Exclusive Dr. Hyman+ Ask Mark Anything: High Blood Sugar, Gut Health, And More

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Hi everyone, welcome to another episode of Ask Mark Anything. My name is Hershel Perth. I'm the Dr. Hyman Plus Community Manager and I am here today with Dr. Mark Hyman. Hi Dr. Hyman.

Hey, hi, Herschel. Hi, everybody.

Thanks for being here today. So we've collected all of your questions from this past month and we're here to ask Mark anything. So let's go ahead and get started. So our first question is, what are some foods and supplements you would suggest for an individual who has hypertension? And can something like blueberries help?

Well, blueberries, I guess, sure could help. And I'll explain why, but I think about it at a much higher level. High blood pressure is such A common problem. It's one of the most common diseases we face as a nation. And in part because of, of two key things that are driving most of the high blood pressure. One is insulin resistance, which you've heard me talk about probably at length and you're sick of it now, but it's basically the thing that's driving every age related disease, which is related to too much starch and sugar in the diet and not enough good fats and not enough high quality protein. And what that does is drive inflammation in the arteries, oxidative stress, and that results in high blood pressure. The other big reason is sleep apnea, which is often undiagnosed where people are not properly breathing at night, often because they're overweight. They're interrupting their sleep with interrupted breathing patterns, low oxygen states, and that creates high blood pressure. There's other reasons as well, like magnesium deficiency. Also, heavy metals can lead to high blood pressure. So I think about a lot of various things. Also, there's more concerning things like kidney diseases and other medical conditions that can cause high blood pressure. We call that secondary high blood pressure, not, you know, primary or essential hypertension. But most of the kind of people have is called essential, which means we essentially don't want to cause, but we actually do in terms of foods. It's really what I talk about all the time, which is a Pegan diet or a very Whole Foods, low glycemic, high phytochemical, phytonutrient diet with lots of antioxidants and Good fats. And so those are all just basic principles. And I actually wrote a book called the 10 Day Detox Diet years ago, which is basically grew out of my practice here in Lenox treating patients for all kinds of problems, whether it's overweight or cardiovascular disease or autoimmune issues or gut issues. And essentially it's a very low glycemic, higher good quality fat, endo chemical rich detoxifying diet. And in one week, the average drop in systolic blood pressure was 20 points, which is amazing. And diastolic was about 10 points. So people respond very quickly to dietary changes. In terms of supplements, the things that I would suggest are a few. One is magnesium. I think it's very important for relaxation of blood vessels. And it's just, I call it the relaxation mineral. The next would be fish oil, which has been shown to be helpful in high blood pressure and coenzyme Q10. So those are the three go-tos. There's a bunch of herbs that can help as well. that are very effective that we use for high blood pressure. And those are like Hawthorn, for example. So there's a lot of options out there, but it's really about diet and lifestyle and exercise and making sure you check your sleep and sleep apnea and fixing insulin resistance and a few basic things like magnesium, fish oil, and CoQ10 can be very helpful. And of course, blueberries are full of antioxidants and anti-inflammatory, so that's why they're good.

Great, super helpful. Thank you for that. So our next question actually came up recently because, as you know, we have got food out for sale and there are a lot of customers that are using it. And we had a couple of people write in and ask this question. So I figured I'd add it in and it says, if you've never had any gut issues, is there any reason to have your gut microbiome tested? And should you take a supplement like gut food if you don't have any known gut issues?

Well, that's a really great question. And I think the problem today is that, you know, whether you have symptoms or not, most of our microbiomes are pretty screwed up. And if you look at indigenous cultures, people who really haven't been in touch with Western civilization, their microbiomes are quite different and they tend to promote health in ways that our diet doesn't. And, you know, Dennis Burkitt was an English physician who went to Africa, you know, in the, I don't know, 30s or long, long time ago. And, he basically found out that the people who lived in the cities who were genetically identical to those who lived as hunter gathers were, were suffering all the diseases of Western civilization where the hunter gathers weren't. And what he noticed was that the average stool weight for a hunter gather was two pounds. and for an urban dweller was four ounces. Bottom line is they have these enormous poops because they're eating a lot of plant rich foods, lots of fiber, and their microbiomes are quite different. So I don't think there are too many people living in Western society who haven't been exposed to toxins who, for example, glyphosate is in everything. It's a, it's a herbicide, Roundup, you might have heard about it. It's on 70% of all crops. It's a microbiome buster. And most people have been exposed to antibiotics in their life. you know, there's been, you know, really decline in breastfeeding and increase in C-sections, increase in processed diets and foods, increase in additives like emulsifiers, which are causing leaky gut. So there's so many things that are damaging our guts, not to mention, you know, all the other things that we do that, that take like Advil or aspirin and, and many, many other drugs that are gut busting drugs, acid blockers, which are the third most common selling class of drugs after statins and psychiatric drugs. So these are for people with heartburn, which is really dietary, bro. for the most part. So bottom line is there aren't too many people who have a healthy microbiome, which is why I recommend, you know, as part of a basic screening and many people in the longevity space are looking at the health of the microbiome. You graze over age. In my book, Young Forever, which I'm really excited about, it's coming out in a couple of weeks. Wait, what is it now? It's coming out February 21st. Go ahead and pre-order. You probably all did already, but It's interesting as I look at one of the hallmarks of aging, it really was surprising to me how much the microbiome changes as we age, even if we don't have symptoms, and that it becomes a more inflammatory microbiome. So I always encourage people to check their stool test to see what's going on. And you can see so much from looking not just at the microbiome itself, but all the metabolites, the short-chain fatty acids, the levels of digestive function enzymes, and various indirect markers. I think it's important to check. Do I think it's essential if you don't have any symptoms, you're doing fine? No, there's probably other priorities, but I do think it's important for people to think about how do we get our healthy microbiome? And I think the gut food product was created out of my own struggles with the gut issue that I developed after an antibiotic and dealt with colitis. And it was pretty nasty. And it made me realize that, you know, when I I mean, and I, by the way, I've probably done, I don't know, 50,000 stool tests over my career on people, and it's a lot of poop. But, but I found that there are very few people have a really healthy microbiome. You know, some obviously are worse than others, but I developed gut food as a, as a strategy to help people fertilize all the good bugs. So it's got prebiotics, polyphenols, and some probiotics, which generally create like a multivitamin for the gut. So I think, I think I take it every day. I noticed my digestion improve a lot, even though it wasn't bad when I, when I do that. So I think, you know, there's, there's arguments to be made to, to really support the gut over long term.

Yeah, definitely. Thank you for that answer. I actually use gut food as well every day, and I've noticed a huge difference, even in just energy and just how I feel. So truly helpful. All right, so our next question. So a community member recently had blood work done, which showed a low growth hormone output. What is the function of the growth hormone and what does a low growth hormone show? And if you have something like a low growth hormone, is there a way to increase that or are you just stuck with a low one?

Yeah. Okay. So growth hormone is something that you might have heard about that is used for longevity medicine. Although I'm not, a big fan of that for a lot of reasons I can talk about in a minute. But the human growth hormone is something that helps build our bodies as we are younger and become adults. And it's found in much higher levels in kids and it helps build bones, muscles, organs, tissues, and it's produced by the pituitary gland, which is right up in your brain. And then as we get older, levels decline and you can see that the people who are older have low levels of growth hormone. It's measured by an indirect marker called IGF-1 or insulin-like growth factor 1. The really high levels can cause a risk of cancer, for example. So it's not good to have high growth hormone all the time because you don't want your cancer cells growing. And we all, by the way, have cancer cells, but you want to keep it at a reasonable level so you can continue to be fit and healthy and strong and, and, and build tissues and organs and muscles. So there are a couple of things that really help. to build growth hormone. One is sleep. A lot of us don't get good quality sleep or enough sleep, but it's really important to sleep. The second is strength training and building muscle through strength training, particularly lower body, big muscles. It really helps and certain supplements can help like arginine, which is a precursor of, of the, of, of, of growth hormone production in the body. So I think, you know, there are people who do need growth hormone kids who aren't growing, for example. I think if you have growth hormone deficiency, which is a unique condition, can be caused by a tumor in the brain or by surgery, radiation, you know, there's different reasons why you can get growth hormone deficiency. But it may be necessary. But for most people, I really don't think they should take it. But you can get your growth hormone up naturally by exercise, by arginine and by sleep.

Okay, super helpful for that. And obviously one of the many reasons that sleep is so important for kids too, so they can keep growing.

Exactly.

So onto our next question. What is the difference between reactive hypoglycemia and regular hypoglycemia?

So regular hypoglycemia is if you're fasting or you haven't eaten for a long time, you can get low blood sugar. reactive hypoglycemia happens after you eat a meal. And I remember a patient I had years ago, a couple actually were really striking. One was this guy who was a Wall Street executive and he would, you know, work late, go out late, eat a lot, drink a lot, eat crappy food, you know, desserts, everything, and you go to bed and he'd wake up and then he would kind of, in the early afternoon, he would really think he was dying. He would get, you know, palpitations, anxiety, sweats, shaking, lightheaded, and, you know, just like literally feel like he was dying. And he didn't know what was wrong. He thought he was having a heart attack. And I just took his history. I'm like, you know, you probably have hypoglycemia because your body is going into this, you know, huge meal crashing your blood sugar. And people can get it at night too. If you have a big meal at night, people who weigh out, have night sweats, for example, men get night sweats, not just women, if they have low blood sugar at night as a result of having a big carb meal at night, which will then cause a spike in their blood sugar, a spike in insulin, and then it'll crash and then they'll be, I think symptoms of hypoglycemia. And it's a life threatening emergency. If you feel like your blood sugar is dropping, your, your body goes into total sympathetic overdrive and, and increases cortisol stress hormones and it does so to kind of mobilize sugar to build what we call gluconeogenesis from from, you know, proteins and other things that can actually kind of make your blood sugar stay high so you don't die. So it's, it's a, it's pretty common. And most people kind of, you know, don't really get what's going on. I had another patient, the same thing. He would eat, he was instead of a big guy with a big gut and kind of had a crappy diet, ate a lot of carbs and sugar, and he would get these episodes where he would get, you know, this full panic attack and think he was dying and and I said, well, what happens is, well, then I drink a can of Coke and it goes away, you know, because basically he just gets his blood sugar up and he's fine. So the solution is just eating more high quality fat, protein, which evens out your blood sugar, avoiding starch and sugar, and that usually helps quite a bit.

Okay. Super helpful. So our next question is about your favorite supplement, probably, I'm going to guess, is vitamin D. So what are the possible reasons that a person who has a vitamin D deficiency has a hard time raising their levels and Is there any way to raise your levels if you are in fact having a hard time?

Yeah, so there's a real genetic variation in our absorption of vitamin D, and we do measure genetics of vitamin D absorption, vitamin D receptors. And so there is variability. Some people will be able to get their levels up with a thousand units a day. Some people need five, some people need 10,000. So it's really about not just checking your amount you're taking, but how much is in your blood. And that's something we can actually measure with a blood test. I think there can be absorption issues if you have fat malabsorption, for example, if you have cystic fibrosis, if you have poor pancreatic enzyme function, which can happen if you have certain intestinal parasites. There's things that can impair absorption of fat soluble vitamins and sometimes fixing whatever the causes of that is important. Sometimes taking digestive enzymes with fat soluble, with sort of lipase and things that digest fat is really good. Also eating fat with your vitamin D is really important. That helps the absorption of vitamin D. So I think those are the reasons some of us might need more vitamin.

D. Well, I hope you enjoyed that teaser of exclusive content that you get every single month with Dr. Hyman Plus.

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