Why food is the best medicine with Dr Mark Hyman

Bulletproof radio, a state of high performance. So we have this idea that if something worked a little bit more, and more and more is going to be better. And what you're saying there is maybe it worked for a little while. Maybe it never worked. You just thought it was going to work. And so that's freeing for people just.

To say, look, it is. Find what works for you. Yeah. And it's important to understand that eating well for health, for longevity, for disease reversal is not that hard when you stick to few simple principles. And that's really why the subtitle of the book is 21 Practical Principles for reclaiming your health in a nutritionally confusing world. Because we're all so freaking confused. You know, even I get confused from time to time. Like, wait a minute, what does the data say? And it sort of goes into nuances. And some of the things I've learned as I was sort of just researching this book and I've been doing this for a long time, were really striking to me. And if I can maybe. Can I give a few examples of the ways in which food regulates your biology, but in a granular level? And why? Can I do that, please? Yeah. Okay. So the first thing I want to talk about is the microbiome. Now, this is just a little snippet, and this is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what we know about the microbiome. But turns out that there's a particular bug that should be in your gut that's critical for your health. To regulate immune function, to prevent leaky gut, to regulate cancer risk, heart disease, and metabolic health, and protect the lining of the gut from intrusion of bacteria and toxins and basically food particles from getting into your bloodstream through your leaky gut. And this bug is called Akkermansia mucinophilia. Mucinophilia is called the mucin layer, the mucus layer, essentially, that covers the lining of the gut. Now, this particular bug you can't take as a probiotic. And if it's low, you're susceptible to all these problems. And if it's low, what's really striking is, based on the research, these new cancer drugs, they're called checkpoint inhibitors or immunotherapy drugs. They literally help your immune system fight the cancer. And if you have stage four cancer, that's a death sentence for most people. With these new drugs, you literally can completely reverse. Like, Jimmy Carter had stage four melanoma, I think, and he completely reversed it. And he's still alive at whatever 90 million years old. He is now. And so it's really striking to see that, that when you have low levels of this bacteria, these immunotherapy drugs don't work. So the difference between life and death is feeding these right bugs, right? And guess what? They love to eat. They eat not then that's not prebiotics or probiotics. They love something called polyphenols, which are these phytochemicals. There's 25,000 of these in plant compounds. And the Rockefeller foundation is funded $200 million, I think, to create a periodic table to assess and investigate all these incredible phytochemicals and what they do. So the particular ones that Akkermansia likes are cranberries, pomegranate, and green tea. So our friend William Lee, mother had stage four uterine cancer. She was not responding to any treatment. She was not responding to the checkpoint inhibitors. And he figured this out with her because he really loves this stuff. And he gave her for Halo Mac Ekermansia, he gave her pomegranate, green tea, and cranberry. And lo and behold, boom. Cancer. Cured in a month. 100% gone. So that's the power of food is medicine. The second story I want to tell is one you're going to love and is kind of a new story on the horizon, which is of an incredible new powerful superfood called Himalayan Tartery Buckwheat.

Oh, yeah, we just had Jeff Bland on the show.

Yeah. Okay, great. So you got it? Yeah, I'll just share a snippet of it. So, I mean, Jeff. Jeff is wonderful, but I feel like my job in life is the Jeff Bland translator. That's my job. And so he. Long story short, there's a part of your immune system that you write about in your book around aging that gets senescent. We call it immunosenescence. And this aging, the immune system creates these things called zombie cells, which are the result of mutated stem cells in your bone marrow that usually produce about a million white blood cells every single minute. And if these cells are damaged, these white blood cells get in your bloodstream, and they become zombie cells, and they cause cancer, heart disease, autoimmune disease. They're really bad for you, and they accelerate aging, or immunosenescence. Well, what's really fascinating is that this Himalayan Tartery Buckwheat, which is this forgotten plant that was grown in the most rigorous conditions in Tibet and the Himalayas with poor soil and lack of water and high altitude and cold weather. I mean, it's just. I mean, this plant shouldn't grow anywhere, right? But it's, it's as a result of living in such a stressed environment, the plant has created robust defenses to protect itself, called phytochemicals. And it has more phytochemicals than almost any other food on the planet. Like 137 different phytochemicals, some are found nowhere else. And these, these phytochemicals just happen to be the perfect antidote for the zombie cells. So they literally nuke your zombie cells. And so you go from immunosenescence to immunorejuvenation, which now with COVID is ever more important. So this is the power of food is medicine. So one regulates your microbiome, one, one regulates your immune system, one can regulate your detoxification system, and so on and so forth, your hormones. So the book is really designed to understand how food is medicine and works on these seven key systems in functional medicine that drive all disease, and then how to use food to actually help optimize the function and performance of these systems. And when you do that, disease goes away as a side effect. I never treat disease. I'm a doctor. I was trained to diagnose disease and treat it with medication or surgery or radiation. I almost never use medication now because I'm not against it, I'll use it. I'm agnostic. I don't care if it's exercise or exorcism, I'll use it. But food works so much better most of the time. And so I feel like the book is the first attempt to really create a food is medicine framework for people to think about specifically what they're eating.