Exclusive Dr. Hyman+ Ask Mark Anything: Parkinson’s, Varicose Veins, And More

Hey everyone, it's Dr. Mark Hyman here. My team and I have been working hard on something that I'm so excited to share a little bit about today. It's a revolutionary new platform called Dr. Hyman Plus, which is a premium membership exclusive for my community. With Dr. Hyman Plus, you get a ton of private content and special access that no one else gets. This yearly membership gives you exclusive access to ad-free Doctors Pharmacy podcast episodes, access to all of my docu-series including the Longevity Roadmap and Broken Brain 1 and 2, plus all the bonus content. You get monthly Functional Medicine Deep Dives where one of our doctors goes deep into a health topic to tell you everything you need to know to heal. You'll also get access to a monthly Ask Mark Anything Q&A where I answer the Dr. Hyman Plus Community's biggest health and wellness questions. This Q&A is only accessible with a membership. Because I'm so excited to share this premium membership content with you, I'm releasing a teaser of the brand new Functional Medicine Deep Dive episode diving into one of the most important topics in health. I hope you enjoy it and head over to drhyman.com/plush. That's drhyman.com/plus for more information. Okay, here we go.

Hi, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Ask Mark Anything. My name is Hershel Peretz. I'm the Dr. Hyman Plus Community Manager and I'm joined by Darcy Groves. Hi, Darcy. Hi, I'm one of the producers of the Longevity Docu-Series. And we are here with, of course, Dr. Mark Hyman. Hello, Dr. Hyman.

Hi, how are you?

Good, good. And so we're so excited. We've collected all of your questions this month and we're here to ask Mark anything. So let's get started.

Almost, almost, should be ask Mark almost anything.

Almost anything. Of course, the caveat is if we don't ask for medical advice, but general information about topics that you guys are all interested in, we've collected those questions and we're here to ask. Let's get started with the first question. This one is actually about Parkinson's. We had a community member that wants to know what's the functional medicine approach to Parkinson's? How would you talk to your practitioner about that? What would a functional medicine doctor do with that?

Well, thank you so much for asking that question. This literally could take the entire hour. It's going to be a little bit of a longer answer. Some of the other questions won't be as long. But Parkinson's is one of the few conditions that conventional medicine recognizes as linked to toxins. So if you look at the scientific literature, it's fascinating about it, is that it's often linked to environmental chemicals, to pesticides, heavy metals, to plastics, to all sorts of compounds, smelting and leather work, tanneries. And so you see people who are industrial workers, they have higher levels. In fact, the the number one group at risk for Parkinson's is farmers. Because why? Because they're all exposed to the pesticides and herbicides and chemicals from the farming. I had a patient once who was 50 years old, had early onset Parkinson's, and she grew up in the Bronx. She lived very poor in one bedroom apartment with her family, and she had cockroaches and rats just crawling all over her all the time as a kid. And Darci's not into that, I guess. and she was so afraid of pests. And when she moved to the suburbs in Long Island, she decided she was going to get chemicals and spray her house. And she sprayed indoor and outdoor every month or every week or some ridiculously large amount. And in her garage was a giant barrel, it was like oil barrels for full of chlorodane, which had been banned because it's so toxic, which is an insecticide. And she got early on, said Parkinson's. I've seen patients with metals, mercury in their mouth and heavy metal fillings as a cause. I've seen people with high levels of mercury in their body from eating fish as a cause. I've seen so many stories of people who were exposed to chemicals and in an occupational way, through their hobbies, through just being in a polluted world that have really come down with Parkinson's. And the literature here is unequivocal. The other thing that's interesting is that it's really not so much genetic. I mean, there are genetic components, but when they looked at identical twin pairs, they found no correlation between identical twins and Parkinson's. So it had to do with more environment. The other thing about it is a really fascinating disease from a functional medicine perspective because it it sort of epitomizes all the things that can go wrong that are at the root cause of disease. So what happens is, at the end of the day, Parkinson's is an energy deficit in the brain and the motor center of the brain. So the brain is responsible for your motor functions. And so with Parkinson's, you get a slowing of motor functions, you have trouble getting off, you have trouble walking, you have trouble with tremors and controlling your motor function. And that often is because of the damage that's caused to this basal ganglia area in your brain. And this is going to be caused again by toxins. But then what happens is there's oxidative stress, there's inflammation, there's damage to the mitochondria. So at the end of the day, it's a mitochondrial disease. And there's been some really fascinating research looking at how do we use mitochondrial therapies like CoQ10 and Parkinson's, and they've been quite effective. So the good news about Parkinson's from a functional medicine perspective is that there's so much that can be done diagnostically to figure out the cause and therapeutically to deal with the effects of these toxins and inflammation in the brain. We know how to deal with inflammation, we know how to boost energy, we know how to deal with oxidative stress. What's also interesting is there's a lot of gut components. There's a lot of components related to imbalances in the gut flora. If you're constipated, for example, you're 400 times more likely, sorry, 400% more likely to get Parkinson's disease. That's a fourfold increase, you know, because these toxins from your gut and the poop are getting absorbed. So you end up having pretty significant exposures to compounds that drive inflammation, that harm mitochondria, and so on. So I'm always very excited when I see these patients because I begin to sort of dig in and do a workup. I look for pesticides, I look for phthalates, I look for bisphenol A, I look for every chemical in their environment. And what are they exposed to from their diet, from household cleaning products, from skincare products, from their water, from their air. from their mattresses, you know, pretty much everywhere. So the job of a functional medicine doctor in Parkinson's is to be a medical detective and then to optimize the systems that are malfunctioning. And so I look at toxin load. So I look for heavy metals, I look for pesticides, I look for phthalates, I look for PCBs, I look for parabens, I look for, you know, herbicides and glyphosate. I mean, I look for all of it. And I often am surprised by what I found and often I'm clued into people's habits or environment in ways that they might not have. For example, one woman, she loved to, you know, drink from her fancy crystal glasses and had crystal like vases. And it was just, it was every day, it was every day wear, not just a special occasion. And crystal is full of lead. And so she was lead poisoned and that was causing her problems. So everybody's a little different. And so I look at toxic levels. I also look at the stool, really important to look at God. What's going on? Is there inflammation? Is there imbalances in the flora? What's happening? I look at mitochondrial function. I look at oxidative stress. like inflammation, but it also may be other factors that are driving inflammation. For example, I've had patients who've had infectious causes like Lyme disease or Babesia that can contribute to neurologic effects. So we really need to take a broad look at allergens, toxins, microbes, and how they work with us plus our diet, and come up with a map of where these problems are. And for everybody, they're different. Not everybody with Parkinson's has the same disease, right? This is a fundamental tenet of functional medicine. Because you know the name of the disease does not mean you know what's wrong with you. it just means, you know, the label for the symptoms. So someone who is slow to get up, has a tremor, you know, has a cogwheel motion in their arm when you, when you move it as a medical exam, they call that Parkinson's. They go, I know you're, why you're having these symptoms. You have Parkinson's. No, that's just the name of the disease. That's not the cause of the symptoms. Right. So functional medicine is about getting to the root cause. And so we're really good at that. And then you have to really dig in and clean up all that mess. You have to get rid of the toxins in their life. You got to detoxify them from metals. You got to up regulate all their Pathways and and get their system going. Make sure they're not constipated and pooping. But then you really have a chance to improve the function of the mitochondria, which is using mitochondrial support. And this is a huge area of functional medicine. It's one of the key pillars in the seven systems in the body, the energy system. So you take food and you take air that you breathe and food that you eat and you burn it in these little energy factories, these powerhouses called mitochondria. And they are, they're producing ATP, which is the energy of your body. And when you don't have enough energy, your system poops out and then lack of energy in the brain is what you see with Parkinson's. So boosting the mitochondrial function, for example, with an acetyl cysteine, lipoic acid, magnesium, potassium aspartate, ribose, creatine, sulfate, NAD can be really, really important. And we can also use those things intravenously, like intravenous glutathione, intravenous NAD. And I've seen amazing results with tremor reduction, even there's even clinical trials using NAD or nicotinamide riboside, which is a mitochondrial factor that is involved in producing energy. And it's really quite stunning when you see how these people respond. So often you have to use a fair bit of interventions to get these people healthy. And then we use things to help reduce inflammation like curcumin and we use antioxidants and so forth. So we create a whole cocktail of therapies. And there's some other things that also seem to be very promising, like Parkinson's disease may respond to hyperbaric oxygen therapy, it may respond to ozone therapy. It may respond to things like exosomes, which are stem cell derived compounds from placentas that are cultured and then they grow or immunofluid and they can be injected and actually help to repair and heal tissues. So from a functional medicine perspective, I always am really enthusiastic about Parkinson's patients because there's so much you can do. And I shared one of my patients who had Parkinson's was really struggling for years and years. and he's been seen the top neurologist, very wealthy guy, seen the best. And when he went in the program, we found he had Lyme disease, he had Babesia, he had pre-diabetes, he had all these gut issues, he had heavy metals. And so we really dealt with all this stuff pretty systematically. And some we had to be really aggressive around the tick infections. And she's just remarkable. And his neurologist said he's never seen this before in his whole life of practice. Like he reversed his Parkinson's in 10 years. and he ended up giving us a donation for our Center for Functional Medicine at Cleveland Clinic, because he was just so grateful about how he was benefited by the benefits of functional medicine. So with functional medicine, I think, you know, of all the conditions out there, you know, Parkinson's is a tough one, but functional medicine is such a wonderful tool to help evaluate, diagnose, to understand the causes, to optimize the function, and to get people going again. So a lot of therapies out there that can be very effective. I don't want people to get discouraged. And sometimes it just takes a little work. Diet obviously plays a huge role, you know, having an anti-inflammatory diet, things like Parkinson's may respond to ketogenic diets, which actually improve brain function. So, and to help improve mitochondrial function, that's really what we talked about. So there's a whole field of mitophagy and mitochondrial regeneration, like autophagy, and that can be stimulated by intermittent fasting, time-restricted eating, ketogenic diets, and those also can be helpful. So, I think this is a really whole new era of treatment of Parkinson's. The problem is that most people aren't hearing about it.

Yeah, that's really great information. And as you said, it's important to deep dive into what could be the cause of that person's specific disease, whether it be toxins or whatever, different kinds of toxins. So thank you for that. Over to Darcy for the next question.

Yeah.

Hi, Dr. Mark. Good to see you again. so we'll just go ahead and jump right in. And it's all about varicose veins. I think there's so many of us that experience this. And so the big question is what causes them, but even bigger, what do we do? What do we do about varicose veins?

Well, that's a tough one. So what are varicose veins? Essentially, it's when too much pressure builds up in your veins and the walls kind of separate now in your vein. If, if let's say the vein is going this way up, right, and down. There's a valve that's like this. It's a one-way valve. When the blood comes from the bottom from your legs, let's say it goes up, the valves open, the blood goes up, and then the valves close. Little valves that prevent the backflow of blood so the blood doesn't go back down. What happens is because of various insults which I'll discuss, the valves become incompetent, meaning they don't work. So the valves are open, so the blood just pools down. and you get the increased largening of the veins. So it's a vicious cycle that happens. There's a lot of reasons why the veins can become incompetent and the pooling of blood can happen, but there can be nutritional factors and just the quality of your diet, the lack of phytonutrients and what we call bioflavonoids, things like asperin, rutin, quercetin. These are important plant compounds that keep the veins really healthy and elastic and vibrant. There also is mechanical so if you're pregnant, you'll often have the compression of your veins in your abdomen, which prevent Herschel's going, yeah, I got that. And you've had kids and it compresses the vein and you get pooling of the blood and that can be a problem. If you're very overweight, if you have a lot of obesity, a lot of that fat will press on the veins and prevent the blood from coming back up and push back pressure on there. It can also be hemorrhoids are actually varicose veins of your butt. So if you're constipated and sitting on your butt all the time, that can be a factor. There are other reasons. There's things like heart failure that can lead to varicose veins with this back pressure from the liver. If you live the right side of heart failure, you get liver failure, you get varicose veins. There's liver failure, there's lung issues that have to do with smoking and end-stage emphysema called COPD. And I can tell you as a doctor, in the operating room many times when you're operating on people who have poor diets, who are unhealthy or overweight, their tissues are just not healthy. And you try to sew them up and they rip. They're not strong and solid. And, and you can see this. It's, and that happens not just on the, you know, outside of your skin and poor quality skin, it's happening on the inside. And so I think there's a level of, of our poor inflammatory diet that drives these weakening of the veins and the vein, the quality of the veins, the vein elasticity and tissue. And there's a lot of things you can do to help. You can take bioflavonoids. You can make sure you take omega-3 fats that are important for vascular endothelium. You can make sure you take lots of spices and herbs, things like curcumin that can be really helpful for helping inflammation and vein elasticity. Those are all really helpful. It's really important if you do have them to get them treated because they can get worse and unfortunately, you know, natural ways don't often work to, to actually reverse them. You might need to do what we call radio frequency ablation, where they'll go in with a little catheter through the vein and they'll buzz it and it'll close the vein. And you have, you know, thousands of veins. So it just, it all, there's like basically side roads that it goes. It's like I said, you're closing the main highway, but there's like all these tributaries that'll, that allow you to return the blood. So that can be really effective. Vein stripping is an old technique they used to do. but sometimes you need to see a vascular surgeon to get it dealt with. But it's better to prevent them than to get them.

Well, I hope you enjoy that teaser of exclusive content that you get every single month with Dr. Hyman Plus. If you want to listen to the full episode and get access to ad-free podcast episodes, plus all the content from my docu-series and of course any future ones we're going to release, plus monthly Ask Mark Anything episodes, plus monthly Functional Medicine deep dive episodes, I guess, right? That's why we call it Dr. Hyman Plus. Head over to drhyman.com/plus. That's drhyman.com/plus to learn more. I'll see you there.

Hi everyone. Just a reminder that this podcast is for educational purposes only. This podcast is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical medical professional. This podcast is provided on the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your journey, seek out a qualified medical practitioner. If you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, you can visit ifm.org and search their find a practitioner database. It's important that you have someone in your corner who's trained, who's a licensed healthcare practitioner, and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health.