Dr. Hyman on Good Morning America for The UltraMind Solution

We are living fast and furiously on this polluted planet, so it's no wonder we feel like our brains are broken from insomnia, depression, and anxiety. How can we heal ourselves? Dr. Mark Hyman's new book, the Ultramind Solution, offers ideas about how altering one's nutrition, sleep, and exercise habits will rock your world. Welcome. Thanks for joining us, Dr. Mark.

We used that term broken brain in the intro, and it's something you mentioned on the COVID of your book, too. What do you mean by that? Well, we all have experienced that. whether it's brain fog or feeling a little low or not being able to focus or concentrate, not being able to remember where our keys are, why we walked into a room. It can range from everything from depression to dementia, from ADD to autism, or just plain old brain fog, which many of us experience. And it's epidemic. 1.1 billion people have it in the world. 20 million kids have psychiatric illnesses. 60 million adults suffer from some type of psychiatric illness. One in two elderly will get dementia. So what's going on?

You have to ask the question. You threw out those numbers. It does seem like we're hearing more and more about childhood ADD and autism, depression when we're older, that sort of thing. Is there more of it now than.

There used to be? Absolutely. There's an epidemic. And it's silent. Obesity is obvious. Problems with your mind are invisible. And yet they're epidemic and we're suffering from them more than we ever have. And it's because we live in a toxic world. and we eat a toxic diet and we're under inordinate amounts of stress and we don't do the things our bodies need to thrive and we do a.

Lot of things that make our bodies sick. Gotcha. It's sort of this trifecta that's working against us.

It's our genes, it's our environment and the way we live our lives that sort of kind of-- that's right, that's right. I always say the genes load the gun, so they make you susceptible. The environment, namely your lifestyle and toxins.

In the environment, your diet, et cetera, pull the trigger. So genes load the gun, environment pulls the trigger. What can we do?

I mean, these terms, they sound good and you know we all know that we've all had a broken brain at one point or another, but what can we logically do to help prevent it? Well, that's a great question. It's not all about the problem, it's about the solution. And that's why I wrote the Ultramind Solution. And the concepts in the book are part of an emerging model in medicine right now which tells us that everything in the body is connected. That if you want to fix our broken brains, we have to look to the body which has the causes. And there are imbalances in key systems in our body, in our immune system, in our digestive system, in our hormonal system, in our immune system and these systems become out of balance because of poor diet, because of too much stress, because of toxins in the environment, because of allergens, because of hidden infections. And we can address those things systematically in an organized way and understand how things are all connected. You know?

Yeah, that's an important point to how they're all connected because a lot of times we might get a rash or a sore ankle or something like that.

And it may be tied to psychological issues too. That's right. No, what happens in the body affects the mind and the mind affects the body. if you go to your doctor and you have depression and you say to me, Doc, I also have this joint pain and my stomach's bothering me and I don't go to the bathroom once a week and I have a rash, they go, I just want to know about your mood. Go see the other doctors, the rheumatologist for your joints, the dermatologist for your skin, and they'll take care of that. And I'll give you the pill for your ale that I can treat. But they're all connected. Those problems are clues to what's going on in your mind.

They're all connected. I call myself a holistic doctor because.

I take care of people with a whole list of problems.

Right.

So a lot of times these problems go sort of misdiagnosed or undiagnosed entirely. because we don't have a map for thinking about this in medicine the way it's organized today. And the new map is called functional medicine. It's what the book is based on. And it's allowing scientists and doctors to really reorganize our thinking about chronic disease.

And give us a roadmap to get to wellness. Okay, you have several tips on things that we can do individually, day to day, to try and prevent our brains.

From being broken, I guess, run through some of them. That's right. I call it the ultra mind solution. The book I go through a six-week step-by-step practical guide and plan to do this. The first step is is eat right for your brain. That's feed your brain right. And the first is become a fat head because 60% of your brain is fat. You need the healthy omega-3 fats, two, which is fish, wild fish and so forth. You need to have protein for brain power because protein provides the amino acids, the basic building blocks of all the happy mood chemicals like serotonin. So you have to have a little protein with each meal. That can be plant proteins like nuts.

And seeds, beans, or lean animal protein. We've heard this notion that diet really.

Plays a role in this but there's medical science that backs this up. Absolutely. an abundant, I mean there's 500 medical references in my book alone. So there's plenty of science. And we also need to eat the right carbs, which are whole carbs, and we need to have phytonutrients. These are hidden brain protectors, these chemicals in food that are colors like turmeric and rosemary and ginger, and these colorful dark reds and blues actually are protective.

Detoxifying, anti-inflammatory and antioxidant things that protect our brain. Gotcha. Okay, so there's the food aspect.

That's something we can easily control. Cut out the fast food.

Get a fat head, as you say. Eat real food.

Eat real food.

Very good.

So what else after that? Then I call the Ultramind Lifestyle, which is exercise your body, about 30 minutes a day of walking, makes you make new brain cells and make your brain cells connect better. Train your brain, which is using puzzles, Sudoku, crossword puzzles, learning a new language to actually connect those cells better, deal with stress, find the pause button, and also Get enough sleep?

Get enough sleep. That's key. So many of us don't. I know I don't.

What's enough? Enough for most people is probably seven to nine hours, depending on who you are.

Seven to nine hours.

I don't know a whole lot of people who get nine hours of sleep. Well, you know, before the advent of.

The light bulb, we went to bed.

When the sun went down. We woke up when the sun came up.

There you go. Just take all the light bulbs out of your house.

Unless you lived in Alaska, you know, you got to get up at 5:00. That's true. Then you're all messed up. Okay, what other keys do you have for us? And then, of course, there's living clean and green. And unfortunately, we're living in a very toxic world. We released 2.9 billion pounds of chemicals in the environment, 6 million pounds of mercury toxic in parts per million, and we have to do things to help us reduce our exposure. One, filter your water. Two, eat organic when you can. Three, avoid as much as you can heavy metals in your food from things like tuna fish and swordfish and large, big predatory fish. And lastly, Avoid electro-pollution as much as you can. Keep electronic devices away from your head of your bed at night so you're not beaming them into your head. Try to use a speaker phone on your cell phone if you can.

Just avoid having this constant electro-pollution in your life. You mentioned eating organic, but I thought.

I'd heard studies recently that said eating organic really doesn't make that much difference. Well, it does. In fact, organic food besides not having all the neurotoxic pesticides, and by the way, pesticides were nerve gases in World War II. that became used in agriculture after World War II and they are nerve gases is what they are. So they are direct nerve toxins.

How do you sort of detox yourself?

It's very easy. You just do, as I said, you filter your water, you eat organic when you can, you exercise which boosts your detox system, you eat foods like broccoli and green tea and pomegranate which boost your liver's ability to get rid of chemicals, you drink lots of water, you go to the bathroom every day and.

You use certain nutrients.

Vitamins that help you stay healthy.

Seems like hearing a lot about pomegranate lately. Is it really that much of a miracle? It is, it's very good.

It's very good. So those are little things we can do day to day, definitely. That's right. And there's one more thing which is tuning up your brain chemistry with supplements. So I recommend everybody needs a multivitamin, fish oil, vitamin D, B vitamins, and something called probiotics which are healthy bacteria.

To keep your gut healthy because 92% of us are deficient in one or more nutrients at the minimum amount necessary to stay healthy. That's pretty logical stuff if we all just did it and tried to get more sleep. Of course, that one, easier said than done. Thanks so much for joining us, Dr. Hyman. The new book is called the Ultramind Solution: Simple Ways to Defeat Depression, Overcome Anxiety, and Sharpen youn Mind. Thanks for watching. GMA now.