it called The UltraMind Solution, How to Fix Your Broken Brain by Fixing Your Body First.
50:57
And and you can just get that off the table.
50:58
And then, you know, if you have other deeper trauma or things, yeah, I think the revolution now in in in metabolic psychiatry, nutritional psychiatry, and then psychedelic medicine and psychiatry are I think going to change the face of mental health care in for the long term. Absolutely.
51:12
What are What are some of the mistakes you see people making in curing autoimmune diseases?
51:16
What are some of the mistakes?
51:18
What are the things that we get wrong?
51:20
>> Well, cuz they don't treat the cause is the biggest thing.
51:23
You know, I had a patient when I was at Cleveland Clinic who was a business coach.
51:26
She was 50 years old, and she had a a lot of problems.
51:30
And I jokingly call myself a holistic doctor cuz I take care of people the whole list of problems, you know.
51:36
And she had everything, you know, she had irritable bowel, she had reflux, she had migraines, she was depressed, she had prediabetes, and she had this horrible autoimmune disease called psoriatic arthritis.
51:47
You know, the heartbreak of psoriasis, these horrible thick, scaly, red, itchy plaques on your skin and it also can attack your joints and it was attacking her joints.
51:56
She was on a drug and she was seeing it by the top doctors.
52:01
And and she was on a drug that cost $50,000 and it wasn't really fixing her and she was seeing the top specialist for neurology for her migraines, psychiatry for depression, gastroenterology for her gut.
52:13
Endocrinology for her pre-diabetes, rheumatologist for her arthritis and her she was a dermatologist.
52:18
I was like, "Man, she had a doctor for every inch of her."
52:22
And I said, "Gee, you know, you're getting all these medications, you're not really better, you're mitigating your symptoms a little bit.
52:29
Maybe we think about treating the root cause."
52:31
And so, because she had so many digestive symptoms and she'd been on lots of antibiotics, she'd been on lots of steroids for her arthritis, that really messed up the gut, too.
52:40
I said, "You have reflux, you have bloating after eating, you you have all these gut issues.
52:46
Why don't we treat your gut?"
52:49
So, I basically gave her an antibiotic to kill off all these bad bugs that were in her gut and I gave her an antifungal cuz she had a lot of fungal overgrowth from all the steroids and the antibiotics to kill off the bad bugs.
53:00
I gave her some probiotics.
53:02
I put her on the 10-day detox diet, basically got rid of all the inflammatory foods, got rid of the sugar, processed food.
53:09
She comes back in 6 weeks and she's like, "I'm all better."
53:12
I mean, what do you mean?
53:13
She's like, "Well, I stopped all my medications."
53:14
I didn't tell you to do that.
53:15
She's like, "No, I I just was feeling so good, I stopped everything.
53:17
I don't have migraines, I'm not depressed, my lost 20 lb, my skin's cleared, my joints don't hurt, my reflux is gone, my irritable bowel's gone."
53:25
And so, if you treat the root, which is was her gut in this case, and I just gave her you know, I just gave her the elimination diet and I gave her the antibiotics and the antifungals, I gave her probiotics, vitamin D, some fish oil, not a lot.
53:36
And in 6 weeks, not only was she feeling better, but she like saved the healthcare system, you know, tens of thousands of dollars.
53:45
Yeah, it's it's almost like it sounds like magic when you're listening to it and you go, yeah, no, it's not because we've just been trained to believe that this way makes sense. >> Yeah.
53:55
Well, it's it's it's funny.
53:55
We're we're more convinced that a manufactured pill will solve our body than the things that our ancestors have lived off >> That's right.
54:08
>> for years and years and years. >> That's right.
54:09
So, if you if you if you don't know how to turn on the body's healing system, then yeah, you need medication.
54:16
And and what's so exciting to me, Jay, is like we're in this revolution in medicine right now where we're finally understanding root causes and it's in the scientific literature, but it takes decades for that to get into clinical practice.
54:27
I mean, to change medical education, to change reimbursement, to change how doctors practice is just such a it's like it's like we're all walking around thinking the earth is flat when it's really round.
54:38
And so, this paradigm shift is is such a profound change in how we think about disease that it's going to revolutionize everything we do and it's and it's only now be accessible to people through things like Function because we're able to through technology be able to get the amazing amount of world scientific literature, you know, AI can read it in like 5 seconds, >> Yeah, yeah.
55:00
and it can synthesize it and then it's your own personal health data set.
55:02
It's not like you're you know, doctor's treating you based on a study that was on 70 kg white men from Kansas which doesn't apply to a an Indian guy, you know, or Yeah.
55:13
somebody who's in like, you know, Vietnam, right?
55:15
And and so, basically, we are treating to the masses where we should be treating to the individual.
55:22
We call this precision medicine, personalized medicine, but medicine should be personalized, it should be predictive, it should be preventive, and it should be proactive that you actually don't have to react like we do in medicine, but be proactive.
55:33
And and that's really, you know, my life's work is not only, you know, taking people with very serious illnesses and reversing them, but actually getting people earlier.
55:40
I mean, Benjamin Franklin said it, right?
55:42
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
55:45
And so, I can give a pound of cure, but it's a lot harder than an ounce of prevention.
55:49
What are you most excited about at the forefront of medicine and functional medicine at the moment? Yeah. Is it AI? Is it >> Yeah.
55:57
Well, you know, I said to you like there's 37 billion trillion chemical reactions in the body.
56:03
It's the body is so complex.
56:03
It's It's physics is complex.
56:05
You know, think about how complicated a rocket is, right?
56:08
Like I can't even understand that, but that's a knowable thing, right?
56:13
Scientists and physicists can figure it out and then send a guy to the moon or build a spaceship that goes to Mars like Elon Musk, but like the body is so infinitely complex and we we see it in this reductionist way where every different organ has a different specialist and the body is all these different parts, but that's not how we're designed.
56:31
Everything is an ecosystem. Everything's connected.
56:35
You know, we're we're one whole web-like organism where where everything's interacting with everything else all the time.
56:40
And And so, that paradigm of thinking that way and functional medicine isn't a test. It's not a supplement.
56:46
It's not a new specialty.
56:49
It's literally a meta framework for thinking about the nature of health and disease based on root causes and based on the body as a system and based on asking the question why not what disease you have and what drug do I give, but why do I have this and and how do I create health not treat disease?
57:02
And when I create health, disease goes away as a side effect.
57:05
And so, that scientific paradigm is is now emerging.
57:10
And before it it it, you know, you know, it was frustrating for me doing this work for 30 years because, you know, it would just it was hard to convince people like, "Look, the Earth is round."
57:19
Like, "No, no, no, it's flat.
57:19
See, right there, it's flat."
57:20
And they go, "There's that disease and it's real."
57:21
Like, "Yeah, you know, rheumatoid arthritis is a thing, but it's not how we think about it."
57:26
We're thinking about it the wrong way.
57:28
And so, I'm so excited now because of AI and and in the ability to synthesize massive data sets.
57:32
I mean, you have 100,000 petabytes of data in your microbiome.
57:38
A petabyte is a million gigabytes.
57:41
Okay, your computer has four terabytes maybe, right?
57:45
Which is a thousand gigabytes or something.
57:46
I mean, it's just such a massive amount of information.
57:50
That's just in your microbiome.
57:52
And so, you your body is so complex and we need technology and AI to help us start to understand that and then apply it to you as an individual and then help create a roadmap for looking at where your weak points are and how do you correct those and then how do you optimize?
58:08
And so, that's what I'm so excited about and that's that's why at 65 I'm like doing the startup.
58:12
I mean, I was I was with one of the one of the investors on a panel and I'm like she's like somebody said, "Well, how do you how do you figure out what companies to invest in?"
58:23
They go, "Well, we invest in the founders."
58:26
And like, "Well, have you ever had a founder that's been on Medicare before?" That's so funny.
58:31
And I'm like, "What am I I'm like I mean, I hope to live to be 100 and something, but you know, I'm doing this because I don't want to see so many people suffering that don't have to suffer.
58:39
And I get these calls every day from Of course.
58:42
friends and would you help this one, they help that one, no one can help me and I'm like I'm only one guy.
58:47
I could like work 24 hours a day for the rest of my life and I wouldn't make a dent in the amount of suffering there is in the world.
58:53
But imagine if we could put, you know, a thousand or a hundred thousand doctors in your pocket that are trained on the future paradigm of medicine and make it accessible to you in real time on a day-to-day basis to guide you and coach you and support you.
59:07
That's what Functional Health is aiming to do and I'm so excited about it cuz it's like wow, we couldn't do this before.
59:14
We couldn't take this amazing amazing complexity of human biology and help a single doctor understand. It's just hard.
59:21
Like I I see the patterns.
59:21
So, I can look at something quickly and I know in a few minutes like what to do, but it's it's only reason I've seen tens of thousands of patients and millions and millions of biomarkers that I can make those connections.
59:34
And I'm not that good compared to like what technology is going to be able to do. Yeah.
59:38
What do What do you wish doctors were taught today?
59:43
Oh my god, don't get me started.
59:43
My daughter just graduated medical school.
59:48
She's brilliant and she she's now going to be an orthopedic surgeon, which I think is great because you need that.
59:54
Like, you know, hopefully you break your hip, you need a new hip.
59:57
So, that's a kind of medicine that I think is we're really good at is is acute care medicine.
1:00:03
But what what she didn't learn about was nutrition. Which Okay.
1:00:08
We have a a chronic disease epidemic in this country.
1:00:14
It's caused primarily by food.
1:00:14
It can be cured mostly by food.
1:00:16
And yet doctors know nothing about food, right? So, nutrition.
1:00:21
Didn't learn about the microbiome.
1:00:24
Didn't learn about environmental toxins.
1:00:26
Didn't learn about how to create health.
1:00:28
Didn't learn about the body's networks and systems.
1:00:30
Didn't learn about mitochondria.
1:00:31
I mean, yes, she got like her first, you know, semester she learned about the Krebs cycle and biochemistry, but didn't understand how to diagnose people with mitochondrial issues, which is our energy powerhouse and how how everything works in our body.
1:00:45
So, those are the things that doctors don't learn anything about.
1:00:48
Didn't learn about how to optimize your immune function.
1:00:49
Didn't learn about how to treat gut issues in the right way by fixing a leaky gut.
1:00:55
So, there's so many areas that that are part of the framework of functional medicine that they don't learn anything about.
1:01:00
Yeah, so no wonder when you go and talk about how you're feeling, Yeah.
1:01:06
you're not getting the information that you need. >> No.
1:01:08
I mean, you know, you go out the doctor, you know, I feel this and that and the other thing and they go, "Well, you know, I did your exam. That's okay.
1:01:14
Your lab tests look okay."
1:01:14
Cuz they do a very limited set.
1:01:18
And, you know, you're fine.
1:01:18
Just go home and take Prozac, you know.
1:01:20
But the are only one or two things that's true.
1:01:24
One, either you're crazy and making it up, or your doctor's missing something.
1:01:28
And nine times out of 10, they're missing something cuz they don't know how to think.
1:01:33
They don't know how to think about the human body except in a very reductionist way, and it's just not how things are.
1:01:38
You know, we we are a a dynamic ecosystem, and everything is interacting with everything else in real time and changing.
1:01:44
And how do you play with that?
1:01:46
How do you as a as a as a practitioner or even as an individual learn how your body works?
1:01:51
I mean, most of us have no clue how our bodies work and how to create a better functioning body.
1:01:54
You know, we take better care of our animals than we do our dogs than our health, right?
1:02:01
I mean, you wouldn't feed your dog a Big Mac, fries, and a Coke, would you? Definitely not. And a milkshake. No.
1:02:05
So, why would we give that to our kids? Yeah. >> Right?
1:02:08
As somebody who grew up in London, England and had the National Health Care Service and then you moved to the United States, and of course, most of it's private and there's not really any health care available as as far as I know, you know.
1:02:22
What do you think the US health care system needs to be focused on? >> Yeah, 100%. Well, I'm not excited.
1:02:26
I mean, I'm working right now with Medicare and with NIH on how to how do things need to change because they're very open and they're very interested in in changing the way we look at things.
1:02:38
And I think, you know, the even having access to good health care, which we don't in this country.
1:02:44
I mean, in UK, you have the NHS, the National Health Service, it's great, but you know, maybe the quality isn't always as good.
1:02:51
The reality is that you most of your health is not happening in the doctor's office.
1:02:55
80 to 90% of it happens with things that you can have control over.
1:03:01
It happens in your kitchen, it happens, you know, where you play and eat and pray and work.
1:03:06
That's where health happens.
1:03:07
I mean, my wife's now studying at Columbia for her master's in public health, and she's just so excited telling me that how she's learning about how they're talking about the real drivers of disease and it's like 80 and 90% is not stuff that the doctor has control over.
1:03:22
It's It's the environment that you live in and it's your choices every day.
1:03:25
And so those things you don't really need health care for. Yeah.
1:03:27
And so I think if we can build a health system that activates people around that, then you won't need the doctor most of the time.
1:03:34
And then they're there for acute care medicine, you know, if you like I had back surgery.
1:03:38
Thank God there's some guy who knows how to deal with a spine infection and can put in hardware and like you know, kind of build my back up. Great.
1:03:46
Thank God, but you know, but if I if I said to him like, "What do I do to recover and become stronger than I was before?"
1:03:54
He's like, "I don't know.
1:03:55
Just do physical therapy or eat better or Yeah, it's very onset. Very very onset.
1:04:00
How do we hold ultra-processed food manufacturers more accountable for getting away with putting excess sugars, emulsifiers, unidentifiable objects into our food? >> Yeah. Yeah, good question.
1:04:16
>> Yeah. Yeah, good question. I mean, I think, you know, we've had a pretty lax system of regulation in this country and you know, we have I think 10,000 chemicals that are allowed in our food here and Europe
1:04:26
is about 400 chemicals and and they go through a very different standard of regulation in terms of ultra-processed food and they they are very restrictive around GMO and around herbicides and lots of things that we don't do here and and I think, you know, this is changing. There's this whole
1:04:41
There's this whole mama movement.
1:04:42
People are waking up and you know, I was with my friend a couple of days ago, Jason Karp, who was really founded a huge chocolate if people like huge chocolate.
1:04:52
And he's been was very vociferous writing a letter as a shareholder of Kellogg's to the company saying, "You have Fruit Loops that you make in America that have all these dyes and chemicals that are known to cause hyperactivity or immune issues or other problems in kids and in Europe they don't allow it.
1:05:10
You make the same Fruit Loops, but with natural colorings, like from blueberries or whatever.
1:05:16
And basically, they were ignoring him, and then my friend Vani Hari, they all went to Battle Creek, Michigan, and they had a protest in the fall in October of '24, and finally this week, Kellogg's agreed they were going to actually take all that crap out. >> Wow. >> Yeah.
1:05:34
And you know, the FDA has now said they're they're working with food companies to either voluntarily or mandatorily have them remove food additives and colors and dyes. That's brilliant.
1:05:45
>> I mean, I I've been I have been a nonprofit called the Food Fix Campaign.
1:05:48
I wrote a book called Food Fix.
1:05:50
Then a new one's coming out called Food Fix Uncensored next February.
1:05:53
And it basically talks about how this problem needs to get fixed from field to the fork.
1:05:56
And what regulations need to happen.
1:05:58
But this I've been working with my nonprofit for the last 5 years, and it's been amazing.
1:06:03
And the woman who was my key person, who was my seeing eye dog in Washington, is now the governor wife of West Virginia.
1:06:10
She's the first lady of West Virginia.
1:06:11
And that was the first state, because of her, to ban food dyes. Wow.
1:06:17
And then they also got SNAP waivers, which means they are going to limit what you can purchase with food stamps to not be allowed to buy soda or certain kinds of junk food.
1:06:29
And this is happening across the country.
1:06:31
There's like over 30 plus states where now there's there's uprisings.
1:06:35
And I'm I'm living in Texas right now, and the this woman uh um Senator Kolkhorst is the head of the Health and Human Services Committee.
1:06:44
She listens to my podcast. She was a huge fan.
1:06:46
And she got so excited about this that she introduced a bill called SB 25 in Texas that limited the crap in the food, that limited crap in schools, that mandates nutrition education for doctors, that starts a chronic nutrition advisory group.
1:07:03
And it passed the Senate, then passed the House there, and it got signed by the governor, it's law.
1:07:06
And I I testified at the at the hearing.
1:07:08
And so there's this movement happening now, which I never thought would happen in my lifetime, that there's a shift and I think the food companies want to do the right thing, but they're they're all in competition with each other, so no one company can act independently because their competitors will eat their lunch. Mhm. So, literally.
1:07:28
And so they they now that this is happening on a nationwide level, they're they're they're fighting and they're kicking and screaming, but it's going to happen.
1:07:35
And the new dietary guidelines are going to come out, which I've helped advise on.
1:07:38
And and that is really exciting to me to actually have something out there that's going to help guide people on what to eat.
1:07:43
Food labeling is changing and working with the FDA on food labeling.
1:07:49
Hopefully we can make progress on food marketing, you know, like That's a big one, yeah.
1:07:53
You know, like like in Europe, if if if stuff has some dye in it or that's going to cause problem with kids, it'll say, you know, this is bad for your kid and if it if your kid eats it, they'll get ADD and whatever, hyperactivity.
1:08:04
And and so the food companies don't want that, so they change their formulations.
1:08:09
So, food marketing is a big big driver of behavior and these companies know it and they spend $13 billion marketing junk food every year.
1:08:17
Uh and there's a lot of ways to fix that, you know, the First Amendment might prohibit us from limiting the advertising, but they could have warnings like they do on drugs.
1:08:26
They could you know, prevent them from being having a tax deduction for spending all that money on food marketing.
1:08:31
And there's a lot of ways to put pressure.
1:08:32
Changing medical school education also important getting more engaged in this.
1:08:36
So, it it's it's a it's a multi-headed hydra that needs these multiple solutions across a lot of government policies and also people making different choices at the checkout counter.
1:08:47
You can vote with your fork. Mhm.
1:08:50
Mark, I am so grateful that you survived. Oh, me, too. I got more work to do. I'm so thankful.
1:08:55
Yeah, you've got so much work to do and I'm so thankful that you're doing it because uh you know, you are a star founder at 65 years old.
1:09:05
You've got so much renewed energy and enthusiasm.
1:09:06
It's such important work and I'm so grateful that you came back on the show to share it because it's important work all the way from the micro level of the individual to the macro level of talking about government level change and national level change. >> Yeah.
1:09:21
And I'm so excited for people to listen to this conversation because I think there's some really quick fixes that people can take. >> Completely.
1:09:31
>> And there's been a lot of warnings in this episode that I really appreciate you shared.
1:09:34
Just I think sometimes we need to feel a sense of just how challenging it will be Yeah.
1:09:39
if we don't make changes now.
1:09:43
And I feel like you've really highlighted some of them for us. So, thank you so much. >> Yeah.
1:09:48
I mean, you know, Jay, for me it's like people people have all these things that they suffer with and they just think that they're They've got to live with that way.
1:09:55
>> got to live with that.
1:09:55
And and for me, I I've been so sick so many times from so many different things and I've had to recover and and I see so many millions of people suffering needlessly.
1:10:06
I mean, I I can't end war.
1:10:08
I can't end floods and, you know, famine and I mean, but like this is a solvable problem and they're not hearing about it.
1:10:16
They're not learning about it.
1:10:18
And that's why I'm obsessed and that's why I'm a founder of a company at 65 years old. Yeah.
1:10:24
Well, I'm so grateful, Mark. Thank you so much.
1:10:26
And again, I'm encouraging everyone to head over to functionofhealth.
1:10:29
com {forward slash} jshetty to get $100 off to get all your 110 biomarkers.
1:10:36
Uh, of course, as I said, I'm an investor in the company, so very excited to give access to the knowledge and information that you need to manage your health better, to take to your doctor, to have healthier conversations, to actually be aware.
1:10:48
And I think all of our change, as we know, starts at awareness. And that's the baseline. That's the foundation.
1:10:55
So, very excited for you all to check that out.
1:10:57
I hope you'll make the most of it.
1:10:58
Want to give a big shout-out to Dr.
1:11:00
Mark Hyman again for being here.
1:11:02
And thank you so much for sharing so many incredible insights.
1:11:06
Hope you keep coming back. Please. >> you stay well.
1:11:08
And again, let me know what you're trying, what you're testing, what you're giving a go.
1:11:12
Maybe you're going to try the 10-day detox, whether you're going to do it at home or with Dr. Mark Hyman.
1:11:17
Maybe you're going to go off and get all the access to the data through Function Health.
1:11:21
And you're going to take a look at what you can avoid for you and your family.
1:11:24
Or maybe you're going to just start making little changes, whether it's to your diet by adding more fiber, taking out ultra-processed foods, getting better sleep.
1:11:33
All these tiny shifts can make such a huge difference. Tag me and Dr.
1:11:38
Mark Hyman on Instagram, X, TikTok.
1:11:40
Let us know what you're changing, what you're shifting, what you're working on.
1:11:45
I love seeing how you're turning these episodes into action.
1:11:48
And I'll see you again on another episode of On Purpose. Thanks for listening. And thank you, Mark. Thanks, Jay.
1:11:54
If you loved this episode, you'll enjoy my interview with Dr.
1:11:58
Daniel Amen on how to change your life by changing your brain.
1:12:01
If we want a healthy mind, it actually starts with a healthy brain.
1:12:08
You know, I've had the blessing or the curse to scan over a thousand convicted felons and over a hundred murderers.
1:12:16
And their brains are very damaged.