Greetings, SuperFriends!

Today, we are joined by Dr. Mark Hyman, one of the most respected health & wellness experts on the planet – and one of the experts that experts themselves turn to.

Dr. Hyman is the founder of the UltraWellness Center, the Medical Director at Cleveland Clinic’s Center for Functional Medicine, and the ten time #1 New York Times Bestselling author of books like Eat Fat, Get Thin, Blood Sugar Solution, and the 10-Day Detox Diet. He is the medical advisor to both Bill and Hillary Clinton, the medical editor at the Huffington Post, and has been featured in just about every publication you can think of, from TED to NPR to CNN and more.

In this episode, we talk about… diet, nutrition, supplementation, and why over 70% of people are less healthy then they can and should be. We get pretty sciencey, and so I’m sure you’re going to learn quite a bit about your body, what it needs, and how it works.

Just a quick apology for the audio quality – as you’ll learn, my guest was away from the office, and so we had to make due with a cellular connection, but all in all, I think our audio editor has done a fantastic job cleaning things up and stitching them together.

This episode is brought to you by my new online course, Become a SuperHuman. Click this link for a special discount!

In this episode, we discuss:

• The story of Dr. Mark Hyman's personal illness, and how it drove him to where he is today
• What is “functional medicine,” how is it different from other types of medicine, and why is it so exciting?
• From 1-10, how healthy is the average Westerner today?
• What is the biggest, lowest-hanging fruit when it comes to improving overall health?
• What is “FLC” syndrome, and how effectively does Dr. Hyman's practice reduce it?
• A discussion of paleo vs. vegan vs. other dietary frameworks and how they're similar
• How our thinking on fat and cholesterol has changed recently
• What about grains? Should we be eating them?
• Thoughts on meat, and whether or not we should be eating it
• What is the real culprit behind our sickness, inflammation, diabetes, and heart disease?
• What supplements does Dr. Mark Hyman advocate for absolutely everyone?
• What are the most common deficiencies in our society today?
• An explanation of the controversy between vaccinations, thimerosal, mercury, and autism
• What are the UltraWellness Center and the Center for Functional Medicine, and what do they do?
• The “Big Hairy Audacious Goal” that drives Dr. Mark Hyman
• What homework would Dr. Mark Hyman like to assign to you?
• Which experts does Dr. Hyman turn to? Who are his mentors and friends?

Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

• The UltraWellness Center
• Dr. Hyman's Books:
  • Eat Fat, Get Thin
  • Blood Sugar Solution
  • 10-Day Detox Diet
  • Thimerosal: Let the Science Speak
• Recommended multivitamins:
  • Pure Encapsulations
  • Thorne
  • Xymogen
  • Metagenics
• Fish Oil Supplements
• Vitamin D3 Supplements
• Probiotics
• Trace Amounts (Movie)
• Dr. Hyman's website
• EatFatGetThin.com

Favorite Quotes from Dr. Mark Hyman:

Transcript:

Introduction: Welcome to the Becoming SuperHuman podcast, where we interview extraordinary people to bring you the skills and strategies to overcome the impossible. And now here's your host, Jonathan Levi.

Jonathan Levi: Before we get started, I just want to let you guys know that this week's episode is brought to you by my new online course Become a SuperHuman. And yes, it sounds exactly like the title of the podcast, but this is actually an online course where we go into the various aspects of improving your health.

Specifically your endocrine health more specifically. Yes. More specifically, getting your testosterone up to the optimal levels. Now whether you're a male or a female, as we've learned in numerous episodes of the show, testosterone is the ultimate feel good motivation, improved health, improved fitness, improved body composition. Super drug. Okay. So everything from your mood to your recovery time and everything in between is affected by your body's endocrine health. 

And what my team and I have done is we've actually taken years of my own self experimentation, years of research, every possible literature and study we could find, and we've condensed it into a simple three to four-hour program that you can follow along and make simple, safe, and easy adjustments to your lifestyle to improve your endocrine health. Now, as listeners of this podcast, you can get a very special discount by visiting jle.vi/t. That's jle.vi, just like my name slash T for testosterone.

Greetings, SuperFriends and welcome to today's show. Now, before we get started, I want to let you guys know about a wonderful, wonderful review that came in from redfoot333 in the US of A who titled his review or her review really enjoyable and inspiring.

And went on to say, this podcast has a ton of wonderful interviews. I especially enjoyed the one about the professional juggler. Since then I've been practicing a lot. It really does work as a great mind and body connection meditation. Thank you so much redfoot for your review and to everyone out there in the audience listening.

If you haven't left a review, please take a moment to do so. It really, really helps us out and brightens our day. Onto today's show. Today, you guys, we are joined by one of the most respected health and wellness experts on the planet, and actually one of the experts, that the experts themselves turn to. Our guest today is the founder of the Ultra Wellness Center.

The medical director at Cleveland Clinic Center for functional medicine. And a 10 time that's ten one zero time, New York Times bestselling author of books like Eat Fat, Get Thin, Blood Sugar Solution, and the 10 Day Detox Diet. He's the medical advisor to both Bill and Hillary Clinton, as well as the medical editor at the Huffington Post.

And he's been on just about every publication that you can think of from Ted to NPR, to CNN and more. Now, in this episode, you guys, we talk about diet. We talk about nutrition. We talk about supplementation and we talk about why over 70% of people are much less healthy than they can and should be. Now I have to tell you, we do get pretty sciency. 

And so I'm sure you guys are going to learn quite a bit about your bodies and what they need and how they work. Now, just a quick apology for the audio quality as you'll learn, my guest was away from the office. And so we had to make, do with a cellular connection. And as you can probably hear there's a concert going on outside of my apartment. 

But all in all, I think our audio editor has done a fantastic job, cleaning things up and stitching them together. So I know you're not going to miss a beat. So without any further ado, let me present to you, Dr. Mark Hyman.

Dr. Hyman welcome to the show today. I'm so excited that we finally got a chance to chat with you. 

Dr. Mark Hyman: I'm so glad to be here, Jonathan. 

Jonathan Levi: Yeah. You know, I have to admit that, uh, I've heard so, so much about you. Your name is one of those that seems to come up time and time again, really with some of the people that I most respect in the industry, the guys like Dr. Kirk Parsley, the guys like Robb Wolf. 

So I've been dying to ask you and I haven't heard you speak about it publicly anywhere else. How did you get to where you are today? I mean, you're the expert that experts go to. So tell me a little bit about your journey. 

Dr. Mark Hyman: It wouldn't be something I would wish on my worst enemy. Actually, because I got terribly ill and had to reverse engineer my biologies so that I could get better.

And in the process discovered a whole field of inquiry called functional medicine, which, is about describing the nature of how the body works. What is the science of creating health? How does disease occur? What are the root causes? How is the body assist them? How do we deal with the system, not just the symptoms.

How do we deal with a cause, not just the symptoms. And in that process, I really uncovered this whole world and got myself better and sort of working with tens of thousands of patients. And I began to realize that this was the world's best kept secret. I just was passionate about getting the word out and writing books and speaking and talking and writing blogs and just sharing, because I think there are so many people who suffer needlessly when we really have solutions to common problems that people have.

And for me, it makes me angry to be honest with you. And this is why I sort of have been so driven to actually tell the story about functional medicine and how we can get better from so many of the things that people suffer from needlessly. 

Jonathan Levi: Wow. So there's a lot to unpack there. I first want to ask, do you mind if I ask what your affliction was, what were you suffering from?

Dr. Mark Hyman: Well, nobody could actually tell me, but it was, you know, basically Chronic fatigue syndrome. I had severe fatigue, severe muscle pain. My muscle enzymes were very elevated, indicating muscle damage. My liver function tests for elevator. I had auto-immune anybodies. My white count was down. I developed severe cognitive impairment and I couldn't sleep.

Wow. I had, um, iterative focus or. I had to rashes and sores all over my body. I couldn't eat anything without my stomach flowing up. I had diarrhea for years. Wow. Terrible digestive issues. So basically every single system in the body, my hormones got wacky. Every system in the body went awry. And so I began thinking I had to learn inside out what happened to people when things go bad.

And I ended up figuring out that I had mercury poisoning and that was the driver behind so much of this. And, you know, there are many people who have similar symptoms may not be mercury. So the whole idea is that because you know, the name of your disease doesn't mean, you know, what's wrong with you or the cause. The name is just the name

we get to people who share a group of symptoms, but they have multiple causes. So for me it was mercury, but for many others it can do things like or mold or, it can be gut infections or food sensitivities or gluten. So usually functional medicine is really a GPS system for navigating to the root cause.

Jonathan Levi: Okay. So tell me a little bit about functional medicine. I have to admit, I haven't heard about it before. How does it differ from kind of other methods of navigating through health problems? 

Dr. Mark Hyman: Well, you know, I'm a trained physician regular MD doctor. Went to medical school and I learned that the body's organ into these organ system.

And you've got cardiovascular system, neurologic system, gastrointestinal system, all these different systems. And you've got specialists for every organ, right? The truth is though the body is not organized that way. That's just an artifact of medical history, where someone has a head pain, they go to the head doctor, they go stomach pain.

They go to the stomach doctor. They get a joint pain, they go to the joint doctor. They've got skin problem, they go to the skin doctor. But your skin problems may be coming from your gut flora. You know, your neurologic problems, maybe also coming from your gut flora. So you have to really rethink the whole model of diagnosis to be based on, cause not on symptom.

Our basic diagnostic system is based on tell me what symptoms you have, I'll put you in a group based on those symptoms. But let me give an example. So let's say someone comes in and they're hopeless, helpless, they're sad, they have no interest in life. They don't have any interested in sex or eating.

Can't sleep, feel suicidal at times. And the diagnosis, is what?

Jonathan Levi: Depression?

Dr. Mark Hyman: Clinical depression, right? At any doctor go, you have depression. That's what's causing your symptoms. Depression is not the cause of those symptoms. It's the name of those symptoms, right? And they go, well, I know what you need. You need an antidepressant.

So basically it's called the name it, blame it, entertainment game. We named the disease. We blame the name for the problem. And then we came in with a drug, whereas depression might be caused by eating gluten. Causes autoimmune thyroid disease that leads to low fire's function and depression. It could be because you've been eating a bad diet or you have a bacteria growing in your stomach that causes reflux and heartburn, and you could be taking an acid blocker for 10 years and have B12 deficiency, or it can be, cause you live in Seattle, the vitamin D deficiency, or because you've taken antibiotics and it alters your gut flora that changes your brain chemistry and leads a depression or because you love sushi and have mercury poisoning or because you hate fish, never will make a three deficiency here because you have pre-diabetes and in some resistance, cause you like teeth cinnabuns and sugar and all those things can cause depression.

Wow. It just because you know the name of what's wrong with you doesn't mean, you know how to fix it or what the causes. And it's functional medicine is a way of navigating that the cost. And similarly you can have one, cause it can cause many diseases. So for example, gluten or celiac disease has been known to cause over 55 different diseases from schizophrenia to osteoporosis, to rheumatoid arthritis, to depression, to autism.

So we really have to rethink our whole diagnostic model and functional medicine is a system of thinking. And analyzing the bodies and system and then treating the root causes by creating balance. And that system is really pretty simple. You take out the things that create imbalance and you put in the things that create balance and you'd get rid of the bad stuff putting the good stuff in the body has a natural capacity to reset. 

Jonathan Levi: That sounds fantastic. So, Dr. Hyman, you mentioned earlier a lot of people that needlessly suffer and I wanted to ask you kind of a general question, which is you've dealt with thousands, if not tens of thousands of patients on a scale of one to 10, how healthy would you say the average westerner is today?

Dr. Mark Hyman: Well, considering that 70% of Americans are overweight and one and two of us have a chronic disease. I would say our health is terrible. Right. It's probably the worst in human history, in fact. I mean, we're living longer, but it's often because of sanitation and lack of infectious disease. And also because we have better rescue techniques to save people like cardiac bypasses, chemotherapy, and no insulin drugs to help people.

But the actual burden of disease is just astronomical. 

Jonathan Levi: Right. And I gather, I mean, just from assessing the titles of your books and also the way that you put it, you know, take out good stuff, put in good stuff. I would assume that you consider diet and nutrition to be pretty much the biggest, lowest hanging fruit when it comes to improving health.

Would you agree? 

Dr. Mark Hyman: Yeah, I think, you know, people don't really understand what food is. And I think they think it's, Oh, it's nourishment, it's calories, it's pleasure, it's energy. But actually is so much more than that. It's actually information or instructions. And it's the single biggest thing you do every day to modify your biology.

Not over decades, not over months or uh, weeks, but literally over days or minutes where we can modify our gene expression, our hormones, our immune system, our gut flora, our brain chemistry by what we're eating in the moment. And if you don't understand how to use food as medicine, it can be quite dangerous.

And I think has really the root of so much disease in America.

Jonathan Levi: Absolutely. I was recently talking to a friend who insisted that because of genetics and because of his gut flora and whatnot, that even if he ate the way I do and he exercised the way I do that he would never be as fit or be as strong. And I tried to convince him this whole thing that, you know, gut flora is dynamic and gene expression is dynamic and just, it frustrates the heck out of me when people don't understand that they have the power to influence the way that their body executes.

Dr. Mark Hyman: Exactly. Exactly. And I think that's what I think I urge people to do more. I will write books like the 10 Day Detox Diet, because I want people to see in 10 days you can literally use food to transform your health. And it doesn't just make you lose weight, which is a side effect. I don't know, it's not even the main purpose.

It's really about, making the connection between what you eat and how you feel. So people don't know that their anxiety or their palpitations or their insomnia or their irritable bowel or their post-nasal drip or their fatigue or their muscle ache, or what I call FLC syndrome. When you feel like crap, it's related to what they're eating or migraines or depression.

I mean, it's you know, we had 600 people do this program online and we had a 62% reduction and all symptoms from all diseases. That means when you take a score of all these symptoms and you grade them about zero to four and severity and frequency, you see that there's a 62% reduction, right? There's no drug on the planet that can reduce all symptoms from all diseases by 62% in 10 days.

It's a miracle, really, but it's not really when you understand the way the body works and how to use food as a lever. 

Jonathan Levi: Absolutely. And it seems like, you know, the other 38% or 37 of the other 38% probably could have been alleviated by sleeping properly. If I've learned anything in doing this podcast, it's diet and sleep are 90% of the problem.

Dr. Mark Hyman: It wasn't that the 38% had no benefit that there was a reduction in the overall symptoms by 62. Wow. So most all had reductions, but the average reduction was 62%. Meaning some people had a 90% reduction. So we will had a 10% reductions. We will have 15% by the average reduction was 62%. 

Jonathan Levi: That's incredible. So I have to ask then, what is the dietary regimen that you endorsed both in studies like this and in your books? 

Dr. Mark Hyman: Well, you know, I conference not too long ago. And I was sitting in between two friends of mine who were doctors, the cardiologists was a vegan. And the other one was a paleo physician and I was sort of in the middle.

I'm like, you know, you guys, I must be a pig. And if you're a paleo and vegan, because I was somewhere in the middle. Right. And I realized, you know, what we have in common is far more than we have differences in terms of what people agree about healthy eating. There's no big arguments here. Right? So everybody realized we shouldn't be eating processed food, junk food.

I said, there's no such thing as junk food. There's and there's food, right? I think we really should be eating food that's free additives and chemicals. That's low-glycemic everybody agrees that we shouldn't be eating lots of sugar and flour and refined foods, and everybody agrees we should be eating trans fat.

Everybody agrees we should be trying to minimize our exposure to hormones and pesticides. And we should be probably not wildly you know on regulated amounts of GMO, because there may be some issues around that. Certainly, how did we raise where they also agree as we shall be eating lots of vegetables and that should be the predominant form of our diet should be eating a lot of vegetables and that we can eat a whole grains and beans and and nuts and seeds and, and then, you know, things start to separate a little bit, right? 

So those were everybody kind of agrees with that. I mean, there are paleo folks are like, well, no beans or grains, but I think everybody agrees a dairy is probably not that healthy for us despite the government's recommendations.

So, and then there's, you know, eating animal foods, we should be eating ones that are humanely raised that are sustainably raised that are ideally grass fed, which has better profiles of Omega three and nutrients that are putting less burden on the environment and less traumatic to the animals and how they're raised.

So everybody kind of agrees on that and agrees with the fish. We should be eating fish from sustainable fisheries or sustainable farms, fish farms that we should be eating low on the food chain that we should be not having a lot of mercury containing fish. So those are all things that we agree on. I think, you know, everybody

um, understands that a healthy diet is essentially one that's a whole foods, real diet and real food. Yeah, I sort of, I sort of joke because I created this program with my two colleagues of, with Janie Ali, Daniel Amen and Rick Warren at Saddleback Church in California, where we got 15,000 people to lose a quarter million pounds.

I started got up on stage and I'm like, it's really simple. Food is really simple. And think about what you're eating. If man-made it, leave it. If God made it, eat it. Did God make a Twinkie. No. Did God make an avocado, yeah. It's something even a kindergarten kid could understand, right. And I think those are really simple principles about healthy eating.

We need the right fats and the there's a crew out there that's saying fat is bad and we should be eating very low fat, but I don't think the literature supports that anymore. I think the evidence is pretty strong. In fact, your own government, which is pretty conservative has finally eliminated any of the restrictions on dietary fat.

I think they've eliminated restrictions on cholesterol. So they're saying eat whole eggs. I think, you know, all of that's moving in the right direction. 

Jonathan Levi: Right. Absolutely. So then I take it, your take on meat is God made it. Let's eat it. Your take on dairy, God kinda made it, but not the way that we eat it.

You know, if it didn't come from your mother, it's not your milk. What about grains though? Cause those are, as you said, hotly contested, God did make them, but seeds of grasses are not something we naturally eat. 

Dr. Mark Hyman: Right. So I think that I would like to come back to the meat question cause it's a bigger conversation if we have time, but with the grain, the grain issue is interesting.

I mean, if you look at the world's population, a lot of the world's population eats grain and does okay. I think a lot of the world's population eat beans and do okay. I think that the real issue is what is the quality of what you're eating. If it's a highly refined, you know, grain, then no, it's not okay.

Right. If it's whole grain and if it's potentially even more of an heirloom type grain, which has much higher nutrient density, less likely to have allergens. For example, even if you eat whole wheat, if it's a dwarf wheat has gotten much higher content of, um, Amylopectin A, which is a superstars that raises your blood sugar more than table sugar.

It has extra and proteins, which are more likely to cause for immunity and inflammation, even if it's quote whole wheat. And I think, you know, I would say eat weird food. You know, like I got a vegetables from Greece is sort of a weed, but it's very high in omega-3 fats or, you know, I get black rice instead of brown rice

or white rice, which is more like the blueberries of rice, it's more phytonutrient dense and there's lower glycemic index. Quinoa or white rice or other grains buckwheat, which are kind of weird foods that actually may be fine. Now, if you're diabetic or you have autoimmune disease, or you have digestive issues, like irritable bowel or bacterial overgrowth.

Then they might not be able to tolerate a lot of grains or beans. And I think most people shouldn't be eating two cups of rice a day because that's going to lead to higher levels of insulin. And I think the key to healthy aging and disease in general is to keep insulin levels really low. And the only way to do that is a very low-glycemic diet.

And if you're eating a lot of starch, it can be a problem. I've met, you know, many patients who were falling Dr. Esselstyn program, which is extremely low fat, very high carb. And they actually are in some resistant and their triglycerides are high. Their HDLs are low. They're having problems with diabetes.

One woman said she had a heart attack, and then she wants to try the diet and diabetes wasn't able to control her blood sugars and needed more and more insulin. So I think, it should be sort of very careful about who we're recommending different programs to. It's very personalize. Right. 

Jonathan Levi: Tell me a little bit about meat.

Dr. Mark Hyman: You know if you research in my book Eat Fat, Get Thin.

I really took a deep dive because you know, I I'm concerned about what's the truth. What does the science tell us? What does it not tell us? You know, look at any particular study, you can find anything you want to convince you of anything you want. So I was like, what does the research say as a whole, what are the issues with the research and the quality of the research?

And the truth is that most epidemiologic research is what we use to look at food, which means we look at populations. We asked them with a survey or food frequency questionnaire, what they ate last week, once a year. And then we kind of correlate all that data with their outcomes and their health over many, many years. The studies are helpful, but they're not highly relevant in a sense that they can't really prove cause and effect. 

So if you see, let's say meat increases the risk of heart disease by 30%. Well, what does that actually mean? It means that there's a small increase in the correlation in this study of meat eaters and bad things. But if you look at the studies that really look, the correlation studies, it really showed significant impact, you've got lung cancer and smoking.

 One of those are also picked up to epidemiologic studies, but there was a thousand percent increase, not a you know, not a 30% increase, right? So you've got to see a magnitude of difference. That really makes sense. And most of the studies don't. And when you can see, for example, have their studies of half a million people where they found there was no difference in other studies of half-a-million where they there was a significant risk. 

And when you look, the studies that showed a significant risk, the meat eaters were unhealthy group. In other words, if you look at the culture and say, well, what is, what is the healthy behavior? Well, people who are wanting to do the healthy behaviors are wanting to stay healthy and do her learning.

They're exercising. They're eating generally that's more fruits and vegetables. And their weights more normal and they're not eating meat. Because meat's supposed to be bad for you. Right? Right. So meat eaters, on the other hand, they ate 800 calories more a day, they smoked more, they drank more, they ate less fruits and vegetables, they exercise less and they didn't take vitamins. Well, of course they weren't going to have my heart disease and cancer and everything else. Cause they were just super unhealthy. So when you looked at meat eaters and vegetarians who shopped at health food stores, and they've done this study with 11,000 people.

It was a lot very interesting study. They found that there was absolutely no difference between the groups. They both, in fact, when you eat meat in the context of a healthy diet, or if you're vegetarian, the risk of death goes down in both those groups because they're not eating crap and they're eating healthy food and doesn't matter of eating meat or not eating meat, this thing at the same benefit.

And then I think there's, you know, the environmental issues, which are real. Which I think are important to note. And I think that pollutes our aquifers, pollutes our waterways, depletes our soils, contributes to global warming, increases you know, use of fossil fuels. One fifth of all fossil fuels are used for growing vegetables and for human and animal consumption.

So I think that, I mean, basically growing food, industrial agriculture. So I think we have to be very smart about what quality of animal food we're eating. But I think, you know, if you feed live beef has, for example, more inflammatory components and less Omega three fats than grass fed beef. So there's, there's a lot of nuances, but I think that, you know, if there's a more or religious reason, you don't want to eat meat, that's fine.

If it's a health reason, I don't think there's a lot of ground to stand on. And I think, you know, for the environmental reasons, we need to be smart about what kind we're eating. And I think based on my take of it all. You know, we used to binge on Buffalo, but we never binged on sheet cakes or grains before historically.

And I think we have to sort of get some, but actually when everybody's right, why don't we, we need protein, we need good quality protein. And I think, you know, there's a challenge in just some of the population demand and pressure, but strictly from a medical point of view, I don't think that there's really an argument for saying that meat is harmful. 

Jonathan Levi: I couldn't agree with you more. So it raises the question though, if it's not the grains per se, and it's not the fat in meat, then what is the real culprit of obesity and inflammation and disease in Western countries? 

Dr. Mark Hyman: Well, that's an easy question to answer. It's our high-glycemic, high sugar, high refined flour, processed diet.

And we now know that when you look at heart disease, cancer, diabetes are driven by a process called insulin resistance. Or it's a form of prediabetes in a sense it's where your body can't regulate your blood sugar and insulin very well. And you lose higher amounts of insulin when you eat anything that raises your blood sugar, whether it's sugar or star tree, and a lot of fruit, it actually causes a spike in insulin that creates a cascade that leads to fat storage around the belly that organ fat is the most dangerous fat, increase inflammation and causes your brain.

You shrink and cause dementia at least increases in cancer growth factors, and it creates inflammation throughout your body. 

Jonathan Levi: Boosts estrogen in men. 

Dr. Mark Hyman: Yeah it causes low testosterone in men and sexual dysfunction. It causes them to grow breasts and lose their hair on their body. This means they get the man boobs. So all that is a result of this high end cost infertility and depression.

And it's really the biggest driver of disease. So the volume we have now, at least to have 22 teaspoons a year. As a hunter gatherer, we luckily found some honey or something, right. And now we have about 22 teaspoons a day, or sometimes even 34 teaspoons if you're a kid. 150 pounds of sugar and 146 pounds of flour per person per year, that's about a pound a day of flour and sugar combined.

A pound a day. That's because it's an everything. So if you have salad dressing there's sugar. If you have barbecue sauce there's sugar. If you have bread, there's sugar in the bread. I mean, if you have everything and every kind of commercially produced food, it's full of it. And then you've got this sugar sweetened beverages. 

If you go to Starbucks and you have like a latte with some flavoring and whatever. I mean, it can be up to 700 calories of unbelievable sugar. 

Jonathan Levi: With no protein and no fiber to stymie that incredible a shock to the system. Exactly. Wow. So let me ask this, you mentioned earlier before about vitamins kind of in passing.

I always like to ask. What supplements do you think are advantageous for just about everyone in the audience? You know, everyone in the first three standards of deviation should take 

Dr. Mark Hyman: X. I was joking. I said, you know, I don't think anybody needs vitamins, but only under certain conditions. Only if you hunting, gather your own wild food only to drink pure, clean water.

Only if you sleep nine hours a night, have no stress are exposed to no environmental toxins and go to bed with the sun and wake up with the sun. If you follow those guidelines, then no, you don't. But I haven't met any human today. There may be a couple of them in the Bush, in Africa, but pretty much nobody else on the planet meets those criteria.

And I think if you look at the nutrient density of our Hunter gatherer diet or starving, if you look at the nutrient density of our diet, even a hundred years ago, compared to our current diet is just dramatically different. And I think we grow foods and depleted soils where you store them for long periods.

We transport them long distances. Pick one that are not ripe. 

Jonathan Levi: Right.

Dr. Mark Hyman: We throw strains that are hybridized actually that breed for certain qualities, but actually have less nutrients. We grow them in industrial, agricultural farms instead of organic farms, which have been shown to have far less nutrients.

So I think there's a lot of reasons we do need them, but I think the basic should be a multivitamin fish oil, vitamin D for everybody. And then I would probably add probiotics on top of that. And that's going to take care of most people. I think there are some other people who need special B vitamins, like methylation factors, maybe more magnesium depending on our life and our diet, but magnesium is a common nutrient deficiency.

So the things that are most common nutrient deficiencies in our culture, vitamin D, omega-3 fats, zinc, magnesium, even things like iron for many people and increasingly iodine because, uh, we all have gone over to the, you know, all the heirlooms salts and the sea salt and the, this salt, and we're not being Morton's iodized salt anymore, you know?

Jonathan Levi: Well, I have to say, I'm really glad to hear you say all that because except for the iodine, if I look across the room, you basically just named everything that's sitting on my desk except for creatine. So switch for creatine and think I'm doing okay. Any multivitamin you personally recommend or take? 

Dr. Mark Hyman: No, there are some good companies.

I think, you know, they who make good products. And I think, you know, I tend to use ones that are where the companies have done their due diligence. Personally, raw materials testing for purity and potency who are fanatic about third-party testing so that it says, you know, a hundred milligrams in the bottle of magnesium glycinate.

That's actually what's in the bottle because there's no regulations to demand that the companies actually do that. So I use pure Encapsulations I'll use thorn I'll use Xymogen Metagenics. These are professional brands that do a little more due diligence and hard work.

Jonathan Levi: Fantastic. On the topic of research, I want to ask you a slightly controversial question actually saw in my kind of prep for the interview that you asserted in 2011, the link between MMR vaccine and autism.

And I've always been curious about this, cause I know it's a really huge public debate. I've never actually looked into it myself. So tell me a little bit about that whole thing. 

Dr. Mark Hyman: Well, I think autism is a complex disease with complex causes and there's no one single factor that accounts for the rise. I think it's a, it's a, um, and I'll just list off quickly. And then we'll jump into the vaccination story. It's a result of changes in our environment because we have not changed our genetics much in 20,000 years, but we change our environment. So increasing environmental chemical load, having metal load the use of C-section.

Addicts in kids. The poor quality of our diet increases in the stresses, all leading to severe immune and gut dysfunction. And these kids that lead to them, to this brain dysfunction. And one of the factors that can contribute is heavy metals and feeding vaccines that contained by Marisol were quite in heavy use and unregulated in.

Really, I wrote a book with Bobby Kennedy on this called Thimerosal: Let The Science Speak. And really reviewed over 900 papers, looking at the link between Thimerosal, mercury and neurodegenerative or neurologic or neuro developmental issues. And we saw tremendous data to support that there's at least a reasonable threat, if not a very, very strong case where a threat.

So I think that's sort of one group. And I think most of the mercury was taken out of vaccines around 2001, when the CDC and the FDA realize that, Oh, wait a minute. You know, we're recommending this increasing vaccination schedule, but she added up all the mercury doses. If you're giving kids these vaccination schedules. The second is NMR, you mentioned.

And I think, and a lot of immunological issues with these kids and you're giving them live viruses. They can actually create inflammatory responses. There's been some work by Dr. Wakefield. Although many have tried to discredit him. I think it's pretty solid work. And I know a lot of the background around it, and there's also been some interesting data from the CDC that was suppressed for many years, has recently been published, showing the increasing risks going there, particularly some populations like African Americans who would MMR have much higher likely risk of having autism.

A lot of this was suppressed by the CDC. Bill Thompson has been a whistleblower for the CDC now. I mean when it's really, you still frightened because of, you know, a lot of the push back on all that. But I think it's a pretty exciting time. There's a movie that was recently came out that was called Trace Amounts about a lot of these issues.

And then backs is another one that came out. It was a lot of times they do highlight some issues. And I think, you know, it's a very simple question. I mean, do you want to give a baby a known neurotoxin, when you can use another substance, even if we don't know for sure that it's a problem, like it just would you want to inject mercury into your daughter or son or your grandson or granddaughter if you had another alternative to prevent infections and there is alternatives.

So I think that's really the issue. 

Jonathan Levi: I see. Okay. So as a whole, you're not against vaccination, it's specific ingredients and specific vaccinations that are cause for concern. 

Dr. Mark Hyman: Yeah. And it's also the schedule of vaccines and number of vaccines. It's timing. I mean, it's just, there's no reason we need to give, like the average kid born in America, hepatitis B vaccine, which is a sexually transmitted or IV, drug transmitted disease.

You know, these kids are not using IV, drugs and are not having sex. And if you can give them the vaccines later, I mean, I gave my kids vaccines when they were older, but I think we just need to be smart about what we're doing. 

Jonathan Levi: Absolutely. Let me change gears, Dr. Hyman and ask you about the Ultra Wellness Center and what it does.

I know you've written a lot of books. That's clearly only a part of what you're doing. So tell me about ultra wellness. 

Dr. Mark Hyman: Well, I developed the Ultra Wellness Center about 12 years ago, which was a functional medicine center for practitioners and nutritionists, for nurses and health. Which is an extraordinary team that sees people from all around the world, dealing with chronic wheel people, using functional medicine.

And then as a result of that, I also developed a program at Cleveland Clinic called the Center for Functional Medicine, where we have now built a whole program at Cleveland Clinic of Functional Medicine, which is, it's really scaling up tremendously. We have 2000 people on the waiting list or building an 18,000 square foot space there.

We're transforming the culture and helping them think about differently about this whole area. So it's quite amazing. 

Jonathan Levi: Brilliant. And the goal is to kind of change this shoot from the hip compartmentalized culture of medicine. If I understand correctly. 

Dr. Mark Hyman: Yeah. It's to really take us forward to a new way of thinking about disease, dealing with chronic illness based on this model of getting to the root causes.

So that's really the goal. It's something I think we can, we can do and do effectively.

Jonathan Levi: Let me ask you a really tough question. You know, given how much you've already accomplished, what is your kind of big, hairy, audacious goal? What is it that's driving you?

Dr. Mark Hyman: I want to see functional medicine scale. I want to, you know, work on addressing the need to use the science of a functional medicine to treat chronic disease or model, and also to change our social network, to support health. So really to use the power of functional medicine to create health and the power of social networks to drive behavior change. And combine those two things and in a scalable model that we can deploy in communities or online to really help deal with this chronic disease epidemic.

I love it. I'll sit decentralize and democratize healthcare by empowering people with the tools and knowledge and information. They need to really get healthy. 

Jonathan Levi: I love it. I love it. And I can see why you work so hard because that's such a worthy goal. I mean, anyone in the audience who's ever had someone not even just become sick, but have something kind of offer Ari and be bounced from doctor to doctor, to doctor and be told 20 different times your problem isn't with me, I'm going to refer you to a specialist and have this endless line of specialists understands how important it is, what you're doing.

So I really want to commend you on that. Thank you. I want to ask you Dr. Hyman. We love, love, love, love to assign homework at the Becoming SuperHuman podcast, something for our audience to do while they wait for next week's episode. So could you think of one homework assignment for this week, whether it's, you know, an elimination diet or trying out a new supplement, picking something up at the store or reading an article?

Dr. Mark Hyman: Well, you know, if you have seven days, the most powerful thing you can do is to do something like the 10 Day Detox Diet, because I can talk all day long about the science and the research and the information and the knowledge. At the end of the day, none of that matters. What matters is that you have an experience, a felt experience

of what it feels like to change your biology quickly and dramatically by using the power of food and some simple lifestyle techniques to help transform your health. I don't think most people realize how close they are to feeling good. And in a few days, people can actually reset and start to feel good.

Jonathan Levi: Brilliant. And I wanted to ask you another question, which is given that you're the expert that so many experts turn to, which experts do you in turn respect the most in the industry and which ones do you turn to with the head-scratching questions? 

Dr. Mark Hyman: Well, my mentor, Dr. Jeffrey Bland is probably the top dude I go to, he's one of the most brilliant scientists and thinkers ever. I go to Sydney. It was, again, my mentor in front of the grandfathers of functional medicine. And actually there are some people who are outside of medicine, who I think are really brilliant and exploring the boundaries of human experience and caliph and people like Dave Asprey, who really sort of pushing the envelope.

He's not always right, but he's, he's asking the right questions. So, and he admits it. He's like, I'm not a doctor. I'm just straight trying to figure this out. And I'm like, yeah, but you did a good job. 

Jonathan Levi: Wow. That's a huge endorsement for Dave. 

Dr. Mark Hyman: So, yeah, I've spent a lot of time with him and had many deep conversations, so very, very cool.

Jonathan Levi: Couple of questions to wrap up here, Dr. Hyman, one of them is if people want to learn more about what you're doing, get in touch with you or anything like that, where should we send them? 

Dr. Mark Hyman: Oh, well they can go to my website, drhyman.com and sign up for my weekly house call. I'll answer questions, and do a little video blog.

And then, um, also Eat Fat, Get Thin. Go to eatfatgetthin.com and get a free Q and A video, a 45 minute Q and A on fat and also free sneak preview of my book and lots of other great resources. 

Jonathan Levi: Fantastic. And we'll make sure to put links to all that stuff into the blog post. I want to ask you before I ask our closing question that we always ask at the end of every episode, I'm sure our audience has noticed we've had a little bit of a spotty connection.

You mentioned that where you are, has no internet. I'm like dying of curiosity to know if you're on a ranch somewhere, reconnecting with nature. 

Dr. Mark Hyman: No, I'm actually at my mother's house and I don't know the password to our internet network. 

Jonathan Levi: Okay. All right. Well, not as glorious as I imagined, but I think family time is very important none the less. Yeah that's one. Dr. Hyman let me ask you the closing question here. If people take away one lesson from today's episode and they remember it for the rest of their lives, what would you hope for that lesson to be? 

Dr. Mark Hyman: You have the power every moment to transform your health and wellbeing. You learn some basic, simple care techniques for your body to really radically transform your health.

Jonathan Levi: Fantastic. That's a wonderful note to close on. And so emblematic of everything that we're trying to share on the show every single week. So Dr. Hyman, I want to thank you so, so much for making the time, taking time away from family to, uh, chat with me today and share your wisdom with our audience.

Dr. Mark Hyman: It's my pleasure.

Jonathan Levi: Awesome. So let's do keep in touch and take care.

Dr. Mark Hyman: Take care. 

Jonathan Levi: All right Superfriends, that's it for this week's episode, we hope you really, really enjoyed it and learn a ton of applicable stuff that can help you go out there and overcome the impossible.

If so, please do us a favor and leave us a review on iTunes or Stitcher, or however you found this podcast. In addition to that, we are. Always looking for great guest posts on the blog or awesome guests right here on the podcast. So if you know somebody or you are somebody, or you have thought of somebody who would be a great fit for the show or for our blog, please reach out to us either on Twitter or by email our email is info@becomingasuperhuman.com. Thanks so much. 

Closing: Thanks for tuning in to the Becoming Superhuman Podcast. For more great skills and strategies, or for links to any of the resources mentioned in this episode, visit www.becomingasuperhuman.com/podcast. We'll see you next time