Speaker 1:
Coming up on this episode of The Doctor’s Farmacy,
Dr. Mark Hyman:
We are what we eat and we’re basically creating the building blocks of our structure from the food we eat. So if we eat junk, we end up having junk molecules, building our tissues. Hey everybody, it’s Dr. Mark Hyman. Welcome to a new series on The Doctor’s Farmacy called Masterclass, where we dive deep into important health topics, including inflammation, autoimmune disease, brain health sleep, and much more. Today I’m joined by my guest host, my good friend, my business partner, and host of the Dhru Purohit Podcast, Dhru Purohit himself, and we’re going to be about longevity and the secrets to looking younger longer. Welcome Dhru, and by the way, this is an important topic because I think we are all going to get to be able to live to be 100, 120, but we don’t want to look 120. So how do we design a life that causes us to age well in the inside and the outside?
Dhru Purohit:
It’s such an important topic, Mark, and a lot of people have questions about it, and I think that note about, we don’t want to look 120. We don’t want to look like what current society says that you have to look even at 60, 70, 80, exactly, which is usually hunched over bad posture, suffering with multiple chronic diseases, and there’s no shade thrown at that, there’s no judgment, it’s just that’s not what health span is about.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
No, I mean, me am 93. I mean, I look pretty good.
Dhru Purohit:
Well, you’re not 93, but you are 63.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
62.
Dhru Purohit:
62. 62. But before we jump in and we talk about three things that we want to start off with that can help people look younger from the inside out. I actually want you to expand on something that you told me about before we got started and there’s this new type of testing that’s emerging that a lot more doctors are getting familiar with, and it’s another way to look at our age, but a different type of age. So what is that test and what did you learn from doing it yourself?
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah, it’s fascinating, Dhru. So, most of the age related decline that we see is in some way related to inflammation, including what happens on the outside. So when people don’t look well on their skin, it’s because they have inflammation on the insides being expressed on the outside. So it’s also key to us, also look at your immune system as part of skin health, and the reason I’m leading with that is because the test looks at something called DNA methylation. I mean, this could be an hour podcast just talking about this particular concept, but the basic idea is this.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
When you’re born, you have your DNA, that’s your code. You can’t really change it except for gene editing or CRISPR, but not all the genes get expressed. Some are silenced, some are turned on, some are turned off, and there’s a process by which your body does that regulates everything. So in every cell of your body there’s the entire code for everything. In other words in your skin cell is the entire code for your brain, but why don’t you grow a brain on your skin because those genes are turned off.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
So there’s a special pattern of turning on and off genes through this meta framework over the genes called the epigenome. So the genes are like the keys on a piano, the epigenome is like the piano player, that determines which songs get played. So one of the ways we look at aging is to see a where the marks are on the epigenome that tell the genes, which genes should be turned on or off, and this is called DNA methylation. This is the major way that genes are regulated. DNA methylation just means they’re methylating groups which are carbon and three hydrogens, it’s just a chemical group that is a common part of our biological currency and the body uses these little chemical tags like bookmarks in your book to look at which pages should be read.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
So this test is a DNA methylation test. It looks at your epigenome, and it looks at your immune cells, it looks at other cells. So I’m 62, but I just got my result yesterday and I’m biologically, even though I’m chronologically 62, I’m biologically 43. So I’m almost 20 years younger than my actual age, which to me is really cool. I’m thinking about that and I’m going, God, so if I’m 62 and I’m actually 43, then I’m probably going to live another 60 years. I could be 100 and that’s a hundred. So I’m like, I feel good. I’m like, I think I’m going to get there.
Dhru Purohit:
Knock on wood, that’s what we wish for you. Of course, that’s what we wish for everybody.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
I mean, honestly it was surprising to me Dhru, because I’ve been through so much, I’ve been through mercury poisoning, mold toxicity, Lyme disease, babesia, autoimmune diseases, colitis. I mean, it’s been quite a journey and I’ve come through all of it, through functional medicine, and to see that even though I’ve undergone such a brutal battery of insults that are inflammatory and that accelerate aging, that I have actually used the practice of functional medicine and the principles of creating health to revive myself in such a way that my DNA methylation pattern looks like I’m 43. Now the interesting thing about that particular test is you can track it over time. So I just did it now, but I’m not going to settle for 43, I want to get to 25. I’m going to see what I can do.
Dhru Purohit:
It could be possible. Obviously there’s certain things that you can do on your own, but you’re writing a whole book on this. There’s a whole other category of new and experimental technologies that could break through a whole new aspect. We have no affiliation with this test company. This is not an endorsement, but people are always asking and they want to know, can they do that same test that you did, do you mind mentioning who it is?
Dr. Mark Hyman:
I mean, the company I used was TruDiagnostic, but I also did four other companies because I wanted to compare, I haven’t got those results yet. So stay tuned. But this one TruDiagnostic is I think among the most reputable and reliable tests.
Dhru Purohit:
I think that they were the one that powered the study that Kara Fitzgerald did, Dr. K Fitzgerald.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yes.
Dhru Purohit:
Who was on your podcast in our podcast, and she published that landmark study in the journal Aging, showing that she could in eight weeks, biologically reverse people’s age by about three years. So when people talk about like, oh, but maybe it’s Dr. Hyman or somebody else who’s living a “perfect lifestyle” and obviously we’ve dispelled that, it’s not about living the perfect lifestyle.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
I don’t live a perfect lifestyle, I could, but I don’t.
Dhru Purohit:
Yeah. Yeah. You got to sneak at some tequila here and there. Little bit of sugar here and there, but in very short time, that’s the power of food and lifestyle intervention and stress reduction is you can make a huge difference in a very short period of time. It can take years depending on what you’ve gone, but in a very short period of time, if we’re looking at DNA methylation as one of the markers that are there for aging, you can see substantial differences in a short period of time by following very specific recommendations, some which we’ll get into in a little bit.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Is so true Dhru because when you look at what we think of as the inexorable decline in terms of our appearance as we age, it’s not a one way street, and as I’ve gotten smarter and I’ve started working on myself more, people who I haven’t in seen years, “God, you look 10 years younger. What are you doing?” I’m like, “Well, I’ve gotten old 10 years older, but I actually look 10 years younger.” So there is a way that this technology works from the inside out, that’s why I really think the framing of this conversation about how we look is about beauty from the inside out, as opposed to the outside in.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
So you go to the dermatology, they slide their stuff on your skin, and I’m not saying taking care of your skin on the outside is bad, I’m just saying it’s part of an overall package. Because if you’re eating an inflammatory diet and your skin’s inflamed from the inside and you;re swollen and have fluid retention and puffiness, that ain’t going away with a bunch of skin cream.
Dhru Purohit:
Totally, especially super expensive skin creams and treatments and lasers, again, nothing wrong with those things, but we spend so much time as a society thinking about those aspects and there’s some of that ends up actually working, and there’s this whole other category that’s underappreciated. So with that being said, let’s jump into it. I asked you before we got started here, if you would take three areas, three categories that we can expand on a little bit, we talk about it high level, then we’ll break each one down. Give us three things that are deeply connected to looking young on the outside, but by starting on the inside. So what’s one of the first ones you want to chat about?
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Well, they’re all related to ways to lower inflammation and help repair and rejuvenation of your entire body, including your skin and your face and so forth. The first is food, obviously. So what you eat plays an enormous role and we’ll talk about what to not eat and what to eat. But the key thing is you want to have high levels of certain nutrients, whether it’s vitamin C, vitamin A, zinc, biotin, omega-3 fats, these are critical nutrients. The carotenoids that help produce healthy skin, healthy collagen, reduce inflammation or antioxidants.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
The next is hot and cold therapies, because our skin is an expiratory organ. It’s the biggest organ in our body. So when you sweat, when you actually create this experience of your body in these extreme temperatures of extreme heat and cold, and I’m staying in a place now where literally I’m doing it twice a day, they have a sauna and a cold plunge, and it’s amazing when you come out your skin looks revived and fresh. You excreted all the sort of superficial toxins, deeper toxins.
Dhru Purohit:
Your skin just feels healthier. Actually, you can like feel it and it just feels-
Dr. Mark Hyman:
It feels healthier. Yeah.
Dhru Purohit:
Tighter. It feels healthier. It feels like your skin can actually breathe.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah, exactly. We’re supposed to sweat and we’re supposed to excrete those things, and then the cold also resets your autonomic nervous system. So your skin is integrated by nerves, it brings blood flow and circulation. So it helps to revive your skin. The third is movement, exercise, plays a huge role too. For the same reasons, it actually increases circulation, lymphatic flow, lymphatic function. The way that your lymph system works, which is the detoxification system in your body that clears out all the fluids that are full of metabolites and inflammatory compounds. It removes them from your body and things that aren’t even in your circulation from the tissues, puts it into your lymph system, then it dumps into your circulation so you can detoxify it.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Exercise is the only way to really activate that diet helps too, but exercise is super important. I think so just, it helps with reducing inflammation and it can activate your antioxidant systems. It can help with excretion of toxins from your skin, it can just overall help your overall sense of wellness and wellbeing. So I think from that perspective, it also makes you feel younger too.
Dhru Purohit:
We had a gentleman on your podcast and mine, Dr. Ben Bikman, who is one of the world’s experts in insulin resistance and all the pathways of insulin, and one of the things that I learned about from him when it came to food and how food can age us is that I had shared with them that my background’s Indian, I’m South Asian, and a lot of South Asians, I noticed this when I go to India, and this is a used to be if you were a lot older, but now I started seeing it on some of my extended family members who were in like their later 20s or 30s. They start to develop these dark patches under their eyes, and there’s a lot of also what are called like these skin tags. If you’ve seen individuals with those.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah, and it’s called acanthosis nigricans also, which is this problem you get from eating too much sugar.
Dhru Purohit:
Sugar and refined carbohydrates. So that’s like one just very practical way, if we’re talking about like reduction of dark circles under our eyes, which can be caused by a lot of different things or influenced by a lot of things. If we’re talking about keeping our skin healthy and it just like avoiding skin tags and little patches and other stuff, our food actually significantly contributes for the better or for the worse towards those things.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Absolutely.
Dhru Purohit:
Break down some of the other categories on food. Let’s talk about like omega-3 fatty acids. What do people not understand about having the ideal of omega-3 to omega-6 ratio and how it influences appearance?
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Well, we are what we eat and we’re basically creating the building blocks of our structure from the food we eat. So if we eat junk, we end up having junk molecules building our tissues. Whether it’s the fats we eat or the proteins we eat. So what’s interesting about fat is that there are a lot of different kinds of fat, I wrote a whole book called Eat Fat Get Thin where I go away into detail about this, but essentially, the majority of the fat in American diet is hidden fat in processed food in the form of refined soybean oil. It’s about 10% of our calories, 1,000% fold increase since the 1900, and these can be very inflammatory when consumed in large amounts, they’re easily oxidized and they’re not really what we should be built from.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Omega-3 fats on the other hand, and saturated fats are the better fats for our biology. They’re things we’ve actually evolved eating and help construct better cells, better membranes, better skin. So one of the things, if you’re omega-3 deficient, it’s really common, have dry patchy areas on your skin to have dry skin, pale skin, flaky skin, dry hair, brittle hair. There’s a whole bunch of clinical symptoms I look for when I can actually tell from someone’s actual physical nutritional exam, whether they’re deficient in omega-3 fats. Hard ear wax, for example’s another clue.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
So we can begin to see that we need to eat the right fats so that we can actually build our tissues from the right substances. These omega-3 fats are very antiinflammatory. Whereas the omega-6s in the wrong ratio out of balance are inflammatory. We need the balance, it’s not inflammatory bad or good, we need both. Omega-6 fats they are essential fats, linoleic acid is an essential omega-6 fat omega-3 fats are essential. You have to get them from the diet, but you don’t need the volume we eat now. We used to eat maybe one to one, omega-3 to six, or two to one, omega-6 to omega-3.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
I had a patient who saw her picture, Janice, I was talking about her, which is like red in the face, super inflamed, chronic illnesses. I got her lab tests, which I was just shocked that I’d never seen such an abnormal ratio of omega-6 to omega-3. It was 20 to one, and I was like, “whoa.” My patients usually are pretty self-selected and they’re already coming in like pre cleaned up. They’re already pretty good on their diet. They’re already exercising. They want the value add that I can provide in solving complex problems, but occasionally get what I call a virgin patient, who’s never eaten a vegetable in their life, and you just see what they’re eating and the processed food and what the effect on their health and their skin, it’s amazing. I mean, the side effect of practicing functional medicine is that people look younger and their skin gets better and all these external problems go away.
Dhru Purohit:
I want to talk about one of the foods that was on your list when we were just jotting a couple notes that people don’t always think about when it comes to beauty, and that was organ meats. Talk about organ meats and why that was on the list of foods you recommend.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Organ meats are something weird. Why would you eat kidneys or liver or heart or brain? My mother used to feed me calf brain when I was a kid. Not sure that’s good now-
Dhru Purohit:
That’s intense.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
With the mad cow disease. But anyway, I really, I think they’re an unappreciated source of the most nutrient dense food on the planet, and I encourage everybody listening to go to their computer after this is over and Google liver and like nutrient density and compared it to vegetables. You’ll see in the graph side by side, liver looks like the most powerful, super food would ever invent on the planet, whereas the best kind of plant-based food like high nutrient density broccoli, or something looks like a very poor second cousin compared to the liver.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
It is because these organ meats contain the highest levels of nutrients and medicinal compounds that are essential for our health, like vitamin A, omega-3 fats often and they’re really rich sources of nutrient dense food. So I think people miss out on that. Now you want to make sure you’re eating organic and when I was a kid, my mother, we were very poor, we lived in a one bedroom apartment in Queens. She was a teacher. She made like $7,000 a year and she would make fried chicken liver with onions and over rice, I thought it was like a gourmet meal because I loved it so much, but that was our dinner, because it was so cheap because nobody wants to eat chicken livers, but get organic chicken livers, it’s a good thing to add your diet and it’s good for your health and your skin. If that grosses you out, they actually have companies now like Paleovalley that make organ meat supplements.
Dhru Purohit:
Right. Or even better than organic would be like, if you could find pasture rays.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Regenerative, right.
Dhru Purohit:
Right. Regenerative or pasture rays, which again, it’s not always accessible, it’s not always out there, but we highlight the different options that are there. Still, the organic chickens are mostly eating organic corn, so their makeup is going to be a little bit different.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Exactly.
Dhru Purohit:
But again, we do the best that we possibly can. I’ll come back to food in a second, but I’m really curious, especially with you being out there, shout out to our friend, Jeff, who is at Onecommune and you’re staying at their retreat center here in Los Angeles up in Topanga and they have a sauna set, they host retreats there, we’ll link to their center and the show notes and you can check it out if you want to. But you’re staying there right now, working on your next book about longevity. Practicing what you preach. So give us the minimum viable dosage when it comes to hot and cold. What have you seen from the research and what are you doing while you are there, and also while you’re not? Because you’re often traveling. So how do you get advantage of the hot and cold treatments when you’re traveling or popping around at different places?
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. Yeah. Well I’m like super spoiled right now because where I’m staying, it’s just, there’s this giant cedar cold plunge and there’s also this beautiful barrel sauna which quickly heats up. So basically my routines, I wake up, I’ll write for a little bit, I’ll work out, I’ll sort of fast, sort of do like an intermittent, I mean a time restricted eating and then I’ll turn the sauna and I’ll go on the sauna and I’ll stand there pretty much until I can’t stand it 10, 15 minutes, and then I go on the ice plunger, as long as I can.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Now, what the science says is just fascinating about this, with saunas, it actually activates your immune system. It activates heat shock proteins. So a lot of what happens with our skin is the degradation of proteins, heat shock, proteins really help to repair and re-full proteins in ways that actually make them back to normal. It also helps you detoxify your skin and get rid of all the sludge and stuff that builds up over time if you’re putting stuff on your skin or if you’re not sweating. So sweat really helps, and so it’s really an anti-inflammatory treatment and also helps reset your autonomic nervous system.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
So lower stress, means lower cortisol, cortisol causes your skin to thin and to break down, and the cold treatments are also are really amazing because they reset your autonomic nervous system and they help to actually activate what we call brown fat, which increases metabolism and your overall metabolic health. So combining those two together will actually extend life and help you look better. I mean in Finland, they have I think enough saunas for everybody in Finland to go on in this time to be in a sauna and their control group because they were so into saunas was basically, people who went once a week versus five times a week.
Dhru Purohit:
Wow.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Sauna has been shown to actually improve cardiovascular fitness, improve cognitive function, to improve heart rate variability, to help with detoxification, to help with the native immune function, to help with reducing inflammation, heat shock proteins. So there’s so many scientific benefits that have been proven, and I think it’s a great longevity strategy, and then when you’re on the road what I’ll do is I’ll take-
Dhru Purohit:
Sorry, before you talk about the road, how long are you doing each of those?
Dr. Mark Hyman:
As long as I can stand it.
Dhru Purohit:
As long as you can stand it.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Basically I go in, depends on how hot the sauna is, but usually 15 minutes in the sauna and then I’ll try to stay in the ice plunge, depends on how cold it is for two, three minutes.
Dhru Purohit:
Right. Temperature for both is a big part of that process.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. So if you do a 40 degree ice plunge is the same as doing a 50 degree ice plunge. I was in one the other day with ice cubes in it, that was like a minute, I could handle a minute. So with the ice cubes and people build up to it, but then I got really cold after and I needed some chicken soup.
Dhru Purohit:
Sure. Sure. For anybody who’s listening, obviously follow Documented Protocol. You had Drew Heman on the podcast. He’s got a few, Wim Hoff, you had him on the podcast, he’s got a few as well, build up your tolerance. But if you would say minimum viable dose and then also minimum viable dose when you’re on the road of how you-
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. I think 10, 15 minutes on a hot sauna, if it’s an infrared sauna half an hour and at least a minute in cold plunge, ideally you can up to two, three, four minutes, five minutes.
Dhru Purohit:
Then how many times a week? If you can get in even one a week, twice a week.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yes. I mean, I think more is better. So I try to do it every day. If you can’t, two, three times a week is good. People don’t have the availability often, but there’s hacks, right? You can actually take an extremely hot bath, that helps, and then you can go in a cold shower. Most people don’t have a problem with that. Most people have bath and most people have a shower. Other thing you do is wake up every morning and take a nice cold shower, which I did when I was in Vermont for a month by myself, which was quite interesting. I skipped quick coffee and went for the cold shower and I’ll tell you, it worked, and I was traveling and I find a cold plunge, I did it every morning when I woke up. It’s the best way to wake up, you’re like, “Whoa, okay, I’m up now.”
Dhru Purohit:
I don’t have a backyard, but my brother-in-law Dr. Neil Patel, who’s a cardiologist down in San Diego, he got for his backyard a like a little plastic barrel, you dump ice in it, fill it up with water, and then that’s like your cold plunge.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. You can get those metal troughs that you use for like feeding cows and horses and water-
Dhru Purohit:
Totally.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Then my friend bought an ice machine and basically filled it up with ice and put water in and then you just get your ice plunge.
Dhru Purohit:
You’re not just doing it for your looks like you actually feel good after doing it.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Oh yeah. I mean, I’m not doing it for how I look, I’m doing it because it’s the most powerful stress reset I’ve ever experienced. Literally just clears out all the stress, and I think I’m tired and actually not. It’s the accumulated stress of working, thinking, writing all day, sitting in the chair, just stressful, like just the normal stress, and I’ll do something like that like all my energy will come flooding back and I’ll go, “Wow, this is the best magic trick.” So if I’m tired or I’m a little stressed, it’s the greatest way to do a reset.
Dhru Purohit:
That’s great. That’s fantastic. Let’s go over to movement. Everybody has a different angle on movement and we’ve covered movement a few times in this podcast, but tell me about movement and its relationship to beauty from the inside out.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
One of the things that ages most is what we call the hallmarks of aging, and I talk about this in the book, but there’s a whole series of underlying breakdowns that happen in our biology as we age that drive accelerated inflammation and oxidative stress. So when you see wrinkles, when you see skin damage, when you see poor quality skin, it’s often a sign of inflammation and, or oxidative stress.
Dhru Purohit:
With the caveat that we all are meant to, as we get older, we’re going to have some wrinkles. We’re going to have some of that, that’s there. We’re going to have some of it, but we’re talking about accelerated amounts that are there.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. I mean, it’s interesting, my main sun exposure’s been on my face. But if I look at my skin health and I was getting body work done by somebody he’s like, “Man, you have the body of a 30 year old.” I mean, your skin health, elasticity, because you can actually take your skin, you can pull it up and you see how long it takes to go down and if you’re old, it takes a long time, but like for me it’s pretty quick and it can take up to a minute sometimes if you’re old for the skin to go down. So you can actually have youthful skin by taking care of the inside. Now, if you get a lot of sun damage, that’s going to cause UV radiation and that creates external inflammation or external oxidative stress, which is what happens.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
So I need to deal with that because I rented a convertible in LA and I got too much sun this week, but, and there’s ways to fix that. But the beautiful thing about exercise is that it addresses all these hallmarks of aging. So whether it’s DNA mutations, whether it’s protein issues and protein folding issues, whether it’s inflammation or whether it’s your metabolic health, we call nutrient sensing, which is blood sugar issues, which are hugely related to your skin health, whether it’s mitochondrial and energy production, all these things play a role in your skin health. So the more you can do to actually halt or reverse these hallmarks of aging, which I’m going to talk a lot about my book Young Forever, you actually can look younger and also be younger. A lot of people do a lot of stuff on the outside to look younger, but they don’t deal with the easiest hack, which is getting younger from the inside out.
Dhru Purohit:
One of those that is also on that list is also the health of your fascia, the foundation of your fascia and your ability to move regularly, and then also get some deep tissue work and make sure you break up that fascial tissue. Chiropractors, especially who are like really aware of the role that fascia plays with your skin health will tell you that people can start looking younger just by getting regular body work done and improving the quality of their fascia, and actually, if you look at a lot of individuals as they age and there’s lack of movement, there’s a lot of sitting and people start to hunch over. That’s the pulling in of the fascial tissue that’s starting to slowly because there’s no resistance counter to that component. So that’s another area that movement significantly plays a role in how you look, your posture, your confidence-
Dr. Mark Hyman:
That’s why I like hot yoga because you get the sauna and the exercise at the same time.
Dhru Purohit:
Totally. Totally. Let’s talk about a bonus one. This one is a good one to talk about and that one is stress. Stress is one of those ones that can age you very rapidly. Some of my favorite presidential photos for any president, regardless of whatever side they’re on is like the photo of them when they first come into office and the photo four years later, or even eight years later, and the level of stress they go through or anybody in any position, obviously parents know a lot about this. So there’s a certain level of, well actually let me just pass it over to you. How should we think about stress and the stress that we can’t do a lot about and the stress that maybe we can mitigate a little bit with lifestyle practice?
Dr. Mark Hyman:
I mean stress affects us throughout every condition. I mean 95% of all these diseases are either caused by or worsened by stress. So whether it’s your skin or your heart or cancer or your immune system, any aspect of your health is influenced by stress, and stress is defined as the perception of a real or imagined threat to your body or your ego. So it can be a physical stress or a mental stress, and often we live in a world that triggers a lot of mental stress. Most of us have enough to eat. Most of us have a place to sleep. Most of us have clothes to wear, but it’s these psychological stresses that trigger a physiologic response that’s the same as a tiger chasing you. When you get that response, it’s meant to be a quick, short burst and run away from the tiger and then stop.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
But in our society, the stress just keeps going. There’s a beautiful book written by Robert Sapolsky, a neuroscientist from Stanford. One of the most brilliant guys I’ve ever met, who basically studied the stress response in baboons. He was like the Jane Goodall of baboons. He wrote a book called Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, which is based on the idea that the zebras are all eating their grass and grazing, having good time, and the lion comes and starts chasing them. They all run like crazy key, he catches one of them and then they all go back to eating the grass with the lion standing there eating their friend. They just like have an accelerated quick stress response and then it’s off.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
In our society, we keep having chronic stress, and so a lot of the hacks that I think, and we’ll talk about this, a lot of the hacks that we can do are ways to reset our physiological state. We talked about saunas, saunas and coal plunges, that is a massive reset for your autonomic nervous system that can discharge the stress. Exercise. I mean, you’re supposed to run from the tiger. So when your body is producing all these molecules that are getting you ready to run like cortisol, cortisol is a stress hormone. So it makes your blood clot faster. It’s good if you’re running from a tiger, but not if you don’t want to get a heart attack or a stroke. It causes you to have high glucose levels, which is great, because you want a lot of sugar to fuel your muscle so you can run as fast as you can, but you don’t want that prolonged high glucose, because that leads to diabetes and more inflammation.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
It causes adrenaline to plug through your body, which causes all kinds of downstream consequences in terms of your heart and palpitations and blood pressure, anxiety, it all makes you want to eat more. It makes you probably choose the wrong foods, because stress makes you crave carbohydrates like sugar and starch. So this chronic stress response leads to all these secondary downstream effects that are harmful and cortisol itself is something that increases as we age growth and hormone goes down. Growth hormone is a repair hormone, cortisol is a stress hormone. It’s not that it’s good or bad is that when it’s prolonged in its elevation, it drives all these downstream pathologies. So it makes your skin really damaged.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
If you ever see someone on cortisol, their skin is like thin as paper, and they get fluid retention and they get inflammation and puffiness. So it’s really important to understand that while stress is inevitable, our response to stress determines how that stress affects us. So that’s why every day I meditate. I get enough sleep. I exercise. I do hot and cold. I eat foods that are not stressing my body because by the way, and this was shocking to me where I learned it. Even if you’re like a Zen monk and you eat sugar, your cortisol goes through the roof. Your adrenaline goes through the roof. So you could be the calmest person in the world and an enlightened master, maybe they can transmute this. I don’t know. But if they eat a ton of sugar and starch, their body’s response to it is danger.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Dr. David Litwin did this study was fascinating to me where he took young boys who were overweight and said, “Look, I’m going to give you three breakfasts, eggs, steel-cut oats, or a regular oatmeal.” They were all identical calories, identical calories, and then he followed their blood levels. He had a catheter and he Dhru their blood like every hour, and then he said, “Whatever you want to eat, just push the button, I’ll bring you food.”
Dr. Mark Hyman:
So the group that ate the oatmeal, which we think is a health food, and I’m not talking about donuts or pancakes or French toast or frappuccino lattes or whatever that you’re eating for breakfast. Those are worse. But the oatmeal caused these kids not only to crave more food, 81% more calories over the course of the day because they were hungrier because of the biological effects of eating the oatmeal, increasing their cortisol, increasing insulin. They literally had a stress response in their bodies. Their cortisol went up, their adrenaline went up, their blood sugar went up, their insulin went up, their cholesterol went up. It’s like danger, danger all of a sudden when they ate the oatmeal. So over time that just creates a degradation in your biology, your collagen breaks down, your skin breaks down, in extreme cases you get increased acne and all kinds of other stuff. So it’s a real problem.
Dhru Purohit:
All right, Mark. I have a list of a few topics where people want to know, is it hyped, is it underrated, overrated, or appropriately rated when it comes to like aging and our appearance and other things like that? Supplemental collagen, what do you think about that? Is it worth it and is it something that you think people could be including in their coffee or smoothie or taking in water?
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Well, it certainly works when you inject it. I think, it certainly is a source of amino acids and protein and your skin structure in collagen has made of protein. So you need to have the raw materials and if you’re protein deficient, your skin breaks down, the quality isn’t as good, the glow isn’t there. So you need adequate protein and I think you can get it from many sources, including collagen. I’m not sure if it completely meets the hype that it has, but I think if people want to use it’s fine.
Dhru Purohit:
Talk about hydration. People are really wondering, a lot of people, I think the context of sort of this note here is that a lot of people don’t know that they’re dehydrated and they don’t drink enough water throughout the day, and they over drink caffeinated beverages.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Or sugary beverages.
Dhru Purohit:
Or sugary beverages. What does that do to the quality of your skin and how your appearances look on the outside?
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Well, we’re 70% water, and if you see someone who’s dehydrated, I mean, clinically in medical school, we’re trained to see, okay, when someone’s dehydrated, they have these signs. Their mouth is dry. Their skin is more sunken. We do this in babies. We can pull their skin up and if it doesn’t sink down, it means they’re dehydrated. So your skin really reflects your state of hydration, and most people need to drink at least half their weight and pounds ounces of fluids. In other words, if you’re 200 pounds, you drink 100 ounces a day. If you’re 100 pounds, you drink 50 ounces a day, which isn’t really that much. I mean, it’s like 50 ounces is less than two liters, if you’re small and if you’re bigger you need three liters, four liters.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
I mean, you can hydrate, which is important because especially now people are having reverse osmosis filters and they’re drinking demineralized water. You need to make sure you have adequate electrolytes. So I always add electrolytes to my water because it helps create interest cellular hydration. What happens is, if you get too much water and this is what happens with marathon runners who die because they essentially will be drinking a lot of water without electrolytes and they dilute their blood. You literally, all your components of your blood become diluted and so you get low sodium, you got something called hyponatremia and that causes seizures and coma and death. So you want to make sure if you’re drinking a lot of water that you’re actually boosting it with electrolytes and minerals.
Dhru Purohit:
Yeah. Another small version of that, people will always tell you that are in the know, like our TB 12 coaches, who we train with, shout out to John. If you drink water and you are cramping a lot from that water, that’s also sign that you may not be appropriately having the right amount of electrolytes in there. Brand that I like no affiliation, no partnership, whatever, but I like Mountain Valley, we have it here. They have naturally occurring electrolytes in there. But do you add electrolytes and what do you want people to know about a lot of the common electrolytes out on the market?
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Well, I’ve tried to all of them or not all of them, but most of them. Most electrolytes are either have sugar sweetened or they’re stevia sweetened, or they have other kinds of sugar alcohols. They have strong flavors. The one I like I found is super simple. It has a little lemon flavor. There’s no sweeteners to it. It’s called LyteShow. I don’t have any affiliation with its L-Y-T-E Show S-H-O-W, and it comes in capsules. It comes in also liquid. So I like the liquid I just squirt in. I do it every morning. I drink two glass of water when I wake up, I squirt in electrolytes. It’s a great way to start the day. So you got to get 16 ounces, boom. Some people say you drink 32 ounces before you do anything else, and I probably should do that, but it really is important to flush your system, and I think a lot of people’s fatigue and many health issues are due to sort of like low grade dehydration that people have and suffer from and aren’t really thinking about it.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
So I encourage people to skip plastic bottles those [thalids 00:37:09] and BPA and often in those and it’s just bad for the environment. Get metal bottles. Now this is great that Mountain Valley has this metal bottles. I actually bought a hydro flash, which is a 32 ounce container. It’s really nice. You can drink from it. I throw my electrolytes in there. I keep it with me all day. It’s great.
Dhru Purohit:
There’s another one. I just want to mention it because you’ve recommended in Mark’s picks before and a few other places it’s called E-Lyte by BodyBio, do you still recommend that?
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. E-Lyte is great. E-Lyte is great. It’s just, it’s not for everybody because it’s just really strong, it’s like salty.
Dhru Purohit:
So it’s a taste thing?
Dr. Mark Hyman:
So LyteShow has some like lemony flavor but with E-Lyte you could actually just squeeze lemon into it.
Dhru Purohit:
Sure.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
So I like it, I use it a lot and it’s one of the most amazing things, particularly when you’re doing sports or athletics and you do it. If you take too much electrolytes, you’ll cause loose stools and you’ll be pooping, which I once filled up my 70 ounce camel back when I was on a long bike ride in Maui and I put a ton of electrolytes in there and I was like, “Oh boy, this is whole nother idea of exercise and detox here.”
Dhru Purohit:
So I said, we are going to come back to food. There’s a few foods and nutrients that you want to give a little special love and attention to. So I’m going to pass over to you to jump into some of this.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yes. So before you into what to eat, I want to just mention what not to eat if you want nice skin. We talked about the oils and it’s important because you want to have the right oils, and most of us need oil change. We need avocado oil, omega-3 oils, olive oil. Those should be your staples and skip all the other oils, all the processed oils, trans fat and so forth. Animal saturated fat is fine, if it’s from [inaudible 00:38:54] it’s different, but mostly those are the fats. But the reality is that most people’s skin looks terrible because the amount of processed food and refined carbohydrates and sugar.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
So not only sugar and carbohydrates, one of the number one source of acne, but it also drives inflammation and oxidative stress which accelerate aging. There was a wonderful book by Nicholas Perricone called the wrinkle cure that I read years ago, which talked about the power of food to actually improve the quality of your skin, and he talks about regulating obviously omega-3s by eating wild salmon or wild fish like sardines, organ means obviously, but also cutting out all the processed food, sugar and starch, which is just the basic pegan diet. In addition, there’s some really important nutrients that are important for skin, it’s like from vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin E, antioxidants. It helps protect your skin, for example, beta carotene or the carotenoids, from all the orange vegetables, sweet potatoes, avocados, they actually have you UV protection.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
So when you look at some of the data, it’s really interesting, if you take people who are sun exposed, if they eat these foods, or if they take antioxidants, their skin doesn’t get as damaged, because there’s antioxidant protection in the skin. There’s this really cool machine that I saw years ago, a spectrophotometer you basically put it on your skin and you get a score of your antioxidants score. Cause it shines the light through and it can actually detect the level of antioxidants or carotenoids in your skin. So, I mean, you can also get a fake tan by eating a lot of carrots. I did that once I was like on a carrot juice kick, like 30 years ago was a really bad idea, and I was like, wow, why am I so orange?
Dhru Purohit:
That happened to Steve Jobs.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
I’m like, so orange. I’m like, I look like Donald Trump, this orange. But it’s important to eat that, and also biotin which is really important and that’s founded more in organ meats and other things. Biotin is very important. It’s called B7 or biotin your gut bacteria make it, very important for your hair, skin and nails. So making sure, having adequate foods with these and even taking supplements can really be helpful.
Dhru Purohit:
A few years ago I came across this book called [Facesasize 00:41:02].
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Facesasize.
Dhru Purohit:
I don’t know of you heard of this, but they’re basically these facial movements that you can do, and they like strengthen, it’s like lifting weights for your face, but you just need to do certain movements.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Oh my God, that’s a hysterical.
Dhru Purohit:
It’s a way to like stretch your neck skin out, and you don’t do all these things. I was thinking, for a while I was like really curious about it and I would do it, and I actually saw like interesting results. Your face looks more defined and the muscles look more defined. I was chatting about it with a friend. I was like, you know what? I think if you just live an active life, you have a lot of friends, you laugh a lot.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Laugh a lot. Yeah.
Dhru Purohit:
You laugh a lot. You hang out with people that make you laugh, you cry a lot. Whatever the full range of emotions are.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Exactly.
Dhru Purohit:
And also I think working out. The beautiful thing about working out is that you make all sorts of weird face contortions, if you’re doing like a dead lift or you’re pushing things out.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
I’m the tongue out guy.
Dhru Purohit:
You’re the tongue out guy, I’ve seen that. So I think that’s another way to another way to incorporate it in without having to do, I mean, it’s a lot of work to do those exercises.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
You reminded me, my mother had this thing when we were growing up, I think it was called a [Dynatone 00:42:03] and it basically had these two electrodes and was like, it looked like a taser basically, and she would put on her face, and make her face like this and there all the muscles contracting her neck, and she would like put on. I was like, wow, that is a weird thing. I used to try to sneak in and try it, but it’s a kind of a facial-
Dhru Purohit:
Stimulation,
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Electrical stimulation machine.
Dhru Purohit:
That’s funny. That’s funny. All right mark. This is the part of the podcast where we go into some community questions from folks on the of aging. I know you’re not a dermatologist, but everybody always wants to know what are your thoughts on Botox, or are there resources that are out there that you could refer people to when it comes to, well, let’s start off with Botox first. People want to know there’s a lot of people that eat really healthy, literally actively lives, other things like that, and then they feel like, well, I’m in a career or a place or whatever that I want to do a little bit of Botox. I like the way that it looks for my skin. Are you worried about it? Are you neutral about it? Are you cautious about it?
Dr. Mark Hyman:
I’m not so worried about Botox. I think it’s a short acting compound that causes muscle paralysis that makes it look like you don’t have wrinkles. I think that’s fine if people want to do it for cosmetic reasons. I went out, I met this woman once who she never went anywhere without an umbrella. I’m like, “What’s up with the umbrella.” She’s like, “sun.” She literally had an umbrella where she went and never went out without her umbrella and her skin, 50 years old looked like she was 20. So skin is highly damaged by the sun and my skin clearly has been damaged by the sun because I like to be outside a lot and I don’t always put sunblock on or I should, but I forget sometimes.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
So I think that there’s a really important way to protect yourself from sun damage which leads to the need for all these by wearing sunblock and the right kinds of sunblock and encourage people to go to ewg.org, the Environmental Working Group, where they have a database called skin deep, and it’s a beautiful way to look up different products for your skin, including sunblocks to find out which had the least toxins. Because I had one woman who was always using sunblock and she had high levels of parabens in her body and it was kind of toxic, and so you want to be careful with that.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Also, there’s a lot of techniques that actually help rejuvenate the skin that are available to people, including lasers and microdermabrasion and fillers and a lot of stuff people are doing. I don’t have any judgment about it, I think it’s fine. I think where I have a problem with it is when people focus on that and don’t also focus on beauty from the inside out.
Dhru Purohit:
Right. Because that friend of yours, again, no judgment on the situation or whatever she was protecting her skin from the sun, but if you don’t have regular sun exposure, there’s a whole host of other things you’re missing.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Vitamin E deficiency.
Dhru Purohit:
Your circadian rhythm is not synced with a day. I have a friend who is a esthetician here in LA and everywhere she goes, she wears a sun mask and carries an umbrella and other stuff. Again, people can do anything that they want to do, but we obsess over one thing and we might be losing out on other stuff, not to mention the joy, if you’re constantly worried about sun and you think the sun is doing something to you all the time.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
It’s a problem.
Dhru Purohit:
Instead of just being smart. Right?
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. I had a lot of sun damage on my skin from just years of being the sun and I actually went to dermatologist. They can actually look at this skin through these incredible imaging things and you see all these pre-cancerous spots. So I had a treatment that kind of cleared all that stuff and all these spots like literally all these pre-cancerous lesions fell off.
Dhru Purohit:
What was that treatment called just-
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Laser treatments, fractal lasers. There’s also cream like 5FU that dermatologists used to deal with kind of cleaning up all the surface damage and there’s ways to build collagen in the skin naturally. So there’s a lot of really exciting dermatologic advances in looking younger, and we just had Tony Robbins on our podcast and Peter Diamandis talking about their book Life Force and there’s all whole section in there on what’s emerging in the world of skin rejuvenation and dermatology.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
So it’s kind of exciting. I mean the future looks even more wild. I mean, we’re going to be able to actually reprogram our cells back to younger cells to really cool technologies that seem sci-fi, but I think are around the corner, such as, for example, gene editing, inserting combination of genes that have been discovered called the Yamanaka factors that can be switched on to reprogram your cells, to reverse back to their embryonic state, we call those inducible [prolypone 00:46:48] stem cells, and those undefined stem cells could then re-differentiate into whatever tissue organ. So skin rejuvenation, there’s so much fun stuff coming down the road. So not only will you be able to look to be 120, but you’ll be able to look maybe 60 at 120.
Dhru Purohit:
One thing that we’ll see in here, and I’m sure you’ll talk about in your conclusion is that we want people to look however they want to look. At the end of the day, be happy with yourself, and there’s a sense of just accepting yourself and however you want to show up. So this is really not a conversation about looks, it’s really that the way the byproduct of feeling good is that also the likelihood is you tend to look good as well too if you want to do those things, comparatively to what the baseline would be if you’re eating a standard processed diet that’s out there.
Dhru Purohit:
So number one, we want people to feel great because when you feel great, you can give love and attention to all the things in life that truly matter, and that’s way more than just your looks. It’s being there for your grandkids. It’s being able to show up for your partner. It’s being able to give back to the world. It’s being able to make a difference in your spiritual or church community that’s out there. It’s being able to give back or build a business or whatever it might be, make a difference.
Dhru Purohit:
So that’s why we want to feel good, and as a byproduct of that, because we know we’ll catch some people’s attention who are focused on wanting to look better, nothing wrong with that, the best way to do that is from the inside out. All right, Mark, we have a few more questions. This is the Dr. Hyman Plus Community. One of the first questions we have is from Charlotte who asked, what kind of sauna does Dr. Hyman use infrared or regular, and what would you recommend to the population that’s out there?
Dr. Mark Hyman:
I’ll take whatever I can get. Steam, sauna, infrared sauna. I think there’s varying arguments about which is better worse. I think they all work. I think the infrared saunas, you can stay in longer, there’s a little more penetration in your skin. A little more detox benefits. It’s less sort of hot and intolerable, which some people don’t like actual saunas. For me, I like to go to the Russian room at the 10th Street Bathhouse in the lower east side, New York where my place great grandfather used to go.
Dhru Purohit:
That place is intense.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Which is like this stone room, literally it’s made of stone, and there’s a giant oven in the room which is turned at full blast. So you’re literally sitting in a baking oven and I don’t know how much heat it is, but it’s really hot.
Dhru Purohit:
It’s super hot.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
It’s super hot. I took you there. Didn’t I?
Dhru Purohit:
Yeah, we went there. We went there, but I had been there one time before previously that place is like an institution it’s been there forever. I’m a little worried about mold though inside there.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah, I know. It’s a little gross. It’s a little gross.
Dhru Purohit:
It’s a little intense, but it’s a great place. It’s a great place.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
I don’t think mold can live in the 180 degree of that.
Dhru Purohit:
Yeah, I’m probably thinking about it too much. Next question, also from Charlotte is, what is the ideal omega-3 to six ratio? Do you know that offhand?
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yes. I mean, I think there’s conversation about it and I think anywhere from four to one and down is fine. So four to one, omega-6 to three, three to one, two to one, one to one. There are tests that we used to look at this as part of diagnostics I do as a functional medicine doctor, we do the omega check, which is one, we use the ion panel, another from Genova Diagnostics. So we can actually tell, what the composition of the fats that people are made of, and it’s fascinating to see, it’s like, wow, you’re really in oil change, or you’re good. Or you’re deficient in this, or you have too much of that. It really helps people, and you can really tell what people are eating from. I mean, it’s so amazing.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
People are like, “How do you know what I’m eating now?” I’m like, “I can see.” I had a friend the other day come to me with this neurotransmitter test and he was freaking out because he had this really high level of one analyte, which was phenylethylamine, which sounds like a something bad, or I don’t know what, and it was off the chart. He was like, “What is this? Should I be worried?” I’m like, “Hmm, do you eat a lot of chocolate?” And he is like, “Yeah, every day.” And I’m like, “Well, that’s what it is. You’re peeing out the phenylethylamine which is the love bomb chemical in chocolate, and it’s not a problem, but just that’s where you’re getting it from.”
Dhru Purohit:
That’s funny. One of the first tests that I did when I discover the world of functional medicine, it’s actually a test that people can order at home, and it’s the OmegaQuant test. It’s a little prick test. You can do it at home. You don’t need a practitioner order it, again, no affiliation with the company, and it’s a 99 bucks and you get your full omega-3 to six ratio and a whole bunch of other details on the quality of your fats, including they have one marker inside of there that helps you understand the level of trans fats that you’re consuming.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. That’s the other thing you can tell people are eating junk food. I’m like, “Ah, you’re in junk food, aren’t you?” They’re like, “How do you know?” I’m like, “Well, it says it on your lab test, you’ve got high levels of hydrogenated or trans fats, which are highly dangerous and really can be deadly.”
Dhru Purohit:
Yeah. We’ll have a link to that in the show notes again. Cool test. I love anytime people can order tests and get it from home that one’s relatively inexpensive as test go, but still about 100 bucks. Okay, great. Next question. Anine asks, how do you ensure that all those good fats you’re eating are absorbed well by your body? So let’s even to take a step back and say, are there things that can be happening in our body that prevent us from absorbing good quality fats that we’re having in our diet?
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Sure. I mean, Dhru, functional medicine, I do stool testing all the time and I can see if there’s fat malabsorption. If it’s a pancreatic problem, enzyme problem, and the truth is though most people do pretty good job of absorbing fats. There’s this system and the gut that breaks down the fats or absorb through the lymphatic system except for MCT oil, which is a little bit different, and they’re then metabolized and put into the circulation. So I think for most people, it’s not an issue, but there are certain people have enzymatic issues with their pancreas, whether they’ve had pancreatitis or they have cystic fibrosis or they have low grade pancreatic insufficiency, as we get older, we have more pancreatic insufficiency. So sometimes taking digestive enzymes can be very, very helpful. So I recommend people take digestive enzymes if they’re concerned about that.
Dhru Purohit:
That’s great. Fantastic. I also know that some people don’t always do great with concentrated dosages of single fats, especially if you have a history of like leaky gut or other stuff, you can have a reaction to, if you use a lot of coconut oil or cook with coconut oil, or you’re using a lot of saturated fats, like butter and things like that. I know that I can do generally okay with coconut, but if I have coconut oil, then I find that it’s a little bit problematic. I actually noticed a few years ago that a really strong redness that I was having in my face and inflammation that was on my skin, and I had a history of having acne was directly connected to a high dose, anytime I would use coconut oil or MCT oil, I’d get a little bit of a reaction, and I found out that it was an endotoxemia situation. Again, that’s more of a unique situation, but sometimes, well, yeah, go to like whole food type fats that you have-
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah, interesting.
Dhru Purohit:
And dial back a little bit from the concentrated sources of fats, if you seem to be not doing well with them.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. I agree. I mean, I think there’s some interesting studies, you just mentioned a word. I think it’s an important talk about which this idea of metabolic endotoxemia. What that means is that when you eat certain foods, it drives the production of certain bacteria that then produce these secondary compounds, these endotoxins called lipo polysaccharides, which are basically poisons. It’s the bacteria’s way of doing bad stuff, and those are absorbed in the body. Then the immune system says that’s bad, and it starts triggering inflammation, that inflammation starts triggering insulin resistance and diabetes and fluid retention.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Because by the way, inflammation drives fluid to retention. So when you see people go through a functional medicine program or eat the pegan diet, they’ll just look younger because they’ll get rid of all the inflammation in their body. The fluid just drops out of their tissues and they have kind of a more normal looking appearance. One patient, she wasn’t overweight or anything, but she had long longstanding inflammatory issues, and she said, “Dr. Hyman, Dr. Hyman there’s something wrong.” I’m like, “What?” I can see all my knuckles and I never saw my knuckles before because her hands were like sausages because of all the inflammation and when inflammation went down, she could actually see her knuckles. She thought there was something wrong. I’m like, “No, no that’s okay.”
Dhru Purohit:
So there’s another question from the community and a little unrelated, but a little related to the longevity topic. So the community member says, “I’ve heard metformin mentioned as possibly having longevity effects. I was on this for almost 15 years and I was very happy to get off of it when I lost 65 pounds following the pegan diet. Do the benefits outweigh the ne with metformin, I’ve listened to so much functional medicine that someone even a non-diabetic taking metformin confuses me?”
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yes. I agree. It still confuses people, and it even confuses me to be honest with you, and I’ve been digging deep into this. So what you’re talking about is a drug that’s been available from I think France that has been used for a long time as a foundational treatment for type two diabetes, because it helps with insulin sensitivity. This particular drug is generally very safe. It can cause problems. It can cause digestive issues. It can maybe have adverse effects in the mitochondria over time. But there’s some really interesting emerging research around its effect on longevity because one of the key pathways and I write about this in my book Young Forever, which is coming out in February 2023, is that, is that it helps to regulate the nutrient sensing pathways that control aging around longevity like AMPK, which is a particular nutrient sensing pathway.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
So if you’re eating a lot of sugar and starch and having a lot of insulin resistance, it’s actually can be very effective in helping to activate a number of pathways. There seem to be other secondary effects that we’re just learning about, that may be beneficial for longevity. So am I taking it? No. Am I learning more and thinking I might take it? Maybe. So stay tuned. I just need to do more work on it because I’m not convinced, and here’s why I’m not convinced. I think that there are so many better ways to access the same pathways and to regulate those nutrient sensing pathways.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
The reason is there’s a major study that called the Diabetes Prevention Trial or DPP that was done many years ago where they did an experiment where they said, and these are people who are prediabetic. They said, “Okay, if we give people a prediabetic metformin, nothing or lifestyle change, what happens?” They found a dramatic improvement through the lifestyle change, the lifestyle change worked 58% better than the metformin, which worked better than doing nothing. But if you’re changing your lifestyle work 60% better than metformin, why take metformin? That’s my view.
Dhru Purohit:
Super fascinating, Mark. All right. We’re wrapping up. Let’s do a little bit of a recap on some of the top things that you think can play a significant role when it comes to the secrets to looking younger, which is really beauty from the inside out. So do a little recap on some of the stuff that we mentioned and some of the take homes that people can implement really starting to date.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Absolutely. I mean, I think the most important thing to do is to clean up your diet. It’s just, that is number one, two and three. So pegan and diet is great, you can even go further than that and eliminate all dairy, which can be inflammatory, all gluten, all sugar, alcohol, all those things can be pretty, pretty damaging in terms of your appearance of skin. But it depends on the person. So if you really want to do a reset and see how you feel, that’s a good way to do it. I had a friend who I saw the other night, who’s 65 and was complaining about getting older and aches and pains and her skin or this and the flu. She’s like, “Can I come see you?” I said, “Save your money, don’t pay me anything, do this 10 day detox diet, the reset we talked about, but do it for 21 days.”
Dr. Mark Hyman:
She came over she says, “I’m so mad at you.” And I’m like, “What?” And she starts hitting me, and I’m like, “What? What?” She says, I feel so great, but I’m not having alcohol, I’m having this, I’m having that.” I’m like, “Okay, fine. You’re feeling so good and you look so good because you changed your diet.” That’s the first thing, get rid of inflammatory foods, add in all the anti inflammatory foods, we talked about things like guacamole, chopped liver, and sweet potato is a good skin meal with a little bit of maybe sardines on this side. How about that? I would like that meal, actually. That sounds really good to me. Maybe not everybody.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
The second is move, move, move your body, because it activates all the longevity pathways, longevity switches. It shuts down all the hallmarks of aging, super powerful. Hot and cold therapies, really easy as we talked about, can be [inaudible 00:59:41]. Don’t really cost much. I mean, if you want to buy a sauna and so forth, it can be expensive, but there are ways to do it without, and then make sure you’re taking the right nutrients. I think fish oil, a good multivitamin, making sure you vitamin A and zinc and vitamin C, vitamin E.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Then I think for the other pieces, which are the sort of outside in, I think whatever ever feels good to you. I think people want to get really aggressive and do a lot of laser treatments and Botox and fillers and collagen. I have no judgment about that, but I think that often the results are so powerful from the inside out that people often won’t need that.
Dhru Purohit:
Yeah, or they’ll need less of it, or-
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Or less of it. Yeah.
Dhru Purohit:
Those things influence your brain and you also start to feel more content with yourself.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Right.
Dhru Purohit:
So you’re like, “I’m not as worried about that wrinkle or that thing or whatever because I feel good.” Again, you want to do any treatments you want to do great. There’s no judgment at it all. Let’s try the lifestyle interventions first so we can actually feel better not just look better.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Fantastic.
Dhru Purohit:
All right, Mark. That was great. Perfect recap. Let’s go ahead and conclude out for today’s episode.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Thanks. So, everybody thanks for listening, if you want to look younger and feel younger, I encourage you to follow what we talked about and for anybody else who you think might care about living younger, longer and looking younger longer, send this podcast to them. I’m sure they’d love to hear about it. Leave your comments. What have you used? What’s worked for you? How have you rejuvenated your skin and your appearance and subscribe wherever you get your podcast and we’ll see you next week on The Doctor’s Farmacy.
Speaker 4:
Hi everyone. I hope you enjoyed this week’s episode. Just a reminder that this podcast is for educational purposes only. This podcast is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided on the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you’re looking for help in your journey, seek out a qualified medical practitioner. If you’re looking for a functional medicine practitioner, you can visit ifm.org and search their find a practitioner database. It’s important that you have someone in your corner who’s trained, who’s a licensed healthcare practitioner and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health.
