PNTV: Food Fix by Mark Hyman, MD (#411)

You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson. More wisdom in Less time.

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today we've got another great book, Food Fix by Mark Hyman, M.D. subtitle how to Save Our Health, Our Economy, Our Communities and Our Planet One Bite at a Time. Now this is an incredibly compelling, thought provoking, enraging, inspiring book. I'm really, really, absolutely loved it. Highly encourage our optimized coaches to read this. It became really a catalyst for some of the stuff we talk about in the eating session for our module on the fundamentals eating, moving, sleeping, breathing, etc. It's just a very eye opening look at how our broken food systems, which will be the brief first idea here, are affecting way more than we think, our health, our economy, the health of our planet, et cetera. It's amazing when you step back and see the dots that Dr. Hyman connects in this book, just how influential what we eat is to all of those different domains. And by optimizing our own personal choices and looking at how we can fix some of the broken systems politically, etc. We can do some really powerful things in the world. So as always we've got a six page PDF Philosopher's note. It's ridiculous to take a book like this and to try to capture its essence in such a brief frame like this, but I basically pulled out a handful of my favorite ideas with a high level look and then of course, as always a practical look at, well, what can we do about it? If you are interested in optimizing your own well being and that of our world and can see the connections of food and would like to get a deeper insightful look at that, I think you'll love the book as much as I did. It is absolutely fantastic. We'll talk about the optimized food prescriptions in a moment. So five ideas here again get the book to see the detailed nuance of how all the different systems come together to create a very broken system. But if you look at the 2 billion people that are overweight on our planet right now, the extraordinary amount of chronic disease and money spent on chronic disease, something like over $90 trillion will be spent on essentially preventable chronic diseases of which food is the primary driver and poor nutrition is the primary driver, $90 trillion over the next 35 years. That's crazy making, let alone the emotional and energetic impact of having so many of us fall prey to these chronic diseases which are largely preventable by lifestyle choices, starting with our nutrition. It gets Just powerful to see the interconnectedness and then you see the damaging effects on the environment, et cetera, et cetera, and then on our psychological well being, etc. But the thing I want to talk about briefly here is the fact that the ultimate issue is that everyone's running around trying to deal with the symptoms. And what Mark does is step back and say, no, no, no, let's look at the root causes. Let's not see how we can more elegantly transfer data and do this and do that to deal with symptoms and how we're offering medical care. Let's see why so many people are getting sick in the first place. And one of the metaphors I talk about, Mark doesn't actually talk about it in this book, but he's one of the world's leading functional medicine doctors. He runs the Functional Medicine Strategic Initiative at the Cleveland Clinic. He's the head of the Functional Medicine Institute, or whatever it's called, that organizes all the functional MDs out there. And the main thing that functional medicine doctors pay attention to the systems that are leading to the disease, the disease. Whereas our traditional medical system currently primarily focuses on, almost exclusively focuses on the symptoms. So when we step back and say, well, what's causing these diseases? We can see that something like what we're eating is contributing greatly. And that will actually just skip to the end here and I'll come back to it for a practical purpose, but there's been research done where you can bring people into a study, split them into two groups. One group is treated normally. The other group is given what they call food prescriptions. Imagine going to a doctor, you're suffering from diabetes or perhaps even heart disease or even cancer. And they say, well, you know, what you need to do is you need to start eating healthier foods. So I'm going to prescribe, then we are going to pay for your healthy food. Now, of course, insurance doesn't do that. They'll pay for symptom alleviation, et cetera, via whatever drugs, medication. But imagine a scenario in which the food is paid for, right? So then let's look at what happens when the food, healthy food, is paid for. Even when you account for the cost of the food, the health care costs go down radically. And of course that's because the health measures go up radically. So there's some really exciting things when we think about how we can deal with the root cause of issues. And then very briefly, the metaphor, as I was reading this book and explaining it to EMERSON like he's 7, because he is 7. I said, look, imagine if we had a tree that was unhealthy. And this is based on a metaphor that Dr. Alejandro Junger talks about in his book Clean, right? I kind of extended in my own playful way for Emerson. I said, imagine that Dr. Younger being another functional medicine doctor, talking about symptoms versus systems and root causes. Imagine we had a tree that wasn't doing too well, right? The leaves were getting brown. We love the tree, but we don't really know how to take care of trees. So we call in a gardener and we say, hey, we got this tree that has brown leaves. And the gardener cruises over and he, you know, he gets out his kit and he looks at it and kind of taps it and all that stuff, right? He says, oh, I know what I need to do. And he takes out a can of spray paint, and he starts spray painting the brown leaves green. And we're kind of looking at him like, what's going on with that? And Emerson, I'm telling him the story, he's looking at me like, that'd be kind of crazy. And then he writes us a prescription for the precise color of green that we need to go get from Home Depot. That's our new favorite place out here in the country outside of Austin. We go to Home Depot a bit, okay, go get this can of green spray paint and just apply a little bit of paint one to two to three times a day, and you'll be fine. Emerson's eyes are just getting big. And I said, what would you think about that? He'd say, that guy's crazy. We don't want our tree to die. He said, we want it to live. We want it to be healthy. And I said, exactly. So what would you do if you were that gardener? Then he does this little seven year old thinking about it. He's like, well, I'd make sure it had the right nutrients. I'd look at the soil, right? Make sure it had enough water and enough light, et cetera. I said, exactly. You deal with the root cause of it and not spray paint the symptoms. And I said, unfortunately, our current system is a little too close. And I'm using the metaphor loosely here, with deep respect for all the people working so hard to try to take good care of us, but it's a little too close to that approach. Yes, we can modulate insulin levels by adding drugs to the equation, and we can do different things with different issues, but are we dealing with the root causes here? Because if we can deal with the root causes, we can create Those green leaves. Naturally, we can solve a lot of the issues. And again, we've got a lot of issues. On a broken food system. We're subsidizing junk food basically, which is going through, and we're paying for it, both to pay for the junk food and then to pay for the health care costs that are required to treat the people who get sick from it. It's a broken system that needs to be addressed. I will save that message for the book in another conversation. For now, we're going to move on to the practical stuff we can do. So again, I'm mining these books looking for practical tools we can apply to our lives today. And when I see something like the number one thing you can do, I sit up a little straighter. Right. Mark Hyman tells us the number one thing that we can do personally and at a systemic level is to quit drinking sugar. So sugar is a toxin, which is why insulin has to shuttle it out of your bloodstream quickly and store it in fat cells. It's not a health food. It is not whatever. We can talk about that. We do talk about it a lot. Some researchers say that sugar is like candy for cancer cells. And drinking your sugar is the number one way Dr. Hyman tells us we can improve our own health and well being and force these industries, these businesses to stop making money on such highly profitable items. So by quitting drinking your sugar, no longer drinking your sugar via sodas, and by the way, parents, fruit juice, fruit juice, all the different teachers and authors talk about. But Mark emphasizes here is not a health food antioxidants, blah blah blah. Pure sugar is not good for your kids. So look at the label and see how much sugar is in whatever you're drinking. And quit drinking your sugar. This is the number one lever, personally and societally. That's rule number one. And we actually made that in our eating module session for our optimized coaches. We have what we call the optimized food rules. Three of them plus one. The first rule is quit drinking your sugar. The second rule is playing on Michael Pollan's food rules. Eat real food. And then we extend it by saying throw out factory food, quit eating ultra processed sugar laden carbage and factory farmed animals. Longer chat Mark has about regenerative agriculture. There's actually some drawdown benefits to having grass fed animals out there. It isn't all about not eating animals, but the factory farm stuff needs to be addressed for multiple reasons. And then throw out your factory fats. Olive oil has existed forever. Socrates was Hammering. Olive oil, soybean oil, safflower oil, corn oil. Those vegetable oils sound good for you. They're not. They were post industrial revolution. They're like 100 years old and they constitute a huge percentage of our diet. Get rid of them. So don't drink your sugar. Food rule number one. Food rule number two, eat real food. Throw out the factory food. Food rule number three is have an eating sunset. Give yourself the night off at least 14 hours between your last meal and your first meal. Again, we talk about this in different contexts. I'll leave it at that for now. Then I have a bonus rule which is basically eat like your favorite philosopher who's at least 300 years old. You boil down nutritional philosophy in many ways to eat like your great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandparents lived. I have fun with it and say, who's your favorite philosopher? Is it Moses? Is it Jesus, Is it Mohammed? For me it's Epictetus. Eat like them. They didn't drink their sugar. They didn't eat factory food because it didn't exist either one. And they had eating windows because they didn't have refrigerators. They can go to and eat all day every day. Right? So there you go, food rules. Then let's go back to your label. You're going to look at to see how much sugar is in your healthy drink that you're drinking right now. Look more closely at your food label and know that they're often lying to you. Now, as I was reading this book and looking at how industry or industry giants and companies like Coca Cola have done atrocious things like truly enraging things that harken back, make you think of the tobacco industry and what they did back in the day. And I believe that we're going to see the same types of trends. Tobacco industry knew that their products were harmful and they hid it. They manipulated the research and all that stuff, right? And then they. We figured it out and everyone said, shame on them. Well, guess what? The junk food industry, we have a reckoning coming. Because they know that their health products aren't great for us and they're doing manipulative things that are enraging. And again, I don't get easily enraged. But I'm reading this and here's the example we'll use today. Smuckers, pick up a jar of strawberry. Smuckers jam. Look at the food label. Food labels were created by a broken political system. The effort was to give us visibility into what's in our food. Right? We should have an opportunity to see what's in our food. Back in the day, it was trust, because we went to the local farmer or the local butcher or the local baker, and we trusted them that we were eating food. That was what they said it was, right? No big deal. Wasn't built in a factory, et cetera. Now we've got a couple steps removed, so let's see what's in our label. You are now obligated to tell us what precisely is in this food product. Seems like a good idea, right? Only if you look at that Smucker's label. Mark tells us what you'll see at the top is strawberries. Cool. Check the box. It's strawberries. It's got to be pretty good for you, right? Well, then you'll see three different types of sugar listed, whatever they are. High fructose corn syrup. One of the 60 names for sugar. Sugar comes in 60 names. Very clever way to manipulate it. I don't even know what this is. Is that good or bad for me? I can't even pronounce it. Sugar has 60 different names. Now, what you'll find is that rather than put sugar at the top and we'd know, wow, this has got a lot of sugar in it. Companies like this split it up into three different forms of sugar so we can look at that label and see strawberries at the top and not see sugar at the top. And I think of that might just lost my brother to pancreatic cancer. And I wonder when my mom walks into the grocery store, she's not thinking about these things. She picks it up, oh, there's strawberries at the top of the list. Must be good for you. My brother, your brother, your mom. Not cool. You know, I could just imagine. And I have a plus one series on this. What was the executive meeting where they said, no, no, no, we got to keep strawberry at the top of this food label, or people might know that it's not healthy for them. So let's just mix up sugar in a few different ingredients so it isn't the most predominant ingredient, and we don't need to put it at the top. Who's thinking through that? That's the opposite of virtuous behavior. It's called vicious behavior. And we got to become more aware of what's going on and then choose to vote with every dollar we spend and change through our personal choices. I get fired up about that. Your labels may very well be lying to you. Check them out. And again, if you can't pronounce the Ingredient, it was made in a factory. Right. And if you wouldn't have that particular ingredient, whatever 20 syllable ingredient in your pantry to add to whatever you're cooking, don't eat it. That's another helpful food rule. And throwing out the factory food. Moving on to some other fun stuff.

Junk science.

So Mark goes off about the $12 billion that the Food industry, junk food industry spends on research. $12 billion is spent by the food industry on research, whereas only $1 billion is spent on independent research. And he quotes a social food advocate who says that, would you believe research produced by the tobacco industry? Probably not. Should you believe research produced by the food industry trying to convince you that your Twix is a health food? Which literally some agencies say, yeah, Twix is a health food. Got all these different ingredients that are good for you.

Really?

A Twix candy bar is a health food? Cocoa Puffs are health food? Yeah. According to the manipulated data and some organizations have put a stamp of their approval on it. $12 billion of what mark calls junk science that's confusing us and trying to explain to us basically that their products obviously aren't that bad, the sugar's not that bad for you, that the issue is what they call an energy balance issue. And again, Mark talks about this, we talk about it in optimal metabolism 101. But the junk science essentially is trying to convince us. And it's confusing because there's $12 billion of this flooding the research world and only a billion of the independent research which unequivocally says that the energy balance theory is wrong. The energy balance theory essentially says a calorie is a calorie, right? And if you are having a tough time maintaining your optimal weight, all you need to do is get the energy balance right. You need to make sure you're not eating too much and that you're burning enough calories, right? So then they say, well, just eat our food in moderation and then you got to exercise more. The real issue is you're not exercising enough. That's the energy balance theory. Now that'd be awesome if it was right. It's not. The research that Mark points to says, no, no, no. You can bring people into a lab and give them a different breakdown of foods. And what you'll find is the ultra processed, fast acting carbs affect the body fundamentally differently than fats and proteins. And you can watch, they'll burn more calories than the other model. And the way that the metabolic balance is affected is fundamentally different depending on the types of calories you're consuming. And again, longer chat. But Mark tells us any third grader can tell you 1,000 calories in a soda is different than 1,000 calories in broccoli. Yet the $12 billion of junk science is essentially trying to tell us it's energy balance. That's all we need to think about. And again, I go off on this in different contexts. We'll leave it at that. But yeah, I'll pause, we'll move on. A calorie is not a calorie. We're moving on to the food prescription. Back to the food prescription. We know that we can reduce healthcare costs while optimizing our overall energetic well being by prescribing ourselves healthy food in dealing with the root causes of our chronic diseases. So my question for you is, we have a little optimized prescription pad. We'll put a link to it in the notes here. But basically, we give our coaches, we're.

Working on the pad.

We'll give them. It's like a doctor's prescription pad, right? Optimize prescriptions. Right. Fundamentals. What do you need to do? So while watching this, what's the number one thing you just intuitively know? If I did this, it would most fundamentally change my life and improve my well being, my family's well being, my community's well being, et cetera. What's the one thing you can write a prescription to yourself for? And then we playfully say to our coaches that it's not a doctor writing a prescription for their patient. A patient, etymologically, literally means one who submits. That's what a patient is, one who submits to, in this case, a doctor. Now, again, if I really trusted that the doctor knew what they were doing or they had their best interest and ability to heal me in mind, I'd probably be more willing to submit someone like Mark Hyman. Yeah, I'll submit. Tell me what I need to do, Dr. Boom. Write me a prescription. In general, I like to take the opposite of submission. And the opposite of to submit is to conquer. The word conquer etymologically means to seek successfully. Conqueror. Conquest. It's got a quest in it. You go on a quest successfully as a conqueror. So we playfully tell our coaches, hand the pad over to your client. They are the conqueror. They need to write the prescription, that they need to go live. And we tell our coaches, here, here's the pad. What do you need to do to be a radiant exemplar to truly move from theory to practice to mastery? So today, I hand you the pad and say, oh beloved conqueror, what do you need to do? How can you optimize your life? What's one thing you could do that if you did, it would most significantly improve your life? Or perhaps one thing you need to stop doing that. If you stop doing it would have the most positive impact in your life, in your family and in your community, and ripples in the world. We each need to be the change we want to see if we want to make a difference in the world. This book Food Fix Mark Hyman, thank you so much for your lifetime of work on this. Highly recommend it and excited to continue to explore these ideas with intensity, with urgency. As we talked about in our last pntv, which was on Tom Rath's Life's Great question, he says, look, the greatest contribution you can make is actually to help people optimize their energy. And this is a guy, actually that's where I got the whole Sugar is candy for cancer cells. It's from Tom Rath. At 16, he realized was diagnosed with a very rare genetic mutation made it very difficult for him to deal with cancer. He's fought cancer his entire life since at 16 losing an eyeball to a tumor. He's fought multiple cancers for decades. And he's the one who says sugar is candy for cancer cells. Eliminate it from your diet, it is toxic. And he also tells us that we can contribute most to the world and answer life's great question, which is how can I contribute? How am I contributing? Help people optimize their energy. He says that's the ultimate way because our energy is what allows us to show up as our best self in our work, in our love, which is ultimately what Optimize is all about. So let's go hit it today. I realize I just dumped a ton. Hope you enjoyed. Look forward to sharing more tomorrow. Let's do this. See you.

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Optymyze with Brian Johnson. To find out more, go to Optimize Me.

Hey guys, this is Bry. Hope you enjoyed that video. We have a lot of people ask us what Optymyze is all about. So I just wanted to give you a super quick tour of our site. Tell you what we do. We do two primary things. We have an Optimize core membership and we have an optimized coach certification program for people that want to go from theory to practice to mastery. So the core membership is basically 10 bucks a month depending on whether you do monthly or annual. And you get instant access to over 500 philosopher's notes, the six page PDF, you know, 25 minute or so MP3 recordings of these great books. And then you get over a thousand optimized plus ones, 50 optimal living 101 masterclasses, et cetera. And we have a free trial the team set up, get it, you know, free for 14 days and then go from there if you like it. So we're blessed to have a lot of people who subscribe to this, including some of my friends who happen to be some world class peak performance gurus like Tal Ben Shahar, who taught the two of the largest classes in Harvard's history. Starts every day with Optimize. Ben Greenfield, friend and coach Optimizes, bar none. My go to source for taking a deep efficient dive into some of the world's best books via the Philosopher's Notes. It's an indispensable resource. Thank you Ben. Marcy Shimoff loves philosopher's notes. Mark Devine, retired US Navy SEAL commander, dear friend who starts his days with optimized plus one winning win in the mind routine to charge him up for the day's battle. If you're serious about leading heroically, I recommend you use them too.

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Thank you. And 10,000 plus other awesome humans around the world. That's the core membership. Then we have, and I should say we have apps. Excuse me, you can get apps, iOS and Android. You know, we're, we're feel pretty proud and blessed to have basically a 4.9 ranking and people saying some great things. You can check that at Optimize Me apps and then our coach program is all about helping you master yourself so you can serve heroically so you can empower others to do the same. We have trained over a thousand optimized coaches from over 50 countries and yeah, really excited about this. This is one of the core levers for us to fulfill our mission to change the world one person at a time together, starting with you and us today. We've been told that here's one little thought and we have hundreds of testimonials you can check out about how it's transformed people's lives and, and if you want to be a coach, your coaching practice now. Half of the people who do this want to be coaches. The other half just want to master their lives.

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