How to Get Your Health Back on Track - ENCORE

Coming up on this episode of the Dr. Hyman Show. It's such an essential part of longevity and of health in general and just of enjoying life. It's not about doing it now for some result later. It makes you feel better now. Before we go, the holidays are supposed to be joyful, but for many of us, they're stressful. Between travel, family, busy schedules, and late nights, our bodies burn through magnesium past. Magnesium is responsible for over 600 processes in the body, including sleep, muscle relaxation, mood, and stress response. Most of us are deficient without even knowing it. That's why I take magnesium breakthrough from bioptimizers. It has all seven essential forms of magnesium in one capsule, so your body can actually absorb and use it. This holiday season, give your body what it needs to feel calm and sleep better. Visit bioptimizers.com slash Hyman and use code Hyman to say 15%. If you jump into today's episode, I want to share a few ways you can go deeper on your health journey. While I wish I could work with everyone one-on-one, there just isn't enough time in the day, so I've built several tools to help you take control of your health. If you're looking for guidance, education, and community, check out my private membership, The Hyman Hive, for live Q&A's exclusive content and direct connection. For real-time lab testing and personalized insights into your biology, visit FunctionHealth. You can also explore my curated Dr. Trusted Supplements and Health products at Drhyman.com. And if you prefer to listen without any breaks, don't forget you can enjoy every episode of this podcast, Add Free with Hyman Plus. Just open Apple podcasts and tap Try Free to start your seven-day free trial. I do this personally regularly. I do it at least two or three times a year, four times a year, and I really reset my system to kind of get my body back on track, to get rid of all the bad stuff, put in all the good stuff. Now I want to walk you through how to do this. I'm going to teach you how to get the reset button, reboot your system and to optimize your biology to help your gut, to help your detox system, to help your immune system, to help reset your nervous system, and it's powerful. So if you want to really see how your body can feel, and get rid of what we call FLC syndrome, I would do this. Most people are like the frog, it's in cold water where you turn the heat up slowly and it starts to boil to death. We just kind of get used to it and think it's normal. These symptoms are not normal. So one of the principles, one of the foundational killers of the Tending Units program, and what can you do now? Basically anybody can do this. People go, not that. I want to do this with a junior high school once, and the teachers are like, well, we might have to get permission from the parents to see if it's safe. Maybe they don't want their children doing this. Like what is it safe to eat fruits and vegetables and nuts and seeds and protein and cut out sugar and starch and processed food? I mean, they should get a note that it's permission to eat the junk food that they have in school. Maybe opposite. I don't know yet, very safe. Anybody can do this. And some people might need more certain things, but basically this is a very universal approach to resetting your system. So one of the first principles of first pillar is eat real food, real whole food. Understood the food is medicine. It's not just energy or calories. It's truly medicine. It's information, it's instructions, it's code. The learning program is your biology with every bite. It regulates your gene expression, your hormones, your brain chemistry, your immune system, your microbiome. Pretty much everything is controlled by food. And if you're eating a wrong food, you're sending all the wrong messages to be the right food, you're today the right medicine. So there's a 10 day detox. You're basically taking me out the bad stuff and putting it into the stomach. You're taking all the foods that cause inflammation that are toxic to your system that are inflammatory and mess with your gut. And you're putting in foods that actually help reset your system. It is pretty much a very simple approach. It's lots of veggies, so mostly veggies. Lots of good fats, lots of fiber, lots of good clean protein. And what does that look like? It's tons of non-star-cheese veggies, like broccoli, any kind of veggies, think up, it's not a basic potato. Yes, no. No, sometimes you behave like a neighbor of people. I'm a cow, almost good shots, I'm a cow, it's olive oil, nuts and seeds, lots of good protein, grass, vet, organic, regenerative meat, fish chicken, sometimes from vegetarians we can vegans, plant-based proteins like tempeh or non-jimo or organic soy, tofu. Those are the most dense source of protein, but you do need protein as you detoxify. So for the 10 days, you're gonna be getting it all the way there, just right processed food, other carbs, sugar, dairy, coffee, gluten, alcohol, actually all grains and beans. And the reason we get rid of these is that a lot of people have issues. A lot of people have issues with their gut, a lot of people have issues with inflammation, a lot of people have issues with gluten, a lot of people have issues with inflammation, a lot of people have issues with gluten, a lot of people have issues with, in some resistance and pre-diameteries, and obesity, and they can be problematic for these people. So basically get off all the bad stuff. Now, it's not calorie-counter, you can eat as much as you want. Well, like crazy, well, how much macronutrients and percent of this and percent of that. Now, it's just pick the right foods, and we focus on what to eat. You don't have to focus on how much to eat, right? So when you look at your plans, you basically look like this. Three quarters of it should be not start to eat veggies. And I use optimal, put two or three veggies in my dinner. I'll make mushrooms, I'll have a broccoli, I'll make some, maybe a salad, so I have lots of veggies. And I'll have a portion of protein that's essentially other sides of my palm. Four to six ounces, which is really 30 to 40 grams of protein. Now, it's a good amount of protein, but you don't need that much if you're having an all protein. It should be rigged in, it should be raised, should be pasture raised, chicken, wild caught fish, should be low mercury, obviously all that. And we'll put all that show notes, lots of good fats with dinner, like avocados, that's the seeds, olive oil and your veggies. You can even use, for example, ghee, which is a kind of butter, but it actually has the inflammatory proteins remove casing weight. So basically it has just the fat, it's called clarified butter. Very common, you can get my book, Indian Talks Diet, you can get the 10 Indian Talks Diet cookbook, whatever you want, but all that show notes and links together. A second pillar, aside from which the food is really important. And then by the needy approaching the morning, you need to make sure you get a sugar starch in the morning, super important. The milk will start their diet, their day with carbs, which is the worst thing you can do, with sugar, sweet and coffee, and steas, cereals, muffins, bagels, breads, donuts. Second pillar, are your daily habits. This is how you eat and live, they put your body back in rhythm, it helps you reset your nervous system. And there's two really important habits as part of the 10 Indian Talks. One is when you eat and also when you sleep. So let's talk about when you eat. Now, when you eat might be as important as what you eat. So many of us don't eat in the right pattern. We tend to eat all day long, we tend to snack, we tend to eat before bed, we stack late at night, it's kind of bad. So basically when you eat is very important. Research shows that doing that can really be bad for your health, eat at night. So the first is make sure you give yourself at least 12 to 14 hours between dinner and breakfast. So dinner is six, breakfast is eight, that's a 14 hour fat. Okay, if you eat at six and then you keep snacking all night, that doesn't happen, right? And it's the most simple form we call it time-art-tricted eating. And it's basically giving your body a rest and giving the body to reset. And I wrote a lot about this in my book, the eating forever, but basically there's all the process that night can happen, it's a lot of top of G and clean after repair, you want to eat your body, the ability to do that. So the next is food. Now you can do a breakfast if you're eating, for example, there are six and breakfast at eight or so, that's important or fast, really important to have protein in the morning or not carbs and sugar. Also not eating three hours before bed, really important. So most people eat that after dinner, don't do that. Have at least three hours, I mean, eat and you go to sleep. That way you will lose weight, your body can repair, heal, if they're trying to digest and store the food. Here's a full-south list. We're gonna have it in the show notes, you're gonna take it with you to the store. It's in the book, the 1080 talks, 1080 talks, cookbook, essentially. Here's what you should eat and what you should actually get rid of. What you should eat is protein, you need to write protein, right? So grass, fat or a generally raised meat is great. You can have a papter, a lamb, beef, bison, venison, elk, grass, a beef, a pastry, chicken, turkey, duck, all that's fine. What you should avoid is convention rates, chicken, poultry and eggs and so forth. And by the way, you can also have eggs that are past-rate eggs. Meat, get rid of all processed meats, deli meats, all convention rates, feed lot meats, get rid of all that stuff. But by fish, it's seafood. Lots of small fish are good, big fish are bad, right? Big fish are like, start fish, tuna, tell you the sea bass, halibut, most farm-raged fish are pretty bad for you. What you should be consuming are things like the, what I call this match fish, a small wild salmon, start beans, anchovies, herring, a macro, you can black cod, shrimp, scallop, trout, all of their finds. Eggs, as I said, pastries are fine, not organic, regular eggs are not fine. What about nuts and seeds? Very important. Almonds, basil nuts, cashew nuts, hazelnuts, macadamia, pea can, pine nuts, pistachios, walnuts, all that's great. You can even count the count-ins, chocolate, chocolate, butchered chocolate comes from. Seeds are great, chia seeds, flax seeds, hemp seeds, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, all great. Nut butters also great. So unsweetened nut butters, so almond, cashew, pea can, macadamia, a macadamia, walnut, all that's great. You also eat beans if they're European, and you want to do this, you can use GMO 3 or non-chimato-food or tempeh, it's your protein. What you should avoid are nuts there, with sugar, they're cooked in oils that are basically candy stuff. A lot of nut butters have sugar, I draw junior stats. Peanut butter, peanuts can be okay, but I wouldn't say mostly avoid peanuts because they have afotox in the offender rinse, and so you want to be careful with that. In about oils and fats, well, what you want to use are organic avocado oil. You can use organic coconut oil, for cooking grass, fengi. If you want to use talo, lard, duck fat, chicken fat, that's okay as long as they're your pastures or originally raised for salads, and you can use different kinds of oils, like almond oil, flax oil, hemp oil, macadamia oil, and for all of oil. And you can cook with olive oil, but only like tomato sauces and things like that. Things are not high-eat sesame oil, the ee is great as well, great fat. Sesame seeds kind of paste while they're in oil. They're flavorful oils, they're not meat. Well, but you want to avoid the traditional oils, while the seed oil is like, can do oil, partially hydrogen, oil is margarine, peanut oil, soybean oil, sunflower oil, saffron oil, commence fats, vegetable oil, vegetable shortening, all that stuff's bad. What about veggies? What should you need? Well, you want to stick with a lot of the other sergey veggies, or orange chokes. I can get it if you can. I use the dirty dozen guide from the Environmental Working Group, www.wg.org. Tell you which of the clean 15, meaning you can eat in the not-organic, where the dirty dozen, which you definitely not eat if they're not organic. But I love a sparing-ass artichokes, avocado, beans sprouts, broccoli, rustle sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, celery, cucumber, eggplant, garlic, ginger, hearts of palm, corrabi, lichy greens, mushrooms, and all kinds, onions, peppers, ridiculous, fruttibegas, all the kind of stuff. See, we eat as great, lots of minerals, shallots, some rosquash, tomatoes, turnips, zucchini, liscoes, all in there. You can have some things like sweet potatoes, I like the Japanese purple sweet potatoes, when you're swashed, carrots, pumpkin. Oh, that's fine. I mean carrots are fine, because unless you're doing carrot juice or that problem. But basically trying to live into like one serving, which is like half a cup a day. We should be avoiding is corn and white potatoes, mostly, a little, you know, some of the little thingling potatoes or the proving potatoes, purple potatoes, and you may find, what about dairy? You can eat pasturized butter or ghee, but I encourage you to get all dairy, including sheep and goat, which you're mostly fine for people, but I encourage you to get all other dairy. And if you're having, you can encourage you to have make sure it's grass-fed or we're generally raised. What about bees? Well, you can have green beans. You can have green peas. And you can have a Nudgemo or organic soy, a just tofu or tempeh. You can have snap beans. You can have soupies. But otherwise, definitely no beans. What about grains? No grains at all. So even healthy grains, quinoa, buckwheat, things like that. I can really get off all of that. Why? Because it just shuts down the insulin response. Health to lose weight, reduce inflammation. Not that these are just all bad, but eventually you're gonna have them back, basically get rid of all the other grains. We need barley, rye, rice, emerald, millet, pep. Oh, it's everything. Get rid of it. Fruit can be okay, but small amounts of non-hygienic fruits. So organic blackberries, blueberries, cranberries, kiwi, lemons, limes, raspberries, all that's fine. Not too much, right? You don't want to mean like, you know, 2 pounds of blueberries, but you can have a cup, half a cup of it. What are you gonna do with all the other fruit? All the hygienic fruit, like bananas, pineapple, melons, half cherries, grapes, is the worst. Even fruits that you think, you know, maybe you could, you could, you could, you could, right? Whether it's, you know, peaches, paracetareans, cherry for example, but you don't want to eat them while you're on the tindy detox. You want to really shut down the blood sugar and some response. What about sugar sweeteners? Sorry, the, you can sometimes have a little bone fruit or stevia, you have in the shake. We have, but generally it's end of void, all that stuff. Also, just get involved with other artificial sweeteners, all the sugar, all that stuff. If you have to ask, yes, there's no, basically, basically, then what should you be drinking? Well, lots of water, herbal tea, green tea, all this, oh, caffeine, that's okay. Love green tea is fine. You know, I'll be gonna have to be, sparkly water, mineral water, all this. What you should avoid? Alcohol, coffee, bottle of water, it's a plastic soda, obviously sugary beverages. Basically, that's the program. So if you eat that way for 10 days, if you use a simple habits, your body's gonna totally transform and you're gonna see just how food is impacting your health, which is the thing most people don't have a clue about. And that's why a little bit so much. Now, after the program, it's really important if you do it for 10 days or 21 days or 10 weeks or 10 months, you have to be smart about getting off it or you can get a big trip. Because when you go off of foods that are inflammatory, foods that are allergic to, and then you reintroduce them, you can get a lot more symptoms. Let's say you had migraines before and they're gone. Wow, you're gonna get a duty of a migraine, or let's say you had gut issues before, you had a real problem. Or let's say you had science congestion for meeting dairy and then you eat it. Again, you might get a science of attention. So you really have to be smart. So if you're feeling great, you wanna continue and let's see how long to wait to lose. Let's see how it'll be in disease. Let's say you just wanna be feeling great, wanna continue, no problem. You continue it, continue to do it. You can do it for another 10 days. You can do it for another 10 months. It's fine, it's totally safe to eat. It is pretty much how eat most of the time or the occasion, grains and meats. Also part, I sleep and obviously you're fasting window and not eating it for bed. And then eventually people can transition slowly to the peagand diet, which you've got by a lot of the principles of the 10-day detox diet, but it gets you more flexibility in your diet. You get to add some gluten-free grains, you can have some grass-fed dairy or sheep or goat. Maybe you wanna do it most of the time, but try to, you know, take me out about the wine or desert occasion, all that's fine. Remember when you're adding things back, you wanna do it smartly. And then the 10-day detox book will put it as shown us, you have to add one thing at a time. So if you're adding back gluten, just do that for three days. Don't have a pizza, which has gluten and dairy. You don't know it's affecting if you feel bad. You wanna know, so give yourself three days and then pick the next week. So, taro gluten and dairy and grain, other grains, whatever, you can see slowly add foods back and you'll see how you feel. And that's your best parameter. The smartest doctor in the room is your own body and that's which one, focus on. This time of year, it can be packed with connection and joy, but it can also be hard in our health. Stress goes up, sleep goes down, and we often feel tired, tense or overwhelmed. One, simple reason why. Most of us are deficient in magnesium. Magnesium is involved in energy production, calming the nervous system, regulating mood, relaxing tight muscles, supporting digestion and improving sleep quality. But most magnesium supplements only include one or two forms which your body can't fully absorb. That's why I take magnesium breakthrough from bioptimizers. It includes all seven essential forms of magnesium. So it gets into your cells where it actually works. I take it every night to support deep sleep and help my body manage stress, especially this time of year. If you want to feel calmer, sleep better, and support your overall health during the holidays, I highly recommend trying it. Just go to bioptimizers.com, slash hymen and use code hymen to get 15% off your order. I wrote a book called The Blood Sugar Solution, 10-day detox diet, which is about sugar addiction and it keeps you through in 10 days how to reset your whole nervous system. And not only you, you know, not crave sugar anymore, but you'll average person lost about seven or eight pounds in a week, they, 10 days, they, they, their blood sugar dropped 10, 20 points, their blood pressure dropped, 10, 20 points. They reduced all symptoms from all diseases and by about 70%. So if you have migraines and digestive issues, sleep problems, joint pain, whatever it was, everything drops 70% by getting your system healthy. So that's important to remember. It's quick. You don't have to wait forever to see the results. So we had a woman in our, in our clinic, a program called Functioning for Life within three days of joining the program. This woman was on insulin for 10 years, was severely overweight. In three days, she was off her insulin by changing her diet. In three months, she reversed her diabetes completely and her heart failure and everything else. Pretty impressive. Next thing you should know about sugar is there's many ways to say sugar and a quote Shakespeare, you know, arose by a rose by any other name. The other thing you should know is that, you know, we have many names for sugar. You know, in, I think, in the, the, the, the inuit from the, the, you know, the Arctic. Say they have a hundred words for snow. And we have so many ways of saying sugar and often we miss it on the label. Because it's kind of hidden. So you know what food companies will do? They literally put four or five different kinds of sugar in some product because you're forced to list the ingredients in order of the amount on the label. So basically if they put five during kinds of sugar, they can list like a healthier ingredient first, like flour something and not actually put sugar as the main ingredient. So it's really really sneaky what they do. Then other thing you should be aware is there's a lot of words that you might see like agave, cane sugar, corn, anything, rice, even brown rice syrup, any kind of evaporated cane juice. That's just basic sugar. Anything with oats in the end, like fructose, dextrose, maltose, tree aloe, sucrose, these are all sugar. Anything with malt in it, like malt syrup, flow malt, maltodextrin, also sugar. Anything with iso, like iso glucose, iso maltose. Basically there's a million in the amount of sugar syrup, maple syrup, syrup, syrup, corn syrup, pancake syrup, which is usually per fructose molasses. Anything with the word sugar in it, date sugar, coconut sugar, brown sugar, beet sugar, confection sugar, it's all sugar. So sugar, sugar, sugar. Now is high fructose corn syrup a little worse? Yes. But in the end, it's all bad. Next thing you need to know is that artificial sweeteners are also not so great for you. So here's a class example of what happens when you try to arse marmouther nature. Rather than accepting that we really shouldn't be eating a lot of sugar or we shouldn't be having a lot of artificial sweeteners. And rather accept the fact that we just should try to eat less and not have so much sugar, we kind of want the hack. We want the magic loophole to avoid doing what's really good for us. We tried this with fat. We thought, oh, butter, fat and saturated fats. So let's have margarine, margarine. I grew up on flashments margarine. But it turns out that trans fats are not only not good for you. They're very bad for you. And they've killed hundreds of thousands of people and they cause heart disease, diabetes. And they're really unsafe. And the government finally, after 50 years and they lawsuit, finally caved and said, oh, gee, it's not safe anymore. So they're all that are grass generally recognized as safe. They removed the grass label. The problem is, it's still in the marketplace because they're FDA's and who's with the food industry. And essentially, they gave them a lot of loopholes and ways to kind of leave it in there. So I go to the store regularly and I kind of hunt for products. Now a lot of companies have taken it out. But what they're replacing with may not be any better, right? So I think we have to be very careful. The pump shortening, which can be from palm trees. But they're often. They're often. You know, kind of harvested in ways that just to rain for us and just to have a tats of a ring of tang. I mean, this is really bad. So, also, there are also five things that have received FDA approval. They're sweeteners, saccharin, sweet and low, as a sulfatein, which is a sudden and a sweet one, an aspartane, and you just sweet equal, and others, sucralose, which is spenda and neotane. So these are all things you should avoid. They're really bad for you and don't have them. People who drink dye drinks every day, in a study about heart disease, had a greater risk of diabetes and metabolic syndrome. They are carcinogenic and animal studies. They destroy your gut microbiome. I mean, they're really bad for the good bugs and your gut and they cause more glucose and tolerance to diabetes. Certain compounds are excitotoxins, like damaged neurons, like the aspartane in the brain have neurological issues. So, not so good. And you go, well, what about sugar alcohols? Are those not bad because you don't absorb them? Well, sugar alcohols sound great, but they're kind of these weird strange names. They're derived from plants, fruit and vegetables sometimes. And they're in everything candy, a bubble gum, a cough drops, a chuboidamins, to smoothies, to even, quote of health foods often have these. Now, they're kind of less sweet than traditional artificial sweeteners. They do have calories, but we don't absorb them because they're too big. So anything with the word all on it, like manitol, maltatol, sorbital, xylatol, reethertol, these are things you don't want to eat. When you do, they tend to cause a lot of gut issues. They cause the bugs in your gut. They love these. They just munch them down and they'll create bloating. I mean, I remember once, when these first came out, like 25 years ago, or something, this patient of mine gave me this choclapar. Look, Dr. Hyman, here's a choclapar, and there's no sugar, and it's amazing. And it tastes good. And I'm like, great. And I'm like, okay, I'm gonna eat it. So I was tired that day. I think I just scarfed the whole thing down in the afternoon. I was hungry, you know, seeing patients. And my stomach blew up like a balloon. Like I literally, my gut bacteria didn't like it. So I would not really consume these at all. They can cause diarrhea, bloating, gas, all kinds of digestive issues they mess with your gut for us. So there's something a little bit better, like your reethertol, but still be very, very careful with these. Don't think you have a free pass. And it can ferment, it can cause all kinds of issues. So don't take it, especially if you have gut issues. Now some natural sweeteners are a little bit better than others. So I'm not, I mean, listen, we all like sweet stuff. But kind of my view is if you're gonna have something sweet, just have it. You know, you have like, you know, like a large, like a sort of sugary kind of coffee drink in the morning. You know, that can have more sugar than a soda. That can have like eight or nine teaspoons of sugar or more in that. Now you wouldn't, you wouldn't put eight or nine teaspoons of sugar in your coffee, right? If you need to take like a teaspoon of sugar and you put your coffee, that's probably a lot better than trying to do all these other things and being really aware. So I would say, you know, not more than five teaspoons a day that, but that can be even too much for some of us. Most adults consume 22 teaspoons a day. Kids about 34 teaspoons. Artificial sweeteners, as we said, not good. Sugar alcohol is not good. So Dr. Hyman, like you're killing me. What am I gonna do? I mean, I, well, first of all, just if you stay healthy, right? If you're metabolically tuned up, right? If you are, if you're metabolic engine and your muscles and your mitochondria and your weight and you don't have a lot of organ and belly fat and you wanna have a little sugar and you exercise regularly, okay, it's not gonna kill you, right? But if you are not metabolically tuned up, which by the way is 93.2% of Americans are not in good metabolic health, which is frightening to me. And how you tell is check your insulin. If your insulin's less than five, you're probably okay. If it's less than two, you're good. But if your insulin's high, you know, you're kind of in trouble and you're not gonna have a lot of tolerance and what I call metabolic degrees of freedom. We get more metabolic degrees of freedom by being healthier. We have more resilience, metabolic resilience. Most of us are metabolically just a train wreck. So be careful, but let's say you wanna have a little something. I mean, I'm not against having a little maple syrup, a little honey, a little, you know, actual sugar sometimes. But I would not use this kind of hacks, like agave or corn syrup or brown rice syrup. They're just not healthy for you and they're gonna be mostly fructose and not a good thing. Day sugar can be okay. They might have antioxidants, molasses, actually has iron and things that could be okay. Little bit, you could use dates just as a sweetener, little maple syrup, a little raw honey. Okay, fine. But, you know, it's not the sugar that you add to your food. That's the problem. It's the sugar that's added by corporations. That's the problem. If you have 120 ounce soda, that's 16 teaspoons of sugar. You wouldn't put that in your coffee, all right? For non-chloric sweeteners, stevia can be okay. But I would say the whole plant stevia, not rebside, which is made by cargill and Pepsi and Coca-Cola. So, that should tell you something about it. Also, there's other kinds of sweeteners that you can use, which is like a monk fruit sweetener, which is I think my favorite. It's generally well tolerated. It's tasty. I don't particularly like stevia because I think it causes a problem. But any, any sweetener could be this brain stimulus. So be careful. Look for a product with the rainforests, a lion certified seal to make sure your stevia is grown in ways that are sustainable. If you want honey, you can check out the Ethic Consumer Guide. We'll provide the link in the show notes. And sweeteners, you know, what are things we can include? Well, juice, pureed fruit juice, molasses, organic palm sugar, date sugar, coconut sugar. It's got a little lower glycemic index, monk fruit sweetener, which is a non-chloric sweetener. Organic maple syrup, honey, as I mentioned. Stevia and monk fruit are typically the ones I would recommend. But, sparingly, and every through tall, some people can tolerate it, but don't have that much. And what should we avoid? Well, we shouldn't meet in the mountains of sugar of any kind, but artificial sweeteners, like big no-no, liquid sugar calories. If you want to do one thing for your health, besides the high fricose corn syrup, it's getting rid of sugary beverages. Liquid sugar calories are the worst because of how they affect your metabolism. High fricose corn syrup, don't eat that. Anything with the word syrup in the name, except maple syrup. Any things that are all natural, you know, agave is natural, sugar canes natural, evaporated canes natural, brown is super natural. That means it's good for you. So the arsenic, that's natural. Package foods that have added sugar just stay away from that stuff. In order to make a food taste good, that's industrial food, they have to add sugar or salt or fat. And just surprising, you know, they're more sugar in serving of prego tomato sauce than there are in two Oreo cookies, right? So salad dressings, granola, cereals, ketchup, soups, candy, yogurt. I mean, I was surprised. I'm Jewish and we had Passover and I didn't even look at the label. I just bought some jar of confille to fish that my mother used to buy. And I'm like, this is kind of sweet. And I kind of looked at the label and was like, it was like full of sugar. And I'm like, why do they put sugar in fish? You know, it's like, so it's pretty much everything. And obviously, you know, refined sugars of all kinds, brown sugar, aspartame, sucralose, saccharine, self-atame, just pass on those things. And there are a lot of ways to enjoy sweetness. Also, a little hack. User continuous glucose monitored from levels. That'll help you find out what things are affecting you and what are not. You can also eat protein and fat before you eat something sweet or carb, for example, you drink a glass of wine or alcohol and you stomach, you get a quick buzz, right? But if you basically have it after a meal or in the middle of a meal, you don't get that instant buzz. Why? Because of the quick absorption. Same thing with sugar. We may not get a buzz, but our bodies don't get the buzz if we eat protein and fat before. Combined with diet, exercise is really the most powerful tool for staying healthy and extending your life. My mom used to say, whenever she had the urge to exercise, she would lie down to let one away, which I think she got from any young members of the comedian, but she followed that advice, unfortunately, and she didn't exercise. Despite my hounding, her of course, parents never listened to their kids. I mean, kids, whatever, something like that. Parents never listened to their kids. And she ended up being pretty frail and disabled the last day of her life and not too functioning. So when you start thinking about how to take this approach of incorporating movement and exercise in your life, you can get really amazing benefits. I'm just going to kind of go through them because they're just so profound. It actually unlocks the body's longevity switches, the regenerative and reparative systems that are built into our biology. It activates all the longevity switches that I talk about in the book, particularly the four that have to do with nutrient sensing pathways that are sort of met at everything else, insulin signaling, M-tore, which is really important in terms of autophagy and cleaning up your cells. Sir Toulins, which are important DNA repair, and also AMPK, which helps regulate blood sugar, insulin sensitivity, inflammation, and many other things. So it's pretty darn exciting. It also activates the body's antioxidant systems. It improves your cognitive function and your mood. It supports, I mean, they found that just walking helps prevent dementia, which is pretty cool. It supports your microbiome that reduces inflammation. It helps you produce more mitochondria and help them work better and be more efficient and have better function because mitochondria can make energy and as you get older, you lose energy so you want to boost that. It also keeps you strong and functional. You know, I just came back from skiing out in Switzerland and I had a really great time, I was privileged a bit ago there. And I was amazed, like I was just skiing along, like I was when I was 30 or 40, and I would probably go a little too fast, but I like to do that. And I felt strong and able to do it, and it was keeping up with people half my age. So I think the body has the capacity it may need you to do this. It also makes you happier and improves your mood and even improves your sex life, believe it or not. So what does the research say? And let's talk about some of the nitty gritty about how it works. If you really know, maybe you want to know about the science, maybe that'll motivate you. I probably don't know the most people, but it kind of gets me all excited. Kind of like that, I'm a little weird. But it really, the research is just, it's just unbelievable, light exercise. When I started to dig into, you know, obviously you can look at exercise and anything and search on PubMed and learn about it. But I started to look at exercise and longevity and what it does. So we covered a little bit of this, but I want to sort of expand on it. It improves your telomeres, which are little caps at the end of your chromosomes that start to shorten as you get older and shorten your life. It actually lengthens your telomeres by exercising. It protects your telomeres. It optimizes all these longevity switches, like AMPK, which regulates blood sugar. People say, I'm going to take midformin for longevity. Well, exercises way better than midformin for regulating AMPK. It also activates sertuins, which help the adabra pair are reducing inflammation and improving blood sugar control, which are really important. It also improves your cardiovascular and heart health be all know, or reduces the risk of heart attacks and strokes and improves your brain function and cognitive function. It also helps a certain types of cancers, I said. You know, we see the regularization of our biology through exercise being meted through all these mechanisms have to with immunity and cancer prevention. So it's super great. And of course, it extends your health span and your lifespan. I remember being in Sardinian. I mentioned this guy, I think before, but his name is Patriot. He was 95 years old. And he was like a shepherd. And he was just running up and down the mountains all day, five miles a day, and it's really regular terrain. And he was bolt up right, you know, booming voice, clear eyes, you know, strong and mentally sharp. And I was like, wow, it's got 95 years old. You know, it was a 195 in America. Barely can kind of walk across the street or get from there bedroom to the bathroom. And here he is, you know, running up the mountains. So we have the ability to do that. And he exercise every day as a shepherd, not quote exercise, but he just does his life. It also, it's incredible for diabetes, for blood sugar control. I mean, just walking after dinner is a great way to keep your blood sugar down. Helps you become more insensitive. And very importantly, it helps you build muscle mass and function. Because as you get older, you lose muscle. It's called sarcopenia. And that leads to all these hormonal and metabolic changes that accelerate aging and lower testosterone. High cortisol, the stress hormone, higher blood sugar, worsening cholesterol, I mean, just lower growth hormone and increased cortisol. Like I said, it's just, it's really bad news. So building muscle is really important. And that's clearly only done by exercise. So hopefully the thing all this, you realize you can't afford not to move. My basically philosophy is if you don't move, you won't. Literally, he'll be dead. So how can you actually incorporate more movement? What can you do without having to drag yourself to the gym? Now I go to the gym sometimes, but I rather play. And I think there's a lot of options. And you can just do simple things. Like start with simple things, even five minutes a day. And if you don't have five minutes a day to do something, there's something wrong with your life. So better look at that. So, you know, for example, I figured out I couldn't do a 10 push ups when I was 50. So I started, I'm going to do push ups. So I take a shower most days. So I basically would wait for the shower to heat up because it was, it's a violent wind of barn. And it's really tall and takes a while for 100 steps. And I would do push ups. And I went from being able not to do 10 to be able to do almost 100 push ups without stopping. So we can train our bodies and it's really simple. Or maybe while your coffee's brewing, maybe do some stretching in yoga. Walker, bike instead of driving. And many, many countries they do this. I, I just met this guy who was a CEO of a big company. He lived in Switzerland and he, I mean, he was a six billion dollar company. And he rides his bike straight up the hill. Or the match is in the mountain to work, 2000 feet elevation every day. And he's in an incredible shape. He's 53 years old and his VO2 max, which is a measure of fitness, is that of a elite athlete and someone who's like half of a half his age. So it's very impressive. You don't have to sort of, you know, do something like that. But just, you know, parking further, way in the parking lot, taking the stairs instead of the elevator, the escalator, just simple things to start moving. Also try standing desk or a stability ball. If you're, you know, at a desk, you sit on a ball, it kind of helps you move and move your body and increase your core strength. I have a friend, Mike Roison, who was a Cleveland Clinic with me. And he used to have a treadmill desk. Little he was on calls and working and working on his computer and walking all day long, which is impressive. Make your lead your time active time. So if you're watching TV or movie, maybe put a stationary bike in your house. I remember I worked at Idaho as a family doc and there was this patient that came in and she lost like a hundred pounds. I'm like, what happened to you? And she's like, well, I decided instead of sitting in front of the TV and eating all day, I would get a stationary bike and just ride the bike all day instead of eating. And she did and she lost a hundred pounds. So it's pretty impressive. Maybe also you can listen to podcasts and an audiobook or do something like that when you're exercising or taking a walk and just makes it more fun and motivating. And also do it with somebody else. As my friend Rick Warren said, everybody needs a buddy. So it's important that if you maybe are having some trouble getting out there and doing stuff, find somebody else to do it with. It's much more fun for me to play tennis with somebody else to play basketball or go on a bike with somebody else and do it by myself. So I try to do it with friends and it's way more fun. Maybe pick a balls the latest craze. Join a pick a ball league and go outside and just do fun stuff. So these are just a few examples of how to incorporate movement and exercise in your life and simple natural ways to do it. And it doesn't matter what you do. It just matters that you do it. So according to science and particularly science of longevity that I talk about in my book, Young Forever, go get a copy please. It's really amazing. I like you a lot is one of my favorite books I've ever written. Maybe the favorite because I think I'm obviously more interested in this because I'm getting older. It's such an essential part of longevity and of health in general and just enjoying life. It's not about doing it now for some result later. It makes you feel better now. And we really can't afford not to exercise. So start where you are, build up slowly, even 10 minutes a day of walking can help start string training, weight resistance training, whatever you want. Body weights bands. I use bands most of the time. I travel with them. Do more movement throughout the day. I get up, walk around, do stuff. And I write a lot about what kinds of exercise, how much exercise, how to optimize it and lease them out of time. I cover all that in my book, Young Forever. So I want to share a little bit about a study that kind of reflects the power of this. And it was an 80 year study called the Harvard study of adult development. And it had been producing data on so many different things on who lives longer, happier, healthier lives. And they wanted to understand not what makes people sick, but what makes people thrive, what makes them well. So over the lessons from this study was 84 year study, right? As long as the study, they were tracking the same people and over generations asking thousands of questions, hundreds of measurements to find out what really makes people healthy and happy. And they were giving, these people were giving regular updates on their life, their health, their income, their employment, their marital status, they filled out questionnaires and were part of interviews where they revealed their fears and their hopes, their disappointments, their accomplishments, their regrets, life satisfaction, and lots more. And this had a really incredible impact by providing lots of data. The researchers used this data to assess how people's lives, their experiences, their attitudes, affect their well-being. And one of the things that was so powerful from this study was sort of surprising. It wasn't career achievement, it wasn't exercise, it wasn't a healthy diet that determined the quality and happiness of your life. It was good relationships, good relationships keep those healthier and happier. That was powerful. And the studies leaders, I mean, obviously, people started to study your dance, the current leader of the study, Robert Waldinger, from Harvard and Mark Schultz, have a new book. It's called The Good Life, Lessons from the World's longest scientific study of happiness. And it's a great book. I actually had Robert Waldinger on the podcast, The Doctor's Pharmacy, and you can learn more about the book and things there. But what are the things that we can do? What are the lessons learned from the study? But how do we improve the quality of our relationships? First, we have to look at ourselves, right? Who are we? What is our life like? What are the choices we're making? How are we not prioritizing relationships? So we can get really busy. We can do all sorts of stuff that we think is helping us get ahead. We can spend too much time on social media, but we often don't really think about building and investing in the quality and the number of our relationships. And for me, I know as personally that my relationships, my friendships, my community, is the most important thing for me. It really is what keeps me grounded, keeps me healthy, keeps me happy. And then more and more as I get older, I focus more on this as opposed to like, when you have kids in a career and you try to just kind of get by. And it's like sometimes friends can fall by the wayside, but it's really important to find, and it even can be just one or two good friends. It makes a huge difference. Now, when these people in the study actually were interviewed, they really actually benefit from this interview because they helped them realize where they neglected their relationships, and then they consider it sort of looking and finding, well, how can we improve that? So maybe look at your own life. What's your social life like? What are the people in your life that you care most about, that you want to have a relationship? Think about how they support you and how often you spend time together, and maybe do a little bit of effort to actually focus on what matters to you most and help you make decisions that actually can enhance the quality and number of your relationships. So maybe spend more time with people who make you laugh and who elevate you, unless time with people who drain you, or energy saps. So I think it's important to find friends and community members that help bring you up and not take you down. Sometimes you meet with people all the way, one who is complaining and going on about everything. And I think there are other people who, when you're around them, you laugh, you have fun, you play, and that's what you want. Prioritize your relationships. We schedule an exercise, we make ourselves maybe time to make a healthy diet, we focus on our career and work, but we don't focus on prioritizing those relationships that matter and being showing up at a present for us, rather than zoning out on social media, rather than doing a million things at once, focus on your relationships. You know, when I'm doing COVID, I think we all felt a little isolated. And so I reached out to about six of my close male friends, and we all have known each other for 40, often, plus years, maybe 35, the smallest, the smallest, I think was 25 years. And so we've known each other, and we formed this group, and every Tuesday at six o'clock, we meet for an hour and a half, and spend time together and share about our lives. And it's been one of the most impactful things I've done. And it's something you can do. It doesn't take any organization, you just need to zoom link, or it's really pretty easy. And you can have these deep connections and relationships that allow you to be seen and known, and can really help activate so many healing pathways in your body. Make time to talk to people, right? And it came in sometimes a small relationship as a matter, but a study in the University of Kansas found that the simple act of just reaching out to somebody a friend for conversation once a day dramatically increases happiness, and lowers their stress hormones. So hanging out with friends lowers your stress hormones, pretty good. And also, it's not all about you, right? So take time to ask questions. Find out what's exciting for them. Find out what they're struggling with. Find out what makes them happy. Have them share their life with you, and value their opinions. Be present, focus, and don't just kind of be superficial with them, but go deep. So maybe try to have one conversation a day and put that in your calendar, and see what the effects will be over time. It's super important. Next thing is be kind. My grandmother used to ask my mother when she came home and said, I met this new friend. She says, are they kind? And I think kindness was such an important value in my family. And how do we be kind to each other? And the relationship happiness is determined by how you are in that relationship. And there was a research study in Michigan State that looked on data for our 2,500 married couples. And they found they were, how good they were in 5 different dimensions. Where they extroverts, where they agreeable, where they conscientious, where they stable emotionally, where they open to doing new things and experiences. And the ones who had higher levels of agreeableness and emotional stability also had higher happiness. So the more kind and positive you were, the more likely were to be happy. So people invest a lot of time in finding someone who's perfectly compatible, but that might not be the whole story. It's more about being kind to the people you care about and fostering those deep connections. Also, a friend of mine had a word that I really love, which is called cop to itiveness, which is where you cop to it. If you screw up, if you make a mistake, you cop to it. And it's really about learning to apologize, learning to repair relationships, learning how to have nonviolent communication, and owning your stuff. Like I said, also a great way to build relationship is to ask questions. I've talked about yourself, ask questions about somebody. Show that you care, show that you're interested in what they care about or thinking about. So once advice, don't just give them your opinion, ask them questions to guide them to the right answer that they know themselves. Also, don't be shy about expressing your love. There are lots of ways to love and lots of ways to express it. Maybe it's simple things. I had a flight that came in at the night late, and I usually dig the Uber home. And my partner, she showed up unexpected and picked me up at the airport. It was like, it brought me such joy and delight. It was such a simple thing, you know, with 50 minutes from the airport here. And it wasn't a big deal for her, but it made a huge difference in terms of my own happiness. And it was really powerful. So help your friends with a project, you know, ask them what they need to do. Whether it's clean up the garage or work on a project together. You know, call an old friend. Maybe they haven't heard from you a while. Maybe you just want to check in on them, ask them how they're doing. Maybe you want to focus on helping somebody who's trying to do something that, you know, maybe difficult for them, try to support them and give them some love. Also, when you have a partner or a close friend, do the lacks of kindness, give them a little gift, buy them something like, you know, get them something that makes them smile. Can be super simple. You know, when you often don't do these acts, kind of life just is a little bit flatter. And when you do them, it's super fun. Like I said, my partner picked me up the airport. It was like, wow, you know, I got that she really cared. Also, tell people how they, you feel about them. Don't wait until they're eulogy to tell them all the things you like about them. Be specific. Give people feedback about what you love about them, what you like about them, what makes you happy and how you feel in their presence. Who would you be without them? You know, who would you be now that you're with them? What are they inspired you to do and thank them for what they've, do and how they show up for you? Don't be shy. Like I said, don't wait until someone's dead to write a eulogy about them. It's better to have eulogies when you're alive. And I actually had a group friend group where we would get together. And on people's birthdays, we would basically go around and for everybody's birthday, we would share a little bit about what they're like and what we like about them, what we love about them. Something that inspires us about them. And it's like getting a living eulogy is pretty awesome. So I really, really, really invested in my own friendships in my own community. And I think it's a critical aspect of our health. And as I get older, it becomes more and more important. So make sure that you take the time to invest in good relationships. Because good relationships is just important. Or maybe more than eating healthy and exercising and giving up sleep. If you love this podcast, please share it with someone else you think would also enjoy it. You can find me on all social media channels at Dr. Mark Hyman. Please reach out. I'd love to hear your comments and questions. Don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe to the Dr. Hyman show wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget to check out my YouTube channel at Dr. Mark Hyman for video versions of this podcast and more. Thank you so much again for tuning in. We'll see you next time on the Dr. Hyman show. This podcast is separate from my clinical practice at the Ultra Wellness Center, my work at Cleveland Clinic and Function Health, where I am chief medical officer. This podcast represents my opinions and my guest's opinions, neither myself nor the podcast endorses the views or statements of my guests. 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