The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka
115. Dr. Mark Hyman: The Truth About Why Americans Are Getting Sicker
Tue, 19 Nov 2024
How a broken food system is destroying your gut microbiome. Dr. Mark Hyman joins Gary Brecka to expose how our broken food system is destroying America's gut health. The 15-time NYT bestselling author reveals why 96% of Americans have metabolic dysfunction and shares his proven protocol for healing your gut and reversing chronic disease. A must-watch for anyone concerned about their health or the future of our food system. Skip 400,000+ waitlist, first 100 users get early Function access with code ULTIMATEHUMAN100: https://bit.ly/3ZbkBGh Explore Kiss the Ground Now!: https://bit.ly/3CgDIpy Watch Common Ground!: https://bit.ly/40Doipt Get Dr. Mark Hyman’s books: https://theultimatehuman.com/book-recs Listen to "The Doctor's Farmacy" Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3Yzsowo Apple: https://apple.co/4fcLe3v Connect with Dr. Mark Hyman YouTube: https://bit.ly/3NX1gCE Instagram: https://bit.ly/4ejJILJ Facebook: https://bit.ly/3YCT6E5 TikTok: https://bit.ly/48A4w09 X.com: https://bit.ly/3CgNJmN LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/48Ewb03 00:00 Intro of Show and Guest 05:40 Single Cell Layer Separating Us from Insides 07:36 Importance of Gut Health 13:30 Lab Testing to Check the Gut Ecosystem 18:37 Leaky Gut and Inflammatory Diseases 20:25 Treatment Steps to Prevent Inflammatory Diseases 25:20 Elimination Diet, Autoimmune Paleo Diet, and 10-Day Detox 32:21 Improving the Health of the Microbiome 35:41 The Need to Fix the Food Supply 40:10 Biomarkers We Should be Looking at 46:16 Make America Healthy Again Movement 52:30 Food Is the Number One Killer Today 53:20 Pharma Ads vs. Research & Development 1:02:20 Educating the People 1:07:45 Craving on Ultra-Processed Foods 1:10:54 Where Do Our Taxes Go? 1:17:44 Dr. Hyman’s Special Offer! 1:20:00 What does it mean to you to be an Ultimate Human? GET GARY’S WEEKLY TIPS ON HEALTH & LIFESTYLE OPTIMIZATION: https://bit.ly/4eLDbdU EIGHT SLEEP - USE CODE "GARY" TO SAVE $350 ON THE POD 4 ULTRA: https://bit.ly/3WkLd6E BODY HEALTH - USE CODE "ULTIMATE20" FOR 20% OFF YOUR ORDER: http://bit.ly/4e5IjsV BAJA GOLD - 91 ESSENTIAL MINERALS PER PINCH! 10% OFF USE CODE "ULTIMATE10": https://bit.ly/3WSBqUa ELEVATE YOUR WORKOUTS WITH THE ULTIMATE HUMAN STRENGTH TRAINING EQUIPMENT: https://bit.ly/3zYwtSl THE COLD LIFE - BOOST RECOVERY WITH THE ULTIMATE HUMAN PLUNGE: https://bit.ly/4eULUKp KETTLE & FIRE - SAVE 20% ON 100% GRASS-FED BONE BROTH USE CODE "ULTIMATEHUMAN": https://bit.ly/3BaTzW5 MASA CHIPS - GET 20% OFF YOUR FIRST $50+ ORDER: https://bit.ly/40LVY4y PARKER PASTURES - GET PREMIUM GRASS-FED MEATS TODAY: https://bit.ly/4hHcbhc SHOP GARY’S TOP-RATED PRODUCTS & EXCLUSIVE DEALS: https://theultimatehuman.com/amazon-recs Watch the “Ultimate Human Podcast” every Tuesday & Thursday at 9AM EST on YouTube: https://bit.ly/3RPQYX8 Connect with Gary Brecka Instagram: https://bit.ly/3RPpnFs TikTok: https://bit.ly/4coJ8fo Facebook: https://bit.ly/464VA1H X.com: https://bit.ly/3Opc8tf The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka Podcast is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute the practice of medicine, nursing or other professional health care services, including the giving of medical advice, and no doctor/patient relationship is formed. The use of information on this podcast or materials linked from this podcast is at the user’s own risk. The Content of this podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Users should not disregard or delay in obtaining medical advice for any medical condition they may have and should seek the assistance of their health care professionals for any such conditions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the main cause of illness in America?
The number one killer today is not smoking, it's not war, not infections, it's food. When you look at the Global Burden of Disease Study, which looked at 195 countries, they said that 11 million people die from ultra-processed food and from not getting enough of the good foods.
And I think a lot of people don't even realize it. We make GLP-1 in our bodies and it responds to satiation. And if you eat nutrient dense foods, you actually release the GLP-1 that stops you from overeating. Ultra processed food is what makes people hungry. Our gut is the gateway to optimal health. Now people get it. And when I started on this, people thought I was crazy.
You were early on talking about the importance of gut health and its myriad of conditions that come from gut dysbiosis.
Basically, our intestines the size of a tennis court laid out flat, but it's only one cell thick is the lining. So it's one cell between you and a sewer. That's a very important dynamic. And when that dynamic breaks down, we get really sick. And when you get to the root, you don't have to treat each thing separately.
You know, it's somebody that is going down this road of saying, you know, I really do realize the importance of my gut health. Where do I start?
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Chapter 2: Why is gut health important?
Functional medicine is where we start. We start with nutrition and gut repair. And if you do that...
Today on The Ultimate Human, we have a true pioneer, a personal mentor of mine, and an absolute icon in the wellness and functional medicine space. With decades of experience, Dr. Hyman has really redefined how everyone approaches health. He's shown millions of people that food can be your medicine.
He's a 15-time New York Times bestselling author and a champion for health as preventative practice. We'll dive into his groundbreaking work on reversing biological age, the true impact of our dietary choices, and practical steps that you can take to live a longer, healthier, happier life. Let's welcome Dr. Hyman to the podcast. Hey guys, welcome back to the Ultimate Human Podcast.
I'm your host, human biologist, Gary Brekka, where we go down the road of everything anti-aging, biohacking, longevity, and everything in between. And as you just heard, today's guest is an extraordinarily special guest because he's very special to me. He doesn't know this, but... He doesn't know this, but he is actually a mentor of mine, 15-time New York Times bestselling author.
I think he's just an icon in the functional medicine space. And when I was looking for people early in my career, which is only 10 years ago, that agreed philosophically with what I was preaching so I could latch my wagon to somebody that was saying the same thing I was, that had some credentials, it was definitely Dr. Mark Hyman.
Oh, that's scary.
I'm very, very excited to have you on the podcast because you have liberated me from a lot of the chicanery and charlatanry that people accuse me of. Is that a word or did I just make it up? I think it's a word. Charlatanry? Okay, yeah, let's put that in there. Google it. Because, you know, I just believe so much in foundationally
what you preach, which is, you know, essentially that, you know, we can take charge of our our cellular biology and we can cure reverse chronic disease and we can even extend our life. And that is a very exciting concept to me and We just did a podcast where we talked about a lot of the simplicity and the complexity and about getting back to the basics. So I'm really excited for today's podcast.
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Chapter 3: How can lab testing help assess gut health?
I want to actually start with something out there a little bit because I just did this gut reset challenge. And every month on The Ultimate Human, I run these free challenges like three-day water fast, cold plunge challenge, 10,000-step challenge. We've done lots of these sleep challenges.
And the idea is to just introduce some of these concepts to people where they can use fasting or sunlight or grounding or breath work or cleaning up their food, their water to really heal their bodies. And we just did a gut challenge. And when I was doing some research for the podcast, I stumbled on a podcast you did with Andrew Huberman. I think it was Huberman.
And you were talking about a gut bacteria that was present in high volumes in patients that were really responsive to immunotherapy. And its absence reduced the responsiveness of immunotherapy.
Acromantia.
Yeah, acromantia.
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Chapter 4: What is leaky gut and its effects?
Acromantia mucinophilia. Yeah.
it's one of those keystone bacteria like the keystone species like the wolves and yellowstone it's like one of those important species of bacteria if you don't have it the cascading effects are quite significant you increase leaky gut you increase inflammation the body autoimmunity uh metabolic diseases diabetes uh it's it's critical for for gut health and maintenance and we basically killed it off with all the inbox we've taken
Chapter 5: What are effective treatment steps for gut health?
Yeah. So, you know, I think that people generally accept the notion that, you know, our gut is the gateway to optimal health. You know, our immune system sits right outside of our gut. You know, it's... Now people get it.
When I started this, people thought I was crazy. Yeah, yeah. Talking about gut and leaky gut.
It was you and Dr. Perlman were the only ones talking about this story. I read his gut brain connection and grain brain and some of these other books that he wrote. And in fact, that's what led me to you. And you were early on talking about the importance of gut health and gut function and its myriad of conditions that come from gut dysbiosis. And that's what I really want to touch on. I mean,
We only have, what, a single cell layer separating us from our inside world.
Basically, our intestine is the size of a tennis court laid out flat in terms of surface area, but it's only one cell thick. It's the lining. It's one cell between you and a sewer. You know, you got food and you got food. That's a very important dynamic because essentially your gastrointestinal system is outside your body. It's a tube that goes from your mouth to your butt, but it's sort of
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Chapter 6: What dietary changes can improve gut health?
got all this foreign stuff in it no one in your body is all this foreign stuff and your body has to sort through like what's friend or foe what can i live in what i have to keep out right and when that dynamic breaks down we get really sick when the whole ecosystem of bugs of which there's you know at least as many as our body's own cells, probably more, 40, 50 trillion.
You know, there's 100 times the DNA in the bacterial DNA in our bodies as our own DNA. We're outnumbered, 101. And they're producing all these metabolites, probably a third or half of our blood metabolites are from the microbiome. They all affect all of our body functions. And if you have good bacteria, you're creating healthy metabolites.
And if you're creating bad bacteria, you're getting bad metabolites. And that's what's leading to this cascade of disease. In fact, in terms of longevity, it's now understood as one of the hallmarks of aging, a dysfunctional microbiome.
wow um and so if if if they're new to this subject somebody's new to this subject i mean where where do they start i know that you know at functional health you guys do a whole myriad of testing i'm actually very impressed with function health yeah our function health um of the caliber and the breadth of testing that you do quite honestly for the price.
And you know, $15,000 worth of testing for $499. It almost sounds too good to be true, but it's not. We talked about it on a previous podcast, but so, you know, it's somebody that is going down this road of saying, you know, I really do. I realize the importance of my gut health. Where, where do I start?
Well, first is to understand what is going on there. Why is it important? Let's just sort of do a little primer on the gut, right? So you've got this whole ecosystem in you. You're basically just a host for the bacteria. They outnumber you in terms of what they do. And there's probably a thousand species of bacteria in there, so maybe more. We're just figuring it out.
They have all kinds of jobs, from helping you digest your food, to helping produce vitamins, to preventing leaky gut, to modulating inflammation, to affecting your brain chemistry and mood, to regulating your appetite, to regulating your weight, to regulating your risk of autoimmune disease, heart disease, cancer, dementia, diabetes, Parkinson's, I mean, you name it.
It's connected to everything, autism, ADD, depression.
so you name a disease or a condition in our modern society at some level it's connected to the gut even our mitochondrial health is connected to our gut wow and so what's happened is that we've we've gone from an era where we're all hunter-gatherers we're all eating wild food we're all eating i mean i visited the haza tribe in africa last year and they're the one of the few other tribes yeah we lived with them for a few days we went hunting with them did you
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Chapter 7: How does the food supply affect health?
They went under this tree and they knew this yam was there, this wild yam, and they dug it out. And it's like, you know, you'd think it was like very tough to eat, but they cook it, they mash it down. And they eat all these foods that are extremely high in fiber. They don't eat processed sugar. They don't have artificial foods. They don't have emulsifiers and additives. Food dyes.
They don't have antibiotics. So we've kind of changed our diet so radically in the last hundred years. Even a hundred years ago, it wasn't so bad. We were eating you know, a lot more foods just close to the earth.
And so what's happened is we've taken, you know, our diet and turned it into an ultra-processed diet, which contains compounds that cause a leaky gut, that feed the bad bacteria, that cause inflammatory bacteria to grow. Two, we've, you know, C-section rates have gone through the roof. Probably third of all births were C-sections.
The baby doesn't get inoculated with bacteria as it's going through the birth canal. The mother's probably taking antibiotics. So she's knocked out a lot of her healthy bacteria, which then the baby doesn't get it, even if it's vaginally born. Then we bottle feed. And what's really fascinating is when you look at it, and look, some women need to formula feed their babies.
So the formula needs to be improved. Somebody's got to figure that out. Oh, my gosh. They require seed oils. Yeah, it's seed oil. It's sugar. And what's really important is that 25% of breast milk, the calories in breast milk, are not digestible by humans. There's oligosaccharides that are complex sugars that can't be broken down that are the fuel for bacteria. Formula doesn't have any of that.
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Chapter 8: What biomarkers should we monitor for health?
And so when you look at the bacterial strains and the short chain fatty acids, which are the fuel that the bacteria produce that are keeping your gut healthy, that are using to run everything in your gut,
the there's higher levels of propionic acid which has been linked to autism and there's lower levels of butyrate which is the really critical fuel for your gut lining and also for regulating so many biological processes it's absorbed in the body it's used as an anti-cancer compound in the body so you you form a feed you don't get these the good bacteria you get all these bad bacteria producing all these bad short chain fatty acids so by the time then you know you then you add in
all the processed food. And these kids are having these guts that are causing high levels of food allergy. We never had the food allergy rates we have. True food allergy, not just food sensitivities. We're seeing rates of, you know, allergy and asthma and eczema. And then all these behavioral issues and ADD and autism rates have gone up a thousand percent.
You know, the use of ADD drugs has gone up like 400%. I mean, it's just, it's insane what's happening. And then we see kids with depression. Why is that happening? Because their microbiome is messed up. And the microbiome needs to be taken care of. Just like if you had a garden, you have to take care of your garden. You have to take care of the soil.
And if you don't take care of your microbiome, you're going to end up with so many different chronic illnesses. And we see this story as functional medicine practitioners. We see this all the time. When you take a history and you watch the timeline, okay, you have an autoimmune disease when you're 40. Well, what was your story?
well i was you know my mother uh you know i had a c-section i was bottle fed i took lots of antibiotics because i had colic when i was a kid you know and then i started getting this and that allergies and asthma irritable bowel and eventually it all ends up in something bad you know right and so tending our inner garden is a huge is a huge factor and in functional medicine is where we start start with nutrition and gut repair
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Chapter 9: How can we make America healthy again?
And if you do that, like 80% of things will get better. It's quite remarkable.
Yeah, what's amazing is, I think unbeknownst to you, we've actually shared some clients who have since disclosed to me that they were also working with you. And some of them had serious gut dysbiosis. When I was working with them and my clinical team was working with them, we had real difficulty with absorption of nutrients, getting levels corrected in the blood.
And then they did a stint with you. And once the gut microbiome was corrected, you see these dramatic shifts in how they respond to the more, let's call it traditional therapies that we were applying. Still not... traditional therapies in terms of allopathic medicine.
We don't use chemicals, synthetics, pharmaceuticals, but even the basics approach that we were taking that a lot of people respond to, these clients were having real difficulty and it just sort of further heightened my awareness to the work that you're doing.
Yeah, it's so important.
So important. So when you're starting with the gut, I mean, you say test, treat. Yeah. And so how does somebody walk through this process? Because if you've got trillions of bacteria in the gut. Hey, guys, Gary Brekka here. And I want to talk to you about something I consider a true game changer in my health regimen. Kettle and Fire Bone Broth.
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Well, there's some simple things. If you have real issues, you probably need to get some testing, right? But empirically, you can actually get a lot of done without actually a lot of testing. So they used to call me Dr. See Every Poop because I used to get everybody. It's floating too much fat. It's sinking. It looks good. No, but I would literally do stool tests on everybody.
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