Ask Mark

Show that I'm doing for my community, it's called Ask Mark. That's me. And it's where I take questions from my text community and I invite those folks to join me live and ask their questions directly to me, which is super fun because I get to talk to people. And today we have about 10 to 12 people that are going to join us to ask their question. Now, if you want to ask a question to me in the future, I just want you to text me. Text me at 413-225-8995. and use the hashtag Ask Mark, right? AskMark, you can remember that. And my team is going to pick your question maybe for the next time in the future. So I really hope I can talk to you soon. So text me your questions and let's get going. Now, I just want to make a disclaimer. I can't give medical advice because I would lose my license and that would be bad for me. It would be bad for you. It would just be bad. But I can give you big picture advice about how I would think about various issues and various health conditions. and any other questions you have. So let's jump in with our first guest, which is, I think, Vivian. Hi.

Do you see me?

Hi, Vivian. How are you? I do see you. Great.

Great to see you live.

See you, too.

So I have been doing a little bit of research. I was reading your book, food fix. and loving it. And at the same time, I was also reading Joel Salatin's book, which is Folks, normal, right? And I'm reading them at the same time, and I hear you talking about food policy and how.

We should look.

Into taxing certain foods like high fructose corn syrup and wheat and soy, everything that's kind of subsidized. right now. And then I heard Joel Salatin talking about it at the same time and he suggested just removing the subsidies from those foods so that the healthier stuff automatically starts to level out price-wise. And I just wanted to know what you thought about that and if you think it's realistic or not.

Well, that's a great question. First of all, I'm not an agricultural policy guy, although I try to pretend I'm one by writing a book about agricultural policy. I'm a doctor. With that disclaimer, I have studied a lot and I do know for a bit about it. I think, you know, the myth is that there are actual subsidies. What actually is going on now mostly is crop insurance. And that means that farmers get paid if their crops fail and they get paid, you know, depending on what, what they plan. If it doesn't do well, they'll get sort of a floor so they don't lose money. But it's a kind of a vicious system that only is for certain crops. So for example, if you're a soy farmer or a wheat farmer or corn farm and you decide you want to plant a giant five acre plot of vegetables on your 5,000 acre soybean farm, you can't do it because you lose your crop insurance. It also forces farmers to plant certain crops because they need the money from the bank to plant crops. and to buy the agricultural chemicals and to buy the seeds, but they can't get the money from the bank unless they get the crop insurance from the government to guarantee to the bank that the bank won't lose money. So it's kind of a rigged system where the farmer is in the middle, they're being squeezed, and the average farmer makes minus $1600 a year, which is pretty bad, right? So the farmer loses money, The banks make money on the loans. The seed companies make money. The chemical companies make money. They're pesticide, fertilizer and herbicide companies. And the farmer loses out. So I think the solutions to the food system are really complex. We need to look at the food system as a whole. And there's not any one solution like just pulling out all crop supports or crop insurance. that's going to fix the problem. I think I do agree it needs to be changed. But for example, we need to support regenerative agriculture. Yes. Which is a way of growing food that regenerates the soil and regenerates human health by creating food that's far more nutrient dense and healthy. And it has also incredible side benefits of sequestering carbon, conserving water resources by storing water in the soil, increasing biodiversity of and pollinators and birds and animals. So you're really creating way more life by doing farming this way. But right now farmers can't really do it because they're stuck between the banks and the chemical seed and ag companies and these crop insurance loans and these crop insurance payments. So they're kind of stuck. So what has to happen is incentives for farmers to convert to regenerative agriculture. And there was a bill introduced recently that was a bipartisan bill to pay farmers for carbon offsets. In other words, if they store carbon in the soil, they will get money for storing the soil carbon. And that's a good thing. So, for example, the airlines have to become carbon neutral. The only thing to do that is by buying carbon offsets. So they have to buy carbon offsets from Farmers. And so the farmers can be part of an economic system that actually makes money. The good thing about regenerative agriculture is it actually makes Farmers money. And even in the first year, they can make money. So right now there's an enormous movement of regenerative agriculture. I was just at a conference where there's a fund, a $250 million fund to support regenerative agriculture initiatives. There's all kinds of training programs for farmers. And you get them over that bridge to break out of that trap that they're in between the banks, the government, and the agricultural big ag companies. Then they can be free to actually grow food that is good for humans. that's good for the environment, that reverses climate change, and that actually makes them way more money. I mean, Gabe Brown, who's a regenerative farmer from North Dakota, he has been on my podcast. I'm not sure we aired it yet, but he'll be on the podcast. And he, he was a traditional North Dakota farmer with 5, 000 Acres of land, and he was, you know, doing the big corn and soy and big ad chemical stuff and his farm got decimated by the hail storms and by droughts. And after a number of years, he was going to have to close. And he began reading Thomas Jefferson's journals. And in Thomas Jefferson's journals, he learned about methods of agriculture that actually built and restored soil, like no-till agriculture, crop rotations, you know, and cover crops and integrating animals into the agricultural cycle. So you use the poop and the pee and the grazing to actually stimulate soil building. And you do all these things in a way that are actually learning how to work with ecosystems. And so he started trying this and he started actually being very successful. And now he tells me he doesn't use any agricultural inputs. No seeds, no chemicals, nothing. Fertilizer, pesticides, barely use any irrigation. this water hold soil holds so much water. Every 1% organic matter, you can hold 27,000 gallons of water per acre. He built 29 inches of soil. And for every 1% organic matter, you can hold tremendous amounts of carbon. It's actually how the cycle works. People aren't listening. What is he talking about? Well, you know, where does the word carbohydrate come from? It comes from where carbon, right? Carbon is what the plants suck out of the air. So they breathe carbon dioxide and they put that carbon down into their plants which makes the all like broccoli is a carbohydrate. It's made of carbon. And then they put more of that into the soil and that carbon becomes food for the microbiology of the soil. So you literally have in a thimble full of soil, you have more organisms than exist in the entire rest of the planet or stars in the entire solar universe or something like that. I forget the exact. It's like a crazy amount. And so the amount of soil building that happens with the carbon going into the plants actually creates a whole microbiology in there that actually helps the plants extract the nutrients because now even if you're growing like organic food and you're not doing in soil that's really regenerative, you're not necessarily getting the same level of nutrient density. And for sure, for sure, the traditional agriculture, we've lost 50% of our nutrient levels in many plants. Even if you're eating your broccoli or your beans or whatever you're eating, if you're eating the healthiest food, you're getting 50% less of the nutrients than you did 50 years ago. So the way that plants get nutrients is by these regenerative processes. So it's so important. and even animal products. And I think people have this false dichotomy in their mind. Sorry, I'm just going on a little rant here, but it's okay. People have this false dichotomy in their mind of plant-based or, you know, you have to just, you know, do conventional agriculture or plant-based and it's just a false dichotomy because, yes, if we continued to do cathos and factory farming of animals, we 100% all should be vegan. But there's a third option, which is regenerative agriculture that includes all these methods that I'm talking about. There are six principles and you can Google regenerative organic agriculture and read about these principles developed by the Rodale Institute and by the Soil Health Academy, which is a bunch of farmers including Gabe Brown. And what they found is that if you include animals in the cycle, you actually can build huge amounts of soil very quickly. So Gabe Brown built 29 inches in a few decades compared to nature, which takes a thousand years to build three centimeters of soil. So we can accelerate the natural process by using animals. And actually the animals will have better lives, it's more humane. You don't have to eat them if you don't want to, but they have to poop and pee and graze and they're salivE and all that. creates enormous capacity built soil and has to be done in the right way. And it doesn't use any water because, so you need, you know, tons and tons of gallons. I don't know what the number is, but to, for every pound of beef you need so much water. Well, that's only if you're doing factory farm animals which require irrigation and require watering, whereas regeneratively raised beef actually have the rainwater that they use. The rainwater supplies the water for the grass that they eat. And so they're getting their liquids through that and they're getting, you know, streams and so forth. It's rainwater. It's not actually irrigation water, which is depleting our aquifers. And then what these animals do, which is fascinating, is if you let them to their own devices, they move in like in herds, traditionally like bison. So they would bite a little bit of grass and then they chew it and they move on, they peep and they pee and they poo. Well, what actually happens is when you look at animals, they naturally seek out plants that have way more nutrients and phytonutrients, which are plant compounds that are medicinal. So they're literally, I want this plant to have a little selenium, this plant has a little this plant chemical that's good for me. And so they're literally eating their medicine and they'll eat up to a hundred different species of plants. Now, a cow is eating corn or a little bit of soy cakes or whatever the heck they're eating, ground up candy or animal parts. There's not that much in there. what they found is in these real regenerative farms, not if you're just having grass fed and it's eating just grass and the same kind of grass, they're literally eating hundreds of different species. They're actually putting these phytochemicals into their meat and you're getting sometimes as much of these phytochemicals in the meat as you would or in the milk as you would from eating the plant. For example, goats grazing on certain shrubs can have as much of the powerful anti-cancer detoxifying anti-inflammatory compounds from green tea called catechins as green tea. So, I think, you know, we're just sort of at the beginning of discovering all this, but there's enormous amounts of investment. And, I think the whole idea of, you know, this simple remove all subsidies or just tax, I mean, it's way more complicated, but all these things are needed. And, I think the goal is really to push the system economically to do the right thing. And, that's with the beauty of regenerative agriculture is because it actually is better for everything. It's better for humans, it's better for the animals, better for the farmers, better for the economy. I mean, it's just, it's a win-win there will be losers, right? Big ag will lose, you know, people like Bayer, Monsanto, the Chem CDAG companies, they're not gonna be happy. The banks might not be happy, but, but I think it's a win-win and such a scale that I think it's so important to do. So thank you, Vivian, for the question.

But I, I really could spend the.

Entire hour talking about this, but I'm.

So grateful and it felt like such a great one-on-one session with you and I always admired your work. So thank you so much for all that. I learned a lot.

Sure, thanks Vivian. So I think we have our next question will be from, no, I don't know who it's from. Who's the next question? Michael, can you hear me, Michael?

I can hear you.

Great, what's your question?

Well, first just want to say big fan of the show, big fan of your books. Read the 10-day detox diet, read what the heck should I eat, and my wife and I enjoy cooking from what the heck should I cook. So thanks for that.

Of course, you're welcome. well, my question is that is about the free advertising. Thanks for the free advertising.

Your podcast. But, yeah, all good stuff. And I think it was a recent episode that you had on supplements, and I confess I didn't listen to the whole thing, so hopefully the question wasn't already answered in there. But afterwards I was thinking about supplements, and I started just looking through the National Institutes of Health to see what foods were supplement dense. Could I get my supplements, everything nutrients.

I need from food?

And I got onto calcium and was looking at how to get calcium. And it just seems like there's no good way to get calcium without eating a lot of dairy. So my question is, can you get calcium without eating a lot of dairy? and looking at that list, it seems like you'd have to eat just tons of kale and turnips, and it doesn't.

Make a lot of sense. Okay, well, there's two parts of that question. Can you get your vitamins and nutrients from food? And two, where do you get your calcium? So I'm gonna. I'm gonna dive into both of those. Okay. Okay. First of all, I had a patient once who said, Dr. Hyman, I don't want to take any vitamins. I want to get everything from food, and I'm gonna learn how to do that. And she was so diligent. She's like, okay, I need. 200 micrograms of selenium. So I need four Brazil nuts a day. I need 30 milligrams of zinc, so I need like 17 pumpkin seeds a day. And I need two grams of omega-3 fats. I'm going to eat 14 sardines a week. And I think it was great. I just love the idea of her doing that. And I think if you can get good food grown a good way and you want to do that, all the power to you. But I would encourage you to test because I have been for 30 years testing people for nutritional levels. and every day I see deficiency. I mean, I just had a patient that she had iron deficiency. It was really common in menstruating woman. You know, it's gonna be hard unless she's eating a lot of meat to get that. And she might need a supplement. Vitamin D is another tricky one. You can eat a lot of herring and a lot of porcini mushrooms. You might be able to get your vitamin D up, but if you don't do that on a regular basis, you're either gonna need to go take vitamin D or be in the sun somewhere south of Atlanta, 20 minutes from 10 to 2:00 PM, mostly naked, maybe a bathing suit, every day. So if you're not doing that, probably need vitamin D. Okay, so let's talk about calcium. Well, calcium is one of the biggest propaganda myths that's been ever perpetrated on the American public. Here's why. It's not about the calcium you eat. It's about the calcium you lose. It's about calcium balance. so there are countries where their intake of calcium is 300 milligrams a day, which is very little in Africa. They have no osteoporosis. If you look at the studies of people who drink a lot of milk, and this, this is an, I encourage you to Google milk and health New England Journal of Medicine.

Okay.

Milk and health New England Journal of Medicine. And if you're a nerdy guy like me, read the article. If not, you can go on medium and you can find the article by Dr. David Ludwig, which is the consumer version. But essentially he, he and his colleague from Harvard, these are top Harvard researchers, have broken down all the myths about dairy and say that in fact, those people who are drinking more milk have more fractures, have more risk of various diseases, have more issues, especially if you drink low fat milk, you have more risk of weight gain because you're hungry because there's no fat. So, I mean, there's a whole bunch of issues around cancer and other things. So I think the myth that we have to have dairy is just a myth. In fact, the The Dairy Council was supported by the government. Well, there's something called the Checkoff Program, which is essentially a government program that ties basically money from the food industry from these councils like the Dairy Council, the Egg Council, the Beef Councils. And they're supposed to help do research and advance the research and understanding about these products. What they do is actually market for them. So they'll take this money and then the government pays for the Got Milk ads. Remember those Got Milk ads? Well, they were all false. And in fact, the FTC, the Federal Trade Commission, said, wait a minute, there isn't proof for the claims you're making. So stop running those ads. So you might have noticed those ads don't exist anymore. That wasn't an accident. They were working. They were working very well. But the other part of the government said, hey, you guys have no proof that what you're saying is true. The science doesn't support it. the reason we are told to drink three glasses of milk a day by the government has nothing to do with science and has everything to do with lobbying. So I think that that said, the things that cause you to lose your calcium are alcohol, caffeine, phosphoric acid, which is in soda, particularly Cokes, right? Colas, salt, sugar, stress, smoking, lack of exercise, obviously, lack of vitamin D. So I think vitamin D is far more important in maintaining your bone health than calcium. And I think that making sure your vitamin D levels between 50 and 75 is really key. So you can't just say, I'm going to take this much vitamin D and be fine. You have to actually measure. Some people need 10,000, some people need 1,000 to get to that.

I don't hear about that. vitamin D and bone health.

Oh, well, it is critical. I mean, it's why they fortify milk with vitamin D. It's not naturally found in milk, right? It's not naturally in milk.

Would it be fair to conclude that on that same National Institutes of Health where I was trying to get smart on calcium, the daily value of calcium, I guess I should disregard that as well?

Yeah, no, because it's like, well, if you're taking in like 300 and you're putting out 200, you're plus 100. you're taking in 1500 and you're putting out 1600 because of your lifestyle, you're losing 100. So it doesn't matter. And I think, you know, with that said, the best source of calcium are tahini, tahini, which is sesame seeds, incredibly high in calcium, chia seeds, more calcium for serving than milk, and also sardines and salmon with the bones in them. You can eat the bones. That's how a lot of people got calcium. and of course all the dark green leafy vegetables. So as long as you're balancing out your calcium by not doing all the things that aren't good for you anyway, right? Drinking soda and tons of salt and alcohol and too much stress and all the things I mentioned, then you should be fine.

Very helpful, thanks.

No problem. okay, we have another question. Hi.

Hi there. Thanks for having me on. I love your, I love your podcast, the doctor's pharmacy. And, yeah. And I, I also love your cookbook, food. What the heck should I cook? And that is one of the reasons I have this question is because I am always looking for creative and delicious ways to eat my medicine. And I've been in a strict anti-inflammatory diet now for about almost six months.

Oh, how's it going?

It's going really well. Yeah, I am attempting to nip a diagnosis in the bud before it gets bad. And so I'm really excited about all the things that I've learned from you. And I love the cookbook. Mommy, all the recipes in your cookbook are delicious.

And.

In particular, I was really surprised at how delicious the sardine cakes were.

Oh, yeah.

And because I've always kind of been like, sardines. I know they're good for me. I'm not sure why exactly, but. And I know they're also, like, a responsible thing for us to be buying and eating compared to other types of fish. But I. So my question is, What makes them so healthy and what besides sardine cakes can I make with them? What are your favorite things to make with sardines?

Okay, great. So, you know, first of all, we just talked about milk and milk is often called nature's perfect food, which it is, but only if you're a calf. Sardines, on the other hand, are nature's perfect food. And here's why. One, they're an incredibly rich source of protein. They're really low on the food chain, so they're really low in toxins. They are rich in omega-3 fats, one of the richest sources of omega-3 fats. If you eat the bones, you get a lot of calcium. They're also a resource of selenium. And also they have iodine, which is really healthy for you. And they have something called choline. They're one of the richest sources of choline, which is one of the most important things for your brain health and for liver detoxification. So they really are a superfood. Of course, my wife won't eat them. And no matter how great I make them, she won't eat them. But it's okay. She doesn't like fish. She doesn't like shellfish. She doesn't like anything. So she likes a lot of food, but just not seafood. And the way I like them, I mean, I'm sort of hardcore. So I just open up a can and just eat them on a cracker. Like, I'm just, I go for it because it's like, you know, but sometimes you can.

It's great for a picnic.

Yeah. Yeah.

So easy for picnic.

You know, you can spray pickle lemon on them. Sometimes I'll mash them up and make like a sardine mash. You can put on crackers, you can put lemon, parsley, little garlic, salt, pepper, so you can kind of mush them up. Of course, there's the recipes in my cookbook, the smoked fish spreads. You can make like a fresh fish spread. You can put in olive oil and carrots, onions, celery, parsley, Little onion garlic powder, a little avocado mayo, a little vinegar. It's really, really yummy. The sardine cakes I love, which basically you just chop up the onions and basil and cilantro and green onions and little ginger, mustard, apple cider vinegar, paprika, salt, pepper, little eggs, and you sort of mush them all together and you make these little yummy sardine cakes. So I really love sardines. I love mackerel. You can get canned mackerel. You can get canned herring. I get them from. Yeah. My little choice. Seafood is a great resource. They really are very conscious about where they get their stuff. My wife, you know, really must love me because, you know, she went to Portugal for a trip, and her present to me was a big, giant box of Portuguese sardines. Wow.

So, yeah.

So she wouldn't eat him, but she, she lets me eat him. I just, but I just have to.

Brush my teeth before I kiss her.

Yeah.

But, yeah, it is kind of a smelly thing to bring to, you know, into a room if people don't like them.

But it's true. Yeah, it's true. It's true. Awesome.

Well, thanks. Thanks for answering the question. I'm gonna have some sardines sometime soon.

Great. All right, we have our next guest. Thank you, Meg. Hi, how are you? Hi, Dr. Hyman.

Good. I'm doing well.

How are you? Good. You have a question? Yes.

So I've been listening to your podcast. I enjoy that and got your recent cookbook.

And.

So my question is I've started eating healthier and doing things that you recommend, reducing stress and exercising. trying to do it more regularly. And I'm looking at my cholesterol numbers, which are on the borderline. And what I get confused about is the role that saturated fat plays in my diet, because some doctors I hear talk about lowering your fat and trying to reduce saturated fat. But then I hear you talk about eating coconuts and.

Yeah, it's confusing. It is confusing. It's confusing for you. It's confusing for most doctors. It's confusing for nutritionists. It's confusing for pretty much everybody. And. And here's the reason. There is no one simple answer. We are complex human beings that are all genetically different and all respond differently to different diets. so I've had patients, for example, who had super high cholesterol and very high triglycerides, very low HDL, were overweight and struggled like crazy to lose weight and fix their cholesterol. And I put them on basically coconut oil and saturated fat butter diet. And their numbers dropped like, boom, just like cholesterol dropped 150 points, triglycerides dropped 300 points. HDL went up. 30 points, I mean stuff you just never see. And she lost 20 pounds. I had another patient who was, who was a avid cyclist and he wanted to try a more kind of ketogenic like diet. And, and he was like cycling 40, 50 miles a day. And, and his numbers went through the roof. And so there, there is a phenomena called lean mass hyperresponder, which I'm one of those, which is if you eat a lot of saturated fat, you actually can increase your lipids in a way that's probably not good. so we're all genetically very different. And one day there will be a test which you just prick your finger or take a cheek swab and you get a sample sent off to the lab and they'll say, gee, you should eat these fats and you shouldn't eat those fats. And we have some of that already. We do some of these testing at the Ultra Wellness Center, but I think we're gonna become much more sophisticated about it. So really it's not also just about the LDL cholesterol, which most doctors focus on, which is really because we have drugs that are designed to focus on LDL cholesterol, right? I mean, it's really, right, it's not just the right thing to treat. I mean, it's sort of like the thing is if everything, if all you have to hammer everything looks like a nail. So if all you have is drugs to lower LDL, then that's the problem, right? But it turns out it's really not the problem. The problem is metabolic syndrome or prediabetes or insulin resistance, which affects probably 70, probably to 80% of the population to some degree. and that is what drives most of the problem. That's driven by carbohydrates, not by fat. So I've written a book called Eat Fat, Get Thin, which I went into all this in great detail. And the science has certainly advanced since then, but pretty much the principles are the same. That it's starch and sugar that are driving the bad cholesterol profile. We call the atherogenic profile. That means you get small, dense LDL particles. You get a lot of them. You get high triglycerides, you get low HDL, you get loss inflammation, your blood sugar's a little too high, your insulin's a little too high. that all drives high blood pressure, high cholesterol, high blood sugar. That is not fixed by eating less fat. That's fixed by eating more fat and by eating less starch and sugar or no starch and sugar depending how severe you are if you're diabetic, you might need to do that. So you have to also look at the whole profile and there's a test that most doctors don't do. It's called NMR or it's called Cardio IQ. NMR is from LabCorp, which is something you can just get your doctor to order. or from Quest, which also you can get your doctor order. And that looks at the particle number, the particle size of both HDL, LDL, triglycerides. So it's a much more sophisticated test. What we're doing now is basically like looking at a, you know, like looking at an x-ray instead of an MRI. In fact, the test that's used to actually or scale, because the LDL particles we measure, the LDL cholesterol and cholesterol we're measuring by weight. So it's milligrams per deciliter. So how much does your cholesterol weigh? That's how we figured out. The NMR test is actually looking at it through an nuclear magnetic resonance imaging. So NMR stands for an MRI of your cholesterol, literally. And that is way more effective in determining your risk and what you should do about it. For example, if your LDL was 140, but your, which should be, let's say under 70 doctors are talking or under 100, but your HDL was 80. and your triglycerides were 50. I'm not worried. And your insulin was three and your blood sugar was 75. I'm not worried at all. On the other hand, if your LDL is high and you have a lot of small particles and you have a lot of particle number, then I'm more worried. So it's a really personalized, individualized approach. And your traditional doctor won't, won't fat. Just eat avocados and nuts and seeds.

And things like that. Yeah, I. I also noticed that my triglycerides and my HDL are great.

Yeah.

But my sugar isn't where it should be.

Yeah, well you can do the mirror test. It's a very effective test. What you do is you take off your shirt and you look in the mirror and you jump up and down. If your stomach jiggles, it's probably an issue.

All right, thank you. That's helpful.

Sure. It's all about the belly fat. So yeah, the belly fat is going to drive a lot of the issues. And I think we have another question coming from Jessica, if I'm not mistaken.

Yes.

Hi. Hi Jessica, how are you?

I'm doing well, thank you. Thank you for taking my question. I have been reading a lot about eating healthy and I follow you on Instagram and see your recipes and I try to imitate them. But I've been seeing a lot of MCT oil being recommended for people to use. And I want to know what the actual benefits of it is. And also when looking at the different MCT oils that are being sold, what do you look for on a good MCT oil to buy?

Yeah. Great question. So, for those who don't know what she's talking about, Jessica, thank you for the question. MCT stands for medium chain triglycerides, and it's a specific type of fat. It's mostly found in coconut oil. And it's a very different kind of fat than traditional fat. Most of the fat you eat is taken up by these things in your gut called chylomicrons, and then they go into your lymph system. so they basically absorb through your gut and they don't go into your bloodstream. They go right into your lymph system and then they dump into your heart and they get processed. So it's very, very, very different. And, and, and their other kind of fat, the MCT oil, is absorbed directly into your bloodstream. And this, and this, and this is very important because it then goes to your liver and it has all these various effects. It also is extremely think of it like super like jet fighter fuel as opposed to diesel, right? So it's an incredibly effective fuel for your mitochondria, which are the little energy factories in your cells that make you energy. So when you eat and you breathe, you produce energy inside your cells, these little tiny little organelles that look like a bacteria, hundreds of thousands of them in every cell. And when you're fatigued or when you kind of age, we tend to have lower functioning mitochondria. It's a big problem with a lot of health issues, whether it's diabetes or neurologic diseases, neurodegenerative diseases, weight gain. I mean, most chronic illnesses have some mitochondrial issue. And so MCT oil, like dementia, we find extremely effective in dementia because it's the perfect fuel for the brain. Also then is burned way more effectively, way more efficiently. It's like a super fuel. So if I go for a long bike ride, I'll just take a couple of tablespoons of that. It doesn't taste like anything. Before I go, and I'll just be like, an energizer bunny the whole time. It also produces ketones, which is incredibly effective for alertness, focus, cognitive function, and also speeding up your metabolism. And it actually is used in treatment of dementia and can be very, very effective for that. It also has the ability to speed up your metabolism. So you think, well, I'm gonna eat fat and I'm gonna get fat. No, it actually is going to potentially speed up your metabolism. Now, not if you're eating a junk food diet and you're eating tons of starch and sugar, but I'll throw like a tablespoon and a shake in the morning and it'll just give me that extra little buzz. So it's like caffeine without the buzz, but it gives me that focus, alertness, attention. So I wrote a lot of my books using NCT. And I've written like 17 books, so I think it's good working out. Okay. And in terms of finding a good source, I would say that there are a lot of products out there. you want a reputable company. I particularly like Bulletproof. My friend Dave Asprey runs a company. He's very religious and diligent about sourcing the right coconut and also the process by extracting it. And also there's different MCT oils. There's different sizes of the change or C8, there's C10, C12. So you want more the C8. So he's purified his in a certain way that has the most benefits.

Okay.

All right. And is that- I think it's called Brain Octane Oil.

Okay, is that something that you can do then every day or...

Yes, but you should check your lipids, right? Because like I said, if you don't know who you are in the genetic spectrum, it could be risky. So you just want to make sure you're checking your numbers.

Okay, great. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much, Jessica. I think the next question is from Alice. Hi Alice, how you doing? Good, how are you, Dr. Can't hear you.

You can't hear me?

Oh, there you are. Well, I do, but you're. You're not lip syncing. Looks like you're a badly dubbed old Japanese movie. Well, I'm sorry.

I'm not sure what the issue is.

Oh, it's okay. You're. It's fine. It's fine. Just tell me what your question is, Alice.

My question is, what can I do to help your efforts? to get our food system improved and fixed.

Well, short of running for Senator, Congress or the White House, I think that there are so many things that we can do that are powerful ways to have an impact, whether it's in our own choices, or whether it's in our action in our communities and our schools, whether it's our political activism, activities with who you vote for, all of that sort of makes an impact. So I would start with aspiring to be a regentarian. And what is a regentarian? Well, you heard me speak about regenerative agriculture earlier, but a regentarian essentially is someone who aspirationally tries to eat food that's grown in a regenerative way, because that will have a downstream effect to increase demand, it'll increase your own health, it'll drive the marketplace to have more and more people doing this, and it'll generate reductions in carbon emissions, improvements in food quality, conservation of water, and so forth. You can also start a compost pile because about 40% of our food is wasted, and that is the third largest emitter of greenhouse gases. If it were a country after the US and China, it would take the entire landmass of China just to grow all the food that we throw in the garbage at a cost of $2.6 trillion a year. So we have more than enough food to feed 10 billion people, it's just we throw a lot of it out. so that you can start a compost pile. You can actually work with your local town or city or state actually to create a composting ordinance. So you can, like cities like California have done that. In Massachusetts, you can't throw out garbage if you have a food waste, if it's more than a ton. So if you're a grocery store or a food service company or hospital or whatever, you have to dispose of it in a way that isn't throwing in the garbage in the landfill. So there's a company, for example, in Massachusetts is partnered with farmers to get the waste delivered to their farm. They build these anaerobic digesters, they throw the waste in there, they throw some manure in there, and they make electricity for 1500 farms. So you can work with your local and state governments to actually advocate for different ideas like this. If you're active in your school, if you want to be active in school, working on school lunches, there's lots of opportunity to work with your local school boards which control a lot of this, to work with various kind of Groups like conscious kitchens that actually give road maps for how to do this or big green, which provides gardens and so forth for schools. There's a lot that can be done at an individual level. And then of course, I'm going to be able to vote, you know, with their with their with their vote. You know, there are are ways to identify bad actors who are voting for policies that are undermining our health and our nation's economy and our environmental resiliency. And there's a group called foodpolicyaction.org where you can go on and find your congressman or senator and you can write to them. You can go visit them in Washington or when they come to your district and you can talk about these issues and be active. I mean, this works and people listen. And so there are a lot of ways to get engaged. If you have money, you can donate to causes and organizations that are doing things like Kiss the Ground or I've created something called the Food Fix Campaign, which is trying to drive policy change in Washington. So I think there's a lot of opportunities to get engaged. It's just matters of where you feel right and where you feel good and what works for you. And you can start as simply as your own kitchen and you can start more complex in your community and you can go all the way up to the government at the federal level if you want.

Very good.

Well, thank you.

I'm a huge fan. I've been following you for a long time and I really appreciate what you're doing.

Thank you. And, and Alice, if you go to foodfixbook.com, you can download the food policy, food, sorry, the food fix action guide. And there's really a whole list of suggestions of ways you can get involved, whether it's joining community supported agriculture or sourcing from regenerative ranchers, which I list in there. So there's a lot of opportunities to actually make a difference.

Okay, well, I have your food fixed. I will continue to read that and get more information. And again, I appreciate everything you're doing.

Thank you, Alice. I think next we have Christina Harvey.

Hi, Dr. Hyman.

Hi, Christina. How are you?

I'm good.

How's it going?

Great.

Where are you?

I love your podcast. And my husband and I just recently got into your 10-day detox and have been dabbling with some of the recipes for dinner. So good.

Yeah, it's delicious actually. It really is good.

It's so good. Scallops and asparagus were our favorite.

Yum.

But I do have a question for you. What are the best strategies in health and fitness to reverse like a pre-diabetes or even a fasting glucose.

Sugar this high.

Yeah, just like an elevated level. I know that because I know. So I had my son four years ago, and I noticed that since having him, every time I get my labs drawn, the glucose is just like a little high. It's a little high.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, there's a couple issues there. One. diabetes and prediabetes are completely preventable and reversible. And it didn't even really exist until the last couple hundred years. It just wasn't a thing. Type 1 diabetes, I think, occurred. But if you look back at the hospital records and so forth, now one in two Americans have prediabetes or type 2 diabetes. It probably more even have pre-diabetes, you know, metabolic poor health, which is 88% of us. So you're talking about 88% of us being somewhere on that spectrum. And the reason we're on that spectrum is very simple. You know, our bodies are adapted to periods of fasting and famine and the really unavailability of large amounts of starch and sugar. Grains were only introduced about 10,000 years ago. people got roots and tubers, but they had a lot of fiber. And sugar was really rare. I mean, if you've got a honey patch or something, good luck. But it wasn't something we ate. And then, you know, the average hunter gatherer maybe ate 22 teaspoons of sugar a year. Now we have about 22 teaspoons a day per person in America, and kids have 34 teaspoons. So starch and sugar are really driving this. And depending on your genetics, like, if you, even if you, you know, are not normal weight, you can be still having this issue. Right. And so, so I think there's a whole condition called metabolically obese normal weight. So you look thin on the outside, but you're fat on the inside. And, and that may, and that may be really related to the amount of starch and sugar. So some of us are more carbohydrate intolerant than others. For example, the Native Americans, they are extremely carbohydrate intolerant. Like, they, they really can't tolerate that because their diets were so much different 100 years ago. And now 80% of them have diabetes. They don't, it's not like they have the diabetes gene, they just were adapted to being extremely good at it storing fat because whenever they, whenever they needed to get into a winter situation, they'd have to make sure they could store all the fat to survive the winter. Problem is, you know, we just keep eating all winter. Right. And so, so the, the key here is one to, to identify the starch and sugar in your diet. Now, flour and is mostly what I'm referring to by starch. We eat about 133 pounds of flour and 152 pounds of sugar every year per person. And it's, it's like almost a pound of sugar and flour a day for every man, woman and child in America. Now, I know, I'm not having that much. So somebody else is having a lot more. And that's really driving this pandemic of over fat, which is driving the blood sugar issues. Right. So you look at your diet and say, where's my starch coming from? Am I eating a lot of potatoes, a lot of rice? I'm eating Flour products and I have a lot of ton of fruit. Am I having ton of sugar? You know what it was going on and you could try to eliminate that. Also increasing fat, the good fats like avocados, olive oil, nuts and seeds, those are great fats to include, which will help also and help cut some of the sugar cravings. Lots of fiber helps to bring down the sugar. So eating lots of fiber, plant-rich foods, obviously really critical. And also, I would say sometimes blood sugar can be elevated in the morning and a relatively healthy not because their blood sugar is a problem, but because they are stressed. Stress will cause blood sugar to go up. So even if you're not eating badly, if you have stress, it makes your blood sugar go up. Why? Because when you're running from a saber-toothed tiger, you want to have a lot of glucose running around your blood so you can fuel your muscles, right? Except, you know, your body doesn't know that it's a saber-toothed tiger. or if your kid's having trouble in school or your husband, you know, stayed out too late and didn't text you, he's coming home and you're mad at him, like, you know, like, all of it has the same response in your body. So. So that can be a factor. And then, you know, you want to look at other factors, like your A1C, like your insulin. So similarly, you have a high fasting blood sugar, but their average sugar is fine. Or some people have, like, a high insulin level. That's bad. But I think if you have a low insulin and a high blood sugar and. your A1C is fine, your cholesterol and triglycerides and HDL is fine. I probably wouldn't worry about it.

It's frustrating because I'm like a health nut. I really, really like I, since having my son, I've really gotten into the functional nutrition. And so to the point to where when I go drop, get my labs drawn, I know the doctor's not gonna really know, like, what's going on. You know what I mean?

Yeah, yeah.

Because I do resistance training. I do intervals. I, you know, eat a lot of vegetables, fruits, hardly any sugar. You know, I drink a lot of water. I I do a lot of the right things. And then to kind of see that, you're like, ah, but there's something like, I just want to know.

What? Yeah. No, you know, like I said, it may be elevated, but it may not be. problem. It may not stay elevated. So for example, if you got a continuous glucose monitor, you can measure your blood sugar all day long and you would see what the swings are and the patterns are. But if you're otherwise healthy, and all your other numbers are good, I don't usually worry about it.

Thank you so much.

Sure. Thanks, Christina. And we have next we have Melina? Yes. Hi.

Thank you so much for taking the time.

Hi.

My question is to my son. He's 13 and since last year in his annual checkup he came like underweight.

Yeah.

To give you an idea, he's 4'11 and he's like 75 pounds.

Does he eat healthy or not? What?

The diet is been a struggle. Like the doctors give him milk, but he's always have a runny nose. Should we give him a lot of food? Give him milk.

Right.

We try to give him protein, starchy food, so he gains some weight. I've been trying to give him vegetables, but he hates everything that I cook with vegetables. so my question today for you was one, if you do recommend vitamins for kids.

Yes, I do.

And two is if you have any tips in a diet for a 13 year old.

Well, you know, I I I've had teenagers, and, you know, this is not an easy age. And I often say jokingly to my friends when they have teenagers that you know, adolescence is a period of temporary psychosis, so just don't pay any attention to what your kids say. They don't mean it, and they'll grow out of it. And I think there's some truth in that. You know, what I normally do is I get kids started early, you know, cooking with me, being in the kitchen, shopping with me. So it becomes part of their life. And I was very focused on this with my kids. So when my kids were a year old, they were in the kitchen making a mess with stuff, and they were helping me cook and that we had a garden. And so I think it requires, you know, a really early start for kids to start to really understand and be able to taste amazing food. Like, you know, have a kid go to a garden and pick a cherry tomato and eat off the plant and it's like melts in your mouth and it's sweet and rich and delicious. I think, I think the reason kids don't like vegetables often is because they just had bad vegetables. You know, I'm not saying that you're a bad cook or you don't make good vegetables, but I just think in general, you know, I think there's, there's a, there's an issue there. And I think that our taste buds have become hijacked by the food industry. So if you are eating junk food, if you're eating artificial sweeteners, if you're eating all these artificial chemicals on your tongue every day, it's like a, it's like a, it's like a, it's, it's like a, a food carnival. And, and, you know, when you're, when you're dealing with a carnival, it's, like, hard to get, to pay attention to anything else. Right. And so I think, I think, you know, helping kids learn how to enjoy food and get in the kitchen and cook is a really good thing and try to focus on the thing he cares about. Does he have acne? Does he want to grow big and strong? What does he care about?

Right now he doesn't care about much, to be honest. We are in quarantine four months inside our house. So it's not that we can really have a lot of things to help him out, but the doctors always, the information that they give you is so confusing. using or so opposite to what you read your books or follow people.

Ask the doctor how many milk a day. Yeah. Ask the doctor how many years of nutrition research and study he's done and how many hours he had in medical school. It's probably going to be pretty little. So I think don't get your nutrition advice from doctors. I hate to say it. Unless they've been trained properly. Right. I think that's the challenge. And I think functional medicine doctors are much better at that. you know, there are ways to increase. I mean, there are ways to get him shakes and stuff that he might like, like, you know, protein shakes. You can add fats in there. You can add things that taste good. You can, you can even put in, you know, things like monk fruit sweetener, little Stevia to make it all sweeter for him. So there are ways to sort of trick him by putting it in smoothies and things like that. So I think, I think that's sort of a great way to do it. You know, he, if he likes protein, you know, he can get protein from from, you know, hopefully ideally, you know, regeneratively raise or grass-fed animals. You know, eggs are great. I don't know what he likes or.

Doesn'T like, but there are ways to do that. And as far as- Dr. Do you recommend vitamins?

Do you have any brand that you think is best? Yeah, I think, you know, I think a lot of kids and I mean, eating junk food are highly nutritionally deficient. I was shocked when I start to test these kids and I see zinc deficiency, magnesium deficiency, omega-3 deficiency, I see iron deficiency. I mean, I just see so many of these deficiencies B vitamin deficiencies. So a good multivitamin, fish oil and a vitamin D usually takes care of it. And I try to focus on companies that are actually rigorous about testing their products pre and post production. So they'll test the raw materials for purity and potency once it's there. They make sure it says 100 milligrams. It's actually 100 milligrams. If it's 95, they throw it out and start again. And they test for contaminants and they use bioavailable forms of nutrients. For example, I had a patient taking magnesium. she's getting at the grocery store was magnesium oxide. Didn't help her at all because magnesium oxide is not very well absorbed. So I gave her a different form of magnesium and it was absorbed. So it really is important. And I, and I, you know, have these, these companies that I've used over the years that I recommend to my patients that are, they're quite good. They're mostly professional brands, but you can get access to them, especially pharmacies.

You know, you can go to Whole.

Foods, you probably got better quality products, but, you know, you have to do a little homework. Okay. I will.

Thank you so much.

Of course. And our next question is from Lizette. Hi, Dr. Mark Hyman. Hi, how are you? Good, how are you? Good, good. I'm doing good. Great. So my question is, what is your advice to someone wanting to pursue a career in functional medicine? Well, it depends on what you want to do because there's so many ways to get into it. You can be a health coach, you can be a nutritionist, you can be a doctor, you can be a physician's assistant, a nurse practitioner. So there's a lot of ways to actually get in. And I think it depends on what your abilities are, your interests are, what you want to do. You know, I obviously I'm biased. I'm a doctor because it gives you the most flexibility, it gives you the most understanding, the most training, but you don't have to be. I mean, I have a physician's assistant. It's a two years training. She's probably as good or better than a lot of functional medicine doctors. I know I shouldn't say that, but she's she's really talented, she's really smart, I've trained her. And I think it depends on what you're really wanting to do with your life, what you want to do. So I think the Functional Medicine Coaching Academy is a great place to start if you just want to be a health coach, if you want to be a nutritionist, you have to get regular training, but there's IFNA, which is the Integrative Functional Nutrition Academy, the Institute for Functional Medicine is a great resource if you want to go on to further training. There are medical schools now that are looking more at Progressive Education around nutrition like Taline has a culinary medicine program. So I think depending on what you're wanting to do and where you're wanting to go, there's sort of a lot of options. Okay, great. Of course. Well, good luck with your choices. Thank you. Of course. And last but not least is Maryanne.

Hello. Thank you so much for taking my call. Here's my question. I'm curious about Candida and I have heard you talk about this a lot.

A lot.

So I'm not a novice on your opinion, but I'd like an update on it. It seems like in the last several years people thought, you know, Candida is a big deal. In the last year or so, not so much of a big deal. So tell me again why you believe it's important and then probably more importantly how we could control it. So I did one of those fasting things to get it under control, and I believe I did, but then I believe it's back again. And I've heard you talk about a specific drug that you often use rather than having people just, you know, hone down their diet. But I don't remember the name of that drug.

Sure, sure. Well, this is a long conversation, but, you know, the, the whole Canada craze is kind of unfortunate because it's like anything else. Everybody gets on keto or Canada or this or that, and it's just so extreme. and there's a kernel of truth within all of it. And the question is, you know, does it apply to you? Now, I don't think every problem under the sun is Canada. And I often think of it more of as yeast overgrowth or fungal overgrowth.

Yes, that's what I mean.

Yeah. Right. So Canada is a very specific yeast, but there are many, many yeast. And you always have yeast and fungus in your gut. It's normal. Understood. It's normal. But it's when it gets out of control, it's a problem. So if you're diabetic, for example, and your blood sugar is really high, you're way more prone to yeast infections, right? If you're on the pill and you're a woman, the estrogen tends to cause more yeast infections, right? So if you've taken antibiotic, it screws up the gut flora and lets the yeast take over. So I'm very focused on personalized treatment and I think I don't want to over treat people with these issues. I want to find out if it's an issue for you. So if I have someone who's never was, was born by C-section never bottle fed, which I know their guts messed up, had lots of antibiotics as a kid, has had eczema and has had dandruff and has blepharitis and has vaginal or yeast infections. And, I mean, I, I know these people are, are, who have an overgrowth of yeast, and then there are certain tests that I can do to confirm it. But I use a lot of history, you know, if you have anal itching, I mean, there's a whole bunch of things which can have many causes, but. There's a whole bunch of things that can really give you a clue as a doctor, health provider, whether this person has a risk for increased overgrowth of yeast. And then there's some tests, stool tests, and they can be helpful, but they're not definitive because you're trying to culture something, you can't always grow it because it may not grow. There are urine tests that look at metabolites of yeast that I find very helpful on organic acid test. You can measure antibodies, but that doesn't really tell you much except that you've been exposed to it sometime. And there are immune complexes you can measure, which may indicate their immune system's a little irritated by it. You know, I think there are, you know, I could have someone with every test being negative and I'm 100% sure they have fungal issues. I treat them and they get better. So, I don't, the tests are a guide. I don't think they're definitive. And what do we do? Well, it's, you know, you cut out those things that yeast love, alcohol, sugar, and starch, right? And if you really want to be strict for a while, you eat mostly protein and vegetables. and that really helps. And then I will often use probiotics and probiotics can really help. Also, there are specific probiotics, one called Saccharomyces, which is a yeast against yeast. It's very powerful for fighting yeast. And sometimes if I get stuck, I might use an antifungal agent like nystatin or diflucan or other ones, depending on the situation. But those are not the first resort. so I think it's really, really, really important that, that we focus on, you know, what, what the cause was to get rid of it. And then, you know, someone just had a bunch of antibiotics and they, you know, they need a, whatever, like, that's fine. So I think, I think it's really focusing on the cause, fixing the story and then working on the diet. And then there are a bunch of herbs we use. I use oregano and I use thyme and I'll use a bunch of other herbs that can be very helpful. So. You had a question?

Yeah, these tests that you do, specialized lab for that, or can LabCorp do those? No, it's not a question.

You don't do that. Yeah, no, these are specialized urine tests, stool tests, you know. So I think it's a little bit usually more with a functional medicine doctor. But, you know, for the most part, if, you know, people cut out all the junk in their diet, if they take the saccharomyces and some probiotics and try some of the antifungal herbs, that usually works for most people.

Okay, how long?

I'd give yourself a couple months.

Okay, got it.

Yeah. And then of course, if you go back to drinking alcohol and sugar, it's going to come right back.

Right, okay, thank you so much.

Of course, well thank you, thank you all so much for joining this special episode of the Doctor's Pharmacy called Ask Mark. It's just been so fun. I love everybody showing up and having really smart questions and taking the time to to watch the show and just be with us for the whole segment. I can't tell you how fun it is for me because one, I'm stuck here in COVID and I'm lonely like you and it's nice to see you talk to people. And second, I get to really talk to people who are interested in health and answer questions that I think are probably on a lot of people's minds. So I really appreciate you coming. So that's it for our show today. If you want to ask me a question in the future, you can text me. Yes, you can text me 413-225- 8-995 use the hashtag AskMark and my team might pick your question for one of our future calls and I'll get to chat with you myself, which I'd love to do. And if you missed the live stream, don't worry, we're going to be airing this on the Doctor's Pharmacy podcast real soon. So thanks for joining us today on this special episode of the Doctor's Pharmacy called AskMark and that's me.