Use These NUTRITION TIPS To Help Heal Your Body TODAY! | Mark Hyman & Max Lugavere

So how do you get rid of environmental chemicals and metals and pesticides? How do you get rid of your own internal toxins, reduce inflammation and better metabolism and improved energy? The data on this is just extraordinary. David Ludwig and others have shown over and over again that all calories are not the same through randomized controlled trials.

What's going on, Marky Mark? Hi, hi, hi, Max. How's it going? I'm really excited because you have a new book out and I want to talk all about that, about the Pegan.

Diet, which I know started as a joke and now you have a book out about it. So how does that- that's true. Well, it was an interesting moment where I just had this epiphany when these two doctors who were at opposite ends of the nutrition spectrum, paleo and vegan, were fighting on stage and I was in the middle and I just was like, wow, you know, if you're paleo and you're vegan, I must be vegan. And I said it as a way to lighten the mood and kind of joke a little bit. And everybody cracked up. I thought, oh, this is good. It's a good joke. And that was it. And then I started thinking about it when I went home. Wait a minute, they're identical except for one thing. And they agree on everything except for one thing, which is where to get your protein, beans and grains or animals, right? They both don't think we should be consuming dairy or junk food or processed food. We should be eating whole foods, a lot of plants and nuts and seeds and berries, all sorts of foods that we all agree are really healthfully, they really are the same. And so I begin to think we really need to be thinking about an inclusive set of principles that's not dogmatic, that doesn't isn't driven by ideology, but it's driven by science and biology and by personalization. And by the overarching concept that food is medicine and that food is information, that if you focus on quality, then, you know, the rest takes care of itself. If you focus on what you're eating instead of how much, you don't have to worry about weight or health issues, and you just pick quality, which upgrades your biology. And, and I, and I think the, the, what's unique about the book is, is really looking at food through the lens of functional medicine and the lens of of how food literally regulates every function of our body. And, and that is a very different framework when people think about eating. It's like they eat for energy, they eat for whatever flavor, taste, all that's great. But if you understand you're also eating to regulate every single biological function in your body, whether it's your gut or your microbiome, your immune system, your detox system, how your energy is made, your, your hormones, communication systems, your structural system, all that is influenced by everybody who you take in real time. It's the single most Important thing you do every day to control your health, period.

Yeah, it's amazing. Prevailing dietary wisdom over the past couple of decades has, you know, always said that to lose weight, eat less, move more. And you said something really interesting. You said that it's more important to focus on what you're eating than how much you're eating. Why is that?

That's right.

That's right.

Well, you know, it's funny, Max, when I got done the book, I realized there is no chapter on weight loss. there's no principle on weight loss because I don't actually tell people to lose weight. I help them get healthy and the weight loss is a side effect of creating health. And it's important people realize that if you, I mean, you, you can staple your stomach and lose weight. You can starve yourself in this way. You can, you know, cabbage soup, die, lose weight. But none of those things are really long-term sustainable or pleasurable. And the key is by focusing on well-being and health, you start to reset all the systems in your body to move towards reduced inflammation and better metabolism and improved energy and so forth. And so I, I think the, the whole idea that all calories are the same basically comes from a lab, because a calorie essentially is the amount of energy is required to raise the temperature of one liter of water, one degree Centigrade. It's just a physics. problem. And if you take a thousand calories of broccoli and a thousand calories of Coke and you burn them in a lab, they release the same amount of energy. They're identical, right? That's true. But when you eat them, they're not the same because they have different effects on your body. If it's just energy and calories and that's all food were, that would be fine, but it's not has all this other stuff in it. So the broccoli has huge amounts of fiber, phytochemicals, vitamins and minerals, very, very low sugar, lots of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of of beneficial compounds, whereas the soda is just pure sugar has none of that and will make you really sick and gain weight and cause all these adverse outcomes. And, you know, even, you know, a fifth grader or a kindergartener for that matter, we understand that there's a difference between broccoli and soda when you eat. But most scientists, most nutritionists, most of our academic institutions, our government policies, and certainly the food industry is very dogmatic about the fact that all calories are the same and that weight loss is an energy problem. And, in fact, you It really serves the interest of the food industry because if a 100-calorie snack pack of Oreo cookies is the same as 100 calories of blueberries, then you can eat either and exchange them and you'll be the same and fine and it's just not true. And the data on this is just extraordinary. David Ludwig and others have shown over and over again that all calories are not the same through randomized controlled trials showing very different profoundly different effects on metabolism, for example, by just changing the macronutrient composition. Forget all the phytochemicals, right? changing protein, fat and carbs, if you have a very, very low carb diet versus a low fat diet, if they're identical calories in a group of insulin resistant patients in a randomized control study where they were given the food, there was no question about their eating, the overweight insulin resistant group that was eating the low carb diet burned 400 calories more a day. In other words, their metabolism was sped up when they cut out the sugar and starch and ate the fat. So that's just one example. But there's so many that has to do with all the other things in food besides just calories.

Also, the low-carb group, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't there data that suggests that even on an isocaloric diet, they'll require less medication because they have fewer glycemic excursions, right?

When they're eating carbohydrates. Yeah, of course. I mean, their blood sugar is better, their cholesterol is better, it increases muscle mass, decreases visceral or belly fat. it, the data is pretty compelling and, and, and, but, but, you know, again, that's just macronutrients. Forget about that. Forget about that. And think about the 25, 000 molecules in food that are phytochemicals that come from plants and actually now are found in meat that eat plants. From data from Fred Provenza and Stephen Van Vleet at Duke, it's pretty compelling when you get wild animals or when you have grass finished beef that's eating a wide variety, not just like one grass and one pasture, but a wide variety of plants, they actually increase the levels of beneficial phytochemicals in the meat. And it can be as equivalent in dosage as much as vegetables, which is pretty amazing. So we have all these compounds and those are regulating every function all the time. Like for example, broccoli has glucosinolates, which I'm picking on broccoli today, but or sulforaphane, which are these phytochemicals that aren't vitamins and minerals, not protein, fat, fiber, carbohydrates. They're these molecules that regulate, for example, detoxification. So how do you get rid of environmental chemicals and metals and pesticides? How do you get rid of your own internal toxins? well, you need certain amounts of these compounds that can be anti-cancer. And that's why they find, for example, that people who eat a lot of these cruciferous vegetables, when they look at high levels of these compounds in their urine, they did studies in China, they find that those who have highest levels of basically broccoli in their pee have far less cancer, right? Because it detoxifies all these toxins. That's just one example. And I could, I could speak for hours on each of the different examples. And they're in the book, you know, whether it's Himalayan, Tartary buckwheat and the 132 phytochemicals in there that rejuvenate your immune system, whether it's the polyphenols and green tea pomegranate and cranberry that fertilize a particular bug in your gut called akkermansia that's needed to improve your metabolism, reduce inflammation, deal with autoimmune disease, even actually can help you treat cancer. It's like, wow, you know, all of a sudden you've got a whole different palette of things to work with to.

Upgrade your health and to improve your, improve your overall well-being there's this pushback on social media to the notion of detoxification diets. And I think rightfully so to some degree, right? Because there's a lot of supplement. There are many, many, many supplements and juice cleanses and things that are sold under the guise of detoxifying your body. And so there's this pushback to it. But I think it's so important for people to understand that food really can help you detoxify. Like that broccoli sprout study you were talking about.

Yeah.

Help people in China get, you know, better, more effectively excrete benzene, carcinogens like benzene, acrylamide.

Right.

Yeah.

This is also important. What are some of your other favorite phytonutrients to talk about?

Well, I love phytochemicals. Yeah, phytonutrients. And, you know, the one that I'm really learning a lot about now are the ones in this Himalayan Tarty Buckwheat, which our friend Jeff Blant has kind of rediscovered this ancient grain that's 3,500 years old that is grown in Himalayas full of so many powerful compounds because it's grown under duress. It's grown in harsh conditions, in cold weather, in poor soil, in high altitudes, poor water conditions, and drought, and yet it produces this incredible grain, or it's actually a flower, not the kind of FLOU are, it's FLOUER. And it turns out that just as an example of one of the things it does is it helps to rejuvenate your immune system. And what do I mean by that? Well, as you age and as you get insulted by life and chemicals and toxins and radiation, who knows what else EMS, your stem cells and your bone marrow can get injured that make white blood cells. And you make a million white blood cells every second. Like every second, you make a million white blood cells. Wow. Okay. And those stem cells kind of write the program for those white blood cells, but the stem cells are funky. You get funky white blood cells. And then those get in your blood and they circulate around and they create all kinds of havoc, heart disease, autoimmune disease, they're called chipped cells or zombie cells. And they cause immunosenescence, which means the aging of the immune system. Well, it turns out that these compounds in Hemalian cartilage, and some of them are or really only found in this one plant, are immuno-rejuvenating and are one of the few things that will actually kill the zombie cells.

Wow.

So that's amazing. Just to me alone, if I wanna, you know, so I'm making pancakes from it, we made soba noodles from it, and it's way higher in protein, very low glycemic load, super high in vitamins and minerals, and really rich in these phytochemicals. It's, I think, the most phytochemical-rich plant on the planet. because the way it's grown and it's stressed by the stress of its environment. It's had to produce all these defenses, which are these phytochemicals. I mean, they weren't putting the plants for us. They were putting the plants for the plants to use to defend themselves or attract, you know, pollinators or whatever they do. Plants do their own intelligence. And we have borrowed that. We have borrowed that, that. biochemistry to upregulate our biology. So we're lazy. Like, we don't make vitamin C, we have to get it from food. We don't make Omega-3 fats. You know, other animals can make vitamin C, for example. But we, we sort of are lazy. And if we can grow up in an environment where we got to use all these plants, then we, we actually can use them for biology. And I call this symbiotic phytoadaptation, meaning that we've evolved symbiotically with plants to borrow their biochemistry to help regulate our biochemistry. and, and use them when we need to. And they're not, quote, vitamins and minerals in the sense they're not essential nutrients, but I think they're conditionally essential. Because if you don't have them over your long life, your health will be poor and you'll be not as, as, as vibrant and healthy as you could be.

Or you might even get really sick. I symbiotic phyto adaptation.

I know. I made that up. I made that up.

Is that good? I'm gonna start using that. What a, what a beautiful, elegant way. What a beautiful, elegant way to describe the phenomena whereby a plant with more vigor in it, right? Like a survivor of a plant actually lends its vigor to you. Right?

Right?

That's incredible.

Yeah. And what's interesting is, you know, when you start to look at plants these days, they're not like the plants we used to eat. The soil is low in organic matter because of tillage and chemical use. We basically killed the microbiome of the soil, which is required to extract the nutrients for the plants. So our broccoli and our vegetables are 50% less nutritious than they were 50 years ago. And on top of that, because of increasing carbon in the atmosphere, plants eat what? They eat carbon. They eat carbon dioxide. They breathe carbon dioxide. So carbon is the root of carbohydrates, right? And so they put the carbohydrates in the soil, which is good. That's the organic matter. But because of this increased carbon, what we're seeing is plants are far less nutritious because they're increasing their carbohydrate content and their protein and nutrient content is going down. So based on looking at kind of current trends with climate change, 122 million people, just because of this increase in climate change, will be protein deficient. You know, a billion people will be iron deficient. You know, there'll be, I think, 75 million who will be zinc deficient. So we, we're in a situation where the way we're growing food is also the problem. And when you mentioned the the plants under duress, you know, organic is more, you know, stressed, for example, than a conventional crop. And a wild crop is more, a wild plant is more stressed than a, than an organic plant, right? And a regenerative is probably somewhere in the middle there. But you look at, for example, strawberry. If you ever eat a wild strawberry, it's about this big. You can barely see it, but it's like the biggest explosion of flavor you could ever imagine. That's because of all the, phytochemicals and there's fenestine and other compounds in that are super helpful for aging and all kinds of health benefits. Whereas if you eat a conventionally grown strawberry, it's full of pesticides, it tastes.

Like cardboard and has almost no phytochemicals. Yeah, I actually have started eating strawberry leaves. I just popped the whole thing in my mouth. Strawberry leaves are a significant source of caffeic acid, which is a powerful antioxidant.

Yeah.

That's, I mean, super interesting. So, on the spectrum of, you know, a more plant-based diet and then we have obviously now a growing population of people on a carnivore diet who are only eating meat. Where do you stand between those two poles? I mean, what does your plate look like when you're sitting down for dinner?

Well, last night was a really good example. I'm on, I'm on Maui and there's more deer than there are people because they were introduced by some, you know, invader years ago. And it was a bocadillo deer on the land next to a friend of mine, a little bit of venison, probably four ounces, six ounces. And I had Japanese sweet potato. I had olio mushrooms, which are the incredible mushroom with tomato sauce. And we had a big salad with watercress and radishes and avocados and miso tahini dressing. And it was so most plate was like the vegetables, the tiny side of, and of course there's some chocolate for dessert. But essentially, I think, you know, the whole conversation about meat is very confused and very confusing. And, you know, I've discussed this many times and, you know, there are just such polar opposite camps. And so part of the whole purpose of the book was say, look, you know, you don't want to let your ideology trample over your biology, right? You, you, you basically, if you have a belief, for example, you should be vegan and you end up doing it and you feel like crap, and you lose your period and your sex drive and your muscle mass and you become nutrition deficient, depressed and low energy and don't have oomph, then maybe you should listen. I met with a woman the other day who was an Olympic, Olympic athlete, and she's like, she went vegan and she's like, she just lost her power. And, and I talked to another Elite athlete who was a tennis player who's, you know, top one, two tennis players in the world. And he was like, yeah, I went, I want to be vegan, but I I can't, like if I want to hit the ball. So I think there's a point of view of looking at what works for you based on personalization of nutrition, which is where we're headed. And two, what makes sense scientifically based on the data we have. And I think when you look at the meat data, there's over 100,000 studies on meat and you can find anything in there you want to read. And I got my little nutrition news, you might get that as a little science journal, which you get one of the latest studies that come out. So you always kind of keep up to date and it comes in your email box. I just love the study because it was so funny because it was on the same day, they basically said, they basically said, I don't know if you can find this one, study strengthens links between red meat and heart disease. The next study down was Mediterranean diet with beef may lower risk factors for heart disease. So no wonder people are confused. The first study was a study that showed in a population, an observational study, that people who ate meat had more heart disease and heart function. And this is a study that does not prove cause and effect, but basically shows an association. And it turns out that meat has been vilified. And so anybody who's eating meat probably is somebody who's not focused on their health, someone who isn't as committed to a healthy lifestyle, let's say. And when you look at the data, when you look at the characteristics of the meat eaters in these studies, they're they're more overweight, they tend to eat more calories, they smoke more, drink more, eat less fruits and vegetables, you know, don't take their vitamins, eat more processed food, sugar and starch. Of course they have more disease. Is it the meat or is it the rest of their lifestyle? When you look at studies that, that have meat eaters and, and vegetarians who shop at health food stores and you look at their risks, their risk of death goes down in half for both groups because what's what, not what they're eating, it's what what they're eating with it, right? So if you're eating meat in the context of a standard American diet, yeah, if you're eating meat in the context of a whole foods plant rich diet with tons of phytochemicals and spices, then no. And the other study was a randomized controlled trial, which is a more intentional study looking at cause and effect and really measuring in each individual what's going on, not just looking at big populations. And they found that actually when you ate meat, your risk factors for heart disease went down like LDL cholesterol. And people, well, I thought meat's bad for your cholesterol. Well, that was the thinking because meat contains saturated fat and saturated fat raises LDL. And so that's what's bad. Turns out that the stearic acid in meat, which is the predominant saturated fat, doesn't really raise your blood cholesterol, whereas sugar and starch actually do. So sugar and starch are really the drivers of most of lipid issues in this country, which are small particles, lots of particles, high triglycerides, low HDL. That's what we call atherogenic dyslipidemia. And in English, that means it's the kind of cholesterol profile that causes heart attacks.

And that comes from sugar and starch, not from eating meat or fat.

Yeah. I mean, I do think it's. Yeah. Keep going. Keep going. Sorry. No. So the TMAO issue is interesting. People say, what about TMAO? Well, two things. One, you know, the carnitine and stuff that they gave was a supplement, not necessarily from meat. So we don't know how that works. And also they looked at, well, although some were from meat, but also they looked at, you know, other factors that are, you know, I was talking to Dan Hazen who's done a lot of this pioneering research. He said, yeah, if you have red wine and olive oil and balsamic vinegar with it, it mitigates the effects. I'm like, oh. And in the book, I talk about how, for example, in Morocco and then the Masai, the Masai, they have no real increased risk of heart disease and cancer and things we associate with meat. And so neither do the Moroccans, even though they eat a lot of meat. And the Masai, all they eat is meat and milk. But the difference is in Masai, they put in 12 spices in their milk and I think about 20 something spices in their meat. And same thing in Morocco, it's used with tons of spices. So the spices are these phytochemicals that are anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, change the ways in which these interact with your body in terms of the meat. So there's a lot of interesting sort of nuances around meat and I think we can talk more about it, but essentially you know, the three issues get conflated, which is, you know, moral and ethical environmental climate and health. Right. And they're like, oh, you know, if it's bad for one, it's bad for all. It's not necessarily true. So moral and ethical, you know, I, i kind of understand that if I have monks or i've taken care of very high llamas in the buddhists, you know, world, and, and they don't want to, you know, like, okay, well, we'll figure out a really a guy that has all the right components in it to help you thrive with adequate protein and low starch and sugar. And a lot of these monks are all diabetic, you know, a lot of these guys are all diabetic. and second is the fact that, you know, if you think you're not harming animals by eating vegetables, you're not completely, you know, getting the full story. And here's why. When you actually do agriculture, it's a destructive act. So if you're growing a cabbage patch and you're destroying the habitat of all sorts of animals, and then you go in and mow it down and collect whatever, you're going to kill the rabbits or the moles or the mice or the birds. And the question is, you know, well, is a, is a rabbit's life any, any less valuable than a cow's life or a chicken's life? I don't know. But, I mean, we're killing 7 billion animals a year just from vegetable agriculture. So you can't get out of that. And also, you know, people are, I'm having organic vegetables. Well, how do they grow the organic vegetables? They use cow manure and bone meal and oyster shells and animal products to grow the vegetables. So your, your grass-fed beef is a, is a vegan. whereas your broccoli is a carnivore. And then lastly is health. And I think that's sort of what we were speaking to earlier, which is the idea that, oh yeah, and the climate issues and the environmental issues. I think for sure factory farming and traditional agriculture is a disaster and should be banned. And it has for all sorts of reasons, climate, environment, inhumane treatment of animals, less poor quality product, et cetera, that's not good for human health, that should just be banned. But that's not to say that a regeneratively raised beef is bad. And it turns out that you need animals to regenerate soil, which is critical for climate change. And I was just speaking to some woman who was a billionaire lady whose entire focus is a very smart woman who's very focused on solving climate change. And she said she looked with all her resources and all her scientists and all the data and everything, she looked around and you know, wanted to come up with some cool solution and realize that it was dirt. It was soil. It was turning dirt to soil. And that is the number one solution for climate change. And literally investing tons of money and doing the research on this and looking further at it. And it just sort of struck me that, you know, people just don't understand how important it is. And the only way to really build soil is to include animals as part of an ecosystem on the farm. And then that doesn't mean you have to eat them. It doesn't mean you have to eat a lot of them. It just means that they have to be in there to build soil through peeing, pooping, digging around and so forth. And lastly, the health issue, you know, just talking about is, is so important because if you're eating grass finished, you know, generally raised meat with tons of phytochemicals, well, that's very different than eating a feedlot cow. And, and there's even been randomized trials looking at, you know, for example, wild kangaroo meat versus feedlot meat and its effect on biology. And even though it's the same gram for gram protein, when they feed them the kangaroo meat, levels of anti, of inflammatory markers go down when they feed the feedlot beef, the inflammatory markers go up. So beef is not beef, it's not beef. So I think, I think it's, it's, you know, as, as Russ Conner says.

As organic farmer, regenerative farmer says, it's not the cow, it's the how across the board on all these things.

Yeah.

I mean, some of the vegan talking points I think would be, would be aligned with, with, with the notion that you know, a modern cow, a cow that goes through the feedlot system, right? It's like fattier than wild animals, right? Like we never, you know, throughout our evolution, we've probably never consumed animals as fatty as a modern cow. And that's why when you feed a cow what it naturally wants to consume, there's actually less, it's a less fatty animal, right? There's less saturated fat and things like that. And the kangaroo study, I haven't seen.

That, but I'm sure kangaroos are incredibly lean animals.

So, yeah.

And the venison I had last night.

Had like now one ounce of fat in it, which is solid.

Clean protein.

So, do you think that maybe there's a rationale then to be more cognizant of the fattiness of the animal that you're consuming? Maybe opt for, because the dietary dogma over the past couple of decades is lean protein, right?

Right.

So, I'm just trying to play devil's advocate even to my own diet and views on this. Is there a rationale to maybe reach for leaner meat as compared to fattier these days?

Well, that is a great question and the answer is it depends. And, you know, I have the privilege of not just sort of learning about the science and reading and studying, but I have the privilege of having seen tens of thousands of patients over 40 years, almost 35 plus years of practice. And it's humbling because you will put one person on a high saturated fat diet and everything will look fantastic. Like, and other people, it's a disaster. So I remember this one woman, she was overweight. She had pre-diabetes cholesterol was super high, triglycerides really high, really low HDL. I'm like, look, she was stuck. I said, why don't you try a keto diet? So she was eating 70 fat and mostly butter and coconut oil. Okay. As the fat and. I was like, okay, let's try this and see what happens for six weeks, two months. You know, it's not going to kill you. And we'll try it. Turned out her tri, her cholesterol dropped 100 points. Her triglycerides dropped 200 points. Her HD went up 40 points. She lost 20 pounds. All her inflammation went away, and she felt fantastic. I had another guy who was a mid-50s bike racer, great shape, but wanted to try it for performance. And I said, all right, let's just make sure we check your numbers. It was a disaster. His cholesterol went crazy. His, his total particle number went up, his lipid particle size down, it was just like the weirdest thing. So I think it really depends on the individual. So I would say there is no one straight answer and everybody's looking for the answer. And, and that's really why the principles of, of the Pegan diet are one, food is medicine and two, personalization. And there's, there's 21 principles in the book that are not meant to be dog dogma, but they're meant to be guidelines for how to think about what to eat in each category of food and how to eat for different causes, right, for personalization, for mood, for gut, for longevity, you know, how to eat in an affordable way, and as well as, you know, which, what should you think about meat and which vegetables should you eat and what, what oil should you have and why? And, and how do you pick quality in each of the areas of the food you're eating? How do you pick the best medicines and everything? And that's really the whole purpose of the book. And if you follow it, you'll be perfect. And it's meant to be inclusive. Right. And we know, look, we know all the people in the wellness field. We are in, you know, in the field. And we know we're not perfect, right? I mean, the other night, I went and had vegan macadamia nut ice cream. It was really, really good. I was a ton of sugar.

Makes sense.

I was a ton of sugar. But you know what? I rode my bike, you know, 30 miles and played tennis and did my workout, and so I'm like, okay, fine. But I just think we have to sort of understand that, that we need to get away from all these diet wars and conflicts because all the different camps, right, are in the wellness world are all trying to do the same thing. They're all trying to get people to focus on improving the quality of their health. What the enemy really is the food system and the industrial processed food that most Americans are eating. It's not, you know, whether you should have, you know, 60 or 70 or 30% of your plate being this or that or the other thing. It's like, it's really about quality.

I couldn't agree more. And there's research that shows us that by increasing the quality of your food, it actually dictates the quantity of food that you end up consuming, right? That Kevin... Oh yeah. Oh yeah. 2018.

Yeah. I mean, literally they eat 500 calories more a day if they were allowed to eat junk food than if they eat regular food, right? And calories matter. I'm not saying calories don't matter, but it's like in the context of everything, it's like what calories and what are they doing to you? David Literally just came out with a study a couple weeks ago showing that and profound ways that the food impact on the reward centers in the brain and how very high carbohydrate and starchy foods are highly biologically addictive and drive cravings and addiction and increase consumption, slow metabolism, cause muscle loss, inflammation, decreased testosterone, cortisol, adrenaline. I mean, it's a mess when you eat that way. And so, yeah, I could eat carbs and sugar all day long. I would love to eat pasta and bread and potatoes and rice and ice cream and yeah, I would really love that stuff. I don't do it. And sometimes I do, you know, sometimes we'll have a vegan ice cream or sometimes we'll have a little bit of rice or I'll have whatever. But I think it's really about understanding how it plays out in the context of overall diet and lifestyle. Yeah.

I mean, I think the mistake that most people in the fitness community make is that they promote energy balance as a weight loss strategy. And it's not. It's like a science, you know, perhaps we can call it a scientific truth, right? But it's not a strategy for people, especially people that are tasked with navigating the modern food environment, which at every opportunity is trying to sell you ultra processed foods that are simply not designed to be consumed in moderation. And so by trying to just eat smaller portions of pizza, pasta, burritos, frozen chicken dinners, and things like that, you're setting yourself up for failure. You're setting yourself up for chronic hunger, And that's why I think we see that diets tend to be unsustainable, right? You can't think of this as being a, a, a temporary fix, a quick fix. It's not a diet. It should be a lifestyle for you.

Yeah. It should be a way in which.

You style your life. Exactly.

But, you know, the thing is, when you focus on what you eat, you don't have to worry about how much, like I said. And what's fascinating is if you're off by a hundred calories a day, and, and, and by the way, I challenge anybody to count their calories. and then estimate what they're doing and then literally make sure you measure everything because you will be off even PhD nutritionists can't do this, right? They can't. You cannot get within 100 calories of what you're consuming. And if you're off 100 calories a day over the course of your lifetime, over 30 years, you're gonna probably gain 20 or 30 pounds if you're off just 100 calories a day. Now, I'm 61 and I'm the same weight as I was when I was 21, more or less, although I have a lot more muscle now. and I don't think about calories. And when you eat the right foods, your biology just normally will kind of adapt to doing the right thing. You don't have to, it's so smart if you just feed it the right food and get rid of all the junk and equality stuff, your body knows what to do. It'll tend to reset everything in the right way and then you'll naturally regulate what you're doing.

Yeah, 100%. How do we get, how do we increase food access? you know, access.

Oh, yeah. I want to say, I want to say one more thing about this before we talk about access to quality food. So what's really fascinating to me is, is this book I've been reading called nourishment by Fred prevenza, who's a Rangeland scientist. He's, he's a genius. This guy is kind of like a guru Rancher, agroecologist. I don't even know what he is, but he's studied basically the relationship between humans, plants, animals, the nature and this whole Dynamic. And, and, you know, what he says is that if you, if you look at animals, and how they eat if they're left to their own devices in a natural environment, like a grass-fed cow who's on lots of land with, you know, like, like Gabe Brown has 100 different species of grasses, right, on his land. They will deliberately seek out different plants for the flavor profile, but they're also, by the way, getting all these phytochemicals in these plants. So they're actually seeking out what they get their main nutrition, but then they're looking at, you know, all this for this vitamin, you know, all this phytochemical. They're not thinking that, obviously, but they're naturally seeking out things that are going to help regulate and improve the quality of their health. What's happened to us humans is we've gotten so divorced from understanding what our bodies want and need and our whole craving taste flavor mechanism has been so warped by the industrial food system that we actually don't know what's good for us anymore, that we won't seek out the things that are good for us. And that people who, like in that study, are eating way more of the processed foods are doing it often in search of nutrients, right? If you look at kids who are iron deficient, what do they do? They eat dirt to get iron. It's called pica. Well, most people who are overweight are highly malnourished. We think, oh, you're fat, you know, you're over nourished. No, you're actually undernourished with a lot of the most important vitamins and minerals. And so the body has this natural intelligence to try to seek out and eat more. And that's why you keep eating and eating and eating. So that I just had to sort.

Of drop that in there? Yeah, that's, I mean, that's where I think we, you know, you have to talk about protein as one of the most effective weight loss and, and body recomposition tools that exists.

Right.

The, the pro, I'm sure you're familiar with the protein leverage hypothesis that we leverage our food environment to, to ingest our, our, you know, the required amount of amino acids. And protein is, you know, there's been a number of feeding studies, right. That have shown meta analyses that show again and again, both in the short term and the long term protein is the most satiating. of the macronutrients. So that's why I tend to, at least in my own diet, I tend to focus on protein, I tend to prioritize protein and then kind of fill in the gaps around that for variety, for taste and stuff. And when I'm filling out those gaps, that's when I will bring in fiber into the equation because fiber is satiating but for another reason, fiber is satiating because it mechanically, it takes in water, it stretches out the stomach, shuts off those hunger hormones like ghrelin, but what are your thoughts on protein? Is that something that you suggest being cognizant of or are you just, it's more of a whole food? Well, you know, it's interesting.

Most of the people in the diet world are focused on fat or carbohydrate, right? And certain proteins sort of ignored. Unless you're, you know, in the medical world, then you do these protein sparing modified fasts. Essentially, you give people a sense of protein in order to lose weight as a rapid weight loss strategy. So, you give them protein shakes. And, I agree, protein is very satiating. I think, you know, the way I think about it is that, is that you want enough, but you don't need a ton for most people. It's, it's really depending on your size, your weight, your activity level. But, you know, the, the guidelines are really 0.8 to 1.2 or maybe up to even two grams of protein per kilo depending on your activity level. And so I think is an individual needs and as you get older, you need more and then the quality of the protein matters. Right. So plant protein is okay, but it's not as good as animal protein in triggering muscle synthesis. So you need a lot more plant protein. When you see these vegans who are super jacked, you know, like, and you go, wow, how do you get like that? Well, they're pounding the plant protein powders. They're pounding those powders in order to get adequate levels. And there's even some, for example, like I, I just picked up one of the day. There was a, a sport, a sport protein. There was a plant protein. And when I looked at it, it was basically they just jacked up the protein amount and they jacked up the amino acids. that are missing in plant proteins or that are low in plant proteins, the branch chain amino acids that you need to build muscle. So you can do it on a plant-based diet, but I think it's really tough. And I, I think the, the other thing I would say is that if we, if we look at the requirements for people, usually people get a palm size piece of protein. If you're a five-year-old or Shaquille O'Neal, your Palm's a different size. That is really about the amount of protein you need each meal, and it can be a mixture of plant animal proteins. And if you mix them, actually, you get better results than just eating the plant protein alone. So I think I tend to not have protein as the center of my life. I think it's sort of a, it's on the plate, but it's literally like a quarter of the plate, not the center of the plate. And three quarters are vegetables.

Yeah, I like that. The thing about plant protein powders that I'm weary of, I used to consume a lot more of them. And now I'll, you know, if I want to try one, I'll have one. But I'd be worried, I'd be nervous about the unintended ingestion of heavy metals with those, with plant protein powders. Yeah, yeah, we see that.

But, you know, I wonder if there's also new animal protein powders. You can get beef protein and collagen protein powders. So there's other ones that people are using whey protein. And, you know, all of our world is so polluted and that's really why you can get these contaminants. It's not because of the, you know.

The inherent quality of the plants and the yeah, I mean plants absorb, you could take a perfectly healthy plant like kale, right? Our mutual friend Dave Asbury loves to hate on kale, but I personally, I eat about a half a cup to a cup of kale almost every day. I eat a kale salad that I get from this local supermarket that I enjoy frequenting. But if you're growing that kale off the side of the freeway, it's going to be sucking up cadmium, lead.

We.

Hear, you know, people who are- Thallium. Thallium, yeah. All these heavy metals that you don't want in your body. And so it's important to recognize and to underscore, which you've so beautifully articulated, that the food system today, if you're basing your diet around foods that are commonly available to a Westerner, to some degree you're ingesting toxins. Like you can't live today a toxin-free lifestyle. So you have to, take the extra step, go the extra mile to integrate foods that are also going to help you detox, to exercise as much as you can for your fitness levels and your age and what have you. But today really, I mean, the best thing that you can do ultimately, I think, is eat a diet that's balanced. And that's one of the things that I love about your work, is that you're very moderate. You're situated in between these warring dietary factions. And I think, you know, you have the most moderate message of anybody, of most of the people that I've seen out there.

Yeah. Well, it's just, you know, it's because I've been humbled by being a real doctor. And you just, you just, if you get dogmatic, say, you should be this, you should be that. Like one, there's different preferences that people have, but there's also different biologies. And so, you know, one of the sections of the book is leveraging personalized nutrition. So we look at your family history, look at your metabolic tests. We look at food tends to be testing, genetic testing, and we can really even your microbiome. We can tell so much about what you should be doing to optimize your health. And I think, you know, not everybody can do all those tests, but soon they're coming. Soon they're coming. Everybody will be able to kind of get them, you know, relatively soon. I think we'll be able to do a finger stick or a little saliva sample or poop test and, you know, do it at home. And I know a lot of people working on this project and be able to tell what really is right for you and then you iterate. But it's super important to get stuck in a pigeon hole of I have to do this or after that, listen to your body.

It's the smartest doctor in the room. Yeah. What do you have any thoughts on this, the movement that's been called intuitive eating? You know, basically listen to your body when your body tells you to stop eating a certain thing. I feel like it goes, it rides and tends to ride in tandem with the healthy at any size movement. You know, we, over the past year, we've seen those Cosmopolitan covers. I'm curious.

My intuition wants a giant chocolate chip cookie. What do I do with that? My intuition says, gee, you really need that whole pint of vegan ice cream because that's good. I don't want to listen to that. That's not good. Because I think, you know, our, our, our, if, if, listen, if we were like these wild animals or these grass-fed, you know, animals, they are, they are seeking out the most nutrition that they can through a home wide variety of plants because they have their natural intelligence. And we don't, we've lost it. Why? Because we're eating a lot of foods that have hijacked our taste buds, hijacked our brain chemistry, hijacked our hormones and metabolism. And so we're like, it's like the body snatchers, you know? It's like we really are struggling with trying to figure out, you know, what is our intuition about food, right? Because often it's pretty screwed up.

Up.

And it's not based on our natural biological needs. It's based on cultural preferences, based on screwed up, you know, biochemistry, as I just mentioned. It's based on our beliefs. I mean, there's so many things that layer into it. So while intuitive eating sounds like a.

Good idea, it depends on who's doing it, right? Yeah, I'm a Jew from New York. I, my intuition, you know, if I look, Bagels in. Yeah, I would eat a bagel. buttered bagel every day.

Yeah.

You know, just pure carbs and fat every day.

Yes. Yeah.

That's good for my first meal of the day. That's what.

Oh, don't tell me that. Oh, I don't even say that.

I just.

I miss bagels or pizza for dinner.

That's what I would. That's what my intuition tells me to eat for dinner.

Yeah.

If I were to listen to that.

I like that. Yeah.

You're so right, though. It's like you. You really can't. you have to have a healthy level of distrust for your intuition today because everything, our taste buds have become short-circuited by the fact that our food now is saltier than it's ever been because they're just pumping ultra-processed foods with sodium. The amount of added sugar in foods today are unprecedented. Your average person consumes 66 pounds of added sugar every single year, to the point that even whole delicious healthful fruit, right, is ceases to be pleasurable for people when that would have been the most pleasurable indulgence for one of our hunter-gather ancestors before the advent of the industrial, you know, industrial food. So it's really interesting. Did you have any thoughts on the, we saw the Cosmopolitan cover come out, which the article was a lot more moderate than I think the COVID the headline, which is I think what kind of went viral on social media, basically made the argument that a person who was clearly overweight was healthy. Did you have any Did you, did you have a, did you, you know, make a statement around that time about that?

No, but I think, look, you can, you, it depends on your biology, right? And I think everybody's a little different. And I think, you know, if, if you're overweight and you exercise and you eat well and you're doing everything right and your biology looks normal on paper, then yeah, but I think the cases for most people, that's not true. And I have seen those people who are just, they're just bigger people. Yeah, of course. And, yeah, you know, but not full, full on obesity. I think if you're, you know, a different body shape or different body type, that's fine. But if you are looking under the hood and you see what's going on with these people, it's often not great. And I think there's been a plenty of studies that have sort of discounted that myth that you can be healthy. and overweight. I think there's a real challenge to that thinking. And I understand why people gravitate towards it because, one, 75% of us are overweight and two, 88% are metabolically unhealthy, which is some form of prediabetes on the continuum there, or diabetes. And it's a massive hill to climb to think about getting out of that as Americans. Increasingly globally, we're seeing the kinds of things. So, I'm not a big fan of the, you know, healthy at any weight kind of thing. I think it's, it's really challenging. I mean, if you look at, for example, gastric bypass patients, you know, if you, if you do a bypass, they will quickly reverse diabetes, even though they're very overweight. So they could be 400 pounds, but their metabolic numbers look better very quickly. Their inflammation, their blood sugar, cholesterol. What was interesting is if they did a gastric bypass on one group and they randomized another group to just changing their diet to what would be the same diet as if you had had a bypass. there was no difference in the outcomes. So when you look, but when you look at, you know, what happens, how can you still be 400 pounds and diabetic one week and not the next week? It's the food. So it's the input. Now, if you keep the input the same, you know, and keep eating whole, real healthy foods, you will not be 400 pounds for very long. You'll be 300 pounds and 200 pounds. Right. But, but initially you can, you can get healthy by, by just changing your diet. I think that's an important message now in terms of COVID COVID because the current state of Americans health is so bad that COVID is landing on that, driving more death and disease. If you're chronically ill overweight, you're six times more likely to end up in the hospital, 12 times more likely to die. Okay. If you look at the excess hospitalizations and the reason all the shutdowns and lockdowns and this and that's, it's because of the hospital system. We, we're seeing this in some countries. I was talking to my friend in Chile, they're just people are overflowing the hospitals. It's horrible. It's a nightmare. The reason we're shut down is because of that. And it turns out 63 of the hospitalizations for covid could have been avoided if people were metabolically healthy. So now more than ever, it's important. And, and again, even without losing a ton of weight, if you quickly change your diet, you'll improve your immune system. You'll basically figure everything out in a way that actually is going to help you. to correct the problem.

Are there any pitfalls to be mindful of when transitioning to a predominantly whole foods diet that might still contribute to either weight gain or weight stagnation? For example, sometimes I'll get comments from people that switch to a diet that's very high quality, but they're overdoing nuts and nut butters and things like that. Anything that you see regularly that you think people ought to watch out for?

Well, sure. I mean, you can die from drinking water. You know, one woman, she thought that bok choy was good like your kale, and she had, you know, two cups of raw bok choy every day, and she put herself in a hypothyroid coma because the cruciferous vegetables can block thyroid function when you have them raw and in excess. So I think, you know, because, you know, macadamia nut butter is good. If you eat the whole jar, probably not so good. Right? So, I think it's just common sense. But as Mark Twain said, the problem with common sense is that it's not so common.

It's not so common. Yeah. I'm more forgiving with whole nuts. There was that USDA study that came out, I believe it was either last year or the year before. When you're eating whole nuts, you end up pooping out a significant portion of the calories.

Yeah.

That'S not, that's probably not the case with nut butter.

When I was a kid, I thought the more you ate, the more you poop, that's how it works. I don't think that's actually true. But to some degree it is. You eat a lot of bulk and fiber and, you know, you should be going to the bathroom two to three times a day. Most people go, what? Two to three times a day? I go two to three times a week. Well, it's because we are not eating a diet that's rich in foods that make us poop like vegetables and fruits and nuts and seeds and fibrous foods. And that's, that's really what our ancestors ate. We used to eat 100 to 150 grams of fiber a day. Now we have about eight to 15 as Americans, which is nothing. And so jacking up your fiber is a good way to overall improve your quality, your microbiome, your health, reduce inflammation, lower cholesterol, lose weight. I mean, it's just a lot of benefits. I mean, they're, my favorite studies are like the silly ones, which use psyllium as a weight loss strategy.

So they give people like Metamucil before.

Their meals and they lose weight. Shocking, right? Well, I use that PGX, which is a great product. It's basically from from a cognac root, which is not a alcohol cognac, but a Japanese root vegetable. It's very viscous, absorbs a ton of water, has no calories, and you can actually get the shirataki noodles and you can make pasta from them. And, and it's basically zero calories and zero carbs and zero whatever. It's just fiber. And it just gets in there like this gelatinous thing and soaks everything up.

So there's a lot of strategies to use to actually increase fiber, but it's really important for people. I like, I actually really like Metamucil because I, there's also really interesting data that help correct to some degree dyslipidemia, like lipid problems, because the soluble fiber basically absorbs LDL in the gut, then you poop it out. Are you familiar with any of that research?

Yeah, I mean exactly how it works. It's basically like a single or high cholesterol absorber. Some are more synthesizers. So, if people are absorbers, you can really help to block that.

While I have you, I did mention earlier that I had a bit of a debate with Dave Asprey who came on my podcast. Not to put you on the spot, but I consume about a cup of kale four to five times a week because there's a really good salad that I enjoy. And he was like, Max, kale's a new smoking. Essentially. That's what he said.

So, Dr. What was the reason he said that?

Well, he's like, it can put you at risk for kidney stones, the oxalates in kale.

Yeah, there's not so much in there. It's more in beets and spinach. But yeah.

What else did he say? The fact that it does absorb, we know that it absorbs heavy metals that any vegetable does. I mean, dark chocolate can be a harbinger of cadmium, lead, certain dark chocolate, But Dr. Hyman, settle the score. Who's right in this debate? Is it me? Can I go on eating my occasional kale salad or is Dave Asprey the, who wins this debate?

The kale or bust, right?

Kale or bust.

I'll listen. You know, it's interesting. I had a friend who loved kale and she did tons of kale, putting her smoothies every day. and she ended up with thallium poisoning because the kales grow in California and the soil is full of thallium and the plants absorb it. If you grow kale in Boston in the city where they had coal industrialization back in the Industrial Revolution, they'd be full of it. So you have to wonder where is it grown? Two, how are you eating it? Is it raw or is it cooked? And, and, you know, raw doesn't actually work all the time for high consumption because it increase the effect on thyroid and goitrogens and other things. So I'm not a fan of a ton of raw kale or cruciferous vegetables. A little bit's fine. I'll have a kale salad here and there.

We're not talking a ton.

Half a cup to a cup a day. Okay, that's fine. But that's every day. I don't know, you see how you feel. I'll check your thyroid. But I would say that it's probably.

Fine, although I would encourage you to cook it. Okay. Steam it a little. All right.

So the case remains open, but that was definitely good insight.

We live in a toxic world, right? It's not a matter of, you know, do you have toxins? How many do you have? You know, persistent pollutant toxins that will just camp out in your fat and just leach into your system on alter how your mitochondria work, alter how your immune system works. Great case that I had. It's a gentleman who has Alzheimer's. He was seen at a very large institution in Boston and he was diagnosed diagnosed at the age of 56 with, you know, moderately advanced Alzheimer's. He was, he had a basic evaluation with a spec scan, and he was told he had Alzheimer's. He was given a pill that we know doesn't work for more than 18 months to stabilize it. Right. Yeah, we, he was given a. Doesn't work even for. Yeah, he doesn't even was. I was just trying to be generous.

And then that's not our opinion.

This is basically in the major medical journals. The pills trials, I remember, just don't work. don't work. So then he was given start behavioral therapy and cognitive therapy. Again, hasn't been proven to do anything to slow the progression or improve cognition at all. So he's at a major institution given those two things to do. He is a very, very active gentleman with a great deal of huge responsibilities in his life, very dear man. And he comes here for the first visit and he's he's, you know, he's, you see these, these issues and so we start talking and I start testing. So we do the tests. Let's look at the gut. Let's see if there's toxins. Let's find out about your hormones, right? Let's see if you have any autoimmunity. Let's do some, we do some, you know, we do specific autoimmune testing to see if your, your body is making auto antibodies against brain tissue.

So why would you do that? Alzheimer's is what?

Alzheimer's is a multifaceted, multi-causality disease. It's inflammation of the brain. It's inflammation of the brain. That's what's driving it. Right, and there's lots of things that can cause an inflammation. So we're gonna look for everything that can cause inflammation, and there's also disruption of normal function, that might be distant. So what effect does having a low testosterone have on the brain? Testosterone has a big impact on the brain, it can have an impact on inflammation, it can have an impact on how the pituitary and a hypothalamus is secreting other hormones, how those hormones will work, how your neurotransmitters may work. So here are some of the things we found with this gentleman.

He had a mercury of 120. Oh, wow. Now put it in perspective, like zero is normal. Zero to four. And anything over 10 I worry about. 20 is bad and like 120 is, you know, a handful of people that you see over the course of decades have 120.

Yeah, yeah. Very, very few mercury people, mercury level, testosterone level.

From where?

Fish, water, air. But, you know, he was a fish eater in his lifetime. And again, you know, he wasn't like an extraordinary fish eater. But if you look at his detox genes, he had a lot of, on his genes, he had a lot of variants that put him, made him susceptible to not being able to detoxify as well as he should. So, you know, you and I could.

Go eat, you know, sushi the whole week. Not me.

I got those same genes. Okay, you got this. That's why I got mercury poisoning. All right, right. So I could eat it. I don't have an issue with Mercury.

Right.

My Mercury wasn't high at all. And I love fish. I eat a lot of fish. So jealous. Okay, well, so. So Mercury, his testosterone level was 150. So at his age, his testosterone level.

Should be, you know, 600 on average.

800. 800. 600 to 800.

Yeah.

Right.

So 150 is.

Nothing about what a woman has almost.

Exactly. So he had his testosterone as though his mercury was bad and of course there was SIBO and he had dysbiosis. So not only did he have- His.

Gut was all messed up.

His gut was all messed up and then finally on top of it, he tested positive for Lyme disease. So that's another thing that we do here at the Ultra Wellness Center is you can't practice functional medicine without coming across Lyme disease almost every day. you know, it's stealth infections, Lyme disease and the co-infections that can be found with it along with other viruses are a big part of what impacts people. He had Lyme disease.

So we had four strikes against him.

And so here's what's really interesting. We arranged for him to get some really intensive Lyme disease treatment at another clinic in Germany. Germany and where they do hypothermia.

Yeah.

Hypothermia. And they, and they give IV antibiotics. When you're, you're, by making somebody really warm, you are able to, that's when the bacteria can be most susceptible to antibiotics. And so at that really high temperature, about 107 degrees, they're going to put an IV infusion of an antibiotic in and fight the infection.

I did that. I I went to San Diego and I had hyperthermia and I had Lyme disease and Babesia and I had night sweats all the time and I did the treatment and it kind of went away. And, I've seen this case after case. Now, it's not something that's available in.

The United States, but it can be very powerful treatment. So, in his particular case, we chose that direction because of the degree of the severity of what he was facing. So, we wanted to let's just hit this hard, hit it fast. It was something we really believed in. So, we arranged for him and I worked with his to the St. George Clinic. And then we treated his mercury. We started treating his testosterone using first getting him to sleep better, working on his nutrition. I always like to work on lifestyle before I start treating directly with hormones. Then we added in some hormones that would benefit his testosterone levels. And at six months, he had stabilized. So he had not worsened at six months, actually about the eighth month mark, When we saw where he was at, he was still working and he noticed that his memory had not gotten any worse than it had been. And so we're continuing to work. It's a story that's ongoing, but really, really exciting because- and that's important to.

Say that this is a progressive disease because usually a year later, people are a lot worse, right?

I was thrilled that at eight months, he wasn't worse.

And where his numbers better?

Oh, absolutely. His testosterone levels were up to like 500 at that point. mercury level was coming down. Mercury can be hard to bring down. It can take a period of time. But I do like to remind people, he was very excited to know there are things I can work on. See, he left a large institution with things to do that weren't going to work. It's sort of hopeless.

So this is a really important point with functional medicine. Alzheimer's is a diagnosis. It's not the cause. No. And functional medicine helps you figure out what that is. It doesn't mean everybody with Alzheimer's Cure Alzheimer's has those things, although they're common, but tick infections, heavy metals, hormonal issues, gut issues, things you can actually treat. And I think this is such a big difference between functional medicine, what we do here at the Ultra Wellness Center in Lenox, Massachusetts, and what people get when they go to a traditional physician. They're not having somebody pull back the hood and look underneath and see what's going on. They go, oh, I know what's wrong with you. You have Alzheimer's. no, that's just the name of the problem. Now let's start to figure out what's going on. And that's beautiful.

We see everything here. We see autoimmune diseases from Hashimoto's thyroiditis to ulcerative colitis to rheumatoid arthritis. We see Alzheimer's disease, ADHD, autism. We see people with- It doesn't matter.

What diagnosis you have because we treat the system, not the symptoms or diseases. And when you that whatever they have has a chance of survival.

And that's the point I want to make. You know, we see everybody with everything from every age, and we end up being able to help them more than the specialists did because we're looking at everything and we're getting to the root cause. And so in a course of a week, I can see a two-year-old or a three-year-old with autism.

Yeah.

And I can see, I can see a, a 62 year old with less.

Right.

I can see a woman with depression, no libido, fibromyalgia, and it all, it's all in my purview.

Yeah.

And it's all really, really important point.

You know, people say, well, do you treat this? You treat that. I'm like, I treat things I've never seen. I never had a patient with vestibular migraines before. I mean, I don't know that much about it other than, you know, the basics. What I learned medical school. But I know how to treat the body. I know how to treat the system. I know how to treat a human being and look root causes. And when you do that, even if you don't exactly understand the disease, it'll often dramatically improve or reverse completely.

Absolutely. But I like to let people know it's hard work. It's good work. It's really good hard work.

It's never not like take this pill in six months, right? Change your diet. You have to take care of your lifestyle issues. You have to take things to help reset your system. Get your gut. Do the hormones. Treat the Lyme. Right.

Example, I think, is a good one is my own one daughter. She went, you know, she started having, I have permission from my daughter, actually. She said, are you gonna say my name? I said, do you want me to? She said, yeah. So my daughter is a Belle. So my daughter is a Belle. So she started having her period. And about, you know, in the first year of her cycle, she was very irregular, and she was really getting more and more fatigued. So it was around school time. It was August. She goes to a pediatrician.

Yeah.

So, you know, no, no. Because, you know, my wife goes her. And, you know, my wife is, she's very attentive to these health issues and nutrition. And so, she sat in the visit and she came back and she shook her head, George, she said, I am done. I am so done. I told him that Isabel had fatigue, never once asked her what she eats, didn't talk about nutrition whatsoever. Basically said, you know, barely asked her about her period other than to know that it was irregular. and really basically said, you know, you just started your period, give it some time, you're an adolescent, you know, you sleep more, you're going to be fatigued. It's sort of the natural process. So I'm like thinking, nope. So I wanted to know, I know my daughter's diet as hard as we try in our home, my wife and I eat whole foods. She will tend towards carbs and sugars outside the home and even inside the home. So I had a lot of suspicion from watching her in our house that she was having issues around her diet and nutrition. So, the first thing I wanted to do was find out if she was having any food sensitivities. So, we did some IgG antibody testing, which looks at food sensitivities, not necessarily food allergies. So, IgE looks at food allergies.

Like if you have peanut allergies.

Peanut allergy. That's anaphylaxis.

You'll know it.

You eat it, you turn blue.

But IGG is like, you might not know, you might eat it on Monday and on Wednesday you get a headache.

Right. Strawberry on Friday night and Sunday you have red cheeks. That's sensitivity. Now you can have sensitivities and you never make the connection to food. My daughter had huge sensitivities to gluten. Gluten is a really bad thing. We're gonna talk about it in a second. Milk, egg, and then multiple other foods, which gives that whole leaky gut syndrome.

She had a leaky gut.

Gut. Check your thyroid. Your TSH should be, you know, in general, you know, if you look at numbers 4.5 or less, hers was 5.8.

Yeah, that's like low thyroid.

I checked her thyroid antibodies when the body begins to make antibodies against self tissue. My daughter had antibodies against her thyroid.

Wow. Again, 14 years old, right?

And she was told, most doctors don't check anybody.

They'll just check a TSH. And if it's around normal, they'll they'll.

Just say it's fine. Right. And, and her CBC, her blood count. We have hemoglobin, hematocrit are two numbers you look at to see if you have enough blood. Blood carries oxygen. Oxygen is required to make energy. Energy gives you energy. And if you don't have it, you're fatigued. And she was fatigued. These tests were done. She was anemic. Her hemoglobin, her hemoglobin was 9.9. It should be 13 to 14.

Yeah, right? That's like down like three pints.

Now, these lab tests were available to conventional doctor. So now here's my daughter with all this going on. So the first thing we're going to do is we're going to change your diet. But here's the key thing, the gluten piece. See, that gluten sensitivity triggers everything. As we know, gluten is what triggers the, you know, can be a trigger for your gut to make something called zonulin. And zonulin is the molecule that opens and closes those gates in that membrane that protect the lumen, your body from what's in the lumen of your gut. In the intestines.

Right, in the intestines.

So, when you're sensitive to gluten and you start to trigger that, you create this leaky gut, that's when you really open up that door, as we talked about, for autoimmunity and malnutrition. And then on top of that, that she was having these bleeds. The last thing I checked, Mark, was her hormones.

Well, before you jump to that, I just want to recap that because that's important. So gluten basically damages your gut lining, which then causes leaky gut, but it also prevents iron absorption, which is why she was anemic. It also triggers autoimmunity, particularly thyroid autoimmunity. So a lot of people have shemoglobin is caused by gluten. So when you sort of dial back, you can get to the root cause and see so what happens?

So, so. Okay, so. And then on top of that, as a quick aside, I checked the hormones, and you can do this ratio between your progesterone and your estrogen. When a woman's irregular like that, you should really check that, because if you have a relative elevated estrogen compared to progesterone, that's called estrogen dominance. And estrogen dominance can impact your cycle. It can make it irregular, and it can make it very heavy. It can lead to a lot of.

PMS and depression, and it can last for half the a month. Yeah.

Okay. So all this was going on.

By the way, 75 of women have PMS. That is not a normal condition.

No, it's not.

It's because of our diet, our stress, our lifestyle, our gut. Our food. Food.

So many things drive it. That has hormones in it. You know, we just, you know, the.

Whole, you know, issue with hormones in our food. And guess what's the biggest driver of high estrogen levels? Sugar.

Sugar and hormones in our food. It's starch. Exactly. So my, my daughter is a perfect example. of the modern diet, despite, believe me, I gotta say this, parents who eat really well have a garden in the backyard and do this.

Teenagers are temporarily psychotic.

It's part of the point I wanna make, and this is the point, is that she is fortunate to have me as her dad, because if she didn't have me, she could have gone a decade or two decades thinking, Hmm, that's just me. only in her 30s after a baby or before a baby or in a stressful time to just completely break down and all of a sudden have Hashimoto's or rheumatoid or some other immunologic disorder that could have been prevented. And this is what happens, right?

I've seen this over and over in patients that start out and you can track their history. We call it the timeline in functional medicine. We track, okay, this person was born by C-section their gut doesn't get developed in the microbiome. They had antibiotics early on because of ear infections. disrupts their microbiome. Maybe they develop some acne or maybe they got some allergies and then they get maybe thyroid issues when they're 20. Then they get when they're 30s, they start getting autoimmune like rheumatoid arthritis. And, it's the same fricking story almost every time. All the time. And, you can track it back. So, the fact that you got your daughter early is a huge thing and that allows her to then maybe develop.

Normally and not develop these autoimmune diseases and so forth that we see in so many. Here's one of the things I want say about functional medicine, applying everything that we discover as we ask those questions why we do this advanced testing that you're not going to get at another center, it's not easy, right? And I know firsthand what it's like to have to change a lifestyle, not only my daughter's, but in my own when I dealt with my brain injury, but with my daughter having to help her sleep better, create a sleep ritual. help her to learn how to meditate, help her to make good food choices. That is not easy work. And so, at the Ultra Wellness Center, we also have coaches. So we have coaches that will come alongside you and will hold you accountable, will work with you to help you devise strategies over a long period of time to change these lifestyles. We know habits don't change for at least three months. How can we anticipate that some of the most critical things that are going to make you healthy are going to happen in two weeks, six weeks or eight weeks. It could take three years.

Yeah.

And I like to remind people that.

What's fascinating too is that what I see here is that it's not as hard as you might think because when we put people on a regimen, and I do this pretty aggressively to get them feeling better fast, because I figure if they can have the experience of feeling good, even if there's more work to do, they're going to do it.

Right.

In other words, in 10 days or two weeks, by changing your diet and doing a few simple things, you often see profound differences. Hey, YouTube. If you like this video, you're gonna love the next one. Click on it to check it out today.

The leading cause of death worldwide can.

Be traced to diet. If you eat highly processed foods, you have, you know, 50 to 100% increased.

Risk of clinical depression.

Patients with colon cancer, those who ate two handfuls of nuts a week, actually.