Dr. Mark Hyman explains how environmental toxins accelerate aging by triggering inflammation, mitochondrial dysfunction, and DNA damage. He recommends reducing toxic load through diet and filtration, then supporting your body's detox systems with vegetables, fiber, and hydration.
Chapters
Foreign. How do toxins relate to lifespan and longevity and what we think of as aging? Great, great, great point. So, you know my book Young Forever, I talked about the way in which longevity and health are all connected. Disease are connected to these fundamental things that go wrong as we get older. They're called the hallmarks of aging. And there's nine, now there's 13. They're basically these systemic processes that we know very well in functional medicine, from inflammation to changes in the microbiome to mitochondrial dysfunction, to dysregulation of insulin. And all these things that we know, we've been talking about for decades in functional medicine now are kind of distilled into this beautiful framework. The question is, from a perspective of traditional longevity scientists, they're focused on, okay, here's the hallmarks of aging, let's treat them. Find a medication or a supplement or an intervention to modify these hallmarks. And from my perspective as a functional medicine doctor, I'm always thinking about the cause. Why? So if the hallmarks are the cause of aging, if the hallmarks are driving all age related chronic disease, from heart disease to diabetes to cancer, dementia, what is causing those hallmarks to become accelerated? And it's really quite simple from a functional medicine perspective. Everything that goes wrong with you is either too much of something that your body doesn't like or not enough, something your body needs. So you need to get rid of the bad stuff and you need to put in the good stuff. And that's essentially the practice of functional medicine. It's so essential to all of us. And I always used to say understanding functional medicine is hard. Practicing it can be relatively easy because it's about being a detective and finding out what is on the list of bad stuff to get rid of and what's on the list of good stuff to get. And so one of the key things, besides food and stress and allergens and bugs and infections that is driving a lot of dysfunction in longevity is, is affecting our epigenome, is the whole field of environmental toxins. So our epigenetic programming is determined by our lifestyle, environment, our diet, toxins, and that can be highly modified by changing our exposures we call the exposome. And so I think when we look at things that are driving so many of the dysfunctions, whether it's increases in insulin resistance from bisphenol A, or whether it's problems with mitochondrial damage from environmental toxins, or whether it's the ability of environmental toxins to upregulate inflammation and things like NF kappa B or Whether it's the way in which environmental toxins influence the microbiome or whether how they cause DNA damage or how they cause, you know, telomere shortening. I mean, you just go through the list of all the things that we know are related to longevity and aging. Toxins play a role in all of this. So if you want to live a long, healthy life, part of the key is to reduce your exposures and to eliminate these toxins.
So what are your top, top tips for people then who say, okay, I'm ready, sign me up. How do they, where do they start? What are the most impactful things in.
Terms of longevity or environmental toxins? Right.
Well, they kind of go together. So. So I would say first for toxins and then for longevity. So let's separate them out.
Yeah, I mean, I think, I think as I mentioned before, the key strategy is to, to really be diligent about reducing your exposures. And the environmental working group has incredible guides. So that's, that's kind of the go to place to learn where you're exposed, how you're exposed, what you're exposed to, and how to dramatically reduce or eliminate most of the exposures you have. So it'd be looking at the food you're eating, things you're putting on your body and skin, your household cleaning products, as well as your how to filter your water, maybe an air filter. Just reducing your overall load. It's about reducing the toxic load. We can't get rid of it. We're all basically toxic waste dumps. Second is how do you upregulate your body's own detoxification system? And making sure you're upregulating with the right foods, like crispy vegetables, the onions, the right supplements, and also making sure you're eliminating properly plenty of, you know, water and fluids to pee it out and poop it out, and fiber and sweating like saunas. All very simple practices that you can include in your diet. I do this as form of habit now, like anything else, like brushing your teeth or whatever you do, making your bed, you just kind of build this stuff into your life. So for me, it's just a part of my regular routine.
