THIS Damages Your Brain & The 7 Steps To REVERSE IT For Longevity | Dr. Mark Hyman

The brain is constantly interacting, communicating with everything going on in your body. Yes, you have a blood-brain barrier, but it's not like it's something that's just inviolable. It's permeable and things go across and impact it. What causes a broken brain? Now, most of us never learn how to manage our own health. We don't get an instruction manual when we're born. We don't get a guidebook. We don't have help, like we do with our apps, help section. And we basically fumble our way through and we try to use all sorts of practices we think might be helping us, but they're actually harming us. We eat too much sugar to get energy. We drink too much caffeine. We have too much alcohol. And we manage our emotions and our mental state through self-medication, sometimes even worse drugs. And we use it to manage our minds and our moods, but we don't connect these behaviors with how crappy we feel. So the key insight here is that your brain is not just this disembodied organ that is sitting in your skull connected from the rest of what's going on in your body. We learned about the blood-brain barrier in medical school, but that's ridiculous. The brain is constantly interacting and communicating with everything going on in your body. Yes, you have a blood-brain barrier, but it's not like it's something that's just inviolable. It's permeable and things go across and impact it. So, everything that's happening in your body impacts your brain. In fact, the title of my book, the UltraMind Solution, was how to fix your broken brain. your brain by fixing your body first, right? Fixing your body first. And then you can see, well, then maybe I have some issues with my thoughts and my emotions and my feelings and my trauma, whatever. But if you are eating a crappy diet, if you're drinking too much, if you're smoking, if you're not exercising, if you have mercury poisoning, if your vitamin D is low, if you're B12 deficient, if your thyroid's not working, your brain's not going to work. So you just got to figure out how to get your brain healthy. So fixing your brain starts with fixing your body and optimizing all the inputs into your system and minimizing the bad stuff, right? The bad inputs, whether it's stress, poor diet, toxins, allergens, bad bugs, drugs like caffeine, alcohol, sugar, whatever is causing your brain to not work. The brain is pretty resilient and it can recover and heal given the right conditions. And I've seen miracles. I've seen people reverse Alzheimer's, reverse autism, reverse ADD, reverse depression, things that by schizophrenia, I mean, you just wouldn't even imagine how powerful this is. In fact, Christopher Palmer, who's been on the podcast, talked about how he uses a ketogenic diet to reverse Alzheimer's and optimize mitochondrial function as a key way to treating mental illness. There's departments of metabolic psychiatry at Stanford, of nutritional psychiatry at Harvard. So, we now actually have an understanding that the stuff I was talking about 15 years ago, by the way, was way ahead of its time and also extremely important to understand if we're going to fix our brains. About 30 years ago, almost, I developed chronic fatigue syndrome and it felt like I had dementia, depression, and ADD all at once. My brain was broken. I really couldn't focus. I couldn't pay attention. I used to be able to see 30 patients a day. Remember all their medical history, dictum at the end of the day with no problem. I couldn't at remember where I was at the end of a sentence from where I started. I couldn't read my kids a book out loud and actually understand at the same time. My brain really was broken. I couldn't sleep. I was exhausted. And I learned that I had mercury poisoning and that broke my brain. My brain was just a mess. I had terrible brain fog. I couldn't focus for much time. I was a physician trying to practice medicine. It was really tough. I couldn't even remember my patient names. and I knew I had to do something different. And that's when I discovered functional medicine almost 30 years ago. And when I reversed my chronic fatigue, when I detoxed from mercury, when I fixed all the other systems in my body, my mitochondria, my gut, my immune system, everything that was going wrong, I was able to reverse my chronic fatigue syndrome and my brain got better. And since then, I've written 18 books in 20 years. My brain is great. I feel good. And I'm sharper, faster and better than ever. So what's the worst things we do for our brains? Well, We have too much sugar and refined starch, carbs, and not enough good fats and not enough intake of the right nutrients. A lot of nutrient deficiencies, omega-3s, vitamin D, magnesium, to name a few, that are critical for brain health. And that affects over 50 to 90% of the population with deficiencies in those nutrients. Also, we're exposed to all kinds of weird things in our diet that are chemicals like artificial sweeteners like MSG, environmental toxins that actually cause damage to the brain, heavy metals, all these things damage our brain. So a lot of things cause brain damage, not just what I mentioned, but things like lack of sleep, too much stress, not exercising, overuse of certain substances like alcohol or other drugs. Now, I found over the years really fascinating to me, it's really quite amazing that people don't connect how they feel with what they eat. or how much they rest or sleep, you know, how much they exercise or how much time they take for friends and community and connection and, or how much bad news and media they're exposed to. I had a patient said, Geez, doctor, I'm so tired. I don't know what to do. I'm always tired. My brain's not working. I said, well, how much do you sleep at night? He goes, well, five, six hours. And I'm like, well, you need eight hours sleep and try to see what happens, right? So, you just don't connect the dots. Now, once you make those connections, you can start to change those simple habits that can have profound effects on your health long term and make a lot of little small changes that can make profound impact. Now, feeling fully focused, fully energized, having great brain health, it requires really following the principles of functional medicine, which is taking out the bad stuff and putting in the good stuff. It's taking out the bad food, toxins, allergens, microbes, stress, adding in the good stuff, the right whole foods, nutrients, balance of hormones, light, air, water, sleep, relaxation, connection, meaning, love, purpose, all these things are necessary for our brain to function properly. And most of us don't get enough of the good stuff. We don't get whole real food. We often are deficient nutrients. We're not exposed to enough natural light. We don't get enough fresh air. We don't drink clean water because most of it's polluted. We don't have periods of deep rest and relaxation. We don't sleep enough. We don't live in rhythm. We don't exercise. we're too focused on being busy in our careers and all kinds of stuff to focus on community and meaning and purpose and love. And so we basically have to optimize those things in order for us to be healthy. One of the things that I really focus on, well, food is the number one thing that controls your brain. And we've seen miracles by simply people changing their diet from treating depression to Alzheimer's to everything from ADD to even schizophrenia, as I mentioned. So, Eating real food is so important. When I say real food, I mean real food, not processed food or ultra processed food. Whole, organic, fresh, local, unprocessed food. If it has a barcode or a label, you might want to get rid of it. If your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize it as food, don't eat it. Does she know what a Lunchable is or a Pop-Tart? Probably not. Junk food is just bad. Fast food is bad. Ultra processed food is bad. Some processed food is okay. A can of sardines is processed, right? It's in a can, it's got salt, maybe oil, can of tomatoes is processed, it's tomatoes, water and salt. That's okay. But if you can't recognize where it came from, like a Pop-Tart, you probably don't want to eat it. And some things that seem like real food are really not like yogurt. Yogurt is often filled with high fructose corn syrup, colors, additives, gums, thickeners, all these things are pretty nasty for us. Also, you want to eat a lot of colorful fruits and vegetables. I know you hear me say this all the time, but these are full of phytochemicals, these impact the brain, the deep dark reds, yellows, oranges, greens, blues are so important because the color is where the phytochemicals are, it's where the medicine is. These are anti-inflammatory compounds or detoxifying compounds, antioxidants, they're mitochondrial boosting, energy producing compounds, brain powering molecules. We need to eat that. So get lots of colorful plant foods, blueberries, dark green leafy vegetables. Also go for the slow carbs, not the fast carbs. Right? I'm not saying no carbs. I mean, basically broccoli is a carb, right? But it's quite different than white bread or from sugar. Cauliflower and ice cream are all carbs, right? But you know cauliflower is good for you, but an ice cream sundae is probably not, right? So eating whole plant foods also will have lots of fiber helps to reduce the surges of sugar that cause some of the problems. In fact, we call now Alzheimer's type three diabetes. It's like diabetes of the brain. from too much sugar. So eating lots of fiber helps slow the surge of sugar, nuts, seeds, lots of veggies, whole grains, beans, all really can be very helpful. And it also keeps your gut healthy. And by the way, your gut and your brain are connected. You need to maintain your healthy microbiome to actually protect your brain health and prevent Alzheimer's. Also fat, the brain is made up of 60% Omega-3 fat, it's mostly fat in your brain. So you need to be a fat head and going on low fat diets are pretty bad for the brain. In my book, Eat Fat, Get Thin, I talk about fats a lot and what are the good fats, what are the bad fats and how to get the Omega-3 fats from your diet, from algae or fish. My brain worked pretty good before, but I actually have gotten on a better fat diet, including things like MCT oil, which is really powerful for the brain. and my focus and my clarity has just gone through the roof. Now, also you want to optimize protein. We need protein because if you lose muscle, because you don't eat enough protein, it leads to this cascade of problems with low muscle mass, fatty deposits in your muscle leads to pre-diabetes, lowers your testosterone, which you need for brain function, lowers growth hormone, which you need for brain repair, increases cortisol, which causes brain damage, literally causes the shrinking of your hippocampus, the memory center of the brain, so you want to make sure that you're having enough protein, ideally animal protein, which is better able to build muscle. And when you age faster, your brain takes a hit. It shrinks. So you can keep your brain good by eating good fats and the right amounts of protein, omega-3 eggs, protein shakes. I like regeneratively based goat whey for a protein shake in the morning, nut Butters, fish for breakfast, all that is great. Also, stop poisoning your brain. Get rid of all the bad stuff. sugar, high fructose corn syrup, trans fats, food additives, preservatives, environmental chemicals, all of which really are a problem. Supplements also very important for the brain. A good quality multi-magnesium is important for the brain. It reduces the stimulation of the NMDA receptors, which is actually producing Alzheimer's risk. Vitamin D is important for the brain. Omega-3 fats, probiotics, all the B vitamins, folate, B6, B12 are critical for your brain. and your neurotransmitter function. And you can find all these versions, the best versions, the cleanest versions at my online store, at store.drhyman.com, along with other brain-boosting supplements. So you need to design a plan for your life that includes your overall health, but you ought to incorporate some of these important practices for your brain. But the good news is what prevents brain problems, prevents heart disease, prevents cancer, prevents diabetes, and everything else. So Not like you do a million different things, but these principles are really important for brain health. Now, if you've tried all these things and you're still struggling, you got to dig a little deeper. For me, it was mercury poisoning. I was exercising, I was trying to eat well, I was doing all the right things, taking my vitamins, but it still wasn't better. So sometimes you got to figure things out. It might be Lyme disease, it might be mold, it might be food sensitivities, it might be some gut issues. You need to probably work with a functional medicine doctor to figure it out. and you can go to ifm.org and you can find a practitioner certified in your area. So taking care of your brain is important. Don't neglect it. It's an important organ and if it starts to go bad, you can fix it, but don't wait too long. If you love that last video, you're gonna love the next one. Check it out here. Understand that you're interacting with things not just from an energy perspective, not just fuel to run your body, but instructions that code for every single function of what's going on in your microbiome, your metabolism, your brain chemistry, your immune system, everything.