Why You Need To QUIT SUGAR & How To Overcome Its ADDICTION! | Mark Hyman

It's only through self-education that you can break that mold because the government's not going to do it. The world we live in isn't going to do it.

You cannot overcome your biology with willpower.

If you eat sugar, if you eat processed foods, then you don't really sleep that well.

They don't really move that well and it's just... Well, the other part about eating a diet of processed foods and sugar is it depletes your nutrients, right? It actually doesn't have the vitamins and minerals and nutrients you need to metabolize stuff. So, the people who are often the most nutritionally deficient are the most obese, which is kind of surprising. How can you be malnourished and obese at the same time? The nutritional density of our food is so important and processed food just doesn't have it and sugar depletes our nutrients like B vitamins. And so when you have low levels of zinc and you have low levels of vitamin D and low levels of omega-3 fats and low levels of iron and vitamin A, your immune system can't function. So in the developing world, we know very clearly that the kids who die from diarrhea or respiratory infections or measles is because they're malnourished. If a kid's get measles who's well nourished in America, they're not gonna die from it usually. But in the developing world, these kids die all the time from basic disease because they're so malnourished. And I think we are a malnourished country. 90% of us are deficient. And so the best way to build your immune system is to eat whole food, cut out the sugar, make sure you take your vitamins, get enough sleep, like you said, deal with stress as a huge factor. And I think, you know, I think something simple like just meditation. Yeah, it's so powerful.

Yeah, it's a thing that doesn't be.

Woo woo, but it works.

We just don't talk about that enough, I think. And you as a functional medicine doctor, I'm sure you speak to your patients about how important this can be because it really is powerful. And my wife went through this whole process. Like she didn't do a lot of the hypnobirthing thing when she was pregnant with my son, Freddie, and then with truly my daughter, she went through this whole process of just making sure she was really, really relaxed all the time. We did a lot of hypnobirthing meditation. And truly, my daughter came out the most chilled baby. I mean, it was unbelievable. I don't know if there was a link there with that, but she certainly thinks there was.

Well, there is. I mean, there's a link and epigenetics are so powerful. So whatever the mother eats, her level of exposure to stress, toxins, All these things have huge effects on the baby. And if studies are so clear, if the mother's eating a lot of sugar and processed food, the baby's more likely to get obese, to have heart disease, to get diabetes. Yeah, setting them up for that. Down the road. The data is so clear on this. And I think people just don't understand. And the fact that we eat about 152 pounds of sugar per person.

Yeah.

That's almost half a pound a day.

Yeah, it's crazy. It's sugar. Well, it's hidden in every single thing that you could pick up. When we were at the gym.

Yeah.

We go to the bar at the gym, they have like a smoothie or something. Oh my God, everything that is laid out that says healthy, organic, gluten-free, it's so counterproductive at the gym.

And you know, all everything you see in there, there's like signs for Coca-Cola in some gyms and stuff. Yeah, that's awful.

You go to those green smoothie things and you look at the label, it has more sugar than a can of Coke.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's just insane.

And then people become addicted to it because they're like, well, I'm eating healthy, I'm drinking this healthy juice. But what they're doing is they're spiking their insulin levels, they're becoming addicted to this fructose almost, I'm sure that some of it maybe even is a hidden, there's so many different names for hidden sugars now.

There's like 200 names for sugar. If you Google names for sugar, you'll see it'll come up with a list of like 200 different things that you.

Don'T even know are sugar.

Yeah, that's one of the things that started me on the journey of like, I'm just not going to eat anything that isn't whole food. Because I remember thinking, well, there's all this other stuff in there now. Like, I started off just being trying to avoid sugar. And then I looked at everything else. I was like, what is that? I can't even pronounce that, let alone like put it in my body and think it's actually going to do anything good. So I just started to just go, no, I can't put that in anymore.

I mean, the average American eats three to five pounds of additives every year.

Yeah, I mean, unbelievable.

But this is the one thing I wanted to ask you then, as a doctor, as someone that does this as an advocate, goes around and travels and talks to everybody. What would you say to the younger generation if they want to start somewhere? What's the first step to really recognizing not just like reading labels, but what is the real first step that can be a tangible first step for someone who maybe lives in rural America? I mean, Lennox, I've been to Lennox before. I've been there. I know what that place is like. I'm surprised that you came out of Lennox and you're like, you know what? I'm gonna do this and bring it to the world. What was it in your journey that was the first step?

Well, I used to be vegetarian too, and I loved sugar and starch and bread and pasta. I bought into the whole low-fat movement.

And you were doing it for health reasons?

Yes, health reasons, yes. And I thought this was the way to go. and it's interesting now that I've sort of cleaned up my diet and got rid of the starch and the sugar for the most part. If I look at pictures of myself without a shirt when I'm 30, I'm like way scrawnier and kind of flabbier than I am today at 60. And I don't do that much exercise. If I'm in the gym five times a month weightlifting, that's a lot. I do yoga, I'll do other stuff, but I just because I'm busy. I'm planning on doing more.

Yeah, it's tough.

Yeah. Maybe I'll get you to help me. You look like you know what you're doing. And then I got very sick and I started to look at what I was doing and had to sort of shift. And as a science changed, I began to sort of look at, you know, because I think ideology is so problematic in nutrition. There are all these diet wars. There are always people in conflict with each other, paleo, vegan, this, that.

Yeah. And it's kind of crazy because- All.

These little religions, aren't they? Yeah, it is. But, you know, I say, let's get, let's get away from that because I came up with this term Pegan, which is a joke. It was like paleo vegan. And I just published this book, Food Fix, and it was number one in Paleo and number one in vegan books. Yeah. And I thought, there you go. Because we have far more in common with each other than with the standard American processed diet. So, you can be a chips and soda vegan, right? Or you can be a cheeseburger, whatever, bacon, paleo, but that's not necessarily either of them are good, right? It's more going towards whole foods. So, your question was what would I say to people? I think it's really easy to just sort of start simply. If you're eating industrial food, stop doing that. If you look at the ingredients and you see refined flour, soybean oil, or high fructose corn syrup, just don't eat it. If you can, the next step would be look for non-GMO certified foods. Not because GMO is that bad for you. It may be, it may not be. There's a lot of controversy about that. But it's a form of agriculture that's a structure of the environment and there's often other things in there like glyphosate, which is Roundup, which they spray on 70 different crops from canola to corn to wheat to soy and that is definitely harmful for our microbiome. It destroys our gut bacteria which affects everything and it's linked to cancer and there was a $2 billion lawsuit that got a settlement of the judgment about Roundup or glyphosate or weed killer. And so just be aware that if you just stop those things, the quality.

Of your gut, you're already making a huge difference.

Yeah, whatever you do. And so, those are really simple things we can do. And then if you can, try to, you know, look at what you're eating. Is it, is it whole food? I mean, is it something you can recognize, like an almond or almond butter? It's like not that many steps of.

Processing, 'cause most food gets processed in some way. We cook it or... Yeah, it's all.

Got some kind of mum intervention, yeah. Yeah, but if you, you know, most of the time I just eat stuff that looks like what it is, you.

Know, broccoli is a broccoli, you know, it's a fish, a piece of fish. Grass-fed meat, well, I was caught, what I said to him when, when we first started, when, when he was, A pretty diabetic vegan, sick man in Australia. I call it the of the earth diet. So if you're eating stuff that the earth naturally provides, then you're never really in harm's way.

How many steps did it take to get from the field to the fork?

Yeah, exactly.

You can trace them all, okay. But if you don't know how it.

Got like that, then yeah, we've got a problem. The ingredients list is your ingredient, right? Sweet potato is a sweet potato, piece.

Of chicken breast is a piece of chicken breast.

There's no ingredient list on there. Yeah, exactly. Right. It is what it is. And I think the other thing I found as well, which is an important thing to talk about, I think, is how people who do make the shift, they have to go through a process themselves. Like, I know went through a process where I kept going back. I kept going, oh, I want that. That addiction to that kind of food doesn't just disappear. I didn't do it overnight. My wife always says, she says this to me, she was like, you know, when I'm talking to people saying, you just do this, you just do that. She's like, Tom, you have to remember that you took two years probably to just not eat any of this stuff anymore. So your taste buds have to change. You have to give your taste buds time to make that change and really know what things taste like again. Like broccoli can taste frickin awesome.

Right, it's so true. When people get off that for a week even, and then they have blueberries, they go, my God, this is, you know, like candy, right? And I think people don't understand how hard it is because of the biology of sugar. It's not a moral failing, right? It's not that you're weak-willed, but you cannot overcome your biology with willpower. It will fail every time. So you have to use science. And the science of sugar is fascinating because it not only drives mechanisms that make you gain weight because it produces more insulin, so it stores belly fat. It makes you hungry, it slows your metabolism, and it locks the fat in the fat cell so it can't get out. It's like a one-way turnstile.

What?

Like in a subway, you can't get out. And when you look at the biology on the brain, it's even scarier. So in really well-controlled studies, they've shown that by looking at brain imaging and blood tests, eating the exact amount of calories, protein, fat, carbs, and fiber in a shake, like a milkshake, They just swapped out the level of the kind of carbohydrate so that one raises your blood sugar a lot and one doesn't. It's like a slowly digested starch. When they did that, they found that the brain imaging showed that the addiction center, which is stimulated by heroin or cocaine or whatever, gets lit up like crazy by the sugar and their insulin goes up, their blood sugar goes up, their adrenaline goes up. So sugar causes your adrenaline to go up. your cortisol, which is the stress hormone, so it literally creates a biologic stress. And for those worried about coronavirus, one of the most important things you can do is cut out junk food and sugar because it suppresses your immune system. So Keegan, you were eating a lot of sugar. Yeah.

And you were getting sick all the time. It wasn't a coincidence. Yeah, and I don't know if you're familiar with Dr. Raymond Francis, but Dr. Raymond Francis, there was like this video circulating about how he pretty much just He immediately was on like a news show and he talks about that sugar even just a small, what is it? Even like a teaspoon of sugar.

It was like a teaspoon of sugar. He juices it by 50%.

Your immunity goes down by 50%. And like, that's the other thing is like some people will go, well there's no science in that.

That's how we're gonna get rid of coronavirus.

We're gonna like, yeah, yeah, just don't eat sugar. Probably not get coronavirus. But the interesting thing is I wanted to add to volume this back to you then. With your immune system, sugar is not the only culprit to lowering your immune system. There are canola oils, there are... What other...

It's a lifestyle as well. Like I find stress and stuff, stress and fatigue and lack of sleep are ones that can drop it for sure.

So you guys have been on a health journey last few years. I want to know how you understood the connection between what you're eating and how you feel. And how did you sort of find my work and get connected to, you know, processed food being bad and sugar affecting you and how did you connect those dots? Because most young guys just eat whatever they want and they just like push through and they're like, I'm Superman, I'm never gonna die, I can eat whatever I want. But you guys seem to have a different experience.

Well, yeah, I mean, what you just said there about being, feeling invincible was exactly the journey that I was on, actually. I was training a lot, so I was really into my fitness and it was actually for training for the show for that show you mentioned, Black Sails, that this whole journey kind of happened for me. And we went on quite an extreme diet to get into shape for that show. And during that process, I started to get stomach problems, a lot of stomach problems, because what I was doing was going From being a sugar addict a major one actually I would do that and then do these extreme diets of cutting out all my carbohydrates and I'd be like oh, I can eat whatever I want now and I when I'm not on the show I was bingeing sugar. So I binge, yeah and these two extremes kept happening and what what happened and I think this is a similar thing for for many people who make this extreme changes I had a health scare a major health scare where my stomach I got an extreme case of gastritis and I felt like I was gonna die. It was so extreme. Yeah, like extreme stomach pain, bedridden, just felt awful. And I thought, I've got to look what's causing this. And I'd been taking various bits of medication because I was getting acid reflux problems and stuff. And I realized that the NSAIDs and stuff I was taking really ripped up my stomach.

So you were taking anti-inflammatories for pain from working out?

Yeah, yeah, so basically I was taking anti-inflammatories because I had two herniated discs and I went to a doctor who I thought was supposed to be helping me and he was just going, yeah, your back's gonna feel like it's gone a holiday if you have these. So I was taking all these painkillers and stuff, not thinking anything of it and that's the, I think so many people are guilty of that, it's just going, I want to be free of the pain. and I think what happened was I had this premonition of my friend who lives a very similar life to us. Now my friend said to me, he goes, it's funny, isn't it? When you feel that ill, when you feel that sick, you'll do anything to feel better again.

Yeah.

You'll do anything to feel just good. And I said, yeah, that's true. Because I felt so ill. And I was like, yeah, that's true. I would right now I'll do anything.

Mm.

And he was like, well, why not take every precaution to make sure you never feel like this again? And that was a big moment for me. It was a kind of a light bulb moment. And that sort of started my journey of going, right, I'm gonna look at the diet. Cause he was a bit like, you know, when we talk about how our link up was, which you'll hear about from Keegan in a moment, but he was a huge influence for me. And seeing that he's always so healthy, he never gets sick, there's never any problems. So I started looking at what he did. and he just didn't eat processed food, he didn't eat sugar, didn't eat anything that would cause any kind of inflammatory response in his body. And also through trial and error, you know, you find what works for you, what doesn't, and just being aware of that. And I started surrounding myself with people that who were on the same journey, you know, and I think that's very important is the influence. Yeah, totally.

If your friends are overweight and unhealthy, you're likely to also be. And if your friends are all drinking green juice and Doing yoga, you're probably gonna be healthier.

Absolutely. And it's that influence of peer pressure, right? The amount of times I get, because I don't drink now either, and every time I go out is have a drink. Yeah.

And I'm like, well, I don't...

Especially the English culture, right? Pub culture. Pub culture, yeah. You go in the local pub, it's like you're expected to have... If I go in and go, just a mineral water, please. It's not going down well. yeah, the peer pressure thing is huge. So, like, surrounding myself, like, my aunt was a big influence for me, who's also a big fan of yours. And she introduced me to, to you and to your, to your podcast. And that was a huge stepping stone for me because, you know, it was, it was just about looking at medicine and food being medicine and having that mindset and going, you know what? I don't. if I look at the way people fuel their car. Yeah. You know, if someone is that their pride and joy is their car, you know, like an item, a thing. Yeah. A solid thing. And they'll put their pride and joy into it, you know? Yeah. And they're gonna fuel it with the best fuel. I mean, even if you have a.

Pet, I mean, we feed our kids stuff. We would never feed our pet. Would you give your pet a cheeseburger, fries and a Coke? Yeah, yeah, I mean, no.

Yeah, absolutely. I see people giving their dogs this, like, Gourmet food.

Yeah, like this. Yeah, right, exactly.

And they're eating down a cheeseburger. And I used this analogy, I was talking to him yesterday about this. I used the analogy when I was shooting in Toronto recently, and every morning I would see this guy who was cleaning his shop front, like meticulous cleaning, with a steam cleaner to make his shop look amazing. And he stood there with this sprayer thing. with a cigarette in one hand and a big can of Coke in the other, and with a huge gut and just looking Not too healthy. Not healthy. And I'm like, he's putting so much effort into making his shop look that good, but has no care in the world about what he's doing to his body. And I think that's a thing that a lot of people have fallen into now, is that kind of aesthetic of what things look like or what an item looks like, what you look like on the outside, but not actually taking into account we've put on this earth in these vessels that we're actually supposed to take care of.

Yeah. We never got the owner's manual.

We never got the manual.

Yeah. Yeah.

And well, yeah, unfortunately, the government and society has driven us into a place where the manual is, oh, just eat this, just eat that. And it's fine.

Well, it's what's available. Yeah.

So it's only through self-education that you can break that mold because the government's not going to do it. No. The world we live in isn't going to do it. It's just, it's our own, it's our own journey. And I think it's that like I say, people who have an extreme health scare or change where they go, I've got to take control.

Yeah, it's powerful. So, you know, that personal experience, it kind of wakes you up. I mean, I think that's the case for a lot of people. They don't sort of wake up until something bad happens, which is unfortunate because most people are, even when they don't have something terrible going on, don't feel the best they could feel. And they don't know how bad they feel. until they start feeling better.

That's it. That's it.

You think, oh, this is just normal. You know, I'm supposed to have aches and pains or my nose is supposed to be all the time. I'm supposed to be tired all the time. Tired or groggy or my digestion isn't great. I got headaches or I don't sleep. I guess these are just sort of, quote, normal things we think we have to suffer from and they're not. And, you know, and I, a number of years ago, I wrote a book called the 10 Day Detox, which is basically a sugar addict detox. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I talked about FLC syndrome, which is when you feel like crap. you know?

Yeah.

And there's a questionnaire, like, how many of these symptoms do you have? And if you get a high score, you have a bad FLC syndrome.

Right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And people just think it's normal. And.

Yeah. And that was one of the. Well, that's the thing. Majority of people, I think, you know, they think it's genetic. They think it's like, oh, I'm just genetically.

Yeah. I I process food this way or I I can't process food this way. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just tired, generically tired. No, I've got headaches because I'm stressed or which. I mean, they are all factors, but I do believe it all does start with food. I mean, people will argue this point with me, but. I do believe that if you get what you're being fueled with right, things start to fall into place. Yeah. Then you make better decisions. Yeah. Brain is working better.

You're not tired. I mean, if you're not sleeping, if you're not exercising, if you're, you know, just stressed all the time, yeah, you're going to make poor decisions. And then the food that you choose is bad. And then that kind of perpetuates that vicious cycle.

Yeah. It's interesting you were saying about the, about exercise and stuff, because. People say, I haven't got the energy to exercise. I haven't got the energy. And what's amazing, I think, about exercise is that if you get up and you do exercise, you get more energy.

It's true. It's not like you get become more tired. No, no, it's true. I mean, last night, I spent out late night with a congressman in Washington, and then I had to fly from New York to LA, and then I, you know, was kind of tired and get enough sleep, and, you know, was kind of tired towards the end of the day, got here, had to do some podcasts, and went to yoga, and I was feeling kind of punky when.

I got there, and by the time.

I left, I just felt so much better.

Right. Yeah.

So, yeah, it's really true. It is.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it does. There's something it does to the brain, whether it's the dopamine or something that just balances you out and gets you ready for, you know, we were talking about getting up early.

Yeah.

Like, if you've had a good night's sleep, get up early and start the day with some kind of exercise. Yeah. It sets you up for the day, you know, mentally for sure.

So Keegan, you had your own struggle with sugar. I did.

Yeah.

Kind of knocked you to your knees.

And you did. Very much so.

Yeah.

I mean, I I met Tom actually in a very interesting way, where I was at the point that I had met you. I was pre-diabetic. I was very healthy.

You looked good on the outside.

I was on television six-pack, felt really good about myself. All the boxes were checked on, I was able to go to the gym, work out, but I always didn't feel right. I never felt good. And I would go to work, I'd be on set, be chewing gummy bears, I'd be eating you know, whatever was around craft service, by the way, for actors is really, really not the best place to eat because they just have a whatever is around.

Yeah.

Most of it's very high in sugar and additives, lots of corn, lots of corn chips, lots of corn things. Sugar and coffee.

Just keep people going. The world goes around.

We got to have the energy. And we, you know, for book tour, I was always really afraid, you know, when you've, you've probably been on book tour multiple times now at this point, but, like, I was always afraid of getting sick, and I would always get sick. And I, and people would be like, it's because you're thinking about getting sick. I'm like, no, there's got to be something going on here. And when we went to do a convention, a big Comic-Con convention, one of the things, especially now with coronavirus, you don't want to touch people, but I would always be like, I can't, I'm so sorry, like, I'm sorry I can't, I can't touch you. My immunity, my immune system's really like, compromised all the time when I travel. It must be something in the air. But the reality was I was slamming Tim Tam and cookies and treats that fans would be bringing us. And we were there with Jason Momoa and, and, and, like, all these people would bring us all gifts. And I, and I would be like, to Momoa, I'd be like, hey, you're gonna eat those Tim Tams? Because I don't want to be like, yeah, eat them. I don't want them. And to Tom, I'd be like, hey, man, can I have those gummies? And he'd be like, yeah, I'm not gonna eat them. so I'm eating all these things at this convention, and I had just met Tom, and Tom's, you know, Tom's like, physically looks ripped. Like, I'm like, oh, man, we should go work out together in the in-between times of the convention. And I get really sick immediately. I get like this Australian flu almost, which was just because my immune system was so compromised, as you know. And what was pivotal in my entire journey at the start of my first step in this journey was when I was really sick. Tom comes over and he's like, mate, you gotta come out. We've got to not. You can't be sitting in the hotel room the whole time. And I'm like. I'm like, well, I'm, like, really sick, man. He's like, we've got all this food we have to eat and all those things. And you can't be sitting in here. And I'm like, oh, man, I was really sick. You're gonna get sick. Don't come in. And he's like, man, I don't sick. I never get sick. I don't eat sugar. I don't eat processed foods. I just work out and I just eat clean. You should come on to this train with me, essentially. And so I, I, and so I kind, I mean, I'm sick as a dog, 103 temperature, running around Brisbane with, with, with him. And I feel like a lunatic.

Yeah, but I start, we started, like.

You look like your car or something.

Yeah.

He was, like, shaking around, like, come on, man.

Yeah.

And he's like, come on. But the interesting thing was, just in that week, I slowly started to realize little things. For example, sweet potatoes. Why do you need to add anything to them? Just put them with olive oil. They're naturally sweet. But we were hanging out and I'm like, Hmm, these are really great. And he's like, Hmm, excuse me. What's in this? And they're like, well, it's sweet potato and a little bit of sugar. Yeah, a little bit of sugar. Or rapeseed oil. Or we were talking about this canola oil. any of these things. And people do not know about this because I was completely baffled by this. I had never stepped into this realm of what's in this, what's inside of the food. And when you have Whole Foods and you think you're eating healthy, oh, I'm having fresh salmon caught fresh. But what's in the marinade? How is it prepared? And so hanging out with him and seeing that just in that week, we kept it in contact and throughout the next three months, I went, you, know what? There's something in this. There's something to this way of living. And I was familiar with you before this because I'm lactose intolerant. I'm just gonna admit it here on the air. No, but...

So you and about 70% of the rest of the world.

Yeah, and so I remember...

It's actually normal to be lactose intolerant. Yeah, you're not supposed to be drinking milk. Or from Northern Europe maybe, it gets.

Tolerated or you're a Masai warrior.

It is a quality of the milk. It is. And also, yes, it's so different when you look at the effect of pasteurization. I'm just going to interrupt you for a second. There's this incredible study that was done in 30s by this guy, Dr. Pottinger, who took cats and wanted to show the effect of processing of foods versus not. And it wasn't even the worst stuff that we're eating now. It was just like regular raw milk, which is what we ate for centuries, versus pasteurized homogenized milk. and a few other different kind of processing. And after three generations on this, the cats couldn't reproduce in the fourth generation. Their health dramatically declined. They got sick and they looked terrible. And when they switched them back to whole, like unprocessed milk, for example, raw milk, they actually had profoundly dramatic improvements in their health.

So infertility was a big factor.

Yeah, infertility. And that's one in seven couples now. One in seven. and what's fascinating is that if you look at the effect, for example, even on cholesterol or your blood lipids, when you have raw milk versus pasteurized, homogenized milk, it's profoundly different on your fats and your blood and your cholesterol. So it's not only like what we eat, because I'm having milk, that's a whole food, it's how that food has been manipulated or processed.

Yeah.

Oh great, another thing for infertility, plastic and now milk.

Oh, maybe, I don't know, this was in cats, but it was really, But.

It is interesting that the infertility thing, because, I mean, like you say, the rate of infertility of young people that should be in their prime for reproducing is going up. One in seven couples. It's crazy that. And a lot of it has to do with sugar, I believe.

Just the modern diet, right?

Well, there's a book written by a.

Harvard professor called the Fertility Diet, and it's all about how sugar causes insulin resistance, which is when you make too much insulin and your body resists it, because it's sort of like the boy who cried wolf, and the insulin levels go up, and it makes you store belly fat, it makes you hungry, it makes you tired, it makes you not want to exercise, and it actually sort of drives you into this visceral fat. But when that happens, particularly in women, it causes their testosterone to go up, it causes them to not ovulate, and so their whole hormones get screwed up and they get infertility from eating sugar, which most people don't realize.

Yeah.

Wow.

Unbelievable. Yeah, that's another profound Thing about sugar there because it's people, I think a lot of people just think, oh, it's about gaining weight. It's about, you know, there is so many knock on effects. Like actually the future of the planet has something to do with it. You know, if it's made species. Yeah, our species. And it's actually, you know, slowing down the, I mean, we are overpopulated as opposed to the planet. So that's maybe one good thing about it. But apart from that, yeah, that's, that's not good.

No, it's not. And it's, and, you know, and it goes all the way back to the farm and how we grow corn, which gets turned into high fructose corn syrup, how it's processed and put in all processed food. But Keegan, you were saying about how you then figured out you were pre-diabetic.

Yeah, yeah. So I had found you actually through just going on, it wasn't even through YouTube at that point, some weird third-party site, and you're a doctor, and what you were saying was not radical within itself, but what was radical was that you were a doctor saying you shouldn't be drinking milk because you shouldn't be drinking baby cows formula. And all these things happen, any kind of lactose is lactose or just sugar anyway. But the idea then is that I was able to use you as a reference to then show people that were enabling, trying to enable me to drink milk, and this huge elucidation from your catalog of work became right in front of me.

This is true. I mean, the school lunch You can't actually have a school lunch unless you serve milk with every school lunch. It's absurd. And often it's chocolate milk, which is a little bit better than Coke, but not much. And a friend of mine, David Ludwig, recently wrote an article, I think it was called Milk in the New England Journal of Medicine, where they went through all the research and showed how our thinking about milk is so flawed, that it's not nature's perfect food, that it can cause increases in in cancer, for example, increases in prostate disease, increases in type 1 diabetes, allergies, eczema, asthma. And for some people, they tolerate it, but it is a big driver of issues. And as a doctor seeing patients for, you know, 30 years, it's one of the big things that I see as a lever I have is just try a holiday from dairy for a few weeks and see how much better you feel. Acne is a huge cause of acne.

Yeah, so this is interesting. It's bigger in milk.

You want acne, you want pimples, just You know, sugar and milk. Hey everybody, it's Dr. Hyman. Thanks for tuning into the Doctor's Pharmacy. I hope you're loving this podcast. It's one of my favorite things to do and introduce to you all the experts that I know and I love and that I've learned so much from. And I want to tell you about something else I'm doing which is called Mark's Picks. It's my weekly newsletter. And in it, I share my favorite stuff from foods to supplements to gadgets to tools to enhance your health. It's all the cool stuff that I use and that my team uses to optimize and enhance our health. And I'd love you to sign up for the weekly newsletter. I'll only send it to you once a week on Fridays. Nothing else, I promise. And all you have to do is go to DrHyman.com/picks to sign up. That's DrHyman.com/picks, P-I-C-K-S, and sign up for the newsletter and I'll share with you my favorite stuff that I use to enhance my health. and get healthier and better and live younger longer. Now back to this week's episode.

So a lot of our followers are younger and when we do these conventions and we meet all these fans and people, I've noticed that a lot of people will ask me, hey, what is your regimen? What do you do? How do you keep your skin clear?

How do you.

Stay in shape and all these things? And I always want to try and go back to, I was in school, unhealthy, studying for finals thinking, oh, I'm just gonna eat M&Ms and study for finals, candy, like junk food, to think that that's gonna help my brain. And all it did was the opposite. And I would have, I had really bad acne. I was really insecure. Like already being a teenager is stressful enough, but then had to have the anxieties that were food related.

Yeah.

100% because I could not understand what was wrong with me. and going through life, I thought that that was just part of a healthy diet. The difference between an apple and a cupcake was nothing in my mind.

And you came from an educated background and family. And imagine how worse it is for people who come from communities where they don't have that education.

Yeah, where they don't have the means.

And where they don't have the even access. You probably live in a community where you had access to food. Yeah, it was okay. There are communities where they just don't. And I think, and they don't even know that they don't know. Yeah. And I had a prejudice. I mentioned this before in a podcast, but I had a prejudice that I thought, you know, well, you know, I always said it's not people's fault if they're overweight because of the food system so bad. But, you know, most people kind of know it's just hard because of the biology. But when I went down to, to film for this movie, fed up, I was shocked that, you know, these people just didn't know what was in their food.

They weren't aware of what they were doing. Yeah. And the thing we were talking about this, about labels, weren't we? How how few people take the step to just go, oh, what's in this? You know, just a simple thing. It's all written on the back.

Not the front of the label, but the back.

Yeah. Actually have a look what's in it.

Nutritional. Ingredients.

Because that's the most basic form of educating yourself of what is going in your mouth.

Yeah, it's tough though, because even, you know, ingredient lists in Europe, they list percentages.

Yeah.

Here, Or flavoring.

They'll put like natural flavoring, which can be another list of a whole other things.

It's true. Natural vanilla flavor is actually coming from beaver's anal glands.

Are you serious?

You learn something new every day.

Wow.

That's what I'm looking out for now.

You know what's really striking, and I had a friend who worked in the Obama administration in charge of the food programs and the food labeling. He's like, the food companies don't want to have sugar listed as the number one ingredient on the label. So they'll put five different kinds of sugar because the list of ingredients is in order of the amount. But if you have, let's say, wheat as the first ingredient and then you have like five kinds of sugar, actually sugar is the most predominant ingredient. Because they don't call it sugar or they don't have the same kind of sugar. It's just a loophole in the law that allows the food companies to get away with bamboozling us. it's pretty bad. And then I was shopping the other day, I was in CVS and getting something, I don't know what, and I looked over and I saw this big freezer of Häagen-Dazs ice cream. And I have a weakness for Häagen-Dazs ice cream, but I don't eat that often. And they said, this non-dairy Häagen-Dazs. I'm like, oh, cool. And I walked over and I pull it out, says plant-based, gluten-free, dairy-free. And I'm like, oh, this is health food, right?

Turn the label over and it's like.

High fructose corn syrup and processed ingredients. And I'm like, what is this?

You know, it's like, well, this is the other movement, actually, which is quite interesting to talk about because, you know, we. We know. I'm sure we've all heard of this, you know, the documentary that came out, and then it's really pushed this whole vegan movement. Game Changers. Game Changers. Yeah. So with that coming out, and, I mean, I'm seeing so many adverts now in the UK. I'm not sure if it's the same here, I think it probably is for plant-based, vegan, plant-based, vegan, be healthy, plant-based, vegan. And there's a picture of some processed burger or some processed piece of meat or something. And for me, I think the biggest thing I have a problem with again is that lack of wanting to go and actually educate yourself. People are taking this thing at face value. and it does, I have to say, Game Changers does make some very valid points about the industry, the meat industry.

That's terrible.

And certainly, I think with regards to like processed meat, they absolutely have a point. But when we're talking about, you know, you're taking a lot of the stuff at the moment about regenerative farming.

Yeah.

And the difference that that makes on, on the meat and on the planet.

Yeah.

And I think that is something we need to look at more, but people are using this blanket thing of meat is bad. And it's just not the case in my opinion if it's eaten responsibly and it's the right kind of meat. But this vegan movement, the wrong side of it is it's actually encouraging more eating of processed foods.

Yes, yeah. I mean all these new plant-based burgers sound great and they're billion dollar businesses, but they are highly processed food with different novel ingredients. And if you go into watch them being made, they're made in a basic factory on an assembly line with All kinds of strange things that I, you know, aren't a whole food. So, you know, if you want to be vegan, great, but eat whole foods and be aware of what you're doing because you can be a chips and soda vegan like you were a vegan.

And you, and what happened to you? Diabetic and pre-diabetic. Went in and I was like, what's wrong with me? Like, why do I feel so tired all the time? What's even more interesting too is I'm looking at your bookshelf right here and I see you have the Surrender Experiment by Michael A. Singer, Untethered Soul. this is important too, is that along with your eating, the reason I bring up Michael Eisenger, that untethered soul was amazing. And understanding meditation, Wim Hof is amazing. I don't know if you follow him.

I do, I know him very well.

Oh, he's amazing.

And cold showers are great.

It helps so much with anti-inflammatory, anti-inflammatory.

If I have any aches or pains, I take a steam and I jump in an ice bath.

Yeah.

Yeah, right.

Amazing. I did a thing for a while doing like contrast showers with like going in the sauna in my apartment that I was staying in Toronto and I was shooting recently. They had a sauna downstairs and I was like, oh amazing, great. So I started doing contrast, like heat.

Hot cold.

Yeah, hot cold. Man, I felt so good. I tried to do it in the morning and then before I do it like half an hour pre going to bed and you feel amazing, sleep so well. huge mental clarity in the morning, energy levels in the morning to get up and go and train, you feel good for the day, like it's brilliant. Like those little things that you don't think would make a huge difference.

They really do. It's so true. So Keegan, how did you then feel after you started to reset your diet?

Yeah, it took about three months. Like Tom was saying, and I'm sure you understand this, anybody that goes on this journey for themselves where they go, okay, now I'm gonna be accountable. I'm fully aware of my diet. I'm gonna look at everything, I'm gonna read the labels, I'm gonna do some research, I'm gonna follow health professionals like yourself, like Dr. Mark Hyman, and start to not just do the research but put in the work. And I would, even with all of that and having this extraordinary world around me in Los Angeles of healthy places that I could eat, it still was difficult. I would still regress back to, okay, I'm gonna go and have a cupcake, or I'm gonna go and eat, like one little chocolate chip won't mess me up. And I immediately was sometimes caught in that. And Max Lugavere talks about this. These are highly palatable foods. And hyper palatable. It's like porn for your mouth. And you eat these things and then you're just like, I actually physically cannot stop myself. And my girlfriend, she's a very healthy person. She does not eat anything, any processed foods, no sugar, no nothing. She's very healthy. But she will tell me, I can't even take a bite of that because I will never be able to stop. And I never understood that until I was doing this.

Right.

And so going through that, understanding that it is an addiction and that the people that were enabling me and saying, well, come on. Like, we'd go out.

It's like saying an alcoholic, just have one drink.

Yeah. Yeah. And you have to see yourself as the next. As an addict. As an addict, yeah.

But then you start to recognize that almost everyone around you is completely bonkers. Addiction, like addiction-wise, with sugar or with these processed foods. And they would, they'll nudge you. They'll be like, it's not gonna kill you. Like one bite of this.

You know what those are?

Lava cakes.

Food pushers.

Yeah. Yeah.

And everywhere.

You gotta get rid of the food.

Pushers in your life.

But I went through all that, and I finally came out on the other side. recognizing that I felt I was a completely different person. And I was a person that I wanted to be. I felt good all the time. And then I started getting deeper into it. So microbiome, understanding that, understanding probiotics, not getting junk, like actual real good probiotics, understanding how my gut and the certain foods that I was eating maybe weren't responding to me. Like, I can't have cauliflower. And cauliflower is great for other people.

Yeah, but some people might not.

And understanding that my mother went through a crazy amount of health issues and it happened right at the time where I was very deeply into this. And one of the health issues was that she had a, she was battling cancer for the last 11 years. She had stage five metastasized breast cancer into her spine. They put her on Ibrance, all of these things. But then we discovered a neuroendochromatic tumor on her pancreas. And... A neuroendocrine tumor. Yeah. And we went, okay, I went, okay, there's got to be a way that... There's got to be something about this. What is your diet? What are you eating? She said, well, I eat very healthy. I know, wait, wait, wait. Hold on.

A lot of people think they eat healthy, but they actually don't.

They do not.

And my own mother was under my radar because I didn't, you know, I didn't see her every day. I didn't know what she was looking put in our mouth every single second. And I went, okay, well, let's go through exactly what you're actually ingesting moment to moment. And if you're eating out, you got to know what you're eating. And we went through and I realized her diet was really, really poor. Like, bad, bad. And we shifted a bunch of cancer.

Yeah.

And your body naturally creates glucose on its own.

Right.

So it's. We don't need all these extra sugars from sugar. But she was eating a lot of highly enriched flour, gluten, things that were very hyperinflammatory. So we cut all that out for about four months and we recognized that it went away. This tumor went away.

In her pancreas.

In her pancreas. She still has other cancers but it has totally taken down a lot of that.

Most people don't realize that sugar is a big driver of cancer and the mechanisms are really understood now of how that works. Yeah. The common cancers, particularly breast, colon, pancreatic, prostate, all of them are driven in large part by sugar. Yeah.

Do you think that's just because it's an inflammatory thing for our bodies to consistently process in chaos?

Insulin promotes something like insulin-like growth factor, which actually is in high levels can be carcinogenic. Yeah, that's part of the problem. And, and I think There's the sugar is the main fuel for cancer. So, we're like hybrids. Humans are hybrids. We can run on fat or on carbs or sugar, right? We can run on ketones or glucose. Cancer can. So, a lot of the exciting research now around cancer is using ketogenic diets to help treat cancer and to actually accentuate the benefits of chemotherapy.

So, actually- Seeing a lot of research on this, Keith. A lot of research and this is.

Not wacky, you know? crazy people on the fringe.

Yeah, there's people like I said, I come across them that are like literally turning their cancer around from doing this. It's amazing.

A friend of mine had a, you know, a thigh, lung, throat cancer and, you know, he was a little overweight and he ended up doing ketogenic diet and during the chemo and he said they never seen anybody with better outcomes, less side effects from radiation, from chemo, and sailed through it and it's been clear of cancer, which is amazing. And you know, you were saying before about the addictive properties of it. This is not an accident. And there's a great book, Michael Mosley, who was on the podcast here called Salt, Sugar and Fat, and talks about 300 interviews he did with top executives and scientists in the food industry and what their tactics are. And I remember having dinner with the vice chairman of big soda company. And I'm like, how's it going? We had, you know, we had a little bit of a bad.

It would have been an interesting conversation. It was an interesting conversation.

I was like, but he said, Mark, you know, we have incredible research facility in New York. You should come visit. I'm like, why? He says, well, we've harvested taste buds from humans, and then we grow them in the petri dish, and then we can stimulate them and see which foods and things will actually activate the taste buds. And, and they have something called taste institutes where they hire craving experts and they manipulate the ingredients and the mouthfeel and the taste of food and the sugar to create what we call the bliss point of food, which is that maximum thing. It's like you get that hit, like a cocaine hit. And then they actually look for how to sell that more to what we call heavy, they call heavy users. These are their own internal corporate terms. So it's hard to get you or me to start drinking a two-liter bottle of soda a day. But if someone's drinking a can of soda, then pushing more soda is easier on them. And so they have this whole category of people who are really heavy users and they target them and they're usually the poor, minorities, people on food stamps. And it's really deliberate. And the biology of addiction in the food is not, it's not like an emotional response. It's not because you have no willpower. It really is hijacking your brain chemistry and your metabolism in ways that we don't really understand. And so I've seen people within a very short time really transform that. I mean, we've created something called the 10-day reset, which essentially is a way to reset your brain chemistry and your metabolism, your hormones very quickly. And people don't get how powerful it is. And it gets rid of all the inflammatory foods, puts on lots of whole foods, and people can learn about it. They can learn how to do the whole program at getpharmacy.com. that's ET Pharmacy with an F, F-A-R-M-A-C-Y. And it's a free program on how to do that if you want to upgrade to using the supplements and the shakes you can. But it's a very powerful way for people to go, wow, like you did. Holy crap. What I'm eating makes me feel like crap. And I didn't really realize it. I'm sick all the time. My immune system's not working. I'm foggy. I have no energy.

I look good, but I feel like crap. Yeah. Yeah. The food is medicine theory, there's so much in that and I think people can really take the steps forward in terms of a mindset. Because that's the thing, changing mindset is the first step. You saying this, you know, it took a while from you and me chatting back and forth to really go, no, there is actually something in this. Yeah. And changing that mindset. once you change that mindset and just keep driving that through of food is medicine, food is medicine, you'll see the difference. Simple as that. It's so easy really when you get down the road, but you've got to put the steps in place to actually get there. And that's not easy. Yeah, something I teach all the time.

Is that food isn't just calories, it's information. Yeah. So are you upgrading your biology or downgrading it with every bite? And it affects everything, your hormones, your brain chemistry, your immune system, your microbiome. and every aspect of your health is controlled by what you're eating. And it's literally like code. So it's like you're putting in malware into your body.

Yeah, that's what it is. Yeah.

You know, and people just don't get it.

Do you think that also as well, what I find sometimes is that people don't care enough about their own body to do their, they're literally, you know, it's that mentality of, I'm here for a good time, not a long time. and, and that's all good and well until I, I think about those people. I think you've not been in severe pain or been really sick. Right. You've not been in a position where you've had that, that opportunity to have that light bulb. And the, the last thing you want for that person is to have something when it's too late and it is something that you can't reverse or. That's true.

And you, what's good about you guys is you're, you're not just doing this for yourselves. You actually said, we're gonna try to educate the world about this. We're creating a documentary about sugar and food. Tell us about it.

Yeah, go ahead.

Well, it came about because, I mean, it originally started about us being like, why is everything impossible? Why does the food industry make it impossible to eat healthy? It doesn't make it impossible. Sorry.

Almost impossible.

It makes it almost impossible. And I said, I felt so bad going to these, to meeting fans, meeting friends, seeing my family, go through chronic illness, go through things that could be fixed so simply by a change in diet, understanding and exercise, any kind of fitness, anything. It could be changed.

Just moving, going for a walk, anything, yeah.

Anything. And how atrophied most of the generation before us and after us is becoming this, it's like a machine. And it's driven by, unfortunately, big corporations, like you're saying. It's so sad to hear that they're putting in all this science and technology into essentially making people drug addicts to their foods instead of taking the time to see what is the best way that we can save, use, you know, our, what's already destroyed with climate change, how we can make the world a better place, if we really make it a better place, make our species healthy, keep people better. And there's something strange in, in all of this. So we both were talking, and I'm like, why don't we just, from our standpoint, I feel like we have a very interesting both sides of the street. I mean, I've seen pictures of you before this, and I can't believe the change. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's like he's a regular John Candy. Yeah, exactly.

That's what he used to say. I was like, oh, my John Candy, mate. Yeah, yeah. I used to eat like 12 Krispy Kreme donuts in one sitting, you know?

Like, I was, wow, that's impressive.

Yeah, I mean, exactly before. He's like, dude, don't talk about that.

Oh, yeah, no, it's good. Well, it's, it's actually real. Yeah, well, I think it's important. Struggle was real. Yeah, that's real. I think it's really important that people understand that we weren't born feeling this way about food. You know, we were victim of the system and victim of sugar and all those things. And we went on our own journey and it's just that realizing those things, like getting sick all the time, all those sort of things. And you think it's normal to just get sick all the time. It's normal to get an illness every winter, you know, because it's flu season and you're supposed to get the flu.

Yeah, it's a holiday.

I've never had the flu.

Wow. Wow. That's really good.

Yeah.

But all these fad diets, all these things that are always circulating.

Yeah.

I mean, there were times where I must have WhatsAppped you a million messages being like, Hey, man, what do you think about this diet? And you'd be like, Dude, don't even it doesn't matter. It's about it's not it's not it's not that hard. It's not that hard. It's it. You don't need a fad diet. Now, what you do is you simplify all of the, you have cherry-picked the best things as a physician. You've cherry-picked the best things and put them into a very coherent, small little construct that people can use and apply to their own life in whatever way they see fit. And what I find really difficult is throughout our journey, I'm sure you went through this as well, you will try and figure it out on your own and you have so much trial and error that you end up just going back to the original way that you were eating because you go, well, it doesn't matter anyway. But it does and that's the thing that we are very passionate about is bringing this to people that when you're driving in your car and you're listening to this or you're sitting at home on YouTube watching this or on our social media platforms that you go, okay, I'm gonna be a little bit more aware, maybe a lot more aware of what I'm putting in my body.

Am I-- yeah.

I know our family's bodies as well. And our family's bodies, our kids, our.

Children are like victims. Yeah, 40% of kids are overweight, one.

In ten have ADD. I mean, it's-- I mean, that must be that the increase of that over the last 20, 30 years, I imagine, is ridiculous.

I don't know what the figures are, but-- I mean, yeah, and I graduated from medical school in 1987. There wasn't anything called type 2 diabetes.

No.

It was called adult onset diabetes.

Right, exactly.

And juvenile diabetes. And they had to change the names because two-year-olds are getting adult onset diabetes. Unbelievable. Some two-year-olds are so fat they can't even walk. Yeah.

You know, because the parents are giving them soda in the bottle. Yeah. I mean, it's a big part of the documentary that we're making is the future, right? And changing the mindset of the children and trying to reach out to parents to say, you are responsible soul, solely responsible from when that child comes out of the mother, you are solely responsible of what goes in that child's mouth. And we have a responsibility to make sure that that child has the best life possible. Yeah. So we, we obviously, there's a big argument here about, as we've already said, like certain places in America, it's same in the UK, people just do not have access to that food, and that's down to the food system. So we have to, we have to go on a bigger scale. We have to do kind of the same sort of thing that game changes has and create a shock factor. We have to go and see these children in their state and use technology available to us potentially to be able to see what's going on there and show these parents the difference in their child that could be if they just changed the way they eat.

It's true. There are teenagers in America who are on the waiting list for liver transplants from drinking soda.

Yeah, that's unbelievable.

I mean, I met a guy at a conference who a pediatrician and it was a conference on obesity and I said, what's your specialty? He says, well, I'm a pediatric gastroenterologist and I focus on liver disease. I said, why are you here at this conference? He says, well, we're seeing so much fatty liver and even five-year-olds, which is crazy and it's one of the most prevalent problems and at least inflammation in the body and diabetes and heart disease and it's terrifying if kids are overweight there. their life expectancy is 13 years less. They're less likely to have productive lives, to have good jobs, graduate from school, go to college, be productive. And it's, it, people just don't understand that what we're doing to the Future Generation. And none of their minds are affected by it, too. It's not just their bodies.

Yeah.

They have trouble focusing, concentrating, ADD, poor academic performance, less likely to succeed in life. And it's, it's, it's so important you guys are doing this documentary because It's going to tell a story that people need to hear and the fact that you guys have voices and have big communities and fans, telling a story is so important and I think the more people are out there talking about it, the more we can come together, actually share what's actually happening will sort of wake people up and it's happening and it's pushing the food industry. I mean, Danone, which is a big company, just announced they were and they own like Ben and Jerry's and they own all these ice cream, they're not going to advertise ice cream to kids anymore.

Oh, wow. That's huge. Yeah, that's huge.

This is the thing too, is that we want to also educate the children. We want it to come through to the kids because at the end of the day, the parents can and will put down an iron fist when they realize that they are essentially doing terrible things to their kids by giving them these treats and things that they think, well, when I was a kid, I had ice cream and it was summer days that I enjoyed that so much. There's an nostalgia to these terrible things. There's a tradition to these foods on holiday.

And.

What has happened is that our, like you said, dessert has become now this normal thing, whereas before it was only for a certain day. And now what I'm worried about is parents can do that. They can stop it. They can stop it.

I would say make your home a safe zone.

But then kids will go out. and they'll have it on their own if they are not in a relationship.

They're gonna be exposed to it, you know, in the outside world. That's what I think. I always think it's about taking control in your own life. So, like, you know, my kids don't eat sugar and I think, you know, they're gonna go out there at some point, they're gonna go to kids parties, they're gonna be exposed and they're gonna be offered these things. But I think if as long as I can control it in our home and, you know, I probably sound like it to certain people, I probably sound like a really unfun dad, like, I don't give them any treats. They get no fun at all. But no, I mean I think for the purpose of their health, I think you know the majority of the time they're spending in in my home and they can eat whole foods, you know, and that's right and that's important, you know that the future for us if we don't do that I always have you seen that movie the Pixar movie Wall-E? Oh, yeah about the little robot We.

Need a Disney movie about this.

Yeah, well that in In the, that's the story about the future. And we see the humans are all now completely obese and they're all in these little, they're like, Zoomy pod things.

They go around in Disneyland.

Just digital fodder being fed to their.

Eyes and just watching TV, these little iPad things and they just go, move around. And I'm like, that's a vision of the distant future if we carry so much distance. It's here. It's here. We're about there. And I think things like that, you see it and you think, I don't want that future for my kids or their kids.

Yeah.

You know, and that's where we're heading. And I think we have to make a change now. And, you know, using platforms and, you know, the media and things like that, that's their only way to do it.

If you love that last video, you're gonna love the next one. Check it out here.

They never get those cancers that we get. I mean, they get some viral cancers, but they don't get colorectal cancer, breast cancer. In fact, the University in Ontario, Canada, used to send an expedition to the Arctic Circle every year.