The Science of Longevity: How Micronutrients Fight Aging, Cancer, and Depression with Dr. Rhonda Patrick

Mark Hyman, MD

Dr. Mark Hyman is leading a health revolution—one focused on using food as medicine to support longevity, energy, mental clarity, happiness, and so much more. Mark Hyman, MD is a practicing family physician and an internationally recognized leader, speaker, educator, and advocate in the field of Functional Medicine. He is the founder and director of The UltraWellness Center, Founder and Senior Advisor for the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine, a fifteen-time New York Times best-selling author, and Board President for Clinical Affairs for The Institute for Functional Medicine. He is the founder and chairman of the Food Fix Campaign, dedicated to transforming our food and agriculture system through policy.

He is a co-founder and the Chief Medical Officer of Function Health. He is the host of one of the leading health podcasts, The Dr. Hyman Show with 150+ million downloads. Dr. Hyman is a regular medical contributor to several television shows and networks, including CBS This Morning, Today, Good Morning America, The View, Fox, and CNN.

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Full Transcript

Automatically generated. Please forgive any typos or errors in the following transcript. It was generated by a third party and has not been subsequently reviewed by our team.

Dr. Mark Hyman
It's such an essential part of longevity and of health in general and just of enjoying life. It's not about doing it now for some result later. It makes you feel better now.

Before we jump into today's episode, I wanna share a few ways you can go deeper on your health journey. While I wish I could work with everyone one on one, there just isn't enough time in the day. So I built several tools to help you take control of your health. If you're looking for guidance, education, and community, check out my private membership, the Hyman Hive, for live q and a's exclusive content and direct connection. For real time lab testing and personalized insights into your biology, visit Function Health.

You can also explore my curated doctor trusted supplements and health products at doctor hyman dot com. And if you prefer to listen without any breaks, don't forget you can enjoy every episode of this podcast ad free with Hyman Plus. Just open Apple Podcasts and tap try free to start your seven day free trial.

Dr. Mark Hyman
I do this personally regularly. I do it at least two or three times a year, four times a year to really reset my system to kinda get my body back on track, to get rid of all the bad stuff, put in all the good stuff. Now I'm gonna walk you through how to do this. I'm gonna teach you how to hit the reset button, reboot your system, and to optimize your biology to help your gut, to help your detox system, to help your immune system, to help reset your nervous system, and it's powerful. So if you wanna really see how your body can feel and get rid of what we call FLC syndrome, I would do this.

Most people are like the frog that's in cold water where you turn the heat up slowly and it starts to boil to death. We just kind of get used to it and think it's normal. These symptoms are not normal. So one of the principles, one of the foundational pillars of the Tending Detach program and what what what what can you do? Now, basically, anybody can do this.

People go, I I wanna do this with a junior high school once. And, the teachers are like, well, I we might have to get permission from the parents to see if it's safe. You know, maybe they don't want their children doing this. Like, what? Is it safe to eat fruits and vegetables and nuts and seeds and protein and cut out sugar and starch and processed food?

I mean, they should get a note that it's permission to eat the junk food that they have in school. It's maybe opposite. So, anyway, yes, it's very safe. Anybody can do this. And, some people, by the way, you know, need more of certain things or other things.

But but, basically, this is a very universal approach to resetting your system. So one of the first, principle, the first pillar is eat real food. Real whole food. Understand that food is medicine. It's not just energy or calories.

It's truly medicine. It's information. It's instructions. It's code that literally programs your biology with every bite. It regulates your gene expression, your hormones, your brain chemistry, your immune system, your microbiome.

Pretty much everything is controlled by food. And if you're eating a wrong food, you're sending all the wrong messages. If you eat the right food, you're clearing all the right messages. So really, ten day detox. You're basically taking out the bad stuff and putting it in the good stuff.

You're taking all the foods that cause inflammation, that are are toxic to your system, that are inflammatory, invest with your gut, and you're putting in foods that actually help reset your system. But it is pretty much a very simple approach. It's lots of veggies, so mostly veggies, lots of good fat, lots of fiber, lots of good clean protein. And what does that look like? It's tons of nonstarchy veggies like broccoli.

Any kind of veggie you think of, it's not a basic potato. You know, sometimes sweet potatoes are okay for people. Avocado, most big shots of avocados, olive oil, nuts and seeds, lots of good protein, grass fed, organic, regenerative meat, fish, chicken. Sometimes we know, for vegetarians, we can, or vegans, we can use plant based proteins like, tempeh or or non GMO or organic soy, tofu, those are the most dense sources of protein. But you do need protein as you detoxify.

So for the 10, you're gonna be getting rid of all the other junk. Right? Processed food, other carbs, sugar, dairy, coffee, gluten, alcohol, pretty much actually all grains and beans. And the reason we get rid of the grains of beans, they're missing all bad, is a lot of people have issues. A lot of people have issues with their gut.

A lot of people have issues with inflammation. A lot of people have issues with gluten. A lot of people have issues with, insulin resistance and prediabetes and obesity, and they can be problematic for these people. So, basically, get off all the bad stuff. Now it's not calorie counting.

You can eat as much as you want. Not like crazy. Well, how much macronutrients and percent of this and percent of that? No. It's just pick the right foods, and we focus on what to eat.

You don't have to focus on how much to eat. Right? So when you look at your plan, it should basically look like this. Three quarters of it should be nonstarchy veggies. And I usually often will put two or three veggies in my dinner.

I'll make mushrooms. I'll have a, you know, broccoli. I'll make some maybe, a salad. So I have lots of veggies, and and I'll have a a portion of protein that's essentially out of the sides of my palm. Four to six ounces, which is really 30 to 40 grams of protein.

Now it's a good amount of protein, but you don't need that much if you're having, you protein. It should be regeneratively raised, should be pasture raised chicken, wild caught fish, should be low mercury, obviously, all that. And we'll put all that in show notes. Lots of good fats with dinner, like avocados, lots of seeds, olive oil in your veggies. You can even use, for example, ghee, which is a, kind of a butter, but it actually has the the inflammatory proteins removed, casein, whey.

So basically, it has just, the the fat. It's called clarified butter, Very common. You can get my book, Tending Detox Diet. You can get the Tending Detox Diet Cookbook, whatever you want. Put all the show notes and links together.

The second pillar, aside from what you're eating, the the food is really important. And then by the needy protein in the morning, you need to make sure you get rid of sugar starch in the morning. Super important. And then people start their diet their day with carbs, which is the worst thing you can do with sugar sweetened coffee, teas, cereals, muffins, bagels, breads. Diet.

Second pillar are your daily habits. Essentially, mom's a pattern of eating and living that puts your body back in rhythm. It helps you reset your nervous system. And and there's two really important habits as part of the ten day One is when you eat and also when you sleep. So let's talk about when you eat.

Now when you eat might be as important as what you eat. So many of us don't eat in the right pattern. We tend to, you know, eat all day long. We tend to snack. We tend to eat before bed.

We snack late at night. It's kinda bad. So, basically, when you eat is very important. Research shows that doing that can really be bad for your health if you eat at night. So the first is make sure you give yourself at least twelve to fourteen hours between dinner and breakfast.

So dinner at six, breakfast at eight, that's a fourteen hour fact. Okay? If you eat at six and then you keep snacking all night, that doesn't count. Right? And it's the most, simple form of what we call time restricted eating, and it's basically giving your body a rest and getting the body to reset.

And I wrote a lot about this in my book, the, you know, forever. But but, basically, there's a whole process at night that happens called autophagy and clean up or repair. You wanna eat your body, the ability to do that. The next is food. Now you can do a breakfast if you're eating, you know, for example, dinner at six and breakfast at eight or so.

That's important to have a fast. Really important to have protein in the morning, not carbs and sugar. Also, not eating three hours before bed is really important. So most people eat and snack after dinner. Don't do that.

Have at least three hours of the time you eat and you go to sleep. That way you will lose weight. Your body can repair and heal instead of trying to digest and store the food. Here's a full food list. You can we're gonna have it in the show notes.

You can take it with you in store. It's in the book, the ten day detox. It's in the ten eighty detox cookbook. But, essentially, here's what you should eat and what you should actually get rid of. What you should eat is, protein.

You need the right protein. Right? So grass fed or regeneratively raised meats is great. You have a path to raise lamb, beef, bison, venison, elk, grass fed beef, pastries chicken, turkey, duck. All that's fine.

What you should avoid is conventionally raised chicken and poultry and and eggs and so forth. And by the can also have eggs if they're pasture raised eggs. Meat, get rid of all processed meats, deli meats, all conventionally raised, feedlot meats, get rid of all that stuff. But about fish and seafood. Lots of small fish are good.

Big fish are bad. Right? Big fish like swarfish, tuna, Chilean sea bass, halibut. Most farm raised fish are pretty bad for you. What you should be consuming are things like the I call this match fish, small wild salmon, sardines, anchovies, herring, mackerel.

You can have black cod, shrimp, scallop, trout. Eggs, as I said, pastries, eggs are fine. Nonorganic regular eggs are not fine. What about nuts and seeds? Very important.

Almonds, brazil nuts, cashew nuts, halal nuts, macadamia, pecans, pine nuts, pistachios, walnuts. All that's great. You can even cap cacao nibs, chocolate black. Chocolate milk is where chocolate comes from. Seeds are great.

Chia seeds, flax seeds, hemp seeds, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, all great. Nut butter is also great. So unsweetened nut butter, so almond, cashew, pecan, macadamia, love macadamia. Walnut, all that's great. You can also eat beans if they're if you're a vegan and you wanna do this, you can use GMO free or non GMO tofu or tempeh as your protein.

What you should avoid are nuts that are with sugar. They're cooked in oils, that are basically candied stuff. A lot of nut butters have sugar, hydrogenated fats. Peanut butter. Peanuts, can be okay, but I wouldn't say mostly avoid peanuts because, they have aflatoxin, and they often are rancid, and so you wanna be careful with that.

About oils and fats?

Dr. Mark Hyman
Well, the

Dr. Mark Hyman
ones you wanna use are organic avocado oil.

Dr. Mark Hyman
You can use organic

Dr. Mark Hyman
coconut oil for cooking, grass fed ghee. If you wanna use tallow, lard, duck fat, chicken fat, that's okay as long as they're they're, pasture raised or regenerative raised. For salads, you can use some kinds of oils like almond oil, flax oil, hemp oil, macadamia oil, and convert to olive oil. And you can cook with olive oil, but only, like, tomato sauces and things like that. Things that are not high heat.

Sesame oil, tahini is great as well. Great fat. Sesame seed kind of paste, walnut oil. All of their flavorful oils are not made oils, but you wanna avoid the traditional oils, all the seed oils, like canola oil, partially hydrogenated oils, margarine, peanut oil, soybean oil, sunflower oil, sapler oil, trans fats, vegetable oil, vegetable shortening, all that stuff's bad. What about veggies?

What should you eat? Well, you wanna stick with lots of non starchy veggies or or anchokes, organic if you can. I use the dirty dozen guide from the environmental working group, e w g dot org, tell you which are the clean 15, meaning you can eat them when they're not organic or the dirty dozen, which you can definitely not eat if they're not organic. But I love asparagus, artichokes, avocado, bean sprouts, broccoli, brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, celery, cucumber, eggplant, garlic, ginger, hearts of palm, kohlrabi, leafy greens, mushrooms of all kinds, onions, peppers, radicchio radish, rutabagas, all that kind of stuff. Seaweed is great.

Lots of minerals, shallots, summer squash, tomatoes, turnips, zucchini. List goes on. We have them all in there. You can have some, things like sweet potatoes. I like the Japanese purple sweet potatoes, winter squash, carrots, pumpkin.

All that's fine. I mean, carrots are fine because unless you're doing carrot juice or that that's a problem. But, basically, try to limit to, like, one serving, which is, like, half a cup a day. What you should be avoiding is corn and white potatoes mostly. Little you know, some of the little, fingerling potatoes or the Peruvian potatoes.

Pearable potatoes is completely fine. What about dairy? You can eat pasture raised butter or ghee, but I encourage you get all dairy, including sheep and goat, which are mostly fine for people, but I encourage you to just get all other dairy. And if you're having, we encourage you to have make sure it's grass grass fed or regenerated rice. And what about beans?

Well, you can have green beans. You can have green peas. You can have a non GMO or organic soy, just tofu or tempeh. You're gonna have sap beans. You're gonna have snow peas.

But otherwise, definitely no no beans. What about grains? No grains at all. So even healthy grains, quinoa, buckwheat, things like that, I agree really have off off all of that. Why?

Because it just shuts down the insulin response, helps you lose weight, reduce inflammation. Not that these are necessarily all bad, but eventually, you add them back. But, basically, get rid of all all the other all grains. Wheat, barley, rye, rice, amaranth, milletep, oats, everything. Get rid of it.

Fruit. Fruit can be okay, but, small amounts of non high glycemic fruits.

Dr. Mark Hyman
So

Dr. Mark Hyman
organic blackberries, blueberries, cranberries, kiwi, lemons, limes, raspberries, all that's fine. Not too much. Right? You know what I mean? Like, you know, two pounds of blueberries, but you can have a top half company.

You wanna get rid of all the other fruit, all the high glycemic fruit, like bananas, pineapple, melons, cherries, grapes is the worst. Even foods that fruits that you think, you know, maybe good for you are actually good for you. Right? Whether it's, you know, peaches, pears, ectorines, cherry, for example. But you don't wanna eat them while you're on the TEND detection.

You wanna really shut down the blood sugar insulin response. What about sugar sweeteners? Sorry. You can sometimes add a little monk fruit or stevia. You have them in the shake.

We have but, generally, you tend to avoid all that stuff. Also, just get rid of all the other artificial sweeteners, sugar, all that stuff. If you have to ask, the answer is no, basically. Right? So then what should you be drinking?

Well, lots of water, herbal tea, green tea, all this caffeine, that's okay. A little green tea is fine. It'll help you get enough coffee, sparkling water, mineral water, all this. Oishi void, alcohol, coffee, bottled water, some potpicks, soda, obviously sugary beverages. Basically, that's the program.

So if you eat that way for ten days, if you use simple habits, your body is gonna totally transform and you're gonna see just how food is impacting your health, which is something most people don't have a clue about. And that's why I love this so much. Now after the program, it's really important that you do it for ten days or twenty one days or ten weeks or ten months, you have to be smart about getting off it where you can get into big trouble. Because when you go off of foods that are inflammatory, foods that are allergic to, and then you reintroduce them, you can get a lot worse symptoms. So let's say you had migraines before and they're gone.

Wow. You're gonna get a doozy of a migraine. Or let's say you had gut issues before, you're gonna get a real problem. Or let's say you had sinus congestion from eating dairy and then you eat it Again, you might get a sinus infection. So you really have to be smart.

So if you're feeling great and you wanna continue and you let's say you have a lot of weight to lose, let's say you have autoimmune disease, let's say you just want you're feeling great and wanna continue, no problem. You continue it. Continue to do it. You can do it for another ten days. You can do it for another ten months.

It's fine. It's totally safe to eat. And it's pretty much how I eat most of the time with the occasional grains and beans. Also, prioritize sleep and, obviously, your fasting window and not eating before bed. And then, eventually, people can transition slowly to the vegan diet, which incorporates a lot of the principles of the ten day detox diet, but it gets you more flexibility in your diet.

You could add some gluten free grains. You could have some gossip and dairy or sheep or goat. Maybe you wanna do it most of the time, but try to, you know, occasionally have a glass of wine or dessert occasion. All that's fine. Remember, when you're adding things back, you wanna do it smartly.

And I and the ten eighty talk book, we'll put in the show notes, you have to add one thing at a time. So if you're adding back gluten, just do that for three days. Don't have a pizza which has gluten and dairy. Right? You won't know what's affecting you.

You feel bad. You wanna know. So give yourself three days and then pick the next one. So start with gluten, then dairy, then grains, other grains, whatever. You'll see slowly add foods back, and you'll see how you feel.

And that's your best barometer. Smartest doctor in the room is your own body, and that's what you wanna focus on.

Dr. Mark Hyman
I wrote a book called The Blood Sugar Solution 10 Detox Diet, which is about sugar addiction, and it takes you through in ten days how to reset your whole nervous system. And not only you, you know, not crave sugar anymore, but you'll average person lost about seven or eight pounds in a week. They 10, they they their blood sugar dropped ten, twenty points. Their blood pressure dropped ten, twenty points. They reduced all symptoms from all diseases by about 70%.

So if you have migraines, digestive issues, sleep problems, joint pain, whatever it was, everything dropped 70% by getting your system healthy. So that's important to remember. It's quick. You don't have to wait forever to see the results. So we had a woman in our in our Cleveland Clinic, program called Functioning for Life.

Within three days of joining the program, this woman was on insulin for, ten years, was severely overweight. In three days, she was off her insulin by changing her diet. In three months, she reversed her diabetes completely and her heart failure and everything else. Pretty impressive. Next thing you should know about sugar is there's many ways to say sugar.

To quote Shakespeare, you know, a rose is but a rose by any other name. The other thing you should know is that, you know, we have many names for sugar. You know, in in, I think, you know, the the Inuit, from the the, you know, the Arctic, say they have a 100 words for snow. And we have so many ways of saying sugar, and often we miss it on the label because it's kinda hidden. So you know what food companies will do?

They'll literally put four or five different kinds of sugar in some product because you're forced to list the ingredients in order of the amount on the label. So basically, if they put five different kinds of sugar, they can list, like, a healthier ingredient first, like flour or something, and not actually, put sugar as the main ingredient. So it's really, really sneaky what they do. Then other thing you should be aware is there's a lot of words that you might see like agave, cane sugar, corn anything, rice, even brown rice syrup, any kind of, evaporated cane juice. What the heck's that?

That's called sugar. Even fruit. You might see fruit, concentrate or fruit juice. I mean, that's just basically like sugar. Anything with ose in the end, like fructose, dextrose, maltose, treolose, sucrose, these are all sugar.

Anything with malt in it, malt syrup, flow malt, maltodextrin, also sugar. Anything with iso, like isoglucose, isomaltose. Basically, there's a million names for sugar. Syrup, bright maple syrup, sorghum syrup, corn syrup, pancake syrup, which is usually per fructose, molasses, anything with the word sugar in it, date sugar, coconut sugar, brown sugar, beet sugar, confectioner sugar. It's all sugar.

So sugar is sugar is sugar. Now is high fructose corn syrup a little worse? Yes. But in the end, it's it's all bad. Next thing you need to know is that artificial sweeteners are also not so great for you.

So here's a class example of what happens when you try to outsmart mother nature. Rather than accepting that, you know, we really shouldn't be eating a lot of sugar or we shouldn't be having a lot of artificial sweeteners, And rather than accept the fact that we just should try to eat less and, you know, not have so much sugar, we kinda want the hack. Right? We want the magic loophole to avoid doing what's really good for us. We we tried this with fat.

Right? We we oh, you know, butter is bad and and saturated fats bad. So let's get margarine. Margarine. I used I grew up on Fleishman's margarine.

But it turns out that trans fats are not only not for you, they're very bad for you. And and they've killed hundreds of thousands of people, and they cause heart disease, diabetes, and they're really unsafe. And the, government finally, after fifty years and the lawsuit, finally caved and said, oh, gee, it's not safe anymore. It's they called it a GRAS, generally recognized as safe. They removed the GRAS label.

The problem is, I it's still in the marketplace, because their FDA is in cahoots with the food industry, and essentially, they gave them a lot of loopholes and ways to kinda leave it in there. So I go to the store regularly, and I kind of hunt for products. Now a lot of companies have taken it out, but what they're replacing with may not be any better. Right? So I think we have to be very careful, like palm palm, shortening, which can be from, you know, palm trees, but the they're they're often, they're often, you know, kinda harvested in ways that destroy rainforests and destroy habitats of orangutans.

I mean, it's it's really bad. So, also, there are also five things that have have received FDA approval. There are sweeteners, saccharin, sweet and low, as asulfatame, which is sun and sweet one, and aspartame, nutra sweet, equal, and others. Sucralose, which is Splenda and Neotame. So these are all things you should avoid.

They're really bad for you, and don't have them. People who who drink diet drinks every day in a study about heart disease had a greater risk of diabetes and metabolic syndrome. They are carcinogenic in animal studies. They destroy your gut microbiome. I mean, they're really bad for the good bugs in your gut, and they cause more glucose intolerance, diabetes.

Certain compounds are excitotoxins, like damaged neurons, like the aspartame in the brain, neurologic issues. So not so good. And you go, well, what about sugar alcohols? Are those not bad because you don't absorb them? Well, sugar alcohols sound great, but they're kind of these weird, strange names.

They're derived from plants, fruit and vegetables sometimes. And they're in everything from candy, to bubble gum, to cough drops, to chewable vitamins, to smoothies, to even, quote, health foods often have these. Now the they they're kinda less sweet than traditional artificial sweeteners. They do have calories, but we don't absorb them because they're too big. So anything with the word all on it, like mannitol, maltitol, sorbitol, xylitol, erythritol, these are things you don't wanna eat.

When you do, they tend to cause a lot of gut issues. They cause the the the the bugs in your gut, they love these. They just munch them down and they'll create bloating. I mean, I remember once when these first came out, like, twenty five years ago or something, this patient of mine gave me this chocolate bar. Look, doctor Hyman.

Here's a chocolate bar, and there's no sugar, and and it's amazing. And it tastes good. And I'm like, great. And I'm like, okay. I'm gonna eat it.

So I was tired that day, I think, and I I just scarfed the whole thing down in the afternoon. I was hungry, you know, seeing patients, And my stomach blew up like a balloon. Like, I literally my my gut bacteria did not like it. So I would not really consume these at all. They can cause diarrhea, bloating, gas, all kinds of digestive issues.

They mess with your gut flora. So there's some that are a little bit better, like erythritol, but still be very, very careful with these. Don't don't think you have

Dr. Mark Hyman
a free

Dr. Mark Hyman
pass. And it can ferment. It can cause all kinds of issues. So so don't don't don't take it, especially if you have gut issues. Now, some natural sweeteners are a little bit better than others.

So I'm not I mean, listen, we all like sweet stuff. But kinda my view is if you're gonna have something sweet, just have it. Like, you know, you know, you have like, you know, like a large, like a like a sort of sugary kind of coffee drink in the morning. You know, that can have more sugar than a soda. That can have like eight or nine teaspoons of sugar or more in in in that.

Now you wouldn't you wouldn't put eight or nine teaspoons of sugar in your coffee. Right? So if you even take like a teaspoon of sugar and you put it in your coffee, that's probably a lot better than trying to do all these other things and and and being really aware. So I would say, you know, not more than five teaspoons a day that but that can be even too much for for some of us. Most adults consume twenty two teaspoons a day.

Kids, about thirty four teaspoons. Artificial sweeteners, as we said, not good. Sugar alcohols, not good. So, doctor Hyman, like, you're killing me. What am I gonna do?

I I mean, I well, first of all, just if you stay healthy, right, if you're metabolically tuned up, right, if you're if you are if your metabolic engine and your muscles and your mitochondria and your weight and your you don't have a lot of organ and belly fat and you wanna have a little sugar and you exercise regularly, okay, it's not gonna kill you. Right? But, in if you are not metabolically tuned up, which by the way is ninety three point two percent of Americans are not in good metabolic health, which is frightening to me. And how you tell is check your insulin. If your insulin is less than five, you're probably okay.

If it's less than two, you're good. But if your insulin is high, you know, you're you're kind of in trouble, and you you're not gonna have a lot of tolerance and what I call metabolic degrees of freedom. We we get more metabolic degrees of freedom by being healthier. We have more resilience, metabolic resilience. And most of us are metabolically just a train wreck.

So be careful. But let's say you wanna have a little something. I mean, I'm not against having a little maple syrup, a little honey, a little, you know, actual sugar sometimes. But but I would not I would not use this kind of hacks like agave or corn syrup or brown rice syrup. They're just they're just not healthy for you, and they're gonna be mostly fructose and not a good thing.

Date sugar can be okay. They might have antioxidants. Molasses actually has iron and things. That could be okay. A little bit.

You could use dates just as a sweetener. Little maple syrup, a little raw honey. Okay. Fine. But, you know, it's not the sugar that that you add to your food that's the problem.

It's the sugar that's added by corporations that's the problem. If have one twenty ounce soda, that's 16 teaspoons of sugar. You wouldn't put that in your coffee. Alright? For non caloric sweeteners, stevia can be okay.

But I would say the whole plant stevia, not herbicide a, which is made by, Cargill and Pepsi and Coca Cola. So that should tell you something about it. Also, there's other kinds of, sweeteners that you can use, which is like monk fruit sweetener, which is I think my favorite. It's it's it's generally, well tolerated. It's it's tasty.

I don't particularly like stevia because I think causes a problem. But any any sweetener could be this brain stimulant. So be careful. Look for products with the Brain Force Alliance certified seal to make sure your stevia is grown in ways that are sustainable. If you want honey, you can check out the Ethic Consumer Guide.

We'll provide the link in the show notes. And sweeteners, you know, what are things we can include? Well, juice, pureed fruit juice, molasses, organic palm sugar, date sugar, coconut sugar's got a little lower glycemic index, monk fruit sweetener, which is a non caloric sweetener, organic maple syrup, honey, as I mentioned, stevia and monk fruit are typically the ones I would recommend, but sparingly and erythritol. Some people can tolerate it but don't have that much. And what should we avoid?

Well, we shouldn't be eating mounds of sugar of any kind, but artificial sweeteners, like big no no. Liquid sugar calories. If you wanna do one thing for your health besides the high fructose corn syrup, it's getting rid of sugary beverages. Liquid sugar calories are the worst, because of how they affect your metabolism. High fructose corn syrup, don't wanna eat that.

Anything with the word syrup in the name, except maple syrup. Any any things that are all natural, you know, agave is natural, sugarcane is natural, evaporated cane juice is natural, brown ice soup is natural. That meat is good for you. So the arsenic, that's natural. Packaged foods, that have added sugar, just stay away from that stuff.

In order to make a food taste good that's industrial food, they have to add sugar or salt or fat. And and it's surprising, know, there's more sugar in a serving of Prego tomato sauce than there are in two Oreo cookies. Right? So salad dressings, granola, cereals, ketchup, soups, candy, yogurt. I mean, I was surprised.

I I'm Jewish, and we had Passover, and I didn't even look at the label. I just bought some a jar of gefilte fish that my mother used to buy, and I'm I'm like, this is kinda sweet. I kinda looked at the labels. Like, it was, like, full of sugar. And I'm like, why do they put sugar in fish?

You know? It's like so it's pretty much everything. And, obviously, you know, refined sugars of all kinds, brown sugar, aspartame, sucralose saccharin, sulfatem. Just pass on those things. And there are a lot of ways to enjoy sweetness.

Also, a little hack, use a continuous glucose monitor from levels. That'll help you find out what things are affecting you and what are not. You can also eat protein and fat before you eat something sweet or carby. For example, if you drink a glass of wine or alcohol on empty stomach, you get a quick buzz. Right?

But if you if you basically have it after a meal or in the middle of the meal, you don't get that instant buzz. Why? Because of the quick absorption. Same thing with sugar. We may not get, you know, a buzz, but our bodies don't get the buzz if we eat protein and fat before.

Combined with diet, exercise is really the most powerful tool for staying healthy and extending your life. My mom used to say whenever she had the urge to exercise, she would lie down till it went away, which I think she got from any young man or some comedian. But she followed that advice, unfortunately, and she didn't exercise despite my hounding her. Of course, parents never listen to their kids. I mean, kids whatever.

Something like that. Parents never listen to their kids. And she ended up being pretty frail and disabled the last decade of her life and not too functioning. So when you start thinking about how to take this approach of incorporating movement and exercise in your life, you can get really amazing benefits. I'm just gonna kinda go through them because they're just so profound.

It it it actually unlocks the body's longevity switches. The regeneratively regenerative and reparative systems that are built into our biology. It activates all the longevity switches that I talk about in the book, particularly the four that have to do with nutrient sensing pathways that are sort of meta to everything else. Insulin signaling, mTOR, which is really important in terms of autophagy and cleaning up your cells, Sirtuins, which are important in DNA repair, and also AMPK, which helps regulate blood sugar, insulin sensitivity, inflammation, and many other things. So it's pretty pretty darn exciting.

It also activates the body's antioxidant systems. It improves your cognitive function and your mood. It it supports I mean, they found that just walking helps prevent dementia, which is pretty cool. It supports your microbiome. It reduces inflammation.

It helps you produce more mitochondria and help them work better and be more efficient and and have better function because mitochondria is where you make energy. And as you get older, you lose energy, so you wanna boost that. It also keeps you strong and functional. You know, I just came back from skiing out out in Switzerland, and I had a really great time. It was a to be able to go there.

And I was amazed. Like, I was just skiing along like I was when I was 30 or 40, and I I was probably going a little too fast, but, you know, I like to do that. And and, you know, I felt strong and able to do it, and it keeping up with people half my age. So I think the body has the capacity at many age to do this. It also makes you happier and improves your mood and even improves your sex life, believe it or not.

So what does the research say? And let's talk about some of the the nitty gritty about how it works. If you really, you know, maybe you wanna know about the science, maybe that'll motivate you. I probably don't motivate most people, but it kinda gets me all excited. I kinda like that.

I'm a little weird. But it it really the research is just it's just unbelievable about exercise. When I started to dig into you know, obviously, you can look at exercise in anything and search on on PubMed and learn about it. But I started to look at exercise and longevity and what it does. So we covered a little bit of this, but I wanna sort of expand on it.

It it improves your telomeres, which are little caps at the end of your chromosomes that start to shorten as you get older and shorten your life. It actually lengthens your telomeres by exercising. It protects your telomeres. It optimizes all these longevity switches like AMPK, which regulates blood sugar. People say, oh, I'm gonna take metformin for longevity.

Well, exercise is way better than metformin for regulating AMPK. It also activates sirtuins, which help DNA repair, reduce inflammation, and improve your blood sugar control, which are really important. It also improves your cardiovascular and heart health, we all know. It reduces the risk of heart attacks and strokes and improves your brain function and cognitive function. It also helps certain types of cancer, as I said.

You know, we we see the the regulation of our our biology through exercise being mediated through all these mechanisms that have to do with immunity and cancer prevention. So it's super great. And, of course, it extends your health span and your lifespan. I remember being in Sardinia, and I I mentioned this guy, I think, before, but his name was Pietro. He was 95 years old.

And he was like a shepherd, and he was just running up and down the mountains all day, five miles a day in this really rugged terrain. And he was bolt upright, you know, booming voice, clear eyes, you know, strong and and mentally sharp. And I was like, wow. This guy's 95 years old. You know, most people 95 in America barely can kinda walk across the street or get from their bedroom to the bathroom.

And here he is, you know, running up the mountain. So we have the ability to do that. And he exercised every day as a shepherd, not quote exercise, but he just that was his life. It also it's incredible for diabetes, for blood sugar control. I mean, just walking after dinner is a great way to keep your blood sugar down, helps you become more insulin sensitive.

And and very importantly, it helps you build muscle mass and function. Because as you get older, you lose muscle. It's called sarcopenia, and that leads to all these hormonal and metabolic changes that accelerate aging and lower testosterone, high high cortisol, the stress hormone, higher blood sugar, worsening cholesterol. I mean, just lower growth hormone and increased cortisol. Like I said, it's just it's really bad news.

So building muscle is really important, and that's clearly only done by exercise. So, hopefully, listening all this, you realize you can't afford not to move. My, basically, philosophy is if you don't move, you won't. Literally. You'll be dead.

So how can you actually incorporate more movement? What can you do without having to drag yourself to the gym? Now I go to the gym sometimes, but I'd rather play. And I I think there's a lot of options, and you can just do simple things like start with simple things, even five minutes a day. And if you don't have five minutes a day to do something, there's something wrong with your life.

So you better look at that. So, you know, for example, I I I figured out I couldn't do 10 push ups when I was 50. So I I started I'm gonna do push ups. So I take a shower most days. So I basically would

Dr. Mark Hyman
wait for

Dr. Mark Hyman
the shower heat up because it was it's I live in a barn and it's really tall and takes a while for hot water to get upstairs. And I would do push ups, and I went from being able not able to do 10 to be able to do almost a 100 push ups without stopping. So we we can train our bodies, and it's really simple. Or maybe while your coffee's brewing, maybe do some stretching and yoga. Walk or bike instead of driving.

In many many countries, they do this. I I just met this guy who was a CEO of a big company, and he lived in Switzerland. And he he I mean, this is he runs a $6,000,000,000 company. And he and he rides his bike straight up the hill or the mountains, say, the mountain to work 2,000 feet elevation every day. And he's in incredible shape.

He's 53 years old, and his v o two max, which is a measure of fitness, is that of a elite athlete and someone who's, like, half of a half his age. So it's it's very impressive. You don't have to sort of, you know, do something like that, but just, you know, parking further away in the parking lot, taking the stairs instead of the elevator or the escalator. Just simple things to start moving. Also, try a standing desk or a stability ball.

If you're, you know, at at at at a desk, you sit on a ball. It kinda helps you move and move your body and increase your core strength. I have a friend, Mike Royson, who was at Cleveland Clinic with me, and he used to have a a a treadmill desk. Literally, he was on calls and working and working on his computer and walking all day long, which is impressive. Make your leisure time active time.

So if you're watching TV or movie, maybe put a stationary bike in your house. I remember I worked in Idaho as a family doc, and there was this patient that came in, and she lost, a 100 pounds. I'm like, what happened to you? And she's like, well, I decided instead of sitting in front of the TV and eating all day, I would get a stationary bike and just ride the bike all day instead of eating. And she did, and she lost a 100 pounds.

So pretty impressive. Maybe also you can, you know, listen to podcasts and and an audiobook or do something like that when you're when you're exercising or taking a walk and just makes it more fun and motivating. And also, do it with somebody else. As my friend Rick Warren said, everybody needs a buddy. So it's important that if you maybe are having some trouble getting out there and doing stuff, find somebody else to do it with.

I it's much more fun for me to play tennis with somebody else or play basketball or go on a bike with somebody else and do it by myself. So I try to do it with friends, and it it's way more fun. Maybe pickleball is the latest craze. Join a pickleball league and and go outside and just do fun stuff. So these are just a few examples of how to incorporate movement and exercise in your life and simple natural ways to do it.

And it doesn't matter what you do. It just matters that you do it. So according to science, and particularly, the science of longevity that

Dr. Mark Hyman
I talked about in my book, Young Forever,

Dr. Mark Hyman
go get a copy, please. It's really amazing. I like it a lot. It's one of my favorite books I've ever written, maybe the favorite, because I think I'm obviously more interested in this because I'm getting older. It's such a a a an essential part of longevity and of health in general and just of enjoying life.

It's not about doing it now for some result later. It makes you feel better now. And we really can't afford not to exercise. So start where you are. Build up slowly.

Even ten minutes a day of walking can help. Start strength training, weight resistance training, whatever whatever you want, body weights, bands. I use bands mostly because I travel with them. Do more movement throughout the day. I get up, walk around, do stuff.

And and I I write a lot about what kinds of exercise, how much exercise, how to optimize it in the least amount of time. I cover all that

Dr. Mark Hyman
in my book, Young Forever.

Dr. Mark Hyman
So I wanna share a little bit about a study that it kinda reflects the power of this. And it was an eighty year study called the Harvard adult study of adult development, and it's been producing data on so many different things on on who lives longer, happier, healthier lives. And they wanted to understand not what makes people sick, but what makes people thrive, what makes them well. So what were the lessons from this study? It was eighty four year study.

Right? A long study. They were tracking the same people and over generations asking thousands of questions, hundreds of measurements to find out what really makes people healthy and happy. And they were giving these people are giving regular updates on their life, their health, their income, their employment, their marital status. They filled out questionnaires and and were part of interviews where they revealed their fears and their hopes or disappointments or accomplishments or regrets, life satisfaction, and lots more.

And this had a really incredible impact by providing lots of data. The researchers use this data to assess how people's lives, their experiences, their attitudes affect their well-being. And one of the thing that's was so powerful from this study was was sort of surprising. It wasn't career achievement. It wasn't exercise.

It wasn't a healthy diet that determine the quality and happiness of your life. It was good relationships. Good relationships keeps us healthier and happier. That was powerful. And the studies leaders that are I mean, obviously, the people started the study are dead.

Current leader of the study, Robert Waldinger from Harvard and Mark Schultz, have a new book. It's called the good life, lessons from the world's longest scientific study of happiness. And it's a great book. I actually had Robert Waldinger on the podcast, The Doctors Pharmacy, and and you can learn more about the book and things there. But what are the what are the things that we can do?

What are the lessons learned from the study about how do we improve the quality of our relationships? First, we have to look at ourselves. Right? Who are we? What is our life like?

What are the choices we're making? How are we not prioritizing relationships? So we can get really busy. We can do all sorts of stuff that we think is helping us get ahead. We can spend too much time on social media, but we often don't really think about building and investing in the quality and the number of our relationships.

And for me, I know as personally that that my relationships, my friendships, my community is the most important thing for me. It really is what keeps me grounded, keeps me healthy, keeps me happy. And and then more and more as I get older, I focus more on this as opposed to, like, when you have kids and a career and you try to just kinda get by. And it it's like sometimes friends can fall by the wayside, but it's really important to find and it even can be just one or two good friends. It makes a huge difference.

Now when when these people in the study actually were interviewed, they really actually benefit from these interviews because it helped them realize where they neglected their relationships, and then they considered sort of looking and finding, well, how can we improve that? So maybe took look at your own life. What's your social life like? What are the who are the people in your life that you care most about that you that you wanna have a relationship with? Think about how they support you and how often you spend time together, and maybe do a little bit of effort to actually focus on what matters to you most and help you make decisions that actually can enhance the quality and number of your relationships.

So maybe spend more time with people who who make you laugh and who elevate you and less time with people who drain you and are are, you know, energy saps. So I I, you know, I I I think it's important to to find friends and community members that help bring you up and not take you down. You know, sometimes you meet with people, all you wanna do is complain and go on and on about everything. And I think there, you know, there are there are other people who you when you're around them, you laugh, you have fun, you play, and it's just that's what you want. You know, prioritize your relationships.

We schedule and exercise. We make ourselves maybe time to make a healthy diet. We we focus on our career and work, but we don't focus on prioritizing those relationships that matter and being showing up and being present for us. Rather than zoning out on social media, you know, rather than, like, you know, doing a million things at once, focus on on your relationships. You know, when during COVID, I I I think we all felt a little isolated.

And so I reached out to about six of my close male friends, and we all have known each other for forty often plus years, maybe thirty five. The small the fewest, I think, was twenty five years. And so we we've known each other, and we formed this group. And every every Tuesday at 06:00, we meet for an hour and a half and spend time together and share about our lives. And it's been one of the most impactful things I've done.

And it's something that you can do. You don't it doesn't take any organization. You just need a Zoom link or you know, it's really pretty easy. And you can have these deep connections and relationships that that allow you to be seen and known and and can really help activate so many healing pathways in your body. Make time to talk to people.

Right? And and it came in sometimes with small relationships that matter, but a study in the University of Kansas found that the simple act of just reaching out to somebody, a friend for conversation once a day, dramatically increases happiness and lowers their stress hormones. So hanging out with friends lowers your stress hormones. Pretty good. And, also, it's not all about you.

Right? So take time to ask questions. Find out what's exciting for them. Find out what they're struggling with. Find out what makes them happy.

Have them share their life with you and value their opinions. Be present, focus, and don't don't just kinda be superficial with them, but go deep. So maybe try to have one conversation a day and put that in your calendar and and see what the effects will be over time. Super important. Next thing is be kind.

You know, my grandmother used to ask my mother when she came home and said, met this new friend. She says, are they kind? And I think kindness was such an important value in my family. And how do we be kind to each other? And, you know, you know, the the, you know, the the the relationship happiness is determined by how you are in that relationship.

There was a research study in Michigan State that looked on data for for our 2,500 married couples, and they found they were you know, how good they were in five different dimensions. Were they extroverts? Were they agreeable? Were they conscientious? Were they stable emotionally?

Were they open to doing new things and experiences? And the ones who had higher levels of agreeableness and emotional stability also had higher happiness. So the more kind of kind and positive you were, the more likely you were to be happy. So people invest a lot of time in in finding someone who's perfectly compatible, but that might not be the whole story. It's more about being kind to the people you care about and fostering those deep connections.

Also, a friend of mine had a word that I really loved, which is called coptuitiveness, which is where you cop to it. If you screw up, if you make a mistake, you cop to it. And and it's really about learning to apologize, learning to to repair relationships, learning how to have nonviolent communication, and and, you know, owning your stuff. Like I said, also, a great way to build relationship is to ask questions. Instead of talking about yourself, ask questions about somebody.

Show that you care. Show that you're interested in in what they care about or thinking about. Someone wants advice. Don't just give them your opinion. Ask them questions to guide them to the right answer that they know themselves.

Also, don't be shy about expressing your love. There are lots of ways to to love and lots of ways to express it. Maybe it's simple things. You know? I I had a flight that came in the other night late, and I usually take the Uber home.

And my partner, she showed up unexpected and picked me up at the airport. It was like just she brought me such joy and delight. It was such a simple thing. You know, we live ten fifteen minutes from the airport here. And it wasn't a big deal for her, but it made a huge difference in terms of my own happiness, and it was really powerful.

So help help your friends with a project. You know, ask them what they need to do, whether it's clean up the garage or work on a project together. You know, call an old friend. Maybe they haven't heard from you in a while. Maybe you just wanna check-in on them.

Ask them how they're doing. Maybe you wanna focus on on helping somebody who's trying to do something that, you know, may be difficult for them. Try to support them and and give them some love. Also, when you have a partner or a close friend, do little acts of kindness. Give them a little gift.

You know? Buy them something they like. You know? Get them something that makes them smile. It can be super simple.

You know, when when you often don't do these acts, kinda life just is a little bit flatter. And when you do them, it's super fun. Like like I said, when my partner picked me up at the airport, it was like, wow. You know, I I got that she really cared. Also, tell people how they you feel about them.

Don't wait till their eulogy to to tell them all the things you like about them. Be specific. Give people feedback about what you love about them, what you like about them, what makes you happy, and what how you feel in their presence. Who would you be without them? You know, who would you who would you be now that you're with them?

What what do they inspire you to do? And and and thank them for for what they've do and and and and how they show up for you. Don't be shy. Like I said, don't wait till someone's dead to write a eulogy about them. It's better to have eulogies when you're when you're alive.

And I, you know, I've actually had a a a group friend group where we would get together. And on people's birthdays, we would basically go around. And for everybody's birthday, we would share a little bit about what they're like and what we what we like about them, what we love about them, something that inspires us about them. And it's it's like it's like getting a living eulogy. It's pretty awesome.

So I I really really, really invested in my own friendships in my own community, and I think it's a critical aspect of our health. And as I get older, it becomes more and more important. So make sure that you take the time to invest in good relationships because good relationships is just important or maybe more than eating healthy and exercising and getting up sleep.

Dr. Mark Hyman
If you love this podcast, please share it with someone else you think would also enjoy it. You can find me on all social media channels at Doctor Mark Hyman. Please reach out. I'd love to hear your comments and questions. Don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe to the doctor Hyman show wherever you get your podcasts.

And don't forget to check out my YouTube channel at Doctor Mark Hyman for video versions of this podcast and more. Thank you so much again for tuning in. We'll see you next time on the Doctor Hyman show. This podcast is separate from my clinical practice at the Ultra Wellness Center, my work at Cleveland Clinic, and Function Health, where I am chief medical officer. This podcast represents my opinions and my guests' opinions.

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