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In today’s episode, we feature four segments from the Doctor’s pharmacy health bite series about hitting the reset button on our diet and lifestyle choices and establishing new behaviors for our overall well being. Dr. Hyman talks about how to activate your body’s healing and reparative systems with this ten day detox diet. He walks us through the many different ways to say sugar, which types are okay from time to time, and what sugars we should absolutely stay away from. He discusses how exercise influences longevity and how you can incorporate more movement into your life without having to drag yourself to the gym. And finally, Dr. Hyman shares the number one key to our longevity. Let’s jump in. I do this personally, regularly. I do it at least two or three times a year, four times a year, to really reset my system, to kind of get my body back on track, to get rid of all the bad stuff, put in all the good stuff. I’m going to walk you through how to do this. I’m going to teach you how to hit the reset button, reboot your system, and to optimize your biology, to help your gut, to help your detox system, to help your immune system, help reset your nervous system, and it’s powerful. So if you want to really see how your body can feel and get rid of what we call FLC syndrome, I would do this. Most people are like the frog that’s in cold water where you turn the heat up slowly and it starts to boil to death. We just kind of get used to it and think it’s normal. These symptoms are not normal. So what are the principles? What are the foundational pillars of the ten day detox program? What can you do now? Basically, anybody can do this. People go, I want to do this with a junior high school once. And the teachers are like, well, we might have to get permission from the parents to see if it’s safe. Maybe they don’t want their children doing this. I’m like, what is it safe to eat fruits and vegetables and nuts and seeds and protein and cut out sugar and starch and processed food? I mean, they should get a note that it’s permission to eat the junk food that they have in school. Maybe opposite. Anyway, yes, it’s very safe. Anybody can do this. And some people probably need more of certain things or other things, but basically this is a very universal approach to resetting your system. So what is the first principle? The first pillar is eat real food. Real whole food. Understand that food is medicine. It’s not just energy or calories. It’s truly medicine. It’s information, it’s instructions, it’s code that literally programs your biology with every bite. It regulates your gene expression, your hormones, your brain chemistry, your immune system, your microbiome. Pretty much everything is controlled by food. And if you’re eating the wrong food, you’re sending all the wrong messages. If you eat the right food, you’re turning on the right messages. So during the ten day detox, you’re basically taking out the bad stuff and putting in the good stuff. You’re taking all the foods that cause inflammation, that are toxic to your system, that are inflammatory and mess with your gut, and you’re putting in foods that actually help reset your system. And it’s pretty much a very simple approach. It’s lots of veggies, so mostly veggies, lots of good fats, lots of fiber, lots of good clean protein. And what does that look like? It’s tons of non starchy veggies, like broccoli, any kind of veggie you think of. It’s not basically a potato. Sometimes sweet potatoes are okay for people. Avocados, good shots. Avocados. Olive oil, nuts and seeds, lots of good protein. Grass fed organic regenerative meats. Fish, chicken. Sometimes for vegetarians or vegans, we can use plant based proteins like tempeh or non gmo, or organic soy, tofu. Those are the most dense sources of protein. But you do need protein as you detoxify. So for the ten days, you’re going to be getting rid of all the other junk, right? Processed food, other carbs, sugar, dairy, coffee, gluten, alcohol, pretty much actually all grains and beans. And the reason we get rid of grains and beans is not that they’re necessarily all bad, is a lot of people have issues. A lot of people have issues with their gut, a lot of people have issues with inflammation, a lot of people have issues with gluten. A lot of people have issues with insulin resistance and prediabetes and obesity. And they can be problematic for these people. So basically get off all the bad stuff. Now. It’s not calorie counting. You can eat as much as you want. We’re not like crazy. How much macronutrients and percent of this and percent of that? No, it’s just pick the right foods and we focus on what to eat. You don’t have to focus on how much to eat. Right. So when you look at your plate, it should basically look like this. Three quarters of it should be non starchy veggies. And I often will put two or three veggies in my dinner. I’ll make mushrooms, I’ll have a broccoli, I’ll make some, maybe a salad. So I’ll have lots of veggies. And I’ll have a portion of protein that’s essentially the size of my palm. Four to 6oz, usually 30 to 40 grams of protein. Now that’s a good amount of protein, but you don’t need that much if you’re having animal protein. It should be regeneratively raised, should be pasture raised chicken, wild caught fish, should be low mercury, obviously. All that. And we’ll put all that show notes, lots of good fats with dinner, like avocados, nuts and seeds, olive oil in your veggies. You can even use, for example, ghee, which is a kind of butter, but it actually has the inflammatory proteins, remove casein and whey. So basically has just the fat. It’s called clarified butter. Very common. You can get my book 1080 detox diet. You can get the 1080 detox diet cookbook, whatever you want. Put all the show notes and links together. A second pillar. Aside from what you eat, the food is really important. And by the way, you need protein in the morning. You need to make sure you get rid of sugar and starch in the morning. Super important. Many people start their diet their day with carbs, which is the worst thing you can do. Sugar sweetened coffees, teas, cereals, muffins, bagels, breads. Bad news. Second pillar are your daily habits. Essentially involves a pattern of eating and living that puts your body back in rhythm and helps you reset your nervous system. And there’s two really important habits as part of the ten day detox. One is when you eat and also when you sleep. So let’s talk about when you eat. Now, when you eat might be as important as what you eat. So many of us don’t eat in the right pattern. We tend to eat all day long. We tend to snack. We tend eat before bed, snack late at night. It’s kind of bad. So basically when you eat is very important. Research shows that doing that can really be bad for your health if you eat at night. So the first is Make sure you give yourself at least twelve to 14 hours between dinner and breakfast. So dinner at six, breakfast at eight, that’s a 14 hours fast. Okay. If you eat at six and then you keep snacking all night, that doesn’t count, right. And the most simple form of what we call time restricted eating. And it’s basically giving our body a rest and getting the body to reset. And I wrote a lot about this in my book, the young forever. But basically there’s a whole process at night that happens called autophagy and cleanup and repair. And you want to give your body the ability to do that. The next is food. Now, you can do a breakfast if you’re eating, for example, dinner at six and breakfast at eight or so, that’s a 14 hours fast. Really important to have protein in the morning, not carbs and sugar. Also, not eating 3 hours before bed is really important. So most people eat and snack after dinner. Don’t do that. Have at least 3 hours time you eat and you go to sleep. That way you will lose weight. Your body can repair and heal instead of trying to digest and store the food. Here’s the full food list. We’re going to have it in the show notes. You can take it with you to store. It’s in the book, the 1008 detox. It’s in the 1008 detox cookbook. But essentially, here’s what you should eat and what you should actually get rid of. What you should eat is protein. You need the right protein. Right? So grass fed or regeneratively raised meats is great. You can have pasteurized lamb, beef, bison, venison, elk, grass fed beef, pasture raised chicken, turkey, duck. All that’s fine. What you should avoid is conventionally raised chicken and poultry and eggs and so forth. And by the way, you can also have eggs if they’re pasteurized eggs. Meat, get rid of all processed meats, deli meats, all conventionally raised feedlot meats. Get rid of all that stuff. What about fish and seafood? Lots of small fish are good. Big fish are bad, right? Big fish like swordfish, tuna, killing sea bass, halibut. Most farmish fish are pretty bad for you. What you should be consuming are things like the, I call the smash fish, small wild salmon, sardines, anchovies, herring, a mackerel. You can have black cod, shrimp, scallops, trout. All those are fine eggs. As I said, pasteurized eggs are fine. Non organic, regular eggs are not fine. What about nuts and seeds? Very important. Almonds, Brazil nuts, cashew nuts, hazelnuts, macadamia, pecans, pine nuts, pistachios, walnuts, all that’s great. You even have cacao nibs, chocolate, not actually chocolate, but it’s where chocolate comes from. Seeds are great. Chia seeds, flax seeds, hemp seeds, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, all great. Nut butters, also great. So unsweetened nut butter. So almond, cashew, pecan, macadamia. I love macadamia walnut, all that’s great. You can also eat beans if you’re a vegan and you want to do this, you can use gmo free or non gmo tofu or tempeh as your protein. What you should avoid are nuts that are with sugar, that are cooked in oils, that are with basically candied stuff. A lot of nut butters have sugar, hydrogenated fats, peanut butter. Peanuts can be okay, but I would say mostly avoid peanuts because they have afrotoxin in them. They often are rancid and so you want to be careful with that. What about oils and fats? Well, the ones you want to use are organic avocado oil. You can use organic coconut oil for cooking grass fed ghee. If you want to use tallow lard, duck fat, chicken fat, that’s okay as long as they’re pasteurized or regeneratively raised for salads. And you can use different kinds of oils like almond oil, flax oil, hemp oil, macadamia oil, extra virgin olive oil. And you can cook with olive oil, but only like tomato sauces and things like that. Things that are not high heat, sesame oil, tahini is great as well. Great fat, sesame seed kind of paste, walnut oil, those are flavorful oils. They’re not main oils, but you want to avoid the traditional oils. All the seed oils like canola oil, partially hydrogenated oils, margarine, peanut oil, soybean oil, sunflower oil, safflower oil, trans fats, vegetable oil, vegetable shortening, all that stuff’s bad. What about veggies? What should you eat? Well, you want to stick with lots of non starchy veggies or arch chokes. Organic if you can. I use the dirty dozen guide from the environmentalworkinggroup ewg.org tell you which are the clean 15, meaning you can eat them not organic, or the dirty dozen, which you should definitely not eat if they’re not organic. But I love asparagus, artichokes, avocado, bean sprouts, broccoli, brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, celery, cucumber, eggplant, garlic, ginger, hearts of palm, kohlrabi leafy greens, mushrooms of all kinds, onions, peppers, radicchio, radish, rudabagas, all that kind of stuff. Seaweed is great. Lots of minerals, shallots, summer squash, tomatoes, turnips, zucchini. List goes on. We have it all in there. You can have some things like sweet potatoes. I like the japanese purple sweet potatoes, winter squash, carrots, pumpkin, all that’s fine. I mean, carrots are fine because unless you’re doing carrot juice or that’s a problem. But basically try to limit to one serving, which is like half a cup a day. What you should be avoiding is corn and white potatoes mostly. Some of the little fingerling potatoes or the peruvian potatoes. Primal potatoes can be fine. What about dairy? You can eat pasture raised butter or ghee, but I encourage people to get up all dairy, including sheep and goat, which are mostly fine for people, but I encourage people to get up all other dairy. And if you’re having, encourage you to have, make sure it’s grass fed or regeneratively raised. And what about beans? Well, you can have green beans, you can have green peas, you can have non gmo or organic soy, such as tofu or tempeh. You can have snap beans, you can have snow peas, but otherwise, definitely no beans. What about grains? No grains at all. So even healthy grains, quinoa, buckwheat, things like that, I increase off all of that. Why? Because it just shuts down. The insulin response, helps you lose weight, reduce inflammation. Not that these are necessarily all bad, but eventually you can add them back, but basically get rid of all the other, all grains, wheat, barley, rye, rice, amarin, millitep, oats, everything. Get rid of it. Fruit. Fruit can be okay, but small amounts of non high glycemic fruits. So organic blackberries, blueberries, cranberries, kiwi, lemons, limes, raspberries, all that’s fine. Not too much, right? You know what I mean? Like two pounds of blueberries. But you can have a cup, half a cup a day. You want to get rid of all the other fruit, all the high glycemic fruit, like bananas, pineapple, melons, cherries, grapes. Those are the worst. Even foods that fruits that you think may be good for you are actually good for you, right? Whether it’s peaches, pears, nectarines, cherries, for example, but you don’t want to eat them while you’re on the ten day detox. You just want to really shut down the blood sugar in some response. What about sugar sweeteners? Sorry, none. You can sometimes have a little monk fruit or stevia we have in the shake we have, but generally tend to avoid all that stuff. Also, just get rid of all the other artificial sweeteners, all the sugar, all that stuff. If you have to ask, the answer is no. Basically. Then what should you be drinking? Well, lots of water, herbal tea, green tea. This got a little caffeine. That’s okay. A little green tea is fine. Can help you get off. Coffee, sparkling water, mineral water, all that’s fine. What you should avoid, alcohol, coffee, bottled water, plastic soda, obviously sugary beverages. Basically that’s the program. So if you eat that way for ten days, if you use those simple habits, your body is going to totally transform and you’re going to see just how food is impacting your health, which is something most people don’t have a clue about. And that’s why I love this so much. Now, after the program, it’s really important. If you do it for ten days or 21 days or ten weeks or ten months, you have to be smart about getting off it. Or you can get into big trouble because when you go off of foods that are inflammatory, foods that are allergic, and then you reintroduce them, you can get a lot worse symptoms. So let’s say you had migraines before and they’re gone. Wow, you’re going to get a doozy of a migraine. Or let’s say you had gut issues before, you’re going to have a real problem. Unless you had sinus congestion from eating dairy and then you eat it again, you might get a sinus infection. So you really have to be smart. So if you’re feeling great and you want to continue, and let’s say you have a lot of weight to lose, let’s say you’re having autoimmune disease, let’s say you’re feeling great, you want to continue, no problem. You continue it until continue to do it. You can do it for another ten days. You can do it for another ten months. It’s fine. It’s totally safe to eat. And it’s pretty much how I eat most of the time with occasion, grains and beans also prioritize sleep and obviously your fasting window, not eating before bed and then Eventually, people can transition slowly to the pegan diet, which incorporates a lot of the principles of the ten day detox diet, but gets you more flexibility in your diet. You can add some gluten free grains. You can have some grass fed dairy or sheep or goat. Maybe you want to do it most of the time, but try to occasionally have a glass of wine or dessert occasionally. All that’s fine. Remember, when you’re adding things back, you want to do it smartly. And in the ten day detox book we’ll put in the show notes, you have to add one thing at a time. So if you’re adding back gluten, just do that for three days. Don’t have a pizza which has gluten and dairy. You won’t know what’s affecting. If you feel bad, you want to know. So give yourself three days and then pick the next food. So start with gluten, then dairy, then grains, other grains, and whatever. You’ll see. Slowly add foods back and you’ll see how you feel. And that’s your best barometer. The smartest doctor in the room is your own body, and that’s what you want to focus on. Hey everyone, it’s Dr. Mark now. Sometimes when I’m traveling, I need snacks. I don’t always snack, but I like to have healthy snacks available. But if I’m traveling, it often means I’m tempted to reach out for whatever’s quick and available rather than what’s healthy and good for me. But thankfully, thrive market has made it easy for me to order my favorite snacks online to travel with in my emergency food pack. And I literally have a day’s worth of rations in my backpack at all times so I don’t get in a food emergency. The convenience of getting my food quickly shipped to my doorstep is a huge time saver and helps keep me eating the right kinds of food that help me meet my health goals. Some of my favorite snacks from thrive market include chomps free range turkey sticks, hue mint chocolate snacking gems, gimme organic olive oil seaweed snacks and their private label pitted olives, which are green olives. They’re yummy and they even have a price match guarantee so you know you’re getting the best prices on your favorite brands. You can join thrive market with my exclusive offer and get 30% off your first order plus a free $60 gift. Head over to thrivemarket.com Hymen today, plus orders over $49 are shipped free and delivered with carbon neutral shipping from their zero waste warehouses. That’s thrivemarket.com Hyman no matter your genetics or lifestyle choices, as humans, we all share the same basic needs, like adequate nutrition, for example. But with the industrialization of agriculture and toxins in our environment, it’s getting harder and harder to get your body the nutrients it needs through food alone. And that’s where ag one comes in. Ag one is a foundational nutritional supplement that supports your body’s universal needs, like gut optimization, stress management, and immune support. Since 2010, ag one has led the future of foundational nutrition, continuously refining their formula to create a smarter, better way to elevate your baseline health. I drink ag one every morning, and I consistently feel more energetic throughout the day. I even recommend it to all my friends and family, because the results I’ve seen personally, if you want to take ownership of your health, it starts with ag one. Try ag one and get ten free ag one travel packs. With your first purchase. Go to drinkag one hymen. That’s drinkagone.com hymen. Check it out. Now let’s get back to this week’s episode of the Doctor’s Pharmacy. I wrote a book called the Blood Sugar Solution ten day detox Diet, which is about sugar addiction. And it takes you through in ten days, how to reset your whole nervous system. And not only will you not crave sugar anymore, but your average person lost about seven or eight pounds in a week. Ten days, their blood sugar dropped 1020 points. Their blood pressure dropped 1020 points. They reduced all symptoms from all diseases by about 70%. So if you have migraines, digestive issues, sleep problems, joint pain, whatever it was, everything dropped 70% by getting your system healthy. So that’s important to remember. It’s quick. You don’t have to wait forever to see the results. So we had a woman in our Cleveland clinic program called functioning for life. Within three days of joining the program, this woman was on insulin for ten years, was severely overweight. In three days, she was off her insulin. By changing her diet. In three months, she reversed her diabetes completely, and her heart failure and everything else. Pretty impressive. Next thing you should know about sugar is there’s many ways to say sugar. To quote Shakespeare, a rose is but a rose by any other name. The other thing you should know is that we have many names for sugar. I think the Inuit from the Arctic say they have 100 words for snow, and we have so many ways of saying sugar, and often we miss it on the label because it’s kind of hidden. So you know what food companies will do? They’ll literally put four or five different kinds of sugar in some product, because you’re forced to list the ingredients in order of the amount on the label. So, basically, if they put five different kinds of sugar, they can list, like, a healthier ingredient first, like flour or something, and not actually put sugar as the main ingredient. So it’s really sneaky what they do then. Other thing you should be aware is there’s a lot of words that you might see, like agave, cane sugar, corn, anything rice, even brown rice syrup. Any kind of evaporated cane juice. What the heck is that? That’s called sugar. Even fruit. You might see fruit concentrator, fruit juice. I mean, that’s just basically sugar. Anything with oats in the end, like fructose, dextrose, maltose, triolose, sucrose. These are all sugar. Anything with malt in it, like malt, syrup, flow, malt, maltodextrin, also sugar, anything with iso, like isoglucose, isomaltose. Basically, there’s a million names for sugar syrup, right? Maple syrup, sorghum syrup, corn syrup, pancake syrup, which is usually per fructose, molasses, anything with the word sugar in it, date sugar, coconut sugar, brown sugar, beet sugar, confection sugar. It’s all sugar. So sugar, sugar, sugar. Now, is high fructose corn syrup a little worse? Yes, but in the end, it’s all bad. Next thing you need to know is that artificial sweeteners are also not so great for you. So here’s a class example. What happens when you try to outsmart Mother Nature. Rather than accepting that we really shouldn’t be eating a lot of sugar, or we shouldn’t be having a lot of artificial sweeteners, and rather than accept the fact that we just should try to eat less and not have so much sugar, we kind of want the hacked, right? We want the magic loophole to avoid doing what’s really good for us, we tried this with, oh, you know, butter is bad and saturated fats bad. So let’s have margarine. Margarine. I grew up on Fleischmann’s margarine, but it turns out that trans fats are not only not good for you, they’re very bad for you. And they’ve killed hundreds of thousands of people, and they cause heart disease, diabetes, and they’re really unsafe. And the government finally, after 50 years and a lawsuit, finally caved and said, oh, gee, it’s not safe anymore. They called it a grass, generally recognized as safe. They removed the grass label. The problem is, it’s still in the marketplace because FDA is in cahoots with the food industry. And essentially they gave them a lot of loopholes and ways to kind of leave it in there. So I go to the store regularly and I kind of hunt for products. Now a lot of companies have taken it out, but what they’re replacing with may not be any better. Right. So I think we have to be very careful. Like palm shortening, which can be from palm trees, but they’re often kind of harvested in ways that destroy rainforests and destroy habitats of orangutans. It’s really bad. There are also five things that have received FDA approval that are sweeteners. Saccharine sweetened low a sulfatane which is sunid or sweet one and aspartame, nutrisweet equal and others sucralose, which is splenda and neotame. So these are all things you should avoid. They’re really bad for you and don’t have them. People who drink diet drinks every day in a study about heart disease had a greater risk of diabetes and metabolic syndrome. They are carcinogenic in animal studies. They destroy your gut microbiome. I mean they’re really bad for the good bugs in your gut and they cause more glucose intolerance. Diabetes, certain compounds are excitotoxins like damaged neurons like the aspartame in the brain have neurologic issues. So not so good. And you go well what about sugar alcohols? Are those not bad because you don’t absorb them? Well? Sugar alcohols sound great, but they’re kind of these weird strange names. They’re derived from plants, fruit, vegetables sometimes. And they’re in everything. Candy to bubble gum to cough drops to chuba, vitamins to smoothies to even quote of health foods often have these. Now they’re kind of less sweet than traditional artificial sweeteners. They do Have calories, but we don’t absorb them because they’re too big. So anything with the word all on it, like menitol, maltatol, sorbitol, xylitol, erythritol. These are things you don’t want to eat. When you do, they tend to cause a lot of gut issues. They cause the bugs in your gut. They love these. They just munch them down and they’ll create bloating. I mean, I remember once when these first came out, like, years ago or something, this patient of mine gave me this chocolate bar. Look, Dr. Hyman, here’s a chocolate bar, and there’s no sugar, and it’s amazing and it tastes good. And I’m like, great. And I’m like, okay, I’m going to eat it. So I was tired that day, I think, and I just scarfed the whole thing down in the afternoon. I was hungry, seeing patients, and my stomach blew up like a balloon. My gut bacteria did not like it, so I would not really consume these at all. They can cause diarrhea, bloating, gas, all kinds of digestive issues, and they mess with your gut for us. So there’s some that are a little bit better, like erythritol, but still be very careful with these. Don’t think you have a free pass. And it can ferment. It can cause all kinds of issues. So don’t take it, especially if you have gut issues. Now, some natural sweeteners are a little bit better than others. Listen, we all like sweet stuff, but kind of my view is if you’re going to have something sweet, just have it. You have a large sort of sugary kind of coffee drink in the morning that can have more sugar than a soda, that can have, like, eight or nine teaspoons of sugar or more in that. Now, you wouldn’t put eight or nine teaspoons of sugar in your coffee. If you take, like, a teaspoon of sugar and you put in your coffee, that’s probably a lot better than trying to do all these other things and being really aware. So I would say not more than five teaspoons a day, but that can be even too much for some of us. Most adults consume 22 teaspoons a day. Kids, about 34 teaspoons artificial sweeteners, as we said, not good. Sugar, alcohols, not good. So, Dr. Hyman, like, you’re killing me. What am I going to. I. Well, first of all, if you stay healthy, if you’re metabolically tuned, are if your metabolic engine and your muscles and your mitochondria and your weight, and you don’t have a lot of organ and belly fat, and you want to have a little sugar and you exercise regularly, okay. It’s not going to kill you, right. But if you are not metabolically tuned up, which, by the way, is 93.2% of Americans are not in good metabolic health, which is frightening to me. And how you tell is check your insulin. If your insulin is less than five, you’re probably okay. If it’s less than two, you’re good. But if your insulin is high, you’re kind of in trouble and you’re not going to have a lot of tolerance and what I call metabolic degrees of freedom. We get more metabolic degrees of freedom by being healthier. We have more resilience. Metabolic resilience. But most of us are metabolically just a train wreck. So be careful. But let’s say you want to have a little something. I mean, I’m not against having a little maple syrup, a little honey, a little actual sugar sometimes, but I would not use those kind of hacks like agave or corn syrup or brown rice syrup. They’re just not healthy for you. And they’re going to be mostly fructose and not a good thing. Date sugar can be okay. They might have antioxidants. Molasses actually has iron and things that could be okay a little bit. You could use dates just as a sweetener. Little maple syrup, a little raw honey. Okay, fine. But it’s not the sugar that you add to your food that’s the problem. It’s the sugar that’s added by corporations that’s the problem. If you have 120 ounce soda, that’s 16 teaspoons of sugar. You wouldn’t put that in your coffee. All right. For non caloric sweeteners, stevia can be okay. But I would say the whole plant stevia, not rebicide a, which is made by Cargill and Pepsi and Coca Cola. So that should tell you something about it. Also, there’s other kinds of sweeteners that you can use, which is like monk fruit sweetener, which is, I think, my favorite. It’s generally well tolerated. It’s tasty. I don’t particularly like stevia because I think it causes problems. But any sweetener could be this brain stimulant. So be careful. Look for a product with Rainforest alliance certified seal to make sure your stevia is grown in ways that are sustainable. If you want honey, you can check out the ethical consumer guide. We’ll provide the link in the show notes. And sweeteners. What are things we can include? Well, juice, pureed fruit juice, molasses, organic palm sugar, date sugar, coconut sugar. It’s got a little lower glycemic index. Monk fruit sweetener, which is a non caloric sweetener. Organic maple syrup, honey, as I mentioned, stevie and monk food, I typically are the ones I would recommend, but sparingly. And erythritol. Some people can tolerate it, but don’t have that much. And what should we avoid? Well, we shouldn’t be eating mounds of sugar of any kind, but artificial sweeteners like big no no. Liquid sugar, calories. If you want to do one thing for your health besides the high fructose corn syrup, it’s getting rid of sugary beverages. Liquid sugar. Calories are the worst because of how they affect your metabolism. High fructose corn syrup. Don’t eat that. Anything with the word syrup in the name except maple syrup. Anything that are all natural. Agave is natural. Sugar cane is natural. Evaporated cane juice is natural. Brown ice soup is natural. That means good for you. So arsenic, that’s natural. Packaged foods that have added sugar, just stay away from that stuff. In order to make food taste good, that’s industrial food. They have to add sugar or salt or fat. And it’s surprising. There’s more sugar in serving of prego tomato sauce than there are in two oreo cookies. Right. So salad dressings, granola cereals, ketchup soups, candy, yogurt. I mean, I was surprised. I’m jewish, and we had Passover, and I didn’t even look at the label. I just bought some jar of filter fish that my mother used to buy. And I’m like, this is kind of sweet. And I kind of looked at the label. It was like, full of sugar. And I’m like, why do they put sugar in fish? So it’s pretty much everything. And obviously, refined sugars of all kinds, brown sugar, aspartame, sucralose, saccharine, sulfatame, just pass on those things. And there are a lot of ways to enjoy sweetness. Also, a little hack. Use a continuous glucose monitor from levels that’ll help you find out what things are affecting you and what are not. You can also eat protein and fat before you eat something sweet or carby. For example, if you drink a glass of wine or alcohol on an empty stomach, you get a quick buzz, right? But if you basically have it after a meal or in the middle of a meal, you don’t get that instant buz. Why? Because of the quick absorption. Same thing with sugar. We may not get a buz, but our bodies don’t get the buz if we eat protein and fat before combined with diet. Exercise is really the most powerful tool for staying healthy and extending your life. My mom used to say whenever she had the urge to exercise, she would lie down till it went away, which I think she got from any youngman or some comedian. But she followed that advice, unfortunately, and she didn’t exercise despite my hounding her. Of course. Parents never listen to their kids. I mean, kids, whatever, something like that. Parents never listen to their kids. And she ended up being pretty frail and disabled the last decade of her life and not too functioning. So when you start thinking about how to take this approach of incorporating movement and exercise in your life, you can get really amazing benefits. I’m just going to kind of go through them because they’re just so profound. It actually unlocks the body’s longevity switches, the regenerative and reparative systems that are built into our biology. It activates all the longevity switches that I talk about in the book, particularly the four that have to do with nutrient sensing pathways that are sort of meta to everything else. Insulin signaling, mTOR, which is really important in terms of autophagy and cleaning up your cells, sirtuins, which are important in DNA repair, and also AMPK, which helps regulate blood sugar, insulin sensitivity, inflammation, and many other things. So it’s pretty darn exciting. It also activates the body’s antioxidant systems. It improves your cognitive function and your mood. They found that just walking helps prevent dementia, which is pretty cool. It supports your microbiome, it reduces inflammation, it helps you produce more mitochondria and help them work better and be more efficient and have better function, because mitochondria is where you make energy, and as you get older, you lose energy, so you want to boost that. It also keeps you strong and functional. I just came back from skiing out in Switzerland, and I had a really great time, was privileged to be able to go there And I was amazed. Like, I was just skiing along like I was when I was 30 or 40, and I was probably going a little too fast, but I like to do that. I felt strong and able to do it, and it was keeping up with people half my age. So I think the body has the capacity at need to do this. It also makes you happier and improves your mood and even improves your sex life, believe it or not. So what does the research say? And let’s talk about some of the nitty gritty about how it works. If you really, maybe you want to know about the science, maybe that’ll motivate you. It probably doesn’t motivate most people, but it kind of gets me all excited. I kind of like that I’m a little weird, but the research is just unbelievable about exercise. When I started to dig into, obviously, you can look at exercise and anything and search on pubmed and learn about it, but I started to look at exercise and longevity and what it does. So we covered a little bit of this, but I want to sort of expand on it. It improves your telomeres, which are little caps at the end of your chromosomes that start to shorten as you get older and shorten your life. It actually lengthens your telomeres by exercising. It protects your telomeres. It optimizes all these longevity switches, like AMPK, which regulates blood sugar. People say, I’m going to take metformin for longevity. Well, exercise is way better than metformin for regulating amPk. It also activates sirtuins, which help dna repair, reduce inflammation, and improve your blood sugar control, which are really important. It also improves your cardiovascular and heart health. We all know it reduces the risk of heart attacks and strokes and improves your brain function and cognitive function. It also helps certain types of cancer. As I said, we see the regulation of our biology through exercise. Being meted through all these mechanisms have to do with immunity and cancer prevention. So it’s super great. And, of course, it extends your health span and your lifespan. I remember being in Sardinia, and I mentioned this guy, I think, before, but his name is Pietro. He was 95 years old, and he was like a shepherd. And he was just running up and down the mountains all day, 5 miles a day, in this really regular terrain. And he was bolt upright, booming voice, clear eyes, strong and mentally sharp. And I was like, wow, this guy’s 95 years old. Most people 95 in America barely can kind of walk across the street or get from their bedroom to the bathroom. And here he is running up the mountain. So we have the ability to do that. And he exercised every day as a shepherd, not, quote, exercise, but he just does his life. It’s incredible for diabetes, for blood sugar control. I mean, just walking after dinner is a great way to keep your blood sugar down. Helps you become more insulin sensitive, and very importantly, it helps you build muscle mass and function, because as you get older, you lose muscle. It’s called sarcopenia, and that leads to all these hormonal and metabolic changes that accelerate aging and lower testosterone, high cortisol, the stress hormone, higher blood sugar, worsening cholesterol. I mean, just lower growth hormone and increased cortisol. Like I said, it’s really bad news. So building muscle is really important and that’s clearly only done by exercise. So hopefully, listening all this, you realize you can’t afford not to move. My basically philosophy is if you don’t move, you won’t literally, you’ll be dead. So how can you actually incorporate more movement? What can you do without having to drag yourself to the gym? Now, I go to the gym sometimes, but I rather play and I think there’s a lot of options and you can just do simple things, like start with simple things, even five minutes a day. And if you don’t have five minutes a day to do something, there’s something wrong with your life. So you better look at that. For example, I figured out I couldn’t do ten push ups when I was 50, so I’m going to do push ups. So I take a shower most days. So I basically would wait for the shower to heat up because I live in a barn and it’s really tall and it takes a while for hot water to get upstairs and I would do push ups and I went from being able, not able to do ten to be able to do almost 100 push ups without stopping so we can train our bodies and it’s really simple. Or maybe while your coffee is brewing, maybe do some stretching and yoga, walk or bike instead of driving. And many countries they do this. I just met this guy who was a seal of a big company and he lived in Switzerland, he runs a $6 billion company and he rides his bike straight up the hill or the matches, say the mountain, to work 2000ft elevation every day. And he’s in incredible shape. He’s 53 years old and his Vo two Max, which is a measure of fitness, is that of an elite athlete and someone who’s like half his age. So it’s very impressive. You don’t have to sort of do something like that, but just parking further away in the parking lot, taking the stairs instead of the elevator, the escalator. Just simple things to start moving. Also try a standing desk or a stability ball. If you’re at a desk, you sit on a ball. It kind of helps you move and move your body and increase your core strength. I have a friend, Mike Royzen, who was at Cleveland clinic with me, and he used to have a treadmill desk. Literally was on calls and working and working on his computer and walking all day long, which is impressive. Make your leisure time active time. So if you’re watching tv or movie, maybe put a stationary bike in your house. I remember I worked at Idaho as a family doc, and there was this patient that came in and she lost like a hundred pounds. I’m like, what happened to you? And she’s like, well, I decided instead of sitting in front of the tv and eating all day, I would get a stationary bike and just ride the bike all day instead of eating. She did, and she lost 100 pounds. So pretty impressive. Maybe also you can listen to podcasts and an audiobook or do something like that when you’re exercising or taking a walk and just makes it more fun and motivating and also do it with somebody else. As my friend Rick Warren said, everybody needs a buddy. So it’s important that if you maybe are having some trouble getting out there and doing stuff, find somebody else to do it with. It’s much more fun for me to play tennis with somebody else or play basketball or go on a bike with somebody else and do by myself. So I try to do it with friends, and it’s way more fun. Maybe pickleball is the latest craze. Join a pickleball league and go outside and just do fun stuff. So these are just a few examples of how to incorporate movement and exercise in your life and simple, natural ways to do it. And it doesn’t matter what you do, it just matters that you do it. So according to science, and particularly the science of longevity that I talk about in my book young forever, go get a copy, please. It’s really amazing. I like it a lot. It’s one of my favorite books I’ve ever written, maybe the favorite because I think I’m obviously more interested in this because I’m getting older. It’s such an essential part of longevity and of health in general and just of enjoying life. It’s not about doing it now for some result later. It makes you feel better now. And we really can’t afford not to exercise. So start where you are. Build up slowly, even ten minutes a day of walking can help start strength training, weight resistance training, whatever you want, body weights, bands. I use bands mostly because I travel with them, do more movement throughout the day, get up, walk around, do stuff. And I write a lot about what kinds of exercise, how much exercise, how to optimize it in the least amount of time. I cover all that in my book young forever. So I want to share a little bit about a study that kind of reflects the power of this. And it was an 80 year study called the Harvard study of adult development. And it had been producing data on so many different things on who lives longer, happier, healthier lives. And they wanted to understand not what makes people sick, but what makes people thrive, what makes them well. So what were the lessons from? This study was 84 year study. Right. Long study. They were tracking the same people and over generations, asking thousands of questions, hundreds of measurements, to find out what really makes people healthy and happy. And these people were giving regular updates on their life, their health, their income, their employment, their marital status. They filled out questionnaires and were part of interviews where they revealed their fears and their hopes or disappointments or accomplishments or regrets, life satisfaction, and lots more. And this had a really incredible impact by providing lots of data. Then researchers use this data to assess how people’s lives, their experiences, their attitudes, affect their well being. And one of the thing that was so powerful from this study was sort of surprising. It wasn’t career achievement, it wasn’t exercise, it wasn’t a healthy diet that determined the quality and happiness of your life. It was good relationships. Good relationships keeps us healthier and happier. That was powerful. And the study’s leaders that are obviously the people started the study are dead. The current leader of the study, Robert Waldinger from Harvard, and Mark Schultz, have a new book. It’s called the good life lessons from the world’s longest scientific study of happiness and It’s a great book. I actually had Robert Waldinger on the podcast at Doctor’s pharmacy, and you can learn more about the book and things there. But what are the things that we can do? What are the lessons learned from the study about how do we improve the quality of our relationships? First, we have to look at ourselves, right? Who are we? What is our life like? What are the choices we’re making? How are we not prioritizing relationships so we can get really busy? We can do all sorts of stuff that we think has help helping us get ahead. We can spend too much time on social media, but we often don’t really think about building and investing in the quality and the number of our relationships. And for me, I know personally that my relationships, my friendships, my community is the most important thing for me. It really is what keeps me grounded, keeps me healthy, keeps me happy. And more and more as I get older, I focus more on this, as opposed to, like, when you have kids and a career and you try to just kind of get by, and it’s like, sometimes friends can fall by the wayside, but it’s really important to find, and it even can be just one or two good friends. It makes a huge difference. Now, when these people in the study actually were interviewed, they really, actually benefit from this interviews because it helped them realize where they neglected their relationships, and then they considered sort of looking and finding, how can we improve that? So maybe look at your own life. What’s your social life like? Who are the people in your life that you care most about, that you want to have a relationship? Think about how they support you and how often you spend time together and maybe do a little bit of effort to actually focus on what matters to you most and help you make decisions that actually can enhance the quality and number of your relationships. So maybe spend more time with people who make you laugh and who elevate you, and less time with people who drain you and are energy saps. So I think it’s important to find friends and community members to help bring you up and not take you down. Sometimes you meet with people, all you want to do is complain and go on and on about everything. And I think there are other people who, when you’re around them, you laugh, you have fun, you play, and that’s what you want. Prioritize your relationships. We schedule in exercise, we make ourselves maybe time to make a healthy diet. We focus on our career and work, but we don’t focus on prioritizing those relationships that matter and being showing up and being present for us, rather than zoning out on social media, rather than doing a million things at once, focus on your relationships. During COVID I think we all felt a little isolated. And so I reached out to about six of my close male friends and we all have known each other for 40 often plus years, maybe 35. The small, the fewest, I think, was 25 years. And so we’ve known each other and we formed this group. And every Tuesday at 06:00 we meet for an hour and a half and spend time together and share about our lives. And it’s been one of the most impactful things I’ve done. And it’s something you can do. It doesn’t take any organization, you just need a zoom link or it’s really pretty easy. And you can have these deep connections and relationships that allow you to be seen and known and can really help activate so many healing pathways in your body. Make time to talk to people, right? And it came in sometimes those small relationships that matter. But a study in the University of Kansas found that the simple act of just reaching out to somebody, a friend, for conversation once a day dramatically increases happiness and lowers their stress hormones. So hanging out with friends lowers your stress hormones pretty good. And also it’s not all about you, right? So take time to ask questions. Find out what’s exciting for them, find out what they’re struggling with, find out what makes them happy. Have them share their life with you and value their opinions. Be present, focus. And don’t just kind of be superficial with them, but go deep. So maybe try to have one conversation a day and put that in your calendar and see what the effects will be over time. Super important. Next thing is be kind. My grandmother used to ask my mother when she came home and said, I met this new friend, she says, are they kind? And I think kindness was such an important value in my family. And how do we be kind to each other? The relationship happiness is determined by how you are in that relationship. There was a research study in Michigan state that looked on data for 2500 married couples and they found they were how good they were in five different dimensions. Were they extroverts? Were they agreeable? Were they conscientious? Were they stable emotionally? Were they open to doing new things and experiences? And the ones who had higher levels of agreeableness and emotional stability also had higher happiness. So the more kind of kind and positive you were, the more likely you were to be happy. People invest a lot of time in finding someone who’s perfectly compatible, but that might not be the whole story, it’s more about being kind to the people you care about and fostering those deep connections. Also, a friend of mine had a word that I really loved, which is called coptuitiveness, which is where you cop to it. If you screw up, if you make a mistake, you cop to it. And it’s really about learning to apologize, learning to repair relationships, learning how to have nonviolent communication, and owning your stuff, like I said. Also, a great way to build relationship is to ask questions. Instead of talking about yourself, ask questions about somebody. Show that you care. Show that you’re interested in what they care about or thinking about. Someone wants advice, don’t just give them your opinion. Ask them questions to guide them to the right answer, that they know themselves. Also, don’t be shy about expressing your love. There are lots of ways to love and lots of ways to express it. Maybe it’s simple things. I had a flight that came in the other night late, and I usually take the uber home, and my partner, she showed up unexpected and picked me up at the airport. It was like. Just brought me such joy and delight. It was such a simple thing within 15 minutes from the airport here, and it wasn’t a big deal for her, but it made a huge difference in terms of my own happiness, and it was really powerful. So help your friends with a project. Ask them what they need to do, whether it’s clean up the garage or work on a project together. Call an old friend. Maybe they haven’t heard from you a while. Maybe you just want to check in on them. Ask them how they’re doing. Maybe you want to focus on helping somebody who’s trying to do something that may be difficult for them, trying to support them and give them some love. Also, when you have a partner or a close friend, do little acts of kindness. Give them a little gift. Buy them something they like. Get them something that makes them smile. Can be super simple. When you often don’t do these acts kind of life just. It’s a little bit flatter. And when you do them, it’s super fun. Like I said, when my partner picked me up the airport, it was like, wow, I got that. She really cared. Also, tell people how you feel about them. Don’t wait till their eulogy to tell them all the things you like about them. Be specific. Give people feedback about what you love about them, what you like about them, what makes you happy, and how you feel in their presence. Who would you be without them? Who would you be now that you’re with them? What do they inspire you to do and thank them for what they do and how they show up for you? Don’t be shy. Like I said, don’t wait till someone’s dead to write a eulogy about them. It’s better to have eulogies when you’re alive. And I’ve actually had a group friend group where we would get together, and on people’s birthdays we would basically go around, and for everybody’s birthday, we would share a little bit about what they’re like and what we like about them, what we love about them, something that inspires us about them. And it’s like getting a living eulogy. It’s pretty awesome. So I really invested in my own friendships, in my own community, and I think it’s a critical aspect of our health. And as I get older, it becomes more and more important. So make sure that you take the time to invest in good relationships, because good relationships is just important. Or maybe more than eating healthy and exercising and giving up sleep. Thanks for listening today. If you love this podcast, please share it with your friends and family. Leave a comment on your own best practices on how you upgrade your health, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and follow me on all social media channels at Dr. Mark Hyman and we’ll see you next time on the doctor’s pharmacy. Everybody, it’s Dr. Hyman. Thanks for tuning into the doctor’s pharmacy. I hope you’re loving this podcast. It’s one of my favorite things to do and introducing you all the experts that I know and I love and that I’ve learned so much from. And I want to tell you about something else I’m doing which is called Mark’s picks. It’s my weekly newsletter and in it I share my favorite stuff, from foods to supplements to gadgets to tools to enhance your health. It’s all the cool stuff that I use and that my team uses to optimize and enhance our health. And I’d love you to sign up for the weekly newsletter. I’ll only send it to you once a week on Fridays. Nothing else, I promise. And all you have to do is go to drheiman.com picks to sign up. That’s drheiman.com picks picks and sign up for the newsletter and I’ll share with you my favorite stuff that I use to enhance my health and get healthier and better and live younger longer. This podcast is separate from my clinical practice at the Ultra Wellness center, my work at Cleveland Clinic, and Function Health, where I’m the chief medical officer. This podcast represents my opinions and my guest opinions. Neither myself nor the podcast endorses the views or statements of my guests. 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