What a family welcome to episode 277 of the genius life.
What's going on everybody? Welcome back to another episode of The Genius life. I'm your host. Max Luke of you're a filmmaker health and science journalist and New York Times bestselling author. I've dedicated my life to unraveling the science behind how our choices, including what we eat, and how we live affect our cognitive and physical performance, how we feel, and our health span and risk for disease. This podcast is all about how to live in that optimal state which I call living like a genius guys on
Today's episode of the show, I'm super excited to welcome back. I think for the third time, my good friend dr. Mark Hyman, dr. Hyman is a board-certified physician a leader in the field of functional medicine. He's the host of the wildly popular, the doctors Pharmacy podcast. And he is the author of several New York Times bestselling books. His latest offering Young Forever. The secrets to living your longest healthiest life is out. Now, today on the show, we are going to discuss the underlying
Causes of Aging, according to dr. Hyman the difference between biological age and chronological age and how it's never too late to improve your health and roll. Back the clock on your biological age. We're going to discuss the fact that the recommended daily allowance for most nutrients is based on the amount needed to prevent diseases of deficiency. Not necessarily to promote Optimal Health and how to use food to modify key aspects of your biology. For example, how to find the right balance between activate,
And mtor with protein to build muscle. But then, conversely how to inhibit mtor to activate autophagy, which is an important process that aids in the cleaning up and repairing of cells. We're going to talk about how hormesis, the positive effect of small amounts of stress on the body. Can be brought about by saunas, hyperbaric, oxygen, therapy, and hot, and cold baths, even certain phytochemicals. And so much more, Mark's latest book is all about the science of longevity. And so that is the topic that we place in our crosshairs for this episode of the show, I'm pumped.
Loot to
listen to it. Please
make sure to listen through all the way to the end, you're not going to want to miss a thing. Before we go any further, I have to let you know about my favorite new sleep hack and that is my eighth, sleep, pod, cover guys. I sleep hot. There have been many nights where I get woken up. Just do, do how hot I am and get under the sheets. Many mornings. I wake up sweaty, but that has been completely fixed by my new eight sleep pod. Cover the
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50 bucks on me on the Pod cover and keep in mind that eight sleep, currently ships within the USA Canada, the UK and select countries in the EU and Australia. Speaking of the EU, big news you guys this week. I got the incredible opportunity. I was given the incredible opportunity to be on the incredible podcast, Diary of a CEO hosted by my new friend Steven Bartlett. I was not all that familiar with the podcast prior to going on and recording, but
It is the number one podcast, the number one podcast in the UK. It was an incredible opportunity to reach a whole new cohort of UK residents. And I'm so grateful that I did because the feedback that I've gotten from, the show has been nothing short of amazing. So thank you to Steven for hosting me and if you haven't yet, listen to it. It was a wonderful conversation and a conversation, one, in particular that I got really that I was really candid and vulnerable on especially towards the end of the
When he started asking me about, you know, growing up my upbringing and my relationships that I've had and my journey in therapy and so much more. So, check it out. Wherever you get your podcasts, the show is called Diary of a CEO and I am one of the most recent episodes on it. You can also watch it on YouTube again, great time. Taping it. And thank you so much again to Stephen and team for hosting me before we get started with dr. Hyman, I also want to give a shout-out to Apple podcast user.
Hey, sh H. Who took time out of their day? To leave this review for the show on the app. They wrote Max, I wish we could be friends IRL. This is my by far, my favorite podcast for so many reasons. It relatable knowledgeable and fun to listen to for someone who is currently studying mind-body. Greens Health coaching program. Your platform has really expanded my knowledge in the health world. I love the variety of topics and experts that you interview. Thank you for sharing your gifts with us.
Thank you, leash Oye sh for taking the time. Congrats, on starting Mind by the greens. Health, coaching program, I'm not familiar with it, but, you know, I'm a fan of the Mind Body Green platform. So I hope that goes well for you. And yeah, thank you so much for listening and for paying attention. And for leaving that rating and review, it really does mean a lot. And by leaving a review for the show, it helps us rise up the podcast ranks, which helps new listeners discover us. So thank you for doing that. It's a freeway to support.
Art and yeah, with all that out of the way. Now, let's move on to my conversation with dr. Mark Hyman. This was a good one. I'm excited for you to listen to it. Here we go, dr. Mark Hyman, yes, sir. Well, I'm Zach. What's going on?
I'm so happy to be here on the genius
life. You're looking 10
with the genius. Himself
with the genie. Yes, I don't know. Hopefully, I can, I can live up to that over the course of the next hour but you look good man. You look
happy. I am so happy. I love my leaf.
In life out and it's so good. Finally, finally, and now I can get started, you know, just turning 63 next week. So I'm beating the next 60 years of my life, so I can get my actual life in the direction that actually is what I want. And taking me, six years to figure out how to live well and to be happy and to solve all my problems. So I can actually do the life that I want. Oh my God, I'm
just getting started. What was the turning point or reap? Most recent Turning Point
God, you know, it was covid it just blew me out of the life of endless.
This work and striving and doing and into being and all of a sudden, I realized, I could do a lot better for myself in the world and the work that I need to do by doing less but doing it more intentionally and deliberately and taking care of myself in the process. So I feel like I look at pictures of myself like from before covid. And I feel like, I look 10 years younger now than I did that. Oh man, you got
the, you got the beard growing out.
I didn't know I was sexy. Look, Oops, I Did.
Yeah, it's true. Someone sent me a picture when I was like 40 and then I look at myself today that picture. I'm like wow I look way better now.
Yeah I mean yeah you look, you look good. You got the high tops on wearing Rag & Bone jeans,
you know. Yeah, I love right. Shout out to
Rag & Bone. Well, okay. We're here to celebrate the launch of your new book, Young Forever, which I'm pumped for. This is the first time I think in a book that you've tackled the topic of longevity for sure.
So, what do you have to teach us? Dr. Hyman
is so much gravity so much. It's really an exciting moment because aging has been a neglected area of medical practice and research for all of medical history until really recently, I mean, the NIH budget for aging, from the Nationals of Aging was, is about a couple of billion dollars. But only about 200 million is on mechanisms of aging and the rest is on diseases of Aging, like can
Answer heart disease and just the cancer budget alone for the NIH is six billion. So we really not studied aging. And now, with the Advent of a lot of billionaires who don't want to die, they're literally billions of dollars being thrown into longevity research and we're discovering the underlying mechanisms that are driving what we see as
Aging, which is really abnormal Aging. In fact, aging is being redefined as a
disease. Wow. So aging itself aging itself is a
disaffected who has now has a code for aging as a disease. Did the the current u.s. medical system doesn't have that but we're treating all the diseases like whack-a-mole cancer, heart disease, diabetes, dementia and were completely missing the fact that if we completely
Skated cancer and heart disease from the face of the planet. The number one and two killers are life, extension would be maybe three to five years. Hmm. But if we address the underlying causes of biological aging and that's distinguish from chronological age and I can't do anything about. When I was born, I was born in 1959, it's my birthday. I'm gonna keep getting chronologically older and that's fine but my biological age is something I have control over. Hmm, in fact can reverse and so scientists.
Out unpacking, what the underlying mechanisms are that drive biological aging, that then result in the diseases of Aging. So rather than treating all the diseases of Aging, which were now doing and spending billions of dollars on manage them, treating them finding mechanisms and drugs and to spending an inordinate amount of money. I mean, we spend in America four point one trillion dollars in health care about eighty percent of that is for chronic disease. And most of that is almost completely preventable and mostly reversible. So we now have the ability
T to unpack what I would call the natural laws of biology. Hmm Einstein said I'm not interested in the spectrum of this or that element. I'm interested in the thoughts of God, the rest your details. So in a way we're getting to look into the mind of God and understand through the radical exponential advances in science and medicine. Which, by the way, have not reached your doctor's clinic or office, still practicing 19th and 20th, Century medicine, crazy, we are finally
Seeing how the Body Works in order to create health. So we have a system of medicine is focused on treating diseases. There's a book I read in my second year medical school which all medical students get called the pathologic basis of disease. But what is the scientific basis of Health? I never took that
class
no clue until I began to unpack functional medicine which I was forced to throw my own sicknesses and I've had to really learn from the
Side out. And then I've learned with tens of thousands of patients over 30 years, how to apply this model and so young. Forever, my new book is essentially taking a look at the current landscape of longevity science and what scientists are talking about as the Hallmarks of Aging, the underlying things that go wrong as we age that underlie, all disease. And layer on top of that, the lens of systems biology and functional medicine, which takes it to a different level. Because if we
Sort of focus on the Hallmarks of aging and we can unpack what those are and try to find treatments or drugs or interventions to treat those. It's still it's better than treating the diseases but it still doesn't ask the fundamental question which is why. Hmm. So functional medicine is the medicine of why conventional medicine is the medicine of what what disease you have, what drug do I give not, why? What's the mechanism? And cause a functional medicine is all about causes and mechanisms. So Hallmarks of Aging are these things go wrong in our body like mitochondrial dysfunction in
DNA damage and epigenetic changes in abnormal proteins and telomere shortening and microbiome changes in inflammation and altered nutrient, sensing and a whole host of zombie cells. All these things that go wrong and it's important to know what those are, but what's causing those? Yeah, and that's what functional medicine. Is, it's a model for thinking about how to navigate the landscape of your health and create a model treating. People that is very different to focus on activating your ancient healing systems in your body.
Our bodies have an innate healing system. You cut your skin, your skin heals, your body knows what to do. You break a bone? I mean, I broke my arm a few years ago and knows what to do. Yeah. Okay. That system is embedded in us. So all we have to do, is learn how to activate these longevity switches. And that's what Young Forever is about. It's about taking the model of functional medicine systems, biology Network medicine, whatever you want to call it and applying that to the science of longevity and create a really practical strategy through lifestyle and some cool interventions, like hormesis and various
and maybe even some medication to activate, these ancient longevity Pathways and reverse our biological age. And I just did mine not too long ago when I was 62. Chronologically, but I was biologically 43. Dams, how old are you? Now Max? I just turned. 40 Reese. Okay, so I'm a little older than you but not by much but too much but let's say your biological age will find out. Yeah. So how do you determine working on getting a 25 though but
we'll see. Nice. Nice nice. I'm sure we'll get there. How do you determine your biological age? Because you're not like a tree that you
Slit Open Sea.
I drink water. I just do kick. I cut your arm and half and look at the the size of this is really relatively new Steve Horvath. The scientist who created something called the epigenetic clock. And this is a measurement of patterns of alterations to your DNA that happened throughout your life, based on the expose them, the full sum total of all the exposures of influences on your life. Your
Diet, exercise, stress, your thoughts, your feelings toxins your microbiome, everything. You could think of its washing over you and every moment is regulating this
Framework of your DNA called the epigenome so your genes are fixed. You've got 20,000 genes, you can really change that. You know, you can edit the maybe and crisper and some fancy new technologies, which is fine. Maybe that's cool for different Gene disorders, but they don't really change. But what changes is the gene expression, which genes are turned on or off and how they're expressed over your lifetime and that's controlled by the epigenome Epi means above. So the
Genome is above your jeans, and it literally is the conductor or the piano player. So your jeans are like the keyboard, right? You can 88 keys on a piano but that can play jazz. Ragtime Blues reggae whatever you want Rock but classical right Beethoven Mozart but the candle player is the epigenome. So the epigenome is like the piano player so you can control your epigenome throughout your life by what you eat and exercise.
Supplements. Don't you think so many different kinds of ways to do? It, hormesis will talk about. And and so we now have a doorway to understand how we can influence our epigenome and how that epigenome can be measured and track our biological age. So, the Horvath is determined that there are certain DNA methylation patterns that correlate, with biological age. So we now can measure those through a blood test and track your biological age. So we have a metric for the first time to look at interventions and how they work to affect your
Biological age for example, Cara Fitzgerald and her group looked at a very intensive, functional medicine. Like intervention of diet. Not just your average Mediterranean diet, which by the way we're versus your biological age, but a upgraded diet let's call it. You know, the genius diet I got which essentially it's a phytochemical rich.
Hi high-fiber. Detoxifying anti-inflammatory diet combined, with a few lifestyle, strategies, and extra phytochemicals and they were able in eight weeks to reverse biological age by three years. Wow, just by doing that type of intervention. And then we haven't even layered on all the other cool stuff. So it's you know there's the foundation you build for longevity and then there's all the cool stuff we can add on top of it, which we can get into which are the sort of Atlanta Advanced longevity Innovations, some things that
Like, hormesis and ozone and hyperbaric oxygen, exosomes, and peptides, and transfer plasma exchange, which is kind of cool are, what's kind of related to parabiosis, which is where they hook the blood up, like, a younger Mouse rattling now. So, an old mouse and then old analogy comes young.
It's kind of cool. Are they doing in humans yet?
Yeah, I was going to ask you for like I was gonna have to have a lab tech. We're going to just cook up your circulation of - suck your blood out and we're going to, no, no, it's not happening although there
Episode of this TV show, I think it was Silicon, Valley TV show called blood boy. Who knows where they are. This young guy to come in and give his blood to an old guy kind of Peter Thiel? I think he's doing that. That's someone up. Now, used to get transfusions from the blood of Young Red Army soldiers. Oh, keep himself? Yeah, God, but you don't have to do that. Actually, the research shows that you can just clean your blood in the same way. It's not that things from the young ones that are making me. So it's not us younger, it's things from the old blood that had to be taken out God and make the old mouse younger,
quick. Pause, you guys this episode of the show.
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Cam genius, check them out. What do you think? Are those compounds that are that are being taken out like inflammatory? So
yeah, exactly inflammatory products damaged proteins, your blood carries like thousands and thousands of molecules and often these molecules degrade as we age and certain things happen, for example, like zombie cells, which create Cascades and inflammation throughout your body and accelerate aging. And so you clean out all damaged proteins, all damaged cells, you clean out inflammatory, cytokines,
Kinds of abnormal, all, all kinds of abnormal compounds that are generating inflammation throughout your body and accelerating aging which is often referred to as inflammation
inflammation. So inflammation really is, is one of the potential cornerstones.
Absolutely. It's one of the Hallmarks of aging and there's 10 II think the first group of scientist talking about this talked about nine Hallmarks, I added one called the microbiome because I think it's a huge factor and if you look at the data, it really plays out but but
Aging is both a cause and a consequence of all the other disturbances in the Hallmarks of Aging. So it is a fundamental phenomena that happens. As we get older, we get more inflamed and it's sterile chronic inflammation. It's not like a sore throat or a fever you get from a virus but it's this sterile inflammation that it wreaks havoc in your body and causes all the age-related diseases. So, every age-related disease you can name
Heart disease, cancer, diabetes, dementia and more ottoman disease, obviously, are all related to inflammation and they're all caused by inflammation and your dress inflammation, these diseases get better. So
how do we, how do we address
information? Well, that's, you know, people should read your book,
people should read your book,
but the truth is that it food is the biggest modifier of our biology. It's the single biggest thing. We interact with every day, which are the pounds of food that we put in our bodies
And that food can either enhance your health or degrade your health. It can either increase inflammation or decrease inflammation that can either enhance gene expression or damaged gene expression. It can cause hormonal regulation and balance or dysregulation and on and on. So we had the power to influence our biology through the information food and a lot of people are talking. Now about this concept of the infamous information, Theory of Aging, David Sinclair talked about this one of the Harvard researchers and Longevity, wrote lifespans great book and is
In this concept is that it's an information problem and we have the wrong information floating around in our bodies. And we fix that information, we create health and and the inflammation is really a huge factor in the disturbances that go on. And when we, when we exercise, when we eat Whole Foods, when we eat a lot of phytochemicals and we get rid of sugar and processed foods, when we do things to restore our nervous system to relaxation, when we get adequate sleep, all these things help to reduce inflammation. And then there's obviously that
Use of supplements, and phytochemicals and nutrients. Whether it's vitamin D or omega-3 fats, zinc, these are all anti-inflammatory compounds. And then, of course, there's all these kind of cool advances, we're learning about that are hormetic therapies. Hormesis is basically the idea that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Love that concept. So I saw outside. You had a punching bag. You were. I mean, that's when you get upset, you're a genius. Life isn't Goin so good, so I'm just going to hit this back. Yeah, when I got attack on
social media, I go out there and talk. Oh, there you go.
Look, it's a smart
smart. Social me. That's one way to accelerate Angel. My God to spend too much time on
social media. Yeah, and definitely don't read the comments. And and so exercise is, you know, is a form of hormesis because you're harming yourself in a sense, you're tearing your muscles, you're lifting weights, but then your body responds by activating these ancient systems of healing and repair. Well, this is really one of the exciting Frameworks of understanding longevity, which is the body has its innate in dodging.
Our inherent mechanisms for repair and healing and restoration and we don't know how to activate those in regular medicine. So functional medicine is about how do we activate these ancient healing systems in our body to do the work like when you cut your skin and heels, you have to think about it but we're doing everything to impair our healing systems everything. We do in our Modern Life, the food we eat the lack of exercise. The amount of stress that I could sleep the exposure to environmental toxins, the medications were on the microbiome. Stop. All of this is just causing Havoc.
And undermining our ability to activate, these ancient longevity, Pathways, and Longevity switches, and these repair mechanisms. So that's really what the book is about is about. How do we learn how to do this in simple? Practical ways that are very inexpensive. We most have access to, and then what it's coming down, the pike, what's the, what are the Innovations now that are out there if you want to explore? And one of the things that aren't here yet but that are on the
horizon. Yeah. What does aging currently look like for the typical American? And how do you see it? Like potentially looking. If one were to follow. For example, all of the
Conditions that you make. Like what is the, what is the best case scenario for aging
today? Well, I mean, the worst case is what we're seeing right now in America, right? The worst case is, as you age, I mean, I remember when I was like a kid, I'm going 60 seem like an old man. I'm like, 63 and I'm next week and I'm like, you know, yeah, it's sir. I'm going surfing next week. I'm going horseback riding. I'm going to heli-skiing, I'm like, you know, I it's not exactly what the average 63 year old was doing when I grew up and and know my body composition 6%, my energy is good. I you know I think
Think I had a bunch of friends of mine who are in the 30s and they're all chatting this on. How do we get abs like dr. Hyman my phone, it's not by exercising all the time. I don't exercise all the time. It's my understanding. How to hack your biology to upgrade your biological software and so what aging can look like is very very different and it and I just got back from Sardinia and in Korea which are the two of the blue zones where I was researching my book on longevity.
And it was just amazing. She's got Pietro's like 95 years old upright, super strong. He just literally retired from shepherding where he was, you know, herding his sheep five miles up and down these very steep, you know, Rocky Mountains all day long for 90 years
sounds exhausting. No, he was like so fit
and and he was singing me these songs bellowing in a loud voice. I mean, you just don't see that agreement, super strong handshake, its eyes were clear. I'm like, wow, 95 ain't what it used to be.
Right. And so when you see people who have by default lived, a life that activates longevity Pathways, the body can respond. And that's what I think looks like. So I'm I'm counting on you know, being strong and fit and healthy well to be over 100 years old, Peter T it talks about the centenarian Olympics. I think he's changed that way. He talks about it but essentially it's this idea that how do you, how do you train for being a healthy hundred year old person? What do you have to do? And it's it has to do with really fine. Tuning it up.
Optimizing your systems. And the truth is that look when you're 30 or 20, you can get away with a lot. But when, you know, if you have a Toyota Camry that you drive off the lot and it's brand-new, you know, you can run that thing pretty good for a decade and not even human change the oil. Probably. Yeah, but if you have a 1936, you know, Mercedes or a Model T Ford you it'll run but you got to take a lot better care of it and so that's what happens as you get older, you have less wiggle room to deviate from optimal practices and
Optimizing your diet, optimizing your exercise routine optimizing nutritional supplements, taking advantage of some of these longevity therapies. I just, I just went to my friend, Matt Cook at Bowery set medical and I had a whole longevity day where I basically did plasmaphoresis. I sucked out my blood, I cleaned it out all the plasma went through away. I always think of the blood went in. I had exosomes that peptides I had all died, be phytochemicals, like our spiritual and course, 10 and easy GC, which is green tea extract. So, literally I'm kind of just experiment with myself. I don't think.
Wow. This is really amazing.
Wow, I want have they compared that therapy to like parabiosis like you
do? Yeah. So just to kind of loop back on that these experiments are parabiosis, essentially taking the circulation of a young Mouse and hooking it up to an old mouse and then they follow the phenomena of Aging in the old mouse and the old mouse becomes Young by all these objective markers and then they were like, well, wait a minute, maybe it's not the Youngblood, this causing the benefit, it's something else. So they said well it's sort of do it.
Permit or we do plasmapheresis on the mice. So we basically filter their blood clean out, the bad stuff on the old mice and created the same benefit. Wow. So you don't have to, I don't really have to hook my blood up to your blood to mine now I've got my god. Wow
I can just go get a
treatment once in a while and clean up my blood and you know rejuvenate my bile body is. So I'm I'm actually tracking my by markers, not just DNA methylation but there's an inflammatory clock. We're gonna be able to measure soon from the hundred. Munim thousand genomes project from David Furman which is super cool. Looking at the
an age where you can track other biomarkers like you're in some resistance, lipids, your inflammation levels, hormone levels your microbiome help, all these things you can track using biomarkers that are available today through traditional testing and through functional medicine. So I've created a longevity panel, Young Forever longevity panel through function help which is a new company that actually allows you to order your test by yourself, you need to go through a doctor and I'm a co-founder and chief medical officer and essentially,
Created a panel that allows people to see what's happening over time to re-check, over time, and to get up to fifteen thousand dollars worth of tests for less than 500 bucks and to recheck, the relevant things, every 6 to 12 months, and see how these interventions work, and we can measure your biological clock. We can measure 50 different can over 50 for cancer through a liquid cancer, biopsy of a blood test. And so there's all kinds of ways of tracking your health. So I'm very much into sort of understanding this on myself. You know, why not try to myself and then I sent apply to my patients.
How I do, I have my guinea pig in there and but it's all based on the sign. So, what happens from the bench From the Bench to the clinic, usually takes 20 years, sometimes more, right? And and so often patients are not getting and people are not getting access to information that's ready for prime time but that just hasn't reached the clinic and that's what I'm trying to assert a close the gap on
that. Are you familiar with any of these Technologies or these companies that I've seen sprouting up where they'll offer to do like full body MRIs, you think there's any value in that?
Yeah, I talked about that in the book. I talk about various Advanced Diagnostics that are both blood urine, saliva biosensors. We can use our ring wig TracFone kinds of stuff, but also Imaging. So, you know, it kind of total body MRI used to be like twenty, thirty thousand dollars. Now, you can do it for 2,500. It'll probably 300 within a few years and and that checks your, your body for all sorts of different diseases. Including many Cancers and allows you to pick up things before they are relevant. So I had a friend who
Ooh, sadly was 50 years old, super healthy guy. And he had a family history, an aneurysm and he kind of delayed getting a brain scan and ended up dying of a brain aneurysm. Well, if two years old which would have been thousand percent preventable and treatable if he had a brain skin. So a lot of things can be picked up that are treatable early and people I don't want to know because what can you do? And I think the ostrich method of taking care of your life is not good. I think the more information, the more data you have the better your able to
You modify that, and that's what's important, even genes can be modified. I mean, it's really quite amazing. A sickle cell anemia is a great example. I was, you know, I learned in medical school, that this is a will come an autosomal dominant disorder. It's fixed like down syndrome or like Huntington's chorea. Or you know these are these are not things you can just like change your diet and fix, right? Yeah. Or maybe you can so I because all genes are impacted by what happens to those jeans. So I was in a
In a coffee shop that Blue Bottle Coffee shop in New York. I'm going to go coffee one morning. The sky was dr. Hyman you saved my life and like I did okay. When I do like well I don't even know you. He's like well yeah well I laughs American guys like yeah. I have sickle cell anemia and I was in crisis every month and I was really miserable and I came upon your work and I started following the died and doing this and that and like I really am good now. I don't have crises maybe once a year I get a little something but I'm really good and a recent paper came out and it was in England Journal or maybe FDA approved but using glutamine to
Help treat sickle cell anemia and what happens with sickle cell, anemia has cells have a tendency when they're under stress to sickle meaning. They look like a sickle, which is what used to use to, you know, cut wheat and stuff. Instead of being with round shape, they become this sort of weird sickle shape and that basically scrapes and all the insides of your blood vessels and damages every part of your body, it's really horrible. Wow. But turns out it's related to add reduction in glutathione inside the cell. Hmm. So
What if I own is a natural product that your body makes to deal with inflammation is an antioxidant, it's a detoxifying compound. And it's made from three, amino acids leucine. Glycine is insisting, which are pennies, literally pennies to take this stuff and they found that by using these compounds, they could modify the course of sickle cell anemia. Wow. So by upgrading his diet, he was able to upgrade glutathione by the recommendations that I make. Because it's a lot of foods that we can eat like the broccoli family or
Like an onion, see me? They help increase glutathione whey protein can do it. Sorry whey protein can do it. In my favorite is goat way from regionally raise goats. So I think there's a lot of ways to upgrade glutathione and and that in this case can change the course of a very fixed single Gene, autosomal dominant disorder, which, you know, in my training was just not
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Or enter code genius at checkout for 20% off of your first order. Again, that's Mobility. Wall.com genius for 20% off of your first order. Thanks Mobility wall. There's an interesting supplement or like a combination of supplements on the market that's been referred to, as gly neck. It's the, it's equal, It's a combination of equal parts Glycine and and acetylcysteine. Yeah, which are, I guess rate-limiting in the production? Yeah glutathione. Exactly yeah yeah and they've shown like in clinical trials, are some really exciting like work going on.
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Milo glutathione, I shoot it up all the time.
It is like a junkie. I don't shoot. So, okay, let's get granular with regard to diet because within the context of longevity, there's a lot of debate about, you know, we go, here we go. Well, I know
where you're going with this. Let's go protein. Yes, I know you go on that person.
It's the most contentious issue, right? You've got researchers like David Sinclair, who you've cited, who I know, I'm friendly with, you know, but he'll argue that it's like low protein diets and
I think specifically low animal protein diets that are the key to longevity,
right? In diets are going to save us. All right,
vegan diet are going to say was, all right, but then I the planet and save Humanity, right? All of that. And then there are some very brilliant people who I actually think are, are probably more correct in this. That argue, that no animal protein is the highest quality protein that you can find in especially for for older adults. Yeah. Who tend to under consume protein, they should be eating more animal protein. Yeah. So what's your take, dr.
Hyman, my take is, is the Goldilocks approach?
Ouch, I think, you know, we have these extraordinarily built-in systems to help us stay alive and to deal with both scarcity and abundance. And, you know, we need both but not all the time, right? So if you just, you know, for example, any therapy. Like, if you eat a huge amount of food, which we need to survive, you're going to become a piece. Or if you don't eat it, all you're going to starve and die, right?
So it's like, what's the Goldilocks approach? So what people are arguing about is this ancient pathway? That's one of the Hallmarks of Aging which is deregulated nutrient sensing and there's for longevity switches that sends nutrients in your body mtor. Insulin signaling Pathways which detect a too much of stuff, like too much sugar protein, amino acids, and ampk, and sirtuins which detect a scarcity and they do different things but they all are involved in DNA repair.
Pear and mitochondrial. Biogenesis and mitochondria repair and antioxidant systems and reducing inflammation. And then all these really cool stuff that is activating, our need healing systems. So mtor is what the Crux of this argument about mtor is named after this compound that was discovered in Rapa. Nui, Easter Island in the 60s by scientists were looking for compounds that could help us. So I don't know, people go, these are aliens who built these things that maybe the aliens left to seem cool drugs. It's actually really cool but me
Easily scrape. The stuff happening. Went to the lab me. Oh, maybe it's an antifungal and in work. So good was put on the Shelf. Oh let's study it again. Well, maybe it seems to modulate immune system. So it's actually used in translate medicine but then they looked at other mechanisms. In fact, this pathway is named after this compound, which is rapamycin. So, it's mammalian Target of rapamycin and is in every cell and this is mtor pathway is important because one it helps you synthesize more muscle
And muscle is the currency of longevity. Hmm, you lose muscle, you lose life. If sarcopenia which is something nobody almost talks about is this disease of muscle loss that happens with aging. So you could be the same weight as you were 20 when you're 70 or 80 and be twice as fat, meaning a marbled fat and it's dysfunctional muscle. Its muscle is inflammation, driving inflammation. That's driving hormonal dysregulation, lowers testosterone, that causes insulin resistance, its reciprocal Esther. All that causes your growth.
Going to go down your cortisol, go up is basically it's a disaster. So you need to build and maintain muscle as you age, and it's critical to longevity for many, many reasons. If you don't activate MTAR, you can't build muscle. If you exercise, you activate mtor. Well, I don't think anybody's going to argue that exercise is good for longevity for heart disease, cancer, diabetes. Dementia like it's just nobody can argue with that. The science is so robust on
this. Yes, that's not that it that it's great for all of
those rights of mtor.
Is activated by exercise and endures bad. Shouldn't we stop exercising? No right. So, but on the other hand, if you exercise all the time you're gonna kill yourself. Right? If you don't like you, if you just do too much, if you do a marathon it's actually bad for you. It run it suppresses your immune system and you kind of deplete your whole your whole system. So you want to activate mtor in the right time and in the right way but you also want to inhibit mtor. So the argument about being vegan or
Avoiding animal protein is animal protein, activates and toward the best, and it's high in an amino acid, called leucine and other Branch chain amino acids, which are the rate limiting amino acids for building muscle. So, if you don't have these amino acids, you can't turn on the protein building switch in your body, so you can eat all the protein you want. If it's low in these amino acids, you're not going to build muscle. Just be burned as calories. So you have to learn how to get the right kinds of protein at the right time. And and then you have to also inhibit mtor in order to activate
This critical process of cleanup and repair. So imagine like just cooking in your kitchen and every washing the dishes. Yeah. Any freakin mess after a while. So you need to like, you need to make the food but then you need to like clean up. So that's what your body has it has this amazing construction crew and this demolition crew and cleanup crew and repair crew, and recycling crew. So, we have that system. It's called autophagy, which means self-cannibalism. So, we have hundreds of genes that regulate starvation because it was some we were used to having throughout history. Revolution. We didn't have abundant food like we do now or
And every corner, you can buy thousands of calories and eat them in 3 seconds, right? So we didn't have that. So our bodies don't really have a lot of jeans to deal with that, but they have a lot of genes to deal with starvation scarcity. So when that happens, you have to, you have to do all sorts of things to activate, your survival mechanisms and these are the longevity Pathways. So you, you activate your antioxidant systems, you shut off inflammation, you recycle old tissues and proteins and cells. You increase mitochondrial function, you increase cognitive function because you want to figure out how to
Your next meal to be sharp, mentally clear to all these wonderful things happen when you inhibit them to are. So the best way to do that is by eating only during a certain window of time, like 12 hours should be the minimum between dinner and breakfast. That's why they called breakfast break. The fast right? 12 hours, not argue it dinner at 6:00. You eat breakfast at 6. That's not so hard. Are you? If you break dinner at 6:00? She'd breakfast at 8:00. That's fourteen hour fast. And he'd attend. That's a 16 hour fast. Not so hard. That gives your body a chance to clean up and repair.
And then on a fasted State, you want it actually increase protein intake of high quality protein, ideally after exercise. So, in my book, I talk about this review that was done by the world's leading protein researchers. So I'm not a, you know, Reese researcher primarily. I mean I've done a fair bit of research at Cleveland Clinic but these guys are the grooves and all you do is study protein and and that's what they do and they got together and create a consensus paper looking at all the science and they said, what does the data show and they show?
Clearly that. If you, if you give protein after exercise in the right amount, it actually will stimulate the most protein synthesis. So having depending on your size and your weight so forth, anywhere, you know, 30 to 50 grams of protein on a fasted state after exercise 1 h 2 is the best way to accelerate muscle mass and building and that's why do I work on the morning? And I have a protein shake, it's pretty easy to do. And I think one of the best sources of available amino acids is whey protein and particularly go away. And I'm not a big fan of dairy, but I think we generally raise
Goats are quite good in terms of the quality of the protein and the ability to synthesize muscle, and it's just great hack. And, you know, goats get, you know, you're not killing the ghosts, just milking them and I think, I think. So, you have to learn how to activate them. Turn the right time and have protein the right time. And and what happens also as you get older, and even the studies that show that maybe less protein early on is better, all of them show that as you get older, it's not better.
And in my book, I tell the story of Emma Morano who was a hundred, a hundred and Seventeen years old and Italian woman when she was 19. She was dwindling. And her doctor said, I want you to 150 grams of meat every day. I think he said, Romney. I think she and she didn't you started in her 90s and she lived to be a hundred and Seventeen years old. Wow. So is it because of that, or something else? You know, obviously, we don't know, but, but most people have what we call anabolic resistance as they get older. It's much harder to build muscle. So, you need to work harder, you'd have more protein.
You know, overcome that resistance. Now you can get 30 grams of protein for many sources. For example, if you have 30 grams of protein that's like four ounces of chicken or meat or maybe 5 or 6 ounces of fish, but it's like six cups of brown rice or two cups of beans or four cups of quinoa. Whatever. Yeah, that's a lot. So if you eating all that all those grains and beans one you can't do it. Yeah. You just can't physically do it. There's not room in your stomach and so it's very tough to meet those requirements. Now you can mix and
Milland plant proteins, you can jack up plant protein. So a lot of people and I see these like, incredible body builders who are like begets. Like they're both down and like, what's going on with you? What do you eat? You know, dig into it. And they go, oh yeah. Yo, I have like, you know 14 protein shakes a day. No, no, I'm Giggs a journey but they have all these jacked up protein shake. So you can you can add amino acids and if you're vegan and you're committed for moral reasons, you know. That's okay. You know, I've monks were patients and that's fine but, you know, I make sure they actually add amino acids and you can do that through.
Supplemental Mio acid, you can add that there's certain protein shakes that are vegan. Now that have added jacked up amino acids and branched chain in them already, so there's lots of ways to do it. But you know, you can't avoid the fact that biology and, you know, the think that you you have to inhibit them to all the times to bad idea. So rapamycin is now being studied and is one of those drugs that is being used to enhance longevity. And an animal studies is very promising and there's a lot of Bio hackers and Longevity. Scientists were actually taking rapamycin as longevity.
Hack. And the question is, what's the Dough's, how much you take is it good? Is it bad? I think we're still figuring that out, right, but it's I think it's an important strategy for for regulating mtor as we get older without having to starve yourself. So, instead of mimics calorie restriction, rather having is charged on
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Check them out and you will see why for yourself butcher box.com genius. Yeah, I mean, I love when you said that muscle is the currency of Aging. Like, I've come across a few studies that have shown that have actually shown that, that the amount of muscle mass a person carries predicts their lifespan. We're sure that it predicts longevity. And if that is indeed the case, then you should be resistance training, Abyssal regularly, and you should be consuming adequate protein to optimally, support that effort.
Absolutely. And
And that's true but that doesn't mean eating protein all day, all the time, it means having throughout the day out of a protein for your needs, at the age you are and at the same time also using strategies that inhibit mtor like time restricted eating or maybe certain food compounds and phytochemicals that do that or maybe even rapamycin. So there's a lot of ways to do it but you can't avoid the fact that biology. Yeah. I, you know, people people, obviously you don't want to let your
To trample over your biology, right. A lot of people have beliefs about, what's good or bad, but biology is biology and and there's a lot of data on this. It's not something I'm making up. I mean, I'm agnostic and I was a vegetarian vegan for over ten years and I have a picture of myself when I was 40 and now and you're like wait it should be reversed, right? I was kind of scrawny and no wasn't overweight, but I didn't have a lot of muscle and now not even like doing much. I do bands maybe three times a week.
Which is not that much in
over half an hour, right? Yeah.
And I'm like, it just looked like a totally different human being now. I can we can throw that slider box in the picture if you want.
I want to see it. So in terms of like a protein Target like in terms of like actual actual numbers. Yeah, so let's talk about.
So, you know, we have this thing called the RDA recommended dietary allowance or RDI. These are these are numbers of amounts of nutrients that we should be consuming on a daily basis to prevent deficiency disease. These are not the
Optimal amounts needed for help. So how much vitamin C do you need to not get scurvy? Not very much. You know, 60 milligrams. You know how much vitamin D do you need to not get rickets? 30 units? How many vitamin E much vitamin need. You need to not get osteoporosis and build your immune system and prevent covid and do all sorts of things. Maybe 5,000. So it's and Robert Heaney was in vitamin D. Researcher, wrote a beautiful paper called long, latency deficiency diseases which was based on the idea that we actually
Need more of certain compounds than we think because in the short run, if we don't have enough, we'll get a deficiency disease but in the long run, if we don't have higher amounts, will end up with his long latency deficiency disease like cancer, heart disease, and so forth. So, the amount of protein we need according to the RDA, is point eight grams per kilo, which, you know, most people are getting but that, that doesn't speak to what your optimal needs are. And you're in. So depending on your activity level and your age, you might need 1.2 1.5 even 2 grams.
Kilo. If you're very Physically Active elderly person, you might need up to 2 round 3 kilo, which is a lot of proteins. So like, you know, 30 to 50 grams, 40, grams per meal is reasonable, and that's kind of what I shoot for, for me, but I think depending on who you are, if you're Shaquille O'Neal or if you're, you know, the dr. Ruth Westheimer, you're going to need different amounts of protein, right? She's like 5 for 11
years. Well, you multiply that you multiply it by your like ideal weight, right? So it sounds like that's obviously be different for every
person, but by your
Yeah. My your by your actual kilo so I'm like let's say 75 kilos or whatever. I am. I multiply 75 by 1.2 or 1.5 and I come up with a
number. Yeah, super great
and you know protein G like what's the grammar protein like, in my book I go through what's what 30 G is so people can get a sense of it but it's not really that much like you know, and I'm the easiest way to figure it out is you know, if you're a 4 foot 11, then you know, the size of your palm is pretty small but if you're Shaquille O'Neal the size of your palm is pretty big. It's a big bomb.
You got to eat about a palm size amount of protein if it's animal protein.
Yeah, okay. So I like that. So you're
sort of the way by the quality matters, right? So some protein is in proteins and protein. So feedlot cow is not wild elk or originally raised animal right there, very different in the composition of their meat. In terms of inflammatory, triggers in terms of fatty acids, in terms of nutrient levels, and antioxidant levels and a whole host of different things phytochemical levels, that are now found in regionally raised meats. And
Things animals that are eating wide variety of plants, so it's really important that the information the food is also really important. Yeah. And I was in Sardinia, you know, they know that that they feed their goats and their sheep, these wild plants at different times of the year because they know the mean, the milk can taste better. They don't know all these phytochemicals in here that are going to make me live longer and they know that the flavor always follows the phytochemical richness of the food. And this one guy will in tow said you gave me this entire Village knows that tell pork meal. There's a lot and he's like we
The animal before we kill it. Like what do you mean? He says, well, you know, we feed Caravan acorns in this and that and they know that what the animals eat matters and so the quality matters.
Wow. So here I am just eating like grass-fed grass-finished, but it's like the next, the next level would be like herbs feeding the animals, herbs and ache.
Yeah. Kinds of other credible, metabolomic studies down. My Steve has been villette and provenza and that was at Duke. He's now at Utah State and it's just remarkable to see the
Data on the the using really Advanced scientific analytics of metabolomic profiles and phytochemical profile that we can measure. Now the difference between these animals and what
happens. It's amazing. But what do you do? Mark? If you live in like a food desert or not a food desert, but like somewhere, other than Los Angeles or New York City, or Miami or Chicago or wherever where we we are lucky enough to have access to a most
pristine. It's tough, it's tough. I mean this is really why it's not a you know son individual solution necessarily in this. Why?
I wrote the book food fix in. Why? I started my nonprofit prefix campaign to drive policy change. So we literally helped to get 20 billion dollars for regenerative agriculture in the ira, Bill inflation reduction act. So that was a huge advance. That money is going to be deployed to educate Farmers to help them transition to support the transition from traditional to to regenerate agriculture, which is going to allow the growing, and raising of both plants and animals in a different way to restore the health of the
Items, restore the soil. Drawdown carbon to increase. Biodiversity to restore water systems, and to provide much more nutrient-dense phytochemical rich
food. Hmm. So all that is to say, you are not of the camp that advocates for low protein diets for longevity at this at this time
I'm not going to Goldilocks thing. It's like you don't want to like eat, you know, 50 ounce Ribeye every meal but I think you need the. It's like the right amount. Yeah. So I don't think it's a high-protein diet. It's not like 50%. Your diet should be protein, right? It should
Be like 20 25 percent and it, depending on your age. It should, you know, can be more as you get older, but it's not like a high protein diet. We all you're eating a steak. You know, it's all right, carnivore diet. I'm not saying that we need like a lot of
phytochemicals. Yeah, going back to inflammation and other things that people should be avoiding to mitigate inflammatory assault because this is so big and it's so so relevant with regard to aging and aging. Well what are some of the things that people should be should be like looking out for?
Well, I mean it's not the obvious things.
Right, diet exercise stress reduction, sleep, foundational stuff, but the stuff that I found so cool was this whole idea for me, sixties these kind of therapies that are available to us now, but we're just part of our life, right? We live in these perfectly controlled thermal regulated environments, where it's 68 degrees and we have like never exposed to any biological stresses, right? And historically, this was the case, you know, we had to deal with screams of temperature and weather and like we were, you know, you're out there like the, you know, like the
Animals in the woods. We're going to buy this shit shitty so there's a struggle. Yeah, the struggle. So what's happened is that we have embedded within us. These Pathways that can get activated by these biological stresses. So it's again, the Goldilocks version he and cold for example too much heat in your, you know, heat stroke in your debt, too much cold in your hypothermia and you're dead, right? So what's that Goldilocks version? So hormesis is a really powerful set of tools and some of them are really easy to access like time restricted eating where we starve ourselves for
At the day exercise, another form through both interval training and strength, training resistance training. And then there's things like hot and cold therapies which most people can access. I took a cold shower this morning two minutes and cold shower, you know, it's Gary wake up your copy and you can also you know fill your bathtub up with water and throw some bags. Ice cubes in there. You don't have a cold plunge is a lot of ways to do it or hot therapy saunas and their saw no blankets. Now, there's infrared saunas, you can get for a very low price. You can often get
Access these things and use them at home and they're great. So,
just take a hot bath. Right? Hot bath, right? Hot bath. Like, if you've got nothing but a
bath. Totally Tony. I actually, you know, I like the bathroom. It's so hot. You can barely get in my girlfriend, doesn't like that. So we kind of I get in first, let it cool off that she gets it. It's like their ways to do it and that therapy activates, for example, heat, shock protein. So, one of the Hallmarks of Aging when you talk about is protein, damaged proteins and damaged proteins happen because of all these insults, and they kind of muck up your system,
And how do we bought out of their body heal or fix these things through otology? Like we talked about but also do saunas. So on is activate these these proteins called heat shock proteins which repair were eliminated, these damaged proteins. And we know from data from Finland where they, these trials looking at Shawnee use if you. And by the way, there's enough saunas in Finland for everybody being a sauna at the same time,
I meet our population in another life. I was finished. I love Finnish sauna
culture. Yeah, it was great. And then, and also, he would jump in the ice water, dude.
Had the boat but they the control group was like once on a week and then the intervention group was like two or and then 3 to 4 to 5. So on the Tucson has the three times a week. It was like a 24% reduction in mortality and if you had four, sonnets or five saunas, was like a 40, some percent reduction in mortality. Damn. And it also activates your innate immune system. Helps your immune system work better and increase. Hardware ability. Circulation helps weight loss. Detoxification heart rate, variability. I mean this is so many benefits to it that help reduce stress and I mean I just love it, I mean I if I could do a saint and
Coleman everyday. I just like, it's my I'm like in heaven and then, and there, you know, there's cold therapy which is gaining in popularity, cryotherapy cold plunges, nice, cool bath, whatever you want to do cold shower. Most people have a shower. And and that actually also activates Brown fat, improves mitochondrial function, it's a stress to the body increases dopamine Clarity function, and has so many Downstream benefits and they work through some of these ancient Hallmarks of Aging, these longevity Pathways, I was talking about, so that's that's something people can really easily do. There's more advanced ones that
Harder to get access to like hyperbaric oxygen, therapy, our ozone therapy or hypoxia therapies. These are their bees that actually, you know, challenge the body. So, we know, for example, that people who live at high altitudes like the ecuadorians and vilcabamba live a long time, they are very high altitude and and that creates an inducible hypoxia something. Something I've heard the hyperfine just by hypoxia proteins or something and that these are these are other mechanisms in the body that help to activate these longevity switches. So you can use a 50 dollar mask that you
put on your face when you're sitting at your desk, or when you're exercising to restrict oxygen flow, athletes use this to increase their performance because if you can, you know, run a four-minute mile at 10,000 feet, you're going to do great at one at sea level, right? Yeah. So that's kind of how they enhance their their
Fitness by Cena. They look like Bane mask. Yeah,
it looks like
sometimes you see these lunatics running up Runyon? Canyon here. Yeah, in Los Angeles wearing these
masks.
Exactly. So you hate them and there's, there's also this thing called the cell gym, which is a kind of an easier version where they put a mask on your face seal tight. And they take you down like up to Mount Everest for a short period of time where you're really starving for oxygen and then they bring you back down and that induces mitochondria repair cleans up on mitochondria, enhances mitochondrial, biogenesis and function. So mitochondria are key to aging and they're why muscle is so important because that's where most of your mitochondria are. There's also a hyperbaric oxygen which is where you
Go into a tank basically, which is a decompression chamber that using scuba diving where they take you down to two, atmospheres or more. And that's basically like, 66 feet below sea level and they pump in 100% oxygen, which is another kind of stress, because room are is 21% and, and that induces, all sorts of benefits of the body in terms of stem cell generation. And that's one of the things that happened with aging is the stem cell exhaustion it, but it also seems to kill zombie cells. Zombie cells is another one of the Hallmarks of Aging. These cells that are not really
Dying. But that kind of live and never die but spew out, you know, inflammation, sort of like the fire-breathing dragon that's running on your body and then it basically kind of in facts, not literally, in fact, but it basically infects other cells and they become zombies cells. And it's like the design, it's like a zombie apocalypse, right? Inside your body Tam and and, and hyperbaric, oxygen kill zombies sells more than anything else. So, it is, by the way, fi Seaton, which is from strawberries, which is another concept of phyto, hormesis, vital hormesis is
Is plant compounds that are stressful. It's stressful to our bodies. And these plant compounds were not designed by plans for our benefit, right? They're designed for their own protection. Yeah, but we use them and we kind of co-evolved with these plants because our bodies are lazy and if we don't have to make vitamin C, we don't make it, we get it from our food. Hmm. Right. So we don't want to do stuff that we don't have to do biologically. So we've kind of Co of all these plants are saying, oh, I'm making all these phytochemicals from the 800 wild plants, and I'm eating, I don't need to build mechanisms to actually create more biting.
He or. And so if I sit in for example from strawberries also is this analytic, which kills the zombie cells sent senescent cells means aging cells. Wow. And also the hyperbaric oxygen tank seems to increase telomere length. Telomeres is another one of those Hallmarks of Aging, the shortening, your telomeres. So the shorter your telomeres. These little end cap that your chromosomes. It protect, your chromosomes shorten as we age and as yourselves, keep replicating. So when you can lengthen them, you actually improve your longevity and many things like the
vitamin meditation good food and a lot of things will fix it but hyperbaric oxygen does it? So you just lay in a tank and watch a movie and you get younger?
That's amazing. What was the term? There was a term that you coined in one of your more recent books phytochemical. Symbiosis symbiotic, phyto adaptation. Yeah, there you go. I love that.
So I just made that I've years ago because I was like, Wow, food is medicine and like food is information and what's going on here and how do these plants know it's like, how do they know what to
do? If the court
I'm
out of words. These are the compounds that are making us sick. Are they just are they wrong?
Well, actually, if you're eating wild animals, you're getting these compounds and that's the benefit of these animals, right? So, that's what's so amazing is, that's right. And this is the work of like I said, Fred provenza. And Stephen van roulette provenza has been on the podcast number of times. Highly recommend his book nourishment, how do we claim our nutritional wisdom from animals? It's so fascinating about how he sort of, has been studying rangeland, ecology and the interaction between saw
Soil, and plants, and animals, and humans for 50 years and this guy, you know, I need a lot of people. I know a lot of famous people presidents Kings. I know, nobody kind of gets me excited, but this guy, I literally made a pilgrimage to Montana to go visit. Wow! I wanted to meet him and talk to him. And he just, he just he just has this beautiful philosophical view of the world. And and his scientific knowledge is so deep. And he talks about this phenomenon of these phytochemicals that are in all these animals that we beat in forever. So,
Even if you're immune less, you're eating like, you know, feedlot animals and, you know, that's a problem. But if you're eating animals that are eating plants, you're getting phytochemicals. Yeah, it's all Bs
know. It's true. I actually looked at a paper recently because some actually, a carnivore sent this paper my way showing me that actually animal products, like pasture raised beef. For example, is a source of phytochemicals. Yes, who'd a thought. Yeah, that's right. You still get vastly more when eating
produce e Maybe.
He may be in fact, some studies show that. For example, these goats eating these different kinds of plants have high levels of catechins, which are in green tea, as green tea. Hmm, and this is what happened in Sardinia, you know, these these goats and sheep eat all these wild plants that have high levels of these catechins and then they get and these are longevity compounds. So one of the longevity compounds that I recommend and take Izzy cgc, which is epic, Galactic catechin Galley, which is basically in a fancy word for saying the cool crap in green tea that makes you live
longer, amazing.
Just like eat more goat or drink or green tea, all right?
Whichever you depend on the goats are eating, right? It goes are being said, in a factory farm? No, but if they're out there, you know, eating all the weird things that goats eat
interesting. I'd love to like, look at populations at that. Eat a lot of goat. Like, I mean, I know, I know that was. Yeah,
when I was in Sardinian and and carry out, those are shepherding cultures, they eat a lot of go there. Yeah. Goat and sheep. Yeah,
wow. That's fascinating.
They didn't eat that much historically because, you know, they just can't afford it so they would milk them.
Um, and then, you know, now, but this guy Sileo and he's like, well, now we only killed the ordinary goats.
Damn, so how so realistically, like, how long you think we're going to live? Like, how long you think
we have a possible limit of human longevity?
Yes.
What am I shooting for? I'm going for at least 120, maybe 150 maybe 180, but who knows? There's a lot of people now talking about longevity escape velocity, like Ray, Kurzweil and others who were futurists and this is
Sort of the idea by longevity escape velocity, is that we're going to keep advancing our science in such a way that we're going to keep out living death by these technologies that will help us extend life.
Don't worry you though like
the kind of worries me I'm like I don't know if I want to be 947 years old or it
also you're like putting your biology in the hands of technologists. Who haven't always had, you know, your best interest for sure in mind, right? I mean like we're addicted to these freaking things right but let's look
at what what
Maybe more realistic and we met them climb on live to be a hundred and twenty two years old. That's the longest known living human there obviously. Are people who say they live longer. But I don't know if they have birth records or can count or Ray she's in India who are 180. I don't know what, who knows, many way. But she's the most well-documented in the and Morano was 117. And I'm Adam, come on, you know she was a wine drinking smoking chocoholic. So I don't I don't I wouldn't follow that plan.
Some Valley, good genes. But, but that's possible for most of us. And given the, the way we are now understand science and what I've unpacked in my book, not just in a, in a sort of explanatory scientific way. But in a very practical program that you can follow step-by-step, that's accessible to most people. Now, I think we can achieve this. And so an animal studies just just taking that alone in terms of calorie restriction, which is just one Intervention, which is sort of activating these longevity Pathways that are related to
Incensing like em towards fortuyn's and BK and, and Insulin signaling. It's been shown that that alone can extend Life by a third. So that for a human, that means, one from 80 to 120. That's, that's a lot. Okay, so I'm good with that. I think, I think that's that's an achievable goal, right? 50% right now. Like if we, if we, if we addressed all the things that I talk about in the book, all these Hallmarks, if we understand the causes and it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not as easy to think some things we have control over right our food
I mean, when you're the best restaurant America,
You know, read the best food in America. It's so different than the food. For example, that you get in your armoire on these islands are in these places where they're eating, like I can carry their eating Wild Greens, summer greens and winter, greens and wild, mushrooms and Wild Sage Tea and all the stuff that we just don't have access to, right? So there may be limits to the quality of our diet exercise available to everybody right and I think the certain phytochemicals we can use that are now being researched in longevity that I think are
Safe and no worth it. Worth of bet, certain compounds like, nmn are pretty exciting that nnr and NAD that that also activate sirtuin genes and DNA repair and all these longevity switches that you can take. And then there's a drugs that are being researched like metformin, which I'm not a big fan of and I can go into that if you want and and rapamycin, which is being studied in animal trials, and I think increasingly in human trials. So there's a lot of work being done in this area and I think, you know, without getting too extreme
Using crazy Gene editing techniques and all the stuff we're going to be able to get pretty far along using the foundational Basics. Hmm. And then there's all this kind of stuff that's coming down, the pike, like, you know, bro, robotic nanotechnology that, you know, can fix things inside your body with Nano robots and 3D printed organs. And, you know, replacement parts. You know, some of us need replacement parts. You know that that's okay. Like that a bad thing. Yeah, that's a nice. If you've got an old car, you need a new muffler but it's okay. But
I think what's exciting is it's a combination of these, sort of basic foundational, things combined, with sort of advances in regenerative medicine, things like stem cells, exosomes peptides, you know, natural killer cell, infusions plasmapheresis. I talk about all this in the book that that are, that are basically in emerging strategies that are safe and effective. And the costs are going to come down, and we'll be able to take advantage of these in ways that I think will have profound impact on our Health and Longevity.
Which Pharmaceuticals current
Currently exciting you the most and you mentioned metformin. I know. Now a lot of people to actually quite topical or talking about some Igloo tide as being
like, a really does impact. Yeah, you know, some glue tide is a peptide. Insulins a peptide. There's, you know, I think 80,000 peptides in the body. There's I think 70 or 80 that are approved by the FDA for different uses. Their extraordinary effective and what are peptides. There are small mini proteins that your body makes so your body has to communicate.
Ate all sorts of messages inside of it to do its job. And so peptides are a lot of these chemical Messengers that the body makes to regulate everything that we're doing, from our hormones to our brain chemistry, to our sex drive doing pretty much everything. And, and so, a lot of these are being used now to treat various conditions like those epic, you know. I think, you know, again, I can take someone who's severely obese, who's diabetic? It was, heart failure. Has all these chronic illnesses.
And I can completely reverse all that without, any drugs. Well yes, I actually do. We use the drug, the most powerful drug on the planet. It's called food and and I think that tells me that, while these things may be additive, they're not a replacement for doing this. So yes, people lose weight and they do better, and they Spencer appetite. But II think in effect, it affects blood sugar, control and insulin resistance, which is the fundamental driver of most age-related diseases, that's what's, that's what's going on. It's like, we're
We're just flooding our bodies with sugar and starch which about a need about a pound a day almost of sugar and starch on average, wow? Right, 155 pounds of sugar, and 133 pounds of flour per person per year. That's according to USDA data. I mean, it varies from year to year, but it's basically a lot and that together who that's a lot of stuff that we didn't consume before. So we might have 22 teaspoons a year as hunter-gatherers if we found a, you know, beehive or we found a bunch of berries. Now, we're eating that
Okay. Wow. And so, our biology is not adapted to that. And so anything that regulates in some resistance will help with longevity, whether it's, you know, Resveratrol or whether it's exempt bank, or whether it's metformin, it'll help. But the question is how help compared to what? Yeah, right. So, the find the old joke is the Vermont Farmers, s. How's your wife? He goes compared to
what I think. So it's always compared to what, right?
Yeah, so like for example to study, I love to talk about is the diabetes, prevention trial.
Which looked at pre-diabetics and trying to prevent the progression to type 2 diabetes. And they gave them either, nothing control group, lifestyle, change or metformin them. Informant did reduce the progression of Diabetes by about 31% lifestyle about 58 percent reduction. But the lifestyle intervention they did in the study was done in the 90s was the worst possible died. You can have her diabetic. Wow it was a low fat diet. Damn hike.
Our
diet. Wow they did take away all the junk food. Yeah. So was a healthier low-fat diet but they had them exercising and they were supervising them in the head group things. They detract what they did. So there was a lot of other interventions and I know something on the study and I was like, whoa, what if we took the work for sample of Sarah, Hallberg another's where they did ketogenic diets, not in pre-diabetes but in type 2 diabetes and It reversed. Completely reversed not prevented. Reverse type 2 diabetes with people who are on insulin for decades like that's just mind-blowing, right?
So what if we compared bad diet to Mid Foreman in Foreman would be like you know maybe like here and that would be like so I think it's compared to what. Yeah I think I think there's a large trial going on alcohol the tame trial targeting aging with metformin and I think we'll see. I mean I'm open-minded I'm willing to change my mind when I see data but it's not the first thing I recommend to patients and I think their achievements that we can see through lifestyle intervention. There's so much greater. So I had a patient at Cleveland Clinic Janice who was part of our group model called functioning
Which is based on the idea that group support helps you change Behavior. So, we put her on a very inflammatory low-glycemic diet, not Kido just more the 50% fat, but good fats, high-fiber phytochemical E rich. You know, basically a functional medicine approach and, you know, Gabriel group support and courage to walk a little bit couple of vitamins. Nothing like so nothing. Expensive or super-high, intervention in three days, she may not. She was severely obese with him BMI 43. She attempted, I'd be done.
In some for 10 years, she had heart failure with injection fraction of 30%, which is like, she's on her way to a kidney transplant on a heart transplant. Her kidneys were failing, her liver was fatty her high. Blood pressure was high, shouldn't a pile of meds, she was on her way out. At 66 years old three days. She was off her insulin or anyone seen went from 11 to 5 and a half. Well, in three months, she got to follow medications, reversed your heart failure, which by the way, doesn't happen, right? Reverse your kidney failure, which by the way, doesn't happen in traditional medicine, right? I just, it's just once you got it, you got it, right. You're going to
Manage your disease. We're Not Gonna Get rid of it. There's a whole idea of chronic disease management which I drives me crazy because I don't care what to manage it. I want to get rid of it. Yeah. And within a year, she lost 160 pounds out of all her medications and biologically was totally different person. Wow, at 66. So even if you're really far down the pike and like near death, that's how powerful food is. So she could have been every single drug, you can imagine, I was emphatic, metformin rapamycin, everything, kitchen sink. If she had done all of that and
Not done the food. She would have seen that change. Wow.
Yeah, it's true. I mean, as I mean, even some clue tide. People are talking about as like a revolutionary weight loss drug people, losing obese patients, losing like 20%, they gain it, right back. When they come off, the draw, of course because they hadn't built the healthy habits, right? They had changed their diet. So they're just using the drug as a crutch. And then soon as I come off it, they gain it all
back. Menus weight with chemotherapy. Yeah, I guess not thinking
strategy. Exactly.
Exactly. Wow. So important. I don't want the the Secret Service coming after me, but you were recently at a White House conference on nutrition. So I have to ask it. What are the kinds of things that they that you got that you all talked about? Well, you know, this is
something we've been working on a long time. I, I think my colleague, Diane must have Aryan from Tufts was a big proponent of having this conference. The last one was 53 years ago, under President Nixon and a lot of our nutrition policies are dating from that era. When there wasn't the rates of
BC there was more hunger more servation, so food stamps and way. It can only produce really came out of a lot of that work, but nutrition policies have not been updated for 50 years. So, we advocated and lobbied for this and, you know, I've been, you know, having much to sort of my dismay become a lobbyist and go to Washington me with congressmen Senators, the White House, the USDA HHS and advocate for the science. And for the patients, and
To change our policies so that we can reduce health care costs, improve Healthcare outcomes. And and actually apply what we know works. And what was really encouraging to me was there was a lot of work done. The pre-work done. We are involving a lot of pre-work in our team and and the White House presented a national strategy on nutrition. And it was the first time that's ever happened. It was a very detailed strategy and of course, it wasn't wasn't the full monty like I would have liked, but it was a real step in the right direction. Just try to address some of these issues by, you know, focusing on the idea that food is medicine. This
Is the first time I ever heard in a government setting, that food is described as medicine. You know, we there's a Bill in Congress, for example, for medically tailored meals, which hopefully will pass and that will allow us to prove that food works better and we should pay for food instead of drugs
called, like, what kind of foods with it, you know, for like what would they recommend?
First? It would be foods that actually help to reverse these, chronic diseases, which we know how to do. So, the devil is in the details but even if the government doesn't do it, the Rockefeller Foundation. Now is finding 250 million dollar study.
Food is medicine for chronic disease and medically tailored meal. So, there's a lot of that happening were talking about, you know, changing food, labels, and addressing food marketing issues that are problematic, and having nutrition education for doctors, amazing concept, right? Isn't that a brilliant idea? Definitely. And, and, you know, having having changing in your dietary guidelines to update the science to include the science on low-carbohydrate diets. And you know, I said I met with the the head of both, the, the USDA and HHS who are in charge of our dietary guidelines and I said look and they were
I'm very open and there and I said, look, you know, these are called the dietary guidelines for healthy Americans. That is six point eight percent of the population. So how about we include recommendations that help? People who have metabolic problems? Yeah, 93.2% Americans, according to new data, have some level of poor metabolic Health, high cholesterol, blood pressure, blood sugar have had a heart attack or stroke or overweight
That means six point eight percent of the population, don't have those things and those are all signs of poor metabolic Health AKA insulin resistance, pre diabetes at some degree right and there in that Continuum from optimal to prediabetes. So it's not like you're healthy and then you have pre-diabetes and diabetes. It's like a it's like a Continuum so you can intervene along that Continuum. So there's a lot of exciting things that came out of it and I'm having a meeting on Friday with the USDA and we're continuing to work with, you know, congressman and Senators on policies. We
Got an A in the report done from the government accountability office which took a couple years to be done. But essentially I I work with my friends in Congress, I said hey this is silly. There's all these agencies all these departments, all these food policies that are totally in opposition and contradictory to each other. So we say with the USDA dietary guidelines that we should limit our intake of sugar. At the same time we spend seven hundred and fifty billion dollars on SNAP program or food stamps and 10% of that is for soda.
Yeah. So how does that comport? If we always think, don't eat it and we're paying for it. And, and I, and there's example, after example, right? So so I said to them, you know, we need to, to sort of update our guidelines to address these, these discordant things. And so the government accountability report came out and it said, and I was worse than I thought. It said there are over 20 agencies with over 200 policies agencies departments, whenever with 200 policies
Most of which are uncoordinated often it working at Cross purposes and they say, it was the first report done on chronic disease and nutrition and didn't include all the collateral stuff around, you know, the effect on health, disparities, and the environment. And the way we Farm in the food, all kinds of issues, but was just like focus on, chronic disease nutrition and they recommended for a federal entity to be established to coordinate all these efforts and to solve these problems. And, and, and in the Appropriations bill, it's now on house that should pass the Senate. We have a
A provision for creating this entity within, within the government to establish this interagency task force to address this, and start to coordinate these policies and deal with these inconsistencies. And then there was a two million dollar Appropriations for the food is medicine pilot and so there's also medically cleared meals Bill in Congress. Now which work with Jim McGovern which is five hundred million dollars twenty centers. Ten States really do a very aggressive pilot looking at food as medicine interventions for chronic disease. Now there's a lot of data out there. It's not like there's a lack of
But the government likes to see their own data. So it's fine, it's fine. Whatever it takes in a take time, but it will happen.
But the guy, I mean, the government has typically been fairly fat phobic with regard to like, you know, animal, sourced? Yeah, fats. Right. It's been, it's been that the guidelines have typically been very generous with their recommendation for grains and buying products, right? I mean, even like and I think and he's a great researcher so I'm not this is not personal but Darius, you know, most of Ari
I had a conversation with him. You must be familiar with the food
Compass. Yes. I know about some of that, I know where you're going with this, but go ahead,
right? So, I'm just well, I'm just curious, like, your take because you were, like, in the room where it happens so that, you know, in the room. Yeah, that's mammal. Did Hamilton get the reference. So, I mean, do you think that there's a world where we're not just going to see, like, more of the same? Like, you know, the endorsement of like ultra-processed Foods or at least, like a hall pass for ultra-processed
Foods because I hated, I mean, it's
Because there's so many competing interests in so much money, I think, you know, processed foods are not bad, right? Sauerkraut's. A processed food, yogurts are processed food. Canned sardines is a processed food, right? Chocolate? Yeah, so it's not on beef, right, round beep is a processed food, but ultra-processed Foods is very different, ultra-processed foods. Essentially means the foods that are assembled from ingredients that you wouldn't have in your kitchen, right? That are extracted from industrial agricultural.
Looks like corn soy and wheat that are made in a factory that resemble and have all their components that have no food value into these food-like substances of all color size, and shapes that are extremely harmful to our biology. So I think you would not find any any legitimate scientists including Dairy, who would say that they should be any part of our diet.
I hope that's true. I've had this conversation with. Yeah, so I, I was glad when I saw that you were there because I know that you're at, you've always been a champion for yeah. Well sourced animal products. And for, you know, you're very Progressive with regard to like low-carb diets and time restricted eating as we talked about all that stuff. So yeah. Well you're the man, this is fun. Thanks, as always for being here of course. And where can people find you on social media and working? They pick up your new amazing book, young
forever, young forever, you can get it anywhere you get books.
Rockstar hopefully or maybe online. Amazon Sarah. Are you can follow me at all? Social media channels at Dr. Mark Hyman dr. Mark Hyman and that's where you'll find me. Dr. Hyman dot-coms, my website, there's inordinate wealth of information that I put out free because I just been doing this for so long. That pretty much pretty much talked about almost everything there is to talk about. Yeah dude. You've built a
you've built quite an impressive career and and yeah you're one of the O G's in the space. So you know honored to call your friend and colleague.
So thanks for being here, to all you guys out there, share this episode of the show, with friends and loved ones, leave a rating and review for the show on Spotify. On the Apple podcast app would really appreciate it and I'll catch you in the next episode. Peace.
